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Open Letter to Tim Cook

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Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#181

Post by pjmlp »

dasil003 wrote: post #170
pjmlp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers on Mac were always using the same computers as everyone else. I don't remember having a Mac Classic Pro or a LC Pro and so forth.

Very odd your selective memory. You don't remember the Macintosh IIfx?

No.

Back in those days the Mac was almost nonexistent in Portugal.

There was just one official importer, Interlog, and buying anything Mac related meant traveling to Lisbon.

So the first time I actually programmed on a Mac was in 1994, on Classic and LC models.

The only ones available on the university campus on a single room! I think there were around 10 there.

The remaining ones were located in the IT department, used by the secretaries and a few teachers.

Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#182

Post by rimantas »

snoman wrote: post #147
sudobear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running multiple VMs

Shit... Just one will start to put strain on the system. If I'm developing an iOS/Android frontend in osx with Xamarin Studio and an asp.net backend with Visual Studio, then 16gb just won't do.

Not sure about Xamarin studio, but for Xcode, AppCode, PHPStorm anr Virtualbox 16GB still does do.

Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#183

Post by mch82 »

agumonkey wrote: post #41
jmeller wrote: post #25

Apple built its PC business on the backs of creative professionals because they were among the few groups who thought Macs were worth more than $0.00, thanks to its superior experience with Adobe's creative suite when compared to Windows. Apple now has a dominant position in the PC market, not because they catered to creative professionals, but because they listened to their initial creative audience and focused on m…

A lot of video shops also used Mac extensively for decades. It seems it wasn't only good marketing, they were alright for this profession. Saying this lightly, I was a kid in the 90s, but I do remember a lot of ads for large Mac stacks (towers, disks, video cards, etc). Tiny SGIs in a way.

49% in 2007 is a figure cited in the Final Cut Pro Wikipedia article.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Cut_Pro

Notable films include Benjamin Button and one of the X-Men: Wolverine films.

Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#184

Post by SiVal »

tensor wrote: post #70
IBM wrote: post #20

Best comment [1] I read a couple of days ago: >One thing constantly said to founders here is "don't let a vocal minority come in, tell you they love your product, and then turn into bullies that tell you how you should make said product. You never made it for them; they aren't your market. Don't get confused into thinking they are, just because they're loud." I think that about sums up the relationship between Apple…

For every rule of thumb there are exceptions. In this case, if you lose the professional market, which is more than just developers, also designers, photographers, videographers, architects, scientists, you risk a sort of negative network affect. In most families and circles people go to the person in the group who knows the most about tech, usually professional user. This person will often recommend products they th…

Exactly. As a developer, what I decide to build depends in part on the market "out there" and in part on what tools I have. When I had an early Mac, I talked my office into using more Macs (despite a corporate "Windows only" directive) by using my own Mac at work (I bought it myself) and building some useful things with it that others wanted to use.

When I switched to Windows, I learned Visual Studio and C# and built several customized tools that coworkers could only use on Windows. I also recommended Windows machines to family and friends, who almost all went with my recommendation.

When OSX came out, I and many other developers switched to it. Finally, a serious OS from Apple. When we did, we pulled lots of families and friends with us, and we made a lot more things (open source installers, for example) available for Mac users.

If Apple succeeds at restricting Macs to people who want lightweight, fashionable, "Apple lifestyle" accessories and need confusing things like folder hierarchies removed from the OS, many of us will move again and take those IT decisions we influence with us.

If I get off the Mac, for example, I will quickly forget how to do things I need to do to provide tech support to Mac-using family and friends, so I'll probably begin recommending Chromebooks to many of them, shifting some of my support away from their individual machines and onto web portals and web apps I build for them on my own servers.

And I went with iPhone because I was a Mac user, and I figured I would get some benefits from using the two together, which I did. If I'm no longer a Mac user, those benefits vanish, and I'll probably switch to an Android phone with an audio plug. (Maybe we developers are just a vocal minority, but we'll probably get pretty vocal to others about why we're leaving Apple if we do.)

Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#185

Post by jhou2 »

smrtinsert wrote: post #98
initram wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple doesn't seem to know or care. Oh nonsense! They showed like a dozen ways that the new touch pad alone makes using professional apps easier, faster, and generally better in their keynote. They are clearly thinking specifically of the professional market. Whether they hit their mark or not is up to the market to decide. The new computers are already back-ordered by 4-5 weeks, so clearly someone's ordering them.

The new touch pad looks ridiculous. It looks like novelty they're throwing out to placate the masses they get a real touch screen together behind the scenes. I have absolutely 0 desire to use a tiny strip of touch above a perfectly good keyboard.

I agree with you. But I think the touch pad is a harbinger of things to come. The eventual goal is probably a touch pad keyboard, one that reconfigures depending on the circumstances. It might even be like the Star Trek NG consoles eventually. I think it might be possible to use the haptic touch on a localized level such that each key press causes a sense of typing feedback.

Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#186

Post by newscracker »

have_faith wrote: post #7

Not to beat a dead horse but I'm also considering abandoning Apple as I'm due an upgrade now. I'm still using a MBP from 2010 that I added an SSD and some extra ram too, it's still going strong although showing it's age it has served me very well over the years. Gluing parts in that used to be user replaceable, models now are 16gb of ram only (can someone explain this one?), thinness for thinness sake, removing stand…

> I get the impression they are trying to transition their laptops to life cycles closer to their phones and I won't be coming along for the ride.

Does that lifecycle mean a refresh every year for the MBP (or gasp, other Macs)??? That would have millions of people screaming with joy if that ever happened. Based on the last few years, it's quite clear that Apple does not believe in spec refreshes or in selling more of the Mac lineup. Apple seems to want to focus only on portables a little bit, followed by all-in-ones (iMac).

Sadly, it seems like Macs have become hobby items for Apple. Something to work on with spare time. I'm very frustrated that the Mac mini has not been updated for more than two years and that it doesn't have user replaceable RAM and HDD.

Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#187

Post by WalterBright »

IBM wrote: post #20

Best comment [1] I read a couple of days ago: >One thing constantly said to founders here is "don't let a vocal minority come in, tell you they love your product, and then turn into bullies that tell you how you should make said product. You never made it for them; they aren't your market. Don't get confused into thinking they are, just because they're loud." I think that about sums up the relationship between Apple…

I get constantly told I'm a unique snowflake and nobody wants the features I want. My response has morphed into one of:

1. I don't bother giving feedback much anymore

2. I invented my own programming language

I keep wanting to invent my own Kindle. Amazon comes out with new version after new version, and they've implemented 0 of my feature suggestions :-(

Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#188

Post by newscracker »

jonlorusso wrote: post #118
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm often noticing a ton of swapping going on, causing serious system-wide lag, when I have a few dozen Chrome tabs and two VM's running in addition to a few other standard programs which use a lot of memory (Slack). It's not hard to rub up against 16GB in a standard developer workflow.

> a few dozen Chrome tabs There's your problem.

I agree. Chrome is a big bloat on Windows and OS X/macOS. I find Safari to be quite lean (memory and energy consumption) on OS X/macOS. I miss that Firefox is not keeping up since it's the most flexible browser for my use.

Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#189

Post by zamalek »

girfan wrote: post #2

The 15inch MBP has i7 Quad Core processor, Radeon graphics and double the RAM than the default 13inch models. This is not a minor jump in performance. I agree that they do sometimes prioritize size, thickness and beauty over performance but I don't see what else could go into the 15inch MBP that it currently lacks?

> Radeon graphics

That's like saying car has combustion engine.

> I don't see what else could go into the 15inch MBP that it currently lacks?

* Razer Blade[1]: 0.70", 4.30lbs. VR-ready performance. i7, DDR4, PCIe SSD, GTX1060. Starts at $1800.

* Gigabye Aero[2]: 0.78", 4.16lbs. VR-ready performance. i7, DDR4, PCIe SSD, GTX1060. Starts at $1500.

MBP is fine if you don't need performance. It straddles the line between netbook and laptop - which is probably why it does so well. Most people don't need more. However, Apple does not service the market that needs more in any way whatsoever. They probably never will: regardless of where the cost of Apple products comes from, they cannot compete with the bang-for-buck of the above examples (neither support Linux very well).

[1]: http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade [2]: http://www.gigabyte.co.za/products/product-page.aspx?pid=613...

Re: Open Letter to Tim Cook

#190

Post by newscracker »

In the recent keynote about the MBP refresh with the TouchBar and the professional apps (like Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Pro) being adapted to it, Apple showed an MBP setup with a couple of 5K LG monitors (which Apple mentioned it worked with LG for) for professional work, along with external RAID storage from Pegasus. The message I got was that MBP is the pro line, which can be "expanded" on the display and storage fronts. Unfortunately, it still leaves RAM and internal storage stuck (pun intended) with whatever came in during the purchase!

At the end of the keynote, I was left with the impression that the Mac Pro is going to be canned in a few months, probably along with the Mac mini - just disappear silently from the store. Even the iMac may get canned in a couple of years, leaving the portable MBP as the sole Mac available. This may be the leading act for introducing an ARM based MBP, thus eliminating the effort to deal with a refresh of other Macs to ARM based chips.

I've expressed my frustration here on this topic before. Apple seems unwilling and incompetent to put in what it takes to show that it still can do and maintain things well.

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