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One arguing that sn established0 pattern of behavior will continue into the future is not a slippery-slope fallacy. There is nothing fallacious about arguing that Apple will continue to make the OS more restrictive in the future, based on a profit motive.

"The core of the slippery slope argument is that a specific decision under debate is likely to result in unintended consequences." [1]

I don't see any claim of unintended consequences here.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

> This is basically a slippery slope fallacy. Today they're making it marginally hard, what might they do tomorrow?!?

They've been making it marginally harder for years and years and have consistantly announced features that tend towards making it more like iOS.

It is a fallacy when you're signaling the world a roadmap to slide down the slope ?

manquer is right, though. Since about 2008, Apple has moved towards being a lifestyle / fashion brand, rather than the semi-pro brand they used to be. For me it started with Final Cut Pro, and the slashing of the quite friendly web server experience. They've even tried to make things hard for Adobe at times, forcing people to pay for patches for months if they were doing it "the old way" after an OS X upgrade. They've simply been terribly rude to their own professional users. By cirka 2016 I started actively advicing professionals to shop for other hardware producers, both within creative media and IT. Incidentally, that's also when the last usable / hardware upgradeable Mac came out. Since then they've glued every part on the thing shut. Apple might look pretty, but you're better off using something else. to me this thing is just yet another nail in the coffin. Love, a former Mac fanboy.

> there are millions and millions of professionals using macOS to do work every single day.

Speaking for myself, every time I've used a Mac for work it's because I had to, being that it was what the employer issued.

Could I have made a stink to be issued something else? Sure, but that is trading problems for problems. Have I used worse OSs? Yes, but that doesn't mean I should be grateful for what I find negative about the Mac OS.

I'm not going to be buying myself a Mac as I'm more productive using a different OS, but it's fine if millions of others do. Just factor in that there's employers with IT decisions out there too.

To each their own. You should use what you like.

I agree.

There was one short term gig [small start up needed short term help, I was available] and they wanted//needed me to bring my own laptop for work. "Fine by me, is it OK that my laptop runs off of Linux?" It was fine. Everyone was happy. If similar would happen more often that'd be great, but I'm going to cooperate otherwise within reason.

the world don't move to the beat of just one drum..

> Oh come now, there are millions and millions of professionals using macOS to do work every single day.

Right, and how many of those are using macOS because they're "forced" to, as a sibling suggests, or simply by force of habit?

Moving from macOS to Linux or Windows (or from any one OS to any other, really) does require some time. It's not necessarily difficult, but it still takes time. Time that the same professionals might find is better spent on their actual professional work.

It could be argued it's a boil the frog situation, but for me that means the incentives to change the OS aren't quite there yet. Maybe if MacOS 10.17 goes too far with restricting what people can run on it, there could be more people switching. But remember, many of those "professionals" are not programmers, they use standard "enterprise" software, like Adobe or whatever. I bet most of those people have no idea what a terminal is. They would probably not even notice such restrictions are in place.

> MacOS 10.17

We’re probably not doing that anymore

> Right, and how many of those are using macOS because they're "forced" to, as a sibling suggests, or simply by force of habit?

Right, because you know why each and every one of the billions of users do what they do, and of course, none of them would be doing something by choice, because how could anyone possibly like something you do not?

I'm not talking about "each and every one". My point is that many people just use the tools they are given. For example my client has one department where everyone gets a Mac. I'm pretty sure most of them don't have a very strong opinion on the matter, as they do mostly administrative stuff (so basically MS Office). They could probably get a PC if they wanted, but again, they just don't care.

Of course people may choose MacOS. I've been using it for a very long time and hopefully that won't change anytime soon. But that doesn't mean that everybody who uses MacOS does so by choice.

Is it really that hard for you to believe that people like and prefer macOS??

I don’t want to move to Windows or Linux. The time sink is irrelevant. I am a software engineer and I PREFER macOS. So do my coworkers. So do many, but not all, of my friends. So does my spouse.

Many of you replying here just seem completely unable to grasp that other people exist, with other thoughts and opinions.

So you would stay loyal to the product no matter what it evolves into? I imagine there's some kind of limit to what you would put up with. Or is your point that these restrictions don't bother you at all? That's fine of course but I'm sure not everyone feels the same way.

As someone who never bought any Apple products, I find it harder and harder to see why I would buy one. I have friends who are quite invested Apple owners who say they will most likely not buy Apple again because of the way the product has changed for the worse (in their eyes).

>So you would stay loyal to the product no matter what it evolves into?

No. My line in the sand is Apple locking down macOS so that I cannot install applications outside of the Mac App Store. These "restrictions" that seem to annoy other people do not bother me. At that point I would just migrate over to Linux and maintain a Mac for any remaining Apple specific dev.

I'm not sure exactly where the line is on mobile. I don't feel restricted by the iOS ecosystem, but I do understand that others might. If there became a time where I wanted to abandon iOS then I would likely just go without a phone or get a flip phone. I refuse to use Android or any product developed by Google.

Nobody can deny that macOS has the most integrated system especially if you own an iPhone/iPad/iWatch. However, for development, it's going to depend. Excluding iOS/macOS development, the macOS is becoming less and less attractive even for web developers.

I'm a web developer, and I just bought a new MBP. There is nothing (currently) that is pushing me away from Mac as my local dev machine.

I can't remember the last time I ran an unsigned GUI app as part of my development workflow.

I'm a web developer using macOS on my home machine for personal projects. I use Linux at work so I'm familiar with both, I have no intention of dropping either in the near future. Both fill a particular niche for me while not requiring much cognitive overhead to switch between them. As long as they don't do anything spectacularly moronic like insisting on the mac App Store as the only source of software or preventing non-Apple OS's being run then I'm unlikely to get pissed off enough to leave the Apple ecosystem.

"To each their own" is the key principle we're missing I think, personally my encounters with Windows have been by far the most frustrating and unproductive interactions with an OS, but some people wouldn't ever step their toes out of Microsoft land. I'm not sure how much of my dislike for Windows is because I'm simply too set in my *nix ways and how much is genuine bugginess and UI obtuseness as well.

In your opinion, what is making it less attractive?

Comparing to Linux: Tiling Window Manager, Package Manager, Much less apps/processes running on your system, Docker integration. It's also moving more toward an iOS like OS.

On the downside, Linux still doesn't have an advanced GUI Git app and other cool stuff like Paw.

I use gitAhead as daily git Gui on linux. It's fast to run. Has a lot of git features, maybe not all though.

https://gitahead.github.io/gitahead.com/

Running Docker on Linux is absurdly faster than on a Mac or Windows. My experience was comparing a company-purchased $3500 new MBP with an old Windows gaming laptop running Linux Mint. On top of that, my old laptop originally cost 1/3 of the price of the Macbook Plus And didn't require a overloaded dongle because it actually has USB and HDMI ports.

Just a note about Docker performance on Linux vs. others: this is likely because Docker on Linux runs without virtualization as more or less a normal subprocess in a separate cgroups namespace. Windows and macOS must use a virtualization layer (e.g. VirtualBox) to run any Docker process, which for obvious reasons is going to be much less performant.

> Oh come now, there are millions and millions of professionals using macOS to do work every single day.

Wait, have you seen them ? Can you link the source for this claim ?

> seamlessness of owning an Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, and a macOS device.

Why do you need this seamlessness ? Is your attention span so short that you forget what you were doing after the first error pops up ?

>Why do you need this seamlessness ? Is your attention span so short that you forget what you were doing after the first error pops up ?

Are you seriously asking why one would want a system to be more seamless? Less cognitive overhead = more productivity, period.

This seamlessness comes at a cost and it's not the financial one.

Don't know about the others, but I have an iphone and a mbp. I used to have android phones before this, and I bought the iphone just to check it out, since I got a good deal on it.

For me, the "seamlessness" opened new possibilities of use. What I really love is being able to use the phone from my computer. I don't have to have it handy.

Examples :

1. Call and take calls directly from the computer. Extremely practical with corded headphones I use for listening to music. Could I just get my headphones off and grab the phone? Of course. If I noticed the phone ringing.

2. Handle messages from the computer. I don't send and receive messages that often, but for some random 2FA over SMS this is just so practical. Could I grab the phone and read the code? Yeah, but if the computer does it automatically it's much nicer.

3. The Handoff feature, for example when I'm on the bus, start reading some article on some website. When I get home / at the office, I can open the page on the computer. Couldn't I copy the URL and type it in? Of course, but it's clearly a pain.

4. Internet sharing: just activate it from the computer, don't have to copy the password, etc by handling the phone. As above, I could of course do this by hand, but it's much more practical.

Maybe all this could be set up somehow with Linux / Windows and maybe with android too. I honestly don't know - my windows PC can't even get internet sharing via usb out of the box (didn't care enough about this to look into it more). It works fine on Linux though.

It's not a question of having a short attention span or of doing something very difficult. It's just having tools that work for you and getting out of your way. After all, that's why we use machines (which computers are): to automate things.

I get that but I still don't understand why you need it. Actually now I'm noticing that _none_ of the replies answer my question - _why_ do you need it ?

1. If I don't notice my phone ringing it's because I don't want to notice it ringing. If I'm waiting for a phone call I will check my phone often or not use headphones.

2. Is being aware of where your phone is and typing off the code from it really so challenging for you ? I don't know about you but I spend maybe 1-2 minutes per day on punching in 2FA codes and most of the time I don't even realize I'm doing it.

3. DM link to yourself on twitter or any other platform. There is also sync for chrome so you can sync stuff as you want, but to be honest whenever I am reading something on the bus the link is still where I found it when I get home. Somebody sent it to me ? Open messages on computer. Found it after searching google ? Make the same search on PC.

4. I don't understand what is complicated about this. I swipe down on my phone and press icon for hotspot. My computer connects.

It's really interesting that Apple users speak about how everything is so smooth yet they don't want to "fumble around with the phone", seems like an oxymoron for me.

You obviously don’t own any of these devices.

Seamless means I can call or text from any of my devices. Switch a phone call audio from my laptop, to my phone, to my AirPods. Go for a run and stream music from my watch directly to my AirPods, without my phone. Unlock my laptop with my watch. Confirm a password from the keychain with my watch. Pull up a browser tab from my phone. Share a clipboard between all my devices with zero setup. On and on and on.