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Mac’s share falls to five-year low

computerworld.com

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Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#91

Post by nkkollaw »

gshulegaard wrote: post #65
fritzw wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second you compile one package to get any of those boxes to work, for me, the pro-linux box argument is negated. Particularly for work machines, I don't have time to compile and install just to get my box up and running. Mac worked for me for this reason, I presume the reasons are the same for many. You like the freedom and power your boxes allot you, I like the simple operation of the mac. My problem is Macs are…

I guess I implied it in my comment, but I'll explicitly say it here: > I did not search for, manually install, or otherwise fiddle with drivers for any of my current 3 personal machines. I have done so many times in the past, but not for these three[1]. This is particularly true for the System76 which not only had drivers pre-installed and the repository configured, but also had no issues out of the box...or ever in…

My machine wouldn't boot anymore because I followed apt's suggestion to run apt-get autoremove.

There are many packages and apps out there that get released but are far from stable, and no easy way for non-devs (as in Linux devs) to opt out of unstable software.

I don't charge a crazy amount of money, but 2 hours are a long time to waste for a developer, and I've wasted many times that with Xenial. That, while being someone used to using the terminal and installing and configuring server software on a daily basis.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#92

Post by walshemj »

grzm wrote: post #75
walshemj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would you do ＊NIX development on anything other than the actual kit the code is going to be running on?

It's important to ensure that the software you're developing runs as expected in the production environment. That does not mean that the development environment and the production environment need to be the same. For example, it's very likely that the development tools you're using will (or should) not be deployed. This extends to anything else about the development environment, as long as you're able to consistently…

Isn't that what I just said? that the development machines os and hard ware should be identical.

I have worked on projects where we brought the dev / test and live from the same production run so the hardware was identical down to the MB rev

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#93

Post by codeddesign »

Oh please...this is like saying google shares fell. It's not like there is a new competitor that entered the marketplace or that mass mac users are jumping ship like a mass exodos for windows or Linux. It's because they haven't launched an iPod or iPhone. But I guess people gotta write to get those clicks these days..

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#94

Post by kelseydh »

pfranz wrote: post #53
jameslk wrote: post #36

I keeping hearing the narrative from this crowd that the MBP is on its way out of being in vogue for developers, but I don't buy it at all. First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It's not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven't released a significant update to the MBP since 2013. But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingr…

I generally agree. But I'm not confident they'll change. They may have withdrawn support too quick, but what do they gain out of doubling down their efforts (especially if the market is just developers)? I've really been surprised hearing pretty popular projects that have been around for 20+ years still have issues on Windows (like Python). Working in VFX there are a lot of domain-specific open source projects that "…

"Just developers"

Developers are not trivial. Good developers lead to good apps, which lead to a better ecosystem. The technically savvy are also the ones who set the trends about what the rest of the curve adopts.

This is only going to grow more true as creative work (coding, design, etc) becomes a larger and larger part of our economy.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#95

Post by greedo »

jsjohnst wrote: post #26
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac Pro is in such bad state that it appears it's worth just building a Hackintosh desktop to avoid buying such old hardware. I'm still running a Mid 2010 Mac Pro because the new trash can model wasn't compelling and it's since sat without upgrades since introduction.

The 2010 Mac Pro is also very upgradeable (and fairly cheaply too). I upgraded mine from a 2.4ghz 8-core to a 3.3ghz 12-core w/ 128gb RAM, very very fast SSD, USB3, and much improved graphics card (driving five displays). The only thing it's lacking that I'd want is Thunderbolt really. Yes, newer processors are a little faster, but the main benefit of Haswell and later CPUs is much lower TDP for mostly same-ish perfo…

The issue with that is that eventually that Mac Pro won't support the latest versions of macOS. It looks like it just made the cut for Sierra.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#96

Post by grzm »

walshemj wrote: post #92
grzm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to ensure that the software you're developing runs as expected in the production environment. That does not mean that the development environment and the production environment need to be the same. For example, it's very likely that the development tools you're using will (or should) not be deployed. This extends to anything else about the development environment, as long as you're able to consistently…

Isn't that what I just said? that the development machines os and hard ware should be identical. I have worked on projects where we brought the dev / test and live from the same production run so the hardware was identical down to the MB rev

why would you do ＊NIX development on anything other than the actual kit the code is going to be running on?

I understand this to mean that you think that the dev environment should be identical to the production environment. Am I misunderstanding?

Assuming I'm understanding you correctly, no, I don't think what you said and what I expressed are the same at all.

A developer (or development team), probably has (and should have) access to all of these environments for testing, but likely does development in the one they're most comfortable with.

If you are saying that development in a different environment is okay, but a dev should do testing in a production-equivalent environment, then we agree. I don't see that distinction in what you've written.

If I'm misunderstanding or misrepresenting what you're saying, please do correct me, as that's not my intent.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#97

Post by shock »

gizmo385 wrote: post #80
DoodleBuggy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you like not having a real escape key?

I don't have the new MBP, but how often do you really use the escape key? I'm use solely vim for my development work and I almost never encounter a need to use the escape key.

How do you exit insert mode?

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#98

Post by coldtea »

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #85
coldtea wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't think like that. "Let's make a gimmick for newcomers". They just legitimately thought it was great and will it enough to impress people and shut them up about the late revamp of the MBP line. And it could be good, with certain provisions, but not will all the other BS coming with it. The main issue is it seems nobody at the top could see this -- and I mean see this when they said ok initially, because sure…

If the touchbar is so amazing, why didn't Apple have the courage to just replace the entire keyboard with one big OLED display? You can easily see how the touchbar comes across as being gimmicky. Lenovo already ditched their touch bar on the X1 Carbon (2nd generation) because it was a terrible idea. Buttons are useful, particularly for people who touch type.

>If the touchbar is so amazing, why didn't Apple have the courage to just replace the entire keyboard with one big OLED display?

Obviously this is no argument.

It basically is: If cake is so amazing why don't we eat cake or day?

Cake is indeed amazing to have in moderation, but it's also not the best thing to solely eat. We could thrive on just greens and meet maybe, but we'd do worse with just cake.

Standard alphanumeric keys are used far more often, and people rely on them far more than they do on function keys (common people, the 95% of users, don't use debuggers or vim). Without a great haptic feedback story that actually gives the sense of clicking it would be disaster.

Plus, it would be way costlier, and just give diminishing returns (since most of the time we just want the alphanumeric keys to be just that, whereas function keys already had a double life as controller keys for sound, etc).

Third, even if it was ergonomically perfect and likable, it will obviously be even more power hungry and expensive at this point.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#99

Post by bostand »

nkkollaw wrote: post #81
jameslk wrote: post #36

I keeping hearing the narrative from this crowd that the MBP is on its way out of being in vogue for developers, but I don't buy it at all. First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It's not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven't released a significant update to the MBP since 2013. But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingr…

I was going to make a similar comment. I tried for the third time last year, and the truth is that if you're switching to Linux because the Mac is too expensive, if you take into account all the hours you waste because of bugs or half-backed apps, Linux is 10 times more expensive. I use Linux for servers and I would never even consider using anything else. On the desktop? No way. It's just not ready, if you value you…

As someone who uses Linux at work without any issues whatsoever I have to ask: What are these crazy Linux bugs people are talking about?

And why does it always happen to macbook users?

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#100

Post by themihai »

dijit wrote: post #19
edblarney wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple prices like a luxury item: no sales etc.. But the thing is - tech is not like fashion. You can't just call it 'Gucci' and hold the plebes at bay with high prices. It's utility - so when there is less utility, people will drop apple and go elsewhere. If they want to keep luxury brand status they actually have to provide something of value.

This is an odd sentiment to hear on HN. We are usually technical people, surely we can see past "spec" as the only differentiator of two laptops. Apple are priced like a high-end business quality laptop. (except upgrades are a higher mark-up) if you compare laptops based on the quality of their build Apple laptops are quite competitive.[0] That's before you factor in little things that don't seem to make it to busine…

You may compare apples to oranges because the CPU and other components may be slightly different(usually they are older and cheaper on the mac). It's a known fact that Apple has the highest(by far) margins on laptops.

Apple used to be priced and marketed as a high-end business quality laptop but now I feel it's marked more as a lifestyle product.

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