Any thoughts on macOS 13 Ventura?

[Clix Pix]

So far, so good on my machines here -- installed Ventura a week or so after it became available, and then yesterday did the software update. The M1 machine, of course, is most responsive, took it right in her stride, but the older machines (2017 12" MacBook, 2018 15" MBP) are also fine with it, although of course I held my breath as each one was installing it for the first time. I spent some time looking at the new arrangement of System Settings -- I still prefer the old way, when I opened the page and there were the icons all nicely set out for me, but I'm getting accustomed to looking at the list and going to whatever it is I need from there. Don't really need to go there that often -- that usually only happens when I'm (manually) setting up a new machine for the first time.

I have to admit I haven't bothered with Stage Manager -- I've got one machine hooked up to one external display and I tend to do things one at a time, I'm not much for multitasking. I don't encrypt my disks and I don't use Time Machine. I keep most of my photo files off the primary machine except current ones upon which I'm working -- they're stored on external SSDs and a couple of older HDDs. I remember that shortly after I installed Monterey when it became available I bought a new 4 TB SanDisk external SSD and was horrified when I couldn't convert it in Disk Utility to APFS, even though I'd never thad that problem before. I had already upgraded all my machines to Monterey, but fortunately a friend still had her MBP on Big Sur, so I took the new drive to her place and converted the drive to APFS without a hitch. Thankfully, later Apple apparently fixed whatever the issue was, as the next time I needed to convert an external drive to APFS, no problem.

With Ventura, so far there has been no issue in using my external SSDs -- they are performing normally, thank goodness!

 

[rdrr]

While I love Apple products, I hate the way in which they are so tight lipped around bugs and force partners into an iron clad NDA so absolutely no info can come out. Currently there is a huge bug with Ventura and possibly Big Sir with the M1 and M2 MacBook Pros that is killing me at work. The laptops lose their ever-loving mind with regards to wireless. They keep dropping off the 802.1X wifi network and stay disconnected for minutes, or require a reboot. Even had a few remain connected to the network but no network traffic in/out. These all get reported as a wifi issue of course and end up in my lap. Our wireless infrastructure vendor has informed us that is a non vendor specific wifi issue with MacBook Pros M1 and M2 on Ventura and maybe Big Sir. They of course cannot tell us anything else, nor give us a timeline of a fix for fear of Apple coming down on them with the legal hammer.

So right now... Not a fan of Ventura. I have very few hairs left to pull out.

 

[Clix Pix]

Huh.....haven't had a problem with my 2020 13" M1 MBP...... Then again I haven't really used her that much since I installed Ventura and the other day the update, too, as that is not my primary machine. I hope something can be worked out to resolve your problems, rdrr!

 

[rdrr]

Huh.....haven't had a problem with my 2020 13" M1 MBP...... Then again I haven't really used her that much since I installed Ventura and the other day the update, too, as that is not my primary machine. I hope something can be worked out to resolve your problems, rdrr!

Well, one of the of the variables seems to be 802.1X (NAC). I cannot speak for other home or other corporate environment, but here at work we use it exclusively. Apple never has been strong with supporting an enterprise, but a large majority of our users have Macs on our network.

 

[Clix Pix]

I"m in a home environment with Cox Cable and an Amplifier Alien router, which offers 802.11ax WiFi 6 technology. I love my Alien! Have never had any issues with it at all.

 

[Nycturne]

I"m in a home environment with Cox Cable and an Amplifier Alien router, which offers 802.11ax WiFi 6 technology. I love my Alien! Have never had any issues with it at all.

Just to clarify, rdrr’s not committing a typo or anything like that. 802.1X has to do with authentication for enterprise networks. Not something many people will have to deal with.

Even in my enterprise situation, it only comes into play when I’m on campus.

 

[rdrr]

Just to clarify, rdrr’s not committing a typo or anything like that. 802.1X has to do with authentication for enterprise networks. Not something many people will have to deal with.

Even in my enterprise situation, it only comes into play when I’m on campus.

Thank you, yes I edited my comment to try to clarify that 802.1X is not the same as 802.11ax. It has to do with Network Access Control.

 

[Clix Pix]

Thanks, Nycturne and rdar! It did look a little strange, but I figured the "x" was to represent whatever version of the 802.xxx they have. That makes sense that there needs to be authentication, too, in the protocol for enterprise networks. Network Access Control......definitely not something I need to worry about since I'm no longer in the working world.

 

[dysamoria]

I like the idea of Stage Manager; it seems to be smoother and more convenient than Mission Control (though with both we seem to have a case of redundancy), but I have some issues with it:

Stage Manager seems to run under the assumption that everyone uses Mac windows at a very small size. This may just be a thing with Unix operating systems in general; the windows are either meant to run full-screen or at a small size and the "maximize" size you see in Windows is not really a thing. However, due to the limited screen real estate of the MacBook Pro, I like the maximize the window size (without going full screen) of certain apps, namely the Music app and my internet browser. Doing this results in the Stage Manager sidebar being covered up, essentially defeating the purpose of it. This would not be a problem if I were using a 27" 5K display, I am sure. But I'm not. I'm using a laptop with limited resolution and I like to take up as much screen space with an internet browser as possible. Now, Stage Manager is usable with the sidebar covered, because dragging your mouse to the left-hand side of the desktop will bring up the sidebar, however, when I restart the computer, apps like Chrome have reverted to a small window to the right of the sidebar; with Stage Manager enabled, the window size I prefer is not "remembered", making this feature bothersome to use for me.

Secondly, I noticed that when using an app that temporarily results in no windows open, like Pages (such as the delay that occurs when opening a large document), Stage Manager will load another active app briefly, then go back to Pages when the document has loaded. This is also very annoying. Stage Manager should know that Pages remains active even when I'm attempting to load a document. I do not want another app to be made active in 1-2 seconds it takes to load a Pages document.

If these issues can be resolved, I may make Stage Manager a regular part of my macOS usage. For now, I think I will leave it disabled.

I almost exclusively use my applications in full-screen mode. The notable exceptions are a file renaming utility and Finder. Or apps that fail to support fullscreen mode for some reason.

I am going to guess one. The next OS update will be the final one with Intel binaries in it. Intel came in with Tiger (10.4) and PPC was dropped for Snow Leopard (10.6). There may be support by special request for some late-to-the-game Intel Mac owners, but I think Apple is close to getting ready to cut the cord.

The first iteration of Rosetta lasted far too short a period of time. There are so many pieces of software, especially for music hardware, that were abandoned by their developers (because they want to sell you another piece of hardware, not support what you bought from them already), which only work on PPC/Rosetta. I am anticipating Apple doing the same thing this time, too, but I really hope they don't.

As someone who is now puttering about with a lowly 2018 Mac mini featuring a Core i3 and 128GB SSD, I'm perfectly happy for Apple to continue to sell Intel Macs in 2023. Right now, I have no idea when I'm going to replace it, or what Mac it will be with, so the longer x86 drags out, the more likely Apple will continue to develop new versions of macOS for Intel. Even if I do decide to make the transition to Apple Silicon sooner rather than later, my old Macs are handed down to non-tech relatives, so they will perhaps get support longer than if Apple had been able to finish at the two-year transition line that they had originally planned.

After my recent challenges, I've decided to sit tight, and just wait to see what gets released. Apple may release a new Mac in March that is so irresistible that I can't help myself. Alternatively, I've gotten extremely cautious, so it's also entirely possible that I wait out the entire lifetime of this Mac mini and then decide what to do, once the partial security patches end, and the final nail is driven into Intel's coffin.


I'll have gotten much more useful life out of this Mac mini than expected, because it was originally supposed to be a two-year "stopgap". Assuming that my speculated 2+2 year remaining lifespan for Intel Macs is correct, I could get as many as eight years out of it, which is wild to think, and certainly not my original intention. The longer I drag my feet, the more impressive the upgrade will be when I finally do it.

Lowly 2018 Mac Mini... ha ha ha... I am limping along on an iMac 12,2. You know, the one with the non-standard SATA drive thermal sensor config (making drive upgrades problematic; go to OWC for the right stuff), and the one that can't be updated past High Sierra, even with DOSDude1's installer patchers (because the GPU is entirely unsupported in Mojave, and no, I'm not going to try to replace the GPU chip). I've been waiting on Apple to produce an acceptable desktop Mac for literally 10 years now. When 2019's new Mac Pro came out at the price they stuck on it... I was pissed. This iMac is a stopgap that has been going for far too long. It was also a refurb, badly done by someone on eBay (to be fair, he refunded me about a quarter of the cost for my miserable experience fixing hardware problems his "builder" failed to do correctly... I never did replace all the missing screws),

In 2023, it's got to be replaced. I can't keep doing this. I've been waiting for so long because I have ONE lump sum of money to put into a studio computer replacement. Not multiple, not for multiple new machines every few years. I'm on disability. Oh, and I also need a new gaming PC (mine was built from cursed parts in 2008/9)... like that's ever going to effing happen.

Just to clarify, rdrr’s not committing a typo or anything like that. 802.1X has to do with authentication for enterprise networks. Not something many people will have to deal with.

Even in my enterprise situation, it only comes into play when I’m on campus.

And there's the reason why Apple haven't fixed the bugs yet.

 

[mr_roboto]

The first iteration of Rosetta lasted far too short a period of time. There are so many pieces of software, especially for music hardware, that were abandoned by their developers (because they want to sell you another piece of hardware, not support what you bought from them already), which only work on PPC/Rosetta. I am anticipating Apple doing the same thing this time, too, but I really hope they don't.

There is reason to hope it can stay a bit longer this time.

PPC-on-x86 Rosetta was a licensed version of Transitive Corporation's QuickTransit. This product was used by several UNIX operating systems. One of the other QuickTransit customers was IBM. Oddly enough, their use case was x86-on-POWER (aka PowerPC) Linux.

In 2009, IBM acquired Transitive. Only 2 years later, in 2011, they announced plans to stop marketing PowerVM Lx86 (their name for the product). Apple stopped shipping Rosetta in Mac OS X in 2011's release, Lion. It's not hard to draw a line between these two events.

This time around, Apple wrote Rosetta 2 itself. It's entirely their choice how long it lasts, and there's been a few hints in how they've handled things so far that they're planning for possible long-term support.

(They need to keep it longer this time, too. MacOS X shipped in 2001, spent the first couple of years not being very good (those early releases were rough), and transitioned to Intel in 2005. That wasn't much time to build up a huge library of legacy PPC apps which would never get ported. But 2005 to 2020 was definitely enough time for that, so Apple should be well aware that there's more need to keep x86 binaries alive this time.)

 

[quarkysg]

But 2005 to 2020 was definitely enough time for that, so Apple should be well aware that there's more need to keep x86 binaries alive this time.)

Until macOS starts removing APIs that legacy apps still uses. It does seem like macOS' framework is still evolving, e.g. with the change in driver model.

 

[lizkat]

A brief dip into the app side of MacOS issues and certainly including Ventura:

I'm to the point of despair over what's been happening to the MacOS version of the Books app. Every new release produces a more embarrassing version of that application, which started out with so much promise.
Tim Cook must not be much of an ebook reader or else he'd fired some folks and would then have thrown some book lovers and book-loving coders at that app about three OS releases ago. As of Monterey it's not even funny any more. Just ludicrously unsuitable and a point of infuriation for those of us owning a lot of Apple-DRM'd ebooks. Forget about metadata maintenance. Now you can't even sort by some of the metadata that exists and is not displayed even in the now worthless list view, which contains useless icons of the cover art and therefore reduces number of books per laptop screen to about six instead of maybe 30.

/rant

Sorry. Maybe this belonged in some Arkham dumpster fire thread.

 

[dysamoria]

A brief dip into the app side of MacOS issues and certainly including Ventura:

I'm to the point of despair over what's been happening to the MacOS version of the Books app. Every new release produces a more embarrassing version of that application, which started out with so much promise.
Tim Cook must not be much of an ebook reader or else he'd fired some folks and would then have thrown some book lovers and book-loving coders at that app about three OS releases ago. As of Monterey it's not even funny any more. Just ludicrously unsuitable and a point of infuriation for those of us owning a lot of Apple-DRM'd ebooks. Forget about metadata maintenance. Now you can't even sort by some of the metadata that exists and is not displayed even in the now worthless list view, which contains useless icons of the cover art and therefore reduces number of books per laptop screen to about six instead of maybe 30.

/rant

Sorry. Maybe this belonged in some Arkham dumpster fire thread.

I'm convinced that none of the executives at Apple actively use anything that comes out of their company. At best, they have executive assistants who suffer tech for them, and who don't tell them just how bad everything is. The whole industry is a disaster, and Apple are only the least bad of them all. I miss the brief span of years where Apple were actually superior.