[iSnow]

Another indication that Apple is no longer committed to professional customers of their computer line and their needs - iDevices get the required admin tools, but the target demographics for their computers are consumers and web dev shops where everyone tends to their systems.

[Remmib]

I do not know why Google doesn't just come in and absolutely dominate Apple in the 'laptop geared towards developers'-market...

The Chromebook Pixel 2 is absolutely gorgeous, but it still comes with a prohibitively small SSD. They need to develop their own super-robust and sexy Linux distro and drop the ChromeOS nonsense.

I just can't figure out why they aren't doing this.

[adamlett]

"I do not know why Google doesn't just come in and absolutely dominate Apple in the 'laptop geared towards developers'-market"

There could be many reasons. Off the top of my head:

* Google is not a devices company (disregarding recent forays into the the high end smartphone market), but a services company. It's not in their DNA to this, and it doesn't fit their (current) business model. The don't have the required hardware competences, nor the required sales or distribution organisations.

* Even if Google had the required competences to do this, it's highly doubtful that it's a worthwhile pursuit. The "pro" market is not big, its probably not growing, and the competition is fierce. To the extend that Apple neglects this market, its probably because the ROI is too low. To make hardware that seriously challenges Apple (and other PC manufacturers) requires large investments.

* It doesn't support Google's other businesses. Google is already present on all the existing platforms. They are not going to sell more ads doing this.

[SamBam]

> The "pro" market is not big, its probably not growing

Not sure I agree with that, when we're teaching everybody and their grandparents how to program, in order to compete in the "new economy."

Doubly-so for developing countries.

I would hope that the proportion of developers in the world should be increasing.

[ubernostrum]

The real issue is that your conception of "pro" is off. The "pro" users Apple traditionally targeted were not software developers. Their laptops became popular among developers not because of the hardware, but because of a quirk of Apple's corporate history which led to OS X being a Unix under the hood, which in turn meant it was a computer you could do all your developer-y things on without the living hell of trying to run Linux as your desktop OS.

[micaksica]

I agree with your statement, however, running Linux as a desktop OS is definitely not that bad anymore.

[adamlett]

We may be talking about different things. I was talking specifically about laptops that are directly comparable with Apple's pro line (i.e. expensive). I seems doubtful that the market for expensive laptops will find much growth in the developing world.

Even if it should prove true that the proportion of high end users is expanding relative to the entire market, it will still just be a bigger slice of a smaller pie. The PC market has been declining for quite some time. That doesn't mean that there will not still be lucrative niches within that market, but does Google really strike you as a company that would or should go for a niche in a contracting market?

[sosborn]

Developers are but a small portion of "pro." Also, the stuff being taught to everybody and their grandparents would do fine on 10-year-old netbooks.

[mixmastamyk]

Indeed, I learned CS on a 486 and the code I wrote ran mind-bogglingly fast on a Pentium.

[iainmerrick]

They need to develop their own super-robust and sexy Linux distro and drop the ChromeOS nonsense.

That would be great, but I don't think they have the expertise in-house for that right now -- they'd have to ramp up and that's a slow process.

[guelo]

Google wants to move you to the cloud. They can't ensure the data collection they need if it's regular Linux.

[johnward]

No one thinks there is much value in the developer market?

[tdkl]

Their revenue comes from ads and cloud. They have 0 incentive doing anything for desktop OS.

[JulianMorrison]

A linux distro that isn't 100% locked down and limited to infrastructure like Android and ChromeOS is a fuss and a nuisance to maintain, it takes expensive specialists, it takes money, and it invites security issues. And "developers" is a teeny tiny market.

[digi_owl]

They may be heading that way with Android given recent changes.

[Ralfp]

Also give me photoshop because I work with PSD's plenty and I'm tempted.

[EasyTiger_]

Hell give me the whole Adobe CC suite

[chillacy]

I'd be good with less corporate governance on the machine they issued me, more in line with what google does. The windows machines are unusable with all the forced updating, antivirus inefficiencies, and basically spyware. The Macbooks are on their way there, though you can at least still unload the kexts today

[blauditore]

> The windows machines are unusable with all the forced updating, antivirus inefficiencies, and basically spyware.

Hardly ever had such problems on machines I was able to manage myself.

I'm not sure what you're referring to by "forced updating"; the W10 upgrade or just regular updates?

[cptskippy]

My company uses a product called LanDesk to manage updates on machines instead of WSUS. It pops up at least once a week if not once a day and says that I have to reboot. It gives me 60 seconds to choose to reboot now or postpone the reboot boot for 4 hours but you can only postpone 3 times before it automatically reboots. If you don't act in those 60 seconds, the system reboots. It doesn't matter if you were getting coffee or having a bio break.

It doesn't initiate the system shutdown command or at least doesn't wait long enough to allow programs like Outlook to safely shutdown so I've had corrupted mail files that needed to be rebuilt because of it.

Further more, LanDesk has a vulnerability scanner and remote administration utility that are both always running. On top of that we use McAfee's virus and malware scanner and firewall. Cisco's Web Security Agent that monitors all network traffic. And a product called WebSense which as near as I can tell logs everything you do in browser.

We deal with PCI, PII, and HIPPA related information though and they pretty much require this kind of nonsense.

Idk, the whole Windows 10 "spying" and "forced" update policies seems insignificant by comparison.

[blauditore]

Yeah, I've seen such stuff too, and I hate it. Such setups are part of the reason for Windows' bad reputation. IMO, too strong security measures tend to reduce security at some point, because users get annoyed and try to circumvent them.

A blank W10 installation with Avast is blazingly fast and quite reasonable with update handling. A lot has changed since Vista, or even 7 and 8.

[module0000]

You listed the exact set of crap installed on our workstations when I worked for Blue Cross & Blue Shield...then you threw HIPPA out there and really sent it home. Do you work for a medical insurance company?

[cptskippy]

Nope, a non profit charity.

[johnward]

Are they referring to corporate policies/software forcing updates?

[chillacy]

Yes. Corporate IT will install extra software on the machine which does this kind of thing.

On the macs, there's an auto-updater which forces a restart with a countdown, no way to stop it. Its not by Apple for sure, based on how jankey it looks, but terminating the process will prevent the restart. The worst is spyware which randomly spins up one of the CPUs to 100% for 10 mins every few hours while it runs du.

[johnward]

We get updates through a corporate AppStore and they function like normal Apple updates. I can choose when to install, etc. I found the software underneath (https://www.jamf.com/solutions/technologies/mac-management/). Sounds like a better UX than what you got stuck with.

The spyware on my personal phone so that I can read corporate email is pretty asinine though.