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Osborning the Mac, or not

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Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#181

Post by [deleted] »

sjwright wrote: post #175
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Apple will move to a long term two-CPU strategy with ARM on economy and low power SKUs, and Intel chips for the “Pro” SKUs. How is this going to work for developers or Apple? For how many years will everyone need to test and ship universal binaries?

I see no issue with developers shipping universal binaries indefinitely. I don’t see what the issue would be with that, for most devs it’s just part of the Xcode build process. I suppose it would double the compile time for release builds. Testing is a legitimate concern but I don’t think it’s as consequential as you imply. (For most developers.)

[deleted]

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#182

Post by arvinsim »

scarface74 wrote: post #128
xnyan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re sort of picking the worst example, the alternate is the fact that Windows has maintained a gargantuan desktop OS market share for decades in large part because of their dedication to application compatibility.

Having an overwhelmingly market share in a declining low profit margin business is the definition of a Pyrrhic victory. No one cares about PCs as a business anymore.

I lump together "PCs are doomed" in the same category as "Apple is doomed".

Both are not even remotely true.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#183

Post by arvinsim »

scarface74 wrote: post #91
lanna wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

32 bit Carbon was deprecated in 2012. Did it really take a rocket scientist to know that you shouldn’t be writing 32 bit software in 2017? 10 years after the last 32 bit Mac shipped?

You keep on repeating that devs are stupid because they only coded their apps in 32-bit.

Perhaps you need to be more charitable and try to find the reasons why devs and businesses chose to only support 32-bit.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#184

Post by unicornfinder »

slantyyz wrote: post #174
unicornfinder wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't think that many will. Back then Mac software support wasn't nearly as good as it is now - I think Apple is in a much better position to drop x86 support.

> Back then Mac software support wasn't nearly as good as it is now It might be a chicken and egg thing though. With the influx of people who wanted Macs on x86 and the halo effect of them spreading the word, the app support got much better. Also, because the machines were x86 compatible, I'm sure a lot of enterprise buyers like IBM started to allow their users to get Macs instead of Windows laptops. I obviously have…

Out of curiosity, what lead you to switch back?

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#185

Post by Wowfunhappy »

earthboundkid wrote: post #156
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> So then why were there so many 32 bit apps? Were there? On iOS, I lost access to a lot of games due to the 32 to 64 transition. On Mac OS, nothing I used was impacted. If your app wasn't 64 bit, it was abandonware. Even the abandonware that I actually use, like Gitbox, was already 64 bit.

> Were there?

Yes, lots! I won't go through all the individual 32 bit apps I use because it's idiosyncratic, but this has been a major complaint about Catalina, aside from the OS's general buggyness.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#186

Post by mrkstu »

OldHand2018 wrote: post #123
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…

I read that paragraph and had a completely orthogonal thought. Intel mobile CPUs compare favorably to all established competition (AMD) and the iPad with Magic Keyboard is almost a laptop anyway. Why start with a mobile device? Intel desktop CPUs are where they have problems and you would assume that this is where Apple has the most frustration with Intel. That's where I'd start. Also, by keeping ARM and Intel around…

Compared to other x86 alternatives, historically true. Compared to Apple processors? Not so much.

There isn't an Intel processor that is near the performance/watt in the iPad Pro, especially factoring in graphics performance.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#187

Post by Wowfunhappy »

mrkstu wrote: post #178
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A theoretical possibility: Apple could make Bootcamp support Windows on ARM. I don't know that they'll do it, but they could and it would be interesting. The choice will also say something about how Apple views these ARM Macs: Are they iPhone-esque devices made exclusively for Apple software, or are they (relatively) open-ended computing platforms capable of booting alternate operating systems?

The problem is that Apple has moved to a home-grown stack for it graphics and deprecated OpenGL and moved wholly to Metal. There is no way Apple would create a Windows driver for that custom silicon- it has always relied on AMD or Nvidia for those drivers in the past, it has no in house code base or expertise to write the requisite code in Windows and none of the silicon has been optimized for it.

This is an interesting point—but, are you expecting Apple to move entirely to in-house GPUs? On the laptops that currently have integrated graphics, sure, but I'd expect the higher-end Macbook Pros and iMacs to still have AMD cards inside. Perhaps that just becomes a prerequisite for Bootcamp—there's probably a lot of overlap between the types of people who want Bootcamp and the types of people who buy Macs with dedicated GPUs.

(I do agree that they're more likely to just drop Bootcamp support.)

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#188

Post by mrkstu »

toyg wrote: post #177
sys_64738 wrote: post #56

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…

It's unlikely Adobe will be on board. Porting their apps to ARM, even with a virtualization layer, is going to be hell. They dragged their feet last time around, I bet they will do that 1000x now. MS might decide that "the web is good enough" and just drop native Mac apps for the time being.

Considering that Adobe has been actively porting creative cloud programs to iPad, I'd say the opposite.

They've already been optimizing the existing code base for ARM, maybe with a heads up from Apple that this would be a good preparation for changes coming down the pipe on Mac...

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#189

Post by slantyyz »

unicornfinder wrote: post #184
slantyyz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back then Mac software support wasn't nearly as good as it is now It might be a chicken and egg thing though. With the influx of people who wanted Macs on x86 and the halo effect of them spreading the word, the app support got much better. Also, because the machines were x86 compatible, I'm sure a lot of enterprise buyers like IBM started to allow their users to get Macs instead of Windows laptops. I obviously have…

Out of curiosity, what lead you to switch back?

The early 2011 15" MBP fiasco. Long story short, the logic boards had a design defect that caused them to fail from overheating. By the time Apple decided to address the issue and do a recall, Applecare had lapsed for many owners, who had already disposed of their computers.

I had my logic board replaced under AppleCare and it had the same issues within a few months.

I managed to keep my bricked MBP long enough for the recall, but the board (which I guess had the same defect) still eventually died (same for a friend of mine with the same model).

That laptop wasn't cheap, and is the only laptop I've ever had that died. I've had a lot of Mac and Windows laptops since the mid-90s (first was a Powerbook with a trackball).

So needless to say, while Apple has the rep of having the best customer service, there are exceptions, and I was unlucky enough to fall under one of those exceptions, and I will probably never go back again.

Having said that, when I switched back to Windows, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had remembered it, and has gotten better since. I only miss a couple of things from Mac, and the biggest one is iMovie.

Re: Osborning the Mac, or not

#190

Post by skinnymuch »

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

A tiny vocal minority doesn’t mean much, if anything, in the overall scheme of things. The tiny vocal minorities of various tech/niche/geek sites rarely means anything.

You can’t extrapolate from that. No less when it’s not even correct for general trends most of the time.

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