
OS X Reviewed - Doubleguitars
http://hypercritical.co/2015/04/15/os-x-reviewed
======
hanlec
I don't know how many were in this camp, but with every OS X release I was
more excited about reading Siracusa's review than upgrading.

While I started only with 10.3, I have found reading the older review as a
fine page of OS X history. Maybe Siracusa these should become a book. Maybe
Apple should move to OS 11.

~~~
esalman
"I was more excited about reading Siracusa's review than upgrading"

That explains why video game commentary is a thing now.

~~~
Retra
Is it information addiction?

~~~
esalman
Don't think so; there are better ways to get informed.

The comment made by jballanc probably gets it- "he would always manage to
cover some new feature or other thing I didn't know about". People look at the
same thing in different ways. When we read a review or watch a game
commentary, we are really trying to know how another person may look at it.

------
melling
John Siracusa has suffered with RSI for many years. He wrote most of these
massive reviews with voice recognition software. He talks about his RSI in
this podcast:

[http://techdistortion.com/podcasts/pragmatic/episode-50-acci...](http://techdistortion.com/podcasts/pragmatic/episode-50-accidental-
clicking)

~~~
phaed
RSI for longer than 3 months is no longer a physical issue but a mind-body
one. He should read up on Dr. Sarno's work. I cured my RSI in a matter of
weeks, after close to half a year of anguish.

~~~
nileshk
I also cured myself the same way over 12 years ago. Aaron Iba wrote up a good
account of his experience which is very similar to mine:

[http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-
pain.htm...](http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.html)

I agree that while the symptoms of RSI may be physical, the root cause is
psychological.

~~~
phaed
What a coincidence! Your article was actually one of the things that I read
that pushed me over the edge and gave me the certainty required to break free
from the idea that there was something physically wrong with my muscles and
led to finally curing myself. I could have been stuck in that cycle for years.
Thanks!

------
mortenjorck
As jarring as it will be to not have a Siracusa companion volume to 10.11, 15
years is a fine career in what has essentially been a one-man industry. He's
no doubt inspired countless other tech writers in his run, and I look forward
to seeing the next generation start upon the path he has so expertly forged.

No one may be able to truly replicate a Siracusa OS X review, but the person
who really gets what made them great will probably do a bang-up job.

------
jonstokes
As a fellow old soldier in the Platform Wars of the late 90's and early 00's
(and the guy who often gets confused with you, and vice versa), let me welcome
you to Fiddler's Green :-)

It's not so bad here. At first, the transition from "guy who does this thing
that's really important to me and my tribe" to "guy who used to do this thing
that was really important to me when I was part of that tribe" is kinda
terrifying. Then you realize that this is the fate of everyone who helped
create A Moment, and it's kinda cool once you settle into it.

Sure, there are a few people who have the talent and energy to keep forcing
themselves into new Moments, but even Madonna is old now, and all she did was
stave off her "hey, you used to be that guy!" phase by a decade or so. And at
what price? At some point, doesn't chipping away at and polishing and spit-
shining and agonizing over your latest cultural product start to feel more
than a little bit like slavery? I know it certainly did for me. Being a slave
to your own brand is no way to spend a life.

Speaking of Madonna, I find that I sometimes identify with interviews given by
older musicians, like an interview I read with David Gilmour where he tells
the reporter something like, "please stop asking me about Roger Waters... I'm
in my 70's and that was only 17 years of my life and it was a really long time
ago."

When I read that, my first reaction was, "oh man, is that my future?" But my
second reaction was, "whatever he thinks of Roger Waters, and whatever he's
done since then, he did some amazing work in those 17 years that touched a lot
of people and became a part of who they are." There much worse fates than
having a truly excellent slice of your work define you when you're 70. There
are plenty of other people who've done a lifetime's worth of equally excellent
work in total obscurity, and would love for someone to care enough to ask them
about any part of it.

Anyway, I imagine that, like me, you're not out there looking around for
another Moment to insert yourself into, but it could be that a new Moment will
find you. After all, isn't that how it happend the first time around?

Now, back to work... Fiddler's Green is a nice place to visit and catch up
with old friends, but we're both way too young to take up permanent residence
here :-)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>There much worse fates than having a truly excellent slice of your work
define you when you're 70.

But these reporters aren't asking him about his work. They're asking his for
gossipy statements about his tensions and fallout with Waters. They give no
shits about the music, they just want to get an old man angry.

------
camperman
When people have asked me for examples of the very best long form technical
writing for the Web, I point them at these articles (particularly the Snow
Leopard review which is my favorite). Not only does John seem to have a solid
grasp of _everything_, he makes it all entertaining.

~~~
ghshephard
Agreed - I thought the Snow Leopard review was a classic, and I read through
it several times, savoring his perspective.

What I liked about his reviews, is that he _intentionally_ did not make them
comprehensive. He saw his goal not to rehash all of the Apple Documentation
(which you could read if you were interested), but rather to provide his
_opinionated_ perspective on what was interesting, and what spoke to the
general theme of OS X's progression.

His reviews will be missed, but I agree, 15 years of stress/agony is more than
enough for one man. He's leaving on the top of his game.

~~~
zw
His Snow Leopard review was also in part a classic because the release was a
classic. Nothing was left unturned in that OS, it was a goldmine for a guy
like him.

I hope a feature release will be of a similar caliber (i.e., "make ALL the
things better") and I hope Siracusa is strong enough to stay away from it.

------
atonse
Thanks for all the really detailed and well written reviews over the years,
John. I especially remember printing out the OS X Tiger review and setting
aside a long lunch at Chipotle while going through it in my college days.

I used to look forward to the Siracusa reviews as much as the OS releases
themselves. This year there will be a void, but hopefully someone like iMore
or MacStories will fill that void.

~~~
chrisjohn93
OS XI: Siracusa

------
dankohn1
My favorite Siricusa review line [0] (of many, this one is about 10.7 lion):

'Finally, we come to the heart of the matter. In Lion, what does Apple say to
the god of file system death? "Not today."'

He is referencing this iconic moment [1] from Game of Thrones.

[0] [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-
os-x-10-7/13/](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/13/)

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvAUJ4i9GoY&t=6m58s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvAUJ4i9GoY&t=6m58s)

~~~
jjoonathan
Yeah but HFS is more like Joffrey than Arya. We want it to die ASAP.

------
LeoNatan25
This is very sad for me. I feel that such in-depth reviews come out very
rarely these days, and losing one of the greater ones really makes me sad,
both individually about these reviews, but for tech journalism in general.

I started reading the reviews a few years ago, when I started a Mac/iOS
career, and was hooked instantly, going back to older Mac OS X reviews to read
about technologies.

------
syncsynchalt
Siracusa is one of my favorite podcast voices. I was really surprised to hear
how gregarious a person he seems to be, considering the autistic level of
detail he always put into his OSX reviews.

We have similar ages and technical backgrounds so any time some
misapprehension of POSIX or USB or Star Wars comes up on a podcast he's always
the one who explains it to the other hosts, but in a relatable or entertaining
way.

~~~
pervycreeper
>autistic level of detail

I would use caution in making armchair diagnoses like that. However, while we
are throwing around psychological terms, I do believe that "anal-retentive
personality" is quite apt.

~~~
ghshephard
I'm not sure either applied, as least from the four or five reviews that I
read in great depth. His reviews were opinionated, and touched on themes that
he though were important - but by and large weren't overly detailed or
comprehensive. He sought to capture the overall arc of the growth of OS X,
rather than regurgitate every new feature.

------
jsz0
Siracusa's OSX reviews offered the same quality and attention to detail Apple
puts into their best products. The reviews were also an incredibly valuable
resource in the early days of OSX when it was hard to find any good coverage
of the Mac news in the mainstream tech media. The reviews were my only
exposure to the Mac platform at this time. His obvious nerd credibility made
me stop and pay attention to what Apple was doing. I believe Siracusa's
reviews helped create a new generation of Mac users.

------
supercoder
Hopefully we begin to see more in-depth toaster oven reviews now.

------
chmullig
They're incredible, absolutely incredible.

As an Ars forum member from back as early as 2001, I appreciate everything you
did, John. Thanks!

~~~
atonse
Siracusa's OS X reviews, and Jon Stokes' excellent explanations of computer
hardware, will both be tough to beat. Ars had some truly amazing stuff in the
mid 2000s.

~~~
frou_dh
Those two were actually mixed up in my head and for the first however many
episodes of Hypercritical I thought I was listening to the guy whose book on
CPUs I was thinking of buying. Siracusa was entertaining enough that I didn't
mind when I realised, and have listened to him since!

------
ebbv
This is very disappointing. When a lot of online writers announce their
retirement/shift of focus, there's usually alternative sources for similar (if
not the same) content.

With Siracusa that is definitely not the case. His OS X reviews are
irreplaceable. Nothing comes close.

------
mrmondo
Hey just a note that there is an incorrect date mentioned on the page: 'OS X
10.10 Yosemite – October 16, 2015' should be 2014

~~~
bobbles
Looks like this has been updated now

------
melq
I've read his reviews since Snow Leopard I believe, and totally respect and
admire his work, but I find the you-dont-know-my-struggle tone he takes in
this insufferable. I'm not saying it was an easy gig or anything but I'm
dubious of how much 'mental anguish' is involved in reviewing an operating
system. And how out of touch need one be before complaining about a noisy air
conditioner seems reasonable?

~~~
jcsiracusa
No one really knows anyone else's struggle. To think otherwise is, well,
insufferable.

------
ux-app
I've never been a mac user and even I thoroughly enjoyed his write ups! John's
certainly earned his place in the long form tech journalism pantheon.

------
gchokov
Big respect to Siracusa. I have enjoyed the reviews, the level of details and
commitment to bring out the best in those articles.

------
marvel_boy
Without the Siracura's review I don't see any reason to move to OS X 10.11 or
whatever is named by Apple.

------
elmarschraml
Thanks, Jon, for all your reviews. It's a sad day to have to look forward to a
new OS X release without a Siracusa review.

How about a Kickstarter campaign to fund him taking a month off work to write
another review? I bet we could get a sum of money together large enough to
have him unable to say no.

------
Khaine
This is a sad day. Siracusa's reviews have always been the best part of an OS
X review

------
ksec
May be Apple should have called it OS 11 Siricusa

And Finally ditching HFS+ which he hate.

------
bontoJR
I honestly bought my first Mac reading his review of Tiger and that OS was so
great that I decided to switch from Gentoo to a Mac, buying a Macbook.

------
mung
I hope you enjoy the extra hours you get back.

In a way, I'll also enjoy the extra time I have in not reading the reviews -
as much as I truly enjoyed them.

------
oahziur
I think OS X is really missing a good tiling window managers for developers. I
think it is the only pain point that I found when using OS X.

~~~
Watabou
Is it only me that seems to not care whatsoever about tiling window managers?
I've tried them on Linux, for a good solid two months, still don't understand
the fascination.

On OS X, I just use Expose or Cmd-Tab and Cmd-` shortcuts. I used to use
Slate, but then ultimately gave that up as well. Maybe I use a retina screen
at 1920x1200 so I can have a lot of screen real estate, but I haven't found
the need to have a tiling wm at work either.

~~~
deathanatos
I don't insist on the tiling WM — they certainly don't work for everyone —,
but I feel OS X's default WM falls on its face in a lot of cases simply as a
"normal" style WM.

You mention Cmd+Tab and Cmd+`, which is a good example. Typically, I'd say I
have a working set of windows consisting of gvim, iTerm2, a web browser (docs,
research, etc.) and Hipchat. Cmd+Tab switches between _applications_ , which
isn't quite appropriate here: first, it doesn't consistently highlight the
highest window in the Z-stack for the application being switched to, and it
drags all windows of that application to the top of the Z-stack, which very
often includes windows I am not interested in. Cmd+` can correct for this,
somewhat. What I really need is just straight manipulation of the Z-stack.[1]

I use Expose extensively, but I find I use it because I lack a good method
above.

I think one of the big draws to a tiling WM is that it allows efficient layout
of windows, _especially_ if you're coming from OS X's WM. Consider that OS X's
WM's resize catchment area (the "border") is impossibly small; grabbing it
with the pointer in OS X is a consistently jarring experience IMO — small
resize catchments work better in a WM that allows you to resize with a
keyboard+mouse shortcut. E.g., in MATE, if I hold Alt, I can click and drag
anywhere within the entire area of the window to resize; this is much more
fluid, and requires considerably less concentration to perform. (I can
similarly move windows, which requires grabbing the title bar on OS X, but
this is somewhat less difficult.) Note that I can do this the OS X way in MATE
too: grabbing the edge works. I'd add that MATE also "snaps" windows to the
edges of the screen, and to each other, which IMO also aids quick layouts.

[1]: This is a big reason for why I run MATE at home. Good old Alt+Tab.

~~~
gtufano
Witch by Many Tricks
[http://manytricks.com/witch/](http://manytricks.com/witch/) solves (for me)
the app/windows switching problem with OS X. I started using it years ago
because cmd+` is a 3 (4 with shift) key combination on my Italian keyboard but
it's a very useful piece of software. (I'm only an happy user of it).

------
snambi
Amazingly detailed and interesting reviews. Its a miracle that he pulled it
off for 15 years with a full-time job and family. Truly amazing.

------
amyjess
I haven't been an Apple fan since I was a kid, but I always enjoyed reading
Siracusa's reviews a lot.

I'll be sad to see him go, but I don't fault him for quitting, nor do I fault
his reasoning. The best reason to quit something is because you know it's time
to quit.

------
crazychrome
Luckily Peter Bright does not quit covering MS/web/programming yet.

------
Doctor_Fegg
And Apple never did FTFF.

------
zak_mc_kracken
tl;dr: Not an actual OS X review, just Siracusa saying he's retiring from
reviewing Mac OS.

~~~
rsynnott
Just? JUST?! I think you mean the most important MacOS news ever, no?

~~~
zak_mc_kracken
No, _this_ was the most important MacOS news ever:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA)

------
Alex3917
Makes sense. Realistically the last killer feature in an OS X release was
probably spotlight in 10.4. Consumer hardware hasn't gotten much faster since
then, and the last six OS X releases have all been pretty much just
rearranging furniture.

I can't see much innovation happening in the OS space for a few years until we
get widespread adoption of memristors, perhaps in 2020 when HP comes out with
The Machine.

~~~
asveikau
Are you kidding? No hardware improvement in 10 years? I have a PowerPC machine
powered off in a closet that runs 10.4, which somehow I can't move myself to
get rid of. Today's smartphones are more powerful. They have more RAM and a
better CPU.

On the software side, I powered it on a year or so ago. Felt pretty different
from recent OS X. I didn't remember it being as different as it was. (If you
had said little substantive change since 10.6 I may have agreed more.)

~~~
Alex3917
There's no question smartphones are completely different, I'm talking about
laptops and desktops. I'm writing this comment from my late 2008 MBP, which in
terms of perceived speed is identical to my 2014 MBP work computer. If the new
MBPs have Skylake then I'll upgrade because this one is starting to fall
apart, but I'm certainly not pretending that it's going to make me more
productive or have any tangible benefit.

~~~
sjtrny
> which in terms of perceived speed is identical to my 2014 MBP work computer

Yeh that's great if all you are doing is mild web browsing and sending emails.
Last year I ditched my late 2008 MBP for a 2014 MBP (both 15") and the
difference is astounding. I can play CSGO at 150fps rather than 25.
Furthermore it doesn't overheat and shut down while playing CSGO. For work it
is also a massive improvement when I run MATLAB scripts that involve huge
matrix multiplications, inversions, SVDs etc.

