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The Mac Platform Decline

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Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#171

Post by landryraccoon »

baby wrote: post #86
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…

> XML and json which are not typically meant to be viewed by a human XML and json are meant to be viewed by a human. Those are visual encodings a contrario to binary encodings.

Agreed. When someone says "not meant to be viewed by a human" I think protobuf or png, not XML/JSON.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#172

Post by majewsky »

Speculation time: What if the big master plan is an Apple Compute Cloud? It would be a public cloud that can run all your favorite resource-intensive macOS apps.

Then you could actually run Xcode and VMs and machine learning on your iPad Pro, because it runs on the cloud instead and the iPad is just RDP'd into your cloud account. The need for a separate Mac product line would then be obliterated entirely.

Within that theory, the disappointing update can be explained as the Apple Compute Cloud being delayed, so they had to scramble something together quickly.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#173

Post by fzzzy »

snom380 wrote: post #99
fzzzy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs died just over a year after antennagate. He had already been extremely sick for years at that point.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but he was still CEO at that point (his biography has a section about how he dealt with the antennagate issue) after having made a recovery from the transplant.

My point is being sick may have affected his abilities.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#174

Post by jasonjei »

matt4077 wrote: post #121
jasonjei wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just wondering how one will install certain OSes if the Func keys aren't usable during OS install in Boot Camp. I don't remember being able to remap an installer hotkeys easily. Maybe Apple doesn't want that demographic, or perhaps we'll have to connect a USB-C keyboard. Boot Camp drivers are also terribly out of date.

At this point I'm starting to assume that people are acting in bad faith when they pretend that the toolbar somehow turns to emoji mode when you're working in a terminal or rebooting or whatever. I do this because all of Apple's material has focused on it's context-sensitivity and configurability. Here's a screenshot of function keys: http://images.apple.com/v/macbook-pro/j/images/overview/touc...

No, my point is Apple is pushing consumer's uses such as typing emoji above the developer's needs, such as pressing ESC. Yes, you certainly still can "press" ESC, but I suspect I won't be used to the touching a screen sensation when reaching for the ESC key without looking at my key plate. I'm very aware of the contextual TouchBar.

Yes, I'm sure the Touch Bar will useful for the consumer demographic. However, there are many of us who are much more effective with the keyboard rather than using a touchscreen or a mouse.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#175

Post by thatswrong0 »

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…

> 4) GPU. Same gripe. NVidia is the undisputed leader in GPUs. Shipping a Radeon which is half the speed of a comparable NVidia offering is really disappointing.

This one is understandable - the AMD 450/455/460 all fit within a 50W TDP. The Nvidia 1060M is at 80W... way too high. The 1050M should be 50W, but it won't be out until early 2017.

The timing of all of this seems weird to me. Since Apple already waited so long to release this update to begin with, would it have killed them to wait just a bit longer to be able to integrate Kaby Lake and the mobile Nvidia cards?

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#176

Post by nodamage »

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…

But what's the battery life like on the Dell?

Edit: Googled for "Dell XPS 15 9550 battery life". Results do not look good.

Seems clear the 16GB limit is an Intel limitation. In order to achieve 32GB (like in the Dell XPS 15) they had to use DDR4, which is not as energy efficient as LPDDR3. Skylake only supports LPDDR3 at a max of 16GB. Kaby Lake only supports LPDDR4 in their ultra-low power chips. Comparable products (Surface Book, Dell XPS 13) also max out at 16GB.

In order to get 32GB of ram in the ultrabook category we're going to have to wait until Intel adds LPDDR4 support to their mobile-class processors (Cannonlake? Icelake?).

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#177

Post by benologist »

snom380 wrote: post #155
__david__ wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? When have they not supported 3rd party displays?

They've always supported third party displays, but this is the first time that I recall that they've included third party displays in an Apple event / presentation. To me, it's a pretty sure sign that an external 5K display from Apple isn't immediately forthcoming (else they would have announced it now and not mentioned the LG display).

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/28/apple-out-of-display-bus...

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#178

Post by eyko »

dasil003 wrote: post #42
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those pro-level users were what kept Apple alive during the dark years but now that greener pastures have been discovered they can easily be abandoned.

If that's really the thinking inside Apple then they are being penny wise pound foolish. The pro users are the influencers. Losing video and photo editors is one thing, but if it eats into their developer marketshare than it will signal the beginning of a slow decline in apps which will significantly hurt iOS over the long-term, and likely be impossible to recover from given Google's leg up in services. Frankly if th…

People don't buy iPhones for the number of _new_ apps anymore. I have a feeling Apple knows this. They already have a share of the market that they're not easily going to drop as long as they keep updating iPhones and marketing them accordingly. I'd say that Apple's focus has shifted, and therefore their long term strategy.

I don't see Apple being the place where the next generation general purpose operating systems will be built.

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#179

Post by baby »

eknkc wrote: post #97
baby wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Our team lives in Slack. Turns out these is no decent slack app for linux and I'd have to use the web app. No thanks. the slack app for other platforms are made from the web app (Electron).

Yeah but they are integrated (native notifications, file access, a window that does not go away with the browser or tied to it, decent looking chrome etc). When I need to use it that much I prefer an app, even if it's a shell actually.

If you're using it that much, perhaps you should re-think how good it is for your productivity :)

Re: The Mac Platform Decline

#180

Post by CountSessine »

paulddraper wrote: post #128
eknkc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but they are integrated (native notifications, file access, a window that does not go away with the browser or tied to it, decent looking chrome etc). When I need to use it that much I prefer an app, even if it's a shell actually.

Eh, people said the same about Gmail but that no-install email client turned out to be wildly successful.

Give it a rest - web applications running in generalized browsers make awful desk-tray applications. The mac & windows Slack app is great - all of the power and connected-ness of a web app without all of the annoyances of accidental web browser navigation.
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