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> >Apple has been neglecting OS X since Snow Leopard, thinking that iOS is the only thing worth investing in > What exactly is the evidence behind this? I agre

> >Apple has been neglecting OS X since Snow Leopard, thinking that iOS is the only thing worth investing in > What exactly is the evidence behind this? I agree neglect is probably not the right word. I like the term Marco Arment uses on his ATP podcast: drive-by updates. > They have been adding several huge components/APIs/tools that they have working for macOS (Metal, APFS, Swift, CoreML, etc), These all seem to have been developed for iOS first and macOS second. > they have tons of under the hood improvements (e.g. memory compression), and so on. Personally I experienced rage-inducing multi-second freezes after updating to Sierra, disabling memory compression solved the problem. > What exactly did you expect to see, or was seeing before "Snow Leopard"? Stability, usability, and polish. I don't think it's controversial to say that all of these have taken a precipitous fall since Snow Leopard. There are probably many reasons for this. It seems to me the biggest culprit is the yearly release schedule. They've shown themselves utterly incapable of releasing a quality update each year. The question is, why are they keeping it up? To sync up with iOS releases roughly maybe?

coldtea 7y ago
>These all seem to have been developed for iOS first and macOS second. iOS and macOS is basically the same OS. iOS uses the same kernel and main userland, and was developed just as a spin-off of OS X with more lockdown enabled, some inapplicable services removed, and a profile that fits smaller devices. Otherwise the kernel, fs, userland, etc is 90% the same, minus different APIs (mostly UI) on top (which they also try to unify for several releases now). macOS+iOS should be seen as the same thing as far as system-level development (kernel, fs, etc) are concerned. Of course features still need integration to the respective form factors and UI paradigms (e.g. APFS required userland and Disk Utility changes, for one), and Apple has done that for both platforms. >Stability, usability, and polish And yet, Snow Leopard was created exactly because people complained Leopard and earlier were not stable enough. It was the release to focus on stability and polish over new features (and they even admitted this was alluded in the name change, "Leopard" -> "Snow Leopard" as opposed to a whole new version-animal). And if we go back then, we can find tons of complains about instability, lack of polish, the world ending, etc. >They've shown themselves utterly incapable of releasing a quality update each year. Given that they ship 100 million or so updates, they have almost immediate adoption (far quicker than new Windows version), and the complains always subdue after 1 point release or so, I don't think so. Not to mention most complains now are about them deprecating stuff (32 bits for one) -- as opposed to breaking stuff. Heck, they pushed a whole new FS to hundreds of millions of users (5x+ that with iOS in), and there hardly any issues to write home about -- and that in record time (FS experts said it normally takes 10 years to mature a new FS to do such a conversion and warned of apocalypse which didn't happen).
- UIZealot 7y ago
  > iOS and macOS is basically the same OS. I'm aware of that. But they are not exactly the same, are they? > Of course features still need integration to the respective form factors and UI paradigms. Isn't that what usability and polish are all about? > And yet, Snow Leopard was created exactly because people complained Leopard and earlier were not stable enough. It was the release to focus on stability and polish over new features (and they even admitted this was alluded in the name change, "Leopard" -> "Snow Leopard" as opposed to a whole new version-animal). I know, and that's why we all love Snow Leopard. Why the regression since then? > >They've shown themselves utterly incapable of releasing a quality update each year. > Given that they ship 100 million or so updates, they have almost immediate adoption (far quicker than new Windows version), and the complains always subdue after 1 point release or so, I don't think so. They release updates alright, but what about the quality? The fact is overall, macOS has gotten slower, buggier, and uglier with every release.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >I'm aware of that. But they are not exactly the same, are they? Yes, in minor ways I already mentioned. >Isn't that what usability and polish are all about? Yes, and as I already wrote: "Apple has done that for both platforms.". You don't get a lesser Metal or a lesser APFS on macOS vs iOS, or less UI integration. >I know, and that's why we all love Snow Leopard. Why the regression since then? I'm not particularly fond of Snow Leopard over other releases, nor I see much "regression since then". There are several legendary Siracusa reviews until Yosemite (after which he passed the torch) here: https://arstechnica.com/author/john-siracusa/ https://arstechnica.com/author/john-siracusa/ Here's e.g. Mavericks: Over the past three years, each successive release of OS X has found its way onto all of my Macs in less time than its predecessor. This year, I may have already gone Mavericks-only across my whole household by the time you read this. Barring any unforeseen bugs or compatibility issues, Mavericks seems like a no-brainer upgrade to me. And here's Yosemite: Viewed in isolation, Yosemite provides a graphical refresh accompanied by a few interesting features and several new technologies whose benefits are mostly speculative, depending heavily on how eagerly they’re adopted by third-party developers. But Apple no longer views the Mac in isolation, and neither should you. OS X is finally a full-fledged peer to iOS; all aspects of sibling rivalry have been banished. Do you see much talk about regression there? There are also post-Siracusa reviews on Ars for each macOS release up to and including Catalina. >They release updates alright, but what about the quality? The fact is overall, macOS has gotten slower, buggier, and uglier with every release. Uglier is pretty subjective if not downright wrong. The new dark mode is great, and the UI is as good as ever. What was better? The skeuomorphic years? The candy colored Aqua years? Slower is easy: it's 100% wrong. In fact, can you show any number of it? If anything, memory compression and battery savings in recent releases made the macOS more performant, and dropping 32bit apps (and double-loading of the same libs for 32/64) even more so... And APFS is also a big improvement over HFS, and Metal is faster than the previous stack and has already given significant performance boost to FCPX and other apps. I'm not sure what exactly you find "slower" then...

coldtea 7y ago

>These all seem to have been developed for iOS first and macOS second. iOS and macOS is basically the same OS. iOS uses the same kernel and main userland, and was developed just as a spin-off of OS X with more lockdown enabled, some inapplicable services removed, and a profile that fits smaller devices. Otherwise the kernel, fs, userland, etc is 90% the same, minus different APIs (mostly UI) on top (which they also try to unify for several releases now). macOS+iOS should be seen as the same thing as far as system-level development (kernel, fs, etc) are concerned. Of course features still need integration to the respective form factors and UI paradigms (e.g. APFS required userland and Disk Utility changes, for one), and Apple has done that for both platforms. >Stability, usability, and polish And yet, Snow Leopard was created exactly because people complained Leopard and earlier were not stable enough. It was the release to focus on stability and polish over new features (and they even admitted this was alluded in the name change, "Leopard" -> "Snow Leopard" as opposed to a whole new version-animal). And if we go back then, we can find tons of complains about instability, lack of polish, the world ending, etc. >They've shown themselves utterly incapable of releasing a quality update each year. Given that they ship 100 million or so updates, they have almost immediate adoption (far quicker than new Windows version), and the complains always subdue after 1 point release or so, I don't think so. Not to mention most complains now are about them deprecating stuff (32 bits for one) -- as opposed to breaking stuff. Heck, they pushed a whole new FS to hundreds of millions of users (5x+ that with iOS in), and there hardly any issues to write home about -- and that in record time (FS experts said it normally takes 10 years to mature a new FS to do such a conversion and warned of apocalypse which didn't happen).

UIZealot 7y ago
> iOS and macOS is basically the same OS. I'm aware of that. But they are not exactly the same, are they? > Of course features still need integration to the respective form factors and UI paradigms. Isn't that what usability and polish are all about? > And yet, Snow Leopard was created exactly because people complained Leopard and earlier were not stable enough. It was the release to focus on stability and polish over new features (and they even admitted this was alluded in the name change, "Leopard" -> "Snow Leopard" as opposed to a whole new version-animal). I know, and that's why we all love Snow Leopard. Why the regression since then? > >They've shown themselves utterly incapable of releasing a quality update each year. > Given that they ship 100 million or so updates, they have almost immediate adoption (far quicker than new Windows version), and the complains always subdue after 1 point release or so, I don't think so. They release updates alright, but what about the quality? The fact is overall, macOS has gotten slower, buggier, and uglier with every release.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >I'm aware of that. But they are not exactly the same, are they? Yes, in minor ways I already mentioned. >Isn't that what usability and polish are all about? Yes, and as I already wrote: "Apple has done that for both platforms.". You don't get a lesser Metal or a lesser APFS on macOS vs iOS, or less UI integration. >I know, and that's why we all love Snow Leopard. Why the regression since then? I'm not particularly fond of Snow Leopard over other releases, nor I see much "regression since then". There are several legendary Siracusa reviews until Yosemite (after which he passed the torch) here: https://arstechnica.com/author/john-siracusa/ https://arstechnica.com/author/john-siracusa/ Here's e.g. Mavericks: Over the past three years, each successive release of OS X has found its way onto all of my Macs in less time than its predecessor. This year, I may have already gone Mavericks-only across my whole household by the time you read this. Barring any unforeseen bugs or compatibility issues, Mavericks seems like a no-brainer upgrade to me. And here's Yosemite: Viewed in isolation, Yosemite provides a graphical refresh accompanied by a few interesting features and several new technologies whose benefits are mostly speculative, depending heavily on how eagerly they’re adopted by third-party developers. But Apple no longer views the Mac in isolation, and neither should you. OS X is finally a full-fledged peer to iOS; all aspects of sibling rivalry have been banished. Do you see much talk about regression there? There are also post-Siracusa reviews on Ars for each macOS release up to and including Catalina. >They release updates alright, but what about the quality? The fact is overall, macOS has gotten slower, buggier, and uglier with every release. Uglier is pretty subjective if not downright wrong. The new dark mode is great, and the UI is as good as ever. What was better? The skeuomorphic years? The candy colored Aqua years? Slower is easy: it's 100% wrong. In fact, can you show any number of it? If anything, memory compression and battery savings in recent releases made the macOS more performant, and dropping 32bit apps (and double-loading of the same libs for 32/64) even more so... And APFS is also a big improvement over HFS, and Metal is faster than the previous stack and has already given significant performance boost to FCPX and other apps. I'm not sure what exactly you find "slower" then...