cloudguy

VaporStain said:

Pay $4.99 for a month of “Entertainment” on Apple TV+ ? or buy a Beer?

Decisions decisions.   

Beer me.

This won't exactly broaden the base of Apple TV viewers. They just keep piling on with more of the same stuff. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Disney+ all have content to attract a wide variety of viewers. Sure, Netflix has Patriot Act and Chelsea Handler but they also have Adam Sandler, Kevin James and action movies like Extraction. Disney+ has Hamilton but they also have the Avengers movies. Amazon Prime: they have the usual awards bait stuff but they also have Jack Ryan. So long as their programming is dominated by things that Apple's own HR department wants to watch to pick up ideas on what to include in their training videos, Apple is going to have to keep giving the service away for free.

dewme said:

Still waiting for an iOS port.

Huh? Apple never has and never will allow the execution of arbitrary code on any version of iOS. Security reasons. So no IDE except Apple's own Swift will ever be allowed on iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs etc. because you won't be able to run any code that you write on it. That was one of the main reasons why so many of us cried foul at Apple's thoroughly dishonest "an iPad can replace your PC" ad campaign. 

So if you want to run VSCode or anything else on your tablet, get a Chromebook. Or if you want to pay twice as much for no particular reason, get a Microsoft Surface. VSCode runs on the x86 and ARM versions of both.

Interestingly enough you CAN execute arbitrary code on Android, which would allow you to program on it - especially in C/C++ - but there hasn't been a real effort to take advantage of it, even on the expensive devices offered by Samsung. (And now that you can get a full Debian-like Linux container in ChromeOS, there won't be.)

VSCode isn't "Microsoft's long-standing app development software." That would be Visual Studio. VSCode is a free, lightweight open source tiny subset of Visual Studio that was released in order to stop the bleeding of scripting programmers - i.e. Javascript and Python - from Visual Studio to competing free and open source scripting IDEs. The older IDEs - Visual Studio, NetBeans, Eclipse etc. - were designed around full blown programming languages like C++ and Java. But for scripting languages full blown IDEs were overkill. In addition in some instances the IDEs were proprietary software that cost a ton of money and aren't available on all platforms (see Visual Studio Enterprise). 

Basically, Javascript is replacing Java for a ton of client (Angular and Express) and server (node.js) for a bunch of applications ... the MEAN stack is now supplanting the LAMP stack - the rage 10 to 15 years ago - for ecommerce sites. (C/C++ was never widely used for web servers and applications, though it is very possible to do so, and Microsoft has made some attempts to push it with their IIS web servers.) And then you have Python and R used for data science. Microsoft was losing a huge chunk of the next generation of programmers, so they created and open-sourced VS Code to get them back. Fortunately for them VS Code is excellent software so that plus the Microsoft name worked like a charm: it is the de facto standard. Including for people who are now using it for Java and C++ instead of Visual Studio. 

"with the launch thought to introduce lower-priced options that could eventually be used with the Mac Pro or eGPU solutions."

Wait what? The Apple switch from Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs to their own integrated CPUs and GPUs lasts two years. It started in November 2020. Meaning that there is only 18 months left. While Apple is rumoured to have one final run of Intel-based Mac Pro and iMac Pro workstations on the way while they work out the bugs with the M2 and M2X CPUs that are capable of replacing the Intel Core i9 and Xeon CPUs that currently inhabit them, you would be absolutely nuts to actually go out and spend all that cash on one. Case in point: the resale value of Intel-based Macs is already plummeting! https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-mac-price-crash-of-2021/ 
So even the idea of buying an Intel Mac now, using it for a couple of years and then flipping it while in still "like new" status and using the cash for an Apple Silicon Mac Pro in early 2023 makes no sense, and getting the AMD eGPU with it even less so. 

Apple has finite resources and organizational focus. Realize Macs have been playing second fiddle to iPhones and iPads for awhile now because those units bring in far more money. Indeed, these days Macs probably come in fourth behind services (which also generate far more revenue than Macs) and wearables (where the Apple Watch and the AirPod give Cupertino rare market place dominance). So you would be absolutely nuts to spend $6000 or more on a device running an outdated software platform. Proof: because you won't do it. No, you want everyone else to do it so Apple's market share doesn't take a nosedive. You want them to be the ones to "trust Apple" when they spend 10 seconds reading boilerplate teleprompter-speech on how they will continue to offer world class support to their Intel-based Mac customers ... before they pivot to talking about how the future is ARM and everyone on x86 is going to be left behind. (And given that Apple is the only company with viable ARM PC and workstation products and will be for the next 3-5 years ...)

Yeah, no. Only buy Apple's last batch of Intel-based machines if you are 100% comfortable replacing macOS with Windows 10 Workstation Pro or Ubuntu on them 3 years down the line. The former isn't that much of a problem - bootcamp will still be supported for awhile - but drivers and such will continue to be a big deal for the latter. Otherwise your platform is going to be an afterthought for a company that has the vast majority of is consumers and market share elsewhere (mobile, services, wearables) and regards your obsolete hardware platform a burden and a chore to develop for. 

lkrupp said:

I put this right up there with the paranoids who complain that their new iPhone battery health went from 100% to 99% in just a week. And let the journalistic terrorists splash their headlines that M1 Macs ‘die’ in a year. 

'Even so, just an official confirmation that it is examining the issue will probably go a long way to ease concerns -- even if Apple ends up determining there's no ultimate issue.”
 
Online yellow journalism is a cancer. Anybody can say anything and not have accountability. Just consider the Bloomberg bullshit about servers having tiny chips the Chinese military put on them so they can spy on Americans.

For goodness sakes. This isn't driven by the mythical anti-Apple tech journalists that you folks insist exist despite it being long proven that media and other creative professionals strongly prefer Macs - at one point they were practically the only ones using them - as well as iPads and iPhones. When was the last time you even saw a journalist mention Android (for example) that wasn't in the context of A. fragmentation B. malware C. lack of privacy and security D. lack of updates E. lack of apps or F. giving a review unit that was sent to them for free that they would never buy for personal use a midding review because of A-E?

Instead, this story is driven entirely by people who bought this device talking about it on social media. Since they bought this device with their own money you can assume that they are ardent fans of Apple devices. Also, issues like these are inevitable with first generation devices. Which Apple folks don't see too often because Apple 1. generally has a much smaller product lineup than other companies and B. generally only introduces products after the innovators went first, often by several years. But - yeesh - anyone remember the 1st generation iPhone? It was not the device that everyone - well 15% of the market anyway - now knows and loves. 

Right here: ARM-based PCs are a new thing. ARM-based mobile devices? Nope. ARM-based servers? Not really. But ARM-based laptops and desktops? The wilderness. You basically have ARM Chromebooks like the Lenovo Duet who use the same storage that is used in smartphones and tablets and you have Windows-on-ARM devices that A. also often uses mobile device storage like the 64 GB version of the Surface Go 2 and B. no one really buys anyway. These Macs are the first ARM-based PCs where their SSDs are being used for things like programming, data analytics and 8K video editing. By contrast the ARM-based Chromebooks are running PWAs and mobile apps (we haven't seen any Qualcomm 7CX or MediaTek M8195 Chromebooks capable of running anything more demanding than LibreOffice on Linux yet) and the Windows on ARM Chromebooks are running ... well they can't even emulate x86 applications yet so who knows what they are running. We don't even have ARM-based Chromeboxes (the same as a Mac Mini except running ChromeOS) or Windows-on-ARM desktops yet as prior to the M1 Macs that entire market was ChromeOS and Windows on ARM 2-in-1s (and 7 or 8 years ago, ARM-based ChromeOS netbooks that really were only capable of running the Chrome browser and PWAs that had only 16 GB of flash storage).

So Apple is doing something truly new here instead of trailing Samsung in smart watches and truly wireless earbuds, or training Amazon and Google in smart TV boxes and smart speakers. (Even there, the HomePod needed quite a few updates AND a second generation device to become competitive and relevant.) Even the iPod: preceding devices got the basics (storage, playback/pause, audio out) right and Apple's success was more of the first to nail the software/business model with iTunes. And when you do that, bugs like this on devices that have barely been commercially available for 3 months are going to happen.