MP All Models Mac Pro X,Y…WHAT IF…

[ZombiePhysicist]

macOS is leagues above in terms of fit and finish than any Linux distribution.

Closest would be Gnome but it’s lacking in design.

Agreed, but they are working hard to lessen that advantage every day.

 

[mattspace]

macOS is leagues above in terms of fit and finish than any Linux distribution.

Closest would be Gnome but it’s lacking in design.

Lack of a unified, global hierarchical menubar through which that all applications have to surface all their commands makes it a non-starter, given it seems to be omitted for philosophical reasons.

KDE Plasma has what looks like a nice option for that, and at least an indication that it's designed with knowledge that the global hierarchical menu is a necessary utility function of a GUI.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I wish dorks weren’t in charge of Gnustep. Instead of just furthering it’s a mess. But basically some macOS apps are compatible because it builds on the libraries. If a UI Nazi took it over, it could become a great alternative to macOS but just the wrong people with the wrong vision. It needed to be a tight next step clone and it’s something else.

Dont get me wrong. Kudos and it’s a lot of hard work, just in a direction no one cares about.

 

[mattspace]

I wish dorks weren’t in charge of Gnustep. Instead of just furthering it’s a mess. But basically some macOS apps are compatible because it builds on the libraries. If a UI Nazi took it over, it could become a great alternative to macOS but just the wrong people with the wrong vision. It needed to be a tight next step clone and it’s something else.

Dont get me wrong. Kudos and it’s a lot of hard work, just in a direction no one cares about.

There was an interesting BSD variant in the last year, designed to look and work like macOS, but the people in charge of it were kindof stupid, with a big proud "no natural scrolling for trackpads pr scrollwheels" proclamation, which showed they don't understand the point of natural scrolling is that the scrollwheel and trackpad manipuate the content directly, not indirectly by moving the scrollbar.

GnuSTEP is always going to have the problem that developers have moved on from Interface Builder etc, now with SwiftUI every app is a janky, single-window-encompasses-the-whole-app brittle piece of garbage, where tear-off palettes are a thing of the past, and no one has more than one display per space.

This is the future, unfortunately - just iPad apps running on different devices. It's "life management" computing for people who do a bit of administration, but whose main "work" is done by telling other people to do things.

 

[Carrotstick]

There was an interesting BSD variant in the last year, designed to look and work like macOS, but the people in charge of it were kindof stupid, with a big proud "no natural scrolling for trackpads pr scrollwheels" proclamation, which showed they don't understand the point of natural scrolling is that the scrollwheel and trackpad manipuate the content directly, not indirectly by moving the scrollbar.

GnuSTEP is always going to have the problem that developers have moved on from Interface Builder etc, now with SwiftUI every app is a janky, single-window-encompasses-the-whole-app brittle piece of garbage, where tear-off palettes are a thing of the past, and no one has more than one display per space.

This is the future, unfortunately - just iPad apps running on different devices. It's "life management" computing for people who do a bit of administration, but whose main "work" is done by telling other people to do things.

SwiftUI might actually make me move to Linux. It’s horrible, just look at Settings, weather apps, the clock app.

Apple doesn’t care about quality and speed anymore in software and Linux as janky in design it might be in code and frameworks its speedy.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

SwiftUI might actually make me move to Linux. It’s horrible, just look at Settings, weather apps, the clock app.

Apple doesn’t care about quality and speed anymore in software and Linux as janky in design it might be in code and frameworks its speedy.

Without interface builder you’re not forced to think deeply about UI. Also the quality of programmers has gone to poop. Design my committee, bad taste, removed from metal, script/library mills drone this crap out. Software became a race to the bottom, lowest common denominator world after stupid pricing was introduced into the App Store.

 

[mattspace]

SwiftUI might actually make me move to Linux. It’s horrible, just look at Settings, weather apps, the clock app.

Apple doesn’t care about quality and speed anymore in software and Linux as janky in design it might be in code and frameworks its speedy.

Well they had to make something that looked, and worked like Electron, and redesign the whole OS to resemble Electron apps (centre floated Open/Save dialogues, rather than rollerblinding down from the titlebar), so that it wouldn't be obvious how few apps were being built "native" any more.

Making it "easier" to make Mac apps has sadly just lowered the quality. Now you have apps that can't address multiple windows, can't have their palettes torn off, etc. The future is iPads (even disguised as desktop computers) for hardware, and iPad apps for software. It's depressing.

 

[Carrotstick]

Well they had to make something that looked, and worked like Electron, and redesign the whole OS to resemble Electron apps (centre floated Open/Save dialogues, rather than rollerblinding down from the titlebar), so that it wouldn't be obvious how few apps were being built "native" any more.

Making it "easier" to make Mac apps has sadly just lowered the quality. Now you have apps that can't address multiple windows, can't have their palettes torn off, etc. The future is iPads (even disguised as desktop computers) for hardware, and iPad apps for software. It's depressing.

My one hope is that the Darwin kernel is still one of the best kernels out there.

I hope with this new AI focus they actually hire some decent software engineers and put the stupid iPad software aside and start making decent Mac software. If Apple wants a proper power platform basing the software around iPad ain’t it.

I like macOS but it needs more attention from Apple. Swift is a great language but SwiftUI sucks right now.

Microsoft is also moving to Electron apps and web based apps for its in built apps.

Apple can do better. The Mac event later this year better show that it’s focusing on the user experience and they can start with that by getting rid of the cruft and optimising macOS.

P

 

[mattspace]

My one hope is that the Darwin kernel is still one of the best kernels out there.

By what criteria?

Applications, and graphics drivers can still kill the system. It "needs" to be rebooted as a maintenance procedure. The filesystem can be locked up by a single drive not wanting to eject, connecting and disconnecting Thunderbolt devices can crash the system.

Darwin is brittle.

I hope with this new AI focus they actually hire some decent software engineers and put the stupid iPad software aside and start making decent Mac software. If Apple wants a proper power platform basing the software around iPad ain’t it.

Why would an AI focus make Apple better when adding AI to things has pretty universally made them worse? Most especially because the sort of people who are in the AI sphere are the same sort of grifters who were behind blockchain, cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

I like macOS but it needs more attention from Apple. Swift is a great language but SwiftUI sucks right now.

Swift was a stupid political thing where they let one "superstar" who made a good compiler off any leashes, aligned the whole company behind it, and then he left the company (to work in the White Supremacy factory at Tesla). Having lost sight of their objective, Apple redoubled their efforts.

Apple made better software when it was deep on Objective C, and the Apple Ecosytem made better software when it was all Objective C and Appkit.

Same thing with Jony Ive - as soon as he didn't have Jobs to work him like a glovepuppet, we saw what an insignificant decorator he actually is.

Microsoft is also moving to Electron apps and web based apps for its in built apps.

Yes, well Micorsoft are the absolute masters of self-sabotage.

Apple can do better. The Mac event later this year better show that it’s focusing on the user experience and they can start with that by getting rid of the cruft and optimising macOS.

I don't think Apple can do better. I don't think there is anyone at Appe who actually understands:

1. that things are bad, and
2. why things are bad.

At the risk of greybearding to much, I was dealing with these sorts of janky unfocussed problms when Apple was failing year after year to make progress on shipping Copland, and today looks more like that era, than it does like 1998-2012.

 

[Carrotstick]

By what criteria?

Applications, and graphics drivers can still kill the system. It "needs" to be rebooted as a maintenance procedure. The filesystem can be locked up by a single drive not wanting to eject, connecting and disconnecting Thunderbolt devices can crash the system.

Darwin is brittle.

Darwin is stable. Linux and NT are much more unreliable. It’s not perfect but it’s flexible.

I hadn’t had any kernel panics apart from Catalina. Sequoia runs really well on my 16” with lots of drives connected with no issues.

Why would an AI focus make Apple better when adding AI to things has pretty universally made them worse? Most especially because the sort of people who are in the AI sphere are the same sort of grifters who were behind blockchain, cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Agree.

I don't think Apple can do better. I don't think there is anyone at Appe who actually understands:

well I hope they get it soon, maybe when the iPhone comes crashing down in sales they will understand.

 

[mattspace]

Darwin is stable. Linux and NT are much more unreliable. It’s not perfect but it’s flexible.

My Ventura system had been running for ~50+ days, doing a lot of moving and deleting of files, and it kernel panicked scaling an image in Affinity photo.

I had a Big Sur Macbook Air system kernel panic plugging it into an original Thunderbolt display. In the same week.

I used to run my G3 Powerbook, connecting and disconnecting external monitors and projectors day in, day out with MacOS X 10.2 (IIRC) for months on end.

well I hope they get it soon, maybe when the iPhone comes crashing down in sales they will understand.

Blood is in the water, with a $490 million settlement to protect Cook, after he defrauded shareholders by concealing the scale of iPhone sales drops in China. I expect his days are numbered, from a purely governance perspective.

 

[Carrotstick]

My Ventura system had been running for ~50+ days, doing a lot of moving and deleting of files, and it kernel panicked scaling an image in Affinity photo.

50 days is good these days. On my Windows PC the file explorer crashes when clicking the Home folder sometimes and it randomly bluescreens. That’s why even though I have a 7700X and 4070 Super PC, I prefer to work on my i7 16” MBP it’s more stable even on the latest Sequoia beta.

Also look at Intel’s 13th and 14th gen utter failure. Gone are the days when it was simple.

 

[mattspace]

50 days is good these days.

I wouldn't expect that to be unusual for a Linux (or a proper UNIX, like Mac OS X) system. *sigh*

 

[Carrotstick]

I wouldn't expect that to be unusual for a Linux (or a proper UNIX, like Mac OS X) system. *sigh*

Check out Sequoia on a seperate partition or drive. It’s good even for a beta. One of good releases in the last 5-6 years(the last being Mojave), imo. Primarily cause of no crashes and I like the iPhone mirroring app as it’s smooth as. Looks like Apple actually put some effort into this app.

 

[mattspace]

Check out Sequoia on a seperate partition or drive. It’s good even for a beta. One of good releases in the last 5-6 years(the last being Mojave), imo. Primarily cause of no crashes and I like the iPhone mirroring app as it’s smooth as. Looks like Apple actually put some effort into this app.

The mirroring only works on Apple Silicon though, doesn't it?

 

[AppaSquatic]

The mirroring only works on Apple Silicon though, doesn't it?

I think it works on some Intel Macs with a T2 as well

iPhone Mirroring in macOS Sequoia

iPhone Mirroring Requirements​

To use ‌iPhone‌ Mirroring, you need a Mac that runs ‌macOS Sequoia‌ and that has an Apple silicon chip (M1 or later) or a T2 security chip. Macs with T2 security chips are Intel-based and include the following machines:

• 2018 and later MacBook Pro
• 2020 iMac
• ‌iMac‌ Pro
• 2018 Mac mini
• 2019 Mac Pro

These Macs have Apple silicon chips:

• 2020 and later ‌Mac mini‌
• 2020 and later MacBook Air
• 2021 and later ‌iMac‌
• 2021 and later MacBook Pro (14 and 16 inch)
• 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro
• 2022 and later Mac Studio
• 2023 ‌Mac Pro‌

Any ‌iPhone‌ that runs ‌iOS 18‌ works with ‌iPhone‌ Mirroring.

• All iPhone 15 models
• All iPhone 14 models
• All iPhone 13 models
• All ‌iPhone‌ 12 models
• All ‌iPhone‌ 11 models
• ‌iPhone‌ XS and XS Max
• ‌iPhone‌ XR
• iPhone SE (2nd and 3rd gen)

Your ‌iPhone‌ and Mac need to be signed into the same Apple ID, and two-factor authentication must be enabled for the ‌iPhone‌ Mirroring feature to work. You will also need to turn on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and the two devices will need to be near each other.

 

[avro707]

The mirroring only works on Apple Silicon though, doesn't it?

It works on my 7,1, but I really find it quite useless.

For me Sequoia has been a complete disaster, very unreliable - never ending crashes and kernel panics while Sonoma is completely reliable. I will not be upgrading my other machine to Sequoia.

 

[Carrotstick]

It works on my 7,1, but I really find it quite useless

It made me not pick up my iPhone at home not as often.

For me Sequoia has been a complete disaster, very unreliable - never ending crashes and kernel panics while Sonoma is completely reliable. I will not be upgrading my other machine to Sequoia.

That’s sad to hear. It’s been completely fine for me and for others it looks to have the fixed the drives disconnecting intermittently.

 

[avro707]

It made me not pick up my iPhone at home not as often.

That’s sad to hear. It’s been completely fine for me and for others it looks to have the fixed the drives disconnecting intermittently.

It's very unreliable with my W6800X Duo GPUs. Two different cards, both of them endless kernel panics. Yet in Sonoma they have no problems at all. Stable.

It doesn't really matter, after all it's only affecting a tiny amount of users with a computer that should be dead and buried already. I doubt they'll fix it given it affects only a small amount of users.

 

[mattspace]

It's very unreliable with my W6800X Duo GPUs. Two different cards, both of them endless kernel panics. Yet in Sonoma they have no problems at all. Stable.

It doesn't really matter, after all it's only affecting a tiny amount of users with a computer that should be dead and buried already. I doubt they'll fix it given it affects only a small amount of users.

I wonder if it's the fact they haven't optimised / debugged dual gpu at all (which the duos are effectively). Be interested to see if dual 6800 or 5700 folks have the same problems.

 

[impulse462]

I havent seen this, so thought it would be interesting to others about what a total piece of s*** apple has become:

Apple designed a modular computer that they do not want you to service

Apple doesn't seem to give a royal damn about Mac Pro 2019 users.

blog.greggant.com

This is genuinely infuriating and so typical of this company. The companys policies are evocative of a spoiled 8 year old brat who refuses to play in the playground with anyone unless they get everything their way. Refusing to give them back the already defective fan assembly is just...i have no words.

Apple is no longer focused on high end users who want top performance per dollar in the short term, and want to be able to invest in affordable upgrades to stay close to top productivity while using a computer bought several years ago. For video producers, it makes sense now to plan the switch to Windows software, as that platform can sustain for much longer the top performance per dollar, and its entry point cost can be much lower too.

I hate to be cynical but this is all by design. The entire tech industry has moved to subscription services and the idea of a modular computer that can have individual replacement parts totally goes against that notion. This fact can be reasoned with mobile laptops where they can argue that having the computer is not-modular increases its value but it clearly stands in stark contrast for a modular desktop workstation. The only option we have to to use your wallet and not give them money.

Darwin is stable. Linux and NT are much more unreliable. It’s not perfect but it’s flexible.

I hadn’t had any kernel panics apart from Catalina. Sequoia runs really well on my 16” with lots of drives connected with no issues.

Agree.

well I hope they get it soon, maybe when the iPhone comes crashing down in sales they will understand.

I am genuinely curious and need some examples as to why you think "Darwin is stable" and "Linux ... are much more unreliable"

Super computers run on linux. Climate models run with linux. Any scientific high performance computing and/or deep learning workstations/clusters run on linux. They are all incredibly stable made to run for weeks/months/years on end with no disruption.

For my own work, I have a mac pro running ubuntu 20.04 bare metal that i have used exclusively for the last 4 years for training and implementing deep learning algorithms. This setup is more stable than the operating system this computer shipped with. I have restarted this computer only ~5 times during this time, and all of those times is because I needed to move the computer for cleaning purposes.

In contrast my "very stable" macOS installation on my 16" MBP has safari (a native mac app) repeatedly crashing when i have too many tabs open, adobe illustrator repeatedly crashing when i'm working on multiple projects at once (this is either adobe or macOS ram mismanagement) and microsoft office apps (spyware as far as im concerned) taking 20-30 seconds to load. 20-30 seconds to load a word processor on modern hardware. Again these are a web browser, a publishing app, and a word processor crashing. Compare this to the high stakes applications I mentioned above, and I seriously am skeptical of the ubiquity of the claim "Darwin is stable".

 

[avro707]

I wonder if it's the fact they haven't optimised / debugged dual gpu at all (which the duos are effectively). Be interested to see if dual 6800 or 5700 folks have the same problems.

It’s even just a single Duo on its own. I tried both of them. I have no trust in Apple at all. No stability at all.

As above, even MS Office apps take a while to load, even the Adobe ones also, Experience Manager excluded as it seems to run really fast.

 

[m1maverick]

Replacing items in the 2019 Mac Pro is dead easy, but replacement parts are only available via the Apple dealers or seemingly some third party resellers.

This is why I'm not buying any more Apple computers. What I've got now are the last ones. PC workstations and laptops going forward.

I feel the same way, my Ultra Studio was supposed to be my last Mac. However I ended up buying a used 2019 MP due to the low price and I wanted to own the last truly upgradable MP. Going forward, at least for the time being, no more Apple computers.

 

[m1maverick]

This is genuinely infuriating and so typical of this company. The companys policies are evocative of a spoiled 8 year old brat who refuses to play in the playground with anyone unless they get everything their way. Refusing to give them back the already defective fan assembly is just...i have no words.

IMO that defective unit is mine. I paid for it and, as far as I know, there are no such thing as core charges for computer parts.

 

[Carrotstick]

In contrast my "very stable" macOS installation on my 16" MBP has safari (a native mac app) repeatedly crashing when i have too many tabs open, adobe illustrator repeatedly crashing when i'm working on multiple projects at once (this is either adobe or macOS ram mismanagement) and microsoft office apps (spyware as far as im concerned) taking 20-30 seconds to load. 20-30 seconds to load a word processor on modern hardware. Again these are a web browser, a publishing app, and a word processor crashing. Compare this to the high stakes applications I mentioned above, and I seriously am skeptical of the ubiquity of the claim "Darwin is stable".

I maintain my claim of Darwin being stable, is it perfect? No.

Sure, tack on Apples inept apps like Safari and FCP and then it gets worse with Adobe and MS apps then yes it becomes unstable. XNU is so flexible and I give credit to Apple’s kernel team for that. The fact it opens up instantly from sleep and it assigns the right cores depending on the tasks and mitigations don’t impact performance CPU performance too much.


Remember Darwin also runs on iOS, watchOS and tvOS. I have never experienced any kernel panics there. Now macOS isn’t definitely as stable as those. That’s be expected as macOS is more open and all types of programs can get executed compared to the locked down platforms.

As for Linux it’s not as rosy, I've had 3D accelerated broken, X11 broked, and the laptops ability to go to sleep and wake up again with Linux updates.

It’s even just a single Duo on its own. I tried both of them. I have no trust in Apple at all. No stability at all.

The whole industry is like this. The Intel fiasco and now Zen 5 performance being impacted because MS and AMD didn’t assign mitigations properly. They don’t test at all.

As above, even MS Office apps take ages a while to load, even the Adobe ones also, Experience Manager excluded as it seems to run really fast.

Again, updates from MS and Adobe maybe of cause. Working software is a dream nowadays because of incompetence.

Microsoft working on Word for Mac freeze fix, here are two workarounds - 9to5Mac

Over the last couple of months, we’ve seen more and more Mac users deal with serious lag and freezing in...

9to5mac.com

IMO that defective unit is mine. I paid for it and, as far as I know, there are no such thing as core charges for computer parts.

I just hope the law goes on hard on companies like Apple and so that they can’t solder SSDs and not pair parts and the computer we actually buy is ours, parts included. It’s idiocy that US law and companies are so unethical.