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The Mac Platform Decline

milen.me

21–30 of 192 posts

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#21

"It will be a switch from iOS developers using Macs at home to them using PCs at home and having a "work Mac" for commercial development." This is exactly what gave rise to the Mac and OSX in the last 10-15 years. People worked on Windows PCs "at work" but had Macs for personal development. Now I'm witnessing the exact same scenario play out now that Apple is the market behemoth amongst power users and developers. Do…

> now that Apple is the market behemoth

I thought Windows/PC was still much larger than Apple in the computer market?

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#22
post #13

I agree that the mac platform seems to have been neglected but Tim Cook isn't stupid, he knows that without developers the iPad isn't going to grow how he wants so I don't think this is the end of the Mac. I think Tim Cook has ignored the Mac in favour of his favourite projects but in the meantime Schiller and Federighi have been making sure the Mac is in his periphery and fighting for resources. I've chosen to view…

> I've chosen to view this update as the start of the uptick where we go back to regular updates (perhaps with a longer period than historically) and more exciting things to come. I'm just curious as to what brought you to that conclusion? Was something said? The last few years I've been sitting around kicking dirt waiting for an OSX convertible type of machine, I know there's never been any talk of it, but I figured…

Pure hopeful speculation based on listening to Gruber, Marco (ATP) and Leo Laporte

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#24

"It will be a switch from iOS developers using Macs at home to them using PCs at home and having a "work Mac" for commercial development." This is exactly what gave rise to the Mac and OSX in the last 10-15 years. People worked on Windows PCs "at work" but had Macs for personal development. Now I'm witnessing the exact same scenario play out now that Apple is the market behemoth amongst power users and developers. Do…

[deleted]

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#25
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think Tim Cook has ignored the Mac in favour of his favourite projects but in the meantime Schiller and Federighi have been making sure the Mac is in his periphery and fighting for resources. Ah yes you heard the latest episode of ATP as well. Maybe if Marco repeats it enough everyone will believe it, which is kind of funny since this story [1] is on the front page right now. I basically feel like I'm being gaslig…

No one is lying here, it's speculation so not sure how that article relates. Marco never claimed it was an original thought, I'm pretty sure Gruber said the same a few months back after WWDC. Either way, we can choose to see this update positively or we can be negative about it and stew on the fact that we feel ignored by Apple - the later always works out well.

The speculation doesn't even make sense because Apple is structured as a functional organization, not around product lines. Schiller and Federighi aren't in charge of Macs so they don't have to fight Cook for resources. When Marco claims (without any evidence) that Schiller or Federighi are the champions for the Mac internally, he's projecting his values on to them because he's created some narrative in his head about various executives.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#26
post #11

I think most of the statements in the article are true, the problem is there is not (right now) a superior alternative. Yes, Microsoft is trying with the surface, Linux I'm sure has come far, but there is simply not any alternative that can realistically compete with the Mac platform right now. There is simply no pressure on Apple to dedicate further resources to this area, because there is not much for them to gain.…

As a current macOS user and a former Ubuntu user, I actually feel that my experience with Ubuntu was better than macOS, not worse. Among the features I liked: a decent window manager built in into Unity and free file-system snapshots using btrfs. And I was using a ThinkPad, which was less expensive, more rugged, and would not try to impersonate a leafblower every time you ran a nontrivial computation on it.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#27
post #21

"It will be a switch from iOS developers using Macs at home to them using PCs at home and having a "work Mac" for commercial development." This is exactly what gave rise to the Mac and OSX in the last 10-15 years. People worked on Windows PCs "at work" but had Macs for personal development. Now I'm witnessing the exact same scenario play out now that Apple is the market behemoth amongst power users and developers. Do…

> now that Apple is the market behemoth I thought Windows/PC was still much larger than Apple in the computer market?

Yes but it's been steadily declining. I guess I should have added an asterisk and said "Amongst power users/developers" since those are almost exclusively Mac now (from my observation, YMMV)

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#28
post #20
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why were you sitting around waiting for a convertible when they've said on the record multiple times they were never going to make OSX touch based? All the way from Steve Jobs to the CNET interview with Schiller, Federighi and Ive.

Hey now, Apple also said nobody wants a stylus and that no one's going to buy a "big" phone!

Stylus for main input ≠ Drawing stylus.

One is overshadowed by multi-touch while the other is needed by professionals among others.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#29
post #11

I think most of the statements in the article are true, the problem is there is not (right now) a superior alternative. Yes, Microsoft is trying with the surface, Linux I'm sure has come far, but there is simply not any alternative that can realistically compete with the Mac platform right now. There is simply no pressure on Apple to dedicate further resources to this area, because there is not much for them to gain.…

Yeah, and as a developer it really behooves me to be able to run Xcode and the iOS simulator. Plus every team seems to use Macs nowadays, and it certainly helps to be on the same platform as everybody else.

Finally, I already have a couple apps in the App Store that I'd have to abandon if I switched to something else. So I'm kinda stuck.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#30
I bought an SE rather than a 7. Size is a better fit for me and I still use the audio jack. A lot. So Apple had an upgrade path for me.

But with the new MacBook Pro, they cut out USB-A. If they'd kept it on the entry level model, that'd be my upgrade path. Instead, I'll eek out maybe a couple more years on my current MBP.

BTW, I'm not sure at all why they ditched MagSafe. They did all this and kept the RCA port. Now that's a head scratcher.

On the plus side, I'm a big fan of the T1 Secure Enclave processor.

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