<story><title>First Look: macOS Monterey Public Beta</title><url>https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/07/first-look-macos-monterey-public-beta/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jillesvangurp</author><text>I use macs but don&amp;#x27;t use iphones&amp;#x2F;ipads and instead prefer Android. In general, I don&amp;#x27;t really use a lot of the services and apps that come with macs. I don&amp;#x27;t use iCloud. I don&amp;#x27;t use iMail. I don&amp;#x27;t use Safari. I don&amp;#x27;t use Facetime. I don&amp;#x27;t use keynote, pages, iMovie, Garageband, etc. So, like with most OS X &amp;#x2F; Mac OS releases of the last half decade, there&amp;#x27;s actually very little (if anything) I can point at that actually genuinely is an improvement for me.&lt;p&gt;The base OS has mostly gotten worse actually. It&amp;#x27;s gotten a lot more anal about requiring signed binaries and micromanaging permissions. Dropping 32 bit means my steam library is now full of stuff that no longer works. OpenGL support is a deprecated afterthought meaning that a lot of OSS stuff either won&amp;#x27;t work or barely works. I recently updated my macbook pro but aside from some minor icon rearranging in the menu bar, I can&amp;#x27;t really tell the difference with last year&amp;#x27;s edition. Most of this review is about applications that Apple bundles with the OS that compete with third party stuff that I use and prefer. Couldn&amp;#x27;t care less about any of that. But I appreciate that it&amp;#x27;s nice for people buying into the whole Apple everything experience.&lt;p&gt;The reason I use macs is mainly because it&amp;#x27;s nice hardware with a unix like OS. Most of the tools I use are open source. I user Firefox for browsing, homebrew, docker, Intellij, VS Code, Darktable for photos, etc. I could easily switch to Linux or Windows and use the same tools. But macs are convenient. For now. It seems MS is much more on top of making Windows developer friendly than Apple is currently. It wouldn&amp;#x27;t be hard to do for Apple but for some reason they are not interested in that anymore.</text></item><item><author>iansinnott</author><text>Do any macOS users actually want unification? I do not, but I&amp;#x27;m just one data point.&lt;p&gt;Being able to use mobile apps on a computer is a clear win, but that&amp;#x27;s a purely additive change—you don&amp;#x27;t need change the existing OS appearance or functionality to accomplish it.&lt;p&gt;I worry that &amp;quot;unification&amp;quot; will be realized by dumbing down the desktop rather than empowering the mobile device.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ithkuil</author><text>I also use Mac as a glorified unix OS with an WiFi that works, printing that works, laptop sleep and awake that works, and  UI that works across external monitors with various DPI settings seamlessly.&lt;p&gt;I know many of the aforementioned issues have been fixed (to some extent) for linux. I&amp;#x27;d be willing to give the Linux desktop another try but:&lt;p&gt;1. I really love my LG 5k external monitor. It&amp;#x27;s still hard to find hardware for linux that can drive it (especially laptops)&lt;p&gt;2. I got used to how fonts are rendered on macos&lt;p&gt;3. Keyboard shortcuts systematically different (CMD&amp;#x2F;meta vs Ctrl) make it harder to occasionally switch between the two systems. I know it sounds silly. But it&amp;#x27;s hard to remap those modifiers in a way that keeps everything else working the same.</text></comment>
<story><title>First Look: macOS Monterey Public Beta</title><url>https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/07/first-look-macos-monterey-public-beta/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jillesvangurp</author><text>I use macs but don&amp;#x27;t use iphones&amp;#x2F;ipads and instead prefer Android. In general, I don&amp;#x27;t really use a lot of the services and apps that come with macs. I don&amp;#x27;t use iCloud. I don&amp;#x27;t use iMail. I don&amp;#x27;t use Safari. I don&amp;#x27;t use Facetime. I don&amp;#x27;t use keynote, pages, iMovie, Garageband, etc. So, like with most OS X &amp;#x2F; Mac OS releases of the last half decade, there&amp;#x27;s actually very little (if anything) I can point at that actually genuinely is an improvement for me.&lt;p&gt;The base OS has mostly gotten worse actually. It&amp;#x27;s gotten a lot more anal about requiring signed binaries and micromanaging permissions. Dropping 32 bit means my steam library is now full of stuff that no longer works. OpenGL support is a deprecated afterthought meaning that a lot of OSS stuff either won&amp;#x27;t work or barely works. I recently updated my macbook pro but aside from some minor icon rearranging in the menu bar, I can&amp;#x27;t really tell the difference with last year&amp;#x27;s edition. Most of this review is about applications that Apple bundles with the OS that compete with third party stuff that I use and prefer. Couldn&amp;#x27;t care less about any of that. But I appreciate that it&amp;#x27;s nice for people buying into the whole Apple everything experience.&lt;p&gt;The reason I use macs is mainly because it&amp;#x27;s nice hardware with a unix like OS. Most of the tools I use are open source. I user Firefox for browsing, homebrew, docker, Intellij, VS Code, Darktable for photos, etc. I could easily switch to Linux or Windows and use the same tools. But macs are convenient. For now. It seems MS is much more on top of making Windows developer friendly than Apple is currently. It wouldn&amp;#x27;t be hard to do for Apple but for some reason they are not interested in that anymore.</text></item><item><author>iansinnott</author><text>Do any macOS users actually want unification? I do not, but I&amp;#x27;m just one data point.&lt;p&gt;Being able to use mobile apps on a computer is a clear win, but that&amp;#x27;s a purely additive change—you don&amp;#x27;t need change the existing OS appearance or functionality to accomplish it.&lt;p&gt;I worry that &amp;quot;unification&amp;quot; will be realized by dumbing down the desktop rather than empowering the mobile device.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spinningslate</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m in the same boat.  Mac-as-a-developer-workstation, not Mac-as-a-consumer-dvice.  Apple seems entirely disinterested in the former market segment.  Perhaps it never was: the mass adoption of macs in the early-mid 2000s might just have been a fortuitous accident, not somethgin Apple ever courted.&lt;p&gt;Either way:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It seems MS is much more on top of making Windows developer friendly than Apple is currently.&lt;p&gt;I see that too and it worries me.  Not because I&amp;#x27;m avidly anti-Microsoft, but because all the portents are we&amp;#x27;re heading back to the place where Microsoft dominates the desktop, with no practical alternatives.  That wasn&amp;#x27;t good first time around and I don&amp;#x27;t see it being any better if repeated.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft is being very smart - and successful - in their strategy.  Whereas the original Windows commoditised the underlying hardware, current &amp;quot;Windows&amp;quot; is commoditising operating systems.  Hence subsuming Android and Linux into the platform.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Windows&amp;quot;, though, is really not the way to think about the platform.  The deep integration of Teams into W11 is a pivotal step.  Teams - with office365 - &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the new &amp;quot;Windows&amp;quot; - the platform that Microsoft wants to dominate end-user computing with on the front end. With Azure on the back.&lt;p&gt;As a developer, I don&amp;#x27;t want to only have a single choice.  But I don&amp;#x27;t see anyone meaningfully challenging Microsoft.  Apple seems only interested in consumers. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t personally touch a Chromebook given Google&amp;#x27;s insatiable desire to monetise my every keystroke.  Amazon seems only interested in the back end and, actually, that seems like strategic myopia.  Microsoft really understands that owning the end-user experience is key.  What future for AWS if all developers are using Windows, and it already &amp;quot;just works&amp;quot; with Azure?&lt;p&gt;So I&amp;#x27;m not optimistic for the future.  On the plus side, it&amp;#x27;s why I bought a laptop from System76, and paid ElementaryOS to use their distro.  It&amp;#x27;s noise level compared to Windows&amp;#x2F;Mac, but that might just be what ensures there&amp;#x27;s a tiny crack of hope for desktop diversity.</text></comment>