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

[Nermal]

Hmm. I’m specifically referring to the window snapping feature where you drag a window to the side of the screen and “snap” it to that half of the screen. The Windows key + left or right arrow also does it. Actually, if you’re interested, there’s an app someone told me about here on MacRumors that mimics this functionality. It’s called Magnet. It’s on the Mac App Store.

What issues do you have at work? I’d like to know so I can watch out for it.

edit - The taskbar in Windows too. Chefs kiss. Also, FOR THE ALLIANCE.

Personally I don't use 'snap' because work's too cheap to get us decent-resolution displays that can actually take advantage of it. However, and perhaps somewhat contradictorily, I get frustrated with Windows' habit of opening things full screen as if multitasking doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, I work from home occasionally, and remote in from my 5120x2880 iMac. When I go back into the office the next day I often find that I need to do the "Alt-Space and M" so I can then move windows back into the visible part of the screen. It's that sort of thing that frustrates me.

As for your other comment... I wonder whether I'll get back to Blizzcon next year...

 

[alex00100]

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 opinion 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.

Can you elaborate on how you fix windowserver crashing? I have the same issue.

 

[Ashbash75]

First thing I do with windoze is install Classic Shell (now open shell) 🤣🤣🤣

 

[SpotOnT]

Ya I don't upgrade regularly anymore. And when I do it is always to a version that has been out for at least over a year.

I get why Apple wants to release a new version of iOS every year, but I can't figure out why the feel the need to do the same for the Mac. A new version of macOS every other year seems like it would be plenty to me. Or maybe they can just spend some of that profit and hire more programmers to work on the bug reports.

 

[Zyphrax]

Hmm. I’m specifically referring to the window snapping feature where you drag a window to the side of the screen and “snap” it to that half of the screen. The Windows key + left or right arrow also does it. Actually, if you’re interested, there’s an app someone told me about here on MacRumors that mimics this functionality. It’s called Magnet. It’s on the Mac App Store.

What issues do you have at work? I’d like to know so I can watch out for it.

edit - The taskbar in Windows too. Chefs kiss. Also, FOR THE ALLIANCE.

Even better, there is an open-source app called Rectangle (just Google “rectangle app”) that does pretty much the same thing. Works really well.

With regards to the first post, I see similar issues with macOS, but I feel that it is still such a better experience than working with Windows. The other day I installed a Windows laptop for someone and even in 2022 I still have to go through the same horrible InstallShield installers to install drivers that may or may not work.

Of course it all depends on what you use every day. It is really silly that macOS still doesn’t have a proper window snapping feature and that maximize covers the entire screen (with the slowest animation in the known universe). And on Windows it is weird that you don’t have something like Quick Look (yeah you can download an app for it too).

With the resources that Apple has, it would be great if they could at least have a couple of devs that just focus on system bugs and stability. But I guess it is aleady hard enough to get devs that can work on the new features.

 

[johannnn]

Yes they should start with 1.5 year or 2 year release cycles. But it won’t happen.

In my experience starting from fresh helps. I do understand though that users should just be able to click the update-button without having a bunch of bugs.

My Intel iMac works great except for one thing. Sometimes Bluetooth just stops working and needs a computer reboot. Not great since I have the Apple wireless mouse and keyboard. And you can’t operate the mouse while being plugged in. So each time I have to borrow some other mouse just to save some open windows and click reboot.

I agree that macOS is buggier than some years ago. But in my experience Windows and Linux isn’t better. And not nearly as enjoyable to use.

 

[exoticSpice]

. But in my experience Windows and Linux isn’t better. And not nearly as enjoyable to use.

Windows 11 is pretty good. The summer update will also bring major improvements to Windows 11. Apple needs to move to 3 year cycle like MS.

 

[dockgaze]

I am not a coder . . . . but I am wondering if the way macOS iterations and evolution over time builds an increasingly shakier/buggier superstructure due to new code simply being piled up time and time again over old code. Could it be that “ground up” OS coding is not economically or chronologically feasible, and thus what we are left with is really a de-evolution of the OS over time, due primarily from building new code on top of old code shortcuts? That would explain much of the frustration in these forums, as well as the waxing nostalgic for earlier macOS iterations.

 

[oldmacs]

MacOS has been unreliable for years - they need a two year cycle to actually get it reliable!

 

[f54da]

It's because the swe old-timers who were there from the nextstep days are gone, and what's left is a kernel dev team that's mostly shared with ios, and a bunch of new hires who were never deeply familiar with the core osx userspace architecture and so are reinventing the wheel by trying to port over parts of userspace from ios.

 

[briloronmacrumo]

I've reported it again and told them "Please don't tell me this is working as designed as this will convince me nobody actually read the bug and tried it. Thank you."

Hopefully, more MacRumors members report this bug. Q/A & Q/C run on metrics and one of them is how many customers report a bug.

 

[gctwnl]

Seeing as I have never had any of those issues, I would just have to question if there isn’t something else going on. Personally, I do a clean install with every major os update. I recently noticed some weird files installed as login items, I didn’t put them there but maybe some software I dabbled with did. Clean install later - gone. That could also help with weird monitor issues. Of course dont you hate that some display companies (Samsung) only allow updates to firmware from windows, pathetic! Also don’t use any external drive crapware (WD). It corrupted 2 disks on me. Just sayin, problem is not necessarily macOS, but incompatiblities elsewhere.

It has of course to do with what I do with the system, the specific monitor (LG 27UK650) that I use, programs I use, etc. Somehow what I do on that system triggers it (e.g. I am running macOS Server on that system and have an Open Directory running for the other Macs, that might be it).

Though today, another of my 12.5.1 iMacs started to be slow to respond to a simple But whatever programs I use, as long as I remain in 'user space', the system should not become unreliable, get stuck, etc.. Reliability should be fundamental, not to be easily affected by user behaviour.

 

[gctwnl]

It's because the swe old-timers who were there from the nextstep days are gone, and what's left is a kernel dev team that's mostly shared with ios, and a bunch of new hires who were never deeply familiar with the core osx userspace architecture and so are reinventing the wheel by trying to port over parts of userspace from ios.

I suspect this may be part of the reason. In iOS everything runs as 'root' but runs in sandboxes (afaik). That is an entirely different (security) model than a multi-user system. They also do stuff in the kernel to optimise things (Microsoft does this too, have apps that bypass the normal working, like Teams going deep in kernel mode to be able to find some optimisation). Such approaches are 'dirty' and lead to instability. I'm guessing here, of course.

 

[calstanford]

In Monterey, whenever I use VPN to download a file all subsequent files (even when VPN is off again) show no icon preview. Meaning if I download a picture or video I won't see it displayed in Finder unless I either reboot or log in and out of my account.

Never been fixed. Was fine in the previous year's release.

 

[Nermal]

I've reported it again and told them "Please don't tell me this is working as designed as this will convince me nobody actually read the bug and tried it. Thank you."

Hopefully, more MacRumors members report this bug. Q/A & Q/C run on metrics and one of them is how many customers report a bug.

This is your first post in this thread, and multiple bugs have been mentioned. Which one are you referring to?

 

[gctwnl]

Just to point out how silly this is, here's my verbatim bug report:


And Apple's response:


Beggars belief...

Hmm. There are a few apps that have that behaviour. Finder for one. It has to with the app/window model. In (original) Microsoft, the window is the app (you had at that time multi-subwidow horrors) and the menu is part of the window, but in macOS the app has windows (much better architecture) and a separate menu. The app is the menu. The problem is that people often act as if 'the window is the app" and they do not close the app when they want, they close the window (especially users having come originally from Windows). Some apps also quit when you close the last/only window (e.g. System Preferences.

Some apps like Finder make sure that when they are activated, a window appears so the nontechnical users (especially the users coming from Windows) get confused "I started Finder but there is no window" (there is only a menu but they don't see it). Hence, for some apps, such as Finder (which really is essential), you can close the last window, but when you activate the app again via the dock, it will create a new window. Maps behaviour is likewise: when it gets activated without a window, it creates one. Maps does it, Finder does it, Messages itself does it. Photos does it. Probably all Apple's own apps do this (haven't tested all of them).

It is illogical, but it is a feature making macOS much more simple to use for newcomers, most of whom will have experienced Windows before macOS. It also has the effect that if a user closes the last window thinking they close the app, the app stays still running and when they click to 'launch' it again, it launches lightning fast (because the app itself doesn't need to startup). The app itself can go into 'sleep' mode not drawing energy or using CPU) when the last window closes, so there is no real drawback.

Their communication to you about it is as dumb as hell, though. Rather not people-friendly. Why not have a we page somewhere that explains this?

 

[MajorFubar]

From a Mac POV it started to go wrong IMO when the iPod arrived. They're not a Mac-centric company anymore and have many other products that put more food on their tables than Macs do by selling in exponentially higher numbers, so that's where the devs are.

Also this silly annual cycle of rolling-out new OS's for the sake of it. Any fool could tell you it's not possible to keep doing that without adding more problems than they fix. For example I was hoping the 'dropping usb connections' issue would be fixed in 12.5.1 but if anything it's got worse. I have of course reported it, to completley deaf ears. All Apple wants to hear is the sound of money in the coin slot, they don't want to hear about the problems.

 

[Xand&Roby]

I can understand the problem for those who need security, but for everyone else I don't: as an Apple user for decades and after forcing users to keep devices up to date lately I've been recommending and blocking updates to all the Apple devices that present to me. After seeing that iOS 15.6 manages to lose an infinite number of performance on an iPhone 13, which is currently the top of the Apple range, less than a year after its presentation, compared to iOS 15.0, after years of struggling with bugs and the quality that is now bad, NEVER AGAIN. For me, the company may go bankrupt. I know it won't happen today or even in 10 years but as long as it continues to sell dirty hardware and software at gold prices even not.
I always justified Apple for software quality, high prices weren't a problem because the software justified the difference with other manufacturers, but frankly enough. I need an Apple Watch that makes up for an iPhone and a tablet/Mac for the most expensive tasks, but I can also do without this, I don't know what to do with Apple's **** do with today, and say that I'm full of Apple gadgets, but I can't take it anymore about the lowest quality of their products.

 

[George Dawes]

The interface and dialog boxes are really boring, not impressed at all plus most things are hard to see as everything’s is so flat

 

[Tiberius2000]

Yes they should start with 1.5 year or 2 year release cycles. But it won’t happen.

In my experience starting from fresh helps. I do understand though that users should just be able to click the update-button without having a bunch of bugs.

My Intel iMac works great except for one thing. Sometimes Bluetooth just stops working and needs a computer reboot. Not great since I have the Apple wireless mouse and keyboard. And you can’t operate the mouse while being plugged in. So each time I have to borrow some other mouse just to save some open windows and click reboot.

I agree that macOS is buggier than some years ago. But in my experience Windows and Linux isn’t better. And not nearly as enjoyable to use.

I have used Macs since the Quadra days and remember when BT appeared on Macs.

BT on MacOS has always been shaken. The lack of ports on Macs would be less concerning if BT was more reliable.

But the BT alone speaks to the OP’s point. I like the UI of MacOS but there are these bugs that have persisted for years that are never fixed.

 

[Nermal]

Hmm. There are a few apps that have that behaviour. Finder for one.

Please re-read my bug report step-by-step, and try it out yourself. Then try it again with Finder in the place of Maps. Finder does not behave like Maps does.

 

[phrehdd]

Having been seeing a few issues occur of late and especially with Monterey and M1 chip...seems to me that the combo is fantastic if one has the right hardware and uses specific software. Go outside of that realm, and you may have issues. My guess is Apple does in fact know of the challenges and released software and hardware thinking people will "adapt" because, after all, this is Apple.

My issues - like many too have memory issues and previously I had monitor issues that were more than frustrating and struck multiple times daily. Strange freezes, reboots, inability to return screen when returning from sleep mode. The list really made me think of Microsoft from years ago where the world was its beta tester bed.

 

[TracerAnalog]

I’ve learnt two things since I switched to OS X back in the day: install point releases ASAP, and wait at least 6 months with major releases. And about every two major releases I perform a clean install. This has worked fairly well for me, with the occasional bewildering bug or missing feature (where ‘Apple knows best’). I have a M1 MP setup with one 4K screen that works, and one NAS, and I don’t encounter the bugs the OP does. I do experience mysterious and unpredictable disconnects with my TB3 drives which drives me crazy… so that’s new 🤷🏻

 

[krell100]

Agree completely with the OP. MacOS has been getting steadily less reliable and more buggy in each new version. Big Sur had issues with inexplicable freezes so once Monterey hit 12.5 I figured, surely this must be more reliable. Well, what a mistake. Continual slow downs that completely seize up the machine regardless of app and with upwards of 50Gb of free RAM. It was a clean install. What a POS.

Apple have always been able to charge more because of premium quality on both hardware and software. At this point I really don't see how they can charge the premium they demand for the quality we're getting.

 

[TechRunner]

I used to upgrade when the newest version came out, but over the last several, I've upgraded one release behind the current one to give Apple a year to iron out the bugs. That doesn't even seem to be a safe bet anymore. I'm planning to upgrade to Monterey when Ventura releases, but with fingers crossed.