Apple's Relationship with Pro Music Needs Mending - <AUTHOR> http://cdm.link/2016/09/apples-relationship-pro-music-needs-mending/ <comment><USER3> I can't give this a big enough amen.

Ten years ago there was simply no question in my mind that apple hardware + OS X was the right choice for audio/music production (not to mention a relatively hassle free Unix workstation for developers + some desktop software usage). Twenty years ago? Still Apple.

Over the last 3-4 years, however, I've come to the conclusion that my next purchase needs to be something else if for no other reason than to clearly understand the alternatives.

This is key:

> The bad news: Apple still can't seem to keep third parties synced up with > its now annual release cadence. In a now yearly ritual, Apple has broken > plug-in validation for its own Audio Unit format. Open question: why? Why is > this now a regular feature of updating an operating system for a format that > has basically remained unchanged for years? Why shouldn't desktop upgrades > be the kind of no-brainer mobile upgrades are.

I have a hard time avoiding at least one of two conclusions:

(a) Apple either now lacks the necessary talent to do the quality of work they sustained with OS X for a while

(b) they fundamentally simply do not care at an institutional level

(And if it were really only about Audio Units, that'd be one thing. But it's not.)

<comment><USER4> I also have a feeling it's a hardware/software combination. All the post- Haswell Macbooks (from 2013 onwards) seem to fare much, much worse for audio applications than the ones produced prior to the switch.

I recently got rid of a late 2013 Retina MBP in favour of a late 2012 15" RMBP, and the difference in audio performance is _astounding_. No dropouts anymore, all my plugins work again, and Ableton is once again usable. I was hoping for a difference in performance but I was amazed at how much better the older one performed, with identical memory and SSD disk.

And that's not the only issue I had with the 13" Haswell RMBP. Often it would lose its entire USB chain (which includes the built-in trackpad and keyboard!) which would require me to remote into it to shut it down. Thunderbolt wasn't much better, with frequent network dropouts over a gigabit tb adapter. The poor thing barely worked out of the box and it didn't get much better.

I don't know what happened specifically with Haswell, but it seems like Apple and Intel haven't really been working to ensure it's a stable platform.

It's a mess.

<comment><USER5> It's likely the OS power management features and/or hardware CPU throttling that is causing you dropouts. The hardware and software have been optimised for occasional CPU use, slim looks and long battery life.

<comment><USER6> Lol, disable USB to save power!

The battery life is _amazing_ when you can't do anything!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple's relationship with pro-anything is collapsing.

I write Mac software for a YC company in the pro video space. Our new product started deployments a couple of months back, and a major source of problems has been the Apple platform -- both hardware and software. It's so bad that we're actively working to move off the Mac completely. (I've spent 15 years doing Mac software, so this is a big deal for me.)

Apple doesn't have pro hardware anymore. The 2013 Mac Pro is a complete failure, maybe the worst computer they've ever made. We deployed a dozen Mac Pros, and four of them suffer from a GPU overheating problem that's widespread but little talked about -- Apple has been replacing Mac Pros quietly for years.

The original Mac Pro was a great computer for the pro market: lots of extensibility, high-quality cooling system. The new Mac Pro removed all that and offers no benefit to users like us. It's really more like a cylindrical rebirth of the infamous Power Mac G4 Cube.

The same heat problems apply to their laptops. Many MBP models with NVIDIA graphics end up needing yearly motherboard replacements, which Apple is providing through a special replacement program. (My previous MacBook Pro has had this done three times.) Apple's drive towards ever-thinner and ideally fanless computers like the 12" MacBook suggests that this trend isn't going to change. I'm afraid the next MacBook Pro will be the "worst of both worlds", a combination of traits from the 12" MacBook and the Mac Pro.

Meanwhile on the software front, macOS has become an unstable and unpredictable platform for high-performance media applications. The emphasis on power saving, sandboxing and relentlessly throttling down userspace applications has made it quite hard to ensure that all our processes keep ticking along as they should. Working around macOS features designed for fanless laptops is such a waste of time when our deployment environment would ideally be a rackmount old-style Mac Pro.

Looks like there's going to be lots of Windows 10 in my future :(

<comment><USER8> It would be an amazing thing for the world if professional-software developers like you began to target Linux (as well).

<comment><USER9> It's difficult for us because we need GPU stability. The best place for that, for now, is going to be Windows.

With Windows we can more or less hope customers can use a more mixed variation of hardware and get ok results. With Linux, it's unlikely we'd be able to let people go it alone.

<comment><USER6> Could you have recommended hardware configurations for Linux? I guess it would limit your market though.

I would _love_ to leave Windows completely, but I need Ableton Live to work. Microsoft have completely lost what little goodwill I had towards them with Windows 10 and it's spying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't get how any professional can trust Apple after the past few years. If as a pro, you aren't at the very least actively looking for alternatives to Apple products you are doing your future self a huge disservice.

After using nothing but Apple products for a decade, I am being forced to wean myself off them, because I cannot depend on Apple for the tools of my trade. What they've done with their Pro hardware is ridiculous. Even if they release the greatest computers ever released for Pros in a month, their history over the past few years makes them completely unreliable.

Final Cut Pro, Aperture, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, XServe, OSX Server, form, in one way or another at least a majority of their pro offerings, for any useful definition of the word Pro, and Apple's behavior with these products have ranged from dumbing down, to neglect, to straight up abandonment.

And it's not just pro users, but also "prosumers". iPhoto, Mail, Calendar, iWork all been dumbed down to the point of not being able to serve any prosumer needs.

Apple provides experience and value to consumers that seems far beyond their competitors but their actions towards pro users couldn't have been more clear in their intent. Lip service with an occasional teaser to keep you hooked.

<comment><USER11> Apple needs to be very careful, by effectively abandoning the pro creatives market, their products start to look more and more like expensive toys and convenience products. Supporting pro-level consumers, they made their offerings indispensable at work and thus more convenient for users at home.

<comment><USER12> Not only that - developers, pro-sumers, and audio/visual professionals are often asked for recommendations on what to buy by friends & families. They're "influencers", and Apple is abandoning them at their peril.

<comment><USER13> I am sure thats where a lot of their "cool" factor comes from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was a heavy Logic 9 user. I've been into producing for 18 years or so now, since I was a kid, a die-hard Mac user. I've been through Digital Performer, Cubase and Logic Pro. Apple was holding it down with the pro software after they bought Emagic. It's kinda sad to see that the situation has deteriorated to this level.

Well, I started getting fed up with Apple ~6 years ago now. After my hard drive crashed, I moved to to producing on exclusively on Linux as a personal, mental and spiritual challenge. This was very difficult in 2011. As much as I wanted Ardour to be what I wanted it to be, the only thing that was stable enough to get stuff done on was QTractor...

Since then, Linux has gotten waayyyy better for music production. KXStudio is _excellent_. (don't waste time on Ubuntu Studio, it's not configured well). There are plenty of amazing LV2 and LADSPA plugins, and even some good VST plugins like TAL NoizeMaker. Ardour is great if you're lucky to get a stable build. As far as "mainstream pro" music production on linux... it's maybe not quite there yet for a general audience, but if you're a producer/composer/independent artist with some technical patience, Linux audio production is completely amazing. It's a whole different paradigm with plenty of room for professionals. The fact that Jack is totally modular from the get- go is extremely powerful. It means that stuff can be combined in all kinds of ways. (check this thing out if you haven't already: [http://moddevices.com/](http://moddevices.com/) )

And honestly, Bitwig has completely switched up the whole situation. Right now I'm running Bitwig on Arch and it's beastly. The only thing I miss from Logic are those excellent MIDI editing tools, non-destructive quantize. I'm also missing my favorite LV2 plugins (ZynAddSubFX). But Bitwig has plenty of synths and a fully modular system for creating endless sounds, so I'm set.

Don't need or want Apple at this point. I'm good :)

<comment><USER15> I'm an amateur in sound and music and only do occasional audio mixing and mastering on a basic level, and only if I need to, for video. Friend introduced me to Reaper and I've been blown away as it was easy (reportedly some people have issues with that, hah!) to use, cheap, and quite nice. Do you know if it will come to Linux as well? I know they've announced something about that.

<comment><USER14> Interesting. I haven't really checked out Reaper. I have some friends who are at the Garageband level of computer music production. They have struggled with QTractor. Maybe I'll suggest Reaper, since it's only $60.

The cost of Reaper, an i5 thinkpad with KXStudio, 8 gigs of ram and terabyte hard drive is like $200. You could make a top quality album with that setup, no problem.

<comment><USER15> I consider myself rather smart, but I'm really dumb when it comes to audio software. DAWs especially so. I got reaper, went through their tutorials and I was mixing and mastering for broadcast stereo output, from 0-100, in about a week. I even dabbled with some music ideas and things like that and it's as easy as anything. I've tried Nuendo and ProTools at work, but it was overwhelming (or I was too lazy). Only other DAW that I liked was Digital Performer, but its font rendering on Windows rendered it unusable. I couldn't read anything in the UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For whatever reason, Apple seems to be struggling across the board when it comes to software engineering. They are slow to execute new features and when they do they are often buggy. With each release cycle they fall farther and farther behind their competition. I'm having a hard time thinking of any Apple applications that are better than their competition. I don't know if they're having trouble attracting top talent or if there's something off in their culture but they need to fix it. Swift is a good foundation to build on but it won't be enough on its own.

They're lucky Microsoft has been asleep at the wheel for the last few years or actively shooting itself in the foot (Windows 8). But MS seems to be getting its act together lately.

<comment><USER17> The answer is pretty simple: Apple is a hardware company. As much as they'd like to claim otherwise, their software is simply there to support hardware sales.

Microsoft had an identity crisis for a number of years where they weren't quite sure where they should go, but their move back to being a platform (with regards to Azure) and making sure that the rest of their lines support that work is starting to pay off. Of course, they do need to tighten things up, especially around Windows... That division in particular seems to be trying to move too quickly and it's showing.

<comment><USER18> I don't think it's that cut and dry, Apple's always been a hardware company but they've had excellent software to match their excellent hardware. I'd argue the hardware is still more or less on point, it's the software that's been struggling lately.

Even as a relatively new developer to the Apple space, in the time I've worked in iOS/OSX the quality has taken a stark dip in terms of stability and functionality, and seems to coincide with Jobs no longer being at the company. I think having one guy who is in a position to yell at literally anyone for doing less then stellar work is an asset no company appreciates until it's gone, and we all know that Tim Cook is in no fashion at all a Steve Jobs, he can't put people to task like that.

<comment><USER19> Apple produced software, yes, but 10 or more years ago it was well understood that many of their users were buying Macs to run third party software, such as Logic (which Apple now own), or Final Cut Pro (ditto), so maybe that goes some way to explaining the change in Apple's software focus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yep. I've been increasingly disappointed in Apple's OS X releases. Not even considering this upgrade for a point release, at least. And they're doing a very good job of promoting third party replacements for their own apps...

For a while, I thought they were chasing IOS marketshare hard, and would come back to fixing the desktop. But I'm beginning to wonder if that isn't the intent; I'm sure the 30k-foot-view financials says OS X is now the second- class product.

The problem is that OS X is the generative platform. Writers and programmers and musicians and designers and artists use Macs to produce. And a lot of these folks (me included) are getting restless.

I'll be fine - honestly, I only own one OS X box today, and my main personal desktop is Linux. I'd be annoyed for a while if I had to switch to a Linux laptop, but vim is portable, and if they continue to baby-proof the OS at the expense of automation and traditional Unix tools, it will be less annoying that staying put.

If the plan is to bring iOS to the point where, say, Ableton and Pro Tools runs sufficiently well there, then they better get on that before the OS where those tools do run rots out from under them. And if that isn't the plan, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be very curious to know what it is.

<comment><USER21> I think the simpler answer is that Apple stopped caring about "pro" apps/users quite a while ago and that it is unlikely to start again in the near future. Video people have moved to Adobe Premier on Windows; photography people have ditched the depreciated Aperture for Lightroom (maybe supplemented with Dark Table); and now music people will have their turn.

<comment><USER22> I was pretty surprised, when I found out that Tom Holkenborg (Junkie XL, Composer of the film music for the new Mad Max movie) was using a Windows PC in his studio. Maybe more and more are moving from Apple hardware back to Windows hardware. Altough you still see most of the people using MacBooks for their live acts.

<comment><USER23> I've been really torn about upgrading my music computer.

On the one hand I hugely prefer macOS over Windows. But macOS now has regular showstopper bugs that simply shouldn't be there - like the issue with AU validation, and a bug in Yosemite that made it impossible to connect more than a small number of USB devices.

Also, the Mac Pro is so poorly specified it's competing with it's own predecessors. It makes more sense to buy an ancient "cheesegrater" 5,1 Pro and upgrade it with a new processor than to buy the new Darth Waste Bin model - not just because of the basic spec and performance, but because the new Pro has no PCIe slots, some popular high-end music hardware comes on PCIe cards, and adding an external PCIe/Thunderbolt card cage doubles the cost.

Windows actually has a broader range of VSTs available than macOS.

So I'm not surprised pro users are switching to Windows. I don't love the idea, but if Apple can't offer the performance the market needs, users have no choice but to switch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I write this from a Surface Pro, leaving a retina macboook and an ipad pro in my bag: really glad to hear someone in a core Apple industry putting together a solid case for "Apple: please vector some engineering talent to macOS, now".

The masses follow the makers. The makers are dissatisfied. Pay attention.

</comment><comment><USER25> I feel like this article is FUD. Nearly every professional audio interface for Mac, iPhone, or iPad has a 1/4" stereo headphone output for real studio monitor headphones. No pro is concerned that they lost the 1/8" output for bargain headphones on their iPhone.

Any iMac or MacBook Pro from the last 5 years is sufficient for any pro audio workflow. A Mac Pro is still sufficient and is way overkill. A lot of people can be pretty productive on an iPad too. New Macs are coming, Apple isn't abandoning the Mac.

I just updated to macOS Sierra and all my pro audio equipment has either kept working as is or the manufacturer released a driver update within days of the macOS Sierra release.

<comment><USER26> > Any iMac or MacBook Pro from the last 5 years is sufficient for any pro > audio workflow.

Just a few days ago, Pro Tools popped up the annoying "A CPU Overload Has Occurred" dialog box while I was working on a mix. Mid-2015 rMBP, 2.5 GHz.

It was a pretty simple session, too - nothing that breaks any rules, like reverbs on inserts. 12 or so tracks and three stereo effects (on their own busses).

I'm amazed every day at how much capability my MBP puts into my hands, but it is not without limitations. To say it's sufficient for any pro audio workflow is a bit of a stretch.

<comment><USER5> The problem with the ultrathin MBP, like all ultrabooks, is that it is not designed for sustained CPU use. It overheats quickly and the CPU will be throttled. You will be better off with a proper mobile workstation like the Lenovo Thinkpad P50 or P70 with Xeon CPUs and better cooling.

<comment><USER27> We should be boycotting Lenovo for their absolutely abhorrent business practices, not promoting them.

<comment><USER5> I use them only as an example I'm familiar with. What abhorrent business practices are you referring to? I find Apple's 0.005% European corporate tax arrangements abhorrent personally.

EDIT: the HP ZBook Studio G3 also looks quite good

<comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish)

"On February 20, 2015, Microsoft released an update for Windows Defender which removes Superfish."

Microsoft has to uninstall the malware that Lenovo had put on the computers it had sold. Lenovo did not remove it on its own. Let that sink in.

<comment><USER5> Lenovo didn't really understand what they were bundling with their cheapest zero margin machines. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm one of the commenters on the original thread, and I'm surprised that people here aren't discussing the other elephant in the room : pro audio software developers being exceptionally reluctant to take advantage of Apple's Developer Preview program, much more so than your average dev.

My original comment below :

 _"...this reveals a deeper, more cultural problem at Apple. The inability to ship OS builds to developers in time for them to adapt..."_

I'm a developer and sorry but... no. The first developer preview of Sierra has been available since June 13th. That's 3 full months, and indeed you must have noticed most developers of non-audio apps have spent the summer shipping updates.

Yet somehow in the audio world, all hell breaks loose come September each year, it seems plug-in developers only start looking at the new OS the same day as their customers, and they scramble to make panicked "DO NOT UPGRADE YET !" statements. Not being ready on day 1 is unfortunate, not having started working on it is simply unprofessional, sorry.

But the worst part is that they manage to get away with it, because most of their customers (musicians are notoriously conservative with their computers) nod in approval and go "yeah yeah don't worry, I'm still on MacOS- from-8-years-ago anyway. F __* Apple always breaking stuff " (just look at the forums if you don't believe me)

It simply doesn't have to be this way in most cases, and this is the real issue you should be talking about IMHO.

<comment><USER5> To be fair to them, a developer preview is not the final shipping product, so it would not offer any guarantees anyway. It's better for them to test once the final code ships and educate their customers not to instantly upgrade just because Apple recommends it.

<comment><USER30> In edge cases, yes, certain would-be compatibility issues on Apple's side will get worked out before release. But that's part of why beta programs exist in the first place - vendors are supposed to test their products with the beta OS, and file bugs as they encounter them!

You make it sound as if Apple is re-architecting the audio system with each beta update. But all that happens long before an OS hits beta: Apple's betas are by and large feature-frozen. There's simply no excuse for a major vendor like Steinberg or Native Instruments to delay testing until there are literally _computers already shipping that will not reliably run their software._

<comment><USER5> Yes I was trolling a bit. But I believe this is how they would probably justify it. Perhaps if Apple offered a beta window larger than 3 months they might cooperate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> An article from the recording world, with a similar perspective:

[http://tapeop.com/columns/end-rant/115/](http://tapeop.com/columns/end- rant/115/)

<comment><USER32> From the article: "It's important for professionals to be able to choose when and how they upgrade their software tools. With macOS, this is getting more and more difficult to do, and this is the main reason I want to leave the Mac ecosystem."

Of course, this is even more true of Windows 10, where Microsoft have decided they want to force updates on users on their chosen schedule - and of course just like with macOS, newer hardware can't run older versions of Windows. Have we reached the point where no major OS is suitable for actual, productive creative use?

<comment><USER23> OS X is still marginally better than the alternatives, but it's becoming increasingly flaky, and Apple's hardware support is a year or two short of a mass exodus to other platforms.

Win 10 is abhorrent in so many it's impossible to list them all. But it's increasingly usable and mostly stable. Some pro users can live with the horror. Others can't.

Linux is still a hobbyist, experimenter, and IT infrastructure OS. It's good at all the above, and it's being used for some creative pro applications. But it's not a straightforward option for anyone who just wants to get on with paid professional creative work.

It would be interesting if one of the main audio sequencers appeared on Linux. Bitwig is already there. But if (say) Ableton Live switched, it would start a mass stampede away from macOS.

Unfortunately Linux fragmentation makes that unlikely.

So - no, we do not currently have a rock solid no-nonsense OS for professional use, and it's looking less and likely that we'll have one any time soon.

This is ridiculous in 2016. But here we are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hardware and software both suffer, and both seem to come from a sense of "well we're just gonna do it this way now, having put no thought into it at all, and you have to deal with it".

For instance, there was absolutely zero reason to release an "update" to GarageBand that outright _removed_ a substantial number of features and _destroyed_ backward-compatibility (I don't think I had a single song that even SOUNDED THE SAME after opening it in the "improved" version; many settings were just thrown out, or hard to find because they were just _moved_ for no good reason). This is just plain stupid management: inept decision- making that shows a complete lack of respect for the financial and time investments made by previous customers.

And hardware decisions have felt the same. Not only was the Mac Pro _not_ what Pros really needed but even the damn _web site_ for the thing made it impossible to really understand what the machine could actually do. I didn't want to sit through animations and fancy scrolling just to find a data sheet. You have to have end-to-end, seamless understanding of what you're trying to do in an endeavor, and this is clueless behavior.

And one last factor makes me wonder: when Apple does so well in the stock market, what does that do to employees? It probably doesn't take a lot of massive profit from stocks to make people reconsider their jobs; I figure there have to be a few new millionaires who just decided to leave, causing perhaps entirely new teams to take over some projects.

</comment><comment><USER34> Software updates in general are just getting sloppy, this isn't limited to Apple. The Windows 10 anniversary update had issues as well. Makes me long for the old MS service pack model.

<comment><USER35> That's something I never thought I would see someone say!

But it's true! At least you could install updates when you wanted, not when your remote masters in Redmond decided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yep, it's scary.

I'm a loyal Logic user (10 years) and a "pro" musician. I started getting worried when Pro X came out. The weird prosumer approach, their poor attempts at beating NI at synths, it all had me worried. Logic used to be fairly bare- bones by comparison but I never had to deal with the kind of bullshit Pro X has thrown at me: whole projects developing strange audio glitches for no apparent reason, constant missing audio files (even on newer tracks), meaningless warnings, system overloads on simple tracks, crashes, you name it. Maybe I was less bitchy when I was 20, but damn, it seems that things have gone downhill.

That doesn't even start on the hardware: $1200 for a computer with sub-optimal hardware pains the engineer in me, especially when the thing breaks every couple of years and has to go to the sandboxed repair store to get fixed.

Like many others in this thread, I leaving for Linux next time and I guess I'll make due with whatever they have.

</comment><comment><USER37> I dunno. Logic is still my favourite DAW. Everything still works, I can even use my 15 year old Emagic AMT midi inteface with it.

I wish they would sort out the AU validation though.

I don't use Apple headphones or Apple Music - not sure if they have much to do with "Pro Music", whatever that is.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's hard for Apple Inc. to care about anything else when 70% of revenue and 90% of profits comes from their flagship product, the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is absolutely a sad news and points towards the sad state of Mac for pro users. The investment on Apple desktop hardware is super expensive and often we end up with under powered hardware but macOS works well. These are for a regular user but pro users wants more. I recollect Oculus comment on why they stay away from Mac. There are lot of consolidations happens to make the devices seamlessly getting connected but unlike iOS walled ecosystem, Mac has a large third party developers heavily invested on the platform. They're sadly left here without anything!

</comment><comment><USER40> Sorry to hear about your problems, but it was inevitable.

Back in 1997 I commented on the AOL Apple Forum that Apple should dump the creative community in favor of the larger consumer market. At the time the creative market represented about 1.5% of total computer usage. Mac market share was 2%, but only in the US. Everywhere else it was non-existent.

Not that I had anything to do with it (I didn't) Apple did just that, and today its the world's largest, most profitable tech company. Beyond computers, Apple manufactures iPhones, iPads, Beats headsets, Ear Buds and Air Buds, Apple Watches, and Apple TV. Apple also offers on demand movies, TV and music, not to mention books and news.

Twenty years ago you couldn't open a Mac catalog without be deluged by creative programs and accessories Adobe was a big deal, today not so much. Most people recognize Adobe as the developer of a crap media player

I want to thank you very much for supporting Apple back in the day. I did too, with a 27 person electronics and software development (Linux) firm. It was hard back then because field support was virtually non-existent (unless you did graphics).

Frankly, the creative industry's need for specialized softwares and extremely powerful computers makes me wonder if you and Apple haven't come to a fork in the road, where each goes their own way.

I wish you the very best.

</comment><comment><USER41> They did the same for the VFX industry, actively stopping the leading compositing software to go and do other things.

However at least Jobs told the collected heads of the VFX houses to go fuck themselves in person.

</comment><comment><USER42> I do think, as one of the commenters on the original thread suggests, that some of the blame lies with the often latent relationship audio software companies have with Apple's release cycle. Ideally QA begins while the OS update is still in beta. This varies quite a bit from company to company, but it's not something to sweep under the rug. The news of audio drop out issues (poison to live performers) persisting through multiple major versions is horrifying though.

<comment><USER3> > Ideally QA begins while the OS update is still in beta.

Would help a lot if (a) Apple had longer lead times to actually get things right internally _before_ they went to beta and (b) beta cycles were a bit longer and (c) companies didn't have to do this every damn year.

On the other side... what are the benefits of having yearly regimented releases again?

<comment><USER43> > _what are the benefits of having yearly regimented releases again?_

It's what consumers expect. If Apple ditched the yearly upgrade model there'd probably be a shitstorm of bad PR and people complaining about how it's not just their hardware offerings that are getting out of date, now the OS is too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This article is conflating consumer audio and pro audio. Most of the points made in this article != pro audio concerns. I DO NOT CARE that the 1/8" jack is missing from the new iPhone and that has nothing to do with pro audio. I never looked to apple to make studio reference headphones and if I ever used them, it would be to check a mix to make sure that the music sounded ok with the typical users headphones.

Ive used various mac/windows based music platforms over the years since around 1997 and still think Mac is the better platform for audio. Heres why: 1) ios/osx has a baked in low latency audio framework in Core Audio which means even on board audio can run at < 10ms round trip latency 2) Logic is still the most solid DAW Ive ever used 3) Windows has yet to offer a compelling Audio experience with out serious hardware.

I will agree that the new mac pro was a big step backwards from the previous version. I had an 8 core mac pro from 2008 and that was the perfect music pc. Im sure the new one is fine, but I dont care about the aesthetics of the computer as long as I can depend on it to record a session and not fail.

The Native Instruments issues dont really surprise me and in my experience with that company their software quality ranges from buggy to mediocre (Komplete 1-8) to the point were I could not find a compelling reason to continue using their software. I could certainly understand a company acting defensive and blaming the OS manufacturer when they are flooded with bug reports.

To that I would also offer a counterpoints of Propellerheads Reason. Their software is consistently bug free and solid performing. So it does not seem to really be a "Mac" problem. I currently use a universal audio apollo 8 and that also performs solidly via the lightning interface at near real time latency. Point being, its possible to make solid software for mac.

Anyway, I don't think that the mac is perfect for audio, and the situation may be worse for video, it sounds like the new mac pro is a dud for pro users, which is disappointing.

<comment><USER45> As a semi-pro I tend to disagree with your reasons why Mac is better because 1) Tons of USB 3.0 audio interfaces work with Windows plug & play with <10ms latency (Focusrite comes to mind, Sweetwater lists a ton) that can be paired with any reasonable spec Windows laptop to be just as good and probably for less money [a], 2) Ableton Live and/or Reaper have been extremely solid in ways that yes Logic & ProTools also are solid, but this is a tie to me, and 3) Serious hardware goes back to #1 in that Windows actually has plenty of options that, let's be honest, a real serious Mac-based musician would invest in anyway. The gold standard UAD used to be Mac only but it's on USB 3.0 now so that kind of evens the field.

I grew up with Macs, but when I learned how to manipulate PCs and, to the best of my ability, overcome a lot of the inherent issues. A lot has been budget oriented. VSTs and the like don't run on Mac, that cuts off an entire community!

[a] Also there's ASIO4ALL which runs on a high grade machine pretty dang well - not Core Audio perfect, but it's surprisingly good in my experieince. Just needs like an i5, 8GB RAM and a decent HD (works great with SSDs).

<comment><USER44> I dont think that contradicts my point. My point was that core audio will let your built in sound card run sub 10ms. To do that with windows, you could use ASIO4All, and I think it is a generally good solution. However, its a bolt on, and not part of the windows audio subsystem. I ran windows 7 on my mac pro and used a card with WASAPI enabled drivers and they still couldnt perform as well as the native ASIO driver(which is itself a bolt on to get around crappy Windows audio performance) Its not impossible, and PLENTY of people use windows for audio but saying that out of the box it performs as well as osx is disingenuous at best. USB 3.0 is only just now becoming available while lightning has been available for a while.

Also, Mac runs/supports VST just fine, and having coded in both VST and AU APIs they are similar enough to make porting to either platform relatively trivial(though not fool proof).

<comment><USER45> Ah well I guess I'm off on the VST thing - hadn't been available at the time, still late XP early Win7 at the latest maybe?

Honestly though using the guitar approach that I was favoring, even having native audio drivers wasn't my ideal "sound chain" approach - <USER2> speaking - so I was pretty much destined to use an outside interface for modeling and whatnot, among other approaches. I wasn't an "out of the box" kind of person but understand why Mac has that particular advantage, but for my not-genuinely-pro under-the-hood level I could still tell PC had equal footing to do powerful things that are more defined by the skill of the user than the inherent capabilities or quality of the platform. Basically a wash, thus not really a Mac advantage except in a kind of narrow defined view, a good one though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Too much whining here. Mac Pro Garbage Can sucks. We knew it on day one and know it today. iMac 5K is a great machine. If you think Mac OS is bad, try Windows. We did and we we went back.

After a few false starts, final Cut Pro X is clearly the way of the future. It reduces our production time by 25%.

El Capitan was stable on all of our machines. We are still testing Sierra and don't expect to deploy for a good while.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm wondering how one could produce "pro music" on an OS which is not real- time in the first place (?)

For people who happen to not know what a real-time OS is, see [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real- time_operating_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real- time_operating_system)

<comment><USER48> > I'm wondering how one could produce "pro music" on an OS which is not real- > time in the first place

I'm not sure if your question is serious or not,but just in case it is: you can listen to poorer quality 'preview' while editing and render the final, full-quality audio in slower than realtime.

<comment><USER47> In a live performance situation, where the software generates effects (based on live input), you really have to do everything in real-time.

Also, in a recording situation, I could imagine that the artists want live feedback.

That said, you could use tricks, like making the output reverb whenever there's a buffer underrun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm waiting for the break in FireWire drivers as afflicts all my audio interfaces every OS update. It's infuriating that the same piece of audio hardware suddenly stops working with a new OS, yet if I reboot my MacBook Pro into Windows it still works great.

</comment><comment><USER49> Why would Apple really care about the "Pro" market?

It's tiny in comparison to the consumer market.

And the revenue for Macbooks is on par with iPad, and less than a third of the iPhone. They have not been a priority for Apple for many years now.

<comment><USER50> Apparently in 2008 the market for computer music software was $425 million ([https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-market-size-for-music- softwa...](https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-market-size-for-music-software- products-DAWs-plugins-virtual-instruments-loop-libraries-etc\);) I can't Google anything more recent but I would say that, while not pure consumer before, it's not completely niche.

Also, one of the advantages of developing pro art products is that they can be siphoned into consumer products or fun "freebies". The audio engine in Logic Pro for instance is the same as what is used in Garageband. With everyone taking photos and video on their phones these days there's probably even more opportunity in those areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> If it wasn't for iOS dev, i would have switched to a Win10 laptop a long time ago

</comment><comment><USER52> People make a big deal of Apple's failure to update their computer line up, but I belive they're missing the point that we're hitting the wall with technology that matters in a laptop form factor.

Apple was the first for all the big impact technologies of the recent years: ultra high def displays, new hard drive technolgies, and the latest wifi standards.

But what do you want now? A new processor? They're only delivering slight marginal improvements in the i5/i7 mobile range. More RAM? Yeah, apple could offer 32GB models, but that's not relevant to the music industry. Everything else is about as good as it gets.

There just aren't laptop scale improvements in technology as of late.

<comment><USER10> This is contradicted by the fact that it isn't legally possible to do any sort of VR work using Apple's lineup of computers.

But you may have hit upon the real disconnect. Apple is waiting for new shiny features, while Pros simply want things that make it easier (and in the case of VR, possible) to do their jobs.

Edit: I meant VR, not 3D.

<comment><USER43> What do you mean by "legally possible"?

<comment><USER53> I think (s)he implies you need to run Mac OS on a hackintosh to do that, and that's something the license forbids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The average person just doesn't care. Like it or not, Apple makes products for average people who want a somewhat affordable status symbol.

<comment><USER55> Just stop with the status symbol crap. I didn't buy a mac to be like everyone else. I bought it because the hardware is solid. For example the keyboard doesn't flex a half inch like nearly every plastic piece of crap windows laptop out there.

<comment><USER54> Millions of people buy Apple products because of the status they convey. Those are the people Apple cares about serving. If their "hardware is solid" as well then that's just a happy byproduct.

Are you really saying that status symbol is not a MASSIVE part of Apple's marketing strategy?

<comment><USER56> What exactly about Apple's marketing would you say is "status symbol" based? I mainly see ads with a focus on the products themselves.

<comment><USER57> the $14k iwatch

<comment><USER56> Yeah, there is that..

But look at an Apple classic ads like the "There's an app for that" series. Nothing really aspirational or status-reaching about those ads.

<comment><USER58> I'd say the "I'm a mac, I'm a PC" ads did a great job conveying a certain kind of image of the "mac user" vs the boring office guy that was the pc user. At least that's the vibe it gave me when I first watched them

Of course it is silly to assume most of Apple's sales come from people looking for the wow factor and ignore the Apple appealed to geek hearts as well early on.

Anecdotally, I still think a significant number of people outside the highly selective HN crowd view Apple as a status symbol or a go-to. Doesn't mean apple doesn't make subjectively great products though</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your home media PC setup? - <AUTHOR> I currently watch all media (TV shows, movies) through a MacBook connected via HDMI to a TV, but I'm looking to invest in a better setup.
I'm thinking of buying a mini PC and connecting it to some sort of network storage. Then, I could download content to this network drive on other home computers. I'd imagine I'd use XBMC, unless something better has come along in the last few years?
Curious to hear how others have solved this problem, and how it's working for you. <comment><USER2> You can give Plex a try if you have a number of lightweight clients you'd like to consume your media through. There's several competing media servers with different priorities but Plex is rather dominant nowadays if you don't mind spending a little money for some conveniences.

I've used Plex in a VM and a ZFS based NAS for nearly 4 years now and have had relatively few problems. I've used Android, iOS, Windows, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and MacOS clients all with decently usable results. The hardest thing to deal with in Plex is mostly about sizing your server for the amount of transcoded streams you'll need. With Kodi, this concern is mostly relegated to the client. While mobile computing capabilities have gotten greater the fundamental problem I ran into for years was that no one device will play everything correctly besides a PC. As such, a transcoding server from a PC (even though Plex has several server options including nVidia Shield and some NAS devices) makes the most sense for compatibility across all random media files you could obtain online. Otherwise, your network transfer speed matters still just like with Kodi and a lot of people's wireless setups are just really bad that get glossed over when using streaming native media like from Amazon and Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried to have a good and not expensive approach on that. So in my opinion i have a quite conservative setting.

I have a raspberry pi 3 with osmc installed via noobs at startup. Additionally I bought a DVB-S USB Stick ([http://sundtek.com/shop/Digital-TV- Sticks/Sundtek-SkyTV-Ulti...](http://sundtek.com/shop/Digital-TV- Sticks/Sundtek-SkyTV-Ultimate-6-2016-DVB-S/S2.html)) for germany. A standard TV is connected via HDMI. I use a KODI android app as a remote control.

Additionally I have bought 1 TB NAS on ebay in the cellar which is connected via network cable to the wifi router.

Without TV I had total cost of approximately 300 €

I have connected all music services (soundcloud, etc), all mediathek services of german and austria television providers. Also youtube and vimeo. Everything works great and was extremely low cost, i would say.

<comment><USER4> I have a similar setup, Rpi3 with OSMC / Kodi installed.

I turned an old 500GB laptop drive into an external HD for storage, with reuse of parts I'd say the whole thing cost me €50/€60 - for the Rpi3, Case, PSU (though most micro USB phone chargers will work so don't buy one unless you need one), Micro SDHC card, and SATA to USB cable for the hard drive (I milled out an old Gameboy and stuck it in there for a retro look)

Advantages: Cheap, no remote required (TV remote can control it through HDMI, or you can use an app), low power, handles 1080p content just fine

Disadvantages: There's currently no way (that I know of) to get Netflix working on Rpi3 hardware. Netflix has no native linux app, and the only browsers it works through are Chrome and Firefox, which are not available on Raspbian or any other Rpi distro. (I would love to be wrong about this. If its possible, somebody _please_ educate me)

<comment><USER3> Yes this is something i found out recently, that the remote control works over hdmi. This quite astonished me! Also it works out of the box with osmc...

Chromium (open source chrome) definitely works. However if you installed osmc you have propably the openelec distro. I am not sure if you can run a browser on it...

<comment><USER4> I had to change some keybindings to map the "back" button on my remote, but it largely worked for me out of the box

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My setup is based on Roku devices connected to a Freenas server with 12x 3Tb HDD on a RaidZ2 setup to store all the media which is then served through Plex Media Server. It works very well and I've had no problems with this setup aside from a hard drive dying on me every once in a while.

Plex also has an option to use Google Drive or Dropbox and others as a storage medium through their new (although only for the premium Plex Pass holders) Plex Cloud (it's also possible to roll your own though, i've written about it here: [https://nunosouto.com/blog/how-to-install-plex- cloud](https://nunosouto.com/blog/how-to-install-plex-cloud))

</comment><comment><USER6> I have an Intel NUC set up with Kodi (formerly XBMC) on linux. Able to connect to remote samba shares for serving media, kodi has plenty of extensions and features so you can use it with youtube, radio streams, weather, photos, etc. when not watching video. Also the NUC I have has an IR receiver so a normal tv remote can be used to control kodi (big plus).

Another thing that's nice about setting up a full computer over an android based media device is that you have a fairly decent computer directly connected to the tv to use when/if you have to.

<comment><USER7> > Another thing that's nice about setting up a full computer over an android > based media device is that you have a fairly decent computer directly > connected to the tv to use when/if you have to.

Exactly. This is the reason I went for Intel NUC as well. I don't always use PC but when I do, one is always available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just have a windows 10 machine plugged into the TV. I have a server farm upstairs with plenty of storage for archives of TV shows if I want them, but these days I can get pretty much anything I want from one of the streaming services online.

I also have a glass table between the couch and the TV, so a dark field mouse is required if I'm doing anything that needs a real mouse. For everything else I just use a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo from Logitech.

<comment><USER9> You could check out the Remote Control Collection app. It will allow you to use your phone for controlling the mouse, keyboard and media players.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Synology 1513+ running Plex Server and a FireTV Box stuck to every TV in the house. All of my media is stored on the Synology (5x 4TB drives).

I also have one of the less used PCs in the house running Plex Server, and we connect to that for viewing Plex Channels (basically, plugins that front-end NBC.com, ABC.com, and a bunch of other services) to take some of the transcoding load off the Synology.

I have a lifetime subscription to Plex.tv and LOVE the service. The only thing I'd like to improve about my set up is the processor in the Synology, which is too slow to transcode on the fly so I have to target my encodes to my current hardware and rerip when my clients get more capable.

<comment><USER11> +1 for Synology. I've got the DS214play which is the entry-level version that supports transcoding [1]. It doubles as a backup to all my photos [2][3][4].

[1] [https://www.synology.com/en- us/products/DS216play](https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS216play)

[2] [https://medium.com/vantage/understanding-my-need-for-an- auto...](https://medium.com/vantage/understanding-my-need-for-an-automated- photo-workflow-a2ff95b46f8f#.dmwyjlc57)

[3] [https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your- personal...](https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal- exif-based-photo-and-video-assistant-d92868f302ec)

[4] [https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo-workflow-using- go...](https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo-workflow-using-google- photos-and-elodie-afb753b8c724)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Raspberry PI 3 plus LibreElec. Cheap, consumes a lot less than a PC and plays everything I can throw at it. I would definitely use different boards for non video related tasks, but in this context the RPi still is the one to go for non trivial reasons such as full CEC support and video acceleration.

The home NAS is a MiniITX board with multiple SATA ports and NAS4Free.

</comment><comment><USER13> Mini PC: [http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini- pc/pp_376410.html](http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_376410.html) (not especially fast but it will just about do 4k)

I have a slightly different requirement: I want to

a) watch and record broadcast TV

b) watch youtube/iplayer/amazon

c) watch other random TV and streaming websites (Eurovision selection shows, my wife is a huge fan)

This leads to Windows, and the best solution for recording TV there actually seems to be Windows Media Centre ("ehome"). Unfortunately this is 7 only, so I'm going to try installing a version that's been hacked by the community to run on Win10.

Most of the HTPC software seems to have PVR as an afterthought, where it's either very hard to set up or unreliable. I never want to see tvheadend's web interface again.

</comment><comment><USER14> Shield TV. Hands down the best steamer you can get. And on top of the streaming benefits, the game stream function is legitimately good. Input lag was not really noticable, even when playing something like rocket league. When I bought it, I went from three devices (Kodi box, Chromecast, Fire TV) to one.

</comment><comment><USER15> It used to be a 5m HDMI cable from my workstation to my TV with super+p bound to output all to HDMI. Worked reasonably well but became cumbersome when I wanted to use my PC whilst playing media. Currently, I have a tiny Linux box running in my media unit with a Plex client and a Plex server running on my NAS to store everything. Everything is now controlled from a Bluetooth remote for the interface so it's generally pretty resilient. So far the only issue has been transcoding and playing back >1080p media, struggles a bit to keep up, but I suspect the atom in the NAS is as much to blame as the Linux box. Kodi/XBMC could work well in this case as a client as long as sharing was properly configured from Plex server.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've had a variety of XBMC, Plex, Windows Media Center (hacked to run on Windows 10 and with a variety of mods), various multichannel TV tuners, cable card readers, DLNA devices, dinovo mini keyboards, reprogrammable remotes, etc.

I currently use an Amazon Fire TV, as fighting an endless war with content creators to steal their content is a waste of my time (I also really like the voice search on the Fire devices).

I pay for films, and most TV, but steal Game of Thrones since, bizarrely, it's not available in full HD via Sky's app. In that case, I play it via DLNA.

</comment><comment><USER17> RPi w/RetroPi, which also integrates Kodi, and a 4TB USB-powered hard drive. Also two 8bitdo SNES style controllers for gaming and controlling Kodi. They are wonderful.

I only recently added Kodi to RPi and it's really nice. I used to have two 2GB MyBook drives with external power and they were very bulky. I would hook them up to my Bluray player with it's massively shitty interface. The new drive is maybe a quarter the size of one of them and Kodi is beyond simple to use.

</comment><comment><USER18> Plex server on an old i3 laptop with a broken screen and some external USB disks.

Plays in the Plex app or browser on everyone's devices, AppleTV, Fire TV Stick, Vizio TV, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pretty simple: XBMC/Kodi on Amazon FireTV, connected to Samba share running on my NAS (Ubuntu with ZFS running on HP Microserver). Kodi pretty much plays anything.

<comment><USER20> I have almost the same setup, one difference being that I have Synology DS215j NAS. I've transited recently from NoName Android box (had it for over 2 years) to newest Amazon FireStick. There is one huge draw back of that. I can not use Amazon Firestick when there is no internet connection. So forget about searching for movie in your library when there is no internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> All my flat panel TVs have Roku 3 boxes (I don't see the need for 4K video since most of my content isn't 4K). I took a 2010 15" MacBook running 3 versions of OSX behind Seira and that runs Plex Media Server. This setup gives us easy access to Netflix, Amazon Prime as well as local content sourced from DVDs we own. Plex also lets us share videos created from our phones as well but that's probably its weakest feature.

<comment><USER21> Another poster commented on network issues and he's definitely correct. In terms of our network, I'm running an access point from our fiber provider connected to an Eero wifi range extender coupled to a Circle network filter. All of our Roku boxes are connected to wifi except for 1 which is hard wired. The Eero boxes span 3 floors and performance is (finally) pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> HP Microserver Gen8 with:

> Debian 8

> Xeon E3-1260L

> 12 GB RAM

> 120GB SSD (OS), 2 x 3TB WD RED (Data), 2 x 4TB HGST (Movies/TV Shows)

> Plex (Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos)

> CouchPotato (Movie Downloading)

> Transmission (Torrents)

> CrashPlan (backups)

> Raspberry Pi Camera Streams (samba share)

> \+ more stuff

All these applications run in their own docker containers. I used to do local web development in a virtual machine, now it all sits on this server. Love it and it works 'magically'.

Connected to the TV is a Quad-core android TV Box.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like a good setup!

CouchPotato seems neat. Are you familiar with any similar services for TV Shows? Often I like to enjoy obscure shows that don't make it to Netflix.

<comment><USER22> Thanks!

I haven't had time to use this: [http://www.sickbeard.com/](http://www.sickbeard.com/)

But a lot recommend it on reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Mac Mini with a Drobo (30tb raw space - 6tb x 5). I have it setup with double redundancy so the space is about 12tb less. Currently using about 11tb. This Mac Mini also does other things like web hosting, file sharing, XCode build, cache, Software Update, etc.

Apple TV and iOS devices to view the content.

I have iTunes content from about 2007 along with DVD's I own that I have ripped

</comment><comment><USER24> 2 Roku's and an old laptop running plex. I'd like to move to a central setup with general file storage at some point. Potentially even tie in to be more of a home hub with power tracking etc.

A deal-breaker would be losing remotes that Roku offer (or similar alternatives) as they make media viewing simple and easy for adults, kids and guests alike.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hardware: NAS, Raspberry Pi 2, Logitech diNovo, PC.

Software: Kodi+Exodus, Plex, Moonlight (+ Steam on the PC).

I do everything that the Pi can do directly on the Pi (which is a lot). For every other purpose (including games), I stream from my PC with Steam in-home streaming.

</comment><comment><USER26> I like MythTV: a client/server based TV-Recording application. Very good at planning recordings, avoiding conflicts etc. MythTv ss able to handle multiple sources (Cable, Satellit, IP-TV, DVB ... , to play DVD and much more.

</comment><comment><USER27> Personally I'm using a Playstation 3 and Plex. Maybe not the most sexy of solutions, but it's cheap, has worked flawlessly for years and I can even play games on it if the mood takes me.

<comment><USER28> +1 for cheap and easy. I'm using a Playstation 4 + USB thumb drive. It was the cheapest & easiest set up I could find that would play files from a storage device, and give me a remote.

Before the PS4, I was pretty happy with my Google Chromecast, but it can't play video files unless you stream them over a network. I also got tired of using my phone and/or browser as a remote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Raspberry Pi 3 running OSMC. Connect an external HDD and plug it to your TV. I use Yatse on Android to control it. It also doubles up as a NAS if you want to watch movies on other devices.

</comment><comment><USER30> I use my gaming desktop as a Plex media server as well. I jut stream to various devices around the house (like the FireTV).

Works very well, even while I'm playing a game.

</comment><comment><USER31> Android TV with Plex and Kodi, and a Mac with Plex server installed. I really need a Plex capable NAS to not have to wake up my mac.

</comment><comment><USER32> Rasp3 running openelec / kodi, never looked back. All Open Source, not snooping on you :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Raspberry Pi 2 running OpenELEC (Kodi), with a large USB HDD attached. It doubles as my NAS.

</comment><comment><USER34> I just have the latest Apple Tv

</comment><comment> tony-allan TV -- Raspberry Pi 2 / Raspbian / Kodi -- 3TB disk

Remote control with Kodi iOS apps.

</comment><comment><USER35> A 2010 Mac mini connected to the TV and Logitech keyboard with trackpad

</comment><comment><USER36> Apple TV and a Mac that I use to stream movies to the Apple TV.

</comment><comment><USER37> Raspberry Pi 3 + OSMC (Kodi) + 2 HDD connected to the router.

</comment><comment><USER38> chromecast</comment>


The scientific case for including two spaces after a period - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/two-spaces-after-a-period/559304/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Emacs encourages this behavior because its operations that work on sentences require the use of two spaces after a period. Although it's possible to make it work with single spaces, it won't be able to reliably distinguish between abbreviations (such as etc.) and the ends of sentences.</comment>


The one tool I wish I had in PHP - <AUTHOR> http://www.carlalexander.ca/bootstrapping/the-one-tool-i-wish-i-had-in-php/

<comment><USER2> Sure... but... what is it? How will it do these things?</comment>


MongoPress - The High-Performance, Object Based NoSQL, OpenSource CMS - <AUTHOR> http://www.mongopress.org MongoPress is an instantly scalable, incredibly flexible content management system that uses MongoDB, PHP and jQuery to deliver a powerful object-orientated environment which is both flexible and free. It is the only GPLv3 open-sourced CMS running in a NoSQL environment that we know about and includes a multitude of features that simply work, right out of the box - this includes intelligent perma-trails, framework themes and full customisation, working plugin functionality, sophisticated media storage and serving through GridFS support and much, much more.<p>MongoPress aims to be as light as a feather when it comes to resources, as fast as lightning when it queries and as tight as a crab's bottom when concerning security. <comment><USER2> We've certainly got a lot left to do / start, but feel that this is a very solid 0.1 beta release, which really helps to highlight the benefits of using a NoSQL back-end such as MongoDB to best serve the new ways in which we engage with media on the web...</comment>


Fundamentals of Fast Bulk IO - <AUTHOR> https://bvckup2.com/kb/fast-bulk-io <comment><USER2> For the lazy: This should be titled Fundamentals of Async IO in Windows / NTFS. You're welcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really, no.

<comment><USER2> uh huh, besides 1 and 2 what exactly is non-Windows/non-NTFS specific ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is Windows-specific in details, obviously, but it's not an async IO explainer. The subject is different even if it's related.

PS. Who peed in your espresso today? "For the lazy", "you are welcome", "uh- huh". Even if you didn't like the post for whatever reason, it's not really hard to maintain a basic level of civility while expressing that. You may not realize it but your comments come across as dismissive and borderline hostile. It's really uncalled for.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What happened to Google's keyboard navigation? - <AUTHOR>

When Google Instant was introduced, they also added a feature where a little blue arrow was shown next to the top result, and you could use the up/down keys on the keyboard to navigate the other results in the page.  This was a cool feature for several reasons, the best one being that you could do a Google search and "click" the link you wanted without using the mouse at all (just hit enter on the link you want)!  But a day or two ago this disappeared.  Does anyone have any news on this decision?  Will it come back?  It was a great feature and I'd be really sad to see it go.<p>Note: This is what I'm talking about: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=1186810&answer=191139 <comment><USER2> Seems like you submitted this twice, and they appear to be the same. Shall we just use the first one?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3030080></comment>


FreeBSD 10.3-Release on AWS - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00KSS55FY <comment><USER2> FWIW, while this says "Sold by: Colin Percival", the FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE images were built and uploaded by the release engineering team; my only involvement this time was to let the Marketplace team know that a new release was available. The FreeBSD project takes the issue of "bus factors" seriously, and while I started the FreeBSD/EC2 project the intention has always been that it would get handed off to the FreeBSD release engineering team; with 11.0-RELEASE we should finally have the last bits sorted out and it will show up in the Marketplace as "Sold by: The FreeBSD Project".

EDIT: Hijacking my own comment slightly, since it's at the top right now: I'm not sure why 10.3-RELEASE being in the AWS Marketplace is a story when 10.2-RELEASE, 10.1-RELEASE, 10.0-RELEASE, 9.3-RELEASE, 9.2-RELEASE, 9.1-RELEASE, and 9.0-RELEASE being in the AWS Marketplace weren't. The hand- off from me to the release engineering team has been gradual (made slower by the fact that we only get to try something new once every 6 months!) but as far as users are concerned FreeBSD has been in the AWS Marketplace for years.

<comment><USER3> How stable is FreeBSD on AWS?

Would you recommend it for production use?

Is there a suite of compatibility/performance tests that is run on AWS for each release?

<comment><USER2> _How stable is FreeBSD on AWS?_

The releases are completely stable. I'd go so far as to say that FreeBSD/EC2 is probably more stable than FreeBSD on native hardware, simply because you're less likely to run into weird driver issues with obscure hardware.

 _Would you recommend it for production use?_

Absolutely. I've been using it for Tarsnap for years.

 _Is there a suite of compatibility /performance tests that is run on AWS for each release?_

Not that I know of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Putting this here just because it's something I often find people aren't aware of and it's somewhat relevant:

If you want to run 10.3 on Google Compute engine, official images from the release engineering team are available.

Quoting the release announcement:

% gcloud compute instances create INSTANCE --image freebsd-10-3-release-amd64 --image-project=freebsd-org-cloud-dev

% gcloud compute ssh INSTANCE

(See [https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.3R/announce.html](https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.3R/announce.html))

<comment><USER3> Whoa - thanks! I did not know this.

Do you use this and can you say something about production readiness/stability?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like this doesn't have the Windows tax...

<comment><USER2> The Windows tax went away when Amazon launched unix HVM, starting with "cluster compute" instances over five years ago. It has never applied to the FreeBSD images in the AWS Marketplace.

<comment><USER5> That's interesting, I can recall getting charged although I don't remember the details. I've never used the "official" AMIs, though, so perhaps it was because we built our own. Either way, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vultr.com is FreeBSD friendly, and dirt cheap. They are different in that you can upload an ISO of any OS you want. I was able, for example, to try out DragonFlyBSD this way. No association other than being a customer.

<comment><USER3> DigitalOcean is FreeBSD friendly too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Was not FreeBSD already available as an image on Amazon?

<comment><USER8> It says: Available on AWS Marketplace Since: 06/06/2014

Maybe it's a new version?

<comment><USER2> 10.3-RELEASE is a new version, yes. (It was released last week, but it took a week to get the new version into the AWS Marketplace. I'm still working out the kinks in the process.)

The "since 06/06/2014" is for FreeBSD 10; there's a separate Marketplace listing for FreeBSD 9, which shows "Available on AWS Marketplace Since: 11/20/2012": [https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00AA25MLK](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00AA25MLK)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow great news! I know that bringing FreeBSD to AWS was a HUGE PITA, so props to everyone for making this happen!</comment>


How to transition from Consulting to Tech - <AUTHOR> http://hackcareer.com/zeya/ <comment><USER2> Nice. I like the emphasis on just finding a role within your dream company first and then transferring internally to your dream role.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow that's a number of interesting transitions. Helpful read.</comment>


Singapore's startup scene - <AUTHOR> http://e27.co/heres-everything-you-want-to-know-about-singapores-startup-scene-20150528/ <comment><USER2> I've been living in SG for a year and the startup scene here is asthmatic at best. Really, it would be generous to call it a "scene". It isn't. If you can document all the startups in a country on a single infographic then... yeah.

The government claim to support startups but actually they barely do anything. There is a Entrepreneur Visa but you need a serious amount of funding, proof of intellectual property (even patents), backing of a VC or incubator, and credibility in the industry to get it. And even then the visa granted is dependent on your startup making hires of local citizens at a certain rate per year, in line with revenues. The actual visa itself is also relatively short term, it is basically issued on 12 month periods which isn't really enough to provide assurance and stability to a startup director.

The culture here is all wrong. The culture here is to go to Uni, attaining 2 degrees is not uncommon, then get a boring job in a mega corporate. And then spend the rest of your life twiddling your thumbs, stabbing and getting stabbed in the back, etc etc, where the gossip often revolves around bullshit job title acronyms like VP, ED etc. That is just the life here. If you ain't working in a mega corp then you are a nobody. And that's not my opinion, I have many many friends here that tell me straight that that is how life is here.

There is also an issue that working in "I.T." in Asia is stereotyped also. It is perceived as a somewhat low skilled office job. Even if you are a top level super senior software developer, try explaining that and most people will still just file you under "I.T." in their minds and maintain a superiority complex over you if they work in a dead-end mega corp job dealing in Excel Spreadsheets all day every day.

If you work in an actual startup in SG you are "different". You are seen as abnormal, risky and even stereotyped as "not being good enough" to work in a mega corp.

When I first came here I was introducing myself as "working on my startup". Most people assumed, seriously, I was just being shy about explaining I was unemployed at that moment, and they wanted to quickly change the subject. Even after clarifying that it is indeed profit making and growing well. So yes, saying your working on a startup here is actually almost as bad as saying you are unemployed. I learnt a better way of doing self introductions very quickly here.

<comment><USER3> Source: been here three years and counting...

You forget that the EntrePass (the entrepreneur visa you speak of) requires investors/VCs from an approved list, all of which are Singaporean; and that even SEEDS funding requires a local investor. So if you're foreign, or even local but with foreign investors (like, say, a US VC), no funding. I talked to these investors and they either aren't investing or want to see 30k/month in revenue. I suspect people were buying themselves residencies with the EntrePass at a fraction of the investor visa amount so they made it ineffective as a visa.

On the visa side, I've seen a lot of people play some kind of musical chairs. The key is the local director, so you pay a few hundred dollars to a firm to hold that directorship whilst incorporating, apply for an EP (standard work visa) for yourself which comes through in 7 working days, and then get the local directorship assigned to your EP. This does involve plugging in 50k or so of capital and paying yourself 8k/month (SGD) out of it (income tax being quite low it's not too onerous).

I don't like playing games with immigration (I don't know if the EP local directorship game is officious or a hack soon to be eliminated) so my startup is incorporated in the UK and Hong Kong until I get PR (I did Hong Kong first, but the paperwork and agent fees just killed me - I'd rather pay an accountant and 20% corp tax). That local directorship rule is a real pain in Singapore and I hope a government official is reading this.

That being said, if you are a local (citizen/PR), it is cheap and very fast to incorporate a Private Limited, the rule of law is exemplary, taxes are low, and it's probably the most visa-friendly first world country in the world.

Status-wise I think a lot of bankers and MBAs are getting into "startups", unfortunately, and just as in the US it's become an acceptable career path. I don't think the feeling towards startups is any different from say, most European countries, amongst the older folk.

Singapore's startup scene suffers from the same problem every non-Valley startup scene suffers: the best valuations and deal speed that we hear of in the Valley doesn't really exist anywhere else. For example, I remember calculating that the Bay Area received around 20x as much venture funding as the entire of the United Kingdom, despite the latter's status as an old startup hub containing the world's largest non-US financial centre. The causes have been debated to death in many places, I personally favor the "lack of big exits locally" explanation, which makes it hard for local investors to want to touch the asset class and in turn disincentivizes talent from getting into startups (mostly, they go to the US). When it takes you 6 months instead of 2 weeks to close a round, and you give up 20% instead of 7% for the seed round, it's much harder to grow that into a global business.

edit - just noticed who the author was. Strongly recommend London based folks go meet him! Zach is a fantastic guy and the kind of investor I would LOVE to have in my startup (if I had investors).

<comment><USER4> Nice rundown - you've clearly done the foreign-startup runabout, and "lack of big exits locally" is also my thesis for why startups & their valuations aren't so positive. The fact is that Asian investors haven't seen big paydays from new ventures, so they're all demanding traction or recurring revenue instead of risking funds on unproven businesses. I've also been struggling with this.

We startup HN people in Singapore should have a beer sometime, would be great to trade stories/news. Send me an email (check my profile) if you/anyone is interested.

<comment><USER3> I try to go to Hackerspace and the JFDI friday beers, I think that's where you find the mass. But yeah, not much participation, nowhere near US levels. The Big Data group has more people. These days I don't really get out of the house much, too much work!

I've found it easy to find investors but when you can make the funding in consulting revenue in 6 months, without giving up equity, it's hard to accept the idea of funding. Provided one has permission to work in SG (the client can sponsor an EP, remember!) it's just much better to bootstrap, I think. Oh, how I envy the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who can toil 100% of the time on their startup, without worrying about paying the rent. Still not worth moving.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's so easy to make that sort of money from consulting revenue so quickly, unless you have serious skills, a good portfolio, and access to good potential clients (which I guess you have, especially as a foreigner). But I haven't done consulting, so what do I know. I hope to cross over to the US or a bigger market to raise the next round of funding! At least the valuations will be a good bit nicer.

Catch you at a JFDI Friday event maybe; I don't go to Hackerspace often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Singapore is an interesting place for sure. I've been a half dozen times for work and fun. The biggest hindrance to Singapore startups is the Singapore government. Their iron-fisted approach to things from chewing gum, drugs, and even dancing on tables (for example) is antithetical to the dual veins of libertarian and liberal US political thought which is so firmly entrenched in Silicon Valley. Many believe that these competing, but sometimes sympathetically overlapping political schools are what made (and currently make) Silicon Valley so great.

Hard to convince a programmer to move from SF to SG if they're going to be hanged for smoking a spliff. While the drug use is just an example, it just illustrates the difference of Laissez Faire in the US vs What's Best for the Country in SG.

<comment><USER3> Seriously, you guys are getting tiring. If it's so important, Thailand's a 1 hour flight away, Malaysia a short bus ride, Indonesia a short ferry. By the way, when's the last time someone was hung for smoking a spliff? It's like tourists in Sydney being scared of being bitten by a funnel web...

Singapore has high quality of life, very low living costs compared to large US cities, efficient government (but not overbearing), and is a hub for one of the most exciting and growing regions of the world. It's an international city where a large proportion of residents come from all over the world and dozens of languages are spoken. The air is clean, there are no traffic jams, the metro is extremely cheap and spotless. And there's giant toucans living in the mango tree of my garden, right next to the centre of town - beat that SF.

Most importantly, government is not corrupt and has over the last 40 years gotten a pretty good track record of doing what is right. Both Lees have been exceptional leaders under any measure; amongst other things, the father influenced the direction of the world by directly influencing DXP towards the Chinese "glasnost" that is responsible for how the world looks today. I used to be pretty libertarian (think Swiss "don't have a Federal government"), but realized living here that a clean, non-corrupt government can also work incredibly well.

Another thing that flies under the radar of most critics is that Singapore has successfully set up a system to allow migrant manual labour legally; it is one of the very few places in the world where your Bengali construction worker on $500/month can go to the police, complain he hasn't been paid on time, and see his employer fined within two weeks. Try that in Qatar. Try that as an illegal in the US (over 80% of minimum wage labourers!).

<comment><USER6> It is called Disneyland with the death penalty for a reason. Forget weed, can I drink a glass of wine in public?

<comment><USER7> erm, actually yes i'm fairly confident we do not have such a thing as open container policy - there is no such rule that you cannot drink in public.

<comment><USER3> Technically, you can't, in Little India, during certain times, because of the riots recently. Cold Storage also says they can't sell booze between 10.30pm and 7am for the same reason. I suspect this will eventually go away again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We now have to compete globally for talent. What are Singaporean startups doing that would convince senior developers throughout the US and Europe to move to Singapore?

<comment><USER3> At a previous company, we had no issue finding talent. 150 qualified applicants (i.e. passed the test, which was to design an inventory management system in Haskell) for ~10 positions, all foreign; the majority came from the US, Germany and Scandinavia.

<comment><USER8> I'm concerned about the fundamentals. It looks like a low demand, low supply situation from the outside. I've worked on projects with more than 150 developers. Could one big player simply absorb all the available talent?

To have a thriving industry you need tens of thousands of available workers.

So I'll put it this way. I earn ~10k/month after tax as a senior software developer. Could I earn that much in Singapore? Or is cost of living so much cheaper that I'm better off even with a lower pay? Better lifestyle? Better culture?

<comment><USER9> Assuming you're living in SF Bay Area with ~120k/year ($10k/month) income:

Your earning after tax is ~$6600 per month. After ~$1800 rent and ~$1700 living costs (transportation, food, utils, ...), you get ~3100 in capital savings.

In Singapore, your personal income tax is nearly zero. To match that savings target and quality of life, you only need to earn SGD 7000 per month (~US $5200/month, or $62k/year) and you gonna spend about $1100 for rent and $900 for everything else (without car).

P/S: I'm a non-US citizen, lived in Philly for 7 years, got 120k offer in SF but declined, now working in Singapore.

<comment><USER8> Is $7k/month a reasonable salary for a software developer with 3-4 years experience in Singapore?

What can you earn with 8-12 years experience?

<comment><USER3> I had 6 months experience (in tech, anyway) when I arrived and still made 7.5k. In fact, that offer was made 4 months earlier, so with 2 months "experience". I was saving about 50-60% of that.

I think what salary you get can span anything from 2k to the sky (realistically, 20k and above will be very hard, and probably in finance or management). It's all about - here more than anywhere in the world - demonstrating value to the person signing the paycheck. If your value is much higher than what you want, then you can pretty much name your price. The tough part being convincing someone that you are worth that much. I think the rate for an American in a good corporate data science team should be at least 10-15k.

The marginal cost of foreigner vs local is, at least at these salaries, the flight. The EP costs $250/application and takes about 7 working days, with no quota. You turn up at the EP centre, pick up the card, scan your finger and you're gone within 5 minutes. Flying coach, you can get a return flight to the US for around 1k, less if you wait for a good sale. So, trivial. And it's easy to change employers - if you get a new offer, just get THEM to apply for EP and as soon as you have it, quit the first job.

Just be aware that flying to the US just plain sucks. London is a direct 12-16 hour (depending on direction). The US is one stopover, probably 20-24 hours. East coast worse than west, obviously. The other thing is expatriation has some invisible but very real downsides, the most painful one being away from family basically forever. On the upside, they get to visit an exotic country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would be really grateful if every engineer who ever complained about San Francisco being dirty and full of homeless people would move to Singapore, because it's pretty crass to complain about poor people in a city you don't want to live in, whose lives are made harder by you being there. By all accounts, Singapore is "clean", so, by any means, go there.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure I'd agree with the article's assertion that the infographic is "intuitive".

Some arrows are double-headed (point both ways), but some are not. So what do they mean? What flows only in one direction along the arrows that are single- headed?

Some of the arrows clearly point from one box to another (so what's that; is it influence? Is it money? Is it people), but other arrows just point to other arrows. So if arrows represent something flowing, what are these arrows that just point to other arrows representing?

It's not an intuitive infographic. I get nothing from the layout, colours and arrows that I wouldn't get from just a list, but I do lose the benefits of a simple list. Brightly coloured chartjunk.

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome! Great job!</comment>


India shuts down internet once again, this time in Assam and Meghalaya - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/10/india-personal-data-protection-bill-2019/ <comment><USER2> Let's not forget Indian Administered Kashmir is also still without Internet for over 4 Months now, affecting ~7 Million people as the curfew continues.

</comment><comment><USER3> Incorrect information. I am sitting in NOIDA and my home is in Delhi. Internet is perfectly working fine. Don't spread rumours at HN.

<comment><USER4> Read the title again. It's not about Noida.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hacker News JavaScript app   - <AUTHOR> http://siteapps.com/app/embedable_hacker_news_button-405

<comment><USER2> easiest way to add the "post to Hacker News" button on your website

<comment><USER3> Perhaps, but I question the value of such buttons. With my data set of 1, I can tell you that I personally find them intrusive and ugly. If I want to submit a page to HN or some other aggregator, it will get submitted irrespective of a little button's existence.

<comment><USER2> When I really like an article / post, I will try to "share the love" with the social media vehicle that website recommends. Having just one button for one network / aggregator tells a lot.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best fitness and/or yoga app? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It would be helpful if you described your needs. The app that I think is best may not suit you at all. That said, I've been using Fit Notes on Android for a few weeks. I like it, it's very easy to use.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you upvote then read? Or read then upvote? - <AUTHOR> I read in a separate tab, and if it was good, I try to remember to come back and upvote it.  But my ADD gets in the way, and I think I probably only remember to upvote about 33% to 50% of the articles I enjoy here on HN. <comment><USER2> My usual flow is

1) open the "comments" link in a new tab

2) read the article

3) upvote/flag/ignore

4) refresh

5) read the comments

But I sometimes read the comments between 1-2, 2-3, because sometimes the comments clarify or debunk the article completely.

(For long articles, I sometimes read them partially, upvote and then continue reading.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wondered something similar. For those who read and then come back and upvote, I wonder if HN tracks how much time you spent reading the article, and whether you upvoted it without reading it or not.</comment>


ASP.NET Core; Blocking Users from the EU - <AUTHOR> https://debugandrelease.blogspot.com/2018/11/gdpr-compliance-in-net-core-web.html <comment><USER2> Blocking users from the EU is a very drastic and in most cases very unnecessary measure to avoid GDPR trouble.

The GDPR was not designed to cripple honest businesses, and enforcement in the past 9 months certainly did not prove otherwise.

If anybody's interested in a more nuanced approach feel free to ask me any questions.</comment>


Gartner's emerging technology hype cycle – updated for 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://whatitallboilsdownto.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/gartners-emerging-technology-hype-cycle-updated-for-2016/ <comment><USER2> I like how cryptocurrencies have disappeared from the graph completely. So far down in the trough of disillusionment that they don't exist!</comment>


Versions of JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/versions-of-javascript/ <comment><USER2> "A big goal of Mozilla is to try implementing difficult ECMAScript features, helping to lead other browsers by example."

Whether or not Mozilla is focusing on "difficult" JavaScript features (and I don't think they are), they're focusing on the wrong features. By and large, the things that will make JavaScript more useful to people are features that we simply can't work around. Access to webcams or local storage, cross-domain xmlhttprequests (actually coming in firefox 3), better support for canvas, etc. I'd much rather have JavaScript 1.5 and get features that would enable me to do new things than to have generators or getters/setters. I couldn't care less about things like "let" scoping.</comment>