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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

#161

Post by eklavya »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #141
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…

I'm also considering a switch, but Windows drives me up the wall whenever I touch it. macOS has been getting uglier and more awkward to use the last few years, but Windows is still the king of ugly. So I've been considering Linux as my first option. I fired up a few VMs and dipped my toes in various Linux desktop environments: Elementary, Fedora 25, and Ubuntu (Unity) so far. These are all GNOME 3 variants. And... oh…

You can try https://neon.kde.org if you want. I am very pleased with it on a desktop.

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

#163

Post by cwyers »

> “Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops,” Cook wrote. “If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.”

Having them in the roadmap only does so much, though; people need to buy computers now, and having some unspecified (but "great") computers that will come out at some unspecified later date isn't the same as having up-to-date computers now, and it doesn't show that when those computers in the roadmap do materialize, that they won't be left fallow for years as these were.

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

#164

Post by Synaesthesia »

gct wrote: post #145
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…

/r/hailcorporate

I'm a big supporter of open source and anti-corporate but if you can tell me which open source hardware is up to standard I'd use that.

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

#165

Post by lobster_johnson »

bane wrote: post #61
yakult wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go a bit further: I want my state to be inside a seamless hardware agnostic VM, that I can access anywhere through public terminals that I only partially trust. I would have the option of either having my storage with me that I plug in, or in the cloud and I just provide 2fa. My device would have a cpu/gpu/etc befitting a mobile device, and the most barebones / untrusted terminals would just be screen/inputs/…

Turns out these are kind of available today https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/ https://liquidsky.tv/ http://www.nvidia.com/object/cloud-gaming.html etc.

Amazon WorkSpaces is just VNC/Remote Desktop-type tech. You get a desktop computer in the cloud, which you connect to as a thin client. Performance is exactly what you expect -- pretty bad, but probably okay if you're doing simple things like word processing or order management or call center stuff.

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

#166

Post by jodrellblank »

morecoffee wrote: post #134
enjo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't thiiiink this is WebDAV behind the scenes: https://www.petri.com/vsphere-powercli-psdrives

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

#167

Post by kitsunesoba »

lisper wrote: post #29
rbritton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgradeability also includes things like the hard drive and card expansion slots. Those both let you extend the useful life of a computer a bit.

But you can already upgrade your hard drives through the USB interface. Nowadays that's plenty fast enough even for external SSDs. You don't really need SATA any more.

For disks USB is alright but it's always been kinda flaky compared to SATA or PATA. The only external port I've used for external HDs that's been as stable as internal connections was FireWire, which unfortunately never really took off.

I could definitely see why professionals or otherwise demanding users might prefer internal disks over external ones.

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

#168

Post by m_mueller »

bsg75 wrote: post #155
lobster_johnson wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also considering a switch, but Windows drives me up the wall whenever I touch it. macOS has been getting uglier and more awkward to use the last few years, but Windows is still the king of ugly. So I've been considering Linux as my first option. I fired up a few VMs and dipped my toes in various Linux desktop environments: Elementary, Fedora 25, and Ubuntu (Unity) so far. These are all GNOME 3 variants. And... oh…

This is why I always return to XFCE. It may not be rapidly evolving, but if I'm running a Linux desktop, I want simple.

On what Distro though? What should I try if I want something that pretty much works out of the box i.e. has acceptable battery life + WiFi + Sound + Suspend mode on a Macbook / Latitude / Thinkpad without me having to set up config files according to all kinds of internet sources for a day... or even a week?

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

#169

Post by HillaryBriss »

lisper wrote: post #29
rbritton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgradeability also includes things like the hard drive and card expansion slots. Those both let you extend the useful life of a computer a bit.

But you can already upgrade your hard drives through the USB interface. Nowadays that's plenty fast enough even for external SSDs. You don't really need SATA any more.

true. of course, a lot of the external SSDs on the market are bound by SATA interface like speeds anyway (even if they have fast external ports). so they won't be as fast as the internal flash memory in, say, a new iMac. the comparison is roughly: 500 MB/s vs 1700 MB/s

http://www.apple.com/imac/performance/

an alternative to the garden variety external SSD would be an external PCI-E card housing (e.g. sonnet or akitio) connected through a Thunderbolt cable. now that's a lot faster.

but, for that we buy an external housing in addition to the actual storage that goes into the housing. so this is more expensive than computers which let us install a PCI-E storage card directly inside the case. which Macs don't let us do easily or at all.

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

#170

Post by taigeair »

BoorishBears wrote: post #124
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.

I have a Zenbook. Windows for development isn't nearly as convinent as OSX. Yes there's lots of customization you can do to make it bearable. Powershell isn't as awful as CMD, but projects aren't supporting Powershell as much as bash any time this decade AFAIK. The Linux subsystem works, but the flow between Windows and Linux is lacking. I tried Linux. Linux doesn't handle my mix of high DPI and normal DPI monitors (…

Thanks for the details! Interesting the touchscreen still works.
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