Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | hnlmorg's commentslogin

It really isn’t. There are a great many people who use macs for work but who do not like Apples design choices. And that number has skyrocketed even further since Liquid Glass was pushed onto people.

In fact one of the front page articles today is literally calling macOS “ugly” in the title.


That’s depressingly common with politicians the world over because Signal supports disappearing messages.

So I wouldn’t expect someone who uses Signal to automatically be the kind of person to use personal email for work.


Sure, parents do bear some responsibility here too. But we are talking about a platform that is engineered to be addictive to adults too. So it’s not as if the platform isn’t still predatory even if we find a way to parent every child on the internet.

I don’t think anyone would disagree with you there but that requires changing the nature of humanity. Which is a much less realistic outcome.

I don't think it requires changing humanity. Just put a 100% wealth tax after 1 billion. And step letting money run politics.

Yeah, but who is going to lobby for it? Certainly nobody with actual money to pay for the lobbying.

And which politician would want to vote that in? Certainly no one with any rich friends who donate to their campaigns. Which means no politician that supports this is ever going to have the budget to get elected in the first place.

And then you have the problem that you cannot just fix this in one country. Because then all these rich people will find tax loopholes to claim they’re not nationals and thus exempt from this tax. So you have to convince every rich person and every politician in every country to change.

And now that you’ve created a wealth vacuum, you need to ensure that nobody rises up to flip the system again, using their wealth to manipulate everyone into repealing these new laws.

And now we are at the stage of having to change the nature of humanity…

The problem we have is that economics is driven by scarcity and consumption; and humans are largely driven by greed (or at the very least, a desire to make life comfortable). And we can’t have a future where rich people aren’t greedy, without changing the entire way economics works. Which also requires changing human nature too.


The basic concept of an impenetrable global taxation scheme came to mind about a decade ago, but at the time I was hopeful such a thing would be possible. (Ain’t no communist, but realize nice to have public roads etc. to get your employees to work - everyone chips in -> we all make more money.)

Is it human nature to rise up once a breaking point is reached? Since I concede it is not in our nature to finish our shift at our third job and go knock on neighbors’ doors, rock the vote. (agitating to elect the least greedy capable people)

Quick, keep my hope alive!


We already have a distinction because it’s been known for decades already that some things are addictive purely through reinforcement psychology and some things lock people into a chemical dependence.

For example see the glossary in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence


And for some reason we only use "addiction" to describe things that are recreational in nature, not drugs that have no recreational use but can be quite dangerous to discontinue abruptly.

I’m not a doctor but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.

Substances like caffeine, sugar, and painkillers are definitely still referred to as “addictive”.

Whereas substances like sertraline (antidepressant) are referred to as a “dependence” because it’s dangerous to discontinue abruptly (as you said) but there isn’t any psychological addiction involved.


To elaborate, I think experts usually use these terms as follows: an addiction is something where you have a continuous and difficult to resist drive to keep doing/using something due to it being inherently rewarding. A dependence is something where if you stop regularly doing/using something you’ll experience some sort of withdrawal.

It’s been a long long time since I’ve heard that name come up in conversation.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane.


You didn’t need two machines to run BeOS. I ran very smoothly on a Windows PC via dual booting.

BeOS 5 could even be installed on a Windows FAT32 partition alongside Windows (it created a 50MB virtual disk).

At one point in time I had Windows 95, Windows 2000, Linux (possibly Slackware) and BeOS 5 all running on the same single PC.


I was probably younger than you, and on the family computer. Couldn't make what I want and mess with booting back then ! I remember trying the PE edition through windows but couldn't install it.

How strictly do you mean “UNIX clone”? Because Linux isn’t strictly UNIX. But then at the other end of the scale, BeOS was also partially POSIX compliant and shipped with Bash plenty of UNIX CLI tools.

Perhaps it’s better to play it safe and just run DOS instead ;)


It certainly is, what it is not, is a derivative.

BeOS on its final commercial version certainly did not allow to compile UNIX applications, beyond the common surface that is part of ISO C and ISO C++ standard library.


I do like Keynote (their PowerPoint alternative) but I do agree that everything else is absolute garbage. But I guess someone has to like it.

> If Apple Business were a real revenue source, if they charged luxury prices for a luxurious business support experience, they could pay for developers to fix their stuff.

Apple can already easily afford those developers. They’re not exactly running at a loss ;)

Plus given how each new iteration of macOS and iOS is a steady step backwards for usability, I don’t have a huge amount of trust in their abilities to fix Business if it had become a strategic product tomorrow.


The reality is that every business unit needs to justify its existence and when asking for headcount, it’s easier to point to a revenue stream you’re tied to rather than “we help sell some things to businesses”

I don’t disagree with that. But equally most business units in Apple are not tied to revenue streams. From R&D though to developers for other non-subscription software. And that’s before you then factor in the non-delivery team (eg finance, HR, lawyers, etc).

So it’s not like a review stream is a requirement.

Moreover, even back when they did have back office tooling as a revenue stream (eg OSX Server), Apple still left it to slowly rot before finally discontinuing it.

So I just don’t think this is something anyone’s Apple cares enough about. If they did, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation to begin with.


If that were the case, the only business units that would ever be get funding would be the hardware sales.

Even with AWS I doubt many of the service teams make enough money to justify their existence alone.


Are you sure Apple does their accounting in that way?

Do you have a reason to believe they don’t? We’re not talking about some weird or obscure custom, it’s just basic business ideas.

Apple famously doesn't have conventional business units.

https://www.apple.com/careers/pdf/HBR_How_Apple_Is_Organized...


I think the burden of evidence is with you in this case. It doesn't make sense for Apple to do their accounting with such a method.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: