The Untouchables – Apple’s new OS “activation” for Touch Bar MacBook Pros(onemoreadmin.wordpress.com) |
The Untouchables – Apple’s new OS “activation” for Touch Bar MacBook Pros(onemoreadmin.wordpress.com) |
> It’s quite clear – Welcome to the future of Apple’s hybrid ARM/x86 platform
Meaning, in a nutshell, that we have two different system "loading" policies (the ARM policy and the x86 policy) having fun together on the same disk? Three if you count macOS and EFI as two different systems really.
So naturally this would make disk imaging complex. Seriously, why wasn't this documented (or better documented)?
I'm quite impressed with the author's polite tone. His list of unanswered questions is mind boggling.
[edit: perhaps not "mind boggling" ... maybe just alarming is a better term]
Becomes less mind boggling when you take this hint that Apple genuinely doesn't care about their machines being used in scenarios that require this anymore.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Would I like the system design be more open and better documented? Sure. But if a security feature doesn't work when the clock is set 45 years in the past… is not concerning per se.
> Good news everyone: Mac imaging isn't dead... yet.
Also the article title doesn't mention breaking anything. So why does the title of the HN post say disk imaging has been broken?
All we know, there's a word "pro" in marketing materials (includes product names). Who they actually target with that is Apple's internal affairs, and everyone should judge for himself, whether it matches one's requirements.
Some people are fine with X limitation, but that doesn't mean they aren't "serious" users.
Some people find limitation X to be a deal breaker, but that doesn't invalidate "pro" status of everyone else.
> All we know, there's a word "pro" in marketing materials (includes product names). Who they actually target with that is Apple's internal affairs, and everyone should judge for himself, whether it matches one's requirements.
So nowadays Apple's "pro" is more like the "pro" in Playstation Pro.
If Apple plays fast and loose with this as a marketing term only, when will this "pro" market open to competition? I suppose it already has, judging from this article.
The correct title is:
"Apple’s new OS “activation” for Touch Bar MacBook Pros"
dang
or this @dang
?
"mac management" is not in Apple's target market anymore. Actual professional usage ended with this mac laptop series.
By the end of 2016, roughly one in four IBM employees will use a Macintosh computer. The tech giant, which employs 400,000 people, bought and provisioned 90,000 Macs since it started to support Apple laptops in June 2015. It expects to have at least 100,000 Macs deployed by 2017.
IBM now has the largest enterprise Mac deployment in the world, and it is Apple's biggest business customer for Macs, according to Mac maker. Apple declined to provide details on the other leading enterprise Mac customers, but SAP, Kelly Services and Intuit are among the company's most recognizable clients. In total, IBM says it manages 217,000 Apple devices for its employees today, including those 90,000 Macs, 81,000 iPhones and 48,000 iPads.
http://www.cio.com/article/3133945/hardware/ibm-says-macs-sa...
I am a pro and I never need this.
My employer (a 20,000+ employee healthcare system) issues me a MacBook Pro, but the client techs have to do heroics do manage it, compared to the Thinkpads that are normally issued. I'm happy to have the choice (I actually like the Thinkpad hardware better, but OSX is better suited to my workflow as a developer compared to Windows), but Apple certainly isn't making it easy. If they keep doing these sorts of shenanigans, it won't be long before I'm adapting my workflow to Windows 10 on a T460.
(It's linked in the footer)
Do you seriously beg some tech to allow you to install the tools you need, or allow you to load kexts to instrument system calls for debugging, etc? That sounds demeaning.
That doesn't imply that the Apple Watch poor sales theory is correct though
However, the iPhone SE had 98% of the guts of the 6S in a smaller package. That's not a cheap or simple thing to do.
And the Series 1 Apple Watch had a better CPU. That's basically a different watch.
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.
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?
What's wrong with all the PC laptops is an attention to detail. Just have look at the recent Dell XPS thread. I mean - coil whine? In 2016? Seriously?
15" HP Spectre x360. UHD display. Option for double the max RAM in the new MBP. Several other nifty features, including an aluminum body and somewhat replaceable components without all of the glue nonsense you'll see in Apple products.
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.
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.
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.
The spyware on my personal phone so that I can read corporate email is pretty asinine though.
The other issue I had was with external monitor was, that the primary display for the login screen was the built-in display, not the external monitor (that's my subjective preference. After login, the arrangement was according to user preferences).
Both certainly not earth shattering. If other laptops or computers have more serious problems, that's issue to be solved by their manufacturer. They are selling their wares to you, after all, why would you accept incomplete support?