Apples M2 looks like a beast.

I guess it would make sense that it could occur to a PR firm representing Apple to take many of the points detractors make that they're theoretically sensitive about, and then hire people to be as obnoxious as they think they could get away with while presenting those points. This thread all makes sense, now. or... a firm which really hates Apple could make it look like Apple is doing that... the possibilities make my tiny, loveless, hairless monkey parrot brain hurt.
 
Showing my age... When I was in high school, the electronics department had an Apple IIe and the business department had the first IBM PC. The business people looked at Apple and said 'all it does is play games; for real work you need a PC!' Fast forward to now and the PC people look at Macs and say 'but they don't play games!'

Who knew what topsy turvy world we'd live in...
 
Showing my age... When I was in high school, the electronics department had an Apple IIe and the business department had the first IBM PC. The business people looked at Apple and said 'all it does is play games; for real work you need a PC!' Fast forward to now and the PC people look at Macs and say 'but they don't play games!'

Who knew what topsy turvy world we'd live in...
they also used to have the slogan " does more. costs less"....
 
they also used to have the slogan " does more. costs less"....
For my particular work case, that is very true. For others? Probably not. But I'm not particularly interested in criticizing people for their choices in computers or operating systems so this thread is really starting to lose it's formerly useful life.
 
I'm not particularly interested in criticizing people for their choices in computers or operating systems so this thread is really starting to lose it's formerly useful life.
doesnt look like you have been, i didnt, so not sure where that came from....
 
For my particular work case, that is very true. For others? Probably not. But I'm not particularly interested in criticizing people for their choices in computers or operating systems so this thread is really starting to lose it's formerly useful life.
That’s the part that baffles me. Would he be bothered if I had a Talos Raptor as a workstation? No games run on Power9, but I kinda have a use case for one.

Hell, I’ve got a 10900K … that doesn’t play Games either. It’s on an ITX motherboard, with 64 gigs of RAM, a dual port 10 gig card, and runs as a compute node. All gaming hardware but no GPU!
 
doesnt look like you have been, i didnt, so not sure where that came from....
Pretty sure we all know who's been attacking others merely for using a platform he doesn't prefer. The one who thinks gaming PCs are the center of the universe and genuinely wants to kill choice and competition in mainstream computing platforms.
 
Pretty sure we all know who's been attacking others merely for using a platform he doesn't prefer. The one who thinks gaming PCs are the center of the universe and genuinely wants to kill choice and competition in mainstream computing platforms.
You call that choice. I call it techno-feudalism.
t5r78igucyt81.jpg
 
You call that choice. I call it techno-feudalism.
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It's not really choice if all we ever get are permutations of the same basic OS; Linux has its perks, but I don't want to use it. Real variety and competition means substantially different foundations and a willingness to tolerate different business models. That doesn't mean giving companies carte blanche, it just means accepting that some people won't mind design decisions you hate.

To get this back on track: you don't like the MacBook Air M2, and that's fine. But the broad consensus is that it's a good laptop for everyday use and mild-to-moderate media editing, and and insisting that no one should like it is both futile and unsupported by evidence.
 
means substantially different foundations and a willingness to tolerate different business models.
To that point, how nice it is to have a business model that was based on making operating margin on every stage, charging enough for hardware to make a profit on it, etc... once the data-ads model became prevalent, imagine if a paid to use for facebook-twitter had thrived in parallel. The powerful soc-arm competition on the mainstream desktop seem a nice to have competition to the AMD-Intel-Nvidia side of things.

It is not bad to know what is possible to do if you do not have to care much about retro-compability to judge what is the cost of supporting it and if it is worth it, it is far from obvious that it is a good sacrifice to do (specially if you continue to build the old hardware at a very high cost for those who would need it).

It can be argued (like Jaron Lanier) that some innovations are really hard to happen with a feeback loop and without an isolation, open source project tend to things a large quantity of people thinks are good to do, which are really often a new version of already existing stuff (an open version of Unix, an open version of Netscape, an open version of Office, an open version of an already popular game archetype, open version of 3d studio max, open version of media player, the execution is often excellent and the final result better than what was there but not much innovation occurred), a lot of great innovation are things most people think are a bad idea or will fail, which involve not listening or not having feedback at all to happen.

Has you ge older usually, you lose the; that thing a lot of people love and use is not really good attitude, even on the artistic side of stuff. I would be surprised if that new M2 is not at least close to be one of the best tool for what they do for a lot of people for the amount of effort they want to spend on the setup side.
 
It's not really choice if all we ever get are permutations of the same basic OS; Linux has its perks, but I don't want to use it. Real variety and competition means substantially different foundations and a willingness to tolerate different business models. That doesn't mean giving companies carte blanche, it just means accepting that some people won't mind design decisions you hate.
Apple could open source Mac OSX. Could you imagine what would come from that? Imagine the Mac OSX distros. Mac OSX on Risc-V.
To get this back on track: you don't like the MacBook Air M2, and that's fine. But the broad consensus is that it's a good laptop for everyday use and mild-to-moderate media editing, and and insisting that no one should like it is both futile and unsupported by evidence.
List of things I'd do to improve Apple's laptops.
#1 Drop the macbook Air in favor of the Macbook Pro. In fact you can now find Macbook Pro's with M1 Pro's for nearly the same price as the Air with the M2.
#2 Make the 256GB version fast again. That's seriously a dick move on Apple's part for the M2's.
#4 Actually put a M.2 slot so the SSD is removable.
#5 Add 32-bit compatibility again. An unnecessary policy that pushed developers to abandon their software.
#6 Add Vulkan support.
#7 Open Source Mac OSX fully. Some parts of it are, but some parts aren't. Let there be clones Apple.
#8 Offer Intel Macs again. Let the consumer choose between ARM or Intel.
 
Apple could open source Mac OSX. Could you imagine what would come from that? Imagine the Mac OSX distros. Mac OSX on Risc-V.
Just run FreeBSD? Sure, Apple could open source OSX. What benefit does that bring them as a company, other than significantly more bug reports on "not their hardware" that they'd have to deal with? It just becomes another BSD clone if they did this - and we have a bunch of them already.
List of things I'd do to improve Apple's laptops.
#1 Drop the macbook Air in favor of the Macbook Pro. In fact you can now find Macbook Pro's with M1 Pro's for nearly the same price as the Air with the M2.
Many prefer the Air - they're doing spreadsheets, browsing the web, looking at youtube videos, email, etc - the Air does just fine for that, and is far more compact. Ultrabooks have a reason to exist. You're paying for form factor there, not horsepower. Heck, if I was on the road constantly again, I'd lean strongly towards an air. If there's any one that doesn't need to exist it's the 13" Pro.
#2 Make the 256GB version fast again. That's seriously a dick move on Apple's part for the M2's.
Eh. Sure. That part is definitely dumb.
#4 Actually put a M.2 slot so the SSD is removable.
I'll give you this one - although I haven't upgraded the storage in a laptop since 2008. This is a form factor compromise that could be figured out with a bit of work.
#5 Add 32-bit compatibility again. An unnecessary policy that pushed developers to abandon their software.
Don't really see people complaining about this, honestly - can you find examples, other than games? There was at ~least~ a 4 year roadmap on that too. Relinking against 64bit libraries shouldn't be THAT hard to do.
#6 Add Vulkan support.
MoltenVK, but again, this is really just for games.
#7 Open Source Mac OSX fully. Some parts of it are, but some parts aren't. Let there be clones Apple.
Why? Honest question - why does it matter? Just philosophical reasons?
#8 Offer Intel Macs again. Let the consumer choose between ARM or Intel.
The last two generations of Intel Macs were not good machines. Hot, poor battery life, underperforming... I had the last generation with an I7, and it was pretty miserable to use. It wasn't even a jack of all trades - it was just... kinda mediocre at everything. That form factor doesn't play well with high-performance X86 chips - that's why gaming laptops and the like tend to be much bulkier, for thermal management and the extra battery space. That's fine, but that's not a market that Apple is choosing to go after. Early on they were a drastic improvement over PowerPC, but eventually the 14nm++++ mess caught up with them. If anything, suggesting AMD as an alternative would be arguably more intriguing, given what all AMD is doing in that space with the G series of chips - but again it comes back to why?

If anything, switching away from intel has significantly boosted sales:
https://www.techradar.com/news/mac-sales-fly-as-pc-declines-did-the-m1-chip-save-apple
https://www.patentlyapple.com/2021/...s-ever-thanks-to-their-new-m1-processors.html
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/19/mac-sales-skyrocketing-after-m1-launch/

There are dozens of laptop and pc manufacturers out there that offer what you're looking for - I still don't get why this is such a big deal to you.
 
Look, at the end of the day, the things you want apple to do are not what their buyers want them to do. They believe, right or wrong, that their buyers are looking for a very specific type of solution - one not compatible with your needs or desires. And that’s fine. There are options out there for everyone. That’s what competition is about. The free market will decide if they’re right or not- and that comes down to us, the consumers. Vote with your wallet. Some people hate iPhones. Others love them. Some honestly don’t give a crap. Same for laptops. Buy what you like and enjoy it.
 
MoltenVK, but again, this is really just for games.
Would it not be that anything that render and want maximum of performance with multithread access to rendering without having to do something significantly different platform to platform (games obviously but CAD and Blender type of application has well)
I'll give you this one - although I haven't upgraded the storage in a laptop since 2008. This is a form factor compromise that could be figured out with a bit of work.
Is it form factor or more about having their own controller instead of using the harddrive you can buy controller ?
 
Just run FreeBSD? Sure, Apple could open source OSX. What benefit does that bring them as a company, other than significantly more bug reports on "not their hardware" that they'd have to deal with? It just becomes another BSD clone if they did this - and we have a bunch of them already.
For one it'll increase the adoption of Mac OSX beyond the cultists that believe Apple is for everyone, but the gamers. It would also help port Linux to Apple silicon as Apple doesn't supply any source code for the M series GPU's. Something Nvidia used to do, until recently, thus making Apple worse than Nvidia.
Many prefer the Air - they're doing spreadsheets, browsing the web, looking at youtube videos, email, etc - the Air does just fine for that, and is far more compact. Ultrabooks have a reason to exist. You're paying for form factor there, not horsepower. Heck, if I was on the road constantly again, I'd lean strongly towards an air. If there's any one that doesn't need to exist it's the 13" Pro.
If the M series runs as cool as Apple fans like to claim, then the fan would hardly ever kick on. Would be nice to have a fan when you do something other than what a Core2Duo already did just fine, like YouTube videos, browsing, spreadsheets, and email.
Don't really see people complaining about this, honestly - can you find examples, other than games? There was at ~least~ a 4 year roadmap on that too. Relinking against 64bit libraries shouldn't be THAT hard to do.
I'm a Linux guy so when I visit the Wine-gaming reddit, I find that games like Team Fortress 2 is only playable on Wine and not the Mac version. Because of so many M1 users having difficulty playing games, they pop up frequently on that reddit. Not just games on Steam either.

critra M1.png

MoltenVK, but again, this is really just for games.
Not really. In fact a little birdy told me that Apple is behind WebGPU which is basically a wrapper that works on top of API's like DX12, Vulkan, and yes Metal API. We don't need this if Apple just supported Vulkan. Besides games you also have the GUI, the web browser, video encoding, CAD, and etc. Nearly everything you do today will use the GPU in some way, and the lack of Vulkan is just dividing the industry as Apple intended.
Why? Honest question - why does it matter? Just philosophical reasons?
I already explained this but to emphasize this more, Apple could allow clones. You know, other companies to make Mac OSX machines besides Apple. Also, x86 support can continue without Apple, as well as support for other CPU's like PowerPC and maybe RISC-V. The community could add Vulkan support without Apple's permission, though without Apple backing it up it wouldn't get much adoption.
The last two generations of Intel Macs were not good machines. Hot, poor battery life, underperforming... I had the last generation with an I7, and it was pretty miserable to use.
That's just Macs in general, except the M1 is allowed to run Hot as 95C is no longer an issue for Apple users. Also, you can hardly run anything on Apple silicon as the move to 64-bit only and ARM has lost applications you could run to test against Intel machines.
It wasn't even a jack of all trades - it was just... kinda mediocre at everything. That form factor doesn't play well with high-performance X86 chips - that's why gaming laptops and the like tend to be much bulkier, for thermal management and the extra battery space.
A 2015 Macbook Air was lighter and thinner than the Macbook Air M2 using a 5W Intel CPU. What innovation? If anything Apple is cutting costs, just like how they removed the SSD second chip in the Macbook Air.

Most of those links are for 2021, where everyone was selling more computers than they had laying around. The one from April 2022 shows Apple had the most growth, not that Apple is selling the most computers, which is 500 more shipments than last year. Dell in contrast had less growth but more shipments from Q121 which was 700 shipments. Just articles playing with numbers.
There are dozens of laptop and pc manufacturers out there that offer what you're looking for - I still don't get why this is such a big deal to you.
Because those manufacturers look at the shitty things Apple does and wants to do them as well, as Apple not only gets away with it, but gets praised too. Samsung is infamous for doing this. The good thing as least is when other manufacturers try, they find out they don't have a loyal fan base that won't roast them alive for trying shitty things. You know, like not having a SD card in phones.
PUizdkK.png
 
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Showing my age... When I was in high school, the electronics department had an Apple IIe and the business department had the first IBM PC. The business people looked at Apple and said 'all it does is play games; for real work you need a PC!' Fast forward to now and the PC people look at Macs and say 'but they don't play games!'

Who knew what topsy turvy world we'd live in...
Truthfully, in that era, they both sucked so bad at gaming. The lowly Commodore and Atari 8-bits handed them their asses!
But Apple and IBM had 80 char display ability. Business!
In hind-sight Apple flukes its way into sudo business class. They didn't push and ran the Apple 2 series into the ground as their one and only cash cow.
 
For one it'll increase the adoption of Mac OSX beyond the cultists that believe Apple is for everyone, but the gamers. It would also help port Linux to Apple silicon as Apple doesn't supply any source code for the M series GPU's. Something Nvidia used to do, until recently, thus making Apple worse than Nvidia.
And? They don't care. Neither does the market. Why do you? You're not going to run OSX anyway.
If the M series runs as cool as Apple fans like to claim, then the fan would hardly ever kick on. Would be nice to have a fan when you do something other than what a Core2Duo already did just fine, like YouTube videos, browsing, spreadsheets, and email.
Adding a fan would make it thicker, heavier, and less portable. For the Air, form factor > heat management. The buyers clearly don't care.
I'm a Linux guy so when I visit the Wine-gaming reddit, I find that games like Team Fortress 2 is only playable on Wine and not the Mac version. Because of so many M1 users having difficulty playing games, they pop up frequently on that reddit. Not just games on Steam either.

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You're a Linux guy. You have different needs and goals than Apple or Apple buyers. There will likely never be overlap here, and again, that's fine - buy a system that works for you. That's the free market.
As for Reddit - or any other discussion board - you're always going to see the folks having problems, not the ones that don't know or don't play games, or didn't even try because they know they bought a system that wasn't for gaming.
Not really. In fact a little birdy told me that Apple is behind WebGPU which is basically a wrapper that works on top of API's like DX12, Vulkan, and yes Metal API. We don't need this if Apple just supported Vulkan. Besides games you also have the GUI, the web browser, video encoding, CAD, and etc. Nearly everything you do today will use the GPU in some way, and the lack of Vulkan is just dividing the industry as Apple intended.
All of those applications work fine without Vulkan, using the native API that Apple built in to the OS (Metal). If you want to use apple to accomplish those, or apple's hardware, you use apple's software. If you don't want to use apple's hardware, or want to write against a common API, you use something else. If it mattered to the industry, Apple would have failed. The market spoke - the market doesn't care (if anything, it's rewarding apple).

This is a philosophical argument - you want everything open. Apple doesn't. Buyers clearly don't ~care~. That battle was lost long ago, Stallman and Linus notwithstanding.
I already explained this but to emphasize this more, Apple could allow clones. You know, other companies to make Mac OSX machines besides Apple. Also, x86 support can continue without Apple, as well as support for other CPU's like PowerPC and maybe RISC-V. The community could add Vulkan support without Apple's permission, though without Apple backing it up it wouldn't get much adoption.
Sure they could. But why do they want to? That buys them ~nothing~. They're a business to make profit, not make FSF folks happy - you're not their customer, you're not going to BE their customer, you have absolutely zero value to the company or the stakeholders. Companies that listen to "never going to be a customer" tend to make products that no one buys - like the early apple clones - better to ignore those people. This is a longstanding facet of business - don't take advice from people that will never be your customer.
That's just Macs in general, except the M1 is allowed to run Hot as 95C is no longer an issue for Apple users. Also, you can hardly run anything on Apple silicon as the move to 64-bit only and ARM has lost applications you could run to test against Intel machines.
ARM - false, that's what Rosetta 2 is for. 32bit - you keep making this claim. Again, other than games, what software? Been using Apple products on and off since 2008 - there's not a single bit of software that I use that didn't make the transition just fine. I'm unaware of any significant software packages that did not make the transition either. Might have taken a new version, but that's software in general. So, what software are people complaining about, in 2022, that they can't run now?
A 2015 Macbook Air was lighter and thinner than the Macbook Air M2 using a 5W Intel CPU. What innovation? If anything Apple is cutting costs, just like how they removed the SSD second chip in the Macbook Air.

Your video is about the Macbook, not the Macbook air - which was designed to be the lowest-possible-cost system they could make as well as the absolute smallest. The market didn't like that many compromises, and thus the MBA returned.

Apple is making a system a lot of people want - an ultra-thin, ultra-portable basic office or home use machine. Sales are booming. Are there compromises? Sure! But there are compromises on ANY ultra-light.
Most of those links are for 2021, where everyone was selling more computers than they had laying around. The one from April 2022 shows Apple had the most growth, not that Apple is selling the most computers, which is 500 more shipments than last year. Dell in contrast had less growth but more shipments from Q121 which was 700 shipments. Just articles playing with numbers.
Sigh, read deeper. Yes, that was 2021 - till you get to digitimes which shows that Dell/etc had an average drop of 19% - except apple, which only dropped 2.6%. The first articles show that Apple sales grew significantly from the release of the M1 series.
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20220704PD212.html

But to make it more clear:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-computers-since-first-quarter-2006/

Because those manufacturers look at the shitty things Apple does and wants to do them as well, as Apple not only gets away with it, but gets praised too. Samsung is infamous for doing this. The good thing as least is when other manufacturers try, they find out they don't have a loyal fan base that won't roast them alive for trying shitty things. You know, like not having a SD card in phones.
So vote with your wallet and buy something else.

Also - personally, I've never, ever understood this. What do you need physical media for? I've never used the option on any of the Android devices I've had, except the very first tablet I bought in 2011 - and then only because it was there. That SD card hasn't come out in over 10 years.
 
The irony of Duke's tirades is that Linus Torvalds uses a MacBook Air M2. He's running a Linux distro, as you might have guessed, but if the very person who created Linux is willing to use Mac hardware... what's Duke's hangup?

Also, thanks lopoetve — you've been explaining things at least as well as I could. Folks forget that Apple is a hardware company that uses software to make said hardware more appealing. Open-sourcing macOS would be great for enthusiasts, but might have limited appeal to competitors and could easily harm Apple. When Apple briefly licensed macOS in the 1990s, it played a significant role in the company's downward spiral. Like it or not, one of Steve Jobs' best moves in returning to Apple was to kill Mac clones and focus on returning to profit. If Apple was going to focus on OS market share over profit, it would've needed to do that much earlier.

For that matter, it's amusing to hear arguments that Apple should bring back 32-bit support. One of Microsoft's longest-running problems is its customers' over-dependence on legacy support — it can't get companies to upgrade to newer operating systems because old Microsoft conditioned them to think apps would be supported for all eternity. The WannaCry ransomware attack succeeded in no small part because legions of companies and government agencies hadn't even upgraded past Windows XP thanks to extended maintenance contracts and a general over-reliance on ancient software. Why would Apple want to give itself the massive headaches that come with stretching support long past a technology's practical heyday? So someone can play a game first released in 2007?
 
So someone can play a game first released in 2007?
Of their very expensive 32 bits accounting system or other application, they bought, in my experience in the small enterprise field at least WindowsXP era stuff is not that uncommon, Office 2007 is still around.

That can be Microsoft number 1 headache, but also one of their best moat, imagine if for some reason (desktop pc goes to arm or what not without a good emulator) Microsoft completely loose the giant legacy of WinTel application (appeal or must use despite not wanting to), zero cost to people to shift system outside some potential small learning curve. I mean you just said the reason So giant company and government does not get disrupted (and small one has well). I doubt Windows would go into all those trouble of legacy support just for games (they could have an emulator for running old game), it is much easier for Apple with their history, user base and what their computer tend to be used for to do those move, often to the the large benefit of said user base.
 
Truthfully, in that era, they both sucked so bad at gaming. The lowly Commodore and Atari 8-bits handed them their asses!
But Apple and IBM had 80 char display ability. Business!
In hind-sight Apple flukes its way into sudo business class. They didn't push and ran the Apple 2 series into the ground as their one and only cash cow.
Curious, did you mean pseudo or sudo?
 
Of their very expensive 32 bits accounting system or other application, they bought, in my experience in the small enterprise field at least WindowsXP era stuff is not that uncommon, Office 2007 is still around.

That can be Microsoft number 1 headache, but also one of their best moat, imagine if for some reason (desktop pc goes to arm or what not without a good emulator) Microsoft completely loose the giant legacy of WinTel application (appeal or must use despite not wanting to), zero cost to people to shift system outside some potential small learning curve. I mean you just said the reason So giant company and government does not get disrupted (and small one has well). I doubt Windows would go into all those trouble of legacy support just for games (they could have an emulator for running old game), it is much easier for Apple with their history, user base and what their computer tend to be used for to do those move, often to the the large benefit of said user base.
Certainly - Apple doesn't have that same "legacy" (or headache, depending on how you want to read it) to care for. They got a somewhat clean break when they migrated to OSX and killed classic, and then the same thing when they moved to Intel and killed Rosetta 1. It lets them build a clean-slate highly-integrated product - without legacy encumbrances - but also means they didn't have that market (for better or worse again) that microsoft and the posix clones were able to take. Now, would that have been a better path? Who knows - they have some of the highest margins in the business for a hardware-first (or at least first among equals) company, but even if it would have been better, we live in the world we have now - not the one that could have been.

Apple users seem happy with this choice.
 
In hind-sight Apple flukes its way into sudo business class. They didn't push and ran the Apple 2 series into the ground as their one and only cash cow.

There's almost nothing in my current job role where I need a Windows-based PC to do any aspect of my work. The exception is the web-based Oracle search export to Excel which requires a Java plug-in not supported by Macs but this is not unique to the M(x)-series chips as my Intel-based MacBook Pro couldn't access it either unless I was running Windows in a VM. We're a Microsoft front-end and Oracle back-end enterprise where I have an Adobe-based workflow and the Mac is perfect for it. (y)

I insist on using a Mac at work as it is the best price/performance computer for my role. I use Windows-based PCs at home because I game or want to use Linux (or other UNIX-like operating systems) and Macs aren't currently a good choice for either situation, at present. Apple gets my money for the tablet and phone I own but I'd rather not buy into the Mac computer market as it doesn't offer what I want to do as opposed to what I'm paid to do.
 
Of their very expensive 32 bits accounting system or other application, they bought, in my experience in the small enterprise field at least WindowsXP era stuff is not that uncommon, Office 2007 is still around.

That can be Microsoft number 1 headache, but also one of their best moat, imagine if for some reason (desktop pc goes to arm or what not without a good emulator) Microsoft completely loose the giant legacy of WinTel application (appeal or must use despite not wanting to), zero cost to people to shift system outside some potential small learning curve. I mean you just said the reason So giant company and government does not get disrupted (and small one has well). I doubt Windows would go into all those trouble of legacy support just for games (they could have an emulator for running old game), it is much easier for Apple with their history, user base and what their computer tend to be used for to do those move, often to the the large benefit of said user base.
That moat mindset certainly helped Microsoft early on. It's just that the pitfalls are increasingly outweighing the advantages, and the company realizes that — hence more willingness to cut off support and shift the focus to cloud services. It creates a lowest-common-denominator environment that can limit feature additions, preserve bloat and hurt sales. My stereotypical example is a company running Windows 7 to use XP mode to run a 25-year-old app written for NT. A scenario like that isn't just lost business for Microsoft, it's a security nightmare.

I wouldn't say Apple's cutoff approach is perfect, particularly for businesses that want to keep computers for a decade or more, but it does have the advantage of raising the baseline sooner and more consistently.
 
Of their very expensive 32 bits accounting system or other application, they bought, in my experience in the small enterprise field at least WindowsXP era stuff is not that uncommon, Office 2007 is still around.

That can be Microsoft number 1 headache, but also one of their best moat, imagine if for some reason (desktop pc goes to arm or what not without a good emulator) Microsoft completely loose the giant legacy of WinTel application (appeal or must use despite not wanting to), zero cost to people to shift system outside some potential small learning curve. I mean you just said the reason So giant company and government does not get disrupted (and small one has well). I doubt Windows would go into all those trouble of legacy support just for games (they could have an emulator for running old game), it is much easier for Apple with their history, user base and what their computer tend to be used for to do those move, often to the the large benefit of said user base.

Lack of backwards compatibility just forces customers to use older unsupported operating systems. It can take years and millions of dollars to fully validate and implement a business process system, especially in a regulated business environment like Pharma or Medical Device.

Once implemented, you obviously don't want to do that again any time soon, so you are going to cling to that system as long as you can to minimize business disruption and costs.

I think Microsoft should have discontinued 32bit versions of windows 15 years ago, but keeping the 32 bit support in order to run existing 32 bit applications is absolutely crucial to the business model.

This is why you don't see Apple machines in infrastructure roles in business. But that's not the business they are going after. They are going after more niche video editing and graphic design type of markets. As a huge proponent of the universal general purpose computer that does everything well, I may think that's a little silly, but everyone chooses for themselves what they want to use.

It would be helpful if Apple were more supportive of open standards though, both in hardware form factors and in software API's. A lot of the time it seems like they are intentionally trying to harm cross platform collaboration and make their customers lives more difficult, and I can't help but wonder why their customers put up with it.
 
That moat mindset certainly helped Microsoft early on. It's just that the pitfalls are increasingly outweighing the advantages, and the company realizes that — hence more willingness to cut off support and shift the focus to cloud services. It creates a lowest-common-denominator environment that can limit feature additions, preserve bloat and hurt sales. My stereotypical example is a company running Windows 7 to use XP mode to run a 25-year-old app written for NT. A scenario like that isn't just lost business for Microsoft, it's a security nightmare.

I wouldn't say Apple's cutoff approach is perfect, particularly for businesses that want to keep computers for a decade or more, but it does have the advantage of raising the baseline sooner and more consistently.
As somebody who still maintains a functional NT environment for our 30 year old accounting/HR/financial reporting software I concur…

Managed to at least get the front end working on windows 11, x86 and Arm variants so it now at least functions in Parallels on the M1’s (haven’t tried it on an M2). I can’t secure the server itself so I’ve had to resort to some network voodoo to isolate the system on the network.

It’s a nightmare that after a little over $1M, and 8 years of work finally has a scheduled termination date. :)
 
Lack of backwards compatibility just forces customers to use older unsupported operating systems. It can take years and millions of dollars to fully validate and implement a business process system, especially in a regulated business environment like Pharma or Medical Device.

Once implemented, you obviously don't want to do that again any time soon, so you are going to cling to that system as long as you can to minimize business disruption and costs.

I think Microsoft should have discontinued 32bit versions of windows 15 years ago, but keeping the 32 bit support in order to run existing 32 bit applications is absolutely crucial to the business model.

This is why you don't see Apple machines in infrastructure roles in business. But that's not the business they are going after. They are going after more niche video editing and graphic design type of markets. As a huge proponent of the universal general purpose computer that does everything well, I may think that's a little silly, but everyone chooses for themselves what they want to use.

It would be helpful if Apple were more supportive of open standards though, both in hardware form factors and in software API's. A lot of the time it seems like they are intentionally trying to harm cross platform collaboration and make their customers lives more difficult, and I can't help but wonder why their customers put up with it.
Honestly I like Linux for longevity, and a mix of Microsoft and Apple depending on job workloads and user preferences. I mean if you are working in 3 offices with shitty commutes between them and you just need something for the basic Office productivity suites than any ultrabook is more than capable of doing the job, your paying a premium there for the form factor and cost differences are relatively minor so there I go off user preference, I’m not going to sweat $300 if it prevents the poor bastard from one additional misery over the next few years.

If they need a mobile workstation then there are strict requirements there for software and interfacing that takes president over preference and desktop workstations again based on job role could be anything at this point. A basic Dell office AiO vs the Apple ones don’t cost that much different once you get the software and support packages involved.

At this stage computers are basically hammers, they do a job until they don’t then you recycle them for scrap metals.
 
It’s a nightmare that after a little over $1M, and 8 years of work finally has a scheduled termination date. :)

That there is exactly the problem. Systems like these are costly to replace, especially in regulated environments that have part 11 and other validation requirements.

This is why you really want systems like these to have long term code compatibility, so once one operating system goes EOL, you can run it on the next, with only minimal re-validation until such time as the business is ready to replace the validated system with something else.

At least now that everything is seemingly going web based (and we are beyond that IE6 era browser compatibility nightmare) the client side should be easier to manage, but you still have to worry about the server...
 
That there is exactly the problem. Systems like these are costly to replace, especially in regulated environments that have part 11 and other validation requirements.

This is why you really want systems like these to have long term code compatibility, so once one operating system goes EOL, you can run it on the next, with only minimal re-validation until such time as the business is ready to replace the validated system with something else.

At least now that everything is seemingly going web based (and we are beyond that IE6 era browser compatibility nightmare) the client side should be easier to manage, but you still have to worry about the server...
This is why the AS400, IBM i series, and IBM Z series are still around. Plus, 15 year lifespan now...
 
That there is exactly the problem. Systems like these are costly to replace, especially in regulated environments that have part 11 and other validation requirements.

This is why you really want systems like these to have long term code compatibility, so once one operating system goes EOL, you can run it on the next, with only minimal re-validation until such time as the business is ready to replace the validated system with something else.

At least now that everything is seemingly going web based (and we are beyond that IE6 era browser compatibility nightmare) the client side should be easier to manage, but you still have to worry about the server...
Back in the 90's when the software was developed nobody was thinking about that. honestly, I am confident I could get it to work on a new version of Windows Server with a bit of elbow grease and the correct application of a few emulation layers, but it should be all web-based by 2025, using a standard SQL back end should keep it going a while longer.
When the system was deployed they digitized all the pension and employment data going back as far as 1903, we are required to keep pension data for at least 99 years and at this point, most of the physical copies have been lost or have degraded to the point of being useless. So the data itself is worth a crap load simply because it is irreplaceable. It's not something I like to mess with any more than absolutely necessary.
 
Back in the 90's when the software was developed nobody was thinking about that. honestly, I am confident I could get it to work on a new version of Windows Server with a bit of elbow grease and the correct application of a few emulation layers, but it should be all web-based by 2025, using a standard SQL back end should keep it going a while longer.
When the system was deployed they digitized all the pension and employment data going back as far as 1903, we are required to keep pension data for at least 99 years and at this point, most of the physical copies have been lost or have degraded to the point of being useless. So the data itself is worth a crap load simply because it is irreplaceable. It's not something I like to mess with any more than absolutely necessary.

What is decades old employment data from employees - many of whom are likely dead or at least retired - even used for?
 
What is decades old employment data from employees - many of whom are likely dead or at least retired - even used for?
we get the odd call from pensions Canada about former employees, alive or not because of some reason or another. The data really isn't useful going that far back but it's the law. I have had to personally pull out archival data going back to the 30s but that was more because I really didn't want to work on what I needed to be working on so I told HR I would dig it up, the digital files were incomplete so I spent a day in the archives trying to find more. Which I did but the writing on the forms was so bad nobody could make out what it said but the simple fact the form existed was good enough for whatever they needed. Bureaucracy... am I right!
 
As somebody who still maintains a functional NT environment for our 30 year old accounting/HR/financial reporting software I concur…

Managed to at least get the front end working on windows 11, x86 and Arm variants so it now at least functions in Parallels on the M1’s (haven’t tried it on an M2). I can’t secure the server itself so I’ve had to resort to some network voodoo to isolate the system on the network.

It’s a nightmare that after a little over $1M, and 8 years of work finally has a scheduled termination date. :)
First: I commend your IT jujitsu.

And this illustrates Microsoft's problem very well. Great, your customer is still running Windows 30 years later... but that sheer dependence on legacy tech makes it such a pain that IT can't wait to get rid of it, and when they do they'll likely move to a system that ensures they never chain themselves to a platform in the future. Microsoft circa 1992 couldn't have anticipated what would happen decades down the road, to be fair, but its short-term money chasing may have carried a steep long-term cost.
 
First: I commend your IT jujitsu.

And this illustrates Microsoft's problem very well. Great, your customer is still running Windows 30 years later... but that sheer dependence on legacy tech makes it such a pain that IT can't wait to get rid of it, and when they do they'll likely move to a system that ensures they never chain themselves to a platform in the future. Microsoft circa 1992 couldn't have anticipated what would happen decades down the road, to be fair, but its short-term money chasing may have carried a steep long-term cost.
I mean yes and no, if I understand the implementation correctly, (BIG IF at this stage) then I am hoping to get 99% of it deployed in an azure instance but the fact that this one is being developed with more open standards will make long term maintenance of it much nicer that's for sure.
But if you want to talk legacy software I knew a guy in University who taught himself the RPG language wrote a software layer then figured out how to emulate it with 100% accuracy on (at the time) modern hardware. Sold the solution to the casinos in Las Vegas and basically got brought on to maintain that, and those systems had been in operation since the early 70s at that point. Legacy in the financial world is the norm, there is just too much data and custom data structures to migrate and the costs of bringing it all over are just insane.
 
And? They don't care. Neither does the market. Why do you? You're not going to run OSX anyway.
I know better than anyone that pushing people to adopt an OS is not going to happen. We are creatures of comfort, and like to stick with things familiar. At least bring Mac OSX back to where it could at least do things that didn't stray away from standards. Apple did support OpenGL forever until they created Metal. Apple also supported CUPS which we linux users use, until they abandoned it.
Adding a fan would make it thicker, heavier, and less portable. For the Air, form factor > heat management. The buyers clearly don't care.
Then don't cry when the Air products losing to fanned devices.
All of those applications work fine without Vulkan, using the native API that Apple built in to the OS (Metal). If you want to use apple to accomplish those, or apple's hardware, you use apple's software. If you don't want to use apple's hardware, or want to write against a common API, you use something else. If it mattered to the industry, Apple would have failed. The market spoke - the market doesn't care (if anything, it's rewarding apple).
In order for it to work fine you must use Apple software? I don't think Apple makes enough software for that.
This is a philosophical argument - you want everything open. Apple doesn't. Buyers clearly don't ~care~. That battle was lost long ago, Stallman and Linus notwithstanding.
Apple use to be, until they weren't.
Sure they could. But why do they want to? That buys them ~nothing~. They're a business to make profit, not make FSF folks happy - you're not their customer, you're not going to BE their customer, you have absolutely zero value to the company or the stakeholders. Companies that listen to "never going to be a customer" tend to make products that no one buys - like the early apple clones - better to ignore those people. This is a longstanding facet of business - don't take advice from people that will never be your customer.
Apple has less than 10% OS desktop market share, which hasn't improved with the introduction of Apple silicon. There's no growth doing what Apple has done for two decades. Also Google open sources Android and they have a very good reason for it.
ARM - false, that's what Rosetta 2 is for. 32bit - you keep making this claim. Again, other than games, what software?
They dumped 32-bit support with macOS Catalina. People are upset and made a petition to bring it back.
https://www.change.org/p/apple-bring-back-32-bit-support-on-macos
Been using Apple products on and off since 2008 - there's not a single bit of software that I use that didn't make the transition just fine.
Probably more off than on if you didn't notice it.
I'm unaware of any significant software packages that did not make the transition either. Might have taken a new version, but that's software in general. So, what software are people complaining about, in 2022, that they can't run now?
You are not a benchmark. A quick look at Wine Gaming reddit shows someone who's trying to run TF2 on their Mac. You know, a game natively ported to Mac. Also it seems that even Valve isn't spending money to fix these builds for Apple.
https://www.reddit.com/r/wine_gaming/comments/wm9k0h/how_to_download_tf2_on_playonmac/

Also these guys have popped up on that reddit for the past few days.
https://www.reddit.com/r/wine_gamin...mac_steam_stuck_on_synchronizing_steam_cloud/
https://www.reddit.com/r/wine_gaming/comments/wqe6fx/lav_filters_failed_to_register_error/
https://www.reddit.com/r/wine_gamin..._deleting_wineskin_it_no_longer_allows_me_to/
Your video is about the Macbook, not the Macbook air - which was designed to be the lowest-possible-cost system they could make as well as the absolute smallest. The market didn't like that many compromises, and thus the MBA returned.
The point is that it was smaller, lighter, and Intel.
 
The irony of Duke's tirades is that Linus Torvalds uses a MacBook Air M2. He's running a Linux distro, as you might have guessed, but if the very person who created Linux is willing to use Mac hardware... what's Duke's hangup?
As he puts it, he doesn't use it "for any real work" as he's "doing test builds and boots and now the actual release tagging." This is his 3rd Apple hardware he's owned in his life. His previous hardware was "for powerpc development on a ppc970 machine,". Don't read too much into it.

Also Linus Torvalds is not someone to put his words on a pedestal. This is the same guy that wanted Intel's AVX 512 to die a painful death. AMD is adding it to their new Zen4 CPU's and eventually Apple will be on ARMv9 which will have SVE2 which is the equivalent of Intel's AVX-512. That comment did not age well.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-i-hope-intels-avx-512-dies-a-painful-death/
For that matter, it's amusing to hear arguments that Apple should bring back 32-bit support. One of Microsoft's longest-running problems is its customers' over-dependence on legacy support — it can't get companies to upgrade to newer operating systems because old Microsoft conditioned them to think apps would be supported for all eternity. The WannaCry ransomware attack succeeded in no small part because legions of companies and government agencies hadn't even upgraded past Windows XP thanks to extended maintenance contracts and a general over-reliance on ancient software. Why would Apple want to give itself the massive headaches that come with stretching support long past a technology's practical heyday? So someone can play a game first released in 2007?
That's the reason why people stuck with Windows, because legacy support is important. Nobody cares if Microsoft has headaches, when they just want their stuff working. This is why Windows and x86 is still around and still #1 for desktops, because some attention to compatibility was given. The reason people didn't want to upgrade from Windows XP is because Vista took a shit on compatibility and let the consumers deal with the problems. Nowadays Microsoft is better at this, but also nobody wants to pay for an OS when everyone else including Apple is giving it away for free. By free I mean you gotta buy the Apple hardware. If Microsoft dumped 32-bit support, there will be hell to pay. If Windows 11 was the last OS to support 32-bit, then that's going to be the new Windows XP. Apple dumping 32-bit support was cost cutting, as they no longer want to pay developers to support those libraries.
 
AMD is adding it to their new Zen4 CPU's and eventually Apple will be on ARMv9 which will have SVE2 which is the equivalent of Intel's AVX-512. That comment did not age well.
Not sure the link between that and his comment, did not make it even more true if Intel influenced other ?
 
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