4 ms·

Leopard = meh Snow Leopard = Awesome Lion = meh Yosemite = ok Sierra = good High Sierra = Awesome Mojave = meh Catalina = meh Big Sur = meh (snow leopa

Leopard = meh Snow Leopard = Awesome Lion = meh Yosemite = ok Sierra = good High Sierra = Awesome Mojave = meh Catalina = meh Big Sur = meh (snow leopard and high sierra were the best IMO) Mac Admin for 15 years

dandongus 5y ago
you skipped ML (meh) and mavericks (best)
- xbar 5y ago
  High Sierra's hatred of all my USB devices was an experience like no other. I feel a reciprocal spite.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
The Snow Leopard days of the Mac made me want one. Everything since then has been a disappointment. I miss the big little details like the Welcome intros and beautiful usage of CoreAnimation. Now it seems like nothing uses it, and macOS seems far far less magical than ever. I could never see Apple coming up with the original Time Machine design anymore.
- ultrarunner 5y ago
  QuartzComposer was really impressive and enabled a bunch of really useful applications (as far as data-driven graphic displays go). And now it's just… gone.
- grishka 5y ago
  Honestly, it's easy to hate on Apple, but you start to appreciate macOS once you have to use Windows or Linux for anything serious. Yes, there is no good desktop OS, but macOS sucks the least, and by far.
  - paulintrognon 5y ago
    I think that is just your opinion, and not objective truth. I am a happy debian user, currently forced to use macOS at my current company, and can't say I have a great time developping on a mac. As a web developper, Linux is great: native docker, native linux terminal experience... I however think this is a personnal opinoin, and I won't argue that Linux is better that macOS. If I has been a macOS user from the start I would have maybe been equally unhappy to be forced to use Linux. What i'm trying to say is, we are all different people with different tastes and priorities, and I don't think we can objectivly say that one OS is better (or "sucks the least").
    - xodice 5y ago
      macOS also has native Docker and native Terminal.app with a Unix tool chain just like Linux. So those two aren't great examples on their own IMO. I do however agree that it's 100% totally opinion based on ones preferred OS.
      - sergiomattei 5y ago
        I don't disagree with your point, but macOS does not have native Docker. It runs as a hypervisor on HyperKit. It's always just been a VM on Mac, hence the constant performance issues it faces.
        xodice 5y ago
        True enough. Upvoted.
    - jolux 5y ago
      macOS has a native BSD terminal experience, more or less. Docker is definitely slower. I like using Linux on the desktop, but I don't like maintaining it and my installations always seem to break eventually. To me, Windows is worse than Linux in every way except compatibility and stability.
grishka 5y ago
High Sierra was meh for me. They rewrote the window server to use Metal, but the Nvidia GPU driver was so terrible at it that it sometimes crashed and it was always sluggish. You literally got a performance boost when you switched to the integrated GPU. They fixed most of the issues with Nvidia in Mojave tho. It still leaks memory but at least it's usable. And I agree that you skipped Mavericks (10.9), it was one of the best releases. I used it for like 3 years but had to update to whatever was current at the end of 2016 because I got a new job and needed the latest Xcode for it.
coldtea 5y ago
I use Macs for programming, music (DAW), and video (NLE), and don't see to have all these big problems people have. Several Macs over the years. And those are quite demanding applications (for programming, resource wise, I didn't use Docker until recently, but did use Vagrant, Vmware, and virtuabox for ages). My major gripes are swallen batteries (2 times in 20 years), and the crappy 2015-2019 keyboards (plus, whoever idiot designed the usb-at-the-bottom mouse). But as far as the OS is concerned there are some bugs I see here and there, but I don't see the big fuss. I don't have peripherals disconeccting at random, crashes, data loss, and so on. I've had way worse bugs and issues on Linux and Linux software over the years (which I also use since 1997), and even used as my main pro desktop for years (1999-2003, Debian) in far more optimistic times. One key differentiator might be that I don't install any kind of crap (I have a no-haxies policy for example, and spare for Little Snitch, I avoided kexts too. A vendor has some special e.g. keyboard driver? Fuck it, I'll use one keyboard with class compliant drivers), but I do install a lot of apps still. Another might be that I usually re-install fresh every 2 years or so (I like to get rid of accumulated junk, including personal documents and downloaded files, and install what I really need to use at the current, sort of like spring-cleaning).
- clajiness 5y ago
  > plus, whoever idiot designed the usb-at-the-bottom mouse The batteries last so long in those mice, plus you can get an almost full day's charge in about two minutes. It takes a real idiot to run into issues with it. :)
  - coldtea 5y ago
    I must be a real idiot then (which is very possibly the case, but I'm pretty sure not for disliking this design). On top of the batteries starting dying much faster later on (the "last so long" thing is only true on the first 1-2 years), the warning is shown and dismissed far too easily, and far too late - and then they just die.

dandongus 5y ago

you skipped ML (meh) and mavericks (best)

xbar 5y ago
High Sierra's hatred of all my USB devices was an experience like no other. I feel a reciprocal spite.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

The Snow Leopard days of the Mac made me want one. Everything since then has been a disappointment. I miss the big little details like the Welcome intros and beautiful usage of CoreAnimation. Now it seems like nothing uses it, and macOS seems far far less magical than ever. I could never see Apple coming up with the original Time Machine design anymore.

ultrarunner 5y ago
QuartzComposer was really impressive and enabled a bunch of really useful applications (as far as data-driven graphic displays go). And now it's just… gone.
grishka 5y ago
Honestly, it's easy to hate on Apple, but you start to appreciate macOS once you have to use Windows or Linux for anything serious. Yes, there is no good desktop OS, but macOS sucks the least, and by far.
- paulintrognon 5y ago
  I think that is just your opinion, and not objective truth. I am a happy debian user, currently forced to use macOS at my current company, and can't say I have a great time developping on a mac. As a web developper, Linux is great: native docker, native linux terminal experience... I however think this is a personnal opinoin, and I won't argue that Linux is better that macOS. If I has been a macOS user from the start I would have maybe been equally unhappy to be forced to use Linux. What i'm trying to say is, we are all different people with different tastes and priorities, and I don't think we can objectivly say that one OS is better (or "sucks the least").
  - xodice 5y ago
    macOS also has native Docker and native Terminal.app with a Unix tool chain just like Linux. So those two aren't great examples on their own IMO. I do however agree that it's 100% totally opinion based on ones preferred OS.
    - sergiomattei 5y ago
      I don't disagree with your point, but macOS does not have native Docker. It runs as a hypervisor on HyperKit. It's always just been a VM on Mac, hence the constant performance issues it faces.
      - xodice 5y ago
        True enough. Upvoted.
  - jolux 5y ago
    macOS has a native BSD terminal experience, more or less. Docker is definitely slower. I like using Linux on the desktop, but I don't like maintaining it and my installations always seem to break eventually. To me, Windows is worse than Linux in every way except compatibility and stability.

grishka 5y ago

High Sierra was meh for me. They rewrote the window server to use Metal, but the Nvidia GPU driver was so terrible at it that it sometimes crashed and it was always sluggish. You literally got a performance boost when you switched to the integrated GPU. They fixed most of the issues with Nvidia in Mojave tho. It still leaks memory but at least it's usable. And I agree that you skipped Mavericks (10.9), it was one of the best releases. I used it for like 3 years but had to update to whatever was current at the end of 2016 because I got a new job and needed the latest Xcode for it.

coldtea 5y ago

I use Macs for programming, music (DAW), and video (NLE), and don't see to have all these big problems people have. Several Macs over the years. And those are quite demanding applications (for programming, resource wise, I didn't use Docker until recently, but did use Vagrant, Vmware, and virtuabox for ages). My major gripes are swallen batteries (2 times in 20 years), and the crappy 2015-2019 keyboards (plus, whoever idiot designed the usb-at-the-bottom mouse). But as far as the OS is concerned there are some bugs I see here and there, but I don't see the big fuss. I don't have peripherals disconeccting at random, crashes, data loss, and so on. I've had way worse bugs and issues on Linux and Linux software over the years (which I also use since 1997), and even used as my main pro desktop for years (1999-2003, Debian) in far more optimistic times. One key differentiator might be that I don't install any kind of crap (I have a no-haxies policy for example, and spare for Little Snitch, I avoided kexts too. A vendor has some special e.g. keyboard driver? Fuck it, I'll use one keyboard with class compliant drivers), but I do install a lot of apps still. Another might be that I usually re-install fresh every 2 years or so (I like to get rid of accumulated junk, including personal documents and downloaded files, and install what I really need to use at the current, sort of like spring-cleaning).

clajiness 5y ago
> plus, whoever idiot designed the usb-at-the-bottom mouse The batteries last so long in those mice, plus you can get an almost full day's charge in about two minutes. It takes a real idiot to run into issues with it. :)
- coldtea 5y ago
  I must be a real idiot then (which is very possibly the case, but I'm pretty sure not for disliking this design). On top of the batteries starting dying much faster later on (the "last so long" thing is only true on the first 1-2 years), the warning is shown and dismissed far too easily, and far too late - and then they just die.