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"It just works" -- Is Apple too large now? Is this a QA problem, product team problem? Management? Catalina is still stumbling and Im surprised to be honest
by ProAm 7y ago
"It just works" -- Is Apple too large now? Is this a QA problem, product team problem? Management? Catalina is still stumbling and Im surprised to be honest after the past 4 years.
- cflewis 7y agoMy feeling is that Apple beancounters have decided macOS is mostly a gateway to Xcode for iOS development, anything else is just to help sell laptops. The stuff in "anything else" doesn't need to actually work well, just exist so it can be something on the features list.
- api 7y agoIt does help that there is no overall competitor to MacBooks in terms of ease of use or (now that the butterfly keyboard is dead) build quality. There are decent build PC laptops but you have to run Windows or Linux on them. Windows is a dumpster fire these days with ads in the start menu, the use of "dark patterns" to herd people into MS cloud, and out of control unnecessary telemetry. Linux is fine only if you have a lot of time on your hands to troubleshoot edge case issues and hunt for drivers. Linux also still (through no fault of its own) can't run a lot of apps that many people need.
- aftbit 7y agoLinux is the only option IMO, but I have a very high yakshaving tolerance. That said, if you run a recent Ubuntu, most stuff "just works" as long as you don't need Photoshop or the Office suite.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jacobsenscott 7y agoOr 4k monitors, or screen sharing when running more than one monitor. That's the reason I haven't switched from macos back to linux (I was all in on linux until about 5 years ago when I started to care about display quality and working remotely).
- Jyaif 7y agoExternal monitor support on macOS is terrible. When it does work, you can't turn on HiDPI resulting in a tiny UI. And the latest 16" macbooks simply kernel panic: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250876794 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250876794
- lostlogin 7y agoDoes System Prefs > Displays > Scaled not work?
- IggleSniggle 7y agoHiDPI is working fine on my 3 external displays
- rekoil 7y agoIt sucks that you are having issues with your setup, but in general macOS is the king of external monitor support. Compare the experience with Windows for example, where disconnecting from your external monitors pushes all applications and windows to the remaining monitors, and doesn't restore them when the external monitor is reconnected. macOS also handles mixed-DPI really well, no other vendor even comes close, Windows simply scales according to the monitor most of the application window is on, resulting in ugly resizing of applications when moving from one monitor to another. I don't know what you're talking about with regards to "turning on HiDPI", can you elaborate?
- lmm 7y ago> Compare the experience with Windows for example, where disconnecting from your external monitors pushes all applications and windows to the remaining monitors, and doesn't restore them when the external monitor is reconnected. Huh? I have a dock that I disconnect and reconnect from all the time; windows move onto my laptop screen when I disconnect, and move back onto my docked screen when I reconnect.
- rekoil 7y ago
- api 7y agoI would agree were it not for the hairy yaks. As a startup founder I just don't have time for my computer to not "just work." This is the primary thing that keeps me absolutely glued to Apple. I do kind of like MacOS, but am concerned about their lack of strong interest in it. I would pay for a "vertically integrated" open hardware Linux laptop. I've seen some promising projects but none are mature enough. The second issue is apps, but that can be mitigated by having a Windows VM.
- null4bl3 7y agoBut this entire thread of comments and even the topic of the post is proof that it really just doesn't work. I would argue that any major Linux distro at this point "just work" just as well as MacOS
- jolux 7y ago> But this entire thread of comments and even the topic of the post is proof that it really just doesn't work. Yeah, there may actually be close to a dozen people commenting here! >I would argue that any major Linux distro at this point "just work" just as well as MacOS Given my perennial attempts to switch to Linux which are inevitably thwarted by aggravating driver bugs and incompatibility issues with X Windows and Wayland (both), I'm inclined to disagree.
- pjmlp 7y agoOr do any kind of serious 3D or audio related work.
- pachico 7y agoIs this still an issue with Ubuntu? I haven't had any problems with drivers nor software for... 6 years and 7 laptops?
- skrtskrt 7y agoSupport for 4K monitors and multiple screens is still pretty miserable and causes stuttering, freezing, and crashing
- ahsima1 7y agoNever had any problems with my 4K screen in Manjaro KDE, and only needed to change Xft.dpi in .Xresources in Manjaro i3
- skrtskrt 7y agoI’m not saying it cannot work but I am saying an IT department cannot just install Ubuntu on a laptop, hand it to someone who doesn’t know how to hack at Linux, and have the display aspects “just work” with any monitor. I have no beef with Linux, but we have to be honest about what it needs to be capable of to compete with MacOS for the general user unable or unwilling to hack at it a bit. If the solution in any way involves "enter this command", you have lost the vast, vast majority of users. Those users will never have any idea that "Catalina broke SSH".
- vbezhenar 7y agoThere are plenty of good laptops and Windows is absolutely fine.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoWindows is not "absolutely fine". Ignoring the garbage heap of bad/inconsistent ui/adverts/nagware. Its just not even capable of running a lot of dev software. The guide for running ruby on rails on windows is basically just to install a linux VM.
- pjmlp 7y agoIt runs perfectly fine lot of developer software, for those of us that are Windows developers first, and something else secondly.
- vbezhenar 7y agoI'm running a lot of dev software and I never had to revert to Linux VM. https://rubyinstaller.org/ https://rubyinstaller.org/ Ruby for Windows. I don't know why Ruby on Rails require Linux, but those reasons are not technical.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoIf you pick your laptop for linux support then you will have literally no driver issues. I'm running fedora on a Dell XPS and it runs flawlessly (Well the fingerprint scanner needs a 3rd party program). Ubuntu is generally even easier since they bundle in proprietary drivers.
- pjmlp 7y agoAs if, I bought a Linux Laptop from Asus with Ubuntu, and my APU is still to get the OpenGL 4.4 that it had with the proprietary AMD driver, instead I should be happy that the open source version at least offers me OpenGL 3.3.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoThats unlucky but it doesn't apply to all laptops. My dell XPS is currently running on a vulkan version released in 2020. AMD strangely seems to lag behind intel in drivers at the moment. Perhaps because until just now AMD laptops were rare.
- asveikau 7y agoI feel like they are doing random deprecations with replacements that don't work as well as the original. As in, leaving the deprecated thing unmaintained but present in the install would be a better outcome. I wonder why they are wasting so much time doing this when they appear to have a working system. I'm not even talking about big items like 32-bit support or opengl but completely random libraries that work fine.
- MiroF 7y agoAs just another random instance, I updated my MacOS about a year ago and now I can only change the last 3 parts of my MAC address, the remainder appear to be fixed. I know my hardware has the ability to change my entire MAC address - I don't get why they are doing this.
- bostik 7y agoBranding? The leading octets in MAC addresses are often called "vendor prefixes", and are assigned to various hardware vendors. Apple probably wants to ensure that all their devices show up in ARP scans and MAC lookups as Apple devices.
- smolder 7y agoTo make it harder to spoof specific devices, perhaps. Commercial end-user OS vendors generally don't think your computer being able to do something implies you should have control over that capability.
- neets 7y agoI guess they are getting ready to run MacOS on Arm rather than AMD64
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoThis is a completely standard failure mode of large organizations. You have a product that works perfectly fine the way it is, but you also have an entire team of people whose job it is to do something with that product. The existing product has already been optimized for years and most changes are moves away from optimal rather than towards it, but they can't get paid to do nothing, so they change things that were better the way they were. This is related to the thing where what customers want most is bug fixes for existing bugs but what marketing wants most is new features to sell to new customers and marketing tends to win, which causes the number of bugs to go up rather than down over time.
- neuronic 7y agoProbably just trying to make Catalina thinner.
- rvz 7y agoWell no business end-user or any typical Mac user is going to be bothered about something technical like 'SSH' breaking their system. Only actual devs here would care. For those business users, it just still works. For developers it's a problem.
- twunde 7y agoMacs have a fairly large share of devs, especially in the startup centers like SF and NYC. Most startups end up with macs as the default computer because of the developer experience as well as the ability to manage them for a consistent user experience using MDM solutions like Jamf or Fleetsmith (both Apple-only)
- quantified 7y agoApple's made huge inroads with developers over the last few years, partly coasting off of a social dislike for Microsoft. There's enough Apple fandom out there that they can probably annoy developers a good deal more without affecting the inroads. After all, exactly what can a dev do about it anyway?
- IggleSniggle 7y agoSwitch to OpenBSD ;-)
- pjmlp 7y agoApple developers are perfectly fine. UNIX developers, well, support OEMs that sell BSD and GNU/Linux laptops.
- KarlKemp 7y agoYou seem to be nurturing some stereotype of Mac users. Just check (photos of) any Silicon Valley or MIT Cafeteria to maybe calibrate your worldview.
- Keverw 7y agoCatalina I haven’t had much problems with, however noticed some odd stuff. Like the Apple Menu and System Preferences it reports one update available but if I go look - nothing. Then was playing with the new TV app and went to watch one of the Apple TV+ shows and all I get is a black screen with audio when watching a show. Then even before Catalina, my AirPods mic seems to act odd, can hardly hear it and it messses with audio output too when listening to music, sounds like I’m listening to hold music on a telephone unless I disable the mic using a third party app. I think having a old Bluetooth chip might be the reason though since I have a older MacBook while it works great on my iPhone.
- sooper 7y agoAlmost everyone in my office has issues with Bluetooth headphones mysteriously disconnecting - the sound output drops even though Bluetooth is still connected. Very annoying and can't find a resolution.
- emmelaich 7y agoA focus on security produces problems like these. I can't blame them too much. It's probably worth it.