[thisislife2]

> With SGI/Sun you were very much completely locked in to their hardware/software ecosystem and completely at the mercy of their pricing.

How is that in anyway different from Apple today with it's ARM SoCs, soldered SSDs and an OS that requires "entitlements" from Apple to "unlock" features and develop on?

[Gracana]

You can buy a cheap Mac and easily write programs for it. You don't have to spend $40k on a computer, you don't have to buy a support contract, you don't have to buy developer tools.

[fuzztester]

>You can buy a cheap Mac and easily write programs for it.

Interesting. How cheap? Never used Macs, only Windows and Unix and Linux.

[cryptoxchange]

Every time I’ve checked over the last decade (including today), you can buy a mac mini that supports the latest macOS for under $250 on ebay. You can also test your app using github actions for free if your use case fits in the free tier.

There is no way to do this for an IBM z16, which is the kind of vendor lock in that people are saying Apple doesn’t have.

[icedchai]

You can get a Mac Mini for $600-ish. Never get the base model though. (FYI, macOS is Unix.)

[fuzztester]

Yes, I did know. Darwin, etc. Thanks.

[fuzztester]

Thanks, guys.

[mcculley]

Are there entitlements or unlockable features other than when talking about App Store distribution?

[CountHackulus]

Thanks to web browsers and web apps it's not QUITE as bad of a lock-in nowdays. At least from a general consumer point of view.