If you will only ever do macos, then why read and then comment (dismissively) on another OS..

Because I think people are overreacting.

UNIX support was never a goal for macOS, neither for NeXT, rather a nice way to bring developers from Sun and SGI into their platforms.

The business value for developers was always the Objective-C libraries, which is quite clear from most presentations done by Jobs, some of them available on YouTube.

It is as if some people needed this week's presentation to wake up for the real Apple culture, that goes back to the days when they kind of toyed around with A/UX.

I used A/UX. For real, because at the time we had VAXen and Suns, and it was a good way to make use of the 68030 Macs we had (I think it never ran on the IIfx, which had a 68040)

I have no delusions about Apple culture. But apparently you're forgetting that Apple heavily marketed OSX's association with UNIX after the merge with NeXT, and that it made a lot of noise about how the Mac would be the best UNIX workstation ever.

I lived through those years and saw the same presentations you mentioned - some on VHS tapes that were shipped to us after the events. There was no toying about OSX as a workstation, it was even on the sales pitch guides.

I was at CERN when they visited us with the same type of sales pitch, but I always saw it as an attempt to get people to buy Macs than anything else, specially after how things went with Copland.

The real Apple culture was Object Pascal, Common Lisp, Hypercard, Dylan, Newton, MacApp, PowerPlant, QuickDraw,...

Now they have money and they actually need is macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS developers, not UNIX developers deploying code on GNU/Linux servers.

Xcode will never work on a non-Apple OS. It's just too tightly integrated.

That's like complaining that Linux can't run Adobe software, well duh.

Of course not. I never meant to suggest this would be a macOS replacement - and as a former dabbler in GNUStep, let me tell you that that way wouldn't work either.

I am ok with the Mac as it is, I don't see an issue with it, and actually am looking forward to eventually being able to play with the magic toolbar from Swift in a future acquisition.

Well, I've been waiting for a suitable desktop Mac for the latter part of six years. I'm certainly not OK with the disrepair their product line is in, nor with the value for money of the "Pro" (or, as I prefer to call them, the "Air SE") range.

I don't use desktops since 2006, only laptops with docking stations.

Many of our customers follow similar patterns, I hardly see new desktops being deployed, so I have some sympathy for Apple thinking that it might not be worthwhile to keep doing them.

Could GNUStep at least help in porting macOS apps to Linux? (In the very, very long term.)

Didn't they make it so swift can run on any OS now?

Also it sounds like you want the ability to develop for osx on a non-osx device. That seems counterintuitive.

I don't want it, I am pretty fine with the latest models and find amazing the amount of vocal UNIX users against it.

Fair enough, I believe I misinterpreted your comment then.