4 ms·

The problem is that there is more than one market here. There is a general market where people love the vendor looking after their security and doing things for

by api 6y ago

The problem is that there is more than one market here. There is a general market where people love the vendor looking after their security and doing things for them, and there is a pro/hacker market where people want to control things themselves and dont want a lot of this stuff.

rsj_hn 6y ago
This. Yes the option of a walled garden is a great thing and I wouldn't recommend anything but an Apple device to my non-technical relatives. But if Apple also wants to make the $$ that comes from selling "pro" gear, they need to stop relentlessly consumerizing and turning OS X into iOS. I don't think they realize the level of ill will they are engendering in the developer/pro market. Perhaps it's time for a "Pro" and "Home" Mac OS.
- warrenm 6y ago
  Methinks you don't grok how Apple uses the term ”Pro”
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    It comes in Space Gray?
    - warrenm 6y ago
      Sigh No - it's for people who want to Get Stuff Done™ and not worry about all the crap under the hood.
- saila 6y ago
  I've been doing software development on macOS/OS X for quite some time now and the consumerization aspects don't bother me. I install almost everything I need via Homebrew, from software libraries to desktops apps, and the fact that there's an App Store isn't particularly relevant (although I do use it for consumer apps now and then). I'm trying to think of how macOS is so different from 10/20 years ago. What's missing? What can I not do now? Maybe my brain has just been consumerized and I forgot something important. I was going to switch to Linux 10 years ago when people were talking about the iOSification of OS X back then, but that never happened.
  - nrclark 6y ago
    Do you write much system-level software? I feel like Apple's changes don't affect the XCode crowd much - but under the hood, things are slowly getting worse for command-line developers. How about when Apple removed /usr/include in its entirety from Mojave? Or when they decided to make the root filesystem read-only? Or when they removed the ability to permanently disable the "only run verified apps" option? Or when they even made that the default in the first place? How about when they stopped supporting or updating the MacOS X11 server, which doesn't have proper GPU support and probably never will? How about when Apple replaced gcc with a thin wrapper around clang, so that /usr/bin/gcc generates identical code to /usr/bin/clang? Or how they froze all GNU tools (including bash) at the last-released GPLv2 version, just so that they could retain the option to lock you out from modifying your OS install? How about the fact that Apple has officially deprecated Python on MacOS? How about the increasingly slow filesystem access? Not a big deal for app users, but terrible for shell-scripts and system software kind of generally. How about when Apple removed the ESC key from two generations of Macbook Pro? And also how they replaced the function keys with a touchbar? Did you know that Apple will soon be using zsh for /bin/sh? Without much regard to how many shell scripts have a #!/bin/sh hashbang and some bashisms in them? You can call those scripts buggy or poorly designed if you want - but they're plentiful and widespread, and will be broken so that Apple can steer clear of GPLv3 code. All so that they can block you from modifying your OS installation. MacOS was a Unix nerd's dream 10 years ago. It was fast, reliable, and it had a good terminal paired with amazing hardware and software that "just worked". Over time, everything that attracted me to the platform has slowly eroded. I stopped buying or recommending Macbooks in 2016, and only use one now because my employer is an Apple shop.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      By writing system level macOS software, although I think you mean old style POSIX UNIX stuff. Here is a thing, already with NeXTSTEP, UNIX support wasn't never something worthwhile looking for, NeXTSTEP was used for its Objective-C tooling and frameworks, like Renderman and Improv. The UNIX stuff was just a solution for having a quick ramp up for their OS development, and just like Microsoft with Windows 3.1 NT, to have a tick in the box when selling to the government, Their famous commercial against Sun, hardly touches on UNIX like development. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg You aren't going to see a CLI on that NeXTSTEP screen. Just like the SDK is all about Objective-C related stuff, even the device drivers were written in Objective-C. https://www.nextop.de/NeXTstep_3.3_Developer_Documentation/ https://www.nextop.de/NeXTstep_3.3_Developer_Documentation/ The only fouls here are those that keep giving their money to corporations instead of supporting Linux OEMs, as Microsoft cleverly discovered. In fact, had either A/UX not been discontinued or Microsoft seriously supported their POSIX personality, Linux would never taken off, as the same crowd would be happily using these systems.

by api 6y ago

rsj_hn 6y ago

This. Yes the option of a walled garden is a great thing and I wouldn't recommend anything but an Apple device to my non-technical relatives. But if Apple also wants to make the $$ that comes from selling "pro" gear, they need to stop relentlessly consumerizing and turning OS X into iOS. I don't think they realize the level of ill will they are engendering in the developer/pro market. Perhaps it's time for a "Pro" and "Home" Mac OS.

warrenm 6y ago
Methinks you don't grok how Apple uses the term ”Pro”
- saagarjha 6y ago
  It comes in Space Gray?
  - warrenm 6y ago
    Sigh No - it's for people who want to Get Stuff Done™ and not worry about all the crap under the hood.
saila 6y ago
I've been doing software development on macOS/OS X for quite some time now and the consumerization aspects don't bother me. I install almost everything I need via Homebrew, from software libraries to desktops apps, and the fact that there's an App Store isn't particularly relevant (although I do use it for consumer apps now and then). I'm trying to think of how macOS is so different from 10/20 years ago. What's missing? What can I not do now? Maybe my brain has just been consumerized and I forgot something important. I was going to switch to Linux 10 years ago when people were talking about the iOSification of OS X back then, but that never happened.
- nrclark 6y ago
  Do you write much system-level software? I feel like Apple's changes don't affect the XCode crowd much - but under the hood, things are slowly getting worse for command-line developers. How about when Apple removed /usr/include in its entirety from Mojave? Or when they decided to make the root filesystem read-only? Or when they removed the ability to permanently disable the "only run verified apps" option? Or when they even made that the default in the first place? How about when they stopped supporting or updating the MacOS X11 server, which doesn't have proper GPU support and probably never will? How about when Apple replaced gcc with a thin wrapper around clang, so that /usr/bin/gcc generates identical code to /usr/bin/clang? Or how they froze all GNU tools (including bash) at the last-released GPLv2 version, just so that they could retain the option to lock you out from modifying your OS install? How about the fact that Apple has officially deprecated Python on MacOS? How about the increasingly slow filesystem access? Not a big deal for app users, but terrible for shell-scripts and system software kind of generally. How about when Apple removed the ESC key from two generations of Macbook Pro? And also how they replaced the function keys with a touchbar? Did you know that Apple will soon be using zsh for /bin/sh? Without much regard to how many shell scripts have a #!/bin/sh hashbang and some bashisms in them? You can call those scripts buggy or poorly designed if you want - but they're plentiful and widespread, and will be broken so that Apple can steer clear of GPLv3 code. All so that they can block you from modifying your OS installation. MacOS was a Unix nerd's dream 10 years ago. It was fast, reliable, and it had a good terminal paired with amazing hardware and software that "just worked". Over time, everything that attracted me to the platform has slowly eroded. I stopped buying or recommending Macbooks in 2016, and only use one now because my employer is an Apple shop.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    By writing system level macOS software, although I think you mean old style POSIX UNIX stuff. Here is a thing, already with NeXTSTEP, UNIX support wasn't never something worthwhile looking for, NeXTSTEP was used for its Objective-C tooling and frameworks, like Renderman and Improv. The UNIX stuff was just a solution for having a quick ramp up for their OS development, and just like Microsoft with Windows 3.1 NT, to have a tick in the box when selling to the government, Their famous commercial against Sun, hardly touches on UNIX like development. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg You aren't going to see a CLI on that NeXTSTEP screen. Just like the SDK is all about Objective-C related stuff, even the device drivers were written in Objective-C. https://www.nextop.de/NeXTstep_3.3_Developer_Documentation/ https://www.nextop.de/NeXTstep_3.3_Developer_Documentation/ The only fouls here are those that keep giving their money to corporations instead of supporting Linux OEMs, as Microsoft cleverly discovered. In fact, had either A/UX not been discontinued or Microsoft seriously supported their POSIX personality, Linux would never taken off, as the same crowd would be happily using these systems.