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Apple Announces Its New Desktop OS macOS Sierra Featuring Siri, Apple Pay (9to5mac.com)
After playing with the names of cats and a few California landmarks, Apple at WWDC 2016 announced that its desktop operating system will now be called macOS -- and its first version update is macOS Sierra. It comes with a range of new features including Siri, the digital voice assistant. The move comes roughly a year and a half after Microsoft brought its Cortana virtual assistant to desktop platform Windows 10. Sierra also supports Apple Pay payment service via Safari web browser. Ars Technica reports about some other features of macOS Sierra: Universal Clipboard answers a longstanding complaint of Mac and iOS users -- copying and pasting now works automatically between an iOS device and a desktop Mac device. iCloud now plays an expanded sync role, too, letting you move files and folders from Mac to Mac or from Mac to iOS. Another new feature called Optimized Storage can sweep through old documents and files and push them to iCloud, clearing up local disk space for other uses. It also can automatically dump your trash, clear your web history, and do some other behind the scenes sweeps. Tabs are coming to more and more applications. Federighi said that Apple wants tabs on all multi-window applications, and says that tabs can be flipped on without developer modification. Update: 06/13 18:55 GMT by M : macOS Sierra won't support many Mac models from 2007, 2008, and 2009. Find more information here.
Is that a step towards the convergence of OS X and iOS?
How long before macOS be stuck with a walled garden in which we can't install non-approved "apps"?
Despite using Linux for a couple of decades, I switched to OS X after I experienced numerous problems with Linux. After spending so many hours fighting to get stuff like PulseAudio, GNOME 3 and systemd working, I finally had enough. Although it was expensive, I bought myself a Mac Mini.
I didn't expect I'd ever say this, but OS X (or macOS or whatever it's called now) is superb. It is UNIX under the hood, but with a really nice UI. Most importantly, it just works. There's no fighting with it like there was with Linux. While upgrading my Linux system was always a crapshoot, I've never had any problems doing an upgrade on OS X. At this point I don't think I will ever have any reason to use desktop Linux ever again.
I moved all of my servers over to FreeBSD. Like OS X, it was a breath of fresh air. Everything works so much better. Plus I get ZFS out of the box. Plus most of its code is released under much friendlier and freer licenses than so much Linux code is.
So I need to ask, with OS X and FreeBSD available to us, what room does that leave for Linux? I know on my computers it means that there's no room for Linux any longer. FreeBSD is excellent for servers. OS X is excellent for workstations. That means that there's no need for Linux any longer.
I really don't care for Siri, nor the fact that the computer will have to actively listen in 24/7 to support that. I was hoping for some under the hood improvements, like a new filesystem, better software RAID, iSCSI, a package management/repository system usable by third parties, so signed code and repos would be easy to add, so we wouldn't need ports, brew, or other third party stuff. Maybe even more blue-sky stuff like having root be a role like Solaris as opposed to an actual user, filesystem snapshots (something like btrfs send/zfs send), deduplication (since all Mac laptops are SSD based, might as well have an offline dedup process to help with storage), maybe even build in a ESXi compatibile hypervisor, so virtualization is baked in and usable without third party utilities, which adds to security.
I wish Apple would actually extend OS X to do more fundamental stuff, not 1-2 gewgaws.
This WWDC is so boring I've actually stopped watching. Is it just me or is the age of Tim Cook extremely dull? This is like watching paint dry.
As far as I can tell, the biggest advantage of a desktop OS over a tablet is the ability to have multiple monitors filled with dozens of windows. I can't even begin to imagine the hell that OS X would become if, for example, Terminal.app forced all of its windows into tabs, or even used tabs by default. Imagine doing all your work in a single terminal window running screen and you're roughly in the ballpark. If you've ever done this, you know what a nightmare it is, and not just because of the control-A behavior. The cognitive load induced by hiding the state of other windows is considerable.
So I just want to make sure that it is as easy to disable the tabs feature systemwide as it is to disable the unnatural scroll direction feature. Not only do I not want tabs to be created automatically, I don't want them to be created at all. I don't want to accidentally release the mouse at the wrong time while dragging a window around and have two of my windows suddenly become a single window with tabs.
Frankly, I don't like tabs even in a web browser, much less in any app that I use to actually get work done. Tabs mean having to manage a nested hierarchy of content state. Not only do I have to remember which browser window something is in, but also which tab. And to get to it, I have to remember three different keyboard navigation shortcuts—one to choose the app, one to choose the window, and a third one to choose the tab. And the headache gets even worse when you start minimizing windows into the dock, because the dock shows you only the frontmost tab. When you go to find something later, tabs make serious computer use an absolute nightmare.
So yeah, that feature is fine for your non-power-user who is scared by having to see more than one window at a time, but it absolutely must be possible for users to kill it with fire as soon as they realize that it is hindering their workflow... because it invariably will for some people.
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I've got a Mac and an iPhone, and although I would say I tend to favor Apple products, I would not call myself a fan.
I just heard about this "rich links" feature in Messages where links to images or video will display in a preview attached to the link. My immediate reaction was one of revulsion and disbelief. That kind of "feature" is a security nightmare and there better be a way to disable it or else I am NOT going to upgrade. Whoever thought this was a good idea is a fucking idiot. Your phone should NEVER pre-emptively download the content of a hyperlink that someone else sends you. I don't care if it's a trusted site or not.
I don't even know what to think about these "innovations" and demos. Between the horrible fake scripts, diversity check lists (gay guy, old guy, mom, hipster indian, fat woman into fitness, etc), and many ideas that are "new" (only if you define new as a first on apple and not a first in industry) I really wonder if Apple as finally lost it? Glad they renamed OS X to mac OS cause that will improve security, reliability, etc.
As I type this on my 2011 macbook pro (OS X 10.11) I wonder what I will do when I need to finally upgrade. Stick with apple just because it is what I know or finally jump to something else. And based off the multiple forums I am reading I am not the only one.
I am sick and tired of modern OS's focusing on adding 8 tons of crap thats not useful to 99% of the users, and not working on better I/O, networking, etc.
Between Windows 10, and this, it sure seems like each new version just gets more and more bullshit stuffed into it, but no real improvements otherwise.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Macs were extremely popular with nerds a decade ago, when Linux required a lot of hacking and tweaking to get working on a laptop. "Just save the trouble and buy a Mac, it's certified UNIX with a nice graphical shell and the hardware was high quality" is what a lot of people said. Even at Linux developer conferences, everybody had Macs.
Nowadays, the hardware is not competitive at all for the price point; plus the drives and RAM are soldered in, so tweakers have moved on to other things. OS X is falling way behind in features to Linux (native ZFS, kGraft, gaming and GPU support, etc.), and newer versions are splicing in iOS features rather than adding anything compelling.
I don't blame them. Focusing on stylishness, ease of use and cross-device features (to encourage vendor lock-in) probably yields higher profits than repairability, high performance and terminal utilities. But that's also a dangerous road to go down.
How long before macOS be stuck with a walled garden in which we can't install non-approved "apps"?
A developer needs Xcode for macOS to develop apps for iOS. Since Xcode 7, any Mac owner has been able to build apps from source and install them on an iOS device on the same Apple ID without charge. (This is a change from previous Xcode, which allowed only developers with a valid App Store seller account to do this.) The walled garden that you propose would reverse this trend. Under the walled garden that you propose, what would one use to develop apps for macOS?
Apple is moving desktop Macs in the "consumer electronics toy" direction. They have been for some time now. Their focus has been on gewgaws, not fundamentals for a good bit. This is not the company you want to stick with for desktop computing if that's what you care about. They are the company for people who have the attitude of a computer being a disposable device they don't care much about: You get the one you like the looks of, don't worry a whole lot about the technical stuff, and use it until it breaks or you decide you like the looks of a new one better.
If low level stuff and long-term support is what interests you, then you want to look at Linux or Windows. Yes really, Windows, Microsoft makes fundamental improvements to their OS quite often, and they are usually good. Either way while all OSes have fluff you don't care about and will keep getting it, Windows and the vast majority of Linux distros also spend plenty of time on the under-the-hood part.
I always wanted to choke MS's marketing group with their version names. There are, in my opinion, two acceptable methods of naming a product that continues to get new version:
1) Version numbers. You can have just one number or number.number whatever you like. You decide how to increment them. What matters is that you are consistent, and that the number is easy to find.
2) Version year. When you release a product it is named via whatever year it is released. Doesn't matter how much changed, it gets the release year in its name.
Either one works well for quickly mentally comparing how out of date something is, as well as being able to impress that on users. But it needs to stay consistent or it gets all confusing. You can't go numbers to years and back or things get all fucked up.
The XP and Vista crap is just totally stupid. Fuck off with that. How do I compare "Vista" to "XP"? They are both meaningless terms. It's as bad as Eclipse. No guys, I do NOT know the order of the Jovian moons, please just publish the version number and/or year clearly.
The cognitive load induced by hiding the state of other windows is considerable.
I agree with you. But when I've mentioned this before on Slashdot, a lot of replies were to the effect that "all maximized all the time" behavior is something that people can and ought to just learn to tolerate. I seem to remember their reasoning being along the lines that people got used to it on the Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC running DOS, and old Macs running Switcher, and they can get used to it now.
I always wanted to choke MS's marketing group with their version names. There are, in my opinion, two acceptable methods of naming a product that continues to get new version:
1) Version numbers. You can have just one number or number.number whatever you like. You decide how to increment them. What matters is that you are consistent, and that the number is easy to find.
2) Version year. When you release a product it is named via whatever year it is released. Doesn't matter how much changed, it gets the release year in its name.
Either one works well for quickly mentally comparing how out of date something is, as well as being able to impress that on users. But it needs to stay consistent or it gets all confusing. You can't go numbers to years and back or things get all fucked up.
The XP and Vista crap is just totally stupid. Fuck off with that. How do I compare "Vista" to "XP"? They are both meaningless terms. It's as bad as Eclipse. No guys, I do NOT know the order of the Jovian moons, please just publish the version number and/or year clearly.
I was with you until you went off on searching XP vs. Vista - what's your gripe on searching including "Microsoft Windows" as your context?
Numbers are meaningless - e.g. FF 47 - why the F should I care? That's why project names / named versions are meaningful. They are easier to remember and more meaningful. I think they should be combined (e.g. 10.5 Leopard is a great google search term).
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Yes, if only Apple had been making something like that for the last decade. What a wonderful world we would be living in..
Try again.
The Airport Express does NOT solve the problem. It does not turn non-AirPrint printers into compatible ones by plugging into the USB port. You will need third party solutions to actually print to any non-AirPrint compatible printer attached to it. I actually own the hardware and have tried. Eventually I bought a third part print server (Lantronix xPrintServer) which solves the problem. It's ridiculous that any Mac cannot provide this functionality out of the box.
I don't mean with a google search, I mean for users. What I want is the ability to have an easy comparison system for how out of date something is. If the current version is 10 and you are on version 5, or if the current version is 2015 and you are on version 2002, I have an easy way to demonstrate how behind it is and thus help them understand why an upgrade is a good idea.
For someone who's doing it as a job, as I am, it doesn't really matter. I can remember the progression, and the rough time of release, without a lot of issue. The problem is lay users and understanding how things have progressed and trying to sell them on that fact.
The Airprint Express didn't support AirPrint translation to conventional printers last time I checked. However, StarTech and Lantronix both offer print servers that adapt existing printers to AirPrint and/or Google Cloud Print.
Yes, keyboard navigation in OS X is a total shit show. Apps behave differently to the keystrokes, and some don't respond at all (if the window is "hidden" instead of minimized - why is there a fucking difference?, and if you use a laptop from the built in screen at home, and then use multiple monitors at work, good luck getting UI's and windows to scale right. So much broken.
Also, I know homebrew is nice and all, but OS X REALLY REALLY REALLY needs a decent package manager system. AND a FUCKING UNINSTALLER FOR FUCK"S SAKE. And a central way to find all of the places every app stores startup elements, configuration items, resources . . . etc.
This is all basic "list of main things every OS should do"; and OS X does not get these. Release after release.
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