Mark Gurman, trustworthy and extremely reliable Apple reporters with uncannily good sources inside Apple, paints a grim picture of the future of the Mac.
Interviews with people familiar with Apple’s inner workings reveal that the Mac is getting far less attention than it once did. They say the Mac team has lost clout with the famed industrial design group led by Jony Ive and the company’s software team. They also describe a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key people working on Mac hardware and technical challenges that have delayed the roll-out of new computers.
And just in case you’re one of the people who ridiculed or attacked me for stating OS X is effectively dead and iOS is Apple’s future, this nugget might interest you – emphasis mine.
In another sign that the company has prioritized the iPhone, Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there’s no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team. There is now just one team, and most of the engineers are iOS first, giving the people working on the iPhone and iPad more power.
It’s been clear to anyone with an unbiased, open mind towards Apple’s past few years that the Mac simply has no or low priority within Apple, and this only further solidifies it.
I just received my new MBP last week. I can tell you, that Apple is committed to the Mac…the reorganization of the software team keeps the Mac relevant, because without it, there is no platform to develop iOS apps.
Thank you Apple for being committed to the macOS platform.
So Mac’s are safe because developers need them to program for ios apps. Sorry, seems about the lamest excuse for an OS that you could base a future on.
Really? You tell me your view of the world. That is the view from my point in the Mac universe. And I recently bought an almost maxed out iMac so it isn’t like I’ve left Apple desktops behind.
The focus at Apple is iOS devices. It isn’t hard to tell from any angle that this is true. Apple desktops and laptops are mostly needed for programming. That is the one thing that I’m really not seeing an iOS program for.
Everything else people, if they are willing to use a program from a different company, (using something other than PhotoShop for instance) do a lot of their heavy lifting on iPad Pros now. But programmers can’t so far. That’s what things look like in my corner of the universe. And I know and work with quite a few people that use Macs, both MacOS (desktop/laptop) and mobile (iPhone/iPad). YMMV
General purpose programming.
and I mean technical/scientific/data oriented programming – not “apps” and fancy touch interfaces.
So I believe the Mac app store and iOS app store models of control/distribution are the huge, unholy, and unlikely to be torn hindrance to QUICK, AGILE creation and deployment of such tools and instruments.
And yes, of course, folk can side-load “apps” via Xcode etc but it’s a massive flipping fudge.
I find it hard to believe that Apple is going to want to have a any General Purpose (non iOS, non-iOS-a-like) computer on the market at all. If fact, even if they don’t WANT such instruments going forward – I think the backlash will FORCE them to bring them back. OR the investors will at least once the ship starts to subside.
And as for Apple designed ARM chip variants taking the lead from intel iron in the near future. That really is cloud cuckoo. The ONLY metric that’s going to happen on is iops/flops PER WATT. I bet both my left and right shoes that Intel will maintain overall performance advantage both per chip and per core until at least the 3rd generation of 5nm CPUs. So 20 years..
We shall see though..
Happy hols and new Year’s to zealots of all technical and religious persuasions. Yer appleby’s to yer alphadroids to yer softies and BBqueens
I’d rather say this artificial vendor-lock-in for iOS development is one of the few things keeping macOS somewhat relevant.
Well, but I’d also expect developers (of cross-platform apps) would give their iOS ports much more love, if they wouldn’t have to deal with that horrible Macs just for compiling and testing iOS code…
The Mac is doing fine, better then since around 1992. 5-10% market- and usershare on the desktop is a solid niche and still sky high above everything else but windows. I highly doubt that iOS developers are a significant number of those users.
Edited 2016-12-21 10:30 UTC
Basically just responding to this thread’s initial comment which claimed that macOS would remain relevant because it is needed for iOS. Which basically is non-sense, upon we agree it seems.
Well, actually I think it’s highly annoying that Apple limits iOS development to the macOS as it makes iOS development unnecessarily annoying. Don’t get me wrong, there are many things to like about Macs and macOS and regularly when doing stuff on macOS it manages to gently surprise me, to make me smile about nice details here and all. Still, in overall my experience with macOS is highly annoying. The non-ISO keyboard layout. The wide gaps between keys. The totally broken macOS app store. This permanent incompatible changes in Xcode. Simply the fact, that I have to carry around two computers when doing iOS stuff. I’d be so much happier if I could just do all iOS work from my Thinkpad. Heck, I’d even pay Apply the full price of an Mac Mini or something, just to have legal and reliably working iOS development tools on my Thinkpad. All this annoyance lets me builds some tensions against my iOS duties, so usually iOS often comes last and therefore short. Which it doesn’t deserve, but I am just human.
End of ranty brain dump.
Edited 2016-12-21 11:10 UTC
Apple’s solution: just use Bootcamp on your MB and dump your Thinkpad.
If they reduce the notorious huge gaps between their keys, add a track point, and ideally remove the touchpad while at it we can talk. Not seeing this to ever happen.
Oh, and of course they’ll have to add more than 16 GiB of RAM, so that one can reasonable run virtual machines on it while compiling stuff (dual boot is waste of time). Well, but at least on the memory issue I have good hope they’ll address it.
(Edit: You might laugh, but I am indeed using an external Thinkpad keyboard when working with Macs to reduce my pain)
Edited 2016-12-21 11:26 UTC
The gaps are already gone in the MB and the new MBP. But you probably wouldn’t like the keyboard either. In my opinion its a matter of taste which are often just acquired habits.
How much memory do you need in your VMs? 16GB was a lot and it is still a lot. Not long ago it was even a lot for servers.
Anyway you could use the following to better use your resources and get a really nice development environment.
1. Use containers, they are very flexible and much lighter.
2. Use cloud resources to have a complete, flexible and unlimited environment to work with.
Ah, one of those “cloud” pushers. Problem is, I want control over my own resources and where the information goes.
You can host your own cloud services (at home!), if that didn’t come up yet. I agree though that you get all the disadvantages of hosting your own services:
– not as fast
– not as reliable
– a lot of meta goes into keeping it running and updated
But the advantage is very simple and very strong: cloud services WITH the guarantee of not having your privacy invaded!
Unless you’re unlucky enough to be capped on the only home ISP you can get (an increasing situation here). You’d be amazed how much data you gobble up. You then have all the disadvantages of the cloud coupled with the major disadvantage of a nasty bill when it would have been far more economical (and faster too!) to just buy the right machine(s) in the first place.
Ahh, yes indeed, I agree.
I was merely stating that talking about cloud services doesn’t necessarily mean that your privacy will be compromised – not in the broad sense of the word at least.
If you only think of iDrive, Dropbox, oneDrive and AWS, then yes of course I wouldn’t do that either, no matter the urge.
Finally, don’t think I’m trying to dismiss the bad things about Apple hardware; I’m very much a hater of their views and principles and will never buy or use anything from them.
Containers might be fine, if you are doing some web hacking and therefore configuring servers and fiddling with stuff is part of your job.
Containers are not fine if the application you create on top of this services is sufficiently complex that you couldn’t bother less than how to configure boring servers.
Containers certainly are _not_ an alternative to dual-booting a second operation system, which actually is the thing I was talking about.
But, your having received your new MBP last week in no way biases your view of the current Apple situation. You wouldn’t let your perceived value of a brand new laptop in any way cause you to want to view the future for the platform as anything but positive.
Apple and Tim Cook have no conception of this at all.
That will change when xcode is completed for iPad.
AppleCare doesn’t have dedicated Mac folks either.
New people start out on iOS, then go to mac, then add specialty departments from there.
This change started happening about two years ago.
I’m the Mac person at work where we have over 10,000 users. So you could easily say that I am biased towards Macs and Mac OS X.
With that said, I FULLY agree about what is said in this article … up to a point.
But I want one thing to be PERFECTLY clear. iOS and MacOS are both OS X. The base OS for both iOS and MacOS is OS X. The base OS for BOTH iOS and MacOS is OS X. ONLY the shell and the drivers are different. This has been true since the iPhone came out.
With that said, it is VERY clear that the only things that have changed in Mac OS are things that Jony Ive did not like (he likes flat icons and a flat OS) and things that compliment iOS devices.
Apple desktops and laptops USED to be the digital hub. That is no longer true. iCloud first, and then iOS devices are THE hubs. Apple desktops and laptops are just devices that connect to the new center of Apple’s universe.
At this point the MAIN reason for Apple desktop and laptops existing is for the Apple programmers to modify OS X and non Apple programmers to write their programs.
Apple is, RIGHT NOW, working on a full compiler for iPad Pros and they are furiously working on iPad (and iPhone) chips that will be as fast or faster than Intel chips so that programming on an iPad will be faster than a Apple desktop/laptop. In this way they will be in full control of when CPU chip updates happen and WHAT is changed in the CPU chips. This will give Apple a big leg up on computers that use what will then be slower Intel chips that lack features which will allow Apple to stand out from the rest of the computers out there.
For those people that think that an iPad Pro is currently too limited to do anything like this, I will 1000 percent agree with you. But I didn’t say that iPad Pros are ready for this now. But check back in five years and if Apple is still using Intel CPUs I’ll eat a leather shoe.
And yes, while I FULLY believe the top shell that runs on Apple desktops and laptops will never be exactly the same as iOS devices, they will ALSO run on Apple CPUs. They will both (mobile and desktop) be running on the same CPU chips. Or at least –versions– of the same APPLE CPU chips.
Is Apple desktop dead? Not until programmers at Apple and 3rd part programmers can full program on iPad Pros. Then they will be mostly dead (see Princess Bride). Until then, if you want to buy a powerful Apple computer, buy an iMac. I will be surprised if we see a new Mac Pro. I won’t eat a shoe if we do though.
Apple fan boy signing off.
Sabon,
Personally I think the reasons are political more than anything to do with CPU performance. I’m sure apple could have ported the IDE/compilers to IOS many years ago if it wanted to and maybe it’s already been done internally. Add a physical keyboard and everything could be more or less the same.
One of the most obvious reasons to me that apple likes the macos dependency is because it forces millions of IOS app developers of all sizes to buy a mac and become committed to the platform. And I imagine developers make up a large portion of their mac sales.
iOS willl never be the upgrade path for me. In the event Apple were to “kill” the Mac in favor of iOS, I and probably most of the Mac developer world would move to Windows. No developer wants to program on a “locked down” mobile OS. If Apple believes otherwise, they are delusional or just do not care about developers, as a market – which is fine. It’s certainly their choice to make. But if and when they do, they will see a developer exodus to Windows PCs, not iPads.
And when Microsoft does the same to Windows as Apple did with iOS? Where will you run then?
Microsoft doesn’t bifurcate platforms. They have a single OS for desktop and tablet that don’t compete with one another the way Mac and iOs do. So I don’t see a likelihood they will kill Windows anytime soon.
Edited 2016-12-21 21:44 UTC
So Apple are constrained by Intel developments for releasing new models. They have combined their software teams under one roof.
Don’t these facts make it even more likely that Macs will do an architecture shift to ARM?
Unfortunately I sold my ARM shares last year;)
If it comes to Apple and in specific OSX/Mac, Thom you are completely talking bullshit. It is beyond pathetic.
– We have seen every year an update of the OS
– Apple is working on a new very sophisticated file-system.
– They are probably also already anticipating another CPU change.
– Probably they are working on better inter-operatebility between iPad and iMac.
What in the world is lacking in features or capabilities let alone compared to Linux and Windows, I really would like to know !
The annual updates are superficial, mostly restricted to the UI and user-visible applications. The base system, tools and libraries are often quite outdated. Much is years old; some tools are over a decade out of date. There are bugs and missing features which were fixed and added to FreeBSD in 2007 which they still haven’t picked up! All the core FreeBSD stuff should be being synched, but it isn’t. They could be doing this for every release, but they aren’t. The base stuff is stagnating, as is a lot of the stuff layered on top. It’s becoming increasingly incompatible with the rest of the world as a result. The wilful neglect here is appalling, particularly since it would not even take a single full-time developer to keep up to date–it’s not like they are even writing code, it’s simply pulling it from elsewhere and integrating it. Given the company’s size and resources, this is quite pathetic.
As for the new filesystem, it has its good points, but it’s hardly earth shattering, and it has some serious flaws as well. Compared with actual modern filesystems like ZFS, it misses out on some key features for data integrity due to NIH. The designers didn’t even look at ZFS or other contemporary filesystems, and as a result, it’s not as good as it could have been. It’s certainly a nice improvement upon HFS+, but it’s hardly “next generation”. They could have adopted ZFS years ago…
Edited 2016-12-21 23:30 UTC
OS X is 18 years old,
based on NextStep which is 26+ years old,
based on UNIX which is what, over 40 years old?
iOS is 8 years old at best, with a completely new UI paradigm (touch) and rapidly changing hardware requirements, based on aggressive power-saving needs.
iOS is far more profitable than OS X user by user.
Makes perfect sense that iOS would get more development effort.
Right. Thats all the explanation required. It has nothing to do with “newness”.
galvanash,
Yep. It has to do with the money and not really the technology. The main reason Desktop/Laptops aren’t selling well isn’t because they’re not useful. Most office jobs still require one and replacing them with tablets would be very inefficient. It’s simply that the market is saturated. New models being sold have very little benefit over the old ones (and even negative benefit in the case of removing ports and reducing battery capacity).
Tech companies will need to find a new cash cow, just because we have the tech doesn’t mean it will sell.
If they could at least keep up with features Windows got years ago, like stereoscopic support and some kind of VR functionality… It is not a case of iOS needing more attention than OS X, it’s about Apple throwing OS X under the bus.
Let’s face it, Apple loves iOS because of the 30% cut they get on every app purchase the user makes, guaranteed. No persky companies like Adobe selling their software from a website and keeping 100% of the money.
In general, the 30% cut has turned operating system vendors into middlemen who only care about imposing a restrictions on app installation from 3rd party sources (to make sure the 30% cut of purchases keeps coming) and also increasing the money they make from the 30% cut. Just have a look at how Apple, Google and Microsoft will advertise on the front page of their stores games having lots of negative reviews (3 or 4 stars average) which are essentially microtransaction tarpits. Because such microtransaction tarpits generate the most income from the 30% cut. Just look at Microsoft’s cute idea to bundle candy crash with windows (no thanks, there are 99 other bejeweled clones which are free for real). And just look at Microsoft’s attempt to kill win32 and force the new WinRT runtime, which is by default restricted on Windows from running apps outside the store (although they loosened the restrictions now that they lost).
The ability to buy software from a website is under attack by OS vendors. OS X is a casualty.
Edited 2016-12-21 10:40 UTC
Don’t think so. The whole services division only provides about 10% of Apples income. The 30% cut is less then their average margin, so even if they would have zero expenses it would still be less profitable then their hardware sales. For Apple software and services are still only a tool to sell more hardware, not the other way around.
Edited 2016-12-21 10:58 UTC
Yes but that 10% is recurring and requires almost zero R&D. Aka, free money.
And don’t forget that if they manage to press-gang Adobe and AutoWorks into selling only via the app store (instead of selling also via the app store) that figure could increase.
Glad to see publishers not buying into this obvious scam. Even if the Mac goes away, Microsoft’s attempts to destroy win32 are laughable at best.
Edited 2016-12-21 15:08 UTC
Those 10% also include revenue from music, video, repairs, apple care, apple pay and so on. Subtract those and the 70% developers get and you arrive at a healthy revenue which just isn’t all that big if you look at the huge profits Apple earns elsewhere. I think its more about controlling what gets installed and less about the profit.
Modern operating systems are likely to evolve closer to mobile systems with the largest difference being the UI. Apple doesn’t need to make server operating systems but are mainly producing mobile phones, notebook computers and a few desktop systems (essentially more powerful notebook computers).
There’s no real need anymore for separate OS core developments when the use case for both mobile phones and computers are to be power efficient using high performance SSD and a semi-fixed hardware structure.
MS does it too and for the same reason. Why have a split codebase when most updates apply to both mobile and “desktop” systems?
“MS does it too and for the same reason.”
Yes, because there is no Server variety based on Windows 10 code, they don’t offer any support for other platforms.
Oh, wait…
He said the core team. Troll better
I never said they (=MS) didn’t do server developments? I said Apple doesn’t really do server development anymore.
Your comment on other platforms isn’t something that I can respond to as it doesn’t matter in any way for what my post was about, I can parse it but can’t understand it – as it doesn’t make any sense.
The fact remains that MS have the same codebase for mobile and general purpose computing, something they didn’t do earlier as the requirements differed too much.
MS had the idea to place the platforms even closer with metro (whatever the name is this week) and pushing for touchscreens on notebook computers and desktops. That failed for several reasons including the fact that touchscreens aren’t a good fit for active productive use on traditional computer form factors.
When iOS is the one that is “paying the bills” (so to speak) it makes a lot of sense to put the priority on the moneymaker than to keep the focus on platforms/departments that have since lost either their focus or their usefulness to the companys bottom line.
When a company doesn’t charge for a product, you can bet that there is not a lot of desire to keep that department happy.
So Apple doesn’t care about iOS? Microsoft doesn’t care about Windows 10? Google doesn’t care about Android?
Your logic falls a bit flat there.
My logic seems fine to me. Unless we’re talking semantics and splitting hairs, I don’t see iOS having the ability to be mutually exclusive from an Apple mobile device. When I can install branded iOS on an Apple Mac, maybe I’ll change my logic.
And last I checked, windows 10 is a pay product.
I’m not sure if consider me as one of those attacking you or not. Hopefully not, as I only complained about you in an earlier story where you stated your opinion a bit too much as fact for my taste.
My take on all of this is that, indeed, it would appear that Apple has fallen victim of the mighty dollar and shortsighted management. That means they prioritize based on what they make their money on, and that’s phones and to some lesser extent tablets. A consequence of such a policy is naturally that anyone not making the big bucks in the organization get very little love. I’ve seen this first hand myself in smaller companies and the pattern seem to match.
However, that doesn’t have to mean that the next MacBook Pro will run iOS. It could mean they might eventually discontinue the series entirely, although given how much their development environments are tied up on macOS I don’t think that will happen. It *could* mean they do the ultimate suicide move and try move everything to iOS/ARM, but this really depends on how many Ballmer style people they now have in the top management.
One thing I’m pretty sure about by now though. The Apple that Steve Jobs ran is stone dead. Only question left is what it is about to be replaced by.
All this makes sense. I can’t see Apple dumping macOS at least until iOS can do almost everything macOS can do, and we are a long way off from that.
I also don’t see why a mobile first team orientation for the common core would be a problem. I mean, what else needs to be added to macOS at this point. I would think Windows 8 should have showed everyone that sometimes it’s better to just leave stuff alone. There just isn’t much to change or add to desktops that won’t piss of more people than it helps.
Now, since this is a tech blog of sorts, I rather like new ways to do things and if iOS can be made to do the critical things that macOS does now, I have no problem with that. But I just do t see it.
Android seems closer btw.
The real question is, what happen to it?
We on this site have watched operating systems die slowly, like OS/2, BeOS, Amiga, Etc. Where they get updates very slowly and they aren’t necessarily replaced by anything specific. Users that don’t really need to use them go elsewhere for their computing needs and only the hardcore platform lovers stay.
I think MacOs is likely to continue in such fashion.
The equally intriguing possibility is that Apple may decide its not worth maintaining a whole operating system just for development of their mobile platforms. So you’d wait to get as many power users as possible on to the ipad Pro ish super ios platforms, then release… xcode for Windows/Linux. IMHO, It would be easier to do on Linux, but obviously more of an established market on windows. Heck they could get windows to do another compatibility layer like Microsoft did for Ubuntu.
annual free updates for many years doesn’t seem like ‘abandoning’ to me.
OSX is the core of everything apple does. they will never ‘abandon’ it.
OSX is very stable and mature.
BTW — the new macbook runs iOS in the touch bar.
Actually, it runs a variant of WatchOS, not iOS.
As far as OS9 – we were told that was going to be replaced for many years. Copland, Taligent, etc.
Do you think apple has something to replace OS X? Highly unlikely at this point. They have the most popular unix userspace by far, why would they leave that?
OS X has gotten a bit less stable for me, but I often have very old hardware (on an 8 year old box now), so I’m not surprised.
I’m more angry about the software updates disabling existing production software. I mainly do audio production and i had to turn off auto updates and lag behind since several of my audio packages would get unstable with new OS versions.
Unfortunately it’s the same on newer hardware, even my 2015 MBA.
For IT professionals the Mac is gaining ground and popularity. In Amazon for example every employee can choose either a Mac or a PC. Most people choose a mac.
Ibm is moving most of its employees to Mac laptops.
On most professional conferences you go there is a vast majority of people using Mac.
It wasn’t like that in the past, Windows laptops where the most popular choice.
Every time I go to an apple store I can see many more people buying Macs that other products.
So there is an healthy environment for macs, and most companies would love to have the position and respect that apple has with their laptops as a productivity tool.
The OS is the most productive today, and the hardware a joy to use.
The system is stable, ages great, is really comfortable to use. Great screen, keyboard, trackpad, good performance that is stable over time, with no noticeable degradation.
Most companies would kill to be in the situation that apple is.
I’m sure that being the silicon valley Apple is fully aware of the popularity of its laptops, the requirements that make them popular with people.
I’m not that hopeful. While what you say about their past performance and present situation is fine, that’s not any guarantee of anything in the future.
They have let MacOS X stagnate for nearly a decade. It’s in a dire state, and I don’t see them doing the work to fix that. They are just ignoring anything which isn’t directly user-facing. It *was* good, but they are resting firmly on their laurels.
I work in a software development group in a university where every developer was issued a top-spec MacBook Pro. But that’s increasingly hard to justify when you can just as easily do cross-platform development on a Linux or Windows system, often with better usability and vastly more capable hardware. Mine’s due a refresh, and I’d probably opt for a Dell with Ubuntu at this point. The annoyances continue to add up with both the increasing count of problems with MacOS X, and also the sad state of Mac hardware which requires far too many compromises in functionality, performance and connectivity.
I would not be at all surprised if their neglect of the OS and the hardware leads to a big crash in the demand for Macs by developers and technical professionals. While a decade back I heard nothing but praise by hardcore users with beefy Mac Pro G5 and later systems doing serious data crunching and development, what I hear now is griping about all their limitations. And since these people often championed their introduction and wider use by nontechnical people, that could lead to a longer term decline in demand by others. That general complaining results in the replacement systems not being macs, and there’s already a shift underway back to Linux and Windows.
Yes, macOS is getting worse with every release since Snow Leopard and yes, Mac hardware is updated every blue moon.
BTW I don’t think the Mac is over and I don’t think Apple (or Tim Cook) wants to kill it at all, they just don’t care too much about it because the Mac is pretty ok! They don’t want to grow its market share and they don’t want to change the world just keep everything as is.
So taking into account the Mac represents a very small fraction of Apple profits I think it’s doing reasonable ok. It’s not the best or innovative platform it was in the past… but It is not the worst either.
Personally I think open sourcing macOS or marking it more community friendly like it was in its origins would be a solution to a lot of its technical problems and limitations… but hey, I know It will never happen so I accept macOS as it is.
I do much prefer Android to iOS because it feels less constraining, and it ends up being far less expensive. However, I have had an iPhone in the past, and iOS is doubtlessly very well done; and it comes with some (free!) apps that are unequaled, by a long stretch, in Android world, like GarageBand and iMovie. iOS tablets doubtlessly work very well, with a lot of software available that is well-adapted to the larger screen.
Mac is different. I work on Windows7 and for work I also have a MacBook Pro, which I occasionally need. I hate the Mac with a vengeance (save for the clicky trackpad, which is a wonder). I dislike the finder, I hate the keyboard, I dislike the dock, and the shared menu bar, and the way it magnifies some things but not others to adapt to Retina displays… Again it comes with some extremely nice apps which I covet, but the OS detracts more than it adds. It’s been long since a GUI was a novelty you could only find in a Mac or a Unix workstation, and now macOS adds nothing but translucency and grief.
I would not be surprised if they let it go. macOS by necessity gives access to the filing system, allows applications to be purchased and installed without Apple in the loop, is expected to offer industry-standard connections, boot from a USB device, run other operating systems and many other loopholes through which the user may enjoy freedom, which Apple clearly dislikes. All this can be cured with iOS while still keeping customers happy with beautifully designed desktop and mobile machines running beautifully designed Apple-sanctioned software. Development could be very well done on Windows, just as it is for Android.
It sound like you are more used to windows. That is fine.
The mac interface is actually very streamlined for productivity, software development, etc.
You have virtual desktops, nice way to see all your windows. The screen real estate wasted is quite minimal leaving lots of space for applications.
In general you can see lots of professionals in the IT world using it. They have a choice, and in the past most of them chose windows.
But having a good quality platform, a GUI that doesn’t change all the time, excellent search mechanism in spotlight, and solid UNIX background is really great.
I do wish apple will stop doing stupid things with its hardware designs. It is certainly not at the same level now as it was. It seems like they didn’t give it to people to try in the real world.
Compare docker on windows vs Mac OS and you’ll see what the current state of development is like.
Then for additional shock compare Ubuntu on windows vs native OSX tools.
AFAIK docker on the mac is not production ready. There is no server usage of mac osx, so no need for anything more than what exists now and allows testing and development on mac osx.
Windows & Linux are used on servers so they have a good use for a complete docker implementation.
Uh, no one runs docker on windows in production, that would be insane. Well outside of Azure.
Docker on windows is better because windows wants developers using windows. Apple doesn’t give a rats ass anymore.
Edited 2016-12-24 04:54 UTC
That’s what Tim and Jony want. If anyone can’t see that evolution then they are blind.
Long live the Prince.
(Prince, because The King, BeOS died nearly 15 years ago)
Just my personal opinions as a Unix guru but….
* I felt MacOS (the actual MacOS, not OSX with a marketing name) had a better UI. The Dock + titlebar takes up too much real estate for not enough payoff.
* Apple is a megacorp. They are all criminals. Screw them. Practical experience has given me zero trust for mega corporations. M$, Apple, Samsung, etc…
* BeOS was (way) better, I agree.
* Who cares about OSX anyway. The first time I saw it I realized they’d bastardized it so much nobody would give a sh** and they didn’t: look at Darwin. It’s tainted just _by association_ with OSX.
* OSX as a Unix variant on servers is a nearly complete failure. They have decent volume management (and pissed away their ZFS efforts). Their file systems are a JOKE (HFS+ puh-leeese!). Their network stack is weak as hell feature-wise. Their libc still has ancient issues fixed years ago elsewhere. I mean I’m literally laughing (BUWAHAHAHAAHA) at their state-of-the-art on the system side. It’s nothing short of totally pathetic. You guys talking GUIs sound to me like folks shuffling deck chairs on the titanic. I’m sure I sound the same to you.
* OSX designs it’s CLI tools along the lines of Solaris 10 & 11. Ie.. they suck balls. Contextual menus, captive interfaces, etc.. I could give dozens of examples because unlike most of the GUI weenies here I stay on the command line. I rarely even load X windows. Framebuffer console on BSD or Linux gets me there.
Now for the one that will piss EVERYONE off, I’m sure:
* This whole thing kinda reminds me of Linux & SystemD. Apple got so sprung on iOS cashflow they think they are merely reallocating resources judiciously. Linux’s decision making process got captured by Android & the GNOME project’s influence – just look at their direction nowadays. Linux zealouts and Pottering hates to be cornered on this (that Linux could now be renamed PhoneOS), he crawfishes about how “server guys wanted systemd” and other horse manure. Oh boy, my DL380 G9 which takes 5 minutes just to finish post will boot 10 seconds quicker! Let’s run out and ruin our infrastructure with systemd, now! I wonder if Pottering has even _seen_ a data center, he sounds so clueless. See a big uptake on RHEL7 ? See a bunch of Apple Xserves dominating the floor? No? That’s because real veteran IT folks (ie.. not Apple fanboys) know better.
* Fsck Wayland, too. That was a very Apple-like move, too. No XDMCP? Lame lame lame. “Aww, but we don’t wanna maintain that anymore. Don’t you know only phones and Windows desktops matter anymore?” Pathetic. Glad that garbage is a Fedora project. That project seems to attract the biggest loudmouth ignorant children. Good. They can centralize there.
* If all you want to do is consume, buy iOS products. They are for modern TV babies. If you want to create, sure, go ahead and spend a huge chunk of change on your hardware, pay huge bucks to Adobe for CS (every month), and subscribe to all your software in some invasive PoS “App Store” where you’ll hardly ever be bothered with pesky “open source” software. You can drain your wallet at lightspeed.
* I know several artists who are so disgusted with the current digital world completely ripping them off that they are now selling ONLY physical items like oil painting, low relief carvings, and sculptures. Why? They can’t make enough money on digital art because everyone online just pirates the art and cops a “What?! You want me to pay for this?” attitude. The only exception I’ve seen are dedicated artist on gaming projects. Then you just get paid peanuts and have to work your balls off, but you might be able to afford a tent or “artist space” (to be burned down later) so you can survive. Apple didn’t help them, it’s part of a system that basically enslaved them.
* In the case of both small-scale artists and musicians, the 1990’s and 1980’s were far more lucrative for them. Why? People actually paid for their music and their artwork. Did you see vinyl outselling digital recently? Why? Because folks nowdays are raised to think that art & music should be as free simply because they are easy to duplicate and distribute digitally. Apple’s iTunes and GarageBand may be “revolutionary” as tools, but they’ve also done a lot to TANK both art and music as decent paying career paths. Now some liar is going to tell me they are living large as a digital artist. I’m sure there are a handful somewhere, but talk to your *average* artist or musician, and MANY will disagree. I play 4 instruments, go to shows, train with other musicians 3 times a week, etc… I’m not just talking out of my rear end, this is from experience.
* I’m also a photographer and I’ve used all the “latest” tools (meaning Lightroom, Adobe CS, ACDsee Pro, etc…). They are helpful, but only in a “last mile” kind of way. If you can’t take decent pictures, you’ll probably end up with crap results no matter what. Put down your silly computer and get to work with your camera and you won’t need to do much retouching. If you do want to make pantographs or tweak your color gamut, you can use GIMP and Hugin for free!
Flame away. I’m sure you guys will hate on everything I’ve said. I’ll read all the responses to my middle finger and let you know what he says. 😛
aliver,
Your post was a bit on the ranty side, but I think more people agree with your complaints than you realize.
I fully admit it was 100% a rant.
The basic feeling without getting technical is just “you can’t trust the man” and the adjunct “Apple is now the man.” That and a little “quality never goes out of style” and a “get the hell off my lawn” sprinkled in.
🙂
I’m also an experienced unix administrator.
I do like a proper OS, thats why I don’t like Windows on the server.
I do like not to have to deal with issues with my workstation, I just want it to stay out of my way. I don’t like to waste my time dealing with setting up things, dealing with stupid pop ups and malware and stuff like that. I hate updates that install without prompting me and rebooting the laptop in the middle of working.
I want to open the lid, login, and get working.
I want the platform to be nice to use, have a nice trackpad, good keyboard and a nice screen. And from all the platforms, laptops I used the best have been the mac laptops.
I will not use it for production, I don’t need to expand volumes and stuff like that on the laptops. I just need it to be comfortable, have virtual desktops and good productivity tools (office, simple media creation tools, workstation virtualization, editors, terminals, etc).
The platform itself it is not perfect, but it is better than the alternatives for this use case.
As for the cloud it is the future, and every professional I believe should get proficient in it or will find himself limited. Plus it is superb interesting, and moves at a pace that is just amazing. Look at the crazy amount of new services launched on AWS.
Edited 2016-12-24 03:54 UTC
It’s interesting. The first thought I had (after someone mentioned this really isn’t Jobs’ company anymore) was that Cook and Ive don’t really seem to care much about technology. That doesn’t make them bad people, obviously, but it’s curious for the leaders of the world’s richest technology company. I think they’ve said as much in interviews: Apple’s main asset now is design, and Cook wants fancy watches and Ive wants to design cars. Jobs would probably be doing the same thing to the Mac, but there is a difference I think.
The second thought is that with apps increasingly the centre of computing, OSes are just APIs and shells to launch apps – OSes don’t really matter the way they may once have. A MacBook with a largely invisible OS, like ChromeOS or iOS (or, say, At Ease), is now imaginable. This doesn’t apply to servers and build environments, etc. but really Android vs iOS is insignificant compared to their apps. Don’t really know how I feel about it, but the Ubuntu Phone’s attempt to reinject the system into the experience didn’t really seem that appealing…