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Comment by NotSammyHagar | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, they sure look like they can't decide what to do with their riches. It's sad. Put money toward self driving car tech if you wish, you have so much to waste. But where are your awesome next gen laptops, why nothing like a chromebook, why their disasterous desktop machines (the coffee warmer form factor, what where they thinking). The apple watch.

The majority of professional devs use apple laptops because they are a great selection of tools and nice ui with unix tools. They can't build off that?

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Devs are a tiny population compared to general smartphone/gadget users. As someone who pays the Apple premium for a reliable laptop that runs a Unix with good desktop applications, I wish they would put more work into developer-focused products, but there's too little money in it for a company of Apple's size.

Back in the day, a company with a money-printing machine like the iPhone, e.g. Ma Bell with telephone service, would create a world-class R&D division inventing all sorts of stuff with no regard for short-term profit. Google X may have aspired to this at some point, but they seem to have backed off. Sadly, the modern company has eliminated this drag on quarterly profits.

Machines targeted solely at devs just seems like a no-brainer to me. Sure, you make no money on them. The value comes from enticing development for your ecosystem. The stagnation of the Mac Pro, and the disappointing MacBook Pro update really confuse me. I'm starting to perceive 1998 Microsoft levels of arrogance.

Exactly, and the fact that devs even need to ask from a giant like Apple that benefits so much from devs demonstrates a lot about the underpinnings of Apple.

The iPhone is popular partly because of the apps that developers created. You could make an argument that making better developer laptops might lead to better iPhone sales.

There's no "could make..." to it. This is absolutely the case.

Haha... I feel like people very often hedge and undermine their own correct argumentation when they differ from something mainstream or powerful.

Do you find it sad that in this day & age - on a site like HN, no less - you find yourself posting so empathetically about the richest companies backing off invention and innovation? Surely most readers here are smart enough to realize that, yes: making things for a small population of their current user base is a suboptimal way to rake in the highest profit margins - so why do we find so many comments even on HN undermining their own vitality with such corporate pandering? Yes, it is logical that Apple tries to increase their profits as much as possible - but it is logical that we state this as an unchanging reality each time we preface our dreams and ideals?

Somehow despite their "disastrous desktop machines" and disappointing laptops, they are the highest revenue PC manufacturer in the world and make more profits making PCs than the rest of the market combined.

And somehow they only sold $6B in Apple Watches it's first year, not only making it the most successful watch launch in history but the best selling watch in the world by revenues.

Imagine if they'd only invest more!

But that money is not made on PCs, it is mostly made on phones and tablets.

Q1/17: 80M iphones, 10M+ ipads, 5M Macs. And margins on phones and pads are higher than on PCs too.

Which is one excuse given for the slow updates on the Mac side (one I don't buy).

But again, Apple's Mac sales are over $25B a year,and it's profit margins on those sales are far higher (15% vs. 2-3%) than the other PC makers. It will never be as big as iPhone or iPad, but it's still one of the largest businesses in the entire world (it would just miss the Fortune 100 list on its own). It's sad they aren't doing a better job of updating the hardware, but so far it hasn't shown up in their sales.

Is this an argument for the status quo? That is, if "it doesn't show up in sales," then a tech company should feel comfortable doing which of the following? 1) Allowing software update issues 2) Alienating userbase who develops their software 3) Alienating pro audio users who want flexibility 4) ... Overlook any issue some user group has if they are winning in the market

>Somehow despite their "disastrous desktop machines" and disappointing laptops, they are the highest revenue PC manufacturer in the world

No they're not; they're the most profitable mobile phone manufacturer who also happens to make PC's.

It sounded ludicrous to me but apparently it's true that a lot of developers use Apple laptops. I don't get it, I've used an Apple computer for a week at a time a few times and it was thoroughly less convenient and more frustrating than on Windows, not even including having no Visual Studio and such.

It's a lot about what you are used to. Most developers are creating websites or backends that run in unix-like environments and since OS X is a unix, it's a lot easier to transition or share between your workstation and production systems.

But the same problem is between Linux and Mac. So many times did my bash scripts break on the ancient userland that comes with Mac OS.

I do all my development in a Linux VM, and it's definitely a wide decision, seeing how many hours my colleagues waste setting up Postgres or Docker or even just Golang on their Macs. (Before you ask, I cannot boot into Linux directly because company policy.)

I wouldn't know how to develop on either, Linux is so much more geared towards developers than Macs or windows computers.

Even so, a Mac is closer to Linux than windows is, it's a full unix under the hood after all.

Having the same environment on my workstation as on my servers always appealed to me (since my SGI days, when I would develop stuff on an indy and deploy on a challenge, basically a headless indy).

But I can't imagine using OS/X as a server environment and windows seems just wrong as a server.

So that leaves me with Linux, but I don't mind and I like the whole concept of open-source software.

MacOS can be used like Linux for all but a tiling window manager (or changing DE/WM at all).

https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst is a godsend.

I knew my comment would attract at least one reply like this. It just really isn't even close though - and it isn't the fault of Amethyst (or others) - it just can't plug into macOS at a low enough level to get an experience comparable to i3wm.

> I've used an Apple computer for a week at a time a few times and it was thoroughly less convenient and more frustrating than on Windows

Well, that's the issue. If you're used to a certain way things work, one week is not enough time to get used to another workflow. Even when you switch from google docs to microsoft office, or vice versa, you'll be very frustrated and confused for a lot longer than a week.

I think it has to do with what you are used to.

I have the same exact reaction to you when using windows. When I try to use a program on my high res display I can barely read the text, when I zoom in and increase the text size the entire program is distorted. The terminal is a backwards windows shell that is useless for any development. There is no ssh installed by default, swiping the trackpad is horrible and generally battery does not last longer than 3 hours.

Also I have to pay for things I never wanted such as touch screens that only encourage people to comes and put finger prints on my display.

With apple I can install homebrew and via the terminal just install whichever packages I need for development with sane defaults. I have no had to mess with environment variables once, something I painfully remember from windows.

I would hate my life if I had to develop on windows honestly

Msys2 on Windows is just like having a Linux shell, even has a decently sized pacman repository.

The unix base matters a great deal. It's not about fayboyism, it's about consistency.

Many well-off tech companies automatically buy you a MBP when you join - and you'd have to proactively ask for something else to prevent this. I got used to my first Macbook like this - and have continued due to construction quality and ease of keeping my whole computing setup running easily anywhere in the world... But their continued insistence on slowly morphing their laptops into what you'd find in a future like Pixar's WALL-E makes me think they're on their way out of the business of enabling pioneers.

A laptop is a tool. As a developer I want to be confident in my tools. If you can work on a Mac, you can work on any Mac: the keyboard is identical, the environment is more or less standard. You invest into learning to develop on Macs only once. Compare that to HP's and Dells: similarly to the Android ecosystem there are just too many variables.

Part of it is practical, it is easier to virtualize other OS's on OSX than the other way around, but also don't underestimate the 'status symbol' of 'look, my employer spends money on me'.

It's also the best platform for mobile app development as it natively supports both iOS and Android dev.

How is it easier to run VirtualBox on OSX than Windows?

It's easier to run a Windows guest vm on an OSX host, than to run an OSX host on a Windows or linux host, because of licensing, so if you need a mix of platforms, having OSX be the host is the path of least resistance.

Symlinks in shared folders

This is possible on a Windows host in a hackish sort of way, though I imagine it's more seamless on a OSX host, being Unix.

Macs trackpad is miles ahead of competition, pretty much any Windows laptop I tried the trackpad sucked.

Exactly, and I just don't get why the average Joe is so motivated to defend large corporate decisions these days. Maybe it's a way to demonstrate that they know something about business and identify as "intelligent people?" I.e. "Well they wouldn't make as much then, you idiot - and why people who think like you aren't intelligent enough to work for them!" Anyone who has worked for a company the size of Apple should realize these all-or-nothing arguments aren't realistic. We have a lot of history of companies in tech rising and falling now, and anyone educated in that history has the ability to interpret Apple's recent choices as statements for what kind of legacy they want to create going forward...

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