A "walled garden" is when there is a single source of software.
According to docs, enabling bitcode: "Includes bitcode which allows the App Store to compile your app optimized for the target devices and operating system versions, and may recompile it later to take advantage of specific hardware, software, or compiler changes."
It seems quite likely they have (and probably used) the capability to recompile any app on their platform to benchmark real workloads against prototype silicon changes.
It's enough that enough of them are.
Plus, even if most aren't, the "short tail" people use these days probably are.
macOS promotes the App Store as the source of software (even if it's not the sole), and has walls like notarization requirements and the Gatekeeper to prevent weeds from intruding.
With the App Store Apple knew that there's a pool of N apps that follows its guidelines, has passed internal checks for API use, and can be converted quite easily to a different architecture, that it could count on.
Their control over the platform allowed them to enforce Metal and deprecate OpenGL pronto, to add a new combined iOS/macOS UI libs, to introduce Marzipan.
They have also added stuff like Universal Binary support, and most importantly Bitcode, which abstracts away parts of the underlying architecture.
All of those where steps towards the ARM/M1 (and future developments), and all were enabled via Apple's control of the hardward, software, and - sure, partial - control of third party apps.
They do. MacOS isn't a walled garden.
> They're anti-competitive
Have you heard of this little company from Washington called Microsoft? They have something like 85% of the PC market. There is another OS called Linux. About 85-90% of the internet runs on it.
I can understand a little where people get the idea the iPhone is anti-competitive, but we're talking about MacOS here.
Ask Amphetamine about how open they are.
Amphetamine is a perfect example of how the Mac isn't a walled garden. They always had the option top sell outside the App Store. That is fundamentally the difference between what makes a platform a walled garden. They might have lost some sales because they couldn't participate in the Mac App Store, but they could still sell their product. Some companies choose to avoid the Mac App Store because they don't like Apple's policies.
That's neither here nor there.
(a) Amphetamine could still be sold outside the Mac App Store.
(b) An app name could be problematic even in FOSS land. It's just that instead of Amphetamine being the name that causes it, it will be something else. E.g. with the trend of banning/changing terms like "master" (as in replication primary master, not as in the owner of slaves), unfortunately named apps could be thrown out something or ask to be renamed to be included in a distros package manager or a project.
Remember the transition to arm64? Apple forced everything on the App Store to ship universal binaries.
Without the App Store walled garden, software isn’t required to keep up to date with architectural changes. Instead, keeping current is only a requirement to being featured on the App Store (which would just be a single way to install software, not the only method).
That said, all software on the Mac, post-Catalina, has to be 64-bit, whether it's distributed through the Mac App Store or not, because the 32-bit system libraries are no longer included at all.
Gates are not incompatible with walled gardens. Most walled gardens have those.
Plus, I mentioned the walled garden as a good thing. It's part of the Apple proposition (even if not alll get it), and part of what it enables it to move at the speed it does (whether in the right or wrong direction).
But one can susbstitute "walled garden" with "tight control of the OS, hardware and imposed requirements on most of third party software, and willingness to enforce hard schedules (e.g. regarding removing 32-bit, OpenGL, etc) to all (or tons) of its developers at once.
The walls in the walled garden only exist in the heads of people who never use a Mac.
With much slower adoption, pushback, and bike-shedding, like in the Microsoft and Linux world.
>To me, it suggests they aren't willing to compete.
Compete with what? With themselves? They compete with Windows (and to a degree Linux, though few care for that), and with Android. They'd compete with Windows Phone too if MS wasn't incompetent.
But they didn't do anything to preclude others from making their OS/hardware and selling it to customers. In fact, they have nowhere near a monopoly in either the desktop (10% or less) or the mobile space (40% or less).
Whereas MS for example, had 98% of the desktop (home and enterprise), and abused its power to threaten OEMs to do its bidding against Linux etc.
I don't care how good their hardware is. Moreover, good luck sourcing parts if the device has trouble. Apple will not sell you the parts. Even if you wanted.
A walled garden does not make their hardware any better. If anything it makes it worse. I hope for Mac users apply does not clamp down further on Macs.
Didn't downvote, but I think it's the same as when people read a "letter to the editor" of yore, declaring that some person "cancelled their subscription" because of something in the magazine.
A natural response is "Don't let the door hit you on your way out", which on HN might be expressed through a downvote by some.
>I don't care how good their hardware is. Moreover, good luck sourcing parts if the device has trouble. Apple will not sell you the parts. Even if you wanted.
Well, they repair all kinds of parts, and have guarantees and guarantee extension programs. But in any case, their allure was never "can find parts to build my own / repair damages forever" or in their stuff being cheap to own or fix/replace.
>A walled garden does not make their hardware any better.
Well, it does in a few ways. Mandating how the software is made, and what software is sold, when it should adapt new libs to continue being sold, etc, means that they can move the platform in different ways faster.
I never bother to enter apple's tyrannical ecosystem . So there is no door to hit me on the way out.
> Well, they repair all kinds of parts, and have guarantees and guarantee extension programs.
You can not get a lot surface mount chips to repair a mac book or iPhone without having to look on the gray-market. This is even before possible firmware issue if you manage to find parts. Heck even getting full replacement boards is basically impossible, unless they are from donor machines that have other problems.
> "Well, it does in a few ways. Mandating how the software is made, and what software is sold, when it should adapt new libs to continue being sold, etc, means that they can move the platform in different ways faster."
I disagree, allowing people to side-load does not stop apple from having policies in place for it's app stores. That's honestly the only problem. It's the owners hardware, they should not need apples permission to run code on it. Unless the owner can sign software themselves and/or run it without apple's consent this will always be a problem. You can't even install gcc without jailbreaking an iPhone.
At the very least I should be able to install an other OS on the device like GNU/Linux. If apple does not want to open iOS the user should at least have that option for the hardware.
This is even before you get into how apple treats developers. Have you read the entire App store guidelines. Some of it is ridiculous. Some of the insanity prevents Firefox from even porting their own browser engine.
The things people give them complains about:
(a) keeping a walled garden,
(b) moving fast and taking the platform to new directions all at once
(c) controlling the whole stack
Which means they're not beholden to compatibility with third party frameworks and big players, or with their own past, and thus can rely on their APIs, third party devs etc, to cater to their changes to the architecture.
And they're not chained to the whims of the CPU vendor (as the OS vendor) or the OS vendor (as the CPU vendor) either, as they serve the role of both.
And of course they benchmarked and profiled the hell out of actual systems.