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Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

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Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#131

Post by jms18 »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #51
shmerl wrote: post #24

OK, if they are so committed, where is OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan support? Why is Safari so behind that it's now called "the new IE"? Talk is cheap, let them actually do something.

Even if Safari catches up, everyone is still forced to use it on their iPads and iPhones as their mobile browser rendering engine and no competition is allowed in that space. So, it will still be "the new IE" but worse than the old IE since competition is locked out at the OS level.

> and no competition is allowed in that space.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ios/

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrome-web-browser-by-google...

http://www.opera.com/mobile/mini/iphone

I cannot agree with "no competition is allowed in that space."

Edit: I just saw the remark for "mobile browser rendering engine" -- that is true.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#132

Post by jpalomaki »

lisper wrote: post #26

What I really want is for my state (SSD, RAM, maybe the CPU, but probably not the GPU) to be easily detachable from my human interface devices (keyboard, mouse, display). I want to be able to use a desktop in one place, then unplug a small unit which contains the aforementioned state (i.e. the equivalent of a sleeping laptop but with no keyboard or display), carry that someplace else, plug it in to a different set of…

This is want I have been dreaming about. While sitting by the desk, I want to use desktop class CPU since there's no need to save power. However I don't want to drag a workstation class laptop while traveling.

I've tried having two different computers. Dropbox makes it easier, but still you have the problem that you need to maintain two separate systems.

I think technically this is not so far fetched. With the portable USB3 memory you could almost achieve it. This would just require that the operating system supports waking up in a bit different hardware (at least different CPU, possibly also different amount of RAM).

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#133

Post by atmosx »

enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

> The new Linux subsystem thing is a god-send.

Does that mean I get a UNIX env/shell on windows?

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#134

Post by morecoffee »

enjo wrote: post #125
taigeair wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on its impact on how you do development? One reason I still have a mac is because it's so developer friendly. Linux is very time-consuming to make things work with and is incompatible with various hardware. Also some mac software is great.

Windows 10 have built a very impressive Linux compatibility layer. It's not a VM, they are executing native ELF binaries using the windows kernel. They run a version of Ubuntu 14.04 on top of it that most notably includes package management. It's currently missing upstart, so some things don't work nicely, but MOST things work just fine. I believe upstart is available on some preview versions now. Everything on our d…

One painfully missing thing is FUSE support. My workflow involves coding on an sftp-mounted directory, which doesn't work in the Windows version. Alas, it seems the only remote mounting Windows will ever have is WebDAV.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#135

Post by nikofeyn »

atmosx wrote: post #133
enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

> The new Linux subsystem thing is a god-send. Does that mean I get a UNIX env/shell on windows?

yes.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#136

Post by sbuttgereit »

enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

To the touch experience you describe, I would add that the terminal support is also rather "meh".

I use WSL a lot during the day; and the stock terminal is way not good and third party options such as conemu are OK, but still comes with annoying issues. My emacs quality time gets messed up because of some of these issues... there may be no way around some of that and it may simply be the reality of a system that maps certain keys one way and a subsystem that would like them another.

Otherwise, I own a Surface Book for travel and tablet like usage and I use a Lenovo workstation for my day-to-day stuff. All Win 10. Very happy overall.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#137

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

bane wrote: post #47

I kind of feel like, once you're talking publicly about things like if you are committed or not, you probably aren't and are trying to keep people from fleeing while you figure out what to do or while some long-term strategy kicks in.

Except that Cook is cited as giving an explicit assurance. A manager can lie only once before they get a certain reputation, and I doubt that Tim Cook would spend his one lie on this.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#138

Post by obstinate »

taigeair wrote: post #110
enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

Could you elaborate on its impact on how you do development? One reason I still have a mac is because it's so developer friendly. Linux is very time-consuming to make things work with and is incompatible with various hardware. Also some mac software is great.

When I develop on Windows, I use a full-screen Ubuntu VM. It's not meaningfully different from having a Linux machine at the scale of work I'm doing.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#139

Post by titanix2 »

linguae wrote: post #77
dba7dba wrote: post #5

I wish Apple never had their success with iTunes and iPhone. It was like winning lottery for them. And you know what happens when someone wins lottery. They forget about their roots and in the end, only ruin remains.

Honestly I've been feeling the same way lately, not so much about iTunes but about the post-iPhone, post-Steve Jobs Apple. I've been a Mac user for over 10 years. In 2006 it felt that Apple was fully devoted to the Mac and its Mac customers. It made computers that fit the needs of a wide variety of people, from casual users to power users. Its hardware was upgradeable, even if it sometimes meant needing to unscrew a…

I had a kind of similar feeling: the Mac hardware tag price is going higher and higher while its performance doesn't come close that of PC, but on the other hand I utterly don't want a PC running Windows 10.

I actually like Windows a lot: I was running Windows 7 as my main operating system on my Macbook Pro for years (until HDD problem, and sadly Windows cannot be installed on a disk connected to the optical sata connector). But I hated the UI nerfing coming with Windows 8. I used it nonetheless because I needed it for Windows Phone development.

But Windows 10 is another whole story. Beside the very unpolished UI, the major blocking point for me is the forced update system. Not that minor updates is a problem, I would apply them anyway, but Microsoft also releases entire new operating system via this system and brand them as updates (eg. Anniversary Update). This can break compatibility, this can mess up the whole system (it happened for each release so far) and it is totally unacceptable for me, as a computer science educated people, to let a third party replace my whole system on my hardware without my consent.

Because I don't except the Mac situation nor the Windows 10 one evolving in a way I like in the foreseeable 2 or 3 years, so I end up buying a Macbook Pro retina 2015 with 256GB and French keyboard layout. Note that I only did that because I'm in a short trip in Japan and the yen/euro conversion rate helped my paying 1214€ for a machine sold 1 689€ at home (= 475€ off) and I wouldn't have buy a new Mac at its full French retail price. I love the retina screen, but I feel forced a bit forced in my buying.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#140

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

atmosx wrote: post #133
enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

> The new Linux subsystem thing is a god-send. Does that mean I get a UNIX env/shell on windows?

Yes. Ubuntu 14.04 specifically[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux

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