OSXDaily

I currently split time between a 15" rMBP and a few Windows 7 machines and to be honest, I prefer the time on my Windows 7 machines despite many downsides.

Every few years I'll have a go at going Mac (this is try #3) and they'll all sort of peter out and I'll end up back in Windows.

I think this current go around has been the most successful, I love my rMBP hardware. And the work that Apple has put into making touchpads actually useful (both with hardware and software) is miraculous. The keyboards are nice typing experiences (I'm more mixed on the magic mouse). It's also an awesome portable virtualization platform that I've had 4 or 5 Linux VMs all up and running like a champ on it. Multiple workspaces are usually awesome, I keep several workspaces for different semantic parts of my day and the flow is really nice. Airdrop is magic.

For the most part things just work.

To try and make it really stick, I went cold turkey for the better part of 9 months and didn't touch a Windows machine.

But then, small frustrations and irritations finally built up and I recently just built myself a new Windows 7 computer and pretty much use it for all of my day-to-day with my Mac sitting in a travel bag for when I need to go on the road. What is it that keeps pushing me back? I've spent a lot of time thinking about why this is and sorta have it narrowed down to a few user scenarios: Here's 1 line of reasoning:

1. When I'm using my Mac, I find I try and avoid actually interacting with OS…

>This is a case of “works on my machine.”

Nope, I even have had a couple of issues (wifi related) which were solved in .2 update. But I also know that I had this or that issue everytime since 10.2 when I started using the OS. I also know I had tons of issues in Linux (been using it since 1997) and Windows (since 3.1), and I'm also a programmer, so I don't have BS expectations from something as huge as a complete OS and apps distro.

So, it's mostly a case of "have been following this space since 2002, including reading most forums, trade mags and blogs, so have a feel for what people compain about."

>There are serious[1] documented[2] issues[3] with Yosemite[4] that were not there in the previous OS X release, and, after multiple point updates still haven not been fixed.

Nothing special about those issues you posted. I post below a list of issues for Mavericks (tried to find similar or even the same). I can find for you similar items even down to 10.2, including lamenting articles about "buggiest release ever", etc.

As for the "and after multiple point updates still haven not been fixed", first we're at 10.9.3. So multiple is just 3 releases. Usually we get up to 7 or 8. And some even carry over or get fixed in the next version, especially if they don't affect many people.

And before dismissing "works for me" casually because of some issues online, note that with a user base in the 100s of millions, even a bug affecting 0.1% (with some weirdo network setup, bad HD…

I've come to expect better researched and sourced articles from the Technology Review.

Lion's most obvious failings are the frequent crashes of its mail reader, calendar program, and PDF Preview utility.

Mac OS X 10.7 ”Lion” started with some issues, as do all new operating systems--it was only released last July. But the issues weren't show-stoppers as the article implies. 10.7.3 addressed a bunch of issues and it was released on February 1st.

The Mac has also become less reliable for developers, experimenters, and hackers.

I'm mostly in this category of user and this hasn't been my experience at all. In fact, things have only gotten better for developers, tinkerers and hackers thanks to Apple's more modular approach to developer tools and support for command line toolchains with Command Line Tools for Xcode: https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action. Clang (http://clang.llvm.org/) is nothing to sneeze at either.

Now developers are reporting that Apple's upcoming "Mountain Lion" release will drop support for many computers that Apple was selling just a few years ago—computers that still run great, but which are no longer covered by the AppleCare warranty.

The implication seems to be that Apple is intentionally leaving these machines out of the Mountain Lion upgrade game because they're no longer under warranty, presumably to force those users to buy new hardware if they want to run Mountain Lion. Bastards! ;-)

Without mentioning that whenever Apple or…

Yep! That option works well for some people but personally I find it takes a bit too much "feel" away.

There are other options like making some animation speeds faster (so fast that the animation is almost imperceptible) and disabling some animations in Finder. The Cocktail utility can do it, and it can be done from the terminal too.

I'm not 100% sure this is up to date, but it might be: https://osxdaily.com/2015/01/06/make-the-window-resizing-animation-speed-instant-in-mac-os-x/

The main one is basically like this:

defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.003

Plus there are some more similar things you can set in `defaults`. (What the Cocktail utility is is a GUI that captures knowledge about a bunch of these settings into a convenient tool. There are other utilities like this afaik? BetterTouchTool maybe? idk.)

Then there's something called yabai which is a 'window management utility', but afaik it goes a lot deeper than other similar programs for macOS - it can disable animations and do some more stuff up to the point that you need to (partially) disable SIP to be able to make full use of it. Haven't tried but it does seems to be very worthwhile. https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

Yeah no. The iMessage white-on-blue isn’t a significantly better contrast ratio. I would actually prefer black text here.

Low contrast UI elements are the calling card of Alan Dye’s design team. The iMessage and SMS contrast ratio doesn’t rank because there are so many other UI issues that have crept in from this team over the years. If the blue provides a slightly better contrast ratio, it is bound to be incidental and if I were a betting man, I would bet that someone actually likes the green used for SMS.

This entire message style by the way is a direct descendant of iChat AV where you could actually choose your message color. When Apple developed SMS and then iMessageS for iPhones, they chose basically iChat’s design, and picked their favorite bubble colors and what we have today evolved from that.

E.g.:
[1] https://osxdaily.com/2011/02/14/prevent-annoying-im-text-styling-with-ichat/

(note the drop-down menu with “Lime” selected, you can Google around for other colors).

[2] https://flylib.com/books/en/1.463.1.538/1/

The stills captured in video are significantly lower quality than the still image at the heart of a live photo. The few frames of captured video and audio are to provide "live" context, not to let you choose the best shot. It was never intended as a burst capture tool, the iPhone has a separate burst mode by holding down the shutter button that works sort of how you are describing, and will provide a rapid burst of much higher quality stills.

You can change the keyframe on a live photo (ie the image displayed first) from the still capture to a video frame, but I generally would never do this due to the quality drop. It adds a little more memory context to a still photo, its not a burst capture tool.

There are actually some features with live photos I hadn't seen before though that are kind of interesting, for example you can fake a long exposure shot via a feature that interpolates information from the video stills into the main image:

https://osxdaily.com/2018/01/10/take-long-exposure-photos-iphone-ipad-live-photos/