Why Apple Should Kill Off the Mac | Hacker News Reader

Why Apple Should Kill Off the Mac

on.wsj.com

6 pointsjack_axel11 comments

>what on Earth is Apple doing running victory laps around a dying PC industry? Personally, I’d rather see Apple push the envelope on what’s next.

I think it is clear that the author is not a developer.

Or a maker in general, I wonder if he touched typed his article on an iPad.

It seems the author of the article couldn’t elaborate any further. Apple wouldn’t want their developers to write apps for iOS platform on anything but the Mac; not in the forseeable future.

This article has no content, the author makes a claim and then doesn't make an argument for the claim.

Can’t argue with the sales figures but I really hope not. As a IT professional I am happy to pay more for a significantly better product - with Windows based machines it seems to be an ongoing race to the bottom.

The Mac will never move the needle as much as the iPhone is right now, and that's ok. Jobs said that traditional computers are like trucks: not everyone needs them, but those that do really use them. So if Apple is like Ford, then just because the Taurus is selling like hotcakes right now doesn't mean the F-150 is going to get dropped.

clickbait

Seriously, how does this shit make it to the top of HN?

I don't know... Watching the array of Apple OS'es (OSX , iOS, WatchOS) during the WWDC keynote, I got the sense that this has got to be a maintenance nightmare. Microsoft seems to be aiming another direction with the one Windows theme--although the thought of making that work also makes me cringe. I'm out of touch with modern development, but simple seems to me to be the best policy.

Is anybody out there more in touch with the details--Is there enough significant overlap that keeping the ecosystem in sync with itself seems to be a reasonable task?

I don't know the details, but I know they emphasized that the three(!) platforms share a lot of common frameworks/foundation. Basically, when the iPhone was introduced, Jobs said "iPhone runs OS X." That hasn't changed, and I believe the watch does to a certain extent.

So from a programmatic standpoint, they are three platforms with one foundation. And Apple isn't going to proclaim "one OS X" any time soon since they want to emphasize (and make sure developers are aware of) each platforms' differences: iOS for touch interactions and limited multitasking, watchOS for limited interactions (glances), OS X for power users and doing things not possible/practical on iOS. But all three are programmed with Objective-C/Swift and use some Cocoa-like framework.

They've been making OSX look more like iOS (Notification Center, App Store for example). There are many similarities between the frameworks. It might make programming sense to use a common framework.

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