The erosion of the Mac experience • Hacker News Board

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#51

Post by doctor_eval » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:10 AM UTC

hammyhavoc wrote: post #41

happyopossum wrote: post #20

I have been hearing this for almost 2 decades now, as long as I’ve been following the ‘community’. Meanwhile, in my real life, my parents, wife, kids, and friends, are all happier than they ever ever been with their latest MacBooks and macOS. Things like iCloud photo syncing, universal control, and airdrop feel boring to us, but they make the computing experience feel pretty much like living in the future for them.

Your parents, kids et cetera aren't power users though. Macs used to be for professionals, but Apple started seriously chasing the consumer demographic with the original iMac.

Apple has always chased that demographic. It started life as “the computer for the rest of us”.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#52

Post by threeseed » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:10 AM UTC

Nathanba wrote: post #36

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annoyingly, nearly every video streaming service uses this horizontal-scrolling skeuomorphism, presumably modeled on video tape rental shelves. Give me vertical scrolling, or give me death!

My opinion on this is that it's purposefully slower to browse through titles so you can't ever create a full mental map of all available titles. That way it feels like you could still find something new if you just tried harder.

They also put the same content in different categories with sometimes different thumbnails.

If you had everything on one screen it would be much easier to pick this (and their many other tricks) out.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#53

Post by jen20 » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:10 AM UTC

hammyhavoc wrote: post #41

happyopossum wrote: post #20

I have been hearing this for almost 2 decades now, as long as I’ve been following the ‘community’. Meanwhile, in my real life, my parents, wife, kids, and friends, are all happier than they ever ever been with their latest MacBooks and macOS. Things like iCloud photo syncing, universal control, and airdrop feel boring to us, but they make the computing experience feel pretty much like living in the future for them.

Your parents, kids et cetera aren't power users though. Macs used to be for professionals, but Apple started seriously chasing the consumer demographic with the original iMac.

OSX, the OS with UNIX underpinnings, came out a full 4 years after the iMac. I think your timeline is flawed at best.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#54

Post by hammyhavoc » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #46

hammyhavoc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your parents, kids et cetera aren't power users though. Macs used to be for professionals, but Apple started seriously chasing the consumer demographic with the original iMac.

> Macs used to be for professionals Makes you wonder who is then buying these expensive MacBook Pros, Mac Studios and Mac Pros. I guess it's those grandmas needing 28 cores for their recipes.

It does indeed make you wonder considering the top composers are on Windows running Cubase/Nuendo, almost everybody in game dev is on Windows or Linux, and most of Hollywood's VFX teams are on Linux or Windows integrating with Da Vinci Resolve.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#55

Post by brundolf » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:14 AM UTC

mylons wrote: post #22

I just started developing in Swift/SwiftUI with a few app ideas in mind as a 37 year old with quite a bit of XP developing web services and *nix based utilities. I _really_ like the overall experience of Swift and the mac ecosystem a lot. Maybe there is a lot of truth in the headline, but other than XCode not being as excellent as PyCharm or VSCode, I'm having a lot of fun and getting some users along the way.

> other than XCode not being as excellent as PyCharm or VSCode

I can't help pointing out the irony that PyCharm uses custom native rendering and VSCode is an Electron app, while Xcode is the only native Mac app of the bunch

Obviously there's a lot more that goes into a piece of software, but

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#56

Post by hammyhavoc » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:14 AM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #53

hammyhavoc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your parents, kids et cetera aren't power users though. Macs used to be for professionals, but Apple started seriously chasing the consumer demographic with the original iMac.

OSX, the OS with UNIX underpinnings, came out a full 4 years after the iMac. I think your timeline is flawed at best.

What's OSX got to do with anything? OSX started out great (UNIX!), but they just kept bolting on more and more consumer-oriented rubbish to it.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#57

Post by hammyhavoc » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:15 AM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #51

hammyhavoc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your parents, kids et cetera aren't power users though. Macs used to be for professionals, but Apple started seriously chasing the consumer demographic with the original iMac.

Apple has always chased that demographic. It started life as “the computer for the rest of us”.

There was one point where it seemed like everybody in Hollywood, music, and the visual arts were using Macs. Logic and Final Cut used to be serious programs.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#58

Post by pmontra » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:16 AM UTC

hammyhavoc wrote: post #41

happyopossum wrote: post #20

I have been hearing this for almost 2 decades now, as long as I’ve been following the ‘community’. Meanwhile, in my real life, my parents, wife, kids, and friends, are all happier than they ever ever been with their latest MacBooks and macOS. Things like iCloud photo syncing, universal control, and airdrop feel boring to us, but they make the computing experience feel pretty much like living in the future for them.

Your parents, kids et cetera aren't power users though. Macs used to be for professionals, but Apple started seriously chasing the consumer demographic with the original iMac.

As a kid I was definitely a power user of everything I cared about. Lego, reading, playing and inventing (physical) games etc. I was really busy and I couldn't understand all those kids that went to sleep after lunch. A waste of time.

I don't know how this maps to using a computer but I think I wouldn't have appreciated a GUI that slowed me down.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#59

Post by emptyparadise » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

The future of Apple is half iOS apps and half Electron apps. It's a shame because they uses to be very good at native apps. I understand the economics of it, but it's still a shame. Worse may be better, but it still feels bad.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#60

Post by what-imright » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

runjake wrote: post #43

The key point in this Twitter rant is that the SWEs who understood the Mac (and NEXTSTEP, for that matter) have aged out. Most everyone has retired or moved onto other opportunities. There's very few of them left at Apple. And they're often overruled by younger managers. Apple is hiring tons of fresh new SWEs who have no understanding, nor desire to understand "The Mac Way". I'm not saying this is right or wrong, the…

Jobs was against dogma. It’s a changing world and the perspective and input of the young is valuable.

What exactly are you moving on to? Ubuntu? Windows?

Behind macOS is the most valuable company in the world adding fixes, features and security patches. There isn’t any other computing solution today that can deliver what Apple does.