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There seems to be a general lack of interest in maintaining the underlying UNIX system well at Apple, for various reasons. It's frustrating that a large company

There seems to be a general lack of interest in maintaining the underlying UNIX system well at Apple, for various reasons. It's frustrating that a large company with a lot of money is unable to handle OS projects with the seriousness and attention to detail that they deserve. Wanting to release a new version of the OS every year with some shiny new features for the end user should be balanced with stabilizing and improving things under the hood. I'm deeply disappointed that such focus on the Mac and macOS is lacking.

pjmlp 10y ago
UNIX never matter to the Apple culture. They were never committed to it with A/UX and for NeXT it was just a way to bring in software from the blooming UNIX workstations market. I remember back in the early 2003, they came to CERN trying to promote the idea of using Mac OS X for research because of the UNIX compatibility. In both cases, NeXT (aka Apple) needed the developers to help grow their diminishing market. Now they have the upper hand and don't need UNIX compatibility more than they already offer, and the non-UNIX layers is what matters. They are not alone, just look at Google efforts with Brillo, Fuchsia and removal of insecure UNIX V APIs in Android.
- kazinator 10y ago
  I think Jobs did believe in Unix, as a way to have a system that doesn't fall down all the time; just he wasn't perhaps on board with all the crusty bits that come with Unix.
  - valarauca1 10y ago
    More likely it was that Mach was a fully functional free OS. Next only had to slap a GUI toolkit on top of to have their own OS. Also as it was a teaching OS, so it was easy to find reference material + developers. Microsoft more or less did the same thing with OpenBSD and NT kernel. Several kernel sections started out as BSD code (the networking stack for example). Don't forget Jobs attempted to steal NeXt's fork of the GCC with Obj-C extensions. The FSF had to sue NeXt to get them to release their modifications. Stealing Free Software is cheap from a business perspective.
    - sedachv 10y ago
      > Don't forget Jobs attempted to steal NeXt's fork of the GCC with Obj-C extensions. The FSF had to sue NeXt to get them to release their modifications. Actually there was no lawsuit. NeXT released the patches after a warning: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/talks/LinuxTag-2011/compliance.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/talks/LinuxTag-2011/compliance.html > Stealing Free Software is cheap from a business perspective. This is why I recommend everyone use AGPLv3 whenever possible (and consider changing the license on your old Free Software - you can do this if all of the contributors consent). Apple has been removing all GPLv3 software from Mac OS X over the past several years because v3 is incompatible with their goals of totalitarian computing: http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/ http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Google is on the same path. Brillo and Fuchsia have almost no GPL or LGPL licensed code. They also are in the process of kicking GCC out of the Android NDK. Only a few feature parity issues are preventing it for the time being.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    I don't think so. When Apple tried A/UX he was on his way out and it was never an attempt to replace Mac OS. Regarding NeXT, the company was targeting the new workstation market, which was moving away from Lisp and Ada Machines into UNIX ones, thanks to UNIX code being freely available, as AT&T was not allowed to charge for it. NeXT main competition were Sun and Irix workstations, so a certain compatibility with UNIX was desired. However the whole Mach stack was very UNIX-unlike. Many naysayers regarding Objective-C use for systems programming aren't aware that even NextSTEP drivers were written in it. So it was all about business, Steve was always keen on how Xerox PARC OSes used to work.
    - kazinator 10y ago
      We can probably think of A/UX as Apple's chess piece, positioned against Microsoft's chess piece of the same type: Xenix.
    - gpderetta 10y ago
      For what is worth, Unix and Mach have a long tradition of being welded together, starting with OSF/1 and derivatives.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Which was created with the purpose to move away from AT&T design.
theanswerer 10y ago
Apple clearly doesn't care about the Mac platform and derives only a sliver of revenue from it compared to iPhone, music and app sales. Apple believes that Mac exists solely as platform to develop iOS apps.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  They care enough for those of us that see Mac OS X, as an operating system using Swift, Objective-C, Cocoa, drivers written in C++, Metal, playgrounds and sandboxed applications, with little or no interest to UNIX PDP-11 CLI compatibility.
- newscracker 10y ago
  I doubt any "additional" money spent on macOS/OS X would make a huge difference to Apple's bottom line. But it would show that Apple is serious about the platform. Money itself is not the issue, but a serious lack of management attention right from the top. Craig Federighi is a nice and funny communicator who knows software (at a deep enough level usually not expected in large corporations for someone in his position), but something is clearly missing in the entire pipeline.
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > I doubt any "additional" money spent on macOS/OS X would make a huge difference to Apple's bottom line. But it would show that Apple is serious about the platform. Why should they care about it as a platform if its impact is negligible. Wouldn't one prefer to focus on the next non-negligible thing?
    - newscracker 10y ago
      > Why should they care about it as a platform if its impact is negligible. Wouldn't one prefer to focus on the next non-negligible thing? Apple should care for multiple reasons: - reputation matters - not acting like it's abandoned its roots is a positive in image building - not being shamed repeatedly, with good reason, about its attitude as well as seeming ineptitude - recruiting talent becomes easier since it's likely more people may see Apple as a decent place to work at (considering this alone in this context, for the sake of simplicity) - making the platform used to build apps for its best selling platform a lot better ought to be a no-brainer - …and many more that don't occur to me right now As I said, I don't think Apple would have to blow a significant amount of money with its finances and budgets to make this better. In my view, with the reasons stated above, Apple has more to lose with this lackadaisical attitude toward macOS/OS X and the Mac platform than just saving some money because the revenue potential is lower. I can't imagine how it'd be to be in a company that gets shamed so much and doesn't seem to want to respond or do much to alleviate matters. On a related note, Xcode also gets a lot of flak, despite the fact that it's what helps Apple make money from apps. I repeat, something seems seriously missing.
matt4077 10y ago
I feel the developer experience has improved substantial, mostly because homebrew is simply amazingly stable and up-to-date. I don't care about the build-in ruby or git because it's replaced immediately anyway. I guess the experience is different for people doing system-level C.
- rleigh 10y ago
  But this is a /workaround/ for the base system being poorly maintained. Apple provide Ruby, Python, and a whole host of other languages and tools on the base system. There's little excuse for them not to keep it up to date and functional. The default "experience" is miserable.

pjmlp 10y ago

UNIX never matter to the Apple culture. They were never committed to it with A/UX and for NeXT it was just a way to bring in software from the blooming UNIX workstations market. I remember back in the early 2003, they came to CERN trying to promote the idea of using Mac OS X for research because of the UNIX compatibility. In both cases, NeXT (aka Apple) needed the developers to help grow their diminishing market. Now they have the upper hand and don't need UNIX compatibility more than they already offer, and the non-UNIX layers is what matters. They are not alone, just look at Google efforts with Brillo, Fuchsia and removal of insecure UNIX V APIs in Android.

kazinator 10y ago
I think Jobs did believe in Unix, as a way to have a system that doesn't fall down all the time; just he wasn't perhaps on board with all the crusty bits that come with Unix.
- valarauca1 10y ago
  More likely it was that Mach was a fully functional free OS. Next only had to slap a GUI toolkit on top of to have their own OS. Also as it was a teaching OS, so it was easy to find reference material + developers. Microsoft more or less did the same thing with OpenBSD and NT kernel. Several kernel sections started out as BSD code (the networking stack for example). Don't forget Jobs attempted to steal NeXt's fork of the GCC with Obj-C extensions. The FSF had to sue NeXt to get them to release their modifications. Stealing Free Software is cheap from a business perspective.
  - sedachv 10y ago
    > Don't forget Jobs attempted to steal NeXt's fork of the GCC with Obj-C extensions. The FSF had to sue NeXt to get them to release their modifications. Actually there was no lawsuit. NeXT released the patches after a warning: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/talks/LinuxTag-2011/compliance.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/talks/LinuxTag-2011/compliance.html > Stealing Free Software is cheap from a business perspective. This is why I recommend everyone use AGPLv3 whenever possible (and consider changing the license on your old Free Software - you can do this if all of the contributors consent). Apple has been removing all GPLv3 software from Mac OS X over the past several years because v3 is incompatible with their goals of totalitarian computing: http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/ http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Google is on the same path. Brillo and Fuchsia have almost no GPL or LGPL licensed code. They also are in the process of kicking GCC out of the Android NDK. Only a few feature parity issues are preventing it for the time being.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I don't think so. When Apple tried A/UX he was on his way out and it was never an attempt to replace Mac OS. Regarding NeXT, the company was targeting the new workstation market, which was moving away from Lisp and Ada Machines into UNIX ones, thanks to UNIX code being freely available, as AT&T was not allowed to charge for it. NeXT main competition were Sun and Irix workstations, so a certain compatibility with UNIX was desired. However the whole Mach stack was very UNIX-unlike. Many naysayers regarding Objective-C use for systems programming aren't aware that even NextSTEP drivers were written in it. So it was all about business, Steve was always keen on how Xerox PARC OSes used to work.
  - kazinator 10y ago
    We can probably think of A/UX as Apple's chess piece, positioned against Microsoft's chess piece of the same type: Xenix.
  - gpderetta 10y ago
    For what is worth, Unix and Mach have a long tradition of being welded together, starting with OSF/1 and derivatives.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Which was created with the purpose to move away from AT&T design.

theanswerer 10y ago

Apple clearly doesn't care about the Mac platform and derives only a sliver of revenue from it compared to iPhone, music and app sales. Apple believes that Mac exists solely as platform to develop iOS apps.

pjmlp 10y ago
They care enough for those of us that see Mac OS X, as an operating system using Swift, Objective-C, Cocoa, drivers written in C++, Metal, playgrounds and sandboxed applications, with little or no interest to UNIX PDP-11 CLI compatibility.
newscracker 10y ago
I doubt any "additional" money spent on macOS/OS X would make a huge difference to Apple's bottom line. But it would show that Apple is serious about the platform. Money itself is not the issue, but a serious lack of management attention right from the top. Craig Federighi is a nice and funny communicator who knows software (at a deep enough level usually not expected in large corporations for someone in his position), but something is clearly missing in the entire pipeline.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > I doubt any "additional" money spent on macOS/OS X would make a huge difference to Apple's bottom line. But it would show that Apple is serious about the platform. Why should they care about it as a platform if its impact is negligible. Wouldn't one prefer to focus on the next non-negligible thing?
  - newscracker 10y ago
    > Why should they care about it as a platform if its impact is negligible. Wouldn't one prefer to focus on the next non-negligible thing? Apple should care for multiple reasons: - reputation matters - not acting like it's abandoned its roots is a positive in image building - not being shamed repeatedly, with good reason, about its attitude as well as seeming ineptitude - recruiting talent becomes easier since it's likely more people may see Apple as a decent place to work at (considering this alone in this context, for the sake of simplicity) - making the platform used to build apps for its best selling platform a lot better ought to be a no-brainer - …and many more that don't occur to me right now As I said, I don't think Apple would have to blow a significant amount of money with its finances and budgets to make this better. In my view, with the reasons stated above, Apple has more to lose with this lackadaisical attitude toward macOS/OS X and the Mac platform than just saving some money because the revenue potential is lower. I can't imagine how it'd be to be in a company that gets shamed so much and doesn't seem to want to respond or do much to alleviate matters. On a related note, Xcode also gets a lot of flak, despite the fact that it's what helps Apple make money from apps. I repeat, something seems seriously missing.

matt4077 10y ago

I feel the developer experience has improved substantial, mostly because homebrew is simply amazingly stable and up-to-date. I don't care about the build-in ruby or git because it's replaced immediately anyway. I guess the experience is different for people doing system-level C.

rleigh 10y ago
But this is a /workaround/ for the base system being poorly maintained. Apple provide Ruby, Python, and a whole host of other languages and tools on the base system. There's little excuse for them not to keep it up to date and functional. The default "experience" is miserable.