Apple Gatekeeper- looks like OSX is moving towards a closed App store type system....

[tombruton69]

Back end development work now going into security. Fedora is just a testbed for what redhat will be. The aim is to try out new technologies and they really do push them, its such an important distro to linux and gnu as a whole. So it is a fundimental part of Linux development and they are massive kernal contributers. I allways use kde tho cant stand gnome. linus was talking about some of the new stuff being 40% more efficient that it was a year b4 which at that level is unheard of. then redhat is sposed to be super stable. I like fedora cuz u can do stuff many ways rather than with ubuntu where u can only do most stuff one way.

I have a macbook pro set aside for music. my other mac dont get much use. OSX is terrible at running virtual machines in my experience which is somthing I use alot of. Im looking at buying an asus zenbook as my next purchase then running fedora on that.

The desktop is a hard area for linux because you have to support so many devices which is unlike every other area. ie phones dont have much stuff plugged into them, or if you buy a supercomputer they tell you what printer to buy. For the average person most the time computer is somthing they do work on and they dont really care that much, so changing there OS is a massive decision. If you look at Mac sale's are now going back down because people though oh I have an iphone so it will be like that and its not. I see so many ppl who have bought a mac just to use the internet mainly facebook. Most dont know how to close an app.

ppl say linux is a bad option because you dont get any support. Please tell me what support people have got from microsoft? Apple are a tiny bit better but any technical question aint guna get answered(well what id consider technical).

If linux got steam witha good amound of games, ableton live, and traktor id go all linux until that day I just cant operate without them, also a native version of notepad ++ would be nice

[mostapha]

You're a developer and like notepad++ but can't find a text editor you like on linux?

[tombruton69]

I know there is loads of good ones, just wat I started on plus got all my extentions set up. Its just wat im used to running it in wine isnt ideal but its never given me any grief. I used sublime for a bit duno just allways found myself going back to notepad ++, but i have tried alot. tried txt mate on mac. The more I move over to git my preference might change

[mostapha]

I still just like vim when I can get away with it.

So, anyway…back on topic…uhh………Apple's not that scary…yet.

If they actually end up dropping the Mac Pros, we'll see what happens. I was in an Avid webcast/chat thing a week or so ago and someone asked about that. Their response: they're testing this for use with Pro Tools HDX and HD Native. But that could mean the beginning of the end for Apple's pro media dominance.

Apparently, no one expects Apple to continue with the Final Cut line because of how much of a failure Final Cut Pro X was……apparently, it was more suited to be an upgrade from iMovie than from the last version of FCP…which drove just about its entire user base to Avid and Adobe.

So, still, they'd have to go a long way before I'd jump ship…but I'm afraid of it happening. Gatekeeper is not a piece of it, though. Just one more thing to turn off after I install OS X.

[Xonetacular]

You really think they will stop making mac pros?

That would kind of suck. As long as I can keep building hackintoshes though.

[mostapha]

When they drop support for real motherboards, you won't. And, idk. There are a lot of those rumors floating around mostly due to how badly they're selling compared to iPads.

[tombruton69]

I can see Apple moving away from pro media and just focusing on consumer products, macbook pro sales are down, dont know about air and the mac pro has gone well beyond its update cycle. Come on 2 grand and you dont even get 4 gigs of ram. So I could see it being a logical step for them. Most pro software is availble for mac and pc, so speeds aint too much of an issue, apple make so much money from a closed way of doing things I think they dont care too much about there pro market

they make nearly all there money from iphone and ipad now. Will ipad sales stay constant that is somthing to be seen as it is a new market. I know tablets have been around b4 but this is the 1st sucsesfull one. tho samsung and motorola are getting in on some of the tablet action.

[mostapha]

Yeah…that's the part that scares me. I effing warned people that the iPad was bad news: either it'd be a huge flop that might end up bankrupting the company right when they were back on an upswing or they'd be so incredibly successful that their future as a real computer maker might be in jeopardy.

Now…they do still have their little walled garden thing going. And Macbooks are a big part of that. It wouldn't be viable for them to, say, discontinue the windows version of iTunes. But there are a few ways they could go:

1 - Make their computers even more high end…and allow iCloud clients & iTunes on Windows for normal people…I don't really see that happening unless they change platforms again to eliminate the possibility of a hackintosh.

2 - Pull the plug on computers, starting with Mac Pros and continuing to everything that's not essentially a media consumption device. This would be the horrible one that would likely drive me to replacing my Mac with a multitrack recorder (tascam, roland, and sound devices still make these), a mixer, and a bunch of expensive outboard gear.

3 - Move everything towards mobile (meaning laptop) computing. Honestly, except for people doing high-end video/audio, most people don't really need a desktop…they're a plus for gaming, but they're not absolutely necessary……and those people are buying wintel/winamd anyway. And the high-end video/audio stuff doesn't have to be a desktop……it just has to use hardware that–until recently–is only available for desktops. Realistically, even if I were running a real studio (as in, recording bands), it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Avid was genius with their AAX plugin format: plugins that–if the plugin can do it and if you have the hardware–can be assigned to the computer's processor or the HDX DSP chips……dynamically. So, you have that Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure thing (after Avid qualifies it) running HDX3 at home connected to your big audio interfaces in your well-treated space and recording something like 96 extremely low-latency (like 0.7ms round trip) inputs. There's not a lot you can't record with that. And you could run it off a laptop. And, say you need to go somewhere else (besides your studio)……freeze/bounce the tracks you don't need to do a lot to, shut down your laptop…and take it with you, using the internal sound card with the latency jacked way the hell up. Run the same plugins (as much as your computer can handle on its own) in the same software with the same project……and go back to the DSP when you get back to the studio.

That'd be cool. But, it relies on Apple not going all-in on iOS. Magma and Avid seem to be convinced they won't. But it's easy to understand that it can be really hard to spend that much on development when you're making so much more money letting people throw pigs at birds and post to instagram.

4 - Open the OS to other hardware. Work from the Avid model that qualifies specific pieces if you want to keep the integration and reliability……but stop producing it yourself. I'm not sure their design team would be happy with the thought of ugly Macs, but it'd be one way to go. That might be the best option, even if it makes OS X cost $300. Then, I'd just have to kick a computer out of my DJ booth……which would be a lot easier.

[tombruton69]

The thing with tablets is that nobody is totally sure where the market will be in 5 years, we are pretty sure laptops and the like will be here, but I honestly think in the next 2 years tablet sales will drop. I bought a few tablets for development ansd to be honest dont use them that much.

For alot of people I think its a fashion statment, like ppl who own a mac not cuz they prefer the os or perform tasks its suited to. I think making OSX a closed system would damage software support and kill the platform. Without steve jobs the company could be in trouble like last time. Steve was great at taking another persons idea, making it a bit better then convincing the world its the perfect solution.

Bill gates was wanting to make tablets a sucsess for years and we was not quite at the technological stage. Now we are going to see a whole bunch of Windows 8 tablets this october. I think the next 5 years will be very interesting for both companies.

Both no longer have there founders, bill could return but there are other things that seem to be taking priority for him

[deevey]

I somehow can't see them getting out of the pro market, be that with a new Mac pro OR some method of perhaps daisy chaining Mini's / MacBooks / iMacs into a single workstation or server cluster perhaps using thunderbolt (that would be pretty neat?).

Apparently, no one expects Apple to continue with the Final Cut line because of how much of a failure Final Cut Pro X was……apparently, it was more suited to be an upgrade from iMovie than from the last version of FCP…which drove just about its entire user base to Avid and Adobe.

They just updated FCP after a complete re-write for FCPX, yes a lot of pissed off people who have used FCP 7 for years and felt that loads of stuff was just "missing", however their recent update addressed ALOT of those issues, which means they are obviously wanting to keep that market segment happy or they would have dropped it totally, logic pro x is in the pipeline too, so I certainly don't believe apple will go completely consumer at any point in the near future OR lock down all applications to the app store - however will keep tabs on possible unsafe ones (hence gatekeeper).

I'm thinking something is going to appear pretty soon to wet the appetite of the pro market, don't forget those x-serves need to be replaced too with any luck and I can't imagine them bothering with lion server purely for Mac-minis. ?