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

[nvmls]

Even spotlight they killed, it's unbelievable. Also, let me tell you, at this pace, Microsoft even with all it's legacy bloat, which is getting removed slowly, OEM compatibility scope, eventually will outdo macOS sooner than later. We use all platforms here, and Windows 11 starts to feel nicer than macOS in some things & UI aspects and gets the job done every time, macOS is a pandora box.

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's very inconsistent because when using multi-monitor with full screen apps, sometimes you want to switch to a specific app and no window shows, just the top menu with the app's name. Windows handling of this is rock solid consistent, works every single time.

Bugs like audio popping, we've had it since 2016, was just fixed with 12.5. Only 6 years took them. Safari has had the same UI glitches in compact mode since beta, they don't care, the amount of ignored Safari bugs/feedback we have sent is surreal.

Notifications every few upgrades stop showing until you reboot. Time machine unreliable, BT unreliable, Airdrop unreliable, Image capture left in the dust, disk utility newer version is half baked compared to older one, Music performs worse than almost any of the most poorly optimised electron apps available in the internet. Their peripherals drop connection since they were introduced, yet no definitive fix. They can't even get iCloud to perform reliably, not even saying downtime can't happen, basic crap like uploading a single 50kb file to drive will remain in a loop for a couple days/until reboot, and that being a paid service, so imagine anything which doesn't drive revenue, they couldn't care less.

On a side note, this thread is gold among so much cringe. Half this forum is still praising touch bars, butterfly keyboards, NAND removal, notch, ads, poor software & magic mouse charging port.

 

[Yebubbleman]

I wanted to like Monterey, but I agree that it is maddeningly buggy. Its performance is poorly optimized to the older side of its system requirements and there are a M1 specific audio glitches that I don't get on either Ventura betas or Big Sur. Would've happily had another year of Big Sur if it meant that Monterey was glitch-free.

 

[hoo-man-b-ing]

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.

I've written code for a few decades now so I'm happy to take a pass at this. 🤓

Yes, that can absolutely happen. You typically hear it referred to as "code rot" but it might be better to think about in terms of cyclomatic complexity, or just complexity. There are lots of different ways to measure code quality and while I haven't seen the source code to macOS and so can't compare it to other operating systems, it's undeniably more complex now than it was in the past. Complexity adds cost, introduces risk, and makes the codebase more difficult to understand. But it also adds functionality, whether that's user-facing or system-facing.

Engineers mitigate this a number of ways, including automating testing (behavior-driven, acceptance, unit, performance, load, etc.) and through (hopefully) relentlessly refactoring. It's also key to deprecate and decommission functionality/code/libraries/services which have low engagement/strategic value to reduce complexity at the source (literally).

As for the frustration in the forums, I suspect there's more at play than just the perceived quality/value of macOS, but that's another topic.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Bonus, upgrading to Monterey also irreversibly upgrades your logic boards firmware, so there is no way to downgrade back to a fully stable Mojave after that. Once you’ve crossed into Monterey, realized it breaks everything, and downgraded to get your working machine back, you’ll have efi errors (your computer has detected a problem) and shaky boot camp performance forevermore.
It used to be the quality software was the main reason to go with Apple. That seems to have reached its pinnacle at Mojave, and ever since, the hated win10 runs on intel macs better than new releases of OSX. It‘s not great.

 

[Ethanmenzel]

Agree with you but for different reasons. Monterey felt like an Update that refined the issues with Big Sur as well as added new but unfinished features that would be finished or improved in Ventura. Told myself not to update but what made me update was that passwords were now in system preferences instead of hidden in safari. Also the uniformity between my iPhone and my mac. Monterey is just as horrible as Mojave but will stick with it for school as I have two more years to go and am using a 2017 MacBook pro-13-inch maxed out except For 512 storage. Hoping Apple will not discontinue the 2017 MacBook Pro‘S and give it at least one more year of support. That's a big wish why I’m trying to hold myself back from installing Ventura

 

[roncron]

I wish macOS updates were more about efficiency and reliability, and less about adding new features. Put new features in apps, please, not in the OS.

 

[bluecoast]

I’m not a dev, but I wonder whether the ultimate plan of them to use SwiftUI as the cross platform solution for iPad and macOS apps, means that they are currently applying sticking plaster (or just.. 🤷‍♂️) to the lower level subsystems of macOS, until they have worked out how to unify every level of both OSes as much as possible.

Given that SwiftUI was introduced in 2019, they do seem to be taking a while with this.

In the meantime, things sure are shaky (Ventura System Settings & practically any of the existing SwiftUI macOS apps).

I guess everyone is on the AVR/VR & Car.

 

[Shh]

I wish macOS updates were more about efficiency and reliability, and less about adding new features. Put new features in apps, please, not in the OS.

Yeah, kind of how like Snow Leopard was just Leopard 2.0.

 

[AgentElliot007]

Mac software quality has nosedived steadily in recent years and indeed seems to be accelerating. Human interface guidelines always making the experience clumsier and clumsier to use. Very sad state of affairs over at Apple when it comes to software, particularly Mac software, these days.

 

[BogiTheTomtom]

What is this other OS that you are moving to that is more reliable? I know it can't be Windows so it must be some flavor of Linux?

Monterey is working (mostly) fine for me. But then again, when I do an update to the next major release of an OS I always do a clean install. I do agree that the quality of the macOS has been on a downward spiral ever since Apple decided on changes for the sake of change on a yearly basis and spend more time on new bling and less time on fixing bugs that have been with us for years, or some of the newer bugs (looking at USB and bluetooth random disconnects).

I got my first mac (Mac Studio with M1 Max) few months ago, and I very pleased with the whole experience. One question though. How do you upgrade to new major release of OS with a 'clean install' as you mentioned? I've never installed macos. Thanks

 

[lescargot]

I just installed Mac OS 12.5.1 and am so disappointed in some of their changes:
(1) you can no longer take a screen shot of part of the screen and then copy it to another place, such as your word processor (Word in my case); and
(2) I can no longer see my "OneDrive" which is a cloud based document storage for Microsoft Word.
Are they trying to make it difficult to use anything but Apple products? I am seriously pissed.

 

[svenmany]

I just installed Mac OS 12.5.1 and am so disappointed in some of their changes:
(1) you can no longer take a screen shot of part of the screen and then copy it to another place, such as your word processor (Word in my case); and
(2) I can no longer see my "OneDrive" which is a cloud based document storage for Microsoft Word.
Are they trying to make it difficult to use anything but Apple products? I am seriously pissed.

I'm so mad at you!! I tried to figure out what you meant by (1), so I tested command-shift 5. Now my whole screen is messed up. Everything is staying dimmed out and there's a bright square in the middle of the screen. It's magical.

But I'm not disappointed in Apple. It's just par for the course.

 

[f54da]

@lescargot >you can no longer take a screen shot of part of the screen
cmd+shift+ctrl+4 still works for me, as has existed since probably the nextstep days?


@AgentElliot007 >Human interface guidelines
Yes, deterioration of HIG guidelines since 10.9 is another maddening thing. osx now looks basically indistinguishable from gnome. It's strength used to be the carefully use of color/depth/shadow to provide layering. Now I don't even know what things are buttons anymore.

Since we're posting monterey issues on this thread, I'll add the ones I've experienced:

* Wakes from darkwake due to NUB.SPMISw3IRQ interrupt
* Pinch-zoom randomly stops working
* M1: Programs using multi-threaded OpenGL segfaulting on resize (apple explicitly built an opengl->metal translator, so this is indeed a bug rather than just deprecated feature)
* AMFId randomly deciding half the time to disallow coredumps for crashed processes (And this isn't a codesigning issue, I shouldn't need to grant task_for_pid to get a coredump for my own compiled binary. Besides, AMFId will sometimes allow the coredump for the exact same binary, so clearly it's a matter of AMFId being cranky)
* (Less significant) sometimes changing AXAPI permissions for an app in system preferences causes all keyboard events to be dropped. It doesn't happen all the time, but you can bet that it will happen right when you're in the middle of trying to debug something important.
* M1: Audio sometimes glitches on usb-c external monitor. Restarting coreaudio doesn't help.
* M1: Mirroring to external usb-c in clamshell mode occasionally stops working. Requires a reboot.


Other annoyances that tell you apple stopped caring about power-users:
* Console since 10.12 is utterly useless, since I can't browse past logs. The entire unified logging seems nice in theory, but they never bothered to update console.app to support it properly. And ideally there'd be some sort of "query builder" for predicates like there exists/existed for searches in finder.

 

[lescargot]

I'm so mad at you!! I tried to figure out what you meant by (1), so I tested command-shift 5. Now my whole screen is messed up. Everything is staying dimmed out and there's a bright square in the middle of the screen. It's magical.

But I'm not disappointed in Apple. It's just par for the course.

Hey, just so you know, I use Command/Control/Shift/4. It used to work beautifully. Not anymore.

 

[svenmany]

* Console since 10.12 is utterly useless, since I can't browse past logs. The entire unified logging seems nice in theory, but they never bothered to update console.app to support it properly. And ideally there'd be some sort of "query builder" for predicates like there exists/existed for searches in finder.

Console is useless. But, the "log" command, run from the terminal, is really, really powerful. I have to give credit to Apple for that one, in supporting the power users.

 

[svenmany]

Hey, just so you know, I use Command/Control/Shift/4. It used to work beautifully. Not anymore.

Well, I risked it and tried your command. It seemed to work fine for me. I pasted the copied image directly into Word.

 

[MrGunny94]

My biggest issue with macOS Monterey, has got to be the amount of memory leaks using external displays and especially Sidecar.

I spend most of my days using my iPad Pro as a sidecar display when I'm working on the go and the amount of memory and CPU usage when using sidecar is absolutely bonkers, I have been using this setup ever since High Sierra and the way that it works in Monterey it's just crazy in terms of resource consumption.

 

[lescargot]

Well, I risked it and tried your command. It seemed to work fine for me. I pasted the copied image directly into Word.

Well I am glad it worked for you. I might have to reboot and see if "magic" works for me! I'll also let you know if it resolves my other issue about OneDrive. Thank you.

 

[Ethosik]

It’s not like it’s any better on Windows. I find Windows 11 barely usable to the point I have asked myself once a week if I should reinstall 10 which isn’t MUCH better either. Monterey works for me 95% of the time. I miss the Windows 7 days so much.

And it’s not just Operating Systems. I have issues with Adobe stuff due to the constant updates. Visual Studio has received bad updates. I miss the days where things were more complete.

 

[rpmurray]

I got my first mac (Mac Studio with M1 Max) few months ago, and I very pleased with the whole experience. One question though. How do you upgrade to new major release of OS with a 'clean install' as you mentioned? I've never installed macos. Thanks

I haven't moved to the M-series yet, waiting for the AS Mac Pro to drop first. So this is for my intel Macs.

In my case, even before Apple started sealing the OS in its own read-only volume, I have my data on a volume other than the one with the OS. This means I really just need to install the OS and the applications. First make multiple backups. Then I do an install of the new OS to a blank external drive, boot from that and install/update my applications. Play with this for a couple of weeks to see if there are any show-stopping problems. Then erase the drive with the OS I'm "upgrading" from (usually the internal SSD), and copy over the macOS and apps from the external (using Carbon Copy Cloner). Et Voilà !

 

[AppleFan735]

The macOS Monterey bug that’s bothering me the most is the mail “this message has no content” error. Same emails that get this error on macOS display perfectly fine on iOS and iPadOS. It’s affecting roughly every fifth email I receive. This has made reading mail on my M2 air unbearable.

 

[exoticSpice]

Well look at that even Apple loves to fix bootcamp bugs more

Apple Updates Boot Camp With WiFi Improvements and Bug Fixes

Apple today released a new version of Boot Camp, the software that allows Windows to be run on Intel-based Macs. Boot Camp 6.1.16 is a bug fix update...

www.macrumors.com

 

[ThomasJL]

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.

That’s what happens when a company has a CEO who is an MBA suit that cares more about maximizing profits for its shareholders more than maximizing the reliability and user-friendliness of its products.

 

[chabig]

you can no longer take a screen shot of part of the screen and then copy it to another place, such as your word processor

Of course you can, using the same technique as in previous versions of macOS. Cmd-shift-4 captures an arbitrary area of the screen and saves it. Adding the control key copies it to the clipboard for pasting.

 

[Shh]

(1) you can no longer take a screen shot of part of the screen and then copy it to another place, such as your word processor (Word in my case)

Yes you can. You just press command + c after you take the screenshot. You can then even delete the screenshot. Then just command + v into whatever you are trying to paste it in.