Can someone remind me why Apple is so anti-VM in seemingly every instance?
It just seems so arbitrary and unhelpful, and I have a hard time imagining that the amount of hardware purchased it forces outweigh the benefits from making macOS/iOS better platforms for development and computation.
Considering a couple years ago, "Apple Hardware" was an intel CPU with an nvidia GPU I've always wondered why you couldn't just throw a million dollars at them so they could stick apple stickers on your rack and let you run MacOS VMs. The company I used to work for had to do crazy gymnastics just to test software and scan for malware on their OS.
There’s more to a mac than the sticker. It’s specific hardware that is tested and supported by the software. That’s worth a premium. Verifying your rack is a cost Apple doesn’t want to take on. iCloud doesn’t run on MacOS. It runs on Linux. Just buy the right hardware for the job.
Does Apple dogfood their OS X/iOS CI pipelines, i.e. are they running them on some off-the-shelf Macs like they expect everyone else to do? I remember reading that at least in the past they were running virtualized OS X on regular servers for those (actually found following: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18117885).
And it's not like Apple would need to verify anything. They can grant the license, but say that the only supported configuration is Mac, it's up to VMWare and such to provide the support if they want to say that you can run OS X on their platform.
Azure doesn't run on Windows. Why would iCloud run on MacOS? There's exactly one organization in the world that needs to run iCloud, why would MacOS target that use case? I doubt Apple eats their own dogfood.
Azure does run on Windows. It's HyperV server below the rest of the hardware. It's a custom Windows install that you can't purchase, but it's Windows none the less.
That's interesting. Do you have a public source for this handy?
I remember seeing an article [1] proclaiming that more than 50% of Azure's workloads are on Linux, so I'm guessing their hypervisors are running an optimised Linux kernel somewhat.
1: Linux is Most Used OS in Microsoft Azure – over 50 percent of VM cores
that 50% is the guests, not the hosts... I think they even have Hyper-V, along with the Windows Server Kernel, running on ARM, since they now have ARM VMs... Only a matter of time before thats released in the wild... [1][https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-virtual-machine...]
Azure Devops Services is an updated version of their old Team Foundation Server stuff. You can't create projects, teams, or workitem areas/iteration paths that are any of the microsoft magic names ( con, nul, ...etc... ), presumably because they store the data on a windows drive and it would implode. git repos, too, but that's just good planning for any git service since allowing microsoft reserved names would make the repo unclonable to microsoft systems.
My Mid 2014, 15" Macbook Pro has both Intel and Nvidia.
Chipset Model: Intel Iris Pro
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
This Macbook pro was a free upgrade from Apple after I'd had 3 mainboard replacements because they'd had faulty GPU's on my 2011 MBP ( see https://web.archive.org/web/20170119031155/https://people.ca... for background) - Basically after I found out what was going on I took my 'repaired' machine home and stress tested it until it failed. After the very quick repeated failures Apple decided to replace my machine completely.
I asked cos the person I replied to stated that it was a couple of years ago. I thought maybe there’s some other apple product other than macs that have Nvidia in them. But seems like there isn’t.
Back in 2007-2009 Nividia shipped defective GPUs to everyone, including Apple.
Every MacBook Pro from that era was affected. Nvidia and Apple couldn't come to an agreement to who should pay for the bad GPUs. It cost Apple a lot of money and Nvidia din't seem to care.
After that, Apple slowly started removing Nvidia GPUs from their products. AMD also shipped bad GPU's around ~2011 and Apple went back to Nvidia for a generation or two until AMD sorted their issues out. From Then on it was AMD GPUs only until the M1.
I only found one article about this from back in 2008. It was definitely a thing back then, I just can't find it....
But indeed likely second fiddle to the gpu issues around the same time, I totally forgot about that.
Apple almost went out of business allowing macOS to run on non-Apple hardware. I think there are still people there who have an irrational fear from that time.
From a current financial/business standpoint, Apple considers itself a hardware company that includes their custom OS with their hardware. From that angle it makes no sense to allow it to run on non-Apple hardware. Sort of like Sony being ok with the PS OS running on Xbox.
But it also makes no sense to forbid it. If Apple were a hardware company, letting people use their software on other devices wouldn't cut their baseline. After all, people buy Apple because of the hardware, right?
Apparently not, and because they subsidise the software using hardware sales, they don't want to decouple the two.
The Sony/PS situation is exactly the opposite: Sony subsidizes hardware using software (games) sales. Which is why they don't allow you to use different software on a PS.
Now that Apple leans into services revenue it might make sense to license the OS for clones, if they could still sell you an Apple Music subscription on your Samsung iOS device. But as matwood said above in the 90s they traded high-end hardware sales for much less lucrative license fees and lost badly. It was one of the very first things Jobs tried to fix when he returned, and he ended the program because he couldn't get terms he liked from the licensees. (Which in retrospect is weird because it put them entirely out of business, but shrug.)
Exactly. At an old job, we had basically a glorified closet full of Mac minis for running our Mac CI builds on; the Linux builds just used EC2 instances.
Sure, but for getting shit done, you can always use nested VMs or SSH into a real linux machine if need be. Regardless, the fact that you can run an unspecified amount of Linux VMs yet macOS VMs are limited to 2 is even more egregious. It's far cheaper to get Linux VMs anywhere than macOS VMs.
They want to sell hardware. I'm reminded of this every day when I can't use Apple Reminders and Calendar properly on non-Apple devices. I have an Apple phone but use a non-Apple computer. You used to be able to have a web interface to Reminders, but they changed it and now you can't add tasks in the web interface. No worries then, let's use Caldav. Hmmm, can't add a Caldav server to iCloud anymore. Ahh, we can add a Caldav account to iOS! Nope, it doesn't obey the sync schedule. You can set the schedule to anything but it just syncs when it wants to, maybe every couple of hours if you're lucky. I might be cynical but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a ploy to get more people into buying more of their devices.
This shit is why I use Google products on my iphone: gmail, calendar (with reminders), contacts, etc. (Paid version at that: I pay for google workspace, even for personal use)
I'm not locked in to the Apple ecosystem: I can use it on my Linux desktop, or switch to an Android phone at any time.
It's solving problems in my life. I have a calendar, it's synced across all my devices, I have no fear of lock-in, and I have full control over my data without fearing about my account getting locked (as I pay for Workspace). Same for email, same for contacts.
Google is a company providing me a service I pay for, with a contract I signed.
Do you think my data would be safer if I used UnknownCalMailCompany Inc, a company with zero track record in terms of privacy, safety, or long-term viability?
Even those whose risk assessment leads to them not wanting to give Google their personal data should be able to acknowledge that Google's pretty good at not leaking user data onto the Internet.
To the extent that they make their money from user data, their advantage is in keeping the underlying data for themselves, not in giving it to other people.
(I use a fair amount of Google tech, including paying for hardware and services, but I won't use their search engine or browser)
I’m sorry but yeah, if you want a concrete solution that is on par with what google offers in terms of privacy and security, you can’t go with a random company and everything I said before stands. And in this scenario, fastmail IS a random company no matter how long you’ve used them.
None of my data is used to sell adverts. You seem to completely miss that I’m using google workspace. I have a contract with google, I’m not using free shit.
What's wrong with a flip calendar or a moleskin diary? Color me old-school but why does every single thing, especially your most private things need to be online?
And this is why I don't want to buy any Apple device. It seems that it's all or nothing for them. If you have a mix of apple and non-apple devices then you'll have all sorts of compatibility problems.
iCloud web UI. Sorry, I just tried again and you can add tasks, but you can't set a due date or time, which I rely on heavily. You used to be able to do this until they went to the "new" Reminders. They gave us a prompt to upgrade to the new reminders, but you don't realize that you lose these features, and as far as I can tell, you can't go back after you "upgrade".
I just set a due date and time on a reminded with the web UI. Add the item, click "details", click "on a day", set a date and time. It's not easy, or a nice UI, but it's functional for this visual user. I didn't check the accessibility.
The walled garden is absolutely essential to Apple's business idea. If you want to use an Apple product, then they want you to commit to their ecosystem completely.
It makes perfect sense that they'd be against anything that circumvents their walled garden, and a VM does just that by allowing users/developers to use their OS without buying their hardware.
I personally hate it, and it's why I'll never touch any Apple product.
They have a very good price-to-value ratio, especially when you account for their high resale value, so that's not really a good reason to avoid apple.
It is simply unbeatable on the laptop market currently, imo.
I was more thinking to the iphone (I don't have laptop). You can't find a cheap new iphone, and even the cheapest iphone is more than I would put in a phone myself.
It's true that now high end android phones are as expensive than high end iphones, so on this point of view it's not a criteria
I purchased two brand new iPhone SE's for $100 each around black Friday from Straight Talk. Required one month of prepaid service and then they were unlocked, I used them down in South America.
The iPhone SE is better than any comparable Android phone and will receive updates for another 5 years.
So "You can't find a cheap new iPhone" is not true. If you're willing to take 1 extra step and get a month of prepaid service you can get a cheap iPhone.
We get dazzled by "benchmark number higher" and ignore other factors. The lock-in means I'd need to have a gun to my head to use an Apple product. I can't game on it or use Linux. My laptop and desktop are both ~10 years old- how long are Apple computers supported? These factors don't show up in benchmarks but they are just as important.
Your laptop and desktop are 10 years old, and that’s it. They are not supported by anyone, they just didn’t die on you yet. Apple actually supports their devices for that long easily, that’s one category they really outshine their competitors in.
Also, the macs are not at all locked down if we are talking about that. OSX is pretty much a general linux with a generally supported graphical environment on top.
One guess: if macOS could be virtualized, it would be even easier to run things like Messages, FaceTime, and Photos on non-Apple hardware, which reduces some of the lock-in effect that keeps people from leaving the ecosystem (i.e. Green Bubble Effect)
Not necessarily. iMessage & FaceTime AFAIK are cryptographically locked onto Apple HW. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that each piece of Apple HW ships with a burned in unique private key that Apple records the public key of in it's internal database. That private key would be missing in a VM context.
It's possible my data is out of date though because iMessage spam is real & I'm not sure how that's done if it needs a valid private key that Apple can ban.
I haven’t looked at this in detail in a while either, but I don’t think the claims here are correct.
It is true that Apple employs some efforts to prevent/discourage you from using those services illegitimately, but using iMessage and FaceTime from a Hackintosh has been possible for years, largely without jumping through any hoops.
As far as I am aware, you need at least one Apple Device to get it started on a Hackintosh. So you might still need one iPhone and then also receive iMessages on a Android by using a VM in the background. And this sounds so complicated, that I would doubt that more then a handful of people world wide would do it.
1: This will likely lead to a small (and I do mean small) hit to their sales from people taking advantage of a VM who would have previously had to buy a device…
Doesn't seem to make all that much sense though. The value of their OS is how perfect it works with their hardware. Sure some people want to run MacOS on a standard desktop, but that doesn't seem to be a significant group of people.
Apple is mostly a hardware company. Aside from aesthetics, people are attracted to their products because of the UI for the OS. If you get that for little to nothing, why would anyone buy their overpriced hardware?
It just seems so arbitrary and unhelpful, and I have a hard time imagining that the amount of hardware purchased it forces outweigh the benefits from making macOS/iOS better platforms for development and computation.
It just seems like such an odd stance to take.