An Open Letter to the Mac Community: The Decline of macOS

[brofkand]

I absolutely agree that Apples newer apps are horrible. Music, Photos, TV, all horrible. System Settings is worse than the worst fever dream that Redmond ever dreamed up. It’s absolutely unusable - nothing is where you expect it to be. All you can do is search and hope. And they continue to just slap more window management and multitasking paradigms onto the system, none of which can interact with each other in any meaningful way. Apple seems to be incapable of writing good software anymore.

 

[splifingate]

Now for the present. I run a number of third-party apps. One of them is called, iStat Menus. As a power user, I like to monitor my computer in realtime. I am forced to reboot my 64GB MBP every 4-5 days. After a reboot, I use about 20% RAM with no one app/daemon using more than 175MB at MOST. Most apps that I run use a small amount of memory, at first.

I use a M2 Studio (64GB/2TB) on the regular, and iStat is one of the 1st&foremost.

This is a screenie of a bog-standard Free-Friday computing experience using such:

I re-booted the Studio following the latest OS update (last week" IDR!!?!); but--otherwise--She just chugs-along in a semi-conscious state.

Pardon me (please) if I take your comment OOC, but it just seemed odd to see such an awkward situ. with something that seems so effortless, to me 🤷‍♂️

 

[splifingate]

I’ve been wondering why Apple hasn’t yet to pull the plug on terminals, *nix support, and much of those “legacy” features old macOS users loved

Rioting in the streets?

 

[aidler]

[Note: This translation was created with the assistance of AI. English is not the author's native language.

An Open Letter to the Mac Community: The Decline of macOS​

Dear Apple Enthusiasts,

As a longtime Mac user who purchased my first Mac II in 1987 and whose professional career as a designer has been closely intertwined with the Mac, it is with a heavy heart and deep disappointment that I must confess today: I have lost all faith in Apple's ability to produce functional software for the Mac. What was once a beacon of user-friendliness and innovation is increasingly degenerating into a dysfunctional patchwork of promises and disappointments.

For years, I have watched with growing dismay as the quality of macOS continues to decline with each update. Once-valued programs like Music, Photos, Mail, and Apple TV have become torturous to use. They ignore basic principles of usability and logic, as if Apple has forgotten all understanding of consistent design.

The recent update to System Settings is a prime example of Apple's incompetence. Instead of real improvements, we get redesigned chaos that lacks any comprehensible structure. Where are the color codings that could at least visually guide us through this labyrinth? Instead, we are flooded with pointless features and useless bugs, while essential functions are neglected.

Apple's marketing promises us the moon, but the reality is sobering. Many of the grandly announced features prove useless in practice, while once reliable features fail more and more frequently. It's as if the entire macOS ecosystem is falling apart before our eyes.

Can Apple's much-touted AI still save this sinking ship? I strongly doubt it. My confidence that Apple is still capable of delivering even remotely everyday usable software for its admittedly excellent hardware has been shaken.

What good is a $5000 hardware setup if I have to restart the computer multiple times a day and buy expensive alternatives for half of the pre-installed programs just to get basic functionality?

Apple has clearly lost its compass. There is a lack of a plausible overall concept for macOS. Instead, we are fobbed off with an incoherent hodgepodge of poorly made and even more poorly maintained applications.

It's time for us as a community to raise our voices and hold Apple accountable. We deserve better. We deserve an operating system that lives up to the performance of the hardware, that is consistent, reliable, and innovative.

Apple, listen to us: Your focus may lie elsewhere, but don't forget the loyal Mac users who made you great. Remember your roots, the principles that once distinguished macOS. Only then can you regain the lost trust.

With deep concern and hope for improvement, Arne Thaysen

Unfortunately, this seems to be the predetermined life cycle of every company. Nothing lasts forever. As unlikely as it seems to us, even Apple can and will fail one day.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Serious question: Why are you still using a Mac instead of Windows given this litany of MacOS shortcomings that presumably don’t exist on Windows?

Serious answer: because Microsoft no longer has a phone.

The litany of MacOS shortcomings doesn't make it a vastly inferior OS, it's just not a superior one.

And the integration with phone (and tablet) is one of the two main reasons that I switched. The seamless ability to get calls and messages on all of my devices. Windows integration with iPhones is still in its infancy, poorly implemented and unreliable and too intrusive when it does work (it hijacks all phone calls when the phone is connected to the PC, instead of letting the user pick what device they want to answer on).

The second reason was hardware. Specifically laptops. And specifically power consumption. It's not that Windows doesn't have good laptops, but it's very hard to pick one that actually lives up to the advertised battery life. Even a high level one. I didn't want to spend up to two grand just to end up with 6 hrs out of advertised 16. With MacBooks, the advertised battery life is very close to my real life experiences.

MacOS was the last thing on my mind.

 

[splifingate]

I cannot even begin to comprehend how anybody could attempt to argue that recent OS versions, coupled with recent hardware releases, are not improvements on anything that came before

Subjectively, I am entirely all-in with you.

Objectively . . . the Jury is still out

 

[asparagus]

OP, can you elaborate on your particular configuration? The way I read your comment, it sounds like you have a multitude of tiny apps to adapt the os to your particular configuration, and they don’t all play nice.

Many apps don’t exactly play nice with each other - Alfred might not like parallels, or onedrive. That shouldn’t be put on Mac OS.

Can you share a full list of your setup and perhaps the community might suggest better compatibility?

I’ll also be upfront - I generally don’t use apples apps. They always were - barely functional - while the os was solid. As hardware changes get faster, I suspect those apps are being neglected. I don’t blame apple. I view it as an opportunity for third party developers to fill in the gaps. PDF expert is awesome, for example. Preview is ok, but other apps are better… ok?

 

[splifingate]

MS-DOS word perfect

*sigh*

Such good times....

 

[SnowCrocodile]

Curiously, I have none of the problems highlighted by the OP, while I remember very well the daily crashes in OS 7, not to mention when I got the first Dual Processor machine.

I basically live in heaven now compared to the 90s/early 2000s

Early 2000s would be Windows ME days. Which was the worst OS ever inflicted on the mankind. And the main source of "On Mac, it just works" story. I wasn't using MacOS back then, but it would be hard to imagine a worse monstrosity than ME. At least MS had more than one OS back then... but even with far more stable Windows 2000 Pro, I still had to do a complete OS wipe / reinstall at least once a year to fix lags and slowdowns.

I do think that all major OS's are more stable and better working now than 20 years ago.

 

[profcutter]

I have to agree with the OP. I recently needed to find some files that didn’t copy vet from my 2015 MBP to my M1 Max. No problem, I have them all backed up on this SSD. Great. So I plug it into my new Mac via a Thunderbolt cable and enclosure. “This disk is unreadable by this Macintosh” or whatever the new phrasing is. WTF? I try a different enclosure. I try hooking it up to my wife’s machine. Nothing. Oh right, there was that one software update that bricked external drives. Remember? Yeah. It killed my backup. That’s not a small bug or an “oopsie!” That’s a basic aspect of an OS: don’t destroy drives with important data on them. And why didn’t the files copy over in the first place? Who knows, but they’re gone now!

 

[monstermash]

I'm surprised there is so much angst about Systems Settings. Do people spend a lot of time all day messing with settings?

On given 8 hour day in front of my computer, I might spend, at most......no time in System Settings.

Why are people in there so much?

I've been using Macs since System 6. I don't think I can even name all the Macs I have had, but they include:

Mac II
Mac Se/30
Mac IIci
PowerBook 170c (?)
Quadra 700
PowerMac 7300
PowerMac 8600
Some other PowerBook thing
PowerBook G4 12"
MacBook Pro 13" (several)
Various Mac Minis

The os and hardware are now better than it has ever been. Some of the apps suck, but there are other apps.

 

[dominiongamma]

My last favorite mac os was snow leopard. Fast and stable with no extra crap and the UI didnt look like ipados. Seems like the mac was a mac and not a hybrid mac/ios device.

I sometimes think the iPhone is just a crutch

I genuinely find it hard to take anyone who says we're worse off right now than in the late 2010s seriously. They had all but abandoned pro users, the laptops doubled as space heaters, and were shipping keyboards that were so badly engineered there was a class action lawsuit about it. A family member had to get their MacBook Pro serviced 4 times for that keyboard issue. Everything sold was frequently using sub par intel chips for massive mark ups. Maybe the software stability was worth it (I wasn't using a Mac until I returned for Apple Silicon) but I'm not convinced.

I have not had a hard crash in like, 2 years, and that was on a beta version I chose to install. I only ever reboot any Mac I use for updates. Crashing daily isn't normal. I recommend trying to troubleshoot it with other users on this forum.

not to mention better battery life now with laptops then way back then

 

[jeremz1ne]

Thats crap if you. gotta reboot tons of times though-out the day, i reboot maybe once a week maybe once every two weeks and everything seems to work flawlessly ( i only really use photoshop and a couple other programs though ) my biggest problem is. the mail app, lately it doesn't send anything and just says cannot contact server

 

[Corefile]

The first two versions of Mac OS X were literally so unfinished that the majority of people using them recommended to not use it as your main OS, but instead use the older OS 9.
10.4 Tiger launched in April 2005 to a lot of praise, and a lot of usability complaints.
10.6 Snow Leopard was literally advertised as a bug fix and stability release, yet launched with a bug that was literally deleting people’s home folders if they logged out of their account. Tons of data loss.
Mountain Lion launched in 2012, and literally wouldn’t run on some machines that weren’t even four years old. Literally some computers from the late 90s and early 2000s received more updates than machines released in 2008. Luckily Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan kept the requirements the same for four years in a row after that, but still. Yikes.

Point is, operating systems have bugs and problems, and this is always going to be true and always has been true.
Even on this very forum it’s not that difficult to find posts of people running any version of macOS over the past 25 years who experienced a show stopping bug.

My own view is that anything before Panther was basically junk. The old MacOS pre-OS X was a garbage pile know as Classic MacOS. It was woeful and embarrassing to use compared to other GUI OS of the time.

 

[splifingate]

instead of letting the user pick

Hear. Hear.

 

[turbineseaplane]

not to mention better battery life now with laptops then way back then

This is true of all laptops now

Some of the comparisons people are making "then vs now" need to be contextualized to what they were competing against at the time .. not new hardware now

Obviously all tech hardware is amazing compared to 15-20 years ago -- all of it, not just Macs

 

[zach-coleman]

The first two versions of Mac OS X were literally so unfinished that the majority of people using them recommended to not use it as your main OS, but instead use the older OS 9.

Hell, Classic Mac OS was so rotten to the core with technical issues that they had to burn it to the ground and replace it with a completely unrelated OS they bought, themed to look like it was a true successor. I don’t think you could reasonably place the current era anywhere near the bottom for this company‘s history. It’s a severe case of recency bias.

 

[HiVolt]

I too haven't liked the direction that Mac and macOS has taken. They are turning it into iOS by locking it down more and more.

I liked it when software could use kernel extensions, you didn't have to disable several settings in order to install your own software outside the app store.

I have a feeling once they kill off intel support, they will lock it down even more.

And of course no Mac is upgradeable anymore, and hardly repairable.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

I was hoping for more clarity so I could understand your point. Because I don't want to be one of those, "my experience is solid, so your complaints are invalid", but you don't want to clarify anything and just kind of insist everyone has the same experience.

I've been around for a while as well, my first computer was my dad's Apple Iic as a little one. I left in the late 90s after college, then returned with Jaguar. I have really never had much of a problem with nearly any iteration, aside from 3rd party software compatibility. Honestly, now that I'm in my 40's, I really appreciate the ease of use with Sequoia and haven't had a single problem with the more recent iterations.

So, I'm sorry you're having issues, but I will have to disagree with your premise.

Well said. It would have been nice to at least have basic info as to what configuration the OP is running and causing all the restarts.

 

[monstermash]

Completely absent from this thread is how much cost has dropped.

I paid about $5500 for a complete Mac IIci system in 1990. That was with Apple student discount of thousands of dollars and special ordering the machine in a 0/0 configuration (I believe I got the very last unit for which that was still possible). I got 8 MB of RAM and a 170MB hard drive from an advertisement in Mac Week, and an Apple mouse and keyboard and a third party 14" CRT monitor. I ran A/UX on it.

How would you like to be paying that kind of price these days?

People don't seem to understand how good they have it.

 

[seek3r]

Now for the present. I run a number of third-party apps. One of them is called, iStat Menus. As a power user, I like to monitor my computer in realtime. I am forced to reboot my 64GB MBP every 4-5 days. After a reboot, I use about 20% RAM with no one app/daemon using more than 175MB at MOST. Most apps that I run use a small amount of memory, at first.

To be brief, there is a memory leak in one or more of Apple's shared libraries. App memory usage grows hourly. My current UPTIME is 3 days 22 hours and my machine is using 60% RAM. Apple's WindowServer (GUI) is using 2.1GB, Little Snitch Extension is using 1.3GB, Apple Music (iTunes) is using 848MB, Path Finder is using 681MB, Apple Mail is using 613MB, Spotlight is using 385MB. Way more than any one should be using.

Unused memory is wasted memory, keeping app memory usage cached when the memory isnt needed for something else removes some of that waste. That memory usage growth you’re seeing is almost certainly mostly cached data, not wired, and the system will purge it if needed.

 

[257Loner]

I've used Mac all my life, and the author is correct: the last 15 years since Mac OS X Snow Leopard have seen many features being dropped. The latest to disappear is Paper Tape from Calculator as of macOS Sequoia.

The Mac OS is not meant for pro users anymore. Apple keeps simplifying it. It loses features. It's baby software at this point.

 

[nathansz]

I liked it when software could use kernel extensions, you didn't have to disable several settings in order to install your own software outside the app store

You don’t currently have to disable any settings to instal software not from the App Store

are you having trouble with something?

 

[zevrix]

System Settings is worse than the worst fever dream that Redmond ever dreamed up.

I agree that System Settings needs quite a few improvements. But at least it's now much better than that Frankenstein concoction we had before Ventura.

 

[TracerAnalog]

might be an issue with your individual set-up
You are Definitely Right. I have got a complicated setup to overcome accessibility problems and a lack of customization by Apple. But I am upset!
That is no excuse for the problems mentioned. And trust me, I've got lots of experience, and I know what I'm doing here. This threat wasn't meant as a discussion of an individual setup and it's related problems. I am having a much bigger problem: with each iteration of a macos the reliability and functionality is declining.

You keep pointing out you have problems, without saying what they are. This sort of post is meaningless to me, and as a decades long Mac user myself, I do not recognize whatever you are trying to point out. I suspect you rely on all sorts of plugins and add ons that keep breaking with MacOS updates.
My MacOS is rock solid. Because I run a lot of audio software that is fairly finicky I always wait about 8 months with upgrading to the latest full release OS in order for the plugin developers to update on their end. Works like a charm.