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    I bought a Mac

    (loganius.org)
    237 points todsacerdoti | 14 comments | 14 Apr 25 01:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.696s | source | bottom
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    SpecialistK ◴[14 Apr 25 02:04 UTC] No.43677433[source]▶
    The late PowerPC-era Macs are really fun to play with, because they're an interesting blend of modern niceties like USB and Ethernet but are limited with how old most software is. There's still a scene of people working on bringing newer versions of GCC and other *nix utilities to Tiger or Leopard, working with the pre-release PPC betas of Snow Leopard, and trying to keep online services working despite aging TLS versions and retired APIs. Compiling takes forever until it fails with an obscure C11 error or missing C library features. And that makes for a fun, if often frustrating, challenge.

    But PPC32 Linux support is quickly falling off. Gentoo isn't just used because it's fun to leave your lampshade iMac G4 compiling a kernel for days, but because it's one of the few distros still supporting the platform. There's unsupported testing repos for Debian (and maybe Ubuntu?) plus the up-and-coming Adelie. Otherwise your best bet is OpenBSD - FreeBSD and NetBSD usually lack precompiled ports, and FreeBSD has announced the next major release will almost definitely drop 32 bit PPC.

    The 64 bit G5 systems are much better supporte. I'm pretty sure they can boot ppc64le that many distros target. They're also even more modern - the final models had PCIe, SATA, and up to 16GB of DDR2 RAM. Sadly there's nothing modern about the power efficiency, nor the self-destructing water cooling system.

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    genevra ◴[14 Apr 25 02:19 UTC] No.43677500[source]▶
    It's always bothered me that Apple has so little backwards compatibility. I suppose that's why Windows is used by most of the corporate world for "reliability" (more reliable than Apple), and "ease of use" (people don't want to learn command line for Linux). It's just the mid option
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    1. chongli ◴[14 Apr 25 02:32 UTC] No.43677566[source]▶
    Apple's built their entire company on dropping backwards compatibility. It's how they've maintained their agility for so long, despite being one of the largest companies on the planet.
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    2. WorldPeas ◴[14 Apr 25 02:35 UTC] No.43677579[source]▶
    I am prone to defend them, but they do it in a sensical way (most of the time), I plugged in a G3 whose hard drive was last written to when I was playing hopscotch and when I connected it to wifi it had an official update patch ready for me. They aren't perfect but how many other companies do that. I'd argue that their unflinchingness to move on hardware-wise, and long software support is what gave them success.
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    3. cosmic_cheese ◴[14 Apr 25 02:44 UTC] No.43677616[source]▶
    I would say that counterintuitively, it’s a factor in the Mac’s strong indieware/botique software scene, which has been going for decades now. Most devs in that camp keep up with the platform changes and those who don’t get swept away, opening up space for someone else to fill that niche.
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    4. p_ing ◴[14 Apr 25 02:45 UTC] No.43677623[source]▶
    They're a phone device manufacture, which is how they became the first or second largest company, depending on how the tariffs blow.

    Mac and macOS are afterthoughts at this point.

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    5. rickdeckard ◴[14 Apr 25 06:22 UTC] No.43678570[source]▶
    Alas they didn't become one of the largest companies on the planet because of how they treated their macOS userbase.

    Especially nowadays it seems their biggest asset became that they produce good PC-hardware on such a high economics of scale that they're almost unreachable in build-quality...

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    6. lostlogin ◴[14 Apr 25 09:22 UTC] No.43679537[source]▶
    > Alas they didn't become one of the largest companies on the planet because of how they treated their macOS userbase.

    I’m not so sure. We love to complain about Apple, but I don’t see many old timer Mac users now extolling the virtues of Windows. It’s dangerous extrapolating one’s own observations to the world at large, so maybe I’m wrong?

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    7. rickdeckard ◴[14 Apr 25 09:57 UTC] No.43679663{3}[source]▶
    > We love to complain about Apple, but I don’t see many old timer Mac users now extolling the virtues of Windows.

    This might be true, but macOS in general is not what made Apple one of the largest companies on the planet.

    That's not about complaining, it's about correlation and causation. It's like saying Apple's Wi-Fi routers must be the best because Apple became one of the largest companies on the planet.

    I'd say without the iOS ecosystem they would be a well-respected company in the premium tier of their industry, like Dyson or B&O.

    8. PurestGuava ◴[14 Apr 25 10:09 UTC] No.43679717[source]▶
    They have somewhere near 10% share of the laptop market and the new Apple Silicon stuff absolutely cooks. For an afterthought, they're an exceptionally well-built and well-loved one that people enjoy using.
    9. tcbawo ◴[14 Apr 25 12:21 UTC] No.43680516[source]▶
    Can you elaborate further on what software project/products/companies you are referring to?
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    10. whalesalad ◴[14 Apr 25 12:21 UTC] No.43680517[source]▶
    This isn’t true. They support old platforms for a long time.

    At some point you need to move on. Can’t support ancient platforms forever.

    11. fossuser ◴[14 Apr 25 12:55 UTC] No.43680768[source]▶
    Yeah imo they support backwards compatibility where it matters and their hardware is useful for longer as a result. They’re also not afraid to drop it when it’s important to do so.
    12. hylaride ◴[14 Apr 25 13:02 UTC] No.43680828[source]▶
    They've started to drop the ball, but Apple also was really good at simplifying things to the point that its infamous "just works" slogan was apt.

    I switched to mac circa 2003 and reliably connecting to wifi was simple, clean, and intuitive. This was the height of the shitshow that was wireless networking on windows, where half the time windows would fight with the vendor software, etc.

    I was even more shocked when I hit the "advanced" button and there was full and working advanced BSD networking settings cleanly laid out, from overriding IP/netmask/router, 802.1X, etc. Windows made it difficult and frustrating to apply these kinds of settings, because they wanted to hide it from the user.

    13. cosmic_cheese ◴[14 Apr 25 15:28 UTC] No.43682373{3}[source]▶
    A couple of long-standing small Mac-focused companies that come to mind are Panic and The Omni Group, which have been building high quality software since the days of classic Mac OS and NeXTSTEP, respectively and are among the fastest to adopt new things coming out of Apple.
    14. Agingcoder ◴[15 Apr 25 09:28 UTC] No.43690694[source]▶
    This is not entirely true - they’ve invested quite a bit in maintaining backwards compatibility at least hardware side through various emulation or translation layers : first during the ppc/x86 migration then more recently with the x86 to arm shift.