Apple's next OS X said to be targeted at 'power users' Apple's next version of OS X may provide welcome relief to users dismayed by the company's seemingly inexorable evolution from computer manufacturer to consumer-electronics company, if unnamed sources speaking to 9to5Mac are to believed. According to those sources, OS X 10.9 – oddly codenamed "Cabernet"* in the closely guarded …
There's no excuse for having to use a plug-in or hack like PathFinder to fix glaring and elementary deficiencies in a FILE BROWSER. Finder stands as an insult to users and an embarrassment to Apple year after year.
A file browser that doesn't even sort properly (with folders AT THE TOP of sorted lists)? That doesn't show you WHERE search results have been found (because there's no path shown for each hit)? That doesn't start searches in the selected folder by default, or even offer that as an option. That doesn't create a new folder within the selected folder when you say "New folder", but instead creates it at the root of the volume (which is often off-screen). That litters your computer and any others you browse with DS_STORE turds, to save display options and other crap instead of storing it LOCALLY.
What kind of inbred thought process leads a programmer to design a file browser that spews files onto every OTHER computer it visits? That's just offensive. Not to mention a totally defective design, since the next person who browses that same directory will overwrite the turds you left.
Finder was supposed to be "rewritten from the ground up" years ago. What happened? Nothing. It's the same defective POS it's always been.
Got a mac, and installed Ubuntu - Finder was the primary reason. You've covered most of them. Here's a couple more:
- No single-key way to open a file. Isn't finding, and then opening, files, the main reason for Finder?
- Drag & drop a file into a folder, it stops exactly where you let go of the mouse button, instead of correctly slotting into the folder list where you would expect (according to the current sort method)
- No folders at the top? What are you smoking, apple?
- No tabs - this is hardly the cutting edge of innovation any more
Since the primary use of an OS is to find and launch programmes and files, getting the browser right is absolutely critical. OSX fails so hard at this it makes baby Jesus cry.
The whole OS is kind of like this - full of broken philosophy, inconsistent ideas and nonsense user interface decisions. In usability, Windows is a hell of a lot better, and that's not a compliment.
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Holy crap, are they actually going to improve the core functionality of OSX, rather than adding on more and more iOS gimmicks? The next version might actually be worth the upgrade price!
Just adding tabs isn't enough for Finder, though. That just gives you two panels of the worst base file manager of any operating system. And yes, OSX users, I am including Windows Explorer.
> The next version might actually be worth the upgrade price!
That is if you have paid up on your cool club dues and have bought an Apple recently enough. Otherwise they will try to prevent you from even upgrading. Pretty sad when a bunch of hobbyists can provide a boot loader (Chameleon) that allows me to run the latest Mac OS X on my Mac (still annoying because its basically a hackintosh) but Apple can't. Also pathetic that Linux and even Windows 8 support my Mac but Apple doesn't.
It's pretty cost effective to upgrade a Mac by selling it and buying a new one. Unlike the market for used PCs, the market for used Macs is pretty active. It's not uncommon for people to pay half retail for a Mac that's 4-5 years old. I've done this several times.
And unlike other OSs, it's stupid easy to transfer your stuff from one Mac to the other. Just clone your drive to an external one or whatever, point a fresh copy of OS X at it, and after about half an hour you won't be able to tell the difference between your new Mac and the old one.
It's pretty cost effective to upgrade a Mac by selling it and buying a new one. Unlike the market for used PCs, the market for used Macs is pretty active. It's not uncommon for people to pay half retail for a Mac that's 4-5 years old. I've done this several times.
It's OK that Apple force you to buy unnecessary new hardware, because that hardware isn't quite as exorbitantly expensive if you manage to sell your existing hardware after you've forked out for the new one?
And unlike other OSs, it's stupid easy to transfer your stuff from one Mac to the other. Just clone your drive to an external one or whatever, point a fresh copy of OS X at it, and after about half an hour you won't be able to tell the difference between your new Mac and the old one.
Oh sweet! So it'll transfer my development environment, and my servers, and my VMs, and my Kubuntu partition, and my Windows one?
No? Then perhaps upgrades are a better idea.
And unlike other OSs, it's stupid easy to transfer your stuff from one Mac to the other. Just clone your drive to an external one or whatever, point a fresh copy of OS X at it, and after about half an hour you won't be able to tell the difference between your new Mac and the old one.
Pretty obvious you don't know much about other OSs then, because you can do that with pretty much any of them.
It's not legal with OEM copies of Windows to transfer to a new machine.
Secondly, back in the XP days I remember a work colleague buying another copy of XP because he had used up his 5 activations (after which Microsoft wouldn't activate his copy). He had the boxed version, not an OEM copy and therefore was properly licenced.
"Pretty obvious you don't know much about other OSs then, because you can do that with pretty much any of them."
Re: easily transferring data from an old computer to a new one.
I admit I haven't tried this with Win8 but at least with Win7 it's pretty terrible. It doesn't even transfer your software. What's the point, almost, since it can take hours to run all the installers for all your software. With OS X most programs are installed via dragging and dropping a bundle.
>I know, I'm hoghly upset the latest copy of OSX doesn't run on my early 90's mac. They just don't care.
Oh like the the iPAD 1 not being allowed to run IOS 6. You know expecting OS support for a whole 2.5 years is unreasonable after all or maybe Apple just cares so much they don't want to curse their early adopters with their crap map app.
>I know, I'm hoghly upset the latest copy of OSX doesn't run on my early 90's mac. They just don't care.
Also did you miss the part where I pointed out that the latest Mac OS X runs absolutely brilliant on my hardware once I hacked around Apple's attempt to try and force me to spend another $2500? Completely artificial constraints and why their share price is falling like a rock under Tim Cook. He has all the douchebaggery of Jobs without any of the talent.
The oldest supported machines for OS X v10.8 are mid-2007 iMacs and the newest unsupported machine is a just-before-early-2009 Mac Mini. So the most harshly affected purchases were a shade more than three years old when the OS came out. Given that we're talking official support, not how well the thing runs, that's harsh when you consider that Windows 7 and 8 have the same official minimum requirements and Windows 7 came out just shortly after the newest of the unsupported Macs.
I guess the £25 cost-of-entry explains support and testing cuts at Apple's end but it's hard to call it fair treatment.
>not strickly true - older macs are still supported - support means OS big fixes, security patches, etc. And they all still happen on pre-lion.
They only support the last two versions (an 'n-2' support policy, where 'n' is the latest version of the OS) with bug fixes and before anyone mentions Microsoft (who are crappy also in their own way and trying to be like Apple now) I would point out Microsoft doesn't release a yearly service pack and calls it a new os just to end support. In fact Microsoft still offers bug fixes for an operating system that is now a dozen years old. The big difference is Microsoft is still largely a software company (lol surface fail) and Apple is a hardware company that only uses software to sell hardware.
http://www.jabbawok.net/?p=47
I warn you first thing back everything up and make sure you have an os x dvd to boot off just in case. The process is not trivial and was kind of PITA to get to work. I am able to get updates just fine but it still usually requires holding the option button down when I boot and having to selected the correct disk (bless command doesn't seem to take permanently for some reason). Good luck and who knows if this solution will work with the next Mac OS. Apple seems to be locking down the OS more and more to squeeze blood from turnips and probably soon won't allow booting a disk with a MBR at all.
How is that hassle? selling your house is hassle, selling a computer isn't.
Twit.
I know you're an Apple user, but some of us actually do stuff with our machines. I'm a programmer. My machine triple boots, and there's a development environment in each. I've got an extensive number of programs, configurations, customisations and such going on to make that machine usable for what I do. Do you have any notion of how long it takes me to fully set up a new machine? It is not the half hour some people in here are claiming.
@Geeg J Preece Gert over yourself, a lot of people triple boot their Macs.
And a lot of us do REAL WORK on them too. OSX and Lnux are easy and fast to set up. You want to cut down the massive set up times. Ditch Windows.
And what does that have to do with how easy its is to sell a used Mac? You nevre addressed All you did was tell us how you do real work and how special a snowflake you are.
And what does that have to do with how easy its is to sell a used Mac? You nevre addressed All you did was tell us how you do real work and how special a snowflake you are.
Given that you can't even spell "Greg", I'm going to assume you can't bloody read either. It isn't about how hard it is to sell a Mac; it's about having to sell the Mac in the first place to get the latest OS when it's an artificial lockout by Apple, and how saying that they hold their value better is weak fanboy justification for that.
I need the latest Mac OS X, regrettably, for work. I can't be ditching my machine and getting a new one every time Apple feel like forcing me to do so. My "real work" point was to illustrate that I can't use the consumer-oriented methods of moving across, and I shouldn't have to either. The Windows OS you deride so easily doesn't make me do this, and neither does Linux.
Would you like that in crayon?
>because a five year old one can't run a 64 bit os on a 32 bit system?
If you are talking about the original Mac Pro desktops they can run a 64 bit OS just fine (have both linux 64 bit and Mountain lion running great on mine) The only thing 32 bit on the machine was the POS hacked up EFI Apple unwisely chose for it (unwise for all but shareholders I guess). As formerly mentioned luckily there are plenty of hacker hobbyists boot loaders that allow you get around the fail that is EFI in general.
"It's pretty cost effective to upgrade a Mac by selling it and buying a new one. Unlike the market for used PCs, the market for used Macs is pretty active. It's not uncommon for people to pay half retail for a Mac that's 4-5 years old. I've done this several times."
I have a macbook from 2008. Get me half retail price and I'll happily sell it. No? Didn't think so. You may get ok money for a top of the line macbook pro but not much else.
Macbook Airs from 2008 are going for around £3-400 on Ebay. That's almost halfway to a new Macbook Air. I know because I just sold one - and there's others going for a similar price.
Except that those original 2008 Macbook Airs sold for thick end of twice the price of the current 11 inch baby ones. Nice try at twisting the numbers, there. What was that about recouping half the cost again? Can you hear me through the reality distortion bubble?
I've still got my two 2008 iMacs running fine. Sure they cost 1400 sovs when new but 5 years for a consumer device that's used for a miminum for 4-5 hours every single day is not bad going. Just given one of the old iMacs to my little one as her personal machine. The only thing I've had replace in the last 5 years was one keybaord after some twat dropped sticky coke on it and the RETURN key broke.
Got a couple of 13" white Macbooks, both bought in 2009 and after 4 years of use with no upgrade the drive finally blew on one of them, not bad going. On to Amazon, £35 for a new 2.5 HD, a £1 for a Torx driver and sorted that problem. One of these machines with it's puny little 2GB of memory is still used to edit photos from a full frame DSLR while I'm out and about on camping trips. My images often exceed 1GB while I'm editing them in the latest Photoshop CS6. a 4 year old machine with a 2 year old O/S and still running fine. The batteries are just starting to go funny which again is not bad for 4 years service, so I'll be on Fleabay looking
for a couple of cheap Far East replacements soon.
People moan about the price of Apple desktop hardware but like anything if you look after it it will last you and provide years of service. You might well call me a mug for buying expensive Apple kit but I'm not on the upgrade treadmill, my boxes get used until they finally die a natural death after long and productive lives.
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