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RIP OS X/macOS 10
- Thread starter timidpimpin
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consider MAC Os 11 a new beginning for the new PowerPC v2 arm Macs - I hate the word Apple silicon - JUST CALL IT A POWERPC V2 on steroids. PPC users rejoice - we won, intel lost. ARM is the future, PowerPC is the future through ARM.
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its PPC V2 on steroids - THINK DIFFERENT is back !
But it's not PowerPC at all. It's ARM. The only similarities the two have is they're both RISC, but that's where the similarities end.
It's understandable why you might think that, and you're certainly free to go on thinking it privately. In a spiritual sense, it's fair to say that 'Apple going to their own architecture is like PPC v2'.
That said, it isn't accurate in a technical sense. The two architectures aren't remotely compatible. ARM was made (albeit under a different name) and used in machines well before the original PPCs were manufactured, and it has bred true; there's no more PPC ancestry in it now than there was when it was introduced in 1985.
So, saying ARM is literally "PPC v2" is going to 1) irritate a lot of people who are sticklers for technical details, and 2) confuse newbies who don't know better into thinking that the two are somehow architecturally related. It might be advisable to consider using a different way of wording your feelings on this subject, especially on the PPC board where this is going to keep coming up.
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I don't love it, but then again I don't love Catalina, either (still on Mojave). Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy.
My impressions have been largely the same as yours. I actually appreciate a fresh try at the look and feel, but there are a few annoyances. The B I G S P A C E S between the menu bar icons on the right seems gratuitous to me, taking up more space and showing less info. I don’t really find the new icons objectionable, and think they did a solid job of reimagining classic Mac icons through the lens of an iOS user getting their first Mac.
I’m sure it’s all something we’ll get used to. We got used to the Mac OS growing silver everywhere with Platinum (I remember thinking Platinum was ugly as sin when 8 came out!), we got used to pinstripes everywhere, then pinstripes nowhere, the icons changing every few years, big shifts in the overall look and design language, even a shift from one OS to another with a few hardware platforms thrown into the mix.
It’s not the end of the story, just the end of this chapter and the beginning of the next! The last 36 years on the Good Ship Macintosh have been quite the wild ride, and it’s certainly not stopping now. I’m quite excited
@MultiFinder17 - Can you show a desktop screenshot with the Finder's File menu being open? I'm interested in seeing how much space it takes up on that 1366×768 desktop due to the larger spacing between entries.
The new icons bring back memories of that iOX theme from 2013. I guess now it's Apple's take on it.
Apart from the points already mentioned, I don't see the point of making the menu bar taller - it just takes up more valuable screen estate that way and not everyone has a crazily high-resolution monitor (I do but it still bothers me).
And can anyone check what the ProductName value in /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist says? On El Capitan it's still "Mac OS X".
The new icons bring back memories of that iOX theme from 2013. I guess now it's Apple's take on it.
Apart from the points already mentioned, I don't see the point of making the menu bar taller - it just takes up more valuable screen estate that way and not everyone has a crazily high-resolution monitor (I do but it still bothers me).
And can anyone check what the ProductName value in /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist says? On El Capitan it's still "Mac OS X".
Honestly, not as bad as I was fearing when they mentioned bigger spacing. Here's a comparison to the same menu on my iMac running 10.13. The text is a tad smaller, and there is a bit more space between each menu item. One thing I've noticed right off is that it seems much easier to read text on a non-retina screen than it was under Mojave, which is what I previously had on here.
Also, the menubar is 24 pixels tall as opposed to 22 in older versions.
It ID's itself as Mac OS X 10.16
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@MultiFinder17 - Big thanks for that, it's not as bad as I thought indeed.
I think the size differences look more extreme than they are because in a lot of places they seem to have shrunk the text size to increase the spacing around it. I’m glad they did that instead of keeping it the same size and adding additional padding around text the same size!
Check out the menu bar comparison - even though it’s two pixels taller, the text on it is notably smaller than the version from 10.13. It’s an interesting choice. I’d be curious to see a screenshot from a Mac with a lot more breathing room and from a retina Mac to see if it’s handled any differently. As of right now, though, this little 2015 is the only officially supported Mac that I own 😬
I think the new OS number is more in regard to it no longer being a purely computer OS. Sure... it's still macOS, but it's going more the way of an iOS/macOS hybrid. It's not for me. I think I will use High Sierra as long as I possibly can, and then just keep my older Macs around for nostalgia. Thank goodness I'm comfortable in Linux. I also use Windows 10 a bit now, but only for gaming and web browsing.
ARM architecture family - Wikipedia
Oddly enough, when you read about the history of the ARM architecture, you realize how much of it was deeply influenced by the design of the 6502 processor that powered the Apple ][. ARM is the closest modern equivalent to that processor. I like think of this in a more poetic way of Apple going deep into its roots although I know that's really not the case.
I hope you are right. Anyway it will be what it will be. We were still in OS X when 2020 MBA landed in my house and upon being plugged in made that little chirp of a sound like when you plug in an iPad. I like my new laptop gear but that sound felt like a bad omen. OS 11's first outing in that keynote --no matter how sketchy-- doesn't make me feel particularly better even if I liked the keynote much more than I had thought I would.
I'm too old to switch back though, so I'll still be playing in Apple's garden.... and trying to wear out their feedback button on any more noticeable drift to iOS in the 11 series of MacOS, probably. Heh, when I lately lamented the loss of dashboard in Catalina, I wasn't signaling willingness to settle for some iOS-like handling of widgets in a MacOS. But widgets at least getting some mention is a plus. I hope they fix up the darn Mail app which in Catalina is just gauche.
I just realized another ploy that this iOS-ifying of MacOS May bring: more sales of MacBooks and desktops.
Remember the old theory that iPods and iPhone would attract buyers to Macs? It took years, but it was evidently happening.
Now, a PC owner coming from an iPhone or iPad to Mac will see something familiar with the capabilities of a PC but the appearance and feel of an iPad.
It all comes with the integration of MacOS and iOS and ipadOS working in harmony for a seamless experience.
Remember the old theory that iPods and iPhone would attract buyers to Macs? It took years, but it was evidently happening.
Now, a PC owner coming from an iPhone or iPad to Mac will see something familiar with the capabilities of a PC but the appearance and feel of an iPad.
It all comes with the integration of MacOS and iOS and ipadOS working in harmony for a seamless experience.
ARM architecture family - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Oddly enough, when you read about the history of the ARM architecture, you realize how much of it was deeply influenced by the design of the 6502 processor that powered the Apple ][. ARM is the closest modern equivalent to that processor. I like think of this in a more poetic way of Apple going deep into its roots although I know that's really not the case.
Yes, it's not too surprising when you look at where ARM started off. The BBC Model B, made by Acorn, is painfully unrecognized and underappreciated outside of the UK and parts of Europe. Not only was it the computer many British schoolchildren in the 80s started off on to become the first truly tech literate generation, it was the computer ARM was born out of. Two of the main designers, Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson, after the release of the Beeb as it's lovingly known, went on a trip through America where they learned of a Berkeley student group, if I remember correctly, working with RISC processor design. They were inspired to experiment with it, and most of the instruction set was written in codes of BBC BASIC. When initial experimentation gave promising results, especially when it came to low power consumption, the green light was given by Acorn co-founder and businessman Hermann Hauser, to further develop it.
Really, Acorn did what the rest of the industry wasn't doing until later, bringing RISC to consumer level computers. The rest of the industry saved it for mostly server and heavy workstation grade equipment. It's also interesting to note that really the catalyst for ARM becoming a popular portable option, was none other than Apple. They chose ARM as the processor for the Newton, which as part of the agreement had Hauser oversee a spin off of ARM (as Apple did not want to be seen working with a competitor), and have Apple have a big stake in it.
It's perhaps one of the longest lasting legacies of Sculley's Apple, as now ARM is bigger than ever, and Apple is now reaping the rewards of heavily investing in ARM all those years ago. Also, I do find it an endearing thought that the Newton eMate 300 will no longer be Apple's one and only ARM-based laptop, even if it wasn't a Mac.
It's a bit like James Burke's Connections, in a way. The BBC Micro came about because the UK government wanted a national computer literacy programme, and they asked the BBC to pick a new microcomputer and make a television show that featured it - Clive Sinclair pushed hard for the ZX Spectrum and according to this article the BBC actually chose the Grundy Newbrain(!) but the company went bust:
Acorn was founded by a couple of former Sinclair employees who couldn't stand his management style - I have nothing against Clive Sinclair, but he was famously single-minded. There's a bizarre parallel universe in which the BBC picked the Sinclair Spectrum, Acorn vanished into obscurity, and our mobile phones all use MIPS or something by Transmeta, or something equally odd. Or we still carry around brick-like phones.
PowerPC was really an independent development of IBM's existing RISC technology, so I assume in this parallel universe Apple's history would have been much the same as it is up until the introduction of the iPhone... minus the Newton, of course, which was also ARM-powered.
I've always felt a bit sorry for the BBC Micro. It was very powerful for an 8-bit machine - there was even a version with 512kb of memory and an 80186 co-processor that could run PC software - and despite having a small market share outside education it gave the world a handful of classic games. But it was very expensive, slightly later to market than the Spectrum and C64, and after winning the BBC contract Acorn concentrated on the education market.
And alas by the time the Archimedes came along schools and colleges were keen to standardise on PCs, because that was what people used at work. My college had a room full of Mac Classics and a room full of awful RM Nimbus PC-compatibles running Windows 2, and nothing by Acorn.
Acorn was founded by a couple of former Sinclair employees who couldn't stand his management style - I have nothing against Clive Sinclair, but he was famously single-minded. There's a bizarre parallel universe in which the BBC picked the Sinclair Spectrum, Acorn vanished into obscurity, and our mobile phones all use MIPS or something by Transmeta, or something equally odd. Or we still carry around brick-like phones.
PowerPC was really an independent development of IBM's existing RISC technology, so I assume in this parallel universe Apple's history would have been much the same as it is up until the introduction of the iPhone... minus the Newton, of course, which was also ARM-powered.
I've always felt a bit sorry for the BBC Micro. It was very powerful for an 8-bit machine - there was even a version with 512kb of memory and an 80186 co-processor that could run PC software - and despite having a small market share outside education it gave the world a handful of classic games. But it was very expensive, slightly later to market than the Spectrum and C64, and after winning the BBC contract Acorn concentrated on the education market.
And alas by the time the Archimedes came along schools and colleges were keen to standardise on PCs, because that was what people used at work. My college had a room full of Mac Classics and a room full of awful RM Nimbus PC-compatibles running Windows 2, and nothing by Acorn.
There's also technically a "parallel universe" where IBM picked their inhouse IBM 801 RISC processor and accompanying OS for the IBM 5150, and the far reach of x86 never happened. Although the far reach of the PC wouldn't have either, as the reason that happened is because PCs became easy to clone, and Microsoft had the rights to supply MS-DOS to competitors of IBM. With an in-house IBM chip, that'd have never happened. Who knows what computer line would have become the dominant force? Or maybe the market would be more fragmented, like it was in the 80s computer boom? Who knows, it's interesting to theorize about.
This is getting very interesting already:
forums.macrumors.com
macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread
This thread will be used to discuss advancements in getting macOS 11.0 Big Sur running on unsupported Macs. --- Compatibility List: --- FAQ: Q: What does unsupported mean for my old Mac? A: Three problems: Apple locks you out from running the stock installer of Big Sur and as...
forums.macrumors.com
It's possible. If the DTK hardware has been slapped together so quickly -- with shortcuts taken in the interest of time -- that someone may be able to get it walking on a non-Apple ARM platform. But the odds of macOS ARM ever running on unapproved hardware seem like basically nil to me. The macOS ARM machines are going to be bespoke labyrinths of Apple proprietary and undocumented chipsets and support hardware that there's never going to be unapproved hardware that even remotely resembles it. From the specialized Apple CPU down to the T2 or T3 Secure Enclave, I can't see how anyone will be able to shoehorn the software onto some vanilla ARM chipset.
I just don't see how this is a realistic expectation.
So, fun fact...I linked it to my FF Sync account, which does 2FA by emailing you a code. The email I received reported a new sign in from "OS X 10.0"
How many days - after the DTKs start shipping - until...
a) macOS for ARM is leaked
and subsequently
b) running on unapproved hardware?
The clock is ticking.
Oh yeah, I'm totally psyched for running the leaked beta of OS X 10.16 Big Sur on my RCA Galileo Pro tablet with its 1.3 Ghz MTK 8127 SoC.
(Good God, I'm betting someone like dosdude1 or LightBulbFun will figure out a way to run the leaked 10.16 beta on some random Chinese white-box ARM tablet from 2012.)