
X11 and the disturbing trend of Apple removing functionality from OS X - codedivine
http://www.imore.com/x11-and-disturbing-trend-apple-removing-functionality-os-x
======
xutopia
What I find disturbing here is the expectation that they would include it.

I was speaking to a Microsoft evangelist two years ago and asked him why it
took them so long to release a new version of Windows. He essentially told me
that Microsoft does the best legacy support in the world and wanted to ensure
that every single piece of important software could still be installed and
work with the new version. He also explained to me that Microsoft was not in
the business of pushing new technology but that they were in the business of
bringing it to the masses. It was his excuse for why IE was so much worse than
Firefox or Chrome.

X11 missing from my computer was a simple google search away from a fix. It's
not essential for 99.9% of Mac users and only developers and system admins
would want it installed. They know how to use google.

To a company like Apple pushing technology is more important and supporting a
fraction of users with something they can get on their own is spending time in
the wrong place.

~~~
jwbaker
That certainly does not justify the installer removing X11 from a perfectly
working Mac.

~~~
gmac
My understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that an 'upgrade' is
really a fresh installation, with your user data migrated across afterwards.
In that context it's not really a 'removal' as such -- and it's hard to see
how else they'd do it.

I'm actually glad they made this change. In the past, XQuartz was sometimes
ahead of the officially distributed version, which could be messy. Now they're
the same thing.

------
Camillo
The X11 that Apple provided with OS X was nothing but a snapshot of whatever
XQuartz version was current when that version of OS X went GM. In other words,
we are now getting the exact same product, but with more timely updates. It
takes a special brand of cluelessness to see that as a bad thing.

~~~
jws
It's a good thing. X11 has joined Flash and Java in the ranks of "stuff third
parties maintain".

RSS removal is a different animal. Statistically speaking, no one used it
(except you and me of course) but 10 minutes of app shopping and I've got a
better solution running. Much better.

~~~
signalsignal
You are wrong. Apple maintains java and didn't uninstall it when I upgraded.

------
Someone
I have a X11.app in /Applications/Utilities. When launched, it shows a dialog:

    
    
      An application has requested access to X11.
      Would you like to install X11 now?
    
      X11 is no longer included with OS X. Apple continues to support
      the development of X11 on OS X with the open source community.
      Clicking “Continue” will take you to an Apple Knowledge Base Article
      which provides information about installing X11.
    
                                                     [ Cancel ]  [ Continue ]
    

So, I think that "and giving me this when I search their knowledge base for
answers" is a bit dishonest. At least on my system, searching wasn't
necessary. Apple pointed me there.

------
tomstuart
Imagine if Apple removes [the floppy drive] itself in the next version of [the
Mac], or decides [wi-fi] is the future and gets rid of [the Ethernet port]?

~~~
untog
Removing the floppy drive and ethernet ports have clear and straightforward
benefits, though. Removing software, less so.

~~~
derleth
> Removing the floppy drive and ethernet ports have clear and straightforward
> benefits, though.

What were those clear and straightforward benefits?

To the consumer, I mean; not to Apple.

~~~
untog
To an extreme example, the Macbook Air.

More generally, saving space, allowing you to add different things inside a
laptop. I realise you could argue the same for hard disk space, but it's not
anywhere near as limited.

------
bradleyland
The trend only appears disturbing if you few it from a very, very high level.

Apple didn't do the best job of keeping up with some OSS components included
in OS X. X11 is a great example of such a component. Outside of OS X, lots of
changes were occurring with X windows servers. By including X11 (or even
providing their own package), Apple was actually in the way. XQuartz dates
back to 2007.

There were five releases in 2010 and 2011. By stepping out of the way, OS X
users will have a more up to date version of X11 on their machines. That is a
good thing™.

~~~
leephillips
That's a good argument for Apple not including their own version of x11. But
the author was most anguished that they _removed_ an installation of x11 that
he was depending on.

~~~
keithpeter
Did all the config go as well? The dotfiles? Did the author try installing the
recommended X11 over the top to see if the old configs were picked up?

~~~
bradleyland
My experience: My current OS install dates back to Leopard, which was
installed on my MacBook Pro back when I purchased it in 2009. I've upgraded to
each subsequent OS X release since then, and maintained a development
environment utilizing X11 (for gnuplot) the entire time.

It is my understanding that the X11 included with OS X was actually a snapshot
of XQuartz at the time of OS release, so the config data is in line with what
XQuartz expects. In the Unixy bits, OS X upgrades are a lot like other Unix-
like operating systems in that package operations remove the application, but
not the configuration.

After installing XQuartz, gnuplot continues to run just like it did under
previous versions of OS X. I simply ran the XQuartz installer and got back to
work.

~~~
keithpeter
Yup, just like Ubuntu. Gnuplot does not depend heavily on whatever window
manager you are using's config anyway, it just needs the X server (similar to
R stats)

Good luck

------
ambirex
"Imagine if Apple removes Terminal itself in the next version of OS X, or
decides iMessage is the future and gets rid of Mail.app?"

I kind of lost respect for the article at this point, Mail.app, really?

I see them removing built in support for X11 the same as them not bundling
java. There probably isn't the corporate will to keep up to date on these
packages and it is better to have groups that will keep them update
maintaining them.

~~~
jiggy2011
While that seems unlikely , there is definitely a strong constituent of people
who would applaud it as a "bold and forward thinking move", "lol, who uses
email anymore?"

------
acdha
> The Terminal was always limited, copy and pasting text in it was non
> standard, there was no default repository for ports or applications. And no
> matter how many cores or how much RAM I threw at it, it would beachball when
> copying and pasting from one terminal to another using the default app on
> Mac OS X.

I stopped taking the author seriously around this point: the lack of package
management outside of the App Store is a serious problem but the other two
distractions are signs that he's either misconfigured his system or is doing
something crazy like pasting data files rather than using pbcopy / pbpaste.

For long-time users, this is a minor change and actually a good move: there
were only a couple of releases where we didn't have to install XQuartz anyway
to get performance or features which weren't available in the shipped version.
Since this affected only a very, very small number of generally more technical
Mac users I'm not surprised that Apple is moving it back outside of the
default release cycle.

------
runjake
This seems rather knee-jerk.

XQuartz _is_ X11.app. Percentage-wise, not many users needed X11 and the ones
who do should be smart enough to follow the instructions they give to get
XQuartz.

Apple effectively removed engineering redundancy. It allows for a more
aggressive release cycle. Apple engineers still oversee XQuartz. Many of the
main committers are Apple employees working on Apple's time, for example,
Jeremy Huddleston.

I liken it more to the Java distribution transition as opposed to something
like Messages.app obsoleting Mail.app.

~~~
redial
I think you mean 'Messages.app obsoleting iChat.app.'

~~~
runjake
I did not mean that. I was referring to the following from the article:

 _"Imagine if Apple removes Terminal itself in the next version of OS X, or
decides iMessage is the future and gets rid of Mail.app?"_

------
nicholassmith
Whilst Apple removing an application without informing the user is bad, them
not shipping things that are less used is a good thing. RSS I'm sure had at
least 10 users, but it was an unneeded overhead in two applications.

X11 on OS X has always been, well, not that great and I use it fairly
regularly for remote session testing and a few other bits and bobs. Apple
wants someone else to keep it up to date for the people who need it to
download it? Fine. Lets go down that route.

Apple is as committed to the terminal as they've ever been, which is to say
it'll be there as long as there's developers and 'power users' on the system.
If they do decide no longer to ship a terminal? There'll be other packages to
do it. They can't rip the UNIX underpinnings out overnight.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> RSS I'm sure had at least 10 users, but it was an unneeded overhead in two
> applications.

Exactly this is my issue (not the rest of your comment, but this sentiment
which I see everywhere since a couple years or so). Every time Apple drops
support for anything, people talk about cleaning up, or the inevitable march
of progress, or about how Microsoft is doomed because you can still install
their OS on unworthy 32-bit boxen.

RSS support in mail hardly imposed any overhead on users. Why do we care about
what Apple's _programmers_ think or feel? These folks are paid to keep their
apps running. Maintaining Cocoa apps is something that Apple can easily hire
more people for (unlike hacking on the kernel, or on system frameworks).

~~~
nicholassmith
It probably doesn't impose any overhead specifically on users, but it's
additional codebase that needs to be maintained and whilst that's a 'well that
sucks for the devs' issue it becomes a user issue as they're not focusing on
their core competencies, which in this case is making the email client as good
as possible. I'll take a better email app over additional, underused features.

------
nikcub
In the time it took to write this you could have just installed the damn thing

------
callumjones
I'm not sure what the problem is here, especially given this is a consumer OS
targeted at the masses but still its underpinnings means it can scale out to
the niche when required.

And this is exactly the case with X11, it doesn't exist on OS X 10.8 by
default but luckily the OS tells me Apple have an open source version ready
for me to download when I need it.

This seems like the best of both worlds, an average computer user isn't bogged
down by niche software shipped with their computer and the developer can
easily hop onto MacForge and extend the functionality of their computer. Heck
you can even compile things since it's just BSD/Mach underneath.

------
cstross
It's worth noting that OSX _does_ provide VNC support, transparently, as
"Screen Sharing". AIUI this should be compatible with other desktop machines
that run a VNC server and Bonjour.

While I wouldn't want to defend Apple's decision to drop X11 support, I should
note that X11 is a minority pursuit on that platform, the Apple X11 server
never worked brilliantly (Apple's use of the Alt/Meta key mapping for accented
characters made for a messy collision with X11 world), and if there's a more
seamless screen sharing system built into the OS, why not go with the path of
least resistance?

~~~
jmmcd
X11 has little to with screen sharing. They always describe it as the
networked window server, but in reality on OSX, it is the software that allows
Inkscape and similar programs to run on your own machine.

------
ap22213
For me, OS X has increasingly become too difficult for use in development. For
a while there, it was the best, especially with tools like homebrew. But, it's
just become too much of a headache. Too often, I find myself wasting hours
trying to get over small OSS compatibility hurdles.

More and more, I've been finding myself picking up my 'other' laptop, firing
up VirtualBox, and running Linux straight. I do miss the build quality of my
MBP, though.

~~~
acdha
I'm curious, what do you have problems with? For me it's been smooth sailing
since around 10.5 or so - and the only OSS problems were with projects which
assumed everyone would use Linux with a certain version of GCC & autotools.

~~~
duaneb
Their reorganization of XCode into an app bundle was really, really annoying
and, frankly, makes zero sense; making the command line tools an extra
download makes me suspicious that the developers they care about are Mac/iOS
developers (as opposed to general purpose ones).

~~~
CrLf
"makes me suspicious that the developers they care about are Mac/iOS
developers"

No surprise here. It is very clear that the Mac is becoming two things:

1\. Just a bigger iPad that isn't too awkward to use where your average
consumer can actually create stuff (videos, photos, etc.); 2\. A development
machine to create iOS apps.

Everything else is an afterthought.

~~~
duaneb
Sigh; I might have to switch back to FreeBSD for development. The only things
tying my into my mac right now are tax software and word processing. Word
processing I can just convert to TeX, but the tax software is an annoyance.

So, UNIX development is still there, but I'm worried that in the future I'll
need to pay a developer license to run unsigned code (or something equally
ludicrous). The interfaces are going down the tube - look at Notes, or iCal.
If iOS keeps influencing OSX, we'll see tape reels and bookshelves in XCode.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Windows 8's Metro actually looks better
designed than modern Apple software.

------
cicloid
TL;DR Linkbait/Apple is evil because they removed old software.

The article and some of his comments show a very narrow mindset. Thinking on
how evil is every corporation, just for being a corporation.

Apple didn't include X11 in order to not tie the releases to certification and
QA. In the other hand, many engineers on apple still work on XQuartz.
Releasing more fast via the XQuartz

Everyone that really depended on it, has known for the last couple of years.
And even beforehand talked about on the last rc's for Mountain Lion was a
topic very active discussed with documentation readily available on Apple
support site (<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293>).

And the same narrow-minded people replying with comments "my TASCAM (any
hardware really) doesn't work on ML", blame the hardware vendors, they did
have many months to do testing and porting of software to the latest release
or at least inform your customers. It wasnt like ML was a surprise release and
the same will happen with Windows 8.

Years of blaming that could be solved by RTFM.

~~~
justin66
> TL;DR Linkbait/Apple is evil because they removed old software. The article
> and some of his comments show a very narrow mindset. Thinking on how evil is
> every corporation, just for being a corporation.

What is the value in giving a synopsis like this which is completely wrong?
The author discusses his feelings a couple of times in the article, impugns
Apple's motives not once, doesn't discuss corporatism, and uses the word "bad"
precisely once to describe his experience here. He's not hyperbolic enough to
use the word "evil," that was you.

Users who depend on both X11 and Apple's RSS support (all ten of them) are
going to find this upgrade a bit of a pain. That's not reflective of a narrow
mindset, it's reflective of an unusual use case.

~~~
cicloid
The thing is, nobody is forcing them to upgrade. Except for the RSS thing that
was a dubious way to handle it (maybe being more clear on ways to get out a
OPML file).

Apple did inform, maybe in a way too opaque. But they did inform it.

On the topic of corporations. I may not interpret it as americans have the
"corporations" rhetoric. But the feeling I have as a whole, from the author
(Anthony and comments) was very paranoid.

Even calling the backend of OSX has "The Terminal" was very narrow on his
scope to explain the problem of this trend and what we loose.

From where I see it, let XQuartz (partially supported/founded by Apple),
Google (as seen on iOS6 Youtube.app removal), do it outside the OSX/iOS
release schedule, even Apple did it for the iBooks apps and Podcast app.

Having old software stalling progress is just bad for all.

------
zdw
X11 never really fit in anyway. It was nearly always a special extra package
to add in, and frequently lagged behind the open source effort they sponsored.

The upside of this, much like with Java and other similar unbundlings, is that
updates to the software are no longer in lockstep with OS releases.

In the end, we get a lower likelihood of it being installed, but a higher
likelihood that it's up to date.

------
swdunlop
That is a lot of excitement for something that was available at
<http://xquartz.macosforge.org/> on release day. I didn't even notice or care
until I realized that libpng's headers were considered part of X11.

When Apple introduced X11.app, I regarded it a tactic to get UNIX developers
onto the platform. At the time, MacOS developers were sticking to Carbon like
glue, and I think that by improving the POSIX compatibility and adding X11,
Apple was trying to get other communities excited about OSX.

X11.app did not integrate well with OSX, let alone Apple's shrinkwrap vision
of the Desktop. I'm not surprised to see they treat it like an optional add on
package, and I am somewhat relieved to see it continue as an open source
project with support and recognition by Apple. It's the right way to handle a
legacy framework in my opinion.

As for the loss of RSS from Mail.app and Safari.app. Srsly? People use that
who don't have a six paragraph definition for "semantic web"?

------
jwbaker
I guess there's nobody left at Apple who believed in the spirit of this
advertisement:

<http://www4.macnn.com/macnn/articles/unixad.jpg>

Now that the Apple no longer needs to be saved by dorks, the dorks are being
thrown overboard.

~~~
mikeash
That ad is from 2002. X11 didn't ship with Mac OS X until 2003. Either they
never believed in the spirit of that advertisement and the whole thing was a
sham, or built-in X11 support isn't actually necessary for it.

------
gizmo686
I had a simmilar experience with Ubuntu a few week ago, when I updated from
10.04 to 12.10. I was already using Awesome as my window manager so I wasn't
exposed to most of there UI overhaul, but somewhere during the update they
removed the battery indicator applet.

~~~
keithpeter
Suggestion, try the XFCE battery indicator: might bring a panel with it, I
don't use Awesome.

------
michael_miller
This is a very rational decision for Apple to make. 99% of their customers
don't even know what X11 is, yet most of them will be downloading Mountain
Lion from the Mac App Store. Not bundling X11 saves most users 70MB of
unnecessary download.

~~~
jwbaker
It's been some time since Apple shipped the X11 package by default. You've had
to download it yourself. They're not saving anything by removing it from
people's computers

------
im_dario
I was just developing with headless gem [0] in a new open data project [1]
(shameless plug) and I found this "issue".

For the record, I come from a hardcore Linux background (no Windows in my home
;)

Nicely handled by Apple, instead of permanently remove it and leave no trace,
they shipped a "xstub" binary, symlinked all the binaries in /usr/X11/bin to
it and make it show a clear way to install XQuartz.

IMHO, it is not a big deal, as some already pointed.

[0] <https://github.com/leonid-shevtsov/headless>

[1] <https://github.com/qomun/pipar>

------
pnathan
A general desktop computer shouldn't be an iPad. I think that's the central
issue here.

Some people just want an iOS experience - some people want to use the full
depth and power of a general purpose computer.

------
vvhn
interestingly, X11 is part of the "open sourced" part ( almost all of the UNIX
underpinnings ) of OS X. Can you change what goes into the distribution CD
provided by ubuntu ?

~~~
keithpeter
<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization>

Sort of. I've never done this myself.

------
duaneb
Well, it's a click away - just like java. Not much worse than having to
install it from one of the non-install DVDs that came with the OS.

------
mmphosis
<http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/>

------
NelsonMinar
Apple should remove Terminal.app and replace it with a stub that prompts you
to install iTerm2.

~~~
derleth
Apple may well decide that the Macintosh should go back to being a Macintosh
and remove Terminal.app _period_.

It's undeniably what Jobs would do.

~~~
snowwrestler
Jobs was in charge of Apple as they shipped numerous versions of Terminal.app
for a period of over 10 years. If he was going to remove it, he would have.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
I wonder if Apple risks losing its technical (i.e. programmer) users. If OS X
stops feeling like a UNIX-like OS to technical users, and they move away, OS X
may receive less attention from developers. And that won't be good for the
platform.

~~~
ctdonath
Apple went to great lengths to get OS X validated as a full-on UNIX. To what
degree do developers in general confuse UNIX itself with good-riddance mis-
associations therewith which cause unnecessary friction against modern
development? (Can we drop vi already? fine paradigm unto itself, but counter
to any other 21st-century UI...)

~~~
super_mario
Except vi is part of POSIX specification and hence you can not be certified
UNIX without it.

<http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/toc.htm>

------
0x0
One can only hope the developers inside Apple still enjoy using the terminal
and "unix subsystem" in their work, enough to keep these things going into the
future. I mean, xcode still needs to shell out to run gcc/llvm/clang, right?

~~~
ef4
I'm not sure that it does. In fact the Mountain Lion upgrade deleted the
command line toolchain from my machine. I had to go into Xcode and manually
tell it to re-download the "Command Line Tools" optional extension.

~~~
0x0
That's just the stuff that goes in /usr/bin, right? Aren't the files always
present in
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin
etc.?

~~~
shadowfiend
Correct. And you can always run it using xcrun (e.g. xcrun clang).

------
Rhymenocerus
X11? Do I need that for my Mac to get on Facebook?

------
shimsham
Hacker News?

------
rimantas
Stupid article. Don't read.

~~~
ibotty
Stupid comment. Don't read.

~~~
nodegree_throw
_sigh_ more and more like Reddit everyday.

~~~
gonzo
Stupid Reddit. Don't read.

------
rogerchucker
My question is this.. why the fuck does Apple ship Photobooth, Mail, Safari,
Garageband, iMovie and iDVD with my OS and make it super bloated, when I have
no bloody use for those?

Why can't we just go to Apple's website and install it if we want to?

------
franzus
How was that quote again?

"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there
is nothing left to take away"

~~~
brudgers
<Godwin's Law>

First they came for the communists...

</Godwin's Law>

------
smallsharptools
This is just stupid. Who copies text from one terminal to another. You are
missing the entire point of the command-line and piping. This is clearly a
novice who just wants easy access to X11 because he does not know how to use
the command-line tools properly.

I manage remote FreeBSD servers with just Terminal. It is perfectly fine. And
I never copy and paste text in terminal windows.

~~~
mikeash
People with different workflows are stupid!

