This seems to be a primary driver of the software-rot found all across Apple's ecosystem. iOS is generally pretty well-maintained; macOS less-so. Apps like Music are kept in better condition than, say, Podcasts. Etc. You can almost directly correlate how unpopular a piece (or feature) of its first-party software is with how buggy it is. Which I guess makes some amount of sense, but it really tarnishes Apple's image as a company selling high-end products.
Also Apple: We don't want to invest as much in parts of the ecosystem that have relatively low returns.
There's a lot to like about Apple, but their closed ecosystem and adversity to consumer repair rights ensure I will never buy one of their products.
In software, on the other hand, the latest macOS update introduced a bug in Notes where now if I hit the Tab key (entering an actual tab character), that whole line of text becomes invisible. Just invisible. I can highlight the text and see that it's still there, but without highlighting, it's invisible. It's very reproducible, this is not an obscure corner case. And this is at a time when Apple is attempting to ramp up its online services like Notes.
But putting that aside, I still see that as an execution flaw, or at least, it's a way in which design and execution are so intertwined that the distinction no longer makes sense. A computer with a non-replacable keyboard that breaks after a year is a badly-executed product. The way to execute it better would be a keyboard that doesn't break, whatever design decisions that entails.
So what you're saying is it was a design flaw from a design company.
1) Enable dark mode
2) Open a new note
3) Tab twice, then type text which will be invisible
It appears to be any line with two or more tabs of indentation. Not two or more relative to the previous line, but two or more period.
The biggest part of their business has shifted from computers to phones but I doubt they expect the iPhone to be their biggest product in the future forever, so I don’t think they would pigeonhole themselves when their name and logo is so ubiquitous.
Companies like Apple, Nike, Mercedes, Coca-Cola will never completely change the name (maybe some variations here and there, without touching the core name) simply because the brand is so recognizable. It would be throwing money and image down the drain and it would just cause confusion.
In Germany both are known. Daimler the business, Mercedes the car...
Kinda Apple and iPhone...then Mac (aka Mercedes Benz Trucks?!)
Another interesting case is when HP decided to spin off their PC business: they gave the HP brand to that new company.
I wonder what results in these dissimilar approaches? Are these cultural? are these youthful company versus decades-old bureaucracy?
Also, I wouldn't call Google a youthful company, even if Apple is 44 years old.
Synology actually encourage this. In particular, the Docker package is great and all sorts of uses have cropped up. There are some gnarly rough edges that I have encountered but that package and others make the unit very useful. I’m a home user so it’s a different use case, but my 918+ is probably my favourite machine ever.
The popular ones for macOS are Jamf and Mosyle. There are some other ones as well that are more cross-platform oriented, but both Jamf and Mosyle more or less cover the features that macOS Server provided for administration of a set of devices.
Tbh, I don't think Server was popular as a NAS service ever. The only thing I've ever used Server for was managing devices.
Their Synology Drive app is a drop-in Dropbox/GDrive replacement too. Works great on Mac at least. Haven't tried Windows yet.
We maintain an official ZeroTier package for it too, so it works anywhere.
We've seen this a number of times with macOS, and some other Apple adventures. Apple will put out something, then if a third-party offering comes along that is equal or better, it cancels the Apple product expecting everyone to switch to the third-party solution.
Off the top of my head, Aperture comes to mind. But I've had this thought before and came with several other examples at the time.
Apple also works the opposite way. If third-party offerings for a particular function are OK, but not great, it will make its own version. Stocks, and several other apps for iPad come to mind.
When the first happens, people complain that Apple is fickle and abandons its customers. When the second happens, people complain that Apple is stifling competition.
Apple is either more schizophrenic, or less predictable, than other big tech companies.
1) Way better battery life. Until the other browsers give a damn about battery life I won’t even touch them!
2) Cross-device syncing. My passwords and my tabs are always available on both my iPhone and my MacBook. Everything is synced through iCloud. I go back and forth so often every day that I could not see myself using a different browser on my Mac.
Really Server.app would run fine on the same slimmed down hardware, but Apple doesn't make that. The cheapest Mac is what, $800 for a Mini? $250 in PC hardware would more than suffice.
If you're on an even tighter budget you hardly need to buy new hardware at all, just set aside one of the old machines the next time you do a desktop hardware refresh and install any of a dozen free Linux or BSD NAS solutions on it.
Most NAS fail at one or more of these.
In addition 90% of them are very bad about security, and putting these kinds of devices on your company or office network transforms it from an internet access network into a garden for insecure appliances to be coddled, a stepping stone that must be vigorously firewalled, scanned, and monitored.
https://www.ixsystems.com/truenas
Also, it's Open Source.
That’s a strong statement. Care to articulate? Server.app used to have services for Calendar, Email, Contacts, Wikis, a profile manager (basically an MDM server), Open Directory, VPN, DNS, DHCP and, well, a web server. Would a Sinology really cover all these features?
Qnap isn't far behind neither: https://www.qnap.com/en/app_center/?top_place=1&qts=4.4.1
And that's the key-word here: appliance. A NAS is a standalone box that receives automatic updates, is 100% remote-management enabled by default, can be easily reset to factory settings, and can't be messed up by employees who think it'd be neat to run local native apps on it, "since it's a computer just sitting there."
Plus, since a NAS isn't going to be doing any desktop-OS things, the software for it can be slimmed down enough to run on lower-specced hardware, making the appliance itself much cheaper than the sort of machine required to run Server.app smoothly.
No SMB office-manager who needs this kind of functionality these days would buy a Mac or PC, to set up server software on it and leave it sitting there headless in the office. They'd buy a NAS.
And, IMHO, that's why Apple haven't kept Server.app up to date. There's just no demand for it any more. Not because of the cloud (which is mostly a complementary use-case) but rather because this software-solution vertical has now evolved into a turn-key hardware-appliance solution vertical. And it's one with slim-enough profit margins, that Apple doesn't want to compete.