Soldato
I've been using a MBPr 13" 16GB 500GB (Haswell) for a couple months now as my main machine. I use VMware Fusion and do all my development work in that, which generally works fine. And the Mac hosts a Xamarin build host for compiling iOS apps (this is pretty much the only reason I needed to make the switch from bare metal Windows).
In that short time I've found some pretty serious flaws with this so called modern OS. In no particular order:
* The close/minimise/maximise buttons don't work in a consistent fashion across applications.
* The aforementioned buttons cannot be resized, not even as an Accessibility option, and the immutable size Apple has chosen for them is not particularly user friendly; they are incredibly small. That's the first thing my (retired) mum commented on when she had a go on my machine so I'm not just making stuff up.
* Resizing windows is more difficult than it needs to be.
* The built-in firewall was not enabled by default. Seriously Apple?
* Battery usage is appalling compared to Windows. Even my previous non-Haswell HP EliteBook had better battery life. Apparently if you use a non-Safari web browser the OS is too rubbish to schedule threads appropriately in a fashion that doesn't rinse the battery. I am led to assume that Safari contains "hacks" to work around OS design flaws but Apple has not disclosed these to the likes of Chrome?
* The Activity Monitor tool reveals that OSX is using around 5-8% of CPU time constantly. Some "kernel_task" and "WindowsServer" processes are the main culprits. And that's from a fresh boot; once given some time for the machine to settle down.
* The OSX equivalent of the "Windows notification area" does not collapse so when you have installed enough applications it just dominates your menu bar with lots of rarely used "junk" icons.
* The "British PC Keyboard" input mapping is broken. Most notably the back tick and backslash keys are not mapped to the correct symbols. Home/End keys also don't really respond normally.
* "Finder" is like using Explorer on Windows 95. It is diabolically rubbish. Simple file and folder management tasks become massive chores. To such an extent I have several times just reverted to using my Windows VM to, you know, "get **** done".
* Sometimes when I have disconnected an external monitor, all of the windows/workspaces that were left on that monitor prior to disconnection will seemingly remain on that monitor. The windows/workspaces do not show up on Mission Control. The only way to recover the lost windows/workspaces is to either reboot the OS entirely or plug the monitor back in. This has happened maybe about 4 times now.
* Sometimes you get a "multi coloured spinny orb" mouse cursor. When this is shown the machine effectively becomes unusable until the annoying orb has disappeared. I assume there is some background operation occurring that is so damn important that the system wants to stop you doing anything else. In 16-bit Windows such as 3.11 this was called the "global lock" and it was really annoying even back then. So it is surprising that a supposedly modern OS still suffers from a fundamental flaw in its design like this.
* Further to that, last night I encountered the darker more evil twin of the "multi coloured spinny orb" mouse cursor which I shall call "multi coloured non-spinny orb of death" mouse cursor. Because the machine froze hard and even after 10 minutes of waiting was still unresponsive; couldn't even move the mouse cursor and the cursor was not its animated spinny usual self. This "freeze" alone is enough to put OSX back over 15 years in my mind because I simply cannot remember having a software-induced freeze like that since like Windows ME!
Why do people hail this "OSX" as being so great? It is a piece of ******* **** dressed up to look pretty. Windows was more stable than this rubbish back in Windows 2000. It's incredibly frustrating that I have to put up with using a massively sub-par operating system just so that I can run the Xamarin iOS build host, but such is life I guess.
With all that said, and in the interests of balance, OSX does have a couple features that are superior to what I've been used to in the past...
* Virtual desktops or "workspaces" as OSX calls them and the way they tie into the touchpad for fast switching is brilliant.
* A proper Unix-like shell.
* The app ecosystem is generally a lot more minimalist and higher quality. Even the Skype app is better, it doesn't even have adverts like the Windows one!
* Self-contained app containers/packages, even if the install procedure for apps is rather odd where you have to drag an icon into a folder. How did that pass usability testing by the way?
In that short time I've found some pretty serious flaws with this so called modern OS. In no particular order:
* The close/minimise/maximise buttons don't work in a consistent fashion across applications.
* The aforementioned buttons cannot be resized, not even as an Accessibility option, and the immutable size Apple has chosen for them is not particularly user friendly; they are incredibly small. That's the first thing my (retired) mum commented on when she had a go on my machine so I'm not just making stuff up.
* Resizing windows is more difficult than it needs to be.
* The built-in firewall was not enabled by default. Seriously Apple?
* Battery usage is appalling compared to Windows. Even my previous non-Haswell HP EliteBook had better battery life. Apparently if you use a non-Safari web browser the OS is too rubbish to schedule threads appropriately in a fashion that doesn't rinse the battery. I am led to assume that Safari contains "hacks" to work around OS design flaws but Apple has not disclosed these to the likes of Chrome?
* The Activity Monitor tool reveals that OSX is using around 5-8% of CPU time constantly. Some "kernel_task" and "WindowsServer" processes are the main culprits. And that's from a fresh boot; once given some time for the machine to settle down.
* The OSX equivalent of the "Windows notification area" does not collapse so when you have installed enough applications it just dominates your menu bar with lots of rarely used "junk" icons.
* The "British PC Keyboard" input mapping is broken. Most notably the back tick and backslash keys are not mapped to the correct symbols. Home/End keys also don't really respond normally.
* "Finder" is like using Explorer on Windows 95. It is diabolically rubbish. Simple file and folder management tasks become massive chores. To such an extent I have several times just reverted to using my Windows VM to, you know, "get **** done".
* Sometimes when I have disconnected an external monitor, all of the windows/workspaces that were left on that monitor prior to disconnection will seemingly remain on that monitor. The windows/workspaces do not show up on Mission Control. The only way to recover the lost windows/workspaces is to either reboot the OS entirely or plug the monitor back in. This has happened maybe about 4 times now.
* Sometimes you get a "multi coloured spinny orb" mouse cursor. When this is shown the machine effectively becomes unusable until the annoying orb has disappeared. I assume there is some background operation occurring that is so damn important that the system wants to stop you doing anything else. In 16-bit Windows such as 3.11 this was called the "global lock" and it was really annoying even back then. So it is surprising that a supposedly modern OS still suffers from a fundamental flaw in its design like this.
* Further to that, last night I encountered the darker more evil twin of the "multi coloured spinny orb" mouse cursor which I shall call "multi coloured non-spinny orb of death" mouse cursor. Because the machine froze hard and even after 10 minutes of waiting was still unresponsive; couldn't even move the mouse cursor and the cursor was not its animated spinny usual self. This "freeze" alone is enough to put OSX back over 15 years in my mind because I simply cannot remember having a software-induced freeze like that since like Windows ME!
Why do people hail this "OSX" as being so great? It is a piece of ******* **** dressed up to look pretty. Windows was more stable than this rubbish back in Windows 2000. It's incredibly frustrating that I have to put up with using a massively sub-par operating system just so that I can run the Xamarin iOS build host, but such is life I guess.
With all that said, and in the interests of balance, OSX does have a couple features that are superior to what I've been used to in the past...
* Virtual desktops or "workspaces" as OSX calls them and the way they tie into the touchpad for fast switching is brilliant.
* A proper Unix-like shell.
* The app ecosystem is generally a lot more minimalist and higher quality. Even the Skype app is better, it doesn't even have adverts like the Windows one!
* Self-contained app containers/packages, even if the install procedure for apps is rather odd where you have to drag an icon into a folder. How did that pass usability testing by the way?
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