10 ms·

Return of the Mac (2005)

121 points by rocky1138 10y ago

smaili 10y ago
March 2005 :)
- moreira 10y ago
  I immediately clicked ("return of the Mac" + "Paul Graham" = perfect clickbait, given what's been going on these past few days). Got me. It's a pretty good read though. At the end, there's a mention of % of YC people on OS X. I bet anything that OS X would be the dominant platform in that demographic these days.
kentosi 10y ago
How can an posting dated from 2005 with only 19 points (at time of writing) reach number 2 on Hacker News? Does anyone know how the ranking algorithm works?
- rwc 10y ago
  Methinks domain plays a significant role...
- foota 10y ago
  Someone recently submitted the post.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  Time since submission is an important factor. Take a look at /newest; this is by far the most upvoted article on it, and most articles there have 1-3 points.
- Lazare 10y ago
  19 points are worth exponentially more the younger the post is, and exponentially less the older it is. If you're trying to understand why a post is where it is, age is just as important as votes.
- greatest-ape 10y ago
  points / time_elapsed ^ 2 ?
- Light2Yellow 10y ago
  I guess the algorithm counts a coefficient (num_of_upvotes / time).
- untog 10y ago
  It was posted 20 minutes ago (at time of writing) - the algorithm works based on submission time, not authoring time.
- 3chelon 10y ago
  Maybe the author's name has some weighting around these parts? ;)
Lazare 10y ago
Ten years (or a bit longer, depending on how you measure it) is a good run.
jliechti1 10y ago
"And open and good is what Macs are again, finally. The intervening years have created a situation that is, as far as I know, without precedent: Apple is popular at the low end and the high end, but not in the middle. My seventy year old mother has a Mac laptop. My friends with PhDs in computer science have Mac laptops. [2] And yet Apple's overall market share is still small. Though unprecedented, I predict this situation is also temporary" Did PG's prediction come true?
- untog 10y ago
  Yes - they lost the low end. Perhaps "lost" is too strong a word - they weren't interested in keeping it.
guelo 10y ago
I laughed at the dig about Intel and Microsoft stickers. They're much easier to remove that the giant glowing billboard ad built into the Mac chassis.
- cooper12 10y ago
  It doesn't glow any more on the newer models. Also there's a difference between a manufacturer's logo and stickers. You'd be hard-pressed to find a laptop that doesn't include the former.
- chadgeidel 10y ago
  Which no longer glows at least. (2016 MacBook and MacBook Pro models)
- marricks 10y ago
  Well, supposedly you like the logo of the product you buy, especially if it's tastefully done. No one tries to remove Lenovo from their thinkpad, right? The "Intel inside" and "AMD graphics" are crumby stickers your wrist can feel and add nothing to the design.
  - dingaling 10y ago
    > No one tries to remove Lenovo Cerainly they do. Black electrical tape is an effective logo-hider for laptops and cameras. It is also great for suppressing those bright blue LEDs that feature on many devices.
- Lio 10y ago
  As others have mentioned the new logos don't glow but even when they do glow the important thing is that it's on the back of the screen. So I as the user am not really aware of it when I'm working. It's kind of a shame they've re-added the "MacBook Pro" text below the screen, I loved the debranded look of business end of a MacBook Pro. On my late 2013 MacBook Pro the only Apple branding I can see is the small Apple in the menu bar. That's really cool.
mrigor 10y ago
The new Macbook Pro supports max of 16GB RAM while Thinkpads support 32GB. This makes it hard to justify getting a Mac.
- sssilver 10y ago
  Factoring in the real world battery performance between those machines helps understand the Thinkpad tradeoff. One I'm not willing to take.
- sanswork 10y ago
  Unless you don't need more than 16GB for the near term future. My MBP has 16gb and never seems to be near an issue for me even running kube-solo, a few vboxes, and light PS work. I would have liked the option to get 32 just to future proof since I tend to keep my mac laptops for 4-5 years but I'm willing it trade that off for the better screen, trackpad and software.
  - alemhnan 10y ago
    My MBP has 16gb as well and no problem whatsoever with that. But it's a 5 years old model and when I bought I had only 4gb. So 4x in 5 years. By extension I would probably need at least 2x 16gb in 3-4 years but instead I will be stuck with 16gb.
    - sanswork 10y ago
      What part of your workflow are you finding increasing dramatically in memory used? I'm just a programmer so most of my stuff is pretty steady except I use a lot more virtual machines these days. But even then I can comfortably run a half dozen on my laptop with no problems and still do other work.
- dijit 10y ago
  It's a tradeoff someone down the chain is making, LPDDR3 has a max of 16G and LPDDR4 is not supported on skylake/kabylake. LPDDR3 being 30% less power drawing than standard DDR4. So. More ram or more battery.. However I have a personal vendetta against Lenovo for their absolutely abhorrent practices in terms of consumer safety and their declining hardware standard.
OJFord 10y ago
Mods - needs a '[2005]'.
strathmeyer 10y ago
Whenever I meet someone who says, "You seem really smart, you must use a Mac," I understand who they are made for.
- jameskegel 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.
  - snerbles 10y ago
    Status signalling.
largehotcoffee 10y ago
I honestly hope the Touch Bar doesn't survive longer than one generation of MacBooks. I believe the whole thing is a gimmick (a well intentioned gimmick) meant to drive forward one thing, Apple Pay on the MacBook. Most likely it's internally perceived as a situation where the end justifies the means, if Apple Pay is widely adopted on the MacBook this will look like a genius decision down the line and make a ridiculous amount of money in the long-term. If not, blame the Touch Bar. Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook. It might not have been perfect, but it would have been lauded as revolutionary by the mainstream media. By not doing it they have now given their competitors the chance to grab that market. When Apple does eventually make a full touch input screen MacBook, Apple Pay will be a part of it. The Touch Bar is just a stepping stone to get to that point, but it's a step they should have skipped.
- georgespencer 10y ago
  > I honestly hope the Touch Bar doesn't survive longer than one generation of MacBooks. Have you used it?
  - leetrout 10y ago
    > Have you used it? This. This x 1000. Everyone is complaining without any hands on experience. The "magic mouse" is one of my least favorite pieces of tech to come from Apple (I use a trusty Logitech) and I do 95% or more of my work with an external mechanical keyboard. I wouldn't even notice the change and I think a lot of people wouldn't, either. The track pad is lightyears beyond anything I've had from Lenovo (can't speak for HP) and has to be the One Killer Feature™ that would make me ^happily pick a brand new MBP. They really should support more ram though...
    - rbanffy 10y ago
      > can't speak for HP HP, Acer, Dell... Nothing comes close.
    - gordon_freeman 10y ago
      > The track pad is lightyears beyond anything I've had from Lenovo This. If I want to pick one feature on Macbook (Base/Air/Pro) hardware side (Obviously I can not live without macOS because of its Unix-like nature plus all the major supported 3rd party softwares) then that would be Macbook's touchpad. It's absolutely irreplaceable and lightyears ahead in scrolling experience than any other damn laptop.
rmason 10y ago
So by posting this are you suggesting he writes a follow up article about the return of the PC? I think that might be premature, but definitely Apple has forgotten which group started the surge of people buying Macs.
- 3chelon 10y ago
  I think I read a later article by Paul Graham advocating thin client netbooks (aka Chromebooks et al).
meritt 10y ago
As a longtime PC user, I'm very thankful how the excellent Apple offerings really propelled the PC laptop market over the past decade to focus on both build quality and high-end specs, most notably Dell XPS and Lenovo/Thinkpad X1 series.
- walterbell 10y ago
  Intel also invested in Ultrabook and 2-in-1 reference designs to help PC OEMs compete with Apple.
IBM 10y ago
What's key about this is that Apple didn't make a laptop for hackers. It was a nice confluence of factors that made Macs attractive to hackers, but Apple never set out to court them. You should keep that in mind if you're a hacker and you feel 'betrayed'. I've been seeing a lot of cringeworthy takes lately which basically amount to trying to guilt a corporation into making your ideal laptop. I can't find the link to it but one of them said something like "I'm an influencer too so you [Apple] should care that I'm switching!"
- bluedino 10y ago
  When they went with a Unix based OS, they did.
  - IBM 10y ago
    Which is why it was a happy confluence of factors. Unix wasn't a call to action though, just an implementation detail.
- elchief 10y ago
  Sure but it wouldn't be that hard for them to keep macbook pro "pro", and it makes them money and earns them maven users
- linguae 10y ago
  At least before the iPhone era began, Apple has played up the fact that OS X has *nix roots in order to draw hackers to the Mac. Check out this switcher's testimonial from 2002: http://web.archive.org/web/20021030230932/http://www.apple.com/switch/stories/index2.html http://web.archive.org/web/20021030230932/http://www.apple.c... And another switcher story explicitly mentioning Unix: http://web.archive.org/web/20021031010139/http://www.apple.com/switch/stories/ http://web.archive.org/web/20021031010139/http://www.apple.c... And notice this from the tech specs of the Titanium PowerBook G4 circa 2002: "Whether you use a Mac, Windows, or UNIX system, your search for the world’s best high performance thin and light notebook computer is over." "Complementing this performance platform is Mac OS X—a supermodern operating system that combines the power and stability of UNIX with the elegance of Macintosh." http://web.archive.org/web/20021004151455/http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specs.html http://web.archive.org/web/20021004151455/http://www.apple.c... And don't forget about the former NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP users who more than likely migrated to the Mac in order for them to continue using an updated (if with a different UI) version of the operating system they loved.
Keyframe 10y ago
After some initial thoughts about the reveal, I gave it some more thought. I wouldn't mind revealed MBP 15" if it were the same features in 13" form. That's what it missed, IMO. 15" features feel more like what a 'power' laptop would look like in 13" form, and 13" one is a MBA basically, and 'true' 15" is missing.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
clifanatic 10y ago
Steve Jobs founded Apple. Apple changed the world. They fired him. They became a joke. They brought him back. Apple changed the world, again. Steve Jobs died. Apple became a joke, again.
- 3chelon 10y ago
  The richest company in the history of the world could hardly be called a joke, unless you were joking of course. I for one am concerned about their current trajectory, but their R&D budget is $25m per day so I don't think they can be written off just yet.
- miguelrochefort 10y ago
  fingers crossed
dasil003 10y ago
I've recently thinking about how to submit more stories that get traction, and I have to take my hat off to rocky1138 for capturing the zeitgeist perfectly with this submission. This essay resonates strongly with me, and I wish Tim Cook saw things this way. But in my heart I realize that it is probably only an accident of history that the most polished consumer computing device company in history happened to make a great Unix developer box. Although it's undeniable that developers were key to Apple's resurgence, the need for embracing open source and modern free software was only necessary because of Apple's weak market position. We know this because of Apple's failed attempts at pushing their own standards in the 80s and 90s when they got their lunch eaten by Microsoft. Interoperability was something that Jobs grudgingly got on board with when he realized he didn't have the market clout to force standards down people throat. Apple now has that clout. No matter how bad the Mac gets, there will still be developers for iOS as long as Apple keeps delivering on iOS. Personally I think I have to stick with the Mac for a while because no one else is producing a software/hardware package that is anywhere near as nice overall, but maybe I'll take pg's advice and walk around some college campuses to see what are the kids who can't afford Apple's immaculately overpriced machines are using.
cs702 10y ago
Money quote: "How big is the hacker market, after all? Quite small, but important out of proportion to its size. When it comes to computers, what hackers are doing now, everyone will be doing in ten years. Almost all technology, from Unix to bitmapped displays to the Web, became popular first within CS departments and research labs, and gradually spread to the rest of the world." Today, hackers are leaving Apple.
catskull 10y ago
> The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need to know? This. I have actually lost sleep since the announcement. I keep going over in my mind alternate hardware, but the fact is that macOS (OS X) is the single best operating system for developers today. I am generalizing "developers". For any embedded development, or HDL stuff, OS X will not be a nice experience. But for web or mobile development (which I anticipate is quite larger than development that could not be done in OS X), it's just better. Things work. If the don't, there is a massive support system in place and worst case scenario you can drive <1hr to an Apple store and let them take care of it. Sure, there are edge cases there as well, but compared to the ultrabook you bought from Costco or any distribution of linux, you have much more support available. I do love my macbook pro (glass trackpad, backlit keyboard, good display), but I absolutely must have macOS. At this point my only hope is that a new distribution of Linux evolves that can seriously compete and works flawlessly on off the shelf hardware (such as the Dell XPS), but we're not there yet. Elementary OS looks promising. Perhaps developers would fork Darwin completely and make a macOS competitor. I guess I should have seen the warning signs. The biggest was macOS Sierra that offered me no reason to upgrade. Apple seems to be stuck inside of an "innovation" echo chamber. Innovating for the sake of innovating. Sorry for the wall of text, but if you have any suggestions for me, please share them.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  Honestly Windows 10 isn't so bad. I primary do my development on a Mac as well but have switched on and off with Windows 10 machines. Naturally the build quality of the hardware has a crazy scale for Windows machines but stick with good hardware like the Surface line or at least Microsoft Genuine. With the new Ubuntu capabilities of Windows the terminal isn't so bad. It still leaves a lot to be desired but I think they're well on their way. I wouldn't be surprised if in another year Windows 10 is just as good in nix. At least that's what I'm hoping for. I do feel like MacOS does a better job multi tasking though...
  - equalarrow 10y ago
    Yah, I think Windows has gotten a lot better since the Vista days. But, VS - I was trying out porting some iOS Obj-C to run on Windows. Impressive that it actually worked, but VS was like, blech. Granted, Xcode is a piece of crap too - it's so buggy and unstable a lot of the time. But I can at least read or figure out what's going on. VS, tiny fonts, things you can't read, tons of "what's this for?" configuration. After my playing around with it (and I used the first few versions of VC years ago) I was thinking, yah, I don't think I could get into this dev environment again.. :-\
marcosscriven 10y ago
I popped into the Apple Store on Regent Street in London today, where they have a couple of these on display in plastic cylinders (but can't touch). They have a constant rolling demo, and two things struck me. The changing touchbar display constantly distracted me from the screen. Also, the little square area on the far right for the touch sensor doesn't blend in nearly as well as the photos make out. Worse, presumably for symmetry, there's a square of the same size at the other end - so the display for the 'Esc' key is actually the distance of one key in from the left hand edge.
- glhaynes 10y ago
  Note that in actual usage, the Touch Bar will only be changing substantially when you switch between apps/contexts or are interacting with it. From the Touch Bar HIG at https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/AbouttheTouchBar.html https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Us...: Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a display. Although technically it’s a screen, the Touch Bar functions as an input device, not a secondary display. The user may glance at the Touch Bar to locate or use a control, but their primary focus is the main screen. The Touch Bar shouldn’t display alerts, messages, scrolling content, static content, or anything else that commands the user’s attention or distracts from their work on the main screen.
meehow 10y ago
1. Apple did pretty good job at popularizing Unix on laptop. 2. Apple's market share is around 6%. In last 3 years Linux doubled it's market share and went from 1% to 2% https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Linux&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=190&qpnp=25&qptimeframe=M https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp... 3. If Apple will fail with their new products for developers, then they will switch most likely to Linux and serious growth of Linux market share on desktop is quite probable.
SwellJoe 10y ago
I got a new computer relatively recently. It's a modest looking plastic Dell Inspiron; but it has a 4k touchscreen display, an i7 CPU, a GTX960M GPU, 16GB of RAM, and an SSD. It cost ~$900, on sale. I, frankly, can't imagine paying the Apple tax, especially now. I kinda suspect we're going to see a replay of the long slow decline into mediocrity that Apple experienced before Jobs' return. With higher prices and a seeming lack of product vision going forward, I suspect the shine on Apple products for developers will fade. I mean, maybe I just don't get it, but the touchbar seems kinda like a boondoggle (and, if it is going to exist, I wouldn't want it to kill my esc key). Then again, I still don't really get the touchscreen on laptops. I have one, but rarely use it.
- MrScruff 10y ago
  > I got a new computer relatively recently. It's a modest looking plastic Dell Inspiron; but it has a 4k touchscreen display, an i7 CPU, a GTX960M GPU, 16GB of RAM, and an SSD. It cost ~$900, on sale. I, frankly, can't imagine paying the Apple tax, especially now. Without meaning to be rude, this comes across like a 90s platform wars usenet post. There is no tax - it's two different products with different features and different prices. If you're happy with your choice, that's great! I like and use computers a lot and don't buy them that often, so I don't mind spending a bit more to get the machine I want.
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    Sure, it may be more fair to compare to an XPS model. But, even so...big price difference. Admittedly, if you really love macOS, buying a Mac is a reasonable choice, and the only realistic choice for non-technical folks (building a Hackintosh is non-trivial, and a license violation). But, I'd just be installing Linux on it, anyway.
- sanswork 10y ago
  "I got a new computer made with worse materials and having worse specs and it was cheaper(when on sale). (insert quip about apple tax)". I've personally seen this exact same form of post in various places for almost a decade now. There isn't an Apple tax though. Once you look at actually comparable hardware from the other manufactures you end up with similar prices.
MrScruff 10y ago
I think the negative reaction to the new MacBook Pro seems excessive. The only real objections I have are the increase in price and the new keyboard though I'm open minded that I'll get used to that. Apple like to make slim, light products. And that's a good thing! There's always a compromise between size/weight/power usage and performance, and I don't think the choices they're making are bad ones. I'm sure if they could have put 32Gb in there without sacrificing some other aspect of the design they would have done so. The negative reaction to touch bar seems to be mostly from people who haven't used it, the press reaction was positive. I use vim but the escape key is horrible to reach on a Macbook Pro anyway so I rebound it a long time ago. I've read bizarre complaints that developers 'need function keys for single step debugging' as though that's not going to be possible with touch bar. But then I never really got the 'Apple software quality' meme either so maybe I'm not representative.
- dognotdog 10y ago
  A wild rant appears. The negative reaction is not because the new MBP is terrible when viewed in a vacuum, it is because people who would like (or actually need) more powerful hardware than the one-size-fits-all approach that seems to be Apple's current course are no longer catered to, or so it seems. Personnally, I don't really care about the touch bar one way or another, but what I do care about is that I would like to have one machine I can do all my work on, which involves a wider range of things one a daily basis than is typical (e.g. video/image editing, GPU powered number crunching, coding, and sitting in moving vehicles plugged into a bunch of stuff). In the past few years, the 15" MBP has been the machine to do it all, but in it's newest incarnation(s) I am no longer sure it would still be the best tool. It seems like gimmicks are added, but useful extras are stripped away. Maybe it's just in the uncanny valley of progress with USB-C, but for the moment the way they went about it all or nothing seems like a major inconvenience, with all the "legacy" hardware I need to attach. And there's minor things like removing the power brick's cord. As such, my first instinct is also to bitch and moan, as now it looks as though I need to find a new setup in the near future, and damn Apple for building something for the median user, but not for me. I, too, like to think that though I have an atypical usage pattern, what I do and how I talk about it benefits Apple enough that they should at least invest a bit of effort to try and keep me on their platform.
billions 10y ago
The new MacBook Pro's Touch Bar is meant as a halfway point between keys and a touch screen. It may replace the application dock, it may replace the menu bar, it may do more granular things like offer local variables, or word completion. Typed input is slow. Until USB can wire into the brain, we will continue needing input help. Perhaps the Touch Bar will, with the help of software, make the data channel to between brain and machine a little faster. The UX of the Touch Bar's software will effectively determine productivity increase and adoption. In a world where Moore's Law has run its course, I believe an improvement of above 20% input speed will make it a success.
27182818284 10y ago
For what it is worth, no Apple fan I know was seriously disappointed by the Touch Bar on the new macs. They (myself included) are disappointed by: * A pro machine with underwhelming specifications * Connectors that now few people know which is what. I feel bad for the amount of arguing and screaming workers in Apple stores are going to get over USB vs USB C vs MagSafe vs Lightning vs HDMI vs Thunderbolt vs Headphone jack -- Heck I own macs and I'm not even sure what all you need for a new iPhone and a new MacBook Pro As a great example, someone I know that describe's himself as an "Apple Fanboy" spent a half hour talking about what a flop the new MacBook is while wearing his Apple watch. That really makes it sink in what a lemon people think the new MacBook is
usaphp 10y ago
Everybody seems to complain about a 16Gb max ram, but I've yet to see anyone have a laptop with 32Gb of Ram anyway, nevermind actually needed all those 32Gb. It seems lately people are just trying to complain for a sake of complaining, they don't care about a reason, just to say something negative, find a flaw, I recently watched some podcast after a apple and microsoft event, they first blamed apple that macbook has only 16gb of ram max, but at the same time they found excuse in microsoft studio that it has a crappy 965m in a $3200+ machine saying that it takes a long time to develop a product and it's understandable that Microsoft is using an old hardware. I love new macbook pro, I think it's great, especially its new touch bar, lighter and thinner form and a longer battery life, not much else I wanted honestly.
- Mandatum 10y ago
  I tend to virtualise a lot of infrastructure and dependencies during development and testing on my local machine. With "infrastructure as code" this is becoming more common, especially with integration work. I agree most developers won't need that amount of RAM, but having to shut down parts of the network that aren't applicable to my current work is annoying to the point I'm switching away from macOS to Linux on a 32GB Thinkpad.
- kainolophobia 10y ago
  My 2015 rMBP is currently using 14.23GB of RAM with an additional 14.56GB swap file. Almost all of it is Chrome on macOS. This is without VMs, video editing, etc. Just standard development tools. Sure, I may have some untrusted code hijacking my threads, but I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy a MBP with 32GB of RAM.
  - usaphp 10y ago
    Don't you think it's a bit ridiculous that Chrome is using 28GB of your RAM?
alex- 10y ago
18th March 2005 APPL: $6.14 Today APPL: $111.49 I hope his father bought the shares this time!
lemoncucumber 10y ago
Alas, Apple has lost its way and no longer make machines with real performance like those 2005 PowerPC laptops that were so very fast. Also the old Jobs-era Apple would never have released a machine where you couldn't plug in any of your existing peripherals without adapters... I'll just leave this here: http://lowendmac.com/wp-content/uploads/bondi-imac-right.jpg http://lowendmac.com/wp-content/uploads/bondi-imac-right.jpg
ericzawo 10y ago
So did Paul's dad eventually listen to his son's stock market advice?
hota_mazi 10y ago
> the Mac was in its time the canonical hacker's computer. Yeah... not really. Never happened. In the 90s, the canonical hacker computers were Amigas and Ataris. And soon thereafter, Windows PC, during the Windows 3 -> 95 transition. Or if you want to go back another decade, Apple ][ and C64. Now these were the ultimate hacker computers. Macs at the time were mostly used to create newspapers, slideshows and graphical assets. We're talking MacIntosh and Mac+, here. You never saw these in LAN parties, trust me.

121 points by rocky1138 10y ago

smaili 10y ago

March 2005 :)

moreira 10y ago
I immediately clicked ("return of the Mac" + "Paul Graham" = perfect clickbait, given what's been going on these past few days). Got me. It's a pretty good read though. At the end, there's a mention of % of YC people on OS X. I bet anything that OS X would be the dominant platform in that demographic these days.

kentosi 10y ago

How can an posting dated from 2005 with only 19 points (at time of writing) reach number 2 on Hacker News? Does anyone know how the ranking algorithm works?

rwc 10y ago
Methinks domain plays a significant role...
foota 10y ago
Someone recently submitted the post.
nostrademons 10y ago
Time since submission is an important factor. Take a look at /newest; this is by far the most upvoted article on it, and most articles there have 1-3 points.
Lazare 10y ago
19 points are worth exponentially more the younger the post is, and exponentially less the older it is. If you're trying to understand why a post is where it is, age is just as important as votes.
greatest-ape 10y ago
points / time_elapsed ^ 2 ?
Light2Yellow 10y ago
I guess the algorithm counts a coefficient (num_of_upvotes / time).
untog 10y ago
It was posted 20 minutes ago (at time of writing) - the algorithm works based on submission time, not authoring time.
3chelon 10y ago
Maybe the author's name has some weighting around these parts? ;)

Lazare 10y ago

Ten years (or a bit longer, depending on how you measure it) is a good run.

jliechti1 10y ago

"And open and good is what Macs are again, finally. The intervening years have created a situation that is, as far as I know, without precedent: Apple is popular at the low end and the high end, but not in the middle. My seventy year old mother has a Mac laptop. My friends with PhDs in computer science have Mac laptops. [2] And yet Apple's overall market share is still small. Though unprecedented, I predict this situation is also temporary" Did PG's prediction come true?

untog 10y ago
Yes - they lost the low end. Perhaps "lost" is too strong a word - they weren't interested in keeping it.

guelo 10y ago

I laughed at the dig about Intel and Microsoft stickers. They're much easier to remove that the giant glowing billboard ad built into the Mac chassis.

cooper12 10y ago
It doesn't glow any more on the newer models. Also there's a difference between a manufacturer's logo and stickers. You'd be hard-pressed to find a laptop that doesn't include the former.
chadgeidel 10y ago
Which no longer glows at least. (2016 MacBook and MacBook Pro models)
marricks 10y ago
Well, supposedly you like the logo of the product you buy, especially if it's tastefully done. No one tries to remove Lenovo from their thinkpad, right? The "Intel inside" and "AMD graphics" are crumby stickers your wrist can feel and add nothing to the design.
- dingaling 10y ago
  > No one tries to remove Lenovo Cerainly they do. Black electrical tape is an effective logo-hider for laptops and cameras. It is also great for suppressing those bright blue LEDs that feature on many devices.
Lio 10y ago
As others have mentioned the new logos don't glow but even when they do glow the important thing is that it's on the back of the screen. So I as the user am not really aware of it when I'm working. It's kind of a shame they've re-added the "MacBook Pro" text below the screen, I loved the debranded look of business end of a MacBook Pro. On my late 2013 MacBook Pro the only Apple branding I can see is the small Apple in the menu bar. That's really cool.

mrigor 10y ago

The new Macbook Pro supports max of 16GB RAM while Thinkpads support 32GB. This makes it hard to justify getting a Mac.

sssilver 10y ago
Factoring in the real world battery performance between those machines helps understand the Thinkpad tradeoff. One I'm not willing to take.
sanswork 10y ago
Unless you don't need more than 16GB for the near term future. My MBP has 16gb and never seems to be near an issue for me even running kube-solo, a few vboxes, and light PS work. I would have liked the option to get 32 just to future proof since I tend to keep my mac laptops for 4-5 years but I'm willing it trade that off for the better screen, trackpad and software.
- alemhnan 10y ago
  My MBP has 16gb as well and no problem whatsoever with that. But it's a 5 years old model and when I bought I had only 4gb. So 4x in 5 years. By extension I would probably need at least 2x 16gb in 3-4 years but instead I will be stuck with 16gb.
  - sanswork 10y ago
    What part of your workflow are you finding increasing dramatically in memory used? I'm just a programmer so most of my stuff is pretty steady except I use a lot more virtual machines these days. But even then I can comfortably run a half dozen on my laptop with no problems and still do other work.
dijit 10y ago
It's a tradeoff someone down the chain is making, LPDDR3 has a max of 16G and LPDDR4 is not supported on skylake/kabylake. LPDDR3 being 30% less power drawing than standard DDR4. So. More ram or more battery.. However I have a personal vendetta against Lenovo for their absolutely abhorrent practices in terms of consumer safety and their declining hardware standard.

OJFord 10y ago

Mods - needs a '[2005]'.

strathmeyer 10y ago

Whenever I meet someone who says, "You seem really smart, you must use a Mac," I understand who they are made for.

jameskegel 10y ago
I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.
- snerbles 10y ago
  Status signalling.

largehotcoffee 10y ago

I honestly hope the Touch Bar doesn't survive longer than one generation of MacBooks. I believe the whole thing is a gimmick (a well intentioned gimmick) meant to drive forward one thing, Apple Pay on the MacBook. Most likely it's internally perceived as a situation where the end justifies the means, if Apple Pay is widely adopted on the MacBook this will look like a genius decision down the line and make a ridiculous amount of money in the long-term. If not, blame the Touch Bar. Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook. It might not have been perfect, but it would have been lauded as revolutionary by the mainstream media. By not doing it they have now given their competitors the chance to grab that market. When Apple does eventually make a full touch input screen MacBook, Apple Pay will be a part of it. The Touch Bar is just a stepping stone to get to that point, but it's a step they should have skipped.

georgespencer 10y ago
> I honestly hope the Touch Bar doesn't survive longer than one generation of MacBooks. Have you used it?
- leetrout 10y ago
  > Have you used it? This. This x 1000. Everyone is complaining without any hands on experience. The "magic mouse" is one of my least favorite pieces of tech to come from Apple (I use a trusty Logitech) and I do 95% or more of my work with an external mechanical keyboard. I wouldn't even notice the change and I think a lot of people wouldn't, either. The track pad is lightyears beyond anything I've had from Lenovo (can't speak for HP) and has to be the One Killer Feature™ that would make me ^happily pick a brand new MBP. They really should support more ram though...
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    > can't speak for HP HP, Acer, Dell... Nothing comes close.
  - gordon_freeman 10y ago
    > The track pad is lightyears beyond anything I've had from Lenovo This. If I want to pick one feature on Macbook (Base/Air/Pro) hardware side (Obviously I can not live without macOS because of its Unix-like nature plus all the major supported 3rd party softwares) then that would be Macbook's touchpad. It's absolutely irreplaceable and lightyears ahead in scrolling experience than any other damn laptop.

rmason 10y ago

So by posting this are you suggesting he writes a follow up article about the return of the PC? I think that might be premature, but definitely Apple has forgotten which group started the surge of people buying Macs.

3chelon 10y ago
I think I read a later article by Paul Graham advocating thin client netbooks (aka Chromebooks et al).

meritt 10y ago

As a longtime PC user, I'm very thankful how the excellent Apple offerings really propelled the PC laptop market over the past decade to focus on both build quality and high-end specs, most notably Dell XPS and Lenovo/Thinkpad X1 series.

walterbell 10y ago
Intel also invested in Ultrabook and 2-in-1 reference designs to help PC OEMs compete with Apple.

IBM 10y ago

What's key about this is that Apple didn't make a laptop for hackers. It was a nice confluence of factors that made Macs attractive to hackers, but Apple never set out to court them. You should keep that in mind if you're a hacker and you feel 'betrayed'. I've been seeing a lot of cringeworthy takes lately which basically amount to trying to guilt a corporation into making your ideal laptop. I can't find the link to it but one of them said something like "I'm an influencer too so you [Apple] should care that I'm switching!"

bluedino 10y ago
When they went with a Unix based OS, they did.
- IBM 10y ago
  Which is why it was a happy confluence of factors. Unix wasn't a call to action though, just an implementation detail.
elchief 10y ago
Sure but it wouldn't be that hard for them to keep macbook pro "pro", and it makes them money and earns them maven users
linguae 10y ago
At least before the iPhone era began, Apple has played up the fact that OS X has *nix roots in order to draw hackers to the Mac. Check out this switcher's testimonial from 2002: http://web.archive.org/web/20021030230932/http://www.apple.com/switch/stories/index2.html http://web.archive.org/web/20021030230932/http://www.apple.c... And another switcher story explicitly mentioning Unix: http://web.archive.org/web/20021031010139/http://www.apple.com/switch/stories/ http://web.archive.org/web/20021031010139/http://www.apple.c... And notice this from the tech specs of the Titanium PowerBook G4 circa 2002: "Whether you use a Mac, Windows, or UNIX system, your search for the world’s best high performance thin and light notebook computer is over." "Complementing this performance platform is Mac OS X—a supermodern operating system that combines the power and stability of UNIX with the elegance of Macintosh." http://web.archive.org/web/20021004151455/http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specs.html http://web.archive.org/web/20021004151455/http://www.apple.c... And don't forget about the former NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP users who more than likely migrated to the Mac in order for them to continue using an updated (if with a different UI) version of the operating system they loved.

Keyframe 10y ago

After some initial thoughts about the reveal, I gave it some more thought. I wouldn't mind revealed MBP 15" if it were the same features in 13" form. That's what it missed, IMO. 15" features feel more like what a 'power' laptop would look like in 13" form, and 13" one is a MBA basically, and 'true' 15" is missing.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

clifanatic 10y ago

Steve Jobs founded Apple. Apple changed the world. They fired him. They became a joke. They brought him back. Apple changed the world, again. Steve Jobs died. Apple became a joke, again.

3chelon 10y ago
The richest company in the history of the world could hardly be called a joke, unless you were joking of course. I for one am concerned about their current trajectory, but their R&D budget is $25m per day so I don't think they can be written off just yet.
miguelrochefort 10y ago
fingers crossed

dasil003 10y ago

I've recently thinking about how to submit more stories that get traction, and I have to take my hat off to rocky1138 for capturing the zeitgeist perfectly with this submission. This essay resonates strongly with me, and I wish Tim Cook saw things this way. But in my heart I realize that it is probably only an accident of history that the most polished consumer computing device company in history happened to make a great Unix developer box. Although it's undeniable that developers were key to Apple's resurgence, the need for embracing open source and modern free software was only necessary because of Apple's weak market position. We know this because of Apple's failed attempts at pushing their own standards in the 80s and 90s when they got their lunch eaten by Microsoft. Interoperability was something that Jobs grudgingly got on board with when he realized he didn't have the market clout to force standards down people throat. Apple now has that clout. No matter how bad the Mac gets, there will still be developers for iOS as long as Apple keeps delivering on iOS. Personally I think I have to stick with the Mac for a while because no one else is producing a software/hardware package that is anywhere near as nice overall, but maybe I'll take pg's advice and walk around some college campuses to see what are the kids who can't afford Apple's immaculately overpriced machines are using.

cs702 10y ago

Money quote: "How big is the hacker market, after all? Quite small, but important out of proportion to its size. When it comes to computers, what hackers are doing now, everyone will be doing in ten years. Almost all technology, from Unix to bitmapped displays to the Web, became popular first within CS departments and research labs, and gradually spread to the rest of the world." Today, hackers are leaving Apple.

catskull 10y ago

> The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need to know? This. I have actually lost sleep since the announcement. I keep going over in my mind alternate hardware, but the fact is that macOS (OS X) is the single best operating system for developers today. I am generalizing "developers". For any embedded development, or HDL stuff, OS X will not be a nice experience. But for web or mobile development (which I anticipate is quite larger than development that could not be done in OS X), it's just better. Things work. If the don't, there is a massive support system in place and worst case scenario you can drive <1hr to an Apple store and let them take care of it. Sure, there are edge cases there as well, but compared to the ultrabook you bought from Costco or any distribution of linux, you have much more support available. I do love my macbook pro (glass trackpad, backlit keyboard, good display), but I absolutely must have macOS. At this point my only hope is that a new distribution of Linux evolves that can seriously compete and works flawlessly on off the shelf hardware (such as the Dell XPS), but we're not there yet. Elementary OS looks promising. Perhaps developers would fork Darwin completely and make a macOS competitor. I guess I should have seen the warning signs. The biggest was macOS Sierra that offered me no reason to upgrade. Apple seems to be stuck inside of an "innovation" echo chamber. Innovating for the sake of innovating. Sorry for the wall of text, but if you have any suggestions for me, please share them.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
Honestly Windows 10 isn't so bad. I primary do my development on a Mac as well but have switched on and off with Windows 10 machines. Naturally the build quality of the hardware has a crazy scale for Windows machines but stick with good hardware like the Surface line or at least Microsoft Genuine. With the new Ubuntu capabilities of Windows the terminal isn't so bad. It still leaves a lot to be desired but I think they're well on their way. I wouldn't be surprised if in another year Windows 10 is just as good in nix. At least that's what I'm hoping for. I do feel like MacOS does a better job multi tasking though...
- equalarrow 10y ago
  Yah, I think Windows has gotten a lot better since the Vista days. But, VS - I was trying out porting some iOS Obj-C to run on Windows. Impressive that it actually worked, but VS was like, blech. Granted, Xcode is a piece of crap too - it's so buggy and unstable a lot of the time. But I can at least read or figure out what's going on. VS, tiny fonts, things you can't read, tons of "what's this for?" configuration. After my playing around with it (and I used the first few versions of VC years ago) I was thinking, yah, I don't think I could get into this dev environment again.. :-\

marcosscriven 10y ago

I popped into the Apple Store on Regent Street in London today, where they have a couple of these on display in plastic cylinders (but can't touch). They have a constant rolling demo, and two things struck me. The changing touchbar display constantly distracted me from the screen. Also, the little square area on the far right for the touch sensor doesn't blend in nearly as well as the photos make out. Worse, presumably for symmetry, there's a square of the same size at the other end - so the display for the 'Esc' key is actually the distance of one key in from the left hand edge.

glhaynes 10y ago
Note that in actual usage, the Touch Bar will only be changing substantially when you switch between apps/contexts or are interacting with it. From the Touch Bar HIG at https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/AbouttheTouchBar.html https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Us...: Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a display. Although technically it’s a screen, the Touch Bar functions as an input device, not a secondary display. The user may glance at the Touch Bar to locate or use a control, but their primary focus is the main screen. The Touch Bar shouldn’t display alerts, messages, scrolling content, static content, or anything else that commands the user’s attention or distracts from their work on the main screen.

meehow 10y ago

1. Apple did pretty good job at popularizing Unix on laptop. 2. Apple's market share is around 6%. In last 3 years Linux doubled it's market share and went from 1% to 2% https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Linux&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=190&qpnp=25&qptimeframe=M https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp... 3. If Apple will fail with their new products for developers, then they will switch most likely to Linux and serious growth of Linux market share on desktop is quite probable.

SwellJoe 10y ago

I got a new computer relatively recently. It's a modest looking plastic Dell Inspiron; but it has a 4k touchscreen display, an i7 CPU, a GTX960M GPU, 16GB of RAM, and an SSD. It cost ~$900, on sale. I, frankly, can't imagine paying the Apple tax, especially now. I kinda suspect we're going to see a replay of the long slow decline into mediocrity that Apple experienced before Jobs' return. With higher prices and a seeming lack of product vision going forward, I suspect the shine on Apple products for developers will fade. I mean, maybe I just don't get it, but the touchbar seems kinda like a boondoggle (and, if it is going to exist, I wouldn't want it to kill my esc key). Then again, I still don't really get the touchscreen on laptops. I have one, but rarely use it.

MrScruff 10y ago
> I got a new computer relatively recently. It's a modest looking plastic Dell Inspiron; but it has a 4k touchscreen display, an i7 CPU, a GTX960M GPU, 16GB of RAM, and an SSD. It cost ~$900, on sale. I, frankly, can't imagine paying the Apple tax, especially now. Without meaning to be rude, this comes across like a 90s platform wars usenet post. There is no tax - it's two different products with different features and different prices. If you're happy with your choice, that's great! I like and use computers a lot and don't buy them that often, so I don't mind spending a bit more to get the machine I want.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  Sure, it may be more fair to compare to an XPS model. But, even so...big price difference. Admittedly, if you really love macOS, buying a Mac is a reasonable choice, and the only realistic choice for non-technical folks (building a Hackintosh is non-trivial, and a license violation). But, I'd just be installing Linux on it, anyway.
sanswork 10y ago
"I got a new computer made with worse materials and having worse specs and it was cheaper(when on sale). (insert quip about apple tax)". I've personally seen this exact same form of post in various places for almost a decade now. There isn't an Apple tax though. Once you look at actually comparable hardware from the other manufactures you end up with similar prices.

MrScruff 10y ago

I think the negative reaction to the new MacBook Pro seems excessive. The only real objections I have are the increase in price and the new keyboard though I'm open minded that I'll get used to that. Apple like to make slim, light products. And that's a good thing! There's always a compromise between size/weight/power usage and performance, and I don't think the choices they're making are bad ones. I'm sure if they could have put 32Gb in there without sacrificing some other aspect of the design they would have done so. The negative reaction to touch bar seems to be mostly from people who haven't used it, the press reaction was positive. I use vim but the escape key is horrible to reach on a Macbook Pro anyway so I rebound it a long time ago. I've read bizarre complaints that developers 'need function keys for single step debugging' as though that's not going to be possible with touch bar. But then I never really got the 'Apple software quality' meme either so maybe I'm not representative.

dognotdog 10y ago
A wild rant appears. The negative reaction is not because the new MBP is terrible when viewed in a vacuum, it is because people who would like (or actually need) more powerful hardware than the one-size-fits-all approach that seems to be Apple's current course are no longer catered to, or so it seems. Personnally, I don't really care about the touch bar one way or another, but what I do care about is that I would like to have one machine I can do all my work on, which involves a wider range of things one a daily basis than is typical (e.g. video/image editing, GPU powered number crunching, coding, and sitting in moving vehicles plugged into a bunch of stuff). In the past few years, the 15" MBP has been the machine to do it all, but in it's newest incarnation(s) I am no longer sure it would still be the best tool. It seems like gimmicks are added, but useful extras are stripped away. Maybe it's just in the uncanny valley of progress with USB-C, but for the moment the way they went about it all or nothing seems like a major inconvenience, with all the "legacy" hardware I need to attach. And there's minor things like removing the power brick's cord. As such, my first instinct is also to bitch and moan, as now it looks as though I need to find a new setup in the near future, and damn Apple for building something for the median user, but not for me. I, too, like to think that though I have an atypical usage pattern, what I do and how I talk about it benefits Apple enough that they should at least invest a bit of effort to try and keep me on their platform.

billions 10y ago

The new MacBook Pro's Touch Bar is meant as a halfway point between keys and a touch screen. It may replace the application dock, it may replace the menu bar, it may do more granular things like offer local variables, or word completion. Typed input is slow. Until USB can wire into the brain, we will continue needing input help. Perhaps the Touch Bar will, with the help of software, make the data channel to between brain and machine a little faster. The UX of the Touch Bar's software will effectively determine productivity increase and adoption. In a world where Moore's Law has run its course, I believe an improvement of above 20% input speed will make it a success.

27182818284 10y ago

For what it is worth, no Apple fan I know was seriously disappointed by the Touch Bar on the new macs. They (myself included) are disappointed by: * A pro machine with underwhelming specifications * Connectors that now few people know which is what. I feel bad for the amount of arguing and screaming workers in Apple stores are going to get over USB vs USB C vs MagSafe vs Lightning vs HDMI vs Thunderbolt vs Headphone jack -- Heck I own macs and I'm not even sure what all you need for a new iPhone and a new MacBook Pro As a great example, someone I know that describe's himself as an "Apple Fanboy" spent a half hour talking about what a flop the new MacBook is while wearing his Apple watch. That really makes it sink in what a lemon people think the new MacBook is

usaphp 10y ago

Everybody seems to complain about a 16Gb max ram, but I've yet to see anyone have a laptop with 32Gb of Ram anyway, nevermind actually needed all those 32Gb. It seems lately people are just trying to complain for a sake of complaining, they don't care about a reason, just to say something negative, find a flaw, I recently watched some podcast after a apple and microsoft event, they first blamed apple that macbook has only 16gb of ram max, but at the same time they found excuse in microsoft studio that it has a crappy 965m in a $3200+ machine saying that it takes a long time to develop a product and it's understandable that Microsoft is using an old hardware. I love new macbook pro, I think it's great, especially its new touch bar, lighter and thinner form and a longer battery life, not much else I wanted honestly.

Mandatum 10y ago
I tend to virtualise a lot of infrastructure and dependencies during development and testing on my local machine. With "infrastructure as code" this is becoming more common, especially with integration work. I agree most developers won't need that amount of RAM, but having to shut down parts of the network that aren't applicable to my current work is annoying to the point I'm switching away from macOS to Linux on a 32GB Thinkpad.
kainolophobia 10y ago
My 2015 rMBP is currently using 14.23GB of RAM with an additional 14.56GB swap file. Almost all of it is Chrome on macOS. This is without VMs, video editing, etc. Just standard development tools. Sure, I may have some untrusted code hijacking my threads, but I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy a MBP with 32GB of RAM.
- usaphp 10y ago
  Don't you think it's a bit ridiculous that Chrome is using 28GB of your RAM?

alex- 10y ago

18th March 2005 APPL: $6.14 Today APPL: $111.49 I hope his father bought the shares this time!

lemoncucumber 10y ago

Alas, Apple has lost its way and no longer make machines with real performance like those 2005 PowerPC laptops that were so very fast. Also the old Jobs-era Apple would never have released a machine where you couldn't plug in any of your existing peripherals without adapters... I'll just leave this here: http://lowendmac.com/wp-content/uploads/bondi-imac-right.jpg http://lowendmac.com/wp-content/uploads/bondi-imac-right.jpg

ericzawo 10y ago

So did Paul's dad eventually listen to his son's stock market advice?

hota_mazi 10y ago

> the Mac was in its time the canonical hacker's computer. Yeah... not really. Never happened. In the 90s, the canonical hacker computers were Amigas and Ataris. And soon thereafter, Windows PC, during the Windows 3 -> 95 transition. Or if you want to go back another decade, Apple ][ and C64. Now these were the ultimate hacker computers. Macs at the time were mostly used to create newspapers, slideshows and graphical assets. We're talking MacIntosh and Mac+, here. You never saw these in LAN parties, trust me.