Apple seems to like removing useful features. In hardware and software … The biggest blunder I think was:
==> MagSafe <==
Well, they finally brought it back. But what a stupid move it was to take it away!
The lastest for me is:
==> SheetWindows <==
They aren’t sheet windows any more; now they’re non-movable modals! Yipee.
Or how about:
==> Combo-Audio Jacks <==
These appear to be gone for good. No optical out, and not a single audio interface on the market supplies reliable optical output.
I know it wasn’t appreciated by many/most users, and I agree in large part, but they designed it and then abandoned it. The most obvious improvement would have been haptic feedback - one of the biggest problems was that you couldn’t tell if you had hit a “button” without looking at it.
Never even seen one. Never had one or used one - but then I don’t use function keys eithers. I’m happy with my Apple wired keyboard (the wide one) that I 've had for more than ten years.
I can’t imagine life without the Touch Bar. It’s not all that useful on its own, maybe, but with the incredible Better Touch Tool, wowza. All my apps a keytap away without having to scroll around - huge timesaver. Apple lost a 16-inch MacBook sale a couple of years ago when I bought a new one, because it’s only offered on the 13-inch.
Preview used to be a decent annotation tool and general jgp/pdf viewer, but they completely ruined it some releases ago, now its annotation tools are just awful.
I did prefer the old sheet windows. They had a grey background for a start. This means that you can actually see controls on them, such as a text box. Text boxes no longer have borders on two sides, so when placed on a white background they become almost invisible. This is especially true when they are disabled. This is why most everything I do lives in a groupbox.
A hilarious irony (for so I chose to take it) was that they deprecated the TouchBar almost immediately after I had spent considerable effort (using Einhugur) in adding TB support to my projects.
I would have been team-touchbar if they hadn’t removed the function keys in favor of it. Leave the ESC-FN keys alone and just put the touchbar above them! But the tactility lost on those keys was too great a sacrifice for any benefit gained by the touchbar for me.
As for things Apple has removed, I’d say the ease of entry into the ecosystem. Requiring apps to be signed and notarized is really a pain and while I’m sure there are some that will tout security as the reason, I view it as an attempt to “gatekeep” (pun intended) the application market, force independent developers to register with Apple and pay an annual fee, and strongarm devs into the App Store.
I especially take offense to the annual developer fee as most of the software I write for their ecosystem is free, and we have to pay them for the privilege of making their own platform better.
Every new release of the Pages word processor seems to have several more features deleted. I used to love Pages, but I don’t even bother with it anymore. It’s become pretty much useless.
I quite liked side-windows (sheets that came out left and right)
Juicy Aqua controls.
How about the Blue G3 iMac design? I still have mine - couldn’t bear to part with it , even if all I could use it for now is to play music. (Retrofit a mac Mini and OLED screen, anyone??)
I am missing a really good mechanical keyboard, like the good-old Apple Extended II Keyboard.
Software:
Contrast in screens - nowadays everything is white in white (or black in anthrazite in DarkMode): white inputfields on a white background, surrounded by a 1 px fine, lightgrey line…
Agreed. I often use it to review work submitted by my students, so I’ve gotten used to it, but that it still tries to change whatever has been handwritten into who-knows-what (quite often: cartoon bubbles ???) continues to be super-annoying.
