It is an interesting article, but not really a Show HN because there is nothing I can play with or try out...unless you ship me an old compatible Mac... my email is in my profile :
Oh man, I actually used this guide when putting Mavericks on my old Mac! So damn nice. The UI is still so fresh. Neat that there's Firefox for it now. Last I tried it, I had to do Chromium-legacy, though I wouldn't exactly want to take an old unpatched machine online very often.
This is nice, I wish there was way to bring the old Rosetta over, though I guess it probably needs something like all/some parts of the OS to be compiled as fat binaries to work,
The newer version of MacOS on it, has become basically useless.
Windows 10 on it, has been handy for when I want to watch Apple TV, or use Channel 4 (who still don't generically support their app on Android which my TV runs).
But now Windows won't update to 11.
So maybe time to move from Windows to Linux and downgrade the MacOS.
The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur).
I did that a few days ago and I agree, it’s quite snappy! Missing certificates can also be installed manually (e.g. from the curl CA bundle), but even then TLS 1.3 support is lacking in most apps which breaks a lot of stuff without the suggested proxy.
Regarding SSL: just make sure you are using macOS 10.9.3, earlier versions (all of them, and I mean, all since the 80s) never had a working SSL implementation.
>I knew I wanted an operating system from before Apple abandoned the Aqua design language.
I suppose it depends on your definition, but that likely does mean Mavericks is the latest available. For my money though, El Capitan (10.11 to Mavericks' 10.9) was the local maxima (speed, stability, capability). I've no inkling what issues using that would entail—I had no idea that Mountain Lion had "a more capable version of QuickTime"—but my immediate response to this was wondering why not El Capitan.
Recently I've been looking for some VPN solution and found that many are quite expensive, though often you get a decent enough discount if you subscribe for like a year or longer. Also, I believe many services are probably not trustworthy (regardless of their claims).
A very affordable alternative is a DigitalOcean droplet with PiHole. You can connect with this VPN with Wireguard, which will probably work just fine on Mavericks. Been using this now for a couple of months and no issues. My costs are probably around 3-4 USD per month, but I don't use VPN all the time.
This is way I feel, but my last stop is 10.15 (Catalina) having started with 3.2. Modern macOS is just trash.
My goal over the longer term is to fully migrate to Android, especially desktop mode. There are several reasons for this but maybe the fact that given the typical hardware for Android means it's less likely suffer the terminal bloat of desktop systems.
I stayed on Catalina for a long time as it was the last version my Macbook Pro 2012 supported natively. It is a pretty solid OS, though it is harder to get Apple services running on it now.
I personally just use Sonoma now on my Macbook Pro M3 Pro.
My exit from the Macintosh OS was in 2011 with the release of OS X 10.7 Lion; meaning the end of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It was at that point when I realized that Apple was going more towards an "appliance" company than a computing company. They started making it more and more difficult to access the power of the Unix core. So I packed up my virtual bags and moved to Linux once and for all. I started with Mint (for about a minute), then went to Ubuntu, now I am at Debian (with the Xfce DE); probably forever.
> Don't you love how hackable everything is? Removing stock apps from the Applications folder is completely safe—nothing will break—and this is your computer, so you should make it your own. You can always restore apps later using Time Machine. Just don't delete System Preferences, or anything in the Utilities folder.
This was pretty funny. “You can do anything, and you should be able to do anything, nothing will break”, then in the same paragraph “but don’t do this specific thing”.
Yes, there is immense value in being able to do whatever we want with our computers without restrictions. But let’s not pretend there isn’t value in being able to set restrictions too. Everything in computers is a tradeoff. Having an immutable signed OS has plenty of advantages, including for hackers: I feel much safer telling people to “just try stuff” when I know there isn’t a risk of them breaking everything and being left with an unbootable machine, leaving them feeling stupid and scared of trying anything else. More advanced tasks can come later.
Kudos for the project in general, though, I’m not throwing shade. I too am discontent with Apple under Tim Cook, but staying on an older version of macOS isn’t an acceptable solution for my use cases, I’d sooner switch to a BSD.
> I feel much safer telling people to “just try stuff” when I know there isn’t a risk of them breaking everything and being left with an unbootable machine
On which non-mobile OS is this true? It's certainly NOT safe on Mac/Windows/Linux to "just try stuff". I can trivially delete all of your data and/or upload all your .ssh files and Documents by "just try it"
He is a fantastic COO, unfortunately, Apple needs a CEO with vision. They do everything safe. I like Tim Cook because clearly he runs the ship nicely, but we need a visionary at Apple. Apple was always a little different and more daring. Remember the Apple that told you, you were holding your phone wrong? I want that level of energy that pushes for more innovation, it was much more exciting.
You know, there comes a journey in every developers life where all roads lead to hackintosh. It’s like a right of passage. I did it back during the Snow Leopard years with NForce motherboards (wrote some kernel extensions). Now, it’s just out of nostalgia.
I have a soft spot for Mavericks too. It’s not 100% perfect (as post notes, scroll bars have been flattened and by then sidebar item icons had lost their color), but otherwise visually its probably the closest thing possible to “perfect” Aqua era OS X. It feels very refined in several ways that the earlier versions didn’t.
In my opinion the runner-up in terms of visuals is actually 10.4 Tiger, though — the dark grays ubiquitous throughout 10.5 and 10.6 have always felt kinda dingy and depressing in a similar manner to the dark gray Windows 95/98 (which, as an aside, is why I find the Windows 2000 variant of that look preferable, with its base gray being lighter and more cheery). That said I miss the 2D grid that 10.5 and 10.6 used for virtual desktops even today… the simplified 1D linear virtual desktops that’ve been in place since 10.7 feels needlessly watered down.
Funny enough that version of OS X can also run what to this day I’ve found to be the best implementation of a Quake terminal anywhere, in the form of the haxie Visor/TotalTerminal which added this functionality to the Apple terminal. The way it handled window focus and everything was so smooth and better than iTerm’s as well as any of the Linux dropdown terminals I’ve used.
On the note of Linux, I wish that there were Linux DEs that went the extra mile to produce a true OS X 10.4-10.9 analogue, but no such thing exists. The closest is elementary/Pantheon which is stylistically in the same ballpark but shares too much of its design roots with GNOME’s oversimplified iPadOS-like design. Everything else in the Linux world is Windows-type desktops or minimal WMs, both with flat UI themes.
There's XtraFinder which promises something similar, but now all modern macs require disabling security features, which seems a bit much for a convenient hotkey.
I have also requested TotalFinder-like feature for PathFinder(https://cocoatech.io/) which is the closest thing to what TotalVisor did.
Wild how tiny little utilities can change your expectations of using a computer. Simply cannot get by without quake terminal and bottom file explorer anymore, on any machine I daily drive.
I mean, yeah, sure, you can run this. I wouldn't trust my personal data to such an old OS if it ever got connected to the internet and the system will slowly disintegrate while you're using it so I'd rather adapt to something like Omarchy on a modern Linux system instead but if this is bringing joy to some people, more power to them.
My favorite Mac, by far. I upgraded the RAM in it. Can you even imagine a Mac that has upgradeable RAM? Pearl clutching. I also tried plugging 4 different 4K monitors into it just for the novelty. I miss my trashcan
Also, if you were to serve your get.sh (et al) as text/plain it would enable browing them versus them downloading and having to open it locally. Or, as your footer implied, linking to GitHub would also be super handy
> Can you even imagine a Mac that has upgradeable RAM?
Well now I feel old. Not only can I imagine it, I used to routinely buy RAM upgrades for my Macs because it was more affordable than getting a Mac with more RAM in the first place. As I recall one of the early aluminum PowerBooks even had a really thoughtful design that made it easy to access and replace the RAM, battery, and hard drive.
> There is no modern mainstream browser engine that works in Snow Leopard.
Sadly this too will be true in Mavericks soon enough. If you decide to web browse on a separate machine though, you can still have your Mavericks machine be your main one.
My favorite thing about MacOS is how it has never changed how it changes.
It's like the game Civilization.
Every new version is worse than the last. Every new version is more bloated. Every new version has changes that ruin it.
Every new version is "less snappy". Every new version ruins everything.
Not even with OS X, we're talking back to the System 6 days, almost 40 years ago, it has always been the same.
System 6 uses too much RAM I'm staying with System 5.
System 7 is bloated I'm staying with System 6.
System 8 is a disaster I'm staying with System 9.
System 9 is a buggy mess I'm staying with System 8.
System, err, OS X v10.0 has no apps I'm staying with System 9.
And then oh boy the OS X/macOS versions!
Every generation gets so much worse, buggier, and "less snappy" than the last that surely our computers must be traveling backwards through time by now!
Every Civ game past III, the one I spent the most time playing during college and am most used to and like the most for totally not arbitrary reasons, has just been the worst, amirite?
>Today, it an inherently vulnerable operating system, and you will need to be a bit careful. Regularly back up your data to cold storage, never use an outdated web browser, and always keep your router's firmware up-to-date.
If my computer is hacked, I'm not really worried about my data being destroyed, I have offline backups for that. The bigger danger is having my data exfiltrated, I don't want my tax return or password manager database to be exfiltrated from my computer.
There was a joke bumper-sticker in the valley back in the day that said "Windows 95 == Macintosh 89". But the critique of this was "Macintosh 95 == Macintosh 89". In the same way, "NeXTStep 89 == MacOS X 2001 == MacOS X 2015 == MacOS X 2025" except that they hadn't steved everyone from the user experience research group in 2001 and there were vestiges of #a11y features left in Yosemite.
Complaining your current version of MacOS X has a worse user experience than it did 10 years ago is like buying a Tesla and then complaining about its resale value.
62 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 66.8 ms ] threadThe newer version of MacOS on it, has become basically useless.
Windows 10 on it, has been handy for when I want to watch Apple TV, or use Channel 4 (who still don't generically support their app on Android which my TV runs).
But now Windows won't update to 11.
So maybe time to move from Windows to Linux and downgrade the MacOS.
I did that a few days ago and I agree, it’s quite snappy! Missing certificates can also be installed manually (e.g. from the curl CA bundle), but even then TLS 1.3 support is lacking in most apps which breaks a lot of stuff without the suggested proxy.
A lot of MacPorts ports also do not build sadly.
The look is so much better than current macOS.
For more, read about the GOTO FAIL bug: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2014-1266
>I knew I wanted an operating system from before Apple abandoned the Aqua design language.
I suppose it depends on your definition, but that likely does mean Mavericks is the latest available. For my money though, El Capitan (10.11 to Mavericks' 10.9) was the local maxima (speed, stability, capability). I've no inkling what issues using that would entail—I had no idea that Mountain Lion had "a more capable version of QuickTime"—but my immediate response to this was wondering why not El Capitan.
Recently I've been looking for some VPN solution and found that many are quite expensive, though often you get a decent enough discount if you subscribe for like a year or longer. Also, I believe many services are probably not trustworthy (regardless of their claims).
A very affordable alternative is a DigitalOcean droplet with PiHole. You can connect with this VPN with Wireguard, which will probably work just fine on Mavericks. Been using this now for a couple of months and no issues. My costs are probably around 3-4 USD per month, but I don't use VPN all the time.
My goal over the longer term is to fully migrate to Android, especially desktop mode. There are several reasons for this but maybe the fact that given the typical hardware for Android means it's less likely suffer the terminal bloat of desktop systems.
I personally just use Sonoma now on my Macbook Pro M3 Pro.
https://github.com/vinceliuice/Yosemite-gtk-theme
If you want a macOS theme with insane quality on Linux this guy's work is the pinnacle.
The UI is soooo much better than the current Mac OS.
This was pretty funny. “You can do anything, and you should be able to do anything, nothing will break”, then in the same paragraph “but don’t do this specific thing”.
Yes, there is immense value in being able to do whatever we want with our computers without restrictions. But let’s not pretend there isn’t value in being able to set restrictions too. Everything in computers is a tradeoff. Having an immutable signed OS has plenty of advantages, including for hackers: I feel much safer telling people to “just try stuff” when I know there isn’t a risk of them breaking everything and being left with an unbootable machine, leaving them feeling stupid and scared of trying anything else. More advanced tasks can come later.
Kudos for the project in general, though, I’m not throwing shade. I too am discontent with Apple under Tim Cook, but staying on an older version of macOS isn’t an acceptable solution for my use cases, I’d sooner switch to a BSD.
On which non-mobile OS is this true? It's certainly NOT safe on Mac/Windows/Linux to "just try stuff". I can trivially delete all of your data and/or upload all your .ssh files and Documents by "just try it"
He is a fantastic COO, unfortunately, Apple needs a CEO with vision. They do everything safe. I like Tim Cook because clearly he runs the ship nicely, but we need a visionary at Apple. Apple was always a little different and more daring. Remember the Apple that told you, you were holding your phone wrong? I want that level of energy that pushes for more innovation, it was much more exciting.
No, we don’t. If I had infinite free time, I’d build a Linux distro that completely lacks support for emoji (and animated GIFs).
In my opinion the runner-up in terms of visuals is actually 10.4 Tiger, though — the dark grays ubiquitous throughout 10.5 and 10.6 have always felt kinda dingy and depressing in a similar manner to the dark gray Windows 95/98 (which, as an aside, is why I find the Windows 2000 variant of that look preferable, with its base gray being lighter and more cheery). That said I miss the 2D grid that 10.5 and 10.6 used for virtual desktops even today… the simplified 1D linear virtual desktops that’ve been in place since 10.7 feels needlessly watered down.
Funny enough that version of OS X can also run what to this day I’ve found to be the best implementation of a Quake terminal anywhere, in the form of the haxie Visor/TotalTerminal which added this functionality to the Apple terminal. The way it handled window focus and everything was so smooth and better than iTerm’s as well as any of the Linux dropdown terminals I’ve used.
On the note of Linux, I wish that there were Linux DEs that went the extra mile to produce a true OS X 10.4-10.9 analogue, but no such thing exists. The closest is elementary/Pantheon which is stylistically in the same ballpark but shares too much of its design roots with GNOME’s oversimplified iPadOS-like design. Everything else in the Linux world is Windows-type desktops or minimal WMs, both with flat UI themes.
- Windows hotkey bottom file explorer: https://github.com/replete/productivity-ahk/blob/main/Bottom...
- MacOS hotkey bottom Finder: https://gist.github.com/replete/245986ddfb5a912f0bc71f5708be...
There's XtraFinder which promises something similar, but now all modern macs require disabling security features, which seems a bit much for a convenient hotkey.
I have also requested TotalFinder-like feature for PathFinder(https://cocoatech.io/) which is the closest thing to what TotalVisor did.
Wild how tiny little utilities can change your expectations of using a computer. Simply cannot get by without quake terminal and bottom file explorer anymore, on any machine I daily drive.
My favorite Mac, by far. I upgraded the RAM in it. Can you even imagine a Mac that has upgradeable RAM? Pearl clutching. I also tried plugging 4 different 4K monitors into it just for the novelty. I miss my trashcan
Also, if you were to serve your get.sh (et al) as text/plain it would enable browing them versus them downloading and having to open it locally. Or, as your footer implied, linking to GitHub would also be super handy
Well now I feel old. Not only can I imagine it, I used to routinely buy RAM upgrades for my Macs because it was more affordable than getting a Mac with more RAM in the first place. As I recall one of the early aluminum PowerBooks even had a really thoughtful design that made it easy to access and replace the RAM, battery, and hard drive.
Sadly this too will be true in Mavericks soon enough. If you decide to web browse on a separate machine though, you can still have your Mavericks machine be your main one.
It's like the game Civilization.
Every new version is worse than the last. Every new version is more bloated. Every new version has changes that ruin it.
Every new version is "less snappy". Every new version ruins everything.
Not even with OS X, we're talking back to the System 6 days, almost 40 years ago, it has always been the same.
System 6 uses too much RAM I'm staying with System 5.
System 7 is bloated I'm staying with System 6.
System 8 is a disaster I'm staying with System 9.
System 9 is a buggy mess I'm staying with System 8.
System, err, OS X v10.0 has no apps I'm staying with System 9.
And then oh boy the OS X/macOS versions!
Every generation gets so much worse, buggier, and "less snappy" than the last that surely our computers must be traveling backwards through time by now!
Every Civ game past III, the one I spent the most time playing during college and am most used to and like the most for totally not arbitrary reasons, has just been the worst, amirite?
If my computer is hacked, I'm not really worried about my data being destroyed, I have offline backups for that. The bigger danger is having my data exfiltrated, I don't want my tax return or password manager database to be exfiltrated from my computer.
Complaining your current version of MacOS X has a worse user experience than it did 10 years ago is like buying a Tesla and then complaining about its resale value.