macOS market share is not growing, its stagnate, actually even declined. Apple is not making the macOS hardware for the masses. eg the only user upgradeable mac is for the 0.5%'ers, their only 15in laptop is out of reach for most, and most are not interested the iMacs with built in screen. In order to get more developers to make mac apps, Apple made Catalyst. I wonder how this will pan out.
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Twitter Bringing Mac App Back Using Apple's Project Catalyst
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You can run entire system emulators and OS's in the browser, thanks to Emscripten and asm.js, which allows "compiling" C or C++ to JavaScript - and most browser JavaScript implementations are good enough that that isn't as sucky as it sounds, particularly when emulating older, slower hardware. (an emulator of an old B5500 mainframe running MCP exists, for example; and at one time, an older version of Qt had been ported, and some KDE apps would work) As long as a web app isn't trying to do something that communicates with other sites, or is really CPU intense (nontrivial realtime 3D video rendering, for example), it should be decent, esp. if it's reasonably lightweight and sensibly designed.
Haven't seen anyone mention TweetDeck yet; that's from Twitter I think (at least presently), and seems to work ok.
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The non-Pro MacBooks are not extravagant (although I doubt Apple will ever make bargain basement stuff, so on value for raw numbers or low-end gaming, it's not plausible; but for ease of use and even basic audio work, they'd be fine); and you can upgrade a Mac Mini if you're a bit handy and/or crazy (RAM, or larger disk internally; Thunderbolt-connected PCIe enclosure (just saw a new 1U rack-mountable one that holds the Mini and two PCIe cards), or eGPU externally).
It's not a mini-tower or pizza box, but I wouldn't say it's not upgradeable, at least to a degree, if you think differently about how to go about it.
Yeah, this is too little too late. At this point nobody cares, Twitter.
This is the worst idea I’ve seen on this site, and I’ve been around a while. NO! They ruined Tweetie which was the gold standard before Tweetbot. They will eat Tweetbot alive and spit out its corpse all rotten and bandaged. Don’t ever wish being bought by Twitter upon any good app! LOL. Although I’m sure the devs would enjoy the payday. I’m sure they’re doing fine though, since it’s only two guys who make Tweetbot + a guy who helps with the Mac version.
Isn't twitter that website where people people rate their self-worth by shouting into a void and hoping someone repeats what they said while it's still relevant?
I gotta say, when I first heard this idea of porting Twitter from iOS into a native Mac app, I was slightly impressed. Before that, I was struggling to think of scenarios where I'd actually WANT iOS apps brought over to my Mac. This is one of those "edge cases", in my opinion, where you have a lot of demand for an app for OS X that was discontinued - and where Marizpan technology makes it cost-effective and worthwhile to bring it back again, courtesy of sharing the iOS code-base.
I have a feeling there are probably some other similar cases, that will often have to do with various clients developed to run on the Mac at one time as "companion apps" to larger web-based applications, and which also had their support ended for financial reasons. (I know Salesforce has a chat/IM component called "Chatter" that comes to mind. Used to run on the Mac as an app made with Adobe Air but was eventually discontinued. Mac users were just directed to the web based version of Chatter instead.)
But beyond that? I don't see this boding so well for Mac OS X? I think most iOS apps are smaller in size and scope than applications people typically use on personal computers. Just because they make it easy to port from iOS to Mac and hook in to functionality like "dark mode", or to have Mac-appropriate menu pull-downs and mouse actions doesn't make the app itself any more powerful. This discourages developers from doing the hard work to build "full size" applications or even games that take advantage of all the reasons you're using a computer instead of a tablet or phone.
I have a feeling there are probably some other similar cases, that will often have to do with various clients developed to run on the Mac at one time as "companion apps" to larger web-based applications, and which also had their support ended for financial reasons. (I know Salesforce has a chat/IM component called "Chatter" that comes to mind. Used to run on the Mac as an app made with Adobe Air but was eventually discontinued. Mac users were just directed to the web based version of Chatter instead.)
But beyond that? I don't see this boding so well for Mac OS X? I think most iOS apps are smaller in size and scope than applications people typically use on personal computers. Just because they make it easy to port from iOS to Mac and hook in to functionality like "dark mode", or to have Mac-appropriate menu pull-downs and mouse actions doesn't make the app itself any more powerful. This discourages developers from doing the hard work to build "full size" applications or even games that take advantage of all the reasons you're using a computer instead of a tablet or phone.
Not going to happen. People dont use websites anymore, they use apps on iPhone ,iPad & android. The Mac & Windows platforms are for luddites.
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The problem with your logic is, that hard work is rarely done to make excellent Mac apps.The Mac has only 9% marketshare in legacy PC world.Its better to have the 1 Million low quality iPad apps on Mac, that get updates. Out of those 1M if only 50,000 make great Mac apps, thats excellent. Its up to Apple's App Store editors to bring the best ones out.
Lets face it, people like having apps. It is good to bring back the focus to the Mac. Maybe it will spur more Mac sales.
The only use of twitter I've found is when you publicly complain about a product or service (e.g. Amazon, ATT,) you sometimes get help. Calling in or sending email is most likely worthless.
ARM and x86 have nothing to do with this. They're just processors (well, really architectures, but which one you use implies which company you buy from), and you use whatever fulfills the physical and load requirements the best. Has nothing to do with UI frameworks.
Also, modern computing performance is all about specialized "accelerator" chips, not CPUs. It's expected that they'll differ wildly between devices, so there's not much hope in Macs becoming more like iPads and iPhones. Maybe Apple will switch Macs to ARM just cause it's RISC; those extra CPU features Intel keeps adding on won't matter anymore.
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Photoshop is the thing you should avoid updating the most, lol. CS6 is still fine, but it uses like 10X the resources of CS3 for no reason.
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It doesn't make sense to mention "masses" and upgrading PCs in the same sentence. Most people don't know what RAM is.
You want a truly great Twitter app? Give back API access to third party developers.
As a long time MacOS developer, and now iOS developer, I don't see the slightest reason why Apple would switch to an ARM-only Mac. ARM and x86 processors work in very similar ways, while having totally different instruction sets. If you have an application written for 64-bit ARM, and you haven't been mad enough to use assembler code, then all you need to do as a developer is to recompile for x86 code.
On the other hand, there _are_ applications where the x86 processor has advantages, like cryptography, string manipulation, and heavily vectorised floating-point arithmetic, so you wouldn't want to give that up.
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The restriction is that you need to tell Apple beforehand which URL schemes you are looking for, and they will want a reason.
They'd have more control over the hardware. Intel's roadmap these past few years has been a bit rocky; hopefully, they'll get back on a sane path with Sunny Cove / Ice Lake.
There are valid reasons, but it would also likely mean I'll leave the Mac platform.
Yes, which was introduced right after it came out that Twitter registered all sorts of URL schemes it didn't need in order to track which apps you have installed.
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Yes, which was introduced right after it came out that Twitter registered all sorts of URL schemes it didn't need in order to track which apps you have installed.[/QUOTE]
Why would you leave the Mac platform? My guess is that the Mac platform will be divided between intel and ARM, the MacBook pro’ s , Mac pro’ s , iMacs will still be intel for years to come.
Nope. They would ARM as a new Mac architecture.
Not that I think ARM-based Mac is coming anytime soon. It won't happen until they have a plan to upgrade *all* Macs, not just having the MacBook be a one-off. And they are nowhere near meeting all the problems that would have to be solved for ARM versions of any of their pro machines.
But.. why? There is nothing iPhone or iPad needed to run macOS on ARM. And an arbitrary requirement to use iOS SDKs will mean zero old code Mac code will run, and all that old code would have no migration path. They'd shoot their foot for any Mac that only supported catalyst.
On the flip side, Catalyst in Catalina plainly shows there is zero requirement for ARM support for Catalyst to work. Catalyst isn't designed to be able to run arbitrary iPad apps on the Mac without recompile, even if that Mac was ARM-based. It is source-level compatibility with iOS SDKs, not binary compatibility.
Likewise, Catalyst in Catalina generates x86 binaries. Using Catalyst doesn't help at all in running those app versions on an ARM Mac - you need the developer to come out with a new release that has an ARM binary.
How would having no transition plan for any *existing* Mac apps that do not have lineage from iOS going to help?
If there is an ARM-based Mac, I would expect it to have a Rosetta tech that lets you run x86 code on the Mac proper. Including the Catalina-timeframe Mac apps that were built with Catalyst.
That would be *interesting*, but rather unlikely. The 12" MacBook is the model that could be most easily built by an A13 chip, but where does that put apple on say an 18 month cycle to replace the rest of the line, including the beastly Mac Pro, with ARM?
I simply can't believe Apple's goal would be to divide the Mac in half along an Intel/ARM line. Catalyst does zero to change this, because it doesn't have anything targeting CPU architecture.
No it has the ability to make Mac apps from iPad apps , so you can change res and operation from touch to keyboard and trackpad , and adding drop menu’ s, etc.
So technically it would be possible to have these apps on a Mac that is arm based.
Adobe is already trying to put full photoshop on an iPad, Apple will try to make an arm based Final Cut Pro, etc.
the way you are seeing things is that all the current Mac apps with x86 code will have to be converted to ARM. They won’ t have to , that is up to the developer.
The only difference between the iPads and these arm MacBooks will be the GUI. One is optimized for touch, the other for keyboard and trackpad. It will be a Mac “ lite” , a new category. For people that just want a laptop to edit photo’ s , some light video editing, simple spreadsheet, word, email and web surfing , file management . But prefer MacOs and native keyboard and trackpad operation.
It won’ t be for the pro’ s. Like the current macbook 12 inch (and MacBook air) is not for the pro’ s.
If apple wants to have better desktop like quality apps on iPad and wants to begin starting making it own cpu’ s for consumer macs , they can do that by pushing catalyst and start with introducing a “beginners “/mainstream Mac for a nicer price than the intel based macs.
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Twitter is amazing but I find that it works best on the phone. I've always preferred the official clients, so the iPad Twitter client on the desktop sounds promising.
Tweetbot is useless now with the limited APIs, so your suggestion to not let Twitter buy them makes no sense which is worse than my idea. At least those guys can try to make Twitter better.
I don’t think it’s useless. Remember, it’s Twitter’s bad ideas that ruined Tweetie and it’s Twitter’s bad ideas that ruined their API and therefore limited Tweetbot. If Twitter bought Tweetbot, things would only somehow get worse. If anything Tweetbot has kept the bar high.
Twitter is a dying platform anyway. I’ve mostly moved on at this point. What did I move on to? Nothing. Social is destroying our society. I’m sick of it. Anyway, sorry for the side rant.