To: Apple

to-apple.md

Apple,

You are a company I learned to love and hate. In that same order.

• I love the way you try to reach excellence in everything you do
• I hate the way you try to fuck everyone else who tries to do same

Things I (still) love

• The MacBook (track pad) is a great piece of hardware, sadly it is not one-of-a-kind anymore. Even more sad is that all other (great) options do not try to hold you on all kind of accessories and stuff, although it still bearable for an old time customer.
• The Apps. There is a sense of simplicity with great features in many apps that makes you feel receiving much more than you paid for.
• Keynote.
• CMD. I am an always-on-the-keyboard supporter, CMD (on the thumb) is much more comfortable to use than CTRL.
• Font anti-aliasing. I never ever put value on that before Apple (and KDE messing a lot with it on a very alpha version 4).
• Dashboard sticky notes. I could never find a replacement for them.
• Spotlight. The thing works, and works very well.
• Unified menu bar. Sorry Ubuntu, you have a lot of time ahead until this works properly on all major applications.
• Preview. I welcome every change they made on Lion to it!
• The Monaco font.
• The battery life.

Things I hate

• The fucked BSD under OSX: It is just fucked up. Extremely fucked up.
  • vmstat is called vm_stat and it is bloody useless
• OSX memory usage is scary: Any ps you make you feel like running a Nasa mission. It is awesome! #not
• iTunes.
• Bloated apps: You will never stop to amuse yourself on trying to think how many things people can put on a single app. Languages, different image resolutions, whole binaries and files, binaries for different architectures...
• Updates: The majority of Apple updates requires a restart. And the damn sticky notification! I really won't like to stop what I am doing, grab the mouse, and dismiss the damn notification.
• Secure trash can: 2 hours to remove 3 text files (not on SSD). And counting...
• Fullscreen mode: works like a charm when the application never opens a new window. Concluding: it never works like a charm.
• Terminal.app. It just sucks in a lot of ways and almost in every way possible.
• .plist files. "No Registry to edit" some may claim. Try messing up with these guys...
• Java 7. I won't even go further explaining this one.
• Lets improve security by disabling self-signed certs on cURL!
• Animations: they are beautiful at the beginning, but they sure annoy you. Started using vim because of them.

The bugs

With time you tend to see them like easter eggs. They do not nearly appear or remind one, but the feeling you get when you see one is almost the same.

PS: remember to take screenshots!

@alganet's login screen

I managed to see it for myself already! You happily boot your OSX, at login screen your picture is slightly to the right. Annoyingly slightly to the right.

You think a little on how that could happen. Laugh. Type your password and go on.

The margin for menu bar

After watching a Flash video in fullscreen, you go back t the browser. After a little you start to miss some vertical screen space and look at the OSX menu bar. It has a 30px margin on top of it.

Yep: Logout.

There is a variation of that bug I tweeted a while ago: the margin is smaller and is seen in just a bit of the screen.

Upload bandwidth gone vacation

Out of nowhere, you start experiencing a DAMN slow internet connection. You got for the usual suspects until after (a lot of) hours you reboot your OSX in security mode and find out internet is fine. Then you go nuts.

After a couple of hours more, you make the last and desperate decision of creating a new user. Internet at the speed of light, like a charm. You cry. Desperatly.

You go back to your old user, turn off iCloud. You can haz internet.

If you turn on iCloud services again, internet remains ok.

Safari cache may be the fucker in this calse also.

I quit doing revisions of this 💩. OSX became unbearable, every new release breaks my workflow which has been the same for 5 years: bash, tmux, vim, git and a vm.

The thing I used to love the most is now broken on the login screen, anti aliasing. The nasty bug sandboxing and rootless introduced allowing one to login and how they fixed (lock and unlock the session upon unlocking) is the example of how wrong Apple is. The keyboard, which is great is now a infamous source of complains. They are ignoring developers, which has been their source of income for decades now.

They will keep growing, until the long tail realizes their product is utterly shit:

• Battery life has decreased
• Life time value of their products decreased (I am not talking about programmed obsolescence, its is shitty build quality)
• Their OS becomes worse on ever minor release: slower, more bugs and without any interesting feature
• Magsafe 😢

So... fuck it. I am already using Linux on my work MacBook. I am moving everything to Docker, and believe me: I hate it. But after 3 years struggling with every release of a new OSX and a MacBook Pro with stuffed battery (due to "improper usage" with a Thunderbolt display full time) I am moving on. And I advice everyone, as I did back when Apple products delivered great value, to move away from their products and (now) empty marketing stunts.

Missed Rick Beato's rant on YouTube, ins 2017:

• Their products don't last because they drop previous standards (firewire, thunderbolt, thunderbolt 2)
• Trying to record a FaceTime conversation is not an option/action in FaceTime's apps
  • Quicktime does not record audio
  • iChat was able to record the conversation
• iTunes

He attributes the decline in quality to Steve Job's death and I have to agree with him.

It has become clear to me that people building Apple products do not use them as their consumers do. They may spend the same, or even more, time working with them but they do not care for the products as their customers do. An example is QuickTime. Do you know how to merge two videos on QuickTime? Drag & Drop both videos together. This level of care is missing on every single Apple product for years now.

I get the rant. We all have it. We used to have great products to use, now we don't. Not from Apple or anybody else.

Just an update: I am full time on a Windows 10 Pro, using WSL2 and Docker. Do I miss OSX? I miss OSX Snow Leopard, every update after that I lost something I really used and loved in the OS.

I must say: I am a happy Windows user now. I really am. But don't get me wrong, if any brand builds a high quality 5-year-worth computer (ecosystem) count me in.

Totally with you. Love hate relationship.

thank god the EU are putting the fire under their feet to get their browser conformant, their App Store prices decent Etc

In Australia there is a saying “ keep the bastards honest “. This is what I mean - governments have to keep them honest somehow and not let them screw everyone. It’s ironic that they screw their devs but apple know we have no choice because they’re hardware is loved by the consumers.

anyways I agree with your sentiments .

It’s ironic that they screw their devs, but Apple knows we have no choice because their hardware is loved by the consumers.

@gedw99 I wouldn't be so sure if they love them. A new MacBook Pro or iPhone is fine for 6 months. It is easy to love them. Not so much so after the battery starts to wear off or other problems appear.

I think the majority of people don't use Apple products enough. As a "success-defining status" brand, people just have them for the sake of having them. I don't see professionals with new Apple machines - they are unreliable. And everyone knows it. Apple knows it. Repair shops know it. People using Apple products for 10+y know it.

Just this weekend, I started installing MacOS Ventura on a MacBook Pro 16 Retina. Not because Ventura is great, but because the machine is still great (new batteries, new speakers), and Apple refuses to support it - to sell new trashy products.

Sad times. Miss the old days of great hardware.