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Osborning the Mac, or not

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Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#11

Post by TMWNN »

torstenvl wrote: post #5
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a very, very long time Mac user, the transition from 68k to PPC, then Mac OS 9 to OS X, then PPC to x86 was fairly smooth for the most part. Apple's relatively firm iron grip on their ecosystem due to their vertical integration gives them a lot of latitude to make moves like this be minimally disruptive to their user base. Now this is of course often annoying and disruptive to its developer base, and I've been on…

Apple has never pulled off a transition like this before. None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. Transitioning to x86 brought additional customers who prefer Mac but also need to run Windows or Linux or who do x86 development. Transitioning away from it may lose them.

> Apple has never pulled off a transition like this before. None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture.

That's exactly what the 68K-to-PowerPC transition was: Going from a widely used architecture (Mac, Amiga, ST, and others) to a brand new one.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#12

Post by blt »

I've been pretty unenthusiastic about the idea of replacing my Macbook Pro after they removed the MagSafe connector and HDMI ports. However, if the ARM laptops run cool enough to actually use on your lap, it might be worth it.

Knowing today's Apple, though, they'll make it super thin and it will still run hot.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#13

Post by tibbydudeza »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #3
nicoburns wrote: post #2

There shouldn't be too much of an Osbourne effect with ARM macs. If anything, the sensible approach is the opposite: get in there quickly and get yourself an x86 mac while you still can. ARM macs make sense long-term, but the experience is likely to pretty rough at first while software support catches up.

As a very, very long time Mac user, the transition from 68k to PPC, then Mac OS 9 to OS X, then PPC to x86 was fairly smooth for the most part. Apple's relatively firm iron grip on their ecosystem due to their vertical integration gives them a lot of latitude to make moves like this be minimally disruptive to their user base. Now this is of course often annoying and disruptive to its developer base, and I've been on…

Also they are not afraid of ditching old stuff when they needed to move forward i.e older generation hardware (Core 2 Duo macbooks) and frameworks (Carbon, 32 bit kernel)

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#14

Post by foobar1962 »

strbean wrote: post #6

It seems like the de jour solution to the Osborne Effect is to create the consumer expectation of significant price increases. People still buy last gen hardware nowadays well after the new hotness is out, because the new generation often costs 50%-100% more for a year or two. If Osborne had said "The next versions will be even better, and only cost $5000 more!" people would have kept buying the Osborne 1.

The first generation PPC Macs were not equal to the 68K Macs they replaced. It took another generation of PPC hardware and optimisations in the OS and applications before the performance envelope expanded.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#15

Post by strbean »

torstenvl wrote: post #5
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a very, very long time Mac user, the transition from 68k to PPC, then Mac OS 9 to OS X, then PPC to x86 was fairly smooth for the most part. Apple's relatively firm iron grip on their ecosystem due to their vertical integration gives them a lot of latitude to make moves like this be minimally disruptive to their user base. Now this is of course often annoying and disruptive to its developer base, and I've been on…

Apple has never pulled off a transition like this before. None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. Transitioning to x86 brought additional customers who prefer Mac but also need to run Windows or Linux or who do x86 development. Transitioning away from it may lose them.

> None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture.

Not sure how unique this architecture will be, but by device count, ARM architectures dwarf all others significantly. Calling it 'less-popular' is wrong.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#16

Post by zerkten »

tyingq wrote: post #7

I'd worry more about Apple iOSing the Mac.

There is likely to be yet more convergence towards iOS constraints. This seems inevitable, especially if Catalyst is central to how Apple carry out any ARM transition. It's very clear that Apple aren't catering to developers in macOS to the extent that drove OS X growth from 2004.

For a time, many developers couldn't find fault with OS X and Mac hardware. I wonder how much more correction we'll see from Apple, now that they've gone back on keyboards to a degree. I'm not counting on too much, I know a lot of people aren't as happy as they could be.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#17

Post by paulryanrogers »

strbean wrote: post #15
torstenvl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has never pulled off a transition like this before. None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. Transitioning to x86 brought additional customers who prefer Mac but also need to run Windows or Linux or who do x86 development. Transitioning away from it may lose them.

> None of your examples involved going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture. Not sure how unique this architecture will be, but by device count, ARM architectures dwarf all others significantly. Calling it 'less-popular' is wrong.

Less popular by count of non-mobile software. Which is likely a lot of business software. Still, Mac software seems to generally keep up to date with Apple's changes. Drivers on the other hand... not so much

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#18

Post by asveikau »

tosh wrote: post #9

The author mentions Nokia as an example, I didn't follow the transition closely. Was everyone really waiting for the Windows Nokia phones or did Nokia just lose mindshare (as I remember it)? Any other good examples for Osborne Effect? Wikipedia does list SEGA's transition from Mega Drive/Genesis to 32X and Saturn and I can see how this confused potential customers but I guess there must be more (better?) examples. ht…

In 2011 Nokia had several OSs.

Symbian was the cash cow, successful in a number of markets. But not up to par with where Android and iOS were leading the industry. The prevailing wisdom seemed to be it needed some modernization or replacement.

Maemo/Meego was their previous replacement candidate, based on Linux and Qt. Personally I liked this one. They never really allowed it to be on a path to cannibalize Symbian. It was always like an experimental project.

Switching to Windows Phone killed both of those.

Less talked about is s40, the low end feature phone-ish platform that continued to sell well in emerging markets long into the Windows Phone era.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#19

Post by jedberg »

Everyone here is very positive that the transition will go smoothly based on their last few transitions being fairly successful.

I'm a bit more skeptical.

Back then, their desktop/laptop business line was much more important to them. They needed it to go well. They were also a niche player and couldn't afford to lose more market share to PCs/Windows.

But now, they barely care about their desktop/laptop revenue (being only 10% of their revenue) and they don't seem to care much about their marketshare either because they don't seem to be doing much to expand it. They care a lot more about their iDevices now.

Also, if the transition from 32 to 64 bit is any indication, they don't care nearly as much about backwards compatibility as they used to. When they did the hardware transitions, they had a compatibility layer (Rosetta) that was supported for 5 years after the transition. But with the 32 bit change, the announced that it would no longer be supported in 2017, and dropped support in 2019, just 2 years later.

I can no longer use a lot of my favorite apps because they were games written years ago with no current support, so they were not updated. Or they're things like the old Microsoft Office, which works perfectly well for me, but I can no longer run. And Apple provided no emulation environment or official way to do so.

So now my choice is to keep an old computer around just to run old apps (which could be a security issue if it's on the network), or buy something like Parallels, which is a ton of overhead for a single app at a time.

It would have been nice if they had provided a Rosetta for the 32/64 conversion. The fact that they didn't does not bode will for this transition.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#20

Post by dehrmann »

nicoburns wrote: post #2

There shouldn't be too much of an Osbourne effect with ARM macs. If anything, the sensible approach is the opposite: get in there quickly and get yourself an x86 mac while you still can. ARM macs make sense long-term, but the experience is likely to pretty rough at first while software support catches up.

> get yourself an x86 mac while you still can

Exactly. You don't want anything to do with first and second gen Apple changes.

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