9 ms·

It is a shame to see Apple using the same tactics as iOS with macOS, which in my opinion a different beast when it comes to upgrades. I really regret upgrading

It is a shame to see Apple using the same tactics as iOS with macOS, which in my opinion a different beast when it comes to upgrades. I really regret upgrading to High Sierra, because — thanks to a still unfixed graphics driver issue, my 2014 rMBP reboots/lags/breaks when using the GPU. Fortunately, I managed to remedy it with a beta Nvidia driver; without a pro-user mindset, I can only imagine how many people are frustrated by this issue alone, not to mention their apps breaking as a result of a 'forced' upgrade! High Sierra has the same lack of 'internal polish' as iOS 11, and as a result, it's going to leave a lot of users scratching their heads in anger. Part of me misses the days when getting an OS X update was an event that required a trip to an Apple Store to pick up (read: pay) a DVD :)

donatj 9y ago
Out of curiosity where does one find such a driver?
- sulam 9y ago
  LMGTFY: https://www.google.com/search?q=nvidia+drivers+mac+high+sierra&oq=nvidia+drivers+mac&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j0l5.6228j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=nvidia+drivers+mac+high+sier...
- sarreph 9y ago
  Check this thread, talking about how it has been a huge headache for Electron apps. https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/10736#issuecomment-345049249 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/10736#issuecomme... The driver I am on is this one but it looks like (as per above thread) there could be updates. http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126538/en-us http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126538/en-... Disclaimer: Check your device is compatible before trying to install any drivers from the above links :D
AHTERIX5000 9y ago
I'm having significant problems with High Sierra on MBPR 2013. WindowServer memory usage can get up to 5-8 GB before it starts to consume insane amounts of CPU and the system basically locks up and I need to reboot the system. Also simple application drawing starts to fail too, I've encountered visual errors like this https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-23-2017-12-41-55.gif https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-2... in multiple applications, Xcode's console/stdout window breaks often. Quite interesting features for a stable release indeed.
- eklavya 9y ago
  This bug frustrated the hell out of me and was fortunately fixed in 10.13.1 update. There are a couple more window manager related bugs (I think), it crashes and logs me out frequently while watching videos in VLC.
  - cjsuk 9y ago
    Confirmed fixed here on 2013 RMBP as well. Was very annoying. It has also fixed watchdog timer firing in the middle of the night and waking up to a fresh boot.
  - danieldk 9y ago
    I was running into a bug with Sierra where the Cocoa version of Emacs would sometimes trigger a bug in DisplayServer that made it use 100% CPU. Fortunately, that is solved in High Sierra. Unfortunately, I have some other fun regressions: - Preview has become pretty much unusable. It crashes often when zooming PDFs. It also often doesn't linearly go through pages/slides when pressing the down key when a thumbnail is selected. - The other day my MacBook Pro (2016) showed the charge icon, but it didn't actually charge. I noticed when it was at 5%. Unplugged and plugged the charger and it works again. - Keynote doesn't open (some?) presentations produced with PDF2Keynote anymore. This worked fine in the previous version of Keynote.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  It sounds like this has been pretty consistent, but I haven't had one problem since upgrading my late 2013 MBP. It's an i5 2.4Ghz, with 8G mem. Onboard 1500MB for graphics, no GPU. Right now my WindowServer is only around 240 MB and I haven't rebooted in a couple of weeks. Not one visual error either. (Memory is looking like: app mem: 1.6G wired mem: 1.9G compressed mem: 1.8G file cache: 1.0G free: 2.5G ) And I'm running a long-open instance of Chrome, Hyper term (Electron-based terminal emu), Itunes, Mail, Keybase, XCode, and Atom. Each time I open one of those I see a memory drop of about 1G, but I run Memory Cleaner to keep an eye on it, and running a quick flush clears up about a gig with no performance drops. That visual issue looks extreme! I've not had a single problem besides the odd program needing updated to be able to run. I did wait until the first official release to upgrade the OS, though. I didn't grab the beta. Did you guys install the beta first?
calimac 9y ago
The long march of OS unification across apple ecosystem is underway.
apostacy 9y ago
After all the trouble you went through, would you really call your experience an "upgrade"? It sounds like you are barely tolerating upgrades. In terms of user experience, Apple has terrible UX because they impose on their users so much. There is no justification for what Apple is doing. They are downgrading and arguably damaging your computer, because 1) they are too lazy to support more than one operating system, 2) they want to use you as a beta tester 3) they want to ensure the integrity of their DRM ecosystem. It is the same reason that I am coerced into installing Sierra if I want to put a video on my iPad that they forced an iOS9 update onto (I would have to "upgrade" iTunes which requires that I update the OS). Sadly, this has become a trend.
- threatofrain 9y ago
  I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple employees tended to test on the newer Apple gear, and older models sat somewhere as part of a bulk testing unit, meaning they don't personally experience the same slowdowns as you.
  - theresistor 9y ago
    Actually, Apple is extremely stingy with gear internally. Most employees complain about having to use minimum spec refurb hardware all the time.
    - bradknowles 9y ago
      Indeed. When I was on a six month contract for Retail Software Engineering, I observed that everyone had hardware that was at least a year or two old. I was told that the new hardware is reserved for paying customers, and if you wanted a new machine you could use your employee discount to buy one. Otherwise, the only people who get the latest hardware are those who need to test or develop code on it, and that is a very small fraction of the total number of employees.
- serhei 9y ago
  Apple has had a planned-obsolescence approach for years and years [1], but with the way software used to be distributed and the consumer expectations on hardware design it was less of a problem before. If you want to keep using an old Mac, there are plenty of OS install disks, copies of old shareware floating around, sites like Low End Mac which document what works and what doesn't. The hardware was also usually more repairable. I'm worried that current Macs in the age of App Store OS updates and glued battery will be rendered into expensive paperweights that much more certainly when Apple withdraws support. [1]: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Diagnostic_Port.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Diagnostic_Port.... -- "[Steve] would also rather have them buy a new 512K Mac instead of them buying more RAM from a third-party."
newscracker 9y ago
> High Sierra has the same lack of 'internal polish' as iOS 11, and as a result, it's going to leave a lot of users scratching their heads in anger. I've avoided upgrading to macOS High Sierra just to wait and see how it turns out. I'm less cautious with iOS, and am currently frustrated by two things in iOS 11: 1. The WiFi/Bluetooth radio behavior in Control Center (to compensate I use Siri to turn those off, but that's cumbersome too). The recent beta of 11.2 has a popup announcing the new behavior, and that sounds like a terrible idea by itself. Instead of giving more control to the users, Apple, for my needs, has made a terrible decision on this one. (Of course, I have read comments from other people who actually like this new behavior). 2. The bloat in the OS, which causes terrible lag in different screens (including Settings) when it's running on last year's device (an iPhone 7). I don't play games or do video editing and other activities that might need more RAM. My usage has been the same as it was on iOS 10, but the device is sometimes a pain to use. I'd expect such slowness in a device that's three or four years old, since Apple doesn't seem to optimize for older devices, but last year's device??? I've restarted the phone, reset it, updated to the latest .x version as soon as it's been released, but nothing has helped (my flash storage is less than half used - so it's not that either). Overall, I guess I'm just echoing what some others have said over the last few years - the software quality and "it just works" mantra that Apple used to take pride in is gone. If anyone in Apple were to ask me what it should focus on, I'd suggest something like two releases on the lines of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which was primarily under-the-hood changes to optimize things and make it better and faster. I'm certain iOS needs this kind of effort badly. FWIW, I've also provided this feedback to Apple at apple.com/feedback and I'd suggest others who're concerned or have issues do the same.
- copperx 9y ago
  This slowdown has happened consistently in every release since iOS 6. Apple just optimizes the experience for the latest iDevices, which are always blazing fast, but then they slow down drastically as the years go by. This is either an engineering decision (let's just focus our efforts on the latest thing) -- but then optimizing the whole iOS would speed up ALL of the devices, wouldn't it?; an economic decision justified as an engineering one (who cares about the old devices? let's just sell them a new one); or incompetence.
mbesto 9y ago
> Part of me misses the days when getting an OS X update was an event that required a trip to an Apple Store to pick up Part of me misses updates like Snow Leopard where the only reason I wanted it was because it saved 7GB of HD space and improved performance. I would 100% buy OS updates that all they did was optimize existing code.
- curun1r 9y ago
  Especially since this "OS" is so far from being just that. In the tour of new features, the first 3 were about editing/organizing photos, then there were a bunch for a browser I don't use followed up by some changes to a mail client that isn't webmail. I'm sure High Sierra includes plenty of lower-level improvements too, but I fail to see why a photos app isn't an optional add on or distinct app from the app store, especially when the OS download is over 5 GB and done in the background without asking. Maybe I'm just a purist, but I'd like my OS to focus on system stuff rather than application stuff.
  - abrowne 9y ago
    > I'm sure High Sierra includes plenty of lower-level improvements too How about a brand new filesystem?
  - threeseed 9y ago
    Wow. You must have been upset for at over a decade now. Because OSX has always shipped with applications. In fact every OS does.
jseliger 9y ago
I really regret upgrading to High Sierra, because — thanks to a still unfixed graphics driver issue, my 2014 rMBP reboots/lags/breaks when using the GPU. Fortunately, I managed to remedy it with a beta Nvidia driver; without a pro-user mindset, I can only imagine how many people are frustrated by this issue alone I honestly see why normal users never want to upgrade anything, for any reason. The first 5K iMac I used was an upgrade nightmare: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/01/5k-retina-imac-and-mac-os-x-yosemite-thoughts https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/01/5k-retina-imac-and-mac-os... . Many of the x.0.0 OS X / MacOS releases have edge-case bugs and one gets in return minimal user-visible functionality improvements. So why bother?

donatj 9y ago

Out of curiosity where does one find such a driver?

sulam 9y ago
LMGTFY: https://www.google.com/search?q=nvidia+drivers+mac+high+sierra&oq=nvidia+drivers+mac&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j0l5.6228j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=nvidia+drivers+mac+high+sier...
sarreph 9y ago
Check this thread, talking about how it has been a huge headache for Electron apps. https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/10736#issuecomment-345049249 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/10736#issuecomme... The driver I am on is this one but it looks like (as per above thread) there could be updates. http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126538/en-us http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126538/en-... Disclaimer: Check your device is compatible before trying to install any drivers from the above links :D

AHTERIX5000 9y ago

I'm having significant problems with High Sierra on MBPR 2013. WindowServer memory usage can get up to 5-8 GB before it starts to consume insane amounts of CPU and the system basically locks up and I need to reboot the system. Also simple application drawing starts to fail too, I've encountered visual errors like this https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-23-2017-12-41-55.gif https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-2... in multiple applications, Xcode's console/stdout window breaks often. Quite interesting features for a stable release indeed.

eklavya 9y ago
This bug frustrated the hell out of me and was fortunately fixed in 10.13.1 update. There are a couple more window manager related bugs (I think), it crashes and logs me out frequently while watching videos in VLC.
- cjsuk 9y ago
  Confirmed fixed here on 2013 RMBP as well. Was very annoying. It has also fixed watchdog timer firing in the middle of the night and waking up to a fresh boot.
- danieldk 9y ago
  I was running into a bug with Sierra where the Cocoa version of Emacs would sometimes trigger a bug in DisplayServer that made it use 100% CPU. Fortunately, that is solved in High Sierra. Unfortunately, I have some other fun regressions: - Preview has become pretty much unusable. It crashes often when zooming PDFs. It also often doesn't linearly go through pages/slides when pressing the down key when a thumbnail is selected. - The other day my MacBook Pro (2016) showed the charge icon, but it didn't actually charge. I noticed when it was at 5%. Unplugged and plugged the charger and it works again. - Keynote doesn't open (some?) presentations produced with PDF2Keynote anymore. This worked fine in the previous version of Keynote.
52-6F-62 9y ago
It sounds like this has been pretty consistent, but I haven't had one problem since upgrading my late 2013 MBP. It's an i5 2.4Ghz, with 8G mem. Onboard 1500MB for graphics, no GPU. Right now my WindowServer is only around 240 MB and I haven't rebooted in a couple of weeks. Not one visual error either. (Memory is looking like: app mem: 1.6G wired mem: 1.9G compressed mem: 1.8G file cache: 1.0G free: 2.5G ) And I'm running a long-open instance of Chrome, Hyper term (Electron-based terminal emu), Itunes, Mail, Keybase, XCode, and Atom. Each time I open one of those I see a memory drop of about 1G, but I run Memory Cleaner to keep an eye on it, and running a quick flush clears up about a gig with no performance drops. That visual issue looks extreme! I've not had a single problem besides the odd program needing updated to be able to run. I did wait until the first official release to upgrade the OS, though. I didn't grab the beta. Did you guys install the beta first?

calimac 9y ago

The long march of OS unification across apple ecosystem is underway.

apostacy 9y ago

After all the trouble you went through, would you really call your experience an "upgrade"? It sounds like you are barely tolerating upgrades. In terms of user experience, Apple has terrible UX because they impose on their users so much. There is no justification for what Apple is doing. They are downgrading and arguably damaging your computer, because 1) they are too lazy to support more than one operating system, 2) they want to use you as a beta tester 3) they want to ensure the integrity of their DRM ecosystem. It is the same reason that I am coerced into installing Sierra if I want to put a video on my iPad that they forced an iOS9 update onto (I would have to "upgrade" iTunes which requires that I update the OS). Sadly, this has become a trend.

threatofrain 9y ago
I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple employees tended to test on the newer Apple gear, and older models sat somewhere as part of a bulk testing unit, meaning they don't personally experience the same slowdowns as you.
- theresistor 9y ago
  Actually, Apple is extremely stingy with gear internally. Most employees complain about having to use minimum spec refurb hardware all the time.
  - bradknowles 9y ago
    Indeed. When I was on a six month contract for Retail Software Engineering, I observed that everyone had hardware that was at least a year or two old. I was told that the new hardware is reserved for paying customers, and if you wanted a new machine you could use your employee discount to buy one. Otherwise, the only people who get the latest hardware are those who need to test or develop code on it, and that is a very small fraction of the total number of employees.
serhei 9y ago
Apple has had a planned-obsolescence approach for years and years [1], but with the way software used to be distributed and the consumer expectations on hardware design it was less of a problem before. If you want to keep using an old Mac, there are plenty of OS install disks, copies of old shareware floating around, sites like Low End Mac which document what works and what doesn't. The hardware was also usually more repairable. I'm worried that current Macs in the age of App Store OS updates and glued battery will be rendered into expensive paperweights that much more certainly when Apple withdraws support. [1]: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Diagnostic_Port.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Diagnostic_Port.... -- "[Steve] would also rather have them buy a new 512K Mac instead of them buying more RAM from a third-party."

newscracker 9y ago

> High Sierra has the same lack of 'internal polish' as iOS 11, and as a result, it's going to leave a lot of users scratching their heads in anger. I've avoided upgrading to macOS High Sierra just to wait and see how it turns out. I'm less cautious with iOS, and am currently frustrated by two things in iOS 11: 1. The WiFi/Bluetooth radio behavior in Control Center (to compensate I use Siri to turn those off, but that's cumbersome too). The recent beta of 11.2 has a popup announcing the new behavior, and that sounds like a terrible idea by itself. Instead of giving more control to the users, Apple, for my needs, has made a terrible decision on this one. (Of course, I have read comments from other people who actually like this new behavior). 2. The bloat in the OS, which causes terrible lag in different screens (including Settings) when it's running on last year's device (an iPhone 7). I don't play games or do video editing and other activities that might need more RAM. My usage has been the same as it was on iOS 10, but the device is sometimes a pain to use. I'd expect such slowness in a device that's three or four years old, since Apple doesn't seem to optimize for older devices, but last year's device??? I've restarted the phone, reset it, updated to the latest .x version as soon as it's been released, but nothing has helped (my flash storage is less than half used - so it's not that either). Overall, I guess I'm just echoing what some others have said over the last few years - the software quality and "it just works" mantra that Apple used to take pride in is gone. If anyone in Apple were to ask me what it should focus on, I'd suggest something like two releases on the lines of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which was primarily under-the-hood changes to optimize things and make it better and faster. I'm certain iOS needs this kind of effort badly. FWIW, I've also provided this feedback to Apple at apple.com/feedback and I'd suggest others who're concerned or have issues do the same.

copperx 9y ago
This slowdown has happened consistently in every release since iOS 6. Apple just optimizes the experience for the latest iDevices, which are always blazing fast, but then they slow down drastically as the years go by. This is either an engineering decision (let's just focus our efforts on the latest thing) -- but then optimizing the whole iOS would speed up ALL of the devices, wouldn't it?; an economic decision justified as an engineering one (who cares about the old devices? let's just sell them a new one); or incompetence.

mbesto 9y ago

> Part of me misses the days when getting an OS X update was an event that required a trip to an Apple Store to pick up Part of me misses updates like Snow Leopard where the only reason I wanted it was because it saved 7GB of HD space and improved performance. I would 100% buy OS updates that all they did was optimize existing code.

curun1r 9y ago
Especially since this "OS" is so far from being just that. In the tour of new features, the first 3 were about editing/organizing photos, then there were a bunch for a browser I don't use followed up by some changes to a mail client that isn't webmail. I'm sure High Sierra includes plenty of lower-level improvements too, but I fail to see why a photos app isn't an optional add on or distinct app from the app store, especially when the OS download is over 5 GB and done in the background without asking. Maybe I'm just a purist, but I'd like my OS to focus on system stuff rather than application stuff.
- abrowne 9y ago
  > I'm sure High Sierra includes plenty of lower-level improvements too How about a brand new filesystem?
- threeseed 9y ago
  Wow. You must have been upset for at over a decade now. Because OSX has always shipped with applications. In fact every OS does.

jseliger 9y ago

I really regret upgrading to High Sierra, because — thanks to a still unfixed graphics driver issue, my 2014 rMBP reboots/lags/breaks when using the GPU. Fortunately, I managed to remedy it with a beta Nvidia driver; without a pro-user mindset, I can only imagine how many people are frustrated by this issue alone I honestly see why normal users never want to upgrade anything, for any reason. The first 5K iMac I used was an upgrade nightmare: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/01/5k-retina-imac-and-mac-os-x-yosemite-thoughts https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/01/5k-retina-imac-and-mac-os... . Many of the x.0.0 OS X / MacOS releases have edge-case bugs and one gets in return minimal user-visible functionality improvements. So why bother?