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> I don’t think this is nefarious. X11 is a klunky GUI, at best, That's the problem: I see you're being dismissive of X due to its ergonomics and aesthetics de

> I don’t think this is nefarious. X11 is a klunky GUI, at best, That's the problem: I see you're being dismissive of X due to its ergonomics and aesthetics despite the fact that X just-works and is still a vital component in computing: the same reason Windows retains both cmd.exe and PowerShell - I feel that your kind of reasoning is why we think Apple is so capricious with their consumer products (removing iPhone headphone ports, deliberately making HomePod incompatible with Android and non-Apple Bluetooth devices, the Trash-can MacPro, etc) they're roistering their own kind of paternalistic computing vision on their users). People that need reliable, dependable computing experiences need to be able to use all the tools out there: old-but-good, tried-and-tested, no matter how "clunky" they are - and this doesn't neatly fit into the Apple way(TM). While I appreciate and respect Apple immensely for significantly and successfully driving the standards for user-experience and overall product industrial design, it isn't perfect... if only they'd tone-down their institutionalist corporate arrogance. > compared with pretty much everything else out there. It really can’t hold a candle to more developed GUI systems. X is a windowing system, it isn't a complete GUI system. Consider that, in fact, what Apple and Microsoft have both done quite successfully since the very beginning of macOS and MS Windows is how they have completely hidden the fact that widget/control libraries, the window-manger, the windowing-system, the compositor, are all completely separate and independent components that actually have no dependencies on each other at all. Having that visual and design consistency between those functionally separate components is what made Windows 95, and MacOS 8 (and especially OS X) so usable and approachable to _normal people_. Now as X and Wayland are just one component in an entire GUI system, there really isn't a strong argument in removing vital components from their own systems just because they just don't like the way it looks - as though Apple is trying to avoid looking like a HP-UX CDE desktop from the mid-1990s. I'm rambling, it's 3am now argh.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Is it Apple’s responsibility to maintain X on the Mac, though? If they want to implement something that may interfere with X (usually they do this kind of thing because security), should they cripple the experience for half a billion users, to appease a small minority of techies? I’ve been writing software for Apple devices since 1986, which means that I’ve had lots of rugs pulled out from under me, and have been incandescent with rage at Apple, many times. That said, I’ve never regretted choosing it as my preferred platform, despite thirty years of insults and put-downs from other tech folks.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > Is it Apple’s responsibility to maintain X on the Mac, though? Yes and no. So POSIX and the Unix Specification(TM) are standards thanks to the US federal government putting their foot-down and mandating that major contractors (like IBM, Sun, HP, etc) stop being incompatible with each other - and in-practice this also means having to support X. When OS X launched Apple loved to tell everyone that it was a true Unix(TM) system - (after-all, they did spend the money to get it certified as a real Unix system), and this meant that OS X-based systems were suddenly candidates for major US and international scientific and research contracts and gigs - which dovtailed nicely with the hype around their boasts of the PowerMac G5's literal supercomputer performance (and indeed: literal supercomputers comprised of racks of G5 machines in a bunch of US Navy Labs). Now, in the 2020s, it's clear that since the iPhone dominated their revenue that Apple is no-longer really interested in being part of government supercomputing and scientific computing contracts - the positive PR and technical credibility they gain from all of those government projects is insignificant compared to the cash revenue value of simply running another iPhone ad-campaign. The 2013 Mac Pro was solid proof that Apple does not value the high-end desktop and workstation computing markets anymore. Apple seems content to even let Windows take away their previously impentrable hold on the desktop video-editing market: whoever was using FCP on a MP in 2006 is almost certainly using Adobe Premier on Windows today. ...having said all of that, I was surprised to see that macOS 12.0 Monterey is still an official Unix(TM) certified product: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3673.htm https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3673.htm - despite Apple's deprecation (and obsolescence?) of their support for X. ------------- So my point, if anything, is that if Apple wants to maintain its credibility as a high-end computing systems provider, it needs to revert back to doing far more than paying lip-service to being a Unix vendor - and that includes bringing native support for X (and some form of compatibility with the rest of the Unix/Linux GUI ecosystem) back into macOS - but if Apple continues to remain uninterested in selling themselves as a professional workstation vendor (which I feel is implicit in how they've been locking-down macOS and their Apple Silicon-based machines) then you're right, they don't have any responsibility to maintain compatibility with X. As it is, I don't know what Apple wants - or even what Apple would do in the event they lose their cash-cow and grip on the world when the iPhone is somehow obsoleted by a competitor. Of course if that happens then they'll quickly reverse-course and try to make-up for all of their substandard devX moments. ------------- > That said, I’ve never regretted choosing it as my preferred platform, despite thirty years of insults and put-downs from other tech folks. Pardon my asking, but I'm especially curious - what kind of software do you write? Unless you work for major creative-tools companies like Adobe - or a boutique Mac shop like Panic nor indie Mac App Store dev - I have trouble imagining what market there is for other types of software on the Mac. Whatever native macOS / Cocoa line-of-business software there was over the past couple of decades will have certainly transitions over to being a SaaS web-app by now.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Is it Apple’s responsibility to maintain X on the Mac, though? If they want to implement something that may interfere with X (usually they do this kind of thing because security), should they cripple the experience for half a billion users, to appease a small minority of techies? I’ve been writing software for Apple devices since 1986, which means that I’ve had lots of rugs pulled out from under me, and have been incandescent with rage at Apple, many times. That said, I’ve never regretted choosing it as my preferred platform, despite thirty years of insults and put-downs from other tech folks.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> Is it Apple’s responsibility to maintain X on the Mac, though? Yes and no. So POSIX and the Unix Specification(TM) are standards thanks to the US federal government putting their foot-down and mandating that major contractors (like IBM, Sun, HP, etc) stop being incompatible with each other - and in-practice this also means having to support X. When OS X launched Apple loved to tell everyone that it was a true Unix(TM) system - (after-all, they did spend the money to get it certified as a real Unix system), and this meant that OS X-based systems were suddenly candidates for major US and international scientific and research contracts and gigs - which dovtailed nicely with the hype around their boasts of the PowerMac G5's literal supercomputer performance (and indeed: literal supercomputers comprised of racks of G5 machines in a bunch of US Navy Labs). Now, in the 2020s, it's clear that since the iPhone dominated their revenue that Apple is no-longer really interested in being part of government supercomputing and scientific computing contracts - the positive PR and technical credibility they gain from all of those government projects is insignificant compared to the cash revenue value of simply running another iPhone ad-campaign. The 2013 Mac Pro was solid proof that Apple does not value the high-end desktop and workstation computing markets anymore. Apple seems content to even let Windows take away their previously impentrable hold on the desktop video-editing market: whoever was using FCP on a MP in 2006 is almost certainly using Adobe Premier on Windows today. ...having said all of that, I was surprised to see that macOS 12.0 Monterey is still an official Unix(TM) certified product: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3673.htm https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3673.htm - despite Apple's deprecation (and obsolescence?) of their support for X. ------------- So my point, if anything, is that if Apple wants to maintain its credibility as a high-end computing systems provider, it needs to revert back to doing far more than paying lip-service to being a Unix vendor - and that includes bringing native support for X (and some form of compatibility with the rest of the Unix/Linux GUI ecosystem) back into macOS - but if Apple continues to remain uninterested in selling themselves as a professional workstation vendor (which I feel is implicit in how they've been locking-down macOS and their Apple Silicon-based machines) then you're right, they don't have any responsibility to maintain compatibility with X. As it is, I don't know what Apple wants - or even what Apple would do in the event they lose their cash-cow and grip on the world when the iPhone is somehow obsoleted by a competitor. Of course if that happens then they'll quickly reverse-course and try to make-up for all of their substandard devX moments. ------------- > That said, I’ve never regretted choosing it as my preferred platform, despite thirty years of insults and put-downs from other tech folks. Pardon my asking, but I'm especially curious - what kind of software do you write? Unless you work for major creative-tools companies like Adobe - or a boutique Mac shop like Panic nor indie Mac App Store dev - I have trouble imagining what market there is for other types of software on the Mac. Whatever native macOS / Cocoa line-of-business software there was over the past couple of decades will have certainly transitions over to being a SaaS web-app by now.