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This is a beautiful machine. Once again, Apple excels at hardware. But what the living hell is going wrong with Apple's desktop software? OS X and Apple's appl

by nkoren 12y ago

This is a beautiful machine. Once again, Apple excels at hardware. But what the living hell is going wrong with Apple's desktop software? OS X and Apple's applications suite have been getting steadily worse with every release. Look at the App store: the latest releases of OS X, iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, and Numbers are (in stark contrast to earlier versins) all rated at 2.5/5 stars, with the plurality being 1-star reviews. People are LIVID -- and not just for trivial NOOB reasons, either: the quality of the work is frankly shoddy. Who's steering that part of the ship???

JustSomeNobody 12y ago
Why is this getting down voted? There IS a point in there.
- _abattoir 12y ago
  Because Apple is systematically downvoting negative comments. Most tech companies do some form of damage control on HN because they know a prominent portion of their userbase comes here frequently.
  - drinchev 12y ago
    Do you have some proof of what you are saying or that's just an opinion?
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  It's the top comment.
- deleted 12y ago
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- deleted 12y ago
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  - omonra 12y ago
    I'm not sure you're supposed to downvote comments you disagree with, do you? I thought it was to enforce a civil debate.
    - deleted 12y ago
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- le_lenny_face 12y ago
  >Why is this getting down voted? This isn't Reddit. Stop caring about Muh Internet Pointz.
derefr 12y ago
That's an interesting effect. If it were just the apps that were previously for "pro-am" work (iMovie et al), I'd get it, but—what happened with Pages and Numbers? I used them years ago, I use them now, and they honestly don't seem like they've changed much.
- hbbio 12y ago
  A few things have changed (I use them daily for 6 years): 1) I has more bugs (for instance, drag and dropping an image from a browser makes it crash). 2) The format has changed, it's now incompatible with computers running last year OS, Mavericks. 3) It automatically uploads new document or documents you open in the cloud. 4) I have lost my iCloud contents twice (each time when syncing from an iPad under poor network conditions, but that case should be handled).
  - graeme 12y ago
    They also removed a bunch of Pages features used by Powerusers. It used to be a reasonable substitute for Word. I'm still on Pages 09 because I had a bunch of manuscripts made in that program. They don't format well in Pages 13. I'm going to keep using Pages 09 until Apple forces its obsolesence. Probably will look at Word instead since they seem committed to stability and the ability to actually do real work on a computer.
    - u02sgb 12y ago
      Not sure what your feature set requirements are, but LibreOffice is a pretty good replacement for Word.
rm445 12y ago
That's a very good point - Apple's desktop software is definitely not a highlight in the last few years. What's not clear is: (i) how much it matters - the core desktop experience is very solid, and between web browsers and MS Office it's not clear how much the iLife(?) apps actually get run. And (ii) whether it's a symptom of some deeper malaise - Apple still seems to be killing it in other areas so perhaps it's just a weak or resource-starved group within the company.
- bsbechtel 12y ago
  Maybe overlooked rather than resource-starved. Apple's sitting on $100B in cash. Resources shouldn't be an issue in any department.
  - hengheng 12y ago
    Even $100B is not a reason to dump money mindlessly. I generally don't trust moves that seem purely driven by money (e.g. facebook's VR hiring spree), and which don't have a clear goal in mind, and a strategy along the way. Given Apple's high aspirations, they probably don't know what to do with the desktop. Ive's expectations seem way beyond what native apps can fulfill ... perhaps the Windows way was the right approach after all, and the complexity of "other" operating systems was just right for the high complexity of daily tasks after all ... and maybe the Apple way of thinking is more apt for mobile use where the computer interface doesn't have the user's full attention. Personally, in my last years of using OS X, all I had open was the PDF reader app, a browser and a terminal. I don't know if that was my personal interpretation of the Cloud age, but suddenly I was completely OS agnostic. Incidentally, this led me away from buying Macs, as the operating system didn't do anything for me anymore. I don't know about the desktop experience. Either it seems to be "power user web crawling", for which the cloud is the best fit, or it's about spending the whole day in a random Pro App with its very own user experience. I'm looking forward for their cars and watches, but I don't care much about their desktop computers. It seems they don't, either.
    - deeviant 12y ago
      I think it's pretty one dimensional to call Facebook's VR acquisitions purely motivated by having a pile of cash laying around. There are plenty of smart people who see VR finally coming around to be the disruptive technology that it was thought to be 25 years ago.
RexRollman 12y ago
I'm not saying you're wrong but I personally haven't any issues with OS X Yosemite.
- benologist 12y ago
  Yesterday was the first time this year I was able to open pages from youtube on the first try instead of over a 20 - 40 minute process of refreshing, resetting wifi, resetting router etc trying to get complete page loads with playing video. I had entire days where Skype text messages was the only internet access I had. Apple's forums have ten thousands of posts on people's wifi being ruined like this for this entire year and counting.
  - RexRollman 12y ago
    Without a doubt, some people have issues, but I don't think you can gage the overall reliability of a product based solely on a support forum. No one is going there just to post that their system is running properly.
    - benologist 12y ago
      If it is some percent unreliable the other percent doesn't change that. It's not just OS X, it's also iOS, Maps, iCloud etc, some of this stuff was famously bad. There's been a lot of discussion about this recently with many notable Apple enthusiasts chiming in - https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+software+quality https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+software+quality.
pbreit 12y ago
You would think Apple would have little problem assembling some high quality teams (and cash) to make these products much, much better.
mslot 12y ago
I just had one of my first exposures to OS X, helping a friend get rid of particularly nasty adware called Downlite. It was nastier than anything I've ever seen since Windows 98, and obviously I've never seen anything like it on Linux. Stunning, really. I'm still considering getting my first Macbook though after this announcement, so I do hope they'll build a better security model.
- stefs 12y ago
  at least that one's not the fault of osx or apple though.
- girvo 12y ago
  For it to be nasty and hard to get rid of, your friend must have given it admin access when he installed it? No security model that I'm aware of can stop that; OS X out of the box stops you from being able to run unsigned code, which would've stopped that entirely.
  - gcr 12y ago
    Windows also prevents untrusted code from running as an admin user by default. As you say, the user clicked "Allow"; there's nothing that could prevent that except changing the mindset of the general end user.
    - jeromegv 12y ago
      Actually that user probably did more than "Allow". Apps non signed by Apple are prevented to launch entirely on the default config. You have to go disable that protection in system preferences or right shift to launch the app, to go around this. So you really need an extra step and also need to know what you're doing
- kalleboo 12y ago
  The only security model that can stop that kind of malware is to only allow software from the App Store (i.e., the iOS model).
zuck9 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth's_law
billions 12y ago
Hardware brings the $, hardware gets budget increased. Typical corporate strategy. The only way someone in power could adjust the focus is if, say, the company failed while they were on leave or something.
craigyk 12y ago
6 of 1, half a dozen of the other? I agree there are things about the new software that are not as good as the old. OTH, it's really hard to maintain feature-parity on launching a new rewrite. I think a lot of this stuff will eventually get there. For the most part I'm liking the new Photos app. Also, OS X has only been getting better IMO. They just need to do a release cycle where they work on polish, which I believe they intend to do.
craigyk 12y ago
6 of 1, half a dozen of the other? I agree there are things about the new software that are not as good as the old. OTH, it's really hard to maintain feature-parity on launching a new rewrite. I think a lot of this stuff will eventually get there. For the most part I'm liking the new Photos app. Also, OS X has only been getting better IMO. They just need to do a release cycle where they work on polish, which I believe they intend to do.
SiVal 12y ago
Because you can't really tell how well software is working when looking at the device edge-on, and that's apparently the way Apple looks at them most of the time. I mean this more metaphorically than literally, but I'm so tired of complaints about the ridiculously primitive Finder being met with, "the edge of the iMac now appears even thinner, now that we've repositioned formerly convenient connectors and such into a bulge behind the screen. Surely you agree that the appearance of a thin edge is more important than usability of Finder or connectors." Or a yearning for more battery life, or even just a swappable battery? "The bottom of our laptop looks better than the top of theirs!" Or, why is the text on my iPhone suddenly so low contrast and hard to read? "Surely you agree that having a fresh look matters more than readability! Look, the icons are flat. Don't you realize how critically important that is?" Or, the apps get worse, not better, over time, and you always have to ask yourself whether each free OS upgrade is worth the risk of unreliable WiFi. Can't you work on this, Apple? "Thinner!" Apple used to emphasize software quality and usability. Now, it's all about the style, about how the edges look in fashion magazines. And yet the rest of the industry is so fragmented that they don't do any better in terms of usability. The frustration is that unlike them, Apple could do so much better, but ever since the candy-colored iMacs, they've decided that Fernando (Billy Crystal's old SNL character) was right. When it comes to look and feel, "It's better to look good than to feel good!"
- state 12y ago
  I think this is good thinking. It might also boil down to something as simple as "Jony Ive". He strikes me as truly a designer of physical things by nature.
- darcyparker 12y ago
  I agree - I'd love to see them re-think Finder. I just don't grok Finder... I do most of my work in the terminal and occasionally midnight commander or nerdtree inside vim. I tried free ones like muCommander but don't like the overhead of starting a java app... Similarly I don't want the overhead of running an X server so I can use an X based file manager. And I don't want to buy some 3rd party File Manager. We should get a great File Manager OOTB with OS X. I don't see why Apple can't implement a modern File Manager... At least give us something comparable to Windows Explorer... or take the time to make a video to convince us Finder is actually good for those who may not grok it. And a swappable battery would be wonderful but I can live without it.
vidoc 12y ago
This is a very good point. I'll also add to this what might still be the biggest burden of Macos: its file-system. It's amazing that they can get away still providing this horror in 2015!
- frik 12y ago
  Apple planned to replace its very old HFS(+) filesystem with ZFS, there were even dev beta releases and demonstration to the media. But OSX 10.5(?) didn't ship with ZFS. So OSX is stuck with an decades old filesystem almost as basic and bad as FAT32, where Windows has NTFS (and ReFS, ExFAT), Linux has Btrfs/XFS/extfs4 and *BSD/Solaris has ZFS.
  - jsz0 12y ago
    OSX has ZFS via OpenZFS.
    - frik 12y ago
      But it's a big difference, if it's an optional driver or the default one. Currently, on OSX and iOS most users are simply using the default installation and are stuck with HDF+. One can install optional filesystems on every OS. Like NTFS on Linux and OSX. ZFS on Linux, Ext4 on Windows.
mmcconnell1618 12y ago
My guess is that somewhere deep in the basement they have an OS that unites iOS and OS X into a single system that will run on future devices. That OS will run both OS X apps in legacy mode and iOS apps. Apple is funding teams for the iOS versions of the apps because that is where they see the future.
- grey-area 12y ago
  Well they have an OS already which unites them, the API layer above is the heterogeneous bit, which they might unify with something like UXKit. Long term it would make sense, and as you say it would explain the move towards mobile paradigms on desktop and the relative neglect of the desktop software. Of course the other explanation is that there is just so much more money to be made in consumer electronics than in computers - that won't change. I expect Apple under Cook to be far more predictable in this way and take the steps to maximise revenue that Jobs might have shunned in favour of something revolutionary and unproven.
- kolbe 12y ago
  At the end of the presentation, I was half expecting Tim Cook to pop the screen off the MacBook and say, "And by the way, we united iOS and OSX, so the MacBook can aslo be a fully-functional iPad."
eblanshey 12y ago
Anyone know how viable it is to wipe it and use Ubuntu with it?
- ChristianGeek 12y ago
  You don't need to wipe it...just set up a dual boot: http://www.howtogeek.com/187410/how-to-install-and-dual-boot-linux-on-a-mac/ http://www.howtogeek.com/187410/how-to-install-and-dual-boot...
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Why waste half a drive?
    - valm- 12y ago
      Wiping it will make it hard to update firmware. I learned this the hard way.
- wowzer 12y ago
  Anyone know if Ubuntu will do the retina justice?
  - lewq 12y ago
    Yup, it works now.
    - eblanshey 12y ago
      With 14.04 LTS? How good is your experience with the setup?
      - babuskov 12y ago
        I have been using Ubuntu 14.04 since it came out. Anyone who calls Yosemite buggy should try running Ubuntu as their primary system and see what buggy really looks like. YMMV, of course.
beyondcompute 12y ago
Agree about bugginess of Software. It seems that Apple shifted focus from overall flawlessness and coherence of UX to craftsmanship and advanced technological processes in hardware. And since we started to see all those weird "Connect phone to iTunes to receive push notifications" popups, etc. If we will have products, whose surface was polished by zirconium particles but that are always buggy and unreliable, it will be not the Apple we all loved. Not "advanced features" but "lack of annoyances and irritation" is what made Apple what it is now, in my opinion.
ForHackernews 12y ago
Just install Linux on your macbook?
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  I dual boot my old MacBook Air between OS X and Ubuntu - really nice because some software development tasks are just easier on Linux. (Off topic, but a good tip: buy a 64gig memory card and always keep it in the memory slot with a file system friendly to both Linux and OS X - there are cards designed to fit in flush on MacBook Airs. This lets my old 128gig MBA comfortably support dual boot, and the shared file system on the card is handy.)
  - babuskov 12y ago
    I'm curious which tasks you find easier? I was a hardcode Linux user before I got Mac, so I had to try it. Four months later, and I never boot into Ubuntu anymore because everything works equal or better on OSX. Am I missing something?
    - mark_l_watson 12y ago
      Good question. There is quite a lot of software (dev tools) that are trivially installed with aptget, but not so easy (if possible) with homebrew. I am mostly retired now, but I am working on a commercial product, and still write the occasional book, and advise consulting customers - that is my excuse for experimenting with LOTS of open source projects. If it is easier to check something out on Linux, then I take the minute to reboot. That said, when developing I mostly "live" in IntelliJ (mostly for Clojure and ClojureScript, a little for Java and Javascript) and running IntelliJ on OS X (or even Windows 8.1) is nicer than on Ubuntu(because of trackpad issues).
      - gcr 12y ago
        Hm. Which tools aren't easy to install with homebrew? I find it has pretty broad coverage of most of the command line tools I need, and it's reasonably easy to compile other packages from source if you need them. Of course your needs are different from mine. Just curious.
Throwaway90283 12y ago
Random story from last week, and my experience with Apple software. I don't use Apple products too often, but I was downloading some apps for a family members ipod touch 4g (latest model being 5g). The 4g only supports up to iOS 6, and nearly every app I tried downloading on the device gave an error saying it required iOS 7 and it couldn't be installed. I thought that was strange, I used most of these apps before on older devices, why does everything no longer work on a device that's relatively new? According to those error messages the device is basically useful, it can't install apps any more, which is the heart of the ipod touch. I searched around online and there's an official solution. I had to install itunes on a computer and login to the same account as the Apple account on the device. Then I had to download the incorrect iOS 7 version of the free app I wanted. That would assign it as a purchase to the Apple account. Then I could delete that download. Then, I had to open up the Apple store on the device like I was doing previously, find the free app on there again, and click download. After doing all that, it wouldn't give an error saying the device wasn't supported, but now ask if I wanted to install the last compatible version. My mind was blown. How could such popular software provide such an awful user experience? The ipod touch said the app isn't supported for the device, but then I 'buy' the free app on itunes, and magically it is supported and I can download a compatible release.
- kenrikm 12y ago
  Because they are trying to nudge you into upgrading. Lets face it, the fact that Apple ruthlessly kills hardware after 3-4 years is both a benefit to Apple (sells more hardware) and developers (don't have to support old versions of the OS). Though, as a consumer sometimes it makes it difficult to know if you're buying a dud (iPod Touch 4th gen) vs something that'll have a long happy life (iPad 2nd Gen)
  - tokenrove 12y ago
    It's awful for consumers, though. And for developers, it's not great, either, because you end up having to support a customer on an old version of OS X, for example, which means keeping a suitably old environment around just so you can keep your builds compatible, or jump through all kinds of hoops. I don't feel like this is a good thing to encourage in an industry that already has more than enough churn as it is.
rayiner 12y ago
Yosemite is moderately buggy, and iOS 8 is buggy as shit. Meanwhile, I've been using Outlook 15 and now the Office 2016 Preview, and I have to say I'm really impressed. Thanks to Microsoft, and despite Apple, I'm really loving my Mac right now.
- selectodude 12y ago
  I'm hoping beyond hopes that iOS 8.2 is the release I've been waiting for. So far, it seems pretty good.
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  Thanks for mentioning the preview; I am downloading it right now. I assume that it is all compatible with the Office 365 web services.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I think so, but I don't use the web services so I can't vouch for them.
- puranjay 12y ago
  I gave up on my Windows Phone Nokia because it was buggy as hell, but they definitely have Apple beat in terms of design. The Metro UI is gorgeous and more usable than anything Google or Apple have put out
serve_yay 12y ago
I don't really think such reviews are a good metric of anything, but I concur. The software quality has definitely taken a decline in recent years.
banachtarski 12y ago
OpenGL compatibility is still 4.1... I like linux, I like Apple hardware, but as a graphics/game programmer, I find developing native OSX applications to be a miserable process.
- rsp1984 12y ago
  This is especially ridiculous since NVIDIA just updated their SHIELD tablets (a $299 product) to support OpenGL 4.5 (yes, the desktop version).
- gcr 12y ago
  Intel integrated graphics on bleeding edge Arch Linux here. I'm stuck at OpenGL 3.3. I can only use shader language GLSL 1.30. And people say Intel has the best OpenGL support... :) Or maybe nvidia fares better?
  - banachtarski 12y ago
    Nvidia fares way better. I develop on Windows at work and use bleeding edge Arch at home. Happily using compute shaders on OGL 4.5 at home.
  - banachtarski 12y ago
    With https://01.org/linuxgraphics/ https://01.org/linuxgraphics/ are you able to use OpenGL ES 3 at least? Should have better shader model support.
- frik 12y ago
  Apple only supports a subset of OpenGL 4.1 last time I checked. iOS8 supports WebGL. iOS4 already supported WebGL but exclusive to iAds. There is the new iOS only metal graphics API to compete with OpenGl/WebGL in AppStore.
walshemj 12y ago
Try using OSx server to migrate an office of mostly standalone macs to a modern centrally managed system its truly awful no tools no documentation
KeytarHero 12y ago
It's because the last few versions of OS X and Apple's applications have seen bigger changes than previous versions. And a lot of the more hardcore Apple fans tend to dislike change. A lot of Apple's more long-term fans hated OS X when it first came out, too. I'm not trying to bash Apple fans when I say this - I'm an OS X user too, and admittedly I only finally moved on from Snow Leopard last year (I actually like a lot of the changes, and most of the ones I don't like are ones that are easy to ignore). This phenomenon is certainly not exclusive to Apple fans either - just look at how many people still refuse to upgrade to Windows 8.
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mmgutz 12y ago
Such beautiful machines to run iTerm2 and Vim. I almost feel guilty for having the latest 15 MBP Retina and 80% of my time is spent in a terminal coding.
- falcolas 12y ago
  Spin up some local vagrant boxes, then you won't feel as bad.
  - Scoundreller 12y ago
    or some ArchiveTeam projects at least.
- lars512 12y ago
  If you can make your coding time more pleasurable by using an excellent display and killer font rendering, why wouldn't you?
otakucode 12y ago
With Apple I think the problem most comes from their aspiration for a mobile-only world. But they might just be suffering the same problem many (if not most) software packages face: The software gets near perfection.... but the organization does not have the capability to process this. They've got a team of developers, and developing on that particular piece of software is what they DO. There are managers of that team, and their career depends much more on keeping their team busy and working on some new thing far more than it relies upon the quality of the software itself. It doesn't look very good if your career seems to 'plateau' and your teams activity is just bugfixes and polishing a stable, usable product. The guy on another team who 'took risks' and radically redesigned the interface or jammed in a few new features that changed the target audience of their application will fare far better, even if their existing target audience has abandoned the application in droves (though they probably won't, as lockin is real). I've never heard of a company which had an endgame - what to do when the software is DONE. I have certainly suffered through many different applications which reached an apex of near-perfection and simply changed direction and went rapidly downhill though.
- conradfr 12y ago
  Internet Explorer ? :)
screamin_jesus 12y ago
The one area where apple really exels though, in both hardware and software is the touchpad. I cannot stand using the touchpad on any windows laptop I used, the touchpad is 99% the reason I still use a mac/osx.
- neoromantique 12y ago
  IBM's trackpoint is killer.
- otakucode 12y ago
  The only experience I have with OSX is toying around with a little Mac Mini. What is special about Apple's touchpad? I'm honestly curious.
  - screamin_jesus 12y ago
    Near perfect gestures integration, and the touchpad behaves very consistently and reliably system wide (osx has system wide smooth/responsive scrolling for example), and the touchpad hardware itself is just very nice and pleasant to use. Windows touchpads are usually all over the place in my experience, mostly due to drivers/windows' poor touchpad support. super basic stuff like 2 finger scrolling is often very janky and unreliable on the windows laptops I've used. I had actually ended up switching from windows to linux on my previous laptops because the touchpad even worked better under ubuntu than it did under windows. I love windows on my desktop PC, but I cannot stand on using windows on a laptop
    - thanksgiving 12y ago
      If one has never used computers like my Lenovo Ideapad y510p ore previously my Asus laptop and had to wrestle with the Synaptic/eLan drivers but rather only ever used a Macbook their entire lives, they would not realize how terribly bad touchpads can be.
vile 12y ago
Form Over Function has been Apple's M.O. for a long, long time.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  The "form over function" focus fallacy has been the Apple hater's M.O. for a long, long time.
ulfw 12y ago
Must be a resource issue on their end. Would be interesting to know how many engineers were working on Watchkit/Apple Watch instead of e.g. iOS8. Now THAT is one buggy release. Especially considering how long it has been live already.
teekert 12y ago
Add facetime to that list. Me and many others haven't been able to use it for over a year due to popping noises. (https://discussions.apple.com/message/27784968?ac_cid=tw123456#27784968 https://discussions.apple.com/message/27784968?ac_cid=tw1234...) And before the popping there was the intense echo (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5489176?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5489176?start=0&tstart=...) For me osX was the reason to switch, yes, nice battery life (at the time, 2011) was nice but having iMovie for family movies, a pro-Photo-suite for 60$ (Aperture!) and being able to call family (who all have iPads) over facetime were most compelling. Finder is indeed horrible, it never reconnects my Samba share, it never opens the way I left it and always in a window that I find too small, when browsing to a network share it may sometimes switch from icon view to tree view and the mapping of the folders in home is strange, in the terminal the folders are called differently in my language. And where is sshfs, ftp etc. Really, I have to download Cyberduck?!
makeitsuckless 12y ago
iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, and Numbers were never any good. They were afterthoughts, always have been. I've been an Apple user for about 15 years, never used any of Apple's own software besides the OS, Keynote, the Mail app, and I've regularly replaced the latter for long periods. The notion that Apple's application software was ever on par with their hardware and OS is a myth. Keynote is pretty much the only exception. For ten years people have been posting this BS about Apple application software going downhill, while in reality it was always mediocre to start with.
- kagamine 12y ago
  Have to take issue with you on Pages, I have always thought it to be far easier to use than Word. Many a time I have started out with a Word doc and after half an hour just scrapped it and used Pages or, more recently, LibreOffice instead.
easytiger 12y ago
OSX is a joke. Between a minor upgrade they destroyed compat with thousands of apps. How is that even possible.
randomsearch 12y ago
In case anyone's thinking about buying a Mac and was put off by this comment: I find OS X Yosemite to be fantastic. It works well, it's very stable. I run it on four different macs of different ages. The UX has definitely improved as a result of the redesign. I'm not sure about the aforementioned apps. Keynote is fantastic, but I don't use those listed very much. iPhoto has always been a basic photo management tool; I use Lightroom. There are times when a Linux box is preferable. I just run Linux in VirtualBox in those situations.
tambourine_man 12y ago
That machine wouldn't be viable if it wasn't for software. The force touch trackpad, which allows the MacBook to be thinner, desperately need the software to make the illusion work.
calinet6 12y ago
Ratings can't really be trusted there. I don't know, I've been running Yosemite just fine since beta. Some issues here and there that have been slowly improving. It's still UNIX, it still has a great UI. I don't think we always remember how good we have it.

by nkoren 12y ago

JustSomeNobody 12y ago

Why is this getting down voted? There IS a point in there.

_abattoir 12y ago
Because Apple is systematically downvoting negative comments. Most tech companies do some form of damage control on HN because they know a prominent portion of their userbase comes here frequently.
- drinchev 12y ago
  Do you have some proof of what you are saying or that's just an opinion?
thrownaway2424 12y ago
It's the top comment.
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- omonra 12y ago
  I'm not sure you're supposed to downvote comments you disagree with, do you? I thought it was to enforce a civil debate.
  - deleted 12y ago
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le_lenny_face 12y ago
>Why is this getting down voted? This isn't Reddit. Stop caring about Muh Internet Pointz.

derefr 12y ago

That's an interesting effect. If it were just the apps that were previously for "pro-am" work (iMovie et al), I'd get it, but—what happened with Pages and Numbers? I used them years ago, I use them now, and they honestly don't seem like they've changed much.

hbbio 12y ago
A few things have changed (I use them daily for 6 years): 1) I has more bugs (for instance, drag and dropping an image from a browser makes it crash). 2) The format has changed, it's now incompatible with computers running last year OS, Mavericks. 3) It automatically uploads new document or documents you open in the cloud. 4) I have lost my iCloud contents twice (each time when syncing from an iPad under poor network conditions, but that case should be handled).
- graeme 12y ago
  They also removed a bunch of Pages features used by Powerusers. It used to be a reasonable substitute for Word. I'm still on Pages 09 because I had a bunch of manuscripts made in that program. They don't format well in Pages 13. I'm going to keep using Pages 09 until Apple forces its obsolesence. Probably will look at Word instead since they seem committed to stability and the ability to actually do real work on a computer.
  - u02sgb 12y ago
    Not sure what your feature set requirements are, but LibreOffice is a pretty good replacement for Word.

rm445 12y ago

That's a very good point - Apple's desktop software is definitely not a highlight in the last few years. What's not clear is: (i) how much it matters - the core desktop experience is very solid, and between web browsers and MS Office it's not clear how much the iLife(?) apps actually get run. And (ii) whether it's a symptom of some deeper malaise - Apple still seems to be killing it in other areas so perhaps it's just a weak or resource-starved group within the company.

bsbechtel 12y ago
Maybe overlooked rather than resource-starved. Apple's sitting on $100B in cash. Resources shouldn't be an issue in any department.
- hengheng 12y ago
  Even $100B is not a reason to dump money mindlessly. I generally don't trust moves that seem purely driven by money (e.g. facebook's VR hiring spree), and which don't have a clear goal in mind, and a strategy along the way. Given Apple's high aspirations, they probably don't know what to do with the desktop. Ive's expectations seem way beyond what native apps can fulfill ... perhaps the Windows way was the right approach after all, and the complexity of "other" operating systems was just right for the high complexity of daily tasks after all ... and maybe the Apple way of thinking is more apt for mobile use where the computer interface doesn't have the user's full attention. Personally, in my last years of using OS X, all I had open was the PDF reader app, a browser and a terminal. I don't know if that was my personal interpretation of the Cloud age, but suddenly I was completely OS agnostic. Incidentally, this led me away from buying Macs, as the operating system didn't do anything for me anymore. I don't know about the desktop experience. Either it seems to be "power user web crawling", for which the cloud is the best fit, or it's about spending the whole day in a random Pro App with its very own user experience. I'm looking forward for their cars and watches, but I don't care much about their desktop computers. It seems they don't, either.
  - deeviant 12y ago
    I think it's pretty one dimensional to call Facebook's VR acquisitions purely motivated by having a pile of cash laying around. There are plenty of smart people who see VR finally coming around to be the disruptive technology that it was thought to be 25 years ago.

RexRollman 12y ago

I'm not saying you're wrong but I personally haven't any issues with OS X Yosemite.

benologist 12y ago
Yesterday was the first time this year I was able to open pages from youtube on the first try instead of over a 20 - 40 minute process of refreshing, resetting wifi, resetting router etc trying to get complete page loads with playing video. I had entire days where Skype text messages was the only internet access I had. Apple's forums have ten thousands of posts on people's wifi being ruined like this for this entire year and counting.
- RexRollman 12y ago
  Without a doubt, some people have issues, but I don't think you can gage the overall reliability of a product based solely on a support forum. No one is going there just to post that their system is running properly.
  - benologist 12y ago
    If it is some percent unreliable the other percent doesn't change that. It's not just OS X, it's also iOS, Maps, iCloud etc, some of this stuff was famously bad. There's been a lot of discussion about this recently with many notable Apple enthusiasts chiming in - https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+software+quality https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+software+quality.

pbreit 12y ago

You would think Apple would have little problem assembling some high quality teams (and cash) to make these products much, much better.

mslot 12y ago

I just had one of my first exposures to OS X, helping a friend get rid of particularly nasty adware called Downlite. It was nastier than anything I've ever seen since Windows 98, and obviously I've never seen anything like it on Linux. Stunning, really. I'm still considering getting my first Macbook though after this announcement, so I do hope they'll build a better security model.

stefs 12y ago
at least that one's not the fault of osx or apple though.
girvo 12y ago
For it to be nasty and hard to get rid of, your friend must have given it admin access when he installed it? No security model that I'm aware of can stop that; OS X out of the box stops you from being able to run unsigned code, which would've stopped that entirely.
- gcr 12y ago
  Windows also prevents untrusted code from running as an admin user by default. As you say, the user clicked "Allow"; there's nothing that could prevent that except changing the mindset of the general end user.
  - jeromegv 12y ago
    Actually that user probably did more than "Allow". Apps non signed by Apple are prevented to launch entirely on the default config. You have to go disable that protection in system preferences or right shift to launch the app, to go around this. So you really need an extra step and also need to know what you're doing
kalleboo 12y ago
The only security model that can stop that kind of malware is to only allow software from the App Store (i.e., the iOS model).

zuck9 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth's_law

billions 12y ago

Hardware brings the $, hardware gets budget increased. Typical corporate strategy. The only way someone in power could adjust the focus is if, say, the company failed while they were on leave or something.

craigyk 12y ago

6 of 1, half a dozen of the other? I agree there are things about the new software that are not as good as the old. OTH, it's really hard to maintain feature-parity on launching a new rewrite. I think a lot of this stuff will eventually get there. For the most part I'm liking the new Photos app. Also, OS X has only been getting better IMO. They just need to do a release cycle where they work on polish, which I believe they intend to do.

craigyk 12y ago

SiVal 12y ago

Because you can't really tell how well software is working when looking at the device edge-on, and that's apparently the way Apple looks at them most of the time. I mean this more metaphorically than literally, but I'm so tired of complaints about the ridiculously primitive Finder being met with, "the edge of the iMac now appears even thinner, now that we've repositioned formerly convenient connectors and such into a bulge behind the screen. Surely you agree that the appearance of a thin edge is more important than usability of Finder or connectors." Or a yearning for more battery life, or even just a swappable battery? "The bottom of our laptop looks better than the top of theirs!" Or, why is the text on my iPhone suddenly so low contrast and hard to read? "Surely you agree that having a fresh look matters more than readability! Look, the icons are flat. Don't you realize how critically important that is?" Or, the apps get worse, not better, over time, and you always have to ask yourself whether each free OS upgrade is worth the risk of unreliable WiFi. Can't you work on this, Apple? "Thinner!" Apple used to emphasize software quality and usability. Now, it's all about the style, about how the edges look in fashion magazines. And yet the rest of the industry is so fragmented that they don't do any better in terms of usability. The frustration is that unlike them, Apple could do so much better, but ever since the candy-colored iMacs, they've decided that Fernando (Billy Crystal's old SNL character) was right. When it comes to look and feel, "It's better to look good than to feel good!"

state 12y ago
I think this is good thinking. It might also boil down to something as simple as "Jony Ive". He strikes me as truly a designer of physical things by nature.
darcyparker 12y ago
I agree - I'd love to see them re-think Finder. I just don't grok Finder... I do most of my work in the terminal and occasionally midnight commander or nerdtree inside vim. I tried free ones like muCommander but don't like the overhead of starting a java app... Similarly I don't want the overhead of running an X server so I can use an X based file manager. And I don't want to buy some 3rd party File Manager. We should get a great File Manager OOTB with OS X. I don't see why Apple can't implement a modern File Manager... At least give us something comparable to Windows Explorer... or take the time to make a video to convince us Finder is actually good for those who may not grok it. And a swappable battery would be wonderful but I can live without it.

vidoc 12y ago

This is a very good point. I'll also add to this what might still be the biggest burden of Macos: its file-system. It's amazing that they can get away still providing this horror in 2015!

frik 12y ago
Apple planned to replace its very old HFS(+) filesystem with ZFS, there were even dev beta releases and demonstration to the media. But OSX 10.5(?) didn't ship with ZFS. So OSX is stuck with an decades old filesystem almost as basic and bad as FAT32, where Windows has NTFS (and ReFS, ExFAT), Linux has Btrfs/XFS/extfs4 and *BSD/Solaris has ZFS.
- jsz0 12y ago
  OSX has ZFS via OpenZFS.
  - frik 12y ago
    But it's a big difference, if it's an optional driver or the default one. Currently, on OSX and iOS most users are simply using the default installation and are stuck with HDF+. One can install optional filesystems on every OS. Like NTFS on Linux and OSX. ZFS on Linux, Ext4 on Windows.

mmcconnell1618 12y ago

My guess is that somewhere deep in the basement they have an OS that unites iOS and OS X into a single system that will run on future devices. That OS will run both OS X apps in legacy mode and iOS apps. Apple is funding teams for the iOS versions of the apps because that is where they see the future.

grey-area 12y ago
Well they have an OS already which unites them, the API layer above is the heterogeneous bit, which they might unify with something like UXKit. Long term it would make sense, and as you say it would explain the move towards mobile paradigms on desktop and the relative neglect of the desktop software. Of course the other explanation is that there is just so much more money to be made in consumer electronics than in computers - that won't change. I expect Apple under Cook to be far more predictable in this way and take the steps to maximise revenue that Jobs might have shunned in favour of something revolutionary and unproven.
kolbe 12y ago
At the end of the presentation, I was half expecting Tim Cook to pop the screen off the MacBook and say, "And by the way, we united iOS and OSX, so the MacBook can aslo be a fully-functional iPad."

eblanshey 12y ago

Anyone know how viable it is to wipe it and use Ubuntu with it?

ChristianGeek 12y ago
You don't need to wipe it...just set up a dual boot: http://www.howtogeek.com/187410/how-to-install-and-dual-boot-linux-on-a-mac/ http://www.howtogeek.com/187410/how-to-install-and-dual-boot...
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Why waste half a drive?
  - valm- 12y ago
    Wiping it will make it hard to update firmware. I learned this the hard way.
wowzer 12y ago
Anyone know if Ubuntu will do the retina justice?
- lewq 12y ago
  Yup, it works now.
  - eblanshey 12y ago
    With 14.04 LTS? How good is your experience with the setup?
    - babuskov 12y ago
      I have been using Ubuntu 14.04 since it came out. Anyone who calls Yosemite buggy should try running Ubuntu as their primary system and see what buggy really looks like. YMMV, of course.

beyondcompute 12y ago

Agree about bugginess of Software. It seems that Apple shifted focus from overall flawlessness and coherence of UX to craftsmanship and advanced technological processes in hardware. And since we started to see all those weird "Connect phone to iTunes to receive push notifications" popups, etc. If we will have products, whose surface was polished by zirconium particles but that are always buggy and unreliable, it will be not the Apple we all loved. Not "advanced features" but "lack of annoyances and irritation" is what made Apple what it is now, in my opinion.

ForHackernews 12y ago

Just install Linux on your macbook?

mark_l_watson 12y ago
I dual boot my old MacBook Air between OS X and Ubuntu - really nice because some software development tasks are just easier on Linux. (Off topic, but a good tip: buy a 64gig memory card and always keep it in the memory slot with a file system friendly to both Linux and OS X - there are cards designed to fit in flush on MacBook Airs. This lets my old 128gig MBA comfortably support dual boot, and the shared file system on the card is handy.)
- babuskov 12y ago
  I'm curious which tasks you find easier? I was a hardcode Linux user before I got Mac, so I had to try it. Four months later, and I never boot into Ubuntu anymore because everything works equal or better on OSX. Am I missing something?
  - mark_l_watson 12y ago
    Good question. There is quite a lot of software (dev tools) that are trivially installed with aptget, but not so easy (if possible) with homebrew. I am mostly retired now, but I am working on a commercial product, and still write the occasional book, and advise consulting customers - that is my excuse for experimenting with LOTS of open source projects. If it is easier to check something out on Linux, then I take the minute to reboot. That said, when developing I mostly "live" in IntelliJ (mostly for Clojure and ClojureScript, a little for Java and Javascript) and running IntelliJ on OS X (or even Windows 8.1) is nicer than on Ubuntu(because of trackpad issues).
    - gcr 12y ago
      Hm. Which tools aren't easy to install with homebrew? I find it has pretty broad coverage of most of the command line tools I need, and it's reasonably easy to compile other packages from source if you need them. Of course your needs are different from mine. Just curious.

Throwaway90283 12y ago

Random story from last week, and my experience with Apple software. I don't use Apple products too often, but I was downloading some apps for a family members ipod touch 4g (latest model being 5g). The 4g only supports up to iOS 6, and nearly every app I tried downloading on the device gave an error saying it required iOS 7 and it couldn't be installed. I thought that was strange, I used most of these apps before on older devices, why does everything no longer work on a device that's relatively new? According to those error messages the device is basically useful, it can't install apps any more, which is the heart of the ipod touch. I searched around online and there's an official solution. I had to install itunes on a computer and login to the same account as the Apple account on the device. Then I had to download the incorrect iOS 7 version of the free app I wanted. That would assign it as a purchase to the Apple account. Then I could delete that download. Then, I had to open up the Apple store on the device like I was doing previously, find the free app on there again, and click download. After doing all that, it wouldn't give an error saying the device wasn't supported, but now ask if I wanted to install the last compatible version. My mind was blown. How could such popular software provide such an awful user experience? The ipod touch said the app isn't supported for the device, but then I 'buy' the free app on itunes, and magically it is supported and I can download a compatible release.

kenrikm 12y ago
Because they are trying to nudge you into upgrading. Lets face it, the fact that Apple ruthlessly kills hardware after 3-4 years is both a benefit to Apple (sells more hardware) and developers (don't have to support old versions of the OS). Though, as a consumer sometimes it makes it difficult to know if you're buying a dud (iPod Touch 4th gen) vs something that'll have a long happy life (iPad 2nd Gen)
- tokenrove 12y ago
  It's awful for consumers, though. And for developers, it's not great, either, because you end up having to support a customer on an old version of OS X, for example, which means keeping a suitably old environment around just so you can keep your builds compatible, or jump through all kinds of hoops. I don't feel like this is a good thing to encourage in an industry that already has more than enough churn as it is.

rayiner 12y ago

Yosemite is moderately buggy, and iOS 8 is buggy as shit. Meanwhile, I've been using Outlook 15 and now the Office 2016 Preview, and I have to say I'm really impressed. Thanks to Microsoft, and despite Apple, I'm really loving my Mac right now.

selectodude 12y ago
I'm hoping beyond hopes that iOS 8.2 is the release I've been waiting for. So far, it seems pretty good.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
Thanks for mentioning the preview; I am downloading it right now. I assume that it is all compatible with the Office 365 web services.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I think so, but I don't use the web services so I can't vouch for them.
puranjay 12y ago
I gave up on my Windows Phone Nokia because it was buggy as hell, but they definitely have Apple beat in terms of design. The Metro UI is gorgeous and more usable than anything Google or Apple have put out

serve_yay 12y ago

I don't really think such reviews are a good metric of anything, but I concur. The software quality has definitely taken a decline in recent years.

banachtarski 12y ago

OpenGL compatibility is still 4.1... I like linux, I like Apple hardware, but as a graphics/game programmer, I find developing native OSX applications to be a miserable process.

rsp1984 12y ago
This is especially ridiculous since NVIDIA just updated their SHIELD tablets (a $299 product) to support OpenGL 4.5 (yes, the desktop version).
gcr 12y ago
Intel integrated graphics on bleeding edge Arch Linux here. I'm stuck at OpenGL 3.3. I can only use shader language GLSL 1.30. And people say Intel has the best OpenGL support... :) Or maybe nvidia fares better?
- banachtarski 12y ago
  Nvidia fares way better. I develop on Windows at work and use bleeding edge Arch at home. Happily using compute shaders on OGL 4.5 at home.
- banachtarski 12y ago
  With https://01.org/linuxgraphics/ https://01.org/linuxgraphics/ are you able to use OpenGL ES 3 at least? Should have better shader model support.
frik 12y ago
Apple only supports a subset of OpenGL 4.1 last time I checked. iOS8 supports WebGL. iOS4 already supported WebGL but exclusive to iAds. There is the new iOS only metal graphics API to compete with OpenGl/WebGL in AppStore.

walshemj 12y ago

Try using OSx server to migrate an office of mostly standalone macs to a modern centrally managed system its truly awful no tools no documentation

KeytarHero 12y ago

It's because the last few versions of OS X and Apple's applications have seen bigger changes than previous versions. And a lot of the more hardcore Apple fans tend to dislike change. A lot of Apple's more long-term fans hated OS X when it first came out, too. I'm not trying to bash Apple fans when I say this - I'm an OS X user too, and admittedly I only finally moved on from Snow Leopard last year (I actually like a lot of the changes, and most of the ones I don't like are ones that are easy to ignore). This phenomenon is certainly not exclusive to Apple fans either - just look at how many people still refuse to upgrade to Windows 8.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mmgutz 12y ago

Such beautiful machines to run iTerm2 and Vim. I almost feel guilty for having the latest 15 MBP Retina and 80% of my time is spent in a terminal coding.

falcolas 12y ago
Spin up some local vagrant boxes, then you won't feel as bad.
- Scoundreller 12y ago
  or some ArchiveTeam projects at least.
lars512 12y ago
If you can make your coding time more pleasurable by using an excellent display and killer font rendering, why wouldn't you?

otakucode 12y ago

With Apple I think the problem most comes from their aspiration for a mobile-only world. But they might just be suffering the same problem many (if not most) software packages face: The software gets near perfection.... but the organization does not have the capability to process this. They've got a team of developers, and developing on that particular piece of software is what they DO. There are managers of that team, and their career depends much more on keeping their team busy and working on some new thing far more than it relies upon the quality of the software itself. It doesn't look very good if your career seems to 'plateau' and your teams activity is just bugfixes and polishing a stable, usable product. The guy on another team who 'took risks' and radically redesigned the interface or jammed in a few new features that changed the target audience of their application will fare far better, even if their existing target audience has abandoned the application in droves (though they probably won't, as lockin is real). I've never heard of a company which had an endgame - what to do when the software is DONE. I have certainly suffered through many different applications which reached an apex of near-perfection and simply changed direction and went rapidly downhill though.

conradfr 12y ago
Internet Explorer ? :)

screamin_jesus 12y ago

The one area where apple really exels though, in both hardware and software is the touchpad. I cannot stand using the touchpad on any windows laptop I used, the touchpad is 99% the reason I still use a mac/osx.

neoromantique 12y ago
IBM's trackpoint is killer.
otakucode 12y ago
The only experience I have with OSX is toying around with a little Mac Mini. What is special about Apple's touchpad? I'm honestly curious.
- screamin_jesus 12y ago
  Near perfect gestures integration, and the touchpad behaves very consistently and reliably system wide (osx has system wide smooth/responsive scrolling for example), and the touchpad hardware itself is just very nice and pleasant to use. Windows touchpads are usually all over the place in my experience, mostly due to drivers/windows' poor touchpad support. super basic stuff like 2 finger scrolling is often very janky and unreliable on the windows laptops I've used. I had actually ended up switching from windows to linux on my previous laptops because the touchpad even worked better under ubuntu than it did under windows. I love windows on my desktop PC, but I cannot stand on using windows on a laptop
  - thanksgiving 12y ago
    If one has never used computers like my Lenovo Ideapad y510p ore previously my Asus laptop and had to wrestle with the Synaptic/eLan drivers but rather only ever used a Macbook their entire lives, they would not realize how terribly bad touchpads can be.

vile 12y ago

Form Over Function has been Apple's M.O. for a long, long time.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
The "form over function" focus fallacy has been the Apple hater's M.O. for a long, long time.

ulfw 12y ago

Must be a resource issue on their end. Would be interesting to know how many engineers were working on Watchkit/Apple Watch instead of e.g. iOS8. Now THAT is one buggy release. Especially considering how long it has been live already.

teekert 12y ago

Add facetime to that list. Me and many others haven't been able to use it for over a year due to popping noises. (https://discussions.apple.com/message/27784968?ac_cid=tw123456#27784968 https://discussions.apple.com/message/27784968?ac_cid=tw1234...) And before the popping there was the intense echo (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5489176?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5489176?start=0&tstart=...) For me osX was the reason to switch, yes, nice battery life (at the time, 2011) was nice but having iMovie for family movies, a pro-Photo-suite for 60$ (Aperture!) and being able to call family (who all have iPads) over facetime were most compelling. Finder is indeed horrible, it never reconnects my Samba share, it never opens the way I left it and always in a window that I find too small, when browsing to a network share it may sometimes switch from icon view to tree view and the mapping of the folders in home is strange, in the terminal the folders are called differently in my language. And where is sshfs, ftp etc. Really, I have to download Cyberduck?!

makeitsuckless 12y ago

iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, and Numbers were never any good. They were afterthoughts, always have been. I've been an Apple user for about 15 years, never used any of Apple's own software besides the OS, Keynote, the Mail app, and I've regularly replaced the latter for long periods. The notion that Apple's application software was ever on par with their hardware and OS is a myth. Keynote is pretty much the only exception. For ten years people have been posting this BS about Apple application software going downhill, while in reality it was always mediocre to start with.

kagamine 12y ago
Have to take issue with you on Pages, I have always thought it to be far easier to use than Word. Many a time I have started out with a Word doc and after half an hour just scrapped it and used Pages or, more recently, LibreOffice instead.

easytiger 12y ago

OSX is a joke. Between a minor upgrade they destroyed compat with thousands of apps. How is that even possible.

randomsearch 12y ago

In case anyone's thinking about buying a Mac and was put off by this comment: I find OS X Yosemite to be fantastic. It works well, it's very stable. I run it on four different macs of different ages. The UX has definitely improved as a result of the redesign. I'm not sure about the aforementioned apps. Keynote is fantastic, but I don't use those listed very much. iPhoto has always been a basic photo management tool; I use Lightroom. There are times when a Linux box is preferable. I just run Linux in VirtualBox in those situations.

tambourine_man 12y ago

That machine wouldn't be viable if it wasn't for software. The force touch trackpad, which allows the MacBook to be thinner, desperately need the software to make the illusion work.

calinet6 12y ago

Ratings can't really be trusted there. I don't know, I've been running Yosemite just fine since beta. Some issues here and there that have been slowly improving. It's still UNIX, it still has a great UI. I don't think we always remember how good we have it.