OS 11

[jay (support)]

OK, we now know what we can tell to our customers; the client is working well at Intel Macs with Big Sur.

Really, that's how you read that thread?

It's a pity that the distance between us is so far, otherwise I could bring you a new M1 Mac mini next week

Feel free to bring me one.. just a quick ferry ride over the North Sea


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OK, we now know what we can tell to our customers; the client is working well at Intel Macs with Big Sur.

Really, that's how you read that thread?

"June 22, 2020: Apple releases macOS Big Sur beta 1 for developers. Apple has just released macOS Big Sur beta 1 for developers. Follow the instructions below to get started with the macOS Big Sur beta."

It seems to me that after more than 4 months the possibility of testing it should be obvious that at least the client should work fine at the moment.
(Or an official statement that it’s working or not to paid customers to avoid these kind of questions and commotion at the introduction of Big Sur)

It's a pity that the distance between us is so far, otherwise I could bring you a new M1 Mac mini next week

Feel free to bring me one.. just a quick ferry ride over the North Sea


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I'm sorry but I think that's not possible anymore through all the Brexit barriers

I'm sorry but I think that's not possible anymore through all the Brexit barriers

See! I said brexit was a bad idea!


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"June 22, 2020: Apple releases macOS Big Sur beta 1 for developers. Apple has just released macOS Big Sur beta 1 for developers. Follow the instructions below to get started with the macOS Big Sur beta."

It seems to me that after more than 4 months the possibility of testing it should be obvious that at least the client should work fine at the moment.
(Or an official statement that it’s working or not to paid customers to avoid these kind of questions and commotion at the introduction of Big Sur)

Ah but they have done testing, they just want to make sure the GM release that actually goes to customers doesn’t have issues.. Apple do have a habit of changing some things between the final build that goes to devs and what goes out to customers.. there has been instances of problems with that in the past with other programs I use!


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Apple do have a habit of changing some things between the final build that goes to devs and what goes out to customers..

As an Apple reseller for more than 35 years now I can fully I agree with that (and many more things)...

BTW: 7.4.1 client is working well and flawless with 11.0.1


PS: And indeed what Churchill has built up, his successors are rapidly phasing this out...

[jay (support)]

Ah but they have done testing, they just want to make sure the GM release that actually goes to customers doesn’t have issues.. Apple do have a habit of changing some things between the final build that goes to devs and what goes out to customers.. there has been instances of problems with that in the past with other programs I use!

Exactly. Apple betas have significant changes (and bugs) between beta releases, so you never know one to the next what will break. And you never know what the GM behavior will be until you actually have the GM release. So, while we believe it will be fine, we can't be sure. We're more confident that the client will work without issues given that it's relatively less complex than the server, its components, and their interactions, but as we found with Catalina even the client can have some unexpected issues once it started getting used more widely. Fortunately, those issues didn't impact normal usage, but they were unexpected nonetheless.

Here's the critical difference between Indigo and most other Mac software: people depend on Indigo being rock solid so that their automation is predictable (and for some it's actually critical). We recommend that those users wait until we have a preponderance of evidence that Apple didn't screw something else up. This is just the reality of macOS releases for the past several years and the mission-critical nature of our software.

To be fair I’d say that’s apples software releases through their whole history.. and Microsoft’s. But ever since internet updates became a thing it’s been a lot cheaper to get the end user to do the final testing.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


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[jay (support)]

<rant>
That might be part of it for sure. IMO, you can trace the decline of OS release quality back to Mavericks (though some might say Lion). Mavericks had issues, which they did correct rather quickly, and they didn't seem to be too onerous. However, rather than following it up with a "hardening" release like they did with Leopard (Snow Leopard) and Lion (Mt. Lion), they released Yosemite, which had even more problems (and even had some regression bugs that were fixed in Mavericks but somehow got back in - this was also especially bad in iOS releases for many years). After that came El Capitan, or as I called it El Crapitan - it was by far the buggiest Mac OS release since early days of OS X.

Unfortunately, it just got worse from there. High Sierra wasn't bad, except for the HUGE FTDI and USB driver issues which still haven't really been addressed.

Then, yesterday, some of you (like me) might have experienced a relatively catastrophic bug which sent me into multiple hours of trying to diagnose why my relatively new Mac mini with craploads of memory couldn't launch many apps, would periodically completely freeze for up to 20 seconds (even the clock in the menu bar was frozen), etc. This bug was completely avoidable if they had just designed the "feature" well and tested it in the situation where one of their hosted servers was down. You can't imagine the time that we spent making sure that Indigo would continue working even if our hosted systems were down.

All in all, Apple has a HUGE QA issue, which is only getting worse as they cram in more functionality. I really hope that they come to their senses and do another Snow Leopard release - where they focus on fixing bugs, refactoring obsolete code, and doing significant testing, so that macOS doesn't become Windows Vista (some say it's too late to avoid that, but I have hope).

Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave...
</rant>

[matt (support)]

Since we are ranting here, I'd like to vent as well about Apple QA but in the hardware department. I'm reading this thread on a MB Pro that has its 2nd bulging battery. Under AppleCare for this particular MB Pro I have: replaced the keyboard, replaced the display, replaced an I/O card, and replaced the battery. This second battery bulging comes a few months after AppleCare ended of course, and they are claiming I'm not eligible for the recall since it has already been replaced once (I'll be arguing with them in-person when I take it in). I've worked on Macs since the original 128K and never before have I had such a lemon.

/rant

Since we are ranting here, I'd like to vent as well about Apple QA but in the hardware department. I'm reading this thread on a MB Pro that has its 2nd bulging battery. Under AppleCare for this particular MB Pro I have: replaced the keyboard, replaced the display, replaced an I/O card, and replaced the battery. This second battery bulging comes a few months after AppleCare ended of course, and they are claiming I'm not eligible for the recall since it has already been replaced once (I'll be arguing with them in-person when I take it in). I've worked on Macs since the original 128K and never before have I had such a lemon.

/rant

For those “Only Fools and Horses” fans your Mac sounds like Triggers brush


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Unfortunately, I could not agree more. Since Apple Silicon hardware is already a thing, maybe it's time to seize the opportunity and move Indigo to an OS independent app...

More detail on what Jay noted previously: Deeper look at Apple’s recent server outage reveals potential Mac privacy concerns

[matt (support)]

More detail on what Jay noted previously: Deeper look at Apple’s recent server outage reveals potential Mac privacy concerns

Yikes, it is worse than I realized. I'm shocked they are sending the query unencrypted. It is therefore trivial for ISPs (NSA, etc., too of course) to watch which apps you are launching and when. For a company that claims to be so privacy focused this is a huge misstep.

The way they should have done this feature: have a background task that periodically grabs (via HTTPS) a list of all dev certs that have been rejected. On app launch check the cert against the local cached copy of the list. This removes the privacy concern and prevents a slow server from hanging app launching.