[Hx] RIP MAC OS

[Tim]

I now spend more time tech supporting my computer systems than actual
work on them. My latest is experiences with HTML coding. I spent months
and 4 hosting sites to get my newest website up - originally to use
Wordpress because it is the thing to do. Let me make a short list.
Finally to write it and make additions in straight coding using BBE.

1) The M1 Laptop is becoming incompatible with everything I do. There
are no Brother Printer drivers for the 3 I have used for years - have to
use Airprint which has lost the Print Queue. I keep losing internet
connection and Mail signons, keeps asking for reinsert passwords. Siri
keeps popping itself up on the screen with a modal dialog box that stops
all other activity despite "disabling" it?

2) Web Sites - I am seeing the fly in the ointment for using HTML page
rendering to dislay computer screens. Very lazy and no standards at all.
<width="30%">is now <style="width:100%">. The underlying problem is
writing pages that dislay as both landscape on a CPU and portrait on a
cell phone. The solution is the place a proprietary webserver in the
chain that interprets your code and censors it using proprietary
scripting - non standardized of course so each browser might render
differently. We move closer to the types of coding for assemblers
(binary or octal) - storing what looks like machine code not human
language and non of the editors help debug the code or organize it.
Leave out a "-" in "--> and the code explodes with context change.
Essentially it looks like we are required to recreate the original Mac
operating system that used relative screen addressing instead of the
Windows absolute addressing but adding a relative address interpreter layer.

3) Charger cable hell. USB has 6 varieties, and the one I just bought
does not have standard USB only USB-C. Nice in the abstract but 2 to the
power of 8 possible combinations creates a mix and match problems
finding the right cable at the time you need it.

4) None of the software I use (appreciate the suggestions on the list
for a contact manager other than the pathetic Mac one). I literally
start up my OSX 10.8 machine to access contacts or started keeping them
all in text files and attaching to Thunderbird on the 11 which allows
that - but oh Thunderbird is an orphan program because Mozilla wants to
be another Facebook company and dumped it. Apple has hidden functions
without Admin programs, requiring the Terminal all the time with
Scripting that is in another universe. Might as well write the code in
Mandarin to try to import my now Contact Database. All my tech support
comes from hit or miss web surfing that always includes disiimilar
terminal coding.

6) All the Central Propritary Web servers are insecure because they
require Microsoft... so add to the lack of standardization we have
reduced our activity to pay password ransome to get the latest 3rd party
app, one of 5 in the line to get where i need to be and is constantly
updating. Apple's Map program keeps taking me to the wrong place by the way.

The programmers at the PERL Club meeting have no clue about Mac or
Servers. I feel like we are back in the world of Basic. And the fact
that everything has Microsoft in the loop means it is no longer humanly
possible to use computers as an individual to do anything that isn't
being done exactly the same way as everyone else. That strikes me as
Communism, a failed exconomic system.

Sigh.

Tim B.


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[Lenny Eiger]

Tim,

I hear your frustration.

I think you will be very unhappy with the alternative - Microsoft. Everything they do is far worse than what the Mac side does. Linux helps for some things... but as soon as you get into the Microsoft world you will be tearing the rest of your hair out. We are having to dip in for some of the security concerns for one of our clients and its a miasma... or insane programming.

Lenny

[Christian Buser]

Hello Tim. On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 05:03:32 -0700, you wrote:

> 4) None of the software I use (appreciate the suggestions on the list
> for a contact manager other than the pathetic Mac one). I literally
> start up my OSX 10.8 machine to access contacts or started keeping
> them all in text files and attaching to Thunderbird on the 11 which
> allows that - but oh Thunderbird is an orphan program because Mozilla
> wants to be another Facebook company and dumped it.

Thunderbird works very well on macOS Cataline (10.15.7). Version 78.14.0 is 64bit, and the system requirements are
‧ Windows: Windows 7 or later
‧ Mac: macOS 10.9 or later
‧ Linux: GTK+ 3.14 or higher

You may need an older version for MacOS X 10.8. Of course I agree, that Thunderbird looks ugly compared with other mailers, but it works. If you like something with a nicer user interface, you could try Postbox <https://www.postbox-inc.com/>. It costs US$ 39, there is a trial version available.

However, you can attach any file to a message in any mail program. If Mail.app from Apple inserts the text into the message (instead of a separate file) you can still compress the file as a .zip file before attching it (and de-compress the attachment at its destination).

> Apple has hidden
> functions without Admin programs, requiring the Terminal all the time
> with Scripting that is in another universe.

MacOS (or macOS) is a Unix derivate, and most Unix commands work in Apple’s Terminal.

> 6) All the Central Propritary Web servers are insecure because they
> require Microsoft...

Can you please explain this in more detail? They might be running on a Microsoft platform (most, however, are some Unix derivates), but they certainly do not require that you use Microsoft for accessing them.

> The programmers at the PERL Club meeting have no clue about Mac or
> Servers.

They don’t need to have. PERL is a scripting language that can be used on a Mac as well.

> I feel like we are back in the world of Basic. And the fact
> that everything has Microsoft in the loop means it is no longer
> humanly possible to use computers as an individual to do anything
> that isn't being done exactly the same way as everyone else. That
> strikes me as Communism, a failed exconomic system.

It is no problem to set up a (standard PC) computer using Linux. Linux is another Unix derivate. The thing "nearest" to a Windows computer is probably "Linux Mint". But it is just a matter of taste whether someone likes Linux Mint more, or any other Linux distribution. The good thing about them is that they are free.

Christian
--
Christian Buser, Hohle Gasse 6, CH-5507 Mellingen (Switzerland)
Hilfe fuer Strassenkinder in Ghana: https://www.chance-for-children.org

[Wade Brezina]

I am surprised at how much I like Mint with the Cinnamon desktop (whatever that is;-). Have a kind of Mac OS theme on it and it is just easy to get around on and just works. Way better than the distros I dabbled with years ago. Quite a bit better than the first Mint distro I started using which wasn't all that bad.  Helix is about the only thing I miss.  BBEdit less so as the newer text editors available there are not as bad as they used to be.  Thunderbird seems to be OK.  Have a couple of email accounts set up on it and everything seems to work and I don't really see much difference between it and Apple Mail although I don't use it heavy enough to to make  that a fair comparison. Have quite a few issues with Apple Mail lately but most of them involve an ISP that I think is more likely the culprit. The worst Mail issues I have run into were with large mailboxes and I just don't have that on Thunderbird.

Wade 

[Tim]

I started to try Mint, but erased it accidentally on the USB Drive, and other one I tried was too slow to boot; haven't gotten back to it. Thanks for reminding. It did boot fine off the USB on MacbookPro 2009. I am not remembering if Mint runs on Fusion/Intel pre-OSX11.

Tim B.

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