Monterey made me fall in love with macOS, Sonoma gives me hate

[darkus]

Just a rant. Monterey has been so stable and “just works” to the point I have been slowly moving everything from my pc world to macOS. With the false assumption that Mac had finally beaten windows.

Then I go ahead and get a newer Mac with Sonoma on it and it’s just… bad. Too much display/font/rendering issues. Window transparencies that come and go for no reason. Strange sleep/wake cycles. Not sure what to make of it all. Windows 11 is suddenly looking good again.

Luckily Monterey is perfectly usable and fine but when the day comes that it’s no longer supported, this would be a problem.

Just a rant is all

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

"Love:Hate" may sum up the relationship between users and Apple tech in general. To roll with Apple, you have to understand that Apple will often decide to "improve" something you may feel is fine as is. Often this improvement can seem 2 or 3 steps back and may take a few years to get back to being as good as it was before the "improvement."

Remedies: Become a...

• Fan so that anything & everything Apple does is practically perfect in every way. All "improvements" are then fantastic even if they are not. Just evangelize all as great in every way. Delude yourself and try to delude others into believing the same.
• Hater so that anything & everything Apple does is stupid/terrible/worst thing ever. Move on to competing platforms that are then superior, but continue to chime in on how terrible all things Apple are to stir the pot. Or stick with Apple but expect any complaints to be met with a wave of blaming you, your setup, third party stuff attached to your Mac, "cheap Chinese chargers", settings mistakes you've made, etc.

Or hang in between the extremes, sometimes being pleased or disappointed with Apple choices. When you are the former, you'll get likes and re-quotes by the Fans but disgust/gripes from the haters. And vice versa.

With modern Apple, we're in a period of time where users unhappy with some "improvement" must try to find their own workarounds. Else, avoid the "improvements" that frustrate you with hopes that Apple will come back around to making them work well again sooner or later.

In your particular case, eventually flaws/issues with Sonoma may evolve with "improvements" towards how things were with Monterey... which had its own mix of flaws/issues vs. Big Sur... which had its own issues vs. High Sierra... which had its own mix of flaws/issues...

There is an old, general rule of thumb that says don't even upgrade to a new version of macOS until at least the .3 or .4 version. The general sentiment is .0-.2 or so are the broad "beta tester" groups. Sonoma is currently on the .2.1 level... so the post "beta" version of it is still a point update or two... or THREE... away.

Will it get better? Yes. When will it seem as great as older, fully-matured version of macOS preferred by any given individual? Maybe not until the fully-matured version of Sonoma... or the next generation after Sonoma... or the next generation after that generation... or...

Welcome to the Appleverse!

 

[darkus]

"Love:Hate" may sum up the relationship between users and Apple tech in general. To roll with Apple, you have to understand that Apple will often decide to "improve" something you may feel is fine as is. Often this improvement can seem 2 or 3 steps back and may take a few years to get back to being as good as it was before the "improvement."

Remedies: Become a...

• Fan so that anything & everything Apple does is practically perfect in every way. All "improvements" are then fantastic even if they are not. Just evangelize all as great in every way. Delude yourself and try to delude others into believing the same.
• Hater so that anything & everything Apple does is stupid/terrible/worst thing ever. Move on to competing platforms that are then superior, but continue to chime in on how terrible all things Apple are to stir the pot. Or stick with Apple but expect any complaints to be met with a wave of blaming you, your setup, third party stuff attached to your Mac, "cheap Chinese chargers", settings mistakes you've made, etc.

Or hang in between the extremes, sometimes being pleased or disappointed with Apple choices. When you are the former, you'll get likes and re-quotes by the Fans but disgust/gripes from the haters. And vice versa.

With modern Apple, we're in a period of time where users unhappy with some "improvement" must try to find their own workarounds. Else, avoid the "improvements" that frustrate you with hopes that Apple will come back around to making them work well again sooner or later.

In your particular case, eventually flaws/issues with Sonoma may evolve with "improvements" towards how things were with Monterey... which had its own mix of flaws/issues vs. Big Sur... which had its own issues vs. High Sierra... which had its own mix of flaws/issues...

There is an old, general rule of thumb that says don't even upgrade to a new version of macOS until at least the .3 or .4 version. The general sentiment is .0-.2 or so are the broad "beta tester" groups. Sonoma is currently on the .2.1 level... so the post "beta" version of it is still a point update or two... or THREE... away.

Will it get better? Yes. When will it seem as great as older, fully-matured version of macOS preferred by any given individual? Maybe not until the fully-matured version of Sonoma... or the next generation after Sonoma... or the next generation after that generation... or...

Welcome to the Appleverse!

I have to say everything you say makes sense and is sage advice!

Looks like I’m following the path of sticking with my older system with Monterey until Sonoma hits .3 or .4 and reasses. I did drop a pretty penny on this new system so it does hurt to just let it collect dust in the meantime but I’ll give Apple a chance to fix it i guess 😀

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Fingers crossed on .3 or .4.

And if not... .5.

And if not... .6

...and so on until it becomes hope for the next macOS version... and then through its point updates... and so on.

Monterey is one still running a key Mac for me. But it's tendency with "unexpected ejections" of some external drives frustrates me to no end. And that's a problem that appeared to start with Big Sur and is not yet resolved in Sonoma (FIVE generations of macOS). Take the same drive/cable/etc BACK to macOS pre-Big Sur and all works fine. Or hook it to any PC through the same cable/enclosure/firmware/drives and all is also perfectly stable.

Every generation of macOS has some of this kind of thing. Find a workaround or wait & hope that whatever bugs you bugs key players within Apple with the power to get it addressed. They probably will get around to nearly everything sooner or later. It's just that later can sometimes be a few generations of macOS from now.

 

[MBAir2010]

darkus​

I miss Monterey
but
Monterey will be bye bye soon.

still Monterey might be worthy or an external drive usage.

Mojave made me stay with products,
so I know how you feel

oh im also using Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion on the same MacBook air
more since Sonoma was released.

Sonoma is very fast, reliable and never disconnected my 4 ssd drives
but the little things like non-auto on and off and losing album art work bothers me.

 

[fisherking]

i would never go back; sonoma (here, on my 2 macs) is fast, stable... and getting better all the time (as it should). might be worth reaching out to apple for help, since everything should in fact work...

 

[GuilleA]

In almost 20 years of switching to Mac, this is the first time I haven't upgraded macOS. Still in Monterey, and see no reason to upgrade to Sonoma yet. I don't see any benefits, not really interested in the new features this year. Everything's running perfect for me right now and I can't afford downtime and dealing with issues.

 

[fisherking]

In almost 20 years of switching to Mac, this is the first time I haven't upgraded macOS. Still in Monterey, and see no reason to upgrade to Sonoma yet. I don't see any benefits, not really interested in the new features this year. Everything's running perfect for me right now and I can't afford downtime and dealing with issues.

yet somehow you got to monterey. for me, personally, it's the under-the-hood changes that matter most (over new features). but, whatever works 👍

 

[MBAir2010]

im done with Sonoma for now, im getting too many annoying situations which is typical
good for 3 years, then crap for the next two.
and I dont perform security risks
heck im using Snow Leopard more than Sonoma on the MacBook last week!

hopefully SaltonSea or Tenderloin 15.0 will be better.

 

[MBAir2010]

i would never go back; sonoma (here, on my 2 macs) is fast, stable... and getting better all the time (as it should). might be worth reaching out to apple for help, since everything should in fact work.

they are not going to advice me on how to type the apple logo the old way or retrieve last album art in mUsic
or delete a phantom include tab from my MacBook Air I delete two weeks ago
SONOMA has problems unfixable.


yes that OS is fast but a set back from Ventura

 

[fisherking]

they are not going to advice me on how to type the apple logo th hold way or retrieve last album art in mUsic
or delete a phantom include tab from my MacBook Air I delete two weeks ago
SONOMA has problems unfixable.


yes that OS is fast but a set back from Ventura

no unfixable problems here, but i get that you're having issues. personally, i'd call, there's nothing to lose. anyway, good luck 👍

 

[MBAir2010]

 

[fisherking]

View attachment 2336612

in which case, no need to post on the sonoma forum anymore, if you're not running it. 👍

 

[MBAir2010]

in which case, no need to post on the sonoma forum anymore, if you're not running it. 👍

we need to move this to Monterey then!

just for the record, on the MacBook Air I do, and now I have dual boot on the Mini
so I can complain once n a while, hey if we kept quiet in High Sierra, Mojave would never have happened.

I love Sonoma but Monterey is better for my needs.
I just installed 98GB of music and the album art is there, all of that
as Sonoma is missing the same ol Coldplay parachute, mixed up Beethoven and Mozart Symps.
while Monterey transported everything incredibly.

 

[MBAir2010]

I just had an epiphany.....

since everyone will use those "vision pro goggles" starting this march 2024
they won't hack or try to hack our computers anymore
and will forget they make these Macs like Minis and MacBook by august
So there's no more Sonoma, Mountain Lion or Panther by august, meaning no more updates.

we can use what ever OS we want and be happy!

 

[fisherking]

I just had an epiphany.....

since everyone will use those "vision pro goggle"s starting this march 2024
they won't hack or try to hack our computers anymore
and will forget they make these Macs like Minis and MacBook by august
So there's no more Sonoma, Mountain Lion or Panther by august, meaning no more updates.

we can use what ever OS we want and be happy!

yes, that will happen... 🙄

 

[yellowhelicopter]

For me on M1 machine it's virtually no difference between them. I'm always amazed or should I say perplexed when someone says they like Monterey/Ventura a lot and don't like Ventura/Sonoma at all. I simply can't see difference except new/additional features in newer OS. They all were stable for me.

 

[darkus]

For me on M1 machine it's virtually no difference between them. I'm always amazed or should I say perplexed when someone says they like Monterey/Ventura a lot and don't like Ventura/Sonoma at all. I simply can't see difference except new/additional features in newer OS. They all were stable for me.

Well one thing I would add is that I have a Mac Pro on Monterrey and then the studio on Sonoma attached to the same monitor via kvm switch. They have the same apps and wallpaper and settings. So that’s probably why the differences are more apparent to me as I use the two systems back to back like that often switching between them multiple times an hour.

 

[profdraper]

Just a rant. Monterey has been so stable and “just works” to the point I have been slowly moving everything from my pc world to macOS. With the false assumption that Mac had finally beaten windows.

Then I go ahead and get a newer Mac with Sonoma on it and it’s just… bad. Too much display/font/rendering issues. Window transparencies that come and go for no reason. Strange sleep/wake cycles. Not sure what to make of it all. Windows 11 is suddenly looking good again.

Luckily Monterey is perfectly usable and fine but when the day comes that it’s no longer supported, this would be a problem.

Just a rant is all

Totally agree. One one of the latest hates is that once again, Photos has lost all of MyAlbums (years and years of important family events and records for our elderly). Unconcionable really, that Apple is still doing this with out personal data in 2023 ... Otherwsie, this recent report is also relevant:

https://www.macintouch.com/post/37381/macos-sonoma-forced-installs/

 

[msephton]

In almost 20 years of switching to Mac, this is the first time I haven't upgraded macOS. Still in Monterey, and see no reason to upgrade to Sonoma yet. I don't see any benefits, not really interested in the new features this year. Everything's running perfect for me right now and I can't afford downtime and dealing with issues.

I hung on to Monterey for as long as I could, until last week, and the only thing that made me upgrade was building an iPad Pro on iOS 17. It was impossible for me to build apps into it using the old Xcode on Monterey. So at that point I updated.

Sonoma annoyances: the big fat text cursor (feels like a bug on non-retina screens), system settings (I suppose I'll get used to this), and that's it so far.

 

[profdraper]

I hung on to Monterey for as long as I could, until last week, and the only thing that made me upgrade was building an iPad Pro on iOS 17. It was impossible for me to build apps into it using the old Xcode on Monterey. So at that point I updated.

Sonoma annoyances: the big fat text cursor (feels like a bug on non-retina screens), system settings (I suppose I'll get used to this), and that's it so far.

A good reason to run dual boot systems. Carbon copy cloner has been with me for many years and has easily solved so many problems with Apple’s ‘upgrades’.

I tend to work the opposite way round to you: boot into Montery for work (pro audio & film), Sonoma for curiosity really. I only ‘go over’ when everything starts to work on the latest system, but Sonoma sure isn’t there yet, eg, Photos just ‘upgraded’ its database and lost all MyAlbums again, a real POS & especially when attacking so many years of fsmily content.

 

[msephton]

The way I figure it ~2.5 years is a good run, it would only be a matter of time before Safari is abandoned on Monterey and I'd choose to upgrade anyway. But your idea of VMs or Dual Boot are good, just not for me.

 

[chevyboy60013]

I am running macOS Sonoma on my unsupported late 2009 iMac with 8gb of ram and a spinner original hd, and have absolutely no complaints about it. In fact this was the first full week of using this iMac for work, and it worked perfect. It wasn't a fan of only 4gb of ram but after finding another 4gb in my junk drawer and finding out it had 4 ram slots, it is absolutely a pleasure to use. It is on 14.3.

 

[Tapper]

Well I think it's only a matter of months left for Monterey updates so I'll install Sonoma probably this autumn. Has anyone upgraded in the past year directly from Monterey to Sonoma and like to share their experience?

 

[auxbuss]

Well I think it's only a matter of months left for Monterey updates so I'll install Sonoma probably this autumn. Has anyone upgraded in the past year directly from Monterey to Sonoma and like to share their experience?

Yes, I have – on two machines It was painless in both cases – well, except for the abomination that is System Settings; I have no idea what they were thinking/smoking with that change.