[tw04]

What is the alternative? They gave up the server market a decade ago and before that they barely actually supported it.

If they were to support darwin containers, what would be the point? Literally nobody would build to it, Linux won.

[riffic]

> Literally nobody would build to it

because nobody does ci/cd against macOS or iOS apps right?

[tw04]

And what is the revenue stream tied to that ci/cd pipeline they aren’t capturing today? Apple would sell less hardware in order to…?

There aren’t any app developers avoiding the Apple ecosystem because there aren’t Darwin containers. They don’t sell server hardware and by all accounts have no intention of ever reentering that space. So they’d spend a bunch of developer cycles to reduce their own revenue stream with no apparent upside beyond “goodwill” which they’ve never been overly concerned about.

[m132]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but by the same logic, you could also say this whole containerization framework is of no use either.

If they're investing resources into it regardless, they might at least try making something that Docker for macOS and co. haven't solved the same exact way already. Something that, due to their almost unhealthy obsession with "system integrity", only they can realistically make. Like native containers.

[tw04]

Supporting the containerization framework lets them sell more laptops to Linux devs that may have otherwise bought a Dell or hp or insert brand to run Linux natively on or windows with WSL.

[MBCook]

Containers are REALLY REALLY popular. This is a a great value add for developers on Mac who need to deal with Linux containers.

Which is a ton of ‘em.

[pjmlp]

They already support this scenario with XCode Cloud, it is only a market for those that don't want to pay Apple for it.