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Why not allow developers to build their own Macs? The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, befo

Why not allow developers to build their own Macs? The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with notebook sales?

eddieroger 9y ago
Drivers. Apple likes the control over the hardware and software, and packages all of the drivers needed to run macOS on any blessed instance of Apple hardware currently supported (and maybe even ever created, since Intel). If you wanted, and I have done this before, you can clone a Mac made HDD and boot it from any other Mac you can get your hands on, and other than the hardware swap it's basically a reboot. If Apple let me build a tower and drop anything I wanted in to it, they can't guarantee that anymore, and even if it's just amongst developers, it hurts their brand experience.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  If it's for developers they don't have to guarantee it. I'm happily running a hackintosh right now. If they made it a little easier we wouldn't have to do weird hacks to spoof hardware ids just so messages work.
  - 542458 9y ago
    I think the iOS "developer previews" have shown that even if you label something as being "unstable and just for developers" you'll still end up with thousands upon thousands of people with no idea what they're doing running it anyways and subsequently being vocally horrified that not everything works perfectly.
    - dawnerd 9y ago
      The difference is those people would now have to build hardware instead of just opening itunes and hitting install. You really think those users could get past the bios setup stage?
      - danieldk 9y ago
        people would now have to build hardware No, all kinds of companies will start offering machines as 'ready for macOS', and we'll see the same problems.
    - runjake 9y ago
      Hence why Apple implemented the Public Beta program. And it seems to work just fine.
  - Operyl 9y ago
    Those weird hacks exist because of the spambot problem they're trying to prevent. It's enough of a hassle for us that iMessage spambots are practically nonexistent as a result.
    - hellbanner 9y ago
      Can you explain further? SMS spam bots can still exist, right?
      - dawnerd 9y ago
        Yep and so does iMessage spam. SMS spam is just easier and works just as well.
      - Operyl 9y ago
        The difference is SMS spam isn't "free", while iMessage spam could be free if they got over the technical barriers.
  - accountyaccount 9y ago
    What happens when developers start selling these boxes and they break? People start hating on Apple because they don't know any better.
  - intopieces 9y ago
    >If it's for developers they don't have to guarantee it. This would only be true in a world where Ars Technica, The Verge, and other publications did not exist. Apple would suffer from poor performance reviews for any sort of driver issue. Plus, "not guaranteed to work" is the opposite of Apple's ethos, which is "it just works." Apple has made it easy enough for hackitoshes to work by being lax with people running MacOS.
- yardie 9y ago
  I believe that is due to the fact of the strength of their xnu kernel than any drivers. I've installed my hackintosh HDD into a regular Mac and it booted just fine. It ignored the chameleon partition and booted the HDD as if it came from any other Mac. BTW, this isn't quite assured when copying a Hackintosh to another Hackintosh. Chameleon kernel injections are device specific. Different motherboards require different injectors.
pinaceae 9y ago
The core business model of Apple is to sell hardware. That simple. That's why macOS, etc are free now. That's why they're ramping up their enterprise partnerships behind the scenes to ensure big apps run best or even first on iOS and macOS. IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge). You can argue if that is the correct approach or not, but it is Apple's DNA now - and all the issues in the pro segment stem from it. Not enough hardware to be sold, why bother, etc.
- astrodust 9y ago
  As much as that's true, Apple has been trying to dig deeper into "services" over the last decade. App sales, music sales, movie sales, cloud services, anything they can do to expand their software ecosystem to make it more versatile and useful on hardware they never produced. If in some conceivable future Apple could make enough money on the "pro" market looking for OEM-style rigs to fund development of macOS through the macOS App Store, or through OS sales, they would probably at least consider it. The problem Apple has is success. If you're managing a team of top talent and you have two products, one of which rakes in hundreds of billions, the other which is mere tens, which team do you think gets the best people? It must take a lot of determination to keep really great people on the macOS team instead of poaching them for iOS. Apple's strategy of using the same OS core for both platforms probably helps in that regard: They can put their best people in the middle without concern about their full potential being wasted. It's a really tricky spot to be in. If Apple had no phone business at all they'd be a tiny company, but they wouldn't have the same stress about where to place people.
  - rahoulb 9y ago
    As I inderstand it, Apple isn't organised that way. They have OS teams, app teams, design teams, which work on whichever product at a given time. They don't have product-specific teams. As for Apple being tiny without the iPhone; it's huge but Apple Watch (commonly described as a failure) is estimated to be a bigger business than Microsoft's Surface business.
    - 9y ago
logicallee 9y ago
Why doesnt McDonald's let you build a big mac at home - it's not like people don't have access to lettuce, tomatoes, hamburger buns, meat, cheese, mayonnaise, pickles, etc. The only thing we really need is the sauce that makes it a big mac. hey before I answer you wanna take a stab at that question? EDIT: I don't know why I was downvoted, it's a fairly close analogy.
- astrodust 9y ago
  People have reverse-engineered everything about that, including the sauce. What's your point? People also go to fast food restaurants to get food quickly. Preparing it yourself saves you zero time, it destroys the value of the Big Mac. If you're going to make your own burger, you can sure as shit do better than a Big Mac.
  - logicallee 9y ago
    your sister comment made an interesting point that McDonald's does sell the sauce in grocery stores. That is a close analogy to this (since if someone really wants a big mac, they can make a hamburger at home and, by including some of that sauce, gets something that meets some of that need.) I think that's a pretty bad business decision for McDonald's to have done.
    - astrodust 9y ago
      It's a non-competing market. Nobody is going to fire up a grill in the office, make a burger, and then slap on the sauce just to save a trip to a McDonald's. They are going to use it when the otherwise wouldn't buy a McDonald's burger, like when hosting a backyard BBQ.
      - logicallee 9y ago
        my analysis is different, but whatever. I think some people would make a hamburger at home rather than go to a mcdonald's when they yearn for this product. obviously mcdonald's canada agrees with you and not me.
1_2__3 9y ago
Because Apple is about as done as it can be with general purpose computing. I think it's safe to say they will make no more significant investments in it. Closed ecosystem computing is their golden goose now, they have zero interest in anything else. The margins for what they're doing now are too high for them to give that up.
- cmurf 9y ago
  Apple started with a closed ecosystem. Any perceived notion that they were going to be open: using commodity hardware, using open source software, was a means to an end. And they have come back full circle.
  - concede_pluto 9y ago
    Anyone could get a schematic of their Apple ][ and crack the case. It wasn't until the Mac that they stopped treating customers like humans with tools.
1_2__3 9y ago
Because Apple is about as done as it can be with general purpose computing. I think it's safe to say they will make no more significant investments in it. Closed ecosystem computing is their golden goose now, they have zero interest in anything else. The margins for what they're doing now are too high for them to give that up.

eddieroger 9y ago

Drivers. Apple likes the control over the hardware and software, and packages all of the drivers needed to run macOS on any blessed instance of Apple hardware currently supported (and maybe even ever created, since Intel). If you wanted, and I have done this before, you can clone a Mac made HDD and boot it from any other Mac you can get your hands on, and other than the hardware swap it's basically a reboot. If Apple let me build a tower and drop anything I wanted in to it, they can't guarantee that anymore, and even if it's just amongst developers, it hurts their brand experience.

dawnerd 9y ago
If it's for developers they don't have to guarantee it. I'm happily running a hackintosh right now. If they made it a little easier we wouldn't have to do weird hacks to spoof hardware ids just so messages work.
- 542458 9y ago
  I think the iOS "developer previews" have shown that even if you label something as being "unstable and just for developers" you'll still end up with thousands upon thousands of people with no idea what they're doing running it anyways and subsequently being vocally horrified that not everything works perfectly.
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    The difference is those people would now have to build hardware instead of just opening itunes and hitting install. You really think those users could get past the bios setup stage?
    - danieldk 9y ago
      people would now have to build hardware No, all kinds of companies will start offering machines as 'ready for macOS', and we'll see the same problems.
  - runjake 9y ago
    Hence why Apple implemented the Public Beta program. And it seems to work just fine.
- Operyl 9y ago
  Those weird hacks exist because of the spambot problem they're trying to prevent. It's enough of a hassle for us that iMessage spambots are practically nonexistent as a result.
  - hellbanner 9y ago
    Can you explain further? SMS spam bots can still exist, right?
    - dawnerd 9y ago
      Yep and so does iMessage spam. SMS spam is just easier and works just as well.
    - Operyl 9y ago
      The difference is SMS spam isn't "free", while iMessage spam could be free if they got over the technical barriers.
- accountyaccount 9y ago
  What happens when developers start selling these boxes and they break? People start hating on Apple because they don't know any better.
- intopieces 9y ago
  >If it's for developers they don't have to guarantee it. This would only be true in a world where Ars Technica, The Verge, and other publications did not exist. Apple would suffer from poor performance reviews for any sort of driver issue. Plus, "not guaranteed to work" is the opposite of Apple's ethos, which is "it just works." Apple has made it easy enough for hackitoshes to work by being lax with people running MacOS.
yardie 9y ago
I believe that is due to the fact of the strength of their xnu kernel than any drivers. I've installed my hackintosh HDD into a regular Mac and it booted just fine. It ignored the chameleon partition and booted the HDD as if it came from any other Mac. BTW, this isn't quite assured when copying a Hackintosh to another Hackintosh. Chameleon kernel injections are device specific. Different motherboards require different injectors.

pinaceae 9y ago

The core business model of Apple is to sell hardware. That simple. That's why macOS, etc are free now. That's why they're ramping up their enterprise partnerships behind the scenes to ensure big apps run best or even first on iOS and macOS. IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge). You can argue if that is the correct approach or not, but it is Apple's DNA now - and all the issues in the pro segment stem from it. Not enough hardware to be sold, why bother, etc.

astrodust 9y ago
As much as that's true, Apple has been trying to dig deeper into "services" over the last decade. App sales, music sales, movie sales, cloud services, anything they can do to expand their software ecosystem to make it more versatile and useful on hardware they never produced. If in some conceivable future Apple could make enough money on the "pro" market looking for OEM-style rigs to fund development of macOS through the macOS App Store, or through OS sales, they would probably at least consider it. The problem Apple has is success. If you're managing a team of top talent and you have two products, one of which rakes in hundreds of billions, the other which is mere tens, which team do you think gets the best people? It must take a lot of determination to keep really great people on the macOS team instead of poaching them for iOS. Apple's strategy of using the same OS core for both platforms probably helps in that regard: They can put their best people in the middle without concern about their full potential being wasted. It's a really tricky spot to be in. If Apple had no phone business at all they'd be a tiny company, but they wouldn't have the same stress about where to place people.
- rahoulb 9y ago
  As I inderstand it, Apple isn't organised that way. They have OS teams, app teams, design teams, which work on whichever product at a given time. They don't have product-specific teams. As for Apple being tiny without the iPhone; it's huge but Apple Watch (commonly described as a failure) is estimated to be a bigger business than Microsoft's Surface business.
  - 9y ago

logicallee 9y ago

Why doesnt McDonald's let you build a big mac at home - it's not like people don't have access to lettuce, tomatoes, hamburger buns, meat, cheese, mayonnaise, pickles, etc. The only thing we really need is the sauce that makes it a big mac. hey before I answer you wanna take a stab at that question? EDIT: I don't know why I was downvoted, it's a fairly close analogy.

astrodust 9y ago
People have reverse-engineered everything about that, including the sauce. What's your point? People also go to fast food restaurants to get food quickly. Preparing it yourself saves you zero time, it destroys the value of the Big Mac. If you're going to make your own burger, you can sure as shit do better than a Big Mac.
- logicallee 9y ago
  your sister comment made an interesting point that McDonald's does sell the sauce in grocery stores. That is a close analogy to this (since if someone really wants a big mac, they can make a hamburger at home and, by including some of that sauce, gets something that meets some of that need.) I think that's a pretty bad business decision for McDonald's to have done.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    It's a non-competing market. Nobody is going to fire up a grill in the office, make a burger, and then slap on the sauce just to save a trip to a McDonald's. They are going to use it when the otherwise wouldn't buy a McDonald's burger, like when hosting a backyard BBQ.
    - logicallee 9y ago
      my analysis is different, but whatever. I think some people would make a hamburger at home rather than go to a mcdonald's when they yearn for this product. obviously mcdonald's canada agrees with you and not me.

1_2__3 9y ago

Because Apple is about as done as it can be with general purpose computing. I think it's safe to say they will make no more significant investments in it. Closed ecosystem computing is their golden goose now, they have zero interest in anything else. The margins for what they're doing now are too high for them to give that up.

cmurf 9y ago
Apple started with a closed ecosystem. Any perceived notion that they were going to be open: using commodity hardware, using open source software, was a means to an end. And they have come back full circle.
- concede_pluto 9y ago
  Anyone could get a schematic of their Apple ][ and crack the case. It wasn't until the Mac that they stopped treating customers like humans with tools.

1_2__3 9y ago