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The iPhone integrations (assuming you mean Handover) are one of my favourite parts of the MacOS/iOS ecosystem and one of many reasons why I can't see myself mov

The iPhone integrations (assuming you mean Handover) are one of my favourite parts of the MacOS/iOS ecosystem and one of many reasons why I can't see myself moving away from either OS for a long time. I've also experienced very few bugs in MacOS which have affected me on a day to day basis. Not saying they aren't there, but to me the MacOS team are doing a pretty great job.

jacobsenscott 7y ago
For any feature on OSX there are some people who love that feature. But the reality is the core reliability of OSX has been declining for years, and many of the bugs are becoming more egregious. Especially some of the recent security issues. They are all symptoms of an under-resourced team. I have no doubt the OSX engineers are heroes to a person. But I can't imagine they have the resources they need. I also can't imagine Apple really cares when accessories appear to be on track to generate more revenue than macs in a few years.
- x0x0 7y ago
  I administer approximately 30 macbooks. 2018s with a few 2017s still in there. They're mostly unreliable garbage. In particular, zoom.us, our teleconferencing solution, crashes them regularly with spewed messages about GPU stuff in console. We're about at the point of running windows vms so my salespeople can have a reliable conferencing solution. The keyboards also do not hold up at all. I've gotten into a shouting match at an apple store after buying their "warranty" and learning that a keyboard repair would mean the laptop would disappear for a week. That's not a warranty; that's some Dell consumer-grade bullshit. I basically had to buy a floater laptop on the spot. Two of the laptops, including my cofounder, have keys that don't work, but they're too busy to deal with Apple's bs to get them repaired. I'm aware that after the WSJ embarrassed them the wait is supposedly shorter, but it's not anything reasonable. They should be able to do a keyboard swap in an hour while you wait. Their busted ass OS also has automatically (!!!) disabled Filevault, refused to turn it back on, including spending 6 hours on technical support and an OS wipe. We had to take that laptop into the mac store for them to service. Folks, don't wait on installing an mdm -- just because you turn Filevault on, it can silently disable itself.
  - pfranz 7y ago
    My company uses zoom.us on Win/Mac/Linux. Out of necessity, I also use TeamViewer, NoMachine, and occasionally Skype, Slack, and often just end up phoning them. I can only assume each needs deep integration into the OS because they all have problems. With zoom.us, I've had black screens (when trying to record?), keyboard input problems (where only alpha-numeric characters worked and other characters sent garbage), the mouse would stop working when certain applications got focus, and audio/video problems. These were mostly on Windows--I believe the black screen was on Linux. Screen sharing software also doesn't play well with each other or I imagine other software that messes with audio/video. zoom.us does seem to scale and perform better than the other solutions. I'm not sure it's a great representative of how good the OS is. Apple's keyboards used to be excellent. After the new keyboards came out a few years ago they've been delicate (I've come around on my opinion about how they are to use--but I'm still not a fan of the layout). Replacing them is also a nightmare. So far a keyboard cover has seemed to not have me baby it and prevented a repeat of any issues.
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    Is there a PC laptop vendor you would recommend?
    - cosmie 7y ago
      I've worked at a company that had Dell ProCare[1]. If you have issues, they'll send a technician onsite for a same-day or next-day repair. I've seen everything from keyboards to screens to entire mainboards get swapped out on the spot by technicians. For consumer grade stuff, I'm not a fan of Dell. But their business laptops and support services are solid, from what I've seen. I haven't experienced any of the other vendors, but any vendor with a business line (such as HP or Lenovo) have similar support services. And just as critical: they design their business laptops with that need in mind. If you pay for a service level that includes on-site support, very few issues are un-repairable by a field technician. And they even make access to things like the hard drive easy, since corporations don't like to relinquish control of potentially sensitive business data. Apple offers enterprise support[2] (not sure if that's an indication that the service is priced out of the SMB range) with similar onsite services. But their machines aren't exactly designed to be easily repaired. So if an Apple Store would have to send it off to a repair depot, I doubt a field technician would be able to do much more. [1] https://www.dellemc.com/en-us/services/support-services/prosupport-client-suite.htm#accordion0 https://www.dellemc.com/en-us/services/support-services/pros... [2] https://support.apple.com/applecare-enterprise-service https://support.apple.com/applecare-enterprise-service
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  My MBP (2016 model, touchbar, macOS Mojave) kernel-panics every time the battery runs out, while attempting to wake up after I plug it in. I frequently work away from my desk and have symptoms of ADHD (inattentive variety) so this actually happens at least 3 times a week. The MBP I had previously (same model, exchanged out due to keyboard keys sticking) did the same thing.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    Ditto, except in my case the previous is an MBA. (I still have it, but the battery's dying, so it does it at about 26% instead.) Additionally I find if the battery hits 5%, it doesn't actually register that it's charging in time to save it. Fair enough, but call it zero (so implicitly I'm warned earlier).
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  It’s called macOS. It hasn’t been called OS X for years, and it was never called OSX.
ken 7y ago
The macOS team still does a great job at making features that demo well. For the past few years, everything below the surface layer is becoming increasingly flakey. - I upgraded to 10.13, and my stock graphics cards would slow, freeze, and then crash window server, logging me out. I spent the money to buy a hot new GPU from Apple's latest recommendation list, and it no longer crashes (though I'm having trouble getting both of my Apple displays to work, since apparently most of the "DisplayPort to dual-link DVI" adapters in the world are actually single-link). Other issues I've run into recently with new or revamped features: - Dark mode works great sometimes, and other times it's an unreadable mess. - Xcode 10's new text editor broke control-T, which has worked correctly in every text field since the earliest days of Mac OS X. - The new security around contacts/calendars broke my app. It doesn't work like it used to, it doesn't work like the documentation says it should, and it doesn't log anything useful to help diagnose the problem. - The recent documentation, overall, is a big step down. developer.apple.com used to have long-form articles describing how things were built. Now, it's mostly just HTML versions of header files, and half the descriptions are "No overview available." - The new WKWebView teases improved performance (and not being deprecated, like WebView), but removed major features I was using, or planned to. - Dragging toolbar items in Safari 12 seems completely broken. - You can set almost any accessibility option via script, except menubar transparency, for no apparent reason. It was no coincidence that Macs used to be simple. "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability"! When you've got only one color scheme, you can make it 'just work' everywhere. Once you've got more than one color scheme, now you have to go check everything to make sure this doesn't happen: https://twitter.com/KenHatesSoftwar/status/1105951217371353088 https://twitter.com/KenHatesSoftwar/status/11059512173713530... (which depends on the dark-mode setting, the reduce-contrast setting, the desktop wallpaper setting, ...) Multiply this by every permutation of settings. I don't think it's feasible any more for single-developer Mac shops. There just aren't enough hours in the day to make everything work well. Even Apple is struggling. My next project isn't another Mac app. It's a web app in Clojure. CSS is still terrible to work with, but (with grid and flex) it's slightly less awful than it used to be, and much more consistent. And Clojure is infinitely more pleasant than Swift.
- rsfinn 7y ago
  > Xcode 10's new text editor broke control-T, which has worked correctly in every text field since the earliest days of Mac OS X. I couldn't believe this, so I tried it. To clarify: in Xcode 10.2.1, typing control-T between two characters in a line exchanges the two characters, as expected. But typing control-T at the end of the line does not perform the special case of exchanging the two characters at the end of the line; instead it exchanges the last character of the line with the newline, thereby moving the last character onto the next line. Off to bugreporter...

jacobsenscott 7y ago

For any feature on OSX there are some people who love that feature. But the reality is the core reliability of OSX has been declining for years, and many of the bugs are becoming more egregious. Especially some of the recent security issues. They are all symptoms of an under-resourced team. I have no doubt the OSX engineers are heroes to a person. But I can't imagine they have the resources they need. I also can't imagine Apple really cares when accessories appear to be on track to generate more revenue than macs in a few years.

x0x0 7y ago
I administer approximately 30 macbooks. 2018s with a few 2017s still in there. They're mostly unreliable garbage. In particular, zoom.us, our teleconferencing solution, crashes them regularly with spewed messages about GPU stuff in console. We're about at the point of running windows vms so my salespeople can have a reliable conferencing solution. The keyboards also do not hold up at all. I've gotten into a shouting match at an apple store after buying their "warranty" and learning that a keyboard repair would mean the laptop would disappear for a week. That's not a warranty; that's some Dell consumer-grade bullshit. I basically had to buy a floater laptop on the spot. Two of the laptops, including my cofounder, have keys that don't work, but they're too busy to deal with Apple's bs to get them repaired. I'm aware that after the WSJ embarrassed them the wait is supposedly shorter, but it's not anything reasonable. They should be able to do a keyboard swap in an hour while you wait. Their busted ass OS also has automatically (!!!) disabled Filevault, refused to turn it back on, including spending 6 hours on technical support and an OS wipe. We had to take that laptop into the mac store for them to service. Folks, don't wait on installing an mdm -- just because you turn Filevault on, it can silently disable itself.
- pfranz 7y ago
  My company uses zoom.us on Win/Mac/Linux. Out of necessity, I also use TeamViewer, NoMachine, and occasionally Skype, Slack, and often just end up phoning them. I can only assume each needs deep integration into the OS because they all have problems. With zoom.us, I've had black screens (when trying to record?), keyboard input problems (where only alpha-numeric characters worked and other characters sent garbage), the mouse would stop working when certain applications got focus, and audio/video problems. These were mostly on Windows--I believe the black screen was on Linux. Screen sharing software also doesn't play well with each other or I imagine other software that messes with audio/video. zoom.us does seem to scale and perform better than the other solutions. I'm not sure it's a great representative of how good the OS is. Apple's keyboards used to be excellent. After the new keyboards came out a few years ago they've been delicate (I've come around on my opinion about how they are to use--but I'm still not a fan of the layout). Replacing them is also a nightmare. So far a keyboard cover has seemed to not have me baby it and prevented a repeat of any issues.
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Is there a PC laptop vendor you would recommend?
  - cosmie 7y ago
    I've worked at a company that had Dell ProCare[1]. If you have issues, they'll send a technician onsite for a same-day or next-day repair. I've seen everything from keyboards to screens to entire mainboards get swapped out on the spot by technicians. For consumer grade stuff, I'm not a fan of Dell. But their business laptops and support services are solid, from what I've seen. I haven't experienced any of the other vendors, but any vendor with a business line (such as HP or Lenovo) have similar support services. And just as critical: they design their business laptops with that need in mind. If you pay for a service level that includes on-site support, very few issues are un-repairable by a field technician. And they even make access to things like the hard drive easy, since corporations don't like to relinquish control of potentially sensitive business data. Apple offers enterprise support[2] (not sure if that's an indication that the service is priced out of the SMB range) with similar onsite services. But their machines aren't exactly designed to be easily repaired. So if an Apple Store would have to send it off to a repair depot, I doubt a field technician would be able to do much more. [1] https://www.dellemc.com/en-us/services/support-services/prosupport-client-suite.htm#accordion0 https://www.dellemc.com/en-us/services/support-services/pros... [2] https://support.apple.com/applecare-enterprise-service https://support.apple.com/applecare-enterprise-service
TimTheTinker 7y ago
My MBP (2016 model, touchbar, macOS Mojave) kernel-panics every time the battery runs out, while attempting to wake up after I plug it in. I frequently work away from my desk and have symptoms of ADHD (inattentive variety) so this actually happens at least 3 times a week. The MBP I had previously (same model, exchanged out due to keyboard keys sticking) did the same thing.
- OJFord 7y ago
  Ditto, except in my case the previous is an MBA. (I still have it, but the battery's dying, so it does it at about 26% instead.) Additionally I find if the battery hits 5%, it doesn't actually register that it's charging in time to save it. Fair enough, but call it zero (so implicitly I'm warned earlier).
chrisseaton 7y ago
It’s called macOS. It hasn’t been called OS X for years, and it was never called OSX.

ken 7y ago

The macOS team still does a great job at making features that demo well. For the past few years, everything below the surface layer is becoming increasingly flakey. - I upgraded to 10.13, and my stock graphics cards would slow, freeze, and then crash window server, logging me out. I spent the money to buy a hot new GPU from Apple's latest recommendation list, and it no longer crashes (though I'm having trouble getting both of my Apple displays to work, since apparently most of the "DisplayPort to dual-link DVI" adapters in the world are actually single-link). Other issues I've run into recently with new or revamped features: - Dark mode works great sometimes, and other times it's an unreadable mess. - Xcode 10's new text editor broke control-T, which has worked correctly in every text field since the earliest days of Mac OS X. - The new security around contacts/calendars broke my app. It doesn't work like it used to, it doesn't work like the documentation says it should, and it doesn't log anything useful to help diagnose the problem. - The recent documentation, overall, is a big step down. developer.apple.com used to have long-form articles describing how things were built. Now, it's mostly just HTML versions of header files, and half the descriptions are "No overview available." - The new WKWebView teases improved performance (and not being deprecated, like WebView), but removed major features I was using, or planned to. - Dragging toolbar items in Safari 12 seems completely broken. - You can set almost any accessibility option via script, except menubar transparency, for no apparent reason. It was no coincidence that Macs used to be simple. "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability"! When you've got only one color scheme, you can make it 'just work' everywhere. Once you've got more than one color scheme, now you have to go check everything to make sure this doesn't happen: https://twitter.com/KenHatesSoftwar/status/1105951217371353088 https://twitter.com/KenHatesSoftwar/status/11059512173713530... (which depends on the dark-mode setting, the reduce-contrast setting, the desktop wallpaper setting, ...) Multiply this by every permutation of settings. I don't think it's feasible any more for single-developer Mac shops. There just aren't enough hours in the day to make everything work well. Even Apple is struggling. My next project isn't another Mac app. It's a web app in Clojure. CSS is still terrible to work with, but (with grid and flex) it's slightly less awful than it used to be, and much more consistent. And Clojure is infinitely more pleasant than Swift.

rsfinn 7y ago
> Xcode 10's new text editor broke control-T, which has worked correctly in every text field since the earliest days of Mac OS X. I couldn't believe this, so I tried it. To clarify: in Xcode 10.2.1, typing control-T between two characters in a line exchanges the two characters, as expected. But typing control-T at the end of the line does not perform the special case of exchanging the two characters at the end of the line; instead it exchanges the last character of the line with the newline, thereby moving the last character onto the next line. Off to bugreporter...