Rob Griffiths writes about macOS and Apple hardware, covering bugs, interface complaints, Mac history, and the occasional personal tech story.
HN links it for its macOS release history reference, the Touch Bar critique, and posts on iOS and High Sierra bugs, such as the calculator animation bug.
As a user of hundreds of programs with no direct cost for updates decades after purchase, I find this perfectly reasonable.
I didn’t say free as this cost is included in the price at purchase. Vendors can be explicit about their fees and updates and let me choose to buy or not buy.
There’s lots of markets with natural charge points for updates (windows and office for example). A vendor not calling out the price for updates and then renaming and stopping updates is sleazy definitely and maybe scammy.
There are lots of models for software with pros and cons. The only thing that really tweaks me is the bait and switch after my purchase. Or the exploitation of an implicit allowance to my detriment.
Theoretically Mac has been providing updates to purchases made in 2000[0]. Granted, they used to charge and I doubt you have hardware that will still run the updates.
Microsoft patched Server 2003 in 2017 [1].
Not to mention the reason why lots of OSS is still used because it allows “free updates for life.”
There’s no such thing as true free (tnstaafl), but there are lots of companies willing to be clear about update costs.
[0] https://robservatory.com/a-useless-analysis-of-os-x-release-dates/
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2014/ms14-064
If you never have to look at the keyboard for anything ever, the touchbar takes away an useful row of keys and forces you to start looking down at the keyboard. I can't overstate how annoying someone who never has to look at the keyboard might find this.
https://robservatory.com/the-fundamental-problem-with-the-touch-bar/
"The Touch Bar, despite its name, is actually an Eye Bar: It forces your eyes off the screen, down to the Touch Bar, back up to the screen, repeat ad infinitum. There's nothing physical about interacting with the Touch Bar, aside from using your finger: There are no defined button areas, and there's no haptic feedback when you tap something. So you absolutely must look at the Touch Bar to interact with it.
When the new MacBooks were released, I spent about 30 minutes testing a Touch Bar-equipped version in an Apple Store, and this constant moving of my eyes' focus from keyboard to screen to keyboard to screen to…well, you get the idea…was incredibly disruptive. To use the Touch Bar, I'd have to change my focus to the keyboard, then refocus on the screen, taking time to find my active window and locate the mouse cursor. This did not make for a pleasant user experience."
I'm pretty sure that Apple uses a very conventional gold alloy with a similar density as other gold alloys. Somewhere on their website they provide the weight of the cases and the bands. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that their gold is twice as heavy as their stainless steel. They are pretty specific on the steel they use, so we know it's density is 8g/cm^3, meaning their gold is roughly 16g/cm^3. This means their gold is probably a completely normal alloy, not some ceramic composite as some people believe.
We also see their yellow gold models are slightly heavier than the rose gold models, which is expected, since the silver/copper ratio is slightly larger in yellow gold, and silver is denser than copper.
Sources:
http://robservatory.com/the-all-in-one-apple-watch-spreadsheet/
http://leancrew.com/all-this/2015/03/apple-gold/
I believe I first learned to shorten animations on MacOSXHints.com (gone now). Regardless, I learned a lot of great "enhancements" here:
https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles
And here's the blog of the person who ran MacOSXHints.com:
https://robservatory.com/make-your-macos-dock-suck/
Fun aside, I'm pretty sure that my mention of a system issue that I read about that morning on MacOSXHints.com was a helper in landing a job in an interview that afternoon. What I mean is, I said, oh are you talking about "whatever thing on that site today…?" and it demonstrated that I was familiar with whatever internals.
If you look at the release schedule of macOS, it hasn't been that much different. There is a major update every year to every 1.5 years and patch updates every 2 months. A difference in 6 months in a release schedule doesn't matter that much if you manage how much goes in a shorter release cycle.
http://www.robservatory.com/?p=46
>there's not a single MacOS device with a touchscreen
The Touch Bar is a touchscreen. It’s on the current 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro and many previous-gen Macs.
Biggest problem is that I can’t use it without looking at it.
https://robservatory.com/the-fundamental-problem-with-the-touch-bar/