Guess I'm the odd one out then, I have never and will never use public wifi networks. I don't even trust connecting through client's office wifi networks. On the rare occasion I have no other option in work situations in client offices, I'll use a VPN through a virtual machine completely isolated from my host environment. It's just not worth the risk. Always wear digital condoms folks.
As a fellow Apple power user, I share your sentiment regarding the sarcasm. It seems like a change happened in the past few years that to love something, means to love it unconditionally, to the point that you must be blind to it's weaknesses and flaws. Blind to the point that to acknowledge them or, gasp, speak of them, is sacrilege. That's a movement I simply can't buy into. How can anything improve if it can't even acknowledge and be honest with itself about what it's weaknesses and failings are?
Introspection isn't always pleasant, but it's quite often the path toward becoming something better.
The irony is that if Apple had simply said "there will be no update this year", people would probably say "fine, the current OS is good enough for now". But when they do make an fairly small update, it is "disappointing" because it didn't add much. It's neophilia - always wanting "new stuff" for its own sake, even though what we have is pretty good.
A useful criticism would point out exactly what desired additions or changes were missing from the update. However, I'm mainly seeing a lot of general disappointment vaguely around "lack of newness".
No, I wouldn't say it's fine and haven't been - my HN comment history will attest to that. OSX is showing it's age more and more every year. Yosemite. El Capitan. Sierra. You may as well have labeled them iOS integration package 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2.
I have to install at minimum 10+ 3rd-party apps on a clean OSX install just to reach baseline feature parity with other modern operating systems these days.
I install Chrome, Keepingyouawake, spectacle, f/Lux, littlesnitch, MSOffice, atom, iterm2, Xcode and a few others. Many are either done via homebrew or the App Store. Be cool to have a new thread for people's "must have" apps.
Curious as to what other operating systems come with that bevy of tools, since you said "I have to install at minimum 10+ 3rd-party apps on a clean OSX install just to reach baseline feature parity with other modern operating systems these days."
Oh, no, definitely not. You're right, that would be absolutely ridiculous. The base 10+ apps or so I mentioned earlier are listed a bit further down in this thread here:
That said, Linux is looking more and more appealing every OSX release and with how much I use it already via docker containers, virtual machines and the like, that will probably be my next move if Apple continues removing power user features from OSX while letting software release quality continue it's decline. There are some amazing open source alternatives available for the vast majority of apps on that list that I've been testing for months now as I honestly don't believe Apple really wants to change to meet the needs of yesterdays power users anymore.
If Apple hadn't released an upgrade, we wouldn't all have to go through the time of upgrading, fixing apps that are broken (or finding new versions, etc). There is a cost to all of Apple's users from OS upgrades, and we can be annoyed that we are spending that time / energy and getting nothing of value back.
I started the upgrade this morning, took a shower and when I came back it was done. Logged in and clicked a couple of buttons (activate Siri etc) and everything was just like I left it when I started the upgrade. I could jump right back in. Perfect.
Wow. Just wow. If this happens, the game has just changed.
Ron Dennis and Tim Cook. If you replaced Tim Cook's name with anyone else, I wouldn't believe it could ever work. Tim Cook though has already shown how awesome he can work with a manically focused leader driving vision and strategy. All of the sliding of Apple's quality since Job's passing, ceased in one brilliant strategic move.
Bravo Tim Cook, bravo. I'd be shocked if Elon Musk didn't pee himself just a wee bit after hearing this news.
Your link shows new Macbooks were released less than six months ago and iMacs less than a year ago.
The only things there more than two years old are the MBP non-Retina, which is essentially an obsolete line, and the Mac pro, which Apple has never seemed massively invested in.
You mentioned the first two on the list, why not the rest? Oh... right... including those paints a very different picture:
Retina MacBook Pro: 491 days since last release
Mac Pro: 1007 days since last release
Macbook Pro: 1563 days since last release
Mac Mini: 706 days since last release
Macbook Air: 562 days since last release
To be fair, the non-retina Macbook Pro and Macbook Air should be removed from the list as their place in the product line is now occupied by the Retina Macbook Pro and Macbook respectively.
That still leaves us with some pretty major product lines looking quite neglected.
Retina MacBook Pro... yes, under two years. But lets see, periods between last updates, 247, 251, 280, 294. Average, 268. Current, 491. Nearly twice that.
Similar with the iMac - at 344, already beyond the average (which was only pulled way out of whack by one 577 day refresh cycle, otherwise it would have been in the 270 day range.
MacBook Air. Average of 350 days, now seven months more...
Mac Mini, similar.
There isn't any way that you can spin this in a way that says Apple isn't neglecting the Mac.
My iPhone I would crash when writing long emails in Japanese and took shitty pictures, my iPhone 6 writes emails in all languages and takes great pictures.
I would choose an iPhone 6 over any Jobs era phone.
I love all of the advanced functionality hidden just beneath OSX's user-friendly veneer. Sadly, it's been one of the first casualties in the post-Jobs Apple. Every new release of OSX along with Apple's own apps, the first thing I check is holding down the alt/option key while clicking the various menu items to see what nuggets of alternate functionality appear. Every day, every release - less and less, if any at all. So sad.
Microsoft have many of the same weaknesses though. The new Windows Modern UI apps or whatever they call it now are awful. Mail? Calendar? Wow. Even Outlook Express was better.
And I turn it on EVERY time I setup a new OSX install - I want to bloody well know for damn sure whether I'm on HTTP or HTTPS when I'm on websites and some stupid little lock icon ain't gonna cut it when I'm passing credit card and banking info over the net. A problem further exacerbated by the SSL variants (extended-validation SSL certs causing green text showing company name to appear beside the lock icon - bankofamerica.com compared to news.ycombinator.com for example). This article is dead on the money.
