Quite honestly Yosemite is the most buggy Apple product I've ever used - it has made working with OSX a chore. Apple has not fixed one of the bug reports I filed during the beta phase (which I'm not convinced has finished).
I tried to downgrade to Mavericks yesterday, it was almost impossible. The installer refuses to wipe clean and install a lower version unless you do some magic to the disk first and use web install. It took over 5 hours and I downloaded Mac OS 4 times from different sources, including Apple.
The ram it on our throats with free upgrade, then block our path to downgrade, unless we have a time machine backup to restore from. I didn't.
My wife and I have identical MBAirs, except that I got mine when it was shipping with Mavericks and she got Yosemite. I get about twice the batter life, and a lot less trouble with Pages/Numbers.
I'm thinking of wiping hers and installing from TimeMachine, then pulling in just her user data.
You didn't use the first few versions of OS X then? Or System 7? Or for that matter the first release of OS8? The newton, whilst technologically interesting, was flaky as hell. Actually, Lion was pretty ropey...
System 7.0, and 7.1 especially, were terrific: a consistent, understandable UI and (in my experience at least) pretty stable.
The issues came with 7.5 and onwards, when Apple kept bolting on more and more features without any regard to either interface consistency or stability. Draw your own parallels.
I remember my poor LCII practically grinding to a halt under 7.5! Just awful. And that's my point; we've been here before, in fact I'd argue same as it ever was! With OS X, the first few releases were painful. Yes, Apple need to up their game on the quality of their software and (IMHO) the quality of their internet services especially, but this is nothing new. Perhaps the rose-tint is wearing thin?
I don't think anyone has claimed that the decline in Apple's software quality was unprecedented. Even if it happens every three years, there is nothing wrong with begging for a stable release once in a while. 10.8 will stop being supported soon and then we will be left with the choice between 10.9.5, 10.10.x and a brand new, unstable 10.11.0. High time for a stable release.
You are absolutely right. My point was that the hyperbole around it all in some cases seems, well, hyperbolic. Other than the mdns issue, both Yosemite an iOS 8 have been fine for me. Obviously others aren't as lucky, which really does suck.
