wizard69

DavidAlGregory said:

The fact that 4 thought no privacy protection is OK is disturbing.

Yeah but it highlights why we as a nation must work diligently to protect all of the Bill of Rights.  Just recently i read that the ACLU has been considering dropping freedom of speach defenses.   This just highlights how warped the concept of liberty has become, they dont realize that the freedom to speak your mind is an essential freedom.  

Im actually hoping that this indicates that the court will start to extend more protections to businesses.  Not just to protect the business but to prevent mining for personal data.  

Sadly the one app i need to work here (Numbers) never gets any compatibility updates to make importing excel files easier.   Generally my luck with excel import is near zero.   At times we are talking simple functions like ISANUM().    It is really frustraiting when we keep seeing all this junk added.  

I really cant agree with this article, the lack of hardware at WWDC was a major blunder as far as im concerned.  Will it doom Apple?   Probably not but it will cause more customers to look else where for hardware.  

The problem is this, there is no rational justification for not having a new Mini to offer up.   Suitable hardware has existed for years now.    Considering that the last update 4 years ago was marginal one can only feel that Apple is giving the desktop customer base the finger.   Frankly i dont care if they have some super ARM based Mac Mini just waiting to debut.  While i would love such an ARM based Mac the fact is an up to date Intel based Mac would last a long time.     However the Mini is just one nide in a long suffering. Mac lineup where they seem to be hell bent on building machines nobody wants.   Any Mac announcement at WWDC would have put the company in a better light.  

We then have another issue which is the fact that this years coming OS releases are focused on performance and stability.   That focus is a good thing dont get me wrong there, the problem is the lack of any really new tech made for a boring WWDC keynote.  Whole keynote could have been condensed down to 30-40 minutes.  A hardware reveal, even new iPads, would have done much to remove the tedious cruft from the keynote.    Instead we got far to much time devoted to features for kids.  


Speaking of iPads and even laptops Apple should realize that there is a huge interest in WWDC from college kids.   Considering that the back to school buying season is about to start, WWDC is a perfect time to debut such hardware.  

Maybe most of the people in this forum dont care but i got so frustrated with Apples treatement of Mac owners and a bigger screws up with a repair that i went out and bought an HP with the intent to give Linux a roll to see if it can effectively replace a Mac for my usage.   Frankly i spent far less money than i would have with an Apple baseed device and gained a significantly better processor and i know this is shocking but i also got USB ports that i use.   Contraste this with Mac Book Airs or even the 13" MBP which could have filled the slot.  MBA's are so outdated that they are a ripoff at the price they are marketted at.  MBP's got the Apple treatment and thus dropped out of consideration.  


Dooomed maybe not but with their current attitude the Mac lineup is certainly suffering.  The lack of updates at WWDC just rubs salt into wounds that a customer base shouldnt have to suffer through.  

Koll3man said:

So Mac OS will become an even worse platform for games. 
Mac users are lucky to get ports for AAA games, there is no way game developers will waste time with Metal

Actually i see the opposite.   Game developers are likeky to be the only ones to make the switch to Metal.   There are a couple of reasons.  
#.   First OpenGL was never really designed for gaming in the first place 
#.  Performance is the other big issue.  Games get a huge speed up from these new GPU interfaces.   Vulkan, which is very similar to Meral, is already widely accepted for games.  
#.  Lastly just about all iOS development is now on Metal anyways. 

rcfa said:

As much as performance is great, part of the appeal of the Mac was superior compliance with open industry standards.

Looks like Apple feels iOS’ market penetration gives it enough clout to start acting like M$ and simply become ever more proprietary. Sad.

Apple could have either worked within standards bodies to move OpenGL/OpenCL towards Metal, create an OpenGL/OpenCL API on top of Metal, or opened up Metal like they opened up Swift for industry-wide adoption.

My understanding is that several companies including Apple and AMD did in fact pushed for significant improvements to OpenGL but got massive push back from companies heavily involved in OpenGL.  The problem is that many smallish companies are heavily invested in OpenGL and simply can mot rapidly adapt to code breaking changes.  Out of this conflict came Metal and AMDs solution.   Both are effectively replacements for OpenGL but also support apps OpenGL was never designed for.