
MacOS Sierra - clumsysmurf
http://www.apple.com/macos/sierra/
======
digitalsushi
I'm excited to see a working speech interface. I use the one on my phone quite
a bit to send quick messages to my wife while I'm driving. The shortest
command so far is [press siri button on dashboard] + "tell my wife to come
down in 2 minutes". I wish I could tell Siri I trust it and not to confirm the
message. [Are you ready to send this message?] "Yes" [Ok, I'll send it].
Every. time.

On the flip side, we're past the line of scrimmage where I like my OS knowing
about my files and talking to a mothership about them. I know it was probably
three operating systems ago that my checksums started leaking to interested
parties, "hey he has a copy of Frozen, did you know that?"

In about 4 months I'll give it a try. I want to hear how the hardware reacts.
I installed 10.10 the day it came out, and got bit by that flakey wifi bug for
what was it, nine months before Apple fixed it? I automatically bluetooth
paired with the phone when the wifi froze, did about 19 gig over LTE (which
kept up!) A beautiful failure scenario.

I think I might not value my privacy enough, is my lingering thought, in
reflection of this being available.

~~~
billforsternz
How about " _Ask_ my wife to come down in 2 minutes"? :-)

------
sdegutis
This is the first version of Mac OS X that I'm 0% excited about.

Literally none of the new features[1] are useful to me, considering:

    
    
      I don't have or want an iPhone
      I don't have or want an iPad
      I don't have or want an iWatch
      I don't have or want an iCloud account
      I don't have or want an Apple Pay account
      I don't have or want an iTunes Music account
      I don't use or need Photos.app
      I don't use or need Messages.app
      I don't like speaking to my computer
      I don't watch TV while doing something else on the computer
      I don't use the computer enough for tabs to be useful
    

Am I really the only one who hits all these bullet points? Am I part of a
dying demographic, who doesn't use/need/want any of this fancy Star Trek
futuristic life, who's okay with using a credit card and organizing photos via
folders, and manually typing stuff into google, and taking notes on a physical
note pad with a physical pen?

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-
sierra/id1127487414?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-
sierra/id1127487414?mt=12) (click "...More")

~~~
poleapple
I apologize to you for Apple for not catering to your specific needs and wants
when rolling out their newest version of OSX. I'm so sorry that you consider
none of these new features exciting nor useful. Personally, I agree with you
to an extent - I prefer taking notes on individual parchment paper with a
Ticonderoga #2 HB pencil that I sharpen with my $400 hand crafted knife. Heck,
I don't even use digital photos or credit cards. I am 100% satisfied with the
polaroid camera that my father left me before he passed, and I always prefer
to barter with the root vegetables that I grow in my back yard (100% organic
of course) as a means of payment.

~~~
xrisk
Ticonderogas make for fine pencils though.

~~~
poleapple
Yeah, I'm only half sarcastic. Polaroid cameras are also fun to play with.

------
AdamGibbins
Careful if you're a user of Karabiner, it doesn't work in Sierra - there's a
rewrite underway to correct.

~~~
mhmiles
Was sad to see that karabiner no longer works. I discovered that
bettertouchtool can substitute for my purposes (adding media keys to a
dasKeyboard)

~~~
laktak
AFAIK bettertouchtool is not open source, so you have to place your trust onto
one individual instead of the community. Not sure I want to do that as it has
access to everything I type.

~~~
SilentNuke
It being closed source doesn't mean that they are any less trustworthy or
competent. Trust me, I am totally on board with what you're saying. In this
case though, I'd say there would be no need for concern. The developer behind
BTT and BST has established trust with their users, great communication and
good support.

Also, as for BetterTouchTool being able to replace Karabiner, I have to
disagree. I have used both for as long as I can remember and consider them
"must haves." But for me at least, they have always been separate in their use
and function.

I made the unfortunate mistake of upgrading to Sierra before doing a more
thorough check of all my application's compatibility with Sierra. I found out
about Karabiner too late - total bummer. I hope an update rolls out soon. (I
haven't tried the current "interim" application they created - I need the real
thing)

------
bigdubs
It's 2016 and we still can't disable the acceleration curve for wired / non-
trackpad mice.

~~~
dogma1138
It's 2016 and you still can't disable the trackpad while typing.

This drove me insane after switching to an MPB.

The solution was to put the trackpad on the highest pressure setting and hope
for the best.

------
iptables
yeah don't be an idiot and install this on your work computer and break vpn.
what kind of idiot does that....

~~~
azinman2
what's the specific issue?

~~~
OhSoHumble
I was the idiot who made the jump. While on VPN, no less. My work laptop has
both GlobalProtect and Cisco installed as VPN clients. The GlobalProtect
client broke but the Cisco client works fine - both require two factor
authentication.

Everything seems to work so the unnecessary risk I took didn't cause too much
harm.

~~~
azinman2
Ah ok so 3rd party software not yet ready for new kernel. I thought apple
dropped support for pptp or something of the like, esp with the IPSec comment
in the thread.

------
protomyth
Finder is worse than 10.11 and it crashes on multiple moves. At this point I'm
just not sure what the heck is the problem. Now it stops being able to do
command-drags (moves) after a while.

~~~
lj3
The finder never worked all that well. I stopped using it in 10.7 and switched
to path finder.

------
jesseendahl
The new smart card support is pretty cool:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12543905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12543905)

~~~
rkeene2
Mac OS X has had smartcard support for a long time. They started removing it a
few "updates" ago, but the support was still there. CACKey specifically added
missing bits as Apple removed them. This latest release probably features
their replacement architecture.

I haven't seen what is needed to make CACKey work on the latest release of the
Apple's OS since I don't use it, someone else works on packaging that up.

~~~
jesseendahl
Yep I realize it's been there, but (as you mentioned) keeping it updated has
been ignored by Apple long time and turned into a community effort. Sierra
brought a significant overhaul.

------
Kadin
Doesn't seem to be much of interest there if you're a Mac user without an
interest in iOS devices. Of the WSJ's "Top 5" features [1]:

\- Universal Clipboard: Neat, but iOS only. Doesn't appear there's an open API
for it that would make it useful elsewhere, which is too bad, because it could
be rather neat.

\- iCloud Drive: Cloud sync of your document folders. Free space (5GB) is
surprisingly limited and the upgrade pricing isn't any better than Dropbox, so
not a lot of motivation to switch from Dropbox/Onedrive/Google Drive -- except
for the iOS integration. It'll be interesting to see if they end up making any
of the filesystem or sync logic that they're using public, so that Dropbox et
al could use them (instead of Dropbox's bolt-on hack), but I'm not holding my
breath.

\- Optimized Storage: Basically a 'feature' that automatically deletes stuff
off of local storage when your disk gets full, leaving it on iCloud Drive.
This basically makes my skin crawl and I can't imagine ever using it; it seems
like a conceptually bad idea. Anyone want to place a bet on how long before
the first article in a major news outlet about some poor soul losing
everything they've ever created since the age of 5 due to this thing uploading
it to the cloud, and then deleting their iCloud Drive account? I'm giving it
six months on the outside.

\- Apple Pay: Conceptually interesting, and I'm certainly interested in
anything that shakes up electronic payments, but there's no way to use it from
the desktop (AFAICT) without an iOS device, because that's how you authorize
payments. Unfortunate.

\- Apple Watch Unlock: Obviously only of interest if you have an Apple Watch.
Again, a quick search doesn't seem to reveal any sort of API for other
hardware, so it's a dead end unless you're interested in the Apple Watch.

Looking through more feature lists, the only thing I can come up with that
seems remotely interesting is the picture-in-picture video, although I don't
know why it's better than QuickTime Player's relatively-ancient "stay on top"
mode (unless they removed that when I haven't been looking). But hey, I can at
least see that getting some use on my workstation.

All in all, it seems like a representative sampling of what Apple has become:
a bunch of neat ideas (well, except for the 'Optimized Storage' thing), but
they've basically crippled them for business reasons in order to prop up their
walled garden hardware ecosystem. It's exactly the sort of behavior people
used to lament Microsoft for: coming up with great ideas, but then kneecapping
them on the way out the door to make sure nothing threatened the golden goose.

[1]: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-macos-sierra-five-top-
fea...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-macos-sierra-five-top-
features-1474391116) or if that's paywalled, Google for "Apple’s MacOS Sierra:
Five Top Features"

~~~
lj3
The thing that bothers me most is Apple hasn't realized yet that the laptop
market has changed. With tablets becoming more powerful, there are fewer and
fewer things casual users need a laptop for. That leaves power users as the
majority of laptop owners, which is a segment of the market Apple has a
history of antagonizing.

------
jbmorgado
I see they changed very little, so I'm hopeful this is one of those versions
(like Lion if I remember correctly, might be other) where basically Apple just
stopped one year, add very few features, and improved the system stability and
performance.

I didn't see (perhaps I've missed it) them saying this was the case, so, any
insights on that?

------
fabioyy
Any news about APFS?

