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Comment by bredren | Hacker News Reader

I have used multiple gens of the MacBook Air for web programming—often docked—most recently w the assist of an egpu.

I am interested in battery efficiency, raw cpu and graphics performance and do not care to do low level tinkering on my Mac.

I do expect it to be much more open to tinkering than iOS, but I also welcome the litany of security measures introduced so far and caution when it comes to executing wild code that affects my privacy.

I realize this puts me further in with trusting Apple to make good compromise decisions on what is possible and the hoops they create for developers on Macos, but I trust they will mostly make the right call for me.

It’s certainly been better than when I’ve had to deal with windows over the past decade.

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> do not care to do low level tinkering on my Mac

You may not, but many do. Those many may actually be a small minority, but it would really suck for those folks.

At the end of the day, sometimes I need to run random x86/64 executables and there isn't any way around that. I could deal with a performant virtual machine.

Drivers are moving to userspace. What more low level access do you need other than that if you can write your own driver for things?

Boy I can't wait to write my own driver to use a program that I bought.

It was just an example. What applications require hardware support that isn’t baked in? Surely the Mac isn’t being used in an industrial space with niche one off instruments? The point is more things are moving to userpsace and Apple is controlling the kernel as, I think, they should.

Kernel extensions I use out of my head.

USB to ethernet dongle.

Little Snitch.

Karabiner.

Hammerspoon.

NTFS read/write driver.

I really doubt they will all remain working but the dongle is hardware.

As with all such changes there will be with time either open source or manufacturers who support the new user space / kernel lock down mode. What you’ll likely experience is temporary loss of use as things transition. In any case the benefits outside of your specific use case outweigh the headaches in just security alone.

There is a significant community in the (biological) sciences that are reliant on the Mac platform as an intermediate between Windows based applications such as Office and, importantly, the often highly specific programs/scripts/applications created for Unix platforms for analysis. Ignoring these users would be a mistake.

Personally, after 13 years of Macs any computer I'm buying in the near future are going to be Linux based because of the current trajectories Apple have decided to take.

Just insight from a different community I guess.

Wouldn't running Windows 10 and the Microsoft Subsystem for Linux make way more sense for these users? Seems more like inertia that is keeping some on the Mac.

In academic environments there is often no dedicated IT department, so all support is done by the technically versed colleagues. Replacing machines with Macs has always resulted in an enormous reduction of these support calls, in my experience. Moving back to Windows would destroy all of that.

I agree, the Microsoft subsystem for Linux will draw many more users away from macOS in the future. When I was starting post-graduate studies/research there was no such support from Microsoft officially. However, now that there is I wouldn't be surprised if academics are more likely to consider Windows in the future for this reason. Good move from Microsoft.

As a Mac lover of 15+ years, at least put PCs under consideration. I bought a Lenovo X1 Yoga to replace my dead MBP. It has a touchscreen, fingerprint reader with U2F support, folds into a tablet, and I do all my development in windows VSCode linked into Ubuntu on WSL. The only thing I miss is having iMessage on the desktop.

> touchscreen, fingerprint reader with U2F support, folds into a tablet

None of that is a compelling enough reason to switch, when the OS is the primary reason I jumped ship to Macs in the first place.

It's not just about being able to run this or that app, but the overall comfort of my everyday work environment, while still giving me the room to occasionally step out of my comfort zone on lazy afternoons.

As long as macOS retains the ability to run emulators, I think I'll be fine with its growing number of security-based restrictions.

However, whenever I have occasionally peeked back in on the state of Windows (the last time being a year ago, to run some games), it still had many of the same annoyances, frustrations and archaic encumbrances that made me wish for a better world and try out Macs around 10 years ago, and I still don't agree with the overall philosophy of Microsoft (as I perceive it.)

Apple/macOS remains the "lesser evil", at least for me.

Moving from Intel -> Arm would be a dealbreaker for me, as I presume any VST/Au/FCPX plugins would be unusable. As people using those tools typically acquire them over a period of years, the original developer isn't always going to be still around or interested in developing a port for an older product. Over the years, the investment in plugins can be much greater than the host (DAW or NLE) that they run in.

You already have to opt into kernel extensions in a very explicit way. I don't think what you mentioned about privacy is actually relevant to this dicussion.

Do you write any code? Because that is not allowed on iOS. Do you want to browse see an application and want to use it? Because that is not allowed on iOS. iOS is so far from being a useable OS that I don't think it will ever be anything more then an internet machine with light video and image editing capabilities. The last update to the ipad pro should tell you enough about what apple thinks constitutes a "professional" OS.

That being said OSX running on a higher specced ipad pro CPU could be really awesome but I don't think that is what will happen.

It is allowed to write code on iOS.

There are several code editors for iOS https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios+code+editor and Apple has even published an own app for students to learn coding called Swift Playgrounds https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ - it isn't a full-blown code editor, but it clearly allows you to write and run code.

And that is ignoring cloud/browser-based code editors. That execution model (write code local, run in the cloud) makes sense with mobile devices which have limited power supply. I personally don't want to spin up several docker containers on my iPhone ;)

> I personally don't want to spin up several docker containers on my iPhone

But other people might? Especially if it not a phone but a 12.5 inch iPad that is supposed to be more powerful than my 5-year-old dev laptop (and has more RAM too).

> It is allowed to write code on iOS

Great, so you can pen&paper your code like in the 1960s. In the 21st century, writing code includes being able to run the compiler/interpreter on your terminal to debug as well.

You can run code on an iPad too, though it's more useful for on-device utilities than for writing code that you want to ship somewhere else.

http://omz-software.com/pythonista/

https://scriptable.app/

There are IDEs on iOS.

So would you be ok with a security model like iOS has, but on MacOS?

I like to use my Mac as a normal *nix machine, however I have a lot more trust in my iPhone from a security POV these days. I can see a case for a much better desktop/laptop security model.

Not OP, but I certainly would not be ok with that.

iOS is system build mostly for content consumption and designed for non-technical users. As such it has to be protected from both external threats (malware etc) and users themselves (social engineering, phishing protection).

macOS is for me my workbench for content creation and I want it to protected from external threats but I do not want it to be protected from me. Even having to go into System Preferences and typing in my password to run unsigned apps since 10.12 is driving me crazy.

When is comes to privacy, today everything is web app anyway. And to be honest I would feel my privacy would be much more secure if I could run latest version of uBlock Origin in Safari, but I cannot.

For native apps I want to decide if I trust them or not. The only new thing I would love to see in macOS is easy blocking of internet access for particular apps.

>Even having to go into System Preferences and typing in my password to run unsigned apps since 10.12 is driving me crazy.

Does right clicking and hitting "Open" not work anymore?

It certainly still does, but a lot of people don't know or have forgotten over the years.

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