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Osborning the Mac, or not

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Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#141

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #45
greedo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This was my argument for why Apple shouldn't have killed Aperture. Sure, it was a tiny percentage of Apple's business, but it was beloved by customers and independently profitable—more profitable than plenty of entire businesses. Apple still killed it.

I never understood why they killed that but kept Filemaker. I guess they really did think the update to Photos was good enough.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#142

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Kipters wrote: post #107
zeveb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driving the Mac off a cliff would alienate developer How many, though, and would they really switch to Windows or Linux, or retire from the industry? Apple has always — or at least since 1984 — had an incredibly loyal fanbase. I think that the sort of slights which would make me leave a platform just roll of their collective back.

Since they released their 2016 lineup there has been a shift from Macs to Linux and Windows (just look at how many "I left macOS for {X}" have been published here on HN) Windows is also making a very compelling argument with WSL2

there has been a shift from Macs to Linux and Windows

As far as I can see the Mac market share hasn't shifted in the last few years. I wouldn't take too much notice of a handful of people whinging on HN.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#143

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Steltek wrote: post #118
scarface74 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even back in 2006, there were at least 7-8 different ways to define a string on Windows depending on which API you were using.

You may have missed GP's point. Microsoft is casts a very wide net, running on a huge array of hardware and trying to do everything from mobile to console gaming to datacenter servers. The dev experience is equally diverse: you don't even need a Windows box to develop for Windows. Apple jettisoned all of that diversity to refine a few precious use cases to earn that "quality" aura. I think this move to ARM is signali…

like beefy workstations

If that was true they wouldn't have released the Mac Pro.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#144

Post by unicornfinder »

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…

Indeed. Been using Macs since 2006 but switched back to Windows late last year after being fed up with the declining quality of Mac software, and the lackluster hardware options.

Speaking to friends suggests that I'm far from the only one.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#145

Post by Jasper_ »

saagarjha wrote: post #114
vetinari wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why in 2006 they introduced Macbook Pros which were 32-bit only? If you want to switch to 64-bit, you don't introduce machines that cannot do that, that need their 32-bit ABI and have to be supported for years to follow.

Apple didn’t really have a choice. The choice required a fairly decent amount of legacy support for the next decade or so; I doubt they really wanted to commit to that if they didn’t have to.

This to me says one of two things:

1. Either their engineering org is so bad they can't afford to spend some of their massive resources on backwards compatibility.

2. They just don't give a shit.

Either way, not a great look.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#146

Post by saagarjha »

awinder wrote: post #120
saagarjha wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After the new machines are released, all Mac app store apps will just magically work because they were recompiled behind the scenes by Apple to run on ARM. That would be really magical; this is essentially impossible.

It's not every app as far as I know because I believe you can opt out of BitCode, but this would be widely the case with exceptions: https://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/17/apples-biggest-devel... https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/blog/20190518-Translatin... (other direction but clearly demonstrative of what apple can do here)

Yes, Bitcode is not a requirement for the Mac App Store. Furthermore, Steven’s blog post is misleading: it implies that Apple can just seamlessly translate IR into a different architecture, and shows it kind of working for the simple example he has there. The problem is that this falls apart for anything that is more than mildly complicated (which, of course, is not mentioned in he blog post) because of ABI differences. Apple did this once before with Apple Watch and there they had full control of both the chipset and the ABI on both sides of the transition, plus they had the forsight to mandate Bitcode submissions for the platform. And watchOS itself precludes doing certain fancy things anyways. So this isn’t really a proven way forwards in this case.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#147

Post by Wowfunhappy »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #141
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my argument for why Apple shouldn't have killed Aperture. Sure, it was a tiny percentage of Apple's business, but it was beloved by customers and independently profitable—more profitable than plenty of entire businesses. Apple still killed it.

I never understood why they killed that but kept Filemaker. I guess they really did think the update to Photos was good enough.

Filemaker is different, it's not an Apple product anymore. Claris was spun off into a separate company.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#148

Post by jmpman »

I buy iMacs for my personal use, as they spend the majority of the time running Windows 10 for gaming. Sure I could build/buy a dedicated gaming machine, but I like the hardware (Great monitor, quiet, sleek, mostly trouble-free) and my iMac can play any game at 1080p. Without bootcamp support, I’m going to abandon the Mac hardware for personal, and then for business use. There’s no way an ARM processor is going to be able to emulate x86 to run windows and my steam library at anything close to usable performance.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#149

Post by Jasper_ »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #48
renaudg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the Mac and iDevices revenue streams are not as independent as you imply. Driving the Mac off a cliff would alienate developers and have serious repercussions on the iOS ecosystem as well. Why do you think Apple still builds Pro apps like Logic and FCP ? They are almost certainly losing money given their ridiculously low price point, but they help with brand image and keeping the Mac the go-to platform for cr…

I mentioned this above—I feel like Apple's pro apps are highly analogous to what happened to the Mac. That doesn't portend a bright future. Apple killed Shake, which was an industry standard at one point. They killed Aperture, which lots of photographers loved. They replaced Final Cut Pro 7 with a much more limited Final Cut X, and seeded lots of ground to Adobe in the process. There's also OS X Server, although ther…

Logic pissed off a lot of composers with the lack of 32-bit AUs in newer versions. The few producers I know who love Logic aren't upgrading to Catalina and are already considering switching to Windows.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#150

Post by unicornfinder »

robertoandred wrote: post #25
zerkten wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not directly, no, but it's an excellent reflection of the declining software quality and attention that the Mac is starting to get from Apple...
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