I have been using a little app called Rectangle[1] for years now, and it solves every possible window positioning need I have ever had. No ads, no cost.
As far as the conversation goes, 1st party implementation by Apple would be nice and all, but 3rd party doesn't bother me in the slightest. (at least in this case)
I mean I use rectangle, and used spectacle before it, and I’m very grateful to the developers for maintaining it and making it available for free, but this really should be part of the OS and I will be very happy to get rid of that app after updating to Sequoia.
I also use an app that reverses the scroll direction of an attached USB mouse, without affecting the (natural) trackpad scroll direction, because MacOS does not allow changing them independently (looks like they are separate options for mouse and trackpad but they are in fact the same).
The App is called Scroll Reverser [1] it is free and works flawlessly, but it really should not have to exist, it’s ridiculous.
Window tiling! If you drag a single window to the top does it maximize, and unmaximize when you drag it away? That's been my most wanted feature in macOS since forever (yes I have tried the third party ones).
I don't really care about tiling multiple windows, but I've always hated the macOS full screen behavior, and before that the old green button behavior, so an alternative that finally works well (the way Windows has for many years) would be amazing.
You can also double click the title bar to expand to fill the screen, and double click it again to return to the previous size. One caveat to this is if your application saves window sizes on close and you close with a full screen window and re-open, it won’t shrink again because the “original size” was full screen when the window was opened
Setting the "Double-click a window's title bar" action to Zoom just fills the vertical space. It doesn't adjust the width to fill available space, which is usually what I want. Finder, as an example, almost never sets the width to something usable.
True, it would be more accurate to say that what "zoom" is designed to do is expand the window as much as possible to display all the content, however the application defines that. For many applications, the result is a fully maximized window. On my MBA, Notes, Messages, Calendar, iTerm, Solvspace, and Mail all just fill the screen. For other applications that report specific content area to the OS that can mean something different. A finder window generally reshapes to show all the icons in icon view, or to maximize columns and names in list view.
The most annoying one is Safari, which arbitrarily decides on what the "best" window width is, even if the website could easily reflow to fit a wider window.
I didn't know about this one, thank you for posting.
Also, on most windows, you can option-click the green window bar button and get this same behavior. However, some apps, like Safari, will instead expand the window to "a reasonably large size" that will not necessarily cover the whole screen.
Had to make an account just to say thanks! You literally solved one of my biggest gripes with macOS. This site honestly feels like the internet of the late aughts' last bastion. I think I'll stick around.
We may actually be seeing the moment where Moom[1] is no longer an essential OS X app. It can solve both window tiling and the "maximize problem" on mac and has been my first install for many years. Here's to hoping that Apple can get one basic OS feature right once.
The 'cycle' option in Rectangle.app allows just this. I use the hotkey(s) + bracket keys to cycle 1/3, 1/2, 2/3 screen windows justified left or right, and the hotkey + pipe key to cycle center justified.
These three shortcuts are embarrassingly effective and cover 99% of my window tiling. Others include the standard hotkey(s) + return for fullscreen and hotkey(s) + backspace for the previous window size..
I don't know which ones you've tried, but the most popular ones (Magnet and Rectangle) have worked perfectly for me for years. I routinely forget that I have Rectangle installed.
I have to use XQuartz for some apps I run in macOS. Magnet (and other apps I've tried) don't understand those windows. ShiftIt does, but it's buggy and no longer maintained.
I've been happy with Divvy for many years. It's not autotiling but the one-time config setup is intuitive after which my kbd shortcuts put things exactly where I want em, so I hardly ever think about it.
Did you mistype or are you actually somehow using a 57 inch monitor?
If really 57”, are these multiple separate screens?
I went up from 32 to 40 and regret it, to be honest. It’s m nice for Xcode, but for any other use, it’s too big for me. For instance, I miss notifications that pop up in the top right corner, it’s just out of my field of vision.
Hm, I've been really happy with Rectangle (https://rectangleapp.com) and its shortcuts have become second nature to me, but if the native version is equally keyboard friendly I might give it a go.
(btw, have you tried Rectangle and if so - what didn't you like?)
Genuine q: is cmd–backspace too much? I’m in general pretty satisfied with the Finder keyboard navigation/editing. Especially with “enter” for rename, copy/paste/cut/move and deletion too…
I never understood the enter for rename shortcut. People open (or "execute", which is the general understanding of the action for the "enter" key) files far more than they rename them.
It makes sense if one considers the angle of how single-key shortcuts are much more disaster-prone.
For example, if the user has a large number of files selected and accidentally triggers the open shortcut by hitting enter, their computer is going to be stuck spinning its wheels for a while (the more files involved and the heavier the applications they open in, the worse it'll be) unless they force restart. Involving a modifier key filters for intention pretty well, and so while this scenario is possible with ⌘O, it's far less likely.
Most Mac shortcuts seem to follow this, with those that are single-key by default doing relatively harmless and easily reversible things.
> It makes sense if one considers the angle of how single-key shortcuts are much more disaster-prone.
> ...
> Most Mac shortcuts seem to follow this, with those that are single-key by default doing relatively harmless and easily reversible things.
The enter-to-rename behavior has been in Mac OS since near the beginning, when versions were just named something like "System N.M").
IIRC, I've heard they had very detailed UI design documents back then, that explained their choices (e.g. I've heard they explained the reason for the menu bar being at the top of the screen rather than the top of a window was the cursor will just stop there, requiring less mousing precision).
So if that's the case, there should be documents confirming or denying your speculation.
The Mac didn’t have a CLI in the first 16 years or so, so there’s no traditional “execute” meaning for the Enter key. I’d argue that the thought here was that by pressing that key, you’d want to enter a new name for the selected file.
That's not a bad thought, but traditiona Mac keyboards didn't even have an "enter" key. (And nor do their current tenkeyless ones.) They just had a "return" key. The "enter" key only came around when the 10-key numpad was introduced, and it gave a different key code than the return key (which lives/lived where "enter" lives on PC keyboards).
I don't recall whether "enter" renamed files, and I can't check whether it does at the moment because all my mac keyboards within reach are tenkeyless, but "return" always has.
If it worked like that in other Mac apps, I wouldn’t mind. Then you would just adjust to “this is how MacOS does cut-and-paste” and after an initial adjustment it would make complete sense.
But in every other Mac app, even in TextEdit, you would Cmd-X to cut a piece of text and Cmd-V to then paste it somewhere else. The same logic is used to e.g. move an image within a note or email, which is also a file.
So Finder is simply inconsistent with the rest of the OS, and after 4 years as a Mac user I have just given up and use either drag-and-drop or a terminal when I need to move stuff.
The finder probably chooses this paradigm because cut + paste is destructive. If you cut text and never paste it, the next time you copy out cut you lose that text forever. So if you used the same paradigm for files in the finder, you could accidentally and permanently delete a file because you cut it and then fat fingered copy instead of paste. If this happens with text from a file you can often just close the file and not save to get your text back, or hit undo because cut text is part of your undo history (usually). But storing whole files in some undo history seems like it could go wrong real quick since either you couldn’t actually delete the file from disk until the history expired or the finder was restarted, or an undo might take a significant amount of time because you moved between file systems. Or imagine if the destination file system crashed during transfer or unmounted after. Then you couldn’t undo at all.
Same, install Rectangle, learn shortcuts, never look back. I would happily remove it if the exact same functionality were ported to macOS (remove one more supply chain concern), but it seems it hasn’t been?
I use the "Multitouch" app from the same developer which integrates Rectangle with some other things.
Trying out the new macOS version.. it's a little fiddly to activate sometimes didn't want to go. Then the margin/spacing between the edge of the screens was annoying. Though I discovered that there is an option under "Desktop & Dock" in settings you can turn off called "Tiled windows have margins".
What I haven't figured out is if you can create a keyboard shortcut to tile left or right without using the mouse... so far have not figured out how to do that. Couldn't see an option for it.
Those settings revealed another option though to "Hold key while dragging windows to file". If you hold that key you don't actually have to drag to the edge, just move it to the correct side of the monitor (or not really move it at all if it's already on that side). Interesting alternative.
But I really often specifically use a keyboard shortcut for tile left, tile right or tile left third/middle third/right third (on a 35" Ultrawide).
If you hold option while dragging the window, yes. Otherwise dragging the window to the top of the screen is the method of moving it between spaces (e.g. separate desktop workspaces).
Raycast has window management and it has been amazing. Very easy to move windows between displays and different configurations of window size and placement.
It maximises, but slightly smaller than full maximisation, which is driving me crazy. Eg there's a 30px or so gap, and if you double tap the chrome it fills the remaining space.
Thanks for this! By the way, does anyone know anyone of the icon designers of Windows 3, 3.1? I would be very happy to meet them or know more about them. For some reason I'm still fascinated with those icons even after all those years.
BetterTouchTool used to be a mandatory install for every Mac for me. Unfortunately, at some point it started putting all my screens to sleep a few times a day. I have no idea why, and it persisted across multiple devices. I switched to Magnet once I narrowed the issue to BetterTouchTool.
The original Aero Snap was almost perfect. But I find the newer variation in Win11 a bit annoying as it adds a bunch of UI for tiling that is too easy to activate by accident.
It annoys the hell out of me that there’s never been an option to invert this. I actually like the old size-to-fit behaviour and I never ever want the iOS-style full screen, I don’t want to have to hold Option to get what was once the default behaviour.
NSUserActivity didn't forward notifications, it just provided a way to move whatever you were doing on your other Apple devices to the one you're currently using and only covered things that the dev specifically implemented.
Oh interesting! Does it mean that the content of these forwarded notifications goest through Apple servers then? With no way for the source app to prevent it?
I haven't picked it apart, but if it's like the other Continuity features it all takes place locally over bluetooth and ad-hoc wifi. There's a possibility that their servers are just sending the notifications to the user's Macs in the same push that sends them to the phone though.
So what phone link has been doing for years. But I suppose with the integration Apple can do you can just open the notification on your mac? Phone link very unhelpfully bings the notifying app name...
On supported devices (Samsung and OnePlus, off the top of my head), Phone Link can mirror apps to your PC and will open them up in this mode when you click a notification. There are some rough edges, like needing to manually unlock your phone—unless you do what I did and rig up a complicated Tasker flow to automate the process. This update makes jumping over to the Apple ecosystem surprisingly tempting, since Continuity with mirroring sounds like a more polished version of Phone Link. I can't imagine giving up my ThinkPad, though.
Ah I really wanted this too but it seems like it's not available in the EU.
Does anyone understand why? Is it apple having a flap about recent DMA/Whatever regulations they don't like or is there an actual technical reason why what's probably a fancy version of VNC can't work without breaching European regulations?
It's DMA. Certainly part of it is punitive, but it makes sense, too - building and especially supporting interoperability for these protocols is a burden that they can avoid by not shipping features to the EU. They're free to change the key exchange, APIs, wire format, etc. without having to deal with documentation, key issuance, etc. outside of their walls. And, being forced to open up Screen Mirroring would reduce its value as a moat, since someone would presumably be able to build an Android client quickly and with no reverse engineering work.
> supporting interoperability for these protocols is a burden
Also an unprecedented and unacceptable privacy and security risk.
You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc.
And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing.
There isn't a government or advertising company on this planet that wouldn't want to get at this information.
> Also an unprecedented and unacceptable privacy and security risk.
> You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc.
> And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing.
MacOS is not secure in the way you would like to think it's secure. This is already risk. And Apple really could do this right: make screen mirroring use the DRM playback paths, and open up the API to trigger it to competitors (who would get precisely the same DRM-playback-pathed result of a screen mirror showing up in a window from which they cannot read). I don't really know why a competitor would want to compete here, but they could.
Most people interact with apps like Health on their phone not their Mac.
And there are also many third party apps that never made Mac versions.
So the amount of data we are talking about exposing is significantly higher.
And the issue is that the DMA is ambiguous about what competition and interoperability specifically means and so it would just take one company to complain about your solution for Apple to be fined 10% of global revenue.
Many people log into their Mac using the same credentials (Apple ID) that give access to the Health data, and in fact Apple makes it really hard or even impossible to use it without (you can't selectively grant access, you need to use a separate Apple ID but then you lose some useful features such as universal clipboard, etc).
This is again a misinformed take. Your Mac can already get all your iPhone's data from the cloud where it is synced without viable opt-out or compartmentalization.
There’s a universe in which your Mac is a locked down device like your iPhone, with a proper immutable filesystem, carefully controlled persistent state, and a strong sandbox in which the terminal, Homebrew, and apps (App Store and otherwise) can act within the sandbox but cannot do things like, say, reading your entire iMessage database.
We do not live in this universe. Consider getting a Chromebook instead if you want to be in that universe. (But then you have a tradeoff: Apple itself seems pretty good about not using your data inappropriately. Google, not so much.)
> Only if the data is available in iCloud and it is stored in files and it is not encrypted.
Health data is available in there, just to go after your example. iPhone backups are also available in there.
At no point am I being asked anything else beyond my Apple ID, password, and two-step approval on another device (such as the Mac) to set up a new iPhone and download all my data.
Thus the outcome is that the Mac indeed has everything it needs to get access to all your iCloud data. In fact, reverse-engineering how to get it directly is unnecessary work - instead, just reverse-engineer enough to capture the Apple ID password (or prompt to it - given there's still no way for the user to tell a real system dialog from one drawn by malware) and approve the 2FA prompt, get an actual, real iPhone and sign into the person's account and then extract all the data from there (via screenshots if necessary).
It is sad to see such a misinformed take on a technical forum. You can already do everything you want. It will take some reverse-engineering work, but it's possible.
Similar things were said about iMessage interoperability with Android, until Beeper proved them wrong. They managed to reverse-engineer it, build a compatible client and clearly proved Apple's claims were BS (and no, this didn't lead to a mass-scale compromise of iMessage, contradicting fanboys' claims).
If the feature allows to pull up the iPhone's screen without any user consent, then it is vulnerable to begin with - the reverse-engineering requirement would become an insignificant hurdle compared to the value of such a vulnerability. Presumably however, there will be a consent step, either on the spot or prior (maybe it can reuse the cryptographic pairing mechanism that happens when the phone asks you to "trust this computer?" the first time), and no third-party (whether using an approved API or reverse-engineered) would be able to bypass it without the user intentionally consenting.
> the reverse-engineering requirement would become an insignificant hurdle compared to the value of such a vulnerability
The idea that breaking device attestation that is secured through Secure Enclave hardware i.e. not accessible from user code is an insignificant hurdle is hilariously ridiculous. It is borderline impossible for any ordinary developer.
And people that bring up the "just ask the user" argument clearly don't remember how poorly that has worked in the past e.g. Microsoft Vista. Users will blindly approve any dialog which is why Apple has been so careful to limit them to targeted actions which a "do you approve this app to record everything on your iPhone" is not.
You're approaching this from the idea that the impenetrability by third-parties is the primary security feature.
If this is true, then my worry isn't even about malicious attackers, it's my neighbor (with a real Mac) being able to (accidentally!) eavesdrop on my phone screen (since according to you this is the primary security measure).
It's obviously ridiculous, and the primary security measure is that there must be a prior key exchange and consent step. If that part is secure, then it would be secure against a third-party.
If that part is not secure, then no Secure Enclave-ing will help you, because worst case scenario, the attacker can just use a real Mac as part of his attack to pass the secure-enclave-protected authentication step, or just exploit the good old "analog hole" by using the real Mac as the main attack vector (and then just capture its HDMI output and feed in inputs via a USB-capable microcontroller simulating a keyboard).
> It is sad to see such a misinformed take on a technical forum.
If you’re going to make such a claim, you should be very careful to ensure you’re not misinformed yourself.
> Similar things were said about iMessage interoperability with Android, until Beeper proved them wrong.
No, they did not. We already knew Apple not allowing iMessage on Android was a lock-in choice. The trial with Epic brought that unambiguously to light, years before the release of Beeper Mini¹.
>You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen
Apple is first-party to the device, but third-party to me, the user. Why are they more trustworthy than a free open-source tool? Who the hell are they to tell me who I can and cannot trust?
So do I understand it correctly; the problem is not MacOS having a client app, the problem is iOS acting as the server with only apple approved client implementation?
I really don't see how it falls outside of the DMA.
> And, being forced to open up Screen Mirroring would reduce its value as a moat, since someone would presumably be able to build an Android client quickly and with no reverse engineering work.
Which is everything wrong about current Apple. How far the Apple has fallen off the tree. Back in the resurgence of the Mac after Steve Jobs returned, the policy was to make everything as open as possible, now it's entirely the reverse.
If the iPhone/Mac were a competitive product as they are, there would be no need to retort to that sort of shenanigan, the whole thing would be openly documented but implementation quality would be the deciding factor.
It is not surprising that Apple doesn't want to compete because they wouldn't necessarily win, before even talking about price.
In any case, while it's a nice feature to have, it can only be considered worthwhile because all of Apple's strategies for convergence have failed pretty hard (after mocking Microsoft) and there are now too many annoying things you need to do specifically on a smartphone (because of Apps, Auths, or other nonsense of the sort).
If anything, it is extremely dumb (considering the price and marketing around ecosystem) that you cannot just use whatever data is on the phone but with correct desktop app implementation even (and especially) for Apple first party app.
As a Mac user that is getting old (I remember System 7 from my youth, and I used System 9 for a bit) I feel extremely saddened that we are now celebrating what is basically a custom implementation of VNC/Remote Desktop for a completely locked device/OS.
This feature was considered essential/basic 20 years ago, having to use it to access a limited device because a company can't figure out proper convergence, largely out of pure greed, is really not something to be happy about.
I'm sure one day they'll figure out how to make a Mac App to properly exploit all the health/sport data of their very expensive Watch products (that require an iPhone for no good reason).
But when this day will come I probably won't be a customer anymore so whatever...
> Back in the resurgence of the Mac after Steve Jobs returned, the policy was to make everything as open as possible
My perception is quite different. One of the first things Steve did after his return was to revoke the licenses for Mac clones (Power Computing, Daystar, UMAX, etc). Also, the iPod, iPhone and iPad were created under his leadership and have always been very far from open in their designs, regarding both hardware and software.
Apple was (and still is) very open when it helps them, e.g. by adopting and enforcing USB (original iMac) or USB C (laptops from ca 2015 on).
“Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these [new] features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.”
I know that Apple wants their cake and eat it too, looking for ways to wiggle out of this while still dodging their responsibilities. This is why they need years and a small army of lawyers.
Publish the protocol docs. That's literally all that's required from them. Actually they don't even need to - they can just promise not to sue anyone who reverse-engineers it and publishes a commercial client.
That's how adversarial interoperability worked for decades (and gave free software the ability to interoperate with proprietary formats, see LibreOffice for example) before abusing the DMCA and/or threatening legal action to take down compatible implementations became common practice. I do not recall of any security breaches as a result of this.
Apple are however not going to do that, because doing so would overnight destroy their moat around Universal Clipboard and all their existing interoperability features. So instead they make up some bullshit that non-technical governments and courts will take years to disprove, buying them more time to operate anti-competitively.
It is however sad to see a member of a technical forum gobble up said bullshit.
Can you articulate where in the DMA where it says that all Apple has to do "is promise not to sue anyone" to be in compliance. Or where it talks about protocol publication.
The DMA is about preventing gatekeepers from using arbitrary restrictions to prevent competition. It does not try to predict and anticipate every possible example nor solution.
The existence of competitor would by itself be enough proof to the fact that Apple is not restricting competition. But for such a competitor to exist, they would require enough assurance that the business will be viable and they won't get sued out of existence.
Apple either publishing the protocol or at the very least publishing an official licensing agreement allowing anyone to reverse-engineer and reimplement said protocol would achieve this.
Evidence could be that Microsoft isn't in trouble for shipping Windows with RDP servers/clients in Europe, which is equivalent to this iPhone mirroring feature.
Why is Microsoft able to do it just fine (without running afoul of the DMA) while Apple supposedly can't, despite MS having an ever larger marketshare of its field than Apple and this would warrant even more scrutiny?
The multitude of third-party RDP clients (and nobody being threatened with legal action for implementing one) out there may be at least part of the answer.
I've been waiting a year for the summarize AI to (not) make it to my Google Pixel 8 Pro. It should be known that everyone outside of the US get a different product than what is advertised online and reviewed on YouTube.
Considering the pricing in the EU it was already hard to consider the effort to value worthwhile but now we are officially getting a substandard product.
Before there were many stuffs like Apple News never making it but at least there was some pretense of working on it.
Since EU people are getting a less featureful product, they should get products priced accordingly.
Otherwise, Apple should just fuck off EU if it doesn't want to play ball, they started the whole thing by being consumer hostile and the greediest corporation ever, they make Microsoft look like the good guys.
They haven't given a detailed reason, but pundits who have paid more attention to the DMA suggest that it's because the feature does not allow 3rd parties to offer the same integration.
While the DMA's changes to the app store received the most publicity, the DMA mandates for modularity for any feature where a home-advantage could be granted by the gate keeper. Since features like AI and screen mirroring are already established markets with competitors, Apple offering these as built in functions could be interpreted as actions against the DMA unless they offer a way for others to tap into it via APIs.
However this is just a guess. There is a cynical rhetoric that it's to punish the EU but this is a pretty flimsy idea since it's clear that Apple is relying on these new features to propel upgrades to M series macs and new iPhones. Currently there exists no tentpole feature for people in the EU to upgrade. The other reason is that it's pretty tenuous to think that the EU masses will rise up against the EC because they don't have screen mirroring or image playground.
This is an interesting one because, to my knowledge, and unlike alternative App Stores etc on iOS, there’s surely nothing stopping an Android phone manufacturer from developing a Mac app to offer equivalent functionality?
I’m unsure whether the DMA compels them to provide specific APIs beyond the ability to connect to arbitrary devices and draw to the screen, and it’s maybe a little bit concerning if it does. My understanding was that nothing in the DMA specifically compelled Apple to create e.g. MarketplaceKit, it’s just that the alternative would be to open up iOS far more than Apple is willing to do.
I can install a whole number of AppStore or opensource apps that allow me to access other machines graphically. I really don't see why accessing the GUI on an iPhone should be treated any differently than accessing the GUI on a terminal server or an android or linux box or something.. The argument doesn't really make sense to me..
While your guess is as good as mine. I can see that the screen sharing feature goes beyond what is currently possible with 3rd party mirroring tools, including apple's own earlier tools. For example right clicking brings up extensive contextual menus that aren't accessible in iOS, and I can see these also leverage the continuity features between the platforms.
Pretty simple really. The EU can't fine Apple for not doing business in EU countries, including not rolling out a feature. But if they do roll out a feature, EU has decided it can fine them 20% of global revenue if it isn't just how the EU wants it to be.
Not doing so only costs Apple whatever marginal business they expect to lose in EU for not offering this or that feature. So I'd expect more of this going forward.
It's only a matter of time before the EU gets wise to this - this move is simply to delay the inevitable and buy themselves some more time to act anticompetitively. When they feel like the EU is closer to disproving their argument (because there is no technical reason this can't be opened to third-parties in a secure way), they will suddenly announce that they have found some magic and miraculous way to do it and release the feature, bringing them back into compliance.
> It's only a matter of time before the EU gets wise to this
"gets wise to this" how, exactly? The EU can certainly set conditions which Apple must meet to ship a feature. They have no legal grounds whatsoever to demand that Apple ship that feature to Europe, specially modified to meet their exacting requirements.
How would that even work? One way to comply with the EU's demands that a product work a certain way, is to not sell that product in the EU. Is your stance that EU has a right to force companies to sell their wares in the EU?
Gets wise that this is blatant malicious compliance, and use this to inform potential enforcement action and/or revisions to the regulation.
It could very well become that after enough of this, DMA 2.0 would have a provision stipulating that any feature withheld in the EU would need to have a valid technical justification that passes review by a panel of independent experts.
Yep, I hope they work on something like that. Maybe we could get a chance for another competitive OS in the EU.
Sometimes I wish they tax the hell out of those US behemoth in a way that would open space for EU companies to become competitive.
The network effects are too big when it comes to IT, it's not very wise to let the US be the sole beneficiary of such an industry.
Can you elaborate on why it's nice? How do I do multi-touch gestures with a single cursor? Is the main benefit be able to use iPhone apps on a bigger screen? Can iPhone apps display more content (maybe let the app pretend it's being displayed on an iPad or at least a larger screen than the physical screen size)?
But with a trackpad you cannot see what you are touching. You see a single cursor on the screen. If you touch two things on your iPhone you know exactly which two things you are manipulating. With a single cursor on the Mac, no matter how many fingers you use you only manipulate one thing.
This seems to me a difficult challenge in mashing up the wildly different interaction paradigms. I'd love to see how Apple solves it in their new feature.
Imagine a game that's supposed to played with a landscape orientation. Your left hand control (up/down/left/right) is located on the lower left corner. Your right hand control (A/B/X/Y) is located on the lower right corner. You are expected to touch two controls simultaneously.
I don't even like Apple as a company but I have high expectations of their products and I assume their product is meticulously designed for a variety of use cases. Why should I as a consumer expect half-assed implementations? Just because all software are half-assed these days?
Apple says "With iPhone Mirroring, users can now fully access and engage with their iPhone right from Mac while iPhone remains locked nearby." And nowhere does Apple say this feature doesn't work for games.
I didn't discount anything. Where did I say that? I merely have high expectations and I'm asking about the feature and whether it satisfies the high expectations, and if so, how. This is called curiosity.
I'm never the kind of person who discounts a feature before I even use it. And I clearly said I haven't used it.
this is so asinine. reassess your expectations for a corporate monolith that only cares about money. You should expect half assed implementations from a corporate board beholden to only a profit directive.
Zooming into a map, a picture, a webpage, or quite frankly most things would be rather awkward if you didn’t know where it would zoom in (or if it would always zoom into the center of the screen, for instance).
As another comment mentioned, it appears to use the cursor position as the pinch-gesture location.
At least in Sonoma, Screen Time requests crash Messages, fail to work properly on iPadOS, but work fine on iPhone. Now I can approve requests without having to dig my phone out my pocket. A small convenience, but I can’t expect them to fix Screen Time on macOS any time soon.
It is surprisingly slow, though. Like, awfully slow. There's a very noticeable latency that's unacceptable for a local device sitting right next to the computer.
Apple has been doing low latency screen mirroring for, I don’t know, a decade. If you find the latency unacceptable, consider looking into your network performance.
As someone who dislikes the “you’re holding it wrong” argument, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Your network latency is outside of Apple’s control.
Great way to tell you have low standard and can't detect latency. The same thing has been said about the iPad Mirroring, expect it's effectively unusable for anyone half serious if you don't use the wired mode.
For a quick tech demo, it's all fun and games, but when there is real shit to do, nobody wants to fight their tools.
fix your network. i send a display to my ipad to run audio mixing in realtime for work. 30fps, but more importantly consistent pen input for control. been doing this for 3+ years regularly
Nothing to do with my network, it has disappointing latency for drawing applications (it's not just about the theoretical latency of input, you have to consider the whole chain, with translation to softwares). Pretty much every pro reviewer has said has much.
I can see why it is completely fine for your application but you can't say the same for other applications.
Besides it doesn't even make much sense to need that when the thing has such a powerful processor, Apple need to get their shit together and have it run real Mac software and that's it.
That’s not what your parent comment is saying. They’re commenting on how there’s no official Instagram app for Desktop, except now there kind of is: you use the mobile app on a mirror of the iPhone on the Desktop. That is “kind of wild” because it’s so roundabout. The comment criticises Instagram (and their lack of a Desktop app), not Apple.
Let us know if you're actually using it in a week or so. (I tried it a couple of times in the beta. It is slow. It is clunky. It is an impractical way to interact with your iPhone.)
Well, it's basically VNC over Wifi with a custom layer for touch events and other special iOS cases, so yeah.
VNC over wifi is worse than RDP'ing a server across a country if you have good wired fiber connection. But I guess in a pinch if you don't want to look for your iPhone and need a quick interaction.
But I agree that in any case it's largely a gimmick and mainly something for marketing reasons around the ecosystem and all that jazz. It's just like the failed attempt at porting iOS/iPadOS apps to the Mac: makes for a great release announcement/keynote, in practice barely worth using.
> With many of the Apple Intelligence models running entirely on device, as well as the introduction of Private Cloud Compute — which extends the privacy and security of Apple devices into the cloud to unlock even more intelligence — Apple Intelligence introduces an extraordinary step forward for privacy in artificial intelligence.
They've said this in every mention of Apple AI since the WWDC, but they haven't mentioned at all if you can disable the cloud calls. I'm assuming you won't be able to, but if you can, that will be a very neat guarantee to have. If that same ability comes to an iPhone, I'll be very tempted to break my 10+ year Android tenure.
In the beta builds with Apple Intelligence, it is possible to turn the entire feature set off (including cloud calls). Don’t think you can keep the local features and skip the cloud though.
If you bought into the apple ecosystem with a recent Mac I’d not bother. But for those of your running a PC Ubuntu is incredible and their new App Store makes finding and installing software super easy. My workstation pc with Ubuntu is insanely faster than my Mac Studio when it comes to jetbrains IDEs. It’s so snappy I first couldn’t believe the performance diff.
Linux user for the past 20 years - I cannot remember the last laptop I had that didn't have multi touch and gestures support. been using mostly ThinkPads & Dells.
I don't know what marketing team created this whole "our trackpad is so different" belief, but they've done a brilliant job!
Multi-touch per se has been pretty common even in tiny junk trackpads. The problem is that it's not particularly useful in that case.
What makes Apple's trackpads so nice is a huge and solid surface. I came from Thinkpads myself and honestly didn't expect that to be as much of a thing as it turned out to be, but yes, they really are that much better. There are a few PC laptops these days with similar trackpads, but you definitely have to look for it when picking one.
I don't mean to say your experience isn't real, but that isn't what I encountered at all with my last 12 years "waiting for Ubuntu to get good" (I am quoting myself here).
Every time I tried to install it to test if it was good, something broke for no reason. This happened to me on many PCs and many versions of Ubuntu.
The last time I tried 24.04, the installer crashed in the middle of the installation and I couldn't finish it.
If someone wants to test Ubuntu, I'd say you should try it, but do not get surprised if something very basic seems broken since that's my entire experience with the distro. I'd recommend Fedora instead.
Debian stands out as a Linux distribution that "just works" IME. Fedora isn't even all that bad, but the short support cycle can be problematic if you care about using it reliably in production. Debian doesn't have that issue, their "Stable" release is just rock solid. It can also be surprisingly snappy even on old, very low-end hardware where everything else (including every modern web browser) will visibly chug or not run at all.
A long time ago I started dreading major updates from corporate providers. They push features they want, not features I want. It got so bad with Microsoft that I fled. Apple's updates have been aggressive in resetting my preferences and pushing things like iCloud and their login to the point that they are on the Microsoft path. I am forced to use mac for work but only because of work.
Apple is most certainly not the company you want to purchase products from if you're afraid of major updates. They are far more aggressive and eager to break things than Microsoft.
Back in 1991, there was an uproar, an uproar I tells you, because System 7 required nearly a megabyte of memory instead of the 600K System 6 could run with. Sure, most users barely had more than a megabyte of memory, but it paints a pattern for sure.
Moving from Windows to Mac because you hate updates is like moving from Ubuntu to Red Hat. It's more of the stuff you hated except you don't realize it; ignorance is bliss?
I'm afraid of major updates and I'm using Apple. I usually wait around a year before updating and that works for me. They release security fixes for old versions.
Or maybe Bluetooth automatically switching to "reduced audio quality" (I know, I know, it's a feature, not a bug...)
Or wait, the kernel panic I get every once in a while would be nice: panic(cpu 1 caller 0xfffffe00318c8a1c): DCP PANIC - ASSERT!AppleDCPDPTXPowerController.cpp:538 No device added after powering on the rails. HPD=0 - dcpav(27)
I haven't had a system that felt so unreliable since Windows 98. :D
> Or maybe Bluetooth automatically switching to "reduced audio quality" (I know, I know, it's a feature, not a bug...)
I don't think I've experienced a single system where Bluetooth is working well. Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS all have their share of Bluetooth issues. The Bluetooth spec must be beyond broken.
Totally agree. I wish my hearing aids had a proprietary USB-C dongle or something.
On Linux, my experience has been both better and worse. More random disconnects and the need to re-pair is more frequent. The nice thing is I can automate the workarounds on Linux but can only curse on MacOS :D
That kernel panic sounds like a hardware fault just from first blush. Sounds like it's turning on some device but the device isn't responding after being turned on
I always take a full disk snapshot before full upgrades like this (boot into recovery and this is straightforward with a usb disk, or use carbon copy cloner) but yep updates in the Apple eco system are (knock on wood) very painless.
Back in the day before things like homebrew it was far worse... the days of macports and mod_python to run your Django app are fortunately behind us.
MacPorts has a pretty slick migration feature now. Not sure about Django, but this is the smoothest migration I've experienced with MacPorts in over 15+ years.
Times have changed completely since... 2006-2007 when this was relevant. If you are still using mod_python in 2024 please seek a therapist specializing in trauma.
There seems to be some bugs related to Apple shipping broken command line tools (again). I've gotten most of my ports built, but I did install an instance of pkgsrc to get the remaining ones until MacPorts gets things sorted out. Clearly not as convenient as Homebrew, but I've always enjoyed being able to tweak compile-time options with MacPorts, so I'm sticking with it.
Weird how the title says, "macOS Sequoia is available today, bringing iPhone Mirroring, Apple Intelligence, and more to Mac"
Then you look at the paragraph for this and it says, "Coming Soon: Apple Intelligence"
They announced this in June, and it's just loosely coming "this fall." I have a feeling they are finding it very difficult to do anything with any kind of consistency or value on their 8gb RAM phones / Macbooks. Their models they have demonstrated so far are a relatively low parameter count with LoRA adapters for various use cases.
I have a feeling that the majority of Apple Intelligence will eventually just be farmed out to their "secure cloud" or whatever they were calling it.
I find that a little hard to believe. I would suppose the vast majority of customers don't think a lot about the timing of software features in a purchase decision.
It’s not as if the hardware features on the 16 Pro are groundbreaking — a slightly nicer camera, a slightly nicer display, a slightly nicer battery life, and a $600 upgrade fee. No, thank you, the software features are what make-or-break the upgrade.
Phones nowadays are made to last years, even 6+ years easily. So the update this year is not for the people who bought it last year but for people with an iPhone X or 11. They will see major improvements. But it’s silly to update (any) flagship phone every year.
Okay, but then, why upgrade to a 16 Pro instead of the much cheaper 15 Pro? The price difference applies there too — there needs to be some reason to get the newest, most expensive one. This generation it is not hardware.
Well this applies to everything then. Why buy the latest AMD or Intel CPU or Nvidia GPU ?
Some people upgrade from iPhone X to 15 this year because it’s cheaper. Some have an old iPhone and just want the latest model to go for 6 or 7 more years.
Even incremental upgrades like this year are welcome. Before there was an S model every other year. This year it’s the « iPhone 15S pro ». Slightly better and more powerful. The other thing is, I think it’s pretty hard to say « well last year model was good enough, we’ll go on a 2 year cycle this time ». It could send the wrong message to investors so they’re trapped in the race maybe ?
Usually because there’s some advantage — you actually need/want the performance offered by Zen4 over Zen3, you need four-cycle AXV512, you have a target framerate in a game, you need RTX or CUDA14… because if you don’t, obviously buying older and used saves you money and you don’t need the new stuff anyway.
Ming-Chi Kuo is the golden standard for reports on Apple's production apparatus. He has the best sources, the best leaks, the best insight into very specific discussions regarding parts acquisition for Apple.
When it comes to what Apple does with those parts, or market segmentation, or sale projection, he's got no special knowledge. In this specific case, pardon the technical language, but he's full of ...
I would guess that the vast majority of customers don’t even know when a new iPhone is released and therefore don’t buy in the first few weeks after it’s released. Of the customers that are aware of the release, I would assume that most are aware because they’re anticipating new features
absolutely anecdotal, but from my experience, people who are normally excited for iPhones really don’t care about AI at all.
i think Apple hyping AI so much was a mistake, doesn’t have nearly the same impact to them as hyping up a new camera feature or a new screen or a new color or something.
The same AI features are coming to the entire iPhone 16 line. The major benefit of the 16 Pro, just as with prior generations, is a faster SoC and better cameras.
The only reason the iPhone 15 Pro was the only of the 15 generation to get the AI stuff is that they happened to put 8GB in that device, giving it enough headroom to not majorly impact user enjoyment trying to cram a multi-GB model into memory. But all of the iPhone 16s have 8GB (+?)
> I would suppose the vast majority of customers don't think a lot about the timing of software features in a purchase decision.
The ones who buy on day one do. I don’t find it surprising that the people who even know about and anticipate the release date of a product are the ones who are eager for specific features. If those aren’t there yet, there’s no rush to buy.
I’m no analyst but I expect demand in the EU won’t be that (comparatively) great either. When the flagship feature isn’t available, there’s little reason to spend the extra money.
iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 -- the versions with the full Apple Intelligence -- are both in betas, and there are enormous numbers of people blogging and vlogging about their experiences. And yes we all realize that on-device models aren't going to be competing with trillion parameter models, but people are finding it pretty useful.
They just don't feel like it's release ready so they're refining. Apple has done this with major releases over several iterations now where a couple of features are held back for the .1 release while it's perfected.
"iterated" implies that there is no improvement. Why do you thing 15.1 wouldn't be an improvement over 15.0? I do agree with you that "perfected" is also not the correct word choice. I think I would have gone with "refined" or "improved"
Unless it can be completely turned off I will never upgrade and I guess I will be selling my year-old M3 Max in favor of some shitty PC (or I’ll eventually just run Asahi once it supports my hardware well).
Apples pretty decent about putting toggle switches on stuff, for instance you don't have to enable iCloud or even associate it with an Apple account if you don't care for FindMy and remote erase etc
But I'm with you, since Apple signaled going all-in on "an assistant that has access to everything" I switched to an android with the intention of never enabling Google services and certainly not the voice assistant. Unfortunately I've found it too annoying to go completely without Google, I've read that RCS messaging won't work with an unlocked bootloader, nor will precise location, so I'm stuck with some evil in the name of features parity.
At least in Photos, the model is not what one would consider working. A quick example: "Halloween with [x]" works, because Halloween is recognized as a specific date. It works well. Christmas throws it for a loop. Christmas isn't thought of as a time but a state. So it'll show photos that look appropriately Christmassy, but the picks appear semi-random: it'll show one of about five taken in quick succession, but the one it picks is someone wearing a Santa hat in profile, but the other 4 are straight on and one would think more likely to be returned.
I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that being unable to properly grok the biggest holiday of the year for many Western countries is sufficient.
That isn't "Apple Intelligence" (which is the generative stuff held over to the .1 releases). What you're describing is inference metadata + basic search logic and has been in iOS and macOS for several major versions now, constantly improving.
And given that Christmas resolves to a date (it actually offers up the autocomplete of "Christmas Day" to make it easier, then simply making the search criteria a calendar date), for me it literally shows all photos on Dec 25. I guess mileage varies.
Well, except Apple specifically calls out this exact photo and video search function on their page titled "Apple Intelligence." Sure they've had some basic search already, but in their demos and advertising, they promise that Apple Intelligence is used to find photos by descriptions.
>Search for photos and videos in the Photos app simply by describing what you’re looking for. Apple Intelligence can even find a particular moment in a video clip that fits your search description and take you right to it.
If we accept Apple's claim that Apple AI is coming in beta in fall 2024 (or per the Canada page December 2024), and I have the release of 18 which by that restriction is not Apple AI enabled, I can already do complex semantic search which means that functionality can't be "Apple AI", right? And person on date has been in iOS for at least two prior generations as well. iOS has been allowing you to search by people in images, places, events, and text appearing in the image, along with broad categorizations like "sunset", "beach", etc, for at least two generations.
However when you're typing in a search, for each term it tries to contextualize it via selections. For instance if you already had "{Person} on " and then typed Christmas, it will let you pick if you mean Christmas the event, Christmas an "object", or Christmas the literal text (an icon of a couple of lines of text in a photo frame). I suspect the poster selected, probably unintentionally, Christmas the text and it gave them images where that text appears somewhere in the image. Just out of curiosity I did that and it gave me a set of images that I thought must be mistaken, but on each image somewhere the text Christmas could be found. In one it was a crazily distorted cursive writing on a table cloth hanging over the edge of a shelf, which is just crazy.
This is such an Apple brainwash, like how many apps in background you think has everyone else, my linuxbox has almost none, the rest is just non-linux from third party, unless you only install apps from Apple and like having a subpar experience, everything you install is just from third party on which they have no control on. And killing apps doesn't mean anything for AI, it doesn't run anything useful on 8GB, doesn't run anything useful on 8GB, no matter if you kill all the processes. I wish I could just have a conversation where people doesn't cyborgically repeats Apple's marketing bullshit and turn on the human brain
Because other OSes don't kill OOM apps? Or any app they want? It is only Apple and only possible on mobile? The only thing that apple has, is the inability to have background apps, so that if you want to use third party sync services, like syncthing, you can't and have to stick to apple products, the rest is just like anyone else
iOS isn’t killing OOM apps. It’s killing inactive apps. It’s something that wouldn’t fly on a desktop or server OS under general use, but works reasonably well in the mobile space.
I think it's actually easier on macOS because you can just swap everything if necessary. For some reason I don't understand, iOS does not employ swap, so while it can kill background apps, it can't kill foreground app.
That is true. I'm not sure why iOS doesn't do that while macOS does. Maybe mobile storage isn't performant enough? At least when iOS was originally developed.
I wouldn't be surprised if they're struggling full-stop. Doing anything with "apple-level" polish and reliability on current-gen LLMs is a challenge. It looks great in demos and maybe even 95% of real-world use cases, but the remaining 5% tends to be embarrassing.
And it's not just a case of "the last 5% takes 95% of the work", it's more like "the last 5% is an open research problem".
That is the biggest hurdle, in my opinion. If we could even reply with, "sorry, I don't know about that", it would be such an improvement over what we have today. Sadly, from what I understand, the only way to say "sorry, I don't know about that" is to just say that to every single question?
There's no specific reason why LLMs couldn't be trained to say "Don't know" when they don't know. Indeed, some close examination shows separate calculation patterns when it's telling the truth, when it's making a mistake and when it's deliberately bullshitting, with the latter being painfully common.
The problem is we don't train them that way. They're trained on what data is on the internet, and people... people really aren't good at saying "I don't know".
Applying RLHF on top of that at least helps reduce the deliberate lies, but it isn't normal to give a thumbs-up to an "I don't know" response either.
Do you think it's really a training set problem? I don't think you learn to say that you don't understand by observing people say it, you learn to say it by being introspective about how much you have actually comprehended, understanding when your thinking is going in multiple conflicting directions and you don't know which is correct, etc.
Kids learn to express confusion and uncertainty in an environment where their parents are always very confident of everything.
Overall though, I agree that this is the biggest issue right now in the AI space; instead of being able to cut itself off, the system just rambles and hallucinates and makes stuff up out of whole cloth.
> Do you think it's really a training set problem? I don't think you learn to say that you don't understand by observing people say it, you learn to say it by being introspective about how much you have actually comprehended, understanding when your thinking is going in multiple conflicting directions and you don't know which is correct, etc.
I really do think it's a training set problem. It's been amply proven that the models often do know when they lie.
Sure, that's not how children learn to do this... is it? I think in some cases, and to some degree, it is. They also learn by valuing consistency and separately learning morals. LLMs also seem to learn morals to some degree, but to the degree they're even able to reason about consistency, it certainly doesn't feed back into their training.
---
So yeah, I think it's a training set issue, and the reason children don't need this is because they have capabilities the LLMs lack. This would be a workaround.
> There's no specific reason why LLMs couldn't be trained to say "Don't know" when they don't know.
Yes there is, it's that we don't know how. We don't have anywhere close to the level of understanding to know when an LLM knows something and when it doesn't.
Training on material that includes "I don't know" will not work. That's not the solution.
If we knew how, we'd be doing it, since that's the #1 user complaint, and the company that fixed it would win.
My understanding is that 8GB is plenty enough to play with small models (7B or so) in a lightly quantized version. (Especially since model params are kept on disk and only really "mapped" to RAM, with it acting as a cache.) 4GB is where it gets dicey, as you're constrained to tiny models that just don't do anything very interesting.
Thing is, you do need all the params usually, so if the model is only partially mapped to RAM, it's the equivalent of an app swapping in and out as it runs. Which is to say, it means that inference is much slower.
Local Apple models are likely in the 2-3B range, but fine-tuned to specific tasks.
No, the DMA very likely bans it. The EU won't say in advance and has been loudly threatening fines of 10% of global revenue.
DMA forbids using your platform's data or position to support a service without giving third parties equal access. Third parties are pretty clearly excluded from screen mirroring or running ai on device, so these seem like things Apple can't legally launch in the EU.
I'm sitting here thinking - man, how is it possible that they can make the best laptop hardware no contest, and yet I still get blurry icons when connecting to a non-retina external display? Something that the cheapest Windows laptop money can buy would do flawlessly?
Macs are great and so is macOS, but it's not that good, at the end of the day it's just a computer
I already own two 2560x1440 non-Apple displays that work flawlessly with my Windows PC, they cost $250 apiece, and there is absolutely no way in hell I am selling them and buying a $1599 display because Apple can't fix their egregiously bad software. I'll just live with slightly blurry icons whenever I want to use them with my Mac.
Yes, but these are the ones I already own and that’s also completely besides the point, which is that they look great on Ubuntu, Windows 10/11, and pretty much every OS that’s not macOS
I realize it's a very Apple ecosystem thing to shore up gaps in macOS with 3rd party apps, but BetterDisplay can do this for you: https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay
(Run non-retina displays at 2X frame buffer for proper anti-aliasing)
Thanks for the advice! I tried downloading this app and set both displays to HiDPI and UI elements seemed to sharpen, but certain icons are still blurry. I didn't see any options related to setting the framebuffer, I assume this happens automatically. Will keep experimenting...
I have not looked very hard but I don't think this app fixes the fundamental issues: which is the removal of proper sub-pixel antialiasing for anything that isn't considered a retina class display by their standard.
This sort of app might get a better output by forcing the 2x rendering and then scaling it to the native display resolution but it cannot possibly be of the same quality as what we had before, unless they rewrote rendering or something like that.
As far as I know there are 2 "real solutions": you buy a display that is retina class in one of their historically supported resolutions or you accept to lose a bit of desktop space by running a "sub-retina" class display at x2.
For example, a 27 inch "4k" (they are 3840x2160) display will get you a desktop space of 1920/1080 in HiDPI mode.
That is sad because a 27-inch iMac from the early 2000 had more desktop space, an image not as sharp but it wasn't bad as long as they kept sub-pixel antialiasing.
As far as I'm concerned, it is that way because they went the lazy way around implementing HiDPI and being able to market it like they were so much better than Microsoft. But that only works if you solely buy their hardware because nobody followed them on the desktop specs (even though it's slowly coming lately it seems).
This issue in my opinion is a testament of how much anti-consumer and disdainful Apple is; because it couldn't possible have cost them a lot of engineering to be able to support both, it is clearly for their bottom line and that's it.
Interesting, I've never seen a big Github project with only a `README.md` before. It looks like they moved the open source part to a new branch[1], before halting the open development completely (I don't mind, just observing).
This is awesome. I had just written off the reduced quality of my external displays and gotten used to it. I feel like I just put my contacts in after turning on HiDPI. Just wanted to say thanks!
Edit: Also want to mention that window sizes and various UI elements also snapped into their 'intended' locations. Two screens, both 1440p, one ultrawide for anyone reading. YMMV.
What does "retina" mean exactly? From what I can tell it's a general Apple marketing term rather than something concrete. Are 4K monitors unsupported by macOS? I've been using one with my MacBook for a while and I haven't noticed blurriness.
AFAICT “Retina” is a marketing term used by Apple to refer to their first party displays with high pixel density. I use a QHD display with much lower pixel density and get blurry icons. Since writing the comment I realized I was using a very specific term in a general way, which is technically incorrect, but I thought that’s what the problem was.
From reading the comments in these threads and some additional resources, it does seem that the problem is not whether or not the display is “retina” per say, but that macOS is designed to run on high density displays and can have problems with low density ones. My mistake I guess.
I think the point that Apple should have better support for a wider range of displays still stands. It is not unreasonable to want your general purpose, professional-grade computer which costs thousands to work correctly with a variety of displays and resolutions, especially when lesser machines do it better.
At this point I’m just whinging bitterly though, the blurry icons are not the end of the world and buying new displays or a new computer just to fix them would be silly.
Jobs explained it when he first debuted it. It's called that because the pixels are small/dense enough that you can basically not distinguish pixels anymore.
So on phones it has usually been about 300dpi. On laptops and desktops it's been something over 220dpi.
That's more on Microsoft's sudden shift to enshittification as a business model rather than making good software.
Apple has is actually enshittifying too (dumb UI changes, worse apps - see "Catalyst", etc), it's just that Microsoft has became a trailblazer in that field so Apple still feels good in comparison, despite the many downgrades.
Meanwhile, Wall Street and normies call Satya Nadella a genius and will be shocked in 5 to 10 years when their tabloid news operation/tech company starts looking more like IBM.
Pedant: Enshittification means something different, involving a company making one group’s experience worse so they can extract more money from another. It’s not “just” making a product worse.
I recently got bored of Apple ecosystem. Was considering buying System76 for work, but thought that iPhone Mirroring feature would be really neat and decided to wait.
Turns out it’s not available in EU because yadda yadda Apple threw a fit.
This is unnecessarily pedantic. Personifying the behavior of a company is not some new concept. It’s actually rather common.
Because a company itself cannot express emotions, the externally facing visible decisions are used as a proxy.
For example, a company raising prices to an unexpected level may be described as “greedy”. A company executing a series of decisions that appears misguided or incalculable may be described as “panicking”.
> Personifying the behavior of a company is not some new concept. It’s actually rather common.
I know, it's common and it's wrong and unhelpful. That's my point. It doesn't help us understand the situation better, but actively misleads us if we're interested in actually analyzing problems and coming up with solutions.
And I just looked it up and it appears that Apple isn't supporting it because their reading of the EU law is that they'd have to support iPhone mirroring to third parties like Windows and Linux, where it would be harder or impossible to control the security and privacy.
That's something that can be talked about intelligently, whichever side you're on. Saying they're "throwing a fit" is not. It's false, and makes the conversation worse for all of us.
> You're suggesting some kind of emotional immaturity
Depends on who's in charge.
Meta has shit PR primarily because Zuck doesn't like/understand comms.
Hes bollocks deep in AI because he likes it. Even though it costs him shareholder value (dropping those billions on new data centres to run massive loss making AI infra. )
I've installed Asahi on my mac. Altough I had to recreate some utilities, it's so much worth it. With macOS you have to accept the good and the bad, and the bad are really annoying. It work great for task focused usage, but for personal computing, it's a pain.
How's your experience? I'm tempted but have so many questions:
- Which mac are you using?
- Any missing hardware support?
- Dual booting?
- How's Bluetooth?
- Anything else that was surprising, scary, or disappointing?
Not OP but I use Asahi on my M1 Pro MBP. Hardware support is incomplete (Thunderbolt doesn't work for example) but I don't need it. One surprising thing is the battery life while sleeping but I learned to do a shutdown instead of sleeping on it.
It's both on my Mac Mini and my MBA (both M1). It work great on the Mini. I think bluetooth work, but I have no use for it and have never checked. Everything works great as far as I know (even virtualization with qemu). I don't game on it, so can't say anything about that.
As for the MBA, suspend is still a miss (I read that the asahi team can't get certain devices to go to deep sleep, so they chose a safer low power mode instead). The lack of DP over usb-c is a bit annoying, but I mostly use the laptop display on macOS too, so I don't really mind. I think thunderbolt is not there too, but I have no thunderbolt devices (dock or storage). It boots very fast, but I'd recommend against KDE as the MBA gets hot with it. I'm using Sway. I heard about microphone issue, but I've never used it for calls as I have a usb one on my desktop.
The installation process is as easy as something done in the terminal can be. It's pretty much guided (just make sure you have enough space for the installation). If I had to redo it, I'd choose the minimal installation as I don't like KDE that much and it was some pain to remove it.
Personally if I'm going Linux, I'm out on Mac hardware.
Don't get me wrong, Mac hardware is nice hardware. But there's no reason to own it if you're using alternative operating systems.
The bang for your buck on computing is wildly better on something like a Beelink mini PC than a Mac Mini. Windows laptop hardware has also most definitely caught up to the M1.
And I think we all know you listed off everything that's gonna be broken with Asahi Linux like Bluetooth and microphone as something you "don't use" just because you know it's broken.
Yeah, the macs were all I had, so there was no other option. I'm waiting for my new PCs to arrive and once they get here, I'm going to wipe the Asahi installation and revert to stock macOS (I will still need them as work computers and for XCode)
And I genuinely don't use Bluetooth. Everything is wired, although I use WiFi on the MBA. Neither do I like to use the laptop microphone (noisy environment, so I use a headset or the usb microphone). The only thing I care in a laptop is WiFi, a good enough keyboard, a good enough screen, low temperature and noise, and a battery that last at least 4 hours. My default workstation is the desktop.
But yeah, I do agree with you that it's better to go with PC if you're planning to stick with Linux long term.
The lack of support for the built in microphone is a bit of a catch you don't see mentioned too often. It feels like one of those things that would have come early on and it's not necessarily the first thing you're going to reach for but it can be a bit surprising when you find out it's just not there.
I looked up an article to elaborate on the "threw a fit" part. It appears that Apple believes it would have to compromise security aspects of iPhone Mirroring in order to do it in a way that complies with EU law, so it's choosing to just not offer it at all.
The problem I have with this explanation is that it’s 90% available sans the magic update.
It’s possible to Airplay iPhone to window and see what’s on the screen. Continuity with iPad work just well so it’s also possible to control iPad using MacOS.
But combine both and we get into no-no land.
It’s not a secret that Apple brings much more revenue from US than from EU. I named it a fit, but I’m perfectly aware it’s a power struggle between EU and Apple and I think it’s an end of the era.
And it works perfectly. Pair it with kdeconnect and you have even a better experience of integration between your phone and your PC than with Apple. Only thing that is missing is the ability to take calls from the PC, that to be fair, it's not something that useful to me (if I want to make phone calls from the PC I use my landline number with VOIP).
Again, I see no innovation in the Apple ecosystem, after trying it out I'm happy to have returned to Linux+Android, overall a better experience. I don't miss Apple at all, it was like being in a cage...
When the apps are shipped bundled with the OS by the same company, and use new system framework/API features that are part of the OS what is really the distinction?
iPhone mirroring, video conferencing and window tiling actually use system frameworks, so it's okay to present them as OS features.
New versions of Safari are already available for older macOS versions through System Update for a few years, I've already downloaded Safari 18 on my Sonoma. And for Passwords, Messages, Notes and Maps there's no legit reasons why newer versions can't be distributed through App Store, other than using their new features as a promo for their new macOS...
I have an M1 Air 8GB and a 2018 MBP 16GB. Performance feels about the same until the Air hits swap, then the old Intel MBP still outperforms the M1 Air.
My 2018 MBP 15 is the i7 model, while it gets warm it never had the overheating issues the i9 models had. I also had the battery replaced under AppleCare about 10 months ago so it still gets 7-9 hours of battery life.
For some reason, I find it kinda funny you don't just ask the LLM to extract the values for you. Practically, your solution makes a lot of sense -- way fewer tokens, less likely to make weird one-off errors, can verify the response makes basic sense or re-use the code off-line or with sensitive data...
But if I were watching Star Trek, they would definitely just ask the computer to grab the fields and it would be a done deal!
jq's syntax is different, but well worth remembering.
i have some flash cards if you'd like. a teensy amount of effort pays huge dividends with swiss knife software like this (and things like matplotlib, tar CLI options, etc)
Wow, that might be the best part of the update. System Integrity Protection shields /usr, /bin, and /sbin, so I prefer to use the system provided executables in those directories when possible.
"dirty" usually means that the commit doesn't correspond to any specific version tag in the repo (or whatever other mechanism is used to map commits to versions).
For the first time Apple responded to my bug report through the Feedback Assistant and requested more information, so kind of feel involved in this :)
So the bug was about the screen recording permission needed for some apps, Shottr specifically. Despite me allowing screen recording previously macOS Sequoia kept asking me to go into the settings and give the permission. According to Apple, that should have had happened once a week, so I gave a follow up feedback about definitely me not wanting to repeat this more than once. Fingers crossed I won't have to fiddle with permission when taking a screenshot.
> For the first time Apple responded to my bug report through the Feedback Assistant and requested more information, so kind of feel involved in this :)
Same here! I think it was re: locatedb not working? Although I was much more interested in my Feedback re: why dtrace was causing crashes after sleep.
As much as I wish Apple were a more open company, if they just responded to Bug Reports, that would be amazing!
It's especially frustrating since you always stumble upon it when you have something else in mind, this your flow is broken to re-confirm something you did a month ago.
I'm not aware of a fix, hopefully more people will write a feedback about it.
Does it mean macOS will periodically ask me again and again that Teams/Zoom/etc need screen recording permissions? As if I didn’t have enough pop-ups and prompts in my life already
I think that's the case. It's doing it for Shottr(screenshots app) and Ice(toolbar management app), the two apps I regularly use and require that permission.
It seems like they could just give you a notification reminder once a month that apps have that permission, without forcing you to grant it over and over
tccutil(1) is already a thing, which by its name you'd think would give you full CLI control over the macOS permission system (TCC), but strangely it only has one command as of now: "reset" (in Sonoma at least, haven't checked Sequoia yet).
I disagree. I like all the privacy protections that Safari gives me as a user. And the safari team seems thoughtful (like the other browser teams) in how they consider features to implement. In fact, I'd like MORE competition in the space, and not having one privacy-addicted company dominating the browser market.
Even as a web developer, I haven't encountered enough issues with Safari to warrant that view and what it would mean (fewer privacy protections for web users). In fact, I stopped using Chrome years ago because it used to destroy my battery life. And Safari always felt more snappy and more "native."
Well, something about head and ass. I looked into doing a one time donation to them earlier this year but they pushed so hard for a recurring one that they put me off and didn't even get the one time.
Besides, from other discussions mostly on HN I get the impression that you can donate to them but you don't know if the money will go to the browser or to their latest crypto or "AI" initiative.
Yet, having Google as the default Spotlight Search provider is an intelligent and advisable business partnership that fully benefits Apple users. Thankfully the best type of developers are advocating for those decisions, the ones who care more about their perfect tech diorama than what the users might actually select in a free-market environment.
And no, don't start whining to me about monopoly abuse if Apple willfully contributes to the entrapment. This isn't an ideological plight, it's a Microsoft-level power grab.
As a web developer, specifically one who started my professional career when Internet Explorer 6 had something like 85% marketshare, I'm horrified at the idea of a single browser engine dominating the space again. It will lead to stagnation just as it did back then.
Keep WebKit alive. Open source Presto. Support Ladybird. Hell, I believe that Microsoft should never have abandoned Trident…
Does it count all of the chromium based apps that query some webpage behind the scenes? Because other than a few brave exceptions, my impression is that most apps are nowadays glorified (and bloated) websites.
As a happy user of Safari, I'd be happy if a lot of web developers just stopped trying to turn my web browser into a buggy, bloated JS House of Cards "operating system" for their crappy SPAs.
Although I don’t use MacOS, the fact that you can now control an iPhone from a Mac will probably be reverse engineered to allow Linux to do the same at some point. A lot of automation opportunities
Bot farms will love that. A lot of websites are using reCAPTCHA and similar to prevent automation, but a lot of apps do not have anything similar. Maybe they do a jailbreak check and that's it.
"Available on Mac computers with Apple silicon and Intel-based Mac computers with a T2 Security Chip. Requires that your iPhone and Mac are signed in with the same Apple ID using two-factor authentication" https://www.apple.com/macos/macos-sequoia/
None of my ATVs have the upgrade option yet; I’m a bit worried, as all the homepods and other devices are on 18, and historically version mismatches can wreak havoc on Homekit. I am pretty excited for Siri to start to stop sucking though!
I dug into this. Apple's incentives aside, the bulk of intel's chips in macs are no longer supported by Intel or soon won't be. The more time passes the harder it is to keep those machines secure.
This is the best article I found on the topic. Note that once a mac is no longer supported for a new os the old os will get security updates for two years after that.
The old OS will generally get most security updates for two years, but that is not a written policy or rule, and Apple has not patched CVEs on older OSes in the past that were well within the N-2 assumption.
Most of the time they do, but depending on the data you work with and the risk you can accept, that might not be an acceptable policy.
I'll note that anyone running an out of date MacOS should use Chrome or Firefox. Safari gets its updates via OS updates, whereas third party browsers have their own update cycle.
iPhone Mirroring is insanely well-implemented and it's a testament to what only Apple can do. Seamless integration of their products and every just works as you expect.
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[ 81.0 ms ] story [ 1069 ms ] threadI like that they _finally_ added window snapping to the window manager, but keyboard shortcuts are still missing from what I can see.
Edit: it is possible! take a look at this Reddit post for a workaround https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1dcy6l2/comment/lax9...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/macos-15-sequoia-the...
As far as the conversation goes, 1st party implementation by Apple would be nice and all, but 3rd party doesn't bother me in the slightest. (at least in this case)
[1] https://rectangleapp.com/
I also use an app that reverses the scroll direction of an attached USB mouse, without affecting the (natural) trackpad scroll direction, because MacOS does not allow changing them independently (looks like they are separate options for mouse and trackpad but they are in fact the same).
The App is called Scroll Reverser [1] it is free and works flawlessly, but it really should not have to exist, it’s ridiculous.
[1] https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
I don't really care about tiling multiple windows, but I've always hated the macOS full screen behavior, and before that the old green button behavior, so an alternative that finally works well (the way Windows has for many years) would be amazing.
I realize that this isn't what you're asking, but it might help.
Also, on most windows, you can option-click the green window bar button and get this same behavior. However, some apps, like Safari, will instead expand the window to "a reasonably large size" that will not necessarily cover the whole screen.
[1] https://manytricks.com/moom/
These three shortcuts are embarrassingly effective and cover 99% of my window tiling. Others include the standard hotkey(s) + return for fullscreen and hotkey(s) + backspace for the previous window size..
If really 57”, are these multiple separate screens?
I went up from 32 to 40 and regret it, to be honest. It’s m nice for Xcode, but for any other use, it’s too big for me. For instance, I miss notifications that pop up in the top right corner, it’s just out of my field of vision.
(btw, have you tried Rectangle and if so - what didn't you like?)
(Not affiliated with it, just a happy user)
For example, if the user has a large number of files selected and accidentally triggers the open shortcut by hitting enter, their computer is going to be stuck spinning its wheels for a while (the more files involved and the heavier the applications they open in, the worse it'll be) unless they force restart. Involving a modifier key filters for intention pretty well, and so while this scenario is possible with ⌘O, it's far less likely.
Most Mac shortcuts seem to follow this, with those that are single-key by default doing relatively harmless and easily reversible things.
> ...
> Most Mac shortcuts seem to follow this, with those that are single-key by default doing relatively harmless and easily reversible things.
The enter-to-rename behavior has been in Mac OS since near the beginning, when versions were just named something like "System N.M").
IIRC, I've heard they had very detailed UI design documents back then, that explained their choices (e.g. I've heard they explained the reason for the menu bar being at the top of the screen rather than the top of a window was the cursor will just stop there, requiring less mousing precision).
So if that's the case, there should be documents confirming or denying your speculation.
(you can compare to the current ones and similar docs for other platforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interface_guidelines)
I don't recall whether "enter" renamed files, and I can't check whether it does at the moment because all my mac keyboards within reach are tenkeyless, but "return" always has.
But I agree that configurable is generally better.
I am not changing, so that's why I install an additional app.
- cmd+opt is a hell of a combination to type
But in every other Mac app, even in TextEdit, you would Cmd-X to cut a piece of text and Cmd-V to then paste it somewhere else. The same logic is used to e.g. move an image within a note or email, which is also a file.
So Finder is simply inconsistent with the rest of the OS, and after 4 years as a Mac user I have just given up and use either drag-and-drop or a terminal when I need to move stuff.
cmd-c & cmd-opt-v is a different, “safer” operation.
Trying out the new macOS version.. it's a little fiddly to activate sometimes didn't want to go. Then the margin/spacing between the edge of the screens was annoying. Though I discovered that there is an option under "Desktop & Dock" in settings you can turn off called "Tiled windows have margins".
What I haven't figured out is if you can create a keyboard shortcut to tile left or right without using the mouse... so far have not figured out how to do that. Couldn't see an option for it.
Those settings revealed another option though to "Hold key while dragging windows to file". If you hold that key you don't actually have to drag to the edge, just move it to the correct side of the monitor (or not really move it at all if it's already on that side). Interesting alternative.
But I really often specifically use a keyboard shortcut for tile left, tile right or tile left third/middle third/right third (on a 35" Ultrawide).
Here's an image from a history:
https://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2015/06/22/history-...
Not sure if MacOS has had that in the past though...
https://www.famousgraphicdesigners.org/susan-kare
It annoys the hell out of me that there’s never been an option to invert this. I actually like the old size-to-fit behaviour and I never ever want the iOS-style full screen, I don’t want to have to hold Option to get what was once the default behaviour.
I've only had it for a few minutes, but it's really nice!
It’s hilarious that Apple made such a big deal out of it and then failed to release it for everyone.
This works for all notifications from all apps.
Does anyone understand why? Is it apple having a flap about recent DMA/Whatever regulations they don't like or is there an actual technical reason why what's probably a fancy version of VNC can't work without breaching European regulations?
Also an unprecedented and unacceptable privacy and security risk.
You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc.
And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing.
There isn't a government or advertising company on this planet that wouldn't want to get at this information.
> You would be allowing third parties the ability to continuously record your iPhone's screen. Which includes websites you browse, apps you open, health information, text messages etc.
> And the Mac is so much open that you could do this, have a local model to transcribe it and ship it to a remote server without the user noticing.
MacOS is not secure in the way you would like to think it's secure. This is already risk. And Apple really could do this right: make screen mirroring use the DRM playback paths, and open up the API to trigger it to competitors (who would get precisely the same DRM-playback-pathed result of a screen mirror showing up in a window from which they cannot read). I don't really know why a competitor would want to compete here, but they could.
And there are also many third party apps that never made Mac versions.
So the amount of data we are talking about exposing is significantly higher.
And the issue is that the DMA is ambiguous about what competition and interoperability specifically means and so it would just take one company to complain about your solution for Apple to be fined 10% of global revenue.
This is again a misinformed take. Your Mac can already get all your iPhone's data from the cloud where it is synced without viable opt-out or compartmentalization.
Only if the data is available in iCloud and it is stored in files and it is not encrypted.
Otherwise data from apps like Instagram will be exposed exclusively via screen sharing.
We do not live in this universe. Consider getting a Chromebook instead if you want to be in that universe. (But then you have a tradeoff: Apple itself seems pretty good about not using your data inappropriately. Google, not so much.)
Health data is available in there, just to go after your example. iPhone backups are also available in there.
At no point am I being asked anything else beyond my Apple ID, password, and two-step approval on another device (such as the Mac) to set up a new iPhone and download all my data.
Thus the outcome is that the Mac indeed has everything it needs to get access to all your iCloud data. In fact, reverse-engineering how to get it directly is unnecessary work - instead, just reverse-engineer enough to capture the Apple ID password (or prompt to it - given there's still no way for the user to tell a real system dialog from one drawn by malware) and approve the 2FA prompt, get an actual, real iPhone and sign into the person's account and then extract all the data from there (via screenshots if necessary).
Are governments recording the screens of Android users?
Put a prompt up that asks for permission? Failing to understand why we're drawing the line on the screen.
Similar things were said about iMessage interoperability with Android, until Beeper proved them wrong. They managed to reverse-engineer it, build a compatible client and clearly proved Apple's claims were BS (and no, this didn't lead to a mass-scale compromise of iMessage, contradicting fanboys' claims).
If the feature allows to pull up the iPhone's screen without any user consent, then it is vulnerable to begin with - the reverse-engineering requirement would become an insignificant hurdle compared to the value of such a vulnerability. Presumably however, there will be a consent step, either on the spot or prior (maybe it can reuse the cryptographic pairing mechanism that happens when the phone asks you to "trust this computer?" the first time), and no third-party (whether using an approved API or reverse-engineered) would be able to bypass it without the user intentionally consenting.
The idea that breaking device attestation that is secured through Secure Enclave hardware i.e. not accessible from user code is an insignificant hurdle is hilariously ridiculous. It is borderline impossible for any ordinary developer.
And people that bring up the "just ask the user" argument clearly don't remember how poorly that has worked in the past e.g. Microsoft Vista. Users will blindly approve any dialog which is why Apple has been so careful to limit them to targeted actions which a "do you approve this app to record everything on your iPhone" is not.
If this is true, then my worry isn't even about malicious attackers, it's my neighbor (with a real Mac) being able to (accidentally!) eavesdrop on my phone screen (since according to you this is the primary security measure).
It's obviously ridiculous, and the primary security measure is that there must be a prior key exchange and consent step. If that part is secure, then it would be secure against a third-party.
If that part is not secure, then no Secure Enclave-ing will help you, because worst case scenario, the attacker can just use a real Mac as part of his attack to pass the secure-enclave-protected authentication step, or just exploit the good old "analog hole" by using the real Mac as the main attack vector (and then just capture its HDMI output and feed in inputs via a USB-capable microcontroller simulating a keyboard).
If you’re going to make such a claim, you should be very careful to ensure you’re not misinformed yourself.
> Similar things were said about iMessage interoperability with Android, until Beeper proved them wrong.
No, they did not. We already knew Apple not allowing iMessage on Android was a lock-in choice. The trial with Epic brought that unambiguously to light, years before the release of Beeper Mini¹.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android...
> They managed to reverse-engineer it, build a compatible client and clearly proved Apple's claims were BS
What claims? The only time I remember Apple publicly addressing iMessage on Android was after cutting off Beeper Mini’s access.
¹ Which is an important distinction from the earlier Beeper, which used trickery with iPhones to accomplish the task.
Apple is first-party to the device, but third-party to me, the user. Why are they more trustworthy than a free open-source tool? Who the hell are they to tell me who I can and cannot trust?
I really don't see how it falls outside of the DMA.
Which is everything wrong about current Apple. How far the Apple has fallen off the tree. Back in the resurgence of the Mac after Steve Jobs returned, the policy was to make everything as open as possible, now it's entirely the reverse.
If the iPhone/Mac were a competitive product as they are, there would be no need to retort to that sort of shenanigan, the whole thing would be openly documented but implementation quality would be the deciding factor. It is not surprising that Apple doesn't want to compete because they wouldn't necessarily win, before even talking about price.
In any case, while it's a nice feature to have, it can only be considered worthwhile because all of Apple's strategies for convergence have failed pretty hard (after mocking Microsoft) and there are now too many annoying things you need to do specifically on a smartphone (because of Apps, Auths, or other nonsense of the sort).
If anything, it is extremely dumb (considering the price and marketing around ecosystem) that you cannot just use whatever data is on the phone but with correct desktop app implementation even (and especially) for Apple first party app.
As a Mac user that is getting old (I remember System 7 from my youth, and I used System 9 for a bit) I feel extremely saddened that we are now celebrating what is basically a custom implementation of VNC/Remote Desktop for a completely locked device/OS. This feature was considered essential/basic 20 years ago, having to use it to access a limited device because a company can't figure out proper convergence, largely out of pure greed, is really not something to be happy about.
I'm sure one day they'll figure out how to make a Mac App to properly exploit all the health/sport data of their very expensive Watch products (that require an iPhone for no good reason). But when this day will come I probably won't be a customer anymore so whatever...
My perception is quite different. One of the first things Steve did after his return was to revoke the licenses for Mac clones (Power Computing, Daystar, UMAX, etc). Also, the iPod, iPhone and iPad were created under his leadership and have always been very far from open in their designs, regarding both hardware and software.
Apple was (and still is) very open when it helps them, e.g. by adopting and enforcing USB (original iMac) or USB C (laptops from ca 2015 on).
“Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these [new] features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.”
Because the DMA was designed not to be specific about what companies are required to do to be in compliance.
That's how adversarial interoperability worked for decades (and gave free software the ability to interoperate with proprietary formats, see LibreOffice for example) before abusing the DMCA and/or threatening legal action to take down compatible implementations became common practice. I do not recall of any security breaches as a result of this.
Apple are however not going to do that, because doing so would overnight destroy their moat around Universal Clipboard and all their existing interoperability features. So instead they make up some bullshit that non-technical governments and courts will take years to disprove, buying them more time to operate anti-competitively.
It is however sad to see a member of a technical forum gobble up said bullshit.
Hint: it doesn't.
The existence of competitor would by itself be enough proof to the fact that Apple is not restricting competition. But for such a competitor to exist, they would require enough assurance that the business will be viable and they won't get sued out of existence.
Apple either publishing the protocol or at the very least publishing an official licensing agreement allowing anyone to reverse-engineer and reimplement said protocol would achieve this.
Especially given you are so quick to criticise me for gobbling up said bullshit.
Why is Microsoft able to do it just fine (without running afoul of the DMA) while Apple supposedly can't, despite MS having an ever larger marketshare of its field than Apple and this would warrant even more scrutiny?
The multitude of third-party RDP clients (and nobody being threatened with legal action for implementing one) out there may be at least part of the answer.
Release their implementation following the guidelines, and see if it passes review, fix and resubmit as needed until it's accepted.
I've been waiting a year for the summarize AI to (not) make it to my Google Pixel 8 Pro. It should be known that everyone outside of the US get a different product than what is advertised online and reviewed on YouTube.
Before there were many stuffs like Apple News never making it but at least there was some pretense of working on it.
Since EU people are getting a less featureful product, they should get products priced accordingly.
Otherwise, Apple should just fuck off EU if it doesn't want to play ball, they started the whole thing by being consumer hostile and the greediest corporation ever, they make Microsoft look like the good guys.
While the DMA's changes to the app store received the most publicity, the DMA mandates for modularity for any feature where a home-advantage could be granted by the gate keeper. Since features like AI and screen mirroring are already established markets with competitors, Apple offering these as built in functions could be interpreted as actions against the DMA unless they offer a way for others to tap into it via APIs.
However this is just a guess. There is a cynical rhetoric that it's to punish the EU but this is a pretty flimsy idea since it's clear that Apple is relying on these new features to propel upgrades to M series macs and new iPhones. Currently there exists no tentpole feature for people in the EU to upgrade. The other reason is that it's pretty tenuous to think that the EU masses will rise up against the EC because they don't have screen mirroring or image playground.
I’m unsure whether the DMA compels them to provide specific APIs beyond the ability to connect to arbitrary devices and draw to the screen, and it’s maybe a little bit concerning if it does. My understanding was that nothing in the DMA specifically compelled Apple to create e.g. MarketplaceKit, it’s just that the alternative would be to open up iOS far more than Apple is willing to do.
Not doing so only costs Apple whatever marginal business they expect to lose in EU for not offering this or that feature. So I'd expect more of this going forward.
"gets wise to this" how, exactly? The EU can certainly set conditions which Apple must meet to ship a feature. They have no legal grounds whatsoever to demand that Apple ship that feature to Europe, specially modified to meet their exacting requirements.
How would that even work? One way to comply with the EU's demands that a product work a certain way, is to not sell that product in the EU. Is your stance that EU has a right to force companies to sell their wares in the EU?
It could very well become that after enough of this, DMA 2.0 would have a provision stipulating that any feature withheld in the EU would need to have a valid technical justification that passes review by a panel of independent experts.
Sometimes I wish they tax the hell out of those US behemoth in a way that would open space for EU companies to become competitive. The network effects are too big when it comes to IT, it's not very wise to let the US be the sole beneficiary of such an industry.
The same way you do them on Mac. With a trackpad.
This seems to me a difficult challenge in mashing up the wildly different interaction paradigms. I'd love to see how Apple solves it in their new feature.
Apple says "With iPhone Mirroring, users can now fully access and engage with their iPhone right from Mac while iPhone remains locked nearby." And nowhere does Apple say this feature doesn't work for games.
I'm never the kind of person who discounts a feature before I even use it. And I clearly said I haven't used it.
As another comment mentioned, it appears to use the cursor position as the pinch-gesture location.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1696762?sortBy=rank
For a quick tech demo, it's all fun and games, but when there is real shit to do, nobody wants to fight their tools.
I can see why it is completely fine for your application but you can't say the same for other applications.
Besides it doesn't even make much sense to need that when the thing has such a powerful processor, Apple need to get their shit together and have it run real Mac software and that's it.
This makes it practically useless for developers.
VNC over wifi is worse than RDP'ing a server across a country if you have good wired fiber connection. But I guess in a pinch if you don't want to look for your iPhone and need a quick interaction.
But I agree that in any case it's largely a gimmick and mainly something for marketing reasons around the ecosystem and all that jazz. It's just like the failed attempt at porting iOS/iPadOS apps to the Mac: makes for a great release announcement/keynote, in practice barely worth using.
They've said this in every mention of Apple AI since the WWDC, but they haven't mentioned at all if you can disable the cloud calls. I'm assuming you won't be able to, but if you can, that will be a very neat guarantee to have. If that same ability comes to an iPhone, I'll be very tempted to break my 10+ year Android tenure.
You can't enable Apple Intelligence and disable PCC, though.
If you are interested, please have a look: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/offline-translate-translator/i...
If you bought into the apple ecosystem with a recent Mac I’d not bother. But for those of your running a PC Ubuntu is incredible and their new App Store makes finding and installing software super easy. My workstation pc with Ubuntu is insanely faster than my Mac Studio when it comes to jetbrains IDEs. It’s so snappy I first couldn’t believe the performance diff.
I don't know what marketing team created this whole "our trackpad is so different" belief, but they've done a brilliant job!
What makes Apple's trackpads so nice is a huge and solid surface. I came from Thinkpads myself and honestly didn't expect that to be as much of a thing as it turned out to be, but yes, they really are that much better. There are a few PC laptops these days with similar trackpads, but you definitely have to look for it when picking one.
Every time I tried to install it to test if it was good, something broke for no reason. This happened to me on many PCs and many versions of Ubuntu.
The last time I tried 24.04, the installer crashed in the middle of the installation and I couldn't finish it.
If someone wants to test Ubuntu, I'd say you should try it, but do not get surprised if something very basic seems broken since that's my entire experience with the distro. I'd recommend Fedora instead.
Much as I like it, its not as convenient to use on a laptop as OSX, for every day things.
Plus I like illustrator too much.
For a workstation, yeah, anything with more than one processor/GPU will be super fast on ubuntu.
But Gnome is a dick to use nowadays. very opinionated and an arse to configure.
Moving from Windows to Mac because you hate updates is like moving from Ubuntu to Red Hat. It's more of the stuff you hated except you don't realize it; ignorance is bliss?
Or maybe Bluetooth automatically switching to "reduced audio quality" (I know, I know, it's a feature, not a bug...)
Or wait, the kernel panic I get every once in a while would be nice: panic(cpu 1 caller 0xfffffe00318c8a1c): DCP PANIC - ASSERT!AppleDCPDPTXPowerController.cpp:538 No device added after powering on the rails. HPD=0 - dcpav(27)
I haven't had a system that felt so unreliable since Windows 98. :D
I don't think I've experienced a single system where Bluetooth is working well. Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS all have their share of Bluetooth issues. The Bluetooth spec must be beyond broken.
On Linux, my experience has been both better and worse. More random disconnects and the need to re-pair is more frequent. The nice thing is I can automate the workarounds on Linux but can only curse on MacOS :D
Back in the day before things like homebrew it was far worse... the days of macports and mod_python to run your Django app are fortunately behind us.
Then you look at the paragraph for this and it says, "Coming Soon: Apple Intelligence"
They announced this in June, and it's just loosely coming "this fall." I have a feeling they are finding it very difficult to do anything with any kind of consistency or value on their 8gb RAM phones / Macbooks. Their models they have demonstrated so far are a relatively low parameter count with LoRA adapters for various use cases.
I have a feeling that the majority of Apple Intelligence will eventually just be farmed out to their "secure cloud" or whatever they were calling it.
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/09/15/iphone-16-pro-demand-es...
I find that a little hard to believe. I would suppose the vast majority of customers don't think a lot about the timing of software features in a purchase decision.
When it comes to what Apple does with those parts, or market segmentation, or sale projection, he's got no special knowledge. In this specific case, pardon the technical language, but he's full of ...
i think Apple hyping AI so much was a mistake, doesn’t have nearly the same impact to them as hyping up a new camera feature or a new screen or a new color or something.
The only reason the iPhone 15 Pro was the only of the 15 generation to get the AI stuff is that they happened to put 8GB in that device, giving it enough headroom to not majorly impact user enjoyment trying to cram a multi-GB model into memory. But all of the iPhone 16s have 8GB (+?)
The ones who buy on day one do. I don’t find it surprising that the people who even know about and anticipate the release date of a product are the ones who are eager for specific features. If those aren’t there yet, there’s no rush to buy.
I’m no analyst but I expect demand in the EU won’t be that (comparatively) great either. When the flagship feature isn’t available, there’s little reason to spend the extra money.
They just don't feel like it's release ready so they're refining. Apple has done this with major releases over several iterations now where a couple of features are held back for the .1 release while it's perfected.
I'd be more inclined to use 'iterated'.
But I'm with you, since Apple signaled going all-in on "an assistant that has access to everything" I switched to an android with the intention of never enabling Google services and certainly not the voice assistant. Unfortunately I've found it too annoying to go completely without Google, I've read that RCS messaging won't work with an unlocked bootloader, nor will precise location, so I'm stuck with some evil in the name of features parity.
I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that being unable to properly grok the biggest holiday of the year for many Western countries is sufficient.
And given that Christmas resolves to a date (it actually offers up the autocomplete of "Christmas Day" to make it easier, then simply making the search criteria a calendar date), for me it literally shows all photos on Dec 25. I guess mileage varies.
>Search for photos and videos in the Photos app simply by describing what you’re looking for. Apple Intelligence can even find a particular moment in a video clip that fits your search description and take you right to it.
https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/
If we accept Apple's claim that Apple AI is coming in beta in fall 2024 (or per the Canada page December 2024), and I have the release of 18 which by that restriction is not Apple AI enabled, I can already do complex semantic search which means that functionality can't be "Apple AI", right? And person on date has been in iOS for at least two prior generations as well. iOS has been allowing you to search by people in images, places, events, and text appearing in the image, along with broad categorizations like "sunset", "beach", etc, for at least two generations.
However when you're typing in a search, for each term it tries to contextualize it via selections. For instance if you already had "{Person} on " and then typed Christmas, it will let you pick if you mean Christmas the event, Christmas an "object", or Christmas the literal text (an icon of a couple of lines of text in a photo frame). I suspect the poster selected, probably unintentionally, Christmas the text and it gave them images where that text appears somewhere in the image. Just out of curiosity I did that and it gave me a set of images that I thought must be mistaken, but on each image somewhere the text Christmas could be found. In one it was a crazily distorted cursive writing on a table cloth hanging over the edge of a shelf, which is just crazy.
And it's not just a case of "the last 5% takes 95% of the work", it's more like "the last 5% is an open research problem".
That is the biggest hurdle, in my opinion. If we could even reply with, "sorry, I don't know about that", it would be such an improvement over what we have today. Sadly, from what I understand, the only way to say "sorry, I don't know about that" is to just say that to every single question?
The problem is we don't train them that way. They're trained on what data is on the internet, and people... people really aren't good at saying "I don't know".
Applying RLHF on top of that at least helps reduce the deliberate lies, but it isn't normal to give a thumbs-up to an "I don't know" response either.
...
Of course, all this stuff does seem fixable.
Kids learn to express confusion and uncertainty in an environment where their parents are always very confident of everything.
Overall though, I agree that this is the biggest issue right now in the AI space; instead of being able to cut itself off, the system just rambles and hallucinates and makes stuff up out of whole cloth.
I really do think it's a training set problem. It's been amply proven that the models often do know when they lie.
Sure, that's not how children learn to do this... is it? I think in some cases, and to some degree, it is. They also learn by valuing consistency and separately learning morals. LLMs also seem to learn morals to some degree, but to the degree they're even able to reason about consistency, it certainly doesn't feed back into their training.
---
So yeah, I think it's a training set issue, and the reason children don't need this is because they have capabilities the LLMs lack. This would be a workaround.
Yes there is, it's that we don't know how. We don't have anywhere close to the level of understanding to know when an LLM knows something and when it doesn't.
Training on material that includes "I don't know" will not work. That's not the solution.
If we knew how, we'd be doing it, since that's the #1 user complaint, and the company that fixed it would win.
Never stopped them from presenting and shipping previous Siri "updates" that haven't made Siri even remotely usable or reliable ;-)
They should not be selling 8GB machines, it was always about being greedy with upgrades. Now they painted themselves in a corner.
Local Apple models are likely in the 2-3B range, but fine-tuned to specific tasks.
DMA forbids using your platform's data or position to support a service without giving third parties equal access. Third parties are pretty clearly excluded from screen mirroring or running ai on device, so these seem like things Apple can't legally launch in the EU.
Macs are great and so is macOS, but it's not that good, at the end of the day it's just a computer
Probably because for the price of a 27" 5k apple display I can buy four 27" 4k displays with money left over for the VESA mounting.
(Run non-retina displays at 2X frame buffer for proper anti-aliasing)
...for now; until Apple disallows any kind of system extension or desktop UI enhancements.
This sort of app might get a better output by forcing the 2x rendering and then scaling it to the native display resolution but it cannot possibly be of the same quality as what we had before, unless they rewrote rendering or something like that.
As far as I know there are 2 "real solutions": you buy a display that is retina class in one of their historically supported resolutions or you accept to lose a bit of desktop space by running a "sub-retina" class display at x2. For example, a 27 inch "4k" (they are 3840x2160) display will get you a desktop space of 1920/1080 in HiDPI mode. That is sad because a 27-inch iMac from the early 2000 had more desktop space, an image not as sharp but it wasn't bad as long as they kept sub-pixel antialiasing.
As far as I'm concerned, it is that way because they went the lazy way around implementing HiDPI and being able to market it like they were so much better than Microsoft. But that only works if you solely buy their hardware because nobody followed them on the desktop specs (even though it's slowly coming lately it seems).
This issue in my opinion is a testament of how much anti-consumer and disdainful Apple is; because it couldn't possible have cost them a lot of engineering to be able to support both, it is clearly for their bottom line and that's it.
1. https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay/tree/opensource
Edit: Also want to mention that window sizes and various UI elements also snapped into their 'intended' locations. Two screens, both 1440p, one ultrawide for anyone reading. YMMV.
From reading the comments in these threads and some additional resources, it does seem that the problem is not whether or not the display is “retina” per say, but that macOS is designed to run on high density displays and can have problems with low density ones. My mistake I guess.
I think the point that Apple should have better support for a wider range of displays still stands. It is not unreasonable to want your general purpose, professional-grade computer which costs thousands to work correctly with a variety of displays and resolutions, especially when lesser machines do it better.
At this point I’m just whinging bitterly though, the blurry icons are not the end of the world and buying new displays or a new computer just to fix them would be silly.
So on phones it has usually been about 300dpi. On laptops and desktops it's been something over 220dpi.
Apple has is actually enshittifying too (dumb UI changes, worse apps - see "Catalyst", etc), it's just that Microsoft has became a trailblazer in that field so Apple still feels good in comparison, despite the many downgrades.
Turns out it’s not available in EU because yadda yadda Apple threw a fit.
Oh well.
Publicly traded corporations generally engage in strategy. They don't "throw a fit".
You're suggesting some kind of emotional immaturity. That's not how these corporations generally operate.
I don't know why the iPhone mirroring isn't supported, but I can absolutely guarantee you it's not because anybody is "throwing a fit".
Because a company itself cannot express emotions, the externally facing visible decisions are used as a proxy.
For example, a company raising prices to an unexpected level may be described as “greedy”. A company executing a series of decisions that appears misguided or incalculable may be described as “panicking”.
I know, it's common and it's wrong and unhelpful. That's my point. It doesn't help us understand the situation better, but actively misleads us if we're interested in actually analyzing problems and coming up with solutions.
And I just looked it up and it appears that Apple isn't supporting it because their reading of the EU law is that they'd have to support iPhone mirroring to third parties like Windows and Linux, where it would be harder or impossible to control the security and privacy.
That's something that can be talked about intelligently, whichever side you're on. Saying they're "throwing a fit" is not. It's false, and makes the conversation worse for all of us.
Depends on who's in charge.
Meta has shit PR primarily because Zuck doesn't like/understand comms.
Hes bollocks deep in AI because he likes it. Even though it costs him shareholder value (dropping those billions on new data centres to run massive loss making AI infra. )
- Which mac are you using? - Any missing hardware support? - Dual booting? - How's Bluetooth? - Anything else that was surprising, scary, or disappointing?
As for the MBA, suspend is still a miss (I read that the asahi team can't get certain devices to go to deep sleep, so they chose a safer low power mode instead). The lack of DP over usb-c is a bit annoying, but I mostly use the laptop display on macOS too, so I don't really mind. I think thunderbolt is not there too, but I have no thunderbolt devices (dock or storage). It boots very fast, but I'd recommend against KDE as the MBA gets hot with it. I'm using Sway. I heard about microphone issue, but I've never used it for calls as I have a usb one on my desktop.
The installation process is as easy as something done in the terminal can be. It's pretty much guided (just make sure you have enough space for the installation). If I had to redo it, I'd choose the minimal installation as I don't like KDE that much and it was some pain to remove it.
Don't get me wrong, Mac hardware is nice hardware. But there's no reason to own it if you're using alternative operating systems.
The bang for your buck on computing is wildly better on something like a Beelink mini PC than a Mac Mini. Windows laptop hardware has also most definitely caught up to the M1.
And I think we all know you listed off everything that's gonna be broken with Asahi Linux like Bluetooth and microphone as something you "don't use" just because you know it's broken.
And I genuinely don't use Bluetooth. Everything is wired, although I use WiFi on the MBA. Neither do I like to use the laptop microphone (noisy environment, so I use a headset or the usb microphone). The only thing I care in a laptop is WiFi, a good enough keyboard, a good enough screen, low temperature and noise, and a battery that last at least 4 hours. My default workstation is the desktop.
But yeah, I do agree with you that it's better to go with PC if you're planning to stick with Linux long term.
I suppose this isn't the case anymore
You can say that about every single OS
https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/06/28/eu-hits-back-at-a...
It’s possible to Airplay iPhone to window and see what’s on the screen. Continuity with iPad work just well so it’s also possible to control iPad using MacOS.
But combine both and we get into no-no land.
It’s not a secret that Apple brings much more revenue from US than from EU. I named it a fit, but I’m perfectly aware it’s a power struggle between EU and Apple and I think it’s an end of the era.
And it works perfectly. Pair it with kdeconnect and you have even a better experience of integration between your phone and your PC than with Apple. Only thing that is missing is the ability to take calls from the PC, that to be fair, it's not something that useful to me (if I want to make phone calls from the PC I use my landline number with VOIP).
Again, I see no innovation in the Apple ecosystem, after trying it out I'm happy to have returned to Linux+Android, overall a better experience. I don't miss Apple at all, it was like being in a cage...
The last thing I want to do is operate my phone with a trackpad/mouse and keyboard.
Proceeds to talk about new App features instead of OS ones.
New versions of Safari are already available for older macOS versions through System Update for a few years, I've already downloaded Safari 18 on my Sonoma. And for Passwords, Messages, Notes and Maps there's no legit reasons why newer versions can't be distributed through App Store, other than using their new features as a promo for their new macOS...
Feels good knowing when my storage wears out, i don't lose the whole machine.
Jk, thanks for the info! It's nice to know it's available on the system by default when writing scripts for my team.
ope wait that's just bash
wait, maybe it's...
$ jq '. | .messages.thank_you' < strings.json
darn it! how about
$ jq '[].messages.thank_you' < strings.json
!??@@!
But if I were watching Star Trek, they would definitely just ask the computer to grab the fields and it would be a done deal!
Plus, you know, I actually learn how jq works and will need to ask the Magic Sky Oracle less often, in the future.
What's wrong with the docs? Relatedly, do you actually look up every filter and argument used in your AI-generated sample code in the jq docs?
i have some flash cards if you'd like. a teensy amount of effort pays huge dividends with swiss knife software like this (and things like matplotlib, tar CLI options, etc)
https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO... hasn't been updated with a "jq" directory yet
> If the working tree has local modification "-dirty" is appended to it.
and one can see their invocation of --dirty here: https://github.com/jqlang/jq/blob/cff5336ec71b6fee396a95bb0e...
The recent live wallpapers feature is really cool, hopefully they've added more
So the bug was about the screen recording permission needed for some apps, Shottr specifically. Despite me allowing screen recording previously macOS Sequoia kept asking me to go into the settings and give the permission. According to Apple, that should have had happened once a week, so I gave a follow up feedback about definitely me not wanting to repeat this more than once. Fingers crossed I won't have to fiddle with permission when taking a screenshot.
But unfortunately it appears that they only changed the policy to do it once a month: https://a.dropoverapp.com/cloud/download/50dcbf08-a812-4ef4-...
Still better than once a week and the final UI is fine, but IMHO it should have an option to disable this behavior.
Same here! I think it was re: locatedb not working? Although I was much more interested in my Feedback re: why dtrace was causing crashes after sleep.
As much as I wish Apple were a more open company, if they just responded to Bug Reports, that would be amazing!
I'm not aware of a fix, hopefully more people will write a feedback about it.
As a web developer I'd be happy if Safari usage fell off a cliff.
Even as a web developer, I haven't encountered enough issues with Safari to warrant that view and what it would mean (fewer privacy protections for web users). In fact, I stopped using Chrome years ago because it used to destroy my battery life. And Safari always felt more snappy and more "native."
... compared to Chrome, right? Not to Firefox with uBlock Origin and Facebook and Google containers ...
I do like and respect Firefox but it’s hard to take them too seriously as a separate competitor if all their revenue comes from Google.
But what choice do they have?
Besides, from other discussions mostly on HN I get the impression that you can donate to them but you don't know if the money will go to the browser or to their latest crypto or "AI" initiative.
Having Google, an advertising company, in sole control of how the web works is bad for everyone.
And no, don't start whining to me about monopoly abuse if Apple willfully contributes to the entrapment. This isn't an ideological plight, it's a Microsoft-level power grab.
I have no issue with Firefox, Brave, Opera, Edge ..
I'm talking about Safari.
Keep WebKit alive. Open source Presto. Support Ladybird. Hell, I believe that Microsoft should never have abandoned Trident…
It’s pretty cool! Still playing with things but upgrade went smoothly and I like the customizability.
Thanks for reminding me I totally forgot. Gonna try this with my phone and my laptop.
That is what Apple is not telling you with this announcement.
This is the best article I found on the topic. Note that once a mac is no longer supported for a new os the old os will get security updates for two years after that.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/with-macos-sonoma-in...
Most of the time they do, but depending on the data you work with and the risk you can accept, that might not be an acceptable policy.
I'll note that anyone running an out of date MacOS should use Chrome or Firefox. Safari gets its updates via OS updates, whereas third party browsers have their own update cycle.
One can dream.
https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy