
Return of the Mac (2005) - rocky1138
http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html
======
catskull
> The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run
> FreeBSD. What more do you need to know?

This. I have actually lost sleep since the announcement. I keep going over in
my mind alternate hardware, but the fact is that macOS (OS X) is the single
best operating system for developers today. I am generalizing "developers".
For any embedded development, or HDL stuff, OS X will not be a nice
experience. But for web or mobile development (which I anticipate is quite
larger than development that could not be done in OS X), it's just better.
Things work. If the don't, there is a massive support system in place and
worst case scenario you can drive <1hr to an Apple store and let them take
care of it. Sure, there are edge cases there as well, but compared to the
ultrabook you bought from Costco or any distribution of linux, you have much
more support available. I do love my macbook pro (glass trackpad, backlit
keyboard, good display), but I absolutely must have macOS. At this point my
only hope is that a new distribution of Linux evolves that can seriously
compete and works flawlessly on off the shelf hardware (such as the Dell XPS),
but we're not there yet. Elementary OS looks promising. Perhaps developers
would fork Darwin completely and make a macOS competitor.

I guess I should have seen the warning signs. The biggest was macOS Sierra
that offered me no reason to upgrade. Apple seems to be stuck inside of an
"innovation" echo chamber. Innovating for the sake of innovating.

Sorry for the wall of text, but if you have any suggestions for me, please
share them.

~~~
realusername
I must live in a parallel dimension. I never got why people like OSX to
develop web apps, it's a different system from the server, lots of tricks are
needed to make it work invisibly (either with a VM or a lighter equivalent),
there's the Control/Command non-standard placement, the different keyboard
layout, Terminal.app which is borderline unusable (almost as bad as cmd.exe),
no package manager and the shell commands which all seem (very) outdated.

I'm not making any comments on the UI itself because it's subjective but I
also find the UI a bit strange and not very intuitive myself.

Yeah sure, you can configure all of this and have something which works but
why not using a Linux (whatever flavour you prefer?), everything is just there
already.

Every time I use my colleagues Macs, I just feel completely powerless and I
feel that everything is getting in my way to prevent me to do something.

~~~
drinchev
Oh come on. It's not so different from the server ( POSIX ), there are not a
lot of tricks and there is a package manager ( homebrew ) & also there is
iTerm, that replaces Terminal.app.

Linux on the other hand does not have mature desktop environment, Safari,
Sketch, Photoshop and a lot of other really good software that comes built-in
with OS X.

As a matter of fact I've never seen a tool that works only on Linux ( except
probably some low-level kernel-dependent tools like iptables & others ) and
does not compile on OS X.

~~~
realusername
> there is a package manager ( homebrew ) & also there is iTerm

Yeah sure, if you install some tooling it then becomes fine, but you need to
install that.

> Linux on the other hand does not have mature desktop environment, Safari,
> Sketch, Photoshop and a lot of other really good software that comes built-
> in with OS X.

I don't use any design app personally so I can't comment on that. I also
forgot to comment on Safari but I also hate Safari as a developer, I find that
it lacks in the tooling part and prefer Firefox (I alternatively use Chrome
also sometimes). I'm not also a fan of Safari's UI personally.

On the desktop environment part, I also forgot to add that I hate the file
manager which prevents you to see the path, maybe there is a way to configure
that somehow? When I use my colleagues computers, I always use the terminal
instead of the file manager to browse because of this.

~~~
mcphage
> Yeah sure, if you install some tooling it then becomes fine, but you need to
> install that.

I think you're the only Linux person I've ever met who has a problem with
installing things.

------
largehotcoffee
I honestly hope the Touch Bar doesn't survive longer than one generation of
MacBooks. I believe the whole thing is a gimmick (a well intentioned gimmick)
meant to drive forward one thing, Apple Pay on the MacBook. Most likely it's
internally perceived as a situation where the end justifies the means, if
Apple Pay is widely adopted on the MacBook this will look like a genius
decision down the line and make a ridiculous amount of money in the long-term.
If not, blame the Touch Bar.

Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook. It might not
have been perfect, but it would have been lauded as revolutionary by the
mainstream media. By not doing it they have now given their competitors the
chance to grab that market.

When Apple does eventually make a full touch input screen MacBook, Apple Pay
will be a part of it. The Touch Bar is just a stepping stone to get to that
point, but it's a step they should have skipped.

~~~
laurentdc
Maybe it's just me, but I dislike any sort of touch input on a laptop besides
the regular trackpad.

The Touch Bar seems distracting since I don't really understand why one should
look down and search for what to press instead of simply using a keyboard
shortcut via muscle memory. But I have yet to try one and I understand that
for stuff like a video editing timeline overview it may be suited - it's an
additional display showing information afterall.

On the other hand, a full screen touch input like the dell XPS feels like the
least ergonomic thing. How are you supposed to interact with it? Holding your
arms up extended to the screen? [0]

[0]
[http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImag...](http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImages/xps-15-9530/laptop-
xps-15-love-pdp-module-1.jpg)

~~~
SBArbeit
If you've never used a Windows touch screen PC, I can imagine that you can't
imagine why you'd want a touch screen. If you have, then you know that after a
day or so, you just start reaching for the screen intuitively, and it's a rude
reminder of the bad old days when it's not a touch screen. This is what Apple
missed: none of them use a touch screen, none of them bother to check out
Windows, so they can't imagine how important it can be. The Touch Bar is a
poor substitute for it, and calling any laptop "premium" in 2016 without full
touch is marketing, not reality.

~~~
mconzen
I've had Windows touchscreen laptops for ~2 years and the only time I even
remember it's there is when trying to point at something in conversation and
accidentally clicking on it. Are there really use cases that matter for a
touchscreen on a standard laptop? I understand it on a convertible, but not
your standard clamshell.

~~~
andrewfong
I don't know how common these use cases are, but I find touch support useful
while doing some web dev stuff. For instance, in Chrome, pinch to zoom is more
precise than ctrl-scroll / ctrl-+. It preserves the existing screen dimensions
(ctrl-scroll / ctrl-+ makes the actual font size larger and alters
dimensions).

I'm not so vision impaired that I need to do this on a day-to-day basis, but
it's great for zooming in to see if I need to adjust a CSS border by 1px or
something.

I haven't tested this thoroughly but I believe Chrome also supports the same
set of touch events it does on Android. So if you want to make sure the mobile
version of your site is touch-friendly, having a touch screen is less clunky
than trying to emulate it with a mouse.

------
MrScruff
I think the negative reaction to the new MacBook Pro seems excessive. The only
real objections I have are the increase in price and the new keyboard though
I'm open minded that I'll get used to that.

Apple like to make slim, light products. And that's a good thing! There's
always a compromise between size/weight/power usage and performance, and I
don't think the choices they're making are bad ones. I'm sure if they could
have put 32Gb in there without sacrificing some other aspect of the design
they would have done so.

The negative reaction to touch bar seems to be mostly from people who haven't
used it, the press reaction was positive. I use vim but the escape key is
horrible to reach on a Macbook Pro anyway so I rebound it a long time ago.
I've read bizarre complaints that developers 'need function keys for single
step debugging' as though that's not going to be possible with touch bar.

But then I never really got the 'Apple software quality' meme either so maybe
I'm not representative.

~~~
dognotdog
A wild rant appears.

The negative reaction is not because the new MBP is terrible when viewed in a
vacuum, it is because people who would like (or actually need) more powerful
hardware than the one-size-fits-all approach that seems to be Apple's current
course are no longer catered to, or so it seems.

Personnally, I don't really care about the touch bar one way or another, but
what I do care about is that I would like to have one machine I can do all my
work on, which involves a wider range of things one a daily basis than is
typical (e.g. video/image editing, GPU powered number crunching, coding, and
sitting in moving vehicles plugged into a bunch of stuff). In the past few
years, the 15" MBP has been the machine to do it all, but in it's newest
incarnation(s) I am no longer sure it would still be the best tool. It seems
like gimmicks are added, but useful extras are stripped away. Maybe it's just
in the uncanny valley of progress with USB-C, but for the moment the way they
went about it all or nothing seems like a major inconvenience, with all the
"legacy" hardware I need to attach. And there's minor things like removing the
power brick's cord.

As such, my first instinct is also to bitch and moan, as now it looks as
though I need to find a new setup in the near future, and damn Apple for
building something for the median user, but not for me. I, too, like to think
that though I have an atypical usage pattern, what I do and how I talk about
it benefits Apple enough that they should at least invest a bit of effort to
try and keep me on their platform.

~~~
vlozko
But it is more powerful hardware. The CPU is upgraded. The SSD has read/write
speeds that smoke most competitors. Graphics got a big boost (though people
found an excuse to rant about it not being Nvidia). The only thing that's not
better is the ability to upgrade to 32/64GB of RAM. That's really it. And the
problem here is the Intel's lack of support for LPDDR4. Apple was faced with
choosing two out of three between thin/lightweight, good battery life, and
support for up to 64GB of RAM. I think the decision Apple would make here is
more than obvious. Look at the existing market for 64GB capable laptops and
all of them are either bulky or just suffer in battery life performance. And
the whole deal with only Thunderbolt 3/USB-C is way overblown; just buy the
1-2 cables you need and your problems are solved. The only genuinely valid
complaint I see is the price. I don't know how much of that is attributed to
more expensive components (CPU/GPU) vs the cost of the TouchBar itself.

------
meritt
As a longtime PC user, I'm very thankful how the excellent Apple offerings
really propelled the PC laptop market over the past decade to focus on both
build quality and high-end specs, most notably Dell XPS and Lenovo/Thinkpad X1
series.

~~~
walterbell
Intel also invested in Ultrabook and 2-in-1 reference designs to help PC OEMs
compete with Apple.

------
IBM
What's key about this is that Apple didn't make a laptop for hackers. It was a
nice confluence of factors that made Macs attractive to hackers, but Apple
never set out to court them. You should keep that in mind if you're a hacker
and you feel 'betrayed'. I've been seeing a lot of cringeworthy takes lately
which basically amount to trying to guilt a corporation into making your ideal
laptop.

I can't find the link to it but one of them said something like "I'm an
influencer too so you [Apple] should care that I'm switching!"

~~~
bluedino
When they went with a Unix based OS, they did.

~~~
IBM
Which is why it was a happy confluence of factors. Unix wasn't a call to
action though, just an implementation detail.

------
27182818284
For what it is worth, no Apple fan I know was seriously disappointed by the
Touch Bar on the new macs.

They (myself included) are disappointed by:

* A pro machine with underwhelming specifications * Connectors that now few people know which is what. I feel bad for the amount of arguing and screaming workers in Apple stores are going to get over USB vs USB C vs MagSafe vs Lightning vs HDMI vs Thunderbolt vs Headphone jack -- Heck I own macs and I'm not even sure what all you need for a new iPhone and a new MacBook Pro

As a great example, someone I know that describe's himself as an "Apple
Fanboy" spent a half hour talking about what a flop the new MacBook is while
wearing his Apple watch. That really makes it sink in what a lemon people
think the new MacBook is

------
cs702
Money quote:

 _" How big is the hacker market, after all? Quite small, but important out of
proportion to its size. When it comes to computers, what hackers are doing
now, everyone will be doing in ten years. Almost all technology, from Unix to
bitmapped displays to the Web, became popular first within CS departments and
research labs, and gradually spread to the rest of the world."_

Today, hackers are leaving Apple.

------
hota_mazi
> the Mac was in its time the canonical hacker's computer.

Yeah... not really. Never happened.

In the 90s, the canonical hacker computers were Amigas and Ataris. And soon
thereafter, Windows PC, during the Windows 3 -> 95 transition.

Or if you want to go back another decade, Apple ][ and C64. Now these were the
ultimate hacker computers.

Macs at the time were mostly used to create newspapers, slideshows and
graphical assets. We're talking MacIntosh and Mac+, here. You never saw these
in LAN parties, trust me.

------
guelo
I laughed at the dig about Intel and Microsoft stickers. They're much easier
to remove that the giant glowing billboard ad built into the Mac chassis.

~~~
marricks
Well, supposedly you like the logo of the product you buy, especially if it's
tastefully done. No one tries to remove Lenovo from their thinkpad, right? The
"Intel inside" and "AMD graphics" are crumby stickers your wrist can feel and
add nothing to the design.

~~~
dingaling
> No one tries to remove Lenovo

Cerainly they do. Black electrical tape is an effective logo-hider for laptops
and cameras.

It is also great for suppressing those bright blue LEDs that feature on many
devices.

------
mrigor
The new Macbook Pro supports max of 16GB RAM while Thinkpads support 32GB.
This makes it hard to justify getting a Mac.

~~~
yalooze
Phil Schiller, their marketing chief said:

> To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook design at this time would
> require a memory system that consumes much more power and wouldn't be
> efficient enough for a notebook.

ref: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13460496/apple-macbook-
pr...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13460496/apple-macbook-pro-16gb-ram-
battery-life-phil-schiller)

Nice to get a reply from the top as I was wondering why it was 16GB max too. I
can't comment on the veracity.

I'm a Windows user, if that makes any difference.

~~~
nostrademons
It'll be interesting to see if & when this starts to influence desktop
software design. Since the early 90s, it's largely been considered a waste of
time to optimize client programs for speed or memory usage, because a new
machine will just come out in a couple years with double the memory and double
the processing power. There's a _lot_ of low-hanging fruit in application-
level performance, optimizations that could be done but aren't because the
user won't perceive a difference. Now that Moore's Law has largely stalled
out, I wonder if we'll start seeing innovation in software platforms
(languages, frameworks) to optimize for speed & space instead of ease-of-use,
to try and recover that performance that the hardware isn't giving us.

~~~
pmontra
Bill by milliseconds (AWS Lambda and the like) is going to push us into that
direction. The 100 ms billing unit could become a benchmark. It will punish
languages with a long startup time. Luckily for Java it's introducing ahead of
time compilation. Many scripting languages are going to suffer. Too bad
because they are usually the ones that make programming easier.

------
SwellJoe
I got a new computer relatively recently. It's a modest looking plastic Dell
Inspiron; but it has a 4k touchscreen display, an i7 CPU, a GTX960M GPU, 16GB
of RAM, and an SSD. It cost ~$900, on sale. I, frankly, can't imagine paying
the Apple tax, especially now.

I kinda suspect we're going to see a replay of the long slow decline into
mediocrity that Apple experienced before Jobs' return. With higher prices and
a seeming lack of product vision going forward, I suspect the shine on Apple
products for developers will fade.

I mean, maybe I just don't get it, but the touchbar seems kinda like a
boondoggle (and, if it is going to exist, I wouldn't want it to kill my esc
key). Then again, I still don't really get the touchscreen on laptops. I have
one, but rarely use it.

~~~
MrScruff
> I got a new computer relatively recently. It's a modest looking plastic Dell
> Inspiron; but it has a 4k touchscreen display, an i7 CPU, a GTX960M GPU,
> 16GB of RAM, and an SSD. It cost ~$900, on sale. I, frankly, can't imagine
> paying the Apple tax, especially now.

Without meaning to be rude, this comes across like a 90s platform wars usenet
post. There is no tax - it's two different products with different features
and different prices.

If you're happy with your choice, that's great! I like and use computers a lot
and don't buy them that often, so I don't mind spending a bit more to get the
machine I want.

~~~
SwellJoe
Sure, it may be more fair to compare to an XPS model. But, even so...big price
difference.

Admittedly, if you really love macOS, buying a Mac is a reasonable choice, and
the only realistic choice for non-technical folks (building a Hackintosh is
non-trivial, and a license violation). But, I'd just be installing Linux on
it, anyway.

------
strathmeyer
Whenever I meet someone who says, "You seem really smart, you must use a Mac,"
I understand who they are made for.

~~~
jameskegel
I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.

~~~
snerbles
Status signalling.

------
rmason
So by posting this are you suggesting he writes a follow up article about the
return of the PC? I think that might be premature, but definitely Apple has
forgotten which group started the surge of people buying Macs.

~~~
3chelon
I _think_ I read a later article by Paul Graham advocating thin client
netbooks (aka Chromebooks et al).

------
usaphp
Everybody seems to complain about a 16Gb max ram, but I've yet to see anyone
have a laptop with 32Gb of Ram anyway, nevermind actually needed all those
32Gb. It seems lately people are just trying to complain for a sake of
complaining, they don't care about a reason, just to say something negative,
find a flaw, I recently watched some podcast after a apple and microsoft
event, they first blamed apple that macbook has only 16gb of ram max, but at
the same time they found excuse in microsoft studio that it has a crappy 965m
in a $3200+ machine saying that it takes a long time to develop a product and
it's understandable that Microsoft is using an old hardware.

I love new macbook pro, I think it's great, especially its new touch bar,
lighter and thinner form and a longer battery life, not much else I wanted
honestly.

~~~
kainolophobia
My 2015 rMBP is currently using 14.23GB of RAM with an additional 14.56GB swap
file.

Almost all of it is Chrome on macOS. This is without VMs, video editing, etc.
Just standard development tools.

Sure, I may have some untrusted code hijacking my threads, but I'm pretty sure
I'd enjoy a MBP with 32GB of RAM.

~~~
usaphp
Don't you think it's a bit ridiculous that Chrome is using 28GB of your RAM?

------
meehow
1\. Apple did pretty good job at popularizing Unix on laptop. 2\. Apple's
market share is around 6%. In last 3 years Linux doubled it's market share and
went from 1% to 2%
[https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Linux&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=190&qpnp=25&qptimeframe=M)
3\. If Apple will fail with their new products for developers, then they will
switch most likely to Linux and serious growth of Linux market share on
desktop is quite probable.

------
marcosscriven
I popped into the Apple Store on Regent Street in London today, where they
have a couple of these on display in plastic cylinders (but can't touch).

They have a constant rolling demo, and two things struck me.

The changing touchbar display constantly distracted me from the screen.

Also, the little square area on the far right for the touch sensor doesn't
blend in nearly as well as the photos make out. Worse, presumably for
symmetry, there's a square of the same size at the other end - so the display
for the 'Esc' key is actually the distance of one key in from the left hand
edge.

~~~
glhaynes
Note that in actual usage, the Touch Bar will only be changing substantially
when you switch between apps/contexts or are interacting with it. From the
Touch Bar HIG at
[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Us...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/AbouttheTouchBar.html):

Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a
display.

Although technically it’s a screen, the Touch Bar functions as an input
device, not a secondary display. The user may glance at the Touch Bar to
locate or use a control, but their primary focus is the main screen. The Touch
Bar shouldn’t display alerts, messages, scrolling content, static content, or
anything else that commands the user’s attention or distracts from their work
on the main screen.

------
dasil003
I've recently thinking about how to submit more stories that get traction, and
I have to take my hat off to rocky1138 for capturing the zeitgeist perfectly
with this submission.

This essay resonates strongly with me, and I wish Tim Cook saw things this
way. But in my heart I realize that it is probably only an accident of history
that the most polished consumer computing device company in history happened
to make a great Unix developer box.

Although it's undeniable that developers were key to Apple's resurgence, the
need for embracing open source and modern free software was only necessary
because of Apple's weak market position. We know this because of Apple's
failed attempts at pushing their own standards in the 80s and 90s when they
got their lunch eaten by Microsoft. Interoperability was something that Jobs
grudgingly got on board with when he realized he didn't have the market clout
to force standards down people throat. Apple now has that clout. No matter how
bad the Mac gets, there will still be developers for iOS as long as Apple
keeps delivering on iOS.

Personally I think I have to stick with the Mac for a while because no one
else is producing a software/hardware package that is anywhere near as nice
overall, but maybe I'll take pg's advice and walk around some college campuses
to see what are the kids who can't afford Apple's immaculately overpriced
machines are using.

------
lemoncucumber
Alas, Apple has lost its way and no longer make machines with _real_
performance like those 2005 PowerPC laptops that were so very fast.

Also the old Jobs-era Apple would never have released a machine where you
couldn't plug in any of your existing peripherals without adapters... I'll
just leave this here: [http://lowendmac.com/wp-content/uploads/bondi-imac-
right.jpg](http://lowendmac.com/wp-content/uploads/bondi-imac-right.jpg)

------
Lazare
Ten years (or a bit longer, depending on how you measure it) is a good run.

------
jliechti1
_" And open and good is what Macs are again, finally. The intervening years
have created a situation that is, as far as I know, without precedent: Apple
is popular at the low end and the high end, but not in the middle. My seventy
year old mother has a Mac laptop. My friends with PhDs in computer science
have Mac laptops. [2] And yet Apple's overall market share is still small.

Though unprecedented, I predict this situation is also temporary"_

Did PG's prediction come true?

~~~
untog
Yes - they lost the low end.

Perhaps "lost" is too strong a word - they weren't interested in keeping it.

------
smaili
March 2005 :)

~~~
moreira
I immediately clicked ("return of the Mac" \+ "Paul Graham" = perfect
clickbait, given what's been going on these past few days). Got me.

It's a pretty good read though. At the end, there's a mention of % of YC
people on OS X. I bet anything that OS X would be the dominant platform in
that demographic these days.

------
Keyframe
After some initial thoughts about the reveal, I gave it some more thought. I
wouldn't mind revealed MBP 15" if it were the same features in 13" form.
That's what it missed, IMO. 15" features feel more like what a 'power' laptop
would look like in 13" form, and 13" one is a MBA basically, and 'true' 15" is
missing.

------
alex-
18th March 2005 APPL: $6.14 Today APPL: $111.49

I hope his father bought the shares this time!

------
billions
The new MacBook Pro's Touch Bar is meant as a halfway point between keys and a
touch screen. It may replace the application dock, it may replace the menu
bar, it may do more granular things like offer local variables, or word
completion.

Typed input is slow. Until USB can wire into the brain, we will continue
needing input help. Perhaps the Touch Bar will, with the help of software,
make the data channel to between brain and machine a little faster.

The UX of the Touch Bar's software will effectively determine productivity
increase and adoption. In a world where Moore's Law has run its course, I
believe an improvement of above 20% input speed will make it a success.

------
ericzawo
So did Paul's dad eventually listen to his son's stock market advice?

------
OJFord
Mods - needs a '[2005]'.

------
kentosi
How can an posting dated from 2005 with only 19 points (at time of writing)
reach number 2 on Hacker News? Does anyone know how the ranking algorithm
works?

~~~
rwc
Methinks domain plays a significant role...

------
clifanatic
Steve Jobs founded Apple. Apple changed the world. They fired him. They became
a joke. They brought him back. Apple changed the world, again. Steve Jobs
died. Apple became a joke, again.

~~~
3chelon
The richest company in the history of the world could hardly be called a joke,
unless you were joking of course. I for one am concerned about their current
trajectory, but their R&D budget is $25m per _day_ so I don't think they can
be written off just yet.

