MP 7,1 Mac Pro 8.1 - WHAT IF...

[ZombiePhysicist]

I think it's almost the opposite, at least on the software side (which is the only one I know about). The few people I know who work at Apple are absolutely world-class, and I don't think I've ever met or interacted with a developer at Apple who didn't come off as incredibly competent.

I know there is an impression that everyone in Silicon Valley is just sitting around designing new emojis and playing in a giant ball-pool, but I get the impression that Apple really is doing an incredible amount of work for its size.

The trouble is that Apple are literally trying to completely re-invent several wheels simultaneously. They're literally trying to do the entire jobs of Intel, AMD, nVidia, Microsoft, and several other gigantic hardware and software companies all at once.

If anything I'd like to see them increase their developer count massively so they can actually fix all their incredibly buggy software, which seems mostly to be buggy because they don't have the people to fix things, rather than the developers they do have being bad or lazy.

We disagree. That they are world class is fine. What they produce is in question.

I know LOTs of people that are super capable but went to apple/google to 'disappear' and rub their red staplers. I talk to some of them, and all they do is go to meetings and produce nothing. They JOKE about it to me. They have basically infinite job security lost inside the bureaucratic do-nothing mire that makes money despite itself and are incapable of producing anything. These companies are now where acquisitions go to die. Sadly apple is on a similar trajectory IMO.

Founder who sold his startup to Google says the company has lost its mission, is mismanaged and has no sense of urgency

A former Google employee said the technology giant is inefficient, plagued by mismanagement and paralyzed by risk.

www.cnbc.com

The maze is in the mouse

What ails Google. And how it can turn things around.

medium.com

Billionaire tech CEO says Meta and Google over-hired so much they didn't have enough work for employees: 'They really were doing nothing'

"If you want to work from home, like four days of work in your pajamas, go to work for Facebook," Thomas Siebel, the CEO of C3.ai, told Insider.

www.businessinsider.com

After 5 years of nothing, Humane 'startup' is now shifting to AI - General Discussion Discussions on AppleInsider Forums

Founded in 2018 by ex-Apple executives, the mysterious Humane company has announced $100 million in new funding plus a shift into AI -- and still has no product to announce.

forums.appleinsider.com

https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/heres-why-bosses-at-google-are-not-allowed-to-hire-fire-or-promote-employees.html

 

[maikerukun]

RE: Shake / Motion / Phenomenon

Wasn't Shake a 2D compositor in an industry shifting to 3D compositing, of which Nuke was the "new hawtness"; and something about the Shake code base not really suitable for a major overhaul...?

Apple bought Shake, killed off the Windows variant, and offered lifetime licenses (unlimited seats...?) & source code (basically, we're gonna stop developing this software, but if you want you code monkeys to work on it pay this one-time fee; oh, and not-for-resale, thanks...) to the "big studios" that were on the Linux variant at the time...?

Then they went ahead and integrated what they wanted into FCP (Motion), there were rumors of a "next-gen" compositing app code-named Phenomenon, but nothing ever became of that...?

I dunno, I am just a 3D/VFX aficionado who has read too many issues of Cinefex & other assorted 3D/DCC/VFX publications in the past...

I only remember that whole thing through an adjacent lens. I had just arrived in LA in 2005 and booked a few commercials as an actor and started my career in entertainment. Didn't start my production company officially until 2010ish...Up until then, anything behind the camera was just amateur work and PA/AD/Etc...type stuff. I had interest in that side of things but didn't feel proficient enough just yet to be offering professional services. So I remember Shake and all that but the only software I was intimately familiar with to that point was Final Cut Pro (and at that point I was buying the Final Cut Studio suite in that big ass physical BOX it came in LOL Good times Pretty sure they discontinued it after 4 or 5 I think?

 

[maikerukun]

Was just about to mention your idea of Phenomenon

Feel Nuke probably would have invariably overtaken Shake even if Apple didn't discontinue it. Ironically feel we're in the same situation where Nuke is becoming staid and needs competition to force it to modernise.


Already part of the way there with their (slightly jank)) support for USD.

Outside of Fusion and After Effects, there's nothing to force Nuke to grow, which is I think the same problem with Adobe. Eventually I think Motion could compete if Apple really went all out with it the way they did with FCPX

 

[maikerukun]

Adding even more fuel to this fire -- apparently a LOT of executives are departing now, or within the very short future. Some others are also reportedly reducing their footprint, instead of getting promoted, they are stepping into less-involved roles.

Things like that^ make me worry about what they will become when all of the Jobs era employees are gone. It felt like a massive hit when Ive left...

Things like this or this for example --- It just makes me sad seeing all of their potential go to waste. That massive slush fund, just sitting there.... literally collecting dust.

Just imagine what innovations they could give the whole world, if they were still the apple of old... Don't think I am singing the nostalgia tune either, *ahem* deconstruct, I am just saying that with the amount of cash they have, and their market cap, they literally could have their R&D group on overdrive making insane machines, even if it doesn't turn a profit right away -- and they could afford to do so.

With their market standing, they literally could be shaking up the world, while still turning a profit with iPhones and whatever else the sheep need to buy.

Hope this discussion keeps going, this thread is super interesting!

This thread will never end. It will continue indefinitely. Because everyone here is passionate about Apple, love them or hate them, and most that hate them here, only hate them because they love them. We hate seeing wasted potential and despite them being the most valuable company on earth, they have SO MUCH wasted potential. Interestingly though, per the article you posted:

"The departures included vice presidents overseeing such fields as industrial design, the online store, information systems, Apple’s cloud efforts, aspects of hardware and software engineering, privacy matters, sales in emerging markets, subscription services and procurement. In all, that’s 11 key people — a far higher amount of turnover than we’ve seen in recent memory."

The areas in which they are losing these folks, and for the reason "retirement, etc...these guys and gals are in 15+ years strong in their positions...there is an opportunity for growth. This doesn't have to go the wrong way. I'm curious to see Tim's next move in this position. I love Ive, but if he was still here, the MacBook Pro would be a piece of paper with circuitry glued to it at this point LOL I'm happy it's gone to a more functional and industrial MacBook Pro and I hope they keep that direction and just bring in Ive and his studio as a consultant.

 

[jmho]

I know LOTs of people that are super capable but went to apple/google to 'disappear' and rub their red staplers.

I wouldn’t defend google or meta, but I’m under the impression that Apple is significantly less cushy than those two.

Mostly because as previously mentioned Apple actually makes a ridiculous number of concrete things, while google and meta sort of just seem to randomly throw money at the wall and see what sticks.

The idea that people at Apple can decide that they don’t feel like working on stuff they’re paid to work on seems unlikely to me, but I could be wrong.

 

[maikerukun]

It's the Monopolist's Malaise - the company is settled into rent-seeking, and progress will be rationed.

Imagine the innovations the world could have, if Apple were banned from any form of product tying between their hardware, software & services, via mandated use of openly documented interfaces at every point.

Hmmm. I don't know about that one. The very reason I LOVE Apple is because everything is CLOSED. If I wanted it all open and independent of hardware, software, or services...I'd just buy an Android, no?

I pray Apple never goes that direction, because then there won't be anything for folks like me who want a closed company. You already have Android. You don't need TWO Androids, do you?

 

[maikerukun]

and to top it off, he had a great Design lead/team and worked in unisom with them, instead of dictating -- profits profits profits!

And this is one of the reasons why I love my 7,1 so much -- I feel like it was Ive's last gift to apple (and the world) before disembarking.

I very much agree with this. My 7.1 will always be around, no matter where we go next. Even if one day (and it will one day), it becomes nothing more than a server machine or a slave for rendering...that beautiful piece of machinery will always be around.

 

[Boil]

After all, they were founded by the same CEO

OG group of folks (Ed Catmull & the gang) at ILM wanted to do 3D animated stuff, while Lucas was focused on photorealistic 3D...

Jobs "bought" said group for fifty million, started Pixar, made a bunch of great movies whilst crafting an incredible DCC pipeline, then sold Pixar to Disney for five billion...?

Renderman, amiright...?

...that big ass physical BOX...

I miss the Big Ass Boxes, because they usually had hard-copy manuals...

When I got EIAS, I had to go to Kinko's to get a hard-copy printed & bound; but when I was dicking with PowerAnimator at a friend's studio, he just gave me a box with all the hard-copy manuals, like 4 or 5 books in there, since he had half a dozen seats at the time...

Outside of Fusion and After Effects, there's nothing to force Nuke to grow, which is I think the same problem with Adobe. Eventually I think Motion could compete if Apple really went all out with it the way they did with FCPX

Apple should buy Blackmagic & Foundry and roll it all (Resolve, Foundry apps, FCP, & Logic) into a 3D/DCC suite...

 

[maikerukun]

Apple is bloated fat and lazy. The reality is FEW people there do things. That's why you get a roving team of awesome developers go, make something, then abandon it because they are needed elsewhere. The rest seems a do-nothing bureaucracy has taken hold of way too much of apple like a cancer. It's like the CIA handbook on how to destroy a compan is apples current company manual.

I think Apple should purge like 3/4s of its employees and I bet you they would be far more innovative and productive. Right now they are fat, lazy, sedentary and mired in banality and cant produce (with the exception of the chip devision).

I do get the feeling if Jobs were around, he would have purged a lot of Apple. He was beyond keenly focused on only having A players, and the tiny band of roving developers that work on one thing then dump it clearly shows there are not enough of them, IMO.

Sadly, I have to agree with this. and quite frankly, cutting their employees by about 2/3 would do wonders for their innovation.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I wouldn’t defend google or meta, but I’m under the impression that Apple is significantly less cushy than those two.

Mostly because as previously mentioned Apple actually makes a ridiculous number of concrete things, while google and meta sort of just seem to randomly throw money at the wall and see what sticks.

The idea that people at Apple can decide that they don’t feel like working on stuff they’re paid to work on seems unlikely to me, but I could be wrong.

Apple is a big place and no doubt you can find all kinds of folks there. And I think I mentioned, but will make explicit here, that I do not think Apple is as bad as google, But it *is* on the same trajectory, and it does have crazy amounts of do-nothing bloat. How bad that is, is fairly open to debate. From my friends there, it is bad. It is now at unhealthy levels. Of course, I currently only have 2 friends working there, but I probably have 15 or so that left and tell me similar things. Still, that's not a statistically relevant sample, but I tend to trust their views as they are good people.

But one other thing to note is if you cut me, I bleed the apple rainbow. I LOVE the company. I want it to do great. So it does in no way please me to be dr. downer on the company. But Apple has gone through bad spells before, and the important thing is it was able to correct itself one way or another. Heck even Microsoft hit its own dark ages and was able to revive itself a lot with new leadership.

So I'm totally rooting for apple. But I think they need someone like Craig Federicci who is a former NeXT person, and has super tech abilities, and I think can have some great vision and inspire productivity. But he also needs to be an ego maniac so he can just cut huge portions of not just dead weight, but weight working actively against the progress of the company. Again, a lot of the stories I hear from apple friends is internally it works like pages out of the CIA handbook of how to destroy a company (that I posted earlier).

Take it for what it's worth. Just one person's view based on anecdotes from friends. I'd be thrilled if the truth turned out to be completely different and all was awesome sauce at apple.

 

[maikerukun]

I think it's almost the opposite, at least on the software side (which is the only one I know about). The few people I know who work at Apple are absolutely world-class, and I don't think I've ever met or interacted with a developer at Apple who didn't come off as incredibly competent.

I know there is an impression that everyone in Silicon Valley is just sitting around designing new emojis and playing in a giant ball-pool, but I get the impression that Apple really is doing an incredible amount of work for its size.

The trouble is that Apple are literally trying to completely re-invent several wheels simultaneously. They're literally trying to do the entire jobs of Intel, AMD, nVidia, Microsoft, and several other gigantic hardware and software companies all at once.

If anything I'd like to see them increase their developer count massively so they can actually fix all their incredibly buggy software, which seems mostly to be buggy because they don't have the people to fix things, rather than the developers they do have being bad or lazy.

This too, is a fair perspective. For me, what I would say is, focus on apple silicon CPU and GPU and pushing to the absolute limitations of what can be done right now...and PARTNER with all the best of the best in world class software. All the innovative stuff. The quality of life stuff is incredible, but I wouldn't mind them just being hella aggressive on the innovation side for a few years.

 

[maikerukun]

OG group of folks (Ed Catmull & the gang) at ILM wanted to do 3D animated stuff, while Lucas was focused on photorealistic 3D...

Jobs "bought" said group for fifty million, started Pixar, made a bunch of great movies whilst crafting an incredible DCC pipeline, then sold Pixar to Disney for five billion...?

Renderman, amiright...?



I miss the Big Ass Boxes, because they usually had hard-copy manuals...

When I got EIAS, I had to go to Kinko's to get a hard-copy printed & bound; but when I was dicking with PowerAnimator at a friend's studio, he just gave me a box with all the hard-copy manuals, like 4 or 5 books in there, since he had half a dozen seats at the time...



Apple should buy Blackmagic & Foundry and roll it all (Resolve, Foundry apps, FCP, & Logic) into a 3D/DCC suite...

Yep, crazily Steve made most of his money through Pixar, not Apple lol.

And yes the manuals that came in the Studio boxes were so darn detailed and helpful. It was great. They were basically university text books lololol.

I wouldn't be against Apple buying Blacckmagic and integrating FUSION into FCPX the way AE is with Premiere. Also the coloring tools of Resolve as a the built in Coloring Suite in FCPX would be great. They should also LEAVE REGULAR RESOLVE ALONE for folks that want to use it as a separate entity all together. If they did this it would be incredible.

 

[maikerukun]

Apple is a big place and no doubt you can find all kinds of folks there. And I think I mentioned, but will make explicit here, that I do not think Apple is as bad as google, But it *is* on the same trajectory, and it does have crazy amounts of do-nothing bloat. How bad that is, is fairly open to debate. From my friends there, it is bad. It is now at unhealthy levels. Of course, I currently only have 2 friends working there, but I probably have 15 or so that left and tell me similar things. Still, that's not a statistically relevant sample, but I tend to trust their views as they are good people.

But one other thing to note is if you cut me, I bleed the apple rainbow. I LOVE the company. I want it to do great. So it does in no way please me to be dr. downer on the company. But Apple has gone through bad spells before, and the important thing is it was able to correct itself one way or another. Heck even Microsoft hit its own dark ages and was able to revive itself a lot with new leadership.

So I'm totally rooting for apple. But I think they need someone like Craig Federicci who is a former NeXT person, and has super tech abilities, and I think can have some great vision and inspire productivity. But he also needs to be an ego maniac so he can just cut huge portions of not just dead weight, but weight working actively against the progress of the company. Again, a lot of the stories I hear from apple friends is internally it works like pages out of the CIA handbook of how to destroy a company (that I posted earlier).

Take it for what it's worth. Just one person's view based on anecdotes from friends. I'd be thrilled if the truth turned out to be completely different and all was awesome sauce at apple.

Personally, I would LOVE for Craig to be the next Apple CEO. He'd be fantastic.

 

[Boil]

...someone like Craig Federicci who is a former NeXT person, and has super tech abilities, and I think can have some great vision and inspire productivity. But he also needs to be an ego maniac so he can just cut huge portions of not just dead weight, but weight working actively against the progress of the company.

Personally, I would LOVE for Craig to be the next Apple CEO. He'd be fantastic.

Hair Force One, sandbagging crucial NanoHair technologies...!

 

[prefuse07]

This too, is a fair perspective. For me, what I would say is, focus on apple silicon CPU and GPU and pushing to the absolute limitations of what can be done right now...and PARTNER with all the best of the best in world class software. All the innovative stuff. The quality of life stuff is incredible, but I wouldn't mind them just being hella aggressive on the innovation side for a few years.

Yessss! this ^^^^

That's exactly what I'm saying, and is why I am rooting for them to release just one more Intel/x86 Mac Pro, as it will do 2 things:

1. It will give the current Pros what they want and continue support for 7,1 users...
2. It will buy apple time to focus 100% on AS, and mature it towards surpass Nvidia's level? (hopefully)

Just imagine, if they had 3-4 years to focus 100% on R&D with AS, instead of profits profits profits! -- granted they can continue to generate profits thru iPhones and Macbooks, but really continue to work hard as hell behind the scenes, and then release their flagship disruptor -- the AS Mac Pro...

This is the same company that brought us the W6800X Duo... Now imagine they carry that concept over into AS.

So, swappable/upgradable and stackable CPU and GPU modules, but this time it's ARM based...

 

[mattspace]

Hmmm. I don't know about that one. The very reason I LOVE Apple is because everything is CLOSED. If I wanted it all open and independent of hardware, software, or services...I'd just buy an Android, no?

The best era of Apple, was when they were doing Intel machines, and MacOS X was a certified UNIX.

That was the era in which quality was highest, in which things generally ran without glitches, in which "just reboot it" wasn't considered troubleshooting, and in which Appl's value-add was in making the most usable versions of open standards - when the system was OpenGL / PDF based, when preferences were all human readable XML.

The quality was highest because they had to make it high quality to work with all the diverse players and sources.

Every time Apple made things more closed, the quality went down.

What you like about Apple isn't it being closed, it's it being interoperable, and those things are in no way connected. Making things closed doesn't make it easier for it to be interoperable, it makes it easier to make it only-just interoperable.

Closed is about hiding sloppy work. It's about kludges, and workarounds.

And importantly, what's becoming clear as lawsuit after lawsuit after regulator after regulator investigate, is that Apple uses closed to cover an industrial panopticon conducted against its userbase, whose scale seems only to be limited by how deeply investigators seek it out.

I pray Apple never goes that direction, because then there won't be anything for folks like me who want a closed company. You already have Android. You don't need TWO Androids, do you?

Yes, because then they would compete with each other to be the best Android. Why are Apple's app stores so crap - lack of competition. Why the butterfly keyboard - lack of competition. Why the notch - lack of competition.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

The best era of Apple, was when they were doing Intel machines, and MacOS X was a certified UNIX.

That was the era in which quality was highest, in which things generally ran without glitches, in which "just reboot it" wasn't considered troubleshooting, and in which Appl's value-add was in making the most usable versions of open standards - when the system was OpenGL / PDF based, when preferences were all human readable XML.

The quality was highest because they had to make it high quality to work with all the diverse players and sources.

Every time Apple made things more closed, the quality went down.

What you like about Apple isn't it being closed, it's it being interoperable, and those things are in no way connected. Making things closed doesn't make it easier for it to be interoperable, it makes it easier to make it only-just interoperable.

Closed is about hiding sloppy work. It's about kludges, and workarounds.

And importantly, what's becoming clear as lawsuit after lawsuit after regulator after regulator investigate, is that Apple uses closed to cover an industrial panopticon conducted against its userbase, whose scale seems only to be limited by how deeply investigators seek it out.



Yes, because then they would compete with each other to be the best Android. Why are Apple's app stores so crap - lack of competition. Why the butterfly keyboard - lack of competition. Why the notch - lack of competition.

What is intersting is you cannot seem to accept that people disagree and want something different. I can understand why people like open unix/linux etc. even though it's not for me. A better android, to me, is like asking for a better painful goiter. I'd rather pass.

Yea, take a look at the android App Store and get back to me. The stores are crap because the software on them is crap. The app culture was a bad race to the bottom and turned all platforms using them to crap. Very little good software still being made. Everything went to awful web based services that are toxic to me. Some love them. So to each their own.

 

[mattspace]

What is intersting is you cannot seem to accept that people disagree and want something different. I can understand why people like open unix/linux etc. even though it's not for me. A better android, to me, is like asking for a better painful goiter. I'd rather pass.

The two things are not mutually exclusive. An open iOS wouldn't require you to use it and experience it like Android, just as the old UNIX MacOS X didn't require you to get into your text editor proctologist's gloves.

Back in the earlier days on MacOS X a lot of stuff that requires terminal commands now had GUIs provided by Apple. We've gone backwards in that respect.

Apple could still run a curated app store - arguably a better one because they could set higher standards. BUT the OS would have to be designed for a potentially more hostile world - it would have to be hardened to cope with that. That would be a good thing.

None of the "positive" things people attribute to Apple technologies being closed are due to them being closed. Nothing makes a process better, than documenting it for someone else to use - as any teacher can tell you, teaching is the best way to learn.

The iOS app store isn't "secure". The iOS app store is just as filled with scam apps as the Play store. App review does not weed out malicious apps or protect users from scams.

These beliefs in the "safety" of Apple's app stores are all myths, easily falsifiable.

Yea, take a look at the android App Store and get back to me. The stores are crap because the software on them is crap. The app culture was a bad race to the bottom and turned all platforms using them to crap. Very little good software still being made. Everything went to awful web based services that are toxic to me. Some love them. So to each their own.

All the worst software I own, is software from the Mac App Store. It's either janky electron-alike ports from iOS, or it randomly requires me to re-authenticate my iTunes store password on launch. The best software I have is the stuff I bought direct from the developer, using Kagi, or Paddle, or FastSpring.

Speak to 3rd party devs and a consistent story that emerges is that Apple kicked off a terrible race to the bottom by choosing not to allow upgrade pricing. Kicked the chair out from under the entire basis of the software economy by breaking the ability to charge money for renovating an existing app to make it better.

The why for that is clear - Apple didn't want an annual iOS upgrade to carry an App upgrade cost.

So now it's subscription pricing, and constantly updating apps, with no rollback if something breaks or regresses - and even the one alleged upside to subscriptions, that you only pay when you're using the app seems to have ben forgotten the moment it was inconvenient for developers to give people their money back when their app stopped working.

 

[maikerukun]

Yessss! this ^^^^

That's exactly what I'm saying, and is why I am rooting for them to release just one more Intel/x86 Mac Pro, as it will do 2 things:

1. It will give the current Pros what they want and continue support for 7,1 users...
2. It will buy apple time to focus 100% on AS, and mature it towards surpass Nvidia's level? (hopefully)

Just imagine, if they had 3-4 years to focus 100% on R&D with AS, instead of profits profits profits! -- granted they can continue to generate profits thru iPhones and Macbooks, but really continue to work hard as hell behind the scenes, and then release their flagship disruptor -- the AS Mac Pro...

This is the same company that brought us the W6800X Duo... Now imagine they carry that concept over into AS.

So, swappable/upgradable and stackable CPU and GPU modules, but this time it's ARM based...

100% brother. That's EXACTLY it. Imagine them releasing one more intel Mac Pro and taking 3 to 4 years to truly create an AS MONSTER! It would be incredible. I am in 100% agreement on this brother.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

The two things are not mutually exclusive. An open iOS wouldn't require you to use it and experience it like Android, just as the old UNIX MacOS X didn't require you to get into your text editor proctologist's gloves.

Back in the earlier days on MacOS X a lot of stuff that requires terminal commands now had GUIs provided by Apple. We've gone backwards in that respect.

Apple could still run a curated app store - arguably a better one because they could set higher standards. BUT the OS would have to be designed for a potentially more hostile world - it would have to be hardened to cope with that. That would be a good thing.

None of the "positive" things people attribute to Apple technologies being closed are due to them being closed. Nothing makes a process better, than documenting it for someone else to use - as any teacher can tell you, teaching is the best way to learn.

The iOS app store isn't "secure". The iOS app store is just as filled with scam apps as the Play store. App review does not weed out malicious apps or protect users from scams.

These beliefs in the "safety" of Apple's app stores are all myths, easily falsifiable.



All the worst software I own, is software from the Mac App Store. It's either janky electron-alike ports from iOS, or it randomly requires me to re-authenticate my iTunes store password on launch. The best software I have is the stuff I bought direct from the developer, using Kagi, or Paddle, or FastSpring.

Speak to 3rd party devs and a consistent story that emerges is that Apple kicked off a terrible race to the bottom by choosing not to allow upgrade pricing. Kicked the chair out from under the entire basis of the software economy by breaking the ability to charge money for renovating an existing app to make it better.

The why for that is clear - Apple didn't want an annual iOS upgrade to carry an App upgrade cost.

So now it's subscription pricing, and constantly updating apps, with no rollback if something breaks or regresses - and even the one alleged upside to subscriptions, that you only pay when you're using the app seems to have ben forgotten the moment it was inconvenient for developers to give people their money back when their app stopped working.

Dude seriously. You cannot accept someone like something different. It’s amazing cognitive dismissal. You don’t have to like a closed system. That’s great. But you keep dismissing others do. You keep arguing why I have to accept your preference and ignoring others.

Not sure what your argument is about the App Store. I think we are in violent agreement it was a crap race to the bottom. I agree that apple stores suck, but I actually think the android store sucks more. I also agree direct from developer generally is way better too, with some rare exceptions.

That said, if the Mac were more fully closed like iOS, with no side loading, I’d dump it. But there are some things that I prefer that are closed and they control fully. Like most things in life, there are few absolutes and it’s more around degree.

 

[mattspace]

Dude seriously. You cannot accept someone like something different. It’s amazing cognitive dismissal. You don’t have to like a closed system. That’s great. But you keep dismissing others do. You keep arguing why I have to accept your preference and ignoring others.

That's really not what it is, it's quite the opposite.

I don't care if other people want "closed", but I do care if other people's advocacy for "closed", is based on effects which are not actually a result of the closed nature, and conflicts with my desire to have a more "open" system.

A "closed" system should ideally be a result of how a user chooses to configure and use it. Someone else having the ability to use iMessage on an Android device, or macOS on an HP Z has no effect on your use of iMessage on an iPhone, or macOS on a Mac Pro.

This is the same argument we're usually on the same side of when it comes to GPUs - the "closed" argument for Apple hardware, especially in regards to Nvidia was that GPU errors were the primary contributor to the greatest source of kernel panics Apple's analytics were getting, so Apple should cut off 3rd party GPUs because they "make Macs unstable".

(*added for clarity* the reason I think this argument against 3rd party GPUs is spurious, is because it ignores that the better solution is building a more resilient GPU software stack, that can cope with the greater variety of GPUs.)

The folks here who don't want to upgrade their GPUs advocating for "closed" Mac Pros that don't allow for us who do, seems no different to me to advocating that the iPhone should be closed for all, because it suits a subset who enjoy the (false) sense of security that provides.

That said, if the Mac were more fully closed like iOS, with no side loading, I’d dump it. But there are some things that I prefer that are closed and they control fully. Like most things in life, there are few absolutes and it’s more around degree.

I mostly agree with this, though I can't think of anything off the top of my head that I think is inherently better in the Apple world as a direct causal result of Apple controlling it, rather than merely being correlated.

 

[enc0re]

A little off-topic, but the App Store being a disaster has less to do with open/closed and more to do with Apple incentivizing revenue models that result in bad software.

If you want to make a freemium app, lots of in-app purchases, Apple is all about that. Even better, they’ll lower their cut if you switch to a subscription model.

On the other hand if you want to make high quality software for a one-time purchase, you’re not only paying the highest fees to Apple. Apple will kneecap you by not allowing upgrade pricing or free trials.

Shovelware is a direct result of the economics. Look no further than the original Angry Birds being hidden by its own developer as an example.

 

[PineappleCake]

Steam is example of an excellent app store. I would rate it 9/10. Yes, there are crapware and adult content but you can turn those off or minimise them.

On Steam, there are forums, great chagelogs, easy to follow news/updates of games and great review method. I would always buy games from Steam because it's cross platform, works on every desktop OS.

Steam is what I would say all app stores should be like.

 

[AndreeOnline]

The very reason I LOVE Apple is because everything is CLOSED.

I agree conceptually, but not with the wording. Apple's ecosystem isn't closed. It's open to quality apps.

All the worst software I own, is software from the Mac App Store.

Hmm. It would seem the system isn't "closed" or curated enough. Apple should double down and sweep the trash right out.

Anyway, and after all: the number one thing that people needs protection from is themselves.

One of these days people will start to ask for cheaper prices too, as if that was a good thing.

 

[mattspace]

Hmm. It would seem the system isn't "closed" or curated enough. Apple should double down and sweep the trash right out.

The only real curation that Apple does on its stores, is to ensure Apple's cut of the revenue. That's the only reason they actually enforce with any consistency.

One of these days people will start to ask for cheaper prices too, as if that was a good thing.

I think rather than cheaper prices, people would appreciate not being herded and compelled into paying more money for the things they have already bought, or having the things they have bought made worse by software updates.