Broken • Hacker News Board

Re: Broken

#541

Post by pcwalton » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #232

blunte wrote: post #203

It's all very depressing. Like most of us here, I have become increasingly frustrated with the state of Mac (touch bar, bad keyboards, odd choices that fit neither creators nor developers well, and so on). No point rehashing it all. But where does that leave us? I spent a year on Windows 10 not so long ago, on upper end laptop hardware with HiDPI screen, and it was less fun and more problem prone than macOS - especia…

Things are worse than ever before. Mac OS stability has taken a bit, but it’s not like Windows machines have gotten better. Windows 10 is still a total clusterfuck when it comes to switching between a high dpi internal monitor and an external monitor. The other day my X1 Carbon started randomly powering down (but not hard looking, controlled shutdown, even installing updates). It rebooted four different times in one…

When it comes to graphics, Windows is now far ahead of macOS. It's simple economics: the GPU manufacturers work with Microsoft for DirectX support due to userbase (especially the game playing userbase, which is where all the profit is). Apple, on the other hand, struggles to keep up with Metal on the same GPUs, unwilling to invest the money to keep up. DXGI, for example, is an extremely powerful and well-supported API, as compared to IOSurface which is like stumbling around in a dark cave.

(On mobile, things are different, but even here PowerVR is increasingly looking beleaguered compared to ARM and Qualcomm's offerings.)

Re: Broken

#542

Post by hinkley » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

IggleSniggle wrote: post #459

hinkley wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ives was sort of a protege to Steve, but he's backing away now. I don't really know who if anyone can step up to fill this vacuum. I keep hoping to hear about some 30-year-old up-and-comer running a company with flawless hardware, but it keeps not happening.

Honestly this is the real reason I’m excited about System76...I don’t really know them or their products, but they have a coherent “passion of computing story,” and PopOS looks pretty. I have no idea if it’s just marketing. I’m just hoping that it’s good, that they’re legit, and that they will do well.

I've often wondered why we have so many luxury brands in automotive, furniture, what have you, a couple in consumer electronics, etc. Even woodworkers have 2 or 3 high end brands that people drool over. And then for computers it's just... Apple, and a revolving list of second place. Sony, Samsung, Alienware... none seem to stick it out.

Re: Broken

#543

Post by nickcox » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #321

snapples wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should note that most developers here really do care, and that’s probably why products can be released in the first place. You have to have really dedicated people willing to cut through the organizational bullshit to get things done. All of the engineers I’ve met here are smart and innovative. Only if we could organize, things would be much better.

What do you mean when you say "organize"?

I think they meant to say, ‘organise’.

Re: Broken

#544

Post by cookiecaper » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #523

toyg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody reads the same management books as Wall Street.

I don't think it comes from management books. The problem is deeper, it's psychological. At the level where full time, professional management begins it starts to become very unclear how to judge a manager's success over short/medium periods of time. Yeah in the very long run "is the product a success" can be used to judge, but that captures a lot of people who aren't the manager and may take years to figure out. You…

It's the principal-agent problem coming home to roost in a world without principals. Everyone is effectively an agent because the principals are sufficiently "diversified" that they don't really have substantial direct investment in long-term organizational success. What matters most is the short-term boost that you can use to dazzle the next employer.

Every employee knows that they're going to stay for 5 years max because companies have made it impossible for there not to be a massive market disparity if you keep stable employment. There are no perks to long-term loyalty and thus no reason to consider an employer's long-term interests as identical to your own. The outcome of this is the predictable situation we see now.

Like it or not, the company's culture comes from the top down. If the boss doesn't know or care whether the product is substantial, people who do will eventually be replaced at least until the boss is duly insulated from them. No one wants to rain on the parade of the guy who holds hire/fire authority.

There's a wider thing here too, which is that the market doesn't know or care about any of the technical details either. You need the touted features to work correctly just enough to create sufficient ambiguity, probably about 10-15% of the time. If you invest enough engineering effort to get them working correctly 90%+ of the time, that's a great deal more money and time spent on engineering for no market benefit. A competitor who dumps that money into marketing and sales will come out far ahead because technical quality and reliability simply doesn't drive sales.

Re: Broken

#545

Post by ActorNightly » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

melenaboija wrote: post #426

ActorNightly wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of web servers that serve all the web content that you use are Linux based. Some of the most popular video games that have massive markets and revenues behind them (CounterStrike and moba games) have all started out as free mods to existing games. The largest share of the worlds smartphones run Linux. Twitch streamers, some of which make extremely high salaries, use open source broadcasting software Pyth…

I don't think anybody is doubting about the huge impact of open source in science and technology, is more that maybe linux is still not a substitute for some commercial products

But...it very much is if you are looking at software that falls under the group of "operating systems".

There are use cases that realistically warrant enterprise software, but those stem from the argument of optimization of time - for example, not doing all your computation stuff in python with spending upfront time learning it when you engineers know Matlab. But those are not intrinsic to the software, it just so happens that Mathworks funds universities and pushes their product to be taught in classes, so that they can get revenue from companies buying licenses when their engineers enter the workforce.

If colleges switched to teaching with open source software, this would have zero net effect on the capability/knowledge of someone that graduates said program, because all the material is going to be new to him or her anyways. And, it would also increase the userbase of the software, and thus improve it.

Re: Broken

#546

Post by craftinator » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 1:53 AM UTC

To the author: Have you tried Linux? It's not a rental OS like those other ones, you actually own it! It's great, give it a shot and be amazed!

Re: Broken

#547

Post by IggleSniggle » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 2:13 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #542

IggleSniggle wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly this is the real reason I’m excited about System76...I don’t really know them or their products, but they have a coherent “passion of computing story,” and PopOS looks pretty. I have no idea if it’s just marketing. I’m just hoping that it’s good, that they’re legit, and that they will do well.

I've often wondered why we have so many luxury brands in automotive, furniture, what have you, a couple in consumer electronics, etc. Even woodworkers have 2 or 3 high end brands that people drool over. And then for computers it's just... Apple, and a revolving list of second place. Sony, Samsung, Alienware... none seem to stick it out.

Yeah it’s bizarre. Still comparatively early days vs cars, though, which have similar levels of pipeline complexity.

Re: Broken

#548

Post by tedk-42 » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 8:35 AM UTC

michaelmarion wrote: post #227

I was thinking on this the other day, and I think what ultimately boils down to is this: there’s no “why” anymore at Apple. Go back and watch old keynotes with Steve. Almost always, whenever he’s talking about a new feature or piece of hardware, he starts with the “why.” Not everyone will agree with the “why,” of course, but it’s still given. Why do we want to get rid of the CD drive on MacBook Airs? (We see OTA soft…

Brilliant summary on the state of invention at Apple.

I think Steve really did give them the edge with design and innovation. Right now there's just no leadership with that kind of bold intent of any one thing in particular. Apple have sort of blended into other premium brands as well as premium brands copying a lot of what Apple do (Matebook X, every phone that copied the iPhone notch).

Are they re-architecting MacOS to be more secure as they've currently pushed for? Or are there middle managers at Apple who are measuring engineering by the number of commits their engineers do per sprint. Only time will tell - If they don't do this right (as with the butterfly keyboard) they really risk damaging their reputation as a premium brand with high quality.

Re: Broken

#549

Post by inthezone » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 12:53 PM UTC

snapples wrote: post #131

Things are so broken here at Apple. I joined about 4 years ago. I am awed by the fact that we manage to release any software at all, let alone functional software. The biggest problem is communication. No one fucking communicates. - No communication between orgs. Tons of bureaucratic tape to cut through just to get a hand on someone working on a different product - Barely any communication between teams. Literally ev…

Of all the elements you mention, the most deadly is the inability to speak out about the problems. The first step in improving anything is to acknowledge the areas that need work.

Re: Broken

#550

Post by gurkendoktor » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

concinds wrote: post #133

dangus wrote: post #99

All the nightmares are nightmares until they're not nightmares. Weird launch day bugs like the I bug on iOS 11 are distant memories. Yeah, these bugs are bad, but to me articles like this really feel a lot like a broken record. Every September and October, when the major releases come out, there are bugs. And then by the time you're on 10.xx.2 or iOS xx.1.3 a month later they're just a bad memory. If you don't want b…

> 10.14 is still supported. 10.13 is still supported. 10.12 is still supported. Keep using those if you want. Unfortunately, not well enough. Catalina contains security fixes that apparently [0] haven't yet been backported to Mojave, let alone the others. I wonder how early or late into the beta those bugs were fixed; potentially, they've been patched for months. [0]: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201222 https://…

In the last years, Apple has only shipped security updates for previous versions of macOS when the .1 release of their new OS came out. So you either dive into a buggy .0 release, or you live with well-known security issues for a month. It's ridiculous.