4 ms·

Sure but those are unrelated. Microsoft doesn't make the chips, and Windows crapiness is its own thing. It not like macOS would turn to crap if they made Rosett

Sure but those are unrelated. Microsoft doesn't make the chips, and Windows crapiness is its own thing. It not like macOS would turn to crap if they made Rosetta2 support x86-32, or in general stopped breaking all the 3P software.

raw_anon_1111 1y ago
Windows crapiness is because they won’t deprecate anything ever. Read some of Raymond Chen’s posts about all of the special casing they did for apps that broke on newer versions of Windows because app developers were using unpublished APIs. Every bit of backwards compatibility increases the testing surface and the vulnerabilities. In fact, an early bug in Windows NT that you could encode DOS shell commands in the browser URL bar from a client and they wouod run with admin privileges if the server was running IIS. Should Apple have also kept 68K emulation around? PPC?
- morshu9001 1y ago
  Apple went the other extreme. Even if you use public APIs exactly the way they want, your software will break frequently. This is without even getting into the whole OpenGL vs Metal drama. In Windows they took things a bit too far by not only supporting old stuff but also treating it as first-class. If software is too outdated, it's fair to stick it behind some compat layer that makes it slower, as long as it still runs. But that's not even the biggest problem with Windows, it's Microsoft turning it into adware, also not being Unixlike in the first place. To answer your last question, yes for PPC at least. 68K is too old to matter. Emulation layer doesn't need to hold back the entire system. If it means less dev resources to spend making glass effects and emojis, fine.
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    It does hold back the entire system though. It increases the attack surface of vulnerabilities and it allows companies like Adobe and Microsoft to be lazy about updating their software.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  > Should Apple have also kept 68K emulation around? PPC? Yes? What kind of mercurial clown world do you live in, where you pay for software and then cheer when it's yoinked off your computer in an OTA update? Even Windows users aren't whipped enough to lick their OEM's boot like that, Jesus. You'd hope Mac users would still have a spine; Apple doesn't maintain macOS as a charity, you're allowed to disagree with them.
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    I don’t believe you are serious that you don’t see the issue with MacOS having - A 68K emulator - A PPC emulator - a 32 bit x86 emulator - a 32 bit ARM emulator (since ARM chips don’t have hardware to run 32 bit code) And to think that Windows is a shining example of good operating system design. Why not include a 65C02 emulator also so you can run AppleWorks 3.0 from 1986?
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      I don't believe you know what you're talking about, if you think that Apple's 64-bit ARM chips struggle to run 32-bit code in-userland. Especially if you're going to put words in my mouth - at no point did I ever call the Windows OS a shining example of anything. You're confirming my suspicion that you live in a mercurial clown dimension. However, I will absolutely say Windows users have higher expectations from Microsoft than what Mac customers demand from Apple. Macs would get removed by force from many of the places that rely on Windows in professional settings like render farms, factory automation, and defense. There is absolutely zero tolerance for Apple's shenanigans there, and Apple offers those customers no products to take their needs seriously, unlike Microsoft. It's not a coincidence that Apple has zero buy-in outside the consumer market, not a single professional customer wants what Apple is selling if Nvidia or AMD will do the same thing with less-petty software support. We all know why products like XServe failed, poor Apple had too much pride to support the software that the industry had actual demand for. While we're talking about software darwinism, I think you need to hear this; Darwin objectively sucks from a systems design standpoint, it's why nobody uses XNU unless they're forced to. It's empirically slow, deliberately neutered for third-parties, the user-exposed runtime is loaded with outdated/unnecessary crap and BSD tooling that won't work with industry-standard software, the IPC model is not secure (fight me), the capabilities are arbitrarily changed per-OS, filesystem security is second-rate like Windows/Bitlocker, the default install is bloated with literal gigabytes of deadweight binaries, both LLB and iBoot are mandatory NSA slopware blobs, and their SDK commitment is more fickle than developers playing Musical Chairs. None of these kernels are good, but XNU is unique in that it is completely disposable to humanity and possesses no remaining valuable features. If macOS stopped working tomorrow, there would be no disruption to any critical infrastructure around the world. If Linux or Windows had a Y2K moment, we'd be measuring the deaths by the thousands. I'm willing to give Apple their due, but you refuse to admit they're lazy - "since ARM chips don't have hardware" my ass, on "hacker" news of all places...

raw_anon_1111 1y ago

Windows crapiness is because they won’t deprecate anything ever. Read some of Raymond Chen’s posts about all of the special casing they did for apps that broke on newer versions of Windows because app developers were using unpublished APIs. Every bit of backwards compatibility increases the testing surface and the vulnerabilities. In fact, an early bug in Windows NT that you could encode DOS shell commands in the browser URL bar from a client and they wouod run with admin privileges if the server was running IIS. Should Apple have also kept 68K emulation around? PPC?

morshu9001 1y ago
Apple went the other extreme. Even if you use public APIs exactly the way they want, your software will break frequently. This is without even getting into the whole OpenGL vs Metal drama. In Windows they took things a bit too far by not only supporting old stuff but also treating it as first-class. If software is too outdated, it's fair to stick it behind some compat layer that makes it slower, as long as it still runs. But that's not even the biggest problem with Windows, it's Microsoft turning it into adware, also not being Unixlike in the first place. To answer your last question, yes for PPC at least. 68K is too old to matter. Emulation layer doesn't need to hold back the entire system. If it means less dev resources to spend making glass effects and emojis, fine.
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  It does hold back the entire system though. It increases the attack surface of vulnerabilities and it allows companies like Adobe and Microsoft to be lazy about updating their software.
bigyabai 1y ago
> Should Apple have also kept 68K emulation around? PPC? Yes? What kind of mercurial clown world do you live in, where you pay for software and then cheer when it's yoinked off your computer in an OTA update? Even Windows users aren't whipped enough to lick their OEM's boot like that, Jesus. You'd hope Mac users would still have a spine; Apple doesn't maintain macOS as a charity, you're allowed to disagree with them.
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  I don’t believe you are serious that you don’t see the issue with MacOS having - A 68K emulator - A PPC emulator - a 32 bit x86 emulator - a 32 bit ARM emulator (since ARM chips don’t have hardware to run 32 bit code) And to think that Windows is a shining example of good operating system design. Why not include a 65C02 emulator also so you can run AppleWorks 3.0 from 1986?
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    I don't believe you know what you're talking about, if you think that Apple's 64-bit ARM chips struggle to run 32-bit code in-userland. Especially if you're going to put words in my mouth - at no point did I ever call the Windows OS a shining example of anything. You're confirming my suspicion that you live in a mercurial clown dimension. However, I will absolutely say Windows users have higher expectations from Microsoft than what Mac customers demand from Apple. Macs would get removed by force from many of the places that rely on Windows in professional settings like render farms, factory automation, and defense. There is absolutely zero tolerance for Apple's shenanigans there, and Apple offers those customers no products to take their needs seriously, unlike Microsoft. It's not a coincidence that Apple has zero buy-in outside the consumer market, not a single professional customer wants what Apple is selling if Nvidia or AMD will do the same thing with less-petty software support. We all know why products like XServe failed, poor Apple had too much pride to support the software that the industry had actual demand for. While we're talking about software darwinism, I think you need to hear this; Darwin objectively sucks from a systems design standpoint, it's why nobody uses XNU unless they're forced to. It's empirically slow, deliberately neutered for third-parties, the user-exposed runtime is loaded with outdated/unnecessary crap and BSD tooling that won't work with industry-standard software, the IPC model is not secure (fight me), the capabilities are arbitrarily changed per-OS, filesystem security is second-rate like Windows/Bitlocker, the default install is bloated with literal gigabytes of deadweight binaries, both LLB and iBoot are mandatory NSA slopware blobs, and their SDK commitment is more fickle than developers playing Musical Chairs. None of these kernels are good, but XNU is unique in that it is completely disposable to humanity and possesses no remaining valuable features. If macOS stopped working tomorrow, there would be no disruption to any critical infrastructure around the world. If Linux or Windows had a Y2K moment, we'd be measuring the deaths by the thousands. I'm willing to give Apple their due, but you refuse to admit they're lazy - "since ARM chips don't have hardware" my ass, on "hacker" news of all places...