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Something that's dawned on me for the last few years is that Microsoft basically settled on the idea that the modern operating system is effectively done, which

Something that's dawned on me for the last few years is that Microsoft basically settled on the idea that the modern operating system is effectively done, which I suppose is true, but then they stopped creating technologies to build on top of Windows all together. It was as if they said, OK, here's the supermarket, now vendors, create stuff and we'll stock the shelves. Except everyone publishing software today that isn't a game developer is targeting the web. Which means the best software you're going to get for Windows that isn't long-lived incumbent software like Creative Cloud is going to be... over Google Chrome (or Microsoft Edge). OK, but Microsoft is in the best position to create great, integrated, first-class technologies that build on how great Windows is. But they don't. I have mixed feelings about this, because when Apple does it, they basically put people out of business. But here's the thing, in 10 years time, you're going to have Windows, which is still just, and will continue to be, Windows. And macOS, and iOS, and tvOS, and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more. And they already are so much more. For those who haven't experienced it yet, or can't afford Apple products, they're missing something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time I can immediately think of. Or, idk, I'm blind because I think Apple products are so great. The lattermost is probably more likely.

yellowfish 5y ago
> Or, idk, I'm blind because I think Apple products are so > great. The latter most is probably more likely. Isn't Microsoft already shipping AR headsets to the US Army? if anything they are the leaders in the space anyway, as far as "Metaverse" goes I'd argue we already have multiple and the presentation layer is just gradually changing
nextstep 5y ago
>> Except everyone publishing software today that isn't a game developer is targeting the web. What? Even your example (Creative Cloud) has an iOS and iPadOS app.
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  Sorry, to clarify, anyone targetting Windows users, is probably only doing so by proxy, because there's no compelling reason to create a first-class Windows desktop application over just a web app.
  - nextstep 5y ago
    Aah I see what you mean
  - criddell 5y ago
    I think you are right on this and it's a real bummer. In Ellen Ullman's book Life in Code, she writes about Whitfield Diffie's (of Diffie-Hellman fame) speech at the 2000 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in Toronto. > "We were slaves to the mainframe! he said. Dumb terminals! That's all we had. We were powerless under the big machine's unyielding central control. Then we escaped to the personal computer, autonomous, powerful. Then networks. The PC was soon rendered to be nothing but a "thin client," just a browser with very little software residing on our personal machines, the code being on network servers, which are under the control of administrators. Now to the web, nothing but a thin, thin browser for us. All the intelligence out there, on the net, our machines having become dumb terminals again." I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Smart people like Diffie saw this happening more than 20 years ago. It's really made me rethink web apps that don't need to be web apps (including stuff like electron). Like you said, Microsoft has thrown in the towel and it seems now Apple is really the only platform making a compelling argument for native apps and keeping the computer smart.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    Even better, the network dependency means piracy is impossible.
fossuser 5y ago
I think Stratechery accurately called Microsoft's strategic shift: https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ around the time that Nadella showed up to save them. I think Apple is better positioned with total vertical integration to lay the ground work for the next platform (AR) and has been doing so for years now. They'll ship some hardware when the time is right. They've repeated this approach since the iPod successfully, never first to market, but laying the ground work before shipping the best in class product. FB (Zuck specifically) recognizes the next platform and Oculus is a bet to win it. Their issue is they don't have their own phone OS, the Oculus platform they have to build up from scratch (which they've done a decent job doing). They also have a brand issue (I personally dislike their ad-driven business model). It'll be interesting to see what hardware Apple ships - the UI potential for AR is enormous and very cool. I know Zuck sees this and is public about it, Apple is acting in such a way that they definitely see it - they're just quiet about it until they ship. Looking at tiny glass displays will be a funny anachronism of our time.
- timmg 5y ago
  > the Oculus platform they have to build up from scratch It's Android, right?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - chaostheory 5y ago
    It's Android.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    I think it's not as much the 'OS-platform' as it is the 'ecosystem-platform' the poster was thinking about.
- slver 5y ago
  Well, it's easy to get excited fantasizing about the future, but your predictions are about as likely to occur as the flying cars we're flying around right now. In fact none of the major platforms we use today was just predicted and constructed. They've evolved and shown their benefits naturally and not entirely in expected ways. No one actually planned the web to be an application platform. It was a university paper exchange program. And the Internet before it was a military communication network. Your predictions about the grand future of AR remind me of the excitement around VRML couple of decades ago. "Looking at stale 2D web pages will be a funny anachronism of our time" we thought. Turns out making existing content more fancy in 3D wasn't that useful, it actually was more cumbersome both to create and to use, so 3D web pages died before they even had a true chance to live.
an_opabinia 5y ago
> and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more... [non-Apple users are] missing something Android hasn't really faced many obstacles in cloning things. Consumers in China, for example, still buy Android phones, despite iPhones and despite having enough money for those iPhones. I don't know if anyone is missing out on all that much. I wouldn't say they are like, unenlightened. If anything the Android ecosystem has led to more digitization of life in China than in America, far faster - it looks way more like the metaverse in terms of computing taking over daily life than here, which is to say that you're really far off the mark in terms of what really matters. Anyway, this metaverse stuff. It blows. Roblox blows. Second Life blew. World of Warcraft is great, but you can hear about why it's great direct from the source (https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/conversations-2014-05-07/ https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/conversations-2014-05-07/) and it's all about really carefully curated and purposeful design choices, the user driven parts of it are not why the game was so good. Existing metaverse experiences blow not for lack of immersion! So the technology will change little of that. If Roblox was photoreal, it would still blow. Minecraft AR didn't matter. None of that shit matters. A company that barely supports 1 external video card vendor, that releases shit graphics APIs, that sues game companies - they're not going to break ground in the "metaverse." Apple Arcade games are good, but that's because they are fighting the real antagonist, the real horror show: free to play gaming. That is the antagonist of the metaverse, having to be free and monetize people via Robux or V-Bucks or whatever it is that activates neurons in a 10 year old's brain. It's got nothing to do with the technology.
salamandersauce 5y ago
Like what exactly? What is Windows missing? They have a way to integrate with Android phones, I can share my Galaxy's screen with PC and use apps that way even. They are working on AR stuff with Hololens and VR. You can do wireless screen sharing, sync your Microsoft Edge tabs, do 3D audio in games. I was all in the Apple ecosystem the past couple years except for the Watch. And I'm struggling to think of something that's impossible to do with Windows and non-Apple devices besides Airdrop and that didn't even work half the time between my iPhone and Mac mini. Sidecar is a cool feature to have built in, but apps like Duet and Astropad do the same thing... And I don't think it's a bad thing that MS doesn't Sherlock devs either...
- arghnoname 5y ago
  Windows is a gigantic market so in general the vast majority of things one could do in MacOS are going to end up being possible in Windows (assuming Apple even was the first to market some feature in the first place). It's almost unthinkable that some in-software feature that a lot of people like can be done in an Apple OS and not a Microsoft/Android OS. The question is not whether it can be done, but how easily it can be done. If you have to jailbreak your phone or cobble together a collection of different applications to simulate the experience, for 80%+ of people that's basically equivalent to impossible.
  - salamandersauce 5y ago
    You don't have to jailbreak your phone or root it to accomplish these things. Stuff like MS "Your Phone" for integrating your Android phone and Windows is built into some devices like those from Samsung and Windows will even walk you through the steps at first boot. Most of this stuff is built in and I'm not entirely sure app installs are onerous. 80%+ seems a little ridiculous.
  - greggman3 5y ago
    you mean like play all the VR games or too AAA games in general? I own both. From my POV I'm able to do more on Windows even if I prefer MacOS for day to day use and iOS for my phone (though again can do more on Android)
tyingq 5y ago
On the other hand, Microsoft did a fairly decent job capturing cloud revenue with o365 and Azure. Apple is leaving most of that on the table. Apple has cloud services, but they are, for the most part, intended to help sell more iPhones. Can't argue with the Apple's approach since it works well revenue wise though.
edem 5y ago
Can you name a few examples? From what I've seen I can now run a Linux within my Windows, that solves my long-standing gaming vs developing problem. I can finally run Docker properly on my Windows box, and literally everything else that was problematic before. I'd pick Windows over MacOS 12 times out of 10.
- flatiron 5y ago
  I was a contractor for Apple for 4 years and when I left a few months ago my new company let me choose windows or mac and I chose windows (mainly spite) but it’s really good now. I live in the command line and having full blown Ubuntu inside windows is great. Docker works as expected. On top of that ms office is wayyyyyy better on windows than mac. I won’t be switching my personal devices off arch anytime soon but I think windows is a better development platform than mac now (can’t believe I just wrote that)
  - edem 5y ago
    I also couldn't believe it when I realized it a while ago! Also...I hear Arch more often lately. Why would someone choose Arch over let's say Ubuntu? I'm curious. Never used it.
    - flatiron 5y ago
      Arch is great for desktops and laptops because it’s rolling and always up to date with upstream. Install it once. Update it once a week. Never have to do anything else. They also have a user repository where they pretty much have everything. There’s nothing on my laptop that isn’t version controlled with their package manager.
carl_dr 5y ago
> OK, but Microsoft is in the best position to create great, integrated, first-class technologies that build on how great Windows is. For a few years now there has been some noise that Apple’s Pro hardware lineup isn’t Pro, that macOS is becoming more locked down and more iOS-like, that the software is buggier than ever, and - until they dropped their App Store split to 15% for small developers - that 30% was too high a price. With WSL, and VScode and GitHub Microsoft are making a (messy, so far) play for developers. But as you point out, they didn’t take it to the nth degree and nail the execution. I wonder if they’ve missed the opportunity now. I develop for web on macOS, and have all Apple hardware, so maybe I’m missing some of the other things Microsoft have done. Maybe it is the lack of verticality MS have, and the integration between devices, something they can never match Apple on that means there hasn’t been the transition they were aiming for. That’s why I’ve not switched. I’ll be very interested to hear what people think about this.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I would say MS nailed VScode remote development. It is seriously, seriously good. I used it during WFH and while VS didn't work nearly as well as the version of IDEA I was using the remote part worked so well I would forget I was working remote.
chaostheory 5y ago
> Or, idk, I'm blind because I think Apple products are so great. The latter most is probably more likely. As a fellow cult member who hasn't drunk enough kool aid, Apple products have been losing their luster in recent years. Apple TV still doesn't have hands free voice control. Fire TV has had this for years now. Using your iPhone isn't great because it doesn't have the microphone setup to consistently hear your voice well. Does Siri and Apple TV finally work together with Home Pod like how Google TV uses smart Google speakers? Apple Macbooks have suffered immensely with the near useless touch bar and terrible keyboard. Thinness as a feature seems to override everything else. I don't care about having a thin desktop. I want something I can open and replace parts in without paying about $10k. The list goes on. Including how there's still no word on the VR / AR unit, while Facebook mops the floor. The only light in the darkness is the M1 chip.
- askafriend 5y ago
  > Apple TV still doesn't have hands free voice control Yes it does. I use it everyday. Which Apple TV do you have? > Apple Macbooks have suffered immensely with the near useless touch bar and terrible keyboard. Still the best laptops in the market by a mile. > Thinness as a feature seems to override everything else. Many recent products have actually been thicker. New iPhone is thicker/heavier. New iPad is thicker/heavier. AirPods Pro are chunkier than regular AirPods. AirPods Max are some of the heaviest headphones in the market. Their new Mac Pro is a massive, modular beast. etc etc > Including how there's still no word on the VR / AR unit, while Facebook mops the floor. Apple is never first to market. But when they do enter, they tend to wipe the market clean. They also never talk about unreleased products. > The only light in the darkness is the M1 chip. This chip and associated tech will power their entire ecosystem and make every product better.
  - chaostheory 5y ago
    > Yes it does. I use it everyday. Which Apple TV do you have? 4k - 1 model older than M1. I don't mind buying a Homepod to enable it (I'm not happy about it, but less happy about being forced to do it with iOS devices not designed explicitly for hearing you anywhere in the room), but to my knowledge commands from the Homepods won't make it to Apple TV. Am I wrong? > Still the best laptops in the market by a mile. They are still considerably worse than older Macbooks, since thinness and removing the ability to upgrader hardware were the priorities. The only thing that keeps me in the Apple computer ecosystem is Mac OS. > New iPhone is thicker/heavier. New iPad is thicker/heavier. AirPods Pro are chunkier than regular AirPods. AirPods Max are some of the heaviest headphones in the market. That's a great trend since Ive left. Looking at the new iMac line was disheartening.
gilbetron 5y ago
Seems like you are just really in deep with Apple. I've used Apple professionally for over a decade now, and personally for a long time before that (Mac SE was my first). When I'm on my personal laptop (windows/linux) I miss absolutely nothing about Apple. Well, that's not quite true, I appreciate the uniformity, but the uniformity costs too much in terms of a walled garden, which is an antithesis to how I think things should be. I think Microsoft does far more interesting research than Apple, which largely (but not completely) just buys new ideas like Cisco. An effective strategy, granted. I feel MS has a feel for where development is going better than Apple, with VS Code and the purchase of Github. "missing something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time I can immediately think of" is just hyperbole. To me, Apple has always been the company that takes other people's ideas and polishes the hell out of them - which is amazing, but when I look at my 30+ year tech career, I don't get very excited about Apple.
- Terretta 5y ago
  Keep hearing about “walled garden” as though it’s a bad thing — Archibald Craven doesn’t want Mary to play? The word “garden” suggests bespoke curation for appreciation and abundance, while “walled” suggests within this boundary the experience is purposefully tended and safe. The Japanese put them in the middle of their homes. The British write children’s literature set in them. Just look — the very idea of a walled garden is lovely: In film: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5b/52/41/5b524125c48b35bfe0cae9dddf614410.png https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5b/52/41/5b524125c48b35bfe0ca... In life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Maytham_Hall#Gardens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Maytham_Hall#Gardens In my experiences with the non metaphorical variety, most anyone who can afford one prefers it.
  - llbeansandrice 5y ago
    I think HN and similar value free (as in freedom) and openness of a system a lot more. So "walled garden" is a bit of a buzzword against those ideals. > bespoke curation...purposefully tended and safe These ideas are antithetical to what many on HN seem to want. I personally love Apple products, but walled gardens are great when you don't bump into the walls all the time, which a lot of other people seem to do. In these cases (wall bumping) I think it's reasonable to want alternatives. But there are fanatics and anti-fanatics that I think skew any discussion about Apple.
smoldesu 5y ago
Apple products have every right to be great: after all, Apple is the largest company in the world. But they also have a duty to extend their services, one that they have sorely neglected for the past 15 years. I wouldn't be so angry at Apple if things like Airdrop, Handoff and Airplay were all open protocols. The only reason Apple doesn't extend these protocols is to have leverage over their competitors. It's not like any of the aforementioned technologies are impressive, either: they were all preceded by Warpinator, XDG and MPRIS, respectively. So Apple embraces these open-source concepts, extends them with proprietary interfaces and then extinguishes the source... where have I heard this one before?
- jolux 5y ago
  EEE is about actual intellectual property and compatibility, not just concepts. As far as I know AirDrop, Handoff, and AirPlay are proprietary all the way down.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    Like it or not, AirPlay will always be proprietary for DRM reasons.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      That might be true if Google's Cast and Miracast both got away with ambiguous wireless mirroring years before Apple even entered the game.
      - tinus_hn 5y ago
        Google Cast includes DRM
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  EEE is more insidious than this so it's important to not dilute its meaning. EEE is about taking a previously open, successful interface and then making it proprietary. It's destroying what was already flourishing. In Apple's case, they just built their own thing.
tomc1985 5y ago
> But here's the thing, in 10 years time, you're going to have Windows, which is still just, and will continue to be, Windows. And macOS, and iOS, and tvOS, and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more. And they already are so much more. And what is wrong with this? A stable, long-lasting platform is a beautiful thing. Maybe I'm an old fart (at 36...) but I don't really want "so much more". I want something that I can count on and bank on now, and that will be there for me for as far into the future as possible. None of this lofty futuretech seems to promise that, at least without bleeding me dry in pointlessly recurring interactions like subscription fees.
outside1234 5y ago
That's because they got sued for antitrust the last time they tried to do this. And given that they don't sell hardware, there isn't money in it. And if there isn't money in it, it isn't worth getting sued over trying it. So here we are.
mioasndo 5y ago
> Something that's dawned on me for the last few years is that Microsoft basically settled on the idea that the idea of the modern operating system is effectively done, which I suppose is true, but then they stopped creating technologies to build on top of Windows all together. What happened was open source software, linux dominating the server side, and android dominating mobile (iOS as well, to a lesser extent). > Except everyone publishing software today that isn't a game developer is targeting the web. Except for nearly all backend development... which mostly targets linux first. > OK, but Microsoft is in the best position to create great, integrated, first-class technologies that build on how great Windows is. But they don't. I have mixed feelings about this, because when Apple does it, they basically put people out of business. For example? Apple software is average, and Microsoft has a long history of 'putting people out of business' (not in a good way). > But here's the thing, in 10 years time, you're going to have Windows, which is still just, and will continue to be, Windows. And macOS, and iOS, and tvOS, and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more. And they already are so much more. You forgot... android and linux. How does apple 'already have so much more'? > For those who haven't experienced it yet, or can't afford Apple products, they're missing something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time I can immediately think of. That just sounds like an opinion of the average non-tech user who lives inside an apple bubble and likes icon shapes and default keybindings. You're not saying anything specific, just poetry about apple being 'first-class' and 'something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time' (???)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 5y ago
  > But here's the thing, in 10 years time, you're going to have Windows, which is still just, and will continue to be, Windows. And macOS, and iOS, and tvOS, and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more. And they already are so much more. Some of those, perhaps, but MacOS has been on a steady decline for the past five years. Apple doesn't seem to care about the Mac platform except as a lifestyle accessory/devbox for iPhone owners. Windows may be limiting itself by merely trying to provide a decent daily-use desktop environment, but Apple isn't even doing that anymore.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> Except everyone publishing software today that isn't a game developer is targeting the web. All pro or semi-pro creative applications target native. live streaming / video editing / animation / DAW / image editing There are some toys for parts of these workflows in the webspace, but no serious tools for people who do this stuff seriously.
- dannyw 5y ago
  ok cool, so 2% of all laptop users?
john_minsk 5y ago
Interesting. So you think they are not even working on making this thing faster? Shame. Windows needs some performance boost.
GoldenMonkey 5y ago
But, Microsoft already has the AR/VR platform. That all devices can use. Oculus, iphones, androids, mac’s, windows, other VR devices. And they are the only ones who have this. It is called: Mesh. https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/02/microsoft-debuts-its-ar-vr-meetings-platform-mesh https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/02/microsoft-debuts-its-ar-vr...
throwawayffffas 5y ago
Does no one remember continuum, that was the future, too bad no one actually bought windows phones.
ksec 5y ago
Am I the one who think this is scary? The future of Microsoft not giving a damn, and a future where Apple dominate and dictate everything. I am not an old timer like some here that has a MacSE, but for 20+ years, this is the biggest come back of Apple, and many of us were once hoping for. For me it was a simple thesis, something that is so much better deserve to be in a better position. May be it was more of a hatred against Microsoft in a way, since they were shipping crap after crap. And here we are, Apple dominating and will continue to do so. But since 2016 Apple smells exactly the same as Google in 2003. Don't be evil Hypocrisy. Except this time around Apple has the better product, services and brand. From a strategic point of view there are no major flaws of weakness. Google's only major weakness was relying on browser for access. That is why they created Chrome. They also saw what could happen if everyone were using iPhone. They will have access dictated by Apple so they need to built Android. But Apple has no access problem. They are the final End Point ( or starting point would be more appreciate ) of all technology and digitalisation. > I'm blind because I think Apple products are so great. Not really, objectively speaking it is hard to argue Apple's product are not some of the best on the market.
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  Yeah. And in my opinion, Amazon is eating Satya's lunch. So, it's not clear to me what Microsoft is a leader in anymore.
Fuzzwah 5y ago
Regarding the topic at hand... MS have an actual product that real live humans use today... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens

yellowfish 5y ago

> Or, idk, I'm blind because I think Apple products are so > great. The latter most is probably more likely. Isn't Microsoft already shipping AR headsets to the US Army? if anything they are the leaders in the space anyway, as far as "Metaverse" goes I'd argue we already have multiple and the presentation layer is just gradually changing

nextstep 5y ago

>> Except everyone publishing software today that isn't a game developer is targeting the web. What? Even your example (Creative Cloud) has an iOS and iPadOS app.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago
Sorry, to clarify, anyone targetting Windows users, is probably only doing so by proxy, because there's no compelling reason to create a first-class Windows desktop application over just a web app.
- nextstep 5y ago
  Aah I see what you mean
- criddell 5y ago
  I think you are right on this and it's a real bummer. In Ellen Ullman's book Life in Code, she writes about Whitfield Diffie's (of Diffie-Hellman fame) speech at the 2000 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in Toronto. > "We were slaves to the mainframe! he said. Dumb terminals! That's all we had. We were powerless under the big machine's unyielding central control. Then we escaped to the personal computer, autonomous, powerful. Then networks. The PC was soon rendered to be nothing but a "thin client," just a browser with very little software residing on our personal machines, the code being on network servers, which are under the control of administrators. Now to the web, nothing but a thin, thin browser for us. All the intelligence out there, on the net, our machines having become dumb terminals again." I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Smart people like Diffie saw this happening more than 20 years ago. It's really made me rethink web apps that don't need to be web apps (including stuff like electron). Like you said, Microsoft has thrown in the towel and it seems now Apple is really the only platform making a compelling argument for native apps and keeping the computer smart.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Even better, the network dependency means piracy is impossible.

fossuser 5y ago

I think Stratechery accurately called Microsoft's strategic shift: https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ around the time that Nadella showed up to save them. I think Apple is better positioned with total vertical integration to lay the ground work for the next platform (AR) and has been doing so for years now. They'll ship some hardware when the time is right. They've repeated this approach since the iPod successfully, never first to market, but laying the ground work before shipping the best in class product. FB (Zuck specifically) recognizes the next platform and Oculus is a bet to win it. Their issue is they don't have their own phone OS, the Oculus platform they have to build up from scratch (which they've done a decent job doing). They also have a brand issue (I personally dislike their ad-driven business model). It'll be interesting to see what hardware Apple ships - the UI potential for AR is enormous and very cool. I know Zuck sees this and is public about it, Apple is acting in such a way that they definitely see it - they're just quiet about it until they ship. Looking at tiny glass displays will be a funny anachronism of our time.

timmg 5y ago
> the Oculus platform they have to build up from scratch It's Android, right?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chaostheory 5y ago
  It's Android.
- oneplane 5y ago
  I think it's not as much the 'OS-platform' as it is the 'ecosystem-platform' the poster was thinking about.
slver 5y ago
Well, it's easy to get excited fantasizing about the future, but your predictions are about as likely to occur as the flying cars we're flying around right now. In fact none of the major platforms we use today was just predicted and constructed. They've evolved and shown their benefits naturally and not entirely in expected ways. No one actually planned the web to be an application platform. It was a university paper exchange program. And the Internet before it was a military communication network. Your predictions about the grand future of AR remind me of the excitement around VRML couple of decades ago. "Looking at stale 2D web pages will be a funny anachronism of our time" we thought. Turns out making existing content more fancy in 3D wasn't that useful, it actually was more cumbersome both to create and to use, so 3D web pages died before they even had a true chance to live.

an_opabinia 5y ago

> and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more... [non-Apple users are] missing something Android hasn't really faced many obstacles in cloning things. Consumers in China, for example, still buy Android phones, despite iPhones and despite having enough money for those iPhones. I don't know if anyone is missing out on all that much. I wouldn't say they are like, unenlightened. If anything the Android ecosystem has led to more digitization of life in China than in America, far faster - it looks way more like the metaverse in terms of computing taking over daily life than here, which is to say that you're really far off the mark in terms of what really matters. Anyway, this metaverse stuff. It blows. Roblox blows. Second Life blew. World of Warcraft is great, but you can hear about why it's great direct from the source (https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/conversations-2014-05-07/ https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/conversations-2014-05-07/) and it's all about really carefully curated and purposeful design choices, the user driven parts of it are not why the game was so good. Existing metaverse experiences blow not for lack of immersion! So the technology will change little of that. If Roblox was photoreal, it would still blow. Minecraft AR didn't matter. None of that shit matters. A company that barely supports 1 external video card vendor, that releases shit graphics APIs, that sues game companies - they're not going to break ground in the "metaverse." Apple Arcade games are good, but that's because they are fighting the real antagonist, the real horror show: free to play gaming. That is the antagonist of the metaverse, having to be free and monetize people via Robux or V-Bucks or whatever it is that activates neurons in a 10 year old's brain. It's got nothing to do with the technology.

salamandersauce 5y ago

Like what exactly? What is Windows missing? They have a way to integrate with Android phones, I can share my Galaxy's screen with PC and use apps that way even. They are working on AR stuff with Hololens and VR. You can do wireless screen sharing, sync your Microsoft Edge tabs, do 3D audio in games. I was all in the Apple ecosystem the past couple years except for the Watch. And I'm struggling to think of something that's impossible to do with Windows and non-Apple devices besides Airdrop and that didn't even work half the time between my iPhone and Mac mini. Sidecar is a cool feature to have built in, but apps like Duet and Astropad do the same thing... And I don't think it's a bad thing that MS doesn't Sherlock devs either...

arghnoname 5y ago
Windows is a gigantic market so in general the vast majority of things one could do in MacOS are going to end up being possible in Windows (assuming Apple even was the first to market some feature in the first place). It's almost unthinkable that some in-software feature that a lot of people like can be done in an Apple OS and not a Microsoft/Android OS. The question is not whether it can be done, but how easily it can be done. If you have to jailbreak your phone or cobble together a collection of different applications to simulate the experience, for 80%+ of people that's basically equivalent to impossible.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  You don't have to jailbreak your phone or root it to accomplish these things. Stuff like MS "Your Phone" for integrating your Android phone and Windows is built into some devices like those from Samsung and Windows will even walk you through the steps at first boot. Most of this stuff is built in and I'm not entirely sure app installs are onerous. 80%+ seems a little ridiculous.
- greggman3 5y ago
  you mean like play all the VR games or too AAA games in general? I own both. From my POV I'm able to do more on Windows even if I prefer MacOS for day to day use and iOS for my phone (though again can do more on Android)

tyingq 5y ago

On the other hand, Microsoft did a fairly decent job capturing cloud revenue with o365 and Azure. Apple is leaving most of that on the table. Apple has cloud services, but they are, for the most part, intended to help sell more iPhones. Can't argue with the Apple's approach since it works well revenue wise though.

edem 5y ago

Can you name a few examples? From what I've seen I can now run a Linux within my Windows, that solves my long-standing gaming vs developing problem. I can finally run Docker properly on my Windows box, and literally everything else that was problematic before. I'd pick Windows over MacOS 12 times out of 10.

flatiron 5y ago
I was a contractor for Apple for 4 years and when I left a few months ago my new company let me choose windows or mac and I chose windows (mainly spite) but it’s really good now. I live in the command line and having full blown Ubuntu inside windows is great. Docker works as expected. On top of that ms office is wayyyyyy better on windows than mac. I won’t be switching my personal devices off arch anytime soon but I think windows is a better development platform than mac now (can’t believe I just wrote that)
- edem 5y ago
  I also couldn't believe it when I realized it a while ago! Also...I hear Arch more often lately. Why would someone choose Arch over let's say Ubuntu? I'm curious. Never used it.
  - flatiron 5y ago
    Arch is great for desktops and laptops because it’s rolling and always up to date with upstream. Install it once. Update it once a week. Never have to do anything else. They also have a user repository where they pretty much have everything. There’s nothing on my laptop that isn’t version controlled with their package manager.

carl_dr 5y ago

> OK, but Microsoft is in the best position to create great, integrated, first-class technologies that build on how great Windows is. For a few years now there has been some noise that Apple’s Pro hardware lineup isn’t Pro, that macOS is becoming more locked down and more iOS-like, that the software is buggier than ever, and - until they dropped their App Store split to 15% for small developers - that 30% was too high a price. With WSL, and VScode and GitHub Microsoft are making a (messy, so far) play for developers. But as you point out, they didn’t take it to the nth degree and nail the execution. I wonder if they’ve missed the opportunity now. I develop for web on macOS, and have all Apple hardware, so maybe I’m missing some of the other things Microsoft have done. Maybe it is the lack of verticality MS have, and the integration between devices, something they can never match Apple on that means there hasn’t been the transition they were aiming for. That’s why I’ve not switched. I’ll be very interested to hear what people think about this.

tomjen3 5y ago
I would say MS nailed VScode remote development. It is seriously, seriously good. I used it during WFH and while VS didn't work nearly as well as the version of IDEA I was using the remote part worked so well I would forget I was working remote.

chaostheory 5y ago

> Or, idk, I'm blind because I think Apple products are so great. The latter most is probably more likely. As a fellow cult member who hasn't drunk enough kool aid, Apple products have been losing their luster in recent years. Apple TV still doesn't have hands free voice control. Fire TV has had this for years now. Using your iPhone isn't great because it doesn't have the microphone setup to consistently hear your voice well. Does Siri and Apple TV finally work together with Home Pod like how Google TV uses smart Google speakers? Apple Macbooks have suffered immensely with the near useless touch bar and terrible keyboard. Thinness as a feature seems to override everything else. I don't care about having a thin desktop. I want something I can open and replace parts in without paying about $10k. The list goes on. Including how there's still no word on the VR / AR unit, while Facebook mops the floor. The only light in the darkness is the M1 chip.

askafriend 5y ago
> Apple TV still doesn't have hands free voice control Yes it does. I use it everyday. Which Apple TV do you have? > Apple Macbooks have suffered immensely with the near useless touch bar and terrible keyboard. Still the best laptops in the market by a mile. > Thinness as a feature seems to override everything else. Many recent products have actually been thicker. New iPhone is thicker/heavier. New iPad is thicker/heavier. AirPods Pro are chunkier than regular AirPods. AirPods Max are some of the heaviest headphones in the market. Their new Mac Pro is a massive, modular beast. etc etc > Including how there's still no word on the VR / AR unit, while Facebook mops the floor. Apple is never first to market. But when they do enter, they tend to wipe the market clean. They also never talk about unreleased products. > The only light in the darkness is the M1 chip. This chip and associated tech will power their entire ecosystem and make every product better.
- chaostheory 5y ago
  > Yes it does. I use it everyday. Which Apple TV do you have? 4k - 1 model older than M1. I don't mind buying a Homepod to enable it (I'm not happy about it, but less happy about being forced to do it with iOS devices not designed explicitly for hearing you anywhere in the room), but to my knowledge commands from the Homepods won't make it to Apple TV. Am I wrong? > Still the best laptops in the market by a mile. They are still considerably worse than older Macbooks, since thinness and removing the ability to upgrader hardware were the priorities. The only thing that keeps me in the Apple computer ecosystem is Mac OS. > New iPhone is thicker/heavier. New iPad is thicker/heavier. AirPods Pro are chunkier than regular AirPods. AirPods Max are some of the heaviest headphones in the market. That's a great trend since Ive left. Looking at the new iMac line was disheartening.

gilbetron 5y ago

Seems like you are just really in deep with Apple. I've used Apple professionally for over a decade now, and personally for a long time before that (Mac SE was my first). When I'm on my personal laptop (windows/linux) I miss absolutely nothing about Apple. Well, that's not quite true, I appreciate the uniformity, but the uniformity costs too much in terms of a walled garden, which is an antithesis to how I think things should be. I think Microsoft does far more interesting research than Apple, which largely (but not completely) just buys new ideas like Cisco. An effective strategy, granted. I feel MS has a feel for where development is going better than Apple, with VS Code and the purchase of Github. "missing something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time I can immediately think of" is just hyperbole. To me, Apple has always been the company that takes other people's ideas and polishes the hell out of them - which is amazing, but when I look at my 30+ year tech career, I don't get very excited about Apple.

Terretta 5y ago
Keep hearing about “walled garden” as though it’s a bad thing — Archibald Craven doesn’t want Mary to play? The word “garden” suggests bespoke curation for appreciation and abundance, while “walled” suggests within this boundary the experience is purposefully tended and safe. The Japanese put them in the middle of their homes. The British write children’s literature set in them. Just look — the very idea of a walled garden is lovely: In film: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5b/52/41/5b524125c48b35bfe0cae9dddf614410.png https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5b/52/41/5b524125c48b35bfe0ca... In life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Maytham_Hall#Gardens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Maytham_Hall#Gardens In my experiences with the non metaphorical variety, most anyone who can afford one prefers it.
- llbeansandrice 5y ago
  I think HN and similar value free (as in freedom) and openness of a system a lot more. So "walled garden" is a bit of a buzzword against those ideals. > bespoke curation...purposefully tended and safe These ideas are antithetical to what many on HN seem to want. I personally love Apple products, but walled gardens are great when you don't bump into the walls all the time, which a lot of other people seem to do. In these cases (wall bumping) I think it's reasonable to want alternatives. But there are fanatics and anti-fanatics that I think skew any discussion about Apple.

smoldesu 5y ago

Apple products have every right to be great: after all, Apple is the largest company in the world. But they also have a duty to extend their services, one that they have sorely neglected for the past 15 years. I wouldn't be so angry at Apple if things like Airdrop, Handoff and Airplay were all open protocols. The only reason Apple doesn't extend these protocols is to have leverage over their competitors. It's not like any of the aforementioned technologies are impressive, either: they were all preceded by Warpinator, XDG and MPRIS, respectively. So Apple embraces these open-source concepts, extends them with proprietary interfaces and then extinguishes the source... where have I heard this one before?

jolux 5y ago
EEE is about actual intellectual property and compatibility, not just concepts. As far as I know AirDrop, Handoff, and AirPlay are proprietary all the way down.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Like it or not, AirPlay will always be proprietary for DRM reasons.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    That might be true if Google's Cast and Miracast both got away with ambiguous wireless mirroring years before Apple even entered the game.
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      Google Cast includes DRM
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
EEE is more insidious than this so it's important to not dilute its meaning. EEE is about taking a previously open, successful interface and then making it proprietary. It's destroying what was already flourishing. In Apple's case, they just built their own thing.

tomc1985 5y ago

> But here's the thing, in 10 years time, you're going to have Windows, which is still just, and will continue to be, Windows. And macOS, and iOS, and tvOS, and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more. And they already are so much more. And what is wrong with this? A stable, long-lasting platform is a beautiful thing. Maybe I'm an old fart (at 36...) but I don't really want "so much more". I want something that I can count on and bank on now, and that will be there for me for as far into the future as possible. None of this lofty futuretech seems to promise that, at least without bleeding me dry in pointlessly recurring interactions like subscription fees.

outside1234 5y ago

That's because they got sued for antitrust the last time they tried to do this. And given that they don't sell hardware, there isn't money in it. And if there isn't money in it, it isn't worth getting sued over trying it. So here we are.

mioasndo 5y ago

> Something that's dawned on me for the last few years is that Microsoft basically settled on the idea that the idea of the modern operating system is effectively done, which I suppose is true, but then they stopped creating technologies to build on top of Windows all together. What happened was open source software, linux dominating the server side, and android dominating mobile (iOS as well, to a lesser extent). > Except everyone publishing software today that isn't a game developer is targeting the web. Except for nearly all backend development... which mostly targets linux first. > OK, but Microsoft is in the best position to create great, integrated, first-class technologies that build on how great Windows is. But they don't. I have mixed feelings about this, because when Apple does it, they basically put people out of business. For example? Apple software is average, and Microsoft has a long history of 'putting people out of business' (not in a good way). > But here's the thing, in 10 years time, you're going to have Windows, which is still just, and will continue to be, Windows. And macOS, and iOS, and tvOS, and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more. And they already are so much more. You forgot... android and linux. How does apple 'already have so much more'? > For those who haven't experienced it yet, or can't afford Apple products, they're missing something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time I can immediately think of. That just sounds like an opinion of the average non-tech user who lives inside an apple bubble and likes icon shapes and default keybindings. You're not saying anything specific, just poetry about apple being 'first-class' and 'something that just hasn't happened in computing in any other period of time' (???)

deleted 5y ago
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PhasmaFelis 5y ago
> But here's the thing, in 10 years time, you're going to have Windows, which is still just, and will continue to be, Windows. And macOS, and iOS, and tvOS, and every other Apple OS, is going to be so much more. And they already are so much more. Some of those, perhaps, but MacOS has been on a steady decline for the past five years. Apple doesn't seem to care about the Mac platform except as a lifestyle accessory/devbox for iPhone owners. Windows may be limiting itself by merely trying to provide a decent daily-use desktop environment, but Apple isn't even doing that anymore.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> Except everyone publishing software today that isn't a game developer is targeting the web. All pro or semi-pro creative applications target native. live streaming / video editing / animation / DAW / image editing There are some toys for parts of these workflows in the webspace, but no serious tools for people who do this stuff seriously.

dannyw 5y ago
ok cool, so 2% of all laptop users?

john_minsk 5y ago

Interesting. So you think they are not even working on making this thing faster? Shame. Windows needs some performance boost.

GoldenMonkey 5y ago

But, Microsoft already has the AR/VR platform. That all devices can use. Oculus, iphones, androids, mac’s, windows, other VR devices. And they are the only ones who have this. It is called: Mesh. https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/02/microsoft-debuts-its-ar-vr-meetings-platform-mesh https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/02/microsoft-debuts-its-ar-vr...

throwawayffffas 5y ago

Does no one remember continuum, that was the future, too bad no one actually bought windows phones.

ksec 5y ago

Am I the one who think this is scary? The future of Microsoft not giving a damn, and a future where Apple dominate and dictate everything. I am not an old timer like some here that has a MacSE, but for 20+ years, this is the biggest come back of Apple, and many of us were once hoping for. For me it was a simple thesis, something that is so much better deserve to be in a better position. May be it was more of a hatred against Microsoft in a way, since they were shipping crap after crap. And here we are, Apple dominating and will continue to do so. But since 2016 Apple smells exactly the same as Google in 2003. Don't be evil Hypocrisy. Except this time around Apple has the better product, services and brand. From a strategic point of view there are no major flaws of weakness. Google's only major weakness was relying on browser for access. That is why they created Chrome. They also saw what could happen if everyone were using iPhone. They will have access dictated by Apple so they need to built Android. But Apple has no access problem. They are the final End Point ( or starting point would be more appreciate ) of all technology and digitalisation. > I'm blind because I think Apple products are so great. Not really, objectively speaking it is hard to argue Apple's product are not some of the best on the market.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago
Yeah. And in my opinion, Amazon is eating Satya's lunch. So, it's not clear to me what Microsoft is a leader in anymore.

Fuzzwah 5y ago

Regarding the topic at hand... MS have an actual product that real live humans use today... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens