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Hard disagree. macOS has been very conservative in redesigning the user experience; it's aging slowly like fine wine. There are a few hiccups occasionally but

Hard disagree. macOS has been very conservative in redesigning the user experience; it's aging slowly like fine wine. There are a few hiccups occasionally but I feel it's a lot more polished and elegant compared to the quirkiness of earlier versions. I don't get this common sentiment that it was better in Snow Leopard etc. Stability is great, power consumption is awesome since the introduction of the M-series chips and I can still do everything (and more) that I did on my mac 20 years ago. Yes there are some more hoops here and there but overall you have to keep in mind that macOS never fell into the quagmire Windows did with bloatware, malware and all the viruses (although I think the situation is much better today). macOS has been walking a fine balance between lockdown and freedom, there is no reason to be alarmist about it and there are still projects like OpenCore Legacy Patcher that prove you can still hack macOS plenty to make it work on older macs. We're eating good as mac users in 2025, I don't buy the slippery slope fallacy.

jwr 2y ago
There definitely is neglect and a slippery slope. The new settings are half-baked and terrible. The OS pesters me constantly to update to the latest revision and I can't turn those messages off, not even close the notification without displaying the settings app. And I don't want the latest revision, because it is buggy, breaks a number of apps, and introduces the "AI" features that I do not want or need. More and more often good apps get broken by the new OS policies (SuperDuper is a recent example). The old style of system apps that did wonderful things is gone (think Quicktime player, or Preview), these apps are mostly neglected. The new style is half-baked multi-platform apps like settings, that do little, and what they do, they do poorly.
- leidenfrost 2y ago
  Unlike your parent comment I do think that Mac favored lockdown all the way. But it does a wonderful job at doing so. Macs feel less like a personal computer and more like an appliance. Which works great if you do things that don't require tinkering, like office tasks or even webdev. And I do love Linux, specially the more hobbyist OS's like Gentoo or Nix. But at some point in my life I decided to spend more of my time (aside work) with other parts of my life. And in result, having to spend a weeken to solve some weird usecase, be it the package manager or the WM, is a pain.
  - graemep 2y ago
    The compromise would be to use non-hobbyist Linux. I have never spent a weekend fixing a problem. The worst I can remember was when an update early version of Ubuntu broke X Windows and the update had run on multiple machines in a small office so needed to be fixed multiple time, and there was a delay while they fixed the problem IIRC. Still, it was a few hours. Even now, using Manjaro which is relatively likely to have problems, I have had no major issues so far. I have not used Macs so cannot compare, but IMO Linux compares very favourably with Windows. Mac users I know rave about it, but every time they come up with a specific example of why they are better it turns out to be something like functionality other OSes have. Sometimes Macs have the advantage of being preconfigured (e.g. copy and paste between devices required installing software on both and pairing - but a 10 min one off when you buy a new device is acceptable to me).
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      I know Linux since Slackware 2.0, have used most well known commercial UNIX systems, and rather use GNU/Linux on VMs, instead of laptops, as I had enough of this. Last attempt to try otherwise was a UEFI bios, without fallback to legacy BIOS, that just couldn't get along with whatever top distro from Distrowatch I would try to. Apple, Google, Microsoft walled gardens are more confortable to stay on, and as long as I can have some kind of ISO C and ISO C++ support for everything else that depends upon them, I am good.
      - graemep 2y ago
        Never had such problems. That said, my current laptop came with Linux preinstalled so I knew I would not have hardware issues. I would also rather have one off issues to install than unpredictable issues later on. Subjective preference, of course. I have had lots of issues with Android. Never at the start, but with app upgrades.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        My ASUS 1215B EEE PC, the netbook generation, came with Linux as typical of them, had wlan problems, and after the AMD driver was replaced by the open source one, it never achieved the same OpenGL capabilities as it had originally, and hardware video decoding never worked after Flash was gone.
smallstepforman 2y ago
I’ve moved away from MacOS for a number of reasons, specificslly the strenghts you highlight I consider weaknesses: - the oh-so-pretty GUI takes up too much white space, I have little left for actual content. I dont need massive icons with wide spacing since, I need the opposite. - what is the deal with hiding folders from Finder (like ~/Libraries). Do I honestly need the command line to open this directory? - every iteration after SnowLeopard I feel their “features” are going backwards and taking away “usability” from me. - OpenGL stuck on 4.1, Vulkan (Molten) is a 3rd party hack. Seriously? - its become a case of one step forward, 2 steps backwards. - I can go on and on, but you get the gist.
wruza 2y ago
As a user of mac for 7 years (went back to windows since around 2018), I’m watching my mac buddy from time to time and it’s not what you are describing. It definitely gets stupid-level worse every year and yes, Snow Leopard was peak mac indeed. never fell into the quagmire Windows did with bloatware, malware and all the viruses (although I think the situation is much better today). Windows has 10:1 program ratio compared to Mac. You can usually choose from full-bloat gamified experience to a simple tool doing its job. Windows itself is crap by default though, but that’s at least fixable if you know what you want and where to look at.
dmwilcox 2y ago
I used OSX from 10.0.0.4 to 10.4 and it was OK then. I recently had to use a Mac for work something-something-tree-whatever and it's slow even on an M1, it's double the weight of an X1 carbon, and the window manager hasn't evolved meaningfully and is junky. I haven't had so many troubles with arranging windows on two screens in almost 20 years. Maybe people have been slowly boiled? I got my partner on a Mac 10 years ago but would not get her another Mac. Apple's push to make evetything e-waste, foxconn, and the general surveillance in the name of security ensure that. My observation is less that it has aged "like a fine wine" and more that Macs become prisons shaped like a computer. (Edit: s/has/hasn't/)
- seec 2y ago
  I agree so much with the slow part. I think the focus on pure performance with Apple Silicon is to hide the fact that they have become very slow to use generally.
trinix912 2y ago
> macOS has been very conservative in redesigning the user experience; it's aging slowly like fine wine. There are a few hiccups occasionally but I feel it's a lot more polished and elegant compared to the quirkiness of earlier versions. I don't get this common sentiment that it was better in Snow Leopard etc. I completely get this sentiment. MacOS since Big Sur has had a quite indeterministic UI, from scrollbars that only appear halfway of the time, to the new app toolbars that truncate filenames and hide the search bar in the overflow menu. The Settings app is still worse than what it replaced, the Mail app keeps randomly appearing, the random confirmation pop-ups are more common than in Windows Vista. Snow Leopard was (and still is) a bliss, it didn't nag you with "this app is dangerous" bullshit, built-in apps that look and work like an intern's multiplatform UI practice, constant updates... It was an OS primarily designed to let people get work done, not to encourage them to spend all their time on Apple TV/Music/...
seec 2y ago
I don't know what kinds of drugs you are on but it must be very nice. macOS has objectively getting worse in so many ways it would take a full day to compile a half serious list. Every redesign has been a pretext for stupid "simplification" making looks airy but much less usuable. This is true both for the system and other Apple apps (iWork redesign is still a lesson on how to ruin things). They also added a lot of restrictions and all kinds of nonsense in the name of "security" and "privacy". The updates are slow to the point of making Windows look good, they also always force some sort of programmed obsolescence that you only find out later down the line. They are unable to keep the development of their OS separate from their Apps (it's actually just a way to force hardware upgrade) and abandoned most local technology to favor their cloud offerings in order to increase their service revenue.

jwr 2y ago

There definitely is neglect and a slippery slope. The new settings are half-baked and terrible. The OS pesters me constantly to update to the latest revision and I can't turn those messages off, not even close the notification without displaying the settings app. And I don't want the latest revision, because it is buggy, breaks a number of apps, and introduces the "AI" features that I do not want or need. More and more often good apps get broken by the new OS policies (SuperDuper is a recent example). The old style of system apps that did wonderful things is gone (think Quicktime player, or Preview), these apps are mostly neglected. The new style is half-baked multi-platform apps like settings, that do little, and what they do, they do poorly.

leidenfrost 2y ago
Unlike your parent comment I do think that Mac favored lockdown all the way. But it does a wonderful job at doing so. Macs feel less like a personal computer and more like an appliance. Which works great if you do things that don't require tinkering, like office tasks or even webdev. And I do love Linux, specially the more hobbyist OS's like Gentoo or Nix. But at some point in my life I decided to spend more of my time (aside work) with other parts of my life. And in result, having to spend a weeken to solve some weird usecase, be it the package manager or the WM, is a pain.
- graemep 2y ago
  The compromise would be to use non-hobbyist Linux. I have never spent a weekend fixing a problem. The worst I can remember was when an update early version of Ubuntu broke X Windows and the update had run on multiple machines in a small office so needed to be fixed multiple time, and there was a delay while they fixed the problem IIRC. Still, it was a few hours. Even now, using Manjaro which is relatively likely to have problems, I have had no major issues so far. I have not used Macs so cannot compare, but IMO Linux compares very favourably with Windows. Mac users I know rave about it, but every time they come up with a specific example of why they are better it turns out to be something like functionality other OSes have. Sometimes Macs have the advantage of being preconfigured (e.g. copy and paste between devices required installing software on both and pairing - but a 10 min one off when you buy a new device is acceptable to me).
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    I know Linux since Slackware 2.0, have used most well known commercial UNIX systems, and rather use GNU/Linux on VMs, instead of laptops, as I had enough of this. Last attempt to try otherwise was a UEFI bios, without fallback to legacy BIOS, that just couldn't get along with whatever top distro from Distrowatch I would try to. Apple, Google, Microsoft walled gardens are more confortable to stay on, and as long as I can have some kind of ISO C and ISO C++ support for everything else that depends upon them, I am good.
    - graemep 2y ago
      Never had such problems. That said, my current laptop came with Linux preinstalled so I knew I would not have hardware issues. I would also rather have one off issues to install than unpredictable issues later on. Subjective preference, of course. I have had lots of issues with Android. Never at the start, but with app upgrades.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        My ASUS 1215B EEE PC, the netbook generation, came with Linux as typical of them, had wlan problems, and after the AMD driver was replaced by the open source one, it never achieved the same OpenGL capabilities as it had originally, and hardware video decoding never worked after Flash was gone.

smallstepforman 2y ago

I’ve moved away from MacOS for a number of reasons, specificslly the strenghts you highlight I consider weaknesses: - the oh-so-pretty GUI takes up too much white space, I have little left for actual content. I dont need massive icons with wide spacing since, I need the opposite. - what is the deal with hiding folders from Finder (like ~/Libraries). Do I honestly need the command line to open this directory? - every iteration after SnowLeopard I feel their “features” are going backwards and taking away “usability” from me. - OpenGL stuck on 4.1, Vulkan (Molten) is a 3rd party hack. Seriously? - its become a case of one step forward, 2 steps backwards. - I can go on and on, but you get the gist.

wruza 2y ago

As a user of mac for 7 years (went back to windows since around 2018), I’m watching my mac buddy from time to time and it’s not what you are describing. It definitely gets stupid-level worse every year and yes, Snow Leopard was peak mac indeed. never fell into the quagmire Windows did with bloatware, malware and all the viruses (although I think the situation is much better today). Windows has 10:1 program ratio compared to Mac. You can usually choose from full-bloat gamified experience to a simple tool doing its job. Windows itself is crap by default though, but that’s at least fixable if you know what you want and where to look at.

dmwilcox 2y ago

I used OSX from 10.0.0.4 to 10.4 and it was OK then. I recently had to use a Mac for work something-something-tree-whatever and it's slow even on an M1, it's double the weight of an X1 carbon, and the window manager hasn't evolved meaningfully and is junky. I haven't had so many troubles with arranging windows on two screens in almost 20 years. Maybe people have been slowly boiled? I got my partner on a Mac 10 years ago but would not get her another Mac. Apple's push to make evetything e-waste, foxconn, and the general surveillance in the name of security ensure that. My observation is less that it has aged "like a fine wine" and more that Macs become prisons shaped like a computer. (Edit: s/has/hasn't/)

seec 2y ago
I agree so much with the slow part. I think the focus on pure performance with Apple Silicon is to hide the fact that they have become very slow to use generally.

trinix912 2y ago

> macOS has been very conservative in redesigning the user experience; it's aging slowly like fine wine. There are a few hiccups occasionally but I feel it's a lot more polished and elegant compared to the quirkiness of earlier versions. I don't get this common sentiment that it was better in Snow Leopard etc. I completely get this sentiment. MacOS since Big Sur has had a quite indeterministic UI, from scrollbars that only appear halfway of the time, to the new app toolbars that truncate filenames and hide the search bar in the overflow menu. The Settings app is still worse than what it replaced, the Mail app keeps randomly appearing, the random confirmation pop-ups are more common than in Windows Vista. Snow Leopard was (and still is) a bliss, it didn't nag you with "this app is dangerous" bullshit, built-in apps that look and work like an intern's multiplatform UI practice, constant updates... It was an OS primarily designed to let people get work done, not to encourage them to spend all their time on Apple TV/Music/...

seec 2y ago

I don't know what kinds of drugs you are on but it must be very nice. macOS has objectively getting worse in so many ways it would take a full day to compile a half serious list. Every redesign has been a pretext for stupid "simplification" making looks airy but much less usuable. This is true both for the system and other Apple apps (iWork redesign is still a lesson on how to ruin things). They also added a lot of restrictions and all kinds of nonsense in the name of "security" and "privacy". The updates are slow to the point of making Windows look good, they also always force some sort of programmed obsolescence that you only find out later down the line. They are unable to keep the development of their OS separate from their Apps (it's actually just a way to force hardware upgrade) and abandoned most local technology to favor their cloud offerings in order to increase their service revenue.