With how horrible the trajectory of macOS has been due to Apple being almost exclusively an iOS profit driven company, this may be better for everyone by forcing consumers to move towards more open PC architectures.
The explosion of home computers followed by the Internet was based on standards and compatibility. If companies would have needed the approval of IBM to distribute an app on an IBM PC or even create some compatible hardware, almost none of the big player now would exists. Same for the web, email etc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Frankl....
There is in my opinion a level of care about macOS on its own, it's more about misguided goals and detrimental choices (Touch Bar, butterfly keyboard, etc.)
The addressable market of the media arts is a peanut next to the mountain of consumers they are now successfully targeting.
It's like asking why Apple is making the value proposition of the Mac Pro so bad. It's so they can cancel that bring the userbase down enough so they can cancel it all together without it creating too much fuzz.
That timeline doesn't look very far.
Has it ever really been about performance? How could you know your mac is slower when everyone else in the office has a mac, it's just bikeshedding and humans being human. They're nice computers but that's about it
ChromeOS and Android with everything going through Google servers?
Linux distributions with their 2% market size, going to take over the desktop since DX 10 wasn't available in XP?
Windows 10X might not have been released as planned, but it will come.
Can you name one?
> Fortune 500
Those aren't the same groups, even if that's true and those companies only use software that's available on the Microsoft store.
The one thing I'm still missing from iTerm is the hotkey-implementation, but we'll get there eventually :-)
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-01-microsoft-is-h...
Android users are now looking to disconnect from Google.
The play store isn't bad, and I can always download an apk.
Windows likes people to use the store, sure. But they don't exercise the kind of control over Windows that would allow them to something like this move by Apple.
I do see constant chicken-little-ing about macOS being hamstrung or locked down like iOS or whatever, but it's not, you know, actually true.
When I first got a macbook at work four years ago, I couldn't even figure out how to install software (you drag'n'drop an icon to a folder within an pseudo-installer? are you serious?) without asking a colleague.
Then: when I'm writing code, I'm writing for linux-machines. Opening a shell in macos just doesn't give me that. Instead I'm either left with the insult that is homebrew, or the alternative, macports, which is functional but so out of vogue its not even fun.
Meet Windows 10: I click on vscode and it's already open.. Not only open, but already connected to WSL, where I write code on a microsoft-maintaned linux-kernel, with proper package management, without ever firing up a vm by hand. In Windows' vscode I'm writing a flask-app running on linux, available without intermediate steps from Windows' Chrome.
The platform that is windows 10 feels so much more powerful and up-to-date than macos, it's not even a fair comparison.
All that being said, of course there are things one misses, because of course, apple has done a lot of things right. But overall, going back to the best macbook money can buy would feel like a massive downgrade.
What apple and macos are good at is the "all from one team" approach. Designing the OS and the hardware hand in hand with native integration to your other apple-devices has some clear advantages that windows just can't provide. But the sentiment I'm used to from my company is that "windows is completely unusable garbage, and apples computers are perfect", and I just have to disagree with that, typing this from my fully loaded xps 15.
"the mess that are locked down and all-over-the-place plist-files (good luck with those!)"
I have utterly no idea what you're on about here. .plist files are preference files, and they're overwhelmingly contained within either ~/Library or /Library. And they are not ever "locked down," at least not in my experience.
"When I first got a macbook at work four years ago, I couldn't even figure out how to install software"
See prior note. That you think you need an installer to install software is you mistaking Windows methods for methods universal to computing.
"when I'm writing code, I'm writing for linux-machines."
Many folks do x-platform dev on Macs, but you certainly DO need to take steps to accurately model your target environment before doing so. It sounds like you'd be happier on a Linux machine, but that isn't an example of failure or decline from Apple.
Your tie-in on vscode and your WSL sounds like a good feature for you. But this, too, isn't an example of "decline" for MacOS.
"The platform that is windows 10 feels so much more powerful and up-to-date than macos, it's not even a fair comparison."
This is a truly weird statement. I use both systems side by side, and have for 25 years. Windows is a fragile house of cards if you frequently add and remove software. C:\Windows inexorably expands, and the only fix is to wipe and reinstall from scratch.
You know what I've literally NEVER had to do on a Mac? Wipe and reinstall from scratch.
"But the sentiment I'm used to from my company is that "windows is completely unusable garbage, and apples computers are perfect""
As with most binary reductions of real-world situations, I agree that this is not a great statement. But Windows as a system still doesn't strike me as something I'd want to depend on in any meaningful way.
I run VMs (on my Mac, and on the Dell), and I have a fairly minimal environment my own loaded XPS 15, because that way I can get the whole setup running again with minimal effort when Windows shits the bed, as it very very often does.
Fair enough. That point hits home with regard to the installer-situation, however what I tried to illustrate with that sentence is that macos is far from the state of borderline-perfection that is often attributed to it.
You're also correct on stability: I wouldn't run Windows on anything that my life depends on. As should nobody. However, serverlike stability simply isn't the core quality I look for in my OS. Its nice to have, but I can tolerate some instability as long as other benefits outweigh it. I feel like that's exactly the case now (and I wouldn't have made the same statement, say, three years ago): Windows simply serves me better as a user, the ue is miles ahead of my last year on macos.
> "Windows is a fragile house of cards if you frequently add and remove software"
well, I don't. I live enirely in the linuxworld, except for Chrome, Vscode and Steam (which should be stable, no? To be fair, I haven't spent the recent years in windows-land, so I might underestimate how close to water windows is built). If that's a minimal environment to you, we're in the same boat.
To the point about the plist-files: I've had a few encounters when I tried to modify things to my liking, and the experience was terrible. Maybe my memory serves me wrong with respect to 'all over the place', but in order to edit them, I had to download specific software, which is a big no no, given that we talk about system config files. And by "big no no" I mean user-hostile behaviour.
I probably failed to make clear enough how all my points relate to the so-perceived decline: to me it feels like apple just completely stopped caring about ux-related progression, doesn't care about powerusers, doesn't care about linux-devs, doesn't care about how terrible their window-management is (seriously, show me how to toggle through windows of the same application, or how to move a window from one screen to another with your keyboard. It's 2020 and this isn't a thing in macland, and thats just bad and can't be justified imo) - all of which is a shame, because their platform is so much more stable than windows is, and because their integration with other apple-devices is simply unmatched in any other product line.
On top of that, to get my macos working the way I wanted it to, I ineeded what, four extra applications? By the time I migrated to windows, I had about 10 extra icons in that bar. Things like caffeine, that should have been implemented as system-settings about ten years ago, but weren't. Macos is full of these little issues, and at least to me it felt like its a dead-end product. Like, great, they're gonna get a touchscreen-implementation, but that's not what I missed as a user.
If I'd need to bet my life on the stability of a computer, I'd take a macbook - any macbook. But I'm not in the business of betting lifes on laptop-stability, and for my consulting-job + playing games after work without a reboot, the choice seems pretty damn clear to me. I wasn't too confident before I actually made the jump, but I haven't looked back since
It sounds like you're on the toolchain that serves you best. That's precisely where you oughta be! Good for you!
Regarding plists, I guess I wonder why you needed to edit them outside of the app that wrote them. When I've needed to do that, I've just used emacs -- they're nearly always text, aren't they? I mean, I would definitely consider myself a power user of the platform, but it's been a LOOOOONG time since I needed to mess with a .plist manually, so I could be misremembering.
I would definitely be willing to stipulate, though, that editing those files manually is pretty far off the rez, so to speak, from normal user behavior.
> "to me it feels like apple just completely stopped caring about ux-related progression,
I don't think that's exactly fair, but it probably IS fair to say that they don't care about the things in the UX that you care about, which can feel like the same thing.
> doesn't care about powerusers, doesn't care about linux-devs,
This probably IS fair, to a point, but the core system is still there and is still pretty friendly to linux dev types. It's just that Windows has made a big stride in the meantime.
> doesn't care about how terrible their window-management is (seriously, show me how to toggle through windows of the same application, or how to move a window from one screen to another with your keyboard.
I actually prefer the Mac window management, fwiw. Cmd-tab flips apps, as you know; Cmd-tilde switches windows in the current app. I use both all the time. The distinction here between apps and windows is one that Windows doesn't make, so I totally get being wrong-footed by this, but it's really just an example of the system being different to Windows, not "wrong" in an objective way.
I don't know how to move windows from screen to screen in any OS, so I can't help you there. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some way to do it, though, since Apple is typically pretty forward-thinking when it comes to accessibility.
> four extra applications
I have NEVER seen ANY OS that I didn't want to add bits to. I'd be lost on a Mac without Alfred, for example, plus a real cloud backup too, plus Little Snitch, plus Dropbox, etc.
My "home set" includes a bunch of these things, but it was the same in Windows, and when I set up Linux environments it's the same there, too. So I guess I'm not sold that this is a problem so much as an inevitable thing that advanced users like you and I do.
You get my meaning?
Anyway, I don't find myself wanting anything in MacOS that I don't have, to be super honest. It's powerful and flexible enough for me, and it doesn't make me want to pull my hair out like Windows always does. I definitely DO think that desktop OS options are looking less shiny generally because mobile has taken pretty much all the limelight in these last 10 or so years, especially as iOS on iPads has become so dang powerful and usable (no lie, I rarely take my laptop off my desk anymore -- the iPad is plenty, even if I need to connect to some work server or something). Many folks are in a position where an iPad plus a keyboard is all they need, which is kind of amazing -- it's GREAT for people like my 80 year old mother.