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Apple Software Developer Says OS X is Rotting to the Core

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News Posted: Fri, Feb 1 2013 9:58 AM
It's not often you hear an Apple user bash his platform, especially a relatively high profile one like Lloyd Chambers, a photography enthusiast and author of the Macintosh Performance Guide. Chambers, who worked as a professional software engineer for 25 years and has been using Macs since they first appeared in the 1980s, wrote an interesting piece on what he perceives is an ongoing degradation of the OS X platform.

"Over the past few years a semi-conscious unease has been steadily growing in my mind: OS X is not getting more reliable and more stable, it is instead developing more and nastier problems that range from interference with getting work done to potential data loss," Chambers explains. "This unease is now consciously realized, hence my decision to publish this series of pages and to no longer ignore the eruption of a serious bug, but to document it."

Macs

His complaints are numerous and varied. One of the first ones he brings up is that OS X is degrading into a base for an entertainment platform, signaling a downhill trend for serious work. He also takes issue with the "fast and furious" OS updates that carry a lot of hype but "little of real value."

Reading through his essay, you might find it hard to believe he's a Mac user, as he dubs iTunes a "nightmarish kitchen sink design" and iCloud an "organization-destroying bug-ridden unreliable disaster."

We could go on, but you get the point. Like a scorned lover, Chambers holds little back in criticizing the platform that he feels is growing apart from him, but it's not a breakup letter.

"The goal here is for Apple to step up to the plate and engage in responsible OS X development; some of these issues are absolutely unacceptable even in a single minor release, but to see them persist for months or years is unforgivable," Chambers says.
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Marco C replied on Fri, Feb 1 2013 10:22 AM

I'm not surprised at all. Although I disagree that we're in the "post PC" era, when Apple says "post PC", that also means "post Mac"; a Mac is a PC.

And if a company openly disparages personal computers, including the ones they build, how much effort do you really think they'll be putting into the platform?

Marco Chiappetta
Managing Editor @ HotHardware.com

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Paul_Lilly replied on Fri, Feb 1 2013 10:32 AM

Agreed, and I think Lenovo has it right by calling this the "PC plus" era.

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Shadizzle replied on Fri, Feb 1 2013 11:08 AM

Agreed that it is now a PC-Plus era and far from a post era-

Is there a link to read through this guys article?

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Shadizzle replied on Fri, Feb 1 2013 11:08 AM

Agreed that it is now a PC-Plus era and far from a post era-

Is there a link to read through this guys article?

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daveschz replied on Fri, Feb 1 2013 11:24 AM

Lenovo's latest earnings report also says they are doing it right.

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Paul_Lilly replied on Fri, Feb 1 2013 1:51 PM

You'll always find the source at the end of the article, where it says "Via" at the bottom (underneath the social networking buttons). Click on the "Mac Performance Guide" hyperlink.

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3vi1 replied on Fri, Feb 1 2013 8:34 PM

If he doesn't like the way OS X is going, he's *really* going to be displeased when he sees it replaced by iOS in another year or two.

I recall some speech Jobs gave long ago that OS X was the "Operating System for the next 10 years". He was also very pumped up about having *one* platform. I can't believe for a second that after IOS started getting bigger and bigger he wouldn't have laid out a roadmap to bring it to the desktop (and rope in those first time buyers that wanted to use all the apps they bought as kids on their phones). Unless Apple is no longer run by the ghost of Steve Jobs, it will happen.

Hopefully, they won't insist on the same UI across all platforms... even if the plumbing does get unified.

What part of "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" don't you understand?

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BenjaminRoss replied on Sat, Feb 2 2013 10:46 AM

I don't know if Windows is getting any better though. Windows 8 is geared so heavily towards tablet and entertainment itself that it will leave enterprises with a sour taste in their mouths. Granted it still has most of its core, the functionality that cannot be bypassed (swipe, Windows tiles (metro, whatever) cannot be ignored.

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