[gtvwill]

Lol no they wouldn't or they'd have done it ten years ago. Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really. Their actions over the last 20 years set that in stone.

[hotnfresh]

> Apple is after your dollars they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity or any ethics outside of profit really.

A damning indictment of the personal computing industry is that Apple nonetheless deliver the best of anyone this front, by a mile, for most users. The whole product category of personal computing devices and operating systems is a real shit-show.

[zakki]

The problem is most other devices are cheaper so no complaint for the shit-show. With Apple’s prices, I want more.

[katbyte]

You are just speculating - having a 2 in 1 device is not as easy as “osx on an iPad” or “iOS on a Mac”

Until the m1 is was 100% not possible, now that they are both arm it’s possible but still would require an entirely new device class to do it justice

[hu3]

> Until the m1 is was 100% not possible.

Microsoft made that possible at least 6 years ago with Surface Book. Why couldn't Apple? (spoiler they could)

https://youtu.be/SdQQ8uvylJ0?si=as1k5R5BhFTZiys_&t=106

And there are other brands too: https://www.ign.com/articles/best-detachable-laptops

Took me 10 seconds to Google. Why do people go to these great lengths to defend giant soulless corporations is beyond me.

[Spooky23]

Sure, and they don’t sell particularly well. That whole segment of the Microsoft ecosystem is a dusty corner that doesn’t get a lot of respect.

Hell, Microsoft has had a tablet offering since 2003 or earlier. It’s hard to do touch and traditional and do justice to both.

[katbyte]

different cpu architects - surface book is still just x86 under the hood.

ios is arm, macbooks were x86, now is arm. thats why. it is impressive what rosetta 2 does, but it still impacts a significant performance and battery hiut

Now why they didn't make a touch macbook/detachable screen with osx is another question, and likely because there isnt the demand. i was just addressing why you couldn't just smush ios and osx together/run both on the same device

[afavour]

Anyone that used an iOS simulator back in the x64 days would tell you that it’s entirely possible to run iOS on x64, just Apple chooses not to do it.

(before anyone jumps in to tell me the simulator is not a full OS: I know. But there was a full toolchain to build for x64, if they’d chosen to Apple could have leveraged it)

[katbyte]

the os isn't the hard part, its the app ecosystem and navigating how do you ensure they all run properly on x86, and not with a huge performance or battery hit. i would be rosetta2 in reverse, and as great as rosetta2 is it has limitations & does come at a cost.

sharing the cpu arch makes things easy, case in point at launch m1 ran ios apps.

[afavour]

> how do you ensure they all run properly on x86

Again, simulator builds in Xcode are exactly that on x64 devices.

> it would be rosetta2 in reverse

It wouldn’t. Rosetta takes programs compiled for one CPU and runs them on another. But in this scenario apps would be built specifically for x64. Xcode previously had the ability to build multiple architectures in one package (32bit and 64bit), they could totally package ARM and x64 together if they wished to.

[katbyte]

You seem to be forgetting that every app in the App Store would need to be rebuilt.. and developers would need to buy in and do so

[afavour]

Make it a requirement in order to ship a new version, developers would do it in an instant. Just like they did with 64bit builds.

Sure, a small number of apps would fall to the wayside. But it’s not like Apple has hesitated to do that before.

[nomel]

> they care nothing for what's better for you for productivity

What is your perspective based on? I'm not sure it's accurate, especially for productivity/professionals [1]. This matches my personal experience.

[1] https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-mac-versus...

edit: Any comments about the accuracy of this? Or perhaps something to dispute it?

[gtvwill]

Well if they were really for productivity they would have made all their software offerings over the last 20 years cross platform in order to allow users of other systems to feel such amazing productivity boosts. But they didnt, they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could.

Proof in case, I can plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device and have zero problems yeeting files around and doing stuff off the block with zero input from me for drivers or some fancy app to let me get to the data. I cant do this with an iphone. The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.

[TexanFeller]

> The most simple act of using a phone as a physical storage device to get something from point a to b....near impossible on apple hardware. Meanwhile its been stock standard functionality for about 15+ years on other devices.

It's been a long time since I stopped trying to like Android devices, but quite a few years ago I remember Android phones no longer working as a mass storage device you could drag files onto. That was a widely discussed intentional decision by Google and was one of several things that made me decide that Android's talk about freedom, openness and all that was just marketing. You can plug an Android in and drop stuff on it like a thumb drive again now?

[trelane]

> You can plug an Android in and drop stuff on it like a thumb drive again now?

I don't think that ever changed, though the vendor can probably turn it off, since they have the source.

On Linux, it can (depends on what you told the phone to present) photos or storage or such. It appears in Nautilus like any other external drive. I usually use it it move the photos off my phone onto my computer.

[nomel]

As a person that always had, and still has, PCs, and also now has MacBooks, I'm suspecting that I use my devices in a significantly different way than you do.

> made all their software offerings over the last 20

What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example? Most of the "niceness" is system wide/cross device integration related, many of which don't have an equivalent in the other OSs to share. For example, try to wirelessly transfer a file, quickly, between any combination of linux and Windows without an active WiFi connection.

The only "substantial" software I can think of, from Apple, is iMovie. My only frequent use is Preview and Keynote. Everything else is either Microsoft (including Office), or third party.

> they walled it off and made mac's about as incompatible and hard to work with for any other device (android,windows,linux) as they possibly could.

Is this also about wired connections? Do you have an example? For me, NFS, VNC, and lots of third party stuff to take care of the rest, the same that I use for PC to PC/linux. I'm not aware of walls for macOS. There's no restrictions for software. I even have third party kernel extensions installed right now.

> plug an android phone into a windows or linux os device

That is obviously intentional, and probably annoying. Although, I can't say I've used wired transfer with a phone in over a decade, including on my Android phone. I have a far less $/Gb USB3 drive to go from computer to computer.

I might be breaking HN guidelines with this comment.

[paulmd]

> For example, try to wirelessly transfer a file, quickly, between any combination of linux and Windows without an active WiFi connection.

bah gawd that’s IrDA’s music!

[trelane]

> What Apple software would people want outside of the Apple ecosystem? Do you have an example?

How about starting with iMessage?

Keynote etc. for Linux would be rather nice.

At one point, I joined a local MUG (Mac Users Group), hoping we could find common cause and support each other in a Windows world. Sadly, that was naive of me.

[gtvwill]

I mean, what kind of OS company would want to build software for another companies competing os???

...

https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/microsoft-corporation/id...

:)

[nomel]

I asked some specific questions so I could have a meaningful conversation. It doesn't look like you're interested. Cheers!