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Comment by Kwpolska | Hacker News Reader

Podman is fairly niche. This is an Apple product that Apple developer circles will push hard.

Alternatives to Docker Desktop aren't niche at all since Docker started charging money.

My org's management wasn't taking the issue seriously, but once the subscription cost reached one FTE's salary, they started listening to people who had already switched to Podman, Rancher or (Co)Lima.

and telemetry on macos

I agree, Apple has a lot of weight. Podman, however, also has a fair bit of heft behind it (IBM via Redhat).

I'll not deny that it's a bit niche, but not so much so that it's completely unknown.

I apologize if this sounds like a hot take, but "Apple developer circles," as in, people who use XCode at all and care about any part of Apple's toolchain[0], is a very small number of people compared to "All developers who happen to code on Macs." In my experience at least, the typical developer who uses macOS codes in VSCode on JS, Python, etc., groans when some file association accidentally launches XCode, and would likely prefer to use normal Docker like the do on their Linux servers, rather than proprietary Darwin weirdness.

"Apple developer circles" to me means the few mostly indies who build non-electron Mac apps and non-ReactNative ios apps, but those developers mostly are writing client code and don't even touch servers.

All this said, my above "gut feelings" don't explain why Apple would have bothered spending their time making this when Orbstack, Docker, etc. already meet the needs of the developers on Mac who actually need and use containers.

[0]: besides the "Command line tools" that allow compilation to work, of course.

> All this said, my above "gut feelings" don't explain why Apple would have bothered spending their time making this when Orbstack, Docker, etc. already meet the needs of the developers on Mac who actually need and use containers.

Before Orbstack, running Docker on Macs was a total pain - the official desktop app is so awful, I doubt anyone at Docker is actually using it. Nevertheless, it was still too useful to let it pass. It was time either Docker or Apple stepped up, but they are both 10 years late to this party. Orbstack fixed the problem.

It would be interesting to see the reaction from Danny Lee, he's hanging out on HN sometimes. I hope this framework ends up being a building block, rather than outright competition.

Podman is the easy go-to for companies that don't like how Docker Desktop requires a license.

I'm sure Apple will try to push their own version of Docker but I'm not sure if they'll be able to win over any Docker Desktop businesses unless their tool also works on other operating systems.

On Windows it is Rancher Desktop that tends to be used, especially since podman only of late started making an easy GUI offering.

Sadly all of them are Electron based.

Most of my coworkers on Windows use none of these desktop applications, there's very little value in their features if you're already using WSL2 and the docker integration of your favorite IDE.

Well, it depends if people have a background as Windows developers, or UNIX refugees on Windows.

You're missing the fact that "docker desktop" actually provides the docker daemon as well as a GUI. There are alternatives for both Mac and Windows, but I'd wager that many people use "docker desktop" just for the ability to run docker containers from the cli.

Windows and macOS are specifically not the same here.

WSL2 provides everything you need to install the docker daemon and CLI, and the VS Code extension gives you a pretty decent GUI, there's no need for anything else really.

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