4 ms·

The decline of "It just works" is one side of the problem. The other, more painful side (driven by the iOS-ification of the OS, I suppose) is: "When it doesn't

by fpgeek 12y ago

The decline of "It just works" is one side of the problem. The other, more painful side (driven by the iOS-ification of the OS, I suppose) is: "When it doesn't work, you're helpless".

gress 12y ago
How have users of OSX become more helpless than they were at any point in the past?
- fpgeek 12y ago
  To take a simple example, faster OS updates combined with more aggressive OS version requirements for Apple apps (e.g. iPhoto) mean that getting the latest app bugfixes demands much more upheaval in your computing environment than it used to.
  - gress 12y ago
    Sorry, what has that to do with helplessness? The claim was that the influence of iOS makes OSX less able to help themselves.
    - fpgeek 12y ago
      In the past, when you were having a problem with an Apple app you had a relatively large window during which you could just update that app without touching anything else to see if the upgrade fixed your problem. In trickier cases you might even try installing a specific version that wasn't the latest and so on. Today, far more often, updating the app you're having a problem with requires an OS upgrade, bringing in tons of unrelated changes and triggering updates to other apps and ... If you don't see how the first scenario involves wider options for self-help, plus greater agency and control than the second, I don't know what to say.
      - gress 12y ago
        The only difference in the scenarios is the rate of change. If you are arguing that change itself reduces users agency then I won't argue with you, but I'll say that it is a problem that is broader than Apple.
  - revscat 12y ago
    That does nothing to prove your original assertion.
- bane 12y ago
  I would be pretty happy if each release didn't fundamentally break key pieces of software I use every day. The last update broke Jabber and VPN for me. I'm one of three OS X machines in my group and was the first to upgrade to Yosemite. My canary in the coal mine experience has waived the rest of the team off. Now I can't call into our daily VTCs or work remotely as easily as everybody else. The Windows users with Putty are running circles around the Mac users in these terms. MS-Office windows keep disappearing when I go on-off my second monitor. Mice continue to work poorly (especially over the trackpad), on computer build by the company that popularized them. At least multi-monitor support is generally better at last. I honestly can't believe the software shipped in the state it was the last few releases of the OS. I upgraded to Yosemite purely because of that. Still, it's sometimes buggy and I've had more than one experience where dragging windows over to another monitor cause all kinds of mayhem. Now if only I could get an OS level window Maximize that worked right and maybe good tiling window support, and fix how broken Finder is, I'd be relatively happy. I had a choice, Windows or a Mac, and after I saw the atrocious Dell hardware my company had on offer, I really had no choice but to go Mac. But sometimes....sometimes....
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by fpgeek 12y ago

The decline of "It just works" is one side of the problem. The other, more painful side (driven by the iOS-ification of the OS, I suppose) is: "When it doesn't work, you're helpless".

gress 12y ago

How have users of OSX become more helpless than they were at any point in the past?

fpgeek 12y ago
To take a simple example, faster OS updates combined with more aggressive OS version requirements for Apple apps (e.g. iPhoto) mean that getting the latest app bugfixes demands much more upheaval in your computing environment than it used to.
- gress 12y ago
  Sorry, what has that to do with helplessness? The claim was that the influence of iOS makes OSX less able to help themselves.
  - fpgeek 12y ago
    In the past, when you were having a problem with an Apple app you had a relatively large window during which you could just update that app without touching anything else to see if the upgrade fixed your problem. In trickier cases you might even try installing a specific version that wasn't the latest and so on. Today, far more often, updating the app you're having a problem with requires an OS upgrade, bringing in tons of unrelated changes and triggering updates to other apps and ... If you don't see how the first scenario involves wider options for self-help, plus greater agency and control than the second, I don't know what to say.
    - gress 12y ago
      The only difference in the scenarios is the rate of change. If you are arguing that change itself reduces users agency then I won't argue with you, but I'll say that it is a problem that is broader than Apple.
- revscat 12y ago
  That does nothing to prove your original assertion.
bane 12y ago
I would be pretty happy if each release didn't fundamentally break key pieces of software I use every day. The last update broke Jabber and VPN for me. I'm one of three OS X machines in my group and was the first to upgrade to Yosemite. My canary in the coal mine experience has waived the rest of the team off. Now I can't call into our daily VTCs or work remotely as easily as everybody else. The Windows users with Putty are running circles around the Mac users in these terms. MS-Office windows keep disappearing when I go on-off my second monitor. Mice continue to work poorly (especially over the trackpad), on computer build by the company that popularized them. At least multi-monitor support is generally better at last. I honestly can't believe the software shipped in the state it was the last few releases of the OS. I upgraded to Yosemite purely because of that. Still, it's sometimes buggy and I've had more than one experience where dragging windows over to another monitor cause all kinds of mayhem. Now if only I could get an OS level window Maximize that worked right and maybe good tiling window support, and fix how broken Finder is, I'd be relatively happy. I had a choice, Windows or a Mac, and after I saw the atrocious Dell hardware my company had on offer, I really had no choice but to go Mac. But sometimes....sometimes....
- deleted 12y ago
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