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I still care about macOS because it is still the most pleasant desktop environment to use, in my opinion. I love macOS's pervasive support for PDFs and macOS'

I still care about macOS because it is still the most pleasant desktop environment to use, in my opinion. I love macOS's pervasive support for PDFs and macOS's font rendering. I also love the iLife suite of applications. With that being said, I've been trying out alternatives to macOS since I've been disappointed with Apple's stewardship of the Mac under Tim Cook, but I keep going back to macOS, though I haven't upgraded to Catalina yet since I still rely on some proprietary 32-bit software packages that I don't feel like repurchasing until I make a final decision about how long I'll stay on the Mac. I tried Windows 10 and I sometimes use it for work; while I can get by, the experience is just not as pleasant for me. While Windows 10 does have some nice features, including the wonderful WSL layer, I don't like the ads and the notifications to use MS services, I find the UI ugly (what's with the huge title bars in Windows 8 and Windows 10?), and the mandatory updates are annoying. I miss the days of Windows 2000, and I'm awaiting the day I can use ReactOS as a daily-driver OS. As far as Linux desktops go, I feel most productive with Cinnamon. However, I find myself missing certain macOS features and certain proprietary software tools (such as Keynote and Microsoft Office), and I also find myself missing the fit-and-finish of macOS. Nevertheless, barring a dramatic leadership change at Apple, I see the writing on the wall regarding the future of the Mac. I don't think the Mac will disappear, but I definitely see it becoming more locked-down and more iOS like, which is a trend I don't like. I'm going to stick to macOS Mojave on my 2013 MacBook Air and my 2013 Mac Pro, which are my daily drivers. But I can see myself switching sometime around 2022 or 2023.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
I was kind of in your position, and I ended up taking the totally ridiculous route of downgrading to Mavericks. I didn't feel like modern macOS was a platform I wanted to use anymore, but between Windows, Linux, and old macOS, old macOS clearly won out. It's snappy, stable, and performant; it's visually beautiful; and it has a plethora of well-designed software I enjoy using. So I built a Hackintosh out of the fastest 2013-era hardware I could get. I'm hoping to stay here for the next decade. I'm not necessarily recommending this route to anyone else, but it's working out well for me. The next step is to decide on a Mavericks-compatible portable device, because going back to High Sierra on my too-new laptop feels yucky. I kind of want to Hackintosh a tablet...
- linguae 7y ago
  I completely understand you. Last summer I was learning GNUstep development on FreeBSD, and I decided to fire up an instance of Mac OS X Tiger running inside of QEMU on my Mac Pro to compile my code using XCode to see if it worked there. I was blown away by how polished Tiger is, even though it had been 14 years since Tiger was released. While for web browsing and security reasons I wouldn't use Tiger as my daily driver today, I found myself more impressed with Tiger than with any non-Mac desktop environment. I admit, I have a soft spot for the classic Mac OS, stability issues aside (though I think projects like A/UX and Rhapsody were interesting examples of bringing the classic Mac UI to Unix). But Mac OS X through Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of the Unix desktop. Not only was it beautiful to look at, but it was a joy to use, and it ran on some of the best consumer computer hardware ever made. I still use macOS, but Apple as of lately doesn't spark joy for me anymore; it's just the best option out there.
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  What about browser support? How long will the latest Chrome/Firefox run on Mavericks? I couldn’t live without the latest Adobe CC as well. I fell like sticking to old OSs is less and less viable these days.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Chrome doesn't run on Mavericks, but Firefox does. I can't say how long that will last, but I can look at what's available on even older versions of OS X as a guide: Mountain Lion and Lion can run Firefox Legacy, which is just a lightly edited branch of mainline Firefox: https://parrotgeek.com/fxlegacy.html https://parrotgeek.com/fxlegacy.html Snow Leopard can run ArcticFox: https://github.com/wicknix/Arctic-Fox https://github.com/wicknix/Arctic-Fox And Tiger and Leopard can run TenFourFox: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ ArcticFox and TenFourFox don't quite have 100% compatibility, so they wouldn't be ideal, but they're still very usable. So while browser support is definitely my biggest concern, I suspect there will continue to be options. It's also worth mentioning that the reason Firefox hard can't run on Snow Leopard or below is because Rust doesn't work below 10.7. Yet another possibility is running Google Chrome in Wineskin. For Adobe, I'm stuck on CS6 anyway because I'm never paying for Creative Cloud. And I'm increasingly eying the Serif suite, which supports Mavericks.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

I was kind of in your position, and I ended up taking the totally ridiculous route of downgrading to Mavericks. I didn't feel like modern macOS was a platform I wanted to use anymore, but between Windows, Linux, and old macOS, old macOS clearly won out. It's snappy, stable, and performant; it's visually beautiful; and it has a plethora of well-designed software I enjoy using. So I built a Hackintosh out of the fastest 2013-era hardware I could get. I'm hoping to stay here for the next decade. I'm not necessarily recommending this route to anyone else, but it's working out well for me. The next step is to decide on a Mavericks-compatible portable device, because going back to High Sierra on my too-new laptop feels yucky. I kind of want to Hackintosh a tablet...

linguae 7y ago
I completely understand you. Last summer I was learning GNUstep development on FreeBSD, and I decided to fire up an instance of Mac OS X Tiger running inside of QEMU on my Mac Pro to compile my code using XCode to see if it worked there. I was blown away by how polished Tiger is, even though it had been 14 years since Tiger was released. While for web browsing and security reasons I wouldn't use Tiger as my daily driver today, I found myself more impressed with Tiger than with any non-Mac desktop environment. I admit, I have a soft spot for the classic Mac OS, stability issues aside (though I think projects like A/UX and Rhapsody were interesting examples of bringing the classic Mac UI to Unix). But Mac OS X through Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of the Unix desktop. Not only was it beautiful to look at, but it was a joy to use, and it ran on some of the best consumer computer hardware ever made. I still use macOS, but Apple as of lately doesn't spark joy for me anymore; it's just the best option out there.
tambourine_man 7y ago
What about browser support? How long will the latest Chrome/Firefox run on Mavericks? I couldn’t live without the latest Adobe CC as well. I fell like sticking to old OSs is less and less viable these days.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Chrome doesn't run on Mavericks, but Firefox does. I can't say how long that will last, but I can look at what's available on even older versions of OS X as a guide: Mountain Lion and Lion can run Firefox Legacy, which is just a lightly edited branch of mainline Firefox: https://parrotgeek.com/fxlegacy.html https://parrotgeek.com/fxlegacy.html Snow Leopard can run ArcticFox: https://github.com/wicknix/Arctic-Fox https://github.com/wicknix/Arctic-Fox And Tiger and Leopard can run TenFourFox: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ ArcticFox and TenFourFox don't quite have 100% compatibility, so they wouldn't be ideal, but they're still very usable. So while browser support is definitely my biggest concern, I suspect there will continue to be options. It's also worth mentioning that the reason Firefox hard can't run on Snow Leopard or below is because Rust doesn't work below 10.7. Yet another possibility is running Google Chrome in Wineskin. For Adobe, I'm stuck on CS6 anyway because I'm never paying for Creative Cloud. And I'm increasingly eying the Serif suite, which supports Mavericks.