The End of OS X • Hacker News Board

Re: The End of OS X

#61

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

0x0 wrote: post #52

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #17

> what the company perceives as a weakness: the paucity of apps in the Mac App Store. I think that the issue with the Mac App store, is that it imposes restrictions on a once-free-for-all development environment. I know many app developers that have abandoned it, after giving it a damn fair shake. Mac developers just got used to being able to wander all over the house, poking their noses into whatever they liked. iOS…

On the other hand, what a modern desktop is sorely lacking right now is protecting users and developers from themselves. Whenever I run "npm install" I have to close my eyes and ignore the chills down my spine thinking about how a thousand random npmjs.org account holders just ran their postinstall scripts on my computer with full access to ~/Documents/. The traditional multi-user Unix permission system is no longer…

Yup. My thoughts, exactly.

The iPhone is a success, because developers are not its target audience.

Re: The End of OS X

#62

Post by SllX » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

crmrc114 wrote: post #15

That family tree is wrong, right? 1. Unix was first, then BSD came from Unix... then Mach was built quite a bit later. 2. NextStep was then built by jobs after he was let go from apple by Mr. Soda man. 3. Jobs comes back to apple, brings NextStep- reads the tea leaves with OS7-9 and sets up NextStep as the successor with OSX. Apple branded NextStep becomes OSX. Is my chronology correct?

The family tree is slightly off, but it’s not completely chronological. A 40 year old man might still marry a 25 year old woman and have children with her and the tree would put them on the same line.

Your chronology is correct though.

I think it was an aesthetic choice to make the grandparents symmetrical, but the only relation the Macintosh has to any other prior system is the Lisa, you could say the Lisa was influenced by the Xerox Alto. The Macintosh Project was founded by Jef Raskin and his vision for the Macintosh was entirely different before Jobs essentially pushed him out. A lot of the Lisa influence comes via Bill Atkinson who designed both QuickDraw and the Lisa user interface and worked on both Lisa and Macintosh.

The tree discounts both Copland and Rhapsody as well. While Copland never shipped, much of the tech developed for it did, and while Rhapsody never shipped, Mac OS X Server 1.0 did.

The only relation the Apple II has to any of this is they’re computers.

Re: The End of OS X

#63

Post by yardie » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

gjvc wrote: post #13

Snow Leopard (version 10.6) was the peak of OS X. Everything since then has been downhill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

Snow Leopard was a development bump for all the things that were broken/unoptimized in the switch from PPC to x86. I wouldn't call it the peak of OS X.

In hindsight it was the last true developer release. Most of the restrictions weren't in place. As they moved to polish the MacOS for customer use they also buttoned it up.

Re: The End of OS X

#64

Post by lordleft » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

I've looked at the trajectory of Apple these past few years with mounting bitter-sweetness. At its best, MacOS really felt like the best of Unix combined with the consumer focus alluded to in the article. I still adore the craftsmanship of the latest Macbooks, but my 2015 Macbook felt like the apex of Mac's design. It was the kind of device that was such a pleasure to develop on. You could leverage the power of Unix in a UI designed with thoughtfulness and care. It reminded you that power and accessibility to end-users can be balanced. And now that balance has tipped away from the power-user, the developers, to the end-user, and in doing so I question my commitment to this extraordinary ecosystem. Why develop on a platform that contends with me every step of the way? Because the users and the money are there? That was never what brought me to the Macbook.

EDIT: I suppose most users in the Apple ecosystem aren't on Macbooks, but iPhones.

Re: The End of OS X

#65

Post by syshum » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #37

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The move towards "iOSing" the OS. It won't be GateKeeper. It will be policies. They won't make it obvious at all, because they know how unpopular it will be. Let's see what the future brings. I'm not thrilled with it (for example, I have one app that I've written, that uses ffmpeg[0], and ffmpeg no likee sandbox). [0] https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_MediaServer

But once again, the only "iOS-ing" that has happened so far is the theme. Yes, the theme looks more iOS-like, but that's about it. There are almost no technical differences whatsoever underneath since Catalina and almost no security changes.

Apple is the chef, and the Mac user is the frog...

Apple just started the burner to low, changing the UI only.. next phase will be to add just a little more restriction over time until one day it is iOS and most user (the ones that did not leave) did not even notice it happened.

That is how the game is played, slow methodical change.

Re: The End of OS X

#66

Post by chrisseaton » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #7

OS X (the name) is gone for a while, it was replaced by macOS. The numbering change now is inconsequential.

macOS, not MacOS.

Re: The End of OS X

#67

Post by amatecha » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

timw4mail wrote: post #44

amatecha wrote: post #11

Wow, I totally missed that version number in the About box. Very interesting! I guess 10.16 will be the last version of "OS X" as we knew it (even though it was already called macOS). The end of an era, indeed.

10.15, you mean?

Yeah maybe! Some other commenters were saying the intel version is still called 10.16 but it depends where you look in the OS... My guess is it will be updated everywhere to be called 11.0 , so I guess yeah 10.15 would be the last of the "OS X" generation (even if it was renamed macOS already).

Re: The End of OS X

#68

Post by rbanffy » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #19

fierarul wrote: post #9

I know that Java is not hip nowadays (was it ever?) but at some point Jobs bragged Macs are the best Java workstations. Clearly Apple not only does not care about Java but hates it. macOS Catalina is also pretty scary. So, I am enthusiastically waiting on getting a new laptop with the Ryzen 4800 CPU to run Linux on. I do some Java tooling projects and I will just use the existing Mac gear to support them, for a while…

That was in the OS X early days, as Apple wasn't sure developers would buy into Objective-C, they jumped into Java as alternative, having their own VM and Cocoa bindings. As it became clear that they would gladly use Objective-C, they killed the other horse.

A lot of their backend is Java. Prior to acquiring Apple for one Steve Jobs (and getting 400 million dollars in change), NeXT had a Java web framework called WebObjects.

Re: The End of OS X

#69

Post by bxparks » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:54 PM UTC

drunkpotato wrote: post #5

I know this is about the coming MacOS 11.0, but Catalina was the end of OS X for me, and the end of Macs in general for me. I will not be migrating from Mojave to Catalina, and will use my current generation of Macs until they are obsolete, while finally making the transition to Linux. Mac and I had a good run, but I'm clearly no longer the target demographic and their corporate goals aren't aligned with mine as a cu…

To me, the first indications that Apple was no longer interested in software professionals were: 1) Removal of USB-A ports, 2) Removal of the ESC key. I bailed out of the Mac world right then. The subsequent software issues (dropping of 32-bit, instability in Catalina, this new MacOS 11) just confirmed my suspicions. The Linux Desktop is still frustrating in so many ways compared to the MacOS, but I can be reasonably productive.

Re: The End of OS X

#70

Post by oefrha » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #30

crmrc114 wrote: post #15

That family tree is wrong, right? 1. Unix was first, then BSD came from Unix... then Mach was built quite a bit later. 2. NextStep was then built by jobs after he was let go from apple by Mr. Soda man. 3. Jobs comes back to apple, brings NextStep- reads the tea leaves with OS7-9 and sets up NextStep as the successor with OSX. Apple branded NextStep becomes OSX. Is my chronology correct?

I think so. OSX was bought, NT was bought, Android was bought. Which big OS vendor build their own OS? Maybe Google with Fuchsia?

OS X was bought from a co-founder in exile to revive the hardware platform championed by said co-founder, so the situation is a fair bit more complicated than most acquisitions.