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The reason Apple cares so much more about iOS than MacOS is vastly increased control. With iOS, they control the hardware from the chips up, the OS, which apps
by SiVal 8y ago
The reason Apple cares so much more about iOS than MacOS is vastly increased control. With iOS, they control the hardware from the chips up, the OS, which apps you can run, and via Safari-only access to the internet, even what you can and can't do using external services.
It makes computing & communications an Apple theme park, where you can't bring anything forbidden into the park, have to buy everything you need from Apple concessionaires, and can't do anything that they haven't planned for you to do. The people in the "park" pay to enter and then become a new type of domesticated herd to be milked.
You can't allow people to bring heavy equipment and power tools into a theme park, but you also can't build the park's controlled features without them, so how do you give power to authorized builders while keeping it away from users? In a physical theme park, they have controlled users during the day and empowered builders at night.
But in Appleworld, I'm thinking they'll keep iOS locked down by limiting the building tools to MacOS.
A unix-style workstation that gives maximum power to its users is so antithetical to everything Apple stands for that MacOS would never be created today, but since it already exists, they can take advantage of it to make iOS even more locked down than it would have been. (And refuse to let any other company use MacOS and not port Xcode anywhere else.) You want to see what your computer is doing (file sys, CPU procs, memory, network, etc.)? Do it with a Mac. iOS is not YOUR computer. It's Apple's. You only paid for admission to iOS, and you aren't allowed behind the locked doors. If you want control, you're in the wrong place.
I'm afraid that if they ever figure out how to sandbox an iOS partition of some sort to allow builder tools to run on iOS itself in a totally controlled way, then the Mac is toast, but the Mac gives them time. I think that for the foreseeable future, they won't risk any accidental empowerment of iOS users and will limit the power tools to the Mac.
- readit3 8y agoThank you, Sir for making it clear for all fanboys out there. Add to this fiasco virtually non existent support, slow hardware update, no easy repairability, dongle gate, no long term driver support for devices, telemetry, root gate etc. Actually i think that is time to give pressure on companies for better Linux support. And live Crapple for the delusional ones.
- pikorino 8y agoThe reason Apple cares so much more about iOS than MacOS is easily obtainable through earnings reports.
- threeseed 8y ago1. It's not Safari only. It's Webkit only and there are legitimate security reasons for this. 2. The idea that UNIX is antithetical to what Apple stands for is just ridiculous. It is still at the core of iOS and MacOS and is one of the areas where Apple continues to innovate. 3. Apple licensed MacOS in the past. It nearly killed the company since third parties like PowerComputing went straight after their core base and did nothing to grow the ecosystem. 4. You can see what your iOS device is doing. Plenty of apps allow you to see what processes are running, file system behaviour etc. Apple just doesn't build it in. 5. Anyone who thinks the Mac is dead needs to go have a lie down with some chamomile tea. Apple even today doubled down on the Mac with the new Air + Mini. And they will continue to grow and invest in the platform since content creation will always be largely done on a Mac.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago>4. You can see what your iOS device is doing. Plenty of apps allow you to see what processes are running, file system behaviour etc. Apple just doesn't build it in. Do you have any examples? I've never seen anything like this in the app store. Some apps give you limited access to their filesystem but (as a Jailbreaker) I'm pretty sure the larger system isn't viewable under normal circumstances.
- brisance 8y agoSearch for Lirum. Tons of apps like this.
- tokyodude 8y agoThere are not legitimate security reasons for Webkit only. That makes zero sense. Chrome has hands down beat every other browser on security for years. Go read the CVEs. There is absolutely zero reason to believe that iOS webkit has a better track record than webkit at large. Therefore it's nearly certain your iOS device is less secure browsing the net with webkit/Safari than if Apple allowed real chrome to run there.
- millstone 8y ago
- brisance 8y agoThere are lots of tools you can use to develop iOS apps other than Xcode. Phonegap/Cordova/OutSystems, Visual Studio, Xojo, Mendix, LiveCode et al. End of the day, Apple like any other corporation does what it does because it makes money for them. The alternative is to use a "free" operating system like Android and you subject yourself to constant surveillance. It's like that scene in The Big Short; "tell me how you're f*ing me." At least with Apple, you know straight up what you're getting yourself into. Your relationship with Apple ends when you stop using their devices. Not so with Google/Facebook, where your data lives on in perpetuity, used for purposes beyond your control. Now I'm not saying it's not possible to have your cake and eat it too. I'm saying, where is this mythical product, where a user is free to do whatever he wants with his device? What's the market size? How come no one has built it yet?
- FiveSquared 8y agoIt's called a "hand-built Linux desktop."
- brisance 8y agoYes, and the market size for that is…? We don't all grow our own crops, make our own clothes, brew our own beer, refine our own crude oil etc, even though we may have the knowledge to do so. Some things are better left to specialists, due to efficiencies/legal reasons. Surely we can agree on this?
- pjmlp 8y agoTyping this on a netbook, the only surviving Linux desktop I still use. For some reason most Linux conferences end up being about file systems, containers, device drivers and what not, seldom about desktop development.
- eddieroger 8y agoBecause conferences require money to run, and the kinds of people who back conferences tend to only run Linux on their servers, not their workstations. Enterprise Linux in general is happy enough being in the data center, and could have made harder pushes for the desktop for years now, but haven't.
- flashman 8y agoA decade ago, I never would have thought that Apple would be the ones mainstreaming Trusted Computing. (Well, the iPhone was out... maybe 12 years ago.) These were machines that supported the hacker ethos of tinkering and experimentation, even if the company involved was dedicated to abstracting more and more of the computer's guts away from the user.
- erik_seaberg 8y agoYou could crack the case and do stuff to an Apple ][. From day one the Mac has been hostile to this, right down to weird recessed screws.