Yeah; I think this is the other problem. I've had my first-ever mbp at work for almost three years. Each OS release is buggier than the last (and all of them fail on resume every once in a while). Example from el capitan: The ctrl and alt keys sometimes get 'stuck' when switching to and from a full screen vnc session (with the builtin client). So, a dozen times a day, I start typing into vnc, and hilarity ensues. It turns out ctrl and alt handling in vnc is surprisingly complicated, but the point is that this is a regression. It never happened before el capitan.

VNC, you ask? As our product has matured, the build has gotten slower, so my local vmware vm is useless. The remote xeon is pretty iffy too (and it is not three years out of date like apple's comparable offering).

Writing on macos and shipping the code is a non-starter, and I like to be able to cut and paste urls / download things into my linux working directory directly from firefox.

Worse, it is not like some things improved while others regressed. Take the mail and calendar clients (the other programs I actually use) for example. Other than waiting, there is no way to dismiss the "you've got mail" notifications without opening the email (thus borking my vnc session again). Since apple is deep into the minimalism cult, I know they are organizationally incapable of putting an X on the popup.

That is the story of my $2800 VNC client with buggy keyboard, crashy kernel and iffy mail client. At least it has an escape key, reasonable keyboard play, and good battery life.

In apple's defense, I don't know of and better options that work out of the box. Microsoft and google perform way too much user surveillance, and Ubuntu Unity (i.e. Dell XPS developer edition) broke the alt key. When did desktop/laptop software start sucking so badly?

I thought that the way you dismissed a notification in macOS was to swipe it away (click/drag out to the side of the screen).

Thanks; I will try that.