4 ms·

I'm in the same boat. Mac-as-a-developer-workstation, not Mac-as-a-consumer-dvice. Apple seems entirely disinterested in the former market segment. Perhaps i

I'm in the same boat. Mac-as-a-developer-workstation, not Mac-as-a-consumer-dvice. Apple seems entirely disinterested in the former market segment. Perhaps it never was: the mass adoption of macs in the early-mid 2000s might just have been a fortuitous accident, not somethgin Apple ever courted. Either way: > It seems MS is much more on top of making Windows developer friendly than Apple is currently. I see that too and it worries me. Not because I'm avidly anti-Microsoft, but because all the portents are we're heading back to the place where Microsoft dominates the desktop, with no practical alternatives. That wasn't good first time around and I don't see it being any better if repeated. Microsoft is being very smart - and successful - in their strategy. Whereas the original Windows commoditised the underlying hardware, current "Windows" is commoditising operating systems. Hence subsuming Android and Linux into the platform. "Windows", though, is really not the way to think about the platform. The deep integration of Teams into W11 is a pivotal step. Teams - with office365 - is the new "Windows" - the platform that Microsoft wants to dominate end-user computing with on the front end. With Azure on the back. As a developer, I don't want to only have a single choice. But I don't see anyone meaningfully challenging Microsoft. Apple seems only interested in consumers. I wouldn't personally touch a Chromebook given Google's insatiable desire to monetise my every keystroke. Amazon seems only interested in the back end and, actually, that seems like strategic myopia. Microsoft really understands that owning the end-user experience is key. What future for AWS if all developers are using Windows, and it already "just works" with Azure? So I'm not optimistic for the future. On the plus side, it's why I bought a laptop from System76, and paid ElementaryOS to use their distro. It's noise level compared to Windows/Mac, but that might just be what ensures there's a tiny crack of hope for desktop diversity.

at-fates-hands 5y ago
>> we're heading back to the place where Microsoft dominates the desktop, Total side note to this, but there are apps that only work on Windows like Adobe Creative Cloud. If some of these companies were to support Linux, you would see a huge migration off of Windows to Linux. Adobe has steadfastly refused to support Linux. Even after years of Linux users saying they would gladly pay to use Adobe products on virtually ANY Linux OS. All to no avail. So here I sit, stuck between two operating systems. One I love, and needing the other strictly out of necessity to run a specific set of software.
- willyt 5y ago
  Adobe creative cloud works on macOS as well. In fact Photoshop and I think Illustrator were originally Mac only back in the 90's.
  - shorner 5y ago
    Unrelated, but there was a time when I vastly preferred Microsoft Entourage and Microsoft Word on a Mac to the Windows versions. They both had features that their windows counterparts didn't for quite a while! Then they unified the teams that made their products for the different platforms and we ended up with the ribbon toolbar UI, which was a pure example of "good looking UI over functionality". I remember using excel with the ribbon toolbar, and it was really easy to put a funky pattern on my bar charts, but annoyingly fiddly to extrapolate data - ie. to actually use excel for science... It's got to be said that if it was my company I would still have unified the teams. I probably would have ok'd the ribbon toolbar too, as I imagine that if I was running Microsoft I probably wasn't doing a lot of data analysis myself and I wouldn't know any better.
GeekyBear 5y ago
> all the portents are we're heading back to the place where Microsoft dominates the desktop Is this the same Microsoft that just decided to get rid of Local user accounts on Windows 11 Home?
_red 5y ago
>-mid 2000s might just have been a fortuitous accident, not somethgin Apple ever courted. yea, I think you are probably right. I was a linux user from 95-05 then switched to mac from 05-13 now back to linux. I'm well aware of the "this is the year of the linux desktop" joke, but honestly over past 4-5 years I think linux has reached the point that its fairly painless for 95% of common desktop usecases.
roody15 5y ago
“Mac-as-a-consumer-device” This has been Apple’s primary focus for the last decade, increasingly so each year. Apple has paid lip service to the education sector and business sector with managed accounts and profile based management but it is severely lacking and in many ways needlessly crippled. Apple is focused on the most profitable sector home / consumer market. They have exited the server market, exited itunes university, exited iweb, really excited anything self-creation or self-managed or self-hosted … in favor of ad friendly click to subscribe model and a locked down primarily content consumption device.
simonh 5y ago
I was pretty much with you up to this point: >Microsoft really understands that owning the end-user experience is key. Since upgrading to Catalina, I repartitioned my Mac to have a 1GB Windows partition for games, particularly 32-bit retro stuff. Other than my locked down work VDI, this is my first experience of seriously using Windows as a desktop OS in over a decade. OMG is this thing horrible. Gah, my heart sinks every time I boot into it. Two Start Menus? A horrible, kafka-esque maze of settings and config in half a dozen different UI interfaces, all of them ugly as sin. One of my kids used it for a few days, and now I've already got some invasive search toolbar crap I can't get rid of, and I've shared a Mac with my kids almost all their lives (17 and 16). Ads built into the OS. The user experience on Windows is as godawful as it's ever been. They've definitely upped their game on technology, WSL2 looks really nice. Power Shell looks pretty decent. They're making interesting moves with making .NET truly cross-platform. I can see the dev argument for sure, but the user experience on Windows is as much, if not more of an inconsiderate, abusive relationship as it's ever been.
- spinningslate 5y ago
  that's fair. Though I didn't say it was good (or otherwise), just that MS understands the importance of owning it.
pjmlp 5y ago
Mac-as-a-developer-workstation has always worked quite well for those of us that don't really care about UNIX, there are other developer platforms out there to care about.

at-fates-hands 5y ago

>> we're heading back to the place where Microsoft dominates the desktop, Total side note to this, but there are apps that only work on Windows like Adobe Creative Cloud. If some of these companies were to support Linux, you would see a huge migration off of Windows to Linux. Adobe has steadfastly refused to support Linux. Even after years of Linux users saying they would gladly pay to use Adobe products on virtually ANY Linux OS. All to no avail. So here I sit, stuck between two operating systems. One I love, and needing the other strictly out of necessity to run a specific set of software.

willyt 5y ago
Adobe creative cloud works on macOS as well. In fact Photoshop and I think Illustrator were originally Mac only back in the 90's.
- shorner 5y ago
  Unrelated, but there was a time when I vastly preferred Microsoft Entourage and Microsoft Word on a Mac to the Windows versions. They both had features that their windows counterparts didn't for quite a while! Then they unified the teams that made their products for the different platforms and we ended up with the ribbon toolbar UI, which was a pure example of "good looking UI over functionality". I remember using excel with the ribbon toolbar, and it was really easy to put a funky pattern on my bar charts, but annoyingly fiddly to extrapolate data - ie. to actually use excel for science... It's got to be said that if it was my company I would still have unified the teams. I probably would have ok'd the ribbon toolbar too, as I imagine that if I was running Microsoft I probably wasn't doing a lot of data analysis myself and I wouldn't know any better.

GeekyBear 5y ago

> all the portents are we're heading back to the place where Microsoft dominates the desktop Is this the same Microsoft that just decided to get rid of Local user accounts on Windows 11 Home?

_red 5y ago

>-mid 2000s might just have been a fortuitous accident, not somethgin Apple ever courted. yea, I think you are probably right. I was a linux user from 95-05 then switched to mac from 05-13 now back to linux. I'm well aware of the "this is the year of the linux desktop" joke, but honestly over past 4-5 years I think linux has reached the point that its fairly painless for 95% of common desktop usecases.

roody15 5y ago

“Mac-as-a-consumer-device” This has been Apple’s primary focus for the last decade, increasingly so each year. Apple has paid lip service to the education sector and business sector with managed accounts and profile based management but it is severely lacking and in many ways needlessly crippled. Apple is focused on the most profitable sector home / consumer market. They have exited the server market, exited itunes university, exited iweb, really excited anything self-creation or self-managed or self-hosted … in favor of ad friendly click to subscribe model and a locked down primarily content consumption device.

simonh 5y ago

I was pretty much with you up to this point: >Microsoft really understands that owning the end-user experience is key. Since upgrading to Catalina, I repartitioned my Mac to have a 1GB Windows partition for games, particularly 32-bit retro stuff. Other than my locked down work VDI, this is my first experience of seriously using Windows as a desktop OS in over a decade. OMG is this thing horrible. Gah, my heart sinks every time I boot into it. Two Start Menus? A horrible, kafka-esque maze of settings and config in half a dozen different UI interfaces, all of them ugly as sin. One of my kids used it for a few days, and now I've already got some invasive search toolbar crap I can't get rid of, and I've shared a Mac with my kids almost all their lives (17 and 16). Ads built into the OS. The user experience on Windows is as godawful as it's ever been. They've definitely upped their game on technology, WSL2 looks really nice. Power Shell looks pretty decent. They're making interesting moves with making .NET truly cross-platform. I can see the dev argument for sure, but the user experience on Windows is as much, if not more of an inconsiderate, abusive relationship as it's ever been.

spinningslate 5y ago
that's fair. Though I didn't say it was good (or otherwise), just that MS understands the importance of owning it.

pjmlp 5y ago

Mac-as-a-developer-workstation has always worked quite well for those of us that don't really care about UNIX, there are other developer platforms out there to care about.