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Apple's Major Leap Is Unification and More Lock-In, Not Big New Features (bloomberg.com) 152

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this week didn't bring any particularly revolutionary new feature, but it did something perhaps more important for Apple's long-term strategy. The latest updates will unify the company's devices and give customers more reasons to stay within its product ecosystem. From a report: From an average user's standpoint, the updates to iOS and iPadOS were underwhelming and minor, aside from widgets (which Android has had for years). Siri's interface changes were impressive, but there wasn't much discussion of a needed under-the-hood revamp, and the Watch update was incremental, other than sleep tracking. The company didn't let these products languish, but Apple's engineers essentially did just enough. The really impressive achievements came in getting the products to work together, plus sweeping improvements to the Mac.

The biggest news of the conference was that Apple-made chips will replace those from Intel in Mac computers. Besides higher speeds and longer battery life, the change customers will notice first is that Mac computers will work more like an iPhone or an iPad, and will have the ability to run the same apps on the new macOS Big Sur operating system. Soon, someone will be able to buy an iPhone app and run it across Apple's major platforms: the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, and in some cases a variant of it on the Apple Watch and Apple TV. The company also moved toward increased unification by bringing over glance-able information (widgets) from the Apple Watch to its larger devices, and by more deeply integrating its smart home features across products. For example, a HomePod speaker can now be a doorbell and an Apple TV can be a door camera viewer. All of this may drive existing customers to buy additional Apple products, knowing that they'll work together seamlessly. The strategy could boost Apple's sales in the long-term and, just as importantly, make it more difficult for a user to leave behind a device, which could blow a hole in their network of Apple products.
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Apple's Major Leap Is Unification and More Lock-In, Not Big New Features More

Apple's Major Leap Is Unification and More Lock-In, Not Big New Features

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  • Seamlessly, my a** (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @12:53PM (#60222444) Homepage Journal

    I still can't buy a pair of wired earphones that work with my iPhone and my Mac without a clumsy adapter, much less any other accessories. It will start getting close to being seamless when Apple uses the same USB-C connectors across their *entire* product line — when I can unplug a camera or an audio interface or headphones or a flash card reader from my Mac and plug it into my iPhone or my iPad or whatever and have everything "just work". We're a LONG way from there, from what I've seen so far.

    • Re:Seamlessly, my a** (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @12:59PM (#60222472)

      Some of their integration is pretty slick. When my wife got a new iPhone 8 it asked if we wanted to migrate everything from her old phone. You just had to take a picture of the one phone screen with the other and it transferred everything wirelessly. Just getting one phone near the other initiated the question.

      • Android just asks you if you want to transfer stuff from an older phone during initialization, then it does the same stuff.

        • Isn't the whole point of using Android is that you store everything with Google? If you do that, the only thing you need to transfer is config stuff

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by comodoro ( 4850881 )
            I don't know about other people, but the point for me is relative freedom and ability to even build and run my own small apps quite easily. Then there is AOSP, which is not always entirely the same as Android, but pretty close.

    • I still can't buy a pair of wired earphones that work with my iPhone and my Mac without a clumsy adapter, much less any other accessories. It will start getting close to being seamless when Apple uses the same USB-C connectors across their *entire* product line — when I can unplug a camera or an audio interface or headphones or a flash card reader from my Mac and plug it into my iPhone or my iPad or whatever and have everything "just work". We're a LONG way from there, from what I've seen so far.

      You have to remember one important factor here; OSX is grounded in UNIX.

      As in that infamous unforgiving world where millions of 90's SysAdmins were spewing four-letter words back in the days where nothing would "just work" when you connected them together.

      You're bitching about the physical interface when Apple isn't even talking about that, and have already created "solutions" to those physical barriers that include generous profit margins. What you call a problem, Apple calls a product. In the meantime,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

        You have to remember one important factor here; OSX is grounded in UNIX.

        As in that infamous unforgiving world where millions of 90's SysAdmins were spewing four-letter words back in the days where nothing would "just work" when you connected them together.

        As opposed to today where I can't even print or text properly between phones let alone transfer files between devices. If this seamless just work environment that you talk about requires that I buy everything Apple or everything Google then we haven't moved very far from the unix days that you are describing. Every year it's getting worse. I won't even get into the environment damage that this is causing let alone having to replace it every 2 years or pay an arm or a leg for locked down parts. Sorry buddy i

    • Re:Seamlessly, my a** (Score:4, Funny)

      by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @01:40PM (#60222678)

      I still can't buy a pair of wired earphones that work with my iPhone and my Mac without a clumsy adapter

      You can't plug your phonograph or your line printer or your VCR into your Mac without an adapter either. Legacy products require adapters when used with new products.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kohath ( 38547 )

          I think the comment was about the fact the iPhone and Mac do not share a common socket type capable of supporting headphones, not a crack at Apple's refusal to include the industry standard 3.5mm analog audio jack on their devices.

          It seemed like the standard adapters cause sad face complaint.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            Nope. I'd be okay if the iPhone had USB-C. I could use my Pixel 3 earbuds with my iPhone and my Mac, or use a single cheap adapter with both of them, or whatever. But having to use an adapter with one and not with the other is a complete and total "it just works" fail like nothing I've ever seen before.

            Putting up with this incompatibility for one iPhone release, I could understand, but it has been what, five years since the first USB-C Macs started coming out? And Apple *still* hasn't released an iPhon

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Kohath ( 38547 )

              Not sure what that has to do with anything announced this week.

              I have the USB iPad Pro and an iPhone with Lightning port. USB headphones stop working after the iPad music has been paused for a while. Then when you press play, it plays from the iPad speaker. I needed to unplug and replug the USC headphones to get them to work again. No such issue with Lightning port.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                Not sure what that has to do with anything announced this week.

                It was a response to the comment in the article blurb that Macs and iPhones would work seamlessly together. IMO, it can't be seamless until hardware can be moved freely back and forth.

      • Legacy products require adapters when used with new products.

        Wired earphones are far from legacy. I still can buy them, a lot of products still supports them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kohath ( 38547 )

          I can still buy a phonograph. Modern headphones are wireless. Legacy headphones or niche audiophile headphones or $2 headphones have wires.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

        Legacy is the Bluetooth version that older phones don't support. Nothing legacy about something that doesn't need to be charged and works as advertised. I can't plug into my line printer because Mac decided that I needed to buy expensive wires but that is not a problem because I can plug the line printer into a computer and print. But hey fuck the environment right? Lets just buy disposable headphones/hardware every 2 years. That's the attitude. Sounds to me like you are drinking the coolaid.

  • For something they have always been? This is nothing new... this them doing the same thing they have always done and just trying to make it look different.

    It is not important to differentiate on what is being done when the end result from any approach will be the same result of "worse for consumer".

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by infolation ( 840436 )
      They could put the Apple logo on a dog turd and people would line up around the block to pay $1,000 for their iTurd THEN they'd do it again 6 months later and call it the iTurd 2

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by mschaffer ( 97223 )

        Don't forget the designer styles. Like iTurd with extra corn.

      • This is equivalent to the meme of the Linux zealot: "Getting your printer to work on Gentoo is easy! Just... . And just like that, you're done!"

        Yeah, that person probably exists, but they're mostly a strawman for the actual typical user of the product. These comment would funny and persuasive if Apple routinely failed in their endeavors, but they haven't, so instead they just seem disconnected from reality.

      • They could put the Apple logo on a dog turd and people would line up around the block to pay $1,000 for their iTurd THEN they'd do it again 6 months later and call it the iTurd 2

        Sir, as a long time Apple hipster I can tell you that you are mistaken. We Apple hipsters have high standards in all things, even turd purchases. No self respecting Apple hipster would buy a turd from you unless you moulded the aforementioned turd into an apple shape, polished it and then proved your faith in the quality of your product by taking a bite out of the flawlessly polished turd and swallowing it in front of witnesses.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zieroh ( 307208 )

        They could put the Apple logo on a dog turd and people would line up around the block

        You appear to be suffering from a classic case of cognitive dissonance. In your case, you can't quite square the fact that Apple products are popular with many, yet you are personally convinced that the products are not worthwhile and thus those people must be batshit crazy.

        I wish you well with your long recovery from this malady.

    • Exactly. This is business as usual. Even Collegehumor was ridiculing Apple years ago about the iphone 6s where the "s" stands for "same".

  • If they're dumping Intel then that'll be a blow to the Intel based Hackintosh community, I suppose they'll be looking to get the MacOS running on a R-Pi!

    • If they're dumping Intel then that'll be a blow to the Intel based Hackintosh community, I suppose they'll be looking to get the MacOS running on a R-Pi!

      Or a Chromebook...

    • Blessing in disguise: Trust (Score:5, Interesting)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @01:50PM (#60222734)

      Walled Garden is not a prison cell
      One thing we dearly need now is a computer we can trust (i.e. reliably high safety) This is not to say we don' tneed computers for other tasks that dont live and die on trust. And these days who owns one computing device? No one. You have them in routers, hot water heaters, cars, phones, amazon dash buttons, chorme sticks, homepods. Oh yeah and lets not forget Phones and Computers. The latter two are often the keys to all your banking and purchasing and personal correspondence and quite possibly your livelihood and job.
      More than business computers put the livelihoods and safety of billions of people at risk.

      Right now if we could have more secure phones and computers, not just for me and you, but for all other people who can't secure their computers.

      It seems to me that we need to think about the notions behind Trusted Platform Computing. That phrase puts a bad taste in my mouth as did Clipper chips because they were in-bed with government control of your computer. But other than doing it the wrong way because of the wrong reasons and desiderata the basic idea is sound.

      We have been slowly backdooring ourselves into this with varied machines. Chromebooks force you to either live in Googles blessed enclave and well patched system or erase your hard disk and go to developer mode. And many google machines (like those for schools) can't even access the latter freedom or if you have it you can't use it without losing all school access. Apple's OS has ways of knowing what machine it runs on making hackintoshes harder and harder (as well as never permenatly stable barring the next update). And now with the Secure enclave hardware in apple ships and more and more security partitions in INtel chips it's going to soon be a point where TPM can be done completely.

      But I embrace this. I really want my banking and important devices like my phone and my primary home computer to be vaults and not have to worry about intruders as much as I do.

      I also have lots of Linux machines for when I don't want that too. But realistically 99% of what I want to do I can do on a mac, and it doesn't cost me more money than doing on linux, nor do I get inferior products. Only in rare cases is linux better in that regard. Thus I really don't sweat the walled garden. I want it. And I know how to migrate to linux if it turns into a padded cell.

      • I'm going to disagree that Apple is the company to provide us this. Between their proprietary nature, primary drives being married to the motherboard, and similar things; they've taken it to far.

        I wouldn't buy into the most secure device in the world if something non critical like a touch bar dying will prevent a system from booting. I'd rather have an open platform where I can quickly replace parts for maximum uptime.

        The thing with computer security is; pulling this number out my ass but I feel it's true f

      • Re:Blessing in disguise: Trust (Score:4, Informative)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @07:55PM (#60224450) Journal

        Walled Garden is not a prison cell

        It's always a prison if someone else has the key. Even if it's decorated like a garden.

        • I don't think you know what a prison is, you can't typically just leave a prison whenever you like. You can easily stop using an iOS device whenever you like, not only that you can copy all your data to some other device, you can even use an iOS device with non-Apple services so your data resides elsewhere. If you have a mac you get all the developer tools and emulators as well to develop your own applications for it.

          I do think many at Apple have their heads a fair way up their own asses though, I mean live

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

        Nothing about a walled garden makes it a vault against intruders. It makes it a vault against the user and the owner.

    • If they're dumping Intel then that'll be a blow to the Intel based Hackintosh community, I suppose they'll be looking to get the MacOS running on a R-Pi!

      Apple's chips are quite different from the chip in a Raspberry Pi.

  • An advantage for Apple, maybe (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @01:00PM (#60222478)

    I don't see that this is going to help me personally. It seems quite possible it's going to push me away from Mac computers, depending on just how badly the solutions to running x86 stuff on these future Macs work.

    The ability to run iOS apps on the Mac unaltered is, at best, a niche benefit. I can't say there are many times I've said "oh, if I could only run this on my computer...".

    I'm a bit surprised people aren't seeing this for what it appears to be - an attempt by Apple to cut support and development costs by marginalizing their Mac product line. They're doing away with computers and turning them into slightly more powerful iPads.

     

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

      They don't need to marginalize their Mac product line - it has always been a (decent sized) niche. But nobody's writing new MacOS apps (they're not writing new Windows apps either), so the only way for the Mac lines to remain relevant at all is to be able to run iOS apps.

      Still, they're going to need to make iOS apps a lot more keyboard friendly for people to enjoy using them on, say, an iMac - with a big vertical screen that's not going to be positioned nicely for a comfortable touch-based interface.

      Any bi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      I don't see it as a big deal at all actually. I really don't care what the CPU architecture of my machine is these days. Most open source stuff is a recompile away from running on ARM. As for me personally, 90% of the programing I do is Ruby or Python. Probably the majority of the remaining 10% is C# and Java and all of it rarely requires me to consider the CPU specifics much if at all - sometimes endianness still comes up but usually that is a few 'if' statements buried at the bottom of some class somewh

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 )

      I'm a bit surprised people aren't seeing this for what it appears to be - an attempt by Apple to cut support and development costs by marginalizing their Mac product line. They're doing away with computers and turning them into slightly more powerful iPads.

      We're talking about the company who has mastered the art of dumbing down computing systems to match the capability of their audience. Why are you surprised that the clueless masses, aren't seeing this for what it is?

      An 8-year old, has no idea that the iPad they're operating, is designed to be operated by an 8-year old.

      • Do you think bridge designers sit around complaining that the people who drive over their bridges "are dumb" because they don't understand the difference between tension and suspension?

        No, they don't. Just like engineers who design microwaves, and refrigerators, and bridges--the engineers who design computers *want* them to be simple--much of their value is that they remove cognitive load.

        The only people who are annoyed by the "dumbing down" of computers are /. wannabes who for some reason derive a lot
      • Why do computers need to be more complicated than the iPad for your average computer user? What is it specifically that you can't work out how to do in a user-friendly way?

    • They're doing away with computers and turning them into slightly more powerful iPads.

      Watch the Keynote, starting at 1:08:00 through the end.

      Tell me if Big Sur looks like an iPad. Tell me if you can run Final Cut, Maya or XCode on an iPad.

      All these pearl-clutching pronouncements, which are easily disproven by the Keynote.

  • iOS/MacOS homogenization? :-( (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SteveSgt ( 3465 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @01:02PM (#60222482)

    From TFA: "Mac computers will work more like an iPhone or an iPad."

    Noo-oo-oo! The horror; the horror.

    It's bad enough that more and more apps have replaced the whole menu bar with the unpredictably-positioned "hamburger", no longer put most of the commands in the menu bar, quit when you close their windows, hog the screen in a disastrous single window instead of movable and resizable windows and pallets, move more and more to tabbed views instead of multi-window views, and make it hard for you to organize your files into directories in your own way. Now they're going to bring that whole dumbed-down experience to a desktop environment?

    • From TFA: "Mac computers will work more like an iPhone or an iPad."

      Noo-oo-oo! The horror; the horror.

      It's bad enough that more and more apps have replaced the whole menu bar with the unpredictably-positioned "hamburger", no longer put most of the commands in the menu bar, quit when you close their windows, hog the screen in a disastrous single window instead of movable and resizable windows and pallets, move more and more to tabbed views instead of multi-window views, and make it hard for you to organize your files into directories in your own way. Now they're going to bring that whole dumbed-down experience to a desktop environment?

      Here's a nickel, kid, go get yourself a proper computer...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      It's not just Mac. Gnome 3 headed down this road full tilt quite a while ago. Dumbing it down for mythical new users (do those even exist?). No thank you. I despise the header bar that is the mark of a Gnome app these days.

      At least with Linux there is still some choice, so I'm happily running Mate and was also impressed with the latest round of KDE Plasma.

      • Ugh, Gnome. The Linux desktop was coming along quite nicely until Gnome 3, then Gnome had to go and screw it up.

        Maybe I'll give KDE another try. Have they given us back a way to put the menu bar at the top of the screen where it belongs yet? Because that used to be a great feature of KDE, then at some point it disappeared.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0xG ( 712423 )

      From TFA: "Mac computers will work more like an iPhone or an iPad."

      Noo-oo-oo! The horror; the horror.

      Well I remember when M$ decided that servers, workstations, and phones would benefit from all having the same interface.
      Then we got Windows 8. Look how well that worked.
      Marketing...sheesh!

  • Not a cause and effect thing .... but support for ARM chips will improve. Right now you can buy a pinebook pro, Rs-Pi or some other ARM based systems and there are 4 or 5 distros that work, but there are apps that don't support ARM period. I think this will get much better with Apple switching to their own ARM based silicon. It also makes vendor locking more pronounced. However Apple users are already aware of this. It's either OK with them, or they work around it.

  • They're clearly aimed at making their products for the average consumer who doesn't mind lock-in because quite honestly, they're not doing anything important (watching videos, playing games, watching people through their doorbell, etc.). What it does is tell me, as a business buyer, that Apple is even less geared toward us than it was previously. These are clearly not devices to do work on.

    • Re:All "consumer" level stuff (Score:4, Informative)

      by slazzy ( 864185 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @01:25PM (#60222614) Homepage Journal
      I watched their WWDC 2019 I think it was and they started by talking about how they were serious about making machines for business and "getting work done" then for the next 30 minutes showed all the game developers they are working with and the new integrated gaming centre and all that other crap...

    • They're clearly aimed at making their products for the average consumer who doesn't mind lock-in because quite honestly, they're not doing anything important (watching videos, playing games, watching people through their doorbell, etc.). What it does is tell me, as a business buyer, that Apple is even less geared toward us than it was previously. These are clearly not devices to do work on.

      +5 Insightful / Informative.

      Apple has figured out their target market perfectly. It's not people who need something for work.

    • These are clearly not devices to do work on.

      That's a pretty narrow definition of what it means to "do work." I know a lot of professionals who manage to make a lucrative living using nothing more than a web browser and the Office suite.

    • What exactly does the average iPhone user need a Mac? Since Apple is dumbing down their computer line, it begs the questions why spend the money?

  • Contrary to the summary on lock-in, Apple opened up the HomeKit standard more to make it easier for other third-party device makers to provide devices that work with HomeKit, and support a more open standard... that is less lock-in, not more, as most of those devices will also support other home integration standards.

    Also I don't know what on earth the writer was thinking saying that Apple Watch update was minimal. This is an EXTREMELY signifiant update in usability of the Apple Watch, in terms of Apple pr

    • Again I take exception with this, they do not "work more like an iPad" just because

      Hear hear.

      The "more like an iPad argument" is equivalent to "Mac is going to be more like Windows" at the PowerPC to x86 transition. Yeah, I guess it's true in some narrow sense, but the outcome ultimately comes down to the direction Apple chooses to take in developing their software. I do expect that they will try to unify the iOS and MacOS space, but if it's what Apple wants it was going to happen whether MacOS was running ARM, PowerPC, or any other exotic architecture of your liking. They certainly hav

    • Integration is not lock-in. It's marketing, and usability.

      Exactly.

      Slashdot is getting as fact-free as Fox News.

  • Unification and More Lock-In!

    OK then so nothing has changed at Apple. They made the garden wall higher to protect their customers! We can Trust Them!

    But then with 100s of billions in cash piled up what others think really doesn't matter ;)

    Just my 2 cents ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      What their customers think really doesn't matter much either, they know the fanbois will buy whatever overpriced and under resourced garbage they shove at them, so why should they worry?

  • While moving away from Intel chips (and a UNIX binary) may be a minor headache, the integration will be beneficial for developers. Already, I've made teh leap from Android (starting with Donut through Jellybean then to Iphone. I currently use an Iphone 11 as well as a Samsung Galaxy S9. The app ecosystem on the Iphone far and away exceeds that on the Android device. It honestly feels clunky now when I use my Windows PC or Windows notebook. Seamlessly moving from Iphone to Ipad to Imac would be fantastic
    • So you want to use your cell phone for computing....all hail the TI-92!

    • But - the games?

      They specifically mentioned better gaming as a goal.

      Watch the keynote, starting at 1:26:02

    • While moving away from Intel chips (and a UNIX binary) may be a minor headache,

      Who said anything about ditching Unix?

      See? This is what Iâ(TM)m talking about. People spewing any old thing. It reminds me strongly of the typical Trump tweets, or that bullshit his newest Propaganda Minister, er, Press Secretary, is spewing almost daily.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by psergiu ( 67614 )

      Universal binaries ARE Unix binaries.
      Mach-O
      Example:

      $ file /Applications/Solitaire\ XL.app/Contents/MacOS/Solitaire\ XL
      /Applications/Solitaire XL.app/Contents/MacOS/Solitaire XL: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
      /Applications/Solitaire XL.app/Contents/MacOS/Solitaire XL (for architecture ppc): Mach-O executable ppc
      /Applications/Solitaire XL.app/Contents/MacOS/Solitaire XL (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386

      I'm guessing they just added AArch64 in the mix and in that case, yes,

  • Welcome to your walled garden (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gsdfa ( 6545090 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @01:43PM (#60222690)
    Apple is slowly raising the garden walls. Hoping nobody notices.

  • Oh no! Lock in (Score:3)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @01:47PM (#60222712)

    When products don't all work together seamlessly, Apple is stupid and has failed in their original vision. When things are updated and they work together seamlessly, Apple is using a sinister ploy to "lock in" their customers. Tech writers never change.

    • When products don't all work together seamlessly, Apple is stupid and has failed in their original vision. When things are updated and they work together seamlessly, Apple is using a sinister ploy to "lock in" their customers. Tech writers never change.

      Perfect!

      Mods: Mod Parent way up!

  • Switching to linux on my 8 year old Macbook Pro.

  • >make it more difficult for a user to leave behind a device, which could blow a hole in their network of Apple products.
    >

    Great insight. Kudos.

    It raises the stakes for those that do choose to leave AAPL. Apple user's will become heavily in-vested in a mall of services, networks of interoperability and a brand of privacy across the board that they have come to depend upon which are the " golden handcuffs" Apple are skewing towards.

  • Talk about a first world problem!: you want to be Sony, but your brand is actually bigger and more popular. Have they thought about simply buying them? $45B is chump change to Apple.

    Of course, the other first world problem Apple has, is that even if they don't buy Sony, they already smell like Sony.

  • Water Found to Have Physical Property Called "Wetness."

    Sun Seen Rising in East

    Discovery: Bears Defecating in Woods.

    Pope Makes Announcement, "I Am A Practicing Catholic."

  • The '80s are back! (Score:3)

    by oh_my_080980980 ( 773867 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @02:51PM (#60223064)
    Because people want to run cell phone apps on a computer? Wow.

    So Apple's innovation is going back to 8 bit computing.

    Today's future tomorrow.

  • Already migrated my desktop to Linux (Score:3)

    by msk ( 6205 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @02:51PM (#60223068)

    About two weeks ago, I setup Devuan Linux on a separate disk in my Hackintosh, which I was holding at 10.14.6. Catalina with no 32-bit support and a read-only OS partition weren't appetizing.

    Most of what I do can be handled with native Linux apps. Some have Windows versions that run under WINE (including the AirPort Utility), a few don't work right under WINE but do in a Windows VM.

    Probably will replace macOS on the old MBP with Linux at some point.

  • I bought the last good Macbook Pro (Score:3)

    by fuzzyf ( 1129635 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @03:07PM (#60223168)
    My 2015 Macbook Pro got audio jack, USB A ports, SD card slot, HDMI and thunderbolt ports. It was my first Mac, and I've been using PC since CPUs were clocked in the single digit Mhz.
    At the time I bought the Macbook Pro, nothing could match it. Really fast 1TB SSD (not SATA limited), dedicated GPU, low weight and long battery life. Nothing was even close on the PC side of things. It was a very nice machine.
    Trackpad is superb and VMs being available with just a three finger swipe fits my way of working.

    I was looking forward for an upgrade, even just to get more ram, But Apple kept removing stuff (ports) and adding stupid stuff (touchbar) and in general making the Mac less useful for me. Now they completely removed the possibility of running VMs (other than ARM guest OS), which mean I'm back on PC.

    It's time to get a nice PC and install linux and vmware I guess.

    • Yes indeed.

      Sitll using my late 2013 MBP with retina

      I was horrified when they stripped all the great ports off

      • Yes indeed.
        Sitll using my late 2013 MBP with retina
        I was horrified when they stripped all the great ports off

        Which you can easily snd cheaply replace with a Dock which has the complement of ports you need; not the ones some marketer decided to give you.

        You can break out the 4 Ports on a Macbook Pro into as many as FIFTY-TWO of those ports you are pining-for. Name me how else that can happen?

        • Is the Dock made by Apple?

          Will Apple provide support when things go wrong?

          If you can answer yes to either of those questions, then I am all in.

  • Being Anticompetitive is fine!! (Score:3)

    by Merk42 ( 1906718 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @03:59PM (#60223402)
    Apple isn't a monopoly. It's just a plucky little one trillion dollar company.

    • Apple isn't a monopoly. It's just a plucky little one trillion dollar company.

      Hey, that's a plucky little one point five six trillion dollar company; who has seen their stock increase by nearly $30 a share, since the news of the announcement broke about a week ago.

      And even more likely interesting, AAPL stock price, which typically goes down after the reality of what is actually announced at WWDC is revealed, instead went up by another $8 a share.

      People get it. Wall Street gets it. What is wrong with (some) Slashdotters?!?

      Do you people think wearing face coverings when in the presence

  • Will ARM mac's have ati or nvidia cards? SFP+? / other high speed networking, pci-e slots? USB-A? Multi nic's?

    • Will ARM mac's have ati or nvidia cards? SFP+? / other high speed networking, pci-e slots? USB-A? Multi nic's?

      Well, we can use the Development Platform, which is based on the same A12Z SoC in the current iPad Pro, as a âoeleast caseâ port complement for miving-forward, agreed?

      Keeping in mind that Apple stated they have a family of Mac-Specific SoCs in Development. So it will presumably only get better, peripheral-wise, going forward. Also agreed?

      So, this is what the Development Platform, which takes the form-factor of a Mac mini, has as far as built-in Ports:

      2 USBA 3.0 ports (same as an Intel mini);

      2 USB-

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