Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad and Mac Apps to Create One User Experience - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-20/apple-is-said-to-have-plan-to-combine-iphone-ipad-and-mac-apps <comment><USER3> Anyone unfamiliar with how things currently work:

macOS and iOS use 2 different UI frameworks (CocoaTouch and UIKit, respectively). And this causes problems when trying to compile the source code between the two platforms. Ex: things like font and color are defined specifically in each framework (NSFont and NSColor versus UIFont and UIColor). If they combine these frameworks, it makes the design and maintenance of cross platform software a lot easier (it'll still be difficult), and the at the very least, you wouldn't have to stub out a bunch of class names and files.

BUT - the most important work is still on the developer to ensure that their app runs great on iPhone, iPad and Mac and has a cohesive UI that scales and takes advantages of the different technologies. It's no different from Responsive Web Design or the shift from iPhone to iPad (and vice versa).

<comment><USER4> Precisely. People thinking this is to create one UI for both platforms are missing the point.

Just like you can have an app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, all with their own UI to a more or less degree, you will now be able toinclude a macOS build as well.

<comment><USER5> Shared Text and UI controls and libraries could be useful, but we need to consider the "one UI" given the title of the article " _Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad & Mac Apps to Create One User Experience_". That just screams Marketing Department Overreach to me, and I've arguments about this exact issue with sales and marketing people before.

The "one user experience" idea is a fallacy because the physical interfaces are so much different. There are definitely overlaps with typical phones, computers or TVs, but developers should embrace and accentuate the the differences, not try to force everything to the lowest common denominator.

For example, an iPhone has limited text input because of a small screen where the keyboard takes up almost half the space. However, it does have a great camera and a shit ton of useful sensors that no computer or TV ever will.

<comment><USER6> It's not like how apps get made is part of Apple's product marketing, if anything it's their developer outreach.

My money is on this being a developer focused update to fix the CocoaTouch/AppKit dichotomy, which will make it easier to develop a Mac version of your software alongside the iOS, watchOS, and tvOS versions. Spinning it as "combined iPhone and Mac apps" sounds like a misunderstanding on the reporter's part.

iOS has gotten a really large developer following with a ton of great apps. Not a lot of that has spilled back to the Mac side of things, but if the basic toolkit were compatible it would be easier for iOS devs to make the jump.

<comment><USER7> I think it's more likely iOS apps will run in a sandboxed emulator on the Mac. Xcode already does this, and it would trivial to build and bundle an emulated app for MacOS with the standard iOS build.

I can't see real unification happening. The platforms are just too different - not just physically, in terms of interface modality and available hardware, but in terms of design culture. For the most part, iOS apps have very little in common with Mac apps - and that will continue to be true even if Apple releases a series of Tablet Macs as the next evolution of the iPad Pro.

Going the other way makes even less sense. All the big content creation apps are monsters with hundreds of menu options and settings. There is zero chance of being able to port a functionally equivalent version to a device with a touch UI, a much smaller screen, and limited performance.

I hope this isn't based on a fantasy of being able to make everything look and work like Photos or Apple's office clone - because that will mean dumbed down apps on the Mac, and a total loss of faith in the Mac among professionals and power users.

<comment><USER8> Xcode doesn't use an emulator. When you build for the _simulator_ it's building an x86_64 binary that runs natively.

Also, to your other point (UI integration), my assumption is that you'll need to make a different UI for macOS than you do for iPhones (you have to do the same for iPads, IIRC, even if you're just creating a larger version of the existing iPhone UI).

So if you have a simple way of handling it, you end up with all of your core logic being shared between all versions, and multiple versions of the UI that you just hook up to your existing controllers.

<comment><USER7> But there's minimal non-trivial shared core logic, because the apps live in a different user space and do different things with different end goals.

You can port a Mac DAW to iOS - e.g. Cubase to Cubasis - but it's no longer the same product. Most of the features that make the desktop version so useful in a professional context are lost in translation, because iOS doesn't have the resources to support them.

So what do you gain by trying to merge development, except extra work and possibly extra confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, I hope they can learn from Microsoft's total failure to do this.

To be honest, I don't see a persuasive argument. In order for this to be worth the extra development time the company needs to have a big marketshare on both platforms - MS failed because they had zero footprint on mobile, and I think Apple will fail because they have a relatively small footprint on desktop. As a third party developer, is it _really_ worth your time to make a native macOS app when the web is already very capable? In some cases I'm sure it will, but in the vast majority of cases you're going to need to make a web version anyway (for the huge number of Windows desktops out there), so a native macOS app just wouldn't be worth it.

<comment><USER10> Microsoft failed because they had few developers for either the desktop or mobile version of the framework. The countless Windows apps did not become buildable on mobile. If Apple makes it easy to add OSX support to existing iOS apps, they will have a lot of success.

<comment><USER11> That, and the fact the new XAML UX framework can only be used by AppX apps that run in the sandbox. "Normal", otherwise unconstrained Win32 programs can't use it.

<comment><USER12> This decrease in capability seems to be a weakness with Mac App Store as well, that and the ramp up from 0% to 30% of purchase price.

As a user I personally prefer more powerful software and a more financially motivated developer; even when it makes buying more bespoke.

<comment><USER13> What are some alternatives to Mac App Store that give the developer the same services, like handling payment, including subscriptions, downloads, some DRM to prevent casual copying and updates, for less than 30%?

Last I checked, I had to assemble the above from disparate services, investigating each, integrating them, and paying for each, which doesn't seem like a productive use of my time or money.

<comment><USER9> That's not an answerable question in any universal way. 30% of what?

Assembling from disparate sources will have more of an upfront cost but cost less per purchase. So it depends entirely on your sales volume.

<comment><USER13> 30% of the sale price, obviously.

Regarding your second point, interesting, seems like MAS is good to get started until the app reaches a certain volume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b The lure of convergence again... that really didn't go so well for Microsoft.

I think that's something that really set Apple's iphone apart and that was really smart.

The problem is the iPad. The iPad should be a mac, in my view, like the Surface is a PC. Making the iPad a giant iPhone was a big mistake. Now people make pro applications for the iPad Pro and they're thinking "shit I really wish this could run on a mac" and now Apple is forced into some kind of compatibility that goes from the iPhone 5s with touch screen to a iMac 4K with touchpad.

<comment><USER14> > Making the iPad a giant iPhone was a big mistake.

I disagree. iPad is fundamentally a _touch_ device, and trying to shoehorn macOS into this paradigm would have probably doomed iPad–remember, that's what the competition was doing back before iPad, and you know how the sales of those devices were…

<comment><USER13> I agree with the post you responded to. I have a 13-inch iPad "Pro" that I'm unhappy with since it doesn't do what it's promised to do. Can I build an iOS app? An Android app? Upload 100GB of data to Google Drive? Play movies stored on my external hard disc? Download Youtube videos for local playback, as some Mac apps can do? And so on.

As far as I'm concerned the "big iPhone" idea is a failure. I don't want a tablet that doesn't have the full power of a PC OS like macOS or Windows. That doesn't preclude touch. The OS and apps could and should be updated to support touch. And Apple has the market power to pull that off.

I want an OS with the full power of a PC OS + touch. You can get there by taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful, or by taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps. Yes, both options require a lot of work, but Microsoft is further ahead in having shipped it for years rather than denying the problem, as Apple does.

<comment><USER14> > [Can I] Upload 100GB of data to Google Drive?

Yes…is there something preventing you from doing so?

> Play movies stored on my external hard disc?

Well, you _could_ if your hard disc supported a format that iOS could understand, such as a lightning cable, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi.

> Download Youtube videos for local playback, as some Mac apps can do?

There are apps that let you do this.

> Can I build an iOS app? An Android app?

No, unfortunately you can't do this yet. This is one of the things that iPad cannot do yet and I'm sure Apple is working on.

> The OS and apps could and should be updated to support touch.

This is an awful lot of work for developers…especially on Apple's platforms, where bolt-on solutions are rare and most apps try to make full use of the medium they have.

> I want an OS with the full power of a PC OS + touch. You can get there by > taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful, or by taking a PC OS and > adding touch to the OS and apps.

Yes, we all do–and Apple is doing this from the "taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful" rather than "taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps" as Microsoft is doing. My argument is that this is the better way to do things, and the market seems to largely agree.

<comment><USER13> > Yes…is there something preventing you from doing so?

Full multitasking, which is required for the hours or days it takes for such a long upload, and ability to connect an external hard disc.

> if your hard disc supported a format that iOS could understand, such as a > lightning cable, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi.

Which is to say, hardly any of them.

> There are apps that let you do this.

Show me some that still work. I looked but couldn't find.

<comment><USER15> For the hard drive, I think you can use the USB dongle to connect a hard drive. But you are right in that the multitasking probably doesn't allow for multi day upload. Haven't tried it yet though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _Developers currently must design two different apps -- one for iOS, the > operating system of Apple's mobile devices, and one for macOS, the system > that runs Macs. That's a lot more work._

One set of devices have ONLY a touchscreen as an interface. The other set of devices have ONLY a keyboard and mouse.

So how will this create less work? I think it will mean that each app either (a) bundles two essentially-different programs into one "application", or (b) gives up on desktop usability. Sadly I expect (b) and I feel that Apple does too, and doesn't mind.

<comment><USER17> Given that Apple seems to be following more and more industry trends, maybe touchscreen Macs are coming?

<comment><USER18> Also, they officially support a keyboard for iPad Pro. With recent multitasking updates for iPad and considering positive reviews for the keyboard, the Pro seems to be a serious contender for laptop replacement.

Recently got a Pro 10.5, and it's a fantastic device — seriously considering a keyboard for office work.

<comment><USER19> iOS has supported keyboards for a very long time. right back to when they first sold their 30-pin to USB "camera" adapter. You could definitely plug in a keyboard and use it.

<comment><USER20> Not just that, the first iPad had an official "keyboard dock" accessory - <USER2> desktop-style keyboard with a built-in iPad stand and 30-pin connector:

[https://www.cnet.com/products/apple-ipad-keyboard-dock- serie...](https://www.cnet.com/products/apple-ipad-keyboard-dock- series/review/)

(For the record, this was in 2010, the same year the camera adapter you mentioned was released, as well as OS support for Bluetooth keyboards.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a complete 180 from the approach in the early iPhone, iPad days. Everything was encouraged and often required to be made device-specific, because the UX is subtly different. Apple followed this too, back in the heady days of Skeumorphism. Even the shade of grey on the keyboard was different between iPhone and iPad[1].

This is yet another indicator that Apple has changed drastically since the Jobs days, and is moving more into alignment with other tech giants in their approach to products.

[1]: [https://ux.stackexchange.com/q/16369](https://ux.stackexchange.com/q/16369)

<comment><USER21> Microsoft has been failing at unifying desktop apps with mobile apps for many years with metro, UWP and whatever. Will be interesting if Apple can pull it off.

<comment><USER22> Apple has already proved they can do major software transitions gracefully with their adjustment from PowerPC to Intel.

<comment><USER14> For developers this transition was quite seamless, since most of the high- level API functionality was still there. This isn't the case when you're ripping out the current UI framework that every app uses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This won't help one bit. Seriously: Why do developers like those from Sketch drop the Mac App Store? Here's why: [https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/01/another-popular-app- leaves...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/01/another-popular-app-leaves-the- mac-app-store/) [http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs- paid-...](http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid- upgrades.html) [https://www.dancounsell.com/a-wish-list-for-the-mac-app- stor...](https://www.dancounsell.com/a-wish-list-for-the-mac-app-store/) [https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/developers-keep-leaving-mac- ap...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/developers-keep-leaving-mac-app-store/)

<comment><USER24> Speaking as a user, many developers are, pardon my French, shit, and will take every mile for any inch given to them.

Look at the iOS App Store after Apple introduced subscriptions: Even the most inane apps are now asking for monthly and yearly subscriptions.

Like, what is even the point of, say, a text editor having a monthly subscription? _"To justify development costs"_ , they write elaborate blogs about. Even though they used to be perfectly fine with a pay-once model for years before. Even though everyone was perfectly happy with buying an incrementally-numbered "Text Editor N" every year, _IF they needed to._

Some (like Day One I think) try to justify it by charging for features that Apple can provide _for free_ , like iCloud Sync, and reinventing that wheel with their own paid solutions for that.

As a user I was happier with the weekly blog whining about Apple's draconian walled garden, compared to this subscription-infested market now.

<comment><USER25> People expect updates once they've purchased an app for a few bucks. They tend not to pay more, and developers who release v2 and v3 as completely separate apps are often criticised. Not to mention, export/importing data can be a new issue across apps.

An upgrade could be released as an IAP, but asking for more once you've released a paid app is risky also.

I tend to avoid subscription software too, but I can fully understand why developers lean towards it as a way of getting a strong return and justifying further development, taking on staff for support, etc.

If the app isn't up to it, then consumers can find an alternative that can scrape by with a single price, right?

<comment><USER24> Pay-once apps compete with each other for my wallet only once. I can purchase them all over a given period of time.

Subscription-based apps _constantly_ compete with EVERYTHING else that I have to pay for every month.

If I'm already subscribing to many apps, it reduces the chances of me subscribing to your app, _even if it does not directly compete with those apps in the same category._ i.e. photo-editing apps start competing with text- editing apps and games and music apps, _perpetually,_ if they all switch to a subscription model. How is that sane?

If my monthly budget needs some breathing room and I [temporarily] cancel a subscription, I lose features or even access to my existing data. It doesn't matter how long I had been paying for, not even if I had been a subscriber for years before cancelling.

If developers demand a subscription model then users should demand a "loyalty" perk, where you get to retain access to an app for N weeks after cancelling if you had previously subscribed for X months.

Also, you'd think that with the total number of computing users increasing for all platforms across the world, the overall sales of apps, or at least the potential buyers to market to, must be increasing as well, compared to when we didn't even have subscriptions in the App Store.

<comment><USER26> Oh, ok. So, if your health insurance expires, you're still going to go ask for coverage, because your insurance only expired two weeks back and you were on it for the last 5 years?

<comment><USER27> Try your best to step back and appreciate the differences between healthcare coverage and apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There are 2 parts of the apps. There's model layer and view layer. The model layer is a pain to bring over because certain model objects (UIColor) are only on one platform. So if they make changes to ease that then making a mac app will become way easier.

The other problem is that AppKit is not as nice or as easy to use as UIKit in my experience. If they can bring these two frameworks together under shared functionality that would be great. For example, template Master-Detail from iPhone to iPad is great (and you can always customize). So having that extend to macOS would make mac development easier. I imagine this is what they are planning.

The third idea is they are thinking of something greater yet separate that is not meant for existing apps. Like a new UI Framework that works on both. This seems hard to believe as they have the iOS app base and the goal is to bring that over to mac not start a new app base altogether.

</comment><comment><USER29> As someone (apparently the only one in this thread) that writes macOS and iOS apps, I can't wait for NSView and it's stupid lower-left cartesian coordinate system to die.

UIKit is so much better in so many ways, it's time NSView and its friends are all put out to pasture.

<comment><USER30> I've had many years of experience with iOS and then started working on a macOS app a year or so ago. Everything seemed overly complicated compared to iOS development.

I ended up using a web view and did a lot of front-end work via HTML to save time!

<comment><USER31> UIKit is much more limited than AppKit because it was meant to run on devices with limited resources. In fact, people used to complain about all the things you couldn't do on iOS devices that you could on the Mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Convergence is overestimated.

As a users, I actually do not want an identical use experience of apps on desktop and mobile devices because inherently these are different use cases and it does not make sense to mix them. It's not even the same applications that would be used on iPad as on macOS.

I doubt technology is an issue here. Universal binaries for macOS worked well and that was a decade ago. It's the fundamental use cases for these devices that differ and no development framework can bridge that, probably even shouldn't.

<comment><USER33> It sounds to me like you're actually saying your _experience_ with convergence has been overrated vis-à-vis initial claims.

<comment><USER27> By extension they could be saying that convergence is likely to incentivize creation of those mediocre experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Assuming they can pull this off in a very good way (a big assumption), I think this is a smart move. This isn't just for tech illiterates, this is for pros.

Imagine if all new software created was immediately available on iPad - that'd be huge. People have been talking about the lack of pro-grade video editors, vector art painters, and programming environments on iOS for a while now. This _could_ be really interesting.

<comment><USER35> I sure wouldn't hold my breath for any Adobe products to get on board with this, they've put all of one app (Photoshop Elements) on the Mac App Store so far.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't be so sure. Adobe has a rather large presence on the iOS App Store, and they're frequently featured as early adopters of whatever new technology Apple rolls out during their onstage presentations. Apple would probably try hard to get Adobe to follow along here, since it's an important app that people want to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Here's a relevant 2014 WWDC presentation on how Apple redesigned iWork to work on both iOS and Mac using most of the same codebase, and the technical problems which needed to be solved: [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2014/233/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2014/233/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Outright shared apps sounds like a terrible experience. I can definitely understand the argument from a developer perspective wrt shared code bases between platforms, i don't know if the user part of me is excited, though.

Maybe it'll also keep people from using other frameworks and lock them in on Apple platforms more.

<comment><USER38> Like everything, it greatly depends on the execution rather than the concept.

<comment><USER39> The concept was tried with Windows 8; they had to go back to offering both desktop and touchscreen options. Based on my experiences using an iPad, iPhone, and a variety of mac laptops, I don't see how this could be practically different.

Touch interfaces take up too much space on lap/desktops, and desktop interfaces are inconvenient to the point of not working with touch.

<comment><USER40> > The concept was tried with Windows 8; they had to go back to offering both > desktop and touchscreen options.

Still using the same platform. The idea is to use responsive design rather than different UI frameworks.

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Please, don't Apple. A Mac is a different device with a very very very different user interface - in the sense of how users are interfacing with it. I don't need ANY of the UIKit interface elements on my Mac.

It's like Write Once Run Anywhere all over again. Instead, go back and focus on what made OS X so great. Because High Sierra ain't it.

It's bad enough that a viewer of hypertext documents is now the common 'app' platform, I don't need or want a unified UI kit.

</comment><comment><USER42> It would be interesting to compare this to [https://github.com/BigZaphod/Chameleon](https://github.com/BigZaphod/Chameleon) which came out of the Iconfactory in 2011:

"Chameleon requires OS X 10.6 or higher. Apps built with it have been proven to be acceptable to Apple for the Mac App Store. Chameleon was first built by The Iconfactory to unify the codebase of Twitterrific for both Mac and iOS."

Frameworks with iOS/macOS targets have long existed and it is proven possible to have events routed in UIKit style. I however fear that the merging of user experiences will come at the detriment of the Mac experience.

SJ said long ago that Macs are trucks and only some people need it. This converging step makes no sense when Apple is already trying to push the iPad as the "computer" for the masses.

</comment><comment><USER43> Having lived through windows 8 and the .net frameworks, I really hope Apple can do better.

<comment><USER44> I don't think it is possible. Different hardware means different user experience.

You can pretend it is the same application, make one sale and provide different software for each device. But this is more of a marketing gimmick than anything.

<comment><USER39> It's not even the hardware, it's the user interface. Touch interfaces are too large for desktops apps well, and desktops interfaces are too fiddly to be used with touch.

<comment><USER45> Agreed, but if anyone understands that UI platforms are different with different needs, it's Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Ugh. Not looking forward to this at all. Instead of making things perfectly fit each device they will try one-fits-all approach which will most likely be sub-optimal at best and horrible at worst (Windows8).

<comment><USER14> Windows is a different beast–many of it's laptop/desktop computers have touchscreens, and Microsoft overreached and basically made the experience better for them at the expense of mouse/keyboard devices. Apple can't do this, of course, since Macs don't have touch screens.

<comment><USER47> The cynic in me sees your last statement as an indication of the next must have feature - the official Apple Touch Screen Monitor for your desktop Mac.

<comment><USER46> But Steve did the research, he even said himself: "Laptop users do not want a touch screen!".

To which I completely agree, mind you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Seems like such a bad idea from a UX perspective that it's hard to imagine iOS apps on macOS being anything more than reimagined Dashboard widgets.

<comment><USER26> I think the burden is going to fall squarely on iOS developers to make their apps usable with mouse and keyboard on the mac. Mac developers are probably not going to bother porting their UI to work on iOS though. Apps like Sketch App come to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> No one's mentioned this but could this be a precursor to weaning themselves off of Intel for MacOS devices?

<comment><USER50> Why would it be? macOS's APIs are architecture-independent and have been since day one, which is what enabled the smooth transition from PowerPC to x86.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm surprised by all the negative comments about this. It's hard for me to understand why this is a bad thing. Linking the phone to the computer in deeper ways without having to write separate apps seems _super_ valuable.

<comment><USER52> Yes. The obvious universal API that targets big screens and small, touch or mouse is Qt. It started as a desktop framework, was made touch-aware to be used Nokia and BB10 for phones, powers KDE 5 and I'm hopeful Ollie Paranoid will provide an update in a few weeks re: Plasma on postmarketOS.

Now a company with Apple's resources should surely be able to reintegrate the Cocoa Touch hard-fork back into a common modernised Cocoa, which by now has a 30 year legacy from NeXTSTEP.

Naturally you'll still need to customize a UI for Mac or iPhone but a unified toolkit is entirely possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> So basically they're going to allow a 3rd set of storyboards and components for the Mac (theres already differences for iPad and iPhone), and then somehow merge the frameworks so it's coherent from a programming perspective?

</comment><comment><USER54> This convinces me my suspicions are correct. They want to replace desktops with iPhones.

Apple has been drastically increasing the power of the processors in iPhones. Now they're unifying the iOS and macOS experience.

They're going to create a desktop mode within iOS. It'll use bluetooth peripherals and an HDMI Airplay stick that plugs into a monitor.

The iPhone will become a PC we carry around in our pockets containing all our data making it unnecessary to have a different computer in every place we go to. And it will justify spending more on our phones because we'll be saving not buying desktops.

<comment><USER55> I've suspected that iOS-only had been the plan for a while and I am pretty sad about it to be honest. I'm sure the user experience will be great but I'm a professional and I want a relatively unrestricted OS with a decent UI and good hardware. I suspect I'll have to compromise on at least one of those eventually. It makes sense for Apple but it will be the end of an era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Please just fix iTunes for God's sake. Why are they wasting all this effort when their core apps like iTunes are among the worst apps in existence but are forced upon us?

<comment><USER14> Maybe they'll rewrite iTunes to use this framework, instead of the C++ Windows/macOS hybrid monster it is today?

<comment><USER26> If they write it in Swift, all the problems will magically go away. Just like how stable rest of macOS has become in the last few years.

<comment><USER14> You're joking, right?

<comment><USER26> What do you think?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> They are inching ever closer and closer to that toaster-fridge they despise.

</comment><comment><USER58> This are two different eco systems. What works for touchscreen does not work for Desktop and vice versa. I don't want even one app from the phone/tablet on my Desktop. This only gets messed up. The good thing about macOS is that Apple stick to it and does not mess it up like Microsoft with their confusion about touch and non touch apps.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is probably going to be focused on lower performance apps but for those talking about video editors it may be important to point out that though the iPad is insanely powerful, it's not as strong at doing long term high performance tasks. Not like a laptop anyways.

<comment><USER59> It's insanely powerful only for its size and energy usage. There are so many cut corners and micro-lies when it comes to mobile that make all the specs sound good but at the end of the day they are far, far more crippled devices than any desktop or laptop computer. They tout things like processor specs but the entire computer matters, and turns out when you optimize for power efficiency and battery life a whooooole lot of computing power is simply not there for you to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Really looking forward to my complex professional software and content creation and data management desktop tools being dumbed down to the UI complexity of an iPhone just like desktop web apps have been since the advent of responsive design.

Maybe the upside of this will be all the developer types fleeing to Linux and Linux finally gaining a comparable user-facing software ecosystem.

(Yes, I know a lot of software exists for Linux, but the quantity, variety, and ease of installation of end-user applications on Mac is in a different league; and a lot of mainstream Mac+Windows apps still don't have Linux versions. It's the main thing Apple gained by making OSX developer-friendly in the first place.)

</comment><comment><USER61> This will probably be what gets me (and most power users) to leave Apple's walled garden for good. Once iOS infects MacOS heavily enough that it interferes with the way I prefer to use my computer, it's all going away.

</comment><comment><USER62> Going to be very interesting to see how they go about implementing this. So much is different about the UI of Mac Os and iOS, that I'm guessing at the very least you'll need different views for each platform.

</comment><comment> juicy-fruit This is amazing news. As a developer the idea of writing once and running on many platforms is weight off our shoulders.

However, I can also see how a lot of developers might not like this. For example, Cultured Code charges $13.99 for Things on iOS but $49.99 on Mac. Why the difference? It is mostly because users expect apps to be cheap on mobile even though developing for both platforms is comparable. However now, developers are going to be _expected_ by users to support both iOS and Mac apps for the same price.

Also, I feel like this news might imply ARM based macOS?

<comment><USER63> No, it won't imply ARM macOS. It's obviously a distinct possibility, and I wouldn't be surprised if they went that way one day. In fact, given release builds uploaded to Apple are basically just an intermediate llvm bitstream, Apple could theoretically release to any architecture.

<comment><USER64> llvm bitcode is a compiler IR and nothing else, it's not architecture- independent. There have been independent bytecodes based on it like PNaCL and SPIR-V, but they're not nearly good enough to run any old app on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> The reason MAS is a ghost town I have always assumed was because of the MAS limitations and that unlike iOS devs aren't required to use the store.

iOS and macOS are totally different so you'd still have to develop custom ui's though Apple could certainly help to make it easier to develop for both platforms at once. But even then MAS would remain mostly a desert until they even change limitations or require all apps to be from MAS which would be nearly impossible, especially for business customers.

</comment><comment><USER66> Would be interesting to see how Apple tackles the problem; since other giants have failed badly on this. Microsoft is perfect example of over-promising and not getting traction.

</comment><comment><USER67> I've realised a while ago that the fact that OSX is Unix-based and fairly open - and therefore used by many developers for non-Apple development -- happened purely by accident, because Apple needed a better replacement for the old MacOS 9 and NExTSTEP was readily available. When developing iOS they made it more controlled and closed, and they're now following that strategy to the desktop.

</comment><comment><USER68> I just don't see anyone winning other than trash app sellers.

far too many using iOS expect apps to be free or so cheap as to be free. how will that outlook crossover into the Mac world? Let alone how will all the apps with in app purchases play out in the Mac world?

finally, how much functionality must mac apps give up to be compatible with both systems? the mac ecosystem is much more open than iOS, is that going to change?

</comment><comment><USER69> I guess this is possible given that their frameworks support many different screens at this point, and some variation in tap target size. But it's not totally clear to me that supporting both touch and mouse in one app will do both input mechanisms justice.

Unless they're imagining that there would be a completely different set of UI resources for Mac apps vs iOS ones?

Any thoughts on this from Windows users?

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm hoping "unified user experience" is meant in a big way -- the promise of a device that can go from touch UI when in my pocket to desktop experience when a keyboard and display are connected is a huge one.

The makings of such support are already there in the hooks iOS has to support different size classes -- currently used to handle device rotation mainly.

</comment><comment><USER71> This makes more sense for games than apps (for apps could have a much more wildly different experience and design on the desktop than on mobile), and it makes even more sense for VR games (where both input and output will be identical regardless of the execution ecosystem).

</comment><comment><USER72> That sounds like a terrible idea. You need an Apple device to seriously build iOS apps, so does that mean that Apple users will have trouble using software that is created by people who write their software on other operating systems?

</comment><comment><USER73> I take it that next year we will see a totally different macOS user interface, in order to make the one ux experience alignment. macOS has not had major UI changes for a few years, so maybe macOS app with no menu bar?

</comment><comment><USER74> Not enough info here to determine anything useful from the developer perspective. If I had to make an arbitrary assumption, I'd guess that this boils down to a UIKit implementation on the Mac.

</comment><comment><USER15> people seem to forget but Apple makes some of the most powerful iOS apps currently. iMovie, Keynote, Photos, Garagaband etc. And the experience between iOS and MacOS is extremely similar between them. Just more "expanded" on desktop. I wouldn't be surprised if they share a lot of code between the different platforms too. If this helps more developers accomplish the same thing that Apple is doing with their own apps then I'm all for it!

</comment><comment><USER75> Wish Apple would hurry up and eat their words so that they can add touchscreens to their laptops. I'm using a mac at work and I so miss my Windows touchscreen.

</comment><comment><USER76> Windows 10. I hope Apple treads this path very carefully.

<comment><USER77> Windows 10 is fine, Windows 8 was the failure. Window 10 actually suffers a bit from not being enough like Windows 8 in some touch screen facets.

<comment><USER76> Windows 10 became fine after taking windows phone out of the equation. You no longer need to optimize for both big and small screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> I know Beeware[0] is doing something similar. Disclaimer: Contributor.

[0] [https://beeware.org](https://beeware.org)

</comment><comment><USER79> It doesn't make sense for all apps but I felt like I need it since I started using Margin Note app in my ipad and macbook.

</comment><comment><USER80> The user experience I want includes USB ports, an SD card slot, replaceable batteries, and the escape key.

</comment><comment><USER81> This is exactly what Progressive Web Apps are going to achieve! Reinventing the wheel once again...

</comment><comment><USER82> This sounds to me like providing the ability to run iOS apps in a window in Mac OS

</comment><comment><USER40> Hopefully this means the iPad Pro will gain support for trackpads and mouse input.

<comment><USER14> I would seriously doubt this. More than likely it'll be a unification of some AppKit and UIKit API, with the developer being expected to tailor the experience to the input devices available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> To provide some historical perspective: Apple's done major transitions like this in the past: The move from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS 10 and the move to Intel come to mind.

I'd be curious to hear from experienced Mac devs on what they think of this plan (if true) and the biggest hurdles?

</comment><comment><USER84> Along with an ARM-based 12" MacBook named iBook. #speculation

<comment><USER14> Friendly reminder that a 12" laptop named "iBook" already exists: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook)

<comment><USER84> I was alluding to that indeed: reviving the beloved brand. Makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> To me this speaks to the power of Progressive Web Apps.

<comment><USER86> Yea, that is the first thing I thought of when I saw this. PWAs could be made for this and I think could be awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> One step closer to killing off Mac OS.

</comment><comment><USER88> Apple's got the Microsoft bug.

</comment><comment><USER89> there we go again...

people failed so many times before... let's see what they can bring to the table now.

</comment><comment><USER90> I wonder if this is a hint that apple might finally be bringing a touch screen interface to the Mac?

</comment><comment><USER91> AKA UWP for Apple OS

</comment><comment><USER92> I wish people would stop designing "one user experience" between mobile and desktop.

Capital One just switched me from a nice classic UI to one clearly designed for a small touch screen, and I'm thinking of switching banks because it annoys me so much.

I generally hate when websites redesign to "look nicer" based on the aesthetic du jour and in doing so throws away a significant portion of the functionality.

<comment><USER44> > I generally hate when websites redesign to "look nicer" based on the > aesthetic du jour and in doing so throws away a significant portion of the > functionality.

I'm right there with you. On the other hand, some of my accounts are still using half-broken UI that hasn't been touched in a decade (A&M plans still don't include UI apparently), even the minimum viable refresh would be an improvement.

<comment><USER93> They will probably refresh everything except this part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Hope they ban the shitty cross platform frameworks at the same time.

<comment><USER95> Unity probably accounts for 90% of the iOS games.

<comment><USER96> I would imagine games would be an exception. Plus Unity started on OSX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> This will be one of those Apple APIs that someone in Apple thinks is a good idea, gets a half hearted release, then dies on the vine as the vast majority of developers say "F no".

It will be Apples less successful version of Electron.

<comment><USER98> That really comes down to whether or not Apple uses it themselves. If they port their various iOS apps to this new thing and have them replace their current macOS counterparts, then this thing is safe to use.

<comment><USER97> That's not the point. I have no doubt it will be "safe" to use. But if it's going to be used for dumbing down apps, it's only going to be beneficial for enterprise and cross platform developers willing to make usability trade-offs to slash development costs.

As a Mac/iOS developer, I'd only use it if I'm able use the merged classes to cross-develop on both platforms, while still implementing my UI natively on each. If it's just for making iOS widget apps run on MacOS, that's fine for others but it's not going to fly for many commercial applications.

The problem is, as an iOS developer, I spent the majority of my time writing UI code to make our apps work as well as possible for users. Which means large tap areas, eschewing menus, minimizing scrolling areas, etc. Basically the opposite of good desktop design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Apple just can't let go of copying Microsoft, first with flat UI, now with one-size-runs-all :D

Seems like real innovation is a thing of the past.

<comment><USER52> I thought it was more Google providing Android compatibility within Chrome OS driving the push to bring apps to macOS.</comment></comment>


What books got you curious and inspired about fields other than CS? - <AUTHOR> For example, in my case I got interested in:<p>- Design when I read "The Design of Everyday Things" and "Design for the Real World"<p>- Cognitive psychology when I read "Thinking Fast and Slow"<p>- Computers & Education when I read "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas"<p>Would love to know about the books that got you inspired and curious about other fields :) <comment><USER2> After reading Walter Issacson's Einstein biography, I read Six Easy Pieces, which is were taken from 6 of Richard Feynman's lectures. The intended audience is for Freshmen Physics students. Having never taken any Physics courses in college, I've only read a few books on the subject. I was pleasantly surprised at how Feynman made the material so understandable. Now I'm very interested in Physics.

</comment><comment> non-entity I stumbled upon a hobby electronics book back as a teenager and actually debated going to school and doing EE back then. Ultimately software won out, I suppose because it was so much accessible to me back then.</comment>


Vienna's Recipe for Living Well - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20150513-viennas-recipe-for-living-well

<comment><USER2> Sorry but that's too much fluff and mozartesque stereotypes. Culture, liveable – yes, but not in a hurry or creative idling most of the time is just plain outright made up.

(Austrian here)

<comment><USER3> As fellow austrian i agree (hi thomas btw)

It's romanticized in international media to the extend it becomes a disney land version of itself.

Which is bad because it is a really good city to live in and should be seen as such - without the fairy dust and glitter.

* It's quiet (american cities tend to be very loud for no reason)

* A high basic standard of living for everyone (salaries, rent, health, etc)

* Education for everyone combined w/ very good universities (top tech university with people of other social class or ethnic groups)

* Clean streets (no homeless, no trash)

I am happy that people recognize the city as a pearl as it is - but other cities (esp in europe) offer the similar qualities and we should rather learn from the patterns that work than to simply romanticize all of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've lived in Vienna for three years and the 'recipe' for the quality of life there is much more tangible than this article suggests. It's about the reasonable working hours (thanks to labor laws), low levels of crime (thanks to the social safety net), reasonable rent (thanks to public housing and renter-friendly laws), levels of education, well-maintained public parks and the excellent public transportation system. One can suggest that these things exist everywhere in Europe but the truth is that most of these things are done better in Vienna than in other European cities.

The Austrians are very proud of their culture and rightly so, they are also smart about how to build the system that can support this good lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER5> A BBC story not accessible from London! I thought UK taxes + TV license where paying BBC. Is there a mirror for this?

<comment><USER6> bbc.com is really BBC Worldwide, which is functionally a separate commercial organisation with really good access to BBC material.

<comment><USER7> And how is that a justification for blocking it in the UK?

<comment><USER6> It's not particularly, it was an answer to the question "I thought UK taxes + TV license where paying BBC."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can't access the page from the UK

"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. "

</comment><comment><USER9> Been to Vienna once; seemed nice. Love to watch the New Years philharmonic concert every year: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIPL5gxjKO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIPL5gxjKO4)

</comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of the story of the Italian village Roseto Valfortore from Malcom Gladwell's book The Outliers

</comment><comment><USER11> Vienna is nice for a visit, I wouldn't recommend living there.

<comment><USER12> Why?

<comment><USER13> I can't speak for the GP, but I lived there for a month with my wife and 3 kids. During that trip we spent extended time in Salzburg, Munich, and Vienna, and Vienna was my least favorite.

It's hard to put my finger on why I liked it less. The people weren't as friendly, ethnic diversity increases as you move further away from the city center that I think might contribute to the lack of community feeling. (Language barriers)

There's a lot of "culture", but a lot of it feels very touristy and classical, and not organic or natural to me. I don't know, the city felt a little fake and dreary to me.

It's also not as naturally beautiful as the other two (but to be fair it's hard to compete with Munich and Salzburg).

<comment><USER14> Munich is amazing. They have a beer garden in the middle of a beautiful park... what more could you want?

<comment><USER15> > Munich is amazing.

Indeed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How To Launch a Company with Zero Ideas, Capital or Tech Savvy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/4aba2443a991

<comment><USER2> People have been doing this kind of thing for a long time, long before there was anything like the Internet.

It suits a certain type of entrepreneurial personality which probably does not frequent HackerNews.

</comment><comment><USER3> That was pretty dirty.</comment>


Please don't learn to code - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/10/please-dont-learn-to-code/ <comment><USER2> This article reads like an amateur-gardener complaining about how hard it is to grow orchids.

> Selling coding as a ticket to economic salvation for the masses is > dishonest.

Most of the articles I've read and discussions I've had about "learn to code" emphasized that the goal is not to become an engineer but simply to develop algorithmic thinking in order to have a basic understanding how a lot of things work in a computerized world.

> It took me more than a year of self-taught study before I got a freelance > gig.

Either the OP is a genius or delusional. I had the privilege to learn from some very, very good engineers and all of them felt not being worth a salary for the first _decade_. It took me 15 years to refuse low-paid jobs because I was confident enough to say "My time is worth more than that."

> Do they keep coding in what is quickly becoming the language of lesser > choice, or do they start again? If you're a young twenty-something, this may > pose little difficulty, but if you're taking care of a family — with bills > to pay and mouths to feed — the task becomes Herculean. [Yes, I am quoting > out of order here].

And if you really understand what you are doing - i.e. you really are an engineer - then it's merely reading and meditating on specs for a week or two and a few more weeks of retraining muscle memory.</comment>


Nokia lays off Qt3D, QtDeclarative (QML), QtMultimedia, CI/QA and other teams - <AUTHOR> http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2012-August/005467.html

<comment><USER2> I really, really hope this is not the beginning of an end of Qt. But it probably is.</comment>


Remote.tools – 100+ handpicked tools in 20+ categories for distributed teams - <AUTHOR> https://remote.tools <comment><USER2> Mail Communication : Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo. Really good choices if you don't care about being hacked or giving away your datas.</comment>


Lenny's history and why he isn't Creative Commons (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/comments/5lcfwq/lennys_history_why_he_isnt_creative_commons/ <comment><USER2> For totally unsolicited sales calls, there's also "the worst hold music in the world", beware, headphone users:

[https://soundcloud.com/user-237714155/sales-call- abyss](https://soundcloud.com/user-237714155/sales-call-abyss)

I downloaded this and converted it to an appropriate wav format/bitrate for use with asterisk and a g.711 incoming SIP trunk, it's extension 666 on my voip system. Easy to transfer.

<comment><USER3> Thank-you. I've just updated the sound file that is played to black-listed phone numbers.

<comment><USER4> Unforunate n00b question here: how does one download the audio from Sound Cloud? Would love to do the same.

<comment><USER3> I used the youtube-dl command line utility.

Google is your friend for other alternatives.

<comment><USER4> awesome, thanks! Use youtube-dl all the time, didn't realize it support sound cloud.

Worked like a charm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, I don't think those creative commons licenses require you to 'identify' yourself, at least not in any way that can't be kept mostly anonymous. The creator of Lenny could publish the recordings under a pseudonym and host it on a website dedicated to the 'Lenny Team' or something similar, and it'd allow him to both use the license and keep his privacy.

No need to put out any information that allows him to be identified there.

</comment><comment><USER6> No association with them, but the folks at Jolly Roger Telephone Compnay ([https://jollyrogertelephone.com/](https://jollyrogertelephone.com/)) have an interesting approach to the problem. It's subscription based, but their bots are more advanced than Lenny and you get the conversations emailed to you after the transfer.

If just a few percent of callers used services like this, or wasted a few minutes time of the telemarketers, mass spoofed calls wouldn't be a viable business strategy.

</comment><comment><USER7> So, he has nothing against Creative Commons licenses in general, but he doesn't want to identify himself.

</comment><comment><USER8> So, what happened? Was Lenny left with an unfortunate misconception about CC licensing?

<comment><USER9> Any kind of copyright claim (and, thus, license) must require identification of the copyright holder. If one believes the TFA (and I see no reason not to), then Lenny's isn't going to come after anyone for infringement. But that's not good enough for some corporate lawyers. They need to know who owns it and under what precise terms it is licensed before they'll indemnify their clients to use the content.

I would suggest to Lenny that he get a lawyer himself to register the copyright to the law firm on his behalf, and have the firm license under CC. But that would cost money. I don't know how much. And I don't know if Lenny would think it's worth the effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who or what is "Lenny"?

<comment><USER11> In this context it helps if Lenny is confused with Lemmy. Lemmy was a rock and roll legend who was into that lifestyle primarily because he liked sleeping with female groupies. There are many people out there wondering if Lemmy was their father. Sadly Lemmy has passed away, however, if I was a telemarketeer then I would spend a lot longer on the phone with Lemmy, learning of his exploits, than I would with Lenny who seems a nice enough chap but rather dull in comparison to Lemmy.

I hope this has helped answer your question.

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

<comment><USER10> Of course I know who Lemmy is! :the horns:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Its actually one of my hobby goals for 2019: "this is Benny" and "this is Penny". A male and female voiceovers (already found suitable voices) and a simple website with bunch of buttons you click to play when you get a marketing call. With ability to record as well and upload to youtube ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> I feel like somehow Howard Stern should be getting some credit here. He's been using recorded drops from his show to make prank calls in this manner for years. Lenny seems at least partially derivative of that.

<comment><USER14> Howard or one of his goons would be at the control board though. The beauty of lenny is how seamlessly his responses tie together with no human interaction.

<comment><USER15> Give "AI" development some time and we'll have digital telemarketing boxes attempting to sell anything to digital anti-telemarketing boxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 2017 should be added to the title.

<comment><USER17> Added. Thanks!</comment></comment>


HTTP Status Rappers - <AUTHOR> http://www.httpstatusrappers.com/

<comment><USER2> This has been posted previously, yet remains hilarious.

The best have to be:

Diddy - No Content. Well, unless you count saying random bullshit over Biggie's lyrics something.

Fresh Prince (Will Smith) - Moved Permanently. He stayed in LA.

MC Hammer - Unauthorized. Although I would argue Vanilla Ice would have been better here.

Cisqo (or however it is spelled) - Not Found. Unfortunately, he was. And so was the Thong Song.

I'm not getting the Wu-Tang Clan for Internal Server Error though, and Biggie and 2Pac for Gone is just depressing.</comment>


Show HN: Generate a Notchless wallpaper for iPhone X - <AUTHOR> https://notchless.milankragujevic.com/?ref=hackernews <comment><USER2> ...bit heavy handed, no?

>> "By uploading an image to Notchless you grant Milan Kragujević a perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, modify, create derivative works based upon, duplicate, redistribute, index, copy, transmit, print, publish, reproduce, publicly perform, display and store your content. The court responsible will be Osnovni sud u Požarevcu."</comment>


Ask HN: My Lead Is Stupid. What Should I Do? - <AUTHOR>

I am in a software company startup with about 200 engineers. I am in team of 6 people. In every engineering team, there will be always an engineer lead. The case is, my lead is stupid. He does not design well. He does not know good code. Even more, he can't write a test. I always ask him to review the design, the code, to other coworker (other than him), but he always refuses that (he says "Well this is good enough, no need for other to review me").
The result? It ends up to, I maintain his poor code and design. Longer development process (Since there is no test!), etc.
What should i do? I want to tell this to the-lead-of-all-engineer-lead, but first of all i want to find out the best way how to tell this to him (the lead of all engineer leads). <comment><USER2> 1\. Make friends with developers in other teams. 2\. Try to get transferred to their team.

<comment><USER3> This! is the most practical and feasible solution. But, it also means that you take the path with least resistance.

If OP really cares about the company/product, he would do this, and then openly talk to the lead about his shortcomings in a fair and constructive manner and resolve the issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never think the solution would be this easy. Thanks! I will try to request team rotation.

<comment><USER2> Above all, what I mean is that complaining about your boss to your boss' boss won't make you look good to either of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, you're always going to find people with different ability levels than yourself. So learning how to best deal with these issues will help your career.

I'm almost certain people refuse to allow others to review their code because of fear of embarrassment or loss of face. Perhaps when you find something you can to do improve his code, you can show it to him and sell it as something that will: 1. make his life easier, 2. impress his boss.</comment>


Boxee adds Hulu support - <AUTHOR> http://blog.boxee.tv/2008/10/20/hola-hulu/ <comment><USER2> For me I was glad to see Joost become web only. With everything on the web that once required an install(IM, Music players like WinAmp) , I no longer install applications. Rather I just open Firefox to enjoy the media Im interested in through various startups/sites.

I think I dont see the need for a media viewer because I have a Mac Mini connected to a large LCD TV, use wireless mouse as remote and firefox add-on fire gestures to enlarge text.

Do you guys have a web service? Everyone is different and many may want a front-end, but Windows Media Center has been out forever...

Just some thoughts... I just think everything will be through a web browser. Maybe turn boxee into the first media web browser!</comment>


Bill Gates: Robots Should Pay Taxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/02/18/robots-that-steal-human-jobs-should-pay-taxes-gates-says.html?cq_ck=1487396977124 <comment><USER2> I saw some odd concepts in this article.

Robots are stealing jobs? Maybe they are used to replace humans in a job which they can perform better, faster, and more economically than humans, but the only robot I have seen stealing was a vending machine.

Tax the robot? Robots typically have no income. If the robot fails to pay tax would it be locked in prison where it could power down until its sentence was served? Robots typically increase the profit of the company which uses them and that company pays taxes on its profit. With the progressive tax system we have they pay tax at a higher rate. It would seem that there is already a tax on robots.

I worked for a company that made automatic label applicators which would apply an adhesive label to a box coming down a conveyor. I have helped install these in manufacturing plants where the employees were extremely hostile towards us. The person who applied the label in the past was no longer needed in that position. My response to them was that in the majority of businesses where I had installed a machine, they took the people who had applied labels and started another production line, increasing their output. If their company failed to do so, it was an issue that they needed to talk to management about. I got the definite impression that they intended to sabotage the machine.

Many years ago I had the idea that it would be possible to make general purpose robots with most of the capabilities of a human. These robots could be used to build a factory which produces more robots, then a factory which produces e.g. shoes, then pants, then cars, and then mining and agricultural robots. With no labor cost involved it would be difficult or impossible to compete with them. With fewer people employed it would become increasingly difficult to find consumers for the goods produced and the manufacturer would be left no choice except to provide a basic income for all people. Those who want to rise above a basic income would need to engage in design work, developing new styles of shoe, pants, cars, etc. They would be compensated according to the demand for their particular design.

If the robots are capable of repairing themselves or other robots it would still be necessary for a human to monitor the overall operation to preclude the possibility of a malfunctioning robot "repairing" other robots to malfunction.

We are still a long way from having such general purpose robots but the use of robots is already taxed.

</comment><comment><USER3> If a robot could assemble other robots, are those the original robots' "dependents"? Or if I provide the electricity and spare parts are they my "dependents"? I don't think the concept of robotic dependents is going to work for tax purposes, but I do imagine tax attorneys giving it a try.

<comment><USER4> No, since the word comes from "depend". The newly constructed robot will most probably be independent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This concept is already in use to a limited degree. Car registration, taxes on gas, real estate taxes, etc, are all taxes on assets that produce income. A robotic tax is just an extension of that.

</comment><comment><USER6> How else can they fund basic income when robots take over most jobs that humans used to do?</comment>


You Wasted This Opportunity - <AUTHOR> http://www.deliberatism.com/blog/not-again/

<comment><AUTHOR> For anyone who reads ideasonideas, this blog might prove interesting. It's still rather ugly (visually), but I'm quite happy with where the subject matter is going.</comment>


Akka vs. ZIO vs. Monix, part 2: communication - <AUTHOR> https://blog.softwaremill.com/akka-vs-zio-vs-monix-part-2-communication-9ce7261aa08c <comment><USER2> Knowing nothing about Monix, I had heard its reputation that it was a simpler alternative to akka-streams. I had heard this mainly from people that dislike Akka in general. But skimming this, Monix and ZIO strike me as lower level and harder to deal with than Akka (or Akka Typed).

<comment><USER3> > Monix and ZIO strike me as lower level (...) to deal with than Akka

It depends on your point of view. Usually, the actor model is considered a lower-level abstraction when compared to streaming.

For example, if you want to implement a simple map-reduce in the actor model, you will need to create a set of mapper actors, a reducer actor, and an actor to distribute jobs between the mapper actors. Meanwhile, using a stream library, this will pretty much become something like `jobs.mapAsync(f).reduce(g)`.

However, since in this example you are implementing actors on top of the IO monad, it is natural that the actor model appears like an higher level abstraction. If the examples were backward (i.e. implementing streams on top of actors, like akka-stream), you would probably get the opposite idea.</comment></comment>


From iPhone to iPad - <AUTHOR> http://jackg.org/from-iphone-to-ipad

<comment><USER2> The Android Developer site has a pretty old and still relevant article about designing for tablets and handhelds: [http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/tablets-and- han...](http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/tablets-and- handsets.html). I particularly like the idea of splitting functionality into "fragments" that get displayed differently based on the screen size.

This figure has always been a reference point to me: [http://developer.android.com/images/fundamentals/fragments.p...](http://developer.android.com/images/fundamentals/fragments.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you haven't done any design/development for iPad, it is a very different experience from that of the iPhone. I think Jack does a pretty good job of explaining that difference here. You really can't approach it with the mindset of "Just scale everything up!"

> When I go the 'My Trips' tab I'm hit with marketing modules telling me about > fare specials and the glory of the Delta Sky Club. These have nothing to do > with My Trips.

Although I agree that it feels like they originated in the marketing department, I don't agree that they have nothing to do with My Trips. If you don't have any trips, you would need to book one to interact with that section of the app. Fare specials serve as a call-to-action to do that. Also, note that these modules change based on the logged in user.

There are far better examples of "filling space for the sake of filling space" in the store.

 _Disclosure: I know the team that worked on the app; I worked on its iPhone counterpart._

<comment><USER4> They still feel very marketing-y to me. I can imagine the email that was sent from the CMO that had these put in. How does an ad for the Delta Sky Club have anything to do with trips I'm taking.

My biggest problem, though, is with the button design. The two red buttons on the marketing modules create the strongest CTA. The strong CTA should instead be on the "Create Account" button.

<comment><USER3> > My biggest problem, though, is with the button design. The two red buttons > on the marketing modules create the strongest CTA. The strong CTA should > instead be on the "Create Account" button.

Completely agree. We lost that battle, sadly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > But on the iPad, you have 8x as much screen space to fill

I believe it's 4x relative to an iPhone if you go by physical screen size

</comment><comment><USER6> How is there 8x more space to fill on the iPad compared to the iPhone? 768*1024/320/568 ~= 4.3x.

<comment><AUTHOR> You need to take ppi into account. The iPhone has more screen density.

<comment><USER6> That's a good point, but there's only about a 25% difference between the two.

<comment><USER4> Maybe the basis is an iPhone 4 instead of an iPhone 5? I agree that an iPhone 5 would be more appropriate, as everyone designing for an iPhone has visuals for that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Announcing 126.96.36.199: the fastest, privacy-first consumer DNS service - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/ <comment><USER2> Cloudflare announce 22.214.171.124 and breaks the Internet. Many people use 22.214.171.124

As a sinkhole or loop back address.

[https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Configuration- Articles/...](https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Configuration-Articles/How- to-Configure-DNS-Sinkhole/ta-p/58891)

<comment><USER3> Aren't the people who were already using 22.214.171.124 for those things the ones "breaking the internet", since according to the specs, 126.96.36.199 is _not_ a reserved address:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16727869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16727869)</comment>


One Frickin' User Interface for Linux (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Hugh.Fisher/writing/1fui.html <comment><USER4> Some time ago I read something that seemed a much stronger case against the Year of the Desktop Linux - lack of binary compatibility. It is hard to develop commercial software for Linux, when it means building your software for every distribution and supporting all of them. Anyone buying a piece of software would probably have to stop upgrading their system if they want to keep using the software. Different desktops add to this pain, but not as much.

Of course, Linux is not about buying software, so I guess not many people care. But the availability of a certain, professional piece of software (aka "killer app"?) is often what eliminates Linux as a choice for many people, in my experience. (That is, now that there are good graphics drivers available and you can watch bloody YouTube.) Ultimately, in a very ironic twist, this makes Linux most suitable for people who do not know anything about computers. I install them Ubuntu, they don't touch anything except updates, and everybody's happy.

<comment><USER5> Of course there is a twist to the binary compatibility story. Namely Linux (the kernel) works very hard to maintain userspace binary compatibility. Afaik you should be able to run some random 20 year old executable as long as you got the right libraries or have it statically compiled. Also considering that X11 (the protocol) is backwards compatible for quite some time, I'd say that cross-distro binaries in Linux is definitiely achievable thing if the application developer puts the effort into it. What is missing most is documentation and tooling to support such efforts.

In near-future I also see containers as a possible cross-distro packaging solution, but that also needs some tooling to make the process more pleasant. Also container-supporting kernels need to get more prevalent for containers to be truly a solution.

<comment><USER4> I did not know that, thank you. I guess the key is in the phrase "as long as you got the right libraries"? Kernel+X alone is not enough... There should be some simpler solution to this than deploying your app in a container, but I really don't know enough to even dare guess.

<comment><USER5> You can bundle .so's with the application (this is how many humblebundle/steam linux games work) or you can statically link those libaries.

<comment><USER6> Steam is probably the best shot in a decade at selling consumer software for use on Linux. It'll be interesting to see if it takes off.

<comment><USER5> It could have been but right now, 1.5 years after launch, Steam on Linux feels quite half-hearted. Steam Machines which were supposed to bring SteamOS (and Linux) to the masses have failed to materialize. Looking at the Linux game releases it seems like Valve is not providing enough developer support to make high-quality releases. Instead what I have seen, the games have been quite inconsistent from techincal point of view. Maybe half of the games (or less) in my library work at all on my Arch Linux systems, even after some minor tweaking. I wonder what they intend to do in couple of years when now-current Ubuntu becomes so outdated that nobody runs it anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up shipping some sort of Ubuntu environment to run the games in.

<comment><USER7> The purpose of Steam on linux was never "to bring linux to the masses", and you're a fool if you honestly believed this story. It should've been obvious the moment they created SteamOS, rather than the first plan, to ship as an application on Ubuntu - it's because the purpose of SteamOS is, and always was, for Steam to liberate themselves from greedy platform providers. They're not about to divorce Microsoft only to jump in bed with Canonical.

The purpose of SteamOS is to power the eventual Steam pseudo-console, and to sit Steam at the centre of game distribution, rather than Microsoft - <USER2> rather, put Steam on par with Sony and Microsoft, instead of being a mere middle man.

SteamOS, for all that matters, might as well be a proprietary platform on top of Linux, much like Android is. Its users won't even know it is running linux, nor will they have root access by default - they'll be given an interface which is the primary portal to games (and "Apps") distributed by Steam

Anything "useful" for the rest of linux that comes out of Steam is only likely to be kernel additions, drivers, and other low level stuff that is merely incidental - required by the GPL of Steam, but nothing is going to solve the "problem" of cross-distro packaging, for instance - Steam will only distribute for SteamOS - it makes zero economic sense for them to do anything otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What the author somehow doesn't get is that you shouldn't see Linux as a whole. You should look at different distributions like you look at Windows vs OSX. Different distributions are totally different to end users, although they share a lot of the core system utilities. Ubuntu or Linux Mint could be picked by a large corporation and everybody in that corporation would have the exact same interface. Normal people don't choose Linux, they choose a distribution.

This way, the normal people have the hard choices made for them and the crazy hackers like myself can do it all themselves on their Gentoo machine.

<comment><USER9> I don't agree. Desktops matter. I use the same XFCE version in Ubuntu and Fedora, and they look/behave the same. You need to get to install software to find differences.

I guess Unity is only available in Ubuntu, but that's just because not enough people want to use it in other distros.

Just one anecdote: my sister used to run FreeBSD in her computer and she always thought/referred to it as Linux. She was using Gnome 2, and it was indeed the same experience (not completely true, compiled packages were faster, kind of Gentoo result).

<comment><USER8> Of course Desktop environments matter, that's why there are so many of them. I would be able to use Ubuntu almost like my own machine if I would install my window manger and utilities on it. What I meant however is that the defaults of a normal user friendly distro are good enough for those users. There is no need for them to tweak stuff because their LibreOffice and Chrome/Firefox just work with those defaults. The choices are only there if you look for them and at that point you are not a normal user any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The desktop is no longer the battle that matters (more mobile devices are in use today than desktops and laptops, and the gap is widening). Linux has won the mobile market...and I guess one could argue it did so with one frickin' user interface (Android, though that's somewhat fragmented by the often- horrible, always-stupid, vendor customizations, like HTC Sense).

We will, I guess, get to see what happens when Firefox OS comes along. Then, again it's so very different from Android (and Android is so far from a traditional Linux distro), that I don't know if the OFUI theory will really be tested in that case, since there are so many other variables.

Generally, the "OFUI" idea is good as long as it's the OFUI that _I_ like. I happen to really like Gnome 3, so I'm fine with it being the One True UI of my preferred Linux distro (Fedora). If I hated Gnome 3 (and I understand why people do...it had a rough and very buggy and very restrictive breaking in period that lasted a lot longer than it should have), I'd be pissed off at the suggestion that KDE (or LXDE or XFCE or whatever) should be removed completely.

Anyway, I don't find myself agonizing over how Linux (or any open system, as that's what I _really_ care about; it wouldn't need to be Linux for me to be happy, as long as it's Open Source) can win the desktop anymore. Partly because open is winning on mobile (at least, in terms of the OS, though there are many dangerously proprietary parts of the mobile industry, including on Android devices), and that's an even bigger market. But, also partly because many of the reasons I needed Linux to win was because I wanted to use Linux for everything, and there needed to be a critical mass of users for hardware, software, etc. to be good on Linux. These days I rarely think about hardware, as it Just Works. And, I rarely worry about software, as there's tons of amazing stuff to choose from. Even games are pretty good on Linux, which is a relatively new change.

So, I want more Linux more of the time. But, I don't know if it has to "win" for all of us Linux users to win.

<comment><USER11> Have you ever used the NDK?

It is quite limited in the set of official APIs and POSIX support.

Google could change Android's kernel for something else UNIX like and almost no one would notice.

<comment><USER12> They'd notice the lack of device drivers.

<comment><USER13> Android is installed by the device manufacturer. You don't attach any peripherals to your phone. Even when you connect your phone via USB, it's the computer that does the read. So, I doubt the user will notice the lack of device drivers.

<comment><USER12> Device drivers are not just peripheral drivers. The baseband driver, the wifi driver, the kernel display adapter driver, the touch driver, the drivers to handle the hardware buttons, the PCH and FSB controller hubs, bluetooth drivers, bluetooth device drivers, and NFC drivers, at the least. You may also be missing accelerometer and thermometer drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No Fucking Way. This kind of mentality is what is resulting in systemd being foisted down everyones throat.

Multiple parts doing single tasks with loose couplings. That is what i came to Linux for.

If i wanted some kind of "One True Way"-ism i would have stayed with Windows or bought a Mac.

<comment><USER15> First, I don't grok the vocal minority's vehement opposition to systemd.

Second, loose couplings are great for those who want to tweak to their heart's content, people who know what they're doing. I used to tweak the heck out of Gnome 2. I grew tired of it and appreciate the simplicity and elegance of Unity and dislike the "we know what's best for you" attitude that Gnome 3 conveys to me. Unity just needs to have 3 sane defaults reverted that I've mentioned in other comments.

Third, you can still tweak Linux to use whatever desktop you want. Back when I was on Windows I even hacked the registry to make the DOS command prompt my UI as a joke and it worked. Booted, no explorer running at all. Just the Windows XP kernel, few processes it started and DOS CLI that was it. It taught me that most of the stuff users interacted with on XP was actually started by and run by explorer which explained why the system grew so unstable when it crashed and I had to restart explorer.exe from the Task Manager by hitting Ctrl_Alt_Delete IIRC.

Having a common UI/UX is great for a lot of people out there including those of us who know all about loose coupling and tweaking things but usually just want to do what we want to do without all of that tweaking. Except on those weird days on the week-end when we try new stuff out like a checking out how KDE is coming along. Still too complex for my tastes but it looks great!

<comment><USER16> Loose coupling allows the "shiny thing of the week" folk to not wreak havoc on the "good engineering" folk.

When DEs like Unity followed Microsoft down the disastrous blind alley of "desktops should act like tablets", that was OK because the loose coupling allowed by defined protocols like ICCCM meant that I could wait it out in XFCE.

The fact that practically every distro has gone with systemd, and that the couplings are tight, means that I have to leave Linux entirely to wait out this disaster.

<comment><USER15> Agreed, the designers of X made some truly brilliant decisions.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter- Client_Communication_Conv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter- Client_Communication_Conventions_Manual)

Edit: I don't have a dog in the hunt on systemd but if it really is tight coupling then history might prove it was a bad decision. There was a lot of let's say strong opinions against Pulse Audio on Linux but I find (once we got through the growing pains) that it's a blessing. It's far superior to Windows 7's basic audio management in my opinion. I've no idea about Windows 8.

<comment><USER17> Everything PulseAudio does should have been implemented as part of ALSA though, not as another layer that only exposes a fraction of the libalsa functionality.

<comment><USER18> Wouldn't that imply putting a network-accessible server in the kernel? That seems a fair bit more risky than non-root userspace...

<comment><USER17> No, alsa actually does its most interesting stuff in userland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And the missing introductory question is : "why should linux aims on world domination ?".

<comment><USER20> I too wonder why, as a linux user, I should care how many other people use the system. It seems to me that we have a really good community going and if more people join in, good for them, but Linux isn't in any danger of fading into obscurity at this time.

<comment><USER21> You should care because a certain critical mass is needed to have a decent choice of properly supported hardware and software. There's no immediate need for worry on that front today, since we are well above this critical mass. However, the original article was written in 2003, more than 10 years ago, when things looked rather different.

<comment><USER22> > You should care because a certain critical mass is needed to have a decent > choice of properly supported hardware and software

Except that if they achieve this by hoisting "one true UI" and one true whatever on you, you might find yourself having less and less choice...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > The core API for both Windows and Macintosh is procedural C language.

> The core API has to be a C language binding.

> A disadvantage is that the core API is in Objective C which is unfamiliar to > most developers, but a straight C API could be generated, as Apple have > demonstrated with MacOS X.

The core API for the OS X UI is definitely not in C. There is only an Objective-C API, and it is not a shim over anything. (It uses the Quartz windowing system, but that does not provide things like button widgets, etc.) There is no C equivalent of NSView, for example.

<comment><USER24> > There is no C equivalent of NSView, for example

objc_msgSend(objc_getClass("NSView"), sel_registerName("alloc")) ...

:)

<comment><USER23> Haha, ok sure. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _" Gnome 2 is the 1FUI for Linux"_

 _" A major company needs to act as champion and enforcer of the 1FUI by bringing out a distribution that runs only Gnome apps."_

I think starting from 2004–2006, with Canonical and Ubuntu, Gnome 2 was indeed on a good path to become the dominating UI for Linux. But then in 2010–2011 Ubuntu and Gnome parted ways, and the leading position of Gnome 2 was split into Gnome 3 and Unity, with some refugees going to Cinnamon and Xfce. And KDE is still going strong, too.

<comment><USER15> Canonical really messed up there. I can understand the maverick attitude but not when it trumps common sense. Gnome 3 was a mistake too and that was a major mess on the part of the Gnome people.

<comment><USER26> I've been using GNOME 3 on Debian Jessie for about a year now on my main work machine and I have to say that I'm very happy with it. I switched to it after having used a XMonad desktop for about a year, I think that says a lot.

What I like is the fact that everything just works (tm). Just as it used to be on Mac OS X. No need to fiddle with 10 volume control applets on your minimal tiling WM, none of them works well with PulseAudio. Same for the battery indicators, manually loading your desktop background, setxkbmap etcetera in your .xinitrc. You're basically forced to mix-and-match your whole desktop.

GNOME 3 comes with batteries included. Everything works out-of-the-box. Yes, the eye candy is a bit too much, but I think the Activities menu is very useful and productive. I can just use my computer, like I did on Mac OS X before. But now I the Linux desktop also gives me much better performance, package management and stability.

Only thing I miss on GNOME 3 is a XMonad's tiling system and keybindings. It's a shame they lost the ability to swap the window manager for your own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Having one UI would be the death of Linux. I would guess that the vast majority of Linux users today (including myself) use Linux _because_ of choice (i.e. I use i3, and I can't live without it), and removing that choice would essentially be abandoning those users.

</comment><comment><USER28> I reckon Quantum OS, the Linux distro based on Google's Material Design guidelines, is trying to achieve something similar:

\- [http://quantum-os.github.io](http://quantum-os.github.io)

\- [http://google.com/design/spec/material- design/introduction.h...](http://google.com/design/spec/material- design/introduction.html)

Personally I would like to see 1FUI as an intra-BSD desktop environment for all the BSD operating systems, most notably OpenBSD.

<comment><USER15> The site reads in my mind like Andy Warhol on computer UI/UX design.

I think Canonical has a clean design with Unity, just fix some simple things as default:

1) Menus should be per application to reduce user mouse movements. 2) All menus and buttons should have icons on again, these provide valuable visual cues and reduce eyestrain. 3) Return scrollbars to the normal ones seen on other desktops, remove the scrollbar overlays, they are confounding and confusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If I didn't have a choice, I'd have probably abandoned the Linux ship long ago, frustrated with Unity and GNOME 3. Instead, I had one, and I am sincerely happy of that.

This article makes it seem like people developing GUIs are at war just because, rather than they stick on (and _work_ on) projects because they like them and want them. If you want something you should make it, right?

In addition, it's not like this is a huge problem, given that most people are going to abandon desktops soon anyway.

<comment><USER15> >> In addition, it's not like this is a huge problem, given that most people are going to abandon desktops soon anyway.

I don't see that happening at all really. The desktop is a theme that fits very well with a lot of computing needs. I don't see that ever changing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What works is consistency between UIs. The QWERTY keyboard has won, for example.

Having used the Mac for so long, I am trained to use my thumb for cut, copy, paste -- command X C V. Using my pinky finger in place of my thumb is a painful amount of gymnastics for me using ctrl X C V on Windows/Linux. At the end of the day I need to use Windows and Linux (and Mac.) Maybe I fiddle with keyboard setting files in Linux or install that old key swapper program that came with Win95, but the reality is I am going to have to use ctrl X C V, even if they conflict with the control key on the command line.

It's like driving different cars. Most things are the same, but you get used to certain things even if they are somewhat awkward, and new interfaces are usually annoying. Driverless cars can solve this. And the same is true for user interfaces. The best UI is no UI at all.

<comment><USER31> Keyboards are completely pluggable though. It's just a character/text interface into the system, so the physical layout can be anything you desire.

For instance, I use this layout: [https://www.kinesis- ergo.com/shop/images/1463/advantage-blac...](https://www.kinesis- ergo.com/shop/images/1463/advantage-black.jpg)

Cut/Copy/Paste is the same CTRL+X/C/V combination that you are using, but the fingers I use are my thumb and one of the three fingers to its immediate left.

With this particular keyboard, every key can be remapped on the hardware itself (no config files), and the physical keys can be removed and placed (almost) anywhere else on the board.

For full disclosure though, the primary reason I use this keyboard is that it allows a much more natural separation between my hands (8-10 inches), which allows my shoulders to rest in a more natural position. It's not perfect, but definitely an improvement over the "cram it all into a tiny rectangle" approach that most other boards use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> These types of posts are super silly. What he's proposing is literally impossible given free licenses. You cannot stop someone from forking your project and you cannot stop users from using the forks. All discussion of how nice it would be if there were no forks is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER33> We HAVE a standard user interface.

It consists of some sort of Taskbar, some sort of Launcher/Startbutton and some application windows.

KDE, GNOME2, XFCE, Windows 95 up to Windows 7 all use this. OSX to some degree. It is all the same.

Am i asking to much if i belive every (non-technical) user should be able to wrap their head around this and get comfortable with this within a few weeks?

<comment><USER34> The user isn't the problem it's that fact that they all work differently. There's no unified API for launcher/startbutton, or task tray, etc etc.

<comment> mkr-hn Isn't it great?

I tried getting used to the new Ubuntu way of doing things, which I've heard is based on the Apple way of doing things. I didn't care for it.

<comment><USER15> This irks me about Unity. I have to run several gsettings commands after a new install to get rid of those dumb overlay scrollbars and to return the menu to the window that owns it. I leave the control buttons on the upper left, I kind of like them there but I can't stand overlay scrollbars and really dislike having to move the mouse all the way to the top just to work with the menu for an application which is why I do the gsettings thing. It's also what turns me off about the Mac, one menu at the top shared for the active app.

Edit: I also run some gsettings commands to turn menu icons back on. Also, you can return menus to the owning application in the Unity UI, right-click the Desktop, Change Desktop Background, select Behavior tab and it's there.

<comment><USER35> Unity worked fantastically when it was called Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and it was run on an 800x600px display, as everything is maximised like a phone because there isn't any other space.

I agree in basically every other context that it is annoying/useless, but for smallish laptop screens it's still not bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This issue can be helped if we stop referring to low level parts as an "OS" like Linux or even GNU tools but refer to individual distros as OS'es, like Ubuntu or ElementaryOS, etc. This at least creates the impression of unification under one banner, which I think is what the article is asking for.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's called Android.

<comment><USER15> It's ironic that Android isn't on the desktop, given how much greater access they would have to expand their brand.

If they made a single touch/click that pulls the top menu _all_ the way down, then it would be easier to use on the phone and on the desktop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I suspect that the lack of 1FUI is also part of why high DPI support is lagging pretty badly on Linux. In some window managers/distros you can get something that sort of/mostly works for built-in stuff, but once you launch a third party application like Firefox it usually doesn't end well. I'm sure the Firefox devs would gladly support high DPI screens on Linux if there were a single standard way to do so. There isn't, though, and there probably won't be one anytime soon due to the fragmentation of the platform.

<comment><USER39> Well, high DPI support isn't something to rave about on Windows, although that may be for similar reasons (WinForms vs WPF vs whatever)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> XFCE for the win.

I don't agree with this article. Have alternatives is good.

</comment><comment><USER41> You could argue that the OP's preferred choice, NeXTStep, did win, and the loser was Linux.

I haven't used Linux on the desktop for years, but have recently been thinking about going back as Apple seems to be abandoning all of the things which got me to switch. Is it really so hard to make a stylish upgradable/serviceable laptop with a matte screen? That, and maintain the OpenSource packages that you (used to) ship like X11 and OpenSSL?

</comment><comment><USER42> I think having choice of desktop environment is a good thing. However, I do think he has some point on interoperability.

Copy/paste for example, works differently in desktop apps vs terminals, etc.

File selectors is another thing. I like the KDE one and the file selector is the reason I ditch gnome altogether, but best would be if KDE programs used gnome file dialog when running gnome, and if gtk programmes used KDE for dialogue of user ran KDE.

</comment><comment><USER43> The author has this backwards. If you want "one single whatever for everyone", you _first_ need world domination. You need world domination because in order to have "one single whatever for everyone", you have to be able to control everyone in the world, so that you can prevent the situation that multiple creative people work independently on similar competing things.

</comment><comment><USER44> Where did the idea of a "year of the Linux desktop" originally come from, anyway? I often see people joking about it or advocating it (Linus, even!), but I've never seen any sort of foundational essay or manifesto - <USER3> something like that exist?

<comment><USER7> It was always a joke, and the joke is on people like the author of this post, who treat linux as a tribe rather than as a useful tool to get your operating system of choice to interact with your hardware of choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I would start small; for instance, can you get _every_ API to use the same foundation types (similar to Core Foundation on Mac OS X)? These kinds of changes would help programmers a lot and pave the way for more complex standards.

</comment><comment><USER46> Sure, as long as it's exactly what I prefer at the present time.</comment>


Oculus disables the use of Galaxy Note 7 on Gear VR headsets for safety reasons - <AUTHOR> https://haptic.al/note-7-disabled-gear-vr-47c903a38827#.69bh3aq1e <comment><USER2> This is bullshit. Not every Note 7 is going to explode, and Oculus is not going to be held liable if a Note did burn while VR'ing. This is another step away from customer freedoms, plain and simple.</comment>


ML programmer's guide to ATS (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://cs.likai.org/ats/ml-programmers-guide-to-ats

<comment><USER2> If you intend to actually read a whole such guide - skip to the end first and notice the "TODO" at the end of the article/guide. Just so that you aren't disappointed when you actually come that far.

<comment><USER3> When I was learning ATS I found the ML guide posted here very useful. I have some ATS related posts if you want to read more about the language [1].

[1] [http://bluishcoder.co.nz/tags/ats/](http://bluishcoder.co.nz/tags/ats/)</comment></comment>


Speed, Speed, Speed: JavaScript vs. C++ vs. WebAssembly (iJS 2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC_QLLilwso <comment><USER2> Great talk, nice to see people not skim over details</comment>