It feels a little clichéd to say it, but I do feel that Snow Leopard, outdated now as it is, was some kind of fortuitous confluence of factors that resulted in OS X being as close to perfect as it's ever been.
Even putting aside the iOS-style elements being added, my experience has been that each version of OS X has been slightly worse than the last, and tends to introduce strange little anomalies and instabilities on hardware that was otherwise working just fine. Sometimes these issues are fixed in the next major version, but sometimes they aren't; and even when they are fixed, there are an equal number of new issues introduced.
My perspective is perhaps coloured by having switched to the Mac during the Tiger era, which was about equal with Snow Leopard in terms of stability and 'completeness'. Since then, with the exception of Snow Leopard, it's been downhill. (I realise, of course, that Tiger benefitted from 11 point updates and thus more polish than any version before or since, but the point stands.)
One wonders if the yearly release schedule has something to do with this. It's got to be a constant rush to tick off the new feature boxes, and then we don't get the period of bug fixing and stability before the engineers all rush off to start implementing next year's new additions.
For a long time it was effectively on a two year clock; they had releases in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011. Now it's half that.
I once saw a very nice chart about the number of users for a great, cool start-up everyone knows about. The CEO illustrated: "You see that inflexion point on the release day? That's what happens for every release. If we postpone it by 3 months, we not only lose 3 months of new customers (painting the 3-months area between lower and higher sales). We also miss on the offset." and he painted the unlimited area between the lower sales and higher sales. And he talked about the recurrence of the inflexion for each release, and he talked about the immobilized capital inventory.
But their growth primarily comes from hardware, how much would OS X updates influence that growth?
Their hardware from 2008 is running El Capitan, so there isn’t much persuasion for existing customers to upgrade. It seems like if someone is going to switch to Mac, they would do it regardless of any features introduced in the last 3-4 OS X releases.
I don’t know, I’m not a sales guy. But it seems like the tradeoff of losing your customer base due to unreliable software isn’t worth it.
OSX updates are driven by iOS updates, which are the main revenue generators. Apple must release iOS every year to follow phone releases; OSX has to follow suit in order to support iOS "integration" features (Handoff, Photos etc etc).
Because release cycles are so short, test cycles are shorter as well; and of course new hardware is tested first (and foremost), so updates to older hardware will see more bugs, and updates are always buggier anyway (because it's harder for developers to predict the state of your system pre-migration).
I certainly see the yearly release cycle for OSX as being a big factor for the perceived fall in quality. In addition, there is probably a glut of "peak Air", people who switched to Mac when the Air was unrivalled and have not bought anything since. Their hardware is less and less tested with each update, so they're feeling the pinch. Apple don't care, because they want new money from them.
Are they really losing a significant percentage of their customer base due to unreliable software though? I doubt it. I expect that most people who use OS X and care about bugs probably have a negative perception of Windows (whether that's still warranted or not). So that leaves Linux. And as good as desktop Linux has become, it's still not the OS for people who don't want to spend time dealing with strange computer issues. So what's left to switch to?
Mac Mini is 1.5 years old, Mac Pro is >2 years old, 13" Macbook Pro is 1 year next month (and conspicuously absent from rumors of Apple's upcoming announcement event, gotta release those watch bands though).
The iPhone is definitely on a 1-year cycle, but it's not really something they put effort into maintaining on their computers. MacBook Air and iMac are probably the closest.
I blame iOS/Mac features tie-in like Continuity. OS X definitely gets the short end of the stick from that.
I think you have rose colored glasses about Snow Leopard. It had plenty of bugs and hiccups.
People deride the "iOS style" features of El Capitan but first, what specifically are you referring to besides Launcher? Do you think adding Notifications to OS X is bad? I find them extremely useful, and like the integration better than the spotty support Growler had among third party software.
I never use Launcher but it's not there for me. It's no skin off my nose that it exists for other people. And it's not like Finder or Spotlight have lost functionality, if anything I feel Spotlight in El Capitan is much better than it was in Snow Leopard or any prior OS X.
Mission Control works great and I think is much more elegant in El Capitan than in previous OS X releases. Granted in older OS X you could arrange your desktops in grids instead of just left to right but I only use about 3-4 desktops anyway, so I don't mind.
OS X has also improved for power users since Snow Leopard as well. Lion introduced FileVault 2 which I find to be a fantastically easy to use encryption system, that I have had no problems with. I enjoy my Retina screen and the Retina support that later versions introduced as well. Air Drop is also handy since my wife and coworkers have Macs as well.
In my mind, each new release of OS X, like each new release of iOS or anything really, has good things and less good things in it. But on the whole I'm glad to be running El Capitan today rather than Snow Leopard. I don't pine for those days.
It's less about Snow Leopard having been supposedly perfect and more about how OS X feels like it's just floundered around randomly since then.
In fact, for me, I can honestly say that OS X has almost strictly regressed in terms of my day-to-day experience. Spotlight now covers up way too much of the screen for almost no gain; if I'd wanted that, I'd have just used Alfred. Mission Control is still not as powerful and flexible as Expose + Spaces, and now it even goes so far as to hide desktop thumbnails even on my dual 27" monitor setup. Seriously?
What's most shocking to me is how much Windows has caught up from a UX perspective. I have Windows 10 on my (primarily gaming-oriented) desktop. Since I don't use the desktop for much programming, I almost never find myself wishing that it was running OS X instead. That's a real blow to the magical grip that OS X once held over me. Cortana is just as good as spotlight -- better, even -- and it manages to be much more space efficient as well. Windows Explorer is so much more useful than the bafflingly overly simplistic Finder. On Windows, if I want to tile windows, I can -- get this -- just drag them to the side, top, or any of the four corners. On OS X, I have to either fiddle with their impressively clunky split-screen full-screen app disaster or use a third-party tool like Spectacle or BetterTouchTool.
I could go on, but I'll leave it at this: there was a day where I never wanted to touch Windows again because I felt OS X was so much better. Now I find myself only really sticking to OS X for two reasons: (1) it still has better touchpad interaction on a laptop; (2) it's still based on Unix so I prefer it for programming.
It's less about Snow Leopard having been supposedly perfect and more about how OS X feels like it's just floundered around randomly since then.
Agreed. It's not that Snow Leopard was some magic release that can never be bettered, it's that it has never been bettered. I can't think of any new features since then that I really value in OS X.
there was a day where I never wanted to touch Windows again
I switched from Windows to OS X back in 2006 thinking I would run Boot Camp for Windows 90% of the time. Boy was I wrong. But nowadays, if the Surface Book trackpad was as good as the Macbook's (it might be, I don't know) and cygwin was better integrated into the OS, I would be very tempted to switch back.
Reviewers seem to think the Surface Book trackpad isn't quite as good as the MacBook Pro, but it's close. (No idea if they're comparing against the new Force Touch trackpads, which I personally think are a regression):
hmmm, why do you feel that the new Force Touch trackpads are a regression? I've yet to use one, but I have other products that use Force Touch functionality, and I'm a big fan of my older Apple Trackpad.
I kept trying them in the Apple Store every week, and at first I thought it was amazing - it feels like an actual click! - but it feels like a mushy, unsatisfying click. The more I played with it, I noticed I was triggering lots of accidental clicks, accidentally moving files around on the desktop etc. I tried tweaking the settings (for sensitivity and click feel) but couldn't find any that gave me what I wanted. Disabling Force Touch and making the main Force Touch click standard for all clicks would be very close to what I want, but there's no way to do that.
I ended up purchasing a non-Retina MacBook Pro, in large part because of the trackpad. The click on the old 2012-era trackpad is sharp, solid, satisfying & deliberate, no accidental clicks.
It's just a matter of what you're used to. I'm a recent Mac convert and I can't stand the old clicky trackpads, but I love the haptic click on my MBP's trackpad.
I have a Surface Book from work, and I hate the trackpad. It feels (just the default out of the box, no specific tweaking) that its "mushy"-it feels like there's more resistance moving my fingers around on it than my MBP.
OSX is known to have a not so good window manager, in example. Well, instead of improving it, by implementing other WM's standards (look at almost all the Linux WMs and Windows', they have maximize buttons, they stack on the border of the screen, etc) they chose to not be smart and not, oh god not copy what works the best. They chose to "force" fullscreen instead of maximizing, to not implement stacking shortcuts, etc. They are going backwards. And sadly you can say that for a lot of things about OSX
For programming especially, yes. I can see that point.
IMHO, an Android programmer in particular will find OSX more comfortable and supportive than Windows because Android Studio and drivers and stuff mostly _just work_ on a Mac.
Example: get adb to talk to a Kindle Fire from your windows machine and then do that same thing from your Mac
Example: install genymotion on your Windows machine and fiddle around with VirtualBox and what have you, and then install genymotion on your Mac
Example: use something like GitBash (Android devs just have to use Git a lot) on Windows and then compare that experience to using a real Unix command line on OSX
Example: watch Tor Norbye give a talk about Android Studio productivity tips and notice that he can't help but give you Apple keyboard shortcuts.
Macs appear to be what most Android programming expert-types and the Android dev team itself use, day to day.
Android dev just seems to go a bit smoother on Macs than on Windows.
As someone running Arch, I have no idea how devs can put up with OSX or Windows. Both are awful, both you cannot fix yourself, and both get in the way all the time of what you want to do.
For me, if I'm missing something, its a pacman or AUR search away. If I need development features of anything it exists as a -git repo as well, and I can super fast insert my patches and get what I need immediately. No updates or any of this insanity stand in my way, and my systems been stable for almost three years since I built it, I just subscribe to the Arch announcements mailing list for major updates that might cause problems. We just got Linux 4.4 yesterday, and I booted today and kept on rolling as per usual.
I develop on Windows and don't see the value on such examples.
Never used Genymotion, rather HAXM or real devices.
There are quite a few nice GUIs for Git, also no one has forced me to use Git so far.
I will become productive with Android Studio the day they are able to match what I already had with Ant, ndk-build and Eclipse ADT/CDT in terms of IDE/build performance and C++ support.
Keyboard shortcuts are the least that I care about in Studio.
"Never used Genymotion, rather HAXM or real devices."
Genymotion is miles and miles ahead of HAXM. Real Devices are best, though. But using real devices is much easier on OS X, due to not having to even think about drivers. I had to use Windows at a big corporate gig for a while, and that was one of the absolute worst parts of it: drivers.
"There are quite a few nice GUIs for Git, also no one has forced me to use Git so far."
It's pretty pervasive. Just about any major library is in git. Most projects are using git, too.
I use git on Windows every day and don't have any problem. I mostly use command line (the vim shell works just fine for entering commit messages), and TortoiseGit for when I want to look at history. For a difftool, I use BeyondCompare (company already had a license), which is really good.
Very similar experience here: As a mac guy, I only have a single gaming / audio PC running Windows 10 in the living room and I'm very impressed with how snappy, useful and flawless everything works.
Frankly, my usage on this machine is very limited - no development environment, editors or other applications, didn't even configure a mail client. Just Steam, Kodi and Roon.
I don't have any intention to switch platforms and still think the third party applications available on Windows are, while available in huge quantities, mostly subpar and terribly designed, however the core parts Microsoft delivers with the OS really, really impressed. Very solid.
I don't have a particular issue with any of the iOS stuff ported over, but it's a lament I hear quite frequently from other Mac users.
You're right that there's a certain amount of rose-tinting with regards to Snow Leopard. It certainly wasn't perfect, and I wouldn't really want to switch back to it; the world has moved on since then, and SL isn't really competitive as a primary OS now.
With that said, though, my use-case in OS X hasn't dramatically changed since Snow Leopard --- mostly web-browsing, some IM, using the Terminal for various tasks --- but OS X's stability has changed in that time, for the worse. Apps crash more often, the OS itself is generally less stable and prone to random freezes which require a hard-restart. Doing a fresh install didn't fix these issues, and my fianceé's MacBook has them too, which makes me think it's not just hardware issues.
I think what I'm really looking for is Snow El Capitan: a year where nothing new is added and Apple throw intense focus on fixing the various weirdnesses that are introduced during their breakneck release cycle.
> People deride the "iOS style" features of El Capitan but first, what specifically are you referring to besides Launcher?
So much hideousness.
Like breaking Save As... with a clunky autosave set up.
Like a badly thought-out full screen mode that couldn't even cope with an external monitor being connected (this being something that worked on the 512k Mac).
Like automatically terminating background apps, and purging resources within apps (so that Safari would reload all your background tabs randomly).
Like App Sandboxing which is so restrictive as to rule out an entire class of applications from the piss-poor Mac App Store, and to continually fill the Console with Apple's own system services getting dinged for sandbox violations.
Like discoveryd.
Like abstracting away the filesytem, so that you hit "Move" on an document and get a crippled filepicker appearing from the title bar.
Have they actually added anything good since 10.6? Some window management has improved a bit. Startup is immensely better. iMessage is getting there (though iChat AV was still better at group video chat than anything since, including Hangouts). You mention AirDrop, but that's a mess (and the awful Chooser was still a better way of finding other Macs to connect to than the Finder is today).
I've noticed the same thing, but with one proviso: Only after an upgrade, rather than a clean install. And with quite literally every major OSX release since Snow Leopard.
Just generalized instability and "weirdness" for lack of a better term. The problems always seem to go away after a fresh load.
It sucks that this is required, but between Time Machine bringing my apps and settings back, and launching the upgrade at night before bed, it's not really that much of an annoyance.
I'd still rather use OSX than any other OS at this point. But I think we need a Snow Leopard 2, a release that only tightens up the backend stuff with no new shiny features.
Your post reminded me of something: after years of doing Time Machine enhanced updates, last year I did a fresh install without Time Machine. I think that this made things better, but I can't really be specific why.
Even putting aside the iOS-style elements being added, my experience has been that each version of OS X has been slightly worse than the last, and tends to introduce strange little anomalies and instabilities on hardware that was otherwise working just fine. Sometimes these issues are fixed in the next major version, but sometimes they aren't; and even when they are fixed, there are an equal number of new issues introduced.
My perspective is perhaps coloured by having switched to the Mac during the Tiger era, which was about equal with Snow Leopard in terms of stability and 'completeness'. Since then, with the exception of Snow Leopard, it's been downhill. (I realise, of course, that Tiger benefitted from 11 point updates and thus more polish than any version before or since, but the point stands.)