7 ms·

I wish Apple would separate the updates of their bundleware from their OS. Some of the major updates have meaningful changes to the underlying OS (gatekeeper, S

I wish Apple would separate the updates of their bundleware from their OS. Some of the major updates have meaningful changes to the underlying OS (gatekeeper, SIP, etc.), but others - like this one - are primarily changes to frills like Messages, Notes, Safari and other Apple-native apps that I don't even use. I have no problem with Apple bundling these apps and making them work seamlessly together, and I don't even mind that they're all updated simultaneously (except for Safari, which I wish I could update independently without relying on the "Technology Preview" beta channel). But I do have a problem with upgrading my entire OS and disabling the new bloatware features just because I want to keep auto-updates enabled. I used to delay updating and then would end up way behind, which is why I enrolled in auto-update. But now it feels like I'm being held hostage to their update schedule. And for what benefit? There are hardly any useful OS-level changes in this release, but there are a bunch of new features I'll need to disable (while hoping the next auto-update doesn't break my external monitor), all powered by freshly written code contributing to an expanded attack surface. If I had my way, then I'd take the OS updates and skip all the apps. Keep the attack surface small while still meaningfully improving the core. I don't care about the rest.

aeyes 3y ago
You know what would be even better? If you could reliably uninstall all this junk or not even install it at all. Every time I hit some button on my keyboard and the Music app opens asking me to create an account I am reminded how hostile all commercial operating systems are.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Somehow on migrating to a new iPhone the music app decided it needed full notification permissions, apparently because a new Taylor swift album is of the same notification level as an incoming missile strike. At least it’s easy enough to turn off.
  - aeyes 3y ago
    At least they didn't "gift" you the album like they did with U2
    - eastbound 3y ago
      Oh man, I have never loaded music on my phone, so whenever the car starts, it plays the first song on the iPhone. I hate U2! And I hate that they’re receiving money each I do this!
      - bzzzt 3y ago
        Do they though? It was a gifted digital 'purchase', not a stream. Anyway, seems you can contact Apple support to permanently remove the album from your account.
    - lynx23 3y ago
      Oh yeah, esp. funny if you always hated U2, and suddenly it appears in the middle of your music collection. Same with "Alone at home", not quite my taste.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    Music has always asked for notification permissions. It's useful for people like me who want to know when new albums are released.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Oh man, it gets worse than that. After updating to iOS 17 the other day, I said to my phone "play OverCast" (my podcast app). It used to start playing from that app. This time, it started playing a band called Overcast, and told me I had just started a 7 day free trial of Apple Music. What the actual fuck.
  - chatmasta 3y ago
    brb, starting a band called "Spotify" and opening a 24/7 convenience store called "Google Maps"
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      It's not a bug, it's a feature. People have done crazier things! Didn't Steve Jobs once say that part of the reason he named the company Apple was because it would be before Atari in the phone book? [1] 1: https://www.macworld.com/article/673923/why-is-apple-called-apple.html#:~:text=Back%20when%20Apple%20was%20founded,for%20whom%20Jobs%20had%20worked https://www.macworld.com/article/673923/why-is-apple-called-...).
      - rib3ye 3y ago
        Not just in the phone books. Ever wonder why the stock ticker has two A’s?
        jen729w 3y ago
        If you’re picking stocks by order of the alphabet you deserve what you get. Which, incidentally, was a tremendous return.
        rib3ye 3y ago
        Once upon a time, stocks were listed alphabetically in something called newspapers.
    - RunSet 3y ago
- amatecha 3y ago
  It's interesting, I've been using OpenBSD for the past couple years and it has _not once_ enraged me the way Windows and Mac do. I still use Windows for work, and own a ton of Macs (probably getting close to ~30 by now), but OpenBSD is the OS I use for most general computing stuff. I mean, I'm using a GUI that is really primitive by comparison to Win/Mac (i3wm) but it's actually great. Extremely fast, efficient, and stays out of my way. There is literally no mechanism in the OS to pop up a notification or bounce an icon or blink anything at me. It couldn't interrupt me and piss me off even if some piece of software wanted to. It's amazing. Nothing updates on its own, and the OS runs very very few services or other background stuff -- basically only whatever I have explicitly configured and enabled. Again, awesome. I'm easily aware of every single process that runs on this machine, and if there's one I don't know about, there's comprehensive documentation about it, including how to configure it. That's honestly effectively impossible for someone using Mac or Windows. Oh, I just installed a security patch in about 20 seconds. Open terminal (winkey->enter), "doas syspatch -c", type pass, see there's a patch, "doas syspatch" to apply it, done in 2 seconds. Once I reboot the newly-patched kernel is active. There is full documentation of the patch, including why it's needed, how the patch resolves the issue, and a diff of the patch is included.
  - reacharavindh 3y ago
    I love OpenBSD…… as a server particularly as a DNS or a network gateway with pf as a firewall. But, I cannot fathom how using OpenBSD on a Desktop/Laptop for personal computing would NoT enrage me everyday. The things I’d do on my personal computer : 1. Browse all bloated modern websites using a modern web browser - Firefox 2. Work with photos(personal) - edit them, crop them to share with someone, markup screenshots to put in docs etc. 3. Use PDFs without worrying about formats, markup on them as needed, fill forms on PDFs. 4. Media - playback audio and video. Without worrying about whether I have the right codecs or file formats. Wouldn’t OpenBSD make me constantly fight against its opinionated safety first way of doing things? Sure, one can run Firefox on OpenBSD, but would it play YouTube and Netflix without making me pull my hair? I can install ffmpeg, relevant codecs, PDF tools, Darktable or other Unix friendly photo tools, but wouldn’t that be a constant fight and tweaking to keep them running?
- dmt0 3y ago
  You absolutely need this: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
  - rawland 3y ago
    One of the best comments in this thread. Thanks.
  - wlk 3y ago
    Alternatively run: launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist
    - aeyes 3y ago
      I tried it but unfortunately it also disables media control (pause/skip) from the keyboard in other applications.
- willtemperley 3y ago
  Reliably removing the U2 album from Apple Music seems impossible. Deleting the album which has helpfully redownloaded itself is now a ritual before I start my car - otherwise it starts playing as soon as bluetooth connects - which is just what I need when I'm pulling away in busy traffic.
  - cormacrelf 3y ago
    “A a a a a very good song” to the rescue. https://music.apple.com/au/album/a-a-a-a-a-very-good-song-silent-track/1268932999?i=1268933000 https://music.apple.com/au/album/a-a-a-a-a-very-good-song-si... Also available on iTunes for a dollar, search for Samir Mezrahi (the blessed soul who made this).
    - willtemperley 3y ago
      That's hilarious. Actually Apple support have just removed U2 permanently from my account. Feeling mildly victorious.
- klausbert 3y ago
  I agree with you. Apple Music is particularly annoying. I recommend this free little utility: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
  - crossroadsguy 3y ago
    I had to mildly fight with my company’s security team to get this app allowed on my work mac.
vaughan 3y ago
Something cool however is you can actually build the open-source WebKit browser engine yourself and make closed-source Safari use your locally built version.
- pchangr 3y ago
  Do you have a link or something ? I couldn’t really find where you’d do that
  - vaughan 3y ago
    https://webkit.org/running-webkit/ https://webkit.org/running-webkit/
    - pchangr 3y ago
      Ohhhhh…. I was looking in the Safari documentation. Thank you! Didn’t know about this!
rpgbr 3y ago
Safari is updated independently of macOS. Today I installed Safari 17 on Ventura. It’s available in Monterey as well.
cztomsik 3y ago
I have similar feelings. Apple did a wonderful job with M1/M2, but on the software side, I have mixed feelings. Xcode is a mess, and Swift UI is not a complete replacement for Cocoa. And on the OS side, I feel like Apple is creating features that I instantly disable because they do the exact opposite of what I want.
- bingemaker 3y ago
  XCode is refusing to install. Fails with some error, and asks me to download XCode again. Also now the system needs 70-80 GB of free space to install XCode. One of the funny upgrades so far
  - icedchai 3y ago
    There is definitely something buggy going on there. It took 2 attempts for it to install for me! No errors, it just stopped installing somewhere around 90%. Plenty of free disks space and RAM.
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      Are you using a XIP to install?
      - icedchai 3y ago
        No, I was using the App Store "update"...
    - chatmasta 3y ago
      Are you sure it actually stopped installing? When I installed XCode for the first time a few months ago, there was a 20-30 minute period where it was completely silent. Ultimately I was able to tail some syslog from the app store daemon that indicated it was actually doing something (downloading dependencies and validating their signatures, IIRC). But I almost restarted the computer thinking it wasn't working.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zuhsetaqi 3y ago
> except for Safari, which I wish I could update independently without relying on the "Technology Preview" beta channel For me the Safari update is always a seperate update in System Preferences which I can install without updateing the OS
jawngee 3y ago
You can install Safari separately.
janandonly 3y ago
For tech minded folk, the upgrade-everyting-or-nothing is indeed unwanted. But I love the facts that I can tell my family to upgrade and they will have all the new stuff at once, like with an iPhone or iPad. That is for most users what they want and/or need.
ExoticPearTree 3y ago
Wow, so much unwarranted hate. It's one download and you have everything updated. If you believe you do not need a new OS version for your laptop for whatever reason, you can always keep using Ventura or whatever you're running now and update that until it is end of support. I don't think you understand how helpful it is for "normal" users to push a button and have a brand new version of everything. And being afraid of new features that you don't use... pretty irrational.
- replete 3y ago
  It is by no means irrational to hesitate on a new major release of an Apple operating system. MacOS upgrades have caused many people all kinds of issues, for instance a Big Sur update broke a metric fuckton of USB-C hubs and they didn't address it for 6 months.
  - absrec 3y ago
    I updated from High Sierra to Catalina and it broke a lot of things. Ultimately sold it in the used goods market and switched it for a new laptop. Installed Linux on it and haven't felt the need to go back to Mac since.
throwaway2990 3y ago
Messages, notes, Safari. All awesome. Can you imagine installing crap like chrome, ever notes, or fake e2e what’s app?
- azangru 3y ago
  > Can you imagine installing crap like chrome I can. Great dev tools, and usually is ahead of other browsers in implementing web apis. What Safari team presented at WWDC this year regarding PWAs as something revolutionary has been available in Chrome for years.
  - throwaway2990 3y ago
    lol PWAs are trash. As is chrome. Firefox dev tools are equiv of chrome. Without all the trash Google ads/adds to chrome.
Nfthero 3y ago
As weird as it sounds this model makes it at least clear that you update your os regularly and it gets attention. Microsoft has the issue that it's hard to sell why you would need to upgrade and not just update.
neovive 3y ago
Maybe Apple should consider dev editions for MacOS that allows more customization during setup. MacOS is still heavily used by web and mobile developers, so I'm sure this would be received well. I do end up removing many of the Apple apps, but recently started using Safari, Notes, and Reminders more. Apple does an excellent job making their apps work seamlessly within the Apple ecosystem.
lloeki 3y ago
> I wish Apple would separate the updates of their bundleware from their OS. In a way it's a bit of a philosophical standpoint: macOS is the whole indivisible thing developed, built, and released in lockstep, kinda like FreeBSB base is the whole indivisible thing developed, built, and released in lockstep (and the rest is ports). In a way, removing tcsh from a FreeBSD install because you only ever use bash from ports does not make sense and may break things; so you just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist.
- chatmasta 3y ago
  Yeah, I get that, but I think there could be a middleground. They could ship all their apps as a bundle, and their raw base OS separately.
  - kshacker 3y ago
    So what do you do when - previous bundle exists, you upgrade raw OS, but the previous bundle is not compatible - you try to install new bundle, but did not install new raw OS I am sure this can be managed, but someone else may say they do not want to do it.
    - chatmasta 3y ago
      I guess the OS installer could have a checkbox "upgrade Apple Apps bundle" and if you uncheck it but have the previous version installed, it could have a disabled, pre-selected checkbox saying "Uninstall Apple Apps bundle (previous version incompatible)"

aeyes 3y ago

You know what would be even better? If you could reliably uninstall all this junk or not even install it at all. Every time I hit some button on my keyboard and the Music app opens asking me to create an account I am reminded how hostile all commercial operating systems are.

bombcar 3y ago
Somehow on migrating to a new iPhone the music app decided it needed full notification permissions, apparently because a new Taylor swift album is of the same notification level as an incoming missile strike. At least it’s easy enough to turn off.
- aeyes 3y ago
  At least they didn't "gift" you the album like they did with U2
  - eastbound 3y ago
    Oh man, I have never loaded music on my phone, so whenever the car starts, it plays the first song on the iPhone. I hate U2! And I hate that they’re receiving money each I do this!
    - bzzzt 3y ago
      Do they though? It was a gifted digital 'purchase', not a stream. Anyway, seems you can contact Apple support to permanently remove the album from your account.
  - lynx23 3y ago
    Oh yeah, esp. funny if you always hated U2, and suddenly it appears in the middle of your music collection. Same with "Alone at home", not quite my taste.
- threeseed 3y ago
  Music has always asked for notification permissions. It's useful for people like me who want to know when new albums are released.
gnicholas 3y ago
Oh man, it gets worse than that. After updating to iOS 17 the other day, I said to my phone "play OverCast" (my podcast app). It used to start playing from that app. This time, it started playing a band called Overcast, and told me I had just started a 7 day free trial of Apple Music. What the actual fuck.
- chatmasta 3y ago
  brb, starting a band called "Spotify" and opening a 24/7 convenience store called "Google Maps"
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    It's not a bug, it's a feature. People have done crazier things! Didn't Steve Jobs once say that part of the reason he named the company Apple was because it would be before Atari in the phone book? [1] 1: https://www.macworld.com/article/673923/why-is-apple-called-apple.html#:~:text=Back%20when%20Apple%20was%20founded,for%20whom%20Jobs%20had%20worked https://www.macworld.com/article/673923/why-is-apple-called-...).
    - rib3ye 3y ago
      Not just in the phone books. Ever wonder why the stock ticker has two A’s?
      - jen729w 3y ago
        If you’re picking stocks by order of the alphabet you deserve what you get. Which, incidentally, was a tremendous return.
        rib3ye 3y ago
        Once upon a time, stocks were listed alphabetically in something called newspapers.
  - RunSet 3y ago
amatecha 3y ago
It's interesting, I've been using OpenBSD for the past couple years and it has _not once_ enraged me the way Windows and Mac do. I still use Windows for work, and own a ton of Macs (probably getting close to ~30 by now), but OpenBSD is the OS I use for most general computing stuff. I mean, I'm using a GUI that is really primitive by comparison to Win/Mac (i3wm) but it's actually great. Extremely fast, efficient, and stays out of my way. There is literally no mechanism in the OS to pop up a notification or bounce an icon or blink anything at me. It couldn't interrupt me and piss me off even if some piece of software wanted to. It's amazing. Nothing updates on its own, and the OS runs very very few services or other background stuff -- basically only whatever I have explicitly configured and enabled. Again, awesome. I'm easily aware of every single process that runs on this machine, and if there's one I don't know about, there's comprehensive documentation about it, including how to configure it. That's honestly effectively impossible for someone using Mac or Windows. Oh, I just installed a security patch in about 20 seconds. Open terminal (winkey->enter), "doas syspatch -c", type pass, see there's a patch, "doas syspatch" to apply it, done in 2 seconds. Once I reboot the newly-patched kernel is active. There is full documentation of the patch, including why it's needed, how the patch resolves the issue, and a diff of the patch is included.
- reacharavindh 3y ago
  I love OpenBSD…… as a server particularly as a DNS or a network gateway with pf as a firewall. But, I cannot fathom how using OpenBSD on a Desktop/Laptop for personal computing would NoT enrage me everyday. The things I’d do on my personal computer : 1. Browse all bloated modern websites using a modern web browser - Firefox 2. Work with photos(personal) - edit them, crop them to share with someone, markup screenshots to put in docs etc. 3. Use PDFs without worrying about formats, markup on them as needed, fill forms on PDFs. 4. Media - playback audio and video. Without worrying about whether I have the right codecs or file formats. Wouldn’t OpenBSD make me constantly fight against its opinionated safety first way of doing things? Sure, one can run Firefox on OpenBSD, but would it play YouTube and Netflix without making me pull my hair? I can install ffmpeg, relevant codecs, PDF tools, Darktable or other Unix friendly photo tools, but wouldn’t that be a constant fight and tweaking to keep them running?
dmt0 3y ago
You absolutely need this: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
- rawland 3y ago
  One of the best comments in this thread. Thanks.
- wlk 3y ago
  Alternatively run: launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist
  - aeyes 3y ago
    I tried it but unfortunately it also disables media control (pause/skip) from the keyboard in other applications.
willtemperley 3y ago
Reliably removing the U2 album from Apple Music seems impossible. Deleting the album which has helpfully redownloaded itself is now a ritual before I start my car - otherwise it starts playing as soon as bluetooth connects - which is just what I need when I'm pulling away in busy traffic.
- cormacrelf 3y ago
  “A a a a a very good song” to the rescue. https://music.apple.com/au/album/a-a-a-a-a-very-good-song-silent-track/1268932999?i=1268933000 https://music.apple.com/au/album/a-a-a-a-a-very-good-song-si... Also available on iTunes for a dollar, search for Samir Mezrahi (the blessed soul who made this).
  - willtemperley 3y ago
    That's hilarious. Actually Apple support have just removed U2 permanently from my account. Feeling mildly victorious.
klausbert 3y ago
I agree with you. Apple Music is particularly annoying. I recommend this free little utility: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
- crossroadsguy 3y ago
  I had to mildly fight with my company’s security team to get this app allowed on my work mac.

vaughan 3y ago

Something cool however is you can actually build the open-source WebKit browser engine yourself and make closed-source Safari use your locally built version.

pchangr 3y ago
Do you have a link or something ? I couldn’t really find where you’d do that
- vaughan 3y ago
  https://webkit.org/running-webkit/ https://webkit.org/running-webkit/
  - pchangr 3y ago
    Ohhhhh…. I was looking in the Safari documentation. Thank you! Didn’t know about this!

rpgbr 3y ago

Safari is updated independently of macOS. Today I installed Safari 17 on Ventura. It’s available in Monterey as well.

cztomsik 3y ago

I have similar feelings. Apple did a wonderful job with M1/M2, but on the software side, I have mixed feelings. Xcode is a mess, and Swift UI is not a complete replacement for Cocoa. And on the OS side, I feel like Apple is creating features that I instantly disable because they do the exact opposite of what I want.

bingemaker 3y ago
XCode is refusing to install. Fails with some error, and asks me to download XCode again. Also now the system needs 70-80 GB of free space to install XCode. One of the funny upgrades so far
- icedchai 3y ago
  There is definitely something buggy going on there. It took 2 attempts for it to install for me! No errors, it just stopped installing somewhere around 90%. Plenty of free disks space and RAM.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    Are you using a XIP to install?
    - icedchai 3y ago
      No, I was using the App Store "update"...
  - chatmasta 3y ago
    Are you sure it actually stopped installing? When I installed XCode for the first time a few months ago, there was a 20-30 minute period where it was completely silent. Ultimately I was able to tail some syslog from the app store daemon that indicated it was actually doing something (downloading dependencies and validating their signatures, IIRC). But I almost restarted the computer thinking it wasn't working.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zuhsetaqi 3y ago

> except for Safari, which I wish I could update independently without relying on the "Technology Preview" beta channel For me the Safari update is always a seperate update in System Preferences which I can install without updateing the OS

jawngee 3y ago

You can install Safari separately.

janandonly 3y ago

For tech minded folk, the upgrade-everyting-or-nothing is indeed unwanted. But I love the facts that I can tell my family to upgrade and they will have all the new stuff at once, like with an iPhone or iPad. That is for most users what they want and/or need.

ExoticPearTree 3y ago

Wow, so much unwarranted hate. It's one download and you have everything updated. If you believe you do not need a new OS version for your laptop for whatever reason, you can always keep using Ventura or whatever you're running now and update that until it is end of support. I don't think you understand how helpful it is for "normal" users to push a button and have a brand new version of everything. And being afraid of new features that you don't use... pretty irrational.

replete 3y ago
It is by no means irrational to hesitate on a new major release of an Apple operating system. MacOS upgrades have caused many people all kinds of issues, for instance a Big Sur update broke a metric fuckton of USB-C hubs and they didn't address it for 6 months.
- absrec 3y ago
  I updated from High Sierra to Catalina and it broke a lot of things. Ultimately sold it in the used goods market and switched it for a new laptop. Installed Linux on it and haven't felt the need to go back to Mac since.

throwaway2990 3y ago

Messages, notes, Safari. All awesome. Can you imagine installing crap like chrome, ever notes, or fake e2e what’s app?

azangru 3y ago
> Can you imagine installing crap like chrome I can. Great dev tools, and usually is ahead of other browsers in implementing web apis. What Safari team presented at WWDC this year regarding PWAs as something revolutionary has been available in Chrome for years.
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  lol PWAs are trash. As is chrome. Firefox dev tools are equiv of chrome. Without all the trash Google ads/adds to chrome.

Nfthero 3y ago

As weird as it sounds this model makes it at least clear that you update your os regularly and it gets attention. Microsoft has the issue that it's hard to sell why you would need to upgrade and not just update.

neovive 3y ago

Maybe Apple should consider dev editions for MacOS that allows more customization during setup. MacOS is still heavily used by web and mobile developers, so I'm sure this would be received well. I do end up removing many of the Apple apps, but recently started using Safari, Notes, and Reminders more. Apple does an excellent job making their apps work seamlessly within the Apple ecosystem.

lloeki 3y ago

> I wish Apple would separate the updates of their bundleware from their OS. In a way it's a bit of a philosophical standpoint: macOS is the whole indivisible thing developed, built, and released in lockstep, kinda like FreeBSB base is the whole indivisible thing developed, built, and released in lockstep (and the rest is ports). In a way, removing tcsh from a FreeBSD install because you only ever use bash from ports does not make sense and may break things; so you just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist.

chatmasta 3y ago
Yeah, I get that, but I think there could be a middleground. They could ship all their apps as a bundle, and their raw base OS separately.
- kshacker 3y ago
  So what do you do when - previous bundle exists, you upgrade raw OS, but the previous bundle is not compatible - you try to install new bundle, but did not install new raw OS I am sure this can be managed, but someone else may say they do not want to do it.
  - chatmasta 3y ago
    I guess the OS installer could have a checkbox "upgrade Apple Apps bundle" and if you uncheck it but have the previous version installed, it could have a disabled, pre-selected checkbox saying "Uninstall Apple Apps bundle (previous version incompatible)"