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The erosion of the Mac experience

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Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#61

Post by 1-6 »

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…

I think Apple has already sailed the seas of no return. Another company that puts users first will eventually arise and take its place. Life is a cycle of highs and lows. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#62

Post by mfcl »

what-imright wrote: post #60
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.

I don't use a single Apple product. What am I missing?

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#63

Post by brundolf »

Putting myself in Apple's shoes: I just don't see the financial incentive to invest a whole lot in the native GUI story for the Mac in 2022

Regular people mostly use iOS. Many don't have traditional computers at all. That was originally the Mac's core market.

It still has a strong professional market- but many of the serious professional tools (Adobe, Blender, IDEA, etc) use their own custom in-house GUI frameworks, or maybe something like QT

And then most of the rest of the space is covered by web apps and/or Electron

Personally I can think of... three third-party native Mac GUIs that I use on my work computer, and two are background apps whose only GUI is a settings window you can open

The Mac is just... not really a GUI platform the way it used to be. Desktop OSes in general aren't. It's a bummer, but it feels like the new reality

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#64

Post by 1-6 »

what-imright wrote: post #60
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.

That’s the problem with the current state of their OS, it attempts to do too many things without regard to simplicity. I could name a few things MacOS could do without.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#65

Post by mfcl »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #54
threeseed wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What about the professional C-suite executives who want to look sharp when meeting potential clients or inventors.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#66

Post by what-imright »

mfcl wrote: post #62
what-imright wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't use a single Apple product. What am I missing?

e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. but hey I’m jealous because you have so many pleasurable experiences to come. I suggest jumping in and buying the new iPhone 14. Go all in get the Pro Max. You’ll get a massive return on the investment.

I’m a tech junkie, I’ve had it all. Doesn’t get better than Apple

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#67

Post by Liquix »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #44
rc_kas wrote: post #14

Windows sucks MacOS is headed towards suck If you want a glimpse of the future of desktops : r/unixporn

r/unixporn is full of horribly impractical and poor UX made by bored people who don't really use their computer for serious work. Just tinkerers. Same crowd who post elaborate and artistic BuJo stuff up with to-do entries of "Post up new photos of BuJo to Reddit" and "Get some new pens for BuJo" as tasks. Meta crap.

There are a few tinkerers, a few nice setups, and a lot of younger posters copying things off GitHub for internet points

That last part isn't necessarily bad - it gets people excited about running GNU/Linux. "Come for the DE customization, stay for everything else"?

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#68

Post by hattmall »

dividefuel wrote: post #38
dleslie wrote: post #6

I believe that Apple is strategically choosing to coast on their desktop software while they work to harmonize their mobile, desktop, and entertainment software stacks. Why? Because based on rumors, patents, and the decisions they've made and the actions they've taken (or not taken), it appears as though that Apple believes that in the not so distant future the concept of having a separate mobile device and a computi…

I'm skeptical of the "one device" future dream when so much of Apple's revenue comes from selling multiple devices for different form factors. Why would Apple want to sell you one device when they could sell you an iPhone, an iPad, AND a Macbook?

They will still sell all three along with many more devices. The brain, the most expensive part for apple to make will be the iPhone. I'm sure they will still make standalone devices as well but the pinnacle will be a singular compute device that works seamlessly with a wide range of "dumb" docking devices. We have seen previous iterations with things like Asus Pad Phone and Motorola lap docks.

Apples ipad and laptop revenue combined is only around 15% vs 50+% for iPhones.

They can sell the docking stations which may be both wireless and physical docking, as in they are useable when paired wirelessly but for maximum performance slip the phone in the docking slot.

The docking devices (tablets, laptops, home centers, desktops, gaming systems, digital media equipment, etc) can be sold at great profit margins and various spec levels (Resolutions, Coprocessors, input sensors, etc)

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#69

Post by jen20 »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #56
jen20 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The start of macs being viable for IT professionals was OSX, which was well after the iMac.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#70

Post by y2bd »

brundolf wrote: post #55
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

I don't have a ton of Xcode experience, but from what I've touched, while it does feel good to use in terms of a "native" experience, as an IDE it feels lacking. Even basic things like the text editing experience feels limited compared to other IDEs (e.g. why is there still no auto-formatting built in? why can't I duplicate a line without having to use pseudo-Emacs movements?)
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