> Apple went from building fantastically reliable software on beautiful, powerful devices
When ? Seriously when. I have used MacOS since 4.1 and never remember a period where there was the case. Especially during this phase of the development lifecycle i.e. we have only just had the 2nd point release update.
I worked at Apple pre and post Jobs and nothing changed. Because he never managed any of the teams directly and his involvement had been less and less for years prior.
Obviously responses are going to be pretty dependent on the person. For me personally the peak was Snow Leopard, then it plateaued for a bit, and then I feel like it has been downhill starting with Mavericks.
Snow Leopard was so good I used to evangelize and talk about how great an OS it was with people who probably didn't know OS stood for operating system. It was that good. Now, heck, I haven't even installed the latest because I hear nothing but bad and in the on-stage demos there isn't a single thing that makes me think, "ooh I want that" It obviously has a product-market fit with a lot of people, I'm just not one of them. I'll eventually update just to make future updates easier on myself, but I have no pressing need.
Ditto on Snow Leopard. I had to muck through the version history to figure out which release I was considering the "last good, exciting release." Turns out we all agree. The divide is... stark. That said, High Sierra seems to trend back up towards the level of ambition we saw in the 200x releases.
2001 10.1 Puma: First OS X to ship by default
2002 10.2 Jaguar: GPU compositing, Mail.app, Address Book, MP4
2003 10.3 Panther: Safari, iChat AV, Journaled FS, Apple's PDF engine
2005 10.4 Tiger: Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, Core Image/Video
2007 10.5 Leopard: Core Animation, Time Machine, Boot Camp, 64 bit, intel
2009 10.6 Snow Leopard: App Store, XCode overhaul with LLVM
2011 10.7 Lion: Launchpad, auto-save documents, multi-touch
2012 10.8 Mountain Lion: Game Center, Notification Center
2013 10.9 Mavericks: iBooks, Apple Maps, iCloud integration
2014 10.10 Yosemite: Skeuomorphism -> Fisher Price, Continuity & handoff
2015 10.11 El Capitan: San Francisco font, Metal API
2016 10.12 Sierra: Siri, Auto Unlock, Night Shift
2017 10.13 High Sierra: HEVC, APFS, VR
Snow Leopard had problems when it was released. I recall major issues with Mail and WiFi, among others. It was especially frustrating because Apple had made such a big deal about how 10.6 was going to focus on stability and fixing bugs.
Of course it did become very reliable. We remember Snow Leopard that way now, because we remember the last stable version of it. El Cap is very stable for me today. High Sierra certainly still has a chance to get there too.
So, I agree with the GP that Apple has never been in a place where they could release v0 of a new OS X major version without issues. That has certainly not been my experience. I always wait at least a few months before upgrading, sometimes longer.
Most of the early OS X problems were resolved: Pretty much any printer you bought would work instantly; there was a healthy ecosystem of well-supported native apps; bundled apps worked well and used open standards (Mail, Address Book, iCal); networking worked well, including sharing files between Macs and PCs. And built-in utilities worked great, like printing to PDF and opening PDFs in Preview.app.
And hardware was quite good around that time too – with unibody notebooks (both plastic and aluminum) released during that time.
Things went downhill with 10.7 Lion and beyond, when Mac OS X imitated iPhone OS and usability started to decline:
- Bundled utility apps suffered: iCal and Address Book got photorealistic leather, and lost key functions like column-based navigation for your contacts and easy handling of multiple networked calendars.
- Flagship apps lost core functionality in the name of simplification: iPhoto took up the whole screen but lost core functions; iMovie was dumbed down (prior to 10.6); Final Cut Pro X left a massive gap in functionality from Final Cut Pro; Aperture was discontinued.
- Things just got worse for no valuable reason. Example: watch a Quicktime movie full-screen on a multi-monitor setup, and all the other monitors just show... textured linen.
- Reliability declined. I don't have data to back this up, and I'd really like to find an objective source for "reliability" on the Mac. But I no longer say "it just works" seriously anymore. That used to be mostly true, but it's no longer true for me. Personal example: constant problems when adding or removing my external display – permanent sleep that requires a hard reset, or display will repeatedly not be detected, or built-in keyboard and trackpad won't work until I plug in my wired keyboard again, type something, then remove it again.
I also remember Mac OS / OS X having lot of problems years ago. Well, actually much more than now, since the last 5/6 releases always have run without any issue on my Macs. Worst machine ever was the cube :)
I don’t see any decline, I actually would say things have improved a lot (I’m a Mac user since the early 2000)
When ? Seriously when. I have used MacOS since 4.1 and never remember a period where there was the case. Especially during this phase of the development lifecycle i.e. we have only just had the 2nd point release update.
I worked at Apple pre and post Jobs and nothing changed. Because he never managed any of the teams directly and his involvement had been less and less for years prior.