[empthought]

> The derelict OS

What? It has a major release every year. Arguably that's too often.

> continued lockdown of OS X

An indication of long-term investment in OS X. If they wanted to move people to iOS, they wouldn't bother.

> UI convergence, iPad Pro as a "laptop replacement"

There is almost no UI convergence. Do you even use an OS X system? The iPad Pro is only a potential laptop replacement for certain niches; for non-power-users it's more of an iPad replacement.

> the OSX Store having an even worse developer experience than the iOS store

Has nothing to do with the operating system.

> the OSX store letting a cert expire.

Has nothing to do with the operating system.

> Oh, and the MacBook line is essentially stagnant as a product line. Basically Apple let's Intel redo the MacBook guts while its hardware teams are hard at work on improving their own architecture for the iPad Pro, which is very clearly a vision of computing that is more like iOS.

Notebooks as a whole are stagnant. Apple manages to make much more money, on essentially the same hardware as everyone else, simply by investing in their brand by spending a little more time on industrial design and the operating system. They would be fools to change anything about that arrangement.

[KirinDave]

Excuses, excuses, and fine-grained sub-classifications. OSX feels bad and stale. The store breaking only exacerbated this.

Oh, and El Capitan's fucked dev experience?

> There is almost no UI convergence.

"Almost" being notification center which is really important and interacted with regularly, I guess.

[empthought]

So you don't have any actual facts to back up your earlier statement. Meanwhile in reality:

https://medium.com/backchannel/exclusive-why-apple-is-still-...

"“From the ergonomic standpoint we have studied this pretty extensively and we believe that on a desktop scenario where you have a fixed keyboard, having to reach up to do touch interfaces is uncomfortable,” says Schiller. “iOS from its start has been designed as a multi-touch experience — you don’t have the things you have in a mouse-driven interface, like a cursor to move around, or teeny little ‘close’ boxes that you can’t hit with your finger. The Mac OS has been designed from day one for an indirect pointing mechanism. These two worlds are different on purpose, and that’s a good thing — we can optimize around the best experience for each and not try to mesh them together into a least-common-denominator experience." -- Phil Schiller

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/tim-cook-apple...

"We feel strongly that customers are not really looking for a converged Mac and iPad,” said Cook. “Because what that would wind up doing, or what we’re worried would happen, is that neither experience would be as good as the customer wants. So we want to make the best tablet in the world and the best Mac in the world. And putting those two together would not achieve either. You’d begin to compromise in different ways." -- Tim Cook

You're unable to develop software using OS X. Other people do not seem to be so impaired. If you think Notification Center is an example of important UI convergence, it doesn't take much imagination to come up with possible explanations.

[KirinDave]

Meanwhile, Tim Cook said publicly and more recently: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/09/tim-cook-ipad-pro-can-re...

"Yes, the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people. They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones."

So I guess maybe we should ask Tim Cook how he really feels? Maybe you should go and write increasingly smug and demeaning hacker news posts at him. I'm sure he'll be as intimidated as I am.

> "“From the ergonomic standpoint we have studied this pretty extensively and we believe that on a desktop scenario where you have a fixed keyboard, having to reach up to do touch interfaces is uncomfortable,” says Schiller.

Just an aside: what a load of absolute horseshit. Just another example of how relentlessly people fall in line with the Apple party line on experience even as experts in UX and UI say, "They are doing nearly everything wrong."

I reach up from a keyboard to a touch surface every day, and it was a revelation when I finally could. You need it maybe once an hour, but the precision of scaling and translation gestures is far greater and the operation way more natural with your hand.

So Phil's statement is either garbage or terribly dated, and independent testing bears that out. But whatever. You're saying that Apple doesn't believe the iPad Touch is a laptop replacement.

> You're unable to develop software using OS X.

No. That's not true. I just prefer not to. The SDK's first substantial change since the days of OpenSTEP was the modernizations brought on by Swift, which themselves feel dated and poorly thought out. Sadly, we don't get many other choices that can match the native look and feel. Its dated and platform locked and Apple's made sure it can't pay out well except in a few categories.

But hey, what do I know. It's not like I've been in charge of shipping successful, highly featured and widely acclaimed iOS apps... What do I know?

[empthought]

Tim Cook's comments about people using iPad Pros where they might have used notebooks before have precisely zero to do with either UI convergence or the long-term prospects for OS X.

> Just an aside: what a load of absolute horseshit. Just another example of how relentlessly people fall in line with the Apple party line on experience even as experts in UX and UI say, "They are doing nearly everything wrong."

So are you saying that they're lying about having done ergonomic research? Also, just like your "indications" comment, this is utterly unsubstantiated. Which experts? What research have they done?

> I reach up from a keyboard to a touch surface every day, and it was a revelation when I finally could.

How could that possibly be comfortable, if your display is at the recommended 25ish inch distance from your eyes and at eye level? Did you notice we're talking about "on a desktop scenario" and not a notebook?

> It's not like I've been in charge of shipping successful, highly featured and widely acclaimed iOS apps... What do I know?

Certainly not Apple's long-term plans for OS X.

[KirinDave]

If Tim Cook's comments I sourced about how iPad Pros can be a laptop replacement are not relevant to my original post, but your lifting of his quotes on the same subject are? Why was Schiller's unsubstantiated quotes about ergonomics relevant?

The rules you have set up for this debate are pretty one sided. Shouldn't you at least pretend to listen?

[empthought]

The comments I quoted were directly related to "UI convergence," which was featured among your bogus "indications."

Assessing the relative value of iPad Pro vs. a notebook to different market segments is not related to UI convergence at all.

The rules are simple: claims should be substantiated. I have refuted some of your claims with direct on-topic quotes from Apple execs. All you've tried is insinuation, complaint, and appeal to authority (nameless "experts," and yourself, comically enough).