The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur).
I did that a few days ago and I agree, it’s quite snappy! Missing certificates can also be installed manually (e.g. from the curl CA bundle), but even then TLS 1.3 support is lacking in most apps which breaks a lot of stuff without the suggested proxy.
> The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur).
Certain 2014 Macbook Airs, including my own, will install Yosemite instead in recovery mode for some reason, even though obviously I'm using Mavericks and it runs fine.
My exit from the Macintosh OS was in 2011 with the release of OS X 10.7 Lion; meaning the end of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It was at that point when I realized that Apple was going more towards an "appliance" company than a computing company. They started making it more and more difficult to access the power of the Unix core. So I packed up my virtual bags and moved to Linux once and for all. I started with Mint (for about a minute), then went to Ubuntu, now I am at Debian (with the Xfce DE); probably forever.
I'm afraid the newest compatible iTerm2 is 3.0.15 from 2017 [1].
It's open source so it might be possible to build a newer version to be compatible, or to cherry pick certain newer features. It's not an app I use though.
>I knew I wanted an operating system from before Apple abandoned the Aqua design language.
I suppose it depends on your definition, but that likely does mean Mavericks is the latest available. For my money though, El Capitan (10.11 to Mavericks' 10.9) was the local maxima (speed, stability, capability). I've no inkling what issues using that would entail—I had no idea that Mountain Lion had "a more capable version of QuickTime"—but my immediate response to this was wondering why not El Capitan.
Strictly speaking, Mavericks (and Mountain Lion and Lion before it) were already some way through abandoning Aqua. Lion dropped the beautiful blue scroll bars that previous OS Xs had, replaced the pill-shaped buttons with rounded rectangles, and somewhat flattened the overall UI as well, though not to the extent that Yosemite did.
But even as a fan of Aqua, I think it's nice that some of these elements got toned down just a bit. Really, you could view most of the design changes from OS X 10.0 onwards as Apple slowly toning down Aqua; the original Cheetah looks kind of gaudy IMO, the interface elements draw too much attention to themselves.
I do miss Snow Leopard's scroll bars though, as I explicitly call out on the website!
You're thinking of QuickTime 7, that can be optionally installed (as a separate app) even on macOS 10.14 Mojave! But the website is referring to versions of QuickTime X. QuickTime 10.2, which was included with Mountain Lion, was the last to support third-party components. (If you've ever used "Perian", that's what I'm referring to.)
We could benefit from a site that describes the best OS for any hardware and has scripts and instructions for how to mod them to be more efficient and up-to-date, with someone assigned to maintaining patches and tools for basic functionality you might need, but also having standalone, airgapped versions of each for longevity.
Right now, this info is dispersed everywhere and it’s not the primary intent of archival sites to provide this.
Oh man, I actually used this guide when putting Mavericks on my old Mac! So damn nice. The UI is still so fresh. Neat that there's Firefox for it now. Last I tried it, I had to do Chromium-legacy, though I wouldn't exactly want to take an old unpatched machine online very often.
The newer version of MacOS on it, has become basically useless.
Windows 10 on it, has been handy for when I want to watch Apple TV, or use Channel 4 (who still don't generically support their app on Android which my TV runs).
But now Windows won't update to 11.
So maybe time to move from Windows to Linux and downgrade the MacOS.
Recently I've been looking for some VPN solution and found that many are quite expensive, though often you get a decent enough discount if you subscribe for like a year or longer. Also, I believe many services are probably not trustworthy (regardless of their claims).
A very affordable alternative is a DigitalOcean droplet with PiHole. You can connect with this VPN with Wireguard, which will probably work just fine on Mavericks. Been using this now for a couple of months and no issues. My costs are probably around 3-4 USD per month, but I don't use VPN all the time.
This is nice, I wish there was way to bring the old Rosetta over, though I guess it probably needs something like all/some parts of the OS to be compiled as fat binaries to work,
This is way I feel, but my last stop is 10.15 (Catalina) having started with 3.2. Modern macOS is just trash.
My goal over the longer term is to fully migrate to Android, especially desktop mode. There are several reasons for this but maybe the fact that given the typical hardware for Android means it's less likely suffer the terminal bloat of desktop systems.
It is an interesting article, but not really a Show HN because there is nothing I can play with or try out...unless you ship me an old compatible Mac... my email is in my profile :
...I'll admit I wasn't entirely sure if this could be a Show HN or not, I might have chosen wrong!
However, the guide includes a ton of software I made, which can absolutely be tried out—Aqua Proxy, updated QuickTime components, SIMBL plugins, etc—by anyone with compatible hardware.
I'm sorry you don't have the right hardware. :( You could use a virtual machine but there's really no point. But I don't think this in itself should disqualify a Show HN submission, right? Otherwise, the only thing people could submit would be webapps!
The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur).
I did that a few days ago and I agree, it’s quite snappy! Missing certificates can also be installed manually (e.g. from the curl CA bundle), but even then TLS 1.3 support is lacking in most apps which breaks a lot of stuff without the suggested proxy.
A lot of MacPorts ports also do not build sadly.
The look is so much better than current macOS.
> The MacBook Air mentioned (2014) will install Mavericks when booted into recovery mode anyway (unless you use Option-Command-R which will give you the newest compatible version which is Big Sur).
Certain 2014 Macbook Airs, including my own, will install Yosemite instead in recovery mode for some reason, even though obviously I'm using Mavericks and it runs fine.
My exit from the Macintosh OS was in 2011 with the release of OS X 10.7 Lion; meaning the end of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It was at that point when I realized that Apple was going more towards an "appliance" company than a computing company. They started making it more and more difficult to access the power of the Unix core. So I packed up my virtual bags and moved to Linux once and for all. I started with Mint (for about a minute), then went to Ubuntu, now I am at Debian (with the Xfce DE); probably forever.
I can, and will, totally use this as my daily driver on my MBP 2013, if there is Tailscale and a up-to-date iTerm2.
The UI is soooo much better than the current Mac OS.
I'm afraid the newest compatible iTerm2 is 3.0.15 from 2017 [1].
It's open source so it might be possible to build a newer version to be compatible, or to cherry pick certain newer features. It's not an app I use though.
1: https://iterm2.com/downloads/beta/iTerm2-3_0_15.zip
In terms of the "Why Mavericks?" section,
>I knew I wanted an operating system from before Apple abandoned the Aqua design language.
I suppose it depends on your definition, but that likely does mean Mavericks is the latest available. For my money though, El Capitan (10.11 to Mavericks' 10.9) was the local maxima (speed, stability, capability). I've no inkling what issues using that would entail—I had no idea that Mountain Lion had "a more capable version of QuickTime"—but my immediate response to this was wondering why not El Capitan.
Strictly speaking, Mavericks (and Mountain Lion and Lion before it) were already some way through abandoning Aqua. Lion dropped the beautiful blue scroll bars that previous OS Xs had, replaced the pill-shaped buttons with rounded rectangles, and somewhat flattened the overall UI as well, though not to the extent that Yosemite did.
But even as a fan of Aqua, I think it's nice that some of these elements got toned down just a bit. Really, you could view most of the design changes from OS X 10.0 onwards as Apple slowly toning down Aqua; the original Cheetah looks kind of gaudy IMO, the interface elements draw too much attention to themselves.
I do miss Snow Leopard's scroll bars though, as I explicitly call out on the website!
You needed to own a "QuickTime Pro" license in order to enable these features. I used to do all my simple video editing with it until they shelved it.
You're thinking of QuickTime 7, that can be optionally installed (as a separate app) even on macOS 10.14 Mojave! But the website is referring to versions of QuickTime X. QuickTime 10.2, which was included with Mountain Lion, was the last to support third-party components. (If you've ever used "Perian", that's what I'm referring to.)
We could benefit from a site that describes the best OS for any hardware and has scripts and instructions for how to mod them to be more efficient and up-to-date, with someone assigned to maintaining patches and tools for basic functionality you might need, but also having standalone, airgapped versions of each for longevity.
Right now, this info is dispersed everywhere and it’s not the primary intent of archival sites to provide this.
Most of all that is subjective and is going to vary person to person, which is why it’s dispersed everywhere.
But something like a pcpartpicker.com but for OS setups would be cool.
I would have went for Catalina.
I'm still running El Capitan on my 2015 Air.
Was hoping this legendary gtk themer had a mavericks theme but Yosemite is the earliest it appears.
https://github.com/vinceliuice/Yosemite-gtk-theme
If you want a macOS theme with insane quality on Linux this guy's work is the pinnacle.
Oh man, I actually used this guide when putting Mavericks on my old Mac! So damn nice. The UI is still so fresh. Neat that there's Firefox for it now. Last I tried it, I had to do Chromium-legacy, though I wouldn't exactly want to take an old unpatched machine online very often.
This is tempting to stick on my 2012 Mac Mini.
The newer version of MacOS on it, has become basically useless.
Windows 10 on it, has been handy for when I want to watch Apple TV, or use Channel 4 (who still don't generically support their app on Android which my TV runs).
But now Windows won't update to 11.
So maybe time to move from Windows to Linux and downgrade the MacOS.
I noticed the app section included VPN.
Recently I've been looking for some VPN solution and found that many are quite expensive, though often you get a decent enough discount if you subscribe for like a year or longer. Also, I believe many services are probably not trustworthy (regardless of their claims).
A very affordable alternative is a DigitalOcean droplet with PiHole. You can connect with this VPN with Wireguard, which will probably work just fine on Mavericks. Been using this now for a couple of months and no issues. My costs are probably around 3-4 USD per month, but I don't use VPN all the time.
You are a madlad! Also, I have an iMac 2013 that might benefit from this so thank you kindly!
This is nice, I wish there was way to bring the old Rosetta over, though I guess it probably needs something like all/some parts of the OS to be compiled as fat binaries to work,
This is way I feel, but my last stop is 10.15 (Catalina) having started with 3.2. Modern macOS is just trash.
My goal over the longer term is to fully migrate to Android, especially desktop mode. There are several reasons for this but maybe the fact that given the typical hardware for Android means it's less likely suffer the terminal bloat of desktop systems.
It is an interesting article, but not really a Show HN because there is nothing I can play with or try out...unless you ship me an old compatible Mac... my email is in my profile :
...I'll admit I wasn't entirely sure if this could be a Show HN or not, I might have chosen wrong!
However, the guide includes a ton of software I made, which can absolutely be tried out—Aqua Proxy, updated QuickTime components, SIMBL plugins, etc—by anyone with compatible hardware.
I'm sorry you don't have the right hardware. :( You could use a virtual machine but there's really no point. But I don't think this in itself should disqualify a Show HN submission, right? Otherwise, the only thing people could submit would be webapps!
I found this useful, appropriate section or not- thanks for sharing