My Dream: Is it Possible?

[darkgoob]

I have a dream.

A dream in which there is an operating system where no matter how many times you upgrade the OS, hardware drivers never break. Printers, audio interfaces, digital cameras, scanners—they all still work perfectly without needing driver update, because the operating system does something magical to make sure that stuff still works.

A dream in which there is an operating system where no matter how many times you upgrade the OS, all your software still works perfectly, just like the day you bought the computer and first installed it. Because the OS maker managed to make sure that stuff will always just work. You won't ever have to worry that an OS update breaks anything. Let the company with $233 billion in the bank worry about that for you, they can spare a few engineers after all. That's the benefit of buying products with a 41% markup.

A dream in which no operating system update ever removes any features that I loved, and always gives the ability to keep using a UI that looks the same.

A dream in which operating system updates do not introduce new features that cannot be turned off yet are useless for my purposes.

A dream in which you can always go back to older versions of operating systems and they'll just work.

A dream where there is more of a reason to update my Mac than "so that Notes will sync right" and "your current version is a hacker's paradise" and "you didn't need that clear toolbar chicklet anyway".

A dream where Dashboard widgets actually get updated. So that they're not the exact same dashboard widgets that they were when Dashboard debuted with OS X Tiger in 2005. The. Exact. Same.

A dream where .. oh never mind… dreams never come true… buy new plug-ins, buy new scanners, buy new audio interfaces, buy new everything. Heck just get rid of it all and buy all new stuff, then spend a million years converting every project you have to the new versions, not that anyone will ever listen to those projects anyway, why not just burn all of it and start fresh, with a clean slate eh? Who needs the past. Just get rid of it all.

 

[old-wiz]

Won't happen. A modern OS has literally millions of lines of code; you still need to keep a lot of it in order to work with other systems. For example, TCP/IP is a worldwide standard and you don't want to break it. It is not just Apple that has issues - every OS in the world has issues and new hardware shows up all the time. I spent most of my working life in various OS kernels and it can be a real bitch down there.

 

[BLUEDOG314]

So you don't want to have to update drivers? Once I had a printer purchased in 2001 that did not have drivers compatible with Yosemite and Windows 10. I spent ~150$ and bought a new printer, problem solved. To blame compatibility issues, especially with printers/scanners, on the company making the operating system is ridiculous. For digital camera like devices, a sub $20 multi card reader will do the trick, I use one that was purchased probably around the time I got my printer, it works without issue on El Cap and Windows 10.
Pro tip: Stop trying to use the disc that came with your 10 year old devices to install drivers on a modern OS. Cleanly uninstall old drivers and go to the manufacturer's site and download the latest. Also as much as it may pain some people, its time to move on from Quicken 04 and Office 01.

I will agree with you on features and UI. Being able to make OS X easily look like how it did back in the Tiger days would be nice. I also think it would be cool to somehow only install the features you want so as to have a light as possible install of an OS. These will probably never happen though.

 

[old-wiz]

So you don't want to have to update drivers?
.

i never said that.

 

[Fishrrman]

Dream on, goob ...

 

[Ebenezum]

OP: I agree with idea.

Unfortunately it would be almost impossible to execute in practice like previous posters have pointed out.

However I do think Apple could make serious improvements as far as bloat in OS X is concerned, 10.6 and previous versions had the ability to choose what extra components to install and I see no reason why Apple couldn't add such functionality back. I prefer OS that is as light and fast as possible.

Another question is has Apple any desire to implement such a feature and given the way last OS X have been going answer is probably no which is very unfortunate.

 

[robgendreau]

You can not upgrade, and all your stuff would work until the hardware dies.

You can upgrade, and adapt.

You can even mix and match, using different partitions to hold different system versions.

No need to dream.

 

[Strider64]

I think the dream is called a pencil and a piece of paper.

Seriously, Operating Systems have come a long way from DOS (I believe I used DOS 3.1 the most) and let me tell you getting a dot matrix printer to work properly was a chore upon itself. If my memory serves me right the LPT1 port was something you had to fool around with? Thankfully those days are long gone and that we have operating systems such as OS X and Windows that do a lot of those mundane things for us. I found that most upgrades don't put the kabash to most devices unless it's a specialized device.