8 ms·

> Even among tech people, they have good will Wait, do they? I mostly remember: - A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality - Aimless product

by sho_hn 1y ago

> Even among tech people, they have good will Wait, do they? I mostly remember: - A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality - Aimless products like the Vision Pro that seems to have failed as the "get the devs excited" premium SDK launch everyone described it as - Rocky start issues on Apple Intelligence, nerfed Siri, etc. - Unexciting iPhone launch and lots of ridicule levied on Liquid Glass It's the laptop to get for compute/battery, which definitely is not nothing, but I'd say few tech people have been excited about Apple otherwise lately, as product or platform.

fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
> but I'd say few tech people have been excited about Apple otherwise lately, as product or platform And probably fewer still consider switching to the alternatives. Apple is, for better or worse, usually the least bad option.
- yndoendo 1y ago
  You have to pay me to use Apple, Microsoft, and Google products. None of those organizations are good. Apple and Google both use immutable locked down OSes on their main products that prevents improving device security, such as IP & DNS filtering / blocking. Microsoft user experience keeps getting worse. Latest version of Teams, as of today, says I'm at the "Calendar" screen and the navigation and content screen both show "Chat". "Calendar" was unpinned because I find Teams to be at interacting with content. No reason it should be a PDF viewer when the desktop application is actually usable allows for viewing chat and content at the same time. I understand developing for those platforms makes money or is needed for other products. Unless I have to develop products that support those companies, I will never pay with my personal income to support those organizations.
  - herval 1y ago
    So you don't use a smartphone?
    - powgpu 1y ago
      Me and many people don't. Just laptop is good enough. Although currently switched back to apple silicon ATM for LLM, price and convince reasons, and as soonest linux on Apple Silicon reach some maturity, will switch over completely. However not using a smartphone is probably good for one's mental and physical healthy now days. It is understandable if your work require you to have one, but if I'm not getting paid, why would I even get a smartphone? Back in the 80's there are investment people managing billions dollars and deals over pen paper and a land line!
      - herval 1y ago
        back in the 1880s, people didn't even need refrigerators!
        jama211 1y ago
        Hahahahaha, right?
      - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
        I'm the opposite, I didn't own a personal computer from like 2015 until last year when I built a new gaming PC. I had a MacBook Pro from work of course, but I just got by on my phone / iPad for my personal life.
      - jama211 1y ago
        Laptops are way heavier and more bulky than phones, and phones can do 90% of what a laptop can do across a cross section of most people’s daily tasks. You don’t have to be a genius to see the value in one. The mental health stuff is about social media apps and things, which aren’t mandatory. If you don’t want one because of some principled stance that’s fine, but don’t pretend there’s no value in them.
    - echelon 1y ago
      Because antitrust enforcement has been so lax, we only have two options. The DOJ/FTC/EU/ASEAN/etc. need to force a breakup of first party app stores, first party payment, first party web browser, and first party messaging. They also really need to require web installs without hidden menus and scare walls. We'll see a proliferation of offerings if that happens.
- rockemsockem 1y ago
  For hardware only
  - retired_account 1y ago
    Eh, macOS is still the UNIX with the most commercial software available. 26 feels like a misstep*, of course, but I’ll take it over a Windows environment any day. * Xcode 26 is kinda neat, though
    - criddell 1y ago
      A mac can (legally) run more software than any other computer. Obviously, macOS apps work, but you can also run most Windows and Linux applications (in a VM). There's also a bunch of iOS/iPadOS apps that can work and some Android apps can run through BlueStacks.
      - Sebb767 1y ago
        > but you can also run most Windows and Linux applications (in a VM). This is really just a cheap rhetorical trick. Linux [0] can run just as much software, if you include VMs, but you can't legally virtualize MacOS, therefore buying a Mac is the only way to legally run their software, in addition to everything else. Now, you are technically correct, but the casual interpretation of > Eh, macOS is still the UNIX with the most commercial software available. isn't really that you can simply run everything unavailable on MacOS in a VM (or several layers of VMs). It's the same as arguing that Powerpoint is all you ever need, as it is Turing complete. [0] And so can Windows, if you run said VMs in a Linux VM.
  - jama211 1y ago
    It’s ok to have preferences, it’s not ok to say “x is objectively bad” just because you personally don’t like it.
    - rockemsockem 1y ago
      Your comment does what your comment says isn't okay. Maybe you shouldn't go around policing people's opinions.
- worik 1y ago
  No. Linux is better. That worm has turned, at least five years ago
  - powgpu 1y ago
    for X_86 family for sure, but the experience on other chip set such as Apple Silicon (maybe the arms) for desktop usage are quite rough around the edges.
    - deaddodo 1y ago
      Linux works fine on ARM devices. The problem is lack of good (non-Apple) ARM devices, not Linux.
    - trelane 1y ago
      "Apple silicon?" Man, how well does OSX run on a raspberry pi? Clearly it's the inferior OS. /s
    - spookie 1y ago
      Never had issues with other ARM chips other than the Apple co-designed ones. Oh, and if you have problems running Linux on Macs... That isn't Linux's fault.
      - SirHumphrey 1y ago
        But Apple ARM chips currently represent most of the laptop and desktop computer market share for ARM processors. Sure, Linux in embedded and semi-embedded capacity works perfectly well with almost all ARM (and even RISC-V) processors, but I doubt most of the people here will be switching to raspberry pi as the daily driver anytime soon. Hopefully either Asahi support improves in the near future or Snapdragon X Elite support in Linux becomes a bit better.
  - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
    When someone makes a SteamOS level "just works" distro for desktop / gaming I'll probably happily switch
__loam 1y ago
The rocky start for apple intelligence is what excites me
bee_rider 1y ago
They aren’t doing a great job exactly, but what is there to recommend to somebody who doesn’t want to use the command line? SteamOS, maybe, haha.
catigula 1y ago
It's also amazing that they convinced developers that running a non-standard CPU instruction set through a laundered Rosetta layer was somehow battery or compute friendly lb for lb when an AMD processor (or even Intel) is plenty efficient and cool. Are any applications on your Mac touching Rosetta right now? You'd better hope not because those single percentage gains from ARM evaporate fast.
- n8cpdx 1y ago
  Delusional take. Rosetta is for maintaining compatibility during the transition. Efficiency is fine with Rosetta. But it doesn’t matter because the ARM transition is essentially already done. Not true, unfortunately, for Windows. Aside from superior performance and battery life (even compared to ARM windows offerings), the M series devices are generally reliable, unlike windows laptops running Intel and (less so) AMD.
  - catigula 1y ago
    What is the efficiency loss specifically? Do you even know, or are you just asserting it? >it doesn't matter because the ARM transition is essentially already done 'Essentially' is doing a lot of heavy-lifting here, but, putting that aside, A. you're wrong, I've recently ran into Rosetta throttling and B. it's not a good reason to begin the project at all, it's only a good reason when it's already done. You're essentially ceding "Yes, I've been wrong and this has been a fool's errand for the past x years until right this moment as the project is done". It's not done and it'd a weak argument. >Aside from superior performance and battery life (even compared to ARM windows offerings), the M series devices are generally reliable, unlike windows laptops running Intel and (less so) AMD. Specifically what are the numbers? Because I have performance/tdp numbers and the M-series performs well but it isn't a categorical difference. In fact, that's no difference, it performs okay but AMD is at the top of the heap currently. Sad.
    - hundchenkatze 1y ago
      then post the numbers? You're just here doing the same thing, asserting that the efficiency is bad, only using more words. Performance and efficiency has been great for me. I've never run into rosetta throttling. I've got the numbers - trust me bro.
herval 1y ago
Apple is certainly fumbling in recent years, and it's clearly behind in some games (Siri, AI in general, iPhones turning into a yearly snooze-fest). But of all the FAANG, I'd say it's the only one I trust, simply because they're not trying to sell my data and have a consistent stance on security.
- QuercusMax 1y ago
  Tim Cook giving Trump a gold-plated statue in exchange for tariff preferences seems like a very bad sign.
  - elictronic 1y ago
    It seems like they got the memo. Pay Trump personally or have your business destroyed. Im not really sure how that benefits me as a US citizen but that is who the majority of the population seems to want and once the rules are set you follow or face made up tariffs that rip you apart. Right.
  - herval 1y ago
    It certainly is. It's not exclusive to Apple, however - _all_ the big tech (and non-tech) companies offered tribute, in one form or another. Despite it being illegal, it seems to be the new government practice. Whether that'll lead to the government requiring Apple to break their encryption, it remains to be seen. I imagine Apple has a bit of an edge here anyway, since iCloud is allegedly e2e encrypted?
  - pklausler 1y ago
    Why? It was a relatively cheap way to dodge the capricious whims of a madman who is fortunately easy to distract with shiny objects.
  - kriops 1y ago
    Why? Regardless of your view of Trump, would you not expect mr. Cook to play the game? His only job is literally and figuratively to navigate hell or high waters to deliver value to the shareholders.
  - 1y ago
eadmund 1y ago
You forgot things like shipping decades-old free software with their OS because Apple are so implacably opposed to their users having freedom to use, examine, modify and share that software.
- junon 1y ago
  SIP is the obvious contra, though.
- Sharlin 1y ago
  Funnily I just yesterday realized that my macOS-bundled bash version is (was) from 2007 because $BASH_ALIASES (introduced in bash 4) didn't work.
- spauldo 1y ago
  I've always heard Apple's refusal to use GPL3 code was due to the patent clause. They certainly don't seem to mind including GPL2 software.
asveikau 1y ago
> A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality It's funny that this exact phrase could have been written about Apple in 1998.
- Philadelphia 1y ago
  Mac OS 8 was new in 1997 and was pretty innovative for user-facing features, if not the underlying operating system. It blew Windows 98 out of the water as far as that went.
  - asveikau 1y ago
    I was around at the time. Mac OS 8 had no preemptive multitasking or meaningful address space protections. A single bad pointer dereference in user mode took down the entire system, and a single busy loop without a yield locked up the entire system. Both of these were universally admitted to be bad and outdated by technically minded people. By 1997 they had looked at replacing it with BeOS or NEXTSTEP, and purchased the latter with the goal of replacing Mac OS. The Rhapsody OS, an OS8 style UI with NeXT underneath, had already been started. Before that, they had also attempted and failed to write a next gen classic Mac OS (Copland). Windows 9x had a lot of problems, but had preemptive multitasking and much better address space isolation. Windows NT 4 Workstation was also a thing at the time and much better. It did take them two more releases to make it into the consumer product.
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      > It did take them two more releases to make it into the consumer product. Rather: It took them two more releases until they offered a version that had a price tag (setting the price was a conscious decision by Microsoft) that made a Windows NT derivate also affordable to non-professional users.
      - asveikau 1y ago
        I don't think it was that simple. Hardware support wasn't good on NT, and it had poor compatibility with a lot of 9x software. These were two things that MS considered obstacles at the time.
worik 1y ago
....and their tools are very flash, bright colours and buttons...and they mostly work "Mostly" is not good enough. The user experience of Apple is still good, the developer experience is woeful
nobleach 1y ago
If that's what you "mostly" remember, your memory is awfully selective. It's totally fine for you to have a bias, but you're overlooking decades of massively successful products and services. Having owned plenty of Thinkpads (Linux), Dells(Windows and Linux) and plenty of Macbook Pros, I can say, Apple's superiority of hardware is so far beyond the rest. Having an OS with a BSD-ish experience is really nice as well. I've spent 27 years in engineering and during most of that time I get the random "Linux is far superior", "I like Windows better" folks... but by and large, yes, Apple's tech has a ton of good will.
- bananalychee 1y ago
  Of course it does in the US tech bubble, if you talk to people who haven't been using Macs for 30 years you might hear a different story. While Apple makes good hardware they also have plenty of blunders, especially in recent years, much like Microsoft in its domain really. Both are coasting on their past successes and familiarity. I get it, many of my coworkers watch their announcement streams like they're video game announcements. From my standpoint they haven't put out anything exciting since the iPhone/iPod Touch, but I don't have the money for toys that cost thousands of dollars apiece like the Mac Studios or their VR headset, so maybe I'm missing out.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    The VR headset was such a flop that I think it might paradoxically have not hurt their reputation. Like nobody is saying “wow, this Apple vision thing really sucks,” because nobody has seen one.
    - jama211 1y ago
      Also no one cares about it positive or negative because it’s such a nothing burger. No one even thinks apple thought it would be big, it was an experiment that’s all.
  - zeroc8 1y ago
    The Mac Mini has been exciting for me. A great low cost low energy consumption desktop that does what it is supposed to do.
deleted 1y ago
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brownriceowl 1y ago
We have different ideas of what qualifies as tech people if we're talking about Liquid Glass, Siri, and Vision Pro IMO, "consumer electronics enthusiasts" != "tech people"
QuantumGood 1y ago
In my business (partly home studio support), it's hard to support MacOS for new-ish users. If the OS is old, things like FFMPEG will not work with things like Audacity. And to use an old version of FFMPEG, you have to guess which one, then install a variety of dev tools to compile it, waay beyond the capability of the average "I just want to record my podcast user". Audacity itself has an extensive help article devoted to this issue for Mac. If you have a new Mac, you'll find companies have given up going through the cost and time of certifying for each new Mac OS, like Evoluent (early vertical mouse maker), who gave up several versions ago and won't support using all the extra mouse buttons their product has on Mac. If you want to use many audio plugins, you'll have to deal with special permissions if it didn't come from the app store. If you want to use zoom to let a remote tech control your screen, you have to find and set two security permisssions. For all four of these issue on Windows, it just works. UPDATE: As commenter below pointed out, experienced users have a different experience than new users, which doesn't invalidate the specific issues I've mentioned, and which I encounter every month, and sometimes weekly.
- nativeit 1y ago
  I’m a producer since Cool Edit Pro and Fruity Loops. I’ve used Windows and Macs for audio and video production extensively over the last two decades. I have no idea what you’re on about.
  - QuantumGood 1y ago
    I gave four specific examples that frequently slow me down when helping people who are new to studio stuff. You ignored my examples, and pointed out you have decades of experience. Why do you start by pointing out you're not the user I'm talking about and ignore the examples?
zamalek 1y ago
> > Wait, do they? The echo chamber is still reverberating. People say that MacOS is good because other people have told them so. The people claiming that is better don't have an earnest effort outside of the ecosystem to support their claims. I was forced to use MacOS at work up until a little over 1.5 years ago, I have perspective on both, and it is categorically incompetent. It doesn't hold a candle to dev on Linux. As for Windows? Windows 7/11 are probably still better than MacOS (as you implied with your comment about neglect), but it's probably as bad or slightly better than Win 11.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- snoman 1y ago
  I’ve used Windows at work for years, my personal/gaming machine is Linux (mint), my personal/development machine is MacOS. They’re all perfectly viable options with strengths and weaknesses. None of them are especially great. I’m partial to MacOS, personally. It’s willful ignorance to think that the many millions of people that like MacOS are just parroting what they’ve been told.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    > It’s willful ignorance to think that the many millions of people that like MacOS are just parroting what they’ve been told. This is so entirely true. I've installed so many different Linux distributions (and multiple Windows versions) on my personal laptop. Currently noodling around with NixOS. I've never been tempted by a non-macOS laptop for work. Whatever faults macOS has, it is very good at staying out of my way for getting work done, and all the small ancillary bits (eg webcam and audio support for chatting) have worked flawlessly for me for two decades. I cannot say the same about either Windows or Linux.
dimgl 1y ago
> I'd say few tech people have been excited about Apple otherwise lately, as product or platform. Maybe you're speaking for yourself? I absolutely love my Macbook and the M-series are the best devices I've ever owned. > - A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality Really? I haven't noticed.

by sho_hn 1y ago

fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago

> but I'd say few tech people have been excited about Apple otherwise lately, as product or platform And probably fewer still consider switching to the alternatives. Apple is, for better or worse, usually the least bad option.

yndoendo 1y ago
You have to pay me to use Apple, Microsoft, and Google products. None of those organizations are good. Apple and Google both use immutable locked down OSes on their main products that prevents improving device security, such as IP & DNS filtering / blocking. Microsoft user experience keeps getting worse. Latest version of Teams, as of today, says I'm at the "Calendar" screen and the navigation and content screen both show "Chat". "Calendar" was unpinned because I find Teams to be at interacting with content. No reason it should be a PDF viewer when the desktop application is actually usable allows for viewing chat and content at the same time. I understand developing for those platforms makes money or is needed for other products. Unless I have to develop products that support those companies, I will never pay with my personal income to support those organizations.
- herval 1y ago
  So you don't use a smartphone?
  - powgpu 1y ago
    Me and many people don't. Just laptop is good enough. Although currently switched back to apple silicon ATM for LLM, price and convince reasons, and as soonest linux on Apple Silicon reach some maturity, will switch over completely. However not using a smartphone is probably good for one's mental and physical healthy now days. It is understandable if your work require you to have one, but if I'm not getting paid, why would I even get a smartphone? Back in the 80's there are investment people managing billions dollars and deals over pen paper and a land line!
    - herval 1y ago
      back in the 1880s, people didn't even need refrigerators!
      - jama211 1y ago
        Hahahahaha, right?
    - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
      I'm the opposite, I didn't own a personal computer from like 2015 until last year when I built a new gaming PC. I had a MacBook Pro from work of course, but I just got by on my phone / iPad for my personal life.
    - jama211 1y ago
      Laptops are way heavier and more bulky than phones, and phones can do 90% of what a laptop can do across a cross section of most people’s daily tasks. You don’t have to be a genius to see the value in one. The mental health stuff is about social media apps and things, which aren’t mandatory. If you don’t want one because of some principled stance that’s fine, but don’t pretend there’s no value in them.
  - echelon 1y ago
    Because antitrust enforcement has been so lax, we only have two options. The DOJ/FTC/EU/ASEAN/etc. need to force a breakup of first party app stores, first party payment, first party web browser, and first party messaging. They also really need to require web installs without hidden menus and scare walls. We'll see a proliferation of offerings if that happens.
rockemsockem 1y ago
For hardware only
- retired_account 1y ago
  Eh, macOS is still the UNIX with the most commercial software available. 26 feels like a misstep*, of course, but I’ll take it over a Windows environment any day. * Xcode 26 is kinda neat, though
  - criddell 1y ago
    A mac can (legally) run more software than any other computer. Obviously, macOS apps work, but you can also run most Windows and Linux applications (in a VM). There's also a bunch of iOS/iPadOS apps that can work and some Android apps can run through BlueStacks.
    - Sebb767 1y ago
      > but you can also run most Windows and Linux applications (in a VM). This is really just a cheap rhetorical trick. Linux [0] can run just as much software, if you include VMs, but you can't legally virtualize MacOS, therefore buying a Mac is the only way to legally run their software, in addition to everything else. Now, you are technically correct, but the casual interpretation of > Eh, macOS is still the UNIX with the most commercial software available. isn't really that you can simply run everything unavailable on MacOS in a VM (or several layers of VMs). It's the same as arguing that Powerpoint is all you ever need, as it is Turing complete. [0] And so can Windows, if you run said VMs in a Linux VM.
- jama211 1y ago
  It’s ok to have preferences, it’s not ok to say “x is objectively bad” just because you personally don’t like it.
  - rockemsockem 1y ago
    Your comment does what your comment says isn't okay. Maybe you shouldn't go around policing people's opinions.
worik 1y ago
No. Linux is better. That worm has turned, at least five years ago
- powgpu 1y ago
  for X_86 family for sure, but the experience on other chip set such as Apple Silicon (maybe the arms) for desktop usage are quite rough around the edges.
  - deaddodo 1y ago
    Linux works fine on ARM devices. The problem is lack of good (non-Apple) ARM devices, not Linux.
  - trelane 1y ago
    "Apple silicon?" Man, how well does OSX run on a raspberry pi? Clearly it's the inferior OS. /s
  - spookie 1y ago
    Never had issues with other ARM chips other than the Apple co-designed ones. Oh, and if you have problems running Linux on Macs... That isn't Linux's fault.
    - SirHumphrey 1y ago
      But Apple ARM chips currently represent most of the laptop and desktop computer market share for ARM processors. Sure, Linux in embedded and semi-embedded capacity works perfectly well with almost all ARM (and even RISC-V) processors, but I doubt most of the people here will be switching to raspberry pi as the daily driver anytime soon. Hopefully either Asahi support improves in the near future or Snapdragon X Elite support in Linux becomes a bit better.
- fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
  When someone makes a SteamOS level "just works" distro for desktop / gaming I'll probably happily switch

__loam 1y ago

The rocky start for apple intelligence is what excites me

bee_rider 1y ago

They aren’t doing a great job exactly, but what is there to recommend to somebody who doesn’t want to use the command line? SteamOS, maybe, haha.

catigula 1y ago

It's also amazing that they convinced developers that running a non-standard CPU instruction set through a laundered Rosetta layer was somehow battery or compute friendly lb for lb when an AMD processor (or even Intel) is plenty efficient and cool. Are any applications on your Mac touching Rosetta right now? You'd better hope not because those single percentage gains from ARM evaporate fast.

n8cpdx 1y ago
Delusional take. Rosetta is for maintaining compatibility during the transition. Efficiency is fine with Rosetta. But it doesn’t matter because the ARM transition is essentially already done. Not true, unfortunately, for Windows. Aside from superior performance and battery life (even compared to ARM windows offerings), the M series devices are generally reliable, unlike windows laptops running Intel and (less so) AMD.
- catigula 1y ago
  What is the efficiency loss specifically? Do you even know, or are you just asserting it? >it doesn't matter because the ARM transition is essentially already done 'Essentially' is doing a lot of heavy-lifting here, but, putting that aside, A. you're wrong, I've recently ran into Rosetta throttling and B. it's not a good reason to begin the project at all, it's only a good reason when it's already done. You're essentially ceding "Yes, I've been wrong and this has been a fool's errand for the past x years until right this moment as the project is done". It's not done and it'd a weak argument. >Aside from superior performance and battery life (even compared to ARM windows offerings), the M series devices are generally reliable, unlike windows laptops running Intel and (less so) AMD. Specifically what are the numbers? Because I have performance/tdp numbers and the M-series performs well but it isn't a categorical difference. In fact, that's no difference, it performs okay but AMD is at the top of the heap currently. Sad.
  - hundchenkatze 1y ago
    then post the numbers? You're just here doing the same thing, asserting that the efficiency is bad, only using more words. Performance and efficiency has been great for me. I've never run into rosetta throttling. I've got the numbers - trust me bro.

herval 1y ago

Apple is certainly fumbling in recent years, and it's clearly behind in some games (Siri, AI in general, iPhones turning into a yearly snooze-fest). But of all the FAANG, I'd say it's the only one I trust, simply because they're not trying to sell my data and have a consistent stance on security.

QuercusMax 1y ago
Tim Cook giving Trump a gold-plated statue in exchange for tariff preferences seems like a very bad sign.
- elictronic 1y ago
  It seems like they got the memo. Pay Trump personally or have your business destroyed. Im not really sure how that benefits me as a US citizen but that is who the majority of the population seems to want and once the rules are set you follow or face made up tariffs that rip you apart. Right.
- herval 1y ago
  It certainly is. It's not exclusive to Apple, however - _all_ the big tech (and non-tech) companies offered tribute, in one form or another. Despite it being illegal, it seems to be the new government practice. Whether that'll lead to the government requiring Apple to break their encryption, it remains to be seen. I imagine Apple has a bit of an edge here anyway, since iCloud is allegedly e2e encrypted?
- pklausler 1y ago
  Why? It was a relatively cheap way to dodge the capricious whims of a madman who is fortunately easy to distract with shiny objects.
- kriops 1y ago
  Why? Regardless of your view of Trump, would you not expect mr. Cook to play the game? His only job is literally and figuratively to navigate hell or high waters to deliver value to the shareholders.
- 1y ago

eadmund 1y ago

You forgot things like shipping decades-old free software with their OS because Apple are so implacably opposed to their users having freedom to use, examine, modify and share that software.

junon 1y ago
SIP is the obvious contra, though.
Sharlin 1y ago
Funnily I just yesterday realized that my macOS-bundled bash version is (was) from 2007 because $BASH_ALIASES (introduced in bash 4) didn't work.
spauldo 1y ago
I've always heard Apple's refusal to use GPL3 code was due to the patent clause. They certainly don't seem to mind including GPL2 software.

asveikau 1y ago

> A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality It's funny that this exact phrase could have been written about Apple in 1998.

Philadelphia 1y ago
Mac OS 8 was new in 1997 and was pretty innovative for user-facing features, if not the underlying operating system. It blew Windows 98 out of the water as far as that went.
- asveikau 1y ago
  I was around at the time. Mac OS 8 had no preemptive multitasking or meaningful address space protections. A single bad pointer dereference in user mode took down the entire system, and a single busy loop without a yield locked up the entire system. Both of these were universally admitted to be bad and outdated by technically minded people. By 1997 they had looked at replacing it with BeOS or NEXTSTEP, and purchased the latter with the goal of replacing Mac OS. The Rhapsody OS, an OS8 style UI with NeXT underneath, had already been started. Before that, they had also attempted and failed to write a next gen classic Mac OS (Copland). Windows 9x had a lot of problems, but had preemptive multitasking and much better address space isolation. Windows NT 4 Workstation was also a thing at the time and much better. It did take them two more releases to make it into the consumer product.
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    > It did take them two more releases to make it into the consumer product. Rather: It took them two more releases until they offered a version that had a price tag (setting the price was a conscious decision by Microsoft) that made a Windows NT derivate also affordable to non-professional users.
    - asveikau 1y ago
      I don't think it was that simple. Hardware support wasn't good on NT, and it had poor compatibility with a lot of 9x software. These were two things that MS considered obstacles at the time.

worik 1y ago

....and their tools are very flash, bright colours and buttons...and they mostly work "Mostly" is not good enough. The user experience of Apple is still good, the developer experience is woeful

nobleach 1y ago

If that's what you "mostly" remember, your memory is awfully selective. It's totally fine for you to have a bias, but you're overlooking decades of massively successful products and services. Having owned plenty of Thinkpads (Linux), Dells(Windows and Linux) and plenty of Macbook Pros, I can say, Apple's superiority of hardware is so far beyond the rest. Having an OS with a BSD-ish experience is really nice as well. I've spent 27 years in engineering and during most of that time I get the random "Linux is far superior", "I like Windows better" folks... but by and large, yes, Apple's tech has a ton of good will.

bananalychee 1y ago
Of course it does in the US tech bubble, if you talk to people who haven't been using Macs for 30 years you might hear a different story. While Apple makes good hardware they also have plenty of blunders, especially in recent years, much like Microsoft in its domain really. Both are coasting on their past successes and familiarity. I get it, many of my coworkers watch their announcement streams like they're video game announcements. From my standpoint they haven't put out anything exciting since the iPhone/iPod Touch, but I don't have the money for toys that cost thousands of dollars apiece like the Mac Studios or their VR headset, so maybe I'm missing out.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  The VR headset was such a flop that I think it might paradoxically have not hurt their reputation. Like nobody is saying “wow, this Apple vision thing really sucks,” because nobody has seen one.
  - jama211 1y ago
    Also no one cares about it positive or negative because it’s such a nothing burger. No one even thinks apple thought it would be big, it was an experiment that’s all.
- zeroc8 1y ago
  The Mac Mini has been exciting for me. A great low cost low energy consumption desktop that does what it is supposed to do.

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brownriceowl 1y ago

We have different ideas of what qualifies as tech people if we're talking about Liquid Glass, Siri, and Vision Pro IMO, "consumer electronics enthusiasts" != "tech people"

QuantumGood 1y ago

In my business (partly home studio support), it's hard to support MacOS for new-ish users. If the OS is old, things like FFMPEG will not work with things like Audacity. And to use an old version of FFMPEG, you have to guess which one, then install a variety of dev tools to compile it, waay beyond the capability of the average "I just want to record my podcast user". Audacity itself has an extensive help article devoted to this issue for Mac. If you have a new Mac, you'll find companies have given up going through the cost and time of certifying for each new Mac OS, like Evoluent (early vertical mouse maker), who gave up several versions ago and won't support using all the extra mouse buttons their product has on Mac. If you want to use many audio plugins, you'll have to deal with special permissions if it didn't come from the app store. If you want to use zoom to let a remote tech control your screen, you have to find and set two security permisssions. For all four of these issue on Windows, it just works. UPDATE: As commenter below pointed out, experienced users have a different experience than new users, which doesn't invalidate the specific issues I've mentioned, and which I encounter every month, and sometimes weekly.

nativeit 1y ago
I’m a producer since Cool Edit Pro and Fruity Loops. I’ve used Windows and Macs for audio and video production extensively over the last two decades. I have no idea what you’re on about.
- QuantumGood 1y ago
  I gave four specific examples that frequently slow me down when helping people who are new to studio stuff. You ignored my examples, and pointed out you have decades of experience. Why do you start by pointing out you're not the user I'm talking about and ignore the examples?

zamalek 1y ago

> > Wait, do they? The echo chamber is still reverberating. People say that MacOS is good because other people have told them so. The people claiming that is better don't have an earnest effort outside of the ecosystem to support their claims. I was forced to use MacOS at work up until a little over 1.5 years ago, I have perspective on both, and it is categorically incompetent. It doesn't hold a candle to dev on Linux. As for Windows? Windows 7/11 are probably still better than MacOS (as you implied with your comment about neglect), but it's probably as bad or slightly better than Win 11.

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snoman 1y ago
I’ve used Windows at work for years, my personal/gaming machine is Linux (mint), my personal/development machine is MacOS. They’re all perfectly viable options with strengths and weaknesses. None of them are especially great. I’m partial to MacOS, personally. It’s willful ignorance to think that the many millions of people that like MacOS are just parroting what they’ve been told.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  > It’s willful ignorance to think that the many millions of people that like MacOS are just parroting what they’ve been told. This is so entirely true. I've installed so many different Linux distributions (and multiple Windows versions) on my personal laptop. Currently noodling around with NixOS. I've never been tempted by a non-macOS laptop for work. Whatever faults macOS has, it is very good at staying out of my way for getting work done, and all the small ancillary bits (eg webcam and audio support for chatting) have worked flawlessly for me for two decades. I cannot say the same about either Windows or Linux.

dimgl 1y ago

> I'd say few tech people have been excited about Apple otherwise lately, as product or platform. Maybe you're speaking for yourself? I absolutely love my Macbook and the M-series are the best devices I've ever owned. > - A neglected desktop OS with slowly deteriorating quality Really? I haven't noticed.