I really miss the days of a rock solid release every ~4ish~ 3ish years - when it was ready.
This treadmill yearly release cycle of half finished OS's released not because it was a good collection of well built features ready to be released, rather released because it was time for a release, have done nothing but tarnish the OS.
It's still the best UNIX desktop, end of story. The difference between macOS and Windows though isn't as big as it was when I switched 20 years ago, and most of the gap was closed by macOS getting worse and not by Windows getting better. In the current state, given the existence and relative decent usability of WSL2, given the choice today rather than twenty years ago, I may have never switched.
The thing that really gets me is just reliability. In the early aughts when I asked macOS to do something there was no question, it would work. That was the excuse for having far less verbose output of what's happening. You didn't need it because everything worked. Now we still have total lack of output of what's happening, and things just fail silently all the time. It's become a very frustrating OS to try to love.
if we’re going to make nonsequitur Apple comparisons, we should note that it was compatible with almost no existing programs, unlike Apple’s contemporary offerings
There's probably quite a few games and programs that didn't run on NT, but I haven't actually encountered any of those for NT4. I had great memories playing unreal tournament on some NT4 machines in a computer lab (while we were supposed to be taking lessons).
FWIW Win2k (aka NT5) compatibility was great. I lived on it for a while before I completely migrated away from Windows ~2002.
For all their flaws, Microsoft took compatibility very seriously back then, I suspect the "incompatibility" part is a bit overblown and didn't affect as many users as we might perceive..
The author doesn't even have Ventura installed, he's just commenting on another blog. He hasn't used a new version since High Sierra:
"I probably mentioned this a few times on social media, but the simple answer is that, apart from my 2017 iMac, none of my current main machines is supported by Ventura. And that iMac is my High Sierra machine, which I’m not going to update to run experiments or to study Ventura’s UI. What I’ve seen on other people’s Macs or borrowed Macs has been enough to make me say, No thanks."
Thats fine but, what is the point? It's basically speculation. He doesn't know first hand if theres any issues he'd personally experience in the FIVE releases since then. He's basically just reading other blogs and saying 'yes it is bad'
It's like someone who hasn't used Windows since 8 saying it still sucks.
> What I’ve seen on other people’s Macs or borrowed Macs has been enough
Which means he has used newer versions, and you cited him saying so.
My own iMac runs 10.14 and what I've seen of each newer version puts me off more and more, so I too have a machine that could run at least macOS 12, but it doesn't. Because I've tried friends' machines, and tried each version in Apple shops and so on, and I don't like what I see.
Is this somehow not enough for you? That we have to install it and personally use it day-to-day in order to qualify our opinion enough?
I mean, I've been using Macs since System 7 came out. I know my way around Macs. That means it doesn't take me long to try one and see if I like it.
In fact, this week, I spent half an hour trying out macOS 13 on some M1 machines in an Apple reseller, and I didn't like it at all. Its menu bar uses a different font, is a different size, Settings has been completely revamped -- and I don't use iPhones for reasons: I've had 3 of them, and I prefer Android -- so the last thing I want is my Mac to be more iOS like.
I found this blog post really resonated with me, but your comment reads to me like you feel we haven't given it a fair enough crack of the whip and our opinions are thus invalid.
If I try out Ubuntu from a live usb for one hour and decide I don't like it, thats fine. If I then write a blog post about how my experience completely dismisses desktop Linux as broken ugly and unusable, then people will rightfully think I'm an idiot. Cheers lad.
He went into great depth in those posts. He knows this subject area exceptionally well. The first one of them, particularly, went viral and TBH I'd expect you to have known that, and to have read those earlier posts, before you start passing judgement. Otherwise you look ill-informed and ignorant, and to be judging on that basis of a lack of understanding.
In addition I'd add that I started using Mac OS X with 10.0, and on unsupported old Macs because new ones were too expensive for me to afford back then, so I hung out in various fora for people running unsupported kit.
(P.S. Don't "lad" me. I've been doing this stuff for more than a third of a century, and that's professionally, after nearly a decade as a hobbyist.)
I'm still in those fora and their modern continuations.
When Riccardo said that he felt that the experience had degraded since "Snow Leopard", he is merely expressing a widely-held view. Many old OS X hands feel that from 10.0 to 10.6 it got better and better, and since then, it's deteriorated and it's still doing so.
In other words, this is not a controversial or contrarian view.
FWIW I don't have the same experience at all — I mostly find each release, MacOS gets a bit better. I don't see lots of bugs.
The weight of commenters here is clearly not in the favor of my experience!
Maybe that's because I don't notice things? Or I don't use many of Mac apps, like Mail / Finder / Mission Control / etc (thanks to Alacritty + VSCode + Contexts + Amethyst)?
But I have to use Windows & Linux machines for other things, and I vastly prefer using a Mac.
Same here. I tend to use my Mac as a consistently “crisp” way of getting to a shell prompt. I use iterm2, while I’m in love with alacritty, etc … (and rust) - I just haven’t switched.
Combined with a pretty consistent decades old dotfile repo, good apps like Obsidian, vscode, and the crap corporate makes me use… I could really do fine with a Linux machine, but I always feel like the windowing envs are one “ctrl+alt+backspace” from me waking up in 1997’s days slackware and video res/driver hell.
I’ve not noticed any of the issues either. Could it be crappy third party mouse or keyboard customisation software? I’ve noticed that Logitech software has sometimes has sometimes caused wierd issues over the years.
Yep it’s crap. I use ‘USB overdrive’ and a cheap generic 5 button wired mouse off amazon. I find this gets the best latency and customisability for graphics work. My Logitech Bluetooth mouse that I used for travel doesn’t work on Apple silicon and I found the Microsoft mice with thier own wireless dongle a bit laggy and the wheels break after a year or so.
I just don't see any of this. Though the Ventura beta was pretty rough for me (M1 MBA), the only issues I've seen day to day is the frequent failure to eject an external drive from Finder. I often have to go in Disk Utility to eject a USB drive. Annoying, but not even something I do every day. Other than that, smooth sailing. And its still my favorite ever laptop.
Here’s one I don’t see mentioned: launch App Store, go to its settings, uncheck In-app ratings and reviews. Now restart the OS and notice how it’s checked again. I can reproduce on every Ventura machine I own and I’m constantly bombarded with all rating prompts, but I can’t submit a rating because the submit button doesn’t work…
I've noticed more minor UI bugs than usual, but what's really glaring to me is system stability.
I'm not sure of the cause, but I've seen Mission Control and the Dock randomly freeze/crash in some weird state and make the system completely unusable, or for some memory leak (I think) to just randomly cause the system to slow to a crawl even with all Apps killed and necessitate restarts much more often than reasonably necessary. In the past I've gone months between restarts, but now I can't go more than a week or so.
What I'd really like to see is a slower operating system development cycle. There's no reason that we need brand new operating systems every year. There should be a minimum 2 full years between releases, taking the time to plan out the UI really well and create rock-solid features and kill almost all bugs. I used to be so excited for new MacOS versions and now I've come to dread them.
That said, I'd still rather deal with Mac's relatively minor problems than the total shitstorm that my Windows box always is.
Author doesn't use Ventura, has never used Ventura, but has strong opinions on Ventura. Commenters tend to agree, one even referring to the blog post as a "report."
Whether MacOS is more or less buggy on any given release seems to have everything to do with what collection of hardware and software you're running, in my experience, but I suppose if your opinion is based on the entire internet, every day can only bring increased bugginess forever.
Posted from a MacOS Ventura 13.1 box without any issues I can think off right away. Certainly none of the issues mentioned in the article. No idea why.
i personally agree that finder is getting worse with every release, whether major or minor. connecting an iphone is guaranteed to be a janky experience. it's a disgrace.
the icon of the volume being unmounted dissapearing too soon (thus giving the impression it's already safe to remove the device) is very real and dangerous.
the dumbing down to ios/ipad level is also quite clear i think. the preferences did not need an overhaul. perhaps it was a gesture towards microsoft windows' preferences "experience" living in this weird limbo, and apple saying we can do a full rewrite in one major release cycle. who knows.
the ventura update itself did not finish unattended, i had to login manually on both my m1's for the installer to get into the next phase.
where macos is right now, is where the mac hw was 2 years ago. management having heir hands on their ears singing lalala and ignoring what people want. perhaps they have to run it totally in the ground before improving.
i had a policy of not upgrading to .0 releases, but i am revising it to install only the last point release of the previous major release after the next major release is out.
I'm sorry you personally are unhappy with MacOS, truly.
I don't connect my iPhone except to charge it, so I have no idea what that experience is like. Perhaps it is a disgrace. Then again, Apple made iPhone completely independent from Macs quite a few years ago now, so I have no idea why one would connect one in 2022 on MacOS Ventura.
I haven't observed icons disappearing prematurely when ejecting volumes, although that's something I do rarely.
The Ventura update itself finished unattended on both my M1 Mac mini and my M1 Pro MacBook, so that one doesn't seem to be a universal issue.
Again, what few specifics are mentioned are clearly not universal, and I can't really judge vague statements at all. If you feel it's dumbed down, who can argue? If you feel it's being run into the ground, who can argue?
Yawn. Every new version ends up with issues, and many will say 'it's the worst version ever!'. Any system that has a lot of users will have some portion of those users hitting problems. People also tend to look back with rose colored glasses so current-N was better.
Ventura has worked fine for me. The betas worked fine. I haven't thought much about macOS in a long time. I install it, and then mostly ignore it while I work.
I've been using OS X since 2005 and have of course noticed the same, how to put it... dissipating quality assurance... that set root somewhere around 2010. But I recently moved from Mojave to Monterey, and to my great surprise it has been an almost flawless experience. Not a single annoyance worth mentioning.
I remember in the mid-00s, Mac laptops suddenly became popular - one of the reasons was you could take them around and plug them in to TVs/projectors and they just worked, but Windows was really hit-and-miss. Now it seems like that's flipped, and MacBooks have random external display issues these days... Sad.
For work-related reasons I use both a new-ish ThinkPad running Windows, and an M1 MacBook Pro. I also hate how unrealiable macOS has become compared to earlier versions. But that's still nothing compared to the Windows notebook.
Like a 5-year old kid, this ThinkPad randomly decides that it doesn't want to go to sleep. Unplugging, closing the lid, or manually selecting it from the start menu: it simply won't do it. It does turn off the display, but the power light stays on, and the fans keep running. What am I supposed to do with a hot, actively cooled notebook that won't turn off, when I want to put it into a bag because I have to go somewhere? And fun fact: This bug has persisted for years. It's a portable computer that actively refuses to be transported.
I'm not sure that Apple has lost that focus? I too have noticed many more bugs in my day-to-day use, but I have always wondered if it's because my way of using the computer is slowly becoming "the way people used to use computers."
The listed bugs involve the finder and networked drives - functionality used by a particular demographic of technically savvy users. It's not exactly that I'm trying to defend Apple - more that I am suspicious that what is happening is that Apple is still focusing on consumer experience, but I (we) are moving out of the "eye" of that experience. The generations younger than me interact with computers in very different ways than I did - and I think Apple's shift in focus reflects that.
FWIW I still fine the "external display" story easier on macs than windows (despite, it seems, Apple's best efforts).
I’ve had this problem for a year. It’s gotten better but the more load (memory pressure? Disk access?) I put on the machine the more likely suddenly Spotify or a YouTube video will crackle.
When Avie Tevanian was still at Apple, every version of MacOS got better: Not just more features, but fewer bugs, better performance etc. Now it seems like you get a visual refresh, a handful of minor features, along with a host of bugs that spend the next year getting fixed until the next release and the cycle repeats.
I think there’s a lot of nostalgia coloring that view. There was a ton of kvetching back then and a significant majority of the problems then and now do not affect all users but the people affected will be far more likely to complain, making it easy to forget that.
No. Snow Leopard is post-Avie. Avie pretty much unilaterally held back the performance and compatibility of Mac OS and forced half-assed solutions like Spotlight that you’re still paying for in wasted CPU and I/O cycles.
Too much to hope for, I know but I secretly hope there's a secret side project for a new coreOS release specifically for all Apple Silicon devices. Kinda like what they did with the first Intel release of OSX (they started working on it 5 years before the first Intel Mac).
I'm hoping within a few years, Apple will reveal the coreOS release (no Intel support) that unifies everything from Apple Watch all the way to Mac Pro.
Just to be clarify, I am not talking about simplified iPhone interface on Mac but a new kernel (maybe linux derived?), unified tech stack (radio(bluetooth/wifi), APFS, Swift-only apps, etc) that's the same across all devices. This would allow them to simplify the whole process, work once and make it work right everywhere once.
They really screwed up the NFS server on Ventura, specifically when it interacts with Docker Desktop.
We figured out a workaround in the Docker issue queue but due to apathy in both camps around solving actual problems instead of doing yet another UI refresh it's just not worth sending anything through Feedback Assistant or trying to get the Docker folks to look into it.
Otherwise I see some UI fixes from the last release, but now there are some new bugs! It really is just totally sloppy over there, I wish they would stop annual releases.
Not only you. In my case I had 2 identical monitors both attached to USB-C-to-DisplayPort cables on a 2019 MacBook Pro, and the left and right monitors would swap daily. Fortunately my monitors also had USB-C input; switching one monitor to USB-C-to-USB-C and leaving the other USB-C-to-DisplayPort seems to make the screen ordering mostly more stable. However the OS still moves all windows to the left monitor weekly, so it's not fully working.
I’ve never seen that. Is your monitor directly connected or via a dock? I had a coworker who had a dock resetting on sleep so it was basically doing a full disconnect, sleep, wake, connect cycle causing the windows to go single-monitor.
I’d also recommend using one of the hot key apps to set window positions since it makes that transition a lot faster.
The issues listed are Finder issues. I haven't seen them. Finder is vulnerable to connected storage devices. I did have a dodgy USB drive connected to one machine and all sorts of weird things happened, such as beach balling, until I disconnected it.
That's always been true, both with computers, tablets, and phones. Old versions of the OS don't support newer hardware. Often, hardware used to ship with a specially patched version of the OS and would be supported by the mainline OS in the next dot release.
Sorry for being nit picky but not really. You need to look at the OS that was preinstalled when that particular model was released rather than what OS an individual machine came with.
It's an important clarification for anyone wishing to upgrade to a newer machine but wants to avoid being stuck with Ventura until if/when it's sorted out.
Other than the settings app, which I personally find badly organized but it is at least functional without any bugs for me, I've quite liked Ventura. MacOS very much gets out of the way when I'm working in it, which is 100% what I want from an OS.
Whereas if I have to use a Windows machine I end up fighting the OS because I have to grok WSL running a separete OS, multiple duplicated system controls from various decades of Windows, and ads everywhere.
MacOS still isn't perfect, and maybe it has slightly less polish than it did some years ago, but it's atleast kept pace with competition feature-wise without becoming as aggravating to use as others.
Glad to know I wasn't the only one with these Finder issues. Thankfully force quitting and restarting Finder brought things back for me. I did have to go through menu options (for first time ever) to show the sidebar and tab bar.
I don't know if it is a bug or a design change but something I cannot stand with Ventura is that "sticky windows" are less sticky.
In all versions prior to 13 when you move a window to the edge of the screen or against another app window it would "stick" just a bit. You could push past it if you wish but it is a nice way to align windows neatly without overlapping or going off screen.
In 13 you can get it to do that but it seems far less "sticky" than it used to be. I noticed it immediately and hated it.
Does anyone here know if this is a bug (it is still present in 13.1) or a design choice going forward?
I just tried it and it seems to reliably stick if you slow down as you move it to the edge of the other window, like it's trying to detect if you have the intent to stick it to the other window. If you just move it quickly past, it doesn't stick at all.
Yes but this is very different to how it has always been in the past.
If you wanted to avoid the window sticking in the past you could hold the option key while you dragged the window, making it less sticky seems kind of strange.
But it doesn't make it less sticky, it just doesn't engage stickiness when you're moving quickly. This makes excellent sense, and is the sort of focus on user experience that Apple should be lauded for. That it marks a marginal change from long-existing behavior just means that the long-existing behavior wasn't optimal.
The alternative would seem to be stop any and all development, as the optimal behavior has been reached in every aspect, which I don't think anybody could credibly argue.
To me they made the sticky window feature worse. It is still there but it is more finickity to use. I don't want to have to slow down and gently bump the window against another in the hope it works.
What I mean by "less sticky" is that it requires more slow moving precision when aligning against an edge in order for the sticky window feature to activate. This is annoying for me when using a trackpad.
They're still "sticky" in the literal sense that the feature is still there that I agree on :)
In other words my complaint is that while sticky windows are still a feature it requires more effort to get it to work which makes the feature less useful to me.
Ideally I would like to see an option where the user can set the sensitivity for the "stickiness". Probably not via a user facing option in the Settings app but a global 'defaults' command line tweak would be nice.
I have been waiting for the release of the new Mac mini. Then I read an article like this and I think that for far less expense, I might as well just upgrade my Intel based desktop running Debian.
The premise that paying the Apple premium gives you a better system doesn't seem to hold anymore. Back in the Steve's day, he would have called "shit" on such work and berated the staff for daring to think of releasing. Perhaps, these days the accountants and marketing staff are calling the shots.
In Spotlight, holding down Cmd for a second will reveal the path of a selected file/app.
In Finder, you can show the "path bar" via Cmd-Opt-P (or View > Show Path Bar), which will show the path of selected files in any Finder window, including searches: https://i.imgur.com/jXWYEnQ.png
One final tip: Cmd-Opt-C in Finder will copy the pathname of a selected file. Sadly this does not work in file select sheets.
Both Ventura and iOS 16 are sloppy. While details matter to users, the logical conclusion is that taking care of them doesn't add to shareholder value.
I use a Magic Trackpad and found that after a couple of hours the pointer would become very laggy. However, if I keep it plugged in to USB, it works perfectly.
It seems like since MacOS X become free that it has succumb more and more to the pressure of a regular release cycle, instead of less, which is the opposite of what you’d expect for an unpaid product.
Why does Apple feel the need to release more and more features at the OS level each year when their customers are only paying for the hardware, not the software?
I feel like it's not just Mac OS. I bought an iPad Mini 6, my first Apple device since an iPhone 4S. I am frankly astounded at how buggy the OS is, how annoying gestural based UX is, etc. These are just from memory:
1. Holding the "keyboard close" button to select an option from the context menu occasionally triggers the "Quick Note" gesture.
1a. Sometimes that options menu closes without even triggering the quick note gesture
1b. Similarly that button is overloaded to move the split/undocked keyboard, but it doesn't always recognize whether you are trying to move the keyboard or open the menu.
2. If you press in the middle of the Safari address bar it will usually be misrecognized as hitting the dropdown for the window management options.
3. If you pull out and subsequently dock the pencil often I find the pencil context menu refuses to go away. You have to engage in the following ritual: (1) open the mini keyboard from the tray, (2) hide the keyboard, (3) minimize the tray, (4) tap some text input before it will finally realize you're not using the Apple pencil anymore. (Which it knows you can't possibly be holding, because it's _charging it._)
4. If video scrubbing controls are at the bottom of the screen (as they typically are) then trying to use them will almost always result in entering the dock/app-switching routine.
4a. Similarly I've found in Safari that it is obstinate that any swipe near the edges of the screen is a "back/forward" gesture, and definitely not you trying to hit the damn slider right under your fingertip. (This largely seems to be a Safari issue, sliders elsewhere in the OS seem fine; but this is a big problem considering every browser is just clothes-over-Safari.)
5. Some apps behave very strangely with the different keyboard modes. Discord seems to be a prime offender. For example: the relatively large undocked/split keyboard behaves as an overlay, obscuring what is beneath it. However the very small floating keyboard, _literally designed to be an unobtrusive overlay_, will have Discord create whitespace for it. (Try putting the floating keyboard in the top corner and you'll end up with ~one line of message history.)
6. When Discord is in "slide over" mode, and the keyboard is docked, hitting their emoji picker will bring it up docked to the bottom left corner. However instead of being the full width of the screen/keyboard it will instead be the width of the slide-over window. (!?!)
7. Similarly I've had it where Spotify after being converted from a "slide-over" window to a full-screen app will have the player controls misaligned and the play/skip buttons will be completely obscured. (Couldn't seem to fix this without a restart of the app.)
8. I'm sure this is by design, but the iOS 16 duplicate image detection doesn't work if [one of] the duplicates are tagged with the Hidden flag. I would very much like to save space even if it means an extra button press hidden in a menu to "reveal hidden duplicates" or something like that. (Since the processing is allegedly on-device I don't really mind it going through my "hidden" photos, considering they're just rows in a SQLite DB w/ a boolean field set to true.)
9. Apple Pencil w/ Scribble turned on it's a total crapshoot if you're going to make a selection or type some random "i", "'", ";", etc.
10. If other media is playing, or was playing recently, the keyboard "clacky" sounds often play louder than their usual volume. However it's not consistently louder: it's like it oscillates between whatever the keyboard volume is vs. whatever your media volume is.
I'm sure I remember my older iDevices with rose-colored glasses, but the lack of refinement in this current UX is mildly infuriating at times. I mean you've got to get the basics right, and I don't know what's more fundamental than keyboards and window management. That's literally the primary input/output of your OS. I feel like if Steve Jobs ran into even a fraction of this list he would've thrown the damn iPad like a frisbee. _I don't have the luxury of doing that because it's far too expensive._
Couldn’t agree more with this, with the exception of being so casual about security updates.
I miss real OSX. I miss Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion.
Where are the no new features upgrades? I don’t need new lipstick on the pig every year. I need it to work without regressions.
Also I want to set fire to the settings screen in Ventura. It’s bad. It’s just bad. Someone did a bad job.
New OSX versions used to be a good thing. Now I just dread them for fear of what they’ll break just for an excuse to make the computer that I “own” a paperweight after a fixed time period.
> Where are the no new features upgrades? I don’t need new lipstick on the pig every year. I need it to work without regressions.
This is one area where free software really shines. I recently put aside a simple desktop I had put together myself from parts that I had used for nearly 20 years. Updated from one OS version to the next with no issues, no new features forced on me, no surprises. Things only changed when I decided to change them.
Only reason I finally ditched it a year or so ago is that technology has moved on and I want to try something new.
My main complaint with the Settings screen is it it tries to squeeze everything into a vertical tower. I think it would be a lot better if we could make the screen bigger. It just feels so cramped on my Ultra Wide monitor.
theres a lot of things that don’t affect your daily life that are worth caring about, like someone getting murdered, someone stalking someone else, or a company tracking/stalking someone else
Yeah this year was particularly bad with that stage manager stuff that really added nothing useful to the desktop. The idea is ok but it wastes a ton of space.
On the iPad it's arguably useful but that's mainly because it doesn't have real windows.
I also felt that every year Apple was sawing the legs off my chair by changing or removing features I used. At least now with KDE I have choice.
Stop buying their products. Stop using services. Maybe... 3-5 years, if sales decline enough, they'll 'listen' to the 'feedback' of people leaving the ecosystem and ... ask what you want, and deliver it another couple years later. Maybe.
Not trying to be a troll or sarcastic, but there's really no way to get that sort of feedback to a company of Apple's size. Or, at least, there's really no way for individuals or small groups to get any impactful feedback to them.
I had a set of AirPods. I bought the AppleCare - which I rarely do. In a 2 year period I had 5 'fixes'. 5 replacements. In 2 years. PERHAPS having those sorts of metrics for them to review - an actual cost to their bottom line - wakes someone up to address quality issues. But... what do you do about the decline and usability in a settings panel? Stop using the settings panel? That'll show 'em! :/
I'm sure they're busy training an AI to do support for them. Which, trained on the past issues, will just drop all feedback, randomly ignore bugs and issues for years, silently fixing some and not others according to no discernable criteria, and generally not communicating anything.
I actually tried this 6 months ago and in no way found the Linux experience better than macOS even though I would on principle prefer living with an open source OS (I also don’t actually notice a lot of issues on macOS). Of course that was still pretty early for Linux on M1 so I’ll probably try it again in the future.
This is how I feel. Asahi is not quite there for me, but it is definitely going to get there prior to my M1s being desupported on Monterey (which is definitely good enough for me).
I just want to be able to drill into ZIP or other archive files, like any regular folder. Drag files in and out of the archive, view and even edit them from within the archive. You know, basic functionality offered by Windows Explorer for decades now.
I haven’t even found any free/OSS archive utilities that really implement this as effectively as Windows out of the box. All you can really do with an archive in MacOS is... decompress it to the current folder. Really?
I sort of agree. Explorer is weird, half-baked. The side bar doesn't work 100%, no tags, loading icons is sloooooow, it doesn't auto-update. It tries to be the Finder and the old Explorer at the same time, but I'm not convinced by the result. And the properties dialog might have been new in 2002, but it's antiquated by now. I can get work done with it, though. It's not horrible (like those old Gnome file managers).
I spend most of my time on my Air running Ventura, and love it, but the Windows file explorer on my Windows 11 machine is way better. Though obviously opinions vary.
Finder is terrible compared to Explorer, it is insanely unreliable. Often the VFS will get completely broken and claim that files don't exist when you try to open them, fail to allow renaming or opening files on network shares, etc. It's also dog slow. It's abysmally slow at generating file thumbnails especially when files are changing due to some other process. Often quicklook will get completely locked up and require kill-9'ing before thumbnails will appear again. It has other weird bugs like not showing thumbnails for search results in some cases eg. on network shares.
Finder has some nice features compared to Explorer but the actual quality of its coding seems to be terrible for what is probably the most important piece of userspace software on one of the 2 main commercial desktop OSs in existence.
My gripe is that the Finder is still full of O[n] or even n^2 algorithms, which worked fine in 1990 when people had maybe 1000 files on the entire filesystem. But nowadays, 10 million files is a small file system. And O[n+] just doesn't cut it.
Sometimes you can't do better than O[n], in which case you sweat the details of that inner loop very hard. Finder doesn't sweat much of anything.
Any time I have to do something to a few thousand files or more I switch to the Terminal and use the command line because Unix [mostly] knows how to deal with large numbers of files efficiently.
Not really. I have a few thumbnail provider extensions installed but they shouldn't cause these issues.
I am pretty sure these things are 'normal' - they are reported around the internet. Just look at the article - bugs in Finder are hardly unprecedented.
Not quite. In windows I can right click and refresh the view. Macos is stuck with the idea that there will be no issues, everything works perfectly, you don't need a refresh button (but you do).
Holy cow, that's one of my biggest annoyances with Apple operating systems. Apple assumes their OSs can never have errors and does no wrong, therefore everything is dumbed down as you, the user, don't need to see error messages, progress bars, way to refresh or trigger firmware checks/updates, etc, just trust that their OS will always work flawlessly. Except no software is ever flawless, least of all their latest OS.
Why not just have a hidden 'power user' toggle in the OS to enable these things?
The problem is that Apple has become a consumer focused company. Power users are a tiny percentage of the customers. So they focus on the glitz and marketing. Top management are part of the consumer class, so they can't relate to the engineering / power user concerns. Accounting tells them that it doesn't matter enough.
Ug, no. I've always hated how Apple refuses to put a "go up to parent folder" button in Finder. Every workaround I've tried just sucks. I don't want to right click the title at the top, I don't want to use list view, I want a simple button. Windows, by comparison, shows the whole path and lets you click on any point on it, and also provides the button. There's other issues I have with Finder, but this one alone leaves me wishing for Explorer almost every time I use it.
I just cannot even agree more with this. When I use Windows, I put FreeCommander on it at once. And File Explorer is far, far worse in Windows 11 than Windows 10. Finder is crap, but it makes sense, in the way that every other single-pane file explorer on Linux makes sense. Path Finder is better, though its buggy, and worth the money.
Can you press the spacebar on a selected file and get a quick look at it without launching the default associated app without any 3rd party programs? If not, it's broken.
Not as broken as not having a file tree view or a file path being shown. You know, stuff since Windows 95 or KDE 1.0.
But yeah, quick preview, as nice as it is, was never a Windows thing, and i doubt it will ever be, as I assume Apple has some software parents for it as they have for several basic UX and software features.
This treadmill yearly release cycle of half finished OS's released not because it was a good collection of well built features ready to be released, rather released because it was time for a release, have done nothing but tarnish the OS.
It's still the best UNIX desktop, end of story. The difference between macOS and Windows though isn't as big as it was when I switched 20 years ago, and most of the gap was closed by macOS getting worse and not by Windows getting better. In the current state, given the existence and relative decent usability of WSL2, given the choice today rather than twenty years ago, I may have never switched.
The thing that really gets me is just reliability. In the early aughts when I asked macOS to do something there was no question, it would work. That was the excuse for having far less verbose output of what's happening. You didn't need it because everything worked. Now we still have total lack of output of what's happening, and things just fail silently all the time. It's become a very frustrating OS to try to love.