[phkahler]

On a more practical note, why would you want to have seconds on the clock? I find that most of the time I don't want to know the time to a precision of better than 5 minutes. That may just be me, but when someone asks the time and I read it off my phone as 3:56 it really bothers me and sometimes I convert that to 5-to-4 just to avoid what in most cases is arbitrary extra precision. Sure there are times when minutes count, and there are occasions when I want to time something to the second, but from a UI perspective those are not common use cases that warrant screen real estate for extra digits especially back then.

[serf]

>On a more practical note, why would you want to have seconds on the clock?

for timing things.

For example, it's super easy to check a heart rate if you don't need to provide timing or rhythm.

Or waiting on ramen , or steeping tea. Lots of reasons.

[Coincoin]

Just click on the clock, it will pop a window with seconds in it.

[kk_cz]

For anyone running Win95 wondering why this doesn't work: You need to double-click, guys.

[kakarot]

It depends on how often you find yourself timing things at that level of fidelity. For me it's quite often and having seconds always displayed really helps out. Especially when developing software and checking things like compile times, load times, etc

[tedunangst]

If you find yourself measuring compile times frequently, I think you'll be much happier with a command that actually times the operation than trying to eyeball it from the status bar. I can't imagine staring at a compilation and being unable to look away lest I miss the finish.

[kakarot]

Well it's more out of curiosity and I don't specifically measure compile times often. I develop in a variety of domains and for some things a fuzzy count of how many seconds something takes is useful. If keeping track of things with finer grained tools is required, that's fine. Whichever is the most productive for the given problem.

[danneu]

That doesn't work when you need to be clicking around and focusing other windows while keeping time.

[anonred]

On macOS, it’s a useful indicator of when the system has frozen/kernel panic, which unfortunately happens far too often.

[throwaway2016a]

You must have really bad luck with Macs.

As a MacOS user for seven years I can't say I've ever had that issue. Certainly not enough to need the seconds to be an indicator. I've had my system completely lock up maybe four times and those times my mouse refusing to move was enough of an indicator.

Heck, right now it's been two and a half months since I've rebooted... and probably a year since I've rebooted because it froze.

I'm not an Apple fan boy either. In fact my next computer will probably be Linux. But I have to admin the last three Macs I have owned have been great computers.

[throwaway32617]

You must not work in an organization that insists on installing security software for you. If I have >2w uptime on my machine I generally have to restart for some reason or other. It's like people have forgotten that computers can and should have more uptime than that.

A faulty update from one of our security software vendors caused a once-per-hour kernel panic and forced reboot for a day or two. It was really nice.

(Obviously none of this is the fault of OSX or Apple but I would kill for 2.5m of uptime on my work laptop).

[eropple]

I feel you there. It got to the point at one gig where engineering folks--who were given root on their preconfigured laptops--often spent their first day figuring out how to kill and extricate Sophos from their machines. For developers who weren't seasoned jerks, it could be a real challenge until somebody took pity on them and helped them find single-user mode, yank out the kexts, and manually delete everything. (The happy .pkg BOMs helped out, too!)

Ordinarily I wouldn't do this and just punch out on a gig (because seriously, it's that annoying and that effectively-useless), but we were a recently-acquired startup subsidiary, so we were also our own IT shop--the CTO actively approved.

[i336_]

Is it still possible to do this kind of thing on the most recent macOS? I recall the issue with the 'git' binary not being modifiable, even with sudo, unless you mounted the macOS filesystem under Linux and made the changes from there.

[eropple]

You can disable rootless via the recovery partition.

[eridius]

My Macs regularly go for 30-60 days before I restart them, and when I do restart, it's not because the computer is misbehaving.

[rabbidruster]

Do you use an external display? Mine crashes about once a week after I've unplugged it from the thunderbolt display

[throwaway2016a]

I switch between two external displays at work then go home and plug the computer into a single external display.

Worst case, sometimes the layout of my windows gets messed up and I have to move them around to get back where I want them to be.

The only major issue I've had is sometimes bluetooth gets confused and it takes me a few minutes to get my track pad connected when I switch between home and work. (by a few I mean almost half an hour :( )

[Larrikin]

My Bluetooth mouse has about a 50 percent chance of being recognized when my laptop is coming out of sleep.

My workaround has been to just open the Bluetooth panel via Alfred and so long as Bluetooth has not totally shit the bed (Bluetooth has turned itself off and the Turn On button does nothing) my mouse is connected in less than 30 seconds, often times under 10.

[mschuster91]

> Worst case, sometimes the layout of my windows gets messed up and I have to move them around to get back where I want them to be.

Hyperswitch combined with SizeUp works wonders in this case (you use Hyperswitch to directly target individual windows and SizeUp to properly full-screen them).

Why Apple still doesn't have proper keyboard-only management for windows (Cmd-tab only allows to select the foreground app, not individual windows of it, and what Apple calls "fullscreen" is an abomination) is way beyond my understanding.

[stefco_]

> Apple still doesn't have proper keyboard-only management for windows

False. Cmd-~ will switch windows within an app. Control-<Left> and Control-<Right> will move left and right between spaces (including fullscreen apps). I use these hundreds of times a day.

I do wish we had more robust features, like keyboard-based window placement/resize. As far as I can tell, third-party tools are the only way to enable that. But I find the above perfectly adequate for 90% of what I do.

[megablast]

> SizeUp to properly full-screen them

Ew.

[sitharus]

I use two external monitors on a pre-touchback mbp and disconnect multiple times a week and never have issues, other than my Windows vm getting confused about which display is high dpi.

What mac do you use? Some of them have issues.

[Spooky23]

I used to have a lot of problems with my imac, but that was more a function of have extremely low hard disk space and apps that don't behave well when that happens.

Also many mysterious crashes can be RAM problems.

[valuearb]

I returned to the Mac 7 years ago, and work on one every day (development, Xcode compiles, run web server, WebStorm, business stuff like numbers/pages, etc). Not sure I ever remember having a kernel panic.

[JoshTriplett]

Cursor movement works for that. Or if the system freezes in a way that allows the hardware cursor to keep working, then move the cursor over something that would normally react to it.

[draw_down]

I mean, come on. It's a clock! Surely seconds are relevant.

I understand that everyone might not want to see them, but this isn't a great argument for leaving off a feature that is surely useful in other circumstances. The article is interesting, but I don't think these sort of technical explanations Chen gets into should be accepted as valid reasons to leave out a feature. They're interesting in context, but we should all be able to recognize that showing seconds is a good feature for a clock. Even the team in question would have left the feature in if it had performed OK at the time, which indicates they agreed with its utility.

[tedunangst]

Lots of broken clocks in my house... Alarm clock, microwave, stove, wall, ... none of them show seconds.

[mikeash]

Seems like you've answered your own question. Typically this is configurable, so that people who want the seconds to always be visible can have it.

[woliveirajr]

Some years ago, I would set the clock of my linux (ubuntu? gnome? don't remember specifics) to display a "fuzzy time". It would tell time in that way : a quarter to eleven... two and a half... And it was very good, instead of worrying if I was being productive by checking the time twice every minute, I would just let it go.

[i336_]

This was a KDE thing. I'm unsure if it still has the option now.

[JosephHatfield]

I concur. I think it would be a great option if users could specify the granularity of time they wanted to see. I'd probably set mine to 30 minutes.

[coin]

> why would you want to have seconds on the clock?

* Timing things, such as software execution

* Starting a phone interview on time

* Timing a trade just before the market closes

[megablast]

> Starting a phone interview on time

Down to the second?

[coin]

Not a second, but a minute is too coarse

[wst_]

You must be toying with us. Please, tell me it is a joke. I can't find literally any reason to start a phone call down to seconds. What's wrong with starting it just when minutes counter changes?

[j3097736]

To synchronize radio-less clocks/timers/etc?