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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to suggest that the focus on one product category is the wrong approach here.

It doesn't matter if it's an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or whatever else. They are all just computers. The difference is in the Jobs To Be Done, and I think it is a very minor, yet important difference.

I suspect the lack of focus on Mac is because Apple has to know that it is a dying product. This is also the direction Microsoft is going with Windows. In the future, we won't differentiate between our different devices in the strict terms we do today.

For the average consumer, their phone can run all the productivity apps they need. For developers and artists, this is not yet true, but it is surely coming.

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> For the average consumer, their phone can run all the productivity apps they need. For developers and artists, this is not yet true, but it is surely coming.

I cannot say anything about artists, but for developers Apple is actively preventing this:

- no way to write apps that allocate executable memory

- hard to sideload applications (though possible with a developer account)

- no way to gain root access in a legal way (necessary for example to create raw sockets; cf. https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/36230)

Development still isn't great on iOS devices. Nevertheless, the activities you mention are a subset of all developer use cases. Not all developers need root or raw sockets, just like not all developers need access to modify physical hardware. The landscape has shifted so that those needs which were once very important in development are now much less prevalent, and are thus not optimized for.

Much of the misunderstanding that I've observed around iOS relates to overgeneralizing the failings of some specific use cases. Like, (artists won't like this) because (it can't do specific use case in art that only some in the field do, and many/most don't).

Framing it this way is a bit unfair, because it limits the comparison to how much iOS can replicate the desktop experience, rather than seeing the new use cases that iOS unlocks. We don't realistically expect iOS devices to have low level hardware expansion ports like PCIe cards to supercharge its video or whatever, but somehow we have software comparisons that seem roughly equivalent.

I'm not saying you were doing this, just something I've observed in comments a lot regarding iOS and its capabilities/purpose/usefulness.

My central point was not about whether the iPhone/iPad is suitable for some use case or not, but about how Apple is actively preventing people (in this case developers) who need these capabilities to be able to do their work on iOS.

I understand it is not ideal, but I think you're still looking at this through the lens of today. What if Apple is aiming for a tomorrow when you won't need to do such things as gain root access or manage the allocation of memory.

Clearly, they don't want you sideloading because it doesn't fit their business model.

Theoretically, if they had a version of XCode on iOS and you could load your programs you are developing somehow, they could possibly be getting around the limitations you list above.

> What if Apple is aiming for a tomorrow when you won't need to do such things as gain root access or manage the allocation of memory.

How do you come to the idea that in the future this will not be necessary anymore? My personal (but this is perhaps biased by my personal values) thoughts on this is such properties will become much more important in the future than they are now.

Why this?

A lot of the advantages Moore's law gave in the past have ended. So it will become much more important in the future to apply more "clever low level hacks" (e.g. use special units of the CPU) to get more speed (allocation of (executable) memory is one such trick).

Also Snowden's revelations have shown that it is very dangerous not to have complete control of the device anymore (at least in Germany these lead to a deep distrust in cloud/SaaS offers for many companies, since these companies fear industrial spying). For this having root access is essential (though not sufficient, since there might be other backdoors).

Laptops won over tablets. The whole post-PC era just isn't happening. That is Apple's problem, they're stuck in the year of 2010 and can't escape.

Nowadays, people want to have a phone and a laptop. Tablets are dumbed-down computing devices, for kids, the elderly, or as toys for the rich.

This is a really encouraging trend. For all the things I love about iOS (not to mention all the years supporting myself on iOS dev work), I love the fact that on desktop platforms, developers can just write a program, throw it up on the Internet, and have people use it or even pay for it without any middleman.

I don't have some deep moral objection to software walled gardens (if that fits your use requirements, more power to you!), but if that model ever wins out, it will be a sad day for innovation. Software's one of the most powerful tools in recent history for disruption, and having a centralized entity wield control over that creates a dangerous bottleneck for this relatively new, extremely powerful medium for human expression. Good to see that, on at least some level, the market agrees with me.

According to IDC, iOS devices sell more than the whole Windows market (all brands).

PC sales were 60 million, taking Apple's share of 4.2 million, it's 56 million, give or take.

Last year, Apple in this period sold 51 million iPhones, 10 million iPads. And it was a "bad" year.

You might say "but I need my desktop, my IDE, my Photoshop, my etc."

Yeah, but you are one programmer or photographer or video editor, most people don't create anything, or just do some very light editing (like removing skin imperfections from photos), and thus, a media consumption device is most right.

We are in the Post-PC world, live with it.

For Apple I think you are referring to quarterly sells

Figures are for quarterly sales in both cases, of course.

Sources

Apple: investor.apple.com IDC: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, April 11, 2017

Actually hybrid tablets/laptops won over plain tablets.

The classical laptop has become a product for creation professionals.

You're still thinking that there is a separation of these things. I think it is still to early to tell.

Remember when everybody said the Microsoft Surface was a failure because nobody wanted a 2-in-1?

I don't disagree that tablets aren't quite a big thing, but I think we'll see another device which fits more use cases.

The obsession Apple and other companies have with the post-PC concept reminds me of Thomas Edison's own obsession with the Nickelodeon. Edison thought no one would ever sit down to watch any length of film beyond five minutes. The idea just baffled Edison to no end and he tried hard to promote the Nickelodeon parlor concept. Obviously, it flopped hard but it didn't stop Edison from trying his damnedest. It seems to me that Apple and company have to have their own Nickelodeon moment where their prized cloud services crater outside of the enterprise markets. In a way, I have a bit of hope that day may be coming sooner rather than later (note: I don't see streaming services as cloud services, these are more about on-demand consumption and not about where or what device the consumption is done).

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