During this year’s “Introducing Dark Mode” session at WWDC Apple gave us three reasons why they were including Dark Mode as a feature in Mac OS Mojave.
- Dark interfaces are cool.
- Dark interfaces are not just inverted.
- Dark Mode is content-focused.
As Stephen Hackett points out, reason No. 1 is hard to argue against; dark user interfaces are cool. (How far we have come from when the black on white interface of the original 1984 Macintosh was considered fashionable.) But dark user interfaces are also difficult to pull off; especially with over 17 years of Mac OS X graphical user interface history behind them. Stephen Hackett shows us how Apple does Dark Mode right.
The system requirements for each new Macintosh operating system are rarely out-of-step with Apple’s marketing message. Mac OS Mojave is no exception. A big theme for this year’s WWDC keynote was improved performance through optimization, and as expected the Mac OS Mojave system requirements reflect upon that theme.
- MacBook (Early 2015 or newer)
- MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or newer)
- MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)
- Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer)
- iMac (Late 2012 or newer)
- iMac Pro (2017)
- Mac Pro models from late 2013 (plus mid 2010 and mid 2012 models with recommend Metal-capable GPU)
At first glance the Mojave system requirements don’t appear to follow a specific trend. It is only when we examine the minimal hardware requirements for Apple’s next generation graphics API Metal, that we find our answer.
During a “What’s new in Metal” session at WWDC, Apple announced that Metal support in OS X extends to Macs built since 2012.
But why is Apple making Metal a requirement for Mac OS now? The answer is optimization. While every other major operating system has good OpenGl support, Apple’s implementation of OpenGL has been languishing for years. Metal promises to improves the Mac’s graphics for less CPU cycles and fewer watts than OpenGL, but at the cost of compatibility.
As a proprietary system-wide 3D graphics engine, Metal does not benefit from the same large cross-platform developer community OpenGL enjoys. Metal only runs on Apple hardware and drops support for Macs made earlier than 2012. This wouldn’t be a problem for Macintosh Developers if Apple continued to support Metal and OpenGL side by side, but with the release of Mac OS Mojave and iOS 12 Apple is depreciating OpenGL in favor of Metal. Forcing 3D developers to choose Metal if they want to continue continue working with the Mac.
As a long time Mac user I have reasons to be wary of proprietary system-wide 3D graphics engine’s from Apple, but by retiring OpenGL in favor of Metal I believe Apple is making the right choice for its customers. Today’s Apple isn’t in the same beleaguered position it once was in 1999 when it adopted OpenGl. Today’s Apple has the market share needed to move to a new optimized API while keeping developersonboard. Mac OS Majove isn’t the last we will see of OpenGL on the Mac (depreciated features take a long time to disappear), but now we finally know why OpenGL is so poorly supported on Mac OS.
Jason Snell on May 23, 2018:
Here’s a bit of numerology for you. Today marks 17 years, one month, and 29 days since Mac OS X 10.0 was released on March 24, 2001. That’s a strangely odd number—6,269 days—but it also happens to be the exact length of time between January 24, 1984 (the launch of the original Macintosh) and March 24, 2001.
In other words, today the Mac’s second operating system era, powered by Mac OS X (now macOS) has been in existence as long as the first era was.
I grew up with Macintosh 512K in my home, a computer that is almost as old as I am. I have known the Mac all my life, and yet I am still surprised Mac OS X is as old as the Classic Mac era that came before it.
Perhaps this is because:
- I was not fully aware of the first era during the early years of my childhood.
- The first era saw several long years of stagnation; I am looking at you System 7.
- The second era began during my adolescence — in the early 2000’s — when Internet adoption, technological innovation, and Apple’s growth were accelerating.
No matter which era feels longer, the truth is we are all now living in the third era of Apple system software. An era where iOS has replaced Mac OS as Apple’s most important platform. iOS comes with all of advantages of the first two eras:
- The adoption of multi-touch and universal wireless data changed the world just as much as the introduction of the GUI in the first era.
- With over 11 annual iterations the third era has never showed signs of slowing down due to a lack of innovation the way the first era did.
- The third era has already witnessed an increased rate or Internet adoption, technological innovation, and growth that far exceeds the second era.
And yet for me Apple’s third era feels the least significant. Perhaps this is because iOS — at 3,981 days since its introduction — has still not replaced the Mac I am using today.
This week we learned a new Mac Pro isn’t coming until 2019. Clearly this revelation is a Apple public relations move designed to reign-in expectations prior to this year’s WWDC. But what makes this announcement so absurd is the guises that it is being made in the name of transparency while omitting any details describing the upcoming machine.
“We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community, so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It’s not something for this year.” In addition to transparency for pro customers, there’s also a larger fiscal reason behind it.
“We know that there’s a lot of customers today that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro,” says Boger.
This is why Apple wants to be as explicit as possible now, so that if institutional buyers or other large customers are waiting to spend budget on, say iMac Pros or other machines, they should pull the trigger without worry that a Mac Pro might appear late in the purchasing year.
It’s almost as if Apple is telling its pro customers to buy different company’s modular computer.
Pro Working Group
Instead of facts we got some spin about how Apple was setting up a “Pro Working Group” to find out what their professional customers need in a pro workstation computer.
“We said in the meeting last year that the pro community isn’t one thing,” says Ternus. “It’s very diverse. There’s many different types of pros and obviously they go really deep into the hardware and software and are pushing everything to its limit. So one thing you have to do is we need to be engaging with the customers to really understand their needs. Because we want to provide complete pro solutions, not just deliver big hardware, which we’re doing and we did it with iMac Pro. But look at everything holistically.”
Apple forming a pro computer steering committees in 2018 is pathetic. The last Mac Pro was released in 2013 and it was a design failure. Apple has had nearly four years to figure out what pros want. Are they just starting now?
The disclosure of the “Pro Working Group” smells like a smoke shield deployed to distract us from the fact Apple is still figuring out what professionals want. Professionals who used to count as some of Apple’s most loyal customers.
Apple’s inability to produce a computer their professional customers want in a reasonable time frame is a sign removing Computer from the company name in 2007 was the right decision.
This tweet by Dr. Drang best sums up Apple’s latest Mac Pro announcement.
Apple will be taking an extra year to design the only product in its lineup whose buyers don’t care about its design.
David Sparks:
Over the years, Apple Products have become increasingly less repairable. The latest teardown of the new iPad evidences this fact with photos of densely packed electronic components and copious amounts of glue. This led iFixit to give the new iPad a low repairability score.
I get that, but also don’t see it as big of a strike against the iPad as most people make it out to be. For years now, repairing these devices, even without the glue, has been no walk in the park. To make these devices small, they have to be dense, and things are locked together inside, so the contents don’t move around. This also leads to that sense of sturdiness you feel with an iPad in your hand.
I don’t believe a computer has to be less “sturdy” to be more “repairable”. The two do not go hand-in-hand. The 2008 MacBook Pro introduced the Unibody chassis which made it far more sturdy than its predecessors, while remaining just as repairable.
That being said I see what David is getting at: “The vast majority of us are not going to take a screwdriver to our iPads at any time, no matter how repairable it is.” … “we buy these devices to use them every day, not take them apart.”
Apple is trading repairability for experience. They are making their computers thinner, lighter, and smaller, but they are paying the price for those improvements in solder, glue, and proprietary components. With a few exceptions, Apple computers are getting more reliable with each new generation. As long as that trend continues consumers should continue buying Apple products.
Apple has an advantage over other computer companies when it comes to maintaining their computers. Their fleet of local Apple Stores and organized repair depots makes fixing issues fast for Apple consumers. That being said an expedited repair process doesn’t hold the same value for all people. Some customers prefer to perform repairs and upgrades themselves; often past the customary five to seven years Apple supports their own products. To those people I say “don’t buy Apple.” If you value repairability over experience Apple is no longer making a computer for you.