5 ms·

The web/webapps/mobile helped lead to this era of "desktop PCs" (to include laptops) where the browser mattered more than the OS. It allowed Apple to become res

by rconti 11mo ago

The web/webapps/mobile helped lead to this era of "desktop PCs" (to include laptops) where the browser mattered more than the OS. It allowed Apple to become resurgent in the desktop market because OS compatibility mattered less than ever. It's not weird that it led to Apple regaining _some_ market share because clearly there was demand for the Apple/MacOS/OS X experience that may have been tempered by incompatibility in the pre-webapp days. What _is_ weird, and nonintuitive, is that the (by all accounts) higher-cost vendor would be seen as ascendent in this market. All the more weird for two reasons: 1. The Apple experience, at least on the OS side, matters less and less in the webapp world. 2. Apple isn't trying, either! They're seemingly doing their best to abandon and alienate their desktop OS users. A decade or more of stagnation or regression in features and usability, capped off by Tahoe this year. It feels like Apple and Microsoft are just waiting for the desktop OS to die, waiting for mobile to take it over; so we can all just shut up and stop asking for filesystems and terminals so they can sell us iPads and Surfaces, and they can finally be free of this ancient burden of selling desktop computer OSes. And the consumers keep buying the stupid things, demanding product in a market that the vendors don't want any part of.

blitz_skull 11mo ago
As an Apple Stan, I don’t understand what you’re referring to. MacOS is light years ahead of Windows in so many arenas, I’m not really sure what you could be referring to when you say “stagnation”. Every OS ever released has issues at launch, not sure if that’s what you mean by “regression”. But man… windows has been garbage for the better part of 2 decades now.
- cocoa19 11mo ago
  If light years means not inundate the OS with ads, shove AI down our throats and redesign every app with regressed UX, then sure.
  - drw85 11mo ago
    Actually in the latest MacOS release it constantly trains local models for all kinds of junk without asking you at all. I had to disable all that AI garbage in the settings after researching a bunch of local inference and training processes that were grinding my MacBook to a halt every time it woke up from sleep.
- liuliu 11mo ago
  Windows 7 is the last good one. And that is only... Oh, almost 20 years ago. Never mind.
  - layer8 11mo ago
    Windows 7 was supported until 10 years ago.
    - 1718627440 11mo ago
      Yeah, the version history as perceived by the vendor and as perceived by the commoner are somewhat out of touch. To me Windows 10 is basically new and already considered to be out-of-date.
  - markus_zhang 11mo ago
    10 is OK if you remove the ads and stop random update. I’ll never use 11 and beyond. I always switched to Linux for my dev box and now that I play less and less game (haven’t played for weeks) I’ll switch to Linux for my personal box too, once the current one broke down.
  - spacechild1 11mo ago
    Windows 10 Pro is actually a pretty decent OS. It brought quite a few major improvements over Windows 7 and I can't really think of any notable downsides.
- frameset 11mo ago
  It's telling that to defend Apple against the charge of stagnation you immediately attacked Windows.
  - bestnameever 11mo ago
    They only attacked Windows at the very end of their statement.
    - Mountain_Skies 11mo ago
      And the second sentence.
    - Wololooo 11mo ago
      And I mean... They're not wrong. I use a Mac for work, but also use windows and Linux machines. The best experience hands down when it comes to specific things would be Linux, for very niche things because it's way less clunky than it used to and people have figured things out in the meantime. My mac is the only system that I can mount (without too much pain because people have figured it out) any filesystem, I can virtually open every document from Mac to Windows to Linux. I have something close to package control with homebrew. The M chips are ridiculously good at both being decently performant while low energy consumption. Sure it has its host of issues and I would be the first one in line to dunk on Apple for many many... many many, reasons, but there are things to like with their laptops... In comparison, recently, Windows has been more and more aggressive towards their users and their data, attempting to lock people in for some spreadsheet editor... Gone are the days of Lotus1-2-3...
- smallmancontrov 11mo ago
  After two decades of relentless effort, Apple has finally managed to make Spotlight as broken and useless as Windows Search where it doesn't find local files and just returns web results.
- candiddevmike 11mo ago
  Snapping and switching windows is light-years ahead of Windows? It only recently became a little more reasonable, and even then they still kept that idiotic full screen mechanic.
  - wffurr 11mo ago
    The full screen thing was great on an 11” MacBook Air. It’s pretty useless on anything bigger.
- CharlieDigital 11mo ago
  macOS daily driver for last 5 years because the hardware is better; I can stay unplugged for almost my entire workday. Lots of things irk me about macOS UX. Finder's lack of tree view sidebar really irks me. Having to disable the silly animations and sounds when I get a new machine irks me. The absolutely terrible window tiling system irks me. When I minimize a window, I can no longer tab into it. The settings dialog's weird behavior with respect to resizing on both axes irks me. Can't use 3 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock and the secondary monitors end up with limited refresh rate options. Meanwhile, I can just plug just about any dock into my 5 year old Windows laptop and multiple monitors just work. Still can't find anything as good as IrfanView (as old and dated as it is, it made working with image libraries a breeze). Finder and the poor external monitor support somehow irks me the most because now I end up typing into the CLI 90% of the time because the navigation experience is so bad and for me this is a work machine and the difficulty in using 3+ monitors is silly. I get being an Apple Stan (love the hardware), but the software UX is 100% bottom of the barrel stuff. Basic OS stuff like Explorer is just light years ahead of Finder.
  - markus_zhang 11mo ago
    Exactly my thought, the last paragraph.
  - glpgeFwac 11mo ago
    > Can't use 3 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock Or you could buy a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max and plug in four monitors without displaylink.
    - mschild 11mo ago
      Something that most sub 1000€ laptops could do over a decade ago, requires a macbook costing well above 2000€ in 2025. I'm running multiple types of machines in my home for work and personal use but macs have been by far the worst offender for multiscreen support for a long time.
      - raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
- munificent 11mo ago
  The question is not whether MacOS is ahead of Windows. As an Apple user since the Apple IIe, I agree it's still the best OS by a mile. But that has basically always been true, at least since Mac OS X. (I liked the earlier OSes too, but they really did crash all the time and have no memory protection, so arguably Windows had some compelling advantages.) The interesting question is whether recent MacOS releases are ahead of their previous versions. Of the top of my head, I can't think of a single feature that MacOS has shipped since 2020 that I care about. Maybe dark mode? The hardware keeps better, and the experience of third-party apps I care about (VS Code and Ableton) is superior to Windows. But the OS and first-party apps seem completely stagnant. Which, arguably, is OK. Maybe the OS should just be a commodity. But I have to imagine that there are user experience improvements they could make at the OS but I certainly haven't seen any.
  - tiltowait 11mo ago
    > Of the top of my head, I can't think of a single feature that MacOS has shipped since 2020 that I care about. They all kind of blend together, so I asked Claude to give me a list of major features since 2020. Here are those that I've enjoyed: * Universal control * iPhone mirroring * Stage Manager * Container CLI Granted it's not a giant list, but each release does have little refinements here and there, and Claude may have missed some (it didn't mention container CLI, for instance; that was from my memory). I also omitted some features I don't care about (like Safari profiles and some other window management stuff). What features are you hoping for? Aside from a tiling WM, which won't happen, I'd be happy just with refinements and bug fixes.
  - green7ea 11mo ago
    > it's still the best OS by a mile I'm not so sure about that, modern Linux is pretty good — I was able to configure it to fit my needs much better than I could a mac. It's also free of dark patterns (looking at Windows). If you're willing and able to configure Linux, I would say that, for some people, it's much better than a mac.
    - munificent 11mo ago
      One of the main things I run on my Mac is Ableton Live, so Linux is a no-go. Also, I'm no longer the kind of person who really wants to tinker with an OS set up and doing a lot of manual configuration. I just want a decent user experience out of the box and good connectivity with all my various peripherals.
- rolisz 11mo ago
  I bought a MacBook last year. The amount of stupid bugs is insane. Safari eating text input, Safari simply not connecting to internet after several days (while chrome is working well). I have to restart my Mac more often than I had to restart my last Windows machine, because it simply grinds to a halt (with a frickin' M4 Max processor)
  - seam_carver 11mo ago
    Yea, Safari 26.1 is really buggy for me on macOS 15. Google searching the issue, lots of my issues are fixed int he 26.2 beta, I had to download beta from apple developer website.
- sofixa 11mo ago
  > MacOS is light years ahead of Windows in so many arenas At least Windows dignifies you with an error message (even if a hex code and badly tanslated text) when something is wrong. macOS mocks you with a dumb and utterly useless message like "Something went wrong, try again" or "A USB device is using too much power, try unplugging it". Or just flat out not showing the button for the thing you're looking for if prerequisites aren't filled (iPad screen extending, unless the iPad is on the same Apple ID, and has been restarted since, the button just isn't there and there is nothing you can do to debug it other than tryingn to guess what is missing). Also, Windows allows you to install whatever with a clear UX (this might be dangerous for random crap from the internet vs having to jump through a weird non-existing UX to get it to open, or flat out being blocked from using downloaded libaries).
  - AniseAbyss 11mo ago
    [dead]
- dingnuts 11mo ago
  [dead]
- markus_zhang 11mo ago
  I use all three and I have to say Windows shitifize itself by adding too much ads, but if you can remove those than it’s a better experience than MacOS. Someone else on HN has a line that I agree with:”Apple makes the OS apps mundane so that people can write replacements and sell those in App Store where Apple has a fat share”.
- rconti 11mo ago
  I love the Mac, but the OS has gone nowhere in ages. I can't think of a new feature since APFS. Have you _seen_ system preferences? Insanely hostile permissions and "untrusted software" behavior. Nobody seems to like Tahoe, but I can't really speak to it because I don't even want to install it.
wongarsu 11mo ago
Apple is at least in part operating like they are a fashion brand. Functionality and usability are secondary to looks. Both in their devices and their software. It's hard to argue they aren't successful with that. It probably helps that Microsoft has also abandoned usability, just for very different reasons
- dawnerd 11mo ago
  I thought it was an Ive problem but once he left nothing really changed. Sure the Mac got some functionality back but that’s about it. They really need to just not do a redesign and flesh out their software.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
  Are you complaining that Apple is releasing computers that are fast, quiet and with a ridiculous long battery life that are well built as “not functional”?
  - encom 11mo ago
    Apple has famously been form over function almost since their inception.
    - samdoesnothing 11mo ago
      This is true, with the caveat that their function is also best in class. And I mean yeah, they make gorgeous devices, but even if they were ugly id still choose them because they also work better than any alternatives.
      - frizlab 11mo ago
        Well said. (An upvote was not enough.)
      - ffsm8 11mo ago
        I use an (at this point older) MacBook pro myself (M1) and honestly believe it is a great product. I am a lot happier with it then if I bought an equivalent windows device. However, its definitely true that Apple prioritizes looks is function. We're just currently in a generation where it ceased to matter for the most part, because Apple Silicon has made the previous tradeoffs basically meaningless. But that's not because Apple started to prioritize function, technology has just gotten good enough for their design philosophy to no longer hamper it significantly
riversflow 11mo ago
> 1. The Apple experience, at least on the OS side, matters less and less in the webapp world. I see it the opposite. At least for iPhone owners Universal Clipboard and file sharing with Airdrop are killer apps.
- bloaf 11mo ago
  On android, KDE Connect felt great for basic copy/pasting/file transfer between devices. https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ On iOS, KDE Connect feels like its running a potato sack race with both arms tied behind its back.
- Kye 11mo ago
  I didn't really get it until I Airdropped a shipping label PDF to the guy at the UPS store to print from his phone, which was already set up for the label printer.
  - encom 11mo ago
    File transfer! What will they think of next?
    - AOsborn 11mo ago
      File transfer that just works. My mum can use airdrop. She sends us things. She doesn't need to install anything or configure things. She just uses the first-party UI. It's the same with Airpods. Bluetooth headphones? Yeah, you can buy some for $20, who needs Apple ones? Apparently everyone. Turns out providing great noise cancellation and bluetooth that just works means the product is appealing to general consumers.
      - csomar 11mo ago
        File transfer worked well on Nokia devices and was pretty stable. What was not, is bluetooth connections with audio devices. This is a solved problem now and my Xiaomi earpods connection is pretty stable. I remember having more issues with the Airpods.
AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
> What _is_ weird, and nonintuitive, is that the (by all accounts) higher-cost vendor would be seen as ascendent in this market. It actually kind of makes sense. Apple has stopped caring but Microsoft is actively hostile. You then have people who can afford it switching to Apple, but the higher price deters everyone who can't, which in turn reduces the pressure on Microsoft to clean up their act. The interesting thing is Linux. It's starting from a smaller base but in the last couple of years the growth rate is even higher than macOS.
raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
You mean alienate their desktop users by making chips specifically targeting them that are fast, run cool, quiet and have ridiculously long battery lives? You’ve seen much more frequent updates in the Mac line post ARM than you did in the Intel era.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- rikafurude21 11mo ago
  Letting go of x86 was just one of the first steps on the road to a world completely dominated by mobile devices. Macs just caught up with all the progress that mobile devices had made when apple made the switch.
- rconti 11mo ago
  Yeah, the hardware's been fantastic, but the OS has mostly treaded water with the occasional step backwards.
  - tim333 11mo ago
    Maybe people are happy with the OS treading water? I basically just want it to run programs, let me find files and connect to the wifi.
hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
Apple keeps cycling between great hardware and not so great software and great software and not so great hardware. In the PowerPC era the software was fantastic, especially when you factor in the much lower odds of viruses and malware. However, the hardware was well behind the curve except right at the release of a new generations, which were few and far in between. Then when Apple switched to Intel, you had a few years of incredible hardware and incredible software. This is when the Mac absolutely blew up. But then while Apple has constantly been improving the hardware (although they’ve made repairabiltu and extensibility worse), their software has seen a steady decline. Where Apple has been really lucky is that while their software has seen a steady decline, their primary competitor MS’s software has seen several steep declines.
duxup 11mo ago
I feel like when I fire up my mac(s) the OS really is there for me to use, new features, better or worse do in fact feel like they're there FOR me with some thought of me as a user. Windows, it feels like the OS is pointed AT ME more than anything else. I used to be happy with windows, it wasn't great but it was utilitarian enough that I could get things done ... not anymore, the OS is a hurdle. I understand longer time Apple users say macOS used to be better, I don't know about that, but the experience with apple silicon and so forth has been great for me. If Apple wasn't trying they could have just stuck with x86...

by rconti 11mo ago

blitz_skull 11mo ago

As an Apple Stan, I don’t understand what you’re referring to. MacOS is light years ahead of Windows in so many arenas, I’m not really sure what you could be referring to when you say “stagnation”. Every OS ever released has issues at launch, not sure if that’s what you mean by “regression”. But man… windows has been garbage for the better part of 2 decades now.

cocoa19 11mo ago
If light years means not inundate the OS with ads, shove AI down our throats and redesign every app with regressed UX, then sure.
- drw85 11mo ago
  Actually in the latest MacOS release it constantly trains local models for all kinds of junk without asking you at all. I had to disable all that AI garbage in the settings after researching a bunch of local inference and training processes that were grinding my MacBook to a halt every time it woke up from sleep.
liuliu 11mo ago
Windows 7 is the last good one. And that is only... Oh, almost 20 years ago. Never mind.
- layer8 11mo ago
  Windows 7 was supported until 10 years ago.
  - 1718627440 11mo ago
    Yeah, the version history as perceived by the vendor and as perceived by the commoner are somewhat out of touch. To me Windows 10 is basically new and already considered to be out-of-date.
- markus_zhang 11mo ago
  10 is OK if you remove the ads and stop random update. I’ll never use 11 and beyond. I always switched to Linux for my dev box and now that I play less and less game (haven’t played for weeks) I’ll switch to Linux for my personal box too, once the current one broke down.
- spacechild1 11mo ago
  Windows 10 Pro is actually a pretty decent OS. It brought quite a few major improvements over Windows 7 and I can't really think of any notable downsides.
frameset 11mo ago
It's telling that to defend Apple against the charge of stagnation you immediately attacked Windows.
- bestnameever 11mo ago
  They only attacked Windows at the very end of their statement.
  - Mountain_Skies 11mo ago
    And the second sentence.
  - Wololooo 11mo ago
    And I mean... They're not wrong. I use a Mac for work, but also use windows and Linux machines. The best experience hands down when it comes to specific things would be Linux, for very niche things because it's way less clunky than it used to and people have figured things out in the meantime. My mac is the only system that I can mount (without too much pain because people have figured it out) any filesystem, I can virtually open every document from Mac to Windows to Linux. I have something close to package control with homebrew. The M chips are ridiculously good at both being decently performant while low energy consumption. Sure it has its host of issues and I would be the first one in line to dunk on Apple for many many... many many, reasons, but there are things to like with their laptops... In comparison, recently, Windows has been more and more aggressive towards their users and their data, attempting to lock people in for some spreadsheet editor... Gone are the days of Lotus1-2-3...
smallmancontrov 11mo ago
After two decades of relentless effort, Apple has finally managed to make Spotlight as broken and useless as Windows Search where it doesn't find local files and just returns web results.
candiddevmike 11mo ago
Snapping and switching windows is light-years ahead of Windows? It only recently became a little more reasonable, and even then they still kept that idiotic full screen mechanic.
- wffurr 11mo ago
  The full screen thing was great on an 11” MacBook Air. It’s pretty useless on anything bigger.
CharlieDigital 11mo ago
macOS daily driver for last 5 years because the hardware is better; I can stay unplugged for almost my entire workday. Lots of things irk me about macOS UX. Finder's lack of tree view sidebar really irks me. Having to disable the silly animations and sounds when I get a new machine irks me. The absolutely terrible window tiling system irks me. When I minimize a window, I can no longer tab into it. The settings dialog's weird behavior with respect to resizing on both axes irks me. Can't use 3 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock and the secondary monitors end up with limited refresh rate options. Meanwhile, I can just plug just about any dock into my 5 year old Windows laptop and multiple monitors just work. Still can't find anything as good as IrfanView (as old and dated as it is, it made working with image libraries a breeze). Finder and the poor external monitor support somehow irks me the most because now I end up typing into the CLI 90% of the time because the navigation experience is so bad and for me this is a work machine and the difficulty in using 3+ monitors is silly. I get being an Apple Stan (love the hardware), but the software UX is 100% bottom of the barrel stuff. Basic OS stuff like Explorer is just light years ahead of Finder.
- markus_zhang 11mo ago
  Exactly my thought, the last paragraph.
- glpgeFwac 11mo ago
  > Can't use 3 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock Or you could buy a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max and plug in four monitors without displaylink.
  - mschild 11mo ago
    Something that most sub 1000€ laptops could do over a decade ago, requires a macbook costing well above 2000€ in 2025. I'm running multiple types of machines in my home for work and personal use but macs have been by far the worst offender for multiscreen support for a long time.
    - raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
munificent 11mo ago
The question is not whether MacOS is ahead of Windows. As an Apple user since the Apple IIe, I agree it's still the best OS by a mile. But that has basically always been true, at least since Mac OS X. (I liked the earlier OSes too, but they really did crash all the time and have no memory protection, so arguably Windows had some compelling advantages.) The interesting question is whether recent MacOS releases are ahead of their previous versions. Of the top of my head, I can't think of a single feature that MacOS has shipped since 2020 that I care about. Maybe dark mode? The hardware keeps better, and the experience of third-party apps I care about (VS Code and Ableton) is superior to Windows. But the OS and first-party apps seem completely stagnant. Which, arguably, is OK. Maybe the OS should just be a commodity. But I have to imagine that there are user experience improvements they could make at the OS but I certainly haven't seen any.
- tiltowait 11mo ago
  > Of the top of my head, I can't think of a single feature that MacOS has shipped since 2020 that I care about. They all kind of blend together, so I asked Claude to give me a list of major features since 2020. Here are those that I've enjoyed: * Universal control * iPhone mirroring * Stage Manager * Container CLI Granted it's not a giant list, but each release does have little refinements here and there, and Claude may have missed some (it didn't mention container CLI, for instance; that was from my memory). I also omitted some features I don't care about (like Safari profiles and some other window management stuff). What features are you hoping for? Aside from a tiling WM, which won't happen, I'd be happy just with refinements and bug fixes.
- green7ea 11mo ago
  > it's still the best OS by a mile I'm not so sure about that, modern Linux is pretty good — I was able to configure it to fit my needs much better than I could a mac. It's also free of dark patterns (looking at Windows). If you're willing and able to configure Linux, I would say that, for some people, it's much better than a mac.
  - munificent 11mo ago
    One of the main things I run on my Mac is Ableton Live, so Linux is a no-go. Also, I'm no longer the kind of person who really wants to tinker with an OS set up and doing a lot of manual configuration. I just want a decent user experience out of the box and good connectivity with all my various peripherals.
rolisz 11mo ago
I bought a MacBook last year. The amount of stupid bugs is insane. Safari eating text input, Safari simply not connecting to internet after several days (while chrome is working well). I have to restart my Mac more often than I had to restart my last Windows machine, because it simply grinds to a halt (with a frickin' M4 Max processor)
- seam_carver 11mo ago
  Yea, Safari 26.1 is really buggy for me on macOS 15. Google searching the issue, lots of my issues are fixed int he 26.2 beta, I had to download beta from apple developer website.
sofixa 11mo ago
> MacOS is light years ahead of Windows in so many arenas At least Windows dignifies you with an error message (even if a hex code and badly tanslated text) when something is wrong. macOS mocks you with a dumb and utterly useless message like "Something went wrong, try again" or "A USB device is using too much power, try unplugging it". Or just flat out not showing the button for the thing you're looking for if prerequisites aren't filled (iPad screen extending, unless the iPad is on the same Apple ID, and has been restarted since, the button just isn't there and there is nothing you can do to debug it other than tryingn to guess what is missing). Also, Windows allows you to install whatever with a clear UX (this might be dangerous for random crap from the internet vs having to jump through a weird non-existing UX to get it to open, or flat out being blocked from using downloaded libaries).
- AniseAbyss 11mo ago
  [dead]
dingnuts 11mo ago
[dead]
markus_zhang 11mo ago
I use all three and I have to say Windows shitifize itself by adding too much ads, but if you can remove those than it’s a better experience than MacOS. Someone else on HN has a line that I agree with:”Apple makes the OS apps mundane so that people can write replacements and sell those in App Store where Apple has a fat share”.
rconti 11mo ago
I love the Mac, but the OS has gone nowhere in ages. I can't think of a new feature since APFS. Have you _seen_ system preferences? Insanely hostile permissions and "untrusted software" behavior. Nobody seems to like Tahoe, but I can't really speak to it because I don't even want to install it.

wongarsu 11mo ago

Apple is at least in part operating like they are a fashion brand. Functionality and usability are secondary to looks. Both in their devices and their software. It's hard to argue they aren't successful with that. It probably helps that Microsoft has also abandoned usability, just for very different reasons

dawnerd 11mo ago
I thought it was an Ive problem but once he left nothing really changed. Sure the Mac got some functionality back but that’s about it. They really need to just not do a redesign and flesh out their software.
raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
Are you complaining that Apple is releasing computers that are fast, quiet and with a ridiculous long battery life that are well built as “not functional”?
- encom 11mo ago
  Apple has famously been form over function almost since their inception.
  - samdoesnothing 11mo ago
    This is true, with the caveat that their function is also best in class. And I mean yeah, they make gorgeous devices, but even if they were ugly id still choose them because they also work better than any alternatives.
    - frizlab 11mo ago
      Well said. (An upvote was not enough.)
    - ffsm8 11mo ago
      I use an (at this point older) MacBook pro myself (M1) and honestly believe it is a great product. I am a lot happier with it then if I bought an equivalent windows device. However, its definitely true that Apple prioritizes looks is function. We're just currently in a generation where it ceased to matter for the most part, because Apple Silicon has made the previous tradeoffs basically meaningless. But that's not because Apple started to prioritize function, technology has just gotten good enough for their design philosophy to no longer hamper it significantly

riversflow 11mo ago

> 1. The Apple experience, at least on the OS side, matters less and less in the webapp world. I see it the opposite. At least for iPhone owners Universal Clipboard and file sharing with Airdrop are killer apps.

bloaf 11mo ago
On android, KDE Connect felt great for basic copy/pasting/file transfer between devices. https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ On iOS, KDE Connect feels like its running a potato sack race with both arms tied behind its back.
Kye 11mo ago
I didn't really get it until I Airdropped a shipping label PDF to the guy at the UPS store to print from his phone, which was already set up for the label printer.
- encom 11mo ago
  File transfer! What will they think of next?
  - AOsborn 11mo ago
    File transfer that just works. My mum can use airdrop. She sends us things. She doesn't need to install anything or configure things. She just uses the first-party UI. It's the same with Airpods. Bluetooth headphones? Yeah, you can buy some for $20, who needs Apple ones? Apparently everyone. Turns out providing great noise cancellation and bluetooth that just works means the product is appealing to general consumers.
    - csomar 11mo ago
      File transfer worked well on Nokia devices and was pretty stable. What was not, is bluetooth connections with audio devices. This is a solved problem now and my Xiaomi earpods connection is pretty stable. I remember having more issues with the Airpods.

AnthonyMouse 11mo ago

> What _is_ weird, and nonintuitive, is that the (by all accounts) higher-cost vendor would be seen as ascendent in this market. It actually kind of makes sense. Apple has stopped caring but Microsoft is actively hostile. You then have people who can afford it switching to Apple, but the higher price deters everyone who can't, which in turn reduces the pressure on Microsoft to clean up their act. The interesting thing is Linux. It's starting from a smaller base but in the last couple of years the growth rate is even higher than macOS.

raw_anon_1111 11mo ago

You mean alienate their desktop users by making chips specifically targeting them that are fast, run cool, quiet and have ridiculously long battery lives? You’ve seen much more frequent updates in the Mac line post ARM than you did in the Intel era.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
rikafurude21 11mo ago
Letting go of x86 was just one of the first steps on the road to a world completely dominated by mobile devices. Macs just caught up with all the progress that mobile devices had made when apple made the switch.
rconti 11mo ago
Yeah, the hardware's been fantastic, but the OS has mostly treaded water with the occasional step backwards.
- tim333 11mo ago
  Maybe people are happy with the OS treading water? I basically just want it to run programs, let me find files and connect to the wifi.

hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago

Apple keeps cycling between great hardware and not so great software and great software and not so great hardware. In the PowerPC era the software was fantastic, especially when you factor in the much lower odds of viruses and malware. However, the hardware was well behind the curve except right at the release of a new generations, which were few and far in between. Then when Apple switched to Intel, you had a few years of incredible hardware and incredible software. This is when the Mac absolutely blew up. But then while Apple has constantly been improving the hardware (although they’ve made repairabiltu and extensibility worse), their software has seen a steady decline. Where Apple has been really lucky is that while their software has seen a steady decline, their primary competitor MS’s software has seen several steep declines.

duxup 11mo ago

I feel like when I fire up my mac(s) the OS really is there for me to use, new features, better or worse do in fact feel like they're there FOR me with some thought of me as a user. Windows, it feels like the OS is pointed AT ME more than anything else. I used to be happy with windows, it wasn't great but it was utilitarian enough that I could get things done ... not anymore, the OS is a hurdle. I understand longer time Apple users say macOS used to be better, I don't know about that, but the experience with apple silicon and so forth has been great for me. If Apple wasn't trying they could have just stuck with x86...