Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#41

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

afroboy wrote: post #27

scarface74 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much has it cost Microsoft? Apple was able to successfully take the base of MacOS and port it’s operating system to a much lower spec phone back in 2007 and came to dominate the smart phone market (in profit they only thing that matters), the tablet market where MS failed repeatedly, not to mention it was able to port the base OS to everything from Watches and TV set top boxes - all things that Microsoft trie…

Unless you have shares in Apple your whole point is invalid, you're looking to this from Apple point of view which is very good for her business but not mine, i care about the company that give me the best solutions to my problems not the company that's can milk me the last day of my life.

Not having to worry about yet another security vulnerability caused by 10 year old code does impact me. It’s also nice to have other Apple products that MS could never produce because they worshipped at the alter of backwards compatibility.

Running outdated code on a bloated operating system doesn’t benefit me.

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#42

Post by twoodfin » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #23

I can understand eliminating CarbonLib support, though I would have made CarbonLib an optional component you needed to install on the OS a couple years ago to make it clear this was now an optional component that may no longer be supported in the near future. I also don't get why they would eliminate all 32-bit userspace support though - like why eliminate support for 32-bit Cocoa apps, and I think Apple made a mista…

My guess: The binary translation support they’re going to build into ARM Macs will exclusively support x64, including low-cost bridging between x64 application code and ARM64 library code.

Not to mention Apple never leaves deprecated runtimes around for more than a few years. Once 64-bit Carbon was canned the writing was on the wall.

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#43

Post by catalogia » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #21

pjmlp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently people keep forgetting that laptops and 2-1 hybrids are desktops as well. Microsoft is doing pretty well there, to the point that in many shopping mall shops in Europe, Android tablets have been slowly being replaced by hybrid laptops running Windows 10.

Microsoft Surface sells are estimated to be 20% of Mac sales. https://www.zdnet.com/article/surface-by-the-numbers-how-mic... Apple sells about 20 million Macs a year and even that pales in comparison to mobile sells. The total sales of computers is estimated to be around 63 million last quarter according to Gartner. Compared to 310 million cell phones ( https://www.androidcentral.com/phone-sales-continue-decline-...…

> "Microsoft Surface sells are estimated to be 20% of Mac sales."

I'd say hardware sales like that are impressive, coming from a software company.

Apple's original core competency was creating hardware, with the software existing to drive hardware sales. (That there is a "hack" in "hackintosh" suggests that this should still be true today. They don't want you to buy their OS and run it on your own hardware, but they're fine with you buying their hardware and running your own OS on it.) Microsoft's core 'competency' has always been software. (I am of course abusing the term 'competency' in this case...)

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#44

Post by threeseed » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

Pmop wrote: post #22

scarface74 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much has it cost Microsoft? Apple was able to successfully take the base of MacOS and port it’s operating system to a much lower spec phone back in 2007 and came to dominate the smart phone market (in profit they only thing that matters), the tablet market where MS failed repeatedly, not to mention it was able to port the base OS to everything from Watches and TV set top boxes - all things that Microsoft trie…

Microsoft did manage to port Windows to mobile platforms, with success to some extent. Notice that it's Windows for Desktop that maintains support for legacy software. Support for legacy software isn't necessarily detrimental to success. Microsoft's lost battle in phone market has nothing to do with it. In addition, Microsoft seems to be doing just fine in the other markets, and it's been growing on cloud, which we m…

Windows on mobile was a mess.

You couldn't just take any Windows app and run it. It had to be a specially designed UWP one of which there weren't many. And then there was different OSs depending on whether it was on ARM or not, running UWP exclusively or not. I am a developer and even I couldn't understand the rules.

It's unquestionable that Microsoft's decision not to encourage developers to rewrite their apps (or at least offer a Carbon solution) really hurt them in the mobile space.

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#45

Post by atombender » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

afroboy wrote: post #27

scarface74 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much has it cost Microsoft? Apple was able to successfully take the base of MacOS and port it’s operating system to a much lower spec phone back in 2007 and came to dominate the smart phone market (in profit they only thing that matters), the tablet market where MS failed repeatedly, not to mention it was able to port the base OS to everything from Watches and TV set top boxes - all things that Microsoft trie…

Unless you have shares in Apple your whole point is invalid, you're looking to this from Apple point of view which is very good for her business but not mine, i care about the company that give me the best solutions to my problems not the company that's can milk me the last day of my life.

Apple being able to move quickly definitely benefits consumers. The OP's specific example was Apple's ability to execute on the iPhone using current tech but without the restraints of supporting legacy development.

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#46

Post by gruturo » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #36

gruturo wrote: post #29

I'm quite surprised Apple isn't providing a VM wrapper to run these apps in a more or less seamless way, for at least the next 2-3 versions. This is leaving a lot of software, and a lot of people, without alternatives.

It’s been 10 years since Apple released a 64 bit OS and the last 32 bit x86 based Mac.

Yeah that looks like a lot of time, except we're looking at some hard evidence saying it wasn't, after all.

Apple helped push forward the state of the art on many things by dropping legacies (No floppy. No CD. No more serial, parallel, scsi, PS/2 ports), but on some it just hurt its own customers with excessive eagerness (USB-C and dongle hell. Headphone jacks, where the ideal timing would have been NEVER. And this very thread about 32bit support).

MacOS is not iOS. There aren't just signed apps coming from a store. They failed to account for that. And this is coming from the company which managed to make the 68K->PPC transition, and the PPC->x86 ones, mostly painless for its users. This is so disappointing, knowing what they're capable of.

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#47

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #35

scarface74 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much has it cost Microsoft? Apple was able to successfully take the base of MacOS and port it’s operating system to a much lower spec phone back in 2007 and came to dominate the smart phone market (in profit they only thing that matters), the tablet market where MS failed repeatedly, not to mention it was able to port the base OS to everything from Watches and TV set top boxes - all things that Microsoft trie…

How much has it cost MSFT? They have a trillion dollar market cap, so I would say that’s not a particularly relevant question.

Well Uber also has a nice market cap. Only on HN is market cap more important than silly things like profit.

But MS recent success has nothing to do with maintaining backwards compatibility. They had to purposefully move away from emphasizing Windows to be successful and move to the cloud, Office on other platforms, abandoning IE, give up the idea of ever selling Windows to end users when it isn’t bundled with the computer, building IE on top of Chrome, and by announcing an Android device.

Does that seem like Windows was a winning strategy?

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#48

Post by ghettoimp » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

afroboy wrote: post #27

scarface74 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much has it cost Microsoft? Apple was able to successfully take the base of MacOS and port it’s operating system to a much lower spec phone back in 2007 and came to dominate the smart phone market (in profit they only thing that matters), the tablet market where MS failed repeatedly, not to mention it was able to port the base OS to everything from Watches and TV set top boxes - all things that Microsoft trie…

Unless you have shares in Apple your whole point is invalid, you're looking to this from Apple point of view which is very good for her business but not mine, i care about the company that give me the best solutions to my problems not the company that's can milk me the last day of my life.

MS's backwards compatibility is definitely great. It's probably also a big opportunity cost and a hindrance to them developing new things. Tradeoffs everywhere.

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#49

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

catalogia wrote: post #43

scarface74 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Surface sells are estimated to be 20% of Mac sales. https://www.zdnet.com/article/surface-by-the-numbers-how-mic... Apple sells about 20 million Macs a year and even that pales in comparison to mobile sells. The total sales of computers is estimated to be around 63 million last quarter according to Gartner. Compared to 310 million cell phones ( https://www.androidcentral.com/phone-sales-continue-decline-...…

> "Microsoft Surface sells are estimated to be 20% of Mac sales." I'd say hardware sales like that are impressive, coming from a software company. Apple's original core competency was creating hardware, with the software existing to drive hardware sales. (That there is a "hack" in "hackintosh" suggests that this should still be true today. They don't want you to buy their OS and run it on your own hardware, but they'…

Apple’s Mac sales are minuscule though in the grand scheme of things and only a small part of their revenue.

Re: Apple's list of 235 apps that are incompatible with macOS Catalina

#50

Post by cousin_it » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

Funny thing about games: most revenue happens soon after release. It's like movies. A game from several years ago usually has low ongoing revenue, so there's little profit in updating it for a new OS. Many Mac games will just die. Especially indies, where the creator might have already moved on. Do you own any nice but not very successful Mac games? They'll die. This move destroys the reputation of Mac as a game platform, compared to Windows which can run decades old games fine.

I'm so happy now that Steam purchases aren't tied to platform and that most gamedevs don't target Mac exclusively. I can just move to PC and keep the games I own. Probably lots of people will do the same.