[Wrao]

It is kind of embarrassing I think, if you're Apple, that these superpowered systems can't play 20 year old games. Sure emulation is hard and a lot of it falls on the emulator itself but still, it's not hard in Windows and basically never has been, and it's not like it never worked in OS X, it has worked fine in the past then new versions come along and everything gets busted. Windows has always been ahead of OS X in gaming and that's fine and all, overall I don't care much, but what bothers me a bit is that the system architecture that supports it all just seems to be outright worse in OS X and it doesn't really get any better with time. Like, with Windows, you just get the sense that certain backbone things are sorted and they work and they don't change too much. With OS X, every version you have to feel guarded that it might break something. True enough this could all just be some glitch or unintended fault that will be patched eventually, but it's so frustrating that 'wait for the patch' has become the standard protocol for all Apple software. Coupled alongside with "don't upgrade until you've heard from people who have".

This is especially problematic when Apple is trying to make the update process disappear behind automatic this and that. They want the system to be more 'in flux' and updating itself regularly and without user oversight, and that's a nice concept, but if each iterative update is on the edge of breaking things or introducing new 'wtf's it's not an advancement I'm really looking forward to.


And also, while I'm in whinging crank mode, What is the deal with my 200mbps connection and brand new Safari and having websites that struggle to load things? I mean sure, you'd expect some off-brand pages here and there to maybe get their servers tapped easily and not be able to dish things out, but I've been seeing big-time, mainstream pages like FB, Google, twitter and others still exhibit problems loading stuff that just... how much more computer and data connection do I need to have properly fast internet why is this always a thing? bah

[psmith2.0]

We're gonna take up a collection here at 'Nova, and get Wrao a Dell for Christmas.

I've got some legit issues and gripes with this latest release, to be sure (it's funny to hear Gruber and John Moltz ragging on Yosemite a bit in the latest Talk Show podcast). But you hate the whole damn thing, it seems. Are you sure you wouldn't be happier with another platform altogether?

[thegeriatric]

Chrome OS?

[psmith2.0]

Lite Brite? Etch-A-Sketch?

[Wrao]

I mean, overall I still prefer OS X, I've just lost a lot of confidence in it and trust that I once had. It's not the quantity of bugs so much as it is the type of bugs and the way that things will persist or be made worse through subsequent updates. (I mean come on, my mouse breaks? what even is that? how is that even possible in 2014?)

It may very well be that I'd be happier with another platform. But I'm not at that point yet, still feel like Apple can pull it together, but I mean doesn't it bear repeating that when a guy like Gruber is bagging on it it might actually be at the point where things are objectively worse than they once were? That guy is as deep in the tank for Apple as is possible but he's also no dolt.

[turtle]

You should get yourself a linux desktop like Fedora or Mint and then you will learn to love what you have with Apple again.

[drewprops]

Scates I'm seriously trying to figure out how to get myself a Windows box with which to play Minecraft.

My previous laptop (the one with the gimped GPU) would work with it great for hours.

This new one kicks the fans on after 4 minutes.

I no longer have the AppleFaith in the equipment, only a love for the environment.

This Yosemite episode combined with my failed laptop is fueling my disillusionment.





...

[Dorian Gray]

Apple’s sales success is perhaps part of this problem. They’re selling a lot of notebooks these days. So from their point of view, why fuss over hard stuff like software when no-one seems to care?

I went to Paris Photo last week. There were 169 galleries showing work, most of which had a computer of some sort at a desk. Do you know how many non-Apple computers I saw? Zero. Not one Windows-based computer in 169 galleries!

Apple has a complete lock on the high end these days. (Do $1000 Windows-based notebooks even exist anymore?) This makes them lazy about quality, even as they continue to add feature after feature – too many of them cloud-releated and buggy.

In fairness, everyone is struggling with the cloud: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Adobe. It’s been a while since a class of software has been so widely unwanted, misunderstood, and broadly inept.

[Wrao]

>$1000 Windows-based Laptops do exist, but for the most part they've all turned into MBP clones.

[Dorian Gray]

Android Lollipop also seems a bit of a mess. I think this is just par for the course across the board these days. Being competitive with new features has become so important, and fixes are so easy to roll out after the initial release, that new software just doesn’t work very well anymore.

Perhaps we’re just going through a bad cycle.

[PB PM]

I've always felt that the move to 1 year OS update cycles was a bad move, because it leads to a more buggy, less finished product. I think Apple/Google/MS etc feel they can get away with it now that they are not charging for updates. It's kind of like, "hey we're giving you free lunch, now shut up and enjoy it!"

[Dorian Gray]

Good point, PB PM.

[Wrao]

It's also become pretty prevalent in gaming. I'm not even much of a gamer but seems like just about every AAA title released the prevailing wisdom is that there will A) almost surely be a 'zero day' patch and B ) that the game won't really get great until the expansion or major content patch later into its release and C) that the development cycle will be about 2 years for each title and along the way expect things to be re-balanced and tweaked and fixed and broken and fixed again until eventually it's a 'great' game by the end of it. Perpetual development is the new-norm it seems which, I mean, yeah that's a good thing overall and I wouldn't argue against it, but it does appear to have rough edges too where products are shipped and it takes months before they're really cooking.

All the whinging aside, I do kind of think it will get better overall though. I think the change to iOS 7 was more substantial than we(at least I) maybe give it credit and it's taking Apple some time to really get things back to form. The change to Mavericks and Yosemite would seem to have been similarly complex and even though we're not calling it OS 11 yet, in some respects maybe we should be/should consider it that. I've argued before that in a way you almost look at iOS as having been iOS 1(before it was called iOS) then iOS 2(when it started being called iOS) then iOS 3(what we know as iOS 7/8). Framed this way, the development cycle makes a bit more sense but it also makes you wonder if it won't be until iOS 9 or 10 that it is *really* as solid and fluid and enjoyable as iOS 6 was. Similarly with OS X, they've only really just taken the lid off of deeper cloud and iOS integration and unification of services and all, so perhaps it will take another CA landmark or two before it's really back to a good place.

I also can't help but wonder if the spaceship campus will play a role in all of this. Perhaps once Apple is back under the same roof, literally, they will be better able to keep things firmly 'handled'.

[Wrao]

Oh so here's a thing. I was griping about an emulator suddenly not working after 10.10.1, and that was true despite trying many things to help performance(quitting all other apps, restarting, even disabling a couple of background things like dashboard and some widgets), nothing worked and it remained choppy and unplayable. On a whim I loaded it up again recently and it was flawless. This was with several apps running even. So yeah, computers.

[psmith2.0]

The 10.10.1 update didn't fix the wifi issues completely. Mom got knocked off her network twice today, which has only been happening since she installed Yosemite. She can go to the wifi menu and simply select her network and it reconnects again, so it's not like she has to go stand on the roof and reboot or anything. But a) that's not how it's supposed to work, and b) that's certainly not how it was working before with Mavericks (or on any other Mac or version of OS X she's owned/used.

So, yeah...Yosemite. A half dome of a turd in some ways.



Listen, I'm glad the icons are nice and flat and Forstall-free. I like that I can text message, from my Mac, with all my non-iOS friends and family. Fine, whatever. Just make sure all the other things that used to work just fine - email, wifi, etc. - still do so, first and foremost, before you try to dazzle me with new marquee features that a) nobody's really asking for, and b) that most people may never even use, day-to-day (but we all, sure as shit, use email and wifi). I'm pretty sure about that one. So I'd gladly give up any Continuity or non-iOS message ability if it means this other, more important things actually work like they did pre-Yosemite. Or introduce any ambitious, half-baked stuff in OS X San Quentin or whatever the next release of X is named, once you're really super-sure it's not going to step on the toes and functionality of all the Shit That Matters More.

Is that too much to ask?

[Wrao]

Another bizarro Yosemite quirk. Suddenly Safari won't load half the pictures on my FB page or anyone's for that matter. Just lots of empty space everywhere. Chrome is fine. Well, probably shouldn't make this a running tally of all the little things wrong or weird about Yosemite but it's just odd that these problems seem to spring up out of nowhere where it'll be working just fine then through no change on my part suddenly develop a fault. Makes me wonder just what exactly is going on in the background.

[alcimedes]

When I get booted from the network at home, it stays dropped until I turn the wifi off, then on again. It will see other networks, but it completely unable to connect to them.

I've also started noting some Bonjour issues, which show up with printers/AirPlay not working, and local screen sharing stuff breaking. The odd thing is, I only drop from the 5Ghz network at home, at the office it's never dropped once.

Almost the exact same hardware and setup in each location, so I'm wondering if there's a frequency differene or interference difference in the locations.

[psmith2.0]

Yosemite 10.10.1 users experiencing YouTube/Safari issues.

Shocking.

No, really.



The article says it's a YouTube thing, but who knows.

[PB PM]

Looks like the update could have removed flash plug-ins. Haven't seen that myself since I use HTML5 Youtube.

[chucker]

Pretty sure it has nothing to do with 10.10.1 or Yosemite, but rather is a bug on Google's end.

Originally Posted by PB PM Looks like the update could have removed flash plug-ins. Haven't seen that myself since I use HTML5 Youtube.

I see it even with HTML5.

[psmith2.0]

Whatever it is/was, all seems to be working now. I'm blaming everything on Yosemite, I don't give a damn.

[Wrao]

Gotta love when the fix is to tell websites you're not using Safari.

[Frank777]

I finally took the plunge and loaded Yosemite on my 2009 iMac.

So far so good, no usability issues yet with CS5 (or pretty much anything else for that matter.)

But Yosemite has the worst MacOS system fonts (Finder and Mail) I can remember. If they put random underlines in the menus, I'd think I was on Windows.

I understand the move to Helvetica Whatever was prompted by Retina screens. Cool. But I don't have a Retina screen.

Can't I just have Lucida Grande back? Please?

[drewprops]

I very nearly upgraded to Yosemite last night in an effort to stop a horrible crashing problem that I've been having with Adobe Illustrator's font list. Fortunately, I discovered that the issue was with my font management software having the wrong things open and only managed to uninstall Illustrator CS5.5 in the heat of battle.

Since I'm now on a stupid Retina screen I suppose the new fonts wouldn't bug me.

BUT.

I'm slowly recognizing that the Mac platform is changing out from underneath me in SUCH significant ways that my overall platform-happiness has declined.

Maybe I'm just getting OLD.



...

[psmith2.0]

No, I'm kinda there with you on some of this.

[Ebby]

Originally Posted by drewprops I'm slowly recognizing that the Mac platform is changing out from underneath me in SUCH significant ways that my overall platform-happiness has declined. Maybe I'm just getting OLD. ...

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 No, I'm kinda there with you on some of this.

*Raises hand* After using 10.10 for a few weeks, I noticed I was mumbling to myself "where did that go" an awful lot.
I like the IOS interface, I like the OS X interface. (10.6.8 FTW!) I don't agree they should be similar.
I hope Apple realizes that differences are perfectly OK.

[Kickaha]

Oddly enough, it isn't the UI I have a problem with.

It's the *infrastructure*.

I don't know where to find the hidden OS bits nearly as well as I used to. :P ~/Library/Receipts has been replaced with... ? /Library used to be nicely thought out, but I'm finding more and more shoved up into /var in directories named with encoded names, not by application or feature.

It's annoying. :P

[Chinney]

I have finally put it on one of our computers as a test and it all went very smoothly. I kind of like the new system fonts. No complaints there on my side. It seems that a fair bit of the core new features are all about integrating iOS devices - especially the iPhone - into the computer work flow. I am not sure that a lot of this is all that useful to me. But I do like the general feel of it.

[Ryan]

Why on earth does it takes seconds for the world clock in the notifications pane to initialize? I realize this is minor but it takes a full two seconds on my MBA for the clocks to show up.

[Wrao]

Originally Posted by Ryan Why on earth does it takes seconds for the world clock in the notifications pane to initialize? I realize this is minor but it takes a full two seconds on my MBA for the clocks to show up.

Similarly(and dating back many versions of the OS) Widgets have always been kind of laughable in their implementation just for how long it takes them to display information, thus rendering their usefulness as quick-use mini-apps to virtually zero(Stickies being the best example, where it is basically faster to just load textedit from the dock than jump to the widgets, wait for them to load and write your note there) . The fact that this same thing happens with notifications would make me think it's a feature not a bug, conserving processor cycles or whatever since Apple probably anticipates users will only activate the notifications panel somewhat sparingly it'd be wasteful to be using resources having it crunching numbers in the background.

This ties into a theory I have about OS X development in general that I can't confirm but there are so many places where it feels to be the case, which is that OS X is built primarily for laptops. The aforementioned possibility of conserving processing power is the type of thing you'd do to save battery life. There are similar behaviors in Safari too where even on a system with power to spare, you'll sometimes have content just disappear moments after you change focus to a different tab or whatever, you see it around Finder too sometimes where 'get info' data purges itself remarkably quickly sometimes.

It's the type of stuff I didn't notice as much when I was using a Macbook but since I've switched to an iMac exclusively, specifically a top of the line iMac(from a few years ago but still) with 12GB of RAM, there are just so many instances when the OS appears to be throttling itself or otherwise not actually utilizing the power it has at is disposal. When you consider most of Apple's mac sales are laptops and even their desktops utilize some mobile components it starts to seem that much more likely that they really focus their priorities around power saving, efficiency and reducing 'waste' even if it comes at the expense of a fluid overall user experience at times.

Also, when you look at the whole 'back to the mac' initiative and how many new elements of OS X are direct copy overs from iOS, the idea that OS X is extremely conservative with its allocation of resources starts to seem a bit more plausible.

(to continue with my spitball theorizing, Google appears to have moved in the opposite direction with many of their apps and bits of software consuming a surprising amount of system resources even while idle but also across the board a lot of their products tend to *feel* 'teh snappier' and fast overall)