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Apple To Release Public Betas of iOS 10 and macOS Sierra Today
The next version of Apple's desktop operating system, macOS Sierra, will be made available in a public beta later today. Enthusiasts can also try their hands at iOS 10, the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system today. Both the new operating system versions offer a range of new features and improvements. Sierra, for instance, features Siri voice assistant which will assist users with locating files, answering queries, and search for images and information just by asking. iOS 10 lets users write a message in their own handwriting, and has a feature called "Raise to Wake" which wakes up the device when a user picks up their iPhone. Notifications have gotten more powerful, and now show photos and videos as well. You will find the macOS Sierra preview here, and iOS 10 preview here. More information on Apple's beta program here.
Being a Mac and Linux user for sometime, I like working on my Mac but it is not my "go to" system and macOS will ensure that it stays that way. So a disclaimer, I am a programmer, so the majority of my work is not Photoshop or whatever grade A software everyone touts about as working perfectly on Mac. Compilers and mostly command line and IDE tools are what I mostly work with and things like Eclipse, Atom, and so on work pretty well across platforms. So I do get real work done on either platform. I get that's not the majority of users but at the same time I am not going to be able to relate to all the crazies out there that are like, "ZOMG, Linux has no Photoshop, you CAN'T DO ANYTHING!!!11!111one1111!!!!". What kind of work I get done on each platform is not the point I am going to be going for though if you bear with me for a bit.
Mac and its ecosystem are nice, but that is also the catch. A lot of the new features with macOS talk about how seamlessly it works for iPhone, iPad, Apple watch, and so on. In other words, those features don't exist unless you have those things. Additionally, you don't get cloud integration unless you are using their cloud. That's 5GB free and the pricing while reasonable does mean that you need to pay that per month/year to access that feature built into the OS as well. Also, the notes, calendar (to a lesser extent), mail (again to a lesser extent), maps, photo, and on and on applications only work well so long as you use that application. You can transfer your stuff from Evernote to Apple's notes, but you can only use Apple's notes on Apple's stuff. Using Evernote or some other program works across platforms but it's not "optimize" or doesn't integrate well into the OS. And there's several other examples where it's Apple's ecosystem or a less than ideal experience or just some features of the OS just don't happen.
And that's what ultimately puts me off from Apple as the "go to" system, why am I buying (which I only did once and man my Apple has been kicking for quite some years now) this hardware and OS for features I'll never get to use unless I get deeper into the ecosystem? Perhaps if I already had an iPhone (I don't) or an Apple Watch (I'm an old fuddy duddy who likes ticking watches still) some of this would make more sense. But I'm not that person and maybe it is just me but I do not feel like I should have to be that type of person in order to get all the features from my hardware/OS. I get that macOS does "more" in a sense than say my Linux box, but I get 100% of my Linux box and maybe that biases me toward it more often than not for things like gaming, programming, and just randomly looking at cat videos on the Internet. The Mac is nice, but I'm never going to use notes or photos the way Apple wants me to use them because I am just not going to go that deep into their ecosystem.
So all that said, seeing macOS tout more/tighter integration of their ecosystem and hardware into the mix of their OS is just off putting to me, and that may only extend as far as me for all it is worth. I get that this is the way things are moving, until they stop moving in that direction one day. However, I just don't see the justification for the cost of getting everything Apple just to get those features. I have an Android phone and use Dropbox for files, whatever the thing is with Google for photos and what-not, and my music comes from Amazon/Google/Apple depending on whatever I'm signed into at the time I decide to buy something. Netflix and HBO have mostly supplanted my need for videos (maybe I'm just tired of the stuff that comes out now a days). All of that works pretty well across whatever devices I use, so there's even less reason to just drop everything and move to Apple. That brings me to the point, macOS is really built for people who aren't in any ecosystem right now or people who are already Mac deep. It's not bringing anything that says to people Android/Linux/Windows entrenched, "Hey this is something you'd drop who you have now for us!" And t