@Dain The Video is still there. Parental controls in action?
Parental controls? Region restriction?
In any case, itâs the bar fight scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service, which starts with a very tired Colin Firth saying, âgentlemen, Iâve had a very emotional day.â And then he proceeds to beat the snot out of about six thugs.
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For us and you, please make a âNon-British, but polite fussâ.
(Britain is âinfectedâ with âmustnât make a fussâ thinking.)
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This is what happens when an Operations Guy takes over from a Visionary: Cory Doctorow dubbed it Enshittification, but each generation throughout history has had its own name for this encysting of a good idea within layers of myopic and self-serving bureaucracy. To repurpose a good British-bit from Auberon Waugh, We must never let this disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to annoy and hinder them at every turn.
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Iâll disagree with you there, and that old chestnut has been well and truly disproven long ago.
That âvisionaryâ allowed some half-baked sh.t to be released and blamed customers for failings. While I had no direct interactions with him, I had direct interactions with the results of some of his less than great decisions. Iâve had multiple interactions with the âOperations Guyâ and when he sees an issue or when a customer complains direct, serious questions are asked and responses are demanded along with learnings and actions being taken. âmyopic and self-serving bureaucracyâ is one thing that doesnât last long under the âoperations guyâ. Is he, or the company perfect? Far from it, and I could go chapter and verse on that, but what company is?
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Slightly off topic, but related. I recently upgraded to Tahoe and the one thing Iâm finding unexpected is how out-of-place many native macOS apps now feel (especially when updated to use Tahoe frameworks). Iâve long been a supporter of fantastic indie macOS developers (Panic, L&L, IconFactory, BBEdit, OmniGroup, DevonThink, etc) but personally, this latest OS update makes the UX of many of these macOS native apps feel like they were made by Fisher Priceâ˘. Visually everything is all over the place, icons are misaligned/too small, buttons are too big or too small/oddly shaped, cluttered interfaces, toolbars have been dumbed down, weird shadows are everywhere, and everything just feels sluggish (Iâm on an M1/32GB).
Many years ago (when I was a developer) I recall filing bugs that were ignored by Apple for years and not fixed until they became a problem for them (many of them needed to be fixed for the original iTunes release). Iâm hoping that Apple soon realizes the problems they have created for macOS native developers (and themselves) and fixes things before more developers migrate their products to cross-platform tools such as Electron, Qt, etc. As it stands, Iâve begun moving to more and more web-based and/or Electron/Qt based cross-platform apps as after almost 50 years of using Apple products (started with the Apple II in grade school), and have I reluctantly begun to contemplate moving to other platforms in the not too distant future. If Tahoe is indeed the future of macOS, then it may just be the end of the road for me.
If I was still a developer today, I definitely wouldnât choose to use the native Apple frameworks as they feel more like a liability now, than the advantage they once were.
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Thatâs not at all what Doctorow means by enshittification.
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification , and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a âtwo-sided marketâ, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
The âEnshittificationâ of TikTok | WIRED
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Each to their own, I guess. I donât see significant issues youâve suggested, and zero âsluggishnessâ on the many apps I run, including some of those you mention.
Even with the Tahoe issues with bugs and tardy response, I for one, and Iâm sure most customers far prefer the apps developed with the in-house Apple tools to anything cross platform. As Iâve posted previously in response to a similar post, cross platform is inevitably mediocre compared to an integrated development tool.
Like you I started my Apple journey with Apple II (actually I made my first computer from a TRS-80 compatible bare board, all hand-soldered with my own developed temperature controlled soldering station) Iâve also been on Windows since the very first release and been on betas and Insider programs with Windows (and IBMâs OS/2, plus GEM).
I know, web-based and cross-platform have supposedly been the holy grail, for years and have yet to see a result that would make me seriously consider any of them.
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Up until very recently I genuinely believed this also, but my experiences of late are more often than not, the complete opposite. I wish I felt that native macOS/iOS/iPadOS applications were all-around better than their cross-platform counterparts (functionality, user experience, platform integration, etc), but this is simply not my experience of late. To me, native apps in the Apple ecosystem are now often limited by the legacy public Apple frameworks that are often buggy, ill-maintained and/or stuck in the past.
Again, I sincerely hope that Apple takes steps to stablize and improve their platforms, guidelines, and frameworks in order to give native app developers a definitive advantage once more. I would much rather continue to use and support native macOS/iOS/iPadOS products crafted by small, independent, passionate teams rather than more the more generic, bloated, and often enterprise-focused tools/orgs.
Sadly, and from my perspective, the cross-platform tools are often now more than âgood enoughâ, and occasionally, significantly better. YMMV.
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As I said, each to their own.
Have you compared the Mac Scrivener to Win Scrivener developed with QT?
While I laud the achievements of the L&L Win development team, I believe a side-by-side comparison supports my position.
âGood enoughâ, sorry, doesnât cut it for me. Iâd love to see an example of a Mac app developed with a cross-platform tool that is âsignificantly betterâ. Happy to be educated.
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No, I havenât used Scrivener for Windows (and probably never will).
In terms of cross-platform tools that are IMO significantly better, hereâs my list:
- Apple Notes, DevonThink â Google Docs/Keep, Obsidian (definitely debatable)
- Apple Freeform, MindNode â Canva (this was surprising)
- Apple iWork â Google Docs, Sheets, Slides (I admit, this one is also debatable)
- Apple Motion â Cavalry (not 1:1 replacement for Motion, but paired with Resolve itâs great)
- Apple Final Cut Pro â Davinci Resolve (a steep learning curve, but more flexible IMO)
- Apple Pixelmator Pro, Sketch â Affinity, Figma
- Apple Music/Classical (crashy, stuttery, janky UX) â Spotify, Idagio
- Panic Nova, BBEdit â Visual Studio Code (I definitely donât love it, but it works)
I donât have a replacement for Scrivener (or Vellum, Typeface and Procreate), and I hope to never need one.
Iâll admit that I donât love using any of these cross-platform tools (with the possible exception of Affinity), but they are more than good enough. The one thing I do miss is the simplicity that was inherent in many of the native Apple tools, but that simplicity was also often an impediment to my needs/goals.
Again, this is what Iâve found works for my needs today (being able to collaborate with others is a BIG one), and your needs and expectations may vary. It took me a long time to admit that these non-native tools better fit my needs today.
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I use all those except the last and would disagree with every one except Affinity (I use Pixelmator Pro as a far quicker app for some work and Affinity for a couple of specific tasks), and Davinci Resolve is a toss-up. It does some things better than FCP, others not so good. I use both.
I definitely find the Google offerings inferior. (Aside from that, their privacy policy on its own is sufficient to rule it out.)
Not a fan of Canva at all.
I have zero problems with Music and dislike Spotify.
As for Scrivener, itâs excellent as is, and I have checked almost all of the competing offerings and none of them come close for me.
I donât often collaborate with others. I do occasionally do some with iWork and that works great, and Iâve done a little with Scrivener (very carefully).
âMore than enoughâ is never a reason for me to move from something that works just fine.
Obviously our needs and expectations differ, as do the needs of others, and thatâs probably why the whole world isnât using Windows and Microsoft Office Suite.
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