6 ms·

> which you have to imagine is something Apple wants in the years ahead as platforms converge on common software stack and UX I don't think we have to imagine

> which you have to imagine is something Apple wants in the years ahead as platforms converge on common software stack and UX I don't think we have to imagine that. Apple's been against that sort of thing for a long time, and I don't see that changing any time soon. They don't target the lowest common denominator. I suppose that the Marzipan project, of iOS frameworks on macOS, should prove me wrong but I still don't think so. The few apps that Apple has given us are ... kinda bad. Their non-nativeness screams out: they don't respond properly to gestures, many macOS Services don't work in them, and the user interfaces are laggy. Yes, I suppose things will change with the next version of macOS, but there's no real way to avoid the fact that UIKit on macOS doesn't make proper macOS apps --- and developers will have to decide what matters more; time to market or customer satisfaction. I'm fairly sure Marzipan is a stopgap, not a platform unto itself. Get your iOS apps running on macOS, and slowly move them to native macOS paradigms. I'm actually hoping that things like Office 365, Lightroom CC (and perhaps the other Adobe apps), BBEdit, etc. help developers see the potential of proper macOS apps (I'll take these big developers' emulations of Cocoa over UIKit-on-macOS any day), and smaller developers will follow suit. (And if their code is MVC-compliant in the Cocoa way, that should't be too big an issue; you can mix and match views and controllers from AppKit and UIKit!) > Have you tried to download Office from their website? If you have an Office 365 account, all you need to do is go to office.com, sign in, and there's a big friendly "Install Office" button right there. But I do generally agree that there is too much friction getting this "must-have" piece of software; I don't care for Office much, but denying its influence and widespread usage is a task best relegated to those who think everybody should write in LaTeX.

npunt 8y ago
1. Go to Office365.com 2. Login 3. Do you want to stay logged in? 4. Is your information up to date? 5. Office / OneCloud homepage ("Good evening"). Press 'Install Office' (its a secondary/white button that blends into background, whereas 'New doc' is a blue button). (20 URL redirects) 6. Installs page. Press 'Install Office' again. 7. Still Installs page, now with banner that says 'Your Office 365 subscription info has moved to account.microsoft.com. Now there's one place to manage all your subscriptions'. No download happens when you press 'Install Office'. No actual link to account.microsoft.com. 8. Go to account.microsoft.com. No download button. I'm literally unable to download the Office dmg right now. Also, this is the improved interface. The prior one from last year was even less clear, except for the fact I could download it. Most other apps have a 1-click download button on their homepage, and guide you through the login/reg process when you launch the app. Oh, that's right, Office ALSO does that, in addition to the aforementioned steps. It's braindead. I think companies sometimes acknowledge that they've screwed up so badly that they need to rethink how they do things. Microsoft demonstrated willingness to do that since Satya became CEO and have shifted the entire company strategy away from Windows, killing a sacred cow. Whether or not that's what's going on behind the scenes here, the end user experience is severely improved going to App Store. Regarding UIKit, yes the current Marzipan apps suck, all four of them. They're not mainline apps by any stretch of the imagination, and none were previously on the Mac. They'll get better. Just because Marzipan/UIKit today doesn't have good MacOS affordances doesn't mean it won't in the future, especially since it's not even being offered to developers right now. I don't see why it's difficult to see where the puck is going here. There's certainly some implementation details to work out, but it's better for the ecosystem as a whole - users, devs, and Apple - to have a single framework in the long run. Were you making something from scratch you certainly wouldn't make two frameworks. To be specific, Apple has been against a 2-in-1 style product. I'm not advocating that, sorry to have caused confusion. I'm saying they'll have same underlying tech (UIKit/marizpan), but different end-user UX affordances based on mouse vs touch. Remember that iPad is as large a market as Mac right now, and is moving upmarket and attracting more pro apps. There are also way more iOS devs than MacOS devs, 10:1 or 100:1. Devs making technical decisions about Apple ecosystem products right now should be getting the hint, and if they're not they likely will this June at WWDC. Apple doesn't tend to lurch around on product decisions, almost everything they do is a multi-year strategy executed in well-telegraphed steps.
- brianpgordon 8y ago
  > Office365 There's your problem right there. Just buy a perpetual Office license. The awful Adobe-style subscription model for desktop software that barely ever changes is ridiculous.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    There are other aspects to Office 365 that are quite valuable to people, like a huge increase in the size of their OneDrive storage quotas, the ability to install Office on multiple devices rather than just one (which is pretty common; people install Office apps connected to their 365 accounts on their mobiles, tablets, etc.), Skype airtime, technical support beyond the first 60 days of purchase, and with certain plans you can share these benefits with a certain number of people. Aside from that, many businesses with specific Office 365 packages get a number of licences (sometimes unlimited) to assign to staff; so people don't have to buy Office, they get it "free" from work and can install it on something like five or ten devices. Same goes for educational institutions; I'm a teacher, so all the staff AND the students get free access to Office 365, and all the complicated businessy things like Active Directory profiles, SharePoint, Teams (MS' answer to Slack), and so on is included with the same account that I use to install Office on my home Mac, iPhone, and iPad. So for plenty of people, benefitting from the subscription service in this way, Office is free - no need to buy a perpetual licence. It's not ridiculous. It might be for your use case, but you can't make a blanket statement that covers everybody.
    - brianpgordon 8y ago
      Well, maybe two different things have gotten conflated here. What I'm calling ridiculous is the fact that Microsoft is charging a subscription for Office. The flexibility to install on multiple devices is something that shouldn't be tied to a subscription license in the first place. And neither is more OneDrive space (why you'd want OneDrive space in the first place is a separate issue) or Skype airtime. It also doesn't make sense to me why you think it's a good thing that your Office account is the same as for AD and SharePoint and Teams... this is an offline desktop office suite - what does a Microsoft account have to do with it anyway? I feel like Microsoft noticed how Adobe was making money hand over fist by moving Creative Suite to a subscription model and wanted in on the action. Of course everyone hates Adobe's awful subscription model, but it doesn't matter- if you have to have Photoshop then you're going to pay whatever they ask. But this is not a good thing. Basically what I'm saying is that rushing to defend Microsoft's licensing model doesn't make any sense. This is a step back in every way from the world where you buy a license and don't have to keep paying the vendor month after month for them to do little more than refrain from shutting down access to software already on your computer. If you want Skype and OneDrive (again, why?) then fine, but the fact that that's bundled is not a good thing.
raquo 8y ago
> They don't target the lowest common denominator. Maybe not _technically_ yet, but certainly in spirit. For example, Apple removed a lot of features from their Photos (formerly iPhoto) and iMovie Mac apps to match the much more limited iOS versions.
- npunt 8y ago
  They did an entire rewrite of iPhoto -> Photos, and slowly added features back. They did this same with the iWork suite and Final Cut Pro as well. It's not unique to iOS. iPhoto may be remembered fondly but it really needed a UX and technical overhaul to handle the order of magnitude increase in photos and videos people were taking.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    It really did. It struggled with MobileMe photo streams; in the modern days of iCloud (being free) and Photo Library, iPhoto would have to be renamed to Beachball Simulator.
    - npunt 8y ago
      Oh man, the Mavericks days of iPhoto were getting rough. Beachball city.
saagarjha 8y ago
> you can mix and match views and controllers from AppKit and UIKit Last I heard, Marzipan apps cannot link against AppKit at all.

npunt 8y ago

1. Go to Office365.com 2. Login 3. Do you want to stay logged in? 4. Is your information up to date? 5. Office / OneCloud homepage ("Good evening"). Press 'Install Office' (its a secondary/white button that blends into background, whereas 'New doc' is a blue button). (20 URL redirects) 6. Installs page. Press 'Install Office' again. 7. Still Installs page, now with banner that says 'Your Office 365 subscription info has moved to account.microsoft.com. Now there's one place to manage all your subscriptions'. No download happens when you press 'Install Office'. No actual link to account.microsoft.com. 8. Go to account.microsoft.com. No download button. I'm literally unable to download the Office dmg right now. Also, this is the improved interface. The prior one from last year was even less clear, except for the fact I could download it. Most other apps have a 1-click download button on their homepage, and guide you through the login/reg process when you launch the app. Oh, that's right, Office ALSO does that, in addition to the aforementioned steps. It's braindead. I think companies sometimes acknowledge that they've screwed up so badly that they need to rethink how they do things. Microsoft demonstrated willingness to do that since Satya became CEO and have shifted the entire company strategy away from Windows, killing a sacred cow. Whether or not that's what's going on behind the scenes here, the end user experience is severely improved going to App Store. Regarding UIKit, yes the current Marzipan apps suck, all four of them. They're not mainline apps by any stretch of the imagination, and none were previously on the Mac. They'll get better. Just because Marzipan/UIKit today doesn't have good MacOS affordances doesn't mean it won't in the future, especially since it's not even being offered to developers right now. I don't see why it's difficult to see where the puck is going here. There's certainly some implementation details to work out, but it's better for the ecosystem as a whole - users, devs, and Apple - to have a single framework in the long run. Were you making something from scratch you certainly wouldn't make two frameworks. To be specific, Apple has been against a 2-in-1 style product. I'm not advocating that, sorry to have caused confusion. I'm saying they'll have same underlying tech (UIKit/marizpan), but different end-user UX affordances based on mouse vs touch. Remember that iPad is as large a market as Mac right now, and is moving upmarket and attracting more pro apps. There are also way more iOS devs than MacOS devs, 10:1 or 100:1. Devs making technical decisions about Apple ecosystem products right now should be getting the hint, and if they're not they likely will this June at WWDC. Apple doesn't tend to lurch around on product decisions, almost everything they do is a multi-year strategy executed in well-telegraphed steps.

brianpgordon 8y ago
> Office365 There's your problem right there. Just buy a perpetual Office license. The awful Adobe-style subscription model for desktop software that barely ever changes is ridiculous.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  There are other aspects to Office 365 that are quite valuable to people, like a huge increase in the size of their OneDrive storage quotas, the ability to install Office on multiple devices rather than just one (which is pretty common; people install Office apps connected to their 365 accounts on their mobiles, tablets, etc.), Skype airtime, technical support beyond the first 60 days of purchase, and with certain plans you can share these benefits with a certain number of people. Aside from that, many businesses with specific Office 365 packages get a number of licences (sometimes unlimited) to assign to staff; so people don't have to buy Office, they get it "free" from work and can install it on something like five or ten devices. Same goes for educational institutions; I'm a teacher, so all the staff AND the students get free access to Office 365, and all the complicated businessy things like Active Directory profiles, SharePoint, Teams (MS' answer to Slack), and so on is included with the same account that I use to install Office on my home Mac, iPhone, and iPad. So for plenty of people, benefitting from the subscription service in this way, Office is free - no need to buy a perpetual licence. It's not ridiculous. It might be for your use case, but you can't make a blanket statement that covers everybody.
  - brianpgordon 8y ago
    Well, maybe two different things have gotten conflated here. What I'm calling ridiculous is the fact that Microsoft is charging a subscription for Office. The flexibility to install on multiple devices is something that shouldn't be tied to a subscription license in the first place. And neither is more OneDrive space (why you'd want OneDrive space in the first place is a separate issue) or Skype airtime. It also doesn't make sense to me why you think it's a good thing that your Office account is the same as for AD and SharePoint and Teams... this is an offline desktop office suite - what does a Microsoft account have to do with it anyway? I feel like Microsoft noticed how Adobe was making money hand over fist by moving Creative Suite to a subscription model and wanted in on the action. Of course everyone hates Adobe's awful subscription model, but it doesn't matter- if you have to have Photoshop then you're going to pay whatever they ask. But this is not a good thing. Basically what I'm saying is that rushing to defend Microsoft's licensing model doesn't make any sense. This is a step back in every way from the world where you buy a license and don't have to keep paying the vendor month after month for them to do little more than refrain from shutting down access to software already on your computer. If you want Skype and OneDrive (again, why?) then fine, but the fact that that's bundled is not a good thing.

raquo 8y ago

> They don't target the lowest common denominator. Maybe not _technically_ yet, but certainly in spirit. For example, Apple removed a lot of features from their Photos (formerly iPhoto) and iMovie Mac apps to match the much more limited iOS versions.

npunt 8y ago
They did an entire rewrite of iPhoto -> Photos, and slowly added features back. They did this same with the iWork suite and Final Cut Pro as well. It's not unique to iOS. iPhoto may be remembered fondly but it really needed a UX and technical overhaul to handle the order of magnitude increase in photos and videos people were taking.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  It really did. It struggled with MobileMe photo streams; in the modern days of iCloud (being free) and Photo Library, iPhoto would have to be renamed to Beachball Simulator.
  - npunt 8y ago
    Oh man, the Mavericks days of iPhoto were getting rough. Beachball city.

saagarjha 8y ago

> you can mix and match views and controllers from AppKit and UIKit Last I heard, Marzipan apps cannot link against AppKit at all.