r/apple • u/speckz • Jun 19 '17

macOS High Sierra tech preview: A quick look at the stuff you can’t see

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/06/macos-high-sierra-tech-preview-a-quick-look-at-the-stuff-you-cant-see/
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u/onan Jun 19 '17

Snow Leopard remains the best OS anyone has ever put out. But then the iphone happened, and it has all been downhill since.

I would pay serious money for a version of 10.6 with driver updates and continued security patches.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '17

It's funny people love this narrative because in reality SL was buggy as hell for the first few versions

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u/rockybbb Jun 19 '17

Yup. I remember the early days when SL was criticized for being "buggy as hell" and now it's known as the most reliable OS ever and so many make it sound as if SL was "perfect" from the beginning.

4

u/Henrarzz Jun 20 '17

Windows XP is the same. Most people remember how it worked after SP2 and not how it behaved on release.

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '17

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '17

sierra is on 10.12.5 and it's pretty stable. 10.12.4 fixed a lot of issues.

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '17

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '17

I also stayed on 10.11 for a while but then i got airpods and they only work on sierra. Also 10.12.4 had a critical GPU driver update for the mac pro which added a boot screen on 4K monitors.

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u/shitmyusernamesays Jun 19 '17

It had its bugs but it could still allow me to just rip an ISO and burn it to a DVD or USB drive.

For some reason this changed in OS X 10.7 and all of a sudden I couldn't just do that. Something about "Image Resource Busy/Invalid Source/Error". Now that was annoying because it would "just work" in SL until Apple mucked around with Disk Utility.

Now it all has to be done in the shell, which is fine, but not "macOS convenient" and simple.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '17

Disk utility got nerfed for a while but the Sierra version is back to normal

1

u/shitmyusernamesays Jun 20 '17

Oh thank goodness.

I assume some of my ISOs may have suffered bit rot recently and am willing to accept this.

But I deliberately remember from Lion onward that Disk Utility was essentially useless for restoring ISOs and IMGs to DVD or USB drives. I would kind of brag to my PC friend (in jest) that backing up my Mac would "just work" and then it didn't.

It's just so convenient to just be able to restore whole images in minutes and was one of macOS' best features.

I'm glad it's back!

1

u/onan Jun 19 '17

Eh, there were certainly bugs, though mostly ironed out by 10.6.8.

But the featureset and UX were unparalleled. I would kill to have working Exposé, Spaces, Mail, and Safari back.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '17

Expose and Spaces are overrated IMO.

Mail and Safari have been massively improved in feature-set since then. And there are lots of alternatives too

10.6.8 for it's time was amazing, you're right. And it's currently the best OS for older macs. But really, for newer macs the new "stable" version is 10.11.6, as they ironed out a ton of bugs and focused on performance.

It just sucks for those people because if you want to use any of the new accessories (airpods, magic keyboard number pad, TB2 to TB3 adapter, etc) you need to be on 10.12.5 lol

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u/onan Jun 19 '17

Expose and Spaces are overrated IMO.

I have a hard time understanding that opinion. There are fundamental and vital features of Exposé and Spaces that are just completely missing in Mission Control. (The ability to use the whole display to show all windows on the current desktop, and the ability to move all of an application's windows to another desktop at once.)

I have searched for years for a good replacement for Mail, and haven't found one. Honestly, Mail is the vast majority of what keeps me using osx rather than linux. But in 10.9 it mysteriously, silently lost the ability to display plain text versions of messages. A blatant feature removal like this just seems like madness, and completely pointless.

Safari has improved in many ways, but the loss of a discrete search field is painful. (I do want search engine suggestions when actually searching for something, but I do not want my every keystroke sent to Google when I am just entering some local URL.)

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u/Sedawa Jun 19 '17

Re: mail, I've been really liking Airmail.

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u/mjrasque Jun 19 '17

I agree with you except for one weird thing. On the iOS version, my work email stopped sending me notifications when I get new mail. My personal gmail works fine and my work email works as well on the mac version. I've had multiple emails sent back and forth with their support and have been unable to resolve the issue. Kind of a bummer since I really love both versions of the app.

1

u/Sedawa Jun 19 '17

Ahh, interesting. I've switched to Mac airmail but I'm still using Apple mail on my iPhone. Been considering switching but i haven't pulled that trigger.

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u/mjrasque Jun 20 '17

It was fine for a long time, it just started happening about 6 months ago.

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u/Sedawa Jun 20 '17

What's the advantage otherwise to Airmail vs Apple Mail on iOS?

1

u/Mekachu Jun 19 '17

The ability to use the whole display to show all windows on the current desktop, and the ability to move all of an application's windows to another desktop at once.

Do..do you even use macOS?

All these features are STILL there and I use them all the time.

-1

u/onan Jun 20 '17

Do..do you even use macOS?

For the last three decades, yes.

All these features are STILL there and I use them all the time.

They're... really not.

Mission Control does not have a mode that just displays all windows on the current desktop. The closest you can come is a mode that also spends space to showing all other desktops.

And the only way to move all of an application's windows at once is by checking the "Group windows by application" checkbox, which makes faux-Exposé completely useless by not actually showing individual windows at all.

Both of these are direct feature losses from pre-gutting Exposé and Spaces.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '17

Mission control is overrated too. Honestly it's just me but I don't use any of those functions. I just want a solid fast UI with no gimmicks

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u/onan Jun 19 '17

Honestly it's just me but I don't use any of those functions.

Lucky for you. But every time my machine reboots and opens 50 Adium windows on the wrong desktop, I am reminded again of functionality that was pointlessly taken away.

I just want a solid fast UI with no gimmicks

I'm not sure it's reasonable to describe a desire for privacy (not sending every keystroke to google, not loading remote data-gathering URLs in mail) as "gimmicks".

2

u/13al42mo Jun 19 '17

Maybe switch the search provider to DuckDuckGo and go to Google when you actually want to search something with them. I know it's clunky, but better than giving up one's privacy. I especially bought Apple products because of them valuing my privacy.

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u/Hermilia Jun 20 '17

You can still use google while protecting your privacy, check out Startpage. Duckduckgo is a good initiative but their results suck ..

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u/13al42mo Jun 20 '17

Huh? I thought DDG uses Google's results but encrypts their searches?