Uber opens at $42 per share - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/10/uber-ipo-trading-debut/ <comment><USER3> Some notes from watching Uber open:

\- if it closes below $45(its IPO price) it will be the first time since 2008 that the happened for a major IPO

\- TD Ameritrade executed more orders in the first 10 minutes of trading than they did for the first 2.5 hours with Lyft.

\- Uber is 9% of all trading at TD Ameritrade, retail loves this stock,

\- market is down today, which isn't helping Uber but its probably not much of a factor

\- Kudos to Citadel, stock opened without a hitch and they seemed to nail the opening price,

\- Boo to the underwriters(Morgan Stanley), who seemed to misjudge the market's appetite, important to note that major buyers at IPO, Fidelity and such already had exposure to Uber pre IPO so maybe this staying private longer but selling shares to public fudns had an effect?

[https://news.yahoo.com/uber-employees-may-not- partying-15171...](https://news.yahoo.com/uber-employees-may-not- partying-151719950.html)

\- interesting piece on how Uber has grown its market cap in the past few years at the expense of its share price and how that effects later employees.

\- later investors like the Saudi Public Investment Fund can't be happy with the opening.

\- from Bloomberg without comment...."Overheard trader on the floor: "That's what you get when you don't make a profit. If you don't make money, people don't want to buy you."

\- Biggest IPO since Facebook, that's something to be proud of!!

Date:

\- June 4 is expiration of 25-day quiet period for analysts at underwriting banks. Expect bullish initiations on this date

\- Nov. 6 expiration of Uber's IPO lockup. Large selling pressure expected to be asserted on this day as is typical for most IPO's.

Personal thought. It may be tough for employee's to not see this pop to say $65-$70 but in the long run its almost certainly better to open flat than to pull a "lyft" and get a first day pop that you price your options at in your head and to then have to cut that price by 40% before you get a chance to sell.

 __EDIT __for comment below.

<comment><USER4> Facebook was at ~$44 on the day it IPOed, and proceeded to fall over the next month to about $19. Today its at $187.

<comment><USER5> Facebook was also profitable and had about 10x the number of users compared to Uber pre IPO

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/04/22/ub...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/04/22/ubers- ipo-valuation-makes-no-sense/#7c360cc540d3)

<comment><USER6> Uber has paying users. Facebook had advertisement targets.

Doesn't make too much sense to conflate the two.

<comment><USER7> wait what?

facebook had paying users AND advertisement targets AND an ability for the paying user to precisely target an ad at the product AND an extremely powerful incentive for the product to not move to competition (product's friend network).

out of the above uber has only paying users - who are ready to jump ship to competition for a penny per mile.

<comment><USER6> Yes, nuance.

Just saying Facebook had 10x the user as Uber is meaningless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's way too many comments in this thread comparing Uber's non- profitability to Amazon's which I think is quite silly. Amazon lost $2.8 billion over its first 17 quarters while Uber lost $4.5 billion in 2017 alone.

Also comparing Uber to Facebook is quite silly too. Facebook had a lot more users than Uber but they are also different types of users. One is a free user with hope for targeted advertisement (in which the advertiser gains/loses money) whereas the other is paid users/riders (but in this case Uber has been losing money each ride and I don't see it changing). Also advertisement has huge margins with not much cost from Facebook's pov but ride sharing logistics is completely different with very little margin where the driver needs to get paid. Drivers are already complaining that they are not getting paid enough for rides and asking Uber to take lesser cut of the ride. So Uber can't raise their cut over their current 20-25%. Facebook's advertisement business doesn't have this problem. Nor does Amazon as they can make their logistics more efficient.

Amazon is able to lower it's cost with economies of scale but I don't see Uber being able to achieve that as their costs only increase as they scale as they lose money on every ride. The only way I can see them become profitable is if and when they achieve driverless cars, which they are betting huge on, but that's a long way to go. Uber is betting on driverless cars to lower the cost per mile. But I think Tesla will beat them to market much much before them considering Tesla already has the tech. Elon even hinted on the Tesla taxi fleet in the next couple years.

Now I realize Elon's got poor judgement on timing but I still think they will be able to achieve that much earlier than Uber. And if they do, I honestly don't see Uber & Lyft surviving.

<comment><USER9> > Also advertisement has huge margins with not much cost from Facebook's pov > but ride sharing logistics is completely different with very little margin > where the driver needs to get paid

Why is this? In both cases it seems the cost is paying a bunch of servers and engineers to run a website. So why is Facebook seemingly more efficient?

<comment><USER10> Nope. Market share and pricing power in digital advertising comes from user base and targeting capability. As an advertiser, I can reach most of the population in many country through FB/IG and YouTube. Their targeting data is also pretty good. So they claim a lion's share of the market. Also inventory expands as userbase expands and the userbase doesn't really have other options with similar network effects.

Uber on the other hand has plenty of competition. Their total cost to user has to be competitive vs. not just taxis but possibly owning a car. There's only so much they can charge for a ride and they pay a ton of incentives to get drivers to drive for them in many markets. So the available space for profitability is constrained.

<comment><USER9> So basically advertising is less constrained on the upside than transportation. The whole bit about 'they have to pay their drivers' is a red herring - the real constraint is that the price the riders are willing to pay is more constrained / lower than what advertisers are per user.

<comment><USER10> That's part of it. The other part of it is that digital advertising business models turn out to be close to zero cost. There's very little "product cost" when you amortize tech cost over billions of ad impressions - the "cost" really comes from "reduction in addressable market" \- ie. what portion of the audience will stop watching the platform due to ads. At least for Google and Facebook, the answer seems to be negligible proportion and in China at least, publishers are finding that many of such people are willing to pay for an ad free experience if you have killer content.

Taxi service is a much more constrained business - you have to pay out product cost plus some incentive to generate supply but you have a strict price ceiling on scaled demand and a lot of competition. The answer for the previous generation of entrepreneurs in this space was to execute regulatory capture and institute a system of restricted supply to boost prices (ie. Medallions, permits etc). So it's going to be interesting to see how these businesses evolve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> According to this article, stock was valued internally at $49/share in __2016 __, so anyone joining in the last three years will not have enjoyed any sort of rocket-ship growth.

[https://news.yahoo.com/uber-employees-may-not- partying-15171...](https://news.yahoo.com/uber-employees-may-not- partying-151719950.html)

<comment><USER12> If you're joining a $60 billion company with thousands of employees expecting rocket-ship growth, that's kind of on you, I think. You wouldn't expect that from a public company; why would you from a similarly sized company that just happens to be pre-IPO?

<comment><USER13> Amazon in 2016 was $502 a share, it is $1900 now

Microsoft in 2016 was $51, $127 now

Facebook was $97, $189 now

We're not even talking about rocket-ship growth here. We are talking about option strike prices losing money in one of the most favorable economic time periods where massive, healthy public business did have monstrous growth.

I would have at least expected price parity with other large companies - <USER2> that assumption would have been wrong.

<comment><USER14> The Silicon Valley giants don't do options anymore, but RSUs (restricted stock units) which are simply share awards. There's no strike price to worry about, but of course it's a bit of a disappointment if you expected Uber to be a $100B company out of the gate.

Still, Uber employees will be happy that they can finally sell those RSU awards (in six months when the lockup expires).

<comment><USER15> I can't speak for sure but that's a little unlikely. RSUs are taxed on vesting. Bad idea when employees can't sell a portion of it to pay the tax.

<comment><USER14> Uber, Airbnb and the rest definitely give RSUs. Details may vary but they may use contracts like "double trigger vesting" where you don't actually receive the shares until they're publicly traded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To add insult to injury for Uber's rank and file equity-holding employees: the terms of Uber's stock offers (at least since 2016 if not earlier) say that you cannot sell your shares until _one year after they officially vest_. That's right, they tack on an additional one-year waiting period for each block of shares awarded. So if you had shares that vested today, e.g., you can't sell those even when the regular six-month lockup period expires... you have to wait until May 2020.

(source: turned down offer in 2016 because of employee-unfriendly terms)

</comment><comment><USER16> Given this price (and the likely downward trend to come if Lyft is any predictor), I wonder if Uber and Lyft are really just an act of philanthropy from SF VCs + SA to hungry/drunk/tired city-dwelling folk. If so, thanks guys! (* and you mostly are guys). Next ones on me!

<comment><USER17> It's not the VC's money - it's money from wealthy investors and more recently sovereign funds and even pension funds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did I miss something? I thought Uber was still a long way from being profitable and had no plausible plan for how to become profitable.

<comment><USER19> Just like Amazon at its IPO.

<comment><USER20> Maybe I don't remember it well enough but Amazon's business model seemed a lot more ... tangible than Uber's don't you think?

<comment><USER21> In the 1997, Amazon's proposition of "Online retailer" was also pretty far fetched. It wasn't obvious that their model was going to make them one of the largest retailers in the world.

<comment><USER20> I duno, buying stuff online seemed like the way of the future at the time IMO. When, how much and etc was just a matter of timing.

<comment><USER22> Doesn't ride sharing seem like the way of the future in your opinion?

<comment><USER23> Who's doing ride sharing? Certainly not Uber

<comment><USER22> > Uber Technologies Inc. is a transportation network company (TNC) offering > services that include peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride service hailing, food > delivery, and a bicycle-sharing system.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is unfortunate for many of the rank and file Uber employees but it's good news for the stock market in general. It's showing we're not in a tech bubble and companies are still going to be valued based on how strong their business case is.

<comment><USER25> With the burn rate uber has, it'll be bankrupt in < 2 years. There are no other suckers to buy in after the public.

<comment><USER26> I've never understood why so many people were/are so bullish on Uber. I understand that ride hailing is a big deal, but it doesn't feel like it's that hard to launch a new ride hailing company.

I'm basing that opinion on what I've seen in my city. When Uber and Lyft left Austin, there were lots of alternatives that had existed or popped up to fill the space.

Aside from brand recognition, what does Uber have that the others don't?

<comment><USER27> > When Uber and Lyft left Austin, there were lots of alternatives that had > existed or popped up to fill the space.

I tried to use one or two of those alternatives. Setup was a pain and I ended up taking a cab. I have at least one coworker who couldn't get a ride because he was in South Austin.

Additionally. if your company is only in one city, visitors have to know about, install, and setup a new app just so they can use you; it's just as easy for them to take a cab. Last time I needed a ride in DC, I used the Lyft app that was already on my phone. There was no friction in being in a different city.

Maybe there was a local alternative in DC, but who's going to look up local ride sharing companies and install yet another app when the app they already use at home already works? Even hailing a cab is easier than installing a new app for one or two rides while you're in a new city.

Uber and Lyft have network effects.

<comment><USER28> Uber and Lyft have "network effects"? How? Explain that.

I couldn't tell you what car sharing service any of my friends use.

When I was in Malta earlier this year, there was no Uber. I downloaded an app called Taxify while sitting at a cafe, and called a car from it. It's not a huge barrier to download and install another app, even when trying to call a car.

<comment><USER27> > Uber and Lyft have "network effects"? > I couldn't tell you what car sharing > service any of my friends use.

It doesn't matter if you know who uses it. It only matters that there are. People are more willing to drive for it if there are plenty of users. If there are more drivers, there's more likely to be one nearby when you request a ride, so service is better. Better service makes for more riders. More riders makes it more worthwhile to be a driver. Positive feedback loop based on network size = network effect.

> I downloaded an app called Taxify while sitting at a cafe, and called a car > from it. It's not a huge barrier to download and install another app, even > when trying to call a car.

You know what's even less of a barrier? Not having to download and install another app.

Maybe it's not a huge barrier to you, but you're a single data point. You're talking to a second data point that's telling you that if I have a ride- hailing app on my phone that works, I will choose it before I install another app, every time.

My belief is that most people will take the path of least resistance, just like I do. How confident are you that they won't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As an employee you typically don't want your stock to skyrocket on the IPO. Most that do plummet as early investors sell and the employees (who have a lockup period preventing them from selling) watch their "gains" disappear. In my opinion, it's better to have an accurately priced stock that grows at a healthy rate.

<comment><USER30> A cart before the horse. Who gets the most profit? The people who finance the project or the people who actually do the project? In a just world, would it be 50/50? Seems skewed... without the builders, there would no buildings.

<comment><USER31> > In a just world, would it be 50/50?

What is your notion of "fair" and how do you go from there and arrive at that value? I mean, if the people who financed the project didn't invested a penny then the company would not have the means to get people to actually do the project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I mean, let's be real here, is $42 really disappointing? Because from where I sit, this company is going to be bankrupt in short order.

<comment><USER33> I'll give you 10:1 odds Uber doesn't declare bankruptcy in the next 5 years.

<comment><USER34> probably not bankrupt, but they will basically become a small ride hailing company with high prices. This will result in their stock falling dramatically.

<comment><USER33> Define 'dramatically', and by when you expect this will happen, and I'll offer you odds as well!

<comment><USER34> In 5 years I expect the MarketCap to be around 10B$ max. If Self Driving cars are a thing then even less than that.

their customer base will be richer//business people ready to pay higher sustainable prices for rides.

<comment><USER35> If you really believe this then you can probably make a healthy amount of money buying put options.

<comment><USER36> 5-year put options on Uber right now would probably cost more than the price of the stock, which would put you at less than even odds. I don't think you can get options yet, though.

A 5-year short.....maybe? Will be interesting to see what the short interest and borrowing rate will be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Morgan Stanley going to have to do a lot to stabilize the price over the coming days...

On Uber's side, they sold at their $45 mark. However, seems this may have been a down round vs their last private funding round ($74.1BN pre-money vs $76BN last year).

<comment><USER38> I'm confused by this comment. Is it the underwriter's job to intervene in the market after the initial sale? I thought they simply guaranteed that all the initial shares are sold.

<comment><USER37> Yes. The lead underwriter needs to stabilize the price post-IPO. When $unicorn_company IPOs, the underwriter actually sells more shares than the IPO company. If the price starts to drop below the originally listed price, the underwriter steps in to purchase these shares back at the IPO price to stabilize it.

It's generally an optics play - how bad would it look if you as a bank, who wanted to continue to offer IPOs, listed a company and its stock price plummeted below IPO on the first day - obviously you didn't do a great job at valuing the company and building an adequate order book.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stabilizingbid.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stabilizingbid.asp)

<comment><USER39> There's a limit to how much they can prop up the price though. If the market really hates the stock they won't be able to save it.

<comment><USER37> Yep. MS has around 27MM shares out there for stabilization pot IPO. Once they blow through that, it's the market's game.

<comment><USER38> Wouldn't they buy shares to raise the price, indicating they need money rather than shares?

<comment><USER40> Yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> disappointing? jesus, its been an hour. Relax your freaking noodles. What´s with everyone and instant gratification these days? The stock is still in range discovery...

I myself am bearish but sitting this one out because I have no idea what to make of it. One thing I know though, calling it disappointing 1 hour after open during a tightning range is beyond irresponsible. It´s flat out stupid and lacks any understanding of how markets work. The stock could literally pop bull 5 mins from now, or not. Either way I wish people would stop with this sensationalism.

<comment><USER42> Sometimes I see no difference between these Market Gurus and Horoscope readers. Just say some bullshit authoritatively and some people will believe.

<comment><USER43> There isn't any difference both are empirically absolute bullshit.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_model_of_financial_ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_model_of_financial_markets)

<comment><USER44> That... doesn't quite work, logically?

Observing that there is no _predictable_ "signal" in stock price changes only proves that whatever you're using to make predictions is unable to beat the market (the "efficient market hypothesis").

Stock prices are very obviously not completely random, in that they tend towards $0 when companies go bankrupt.

There is some randomness, or at least unpredictability, in stock prices. This is called "volatility". But the model operates on the very small tick-to-tick scale, not wether UBER is priced at $45 or $450.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> legit/dumb question. Math does not add for me on the '$82.4B valuation', they are selling 180 millon shares at $45 which is $8.1B what is the remaining 82.4b - 8.1b = 74.3b value come from????? it said: "Uber had raised $28.5 billion as a private company from no less than 166 different backers, with its last valuation in the region of $75 billion. The $82.4 billion valuation that it finally settled on for the IPO (selling 180 million shares at $45/share)" So it means that when they raised the 28.5b privately it went to 75b valuation???? please explain, thanks in advance...

<comment><USER46> The market cap (valuation) is the value of one share times the number of outstanding shares (those part of the IPO but also all the existing ones). $8B is the amount of capital raised during the IPO.

<comment><USER45> but when you buy a share, you are part of only the 8B thats being raised with the other 180 million shares, or do you have a small part of the whole 80~b valuation?

<comment><USER47> There are 80 billion dollars worth of shares that exist. However only 8 billion of those shares were released for the public markets. The remaining 72 billion dollars worth of shares are held outside of the public markets (insiders, vcs, the company itself, etc.)

<comment><USER48> Till such time those 72b shares do not become public, are these technically still referred to as options? Also, for ex-uber employees who still own shares, how does one restrict them to not sell those in the public market assuming they are part of the 72b or will they only be part of the 8b?

<comment><USER47> No, options are not the same as shares. Options are a contract that allows you to buy or sell shares at a certain price.

The employees are part of the 72 billion. All employees (current or ex) have a lock up period after the IPO where they are not allowed to sell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Tech crunch's new close to home page button is a daring move I pressed it to see what would happen and then decided not to read the article I came their to read the news not to be sold more news.

</comment><comment><USER50> My primary disappointment with the Uber IPO is that I don't have a larger wad of money to cover a short position.

<comment><USER51> "To cover a short position" implies that you have a short position you are buying to cover. You likely mean "to put on a short position"

<comment><USER52> > "to put on a short position"

Put is still a bad word because it has a connotation for options trading. (put options vs call options).

Maybe "to bet on a short position" is the best phrasing? "Put", "Call", and "Cover" all have precise meanings in the financial word. "Bet" is ambiguous enough that its kinda clear in this case.

<comment><USER53> To open a short position. Or simply "to short".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Uber and Lyft IPO is the worst thing that can happen to their users.

Uber will need to become more profitable so they will raise their prices and the users will be the ones who suffer from this IPO

</comment><comment><USER55> Overpriced. However I don't see them going belly up like all the naysayers over in the corner with pitchforks who are declaring them doomed

</comment><comment><USER56> "Uber created the market for on demand transportation"

What the fuck is this?

It's a mini cab firm with an app. Mini cab firms existed before Uber.

</comment><comment><USER57> How do you short stocks? Asking for a friend.

<comment><USER58> If you have to ask, please refrain from acting and study a bit. Shorting is risky business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Meh. Bought shares in Zoom. They're actually profitable.

Yes, yes, I know. This kind of thinking would have me not investing in an Amazon back in the day because they weren't profitable... but they weren't also losing almost as much as they were making in revenue either... and were actually selling a tangible good to prove out a business plan of basically world domination... so yeah I'm happy with my shares of Zoom.

</comment><comment><USER60> Uber is currently worth more than Stripe, Spotify and Dropbox combined. I'd easily rather own those 3 outright than Uber. Wonder what the market knows that I'm missing.

</comment><comment><USER61> Not profitable while reaching the market ceiling and bad reception in lots of places... no wonder here

</comment><comment><USER62> probably one of the worst days to IPO given current china/us trade spat

<comment><USER63> I would think there's a lot more free cash floating as the sell offs continue.

<comment><USER34> This was used as a lame excuse.

Uber had actually something to win as you said because of all the free cash floating around and the fact that Uber is completely out of China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Congrats to everyone!

</comment><comment><USER65> Unprofitable companies are the only ones that really benefit from IPOs.

An IPO is basically a way for the company to raise money, but tis time straight from the public. Usually when it gets harder and harder for them to attract private investors. The IPO listing basically guarantees that they won't take the public's billions and run.

Successful companies with perfect cash flows (think of Github, Valve, IKEA) always try to remain private. Because they have nothing to gain by raising more money. They can give their employees good bonuses and maintain control of the company.

This is by design. In Silicon Valley we are obsessed with them because they are the only meaningful exit for common employees (take the money and run mentality). The rest of the world doesn't care much because they see them for what they are.

Of course. Startup employees do not know they can sell their 'private' stock already, today. However, they need permissions to do so from the company's board (their answer will be NO. Here, saved you from asking. Or maybe they will offer to buy back the stock with shitty terms), and can only sell them to an accredited investor and not random people/public.

Many companies would be ran better if they remained private (think of Facebook, which now has investor pressure to increase the price, which results in careless decisions about data handling, privacy etc).

<comment><USER47> This is incorrect. There are lots of cases where profitable companies want to IPO. Specifically the public markets are where you go when you need to raise money at significant levels. Nowadays this happens less often as their are bigger and bigger private investors (so you can raise billions in private markets). However there is still a point at which you may need to go public for fundraising.

You are making a mistaken assumption that only unprofitable companies need to fundraise, there are lots of profitable companies that want to raise capital to fund future growth (and their current cash flows aren't enough).

Also I am very surprised that you named Github as a well run private company. As far I know, they were definitely not profitable (their spend was crazy) which is part of the reason the board took the acquisition offer from Microsoft. I really don't think they are a good example of a well run private company.

You are correct that only companies that want capital IPO but that is by definition as an IPO is a capital raise. I believe that direct listing is an exception to this.

<comment><USER65> You are correct. There are many cases where fundraising for successful companies is needed. From liquidity, to gathering funds to fuel new ventures. Acquiring competitors, etc.

My assumption was that troubled ones also need it. So we should not be surprised that see so many controversial IPO listings recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> how would the average employee at uber HQ who was there for 4-5 years before today?

</comment><comment><USER67> it's all a matter of perspective, I think an $80 billion market cap for a company that loses billions of dollars every year with no end in sight is not that disappointing at all for those who can sell today

<comment><AUTHOR> Those who can sell today did buy it for a higher price yesterday, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Reminder that Facebook opened lower than this and was lower for years before they started growing. Granted, FB can, you know, make money.

<comment><USER69> > Granted, FB can, you know, make money

And there is the rub. Uber and lyft both loose money on every ride. Their whole strategy was to dominate sweeping markeshare by subsidizing rides, then cutting costs significantly with an autonomous network of driverless cars. AFAIK uber already failed in the second half, so there really is no plan right now with what to do with these massive expensive networks of drivers that both companies are now beholden to, other than shovel more money into the furnace and hope the lights stay on long enough for driverless cars to appear through a competitor who'd be willing to let uber use their tech. Even then I don't see margins being anything but razor thin.

I'd be polishing my resume if I worked at either of these companies.</comment></comment>


Anyone know what happened to knox payments? - <AUTHOR> Site looks dead or abandoned <comment><USER2> "Knox claims the former company president Thomas Nicholas and other employees conspired to form a competing company" (2015) - [http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/04/10/payment-firm- says-w...](http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/04/10/payment-firm-says-workers- stole-its-code.htm)

Their social media accounts have been dead since the end of 2014. [https://www.facebook.com/knoxpayments/](https://www.facebook.com/knoxpayments/) \- [https://twitter.com/knoxpayments](https://twitter.com/knoxpayments)

<comment><USER3> Tommy Nicholas here - I run a company called Alloy that is not in the payments business at all.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use your caps lock key for? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Mapped to CTRL for all sorts of things.. like vim and weechat and such.

</comment><comment><USER3> Compose key, currently. ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key) )

</comment><comment><USER4> I actually keep it popped off the keyboard because I would fat-finger it otherwise.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your recommended podcasts on technology and related topics? - <AUTHOR>

I used to listen to LUG Radio (http://lugradio.org./) back in the days they were still active and I noticed that I haven't really been listening to any podcasts since then. So I'm looking for recommendations. What podcasts are you listening to? I'm mostly interested in technology, although I'm open to suggestions covering other topics. Some British type humour (I was a fan of the LUG Radio format, after all) doesn't hurt either. <comment><USER2> <http://techzinglive.com/>

<http://mixergy.com/></comment>


Within five years, technology will obliterate the need for business travel - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/big-idea/within-five-years-technology-will-obliterate-need-business-travel <comment><USER2> <http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Eliminate? I doubt that. Definitely reduce, and especially with fuel prices as high as they've been. But in the end, traveling is often required; there's no substitute for an in-person meeting and handshake when a decent-sized deal's at stake.

</comment><comment><USER4> paperless office. anyone ?</comment>


I will never 'Thumbs Up' again - ahmed-sharkasy https://medium.com/p/i-will-never-thumbs-up-again-53910418fea1 <comment><AUTHOR> "I found them the most closer to reality." So I guess left-handed people are not _real_?

<comment> ahmed-sharkasy You are right, i might be biased as right-handed but i was not sure whether even left-handed people usually do it by their right or left hand.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mostly use my left hand I guess to thumb up.

But your post is interesting, it would make sense to me to use a right-hand thumb up by default since right-handed people are close to 90% of the world wide population. It would be interesting to know why some companies just went with the left-handed version, if it's an aesthetic choice or just coincidence.</comment></comment></comment>


Analyzing the names of almost every Chinese restaurant in the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/08/we-analyzed-the-names-of-almost-every-chinese-restaurant-in-america-this-is-what-we-learned/ <comment><USER2> The reporter's name, Jennifer 8. Lee, is not a typo.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_8._Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_8._Lee)

> Lee was not given a middle name at birth so she chose "8." when she was a > teenager. In Chinese culture, the number eight symbolizes prosperity and > good luck.

<comment><USER3> We ran into this when working at ZenPayroll. Not her specifically but a similar circumstance where a security check triggered based on an unexpected non-alpha character in a signature. Turned out the person really did have a number as a name.

<comment><USER4> Names are hard.

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472)

In your case, I'd just say you need the same name that the IRS/department of revenue would need though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Language Log often notes how the English and Chinese names on Chinese restaurants are typically wildly different.[0, 1]

The Chinese Restaurant Worldwide Documentation Project is a good resource for restaurant names in both languages.[2]

[0] [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9943](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9943)

[1] [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4424](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4424)

[2] [https://www.flickr.com/groups/twchineserestaurantsdp/pool/wi...](https://www.flickr.com/groups/twchineserestaurantsdp/pool/with/141012288/#photo_141012288)

</comment><comment><USER6> I used to wonder why there was no Chinese restaurant in all of Capitol Hill in Seattle. Some have opened more recently, but it turns out one was there all along – called Regent Bakery & Cafe. Truly hidden from my Chinese restaurant radar due to the name.

<comment><USER7> There is a fusion place that's actually decent. Zhu Dang?

But I'm never going back because people in Capitol Hill are racist. Also parking is hard.

<comment><USER6> I liked Zhu Dang! Sadly it closed after only being open for a year. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _General Tso 's Chicken might be the most popular Chinese dish in the > western world_

Ah, the definition of 'western world' that starts at North America's west coast and ends at its east coast...

<comment><USER9> Wikipedia [0] confirms that this is an American dish. I personally have never encountered it in any of the four other western countries where I've visited Chinese restaurants. (Also not in restaurants in China, or a Chinese restaurant in Korea)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Tso%27s_chicken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Tso%27s_chicken)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is why I don't buy the theory that automation will make jobs obsolete. The fact that automation produces enough surplus to enable the employment of people to do articles like this!

</comment><comment><USER11> If you haven't already, try Indian style Chinese food.

<comment><USER12> After living in China for a decade, I was quite amused to find food labelled as Chinese on a multi-month jaunt to southern India, where it seemed the only categories for food were "veg", "non-veg" and "Chinese". There were only a few dishes under the 'Chinese' classification, and the names seemed to have been stuck. However, quite interestingly, I did find three other examples of Chinese contact in South India. The first was Chinese cigarettes, super budget brands that are obviously export only, probably using the worst quality floor- sweepings from China's tobacco industry, which is centered on the province I live in, Yunnan, which happens to be the closest part to India as the crow flies, if you exclude Tibet. Secondly, bamboo-structure pivoted fishing nets[0] were fairly common on the Kerala coast, and particularly in Kochi. These were commonly acknowledged to have come from China. Finally, some locals told me that a traditional system of physical exercise endemic to Kerala had actually traveled to China with a monk and was the true basis for the Chinese system of Kung Fu.[1] I wouldn't write this theory off entirely, but it's not widely known and too close to Chinese national sentiment to discuss usefully in-country.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_fishing_nets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_fishing_nets) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Asian_martial_arts#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Asian_martial_arts#China)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Funny story, but here in The Netherlands they are named after the owner, as far as I know...

<comment><USER14> That's the way they're usually named in China, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had some fun with this idea by modding Dot-o-mator's name generator code to cook up random restaurant names... [http://www.dotomator.com/namers/asian- restaurant.html](http://www.dotomator.com/namers/asian-restaurant.html) :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Sushi should not to be in the word cloud.

<comment><USER17> The article starts off by talking about how chinese food in the US is a cuisine of its own at this point. Given that, why are we worrying about how traditionally non-chinese items are featured? It's not uncommon for chinese buffets in the northeast to have things like french fries on it.

Besides, many Americans aren't too bright and have trouble discerning their asians.

<comment><USER18> I went to a Chinese restaurant in Beijing that had a dish of fried lamb with cumin that was served with a side of french fries. Something got lost in translation though because the french fries came with a dipping sauce which was a whole can of cold tomato paste.

<comment><USER19> It's been a decade since I backpacked through China, but potatoes were a thing that were always lost in translation. Did not know fried potatoes could be both greasy and undercooked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's kind of funny how Mongolian and Jin show up prominently in the word cloud.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_dynasty_(1115-1234)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_dynasty_\(1115-1234\))

</comment><comment><USER20> I find it funny somehow invented a dish never found in any menu in China saying other's dish is not "authentic". He is right other did not follow his recipe, but "authentic" is a word I would never associate with most Chinese dishes and resteraunts in US.

</comment><comment><USER21> Obligatory Pun on the Chinese restaurant names:

[https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/31/45-asian- fusion-...](https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/31/45-asian-fusion-food/)

</comment><comment><USER22> One of my favorite names is "the five happiness" which happens to be in the same form of the new official political strategy of the CCP "the four comprehensives".

</comment><comment><USER23> Ultimate Chinese restaurant name: China Panda Garden Chinese Restaurant Express!</comment>


Facebook to users: Please vote to abolish your right to vote - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57553139-93/facebook-to-users-please-vote-to-abolish-your-right-to-vote/

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a baby out with the bathwater kind of case, to me. if comments are the problem, why aren't they playing with alternatives to the standard thread format?

</comment><comment><USER3> The irony of democracy is that the people can vote to eliminate democracy.</comment>


Human brain now registers smiley face emoticon as real facial expression  - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/happy-days-human-brain-now-registers-smiley-face-emoticon-as-real-facial-expression-9117473.html

<comment><USER2> _Interestingly, when the series of punctuation used to create a smiley face was reversed to show '(-:', or presented upright, no response was triggered._

':-.</comment>


Introducing the Qt WebEngine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2013/09/12/introducing-the-qt-webengine/

<comment><USER2> Posted by Lars Knoll, author of KHTML (which was then forked to become WebKit): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML)

</comment><comment><USER3> A little bit off topic, but I'm glad Qt didn't end up at Microsoft.

<comment><USER4> +1000. That could be a disaster. Some people in Nokia really saved it before the rest of Nokia sunk.

<comment><USER5> Nobody saved it. It just got sold off.

<comment><USER4> Selling off could hurt the project. Here it helped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really interesting, because whilst Qt Webkit was a fantastic effort it had some quirks. Last project I was working on used Qt Webkit to provide a basic browser, so there was lots of fun with flash player integration, Javascript going awry and so on, if they're relying on Chromium to act as the core it should remove a lot of those headaches for developers and allow them to build on top of it much easier.

Definitely a big change, quite exciting though.

<comment><USER7> Since Chromium doesn't support flash (that is one of the closed source bits added to Chrome), I suspect that while QTWebKit had fun with flash integration, Qt WebEngine will probably make Flash integration impossible.

The worst part (at least for where I work) of using Flash in QtWebView was the non-availability of a license to just include the flash .dll in our application distribution.

<comment><USER8> >Since Chromium doesn't support flash (that is one of the closed source bits added to Chrome)

The Chrome PPAPI Flash Player works perfectly on Chromium and the binary can be shipped separately.

<comment><USER9> In principle, but does Adobe ship the Flash PPAPI binary separately?

<comment><USER10> How do other WebKit-based browsers like Luakit get flash to work? I thought they were always using the NS Plugin API for Flash. Is that being deprecated; is PPAPI a replacement?

<comment><USER11> Adobe no longer support (except for security updates) the NPAPI ( _not_ NSAPI) plugin on Linux, which also has a habit of crashing a lot and randomly hanging… If you want Flash to work under Linux, one practically has to use the PPAPI plugin.

Note nobody except Chrome (and those based on the Chromium Content API) has any plan to support PPAPI, so in that sense NPAPI is alive and strong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Everyone seems to be moving from WebKit to Blink/Chromium. I wonder if / when Apple will be the only one using WebKit?

Slightly off topic: are there any desktop browsers that run on Linux or Windows that run an up to date version of webkit (for browser testing)?

<comment><USER13> Well as long as you have a copy of Arora that links to a current Qt you will have a recent WebKit. I have put Arora as a project on ice, but it is still useful for that purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is excellent news. I have been working on a project that uses QtWebkit extensively and I have had my fair share of burns from QtWebkit's platform specific quirks—such as all rendering being retina except SVG, causing SVG's in webpage to show incredibly pixelated. Chromium core should enforce a stricter feature parity with the current Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can someone provide a simplified summary?

<comment><USER13> After Google forked WebKit a few months ago into the Blink project the Qt trolls got together and decided that they will basing the future Qt WebKit module on the Google fork of WebKit and not the (Apple maintained) WebKit. While similar the two differ in a few key aspects the main one being if the WebKit/Blink webviews are in process or out of process (ignoring the discussion complication of webkit2).

There were various other reason for following Blink and honestly the day Blink came out I would be shocked if there hadn't been meetings in every company contributing to WebKit putting together a mini-project to decide if they should follow Google. There were a lot of little pain points in the WebKit project and Google in one swoop cleaned up a ton of them. If anything I see WebKit as an example of failing to steward an open source project on the part of Apple or the community as a whole. Everyone was working on their own problems that it was hard to get movement to fix bigger problems that applied to all ports. Even very visible things like letting each port have their own build system sounded good originally, but was one of the things holding the project back. I was on the edge of the community (worked on the qtwebkit port, helped port chrome to linux, ce port, blackberry port, etc) so I know only so much, but it would be interesting to hear from someone closer in the community not about what was bad technically in the project, but how as an project we (socially?) didn't fix them. Why didn't the WebKit meetings fix this? Did Apple have too much say because they owned the svn server to the detriment of themselves?

<comment><USER16> A little offtopic, but I wanted to clarify to people not familiar with Qt, that the term "Qt trolls" is because the company behind Qt was called Trolltech, before Nokia purchased it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, if I understand this correctly, there will be no more direct access to the DOM via C++, and JavaScript will be the only language for fine grained, fast DOM access. I'm not entirely happy about that, although I do understand the benefits of the new multi-process architecture.

<comment><USER18> Chrome supports a single process mode [1], and has in-process APIs [2] for manipulating the DOM via C++.

I would be surprised if it wasn't already possible to make use of these from the embedder side if you're in single-process mode. But if it's not, I wouldn't expect there to be pushback on changes to that effect.

[1] [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/content/public/common/content_switches.cc&sq=package:chromium&l=746)

[2] [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/t...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/third_party/WebKit/public/web/WebElement.h&sq=package:chromium)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great news, although I really wish it would have come sooner as we have spent a significant amount of time getting Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) to play nice with our Qt application in the past months.

One thing that I wonder though: Does this mean that the Qt WebEngine will stay more up to date? Because the old QtWebkit was lagging pretty far behind and for instance didn't get HTML5 support until very recently.

<comment><USER20> While it's bad for you - you had to spend a lot of time and effort on integrating - perhaps this experience can be shared with the Qt WebEngine people and improve their effort?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's going to happen to wkhtmltopdf and phantomjs ?

<comment><USER22> Their future releases may be based on Qt::WebEngine instead of Qt::WebKit

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is what happens when Mozilla stopped giving shit about their XUL platform.

<comment><USER24> What about WebKit! Now they're down to Apple, GTK+, EFL and BlackBerry (until they go bankrupt).

EFL is funded by Intel and Samsung for Tizen (insurance policy against Android?). GTK+ is supported by consulting and occasional grants. If everyone but Apple leave WebKit will it stay open?

<comment><USER25> The LGPL means there will still be code dumps, but the development process has been closing for some time (e.g. WebKit2 process changes).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you ship a copy of a browser engine you need to make sure deployments are diligently kept up to date via patches, that didn't hapapen with the earlier Qt setup. Hope they have a plan for it now.</comment>


The End of OS X - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2020/the-end-of-os-x/ <comment><USER2> I've looked at the trajectory of Apple these past few years with mounting bitter-sweetness. At its best, MacOS really felt like the best of Unix combined with the consumer focus alluded to in the article. I still adore the craftsmanship of the latest Macbooks, but my 2015 Macbook felt like the apex of Mac's design. It was the kind of device that was such a pleasure to develop on. You could leverage the power of Unix in a UI designed with thoughtfulness and care. It reminded you that power and accessibility to end-users can be balanced. And now that balance has tipped away from the power-user, the developers, to the end-user, and in doing so I question my commitment to this extraordinary ecosystem. Why develop on a platform that contends with me every step of the way? Because the users and the money are there? That was never what brought me to the Macbook.

EDIT: I suppose most users in the Apple ecosystem aren't on Macbooks, but iPhones.

<comment><USER3> I am a developer and power user. I am incredibly happy with every update from Apple. Unix with good design is _exactly_ what I want from my OS.

Sure I can't disassemble my laptop and change the hardware. I have no desire at all to do that. I literally can think of no reason I personally would want to do this, although I imagine there are a tiny fraction of users who would and you may be among them.

<comment><USER4> > I literally can think of no reason I personally would want to do this

Being able to swap out RAM and storage and battery from factory-provided can extend the lifetime (and even increase the performance capacity) of a given machine at nothing more than the cost of the new parts. And Apple used to make it pretty easy to do this, and enough people did that there was a subeconomy of vendors selling for this purpose, although of course there were full- service options for people who literally couldn't imagine doing it themselves.

This also meant that downtime wasn't controlled by Apple Store service availability (literally had a drive fail on me once, had my bootable backup, swapped it into the machine, good to go).

And on a number of occasions I've done more complex replacements, a DVD drive here, a keyboard there. I can see why most people wouldn't want to do those, they're a giant pain, but having the option can be empowering.

What's _actually_ hard to think of, if one is thinking, is what Apple has gained in return for this. I can kinda squint and see that irregular (and therefore, perhaps, less efficiently swappable) battery shapes have some credible advantages, but the rest of the marginal ounce-gains and dimensional- golf scores belong to a category of diminishing returns.

<comment><USER5> _Being able to swap out RAM and storage and battery from factory-provided can extend the lifetime (and even increase the performance capacity) of a given machine at nothing more than the cost of the new parts._

It isn't just the cost of new parts. It's also the cost of those parts being larger in order to accommodate user-accessibility and replacement. When everything is surface-mounted on the PCB it can be made a lot smaller. This allows Apple to shrink the laptop as well as allocate more space for the battery.

No one is asking for phones where we can swap out the RAM and storage. Why do we want this from laptops? I'm typing this on a 2020 Air which I configured with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. I really don't anticipate a need to upgrade either of these things before the machine reaches end of life anyway.

<comment><USER6> > _Why do we want this from laptops?_

Why shouldn't we? I would gladly sacrifice a few mm of thickness for a machine where I could upgrade the RAM and storage (and replace the battery) every few years. Not only would that save me money, but it's much more sustainable from a manufacturing and waste perspective.

I just finally threw out my old (sadly broken) 12" G4 PowerBook, and marveled that it had a removable battery (you don't have to disassemble it; you just flip a latch on the external bit, and the battery slides out). And I remembered that at some point I'd done a trivially-easy disassembly at one point to upgrade the HDD. I got that laptop secondhand, when it was already a couple years old, and it lasted me a good five years, and probably would have lasted longer had my then-girlfriend not dropped it on concrete, which somehow fried the drive controller.

<comment><USER5> My Air is 2.8lbs, far thinner and lighter than a 12" PowerBook G4 (which I used to own as well) with way better battery life. I don't want to go back to an old brick of a laptop like that. I think most people don't.

You're part of a very small niche. The tinkerer who doesn't want to jump to Linux. This is a tiny number of people, sadly, just as the number of people who want to tinker with their cars is very small. Most people just want something that works and is very convenient. They prefer to leave the service to service people.

<comment><USER6> > _My Air is 2.8lbs, far thinner and lighter than a 12" PowerBook G4 (which I > used to own as well) with way better battery life. I don't want to go back > to an old brick of a laptop like that. I think most people don't._

Not saying you'd have to. Battery technology has improved since then; we can make lighter batteries that last longer. Hard drives have been replaced by small PCBs with a few chips on them; again, much lighter. Further miniaturization of the internals means a smaller chassis which means less material; again, much lighter.

It's be perfectly possible to build a laptop with similar dimensions and weight as the current crop of laptops, but allow for easier battery replacement, and even RAM/storage replacement. I'm not saying it'd be as simple to swap as it was in 2005, but it'd at least be easier/possible and not involve special tools.

Apple seems to implicitly claim that their anti-repair/anti-upgrade stance is due "delighting customers" with smaller, lighter hardware, but I suspect it's mostly driven by their desire to lock down their hardware against tampering, and keep people on the upgrade/purchase treadmill every few years.

> _You're part of a very small niche. The tinkerer who doesn't want to jump to > Linux._

I actually do run Linux (previously on Mac hardware, but I finally gave up on it last year), so that's not the niche I'm a part of.

But that's not really the point; I'm not speaking for myself, I'm speaking for average users. I see a lot of posts here claiming that average users "don't think about" this or "don't care about" that, and I posit that the average user doesn't care about an extra few millimeters of thickness or an extra few tenths of a pound of weight. Especially if it doubles or triples the useful life of the device through a RAM/storage upgrade and easy/cheap battery replacement every few years.

> _They prefer to leave the service to service people._

That's fine too, but Apple is actively against allowing a robust, price- competitive field of independent repair shops. And even if they weren't, soldering in the RAM chips and NVMe drives means the only thing those repair shops could do would be to swap out batteries and main boards, rather than do cheap, targeted upgrades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I personally think that the MacBook Pro 16 inch is the world's best laptop, and look forward to see what the next generations can do.

But the whole point has been MacOS. I'm not sure what to think of the changes. If they stabilize the mess that was Catalina, then they're doing the right things, even with the increased iOS-ification of the Mac. If they just slap more Windows 8 style touch gloss on deep and unresolvable system level issues, then Apple has reverted to all the reasons that Classic MacOS was so unstable.

That said, after 20 years with the Mac I recently added an Alienware Aurora R9 desktop to my life. Wanted to PC game again, and use VR. Also wanted to catch up with Windows, as I hadn't really used it regularly for 10 years. Early Windows 10 did not impress me.

I have been surprisingly really happy with Windows 10 build 2004 and Windows Subsystem for Linux v2. To the point it's my main dev box now. (With COVID there's less need for a laptop!).

Some weirdness with cut and paste, but file system sharing and networking has mostly been smoothed from what I remember. Docker runs well integrated, as does Kubernetes. Everything is blazing fast. The main thing I miss is Spotlight search, but there are third party replacements for that.

I really can't see myself moving back to Linux, which was my go to prior to the Mac from 1995-1999. I tend to follow the JWZ adage, Linux is only free if your time has no value. I use it as a server OS plenty, but don't really need it on my desktop.

<comment><USER8> > Linux is only free if your time has no value

Hah, that's great. I'll have to tuck that one away.

<comment><USER9> That was probably a fair assessment a decade ago, but Linux seriously "just works" now. About a year ago I bought a Dell XPS 13, I've thrown Pop!_OS on there, and it worked out of the box, no driver downloads, no sneakernetting Wi-Fi drivers, no codec installs, no track-pad problems (two fingers to right click works!), no scaling issues, no 3rd party repos. It just works. (I'm sure FOSS folks may dislike the distribution of 3rd party binaries, but I don't use Linux because I'm a FOSS purist.)

Pop!_OS comes with a built-in tiling manager you can toggle on that completely changes the game for development. If you have never used a tiling manager, you owe it to yourself to do it at least once. The built in software manager is excellent, and is the one-stop-shop for installing VSCode, Android Studio, Steam, Chromium and IntelliJ all at once. No finding/adding repos, automatic updates, _it just works._

Even gaming (on Steam and Lutris) is a breeze. It honestly requires zero tinkering (on Steam at least) to get 90% of my library to run (including AAA titles.) If you haven't used desktop Linux since 2010, it is a radically different experience. It honestly is easier to use and get what I want it to do than a MBP today.

(Disclaimer, I'm sure mileage varies depending on your environment, hardware, and chosen distro, just sharing my experience. I prefer to compare the XPS + Linux experience to MBP + macOS)

<comment><USER8> Ironically, I _first_ used it in 2010

It's definitely gotten better over the past decade, and maybe the jab is a little unfair if you're using off-the-shelf Ubuntu on very vanilla hardware. But that's mostly what I do when I use Linux, and yet I've never had it "just work" without several asterisks.

Sure, the mouse and keyboard just work. The display and network adapter (usually) just work. Audio may or may not just work. A second display may not play very nicely. Setting up GRUB/dual-booting always takes some effort to get it running smoothly enough for daily use. Installing my dev tools, there's always one random things that goes wrong. Sometimes I'll install my browser the wrong way and it doesn't get an icon in my launcher; so I have to go look up how to configure that manually. I still have this weird issue where whenever I boot Linux and then boot back to Windows, my system clock (in Windows) is off by 6 hours; I gave up trying to fix it because it wasn't worth the effort.

It's a death by a thousand cuts. I'm sure officially-supported installations like those on the XPS 13 work just fine, but if you're installing it yourself you're going to get pulled off track from what you were trying to do _with_ your computer, and into forums trying to find someone else who had your exact issue. Some people revel in this experience, and I've been known to take a sense of accomplishment from it before, but most of the time I don't want to be _messing_ with my computer, I want to be _using_ it.

<comment><USER10> I feel like Linux people have got so used to sorting out those thousand cuts, they don't really think about it as a problem anymore, just part of initial setup. But as soon as Joe Bloggs installs it and his wifi doesn't work or his graphics card has a minor glitch it's a complete dealbreaker.

And I agree with your assessment that I don't think I've ever installed even Ubuntu and had _everything_ work perfectly out of the box. In contrast, Windows has plenty of things you'll _want_ to change configuration on, but usually nothing that's outright broken.

<comment><USER8> That's true- and macOS has plenty of things I reconfigure whenever I set up a fresh install too, so I guess you could argue that takes up just as much time. I would say it's a do-once-and-forget thing, but then I'm sure there are people who would say the same about Linux issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gjsman-1000 What I think a lot of us programmers miss is the experience of the end-users who are likely to buy a Mac.

The fact of the matter is, 99.9% of people who buy a Mac are not going to know what subpixel hinting is. Or care too much that they can't delete Chess.app. To them, the Mac is nicer looking and easier to use than ever.

Will iOS devs care? Not at all - developing for the Mac has become easier with Catalyst. It's easy and cheap to get a new audience for your apps. Will web devs care? Not while homebrew and all of the packages in it still work fine. I, as a web dev, have everything working great on the Big Sur beta already.

And as for some saying that MacOS is becoming more iOS like: Yes, it's been happening since Mac OS X Lion with the fullscreen Launchpad. Nothing has changed.

<comment><USER11> > And as for some saying that MacOS is becoming more iOS like: Yes, it's been > happening since Mac OS X Lion with the fullscreen Launchpad. Nothing has > changed.

I'd say a lot has changed, because everything is a matter of degrees. As soon as I realized Launchpad was a piece of crap, I put an Applications folder stack in my dock a la the Leopard default, and forgot that Launchpad exists.

Can't really ignore it anymore...

<comment><USER12> My solution is to just use Spotlight Search to launch everything. My hands are on the keyboard much more than a mouse or touchpad, and it's a good habit for when I switch between the laptop (where the touchpad is more convenient) and a desktop setup where they're more physically separated. Hunting for things on a screen with a cursor is tedious and annoying to me, when I can always just type it. But maybe that's a habit from growing up with MSDOS and (later) Linux and FreeBSD starting in college.

<comment><USER13> Spotlight search is one of the only patterns I really took away from using a mac for work.

I even mapped Super (win key) + Space to the application finder in XFCE. It's just muscle memory at this point, just like the vim keybindings.

And, really, any excuse to use the mouse less is a win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _> what the company perceives as a weakness: the paucity of apps in the Mac App Store._

I think that the issue with the Mac App store, is that it imposes restrictions on a once-free-for-all development environment. I know many app developers that have abandoned it, after giving it a damn fair shake.

Mac developers just got used to being able to wander all over the house, poking their noses into whatever they liked.

iOS, on the other hand, started off restricted. iOS developers have never known the freedom that Mac developers have had.

To be completely fair to Apple, the iOS model is the one that needs to be followed, if security and privacy are the goals, and I think that a big part of MacOS 11 will be to add restrictions.

I suspect that non-App Store apps for the Mac may be seeing the twilight.

I am not looking forward to the restrictions on the Mac, but it has been quite some time since I've stepped outside the walled garden, myself.

<comment><USER15> On the other hand, what a modern desktop is sorely lacking right now is protecting users and developers from themselves. Whenever I run "npm install" I have to close my eyes and ignore the chills down my spine thinking about how a thousand random npmjs.org account holders just ran their postinstall scripts on my computer with full access to ~/Documents/. The traditional multi-user Unix permission system is no longer appropriate for the modern waterhole malware world. Nobody cares if you break root and hack system binaries, they can always be restored. The gold is in the user's content. We need a system where regular users don't need to worry about defending against software developers who don't carry the user's best interest in mind, and we need a system where even the cowboy I-know-what-I'm-doing developer doesn't point a gun at their foot, while still providing the freedom to tinker and share.

<comment><USER8> Maybe what we need is a granular permissions model for all executables, including those in the terminal. Instead of the binary choice between "this code is allowed to rewrite my operating system if it wants to" and "this code can 'only' read and write all of my user files", what if we had to explicitly give binaries access to specific directories? Network access? The desktop environment? Drawing to the screen anywhere outside of their designated windows?

IMO this is the real innovation of iOS: not simply locking everything down, but locking everything down _by default_ and putting the user in control of where to release those valves. Catalina introduced a fairly ham-fisted version of this that doesn't work super well in practice, but I think they've got the right idea.

Improvement ideas for the Catalina model:

\- A terminal interface. Right now if you run a program that tries to access Documents you get a pop-up. If you ran it from the terminal, why not get a terminal prompt, a la sudo?

\- A central place to manage all of the permissions you've allowed and disallowed (this may already exist and I just don't know about it)

\- No special status for folders like "Documents" and "Downloads"; a generalized way of specifying any arbitrary directory (recursive and non- recursive, maybe with patterns). For regular users there can be a simplified UI overlaid on top, while power-users could manage these directly.

\- Separate read and write permissions for files and directories

Imagine if you ran all those NPM install scripts and they only had write permissions to their subdirectory of node_modules, only had read permissions to your path, and would dynamically prompt you if they had a reason to request something beyond that

EDIT: What if you could also designate certain programs as trusted "authorities" that can then automatically delegate these permissions to other programs? Running with the example, you could allow NPM to dole out narrow permissions to postinstall scripts as needed, coming back up to prompt you in unusual cases. This would hugely improve the user-experience issue and these "authorities" wouldn't really have any more power than they already do today.

<comment><USER16> IMO there are two problems.

The first is that no one actually wants to manage that kind of access. Especially not your every day computer user.

The second, related, problem is that if every app is asking you to review 20 permissions, people are going to stop reading the list and blindly accept. Or at least the people who need the guardrails the most will blindly accept.

For all the crazy granular permissions I just don't see a way for it to work other than a source like Apple doing the review, saying that this app is trying to read your documents for no reason and so it's rejected. But now you're back to all apps going through the app store sandbox.

<comment><USER8> A highly-granular system can be organized under a simplified, streamlined, user-friendly interface. I fully believe that this could be made to work well.

<comment><USER17> And the end result would be Catalina ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Snow Leopard (version 10.6) was the peak of OS X. Everything since then has been downhill. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard)

<comment><USER19> I would not go that far. Security changes. iOS integration with AirDrop and Messages. Laptop trackpad gestures.

But note what I'm highlighting for the most part: mobile features. They've added good stuff for laptops, and for interfacing with iOS devices. But for desktops, and laptops living on a desk? Not so much. If you're using a full keyboard and a mouse, sans trackpad, I can't think of a lot of real UI enhancements since 10.6.

(Which makes total since, given they sell so, so many more laptops than desktops. But still. I get it.)

</comment></comment><comment> codemonkey-zeta As a younger hacker, who has never been into the Apple ecosystem and doesn't know much about Steve Jobs, the video presentation of the funeral for MacOS 9 sort of blew me away. It was so funny and theatrical, but got the message of Apple's new direction across so clearly. You can even see people in the front rows standing up and gawking, trying desperately to figure out what was going on. What a fascinating production.

<comment><USER20> Got a good link?

<comment> codemonkey-zeta It's the first video in the original post. [https://videopress.com/v/cTvJLHm8](https://videopress.com/v/cTvJLHm8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been unhappy with macOS and Apple for the past few years and in January switched back to developing on a windows PC. I could not be happier with that decision and with the "roadmap" Apple provided yesterday, I expect it will be a long time before I go back to macOS, if ever.

<comment><USER22> I don't understand how you can get anything done without fighting windows nonsense proprietary tools.

<comment><USER23> I've had to help people in my classes fight Apple nonsense proprietary tools because no one could understand why Apple won't let you open a file using your own code. If there wasn't anyone there that understood the issue (and that was almost the case) they'd have to use Windows.

Trust me, macOS is much worse on that front than Windows is. At least on Windows if you have issues with your OneDrive account folders won't start disappearing from your Desktop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As someone still on Mojave and really disappointed with the Mac strategy from Mavericks onwards, I've resigned myself to the idea that my next laptop will not be an MBP. I was enamoured with the original OSX Look&Feel and its unixy underpins; the former is now dead for good (the Big Sur icons are 2001-gnome- level horrendous, and everything is flatter than flat), and the latter dies a little bit more with each release.

I have to admit that I dread going back to the utter boredom of the Microsoft ecosystem, though. I would dearly love a Linux laptop that doesn't make me deaf with fan noise, can last 3 hours of Firefox and Pycharm on a battery charge, and doesn't freak out when waking from sleep. Does such a thing exist yet?

<comment><USER25> I have the system76 oryx pro (last years model). I'm moving from my 13" MacBook pro (2015) which I really like but it was time for a new machine (should have bought more RAM/ SSD space..).

Its pretty great. Compared to the the MacBook its much faster and has a ton of ports, and everything just works (why you pay a premium for a linux notebook). Build quality isn't as good, but not bad.

Its not perfect, However when running Nvidia video the fan does spin up (its not quiet, but not that bad). The battery life is, terrible, (probably about 3 hours), but it runs jet brains software really well. I've only had one problem waking from sleep in the year I've owned it. Even steam runs well on this thing (the video card is a beast).

Its the year of linux on the desktop (again....maybe)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of the big turndowns from Apple for me was when they did not give me a choice but to upgrade an Ipad 2 i had loaded with cool music apps. The ipad was 1 instrument more un my studio, could trigger MIDi or have good apps. I can remember why i had to upgrade, but waited as long as i could. After the upgrade the ipad became unresponsive, they slowed down the processor but it did not came out untill they got sued. I gave the ipad to my mother and never again bought one. I still use a Mac pro in the studio. I run El capitan, with newish protools and Ableton, and have another partition with 10.6 with legacy Pro Tools and a ton of nice plugins. But when i need to do office or programming i boot in Linux. I have also and old macbook air that is in the process of be turned into Linux. For music it was and it is amazing to be able to run withouth trouble, it was always a hassle to update as music software was a year behind at least. Apple was cool, now is just another big corporation.

<comment><USER27> Apple never got sued for slowing down the iPad.

<comment><USER28> Nor did they force any iPad upgrades...sigh

<comment><USER26> The issue was that I could not sync my Ipad with Itunes anymore i believe, so I could not for example load music to my Ipad. So they did not "force" me you are right, but I did not get other choice because they disable some core functionalities. I aprecciated if you elaborated the meaning of "sigh", as you might noticed english is not my native language. And please do tell on your experience on the subject.

<comment><USER27> My original _iPod Touch_ from 2007 could still sync to my computer as of about a year ago.

Also as of about a year ago, I could still download "the last compatible version" of apps like Hulu, Netflix, and Crackle on my first gen iPad and they worked. Music I bought from iTunes was still playable and still synced automatically to it. I didn't try to sync from my computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> OS X (the name) is gone for a while, it was replaced by macOS. The numbering change now is inconsequential.

<comment><USER30> Most people probably don't even refer to the macOS versions by number but by codename.

<comment><USER31> Sure, but version names are hard to order: was Catalina before or after X? who will remember? (maybe if it at least was like Ubuntu with names following alphabetic order)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> OS X was a marketing name and was dead for a while now.

Besides the CPU arch change and a slightly refined UI it is pretty much the same.

<comment> gjsman-1000 Homebrew packages work fine, you can still disable SIP, Gatekeeper hasn't gotten tighter. Everything is almost exactly the same as Catalina. There's really no substance whatsoever to the claims that MacOS 11 is locking the OS down. You could make this claim for Catalina, but Big Sur isn't changing anything of consequence at all.

<comment><USER33> Maybe people are only just now starting to see Apple's intentions of locking down their system. I remember it being a bad omen a few releases back when i found i could no longer (easily) delete the Chess.app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What many UNIX fans that abandoned their Linux and BSD distributions for OS X fail to understand is that Apple culture was never about CLI, shell scripts and daemons.

Mac OS was never like that, A/UX was a failed attempt into UNIX market while keeping the Mac OS spirit, and for NeXT is was a way to embrace UNIX workstation market and extend it with NeXTSTEP Objective-C frameworks.

Steve's opinion regarding UNIX is well known.

And then there was BeOS on the race or the failed Copland project, both without any major UNIX story.

<comment><USER35> Apple marketed directly to UNIX and Linux power users with their famous advertisement:

[https://julxrp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/apple_unix_ad.jpg](https://julxrp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/apple_unix_ad.jpg)

In this era, they were all about marketing to UNIX people.

<comment><USER34> When the ship is sinking anything goes, they also had sessions at CERN back in the day, but that was never a central role in Apple culture, nor its users for the most part.

<comment><USER35> I would argue that their UNIX focus was a major contributor to the popularity of the (post-OPENSTEP) Mac.

It attracted UNIX nerds, which attracted other nerds and all those nerds spread the word to family, friends, and coworkers and helped spur adoption in a significant way.

That's how I seem to remember it, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gjsman-1000 I mainly program web apps on my MacBook Pro 2017, and upgrading to Big Sur hasn't changed almost any of this for me. I can still install brew and do my work. The UI is a rough around the edges in some areas, but I actually don't really mind, and some of the new features are pretty nice.

</comment><comment><USER36> That family tree is wrong, right?

1\. Unix was first, then BSD came from Unix... then Mach was built quite a bit later.

2\. NextStep was then built by jobs after he was let go from apple by Mr. Soda man.

3\. Jobs comes back to apple, brings NextStep- reads the tea leaves with OS7-9 and sets up NextStep as the successor with OSX. Apple branded NextStep becomes OSX.

Is my chronology correct?

<comment><USER37> I think so.

OSX was bought, NT was bought, Android was bought.

Which big OS vendor build their own OS? Maybe Google with Fuchsia?

<comment><USER34> NT wasn't bought.

<comment><USER38> Maybe a shortcut of Dave Cutler plus what Wikipedia said "While creating Windows NT, Microsoft developers rewrote VMS in C. Although they added the Win32 API, NTFS file system, GUI, and backwards compatibility with DOS, OS/2, and Win16, DEC engineers almost immediately noticed the two operating systems' internal similarities; parts of VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures, published by Digital Press, accurately describe Windows NT internals using VMS terms. Instead of a lawsuit, Microsoft agreed to pay DEC $65–100 million, help market VMS, train Digital personnel on Windows NT, and continue Windows NT support for DEC Alpha"

Also [https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/windows-nt-and- vm...](https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/windows-nt-and-vms-rest- story)

<comment><USER39> Using VMS in the 80s at my university, it was a solid foundation for creating a proper OS that NT became.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> First OS X was big cats, then it was mountains.

Very surprised they didn't switch to a new naming theme!

I guess an architecture change was as good a reason as any to revert back to a normal, sane versioning system where the first number increments like most programs. But it's just weird how "unannounced" or unacknowledged it is.

<comment><USER41> Not mountains, but California landmarks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This blog post is 90 prelude/buildup toward these two claims:

* MacOS X was a very good OS for developers,

* MacOS X 11 is not.

The first claim is discussed in the prelude, but irrelevant for the conclusion. Three arguments are given for the second claim:

* macOS11 runs on ARM

* macOS11 UI supports touch

* macOS11 is not open and good [like macOSX] but easy and good enough

That's it. This leaves me quite disappointed.

macOS 11 running on ARM, RISCV, x86 or powerpc has little to do whether it is good for developers. I have an intel mac and do a substantial amount of ARM development on it: qemu works just fine. I expect qemu to work as good on arm for developing for x86.

macOS11 supporting touch does not say anything either about whether it is good for developers. Windows UI supports touch, and that's quite good, even for developers. I also have a Lenovo Yoga, and I can fold it, and sketch on it, which is great for web meetings. All thanks to having a good touch screen and good OS touch support. So IMO this change could make macOS11 better for devs than macOS10.

I haven't heard any information suggesting that macOS11 is less open and less good than macOS10. macOS10 was never great. It has quite old BSD utilities that are often subtly incompatible with their Linux or modern BSD variants for apparently no reason. macOS11 does not make this better or worse. macOS10 requires pretty much every process to grant permissions for everything nowadays, which makes it a bit of a pain to do something in the terminal without granting all permissions to the terminal, but that's only one click away, already "prepared" by apple, and you only have to do this once, etc. Each release of macOS 10 has made it more painful to use for development in some ways, and also better in other ways (zsh as default shell, C++17, C++ modules, dropping CUDA support, no native Vulkan support...). It was never great, it was always kind of a mixed bag.

</comment><comment><USER3> So Apple changed their OS numbering system. Is there any more significance to this event?

<comment><USER43> why exactly did they change the version number? i dont get it

<comment><USER44> I don't think Apple has explicitly said anything, but the fact that this version will support a new CPU architecture seems like a pretty good reason.

<comment><USER23> Not really, OS X supports PowerPC and Intel (32 and 64 bits) at various stages in it's lifetime.

<comment><USER45> macOS 11 will support Intel and ARM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Wow, I totally missed that version number in the About box. Very interesting! I guess 10.16 will be the last version of "OS X" as we knew it (even though it was already called macOS). The end of an era, indeed.

<comment><USER47> 10.15, you mean?

<comment><USER46> Yeah maybe! Some other commenters were saying the intel version is still called 10.16 but it depends where you look in the OS... My guess is it will be updated everywhere to be called 11.0 , so I guess yeah 10.15 would be the last of the "OS X" generation (even if it was renamed macOS already).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I have fond memories of when the first OS X CDs arrived at our college computer lab, and we installed them on a PowerMac G4. The aqua UI felt so futuristic, and it matched the hardware!

</comment><comment><USER49> Before leaving on my morning hike, I cleaned up some storage, getting 50G free on my MacBook, and downloaded the 9G installer while I was hiking. It turns out that I was still about 12G short in required disk space.

I mention this to save other people from lost effort.

A question: lots of my 256G of storage is taken up by remote mobile storage in ~/Library. If there an easy way to tell macOS to temporarily not keep local copies, and get them back later from iCloud?

<comment><USER50> Did you happen to have Time Machine enabled? (To answer your question, I think what you're looking for is brctl evict.)

<comment><USER49> I deleted ~/.stack and ~/.mvn and had plenty of room. I usually do Haskell dev on a very fast VPS anyway.

I am running the macOS Big Sur beta and also the iPadOS 14 beta. Things seem to run slowly on my MacBook, but ti seems like some work is done the first time apps are opened. My $3400 Common Lisp kit does not work on the Big Sur beta, so I will probably revert in a few days, but I am having fun with the beta right now.

I have had no problems with the iPadOS 14 beta so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Mac OS 11 feels like it might end up being the Windows 8 of Mac OS. A company is taking/took a well-loved and highly productive desktop/laptop optimized operating system (OS X for Apple, Windows 7 for Microsoft) and is making/made it more like a tablet/phone operating system. Unfortunately, that made it less optimized for the desktop/laptop use case.

<comment><USER52> That could be true of macOS 11 but it's too early to tell unless they completely removed Finder.app and blew it up into a new user interface for macOS, which Windows 8 did for the start icon that destroyed the user experience, but we'll see.

If that's the 'Windows 8 of Mac OS' I don't want to see what the 'Window 8 of the Linux Desktop' is.

<comment><USER53> I think Gnome 3 is the "Windows 8" of Linux: It's pushing touch, it's moving away from tried and true desktop concepts and its release led to the creation of numerous "alternative" desktop environments for people who liked the old Gnome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What's interesting to me after reading a bunch of the threads here is that consumers are constantly re-evaluating your product.

Mac became popular, not because of hackers, but because it was a great platform for doing graphic design and artwork. Apple put a lot of time and energy into the human factor and it paid off. That and the iphone basically saved the brand from extinction.

It's clear that apple is moving the same direction that Windows did years ago where they're putting the mobile OS on the desktop. I'm wondering how this is going to pay off for desktop/server users. Apples fortunes are in mobile and they're basically ballooning their mobile device inventory with multiple form factors.

I think a lot of what keeps apple users buying more expensive laptops/servers is because they simply 'work'. However, apple has been sneaking in a lot of annoying features that I would expect on mobile devices but I have come to dislike on a desktop. No i don't want my email address tied to my purchases, no I don't some random device in my house popup with a MFA code, no I don't want what I do on my home laptop sync'ed to every mobile device I own.

Usability and human design has always been the 'win' for apple and it's what Linux/Windows can never match (because they don't control all the parts for a uniform customer experience). However, there has always been a line between phones and mobiles devices. That line is in the fact that my laptop doesn't have a GSM/CDMA cell device in it. Because it would be "silly" to take calls on a laptop (i guess). I'm not sure I really like this line blurred. I'm not really sure that my laptop is just another IoT device running the same OS making annoying popups and tweets that I have to cancel while I'm working.

Anywho there is an intangible distinction between a laptop and a phone and by blurring this line I think some people might begin to dislike it. There are other options out there.

</comment><comment><USER55> Am I the only one who wants to call it MacOS 11 Big Bottom? Any Spinal Tap devotees here? Oh never mind.

<comment><USER56> You can have one chuckle for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I predict that Apple will go on from this in strength. Moved some of my VITAX directly into AAPL.

</comment><comment><USER58> So what's the significance signaled by the numbering change?

I often like Thomson's writing (and have him in my RSS feed) but this meanders a bit too much for me to follow. Can someone help me out?

</comment><comment><USER59> This is just the 2020 version of Windows 95+NT = XP.

</comment><comment><USER60> Wait... so in a few updates Macbooks will be locked down like iPhones without a possiblity for "sideloading" ?

<comment><USER61> I hope not. In the presentation they mentioned homebrew, so I suppose that's something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anybody have any reasons as to why they totally downplayed this major version release of their flagship OS?

<comment><USER62> They did?

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> You spend $6K on a laptop and then Apple kills the product line. Sweet.

</comment><comment><USER64> i switched 2002 from a Mac Powerbook G3 "Wall Street" to Windows. I will switch to a Mac again at the end of the Year when a Mac with an Apple Chip comes to Market. Exciting Times :)

</comment><comment><USER65> _> an open platform on top of the tremendous hardware innovation being driven by the iPhone sounds amazing._

macOS is anything but open though. If anything, it's completely the opposite, in many senses of being not open. If you want an open platform, use Linux.

<comment><USER66> Depends on what you call open and what the 'opposite' you refer to is.

Open as in 'welcoming to users'? Open as in 'it has hinges on the device that open'? Open means many things.

If you refer to Open Source in terms of the OSI, then no, macOS is not that kind of open. It's also not entirely closed as there is plenty of 1-to-1 source code available, also under OSI-approved licenses (but not all of it).

If you refer to Open in terms to 'the ability to add and remove at least some components so you can do your work', then macOS is plenty open. Want to get rid of Pages and install Microsoft Word? No problem.

<comment><USER65> Apple for example refused to support Vulkan and don't allow anyone else to provide drivers for it. It means they have control over what features you can use - you have no say in it. Even Windows being as closed as it is doesn't have such restrictions. So I'd say macOS is closed to a sickening level and it's completely disingenuous to call it open.

May be if you compare it to iOS which is closed in even worse ways, you could say macOS is "open". But it's like comparing something that's rotten to something that's rotten even more. Both are rotten.

<comment><USER66> That's a rather extremistic view. Apple doesn't support vulkan because they tried to get OpenGL and OpenCL working. Nvidia didn't play ball and AMD wasn't in the picture back then. The result was that Apple had to come up with something else (Metal) and that has worked out great with them.

But unless you are writing a graphics engine (which almost no user does) that doesn't even matter.

Regarding your openness, you still haven't provided with a description as to what you describe as open or closed. Is Windows open? No. None of it is, except a few example apps and things like the calculator. You don't get kernel sources, you don't get library sources, and you can't run any custom versions. With macOS you can.

Same goes for DirectX if you want to stay with graphics stacks (Direct 3D to be more specific). That's about as closed as it gets: you can't remove it, you can't use it elsewhere, you can't get the sources and you can't modify it.

You can still run Vulkan on macOS if you want -- you are free to implement it, run it, make shims or layers if you wish etc, just not with Apple's support.

What you call open or closed isn't clear, but the fact that you use the word 'rotten' signals to me that you are emotional about it and probably not really looking for a discussion.

<comment><USER65> I don't really care for their excuses why they don't do it. Even if anything of that applied in the past, they have no excuse today.

The bottom line - they don't do it and don't allow let's say hardware makers to provide drivers, like they can do even on Windows. That alone is an indication that it's anything but open.

 _> You can still run Vulkan on macOS if you want -- you are free to implement it, run it, make shims or layers if you wish etc, just not with Apple's support._

You aren't free to do that. Hardware drivers for macOS are all controlled by Apple. Otherwise you'd see AMD, Intel and Nvidia providing native Vulkan for macOS already. The only thing you can do is to provide translation into Apple's Metal lock-in (like MoltenVK, gfx-rs and so on).

macOS is one of the worst examples of closed systems.

<comment><USER66> > You aren't free to do that. Hardware drivers for macOS are all controlled by > Apple.

No, they are not. Apple ships some drivers themselves because they obviously support the hardware they deliver, but you are free to get your text editor out and write one yourself, compile it, and load it.

<comment><USER65> Apple won't allow you to run any hardware driver without them signing it. And Vulkan would require GPU driver support for it. So they are the gatekeeper who is preventing this from happening. Keyword here is _gatekeeper_. "Open" system much? In open systems gatekeepers aren't in the way of the user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> it is frankly unbelievable how unusable the play store is.

</comment><comment><USER68> I know this is about the coming MacOS 11.0, but Catalina was the end of OS X for me, and the end of Macs in general for me. I will not be migrating from Mojave to Catalina, and will use my current generation of Macs until they are obsolete, while finally making the transition to Linux. Mac and I had a good run, but I'm clearly no longer the target demographic and their corporate goals aren't aligned with mine as a customer any more.

<comment><USER69> I suspect you're being downvoted because this is an empty, meaningless comment without some elaboration on _why_ you've decided this. As it stands, there's no room for discussion: the only paths forward are for others to simply agree or disagree, or to try their best to guess at what your concerns are in order to further the conversation.

<comment><USER70> The comment states the why clearly when read within the context of the article: "I'm clearly no longer the target demographic and their corporate goals aren't aligned with mine as a customer any more"

<comment><USER71> Did we miss a memo where Apple suddenly changed their target demographic and corporate goals?

I don't think they did.

The comment seems like an emotional nostalgic conclusion they have after watching the WWDC, without any mentions why they think future will be worse than what we have now or what we had in the past.

<comment><USER72> Those things are rarely (publicly) unambiguously stated, so no, we didn't miss the memo because there wasn't one. Does not mean that over the course of time a target demo can change for a company though. Apple would hardly be the only company who did.

Pity though, Snow Leopard was something to be envious of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Lots of pointless user-facing "innovations," some of which break things with no warning, and very little improvement of the base OS from what a Unix person would notice, combined to cause stagnation.

When Apple moved to file 'tags' from comments which one could edit which would be attached to the file, they literally nuked thousands of annotations of mine. I was never warned that they would be blown away. What kind of company just does this?

</comment><comment><USER74> Intel version is still 10.16, new ARM version is 11.0.

<comment> gjsman-1000 I can confirm this is false. I have MacOS Big Sur on my MacBook Pro 2017, and it identifies as 11.0.

<comment><USER46> What does it say if you run:

sw_vers -productVersion

<comment> gjsman-1000 10.16.

However, it is clear that Apple wants to move everything to 11. Xcode also says 10.16, but Apple Developer Docs say 11. My suspicion is just that the developers of Xcode and other parts of the OS weren't aware of the switch yet.

<comment><USER46> Ahh interesting! Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. It's 10.16 now, but I wouldn't be surprised if all of those version numbers will be updated to say 11.0 upon the final production release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I know that Java is not hip nowadays (was it ever?) but at some point Jobs bragged Macs are the best Java workstations. Clearly Apple not only does not care about Java but hates it. macOS Catalina is also pretty scary.

So, I am enthusiastically waiting on getting a new laptop with the Ryzen 4800 CPU to run Linux on. I do some Java tooling projects and I will just use the existing Mac gear to support them, for a while.

As weird as it sounds, even Windows is starting to look like a good target OS for somebody spending lots of time in the terminal and doing some Java.

<comment><USER76> Apple is a _huge_ Java shop. They're quite secretive but a very large portion (the great majority?) of their backend is Java.

OpenJDK has a Linux/AArch64 port, and it will have a macOS/AArch64 port, too.

<comment><USER77> Do they currently run their backend on MacOS?

<comment><USER66> No they do not. They (as some would maybe not expect) even use Oracle software as backend for some systems. But not macOS. Unless you count developer workstations and things like Xcode build servers or their ASD replacement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


LinkedIn Banishing Rapportive Tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://intellerati.com/2014/07/30/linkedin-banishing-rapportive-google-apps-tomorrow/

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone found a decent replacement? A quick search turns up the following but I haven't dug in to them yet:

1) [http://vibeapp.co/](http://vibeapp.co/)

2) [http://www.connect6.com/](http://www.connect6.com/)

I'm going to miss the email prospecting hack the old Rapportive gmail gadget provided...was great for getting feedback from potential users: [http://www.techforagents.com/1780-how-to-hack-prospecting- wi...](http://www.techforagents.com/1780-how-to-hack-prospecting-with- rapportive/)</comment>