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Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

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Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#281

Post by pcwalton »

rayiner wrote: post #280
pcwalton wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article you linked to is talking about a new feature, per-thread DPI awareness, which is something that macOS has never had—NSHighResolutionCapable is per-app (in the Info.plist) and always has been. It seems strange, then, to claim that this feature is needed for HiDPI to not be "broken". Rather, the problem here is that legacy APIs, which Windows has a lot of, are not HiDPI capable, and attempts to retrofit the…

The article is also talking about non-client area scaling which is not a per thread issue. Also, it gives the example of the print dialog in Notepad not scaling. That's a first party app! Sure, Carbon doesn't scale. It was effectively deprecated almost ten years ago when it wasn't ported to 64-bit. Apple rapidly rewrote its first-party apps and they've been scalable for years. Basic first party apps in Windows 10 don…

> The article is also talking about non-client area scaling which is not a per thread issue.

It's talking about that and the per thread DPI issue. And again, it seems to be backwards compatibility that's the issue. Note that you have to opt in to the non-client-area scaling with a special API.

> Also, it gives the example of the print dialog in Notepad not scaling. That's a first party app!

Are you sure notepad.exe can be even changed? It's a tiny wrapper around a comctl32.dll TEXT control. The Print dialog is pure comdlg32.dll, and I'm sure there are backwards compatibility reasons why that cannot be changed.

Wine has to fairly precisely duplicate notepad.exe, so I suspect there is some backwards compatibility reason why it has to be the way it is.

Remember that Win32 is totally based on using exact pixel coordinates for everything. There are a lot fewer apps hardcoding pixel measurements of things in the Apple world (and coordinates in classic Win32 are in integers, not CGFloats as in Core Graphics/Cocoa). Microsoft can't even change the Windows 95 default style of buttons without opt-in without breaking apps!

> Apple rapidly rewrote its first-party apps

Not iTunes! It is still Carbon.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#282

Post by csomar »

criley2 wrote: post #265
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Apple's stance on privacy has everything to do with the personality and life experiences of Tim Cook. Stop for a moment to imagine what being a homosexual teenager in 1970's Alabama was like. Also it's well known that his career at IBM was torpedoed over a gay "glass ceiling." Tim Cook is a man who understands that privacy is a human right.

>I disagree. Apple's stance on privacy has everything to do with the personality and life experiences of Tim Cook. Stop focusing on feelings and personality. It would be a violation of his role as Chief to lead the business on purely emotional grounds, making decisions based on his experiences growing up. He has an obligation to return value to his shareholders. Privacy is a Business Moat[1] for Apple, it's something…

I used to think exactly like you until recently. Something happened that changed my thinking completely: I come into a position of power, and I was actually inclined to push my personal believes "policy". There was no personal benefits. Maybe not much benefits for the counter-party I was acting for.

I used to think people act completely on self-interest. Well, they do run daily for self-interest but you'll be surprised how much they want to push their "policies"/"believes". And some of them do go really long extra miles and put huge efforts.

Now, Tim Cook might be in for financial reasons. But I'll be surprised if his experiences didn't affect his decision making a LOT.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#283

Post by floopidydoopidy »

sctb wrote: post #266
floopidydoopidy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like cancer.

Please comment civilly and substantively here or not at all.

There's nothing uncivil about similes. It's a valid criticism of a corrupt organization that uses your website like free advertising.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#285

Post by pier25 »

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #218
mikeryan wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook, Mac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone+,MacBook HDMI Dongle, iPhone Headphone Dongle, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Pencil. These are primarily iterations or extensions of existing products, not new products (in the blue ocean sense) as seem to be defined in the article. This is the complaint the article makes with "execution" executives. As products they're all mechanisms for increasing revenues on existing (re: stagnan…

Mac Pro, Apple Watch, Pencil, Apple Music were not iterations. There was nothing similar before them from Apple.

The 2013 Mac pro was a very powerful Mac Mini with lots of terrible design choices. So many pros hated it and Apple hasn't bothered to upgrade it in 3 years.

The Watch and Pencil are accessories, like the AirPods.

Apple Music isn't that big of a deal.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#286

Post by r00fus »

josu wrote: post #193
protomyth wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mr. Gates was in charge when Microsoft did quite a bit of their hated activities. It was Gates as CEO who rigged it so all of us buying a PC to run a different OS had to pay for Windows.

Apple also did a fair share of evil things, but it managed to be viewed as cool rather than evil. However, it is obvious that we are talking about subjective things here, and establishing causality is certainly not easy.

Interesting - do you have a cite?

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#287

Post by STRML »

astrodust wrote: post #225
mikeash wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac Pro is pretty ancient at this point. If you see them in dev shops, it's because they simply don't have any other choice: if you want a powerful desktop Mac, then you buy the Mac Pro, even though it's three years old. And even that is not necessarily true anymore. The iMac tends to beat it on many tasks now. At this point, people buy it because they really want to bring their own monitor, or they just can't im…

That's the bind Apple's in. The market for the Mac Pro is very small, and it's also extremely demanding, they're never happy. The iMac has a much broader appeal, the market is demanding but not to the same extreme. Many designers use these machines because they've got great screens and acceptable levels of performance. I'm not sure Apple can win in the Mac Pro space without losing a ton of money. HP and Dell make hig…

I agree that segment is demanding, but there's really only one box we want to tick:

1. I want to legally run OSX on top-of-the-line hardware.

I don't want a fancy design that's unnecessarily difficult to rack-mount or store anywhere, I don't want to try out new ports while abandoning common ones, and I certainly don't want to be 3 years behind.

A matte black rectangle would be a lot better than this. Why the need to be so fancy, to the detriment of your actual users?

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#288

Post by pier25 »

astrodust wrote: post #225
mikeash wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac Pro is pretty ancient at this point. If you see them in dev shops, it's because they simply don't have any other choice: if you want a powerful desktop Mac, then you buy the Mac Pro, even though it's three years old. And even that is not necessarily true anymore. The iMac tends to beat it on many tasks now. At this point, people buy it because they really want to bring their own monitor, or they just can't im…

That's the bind Apple's in. The market for the Mac Pro is very small, and it's also extremely demanding, they're never happy. The iMac has a much broader appeal, the market is demanding but not to the same extreme. Many designers use these machines because they've got great screens and acceptable levels of performance. I'm not sure Apple can win in the Mac Pro space without losing a ton of money. HP and Dell make hig…

> they're never happy

It's hard to be happy with that little trash can.

The tower models were great. It's a shame Apple stopped updating those.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#289

Post by cfjgvjh »

usaphp wrote: post #150
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but why is that so? Apple wants the high end consumer. Gamers are high end consumers, and yet Apple doesn't sell them high end desktop or laptop machines with gaming capable GPUs. Also no VR/AR gear. This seems like quite a strange omission from their product line.

Gamers market is a completely different animal. The hate towards Apple products in that market is spread across it, even if Apple releases a great and powerful computer for gaming - most of the high end gamers would not buy it just because they have an anti mac mentality. On top of that high end gamers want customizability when building their PC, Apple can not possibly support many different model and brands of mothe…

Not to mention the lack of certain titles on MacOS.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#290

Post by methou »

snowwrestler wrote: post #243
intoverflow2 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> announced very few new products. Look it up, he's actually announced plenty. Just they're kinda underwhelming. Off the top of my head: MacBook, Mac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone+,MacBook HDMI Dongle, iPhone Headphone Dongle, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Pencil.

How does this list not include the Apple Watch, which Cook also announced? Speaking of which, how does this not include Swift, which also debuted under Tim Cook? And Metal?

Speaking of Metal, understanding the rationale behind keeping a non-interoperable API with other ecosystems couldn't help me from expecting a revolutionary universal low-level graphics API. I've suffered long enough in the GL madness to lose my sanity.
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