High Sierra didn't have much notable or interesting either, and it proved to be the least stable release in a while by a damn sight.

Lately it seems like Apple has downshifted in competence all-around (at least on the Mac). I'll believe evidence to the contrary when I see it — not sooner.

I know that makes me seem like an HN Apple hater. And it pains me to say that. I've been a Mac fan since the mid-90s. I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt for a few years, but at this point they've blown through that into deep red territory. It makes me sad :(

I would not consider a brand new file system to not be notable. Maybe for average consumers it wouldn't matter much, but for us, we probably should appreciate how big an endeavour a new file system is.

I certainly appreciated it when I went to install the beta this afternoon. Took two seconds to add a volume, as opposed to many minutes (and the risk of data loss) partitioning in the old days.

In my case it resulted in total data loss causing me to do a fresh install, then within days a file system that was filled to capacity due to time machine snapshots that couldn't be deleted due to a cyclical depedency. I had to figure out how to reinstall on HFS+ and don't plan on ever trying again.

It's a "brand new" file system with implementation details that are a disaster. Lots of apps - including Steam just don't work on it if you use case sensitivity. Which is just silly. I had to create a virtual disk and mount it in my install folder so steam could work. It's 2018.. my 3k macbookpro shouldn't have this problem.

Give me my damn physical escape key back! the touchbar is the silliest thing ever.

While I have many issues with the new file systems as well, it is difficult to justify blaming it for Steam not running. Steam for Mac had never ran with case sensitive file systems since its inception, and Valve continuously refused to fix this despite numerous user complaints. This is hardly Apple’s fault.

I was saying this almost 10 years ago with various applications blowing up on case sensitive HFSX, and not really getting very good reasons why. And it's not just a few developers, they were all telling me case sensitivity on macOS is a problem. They'd get things working with one build, and a new dev build would bust their app but only on a case sensitive file system, not case insensitive. So the fact it's 2018 and this is still going on with APFS? shrug It doesn't surprise me one bit, even though I don't understand why it's still a problem. Two different file systems, same problem. Sounds like Apple just doesn't really care to properly support or test case sensitivity, their own test suite doesn't catch problems in the real world?

As much as I value the new file system (interestingly architected by the chap who did the BeFS, if only Apple had bought Be Inc!), it appears to still be lacking all the wonderful features of NTFS.

I'm still on Sierra at the moment as I delay upgrading after all the horrible bugs of the new release have been found - in everyone's opinion, is now a good time to leapfrog High Sierra? Time will tell.

Anecdote is not data, but I had huge issues when I first updated, so I rolled back. About 6 weeks ago I bit the bullet and updated again and it's been fine.

Thank you - anecdotes help me because I know 1 other Mac user and he's not overly technical (day job is Windows C++ so there's little Apple love around here)

It was notable when it nuked my install drive on update and I had to restore from backup ;) That was a first for me with an Apple OS.

I'll second that it's the least stable. It broke a whole load of stuff I needed for work. I eventually fixed it up (or found kludgy workarounds...) but I definitely resent encountering that immediately after updating.

So. The most important feature of this new release "designed for pros" that gets top placement on the announcement page is ... dark mode. The second is stacks. The third is the ports of iOS apps (including the long overdue Home).

I find it very hard to be excited about a yet another "major" release that doesn't even qualify as a minor version bump.

I’ve been wishing for dark mode for all 6 years I’ve had my MacBook Pro, so I’m pretty happy with that alone. I also have next to no qualms with OS X in its current state so I’m pretty easy to please. I will say that the hardware quality on the other hand has taken a nosedive lately.

It looks like dark mode is not a global option like on Linux, but rather needs to be adopted by individual apps. That means when opening old apps at 2AM, my eyes are really gonna be hurt..

it will depend on which APIs the app is built with. I don't know which desktop environment you are refering to, but I assume it's one, not all linux based operating systems. But in this linux DE, if I run xeyes will it come up in dark mode?

Does MacOS have night shift like iOS does? Else, f.lux really does the trick.

yes it does indeed - it operates in much the same manner - set by the clock or manually enabled.

Perhaps try sleeping at 2AM.

Not everyone is lucky enough to work 9-5.

Maybe try telling that to every user?

OK. Everyone, get some sleep.

It's so kind of you.

Speaking of Stacks, I keep remembering this different feature: https://www.dropbox.com/s/loojgwkskhqn4lu/About%20Stacks.pdf...

It's not designed for pros. Linux is. Apple is about easy usage and they benefit hugely from having Linux underneath, which is why they even are considered by real pros. It looks nice and that's what people like.

It's not "Linux underneath".

It's a Mach microkernel and a BSD userland taken from FreeBSD, which coincided with them hiring the founder of FreeBSD into a role to do release management. He's left since.

The fact you don't know this suggests you might not be aware of macOS fundamentals, the history of OS X, or MacOS that preceded it, the design decisions that went into all of those, the user groups they targeted at key points (including the adoption of FreeBSD userland), or their overall design intent.

I therefore struggle to agree with your premise that it's "not designed for pros", or that you are qualified to make that assertion.

Their definition of 'Pro' stretches much wider than developers. Traditionally, their Pro Apps were Aperture (raw editing), Logic (audio workstation) and Final Cut (video editing). Of course, the Adobe suite fits that moniker as well. For most people doing video/audio/photo editing, macOS and Windows are the primary choices (though you can obviously do this on Linux as well).

Note: macOS is not using Linux underneath. It uses the XNU kernel, which is based on Mach and BSD.

For the longest time ever MacOS was the OS for professional print, professional graphic design, professional sound design and professional sound editing, professional video editing.

When MacOS moved to a BSD-based system, it won over a large portion of software development. Go to almost any IT conference, you'll see people with MacBooks running MacOS (some run *nixes on MacBooks because of hardware).

In the past 4 to 5 years though Apple has let MacOS more or less stagnate.

I take Apple at their word. If they don't claim to have focussed on stability in this release, then I won't assume that they did.

I don't think they'd ever admit to focussing on stability because that would imply the OS isn't already stable.

But that's exactly how they marketed Snow Leopard (macOS 10.6). They even said it would have "no new features", instead focusing on making it faster and more reliable.

Fair enough, Snow Leopard marketing was before my time noticing Apple's existence. I've just noticed that in general they never admit that they've done anything wrong or made any mistakes, and it seems hard to market a release for stability without somehow admitting to existing mistakes.

They joyously announced zero new features for Snow Leopard over Leopard and it has been known as the most excellent release of OSX, ever (before the iOS-ification of the system and deep iCloud integration).

SJ had plenty of moments where he admitted mistakes, together with the new solution. IMO he was much more engaged with user feedback than Cook/Ive/Federighi.

Bingo.

I was hoping they were going to remove some features that didn't work out - Launchpad for example, which seems to have been a spasm in macOS a couple years ago to make macOS more suitable for a touch screen that never came.

My understanding is a lot of users use LaunchPad (possibly all those who don't have an Applications folder dragged to their dock and do not know they can just type the name of their app to run it via spotlight)

It's somewhat useful on a laptop where it's easily invoked by a trackpad gesture — I've sent a few users who consider it to be where all their apps 'are'.

I for one am extremely happy if they work on stability rather than gimmicks (or worse, breaking my workflow which pointless changes for the sake of change).

The problem is, it's difficult to be excited in advance about a stability which is being promised, but can only be verified some months away.

But I don't care really. Give me an OS which works and doesn't get in my way. Something without ridiculous amounts of telemetry, please.

The side story could be different: very low effort on MacOS -> No much new features -> No much work to stability issues.

did they announce all the fixes? if not then I'd assume that's why people aren't focusing on them.

I too would appreciate stability and fixes. I know they are listed in the notes for each release. Still if that really was the focus that needs to be communicated

note I didn't watch the announcements so if they did emphasize that great!

I think no matter what the focus is, they’re never gonna spend time during highly publicized events highlighting bugs in previous versions that they’ve fixed!

I'm 100% with you. I heard nothing about focus on stability, or bug fixes. Really, just silence about it.

Seems like some people still got this ongoing "war" concept in their minds between major desktop OSes. They demand breathtaking features that will make them outstanding placed side by side with competition and all what they're getting are gimmicks, changes for sake of change. And I don't find that surprising either; for more than a decade OS are feature complete and you can do your everyday chores no matter if it's Windows, OSX or any *nix with DE of choice - the difference is in style that mentioned are giving; so it's hard to give something really meaningful that would change the workflow, especially when majority of people are more happy with mobile envirnoments

I'd disagree. I can think of multiple feature that only OSes can improve upon, not apps.

One is, creating a common platform for apps to share data, live data, with one another. By live data, I mean editing a spreadsheet in Excel, and seeing it change a chart in Photoshop, instantaneously. Not after saving the file. Not after hitting a refresh button somewhere.

I know, this has been possible for decades, but there are no apps taking advantage of it, mainly because these things need a common platform with well-defined standards.

This is something that OSes are best positioned to implement, but none do.

Maybe because it doesn't actually mean anything. It's like those random numbers they pull out... 40% faster app starts etc... In practice, you won't even think about it in real usage. They take some part of upstart procedure and load it afterwards in the background so it seems the app is faster. It's smoke and mirrors.

I am guessing you have some specific examples of that happening in mind? Otherwise, you’re just spreading FUD, not to mention insulting the developers working there.

PS: i am pretty sure caching, pre-compiling, etc are perfectly reasonable optimization techniques that many of us rely on.