[HN Gopher] Scary Hasty
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       Scary Hasty
        
       Author : GavinAnderegg
       Score  : 72 points
       Date   : 2023-11-12 12:35 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (eclecticlight.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (eclecticlight.co)
        
       | aidos wrote:
       | I'm going to put whatever did I or didn't happen here aside and
       | marvel for a moment at how complicated it must be to coordinate
       | the logistics behind managing release schedules of both hardware
       | and software and preinstalling OSs on all these machines.
        
       | GavinAnderegg wrote:
       | Apple's hardware -- especially the M-series processors -- has
       | been excellent lately. On the software side, it feels to me like
       | there's been a large falloff in quality. This story is a good
       | example of that, and I'd really love if we could get a release of
       | macOS that focuses on bug fixes.
        
         | selimnairb wrote:
         | Craig Ferengi is too busy combing his hair. Or he is too much
         | of a lightweight to convince Tim Cook that software quality,
         | not quantity needs to be more of a focus.
        
           | helf wrote:
           | Ferengi.. lol that made me chuckle.
        
           | karmakaze wrote:
           | Had to look that one up: "Craig Federighi"
        
           | thowaway91234 wrote:
           | > Craig Ferengi is too busy massaging his own ears
           | 
           | FTFY
        
         | danieldk wrote:
         | I have seen this kind of comment on the web since I switched to
         | macOS in 2007. There were some very bad years, when Apple
         | apparently thought that iPad was the future of computing. But
         | the all the Apple Silicon releases have been rock-solid for me.
         | 
         | Seems like there were some missteps with introducing the M3,
         | but macOS on existing hardware has been pretty good for me.
         | 
         | (Before someone starts about Snow Leopard, the early Snow
         | Leopard releases were also pretty buggy, only near the end of
         | the release cycle did it get good.)
        
           | mlyle wrote:
           | Rock-solid is a little far-- I've not been free of weirdness
           | on M1 Max. But overall I agree-- things feel like they've
           | been better than the vast majority of my tenure on MacOS
           | ("X", all the way back to the original "Mac OS X Server" in
           | 1999).
           | 
           | I don't update to new major releases immediately if I can
           | help it, though.
        
           | lapcat wrote:
           | > Before someone starts about Snow Leopard, the early Snow
           | Leopard releases were also pretty buggy, only near the end of
           | the release cycle did it get good.
           | 
           | This is one of the most misunderstood things about software
           | releases. It's an iron law: major software updates always
           | introduce more bugs than they fix. What you need is a lot of
           | minor bug fix updates between the major updates, and Snow
           | Leopard had about 2 years of bug fixes releases. What people
           | remember fondly is not Mac OS X 10.6.0 but rather 10.6.8
           | v1.1.
           | 
           | Apple's annual major release schedule is just too rapid to
           | leave any time to fix bugs. They need to go back to 2 years
           | or more between major releases.
        
           | troupo wrote:
           | > but macOS on existing hardware has been pretty good for me.
           | 
           | If you don't count all the shitty Catalyst and Swift UI
           | _first party_ apps. If you don 't count things like even
           | switching keyboard layouts is a second-long animation that
           | swallows keystrokes. If you don't count things like this:
           | https://twitter.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1707684940337283563
           | or this: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/05/12/the-apple-
           | services-experi... or this:
           | https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/12/27/ventura-issues/ or...
        
             | dave4420 wrote:
             | Another one: Switching between full screen windows doesn't
             | swallow keystrokes as such, but sends them to the window
             | you're switching away from, instead of to the window you're
             | switching to, while the animation completes. Highly
             | annoying.
        
           | kraig911 wrote:
           | This I think toes up to that saying - we've always done
           | things this way so we'll continue to, even since OS X came
           | out. These yearly releases are kind of drab for OS X I think.
           | I want a huge focus on integration between my devices, I wish
           | they'd go all in in icloud and make it where my stuff is just
           | whatever device i'm on. Almost like how good they've made
           | Bluetooth work on my airpod pro's work on whatever device I'm
           | using.
        
             | ed wrote:
             | i don't expect much investment in iCloud since the trend
             | (like it or not) is for cloud services to manage our data
             | instead
        
       | troupo wrote:
       | There's a tweet exemplifies the state of Apple software, and
       | Apple's attention to it:
       | https://twitter.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1707684940337283563
        
       | dcow wrote:
       | Did it annoy anybody else that during the whole event they
       | compared M3 to M1 as if M2 didn't exist? Guess they didn't think
       | 5-10% improvement would market well? But does anybody in their
       | target audience even care or do they just buy the new hardware
       | anyway?
        
         | dave4420 wrote:
         | Means their target audience includes people who own M1 Macs,
         | but doesn't include people who own M2 macs?
         | 
         | (Although I don't think most M1 owners will be interested in
         | upgrading yet. Maybe they should just compare to Intel chips.)
        
           | macintux wrote:
           | Especially since the M2 generation was very recent. Not much
           | of a time gap.
        
         | Schiendelman wrote:
         | If anything this is recognition that they know their customers
         | don't feel the need to upgrade every year! It's refreshing.
        
       | raspasov wrote:
       | Maybe I've been lucky but I haven't noticed a deterioration of
       | software quality in MacOS. Things have been stable, perhaps even
       | improved overall. Also the UI overall is extremely snappy, but
       | likely that's because of the M-series architectures.
       | 
       | I recall 10 years ago (circa 2012) I'd purchase a brand new
       | MacBook Pro and things would have a small but frequent lag in
       | many UI across the OS. And no, not only during initial sync. It
       | would be a normal part of the "experience".
       | 
       | Haven't noticed any such thing especially with M-series in recent
       | years.
        
         | msoad wrote:
         | Same! I don't get why there are so many complains about macOS?
         | It works very well for me; as a programmer or as a simple media
         | consumer user. In fact I switched to Safari for web browsing a
         | few years ago and have not looked back. I use Chrome only for
         | debugging web apps.
        
           | sneak wrote:
           | It's because macOS used to be made with an inordinate (and I
           | cannot emphasize this enough) amount of care for the user
           | experience for the sake of the user experience.
           | 
           | Now that Apple has an existential crisis for growth and has
           | become a services company, almost all Apple effort in
           | software is aimed at maximizing recurring revenue and
           | subscriptions. The UX for fitness, iCloud, IAPs, Apple TV,
           | Arcade, Apple Pay, etc is top notch, because it makes them
           | more money on an ongoing basis.
           | 
           | The Finder, not so much.
           | 
           | Also, a lot of the people who used to care deeply on a
           | philosophical level about the UX of a computer for its own
           | sake have either retired or moved on to other companies.
           | Apple is not the same culture as it was fifteen years ago. A
           | lot of younger people that work there don't understand the
           | Apple-ness of the Jobs era, and the products speak more to
           | DJI than vegan counterculture hippies.
           | 
           | There is also obviously a lot of product-manager-career-
           | driven-design going on, same as any other hip modern tech
           | company in no danger of going out of business (cf Slack,
           | Dropbox, etc).
           | 
           | Apple was, in many ways, an outgrowth of the obsessive nature
           | of Jobs. He's gone and it is perfectly natural that Apple
           | would regress toward the mean of any well funded hip tech
           | company.
        
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