Most of the early OS X problems were resolved: Pretty much any printer you bought would work instantly; there was a healthy ecosystem of well-supported native apps; bundled apps worked well and used open standards (Mail, Address Book, iCal); networking worked well, including sharing files between Macs and PCs. And built-in utilities worked great, like printing to PDF and opening PDFs in Preview.app.
And hardware was quite good around that time too – with unibody notebooks (both plastic and aluminum) released during that time.
Things went downhill with 10.7 Lion and beyond, when Mac OS X imitated iPhone OS and usability started to decline:
- Bundled utility apps suffered: iCal and Address Book got photorealistic leather, and lost key functions like column-based navigation for your contacts and easy handling of multiple networked calendars.
- Flagship apps lost core functionality in the name of simplification: iPhoto took up the whole screen but lost core functions; iMovie was dumbed down (prior to 10.6); Final Cut Pro X left a massive gap in functionality from Final Cut Pro; Aperture was discontinued.
- Things just got worse for no valuable reason. Example: watch a Quicktime movie full-screen on a multi-monitor setup, and all the other monitors just show... textured linen.
- Reliability declined. I don't have data to back this up, and I'd really like to find an objective source for "reliability" on the Mac. But I no longer say "it just works" seriously anymore. That used to be mostly true, but it's no longer true for me. Personal example: constant problems when adding or removing my external display – permanent sleep that requires a hard reset, or display will repeatedly not be detected, or built-in keyboard and trackpad won't work until I plug in my wired keyboard again, type something, then remove it again.
Most of the early OS X problems were resolved: Pretty much any printer you bought would work instantly; there was a healthy ecosystem of well-supported native apps; bundled apps worked well and used open standards (Mail, Address Book, iCal); networking worked well, including sharing files between Macs and PCs. And built-in utilities worked great, like printing to PDF and opening PDFs in Preview.app.
And hardware was quite good around that time too – with unibody notebooks (both plastic and aluminum) released during that time.
Things went downhill with 10.7 Lion and beyond, when Mac OS X imitated iPhone OS and usability started to decline:
- Bundled utility apps suffered: iCal and Address Book got photorealistic leather, and lost key functions like column-based navigation for your contacts and easy handling of multiple networked calendars.
- Flagship apps lost core functionality in the name of simplification: iPhoto took up the whole screen but lost core functions; iMovie was dumbed down (prior to 10.6); Final Cut Pro X left a massive gap in functionality from Final Cut Pro; Aperture was discontinued.
- Things just got worse for no valuable reason. Example: watch a Quicktime movie full-screen on a multi-monitor setup, and all the other monitors just show... textured linen.
- Reliability declined. I don't have data to back this up, and I'd really like to find an objective source for "reliability" on the Mac. But I no longer say "it just works" seriously anymore. That used to be mostly true, but it's no longer true for me. Personal example: constant problems when adding or removing my external display – permanent sleep that requires a hard reset, or display will repeatedly not be detected, or built-in keyboard and trackpad won't work until I plug in my wired keyboard again, type something, then remove it again.