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Just a little sad to see how much value they put into the iPhone and services while iPad and Mac software is lacking. Obviously, they're making money, and that'

Just a little sad to see how much value they put into the iPhone and services while iPad and Mac software is lacking. Obviously, they're making money, and that's their goal. However, I think sales could be boosted for the iPads and Macs if they increased the quality of the software for those devices. Great example explanation within here: https://daringfireball.net/2020/01/the_ipad_awkwardly_turns_10 https://daringfireball.net/2020/01/the_ipad_awkwardly_turns_...

mooreds 7y ago
Do you think it'd make sense to spin off the mac business, or is it too integrated (with the app store)?
- threeseed 7y ago
  It's integrated with everything e.g. Airdrop, Continuity, Handoff, iCloud Drive/Sync, Messages, Sidecar etc. And clearly the investment with Catalyst means they see the future as unified iOS/OSX apps.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    At minimum, it's integrated in the GM sense. In that by offering a product (even an inferior one) for every customer need, you smother your competitors by denying them market share.
- wtmt 7y ago
  It might make sense to assign the Mac to a dedicated team at the top executive level who’s only responsibility is to grow and update the Mac line. Except for MacBook Pro and the iMac, which seem to get some sort of periodic updates, the Mac mini and Mac Pro don’t get enough attention. The Mac mini hasn’t seen any updates since the latest update was launched in 2018. We’ll have to see how the brand new Mac Pro fares in the next two years to get a sense of Apple’s commitment to its entire Mac lineup.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    I'm not sure that is a huge problem for the Mac Mini, it was released in late 2018 so we are only at about 18 months now. We are long past the stage where every new operating system version demanded new hardware.
    - lostlogin 7y ago
      New hardware would be great, particularly in the Mini. It has more CPU than anything else that size that I can find and with an internal power supply. The lack of compelling upgrades made by Intel seems to be the main problem. The Hades Canyon Nucs come close, but are larger, have a power brick and are not my taste in design. But the 2x nic, graphics, storage options and price are compelling. Bring on ARM.
      - amdavidson 7y ago
        I don't see where you're making the case that they need to update. They're better than anything you can find in the bracket that you place them in. Sure, everything can always be better but I don't see much market pressure forcing it.
threeseed 7y ago
Most of the investment in iOS/OSX has been behind the scenes which is why it appears that not much has been done on it. The move to fully 64-bit as well as Project Catalyst are significant pieces of work. Not to mention the inevitable ARM Mac which will be appearing soon.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  While Catalyst is a significant investment, it's misplaced, misguided and released at least two years too early. Even Apple's own first-party Catalyst apps are a joke.
wtmt 7y ago
Apple struggles with executing many things in parallel and doing them all well. That’s why we tend to see the most prioritized products getting all the love and the others languishing. I’m talking from the software perspective, where the changes in recent years and stability issues are way too painful and disruptive. Catalyst apps are third class citizens on the Mac. They cannot even be classified as Mac apps. Catalina is still plagued with different kinds of data loss issues (mail, iDevice integration, etc.). Of course, Mac OS X/OS X/macOS has had glaring issues in almost every release, but the lack of design chops and inadequate testing across the software arena (like it was shown in one of the security issues exposed by Google Project Zero) are telling examples of Tim Cook being fine as a breadth guy but not a details guy or a focused guy who can drive his teams to double down on all the software quality issues.
- 72deluxe 7y ago
  I have been extremely disappointed with Catalina. I am keeping my work MacBook on Mojave as long as I can. My home MacBook is still on High Sierra I think, because I risk having non-functioning external audio hardware (mic preamps) if I upgrade. I did install Catalina on an external USB disk but found issues straight away: a. You can’t create any directories on the root filesystem any more, eg. / so you have to set up a redirection system via the synthetic.conf in /etc b. When I run a program in Catalina under xcode for debugging, it asks me the first time to put a password in to let me debug it, every single time after reboot. Why?? c. The file system is now spread over 2 partitions (one safe modifiable one, one hidden secret one) but if you ask for the size of the partition via a system call or via df -h, it adds the TOTAL from both partitions, eg. 100GB and then tells you how much space is used for EACH parition (not total) so you get 25GB / 100GB 10GB / 100GB This is inaccurate - I do not have 200GB total capacity. I only have 100GB. The size for each partition should be just that - the size of that partition. d. Also, search for text in PDFs no longer works?? e. If my MacBook goes to sleep, it crashes (2012 MacBook Pro for home, on USB disk). It doesn't do this when running High Sierra off the internal disk/SSD (I upgraded the disk, yes). I found all of these issues in half-an-hour after installing when trying to set up a dev environment on it. It's rubbish!!
  - 7y ago

mooreds 7y ago

Do you think it'd make sense to spin off the mac business, or is it too integrated (with the app store)?

threeseed 7y ago
It's integrated with everything e.g. Airdrop, Continuity, Handoff, iCloud Drive/Sync, Messages, Sidecar etc. And clearly the investment with Catalyst means they see the future as unified iOS/OSX apps.
- ethbro 7y ago
  At minimum, it's integrated in the GM sense. In that by offering a product (even an inferior one) for every customer need, you smother your competitors by denying them market share.
wtmt 7y ago
It might make sense to assign the Mac to a dedicated team at the top executive level who’s only responsibility is to grow and update the Mac line. Except for MacBook Pro and the iMac, which seem to get some sort of periodic updates, the Mac mini and Mac Pro don’t get enough attention. The Mac mini hasn’t seen any updates since the latest update was launched in 2018. We’ll have to see how the brand new Mac Pro fares in the next two years to get a sense of Apple’s commitment to its entire Mac lineup.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I'm not sure that is a huge problem for the Mac Mini, it was released in late 2018 so we are only at about 18 months now. We are long past the stage where every new operating system version demanded new hardware.
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    New hardware would be great, particularly in the Mini. It has more CPU than anything else that size that I can find and with an internal power supply. The lack of compelling upgrades made by Intel seems to be the main problem. The Hades Canyon Nucs come close, but are larger, have a power brick and are not my taste in design. But the 2x nic, graphics, storage options and price are compelling. Bring on ARM.
    - amdavidson 7y ago
      I don't see where you're making the case that they need to update. They're better than anything you can find in the bracket that you place them in. Sure, everything can always be better but I don't see much market pressure forcing it.

threeseed 7y ago

Most of the investment in iOS/OSX has been behind the scenes which is why it appears that not much has been done on it. The move to fully 64-bit as well as Project Catalyst are significant pieces of work. Not to mention the inevitable ARM Mac which will be appearing soon.

dmitriid 7y ago
While Catalyst is a significant investment, it's misplaced, misguided and released at least two years too early. Even Apple's own first-party Catalyst apps are a joke.

wtmt 7y ago

Apple struggles with executing many things in parallel and doing them all well. That’s why we tend to see the most prioritized products getting all the love and the others languishing. I’m talking from the software perspective, where the changes in recent years and stability issues are way too painful and disruptive. Catalyst apps are third class citizens on the Mac. They cannot even be classified as Mac apps. Catalina is still plagued with different kinds of data loss issues (mail, iDevice integration, etc.). Of course, Mac OS X/OS X/macOS has had glaring issues in almost every release, but the lack of design chops and inadequate testing across the software arena (like it was shown in one of the security issues exposed by Google Project Zero) are telling examples of Tim Cook being fine as a breadth guy but not a details guy or a focused guy who can drive his teams to double down on all the software quality issues.

72deluxe 7y ago
I have been extremely disappointed with Catalina. I am keeping my work MacBook on Mojave as long as I can. My home MacBook is still on High Sierra I think, because I risk having non-functioning external audio hardware (mic preamps) if I upgrade. I did install Catalina on an external USB disk but found issues straight away: a. You can’t create any directories on the root filesystem any more, eg. / so you have to set up a redirection system via the synthetic.conf in /etc b. When I run a program in Catalina under xcode for debugging, it asks me the first time to put a password in to let me debug it, every single time after reboot. Why?? c. The file system is now spread over 2 partitions (one safe modifiable one, one hidden secret one) but if you ask for the size of the partition via a system call or via df -h, it adds the TOTAL from both partitions, eg. 100GB and then tells you how much space is used for EACH parition (not total) so you get 25GB / 100GB 10GB / 100GB This is inaccurate - I do not have 200GB total capacity. I only have 100GB. The size for each partition should be just that - the size of that partition. d. Also, search for text in PDFs no longer works?? e. If my MacBook goes to sleep, it crashes (2012 MacBook Pro for home, on USB disk). It doesn't do this when running High Sierra off the internal disk/SSD (I upgraded the disk, yes). I found all of these issues in half-an-hour after installing when trying to set up a dev environment on it. It's rubbish!!
- 7y ago