Looking across the updates in El Capitan, the story is clear: Apple is making life way better for people who live in its ecosystem. But if you don’t live in Apple’s garden, the benefits are less clear. Yes, it’s faster and there are bugfixes all around, but to take advantage of Apple’s updates you really need to use Apple’s apps.
I just want El Capitan’s Metal and Aero Snap. That name is horrible, though.
I just want an OSX realease on par with Snow Leopard in stability and speed. That’s all I ask.
I don’t care about stupid Windows or iOS features, I want QUALITY. Please Apple, give us back the simple and polished product that OSX was in the past.
Mavericks was a step in the right direction and El Capitan looks good too… but We need 2 or 3 bug fixing releases to get Snow Leopard levels of stability back. Please Apple, please focus on quality again. Quality was the key difference between OSX and all the rest.
Why are you asking for something that they are already specifically doing in OS X and iOS?
The quality of MacOS has been quite variable the last few years. There’s a reason there were a lot of holdouts using 10.6. I primarily use it for development, so I don’t actually use much of the GUI stuff, but the stupid small scrollbars are really annoying. I also went through a phase of getting a “black screen of death” several times a week… selecting text in Emacs(!); tripping over some fundamental bug somewhere. The removal of the maximise button in favour of fullscreen is also massively annoying.
MacOSX 10.8 was a wreck. It came with a hybrid toolchain of clang++ and GNU libstdc++. So much stuff was broken it was untrue; huge chunks of the standard C++ library were unusable. Just creating a std::locale object would segfault your program… This has improved a since they switched to libc++ for later releases. But it’s only with 10.10 we have a relatively bug-free clang++. But you have to use lldb which I still don’t find half as good as gdb; I find it vastly less useful on the command-line, and it seems to have been written with other uses in mind.
However, they now won’t let you run a debugger without it
– being codesigned
– being given special privs
The upshot is that you can’t run the debugger over SSH (the priv escalation password prompt is GUI only), and you can’t run gdb without faffing around with your own self-signed codesigning cert. When your Mac builds are all on remote build nodes, this doesn’t help. In fact, I now do all my clang++/libc++ build debugging on FreeBSD to avoid the pain!!
Honestly, I can’t see from a UI point of view much improvement after 10.6 other than maybe Spaces. It’s been either pointless bling or regressive changes for the sake of it. The changes inspired by iOS have been poor choices for desktop use, and I can’t help but feel that the desktop UI is no longer being developed with real usability in mind (as in being simple, discoverable, functional, and efficient, not just following a fashion trend). Not that Apple are alone in that camp.
I think your prayers have been heard.
Been running El Cap’ off of a partition for 6 days, and the performance boost is rather impressive. I already thought Yosemite was snappy on my Macbook Pro, but this thing really flies.
I’m one of the few who uses fullscreen all day long (go iTerm2 and splits), and OS X is years ahead of the competition in this area.
So far, El Capitan rocks (!)
Wait… what area are you referring to? The fast on old hardware area or the split terminal app available arena? And what is the competition?
I think its arguable in either case. Although, I haven’t tried El Cap yet.
Totally with you on the full screen. OS X did this correctly while Windows screwed it up royally. On the Mac each program can implement a sensible full screen view in the same application. On Windows each application is forced to provide a totally separate and crippled metro app which behaves totally different and doesn’t integrate with the desktop version.
…am I missing something? Any application can go fullscreen on Windows, and none of them require Metro for it.
Huh?
Edited 2015-06-16 19:45 UTC
Windows doesn’t have a full screen mode. Maximized is not full screen.
I would personally rather them throw their weight behind Vulkan as that’s the new standard for Graphics from Khronos. I’m not seeing anything from Metal that necessitates it’s existence in light of what Vulkan will bring.
Why any of them? Apple virtually only sell mobile GPU computers. What is the point of reducing API overhead when the CPU is always waiting for the GPU anyway?
It’s more often GPU which is waiting data from CPU than the reverse, in fact.
Hence why Mantle, Metal and now Vulkan were pushed by GPU manufacters. They know where main bottleneck is these days…
On a desktop with a powerful GPU and a mediocre CPU, yes. It is even better on tablets and mobile phones where the GPUs are even more powerful compared to the CPU. It makes less sense on an iMac and MacBooks where the GPU is shit, but the CPU powerful. I guess it does simplify the numbers of APIs though, and if programmers are using the lower level APIs anyway, nothing is lost by supporting them, they shouldn’t be slower anywhere, only more complicated to use.
An OOP API built on top of Objective-C and Swift, with C++11 for shader code, instead of the same old crufty C that Khronos keeps using.
A proper SDK for font handling, shader compilation, texture handling, model files instead of roll your own Khronos attitude. I really would like to earn 0.01 euro for each time a developer re-invents the wheel to display a triangle in OpenGL (Vulkan will be no different).
Apple went to the trouble of re-writing all their graphical and compute desktop Kits on top of Metal.
They aren’t going to throw away that work for adding Vulkan support, specially when all AAA game studios that matter already announced Metal support on their engines.
And this is what matters, game engines. Any game developer knows the 3D API it just a tiny bit of the engine, which can be easily handled via a plugin system.
Before anyone mentions that Apple is listed on the Vulkan work group.
1 – So is Sony and they hardly use any OpenGL outside their Android phones and WebGL for the PS 4 dashboard
2 – Apple can have played a Microsoft card and used their presence at Khronos meetings to improve Metal
Apple rescued OpenGL from dying with their decision to use it for their iPhone. Now like don’t need it anymore, as developers will just use whatever they propose.
Okay, now you’re just trolling. Apple rescuing OpenGL! Give me a break!
Have you ever did graphics programming on mobile platforms before iPhone was born?!?
I did.
The options were between vendor specific hardware accelerated 3D APIs, J2ME M3GS and software rendering of OpenGL ES 1.0.
The N95 was probably the only handset ever offering an usable hardware accelerated OpenGL ES 1.0 implementation.
No sane developer would pick OpenGL ES 1.0 before the iPhone was released.
Edited 2015-06-16 08:44 UTC
Ah, so because mobile hardware was too slow and limited for OpenGL before the iPhone arrived, Apple “rescued” OpenGL. Never mind the fact that normal OpenGL was supported on Windows, Linux, OS X for decades by the time iPhone arrived. What a rescue! Oh and don’t mention this never heard of mobile OS called Android, which also happens to use OpenGL ES. But I guess they would NEVER EVER have picked OpenGL ES if Apple had not done so! No no!
Edited 2015-06-16 09:16 UTC
If you ever written any OpenGL code you would surely be aware that OpenGL ES != OpenGL, besides some basic common APIs, thus requiring multiple code paths.
Android wasn’t a thing when the iPhone hit the streets.
OpenGL on Linux has mostly been a joke for developing serious games unless one uses the proprietary drivers.
Most developers targeting Windows back then, wouldn’t exchange the DirectX tooling and support given by all vendors vs OpenGL.
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055
No serious studio ever bothered with PSGL (OpenGL ES 1.0 + Cg for shaders) on the PS3. The only games console to ever offer some form of OpenGL support.
http://sandstormgames.ca/blog/tag/libgcm/
OpenGL on OS X has always lagged behind, with drivers done exclusively by Apple and buggier than the ones provided by the graphics vendors.
El Capitan is still stuck in OpenGL 4.1, with the latest version being 4.5. Apple also is the only vendor not offering the compatibility context.
And that is because nothing Apple sells (except maybe the highest end Mac Pro products) is even remotely able to do anything those newer versions can do. My MacBook Pro returns “4.1 INTEL-10.6.20”. I’m not even sure the hardware in this laptop can actually DO compute shaders!
Still, how exactly can Apple have been “rescuing” OpenGL when they treat any GPU technology as an unpleasant thing they have to update once every 5 year? Amazing OpenGL survived it!
By creating a lucrative market for games on the App Store, games being the top applications being sold and using OpenGL ES as the 3D API.
Valve only added OpenGL support to their engine for bringing their games to the Mac, back in 2010.
https://www.opengl.org/news/comments/valve-source-engine-overhauled-…
Edited 2015-06-16 19:11 UTC
Wow, what a snark off! Thanks at least for providing some information in between those back bites.
Nice to you.
But people did graphics programming before mobile platforms were born too, and still do it.
I did and still do.
And OpenGL was and still is the de-facto standard for that kinds of needs, even if its internal design is showing its age indeed.
Hence Vulkan: better, quicker, simpler, moderner, but still open, still crossplatform, still generic.
Which Metal isn’t and, according Apple’s history, won’t be.
I fail to see how a closed-plateform GPU API useable with languages mostly only used on subset of closed-platerfoms could ever become the de-facto cross-plateform language-agnostic GPU API.
But feel free to enlight me.
Please put down your mobile/apple focus lens, GPU landscape is way larger than that.
If OpenGL, an old GPU API, is still often used 25 years later , it’s not for the GL API quality, but for its openess, its portability.
Sounds that not depending on one closed platform matters to more developers than you think…
Edited 2015-06-16 10:09 UTC
♫ Para bailar la bamba…
…Yo no soy marinero. Soy capitán. Soy capitán. ♫
Edited 2015-06-16 03:19 UTC
I’m surprised that anyone who wants the Aero Snap functionality isn’t already using one of the implementations of it available for Mac OS X. Most of them improve on the Windows version, adding extra features and customisation options.
The version in El Capitan has more limitations, forcing you to use the full screen mode, split between two windows. As the article points out, it doesn’t even work properly with all the applications that support the current full screen mode, and some software (e.g. Adobe apps) don’t support it at all.
If they get the Basics right first….
* WiFi that just works – they control half of he hardware so it should be easier than win/linux
* a GUI that doesn’t stutter and lag on ghz cpus (my £250 win7 was smoother and snappier)
* how hard is it to place windows precisely? Snap to edge? For those without gestures the scroll bar is insanely thin…
By after many years of prioritising rmojis and continuity… I don’t have high hopes.
Oh and that file explorer… Who likes it?
Networking must be stable again. That is the single biggest issue with Mavericks. discoveryd was a huge mistake.
I’m glad apple is taking performance seriously, but you don’t optimize a system until it’s stable and Yosemite is not that. Apple needs to get some good QA and listen to them.
They need to fix bugs. They need to test in different network environments. Wifi, LAN, bad connections, etc. Not the perfect lab with high end switches and fantasy.
I’m tired of my apple TV not streaming right or my Mac renaming itself every 2 hours. I’m tired of my airport extreme needing a reboot every day so my nest can stay online. (2.4 ghz band is unstable)
Paying a premium for apple products was OK when they worked well. Now, it makes me very angry. It’s bad enough I can’t find a new mac to upgrade to because I have to spend 2000 dollars to replace a 2012 mac mini to get the same CPU power.
IIRC they dropped discoveryd and went back to mDNSresponder, which probably helps a bit.
Finder is indeed a real PITA. 5 essential features missing in Finder: sort with folders first, (temporarely) show hidden files, 2 column view (a la Norton Commander), refresh button for remote file systems, empty trash for USB sticks.
It is the main reason I am mostly using my Dell XPS13 preloaded with Ubuntu iso my MBP.
That name… sounds like an 80s porn star. And it’s spelled wrong, the captain is in spanish el capitán. So basically Apple is now selling an operating system named after an 80s porn star, spelled wrong? Eh…..let me think about it, OK?
Edited 2015-06-16 09:07 UTC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Capitan
Blimey!
No need to think about it, since you’re wrong.
I’m leaning more towards Latin American dictator or drug lord.
Can I turn it off? If not, Yosemite will be my last version of OS X. I like the OS, but I can only tolerate so much vendor lock-out.
You can turn it off.
According to Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/06/preview-os-x-el-capitans-first…
“Almost all of El Capitan’s updates are aimed at detail-oriented power users who are intimately familiar with the platform and its apps. I’m sure that not all OS X users even make use of the window management features present in Yosemite, so they’re not really in a position to appreciate the improvements in El Capitan. You’d miss pretty much all of Mail’s improvements if you don’t use trackpad gestures or Full Screen mode.”
“So, exciting? No, not really, not unless you’re a window management enthusiast who is excited to dance on Helvetica Neue’s grave (hi).”
So i think the article is somewhat contradicting or a bit too premature.But what’s to complain about a free upgrade.
No OpenGL 4.5? They must be sleeping.
Edited 2015-06-17 05:02 UTC
I am really impressed on how they manage to make every single version of OSX uglier than the last since 10.4 onwards.
Compared to Kit Kat, Ice Cream… El Capitan is a stellar name.
I have never been able to take Android seriously with the names it gives it releases… Sorry, maybe my own biases but they are just completely freak’n stupid.