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I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. I also don’t know what he’s looking

I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. I also don’t know what he’s looking for, as someone who worked at Apple during this time quality improved substantially in 10.6 Snow Leopard and continued. Most bug fixes don’t get a marketing line item or even much fanfare. We were all users of what the OSX guys were doing and lived on the dogfood while we made our own mistakes on iOS. As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features. It cannot just be quality, but quality is table stakes and the minimum expectation. When things get out of hand organizationally it makes sense to call for a snow leopard, but it comes at great cost so you better make big changes in the system so the same mistakes are not repeated.

pico303 2mo ago
There’s red flags I look for in articles like this, and a FreeBSD partition on your MacBook Pro is one of them. Tells me the author is probably hypercritical of MacOS because it’s not a GPL OS. That’s fine, but as someone who likes MacOS, I don’t share the pessimism. Snow Leopard was a great experience for me. So much more stable, and the OS felt tighter, like lots of the little wonky things got sorted out. It well deserves its credit and more operating systems should focus on bug fix releases once in a while.
- ndiddy 2mo ago
  FreeBSD is not a GPL OS either.
- mepian 2mo ago
  FreeBSD is definitely not a "GPL OS", the license is right in the name!
  - ido 2mo ago
    To be pedantic “BSD” is the name of the original distribution that FreeBSD is based on, and the license is also named after it (rather than FreeBSD being named after the license).
  - frollogaston 2mo ago
    Guess he meant non-free OS. I still don't get the point though, cause someone who cares so much about FOSS wouldn't be criticizing SL vs Leopard, he'd just not use Mac OS.
- vor_ 2mo ago
  I'd say Snow Leopard was as buggy as any other typical OS X release from that era, as covered by the Jeff Johnson article. The reality is that the "no new features" marketing was most likely a positive spin on the shift in engineering resources toward iOS, which had previously caused Leopard's release to be delayed.
- anthk 2mo ago
  FreeBSD is not GPL and in that era FreeBSD was almot the low-level Mac OS X testground for ex-FreeBSD developers working for Apple.
ndiddy 2mo ago
> I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. Snow Leopard was a refinement of Leopard, and both releases had unusually long durations as the newest release of Mac OS X, totaling 4 years. It then continued getting security updates until late 2013, another 2 years after Lion replaced it. I can see how people would treat the later point releases of Snow Leopard as a high point for stability because of the years of bug fixes that had gone into the system by then. > As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features. It cannot just be quality, but quality is table stakes and the minimum expectation. I don't know anybody who's switched to Mac because of a feature they added in the latest OS release. It's always because of the better price-performance, the better battery life, or because Windows got too glitchy and annoying. The only new Mac OS feature from the past few years that I can even name off the top of my head is when they finally added window snapping with Sequoia.
- trueno 2mo ago
  mayhaps we've just moved the goal post on what constitutes a major release a lil too far. redefine what is major, scale that back and ship in a year cycle and not necessarily need to ship anything that pushes you past the threshold of "we're still beta testing even after release, and now the users are the QA team". just bring that definition of "a major software upgrade" back a bit. everyone should do it, i'd be super happy if "major upgrade" meant a new icon set and some exciting thoroughly vetted new utilities/apps. thrilled even.
- fragmede 2mo ago
  When you have a bunch of windows open but you click on the desktop, the windows go off to the edges so you can see the desktop.
  - alsetmusic 2mo ago
    > When you have a bunch of windows open but you click on the desktop, the windows go off to the edges so you can see the desktop. It's one of the first things I turn off.
  - 2mo ago
lapcat 2mo ago
> I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. I'm not sure this is a good place to debate my article when the author of the submitted article merely linked to mine. It appears that Ruben Schade downgraded to 10.5 from 10.6.2, which was still pretty early in the Snow Leopard cycle, then "tried it again a few months later" and downgraded again, until 10.7 Lion (which I personally hated and skipped on my main Mac). Thus, Schade never experienced the later versions of Snow Leopard that everyone remembers fondly.
- thomassmith65 2mo ago
  I just reread the blogpost (by the parent) that this article cites, and its points all seem correct to me, including that "Mac OS X 10.6.0 was certainly much buggier than Mac OS X 10.5.8": • 10.6 was not primarily about bug fixes • 10.7 was buggy and its design was incoherent • Apple should abandon its yearly release cycle That said, my recollections from the time are that the 10.6 GM release caused fewer problems than the 10.5 GM. It wouldn't surprise me if the consensus about Snow Leopard switches to the opinion that Snow Leopard was no better than any other version. That's wrong, but few people still use or remember using Snow Leopard.
- masswerk 2mo ago
  Yes, the version of Snow Leopard people are referring to (and have fond memories of, me included) was 10.6.8.x. The point is really that it was given time to mature. (Back in the day, users used to explicitly refer to "10.8.6", and not just globally to "Snow Leopard". Similar to how people used to refer to 7.5.5 and 7.6.2 specifically.)
musicale 2mo ago
> When things get out of hand organizationally it makes sense to call for a snow leopard, but it comes at great cost so you better make big changes in the system so the same mistakes are not repeated What about the recent macOS releases that seem to prioritize dubious features (Apple Intelligence) that don't add a lot of value (and don't work well), while botching the core fundamentals of UI design and functionality, as with the UI disaster that was Liquid Glass (not to mention the broken window resize region, inconsistent spacing and corner radii, menu items being hidden under the notch, the off-center Windows menu, scrollbars that are either invisible or hard to target, etc.) Liquid Glass was inexcusable as it opposed the fundamental UI principles of clarity and legibility. Apple basically ignored its own design principles.
- alsetmusic 2mo ago
  > while botching the core fundamentals of UI design and functionality, as with the UI disaster that was Liquid Glass This is why Apple nerds (like me) are hopeful that John Ternus will refocus the company. Steve said that companies that want to make good software should make their own hardware. I only learned that Alan Kay said that first when looking to make sure that I had this quote correct. Alan Dye is gone. The guy who was completely unqualified to lead UI design is no longer in charge. Tim Cook will soon move to a new role. The business guy is stepping aside. An actual engineer with no business degree is gonna be in charge. Maybe things will become sane again. I hope so. Fwiw, Apple nerds who care about UI design would enjoy the recent Talk Show episode (Daring Fireball, John Gruber, the Markdown guy) ep with Louie Mantia. He's a designer who expresses why Dye was unfit for the job in a satisfying way. Just woke, probably typos and mistakes.
alberth 2mo ago
> As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service When companies use to charge for OS … and the releases were staggered by 3-4 years, I would have agreed. But when OS upgrades are free, and happen yearly - there’s a different user expectation.
- panta 2mo ago
  I'd gladly pay for the OS if this guaranteed abstaining from unnecessary changes and/or from removing useful features (eg 2d Spaces in Leopard and Snow Leopard, replaced by the inferior abomination that is Mission Control)
steveBK123 2mo ago
> don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. Call me an old man, but I'm no longer sure that annual major OS upgrades are even desirable. Adding features is great, but half of the changes feel like product manager brain "changes to show we made changed things". I actually don't need buttons moved around in photos/mail/finder annually. I don't need the design language of the windows changed annually. I don't need the icons of all my apps to change annually. An OS is a tool that serves the purpose of granting me access to all my other tools (apps).
- spunker540 2mo ago
  I agree- I also dont think OS features of the kind that get shipped in these updates are convincing anyone to switch from pc to mac or upgrade their mac sooner. Tons of stuff just changing for the sake of change. Meanwhile LLMs increasingly only need the command line to do everything.
- dwaite 2mo ago
  One big source of both delays and bugs is the feeling that your work (which has compatibility impacting changes) _has_ to make it in the current release, because otherwise it will languish for years until the next train leaves. Likewise, if a fix requires a behavioral change that impacts third party developers, that fix may not feasible to deploy until the next release. Apple had some pretty fundamental things like Cocoa outline views broken for multiple years because the fix required API changes.
  - manxiemanx 2mo ago
    Understandable from a developers perspective but this is what management is for. This is a great indicator that Apple's current software management is doing a bad job. Because their job is to say no and come up with the plan that will make the software quality and one time. It's really the only thing they do that matters
rlt 2mo ago
> As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features Is this true of operating systems for most people? Personally I’d take macOS from 15 years ago (with security bug fixes and new hardware support, assuming modern apps still worked, but no new features) over today’s Windows any day.
manxiemanx 2mo ago
No one said major software updates are impossible on a yearly schedule. It's obviously possible since Apple's been doing it. What's not possible is major software updates with a normal amount of new features for a major software update at a reasonable level of quality

pico303 2mo ago

There’s red flags I look for in articles like this, and a FreeBSD partition on your MacBook Pro is one of them. Tells me the author is probably hypercritical of MacOS because it’s not a GPL OS. That’s fine, but as someone who likes MacOS, I don’t share the pessimism. Snow Leopard was a great experience for me. So much more stable, and the OS felt tighter, like lots of the little wonky things got sorted out. It well deserves its credit and more operating systems should focus on bug fix releases once in a while.

ndiddy 2mo ago
FreeBSD is not a GPL OS either.
mepian 2mo ago
FreeBSD is definitely not a "GPL OS", the license is right in the name!
- ido 2mo ago
  To be pedantic “BSD” is the name of the original distribution that FreeBSD is based on, and the license is also named after it (rather than FreeBSD being named after the license).
- frollogaston 2mo ago
  Guess he meant non-free OS. I still don't get the point though, cause someone who cares so much about FOSS wouldn't be criticizing SL vs Leopard, he'd just not use Mac OS.
vor_ 2mo ago
I'd say Snow Leopard was as buggy as any other typical OS X release from that era, as covered by the Jeff Johnson article. The reality is that the "no new features" marketing was most likely a positive spin on the shift in engineering resources toward iOS, which had previously caused Leopard's release to be delayed.
anthk 2mo ago
FreeBSD is not GPL and in that era FreeBSD was almot the low-level Mac OS X testground for ex-FreeBSD developers working for Apple.

ndiddy 2mo ago

> I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. Snow Leopard was a refinement of Leopard, and both releases had unusually long durations as the newest release of Mac OS X, totaling 4 years. It then continued getting security updates until late 2013, another 2 years after Lion replaced it. I can see how people would treat the later point releases of Snow Leopard as a high point for stability because of the years of bug fixes that had gone into the system by then. > As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features. It cannot just be quality, but quality is table stakes and the minimum expectation. I don't know anybody who's switched to Mac because of a feature they added in the latest OS release. It's always because of the better price-performance, the better battery life, or because Windows got too glitchy and annoying. The only new Mac OS feature from the past few years that I can even name off the top of my head is when they finally added window snapping with Sequoia.

trueno 2mo ago
mayhaps we've just moved the goal post on what constitutes a major release a lil too far. redefine what is major, scale that back and ship in a year cycle and not necessarily need to ship anything that pushes you past the threshold of "we're still beta testing even after release, and now the users are the QA team". just bring that definition of "a major software upgrade" back a bit. everyone should do it, i'd be super happy if "major upgrade" meant a new icon set and some exciting thoroughly vetted new utilities/apps. thrilled even.
fragmede 2mo ago
When you have a bunch of windows open but you click on the desktop, the windows go off to the edges so you can see the desktop.
- alsetmusic 2mo ago
  > When you have a bunch of windows open but you click on the desktop, the windows go off to the edges so you can see the desktop. It's one of the first things I turn off.
- 2mo ago

lapcat 2mo ago

> I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. I'm not sure this is a good place to debate my article when the author of the submitted article merely linked to mine. It appears that Ruben Schade downgraded to 10.5 from 10.6.2, which was still pretty early in the Snow Leopard cycle, then "tried it again a few months later" and downgraded again, until 10.7 Lion (which I personally hated and skipped on my main Mac). Thus, Schade never experienced the later versions of Snow Leopard that everyone remembers fondly.

thomassmith65 2mo ago
I just reread the blogpost (by the parent) that this article cites, and its points all seem correct to me, including that "Mac OS X 10.6.0 was certainly much buggier than Mac OS X 10.5.8": • 10.6 was not primarily about bug fixes • 10.7 was buggy and its design was incoherent • Apple should abandon its yearly release cycle That said, my recollections from the time are that the 10.6 GM release caused fewer problems than the 10.5 GM. It wouldn't surprise me if the consensus about Snow Leopard switches to the opinion that Snow Leopard was no better than any other version. That's wrong, but few people still use or remember using Snow Leopard.
masswerk 2mo ago
Yes, the version of Snow Leopard people are referring to (and have fond memories of, me included) was 10.6.8.x. The point is really that it was given time to mature. (Back in the day, users used to explicitly refer to "10.8.6", and not just globally to "Snow Leopard". Similar to how people used to refer to 7.5.5 and 7.6.2 specifically.)

musicale 2mo ago

> When things get out of hand organizationally it makes sense to call for a snow leopard, but it comes at great cost so you better make big changes in the system so the same mistakes are not repeated What about the recent macOS releases that seem to prioritize dubious features (Apple Intelligence) that don't add a lot of value (and don't work well), while botching the core fundamentals of UI design and functionality, as with the UI disaster that was Liquid Glass (not to mention the broken window resize region, inconsistent spacing and corner radii, menu items being hidden under the notch, the off-center Windows menu, scrollbars that are either invisible or hard to target, etc.) Liquid Glass was inexcusable as it opposed the fundamental UI principles of clarity and legibility. Apple basically ignored its own design principles.

alsetmusic 2mo ago
> while botching the core fundamentals of UI design and functionality, as with the UI disaster that was Liquid Glass This is why Apple nerds (like me) are hopeful that John Ternus will refocus the company. Steve said that companies that want to make good software should make their own hardware. I only learned that Alan Kay said that first when looking to make sure that I had this quote correct. Alan Dye is gone. The guy who was completely unqualified to lead UI design is no longer in charge. Tim Cook will soon move to a new role. The business guy is stepping aside. An actual engineer with no business degree is gonna be in charge. Maybe things will become sane again. I hope so. Fwiw, Apple nerds who care about UI design would enjoy the recent Talk Show episode (Daring Fireball, John Gruber, the Markdown guy) ep with Louie Mantia. He's a designer who expresses why Dye was unfit for the job in a satisfying way. Just woke, probably typos and mistakes.

alberth 2mo ago

> As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service When companies use to charge for OS … and the releases were staggered by 3-4 years, I would have agreed. But when OS upgrades are free, and happen yearly - there’s a different user expectation.

panta 2mo ago
I'd gladly pay for the OS if this guaranteed abstaining from unnecessary changes and/or from removing useful features (eg 2d Spaces in Leopard and Snow Leopard, replaced by the inferior abomination that is Mission Control)

steveBK123 2mo ago

> don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. Call me an old man, but I'm no longer sure that annual major OS upgrades are even desirable. Adding features is great, but half of the changes feel like product manager brain "changes to show we made changed things". I actually don't need buttons moved around in photos/mail/finder annually. I don't need the design language of the windows changed annually. I don't need the icons of all my apps to change annually. An OS is a tool that serves the purpose of granting me access to all my other tools (apps).

spunker540 2mo ago
I agree- I also dont think OS features of the kind that get shipped in these updates are convincing anyone to switch from pc to mac or upgrade their mac sooner. Tons of stuff just changing for the sake of change. Meanwhile LLMs increasingly only need the command line to do everything.
dwaite 2mo ago
One big source of both delays and bugs is the feeling that your work (which has compatibility impacting changes) _has_ to make it in the current release, because otherwise it will languish for years until the next train leaves. Likewise, if a fix requires a behavioral change that impacts third party developers, that fix may not feasible to deploy until the next release. Apple had some pretty fundamental things like Cocoa outline views broken for multiple years because the fix required API changes.
- manxiemanx 2mo ago
  Understandable from a developers perspective but this is what management is for. This is a great indicator that Apple's current software management is doing a bad job. Because their job is to say no and come up with the plan that will make the software quality and one time. It's really the only thing they do that matters

rlt 2mo ago

> As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features Is this true of operating systems for most people? Personally I’d take macOS from 15 years ago (with security bug fixes and new hardware support, assuming modern apps still worked, but no new features) over today’s Windows any day.

manxiemanx 2mo ago

No one said major software updates are impossible on a yearly schedule. It's obviously possible since Apple's been doing it. What's not possible is major software updates with a normal amount of new features for a major software update at a reasonable level of quality