11 ms·

Why are we all moving away from Apple?

93 points by akitaonrails 10y ago

heavymark 10y ago
Lol, "we all", is probably only appropriate if the author has multiple personalities. Was interested to see what dataset the author was using to support their belief that "we all" are leaving Apple for presumably competing companies as I'm not aware of any such movement or data. I imagine rather they chose a sensational title and choose to speak on behalf of all humans rather than saying more appropriately, "Why I am moving away from Apple" or at most, "Why some are moving away from Apple".
manicdee 10y ago
My reason is simple: I want a desktop and a laptop capable of running graphics-intensive games. I play games with my expensive computer. So sue me. The previous batches of MacBook Pros were capable of running games. The current batch is not: they are not designed for sustained use of the GPU. This is especially damning when new number-crunching programming techniques are starting to make more use of the GPU, and Apple has an entire API dedicated to compute distribution. There are two ideal MacBooks for me: an 11" MBA with SD card built in for my photography bag, and a 15" MBP with more than enough speed in processor, GPU and memory to run 3D intensive games. I don't care about battery life during maximum load, since for the heavy compute I'm most likely going to be plugged in anyway. The rest of the time it would be nice if I could spend a weekend web browsing, checking maps, writing Arduino code, etc, without having to be connected to a wall. Then I can come back home, plug into my TB3 dock with monitor, Ethernet, scanner, etc attached, and continue working as if on a "desktop" computer. The only things keeping me on OS X in any way, shape or form are: effort free backup with Time Machine, Alfred, Finder "tags", Spotlight, ScanSnap (for scanning documents, then OCR to PDF), Hazel, and a significant investment in movies and TV shows that were only available from DRM encumbered sources.
tmaly 10y ago
Maybe its not just apple. Growing up in the 90's I imagined this cool VR / AI future right out of Gibson's Neuromancer. Instead we have these walled gardens, the Internet has become less open, less free to the masses. Everything has become about commercialization instead of innovation and exploration.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
  I've got tired of the walled gardens on phones especially. Stopped iOS dev and went back to web.
  - equalarrow 10y ago
    I see this type of comment a lot. It's not just iOS, Android now has a review process and Google will keep driving in the Apple direction because it is successful. And if it's like the op says where everythig is in the cloud, then walled gardens don't matter much as long as your service has a native app or mobile web (hint, they probably have both). What's the really big issue is privacy (which I know is gone) and what facebook is doing to the world. Everyone likes to bash on Apple lately, but Apple is 'acquiring' a lot less of your personalized data than the social networks and Google are (they are also trying to take the lead in being privacy first). Facebook is just a big ad platform and dont forget 'free' == you are the product.
  - HugoDaniel 10y ago
    PWA FTW [0] https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/ https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/
- l3m0ndr0p 10y ago
  Also - in the USA, we should have Fiber to all homes by now, but instead what do we have? Segmented, ancient infrastructure, run by ISPs that have carved out territories with no competition, no foreseeable upgrades and the end of "net neutrality." Greed is front and center over providing an inexpensive and innovative means of communication (internet). Peace
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  Neuromancer's cool, but the world it represents isn't exactly amazing, or that much better than ours, unless I'm mistaken. Plus, honestly... what else should we expect? We live in a capitalistic, commercialistic, materialistic society. Hypercommercialization of any and all technology is the default.
- 10y ago
larrik 10y ago
Not a particularly well-written article, but some interesting points. The constant "Linux isn't good enough shots" in all these articles is annoying, though. I was on Linux full time in 2010, and found it far more pleasant than OS X.
- gipp 10y ago
  The bits about X11/Wayland made me a bit curious. The author claims we're "only just now" moving towards Wayland -- is there a big movement towards it lately that I've been missing?
  - rhodysurf 10y ago
    Yeah its finally shipped by default with GNOME in both Fedora and Arch (Fedora shipped it for the first time in 25). So thats where that is coming from.
    - akitaonrails 10y ago
      Exactly! I am using GNOME 3 with Wayland in Arch and enjoying it very much.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- cr0sh 10y ago
  I've been "full time" on Linux since 1998 (part-time since 1995 - started with Monkey Linux on a 386 laptop, then moved to Turbo Linux 2.0 on a 486 laptop); I found it interesting that the author of this article seems to think that the devs of GIMP haven't always been frustrated by the various color management issues - because most of them are proprietary problems that don't mesh with open source.
dccoolgai 10y ago
Apple's pattern seems to be small "bursts" of innovation followed by long periods of "dormancy" where they just make smaller/bigger screens. Their "walled garden" cow is just about milked out as the Open Web is enters its new rennaisance. They'll be back in 10-15 years with somethinh that looks like real innovation again.
- bnolsen 10y ago
  Without Jobs I king of doubt that it will be them doing it. They might stumble onto some gem and use their vast hordes of cash to buy their way into an emerging market this time around.
codingdave 10y ago
> Anyone that is someone has been following Apple for the past couple of decades. Love them, or hate them, the only thing you can't do is ignore them. I hate to write off a whole article based on a bad first sentence, but this one just about makes me do so. It starts of with a judgement of a person's worth, then shows that they seem to have completely missed the years over the past few decades where Apple stagnated and were not really relevant outside of creative circles and academia. And finishes off by saying they cannot be ignored, when in reality the business/enterprise world has gotten along just fine ignoring Apple even to this very day.
- akitaonrails 10y ago
  I did a small change in the opening statement to make my intention clearer.
msabalau 10y ago
"Wearables and VR are good gimmicks, but even if they become ubiquitous, it's not a revolution, just an extension of the use cases that the iPhone revolution bootstrapped." Smartphones seem a heck of a lot more derivative of earlier computing use cases. Wearables and VR owe a debt to smartphones because of the cheap components from the mobile supply chain finally make them possible. The debt is not in the realm of ideas. Conceptually both VR and ubiquitous computing predate smartphones by decades.
yborg 10y ago
"We all" aren't moving away from Apple, while I have many issues with the current direction and product offerings, the platform still works for me. So maybe it really is just "All - Me" but my distinct impression is that it is a noisy cohort in the blogverse that has seized upon this as the trend du jour.
- ggregoire 10y ago
  Yes it's a ridiculous statement. I'm still using my MBA 11" from 2012 for everything. I have only 4GB RAM and it's not even a problem to work (I don't have 15 VMs running in background). :)) I have no idea when I'm going to change it and for what, but I have absolutely no desire to move back to Windows or Ubuntu. And there is no way I move away from iOS. It works great for me. Plus, I use my iPhone 6 mostly for gaming and I've been buying games since the 3GS so I've a huge collection (including a bunch of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles that are quite expensive).
  - travisby 10y ago
    The last bit sounds more like stockholm's syndrome. Vendor lock-in shouldn't be a happy thing.
- dntrkv 10y ago
  That's exactly what it is. I only hear about this nonsense on HackerNews and related sites. In The Real World, I haven't seen an increase in people abandoning MacOS for Linux or Windows, just the usual dev that claims "I've switched to Linux as my main OS and it's been great", then two weeks later you learn that dev has switched back to Mac. As far as mobile goes, I've actually seen an increase in people moving back to iOS from Android.
- akitaonrails 10y ago
  You're not wrong. The idea was not for the article to be a statistically correct report of the present day status. That's easy to get and Apple's marketshare is nowhere near bad. This is a decades-long reflection on computer history as a whole, having Apple as protagonist and important player. The title reflects where the early-adopters - the same people that brought Apple back from the dead in the late 90's - will go from here.
blakesterz 10y ago
Even after reading I still think the questions is "ARE we all moving away from Apple?" or even "Are a significant number of people moving away from Apple"
- stinos 10y ago
  Exactly. It's not because I and others moved away from Apple once, that it's a trend. Unless you've got some proper data to back that up.
- rorykoehler 10y ago
  I'm waiting for second generation of the current mbp. Might not make it that far as 2009 mbp is definitely showing it's age but I get prepurchase buyers remorse every time I go to buy. 2009 mbp still works well enough to put off the decision.
akshayB 10y ago
These days its very easy to get any flavor of Linux/Unix running in cloud at a very cheap price. Back in the day folks especially developer relied on Macs as a stable platform to work on but now that landscape has changed due to cloud. Meanwhile this transformation was happening Apple lost its focus and doing the right thing instead their bright idea was generate passive income by forcing people buying connectors. I owned an old Mac for 7+ years it worked fine and finally I decided to get a new one. I was just amazed by amount of connectors I ended up buying.
- sbuk 10y ago
  Yeah, that first iMac took the biscuit. No ADB or SCSI, Parallel or Serial ports, no floppy drives and that stupid mouse! But in time most most manufacturers turned to USB as it really was the obvious choice for the future. Heady days!
fritzw 10y ago
I agree completely with this essay. Here is my tip to Apple. I always felt I understood Apple's Gestapo-like tactics in the past, regarding their rigid methodologies. Eliminating ports and features, removable batteries, etc. I don't understand Apples moves in the past 5 years. They have spread out and complicated everything that Jobs' made simple and attractive. Heres my advice. Apple is way too spread out, it should kill off the dead ends. * Kill iTunes split it in to 5 functional media apps, and design a good simple music player. Stop trying to make me sign up for reoccurring-billing services. Makes me feel like I'm dealing with Comcast. * Merge the App store with the Apple media store. * Kill the watch and the car. * Merge the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMac, Macbook to one product with 5 sizes each with a pro series all with a touch or keyboard interface and an appropriate OS interface depending on if a keyboard is attached. Yes, merge MacOS and iOS. * Simplify product and Apple services pricing, two tiers, basic and unlimited. * Bring back a pro series products and software even if it was a revenue loser. * And simply password protections with a API service offered and incentivized like SSL certs are. * I sort of get Apple Health, but what is Apple Home? What is Apple Music Match, or Apple Music and why isn't it included with iCloud? Merge them all. There are plenty of IT sectors to fix and disrupt. They seem like they just think there's isn't anything work on. Cars? Watches? Movie/TV? WTF How about There’s just one more thing... Apple home audio video equipment and media services and amps. Compete with the big boys in home audio video. The industry is a mess with protocols, encryption, DRM, AV encoding, bit-rates, streaming services. I need my IT degree, not for computers but for my audio system. Erode cable's power grip not from the network production and delivery end from the home equipment end. Remake Apple TV as a prosumer product series called Apple Home. Hardware that works with Apple amplifiers, Apple speakers, Apple record players? etc. Introduce Apple TV an actual TV. Let's face it the only good thing about TVs these days is the actual screen, the software sucks. Everyone is tired of having 5 remote controls. My husband can’t turn on the TV! Apple is perfectly set up to do it. It’s constant and consistent market that will only grow as home entertainment improves in quality.
- robotjosh 10y ago
  Apple could have done what sonos is doing. I was waiting for apple to improve on airplay and let me hook up all my stuff over apple stuff. I got the apple tv, the time capsule, the macbook pro, and I got my wife a macbook, iphone, and ipad. Why doesn't this shit conveniently work together? Why is my wife now saying we need to throw out our high end speakers and get all sonos stuff to fix our mess of an AV system? I got her every damn apple product that exists. My favorite part of apple tv was the screensavers but they can't even keep those updated in a timely manner. I'm done buying apple stuff.
robotjosh 10y ago
The last straw for me was when osx without warning or explanation removed the vpn technology I was using. The people waiting for me to do work asked "why in the hell are you still trying to use that piece of crap" and I didn't have an answer. I never really needed the super expensive ssd or the most high end cpu. I do need more ram and am dumbfounded why apple would go 5+ years without upgrading the ram (cue the apple fans to tell me I'm stupid and don't need more ram). I put together a $700 system that better fits my needs than the $4000 macbook. The awesome magic trackpad 2 I was so worried about losing has been replaced with a mx master and I ended up liking it better. The real surprise for me is that intel 530 graphics drives a 4k display better than the macbook with its loud m370x. I'm not a hater. I like apple's attitude on encryption. I like brushed aluminum stuff and don't mind paying for it. It just doesn't work for me when a $700 system can have better specs for my work than their $4000 system.
- xxs 10y ago
  "most high end cpu" there is nothing high end about the cpu...
- sbuk 10y ago
  They removed PPTP, which is a terrible protocol. >"why in the hell are you still trying to use that piece of crap" I'd've retorted with "Why the hell are you still using PPTP for your VPN?"
  - robotjosh 10y ago
    It wasn't the first issue I ran into being on osx and everyone else using windows. As someone who used these machines for work, I can't control what terrible protocols people use, I just need it to work.
    - sbuk 10y ago
      >"It wasn't the first issue I ran into being on osx and everyone else using windows." So Microsoft using outdated and insecure prototocols, as well as propriatery[0] ones is Apple's fault? It's perfectly fine to say "I don't like Apple/the direction they are taking, so I'm moving to another platform." Use what works best for you. Just don't use petty excuses for it. Sorry, you are baring the brunt of the glut of "Why I'm switching" articles. [0]Yes, I realise that Apple can also be a bad actor in this department too.
gcp 10y ago
Because there is at least a good Chrome browser in every platform. Aside from iOS, you mean? Actually, the non-Chrome browsers on every platform are good enough and Chrome doesn't stand out. That's why the author missed this extremely obvious extra jab at apple.
- lukevdp 10y ago
  What's wrong with the chrome browser on iOS? I've never had a problem with it.
  - cracoucax 10y ago
    simply that there is no real chrome for IOS, or firefox for that matter. They both are shells around webkit (i.e Safari). Apple does not allow browsers in the app store if they don't use their own rendering engine.
- kbutler 10y ago
  There is a "good Chrome browser" on iOS. It syncs your passwords and bookmarks and works as intended. The fact that it's not sharing rendering technology with the other Chrome browsers doesn't matter at all to end users, and matters very little to developers.
  - gcp 10y ago
    matters very little to developers. This was a joke, right? It's doing more to hold back usage of new web standards than pretty much anything out there.
    - kbutler 10y ago
      Developers have to support safari on iOS. Chrome's implementation on iOS doesn't help development, but it doesn't appreciably hinder development either.
quotha 10y ago
> I have no idea where we are going from here Mars, we are going to Mars!
- thebiglebrewski 10y ago
  I'm with you on that
analog31 10y ago
I've always bristled at the idea -- prevalent in Mac Evangelism going all the way back to the 1980s -- that I'm "corporate" and not "creative" because I create things like electronics, optics, embedded systems, and industrial controls, rather than newsletters and advertising.
- bnolsen 10y ago
  It doesn't help that many of the people I personally knew who were mac evangelists (programmers) in the late 80s and early 90s tended to be sniveling elitists.
wpietri 10y ago
Huh. From the title and the themes, I was expecting an amazing article. But this isn't it. It struck me as confused, poorly written, and not well supported. Personally I think Apple is in trouble. Sustaining their dominance was never going to be easy, and I don't think they're rising to the challenges. So I expect too soon read something like this, but engaging, succinct, and persuasive.
- akitaonrails 10y ago
  I was not expecting it to reach Hackernews frontpage :-) Sorry if it was a confusing read, I just wrote my personal thoughts. It was not the intention to make an objective checklist. Feedback is appreciated.
greenspot 10y ago
While I prefer an 12.5" ultrabook with Arch + a tiling window manager (i3) as my daily driver. There're still moments I need my Macbook Pro: - Sketch (this is macOS' killer app, there is no other app on any OS where you can create mockups that fast and accurate) - Support of multiple 27" screens with 5K (5K makes a difference and the new 15" MBP can drive 2 (!) of them at the same time) - Xcode (and if it's sometimes just for using the iOS simulator) - Word (for contracts) and Excel (rarely) - And of course the trackpad: sometimes I have to deliver and when in panic mode, the touchpad must work 100% But when I look myself at the list above, it's not much left to migrate fully to another OS. Edit: Thanks for the downvote but why?
- deleted 10y ago
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leecarraher 10y ago
the authors understanding of X11 seems flawed. Or at least i don't agree with X11 being the thing holding linux back. There have been many proposed replacement, and finally it appears wayland may make some headway, but from a user experience, the windowing system has very little influence. Perhaps the author means desktop environments, gnome/kde/xfce... those certainly effect the user experience, and the fragmented culture of the user experience can be frustrating. However from my vantage that is by design, the classic make it whatever you want it to be. All-in-all a disappointing article.
- akitaonrails 10y ago
  I really meant X11. The desktop manager fragmentation is an issue but not so much. It doesn't help for the end user if the system is difficult to maintain, if out of the box it's easy to break, it stutters, crashes, doesn't draw correctly, and overall is difficult to make fluid. Latency is high, one app can hang the windowing drawing, etc. So yes, it's a lot to blame on X11.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    > one app can hang the windowing drawing I have seen many things, but not that. My first suspicion is that it is not X11 that hangs, but the blasted compositor that whatever DE you were using insist on applying because "UX"...
  - BuuQu9hu 10y ago
    Except that that's not why Apple avoided X11. Apple decided to build their own thing because they wanted to avoid also-ran cross-compatibility with other UNIX clones, and additionally they wanted fancy antialiased font rendering which X11 didn't support at the time. Apple built Quartz while Xorg developed Xft. A couple years in and Quartz didn't have any compelling features over Xorg, just an alien API. It's true that X11 is terrible but nearly all of its competitors have shown themselves to be worse. Wayland wasn't practical until recently (like 2014?) when GPU memory and latency has dropped to the point where actually running a full compositor is no longer expensive. And most people using Wayland will just host an Xorg inside for X11 backwards compatibility anyway...
chillaxtian 10y ago
> Why are we all moving away from Apple? because it's trendy, and you can write a medium post about it.
overcast 10y ago
Oh give me a break, "we all" are not moving away from Apple. People are pissed off, and rightly so. But no one is running out and ditching all their hardware. We're all sitting around to see what 2017 brings for changes, and if there isn't any significant, we're still going to be buying the new whatever there is. We're after the OS, that's not going to change.
- heavymark 10y ago
  Exactly. I imagine people are moving towards Apple more than they ever have. Though the author neglects to provide any actual data proving either way and rather assumes all share their narrow view based on headlines. Apple doesn't update Mac hardware and software for developers in the way have in the past, but developers are small subset of customers so make of course sense they should be focusing on their main massive customer base. Developers assume MBP to mean meant for only Pro users, but imagine (Without data), that even most Pro customers are not developers/creatives, and rather normal consumers who want the best or bigger screens. As a developer and designer, I would love if Apple were to focus more on our needs, but more importantly, I want them to do what's best for their business so that will be able to continue to produce solid products as no other option comes close to what the Apple Ecosphere can offer currently in my opinion, Linux and Google included. But we all have our own needs some for those that don't like Apple's direction, like the author, glad they are finding other options they find more suitable.
- dangerboysteve 10y ago
  Yes and iPhone market share just went up 6% in the US. Everyone does not equal a few pissed off developers.
  - akitaonrails 10y ago
    It's not that we are all "pissed", it's not the tone of the article. I wrote it because that's what I see happening. And I will be the first to be proven wrong. But right now, it's not that Apple products are "bad", it's more like everybody else caught up while they're in standstill. That's the gist of the article.
- 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
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sndean 10y ago
Assuming there's movement away from Apple, how much of that movement, if any, can be attributed to more polished macOS-like linux options that are available? Not that Mint, Elementary OS, Ubuntu, etc. are exactly new...
rayiner 10y ago
I'm ready to leave Apple (at least on the laptop side). Almost all my work these days is on some Windows terminal over RDP. But where am I going to go? After years of seeing PC manufacturers churn out crap, I simply don't trust them. Dell has a nifty XPS 15 update that actually increases the size of the battery by 15%.[1] But my last Dell had annoying coil whine, shoddy construction, and plastic palm rest portions that (unlike aluminum) showed wear spots over time. Do I want to roll that dice again? [1] The new XPS likely will be a downgrade from my 2013 rMBP. There's no option for a power-efficient high-DPI display. Your choices are 10+ hours with the 1080p, or 5-6 hours with the 4k. But at least it's a path forward.
simonh 10y ago
"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." - Yogi Berra
toodlebunions 10y ago
We aren't. There is concern that apple is moving away from us, the pro user.
arrow64 10y ago
s/reigns/reins http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/rein-or-reign/ http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/rein-or-reign/
- akitaonrails 10y ago
  thanks, corrected :-)
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maxharris 10y ago
I'm not moving away from Apple - Apple is moving away from me. They haven't updated the Mac Pro in years, they don't sell external displays anymore, and they killed off their router line (I've had two Time Capsules - best routers I've ever owned).
it 10y ago
How did this rambling article make it to the front page of HN?
sirwitti 10y ago
Hm, X11 is not an operating system. Stopped reading there - doesn't seem worth reading to me. (Btw, I was never an Apple user)
- akitaonrails 10y ago
  Did you know that at one point X had a freaking printer server? These are all complaints from the maintainers of X themselves. I am not making that up.
- dreamcompiler 10y ago
  X11 is "not" an operating system in the same sense that systemd is "not" an operating system. In other words, it's damn close to one.
pdog 10y ago
Sorry, but visit an Apple Store sometime and look around you. You'll realize that 99% of Apple customers don't know or even care what CPU is in their laptop.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
We're still in the overture to the computer era. The most powerful software tool ever built is the function call, and that's been stuck in a developer-only release for 50 years. It's still early days.
dreamcompiler 10y ago
Off-topic public service announcement: There is no "g" in the word "reins" in the context of "...left the reins to..."
- akitaonrails 10y ago
  thanks, corrected :-)
  - dreamcompiler 10y ago
    YW. Enjoyed reading the article.
rocky1138 10y ago
This is probably one of the most revisionist and poorly-written articles I've read in a while. "Wearables and VR are good gimmicks, but even if they become ubiquitous, it's not a revolution, just an extension of the use cases that the iPhone revolution bootstrapped." This took the cake. Apple has nothing to do with VR. Nothing they've done has helped that industry at all, except maybe cheaper LCD screens (which likely would have happened anyway). Apple has no hardware or software which is VR capable. To claim they built the VR ecosystem is, at best, delusional.
alphabettsy 10y ago
These bandwagon articles are getting really old… A minority of people choosing to try Linux again does not represent a massive shift.

93 points by akitaonrails 10y ago

Lol, "we all", is probably only appropriate if the author has multiple personalities. Was interested to see what dataset the author was using to support their belief that "we all" are leaving Apple for presumably competing companies as I'm not aware of any such movement or data. I imagine rather they chose a sensational title and choose to speak on behalf of all humans rather than saying more appropriately, "Why I am moving away from Apple" or at most, "Why some are moving away from Apple".

manicdee 10y ago

My reason is simple: I want a desktop and a laptop capable of running graphics-intensive games. I play games with my expensive computer. So sue me. The previous batches of MacBook Pros were capable of running games. The current batch is not: they are not designed for sustained use of the GPU. This is especially damning when new number-crunching programming techniques are starting to make more use of the GPU, and Apple has an entire API dedicated to compute distribution. There are two ideal MacBooks for me: an 11" MBA with SD card built in for my photography bag, and a 15" MBP with more than enough speed in processor, GPU and memory to run 3D intensive games. I don't care about battery life during maximum load, since for the heavy compute I'm most likely going to be plugged in anyway. The rest of the time it would be nice if I could spend a weekend web browsing, checking maps, writing Arduino code, etc, without having to be connected to a wall. Then I can come back home, plug into my TB3 dock with monitor, Ethernet, scanner, etc attached, and continue working as if on a "desktop" computer. The only things keeping me on OS X in any way, shape or form are: effort free backup with Time Machine, Alfred, Finder "tags", Spotlight, ScanSnap (for scanning documents, then OCR to PDF), Hazel, and a significant investment in movies and TV shows that were only available from DRM encumbered sources.

tmaly 10y ago

Maybe its not just apple. Growing up in the 90's I imagined this cool VR / AI future right out of Gibson's Neuromancer. Instead we have these walled gardens, the Internet has become less open, less free to the masses. Everything has become about commercialization instead of innovation and exploration.

ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
I've got tired of the walled gardens on phones especially. Stopped iOS dev and went back to web.
- equalarrow 10y ago
  I see this type of comment a lot. It's not just iOS, Android now has a review process and Google will keep driving in the Apple direction because it is successful. And if it's like the op says where everythig is in the cloud, then walled gardens don't matter much as long as your service has a native app or mobile web (hint, they probably have both). What's the really big issue is privacy (which I know is gone) and what facebook is doing to the world. Everyone likes to bash on Apple lately, but Apple is 'acquiring' a lot less of your personalized data than the social networks and Google are (they are also trying to take the lead in being privacy first). Facebook is just a big ad platform and dont forget 'free' == you are the product.
- HugoDaniel 10y ago
  PWA FTW [0] https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/ https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/
l3m0ndr0p 10y ago
Also - in the USA, we should have Fiber to all homes by now, but instead what do we have? Segmented, ancient infrastructure, run by ISPs that have carved out territories with no competition, no foreseeable upgrades and the end of "net neutrality." Greed is front and center over providing an inexpensive and innovative means of communication (internet). Peace
ivraatiems 10y ago
Neuromancer's cool, but the world it represents isn't exactly amazing, or that much better than ours, unless I'm mistaken. Plus, honestly... what else should we expect? We live in a capitalistic, commercialistic, materialistic society. Hypercommercialization of any and all technology is the default.
10y ago

larrik 10y ago

Not a particularly well-written article, but some interesting points. The constant "Linux isn't good enough shots" in all these articles is annoying, though. I was on Linux full time in 2010, and found it far more pleasant than OS X.

gipp 10y ago
The bits about X11/Wayland made me a bit curious. The author claims we're "only just now" moving towards Wayland -- is there a big movement towards it lately that I've been missing?
- rhodysurf 10y ago
  Yeah its finally shipped by default with GNOME in both Fedora and Arch (Fedora shipped it for the first time in 25). So thats where that is coming from.
  - akitaonrails 10y ago
    Exactly! I am using GNOME 3 with Wayland in Arch and enjoying it very much.
- deleted 10y ago
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cr0sh 10y ago
I've been "full time" on Linux since 1998 (part-time since 1995 - started with Monkey Linux on a 386 laptop, then moved to Turbo Linux 2.0 on a 486 laptop); I found it interesting that the author of this article seems to think that the devs of GIMP haven't always been frustrated by the various color management issues - because most of them are proprietary problems that don't mesh with open source.

dccoolgai 10y ago

Apple's pattern seems to be small "bursts" of innovation followed by long periods of "dormancy" where they just make smaller/bigger screens. Their "walled garden" cow is just about milked out as the Open Web is enters its new rennaisance. They'll be back in 10-15 years with somethinh that looks like real innovation again.

bnolsen 10y ago
Without Jobs I king of doubt that it will be them doing it. They might stumble onto some gem and use their vast hordes of cash to buy their way into an emerging market this time around.

codingdave 10y ago

> Anyone that is someone has been following Apple for the past couple of decades. Love them, or hate them, the only thing you can't do is ignore them. I hate to write off a whole article based on a bad first sentence, but this one just about makes me do so. It starts of with a judgement of a person's worth, then shows that they seem to have completely missed the years over the past few decades where Apple stagnated and were not really relevant outside of creative circles and academia. And finishes off by saying they cannot be ignored, when in reality the business/enterprise world has gotten along just fine ignoring Apple even to this very day.

akitaonrails 10y ago
I did a small change in the opening statement to make my intention clearer.

msabalau 10y ago

"Wearables and VR are good gimmicks, but even if they become ubiquitous, it's not a revolution, just an extension of the use cases that the iPhone revolution bootstrapped." Smartphones seem a heck of a lot more derivative of earlier computing use cases. Wearables and VR owe a debt to smartphones because of the cheap components from the mobile supply chain finally make them possible. The debt is not in the realm of ideas. Conceptually both VR and ubiquitous computing predate smartphones by decades.

yborg 10y ago

"We all" aren't moving away from Apple, while I have many issues with the current direction and product offerings, the platform still works for me. So maybe it really is just "All - Me" but my distinct impression is that it is a noisy cohort in the blogverse that has seized upon this as the trend du jour.

ggregoire 10y ago
Yes it's a ridiculous statement. I'm still using my MBA 11" from 2012 for everything. I have only 4GB RAM and it's not even a problem to work (I don't have 15 VMs running in background). :)) I have no idea when I'm going to change it and for what, but I have absolutely no desire to move back to Windows or Ubuntu. And there is no way I move away from iOS. It works great for me. Plus, I use my iPhone 6 mostly for gaming and I've been buying games since the 3GS so I've a huge collection (including a bunch of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles that are quite expensive).
- travisby 10y ago
  The last bit sounds more like stockholm's syndrome. Vendor lock-in shouldn't be a happy thing.
dntrkv 10y ago
That's exactly what it is. I only hear about this nonsense on HackerNews and related sites. In The Real World, I haven't seen an increase in people abandoning MacOS for Linux or Windows, just the usual dev that claims "I've switched to Linux as my main OS and it's been great", then two weeks later you learn that dev has switched back to Mac. As far as mobile goes, I've actually seen an increase in people moving back to iOS from Android.
akitaonrails 10y ago
You're not wrong. The idea was not for the article to be a statistically correct report of the present day status. That's easy to get and Apple's marketshare is nowhere near bad. This is a decades-long reflection on computer history as a whole, having Apple as protagonist and important player. The title reflects where the early-adopters - the same people that brought Apple back from the dead in the late 90's - will go from here.

blakesterz 10y ago

Even after reading I still think the questions is "ARE we all moving away from Apple?" or even "Are a significant number of people moving away from Apple"

stinos 10y ago
Exactly. It's not because I and others moved away from Apple once, that it's a trend. Unless you've got some proper data to back that up.
rorykoehler 10y ago
I'm waiting for second generation of the current mbp. Might not make it that far as 2009 mbp is definitely showing it's age but I get prepurchase buyers remorse every time I go to buy. 2009 mbp still works well enough to put off the decision.

akshayB 10y ago

These days its very easy to get any flavor of Linux/Unix running in cloud at a very cheap price. Back in the day folks especially developer relied on Macs as a stable platform to work on but now that landscape has changed due to cloud. Meanwhile this transformation was happening Apple lost its focus and doing the right thing instead their bright idea was generate passive income by forcing people buying connectors. I owned an old Mac for 7+ years it worked fine and finally I decided to get a new one. I was just amazed by amount of connectors I ended up buying.

sbuk 10y ago
Yeah, that first iMac took the biscuit. No ADB or SCSI, Parallel or Serial ports, no floppy drives and that stupid mouse! But in time most most manufacturers turned to USB as it really was the obvious choice for the future. Heady days!

fritzw 10y ago

I agree completely with this essay. Here is my tip to Apple. I always felt I understood Apple's Gestapo-like tactics in the past, regarding their rigid methodologies. Eliminating ports and features, removable batteries, etc. I don't understand Apples moves in the past 5 years. They have spread out and complicated everything that Jobs' made simple and attractive. Heres my advice. Apple is way too spread out, it should kill off the dead ends. * Kill iTunes split it in to 5 functional media apps, and design a good simple music player. Stop trying to make me sign up for reoccurring-billing services. Makes me feel like I'm dealing with Comcast. * Merge the App store with the Apple media store. * Kill the watch and the car. * Merge the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMac, Macbook to one product with 5 sizes each with a pro series all with a touch or keyboard interface and an appropriate OS interface depending on if a keyboard is attached. Yes, merge MacOS and iOS. * Simplify product and Apple services pricing, two tiers, basic and unlimited. * Bring back a pro series products and software even if it was a revenue loser. * And simply password protections with a API service offered and incentivized like SSL certs are. * I sort of get Apple Health, but what is Apple Home? What is Apple Music Match, or Apple Music and why isn't it included with iCloud? Merge them all. There are plenty of IT sectors to fix and disrupt. They seem like they just think there's isn't anything work on. Cars? Watches? Movie/TV? WTF How about There’s just one more thing... Apple home audio video equipment and media services and amps. Compete with the big boys in home audio video. The industry is a mess with protocols, encryption, DRM, AV encoding, bit-rates, streaming services. I need my IT degree, not for computers but for my audio system. Erode cable's power grip not from the network production and delivery end from the home equipment end. Remake Apple TV as a prosumer product series called Apple Home. Hardware that works with Apple amplifiers, Apple speakers, Apple record players? etc. Introduce Apple TV an actual TV. Let's face it the only good thing about TVs these days is the actual screen, the software sucks. Everyone is tired of having 5 remote controls. My husband can’t turn on the TV! Apple is perfectly set up to do it. It’s constant and consistent market that will only grow as home entertainment improves in quality.

robotjosh 10y ago
Apple could have done what sonos is doing. I was waiting for apple to improve on airplay and let me hook up all my stuff over apple stuff. I got the apple tv, the time capsule, the macbook pro, and I got my wife a macbook, iphone, and ipad. Why doesn't this shit conveniently work together? Why is my wife now saying we need to throw out our high end speakers and get all sonos stuff to fix our mess of an AV system? I got her every damn apple product that exists. My favorite part of apple tv was the screensavers but they can't even keep those updated in a timely manner. I'm done buying apple stuff.

robotjosh 10y ago

The last straw for me was when osx without warning or explanation removed the vpn technology I was using. The people waiting for me to do work asked "why in the hell are you still trying to use that piece of crap" and I didn't have an answer. I never really needed the super expensive ssd or the most high end cpu. I do need more ram and am dumbfounded why apple would go 5+ years without upgrading the ram (cue the apple fans to tell me I'm stupid and don't need more ram). I put together a $700 system that better fits my needs than the $4000 macbook. The awesome magic trackpad 2 I was so worried about losing has been replaced with a mx master and I ended up liking it better. The real surprise for me is that intel 530 graphics drives a 4k display better than the macbook with its loud m370x. I'm not a hater. I like apple's attitude on encryption. I like brushed aluminum stuff and don't mind paying for it. It just doesn't work for me when a $700 system can have better specs for my work than their $4000 system.

xxs 10y ago
"most high end cpu" there is nothing high end about the cpu...
sbuk 10y ago
They removed PPTP, which is a terrible protocol. >"why in the hell are you still trying to use that piece of crap" I'd've retorted with "Why the hell are you still using PPTP for your VPN?"
- robotjosh 10y ago
  It wasn't the first issue I ran into being on osx and everyone else using windows. As someone who used these machines for work, I can't control what terrible protocols people use, I just need it to work.
  - sbuk 10y ago
    >"It wasn't the first issue I ran into being on osx and everyone else using windows." So Microsoft using outdated and insecure prototocols, as well as propriatery[0] ones is Apple's fault? It's perfectly fine to say "I don't like Apple/the direction they are taking, so I'm moving to another platform." Use what works best for you. Just don't use petty excuses for it. Sorry, you are baring the brunt of the glut of "Why I'm switching" articles. [0]Yes, I realise that Apple can also be a bad actor in this department too.

gcp 10y ago

Because there is at least a good Chrome browser in every platform. Aside from iOS, you mean? Actually, the non-Chrome browsers on every platform are good enough and Chrome doesn't stand out. That's why the author missed this extremely obvious extra jab at apple.

lukevdp 10y ago
What's wrong with the chrome browser on iOS? I've never had a problem with it.
- cracoucax 10y ago
  simply that there is no real chrome for IOS, or firefox for that matter. They both are shells around webkit (i.e Safari). Apple does not allow browsers in the app store if they don't use their own rendering engine.
kbutler 10y ago
There is a "good Chrome browser" on iOS. It syncs your passwords and bookmarks and works as intended. The fact that it's not sharing rendering technology with the other Chrome browsers doesn't matter at all to end users, and matters very little to developers.
- gcp 10y ago
  matters very little to developers. This was a joke, right? It's doing more to hold back usage of new web standards than pretty much anything out there.
  - kbutler 10y ago
    Developers have to support safari on iOS. Chrome's implementation on iOS doesn't help development, but it doesn't appreciably hinder development either.

quotha 10y ago

> I have no idea where we are going from here Mars, we are going to Mars!

thebiglebrewski 10y ago
I'm with you on that

analog31 10y ago

I've always bristled at the idea -- prevalent in Mac Evangelism going all the way back to the 1980s -- that I'm "corporate" and not "creative" because I create things like electronics, optics, embedded systems, and industrial controls, rather than newsletters and advertising.

bnolsen 10y ago
It doesn't help that many of the people I personally knew who were mac evangelists (programmers) in the late 80s and early 90s tended to be sniveling elitists.

wpietri 10y ago

Huh. From the title and the themes, I was expecting an amazing article. But this isn't it. It struck me as confused, poorly written, and not well supported. Personally I think Apple is in trouble. Sustaining their dominance was never going to be easy, and I don't think they're rising to the challenges. So I expect too soon read something like this, but engaging, succinct, and persuasive.

akitaonrails 10y ago
I was not expecting it to reach Hackernews frontpage :-) Sorry if it was a confusing read, I just wrote my personal thoughts. It was not the intention to make an objective checklist. Feedback is appreciated.

greenspot 10y ago

While I prefer an 12.5" ultrabook with Arch + a tiling window manager (i3) as my daily driver. There're still moments I need my Macbook Pro: - Sketch (this is macOS' killer app, there is no other app on any OS where you can create mockups that fast and accurate) - Support of multiple 27" screens with 5K (5K makes a difference and the new 15" MBP can drive 2 (!) of them at the same time) - Xcode (and if it's sometimes just for using the iOS simulator) - Word (for contracts) and Excel (rarely) - And of course the trackpad: sometimes I have to deliver and when in panic mode, the touchpad must work 100% But when I look myself at the list above, it's not much left to migrate fully to another OS. Edit: Thanks for the downvote but why?

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leecarraher 10y ago

the authors understanding of X11 seems flawed. Or at least i don't agree with X11 being the thing holding linux back. There have been many proposed replacement, and finally it appears wayland may make some headway, but from a user experience, the windowing system has very little influence. Perhaps the author means desktop environments, gnome/kde/xfce... those certainly effect the user experience, and the fragmented culture of the user experience can be frustrating. However from my vantage that is by design, the classic make it whatever you want it to be. All-in-all a disappointing article.

akitaonrails 10y ago
I really meant X11. The desktop manager fragmentation is an issue but not so much. It doesn't help for the end user if the system is difficult to maintain, if out of the box it's easy to break, it stutters, crashes, doesn't draw correctly, and overall is difficult to make fluid. Latency is high, one app can hang the windowing drawing, etc. So yes, it's a lot to blame on X11.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  > one app can hang the windowing drawing I have seen many things, but not that. My first suspicion is that it is not X11 that hangs, but the blasted compositor that whatever DE you were using insist on applying because "UX"...
- BuuQu9hu 10y ago
  Except that that's not why Apple avoided X11. Apple decided to build their own thing because they wanted to avoid also-ran cross-compatibility with other UNIX clones, and additionally they wanted fancy antialiased font rendering which X11 didn't support at the time. Apple built Quartz while Xorg developed Xft. A couple years in and Quartz didn't have any compelling features over Xorg, just an alien API. It's true that X11 is terrible but nearly all of its competitors have shown themselves to be worse. Wayland wasn't practical until recently (like 2014?) when GPU memory and latency has dropped to the point where actually running a full compositor is no longer expensive. And most people using Wayland will just host an Xorg inside for X11 backwards compatibility anyway...

chillaxtian 10y ago

> Why are we all moving away from Apple? because it's trendy, and you can write a medium post about it.

overcast 10y ago

Oh give me a break, "we all" are not moving away from Apple. People are pissed off, and rightly so. But no one is running out and ditching all their hardware. We're all sitting around to see what 2017 brings for changes, and if there isn't any significant, we're still going to be buying the new whatever there is. We're after the OS, that's not going to change.

heavymark 10y ago
Exactly. I imagine people are moving towards Apple more than they ever have. Though the author neglects to provide any actual data proving either way and rather assumes all share their narrow view based on headlines. Apple doesn't update Mac hardware and software for developers in the way have in the past, but developers are small subset of customers so make of course sense they should be focusing on their main massive customer base. Developers assume MBP to mean meant for only Pro users, but imagine (Without data), that even most Pro customers are not developers/creatives, and rather normal consumers who want the best or bigger screens. As a developer and designer, I would love if Apple were to focus more on our needs, but more importantly, I want them to do what's best for their business so that will be able to continue to produce solid products as no other option comes close to what the Apple Ecosphere can offer currently in my opinion, Linux and Google included. But we all have our own needs some for those that don't like Apple's direction, like the author, glad they are finding other options they find more suitable.
dangerboysteve 10y ago
Yes and iPhone market share just went up 6% in the US. Everyone does not equal a few pissed off developers.
- akitaonrails 10y ago
  It's not that we are all "pissed", it's not the tone of the article. I wrote it because that's what I see happening. And I will be the first to be proven wrong. But right now, it's not that Apple products are "bad", it's more like everybody else caught up while they're in standstill. That's the gist of the article.
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sndean 10y ago

Assuming there's movement away from Apple, how much of that movement, if any, can be attributed to more polished macOS-like linux options that are available? Not that Mint, Elementary OS, Ubuntu, etc. are exactly new...

rayiner 10y ago

I'm ready to leave Apple (at least on the laptop side). Almost all my work these days is on some Windows terminal over RDP. But where am I going to go? After years of seeing PC manufacturers churn out crap, I simply don't trust them. Dell has a nifty XPS 15 update that actually increases the size of the battery by 15%.[1] But my last Dell had annoying coil whine, shoddy construction, and plastic palm rest portions that (unlike aluminum) showed wear spots over time. Do I want to roll that dice again? [1] The new XPS likely will be a downgrade from my 2013 rMBP. There's no option for a power-efficient high-DPI display. Your choices are 10+ hours with the 1080p, or 5-6 hours with the 4k. But at least it's a path forward.

simonh 10y ago

"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." - Yogi Berra

toodlebunions 10y ago

We aren't. There is concern that apple is moving away from us, the pro user.

arrow64 10y ago

s/reigns/reins http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/rein-or-reign/ http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/rein-or-reign/

akitaonrails 10y ago
thanks, corrected :-)

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maxharris 10y ago

I'm not moving away from Apple - Apple is moving away from me. They haven't updated the Mac Pro in years, they don't sell external displays anymore, and they killed off their router line (I've had two Time Capsules - best routers I've ever owned).

it 10y ago

How did this rambling article make it to the front page of HN?

sirwitti 10y ago

Hm, X11 is not an operating system. Stopped reading there - doesn't seem worth reading to me. (Btw, I was never an Apple user)

akitaonrails 10y ago
Did you know that at one point X had a freaking printer server? These are all complaints from the maintainers of X themselves. I am not making that up.
dreamcompiler 10y ago
X11 is "not" an operating system in the same sense that systemd is "not" an operating system. In other words, it's damn close to one.

pdog 10y ago

Sorry, but visit an Apple Store sometime and look around you. You'll realize that 99% of Apple customers don't know or even care what CPU is in their laptop.

erikpukinskis 10y ago

We're still in the overture to the computer era. The most powerful software tool ever built is the function call, and that's been stuck in a developer-only release for 50 years. It's still early days.

dreamcompiler 10y ago

Off-topic public service announcement: There is no "g" in the word "reins" in the context of "...left the reins to..."

akitaonrails 10y ago
thanks, corrected :-)
- dreamcompiler 10y ago
  YW. Enjoyed reading the article.

rocky1138 10y ago

This is probably one of the most revisionist and poorly-written articles I've read in a while. "Wearables and VR are good gimmicks, but even if they become ubiquitous, it's not a revolution, just an extension of the use cases that the iPhone revolution bootstrapped." This took the cake. Apple has nothing to do with VR. Nothing they've done has helped that industry at all, except maybe cheaper LCD screens (which likely would have happened anyway). Apple has no hardware or software which is VR capable. To claim they built the VR ecosystem is, at best, delusional.

alphabettsy 10y ago

These bandwagon articles are getting really old… A minority of people choosing to try Linux again does not represent a massive shift.