4 ms·

How can they toss away a fundamental part of the OS? Steve just presented it back in Tiger. This and tossing 32 bit apps to the wind. Crazy Apple.

2arrs2ells 7y ago
Tiger came out 14 years ago. Dashboard has barely seen any investment since then. Calling it a "fundamental part of the OS" makes me think you're trolling. This isn't the least bit surprising. (And I'm sure a 3rd party replacement will pop up, if there are enough frustrated users).
- webwielder2 7y ago
  Maybe they could call it Konfabulator.
s_dev 7y ago
Bar gaming, most serious apps have gone 64 bit and gaming was never more than niche on Mac.
- skohan 7y ago
  There are a lot of legacy apps which are still useful and not 64 bit. I have a license for Aperture and Logic Pro for instance. I use Aperture daily and it meets my needs perfectly. Now I need to find a solution. I don't see why they couldn't include an optional compatibility mode forever. Even if it were something I had to download and install.
r00fus 7y ago
Dashboard was simply a way to get basic mobile apps prototyped on Mac before iOS existed. Apple does this a lot - make hay about something that's foundational to their next step. A good example was usage of LLVM on the PPC->Intel transition which then helped when they ported OSX to ARM (ie, iOS, nee iPhoneOS). Another is Safari (which was useful/needed on Mac at the time) but more importantly was critical in making the iPhone successful - mobile browsing sucked before the iPhone.
- woodruffw 7y ago
  > A good example was usage of LLVM on the PPC->Intel transition which then helped when they ported OSX to ARM (ie, iOS, nee iPhoneOS). I’m not an Apple insider, but I don’t believe LLVM played a substantial role in either the PPC-to-x86 or x86-to-ARM-for-iOS ports — the former was accomplished with Rosetta and a lot of bugs. The current rumor, OTOH, is that Apple’s collection of LLVM bitcode for apps is intended to allow painless migration for applications when macOS is switched over to ARM.
  - 0x0 7y ago
    Isn't that rumor solidly debunked by the fact that LLVM bitcode is strictly tied to the cpu architecure and kernel/system ABI which varies quite a bit between arm/arm64/x86/x86_64? Has anyone been able to execute built-for-x86_64 bitcode on aarch64 ever?
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Yes and it was debunked by no less than Chris Lattner himself on the Accidental Tech Podcast. https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript
      - woodruffw 7y ago
        Oh well, I guess the rumor is junk then. I will say, however, that executing LLVM bitcode on different targets than the compilation machine is a subject of active research. It's one of the things that I work on in my day job.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Relevant quote: Bitcode is not [12:30] a magic solution, though. You can't take a 32-bit app, for example, and run it on a 64-bit device. That kind of portability isn’t something that Bitcode can give you, notably because that is something that's visible in C. As you're writing C code, you can write #ifdef pointer size equals 32, and that’s something that Bitcode can't abstract over. It's useful for very specific, low-level kinds of enhancements, but it isn't a panacea that makes everything [13:00] magically portable. What’s funny, is later on after Apple shipped a 64 bit chip for the Apple Watch. He admitted that forcing developers to ship watch apps as bitcode allowed Apple to recompile all of the third party Watch apps on the fly to support it, he knew that was coming, but couldn’t say anything at the time. https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/1046960724646465541 https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/1046960724646465541
mwfunk 7y ago
It’s not a fundamental part of the OS, it’s a feature they pushed 12 years ago that never ever got any traction. User apathy towards Dashboard has been used as a darkly humorous but sad metaphor both inside and outside the company for many years now. Continuing to maintain things that have hardly any user adoption would be crazy. Better to take it out then leave it in as an attack surface and something that no engineer would ever want to work on. Many many more people know about Dashboard through jokes about how nobody ever uses Dashboard, than there are people who actually use Dashboard. Similarly, someday MS will remove live tiles from the start menu. It’s inevitable, but clearly internal politics are keeping the feature around. Guaranteed that 99% of humanity will rejoice when it happens, but equally guaranteed that someone on HN will express how appalled they are that a company as big as MS didn’t choose to keep the feature alive for the sake of the handful of people who liked it.
- icedchai 7y ago
  Pretty sure the person you're replying to was being sarcastic. (Tiger was released in 2005, before Intel Macs.)

2arrs2ells 7y ago

Tiger came out 14 years ago. Dashboard has barely seen any investment since then. Calling it a "fundamental part of the OS" makes me think you're trolling. This isn't the least bit surprising. (And I'm sure a 3rd party replacement will pop up, if there are enough frustrated users).

webwielder2 7y ago
Maybe they could call it Konfabulator.

s_dev 7y ago

Bar gaming, most serious apps have gone 64 bit and gaming was never more than niche on Mac.

skohan 7y ago
There are a lot of legacy apps which are still useful and not 64 bit. I have a license for Aperture and Logic Pro for instance. I use Aperture daily and it meets my needs perfectly. Now I need to find a solution. I don't see why they couldn't include an optional compatibility mode forever. Even if it were something I had to download and install.

r00fus 7y ago

Dashboard was simply a way to get basic mobile apps prototyped on Mac before iOS existed. Apple does this a lot - make hay about something that's foundational to their next step. A good example was usage of LLVM on the PPC->Intel transition which then helped when they ported OSX to ARM (ie, iOS, nee iPhoneOS). Another is Safari (which was useful/needed on Mac at the time) but more importantly was critical in making the iPhone successful - mobile browsing sucked before the iPhone.

woodruffw 7y ago
> A good example was usage of LLVM on the PPC->Intel transition which then helped when they ported OSX to ARM (ie, iOS, nee iPhoneOS). I’m not an Apple insider, but I don’t believe LLVM played a substantial role in either the PPC-to-x86 or x86-to-ARM-for-iOS ports — the former was accomplished with Rosetta and a lot of bugs. The current rumor, OTOH, is that Apple’s collection of LLVM bitcode for apps is intended to allow painless migration for applications when macOS is switched over to ARM.
- 0x0 7y ago
  Isn't that rumor solidly debunked by the fact that LLVM bitcode is strictly tied to the cpu architecure and kernel/system ABI which varies quite a bit between arm/arm64/x86/x86_64? Has anyone been able to execute built-for-x86_64 bitcode on aarch64 ever?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Yes and it was debunked by no less than Chris Lattner himself on the Accidental Tech Podcast. https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript
    - woodruffw 7y ago
      Oh well, I guess the rumor is junk then. I will say, however, that executing LLVM bitcode on different targets than the compilation machine is a subject of active research. It's one of the things that I work on in my day job.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Relevant quote: Bitcode is not [12:30] a magic solution, though. You can't take a 32-bit app, for example, and run it on a 64-bit device. That kind of portability isn’t something that Bitcode can give you, notably because that is something that's visible in C. As you're writing C code, you can write #ifdef pointer size equals 32, and that’s something that Bitcode can't abstract over. It's useful for very specific, low-level kinds of enhancements, but it isn't a panacea that makes everything [13:00] magically portable. What’s funny, is later on after Apple shipped a 64 bit chip for the Apple Watch. He admitted that forcing developers to ship watch apps as bitcode allowed Apple to recompile all of the third party Watch apps on the fly to support it, he knew that was coming, but couldn’t say anything at the time. https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/1046960724646465541 https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/1046960724646465541

mwfunk 7y ago

It’s not a fundamental part of the OS, it’s a feature they pushed 12 years ago that never ever got any traction. User apathy towards Dashboard has been used as a darkly humorous but sad metaphor both inside and outside the company for many years now. Continuing to maintain things that have hardly any user adoption would be crazy. Better to take it out then leave it in as an attack surface and something that no engineer would ever want to work on. Many many more people know about Dashboard through jokes about how nobody ever uses Dashboard, than there are people who actually use Dashboard. Similarly, someday MS will remove live tiles from the start menu. It’s inevitable, but clearly internal politics are keeping the feature around. Guaranteed that 99% of humanity will rejoice when it happens, but equally guaranteed that someone on HN will express how appalled they are that a company as big as MS didn’t choose to keep the feature alive for the sake of the handful of people who liked it.

icedchai 7y ago
Pretty sure the person you're replying to was being sarcastic. (Tiger was released in 2005, before Intel Macs.)