Unauthoritative Pronouncements

I’m on Mavericks still. Why? Because I don’t have any deep, urgent need to upend everything in the world for something that’s shipped with a bunch of weird, crappy, buggy nonsense in it. I get that Yosemite is working fine for the vast majority of people, but what’s my rush? When Apple was doing releases like Leopard, I’d wait to install updates. Even for the point releases, I’d check on the Mac blogs to find out if WiFi did, or did not, work for that release. I’d rather read the reviews about Yosemite than install it. Particularly when I see that iCloud Drive deleted Nate Boateng’s entire photo library, and broke everything. Yosemite? More like YOLOsemite, amirite?!

The truly disturbing thing about what happened to Nate was that he didn’t trust Apple, and had a backup of everything. I don’t trust Apple, and I have a backup of everything. At what point is distrust a sign of a problem, and not just paranoia? Even Dan Moren, doing some Color Commentary™ on Thurday’s Apple Event seemed a little scared of the “Public Beta” moniker on iCloud Photo Library. I am not clamoring for the Photos app. (Yes, I reused the precious memories joke, deal with it.)

Apple’s seeing a decline in their iOS 7 to iOS 8 upgrade rate that surely has more to do with the size of the update, than for the reticence of the customers — but isn’t there a little reticence? What will the upgrade numbers look like for Yosemite over Mavericks? They’re both free, and everyone should have the required space for it.

I’m not talking about End Times, or we should all go back to Snow Leopard, we should all boycott until iCloud is perfect, or some other nonsense, but on balance, there is no compelling reason to upgrade to the first release of Yosemite. There was no compelling reason to test the beta. My Casey-ancient late-2011 MacBook Pro is too old for many headline features. That leaves the new visual stylings. Meh. I can wait. I’ll upgrade, but maybe in a month or two. It’ll be more an issue of social pressure (like using an iPhone 4) than an actual issue. Surely the problems people face are not universal, but that’s kind of the disturbing part. It’s a “maybe this will blow up in your face” lottery. (That is not my favorite kind of lottery.)

Things working > New things that might not work.

The really annoying part is that I don’t even like Mavericks. I was even pretty angry at one point. My observation then, and now, is that Apple needs to stop pushing forward to release, no matter the cost. If it doesn’t work, or it deletes the precious memories of a few people, then maybe take five? Do not ship it.

I’ll just read John Siracusa’s review a few times to hold me over.