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The End of OS X

stratechery.com

191–200 of 589 posts

Re: The End of OS X

#191
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always used Apple products because they just work. UNIX compatibility has been great and I've run docker, run virtual machines, given presentations and I love the hardware. Most of the restrictions are tradeoffs for security and the real problem is that I have tried having workflows on other systems and tried to switch off of it (I had linux on my MacBook Pro 2017. Below are my most frustrating situations 1. My…

Interesting you mention Emacs. The Mac port of Emacs runs noticeably slower than Linux depending on operation (magit especially is very slow). This is due to the much slower fork call on OS X I believe. I found Emacs so painfully slow on a MBP 16” I gave up on OS X completely. It might just be you are used to it and it’s good enough. For me OS X feels like a laggy mess.

Docker on macOS has been pretty bad for me, too...

Re: The End of OS X

#192
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy. A new application you have needs more RAM. Your battery is not holding up very well and you want to replace it. Your SSD will fail soon and you want to replace it. I had every single one of those issues on a laptop, and fixing them cost me from 25$ to 100$, about a fifth of what the Apple Store or OEM was quoting me. Instead of being without my laptop for a week or two, I got all of them over in an hour and a h…

All that, and also -- Apple sets prices about once a year. Meanwhile, the price of CPUs, RAM and graphics cards drops. For any price level that Apple establishes, I can afford a Hackintosh desktop of much greater power or I can save a lot of money and get equivalent power. Though, to be honest, I don't bother unless there's a particular application which isn't available on Linux.

Photoshop

Re: The End of OS X

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I suspect that non-App Store apps for the Mac may be seeing the twilight." Obv someone doesn't shop on Steam.

Considering that 80% of mac games got axed with the removal of 32bit support, and approximately 100% of the remaining with the ARM transition, id say they don't use Steam at Apple either.

x86 games will run under emulation on ARM hardware.

Re: The End of OS X

#194
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 influ…

I read somewhere that nobody had ever identified a technical person who had worked on Rhapsody. Now that's vapourware.

It was realized more or less in Mac OS X Server 1.0, which despite its name is more Rhapsody than Mac OS X, and enough people bought it to complain when Apple quickly moved ahead with Mac OS X as we know it and didn’t offer any kind of discount on Server 10.0.

EDIT: Not the best quality, but here’s a demo I found on YouTube for those interested: https://youtu.be/HrHNub_vJtA

Basically imagine NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, but with a Platinum skin, the window server is still a Display PostScript interpreter, there is a Classic Environment in the Blue Box, and instead of the Finder you have NeXTSTEP’s Workspace Manager and its still App Kit and Foundation Kit. Carbon isn’t a thing yet, or it’s in early development and hasn’t been announced yet.

I don’t recall if the kernel had replaced Driver Kit with IO Kit yet though.

Re: The End of OS X

#195

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…

I used to use macOS because it was a Unix that looked good and just worked, but both observations have become less and less true with time.

In that same time, Linux really caught up and diverged such that it offers features in its kernel, like cgroups and kernel namespaces, that macOS doesn't match, leaving me to feel as if the old FreeBSD roots of macOS are less of a perk and more of a kludge in 2020.

Today, I run Linux on my MacBook because it is a modern Unix clone that looks good and works well with all of my development tools. Native Docker is a treat.

Re: The End of OS X

#196

I personally think that the MacBook Pro 16 inch is the world’s best laptop, and look forward to see what the next generations can do. But the whole point has been MacOS. I’m not sure what to think of the changes. If they stabilize the mess that was Catalina, then they’re doing the right things, even with the increased iOS-ification of the Mac. If they just slap more Windows 8 style touch gloss on deep and unresolvabl…

> Linux is only free if your time has no value.

Linux has cost me less time than either Windows or OS X. But that's me; everyone's personal workload and usage pattern is different. My experience with OS X was that any time I tried to color outside the lines, the system worked against me, and that cost me more time. (My experience with Windows has generally been that it just sucks.) I haven't had that experience with Linux.

Re: The End of OS X

#197

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.

Because they're focusing on the arch change. And the big change to end users for the arch change? iOS apps run unmodified in catalyst.

Re: The End of OS X

#198

I personally think that the MacBook Pro 16 inch is the world’s best laptop, and look forward to see what the next generations can do. But the whole point has been MacOS. I’m not sure what to think of the changes. If they stabilize the mess that was Catalina, then they’re doing the right things, even with the increased iOS-ification of the Mac. If they just slap more Windows 8 style touch gloss on deep and unresolvabl…

­>inux is only free if your time has no value. I use it as a server OS plenty, but don’t really need it on my desktop. To me this means "I don't know how to get Ubuntu working". Even Arch Linux requires less maintenance for me than my 2013 Macbook Pro did. As soon as you get the setup over with correctly you never have an issue, unless you can't get set it up correctly. Windows is nice when everything works, and if y…

Arch Linux basically demands NO MAINTENANCE. The reason is, Arch is a BASE LINUX SYSTEM, which means once you LEARN THE BASICS, it's IMPOSSIBLE TO GO WRONG. Learn the basics people, it's the BASE OF EVERYTHING. Learn Arch and then you've learned it all. Arch is the base closest to everything so LEARN ARCH and then you'll have NO WORRIES. How difficult is it. IF YOU DON'T KNOW ARCH YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE A COMPUTER. Learn Arch. Then you've learned it ALL. How often do we need to say these things.

Re: The End of OS X

#199
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that (most) Linux users see "free" as the main reason for using Linux. Personally if Linux had a price tag, and Windows were free I would still be a Linux user.

Sure they do, otherwise selling desktop software to Linux users would actually be profitable.

That's a chicken and egg problem and has nothing to do with Linux users being cheap. It has more to do with nobody actually using Linux on the desktop. Why would you devote a ton of dev time to supporting a platform with "dozens of us!"?

Re: The End of OS X

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that isn't the point either. The point is happy users, and there will always be some unhappy users because they wanted to do something that isn't supported or actively barred. Throwing in words like 'right' and 'unjust' helps in movements and call to action etc, but in this context it's about someone turning on their device, doing some work, and turning it off again.

Since I can't reply to the replies, I'll reply to myself: All of those points are fine, but they are points separate from a user using a device. If you want it for environmental reasons, say that. If you want it for freedom, say that. Both are valid reasons but don't have anything to do with someone using their machine, unless that 'usage' mains doing stuff with the insides. And before someone jumps in to tell that t…

I am not allowed to use a browser I want on iOS. Do you count this as “using their machine”? The reason is the lack of freedom to do what I want with the software.
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