How is reducing the number of ways one can acquire or install something not further locking down a platform?
That's pretty much what 'locking down' a platform comes down to, reducing the number of ways you can install various kinds of software on said platform. An OS is still another piece of software.
Perhaps this is incrementally progressing towards constant security updates like Chrome has had for some time.
Reliability is only one axis. Focus too much on one aspect, and increasingly fewer people will be happy.
If the last week has been any indicator, this property of software product value is very hard to provide and its value greatly underestimated.
The effect is similar, unless you’re trying to find away around it.
Most users do not care.
How is sitting on social media ranting about such things productive?
This is how corporate works. Do something different politically if it matters.
From which we find the URL to the 11.1 standalone installer (11.4GB):
http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/00/55/001-86606-A_9...
> they just want to reduce the number of ways the OS can be installed and upgraded
Isn't that synonymous?
Ian: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no...no, no, not at all. I, I, I just think that the.. uh.. their appeal is becoming more selective.
If I have two URLs pointing to my website and then I remove one, users can just go to the other one. I have not "locked down" my website or limited access at all.
The impact on user freedom is negligible.
But even if we decide this particular situation is in fact locking down, what I said is still true. Locking down is a subset of removing options, not synonymous with it.
Apple has been practicing incrementalism. Each small step by itself doesn't seem very significant. But the slow march continues, and the pieces add up. Current people with technical ability may be able to modify their behavior to work around it, but the technical bar has been raise slightly-- people without technical ability have one more small speedbump.
If you're right and Apple stops here, then sure, no big deal, and I'd be happy to be wrong. This isn't the hill I'd die on for the issue. It's the trend I don't like. If a few years go by without Apple locking down the OS further, I'd be okay with the status quo. Looking at the trend of the past few years though, it seems like Apple is slowly taking MacOS towards the iOS model.
If this was a typical increment in Apple's incrementalism, then even the sum total would be something you could ignore for a hundred years.
If the scope is too large any company will fail, regardless of budget.
Apple historically was always removing features that add bulk but are not necessary (although some people need them).
To give some examples: - with one of the MacOS releases they announces there are no new features in the OS, just a cleanup of unnecessary stuff - they removed support for 32 bit apps a year ago - personally I found it painful as some stuff stopped working, but I understand this was done to streamline the system - and so on
Sure it’s sometimes irritating, but otherwise you risk ending up with a mess that Windows is.
As a side note - since they switched from physical medium it was weird to me personally that there even is a standalone installer - why not make it a system update? This year they finally did the switch.
It doesn't need to. Every Big Sur mac maintains a hardware-serial-linked TLS connection to Apple's push notification service (which exposes client IP, and thus the city you're in and your ISP) at all times when connected to the network. Also, opening the App Store app links your IP to your hardware serial number.
War is peace, freedom is slavery etc.
I could almost understand it if you were talking up Linux, at least there is some real difference there. Microsoft and Google? Give me a break.
I run Catalina in a VM because it's the oldest macOS version that supports the APIs I'm developing against. I used to use KVM for virtualizing macOS, but VirtualBox[3] is more portable despite being much slower, so I use that now.
If you can use KVM with Virtio and VFIO passthrough, it's really fast. Linux just got Virtio-fs[4], too. I've had to pass boot options to the kernel to get the IOMMU to play nicely on the Mac, though, and I just don't have patience for that these days.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23607374
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25172499
Never bothered with GPU passthrough however.
I honestly don't even know why you'd do that. I certainly have never heard of anyone doing that until now.
I'm not personally affected, and my Apple outrage cup is already filled up with their sustained anti-repair pro-landfill stance.
My priors tell me that to a close approximation, this will prevent 0 people from installing MacOS. It's just "outrage porn".
If you actually do care about the environmental impact of your electronics, Greenpeace are the real deal. They look into the details from renewable energy use, eliminating toxic materials, average device lifetimes to reduce device churn and recyclability, there's one clear option out of the big device manufacturers and it's not even close.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40561811/greenpeace-to-apple-for...
My one criticism of the a Greenpeace report I think is that they don’t really put enough weight on average device working lifetime. It’s a direct multiplier on every other factor.
Not exactly, because other phones can be repaired which extends their life.
Apple's doesn't do board repair themselves, and blocks others from doing it as well. This means more components end up in land fills. Apple's own extended warranty program makes billions of dollars. And the repair industry itself is quite large - millions maybe hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Apple products clearly fail and need repair at some point or another.
I hope you'll join everyone else in demanding Apple stop opposing right to repair legislation.
“..researchers found that brand, an intangible property, is more important than repairability or memory size in extending the life of a product.”[0]
The article found that Apple phones last on average a year longer than Samsung’s.
[0]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181016142434.h...
Another estimate puts Apple device lifespans at 4 years 3 months.[1]
[1]https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-ipad-mac-heres-how-long...
The average for all smartphones is estimated as from 2 to 3 years, but bear in mind that includes many Apple devices, so non Apple devices must average the low end of that.[2]
[2]https://www.coolblue.nl/en/advice/lifespan-smartphone.html
The fact is repairability simply isn’t a significant factor in environmental impact overall. I do completely accept that wanting it as an individual right is entirely reasonable. There are plenty of solid arguments in favour of repairability, but environmentalism isn’t one of them. If you care about the environment more than right to repair, Apple devices win by a very large margin.
>The fact is repairability simply isn’t a significant factor in environmental impact overall.
This is not a fact. Every single environmental group on this planet agrees that repair is significant component in reducing environmental impact. By definition it means fewer devices need to be re-purchased, fewer devices end up in landfills, more local repair jobs, more support-economy jobs, etc. I don't think I will be able to convince you otherwise. I will let you have the last word. Have a nice day :)
Not swayed by studies. Sheesh. If the best you can do is “Laaa, Laaa, I’m not listening”, I’m done.
While it can be argued that such a service model can have benefits for both the provider and the consumer, Apple has historically engaged in anti-consumer behavior and continues to do so.
So no, this sort of thing is not to improve anything for anyone but Apple.
I think you just repeated yourself.
- Apple hasn't officially said anything about this. The linked rantpost is verklempt because it's been 4 weeks since the release of a major OS revision supporting a new processor architecture and a standalone installer hasn't been provided (yet).
And here are his given arguments for the Collapse of American Way and Civilization in General if this situation continues:
- It's hard to reinstall Safari.
This basically happens ... never. I've been running OS X since the beta and have never had to reinstall Safari.
- It would make it difficult to recreate a specific point release in the future.
This is valid, but also a rare use case and this doesn't prevent you from doing it, you just have to apply the incrementals from Apple.
- It would eliminate "An effective panacea for some system problems."
I think I applied a combo update to fix some hosed up printer drivers after an HP update screwed the pooch one time but I could have just loaded an earlier version. This goes into the general category of "zapping the PRAM" to fix issues which originated from a real problem this actually corrected 20 years ago and morphed into a mystical incantation to utter when you have no idea wtf is wrong with the computer and don't feel like praying the rosary over it.
Quote from the thread
"Apple finally has shown their true colours and no form of hardware or software advancement will push me to use their products. Can you imagine the world without Linux or BSD alternatives? What a nightmare."
It would be a fun project to run an sentiment classifier against Apple related comments to see what the ratio actually is.
Software updates delivered through the automatic updater are listed in an XML catalog file that anyone can parse to get the URL where the actual update package is hosted. The packages usually use the platform standard .pkg installer format.
(Note that the update check does not send information about your system to Apple.)
Apple still provides the `softwareupdate` command line tool to list, download, and apply updates and even whole OS installers of the last 4 years of releases. The OS installers contain tools that can produce bootable install media if you want to archive them.
Apple has also provided tools to mirror software updates on your own infrastructure---see the "Content Caching" option in the Sharing prefpane, for example. Not sure what the state of this is today.
I think the linked article makes good arguments for why it may be premature to discontinue the standalone updates. And I am critical of how difficult it is to obtain OS installers for older hardware and VMs. But it's not the end of macOS as a developer platform.