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# Moving Forwards by Moving Back
- URL: https://birchtree.me/blog/moving-forwards-by-moving-back/
- Published: 2015-07-12T12:49:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-07-12T12:49:00.000Z
- Author: Matt Birchler
- Tags: Links, #Import 2023-06-01 22:41, #Import 2025-03-29 19:29

[Marco Arment responds to his own "Functional High Ground" article from the start of the year](http://www.marco.org/2015/07/12/climbing-back-up?ref=birchtree.me):

> The entire decline of software quality that I felt in January wasn’t all due to a single buggy network-lookup service — but, unbeknownst to me at the time, a lot of it was. And that huge swath of problems that annoyed me every day disappeared instantly and completely as soon as I updated every computer on the network to 10.10.4.

It sounds like discoveryd was nowhere near ready for prime time last year for OS X Yosemite, but Apple shipped it for some reason. They've completely reverted to the older nDNSResponder, and they're sticking with it in this year's major release, El Capitan as well.

I don't know nearly enough about network tech to tell you why nDNSResponder is better than discoveryd, but it is a good reminder that sometimes it's better to stick with what's old and boring, **and works**, over something that's new and shiny.