I’m curious if Microsoft is regretting not pursuing the Windows phone and universal apps strategy with more pathos, seeing now how successfully is Apple executing incremental changes to get to a homogenous cross device experience. At this point there is no other company that even comes close in terms of replicating this kind of experience, natively across 3 classes of devices (phone, tablet, computer). I’m really wondering what is Google and Microsoft strategizing when they see Apple’s progress.
The hell is Apple doing with their supported machines?<p>* iMac Late 2014 - Haswell 4th gen CPU with AMD GCN 1.0 or 1.2 GPU - not supported<p>* Mac Mini Late 2014 - Haswell 4th gen CPU and GPU - supported (this came out the same day as aforementioned iMac)<p>* Mac Pro Late 2013 - Ivy Bridge 3rd gen CPU with AMD GCN 1.0 GPU - supported<p>* Macbook Late 2015 - Broadwell 5th gen CPU and GPU - not supported<p>* Macbook Air Early 2015 - Broadwell 5th gen CPU and GPU - supported<p>I was thinking I could get consistent, somewhat predictable 10 year support out of Apple when buying a new machine - counting 2 years of security updates after the last supported major release. Usually Apple lets go old stuff for specific architecture features in the CPU or GPU, meaning there's <i>some</i> technical reason albeit unstated. But this looks like a random crapshoot? This doesn't inspire confidence for my intended new purchase this year - because the 10 years on my previous purchase is running out.<p>It's rough especially for people that spent thousands of dollars on the 27" 5K iMac in 2014 to be cut off in this release - really at the earliest end for Apple. That was a halo product on release and is still a damn fine computer, and will still be a damn fine computer two years from now. If you had instead bought a cheap Mac Mini the same day you'd have one more year of support at least...
The new focus feature is great and something I've been looking forward to for ages — so much so that I built a hacky version of it myself a while ago. Essentially, I used to put on do not disturb for deep work but forget to turn it off later, missing out on important notifications. I really enjoy turning things off for an hour or two and then get back to being social. Having the feature baked into the OS instead of my hacky workaround app is great.
It’s cool to see the “move your mouse between computers” concept become more widely available. I worked as an intern at TideBreak in 2007. Their product PointRight was based on work the founder did at Stanford in 2000. It let you move your mouse from one computer to another:<p><a href="http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/pointright/" rel="nofollow">http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/pointright/</a>
Many of the Facetime features would have been great for the pandemic. Too bad that would have resulted in an insane schedule for the engineers.<p>I love the idea of the different Focus modes. Hopefully they have some good profiles out-of-the-box. I imagine without a good set of profiles, most people will never end up touching it. Hopefully shortcuts can interact with the current focus mode.<p>The Safari changes are quite aggressive. I'll have to try it before judging it. I don't really use the tab bar that much. I tend to find tab expose works better for me. If that still works, this change will make little difference for me. The tab groups seems neat. I know that is a thing people are always asking for.<p>What is interesting is the contrast it has Firefox changes announced recently. Those changes got a lot of flack on HN for decreasing the vertical space available for the webpage. These Safari changes go in the opposite direction. The color changing feature further indications that the focus is on the webpage and not the browser.<p>Overall, I predict this version of Safari will be pretty unpopular on Hacker News.
I’m nervous about the changes to Finder. How much collateral damage will be done to existing workflows?<p>Lots of changes to notifications again. Will they reintroduce coherent gestures (swipe to dismiss, default action on click) or reinvent the wheel yet again?<p>I’m still not used to Big Sur’s changes and Apple is yanking the rug out from under me again.
Universal control + airplay for mac is enough to bring back target display mode?!!<p>The universal control example talks about shared keyboards but does drag a PSD layer from ipad to mac which is pretty cool. and the airplay says mirror or extend monitor, cross platform is pretty cool imho.
> Focus helps you stay in the moment when you need to concentrate or step away. Choose a Focus that only allows the notifications you want — you can get work done while you’re in the zone, or enjoy a distraction-free dinner. Pick from a list of suggested Focus options or create your own.<p>distraction-free dinner? Why would people use their computer while eating dinner? I find such a weird thing to say in a feature highlight(ps: i am not american)
Really happy to see the updates to FaceTime making it a more fully-fledged video conferencing tool, no longer limited to users on the Apple ecosystem. It's rivalled only by Zoom in terms of call and video quality on low-bandwidth connections so I really hope that continues with this update!
They seem to mainly feature minor things like the ability to run FaceApp with other apps - that's very good, I hope they take time to stabilize the system instead of adding new features.
Hey Apple, can we have native OS/kernel-level containerization yet?<p>edit: what I mean by this is support for cgroups and network namespaces within xnu:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25447835" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25447835</a>
uf, this page definitly says that I'm not the target audience anymore.
the 2019 16" model was probably my last one (the build quality, etc. is so much worse), besides that i loved the 2013 15" late model.
All I can see these days is purple-magenta gradients and babyfication of UI with rounded corners. Designers follow this recipe without independent thought or opinion about graphic design. I'd love to see UI based on the International style (aka Swiss typographic style) typified by the designers of the bygone era of 1970's and 80's. Ultra functional and less about aesthetics.
Damn, I sure am not seeing anything that makes my solitary, works-offline self want to upgrade when this goes public. I just kinda got off the upgrade train when 10.15 killed off all 32-bit apps because Neko never got recompiled for 64-bit and I didn't wanna lose the cute desktop kitty. I'll be three versions behind when this comes out in Fall.
This is going to be controversial... but if Apple is going to choose a Spanish word for a _very popular_ product name, they should at least pick one that is properly written.<p>Monterrey in Spanish is written with 2 Rs.<p>Yes, I know the city in California is spelled with just a single R. Its original name was actually "Puerto de Monterrey". It probably changed to a single R when Mexico sold California (and other territories) to the US in the mid 1800s.<p>Edit:<p>See, told you this would offend US sensibilities.