[Udo]

I've been a Mac-only user for about 15 years now, and I'm teetering on the edge of abandoning the platform. A lot of technically-minded people I know are considering the same. The hardware is outdated, underperforming, and overpriced - and what's worse is Macs are now completely user-unservicable. So I'm weary when I read about an OS update nowadays (it used to be I was excited), because OS X has been getting slower and more tedious to work with for a long time now.

Metal: it's good that Metal exists, even though Apple has no ambitions to introduce performant or even recent graphics adapters into its PC products. Some people may even have wished for Metal adoption beyond Apple, but that's not happening. What's conspicuously missing from Sierra is Vulkan support, so gaming on the Mac is basically a prohibitively walled garden that can only be tackled economically by the big graphics engines (which have mostly ignored the platform) and pre-existing iOS developers.

Swift 3 and Apple Pay: this should not be an OS feature, or at least one that is featured as spots #2 and #3 on the bullet point list.

Picture in picture: in a better world, this would be a window management feature, but OS X is reducing its windowing capabilities in anticipation of a full merge with iOS, it seems. So this is going to be a specialized video component feature instead. Even on the screenshot they chose to show this off with, it's clear this is drastically worse than just lining up non-fullscreen windows side-by-side.

[pducks32]

"..feature merge with iOS"

macOS is not becoming iOS ever, unless you mean apps being migrated over which I also find very hard to believe.

[Udo]

> macOS is not becoming iOS ever

I wish I had your confidence, but even if they keep the Mac line and name, the only UI improvements they have been championing lately are tablet-mode activities.

[pducks32]

Sure I'll give you that the design is merging, but they are a single company; wouldn't you expect the design to merge. And I—as a software developer—would appreciate more platform convergence. (I'm looking at you SCNLayer). Though I am completely with you when it comes to feature stuff. I know their engineers work very hard but I wish they would spend time looking at some of their interface changes and really work extra hard to help non-techies "get" them. They seem to be doing that on iOS 10.

[Udo]

> wouldn't you expect the design to merge

It depends on what we're talking about. I would expect UI design elements to merge where the capabilities of devices are converging. That's not happening from the desktop since Apple is against desktop touch input; if anything the mobile side should be moving closer to desktop, but that's not happening either. I would also expect UI designs to be merging where innovation is concerned, say if they invested in better desktop/window manager UI, but in actuality all that is happening is the backporting of iOS ideas that are all centered on the fullscreen mode.

> I wish they would spend time looking at some of their interface changes and really work extra hard to help non-techies "get" them

In my experience that's not really a pain point. I have seen several of my clients adopt an OS X-only landscape in their offices (mostly non-technical people). I feel Apple is actually making heavy inroads in office and home use, but for many reasons is losing the support of technically-minded people who - at the risk of sounding self-absorbed - are early warning indicators that the base of the platform is withering significantly.

[pducks32]

Well I think Apple made certain decisions when they started OS X all those years ago that they must now stick to. Like the http2 discussion from the other day. That will keep technically-minded people around. I still believe that macOS is the best machine for me to develop on. I see no close competitor for my work.

And—look—the way the desktop works is not going to be changing drastically any time soon. Their is not much to innovate on, so the obvious next step is to perfect every single interaction and to fine tune every single component of macOS (or Windows or any other OS) to make it faultless. That will keep me and many others around. (And keep trying to innovate and revolutionize in the backroom)

[Udo]

> I still believe that macOS is the best machine for me to develop on.

I'm inclined to agree, but we're starting to hit the zone where I feel I'm using a tool of questionable qualities because of lock-in and the absence of sane competitors. The Unreal Engine IDE runs at 10 fps on my current-gen iMac, an expensive machine based on 2010's hardware and no upgradeable parts that takes minutes to boot up into an increasingly DRM-plagued OS where all the innovation goes into iOS-like features I don't use.

> so the obvious next step is to perfect every single interaction and to fine tune every single component of macOS [...] to make it faultless

I disagree vehemently that this is what's going on. If that was the "problem", my (software) complaints would not exist.

[pducks32]

Udo, that's fair. I agree. I work with Vulkan and Metal all day and sometimes I do wish things were quicker and I had more control over where resources get allocated.

I imagine like Iron Man where he can divert resources to his weapons from his thrusters and stuff. They do keep adding things that need to run when I wish I could selectively turn some things off.

[berberous]

PiP looks great. There's nothing stopping you from opening two browser windows side by side, but that's a huge pain. I don't want all the various other parts of the webpage showing, or to have to resize the window manually to just show the video. I just want to pop-out the video only. I love the feature on my iPad. I think when you try it, you may grow to appreciate it.

[Udo]

> PiP looks great.

For me at least, there is no way to look at that screenshot of a space-wasting yet partially occluded fullscreen app with an awkwardly-placed naked video component on top of it and say it "looks great".

> windows side by side, but that's a huge pain

Window positioning on OS X is a huge pain because literally no work has been done on this by Apple for many years now. Other OSes all have window snapping and other conveniences, but on OS X I need 3rd-party software for that. What's more is that PiP is a barely adequate specialized component from iOS. The more generalized desktop element would instead have allowed to "PiP" any window content I choose by essentially being an always-on-top decorator-less partial window. But the way they are presenting it is not going to be empowering for desktop users in any way. It's a thoughtlessly ported component from the more unpleasant corners of the Youtube iOS app.

[tmikaeld]

There is window snapping in macOS, websearch for Sierra window snapping.

[eDameXxX]

Very similiar feature in Opera desktop since 4 month now [1]. It works pretty good on Windows, Mac and Linux.

[1] http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/04/opera-beta-update...