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I'm continually amazed at how much Apple hypes up the most pointless, useless, basic things. This is a new version of a major operating system, and we get... th

I'm continually amazed at how much Apple hypes up the most pointless, useless, basic things. This is a new version of a major operating system, and we get... the desktop organized by filetype. A built-in stock application. How is an App Store update considered part of an OS update?

aldanor 8y ago
I can't help shuddering everytime Craig presents (is forced to present? is paid to present?) the... omg... wait for it... the new set of animojis, on stage.
- some_account 8y ago
  Yeah it's very cringe to watch. A grown man being exited about personal emois on a phone. Really?
  - IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
    Yet teens are a very popular demographic for buying iPhones, so if they like it, so what?
    - some_account 8y ago
      I'm a developer using the mac as a programming and devops system. I do not want teen features to be the best thing about my next upgrade. I want it to be about the computer feeling faster, smoother, better. You know, like an operating system feature?
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        Why not have both?
      - Lio 8y ago
        This. MacBook Pros are getting more and more expensive surely they’re already outside of the teen demographics purchasing power. It’s professionals and those that aspire to be professional who spend > £2,000 on a laptop. I want decent UI (including keyboard shortcuts I can touch type), more features and better performance more than I want fluff like voice commands or anything-moji. When thy said there another part of the platform they were ignoring I got excited for a moment. I thought they bringing out an Apple official version of homebrew. Nope iOS apps.
      - jonhendry18 8y ago
        Have you considered working in COBOL?
      - IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
        emoji's and the like are iOS features (for now). Teen focused features drive sales of iOS devices, increasing Apple's revenue stream and your potential customer base as those teens will likely buy macOS computers. Craig owns software for both macOS and iOS, and in fact part of iOS 12 is about improving performance of the OS to operate faster, smoother and better. So they are delivering exactly that on iOS. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- drunken-serval 8y ago
  Well, I get excited about this stuff. I really like Telegram because of the stickers. I get stupidly excited every time I find a new sticker pack I like.
heyoni 8y ago
They are doing absolutely nothing to bring back gaming to Mac. Major developers (like Blizzard) who have been loyal to that user base for decades are giving up and it feels like Apple isn't even trying to figure out a solution.
- ihuman 8y ago
  During the keynote, they showed Fortnite and a Unity demo running on Metal 2, and showed off the power of an external GPU. The new Mac app store will also give them the ability to highlight standout games, like it does on iOS.
  - heyoni 8y ago
    This is great, however there are a slew of games that should technically work on mac but won't ever be ported because of 'technical limitations' set by Apple. Those reasons could be any number of things like not having native nvidia drivers, or lack of openGL support (which is completely deprecated in Mojave), etc...I'm happy to hear about their work on fortnite because currently my mac is overpowered for that game yet it is absolutely unplayable in its current state.
- grandinj 8y ago
  You mean other than continually improving Metal and working with Unity to get the latest Metal stuff supported properly?
  - heyoni 8y ago
    Yes, I mean other than that they are doing nothing. Vulkan and OpenGL are shunned by Apple and developers won't even port over games that should run on macos (i.e. any game using the unreal engine -- pubg for example).
    - drak0n1c 8y ago
      Unreal Engine supports Metal - they even did a demo on stage a few years back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br7qVnzxzv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br7qVnzxzv8
dewey 8y ago
Have you seen the part where you can easily port iOS apps to macOS that was probably in the making for a few years? That's pretty huge for a developer conference. Changes to the app store to make discovery easier and feature more developer stories also have a huge impact on Mac/iOS developers and their revenue.
- janlukacs 8y ago
  Is that an OS update? Do you really need iOS apps on the Mac? How about having decent apps in the actual native apps store?
  - asasidh 8y ago
    This is the only way that they can make developers to care about putting more apps on the Mac AppStore.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    Decent apps in the actual native store is what the UIKit port is about. It’s not iOS apps on the Mac any more than tvOS apps are iOS apps on the TV. You still need to adapt it to native UI conventions like the menu bar, you just won’t need to rebuild the entire UI from the ground up in AppKit anymore.
    - janlukacs 8y ago
      Let me put it another way, when was the last time you heard a user ask for an iOS app to be on the Mac? Is this what Mac users want or is it something that Apple wants?
      - mattkevan 8y ago
        Me. It’s something I want. I love apps that allow me to work on an iPad while I'm on the tube, then pick right up where I left off on the desktop. It’s the best of both worlds. A good example is Bear Writer[0], a Markdown-based writing and notes app. The Mac app, while fully featured, is based on Electron. Without knowing anything about this new system I’d think these changes would allow the developers to create a native Mac app at least as easily as an Electron web app. [0] http://www.bear-writer.com http://www.bear-writer.com
pvg 8y ago
When they add big features, people complain they haven't spent enough time on stability and performance. The event is every year so they announce something, it's not like they're going to write a new OS annually. Slowing down the release rate of shiny new things is probably a good thing.
uptown 8y ago
"A built-in stock application" This was essentially their sales-pitch demonstrating write-once run-anywhere codebase reducing the effort required to develop an app which can be built to run on both iOS and MacOS hardware.
awat 8y ago
I really have to agree with this. It used to be a selling point for me that Apple gave free OS upgrades (cost baked into hardware I know). But lately I’m on the fence wether some of this is really a free OS upgrade or really even fully justifies a full point release. Lots a hype for what imho used to be a 10.x.1 to 10.x.4 release.
wlesieutre 8y ago
To be fair, New, Stocks, and Voice Memos are really there as the first public tests of UIKit’s Mac port. And desktop icons might not be a huge deal, but I’m glad to see Apple acknowledging that they’re useful and continuing to improve it, in contrast with major Linux distros removing files from the desktop entirely. For the Mac App Store, developers have been complaining about how subpar, useless, and stagnant it’s been for years. If the new version can drive customers to buy things, it’s a potentially big deal. Personally my favorite features are dark mode, fingerprinting protection in Safari, and improved security of the camera/microphone and sensitive files. UIKit will be a big deal for the Mac ecosystem when developers outside Apple get it next year.
- drcode 8y ago
  It'll certainly be nice to have the fingerprinting feature on my macbook pro, given how difficult it is for me to type in a password error free using their unreliable keyboards.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    Not sure if serious, but fingerprinting as in device fingerprinting for tracking scripts. If you want a fingerprint enabled password manager those exist already.
SiVal 8y ago
Apple Hype Theory requires the irreducible Apple quantum of hype at any event be spread across whatever announcements are being made at that event. It's Apple's modus operandi, and I don't mind it, because I can compensate. What I wish, though, was that they themselves would get more excited about making MacBook Pro hardware improvements intended to drive people to upgrade to new MacBook Pros instead of seemingly trying to drive them to move on to iPads.
mrisoli 8y ago
I find it amusing, my friends and I continuously joke Apple-style hype pitches for mundane things like airline safety videos. But otherwise, it's pretty cringy not only seeing them demo the new animoji stuff as well as people frantically clapping.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  >it's pretty cringy not only seeing them demo the new animoji stuff as well as people frantically clapping. Because you don't see the vision that the developers in that room do. You're thinking about yourself. You're not thinking about Apple expanding its user base and making more customers available for its developers and their companies. There was a lot of love in the keynote if you're a company looking at the bigger picture. If you're just a dev pounding on a keyboard, I can understand being less than impressed.
  - briandear 8y ago
    So much this. The complaints about Memoji for example, does anyone actually understand the possibilities of that tech, especially for making feature films? Think about the applications of that in areas such as hospitality or customer service as well. An augmented reality “person” to show you around your hotel room for example or help you check in for a flight using natural facial expressions — and super easy for a company to create without having to do character animation for each spoken sentence. For “Hacker” news, many people seem very much “get off my lawn” and fail to see the future. They see stickers and teenagers but what they should be seeing is an entirely new and natural way to interact with the world. This is like rounded corners in 1981. Apple could invent a flying car that reverses global warming and people would complain that the color scheme is just a touch too whimsical to be taken seriously. They’d complain about how Apple doesn’t support their cassette deck they had installed in their old Audi. They’d complain that real drivers shouldn’t need cup holders. Do any of you people care about actual joy, delight or fun? Does anyone actually have the ability to imagine the future even a little bit? Must we be constrained to a monochrome CRT? This tech is a small building block of the future and many of you dismiss it like it’s some gimmick. I know you guys wanted Craig to talk about performance and stability — but, if people actually knew anything about WWDC, you’d know that those topics get covered exhaustively throughout the week. The keynote is about big ideas and what is going to be possible. The smaller sessions are where the questions get answered and the spec sheets get explained.
matthewmacleod 8y ago
What on earth are you complaining about? It's an annual, incremental OS release. We're not talking about multi-year developments or grand visions. There are a bunch of features that look quite nice from a usability standpoint, some improvements to the App Store, and a crack at a unified development platform for iOS and macOS. Those seem like a pretty reasonable set of features to roll out, and no doubt they'll be accompanies by the usual array of more minor improvements. The only thing we should really be hoping for is that they focus more on reducing the number of bugs, performance issues and security vulnerabilities.
- Jtsummers 8y ago
  I think a lot of people have lost sight of this. OS X/macOS has had releases (since version 10.0) after: 0 months, 10.0 released 6 11 14 18 18 16 15 12 15 12 11 12 12 10.13 released I think I got them all right. When you wait 1.5-2 years between releases, it's reasonable to expect more extensive changes. But every 12 months, the big changes won't happen every single year.
donarb 8y ago
The other thing that was glossed over was Panic's Transmit and BBEdit coming to the App Store (both currently not available there). Panic wrote on their blog last year about problems they had trying to sell their app on the App Store and pulling it. Looks like Apple is working with developers to help them with things like demos, trial periods and such.
- donarb 8y ago
  In response to the plug from Apple on stage, Cabel from Panic tweeted "...More on Transmit and the Mac App Store later!..." https://twitter.com/panic/status/1003713594154835968 https://twitter.com/panic/status/1003713594154835968
sjm-lbm 8y ago
I actually agree with you broadly, but the funny part is that stacks (or, basically, some form of 'smart folders') actually hit me as a genuinely interesting addition to the very old and tired UI paradigms for desktop software.
jimbokun 8y ago
The keynote is for the masses, who mainly notice things like changes in color schemes. The WWDC technical sessions are about the changes that really matter.

aldanor 8y ago

I can't help shuddering everytime Craig presents (is forced to present? is paid to present?) the... omg... wait for it... the new set of animojis, on stage.

some_account 8y ago
Yeah it's very cringe to watch. A grown man being exited about personal emois on a phone. Really?
- IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
  Yet teens are a very popular demographic for buying iPhones, so if they like it, so what?
  - some_account 8y ago
    I'm a developer using the mac as a programming and devops system. I do not want teen features to be the best thing about my next upgrade. I want it to be about the computer feeling faster, smoother, better. You know, like an operating system feature?
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      Why not have both?
    - Lio 8y ago
      This. MacBook Pros are getting more and more expensive surely they’re already outside of the teen demographics purchasing power. It’s professionals and those that aspire to be professional who spend > £2,000 on a laptop. I want decent UI (including keyboard shortcuts I can touch type), more features and better performance more than I want fluff like voice commands or anything-moji. When thy said there another part of the platform they were ignoring I got excited for a moment. I thought they bringing out an Apple official version of homebrew. Nope iOS apps.
    - jonhendry18 8y ago
      Have you considered working in COBOL?
    - IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
      emoji's and the like are iOS features (for now). Teen focused features drive sales of iOS devices, increasing Apple's revenue stream and your potential customer base as those teens will likely buy macOS computers. Craig owns software for both macOS and iOS, and in fact part of iOS 12 is about improving performance of the OS to operate faster, smoother and better. So they are delivering exactly that on iOS. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
drunken-serval 8y ago
Well, I get excited about this stuff. I really like Telegram because of the stickers. I get stupidly excited every time I find a new sticker pack I like.

heyoni 8y ago

They are doing absolutely nothing to bring back gaming to Mac. Major developers (like Blizzard) who have been loyal to that user base for decades are giving up and it feels like Apple isn't even trying to figure out a solution.

ihuman 8y ago
During the keynote, they showed Fortnite and a Unity demo running on Metal 2, and showed off the power of an external GPU. The new Mac app store will also give them the ability to highlight standout games, like it does on iOS.
- heyoni 8y ago
  This is great, however there are a slew of games that should technically work on mac but won't ever be ported because of 'technical limitations' set by Apple. Those reasons could be any number of things like not having native nvidia drivers, or lack of openGL support (which is completely deprecated in Mojave), etc...I'm happy to hear about their work on fortnite because currently my mac is overpowered for that game yet it is absolutely unplayable in its current state.
grandinj 8y ago
You mean other than continually improving Metal and working with Unity to get the latest Metal stuff supported properly?
- heyoni 8y ago
  Yes, I mean other than that they are doing nothing. Vulkan and OpenGL are shunned by Apple and developers won't even port over games that should run on macos (i.e. any game using the unreal engine -- pubg for example).
  - drak0n1c 8y ago
    Unreal Engine supports Metal - they even did a demo on stage a few years back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br7qVnzxzv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br7qVnzxzv8

dewey 8y ago

Have you seen the part where you can easily port iOS apps to macOS that was probably in the making for a few years? That's pretty huge for a developer conference. Changes to the app store to make discovery easier and feature more developer stories also have a huge impact on Mac/iOS developers and their revenue.

janlukacs 8y ago
Is that an OS update? Do you really need iOS apps on the Mac? How about having decent apps in the actual native apps store?
- asasidh 8y ago
  This is the only way that they can make developers to care about putting more apps on the Mac AppStore.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  Decent apps in the actual native store is what the UIKit port is about. It’s not iOS apps on the Mac any more than tvOS apps are iOS apps on the TV. You still need to adapt it to native UI conventions like the menu bar, you just won’t need to rebuild the entire UI from the ground up in AppKit anymore.
  - janlukacs 8y ago
    Let me put it another way, when was the last time you heard a user ask for an iOS app to be on the Mac? Is this what Mac users want or is it something that Apple wants?
    - mattkevan 8y ago
      Me. It’s something I want. I love apps that allow me to work on an iPad while I'm on the tube, then pick right up where I left off on the desktop. It’s the best of both worlds. A good example is Bear Writer[0], a Markdown-based writing and notes app. The Mac app, while fully featured, is based on Electron. Without knowing anything about this new system I’d think these changes would allow the developers to create a native Mac app at least as easily as an Electron web app. [0] http://www.bear-writer.com http://www.bear-writer.com

pvg 8y ago

When they add big features, people complain they haven't spent enough time on stability and performance. The event is every year so they announce something, it's not like they're going to write a new OS annually. Slowing down the release rate of shiny new things is probably a good thing.

uptown 8y ago

"A built-in stock application" This was essentially their sales-pitch demonstrating write-once run-anywhere codebase reducing the effort required to develop an app which can be built to run on both iOS and MacOS hardware.

awat 8y ago

I really have to agree with this. It used to be a selling point for me that Apple gave free OS upgrades (cost baked into hardware I know). But lately I’m on the fence wether some of this is really a free OS upgrade or really even fully justifies a full point release. Lots a hype for what imho used to be a 10.x.1 to 10.x.4 release.

wlesieutre 8y ago

To be fair, New, Stocks, and Voice Memos are really there as the first public tests of UIKit’s Mac port. And desktop icons might not be a huge deal, but I’m glad to see Apple acknowledging that they’re useful and continuing to improve it, in contrast with major Linux distros removing files from the desktop entirely. For the Mac App Store, developers have been complaining about how subpar, useless, and stagnant it’s been for years. If the new version can drive customers to buy things, it’s a potentially big deal. Personally my favorite features are dark mode, fingerprinting protection in Safari, and improved security of the camera/microphone and sensitive files. UIKit will be a big deal for the Mac ecosystem when developers outside Apple get it next year.

drcode 8y ago
It'll certainly be nice to have the fingerprinting feature on my macbook pro, given how difficult it is for me to type in a password error free using their unreliable keyboards.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  Not sure if serious, but fingerprinting as in device fingerprinting for tracking scripts. If you want a fingerprint enabled password manager those exist already.

SiVal 8y ago

Apple Hype Theory requires the irreducible Apple quantum of hype at any event be spread across whatever announcements are being made at that event. It's Apple's modus operandi, and I don't mind it, because I can compensate. What I wish, though, was that they themselves would get more excited about making MacBook Pro hardware improvements intended to drive people to upgrade to new MacBook Pros instead of seemingly trying to drive them to move on to iPads.

mrisoli 8y ago

I find it amusing, my friends and I continuously joke Apple-style hype pitches for mundane things like airline safety videos. But otherwise, it's pretty cringy not only seeing them demo the new animoji stuff as well as people frantically clapping.

reaperducer 8y ago
>it's pretty cringy not only seeing them demo the new animoji stuff as well as people frantically clapping. Because you don't see the vision that the developers in that room do. You're thinking about yourself. You're not thinking about Apple expanding its user base and making more customers available for its developers and their companies. There was a lot of love in the keynote if you're a company looking at the bigger picture. If you're just a dev pounding on a keyboard, I can understand being less than impressed.
- briandear 8y ago
  So much this. The complaints about Memoji for example, does anyone actually understand the possibilities of that tech, especially for making feature films? Think about the applications of that in areas such as hospitality or customer service as well. An augmented reality “person” to show you around your hotel room for example or help you check in for a flight using natural facial expressions — and super easy for a company to create without having to do character animation for each spoken sentence. For “Hacker” news, many people seem very much “get off my lawn” and fail to see the future. They see stickers and teenagers but what they should be seeing is an entirely new and natural way to interact with the world. This is like rounded corners in 1981. Apple could invent a flying car that reverses global warming and people would complain that the color scheme is just a touch too whimsical to be taken seriously. They’d complain about how Apple doesn’t support their cassette deck they had installed in their old Audi. They’d complain that real drivers shouldn’t need cup holders. Do any of you people care about actual joy, delight or fun? Does anyone actually have the ability to imagine the future even a little bit? Must we be constrained to a monochrome CRT? This tech is a small building block of the future and many of you dismiss it like it’s some gimmick. I know you guys wanted Craig to talk about performance and stability — but, if people actually knew anything about WWDC, you’d know that those topics get covered exhaustively throughout the week. The keynote is about big ideas and what is going to be possible. The smaller sessions are where the questions get answered and the spec sheets get explained.

matthewmacleod 8y ago

What on earth are you complaining about? It's an annual, incremental OS release. We're not talking about multi-year developments or grand visions. There are a bunch of features that look quite nice from a usability standpoint, some improvements to the App Store, and a crack at a unified development platform for iOS and macOS. Those seem like a pretty reasonable set of features to roll out, and no doubt they'll be accompanies by the usual array of more minor improvements. The only thing we should really be hoping for is that they focus more on reducing the number of bugs, performance issues and security vulnerabilities.

Jtsummers 8y ago
I think a lot of people have lost sight of this. OS X/macOS has had releases (since version 10.0) after: 0 months, 10.0 released 6 11 14 18 18 16 15 12 15 12 11 12 12 10.13 released I think I got them all right. When you wait 1.5-2 years between releases, it's reasonable to expect more extensive changes. But every 12 months, the big changes won't happen every single year.

donarb 8y ago

The other thing that was glossed over was Panic's Transmit and BBEdit coming to the App Store (both currently not available there). Panic wrote on their blog last year about problems they had trying to sell their app on the App Store and pulling it. Looks like Apple is working with developers to help them with things like demos, trial periods and such.

donarb 8y ago
In response to the plug from Apple on stage, Cabel from Panic tweeted "...More on Transmit and the Mac App Store later!..." https://twitter.com/panic/status/1003713594154835968 https://twitter.com/panic/status/1003713594154835968

sjm-lbm 8y ago

I actually agree with you broadly, but the funny part is that stacks (or, basically, some form of 'smart folders') actually hit me as a genuinely interesting addition to the very old and tired UI paradigms for desktop software.

jimbokun 8y ago

The keynote is for the masses, who mainly notice things like changes in color schemes. The WWDC technical sessions are about the changes that really matter.