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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Apple can’t see a future where Mac isn’t like iPhone. They need a 30% cut of all software revenue, want a 30% cut of any AI tokens you use, and will steal 30% of your time as a software developer developing for your own account any way you can.

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This. I'm quite confident that they look at the Mac as a "profit-leaking" product they gradually need to bring on-par with their other products, but can't make any big steps to avoid alienating the userbase.

But I'm sure the day of the iOS-based iMac will come, and pandora's box will be opened. Businesses will love it, especially those with Kiosk use-cases, and not before long we will read everywhere (including here) how superior the security is to a Mac for everyday use...

They must have a prototype of an iPad somewhere that can run both iOS and Mac software but they are too comfortable with their current product positioning. I thought Microsoft had a good idea with Windows 8, I mean, I don’t travel with a laptop anymore, just an iPad and wireless mouse and keyboard. If I need to use desktop software I use RDP or something like that. I go to a hackathon and I have both the sleekest and the beefiest hardware. It’s great. An iPad could give a similar experience with local compute if only Apple would let it.

But to back into it…. OpenClaw amd Muse and stuff give people a real reason to buy a Mac but Apple doesn’t like it.

> "OpenClaw amd Muse and stuff give people a real reason to buy a Mac but Apple doesn’t like it."

Yeah, because a year down the road they might give the same people a reason to upgrade to another box, not from Apple.

Apple needs to ensure that they stand in the middle of every supplier relationship their customers have.

That's quite difficult when they don't provide direct value to both, so the natural conclusion is for Apple to present itself as a care-taker, the only one who prevents the user from taking any harm...

That’s a pretty elaborate and conspiratorial way to say “Apple isn’t especially interested in market segments they’re not trying to serve”. Which I think is true of most companies?

It's meant to say "Apple prefers if companies are not able to enter relationships with Apple customers without Apple being in the middle", which is not typical for most companies

It’s true of any two-sided marketplace, especially when part of the marketplace’s value prop is safety (see: eBay)

> An iPad could give a similar experience with local compute if only Apple would let it.

It does, it's called the MacBook Neo.

iPad sales have been rather stagnant in the last few years, while they made bank with their low-cost laptop. On a purely conceptual level I don't think they're gonna merge the two anytime soon, even if they will probably start sharing the very same logic board from their next revision.

Stagnant because (1) they don’t want to cannibalize iPhone and Mac and (2) competitors have failed to do make tablets that do a lot more than become e-waste. Microsoft had a reason to make the transition as carriers didn’t allow them to make a phone platform but their other enemies like Dell, HP and Lenovo had neither the motivation nor engineering skills to come along.

> I thought Microsoft had a good idea with Windows 8

Get out! Desktop are not mobile devices and there is still need for them. Microsoft learnt this the hard way.

Well I hear a lot of “silly boomer, don’t you know a computer is a computer and a phone is a phone” but many whippersnappers don’t know that Von Newman proved all computers are equivalent in theory and video game emulation proves they are in practice.

I think the barriers that exist depend on path dependence and other accidents of development. The laptop has a hinge and a trackpad that help you when you are flying on a plane. 2-in-1s drove stewardesses crazy because they couldn’t figure out if you had to stow them for takeoff. For that matter battery sizes are limited because of the needs of that industry which might seem justified if you live in NYC and can fly to London for what it less to costs to fly from my small town to NYC. Maybe if they’d invest in my community I’d care what they think but I think it’s unjust.

All the time I use a cheap plastic clip and a cheap Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and RDP into a monster computer from my tablet. If I have a real desk or table it’s fine, if you really have to put your laptop on your lap that hinge looks like genius. I’ll grant the 2-in-1 can be demoed at CES and the Bluetooth-based system can’t because they have too many devices in too small a space for Bluetooth to be reliable.

Even if I don’t have the mouse and keyboard I can still do a lot with the touchscreen.

The worst thing Win 8 revealed was that you could have the ‘windows’ keys on computer keyboards for almost 20 years and nobody noticed because…. It looks like an ad and people think anything that looks like an ad “just doesn’t work” (as opposed to “doesn’t just work”). If you were missing the start button you could just push that button but people treated that like putting their hand in the toilet.

OT but I really would have liked to see your comments on this

  (deleted submission)

  https://inti-tidball.writeas.com/por-que-uso-y-recomiendo-dominios-xyz-numericos-para-self-hosting

Well Spanish is one of those “languages that I can’t read except that I can read it” together (in order of declining comprehension) with Dutch, German, French and (large gap) Chinese and Japanese.

The Mac has had the ability to run iPad apps for quite a few years now, since Apple Silicon. Unfortunately it is opt-in for developers and most don't. I wonder if it will become non-optional (or at least opt-out) with the touchscreen MBP rumoured for this fall.

I think that's the unification route they are most likely to take, hopefully along with a thinner/smaller MacBook design and built-in cellular.

They've taken so many swings at the iPad Pro (both hardware and software), and it has never been as good as the MacBook.

>...but can't make any big steps to avoid alienating the userbase.

I think the way this could work is by linking certain capabilities to MDM or a developer program membership. Organisations and people who really need it would still be able to get it but regular users would not.

> Businesses will love it

businesses can already lock down your mac so you can't use it inappropriately.

I'm reminded of the guy who ran afoul of google, and all of a sudden all his google devices got forced software updates and started doing things.

it is sad, really.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

I don't think that's fair, they've spent a lot of time and effort ensuring the Mac is still an open/UNIX like platform, including (where they didn't have to):

- Per-install boot security policies

- Custom kernel boot (kmutil configure-boot)

- Raw-image boot mode

- XNU source releases

- Disabling SIP

- Disabling the Signed System Volume

- Third-party kernel extensions

- Developer ID distribution and notarisation

- Gatekeeper "Open Anyway" override

- Hypervisor.framework

- Virtualization.framework

- Rosetta for Linux VMs

- Nested virtualisation

- macOS guest provisioning

- DiskImageKit

- Custom Virtio devices

- Containerization framework

These are basically all things that an engineering org can justify as necessary for some reason but can immediately disappear when leadership announces a change in strategy.

Not to take away from your point too much - this is a significant amount of work that shows their current stance towards maintaining the mac as a premium development platform. But I imagine they will start to split this - lower cost SKUs will get the iOS-ified OS while "Pro" SKUs will get (some of) the above and can still install homebrew, to prevent a full developer revolt.

Techies will figure out how to "jailbreak" the lower SKUs to unlock the full experience and the amount of people that follow through with that will round to 0%. Tech businesses will buy the >$3k Pros for their devs.

"Everyone" will be "happy".

Unlike 30 years ago, now I see anti-developer as a feature for end users. The current trend is that big corporation developers just abuse any system to squeeze profits/information from end users as much as possible.

In this case apple do this because Meta are abusing.

What does this have to do with the article, exactly?

Author's misguided choice of platform for running a headless server.

I understand this mindset when I put my software developer hat on.

But as an end user, these are hollow words. As a consumer with Apple devices, I'm entrusting Apple to keep my computer protected from bad software, malicious or otherwise. You need to appreciate that you -- the software developer -- are not the good guy. We're not the same team. If you don't like your little sandbox, or if you resent having to ask for permission to go beyond it, that's a you problem, not a me problem.

As a software developer, I can see it from both sides. I wish more people did.

You forgot, they want 30% (or more) of your files to be inaccessible by you, so you can't access the data/media you've downloaded in ways apple doesn't like, or disable apple daemons that collect telemetry or whatever.

> Apple can’t see a future where Mac isn’t like iPhone.

Can you blame them? Their managers cannot code, so they need something else that is "useful" to do. And the one thing they find useful is to increase revenue.

Indeed, it's all beancounters and lawyers now, just as with any other run-of-the-mill monster corporation.

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