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Comment by saturdaysaint | Hacker News Reader

Nope. The gadget-oriented press misses it completely, but Apple's history of catering to creative professionals and media industries goes just as deep as any of their control freak tendencies. Coming straight from Jobs, the purpose of these computers was to serve the arts. They're deeply attuned to the technical requirements (eg plugins) for creative software as well as to what creative pros of all stripes are using. Another example: part of the reason that iOS has had a lot of cool audio apps from the beginning is that low-latency audio performance is practically a core feature of OSX.

Mark my words: Apple will never make a change to OSX that will keep Illustrator, Pro Tools, or Avid off of the platform for a second.

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Question. What percentage of their sales in this quarter or the last were to support Pro Tools or Illustrator installs?

Are you sure they won't trade that away to Windows for a chance to improve their lockdown? You still seem to be working under the mental model that was created for Apple's actions when those apps were basically the only thing keeping Apple a going concern at all. That is not their current status anymore, and I think the model may need updating to reflect that.

The counterpoint that these people are thought leaders is still valid, but even then... thought leaders for what percentage of their market now?

I think Apple likes that their computers are used to make the content that people use their computers to consume. I think it will take them a while to give that up. I also think that, eventually, they WILL give that up -- it just won't be for a while yet -- and that's probably about when I'll stop using Apple products.

     that's probably about when I'll stop using
     Apple products

Because Apple is popular, everybody is copying them, so then it's going to be too late for you to stop.

I don't know if that's true. There are a lot of professionals in the visual arts who need monstrous, component-driven, customizable workhorse computers to do what they do, and that won't change any time soon because their job depends on working on or near the cutting edge of what hardware can output.

Apple has served that market (or at least the front-end focused part of it) pretty well in graphic design and video for a long time, but even if that market becomes too small or too complicated for Apple, those people will still need their machines and their systems, and their business will be big enough for someone.

We'll always have Linux.

At least until UEFI Secure Boot becomes mandatory.

But they were perfectly willing to ruin Final Cut Pro X for creative professionals (and only re-released the previous version after a huge backlash)?

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