For those wondering why Apple is allergic to GPLv3 code: there is a clause in the license requiring you provide a way to run modified version of the software which would require Apple to let users self sign executables.
You can't tell me that Microsoft is able to ship entire distribution's userlands (Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE, and more) through the Windows Store, including all their GPL3 components, and Apple can't figure out how to ship an updated version of base64.
If I'm grumbling, it's just because making devops/CI scripts work on Windows and Linux is easier than MacOS and Linux these days because my colleagues run into issues like "base64" or "uuidgen" having different arguments in the extremely dated MacOS userland, and they then have to brew install a bunch of isolated components.
Yup, and then down in the code, it was #ifdef's up to your eyeballs[1], even if you went all the way and used autoconf/configure and then... more #ifdefs.
And we can tell our kids we had this thing called endianness which showed up in structure packing, system calls, network byte ordering, and hopefully portable binary file formats. Thankfully we had RPC and IDL to save us from that mess... not.
Oh and don't forget the windowing system war on top of the Unix war, all with different desktop and library concepts: CDE, Motif, Openwin, NeWS, DM, X11 and X10 at least.
One compatibility honorable mention goes to Apollo for at least making an attempt at flavor normalization: you could have an env var that would resolve a symlink at every file access near the top of the filesystem, where there would be a collection of different BSD/SystemV/Aegis(?) all running at once. [2]
Funny you should mention RPC because of course RPC was all the rage back in 1993, with the heap of garbage they called DCE/RPC.
To this date, this is the only network protocol I have ever seen that not only allowed you to choose the endianness you will use in the header, but also the floating point format.
> Now having to deal with DG/UX, Aix, Tru64, SGI, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD and the new incumbent Linux, that was fun.
Don't forget AIX/ESA (a weird beast), NextSTEP (which is still with us, in disguise), the HPC crowd (UNICOS, OSF/1 AD...), SINIX (my first contact with the internet, thanks to Siemens/Nixdorf)...
I've moved on to Windows since last year. Besides terminal emulators being shit (which they're fixing now), worse PDF support and shit OS config management, there's really not much anymore that goes in favor of Macs. Their laptops are worthless junk at 40% markup, the OS gets buggier and more locked down with every version while Windows is on a clear trajectory of improvement and PC hardware gives real choice and innovative solutions. I was a Mac user for 13 years, but no more. Since they gave all the keys to Jony it went down the drain real fast.
Out of curiosity, has Windows improved in any way from a low maintenance perspective?
The reason I switched to Mac in 2006 was that I ended up using a friend's Mac for a month while abroad so I could get some work done. When I got back to a place where I could get a new Viao at a reasonable price it occurred to me that I hadn't been fighting with the Mac a single time. Wifi always worked, everything I plugged into it just worked as well, the software I ended up installing just worked too, Apache and SVN ran fine, there was a good Terminal app out of the box, etc. This was in stark contrast with the decades long experience I had had with PCs until then. On any given week I had been invariably spending between a half-hour and a day fighting with Windows in some way or another. Which could mean trying to figure out why Wifi or some random printer didn't work, looking for drivers, reinstalling or reconfiguring some piece of software, and so forth. Has this improved materially since the past decade?
It certainly has improved, but Mac still has the edge in that regard. This mainly comes down to one things: Superior config management (plist files vs Windows registry). This makes it much easier to maintain - you hardly ever have to reinstall a Mac, instead just clean up all the Library folders and you're fine. A Mac HD also boots on any supported Mac hardware, impossible with windows, which makes things like Migration assistant and full Time machine restore possible.
Bundled apps to me are a wash. Preview >> Edge for PDFs and Terminal.app >> Cmd.exe, but explorer.exe >> Finder and Task Manager >> Activity Monitor.
Another big plus for windows is everything to do with graphics drivers and GPU support if you're into this. I also find WSL overall now better than Mac's Darwin since you get up to date Linux packages which beats homebrew in my books. Performance of WSL is also pretty good, much better than running a VM. This is really what turned Windows around for me, making it a very viable alternative.
how about screen management ? I'm using several virtual screens (spaces) in my mac, that makes things a lot easier to me. How does that go in today's windows?
My biggest problem with Windows is that you can't scroll in a window or a pane without clicking on it first. Both Mac and Linux support that and it makes the OS feel so clunky.
I'm no Windows fan, but Windows 10 is the first where I don't actively hate the window manager. Well, I do hate how it keeps moving all my windows to the left side of the desktop. Not sure why that is happening. So I guess I hate something different about it now.
You mean it's snapping to the left half after some action? That would probably be when you press Windows+Left-Arrow, happens to me sometimes when I try to do Ctrl-left for example.
sounds a bit like a driver issue, like it changes the screen resolution during wake-up. you should figure out whether it's the exact size used for half-pane snapping (which sounds like userland issue), or whether it's some other size.
But in MacOS, typing doesn't follow the mouse by default. So you're scrolling away in a window you don't realize is inactive. Then go to close a tab or type and you've just closed a tab in a random application two monitors away. And it can be hit-or-miss whether you realize which application you just interacted with (or where you just inserted characters into your code).
Ugh this happens to me all the time, but on the other hand I'll sometimes be scrolling through a pdf with my trackpad, but typing in a pane on the left, so I do find it quite useful to have that split between kb/pointer focus.
Those seem like pretty big downsides to me, and I don't believe the new terminal marketing gimmick. I will admit Windows has been very attractive lately for gaming reasons, but from a development standpoint, MacOS still seems way ahead of Windows. I seriously considered it, but there would be too much I'd miss if I switched. There's some minor reasons too, like why does IntelliJ look ugly in Windows? It looks great in both Mac and Linux.
Re: IntelliJ looking bad on Windows, I do know that JetBrains IDEs are still stuck on using GDI for drawing fonts rather than the new DirectWrite protocol. The poor quality of GDI (especially on high DPI displays) is very noticeable when you switch from Linux or macOS to a Windows app that uses it. I looked it up a while ago, and as I recall it was an issue with the Java runtime that JetBrains IDEs use.
Well did you try out Linux bash on windows. In less than 2 minutes you setup a Debian instance. You got shells and everything. All well known ide's are available on both Windows and Mac. In my opinion there is no real difference anymore.
I am a Mac user and windows user.
The only reason why I still use my Mac is because of the ergonomics.
The only crashes I've had from NT kernel over the past 15 years or so are from graphics card drivers and bad RAM.
Linux is a lot less stable, as a laptop OS, than Windows or OSX. Suspend and resume in presence and absence of multiple monitors is like rolling dice; locks up about 15% of the time.
Not my experience. I used mostly Linux for 15 years, and I had zero problems with laptops, external screens and suspend in the past 8 years. I have a Linux laptop that's used for demo hooked up to a TV, settings are changed from dual screen to mirroring all the time, then it goes to sleep, is woken up with the TV off, etc, zero trouble, it hadn't rebooted in 2 months.
And Windows still requires random reboots for updates, of course usually at the worst possible time (fortunately I only use windows in VMs for testing). God how I hate Windows, it's unbearable really, after 5 minutes at the third nagging stupid popup (update Java! update Acrobat! update antivirus! don't turn off the computer, installing update 2 on 10532!) I want to throw the thing out of the window :)
I've been using Linux since 1996; not wet behind the ears. Graphics drivers are substantially worse on Linux than Windows, and even on Windows they're still the main source of problems.
A mix of dock and undock with multiple monitors is dodgy; like rolling a die. Plugging in the display port cable after a resume from a prior docked suspend, for a presentation, is flipping a coin.
A lot of what you say describes a fairly common experience with Windows too. Perhaps not with a Thinkpad maybe but I’ve failed to revive a sleeping windows machine on a few occasions, and switching between output sources can be unpredictable too. Mac is the only platform which consistenly succeeds at these kinds of things because of the vertically integrates hardware. Its the drivers as you say ... I don’t think the actual o/s has much say in it beyond the drivers that are supported.
Lucky you! I do a reboot on my Windows 10 machine every night. I also suffered from intermittent complete and total lockups due to a bug in what I traced to spotify. Similar thing happened with MacOS and safari recently enough too so I stopped using Safari for a while ...
using a Lenovo P50 with windows 10 for 2 years now, I only reboot it maybe once a month, for the rest, I close the lid, it goes to sleep, next day in the office, I open the lid and continue where I stopped. so far I have had zero issues with it.
Genuinely curious - which ergonomics do you mean? Macbooks have objectively terrible keyboards these days, and the lack of dedicated buttons on the trackpad makes two handed trackpad use a royal pain. Yes, the mouse movement is precise, but the trackpad doesn't blow my mind.
Old thinkpads with 7-row keyboards had proper ergonomics, to my mind anyway.
A sluggish clumsy bloated IDE? What's good about it? I've used it for a couple of years when I wrote directshow filters, and it was a complete shit back in a days (2015-2017).
* terrible clumsy project system, where changing a flag is a quest. As abominable as autotools.
* using non-vcproj projects is a pain, especially when you have a bunch of make files
* It's slow as hell.
* Language support is lacking. No OCaml, no Lisp, hell, even C11 is a quest.
After they've added a package manager and clang support, it became less painful, but fur from great experience.
Everyone has heard of Visual Studio, and nobody that has to use it wants to. Just because you have Stockholm syndrome doesn't mean everyone else has to have it too ;-)
It has been a long time since I used Visual Studio but I remember it as the best IDE I have ever used for C++.
I am now working on Linux with Sublime Text, Makefiles and the command line. I am most comfortable with that setup but there are many features that I miss from VS: the debugger, online help, code navigation, ...
Not that these features don't exist in other editors and IDEs, but with VS, they worked reliably and out of the box.
Note: VSCode is completely different. It is a multi-platform text editor, one of the best in town. A bit lacking in the performance department though, that's why I am still using Sublime Text.
I'm confident most of the .NET community is very happy with Visual Studio.
In my opinion, Visual Studio massively outclasses Eclipse, VSCode and Netbeans. It even makes IntelliJ (which is pretty great too) look a bit inadequate.
>I'm confident most of the .NET community is very happy with Visual Studio
.NET is not the only ecosystem people develop for. There are embedded C/Forth, web frontend/backend, written in Java, Scala, Ruby, Python, other stuff. VS sucks for nearly everything safe C#/C++ for windows.
Besides, even for C# people use an additional plugin, resharper, so VS is not enough even for its target ecosystem.
It's why I put in: unless you have to use it, which means: if you target Windows. If you target anything else, you're probably not using it unless you already happen to have it. I agree that most IDEs are crap, it's pretty strange when you think about it, software developers developing software to develop software, but developing it badly so it now sucks for everyone.
Must be a different development sphere to me. I have to use xcode for dev on the Mac and it is feeble compared to VS. I can't think of a better IDE to be honest (C++, C# for me).
Whenever I have to use other offerings like Eclipse, Netbeans or Android Studio for other languages I am never very satisfied with them. Android Studio in particular breaks gradle and projects between updates, although Flutter seems to work.
To be exact, FreeBSD and macOS (based on NeXTStep) are both based on BSD, and contribute to each other. FreeBSD came out after NeXTStep was released though...
How's using homebrew any of this different than being able to run "base64" and "uuidgen" on Windows? It's not like either of those applications are part of a Windows installation anyway.
I'm sorry, this is totally off-topic but I had to re-read your comment 5 times until it became apparent that you meant re-sign, not surrender. English is funny sometimes (especially when you're not a native speaker like me:) ).
I don't believe this to be true, and I don't know where this comes from. Their documented GPLv3 reluctance predated code signing on their platforms by many years. FWIW, GPLv3 was controversial even amongst GPLv2 advocates for all sorts of reasons, never mind amongst actual lawyers. No conspiracy theories required, even if you disagree with their position. The Linux kernel and many other non-GNU projects never updated to GPLv3 and it had nothing to do with enforcing anyone's walled gardens.
I'd disagree (I agree with the original post). Apache 2 requires a patent grant and I've heard very few instances of this license being avoided (besides the OpenBSD folk). I really do think the fear of GPLv3 comes from the anti-Tivovization requirement -- which would essentially require that 3rd parties (e.g. me) be allowed to install modifications (e.g. modified libs/binaries) of a GPLv3 application onto the controlled iPhone.
This reason doesn't make sense, though: I can modify, replace, and overwrite the bash that comes with the system, and self sign it with a certificate of my choosing.
Which is to say, "let users run their own software". There's value in formal authentication of third party software as a default configuration, but let's not pretend that's what lockdown is about.
Not anymore. Since 10.12 Sierra the GUI option to turn off Gatekeeper is gone, you have to use command line to turn it off. And now App Notarization is making it harder still to run your own software.
How so? I can run anything I like via the command line, and right-click -> Open still launches unsigned executables. Sure there are warnings, but that's not hard to get past.
And then who would make software for Apple's platforms? At the end of the day there always has to be a platform that developers can use. You can rest easy; that will never change.
I don't really understand the licensing issues that well, but if what the poster above you said is true, I wouldn't really want to have to sign software that ships with my computer when it should just run out of the box.
I don't think the prior poster is suggesting that you would have to sign existing software.
I believe that they are suggesting that Apple would be required to let you sign your own software if you do choose and give owners the right to opt to have their os trust software they OR Apple signed.
There is something that was addressed in the gpl community called tivoization.
Tivos dvrs were Linux boxes wherein they shared their source technically complying with the letter of the gpl but in fact locking them down so users couldn't modify the devices violating to many peoples mind the spirit and clearly expressed intent of the license.
This is if I understand correctly dealt with in gpl 3 which is what I think the poster is talking about.
Apple ios devices are non free in the same fashion as Tivos which is incompatible with gpl3
I don't understand why GPLv3 would be a problem on macOS.
On macOS, you can run anything out of the box (depending on security/gatekeeper settings) and you can replace or modify system executables (such as /bin/bash) if you turn off SIP (which is slightly tricky to do but can be done from recovery mode.)
Running your own customized /usr/local/bin/bash is easy of course, and package managers like MacPorts or Brew make it simple to install various shells including the latest bash.
On iOS, however, there might be an issue, as you have to sign executables with XCode, but unfortunately Apple reduced free developer provisioning profiles from one year down to two weeks in order to block third-party app stores and malware, and to get more people to sign up for the paid developer program. Moreover, there is also no Apple-sanctioned way to modify system executables that I am aware of.
SIP and Gatekeeper and one-time commands. I find disabling SIP to be much less painful than enabling unsigned drivers in Windows.
I wouldn't even classify turning off SIP as "slightly tricky". You boot into recovery mode, open the terminal, type in two words, and press enter.
Besides, this is separate from the GPLv3 question. You can absolutely recompile bash and replace macOS's version with your own, so I don't understand why this is a problem for Apple.
It's not a problem, yet. But I would argue that it's quite clear from Apple's actions the last ~5 years that they really want to make Mac OS behave as iOS as much as possible, including making it impossible for regular users to run arbitrary non app store software.
I know it sounds crazy, but they have for years now been taking steps - like this - which nobody seems to find a rational cause for, but which step by step seem to remove obstacles of technically, legal, or user expectations in line with making OS X an app store only platform, and if possible completely replace OS X with iOS.
You can't think of a single rational cause for requiring code signing by default other than them wanting to lock down the system? It's a huge security gain for normal users, and helps application developers by encouraging normal users to trust third-party applications rather than being terrified they'll get malware if they install any non-apple software.
It's certainly possible that Apple has intentions other than to make the platform better and a discussion can be had on if the tradeoffs are worth it, but it's ridiculous to claim that there are zero benefits to anyone but Apple.
I can't think of a single (non-malicious) rational cause for requiring code signing by default and making the requirement impossible for the user to disable.
We're talking about what Apple could be planning that would violate the GPLv3. As long as the signing can be disabled by the user, there shouldn't be a GPLv3 violation.
The obvious "rational" security benefits to users are:
1) Gatekeeper makes it harder to run malware; unsigned executables don't run by default, and signed malware can have its developer keys revoked by Apple.
2) SIP makes it harder for malware to modify system files.
The obvious "rational" business benefit to Apple is that:
3) Gatekeeper makes it harder to sell Mac apps without Apple getting a 30% cut
The "You must release changes"-clause and anti-tivoization clause might be not be enough individually to switch to MIT zsh but probably were together good enough reasons for Apple to switch.
Again, perhaps it is because Apple is planning for a future where SIP and Gatekeeper cannot be turned off. A future where macOS is basically reduced/merged to iPadOS. Time will tell.
A company or school can already do this easily, by the way, by setting a boot-loader password and restricting admin access. Notably, this are normal macOS functions, you don't need a fancy mtm setup.
IANAL, but I really don't think so. On a company laptop, the company owns the laptop, and the company can lock it down as much or as little as they want.
The bash4 from homebrew is installed to a different place to the system bash, and even when you switch to it as your login shell the system bash is still accessible. The homebrew design is never to overwrite system programs but to have same named alternatives higher in $path.
Somehow I don't think GPLv3 presumes that you'll replace system files. And I'm using Homebrew versions of system-bundled utils just fine without overwriting them.
Why is self signing a problem? Keychain Access (macOS's password utility) has allowed this capability for years. It's possible someone could self sign malicious things, but I'd consider that a separate - if related - problem.
I suspect they also recognize that applying the GPL would force them to release things they otherwise consider private.
