iPhone, iPad and Mac sales are down, but Apple only cares about services now | Hacker News Reader

iPhone, iPad and Mac sales are down, but Apple only cares about services now

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92 pointszhuxuefeng1994212 comments

As a single, insignificant data point: I just bought my first Windows laptop after 2008. I kept waiting for Apple to release Skylake professional machines. Just gave up waiting for them. Ended up getting a Windows Signature machine, which came with a free tablet. Guess I don't need to wait for the iPad Air refresh anymore as well.

I think Apple has lost its way. It has forgotten about its power users. I think they are trying to be a luxury brand now ... limited function devices that overpriced (but look really nice). I'm a bit bitter as I say this since I was a huge Apple fan.

You did not write anything about the actual user experience, which is telling. Is the mere fact that there exist machines which will boot into a non Apple OS supposed to spell doom for them or something? I just used my first Windows machine in almost ten years as well and... guess what it still sucks. Particularly if you are trying to develop software.

Yeah, every time I boot to Windows to test something on IE I'm reminded why I left Windows. It's a shame because the Surface tablets look nice.

I usually roll my eyes at all the hate people always find for Microsoft in nearly every decision they make and every thing they release into the market. I upgraded my gaming desktop to Windows 8 the day it came out, and I upgraded to Windows 10 when it came out. I've never really had too many problems.

But everything new they release and everything I use from them makes me thankful I mostly use Apple products. I don't have to worry about the new version of Windows destroying my computer or forcing itself upon me, and I especially love knowing that my computer will not reboot itself unexpectedly at night due to security updates. I'm glad I have products made by a company that knows what it is and what it does, that focuses on stability and polish. A company that doesn't flap back and forth between consumer and enterprise computing, discontinuing devices and services as fast as they can create them. Maybe I'm still sore from the loss of my Zune, or my Windows Phone, or my TechNet subscription.

I didn't start using Macs with the Lisa, or System 7, or even when OS X was released; I'm fairly new. This is only my second Mac. But I used Windows for years, and every time I hear someone say "I'm leaving Apple for Microsoft because Apple has lost their way", what I actually hear is "I'm making a symbolic statement and I don't actually care what the repercussions are." Because if anyone thinks Windows is more stable, more polished, more developer friendly, or has machines with a better build quality, I have to say... you're gonna be surprised.

Maybe Apple isn't what it used to be. But it still seems a damn sight better than Windows, in almost every regard.

Without providing a wall of text, as someone who has to work on both platforms daily, I have a very different opinion. Windows is an excellent Dev Platform, and of all the default assumptions both systems make, Windows still favors devs more than OSX.

I really wonder why people seem to like Finder over Windows Explorer.

This.

I mean, I run linux on all but one of my machines, but if a company made me choose, I'd choose Windows over OSX.

Apple doesn't make things dev-friendly, the mountain of volunteers who make homebrew and packages make it dev-friendly. They didn't switch OSX to be nix-based because they wanted to entice developers, they did it because it allowed them to move faster.

Meanwhile, MS is releasing their nix subsystem, open-sourcing lots of crap, and generally going out of their way to pull devs back into the fold.

I wouldn't switch today, but the last year of releases makes it clear that this has been under way for quite a while... and will continue for many more. If the nix subsystem works as well as they say, I could see myself switching at some point in the future. (because I would really like some decent power management)

As with all things, this really depends on what your job is. I never use Homebrew. I installed it but I've never used it for anything. All I need is a super-reliable computer and bash. My Red Hat laptop gives me one of those, my Macbook gives me both.

But literally my biggest pet peeve with Windows is, it seems every few days I sit down in the morning and log in only to realize it had rebooted itself overnight. Or it's begging me to schedule a reboot. Or I installed a program and immediately afterwards it needs to reboot to finish installing. My Windows machine spends more time shutting down or starting up than it does actually running.

I don't get the shutdown reboot problem. Is a restart every 15 days unacceptable in return for reliable, consistent security/bug patches? Even Ubuntu is like that. I've used a mac book air for a little while and the update software had a glitch which caused it to get stuck. So I have zero experience with osx updates.

I think that it's unacceptable not to ask, as it effectively equals unreliability.

It is not acceptable because it breaks you workflow, possibly implies closing applications and opening them again.

As a note, when I was developing full time on Ubuntu, I used Ksplice which applied updates without a restart, even kernel updates. OS X still requires restarts after OS changes (in fact, I have a pending update to apply right now), though it's not as bad as Windows.

Windows and OSX's unpredictability with time for updates to install is a key issue. Sometimes my machine can be down for 20-30 minutes, which as a developer completely ruins flow. So I put off any restarting update for as long as I can tolerate the stupid annoying box.

How about working on getting me updates-without-restarts like ksplice instead of changing the colour of the buttons.

I don't actually like Finder. At all. I think Windows Explorer is better. Nothing in Finder makes sense to me except the "All My Files" section, and even then I can save a file and it doesn't show up in there. Complete mystery to me.

What I like is a Unix command line. I also like virtual desktops that I can spawn by full-screening an application. I have a Red Hat laptop that work gave me, but I prefer my BYOD Macbook. I have three Linux certifications, but it's still so fiddly and good lord do I hate the package management tools. All of them. Why is it "yum install httpd" but "apt-get install apache2"? Why doesn't my OS run "apt-get update" in the background every so often so I don't have to do it manually when I want to install something?

It's nice to have Unix but backed by a company who knows how to design a user-friendly experience.

> Why doesn't my OS run "apt-get update" in the background every so often so I don't have to do it manually

Probably because you disabled it at install time. There's a box to check in the software update settings on Ubuntu; I see a similar cronjob on Debian.

In any case, you don't have to do it. You'll simply get the version of the package that was current at the time you last did the update.

> Why is it "yum install httpd" but "apt-get install apache2"

Because these are different tools.

>Because these are different tools.

In my opinion, that's not a valid answer. httpd and apache2 are exactly the same software package, running on the same OS at the same version, performing the same function. The only reason yum, apt, pacman, etc exist independently of each other is because the maintainers of each package manager are too stubborn and prideful to see the value in combining their efforts. It's obvious that apt is no better than yum. If it was, Red Hat would switch to it, and vice versa.

To reiterate something I said in another reply, these are things that seem perfectly natural to a Linux admin but are unacceptable to anyone else. I've seen 10+ year experienced Linux admins log into a new box and run apt-get install and see the response "command not found". Whoops, forgot it was a CentOS box.

I love bash and the Unix core utilities, but I dislike the way Linux is developed. I know Linux because I use it every day for my job, but that doesn't mean I have to like it and all of its idiosyncrasies.

Linux has its headaches, but

> The only reason yum, apt, pacman, etc exist independently of each other is because the maintainers of each package manager are too stubborn and prideful to see the value in combining their efforts.

To me this seems a bit like complaining that Chrome, Safari, IE, and Firefox have different keyboard shortcuts, and saying it'd be better if everyone just joined forces and worked on one browser. There is a huge amount of value in diversity and competition. If that means I occasionally have to google "pacman apache package," so be it.

I do complain about the different browsers... not picking on Linux again, but the way Chrome behaves in Linux is completely unreasonable. I prefer when I click on a URL bar, it highlights the whole thing by default. Firefox on Linux lets me change the default behavior, Chrome does not. When I filed a feature request, they closed it saying this is the native behavior of Linux and everyone expects it. But it's completely different from the behavior on Windows using the same software, so it breaks my workflow. End result is, I stopped using Chrome. Not to mention I can install Chrome, Safari, and Firefox on my Mac and pick between them at will. It's a lot harder to do that with a package manager.

There's value in diversity and competition, but does yum's new features make apt better? Does yum have any new features? Or is it literally just duplicating the exact same thing just for the sake of NIH? Browsers get updated constantly, it's a quickly changing market. Package managers are pretty much done. If apt or yum have implemented a new feature in the last 5 years that made the other maintainer say "oh my god we need that, how did we not think of that?" I will eat my hat (I don't actually own a hat).

You know what's really nice? Interoperability. Predictable behavior. It's the same damn OS. EXEs that run on Windows 10 Pro run on Windows 10 Home Premium, too, you don't have to switch to MSI just because you changed the distribution.

> I really wonder why people seem to like Finder over Windows Explorer.

I work on both daily as well. I can give some commentary on that. Coming from Windows, I initially hated Finder, but I prefer it now. The controls scheme is more consistent to me, and things I liked about the Windows setup was purely because I used Windows first.

* Navigating the folder structure: OSX: Cmd+down to drill down. Cmd+up to move up a directory. Cmd+down to open a file. Windows: Enter to move down. Alt+up to move up a directory. Enter to open the file.

* Renaming a folder or file OSX: Enter. Hands can remain on the home key for immediate typing of new name. Windows: F2. F2? Why? Hand has to fly off home position. And it's such a random key. I'm sure there's a historical reason, but from an end user's perspective, why that F key vs any other F key?

* Open file dialog (I believe each OS uses their file manager to power it) OSX: Not in the right directory, but have an instance of Finder open that is? Just drag in the target directory into the dialog, and it will smartly switch to that folder. Windows: If you try that, it freaks out. Navigate manually.

Renaming: I think if the enter key does anything except execute/open the selected file it's non obvious and nonsensical. Also, the F key mappings are all random. It's meant to be like that. F5 is refresh. F11 is full screen. These are a bunch of unnamed keys that can be assigned arbitrary functions. Some apps hardcore it, some let users change.

> Renaming: I think if the enter key does anything except execute/open the selected file it's non obvious and nonsensical.

In a vacuum, sure, I could agree with that. But in conjunction with cmd + [arrow] to move in and out of your current position, I think cmd + down to open a file continues that line of thought and is intuitive and obvious in the Finder context. After drilling down with cmd+down, if it's another directory, open it, else if it's a file... open it.

Alt-up and enter to do similar navigation all make sense in their own individual context, but in the context of each other or Explorer itself, is not intuitive and is nonsensical imo. That would be like mouse wheel down to scroll, but ctrl+up to scroll the other way. And F2 I guess, as you put it, is just pure randomness and would make no sense in any context.

>Also, the F key mappings are all random. It's meant to be like that. F5 is refresh. F11 is full screen

Isn't this just the typical argument of "Well that's how it's always been!". You're advocating something arbitrary and nonsensical just because you're used to it.

He's not really arguing anything. He was explaining why F2 was picked as the key for renaming; all the F keys were random and arbitrary. He never said whether thats the best way or the only way; he's not advocating it. Merely stating that the F keys were intended for arbitrary functions.

Re: renaming. The 'Enter' key is marked 'Return' on Apple keyboards and has different semantics to the 'Enter' key used in Windows.

It was confusing at first when I switched to Mac (still have a Windows 10 laptop), but the 'Enter' to rename really saves me time, or it becomes much more natural.

And while we're on the subject of renaming files, I actually like how I can rename currently opened files.

> I really wonder why people seem to like Finder over Windows Explorer.

IMO the main problem with Windows Explorer is the UI changes so often it's kind of confusing to do really basic tasks sometimes. There's so much functionality buried under toolbars, contextual menus of different kinds, nested property sheets, etc that any change to the UI effects a lot of things. For example in one release I always had to remind myself to right click on 'My Computer' in the Start Menu to get the contextual menu that included 'map network drive' because right clicking in a My Computer window only offered 'add network location' which is something different.

>I really wonder why people seem to like Finder over Windows Explorer.

Amen to this. I can tolerate either OS but whenever I'm on a Mac, I miss Windows Explorer greatly.

> I really wonder why people seem to like Finder over Windows Explorer.

I don't like either, and seldom touch the Finder. But the column browser is useful for some things.

As long as you don't have to deal with licences, then it becomes hell.

I left both OS X and Windows for Linux Mint recently; both because they became regressions to previous versions and once in decline you can't really expect improvements, hence Linux where there is still some nice flow of creative air and a potential/need to improve.

"or forcing itself upon me"

Apple's current strategy for security fixes is "update or die". They now support only the latest and greatest OS on both desktop and mobile, with no "enterprise" exceptions. If you don't want to get owned, you have to use the newest OS that may have added/removed features that you may or may not want. MSFT is still supporting Windows 7, 8, and 10.

Apple released the recent set of security patches back to 10.9, or 2 releases old.

See it's really funny that basically everyone upgrades to the very latest release of OS X shortly after its released. You never hear too many people complaining that Apple put out a new version and is "forcing" you to upgrade. People just do it. They just upgrade. The only complaints you hear are from people who are locked out of the upgrade because their hardware is considered too old for the new version. People complaining that they can't upgrade even though they want to, huge difference from the Windows world.

Yet every time Microsoft puts out a new version, even fairly minor revisions like Windows 7 or Windows 10 where the hardware requirements stay the same, there is a major backlash and a huge furor and everyone insists they will stay at the older version until they die.

I'm the same way, and still sore from some Microsoft losses.

It's as if they have the potential to build an amazing ecosystem but they trip over themselves and stuff comes out 3/4 baked. Mostly looking at the huge opportunity that they had with Windows Phone and still have with Xbox Live.

I don't know what you mean when you say polished. OSX is like a skin deep gui for unix. Tell me how you disable your second monitor in OSX using the gui. It was impossible to do this around 2 years ago when I tried, it probably still is.

They seem to intentionally sabotage the wire that connects the harddrive to the board on macbook pros in order to force you to upgrade.

Also idk what you mean about build quality though because people build their own PCs. Our macs seem to break faster and more frequently than the PCs we build.

edit: It is also super fun trying to get a macbook to output both sound and video onto a tv.

>* Tell me how you disable your second monitor in OSX using the gui. It was impossible to do this around 2 years ago when I tried, it probably still is.*

By going to the Preferences -> Display?

>It is also super fun trying to get a macbook to output both sound and video onto a tv

Never had any issue with it, with 2 TV models, a projector, 2 Macs (Air, MBPr) -- using HDMI in all.

Apple thinks my Dell U2410s are TVs when connected over HDMI, and uses YPbPr colour space, and some weird stuff because of it. There's no way to tell the OS that it's a monitor without using an EDID override, which is now extremely difficult to do because of the system file protection in 10.11. Pain. In. The. Behind.

Don't even get me started on the couple of years when you couldn't even really use a second monitor after Lion. Dear god.

Use display port instead? OSX is not great with multi-monitor, but it has come a long way. I have 2 monitors hooked up to my 2014 mbp using display port and they work fine.

Yeah, I would - but I need dual external monitors and thunderbolt at the same time - forced to use the HDMI for one or buy a daisy chaining display. Sigh.

Take a look at Windows 8 with the Modern interface. Then dive into the settings. It very quickly kicks you out of the Modern interface to do some operations, even on the ARM tablet that didn't official have a desktop. Even if you're on a touchscreen, it makes you tap tiny radio buttons. At least OS X has a consistent user interface.

Funny you mention building your own, I got my first Mac when I got fed up with building and maintaining my own PC. I bought some new RAM and plugged it in, and suddenly it stopped booting. I put the old RAM back in, and it wouldn't boot with the old RAM either. This was the straw that broke the camel's back, after I had gotten fed up with rebooting every week for updates, overheating issues that had been starting to pop up, and how ridiculously loud the fans were for a not-that-good desktop. I was looking at a Surface, but plenty of people are like "oh it's great, but there are some driver issues". It's a first-party machine. There should be no driver issues. Zero.

I bought a Macbook that same day. Everything I was complaining about sounds completely normal to a PC enthusiast. "Of course you're getting overheating, just put more fans in." "Of course the fans are loud, put in more, bigger, slower fans." "Just disable automatic updates and reboot when it's convenient." "Just replace the motherboard."

It's completely asinine. If my car needed that much constant maintenance I'd call it a lemon and demand my money back. I have work to do, and it doesn't involve building a computer to do it.

You've been downvoted, but the underlying theme of your comment is that most of the time OSX on a MBP for example, just works. Is is perfect? No. But, no Windows laptop I ever used prior to my MBP operated with fewer issues. Linux on a laptop was a joke. Maybe both have improved substantially, but instead of waiting I moved on to get work done.

I always assume the build quality statement refers exclusively to their macbooks, and even that is less a statement about apple vs windows as it is apple vs every other hardware manufacturer. I'd just like a laptop that still has working hinges after a year of use; I'm looking at you HP...

> They seem to intentionally sabotage the wire that connects the harddrive to the board on macbook pros in order to force you to upgrade.

You mean to prevent you from changing it? Recent MacBooks don't have SATA (instead opting for SSD chips straight on the board with NVMe), but I had one of the last models with a magnetic drive option and I put in a standard SATA SSD with no problem.

Comments like that are typical from people who have a career repairing or building PCs, I know quite a few desktop support guys who are of the opinion that if you didn't build it yourself, the company you bought it from sabotaged something. Only home built computers can be trusted to be reliable.

The problem is, in their line of work they only ever see the broken computers. So it kind of taints their view point.

>>> and I especially love knowing that my computer will not reboot itself unexpectedly at night due to security updates.

I hear this comment so many times. Why don't you just disable automatic updates if they bother you so much?!

Really? Next week you can install WSL (Bash on Windows) on Windows 10 which is amazing considering its in beta. Definitely try it if are developing on a Windows box.

I cannot understand who would down-vote your comment. The Windows Subsystem for Linux is a good thing for software developers https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about

If I can viably develop on Windows instead of a slow (on my i3 laptop) Linux VM I'll be thrilled.

Not getting my hopes up though.

I'm pretty sure WSL is not enough for any decent sized dev effort. And running Linux on a VM on an i3 would just be masochistic. Stick to Linux would be my suggestion.

It's really not thaat bad most of the time. And I would but I don't trust Windows updates to not eventually trash any dual boot setup, or Linux updates not eventually trash my graphics drivers etc.

WHy not switch completely to Linux? Unless you play games.

A bit of LoL here and there, plus little things like being able to cast to my roku hassle free and reliable sleep/suspend. Was all Linux for a few years but the man won. I know I should probably get a real dev machine but this is what I'm working with at the moment.

Really my current development needs consist of git, ssh, node, redis, mysql, apache, and python. If WSL can do that I'm all set.

I used to love the Mac, but for a long time now, Windows+Linux have outpaced the MacOS experience.

Visual Studio runs absolute rings around XCode.

And I day this as a vim/make user with a significant Linux investment.

Sometimes, I'll port software to windows, only so that I can use Visual Studio!

Any OS is fine for browsing the web. Windows is better fort playing games. And VMWare means I can develop my Linux server software in a Linux environment, which avoids any compatibility surprises.

3dsMax or Inventor don't even run on MacOS, but most people luckily don't have that problem :-)

So why is MacOS better for "development" again?

After not owning a Windows machine for around 14 years I bought a dell xps13. I love the design but the Windows experience really leaves the same things to be desired. I've had issues from dell (crappy drivers). But the actual user expedience still lacks. It's 2016 and Windows can't figure out a way to make all apps look ok on a high resolution. Never before have I seen an OS actually fail to shut down.

Windows is awesome. I can and have written volumes on how much better it is than OS X and Linux. Is that telling you anything?

You didn't say much about anything either. Hmmm.

Anyway, I've developed software for twenty years on Windows and so have a ton of others, so I'd really like to know what your problem is?

I'm not sure what kind of developer can't cope with switching operating systems.

I actually have a harder time using OSX than Windows, but that just because I spend far more time using Windows.

Is silly to just condemn something blindly just because it isn't OSX.

Been a Mac user for 14 years now, didn't miss the windows world one bit until the past year or so.

Almost no (or maybe no now?) mac ships with a decent performance CUDA card, disciplines like 3D rendering are getting more and more reliant on GPU computing and almost no one supports OpenCL it's all CUDA.

I'm currently debating if I should put together a hackjob external GPU or if I should just spend about $200 and get a full PC to work on.

Exactly. They don't realise loosing power users has the potential to harm you in the long run. Power users include many groups you need to target, like early adopters and indie application developers just to name a few.

Back in time, when Apple switched to Intel and there was no iPhone yet, it was pretty clear to me they would become huge. There was a great ecosystem around the Mac with fantastic applications developed by Panic, Omni Group and lots of individuals. Loosing these will make your stuff enterprisey and boring, in a bad way.

IMO this is what Microsoft is trying to fix with their recent open source efforts. Developers (outside of enterprise) aren't on their platform and even tend to hate the company. It turns out that's not great for their consumer software market.

I can name exactly one company known for making well polished Windows utilities (Stardock), and everything else tends to look like it was developed on Windows 95.

Compare to Mac where you have those companies like Panic, The Omni Group, Rogue Amoeba, Delicious Monster, Ambrosia SW, The Icon Factory, and others.

I know a lot of stuff has moved online and desktop software isn't as critical as it was a decade ago, but native developers still power a big chunk of the ecosystem. Apple is clearly uninterested in supporting their professional userbase, and MS would love to have them.

Personally I'm holding out for new MBPs to replace a 2011 Macbook Air (no audio, but it still runs), but I can't blame those who aren't. It'll be a bottom-of-the-line model and I can do my serious work on a Windows machine that costs half of a Mac Pro and has 3 years newer hardware.

I should add to this, it's not that I like Windows 10 particularly much. It's got an annoying habit of repeatedly uninstalling working graphics drivers and replacing them with versions that are "updates" but known to be broken. And the user experience in general just isn't where OS X is.

But for hobbyist sorts of work in photography, 3d modeling, and texturing, Apple's product lineup is kind of a joke. I've been using Macs since System 7 and I'd like to have one to do these things on, but Apple doesn't want to make it.

For me, this is just a question of higher price and lower speed for hobbies where I could deal with that if I really wanted to. But looking at entertainment industry professionals, Apple isn't even in the market. VR and 360° video (like the Surround 360 post from earlier today[1]) just aren't going to happen on Macs. Nobody's going to spend $6000 on a machine with 3 year old GPUs that can't handle a modern workload. Historically that was a market that kept Apple afloat. Now I guess it's too small for them to care?

If Substance Designer ever gets released on Linux, I'm jumping ship to elementaryOS.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12167056

What kind of software do you need specifically? I'll bet you have more and better options om Windows.

I don't disagree about more, but my experience is that they're rarely better.

For a couple of examples, there are a million IRC clients on Windows, and they're all worse than Colloquy and Textual. Another million FTP clients, but the Mac version of Cyberduck is nicer than any I've tried. Ditto for bittorrent clients, I'd rather use Transmission. No launcher on Windows comes anywhere near Quicksilver. Mac firewalls are nice (Little Snitch and Hands Off), system utilities are nice (iStat Menus, Bartender, iTerm). Even tiny things like package tracking with JuneCloud's Deliveries are better than anything you'll find on Windows.

Decent user interface is a high priority to me though. Others who don't share that opinion will probably be happier with the state of 3rd party software on Windows.

Every single package that you listed has a vastly superior option available on Windows or it's not even necessary. There are very few genres of software where the Mac options actually exceed what is available on Windows. Utilities is not one of them though.

To me, Cyberduck is meh. I don't know why you'd want to when you have mIRC available, which has a ton more features than Cyberduck. However, what exactly do you think makes "the Mac version" of Cyberduck a better app?

Windows has a launcher that works so I don't need to replace that, Windows has a firewall that works too so I don't need to replace that. Why would I need iStat when I have the Task Manager? Don't need Bartender at all. I don't need to replace the Windows terminal at all since I hardly use it, but if I did there are plenty of high quality options that pretty much kill iTerm and WinSCP is absolutely more robust and useful than anything available on OS X.

Meanwhile tons of OS X users have to install things like HyperSwitch, HyperDock, BetterSnap/TouchTool, things to replace the terrible and broken Finder that hardly anybody seems to enjoy using, etc. etc. etc. the list goes on and on since there are so many features missing or poorly implemented in OS X. (Like being able to turn off an external monitor without physically powering it down....which you need a 3rd party utility for on a Mac.)

I add one utility to fix Windows and one to add a missing feature. Those are: 7+ taskbar tweaker and AutoHotkey.

Let's talk about common end-user software though, like Outlook. Every OS X mail client sucks compared to it, including Outlook for Mac. Visio vs OmniGraffle? Xcode vs Visual Studio? There's simply no comparison here. Even when the software has a Mac version (such as in the case of AutoCad/Excel/etc), the Mac version is severely limited.

> Decent user interface is a high priority to me though.

Me too. That's why I prefer Windows software. OS X is just plain ugly to me. It looks like it was inspired by an 8-track player from the 70's.

Decent to me also means having features are easily discoverable. Windows software has that in spades compared to OS X where all the features are hidden behind label-less icons and secret handshakes.

I think we just have different tastes then. The screenshot on mIRC's website is still showing Windows XP, but from what I can find on Google the more recent versions look like this: http://images.snapfiles.com/screenfiles/mirc.gif

IMO not better than Textual: https://www.codeux.com/textual/private/images/v500media/Yose... (which I assume is what you meant to compare it against, instead of an FTP client?)

Re: Cyberduck, it's a nice FTP client. The Windows version is more or less the same thing, but has a distinct "this is a Windows port of a Mac app" feel to it. It's OK, just not great: http://cdn.lo4d.com/t/screenshot/800/cyberduck-3.png

The more widely used FTP client on Windows is FileZilla, but I kind of hate it: http://cdn.portableapps.com/FileZillaPortable.png

OS X has a built in search/launcher. I just like Quicksilver better. Could I do without it? Sure. But I've been using it since ~2003 and I'm happy with its speed and feature set. Compare to Windows's search which regularly hangs on me, then works fine after I cancel out and reenter the exact same search term.

I do admittedly use a tool to adjust window management. In my case, it's Divvy, though there are a lot of free alternatives now if I hadn't bought that years ago. It's more flexible than the native window snapping in Windows, and I'm perfectly happy with it. OS X has native fullscreen/splitscreen now, so it's less needed, but I still like the fast keyboard shortcuts for things like 1/3 split.

Can't say I have a desktop mail client on my own computers (gmail.com does the trick), so I can't weigh in there. Nor do I need Visio or OmniGraffle. But I'll give you Visual Studio over Xcode for sure.

> Me too. That's why I prefer Windows software. OS X is just plain ugly to me. It looks like it was inspired by an 8-track player from the 70's.

Yep, different tastes.

I was pretty happy with Windows 7, but I think Windows 8/10 takes the excessive whitespace too far, and then it buries all of the features it "cleaned" out in legacy control panels. Plus half of the 3rd party software still looks like Windows 95, which might be nice and nostalgic if you grew up with Windows 95, but I didn't

> Decent to me also means having features are easily discoverable

Nearly all functionality is accessible from the menubar, so that's always a good place to look for things. It's even searchable. Next time you're on a Mac, hit up the help menu (or cmd-?). Much more useful than F1.

I agree with this. Mac application ecosystem is fantastic.

But I hate seeing the whole thing heading South because Apple doesn't understand its power users. Ultimately, I think Linux is superior and makes me happier if I stick to minimal text-mode applications like emacs or mutt [1]. Not being at the mercy of a big corporation is a huge plus.

[1] http://suckless.org/rocks

No spelling snobbery intended, but it's "losing", not "loosing".

I agree with your point.

Part of the problem is that many power users have no other option.

Many of us can't use Windows because we need our primary machine to be _nix for various reasons (because our servers are Linux based, because we're used to the commands/tools from the _nix ecosystem, because configurations etc are easier to to understand and work with in the _nix ecosystem, etc).

And many of us can't use Linux because there's no laptop that comes close to the power, portability, ease-of-use (think wifi, power options), screen, etc of Macbook Pro et al. Add to that the fact that many apps we need to use (Illustrator, Photoshop, Sketch, etc) don't run on Linux natively.

So, even if you ignore the fact that the non-power-user is a much bigger market, there's no reason for Apple to focus heavily on power-users because we aren't going to go anywhere else.

I've been using Macs for years and recently switched to Windows 10 as my primary dev device. Bash on Windows is almost as good as running on a Linux kernel, and it's not finished yet. Truly the only thing I miss is Sketch.

Recent changes have made Windows very approachable/usable for a Linux and Mac power user.

Thanks for your feedback. Let me ask you a few more questions about your experience.

The _nix commands/tools you're used to don't just start and end with Bash, right? What about the other commands/tools you used that still aren't in Windows? Do you spend a majority of your time in the command line in Win10 and you still don't feel limited by it?

What about the horrible registry hell? Don't you sometimes need to go into the magical world of #RANDOMWORD1>#RANDOMWORD2>#RANDOMWORD3>... in the registry editor to make Windows behave the way you want to?

Does Windows still automatically reboot for security updates, ignoring whatever else you might have running on the machine?

I haven't edited a Windows registry for a decade at least. It's just not a problem anymore. I suppose if you develop Windows native apps, you might have to deal with it.

Between Bash, Powershell (which is awesome), and Cygwin/MinGW, you can get access to most of the Unix commands and tools you are used to.

I highly recommend learning Powershell, which is really nice. Instead of forcing Windows to be like Unix, it's better to learn to live with Powershell for a while, and then bring in the Unix utilities if you really need them. If you give Powershell a chance, you may find that you don't want to use Bash anymore.

The main hurdle to development on Windows is application support, not command line tools. For example, there is no official Redis build for Windows. Installing Python and Ruby can be a little bit difficult on Windows compared to other platforms. But lots of other languages, including Java, are perfectly functional.

I have tried Powershell recently. While the language itself is nice enough (if a bit verbose), getting a script to run is such a hassle. The security model is both overzealous and unpredictable. I finally get it running without questions for a while, but then it starts throwing up security prompts at random.

> Installing Python and Ruby can…

Huh, like next, next, finish?

Yeah, and then some of this stuff: https://docs.python.org/2/using/windows.html

None of that is required, and newer installers can set your path with a checkbox.

> The _nix commands/tools you're used to don't just start and end with Bash, right? What about the other commands/tools you used that still aren't in Windows?

bash on Windows is a full distro wrapped in lxrun. tmux works, nginx works, most things you apt-get from the Ubuntu repos Just Work. That alone places is far ahead of fucking around with ports or homebrew or whichever unholy combination you're trying on OS X.

And, if you use Ubuntu on the server (or are prepared to hack around replacing Ubuntu on Windows with your preferred distro) is a much better match for your runtime.

> What about the horrible registry hell?

The last time I had to care about the registry was Windows 2000.

In my personal experience regarding your last question, the security updates on my Surface Pro 4 have always asked me if I wanted to restart my machine or delay it til off hours (anywhere from 12-5am). I've also been offered to schedule when restarts occur.

Seconded. I was a fairly early adopter of Windows 10, and the updates have never been an issue for me. I changed the update setting to 'notify to schedule restarts' and it's always prompted me to schedule it myself, rather than just doing it when it thinks I won't be using the computer.

It's that simple.

The only windows thing I changed is to use Classic Shell instead of the new start menu - other than that, it's fantastic, and a good evolution to windows 7. Going back feels like going back to XP.

With the new Anniversary Update you can set Active Hours when Windows 10 won't attempt any updates at all....

"Bash for Windows" is pretty much Ubuntu for Windows -- you can apt-get other commands/tools.

I actually edit the registry on first install to clean stuff up. But there are the same magic elements to OS X as well if you want to get that custom. For most people, it's completely unnecessary.

As for security updates, Windows does what you tell it to do. I've always had it set to download and not install them.

To answer your question, I haven't edited the Windows registry since XP. Reboots are still far too frequent but are at least scheduled at night. "Bash for Windows" is a bad name for Ubuntu apps running natively on the Windows kernel. You have all Ubuntu tools available to you natively--it's honestly a remarkable engineering feat, and once they implement SA_RESTART for Golang it'll be everything I need. You can even access your standard Windows files via Bash via /mnt/c. Cat, tmux, awk and more all work brilliantly.

Adobe's XD is coming to Windows within a month or two. It appears to be a good alternative clone of Sketch. http://www.adobe.com/products/experience-design.html

(As a primary Windows person, Sketch is one of the things I do envy about having an OS X computer!)

Luckily for you, Windows 10 will support Ubuntu Bash natively (as part of the anniversary update).

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about

Dell sells an XPS laptop with Ubuntu Linux installed out of the box, then you have System 76 and other companies that focus on selling you Linux-only devices. I guess your main issue after that is application compatibility. I use a VM to run Visual Studio, which is the only non-Linux application I need, but I make due with Mono Develop to some extent.

Running a VM means I get the best of both Linux and Windows. I also get the worst of both Linux and Windows. I don't think OSX has gotten bad enough for me to go that route and be forced to manage two operating systems.

>As a single, insignificant data point: I just bought my first Windows laptop after 2008. I kept waiting for Apple to release Skylake professional machines. Just gave up waiting for them.

The Skylake processors meant for the MacBook Pros have not yet made available by Intel. They were announced last year but are still either not available at all (TBD) or available at small quantities.

The PC competitors rushed to put out PCs with whatever Skylake models Intels put out, models that have marginal gais (or sometimes even worse performance) compared to earlier Haswell.

The worst one can say about Apple is not about them not rushing to adopt the BS early Skylake models that are unfit for the MBP, but that they held the prices of MBPr with older processors high while people are waiting for the refresh.

That said, Apple has already put out Skylake Macbook and Skylake iMacs.

Meanwhile, it is literally impossible to buy a Mac that has a GPU good enough for VR.

It's not just VR where Macs are having trouble. Blizzard has historically been a bastion of Mac game development even when it was a niche platform, but Overwatch is Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation. For a bit of history, here are their Mac titles:

• Blackthorne

• Warcraft

• Diablo

• Starcraft + Brood War

• Warcraft II

• Diablo II + Lord of Destruction

• Warcraft III + Frozen Throne

• World of Warcraft + Burning Crusade + Wrath of the Lich King + Cataclysm + Mists of Panderia + Warlords of Draenor + Legion

• Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty + Heart of the Swarm + Legacy of the Void

• Diablo III + Reaper of Souls

• Hearthstone

• Heroes of the Storm

And here's what they have to say about their latest blockbuster title, Overwatch:

> Currently with the technology behind Macs and the way Overwatch runs it's just too challenging for us at this point to support it. Our focus right now is entirely on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. [1]

Mac marketshare has grown by leaps and bounds over what it was in the 90's, and Blizzard drops Mac support for the first time ever. Their last (well, only) game that shipped on PCs and didn't make it to Mac was The Lost Vikings in 1992 on MS-DOS. Overwatch is the only one to see a Windows release without Mac.

Bummer. Hopefully a port is eventually in the cards.

[1] http://www.polygon.com/2015/11/6/9686370/overwatch-mac-os-x-...

Overwatch is probably the most challenging in that list to properly port. Hearthstone isn't performance sensitive, frames per second and such doesn't matter, lag isn't an issue so long as it's not perceptible. In an FPS you're always slave to the clock, every millisecond counts, and the OpenGL support isn't there to squeeze what they need out of the mid-range GPUs.

Presumably this means Bizzard isn't interested in porting to Metal.

Last I heard, Blizzard ported World of Warcraft over to Metal with significant improvements. It wouldn't surprise me, though, if the relative age of the current Mac hardware is to blame.

Well, 99% of PC laptops sold don't have one either.

It's a niche field, and it concerns all of a few million (if that). When it becomes actually mainstream, it would be catered by mainstream oriented companies.

Heck, Apple doesn't even care about gaming, and that's quite a larger niche compared to VR, but still not people who appreciate the kind of details Apple focuses on (lightweight, thin, power efficient, etc). Gamers would rather build a custom rig. Plus, they're a demographic that fades off quickly after 25 or so.

>The Skylake processors meant for the MacBook Pros have not yet made available by Intel. They were announced last year but are still either not available at all (TBD) or available at small quantities.

>The worst one can say about Apple is not about them not rushing to adopt the BS early Skylake models that are unfit for the MBP, but that they held the prices of MBPr with older processors high while people are waiting for the refresh.

The 15" models still use Haswell processors, not Broadwell like the 13".

Haswell vs Broadwell is a very incremental change. Pick any metric you like and it'll be better by at most 10 percent. In most practical metrics it's a lot less than that.

It's not about it being an incremental change.

Come this Friday, the same CPUs have been shipping in the 15" retina MacBook Pros for 2 years. Last spec bump was May 2015, but the change to Haswell processors was in late July 2014.

It is clear that Apple does consider the desktop dead. As far as the MBPs go, I'm not sure what the hold up is. If they just kept changing out the internals with the latest Intel had to offer people would still complain, but at least be buying recent stuff.

The other option would be to lower prices as the hardware got older, but that is not Apple's way. My 2014 MBP runs fine, I just would not want to pay the new 2016 computer price.

They're probably still trying to shave another 5mm off the thing.

> It has forgotten about its power users.

Features like HiDPI displays and NVMe are very much power user features. Apple was among the first in the industry to adopt those features so they've had a period of time over the last year or so without much in the pipeline for power users. Minor CPU upgrades that offer barely any performance improvement are not enough to buck the historic decline in PC sales.

> I think Apple has lost its way. It has forgotten about its power users. I think they are trying to be a luxury brand now

How is that losing their way? They're targeting a way more profitable and way larger market.

Judging by many of the comments I see here, especially in threads about products that do target power users, power users are so difficult to please that targeting them is probably a waste of time and money.

That's the quarter capitalist point of view.

The brand adoption cycle goes from Professional -> Prosumer -> Consumer. If you lose the pro market you lose brand equity that makes you a premium brand. Then, you eventually lose the consumer market and start cutting costs and prices to keep up.

I don't believe that for a second. There are many successful companies that only target only one or two of those market segments.

Besides, Apple's products have traditionally attracted consumers and prosumers before professionals, e.g. the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone...

You've got the cycle wrong anyway. From Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations, it is traditionally: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards. These are categories of people who have varying enthusiasm about trying new technology. They are not segmented into professionals and non-professionals. The first category includes all kinds of people, including consumers who want the latest and greatest iPhone for media consumption and playing Pokemon.

That's how it works for markets but not individual products.

Cellular phones started with professionals, then prosumer, then consumer. The iPhone followed that track only because the market was significant in all areas, but it's worth noting they don't really have a "pro" phone.

Likewise, a lot of their pro gear is really expensive to engineer and the sales are thin. They'd rather make prosumer and consumer gear that they can crank out in volume.

Can't blame them, really. The entire PC market is imploding, so it's a lost cause to try and carve out new market share when everything's going to hell.

> It has forgotten about its power users.

Oh, they haven't forgotten.

Since the introduction of the multicolor iMac, Apple has been moving steadily towards a line of luxury-ish mass market products. Updates and refreshes in Apple's lines of high-performance "computers" will only continue to become fewer and further between.

Edit: Why down vote this?

>> Since the introduction of the multicolor iMac, Apple has >> been moving steadily towards a line of luxury-ish mass market products.

That would've been twenty years ago. The only "interesting" boxes that appeared before then were the Mac II NuBus machines, and even then because there was no alternative.

History at that time moved very slowly - it allowed for an Apple II class machine to be sold into the 1990s; after that, the benefit of a tightly designed custom motherboard and software combination trailed dramatically against the cost of supporting software. Sure, a DayStar 40MHz accelerator card was the bees knees at only only like $1,040, but it didn't do anything even remotely like moving the software forward like the (2004) intel transition. (And compatibility was severely lacking from third parties for third party pro options.)

(Please do note though, I <3 m68k. I wish the world had taken another track - but I don't think i'd have been significantly better off.)

Ya just don't buy a Mac every two years. It's been so effective for so long, that it's too painful to replace, even if it's far easier to replace than a Windows box.

Sounds more like you don't use computers the way you used to. I use my computer for software development and music creation. Both experiences are orders of magnitude better on OS X then on Windows 10. On the rare chances I get to play games, I play on Win 10.

Getting a signature machine is the way to go. Not having all that crapware installed is good.

I am tired of Verizon installing crapware on my android phones so I am going for a Google device with the Fi service when I need a new phone.

One thing Apple does well is not loading crapware.

I think Apple just has a different view of who is important to it as far as customers go. For them it's always been about graphics/media first, education second, and everyone else is an afterthought. The OSX acquisition brought in a number of people who care about developers, but the further the OS gets from that, the closer it gets to their roots.

The only major change recently being their desire to integrate as much of their work with iOS into OSX as they can. Which is helpful to their bottom line.

As far as Windows vs. OSX. I've had to switch to Windows for work and I still get very frustrated with it at times. As long as I can stick to my core tools, which is text editor + shell + Firefox, I'm fine. But it's a PITA to even make simple changes to settings as they bury it behind all kinds of stupid menus. And IE is still garbage, though it's less on fire than it was. And my stupid laptop will still spin up and slow the entire system down at random times of day just to run whatever flavor of malware scanner, auto updater, or copy protection scanner it feels is suddenly more important than the work of the actual user.

And then there's Office itself, which is garbage as well, as far as I'm concerned, but is pretty much the only reason why Windows exists as a platform. So I like Macs because they mostly have everything I need and stay out of my way. And also because of BBEdit which is still the best. Windows works okay, and is still better for gaming in terms of Price vs. availability, which is why I'm actually considering purchasing one at all.

Different data point.

I occasionally think I want a new MBP but I just got Sierra PB2 working just fine on my Mid-2009 MBP which isn't even supported. Given that I've upgraded it over the years with a SSD and maxed out the RAM, it still surprisingly feels like a pretty usable machine despite its bulk. So for me, at least for now, it's good enough and I still do not have a sufficiently compelling reason to upgrade. Hence the lack of new machines really does not bother me that much.

Of course the terribly irony is that Apple needs the power users because they are the ones who actually create things for their platforms and anything experienced by average users while on a Mac, iPad or iPhone.

But no, the put a "Pro" on the end of the iPad and now we are supposed to believe that is the answer. Sorry, but an iPad will never be a usable workstation without ergonomics, a precision cursor and file system.

Hey, maybe they will release Xcode for Windows or Linux?

$42.4 billion of revenue in total. $6 billion of which is services. That is not the profile of a services company. That is the profile of a company who's PR department is running distraction on the press.

You cannot replace the revenue of a once every two years $800 purchase with some music sales. Consummers only even spend that $800 because the cost is hidden in a larger monthly bill.

This should be a big deal. Apple is no longer taking market share from Android. Apple is no longer convincing consumers to replace their old iPhones. This is a trend which should scare investors. Let Apple is still priced assuming 11 more years of current profits.

From the conference call:

Maestri: Services now account for 11% of Apple's overall revenue, up from 8% in the year-ago period.

Cook: Switchers from Android and other platforms accounted for the highest percentage of iPhone buyers than ever before.

That'd be an interesting data point, if iPhone sales hadn't collapsed by 15% in the quarter. As such it sounds like nothing but spin and entirely hollow.

iPhone sales are supposed to collapse though.

The new iPhone is coming out in a few weeks.

I think Apple has it's issues, but isn't this textbook Innovator's Dilemma? Newer vertical looks small compared to established vertical, thus dismissed.

$400 every two years (assuming 50% profit per phone!) is just $17/month. If Apple can convince you to pay for 2 or 3 of its services, then they're gold.

Where does the "11 years" comment come from though? How do you figure that?

If you're counting profit on the phone, you need to compare that to profit from the service.

I doubt they are running Apple Music with a 50% profit. Most services are probably being priced close to cost to gain market share.

Yeah that's a good point. I don't really think these services are "at cost", though: isn't the whole point of this industry that marginal costs are super low?

I assume he means the P/E ratio which is 10.79 right now.

I would hesitate to interpret a P/E ratio as the number of future years in which we'd expect constant profits (wrt now)

Why hesitate? Isn't that a good definition?

The problem with claiming that Apple wants to be a services company is that they've tied their services to Apple hardware. The only product you might use these days if you don't have Apple hardware is iTunes or Apple Music.

For Apple to become a services company, they're going to have to open up to other platforms. Otherwise they'll remain a hardware company with services that are designed to keep users locked into their ecosystem.

Comcast's cable business generated $435/subscriber in the most recent quarter. That's $800 in two quarters let alone two years.

There is significant revenue opportunity in video. Apps are the new video. Music and iCloud are gravy. That's what the market is reacting to.

Maybe AAPL won't achieve it but you can't dismiss at as prima facie impossible.

So what happens when they become a car manufacturer?

That's a purchase that is a few orders of magnitude larger, and spaced out even farther than a smartphone cycle.

Honestly at this point the only thing that's keeping me from switching to Windows is XCode because I need to build iOS apps. I will immediately switch to Windows if someone figures out a way to seamlessly build true native iOS apps on Windows.

I've waited enough for their laptops--not because I love mac but because that's the only option I have for the reason above--and getting tired of it. As I am typing this on my macbook air, I have to take my hands off the keyboard time to time because it gets too hot. Also the battery has swollen up to a point where I can't even close the laptop. I've been waiting for a legitimate new laptop from them for TWO years. All they released was some minor upgrades and a "macbook" which I didn't buy because I know better than to act as Apple's guinea pig and buy their first iteration of anything--I learned it the hard way with my iPhones and iPads.

Anyway, all this to me feels like it's because Apple is no more an innovator company, instead they follow the stock market. I used to be a Windows user but switched when Vista came out and I really couldn't stand it. I feel very reminiscent of those times when I think about what's going on with Apple nowadays.

Regarding the swollen battery, if it's a Lithium battery it sounds like it may be close to failing. If I were you I would stop using that laptop right away.

I learned during my time at an RC airplane co. that lithium batteries can be very dangerous: they will actually explode in some cases.

Anyway, a stranger's $0.02. Good luck!

I've seen enough YouTube videos of battery fires that those things freak me out. It's like having a stick of dynamite laying around with a smoldering fuse.

A battery "swollen up to a point where I can't even close the laptop" is a serious fire/explosion hazard.

You should remove it from your laptop and safely dispose of it as soon as possible.

It does NOT go into regular garbage or recycle. Call your local recycle center (or the non-emergency number of your fire deptartment) to ask how your city handles laptop batteries.

Lowes and Home Depot will both take batteries for recycling.

The biggest thing for me is speed. I don't know who Apple thinks it's fooling with their slow ass animations. Windows 10 is way snappier.

And I think the OS X windowing/dock system is inferior. It's way harder than it should be to find windows.

I hate the Mac windowing system. I like most other aspects of the Mac though.

> Also the battery has swollen up to a point where I can't even close the laptop.

You can get a replacement battery from Apple for pretty reasonable pricing (https://support.apple.com/mac-notebooks/repair/service/prici...).

You really don't want a bulging Macbook battery lying around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNJXqy6bWow

Maybe Apple has stopped innovating, but Windows is just not there for developers, not even close to what Mac has been ~3 years ago.

Saying this from recent personal experience.

There are no good options these days. I know that's been the song of developers since the beginning of software, but it does seem we've hit a bit of a valley in terms of desktop OS's. Linux still can't quite get its foot in the door. OS X peaked with 10.6.4. Windows peaked with 7. Everything since has been the long, slow decline of trying to mimic mobile's success and failing.

Wholeheartedly agree.

I want Windows 10s graphics performance, Linux' kernel/CLI tools/open source mindset and OS X' graphical applications/UI design/integration with my my other devices.

Currently using OS X, but the hardware situation is frustrating (has always been, but currently at it's worst since ~10 years), the software quality is declining and Apple's ongoing direction towards iOS doesn't fit me.

Using Linux on my PC is frustrating, the graphics situation is terrible. All I want is 60 fps vsync'd performance, fluid scrolling, no choppiness when moving or resizing windows. Also, there is still a lack of many important applications (Adobe, MS Office). The whole Gtk vs. Qt situation also aggravates this.

Windows, for me, as a developer, is a total disaster, not only does it differ totally from my usual UNIX environment with it's completely different way of handling files and directories, but I also dislike the software: font rendering is terrible (in my eyes), the switch to UWP is terrible, as is the platform (UWP) itself, to me, the lack of choice is even worse than on OS X. But Windows seems to be the only OS at the moment to run without major problems on hardware of my choice with good graphics performance.

I really wished Linux would get it's graphics stack straight. I know it's not the individual developer's fault (and most certainly, the NVIDIA/AMD didn't help much in the past), but the current situation is still somewhat subpar. Still, the choices at the moment all frustrate me, so I stick to what I have.

What GPU do you have, and which driver stack do you use?

The machine on which I installed Linux had a Core i7 4770, so it came with an Intel HD 4600. This chip did well, but of course the performance is not enough, so I installed my GTX 770. The proprietary driver made many problems, reported wrong refresh rates (Compiz never got above 30 fps, unless I manually told it the refresh rate, which breaks my multi monitor setup). I tried mutter (Gnome 3), Compton and Compiz, but none of them could easily deliver sane, smooth 60 fps using vsync.

Kwin from KDE actually managed that, but the performance was very bad, whenever I started playing a YouTube video for example, scrolling got choppy and to a maximum of 30 fps.

I will say this: Visual Studio is pretty great. This is from someone who started out on the command line and swears by Unix / Vim.

Could you expound on that? What's missing, besides a bash shell?

Win 10 has bash shell and full Ubuntu apt-get now

That's really not that good. It's a nearly completely isolated and the terminal app is extremely lacking compared to both linux and iTerm2. Also in my short time using it a BUNCH of standard packages, like spacemacs for example, didn't work at all correctly or couldn't be installed.

Win 10 can run ELF binaries now. That doesn't make it an integrated *nix like system (sadly!).

>As I am typing this on my macbook air, I have to take my hands off the keyboard time to time because it gets too hot.

For over 5 Apple laptops of various kinds, I've never seen that, with heavy programming/VM use, or DAW and NLE use. A little warmer yes. Ouch, my hands hurt? No. Does that really happen, and can we have some actual temperature measurements, or is it just that some people are too sensitive?

>Also the battery has swollen up to a point where I can't even close the laptop.

That, on the other hand, I had happen. The battery needs to be replaced, and it can even be dangerous.

>All they released was some minor upgrades and a "macbook" which I didn't buy because I know better than to act as Apple's guinea pig and buy their first iteration of anything--I learned it the hard way with my iPhones and iPads.

Those are probably the worst examples to cite, as the original iPhone and iPad were mighty fine. It's mostly with 1st generations of Mac redesigns that things sometimes get bad for some production runs (faults found in new materials/suppliers/designs etc).

>Anyway, all this to me feels like it's because Apple is no more an innovator company, instead they follow the stock market.

Compared to which company that is? Because I mostly see either PR projects (like Google glass) or failed semi-copies (Surface capped to 1M unit sales etc).

So while new and exhiting things might have slowed down at Apple (though I remember in Jobs times that we waited for 5 years of iterations to get color and wifi on our iPods and people cheered for any minor incremental update as if it was golden) I just don't see anyone in the PC land doing anything worth my while.

> For over 5 Apple laptops of various kinds, I've never seen that, with heavy programming/VM use, or DAW and NLE use. A little warmer yes. Ouch, my hands hurt? No. Does that really happen, and can we have some actual temperature measurements, or is it just that some people are too sensitive?

Yes it does happen. I have had two macbook pros, two macbook airs. It happened to every single one of them when it was time for their death. Maybe you've been switching your macbooks before something like that happened. It's not like I get a serious burn but it sure is very irritating and even hurts if I keep it there for too long.

> Those are probably the worst examples to cite, as the original iPhone and iPad were mighty fine. It's mostly with 1st generations of Mac redesigns that things sometimes get bad for some production runs (faults found in new materials/suppliers/designs etc).

I bought the first iPad, and it was super heavy. They came out with a lighter iPad soon after. In my opinion the best timing to buy any Apple product is their second iteration. The second version is always significantly better than the first one and then the perceived variance is not as severe afterwards.

> Compared to which company that is? Because I mostly see either PR projects (like Google glass) or failed semi-copies (Surface capped to 1M unit sales etc).

I'm comparing it to Apple itself. Comparing to other companies has no meaning. Just because other companies are not being innovative doesn't make Apple an innovative company, has nothing to do with each other.

>I bought the first iPad, and it was super heavy. They came out with a lighter iPad soon after.

Well, I had the first iPad, and have been using it for a god 4-5 years until I got an iPad 4. It being heavy is just what the technology afforded at the time, not some unique case of making the customer a guinea pig.

>* I'm comparing it to Apple itself. Comparing to other companies has no meaning. Just because other companies are not being innovative doesn't make Apple an innovative company, has nothing to do with each other.*

Innovative (which I dislike as a word in general for this use, as people conflate it with anything, from primary physics research to new case designs) is relative.

Some company is innovative because others make less new things. If HP for example produced marvels of novel technology year after year since 1999, then we wouldn't call Apple or anyone else innovative with the "mere updates" they've put out (in comparison).

My Macbook Pro 17in got so hot I ended up buying an external keyboard. No actual temperature measurements because it was a work machine I gladly gave back, but given that people often tell me I have "asbestos fingers" I'm certainly not too sensitive.

First iPad (I still have one) became a paperweight pretty fast, partly due to the small amount of RAM, but also because the last version of iOS that runs on it has a seriously buggy version of Safari. It will suddenly quit in something JavaScript-related, I know not what. Reasonably well attested on various support forums.

I still swear by my Mac desktops - the mini is a marvel - and would be wary of drawing any greater narrative, but I've certainly had some duds recently.

The stagnation of progress in computing power is going to commoditize operating systems and software in general, so if you stick with Apple for another few years then the costs of switching away will probably be lower.

You could check out JetBrains AppCode[1], depending on how you're building. It still uses Xcode for the Interface Builder and Storyboard tools but you might be able to offload much of the process to AppCode. We've experimented with doing it, but I don't believe anyone has actually made the switch full time yet.

[1] https://www.jetbrains.com/objc/

My point was I would like to switch to Windows if I had the choice. This doesn't look like it's solving my problem. You still need to use mac.

Interesting; my own experience has been rather the opposite:

Windows -> Linux -> Mac

I got a Mac Mini to do some iOS work, and it rapidly became my primary workstation. Now my main laptop is a Macbook Air.

It's outstanding hardware and software. Windows 7 is slick, but Apple just works, and I can focus more on my work and less on searching for menu items etc.

It's not the opposite.

I came from Windows to Mac too. And my point was I would like to go back to Windows only if I could.

I do not think apple products suck. I just dislike the increasingly lack of choice since they're now following Wall Street and trying to move away from desktop and into a "growth market".

I would have been much more forgiving if the things they shipped instead of mac were good. I was honestly ready to buy them all. They were not. I don't care about some niche high end laptop-wannabe tablet (iPad pro), and I don't care about some watch they desperately want to turn into a platform just like iPhone but won't ever happen.

I think the reason people like me complain nowadays is because Apple is making too many decisions that they would have never made before, and it feels like all those bad decisions come from wanting to keep growing for the sake of growing instead of thinking from customer's point of view.

I moved from Windows to Mac because I can actually afford it, and honestly I'd really prefer not to go back. I don't get the love for Windows that some Mac/Linux devs have.

My two cents: I have used an Apple Watch every day for the past year, and I love it.

As others have mentioned, the swelling battery is a fire risk. I had the same issue for a macbook some years ago and the Apple store replaced it for free. I can't recall whether I had AppleCare at the time, but the macbook wasn't purchased via Apple. So it likely didn't.

I don't think you'll find a way to seamlessly build native iOS apps from Windows. Visual Studio has a great development environment for iOS apps but the compilation still has to happen on a Mac. It's more difficult for developers, but Apple tightly controls their entire stack.

And for all of you on the thread who say Windows is a disaster for developers, I'd love to chat with you. I'm the guy for the MSVC C++ front end and code analysis. Either PM me or mail me: my work address is apardoe at youknowthecompany.com

> but Apple tightly controls their entire stack

More like Apple wants you to use their computers. If it was legal I'm sure Microsoft would have figured out how to compiler iOS apps in Visual Studio. It's not magic, it's just obscured and prevented through legalese.

I can either be charitable or accusatory :) It's not so obscure as to how one might run Xcode tools on another Unix-like OS. It's just illegal. Apple tightly controls their entire stack.

MacBook Air was designed for portability. Heat and CPU throttling mean it's not really suitable for use as a workhorse....

And, of course, if you really want a serious, long-lasting workhorse, then you want a proper tower desktop. Apple used to make good ones ;-)

Wow, I am the opposite. Have to move to windows every now and again to develop (Damn you Xamarin and SOE), and I hate every minute of it. Everything is harder, the hardware is crap, it seems slow and buggy.

I much prefer xcode on Apple.

I am always puzzled when analysts are seemingly baffled that a company cannot keep selling more and more product each year to a finite audience and never reach saturation point...

I really liked this small article about exponential growth. Exponentials don't really exist in nature, there are pretty much always limits.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/11/its-not-exponential-its-sig...

Pretty much this. Growth to carrying capacity looks a lot like exponential growth for a bit and then stops. Assuming it is exponential is a recipe for sadness and disappointing earnings reports.

Most people - including analysts - bought into the hype that nearly every person on earth would have a smartphone soon.

Instead, smartphone sales growth has fallen down to practically nothing globally. Apple is already missing the last growth wave, which is mostly made up of very cheap Android phones in India and China.

Those people also bought into the notion that Apple was going to dominate China, because of their early success there. It was talked up non-stop by Tim Cook. Instead, China will become an epic disaster for Apple, as they melt market share endlessly to nationalism and protectionism. The Chinese will only get more aggressive with Apple as the iPhone gets weaker as a product inside of China.

40 million for the iPhone alone is practically nothing!?!? Sure it's down but people on HN are a little crazy acting like Apple is going to go under because of this.

The person you are replying to was talking about growth in sales. You've given a single yearly sales figure, which doesn't tell you anything about growth on its own.

This is a significant feat. Apple's $6b in revenue from services beats Facebook's last reported quarter for the entire company.

A lot of people in this thread are seeing $6 in revenue next to Apple's huge worth and dismissing it. That's a lot of money, and it is growing.

In my opinion, Apple is undervalued right now (I'm biased, I own a trivial amount of Apple stock). There is no real competitor that I've seen in the phone and tablet space, and their services business is growing.

>There is no real competitor that I've seen in the phone and tablet space

If you haven't seen them, you haven't looked. Google, Samsung, Huawei, etc. Android is dominating Apple in market share at this point. Apple is making great margins still, but they are not without legit competitors and have not been for years.

I've been sitting around for the past year or so wanting to give them more money for a new Air. Last month I tried a Surface and that came damn close to replacing my Air for its primary job of "going out to cafes and parks with me to draw stuff in Illustrator". I only brought it back because it had some major issues with Illustrator dropping the first half second of stylus strokes. Despite really hating the Windows experience.

If Apple comes out with a laptop/tablet hybrid like that, they will have my money in a hot second.

The wait for the new MacBook Pro is agonizing but I am convinced it will sell like hotcakes when it finally comes out.

I'm wondering how many ports they are going to remove. Fingers crossed they will keep plain HDMI and not make us go back to Thunderbolt / MiniDisplayPort.

(Oh, and it'd be nice if they did something about the potential for Thunderbolt viruses...)

What do you think is taking so long? I'm waiting too - it's hard :).

Firmware weirdness with skylake.

Something about how it handles suspend, I remember the linux kernel having massive problems too, and they don't employ the same level of power saving optimisations as Apple do.

The Surface Book had power management-related firmware weirdness for its first couple of months as well. That said, Microsoft had it fixed by ~January-February as I recall it.

Just sold my 2013 15" MBP in anticipation!

Well, they're not really wrong; while it's true they were selling high-margin hardware and making a handsome profit, they've been a vertical for many, many years, and all that hardware install base is just to get their services into people's hands.

While earnings calls always try to put a positive spin on the facts, I don't think their calling attention to their services is a distraction; it's simply pointing out what several people already knew: that selling 'services' on an ongoing basis is better in the end than selling actual tangible objects, which you can only sell once.

I think in general that selling ongoing services is a good business model, but Apple's bread and butter and golden goose has been hardware. Their enormous cash reserves were built by hardware, not software. Certainly software was a bit part of making that happen, but the margins and money came from hardware.

There's also the issue that you can only sell great hardware so often. I ordered my retina MacBook the first day they were available in 2011. It's out of AppleCare and works better now than the day I got it. I have an essentially infinite supply of laptops and tablets available but any effort replacing this machine couldn't possibly be worth it.

but it does have a limitation in that some Apple services are not on other platforms and some are.

And some of the Apple Services are up against some very competitive Services..

Anecdotal, but for me, I feel my iPhone is now good enough for my use and feel no compelling urge to upgrade. My guess is that many people feel the same way about the iPad.

Don't worry, new iOS release will show you what a clunker you actually have! ;-)

If Apple services were best of class, eco system leading stars, this approach would make sense. When we get iTunes and iCloud, well, their Kool Aid is probably spiked...

You're the first person I've seen make this point. All the way down here, and it's by far the most glaring issue with this picture. Apple's services are kind of a bit flimsy. They're at best an expensive value added service for their devices. The only reason I use Apple Music/iTunes under Windows is because I have an iPhone. Otherwise I'd probably be using Spotify.

Apple is a devices company first and foremost. The services augment these devices. To say that services are some kind of a way forward for growth neglects the fact that these devices are a gating factor for these services.

Services are an enticing revenue model because they guarantee a steady income, while developing a good device experience is "hard". But it's a hard way to make money, with your revenue constantly consumed by labour costs. Only "products" can provide the kind growth a devices company needs. Leo Apotheker got caught up in this with HP - thankfully wiser minds prevailed and they backed out before it was too late.

>But it looks like the company is investing a lot on services as we can see with the Apple Music redesign happening just a year after the launch

This is a bit of a stretch. The "redesign" is basically a new skin on the original, fixing confusion that should have never existed in the first place. I don't think it constitutes a major development from such a large company and a year's worth of work. Meanwhile the Mac product line sits gathering dust and Siri either makes incremental improvements or goes backwards.

It saddens me to say but Apple seems to have become one of these lumbering giants that is too slow to change course and adapt to the changing surroundings. Are they just too scared to move fast in case they lose what they have? Or is there some systemic problem that is dragging the pace down? I'm sure any one of the engineers working there has 100 ideas and the enthusiasm to move them forward.

I don't want to be pessimistic, but making money by milking profits out of existing products while loosing market shares and not opening successful busines lines is exactly the sign of failing big companies. Blackberry was making profit until very late.

I see signs of decline on everything apple does, from failing products ( watch ), to failing software ( xcode, macos having the same network connectivity issues for years and not releasing anything new for years, ios still relying on decade old software stack and an aging cocoa framework).

The only true technological success i've seen from apple recently is what they're doing with swift, and it's maybe not a coincidence that it was aimed at being a cross platform, community driven technology.

I wonder how much of this downturn is due to not much exciting hardware being release by manufacturers? Intel hasn't released anything much in the last few years, video cards are already overpowered for 99%, phones are pretty much all the same, etc.

Seems like there is no need to upgrade pc hardware or phones these days and VR/IoT hasn't really taken off in any way.

I wouldn't agree. Innovation for portable laptop/tablet form factors had been slow for quite some time, but I think there's a small uptick again. Everything from the Razer Blade which supports a external dGPU to devices like Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are pretty exciting.

On other fronts, $99 "laptop containers" which utilize your smartphone's computing power are popping up:

SuperBook: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook...

NexDock: http://nexdock.com/

And finally: $250 Chromebooks have started to get so good that it's actually viable replacement for a large portion of people who do most of their work in a browser anyways!

Yes, iPhone is also down because of incredible demand last year for the larger handsets. So this year, it is back down slightly below normal, but should even out next year.

I will ignore the sensational nonsense headline from TC.

So revenue from services up 19% and App Store growth is up 27% which are quite impressive numbers yet all the media seems to be talking about is "is the Apple Goldrush over?" The market for smartphone is fairly well saturated in the majority of first world countries. And they are using that success to sell services that run on those devices which seems to be working. How is this a back drop against which to paint a picture of decline and impending demise?

This focus on services seems like a bad sign for Apple's product quality. Apple's goal of making their products a great, cohesive experience aligned well with their profit incentive to sell hardware. Trying to get customers to use services they may not really want could have a negative effect on the overall product. We've already seen some of this with ads in the App Store.

I waited for my macbook upgrade to have 5th Gen Intel processor , became 6th gen and now 7th Gen. Guess they will never catch up to latest generation

Is Apple Pay even a thing any more? The near-field readers in stores seem to have disappeared when the chip card readers went in.

Anecdotally, contactless is supported in a majority of places in Europe – even though Apple Pay has yet to roll out to many European banks. As a result, I use Apple Pay at most places in Switzerland and Poland, yet it's always the merchant's first time seeing Apple Pay used. In fact, most of them weren't aware it's a thing since their credit card / bank doesn't offer it.

Huh? Most of the chip readers I've seen are NFC enabled.

I use apple pay whenever I can. It's faster than the chip readers

Most places that I've seen have installed NFC readers at the same time they upgraded to chip readers.

That said, I've yet to see anyone actually use contactless in the wild.

I did, once. Because Discover was offering 10% cashback when they launched Apple Pay support, so I loaded up my card on my buddy's iPhone and went to Best Buy to buy a Surface Book. I've had zero other incentive to use contactless otherwise.

Contactless is a perfectly mundane and unremarkable thing in the uk. Just about everywhere you go accepts All of Visa, MasterCard or Apple Pay, including the underground. There is currently no other way to pay for London busses other than Oyster or contactless.

It's honestly mundane in it's availability in the US as well; I just haven't seen anyone actually using it.

I use contactless wherever it's available, the chip readers are way too slow and drive me nuts.

Like the others, I use it wherever I can. The newer Verifone readers have NFC capabilities.

Whether or not the retailer has enabled it is another story. It's also another story if the staff knows anything about it.

Whataburger is an example. They take Apple Pay and they didn't even know it. The employees are always surprised to see someone use it.

In the UK it works basically everywhere. We've had contactless cards for a while.

Windows? come on, come on.

Why is the stock up? I'm confused.

Stock prices tend to fly when reality exceeds Wall Street expectations - even if those expectations were poor to begin with (the opposite is also true)

>"12.9-inch iPad Pro"

I had to look this up. It's real. A 13" iPad. Are these still labeled as tablets? Same size as my laptop screen.

Have you been living under a rock?

That's basically the size of A4 writing paper (slightly larger, but a pad of paper on a clip board would be the same dimensions). I haven't tried it, but I'd assume it is quite nice for note taking/sketching etc.

I have one. It's excellent.

For what is it excellent? What do you use it for?

To me it has weirdly uncomfortable ergonomics, and it's still nothing more than a jumbo iPhone. I have long tried to like iPad but I find no use for it.

I got one for work use, and it slowly turned in to my at home laptop replacement. Definitely shines at casual consumption, the only time I use it productively is when it acts as a second display (meaning my laptop is productive).

Regular uses: - Streaming video, cool and quiet, unlike my laptop (especially if it is sitting on fabric, like a lap or bed) - Dual monitors on the go using duet - Quickly looking things up with someone else (instead of sharing a phone screen, or starting a computer) - Playing games in places where a laptop would be uncomfortable (heat and noise) or overkill: human resource machine, worm.is, hearthstone - Skype (including conference calls)

Less commonly: - Insanely long battery life for replaying downloaded videos on flights (last flight was ~15 hours, ~8 hours watching iPad video, <10% battery used)

It's great for sheet music, my main use case. The screen is large enough to display music from IMSLP without making me squint. A 9.7" iPad is a bit too small for comfortable reading at the piano. An iPhone is unusable.

Awesome for music.

Very good for a thin-and-light exec travel item -- it has baked in data, good battery life, and I can read on it, write on it, type on it.

Great for movies in bed; the audio is excellent.

Nice big screen for games (I have middle aged eyes).

If I could code on it, (or possibly if the apple keyboard had an escape key -- I like vim --) I would not travel with my laptop.

If I could get docker images on it, I would not have a laptop.

Great for Movies and TV, and a lot easier to handle at moving time.

>>Are these still labeled as tablets?

At that size, it should be called tables.

Microsoft's first "Surface" was in fact literally a table.

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