things we've lost

[Adora]

the old "About This Mac" would show the OS's logo (the same one from the installer icon) like the Mojave desert for 10.14 or the Catalina cliffs for 10.15. they replaced it with the device icon in Ventura. I think until Mavericks or El Captain they just had the Apple logo in there ? I do not remember anymore as I wasn't looking there much.

Releases · 2009-Nissan-Cube/About-This-Hack

Discover your hardware on macOS with this simple, user-friendly hardware info app that retains the beloved design language of the classic 'About This Mac' interface, while gaining access to...

github.com

 

[Adora]

Front Row.
Still looking for a proper replacement if anyone has one, would love to use an Apple TV remote to control a super simplified interface to control music, movies, TV shows, and podcasts on my Mac.
The TV app that exists now on the Mac is just terrible.
It’s fine on iOS, iPadOS, and the Apple TV, but on the Mac it’s just barely functional.

GitHub - JacksonDam/FirstRow: A highly accurate Front Row recreation in SwiftUI for modern macOS.

A highly accurate Front Row recreation in SwiftUI for modern macOS. - JacksonDam/FirstRow

github.com

 

[maxoakland]

Things that I've lost/miss: app icons that aren't encased in a squircle.

Yes

Also, the green traffic light button on the window title bar that zoomed the window and nothing more; I'm annoyed at how it was "enhanced" a few macOS releases ago to be full screen by default and show a popup on hover with different window arrangement options.

Seriously. I rarely use full screen. I want the original functionality back. And it’s so awkward to have that little menu pop up when you hover over the green button. Just not a well done design on any level

Yes, I know that I can hold the Option key while clicking to zoom, but I would have much preferred if a new button was added on the right-hand side of the title bar for full screen/arrange window options.

Just like it was before they changed the green button. Makes a lot more sense

Mine is centered title bars. and also title bars. It looked so much better. Now the title bar and toolbar are all crammed into the same space, there’s tons of wasted space where you can’t put any tools so it gets more cramped, and the title text is on the left looking ugly like windows

 

[maxoakland]

Early OS X was gorgeous ☺️

Imagine how good Mac OS could look with today’s hi color retina screens and the power of today’s processors. But no, we just get half measures

 

[maxoakland]

Didn’t they source those from Sony who charged a pretty penny for the slot loading drives? It’s little stuff like this that endeared me to early Mac, just like the floppy drive the Mac used. Instead of a big dumb mechanical eject button like all the PCs, the Mac floppy had the cool/elegant way of ejecting the floppy. Felt futuristic lol.

Such a good observation. Makes me think about the way Tim Cook did everything possible to reduce costs and didn’t care if that impacted quality. Jobs cared so much about quality and it showed

I hope John Ternus has what it takes to fix everything that went wrong because of Tim Cook but I’m not holding my breath

 

[turbineseaplane]

I hope John Ternus has what it takes to fix everything that went wrong because of Tim Cook but I’m not holding my breath

Me either after I saw this today

"Apple wants to “figure out ways to raise margins and squeeze additional recurring revenue from the platform,” and that this effort is largely driven by new CEO John Ternus and existing services SVP Eddy Cue."

Apple might soon make App Store changes to raise revenue, increase margins: report - 9to5Mac

According to the latest edition of the Power On newsletter from Mark Gurman, Apple is reportedly considering making some changes...

9to5mac.com

 

[It’s always something]

Me either after I saw this today

"Apple wants to “figure out ways to raise margins and squeeze additional recurring revenue from the platform,” and that this effort is largely driven by new CEO John Ternus and existing services SVP Eddy Cue."

Apple might soon make App Store changes to raise revenue, increase margins: report - 9to5Mac

According to the latest edition of the Power On newsletter from Mark Gurman, Apple is reportedly considering making some changes...

9to5mac.com

It’s appalling that he seems to think they’re leaving money on the table in SERVICES!

 

[MacGizmo]

I just thought of a huge thing (at least it is for designers).

The ability to turn off/deactivate or completely delete fonts that ship with the system.

This ungodly "feature" of the modern OS of locking down the System fonts drives every designer I know batshat crazy. We don't want 100 Noto fonts showing up in our font menus, nor do we want another 100 foreign language fonts we'll never use. We also don't appreciate being force-fed versions of popular fonts like Futura, Helvetica, Avenir, Bodoni, and several others, which compete with full font sets of those fonts that we already own and use and cause never-ending conflicts.

I miss the days when I could at least deactivate them. I know a few of them can be deactivated today, but most cannot be and there's no real workaround.

 

[Skwoodge]

I just thought of a huge thing (at least it is for designers).

The ability to turn off/deactivate or completely delete fonts that ship with the system.

This ungodly "feature" of the modern OS of locking down the System fonts drives every designer I know batshat crazy. We don't want 100 Noto fonts showing up in our font menus, nor do we want another 100 foreign language fonts we'll never use. We also don't appreciate being force-fed versions of popular fonts like Futura, Helvetica, Avenir, Bodoni, and several others, which compete with full font sets of those fonts that we already own and use and cause never-ending conflicts.

I miss the days when I could at least deactivate them. I know a few of them can be deactivated today, but most cannot be and there's no real workaround.

You CAN deactivate or delete system fonts, but you have to disable SIP for this kind of control, which is a huge security risk. I agree that it's annoying that these are locked down by default.

 

[Harddrive]

I miss iTunes.

 

[leifp]

Aqua UI and skeuomorphism. I miss both
View attachment 2658983

Aqua yes, skeuomorphism substantially less so. The complexity of design that also lead to easily distinguishing between apps is missed a bit more but I definitely prefer the post-skeuomorphism era until they reduced to absurdity the simplification of representative images of apps and processes. “Change for change’s sake” leaves a bitter taste in my mouth

 

[droplink]

Ah yes...
What I miss the most is predictability!
I miss how neither the OS nor the Apps would ever surprise you with some random interface or behavior change after an "update".
If you set scroll bars to be always visible, then they would be always visible and always within the OS colors, size etc. Now it's a toss up if the various apps (and websites) are going to follow the set settings or they are going touse whatever feeling the programmer had that day.
Or how the Mac /iOS did not try to second guess which language you are writing in, or how you were attempting to format your text and so on.

Also I miss the old iTunes. I do not know if it perhaps was outdated in the back end, but the old iTunes did what it was supposed to do, which is allowed you to sort your music as you liked and synced to the iPhone (or iPod!) as it was supposed to. And it did not randomly assign portraits of musicians whether you wanted it or not.

Also, I miss the old Mac OS workflow of opening / closing windows and Mac OS remembering a window's size, icon layout and so on.

 

[chaosbunny]

3. Color labels. And I'm not talking about the dots. I mean, full length color labels for folders/files.

Omg I miss these so much. At least with Tahoe the folders get the color too, which makes it a litle bit better than the tiny dots. It could be full length color labels will come back at some point, and they'll be presented as some awesome new feature. 😊

I also miss the old system preferences. I currently use my 12" PowerBook G4 to play audiobooks for my 7.5 years old daughter to fall asleep to. Whenever I navigate to system preferences I'm amazed how straight forward, simple and easy to find things were.

Oh yes, and iTunes. 😊

 

[jjrtiger]

I miss when notifications would slide out of the title bar. This was so Apple.

Now we just the classic dialogue box (window).

 

[crococarbs]

I used and miss Dashboard. It was a nice place to have widgets.

I didn’t realize I’d started using LaunchPad as much as I had until Tahoe removed it. LaunchOS app does a pretty good job of providing similar functionality as LaunchPad with the benefit of additional settings/features.

I miss 32-bit compatibility for a few games and apps that have sentimental value. Would be cool to have an optional “32-bit subsystem for macOS” type of download.

I will miss Rosetta for mainly one little app. Not sure why it can’t just remain a sandboxed optional download in the future.

I miss iTunes. Everyone complained about bloat and other things at the time, but I believe a large amount of users would agree that the way in which Apple broke things up (especially Apple Music which in many ways is still inferior to iTunes) made things worse rather than better. Two non-music features that were cool was being able to archive iPhone app files so you could always have an older version on hand to load or revert to. Another feature was seeing all your pages of apps on your phone at one time and being able to drag and drop apps between pages and organize entire phone. It was so much more convenient (or efficient at least) than dragging things around with finger on the device.

About 32-bit compatibility for games, I first had an externa boot SSD with Mojave that I would fire up whenever I wanted to play a 32-bit game, but in the last couple of years I've been relying on CrossOver to run those games, I know it's not mac-native etc, but thanks to the wizards at CodeWeavers/CrossOver I can still run things like portal, HL1/2, etc. Their tech is now almost as good as Linux's Proton, thanks in part to Apple's Game Porting Toolkit. CrossOver is not free but worth every cent IMO.

 

[droplink]

A silly thing that had no real practical use (I think), but do you guys remember the sound effects that could be enabled for a brief period back in Mac OS 9?

You could have sound effects for everything, like moving the mouse cursor over a menubar and menu, opening and closing windows, moving windows, emptying trash and so on.
They were all in stereo too, so everything under the apple/file/edit menu would come from teh left speaker and opening/closing folders and discs from the right.

It was a fun but largely useless feature 🙂

 

[diggy33]

I miss the into video at first boot before configuring the system.

 

[Skylar.]

I miss the into video at first boot before configuring the system.

For anyone who wants to reminisce. 🙂

 

[Fishrrman]

aespana wrote:
"For me, iTunes. I'm thinking about getting an Intel Machine compatible with Mojave just for iTunes."

A modified copy of iTunes still works for me in both Tahoe AND Golden Gate (works in Sequoia, too).

I use it exclusively for the free streaming internet radio stations. Apple removed most of that in "Music" (no more list of all the stations available for the user to choose from).

Having saiid that, what I miss is the ability to turn off the "multiple menu flashes" when I make a menu choice. In old version of the System, the user could do this -- set it to 3 flashes, 2, or just 1, or... none at all.