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The Mac Platform Decline

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Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#161

Post by heisenbit »

bane wrote: post #46
ChuckMcM wrote: post #12

Wow, I really liked that article. I thought it articulated some really important insights, first that Apple could reasonably be seen as abandoning the core computer user market, and second an acknowledgement that the market they are leaving in favor of the consumer market is probably immaterial to their current business model. It is clear that there are two "kinds" of users of computation platforms, the "apps only" u…

Apple is fighting too many competitors at the moment. It used to just be Microsoft, but Google's dominance in smartphones and slow but constant pressure in tablets and "good enough for most people" laptops is causing the company to lose focus. Microsoft also traditionally didn't have a credible hardware story, giving Apple a complete vertical integration story. Now both major competitors are vertically integrating (M…

> Apple is fighting too many competitors at the moment. It used to just be Microsoft, but Google's dominance in smartphones and slow but constant pressure in tablets and "good enough for most people" laptops is causing the company to lose focus.

The too many competitors I don't buy. The question about where their products are positioned in the market is imho. a valid one.

Apple tends to leave last years product available at a somewhat lower price to measure what pricing the market bears. This works well for a continuous change of conditions. Such strategies can end up in local optima - high margin niches that are shrinking.

On the iOS side after moving upwards all the time Apple recently came out with the iPhone SE - a powerful device in a less fancy package with smaller screen - to complement the portfolio on the lower end. On the MacBook side such discontinuous thinking seems to be missing. Even more worrying they are not lowing prices for the older architecture enough to properly gauge the demand on the lower end side.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#162

Post by apozem »

jarjoura wrote: post #66
simonbarker87 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I see you've also read the stratechery article about apple's structure :-) I think it's pretty clear from the WWDC Gruber interview panel that the execs who love the Mac are Schiller and Federighi but you're right that it's speculation. Either way, we can be negative and whinge or take this update as a glimmer of hope - because whatever we choose to do Apple aren't paying us any attention on HN!

They all read these comments silently, and I have a few friends who feel burned by all the negative press. Some have spent a really long time and many hours on this latest laptop. There's definitely a camp inside the company who believe windows should take the pros back as they were burned by the whole Final Cut Pro rewrite fiasco. There's also a camp who want to see the MacPro continue on and understand brand mindsh…

I'm sorry your friends within Apple feel burned. Really, I am. I like my Apple products and would like to buy more... But however hard your friends at Apple worked on the new Macs, they're not the Macs we wanted.

We professional users didn't want to lose the SD card slot. We didn't want that awful butterfly fake keyboard. We didn't want to lose MagSafe.

Apple tends to lead from the front and force change, and that's fine. Sometimes you have to pull the floppy drives out of our clutches. But when this many people are telling you you're on the wrong path... You may in fact be on the wrong path.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#163

Post by flashman »

jeffehobbs wrote: post #73

This recent round of updates made me consider what I need from a "work" machine. For me, it comes down to three items: * Can I code on this machine? This means at minimum three tasks: write, deploy and test code. This also connotes a lot of things, including but not limited to access to a non-unobfucated file system. * Can I view all file formats easily and successfully? This includes formats like XML and json which…

> Apple seems completely stuck in a time where all users needed was access to a decent office suite and the ability to email and print in order to "do work".

They're like a corporate IT department that refuses to allow its users to install the programs they need to get work done.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#164

Post by IBM »

jasonjei wrote: post #159
IBM wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider you can only tell if the R&D money was spent wisely in retrospect.

I would say the same of insiders. Outsiders can judge this better than insiders due to independence (tunnel vision and company pride sometimes get in the way).

Perhaps. The point is we'll find out in 5-10 years if the R&D money spent today was a good decision (and sooner for future iterations of the existing product categories).

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#165

Post by majewsky »

mbernstein wrote: post #160
matwood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally in agreement. I'll give Linux another try on my rMBP to see if the HiDPI issues have been resolved yet. A quick search shows that MySQL Workbench still has issues: https://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=48867 If that's the only software I use that has problems I can probably deal with that though.

The annoying part with Linux on rMBP's for me isn't the display - it's the fact that my palm rests on the trackpad and causes all kinds of issues that macOS is immune to.

Does Linux not support palm detection on MBP touchpads, like it does on regular Synaptics touchpads?

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#166

Post by parasubvert »

pjmlp wrote: post #72
parasubvert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really varies; among many SF Bay Area companies, PCs are rare sights for the past 5-7 years. Go into any Bay Area coffee shop, for example. Now in London, Tokyo, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, Toronto or New York it's probably more balanced, but I see plenty of tech companies that are Mac standard. I work for a global software and services company of over 2500 people and I'd say maybe 5% are running PCs with windows or…

I can tell you that in Europe it surely doesn't look like that. Companies like Salesforce, Amazon, Google or Facebook and similar are the snowflakes of Fortune 100. There are plenty of other companies out there, and for the large majority software development is a by product, not their main business.

"for the large majority software development is a by product, not their main business."

And this is why software companies are slowly taking over many other industries. :-)

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#167

Post by apetresc »

paulddraper wrote: post #120
threeseed wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. The Apple Watch is absolutely a long term play. Right now it's a fraction of what they want it to be ie. the saviour of the health care industry. And given the regulatory requirements of playing in this space you need to play the long game.

How will a watch "save" health care?

Presumably by constantly monitoring whatever biometrics you can gather from the wrist, thus detecting anomalies sooner than annual checkups would.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#168

Post by [deleted] »

paulddraper wrote: post #120
threeseed wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. The Apple Watch is absolutely a long term play. Right now it's a fraction of what they want it to be ie. the saviour of the health care industry. And given the regulatory requirements of playing in this space you need to play the long game.

How will a watch "save" health care?

[deleted]

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#169

Post by majewsky »

danjoc wrote: post #157
zepto wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing people say things about how the Mac is sidelining serious developers and content producers, but I haven't seen any actual argument as to why this is so. Can you explain?

I'll sum up the points I've seen for the 2016 Macbook Pro. 1) No esc key or fkeys. These are pretty important for vim, and vim is the defacto editor on most Linux systems. If you want these keys, you have to accept the lower end dual core CPU and no discrete GPU. 2) 16GB of RAM, not really enough for running multiple VMs. 32GB has been common for years from other manufacturers. Phil Schiller responded that this was t…

> 1) No esc key or fkeys. These are pretty important for vim, and vim is the defacto editor on most Linux systems.

Ooohhh, I can already see the angry complaints from Emacs users.

More seriously though, vim doesn't rely on F keys at all. (The only default function mapped to an F key is F1 for help, which is only there to assist newbies AFAICT.) The F keys are useful as a blank slate for one's own mappings, though, so a lot of individual vim users (me included) might be upset about their favorite functions gone.

The F keys are of much bigger importance in Xcode, where F6/F7/F8 are the default bindings for stepping during debugging. (I cannot comment on this myself as I'm from the printf-debugging camp, but a lot of people pointed to this concrete function in HN commentary in the past few days.)

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#170

Post by desdiv »

x0x0 wrote: post #136
threeseed wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is responsible for the lack of RAM not Apple.

You can buy a dell xps 15 today that comes with: 3840 x 2160 display / 1tb pcie solid state disk / nvidia gtx 960m (crucial for developing cuda programs and prototyping deep learning on your laptop) / 32g ram. For $2340 (ten percent off coupon at the top of the page). I'm not sure if this link will work: http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9550-la... And this thing comes with regular usb ports and an…

>And this thing comes with regular usb ports and an hdmi port instead of usb-c nonsense

Just to clarify for the readers: it's got two regular USB 3.0 ports and a USB-C port, so it's got current compatibility and future proofing.

Ironically enough, if you have a Dell XPS 15 and an Android phone and you travel a lot, you should get an Apple Macbook Pro charger, because said charger would allow you to charge both items.

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