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Sure, but a decent share of Apple's success was due to making OS X a very nice development platform. This attracted developers who created great desktop and mob

by nextos 7y ago

Sure, but a decent share of Apple's success was due to making OS X a very nice development platform. This attracted developers who created great desktop and mobile software. So I'd argue it's in Apple's best interest to keep developers happy. Also, is it that hard for a giant of Apple's size to put a fully fledged terminal in iPadOS?

qubex 7y ago
> is it that hard for a giant of Apple’s size to put a fully fledged terminal in iPadOS? Of course it isn’t. And that tells you that it’s a deliberate decision not to, because it’s miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users. Besides, it would be very confusing for users to have a terminal that can only connect to remote systems (which most people likely don’t have access to), because it’s rather improbable that Apple would choose to expose iPadOS through a shell.
- nextos 7y ago
  OS X, now macOS, includes lots of applications that are "miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users". A huge userbase will always have tons of different clusters, and it's good to serve them all. Furthermore, the terminal could be simply running in a little Unix sandbox, like Termux, and that could be a great entry point for kids to lots of different interpreters to learn programming. Not exclusive to remote into other systems.
  - qubex 7y ago
    Why on earth should they go the extra mile of creating a sandboxed UNIX-like environment for the sake of a few power users who desire to run terminal commands which cannot (if they follow their own rules) affect other applications and/or interact in any stateful manner with the filesystem? Even as a learning experience, why give (power)users the ability to acquaint themselves with a generic platform that is not tied to Apple’s own offerings? It makes no commercial or even pedagogical sense. Try out iSH: https://ish.app https://ish.app It sounds like it’s what you want. Apple won’t be providing anything even remotely comparable for the foreseeable future, I’m sure.
askafriend 7y ago
> Sure, but a decent share of Apple's success was due to making OS X a very nice development platform. This attracted developers who created great desktop and mobile software Apple's customers are the >1 billion user install base it has for iOS and more broadly the Apple ecosystem. Developers will develop great desktop and mobile software because that's the way to reach the incredibly valuable install base where consumer spend is 2x+ that of competing platforms. You don't win developers purely by giving them nice developer features. You win them by giving them something worth developing for. Part of that is a nice developer ecosystem, but that not enough on its own.
pjmlp 7y ago
Apple keeps their developers happy, those that embrace Objective-C and Swift, serving the Apple users. They don't care about those that use macOS as pretty Linux/BSD replacement. Just like NeXT never did, UNIX compatibility was a means to bring UNIX software into the platform, that was all.

by nextos 7y ago

qubex 7y ago

> is it that hard for a giant of Apple’s size to put a fully fledged terminal in iPadOS? Of course it isn’t. And that tells you that it’s a deliberate decision not to, because it’s miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users. Besides, it would be very confusing for users to have a terminal that can only connect to remote systems (which most people likely don’t have access to), because it’s rather improbable that Apple would choose to expose iPadOS through a shell.

nextos 7y ago
OS X, now macOS, includes lots of applications that are "miles from the platform’s intended use by the intended users". A huge userbase will always have tons of different clusters, and it's good to serve them all. Furthermore, the terminal could be simply running in a little Unix sandbox, like Termux, and that could be a great entry point for kids to lots of different interpreters to learn programming. Not exclusive to remote into other systems.
- qubex 7y ago
  Why on earth should they go the extra mile of creating a sandboxed UNIX-like environment for the sake of a few power users who desire to run terminal commands which cannot (if they follow their own rules) affect other applications and/or interact in any stateful manner with the filesystem? Even as a learning experience, why give (power)users the ability to acquaint themselves with a generic platform that is not tied to Apple’s own offerings? It makes no commercial or even pedagogical sense. Try out iSH: https://ish.app https://ish.app It sounds like it’s what you want. Apple won’t be providing anything even remotely comparable for the foreseeable future, I’m sure.

askafriend 7y ago

> Sure, but a decent share of Apple's success was due to making OS X a very nice development platform. This attracted developers who created great desktop and mobile software Apple's customers are the >1 billion user install base it has for iOS and more broadly the Apple ecosystem. Developers will develop great desktop and mobile software because that's the way to reach the incredibly valuable install base where consumer spend is 2x+ that of competing platforms. You don't win developers purely by giving them nice developer features. You win them by giving them something worth developing for. Part of that is a nice developer ecosystem, but that not enough on its own.

pjmlp 7y ago

Apple keeps their developers happy, those that embrace Objective-C and Swift, serving the Apple users. They don't care about those that use macOS as pretty Linux/BSD replacement. Just like NeXT never did, UNIX compatibility was a means to bring UNIX software into the platform, that was all.