macOS Sierra

[ChattanoogaPhil]

Finally... Siri is coming to Mac with macOS Sierra.

Siri completely changed the way I use a Smartphone. Very much looking forward to Siri on my iMac. Supposed to be released this Fall.

Good for 2009 iMac and MacBook. 2010 for Air, Pro and Mini.

 

[Ben_hutcherson]

I've been running since the day DP1 dropped(same day as WWDC), although not as a main OS.

To me at this point, Siri is more of a gimmick on the computer than anything else. I've used it, but more to play around with. I interact with my computer much differently than I do with my phone, which is why I see a lot of value. Your mileage may vary, though.

Aside from that, Apple has deprecated a LOT of computers. My faithful Mac Pro 1,1 is at the end of the line, as the processors don't support some of the instruction sets needed for Sierra. Those of us with 1,1s have been getting along quite well for several years now, but we're at the end. The list of "hackable" computers for Sierra is quite small-I have it running on my mid-2009 white Macbook and it should run on my MBP 4,1, but those are the only unsupported computers I have that can be hacked. I actually have ordered a replacement WiFi card for the MBP 4,1, as the one it came with from the factory is not Sierra compatible.

 

[johngalt]

I've been resisting upgrading, as I don't like the way the OS has been dumbed down to look like an iPad and the loss of Rosetta. I will have to soon, new versions of some of my software no longer run on my system.

 

[Ben_hutcherson]

I've been resisting upgrading, as I don't like the way the OS has been dumbed down to look like an iPad and the loss of Rosetta. I will have to soon, new versions of some of my software no longer run on my system.

There's no question that Snow Leopard is one of the best OSs of the modern era. SL is to OS X what Windows 7 is to Windows.

In fact, I acquired an early 2008 black Macbook the other day. I knew the previous owner personally, and she's not that computer savvy. It was running Leopard, and I pretty promptly upgraded it to Snow Leopard. The computer officially runs Lion and can be upgraded to Mountain Lion, but there's not a compelling reason to do so that I see. It runs great on SL, and I have another Blackbook(late '07, which is basically the same as the '08 but with a slower processor of the same generation) and it does run ML okay.

Aside from that, OS X Mavericks was-to me-the last "good" version of OS X that Apple made and it is my main OS both on my main laptop and my work computer. It's fast and stable, has some of the nice iOS-like features but has them toned down relative to Lion, and doesn't look like it was colored with watercolors.

My mid-2012 MBP(my main computer) can't run Snow Leopard(interestingly enough, my late 2011 can, although it's not straight forward) and I do have some PPC programs that I need on it occasionally. I have a Snow Leopard Server virtual machine that satisfies the occasional need for Rosetta. Otherwise, I go straight to a G5 Quad. My newest computer can "power through" a lot of PPC programs and make them run well, but some that were heavily coded to leverage the G5 instruction set don't run as well in Rosetta since it only emulates a G4.

Apple has traditionally provided security updates for the current OS and the previous two versions. With things on a yearly update cycle, that means three years of support for an OS. Unfortunately, that means that 10.9 is rolling off support this fall.

Additionally, the new versions of Xcode coming out do not code for anything before 10.9. That means that programs that users of older OSs who have been getting along with things like the most current versions of Firefox are going to be left out in the cold. Office 2016 requires 10.10 or newer. Currently, there's an individual who has been maintaining a fork of Firefox(called Tenfourfox) for PowerPC computers but he's going to have to change strategies with the next ESR of Firefox. There's also been some talk of starting a project like this for Snow Leopard, but no one with the knowledge has volunteered to take the task on.

 

[chaparrito]

Siri, meh... but it looks good for other reasons. Can't wait.

 

[johngalt]

I tried updating to 10.9, but Mail was broken and failed to import my mailboxes to the new format. Then iTunes was broken and wouldn't sync over the cable and tried to force the use of iCloud. So I reverted back. Right now I have 2 Mac book pros, both 2011. One has snow leopard, the other mountain lion. I had to update my primary machine to mountain lion to run some apps I need that aren't supported by SL, but I like SL better. I will have to upgrade eventually because turbo tax won't run on it next year.

So far mountain lion is ok, except for the loss of Rosetta. They also dumbed down the Finder, and I've read that trend continues with the newer versions.

I like the stability of OS X, but usability pales in comparison to the old system 7 days. I still miss Eudora, Mail is very inadequate replacement.

 

[Ben_hutcherson]

So far mountain lion is ok, except for the loss of Rosetta. They also dumbed down the Finder, and I've read that trend continues with the newer versions.

I like the stability of OS X, but usability pales in comparison to the old system 7 days. I still miss Eudora, Mail is very inadequate replacement.

I haven't really seen much dumbing down of the finder, and bear in mind that this is coming from someone who collects Macs as a hobby and has used every version of OS X at some point in the last 6 months.

The biggest issue was the tag/label system introduced in 10.9 that stopped coloring the all of the text(as it was in system 6 in favor of a small dot next to the file/folder. For those of us who have used tags for a while, it was a pretty shocking change as the dots are a LOT harder to see. At the same time, though, it allows you to put multiple tags on one file/folder. I've not seen the need to do this myself, and Apple has planted their feet pretty firmly on this being the way they do tags now despite disagreements to the contrary.

As a side note, the coding for this system hasn't changed since it was introduced-if I mount a volume containing files that was created in System 6 in Sierra, Sierra will read the tags.

Oh, and System 7.5 was way better than System 7 . I maintain that 8.6 is probably my favorite release of the "classic" Mac operating system.

 

[Rule3]

Do you prefer the English, Australian or American Siri?

 

[Tom S.]

Oh, that Mac. I thought you were talking about McDonald's.

 

[johngalt]

I haven't really seen much dumbing down of the finder, and bear in mind that this is coming from someone who collects Macs as a hobby and has used every version of OS X at some point in the last 6 months.

The biggest issue was the tag/label system introduced in 10.9 that stopped coloring the all of the text(as it was in system 6 in favor of a small dot next to the file/folder. For those of us who have used tags for a while, it was a pretty shocking change as the dots are a LOT harder to see. At the same time, though, it allows you to put multiple tags on one file/folder. I've not seen the need to do this myself, and Apple has planted their feet pretty firmly on this being the way they do tags now despite disagreements to the contrary.

As a side note, the coding for this system hasn't changed since it was introduced-if I mount a volume containing files that was created in System 6 in Sierra, Sierra will read the tags.

Oh, and System 7.5 was way better than System 7 . I maintain that 8.6 is probably my favorite release of the "classic" Mac operating system.

7.6 was probably my favorite classic OS. I didn't really like the grey theme that was introduced with 8. 7.x looked cleaner to me, while 8 was a bit cartoonish.

One big improvement that came with OS X is the interleaving of windows, which made it much easier to drag and drop between applications. With classic, clicking in a window brought ALL of an apps windows forward. In OS X, it brings forward just the window that was clicked.

In the more recent OS Xs, the elimination of color and making everything shades of grey, removal of the shortcuts in the finder side bar, narrow scrollbars with no arrows at the ends, replacement of the old high resolution icons with illogical symbols designed for a low-resolution iPhone screen are some of the annoyances.

I'm not sure how much attention I should give to the complaints about the newer versions being buggier. There is always lots of complaining when a new version is released. That said, both 10.6 and 10.8 have been rock solid.

 

[Ben_hutcherson]

7.6 was probably my favorite classic OS. I didn't really like the grey theme that was introduced with 8. 7.x looked cleaner to me, while 8 was a bit cartoonish.

One big improvement that came with OS X is the interleaving of windows, which made it much easier to drag and drop between applications. With classic, clicking in a window brought ALL of an apps windows forward. In OS X, it brings forward just the window that was clicked.

In the more recent OS Xs, the elimination of color and making everything shades of grey, removal of the shortcuts in the finder side bar, narrow scrollbars with no arrows at the ends, replacement of the old high resolution icons with illogical symbols designed for a low-resolution iPhone screen are some of the annoyances.

I'm not sure how much attention I should give to the complaints about the newer versions being buggier. There is always lots of complaining when a new version is released. That said, both 10.6 and 10.8 have been rock solid.

I guess I like the Platinum, which is why I like 8.6. Feature wise, one big selling point for me is support for USB mass storage devices. 8.6 is also a lot "lighter" than OS 9(in any trim) so it's a good OS for lower spec systems. I'm running it on my Kanga(first generation Powerbook G3) as OS 9 is a bit too much on 160mb of RAM(max) and a 250mhz G3.

And, yes, the finder in OS X as a whole is much improved. There's also the whole pre-emptive multitasking thing so that you can do something like copy a file without it grinding your system to a halt.

One of the things that I think has resulted in the "bugginess" complaint is the fact that recent OS releases almost seem rushed. Truth be told, they are, with the current ~12 month cycle on them.

Tiger is the Windows XP of Macs, and it was in use for a full 27 months. It is one of the most stable and, IMO, overall best versions of OS X there has been. Snow Leopard lasted around 20 months. Both of these OSs had their teething pains, but both matured into great OSs.

UI wise, I REALLY am not a fan of the flat blurry look that came in with 10.10(Yosemite).

 

[johngalt]

I was never a fan of USB drives, especially since that era had USB 1.1 (slow) ports. I'm a much bigger fan of FireWire. I even added a FireWire card to my old powermac 7500 (gone now).

I never upgraded my PowerBook G4 beyond Tiger because leopard lost the classic environment and added nothing useful. My aluminum PowerBook came with tiger installed and I stuck with it.

My titanium PowerBook came with OS 9 and 10.1, and could boot either. Awesome machine. 10.3 was also fantastic, I ran that for a long time before upgrading to 10.4.

The Mac's ability to boot from any drive, the migration assistant, and the OS having all of the drivers for every supported Mac makes maintenance easy.

I can put one in target disk mode and use it as an external drive to boot the other. I can clone from one to the other willy-nilley. My main machine has been migrated, over several generations, from my original titanium G4. It looks like my old machine, just much faster. Occasionally I find something that won't run and delete it. You would be surprised how much still works.

Another cool trick. I upgraded my main macbookpro SSD with a bigger one. Bought an external FireWire case for the original, booted from it, cloned it to the new bigger one. Worked perfectly.

Last year bought a used 2011 model as a backup. It came with a mechanical drive with 10.10 on it. swapped in the old original SSD (now in the external case). Worked perfectly, the new machine looks just like the original.

Worried that you won't like an upgrade? Clone the drive. If you don't like it, restore the clone. I've done this many times.

The capability to clone any drive and boot from any drive makes maintenance trivially easy.

 

[Ben_hutcherson]

I actually am close to finishing a project with a PowerMac 8600.

It has a 700mhz Sonnet G4 upgrade, 1gb of RAM, a Radeon 9200 video card, a Sonnet ATA card, and a Sonnet USB/FW card.

It's currently running Tiger(and doing so well) but will also soon be running Leopard. It took me a bit of hunting to get everything together for a reasonable price. The G4 was the key piece, and I got it in trade for a 1ghz Titanium PowerBook. G4 cards for x500 and x600 series PowerMacs are quite hard to find.

I also lucked into finding a seller with 128mb sticks of EDO RAM for a reasonable price. OWC had it for a while for $11 a stick, but recently raised their price to $20. I managed to get the most recent lot I bought from the Ebay seller at $8/stick(admittedly I'm a repeat customer and have now bought a fair bit of RAM from them).

The really fun beige Mac I have, though, is the G3 minitower in my office that I was given. It has a 1ghz Sonnet G4 along with a "Jackhammer" SCSI card driving a pair of 15K drives in RAID 0. It has a Sonnet USB/FW card also and came with a Radeon 7000. I upgraded the video card to a Radeon 9200.

BTW, I'm in agreement on FW, but unfortunately the market has spoken and you can't beat the convenience of a USB flash drive. I still use a Firewire external as Time Machine drive for my main Macbook Pro, despite it having USB 3.0. BTW, I'm running a 1TB Samsung Evo in that computer, and it's quite fast.

 

[chaparrito]

UI wise, I REALLY am not a fan of the flat blurry look that came in with 10.10(Yosemite).

Neither am I, but it's a small point really. My two biggest beefs with the most recent iterations are the disappearance of the scroll bars and the inability to secure empty trash as an option. I realize it's due to the use of solid state drives and has a terminal workaround, but that's a PITA.

 

[ChattanoogaPhil]

It's here... just downloaded macOS Sierra.

Really like Siri. Lliterally allows me to use the iMac just like an iPhone for everything (other than portability ) and more. Instead of having to click on the Siri icon you can go into Diction and set up a voice command for "Hey Siri" and Siri will automatically come up.

 

[bigwheelzip]

Really like Siri.

Is that smooth jazz I hear?

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtt0MqG0lQY[/ame]

 

[Ben_hutcherson]

I downloaded the golden master candidate on my test machine last week(a white 2010 Macbook) but I guess need to bring it up to speed.

For "mission critical" work I never use the .0 version of an OS release. I actually just upgraded my main laptop from Mavericks to El Capitan last week also. My Mac Pro at work is still running Mavericks, and since it's past the official support window doing an upgrade isn't as straight forward as it is on a supported Mac.

 

[johngalt]

If I don't care about Siri, is there any other season to upgrade?

 

[ChattanoogaPhil]

There's a list on Apples's website. What may be of interest or benefit to someone is another matter.

iCloud storage and integration across all devices via iCloud is the overriding theme is some Sierra additions. A couple examples - Optimized Storage might be of significant benefit to a MacBook user with a 128gig flash drive. And everything you save to your Mac desktop and in your documents folder can be automatically uploaded to iCloud and then shared on demand across all your devices.

There's several new things that someone may or may not find useful but Siri is by far the most significant.

Hey Siri....

 

[Ben_hutcherson]

And here I am installing Mountain Lion on a first generation Macbook Air(what a piece of ****)...

In any case, as I said I never switch to a new OS until the .1 release.