Osborning the Mac, or not • Hacker News Board

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#51

Post by Wowfunhappy » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 1:25 AM UTC

comex wrote: post #47

jedberg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Why would an app maker update their old apps before an announcement was made that they would be deprecated? Almost immediately after 64-bit support was added in 2005, it was the recommended path, not only for new apps but for existing ones to migrate to. For example, an document called "64-bit Transition Guide for Cocoa" [1] was first published in 2007. A few years later, another document [2] was more explicit: > S…

So then why were there so many 32 bit apps? 2005 is, what, a year after the Intel transition? Surely not all of those apps were written during that one year.

Not to mention, for better or worse, games in particular were 32bit through 2018 at least. I imagine this must have had something to do with cross platform compatibility, although I can't imagine what.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#52

Post by pier25 » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #10

egypturnash wrote: post #4

I’m just real glad that my personal upgrade cycle is at the point where I won’t be looking for a new computer until at least the second year of ARM Macs, when most show-stopping bugs should be ironed out of the OS and the Adobe tools I spend most of my work time in. I was an early adopter of PPC and OSX, I’m not gonna sit there trying to get work done via the old-cpu emulation again.

Also: On a desktop machine, there’s no benefit in lower power dissipation and slimmer bodies If you’re in a hot climate then every little bit helps. Lower your power bill due both to lower consumption on the part of your computer and due to the AC coming on that much less. Run the computers fan less. Maybe even have a Mini that does a surprising amount of what you’d buy a Pro for. Make the iMac that much more of a fl…

> If you’re in a hot climate then every little bit helps

Jesus, yes.

I live in Mexico and when it's hot anything other than idle or small bursts of CPU brings my iMac to 60-70ºC and I hate fan noise.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#53

Post by pier25 » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 1:32 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #8

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.

We're talking about Apple here, the company that pulled off two seamless architecture transitions for its desktop platform -- something I believe no other desktop vendor even attempted. ARM Macs will do just fine. Backwards compatibility will be close to 100%. x86-64 apps may run a bit slow, but native software will benefit from running on the most powerful laptop money can buy, period.

I envy your enthusiasm. Apple has not been quite as attentive regarding the Mac as it used to when those transitions happenned.

I do believe ARM Macs will do fine, eventually.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#54

Post by im_down_w_otp » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 1:42 AM UTC

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.

68k to PPC was exactly "going from a popular architecture with broad software support to a less-popular architecture". ARM today is waaaaaaaaaaaay more popular than PowerPC ever was, and nearly infinitely more popular than when Apple switched from 68k, and 68k was very popular back then.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#55

Post by epall » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 2:26 AM UTC

I’m rather happy about buying the recently updated 13” MBP and basically skipping ARM Macs. My last one lasted 8 years, so I expect this one to last roughly as long. By then they’ll _definitely_ have ARM figured out, and in the meantime I can continue enjoying x86 compatibility and VMWare. For the fairly small segment of the market that we devs represent, I suspect I’m not the only one here implementing a _reverse_ Osborne Effect. Get your x86 Mac while you still can!

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#56

Post by sys_64738 » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 2:35 AM UTC

Does the underlying CPU platform matter anymore for most people? If they have some non-standard proprietary apps then for sure that's a big issue. But if most OS apps are recompiled, then you have iCloud apps too, the bigger hitters being onboard is key (Microsoft, Adobe). If you pretty much hit those key points then it begins to look like it'll be relatively straightforward. ARM Macs will increase Apple's profit per unit shipped as they get the CPU for free. No longer beholden to Intel's erratic road map and failure to deliver.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#57

Post by egypturnash » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 3:24 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #52

egypturnash wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: On a desktop machine, there’s no benefit in lower power dissipation and slimmer bodies If you’re in a hot climate then every little bit helps. Lower your power bill due both to lower consumption on the part of your computer and due to the AC coming on that much less. Run the computers fan less. Maybe even have a Mini that does a surprising amount of what you’d buy a Pro for. Make the iMac that much more of a fl…

> If you’re in a hot climate then every little bit helps Jesus, yes. I live in Mexico and when it's hot anything other than idle or small bursts of CPU brings my iMac to 60-70ºC and I hate fan noise.

same, I wrote that comment sitting outside a cafe in New Orleans. 80ºF, plus humidity. I can only assume that Gassée has not spent much time in the tropics, or that if he has, he is more than wealthy enough to not worry about the cost of running the AC constantly. :)

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#58

Post by pier25 » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 3:48 AM UTC

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.

> But Apple can chew gum and walk at the same time.

I don't know, look how long it took for Apple to finally replace the damn keyboards.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#59

Post by rrdharan » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #35

rrdharan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the money they need to spend is less than that 2%, why WOULDN'T they spend the money?

The overhead of hiring people. The overhead of managing an extra team. The overhead of extra QA. The overhead of triaging extra bugs. There are a lot of costs associated with backwards compatibility with very little payoff if it doesn't mean a lot to the bottom line.

Sure. Note that 2% of $25B is $500M.

Companies of all sizes (even FAAMNG) will act to protect that kind of existing revenue.

And my point was that you can do all of the things you listed for less than $500M; probably for less than $250M. Developers are more expensive than they used to be but $100M+ still goes a pretty long way.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#60

Post by comex » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #51

comex wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would an app maker update their old apps before an announcement was made that they would be deprecated? Almost immediately after 64-bit support was added in 2005, it was the recommended path, not only for new apps but for existing ones to migrate to. For example, an document called "64-bit Transition Guide for Cocoa" [1] was first published in 2007. A few years later, another document [2] was more explicit: > S…

So then why were there so many 32 bit apps? 2005 is, what, a year after the Intel transition? Surely not all of those apps were written during that one year. Not to mention, for better or worse, games in particular were 32bit through 2018 at least. I imagine this must have had something to do with cross platform compatibility, although I can't imagine what.

> Not to mention, for better or worse, games in particular were 32bit through 2018 at least. I imagine this must have had something to do with cross platform compatibility, although I can't imagine what.

Well, here are the Steam Hardware Survey results from some random date in 2014:

http://web.archive.org/web/20140318083854/https://store.stea...

If you click on "Windows Version", you can see that a substantial percentage (~20%) were running 32-bit versions of Windows, which can't run 64-bit applications. Most of those were likely on 64-bit processors, but had 32-bit Windows installed anyway for whatever reason; IIRC that might include driver support and not needing as much RAM. So game developers were forced to ship 32-bit binaries if they wanted to target those users. (They could ship both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, but that's relatively difficult on Windows; there's no equivalent of Mac "fat binaries". And there wasn't much point.)

That's Windows, not macOS. But then as now, game developers targeting PC primarily cared about Windows, with macOS as an afterthought at best. If the Windows version was built as 32-bit, the macOS version likely would be too for simplicity's sake.

There's also game consoles to consider. PlayStation and Xbox both switched to 64-bit in 2013, so most games released from then on would have to at least have 64-bit-clean codebases (even if they weren't tested specifically on 64-bit PCs). But earlier games might well not be 64-bit clean; the kind of low-level hacks that make porting to 64-bit difficult are probably more common in game codebases than your average app.