OS X Reviewed
hypercritical.co
hypercritical.co
While I started only with 10.3, I have found reading the older review as a fine page of OS X history. Maybe Siracusa these should become a book. Maybe Apple should move to OS 11.
Of course, Apple doesn't make it easy to upgrade to their stable and regressed operating system - I'm going to have go through all sorts of hoops to upgrade to anything other than the (still not fully trusted by me) Yosemite.
However, if one is using Xcode to write iOS 8 apps for the millions of new phones people bought a few months ago, you are pretty much forced onto the Apple upgrade treadmill.
For example, Xcode 6.3 requires 10.10[1]. Apple decided that OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) released less than 18 months ago is not recent enough.
Staying with OS X 10.6 means the latest Xcode you can install is v4 which means iOS 5 is the last version you can write apps for. That would be a severe handicap since iOS 5 has less than 3% marketshare[2]. I'm not sure if Apple servers would even allow developers to submit an iOS 5 app these days[3]. OS X 10.6 definitely was very stable but staying on it has severe economic penalties for many programmers.
[1]https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id497799835?ls=1&mt=12
[2]http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/
[3]http://www.macworld.com/article/2080865/apple-requiring-app-...
Snow Leopard is still my favorite. Mountain Lion was ok and Mavericks and Yosemite have been error-filled and support headaches. I am hoping the next version is better tested.
I agree about the testing, but still I think they have managed to keep the technical debt somewhat in control. I really yearn for the day they license Plan9, and port OS X on top of that. Because I believe that would give bigger opportunities, both with respect to hardware, but also with respect to a better foundation for developing more sophisticated features.
[edit: I should say that OpenStep was my favorite release and somethings are still not in OS X which is a pity - as to Plan 9 - I do have dreams of OpenStep on top of Plan 9]
I feel exactly the same. Partially for the content, and partially because I knew that the reading experience would prepare me for the best and worst; cushion the blows, and highlight the bits to be savored.
That explains why video game commentary is a thing now.
The comment made by jballanc probably gets it- "he would always manage to cover some new feature or other thing I didn't know about". People look at the same thing in different ways. When we read a review or watch a game commentary, we are really trying to know how another person may look at it.
A shame that he is no longer reviewing them but thanks to him for all the other reviews. Incredibly informative! And I will be waiting to see what changes Apple make to HFS+ after his in-depth overview of the state of the filesystem in the Lion review.
I can only imagine the stress such reviews would cause; hopefully he hasn't suffered too much from it.
http://techdistortion.com/podcasts/pragmatic/episode-50-acci...
http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.htm...
I agree that while the symptoms of RSI may be physical, the root cause is psychological.
No one may be able to truly replicate a Siracusa OS X review, but the person who really gets what made them great will probably do a bang-up job.
It's not so bad here. At first, the transition from "guy who does this thing that's really important to me and my tribe" to "guy who used to do this thing that was really important to me when I was part of that tribe" is kinda terrifying. Then you realize that this is the fate of everyone who helped create A Moment, and it's kinda cool once you settle into it.
Sure, there are a few people who have the talent and energy to keep forcing themselves into new Moments, but even Madonna is old now, and all she did was stave off her "hey, you used to be that guy!" phase by a decade or so. And at what price? At some point, doesn't chipping away at and polishing and spit-shining and agonizing over your latest cultural product start to feel more than a little bit like slavery? I know it certainly did for me. Being a slave to your own brand is no way to spend a life.
Speaking of Madonna, I find that I sometimes identify with interviews given by older musicians, like an interview I read with David Gilmour where he tells the reporter something like, "please stop asking me about Roger Waters... I'm in my 70's and that was only 17 years of my life and it was a really long time ago."
When I read that, my first reaction was, "oh man, is that my future?" But my second reaction was, "whatever he thinks of Roger Waters, and whatever he's done since then, he did some amazing work in those 17 years that touched a lot of people and became a part of who they are." There much worse fates than having a truly excellent slice of your work define you when you're 70. There are plenty of other people who've done a lifetime's worth of equally excellent work in total obscurity, and would love for someone to care enough to ask them about any part of it.
Anyway, I imagine that, like me, you're not out there looking around for another Moment to insert yourself into, but it could be that a new Moment will find you. After all, isn't that how it happend the first time around?
Now, back to work... Fiddler's Green is a nice place to visit and catch up with old friends, but we're both way too young to take up permanent residence here :-)
But these reporters aren't asking him about his work. They're asking his for gossipy statements about his tensions and fallout with Waters. They give no shits about the music, they just want to get an old man angry.
What I liked about his reviews, is that he intentionally did not make them comprehensive. He saw his goal not to rehash all of the Apple Documentation (which you could read if you were interested), but rather to provide his opinionated perspective on what was interesting, and what spoke to the general theme of OS X's progression.
His reviews will be missed, but I agree, 15 years of stress/agony is more than enough for one man. He's leaving on the top of his game.
I hope a feature release will be of a similar caliber (i.e., "make ALL the things better") and I hope Siracusa is strong enough to stay away from it.
I used to look forward to the Siracusa reviews as much as the OS releases themselves. This year there will be a void, but hopefully someone like iMore or MacStories will fill that void.
'Finally, we come to the heart of the matter. In Lion, what does Apple say to the god of file system death? "Not today."'
He is referencing this iconic moment [1] from Game of Thrones.
I started reading the reviews a few years ago, when I started a Mac/iOS career, and was hooked instantly, going back to older Mac OS X reviews to read about technologies.
We have similar ages and technical backgrounds so any time some misapprehension of POSIX or USB or Star Wars comes up on a podcast he's always the one who explains it to the other hosts, but in a relatable or entertaining way.
I would use caution in making armchair diagnoses like that. However, while we are throwing around psychological terms, I do believe that "anal-retentive personality" is quite apt.
As an Ars forum member from back as early as 2001, I appreciate everything you did, John. Thanks!
With Siracusa that is definitely not the case. His OS X reviews are irreplaceable. Nothing comes close.
How about a Kickstarter campaign to fund him taking a month off work to write another review? I bet we could get a sum of money together large enough to have him unable to say no.
And Finally ditching HFS+ which he hate.
In a way, I'll also enjoy the extra time I have in not reading the reviews - as much as I truly enjoyed them.
Spectacle does 60% of what I want, and the keyboard shortcuts for it are in my finger DNA. Works particularly well on a 13" Macbook Air. But I'm still holding out for a proper tiling window manager - one of these days...
On OS X, I just use Expose or Cmd-Tab and Cmd-` shortcuts. I used to use Slate, but then ultimately gave that up as well. Maybe I use a retina screen at 1920x1200 so I can have a lot of screen real estate, but I haven't found the need to have a tiling wm at work either.
That being said: at home, I use a tiling WM exclusively (dwm), and the main attractions for me is that it's (a) uncluttered and (b) fast.
Not just fast because the WM is snappy (though dwm certainly is), but because a whole layer of decisions on moving and positioning windows is taken away.
I use three main layouts, none of which require me to do anything except start applications (and maybe switch workspace and possibly tiling mode):
1) Full screen -- e.g., web browsing.
2) Two windows side by side -- e.g., text editor & REPL.
3) Variation on #2 where there's more than one window stacked on the right -- e.g., a spare terminal for general file management or whatever. Swapping windows from the 'stack' to the 'master' area is a single keyboard operation.
I have nine workspaces to play with (pedantic point: dwm uses 'tags' rather than workspaces, but for the purposes of this discussion they can be considered the same), so I can keep different tasks cleanly separated.
And almost all WM tasks can be done from the keyboard: the only exceptions are moving and resizing floating (non-tiled) windows, which I almost never need to do.
You mention Cmd+Tab and Cmd+`, which is a good example. Typically, I'd say I have a working set of windows consisting of gvim, iTerm2, a web browser (docs, research, etc.) and Hipchat. Cmd+Tab switches between applications, which isn't quite appropriate here: first, it doesn't consistently highlight the highest window in the Z-stack for the application being switched to, and it drags all windows of that application to the top of the Z-stack, which very often includes windows I am not interested in. Cmd+` can correct for this, somewhat. What I really need is just straight manipulation of the Z-stack.[1]
I use Expose extensively, but I find I use it because I lack a good method above.
I think one of the big draws to a tiling WM is that it allows efficient layout of windows, especially if you're coming from OS X's WM. Consider that OS X's WM's resize catchment area (the "border") is impossibly small; grabbing it with the pointer in OS X is a consistently jarring experience IMO — small resize catchments work better in a WM that allows you to resize with a keyboard+mouse shortcut. E.g., in MATE, if I hold Alt, I can click and drag anywhere within the entire area of the window to resize; this is much more fluid, and requires considerably less concentration to perform. (I can similarly move windows, which requires grabbing the title bar on OS X, but this is somewhat less difficult.) Note that I can do this the OS X way in MATE too: grabbing the edge works. I'd add that MATE also "snaps" windows to the edges of the screen, and to each other, which IMO also aids quick layouts.
[1]: This is a big reason for why I run MATE at home. Good old Alt+Tab.
Also, Spectacle[2] gives you most of the benefits of a tiling window manager without actually having to run one. I have Command+Option+{Left,Right} set to move and resize a window to the left or right vertical halves of my screen, and I use those combinations constantly.
Further, I second the sibling's recommendation for Witch. If buying a license hadn't removed the "You have used this X times" counter, I'd tell you how many times I've used it, but it's easily in the hundreds of thousands.
[1]: http://www.bettertouchtool.net/ [2]: http://spectacleapp.com/
I believe that being keyboard centric also made a big difference. I still use the mouse some but I mostly use the keyboard to move around workspaces and windows and the tiling window manager is very amenable to that workflow.
When using OSX, I haven't been very happy with the tiling solutions available. They all frustrate me in one way or another. And, in terms of the way my desktop looks, I'm okay with it being... well, maybe not the most aesthetically pleasing desktop around.
You can fix this in the keybord section of system preferences, or just run this:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode -int 3
defaults write com.apple.finder FXInfoPanesExpanded -dict General -bool true
I'll be sad to see him go, but I don't fault him for quitting, nor do I fault his reasoning. The best reason to quit something is because you know it's time to quit.
I can't see much innovation happening in the OS space for a few years until we get widespread adoption of memristors, perhaps in 2020 when HP comes out with The Machine.
Indeed, Notifications has an annoying habit of locking up an otherewise solid 10.8.5 so I can't command+tab between apps. It always returns after 45-90 seconds, and I can kill it by bringing up spotlight and launching activity monitor - but that's the only impact that the notification tray has made on me. (Though, notifications themselves, akin to what Growl used to do, are kind of handy - except for the annoying one telling me I have to update my computer that I can't stop from coming back - particularly harsh when you are doing a presentation on a projector)
>the annoying one telling me I have to update my computer that I can't stop from coming back
That one caused me to disable OS X notifications altogether. If Apple wants to silently upgrade the OS without notifying me, I would be OK with that (though I'd appreciate an email) but interrupting me without giving me any way less drastic than rebooting to turn off the stream of interruptions is just not OK with me.
(Yes, I realize that I'm more intolerant of interruptions than most people.)
I command-tab as well, but I find it useful to have an overview of everything going on, and jump straight to a window (without command-tabbing, then command-tilde'ing depending on the application)
On the software side, I powered it on a year or so ago. Felt pretty different from recent OS X. I didn't remember it being as different as it was. (If you had said little substantive change since 10.6 I may have agreed more.)
Yeh that's great if all you are doing is mild web browsing and sending emails. Last year I ditched my late 2008 MBP for a 2014 MBP (both 15") and the difference is astounding. I can play CSGO at 150fps rather than 25. Furthermore it doesn't overheat and shut down while playing CSGO. For work it is also a massive improvement when I run MATLAB scripts that involve huge matrix multiplications, inversions, SVDs etc.
My point was that the thing in your pocket runs circles around the 10.4 machine, and the high-end desktop machine runs circles around that. But I agree with sjtrny's comment that you might not notice it if you don't try it with the right workload. (Although, with the way web browsers burn cycles and RAM these days ...)
I also have a PowerPC machine on 10.5 that I power up every now and then, and every time I am surprised how similar it is to 10.9. Maybe that's because my Dock hasn't changed a lot since 10.4, and I avoid the cloud and notifications like the plague.
http://flashlight.nateparrott.com
It's a system for Spotlight plugins on Yosemite. It works similar to Alfred, LaunchBar or Quicksilver. It's open source and fairly simple to write your own plugins for the system (in Python or Javascript).
Look for "Scalable User Interface" here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2005/04/macosx-10-4/20/
(Not entirely serious, I think HiDPI this is the best new thing to happen since 10.5, and I can't wait until I can actually buy HiDPI displays.)
* HiDPI support & Retina scaled resolutions * AirPlay video / desktops * Photos / iCloud Photo Library * Notifications * Handoff / Continuity * iMessage / FaceTime (bundled in 10.7) * Voice & SMS relay * Find my Mac / remote lock & erase via iCloud * Automatic cellular data tethering * MailDrop for sending large Mail attachments * AutoSave (app state save/restoration) * 32->64 / ALSR / kext signing / GateKeeper * Rotating TimeMachine backups * EFI OS Recovery
I like all of those features (though AirPlay still is a struggle with HD, though to be expected; and handoff for voice is still very buggy). And others are genuine innovations or things that Apple has polished. But to point to, for an egregious example, "Look, Notifications, how innovative that is" is also disingenuous.