<story><title>Linux on the Mac – state of the union</title><url>https://lwn.net/Articles/707616/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ubernostrum</author><text>Except this is largely based on mythology. People seem to equate &amp;quot;pro user&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;software developer&amp;quot; (and no other roles&amp;#x2F;occupations at all), and invent a fictitious history in which the Macbook Pro was jumping up and down on stage shouting &amp;quot;DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Except that never happened. The perceived dev-friendliness of the Macbook Pro was a historical accident: it turns out that when you build something for use cases like audio&amp;#x2F;video engineering (which overlap a bit in their hardware needs with use cases like compiling software), and happen due to quirks of your company&amp;#x27;s history to be shipping a Unix-y operating system, developers will like it. But aside from providing tools to build applications for Apple&amp;#x27;s own platforms, the MBP and other Mac hardware wasn&amp;#x27;t deliberately catered to developers.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the audio&amp;#x2F;video-engineer types still seem to like the MBP; the reviews I&amp;#x27;ve read from them are positive about the touch bar and accepting of the fact that USB C is the future. It&amp;#x27;s just the developers -- and largely developers who hated Apple&amp;#x27;s products anyway and likely will never interact with the new MBP -- who say that this is proof that Apple has completely abandoned &amp;quot;pro&amp;quot; users.</text></item><item><author>toodlebunions</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;the realization that Apple no longer caters equally to casual and professional customers as it had in the past [YouTube video]. Instead, the company appears to be following an iOS-focused, margin-driven strategy that essentially relegates professionals to a fringe group.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Ouch</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rev12</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Meanwhile, the audio&amp;#x2F;video-engineer types still seem to like the MBP&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t speak to the professional video world, but that&amp;#x27;s absolutely false in the professional audio world.&lt;p&gt;My experience is in the world of composition and sound design; the attitude towards using Mac for that shifted a while back, due to the lackluster and non-existent upgrades to the Mac Pro.&lt;p&gt;No one in the professional audio world that I know, or anything that I have read, has suggested they are liking the new laptop (which wouldn&amp;#x27;t get much use from them anyway).</text></comment>
<story><title>Linux on the Mac – state of the union</title><url>https://lwn.net/Articles/707616/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ubernostrum</author><text>Except this is largely based on mythology. People seem to equate &amp;quot;pro user&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;software developer&amp;quot; (and no other roles&amp;#x2F;occupations at all), and invent a fictitious history in which the Macbook Pro was jumping up and down on stage shouting &amp;quot;DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Except that never happened. The perceived dev-friendliness of the Macbook Pro was a historical accident: it turns out that when you build something for use cases like audio&amp;#x2F;video engineering (which overlap a bit in their hardware needs with use cases like compiling software), and happen due to quirks of your company&amp;#x27;s history to be shipping a Unix-y operating system, developers will like it. But aside from providing tools to build applications for Apple&amp;#x27;s own platforms, the MBP and other Mac hardware wasn&amp;#x27;t deliberately catered to developers.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the audio&amp;#x2F;video-engineer types still seem to like the MBP; the reviews I&amp;#x27;ve read from them are positive about the touch bar and accepting of the fact that USB C is the future. It&amp;#x27;s just the developers -- and largely developers who hated Apple&amp;#x27;s products anyway and likely will never interact with the new MBP -- who say that this is proof that Apple has completely abandoned &amp;quot;pro&amp;quot; users.</text></item><item><author>toodlebunions</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;the realization that Apple no longer caters equally to casual and professional customers as it had in the past [YouTube video]. Instead, the company appears to be following an iOS-focused, margin-driven strategy that essentially relegates professionals to a fringe group.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Ouch</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>matt4077</author><text>I got the strong impression that those self-proclaimed &amp;quot;professionals&amp;quot; are more or less exactly the opposite: people who spend an inordinate amount of time plugging in dozens of different peripherals with random port requirements, fiddling around with the hardware, and running benchmarks.&lt;p&gt;For what it&amp;#x27;s worth, a Mac today is still as useful (at least for web development) as it has always been. Much more so actually because homebrew has evolved to be completely stable.&lt;p&gt;And while CPU speeds have been stagnating (mostly because they&amp;#x27;ve reached &amp;quot;good enough&amp;quot; and then some), people are ignoring two major shifts in hardware that have significantly improved the dev experience: Retina screens and SSDs.</text></comment>