I think I've had a change of heart on the ARM Macs.

[now i see it]

These M1 machines are 1st generation computers aimed at the bottom of the product line. You can't expect to get what you want at an affordable price

 

[Shirasaki]

this was removed after criticism by developers.

Apple removes criticised whitelist in macOS Big Sur 11.2

As of beta 2 of macOS 11.2, Apple's own apps can no longer bypass firewalls and VPNs

www.macworld.co.uk

Look I get that you love your conspiracies but what you describe will not happen, no matter how much you wish it to happen.

Heh. I love my conspiracies as long as I can throw them away like hot potato. It is interesting to see Apple removes that. But blending the line between macOS and iPadOS is happening. Apple can still keep selling Macs and iPads but by then they will be more or less identical. All apple needs to do is boiling frogs.

 

[Shirasaki]

Are you serious? That's what they have been doing since Apple was first founded as a company. UI design is at the heart of Apple, and hey were the first ones to implement many things that others disregarded as unnecessary flippery. Starting with things like graphical interfaces and variable fonts. They even patented their rounded corner drawing algorithm.

Yes, apple can and will keep spending big money to make their software and hardware looks perfect and beautiful. That’s what makes apple products shine and defines their stuff as premium products. But widening menu item and increasing space between menu bar icons are going to be more than “just making it look nice”. Everything done must have their own purpose. To me apple does that for reasons more than just “making it look nice”, otherwise there’s other ways to make it look better.

You suggested, that Apple allowing iOS apps to run on a Mac is a sign that they plan to merge the platforms. I pointed out that Microsoft allows to run Android apps on Windows 11. Since it is nonsensical to suggest that Microsoft want to fuse Android and Windows, I hoped this serves as an illustration that your logic is flawed.

Microsoft allowing android apps to run on windows seems more like a response to apple allowing iOS and iPadOS apps to run on Mac, rather than turning windows PC into a phone or something. Also, iOS and macOS will not merge. They serve completely different set of use cases. iOS apps more or less just “happen” to run on Mac. What I say is iPadOS and macOS will blend together, with or without being merged into one desktop system.

And now you are again confusing "locking in" and "not supporting my use case". Macs are not system for tinkerers and are not designed to be tinkered with easily. And can we please stop with the nonsense of "tech savvy people wanting to hack into systems". Tech savvy people don't want to hack into anything, they just want to be able to do their work. I am a tech savvy person and I am delighted that we finally have a properly secured system volume that I can't ruin by mistyping an elevated command. Sure, some people like to tinker with their systems, either for their job or their hobby. That's why modern Macs have reduced security profiles.

There are many more types of tech savvy people than you think. Linus, for example, loves to tinker stuff. I also like to tinker stuff and poke around random bits of software. But I also love to keep my stuff up and running all the time. They don’t contradict each other.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Would professional photographers download an iOS version of Photoshop for their professional works (assuming Adobe allowing that)? I doubt it.

If Adobe makes it a part of their Adobe subscription and they have an iPad to use it on, why not?

 

[leman]

Yes, apple can and will keep spending big money to make their software and hardware looks perfect and beautiful. That’s what makes apple products shine and defines their stuff as premium products. But widening menu item and increasing space between menu bar icons are going to be more than “just making it look nice”. Everything done must have their own purpose. To me apple does that for reasons more than just “making it look nice”, otherwise there’s other ways to make it look better.

They have retuned the entire UI, reworking spacing, materials and element layout across the board. You are interpreting way too much into it.

What I say is iPadOS and macOS will blend together, with or without being merged into one desktop system.

I agree that it’s a possibility. I disagree that it will mean that macOS becomes more restricted. If they fuse together, it wil be the iPad that gains functionality, not Mac that loses it.

There are many more types of tech savvy people than you think. Linus, for example, loves to tinker stuff. I also like to tinker stuff and poke around random bits of software. But I also love to keep my stuff up and running all the time. They don’t contradict each other.

I really hope that you didn’t just refer to Linus Thorvalds as a “typical tech savvy person”. With all my respect to Linus, he is a very opinionated person with opinionated needs. He is the anthithesis of usability. Just look at git.

And yes, they do contradict each other at some levels. Unified rich UI for example helps to create streamlined experiences and makes it easier to create rich, high-quality UI applications. But it’s fundamentally incompatible with UI modding, since modding can destroy that careful UI look. Similarly, locked system partition is an amazing feature for system stability and performance. I don’t even know why one would want to disable that one, unless you are a security researcher or an OS developer. Similarly, there is just no good argument against user-space drivers.

You design a system with certain use cases in mind. It is not true that a powerful system needs to support low-level tinkering and it is not true that systems that support low-level tinkering are convenient. Linux for example is great, and you can set it up to support many different use cases, but my, it’s an absolutely tedious system to work with. MacOS instead is designed for usability, and it comes with certain tradeoffs.

 

[RPi-AS]

Microsoft allowing android apps to run on windows seems more like a response to apple allowing iOS and iPadOS apps to run on Mac, rather than turning windows PC into a phone or something.

Let's not forget that ChormeOS added support for running Android apps a few years ago. It might be possible that iOS app support on macOS on the M1 is an answer to Google's effort.

There are many more types of tech savvy people than you think. Linus, for example, loves to tinker stuff. I also like to tinker stuff and poke around random bits of software. But I also love to keep my stuff up and running all the time. They don’t contradict each other.

macOS is used by developers which love to tinker so I don't think that it is the best strategy for Apple to lockdown furthermore macOS. I agree that having control of all of the hardware and software opens up more occasions for restricting things, so I would still keep this theory as possible. It is (30% cut via App Store) and it is not (loss of tinkerer and software devs) in their interest to do this.

I really hope that you didn’t just refer to Linus Thorvalds as a “typical tech savvy person”.

I think that they were referring to Linus Tech Tips.

Similarly, locked system partition is an amazing feature for system stability and performance. I don’t even know why one would want to disable that one, unless you are a security researcher or an OS developer. Similarly, there is just no good argument against user-space drivers.

You design a system with certain use cases in mind. It is not true that a powerful system needs to support low-level tinkering and it is not true that systems that support low-level tinkering are convenient. Linux for example is great, and you can set it up to support many different use cases, but my, it’s an absolutely tedious system to work with. MacOS instead is designed for usability, and it comes with certain tradeoffs.

I agree with your point, even if I think that macOS should be more open.

 

[mi7chy]

Let's not forget that ChormeOS added support for running Android apps a few years ago. It might be possible that iOS app support on macOS on the M1 is an answer to Google's effort.

Bingo. ChromeOS is #2 marketshare surpassing MacOS so a bigger threat to Microsoft. Another Microsoft move to counter Google is adopting Chrome Edge browser. As a Chrome user, Edge is now close enough that I don't need to install Chrome plus Edge has built-in pen markup that Chrome doesn't. Surprisingly there are better deals on Windows devices so it has the edge over Chromebooks. Competition is good for consumers.

 

[leman]

macOS is used by developers which love to tinker so I don't think that it is the best strategy for Apple to lockdown furthermore macOS. I agree that having control of all of the hardware and software opens up more occasions for restricting things, so I would still keep this theory as possible. It is (30% cut via App Store) and it is not (loss of tinkerer and software devs) in their interest to do this.

I would say macOS is great system for developers. None of the mentioned restrictions (boot security, locked system volume etc) affects the developer experience. You can still install and use any framework you want, and it only took a couple of month for the major dev tools to be natively available on ARM macOS as well.

 

[Jorbanead]

Well it's obviously better than Intel, but it's not even as good as an Nvidia GPU from several years ago. I wont praise it too much as you still cannot game on it unless you like 30FPS on low, but it actually does run games now lol.

Also I know it's a memory shortage and it caching to the SSD. I can just compare to a 16GB machine and scroll on an endless news site, the 8GB machine is slow at loading... it's caching to the SSD because the ram is full. You NEED 16GB, 8GB is not enough unless you're that clueless and upgrading from an old Laptop and cannot tell the difference.

I've just wanted to confirm that, yeah searching on many videos, the 8GB is constantly holding the Mac up, it just isn't enough.

What MBA came with Nvidia graphics?

Your issues seem less to do with M1 and more that you're mad apple charges what they do for 8GB of ram. That's totally fair, but this isn't exclusive to M1 it's just Apple's prices.

 

[jdb8167]

Similarly, there is just no good argument against user-space drivers.

Traditionally the trade off is performance. But I doubt that is much of an issue with today's hardware.

 

[petvas]

What do you mean alpha phase CPU? Intel Mac represented x86 Mac era, and M1 is the end of it and the start of Apple Silicon era. That’s how it is, and regardless of how we call it, M1 IS the first generation of Apple Silicon. Calling it “beta” because there is going to be issues and hiccups for every first generation of Apple consumer products (first generation iPhone, first generation iPad, both died rather quickly for obvious reason, as well as iPhone 4 ending horribly on iOS 7). Lack of optimised M1 app is one of those hiccups and development will need some time to catch up. When M2 is released, I bet most if not all mainstream applications (all kinds of browsers, Adobe suite, Microsoft Office for example) would be fully optimised for Apple Silicon and they will run amazingly well and better than their Intel counterparts.

It's not a beta. This CPU is fantastic and there are zero issues with it. Of course there are developers who still didn't update their apps, but even Intel apps behave very well when run under Rosetta.
Intel CPUs on the other side are badly optimized and get very hot.

 

[sgtaylor5]

from "Annotating Apple’s Anti-Sideloading White Paper from DaringFireball.com on Wednesday, 23 June 2021":
The Mac is fundamentally designed for users who are at least somewhat technically savvy, but tries its best to keep non-savvy users from doing things they shouldn’t. But you can always hurt yourself, sometimes badly, with any true power tool. The iPhone is the converse: designed first and foremost for the non-savvy user, and tries to accommodate power users as best it can within the limits of that primary directive.

"Tries its best to keep non-savvy users from doing things they shouldn't" = You can circumvent security controls, but it's hard to do if you're a beginner. Also, macOS isn't designed to tweak. I knew I couldn't switch to macOS until I didn't want to tweak my systems anymore. So I waited. For those who do want to tweak, there's Windows or, more difficultly, Linux. It's a breath of fresh air that I don't have to tweak anymore. YMMV.

The iPhone is vastly different in its nature, and iPadOS isn't far behind: "designed first and foremost for the non-savvy user", meaning you can't tweak nor really destroy the operating system in daily use, and nothing else can either. Not apps, not anything. So, you can't do what you want on iOS or iPadOS differently than what is provided. I'd love to graft the iOS 12 text magnifying loupe onto iOS 14; not able to happen. If you want your phone to work like your computer, there's Android.

Think about those current iPad ads: what's special about the iPad? you can do what you want, and not have to worry about managing your device. It's much easier to use. An iPad, even a Pro, isn't made for a developer's work, nor is it made for extremely heavy use, even if it has an M1 in it. Now, one might argue that Apple shouldn't have put an M1 in the iPad Pro, simply to forstall these current expectations and complaints.

Can't stress this enough; an iPad is for people who don't want to think about their device, they just want to use it. It isn't a Surface Pro.

An anecdote: a friend's wife quit using her Haswell Toshiba laptop when she got her 1st gen iPad Pro (for photography and crafting use) so completely, her husband had to feature update Windows 10 two or three times before he could use it for his trip.

 

[Yebubbleman]

I think Apple might be partially banking on the success of game streaming. If the web-app-based game streaming services become very good (and widespread), then it won't matter that your Mac is running a different architecture to that for which the game was made, and there would end up being a reduced case for choosing Windows for gaming (if any reasonably-sized title would always also release on the game streaming services). It would be a waste for Apple to focus on Mac becoming a gaming platform if they believe it wouldn't matter in the long run.

I'd buy that for at least a dollar. Though, last I checked, the selection of titles was pretty weak. Though, to be fair, the selection of titles was probably comparable to the list of 64-bit Intel Mac games that run in Catalina or newer Intel-based macOS versions. Certainly cloud streaming would be nice to have take off as that way, the need to buy something like an Intel 16" MacBook Pro or a dedicated gaming PC notebook/desktop would go away.

 

[Kung gu]

Why they allow iOS and iPadOS apps to be run on Mac, if Mac is, well, a Mac for professional users and to complete professional tasks? Would professional photographers download an iOS version of Photoshop for their professional works (assuming Adobe allowing that)? I doubt it.

Man, Windows 11 is getting android apps. Does that mean Windows 11 and android will merge?

Your posts seem to be only anti-Apple and dismisses whatever MS does.

 

[Kung gu]

I have seen article about firewall software on newer version of macOS no longer able to limit system service network traffic since they are whitelisted by macOS internally. What if someone don’t want macOS keeps phoning home? The list goes on and on.

They got rid of this in Big Sur 11.2

Apple removes criticised whitelist in macOS Big Sur 11.2

As of beta 2 of macOS 11.2, Apple's own apps can no longer bypass firewalls and VPNs

www.macworld.co.uk

Please stay up to date on matters

 

[Kung gu]

It is interesting to see Apple removes that. But blending the line between macOS and iPadOS is happening. Apple can still keep selling Macs and iPads but by then they will be more or less identical. All apple needs to do is boiling frogs.

That has already happened with Sidecar and Universal control, the Mac and the iPad are used with tandem with each other. But Apple has no intention of merging, its clear they want a distinct differentiation between Mac and iPad because they want people to buy both.

 

[Shirasaki]

Man, Windows 11 is getting android apps. Does that mean Windows 11 and android will merge?

Your posts seem to be only anti-Apple and dismisses whatever MS does.

Has Microsoft developers their own silicon and their own computer and tablet yet? And most if not all android apps are not optimised for tablet use. Apple is a completely different story: own processor, own OS, own App Store. I’d quote Microsoft If they had such high level of vertical integration but they don’t. And no. Windows and android will NOT merge. What apple might do is merging a TABLET OS into desktop OS, not phone OS.

 

[Shirasaki]

That has already happened with Sidecar and Universal control, the Mac and the iPad are used with tandem with each other. But Apple has no intention of merging, its clear they want a distinct differentiation between Mac and iPad because they want people to buy both.

Yeah, that’s what they are scrambling to tell their customer at the current stage. However, Apple is trying their best to blend macOS and iPadOS as much as they can as to “unify the experience” and achieve “seamless transition” for users who owns iPad and Mac. If making iPad the Mac companion is the approach, I’m more than happy to throw my conspiracy theory into trash can and embrace it.

Oh btw, being critical is not the same of “hating”. It’s not like your parents scolding you after you making mistake means they hate you.

 

[russell_314]

Nvidia had fast GPUs in passively cooled laptops several years ago? You sure?

M1 GPU reaches around 80-90% of GTX 1650 Max-Q in unoptimized games, which IMO, is far from "terrible".

I get about 60 FPS in WoW classic on my M1 iMac and I think that's being capped at 60. I don't think it can compare to a modern dedicated GPU but it's light years ahead of Intel.

 

[Kung gu]

Exactly. It is pretty obvious, given the trajectory, where this ends up. We're not there yet, but that's where we're going...and it is a "slowly boiling a frog" type of metaphor at work.

Incremental steps, none of which on their own will be a red flag to cause people to jump off... but the end result is they're caught. Some will complain, as they do with iOS devices, that they're "locked in" and "too invested" in the ecosystem to switch out.

Until then, there will be the skeptics. It is not fruitful to attempt to convince anyone... just make sure that you're making the right decision for you.

I don't believe so every step Apple has taken is to prepare the Mac for Apple Sillcon.

Kill 32bit, introduce T2 chip and introduce catalyst and universal apps.

If the Mac can only gets Apps from the Apple App Store then can you call it a Mac?
Won't the Mac become an iPad then?

The beauty of Mac is that it's OPEN platform to develop apps where APPS can be downloaded from everywhere.
I also think the other side is too extreme, that Apple will LOCK down the Mac because of some design changes.

My question to them why? The Mac has more to lose by locking up to the App Store and the Mac. Apple knows this.

As I said before the PERFECT time to lock down was with M1 as this represents the future of the Mac but the macOS is as open as it was on Intel Catalina.

 

[Kung gu]

And no. Windows and android will NOT merge. What apple might do is merging a TABLET OS into desktop OS, not phone OS.

How do you know that? But you sure seem that iPadOS and macOS will merge.
In fact I think that already happened, macOS is a better iPadOS suited for mouse and keyboard.

The iPad and Mac share the same ARM SoC after all.

 

[Kung gu]

Yeah, that’s what they are scrambling to tell their customer at the current stage. However, Apple is trying their best to blend macOS and iPadOS as much as they can as to “unify the experience” and achieve “seamless transition” for users who owns iPad and Mac. If making iPad the Mac companion is the approach, I’m more than happy to throw my conspiracy theory into trash can and embrace it.

Apple wants money, apple loses money if the Mac and iPad is the same because the customer will only buy one.
So apple will not make the Mac and iPad have the SAME features.

 

[Kung gu]

Has Microsoft developers their own silicon and their own computer and tablet yet?

Windows 10 has tablet mode and Windows 11 removes that but its makes the icons bigger and spacing and padding bigger so that OS is more touch friendly.

For MS any PC laptop with a detachable keyboard is a tablet.

 

[Shirasaki]

How do you know that? But you sure seem that iPadOS and macOS will merge.
In fact I think that already happened, macOS is a better iPadOS suited for mouse and keyboard.

The iPad and Mac share the same ARM SoC after all.

Microsoft attempted to merge desktop OS with phone OS during the entire Windows Phone saga, and failed.
Given iPadOS inferior mouse and keyboard support (no right click for example), macOS is currently still a better OS for mouse and keyboard as you can see.

 

[Shirasaki]

Apple wants money, apple loses money if the Mac and iPad is the same because the customer will only buy one.
So apple will not make the Mac and iPad have the SAME features.

Ok, maybe not the SAME (terminal and such), but I am sure they will develop features similar enough so users would not feel the disruption when moving from iPadOS to macOS and vice versa. I’m ok with that.