Page 2 – News Debris For The Week of January 29th
Fighting in the OS Trenches
• When Apple announced that it was yanking many enterprise-related features from macOS Server, our John Kheit went ballistic. “Apple Seemingly Kills macOS Server, Deprecates Many Essential Services.” A great read.
This week I ran across another splendid article by, who else, Dan Moren that puts more meat on the bones of this topic. “macOS Server: As features are cut, what does the future hold for Apple’s server software?”
Author Moren goes into the history of macOS Server, his personal experience with it, Apple’s thinking, and what the future holds. In my mind, it’s certainly sad to see Apple take this direction, but not because of waning enterprise support.
Rather, if you’re going to be a player in the major OS market, you have to fight hard in the trenches and learn. Every time macOS Server is deployed, Apple has to be prepared to work at a very high level in UNIX technologies and security. That experience, in turn informs Apple about consumer OS issues.
Withdrawing from enteprise support may look sensible for a consumer-oriented company, but it’s like an aerospace company pulling back from combat aircraft and claiming that it can still build superior, high performance business jets.
A company has to walk the walk of the highest levels of stress and performance to work with excellence at lower levels. Otherwise it quickly gets in over its technical head.
• Deciding, as a corporation, when to get into a new market depends on several things. Is the infrastructure, including satisfactory security, in place? Is the customer psychology primed? Do applicable laws intended to protect certain interests get in the way? Do the industry players see an ROI in the proposed solution?
This article at CNBC addresses those issues. “Why Apple will succeed where other tech giants have failed: Helping people track their health info.”
• You have to own an iPhone with iOS 11 to operate a HomePod. Is this a problem? You can’t use Siri to search your ripped library in iTunes. Is this a problem? Is it too closed? Michael Simon at Macworld takes sober look at how Apple has designed the HomePod. “HomePod’s biggest problem isn’t Siri, it’s that it’s too much like the original iPod.” What do you think? Tell me if you’re buying one.
• Finally, the iPhone X is a spectacular smartphone. Customers have been eager to acquire one even as others, with a sour grapes mentality, focused on its cost and (faux) downsides. Here’s a nice article at The Verge that sums up the feelings, pro and con, about the iPhone X and highlights the key issue. Good old-fashioned customer satisfaction. “The iPhone X is Apple’s underrated masterpiece.”
Particle Debris is a generally a mix of John Martellaro’s observations and opinions about a standout event or article of the week (preamble on page one) followed on page two by a discussion of articles that didn’t make the TMO headlines, the technical news debris. The column is published most every Friday except for holiday weeks.
Wow, a lot of whining for something that hasn’t been even properly described yet!
I might contend that the security problems with servers are tangential at best to the issues with consumer machines and data.
And what is wrong with allowing iOS apps to run on a Macintosh? That does not necessarily mean that your heavy lifting apps (where you need 2 monitors and a full sized keyboard) will have to run on an iPhone. It all depends on the implementation. That said, Windows 10 is fairly robust, some variants or Linux are user friendly. So if you really need total control and the tools you want are on those platforms, then by all means use the best tool for the job. But try not to whine about it.
The one thing you can count on in life is change. (and the other thing is people complaining about it!)
John:
Just one quick comment before I have to do some real work.
I concur with much of the CNBC article on why Apple will succeed in the health medical record space where others have failed. Apple is well positioned, not simply with material assets, like the iOS devices (which have remarkably high penetration in both the personal consumer and the health provider spaces) and watchOS devices, but secure digital infrastructure as well. Most importantly, they have a ready and substantial instal base of users who have bought into that infrastructure, and can use that war chest of cash to fund both the R&D and investment to fuel that transition.
On another front, Amazon and Alphabet are (and MS) are creating a private insurance option for their employees that, provided it succeeds, will undoubtedly be opened up to the public in short order, and which, if all parties play nice, could further incentivise the adoption of Apple’s (and others’) electronic medical records solutions (EMR).
The potential for a portable EMR that health care providers can access in emergency situations will have substantial impact emergency and critical care survival, particularly when seconds count. And that’s even before we factor in potential new health monitoring and intervention technology that both Apple and third parties are working on to build into the AW and iOS devices.
Again, I concur with the CNBC piece, a game changer, indeed.
I agree with you about MAc OS Server. But
Cessna? Lear? I don’t believe either ever built combat aircraft. The closest was the Cessna Skymaster but that was a weird one off that had no connection to the Citation line.
Of course, correct me if I’m wrong.
The concerns about Macs becoming iOS devices makes me wonder about the Apple announced, deprecation of services from MacOS server. A sign of things to come?
It’s really insulting every time I read or hear a writer talk about iPad pro being the future…if that’s the case I’ll be going back to Windows.
As a creative business pro, I need the horsepower, real keyboard size, and dual 27″ monitors for my “heavy lifting” duties.
The thought of trying to do this on a grid-based icon tablet nauseate me.
Those that do their “job” on a tablet at Starbucks are not the vast majority of creative pros, TIM COOK!
Linux continues to call to me, to check it out as a power platform for a desktop computer…. every time Apple degrades their desktops.
Bring full APFS support for Time Machine and external SSD. Besides updated Apple Mail allowing to handle thousands of messages and manually run all rules at any time with a single click.
I have no doubt what is coming in the next version of macOS; and I hope to be dead wrong. Basically, we will get a reduction in usability. More security features that get in the way. More dumbing down of applications. More bugs. I’m stuck on El Capitan because both Sierra and High Sierra are a degradation of the OS in spite of new technology. Consumers are cool and everything, but I really like it when the OS accommodates power users as well. Little by little, IMHO, Apple is falling by the Sony wayside. I am ready for Apple 4.0, and hopefully a return to a fervent desire to create the very best user experience that can be had. Planned obsolesence etc. be damned.
I am so sorry about that mess above, I thought I could abort an upload if I did it early enough.
For me, the critical advantage in health info that Apple has over other companies out there is trust. Apple has left money on the table because they did not want to offer products and features to match competitors if it meant a surrender or even a compromise on user privacy.
Google at one time contemplated asking people to trust them with their health information? Ha ha ha ha ha! I’d rather take a cruise on a Google barge.
For me, the critical advantage in health info that Apple has over other companies out there is trust. Apple has left money on the table because they did not want to offer products and features to match competitors if it meant a surrender or even a compromise on user privacy.
Google at one time contemplated asking people to trust them with their health information? Ha ha ha ha ha! I’d rather go aboard a Google barge.
For me, the critical advantage in health info that Apple has over other companies out there is trust. Apple has left money on the table because they did not want to offer products and features to match competitors if it meant a surrender or even a compromise on user privacy.
Google at one time thought contemplated asking people to trust them with their health information? Ha ha ha ha ha! I’d rather go aboard a Google barge.
As an Apple Music subscriber I will be picking up a HomePod on the way home from vacation in three weeks. We already have a Sonos One. What is going to be important to us is comparing the integration of each unit with Apple Music as well as the sound. Generally the hardware that is easier to use gets used in our house when other aspects are close.
We held off on the iPhone X this past fall due to the cost. We are now on an upgrade path that is one year longer. This will make the cost of upgrading to whatever X version of the iPhone comes out this fall about same as the two year upgrade path we were on. Cost was the only reason for this change.
Apple is so myopic it’s stunning. “well, we make boatloads of cash with iOS toys – so we better make ALL our big boy computers run the same OS” . I was hoping they’d re-release Snow Leopard as the next OS, after SL it was all downhill. Why not take advantage of the typically HUGE screens-usually in pairs for we music and graphics guys – or any user that runs his Mac Pro thru a 70″ HD TV??? What happened to skeuomorphism? 3D layers?? Vast Customization? How about some verbal commands at app level incl. some contextual ai?
When will Siri know the answer to “when was the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906”?
_(ツ)_/¯ I mean that’s just embarrassing. Well, maybe they are busy working on the brain controlled UI via fMRI thought reading (a thing-believe it or not)…. but I doubt it. rant over. go pats 🏈
+1