“No” Part 2

The result is that now everything looks like it was made for (AND by) children and dunces. Expert / enthusiast features have been either removed or buried or have become incredibly buggy or broken.

Apple is getting away with this because they have no competition. Windows 11 and Linux desktop options still look and work like garbage too.

If you asked me in 2010 to imagine what OSX would look like in 2025, this isn't it at all. We've gone from OSX looking like a child's toy but having professional features, to looking like a professional OS with professional features (peaking around 2010 I think), and now in 2025 we have an OSX that looks AND acts like a child's toy.

Sad to see it.

iPad should just run macOS since it's settled on the macOS experience. iPadOS is a worse macOS in so many ways:

- The world's most-gimped multitasking model, based on iOS's crippling restrictions instead of macOS.
- Worse windows and menu bar, with derpy behaviors (no live resize, having to deal with "size classes", new bugs, etc.).
- A bunch of not-invented-here initiatives like Stage Manager instead of proper Exposé.
- Scuffed SDKs and internals carrying all this redundant baggage and mistakes.
- Can only sideload apps from the App Store, no freedom of installation.

With Liquid Ass forced everywhere, iPadOS matters even less.

Kill iPadOS, put macOS on iPads, run existing iOS apps through Catalyst, keep Springboard (the modern Simple Finder) turned on for the Boomers. Done. Now iPad would be able to run Xcode and other real apps.

When MacBooks with touchscreens come out, iPad becomes a keyboardless form factor. It still has value as a dedicated tablet, remote monitor, or a cheaper simpleton "computer".

It sucks that visionOS based off of iPadOS, but that's just another awful decision in a long line of fail (and no one uses it, anyway).

> But it feels like macOS has been held back for the last decade or so.

We lost more than a decade while iOS and its offshoots cannibalized macOS.

> Max Oakland: Making them look and act the same is bad design. They should reflect the machines they run on and the ways people use them.

Yes! Great third party apps that understand this are the key reason that I use macOS. Looking at what I'm currently running the only thing provided by Apple is Finder. I should do something about that.

Well… a lot of us would argue that it’s not so much that macOS has stalled as it has regressed. The older iLife, iWork apps from about 2004-2010 were prime examples of apps that used to be more Mac-like and full of substance and utility, but were subsequently nuked in rewrites to make them more iOS-like. Same with Disk Utility. A lot of people weren’t happy with Final Cut 7’s replacement for the same reasons. Aperture to Photos yet another example.

We used to have it so good.

@Ben G: Try out this Linux. Not for everyone, not sure it is for me, but is is one of the most interesting developments in Linux in ages, imo.

https://omarchy.org/

@Rick F: So, what exactly do you use your macOS computer for? Music? MP4s? Browsing? Maybe coding? If the *only* Apple app you use if Finder, then - and I will use some of the alternatives in my list - could you please give me your list of apps? It feels like your comment could be a bit more complete, of if all you really *do* use your macOS computer for is to run Finder, moving to Linux should be a breeze.

iPads desperately need true multi-user capability like macOS. Until that happens, iOS will forever be just a toy OS.

It all makes sense if you just think about the money.

Apple has de-emphasized macOS because it’s the last platform that doesn’t give them full control and a cut of all commerce.

Even the icons are for the iPad and not the Mac but that doesn’t matter because the iPad is now the target.

It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t work as well. All that matters if that it’s fully locked down.

Apple will never make an open operating system again. They are trying to retcon the entire concept of the general purpose computer.

@Dave it's not too far fetched. My only Apple apps on macOS that I regularly use are Finder, Apple Music and Logic Pro. But I use a ton of other apps only available on desktops (some macOS only even), like Sketch, Tower, CodeRunner, JetBrains IDEs, Affinity Photo, Blender, Transmit, Rogue Amoeba tools and many more.

I often suspect that Apple's attempts at making iOS and MacOS more consistent with each other (both appearance and development) has nothing to do with making either platform better, but rather is just about saving money.

Why pay two teams to develop two different Notes apps that are perfectly tuned for their respective platforms when you can pay one team to write one Notes app that is mediocre everywhere!

"We're not merging iOS and macOS...

...we're just replacing Mac apps with iOS apps (messages, books etc), introducing a bunch of new iOS apps (weather), and encouraging developers to make janky iOS-feeling apps by porting iPad apps to the Mac (everything Catalyst), replacing system-level components (the entire disk loading system so PCI-Slot hosted storage didn't work for the entire Sonoma release because no iPad has PCI slots and we didn't bother to test it), replacing macOS UI conventions with iPad UI conventions (the main menu now functioning like buttons spawning palettes, rather than menus), bringing the graphical look of iOS icons, bringing stupid ideas like notches which interfere with the defining feature of the Mac that we literally sued other companies over if they tried to use it, and dumb novelty tricks like matching ui curves to one particular generation of hardware curves...

...but whatever could give you the idea we were *merging* the systems?"

@Rob Agreed. @Someone It's really damning when you list out everything.

macOS is only platform I cared about. Apple went from neglecting macOS to destroying it. I'm not interested in macOS becoming iOS Desktop. Liquid Ass everywhere cements the shift.

The apps and dev stack focus went from "user experience" to "write once run everywhere" SwiftUI Slop and Catalyst Crap. Apple's dev stack offers little advantage in time-to-build or output quality versus alternatives. Half the apps I regularly use are Electron and don't feel out of place, which is verification Apple's platform and dev stack has enshittified.

I'm likely going the DHH route. Apple's priorities are with shareholders, not users, and certainly not devs. Focus my time and energy on being independent of any specific platform.

One of the most bitter aspects of this is that, at first, Apple intentionally rejected making iOS and macOS merge together, especially because Microsoft tried merging desktop and touch UI into one operating system, and it sucked and didn't work. And Apple was sure to point that out.

They recognized that an iPhone and a mac had different methods of interaction that were different enough to require different UI paradigms altogether. And for a little while, both macOS and iOS were the best operating systems and provided the best user experience.

Now they're both pretty much crap and getting worse, with Apple making the very same sorts of bad decisions as Microsoft. Presumably because they think it will make them more money. They're probably correct in the short term.

I will avoid upgrading to macOS Tahoe for as long as I reasonably can. My intel macs can't run it anyway.

@Hammer the real tell was when Apple changed the visual design of macOS to float open / save file browsers in the centre of windows, instead of being sheets from the titlebar; because centred floating windows are easy to do in web technologies and it was going to make apparent how few "Mac" apps were actually Mac apps, vs. Electron web apps etc.

@Bri I'd actually argue that Microsoft's solution was a better one than Apple's; make the OS do both duties, and change the UI depending on context (and you get the proper full-fat version of your applications). But then again, pretty much everything Apple has done with regards to the iPad has been imitating Microsoft's Surface Pro from the get-to.

If you compare an iPad Pro today, to an iPad when the iPad was first released, and to a Surface Pro from around then, the iPad Pro of today is far more like the Surface Pro than it is the original iPad. While superficially, Springboard may still look similar, everything about how te device functions is more, and more like the Surface Pro... except the best part - the surface Pro could plug in to an external graphics card over thunderbolt, to drive multiple monitors.

Keep an eye on KDE - you can very easily make it look and function a lot like macOS (dock, universal hierarchical menubar) and I suspect, it will eventually be a better macOS than the official one coming out of Apple, given the incompetence of Alan Dye's team.

@Someone The issue with Linux hasn't been the actual desktop environments for years now; those have been relatively well designed, and customizable enough to get things looking and behaving good. The issue has always been the lack of high quality user interface and consistent software. Each project has its own "HIG" because why not, and there is very little in agreement between them. Other technical limitations further hinder the Linux experience, such proper high DPI support, HDR support, printing support, driver support, high quality typography support, etc.

It really grates me when somebody doesn't recall thing correctly.

> "If you compare an iPad Pro today, to an iPad when the iPad was first released, and to a Surface Pro from around then, the iPad Pro of today is far more like the Surface Pro than it is the original iPad."

Wrong. The very first MSFT Surface of *any* sort (at least portable, not table) was released i 2013, about 3 years after the iPad was.

> "But then again, pretty much everything Apple has done with regards to the iPad has been imitating Microsoft's Surface Pro from the get-to."

Got it. Just like Apple imitated MSFT's mobile phone OS, right?

Just saying....

@Léo

> Other technical limitations further hinder the Linux experience, such proper high DPI support,

Things have improved a lot on that front. I regularly hook up my ThinkPad to my Studio Display and it works great with the ASD running at 2x scaling and the ThinkPad at 1.25x scaling. Fractional scaling used to be an issue with X11 apps, but has worked without issues for me since GNOME added the 'scale-monitor-framebuffer' option.

> HDR support

GNOME 48 added HDR support, support is not very wide yet, but it's getting there.

> printing support

This hasn't been an issue for a long time? I mean, macOS uses CUPS, which has been the printer daemon on most Linux systems well before macOS adopted it.

> driver support

This one is complicated. There is hardware that is not well-supported, then on the hand, a lot of USB devices are supported better than on macOS (like certain NICs). Both for macOS and Linux it's a matter of selecting devices that are supported. E.g. every peripheral of my ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 AMD is supported.

> high quality typography support

Can you be more specific? There doesn't seem to be much of a difference compared to macOS?

I am not going to deny that a lot of things are less polished than macOS. On the other hand, a lot of developer workflows are faster, there are far less distractions, and you hold the destiny in your own hand. (And there are awesome things that are unheard of in macOS like fully declarative systems like NixOS.)

@Léo, Daniël,

I've wanted to run Linux for 30 years but there's always been something stopping me from using it as my full time get work done OS.

It's not even so much drivers and printing and etc anymore. It's really just third party software, especially commercial software. There are a few things I need and on Linux my options are always a shitty also-ran Java app, a website, or nothing.

If the software is not Linux-centric in the first place, it often is supported least or never. As one one expect from the number 3 OS on the list of the only 3 operating systems.

I've dabbled with it since nearly the beginning and run it every year or so since on something or other, but it's always next year that's the year of the Linux Desktop.

@bart,

For me the biggest problem is CAD software. Most everything else is Good Enough™️.

But FreeCAD is a dumpster fire if you are used to just about any of the commercially available CAD tools.

I'm not a graphics designer, audio editor, etc., but imagine those are lacking as well.

iPad and Mac Pro with the same OS. What could go wrong?

If iPadOS will become the new main development basis for everything else I wonder how they will support the immense legacy of Mac specific software. Virtualization?

@Wu Ming; seeing past transitions, Apple just does a technically impressive although practically unusable Rosetta or Classic-on-OSX for a year or two before calling it quits.

Apple cares not for legacy software, it has shown so time and again. One of the main differences with MSFT, I’d say.

I agree on the Linux observations, alas as a user you simply have nowhere to go. Apple caren’t about UX, MSFT wants you in the cloud and Linux is always the bridesmaid

@bart @CowMonkey, I hear you! I am cheating to some extend, because we have several Macs in our household. So if I need to use the Affinity suite or something else not available, I'll just pick up my MBP.

That said, Windows is a dead end for me. After using Mac for 18 years, Mac/Apple are slowly drifting somewhere I don't like (it has been a fabulous ride though!). But we are only getting more software on Linux when more people switch. Linux is the only system where users can drive its destiny (well and obviously BSDs, etc., but Linux has by far the best shot of getting traction).

Forgot to add: the app situation has certainly been improving over the years. Ironically it's thanks to something I absolutely hate on macOS: Electron. Applications like 1Password work just as well on Linux (including fingerprint unlock).

@Davedfderie@proton.me Point taken, but I'm comfortable with "around then" being a few years, given we're over a decade later.

Perhaps the rephrase as "if you compare an iPad Pro today with both the original iPad, and the iPad that was available when the Surface Pro launched, the iPad Pro has more in common in terms of its usage paradigm (external displays, keyboard / mouse, filesystem, landscape orientation) with the Surface Pro, than it does with the iPad" will meet your requirements.