Roughly 2002-2010 that attention to detail was on display and the OS struck an impressive balance between features, ease of use, and power user access.
Since then it’s been straight downhill. First they stopped investing in desktop in favor of mobile. Then they underwent some rewrites to OS and bundled apps that dumbed things down and exploded the defect rate. Then they started setting the stage for a touch experience on desktop at the expense of UI density. Around the same time they started to prioritize short term profit over UX — spamming with notifications to try to get you to sign in, upgrade, etc. And then there’s the travesty that is Tahoe.
> And then there’s the travesty that is Tahoe.
Liquid Glass has no place on the desktop (or the phone really).
I migrated to Mac OS X from OpenBSD in like 2002 or so. MacOS has been a steady decline for many years, probably soon after the iPhone. Snow Leopard was probably the height of the MacOS experience. It’s been lots of little things along the way but I agree Tahoe is an inflection point.
Towards the end of it's dev cycle I think Snow Leopard got pretty good.
I do think about this article though: https://www.rubenerd.au/the-myth-of-snow-leopard/
Obviously (to me anyway, maybe folk disagree) comparing a new release to the previous versions last release (with years of bugfixing) wasn't totally fair, but my experience with Snow Leopard wasn't great either and I wonder if it wasn't quite the peak everyone thinks of it as.
It's sad how much faster and cooler my phone runs with the accessibility feature that turns off parts of Liquid Glass.
The Liquid Glass thing is a migraine trigger for my mum, and everyone I know with an iPhone has turned as much of it off as possible.
And the worst part? It's still the best option.
Depending on your needs. I'm not sure it's that cut and dry. For developer experience I don't find it very good. My System76 laptop provides a better experience.
It is all pretty subjective though. Windows is the best option for some.
> Roughly 2002-2010 that attention to detail was on display
I think steve jobs had common sense... from the user's perspective.
He could throw a little nonsense or a lot of nonsense (and the entire department that created it) out the window.
Oh my god for the love of all is holy why can’t I remove Apple Music.