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Apple’s 2016 in review

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Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#381

Post by daxelrod »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #338
caconym_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure "pure neglect"? What are the features you're missing in the current Mac lineup? Which products from other manufacturers make a meaningful improvement on Apple's offering for "devs"?

Here's one piece of anecdata, not for a "dev" but for another high-end use case: professional photography. My wife is a professional photographer. Her current photo-editing computer is a Windows 7 desktop with 16 GB of RAM. We know Windows 7's days are numbered, so we're starting to think about her next editing computer. The two most obvious options are (a) some Apple product, or (b) a computer running Windows 10. He…

For (3) check local independent repair shops. I know of several Apple-authorized repair shops that rent inexpensive loaners while they're working on your computer.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#382

Post by leonroy »

illumin8 wrote: post #337
bangonkeyboard wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve... They had one. Tim fired him.

Yes, but Forstall was responsible for skeumorphism across all of iOS, so I'm not certain he really was as visionary as Jobs.

To be fair Jobs seemed to be a big fan of skeumorphism too - the leather stitching on the Calendar.app was supposedly modelled on Jobs's Learjet so it can't all be attributed to Forstall.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#383

Post by leonroy »

Apocryphon wrote: post #369
illumin8 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but Forstall was responsible for skeumorphism across all of iOS, so I'm not certain he really was as visionary as Jobs.

Not to mention, the Maps fiasco happened under his watch.

Whilst this was a big blunder, the Apple Maps project was an absolutely enormous undertaking. The Google Maps app itself had an almost 10 years head start, beginning life in 2003 at a startup which Google purchased. I think it's impressive what Apple managed to put out even though it fell far short of Google's work.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#384

Post by daxelrod »

yoz-y wrote: post #229
lsadam0 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtual Machines. If you use VM's, 16gb is likely going to be a problem. I, quite easily, hit it all the time. It has nothing to do with being 'professional enough'. The nature of a dev's daily work can vary greatly with what kind of dev they are doing.

Bollocks, I have a 16GB ram MBP from 2014, running a VM all the time and compiling on both the VM and the host OS. No problems there. The 32GB might be more comfortable for some, but I have hard time figuring out how something so exclusive has now become a necessity.

I generally expect to use a Mac for 4-5 years after I've purchased it. I've added memory to every Mac I've owned so far at some point in its lifecycle. I have a hard time believing that in 2021 16GB of RAM will still be sufficient.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#385

Post by wyager »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #364
wyager wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now its just incremental phone updates. And the software side of those updates is bad . Apple hardware is probably better than ever. The mechanical engineering and precision involved blows away anyone else in consumer electronics. The new MacBooks and iPhones are truly works of art compared to the cheap injection-molded stuff everyone else is pumping out. But the software just keeps getting worse and worse. My iPho…

Your issues really sound like they're hardware-related. It's not surprisingly that hardware problems would occur in a few instances, given that Apple is pumping out millions of these. Fortunately, Apple is pretty good at replacing defective specimens. Counter-anecdotally, I've owned a sequence iPhones starting with the 3G, and I've never experienced any serious glitches, ever. I remember Safari used to crash a few ti…

It started happening immmediately after updating to iOS 10, and not just on my phone. And that's just the start of it; iOS 10 has tons of other inconsistencies and annoyances. I used my several-year-old iPhone 4 the other day and it was a way better experience.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#386

Post by wyager »

eridius wrote: post #348
wyager wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now its just incremental phone updates. And the software side of those updates is bad . Apple hardware is probably better than ever. The mechanical engineering and precision involved blows away anyone else in consumer electronics. The new MacBooks and iPhones are truly works of art compared to the cheap injection-molded stuff everyone else is pumping out. But the software just keeps getting worse and worse. My iPho…

> My iPhone … regularly has strange graphics glitches and Springboard crashes Sounds like a hardware fault. You should take it to an Apple Store and have them run a complete diagnostic. Heck, the next time you see the graphics glitches, take a picture of the screen, and depending on the nature of the glitch, that alone might warrant replacing the device regardless of what the hardware test comes up with.

Only started happening after an iOS 10 update. The graphics glitches are resolution-related, not bad VRAM or anything. I'm also well out of warranty.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#387

Post by eridius »

wyager wrote: post #386
eridius wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My iPhone … regularly has strange graphics glitches and Springboard crashes Sounds like a hardware fault. You should take it to an Apple Store and have them run a complete diagnostic. Heck, the next time you see the graphics glitches, take a picture of the screen, and depending on the nature of the glitch, that alone might warrant replacing the device regardless of what the hardware test comes up with.

Only started happening after an iOS 10 update. The graphics glitches are resolution-related, not bad VRAM or anything. I'm also well out of warranty.

What do you mean by "resolution-related"? And it's not unusual for major OS updates to trigger hardware faults, either because they do something a bit differently, or because the older OS was simply masking the hardware fault somehow.

And FWIW, I've never heard of anyone else complaining of graphical glitches after upgrading to iOS 10. And if I search for "ios 10 graphics glitches", the only relevant hits are some complaints about minor glitches with the new UI for notifications (I assume that's not what you're talking about, and I also assume these minor glitches have been fixed).

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#388

Post by wyclif »

simonh wrote: post #256
wyclif wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MacBookPro now seems like a sideline for Apple. They put a lot of design and development into the iPhone because they sell so many of them. It makes sense from a business standpoint, but it's disappointing if you're a developer or power user.

If so, why did they bother designing and engineering in an entirely new touch-based interface in the form of the touch bar, using a watch-OS based subsystem, and update all the integrated apps to support it? That seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a sideline product. If that were the case surely they'd just have upped the specs on the existing designs.

But the Touch Bar feels like a bolt-on "innovation", i.e. something Apple did to prove that they are still innovating and driving sales, rather than refinements to the MBP experience (the "P" in MBP) and more power.

My point is that Apple knows that laptops are a declining market. Still, the professionals who use MBPs drive adoption of other Apple products.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#389

Post by mcculley »

I see a lot of articles suggest that Apple may no longer support developers, building only consumer devices. But what are Apple developers using internally? Would Apple maintain some hackintosh build for their developers? This seems unlikely to me. I would instead expect that we will soon see some new hardware suitable for developers. But maybe I'm wrong. They got rid of Xserve, which means they either are building server hardware they don't sell or they are using Linux or Windows for their own servers.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#390

Post by exadeci »

jdcarter wrote: post #359
eridius wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built my first gaming PC (GTX 1070 as well) not that long ago, and you're right, it wasn't too hard (though my wife did most of the work). And I use that for gaming all the time. However, I would never dream of using it for development. One of the games I play is World of Warcraft, and I maintain a few addons, and even just trying to edit Lua files on Windows is a PITA. Atom kind of sucks, and the CLI isn't very go…

Agreed, macOS is a far superior blend of Unix underpinnings and a graphical front-end. I love that I can have my terminal and Emacs run seamlessly on the same platform as Sketch and Photoshop. Fortunately, my MacBook Pro is still a plenty capable machine for the programming I do in my day job. But I have to say, PC hardware has come a long way, not just in terms of performance, but also in build quality and ease of u…

Actually it can be done and works well after ironing down some stuff: https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/search?q=flair%3A"succes...!
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