I have to reluctantly conclude: macOS Monterey is a horrible product, quality-wise

[svenmany]

Depends on the sector. Anything oriented around high performance, low latency, or limited resources (embedded systems, kernels, game engines, boot loaders, etc) requires a solid understanding of the instruction set and architecture. A compiler is just a tool, and like any tool, it has limitations and can be used poorly.

It's like pushing the auto button on an oscilloscope: you can push it, but you better know how to do it manually when it doesn't work.

Good correction. I guess there are some Apple developers working with those areas.

 

[kingtj1971]

The only way anything will change is if these flaws go viral. I’m talking to the point where you can’t mention Apple without talking about the bugs. Xbox 360, meet red ring of death.

Too bad that 100% of the Apple baiters on YouTube that upload a video twice per day about “OMG NOBODY KNEW ABOUT THIS HIDDEN MACBOOK FEATURE UNTIL…” and “Jonny Ive hid this from us!” are only saying good things or making hollow criticisms. They all focus on hyping new product releases and jumping on whatever the groaning commiserating bandwagon is. I can think of at least ten of these YouTube Apple clickbait factories and they’re all basically SXEPhil but instead of celebrities it’s the pattern on the Mac Pro grill.

We’d need something bigger than “antenna-gate” and bending iPhones. Companies are all about fan service. Remember that time everybody was meme-posting for DiCaprio to get an Oscar or whatever and that year he actually got one?

Truth is? I think many Mac users are just afraid that the whole thing will get discontinued if Apple gets enough bad press about the state of the hardware and the OS? They keep cranking out the positive-spin on all of it to pump up sales and keep Apple placated.

I mean, Tim Cook himself has expressed a personal disinterest in using a Mac computer. He thinks everything he needs can be done just fine with an iPad Pro.

Apple dropped "computer" from its name long ago. All of us who are "Mac faithful" are really just relics from a bygone era of Apple and they toss us a bone occasionally, because there's still some money to be made from it. But it's a niche at this point. You don't see TV commercials trying to convince people to buy a Mac instead of a Windows PC anymore. They just don't care....

 

[the8thark]

Well Montery is far better than Ventura.
Ventura is the first MacOS I have ever used that I did not say "I will upgrade once it's stable and reliable". Idid my research on Ventura and my initial reaction was "Holy %$#@. MacOS can't be this bad surely". Unfortunately it was. Thankfully the M1 iMac I bought shipped with Monterey and it will stay on this till the next good MacOS releases.

 

[koelsh]

Truth is? I think many Mac users are just afraid that the whole thing will get discontinued if Apple gets enough bad press about the state of the hardware and the OS? They keep cranking out the positive-spin on all of it to pump up sales and keep Apple placated.

I mean, Tim Cook himself has expressed a personal disinterest in using a Mac computer. He thinks everything he needs can be done just fine with an iPad Pro.

Apple dropped "computer" from its name long ago. All of us who are "Mac faithful" are really just relics from a bygone era of Apple and they toss us a bone occasionally, because there's still some money to be made from it. But it's a niche at this point. You don't see TV commercials trying to convince people to buy a Mac instead of a Windows PC anymore. They just don't care....

That genuinely was a fear of mine. Between 2014 and 2019 in particular it felt like macOS had been put out to pasture as iOS was getting all of the love while the Mac got laptops with broken keyboards Apple didn’t deem worthy of fixing for years. I’ve got a 2018 MBP with the membrane and upgraded(?) switches that was supposed to fix the issue and at least 1/3 of the keys have some double tapping problem.

They say dance with the one that brought you but when her dad is pushing you to her little sister who doesn’t want to be there in the first place it really spoils the mood.

Well Montery is far better than Ventura.
Ventura is the first MacOS I have ever used that I did not say "I will upgrade once it's stable and reliable". Idid my research on Ventura and my initial reaction was "Holy %$#@. MacOS can't be this bad surely". Unfortunately it was. Thankfully the M1 iMac I bought shipped with Monterey and it will stay on this till the next good MacOS releases.

Wishing I could downgrade to Monterey, just haven’t had the time. Ventura feels almost as bad as Yosemite did with the performance and stability degradations from everything turning to frosted glass.

 

[svenmany]

I've started (only slightly) wishing they would just rip off the bandaid and discontinue the Mac. My work is pushing me toward Linux and that would be the impetus to make it happen.

Forget the ecosystem. I'm tired of it not working reliably. I'd still keep my iPhone, but I won't bother answer calls on my computer (because it often doesn't work) or reading text messages there (because they sometimes don't show up).

The only reason it would be a significant problem is that I'd lose access to my most important tools: DevonThink, DevonAgent, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner. I use them all of the time and I don't know how to replace them on Linux.

I suppose there'll be other problems and inconveniences, especially for my family. I guess I don't really want it to happen, but I'm tired of being annoyed and feeling like I'm being held captive by a company that doesn't really make a serious effort to fix things.

 

[averagenerd81]

I’m giving Manjaro a go for a week. macOS has been going downhill for awhile and Monterey is just awful. Apple has amazing hardware with the M series SoC but it’s ruined by the software. Really sad.

 

[Apple_Never_Again]

I have been a macOS user since the first appearance of MacOS X. After the initial start, macOS became a platform that I loved not just for the experience, but for its stability and performance. I would easily have a laptop running for many months without single reboot and without problems. I am reasonably technical (having been part of a team that won an Apple Design Award once) and I know my way around the lower levels of the OS. There too I could do the things I should be able to do and 'it just worked'.

The last years, my experience has been completely otherwise and I've reached the end of the line. A few months back I decided to move my older macOS versions (one Mojave and a few macOS Catalinas) to macOS Monterey and, boy, do I wish I had never done that (in case of Mojave, I really wanted to because there were no longer security fixes).

A list of issues I encountered in various versions of Monterey:

• A 4K LG monitor that isn't recognized as 4K but as 5K. Notable: that same monitor is recognised fine on the only M1 Mac over here. Note also: I have 5 different Macs in this household, this clearly is not a hardware problem if all the Monterey x86 Macs do not recognise the monitor correctly, but the same hardware before the upgrade did, the only x86 Mac still running Big Sur does, and the M1 Mac running Monterey does.
• A monitor that directly after the 'upgrade' on a Mini was only showing black until after an SMC reset, a problem that returned a few times
• If Display user preferences are set, it might crash WindowServer making it impossible for that user to log in (log in, Window Server starts up, crashes, back to login screen). I had to go in via another user, clean out the affected user's prerefences, after which logging in was possible again (though all preferences were lost)
• Booting a system with a USB SSD attached (SanDisk) via USB ends up in a situation that the whole disk isn't seen (missing from System Info) until you physically disconnect/reconnect the drive. Two Thunderbolt drives connect fine and so does a USB RAID
• Attached wired keyboards/trackpad (all Apple) unable to wake a system from deep sleep, you need to physically disconnect/reconnect them to get them recognised
• A monitor as second monitor on an iMac. When the monitor is turned off, the main screen works but input (trackpad, keyboard) gets stuck for a half-second or so all the time.
• If you use software that allows connections from the outside and you use the Application Firewall (ALF) to protect your system, at some point using ALF meant that a certain service would stop working after a few hours because the kernel had stopped passing connections on to the software. Stopping and starting the software made it work again for a few hours. This software ran fine under Mojave and several earlier versions. It seemed that the kernel ran out of resources and that stopping and starting the software freed them. I had to stop using the firewall as a result.
• Services that are started by hand work fine, but when started via launchd are unable to reach.
• And the latest: under 12.5.1 the system suddenly freezes for all connection requests (e.g. you cannot ssh in to the system, or use ARD, etc. Nothing that requires TCP/IP it seems. Ping works, but no TCP/IP port can be reached. Most of the time, this will resolve itself after a while as if the kernel gets 'stuck' and at some point gets 'unstuck', but sometimes it doesn't and you have to hope you are logged out and can click the restart button or you have to do hard reboot. The last time an unstuck happened after an hour or so.

And this list isn't even complete. macOS Monterey 12.5.1 in my experience is as buggy and fragile as anything I have ever had to work with in decades, and that includes older Microsoft Windows. This is now especially the case with anything having to do with sockets, ports, traffic, etc., i.e. kernel level stuff.

I have my suspicions about what may be in play here:

• Apple not spending as much energy on x86 as it does on M1 (which pisses me off as I spent thousands on all these machines)
• Apple working hard on adding security (e.g. the kernel being able to merge a read-only and writable volume into one file system, very neat, and a lot that is now connected to software being signed) but not doing a very good job at writing correct code that can handle all the different situations ('happy flow code')
• The 'unstuck' behaviour of 12.5.1 really feels like Apple has put in some stopgap measure to make sure that if the system gets stuck there is some sort of low level 'reset'. Or, Apple knows this is unreliable, but has implemented some sort of garbage collection that once in a while cleans stuff up so it starts working again

Apple has always been that weird combination of 'insane level of attention to detail' in one place and 'insane level of neglect' elsewhere. But I have to conclude that now that Monterey is at version 12.5.1 it still is buggy, fragile, unreliable. It is a P.o.J. and I am very sorry that after more than 20 years of Apple use I have to give up on ever having something as robust as it was years ago. And the history of recent versions have been that they have become worse and worse in terms of reliability over the years.

I have started to investigate moving parts of my (until now 100% Apple) landscape to another OS because the level of reliability has become so low that I have lost my confidence that it will be reliable any time soon.

I will never buy another Apple product. I only bought Mac's for thunderbolt but since windows has USB 4 now what's the point of wasting extra money on something that does not work properly up and simple parts of Mac OS crash all the time. The keychain does not work properly anymore and the text edit application is broken most of the time. What's the deal with a new OS every year then you have to update all of your other software and if you make music every update since Mac OS Mojave is garbage. Luckily I have one Mac that has Mac OS Mojave on it and even though I can update it I won't. I have never seen a company fall apart faster than Apple. I started looking at running my own cloud server and switching to bit warden for the inevitable break up. If only everything worked the way it was supposed to but it does not and its been years since it did.

 

[Nermal]

the text edit application is broken most of the time.

Yeah, I'm astounded that something as simple as TextEdit is broken in recent versions. I use my old machine with OS 10.14 for text editing since I can actually trust it.

 

[mxrider88]

Can only agree here.

I had to initialise my m2 air the other day because for the last 3 months and after a few software updates too, I had issues when opening files.
Double clicking on any file was not doing anything, only the little opening animation, then hanging for a minute or two before the file actually opened. Same issues when clicking on links on mail or trying to share webpages via iMessage. The action was executing with 60/120 seconds delay.
Opening files from the File-open menu in the application was working and instantly opening any file.

I contacted Apple and they have no idea, just keep asking me for sys diagnostics and then go quiet.
Running all the latest software, tried to repair the disk, tried safe mode, tried to delete finder preferences, tried to run onyx to clear all caches, tries a reinstallation of macOS without initialising. Nothing helped.

I had to initialise and reinstall everything from scratch. And even in that case, it forced me to reinstall Monterey, no option given to install directly Ventura.


macOS is a complete disaster. It just looks pretty. That’s about it.

 

[ThomasJL]

Many people think Tim Cook is doing a fine job as long as Apple keeps making massive profits. They fail to see that he is a mediocre MBA suit who primarily cares about profits and neglects products and software stability.

 

[phrehdd]

Can only agree here.

I had to initialise my m2 air the other day because for the last 3 months and after a few software updates too, I had issues when opening files.
Double clicking on any file was not doing anything, only the little opening animation, then hanging for a minute or two before the file actually opened. Same issues when clicking on links on mail or trying to share webpages via iMessage. The action was executing with 60/120 seconds delay.
Opening files from the File-open menu in the application was working and instantly opening any file.

I contacted Apple and they have no idea, just keep asking me for sys diagnostics and then go quiet.
Running all the latest software, tried to repair the disk, tried safe mode, tried to delete finder preferences, tried to run onyx to clear all caches, tries a reinstallation of macOS without initialising. Nothing helped.

I had to initialise and reinstall everything from scratch. And even in that case, it forced me to reinstall Monterey, no option given to install directly Ventura.


macOS is a complete disaster. It just looks pretty. That’s about it.

Do you or anyone else have a comparison of issues between Intel systems and M chip systems that run Monterey or Ventura? My guess the M chip systems have far more strange issues.

 

[mxrider88]

Do you or anyone else have a comparison of issues between Intel systems and M chip systems that run Monterey or Ventura? My guess the M chip systems have far more strange issues.

I have only one mac at home and it is M2.

I have a get G3 and 4 around and they are more reliable though!!!


But yeah, can’t compare with Intel

 

[BellSystem]

It really is becoming a dumpster fire. My Studio was having all kinds of network lag randomly that nothing else was experiencing. Spent an hour looking at logs, taking pcaps,ect. Rebooted and problem solved. When your Unix box has to be rebooted to solve networking issues….you got problems.

 

[MrCheeto]

All this but will you quit buying?

💁🏻‍♀️

 

[orionquest]

Many people think Tim Cook is doing a fine job as long as Apple keeps making massive profits. They fail to see that he is a mediocre MBA suit who primarily cares about profits and neglects products and software stability.

What corp world are you in where they don't believe solely in profits? Apple is here to sell you a product, they just do a better job convincing you it is one, other times it actually is.

 

[ThomasJL]

What corp world are you in where they don't believe solely in profits? Apple is here to sell you a product, they just do a better job convincing you it is one, other times it actually is.

During Steve Jobs's time being CEO of Apple, Apple was of course interested in making profits, but not to the extent that Tim Cook is, which involves sacrificing the quality of hardware and software, and charging highly unreasonable prices, in order to maximize profits.

 

[MrCheeto]

Another California daycare corp. 🙄

 

[Gudi]

Many people think Tim Cook is doing a fine job as long as Apple keeps making massive profits. They fail to see that he is a mediocre MBA suit who primarily cares about profits and neglects products and software stability.

The software stability only declined temporarily, because the whole system was rewritten for arm64. Overall it was a very smooth transition. People who blame Tim Cook live in a fantasy world in which OS X never had any bugs as long as Steve Jobs was alive. 😆

 

[yellowhelicopter]

It's like we have different OSes. Not once my 13.0 crashed or gave me problems on MM M1, installed just upon release. Using it like 15hrs/day. As well as Monterey before it. I don't use some fancy or old programs though: just Chrome, stock Mail, Commander One, Telegram/Viber, qTorrent, IINA/VLC, CrossOver, Parallels.

 

[okkibs]

I had to initialise and reinstall everything from scratch. And even in that case, it forced me to reinstall Monterey, no option given to install directly Ventura.

That is a feature, not a bug. You upgraded from Monterey to Ventura, but your Mac kept the Monterey recovery. This is so that if something went wrong with the Ventura installation you can still access the known-to-be-good Monterey recovery. Which naturally offers to install Monterey (might be better than only offering to reinstall the broken MacOS again).

The recovery should be upgraded with the next minor point release of Ventura.

That entire recovery/installation process is not optimal in my opinion, but at least there is some logic to it and given how rarely you should have to use any of it, it won't matter that you have to install the older MacOS first and then upgrade it.

And the issues you had with Monterey are certainly due to 3rd party software issues - I am still running Monterey to this day since Ventura is a much worse bugged mess and Monterey works flawlessly on my M1 device. I've used Monterey since the .3 release, so a full year now and it's really the most stable running Mac I've ever seen. Not a single real issue since day 1 with this new Mac.

Ok: If I don't reboot every 3 weeks the Mac will reliably kernel panic somewhere in the 4th week with the same error every time. Certainly some deeper memory management issue or similar that's embarrassing but easily avoidable. In the grand scheme of things a bug that appears every couple weeks and is avoided by rebooting twice a month is really not a problem.

It's like we have different OSes. Not once my 13.0 crashed or gave me problems on MM M1

Not even after 4 weeks of uptime? Mine crashes every single time. But even then, that just goes to show that different workflows can impact reliability. Maybe I only get these crashes because I use an external monitor, for example (I don't know the root cause), who knows. Maybe you got a different hardware config, perhaps the 64GiB models crash more rarely than the 32GiB models for example.

 

[MrCheeto]

I will add this in defense of some issues we may be experiencing.

I’m skipping Ventura entirely, so my MacBook Air M1 is using Monterey. Despite using such a modern system, I still have files that are dated as far back as 2009.

This is due to my need to maintain congruity through each upgrade. Some might think that migration can be as easy as dragging your Home folder over but this does not include very obscure plists, cache’s, or other breadcrumbs that have accumulated over the years and can break dependency links.

I need these breadcrumbs more than I need a 100% reliable system. I am not exaggerating if I say that I have let an app or file lay dormant for ten-years before needing it again. It had better be there when I need it. I’ve visited websites that I have no recollection of and find that there is a saved name and password. When I log-in with those old credentials, I remember that I made a user some many years back and am glad that I have it still. Sometimes there is a loss of data and the only lifeline I have is a breadcrumb I placed back in Snow Leopard that makes the information recoverable.

None of this is possible in any explicit form. Keychain passes, web caches, certain plist info can’t be resolved and so if they aren’t preserved as they were all along then they are lost.

Most recently I have been going over AOL and Skype messages from about 2008-2010 and finding traces of things I would otherwise have absolutely no ability to find. They are saved in some format that isn’t really resolved without them being within the app’s contents and logged in a registry. This was most instrumental as the most recent passing of a friend left many many loose ends.

My friend took me to his friend’s place around 2010. This was a 300-mile distance. I was introduced, did some mechanic work, collected some cash and left. In more recent years, my friend said he knew where I could store my excess tools and parts etc. so I let him carry them off and I didn’t think about them for years. Once he was gone, I had no contact with many of the people that he knew. I had a hunch where my stuff was being stored. Through scouring these old remnants, I was able to find a message that included a dropped pin on Google maps. That pin was the friend’s townhome. Without this very obscure bit of data, I would have lost everything that his friend was storing for us.

Obviously this old data is not of deathly seriousness but when I consider the many times a tidbit of data has saved me a lot of frustration or been able to track something down, I’m not so worried about StuffIt crashing on start until I clear old plist and resource files out of the way.

I don’t know what percentage of your issues are caused by cobwebs but I can assuredly say it is a factor for those that migrate over the years. My current install of Monterey has files passed down since 10.5 Leopard. I’ve never broken the chain since.

My real issue is with the intentional screwing up of MacOS. Yikes. Disk Utility? Unless I have to work with APFS volumes, I’m sticking with Leopard. The new Music app? It’s so screwed I am literally unable to make it select, sort and play my music in the way iTunes did and so I refuse to use it anymore. It is DOA. That is what I call unforgivable.

 

[okkibs]

I’ve visited websites that I have no recollection of and find that there is a saved name and password. When I log-in with those old credentials, I remember that I made a user some many years back and am glad that I have it still. Sometimes there is a loss of data and the only lifeline I have is a breadcrumb I placed back in Snow Leopard that makes the information recoverable.

You can have that way more easily, firefox profiles can be easily archived, as long as you don't mix OS platforms. I still have the passwords from 10 years ago in my firefox password manager, on a new Mac where I merely copied over the firefox profile.

Most recently I have been going over AOL and Skype messages from about 2008-2010 and finding traces of things I would otherwise have absolutely no ability to find.

For messages I have used export functions or plugins in the past, and I got all text messages from back in the day where text messaging was a thing stored in files that I can read without any app, I think it's just html files I can look at with spacebar quicklook in Finder.

Of course all this requires to make a conscious decision what to save, every time you switch devices. But this means I have old data I consider important catalogued and stored on archival storage, that I can go look at any time and simply open the directory corresponding to the year, app, and person. At the same time a new Mac doesn't even need a full TM restore, I merely copy back the apps and let my locally hosted cloud sync back the rest of the data that was stored in my user account.

I don't have to look inside or backup the Library directory for my user at all.

 

[StellarVixen]

Sorry to hear that, I know things are bad, but…

…they are gonna get way worse.

The Ventura is worse, and every next Mac OS is gonna be worse and worse. What a time to be alive (I am wondering if this is how the Mac users during the 90s felt)

 

[StellarVixen]

I've started (only slightly) wishing they would just rip off the bandaid and discontinue the Mac.

Oof, this one hurts a lot. But I don't know what's worse, looking at this pale shadow of what was once the Mac OS, foolishly hoping that maybe, just maybe one day things will improve, or accepting that Mac platform will most likely never get love ever again (software wise, although even the ARM transition might as well been a swan song).

 

[kingtj1971]

Many people think Tim Cook is doing a fine job as long as Apple keeps making massive profits. They fail to see that he is a mediocre MBA suit who primarily cares about profits and neglects products and software stability.

I own a little Apple stock so did my symbolic move of voting him out when they had me vote on folks on their board, etc. as a stockholder.

Massive profits will please the people who just care about the stock and investing. But the original Apple was never focused on market domination. It was created by one Steve who truly only cared about the engineering and building the best product he could make, and one Steve who felt that when you build an "insanely great" product? You simply charge more for it, to ensure you stay profitable. But you don't worry about selling as many of them as you possibly can. Having even 10% of the market share of computing devices is a perfectly good place to be, if you're building the ones a selective/choosy audience prefers.

I know car analogies are way overused in the tech community. But Apple has gone from being a Lamborghini to being a Chevrolet. They sell a LOT more units and have a wider product line now, and you can even buy their "upscale" line and get decent performance (kind of like buying a Corvette from Chevy). But they stopped trying to be "elite" in the computer world, and just expect people to keep loyally buying them for the branding/logo.