Not really. PhoneLink sucks, and the overall level of integration that you get between Mac and iPhone is not there. Android integration is better, but I’m not ready to switch to Android.
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An Open Letter to the Mac Community: The Decline of macOS
- Thread starter silverdollar
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I bought Windows 2000 Pro just to get away from ME. But even that OS had the quintessential Microsoft problem of developing random lags and freezes with time. Unlike the ME, which crashed all the time, W2K usually had to be repaired (reinstalled) about once a year. Not nearly as bad. I think a big part of that was the reliance on 3rd party antivirus software, none of which was really optimized for the OS.I think I started with OS X Leopard (or whichever one was Crash Central, on the white plastic 24” iMac). I went with a Windows machine for my home PC, but I configured it – not sure why, must have been a feeling – to be easily hackintoshed. And once at work I realised nothing ever crashes anymore, while Windows was being Windows… hackintosh it I did.
Windows ME was a class (LOL) of its own. I’ve never experienced anything that buggy. On a Mac or anything else. (Except the Sonos app, but I might have mentioned that.) I had to use it in the job before the crashOS X one and I went to plead to get a downgrade, I was a graphic designer and there’s no feeling like working on something for hours, moving things pixel by pixel (ahh, the bad old times when you could actually see pixels) and suddenly BOINK ME WINDOSW IS WILL RESET ME LOLOL.
I may have problems with Sequoia, but in comparison with Windows ME it’s the best thing ever. (Actually the best OS ever I used was Windows 2000 Professional, but that’s quite a digression.) Anyway, macOS simply doesn’t need yearly updates, and I wish they would stop doing that. It’s not like it becomes radically different. The updates introduce new apps, which don’t need a new OS name and new bugs, which I suppose do? (macOS Woodworms would work.) Big Sur was the last version that really caused me absolutely no problems. Before that, High Sierra. I’d like another bug squash release next year. Whom do I pester about that, Craig Federighi?
Anyway, guess I have to do a clean install… have I mentioned my free space has been fluctuating randomly, according to Finder, between 60 and 280 GB? (It should be at least 400. I’ve gone on a deleting spree.)
Now, Windows no longer has this problem. W7 was probably the first really solid release. W10, once they figured out the initial bugs, is rock solid, and so is W11. They finally seem to have figured out memory management and process separation. But the “Windows sucks, Mac just works” image that originated 20 years ago has stuck.
Totally agree.
Also, as someone who used iOS way before macOS, another thing that made the old “System Preferences” so complicated was that none of the categories on iOS matched the same category on macOS.
“General” for example, on the iPhone it has *always* been for actual general purpose OS settings, like software update, storage, warranties in the Clock functions.
From Mac OS X 10.0 Chita all the way up through macOS Monterey, “General” in macOS was… mostly appearance settings. And not really anything else. Totally didn’t match any of their other platforms at all.
Now “General” is pretty much the same across platforms.
Same with several other system panels, “Security and Privacy” used to be quite a bit more fragmented, etc.
With all due respect, the “macOS is becoming iOS so say bye to Finder and Terminal” fear mongering has been around since at least OS X Lion, which was… 13 versions of macOS ago.
It’s almost 15 years later, and macOS is only marginally more locked down than it was in 2011, and there is no signs of any major changes coming any time soon.
As for a repairability, it should be noted that the original Macintosh from 1984 was never supposed to be upgradable. Steve insisted on special screws to make it more difficult to open, plus it has soldered RAM. Obviously, it’s still more repairable than today’s computers, but the idea of soldered components and intentionally making things harder to open was totally a Steve move.
After reading OP, I tried Chrome and Opera. It appears that they open faster than native Safari, the time difference is minuscule, though. Cleaning cache is quite easy with those two, but strange in Safari, one has to enable advanced "features." After all clearing cache should be a simple thing. Lately, every app dims a little randomly, running Sequoia beta, by the way. The optimised charging mode is just gone haywire. The calculator can't be enlarged. After all this 2024.
You don’t even have to go back that far, I’m pretty sure that the original MacBook Air with a hard drive was $1800, which is over $2000 in today’s money. And I believe that was an 80 GB hard drive.
To “upgrade” to a 64GB (yes less storage) SSD was something like a $1,500 add-on. Just for an SSD. With less storage.
Makes today’s $200 ram and storage upgrades look like a bargain.
Great points. Also, just a reminder that Jobs’ entire idea of computing was to make it an appliance, that’s largely what they’ve been able to achieve. It’s not as fun for us tech nerds but it is in much more use by the majority of all people now. That’s an incredible feat.
Yep, it is my understanding and have not tried it yet, that System Integrity (SIP) Protection can no longer be turned off in Sequoia. MacOS is really not your computer any longer, it belongs to Apple even after you paid for it.
Yet here we are — despite its shortcomings the best device for you is a Mac running macOS. I appreciate your thoughtful reply.
I left windows behind a long time ago and made the decision to force myself to use native macOS capabilities vs add-on utilities and third party apps wherever possible. The reason was to learn to use my Mac as it was intended vs the way I wanted to use it — as I recognized that Macs and PCs reflect different philosophies about personal computers and I did not want to try and force a square peg into a round hole. Everyone has their preferences and should approach this in the way that works best for themself, but I think this approach saved me a lot of grief over the years and now as new features are introduced.
Your initial post and this reply reminded me of some of my early transition challenges as well as important features and benefits I now take for granted. Thank you and best wishes on your enfolding Mac journey! 🙏🏽
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With all due respect, you’re putting words in my mouth that I never said.
“The best” it’s not.
Mac met my one of my goals, having seamless integration between my laptop and phone for calls and messages. And it met my other goal of being a laptop with predictable and decent battery life. While there definitely *are* such laptops on the Windows side, the trick is finding one behind the fog of deceptive marketing and conflicting user reviews.
However, there were many issues and limitations with MacOS that I did not know of, or failed to understand the real life impact of, at the time I decided to switch. Which, had I fully appreciated them at that time, would impact my decision.
In the end, I am getting used to MacOS, and am not planning on switching back anytime soon, but I would not call it “the best” by a long stretch. It’s just a different set of advantages and disadvantages.
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I don't doubt that a given configuration of software/hardware gives rise to instabilities. I am a light user (mail, books, x code, bbedit, preview, safari or opera or Firefox for web applications, and gnu compilers), I haven't noticed any real issues since os 10.2, but in the pre os 10 days the problems you encountered were common. I abandoned msdos/windows due to the it 'mafia', in general I considered the uniform setup regime to be a potential security nightmare. an apple user from apple ii, first Mac in 1984.
You understanding is entirely false
Never ceases to amaze me how willing people are to chime in when they are completely wrong
Because I also use Windows daily via Parallels for some of my consulting work. Windows has definitely improved and is actually a pretty elegant OS.
I no longer find the question of which OS is better interesting. In my opinion, the better question is which ecosystem is better for you? For me, that answer is the Apple ecosystem. It is not perfect but I prefer to deal with its shortcomings vs the shortcomings of alternative ecosystems.
If I was looking strictly at the OS ease of use and ignored all other issues, I’d probably pick Linux Mint over both Mac and Windows. When I was running a Mint desktop, I really appreciated the overall responsiveness and the extent to which it could be customized to suit my needs. E.g. its window management was better than either Windows or Mac at the time. And the level of control over system interface was unprecedented. But, it lacked many (honestly, most) apps and usability features that I needed, and I had (and still have) reservations about Linux ecosystem security.
Apple's problem was trying to turn iOS into Mac.
They couldn't do it.
So now they're trying to turn Mac into iOS, to somehow make them meet in the middle.
Both methods are the wrong approach and they need to instead accept that they are two different platforms and go back to making the best iOS ever and the best Mac OS ever.
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They couldn't do it.
So now they're trying to turn Mac into iOS, to somehow make them meet in the middle.
Both methods are the wrong approach and they need to instead accept that they are two different platforms and go back to making the best iOS ever and the best Mac OS ever.
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The question here is what's wrong, or what might be wrong with macOS, not with Windows, so bringing in Windows in to this is practically useless.
We can, of course, compare certain new additions to macOS, which are not really new additions compared to other OSs, like window tiling, always on top only with calculator, inability to enlarge the calculator for example, or giving wrong suggestions - macOS underlines supposed to be incorrect word, and suggests a wrong word. Apps suddenly and randomly dimming for example, that Safari is becoming slower than Chrome or Opera, that macOS cannot remember the last copied word or paragraph, when right click is used, but remembers the one before, for example. That the optimised charging mode in a terrible state, for example.
I send feedback, but what the use? So many beta upgrades happened, but all I can see is what was there in Sonoma had been broken in the "new" OS. There are problems in the beta stage, but if the OS had not even changed much from the last one, something really is wrong with those who tinker with it at Apple, or the OS at a troublesome time. It is all business, get something released new every year, whatever the result. Why not keep an LTS variant, like Linux does for 5 years?
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Decades of watching these discussions makes me think the same discussions will go on for decades more...
This is an interesting and thought-provoking perspective with great supporting thoughts.
I agree that we’re seeing an evolution of the Mac as another (largely manufacturer-defined vs user-defined) appliance in an ecosystem of such devices vs its early position as a platform itself with unrestrained user-defined configuration potential.
However, I don’t attribute this evolution to Apple disrespecting the intelligence of its users. I think this is the result of business decisions made by an organization operating at billion units scale. I believe there are two primary factors driving this:
1. Scaling a business that’s responsible for supporting billions of infinitely configurable devices is not possible. I define scaling as getting better as you get bigger. Having unlimited degrees of configuration freedom creates an unsustainable combinatorial explosion of support issues. As a result, support issues and costs increase non-linearly with growth and the business ultimately collapses under its own weight. This is the opposite of getting better as you get bigger.
2. The number of people who want this amount of control over their devices is a small fraction of those who just want a simple, iPad-like computing appliance. However if you offer this capability to everyone the unprepared masses will use it and likely flood Apple support with issues and drive down overall user satisfaction.
Apple knows (and respects) there are people who want to tinker with their devices (and that probably includes many leaders at Apple), but the math of a billions-unit enterprise makes it prohibitive to cater to this without some fundamental breakthrough in how to support historical patterns for user-configurability at billions-unit scale.
If you look closely, Apple are being responsive to this, but they are taking their time and introducing customization capabilities slowly and deliberately (see iOS 18 Home Screen customization options). This example may seem laughable, but when you’re operating at billions-unit scale, small well-considered, incremental changes are essential.
I also agree with your statement regarding an approaching tipping point, but I think the tipping point is whether Apple can scale its creativity and ingenuity in this area to sustain it’s legacy for innovation vs evolving into a soulless profit-generating behemoth. I choose to believe that Apple leadership value this legacy and are working hard to find a way to sustain it as they grow .. and will succeed.
Your closing comment is spot-on: we shall see how this will play out.
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The combo of macOS, Apple M-series chips, and integration with their other products is unmatched and BY FAR the best user experience available. That's why we are here.
Same here. Although I DO sometimes have to reboot when searching Notes or Mail fails to turn up ANY hits when I know for sure there are several--i.e. to fix dysfunction within a Mac OS app, often one from Apple itself. NOTE: this was true with Sonoma and it remains true with Sequoia.
That said, I really should NOT have to reboot just to fix basic functionality within first party apps, so on that front, I do agree with OP's post.
I would, if I could make some money at it.
I’m curious. The statement was that macOS seems to be “the best device for you” not “The best” which is putting words into my mouth that I never said.
So, if a Mac running macOS which you intend to keep using is not the best device for you — which is the best device for you?