I've mentioned to a few people that I'm not planning on moving to MacOS or iOS 26 when Apple ships those. This attempts to collect some of my reasons for that stance. Not that things are organized by how I thought of them, not most important to me (at least not yet).

Continuing keyboard issues

The keyboard in iOS used to be pretty usable for me. Not as good as a physical keyboard, but during the three-and-a-half years I lived iOS-only, I got pretty adept at using the keyboard, and didn't have too many problems with it. But over time, Apple has done things attempting to fix problems for other people which have made the keyboard worse for me.

Dropping two keys pressed in rapid succession

If you type two keys rapidly on iOS (such as touch-typing “the”, when the “th” come very rapidly because they're on different hands), iOS simply throws them away. You get a solo “e.” This also bites me very frequently on “ng” at the end of a word, and I get a lot of words like “runni” when autocarrot generally mangles. This got noticeably worse in 2022 or 2023.

Slow autocarrot when it goes back multiple words

As you're typing, the “window” for autocarrot has grown, often past the capabilities of the device to keep up. On my iPad Air 5th Gen, when I'm typing rapidly on the on-screen keyboard, autocarrot will sometimes look back two or three words to make a correction, but I've typed multiple characters before it decides to make the change, so I end up with a word that's back a couple words getting selected, and rather than getting it changed, it ends up being what I'm currently typing, with words that should have been before it now after it, because autocarrot moved back.

Smaller bezels on everything

I have big hands. When I buy motorcycle gloves, I have to buy either 3XL or 4XL gloves in order to have them fit correctly. For work gloves in the yard, 3XL is also the minimum. As Apple continues to shrink the bezels on all of their devices, I get more false-hits from the hand holding the device. I've put a thick case on both my phone and my iPad, and still get false clicks near the edge of the screen which screw up whatever I'm trying to do at the time.

No Home Button

As I age, I have noticed that I'm developing a slight tremor in my hands. It's not bad, but it's enough to make it impossible to me to swipe reliably on an iOS device. If I'm trying to swipe up to get home, I frequently get a “swipe and a half” which takes me to the task switcher. Or a too-short swipe which activates one of the controls so many apps insist on putting across the bottom of the screen. The older I get, the more I need an actual Home button. I get by okay with the Assistive Touch home button, but that requires constant repositioning because there's always some control underneath it, and while it does move somewhat intelligently when the keyboard appears (for example), it doesn't always, and sometimes it just does the completely wrong thing.

Liquid Glass

The straw that broke the camel's back was Liquid Glass. Apple announced this for iOS and MacOS 26. I looked at a few examples and I just can't see the controls. There are supposedly ways to cut down on the effect to make the controls more visible, but this is a just plain stupid idea. Yes, content is important, but when you are working on content, the controls to work on it are also hugely important, and having them fade into the contents is... stupid. I may be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but I think SJ would've thrown a fit and fired people until this idea went away. It's a real shame Tim Apple doesn't have a similar sense of aesthetics.

#computers #tech #apple

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Note that this is based on Joel Carnat's Cruising a VPS at OpenBSD Amsterdam which is a very good guide to getting up and running. There were just a few things that I tripped over along the way, but if you have any questions I don't answer, that's a good place to go look for answers.

Booking Your VM

The first thing you need to do is click the Book your VM yellow button on OpenBSD Amsterdam. Note that this won't ask for payment up front, just technical details for the VPS, plus a public SSH key so you can get in. Also, be aware that the form is processed manually by Mischa, so there may be a delay, depending on what time of day you book the VM.

Here's a list of the information required: * Your name * Your email address * A public SSH key used for accessing your VM * The hostname for your VM. You can change this later, but the default DNS that Mischa configures for your VM will be hostname.openbsd.amsterdam * Default username on your VM. Again, you can change this, but this will be the way you get in the first time. * RAM and HDD configuration options * A note * Your VAT number if applicable

Paying

Once you receive the email from Mischa, it includes all the information needed to get into your VM. But rather than diving right in, you should pay for your VM so you don't forget in all the excitement of getting something new running.

Once you've paid, ssh into your VM. Directions are included in the onboarding email, but it wasn't entirely clear to me that I could simply ssh username@hostname.openbsd.amsterdam but you can. Or you can use the IPv4 or IPv6 address included in the email, which is what I did initially.

You can also ssh into the host rather than your VM, using the same username and SSH key and the port number provided in the email. No need to do that just yet, though. See “Connecting to the console” for that.

Initial Configuration

The random password for root on your VM is appended to the end of the ssh key you provided, so you may need to take a look at that, but as the first thing you do on your VM should be to change that, you don't need to.

ssh username@hostname.openbsd.amsterdam cat ~/.ssh/authorized_keys su - passwd root

At this point, set the new root password for your VM. Then you'll configure doas

cat > /etc/doas.conf permit keepenv persist :wheel permit nopass root ^D

Note that when actually using doas you will be prompted for the password on your account. It's probably simplest to set that password to something you'll remember and can type at this point.

passwd username

And now it's time to update your system. There is much more information available in the Upgrade your VM page.

sysupgrade syspatch reboot

Connecting to the console

Since you've restarted your VM, now you're waiting for it to reboot. The upgrade page has a section titled “Connect to the console” which will cover the details. Note that you will need the root password mentioned above at the start of the “Initial Configuration” section (or what you changed it to) if you want to do anything more than passively watch your VM rebooting.

The main time you're going to need to connect to the console will be if you Full Disk Encrypt (FDE) your VM, or if you attempt to upgrade and something goes wrong, but I've found that I just don't use the console on the host much.

Joel has more details on connecting to and using the console on his page.

Enjoy!

With that, your VPS should be up and running. Your next steps will depend on what you're planning to do with it, but for me, the very next step was configuring DNS to point to it and waiting for that to propagate, and then setting up the PTR records, which is well-documented. If you have untrusted users on your system, you'll want to protect your PTR as well, and even block access to the PTR daemon using firewall rules.

#tech #OpenBSD

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