Gorbzel

So, I reject the premise of your question & the groupthink, namely that the best product "is no longer available." Just like every other Revision A  product, people are considering the tradeoffs vs whether they still want to be on the platform ("If you don't like the iPhone 4..." ). Cupertino also likely needs to fix some bugs.

Since that's a normal part of life I'd fully agree if this were the first time, but this is the 15th take or so on the tbMBP since it came out. Simply going by my history, people seem to like the XPS 13 Developer edition, machines from System76, the Thinkpad T460, as well as mentioning the Surface Book and/or Studio in every article as incontrovertible proof that Apple is doomed. Full disclaimer that YMMV, as ultimately, buying a machine is a subjective decision that will always have tradeoffs (this stunningly controversial take was flagged last time).

Perhaps, just maybe, people who chime in "I find this article useful" could do the rest of the community who doesn't think Apple is dying on a daily basis a favor and do a search when they're in the market for a new laptop. But now we're just degrading into basic forum etiquette, a tale as old as time...

As Steve famously said, if you don't want a tbMBP, don't buy it. If you buy one and you don't like it, take it back.

Since that is/always has been the working approach, any chance the HN hive-mind could avoid posting EVERY single MBP->other laptop or macOS->*nix article?

Proper procedure (including appearance, notice, and other jurisdictional matters) is part of the decision.

It's ridiculous how otherwise (mostly) rational professionals are so blinded by their version of facts & the adversarial nature of litigation / hearings that they act so cluelessly.

This comment included: imagine if someone had a pitch scheduled with a VC, but sent an assistant instead. The investor would correctly pass on that and HN would flip a shit. But involve lawyers, judges and the judicial process...and expecting someone to show up to court is a "reality show popularity contest"

>Not sure how you say Alaska isn't innovative.

Since VX has had those exact same amenities plus additional others for longer, and AS is not going to keep the Airbuses around...from the perspective of a Virgin flyer, Alaskan wouldn't seem that innovative.

He does love him some chain restaurants.

Hacker News: where a commenter won't hesitate to take a dump on your hero, but will lack the confidence to assert any truth to their contrarian takes.

Yes, they introduced higher storage options, but not until component prices dropped low enough for Apple to maintain their margins at the same MSRP. The iPod had already became a gigantic hit in its own right during the 6 years between the introduction of the iPod 1st Gen and when the iPod Touch brought wireless to the iPod family.

So other than some non-sequitur facts, what's so interesting? CmdrTaco's take is the classic example of tech spec-naysaying by pundits completely misreading demand in the market. Meanwhile, AceJohnny says that it may very well apply here, which remains to be seen.

This is exactly what tons of WebKit/Safari haters do — troll through the literally 100s of proposed standards (admittedly sometimes W3C but still) and rile up comment sections w/this false trope astroturfing for half-baked technologies.

It's usually because they had some pet project / approach relying on the "standard" that they couldn't run right in MobileSafari, even though it had no adoption whatsoever, Cupertino is DESTROYING the web for not including it, battery life, privacy, reasonable userspace restrictions, etc BE DAMNED.

Don't believe it.

Confirmation bias turning HN into an anti-Apple echo chamber of niche, subjective rants is really getting old (...and it's not even been a week).

As an iOS developer, I've got the experience to know this kind of drivel doesn't reflect reality. More then that though, I simply find it amusing how people here rush to judgment about a product they've never used, then circle the wagons. I guess it's not surprising, developers and entrepreneurs tend to be god-awful at understanding the needs of end users, tale as old as time. What's more concerning is that despite over 40 years of technical revolutions, attention to minor detail wins, and adoption/consideration of community input, industry "professionals" won't give Apple even the slightest hint of the benefit of the doubt.

But I do wonder about the empathy and humanity of people who say that Apple "doesn't care." They has over 125,000 employees worldwide, many of them hardware engineering, open-source software, and design veterans who know and are passionate about the work they do. Passionate enough to know about tradeoffs you make when shipping a successful product. Marginalizing these people simply because you've decided to switch to Desktop Linux reflects really poorly on you, not on the Touch Bar.

Nor does it get anything done, as time and time again Cupertino shows that the haters have less memory than a Nomad and are lame. Meanwhile, scores of developers will use the tbMBP, Xcode, and even iTunes Connect to do tons of productive things with their time. Maybe think of that next time you decide to lower the discourse +1 on every damn article.

Nope, they can't.

First of all, if it's actually fraud that totally doesn't scale.

But in a more nuanced case, look at the iMessage App that allowed people to send images that looked like a stock Messages blue bubble. Good idea for humor, not so good for non-trolling UX. Apple pulls it but gives the developer a week to see if there's any way to salvage the situation to ease the heartstrings and pocketbook.

IMMEDIATELY calls go out to download the infringing app, several thousand more than anyone who might otherwise (full Streisand effect)...

Then imagine that app actually has Malware! Lots to think about, and if people hate on Apple for this, fair enough — as an iOS dev it's tough to defend. Really love Dash. Hope it gets straightened out. 8 years in on the platform and you can do a ton of things you couldn't do back in 08, and vice versa.

This was my understanding as well.

Except now, two issues: 1) More a quibble, but I'd say that people around here pushing AOSP makes the term "stock Android" a bit less clear.

2) Article claims the new Pixels will have some other variant of Android, based on current stock Nougat but with additional support baked in for things like their new VR headset and Google Assistant.

Which strengthens FuzzyZeus' point: determining which version of Android a given phone comes with (and which it can support, both now and in the future) is an extremely muddled game, with the OEMs and now Google itself not doing anyone any favors.

> So the whole issue boils down to "what if you get into a patent dispute with Facebook over a patent that doesn't relate to their core web UI tech". Which...I dunno, is that a real concern?

Yes!

On one hand, tons of HN commenters claim to be opposed to 1) NPEs going after smaller software concerns 2) giant ecosystem software vendors being the only choice when it comes to mobile/web technologies, but then this amateurish ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ mindset carries the day on easily graspable concepts that directly affect the likelihood of patent infringement.

> But if my core business is making apps, then every patent I might have is likely to be covered by both patent grant termination clauses. So the issue is...?

Given the increasingly broader markets that Facebook, Amazon, et al. want to break into, the issue is for businesses whose core business doesn't relate to apps but that still want to leverage modern software (aka all of them).

Stop brushing off issues you don't understand and calling them FUD.

Dropbox is using cached root privs that it now claims it doesn't even need to force itself into full control of your machine, on the back of an accessibility exploit, actively disregards explicit user actions taken to remove it, does this all via SQL injection, and if all of the above doesn't meet the definition of malware, I don't know what does.

All this from a company who recently had one of the largest credential breaches in the history of the Internet

and you think it's okay to "push the platform"?!???!

It's pretty popular these days to say "Delete your account" online. If this wasn't an accidental knee jerk response, please go one step farther and delete any professional involvement you have with software or technology implementation. You don't understand security concerns, nor does your poorly rehashed half-argument about OS X explain why this would be okay on any platform.

A bit emphatic, but if those goes to the greys, so be it. HN is clearly frequented by people with meaningful input in business, product, and engineering decisions. This kind of scapegoat deflection needs to be highlighted as an unacceptable security practice not justified by anything that seems to qualify as entrepreneurial disruption.

Clearly you've never seen any teardowns of Apple adapters. Usually the best (cleanest power, data throughput, etc) in their respective categories.

What I don't buy is why it's okay to generalize your imposter syndrome to an industry as a whole.

"Maybe I feel differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub"

Read: "I can afford to live in a comfortable place and not a closet, so let me generalize such that no dev can afford to live in historically relevant software hubs either."

Next, lest this selfish hot take get too tonedeaf, time to write off our 6 figure privilege! Since this is a recent accomplishment, let's ditch any sort of humility toward the the talented software minds who came before who made the efficiencies of our day jobs possible. Instead, we'll roll with some terrible analogies to completely non-sequitur professional industries!

• I'm not performing life-altering surgery, because emotional hyperbolic appeals will distract from the fact I base my insight into the most valuable industry in the world on 7 paragraphs of anecdotes. Forget that the fundamentals of medicine and the practice thereof bear almost no relation to that of computer science and software development.

• Wheee! I love talking about dentists with mansions. I got my teeth cleaned last Saturday, and I've never had to be on call for any sort of systems admin role. Speaking of things I've never had to do, thank god I come from an ever increasing minority of people who can afford to live a comfortable lifestyle without taking on student loan debt early in life.

• I don't need a graduate degree to get precious time in a lab with equipment I absolutely must have to do my job. Unclear if I've ever met anyone who's tried to further themselves with a IT licensure, but since those aren't in vogue any more, I'll just make dreamy comparisons to one of the most antiquated, regulated industries out there. I've worked less, but people I know are stuck in debt forever working 80+ hour weeks in BigLaw!

Despite the option of a meaningful career alternative to the above, developers shouldn't try to build on their gains. Let's just foreclose even the notion that there are people working out there who are underpaid because they don't have coworker peers, or they are just the "IT guy", or are a woman or minority, or because some doctor, dentist, or lawyer has an idea.

"My lifetime earnings won't be that different because I got such a tremendous head start" ...so why should I try to build others up?

In these kind of discussions, I often point out how software is pretty unique in that due to supply/demand, there's no labor unions or collective bargaining. But maybe it's a good thing, because I'd never want you speaking for me when it comes to how much any of us are being paid.

Or they could compete in the marketplace w/ a better product, an integrated product strategy, and a long term understanding of the market and talent. In doing so, they deliver shareholder value without burning unnecessary cash.

Oh look! They're doing exactly that with exclusives.

Perhaps you should let the crowd answer the first part of your post before making a demand re: something you know nothing about in the very next sentence?

Location: Chicago, IL

Remote: I have significant experience with remote-friendly/first organizations.

Willing to relocate: For the right opportunity. I’ve lived and love early-stage experiences, but this means an established company (>50ppl) recognized in their industry. Also, SF/NY salaries will need to be aggressively competitive. More willing to travel for work than to relocate.

Technologies: iOS, DevOps. (Focused experience > laundry lists, but I’ll roll up my full stack sleeves as necessary to get things deployed)

Résumé/CV: https:// db.tt/lJS3Mgeo

Email: Anti-spam (see-resume): firstname@firstnamelastname.com

I’m passionate about delivering high quality mobile experiences for clients, employers, and end users.

It it doing binary compatibility with iOS apps or just some cross-compilation approach?

Don't have access to a Windows machine and if this is the mentality behind getting apps on the platform, not sure there's any reason to change that.

But that's the problem: the good points about hardware quality are objectively true regardless of an end user's ability to afford a replacement or the article author's proclivity to get offended.

Things are improving, but many components in a PC are known to eventually give out — the metric for hard drive longevity is literally known as "mean time to failure," batteries have cycle counts, etc.

Nor is the gap between quality components and inferior alternatives bridged suddenly because someone heard Phil Schiller say something they didn't like. An $150 Acer trackpad is going to be significantly worse than a $1500 MacBook trackpad. I highly doubt this article gets published if the author had tried to use a 2011 budget PC laptop.

And most purely-software developments in video gaming shouldn't be patentable.

CocoaPods exists because developers want to learn how to "build apps" but lack the resources to intelligently include and link to 3rd party code in their projects. CocoaPods doesn't enable anything not otherwise configurable via git submodules and Xcode project hierarchies / build settings.

Therefore, it's not Apple's problem. In fact, I've talked to a non-trivial amount of engineers (both in Cupertino and long time Cocoa devs) that disapprove of the shortcuts that Cocoapods takes all over, software architecture be damned. Reasonable parties can agree to disagree, but I do include 3rd party framework inclusion without a dependency manager as an interview screen for prospective iOS hires.

Since you mention developer relations, I'll assume you're not actually arguing that this is Apple's technical responsibility, but that they should throw around some $ to grease the wheels to make dependency inclusion better. As a platform vendor, funding hosting costs for some project that you don't agree with just to "support the community" is a bad idea. Better idea is to allocate resources to setup a structure that can fix the issue in a technically agreeable way while also benefitting from the independence a FOSS project provides. In doing so, you are correct that it'd be preferable for Apple to fund/use well-known FOSS standards, such as Github.

In conclusion, Apple should setup a FOSS project to address the current inconveniences associated with third party package inclusion and should involve and pay Github somehow.

Oh wait...https://github.com/apple/swift-package-manager

Research in (Moral) Bankruptcy.

It is, though I imagine there's better precedential cases for digital acts as speech than Tinker.

More importantly, good on you for this: > In my opinion, code in its functional capacity is not speech.

This is HUGELY important for people to recognize before arguing that "Code is speech" in an absolute sense. Sure, it seems like a clear-cut position in the Civil Liberties sphere, but then you find all that same protected speech is suddenly subject to © and 35 USC §101.

Article makes some good points, but then rolls into an increasingly common "nerd" talking point that completely undercuts the point:

"It’s fine that no one cares about whatever dorky thing you’re into, but wow why would you make fun of the sacred and hallowed Super Bowl, which is so important to so many people, how could you be so inconsiderate"

and the strawman couldn't be more blatant absent some flame emoji.

Now, she didn't reference the tweets which provided the supposed context, but everyone's probably heard the "Ha ha, sportsball!" jokes from people who don't enjoy athletics. The problem isn't that people are making jokes about the popularity of sports, it's that the joke really isn't funny. Instead, it perpetuates the behavior the author claims to oppose — rather than be pleasant with one another and take at least a conversational interest in what someone's saying...let's be inconsiderate and vitriolic about one another's hobbies! This is wrong whether said hobby is football or League cosplay.

"I don’t think too many people are wanting for someone who’ll listen to them talk about football."

The strawman continues with vague references to undefined populations that strip people of their individuality. They're all rude sports bros, while we're enlightened board gamers.

"Yet I haven’t seen any comics and snarky jokes suggesting that sports fans listen to their friends rave about Warhammer.

Must not have been paying too much attention. Here ya go, guy is a pretty popular standup who notoriously loves nerds, hates sports, and has a show discussing internet culture with three comedians every weeknight(!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hardwick

At this point, you may be asking. Wait — this started about Stephen Fry and Twitter...why are we now talking about nerds vs sports? I'd ask the same thing of the author. The section is poorly though-out and explains nothing about power dynamics; Was hatred of one another's interest the most appropriate horse to hitch the "serious discussion of Twitter mobs" wagon to?

Yeah, I was saying Boo-urns, and it couldn't find it.

Also, yeah, this is coming down as soon as the lawyers get ahold of it.

All web positions. I hope this doesn't imply that the government avoids native mobile!

GENIUS! :-)

At work we're ramping up a build on a huge mobile app, and we have a menu (though more accurately, the master of a split for those familiar with iOS UIKit). We've been debating how to represent the navigation item that a user will tap. Of course, we all started discussing glyphs immediately and quickly found ourselves in the weeds.

Enough times on previous rodeos led me to ask if we could think of what text to put in the label. Team floated ideas, no one loved anything. Now, at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday night.

MENU!!!!

We agree, I don't think it matters. I initially believed based on the "petition" nature of the letter and adding signatories that it was going to be an inclusive effort.

Which is why I've asked and received absolutely no answer as to why one of the dear-github organizational "owners" (as labeled on Github) responses to my issue inquiry was to tell me who he was, then use that to determine my issue was not constructive.

> That letter didn't feel ungrateful or malicious at all to me, but I sure hope it didn't come off that way to others.

It might have; software engineering is a big tent, and people who touch Github (in at least someway) no doubt comprise a huge part of it. Full disclaimer, I'm biased, as I opened an issue attempting to address some potential editorial/tone issues, and the initial response was not good (a big part of that may be questions of who exactly is "involved" with the letter. How should others become involved and contribute in a way the OPs feel is constructive?)

As another commenter pointed out, not everything is so black and white. In this case, no one should be "beyond reproach", but what seem like simple issues to Issues may indeed be representative of strong product/technical decisions from an opinionated vendor. IMO it's not inherently clear that the people behind dear-github entirely recognized the nuance here. No one is looking to pick fights or troll anyone, because no, not everyone who is passionate about this issue is a meanie. That said, the original letter and the immediate response could be interpreted as brash, and to that end, I wouldn't be surprised that someone responded with thank-you-github as an opposite reaction.