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> I think if Apple measured developer satisfaction scores on the App Store, the results would be jarring. I think their ARM Macbooks have the opportunity to be

> I think if Apple measured developer satisfaction scores on the App Store, the results would be jarring. I think their ARM Macbooks have the opportunity to be a real tipping point if they make macOS as restrictive as iOS. Who'd sign up for another decade of this? The only argument I've seen for them to not do that is a wide range of developer tooling won't work, but perhaps they're OK with developers exclusively using their own languages. They actually did ban apps made in Flash (the IDE), Unity3d and other cross-compiling technologies from iOS for a while even though they were producing native apps, and more recently they banned apps using Electron too. https://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flash_compiler https://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_fla... https://venturebeat.com/2010/09/09/apple-loses-game-of-chicken-allows-flash-and-other-conversion-tools-for-ios-apps/ https://venturebeat.com/2010/09/09/apple-loses-game-of-chick... https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/04/electron-app-rejections/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/04/electron-app-rejections/

pdonis 6y ago
> I think their ARM Macbooks have the opportunity to be a real tipping point if they make macOS as restrictive as iOS. Who'd sign up for another decade of this? I don't think Apple really cares that much if developers decide not to sign up. It can hire its own app developers if need be. Now if enough users decided not to sign up, that would get their attention.
- quantummkv 6y ago
  > I don't think Apple really cares that much if developers decide not to sign up The will be forced to. The mac is the only exclusive developer platform for the money making iDevice lineup. Just as Microsoft found the hard way towards the end of the Ballmer era, if your only developer platform is a burning platform the developers hate with a passion, you are going to have a hard time.
  - ReptileMan 6y ago
    They actually had a winner with windows phone in 2010 . If they had put out unlocked device on which recompiled windows apps to run, with easy updates and hals, bypassed carries about updates, they would have pushed android out and taken a nice chunk out of apple share. The main android problem is the hal and the updates - and google for various reasons hadn't tackled this problem properly. For a decade.
mortenjorck 6y ago
I think it’s safe to say the CPU architecture of the Mac is orthogonal to future restrictions Apple may put in place on MacOS (other than at the EFI level). Not to say that they won’t make the mistake of locking down MacOS to an iOS level in the future, but x86 has never inhibited nor does ARM specifically enable such a move for the OS.
- dmix 6y ago
  Plus moving desktops/laptops to ARM would require a giant effort of developer opt-in and monetary investment industry wide. I don't think company experience with mobile/tablets via the App Store is a sufficient example of buy-in to say it will be a viable choice. There's a ton of random MacOS software that would need to be ported, upgraded, or virtualized which could take a full decade to really cover the full ~99%, with the last 1%+ mostly dying off. Apple usually doesn't like running two product lines with arm/x86 options, so it would probably be some weird transition thing.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    > ...would require a giant effort of developer opt-in... I'm not sure how true that is, there are a ton of workflows that can run solely on iPads. The problem is largely physical form factor and a little bit of UX smoothing for desktop computing on bigger screens. I don't see it as a forgone conclusion that ARM Macs need to bring over the legacy software, why can't they just use what's present in iOS? If I want to design a form, I care less about the name on the app than I do about how well it works. I think a lot of desktop MacOS developers are in for a very rude awakening about how irreplaceable their apps really are.

pdonis 6y ago

> I think their ARM Macbooks have the opportunity to be a real tipping point if they make macOS as restrictive as iOS. Who'd sign up for another decade of this? I don't think Apple really cares that much if developers decide not to sign up. It can hire its own app developers if need be. Now if enough users decided not to sign up, that would get their attention.

quantummkv 6y ago
> I don't think Apple really cares that much if developers decide not to sign up The will be forced to. The mac is the only exclusive developer platform for the money making iDevice lineup. Just as Microsoft found the hard way towards the end of the Ballmer era, if your only developer platform is a burning platform the developers hate with a passion, you are going to have a hard time.
- ReptileMan 6y ago
  They actually had a winner with windows phone in 2010 . If they had put out unlocked device on which recompiled windows apps to run, with easy updates and hals, bypassed carries about updates, they would have pushed android out and taken a nice chunk out of apple share. The main android problem is the hal and the updates - and google for various reasons hadn't tackled this problem properly. For a decade.

mortenjorck 6y ago

I think it’s safe to say the CPU architecture of the Mac is orthogonal to future restrictions Apple may put in place on MacOS (other than at the EFI level). Not to say that they won’t make the mistake of locking down MacOS to an iOS level in the future, but x86 has never inhibited nor does ARM specifically enable such a move for the OS.

dmix 6y ago
Plus moving desktops/laptops to ARM would require a giant effort of developer opt-in and monetary investment industry wide. I don't think company experience with mobile/tablets via the App Store is a sufficient example of buy-in to say it will be a viable choice. There's a ton of random MacOS software that would need to be ported, upgraded, or virtualized which could take a full decade to really cover the full ~99%, with the last 1%+ mostly dying off. Apple usually doesn't like running two product lines with arm/x86 options, so it would probably be some weird transition thing.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  > ...would require a giant effort of developer opt-in... I'm not sure how true that is, there are a ton of workflows that can run solely on iPads. The problem is largely physical form factor and a little bit of UX smoothing for desktop computing on bigger screens. I don't see it as a forgone conclusion that ARM Macs need to bring over the legacy software, why can't they just use what's present in iOS? If I want to design a form, I care less about the name on the app than I do about how well it works. I think a lot of desktop MacOS developers are in for a very rude awakening about how irreplaceable their apps really are.