Apple is reportedly putting Mac development on the back burner | Hacker News Reader

Apple is reportedly putting Mac development on the back burner

engadget.com

12 pointsmartin_henk5 comments

I've long said that if Apple would allow MacOS to be installed on desktop computers made by anyone, but being certified - then it would boost their market share exponentially and in turn boost iPhone and iPad sales even more.

It would attract more developers and in turn better quality software and more software means more customers.

Apple is a hardware company. iPhone and iPad work with non-macOS machines. For them to increase the market share they're interested in, it would be to sell more Macs, not have macOS on non-Apple hardware. I don't think there's a paucity of iOS apps by any stretch of the imagination. Any increase in quality iOS apps created on non-Apple hardware running macOS would be marginal, in my opinion.

Apple allowed other companies to produce computers running the Macintosh OS from 1995-1997. Steve Jobs ended the program when he returned with Apple's acquisition of NeXT.

The program was generally not well received: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone

Those weren't really so much clones as Macs in non-Apple cases and assembled in non-Apple factories. The licensed clone makers had to use Apple-approved motherboard designs, and Apple would not approve designs other than those that were very similar to Apple's.

Power Computing demonstrated prototypes that would take the Mac into new markets that Apple's designs didn't fit well in, and publicly begged Apple to allow them to sell them, but Apple refused.

The result was that the pseudo-clones competed directly for the same customers Apple was going for, and so of course the program was a failure. A successful authorized clone program needs to grow the market, not merely redistribute it.

As a long time fan of my Macbooks, I'm really excited about this. This could finally kick one of the other manufacturers hard enough (Lenovo, Dell, HP) to make a seriously good device. The MS Surface Pro series is already pretty solid, but Windows is just not there yet. I don't think it will be Ubuntu taking the cake, but with some better software, I'd happily switch away from macOS.

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