The Ultimate macOS Thread

My macbook pro has decided it wants to kernal panic pretty much every second day (seems to be associated with gesture on the touchpad)


I've owned my macbook for nearly a year and a half and probably wouldn't buy another one (hardware is nice but the rest is meh)
 
Cobol74 said:
Any one know of a reason not to go for Lion?
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Honestly, right now I can't see any reason to GO for Lion. Yeah, the buttons are a bit prettier, I'll give it that. Apart from that, the only remotely useful feature I can think of is AirDrop, but then we had DropCopy (and DropBox for smaller files) for ages. Lion is looking like a slightly facelifted SL to me :|

Besides, I wouldn't switch just yet because it's proving to be unstable for too many people.
 
Well, too be fair it's still a beta ;-)

And it's been running problem-free on my MacBook Pro for about a week now :)
 
Dr_Grip said:
Another op/ed piece chiming in to my "OS X/iOS-merge" doom and gloom:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/06/07/is-apple-planning-to-kill-off-mac-os-x/
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I think there should be a choice, two OS's....power users would use OS X, while more every day people would use iOS.

That said, if iOS on the desktop uses windowing...it could work...

In the end I think that it'll be a lot like Lion in the future...start building iOS to be useful on the desktop and it starts to look a lot like Lion only a bit more locked down. (that alternate desktop with the icon grid turned on permanently for example)

I could see Apple really wanting people to use the Mac App Store, seeing as the whole Mac malware thing really took off with MacDefender and it's ilk, so maybe they'd make it so you'd have to check a box to install programs "outside the app store" like on Android.
 
killpanda said:
Well, too be fair it's still a beta ;-)

And it's been running problem-free on my MacBook Pro for about a week now :)
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It's releasing in July.. Probably pretty limited what they can achieve before that :p

In any case, at 30$, I don't see why you wouldn't upgrade. I'm certainly doing so.
 
Buktu said:
In any case, at 30$, I don't see why you wouldn't upgrade. I'm certainly doing so.
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The only way to update is through the AppStore. Big Brother Steve is watching you.
 
Dr_Grip said:
The only way to update is through the AppStore. Big Brother Steve is watching you.
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Not the only way. Once you upgrade one machine you can upgrade the rest via optical/flash easily enough. You also only need to buy only ones for all machines associated with your Apple ID.

I don't really understand the whole "Apple will make OS X like iOS and stop you from "sideloading" apps" rhetoric. iOS is an "embedded" OS used on specific types of devices where it makes perfect sense to have limited functionality/ability to install since it's all about experience and making sure that things run the Apple way.

OS X is a desktop OS that is meant to be more robust and allow a certain amount of freedom to the user (basically if it can compile on it you can use it). Could Apple lock it down like iOS? Sure they could. Will they do it? I kinda doubt it, there is no reason whatsoever to do so.
1) They make a shitload of money from Mac, Apple has a fairly large markup on their "desktop (laptops included)" hardware so they make a decent amount of money out of it.
2) They make no money from free applications - a HUGE number of Mac software is free, either FLOSS or shareware or even nagware in some cases but you can very easily have everything you would need for everyday computing for free (without piracy). So forcing users to go through App Store won't really give them any more money, in fact it would make it easier for them to find free alternatives to paid software.
3) App Store doesn't allow certain things that would hugely decrease Apple's userbase - you cannot have torrent clients from an App Store, so anyone who does any kind of torrenting, which is a huge amount of people as we all know, will move to a different OS.
4) There is no real lock-in for OS X as opposed to iOS. Apple can get away with what they do in iOS because of the lock-in effect. They have majority share in the tablet space and a significant share in the Smartphone space. There are many very obvious differentiating features between iOS and Android and those who prefer one very rarely switch to the other. Also for the most part iOS and Android don't share apps, there are a few examples like Angry Birds but, at least from my experience, a majority is different and its not necessarily easy to find something similar. There is also the fact that most iOS apps are paid and if you have a certain amount of money already invested in the platform it makes very little sense to move to a different platform. OS X vs Windows is not quite as obvious, for one Windows machines tend to be cheaper, for two as I mentioned before there are tons of free applications for both and many are cross platform. (As an example the only OS X exclusive application that I use that I can't find a good alternative for in Windows is iStumbler).
5) Increased availability of web based applications - you can already run an entire capable office suit from the web, requiring only a browser. There are services that allow you to play games that are hosted on a central server (though thats not from a browser yet), online streaming solutions are ubiquitos. There is basically no way to lock a desktop down at this point as for the most part all you need is a browser and a broadband connection to use just about anything you want.
6) Games - the biggest lock-in that Apple currently has in iOS is games. More importantly very long running games like Cut the Rope, or Angry Birds. Because data is saved locally (and soon on Apple servers) switching OS's will also cause you to lose your progress. In the PC gaming this is barely the case anymore. The most popular games are MMORPGs that by very nature keep all your progress on a central server. Then you have things like Battle.net and Steam (not sure if Steam keeps progress saves though but I'm sure if they don't they will soon) that will allow you to buy once, download many with your games and lets face it there are more Windows games than there are OS X.

Bottom line is that in the desktop world OS X is rather unimportant and is used by a fairly small number of people. If Apple does attempt to lock it down the users currently on it can very easily move to Windows (even on the same hardware) as there is virtually no software that is OS X exclusive and has no alternative in the Windows world. So for Apple to lock it down would make no sense whatsoever and at best have very little effect on their bottom line, at worst deplete OS X user base to where they were in the 90s, so basically only people who do any kind of graphic design.
 
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I just discovered what they did to the Quick Preview, Preview and specifically to the PDF engine.
FUUUUUUCCCCKKKKK YYYYYOOOOOOOUUUUUU Apple. Fuck you.<_<
 
It was very handy when quick preview had a black (dark) background, allowed for single-page viewing, continuous scrolling and zooming in full screen. That way it was fantastic for reading scientific papers and the like. Now it does none of those things. And I can't seem to find any settings at all which could change that. I finally managed to configure preview (the "standalone" viewer) to work that way in full screen mode, but a) it has that ghastly denim background b) I can't flick through a bunch of files with up and down arrows, and it takes quite a few clicks to open a paper in the Preview in full screen mode. Besides, all the transitions are ghastly. And buggy.

What pisses me off even more is that I can't roll back to Snow Leopard now. Yes, I didn't do a Time Machine backup before installing DP4 (my fault, but I had reasons), and they've changed something in the way the file system/installer works so that all of the SL versions I have refused to (re)install. So basically, I am stuck with DP4. I will see if I can get 10.6.7 to work, but I will either need a DL DVD burner (and a disc), or a bootable flash drive. Just works, yeah.
 
If you had a Time Machine backup (and every single computer user should have a back up of their system no matter what), then you'd be able to do it just fine.
 
A Time Machine backup from Lion is different than one made with Snow Leopard, so that won't work. Plus, new versions of the programs will modify their work files and configurations so most of them won't work with SL anymore as well anyway.

You pretty much committed yourself to use Lion, unless you're OK with starting your user folder all over again.
 
Or you use super duper for backup where you can wipe your drive and restore to your bootable backup. :p
I haven't bothered upgrading though as that is still a pretty big hassle to restore the whole drive


Well maybe if I bought a thunderbolt compatible drive
 
I don't know why apple does that shit, it's like the expresscard port on my old one WHAT IS THIS FOR.
 
There will be stuff for it, but all the hard drive enclosures will have professionals as the target market (RAID enclosures, SSDs, etc.), what I'm really waiting for are adapters :-d
 
wouldn't the adapters make it slower and defeat the purpose though?
 
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