Apple should stop selling four-year-old computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/4/12373776/2012-macbook-pro-still-alive-not-dead-why <comment><USER2> Anyone who buys a Macbook Pro today, before they're updated in the fall, will be able to use it for the next 3 years without issue. My Macbook Air was purchased in 2012 and is still fast enough that I probably won't replace it for another 2 years. People keep their computers longer now because they're fast enough. This has been true for the PC industry for at least 5 years now and it's why sales have been declining since they peaked in 2011 [1]. The year over year changes from Intel/AMD are incremental and I suspect Apple has decided they're not going to buy every iteration. It's even less important to get every chip now that Intel has stretched their development cycle from Tick- Tock to Process-Architecture-Optimization [2].

[1] [http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/56968e64c08a80492c8...](http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/56968e64c08a80492c8b794e-1200-900/20160113_pc_bi.png)

[2] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/10183/intels-tick-tock- seeming...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/10183/intels-tick-tock-seemingly- dead-becomes-process-architecture-optimization)

<comment><USER3> > Anyone who buys a Macbook Pro today, before they're updated in the fall, > will be able to use it for the next 3 years without issue.

It kind of depresses me that three years is considered a long lifetime for a computer.

<comment><USER4> Why, though? Lifetimes are dictated by the physical processes that govern wear, and computers wear out fast: we pump a whole lot of electrons through them, and because we want them to be faster and faster have made them less and less fault tolerant under heavy load.

Make no mistake: ever since the AT/XT days the useful lifetime of a computer has been in the three year range because of the nature of matter and the physics we exploit to make digital circuits do what they need to do. Can you still use a 20 year old computer that runs Word Perfect 5 on MS-DOS 6.22 and isn't really made to do much more? Of course. And of course, you'll still be able to run OSX Panther on a 2005 MacMini for years to come, but you can't use those things for anything new or modern, you've created a little time machine that can only do what we wanted to do in 1985, or 1995, or 2005, instead of in 2015 (or soon enough, 2025).

Most of us want to use those new programs that rely on new algorithms that require the faster hardware, or old algorithms that massively benefit from faster hardware - we want spreadsheets to take less than seconds, not more than minutes, for ever-more complex work; we want games that run smoothly, not "not at all" or at 1 or 2 frames per second; we want our internet browser to start when we tell it to, not after a period of time that is long enough to wonder whether it even started at all.

Things all have lifetimes, and for computers that lifetime's about 3 years, and has been for decades. On the upside, computers are ships of Theseus: most of the time, we can just swap out broken parts for new parts, including faster parts, so really the lifetime of a single, unadulterated, intact computer is three years, but with a few hundred bucks every three years, we can keep pulling it back into the modern age until at some point nothing of the original remains - and the lifetime of THAT computer is much, much longer.

<comment><USER5> Why 3 years? My MacBook Air 2012 runs Linux better than some brand new machines. As a browser and a ssh machine it's good enough.

My dad ran Ubuntu for a decade on my 13 year old workstation. He couldn't do anything I could do on my laptop. A Pentium IV with HT was good enough for his LaTeX and his MCMC simulations.

<comment><USER6> > Why 3 years? My MacBook Air 2012 runs Linux better than some brand new > machines.

Not if you compensate for how much extra you paid for it.

> As a browser and a ssh machine it's good enough.

So you're just offloading the needed upgrades to someone else, while still ALSO needing to maintain your own computer (though to a lesser degree).

Unless you need the extra battery capacity (how often do you need to work for several hours without being close to a plug?) then it's much simpler to just run everything locally. Plus you don't need an internet connection! Plus using an IDE or anything else graphical will actually be a bearable experience!

<comment><USER7> > Not if you compensate for how much extra you paid for it.

It's not how much you pay for your computer, but how much you spend per year, on average, that counts. If a computer does its job for twice as long as the other, it's reasonable to pay up to twice as much for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Last week I bought a new computer. And for the first time since 2002, it wasn't a Mac. I wanted a Mac Mini, but that's a tough buy when you can get something much smaller, more flexible, and more powerful in the PC realm. I wound up buying an Intel NUC and slapping Ubuntu Gnome on it.

Most surprisingly, Gnome 3 does not feel like a compromised choice in comparison to OS X. It's not a seamless experience by any means. That said, I'm really digging some of the UI choices they've made. It's a UX that's committed to a vision of how the user should interact with the computer.

I remember a time when the Mac also felt like a strongly opinionated experience, designed by and for humans. It no longer feels so. It feels aimless and stagnant, even regressive in some ways. It feels designed by committee rather than vision or voice. The changes do not seem to serve any higher purpose than making the UI look cool in screenshots. I miss the high- contrast controls, readable fonts, always-visible functionality, personable quirks, etc.

I still use a Mac all day at work, and I still respect it as a good tool for getting shit done, but I really wonder about the point of it. If I can pick up a free alternative like Ubuntu Gnome and actually feel happy and productive quickly, what's left to recommend the Mac? If Apple doesn't care any more, why should I?

(Alright, now y'all can light me up.)

<comment><USER9> I chuckled at your parting "y'all can light me up," but if Gnome on an Intel NUC meets your needs, you are indeed a happy man. (NUCs are on Newegg for around $386 right now.)

Here's what is most commonly mentioned that Linux "can't do". Maybe some things on this list haven't bitten you yet, but it's worth reviewing:

• Fewer games. It's not as bad as comparing Linux to Windows, but even Mac has games that don't have a Linux port. Wine is pretty impressive these days -- if you are willing to mess with the command line and config files and searching random internet posts for how to get the game to work.

• "Professional" software. Microsoft, Adobe, nVidia and Autodesk all openly refuse to support Linux. Whatever their reasons, it means that Linux users must do the format conversion to something that does run on Linux. Arguably that's a good thing because proprietary data formats mean archived data can't be opened in a decade, but day to day it's super painful.

• Driver issues #1: plugging random things in via USB. Linux has impressive driver support for things that are well understood. But the lesser well- standardized hardware (printers, scanners, wifi dongles, ...) may not work. Know before you buy. Windows again has it best, but knowing if it runs on Mac is usually printed on the packaging. (And Linux is not.)

• Driver issues #2: Actually Linux wins out if you're willing to wait a few years because Linux will gain driver support for quirky fringe hardware over time. macOS actually DROPS support for things over time.

• Driver issues #3: Very new hardware like VR headsets are going to be an adventure in cobbling together new kernels, the latest software versions built from source or downloaded from an unstable branch, ... [1]. Or, sometimes the answer is: nope, never going to get Linux support.

[1] [https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/first-steps-with- open...](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/first-steps-with-openvr-and- the-vive-on-linux.7229)

<comment><USER10> I agree entirely with everything on this list. Thankfully, there is a modern solution!

Buy the PC of your dreams, install Windows 10 on it, then install VMWare Workstation. Put the linux distro of your choice in vmware, enjoy! Everything will _just work_ , consistently, elegantly, and without hassle.

Play your games with Steam in Windows of course, and thanks to Windows handling all the drivers, you can enjoy issue-less plug-and-play with USB and everything else. Merely install the apps that only work in Windows.... in Windows, and keep the rest of the dev-work in the linux VM.

The only caveat I can think of, is that you don't get 2d GPU hardware acceleration, vmware will accelerate 3d, but not 2d for say, compiz. I usually turn off these random 2D type effects so I don't notice that. Virtualbox is an option of course, but it still doesn't feel solid enough to me. At some point Hyper-V will have enough GPU acceleration with vmconnect that Windows 10 Pro + Hyper-V will be plenty (I know it has RemoteX acceleration now, but afaik that's only for Windows Server...).

I've loved this solution so much, I actually copied my VM over to my Retina MacBook Pro so I can use the linux VM for development work on the go. OSX handles ensuring the wifi always works, and the VM sees it as a reliable hardwired connection, no issues.

After 15 years of being a hardcore OSX/Apple user(fanboi), I cannot be more happy with the past 18 months since switching to this configuration. Cheaper than the Apple ecosystem, and waaaay faster hardware.

<comment><USER11> Exactly my situation. I've been a 24x7 Linux/BSD desktop user since the Slackware 3.3 days but got too tired with all the issues.

I started dual booting an year ago and a few months ago switched for good.

Now I'm using Win10 and VMware Workstation 12.1 and some Fedora/CentOS VMs. 3D acceleration screams and my desktop just works.

Workload involves working with Linux servers all day, developing inside the VMs, etc. Everything else I do natively on Windows.

I wish it had turned out differently over these 10+ years (with a pure OSS desktop) but that's where I find myself today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They become sad after 5 years, I guess.

[http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2016/03/21/apple- hypocritical-...](http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2016/03/21/apple-hypocritical- insensitive-pc-users-old-pc/)

"There are over 600 million PCs in use today that are over five years old. This is really sad, it really is."

<comment><USER13> I have half a dozen desktop PCs from 2000-4 in use in my house. I had to update the graphics card, but a Core2-Dou at 3 GHz with a decent graphics card will run virtually every program in existence. Recently I went from 2.4GHz processor to 3GHz processors, 15 bucks on ebay ;-)

I don't get the obsession with notebooks. Why do I want to spend 4X the amount of money for something that last 4 years if I am lucky. For the <1% of time I am not working from my desk? In meeting I prefer people NOT to bring a notebook, this way they pay attention and I can get them out of the room and back to work faster.

<comment><USER14> > I don't get the obsession with notebooks. [...] For the <1% of time I am not > working from my desk?

It turns out, many people spend much more than 1% of their time not working from their desk.

<comment><USER15> When I had a desktop, I spent 99% of my time working from my desk.

I switched to a notebook in 2006, and now spend less than 20% of my time working at a desk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We've been pretty loyal buying Macs, but at this point we just cannot justify it anymore. We had a brief flirtation with giving people iPads instead of PCs, and that is better from a support / update point of view. But, the desire for a "real computer" is pretty strong with the generation of people we have on staff. At this point, I'm reading up on Chrome books and Chrome boxes to see how simple IT things (e.g. network login, server storage) are managed and can we use them with local not cloud storage[1]. We might do more Win 10, but Microsoft sure isn't making it easy with their OS. I guess the Enterprise edition might be ok.

Creative arts will probably always be Mac, but we are an all Adobe institution after the Final Cut Pro X fiasco so even that is not a certainty.

1) I have to obey a couple of very un-fun local laws and will buy old machines rather than deal with problems in that area

<comment><USER17> >we just cannot justify it anymore

Have you looked at total cost of ownership? From the 'Every Mac we buy is making and saving IBM money' - IBM article:

"Just 5 percent of IBM's Mac using employees need to call the help desk; In contrast an astonishing 40 percent of PC using staff call the help desk."

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2998315/apple- mac/every...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2998315/apple-mac/every- mac-we-buy-is-making-and-saving-ibm-money-ibm.html)

<comment><USER18> Were the employees who received MacBooks selected randomly/arbitrarily, or was it by request?

A pretty key point to consider, since people who prefer "non-standard" technology tend to be more tech-savvy users, who require less support.

I'm sure that Chrome users also call the help desk less frequently than people who use Internet Explorer (or Safari for that matter).

<comment><USER19> or it could be the fact that you don't have to install an antivirus. I have a Dell at work and the company policy is to have mcAfee installed. It prevents a lot of stuff from working (need to use virtual box 4 for example)

<comment><USER20> IBM requires antivirus on Macs, but it may be less broken than Windows antivirus software.

<comment><USER21> I have McAfee on my work Macbook, but I don't have an opinion on whether it's "less broken". I used a Windows 7 Thinkpad before the Macbook (also with McAfee), and didn't notice McAfee at all in these 3 years. In 2 years on the Mac, I noticed one interesting UI bug where the taskbar icon says "Your Mac is Not Secure", but when you click on it to open the main UI, the window will say "Your Mac is Secure", and the taskbar icon then agrees with the main window from that point on. Just a glitch, nothing that I would consider noticably broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The 2012 MBP bought new today for $1100 will serve a lot of people really well.

An $800 Dell XPS will serve them much better, last them much longer, and keep them much happier.

A $500 Chromebook might be an even better choice.

Unless you have no escape from the Apple eco system lock in, it's almost impossible to recommend a mac to anyone anymore. Even if Apple does come up with a great refresh to their lineup, their treatment of the mac over the last couple of years means they might simply do this again, which means I really cannot recommend them anymore. Apple has pretty much destroyed all teh goodwill they built up with me, and the only way I can recommend a mac anymore is if they open up OS X to all hardware makers (but then, I'd trust Windows which has been doing that for decades, over OSX which has not and Apple would almost certainly have trouble supporting OSX on non Apple devices).

And finally, because of how deliberately tied up Apple's ecosystem is, that means I cannot recommend iPhones/iPads anymore despite iOS being a superior platform anymore.

I genuinely feel Apple is trading away their past reputation in an effort to extract money from consumers who may not know better.

<comment><USER23> I doubt a Dell XPS will last longer. The problem with non-Apple laptops, with few (and expensive) exceptions, is the build quality.

It's 2016, people treat laptops like any common electronic household item, and the majority of non-Apple laptops, especially Dells, start to look pretty ragged after less than 2 years.

That's why MacBooks tend to have a decent resell value, whereas you cannot even give other old laptops away.

<comment><USER24> I've got a Dell E1505 I bought refurbished in 2016 that runs Windows 10. It's been dropped a couple of times from the door of an old Ford Econoline van with door pockets that, as it turned out, weren't in great shape.

In 2010, I received a brand new Mac Mini. We had at that point been using the Dell laptop to run Hulu and Netflix, and I decided to swap in the Mac Mini. Turns out the Mac Mini couldn't run 1080p without chugging a little bit, but the laptop from four years earlier had no problem keeping up.

It mostly sat in a drawer, as I needed something faster for video and audio work. Over the years I'd try out Windows upgrades as they came through. Another fun point - It came with Windows XP. When the Win 7 beta came out, I installed that just to see - it ran surprisingly well. Back in the drawer it went until Windows 8's preview came out - that also installed without any issue, and ran surprisingly well. When Windows 10 rolled around, it actually upgraded from the Windows 8 beta to a full-fledged installation of Windows 10. Never ended up paying for an upgrade to the operating system!

The internal wifi did burn out at some point, and I'm sure the screen was dimmer than when I'd first gotten it, but other than that? You could browse the internet and run some basic apps.

We finally donated it a couple of months ago. I can't argue about the resell value of Dell laptops, but that E1505 had build quality in spades, and better longevity than the equivalent Mac. Can you even put the latest OS X on a Macbook from a decade ago?

<comment><USER24> Correction: bought refurbished in 2006, not 2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why should Apple stop selling anything that people want to buy?

For most people, buying a new computer is something you do when your old one breaks. I know Apple cultivates itself as a "professional's brand" but that's not really the case anymore. Every 18 year old with a pocket full of graduation money next to her iPhone grabs a new Mac, and any Mac she grabs will perform a vast majority of the tasks she needs.

The real question is not "why does Apple still sell.." It's "why do people still buy ...?"

Answer: because it works.

<comment><USER26> Because the computers get slower with each OS upgrade. At some point this catches up and the machine feels slow. CPU's might not be improving at the same rate but GPU's are. iMacs, for example, use a mobile gpu on the desktop. i've goto a 2010 iMac and it's slow because i didn't opt for an ssd at the time and got a painfully slow 5400 rpm drive.

People buy because they don't know any better. Wait until every new Mac in the fall has USB C connectors.

<comment><USER27> > Because the computers get slower with each OS upgrade.

It seemed was a time in the history of OS X (up through Snow Leopard) where the reverse was true, and it's certainly not true that the OS _must_ become less efficient with each iteration.

<comment><USER28> It's not a necessity that the machine must slow down with each OS update. Boot an XFCE on Linux image to establish a baseline level of performance. Make that your OS and you can _buy_ from guys selling 2012 computers.

<comment><USER26> No one said that it was a necessity. The fact is that Apple software needs more performance over time so they shouldn't skimp on the hardware, or sell "old" hardware.

Why are you introducing an irrelevant tangent into the conversation? I have an old Dell in my closest that has Linux on it. But once again, that's irrelevant to this conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Many people who are asking or hoping for an update to the non-Retina MBP are missing an important point. Apple already has released an update to it with newer CPUs, and better screen, and thinner, it's the Retina MBP.

The non-Retina MBP is effectively discontinued because it's largely replaced by the Retina version, and has been for many years.

They still sell the non-Retina MBP (in one size only, no 15") just for few people that absolutely need a built-in optical drive in their MBP for some specific reason.

The non-Retina MBP is not meant for the general public. If you walk into an Apple Store without knowing anything, the chances of you walking out with one is less than 1%, it's hard to find and store employees will recommend something better for your needs.

<comment><USER30> That's a good point. The article does mention that its latest release was over a year ago, which isn't bad:

"The Retina MacBook Pro is 442 days into its current cycle, despite refreshes coming every 268 days on average in the past."

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can Apple at least just put a Retina screen and 16GB RAM option on the 13' MacBook Air. That's all I'm waiting for. They don't even have to bump the CPU or ports or anything else.

It's not a hardware problem. My MacBook Pro's HD 4000 drives a Retina screen, the Air's current HD 6000 certainly could too. Microsoft and Dell have been shipping Retina screens and 16GB ram ultrabooks for 2 years now -- but we're forbidden from using it for iOS development.

I totally get that it's more fun to go "Scrooge McDuck" swimming through their iPhone money. But if Apple could kick out just a basic spec bump from 1-2 years ago for the Air, I'd be thrilled.

<comment><USER32> I think they're more likely to drop the Air in favor of the new Retina MacBook line than update it...

<comment><USER31> Your probably right. But if they do that, I'm out. I simply won't buy a laptop that ships without a working keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Processor speed isn't a limiting factor for me, but the 16 GB max RAM really is and it's definitely becoming a problem for daily work as a programmer working with compilers and VMs. I just wish they'd fix that.

<comment><USER34> If you don't work remotely, I suggest a Mac Pro. Mine has 64 GB of ram which is rarely not enough.

<comment><USER35> It would be great if it wasn't the same machine they released 3 years ago. I've wanted to upgrade my desktop Mac to a machine that can support 4K output at 60Hz, but my options are currently to downgrade from quad to dual core and get a Mac Mini, spend a lot of money on an outdated Mac Pro, or repurpose on of their laptops into a desktop, which I'm not terribly interested in doing (and also only dual core).

<comment><USER36> are the current generation processors much much faster or better, than the ones from a generation ago?

<comment><USER35> If you're considering the Mini, then no, not at all. Core for core, they're quite similar, with only a mild speed bump. The 2012 had a 4-core option, but does not support 4K. The 2014 models (current generation) are dual core only, but have a graphics system that's able to handle 4K @ 60Hz. (Not sure how well it does it, but it can actually output it.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> There was an article about its appeal: [https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a](https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a)

Upgradable storage, memory, and an optical drive. It's cheap and not _that_ outdated.

<comment><USER27> And personally, I think that we passed the point of adequate specs for most purposes 8 years ago.

I have two MBPs. One is a 2008 that is beat to hell at this point but still functions pretty darn well with an SSD and maxed out RAM. It's good enough I've been able to do most day-to-day development with it and audio production up through this summer. If it were effectively invulnerable and weren't eventually going to stop receiving OS updates (or if security/compatibility weren't a concern), I could conceive of using it indefinitely for most work.

I also have a 2012 that is still adequate (though, weirdly, sometimes worse in terms of locking up, not sure if that's the later version of OS X or no SSD). I bought it not because I needed anything newer, but because I didn't want to be stuck searching for a replacement when the 2008 fails. And perhaps interestingly, I bought it used because Apple has decided to no longer offer a 15" model with a matte screen that's upgradable anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "...that doesn't mean it isn't unconscionable for Apple to continue to sell outdated products to people who may not know any better"

I may suffer from a lack of nannying instincts that make these sort of hyperbolic assertions hard to swallow. Is it a common impulse to want to save all those poor people from themselves for no particular reason? If they "don't know any better", it's pretty clear they don't have a personal reason to care, and this entire sentiment becomes rather condescending in that light.

<comment><USER39> If you buy something new, isn't it reasonable to expect something is new? Not four years old and soon to be antiquated?

<comment><USER40> Have you ever bought a TI calculator?

<comment><USER39> Yes my 20 year old TI84 still works fine.

Do you really think a new Mac is like a 20 year old graphing calculator? How about an iPhone or iPad? Nokia phone? Am radio? Is a Tesla different from a Ford model T?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> As a teenager, I subscribed to MacAddict from 1997-2001. It was very exciting to watch the company transform over this time. Alas, since then my relationship to Apple has evolved dramatically, to the point of more or less despising the company and its manipulations. I am grateful for this journey. It has given me a sharp sense (distaste) for manipulative marketing tactics and branding in general. When my hard drive crashed badly in 2010, I quit for good, jumping over to Ubuntu full time. (More recently I installed Arch, which makes me excited about computers again!)

Anyway, It's completely frustrating to me even my most financially disabled friends will, to this day, look to spend $1200 as much on a Mac laptop or an iPhone when they could get an equally powerful, used machine for $150. A close friend of mine just spent $300 on a used G5 iMac from 2006... I told him not to but he didn't listen. He has had to learn the hard way that the computer is slow, won't accept updates, won't run any new software or drivers, etc. because Apple's branding black magic is _that_ powerful, that it could completely trump the well reasoned advice of someone knowledgable about the subject that you've known for years.

<comment><USER42> > more or less despising the company and its manipulations

I will never understand why perfectly normal human beings do this, whether it be against Apple or Google. I have an Apple sticker on my car because I'm proud of where I work. On four separate occasions now Google fans have come up to me after I've parked and tried to convert me to an Android fan or make fun of me for being an "Apple fan," assuming the sticker represents my status as a demagogue for one side. (One guy asked me if I felt inferior for not having root on my phone and I had to resist answering the question honestly, but it would have been really fun and confusing for him.)

My own family gets sheepish and embarrassed when they buy an Android phone because their partisan friends have trained them to think that I'd react explosively to this grievous slight instead of the truth, which is that people should buy what works for them and it's not really any of my business. I don't actively sway people toward Apple products or discourage them from buying what they want. Sometimes a Mac is the answer, and sometimes it isn't. Their purchasing choice has arguably no effect on me personally, and this applies to other things too, like cars. As you're discovering, in general, people don't listen anyway and instead quietly form a negative opinion of you.

Speaking personally, there are things I dislike and like from Apple and there are things I dislike and like from Google. I simply cannot connect with the mindset of red vs. blue, us vs. them, vim-vs-emacs, all-or-nothing that people get frothed up like this about. It's your prerogative to despise Apple and I'm fully supportive of your decision to do so. I'm just saying it strikes me as weird to invest part of your humanity in despising an inanimate entity that creates products as opposed to just not buying the products. I'd say this about people who despise Google, too, and I'm only using that example because it seems like the war of our time (and because you probably carry an Android device, given the market).

Am I the only one who feels like it's just not worth it to hate a company? I don't even hate Comcast, and they've given me plenty of reasons. I don't even hate patent trolls; they've identified a strategy that is legal and shitty and exploit it. That's capitalism. Maybe it's just me and, before you think it's partisan, I felt like this before ever being personally vested. I've just got far better things into which to invest my hatred.

(Only my personal opinion, speaking for me alone.)

<comment><USER43> Sorry, "not buying products" and otherwise being silent doesn't cut it. There are (were[1]) whole magazine categories that test and criticize consumer products.

[1] In Germany at least some of those magazines were quite good. Haven't read any recently though.

<comment><USER42> Okay, you've refuted my point, now bring it home and illustrate _your_ point: why doesn't it cut it?

Reviewers are a totally different animal and orthogonal to my point; I'm not arguing that reviews should cease. You're talking to a guy who respects film reviewers individually and recognizes patterns and traits of certain reviewers (like Ebert or Travers or Tom Long, who I dearly miss in retirement -- if I were on the fence for any film in the last decade I read Tom), so I definitely value review as an industry. Hell, Broadway might argue review is an essential part of the industry, I reckon, since there are _many_ people who wait for the _Times_ to review a play before buying tickets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The power savings from including a newer Intel processor seem pretty massive in and of themselves. It doesn't seem like they'd have to do a massive overhaul to make an update worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER45> At least until recently, they would have been hard-pressed to do a refresh - Broadwell had basically no non-low-power SKUs for a long while, so you wouldn't want one in your MBP.

So they'd need to refresh with Skylake, which would add lead time, particularly with how long it took to ramp up Skylake manufacturing yield.

Meanwhile, if they were going to leverage anything from Skylake for OS X features (looking at you TSX-NI), they wouldn't want to refresh the desktop until they could get it there too, which would probably mean Xeon E[57] v4, and that only came out this quarter.[1]

So I'd probably blame this current delay on refreshing on a ripple from Intel's Broadwell/Skylake timeline debacle, and Apple deciding to merge any intervening hardware upgrades into the next iteration forward.

[1] - The slight oddity with this logic is that the Xeon E[57] v3, Q2 2015, _does_ have working TSX bits, so they could have conceivably shipped that, even though it's "technically" Haswell. Maybe they got scared when Intel had to use the chicken bits to disable TSX in the first Haswell revs? [2]

[2] - [http://www.anandtech.com/show/8376/intel-disables-tsx- instru...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8376/intel-disables-tsx-instructions- erratum-found-in-haswell-haswelleep-broadwelly)

</comment><comment><USER46> Some people point to the limited improvements in Skylake and Broadwell as an argument why it doesn't matter that Mac updates have faltered. I respectfully disagree.

Look at the 12" Macbook. This, to me, is just too much compromise. Only one port and it's USB-C and it's the power?? Compare this to the healthy amount of ports on the HP Spectre in what is still a small form factor. Add in the terrible (IMHO) keyboard, pointless Force Touch and lack of tactile feedback on the trackpad.

Yet the Macbook Air remains with a relatively crappy display. For year it was suggested it wasn't economical/possible to add a retina display to this form factor. The Macbook is proof to the contrary.

Plus with the 12" Macbook, 13" Retina MBP and 11" and 13" Macbook Airs, it seems clear that not all these SKUs are going to survive.

I have a 2011 13" Macbook Air as my personal laptop. At the time I considered it to be about perfect in terms of portability and power.

But the design is getting pretty long in the tooth now. Crappy (relatively) display. Look at the Dell XPS 13 and 15s as inspiration. For one, they have really thin bezels.

The Mac Pro? Introduced with much fanfare 3 years ago and hasn't been updated since.

Mac mini? Coming up on 2 years without an update. And we lost the quad core options.

This all comes as Apple has pushed the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement.

My point is that with the Apple ecosystem (and many others) there's a halo effect. People buy into part of it based on the complete range, regardless of whether or ot they'll buy into the rest. They have the option.

The sense I get from Apple is they're no longer interested in the PC/laptop segments. They seem to no longer care about power users even though power users are influencers.

Also, it seems like the days of only horrible trackpads on PCs might finally be over. At least it seems like some models might have decent trackpads.

Can Apple really think tablets are the future? Maybe they aren't but we're a long way from that. The UX on an iPad Pro with a keyboard is as terrible as Steve Jobs used to say it was (Jobs famously called touchscreens with keyboards terrible).

So even if Apple does update their lineup later this year I'm not sure I'm going to buy in because the writing seems to be on the wall.

At this point a Dell XPS 13 or 15 seems like the way to go.

<comment><USER47> "Mac mini? Coming up on 2 years without an update. And we lost the quad core options."

Also, they dramatically reduced its utility by removing the optical drive.

It is stupefying that you cannot buy a mac mini with an optical drive. It's ridiculous. It takes most of the interesting use-cases off the table and makes many other use-cases a pain in the ass.

I would have kept buying mac minis, continuously, every 3-4 years, forever. Instead, I bought two of the fastest/latest ones with optical drive and that's all I'll ever have.

<comment><USER48> Can you not use external optical drive?

<comment><USER47> Of course I could. There's all kinds of lame things I _could_ do.

The mac mini is about the form factor. The form factor is broken if there's a second device hanging off of it.

<comment><USER49> >> The form factor is broken if there's a second device hanging off of it.

That perfectly describes my problem with the tubular Mac Pro. Call me old school, but I loved the old Mac Pro chassis and its internal expandability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't think Apple care about their desktop OS and hardware anymore. It has been stagnating for a while already. I suppose recent rise of stats for global Linux usage can indicate OS X refugees who are fed up with that stagnation.

</comment><comment><USER51> Why did Apple stop making new computers? Is there an underlying business rationale or is it component supply challenges?

<comment><USER52> It doesn't make money. Even though they have a crap ton of cash because of their mobile business, they don't seem willing to invest in their desktop os or their PC business.

Its surprising because the mac + ios system is such a powerful combination. With MS at least trying lately with their pen enabled devices, bash on windows, and general lack of complete disdain for customers, they may be getting ready to eat Apple's lunch.

Compare that with 4 year old laptops, little real innovation in mac os (the latest I can recall is implementing Windows 8's window system for full screen and making dev's lives harder with all the security changes in el cap) and it starts to make you wonder.

Not saying Windows is better than Mac, just wish Apple would stop pulling an MS and actually try with their OS.

<comment><USER53> The Mac _does_ make money though, about 13% of revenue in Q4 2015: [http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/27/q4-2015-earnings/](http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/27/q4-2015-earnings/)

Yes, the iPhone delivers the lion's share of revenue, but the Mac is still an important product category.

To me, the problem seems to be one of focus. The extreme centralisation that Apple inherited from the Jobs era means that, when the leadership is focussed on a particular product or product category, be it the iPhone, the Apple Watch, or a new service like Apple Music, then progress in all other areas grinds to a halt.

I can understand that Apple wants to avoid the Microsoft problem of having multiple, independent business units that end up distrusting and working against one another, but the complete opposite situation isn't healthy either. A company of Apple's size and means should be able to do more than one thing at once.

A few years ago, Apple had a perfect opportunity to finally break the Mac out of its 5-10% niche of the PC market. Windows 8 was a dud, while Apple's brand and reputation were at their zenith, and their hardware had a huge edge in terms of quality and aesthetics over anything other PC vendors were putting out. The time was right for a huge push of the Mac. But they didn't do it.

Perhaps it was absent mindedness. Perhaps it was a lingering fear of taking on Microsoft in their own territory. Perhaps they genuinely believed the PC/laptop market was going to be disappear and be replaced by tablet computers. But for whatever reason, they blew their chance. And if I was an Apple shareholder, I'd be pissed about it.

<comment><USER54> Perhaps they already have most of the customers that want to spend the money a Mac costs AND want to buy from Apple. There is no way for Apple to swap market share with Windows unless they sell a Mac for $300 and I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't want to sell at such a low margin.

<comment><USER53> That might be true if the only segment of the PC market left was the low-end, but that's just not the case. There's still masses of high-end PCs sold to software developers, video and graphics creatives, and gamers. And there's still masses of mid-range PCs sold to businesses, government, and schools.

It's not that Apple doesn't play in these markets. The Mac mini is their offering for the mid-range, for example, and the iMac and Mac Pro are for the high-end desktop market. But as the article points out, they have left these products without updates for years, at precisely the moment they should have been capitalising on their brand momentum and the rest of the industry's problems.

<comment><USER55> One area that deserves more attention is the office. Not every company wants to buy both an iMac AND a MacBook for each employee, so they end up with a mess of cables that has to be connected to a MacBook every morning.

Why haven't Apple made a decent docking solution yet?

<comment><USER54> It happens that companies buy from Apple but Apple's primary market is consumers. I think Apple really doesn't have interest in that kind of specialized enterprise products. Maybe a third party could work on it as they do on connectors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The main reason to keep selling old _models_ is a logistical one: what Apple actually wants is to get rid of all their pipelined _stock_. That doesn't mean that they produced too many 2012 MBPs; but rather, they have a bunch of last- gen _components_ they've already irrevocably taken receipt of, and are now stuck integrating, manufacturing, and warehousing; and those components can go together to make (among other things) a 2012-MBP. Which still sells. So making and selling those is one strategy for getting rid of those components.

Adding a channel for using up last-gen stock has, after all, been stated as the main reason for the existence of the iPod Touch.

<comment><USER57> The non-Retina 2012 MBP is their institutional laptop product. If it was a consumer oriented product, they would have gotten rid of it, but they keep selling thousands at a discount to universities and high schools. They haven't dragged in an update as the specs and prices are good enough for what those customers need, and they are pushing a move to iPad for them anyway.

Their other products _should_ have been updated by now. Especially the Mac Pro and Mac Mini. And they've been skimping on the graphics card for lower end models. The price/performance has been very frustrating as you can get a good (e.g. Alienware) desktop with the same high end graphics as the high end iMac but for the same price as the low end model now.

Their laptops are still good even at the price, but the rest of the line could be much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Not a single computer sold by Apple meets the minimum spec for a VR experience, nor the next crop of AAA games. What does that mean to the creative that used to prefer Macs for their content creation? What does that do to the brand long term?

<comment><USER59> Real "creatives" _never_ preferred Macs. Mac, until very recently, didn't have any way to calibrate a monitor (and you had to buy a 3rd party monitor to get a full-gamut display), or 10 bit/channel color. For all our color-critical work at our shop, we _never_ used macs.

<comment><USER60> It's not helpful trying to play No True Scotsman by defining "real creative" as "what we do". Anyone with more than cursory exposure to printing, video, photography, etc. knows that there's a sizable percentage of people who vocally prefer Macs – certainly not everyone, but far, far too many to pretend that a claim like "never preferred" is anything other than fanboy hyperbole.

As an aside, what do you mean by "calibrate a monitor"? ColorSync arrived in 1993.

<comment><USER59> Mac LCD monitors have a LED back light that's too blue and too narrow a gamut to do color grading. Yes, it's true that some of the early CRT machines were capable of this.

<comment><USER60> So let's correct your statement:

1\. Every Mac since the early 90s has had support for color management

2\. Most people doing serious color work have to buy a more expensive, professional-quality display – as has long been the case on every platform. This was a staple of reviews for printing, photography, scientific/medical imaging, etc. publications, along with comparing color calibration devices, and a big reason why CRTs persisted longer those fields than the general market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I don't mind the release cycle as it exists... I get the newest model when they come out and the feeling of missing out on something better doesn't linger over me. There aren't a million configurations of the same laptop, there are only a few, which makes things simple on aspects of development, support, and troubleshooting.

When people on this thread compare MacBooks to "chromebooks" I don't even know what that means... It could be any number of manufacturers using any number of combinations of hardware to run a common OS. Just because it has the latest Intel doesn't mean the rest of the components aren't subpar. Even if they are higher quality, it wouldn't nearly stack up to the millions of users that have tried and tested the exact configuration of my MBP.

Most of the professional community feels the same way, even within the last year [1]

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer- survey-2016#tech...](http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer- survey-2016#technology-desktop-operating-system)

</comment><comment><USER62> This is my personal opinion.

My Late 2013 MacBook Pro is running so smooth that I have no doubt that I would keep it for at least another 2 to 3 more years before looking into replacing it with another MBP. So In between now and then, why even bother to look for another computer? Apple probably saw the same that users would keep their Apple computer long enough before needed another major replacement to buy new ones every 3 to 5 years or so. IMO, for everyday tasks or even medium- to-high CPU instense tasks, current MBP handles very well, given that you are not a gamer or 3D CG designer.

Secondly, for the price you pay, it makes no reason to look into another Mac every or every other year. Serious, the author Sam Byford's 2012 MacBook Pro should be fine running everyday tasks. Mine is only 1 year newer, so if mine running so well, so should his. Admittedly, having SSD makes a HUGE difference in terms of stability and performance. I encourage everyone should have it. Maybe that's what the author's really missing out.

</comment><comment><USER63> Read this as "Apple should stop selling four-year-olds computers" and I was like hell yeah they should! Get those babies on Raspberry Pi's asap.

</comment><comment><USER64> I didn't read a single technology or feature any ultra modern computer has that the 4 years old MBP doesn't have, nor about anything you can't do on it any newer computer does.

People are interpreting "PCs are extremely good and capable now" as "PC is dead".

<comment><USER65> Skylake supports HEVC (H.265) codec making it so much more battery efficient to encode and decode video [1]. Smaller battery consumption also means less heating issues, so that's what keeps me excited about "ultra modern" computers that none of the MBPs has.

[1] [https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2015/12/11/codecs- are...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2015/12/11/codecs-are-they- slowing-you-down)

<comment><USER32> > Smaller battery consumption also means less heating issues

This is the main thing for me - I'm still using a 2012 rMBP as my main machine, and I have no complaints about performance except often when you try to make the most of the performance it's capable of, it overheats and throttles down. Especially a problem in the summer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> You know, I've had Mac's that well...I have no idea when they'll die. They're all still going. My Apple IIlc is in fact still kicking. I have a 2007 MBP that runs like a champ (well, swapped in a SSD, but other than that...). The OS might have some features that make it tough for bleeding edge developers...but you know, for the most part people need those features (security, etc.). The Dell and Sony laptops I've had just don't hold up to constant use. Lenovo on the other hand was a different story. I loved their keyboards and the build quality is quite good, equivalent to Apple. Style though, until recently hasn't quite been up to the fruit standards.

</comment><comment><USER67> Background: This is about the last MacBook Pro without things like soldered RAM I think.

<comment><USER68> Yes. I recently almost purchased one of these for $800 on eBay simply because I have a spare SSD and 16 GB of DDR3.

I won't pay $2000 for a laptop from Apple that has these things already soldered in.

In the end I still couldn't justify it as I want an I7 which they no longer sell with the ability to add ram and SSD.

<comment><USER69> _I want an I7 which they no longer sell_

You can still buy the 2012 Macbook Pro with an i7. You must BTO:

13-inch MacBook Pro

        2.9GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
        4GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM — 2x2GB
        500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
        SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

[http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook- pro?product=MD101L...](http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook- pro?product=MD101LL/A&step=config)

Cost is $1249. Bring your own RAM and SSD to upgrade as desired.

<comment><USER68> Thanks - I did not know these were still sold.

I usually look on EBay for a new one, and $700-$800 (with no tax) is a price point that I'd be willing to pay. I've never seen a new i7, though.

At $1300 (with tax), I could get a pretty nice Thinkpad or Dell Precision with quad core 6th gen Intel and still use the ram and SSD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> The dearth of Macbook Pro releases may not represent an obstacle or even a nuisance for everyone but for devotees of the Mac such as myself whose work falls under the general rubric of "creative", it presents real challenges. The Mac issue is not necessarily speed (which could mean processor, bus, GPU etc) but isolation. The platform is burdened by I/O options that are not mature or well supported. Things became really challenging when Apple bet on Thunderbolt, which from my non-techie perspective seems to have never gained great acceptance by peripheral makers. By stripping out Firewire and and providing somewhat limited USB 3.0 support Apple really narrowed the universe of mass storage and other peripherals that were viable.

Everything that formerly lived happily in the enclosure of a Mac Pro now had to live in a stack near a laptop or new Mac Pro cylinder. The more compact Mac Pro exacerbated workplace sprawl rather than helping it. Macbook Pro models faced the many of the same issues.

I have been nursing along an early 2009 Mac Pro, praying is does not have a major component failure because apple has left me as a photographer/videographer out in the cold. While I realize the Intel processor road map has created challenges for Apple, they need to get updated machines into the market or face defection from people like me who have been Mac Zealots since the mid-80's.

</comment><comment><USER71> I bought my rMBP in late 2014. At the time, I just needed a laptop, Windows or otherwise as I mainly use Linux. Other than the rMBP, every laptop that I could physically get my hands on was flimsy junk. The keyboards flexed, that plastic around the screen flexed, the screen was not steady in the open position. Even my workstation (Lenovo w530) for work is a hunk of flimsy plastic. It's just crazy.

Maybe things are different now? Or maybe I didn't get my hands on some better ones, but how can companies sell so much junk?

<comment><USER72> It's obviously all subjective. Personally, compared to Lenovo, I find MacBookPro keyboards to be "junk". I also don't want a glossy glass-covered screen, a glued-in battery or a heavy dent-prone radio-attenuating metal case. Each to his/her own.

<comment><USER73> It's 2016, it is much more effective to integrate battery, who needs removable anyway ?

<comment><USER72> Can you explain "more effective"? The 2016 Thinkpad X1 Carbon is significantly lighter than any MBP and still allows a user to replace the battery using a screwdriver - they are consumables after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I just dropped off my 15" rMBP for service. The work order showed the purchase date: May 2013. Wow. It's an i7 w/ 16GB RAM and an SSD. I had no idea it was that old but I'm a little surprised the specs don't feel that outdated.

I mean, don't get me wrong. If I were to replace it I don't want to pay top dollar for old hardware. Makes me wonder if  has something brewing the the desktop space.

</comment><comment><USER75> Ding them for supposed planned obsolescence or tell them to stop selling 4 year old computers, take your pick :)

</comment><comment><USER76> It was just 6 months ago the internet was singing the praises of the "outdated" 12-inch MacBook Pro: [https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a](https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a)

<comment><USER77> Singing the praises? Here are some quotes from the piece:

> it's an open secret among Apple employees that the "101" still sells > surprisingly well — to a nearly tragic degree, given its age and mediocrity.

> Geeks like me often wonder why anyone would still buy such an outdated > machine.

> I'm right there with everyone else who'd strongly advise against buying this > machine for most people who'd ask me

<comment><USER76> Wow, that's weird -- I distinctly remember reading this in January and coming away feeling great about my 4-year-old MBP that still runs just fine. Totally stuffed the bad parts down the memory hole -- thanks for rightfully calling this out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Another problem is that, as recently as May 2016, a brand-new 13" MacBook Pro from the Apple store is loaded with Yosemite. It's a totally crappy first-use experience to discover you are on an old version of the operating system.

<comment><USER79> It's just that most people don't care. You won't believe how many students (non IT related field) I see who still run 10.8/10.9, or whatever OS their MacBook came out with.

Also: if you hold down alt-R for performing Internet Recovery on a Mac it downloads the OS it came out of the store with. No idea why. I've had to internet recover a 2013 MacBook Air a week ago and it downloaded... Mavericks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> It's all up to your needs in the end. I am always for more battery and better optimisation than latest and fastest!

We are in a weird period in terms of PC hardware. Things settled down and people expect new shiny hardware every year or two. But why? Get used to it, you don't buy latest car model every 2 years. If a machine gets the job done use it to every last bit.

Bought rMBP 13" (maxed out) in November and I can see myself using it for 5 years easily! Consumer society is hungry and they want redesign, shiny new specs every year. But those times are 20 years behind us. So just enjoy in your machines... :)

</comment><comment><USER81> Apple "should" sell hardware people will buy, since they are a hardware company. I'm about to buy one of these laptops. It's fast enough for web coding, organizing photos, Darktable processing, and Inkscape. I'm mostly space constrained vs. CPU constrained. The standard-form-factor SSD in "101" model, and its replaceable RAM, means I'll be able to get 6-8 years out of it. I'm currently using a 2009 Macbook Pro that I upgraded to 8GB of RAM, when one of the original DIMMs died. That type of fixability isn't available in newer Apple gear.

</comment><comment><USER82> Mac sales were down 11.5% in the latest quarter. Apple knows where that's heading: their Mac business will get cut in half from 2015 to 2021 or so.

Few businesses are going to be interested in investing into regular updates to a segment that is being significantly reduced in size. More likely, Apple will cut how many PC models / variations they sell, and the business will slowly fade until it's a nearly meaningless portion of their business. In ten years the traditional PC market will be 3/4 smaller than it was at the peak a few years ago, and that drop will go the same for the Mac.

</comment><comment><USER83> I'm still using a Mid-2012 Retina 15" Pro, which I upgraded significantly when purchasing. It was plenty of power to crunch database reports and compile my code then and its still one of the most powerful laptops available. I don't see a reason to get rid of it until either a significant jump in processing power or some massing improvement in other hardware, until then my Quad core 2.6GHz lasts 9hrs on a charge and runs every piece of software imaginable without skipping a beat.

<comment><USER84> 9 hrs is a massive stretch. I'm lucky to get 4~5hrs on a single charge.

<comment><USER83> Really depends what I'm doing, if I'm just on Cisco remote it lasts all day and more, but if I open Outlook it goes in 6 hours or less. Worse if the GPU fires up, then its maybe 3...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I bought a MBP in 2012. The motherboard went bad after a year. And after a year the cable to the hard disk had to be replaced. Also I feel the upgrades we do on OSX causes the MBP to slow down. It is sleek, elegant, battery life is great (actually I need to replace it now, its dying), great design etc. But I feel the more perfect it is designed to be, the more vulnerable it is.

I say this when I compare this to my HP pavilion sleekbook which did not have any trouble so far in the last 3 years.

</comment><comment><USER86> I've been getting more and more life out of my Apple stuff. For example, my early 13" 2011 MacBook Pro (2.3 GHz i5, 8gb RAM) feels like a much newer machine now that I replaced the spinning disk with an SSD. For what I'm doing with it, things are great. I have the feeling that macOS Sierra will be the last OS X version that will run on it, though. At that point, I might finally do an upgrade, which I plan to keep for a 5 year cycle if at all possible.

<comment><USER49> >> I've been getting more and more life out of my Apple stuff.

The thing is, your next upgrade is probably going to involve a device with soldered on memory and a chassis that isn't as conducive to end-user hardware upgrades as the model you have. The upgradability gravy train pretty much ended with the 2012 unibody models. The only way you can maximize the life of your next purchase is to buy the maximum spec'ed machine. Doesn't sound like a problem, but maxing out an Apple BTO machine gets expensive fast.

I thought my 2011 15" MBP would still be my main machine today (the specs still hold up today), except mine was one of the models that had the overheating GPUs and it got bricked and stopped booting. It wasn't until after I switched to a Windows laptop that Apple finally acknowledged the problem and issued a repair order. By that time, they had basically lost me as a customer of their computer products.

<comment><USER86> That is true, but I'm seeing that spreading into the non-Apple world as well. It's as if the industry realized that people just don't do many hardware upgrades to laptops.

Desktop space is a whole different story, though. Although the resale value on the Apple stuff seems to hold up a bit. I've had friends upgrade to a newer machine for the price they would have paid for a PC just by selling the old Mac. I suspect that too will slowly change as time goes on.

(Was just looking at eBay for example - I could sell the Mac Mini that I have and only had about a $100 loss on it. I bought it almost two years ago now.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> For casual and most technical users[0], Apple machines are still way ahead of the competition in all areas that matter: available software, quality of OS, build quality, portability, battery life...

Why should Apple mess with a good thing? The market supports selling the machines they have at the prices they ask. No need to spend NRE costs on new kit.

[0] Meaning Web devs, engineers, and scientists, most of whom can't stand Linux. The only thing that matters in software is the experience of the user.

<comment><USER58> Sorry, I can't find versions of 3ds Max, Inventor, Solidworks, or AutoCAD for the Mac. Also, no Visual Studio. And no Excel.

The Mac "equivalents" where they exist are far inferior.

How does the Mac have better available software these days?

<comment><USER88> Ah, the "CAD" canard.

1\. 3dsmax is but one 3D/animation program, most are multi-platform (see Maya, Cinema 4d, Modo etc...). No, it's not the "industry standard".

2\. PLM software like Inventor and SolidWorks are underrepresented on the Mac. Software like Fusion 360 and OnShape[0] are beginning to make up for this

3\. AutCAD is available for macOS. Has been of about 5 years. Autodesk in fact produce plenty of software for the Mac... [1]

4\. No, but there is Xcode. And IntelliJ.

5\. No Excel? Microsoft appear to disagree. [2]

Based on your comment, you have no clue what you are talking about, and I'm so bored of seeing this nonsense every time this comes up. Please, stop.

[0] [https://www.onshape.com/](https://www.onshape.com/) [1] [http://www.autodesk.com/solutions/mac-compatible- software](http://www.autodesk.com/solutions/mac-compatible-software) [2] [https://products.office.com/en-gb/excel](https://products.office.com/en- gb/excel)

<comment><USER89> > 5\. No Excel? Microsoft appear to disagree. [2]

In my considerable experience using Office on Mac in tandem with Office on Windows, the Mac experience is severely, severely degraded in comparison.

Extreme slowdowns in large documents, odd crashes, and difficulties handling macros are pretty much the defining experience for Office 365 on Mac for me.

<comment><USER88> I think this is case of YMMV as I've genuinely not experienced those problems. That said' i'm not crunching through big data sets. Anecdotally, my partner does. SPSS to Excel and back without issue...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Still using an early 2011 MBP. Replaced the drive with an SSD on day one, and have since swapped out the DVD with a 1tb hard drive. Upgraded the RAM and it works well for its age, but it's had its main board replaced as part of the 2011 video card recall and it's definitely got some issues that would benefit from a clean install of OSX.

I'm a buyer of their refreshed MBP ... whenever that comes to market.

</comment><comment><USER91> it's not just the hardware. El Capitan, the latest and greatest, still ships with a stone age Vim 7.3 from August _2010_. And we're told not to touch it because /usr/bin is sacrosanct. Bunch of add ins doesn't even work properly. Seriously Apple just doesn't seem to care. This isn't hard to fix, and it's an embarrassment compared with Linux.

<comment><USER68> I think the solution is to install the Brew version of the Unix-land tools you use, then set your path to favor these over the Apple supplied executables.

That's what I did for Emacs, find, bash, etc. and it works fine.

<comment><USER92> This is a workaround, one which I use myself. But I do have a not unreasonable expectation that the base operating system will be actually maintained rather than abandoned. The amount of unmaintained and obsolescent stuff is quite bad, and getting worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> I miss something between a MacBook and a MBP.

Something light with a Retina display, minimum 13" and a good CPU. Basically a Thinkpad X1 Carbon with OSX.

</comment><comment><USER7> I suppose the non-retina MacBook Pro is still made due to some supply agreement with a sufficiently large buyer that wants a specific configuration to be available for a certain period. And, frankly, an indestructible computer that's field upgradable (or upgradable at all) is not a bad proposition. I'd prefer a cheaper one, of course.

</comment><comment><USER94> I'm keeping my mid 2012 air for at least another year. It's fine. Use it every day and I'm not gentle with it. Only the battery needed replacing. Let's be real here. If you need real power you get a proper desktop or use servers. If you're constantly running your laptop hard enough to power up the fan then you're doing it wrong.

</comment><comment><USER95> If they refresh, how many ports would the new MB Pro have? I was seriously taken by the looks and weight of the latest MB, but the idea of a single port -- and needing a bulky adapter dongle to connect an HDMI cable or any of a dozen legacy USB devices I routinely use -- killed it. A laptop that requires a hub dangling off it is just not acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER96> The fanless CPUs and USB-C ports on top of new monitors made this iteration a bit longer but wait for it. Some cool computers are coming out of Apple very soon. I haven't seen them but every Apple employee I talk to seems to be very excited about them. They also have a ridiculously large track pad with better palm rejection

</comment><comment> nommm-nommm Would anyone care if Lenovo or Dell was selling outdated computers? Hell, they probably are. Do we have different expectations for Apple? Is it because they are more of a luxury brand? Why does Apple have an _obligation_ to update their hardware every X years?

Also from what I have seen prices of MacBooks seem to have been going down quite a bit.

<comment><USER67> They don't typically sell new computers this outdated.

<comment><USER97> Yes. New Thinkpads have CPUs two generations newer than lates rMBPs

<comment><USER98> You certainly can buy an outdated Thinkpad, but the lines are refreshed often. Literally from the first Google result:

> At CES 2016, Lenovo announced a massive overhaul of its ThinkPad line. In > addition to unveiling new ThinkPad X1 notebooks, tablets and convertibles, > Lenovo also unveiled refreshes to its X, T and L series ThinkPad as well as > a new ThinkPad 13. Except the ThinkPad 13, which comes with options for > either Windows or Chrome operating systems, all the ThinkPad models unveiled > come with Intel's sixth generation Skylake processor, giving them a boost in > performance and battery life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Well, the new retina Macbook Pros should be coming out in a few months.

Increased battery life and hopefully a lighter 15" retina Macbook Pro will be a compelling reason to upgrade.

Moreover, now that Windows 10 Anniversary Update has the integrated bash shell, this makes the Windows platform finally much more competitive for Open Source software development.

</comment><comment><USER100> Apple's stuff is still expensive. Putting new components and building newer models will surely raise costs, and prices, which may be something Apple realizes isn't feasible with their target market. I'm a developer/designer and I still had a hard time plopping down what I did for my MBP.

</comment><comment><USER101> I would rather pay $200 for a refurbished Thinkpad t420s and then $150 in SSD /RAM / wifi card upgrades than $750-1K for a brand new laptop.

My last Mac Mini went 4 years before I upgraded to the current model, and honestly there's not a lot of performance difference between the two, at least for my use cases.

</comment><comment><USER102> Well people should stop buying it if they don't want apple to sell. As long people are buying why shouldn't they sell it. With every macbook pro made and sold Apple per unit cost keep coming down. It is probably making $100-200 more on each unit then when it first started selling it.

</comment><comment><USER103> I think there is a simple answer for this: Apple is busy doing other stuff (probably figuring out the next market to dive into) and isn't caring that much about 15" rMBP which after all still sells good.

Imho Apple will upgrade when sales will slow down below a certain threshold.

</comment><comment><USER73> Apple have MBPr and it is powerful reliable machine. On other side Air model is really outdated at the moment. I think they just can't miniaturize MBPr specs in Air sized model yet and don't want release half backed laptop, wait.. I forgot about new MacBook. Damn Apple.

</comment><comment><USER104> I'm constantly amazed by people's lack of care for the Macbook Air's abysmal TN screen. It's so good to see this being pointed out in this article. But still I can't believe there is no a single mention of TN or IPS on this page!

<comment><USER105> For me, the most important is the resolution, which is 1440x900. Doesn't seem too bad for me, for a 13".

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r Apple's always been a big proponent of the "shock and awe" product announcement. Since the introduction of Retina displays, has there been anything that would qualify? The small incremental component improvements just don't cut it.

</comment><comment><USER106> Good thing Apple price these relics competitively. They don't?

</comment><comment><USER58> How long did the Mac Plus form factor (and 16 MHz 68k) stay on the market? Much longer than 4 years. ("Mac Classic" anyone?)

</comment><comment><USER107> This is the 'Good Enough' inflection point, much the same as with PCs (minus the gaming and virtualisation crowds).

</comment><comment><USER108> "Making computers is hard. Let's just sell phones, apps, songs, ads, and whatever the hell people are paying us for icloud for!" \-- Apple, probably.</comment>


Slack CEO on building the fastest company to $2bn - <AUTHOR> http://m.businessinsider.in/Slacks-CEO-reveals-what-its-like-building-the-fastest-2-billion-startup-in-history/articleshow/47040858.cms

<comment><USER2> The fact that a company went from $0 valuation to $2B valuation so quickly says more about the climate of investment than it does about the company itself.

That's not to say Slack is a bad product at all, though. I just don't support the idea that valuations = value. Investors are almost always wrong (otherwise they wouldn't be out looking for unicorns to make their returns).</comment>


Rebuilding the Web We Lost - <AUTHOR> http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/rebuilding-the-web-we-lost.html

<comment><USER2> Excellent article! I'm looking forward for the next wave!

His insights echo some of mine regarding social media; it's both comforting (knowing that I'm not crazy), and scary (discovering that others are seeing the patterns I see). I have an idea for a new kind of social media website, which I really believe it could be disruptive; I just wish I wouldn't have to spend so much time with this useless university work, and instead code…</comment>


FameBit Acquired by Google - <AUTHOR> http://blog.famebit.com/intelligence/2016/10/11/famebit-acquired-by-google <comment><AUTHOR> There's a statement on the YouTube blog[1] today about what they hope to achieve by acquiring FameBit, which is a media platform for brand sponsorship and promotion:

 _Today, we're excited to announce that Google has acquired FameBit -- a technology platform company that helps creators and brands find and work with each other through sponsorships and paid promotion. We believe that Google's relationship with brands and YouTube's partnerships with creators, combined with FameBit's technology and expertise, will help increase the number of branded content opportunities available, bringing even more revenue into the online video community._ ____________________

1\. [https://youtube.googleblog.com/2016/10/helping-creators- conn...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2016/10/helping-creators-connect-with- brands.html?m=1)</comment>


Cyberpunk: Then and Now - <AUTHOR> https://thedorkweb.substack.com/p/tales-from-the-dork-web-4 <comment><USER2> I've never heard of Solarpunk before, but I'm going to go read/watch everything in this genre now.

"If Cyberpunk rebelled against post-war optimism, Solarpunk rebels against today's structural pessimism. Only around since 2015, Solarpunk creates bright, beautiful worlds with rich atmospheres. Solarpunk's aesthetic draws inspiration from Art Noveau and artists like Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki. If Hayao Miyazaki's Future Boy Conan is Solarpunk's Alphaville, Beasts of The Southern Wild is Solarpunk's Shockwave Rider."

<comment><USER3> There's nothing 'punk' about it. We just stopped being creative with naming subgenres.

It's more appropriate to call it "Solarhope"

<comment><USER4> > There's nothing 'punk' about it.

To state the obvious, others disagree. Here's how the "manifesto" page linked from the OP [1] puts it:

> The "punk" in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, > decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction > than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction

[1] [http://www.re-des.org/a-solarpunk-manifesto/](http://www.re- des.org/a-solarpunk-manifesto/)

<comment><USER5> I wait until they re-discover Soviet SF from 1960s.

<comment><USER6> Any recommendations?

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_\(novel\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are two common elements of cyberpunk: the setting, which is usually some kind of "neon noir", inheriting the detectives and shadow world of Raymond Chandler et al. And the themes, which (per the "cyber" prefix) are always about the application of control loop systems to human beings, usually to dehumanizing effect. Common subthemes of "control" are economic coercion, addiction, and manipulation of trauma; Neuromancer has all of those spread out across its characters. The plot centers on an AI trying to free itself of its controls, but it is made quite clear that the other characters involved are stuck in systems of control.

It's pretty much explicitly post-Modernism, and the Modernist dream of a technocratically computer-directed society for public benefit, a la Cybersyn; cynicism arising from the observation that computer systems would not be allowed to disrupt the existing power order but would instead consolidate it, leading to a society of people who have plenty of technological artefacts but a lack of psychological and economic security.

(The subtheme of technologically assisted body modification and various sorts of mind-body dualism is also important but gets treated very differently by different authors depending on whether they regard it as empowering or body horror)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting collection of mediums and such mentioned here. Surprised I didn't see William Gibson's book "Neuromancer" or Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" mentioned.

Incidentally, years ago my sister gifted me the movie "Beasts of The Southern Wild" which is mentioned in the article as "Solarpunk." After watching the trailer I still don't feel like watching it.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, the only reference to gibson I could find was nidirect via "the cyberpunk novels of the 1980s."

<comment><USER11> The "The Future Is Already Here - It's Just Not Evenly Distributed" line is a Gibson quote. Which of course doesn't make it any less strange to write an article about cyberpunk and not mention William Gibson.

<comment><USER12> This article wasn't much more than what you'd see in daily discussion over at /r/cyberpunk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Much of modern Cyberpunk feels more like Near-Future-noir. Stories live in the future but feel less wildly futuristic._

I think this cuts close to the reason why I don't enjoy cyberpunk quite as much as I did. As our world has actually _become_ more and more cyberpunk, it feels less and less like fiction, or entertainment.

One moment in particular that stands out to me, was back around the time of the Arab Spring, when people in Turkey were spray-painting Google DNS server IP addresses on walls to help people evade the government 'net restrictions. That was one of the times I really thought: "We are living in the cyberpunk future, now."

Of course not _all_ of the sci-fi elements of cyberpunk are here yet (no Altered Carbon style ability to shuffle your mind into another "sleeve" for example) but you can definitely start to recognize a lot of elements of it in real life today.

</comment><comment><USER14> I guess it's a good moment to recommend Altered Carbon on Netflix to everyone. I love cyberpunk genre, played through every single Deus Ex game multiple times, watched most of the relevant movies, etc.

What I loved about AC is that it adds a few concepts I hadn't seen before: separation of body and mind, virtualization of the mind and perception of time in those simulations. If the brutality of the series doesn't put you off, I think there's a chance you'll agree that many of the ideas are pretty thought over in general.

I didn't like the books though - while the first one was OK, the second just didn't engage me enough and I was glad that the TV series greatly deviated from it.

<comment><USER15> I just rewatched it last week, amazing show. Second season was less so, and it had a much different cyberpunk feel than the first, but it's still fun to watch if you don't pay attention too hard

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For me cyberpunk is defined not simply by its aesthetic, but by its exploration of the thesis "anything that can be done to a rat can also be done to a human being". A cyberpunk novel is a (usually cautionary, of course) tale of what happens when you strip away outmoded humanistic notions of dignity and agency and replace them with something weird.

In relation to this I'd like to mention Strugatsky brothers' book _Predatory Things of Our Times_ (translated into English as _The Final Circle of Paradise_ , wikipedia link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Circle_of_Paradise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Circle_of_Paradise)). It is their lesser known work, but IMO it is first-grade cyberpunk. The rat- human stuff is there all right, but also a very believable near-future setting with a post-capitalist society that is outwardly prosperous but rotting inside. The remarkable thing is that this book feels very modern but it was published in 1965 in the Soviet Union.

<comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_\(science_fiction\)) alone makes no cyberpunk. It lacks the transnational corporations with their own paramilitary/police/security, their indebted slaves, the mobsters/mafiosi/yakuza interfacing between them and the slums for the unwashed masses, and the punks cybering back frome the slums for some breadcrumbs, upgräydz. Think Bladerunner. Allmighty Tyrell. Or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_\(film\)) , or even this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_\(TV_series\))

<comment><USER16> Sure, wireheading is just part of the story, but I'd argue that the 'evil corporation' trope perfectly fits the same narrative. What is particularly evil about these corporations? It is precisely the fact that they don't care about individual humans and treat them as expendable resources to be exploited in pursuit of their goals. Aided by novel technologies, this exploitation can take some weird and scary forms. And those who try to fight back have no choice but to treat _themselves_ as rats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Syd Mead did amazing work on Blade Runner but the crowded urban city-scapes, multicultural and filled with ads were inspired by Mobius' Long Tomorrow.

<comment><USER19> First page of "The Long Tomorrow" , "Art" by Moebius [http://www.bulledair.com/index.php?rubrique=planche&album=lo...](http://www.bulledair.com/index.php?rubrique=planche&album=long_tomorrow)

These [http://www.openculture.com/2018/09/long-tomorrow-discover- mo...](http://www.openculture.com/2018/09/long-tomorrow-discover-moebius-hard- boiled-detective-comic-inspired-blade-runner-1975.html) and [https://www.neondystopia.com/cyberpunk-books-fiction/the- leg...](https://www.neondystopia.com/cyberpunk-books-fiction/the-legacy-of- the-long-tomorrow/) discuss the influences that The Long Tomrorow had.

On Moebius in general, [https://www.moebius.fr/?lng=en](https://www.moebius.fr/?lng=en) is a good starting point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Cyberpunk of the 80's was a backlash in response to the utopia promised by science fiction writers in the 60's and 70's that readers grew up on and ultimately would become disillusioned by, as they saw their reality fail to meet the unattainable standards that had grown to be their expectation. Of course, in their frustration and desire to distance themselves rotating 180 degrees as they traveled in the complete opposite direction, they too would also fall into a similar trap of generalization and overly simplistic definitions. Because both utopia and dystopia are extremes that will never truly be able to describe reality as it is.

As we know today, technological growth especially in the last fifty years or so, has immensely benefited and impacted our world. Literacy, basic education, democracy, and vaccination rates have all steadily increased as child mortality, extreme poverty, and inequality correspondingly have decreased. Life on average has quite literally never been better than it is now. Yet at the same time, it's undeniable that a great deal of deeply rooted and structural issues exist today that technology in and of itself has not been able to solve. Yes, the world is getting better, but humanity still faces an innumerable number of existential challenges that we likely will continue to face in part for, well frankly, probably as long as humanity continues to exist.

Post-Cyberpunk, or Solarpunk, is an acknowledgement of this, accepting that our reality is one defined by nuance and complexity, showcasing a significant literary maturation, and in my eyes, a reflection of a corresponding development and growth in society that has been undertaken in parallel as well. Because, as I believe my generation has come to see, both hope and despair can and often does exist in equal propriety.

<comment><USER21> Better be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and be correct or something like that.

For me the interesting part is the unexpected. So if you model the perfect world, a "solar punk world" for all I care, I would expect to be one or two "buts" in there. Nuance has always been a requirement for good literature in my opinion. The reverse is true for cyber punk. I don't know of a single example that just describes the worst dystopia immaginable. There is always the counter balance with something that warrants optimism.

So I would argue it to be the same genre group to be honest.

Still, from the description of solar punk or "post-cyberpunk" sounds just like a template for many horror novells that happen to play in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> BTW, since we're talking cyberpunk... one recent series I did read that was pretty good, was the Necrotech series by K.C. Alexander. It's pretty edgy and dark by some standards, but some of you might enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER22> This "solarpunk" reminds me the universe of Noon from brothers Strugatsky, Soviet science fiction authors (they also wrote Stalker): [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon_Universe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon_Universe) , [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon:_22nd_Century](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon:_22nd_Century)

The books were very positive and inspiring: space exploration, communism that worked, a very interesting world to live in.

As nine_k commented, I hope they open Soviet Sci-fi with its interesting aesthetics.

Strugatsky eventually turned from optimism to more pessimistic and tragic future like in "Beetle in the Anthill" [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetle_in_the_Anthill](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetle_in_the_Anthill)

</comment><comment><USER23> This article is full of great gems and as an avid fan of the cyberpunk genre, I loved it. Kudos to the writer!

Definitely read this article while listening to LORN's ANVIL as the author suggests.

<comment><USER24> Lorn's stuff is so good and unique, recommended!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reality is now more cyberpunk than fiction.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY)

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone remember "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree Jr?

Listen Zombie, believe me. It was a real cyberpunk novel in 1970s.</comment>


Jawbone acquires Massive Health - <AUTHOR> http://www.massivehealth.com/

<comment><USER2> Warning: this page breaks the back button.</comment>


Stored Hashcash - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdixon.org/2014/03/15/stored-hashcash/ <comment><USER2> _In order to send an email, the sender first has to solve a math problem. Legitimate activities suffer an indiscernible delay, but illegitimate activities that require massive volume are hobbled._

Illegitimate activities are often carried out in a parasitic manner using infected and hijacked equipment for which the spammer and attacker don't have to pay. This will do little to hinder those tactics.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's worth mentioning that hashcash has never been widely deployed for email spam prevention, and never will be. (As far as I'm aware its widest success was getting a modest reduction in scores in the default SpamAssassin ruleset at one point, which -- AFAIK -- was eventually rolled back because, while people are attracted to the philosophy of hashcash, nobody actually uses it.)

Why?

1) The supermajority of spam is sent through systems which can be operated by an attacker but which are not actually owned by them. This includes, most prominently, botted-up residential PCs. Prior to wide availability of always- on high speed Internet it included email servers which were insufficiently locked-down. Hashcash does not meaningfully affected the economics of botnets.

2) The most successful anti-spam measure in history makes direct use of a consequence of #1: since mail servers do not move in nature that much, and legitimate mail systems do not frequently mix outgoing spam and outgoing ham, you can make IP-based reputational systems. If a residential IP starts sending email in large amounts, assume spam. If a novel IP starts sending email, treat as suspiciously smelling ham until they've demonstrated sufficient history, but flip the spam bit if/when they get aggressive. If a new MSA springs up, ensure their industry veterans at the helm understand the importance of their anti-abuse team, and tell them explicitly that their IPs are dead if they don't.

This worked fantastically well. It's the primary anti-spam measure which protects your inbox. (No. I know you think Bayesian filters are. They're more expensive to operate at scale, are virtually unusable by the common- denominator email user, and don't solve any problem better than IP reputation does.)

3) Hashcash never caught on in part because the people who care most about spam also care most about sending billions of emails. "We make it economically unattractive to send billions of emails" is a non-starter for them. You can guess who I'm talking about by taking a look at any user database and observing what percentage of email addresses in it terminate with the top, oh, five domain names. (Interestingly, email is a P2P protocol at the server level which is best described as "All peers are equal, in that they will be equally squashed beneath the boots of our governing oligopoly if they misbehave.")

Note that none of hashcash's problems are solved by "And now it can be stored for later."

Source: My first engineering job was as an anti-spam researcher.

<comment><USER4> > My first engineering job was as an anti-spam researcher.

Was it at Japanese megacorp?

<comment><USER3> That was the 2nd one. The first one was as the Coordinator of International Relations at a prefectural technology incubator. We didn't have many International Relations to Coordinate and I was theoretically getting paid out of the R&D division's budget, so I got myself assigned to the anti-spam group so that I didn't spend 3 hours a month translating and 157 hours a month reading Slashdot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _How valuable would stored Hashcash be?_

It depends on the rules of the system. If the system arbitrarily limits the creation of hashcash to 2.5 per minute and limits the total in circulation to 21 M then it could be worth a lot (although with high volatility). Without such limits each unit of hashcash would be worth almost nothing, but the overall system might be more efficient and thus worth more.

Also, if the system limits itself to 7 transactions per second it may not be useful for anti-spam or bandwidth accounting.

<comment><USER6> But if this theoretical (but somehow very well defined) system supported offchain transactions, whereby a sender could attach a signed transaction for the appropriate amount to the sent message (rather than submitting it via a theoretical "peer-to-peer" network), then the throughput would be effectively unlimited.

EDIT: or micropayments: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_7:_Rapidly- adju...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_7:_Rapidly- adjusted_.28micro.29payments_to_a_pre-determined_party)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is that not bitcoin?

I've long been a fan of a "bounty" system -- you attach digital coins to a message, with the recipient specifying how many coins must be attached (maybe higher for voice, lower for email, mid level for SMS). If the message was unwanted (not merely spam, but even just a stupid request), the recipient collects the coins; otherwise, the sender gets them back.

This nicely aligns incentives. If the recipient takes coins improperly, you stop sending him mail.

<comment><USER8> It is Bitcoin. I was just trying to present some of the ideas behind Bitcoin without all the baggage of the word.

<comment><USER7> You really should have a beer w Adam Back sometime; he's one of my favorite people from the cypherpunks golden age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure how stored hashcash makes sense for preventing spam and DDoS. Won't services pop up that mine away, accumulate successful computation tokens, then sell them cheaply to spammers and flooders? Or spammers and flooders can simply leave their computer running a week in advance of planned attacks, and acquire a bunch of tokens all on their own.

We already see this kind of thing in CAPTCHA farms.

<comment><USER10> _Won 't services pop up that mine away, accumulate successful computation tokens, then sell them cheaply to spammers and flooders?_

Not as long as the cost of mining per e-mail is higher than the average revenue per e-mail.

<comment><USER9> True, but then you could have potential issues like people running old computers who send 100 or more legitimate emails per day. They won't want to wait 1 - 10 minutes for their computer to spin away every time. They also probably don't want to leave their computer running all night just to get enough tokens for the next day.

CAPTCHA is not a nice option, but compared to the alternatives it's probably the best we're going to get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Your post advocates a

(X) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses

(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected

( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money

( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks

( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it

( ) Users of email will not put up with it

( ) Microsoft will not put up with it

( ) The police will not put up with it

( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers

(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once

(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers

( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists

( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it

( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email

( ) Open relays in foreign countries

( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses

(X) Asshats

( ) Jurisdictional problems

(X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes

(X) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money

(X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP

( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack

(X) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email

(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes

(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches

(X) Extreme profitability of spam

( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft

( ) Technically illiterate politicians

( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers

( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves

( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering

(X) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical

( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable

( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation

( ) Blacklists suck

( ) Whitelists suck

( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored

( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud

( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks

( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually

(X) Sending email should be free

( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?

( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses

( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem

( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome

( ) I don't want the government reading my email

(X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.

( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.

( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

<comment><USER12> Thank you, I was about to look up the form and post it myself. I'd also check

(X) Microsoft will not put up with it

(X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Instead of hash cash, could you charge 10 dogecoin?

We abstract out the computational requirements into a sub-penny but not insignificant payment.

Then again, how much would spammers be willing to pay?

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this supposed to be an explanation of the value of Bitcoin, or am I to take this at face value?

<comment><USER15> The proof of work concepts behind bitcoin are based on hashcash (originally proposed in 1997)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How about we increase energy costs? Huh guys?

<comment><USER17> Storing, transmitting and reading spam consumes energy as well.</comment></comment>


Centrallo – Productivity tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.centrallo.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone check this app out? Installed updated material design app for my Galaxy 4 and I have never seen anything like it. Syncs great with my iPad. Would be curious to see if you have the same experience.</comment>


Parallelism and Concurrency with Haskell and Cloud Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/interviews/coutts-haskell

<comment><USER2> Great presentation.

First, I liked the example of SQL as a language that is not concurrent but can be parallel. In theory, I guess almost any language can be parallelized, but it wouldn't work out very well in many cases.

Also, I liked his introduction of distributed haskell. Obviously he didn't go into much detail, but he mentioned enough about what it's trying to accomplish that I'd like to take a look. Erlang is nearly the only game in town here (that I know about, anyway), so I look forward to learning more about the haskell community's take on distributed computing.</comment>


Ask HN: Beginning web development language for a non-programmer? - <AUTHOR>

I have a few ideas for some rather simple, fun websites, but I need to learn a language so I can do the backend. I know html/css, but pretty much no actual programming languages. I've done some research but really I'd just like some personal opinions here.
I'm going to be honest and say that I'd prefer an easier language to learn over one that's faster / more efficient and such. Though I think PHP is out of the picture because apparently PHP is terrible. I don't plan on becoming a career programmer, but I'd like to be able to execute my ideas, which is why I'm going for ease of learning / use.
I've heard of Django and Rails. Everyone loves Python, and Rails seems nifty from when tryruby.org (vague opinion of it, I know).
Anyone have any languages / frameworks to recommend? I realize this question has been asked before but I'd like to be able to discuss with someone about it. Thanks. <comment><USER2> If you want to eventually learn web programming, pick up a language like Python (well documented, mature language).

It seem, though, as you don't see yourself walking down that path. In that case, learn PHP. it'll get you what you need to get done on the web, it's installed on nearly every server, popular CMSs are written in it, and it's easy to hire for should the need arise.

</comment><comment><USER3> For beginners, Python is not what I'd suggest.

I like javascript for beginners.

It's not tightly typed, meaning you can experiment with variables of different types without worrying about what types they currently are. It's very fast, browser based (mostly), and it's really easy to learn.

Additionally, you can learn regular scripting (non procedural), procedural (where you define the functions and call them as needed), and object oriented paradigms (I like Class.js for this).

You can use tools like CodeRun (<http://coderun.com/>) to write and test code online without needing any OS based tools.

Finally, it's probably the most documented language on the planet because it's so widely used.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, okay. Can Javascript do things like user accounts? Perhaps through a .js library? I have had the idea that Javascript is more for the client-side of sites rather than the backend, but maybe I'm wrong.</comment></comment>