Making the Mac a Mac once more

[Bobby dazzler]

Hi all,

Something someone wrote in a comment a few days ago has got me thinking. They said “lately, Apple is not so Apple anymore”.
So let’s explore that a minute, because what does that mean essentially?
If Apple isn’t Apple, then what is it?
Most Mac owners used to have PC’s and had PC’s for many years before they made the break to Apple Macs.
Many of these Mac owners love their computer now, after a forming a true dislike of the PC.
So if our reality is made up of the experience of either PC’s and Apple Macs does it mean that Macs are becoming less Mac and more like the PC and if so, how could that be?
PC’s have always been the prime choice of the IT technician: they learned on them, grew up with them and by a few choice upgrades evolved with them too. You can mess around with the PC.

Macs aren’t like that. Apple isn’t like that. You build your mac from the App store and that’s it, because it works. It isn’t slow at starting up, waking up, opening apps or very much anything. No need to upgrade much.
Boring, but it works and it’s boring because it needs to be.
It’s aimed at people who don’t have the time to mess around. It’s aimed at people who need it to start up and wake up quickly. It’s aimed at the short tempered, the short staffed, the short timed and the short tongued.

These people love the Mac, because when they put it on the desk and wake it up in front of a Client, it doesn't bombard them with maintenance questions like “your software needs updating, do you want to do this now?”, or “Flash is out of date”, or anything else.
You can get down to working with the Mac and get on with your job and life.
Steve Jobs was right there when the Mac was conceived and his huge influence made it what it was.

Well who do we have at the top now who is influencing the Mac?
Tim Cook, the man who shushed the very supportive cheering crowd the first time he led a WWDC and deflated their balloon.

What is he like? What makes him tick? Is it the thrill of how a new product looks, or the way it works with you?
Is he a patient man, or a frustrated inventor type. Does anyone know?

Whatever he is, is not Tim Cook chipping away at the monolithic work of Steve Jobs which attained a formula for so much success?
Is not the formula being changed and therefore the product changing with it?
More to the point, is he forcing through a dumbing down of what it means to be a Mac?

We now have to confirm our orders: e.g. you can’t just shut down or restart the Mac anymore, you have to sign in and confirm you want to shut it down, or restart it.
Telling the computer to update "later" isn’t enough either. Like a petulant child, it now wants to know “when” later.

If we are to use computers as tools with which to work, we don’t want them questioning our orders. We don’t have time for that.

My iMac never used to question me, but now it does and I'm finding it very annoying just like my old PC.

Is it not time Tim Cook moved on? He may have been an essential choice as a transitional man, but I think Apple needs to look around for someone impatient and bring the company back to the “it just works” days that made it Apple and made the Mac a Mac.

Right?

 

[maflynn]

I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to raise.

Like anything Macs are evolving to compete in an ever changing industry. I find OS X and the Macs no less useful then prior generations, and actually quite a bit more useful then they ever were. I can use my Mac to make phone calls. and work seamlessly between my iPad.

OS X has changed quite a bit since OS X 10.0 in fact I remember the old days.

Running System 7, OS 8 and OS 9, on my old Macintoshes. the hassles, extension conflicts and lack of protected memory/pre-emptive meant that Macintoshes crashed as much as PCs. that is what many of us Mac users grew accustomed too. Some of this was during Steve Job's watch.

OS X is not perfect and never was, but I think its moving in the right direction and I'm happy to use it over windows.

Mac hardware continues to improve, whether we're talking about retina MBPs, or the new Mac Pro or the recently released 5k iMac. True nothing is perfect and I think apple missed the mark on Mac Mini.

I think during Cooks watch we've seen a lot of updates and improvements to Macs that we hadn't seen during Jobs watch (other then the transition form PPC to Intel).

 

[Jessica Lares]

I don't understand the OP either. And I'm pretty sure that shutdown message has been around for years.

I use my Mac the same way I did with Mavericks, with Mountain Lion, with Lion, with Snow Leopard, with Leopard, with Tiger, and so on. I can go and turn on my iMac G4, or my iBook and pretty much have the same workflow.

 

[phrehdd]

I think the OP is correct in saying Mac isn't what it used to be. But then again how can it be? There are upgrades for 3rd party software that are frequent visitors to OSX along with Apple's own upgrades and patches. The world back then wasn't as big and didn't have as much for Apple to contend with with respect to types of applications, communications and the ease of Internet access.

It is no secret as some have found in the threads that I have a love-hate relationship with Apple. However, I can't consider many of the OP's concerns to be a fault of Apple. Only way to have a system that way is to not connect it to an outside source and use it exactly as first set up with NO intention of modifying or implementing software or hardware. In short, to go back to days of yore when Apple was a bit more "smooth" in operation, the machine must be isolated completely.

 

[Solomani]

We now have to confirm our orders: e.g. you can’t just shut down or restart the Mac anymore, you have to sign in and confirm you want to shut it down, or restart it.

Telling the computer to update "later" isn’t enough either. Like a petulant child, it now wants to know “when” later.

If we are to use computers as tools with which to work, we don’t want them questioning our orders. We don’t have time for that.

My iMac never used to question me, but now it does and I'm finding it very annoying just like my old PC.

Your Mac is giving you choices, it's giving you options. You find that annoying?!

 

[Garsun]

Well, I agree with one thing the OP said,The daily "do you want to upgrade your OS" message is extremely annoying. Since I found that one out of ~10 updates break some essential piece of productivity software I use, I only update the OS when I'm sure it won't break anything or after a back up so I can recover to a bootable disk if it does break something important.
There really needs to be an option of "don't remind me anymore"

 

[maflynn]

There really needs to be an option of "don't remind me anymore"

That I agree with. Don't nag me about updates, and in fact allow me to manually check updates. I don't need the system to phone home every day. On one of my Macs I purposely don't upgrade it. The machine is stable and used for my kids. There's no need to upgrade/patch it.

 

[AdeFowler]

There really needs to be an option of "don't remind me anymore"

I might be missing the point, but can't you just turn off check for updates?

 

[roadbloc]

We now have to confirm our orders: e.g. you can’t just shut down or restart the Mac anymore, you have to sign in and confirm you want to shut it down, or restart it.

This has always been the case.

 

[maflynn]

I might be missing the point, but can't you just turn off check for updates?

D'Oh, I forgot about that. Switched that off, hopefully I stopped getting nagged now

 

[AdeFowler]

Hi all,

We now have to confirm our orders: e.g. you can’t just shut down or restart the Mac anymore, you have to sign in and confirm you want to shut it down, or restart it.

Hold down the option key when you select restart or shutdown from the Apple menu.

 

[Jessica Lares]

This has always been the case.

Command-Shift-3!

 

[AdeFowler]

Command-Shift-3!

Command-Shift-4 and tap space bar