Arse Ventura

My apologies for the crass and rude title for this post, however there are a few things I need to vent about today.

It’s a few weeks now since I upgraded my 2017 iMac to macOS Ventura 13.0.1, and yesterday I moved up to 13.1.

I’ll be honest, the only good news is that I’ve not had much in the way of interruption to my workflow, thank goodness.

Now for the not-great news.

Stage Manager

I tried it for a while, then turned it off again.

It’s different, I’ll give Apple that. But I can’t figure out why I’d want to use it. For my use and workflow, it feels like a downgrade and a needlessly complicated one at that. Is it that I’m spoilt because I worked out how to use Moom and Keyboard Maestro together to control app windows quickly from the keyboard?

System Settings

Ho boy.

Look, I wasn’t a fan of the System Preferences app — its saving grace was that you could hide parts of it to make the bits you use easier to find.

But retro-fitting all that into the i(Pad)OS app’s body and slapping that into macOS feels like Apple having a severe case of Can’t Be Arsed To Do This In A Mac Way.

I find it darkly hilarious that you can resize the app’s window vertically, but not horizontally.

Now, I’m going to charitable here and point out that a few things are better thought out in System Settings, but that’s a low bar for Apple given the state that System Preferences was in. But to make an app that screams “We lifted the code from i(Pad)OS and made it a window, now it’s a Mac app”… that is meeting the criteria for the Cone of Shame.

Sharing Is Caring… Unless You’re Apple

Another feature that Apple decided to ‘fix’ by copying the iOS version over… the Share Sheet.

I spotted this straight away, as I use this thing a lot every day. Yep, making it smaller and more cramped is an improvement, thank you Apple!

(Pause to relax and let bile level recede to safe level.)

Boil, Froggies, Boil

I shouldn’t be surprised at any of this. Apple has been gradually turning up the gas under the macOS pan for many years (and releases) now, and haven’t made much secret of the direction of travel. But I have to wonder if they have a long-term plan or expectation of what the end-result is that they want from all this work.

Trying out new things is fine, but fixing bugs and defects — and not merely telling folks to update to the next release (if they can) — is finer.

It’s ironic that they’re finally fixing many of the hardware design mistakes of the past, and I take my hat off to them for what Apple Silicon can do. But there’s this lingering doubt over what they want the Mac to be, over two and half decades after Steve Jobs simplified the range with his Consumer / Pro / Laptop / Desktop grid. Come to think of it, the same could be said for the iPad.

It’s time for Apple to take a leaf out of their own marketing book — Think Different, and come up with a plan for Insanely Great products, apps and services.