Musing on the Mac...

Posted by MadaboutDana
Apr 11, 2017 at 02:28 PM

Ha, yes, I entirely agree about your development points - I remain totally unable to see (and I’m not even a developer!) why the App Store shouldn’t enable upgrades. One-off payments are nice, but scarcely a model for development survival. Subscriptions are often just plain irritating (and must be so for developers, too, because they effectively feel obliged to keep issuing new versions of perfectly acceptable software with extra features/cosmetics/attractions/whatever, any of which could end up introducing bugs/issues/development dead-ends. If I was a developer, it would drive me round the bend!).

As for the new MacBook Pros - I’d agree on the button bar. Not quite so sure about the ports, but if I was ordering a new MacBook Pro, I’d want to cut out some of the hundreds of dollars by ordering one without a button bar. But I don’t do 13-inch screens any more; gimme a 15-inch screen anytime. And of course you can’t get a 15-incher without a button bar…

Andy Brice wrote:
>The latest line-up of Macbooks seems to be a big step backwards. I can’t
>imagine their new button bar is going to be very useful or long-lived
>and I don’t want to have to carry a big bag of adaptors with me.
> >As a developer:
> >Apple loves to make life miserable for their developers by nuking their
>development ecosystem from orbit every few years. Microsoft, on the
>other hand, work very hard to keep old software working.
> >The economics of the Mac app store are pretty horrible for developers.
>Microsoft would probably like to squeeze developers in the same way, but
>don;t seem to be able to pull it off.
> >—
> >Andy Brice
>http://www.hyperplan.com