Projects for Old OS X

I wish Apple would bring back the Dashboard for modern macOS versions, using the modern widget technology. I like the modern widgets but it's awkward that you can only use them on the desktop or notification centre. It's been gone for years now, but I still really miss Dashboard!

What I'd like is:

* Dashboard is a special desktop that appears to the left of the main desktop

* Can be accessed with a single F-key press, or by swiping with the trackpad/Magic Mouse

* Widgets can be organised/laid out any way you like, anywhere on the screen

If anyone is interested in old Mac software and open source projects, I have an archived version of my old OS X listings. While most links are broken these days, it can be a handy for finding things for old Macs. I think the list ended when the App Store finally went online, around the time of Lion. http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps/

We've accumulated much bloat in macOS since "big cat" days... and what seems like only 10% more OS utilities/functionality. Interesting to think about it in retrospect.

10 years after introduction, Swift is now 6.1 and soon to be 6.2. May be another revision or two before finalising on 7.0 ? Then may be Apple could rewrite everything in Swift 7 ?

I know this sounds fun or cool for a lot people on HN. But I much rather they kept Objective-C and keep refining old codebase for the past 10 years instead.

And as many have noted. macOS is now huge. And apart from continuity I dont know any recent macOS feature that made any different for me. We are now close to yet another remake for UI with Vision OS styles.

May be they will do a big clean up when they stop supporting x86 Mac. But I wont be holding my breath.

macOS keyboard shortcuts situation is weird. it shines where Windows is lacking, and falls behind where Windows is ahead.

Example:

I still don't know how to install an app (*.pkg) just using keyboard on macOS. On Windows, it's simply "press tab or alt and see what happens". Another example: on Windows I can press Alt and see a letter underlined in the menu to let me know what keyboard shortcut activates it, but on macOS I have to do Cmd-Shift-/ and search for the command.

On the other hand, on macOS I get to create custom keyboard shortcuts in the Settings app while Windows, afaik, doesn't have this feature.

I can make a new folder on macOS and put the selected files in it automatically if I do Ctrl-Cmd-N, but if I want to "show package contents" of an app in the Applications, I definitely need a mouse! On Windows machines there's often a right-click button which is really useful

> it was time to leave modern macOS behind.

I can relate. But there's one thing I really find great in Sonoma: Select Cyrillic text and hit the keyboard shortcut for Speech and it pronounces the text in Russian. Select Japanese text and it pronounces it in Japanese. And so on. Also, translations or transcripts of such texts in images. Finally an alternative to Google Translate!

But I'm still pissed that I can't install 10.14 on the latest Intel iMac, the hardware won't let me. You cannot run one of the more resource-hungry games on Intel macOS > 10.15 any more. For Apple Silicon, they don't even exist.

Related:

Projects for Old Versions of OS X - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31164521 - April 2022 (87 comments)

The effect on that page is awful. I also suspect not great on older Macs.

I shudder to think anyone still has OSX connected to the internet. How many unpatchable critical vulnerabilities are there already?

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