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macOS 10.12 Sierra: The Ars Technica review

153 points by mercutio2 10y ago

JoshGlazebrook 10y ago
"And finally, Apple Watch unlocking also requires 802.11ac Wi-Fi because of the way the software determines the distance between your watch and your Mac. That list includes: MacBook (Early 2015 and later) iMac (Late 2013 and later) MacBook Air (Mid 2013 and later) MacBook Pro (Late 2013 and later) Mac Mini (Late 2014) Mac Pro (Late 2013)" I have a Mid-2012 Retina Macbook Pro, and I actually upgraded the wifi card to the one in the Late 2013 because I wanted 802.11AC (It's one of the few things that are not soldered to the board). It works without any issue, I wonder if it will work with this apple watch unlock feature.
- newman314 10y ago
  This mcard is supposed to work on unsupported Macs. I personally do not care for the mobility features as I do not use iCloud so YMMV. http://www.quickertek.com/products/mCard.html http://www.quickertek.com/products/mCard.html
  - snuxoll 10y ago
    Save yourself some money and just buy this: https://www.amazon.com/SEENIGHT-Bcm94360cs2-Bcm94360cs2ax-Bluetooth-Wireless/dp/B01F3I300U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474472939&sr=8-1&keywords=BCM94360CS2 https://www.amazon.com/SEENIGHT-Bcm94360cs2-Bcm94360cs2ax-Bl... Apple uses bog-standard Broadcom wireless chips for their AirPort Extreme cards, this one is advertised as "mac-compatible" but any of the BCM943X cards will work as long as they are standard mini-PCIe cards.
    - JoshGlazebrook 10y ago
      Same kind of thing, but for the retina macbooks make sure you get one like this: https://www.amazon.com/SEENIGHT-Bluetooth-653-0029-BCM94360CSAX-BCM94360CS/dp/B01F3G92C2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474473438&sr=8-1&keywords=BCM94360CS https://www.amazon.com/SEENIGHT-Bluetooth-653-0029-BCM94360C... The retina macbook pro has 3 antennas for 3x3 MIMO, the one you linked to only has two. This is really only needed if you have the 2012 retina macbook pro as they didn't switch to 802.11AC chips until 2013.
blakesterz 10y ago
Quite a bit written there on APFS: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/macos-10-12-sierra-the-ars-technica-review/7/#h1 http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/macos-10-12-sierra-the-... Sounds like it's going to be awesome, especially the snapshots and clones. (I love that the author of this review has B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and he records a weekly book podcast.)
- FullyFunctional 10y ago
  I can't be the only one who is massively disappointed that, not only did we not get ZFS, but APFS forgoes the most important feature - data checksumming - with a snobby hand-wave of "trust us", yet includes it for meta data. Sure, APFS is a tremendous improvement over HFS+ (Hardly Fail Safe), but such as missed opportunity.
colemannerd 10y ago
I feel the biggest disappointment in Sierra that this review didn't really harp on is the lack of new features for non-iOS users. There's not that much in this update and the end user features that are available right now are solely focused on iPhone users. As an android user, I can't use siri on a day to day basis, I can't do automatic unlock with my watch, etc. You'd suspect that most mac users have iPhones, but that's not been my experience since most developers use mac but also use android.
- djrogers 10y ago
  > As an android user, I can't use siri on a day to day basis But with Sierra, now you can. You seem to be under the impression that this requires an iPhone - it does not.
  - SSLy 10y ago
    he meant to say he can't run siri on android
  - israrkhan 10y ago
    Siri, Cortana, and Google Now are mainly for collecting personal user data, and understanding user behaviour. Microsoft has already made cortana available on iOS and Android (though it is not baked into OS). Similarly Google has made their tech available on other platforms. Apple's data harvesting ambitions are not huge currently, mainly because of their absence from search and advertising business, but I wont be surprised if one day they make Siri available on other platforms too.
    - corv 10y ago
      As opposed to how Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and Baidu text search are not collecting personal data?
- jws 10y ago
  The Photos upgrade for "moments" is quite nice, assuming you use Photos to store your photos. The storage upgrade where they can remove forgotten debris files and then migrate your unused files to the cloud is great for most people. I realize most HN readers have already drawn their saber and are 2/3rds over the gunwale at my suggestion that a computer make a decision about the disposition of a file, but this one feature is going to reduce my "friends and family tech support debt" by about 75%. A couple of clicks and I can fix their full computer. In the process of that I have quietly gotten them to backup their documents to the cloud so when I get the "my computer won't turn on" call I don't have to spend hours extracting and recovering their hard drive because they NEVER backup. Thanks to "apps", I can finally convince people that paying $1.99/mo for cloud storage isn't some evil plan to loot the world economy. People are used to small payments for computer services.
overcast 10y ago
Just a heads up, for anyone running the now "unsupported" 2008 MacPro's, MacBooks, and the like. http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html Worked perfectly for me. Patches the installer, reboot, install as normal, reboot, run the post patch stuff, reboot. done. Been running the GM release for the past week with zero issues on my Early 2008.
- no_protocol 10y ago
  It seems like there are a lot of tools, patches, and installers in the Hackintosh/"not quite supported Mac" realm that are supposed to be blindly trusted by users. It's like a few guys figure something out and release a fix but they are rarely explained or documented. Do you know if there is a forum thread or mailing list or site documenting what this program does with source available?
  - overcast 10y ago
    Monster thread if you want to dig through it. Though you could say that about just about every piece of software you use. http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-12-sierra-unsupported-macs-thread.1977128/ http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-12-sierra-unsup...
  - s_kilk 10y ago
    Reminds me of the android scene, loads of random forum posts, zips uploaded to rapidshare and blind trust in hacked installers. It's been a few years since I last built a hackintosh though.
    - overcast 10y ago
      The newest patcher, downloads the installer straight from Apple for you, and then you patch that.
  - mhurron 10y ago
    > Hackintosh/"not quite supported Mac" realm that are supposed to be blindly trusted by users. That's pretty normal for the Apple user community. Not long after the release of Sierra, you had people on forums asking for other (not App Store) sources for an ISO to download and install from because the App Store was (predictably) swamped. No one had a problem with installing their OS from god knows where, they just go ahead and trust any source that said, yep, this is totally a legit Sierra installer.
gcatalfamo 10y ago
No useful new features for power users...I am a bit disappointed.
- nicky0 10y ago
  I guess you won't be buying it then.
  - DoritosMan 10y ago
    The update is free?
    - nicky0 10y ago
      Is that a statement or a question? Yes, it is free.
      - aeturnum 10y ago
        I don't know why he asked, but I was confused about your statement. I wasn't sure of your intent. Were you asking if the user "did not buy it" metaphorically? Or were you suggesting that because the update is free (therefore impossible to buy), users should restrain (or properly frame) their criticism?
        DigitalJack 10y ago
        1) It's free. It's not like they took something from you. 2) You don't have to install it. 3) If you don't like it, move on and quit bitching about it.
        nicky0 10y ago
        The latter - and you expressed it a lot better than I did.
  - gcatalfamo 10y ago
    I don't get your sarcasm. It's free, what is there to buy?! I have been using it for roughly 12 hours and, as I said, it's kind of underwhelming in terms of new features. It's not "bad" in any way, it just doesn't feel fresh or more powerful unless you are longing for iOS features on a desktop OS.
killbrad 10y ago
So unless I want to use Siri on my computer (I don't) or tighter integration with iPhones (which I don't use), this update brings mostly nothing of significance.
- nicky0 10y ago
  Yes and as a Mac developer, thank god for that. None of my apps broke this year!
  - heartbreak 10y ago
    Seems you don't use Seil or Karabiner. Lucky.
    - Kudos 10y ago
      I'm sure they mean the apps they made, not the apps they use.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - Luc 10y ago
      Karabiner-Elements works great for me. Some work to set everything up again though, ant it only does simple key reassignments for now.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Seamlessly using cloud storage for rarely-used files is pretty great. For photos, it even recompresses the local files when space gets low and restores higher qualities from the cloud when you have more space.
- sir-velo 10y ago
  I'd never upgrade Mac OS versions if not for the fact Apple's developer tools require it. As for Safari 10.0 not working on all but the last version OS versions, thankfully there's a choice - Chrome and Firefox.
whitecarpet 10y ago
At the end of the review, the author also complains about Apple neglecting Mac hardware which 'is no longer running circles around the rest of the PC industry'. I had the same thoughts a few weeks ago—I needed to buy a new notebook and coming from many years on several Macbook Pros, I was disappointed that Apple hasn't done any significant refreshes for years. So, I decided just to get a nice Thinkpad and put Ubuntu or Windows on it. This journey—and it was a journey taking weeks—was infuriating and I realized that Apple is still way ahead, even with three years old hardware. To make it short: I faced so many frustrations on the other side just to buy a non-Apple notebook. I lost so much time with find the right notebook that I finally decided for a three year old Macbook Pro maxed out with a Intel quad core HQ CPU—which runs circles around all current notebooks, performance-wise and battery-wise, even the just launched Kaby Lake U series. Here just a few of these disappointments which brought me back to a 'coasting platform' as the author says: even the best trackpads in the non-Apple-world are still crap, Thinkpad suffer from display lottery (two suppliers two qualities), displays not matching Apple quality and brightness, PWM for brightness control, hidpi screens are still not fully supported by the OS as on macOS, on Windows it's ok, on Ubuntu so-so, but never the consistent crispiness of macOS, good non-Apple-hardware is not cheaper, Thinkpads can get really, really expensive, too much choice with little difference, worse quality control, battery-time never matches Apple's, very often tacky designs (except Thinkpads), innovation takes wrong direction (who needs 2-in-1s), 5K display support (Windows is kind of capable, Linux not), wake-up problems (notebooks don't come back from sleep and if something is not working, trackpad, Wifi, etc.)... It's often very small stuff but my notebook is my daily driver and it's shocking that a three year old MBP still crushes all brand new notebooks from competitors.
- limeyy 10y ago
  I've been going through the same motions. You end up with Thinkpads as the only viable alternative (esp with the numeric keyboards, which I like); but once if you get decent specs, they become as pricey as mbp's, plus there is the lottery of quality you randomly get. I'll wait a month, see if Apple does an event.
- NovaS1X 10y ago
  I see this train of thought in Apple-centric forums like MacRumors and here on HN. The typical "I can't believe Apple is doing X!" or the "Why hasn't Apple upgraded X yet, Apple is dead! I'm moving to X company now". I work in IT. I see and use many different laptops all the time. These people really don't get how bad a lot of the other options are, even when they look great on the companies marketing page. The reality is that innovation in laptops died when the tablet and phone boom took the market by storm. Apple hasn't been innovating with the Mac, but neither has anyone else. Any new MacBook Pro will be just another step above the already steaming pile of trash that the majority of "PC" laptops are.
cmsimike 10y ago
I was mostly disappointed with Siri on macOS - there is no homekit support. The dream of sitting on my computer and verbally turning off the lights was premature. I still have to reach for my phone =/ Everything else Siri could do seems a bit pointless (to me) on a computer. The latency added by asking Siri to do something makes using keyboard and mouse much quicker, I feel.
- blowski 10y ago
  Not just you asking, but Apple processing it while you wait to see whether it understood correctly. The only time I use Siri is calling people when I'm wearing gloves. I don't see it changing on a computer. My biggest problem with Siri is that half the time it feels like muttering magical incantations - get the words in the wrong order and the spell doesn't work.
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api 10y ago
I don't see "second fiddle to iOS" as necessarily a terrible thing. OSX is a fine operating system. It's stable, strikes a great compromise between power, security, and ease of use, and is useful for pretty much anything you want to do with a present-day desktop. I personally want Apple to keep it mostly the same but polish it, make it more secure (without making it less useful!), and improve things like stability and performance. Other than that I'm fine with it as-is.
- xufi 10y ago
  Same here, Granted (I just moved to it really 3 years ago) I really wish they also paused OS release/delay them a bit longer. By looking back on older versions, I wish we had another Snow Leopard like version since some of the latest releases seem to be not completely polished but I welcome the new features as well
Gimpson 10y ago
It was unclear to me from the review, does the Spotlight Siri integration now let us type "Remind me to put out the trash cans when I get home" in Spotlight and have it perform the same action Siri would have done? I feel like for the couple of things that Siri parses well, it's way easier to use than the app itself, but I'm not going to speak into my computer in my open-plan office.
- pboutros 10y ago
  No, it doesn't receive text input, just voice right now.
  - pavlov 10y ago
    That's a strange design choice.
    - veidr 10y ago
      Well, it's not a good design choice, but it's what you might expect of a slapdash attempt to make a "minimum viable marketing bullet point" release with a skeleton crew of engineers maintaining the product line that is currently the company's lowest priority.
    - thesmok 10y ago
      Well if you are going to use keyboard anyway, why not just create a reminder yourself instead of asking Siri to do it?
      - MarkMc 10y ago
        Because I don't know how to create a reminder in macOS, but I know how to type a sentence
yokohummer7 10y ago
> if you’ve got a Mac with a fan and that fan is currently spinning loudly, triggering Siri will slow it down so that the fan noise doesn’t interfere as much with your speech. These kinds of small details make me happy. Nice touch as usual, Apple.
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syncsynchalt 10y ago
I'm fascinated by this line: "In macOS Sierra, ECN is enabled for 50 percent of TCP sessions. So should you run into a creaky old firewall that hasn't been updated in the past decade and a half (it happens), then clicking the link again will probably solve the issue." Introducing congestion features to a network is always scary (you can blackhole your clients and even trigger unintended behavior that affects the health of the network) but introducing non-determinism in your TCP connections seems like an odd way to do it.
- glhaynes 10y ago
  See also their previous non-deterministic usage of IPv4 vs. IPv6: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el-capitan-the-ars-technica-review/11/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el-capitan-t... (paragraph that starts with "When an iOS 9 or OS X 10.11 application")
rch 10y ago
The only compelling 'feature' of this release, is that now I won't have to deal with most of software I use telling me I need to upgrade.
jorgecastillo 10y ago
I miss Snow Leopard and I miss pre-iPhone Apple!
israrkhan 10y ago
With Siri in macOS, Cortana in Windows 10, and Google Now in chrome.. The operating systems have turned into data mining software. This is an alarming trend. Companies are no longer making money from operating systems by selling licenses, but using their software platforms for harvesting personal user data. Cross-device and cross-browser tracking is catching up. And the worse part is that majority of consumers don't really have a choice
- kentosi 10y ago
  What do you mean that they don't have a choice? Can't you disable the siri function?
  - israrkhan 10y ago
    I mentioned, majority of users don't have a choice. The way they bake it into Operating system, and leave it enabled by default, it ends up enabled on majority of devices even if user is not using it. Additionally these companies are going to extreme lengths by coupling these data-collection features with core OS functionality.
    - wl 10y ago
      I upgraded to macOS Sierra on two machines yesterday. Both times, the setup program asked if I wanted Siri enabled or not.
- agmcleod 10y ago
  How does voice dictation enable data capture that wasnt already doable before? They already have calendar apps, browsers for web searches. The things you type pipe through the OS already. I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid, just that I don't see how these make it more about data mining.
  - israrkhan 10y ago
    voice dictations were local. The data you stored in calendar did not go to cloud, and even if it did, nobody correlated your calendar with your web searches or your location. Various pieces of data existed in their own Silos, without needlessly going to cloud. These personal assistants are combining data from all sources (your contacts, location, search history, calendar, across devices) , correlating and storing it in one place to build a personality profile. This has huge privacy implications.
xhruso00 10y ago
Have they finally updated packages like php and ruby? They were so outdated in 10.10/10.11
- itafroma 10y ago
  > Have they finally updated packages like php and ruby? PHP: > ▶ /usr/bin/php -v > PHP 5.6.24 (cli) (built: Aug 8 2016 16:58:37) > Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group > Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies Ruby: > ▶ /usr/bin/ruby -v > ruby 2.0.0p648 (2015-12-16 revision 53162) [universal.x86_64-darwin16]
  - xhruso00 10y ago
    +1 for PHP /usr/bin/php -v PHP 5.5.36 (cli) (built: May 29 2016 01:07:06) (10/11) -1 for ruby (2.3.1 is the recommended now) ruby 2.0.0p648 (2015-12-16 revision 53162) [universal.x86_64-darwin15] (10/11)
- corv 10y ago
  http://brew.sh http://brew.sh
deleted 10y ago
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apocalyptic0n3 10y ago
If you're running any Logitech hardware, specifically mice, I recommend waiting to upgrade. Numerous issues have been reported (see [1][2][3]). For my Marathon M705 mouse, I cannot use back/forward and scrolling is only half working, plus the Logitech Control Center is crashing randomly and actually uninstalled itself this morning without warning, which is always cool. [1]: https://community.logitech.com/s/question/0D53100005UytQy https://community.logitech.com/s/question/0D53100005UytQy [2]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/253784/logitech-mouse-scrolling-weird-after-sierra-update-soggy-inertia-effect-in-nati http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/253784/logitech-mou... [3]: https://community.logitech.com/s/question/0D53100005UPFcp https://community.logitech.com/s/question/0D53100005UPFcp
- veidr 10y ago
  Various Logitech gear has broken (sometimes grayscreening the entire Mac just by existing) with every major OS X update ov the last half dozen or so. Most of these issues can be solved by using a third-party driver and never installing any of the Logitech software.
hackbinary 10y ago
As much as I like Mac OS X, when does Mac OS XI come out? (I've been using it since the first pre-release).
- sccxy 10y ago
  Never. There is no Mac OS X anymore. Now it is called macOS.
- CGamesPlay 10y ago
  It doesn't. They dropped the X. It's 'macOS Sierra' now.
STRML 10y ago
Be aware: Sierra breaks Karabiner and Seil. You'll need to use Karabiner-Elements, which has far less functionality than Karabiner. Notably, you can't remap caps lock and you can't assign to more than 2 keys, so caps-lock "hyper" is out.
- steeef 10y ago
  That's kind of a deal-breaker for me. I rely on shortcuts with a virtual hyper key that it would be painful to lose it.
- thesmok 10y ago
  You _can_ remap Caps Lock. It's even in the [readme](https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/usage/README.md#change-key https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/usa...). I was using Seil on El Capitan and after upgrading to Sierra I went to the Seil website and I see it says "use Karabiner elements now". Ok, I uninstalled Seil, installed Karabiner elements, got configuration example from readme file and it works as it did before. I use it to switch keyboard languages with Caps Lock key.
  - STRML 10y ago
    That's great to know. So all that's missing is the ability to map more than 2 keys so we can get `hyper` back. Seems this is the place to look: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/src/core/grabber/include/manipulator/event_manipulator.hpp https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/src...
cycomachead 10y ago
I miss John Siracusa's reviews. This is a fine review, but not a Siracusa Review.
rleigh 10y ago
Did they update the FreeBSD userland? The neglect to the core of the system the last few years has gotten increasingly more annoying to deal with. There are now glaring incompatibilities due to the age of a lot of the core tools. Stuff as basic as "readlink -f" works everywhere except on MacOS, simply because they haven't bothered to update it in a decade... It also looks like the OpenGL support is untouched for yet another release from the article, and that's another pain point for me, since it's the poorest supported of all major platforms at this point.

153 points by mercutio2 10y ago

"And finally, Apple Watch unlocking also requires 802.11ac Wi-Fi because of the way the software determines the distance between your watch and your Mac. That list includes: MacBook (Early 2015 and later) iMac (Late 2013 and later) MacBook Air (Mid 2013 and later) MacBook Pro (Late 2013 and later) Mac Mini (Late 2014) Mac Pro (Late 2013)" I have a Mid-2012 Retina Macbook Pro, and I actually upgraded the wifi card to the one in the Late 2013 because I wanted 802.11AC (It's one of the few things that are not soldered to the board). It works without any issue, I wonder if it will work with this apple watch unlock feature.

newman314 10y ago
This mcard is supposed to work on unsupported Macs. I personally do not care for the mobility features as I do not use iCloud so YMMV. http://www.quickertek.com/products/mCard.html http://www.quickertek.com/products/mCard.html
- snuxoll 10y ago
  Save yourself some money and just buy this: https://www.amazon.com/SEENIGHT-Bcm94360cs2-Bcm94360cs2ax-Bluetooth-Wireless/dp/B01F3I300U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474472939&sr=8-1&keywords=BCM94360CS2 https://www.amazon.com/SEENIGHT-Bcm94360cs2-Bcm94360cs2ax-Bl... Apple uses bog-standard Broadcom wireless chips for their AirPort Extreme cards, this one is advertised as "mac-compatible" but any of the BCM943X cards will work as long as they are standard mini-PCIe cards.
  - JoshGlazebrook 10y ago
    Same kind of thing, but for the retina macbooks make sure you get one like this: https://www.amazon.com/SEENIGHT-Bluetooth-653-0029-BCM94360CSAX-BCM94360CS/dp/B01F3G92C2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474473438&sr=8-1&keywords=BCM94360CS https://www.amazon.com/SEENIGHT-Bluetooth-653-0029-BCM94360C... The retina macbook pro has 3 antennas for 3x3 MIMO, the one you linked to only has two. This is really only needed if you have the 2012 retina macbook pro as they didn't switch to 802.11AC chips until 2013.

blakesterz 10y ago

Quite a bit written there on APFS: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/macos-10-12-sierra-the-ars-technica-review/7/#h1 http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/macos-10-12-sierra-the-... Sounds like it's going to be awesome, especially the snapshots and clones. (I love that the author of this review has B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and he records a weekly book podcast.)

FullyFunctional 10y ago
I can't be the only one who is massively disappointed that, not only did we not get ZFS, but APFS forgoes the most important feature - data checksumming - with a snobby hand-wave of "trust us", yet includes it for meta data. Sure, APFS is a tremendous improvement over HFS+ (Hardly Fail Safe), but such as missed opportunity.

colemannerd 10y ago

I feel the biggest disappointment in Sierra that this review didn't really harp on is the lack of new features for non-iOS users. There's not that much in this update and the end user features that are available right now are solely focused on iPhone users. As an android user, I can't use siri on a day to day basis, I can't do automatic unlock with my watch, etc. You'd suspect that most mac users have iPhones, but that's not been my experience since most developers use mac but also use android.

djrogers 10y ago
> As an android user, I can't use siri on a day to day basis But with Sierra, now you can. You seem to be under the impression that this requires an iPhone - it does not.
- SSLy 10y ago
  he meant to say he can't run siri on android
- israrkhan 10y ago
  Siri, Cortana, and Google Now are mainly for collecting personal user data, and understanding user behaviour. Microsoft has already made cortana available on iOS and Android (though it is not baked into OS). Similarly Google has made their tech available on other platforms. Apple's data harvesting ambitions are not huge currently, mainly because of their absence from search and advertising business, but I wont be surprised if one day they make Siri available on other platforms too.
  - corv 10y ago
    As opposed to how Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and Baidu text search are not collecting personal data?
jws 10y ago
The Photos upgrade for "moments" is quite nice, assuming you use Photos to store your photos. The storage upgrade where they can remove forgotten debris files and then migrate your unused files to the cloud is great for most people. I realize most HN readers have already drawn their saber and are 2/3rds over the gunwale at my suggestion that a computer make a decision about the disposition of a file, but this one feature is going to reduce my "friends and family tech support debt" by about 75%. A couple of clicks and I can fix their full computer. In the process of that I have quietly gotten them to backup their documents to the cloud so when I get the "my computer won't turn on" call I don't have to spend hours extracting and recovering their hard drive because they NEVER backup. Thanks to "apps", I can finally convince people that paying $1.99/mo for cloud storage isn't some evil plan to loot the world economy. People are used to small payments for computer services.

overcast 10y ago

Just a heads up, for anyone running the now "unsupported" 2008 MacPro's, MacBooks, and the like. http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html Worked perfectly for me. Patches the installer, reboot, install as normal, reboot, run the post patch stuff, reboot. done. Been running the GM release for the past week with zero issues on my Early 2008.

no_protocol 10y ago
It seems like there are a lot of tools, patches, and installers in the Hackintosh/"not quite supported Mac" realm that are supposed to be blindly trusted by users. It's like a few guys figure something out and release a fix but they are rarely explained or documented. Do you know if there is a forum thread or mailing list or site documenting what this program does with source available?
- overcast 10y ago
  Monster thread if you want to dig through it. Though you could say that about just about every piece of software you use. http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-12-sierra-unsupported-macs-thread.1977128/ http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-12-sierra-unsup...
- s_kilk 10y ago
  Reminds me of the android scene, loads of random forum posts, zips uploaded to rapidshare and blind trust in hacked installers. It's been a few years since I last built a hackintosh though.
  - overcast 10y ago
    The newest patcher, downloads the installer straight from Apple for you, and then you patch that.
- mhurron 10y ago
  > Hackintosh/"not quite supported Mac" realm that are supposed to be blindly trusted by users. That's pretty normal for the Apple user community. Not long after the release of Sierra, you had people on forums asking for other (not App Store) sources for an ISO to download and install from because the App Store was (predictably) swamped. No one had a problem with installing their OS from god knows where, they just go ahead and trust any source that said, yep, this is totally a legit Sierra installer.

gcatalfamo 10y ago

No useful new features for power users...I am a bit disappointed.

nicky0 10y ago
I guess you won't be buying it then.
- DoritosMan 10y ago
  The update is free?
  - nicky0 10y ago
    Is that a statement or a question? Yes, it is free.
    - aeturnum 10y ago
      I don't know why he asked, but I was confused about your statement. I wasn't sure of your intent. Were you asking if the user "did not buy it" metaphorically? Or were you suggesting that because the update is free (therefore impossible to buy), users should restrain (or properly frame) their criticism?
      - DigitalJack 10y ago
        1) It's free. It's not like they took something from you. 2) You don't have to install it. 3) If you don't like it, move on and quit bitching about it.
      - nicky0 10y ago
        The latter - and you expressed it a lot better than I did.
- gcatalfamo 10y ago
  I don't get your sarcasm. It's free, what is there to buy?! I have been using it for roughly 12 hours and, as I said, it's kind of underwhelming in terms of new features. It's not "bad" in any way, it just doesn't feel fresh or more powerful unless you are longing for iOS features on a desktop OS.

killbrad 10y ago

So unless I want to use Siri on my computer (I don't) or tighter integration with iPhones (which I don't use), this update brings mostly nothing of significance.

nicky0 10y ago
Yes and as a Mac developer, thank god for that. None of my apps broke this year!
- heartbreak 10y ago
  Seems you don't use Seil or Karabiner. Lucky.
  - Kudos 10y ago
    I'm sure they mean the apps they made, not the apps they use.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - Luc 10y ago
    Karabiner-Elements works great for me. Some work to set everything up again though, ant it only does simple key reassignments for now.
matt4077 10y ago
Seamlessly using cloud storage for rarely-used files is pretty great. For photos, it even recompresses the local files when space gets low and restores higher qualities from the cloud when you have more space.
sir-velo 10y ago
I'd never upgrade Mac OS versions if not for the fact Apple's developer tools require it. As for Safari 10.0 not working on all but the last version OS versions, thankfully there's a choice - Chrome and Firefox.

whitecarpet 10y ago

At the end of the review, the author also complains about Apple neglecting Mac hardware which 'is no longer running circles around the rest of the PC industry'. I had the same thoughts a few weeks ago—I needed to buy a new notebook and coming from many years on several Macbook Pros, I was disappointed that Apple hasn't done any significant refreshes for years. So, I decided just to get a nice Thinkpad and put Ubuntu or Windows on it. This journey—and it was a journey taking weeks—was infuriating and I realized that Apple is still way ahead, even with three years old hardware. To make it short: I faced so many frustrations on the other side just to buy a non-Apple notebook. I lost so much time with find the right notebook that I finally decided for a three year old Macbook Pro maxed out with a Intel quad core HQ CPU—which runs circles around all current notebooks, performance-wise and battery-wise, even the just launched Kaby Lake U series. Here just a few of these disappointments which brought me back to a 'coasting platform' as the author says: even the best trackpads in the non-Apple-world are still crap, Thinkpad suffer from display lottery (two suppliers two qualities), displays not matching Apple quality and brightness, PWM for brightness control, hidpi screens are still not fully supported by the OS as on macOS, on Windows it's ok, on Ubuntu so-so, but never the consistent crispiness of macOS, good non-Apple-hardware is not cheaper, Thinkpads can get really, really expensive, too much choice with little difference, worse quality control, battery-time never matches Apple's, very often tacky designs (except Thinkpads), innovation takes wrong direction (who needs 2-in-1s), 5K display support (Windows is kind of capable, Linux not), wake-up problems (notebooks don't come back from sleep and if something is not working, trackpad, Wifi, etc.)... It's often very small stuff but my notebook is my daily driver and it's shocking that a three year old MBP still crushes all brand new notebooks from competitors.

limeyy 10y ago
I've been going through the same motions. You end up with Thinkpads as the only viable alternative (esp with the numeric keyboards, which I like); but once if you get decent specs, they become as pricey as mbp's, plus there is the lottery of quality you randomly get. I'll wait a month, see if Apple does an event.
NovaS1X 10y ago
I see this train of thought in Apple-centric forums like MacRumors and here on HN. The typical "I can't believe Apple is doing X!" or the "Why hasn't Apple upgraded X yet, Apple is dead! I'm moving to X company now". I work in IT. I see and use many different laptops all the time. These people really don't get how bad a lot of the other options are, even when they look great on the companies marketing page. The reality is that innovation in laptops died when the tablet and phone boom took the market by storm. Apple hasn't been innovating with the Mac, but neither has anyone else. Any new MacBook Pro will be just another step above the already steaming pile of trash that the majority of "PC" laptops are.

cmsimike 10y ago

I was mostly disappointed with Siri on macOS - there is no homekit support. The dream of sitting on my computer and verbally turning off the lights was premature. I still have to reach for my phone =/ Everything else Siri could do seems a bit pointless (to me) on a computer. The latency added by asking Siri to do something makes using keyboard and mouse much quicker, I feel.

blowski 10y ago
Not just you asking, but Apple processing it while you wait to see whether it understood correctly. The only time I use Siri is calling people when I'm wearing gloves. I don't see it changing on a computer. My biggest problem with Siri is that half the time it feels like muttering magical incantations - get the words in the wrong order and the spell doesn't work.

deleted 10y ago

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api 10y ago

I don't see "second fiddle to iOS" as necessarily a terrible thing. OSX is a fine operating system. It's stable, strikes a great compromise between power, security, and ease of use, and is useful for pretty much anything you want to do with a present-day desktop. I personally want Apple to keep it mostly the same but polish it, make it more secure (without making it less useful!), and improve things like stability and performance. Other than that I'm fine with it as-is.

xufi 10y ago
Same here, Granted (I just moved to it really 3 years ago) I really wish they also paused OS release/delay them a bit longer. By looking back on older versions, I wish we had another Snow Leopard like version since some of the latest releases seem to be not completely polished but I welcome the new features as well

Gimpson 10y ago

It was unclear to me from the review, does the Spotlight Siri integration now let us type "Remind me to put out the trash cans when I get home" in Spotlight and have it perform the same action Siri would have done? I feel like for the couple of things that Siri parses well, it's way easier to use than the app itself, but I'm not going to speak into my computer in my open-plan office.

pboutros 10y ago
No, it doesn't receive text input, just voice right now.
- pavlov 10y ago
  That's a strange design choice.
  - veidr 10y ago
    Well, it's not a good design choice, but it's what you might expect of a slapdash attempt to make a "minimum viable marketing bullet point" release with a skeleton crew of engineers maintaining the product line that is currently the company's lowest priority.
  - thesmok 10y ago
    Well if you are going to use keyboard anyway, why not just create a reminder yourself instead of asking Siri to do it?
    - MarkMc 10y ago
      Because I don't know how to create a reminder in macOS, but I know how to type a sentence

yokohummer7 10y ago

> if you’ve got a Mac with a fan and that fan is currently spinning loudly, triggering Siri will slow it down so that the fan noise doesn’t interfere as much with your speech. These kinds of small details make me happy. Nice touch as usual, Apple.

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syncsynchalt 10y ago

I'm fascinated by this line: "In macOS Sierra, ECN is enabled for 50 percent of TCP sessions. So should you run into a creaky old firewall that hasn't been updated in the past decade and a half (it happens), then clicking the link again will probably solve the issue." Introducing congestion features to a network is always scary (you can blackhole your clients and even trigger unintended behavior that affects the health of the network) but introducing non-determinism in your TCP connections seems like an odd way to do it.

glhaynes 10y ago
See also their previous non-deterministic usage of IPv4 vs. IPv6: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el-capitan-the-ars-technica-review/11/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el-capitan-t... (paragraph that starts with "When an iOS 9 or OS X 10.11 application")

rch 10y ago

The only compelling 'feature' of this release, is that now I won't have to deal with most of software I use telling me I need to upgrade.

jorgecastillo 10y ago

I miss Snow Leopard and I miss pre-iPhone Apple!

israrkhan 10y ago

With Siri in macOS, Cortana in Windows 10, and Google Now in chrome.. The operating systems have turned into data mining software. This is an alarming trend. Companies are no longer making money from operating systems by selling licenses, but using their software platforms for harvesting personal user data. Cross-device and cross-browser tracking is catching up. And the worse part is that majority of consumers don't really have a choice

kentosi 10y ago
What do you mean that they don't have a choice? Can't you disable the siri function?
- israrkhan 10y ago
  I mentioned, majority of users don't have a choice. The way they bake it into Operating system, and leave it enabled by default, it ends up enabled on majority of devices even if user is not using it. Additionally these companies are going to extreme lengths by coupling these data-collection features with core OS functionality.
  - wl 10y ago
    I upgraded to macOS Sierra on two machines yesterday. Both times, the setup program asked if I wanted Siri enabled or not.
agmcleod 10y ago
How does voice dictation enable data capture that wasnt already doable before? They already have calendar apps, browsers for web searches. The things you type pipe through the OS already. I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid, just that I don't see how these make it more about data mining.
- israrkhan 10y ago
  voice dictations were local. The data you stored in calendar did not go to cloud, and even if it did, nobody correlated your calendar with your web searches or your location. Various pieces of data existed in their own Silos, without needlessly going to cloud. These personal assistants are combining data from all sources (your contacts, location, search history, calendar, across devices) , correlating and storing it in one place to build a personality profile. This has huge privacy implications.

xhruso00 10y ago

Have they finally updated packages like php and ruby? They were so outdated in 10.10/10.11

itafroma 10y ago
> Have they finally updated packages like php and ruby? PHP: > ▶ /usr/bin/php -v > PHP 5.6.24 (cli) (built: Aug 8 2016 16:58:37) > Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group > Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies Ruby: > ▶ /usr/bin/ruby -v > ruby 2.0.0p648 (2015-12-16 revision 53162) [universal.x86_64-darwin16]
- xhruso00 10y ago
  +1 for PHP /usr/bin/php -v PHP 5.5.36 (cli) (built: May 29 2016 01:07:06) (10/11) -1 for ruby (2.3.1 is the recommended now) ruby 2.0.0p648 (2015-12-16 revision 53162) [universal.x86_64-darwin15] (10/11)
corv 10y ago
http://brew.sh http://brew.sh

deleted 10y ago

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apocalyptic0n3 10y ago

If you're running any Logitech hardware, specifically mice, I recommend waiting to upgrade. Numerous issues have been reported (see [1][2][3]). For my Marathon M705 mouse, I cannot use back/forward and scrolling is only half working, plus the Logitech Control Center is crashing randomly and actually uninstalled itself this morning without warning, which is always cool. [1]: https://community.logitech.com/s/question/0D53100005UytQy https://community.logitech.com/s/question/0D53100005UytQy [2]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/253784/logitech-mouse-scrolling-weird-after-sierra-update-soggy-inertia-effect-in-nati http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/253784/logitech-mou... [3]: https://community.logitech.com/s/question/0D53100005UPFcp https://community.logitech.com/s/question/0D53100005UPFcp

veidr 10y ago
Various Logitech gear has broken (sometimes grayscreening the entire Mac just by existing) with every major OS X update ov the last half dozen or so. Most of these issues can be solved by using a third-party driver and never installing any of the Logitech software.

hackbinary 10y ago

As much as I like Mac OS X, when does Mac OS XI come out? (I've been using it since the first pre-release).

sccxy 10y ago
Never. There is no Mac OS X anymore. Now it is called macOS.
CGamesPlay 10y ago
It doesn't. They dropped the X. It's 'macOS Sierra' now.

STRML 10y ago

Be aware: Sierra breaks Karabiner and Seil. You'll need to use Karabiner-Elements, which has far less functionality than Karabiner. Notably, you can't remap caps lock and you can't assign to more than 2 keys, so caps-lock "hyper" is out.

steeef 10y ago
That's kind of a deal-breaker for me. I rely on shortcuts with a virtual hyper key that it would be painful to lose it.
thesmok 10y ago
You _can_ remap Caps Lock. It's even in the [readme](https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/usage/README.md#change-key https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/usa...). I was using Seil on El Capitan and after upgrading to Sierra I went to the Seil website and I see it says "use Karabiner elements now". Ok, I uninstalled Seil, installed Karabiner elements, got configuration example from readme file and it works as it did before. I use it to switch keyboard languages with Caps Lock key.
- STRML 10y ago
  That's great to know. So all that's missing is the ability to map more than 2 keys so we can get `hyper` back. Seems this is the place to look: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/src/core/grabber/include/manipulator/event_manipulator.hpp https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/src...

cycomachead 10y ago

I miss John Siracusa's reviews. This is a fine review, but not a Siracusa Review.

rleigh 10y ago

Did they update the FreeBSD userland? The neglect to the core of the system the last few years has gotten increasingly more annoying to deal with. There are now glaring incompatibilities due to the age of a lot of the core tools. Stuff as basic as "readlink -f" works everywhere except on MacOS, simply because they haven't bothered to update it in a decade... It also looks like the OpenGL support is untouched for yet another release from the article, and that's another pain point for me, since it's the poorest supported of all major platforms at this point.