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I am not an iOS/macOS developer, but I resonated strongly with this post because it captures how I feel the general experience of upgrading Apple OSes has been

I am not an iOS/macOS developer, but I resonated strongly with this post because it captures how I feel the general experience of upgrading Apple OSes has been over the past few years: With each update, I find myself asking, what is going to be broken that used to simply "just work"? I'm not talking about controversial new design directions like the iOS photos app redesign, I mean broken behavior. I can't recall everything off the top of my head, but just a few examples that come to mind: - The new macOS has a system info pop-up every time any application is using your screen. It tells you how many times the application has accessed your audio or video over the last month, and tells you that you can manage this in settings. You cannot turn this notification off, and it is repeatedly triggered every few seconds by applications such as Zoom. This popup sometimes (but not always) steals application focus, which means if I am screensharing a code editor, keystrokes will inexplicably stop being sent to it. - In a recent version of iOS, I could no longer tap on the calendar event time-selection wheel while creating an event to manually type the time instead of spinning to select it. As soon as I started typing numbers, the UI would disappear and only a partial time would be entered. In the most recent version of iOS this has been fixed, but for a while the entire workflow of how I create calendar events was broken. - I used to be able to ask Siri to create an alarm for X minutes from now, but an update or two back Siri started creating timers instead. - For a few prior iOS versions, I would reduce volume or brightness in the iOS control center, only to have the sliders pop back up from time to time on their own. The general feeling of using iOS and macOS lately is that I can no longer rely on things continuing to behave the way they used to. Although macOS is a far better operating system experience than Windows, and far more polished than Linux on the desktop, it just feels like the reliable usability of Apple operating systems is slowly ebbing away. Maybe this is a sign that I'm turning into a curmudgeonly old graybeard in my middle age.

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dsego 2y ago
I am not sure if my mind is playing tricks on me or sometimes with some apps the focus doesn't work right. Like desktop Whatsapp looks to be in focus, but when I try typing nothing happens, than I need to click on it or restart it before I can type into the message box, but one time I managed to rename a folder on my desktop (and only realized this much later). One of the downsides of the macos windowing system allowing active apps without any windows shown. I'm scared I will delete something important or do damage if I can't be sure my mental model maps correctly to what's happening on the computer.
- hypeatei 2y ago
  > macos windowing system allowing active apps without any windows shown. This seems like a security issue. What if you're typing a password quickly and hit Enter but it turns out that focus was in Discord or something?
  - jitl 2y ago
    How’s this any different from saying “2 monitors is a security issue, what if you’re typing a password but Discord on monitor 2 was in focus”? Typically when I’m typing my password into an input on any platform, I’m looking at the password input, and if it loses focus, I’m going to notice. On most OSs these days (including macOS), native password inputs are rendered by an elevated privilege secure process, and focus stealing behavior is disabled while the password input is on-screen.
hbbio 2y ago
Same, I have a Mac but every week I check the progress of linux support for the Snapdragon X1E! I am running Sonoma (and iOS 17) with no plan to update. I don't want AI built into the OS. Very happy with ollama and our own code. In fact what I would like the most is to strip the OS to the bare minimum: Remove Photos and whatnot from the OS (hey it's an app, I should be able to install it from the AppStore if I want) and the hundreds of daemons that run to do who knows what. I tell myself I'm a minority here... but everyday I stumble upon all types of users who want the same.
Spooky23 2y ago
I think both operating systems are incredibly complicated compared to years past and their development model is straining in some ways with the relentless pace of development and integration with online services. You see it if you run the betas. Even something as seemingly simple as the keyboard needs integration with a dozen or more other modules. I’m experiencing a lot of bugs with the emoji keyboard in the iOS beta - no surprise… it’s hooked into 2-3 different custom emoji schemes, AI generation, etc.

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dsego 2y ago

I am not sure if my mind is playing tricks on me or sometimes with some apps the focus doesn't work right. Like desktop Whatsapp looks to be in focus, but when I try typing nothing happens, than I need to click on it or restart it before I can type into the message box, but one time I managed to rename a folder on my desktop (and only realized this much later). One of the downsides of the macos windowing system allowing active apps without any windows shown. I'm scared I will delete something important or do damage if I can't be sure my mental model maps correctly to what's happening on the computer.

hypeatei 2y ago
> macos windowing system allowing active apps without any windows shown. This seems like a security issue. What if you're typing a password quickly and hit Enter but it turns out that focus was in Discord or something?
- jitl 2y ago
  How’s this any different from saying “2 monitors is a security issue, what if you’re typing a password but Discord on monitor 2 was in focus”? Typically when I’m typing my password into an input on any platform, I’m looking at the password input, and if it loses focus, I’m going to notice. On most OSs these days (including macOS), native password inputs are rendered by an elevated privilege secure process, and focus stealing behavior is disabled while the password input is on-screen.

hbbio 2y ago

Same, I have a Mac but every week I check the progress of linux support for the Snapdragon X1E! I am running Sonoma (and iOS 17) with no plan to update. I don't want AI built into the OS. Very happy with ollama and our own code. In fact what I would like the most is to strip the OS to the bare minimum: Remove Photos and whatnot from the OS (hey it's an app, I should be able to install it from the AppStore if I want) and the hundreds of daemons that run to do who knows what. I tell myself I'm a minority here... but everyday I stumble upon all types of users who want the same.

Spooky23 2y ago

I think both operating systems are incredibly complicated compared to years past and their development model is straining in some ways with the relentless pace of development and integration with online services. You see it if you run the betas. Even something as seemingly simple as the keyboard needs integration with a dozen or more other modules. I’m experiencing a lot of bugs with the emoji keyboard in the iOS beta - no surprise… it’s hooked into 2-3 different custom emoji schemes, AI generation, etc.