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the Mac as a continuous story line from 1984 to the present It's a reasonably continuous storyline for the end user, which is what matters given the topic. Per

by pvg 3y ago

the Mac as a continuous story line from 1984 to the present It's a reasonably continuous storyline for the end user, which is what matters given the topic. Personal computers themselves weren't a mass market, neither were smartphone so you could just as well look at it as, say, "Apple's long-term vision of mass market computing succeeded". But it's not clear how either of these interpretations would change this blog post much.

fulladder 3y ago
Well, everyone is going to have their own perceptions, and maybe some end users do see it as a continuous evolution. For me personally, I saw a discontinuity in the 2010s where suddenly the platform was becoming very locked down: features like SIP prevented you from modifying anything that was part of the OS (though you could turn it off) and code signing appeared to be the first step toward preventing end users from executing any program not blessed by Apple. There was a while in the late 2010s where many of us were pretty sure that Apple was on the verge of prohibiting users from running any code they wrote themselves. There would be some kind of byzantine approval process like for iOS that would reject random, personal utilities not useful to anyone besides the author. Apple kept denying this was their plan, but kept moving closer and closer to doing this. However, they then appeared to stop around 2020 and haven't renewed those efforts, so I guess we are safe?
- pvg 3y ago
  There was a while in the late 2010s where many of us were pretty sure that Apple was on the verge of prohibiting users from running any code they wrote themselves. Other than arguments made on messageboards, I don't think there was really any concrete evidence of this, the technical/product reasons they were/are doing this for were clear. So yeah, I think that's a discontinuity of perception.

by pvg 3y ago

fulladder 3y ago

Well, everyone is going to have their own perceptions, and maybe some end users do see it as a continuous evolution. For me personally, I saw a discontinuity in the 2010s where suddenly the platform was becoming very locked down: features like SIP prevented you from modifying anything that was part of the OS (though you could turn it off) and code signing appeared to be the first step toward preventing end users from executing any program not blessed by Apple. There was a while in the late 2010s where many of us were pretty sure that Apple was on the verge of prohibiting users from running any code they wrote themselves. There would be some kind of byzantine approval process like for iOS that would reject random, personal utilities not useful to anyone besides the author. Apple kept denying this was their plan, but kept moving closer and closer to doing this. However, they then appeared to stop around 2020 and haven't renewed those efforts, so I guess we are safe?

pvg 3y ago
There was a while in the late 2010s where many of us were pretty sure that Apple was on the verge of prohibiting users from running any code they wrote themselves. Other than arguments made on messageboards, I don't think there was really any concrete evidence of this, the technical/product reasons they were/are doing this for were clear. So yeah, I think that's a discontinuity of perception.