Broken - <AUTHOR> https://tyler.io/broken/ <comment><USER2> Things are so broken here at Apple. I joined about 4 years ago.

I am awed by the fact that we manage to release any software at all, let alone functional software.

The biggest problem is communication. No one fucking communicates.

\- No communication between orgs. Tons of bureaucratic tape to cut through just to get a hand on someone working on a different product

\- Barely any communication between teams. Literally every group of 4 people is in a little silo with no incentive to go outside it

\- Broken management structure. I have had many managers (a red flag in itself) but even worse none of the managers take suggestions from engineers. Everything is purely top down. If an engineer realizes there is a problem on a macro scale they cannot fix it. It is literally impossible to unite more than 1.5 teams to get anything done.

\- So what happens is that you're working on a product that's part of another product but you never talked to any other teams or orgs on how to make your product fit in

\- 10 different teams working on the same products and services. Zero unification means you are literally wasting developers and internally fragmenting every tool. Even worse, these teams compete for internal market domination

\- Culture of secrecy means nothing gets fucking done. You file a bug report and you can't even see it any more for some orgs

This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are fundamental and serious problems at Apple that no one in management gives a shit about solving. Any time engineers try to congregate or work on anything constructive with another team, they are shot down.

The only time I have seen cross-team developers working together has been to deal with critical bugs.

Because of the lack of communication, none of management's goals align. They are all out of sync and poorly thought out. So year after year your manager has something they want you to implement but the feature for the year is bullshit because it makes no sense and is just there to pad the manager's resume.

And you can't speak out about this. Apple doesn't take well to employees complaining. Even then, because of the lack of organization there is no one you could raise these issues with.

<comment><USER3> It absolutely isn't the individual employee developers job or responsibility to try to fix corporate culture. Almost anyone on here or reading this is a line worker developer and trying to take on the job responsibilities of C level staff is setting yourself up for disappointment and failure.

Any company larger than a few dozen people is entrenched - there will be a hierarchy and the top will dictate the order of things. If they are paying you to write pointless software then you are either content with the paycheck and probably a lot of free time at work if nothing really matters or can go somewhere else to find meaningful work.

But seriously, the larger the company the less you should ever consider thinking yourself as some engineering talent can change the system. You change the system in those circumstances by realizing the failure, networking with your peers, and starting your own company to do it better. Assuming you didn't sign a deal with the devil by noncompeting your way into being stuck. You were hired to write code, not fix corporate culture. Largely because most large corporations have layers of management dedicated to insuring it is _not_ fixed.

<comment><USER4> Yes it isn't but who else will do that for them? Culture is only possible when people talk to each other and/or exchange thoughts in other ways. If normal people can't do that, there's no single culture, there's many little cultures. Remember that organizations are people and not some magical beings from a different dimension.

<comment><USER5> Culture is one of those things where once it's broken, it's usually easier to let it die than to fix it. Go join some smaller organization that _doesn 't_ have a broken culture and help it succeed. Once enough people do that, the small company becomes a big company, the big company rots on the vine and eventually goes bankrupt, and the cycle starts again.

<comment><USER6> That assumes that the big company doesn't have enough inertia to keep going on and on, strangling the small business or buying it outright (thus incorporating it into the broken culture, Borg-like).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The final (well, first) Catalina release along with the outright awful > public beta makes me think one thing. And that is Apple's insistence on > their annual, big-splash release cycle is fundamentally breaking > engineering. I know I'm not privy to their internal decision making and that > software features that depend on hardware releases and vice-versa are > planned and timed years (if not half-decades) in advance, but I can think of > no other explanation than that Marketing alone is purely in charge of when > things ship.

I don't work at Apple, but this part hit home for me. In the past few years my jobs have revolved around shipping features at all costs with zero regard for engineering feasibility.

We all like to criticize CEOs for prioritize short-term stock prices over long-term company goals, but I'm beginning to think the average employee or middle manager has even more perverse incentives to make poor short-term decisions. I've seen a lot of engineers and managers swing for the fences to deliver headline features that can't possibly be completed on time with any standard of quality, testing, or long-term support. It doesn't matter, though, if your goal is to add that accomplishment to your resume so you can pivot into the next higher-paying job elsewhere. After that, your mess becomes someone else's problem and you're off the hook. Up or out.

<comment><USER8> This reminds me of the fascinating NYT story about the lead up to the original iPhone announcement event: [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and- then-steve-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve- said-let-there-be-an-iphone.html).

A choice excerpt:

> The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn't play > an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an > e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, > it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop > what engineers called "the golden path," a specific set of tasks, performed > in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.

I guess I post this here as a means to say, while what OP is talking about certainly sucks, Apple seems to have a long history of this. Doesn't make it better, and certainly what he's outlined seems extra bad, but not completely unexpected.

<comment><USER9> Great read! Thanks for sharing. Highly encourage anyone who is on the fence about reading the whole thing to go for it.

Steve, and others like him, do make me wonder. On the one hand, I work four days a week, never stay late at work, and live a good, steady life. But on the other hand, I see these super-stars, these drive-people-to-the-edge, sleep-on- shop-floor types, and see how much change and drive they create, it makes me start to think that maybe I should work _much_ harder. But then again, I quite like all this time I have to think on things. And of course, we don't get all the details about how this style of work _really_ affects home life; I'm sure we'd have much less respect for these super-stars if we knew they _all_ had screwed up lives away from work.

<comment><USER10> I know what you mean, the appeal of this total dedication. For myself, I've come to the conclusion that I could not do it for long, not as long as I'd have to. I think for those types like Jobs, Musk, it wasn't even a conscious choice they made to put all they had into their work, they are/were just driven. You'd know it if you were, too. They could never have done a four-day work week with zero overtime, it was never an option for them. So, enjoy your life as it is, this is yours, theirs is different, and don't think you're missing out on anything.

<comment> mark-r Reminds me of an anecdote I heard about starting your own company. It's great, you're the boss. You can work half days if you want. You even get to choose which 12 hours that will be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was thinking on this the other day, and I think what ultimately boils down to is this: there's no "why" anymore at Apple.

Go back and watch old keynotes with Steve. Almost always, whenever he's talking about a new feature or piece of hardware, he starts with the "why." Not everyone will agree with the "why," of course, but it's still given.

Why do we want to get rid of the CD drive on MacBook Airs? (We see OTA software updates and media downloads as the way of the future and it wastes space.)

Why do we want to migrate from PowerPC to Intel? (We need better performance- per-watt so we can build MacBooks that have better battery life and don't overheat.)

Why do we want to not have a physical keyboard on the iPhone? (Because the buttons and controls can't self-specialize for each application.)

There are obviously exceptions to this rule, but by and large it's fairly accurate. Now, watch the most recent keynotes. Has there been even a single second dedicated to WHY we need Apple TV+? Apple News+? Apple Arcade? Thinner keyboard mechanisms?

No, and it's because we all know what the answer is.

<comment><USER12> There's still a "why" to those product launches. It's just that the "why" is no longer design-driven and is instead driven by business needs– namely, "we need to diversify our revenue streams away from just hardware sales and into services." This started when Tim Cook (instead of Jony Ive) took over as CEO.

<comment><USER13> I think the actual turning point was when Scott Forestall was fired & Ive took over software design. Prior to that, Apple had been a software company first. Even Woz talks about making hardware so that he'd have to tools to make software.

Ive created some amazing hardware, but I'm excited to see where the next few product cycles go.

<comment><USER14> > making hardware so that he'd have to tools to make software

A very good point in the context of neglecting the Mac, the primary tool used to make software for all the other prioritized hardware devices.

If they lose the developer community, who do they expect will build software for iOS, or the iPad that Cook loves so much? Seems very shortsighted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure if anyone has seen this yet, but Catalina is letting me login without entering my password!

I have two users on my machine.

1\. I "lock screen" from the Apple menu and close the lid. 2\. I reopen the lid and it does not ask for password. 3\. I start using laptop and lock screen suddenly pops up, but asks password for the wrong user. 4\. I hit random key and the screen goes away, and i can continue working.

Also, it looks like a lot of settings don't work on the lock screen / choose user screen. For instance, the pointer speed doesn't match what I have set, font sizes don't match either, and the resolution looks wrong.

In all... It feels like windows?

<comment><USER16> I've never seen a bug like that on Windows. Honestly, it feels like a lot of Mac users live in a bubble where Windows is a buggy pile of crap. Meanwhile most Windows users around the world are getting on with life on a stable OS with a great choice of hardware. While nothing's perfect, Windows is in a really good place at the moment.

<comment><USER17> As a Linux user I feel like windows users live in a bubble where where computers are more or less expected to behave like diseased wild animals rather than machines.

<comment><USER18> Good joke. Sounds like you haven't used windows since ME.

<comment><USER17> I came up with that idea (windows makes computers behave like organisms and not machines) during an internship where everyone was required to use corporate computers running Windows 10.

I haven't used it on a personal computer since XP though so I guess you're not far off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apple fanboy and software developer here. Also disappointed with the Catalina release. Had do an NV RAM reset, boot into safe mode, talk to Apple support to solve iCloud issues, and also click away dozens of privacy notifications.

But I still really don't consider windows or Linux as legitimate alternatives because of the ecosystem log in.

Yes, macOS has its downsides. But what keeps me from even thinking about Linux are all these little niceties: \- copy something on my iPhone, paste it on the Mac (still regularly leaves people speechless when they watch me do it: "what!? You can do that?") \- my watch unlocks my Mac \- my desktop is always in my pocket, all files sync'ed per default, zero config \- Start Reading something in safari, Hand it over to my iPhone in a second and walk out the door \- All my browser tabs synced across my Mac, iPhone and iPad \- I can curate my TV Watchlist on my Mac and it's automatically available on my AppleTV when I get home that night

I could go on with dozens more of these little things that I can't imagine living without anymore. I know that it's probably possible to achieve most or all of this with a Linux/Android/Chromecast Setup. But every time I watch some of my friends do it, it just looks like so much work to set up and maintain.

The only argument I understand here is the joy of tinkering and that feeling of achievement when you get it to work in the end. Apple is a bit boring in that regard. A lot of the integration stuff just works (yeah, yeah, sure not all, but still more so than on any other platform I know).

I'm not 20 anymore and I just prefer to spend my time with other things these days than tweaking my OS.

So although I wish Apple would invest more into quality on macOS again, for me the walled garden just totally works, and I'll stick with the lesser evil.

<comment><USER20> I don't understand why people update straight away. Leave it a few weeks/months. Especially as a developer.

<comment><USER21> Early adopters are the reason bugs are reported :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can I just say how happy I am with Xfce. It's a Linux desktop environment that looks like in the early 2000s. It's fast. There are no unnecessary frills. It just gets the job done. Its release cycles are measured in several years, and keep it minimal. I used to be on Windows, then macOS, then Ubuntu and now this. As a developer with soon to be 20 years of experience, it's the best environment I've had.

<comment><USER23> So was I until I switch to a 4k monitor and realize that there's no real, stable, functional fractional scaling on Linux, even less so on XFCE, unfortunately.

<comment><USER24> This is the biggest thing keeping me from leaving the Mac for Linux, and it hasn't really improved much in the last 4 years. I don't think most people care about HighDPI (or whatever you want to call it), particularly Linux devs. But I can't go back to lower DPI screens.

<comment><USER25> > I don't think most people care about HighDPI (or whatever you want to call > it), particularly Linux devs. But I can't go back to lower DPI screens.

I find this surprising. I'd say anyone who does any serious amount of multitasking (whether a Linux dev or not) would easily want one. I think people do care but they are just waiting on better pricing/availability.

<comment><USER26> My experience with hiDPI on Linux has been pretty varied. On GNOME, everything just works, and I recommend GNOME to most first-time Linux users. I use i3, and the scaling situation there involves setting some environment variables globally, but is otherwise fine (GDK_scale or something like that). The only issue I usually run into is when Firefox opens my file browser, which breaks the scaling somehow. Other than that, hiDPI is as good as it is in windows. MacOS definitely leads in that regard, but things have certainly gotten better to the point of not really worrying about it in Linux these days.

<comment><USER27> Seconding i3. I bought into vim when the evangelists came for me early in my career and it has payed wonderful dividends. I can't recommend i3wm for everyone but for those who like keeping their hands on the keyboard and want the wm to just get out of their way, i3 is perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> 1) After upgrading I had the avalanche of permission requests. I clicked through all of them on day 1. Needless to say it's running fine if you ignore running any of the new features.

2) For the first time in my 10+ years supporting Macs at an enterprise level, I'm holding off on upgrading my company to 10.15.

I'm genuinely pissed that there's an over abundance of annoyances when upgrading that it's not the Steve Jobs experience. Yes he's gone, but his spirit and ideals for what brought Apple back from bankruptcy 20+ years ago.

I'll veer off of Catalina into a Steve Jobs decision that made sense in 1997. Apple had too many products and it was too confusing. Steve said two types of users. Consumer/Pro. Two types of computers for them, portable/desktop. Now we have five different iPad lines. Multiple iPhone lines. What made things simple to focus on at Apple have gone away to colleg grads with no experience.

<comment><USER29> >What made things simple to focus on at Apple have gone away to colleg grads with no experience.

rather the decisions have went to the business people, and that's why Apple went bankrupt the first time around

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Catalina is definitely the most badly broken release in the last 10 years.

I can't get Chrome desktop notifications to work anymore, but the worst thing is that all my Apple Music playlists have disappeared from my iPhone.

They do exist in the Catalina Music app, but not on the phone where I need them. I suspect it's because my iPhone 6 isn't supported by the latest iOS release and there appears to be some iCloud version incompatibility that was triggered by Catalina. The iPhone Music app has crashed a few times as well.

They do warn me of just such an incompatibility when I open the Reminders app (which now has a far more convoluted user interface for no apparent benefit). I get the feeling that my decision to just keep using my iPhone 6 until it's not longer good enough will be difficult to sustain.

Catalina also randomly stalls for a second or two and some mouse clicks just don't register for a long time until they eventually do. This seems to have gotten a bit better now so I'm hopeful that it was related to uncached data.

</comment><comment><USER31> I can add something to the list which is Sidecar i.e. using an iPad as secondary screen. It was a real nightmare to set it up as it'd not detect the iPad despite meeting all the requirements. I found no fixes online so I had the idea of logout & login again (iCloud) so that it might detect it.

Well, it detected I had an iPad but the connection would time out every single time. After rebooting both the Mac and the iPad (another wild guess) it kind of worked - very laggy and couldn't use the Mac properly as clicking in e.g. System Preferences would open Finder to show me the app under Applications instead of the actual system preferences panel because of reasons.

It's truly broken and felt like an alpha version. But this has been the trend with macOS and guess it'll stay like this unless someone high enough at Apple decides to wake up.

<comment><USER32> SideCar was the reason I was excited for Catalina. But alas, the feature is not supported on 2015 Retina Macbook Pros, only the newer ones with the horrible keyboard, pointless touchbar, only one kind of port, etc.

<comment><USER33> I'm in the same boat. Installed the betas on both iPad and MBP about a month ago. Turns out my 2015 pre-horrible-keyboard MBP is too old. And none of the published hacks around the restriction work nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> All the nightmares are nightmares until they're not nightmares. Weird launch day bugs like the I bug on iOS 11 are distant memories.

Yeah, these bugs are bad, but to me articles like this really feel a lot like a broken record. Every September and October, when the major releases come out, there are bugs. And then by the time you're on 10.xx.2 or iOS xx.1.3 a month later they're just a bad memory.

If you don't want bugs, don't upgrade right away. That's not an Apple-only phenomenon - remember the Windows 10 October 2018 update that had to be _entirely retracted_?

10.14 is still supported. 10.13 is still supported. 10.12 is still supported. Keep using those if you want.

<comment><USER35> That cavalier attitude is fine for NEW features, but not for basic apps and foundations of an OS.

iOS 13 shipped with the Mail app broken. That's almost as bad as not being able to make calls.

Would a BlackBerry ever ship with a broken email app?

<comment><USER36> BlackBerry's first and only tablet (the PlayBook) actually shipped without an email app. Was it courage or a company falling apart, you decide :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I just upgraded to Catalina today on my MBP, and that screenshot of Allow/Deny notifcations hits the nail on the head! Likewise the popups about allowing apps to control other apps - what a wonderful way to introduce me to Catalina!

I mean, come on, there has to be a better way than this, especially from a company supposedly famed for it's user-orientated designs and thinking?

<comment><USER38> How would you choose to handle it?

<comment><USER39> Maybe Apple could have gone through all the apps on their own App Store, built a whitelist out of the privileges that each of those apps effectively needs to do its job at all (not optional features, just the "makes the app more than a paperweight" feature-set), and shipped Catalina with said whitelist.

For example, if, when you upgraded to Catalina, the App Store version of Alfred was already installed on disk, then macOS should assume that you're an Alfred user, who wants to continue to be able to do "the thing Alfred does" (launch apps) without asking.

And before you say "but what if this whitelist authorizes malware to continue being malware"—if there's malware _on the App Store_ , then they should probably solve that by removing the app from the App Store and deauthorizing the developer's code-signing cert, so that Gatekeeper won't run it any more. Just kill the vampires; don't ask the user if they want to let them in.

<comment><USER40> > if there's malware on the App Store, then they should probably solve that by > removing the app from the App Store and deauthorizing the developer's code- > signing cert

Apple has been spectacularly poor at spotting bad apps on the Mac App Store.

<comment><USER41> So the solution is to punish the users of the platform because the company won't spend enough money to hire people to properly vet the app store?

"its a bold move cotton..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Jobs was obsessed with design, but it had to actually work. "Real artists ship" was his famous quote and he was making tools for people who also had to ship. Cook and Ive aren't making tools for working professionals, they are making exhibits for a design museum. This permeates the culture: no one in Apple management gives a flying fuck about the OS (or the keyboard) because you aren't meant to use it or even switch it on. Just look at it and admire it, on your desk if you're a pleb but preferably in a glass case in a white painted room.

<comment><USER43> Someone like Cook is probably very very busy with the logistics of running one of the worlds biggest companies. I dont think he cares that much about products, hes a businessman not a user

<comment><USER42> You might be right but that is the job of a COO not a CEO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Great post detailing everything wrong with Catalina so far. I installed it on my personal Mac, and that scared me off of ever installing it on my work laptop. Hopefully I can jump to whatever the next thing is. Or maybe it's time to get off Macs for good.

<comment><USER45> _Or maybe it 's time to get off Macs for good._

At least don't try to use the version of Linux under MacOS as a Linux system. The OP is running cron jobs and Python in the background, and changes in the Apple security environment broke them. If you need to run Linux stuff, put it on a real Linux system.

<comment><USER46> >> don't try to use the version of Linux under MacOS

MacOS is based on Unix not Linux. However, I mostly agree with your sentiment and would extend it to "use the right tool for the job". Use launchd (although I hear it is on the way out) instead of Cron etc.

<comment><USER47> It's based on Mach via NeXTStep. Not Unix.

<comment><USER48> Way back in the day, Mac OS X was, "Unix Certified(tm)", so it's correct to say it's unix, technically. Has that certification changed?

<comment><USER49> macOS catalina is UNIX certified: [https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register](https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's all very depressing. Like most of us here, I have become increasingly frustrated with the state of Mac (touch bar, bad keyboards, odd choices that fit neither creators nor developers well, and so on). No point rehashing it all.

But where does that leave us? I spent a year on Windows 10 not so long ago, on upper end laptop hardware with HiDPI screen, and it was less fun and more problem prone than macOS - especially when it came to fast day-to-day stuff we never think about, such as PDF printing, quickview, etc. Plus in Windows you get the mysterious stop-the-world issues (that I suspect are OS level misbehaviors when some remote network connection has become lagged). There may be some use cases where Windows is actually faster/nicer/better than macOS, but they're not non-MS development, Adobe CC work, regular file management work, etc. Maybe games are it.

Desktop Linux (even on standard desktop computers, not just specialized laptops) is far from perfect. Getting everything to work is a lot of effort, and then mysteriously something will stop working. Every window manager has some rough edges or cases where it's unpleasant. Getting and keeping a Linux Desktop in good working order is harder than it should be at this age of Linux.

ChromeOS?... I know some people who use that as their daily driver. Obviously there are desktop apps that they don't need/use (Adobe CC, for example). But what happens when some automated Google thing triggers an account ban? Bricked laptop and no data?

Thing really do not seem to be improving on the whole. Old problems are replaced with new problems, but the layers and separated concerns mean more complexity and more difficulty solving problems.

<comment><USER51> > Getting and keeping a Linux Desktop in good working order is harder than it > should be at this age of Linux.

Maybe because all the developers ran away to Macs, instead of sticking around dogfooding and fixing bugs? Free software is a collaborative social enterprise - it's not really anyone's job to make free stuff for you to use. If, as a developer, you've taken the easy path of proprietary software for years, and now after finally getting fed up of being abused by a company that doesn't have your best interests at heart you return to the world of Free Software only to complain that it's still unpolished - then I'm afraid you are rather entitled, and deserve a serenading by the world's tiniest open source violin.

And make no mistake, the kinds of "rough edges" you refer to are not hard computer science problems. They're broadly just the kinds of everyday maintenance things that inevitably crop up in a huge software project on an ongoing basis and are easily fixed by many eyes and a little graft. The more eyes, and the more graft, the more polished the system.

For what it's worth, Desktop Linux for all its faults is still light years ahead of the competition. Far from perfect, as you say, but it really is the least bad choice. As they say - the best time to rally around Free Software is 10 years ago, and the second best time is now.

<comment><USER52> This!. Love your reply. I'm also tired of developers criticizing Linux desktop for not being friendly enough and running away to propietary systems instead of trying to help to fix what they don't like of Linux Desktop. That's the good thing of open source: don't like it? Then fix it and send me a patch and stop complaining. Its not like propietary systems where you only can complain (you can't fix)

<comment><USER53> Maybe they want to get stuff done, other than puttering around in the tooling. It's a nice option to have, but would be ruinous to productivity.

Also, design by committee rarely produces good UI. You can patch little UI bugs, but if you really want to holistically improve the UI it's a huge undertaking.

Just because you're developer, doesn't mean you want to hack on every tool you use. Software has gotten way too big for that.

<comment><USER54> > Maybe they want to get stuff done, other than puttering around in the > tooling.

You mean like that crufty thing called homebrew?

Or the default versions of software shipped are out of date by maybe a long, long time?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/bash/comments/393oqv/why_is_the_ver...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bash/comments/393oqv/why_is_the_version_of_bash_included_in_os_x_so_old/)

<comment><USER55> > You mean like that crufty thing called homebrew?

What kind of problems have you faced with Homebrew? Can you please elaborate?

I use Homebrew all the time and it just works for me out of the box without any issues. I never had to edit configuration files or customize anything to make it do the right thing. It just works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I've been using Catalina as a daily driver since the first beta. I did notice some bugs here and there but I have to say my take away was different. I did get the barrage of permission prompts but it was just like that the one time and while it was a bit overwhelming it made me feel good that my OS was keeping tabs on these things. With Apple's emphasis on privacy they had to build these sort of controls into macOS to play catch up with iOS's features in this regard.

Also, I have hard time feeling sorry for someone who is upset that beta system software upset his working environment. Apple specifically says not to put their betas on critical hardware. The author said he did this because it was "simpler". Not sure if breaking your work environment is "simpler" than booting off an external SSD or having a second machine for testing.

<comment><USER57> OP here. I never installed Catalina (or any recent beta software in years) on my primary machine that I get work done on. My Catalina testing this Summer was explicitly kept to an old laptop and virtual machines.

My "simpler" comment was about my mistake in signing into iCloud on those test devices. I learned my lesson and either stayed logged out or used a test iCloud account for the rest of the Summer.

And, overall, my post and comments in general are about running Catalina now that it's publicly released. Not about issues I experienced as a beta user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is a sure sign that the key people who used to run OS X development have moved on. Probably years ago, and we're just witnessing the gradual atrophy. The maintainers they left in their places probably kept it mostly working for 2-3 years. That is all.

<comment><USER59> They were the original NeXTSTEP people. Most of them have probably retired, rightfully, but to detrimental effect to macOS...

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I think windows has always hands down beat osx in everything but aesthetics in terms of functionality and control. Maybe you could say except for proprietary features / apps but I don't think that really counts because that's comparing ecosystems. Even for development on Linux, running a vagrant instance and writing code in Windows is just a better experience up front. I think Microsoft understands this when their Linux subsystem stuff and upcoming revamped terminal. Developing for Mac is only better if you're trying to develop for the apple ecosystem. For non code use I think it goes either way, with Mac being the choice for graphics stuff since it's generally bought as a complete package with guaranteed color accurate screens etc. Linux is really powerful and a better OS than windows for running code, but precisely for running it and nothing else imo.

</comment><comment><USER61> With the level of frustration I've had with mac for a while now, my latest desktop is now running Linux... though that had its' own series of headaches. First, the onboard audio and wifi only work with Kernel 5.1 and 5.2 respectively. I upgraded. When an rs 5700 xt finally got in stock with non- reference designs, I ordered one, that lead me to 5.3 kernel, and binary downloads (which were locked at 1080p on a 40" 4k display, too big).

In the end after trying things, borking my install, trying manjaro architect (failed), trying arch (not sure how I failed, but no boot) and finally reverting to Ubuntu LTS and forgoing the onboard audio for an external soundblaster usb and using wired ethernet anyway, I have a working system.

But at the very least, I'm not entirely beholden to Apples whims, which means eGPU and a lot of issues for Nvidia graphics. In the end, I'm not developing iOS apps or mac apps, and even if I do an electron app, have no intention of giving Apple any more of my money.

I haven't bought a Sony hardware product in about 20+ years since their bad behavior (though they do get revenue from blueray and make components). I can live without Apple too.

</comment><comment><USER62> As another person whose livelihood is tied up in the use of OS X, I agree that apple continues to drop the ball. Hardware, software, 'security', cloud services. It's just painful. I don't understand why a company with so many resources cannot produce better results. I really love the mac, and so many Apple products, but I fear that the long term trend is downwards, and I see no sign of it abating.

</comment><comment><USER63> At this point I stay at least one _major_ release behind Apple's bleeding edge. They've been shipping increasingly buggy software on the Mac for years.

<comment><USER64> I'm currently two major releases behind. My policy now is basically "upgrade when only when _forced_ " (eg. by security updates).

<comment><USER65> Or unfortunately when trying to build an iOS app: the ability to target an iOS version (sometimes minor, such as from 12.3? to 12.4?) depends on Xcode version and the latter is often hard-locked to a MacOS version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> > Allow or Deny

Have we forgotten this [0]?

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuqZ8AqmLPY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuqZ8AqmLPY)

<comment><USER67> You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or Allow?

...

 _sigh_ allow

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> It's interesting to see this from a MacOS release and the security complaints are similar to what's been seen about recent versions of Windows.

To me, both are a manifestation of the idea that these two Operating Systems are moving in the direction of being safer for "ordinary users" at the expense of annoying more technical users who want to do less common things which can be dangerous if you're not careful (like running software as root)

Given that "ordinary users" outnumber technical ones, I guess that makes commercial sense...

As a result of that, I prefer working with Linux where possible as (generally) it lets you do what you want, even if that's really dumb/dangerous. If I say `kill -9 x` or I sudo to root and do `rm -rf .` by accident it's on me.

<comment><USER69> I take solace in that fact that by definition there will _always_ be developers - increasingly, even. And therefore there will alway be a market for making computers for developers. Apple seems to be dropping the ball on that lately, which is a shame because they had such a lead. But Microsoft is racing to fill the gap with things like WSL and the skyrocketing build quality of high-end Windows laptops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> From the article:

> Because I'm an idiot with reasons, I have a python daemon that launches as > root via launchd and remains running in the background. It is now silently > failing because it isn't allowed to access an external USB drive.

This reminds me of the thematic line from one of Linus' infamous rants:

> WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE!

A lot of people asked why it was necessary to tolerate rude behavior from leadership. It seems the answer is "Catalina."

</comment><comment><USER71> I have been using Linux on my home workstations for over 10 years. I use a MacBook Pro 1 day a week for work for 5 years. I occasionally use a Windows 10 machine if a friend or family member needs help.

Linux desktop is easily my most productive and least worse environment. It's so smooth to develop on. All other OS behave like an annoying authoritarian dictator. And Windows specifically is a kafkaesque dumpster fire of menus and windows all with seemingly different design concepts. MacOS is pretty consistent in design and performance but using the machine it's obvious that developer productivity is not their top goal and you can't develop using a mobile phone as your workhorse so desktops are all we got.

<comment><USER43> Thats a very good formulation of current windows, I always struggle to find the words to describe it. As someone quite new to Linux, I wonder what setup are you running?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Honest question: if apple software engineering has structural problems that sacrifice quality for splash, what is the reasonable alternative OS? Is it Windows 10? Is it Ubuntu?

I suppose it depends on the user.

I'm lucky, I'm an academic and presumably I can deal with any option.

<comment><USER43> I've been using stock Ubuntu 18 on my laptop (zenbook) for a year and have had pretty much 0 issues. I consider myself a bit lucky in that though. The driver experience is actually better then on windows, on windows I had some random crashes which I have never had since switching.

I just love the feeling that its my computer again, I haven't felt that for 10 years prior. I actually like customizing the interface and stuff like that, like I used to do in the win2k days. And having a real package manager integrated in the OS is just glorious. My only problem is not being able to run Photoshop, I can't live with Gimp. So I use photopea as a poor substitute.

I grew up on Windows but have been using mac extensively as well. I can never understand window management on mac, but with some gnome extensions (cover flow alt tab, dash-to-panel, arc menu) its just really really solid, I'm so happy to have my own computer again.

If windows and mac continues on the road they are on, I expect linux desktop to get a real boost. I cant stand not being able to shut off annoying stuff like automatic reboots and some photoanalysisd process, I just want to scream.

<comment><USER73> Someone needs to end the Photoshop monopoly. It's annoying I can't switch to alternatives or think about using Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I mean, even the supposed top software product from Apple nowadays, iPadOS, is suffering from annoying bugs.

This will be the third time I have to reboot my iPad 6th gen today, the first two were because the keyboard would randomly close and not come back (if someone has a workaround for this issue, I would be grateful, it is a really annoying bug specially since it happened while I was writing a big text) [1].

Now, the app that I use for Hacker News (Octal) is broken on the dock, so the only way to switch to it is using the Expose-like screen. I already tried to force remove it from dock, however opening it again triggered the same bug. Also, force touching the icon shows a "Share (null)" (probably the cause of the bug).

I know, not a big deal (making the user reboot three times in one day, however, should be a big deal). But this is for their top product for gods sake. I don't want to even imagine how Catalina is.

[1]: If this was Android I could at least force close the keyboard app. I didn't find a way to force closing iPadOS keyboard, BTW, I tried to add and remove keyboard languages without success. Also annoying that I had to use another device to search about this issue since, you know, I had no keyboard at all.

</comment><comment><USER75> Off-topic: I'm having trouble reading this site on mobile, the font color is far too light, my eyes kept losing focus. Desktop it seems much more readable.

Font-weight: 300 with Open Sans + light color is the problem. Font-weight 500 solves it.

</comment><comment><USER69> To throw my own (admittedly niche) Catalina anecdote into the mix:

In El Capitan, Apple introduced something called System Integrity Protection (SIP). This is a security layer that prevents you from doing certain things, like modifying system directories, _even as root_. The idea is that malicious software could gain root permissions and still be unable to do the most egregious stuff.

Okay, fine. You can turn it off by booting into recovery mode and running a command. I'd done this in the past because most of my company runs Linux desktops and some of our core software and scripts explicitly refer to network directories normally mounted in the root dir (yes, really). So since macOS mounts remote volumes under /Volumes, I had symlinks pointing from /foo to /Volumes/Foo.

Updating to Catalina removed all of these symlinks. Okay, sure, it's a system directory and they probably just overwrote it in the process. So I went back and turned off SIP, but afterward I still couldn't "sudo ln". What gives?

An extensive Google search turned up the fact that in Catalina, system directories are now mounted as a separate, read-only volume, at startup. So even with both admin permissions _and_ SIP turned off, there is zero way whatsoever to write to them.

An even more extensive Google search revealed someone who'd figured out you can re-mount the root dir after boot (and after turning off SIP, of course) as a writable drive, at which point I was able to finally re-create my symlinks.

This took me about an hour to sort out. If there hadn't been a workaround on that random forum (which by the way feels like a loophole, as it only required root permissions), I would've been forced to stop using a Mac altogether.

<comment><USER76> I can appreciate your problem, but SIP on whole is a good thing along with mounting system directories as read only. It's the only thing that prevented many machines from having to be reinstalled recently.

[https://mrmacintosh.com/google-chrome-keystone-is- modifying-...](https://mrmacintosh.com/google-chrome-keystone-is-modifying- var-symlink-on-non-sip-macs-causing-boot-issues/)

<comment><USER69> Right, but it's something that technical users should have a clear path for overriding. SIP at least has a semi-clear path for disabling it (though I couldn't find any official documentation of it, only forum posts) but the read-only directory thing was definitely really hard to find.

<comment><USER40> It was announced at WWDC, though not very widely advertised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I just restored from Time Machine after getting stuck on the "Estimating time remaining..." screen and then googling some other peoples' experiences. Three hours spent restoring from backup seemed like a better option.

</comment><comment><USER78> See also the discussions on "Everything's broken And nobody's upset" from 7 years ago, about Microsoft, by Scott Hanselman focusing quite heavily on sync problems

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531549)

It does seem to me that everything I use IT wise is more "always a bit broken" now, than it ever used to be.

</comment><comment><USER79> Wow... between the linked blog post and the responses here I have to say I'm still pretty happy running Mac OS 10.11 on an late `09 Mac Mini with maxed out ram and a SSD drive so upgrading really doesn't seem necessary.

Sure, I'd love more power and a 3 monitor setup but since I only code web apps and mostly use BBEdit, Fetch, Terminal, and a few web browsers neither speed or power are really lacking.

I've figured I'd move to linux when I finally do buy a new box and this sure reinforces going that direction, especially the comments here from folks in the trenches at Apple.

That said, sounds to me like Apple needs to implement a structure of team liaisons that are assigned solely to manage product continuity between teams of coders.

</comment><comment><USER48> Running a 2015 Macbook w/High Sierra. I feel pretty alright about things.

I'll check back in a year if there's any compelling reason to upgrade.

<comment><USER73> Back then, upgrading meant something for the users, like QuickLook, TimeMachine or for the first time in life I saw a new OS actually take less disk space and was released primarily as optimization of the previous release as in Snow Leopard.

Now I don't bother to watch their keynotes as they're too boring and I'm productive on High Sierra and I don't see any reason I should upgrade and cause unnecessary annoyance. How boring Apple software have become.

Is there a reason to upgrade these days? I don't need SideCar as I connect my laptop to a bigger display.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I've thought about the UX issue, and I believe a big problem is they've overloaded the existing Privacy tab. It worked before only because it didn't do a whole lot. Now that it's essentially an integral part of the OS experience, it really needed to be broken out into its own dedicated preferences pane like Notifications.

Look at the Notifications pane and how it's grouped by application, with many options to the right. It offers far more information and control, and has visual indicators. That is what the privacy UI should have been like.

Current solution is half baked and no one can argue otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER81> Eesh, all this whinging about permissions dialogs is tiring. It's really not any different than what you would get on an iPhone, except that someone with an existing Mac probably has a saved session which a bunch of programs already running.

I clicked "allow" a maybe a dozen times and I was done. It was real, real hardship.

The only real weirdness I've had with Catalina is that I have some code where one thread wakes up another with an empty UDP packet, and that packet no longer arrives. Sending 1 arbitrary byte instead of 0 fixes it.

</comment><comment><USER14> > It is absolutely clear that the Mac is far outside of what the upper-ranks > of Apple is focusing on.

This is so inexplicable, given that the Mac is necessary to continue producing the apps for the iPad and iOS ecosystems, yet I've never really heard anyone outside of developer community comment on this, nor does it seem Cook or anyone in Apple has contemplated the consequences to their entire company of squandering the buy-in from the developer community by neglecting the company's primary development tool. Mind-boggling.

</comment><comment><USER82> Although I use a mac for work, I have a spare thinkpad with openbsd, which I think of as my "forever system." I put stable software on it and generally go with the OS defaults. Over time I patiently refine the configuration files, adding a little polish here and there. The experience keeps improving, and perhaps some day it will be my main system, and work completely smoothly.

IMHO investing time to get too comfortable with the changing mac ecosystem is ultimately wasted work since it will eventually change/break.

</comment><comment><USER83> My update experience for Catalina was like so:

1\. Download 8GB on Australian internet.

2\. Wait 7 hours.

2\. "Sorry there was an error".

3\. Download again.

4\. "You need 1GB more free space".

5\. Clears 1GB of space.

6\. Ok installing, restarts.

7\. "You ran out of disk space". Only one button: [restart].

8\. Restarts.

9\. "You ran out of disk space". Only one button: [restart].

10\. Search for solution, find dozens of others with the same problem. I had to do a time machine backup restore. Cleared 16GB of space and it worked.

<comment><USER84> I mean you clearly 8gb is needed, this is not apple problem.

<comment><USER83> You've misunderstood. I had cleared enough space for the update to give the go ahead. Then during the installation it ran out of space and got stuck in an infinite restart loop.

So clearly the Catalina update requires much more free space than it says it does before allowing the installation to continue. Just poor software development and lack of testing.

Here's a Reddit thread of people with the same problem: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/deuwsa/help_stuck_in...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/deuwsa/help_stuck_in_catalina_update_boot_loop_because/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I'm not a macOS user but from what I'm reading, it seems Apple turned something akin to SELinux on by default but let users define the policies on the fly.

I remember a lot of headaches with SELinux on Fedora desktops years ago. It was not fun but I could always disable that if I didn't feel like fixing the policies myself. Lately, things barely pop up.

<comment><USER86> In my opinion, it's way less troublesome than the SELinux introduction back then.

If you start an app, you get a one time popup when it tries to access something important. Like the Documents, Downloads or Pictures folder, or the folder where Contacts are kept. That's all.

The author happens to be running a number of utilities in the background. For instance "Alfred", which is a replacement for the built-in Spotlight search tool. Of course, being a search tool, Alfred wants to know everything and generates a number of popups. He runs a terminal and perhaps does a "find ~ -name blah" which also generates a number of popups.

It's not fair for the author to stick the "broken" label on there. It's just that the author encountered a number of other things, and they add up in annoyance for him.

Not for me, by the way. Catalina runs fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> > Apple is becoming (already is?) a services company. And, let's face it. > Apple has never been good at anything involving the internet. I feel like > they could have all the money and engineers in the world (which they > basically already do) and still never completely get their services right > because it's just not in their DNA. Applications are. Hardware is. But put a > network layer in there and they crap themselves. (Ok, not in every case. I'm > obviously exaggerating to make a point. But the overall track record is iffy > at best.)

For what it's worth, Apple is on a massive hiring spree in the Seattle area, attempting to lure developers and systems engineers from all of the Cloud companies in the area, with the goal of using all their combined experiences to start doing internet services properly. No idea if it'll work. I hear horror stories from my ex-Apple co-workers about the way things used to be.

</comment><comment><USER88> To add to the list of bugs, what the actual fuck is going on with SideCar? It barely works and every time I turn it on, it destroys the colors on the laptop screen. Whites become yellow and colors are partially inverted. It's worse than the betas (which also had its fair share of bugs while connecting)

</comment><comment><USER89> Looks like it's the HN hug of death for this one: [https://web.archive.org/web/20191010183502/https://tyler.io/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191010183502/https://tyler.io/broken/)

<comment><USER57> _sigh_ I switched back to WordPress literally five days ago and haven't yet gotten around to installing a caching plugin. My bad. I've turned Cloudflare caching on in the meantime.

<comment><USER90> Mind sharing what thing you are fleeing _to_ Wordpress from and why? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER57> Been running WP for god knows how long for my personal site, while my company website is built with Jekyll.

In June I migrated to Ghost simply to try it and learn more about Node. It was _fine_, but never really fit my mental model of how a blog should operate or a web app should be structured. For better or worse, I'm an ex-Yahoo and a PHP guy through and through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> Have you found the solution to keep things from asking for permission on things? I haven't upgraded yet, but experience this for a good 20+ items on reboot, and I haven't been able to find a solution to stop it. (including going into my keychain and trying to allow more permission to some items)

Sometimes this mean 5-10min of allowing things access and typing my password over and over for each prompt. Things usually work after that, but I don't even have a clue, often times different apps seem to be asking if they can access system programs.

<comment><USER40> > including going into my keychain and trying to allow more permission to some > items

This almost certainly is not going to help, because it's granting access to other things.

> Sometimes this mean 5-10min of allowing things access and typing my password > over and over for each prompt. Things usually work after that, but I don't > even have a clue, often times different apps seem to be asking if they can > access system programs.

It's interesting to see how we've already degrade to the Windows Vista-esque experience when you just approve everything. None of the security benefits, all of the usability downsides…

<comment><USER91> I mean, I've taken the time to try to search for each of those subsystem things are asking for, but the information out there about doesn't really add much more info to 'if you don't say yes this will not work' or, 'this will ask you again for permission in 10 min'

Some of the more curious ones I've checked via the logs in the ActivityMonitor to try to figure out what is really being asked.

But none of this yields an answer. ie, things need to use launchd, assistantd, and accountsd ect. I never personally revoked those permissions.

Historical web answers point users to use Keychain First Aid, which hasn't been around for years now, but obviously this has been a long ongoing issue which seems to possibly be exacerbated by other OS upgrade issues.

A fix would absolutely quell the rage this gives me when I have to deal with it early in the morning before a deployment.

<comment><USER91> curiously, on my Windows system, I clicked 'no' to a permission prompt on something one time and now I can't seem to actually give the thing blanket permission after determining I would want it to have it.

So that just asks pretty much every 5 min or so, again it's more a subsystem than an entire program, so bla)

so. yea. yay for technology. ;) I think I'll just go read a book now. on paper. in the other room. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> " Apple has never been good at anything involving the internet. I feel like they could have all the money and engineers in the world (which they basically already do) and still never completely get their services right because it's just not in their DNA. Applications are. Hardware is. But put a network layer in there and they crap themselves. (Ok, not in every case. I'm obviously exaggerating to make a point. But the overall track record is iffy at best.)"

Haven't tested it in Catalina yet, but I doubt my Contacts in MacOS is still able to sync with iCloud

</comment><comment><USER93> I really feel for the people who HAVE to be on the latest OS. Thankfully I'm able to always operate at n-1 for ~6mo and once the dust has settled I can upgrade safely. I might speed that up a little now that I have a work and a personal MacBook but only on my personal and only to play with SwiftUI. Even then, it's probably better to just run a VM with a throwaway iCloud account.

I love my mac and have no intention of switching but I really hope this is their Vista moment, or close to it, and they start doing better on the desktop.

<comment><USER73> I have already lost hope for Apple. I'm just hoping they don't make things worse and just keep the quality as is but this seems optimistic too. Maybe in 5 years, Linux gets bit better when Mac is finally crap as a whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> I am lucky to have a Mac book pro 2012 ( yeah that one with all ports and stuff). So am perfectly protected from all the hardware issues from then.

What software issues ,oh boy.

at this point I don't even see your point of releasing a new OS every year.look at the windows yes I'm taking that example.

I honestly feel that if you let the developers to do their job, without the stringent yearly cycle they would do an incredible job and Mac will flourish.

Keeping a year-on-year cycle with incremental updates just for the sake of it, is really hurting Apple's image..

</comment><comment><USER95> > _why is my iMac's hostname now duplicated "(2)"?_

Oh boy, I've seen that! Don't quite remember where―I think it was Mavericks, if I'm not mixing it up with the Ubuntu NAS.

<comment><USER96> I've seen it happen when the machine has both an ethernet and wi-fi connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> I had the same response when they dropped the live version. I've been using the beta for weeks, and when I heard it went GM I was shocked.

My biggest issue is that the whole computer freezes for about 10 seconds when I activate a dropdown in Safari, Chrome, or Firefox sometimes. It will also freeze everything but audio playback for 10 to 30 seconds when watching videos full screen with VLC. I dunno, maybe it's just me.

But this release is the buggiest .0 release I've ever seen from Apple.

</comment><comment><USER98> I still love Apple. For me macOS is still much better than Windows and Linux, and iPhone + iPad + Watch + TV + App Store + AirPods etc. is still a more pleasant overall experience than any other ecosystem out there.

but when you see betas for x.1 before there is even a GM for x.0, you know it's going to be a rushed, buggy release.

and it's disheartening to see all the little quality-of-life bugs and suggestions you submitted eons ago remaining unfixed year after year.

</comment><comment><USER99> I switched to a T480 Lenovo running Fedora. Prior to this I've never really ran a Linux machine for my personal laptop and only ever in the capacity of a desktop for work (usually running some old RHEL).

I don't think I ever want to go back to OSX. Fedora has been such a pleasure to work on Sure thunderbird is meh -- but overall my output and joy from running the system has been returned 10x

</comment><comment><USER100> I used to dream of setting up a company that sold solid hardware laptops with solid components and paying really good kernel hackers to write really good drivers just for those devices, and then running BSD and XFCE and selling it as the uber-menace choice for silicon valley types

Just saying simple and bullet proof goes a long way

<comment><USER101> Retrofit 15 year old think pads with modern components and ship it running bash and no gui. There's probably a market there to be honest.

</comment></comment><comment> jorge-d I was just in the process of installing Catalina, guess I'll just click on that "Cancel" button now.

<comment><USER102> Huh, does that work? I didn't realize that one could actually revert mid install. Let us know. (:

<comment><USER103> you can't. once it finishes downloading and reboots into the update screen you can't go back.

Catalina seems to at least have broken the ability to create symlinks in the root folder. So no more `cd /htdocs` on my laptop.

<comment><USER104> > So no more `cd /htdocs` on my laptop.

If you use zsh I recommend using hashed directories. So this in your .zshrc:

        hash -d htdocs=~/path/to/htdocs

Lets you `cd ~htdocs`.

Alternatively, use 'fasd' or 'z' and you can just `z htd` without preconfiguring anything or caring where htdocs is.

Or, of course, you could just create the symlinks in your $HOME instead of in root.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> Having tried Figma (a Web based design tool) i am beginning to think that this will be over soon for OSs anyway.

The battle will be between browsers as they will become the new OSs.

My sons school uses chromebooks, which is going to be their base for how they think about digital space in the future. The desktop metaphor will not last forever.

</comment><comment><USER106> I have had no issues so far, and I like the permissions requirements as they are allowing at least some privacy improvement.

Funny that everyone complains about privacy invasion but then also complains when the needed permissions to protect privacy are introduced.

<comment><USER107> Reading the post, I didn't get the impression that he was complaining about permission dialog boxes in general, but rather about the specific implementation (including lack of documentation and lack of power-user features) in Catalina.

<comment><USER57> OP here. Thank you. I have no issues with the tightening of security and permissions on Catalina. In fact, I welcome it both for myself and my aging parents who I want to remain safe online. My issue, as you said, is the implementation and lack of documentation for those of us who do know what we're doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> What is broken is the pale grey font on white background. I can't read that without hurting my eyes. What is the point of this? Is it supposed to be pretty? I can hardly see it.

</comment><comment><USER109> To the author: Have you tried Linux? It's not a rental OS like those other ones, you actually own it! It's great, give it a shot and be amazed!

</comment><comment><USER110> > The point I was hoping (but probably failed) to make

In the the author reads this: you can definitely rest assured you very well made your point, at least for me! :-)

</comment><comment><USER111> The reality is that now that computing is _really_ mass market, and computers are incredibly complex (tens of gigabytes in an OS!), open-ended power-usage is no longer a profitable addressable market. Our needs are too niche to make it work the effort to support our needs. (Dis-)economy of (non-s)scale and the complexity of modern software implies that we'd have to pay a lot of $ to get our use cases handled.

So we have to put up with the hassles, or invest in the extra machines for experimentation and testing, or pay people to clean up our dev environments for us.

</comment><comment><USER112> Looks like the page itself is broken, too... from the comments I presume that there's something wrong with the latest version of OS/X?

<comment><USER40> It's an article talking about bugs in the OS and the new privacy features being too onerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> > quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor > iste tuus nos1 eludet?

Jobs would have caught that one.

</comment><comment><USER114> I wonder if things are so broken, how do they manage to create world class hardware and software. Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER73> Burn money brute forcing. How else would "non intelligent" organization accomplish?

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> Why does what seems likes every commenter / blogger on this site feel the need to write a think piece about how they no longer trust Apple and all those other times they weren't the one complaining? (Hint: they were.)

It's always the same – this time out:

• Guy installed beta software and it was buggy. STOP THE PRESSES!!!!

• "I'm a pro user, I've functionally given escalated privs to apps that steal my data, every Electron container POS ever written, and 100 open standards only Chrome supports. How DARE Apple ask desktop users for permissions on upgrade!?!?!? Keep that security stuff for smartphone users – filthy casuals."

• Forgot Password. #classic

• Somehow my hostname changed during a system update.

And the cycle continues. Comments section without fail: 4-5 commenters who maybe used a Mac once are somehow experts on MBP keyboards, no one likes the Touch Bar, software quality, here's a Linux laptop I like (obligatory distro discussion in reply), "Services Company", a WWSJD for good measure, blah blah blah, Apple is DOOOOMED!

Sure, the public at large loves drama, but the ethos of Hacker News supposedly assumes some higher quality of posts + commentariat due to an audience of those involved in building software, startups, products, and hacks that require technical knowhow. Rather, the tendency of the vocal minority who post these anti-Apple Medium articles and comments is quite perverse:

\- rail against the mythical "manager" strawperson who hates software quality and is just out to steal money, jobs, or some other vague emotional rallying cry from all us hard working devs.

\- "empathize" by infantilizing the industry and software engineers. Neither devs nor tech companies have any responsibility for speaking up on scope, making well-justified technical decisions, keeping in mind the end user or world around them, or voting with their feet, etc.

You hate to see it. Since it's the exact same platform war crap that's been going on forever, it's always big, bad, Cupertino that's at fault...

...and yet, I've been using Catalina (on a separate machine until a late beta), treat my personal accounts as production, assume every process and line of code might be a potential attack vector, and support reasonable software policies which respect I'm both an end user and a software professional.

Isn't perfect, but stable enough for both development and production, just like software since time immortal. Not broken.

<comment> bloody-crow I don't know if you just skimmed the article or deliberately misrepresenting its arguments to make your point. Either way, this behavior deserves a downvote in my book.

> Guy installed beta software and it was buggy. STOP THE PRESSES!!!!

The author is describing the experience on the stable point-zero release of the OS. He only mentions beta to set up the context.

> "I'm a pro user, I've functionally given escalated privs to apps that steal > my data, every Electron container POS ever written, and 100 open standards > only Chrome supports. How DARE Apple ask desktop users for permissions on > upgrade!?!?!? Keep that security stuff for smartphone users – filthy > casuals."

That's pretty much the opposite of what the author is actually saying in the article. You're misrepresenting quite agressively.

> Forgot Password

Sure, that's possible. It's also entirely possible, given poor overall quality of the release, that it's an OS' fault.

> Somehow my hostname changed during a system update.

Are you saying it's not an issue worth mentioning? I disagree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> This is about macOS Catalina being broken.

</comment><comment><USER117> Too many Majors, not enough soldiers.

</comment><comment><USER118> [deleted]

<comment><USER31> How is this related to a post talking about a(nother) buggy macOS release?

<comment><USER118> You are right, I commented in the wrong thread

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> Oh boy. I'd like to know Jony Ive's reaction to Catalina...

<comment><USER120> Based on Apple's recent history I'm sure Jony Ive would lament how Catalina didn't make the computer 0.1mm thinner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> This article is pure bullshit and it makes no effort to hide it

> Let's start with my now infamous tweet from the other day. (I'm an > influencer!) This screenshot has absolutely been manipulated to make a > point, but everything in it is real. It's all of the security warnings and > permission

What the author doesn't understand in this instance, is that it stops being real when he does the manipulation.

There is no reality in that picture and by his own admission the author has no credibility to make a point.</comment>


Refactoring: When is it appropriate to not rewrite code as a Freelancer? - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/are-you-a-boy-scout-coder/

<comment><USER2> I usually _don't_ rewrite, unless the client specifically agrees to that work. Often it's not much extra work, but it's still over and above what they've asked for.

Instead, I'll usually write some documentation explaining what I've learned about how the system works. If it takes me a few hours to reverse engineer a particular set of code, documenting that up often only takes a few minutes, and will save me and future people a lot of time. But... I've not had to change _how_ the system's working.

In almost all these cases there's 0 tests - in some cases the code isn't really even _testable_ in the first place. If I think I'm going to have a long term relationship with the project/client, I may push for refactoring or rewriting, but if this is a short 'add a feature', I just document what I can that will be useful, and do the work.</comment>


Drab – An Elixir server-side alternative to JavaScript front ends - <AUTHOR> https://tg.pl/drab <comment><USER2> Other than not having to write another app, what are the advantages of something like Elixir/Drab over react/(relay/redux/flux)?</comment>


Moonlight 2 Released - <AUTHOR> http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Dec-17.html

<comment><USER2> "We worked with Microsoft to make sure that Moonlight was available to everyone on Linux and BSD."

Why doesn't Microsoft just open source Silverlight? Much as I applaud the energy and work of the Moonlight developers, I personally would have a lot of difficulty with donating my time to do a multi-billion-dollar corporation's job.

<comment><USER3> Do you feel the same way about MySQL, Java, or Eclipse, for example? Why is it so bad that a group of developers are motivated to port a commercial product? And why is the reaction "MS should do this" instead of "Thanks MS for helping out".

I just don't get the animosity around Mono and Moonlight. Those guys have balls, and they're doing great work to bring a set of technologies and tools to Linux. Why is this in any way bad? And please leave the IP poisoning arguments at the door--those have been thoroughly addressed and that horse has been beaten to a bloody pulp.

<comment><USER4> It's just strange that MS uses its resources, both directly and indirectly, to help Mono/Moonlight when it just could opensource (parts of) .NET/Silverlight.

<comment> andrewl-hn Patents or some other intellectual property rights might be an issue. Opensourcing a product of that scale can be very complicated. Java comes to mind, for example. It took Sun about two years from the initial announcement to a completely opensource release of JDK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On my phone so I can't search thoroughly yet. Does this mean netflix silverlifht drm is dealt with?

<comment><USER4> Miguel says "It is very unlikely that we will get PlayReady DRM on Linux."</comment></comment>


Alan Turing Documentary - <AUTHOR> http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/04/03/alan-turing-documentary/ <comment><USER2> "...he faced prosecution by the British government because he was gay. In 1954, Turing committed suicide at age 41 after being forced to undergo hormone therapy to "fix" his sexual orientation."

I don't know how I never heard of that before. It's certainly not from lack of hearing about Alan Turing in comp sci lectures. I feel kind of cheated that I didn't find out about it until now. Did the professors just not know? Were they too squeamish to talk about it? Did they think his biography was irrelevant in discussing his contributions to the field? It's just kind of unsettling to have heard him talked about as a genius so many times yet to have never heard it acknowledged that he was so profoundly mistreated.

<comment><USER3> >It's just kind of unsettling to have heard him talked about as a genius so many times yet to have never heard it acknowledged that he was so profoundly mistreated.

At the time, being homosexual was considered a mental disorder. This is how we used to treat people with mental disorders. Now, go to your nearest insane asylum and see if we're any less barbaric today. Be prepared for disappointment.

<comment><USER4> _> Now, go to your nearest insane asylum and see if we're any less barbaric today. Be prepared for disappointment._

Erm, care to back that one up there my friend?

<comment><USER5> Today we "treat" children with drugs to 'correct' their depression, their ADD, and so on. How can we be sure that a generation from now, we won't look back and realize that we were damaging their brains during a crucial learning window? How can we be sure that a generation from now, we won't look back and realize that we were playing God with people's personalities?

I'm not _against_ pharmapsychiatry, but at the same time I would stop well short of saying that everything we do with it is unassailably beneficial for the patients. Perhaps in a generation we will realize that trying to 'cure' ADD isn't very different from trying to 'cure' homosexuality.

<comment><USER4> Forcing a person who is past the age of legal responsibility to take massive doses of sex/gender hormones against their will is not the same as giving kids ritalin, and it is mildly offensive to say so.

We do not put ADD kids in "insane asylums." Have you ever seen the inside of a mental hospital? Most modern ones are nicer places than the average school.

Psychiatry before the 60s/70s was basically a different thing altogether to modern psychiatry. One flew over the cuckoos nest has a lot to answer for. It wasn't even an accurate portrayal of practices at the time the book was written, let alone when the film was made.

I broadly agree with the ADHD thing though. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(The US healthcare system and the incentives around drug proscriptions don't help a lot.)

<comment><USER3> >Forcing a person who is past the age of legal responsibility to take massive doses of sex/gender hormones against their will is not the same as giving kids ritalin, and it is mildly offensive to say so.

You're speaking from the moral outrage position _of today_. At the time, this was thought of as a way to "correct" the issue just as various drugs we force on kids is now. Personally I find it at least as bad that these drugs are forced on kids who have no way to defend themselves or even know what's being done to them.

The last time I was in the US I ended up having lunch with a friend and that friend's grown up daughter. The daughter, sadly, had a 4 year old son. During the coarse of lunch the loud, obnoxious daughter explained about all the disorders her kid had (ADD, OCD, etc.) and all the _drugs_ she gave him to deal with it. My wife asked what would happen if she just skipped giving him all this medication. "Oh, you just can't deal with him if he's not on it.".

She then went on to talk about her life. It was pretty clear that she had no time for the kid; he had to either be with baby sitters or sitting in front of the TV nearly 24/7. I can't help but think/hope that in 50 years this kind of lazy, inconsiderate behavior will be considered criminal (since it's the child who bears the long term affects of it, not the decision maker). That kid sounded like a normal 4 year old boy to me but he's being drugged into shape so he can serve a role closer to that of a cat than of a child.

It's been speculated that if Mozart, Beethoven, etc. were born in the US today they would probably never amount to anything because their parents would probably drug away their creativity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Direct: <http://www.turingfilm.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> That page has the most elaborate and geeky captcha I've ever seen. It's also not very practical considering that something like 7 percent of men have some degree of color blindness. I can barely tell the difference between 3 and 5 on that scale.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there any video or audio footage of Alan Turing? I am not aware of any.

It would be really amazing to see video of him, or at least hear his voice.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I agree. I think I remember reading maybe in the Hodges biography that there unfortunately isn't any; I think there was some sort of recorded radio interview that got lost somehow...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was told by a friend, not a prof. But now that I'm a prof I can tell you that most students look at you weird if you go anywhere near politics in a CS lecture. Or even into biology / evolution.

<comment><USER11> Let me guess: you happen to be living in the US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In terms of actual real-world tangible importance, I consider Alan Turing more important than Einstein. He and von Neumann are possibly the greatest scientists of the 20th century.

BTW, another thing people often don't know about Turing and von Neumann was that their interests went beyond computers and mathematics. Both were very interested in biology and physics as well, and did important work on those fields. von Neumann in particular did important work in regard to the theory of self-replication, early proto-evolutionary-information-theory, etc.</comment>


"In the Case of WeWork, I Made a Mistake" – CEO SoftBank Group of Japan - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/business/softbank-loss-wework.html <comment><USER2> It may be worth examining whether there are national security risks to commingling sensitive assets like ARM with assets that have huge funding and liquidity needs, like many Vision Fund investments (and until recently, Sprint).

<comment><AUTHOR> Guess this has started , but not directly..

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3036490/latest- chine...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3036490/latest-chinese-tech- threat-us-security-lawmakers-take-aim-tiktok)</comment></comment>


The Good Censor - <AUTHOR> https://www.scribd.com/document/390521673/The-Good-Censor-GOOGLE-LEAK#from_embed <comment><USER2> Incredibly revealing. Slide 67 is the best evidence for finally regulating these platforms as publishers.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does [flagged] sometimes appear in a post title? - <AUTHOR> I'm familiar with [dead]. At the moment, there is a submission on the "new" page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869963) that has [flagged] in the title. I've never seen that before, is it added when a post has been flagged enough that its close to being dead? Something else?<p>Just curious as I don't remember ever having seen that before. <comment><USER2> If a user has 31 Karma, they can flag submissions. Although submissions cannot be downvoted, flags act as a "super" downvote and enough flags will strongly reduce the rank of the submission, or kill it entirely (flagging is supposed to be used for submissions which break the site guidelines, but that isn't always the case in practice). A submission that's flagged to death will have a [flagged] tag. Comments behave similarly. See: [https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news- undocumented](https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented) for more.

<comment><AUTHOR> What does "flagged to death" mean given that you can see them?

Even users who aren't logged in can see them so... I'm not really sure what the point is. Is it so the submitter knows they got flagged a lot?</comment></comment>


What do all of the controls on a fire engine truck do? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/08/15/what-do-all-the-controls-on-a-fire-engine-truck-do/

<comment><AUTHOR> I originally wrote this as a reply to a Quora question, and then it got picked up for this Forbes blog. It just hit me that some of you guys might find this interesting. Firefighting is a pretty fascinating field, with a lot of "stuff" going on. I was a volunteer firefighter for about a decade and was a NC Fire & Rescue Commission certified Fire Instructor II with qualifications to teach Firefighter I and II certification courses, LP Gas Firefighting, and Incident Command. Feel free to ask any questions you might have and I'll be happy to answer if I can.</comment>


W3C working on DB-Browser-API - <AUTHOR> http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-WebSimpleDB-20090929/

<comment><USER2> I really hope this turns out better than DOM (both design and implementation).

At least good libraries should arrive more quickly given that the number of good Javascript developers out there is so much greater than it was in 1998.</comment>