Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

They just won't do it.

Not that they can't, it would be nice. When they capitulated and came out with the intel macs around 2007ish, it became sort of a golden era. You could run macos and windows on their machines, and the smart computer folks started getting and usefully using macs.

But now apple is years into a disappointing inward looking phase.

What a decent future would be like...

  - vulcan/x
    - take back xquartz into the fold
    - actively pursue other linux graphics apis
  - apple does virtualization
    - maybe like rosetta but for all their software
    - run macos9 in a window
  - apple does containers
    - what if there was something like docker for macos natively?
      FROM macos:10.3
  - apple actively supports open source projects
  - open up ios
    - let me see the filesystem
    - let me run a firewall (true privacy?)

etc...

If you go work for apple and use development hardware, you can have many of these things...

But you lose the ability to talk about it.

If Apple did all that, I would buy new hardware from them, and even leave their OS in place on it, for the first time in almost two decades.

The move to MacOS by development and sysadmin types started long before Intel Macs with the release of OSX, when it was finally possible to get a laptop with a 5+ hour battery life that ran a Unix-like OS.

Edit: The latest macOS has a great virtualization system built in, that many of the container platforms have already switched to.

The PowerPC machines never did reach actual 5 hour battery time, 3 at most, on a good day, with the display off.

I think my "Lombard" or maybe "Pismo" powerpc powerbook did longer than 3 by far. And my iBook would go 8 hours no sweat.

edit: fixed the nickname

Mine managed 6-8 without too much problem throughout the time I was in university. And they had removable batteries so you could just switch them out if you ever needed to (I had two for my Powerbook, and that would do a full day on campus without ever having to go near a power outlet).

G4 ibooks were crazy good for battery life, I often did a whole day of uni on my little white beast.

Not that I disagree with the spirit, X is dead, and someone demo'd Wayland apps on macOS at NixCon Paris.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com