Yes, but how else do they plan to announce they have achieved it without 1984 word management/control and polluting the training pool so badly that future trained models agree?
Plus show me an off the shelf solution to MDM that exists in the Linux space?
(Not too mention an easy to buy consumer devices which supports suspend/resume correctly in 2026, not even Windows can do that any more)
Apple is crap and evil about many things, but at least here they know their paying audience...
One case where Apple can be very useful is if you're traveling a lot for work.
Wherever you are you can probably find a local store that sells and services Macbooks. So if your machine is damaged during a trip you can get it fixed, or buy a replacement on the spot, and at least get through the work you are there to do.
For small-ish companies that can be a very useful feature.
Except it's still a slightly different challenge each time to "get it working", each different PC. A Mac is a Mac is a Mac, more or less.
I have a nice Framework laptop on my desk running Kubuntu alongside my Macs. Every now and then I check in, make sure I could switch to it if I needed to, test all my important tasks, plug it in so the stupid mainboard battery does not go flat.
And then I go back to my Mac, because I prefer it and even Tahoe isn't painful enough to switch. KDE is fine and I'll use it if circumstances dictate I have to.
I think critics misunderstand the extent to which Mac-using devs are "locked into Apple's ecosystem". Unless you're writing iOS apps, you aren't. You perhaps even exist in a more heterogeneous world (Mac and Linux, Mac and Windows, all three) than a Linux-using web dev does.
Essentially everything I run is not at all "locked in". I would miss the ease of keychain, handoff and Apple Notes (which I like despite its flaws). And then I'd deal with it. I'd probably carry on using an iPhone (I am very ambivalent about the iPad)
FWIW my "Apple ecosystem" is why I have been able to teach myself open weights/open source AI at a pragmatic level, because my secondhand off-the-shelf kit does an acceptable job of it without me yet having to specify a PC I don't have enough use for as a non-gamer. A lot of people have solved a lot of general problems that I don't have to tinker with too early.
This isn't a fanboy thing (I would consider myself a qualified critic). Both KDE and GNOME have some nice things. It's just a question of energies.
IIRC it was Adrian Cockcroft who said he used Sun at work, and a Mac at home, because performance tuning was his day job and he didn't want to do it at home; I think this resonates.
It has been my own choice for 28 years, largely: Mac plus linux.
Right but a secondhand thinkpad is not a laptop you find in the travel context of the thread.
(I dispute the main point, too — I spent flipping hours trying and failing to get trackpad speed right on a Surface Go in GNOME/Wayland. Ended up having to abandon that combination.)
On the contrary it (faster Surface Go 2) was one of the most practical little machines I’ve ever used, and was really impressive in Windows 11.
I am totally happy to lay the blame for the poor trackpad performance in Gnome/Wayland on the software, because the hardware was super. Absent that problem I would have used it for almost anything and I loved taking it on trains and to coffee shops; Apple has no equivalent machine at all.
But you’re making the point for me. Success in Linux involves either tinkering or constrained hardware choices, even now. That’s fine but I think the Linux world pretends the situation is better.
> But you’re making the point for me. Success in Linux involves either tinkering or constrained hardware choices, even now. That’s fine but I think the Linux world pretends the situation is better.
Have you heard of this new Windows thing that everyone's going on about? Almost nothing supports it out of the box and it's just all tinkering - and that's for something you have to pay a lot of money for.
You're equally hardware-constrained with Apple too. Can you find me an Apple laptop with four "proper" USB ports, a Displayport socket, and swappable battery?
> You're equally hardware-constrained with Apple too. Can you find me an Apple laptop with four "proper" USB ports, a Displayport socket, and swappable battery?
This is now a circular argument.
As I said, a Mac is a Mac is a Mac. Nobody is arguing it is otherwise.
That's the whole point of the thread I was replying to.
Of course it does! I'm exactly suggesting that those constrained hardware choices have value in the context discussed (agreeing with an earlier poster) and that in fact, if you're out on the road or you're under pressure and something fails, the Mac does have that advantage: you'll easily find one and there is no setup time to speak of.
Buying on the spot - sure. Anything that requires repair has to be usually booked in advance with some waiting time. Relatively short, usually days, but still not really possible to go into the store and get your laptop fixed right away in most cases.
There's also a difference between treatment and cure but we call it all a "vaccine" now (I prefer the transitional OED definition from pre 2019). We've already entered 1984s use of good speak especially around healthcare.
Yeah that article is missing a very major point that immigration in the UK hasn't meant assimilation or a coherent mixing of cultures as people want or may have observed at times.
The problems in the UK are actually focused around sticky blobbyness caused by a) lack of integration, b) left vs right flavor of the moment causing further segregation and c) long term socioeconomic factors leading to govt(councils) fixing the problem in the cheapest way possible which is unfortunately high profile in the British high street by the public.
A lot of British are moving out of the city centers themselves (or already have) and into suburbs which leaves the cities hollowed out. Lack of footfall means lack of investment means decay and cheap housing/buildings.
All of this is a predicable recipe for friction but very short term British politics combined with a "not my problem" attitude prevalent in the nhs and public sectors means people doubled down in short term solutions for over a generation.
That combined with more hardship causes people to look at the biggest broken problem which is our immigration system needed reforming over 20yr+ ago and unfortunately this was locked into place by EU laws and policy (such ironically we pushed for, for other political reasons).
It's less of a grand conspiracy and more of the dominoes we're set to fall this way after dragging us out of the 80s without fixing anything and then the post recession being used to fuel boom and growth vs fixing underlying issues at a national level.
British people miss the fact that assimilation happens in the generation after the immigrant generation. Italian immigrants were looked down on in the US too. Too catholic, not speaking the language and not engaging in american culture practices. The next generation speaks fluent english and is scarcely different than any other american out of the school system.
I wonder if we (the countries experiencing mass immigration numbers) are also missing that between 1908 and 1923 35% to 40% of all immigrants who arrived in the U.S. eventually returned to their home countries. I wonder if those were people who were unable to assimilate and if those numbers are true today or if with access to media from home, etc, it no longer occurs as much and the dynamics today are incomparable to historical immigration/assimilation patterns.
Most immigrants in UK do assimilate. Seen the stories about the high proportion of births where at least one parent is foreign born? In most cases the other parent is British born.
No, that's the quality of candidates. I wish I was joking as a PhD holder for only 15yr.
A lot of skill of
is getting bled into the private sector because getting the PhD in a lot of regions doesn't mean the step up it used to. A lot of that comes from awarding them to layabouts doing "a gender critical analysis of ...".
Industry doesn't how/what/why they just wanted the 3 letters as a performance barrier to hire competants.
Those who can use it better, those who can't out who cheat are (for now) let down by obviously cheap and slightly crappy models.
The worry is in ~5yr time when the generic models catch up to this level (basic undergrad mind) that we need to worry about how to thin the herd. We could always go back to the tried and tested student staff engagement but most unis tried to turn themselves into sausage factories in thirst for the almighty dollar so the student/staff ratios are all off
