[stephenhuey]

When Apple released its BSD-based OS X at the turn of the century, I was at Rice learning on Solaris machines, and also started dual booting Linux on my personal desktop at the time. My first few years in the working world were spent on Dells running Windows, so by the time I bought my first laptop in 2006, I was excited to spend my dollars on an unusual-looking white Macbook specifically because it had a *nix shell and the developer experience was vastly better to me than any machine I used at my day jobs. I still prefer working on Macs because ever since, they have just worked and Windows has gotten progressively worse (I know, because I have helped my parents with their Surface laptop). Unfortunately, Mac OS X has been less robust in the last several years, and I'd love to see them turn this around, both for the developer experience and for regular consumers. I still like using Photos, but I don't use their cloud for those, and I've been amazed over the years just how uninformative the Photos app on Mac can be when it flakes out and I have to try a rain dance just to get it to sync with my iPhone. That's pretty abysmal for a company that used to just work, but I believe it comes from the top. Steve Jobs used to enforce quality, and I want to see that again!

[gradstudent]

Similar experience here, started with the same G4 ("white") iBook. That was an amazing machine. Under the hood it was hard to distinguish many differences with Linux/BSD of the time. The UI on top (OSX Tiger) was peerless -- I recall being very excited for the introduction of Spotlight. I'd say the decline came around 2012-2013 or so. Hardware was still great, but they were no longer updating the GNU stuff and anti-features like SIP made it harder and harder to run the applications I want (gdb for example). I gave up not long after they introduced the touchbar

These days I'm happier (or at least content) without a Mac. My FW13+Linux setup may not be as nice as the latest macbook, but it does exactly what I want and if it doesn't, I have options.

[fchicken]

> I'd say the decline came around 2012-2013

Dead on.

Apple's current software is such a joke I almost regret ever having invested in the Mac ecosystem. I still run Mojave for its 32-bit app support for (apple's own) apps that have no contemporary equal.

Apple weathered the passing of Steve surprisingly well, however the cracks still show. Apple's very best is exclusively reserved for those products/devices/software with Jobs' fingerprints on them.

I still run an original iPhone SE as well. The entire tech sphere has gone in such a poor direction, I've increasingly divested myself from tech. If it no longer works with my system, I simply stop using it. It's a happy ("insecure") place.

[wtallis]

> I'd say the decline came around 2012-2013 or so.

I think it started slightly earlier: 10.7 Lion in 2011 introduced the new full-screen mode that was completely broken on multi-monitor setups, as though Apple entirely failed to test on or even anticipate what was at most a moderately "power user" hardware configuration. They've introduced lots of useless features over the years (eg. Game Center), but that full-screen mode was the first time I recall OS X having such an in-your-face usability regression that was so obvious and avoidable.

10.7 also dropped Front Row, which was a disappointment to me, but is at least understandable in the context of Apple TV existing as a separate product they wanted to steer users toward. Losing Rosetta in 10.7 was also somewhat justifiable, and didn't hurt me much since my first Mac was an Intel machine and I didn't have much of a library of PPC-only applications.

[dcminter]

I'm a Linux guy who doesn't really like Macs but has intermittently been required to use them. On the whole I have a grudging respect for Apple (their hardware is peerless), but seeing one screen turn to "brushed steel" when the app on the other was put into full screen mode kind of blew my mind because "UI is worse than Windows" was not, at the time, a failure mode I believed the company was capable of.

[simondotau]

The problem is, in the age of the Internet, old operating systems decay. Even MacOS 10.13 is effectively unusable as a primary workstation, NOT because Apple has abandoned it, but because Firefox, Chrome and Homebrew have abandoned it. Yes there are alternatives, but my point stands.

[lukeh]

SIP is anti-feature for a certain class of users, but the right tradeoff for most consumers. At least you can disable it. And even as a developer I leave it enabled.

[pdpi]

> the right tradeoff for most consumers

It's really easy to fail to see this in the heat of things.

macOS has a feature where it puts an orange dot on the top right corner of your screen whenever your microphone is recording. That orange dot is normally part of the menu bar, and completely unobtrusive, but will still show up on top of full-screen windows (e.g. it'll show up on top of games if you're on Discord talking to friends), which is distracting as hell.

As horrendously annoying that little dot is, what's the alternative? Either you have an uncircumventable marker saying you're being recorded, or you don't. Any way to turn that thing off that doesn't involve disabling SIP would be trivial to exploit by anybody who managed to plant malicious recording software in the first place.

[hecanjog]

They could put an LED in the bezel, like the camera indicator.

[pdpi]

That works great on a laptop. Less so on a Mac Studio, using non-Apple displays.

[phs2501]

More annoying is when you use something like SoundSource (a paid app which adds per-app volume control and input/output redirection to macOS... a feature that by all rights should be built in in any reasonable OS) you get a permanent purple dot indicating a third party tool is intercepting audio.

Again, I get it, but as a power user this kind of stuff is just infuriating.

[pxc]

It's also annoying that macOS doesn't already have at least basic per-app volume mixing.

So much pain in macOS is in areas like this, trying to hack basic features back into the anemic OS.

Apple's "OS" updates typically focus on end-user applications that I don't use and never intend to. Meanwhile the core of the OS, and even the desktop environment, feels stagnant compared to many Linux distros.

[mgiampapa]

Actually, the date was 29 June 2007. This is when GPLv3 was released and Apple could no long continue using the fruits of open source labor without giving anything back. That's when MacOS X's UNIX underlying began to ossify. Sure Apple kept backporting important security things, but it froze in time all of the GNU utilities that made UNIX on MacOS X good.

[hnfong]

> no longer updating the GNU stuff

I think that was mainly due to GPL 3.

[simondotau]

I’m honestly unconvinced that the “or later” clause of the GPLv2 license is legally valid. Can anyone think of any example where contract terms get to be reinvented by a self-interested third party whenever they choose?

[hnfong]

The "or later" is a separate issue, I think.

IIRC, the FSF generally insists on getting assigned the copyrights on all GNU software, so the FSF can re-license any new version of their software under any license they choose to, which is currently GPLv3.

Users/vendors can still choose GPLv2 for the older versions of GNU software, which I think is what Apple does for the few remaining GNU software they ship.

[Schiendelman]

The whole experience you're having with the rain dance is because the cloud does just work. It's a vanishing a tiny percentage of people that don't use it.

[stephenhuey]

I hear ya. I'm not in the target market. Surprising, I know, considering how many SaaS platforms I've launched which maintain photos and videos in the cloud!

Many other iPhone/Macbook users have been shocked I don't turn on Messages on my Mac due to a bad experience with sync in the first year that was possible, and I had a similar bad experience with photos in iCloud early on. Maybe the sync is fast now, but my usage would put my in a higher iCloud tier than I'd like, and I still feel more at ease juggling many Photos libraries on external hard drives. I avoid Google Photos like the plague, and even though I trust Apple more (for now), I'd still rather not entrust to them my family's personal photos and videos.

[Schiendelman]

As someone who has had the pain, if you're open to some prodding - one of your external hard drives might be broken right now. Don't risk it. Just pay a few bucks a month to avoid missing your memories. :) I don't think they've ever had a data loss.

[fragmede]

It doesn't even have to be Apple. There's Backblaze and Arq and Tarsnap, amongst others. Encrypt the hell out of it and make sure there's a globally redundant copy of your files. If a thief or fire/tornado/earthquake/tsunami takes out your physical drives, where are you?

[stephenhuey]

Always good advice! I did start backing up at a location other than my home many years ago, but it’s not in a cloud. The one time I tried Backblaze I wasn’t impressed but I recognize there are other good alternatives and certainly agree with your strong convictions!

[miramba]

> fire/tornado/earthquake/tsunami takes out your physical drives, where are you?

Hopefully in a place where I can solve the bigger problems I have then!

[rodric]

> Maybe the sync is fast now, but my usage would put my in a higher iCloud tier than I'd like

You can use Messages on the Mac without storing messages in iCloud. iPhone, iPad and Mac can all send and receive the same account’s messages, effectively staying in sync without actually syncing them to iCloud’s servers.