Do we need a new Pro-Mac revolution -- against Apple!?!?
 

There have been several complaints on this venerable pro-Mac site to the effect that there is a drought of new hints on the Mac platform.
Indeed, there is such a drought..
..but the fault lies, i'm sorry to say, squarely with Apple.

Snow Leopard (MacOSX 10.6) was just a 'fine-tuned' version of Leopard (10.5).
It was explicitly sold to us as a 'no new features' upgrade to Leopard; and i bought it -- happily, i might add...

But i'm also a member of the OS X developer program, and i've been waiting for several months now for a totally, completely, utterly, insignificant update: i'm talking about 10.6.5...
Apple has released a new developer seed only every two weeks with every single seed's release notes saying that there were no known issues, and that Apple was working on OpenGL and '3D' in general...

Well, it's no secret that Apple has fallen way, way, way behind with regard to OpenGL performance.

I do realize that iOS is a really big deal for Apple these days, and they probably could give two $#1t$ about Mac sales, and it's probably useless to say something to the effect that Mac users drove initial sales of iPhones and iPods.. That iOS is really just a slimmed-down version of the Mac OS...

But it is now becoming painfully clear that Apple, blinded by the quick-buck, simply has no more time or resources to spend on the Mac...
The situation is so dire that there is not even the slightest rumor about the beyond-expected Mac OS X 10.7..
Is there even a code-name for it? Maybe it's just 'kitty-cat'..

The message from Apple is loud and clear: iOS is in; MacOS is out.
i guess we're all supposed to get our iPads and figure out how to do our content development right on those.
Maybe to complete the deal, Apple could just release an iOS SDK that'll run on iOS, thereby finally freeing it from the burden of the 'truck'-like Mac OS..
Or maybe the future that Apple sees for the Mac is simply: more iOS development..

Seriously, Apple, i think i can speak for an increasing amount of Mac users out there when i say: 'what the heck is going on with Mac development?'.
Has Apple completely given up?
Are computers 'sooo-like-an-iOS-version-ago'?

It really is time for Apple to dazzle us with a (really) new-and-improved Mac OS X! Seriously: i just wrote an article on how easy it is to install ubuntu on my MacBook Pro; but maybe that's Apple's plan for the 'computer': just let the extremely capable ubuntu take over (or maybe Windows 7, while we're at it)...

In any case, it's time to finally release 10.6.5 so i can finally publish my crappy hint..
Even though there is no improvement whatsoever in OpenGL, or 3D in general...

Cheers,
Peter

You're right Peter. The Mac is dead, and Apple knows it. That's why they haven't updated the iMac, the MacBook Pro, the Mini, or the Mac Pro since...July 2010. No updates in 2 1/2 months - unacceptable! Dead.

Why? Snow Leopard is a great OS. What kind of dazzling do you need?

Chris

The mobile market is just what is hot now (beats me why, I don't even like the damn things). Looks like pretty much everyone's desktop stuff is on cruise control while they battle for position in the new markets.

Couldn't have said it better.

I think we have reached a point where there really isn't much more to add. Hardware has been plenty fast enough for years, motherboards accomodate more memory and peripherals than most users can afford, monitors are huge - dominating desks in many cases, the software has features on top of features and they just did a performance rewrite.

Unless someone comes up with a Star Trek interface I'm perfectly happy with my 24". But I see room in the mobile market - Wifey wants a tablet halfway between the Pod and the Pad, and wireless recharging on a weather-sealed tablet would be über-nifty.

Put it this way: I'm thinking "wait till 2011" about this. Didn't Apple release SL in '09? Didn't SL feature near-full 64-bits, Cocoa Finder, etc? Are those not updates, and are they not recent?

Maybe Apple's waiting for SL to become really old - like 3 years. Then we'll cry out for 10.7 and they will Save the Day!! :)

Yes & no - SL will do 64-bit, but it's only the default setting on XServes.

Full 64-bit won't benefit the bulk of the user base anyway, just like 4 cores won't make your machine 4x faster.

iTunes needs 64 bits. Reminds me, wasn't iTunes also made for the Mac? And a darker thought: Is it a looking glass into 10.7? (I hope not, for design reasons.)

My iTunes says 32bit. Individual programs can be 32 or 64, but if the kernel is 64 bit all the drivers must match.

The reason for the decline in new hints has been explained: OS X is a mature version, and there is very little left to discover. That's hardly Apple's fault.

I find it hard to take you seriously as a developer when you say there were "no new features" in Snow Leopard, compared to Leopard. Nearly all the changes in 10.6 were of interest and huge importance to developers, rather than end-users.

A great many people seem to have difficulty accepting that reality is not black or white: why do you think that Apple can only concentrate on ONE element of its business? The people who work on OS X are not the same people that work on iOS.

Really, you're complaining about a lack of rumours about 10.7, and sub-optimal OpenGL. Apple is well-known for its secrecy, so any rumours are no more than gossip. I could give you some rumours about what I think might be in 10.7, and they are no less reliable than any others.
If you have problems with OpenGL on OS X, then as a developer, you'll know how to contact Apple about that. If it's such a big deal, then I'm sure you're not the only one complaining.
I've got several OpenGL programs that run very well on my 2006 iMac.

There is a lot of third-party software out there that breaks whenever a new version of OS X is released; there has also been the Intel/PPC transition. Apple very often draws a line in the sand and leaves people behind, whereas Windows does ensure compatibility with very old software (admittedly, to a fault).

Snow Leopard is just over a year old, and you're already saying that it is too old!!!!!
I imagine that some people might like some stability and permanence on their platform -- developers and users -- rather than constant change that requires code rewrites and updates.

In the immortal words of Queen Victoria: "Change? What do you want to change things for? Things are bad enough as they are!"

A lot of stuff in NSFileManager.h and others is deprecated in 10.6. Xcode has been modified everywhere with more and more stuff. Grand Central Dispatch, 64-bits, all that. Removal of AppleScript Studio. No, there were no major features to end users. However 10.6 changed a lot of programmatic stuff.

Ah, well... some people aren't going to be satisfied until they have a computer that can wipe their bum for them, and then they'll complain that the company-provided paper is too rough.

The hardware has (for the moment) pretty much plateaued - even the gaming deficit that macs have has less to do with hardware weaknesses and more to do with the fact that game programmers tend to write hardware dependent code with PC boxes in mind. The system software has a few weaknesses, but it's still miles ahead of the competitors. There's not much to be done with the system until there's a technological breakthrough that opens some new potentials or a conceptual design breakthrough (that's kind of what's happening with iOS right now - the system is relatively new, and developers are still fleshing out the full range of possibilities in it).

I sincerely doubt that apple is writing off the computer market: worst case scenario, they are considering amping up the iPad as an eventual replacement for laptops. laptops and iPads have overlapping market niches, so that's a possibility. but the iOS (as well as the technical specs of the iPad) have a long way to go before they will be an adequate replacement for a modern laptop, even for normal users. Power users (like most of the people reading this) have higher demands for control and performance that the iPad isn't even close to satisfying.

I would like to see resolution independence in the next Mac OS. (i.e., and/or some way to increase font size system-wide without other graphic entities getting fuzzy or grainy).

Oh well, that's a feature request since... System 7.0? Wonder if we ever see that..

i have spent the last 6 weeks having to work on a PC running XP . i had been told that this was a very stable system. it has been a complete nightmare.

i cant wait to get back to my mac running snow leopard & i thank apple for all the work they have put into building such a brilliant system. to the ones who are not happy with the advancement of OSX - try working on something else & then thank your lucky stars that you have a mac. no doubt 10.6.5 will come when its ready to be released.

i for one - have been mega impressed with the growth of OSX over the last 5 years - it has been a joy to behold & has made my life much much easier.

when 10.7 finally comes - no doubt it will be another giant leap from a company that thankfully has not lost the power to innovate.

I have found XP and W7 to be better than the monkey in the middle – Vista. ;)

I don't think we're worried about the future of Mac. Software updates come every few weeks. There is no shortage of Mac apps out there (prove it to yourself if you wish).

What I would like to see, though, is a Mac OS Touch, made for use with SmartBoards. They (http://smarttech.com/) are all over our classrooms, and they are tiring to use in a way. Since SmartBoards were made for touch, simulating a mouse is a lot tougher.

Yeah, that would be nice. It's been promised for quite some time now. I wonder if the development of the retina display will be the thing that finally makes this happen.

Oh, and as far as the Mac goes, I still expect the desktop computer in general to go the way of the mainframe; that is, left in special purpose niches. Portable and ubiquitous computing is the obvious way things are evolving. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.

I don't know about that... private users will probably continue to shift to portable devices, but desktops are very appealing to institutional and corporate entities: more power for your buck, easier to secure to a fixed location, harder to break, more flexible with respect to expansion. any place where you have large numbers of people chained to their desks for 8 hours a day you're going to find large numbers of low-end desktop computers. Where do you think the PC world gets most of their sales? If Apple gets out of the desktop business it won't be because no one wants desktops, it'll be because Apple can't build a desktop that appeals to the (admittedly skewed) priorities of the corporate workplace.

You mean BACK to mainframes. Cloud computing is basically dumb terminals time-sharing, all over again.

Personally, I don't want my data on anyone else's machines. I don't email it; and I don't put it on a file storage service. (Currently doing a PhD and the work has commercial value.) But then I'm not everyone.

Clouds are nebulous. :rolleyes:

... what happened to the OP?

I am still waiting on my Quad-core Mac mid tower. I don't want an all-in-one per se, and I don't need a Mac Pro. I want a mid-tower with a i5 or i7, 6 gigs of RAM, and an actual decent video card.

Apple has always been behind on the video card market. I have steam on both my Macs and my PCs. All my steam games on the Mac get significantly less frames per a second. It is totally playable, but not as good.

I have always wanted a pro-sumer Mac desktop. I like my iMacs at work in my office. They are nice. However, my work buys that stuff for me. If I were to go out today and buy a Mac, I'd probably buy a mini, but to be honest I could build an equivalent mini for way cheaper.

As far as the OS goes. I think it is pretty solid, but could probably take on some UI tweaks. Allowing for manual setting of resolutions, font sizes, window sizes, etc. A system roll back would be nice too. Like if you apply an update that breaks tons of stuff, the ability to roll back. I guess time machine does this if you backup your whole system, but to be honest I don't like TM all that much. I have already had bad experiences with it, when users use TM to back up their own data and then I have to restore it for them. A system roll back should be different than a back up.

…could take on some UI tweaks.

How about someone updates the CoreUI files?

Most likely dragged off by Apple Security (the little-known iSpy division). I expect he's off somewhere being deprogrammed, and will return with a new, more user-friendly interface. I've heard rumors they use circuit-boarding these days; I'm not too sanguine with the moral ramifications of that.

hyuck, hyuck, hyuck...

I would also love to see better enterprise support. Print servers, more robust group policy, better enterprise calendar system (iCal server is a huge pain), and better chit chat with other existing enterprise products.

That though, is all one giant pipe dream. I would love to see it though, and it would make my professional value go way up.

It appears we're going to find out more about what's going on Oct. 20th.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1548...nt_invite.html

It can't come soon enough. :)

sweet!

*adding in more characters to meet the limit

Lion? I can't wait to see its heart. :rolleyes: Probably 64-bit.

Some sort of pagan ritual I'm not familiar with? ;)

I had hoped they would avoid using Lion for any of the OSs, but hey, what are you going to do? I would have preferred Lynx, because it's fun to say. Or maybe Ocelot!

I hate to come back to this topic, but it looks like 10.7 is beginning the "let's assimilate Mac OS X into iOS" process. App Store? Home screens? What?

If Apple is going to turn the Mac into a giant iPad with more powerful components, then I can't agree with that.

Lion, eh?

I'm sure all of you are delighted to see me back here ;-)

But, in my defense, i may not have expressed myself the best way possible (far from it..), but i *Love* the Mac. Always have (since the first one).
Of course, i have an iPhone 4 -- and i really love it too...

But, deep down, i still think iOS is 'gadgety' -- meaning it makes for really cool-looking gadgets..

Computers are still, to me, unparalleled for content creation: in so many ways, iOS lets you enjoy the stuff that was *created* on MacOS


So… Lion.. Did you know that's the fattest of the large felines? Must be because of all those useless, slow, and redundant gooey additions it got in its diet... ;-)


Basically, the one 'great new feature' is what amounts to some intern's summer project: make the iOS home screen work on a Mac, no matter how irrelevant it is, or how graphically hideous (and slow)…

No mention of new, or even just improved, technologies -- like the universally demanded expanded functionality for QuickLook, or an expansion of OpenCL..
I know all of you think i'm wrong in criticizing the Mac's OpenGL implementation, but X-Plane (a pro-Mac software if there ever was one) runs almost twice as fast on a Mac when booted in Windows, rather than in MacOS!!
That is just plain wrong, and the fault lies squarely on Apple for its poor OpenGL and its weak GPU drivers.

At least, you can tell from the new iLife apps that Lion is moving towards a matte 'solid-scrollbar' UI (as was expected); this means that, despite the aforementioned iOS transplant, Apple understands that the best UI is the one that occupies the least space, time, and resources, all while getting the job done ever faster and easier.

So.. i'm sure i've made more enemies -- which is really, really not my goal here: i just want to open some honest, constructive 'tough-love' discussion about our oh-so-beloved platform, the Mac..

I hope some constructive discussion comes from this ridiculously hot-headed, drunken post…

Cheers!
Peter

PS: still no 10.6.5... Even thought the last three dev releases have been flawless, but i guess iOS's AirPrint (or whatever it's called) is more important than addressing actual Mac-related issues...
OK, i promise, no more drunk-talk from me... tonight anyway...