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Why should I "upgrade" to Sierra?
- Thread starter kattskrall
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I haven't used Siri once, as a power user, developer, and administrator I really like having tabs everywhere. Siri was not my reason for upgrading and I have no plans to use Siri until it has more functionality. I want to be able to talk to it like a secretary, not try to guess at pre-made options and hope I get it right.
Things I like:
- Universal clipboard, one reason to upgrade, haven't used it yet
- Auto unlock with AW, Mac's too old, can't use it until I upgrade, not a reason to upgrade
- iCloud Drive for Desktop and Documents, very awesome to have but also see things I don't like.
- Apple Pay... if you've used it ever, you know what I mean.
- Optimized storage, very nice for smaller drives, but in larger drives it doesn't have much use. See things I don't like.
- Tabs everywhere, this on macOS really hurt my relationship with Linux as a developer platform.
- Picture in Picture, really nice to have, used it a couple of times during beta and see myself using it in the future.
Things I'm neutral on:
- Siri
- Memories in Photos, really cool, have yet to find a practical use for it, even with an aTV4
- Messages improvements, it's ok but it doesn't use iMessage Apps or the GIF keyboard so I was a little bummed.
- iTunes, same ol' thing.
- Adds back RAID utility that you don't get with El Cap, not a widely used tool but I'm glad it's back.
Things I don't like:
- iCloud Drive, Documents AND Desktop, Desktop for me is a scratch working space and most of it is stuff I don't care about this becomes a huge iCloud Drive space eater. But this can be turned off.
- Daemons for Optimized storage run 24/7 and I've noticed a memory leak in one of them, was using 1.45 GB but I also have 32 GB of RAM so it may use less with less RAM.
Most of the developer documentation is too technical for majority of users, I would prefer Apple would provide a layman version of what is changed in the new OS.
I doubt it would be a problem given the Apples resources...
The keynote was original designed around developers, but when the audience was captivated by it and average joes and janes started watching it, it became about as layman as you can get, I'm actually more interested in the slides with all of the small text around the talking point (SomeKit extension) and typically take the time to pause and read through all of them.
As what the link referred to in Apple's Documentation, almost all of it was covered in the Keynote but wasn't elaborated on because the average people just wouldn't get it. I doubt a vast majority of viewers even know what a Framework means to developers.
Here's a laymans example of why Apple focuses in on developer improvements where as Microsoft focuses on User improvements:
Windows 10's new features are a mile long, but developer features are very limited, what does this mean? It means that Windows 10 does a lot of cool stuff out of the box, but developers will have a hard time matching these features without writing their own implementation which could stretch production time months or even a year for small teams with a big idea.
macOS adds a few new features, most of which can be hit on in a 2 hour keynote with demos, but every time a new OS is released all of the added features, or most of them, add in an API (or hooks) for developers to use to extend their application using pre-written optimized code so that their App will run fluid every time and interface with the hardware as well as Apple's software does.
There isn't an easy way to talk about it without being terse, but the idea is that if a developer implements an app that provides a certain feature, this feature should be available to all other applications that can take advantage of this feature.
A manual, if only on PDF would be nice.
It's very easy to forget that opening the Bluetooth Menu with the option key held down will bring up status info, and opening it with option shift down will bring up a reset Bluetooth option.
At the prices we pay, a little semi-comprehensive user level documentation is not too much to ask.
Apple used to print manuals, back in the 80's and 90's. I guess it got to be too much bother.
It's very easy to forget that opening the Bluetooth Menu with the option key held down will bring up status info, and opening it with option shift down will bring up a reset Bluetooth option.
At the prices we pay, a little semi-comprehensive user level documentation is not too much to ask.
Apple used to print manuals, back in the 80's and 90's. I guess it got to be too much bother.
I think Apple decided to consider the name of the button and making it literal. If I use option with whatever I'm doing it gives me an option or a list of options. If I use command it performs some kind of task. Control is used to control an application in some way.
Windows muddles this, by doing away with command and using the Windows key just to open up the start menu or to flip through Windows, align windows, etc, where as control, pretty much controls just about everything. Alt gives a menu, there's no alternative (option) about anything alt does, other than having a use to quickly kill a program.
Apple uses the buttons quite literally, Microsoft has just twisted the meaning.
or you can visit the developers forum. or use the internet; printed manuals are so 80s-90s. and, for the price you pay for the OS, uh...
It does not matter what you use for an OS on a Mac - if it's El Capitan, Snow Leopard, Jaguar.
You could also do all your computing on a wet bath towel or a slice of organic tomato. Go ahead! I dare you to try. Nay. in fact, I double dare you.
You could also do all your computing on a wet bath towel or a slice of organic tomato. Go ahead! I dare you to try. Nay. in fact, I double dare you.
I think this hits on the problem with the younger generations. I'm in my 30s and can take some of the blame on this too. It took me a while to understand but in today's day and age, people are used to instant gratification. Back in the early 90s the only real reference was a dated book that was 10 years old sitting on a dusty shelf in a library. Now someone can jump on a smartphone and find the answer in a few taps. As nice as this improvement is, when it comes time to actually have to learn something, they get upset when it's not like Neo learning Kung Fu in the Matrix. Some kids outright refuse to have to open a book to "manually" find the answer.
There have been times where I've wished for instant gratification, one most recently was expanding what I know about finance. I hate to break hearts, but somethings you just can't learn in a few seconds, there is no magic word to have all your problems go away. You actually have to take the time to learn them the hard way. If there is such a thing as the hard way.
@Partron22
With the keyboard shortcuts, I'm not a master of them and, I've been working on learning them for 25 years since my first computer at the age of 5. Albeit, it hasn't been a huge focus of mine, it's just something I've picked up from repetition. I know more than most, think average joes, when it comes to Windows and macOS, but Linux I really only know end program execution, bold, italics, save, etc... It's all I've ever needed to use.
If you really want to learn something, the best thing to do is stop complaining that it wasn't spoon fed to you, that just wastes time. Instead use that energy to type in <product> <what you want to do> in a google search. I almost guarantee you'll find what you are looking for in the first page of results. Once you get where you are going, you'll be reading about 10x what I wrote, just to find the one sentence of text that describes what you are looking for. Welcome to learning the way the world has before smartphones and Google.
I've been doing the same since '84. I know and use a lot of them. My main complaint is that about a decade ago, Apple starting hiding the good stuff behind option-clicks or option-shift-clicks etc. and not mentioning that fact in easy to access places. I don't like having to either search online to look for functionality I know is probably still there, or spending time opening Menus with various combinations of keys held down, just to see what comes up. BTW, searching online isn't so great, you always get hits from 2011 that do not work anymore, and the stuff you want is probably on page 2 of the search results.
A simple text 'change log' would do the trick for many of us, but Apple doesn't publish such things.
brilliant. now all we need is a chart to explain how to read that chart...
Well, microsoft have done it a few times, even released compatibility scanners to let you know if problems prior to major OS upgrade.
[doublepost=1478739803][/doublepost]I have El Capitan. I updated to Sierra only to find that VM Ware Fusion did not work. (I have two important programmes that only work with Windows, so I use Fusion to run Windows on my Mac)
Boot camp did not work either.
I then re-installed the old system via Time Machine.
Now all is OK.
I finally updated and I'm not really that happy:
Pros? I like the wallpaper.
Not nearly as polished as El Cap, but that's a .6 vs .1 release. However, I never had this many issue with EC even on .0.
- Choppy Safari scrolling
- Typing input lag with autocorrect that's really messing me up.
- Pixelated log-in screen for whatever reason.
- Mail sync issues - (now fixed after 2 days of work)
- Freezing iTunes.
- Freezing Finder
- I don't personally like the new Mission Control animation so I'll use BTT to fix that.
- Could make my account name with capital letter on fresh install. I had to make a temp account, create another account, and then delete the previous 2.
Pros? I like the wallpaper.
Not nearly as polished as El Cap, but that's a .6 vs .1 release. However, I never had this many issue with EC even on .0.
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At the moment PDFKit seems very buggy, I noticed similar problems as mentioned in this Apple discussion: https://discussions.apple.com/message/30717269#30717269
Problems are also discussed in Apple Developer mailing list: http://lists.apple.com/archives/cocoa-dev/2016/Oct/msg00011.html
Furthermore Mail is very slow and Spotlight indexing is buggy.
I'm not saying skipping Sierra but neither I would recommend installing it at this point.
That is the theory but unfortunately Time Machine restore won't always work if the drive contains newer OS than the one being restored...
This happened to me trying to go back to an earlier version. Can get user files, but trying to use time machine to revert back to a previous version of the OS did not work...
Best OS yet, for me. Smooth runnings, no choppiness or lags, this on an old spinning-disk iMac, upgraded each year – no 'clean install'. I tested it out first on an external disk.
Several bugs fixed that I reported, including the 'distnoted' hang.
I'm part of the quietly happy majority: most of us are too busy using the new OS to post about it.
I, too, upgraded and I'm not super happy. Autocorrect is out of control. Annoyances with MS Office (e.g., hiding a column in an Excel spreadsheet causes Excel to crash every single time). One of every three times I try to wake up my 2015 MacBook Pro from sleep, it either doesn't wake up at all or it reboots.
I compulsively upgrade my iDevices and MBP every time a new version of the OS comes out. I need to stop doing this.
I compulsively upgrade my iDevices and MBP every time a new version of the OS comes out. I need to stop doing this.
Exactly! Had a professor who into the 2000's still did not watch tv and kept a black and white in the closet in case of an emergency. One day he will plug in that analog tv set and wait for that signal to come in.
Eventually an app you need or want will require a service that is not available in your OS and it's upgrade path becomes harder. Sure Apple could waste time and effort to back port the new services and continue to support older APIs but then you end up with the Windows bloat ware.
And how can you say what version of the OS you like best , if you don' t use it first (not five minutes, not a day, but maybe a week)? Come on!I use the versions of the OS that I like best, and don't worry about it.
Watch the WWDC streams to get the new OS features under the hood.
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It would be outdated by the time you got the computer. The web site for the developers usually has 2 levels of documentation. And the main site has a vast amount of info under the support section.
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The problem is Fusion. It will never work between OS versions. Early on someone posted a hack to allow it to run on a newly released OSX. The hack just changed the OS version number that it was purposely blocking. For this reason and the fact that it doesn't work well with Dev tools is the reason I use VirtualBox.
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What about support for USB 3.0 gen 2 (10 Gbps) and Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps)? Those are in the new build for the new MacBook Pro 2016's. I don't know if those features are in the downloadable version of Sierra yet, or if those features will be added to ElCapitan someday. Apple's Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter is supposed to allow older Macs with Thunderbolt 2 to connect to Thunderbolt 3 devices but requires Sierra to do that.
That might be so but its impossible to say without research by neutral party.
While support section does have information another question is how much of it is valuable to average user. My observation is that the quality of help documentation provided by Apple is worse than it was about 5 years ago. Examples: iPhoto vs Photos, Old Disk Utility vs the new one. I wonder if Apple has outsourced the documentation writers or what is the reason for the change but I'm not impressed with the results...
While I can understand the documentation I doubt all users can, I showed those examples to my relatives (age 50-60+, some experience with computers) and they understand the older documentation but not newer one.
Siri slurps because much of the information it provides, as with the service on the iPhone, is location based. Admittedly, location services are a mixed bag. But they can help you find your Mac, iPhone or iPad should they be lost or stolen—and have Find My Mac/iPhone/iPad turned on. If that's not important to you, you can turn Location Services off in the Security & Privacy preferences, under the Privacy tab.
That said, Siri (as with Cortana in Windows) is an acquired taste. Apple offers a lot of voice input related services on the Mac, which is probably why it took them so long to integrate Siri into the system. I mean, Speakable Items is still around from the early days of the Mac OS, as is Text to Speech. Voice Over is of more recent vintage, intended as a more robust service to the visually impaired. Most people don't use any of these tools and never have, actually for much the same reason. And that reason has little to do with how useful the tools might be.
The reason Siri may seem less than helpful is because artificial intelligence is still in its infancy. Then again, all voice response systems require some amount of user training. If you are unwilling to put in the effort to learn how to utilize it, then of course it seems useless. And it's easier to accuse Siri of being useless than to accept responsibility for your own lack of interest or motivation. As with any tool, there is a learning curve. Some people find learning harder than others. It's definitely harder for me than it once was. But I'm a certified old fogey.
Most people have elevated expectations for voice recognition and response services on a computer. We have Star Trek to thank for that. On the Starship Enterprise the computer will answer almost any question the minute you step aboard. No authentication or authorization required. Just say "computer' and she's ready to do your bidding. That notion was more than fifty years ahead of its time. Much more, given the current state of AI. On the Enterprise a security clearance is necessary for only the most vital functions, like blowing up the ship.
So yes, Siri is less than it could be, and less than it will be a few years from now. But it's on the Mac at last, and her sisters are in Windows, the Amazon Echo and now the Google Pixel phone. ;-) Voice response systems are moving into home automation as well. So use them or not, they're here to stay.
It would seem from all the posts that security updates are essential and can be released independently of OS upgrades. Security apart, I have seen nothing that gives me a compelling reason to update my 2008 iMacs, 1 running 10,6,8 (forced update to get the keyboard to work after I changed the HD & upped the RAM to 4mb) & the other 10,10 (Yosemite) 'forced' in order to get a usable version of iMovie (iMovie 10,8 produced very poor results).So the two main points of upgrading is security and tabs then I guess
I use Office 2008 - fit for purpose, Firefox, iMovie for video creation and my PC for the rest as OS 10,10 will not run my version of Photoshop Elements nor will the latest version of VirtualBox load Windows XP to run my legacy Paradox database. I see no reason to spend much of my life updating software rather than sim^ly using it for my needs.
I do admit that I will have a problem when my iMacs become unrepairable.