9 ms·

A world without the Mac Pro

113 points by Shank 10y ago

cwyers 10y ago
> Microsoft is boldly experimenting with PC hardware, but Windows and everything around Windows is woefully inferior to macOS and the Mac software ecosystem. Even if Microsoft did everything right, it would take Windows at least a decade to catch up — and they won’t do everything right. So, if you have everything already on macOS (I still hate that name change), I can get not wanting to switch. But what on Earth is it doing so much better than Windows that at minimum a decade would be required for it to catch up?
- efvxcgci 10y ago
  Unix
  - hartator 10y ago
    Windows 10 has Linux subsystem now, which is Ubuntu 14.04. I would say it's at least on par now with MacOS.
    - geff82 10y ago
      Windows also has an annoyment-subsystem now, reminding you to use Edge once a day when you start Chrome. That is why I am switching my last desktop to Linux in the minutes I write this post. I will not accept an OS that tells me what I should use.
      - aq3cn 10y ago
        I am also a Windows 10 user but I have not been asked this way to use Edge or IE. Are you sure it happens even after setting your default browser to something X?
        geff82 10y ago
        Can't tell you, Edge has been my default because it is ok, but I use Chrome sometimes.
      - grahamburger 10y ago
        I saw this while using Firefox on my wife's Windows laptop yesterday. "Firefox is using 75% of your battery. Switch to Edge." Notification pop up from the battery indicator. Really obnoxious dark pattern.
        Godel_unicode 10y ago
        Edge uses less power than Firefox for similar browsing patterns. Why is the OS monitoring your battery life and making suggestions to improve it (this is not the only suggestion it will make) a "dark pattern"? It does similar things with boot times (measure and report about slow startup apps) and IE add-ons. I want my OS to make suggestions about changes I could make to improve my experience.
        grahamburger 10y ago
        Because it wasn't measuring and making suggestions, it was a scare tactic. I should have screenshotted the notification - I've seen notifications before like what you're talking about, 'X program is causing Y system issue, consider Z.' That's not what this was. It was more along the lines of those bouncy 'Your Computer Has A Virus! Click here to Scan!' banner ads of yesteryear.
      - smitherfield 10y ago
        Of course Google also throws up annoy-popups every time you go to their site from a non-Chrome browser.
        geff82 10y ago
        That is annoying, too. But it is not "in my system".
    - ditados 10y ago
      Believe me, it's not. Even when the userland gets updated to 16.04, it's still heavily dependent on the Windows kernel, and the networking stack (for example) will not be the same. The WSL will never replace a native Linux OS. Period. But it will be pretty useful for some lighter use cases. As a dev, I'm still not convinced it's good enough, given the recent issues with Ruby and Node.
      - throw_away 10y ago
        I'm fine with Unix support not being as good as native Linux, but is it as good as MacOS?
        ditados 10y ago
        macOS runs a BSD-like userland atop a Mach kernel. It's not Linux, but it is a damn sight more field-tested and reliable than the Windows kernel... I'm actually surprised at the question, considering the number of devs who work on macOS (and I'm not talking about front-end folk).
      - hartator 10y ago
        What issues are you talking about? I was about able to run a full Rails installation with MongoDB, Redis and Sidekiq without issues. But, I kind of agree actually, the only true issue was advanced socket issue with PhantomJS. Like for some reasons, Capybara/Poltergeist can't connect to it. It's the only reasons I am back to MacOS. But, I think I will switch as soon as it fixes. It should be soon.
        rcarmo 10y ago
        Probably this, which has since been fixed: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/26054 https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/26054 I'm running current stable (full disclosure: MS FTE here), and there are still a few hang-ups that I know are being addressed (and some already fixed) in the Insider Previews. I had to leave the Previews because I needed to pin down a few things, and mostly use Docker for Windows instead of WSL for work. WSL will not run Docker containers directly (for instance), but I managed to get the CLI to run in WSL to control them inside the Docker VM. Well, until the last Docker upgrade reset the configs... :)
- m_mueller 10y ago
  * The windows registry vs the OSX defaults system * Constantly changing APIs based on Microsofts internal politics vs. the very stable Cocoa * HiDPI that always works or has good fallbacks * Touchpad / gesture support that is actually pleasant and precise to use * Battery life * Multidesktop * POSIX scripting (that one is slowly coming to windows now) * Can be restored from another computer in a matter of minutes (see also the first point) * PDF support baked into OS
  - CJefferson 10y ago
    * Constantly changing APIs based on Microsofts internal politics vs. the very stable Cocoa Really? I can run Windows apps I bought 10 years ago easily, whereas many Mac apps seem to break with every OS update. It's also extremely hard to build apps for older versions of Mac OS X, as Apple hide the older versions of the SDK.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      I think m_mueller's comment is more from a developer's perspective than a users. Microsoft has done an amazing job of preserving compatibility. Its not that Microsoft gets rid of APIs (they don't), but that they haven't stuck with a "one true" API to program Windows in[1]. Their switching of what tech you should use to build your apps is problematic. Cocoa has been a long path, but my Windows friends have had a constant churn of the latest API to use. 1) I am talking about the stuff we are supposed to use above the base Win32.
      - TarpitCarnivore 10y ago
        I suspect this will change under Nadella. Things just feel like they have a better vision to them.
      - mhenr18 10y ago
        A key difference with the Microsoft approach vs the Apple approach is that on Windows the API that exposes every single feature is such a beast that developers are expected to work at a level above that API. Whether it's WPF, WinForms, WinRT, or whatever the new flavour of the day is, it's always a layer on top. And that layer is never perfect, because you still have to do the occasional [DllImport("Kernel32.dll")] interop reference. Here are the currently supported ways to deal with windows on Windows: * HWND * System.Windows.Window * Windows.UI.Xaml.Window On OSX, you use Cocoa. When Apple introduced Swift, they didn't have to layer on top of the API accessed by ObjC. When you write Swift code, you call the exact same APIs as you would have done with your ObjC code. Here are the currently supported ways to deal with windows on the Mac: * NSWindow
- deleted 10y ago
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- alyandon 10y ago
  Yeah, I don't really get that either. I have been using Windows, OS X (I mean macOS) and various Linux distributions for years. Each one of them comes with their own particular set of quirks/warts and I can't objectively say one is so superior that I'd rather use it to the exclusion of the others.
- morganvachon 10y ago
  That's what bothers me about the article. I can't think of a single piece of professional production software that is Mac only, apart from Apple's own apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic. Those are great apps but they have equivalents on Windows, and some of the Linux pro audio and video apps are getting really good. As for web development, there is nothing you can do on a Mac that can't be done on Linux or BSD apart from testing in Safari, and Safari has a smaller user base than IE/Edge. Hell, even Windows is improving in this space. I guess one could argue that macOS is a more aesthetically pleasing environment to work in, to which I counter that I'd rather work in BeOS/Haiku as I find it more aesthetically appealing than any other OS. In other words, that's purely subjective.
  - greenhatman 10y ago
    The only one I knew of was Sequel Pro. But JetBrains' DataGrip now fills that void.
- mhenr18 10y ago
  * Free OS updates. * Better touchpad support throughout the entire OS. * Vastly superior HiDPI support (especially if you're using a multi-screen, multi-DPI setup). I cannot stress how poorly Windows 10 performs in this regard. This has been a solved problem on the Mac for years. * Better colour management through the whole UI stack. * Better tablet support (OSX has had integrated support for tablet events since 10.4, on the Windows side there were still apps that broke when the Surface 3 launched almost a decade later due to using a third-party API for tablet events that needed custom drivers) * Core Audio. OS X has had the same set of audio APIs since 10.3, and they've been well regarded for years and years. It wasn't until Windows 10 that you could argue Microsoft had finally caught up, and there's still people with ASIO driver compatibility issues. That's literally 12 years it took for Microsoft to catch up. * OS X had scrolling of inactive windows for over a decade before Windows caught up. I actually think it's something that was there in 10.0 but I only started using Macs at 10.3 so I can't be sure. * Spotlight. Spotlight is almost the perfect analogy of the difference between OS X and Windows, and I'm just going to look at one tiny feature of it. If you want to do some math on Windows at a single keypress, you need to turn on Cortana which only became availble in Windows 10. Cortana isn't even available in every country. Meanwhile OSX has had that built into Spotlight since 10.4 and it works on every Mac ever shipped since then, no matter what country you're in. * File tagging. OSX has had this for over a decade, and you still can't do it in Windows. * An integrated C/C++ runtime library, like every other Unix ever. It wasn't until Windows 10 that you could ship C/C++ code without worrying about whether your end user had the right msvcr/msvcp DLL installed on their machine. I'll stop here, because there's so many things that OSX has had for a decade or more that Windows still hasn't caught up with that I wouldn't be surprised if Windows doesn't catch up after another decade.
  - addicted 10y ago
    * Windows has free OS updates * Precision Touchpads are equally well supported in Windows. * HiDPI is better on the Mac * I don't know much about this. * Are you referring to Wacom style tablets? Not sure about that, but if tablets in general, OSX tablets don't even exist, so it's irrelevant. * Windows Audio APIs are as good as Core Audio now. * This really isn't that big a deal. In Windows it leads to different benefits, where my mouse could be anywhere, ubt I could still scroll the page I was reading. * Cortana is better than Spotlight now. I didn't know that Cortana would be completely disabled in countries that aren't supported. That sucks. * Windows has had file tagging since Win 7. There really isn't that much of a difference. There are places where Mac OS is better, and there are places where Windows is better.
_ph_ 10y ago
While there is no doubt that Apple did neglect the Mac Pro, I am quite hopeful that it gets a significant refresh in the spring. As with so many Mac releases, Apple is limited by the Intel release schedules. That is why the Mac Pro has to wait till spring for a refresh. And that the Mac Pro has not being bumped in smaller features points to me to a rather larger change. And it would make a lot of sense to go back to a bit more "PC" like design like the predecessor of the current machine. That would mean that Apple has less pressure to update it frequently, it would be sufficient to have updates whenever Intel releases new CPUs, but all the other stuff, especially graphics cards, could be updated independent of Apple releases.
pavlov 10y ago
Arment is way too positive on the Mac Pro's thermal design. Recently I worked on an application where we had about a dozen Mac Pros doing heavy video encoding workloads. Four of these computers started having GPU overheating issues, and turns out that this is a common occurrence on the 2013 Mac Pro. Apple has been quietly replacing units over the years (searching for the specific console error message reveals that it's common among Mac Pro owners). My theory is that the Mac Pro hasn't seen an update because Apple knows that its current thermal design is a lemon, and they don't really want to sell any more of these because the replacement rate is so high.
- dbg31415 10y ago
  Can confirm, had a similar set up with six Mac Pros for video processing and compression. We had to replace every single one of them at least once, and some 3 times and still we feel there are heat-based performance issues that Apple hasn't addressed. Also, I think Apple will have to come out with a new display to go with the Mac Pro.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    > Also, I think Apple will have to come out with a new display to go with the Mac Pro. I must be missing something. If a new Mac Pro ever came out wouldn't it use USB-C and be fine on the new LG displays Apple sells (price dropped by the way)?
  - hyperpape 10y ago
    There's no press release, but they've told at least one journalist there's no more displays: https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/28/apple-standalone-displays/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/28/apple-standalone-displays/.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- whyoh 10y ago
  It was already evident from the Anandtech review, where the 12 core model was reaching around 100 C (CPU and GPU) under stress load. Anand tried to downplay the issue somewhat, but the numbers speak for themselves, it's not a computer you can rely on for prolonged high loads.
thenewwazoo 10y ago
I feel like I'm living in a crazytown where nobody sees what's so plainly obvious. Doesn't anyone remember when IBM wasn't able to deliver chips to Apple on the schedule they demanded, and customers were complaining, and they were taking a drubbing in the press for it? And Apple let their existing product line stagnate for a little while, and then we got the Intel Macs? Well, this time it's Intel and not IBM, except Apple owns their own chip designs and has 200 billion dollars laying around.
- addicted 10y ago
  What others are seeing that you aren't is that (a) Unlike the PowerPC days when the Mac gave Apple over 90% of it's profits, it now probably accounts for closer to 10% of Apple's profits (b) The Intel excuse seriously does not fly with the Mac Pro. (c) The CEO has openly wondered why anyone would buy a PC. Some have argued he meant Windows computers, but it doesn't inspire confidence (especially since he has stated he uses an iPad pro for most of his work) (d) Clearly Apple's top priorities are making things smaller and lighter. This is out of step with a lot of "Pro" users' needs. Compare the new Mac Pro to its previous incarnation, and the changes in design priority could not be more obvious.
- _ph_ 10y ago
  Apple has indeed some great chip designs available. But one should not forget that the switch to Intel not only gave Apple nicer CPUs but also made Apple compatible to the rest of the PC world. You can run any x86 application on a Mac via VMware or Parallels. Moving away from Intel would kill this.
  - sigjuice 10y ago
    Apple could make the equivalent of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) to run x86 apps on non-Intel Macs. But the thing is, Apple has no good reason to make a different type of computer, considering computers are not that important, at least to Apple.
    - 10y ago
wfleming 10y ago
> Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change. Depending on which pro needs We're talking about, I don't believe this is true anymore. I was a Linux user for many years, then an OS X user for over a decade, and earlier this year I'd had enough with being annoyed by OS X & switched back to Linux. I am extremely happy I did. If you want beautiful GUIs or do video/audio/graphics editing then, yes, macOS is still superior. If you are a developer who spends most of your time split between the terminal and the browser, then Linux is not just an acceptable substitute, but can in fact be a superior replacement.
- sverige 10y ago
  And if you split your time between the terminal and the browser and want what amounts to a built-in IDE, OpenBSD is a great answer.
  - wfleming 10y ago
    I like the BSDs, and considered doing that instead of Linux. My company is a heavy Docker user, though: dealing with docker-machine & running Docker via a VM on OS X was one of the final straws that caused me to switch. Given that FreeBSD's Docker support is pretty recent (and was still considered beta when I was deciding to switch), and OpenBSD doesn't have any native support at all as far as I know, I felt that the probability of trading one annoyance for a similar one was too high, so Linux was the right choice for me.
  - trungaczne 10y ago
    Can you elaborate on what you mean by "what amounts to a built-in IDE"?
- kenOfYugen 10y ago
  I can relate. Since I setup a Linux desktop PC running Arch & bspwm, I feel less productive in macOS. The only other desktop UX tool I use is dmenu. It feels like when I first moved from Windows to OS X. Makes sense, since back then OS X felt minimal compared to Windows, and a bare tiling manager over Linux is the ultimate minimalism.
ne01 10y ago
> Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change. I disagree! A Linux desktop gets as good as your customization. For me nothing can replace my setup: Debian + custom Stumpwm window manager Pro users want flexibility.
- djhworld 10y ago
  I think for some people customisation is a pain, especially when you have to workarounds bugs or find some hardware configuration incompatibility. Not saying there's anything wrong with people enjoying tinkering with their setup, but I guess the advantage OSX offers you is most of that is taken care of you on the desktop, you just install your apps on top
  - sheer_horror 10y ago
    It is a misconception that mainstay Linux distributions have any sort of hardware or software incompatibility (aside from Mac- or Windows-only targeted software). That said, you are correct that people use OSX because it's literally 0 set up and configuration.
    - mamon 10y ago
      There's a lot of incompabilities on new hardware. Usually Linux kernel needs about 6 months to catch up with latest Intel or NVidia products. Also, try to use an iPhone with Linux computer - it is a nightmare. I have Windows installed in VirtualBox vm solely for iTunes's sake.
Adaptive 10y ago
"Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change." When I switched in 2005 I had to convince friends I wasn't crazy. I advocated for the platform. I suffered weird incompatibilities. I dealt with bad updates. I found work arounds for non-multi-platform tools I had to run. But look how stable, how much less restrictive the platform was, I said! And it was! The platform I switched to in 2005 wasn't Linux. It was OS X. In 10 years the world has changed and today if you are in most of the "creative" professions, not using a Mac is the exception. You can today make a lot of arguments against desktop linux, yet for the past several years I've run it exclusively on all my main systems (laptops and desktops, work and home). 10 years ago, plenty of Windows users couldn't imagine a world in which Macs were where they are today. I mean couldn't imagine. The way Mac enthusiasts can't imagine desktop linux today. The parallels aren't exact. They don't need to be. I am neither predicting success or failure. I am simply pointing out that imagination fails and it is a mistake to say "that will probably never change."
- tptacek 10y ago
  My first Mac was a TiBook, which I bought to install Yellow Dog Linux on. I switched to OSX at 10.1. I worked from 2001-2005 at a decent-sized network software firm in Ann Arbor. Within a year or so of arriving, much of the office had converted to Macs. I don't think having a Mac in '05 made you too much of an outlier --- at least, not if you worked in technology. By 2005, Apple had already started the switch to Intel! This would be nitpicking, except that the timeline matters here. It's not a 10 year gap, just by your own numbers. But it's not 12 years, either. It's more like 16. Let's also remember that Linux has been an unreasonable mass-market desktop choice for a lot longer than 16 years. "The year of Linux on the desktop" is a nerd joke for a reason.
  - Adaptive 10y ago
    In 05 I was based in Asia. Macs were edge cases. From 99-03 I ran online ops for a large ad agency network in Asia. PCs were by far the norm outside of the video departments. By 07 I worked in the states for a mac software firm, so I was definitely no outlier by then.
andreapaiola 10y ago
I'm sorry to pop your Apple bubble, but I find Ubuntu much better than macOs. And RIP Apple hardware, I give you the Hackintosh!
nkurz 10y ago
3. “Hackintoshes” aren’t good enough. ↩︎ Is this really true? Yes, there are currently support issues, but this would seem to be because Apple exclusively makes its own hardware and doesn't legally permit running their OS on anything else. Might macOS thrive if it was retargeted to (or at least officially permitted use of) high-end 3rd-party hardware? Microsoft doesn't make their own high-end workstations, and Windows seems to be doing just fine.
- ditados 10y ago
  Marco does iOS development, and there are a number of features that simply won't run on a Hackintosh. Anything involving crypto is dicey, and stuff that relies on (for instance) having an official serial number (like iMessage) will also fail. But that is irrelevant for a lot other use cases.
  - addicted 10y ago
    I believe the iMessage issues have been resolved now. Hackintoshes are getting better, but Marco is fundamentally right. Any OS update could break your system, which means you need to wait before installing an update, which opens you up to security and/or professional risks (for example, if it takes a couple of months for the newest MacOS to be made suitable for a hackintosh, that's a couple of months where you cannot update your iOS apps with the latest features, since XCode versions also tend to be tied to OS versions).
  - chrisper 10y ago
    >and stuff that relies on (for instance) having an official serial number (like iMessage) will also fail. Which is not true. I have gotten my iMessage to work without having to clone a serial number.
    - rcarmo 10y ago
      I'm curious about that, since iMessage and iTunes Match have been a constant source of trouble to one of my colleagues. He also mentions that the device is flagged as "Untrusted" in Find My Mac...
redial 10y ago
The problem with this article is that Marco presents a rational argument for the need of a Mac Pro, but Apple is way past rationality in their view of the future; they are engaged in a holy war against local computing, against ports, wired connections, and against being tethered to a desk.
- sosborn 10y ago
  What is irrational about this?
desireco42 10y ago
Stop begging to get crumbs from Apple. They are big company run by adults. They've been exploiting our desire to get their computers for a long time. They make some really nice computers, but the whole point is that there are others. I really miss times when I would assemble my own computer. Obviously you can't do this with laptops, but I still miss freedom it gave me. I am exploring how to get my work done on something else, for start on desktop, some nice linux machine for start. I tried several times in the past, but without us actually using linux, there will never be real need to fix issues that it has.
krosaen 10y ago
This was interesting until he got to the unsubstantiated (maybe he elaborates elsewhere?) partisan jabs at windows, linux and Google.
- devsquid 10y ago
  Yup thats typically this guys MO. Him and Grubber make it pretty lame to be a modern Apple fan. They whine about Apple not doing what they want, they whine about people critiquing Apple, and then they make up or spread nonsense about Apples competitors. They are the "Macs can't game" Windows fan boys of the 90s. I would be surprised if he's ever really given Ubuntu or Fedora a serious chance. I think he thinks Google's Android and Kindle Fire have the same UI. I listened to him once bitch about Windows and it was so obvious he hadn't installed it properly.
petepete 10y ago
For every 'pro', how many people buy a Macbook/MBP for the logo and use it as a glorified Facebook/occasional assignment machine. It's an easier audience to keep happy and probably more profitable.
sigjuice 10y ago
Any particular reason why Apple should sell Macs at all, given they make almost all their money from other products? Besides Xcode, is there any other app (or equivalent) that can't be had on other systems?
- mikhailt 10y ago
  First of all, Apple is making more money from Macs than iPads. In the last quarter, they had ~$6B in revenue from Macs versus $4.2B from iPads (~$7B same quarter last year). Are you seriously suggesting that Apple should drop that kind of money just because the iPhone had ~$30B instead? (Source: http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy16datasum.pdf http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy16datasum.pdf) They're not going to make macOS a paid OS for sale on other hardware, which means they'd lose $4-6B per quarter, that's $20b revenue a year they can use to improve all products. They're not going to keep making that much money from iPhone forever, it will decline eventually as competitors keep getting better and better. Google is entering the market with products that finally rivals iPhones and Microsoft/HP/Dell with Surface/Spectre/XPS products that does rival Macbooks. This is Apple, they want total control of the entire stack and the only way to do this is to do it themselves. macOS will not survive on other hardware with questionable QA. I started hating W10 simply because of its driver issues, automatic brightness stuff that I can't turn off on SP4. Same Win10 on my Macs, it works much better and consistent. There's no way Apple will do this to macOS.
  - sigjuice 10y ago
    Five years down the line Macs will be an even smaller piece of the pie. The way Apple has been neglecting Macs has me concerned of a not too distant dystopia where Apple decides that Macs and macOS are not worth the trouble any more. Sure they will still use macOS internally for development that they can run on older Macs or generic PCs themselves. Swift Playgrounds on the iPad will be the way most developers get to make apps. Larger and more prominent developers like Adobe, Microsoft, big name game publishers etc. get some sort of special treatment, e.g they get to buy iOS "devkits" (2013 Mac Pro preloaded with Xcode or some sort of macOS VM) from Apple for a lot of money.
derefr 10y ago
> We can’t just buy hideous Xeon workstations from Dell and install macOS on them. Sure you can. Or rather, you can install the [free] VMWare ESXi hypervisor on said hideous box, and then install macOS on that. The ESXi hypervisor is an officially-supported macOS hardware configuration. Apple want you to only run macOS guests through ESXi if you're on macOS hardware, but there's literally nothing stopping you from doing otherwise. Default new USB device attachments to the macOS VM; add a USB Bluetooth dongle; use SR/IOV to feed the VM a dedicated video card, and plug your monitor into that. You'll never even know ESXi is running. Side benefit: cheap sibling Linux VMs!
- UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
  > The ESXi hypervisor is an officially-supported macOS hardware configuration. ON APPLE HARDWARE. If you run MacOS on non-Apple hardware it isn't officially supported at all, effectively piracy, and you need to hack ESXi to make it work at all (ESXi Unlocker, etc). > but there's literally nothing stopping you from doing otherwise. Except the license agreements (both Apple and VMWare), and the fact that ESXi won't do it unless modified.
  - derefr 10y ago
    > If you run MacOS on non-Apple hardware it isn't officially supported at all By "officially supported", what I mean is that Apple supports VMWare in developing drivers for ESXi, so neither new versions of ESXi, nor macOS updates, will suddenly break macOS ESXi guests. You can put the same expectations on the stability of the ESXi hypervisor in running Apple software as you can on Apple hardware in running Apple software. (This contrasts with the Hackintosh driver ecosystem, where every time macOS updates you have to figure your compatibility out all over again.) Now, the other half of that—the stability of your hardware in running ESXi, etc.—is up to you. Obviously, you can't take your Dell into an Apple Store and expect support. VMWare sort of does support you, though, insofar as it's the free-tier support (you can get better if you pay for VSphere), and insofar as whatever problem you're facing is a problem with ESXi—or a problem in your hardware's ESXi compatibility—instead of a problem in how ESXi handles macOS guests. But, as I said above, the latter is Apple's problem to worry about; such bugs get fixed, to support the people who are virtualizing macOS on Apple hardware. > the fact that ESXi won't do it unless modified Not actually true! ESXi won't create a macOS guest without hacks. It's perfectly happy, however, to import a macOS VM created using VMWare Fusion. There's even a quick menu-action to upload VMs directly from Fusion into ESXi. > Except the license agreements (both Apple and VMWare) A license agreement doesn't stop you from doing anything. It doesn't have hands to restrain you from typing the commands that will install macOS. You stop yourself, because of a license agreement. Or you don't. Up to you, really. It's not like either Apple or VMWare is going to stop selling you their products, let alone sue you, for what you do with their software on your own computer. (Now, if you're an employee of a company, then the licence agreement might indeed have "hands" to stop you with: the hands of the lawyers of the company, enforcing the company's agreement with VMware/Apple. This is why https://macminicolo.net/ https://macminicolo.net/ exists, instead of just being an ESXi farm.)
ditados 10y ago
Some of the Mac people I follow seem to be begging Apple to build a PC-like box: - https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much-of-the-controversy/ https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much... - http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/04/2230 http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/04/2230 - http://www.libertypages.com/clarktech/?p=751 http://www.libertypages.com/clarktech/?p=751
- rcarmo 10y ago
  Hey! Thanks for the link. I don't really want a completely PC-like box (I have a mini, and want to upgrade that), but I do want something that can be expandable somehow. I'm pretty sure I won't get it (or worse, that I'll have to pay through the nose for it at Mac Pro-grade prices), but I'd really like to get a more modular Mac. I don't think that Apple will do it, though. Jony "VP of Narration" Ive has a thing about unbroken surfaces, and even though I like Apple's overall aesthetics, I don't think there's any way a modular system fits into the Mac "look".
Yabood 10y ago
> Microsoft is boldly experimenting with PC hardware, but Windows and everything around Windows is woefully inferior to macOS and the Mac software ecosystem. Even if Microsoft did everything right, it would take Windows at least a decade to catch up — and they won’t do everything right. A whole decade to catch up? I use Windows and macOS on daily basis for web development and various other tasks. I find macOS inferior to Windows in many ways. For example, window management on macOS is terrible and the transitions are nothing but annoying (personal preference) . Can't cut and paste with keyboard, can't lock your screen with keyboard, finder, itunes, and the task manager are all garbage. There are many other examples. That's not to say there aren't many things that are better than Windows or other operating systems, but the statement above is exaggerated.
- et2o 10y ago
  Can't cut and paste with the keyboard...?
- jeremymcanally 10y ago
  > Can't cut and paste with keyboard, can't lock your screen with keyboard... Uh, are you using some weird KVM or something? There are keyboard shortcuts for both of those.
  - mrcarrot 10y ago
    I assume he's talking about files in Finder, where you can't just CMD+x, CMD+v like you'd expect (though I think there is some kind of CMD+SOMETHING+V shortcut that will move a file after copying it).
hacknat 10y ago
"Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change." Miserable is a strong word. Ubuntu is hardly miserable. Chromebooks are pretty much guaranteed to be able to run Linux without worry, and installing Ubuntu on them shouldn't be much of a hassle. I personally run Fedora on an XPS 15 and have had very few issues with it, which is crazy since I'm bleeding edge everything by that count (hardware and software).
woofdogwoof 10y ago
Not sure what the author point was. He told us that chips aren't getting faster, so the only way to add speed was to add cores, then he told us that we can get 22 cores from a Mac Pro. As far as I know no other desktop can deliver 22 cores, so what is he griping about? Is he upset that Apple hasn't released a Pro with 48 cores?
- et2o 10y ago
  You can only get maximum 6 cores from a Mac Pro currently. He is saying that the modern processors they should be using have 22 cores.
  - redial 10y ago
    You can custom order a 12 core Mac Pro from the Apple Store.
empath75 10y ago
I wonder if it's possible to offload the stuff that requires a heavy CPU load to the cloud. Spot instances on aws are really cheap per hour.
PascLeRasc 10y ago
Is the 2013 Mac Pro the best performing Apple-supported Mac computer? Or are there older full ATX Mac Pros with dual CPUs or something that would outperform them?
stevesun21 10y ago
I personally don't really care how nerdy criticism sounds like to me. MacBook Pro still the best developer laptop I have ever use. Even, you just keep a closed MBP on everywhere in your house, it looks so like a piece of fine art rather than an electronic device to stand out.
- stevesun21 10y ago
  Really, say what product I personally like get down vote?
jackyinger 10y ago
If you know what you want a workstation for, you probably have enough know how to get a Supermicro barebones system and stuff it with the exact CPUs, GPUs, RAM, SSDs, and ANY peripheral you want. More flexibility and cheaper. There are even outfits that will build it for you if you're feeling lazy. And when Linux breaks, there is a wealth of knowledge on how to fix it. I have found OS X's community to be plagued by the opposite.
lucb1e 10y ago
This article is ridiculous. > Nobody else can make macOS hardware. If Apple doesn’t address someone’s hardware needs, there’s no alternative. So that's a bad thing right, the closed ecosystem? Oh no wait. > Microsoft is boldly experimenting with PC hardware, but [even] if Microsoft did everything right, it would take Windows at least a decade to catch up Talking about which, that decade an entirely unfounded claim. It doesn't even attempt to make arguments, instead waiting for the mac vs windows users flamewar to start. Then to add some fuel, it says linux sucks as well, not backing up that claim either, inviting anyone using a linux-based desktop (and by extent, the rest of the open source desktop community) to add to the flamewar. And it's all for nothing. The article is telling about how bad it would be not to get another mac pro, using a hundred arguments that come down to "I like OS X software and software that runs on OS X, and the pro hardware is better than the consumer version [duh]". Apple cannot possibly not have thought of this yet. PS. My memory must be wrong but I thought I remembered a different company boldly (bravely?) experimenting with hardware.
vbezhenar 10y ago
If I were "Pro" relying on OS X, I would build good PC compatible with macOS and just install hackintosh. Much better experience.
captainmuon 10y ago
A strange fact is that many modern PCIe graphics cards work with MacOS, despite the last extendable Mac Pro being sold years ago. Also, Apple knows exactly what hardware they have sold over the years. They could put a whitelist in their OS to prevent Hackintosh or make it at least a lot harder (almost everything can be patched out of course, but it is funny that you can open "About my Mac" and it happily shows configurations that have nothing to do with a real Mac). I take this as a hint that they secretly tolerate hackintosh at a small scale. They can't allow it altogether, and anyway it is nothing for most Mac customers (who want the "it just works" experience), but some people in the "pro" segment who need the extra power and don't fear some hacking can be satisfied that way. I'm thinking especially about small iOS or macOS developers, or people who work with audio/video, who need a beefy macOS machine.
wodenokoto 10y ago
I think this is the first article on HN that touches on the real problem with the Mac lineup. It's not that the notebook aren't powerful enough (they're notebooks, not desktop replacements) it's that there isn't a viable Mac backend to do the heavy lifting. They discontinued the rackable servers, yet require developers to do software testing and compiling on MacOS. On what? Racks of macbooks and imac mini apparently. What backend are we supposed to render on? A single, 3 year old Mac pro? I get wanting to only sell in highly profitable segments, but maybe they should give developers a little sugar
halis 10y ago
As a software developer, I can't say I really care about the Mac Pro. It's not to say that I don't care about performance, I have a MacBook Pro bought by my work that's about 5 months old and it's great. But honestly, I run the hell out of this thing and I never really notice a slowdown. I can have Chrome open with a bunch of tabs (I probably limit it to a dozen before I force myself to start reading/closing them), multiple VM's spun up with vagrant/virtual box, a Windows 10 VM via Parallels, an entire linux software stock via docker-compose, Sublime Text, Slack, SourceTree, PostMan, 4 or 5 terminals, a VPN manager, multiple web servers and not notice any slowdown whatsoever. If a new MBP came out and offered 32GB of RAM, I'd take the option. But do I really have any reason based on reality that I need more than 16GB of RAM? No. Would I ever buy a 4K or 5K Mac Pro? Unless I had some sort of big data or scientific computing need, no. And even then, wouldn't I have a cluster somewhere else for that? Probably.

113 points by Shank 10y ago

efvxcgci 10y ago
Unix
- hartator 10y ago
  Windows 10 has Linux subsystem now, which is Ubuntu 14.04. I would say it's at least on par now with MacOS.
  - geff82 10y ago
    Windows also has an annoyment-subsystem now, reminding you to use Edge once a day when you start Chrome. That is why I am switching my last desktop to Linux in the minutes I write this post. I will not accept an OS that tells me what I should use.
    - aq3cn 10y ago
      I am also a Windows 10 user but I have not been asked this way to use Edge or IE. Are you sure it happens even after setting your default browser to something X?
      - geff82 10y ago
        Can't tell you, Edge has been my default because it is ok, but I use Chrome sometimes.
    - grahamburger 10y ago
      I saw this while using Firefox on my wife's Windows laptop yesterday. "Firefox is using 75% of your battery. Switch to Edge." Notification pop up from the battery indicator. Really obnoxious dark pattern.
      - Godel_unicode 10y ago
        Edge uses less power than Firefox for similar browsing patterns. Why is the OS monitoring your battery life and making suggestions to improve it (this is not the only suggestion it will make) a "dark pattern"? It does similar things with boot times (measure and report about slow startup apps) and IE add-ons. I want my OS to make suggestions about changes I could make to improve my experience.
        grahamburger 10y ago
        Because it wasn't measuring and making suggestions, it was a scare tactic. I should have screenshotted the notification - I've seen notifications before like what you're talking about, 'X program is causing Y system issue, consider Z.' That's not what this was. It was more along the lines of those bouncy 'Your Computer Has A Virus! Click here to Scan!' banner ads of yesteryear.
    - smitherfield 10y ago
      Of course Google also throws up annoy-popups every time you go to their site from a non-Chrome browser.
      - geff82 10y ago
        That is annoying, too. But it is not "in my system".
  - ditados 10y ago
    Believe me, it's not. Even when the userland gets updated to 16.04, it's still heavily dependent on the Windows kernel, and the networking stack (for example) will not be the same. The WSL will never replace a native Linux OS. Period. But it will be pretty useful for some lighter use cases. As a dev, I'm still not convinced it's good enough, given the recent issues with Ruby and Node.
    - throw_away 10y ago
      I'm fine with Unix support not being as good as native Linux, but is it as good as MacOS?
      - ditados 10y ago
        macOS runs a BSD-like userland atop a Mach kernel. It's not Linux, but it is a damn sight more field-tested and reliable than the Windows kernel... I'm actually surprised at the question, considering the number of devs who work on macOS (and I'm not talking about front-end folk).
    - hartator 10y ago
      What issues are you talking about? I was about able to run a full Rails installation with MongoDB, Redis and Sidekiq without issues. But, I kind of agree actually, the only true issue was advanced socket issue with PhantomJS. Like for some reasons, Capybara/Poltergeist can't connect to it. It's the only reasons I am back to MacOS. But, I think I will switch as soon as it fixes. It should be soon.
      - rcarmo 10y ago
        Probably this, which has since been fixed: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/26054 https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/26054 I'm running current stable (full disclosure: MS FTE here), and there are still a few hang-ups that I know are being addressed (and some already fixed) in the Insider Previews. I had to leave the Previews because I needed to pin down a few things, and mostly use Docker for Windows instead of WSL for work. WSL will not run Docker containers directly (for instance), but I managed to get the CLI to run in WSL to control them inside the Docker VM. Well, until the last Docker upgrade reset the configs... :)
m_mueller 10y ago
* The windows registry vs the OSX defaults system * Constantly changing APIs based on Microsofts internal politics vs. the very stable Cocoa * HiDPI that always works or has good fallbacks * Touchpad / gesture support that is actually pleasant and precise to use * Battery life * Multidesktop * POSIX scripting (that one is slowly coming to windows now) * Can be restored from another computer in a matter of minutes (see also the first point) * PDF support baked into OS
- CJefferson 10y ago
  * Constantly changing APIs based on Microsofts internal politics vs. the very stable Cocoa Really? I can run Windows apps I bought 10 years ago easily, whereas many Mac apps seem to break with every OS update. It's also extremely hard to build apps for older versions of Mac OS X, as Apple hide the older versions of the SDK.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    I think m_mueller's comment is more from a developer's perspective than a users. Microsoft has done an amazing job of preserving compatibility. Its not that Microsoft gets rid of APIs (they don't), but that they haven't stuck with a "one true" API to program Windows in[1]. Their switching of what tech you should use to build your apps is problematic. Cocoa has been a long path, but my Windows friends have had a constant churn of the latest API to use. 1) I am talking about the stuff we are supposed to use above the base Win32.
    - TarpitCarnivore 10y ago
      I suspect this will change under Nadella. Things just feel like they have a better vision to them.
    - mhenr18 10y ago
      A key difference with the Microsoft approach vs the Apple approach is that on Windows the API that exposes every single feature is such a beast that developers are expected to work at a level above that API. Whether it's WPF, WinForms, WinRT, or whatever the new flavour of the day is, it's always a layer on top. And that layer is never perfect, because you still have to do the occasional [DllImport("Kernel32.dll")] interop reference. Here are the currently supported ways to deal with windows on Windows: * HWND * System.Windows.Window * Windows.UI.Xaml.Window On OSX, you use Cocoa. When Apple introduced Swift, they didn't have to layer on top of the API accessed by ObjC. When you write Swift code, you call the exact same APIs as you would have done with your ObjC code. Here are the currently supported ways to deal with windows on the Mac: * NSWindow
deleted 10y ago
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alyandon 10y ago
Yeah, I don't really get that either. I have been using Windows, OS X (I mean macOS) and various Linux distributions for years. Each one of them comes with their own particular set of quirks/warts and I can't objectively say one is so superior that I'd rather use it to the exclusion of the others.
morganvachon 10y ago
That's what bothers me about the article. I can't think of a single piece of professional production software that is Mac only, apart from Apple's own apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic. Those are great apps but they have equivalents on Windows, and some of the Linux pro audio and video apps are getting really good. As for web development, there is nothing you can do on a Mac that can't be done on Linux or BSD apart from testing in Safari, and Safari has a smaller user base than IE/Edge. Hell, even Windows is improving in this space. I guess one could argue that macOS is a more aesthetically pleasing environment to work in, to which I counter that I'd rather work in BeOS/Haiku as I find it more aesthetically appealing than any other OS. In other words, that's purely subjective.
- greenhatman 10y ago
  The only one I knew of was Sequel Pro. But JetBrains' DataGrip now fills that void.
mhenr18 10y ago
* Free OS updates. * Better touchpad support throughout the entire OS. * Vastly superior HiDPI support (especially if you're using a multi-screen, multi-DPI setup). I cannot stress how poorly Windows 10 performs in this regard. This has been a solved problem on the Mac for years. * Better colour management through the whole UI stack. * Better tablet support (OSX has had integrated support for tablet events since 10.4, on the Windows side there were still apps that broke when the Surface 3 launched almost a decade later due to using a third-party API for tablet events that needed custom drivers) * Core Audio. OS X has had the same set of audio APIs since 10.3, and they've been well regarded for years and years. It wasn't until Windows 10 that you could argue Microsoft had finally caught up, and there's still people with ASIO driver compatibility issues. That's literally 12 years it took for Microsoft to catch up. * OS X had scrolling of inactive windows for over a decade before Windows caught up. I actually think it's something that was there in 10.0 but I only started using Macs at 10.3 so I can't be sure. * Spotlight. Spotlight is almost the perfect analogy of the difference between OS X and Windows, and I'm just going to look at one tiny feature of it. If you want to do some math on Windows at a single keypress, you need to turn on Cortana which only became availble in Windows 10. Cortana isn't even available in every country. Meanwhile OSX has had that built into Spotlight since 10.4 and it works on every Mac ever shipped since then, no matter what country you're in. * File tagging. OSX has had this for over a decade, and you still can't do it in Windows. * An integrated C/C++ runtime library, like every other Unix ever. It wasn't until Windows 10 that you could ship C/C++ code without worrying about whether your end user had the right msvcr/msvcp DLL installed on their machine. I'll stop here, because there's so many things that OSX has had for a decade or more that Windows still hasn't caught up with that I wouldn't be surprised if Windows doesn't catch up after another decade.
- addicted 10y ago
  * Windows has free OS updates * Precision Touchpads are equally well supported in Windows. * HiDPI is better on the Mac * I don't know much about this. * Are you referring to Wacom style tablets? Not sure about that, but if tablets in general, OSX tablets don't even exist, so it's irrelevant. * Windows Audio APIs are as good as Core Audio now. * This really isn't that big a deal. In Windows it leads to different benefits, where my mouse could be anywhere, ubt I could still scroll the page I was reading. * Cortana is better than Spotlight now. I didn't know that Cortana would be completely disabled in countries that aren't supported. That sucks. * Windows has had file tagging since Win 7. There really isn't that much of a difference. There are places where Mac OS is better, and there are places where Windows is better.

_ph_ 10y ago

While there is no doubt that Apple did neglect the Mac Pro, I am quite hopeful that it gets a significant refresh in the spring. As with so many Mac releases, Apple is limited by the Intel release schedules. That is why the Mac Pro has to wait till spring for a refresh. And that the Mac Pro has not being bumped in smaller features points to me to a rather larger change. And it would make a lot of sense to go back to a bit more "PC" like design like the predecessor of the current machine. That would mean that Apple has less pressure to update it frequently, it would be sufficient to have updates whenever Intel releases new CPUs, but all the other stuff, especially graphics cards, could be updated independent of Apple releases.

pavlov 10y ago

Arment is way too positive on the Mac Pro's thermal design. Recently I worked on an application where we had about a dozen Mac Pros doing heavy video encoding workloads. Four of these computers started having GPU overheating issues, and turns out that this is a common occurrence on the 2013 Mac Pro. Apple has been quietly replacing units over the years (searching for the specific console error message reveals that it's common among Mac Pro owners). My theory is that the Mac Pro hasn't seen an update because Apple knows that its current thermal design is a lemon, and they don't really want to sell any more of these because the replacement rate is so high.

dbg31415 10y ago
Can confirm, had a similar set up with six Mac Pros for video processing and compression. We had to replace every single one of them at least once, and some 3 times and still we feel there are heat-based performance issues that Apple hasn't addressed. Also, I think Apple will have to come out with a new display to go with the Mac Pro.
- protomyth 10y ago
  > Also, I think Apple will have to come out with a new display to go with the Mac Pro. I must be missing something. If a new Mac Pro ever came out wouldn't it use USB-C and be fine on the new LG displays Apple sells (price dropped by the way)?
- hyperpape 10y ago
  There's no press release, but they've told at least one journalist there's no more displays: https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/28/apple-standalone-displays/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/28/apple-standalone-displays/.
deleted 10y ago
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whyoh 10y ago
It was already evident from the Anandtech review, where the 12 core model was reaching around 100 C (CPU and GPU) under stress load. Anand tried to downplay the issue somewhat, but the numbers speak for themselves, it's not a computer you can rely on for prolonged high loads.

thenewwazoo 10y ago

I feel like I'm living in a crazytown where nobody sees what's so plainly obvious. Doesn't anyone remember when IBM wasn't able to deliver chips to Apple on the schedule they demanded, and customers were complaining, and they were taking a drubbing in the press for it? And Apple let their existing product line stagnate for a little while, and then we got the Intel Macs? Well, this time it's Intel and not IBM, except Apple owns their own chip designs and has 200 billion dollars laying around.

addicted 10y ago
What others are seeing that you aren't is that (a) Unlike the PowerPC days when the Mac gave Apple over 90% of it's profits, it now probably accounts for closer to 10% of Apple's profits (b) The Intel excuse seriously does not fly with the Mac Pro. (c) The CEO has openly wondered why anyone would buy a PC. Some have argued he meant Windows computers, but it doesn't inspire confidence (especially since he has stated he uses an iPad pro for most of his work) (d) Clearly Apple's top priorities are making things smaller and lighter. This is out of step with a lot of "Pro" users' needs. Compare the new Mac Pro to its previous incarnation, and the changes in design priority could not be more obvious.
_ph_ 10y ago
Apple has indeed some great chip designs available. But one should not forget that the switch to Intel not only gave Apple nicer CPUs but also made Apple compatible to the rest of the PC world. You can run any x86 application on a Mac via VMware or Parallels. Moving away from Intel would kill this.
- sigjuice 10y ago
  Apple could make the equivalent of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) to run x86 apps on non-Intel Macs. But the thing is, Apple has no good reason to make a different type of computer, considering computers are not that important, at least to Apple.
  - 10y ago

wfleming 10y ago

> Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change. Depending on which pro needs We're talking about, I don't believe this is true anymore. I was a Linux user for many years, then an OS X user for over a decade, and earlier this year I'd had enough with being annoyed by OS X & switched back to Linux. I am extremely happy I did. If you want beautiful GUIs or do video/audio/graphics editing then, yes, macOS is still superior. If you are a developer who spends most of your time split between the terminal and the browser, then Linux is not just an acceptable substitute, but can in fact be a superior replacement.

sverige 10y ago
And if you split your time between the terminal and the browser and want what amounts to a built-in IDE, OpenBSD is a great answer.
- wfleming 10y ago
  I like the BSDs, and considered doing that instead of Linux. My company is a heavy Docker user, though: dealing with docker-machine & running Docker via a VM on OS X was one of the final straws that caused me to switch. Given that FreeBSD's Docker support is pretty recent (and was still considered beta when I was deciding to switch), and OpenBSD doesn't have any native support at all as far as I know, I felt that the probability of trading one annoyance for a similar one was too high, so Linux was the right choice for me.
- trungaczne 10y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you mean by "what amounts to a built-in IDE"?
kenOfYugen 10y ago
I can relate. Since I setup a Linux desktop PC running Arch & bspwm, I feel less productive in macOS. The only other desktop UX tool I use is dmenu. It feels like when I first moved from Windows to OS X. Makes sense, since back then OS X felt minimal compared to Windows, and a bare tiling manager over Linux is the ultimate minimalism.

ne01 10y ago

> Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change. I disagree! A Linux desktop gets as good as your customization. For me nothing can replace my setup: Debian + custom Stumpwm window manager Pro users want flexibility.

djhworld 10y ago
I think for some people customisation is a pain, especially when you have to workarounds bugs or find some hardware configuration incompatibility. Not saying there's anything wrong with people enjoying tinkering with their setup, but I guess the advantage OSX offers you is most of that is taken care of you on the desktop, you just install your apps on top
- sheer_horror 10y ago
  It is a misconception that mainstay Linux distributions have any sort of hardware or software incompatibility (aside from Mac- or Windows-only targeted software). That said, you are correct that people use OSX because it's literally 0 set up and configuration.
  - mamon 10y ago
    There's a lot of incompabilities on new hardware. Usually Linux kernel needs about 6 months to catch up with latest Intel or NVidia products. Also, try to use an iPhone with Linux computer - it is a nightmare. I have Windows installed in VirtualBox vm solely for iTunes's sake.

Adaptive 10y ago

"Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change." When I switched in 2005 I had to convince friends I wasn't crazy. I advocated for the platform. I suffered weird incompatibilities. I dealt with bad updates. I found work arounds for non-multi-platform tools I had to run. But look how stable, how much less restrictive the platform was, I said! And it was! The platform I switched to in 2005 wasn't Linux. It was OS X. In 10 years the world has changed and today if you are in most of the "creative" professions, not using a Mac is the exception. You can today make a lot of arguments against desktop linux, yet for the past several years I've run it exclusively on all my main systems (laptops and desktops, work and home). 10 years ago, plenty of Windows users couldn't imagine a world in which Macs were where they are today. I mean couldn't imagine. The way Mac enthusiasts can't imagine desktop linux today. The parallels aren't exact. They don't need to be. I am neither predicting success or failure. I am simply pointing out that imagination fails and it is a mistake to say "that will probably never change."

tptacek 10y ago
My first Mac was a TiBook, which I bought to install Yellow Dog Linux on. I switched to OSX at 10.1. I worked from 2001-2005 at a decent-sized network software firm in Ann Arbor. Within a year or so of arriving, much of the office had converted to Macs. I don't think having a Mac in '05 made you too much of an outlier --- at least, not if you worked in technology. By 2005, Apple had already started the switch to Intel! This would be nitpicking, except that the timeline matters here. It's not a 10 year gap, just by your own numbers. But it's not 12 years, either. It's more like 16. Let's also remember that Linux has been an unreasonable mass-market desktop choice for a lot longer than 16 years. "The year of Linux on the desktop" is a nerd joke for a reason.
- Adaptive 10y ago
  In 05 I was based in Asia. Macs were edge cases. From 99-03 I ran online ops for a large ad agency network in Asia. PCs were by far the norm outside of the video departments. By 07 I worked in the states for a mac software firm, so I was definitely no outlier by then.

andreapaiola 10y ago

I'm sorry to pop your Apple bubble, but I find Ubuntu much better than macOs. And RIP Apple hardware, I give you the Hackintosh!

nkurz 10y ago

3. “Hackintoshes” aren’t good enough. ↩︎ Is this really true? Yes, there are currently support issues, but this would seem to be because Apple exclusively makes its own hardware and doesn't legally permit running their OS on anything else. Might macOS thrive if it was retargeted to (or at least officially permitted use of) high-end 3rd-party hardware? Microsoft doesn't make their own high-end workstations, and Windows seems to be doing just fine.

ditados 10y ago
Marco does iOS development, and there are a number of features that simply won't run on a Hackintosh. Anything involving crypto is dicey, and stuff that relies on (for instance) having an official serial number (like iMessage) will also fail. But that is irrelevant for a lot other use cases.
- addicted 10y ago
  I believe the iMessage issues have been resolved now. Hackintoshes are getting better, but Marco is fundamentally right. Any OS update could break your system, which means you need to wait before installing an update, which opens you up to security and/or professional risks (for example, if it takes a couple of months for the newest MacOS to be made suitable for a hackintosh, that's a couple of months where you cannot update your iOS apps with the latest features, since XCode versions also tend to be tied to OS versions).
- chrisper 10y ago
  >and stuff that relies on (for instance) having an official serial number (like iMessage) will also fail. Which is not true. I have gotten my iMessage to work without having to clone a serial number.
  - rcarmo 10y ago
    I'm curious about that, since iMessage and iTunes Match have been a constant source of trouble to one of my colleagues. He also mentions that the device is flagged as "Untrusted" in Find My Mac...

redial 10y ago

The problem with this article is that Marco presents a rational argument for the need of a Mac Pro, but Apple is way past rationality in their view of the future; they are engaged in a holy war against local computing, against ports, wired connections, and against being tethered to a desk.

sosborn 10y ago
What is irrational about this?

desireco42 10y ago

Stop begging to get crumbs from Apple. They are big company run by adults. They've been exploiting our desire to get their computers for a long time. They make some really nice computers, but the whole point is that there are others. I really miss times when I would assemble my own computer. Obviously you can't do this with laptops, but I still miss freedom it gave me. I am exploring how to get my work done on something else, for start on desktop, some nice linux machine for start. I tried several times in the past, but without us actually using linux, there will never be real need to fix issues that it has.

krosaen 10y ago

This was interesting until he got to the unsubstantiated (maybe he elaborates elsewhere?) partisan jabs at windows, linux and Google.

devsquid 10y ago
Yup thats typically this guys MO. Him and Grubber make it pretty lame to be a modern Apple fan. They whine about Apple not doing what they want, they whine about people critiquing Apple, and then they make up or spread nonsense about Apples competitors. They are the "Macs can't game" Windows fan boys of the 90s. I would be surprised if he's ever really given Ubuntu or Fedora a serious chance. I think he thinks Google's Android and Kindle Fire have the same UI. I listened to him once bitch about Windows and it was so obvious he hadn't installed it properly.

petepete 10y ago

For every 'pro', how many people buy a Macbook/MBP for the logo and use it as a glorified Facebook/occasional assignment machine. It's an easier audience to keep happy and probably more profitable.

sigjuice 10y ago

Any particular reason why Apple should sell Macs at all, given they make almost all their money from other products? Besides Xcode, is there any other app (or equivalent) that can't be had on other systems?

mikhailt 10y ago
First of all, Apple is making more money from Macs than iPads. In the last quarter, they had ~$6B in revenue from Macs versus $4.2B from iPads (~$7B same quarter last year). Are you seriously suggesting that Apple should drop that kind of money just because the iPhone had ~$30B instead? (Source: http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy16datasum.pdf http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy16datasum.pdf) They're not going to make macOS a paid OS for sale on other hardware, which means they'd lose $4-6B per quarter, that's $20b revenue a year they can use to improve all products. They're not going to keep making that much money from iPhone forever, it will decline eventually as competitors keep getting better and better. Google is entering the market with products that finally rivals iPhones and Microsoft/HP/Dell with Surface/Spectre/XPS products that does rival Macbooks. This is Apple, they want total control of the entire stack and the only way to do this is to do it themselves. macOS will not survive on other hardware with questionable QA. I started hating W10 simply because of its driver issues, automatic brightness stuff that I can't turn off on SP4. Same Win10 on my Macs, it works much better and consistent. There's no way Apple will do this to macOS.
- sigjuice 10y ago
  Five years down the line Macs will be an even smaller piece of the pie. The way Apple has been neglecting Macs has me concerned of a not too distant dystopia where Apple decides that Macs and macOS are not worth the trouble any more. Sure they will still use macOS internally for development that they can run on older Macs or generic PCs themselves. Swift Playgrounds on the iPad will be the way most developers get to make apps. Larger and more prominent developers like Adobe, Microsoft, big name game publishers etc. get some sort of special treatment, e.g they get to buy iOS "devkits" (2013 Mac Pro preloaded with Xcode or some sort of macOS VM) from Apple for a lot of money.

derefr 10y ago

> We can’t just buy hideous Xeon workstations from Dell and install macOS on them. Sure you can. Or rather, you can install the [free] VMWare ESXi hypervisor on said hideous box, and then install macOS on that. The ESXi hypervisor is an officially-supported macOS hardware configuration. Apple want you to only run macOS guests through ESXi if you're on macOS hardware, but there's literally nothing stopping you from doing otherwise. Default new USB device attachments to the macOS VM; add a USB Bluetooth dongle; use SR/IOV to feed the VM a dedicated video card, and plug your monitor into that. You'll never even know ESXi is running. Side benefit: cheap sibling Linux VMs!

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
> The ESXi hypervisor is an officially-supported macOS hardware configuration. ON APPLE HARDWARE. If you run MacOS on non-Apple hardware it isn't officially supported at all, effectively piracy, and you need to hack ESXi to make it work at all (ESXi Unlocker, etc). > but there's literally nothing stopping you from doing otherwise. Except the license agreements (both Apple and VMWare), and the fact that ESXi won't do it unless modified.
- derefr 10y ago
  > If you run MacOS on non-Apple hardware it isn't officially supported at all By "officially supported", what I mean is that Apple supports VMWare in developing drivers for ESXi, so neither new versions of ESXi, nor macOS updates, will suddenly break macOS ESXi guests. You can put the same expectations on the stability of the ESXi hypervisor in running Apple software as you can on Apple hardware in running Apple software. (This contrasts with the Hackintosh driver ecosystem, where every time macOS updates you have to figure your compatibility out all over again.) Now, the other half of that—the stability of your hardware in running ESXi, etc.—is up to you. Obviously, you can't take your Dell into an Apple Store and expect support. VMWare sort of does support you, though, insofar as it's the free-tier support (you can get better if you pay for VSphere), and insofar as whatever problem you're facing is a problem with ESXi—or a problem in your hardware's ESXi compatibility—instead of a problem in how ESXi handles macOS guests. But, as I said above, the latter is Apple's problem to worry about; such bugs get fixed, to support the people who are virtualizing macOS on Apple hardware. > the fact that ESXi won't do it unless modified Not actually true! ESXi won't create a macOS guest without hacks. It's perfectly happy, however, to import a macOS VM created using VMWare Fusion. There's even a quick menu-action to upload VMs directly from Fusion into ESXi. > Except the license agreements (both Apple and VMWare) A license agreement doesn't stop you from doing anything. It doesn't have hands to restrain you from typing the commands that will install macOS. You stop yourself, because of a license agreement. Or you don't. Up to you, really. It's not like either Apple or VMWare is going to stop selling you their products, let alone sue you, for what you do with their software on your own computer. (Now, if you're an employee of a company, then the licence agreement might indeed have "hands" to stop you with: the hands of the lawyers of the company, enforcing the company's agreement with VMware/Apple. This is why https://macminicolo.net/ https://macminicolo.net/ exists, instead of just being an ESXi farm.)

ditados 10y ago

Some of the Mac people I follow seem to be begging Apple to build a PC-like box: - https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much-of-the-controversy/ https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much... - http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/04/2230 http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/04/2230 - http://www.libertypages.com/clarktech/?p=751 http://www.libertypages.com/clarktech/?p=751

rcarmo 10y ago
Hey! Thanks for the link. I don't really want a completely PC-like box (I have a mini, and want to upgrade that), but I do want something that can be expandable somehow. I'm pretty sure I won't get it (or worse, that I'll have to pay through the nose for it at Mac Pro-grade prices), but I'd really like to get a more modular Mac. I don't think that Apple will do it, though. Jony "VP of Narration" Ive has a thing about unbroken surfaces, and even though I like Apple's overall aesthetics, I don't think there's any way a modular system fits into the Mac "look".

Yabood 10y ago

> Microsoft is boldly experimenting with PC hardware, but Windows and everything around Windows is woefully inferior to macOS and the Mac software ecosystem. Even if Microsoft did everything right, it would take Windows at least a decade to catch up — and they won’t do everything right. A whole decade to catch up? I use Windows and macOS on daily basis for web development and various other tasks. I find macOS inferior to Windows in many ways. For example, window management on macOS is terrible and the transitions are nothing but annoying (personal preference) . Can't cut and paste with keyboard, can't lock your screen with keyboard, finder, itunes, and the task manager are all garbage. There are many other examples. That's not to say there aren't many things that are better than Windows or other operating systems, but the statement above is exaggerated.

et2o 10y ago
Can't cut and paste with the keyboard...?
jeremymcanally 10y ago
> Can't cut and paste with keyboard, can't lock your screen with keyboard... Uh, are you using some weird KVM or something? There are keyboard shortcuts for both of those.
- mrcarrot 10y ago
  I assume he's talking about files in Finder, where you can't just CMD+x, CMD+v like you'd expect (though I think there is some kind of CMD+SOMETHING+V shortcut that will move a file after copying it).

hacknat 10y ago

"Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change." Miserable is a strong word. Ubuntu is hardly miserable. Chromebooks are pretty much guaranteed to be able to run Linux without worry, and installing Ubuntu on them shouldn't be much of a hassle. I personally run Fedora on an XPS 15 and have had very few issues with it, which is crazy since I'm bleeding edge everything by that count (hardware and software).

woofdogwoof 10y ago

Not sure what the author point was. He told us that chips aren't getting faster, so the only way to add speed was to add cores, then he told us that we can get 22 cores from a Mac Pro. As far as I know no other desktop can deliver 22 cores, so what is he griping about? Is he upset that Apple hasn't released a Pro with 48 cores?

et2o 10y ago
You can only get maximum 6 cores from a Mac Pro currently. He is saying that the modern processors they should be using have 22 cores.
- redial 10y ago
  You can custom order a 12 core Mac Pro from the Apple Store.

empath75 10y ago

I wonder if it's possible to offload the stuff that requires a heavy CPU load to the cloud. Spot instances on aws are really cheap per hour.

PascLeRasc 10y ago

Is the 2013 Mac Pro the best performing Apple-supported Mac computer? Or are there older full ATX Mac Pros with dual CPUs or something that would outperform them?

stevesun21 10y ago

I personally don't really care how nerdy criticism sounds like to me. MacBook Pro still the best developer laptop I have ever use. Even, you just keep a closed MBP on everywhere in your house, it looks so like a piece of fine art rather than an electronic device to stand out.

stevesun21 10y ago
Really, say what product I personally like get down vote?

jackyinger 10y ago

If you know what you want a workstation for, you probably have enough know how to get a Supermicro barebones system and stuff it with the exact CPUs, GPUs, RAM, SSDs, and ANY peripheral you want. More flexibility and cheaper. There are even outfits that will build it for you if you're feeling lazy. And when Linux breaks, there is a wealth of knowledge on how to fix it. I have found OS X's community to be plagued by the opposite.

lucb1e 10y ago

This article is ridiculous. > Nobody else can make macOS hardware. If Apple doesn’t address someone’s hardware needs, there’s no alternative. So that's a bad thing right, the closed ecosystem? Oh no wait. > Microsoft is boldly experimenting with PC hardware, but [even] if Microsoft did everything right, it would take Windows at least a decade to catch up Talking about which, that decade an entirely unfounded claim. It doesn't even attempt to make arguments, instead waiting for the mac vs windows users flamewar to start. Then to add some fuel, it says linux sucks as well, not backing up that claim either, inviting anyone using a linux-based desktop (and by extent, the rest of the open source desktop community) to add to the flamewar. And it's all for nothing. The article is telling about how bad it would be not to get another mac pro, using a hundred arguments that come down to "I like OS X software and software that runs on OS X, and the pro hardware is better than the consumer version [duh]". Apple cannot possibly not have thought of this yet. PS. My memory must be wrong but I thought I remembered a different company boldly (bravely?) experimenting with hardware.

vbezhenar 10y ago

If I were "Pro" relying on OS X, I would build good PC compatible with macOS and just install hackintosh. Much better experience.

captainmuon 10y ago

A strange fact is that many modern PCIe graphics cards work with MacOS, despite the last extendable Mac Pro being sold years ago. Also, Apple knows exactly what hardware they have sold over the years. They could put a whitelist in their OS to prevent Hackintosh or make it at least a lot harder (almost everything can be patched out of course, but it is funny that you can open "About my Mac" and it happily shows configurations that have nothing to do with a real Mac). I take this as a hint that they secretly tolerate hackintosh at a small scale. They can't allow it altogether, and anyway it is nothing for most Mac customers (who want the "it just works" experience), but some people in the "pro" segment who need the extra power and don't fear some hacking can be satisfied that way. I'm thinking especially about small iOS or macOS developers, or people who work with audio/video, who need a beefy macOS machine.

wodenokoto 10y ago

I think this is the first article on HN that touches on the real problem with the Mac lineup. It's not that the notebook aren't powerful enough (they're notebooks, not desktop replacements) it's that there isn't a viable Mac backend to do the heavy lifting. They discontinued the rackable servers, yet require developers to do software testing and compiling on MacOS. On what? Racks of macbooks and imac mini apparently. What backend are we supposed to render on? A single, 3 year old Mac pro? I get wanting to only sell in highly profitable segments, but maybe they should give developers a little sugar

halis 10y ago

As a software developer, I can't say I really care about the Mac Pro. It's not to say that I don't care about performance, I have a MacBook Pro bought by my work that's about 5 months old and it's great. But honestly, I run the hell out of this thing and I never really notice a slowdown. I can have Chrome open with a bunch of tabs (I probably limit it to a dozen before I force myself to start reading/closing them), multiple VM's spun up with vagrant/virtual box, a Windows 10 VM via Parallels, an entire linux software stock via docker-compose, Sublime Text, Slack, SourceTree, PostMan, 4 or 5 terminals, a VPN manager, multiple web servers and not notice any slowdown whatsoever. If a new MBP came out and offered 32GB of RAM, I'd take the option. But do I really have any reason based on reality that I need more than 16GB of RAM? No. Would I ever buy a 4K or 5K Mac Pro? Unless I had some sort of big data or scientific computing need, no. And even then, wouldn't I have a cluster somewhere else for that? Probably.