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Apple's Shifting Differentiation

(stratechery.com)
292 points kaboro | 3 comments | 11 Nov 20 13:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.491s | source
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Shivetya ◴[11 Nov 20 14:29 UTC] No.25058661[source]▶
Software is the key for me. I am by no means a power user but I really am loathe to give up even more of my software library to swap to Apple Silicon after Catalina cratered my gaming library in Steam and some older apps from companies long gone.

I don't expect I am alone in this observation but the number of software companies they highlighted during the M1 debut was very slim and to be honest I have not heard of half of them until then and don't remember them now.

So to me it matters not how much faster AS is, what matters is if I can run want I want to run. I am not going to own two separate machines to do what I want to do. If AS machines cannot do all I need I will keep my current Mac till support runs out and look again

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freeone3000 ◴[11 Nov 20 14:41 UTC] No.25058768[source]▶
Rosetta 2 allows you to run your x86 mac apps on Apple silicon. It's like the PPC->Intel switch again; your software keeps working regardless of the hardware underneath.
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joshspankit ◴[11 Nov 20 14:57 UTC] No.25058871[source]▶
Counterpoint: Try to run PPC software on a current mac.

“Keeps working regardless” is a great promise Apple has continued to make, but they only hold that up as long as it takes you to get the latest thing.

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breakfastduck ◴[11 Nov 20 15:25 UTC] No.25059092[source]▶
Dont think that's fair. PPC is very old. An extra 5 years of OS updates that support intel would be acceptable to me.
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1. joshspankit ◴[11 Nov 20 15:42 UTC] No.25059249[source]▶
Meanwhile I can still use WindowsXP (and even DOS) apps on Windows 10, and many linux tools are rock solid without any ongoing maintenance.

Some problems are straightforward and have final solutions in software, and that should be seen as a good thing.

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2. breakfastduck ◴[11 Nov 20 19:34 UTC] No.25061990[source]▶
Yeah that’s great. But macOS wouldn’t be the way it is if it didn’t make breaking changes over the years.

Windows 10 compatibility is an excellent achievement. But it comes at a cost of a significantly worse user experience (in my opinion, at least). Like legacy menu hell.

3. kergonath ◴[11 Nov 20 23:22 UTC] No.25064222[source]▶
What’s a good thing is that different people can do things differently, according to their priorities.