Very funny to see HN hate on Microsoft and Google but then love a company where they cannot even run an app on their mobile platform without Apple's permission or only a certain number of VMs on the hardware they own .
HN is not one person. I'm very happy to hate on all of them. I see what you mean though. I've given up on getting normal people to care, but seeing programmers who are absolutely smart enough to run their own Linux system on computers they actually own actively choose not to do so is very disconcerting.
Has apple been a serious development platform in the last 20 years?
I know a lot of devs like apple hardware because it is premium but OSX has always been "almost linux" controlled by a company that cares more about itunes then it does the people using their hardware to develop.
At least 9 out of every 10 software engineers I know does all their development on a mac. Because this sample is from my experience, it’s skewed to startups and tech companies. For sure, lots of devs outside those areas, but tech companies are a big chunk of the world’s developers.
So yea I would say Apple is a “serious development platform” just given how much it dominates software development in the tech sector in the US.
The hardware for a Linux laptop right now is not great. Especially for an arm64 machine. Even if the hardware is good the chassis and everything else is typically plastic and shitty.
>>At least 9 out of every 10 software engineers I know does all their development on a mac
I work in video games, you know, industry larger than films - 10 out of 10 devs I know are on Windows. I have a work issued Mac just to do some iOS dev and I honestly don't understand how anyone can use it day to day as their main dev machine, it's just so restrictive in what the OS allows you to do.
I compile a tool we use, send it to another developer, they can't open it without going through system settings because the OS thinks it's unsafe. There is no blanket easy way to disable this behaviour.
We also inject custom dlibs into clang during compilation and starting with Tahoe that started to fail - we discovered that it's because of SIP(system integrity protection). We reached out to apple, got the answer that "we will not discuss any functionality related to operation of SIP". Great. So now we either have to disable SIP on every development machine(which IT is very unhappy about) or re-sign the clang executable with our own dev key so that the OS leaves us alone.
If SIP is kicking in, it sounds like you're using the clang that comes with Apple's developer tools. Does this same issue occur with clang sourced from homebrew, or from LLVM's own binary releases?
It is a weird situation. Apple products are consumer products but they make us use them as development hardware because there is no other way to make software for those products.
Anything being developed for the Apple ecosystem requires use of the Apple development platform. Maybe the scope could be called "unserious," but the scale cannot be ignored.
However having used Xcode at some point 10 years ago my belief is that the app ecosystem exists in spite of that and that people would never choose this given the choice.
For me at least, not being Linux is a feature. Linux has always been “almost Unix” to the point where now it has become its own thing for better or worse. OS X was never trying to be Linux. It would be better if we still had a few more commercial POSIX implementations.
That is fair but in my experience most devs are targeting linux servers not BSD(or any other flavour) which is helped by OSX. If OSX was linux derived it would suit them just as well.
edit: I suppose I should also note the vast majority of people developing on mac books (in my experience anyway) are actually targeting chrome.
Heterogeneity is the feature. The Linux ecosystem is better off for it (systemd, Wayland, dconf, epoll, inotify are all based on ideas that were in OS X first) and not being beholden to Linux is a competitive advantage for Apple everyone wins.
This is a very silly restriction, at least to apply uniformly to all Macs. I think if you buy a more powerful Mac they should let you virtualize more Mac instances. Like an M5 maybe limit to 2, but maybe let an M5 Pro do 4 and an M5 Max do 8 or something.
Apple had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of virtualization and the idea of macOS running on anything besides "metal built by Apple." They've been pretty clear for decades that they only care about customers who buy Apple aluminum and silicon.
Because their business model is to sell tightly integrated hardware and software as a package. The hardware sales fund the software development. They don't want people who haven't bought the hardware using the software.
Yeah but the "hardware" in that sense is almost entirely iPhone and iPhone-adjacent, Mac is a trailing 4th- or 5th-place line of business... maybe 6th.
That kind of tracks as the source of the concern. My first thought was it’d be something IDMS-related as well. I don’t know enough about that system to pinpoint exactly what.
Very funny to see HN hate on Microsoft and Google but then love a company where they cannot even run an app on their mobile platform without Apple's permission or only a certain number of VMs on the hardware they own .
Someday I may be able to retire this link, but today is not that day: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Goomba_fallacy
HN is not one person. I'm very happy to hate on all of them. I see what you mean though. I've given up on getting normal people to care, but seeing programmers who are absolutely smart enough to run their own Linux system on computers they actually own actively choose not to do so is very disconcerting.
Since when are users in this place shy about bashing Apple?
Plenty of hate out there of apple alongside the love.
In the very same comments sometimes, those frustrating geniuses
Inside of me are two wolves. One that’s like “F Apple” and another that is like “Are they going to do an M5 ultra or…?”
Adults can hold 2 thoughts in their head at their same time.
What love? I think this is bullshit.
This is a really cool article, but the existence of such an arbitrary limit on any serious development platform is weird.
Has apple been a serious development platform in the last 20 years?
I know a lot of devs like apple hardware because it is premium but OSX has always been "almost linux" controlled by a company that cares more about itunes then it does the people using their hardware to develop.
At least 9 out of every 10 software engineers I know does all their development on a mac. Because this sample is from my experience, it’s skewed to startups and tech companies. For sure, lots of devs outside those areas, but tech companies are a big chunk of the world’s developers.
So yea I would say Apple is a “serious development platform” just given how much it dominates software development in the tech sector in the US.
I have the feeling a lot of people take Macs because the other option is a locked down Windows, and Linux is not offered.
The hardware for a Linux laptop right now is not great. Especially for an arm64 machine. Even if the hardware is good the chassis and everything else is typically plastic and shitty.
>>At least 9 out of every 10 software engineers I know does all their development on a mac
I work in video games, you know, industry larger than films - 10 out of 10 devs I know are on Windows. I have a work issued Mac just to do some iOS dev and I honestly don't understand how anyone can use it day to day as their main dev machine, it's just so restrictive in what the OS allows you to do.
Weird .. macOS is still completely open is my experience. Can you give an example?
I compile a tool we use, send it to another developer, they can't open it without going through system settings because the OS thinks it's unsafe. There is no blanket easy way to disable this behaviour.
We also inject custom dlibs into clang during compilation and starting with Tahoe that started to fail - we discovered that it's because of SIP(system integrity protection). We reached out to apple, got the answer that "we will not discuss any functionality related to operation of SIP". Great. So now we either have to disable SIP on every development machine(which IT is very unhappy about) or re-sign the clang executable with our own dev key so that the OS leaves us alone.
If SIP is kicking in, it sounds like you're using the clang that comes with Apple's developer tools. Does this same issue occur with clang sourced from homebrew, or from LLVM's own binary releases?
It is a weird situation. Apple products are consumer products but they make us use them as development hardware because there is no other way to make software for those products.
Anything being developed for the Apple ecosystem requires use of the Apple development platform. Maybe the scope could be called "unserious," but the scale cannot be ignored.
I am aware.
However having used Xcode at some point 10 years ago my belief is that the app ecosystem exists in spite of that and that people would never choose this given the choice.
For me at least, not being Linux is a feature. Linux has always been “almost Unix” to the point where now it has become its own thing for better or worse. OS X was never trying to be Linux. It would be better if we still had a few more commercial POSIX implementations.
That is fair but in my experience most devs are targeting linux servers not BSD(or any other flavour) which is helped by OSX. If OSX was linux derived it would suit them just as well.
edit: I suppose I should also note the vast majority of people developing on mac books (in my experience anyway) are actually targeting chrome.
Heterogeneity is the feature. The Linux ecosystem is better off for it (systemd, Wayland, dconf, epoll, inotify are all based on ideas that were in OS X first) and not being beholden to Linux is a competitive advantage for Apple everyone wins.
> I suppose I should also note the vast majority of people developing on mac books (in my experience anyway) are actually targeting chrome.
Point taken. Most developers probably make do with Linux containers rather than MacOS VMs.
It’s crazy that you can compile a custom kernel and it’ll boot and the GUI will run.
This is a very silly restriction, at least to apply uniformly to all Macs. I think if you buy a more powerful Mac they should let you virtualize more Mac instances. Like an M5 maybe limit to 2, but maybe let an M5 Pro do 4 and an M5 Max do 8 or something.
Why should they impose a limit at all? Your hardware is a natural limit, you'll stop of your own accord when you reach its thresholds.
They are likely scared of people who would run MacOS virtual desktop farms, without also buying an appropriate number of Apple machines.
That’s what I would be worried about if my primary source of income was hardware sales.
Apple had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of virtualization and the idea of macOS running on anything besides "metal built by Apple." They've been pretty clear for decades that they only care about customers who buy Apple aluminum and silicon.
Well, but their customers are those that buy Apple hardware.
Imagine buying a mac studio with 500+ GB of memory and being limited to 2 vms.
"Can you please apply soothing balm after you beat me?" That is what you sound like.
I’m very curious, why did Apple put such a limitation?
Because their business model is to sell tightly integrated hardware and software as a package. The hardware sales fund the software development. They don't want people who haven't bought the hardware using the software.
The VM limit only applies to the number of macOS VMs launched from macOS itself.
My 2018 mac mini officially supports VMware ESXi to be installed directly on the hardware and virtualize any number of macOS machines
Funny enough I can even launch more than 2 macOS vms on my framework chromebook with qemu + KVM from the integrated Linux terminal.
Yeah but the "hardware" in that sense is almost entirely iPhone and iPhone-adjacent, Mac is a trailing 4th- or 5th-place line of business... maybe 6th.
Probably to prevent a single hardware system from being used to run an online identity farm.
Doesn't make too much sense, the VMs don't get unique hardware identifiers that one could (ab)use for spamming iMessage.
That kind of tracks as the source of the concern. My first thought was it’d be something IDMS-related as well. I don’t know enough about that system to pinpoint exactly what.
IIRC you can just turn off sip and set the boot argument that controls it without a custom kernel
starting with M3+ you can use Hypervisor.framework/Virtualization.framework to spin up nested VMs.
it would be amusing if that bypassed the limit.
Can this work with lume as well? Currently it has a similar limitation.
it should, lume is a thin wrapper around Apple's Virtualization.framework as i understand it