Wait, do they?
I mostly remember:
- A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality
- Aimless products like the Vision Pro that seems to have failed as the "get the devs excited" premium SDK launch everyone described it as
- Rocky start issues on Apple Intelligence, nerfed Siri, etc.
- Unexciting iPhone launch and lots of ridicule levied on Liquid Glass
It's the laptop to get for compute/battery, which definitely is not nothing, but I'd say few tech people have been excited about Apple otherwise lately, as product or platform.
If the OS is old, things like FFMPEG will not work with things like Audacity. And to use an old version of FFMPEG, you have to guess which one, then install a variety of dev tools to compile it, waay beyond the capability of the average "I just want to record my podcast user". Audacity itself has an extensive help article devoted to this issue for Mac.
If you have a new Mac, you'll find companies have given up going through the cost and time of certifying for each new Mac OS, like Evoluent (early vertical mouse maker), who gave up several versions ago and won't support using all the extra mouse buttons their product has on Mac.
If you want to use many audio plugins, you'll have to deal with special permissions if it didn't come from the app store. If you want to use zoom to let a remote tech control your screen, you have to find and set two security permisssions.
For all four of these issue on Windows, it just works.
UPDATE: As commenter below pointed out, experienced users have a different experience than new users, which doesn't invalidate the specific issues I've mentioned, and which I encounter every month, and sometimes weekly.
Having owned plenty of Thinkpads (Linux), Dells(Windows and Linux) and plenty of Macbook Pros, I can say, Apple's superiority of hardware is so far beyond the rest. Having an OS with a BSD-ish experience is really nice as well. I've spent 27 years in engineering and during most of that time I get the random "Linux is far superior", "I like Windows better" folks... but by and large, yes, Apple's tech has a ton of good will.
If you asked me 2 years ago I would say something different about Linux than I would said today, because I’m running a different distribution with a different desktop environment and that changed my experience completely, even though I’m running on basically the same hardware.
I run Linux in Apple hardware too, how does that rank in your comparison?
Hardware: Apple announced an ARM based CPU and started shipping. It was _mostly_ a seemless experience thanks to Rosetta2. The performance on these well-built machines was outstanding. Even the Intel-based machines previously had really strong performance. The machines themselves (on average) were among some of the most well-built. Yes, there were outliers with the butterfly keyboards. Yes there were outliers with silly features like the touchbar. We're talking on average.
Software: Apple's OS is just a boring Unix that works. Yes I realize that Unix is in name only - but on top of that XNU microkernel really is a lot of BSD. Having the GNU tools available AND Sound/Fingerprint Reader/HiRes Display that actually scales... that is still not the reality in Linux. (I still love Linux btw - I keep multiple machines around the house running it) So not having to spend a great deal of time fiddling with config files when I plug in an external monitor actually is a big deal. Most folks don't want the hassles of messing with pavucontrol just because they switched to their external audio setup. Most folks will appreciate when they drag a window to that exterinal monitor that the HiDPI didn't cause text to go wonky.
So those are the areas where Apple is just massively superior. They nailed it in the "it just works" department. They've nailed it in the "quality hardware" department.
Windows also does fairly well in a lot of these areas.
As far as running Linux on Apple hardware? I had a buddy come into a meeting running Gnome+Ubuntu on his MacBook Pro back around 2017... as soon as he plugged into the projector, it was a mess. I'm sure it's gotten better since then.
IMO, "consumer electronics enthusiasts" != "tech people"
Are you sure?
They also use it for their growing ad platform.
Can't let people find your app for free. You need to pay to defend your trademark and lead in a given app category.
Plus they've severed the customer relationship and inserted themselves as Mafia middlemen. They'll sell that to companies too.
Whether that'll lead to the government requiring Apple to break their encryption, it remains to be seen. I imagine Apple has a bit of an edge here anyway, since iCloud is allegedly e2e encrypted?
Im not really sure how that benefits me as a US citizen but that is who the majority of the population seems to want and once the rules are set you follow or face made up tariffs that rip you apart. Right.
I think we basically agree - just clarifying here.
And probably fewer still consider switching to the alternatives. Apple is, for better or worse, usually the least bad option.
Apple and Google both use immutable locked down OSes on their main products that prevents improving device security, such as IP & DNS filtering / blocking.
Microsoft user experience keeps getting worse. Latest version of Teams, as of today, says I'm at the "Calendar" screen and the navigation and content screen both show "Chat". "Calendar" was unpinned because I find Teams to be at interacting with content. No reason it should be a PDF viewer when the desktop application is actually usable allows for viewing chat and content at the same time.
I understand developing for those platforms makes money or is needed for other products. Unless I have to develop products that support those companies, I will never pay with my personal income to support those organizations.
Just laptop is good enough. Although currently switched back to apple silicon ATM for LLM, price and convince reasons, and as soonest linux on Apple Silicon reach some maturity, will switch over completely.
However not using a smartphone is probably good for one's mental and physical healthy now days. It is understandable if your work require you to have one, but if I'm not getting paid, why would I even get a smartphone?
Back in the 80's there are investment people managing billions dollars and deals over pen paper and a land line!
If you don’t want one because of some principled stance that’s fine, but don’t pretend there’s no value in them.
The DOJ/FTC/EU/ASEAN/etc. need to force a breakup of first party app stores, first party payment, first party web browser, and first party messaging. They also really need to require web installs without hidden menus and scare walls.
We'll see a proliferation of offerings if that happens.
I actively invest my personal income to organizations / businesses that are working to provide viable alternative. All are fruitful in reducing the barrier to a viable product. From improving hard-ware design to getting software in a stable state. Currently waiting on a phone from EU from a company on their attempt.
Went with a Farirphone 4 running /e/OS/. Yes, /e/OS/ is based on AOSP. This phone has a high chance of full postmarketos support. It is the closet from being disconnected from Google that I find to be stable. Postmarketos would allow for a quick jump.
In the mean time, still investing in companies and organizations that don't want to help Google in the smartphone market. It is a long-term investment.
Linux is better.
That worm has turned, at least five years ago
Oh, and if you have problems running Linux on Macs... That isn't Linux's fault.
Hopefully either Asahi support improves in the near future or Snapdragon X Elite support in Linux becomes a bit better.
* Xcode 26 is kinda neat, though
This is really just a cheap rhetorical trick. Linux [0] can run just as much software, if you include VMs, but you can't legally virtualize MacOS, therefore buying a Mac is the only way to legally run their software, in addition to everything else. Now, you are technically correct, but the casual interpretation of
> Eh, macOS is still the UNIX with the most commercial software available.
isn't really that you can simply run everything unavailable on MacOS in a VM (or several layers of VMs). It's the same as arguing that Powerpoint is all you ever need, as it is Turing complete.
[0] And so can Windows, if you run said VMs in a Linux VM.
Maybe you shouldn't go around policing people's opinions.
It's funny that this exact phrase could have been written about Apple in 1998.
Mac OS 8 had no preemptive multitasking or meaningful address space protections. A single bad pointer dereference in user mode took down the entire system, and a single busy loop without a yield locked up the entire system.
Both of these were universally admitted to be bad and outdated by technically minded people.
By 1997 they had looked at replacing it with BeOS or NEXTSTEP, and purchased the latter with the goal of replacing Mac OS. The Rhapsody OS, an OS8 style UI with NeXT underneath, had already been started. Before that, they had also attempted and failed to write a next gen classic Mac OS (Copland).
Windows 9x had a lot of problems, but had preemptive multitasking and much better address space isolation. Windows NT 4 Workstation was also a thing at the time and much better. It did take them two more releases to make it into the consumer product.
Rather: It took them two more releases until they offered a version that had a price tag (setting the price was a conscious decision by Microsoft) that made a Windows NT derivate also affordable to non-professional users.
And that's just in the Microsoft vs Apple camp. If you left that then Unix, BSD, BeOS, etc also blew it out of the water.
MacOS 8 looked pretty, but it was far from a "good" OS.
98 just crashed, or showed something DOSish white on black before rebooting.
edit: Hrrm. According to Wikipedia it did. Still can't remember that, though.
Aye repent! Aye repent!
Your reasoning also isn’t sufficient. The classic Microsoft Kernel was able to support a much wider variety of hardware because it was modular (internally, not architecturally). The classic Macintosh Kernel had a far smaller ecosystem to support and couldn’t even add support for hardware that existed on many of their own devices that would make the kernel on-par with the 9x kernel and be transparent (except for improved usability) for users.
So to recap, OP claimed that OS 8 (not A/UX) was superior to 9x. And that’s simply false. Many consider the 98 kernel garbage, even for its time; and yet it’s objectively better to OS 8’s.
If we’re simply arguing Apple hardware OSes versus Intel options (as you seem to be conflating this to), then the latter still wins with Xenix, any number of Unices, BSD, Linux, etc; all more stable and better supported than A/UX as well as better UI-centered OSes (NT, OS/2, BeOS, XFree86, etc).
Not arguing. The context is that MS had much more capable hardware to run 95 on than the 68020 based Macs.
> seem to be conflating
Not really. Just providing some context as to why MS was able to get a jump while Apple got held back by hardware.
MacOS 8's initial release was after PowerPC-based hardware was already released. The OS had a separate kernel for that hardware. MacOS 9 never ran on 68k hardware (with an MMU or not).
It was perfectly capable of having that functionality, yet didn't.
You're just retroactively applying rationale to a bad design and making bad faith arguments (or "explanations"). Even Apple knew it was bad, that's why they threw it out.
None of these were issues on Windows 98.
Are any applications on your Mac touching Rosetta right now? You'd better hope not because those single percentage gains from ARM evaporate fast.
Aside from superior performance and battery life (even compared to ARM windows offerings), the M series devices are generally reliable, unlike windows laptops running Intel and (less so) AMD.
>it doesn't matter because the ARM transition is essentially already done
'Essentially' is doing a lot of heavy-lifting here, but, putting that aside, A. you're wrong, I've recently ran into Rosetta throttling and B. it's not a good reason to begin the project at all, it's only a good reason when it's already done. You're essentially ceding "Yes, I've been wrong and this has been a fool's errand for the past x years until right this moment as the project is done". It's not done and it'd a weak argument.
>Aside from superior performance and battery life (even compared to ARM windows offerings), the M series devices are generally reliable, unlike windows laptops running Intel and (less so) AMD.
Specifically what are the numbers? Because I have performance/tdp numbers and the M-series performs well but it isn't a categorical difference. In fact, that's no difference, it performs okay but AMD is at the top of the heap currently. Sad.
I use a lot of nonstandard software (not just a browser), not a single piece needed Rosetta.
I agree recent AMD chips are power efficient like the M series (though I don’t have one to compare with) but I thought everyone agreed the comparable chips in 2020 weren’t?
>...I thought everyone agreed the comparable chips in 2020 weren’t?
Possibly, but it was likely far, far closer (see maybe the AMD Ryzen 7 4800U) than justified defense of the project.
Anyways, with the addition of the Rosetta translation layer there's no way the Apple M1 was as efficient as the Ryzen.
Performance and efficiency has been great for me. I've never run into rosetta throttling. I've got the numbers - trust me bro.
Of course, they really aren't, which is pretty obvious. It doesn't make sense that Apple would randomly invent some categorically new CPU technology when they don't even own an instruction set or foundry and that they would simply be concocting some vendor lock-in supply chain scheme.
It sounds like you've already done the work... why not just share the numbers. I'm just asking to see what you claim to have. Unless... you don't have them and you're just making stuff up.
The real difference maker is efficiency. MacBook owners simply do not need to worry about whether they are plugged in or not; the performance does not change and the battery lasts many hours, even on demanding tasks. Occasionally you can cherry pick a benchmark where AMD appears to be competitive, but always at much higher power draw.
AMD and Intel users don’t really appreciate how much of a qualitative difference that is. Being even close in performance, while offering far superior reliability and battery life, puts apple silicon in a league of its own.
Share your numbers please. I’m having trouble finding reliable sources that aren’t YouTube videos or forum posts, but nothing I’ve been able to find contradicts my claims.
Can you please define and explain the meaning «Rosetta throttling»? Rosetta 2 is static binary translation + JIT optimisations at the run time. Is Rosetta injecting delays slots or delay loops into the translated code? Or, is it injecting branch instructions that consistently fail the branch predictor? Something else? Since you seem to have analysed specific code paths, the esteemed congregation on here is eager to pick the disassembled code apart.
Without the direct evidence, such claims are as credible as that of a vegetable vendor at the local farmer market claiming that spinach they sell cures cancer.
"Mostly" is not good enough. The user experience of Apple is still good, the developer experience is woeful
The echo chamber is still reverberating. People say that MacOS is good because other people have told them so. The people claiming that is better don't have an earnest effort outside of the ecosystem to support their claims. I was forced to use MacOS at work up until a little over 1.5 years ago, I have perspective on both, and it is categorically incompetent. It doesn't hold a candle to dev on Linux.
As for Windows? Windows 7/11 are probably still better than MacOS (as you implied with your comment about neglect), but it's probably as bad or slightly better than Win 11.
They’re all perfectly viable options with strengths and weaknesses. None of them are especially great. I’m partial to MacOS, personally.
It’s willful ignorance to think that the many millions of people that like MacOS are just parroting what they’ve been told.
This is so entirely true.
I've installed so many different Linux distributions (and multiple Windows versions) on my personal laptop. Currently noodling around with NixOS.
I've never been tempted by a non-macOS laptop for work.
Whatever faults macOS has, it is very good at staying out of my way for getting work done, and all the small ancillary bits (eg webcam and audio support for chatting) have worked flawlessly for me for two decades. I cannot say the same about either Windows or Linux.
Maybe you're speaking for yourself? I absolutely love my Macbook and the M-series are the best devices I've ever owned.
> - A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality
Really? I haven't noticed.
They are very different companies in very different businesses. Apple is a hardware company, Microsoft is a software company. That affects everything (and is why the two are not fundamentally competitors).
I don't think one has ever been better behaved than the other at all, though. The main difference is that for most of their time, Microsoft was just in a position where it could do more harm than Apple.
The DOJ noticed and is suing Apple for doing this.
That's likely why the DOJ is _not_ “suing Apple for doing this”. Browsers are conspicuously not on the list of charges and I think it's because in the subsequent 3 decades, we've had some key changes: all of the major browser engines are open source, very few people question the demand for standard libraries for rendering web content even in desktop apps, statistically nobody pays for web browsers. A large part of the Microsoft trial was discussing how they colluded to prevent PC vendors from bundling other companies' software but in this case Apple isn't trying to restrict another vendor's decision about what software they ship on their hardware and users don't show much sign of being bothered by the lack of PWAs, which have negligible usage on any platform. If someone was making a lot of money with a PWA on Android but having to pay Apple's in-app fees on iOS, that'd be a much stronger argument for market distortion.
The actual lawsuits are focused where Apple's behavior is more clearly like 90s Microsofts: restricting access to the NFC APIs, restricting game streaming platforms, and restricting the ability of WearOS watches to work with iOS phones or Apple Watches working with Android phones. Unlike PWAs, there are other mobile payment companies who'd love to ship tighter integration, customers who want more gaming options, or who want to have something like a Garmin device as tightly integrated as an Apple Watch. I don't know how likely the DOJ's case is to succeed but at least in those cases it's easy to show that there's a real market being affected whereas it's much harder to argue that a PWA market would suddenly spring into being or that Google is somehow being deprived of Chrome revenue by having to use WebKit on iOS. I'm aware of the technical arguments but it seems fairly challenging as a legal argument to make the case that the DOJ should respond to Apple abusing a monopoly position with a fifth of the market by allowing Google to push their share over 90%. The only way the web is better off out of this is if there's some coordinated simultaneous action.
Wrong.
"60. For years, Apple denied its users access to super apps because it viewed them as “fundamentally disruptive” to “existing app distribution and development paradigms” and ultimately Apple’s monopoly power. Apple feared super apps because it recognized that as they become popular, “demand for iPhone is reduced.” So, Apple used its control over app distribution and app creation to effectively prohibit developers from offering super apps instead of competing on the merits.
61. A super app is an app that can serve as a platform for smaller “mini” programs developed using programming languages such as HTML5 and JavaScript. By using programming languages standard in most web pages, mini programs are cross platform, meaning they work the same on any web browser and on any device. Developers can therefore write a single mini program that works whether users have an iPhone or another smartphone."
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl
A browser engine made by a company other than Apple is considered a "super app". It's the same thing Apple got sued for in Europe and lost, and now iOS in Europe has to allow other browser engines.
>A large part of the Microsoft trial was discussing how they colluded to prevent PC vendors from bundling other companies' software
That is pretty much what Apple is doing.
You can try to deny it all you want but Apple is being sued by the DOJ for many things, and one of this things is them forcing Safari on every web browser running on iOS.
I really don't care what Apple does to hobble Safari, so long as they let other more modern and capable browser engines on the platform.
You say that, but consider that they might not have used the word “browser” because super apps are not the same (your attempted redefinition is not how that term is normally used). That's going back to the App Store control of code distribution, there's certainly no technical reason why someone can't use HTML5 or JavaScript in an iOS app given how many do that every day.
Again, I'm not saying that what Apple is doing is blameless but it's important to read the actual DOJ cases so you can understand why these aren't the same. For example, you baldly assert “That is pretty much what Apple is doing” completely missing that Apple is only controlling what you can do with their hardware and is making no effort to prevent, say, Google or Samsung from doing something different on their own hardware. That's significantly different from Microsoft preventing Dell, IBM, Gateway, etc. from shipping alternate operating systems and those kind of legal distinctions matter a lot in court.
You're trying to weasel around the fact that "Super App" is definitely what a native browser app not using Safari is considered to be. The DOJ is explicitly mentioning HTML and Javascript, and you're just handwaving that away.
Good luck to you sir or madame, I don't care to continue this pointless back and forth.
I do not want to pay Apple for the privilege to develop a native app, as well as being forced to buy not just their mobile devices, but a full computer just to develop that native app on, when it could just be done as a web application. It's hurting me, a non-Apple user.
Oh wait, that’s totally not the case.
I refuse to pay Apple and buy their hardware to be able to develop a native app for their walled-garden platform, where they can then further extort me for any money my users spend through the app I create.
And the DOJ agrees with me, which is why they are suing Apple for abusive business practices.
Well, one reason is that most Android phones being sold are so underpowered that you have to make a native app to get decent performance. Facebook for one found out early on that it couldn’t get away with just having an app that was a web wrapper because of low end Android devices.
So where are all of the great groundbreaking popular web apps?
And saying the current US government is in agreement with you about anything isn’t the positive thing you seem to be implying it is…
So you think I'm the only person who ever had this problem? The DOJ apparently disagrees with you.
>Well, one reason is that most Android phones being sold are so underpowered that you have to make a native app to get decent performance.
Bullshit. It has nothing to do with performance, it has everything to do with Apple's abusive business practices not allowing any other web view on their platform, and purposely hobbling their browser for anti-competitive greedy business reasons.
>So where are all of the great groundbreaking popular web apps?
So where are your goalposts moving next?
>And saying the current US government is in agreement with you about anything isn’t the positive thing you seem to be implying it is…
I didn't say the current US government, the DOJ under the previous administration is the one that filed the charges against Apple. But I know you aren't arguing in good faith, so maybe we should just agree to disagree.
If the only reason web apps aren’t on iPhones is because of Safari and if there are other browser engines available for Android and Chrome is so much better, wouldn’t you expect to see great PWAs on Android? Especially with it being 70% of the world wide market?
> Bullshit. It has nothing to do with performance, it has everything to do with Apple's abusive business practices not allowing any other web view on their platform, and purposely hobbling their browser for anti-competitive greedy business reasons.
It doesn’t have anything to do with performance of iOS devices that’s true - because Apple doesn’t make any devices with substandard hardware with bad browser performance. But there are plenty of crappy Android device (most of them by sales volume) that do have subpar hardware performance.
But native apps are more performant than web based apps and web wrappers. Are you denying that?
> I didn't say the current US government, the DOJ under the previous administration is the one that filed the charges against Apple. But I know you aren't arguing in good faith, so maybe we should just agree to disagree.
One of us haven’t checked to see what the DOJ’s complaints are about - none of which are alternate browser engines…
Wow, that's quite the reach. Again, bad faith.
>wouldn’t you expect to see great PWAs on Android?
I do, YMMV. I even created one myself. But again, bad faith from you.
>because Apple doesn’t make any devices with substandard hardware
"You're holding it wrong" proves you wrong.
>that do have subpar hardware performance.
None of this is about a hardware dick-measuring contest, but you sure are trying to move the goalposts that way. Again, bad faith from you.
>But native apps are more performant than web based apps and web wrappers. Are you denying that?
This is another logical fallacy. I'm done with you, you're comments are not grounded in anything except your hatred of anything not Apple.
>One of us haven’t checked to see what the DOJ’s complaints are about - none of which are alternate browser engines…
Again, just more bullshit from you.
"The complaint also alleges that Apple’s conduct extends beyond these examples, affecting web browsers, video communication, news subscriptions, entertainment, automotive services, advertising, location services, and more. Apple has every incentive to extend and expand its course of conduct to acquire and maintain power over next-frontier devices and technologies."
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...
The "affecting web browsers" part is exactly the thing I described.
Apple already lost that exact thing in Europe, because Europe sued them for it too, and now you can use alternative browser engines on iOS in Europe. Apple's going to lose that one in the US too.
You really don't need to reply. I'm just going to give you canned response from here on out because I'm not wasting any more of my time with an Apple shill.
You should be working for Facebook or Google, they both came to the conclusion that their apps should use native frameworks for performance reasons…
It very much is about hardware. Most Android phones suck statistically (yes I know there are some performant ones. But that’s not what most of the world is buying) and your web app is not going to perform well on them.
By the way, what’s the ARR on your web app? Monthly active users? Have you tested it on one of the low end free phones?
And it’s not me being an Apple shill, your web app probably sucks like every other web app that has ever existed on mobile. I wouldn’t say the same about a native Android app.
You really don't need to reply. I'm just going to give you canned response from here on out because I'm not wasting any more of my time with an Apple shill.
Apple is essentially responsible for the shit show that is react native, flutter and all the other cross platform crap. Just let us build for the web with basic support for a native like experience. Works fine on every platform but iOS and iPadOS.
I as a small business don't want to write three separate fucking apps. I don't want to charge customers more to cover that. It's a waste of everyone's time and money.
You really don't need to reply. I'm just going to give you canned response from here on out because I'm not wasting any more of my time with an Apple shill.
So Apple is now responsible for the shit show of current web development and at the same time isn’t keeping up or doesn’t care about the web? Which is it?
I could swear that the two most popular web frameworks over the years either came from Google or Facebook.
How praytell is Apple responsible for Google’s Flutter - that they also have basically abandoned.
And run once run anywhere has never worked in the history of the industry.
Yes. Apple, who once promoted the web as a distribution model, changed course once they realized that doing so would lead to less revenue. They have been actively hostile to open web standards and PWAs as a distribution model.
https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/did-apple-just-break-web-...
https://proton.me/blog/apple-lawsuit
> And run once run anywhere has never worked in the history of the industry.
Yet it works pretty damn well on the web.
Now I am what you would consider a "Full Stallman" free software guy, but you can imagine my mixed feelings when I ended up being interviewed by Business Insider on why Microsoft shouldn't be giving up with web engine for a Chromium based browser. Yes, things like Safari are proprietary junk but they still keep things like Chrome dominance at bay. Alas I feel we are better having a few proprietary systems than a singular monolithic one. Once Apple lets that one go, it is only a matter of time until Google almost single handled controls the framework of the internet.
Save us Ladybird, you are our only hope!
The problem is Apple is intentionally hobbling their web browser and forcing every other browser maker to use it, which prevents web applications that use any kind of hardware API from functioning on iOS - the only alternative being making a native app for iOS where Apple can charge a significant amount for any purchases made through the native app. Web applications threaten Apple's greed, so they forbid any other browser maker from using anything but Safari on their platform.
Microsoft got sued in an antitrust and lost just because they bundled IE with Windows - not for forbidding any other browser on the platform like Apple has been doing, which is way worse IMHO. And that's one of many reasons the DOJ is suing Apple for abusive business practices.
I'll start with the most eggregious one to save time so you can just click away but: Microsoft wasn't sued for bundling a browser, it was sued because it used one monopoly position to aid another. Apple mobile devices are 57% of the market in the US (which is the highest percentage globally from what I can tell at a glance) and a far cry from 1997 Windows which was a staggering 96%+ of all desktop operating systems in the US. That is a monopoly which is not explicitly forbidden in the US unless you use it to further domination in some other field: Web browsers were considered another field.
That said, while I agree with you in principle, in practice I really don't like the idea of a browser monoculture. We already see the effects of it with WebUSB (for real) and Manifestv3 which nobody really wants but is essentially foisted on us.
There are two types of people: those who think the web is an application delivery platform, and those who think it's a window into information.
The more leaky the sandbox the worse security will get over time (even if we put a lot of eggs into the basket) and the more bloated things will get. But the people in the first camp cannot see passed their next meal for want of a "better" application delivery system. Anything that keeps them at bay is welcome to me, even if it's something I also don't agree with.
The lesser devil.
"The central issue was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its IE web browser software with its Windows operating system. Bundling the two products was allegedly a key factor in Microsoft's victory in the browser wars of the late 1990s, as every Windows user had a copy of IE. It was further alleged that this restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera), since it typically took extra time to buy and install the competing browsers."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
Yeah, Windows has a larger market share than Apple ever will, but that doesn't change the abusive business tactics Apple is using to satiate their greed.
When someone installs Chrome on iOS, they aren't getting Chrome, they are getting Safari with a wrapper. It's way worse than what Microsoft did with IE by simply bundling a browser with Windows - was it really so inconvenient to download and install a different browser when downloading and installing software is the de facto means of obtaining and running any software? I think the case against Microsoft was a bit absurd, honestly. And I don't care if Apple's market share is smaller, that isn't the point. They are preventing competition so that they can pocket even more money from developers.
>There are two types of people: those who think the web is an application delivery platform, and those who think it's a window into information.
And yet the web is both of those things. I think it's both, so am I a third type of person? What else are you getting wrong about this?
you don’t mention what a third type of person would look like, i only can see that you’re the first type from your comments. They’re fundamentally incompatible with each other (or, will cause major issues for each other) so being a blend of both is to be a walking contradiction.
What else are you wrong about!?
Only among people who don't have to develop for the Apple ecosystem.
Good grief. Sometimes it's good to get a reminder that there are still people who think this way.
Everyone else carries Apple devices.
GNU/Linux only exists on local VMs for containers, or servers on cloud instances.
I dev on a Mac all day and own 2 macs at home. Why?
* not going to try to convince the whole family to change and I want the various family & imessage features that everyone uses to all work
* all the developers at my company use macs and I don't want to have to set up my own unique configurations for everything using WSL and stuff.
* In the US, often the Android versions of "apps" you're forced to use by random businesses (instead of the Web which usually would work fine), are pawned off on an offshore team, and no execs use Android so there's no accountability when those apps suck.
* Windows also has many recent disappointments (ads in the start menu, increasingly dumber and worse settings screens), so they're doing a bad job of winning over people like me, dampening my enthusiasm to switch.
* Linux is cool but I'm too busy to want a project as my daily driver PC.
I have nothing but scorn for Tim Cook's Apple and have zero goodwill for them. They haven't shipped an actual smart idea for any of their platforms besides maybe Shortcuts (which they bought), and even then it took them 3 years to let me run automations unattended.
I haven't seen this.
Also I would imagine those businesses would do the same for their iOS development? It's odd that you would assume they don't.
The point is that regardless of whether one or both are offshored, the VP or CEO will get on your ass immediately if the iOS app has a crash or even a layout bug because they all use iOS personally. Whereas the most influential person in the company who even owns an Android device tends to be some IT manager.
YMMV but this is precisely how it worked in my last two jobs. For instance, in one company, we outsourced both, but the Android app was developed entirely in India, whereas the iOS team was supervised and led by a US-based contractor that we could (and did frequently) talk to.
Of course, only a tiny number of such "commercial" apps are native, 90% are some cross-platform framework. But the iOS versions tend to get far more attention when sloppy habits and lack of skill result in lag, race conditions, bugs, etc.
PS: I belive completely that this dynamic either does not exist, or is actually in REVERSE, in countries where Android is more dominant. In the US, iOS users dominate the top 80% of the orgchart in basically every company besides Google.
Do they? I feel like this is a bimodal thing from what I've seen of other peoples opinions - they're either amazing and all you ever use, or they're the worst company ever.
As a developer I've always seen Macs as a necessary evil - they were the only polished "working out of the box" unix-like system you could buy for a long time but you had to put up with locked down software, comically bad pricing and cooling issues.
Now with the Mx stuff the hardware is amazing, and pretty fantastic value for money if you avoid the weird points in the price scale where they massively overcharge for RAM. But you still have to use their locked down software stack and ecosystem.
They're both the polar opposite of "tech friendly".
This love for Apple seems to be a very US-American thing.
I would thus rather say many European countries are more Microsoft-centered, even though at least in Germany I would say that people deeply hate and distrust the more and more spying functionalities that Microsoft introduces into its software. So I would claim this current dominance of the Microsoft ecosystem is fragile.
Surprisingly, at least in Germany I observe that Microsoft plans to stop providing updates to Windows 10 (and forces the users to buy new computers) has made quite a lot of mainstream users to at least consider switching to the GNU/Linux ecosystem:
It is perhaps difficult to understand to people who are used to the US mentality, but the fact that Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will be the last Windows, and after that broke this promise (and particularly important: ceases to provide further updates for Windows 10 despite this promise) is considered to be near "high treason" by many PC users - a nigh-unforgivable sin. In particular US-American companies should really learn to understand that (in the eyes of German users, who consider such promises to be sacred) if you give a promise, and break it, this is (I am only slightly exaggerating) something that the CEO of the respective company should better commit suicide for because of the shame that he brought to the company.
> Apple computers are typically rather mostly used by people from media and audio production (+ some hipsters).
For what it’s worth, this is the sort of stuff I meant by “stylish and cool,” these are the fashionable people, right? That doesn’t make their decisions good, at all (I intentionally picked the description “stylish and cool,” not “good and technically solid.”)
The difference is: outside of these bubbles (somewhat excluding the audio production people: these are in my opinion rather pragmatic about their computers; it's just that Apple historically had the best support for their requirements) Apple is not considered stylish and cool, but rather ridiculed, and fun is made of this Apple-fanboi-ism.
So, it's rather some "Apple bubble" where the people inside it (in particular the hipsters and some media people inside this bubble) praise each other (and themselves :-) ) for being stylish, cool and having a refined taste, but outside of this bubble this judgment is not shared.
Microsoft is the Walmart of operating system providers, that happened to buy a popular Git hosting site and briefly made noises that seemed not awful.
In terms of coolness, Microsoft peaked right around the time they were hiring the cast of Friends to promote their OS.