Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

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> But what about the Mac? The Mac is the PC from the company that more or less defined the Post-PC era. Would it not be the first to be sacrificed for the new future?

This to me is one of the really big but less talked-about implications of Apple Silicon. 12 months ago - before M1, before Big Sur, before the Mac Pro reboot, before the MBP 16 - the Mac had atrophied. Hardware quality had gone down, the software felt neglected (the UX update in Yosemite felt like a half-hearted skin). The Mac felt like a side-project. It felt unimportant to Apple; there was speculation that it might be turned into an iPad with a keyboard, or be dropped altogether with the all the new energy surrounding the iPad Pro. Apple seemed like it might just exit the workstation business completely.

In the past year that trend has been turned on its head. First they fixed the keyboard and refreshed the MBP form-factor and internals. Then they came out with the radically-powerful (and expandable!) machine that pros had been asking for for years. Then, most importantly, they came out with a huge financial commitment to the future of the Mac, making it a seriously compelling workstation again, and the cherry on top is a new UX that, for the first time since OS X (nearly 20 years ago!), looks like it was designed cohesively from the ground-up. No matter how you feel about Big Sur's design choices, it shows that Apple cares about the Mac again. And they're just getting started with the new silicon.

For an ecosystem that asks a lot in terms of commitment, it is hugely encouraging to see such an unambiguously renewed focus on this product line.

Counterpoint: Moving to ARM and custom silicon is a way to unify their iOS device line with their Mac lines.

The Mac may not be an afterthought, but I suspect it will eventually become an "iPad XL" with a keyboard. The Mac will move further from being a general-purpose computing device and more toward being an appliance. I'm sure they'll still allow you to run XCode and Photoshop, but maybe not Wireshark or VPN software[0]?

[0] https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/11/16/apple-apps-on-big-...

This again.

I've been using Macs for 20 years (and Linux for 20, and Windows for 30). There's no evidence I can see that Apple is going to move the Mac away from being a general-purpose computer. People LOOOOOVE to say they will, though.

We're barely a week away from offline 3rd party applications not working on a mac due to Apple's servers being overloaded.

To dismiss the idea that Apple may move towards this direction is way too hasty, especially when nearly every improvement Apple has made has gotten the mac closer to its i counterparts. In fact, it's hard to think of a change Apple has made to macs over the last several years, which would potentially make such a transition even slightly harder.

You're confusing "when online, Apple checks binaries" for "Apple by default blocks 3rd party apps."

>To dismiss the idea that Apple may move towards this direction is way too hasty

This is just a silly sentence. It's not on me to prove they're NOT doing this. It's on YOU to show me things that definitely say they ARE.

Apple (and MSFT) have both taken steps to button up the OS more in line with the level of expertise of the baseline user, which is WAY closer to your 60 year old aunt Millie than to anyone who posts here. Apple does a better job here; enabling non-AppStore binaries is a single checkbox. Microsoft's S mode is a gesture in the same direction, but it's hilariously bad in implementation -- harder to disable, can't be turned back on once disabled, etc.

Weirdly, though, nobody is yelling that MSFT is going to move to an app-store-only model.

That was a dumb failure mode of a certificate check for expired certificates where it didn't handle the server being up but not responding. If you are offline, that check failed silently with no issue. Adding the certificate server to your hosts file fixed the issue.

I guarantee you that code has been updated already with the recent updates and anything similar is also under review. It's always easy to Monday morning quarterback about edge cases after they happen :p

It absolutely is NOT some sort of "tell" for Apple locking the Mac down. They don't need to - if you want an appliance device they already have that with iOS.

There is zero upside for Apple to try to lock the Mac down; it's all negative. Apple can do some dumb things, but they are NOT stupid. Used a Mac since 1986, owned one since 1987 (thanks to my crazy parents - could have had a good used car instead!) and dunno why people love to focus on the negative with Apple but unfortunately it's nothing new.

Can you run unsigned apps on recent MacOS?

Of course.

To even go further `sudo spctl --master-disable` to disable Gatekeeper, and `csrutil disable` in Recovery Mode to disable System Integrity Protection and you have a Mac that is just as open (including the loss of security, which may or may not just be theatre, I am not going into that one) as any old OS X/Windows/*nix machine of yore.

I personally just tend to use cheap-o machines myself these days, I just use web terminals for the most part personally.

Yes.

VPNs are required for corporate use of the machines. That's a fairly big market, I doubt it will go away quickly.

Substitute "VPN" with "any creative use of the hardware that requires low-level access to do something Apple might not endorse".

But you're right, corporate VPNs will certainly still be allowed. Maybe you'll need to install it through the app store, and your company IT will have to submit their VPN configuration for Apple security review or something, but they won't block all VPNs.

They will provide a standard Apple VPN solution. Because they're big enough now and because they've started to be adopted by enterprises plus they don't care if the adoption is immediate, network device vendors will start following.

Then once they're ready they'll pull the plug on third party VPN solutions.

They already have VPN support built-in, you can add a VPN connection via the Network system preferences screen.

This and considering edge security is on a massive rise due to Covid-19 they won’t dissallow it. Heck Wireguard and OpenVPN are available as well on IOS.

Corps might not care that much that everything but apple telemetry is going through the VPN although.

People keep drawing a very long line between the chipset and the OS flexibility/philosophy. These things have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. You can have a locked-down OS on x86 hardware and a power-user OS on ARM. The M1 has very little to do with the "What does the future of macOS as a platform look like?" discussion, aside from providing strong evidence that there is going to be a future for the Mac.

Indeed - this is the first time in over 20 years I'm excited about new Mac hardware.

I was all set to replace my 2015 MBA with an M1 MacBook Air. Then I started watching all the videos of people running games on the Air (Air!) - and even Windows games - many of which I play - under Crossover (commercial version of WINE from CodeWeavers - more than worth the $60 for the integration work they have done) I'm starting to realize that I may not care about keeping a Windows gaming machine any more. My only problem is I'm addicted to way to many assets in Cities:Skylines to get by with 16GB of RAM, so now I'm seriously thinking about waiting for round 2 for something that can get to at least 32GB of RAM.

And by the time those machines are out I suspect a few of the games I care about that don't run on the M1 may have a solution of some sort. It's nuts, and not a path I thought I might go down - but the performance I'm seeing from non-native code already simply blows me away.

It's only going to get better from here. This is the _ground floor_. I have to keep reminding myself that this is the start

>This to me is one of the really big but less talked-about implications of Apple Silicon

Yes. Everyone is too busy hyping. No one is asking questions. ( Hype has die down a bit and we are now starting to see some quality information and discussions going [1] )

It was basically Apple admitting defeat. I mean even Steve Jobs didn't write off PC completely[1]. Or Intel is partly to blame because their roadmap were off by 4 years. The MacBook 12" in 2015 was designed with the hypothetical 10nm in mind.

People keeps talking about Tablet taking over PC, Phone taking over Tablet etc. It really isn't the form factor. It is the default input devices, and how they are optimised for. The PC is strictly optimised for Keyboard and Mouse. And for lots of task, business conducting activities, Keyboard and Mouse remains the best option. Business are not switching to Tablet, or Tablet with Keyboard. In fact they are switching back to Keyboard and mouse for lots of the task they thought Tablet were better. In other sectors, AutoCAD CEO mentioned ( sorry cant find the video , it was about 2-3 years ago asked by Emily Chang on Bloomberg ) in certain fields ( I remember it was construction ) all of the their customers has literally moved to Tablet / iPad. So it really isn't a once size fits all solution.

And the PC market is still growing. A very low single digit number, so 2020 will be an outliner. But it didn't slump to 150M or 100M unit a year as many predicted. Something somehow even Horace Dediu refuse to admit.

And since the PC market ( WorldWide, so you could argue China and India or other countries are picking things up ) is not shrinking by any definition, there are still innovations to be made. Estimate of 1.5B of PC Worldwide ( You wont find an actual real number, since even Microsoft doesn't have clue and keep changing it ), 750M of those are business. Compared to ~110M Mac, there are plenty of space to grow. In 2015 I wrote about Mac should be at least 150M and really should be pushing for 200M by 2020 if they continue with momentum, which they didn't. Luckily Apple was only really competing with itself.

The new Mac will have lots of user switching or coming back. There seems to be enough margin for an even cheaper MacBook Air at 11" or 12". Depending whether Apple follows the iPhone playbook where they have 16" and 14" for Pro, then the MacBook Air will be 14" and 12". That is going to be quite disruptive for a 12" MacBook Air at $799 and for Students $699.

Having said all that, whether Apple remains committed to Mac in its ideal as a Personal Computer, or a lock down iPad Appliance remains to be seen. It seems Apple execs are unsure. I could only wish a Mac remains a Mac.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25257932

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfJ3QxJYsw8

I think you're overselling the input device argument here.

I work all day on a regular computer -- big monitor, mechanical keyboard, mouse of my choice, etc. BUT when I do personal travel, or leave my office, I can do almost anything I want or need to do with my iPad + Magic Keyboard, which includes a trackpad.

It's not the lack of, or default positioning of, input choices that make a general computer superior to a tablet for many tasks; it's the whole way the OS works.

MacOS, Windows, and (I suppose) most Linux window managers are predicated on having lots of persistent windows you can move around, reference, etc. Tablets and phones assume a fullscreen approach. Modern iOS has the ability to show multiple things at once, some of the time, but it pales next to what you can do on the general purpose OS of your choice. THAT, to me, is the productivity gap.

This is NOT to say that I want iOS to change and become more like MacOS in this regard. I think there's a real place for both modes. It just depends on what you need to do (and, to a point, where you need to do it).

> Apple cares about the Mac again

I don't think Apple cares about macOS users though. It's a huge difference. The way Apple drops support for existing things easily drives people away from them.

I wish this was true, but everyday I see more dev shops moving from windows to mac than the opposite. I don't see as many moving to linux.

Moving applications to the cloud and the slow deprecation of old windows apps made this possible.

I've seen people dropping macOS and switching to Linux for a development computer. Can't really quantify that.

But it's even more pronounced for gamers about whom Apple doesn't care at all. Linux is no doubt better for development than macOS, but for gaming it's glaringly better.

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