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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

There’s one thing I don’t think Gassée, or many of the people predicting an ARM transition for the Mac, are considering: user patience and goodwill, basically political capital with the user base.

Apple blew through an incredible amount of it on vanity projects in the 2010s, from the abandoned trashcan Mac Pro to the Touch Bar and butterfly keyboard. They’ve clearly changed course with the 16” MacBook Pro and the 2019 Mac Pro, but they’ve asked a lot of users over the past decade, and this doesn’t quite seem like the right time to ask the entire user base to please be patient once again.

In other words, while there’s little question that a switch to ARM is worth the headache for Apple, the critical question is whether Apple can make the case that the switch is worth it for users.

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The other thing people tend to overlook that Apple has a history of creating new categories of devices. The ipad carved out a niche for itself over time. So did the ipod back in the day.

An ipad pro with the fancy keyboard cover is basically a laptop in all but name and I know a few non technical people who insist that's all they need. The next obvious move is to bridge the gap between the two software ecosystems; which is something they started doing a few years ago by allowing IOS applications to run on Mac OS. Blurring the line further, an ipad with the keyboard attached a bit more and the ability to run Mac OS software (similar to how chrome os can run linux packages) would not be that much of a stretch.

So, an ARM macbook with a touch screen wouldn't necessarily be that different from an ipad with a keyboard. The hard part is basically all software. Imagine an ipad where you can install your favorite adobe tools, home brew, and an IDE. Probably a lot easier to sell than a macbook that doesn't run most of the software you are used to even though technically they aren't that different in terms of hardware and software.

Also, thinking beyond their current device categories; Apple has not done a lot wit VR/AR and gaming centric experiences so far. They've done a little bit via IOS and Apple TV but they've arguably held back a little bit here.

+1, think you have it just right.

Apple is looking for new product lines. The Apple Watch is amazing both in design and manufacture, and also in how very useful it is.

I tend to use my iPad Pro for just about everything but writing code and it can plug into my large USB-C interfaced monitor. Get XCode on it and a data plan with phone service, and it could be a single device to do everything if it is very small and lightweight and can run everything.

Apple has a lot of talent and a ton of money, and I expect them to surprise us, in a good way.

You left out one important taker-of-goodwill: loss of 32bit on Catalina.

But, the fact this happened just now, in 2019, makes me think Apple doesn't recognize this is a problem at all, or thinks it's too small of a problem to matter.

And getting rid of Dashboard, which had no technical reason to kill even.

Daily I find myself cursing that I can't quickly bring up a calendar or unit converter with the dashboard shortcut.

I thought Mac OS had been 64 bit only for years and am amazed they kept 32 bit support for that long.

When they decide on something they usually do it for real and I appreciate that, because it moves the ecosystem forward.

> thinks it's too small of a problem to matter.

They know. The loss of 32-bit apps means little to them, because they know it means little to users, and that's why they went through with it.

What are you basing this assumption off of?

For me, it's an enormous loss. I'm certainly not all users, but neither are you.

I think it's pretty clear at this point that the Mac user base has not reacted to Catalina very well. Upgrade rates are abnormally slow. A lot of that is just due to general buggyness (also a problem!), but I think 32bit is some of it as well.

The key is they wouldn't have done it if a large enough number of users relied on 32-bit apps. Pretty obvious.

> A lot of that is just due to general buggyness (also a problem!)

This is the only thing you're right about. People don't care about 32-bit apps.

Most non-tech people that use macs that I know of complained about apps not working anymore (old printers, tablets, etc) (and even paid me to fix it)

Apart from sentiment, does anyone, including Apple, still care about OSX? Seems that the potential move to ARM will merely be the final nail in its coffin. Apple has removed a lot of backwards compat over the last releases, large app developers seem to not be embracing new systems/APIs, software largely isn't being ported, iOS now has the iPad pro, soon perhaps a laptop.

What is the reason for macOS at this point?

I still care about macOS because it is still the most pleasant desktop environment to use, in my opinion. I love macOS's pervasive support for PDFs and macOS's font rendering. I also love the iLife suite of applications. With that being said, I've been trying out alternatives to macOS since I've been disappointed with Apple's stewardship of the Mac under Tim Cook, but I keep going back to macOS, though I haven't upgraded to Catalina yet since I still rely on some proprietary 32-bit software packages that I don't feel like repurchasing until I make a final decision about how long I'll stay on the Mac. I tried Windows 10 and I sometimes use it for work; while I can get by, the experience is just not as pleasant for me. While Windows 10 does have some nice features, including the wonderful WSL layer, I don't like the ads and the notifications to use MS services, I find the UI ugly (what's with the huge title bars in Windows 8 and Windows 10?), and the mandatory updates are annoying. I miss the days of Windows 2000, and I'm awaiting the day I can use ReactOS as a daily-driver OS. As far as Linux desktops go, I feel most productive with Cinnamon. However, I find myself missing certain macOS features and certain proprietary software tools (such as Keynote and Microsoft Office), and I also find myself missing the fit-and-finish of macOS.

Nevertheless, barring a dramatic leadership change at Apple, I see the writing on the wall regarding the future of the Mac. I don't think the Mac will disappear, but I definitely see it becoming more locked-down and more iOS like, which is a trend I don't like. I'm going to stick to macOS Mojave on my 2013 MacBook Air and my 2013 Mac Pro, which are my daily drivers. But I can see myself switching sometime around 2022 or 2023.

I was kind of in your position, and I ended up taking the totally ridiculous route of downgrading to Mavericks.

I didn't feel like modern macOS was a platform I wanted to use anymore, but between Windows, Linux, and old macOS, old macOS clearly won out. It's snappy, stable, and performant; it's visually beautiful; and it has a plethora of well-designed software I enjoy using.

So I built a Hackintosh out of the fastest 2013-era hardware I could get. I'm hoping to stay here for the next decade. I'm not necessarily recommending this route to anyone else, but it's working out well for me.

The next step is to decide on a Mavericks-compatible portable device, because going back to High Sierra on my too-new laptop feels yucky. I kind of want to Hackintosh a tablet...

I completely understand you. Last summer I was learning GNUstep development on FreeBSD, and I decided to fire up an instance of Mac OS X Tiger running inside of QEMU on my Mac Pro to compile my code using XCode to see if it worked there. I was blown away by how polished Tiger is, even though it had been 14 years since Tiger was released. While for web browsing and security reasons I wouldn't use Tiger as my daily driver today, I found myself more impressed with Tiger than with any non-Mac desktop environment.

I admit, I have a soft spot for the classic Mac OS, stability issues aside (though I think projects like A/UX and Rhapsody were interesting examples of bringing the classic Mac UI to Unix). But Mac OS X through Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of the Unix desktop. Not only was it beautiful to look at, but it was a joy to use, and it ran on some of the best consumer computer hardware ever made. I still use macOS, but Apple as of lately doesn't spark joy for me anymore; it's just the best option out there.

What about browser support? How long will the latest Chrome/Firefox run on Mavericks?

I couldn’t live without the latest Adobe CC as well. I fell like sticking to old OSs is less and less viable these days.

Chrome doesn't run on Mavericks, but Firefox does. I can't say how long that will last, but I can look at what's available on even older versions of OS X as a guide:

Mountain Lion and Lion can run Firefox Legacy, which is just a lightly edited branch of mainline Firefox: https://parrotgeek.com/fxlegacy.html

Snow Leopard can run ArcticFox: https://github.com/wicknix/Arctic-Fox

And Tiger and Leopard can run TenFourFox: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

ArcticFox and TenFourFox don't quite have 100% compatibility, so they wouldn't be ideal, but they're still very usable.

So while browser support is definitely my biggest concern, I suspect there will continue to be options. It's also worth mentioning that the reason Firefox hard can't run on Snow Leopard or below is because Rust doesn't work below 10.7. Yet another possibility is running Google Chrome in Wineskin.

For Adobe, I'm stuck on CS6 anyway because I'm never paying for Creative Cloud. And I'm increasingly eying the Serif suite, which supports Mavericks.

> large app developers seem to not be embracing new systems/APIs, software largely isn't being ported

What makes you think that? Microsoft, Adobe, heck, even Valve have ports of their stuff on macOS. They seem to use new systems/APIs when appropriate, but maybe I'm not sure what you're talking about there. Care to elaborate on what you mean?

As for:

> What is the reason for macOS at this point?

Well, it's for people who want something more usable than Linux, but don't want to deal with Windows. Pretty much the same as it's been for decades. It also works very nicely with the iOS devices that many people love, so that helps, too.

Pixar does, along with many other video/movie producers. There are also a lot of professional musicians and recording engineers using Macs as well. Not to mention all the developers using Macs for iOS app development. None of these activities are realistically viable on an iPad Pro. I think the real issue is OSs aren't very interesting at this point - they're mature and there isn't a lot of sexy sizzle to be added to them.

Doesn't Pixar mostly run Linux? [0][1] And if I remember correctly, before Linux they were an SGI shop.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9ikzGQW0ys

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnFSVx7NhmM

there's a Qemu implementation that now runs on iOS, and with services like AWS Cloud9 you can get away with developing on an ipad only setup, at least for most webdevs. Sooner than later someone is going to be able to run android on this: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM

and then the gates will open to ARM heaven, once developers find a way to do their jobs on an ipad the rest of the industries follow

QEMU for iOS, Bochs, has been a thing for a long time. I remember running Debian on my iPod touch 3G.

edit: Contrary to my memory it's its own project and not QEMU based.

> Apart from sentiment, does anyone, including Apple, still care about OSX?

Going to hazard a guess that the users of the approximately one hundred million Macs currently in use are among those who still care.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/30/there-are-now-100-million-...

to run xcode to build iOS apps.

(even my friends who were long-time Mac users/developers are moving off; for many of them, it was the slowly decaying UNIX component of MacOS X, which they originally touted to me)

> user patience and goodwill, basically political capital with the user base.

Or they can go down the Trojan Horse route and bolt one of their A-series chips as a co-processor to a board with an x86 CPU, begin the process of rewriting the OS and other assets in their control to run on ARM and provide some encouragement for dev's to make the switch over the next 4-5 years.

By having an ARM co-processor lightening the load running system assets they could balance the parts cost by using a previous generation x86 CPU.

They've already offloaded the System Management Controller, image signal processor, audio controller, and SSD controller to the T2 chip (64-bit ARMv8 A10 derivative: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208862) - the next step would be integrating T2 into a full blown CPU/SOC. Maybe T2 was the beginning of the Trojan Horse?

Comments like these always confuse me, because it makes the incorrect assumption that people who love Macs are willing to put up with Windows or Linux, or that Mac users will bother going anywhere else, en masse.

Millions of people are still walking around with millions of 2016-2019 TouchBar MBPs. Every person or business who genuinely cares about the Mac Pro is still going to buy one if they can afford it. None of the things you're talking about actually matter to the average person.

If they go with ARM, Apple will ensure apps that people use will work. You think they're going to scare off Adobe from making apps? Kill off Logic Pro? Stop the web from working? What would Apple possibly do that bothers a normal person enough that they would check out of Apple's ecosystem?

the problem comes in when your apps break and the only way to fix them is to fork out even more money for software upgrades. for music production i have been badly burnt and have moved to hardware synth that will last decades and a mac with logic that will never see another upgrade ever.

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