You may not, but many do. Those many may actually be a small minority, but it would really suck for those folks.
At the end of the day, sometimes I need to run random x86/64 executables and there isn't any way around that. I could deal with a performant virtual machine.
USB to ethernet dongle.
Little Snitch.
Karabiner.
Hammerspoon.
NTFS read/write driver.
I really doubt they will all remain working but the dongle is hardware.
Personally, after 13 years of Macs any computer I'm buying in the near future are going to be Linux based because of the current trajectories Apple have decided to take.
Just insight from a different community I guess.
None of that is a compelling enough reason to switch, when the OS is the primary reason I jumped ship to Macs in the first place.
It's not just about being able to run this or that app, but the overall comfort of my everyday work environment, while still giving me the room to occasionally step out of my comfort zone on lazy afternoons.
As long as macOS retains the ability to run emulators, I think I'll be fine with its growing number of security-based restrictions.
However, whenever I have occasionally peeked back in on the state of Windows (the last time being a year ago, to run some games), it still had many of the same annoyances, frustrations and archaic encumbrances that made me wish for a better world and try out Macs around 10 years ago, and I still don't agree with the overall philosophy of Microsoft (as I perceive it.)
Apple/macOS remains the "lesser evil", at least for me.
That being said OSX running on a higher specced ipad pro CPU could be really awesome but I don't think that is what will happen.
There are several code editors for iOS https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios+code+editor and Apple has even published an own app for students to learn coding called Swift Playgrounds https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ - it isn't a full-blown code editor, but it clearly allows you to write and run code.
And that is ignoring cloud/browser-based code editors. That execution model (write code local, run in the cloud) makes sense with mobile devices which have limited power supply. I personally don't want to spin up several docker containers on my iPhone ;)
But other people might? Especially if it not a phone but a 12.5 inch iPad that is supposed to be more powerful than my 5-year-old dev laptop (and has more RAM too).
> It is allowed to write code on iOS
Great, so you can pen&paper your code like in the 1960s. In the 21st century, writing code includes being able to run the compiler/interpreter on your terminal to debug as well.
iOS is system build mostly for content consumption and designed for non-technical users. As such it has to be protected from both external threats (malware etc) and users themselves (social engineering, phishing protection).
macOS is for me my workbench for content creation and I want it to protected from external threats but I do not want it to be protected from me. Even having to go into System Preferences and typing in my password to run unsigned apps since 10.12 is driving me crazy.
When is comes to privacy, today everything is web app anyway. And to be honest I would feel my privacy would be much more secure if I could run latest version of uBlock Origin in Safari, but I cannot.
For native apps I want to decide if I trust them or not. The only new thing I would love to see in macOS is easy blocking of internet access for particular apps.
Does right clicking and hitting "Open" not work anymore?
I am interested in battery efficiency, raw cpu and graphics performance and do not care to do low level tinkering on my Mac.
I do expect it to be much more open to tinkering than iOS, but I also welcome the litany of security measures introduced so far and caution when it comes to executing wild code that affects my privacy.
I realize this puts me further in with trusting Apple to make good compromise decisions on what is possible and the hoops they create for developers on Macos, but I trust they will mostly make the right call for me.
It’s certainly been better than when I’ve had to deal with windows over the past decade.