Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Osborning the Mac, or not

mondaynote.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 253 posts

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#21

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#22

Post by asveikau »

TMWNN wrote: post #11
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.

> 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.

I think 68K and PowerPC were both clearly much more of a dead end when they were abandoned than Intel is today.

Also, I don't recall stories of Macs being able to dual boot AmigaOS, and there was nothing like virtualization in those days. There were emulators, I guess. All of those other platforms were less common than Windows is today.

And there was never any threat that they would enforce sandboxing and code signing like a lot of people speculate for ARM Macs.

It really does sound like the ARM Macs are going to be less capable. It would be nice if that turns out incorrect but it's sure the way it looks.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#23

Post by robertoandred »

jedberg wrote: post #19

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…

Including 64-bit support until Catalina was effectively the same as Rosetta: support for deprecated tech. A Rosetta for 64-bit is just kicking the can.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#24

Post by greedo »

jedberg wrote: post #19

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…

This is ridiculous. Mac revenue was roughly $25 BILLION dollars in 2019. The idea that they don't care about it is simply wrong. Same with the idea that they don't care about marketshare.

Of course they care more about iDevices than the Mac. It brings in roughly 5x as much money as the Mac. But Apple can chew gum and walk at the same time.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#25

Post by robertoandred »

zerkten wrote: post #16
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 th…

Catalyst has nothing to do with ARM Macs.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#26

Post by lanna »

jedberg wrote: post #19

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…

> 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.

You are comparing the time a technology was supported with the time it was announced a technology would no longer be supported. 32-bit apps were supported in 64-bit Mac OS systems for at least 7 years.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#27

Post by jedberg »

lanna wrote: post #26
jedberg wrote: post #19

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…

> 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. You are comparing the time a technology was supported with the time it was announced a technology would no longer be supported. 32-bit apps were su…

From what I could find, the first announcement of dropping support for 32 bit apps was in 2017, and the support dropped in 2019. Why would an app maker update their old apps before an announcement was made that they would be deprecated?

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#28

Post by jedberg »

greedo wrote: post #24
jedberg wrote: post #19

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…

This is ridiculous. Mac revenue was roughly $25 BILLION dollars in 2019. The idea that they don't care about it is simply wrong. Same with the idea that they don't care about marketshare. Of course they care more about iDevices than the Mac. It brings in roughly 5x as much money as the Mac. But Apple can chew gum and walk at the same time.

25 billion is still only 10% of their revenue. And they won't lose it all by making it a shitty transition. Heck, they won't lose most of it. But if they lose 20% of their revenue because of a bad transition, that's still only 2% of the total company revenue. Why would the spend money on protecting that 2%?

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#29

Post by jedberg »

robertoandred wrote: post #23
jedberg wrote: post #19

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…

Including 64-bit support until Catalina was effectively the same as Rosetta: support for deprecated tech. A Rosetta for 64-bit is just kicking the can.

Right but my point is they only did that for two years, instead of five.
Post reply on HN