I don't know how many were in this camp, but with every OS X release I was more excited about reading Siracusa's review than upgrading.
While I started only with 10.3, I have found reading the older review as a fine page of OS X history. Maybe Siracusa these should become a book. Maybe Apple should move to OS 11.
I worked for Apple during Snow Leopard and Lion, and I was still excited for his reviews post-launch. To his immense credit, he would always manage to cover some new feature or other thing I didn't know about, and I wrote parts of the damn operating system.
I loved Snow Leopard, but Lion caused me so much pain. The whole "Save As" fiasco is Lion's legacy.
Snow Leopard is still my favorite. Mountain Lion was ok and Mavericks and Yosemite have been error-filled and support headaches. I am hoping the next version is better tested.
My favourites are Tiger, Snow Leopard and Mavericks. And I am more pleased with Mavericks than Snow Leopard which I am more pleased with than Tiger.
I agree about the testing, but still I think they have managed to keep the technical debt somewhat in control. I really yearn for the day they license Plan9, and port OS X on top of that. Because I believe that would give bigger opportunities, both with respect to hardware, but also with respect to a better foundation for developing more sophisticated features.
Did you use Mavericks as an individual or as part of a network of machines? I did like Tiger, Core Image was so fun and lead to the first commercial program I ever released.
[edit: I should say that OpenStep was my favorite release and somethings are still not in OS X which is a pity - as to Plan 9 - I do have dreams of OpenStep on top of Plan 9]
I concur. I loved 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), but I was burned so badly when I upgraded (too quickly) to 10.7 (Lion), that I've been paranoid ever since. That operating system was, freeze and kernel panic city for me. I'm pretty happy with 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion), and Its only about now that I'm considering upgrading to (10.9) Mavericks. (Just one operating system before the current (10.10) Yosemite)
Of course, Apple doesn't make it easy to upgrade to their stable and regressed operating system - I'm going to have go through all sorts of hoops to upgrade to anything other than the (still not fully trusted by me) Yosemite.
The old OS X version can be fine if you're primarily doing Python programming.
However, if one is using Xcode to write iOS 8 apps for the millions of new phones people bought a few months ago, you are pretty much forced onto the Apple upgrade treadmill.
For example, Xcode 6.3 requires 10.10[1]. Apple decided that OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) released less than 18 months ago is not recent enough.
Staying with OS X 10.6 means the latest Xcode you can install is v4 which means iOS 5 is the last version you can write apps for. That would be a severe handicap since iOS 5 has less than 3% marketshare[2]. I'm not sure if Apple servers would even allow developers to submit an iOS 5 app these days[3]. OS X 10.6 definitely was very stable but staying on it has severe economic penalties for many programmers.
Don't think so; there are better ways to get informed.
The comment made by jballanc probably gets it- "he would always manage to cover some new feature or other thing I didn't know about". People look at the same thing in different ways. When we read a review or watch a game commentary, we are really trying to know how another person may look at it.
"..with every OS X release I was more excited about reading Siracusa's review than upgrading."
I feel exactly the same. Partially for the content, and partially because I knew that the reading experience would prepare me for the best and worst; cushion the blows, and highlight the bits to be savored.
The only (but big) information we missed in 10.9 was the much higher frequency of kernel panics. An immediate review can't unveil such a flaw, so I wouldn't mind if Siracusa made reviews later on.
I also really really enjoyed his reviews but his Yosemite review doesn't seem to be as in-depth, and felt like he was brushing over the surface which is understandable given how quickly people want reviews after launch. Still, it felt different to the previous ones. Still informative, just different.
A shame that he is no longer reviewing them but thanks to him for all the other reviews. Incredibly informative! And I will be waiting to see what changes Apple make to HFS+ after his in-depth overview of the state of the filesystem in the Lion review.
Re: Rushing - if you list to ATP, or, previously, hypercritical, Siracusa spent months on those reviews. By the time it came out to launch, he was basically at the point of correcting (and re-correcting screen shots).
John Siracusa has suffered with RSI for many years. He wrote most of these massive reviews with voice recognition software. He talks about his RSI in this podcast:
RSI for longer than 3 months is no longer a physical issue but a mind-body one. He should read up on Dr. Sarno's work. I cured my RSI in a matter of weeks, after close to half a year of anguish.
What a coincidence! Your article was actually one of the things that I read that pushed me over the edge and gave me the certainty required to break free from the idea that there was something physically wrong with my muscles and led to finally curing myself. I could have been stuck in that cycle for years. Thanks!
As jarring as it will be to not have a Siracusa companion volume to 10.11, 15 years is a fine career in what has essentially been a one-man industry. He's no doubt inspired countless other tech writers in his run, and I look forward to seeing the next generation start upon the path he has so expertly forged.
No one may be able to truly replicate a Siracusa OS X review, but the person who really gets what made them great will probably do a bang-up job.
As a fellow old soldier in the Platform Wars of the late 90's and early 00's (and the guy who often gets confused with you, and vice versa), let me welcome you to Fiddler's Green :-)
It's not so bad here. At first, the transition from "guy who does this thing that's really important to me and my tribe" to "guy who used to do this thing that was really important to me when I was part of that tribe" is kinda terrifying. Then you realize that this is the fate of everyone who helped create A Moment, and it's kinda cool once you settle into it.
Sure, there are a few people who have the talent and energy to keep forcing themselves into new Moments, but even Madonna is old now, and all she did was stave off her "hey, you used to be that guy!" phase by a decade or so. And at what price? At some point, doesn't chipping away at and polishing and spit-shining and agonizing over your latest cultural product start to feel more than a little bit like slavery? I know it certainly did for me. Being a slave to your own brand is no way to spend a life.
Speaking of Madonna, I find that I sometimes identify with interviews given by older musicians, like an interview I read with David Gilmour where he tells the reporter something like, "please stop asking me about Roger Waters... I'm in my 70's and that was only 17 years of my life and it was a really long time ago."
When I read that, my first reaction was, "oh man, is that my future?" But my second reaction was, "whatever he thinks of Roger Waters, and whatever he's done since then, he did some amazing work in those 17 years that touched a lot of people and became a part of who they are." There much worse fates than having a truly excellent slice of your work define you when you're 70. There are plenty of other people who've done a lifetime's worth of equally excellent work in total obscurity, and would love for someone to care enough to ask them about any part of it.
Anyway, I imagine that, like me, you're not out there looking around for another Moment to insert yourself into, but it could be that a new Moment will find you. After all, isn't that how it happend the first time around?
Now, back to work... Fiddler's Green is a nice place to visit and catch up with old friends, but we're both way too young to take up permanent residence here :-)
>There much worse fates than having a truly excellent slice of your work define you when you're 70.
But these reporters aren't asking him about his work. They're asking his for gossipy statements about his tensions and fallout with Waters. They give no shits about the music, they just want to get an old man angry.
Jon, I enjoyed your contributions to the tribe and your book "Inside the Machine". Any plans to release an updated edition or it wasn't worth your time? I'd back it on Kickstarter if you were to do that.
When people have asked me for examples of the very best long form technical writing for the Web, I point them at these articles (particularly the Snow Leopard review which is my favorite). Not only does John seem to have a solid grasp of _everything_, he makes it all entertaining.
Agreed - I thought the Snow Leopard review was a classic, and I read through it several times, savoring his perspective.
What I liked about his reviews, is that he intentionally did not make them comprehensive. He saw his goal not to rehash all of the Apple Documentation (which you could read if you were interested), but rather to provide his opinionated perspective on what was interesting, and what spoke to the general theme of OS X's progression.
His reviews will be missed, but I agree, 15 years of stress/agony is more than enough for one man. He's leaving on the top of his game.
His Snow Leopard review was also in part a classic because the release was a classic. Nothing was left unturned in that OS, it was a goldmine for a guy like him.
I hope a feature release will be of a similar caliber (i.e., "make ALL the things better") and I hope Siracusa is strong enough to stay away from it.
Thanks for all the really detailed and well written reviews over the years, John. I especially remember printing out the OS X Tiger review and setting aside a long lunch at Chipotle while going through it in my college days.
I used to look forward to the Siracusa reviews as much as the OS releases themselves. This year there will be a void, but hopefully someone like iMore or MacStories will fill that void.
This is very sad for me. I feel that such in-depth reviews come out very rarely these days, and losing one of the greater ones really makes me sad, both individually about these reviews, but for tech journalism in general.
I started reading the reviews a few years ago, when I started a Mac/iOS career, and was hooked instantly, going back to older Mac OS X reviews to read about technologies.
Siracusa is one of my favorite podcast voices. I was really surprised to hear how gregarious a person he seems to be, considering the autistic level of detail he always put into his OSX reviews.
We have similar ages and technical backgrounds so any time some misapprehension of POSIX or USB or Star Wars comes up on a podcast he's always the one who explains it to the other hosts, but in a relatable or entertaining way.
I would use caution in making armchair diagnoses like that. However, while we are throwing around psychological terms, I do believe that "anal-retentive personality" is quite apt.
I'm not sure either applied, as least from the four or five reviews that I read in great depth. His reviews were opinionated, and touched on themes that he though were important - but by and large weren't overly detailed or comprehensive. He sought to capture the overall arc of the growth of OS X, rather than regurgitate every new feature.
I believe you're misreading this. He isn't trying to imply Siracusa has autism, but rather is implying that the level of detail in his reviews is similar to what one might expect of someone who does have autism. This is a significant difference.
Siracusa's OSX reviews offered the same quality and attention to detail Apple puts into their best products. The reviews were also an incredibly valuable resource in the early days of OSX when it was hard to find any good coverage of the Mac news in the mainstream tech media. The reviews were my only exposure to the Mac platform at this time. His obvious nerd credibility made me stop and pay attention to what Apple was doing. I believe Siracusa's reviews helped create a new generation of Mac users.
Siracusa's OS X reviews, and Jon Stokes' excellent explanations of computer hardware, will both be tough to beat. Ars had some truly amazing stuff in the mid 2000s.
Those two were actually mixed up in my head and for the first however many episodes of Hypercritical I thought I was listening to the guy whose book on CPUs I was thinking of buying. Siracusa was entertaining enough that I didn't mind when I realised, and have listened to him since!
This is very disappointing. When a lot of online writers announce their retirement/shift of focus, there's usually alternative sources for similar (if not the same) content.
With Siracusa that is definitely not the case. His OS X reviews are irreplaceable. Nothing comes close.
I've read his reviews since Snow Leopard I believe, and totally respect and admire his work, but I find the you-dont-know-my-struggle tone he takes in this insufferable. I'm not saying it was an easy gig or anything but I'm dubious of how much 'mental anguish' is involved in reviewing an operating system. And how out of touch need one be before complaining about a noisy air conditioner seems reasonable?
Thanks, Jon, for all your reviews. It's a sad day to have to look forward to a new OS X release without a Siracusa review.
How about a Kickstarter campaign to fund him taking a month off work to write another review? I bet we could get a sum of money together large enough to have him unable to say no.
Is it only me that seems to not care whatsoever about tiling window managers? I've tried them on Linux, for a good solid two months, still don't understand the fascination.
On OS X, I just use Expose or Cmd-Tab and Cmd-` shortcuts. I used to use Slate, but then ultimately gave that up as well. Maybe I use a retina screen at 1920x1200 so I can have a lot of screen real estate, but I haven't found the need to have a tiling wm at work either.
That being said: at home, I use a tiling WM exclusively (dwm), and the main attractions for me is that it's (a) uncluttered and (b) fast.
Not just fast because the WM is snappy (though dwm certainly is), but because a whole layer of decisions on moving and positioning windows is taken away.
I use three main layouts, none of which require me to do anything except start applications (and maybe switch workspace and possibly tiling mode):
1) Full screen -- e.g., web browsing.
2) Two windows side by side -- e.g., text editor & REPL.
3) Variation on #2 where there's more than one window stacked on the right -- e.g., a spare terminal for general file management or whatever. Swapping windows from the 'stack' to the 'master' area is a single keyboard operation.
I have nine workspaces to play with (pedantic point: dwm uses 'tags' rather than workspaces, but for the purposes of this discussion they can be considered the same), so I can keep different tasks cleanly separated.
And almost all WM tasks can be done from the keyboard: the only exceptions are moving and resizing floating (non-tiled) windows, which I almost never need to do.
I don't insist on the tiling WM — they certainly don't work for everyone —, but I feel OS X's default WM falls on its face in a lot of cases simply as a "normal" style WM.
You mention Cmd+Tab and Cmd+`, which is a good example. Typically, I'd say I have a working set of windows consisting of gvim, iTerm2, a web browser (docs, research, etc.) and Hipchat. Cmd+Tab switches between applications, which isn't quite appropriate here: first, it doesn't consistently highlight the highest window in the Z-stack for the application being switched to, and it drags all windows of that application to the top of the Z-stack, which very often includes windows I am not interested in. Cmd+` can correct for this, somewhat. What I really need is just straight manipulation of the Z-stack.[1]
I use Expose extensively, but I find I use it because I lack a good method above.
I think one of the big draws to a tiling WM is that it allows efficient layout of windows, especially if you're coming from OS X's WM. Consider that OS X's WM's resize catchment area (the "border") is impossibly small; grabbing it with the pointer in OS X is a consistently jarring experience IMO — small resize catchments work better in a WM that allows you to resize with a keyboard+mouse shortcut. E.g., in MATE, if I hold Alt, I can click and drag anywhere within the entire area of the window to resize; this is much more fluid, and requires considerably less concentration to perform. (I can similarly move windows, which requires grabbing the title bar on OS X, but this is somewhat less difficult.) Note that I can do this the OS X way in MATE too: grabbing the edge works. I'd add that MATE also "snaps" windows to the edges of the screen, and to each other, which IMO also aids quick layouts.
[1]: This is a big reason for why I run MATE at home. Good old Alt+Tab.
Witch by Many Tricks http://manytricks.com/witch/ solves (for me) the app/windows switching problem with OS X. I started using it years ago because cmd+` is a 3 (4 with shift) key combination on my Italian keyboard but it's a very useful piece of software.
(I'm only an happy user of it).
With BetterTouchTool[1] you can both move and resize by combining keypresses with mouse movement; for example, I have it set so that holding Option will move a window along with my mouse cursor, and Option+Shift will likewise resize a window. No dragging needed, actually. It has a metric ton of other features, but these are the only ones I use.
Also, Spectacle[2] gives you most of the benefits of a tiling window manager without actually having to run one. I have Command+Option+{Left,Right} set to move and resize a window to the left or right vertical halves of my screen, and I use those combinations constantly.
Further, I second the sibling's recommendation for Witch. If buying a license hadn't removed the "You have used this X times" counter, I'd tell you how many times I've used it, but it's easily in the hundreds of thousands.
For me it was the better handling of multiple displays. With a tiling window manager (in my case, i3), windows expand or contract nicely when I dock my laptop and they move to the two displays on my desk. With a regular window manager I was always wasting time moving them from one display to another or resizing them.
I believe that being keyboard centric also made a big difference. I still use the mouse some but I mostly use the keyboard to move around workspaces and windows and the tiling window manager is very amenable to that workflow.
When using OSX, I haven't been very happy with the tiling solutions available. They all frustrate me in one way or another. And, in terms of the way my desktop looks, I'm okay with it being... well, maybe not the most aesthetically pleasing desktop around.
No. I don't get it either. As long as you don't insist on having every window maximized, I don't see any benefit to tiling window managers at all. Simply clicking the window you want to use, along with Exposé is more than enough for me.
How do you keep the window you want to use visible and distinguishable? If you ever drag windows around to find the one you want, a tiling WM could help you.
The only pain point? Really? How about not breaking every "posix compliant" header for every release so I don't have to wait 4-6 months before I can reliable compile open source software without hacking someone else's impossibly baroque build to install routine libraries? How about having an actual package manager instead of relying on third parties (thank you homebrew)? How about one fucking key press to dismiss notifications that pop up over the fucking thing I'm fucking looking at right now? These are just three random things that filled me with rage today. Peace out.
Yes - I use Spectacle constantly. I looked for years for a good tiling window manager - at least once every three-four months I would go searching the web, and wondering "Why has nobody built a decent tiling window manager."
Spectacle does 60% of what I want, and the keyboard shortcuts for it are in my finger DNA. Works particularly well on a 13" Macbook Air. But I'm still holding out for a proper tiling window manager - one of these days...
I haven't been an Apple fan since I was a kid, but I always enjoyed reading Siracusa's reviews a lot.
I'll be sad to see him go, but I don't fault him for quitting, nor do I fault his reasoning. The best reason to quit something is because you know it's time to quit.
Makes sense. Realistically the last killer feature in an OS X release was probably spotlight in 10.4. Consumer hardware hasn't gotten much faster since then, and the last six OS X releases have all been pretty much just rearranging furniture.
I can't see much innovation happening in the OS space for a few years until we get widespread adoption of memristors, perhaps in 2020 when HP comes out with The Machine.
Are you kidding? No hardware improvement in 10 years? I have a PowerPC machine powered off in a closet that runs 10.4, which somehow I can't move myself to get rid of. Today's smartphones are more powerful. They have more RAM and a better CPU.
On the software side, I powered it on a year or so ago. Felt pretty different from recent OS X. I didn't remember it being as different as it was. (If you had said little substantive change since 10.6 I may have agreed more.)
To be fair, your machine is probably one of the oldest to run 10.4. I have a 32-bit Intel Mac Mini that shipped with 10.4, and it still works.
I also have a PowerPC machine on 10.5 that I power up every now and then, and every time I am surprised how similar it is to 10.9. Maybe that's because my Dock hasn't changed a lot since 10.4, and I avoid the cloud and notifications like the plague.
There's no question smartphones are completely different, I'm talking about laptops and desktops. I'm writing this comment from my late 2008 MBP, which in terms of perceived speed is identical to my 2014 MBP work computer. If the new MBPs have Skylake then I'll upgrade because this one is starting to fall apart, but I'm certainly not pretending that it's going to make me more productive or have any tangible benefit.
> which in terms of perceived speed is identical to my 2014 MBP work computer
Yeh that's great if all you are doing is mild web browsing and sending emails. Last year I ditched my late 2008 MBP for a 2014 MBP (both 15") and the difference is astounding. I can play CSGO at 150fps rather than 25. Furthermore it doesn't overheat and shut down while playing CSGO. For work it is also a massive improvement when I run MATLAB scripts that involve huge matrix multiplications, inversions, SVDs etc.
> There's no question smartphones are completely different, I'm talking about laptops and desktops.
My point was that the thing in your pocket runs circles around the 10.4 machine, and the high-end desktop machine runs circles around that. But I agree with sjtrny's comment that you might not notice it if you don't try it with the right workload. (Although, with the way web browsers burn cycles and RAM these days ...)
The changes started in 10.7 to modernize OSX with some iOS inspired features have grown into killer features for me. When you add up everything from the last few years it's an impressive list:
* HiDPI support & Retina scaled resolutions
* AirPlay video / desktops
* Photos / iCloud Photo Library
* Notifications
* Handoff / Continuity
* iMessage / FaceTime (bundled in 10.7)
* Voice & SMS relay
* Find my Mac / remote lock & erase via iCloud
* Automatic cellular data tethering
* MailDrop for sending large Mail attachments
* AutoSave (app state save/restoration)
* 32->64 / ALSR / kext signing / GateKeeper
* Rotating TimeMachine backups
* EFI OS Recovery
Lets be honest though. I am a big fan, a convert even. An impressive list, maybe, but when the parent talks innovation, how many of these fit the bill? These don't, to me: photo library, notifications, iMessage and FaceTime, sms relay, remote lock and erase, cellular tethering, 32>64, next signing, all borrowed HEAVILY from competitors.
If you're going to play that game, there's been no innovation whatsoever since day 1. GP mentions Spotlight but that was just stolen from BeOS, the leaked WinFS plans, etc etc.
Spotlight stolen from BeOS? LaunchBar which goes back to the NeXT days has the basic Spotlight features and more. While it's not a NeXT company product, it was a third-party product for their OS. I'd say it's more likely they borrowed ideas from it, if anything. But given they had Sherlock (where the initial version predates OS X), I'd say it was initially more of a re-imagining of Sherlock.
It also does not mean "feature X, taken (in some cases almost cloned) from somewhere else, is now an 'Apple innovation'."
I like all of those features (though AirPlay still is a struggle with HD, though to be expected; and handoff for voice is still very buggy). And others are genuine innovations or things that Apple has polished. But to point to, for an egregious example, "Look, Notifications, how innovative that is" is also disingenuous.
Computers that update themselves in their sleep, time machine, continuity, notifications, the app store (and gate keeper), high resolution support, and mission control are all pretty huge in my eyes.
I think the continuity features like automatically being able to load a Safari tab that I've loaded on any other Apple device is great. I thought Spotlight wasn't very good until I used it with a SSD. Many of the Yosemite features will probably become better over time as they mature, too.
It's a system for Spotlight plugins on Yosemite. It works similar to Alfred, LaunchBar or Quicksilver. It's open source and fairly simple to write your own plugins for the system (in Python or Javascript).
Mission Control and Notifications have made a pretty big difference in my workflow, but yes, I'd agree that the changes are getting smaller over the years.
It's interesting - I use a lot of features of OS X that I think most people don't touch often (I'm probably one of the only people on HN who frequently launches apps from Launchpad with the four-finger squeeze, for instance) - but notifications bar and mission control are two that I've never found any use for. (I'm an Cmd+Tabber)
Indeed, Notifications has an annoying habit of locking up an otherewise solid 10.8.5 so I can't command+tab between apps. It always returns after 45-90 seconds, and I can kill it by bringing up spotlight and launching activity monitor - but that's the only impact that the notification tray has made on me. (Though, notifications themselves, akin to what Growl used to do, are kind of handy - except for the annoying one telling me I have to update my computer that I can't stop from coming back - particularly harsh when you are doing a presentation on a projector)
I'm with you. I gave Mission Control.app a serious try, but have no use for it.
>the annoying one telling me I have to update my computer that I can't stop from coming back
That one caused me to disable OS X notifications altogether. If Apple wants to silently upgrade the OS without notifying me, I would be OK with that (though I'd appreciate an email) but interrupting me without giving me any way less drastic than rebooting to turn off the stream of interruptions is just not OK with me.
(Yes, I realize that I'm more intolerant of interruptions than most people.)
I have 4 spaces (or whatever they are called now) to which I assign various applications, each of which can have several windows open, so that's my use case.
I command-tab as well, but I find it useful to have an overview of everything going on, and jump straight to a window (without command-tabbing, then command-tilde'ing depending on the application)
While I started only with 10.3, I have found reading the older review as a fine page of OS X history. Maybe Siracusa these should become a book. Maybe Apple should move to OS 11.