10 ms·

I'm a professional developer, I don't want a new toy language. I'm buying a powerful laptop, I don't want cloud storage. I want the possibility to dual boot or

by ynniv 10y ago

I'm a professional developer, I don't want a new toy language. I'm buying a powerful laptop, I don't want cloud storage. I want the possibility to dual boot or share drives with other operating systems, I don't need a new proprietary filesystem. I don't want compressed memory, I want 32GB of RAM. And while I'm at it, I want a laptop with a real keyboard, not keys that have so little travel they feel like a touchscreen. In short, Apple is spending a lot of effort making features that I, as a professional developer and 20 year Mac user, don't want.

coldtea 10y ago
>I'm a professional developer, I don't want a new toy language. First, there's nothing "toy: about Swift. It's a full featured language on par with Rust, Go, etc. Second, whether some random web dev or embedded C dev or Java dev wants Swift or not is irrelevant to its intended audience and utility. It's not for "professional developers" in general, it's for Mac/iOS application developers, and thus, for Mac/iOS users (that benefit as a side-effect from developers having a modern/better language to implement stuff). >I'm buying a powerful laptop, I don't want cloud storage. So? Millions of users do want it, judging from the huge popularity of Dropbox, Google Drive, MS implementation of the same, etc. >I want the possibility to dual boot or share drives with other operating systems, I don't need a new proprietary filesystem. Again, irrelevant. Lots of Mac users, and tons of pundits HAVE asked for a "new proprietary filesystem" to replace HFS+ and Apple obliged. And whether you can "dual boot" or "share drives" is orthogonal to whatever OS X has a new native filesystem. You can still format the rest of the hard disk on another fs to dual boot, and you can still share drives with other systems in NTFS, xFAT, etc. >I don't want compressed memory, I want 32GB of RAM. And I want a pony unicorn. But until Intel delivers boards that accept 32GB low-power RAM of the kind that goes into Apple laptops, we're not gonna get it. And Intel gives late 2017 / early 2018 as the date for those. (Existing PC laptops with 32 GB ram merely sacrifice battery life using regular high power drawing RAM -- and even those are far and few between). (And of course compressed memory helps whether you have 16 or eventually 32GB of ram) >In short, Apple is spending a lot of effort making features that I, as a professional developer and 20 year Mac user, don't want. Well, as a 15 year Mac user and 20 years professional developer, I do want those things. I don't particularly care for the touch strip though -- I'd prefer it to be OLED physical buttons giving both tactile feel AND changeable inscriptions.
- ynniv 10y ago
  First, there's nothing "toy: about Swift. It's a full featured language on par with Rust, Go, etc. That's some amazing CoolAid you've got there. But I'll grant you that it's on the same level with a bunch of other new languages that also aren't in general use for serious long term products yet. But until Intel delivers boards that accept 32GB low-power RAM of the kind that goes into Apple laptops, we're not gonna get it. Yeah, wouldn't it be great if Apple made this happen? That's the kind of innovation I want to see. As for the bulk of the rest of your points, developers and common Mac users have different priorities, and your opinions are not mine. Who better represents professional developers will take time to find out.
  - megablast 10y ago
    You want Apple to make their own CPUs?
    - ynniv 10y ago
      No, I want Apple to do what they've done in the past and get Intel to do something for them. http://mrob.com/pub/comp/mac-models.html#intel_special http://mrob.com/pub/comp/mac-models.html#intel_special
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Yeah, wouldn't it be great if Apple made this happen? That's the kind of innovation I want to see. Adding something with marginal utility for the majority of their users (since even pros can do just fine with 16GB) just because some insignificant minority runs multiple VMs on their Macs? That's not the kind of innovation Apple was ever, ever, interested in.
- optimiz3 10y ago
  As a Linux/Windows developer, Swift remains a toy language as it cannot be used to do develop useful applications for Linux and Windows, where I make all of my money.
  - 10y ago
comex 10y ago
> I want the possibility to dual boot or share drives with other operating systems, I don't need a new proprietary filesystem. Then you're in luck. APFS isn't proprietary, as Apple's website claims that "Apple plans to document and publish the APFS volume format specification when Apple File System is released for macOS in 2017." So there will be nothing preventing drivers from being written for other operating systems, though of course it will require someone to actually do the work. In return you get a FS that improves on HFS+ in reliability, performance, and features (volumes). If there is enough interest I imagine it might even compete with btrfs for use as a root volume for Linux installations… though there probably won't be. You may criticize Apple for not open sourcing their implementation of APFS, though I'm holding out hope they will do so eventually. An open source implementation would definitely be useful as a starting point for drivers for other operating systems, but to be fair, it would still require someone to spend the time to port it. Apple's HFS+ driver is open source as part of xnu, but Linux hfsplus doesn't support journaling which was added in 2002. That's not Apple's fault.
- jodrellblank 10y ago
  APFS isn't proprietary, as Apple's website claims that "Apple plans to document and publish the APFS volume format specification Great. ... anyone else still waiting for the open FaceTime API announced in public on stage by Steve Jobs?
  - comex 10y ago
    That was six years ago :) The rumor is that Apple changed its mind due to the VirnetX patent lawsuit, which forced it to switch FaceTime from P2P to relaying all calls through a central server. But who knows if that's the whole story. I'd still like to see an open FaceTime.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Great. ... anyone else still waiting for the open FaceTime API announced in public on stage by Steve Jobs? Only people who missed the part that some other company took them to court over a BS patent on it and won, so they couldn't finally do it. Meanwhile, they HAVE opensourced other stuff, including Swift, in the meanwhile, so it's not like they have some big history of backtracking on open sourcing promises...
bartvk 10y ago
> I'm a professional developer, I don't want a new toy language Why do you think Swift is a toy language?

by ynniv 10y ago

coldtea 10y ago

>I'm a professional developer, I don't want a new toy language. First, there's nothing "toy: about Swift. It's a full featured language on par with Rust, Go, etc. Second, whether some random web dev or embedded C dev or Java dev wants Swift or not is irrelevant to its intended audience and utility. It's not for "professional developers" in general, it's for Mac/iOS application developers, and thus, for Mac/iOS users (that benefit as a side-effect from developers having a modern/better language to implement stuff). >I'm buying a powerful laptop, I don't want cloud storage. So? Millions of users do want it, judging from the huge popularity of Dropbox, Google Drive, MS implementation of the same, etc. >I want the possibility to dual boot or share drives with other operating systems, I don't need a new proprietary filesystem. Again, irrelevant. Lots of Mac users, and tons of pundits HAVE asked for a "new proprietary filesystem" to replace HFS+ and Apple obliged. And whether you can "dual boot" or "share drives" is orthogonal to whatever OS X has a new native filesystem. You can still format the rest of the hard disk on another fs to dual boot, and you can still share drives with other systems in NTFS, xFAT, etc. >I don't want compressed memory, I want 32GB of RAM. And I want a pony unicorn. But until Intel delivers boards that accept 32GB low-power RAM of the kind that goes into Apple laptops, we're not gonna get it. And Intel gives late 2017 / early 2018 as the date for those. (Existing PC laptops with 32 GB ram merely sacrifice battery life using regular high power drawing RAM -- and even those are far and few between). (And of course compressed memory helps whether you have 16 or eventually 32GB of ram) >In short, Apple is spending a lot of effort making features that I, as a professional developer and 20 year Mac user, don't want. Well, as a 15 year Mac user and 20 years professional developer, I do want those things. I don't particularly care for the touch strip though -- I'd prefer it to be OLED physical buttons giving both tactile feel AND changeable inscriptions.

ynniv 10y ago
First, there's nothing "toy: about Swift. It's a full featured language on par with Rust, Go, etc. That's some amazing CoolAid you've got there. But I'll grant you that it's on the same level with a bunch of other new languages that also aren't in general use for serious long term products yet. But until Intel delivers boards that accept 32GB low-power RAM of the kind that goes into Apple laptops, we're not gonna get it. Yeah, wouldn't it be great if Apple made this happen? That's the kind of innovation I want to see. As for the bulk of the rest of your points, developers and common Mac users have different priorities, and your opinions are not mine. Who better represents professional developers will take time to find out.
- megablast 10y ago
  You want Apple to make their own CPUs?
  - ynniv 10y ago
    No, I want Apple to do what they've done in the past and get Intel to do something for them. http://mrob.com/pub/comp/mac-models.html#intel_special http://mrob.com/pub/comp/mac-models.html#intel_special
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Yeah, wouldn't it be great if Apple made this happen? That's the kind of innovation I want to see. Adding something with marginal utility for the majority of their users (since even pros can do just fine with 16GB) just because some insignificant minority runs multiple VMs on their Macs? That's not the kind of innovation Apple was ever, ever, interested in.
optimiz3 10y ago
As a Linux/Windows developer, Swift remains a toy language as it cannot be used to do develop useful applications for Linux and Windows, where I make all of my money.
- 10y ago

comex 10y ago

> I want the possibility to dual boot or share drives with other operating systems, I don't need a new proprietary filesystem. Then you're in luck. APFS isn't proprietary, as Apple's website claims that "Apple plans to document and publish the APFS volume format specification when Apple File System is released for macOS in 2017." So there will be nothing preventing drivers from being written for other operating systems, though of course it will require someone to actually do the work. In return you get a FS that improves on HFS+ in reliability, performance, and features (volumes). If there is enough interest I imagine it might even compete with btrfs for use as a root volume for Linux installations… though there probably won't be. You may criticize Apple for not open sourcing their implementation of APFS, though I'm holding out hope they will do so eventually. An open source implementation would definitely be useful as a starting point for drivers for other operating systems, but to be fair, it would still require someone to spend the time to port it. Apple's HFS+ driver is open source as part of xnu, but Linux hfsplus doesn't support journaling which was added in 2002. That's not Apple's fault.

jodrellblank 10y ago
APFS isn't proprietary, as Apple's website claims that "Apple plans to document and publish the APFS volume format specification Great. ... anyone else still waiting for the open FaceTime API announced in public on stage by Steve Jobs?
- comex 10y ago
  That was six years ago :) The rumor is that Apple changed its mind due to the VirnetX patent lawsuit, which forced it to switch FaceTime from P2P to relaying all calls through a central server. But who knows if that's the whole story. I'd still like to see an open FaceTime.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Great. ... anyone else still waiting for the open FaceTime API announced in public on stage by Steve Jobs? Only people who missed the part that some other company took them to court over a BS patent on it and won, so they couldn't finally do it. Meanwhile, they HAVE opensourced other stuff, including Swift, in the meanwhile, so it's not like they have some big history of backtracking on open sourcing promises...

bartvk 10y ago

> I'm a professional developer, I don't want a new toy language Why do you think Swift is a toy language?