6 ms·

The Mac Sonoma sure is starting to look like the iPhone

60 points by RadixDLT 3y ago

retrac98 3y ago
I really resent the bloat of modern operating systems. MacOS in particular. I feel like I need ridiculously powerful hardware now just to do the same things I was doing 15 years ago - web browsing, web development, a photo library and playing music. All this crap they’re adding should be able to be toggled off.
- throw47474777j 3y ago
  Websites are a lot more complicated now than they were 15 years ago. There’s a lot to complain about, but it’s nothing to do with MacOS. Beyond that, what actual stuff are you talking about?
  - nicbou 3y ago
    I have a really slow 12 inch MacBook. System preferences is slow. Most other things are actually quote snappy, aside from many websites.
  - jfghi 3y ago
    For me at least, I’d say the prior versions of windows were pretty zippy whereas now I don’t even know what’s going on behind the scenes and why it takes so long to perform basic tasks, even with 16 gb ram.
    - internetter 3y ago
      macOS is actually pretty good in this regard. It's definitely gotten worse, but not anywhere close to the extent of Windows
      - Gigachad 3y ago
        My MacBook runs at 120hz super reliably. Everything feels basically instant. It kind of turns me off using my gaming desktop since despite having far more power, the experience is not as slick and responsive.
    - white_dragon88 3y ago
      [dead]
    - happymellon 3y ago
      One of the things I think is all the performance improvements. By that I mean performance improvements that sounds like they should be faster, but don't scale as well as simply brute forcing. The other is "security". My work Mac has 3 different VPN/Network Proxies and 2 malware checkers. I would assume that each one is caching network details, as I have to go in an disable/enable them all once or twice a day to restore network performance. It's like the whole multiple anti-virus conflicts on Windows again like no one ever learnt.
  - gary17the 3y ago
    No, I don't think it's only about "more complex websites", "more taxing multimedia" and so on - it's more likely also macOS and Windows bloat and questionable software quality getting in the way. I recently installed Ubuntu Linux with the LXQt performance-oriented desktop environment on a 10-year-old Intel i7 2600 workstation back from 2011 (16 GB RAM, an Intel HD Graphics 2000 built-in GPU, an Intel SSD with specs archaic by today's standards) and the system is extremely fast and responsive at everything including web browsing, multimedia playback, IDE-based development (e.g., CodeBlocks), app launching, etc. Website content and multimedia rendering alone is not enough to saturate even a 10-year-old CPU/GPU.
    - throw47474777j 3y ago
      I guarantee a new Mac would be faster. There is really nothing to see here.
      - gary17the 3y ago
        Yeah, right. If website content and multimedia rendering alone is, demonstrably, not enough to saturate even a 10-year-old CPU/GPU under Linux, then no, it is not possible for "a new Mac" to be even faster at same content and multimedia rendering. It does not make any difference, productivity-wise, whether you render website content and multimedia at 60 fps, or 120 fps, or 240 fps - the eye perceives the same thing. Effectively, whatever you pay for "a new Mac" over the cost of a 10-year old, generic PC workstation is being used exclusively to accelerate macOS.
- white_dragon88 3y ago
  [dead]
- Gigachad 3y ago
  I feel like Mac has absolutely nailed feeling responsive and snappy. I have a full gaming desktop with enormous amounts of compute, but for some reason my MacBook Air _feels_ faster while the desktop just seems to miss beats or have occasional jank. The M1 is 3 years old now but if you packaged it up in a new shell and told me it’s the 2023 edition, I wouldn’t know otherwise.
areoform 3y ago
I've noticed that the MacOS codebase seems to have kibble. Features that used to work have degraded in quality for seemingly no reason over successive generations. For example, Spotlight, ever since their updates, is now unable to find any of my applications, struggles to find PDF documents while being slower and worse than the spotlight I used to use in OS X Snow Leopard. Yes, my current Mac's spotlight has more features. But the core functionality no longer "just works." Another example is networking. For some reason, MacOS is now really flaky when using VPNs and it seems to have struggle connecting with WiFi networks from time to time. It's bizarre. I'm using the latest hardware (the 28GB M2 MacBook Air) — it shouldn't be this bad. Let's not even talk about Apple Care. Apple Care theoretically does more now, but they've made it functionally worse for most consumers.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  A few versions of MacOS ago, I noticed that mounting a network drive with NFS through the GUI (e.g. Command K) took far longer than it should; 15 to 20 seconds when it should have been nearly instant. And in fact if I had a terminal open when I did it, I could see that the drive was mounted and accessible in a veritable instant, while the GUI progress indicator just sat there for another 20 seconds. I never bothered to dig into it, but I presume it was waiting to stat all the files in at least the first level of sub-directories (more would have taken much longer, so it certainly wasn't doing the whole drive recursively.) I can't imagine any sane reason to delay showing the user the root directory of the mount before stating files in the sub-directories, but I also can't imagine any other quasi-legitimate reason it could have been taking so long.
  - dragonelite 3y ago
    I heard a story a while ago that some apps just create a fake progress bar/indicator. Because if it happened instantly people don't trust/believe the action actually happened.
    - hnbear 3y ago
      https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-some-apps-use-fake-progress-bars/517233/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-s... But I doubt that’s happening here. Anyone mounting NFS drives via a direct path in cmd-K isn’t shocked it’s quick.
mrweasel 3y ago
One thing I've noticed with the latest macOS and iOS releases is that I find macOS is being dumbed down while iOS has become incredibly complicated. I can still do what I want in macOS, some things are just unnecessarily difficult to find, like Internet Sharing. I was only able to find it by searching for "Sharing". Staying with internet sharing, the interface for it is bonkers, you have to click a tiny gray (!) logo to configure it. That seems like someone ran out of space and just made something up, without the oversight of a designer. While Apple seems hellbent on making macOS dumber, they've have no second thoughts about making iOS insanely complicated to use. Settings are all over the place, I frequently miss notification, because apparently I did something that disables them in some scenarios, no idea what that might be. There are so many features in iOS and very little is done to surface them or make them intuitive to use. I feel like they could yank 80% of iOS and I'd still have a workable phone. Apple needs to take a break and reevaluate their design decisions for both operating systems, but neither is evolving in the right direction.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
SG- 3y ago
Or iOS is getting more and more Mac features. This slow merge is much better than the originally predicted switchover long ago.
methou 3y ago
While I understand why would they putting efforts on the distant merging of the codebase, I still hate the UI. It's just not for a big screen with mouse and keyboard.
GoofballJones 3y ago
I must be doing something wrong, because I don't hate this. And this is coming from someone using the Mac since 1985ish or so. Like I said, I'll try harder to hate on it more as that seems to be the cool thing to do.
- asimovfan 3y ago
  If you've been using the mac since 1985 i think you're just unnaturally biased and wouldn't really hate anything apple imposes on you. But i agree you must be doing something wrong.
  - GoofballJones 3y ago
    Not actually. I've been using the Mac since 1985, but not exclusively. The same year I got more into the Amiga as it could do so much more...but Commodore didn't know what to do with the machine and now it's just a footnote. I've also switched between PC/DOS to Mac to DOS to OS/2 to Mac to Linux to Windows back to Mac to Linux and now back to Mac. My media server here is run on Linux. I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to computers, it just so happens that at this point in time I'm using a Mac as my daily driver.
- sbuk 3y ago
  It's the same every year, isn't it. Likewise, I've been using a Mac since around 1986. The sky has been falling ever since then.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Windows 8 went about this all wrong by just forcing everything mobile on desktop and removing the desktop features. Apple seems to have done this super carefully by copying over individual features in both ways and making sure it really works before releasing it.
esskay 3y ago
macOS needs another Snow Leopard. It was a bit of a one off OS release from Apple, and instead of being an intense focus on new features, the whole point of that release was to improve stability and performance. They removed a ton of legacy support, but in the process gave all the core operating system mechanics a much needed house cleaning to improve performance. It breathed new life into older macs and made the OS significantly faster and more stable. Since then we've had tons of bloat brought back in, then removed again, then added back in again (see widgets for example). It's time for another Snow Leopard.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  Or just adopt a bi-annual major release cadence.
- microtonal 3y ago
  When are y’all hoping to release today? This is a popular sentiment, but the last few releases were pretty tame feature-wise, and Monterey and Ventura have been quite solid for me. I think we are also looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I have been using macOS since 10.4/10.5 and those releases were quite rough. Even the initial 10.6 (Snow Leopard) releases were quite buggy, it was only towards the end of the end of the 10.6 release cycle (which was still two years) that it got really solid. Especially the releases after Apple lost interest in the Mac (when they proclaimed the iPad was the future of computing) and later the Intel Mac were horrible. The mid to late 2010s were particularly horrible for Mac users. Bad hardware (the faulty butterfly keyboard, only 1 or 2 USB-C ports on many models, CPUs that got too hot for the limited cooling) and very buggy macOS releases.
- ulfw 3y ago
  We've been doing Snow Leopard for the last few years. There's not been major feature releases. Just a bunch of little things here and there really.
DarthNebo 3y ago
Bring the calculator widget back cowards!
pmontra 3y ago
Widgets on the desktop have a long history in currently mainstream OSes. I remember Windows 95 Active Desktop [1] which worked in combination with Internet Explorer 4. HTML widgets rendered on Windows' desktop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop
- _glass 3y ago
  I remember xeyes on my Unix desktop
  - pmontra 3y ago
    Wasn't that running in its own window [1]? However I'm pretty sure that somebody made it render directly on the screen below all the other windows, or in front of them. I remember cockroaches scrambling to hide below windows [2] or snow accumulating above windows titles [3]. [1] https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xeyes https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xeyes [2] https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xroach https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xroach [3] https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xsnow https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xsnow
tmikaeld 3y ago
MacOS, once reliable and straightforward, now feels like a puzzle board. Snow Leopard was great, it prioritized performance and stability, not adding unnecessary bells and whistles - it was the best MacOS I've used to far. Both MacOS and iOS need to return to their roots. MacOS needs to prioritize performance and stability, and iOS needs to simplify. Trim the fat, focus on what matters, and make these platforms user-friendly again. Even decade-old hardware running Ubuntu Linux can outperform MacOS. It's not about the hardware any more, it's about the software!
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  I'm strongly considering a return to linux; any distro recommendations for someone who mostly wants a dev box?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - gary17the 3y ago
    If you care about having the very latest versions of all apps, tools, compilers, etc. go with a "rolling distro" such as Manjaro (easier to setup) or Arch Linux (more advanced to administer). If you prefer upgrade stability (and a huge community with a lot of help), go with a "checkpoint distro" such as Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support). For a desktop environment, I found LXQt (Ubuntu + LXQt = the Lubuntu distro) to be both very fast and quite modern-looking at the same time (especially if you invest some time into customizing it), while KDE Plasma (Ubuntu + KDE = the Kubuntu distro) is probably the best looking Linux out of the box, but somewhat more resource hungry. (More info at: https://distrowatch.com https://distrowatch.com)
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Fedora
SomeRndName11 3y ago
Apple needs a new Steve Jobs. He had good taste for sure.
pacifika 3y ago
There’s nothing revolutionary here, when are we going to see the next generation of desktop computing? There is so much potential to overhaul the desktop metaphor, rethink the finder, how we share documents and review edits in text based files, automate using modular blocks, share media with your tv and other devices, share information between multiple running apps, allow central software updates for non store apps… the list is endless. Instead it seems we’re content with the status quo and adding cosmetics. When document versions was introduced and spotlight I remember the envy running windows at the time. macOS needs a more courageous vision imho.
- jemmyw 3y ago
  I don't want them to be courageous. Because that inevitably means taking away working workflows, making things harder for developers or anyone who doesn't want to conform to whatever new vision it is. This is what experimental systems are for - showing a new vision and then when anyone tries to use it finding out why things are the way they are.
  - pacifika 3y ago
    There are ways to have both alongside one another. - dos / windows - game mode on/off - settings - dual booting Etc.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  Instead of overhauling the desktop metaphor I'd prefer if they improved the current state of the system. The Stage Manager is still very rough around the edges (obvious drag-and-drop interactions don't work, windows sometimes get randomly repositioned and can even land outside the screen area, ...). The fullscreen mode feels really sluggish because it's weirdly implemented using virtual desktops and thus has a one-second delay. The file chooser for saving files is completely frozen until all connected harddrives have spun up. Why does the browser have a back/forward swipe gesture but not the Finder etc.? Though I agree completely new approaches to some things can be great, for example the Stage Manager turned out far more useful than I expected, it's like a taskbar for virtual desktops.
- 3y ago
olgeni 3y ago
This is amazing! We will be getting Active Desktop all over again!
macintosh-hd 3y ago
Looks cool to me!

60 points by RadixDLT 3y ago

I really resent the bloat of modern operating systems. MacOS in particular. I feel like I need ridiculously powerful hardware now just to do the same things I was doing 15 years ago - web browsing, web development, a photo library and playing music. All this crap they’re adding should be able to be toggled off.

throw47474777j 3y ago
Websites are a lot more complicated now than they were 15 years ago. There’s a lot to complain about, but it’s nothing to do with MacOS. Beyond that, what actual stuff are you talking about?
- nicbou 3y ago
  I have a really slow 12 inch MacBook. System preferences is slow. Most other things are actually quote snappy, aside from many websites.
- jfghi 3y ago
  For me at least, I’d say the prior versions of windows were pretty zippy whereas now I don’t even know what’s going on behind the scenes and why it takes so long to perform basic tasks, even with 16 gb ram.
  - internetter 3y ago
    macOS is actually pretty good in this regard. It's definitely gotten worse, but not anywhere close to the extent of Windows
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      My MacBook runs at 120hz super reliably. Everything feels basically instant. It kind of turns me off using my gaming desktop since despite having far more power, the experience is not as slick and responsive.
  - white_dragon88 3y ago
    [dead]
  - happymellon 3y ago
    One of the things I think is all the performance improvements. By that I mean performance improvements that sounds like they should be faster, but don't scale as well as simply brute forcing. The other is "security". My work Mac has 3 different VPN/Network Proxies and 2 malware checkers. I would assume that each one is caching network details, as I have to go in an disable/enable them all once or twice a day to restore network performance. It's like the whole multiple anti-virus conflicts on Windows again like no one ever learnt.
- gary17the 3y ago
  No, I don't think it's only about "more complex websites", "more taxing multimedia" and so on - it's more likely also macOS and Windows bloat and questionable software quality getting in the way. I recently installed Ubuntu Linux with the LXQt performance-oriented desktop environment on a 10-year-old Intel i7 2600 workstation back from 2011 (16 GB RAM, an Intel HD Graphics 2000 built-in GPU, an Intel SSD with specs archaic by today's standards) and the system is extremely fast and responsive at everything including web browsing, multimedia playback, IDE-based development (e.g., CodeBlocks), app launching, etc. Website content and multimedia rendering alone is not enough to saturate even a 10-year-old CPU/GPU.
  - throw47474777j 3y ago
    I guarantee a new Mac would be faster. There is really nothing to see here.
    - gary17the 3y ago
      Yeah, right. If website content and multimedia rendering alone is, demonstrably, not enough to saturate even a 10-year-old CPU/GPU under Linux, then no, it is not possible for "a new Mac" to be even faster at same content and multimedia rendering. It does not make any difference, productivity-wise, whether you render website content and multimedia at 60 fps, or 120 fps, or 240 fps - the eye perceives the same thing. Effectively, whatever you pay for "a new Mac" over the cost of a 10-year old, generic PC workstation is being used exclusively to accelerate macOS.
white_dragon88 3y ago
[dead]
Gigachad 3y ago
I feel like Mac has absolutely nailed feeling responsive and snappy. I have a full gaming desktop with enormous amounts of compute, but for some reason my MacBook Air _feels_ faster while the desktop just seems to miss beats or have occasional jank. The M1 is 3 years old now but if you packaged it up in a new shell and told me it’s the 2023 edition, I wouldn’t know otherwise.

areoform 3y ago

I've noticed that the MacOS codebase seems to have kibble. Features that used to work have degraded in quality for seemingly no reason over successive generations. For example, Spotlight, ever since their updates, is now unable to find any of my applications, struggles to find PDF documents while being slower and worse than the spotlight I used to use in OS X Snow Leopard. Yes, my current Mac's spotlight has more features. But the core functionality no longer "just works." Another example is networking. For some reason, MacOS is now really flaky when using VPNs and it seems to have struggle connecting with WiFi networks from time to time. It's bizarre. I'm using the latest hardware (the 28GB M2 MacBook Air) — it shouldn't be this bad. Let's not even talk about Apple Care. Apple Care theoretically does more now, but they've made it functionally worse for most consumers.

mcpackieh 3y ago
A few versions of MacOS ago, I noticed that mounting a network drive with NFS through the GUI (e.g. Command K) took far longer than it should; 15 to 20 seconds when it should have been nearly instant. And in fact if I had a terminal open when I did it, I could see that the drive was mounted and accessible in a veritable instant, while the GUI progress indicator just sat there for another 20 seconds. I never bothered to dig into it, but I presume it was waiting to stat all the files in at least the first level of sub-directories (more would have taken much longer, so it certainly wasn't doing the whole drive recursively.) I can't imagine any sane reason to delay showing the user the root directory of the mount before stating files in the sub-directories, but I also can't imagine any other quasi-legitimate reason it could have been taking so long.
- dragonelite 3y ago
  I heard a story a while ago that some apps just create a fake progress bar/indicator. Because if it happened instantly people don't trust/believe the action actually happened.
  - hnbear 3y ago
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-some-apps-use-fake-progress-bars/517233/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-s... But I doubt that’s happening here. Anyone mounting NFS drives via a direct path in cmd-K isn’t shocked it’s quick.

mrweasel 3y ago

One thing I've noticed with the latest macOS and iOS releases is that I find macOS is being dumbed down while iOS has become incredibly complicated. I can still do what I want in macOS, some things are just unnecessarily difficult to find, like Internet Sharing. I was only able to find it by searching for "Sharing". Staying with internet sharing, the interface for it is bonkers, you have to click a tiny gray (!) logo to configure it. That seems like someone ran out of space and just made something up, without the oversight of a designer. While Apple seems hellbent on making macOS dumber, they've have no second thoughts about making iOS insanely complicated to use. Settings are all over the place, I frequently miss notification, because apparently I did something that disables them in some scenarios, no idea what that might be. There are so many features in iOS and very little is done to surface them or make them intuitive to use. I feel like they could yank 80% of iOS and I'd still have a workable phone. Apple needs to take a break and reevaluate their design decisions for both operating systems, but neither is evolving in the right direction.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

SG- 3y ago

Or iOS is getting more and more Mac features. This slow merge is much better than the originally predicted switchover long ago.

methou 3y ago

While I understand why would they putting efforts on the distant merging of the codebase, I still hate the UI. It's just not for a big screen with mouse and keyboard.

GoofballJones 3y ago

I must be doing something wrong, because I don't hate this. And this is coming from someone using the Mac since 1985ish or so. Like I said, I'll try harder to hate on it more as that seems to be the cool thing to do.

asimovfan 3y ago
If you've been using the mac since 1985 i think you're just unnaturally biased and wouldn't really hate anything apple imposes on you. But i agree you must be doing something wrong.
- GoofballJones 3y ago
  Not actually. I've been using the Mac since 1985, but not exclusively. The same year I got more into the Amiga as it could do so much more...but Commodore didn't know what to do with the machine and now it's just a footnote. I've also switched between PC/DOS to Mac to DOS to OS/2 to Mac to Linux to Windows back to Mac to Linux and now back to Mac. My media server here is run on Linux. I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to computers, it just so happens that at this point in time I'm using a Mac as my daily driver.
sbuk 3y ago
It's the same every year, isn't it. Likewise, I've been using a Mac since around 1986. The sky has been falling ever since then.
Gigachad 3y ago
Windows 8 went about this all wrong by just forcing everything mobile on desktop and removing the desktop features. Apple seems to have done this super carefully by copying over individual features in both ways and making sure it really works before releasing it.

esskay 3y ago

macOS needs another Snow Leopard. It was a bit of a one off OS release from Apple, and instead of being an intense focus on new features, the whole point of that release was to improve stability and performance. They removed a ton of legacy support, but in the process gave all the core operating system mechanics a much needed house cleaning to improve performance. It breathed new life into older macs and made the OS significantly faster and more stable. Since then we've had tons of bloat brought back in, then removed again, then added back in again (see widgets for example). It's time for another Snow Leopard.

WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
Or just adopt a bi-annual major release cadence.
microtonal 3y ago
When are y’all hoping to release today? This is a popular sentiment, but the last few releases were pretty tame feature-wise, and Monterey and Ventura have been quite solid for me. I think we are also looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I have been using macOS since 10.4/10.5 and those releases were quite rough. Even the initial 10.6 (Snow Leopard) releases were quite buggy, it was only towards the end of the end of the 10.6 release cycle (which was still two years) that it got really solid. Especially the releases after Apple lost interest in the Mac (when they proclaimed the iPad was the future of computing) and later the Intel Mac were horrible. The mid to late 2010s were particularly horrible for Mac users. Bad hardware (the faulty butterfly keyboard, only 1 or 2 USB-C ports on many models, CPUs that got too hot for the limited cooling) and very buggy macOS releases.
ulfw 3y ago
We've been doing Snow Leopard for the last few years. There's not been major feature releases. Just a bunch of little things here and there really.

DarthNebo 3y ago

Bring the calculator widget back cowards!

pmontra 3y ago

Widgets on the desktop have a long history in currently mainstream OSes. I remember Windows 95 Active Desktop [1] which worked in combination with Internet Explorer 4. HTML widgets rendered on Windows' desktop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop

_glass 3y ago
I remember xeyes on my Unix desktop
- pmontra 3y ago
  Wasn't that running in its own window [1]? However I'm pretty sure that somebody made it render directly on the screen below all the other windows, or in front of them. I remember cockroaches scrambling to hide below windows [2] or snow accumulating above windows titles [3]. [1] https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xeyes https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xeyes [2] https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xroach https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xroach [3] https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xsnow https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/#xsnow

tmikaeld 3y ago

MacOS, once reliable and straightforward, now feels like a puzzle board. Snow Leopard was great, it prioritized performance and stability, not adding unnecessary bells and whistles - it was the best MacOS I've used to far. Both MacOS and iOS need to return to their roots. MacOS needs to prioritize performance and stability, and iOS needs to simplify. Trim the fat, focus on what matters, and make these platforms user-friendly again. Even decade-old hardware running Ubuntu Linux can outperform MacOS. It's not about the hardware any more, it's about the software!

082349872349872 3y ago
I'm strongly considering a return to linux; any distro recommendations for someone who mostly wants a dev box?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gary17the 3y ago
  If you care about having the very latest versions of all apps, tools, compilers, etc. go with a "rolling distro" such as Manjaro (easier to setup) or Arch Linux (more advanced to administer). If you prefer upgrade stability (and a huge community with a lot of help), go with a "checkpoint distro" such as Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support). For a desktop environment, I found LXQt (Ubuntu + LXQt = the Lubuntu distro) to be both very fast and quite modern-looking at the same time (especially if you invest some time into customizing it), while KDE Plasma (Ubuntu + KDE = the Kubuntu distro) is probably the best looking Linux out of the box, but somewhat more resource hungry. (More info at: https://distrowatch.com https://distrowatch.com)
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Fedora

SomeRndName11 3y ago

Apple needs a new Steve Jobs. He had good taste for sure.

pacifika 3y ago

There’s nothing revolutionary here, when are we going to see the next generation of desktop computing? There is so much potential to overhaul the desktop metaphor, rethink the finder, how we share documents and review edits in text based files, automate using modular blocks, share media with your tv and other devices, share information between multiple running apps, allow central software updates for non store apps… the list is endless. Instead it seems we’re content with the status quo and adding cosmetics. When document versions was introduced and spotlight I remember the envy running windows at the time. macOS needs a more courageous vision imho.

jemmyw 3y ago
I don't want them to be courageous. Because that inevitably means taking away working workflows, making things harder for developers or anyone who doesn't want to conform to whatever new vision it is. This is what experimental systems are for - showing a new vision and then when anyone tries to use it finding out why things are the way they are.
- pacifika 3y ago
  There are ways to have both alongside one another. - dos / windows - game mode on/off - settings - dual booting Etc.
alpaca128 3y ago
Instead of overhauling the desktop metaphor I'd prefer if they improved the current state of the system. The Stage Manager is still very rough around the edges (obvious drag-and-drop interactions don't work, windows sometimes get randomly repositioned and can even land outside the screen area, ...). The fullscreen mode feels really sluggish because it's weirdly implemented using virtual desktops and thus has a one-second delay. The file chooser for saving files is completely frozen until all connected harddrives have spun up. Why does the browser have a back/forward swipe gesture but not the Finder etc.? Though I agree completely new approaches to some things can be great, for example the Stage Manager turned out far more useful than I expected, it's like a taskbar for virtual desktops.
3y ago

olgeni 3y ago

This is amazing! We will be getting Active Desktop all over again!

macintosh-hd 3y ago

Looks cool to me!