Live data from Hacker News

New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

github.com

161–170 of 170 posts

Re: New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

#161
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, they are talking about high performance desktops, mostly. They link to the Framework desktop, which has 256 GB/s memory bandwith. For comparison, the Apple Mac Pro has 800 GB/s memory bandwidth. Neither manufacturer is able to achieve these speeds using socketed memory.

> no, they are talking about high performance desktops then i don't really get the "world has moved on"-claim. in my bubble socketed RAM is still the way to-go, be it for gaming or graphics work. of course Apple-user will use a Mac Pro, but saying that the world has moved on when it's about high-performance, deluxe edge-cases is a bit hyperbolic. but maybe my POV is very outdated or whatever, not sure.

I think, but am not totally positive, this is primarily a concern for local LLM hardware. There are probably other niches, but I don't it's something most people need or would noticeably benefit from.

Re: New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

#162

Wine works because Microsoft spends billions on backwards compatibility and APIs are stable over time. Apple regularly deprecates frameworks and adds new ones at rapid rates. It's a moving target with the added complication of moving build targets. If you implement your own version of Apple's XyzKit, that might only be used in macOS 12 to 14, and not before or after that, so you put in a lot of work to essentially su…

I don’t think it’s as fast breaking as you suggest but certainly big changes like 32Bit support dropping, OpenGL deprecation, and move to arm64 are huge breaks.

Generally their “availability” macros in swift and objc keep things working across versions in a forward compatible way.

Re: New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

#163
post #51

Why is every new OS project just a rehash of 60/70's tech. What about something new that actually attempts to move the field forward.

I would argue that iPadOS (built on iPhone's coat tails) moved the field forward significantly in terms of isolation and user security. While this has left a long tail of inconveniences, many resolved and some not, I am very confident that using 1 app on my iPhone/iPad will not leak data to another in any case that I am likely to care about as a non-significantly interesting person (political figure, etc). ... and fo…

Android permissions began to ask for individual confirmation on first use in Android 6.0 (released in 2015) so the grant-all-on-install model hasn't been how it works in a very long time.

Also your narrative about iOS moving from locked down to opening things up over time isn't entirely accurate, when iOS (iPhoneOS) was first released, it didn't have any concept of permissions at all! Apps could use whatever API the OS offered with the user none the wiser. At that time Android Market forcing developers to disclose which permissions were required was seen as unusually transparent and secure. Random iPhone apps scanning contacts deceptively pushed Apple to adopt a permissions model several years after the iPhone was first released.

The two platforms have historically leap frogged each other in various ways but at this point have started to converge as mobile settled into a boring appliance instead of groundbreaking new computing paradigm. Apart from sideloading, notifications and some minor annoyances here and there I can almost forget which OS I'm using as I switch between iOS and Android (thanks to gestures removing the trademark home/back navigation distinctions).

Re: New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

#164
post #99

Why is every new OS project just a rehash of 60/70's tech. What about something new that actually attempts to move the field forward.

Because many open an UNIX book, and rather copy what was already done. Note that Smalltalk, Interlisp-D, Mesa, Cedar, safe systems programming are also 60/70's tech, but these ones hardly anyone bothers to copy in such attempts.

  > but these ones hardly anyone bothers to copy in such attempts.
as alan kay would say: everyone is busy reinventing the flat-tire...

Re: New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

#165
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While this has left a long tail of inconveniences, many resolved and some not, I am very confident that using 1 app on my iPhone/iPad will not leak data to another in any case that I am likely to care about as a non-significantly interesting person (political figure, etc). Log in to YouTube with one Google account. Log in to Google Drive with a different one. Google knows that both accounts are owned by the same pe…

I don't think it's something special that Google is doing. I suspect they are just using the built-in App Groups functionality. Basically, it's a way for different apps from the same developer to share information via a data container.

Correct. Apple is leaking the data between apps for them.

Re: New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

#167
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's something special that Google is doing. I suspect they are just using the built-in App Groups functionality. Basically, it's a way for different apps from the same developer to share information via a data container.

Correct. Apple is leaking the data between apps for them.

I wouldn’t call it leaking when it’s done by design and is something any developer of multiple apps can do.

For example I wouldn’t say Linux is leaking data every time an application uses fopen.

Re: New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

#168
post #58

Why is every new OS project just a rehash of 60/70's tech. What about something new that actually attempts to move the field forward.

Because writing even a remotely modern OS is really really hard. I speak from experience. Even getting old hardware from the 90s and early 00s to work is a pain. Then of course you have the more modern standards (although even SATA is still modern for some definition of modern, but AHCI is a nightmare), and then you have things like modern NICs and GPUs which has documentation that is very hard to find, or in the cas…

One interesting cheat code is to start by only running inside KVM. Virtio for everything, no real hardware drivers. The host Linux can become a thinner and thinner shell over time.

Re: New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

#169
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, they are talking about high performance desktops, mostly. They link to the Framework desktop, which has 256 GB/s memory bandwith. For comparison, the Apple Mac Pro has 800 GB/s memory bandwidth. Neither manufacturer is able to achieve these speeds using socketed memory.

> no, they are talking about high performance desktops then i don't really get the "world has moved on"-claim. in my bubble socketed RAM is still the way to-go, be it for gaming or graphics work. of course Apple-user will use a Mac Pro, but saying that the world has moved on when it's about high-performance, deluxe edge-cases is a bit hyperbolic. but maybe my POV is very outdated or whatever, not sure.

I agree and I do not agree. I still sometimes use a Thinkpad X230, and wait- a G4 PowerBook, and they are fine machines for many tasks. Yet even those have soldered CPUs, simply because of design constraints.

You don't need to have to train models. You want to play a game like Factorio, that, of all things, is bottlenecked on memory bandwidth - you must update each entity in a huge world on every tick, at 60 UPS, and yes, the game is insanely well optimized (check the dev blog). You don't have to play Factorio, but you also technically don't need DMA.

Re: New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't install roots for all apps, notably the app store. Various government agencies occasionally like to install apps that are not web apps.

I'm not sure I understand. What software do they expect to install via the App Store that can't be installed with the Apple's root certificates? Apple signs everything listed on the App Store, does it not? Also, why would they need the App Store to distribute software signed by their own keys anyway?

Assume you're a government agency. Assume you want to install software that isn't in the AppStore. Perhaps some software you wrote yourself. Sure, the security of the system should be based on keying material, but you still don't want the general public to know you're installing Coup d'Etat 2.1 on your devices. And you don't want Apple to know that you're installing Corporate Fiscal Surveillance 1.1 on your iDevice.

It would be nice if you could maintain the many security features that DO exist while at the same time installing apps on your devices you want to install without having to have them blessed by Apple's dev CA.

Post reply on HN