Fidonet127

Intel takes aim at Apple, instead shoots itself in the dongle

Fidonet127

March 2021

DavidEsrati said:

I hope it wakes the morons at Apple up.
My 2020 Mac Book pro barely qualifies as pro.
A "pro computer" that I need a dongle to hook up to an external projector, monitor or ethernet.
A pro computer that ditched the brilliant mag safe power cable.
A pro computer than no longer allows me to stick an SD card in it.
A pro computer that requires a dongle to connect a USB A jump drive- the industry standard way of walking files.

And- they gouge me on the price of RAM, Storage by 3 to 10x what everyone else charges.
With no user replaceable parts- and barely serviceable.

And that was my Intel machine.
Now- my M1 MacMini- can't connect to my Drobo- which is a 72 TB paperweight.
Gee - thanks Apple.

You keep saying that your Drobo is a paperweight on several threads. Drobo says their Dashboard software is compatible with ASi Macs as of November. https://myproducts.drobo.com/retrieve/s3/knowledge/AA/New%20Mac%20M1.html

Second, you can share your drive from your Intel Mac.

Third, if you have unusual hardware, always check to make sure it is compatible.

My ThunderBay is compatible.

Intel is now making 'Mac versus PC' ads with Justin Long

Fidonet127

March 2021

techconc said:

Fidonet127 said:

Then Arcade has also helped the gaming.

I hope that was meant as sarcasm... Apple Arcade has largely been a joke thus far. Lots of horrible Indie titles that nobody cares about. Probably the closest it gets to an A list game is Oceanhorn 2. Apple doesn't get gaming and they never have. One can only hope that rumors of Apple taking this serious and commissioning some real games will come true. Until then, Apple just isn't a great platform for gaming. In that respect, this ad from Intel was effective as it hits home for many Apple users.

On the other hand, Intel recognizing Apple as their main competition now is definitely a sign of weakness and a tacit admission that Intel is now the underdog in this competition.

To base something on A list games is short sided. A list games are not the only games out there. I would say the vast majority of games are not A list games. I'm not sure A list games are worth the massive investments needed to produce them. I've spent many hours on the games within Apple Arcade and more games keep getting added.

Prolific indie game porter won't develop for macOS anymore

Fidonet127

January 2021

elijahg said:

For a long time this kind of thing has been worrying me. I have some of the games on that list, and I hope it's not the start of a trend for games and other apps.

There is a disproportionately large number of games and cross platform apps available for macOS considering its market share, which is great news for us Mac users. But Apple doesn't make it easy to be an indie coder on macOS. They're so out of touch with the indie devs, and how common it is for indie devs to write apps as a secondary income to their main jobs. Apple just assumes devs have unlimited resources to follow their whims to the Next Big Thing™ and an expectation that devs will always follow along, they unfortunately seem to take them for granted - but in a lot of cases it was these very devs that stuck with Apple though its dark ages.

To name a few recent anti-developer Apple policies:
Apple's regular deprecation of significant cross platform technologies (OpenGL)
Their silence on deprecated technologies and APIs (little more than a warning that the "API is deprecated in <macOS version>")
Announcement of something as the Next Big Thing (VR, external GPUs) and then silence on the subject, and eventual dropping of support.
Onerous App Store rules with arbitrary application of those rules.

Also, and it's a big one - Apple's expectation that devs spend a disproportionate amount of time on Apple's proprietary APIs like Metal, for a platform whose marketshare is pretty tiny. With a lot of open source apps, engineering and games especially, OpenGL is key. Apple has always lagged far behind with OpenGL support, but a few macOS versions ago it was deprecated. OpenGL support makes supporting macOS little more than a tickbox. But the threat of OpenGL's removal resulting in a rewrite and subsequent maintenance of two graphics engine branches is simply untenable for most devs, so the result is macOS support is dropped. So ultimately Apple ends up harming Mac users, again.

I'd hardly call Metal a tiny market share as you have iPhones, iPads, AppleTVs, and Macs. You are talking over a billion devices. I'd say Apple is listening to devs, as they are making it easier to run Apps across their devices. With the ability to run iPad/iPhones apps natively on the Mac, plus Catalyst etc, this should enable more developers to develop for the Mac. The deprecation of OpenGL and requirement of Metal has been in effect for years now. Prior to that, Apple as warned about requirement of Metal and deprecation of OpenGL for years.

Developer devises workaround to run ARM Windows on M1 Mac

Fidonet127

November 2020

I think some seem to be glossing over that, rather than Windows will never run on Apple Silicon, that there is many efforts to run Windows or Windows programs on Apple Silicon. As to Apple will or will not be successful with Apple Silicon, US Military/Retired/Veteran shopping has the Mini 8gb/512gb version as “bestseller,” and they can’t seem to keep the Air in stock. One day they have it and for many days it is not available for sale. People buying these Macs are not buying them to run Windows.