Simon's Lament Mac OS
The current Mac renaissance has a certain “be careful what you wish for—you just might get it” feel to it. After more than a decade of stagnant market share, the Mac is thriving.
Apple used to sell about 1 million Macs every fiscal quarter. Now it sells three times that many, and it’s getting close to four. The longtime lament of the Mac enthusiast—Why don’t more people who are unhappy with Windows PCs switch to the Mac?—has been answered. They are switching, in droves. Quarter after quarter, Apple reports that over half of all Mac sales in the company’s retail stores are to first-time Mac buyers.
This sort of renaissance is rare. When markets are new, they tend to be fluid. But when they’re old, they’re settled—and a decade ago, the personal computer market seemed settled. But at some point about five years ago, that changed, and the Mac has seen year after year of consistent industry-leading growth.
Just what longtime Mac enthusiasts have always wanted, right?
Long-term doubt
The irony is that there’s more doubt today about the long-term prospects of the Mac than there has been at any time since Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. Rather than suffering defeat at the hands of a competing platform—like, say, Microsoft Windows—the problem for the Mac today is that it has been overshadowed by its own sibling, the fabulously precocious iOS. There are more iOS users and developers than Mac ones. For all the remarkable growth in Mac sales (especially for a 25-year-old platform), after six months of life the iPad was already outselling the Mac.
Here’s the short version of the “Mac is doomed” scenario: iOS is the future, Mac OS X is the past, and Apple is strongly inclined to abandon the past in the name of the future.
Securing Mac OS X A guide to security hardening for Apple Mac OS 10.3 Paul Day, pd(at)csse.uwa.edu.au November 2004 Abstract: This paper discusses numerous methods of securing Apple Mac OS 10.3 and drawbacks to currently accepted methods of security. It covers both security from a local user’s perspective and a network perspective. If you want to use Simon on Mac OS X, you need to compile from source. This is only recommended for more experienced users. For an installation from sourcecode please follow page Setting up A Development Environment.
You can’t really argue with that, can you? But the premise that the end is near for the Mac presupposes quite a bit about the near-term future of iOS.
Apple’s cultural aversion to legacy technology isn’t about a lack of seriousness, or a short companywide attention span. It’s not about being attracted only to the new and shiny. It’s about fear—the fear of being weighed down by excess baggage. Fear that old stuff will slow them down in their pursuit of creating brand-new stuff.
So it goes: Classic was abandoned as quickly as possible in the transition to Mac OS X. PowerPC support was dropped in Mac OS X 10.6 three years after the last PowerPC Macs were discontinued. The 64-bit Carbon application programming interface died. It’s not that these technologies were no longer useful. It’s that continuing to support them would have slowed the company down. Time spent supporting the old is time not spent building the new.
At typical companies, “legacy” technology is something you figure out how to carry forward. At Apple, legacy technology is something you figure out how to get rid of. The question isn’t whether iOS has a brighter future than the Mac. There is no doubt: it does. The question is whether the Mac has become “legacy.” Is the Mac slowing iOS down or in any way holding it back?
Heavy versus light
I say no. In fact, quite the opposite. For one thing, Mac OS X development has been slowed by the engineering resources Apple has shifted to iOS, not the other way around. Apple came right out and admitted as much, when Mac OS X 10.5 was delayed back in 2007. The company’s explanation: It had to shift key engineering resources to help the original iPhone ship on time.
The bigger reason, though, is that the existence and continuing growth of the Mac allows iOS to get away with doing less. The central conceit of the iPad is that it’s a portable computer that does less—and because it does less, what it does do, it does better, more simply, and more elegantly. Apple can only begin phasing out the Mac if and when iOS expands to allow us to do everything we can do on the Mac. It’s the heaviness of the Mac that allows iOS to remain light.
When I say that iOS has no baggage, that’s not because there is no baggage. It’s because the Mac is there to carry it. Long term—say, ten years out—well, all good things must come to an end. But in the short term, Mac OS X has an essential role in an iOS world: serving as the platform for complex, resource-intensive tasks.
The funny thing is, the best slogan to describe the Mac’s role is the same one it started with 25 years ago:
The computer for the rest of us.
[John Gruber is the author of Daring Fireball.]
Bad news, everyone. Macs sometimes have bugs. Time to ditch your Mac and, uh… well, the next step isn’t so clear.
Writing for the Forbes contributor network and set of the gameshow “What’s That Smell?” which was canceled before it premiered, Ewan Spence describes the “Three Damaging Mistakes That Guarantee More MacBook Pro Disappointment.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Alex.)
[Takes MacBook Pro he’s typing on, chucks it in the river.]
Having a safe and secure computer is a requirement that is becoming more important to consumers.
As opposed to years past when everyone was fine having a computer that anyone and everyone could get files and photos and browsing history off of.
A lot of people don’t remember this but porn was only invented last year. True story.
For many years the Mac range of computers, from the MacBook in your bag to the Mac Pro hiding under your desk, were regarded as a gold standard, immune to malware and secure against malicious attacks.
Some may have regarded them as such, but they never were, of course.
In the last few months that perception has been challenged by errors on the part of Apple and its suppliers. The strong selling point of security is no longer there.
Isn’t it? Let us assume for the moment that you “need” a computer of some kind. If we assume this, which seems like a fairly safe assumption these days, then the question is not “Which computer is 100 percent impervious to malware and malicious attacks?” but “Which computer is more secure against malware and malicious attacks?” And the Macalope would argue that, while it’s a complicated issue, the Mac still holds an advantage over Windows, at the very least because Windows is still targeted more.
The biggest flaw that sticks in the mind was the discovery that a blank password field would allow anyone to log in with root access to the Mac.
Yep, that was what they call in the information security business [seventeen very filthy words that cannot be published on a family website like Macworld]. Fortunately, this has been patched. This week brought us another macOS security flaw, thankfully one that is much more minor.
Yes, these are not good things. But if your plan is to switch to Windows because security is all screwed up on the Mac but better on Windows, well, allow the Macalope to just say “Good luck with that.” in the most sarcastic tone he can muster.
The technical reasons may be different but the perception building in the public conscience is a simple one… your password is not always needed on a MacBook.
Honestly, while the tech press rightly throws a fit about these flaws (that’s what we’re here for), most Mac owners probably don’t know anything about them. Heck, most people probably don’t even know the effects of certain security features of macOS. How many Mac users know that if you don’t have FileVault turned on, the resetpassword utility in Recovery mode will reset the password of any account without the need for verification? Probably not that many.
Come to think of it, taking Apple to task for inadequate education on such matters is probably a more valid criticism than saying “Macs have bugs so don’t buy Macs”.
Simon's Lament Mac Os X
On top of the native macOS errors, you also have to consider the impact of Meltdown and Spectre.
Simon's Lament Mac Os Download
Which only effect Macs?
The fact that both of these vulnerabilities affect almost every single computing device currently on sale is not mentioned. Because we only gathered here today to lament the sorry state of the Mac.
…the long-term effect will be a likely slowing down across the macOS devices, and the potential for more damming exploits to be discovered.
Spence continually evaluates the Mac in a vacuum, as if its only competition is the Platonic idea of a laptop that exists in thought space and not reality.
The Mac family is not a cheap option.
No, it’s not cheap. But not only do most cheap PCs come with Windows, they’re also made of plastic and usually come with some kind of crapware installed. When you price high-end PCs against Macs, the prices are pretty comparable.
Again, yes, these bugs are bad things. There is no denying that. But it’s not exactly like Apple’s competitors are bug-free and, for most people, buying a computer is a technology purchasing decision, not a decision about whether to adopt an Amish lifestyle.