as an arch user and general ops person I do actually find a reason to do it on an annual basis or so (because upstream has deprecated my power button or the version of RHEL at work doesn’t support new enough docker features or mesa has stopped declaring OpenGL 4.5 compatibility on my held back version) but fair enough
I don’t find Linux usable without access to AUR packages, and most healthy individuals do not find it usable with, so I think it bears mentioning all the same
I recall at one point when I was testing a game engine with someone, we ended up spending a night or two chasing a bug in our code wherein the struct for the color format changed between two contiguous OS X versions. The fellow I was helping was the primary coder, and I assume he fixed the issue with the use of some C pre-processor #ifdef statements or something else far more cryptic. This was a real kick to the cabbage though. Ultimately, my experience as a developer was hardly so rosy as the experience the experience that I had, on average, as a user.
Honestly though, I’m surprised that Apple hasn’t switched their instruction set architecture already. They were making menacing vibrations about doing that a good 10 years ago at least, if memory serves. I guess said vibrations actually came about as a result of them declaring it necessary to begin compiling C/C++/ObjC code using some particular compiler target, but the subtext was simply, “Don’t count on our computers having the same microarchitecture between the current crop of machines and the next.”
Ultimately though, I’m just bitter. The last Macbook I owned met with a frightening and ignominious death. Suffice to say, some unsavory characters rooted it and changed my encryption key to lock me out of the thing. Suffice to say, I’ve never been able to use it since.
For the record though, I won’t be defending Windows any sooner than OS X.
The deprecation of OpenGL is the real tragedy here. That API still has much to commend it and to offer the world, in my humblest of opinions. Heck, at the very front of the Vulkan Redbook the authors make a statement to the effect that Vulkan is not so hot for whipping up singular applications. Instead its aim is middleware. I rather wonder how Metal will compare.
I wish I could imagine a good reason that Apple is going with Metal instead of Vulkan, but I suspect the reason is not good at all.
To be fair though, Microsoft throws its own proprietary heft around. I reckon they just don’t meet with such unexpected and stunning success at it. Ultimately, ecosystem fragmentation hurts the whole ecosystem. This very phenomena has begat everything from Forth to Java.
Hopefully frameworks such as SDL will be able to obviate some of the need to write large swathes of OS X-specific code, though I cannot help thinking that this is precisely what Apple is attempting to make impossible. Certainly, OS X is a unique think, but I cannot think of it as being so unique that it is worthwhile to write large functional chunks of my code twice to accommodate its desire to make itself a unique pain in my ass.
Again though, Windows isn’t off the hook here. What the Hell, Microsoft, why the heck you gotta use a weird, special name for your “main” function? An ultra-specific example of a case where Redmond’s bastard child is no better than the rest where concerns useless extension of functionality for the sake of being different where difference is typically neither appreciated nor desirable.
Is this the thread where I can share my irrational sentimentality for old macs
I bought a blue and white G3 from a thrift store to mess with when I was 14 but it died and I’ve since recycled it
Someone thought to sell my love of translucent blue plastic back to me in pog form!
why do all iPhone cases have a cutout for the stupid logo
this has always bothered me
Probably why embroidered crocodiles are valuable
I normally don’t care for it but it’s covered by the translucent blue plastic and helps with the pocket sized g3 look
Yeah, it’s that thing where it’s positioned as both good consumer electronics and as a luxury accessory and I don’t like my clothing/things I carry to send messages beyond a tight spectrum so I’m complaining and being anxious about nothing. But
ive got an otterbox case that doesn’t have a logo cutout, it rules
this is the first phone i’ve bothered to buy a case for because it has a camera bump and is legit too thin to easily pick up off a table thanks jony
yeah I have a nodus leather thing, also no logo, beautiful
Case manufacturers can’t print the logo themselves and showing off the brand of phone you own is viewed as important in many markets, especially China
i haven’t compiled a linux kernel myself since like 2002 i’m not sure what your deal is
as a developer i’m not so much bothered by opengl dying (the API has some very real shortcomings) so much as Apple just going Fuck You, Use Our Special API instead of the entire rest of the universe which is standardizing on Vulkan
every time you make it harder to develop for your platform, you get less ports overall and shittier overall port quality. if you want higher quality you make it easier to do. that’s just how it is.
yeah, and I still have to use out of tree chromium build patches to enable hardware video decoding, as I have for the past five years
Mind you Firefox hasn’t ever supported it on Linux in non Flash contexts so it could be worse
Linux and I are real close but never in all my life would I describe it as the best of any worlds
is there a good non-adtech web browser on linux even
vaguely remember epiphany being alright in like 2004
non-Chrome chromium builds with UBO are fine with me, not sure how bothered you are beyond that. I would definitely not try anything that doesn’t use upstream Webkit/Blink, which pretty much leaves chromium and derivatives like Opera.
i’m 100% fine with modern firefox. latest updates bring it up to speed nicely.
and you’ll never miss a new season of Mr. Robot
This is the main thing you don’t seem to grok about Apple’s developer strategy in general: Apple doesn’t want ports and they don’t care if they don’t get them. They want people to make apps specifically for the Mac that play into the things that differentiate it as a platform. Almost every development-related decision they make makes a lot more sense when viewed via that angle, whether you agree with or not.
I know that approach doesn’t work for games, because practically no one is making games specifically for the Mac anymore in 2018, but as far as Apple is concerned games are just a category of apps and they treat them no differently.
If you do actually lock yourself up in the Apple ecosystem and only buy apps from developers who target the Mac first, the user experience quality is unrivalled on any other platform. This is what Apple wants to preserve, and that’s why Apple will take any opportunity to fuck over people writing multiplatform software.
Yes, I don’t get it. Personally, I don’t really understand it and I don’t really want that.
But from a developer standpoint, it is intensely frustrating to be asked to jump higher and higher hurdles just to support a bunch of people who honestly would want your software. So from that perspective, this is really unbelievably stupid and frustrating and is not something that is easy for me to understand.
Mostly, it makes me want to say, yeah, you clearly don’t want me there, and I don’t want to be there, k bye have fun with that.
A friend is just going to ship things in Electron wrappers now. Can’t blame her. We simply do not have the time for this anymore.
I share your feelings
I feel like as a user Apple only wants you if you are willing to be 100% committed, and as a developer they just keep throwing up hurdles while letting their own quality slide
Well, in this same announcement they added more iOS compatibility, so I think what Apple hopes will happen is shared iOS/OS X apps as opposed to Electron apps.
