In theory, nothing stops someone from writing a FireWire Audio PCI driver using PCIDriverKit and AudioDriverKit, but I'm pretty sure nobody is going to do it unless I magically find myself with a lot more free time. You'd have to start by writing a FireWire OHCI card driver, and then write the drivers for the actual devices on top of that. It would be a huge pain in the you-know-what.

It would be easier, in all likelihood, to just keep Apple's (open source) FireWire drivers working, so long as they don't rip out any critical hooks in xnu, with obvious caveats about probably having to disable SIP.

Sorry, thanks for playing. Apple supported FireWire even in current Macs using the Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter (though you also need a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter on any Macs built from 2016 onwards). I used multiple MOTU FireWire audio interfaces with my M1 Mac (still running Sonoma) just a couple of months ago.

Apple also supports FireWire PCIe cards in all versions of the Mac Pro, and in Thunderbolt PCIe enclosures attached to any Mac.

Yes, this impacts people. No, Apple doesn't care about pro audio folks. They demonstrated that long ago, and keep doing so over and over again.

Not really, no. The iPod stopped supporting FireWire data transfers with the iPod nano (2005) and the fifth-generation classic (2005). They continued supporting FireWire charging up through the original iPhone (2007), and phased it out beginning in 2008, a full four years before they dropped the 30-pin connector.

... and yet, sporks are used only rarely, mostly by campers or at picnics, both of which are specialized niche use-cases where minimizing the amount of gear to transport justifies the necessary compromises in usability.

So, his analogy is exactly right. Most people don't want to use a spork, and will only use one in situations where access to a separate spoon and a fork isn't an easy option.

I can think of one reason -- supporting that would at least double the amount of QA they needed to do to validate each new release of either MacOS or iOS. That would be a pretty significant amount of overhead to support a configuration that most people didn't ask for and don't want.

OTOH if macOS was informally "ported" to the iPad by some non-Apple group, Apple might just look the other way and say "that's not supported by us, if you do it, no warranty, YMMV, good luck".

Don't forget the second-order effects of overruling your engineers' better judgement: your best talent gets frustrated with their work being sabotaged, and quit your company to work for one of your competitors instead.... leaving you with the less-talented engineers who are still willing/forced to put up with your bad ideas. Now you have bad ideas, implemented badly.

Everybody who still has FireWire audio interfaces. I've been trying to get MOTU hardware to go from large quantities of ADAT inputs to AVB for almost a year now, and the hardware is completely unobtainable. I will not be able to move to Tahoe for the foreseeable future because of this.

Yup. This right here is why I don't own an iPad, even though I own an iPhone, a Mac, and a Vision Pro. My only tablet (other than a first-gen iPad Mini that we all got for free when they first came out) is a cheap Kindle Fire 7-inch that I use for watching Netflix when I'm in the middle of something at night and don't want to stop to take a shower. Oh, and a 21.5-inch Android tablet that I use as an electronic music stand for my electronic organ, but that's a tablet in roughly the same way that an iMac is a tablet. :-D

If I could actually use an iPad to do everything I can do on my Mac, even if it weren't as good at it, I would own one, because you can use an iPad during takeoff and landing on an airplane, which would be at least two extra hours of getting stuff done every trip across the country, and that adds up. It would take an extra couple of minutes to transfer files across, but it would be worth the extra couple of minutes to be able to effectively have my Mac for an entire flight.

But as long as the iPad is a toy that can only run about 15% of the software that I use on my Mac (and only the 15% that is least useful in that environment, such as Safari), the entire product line is useless to me.

Apple is leaving money on the table with that decision. Craig, please think back to when Steve said that a company that doesn't cannibalize itself will get cannibalized by other companies, and take that to heart.

But even more useful would be a proper USB-C port and Mac app support on Vision Pro.

AI ethics

Vibes and snake oil

Hmmmm

California and Washington have constructive discharge/dismissal laws, too, FYI, and I suspect most other states do as well.

More than a dick move, unless your employment contract explicitly allows the company to force you to relocate or specifies that your work location is at a particular location, forcing you to move is a violation of your employment contract, and potentially illegal.

No one who is getting these notices should do anything without consulting two lawyers — one in their state of residence and one in Seattle, because in the event of any conflict of law, the weaker party may be favored regardless of any contract terms to the contrary, and you are by far the weaker party compared with such a large employer.

Always was. Any illusion of workers having any actual bargaining power in the employee-employer relationship is just that — an illusion. When you have a multi-billion-dollar company with 1.5 million employees, do you think they actually ever cared about losing a few? This fundamental imbalance is why most countries have strong laws to protect employees from abusive employers. Give it a little time, and Washington will pass laws in response to this, and Amazon will begin to regret their short-sightedness, having made all future layoffs harder by being too greedy during this one.

That said, in this case, the employees still have a choice not to cede even more power to the employer unnecessarily. Amazon cannot force anyone to come back to the office. This isn't a totalitarian regime where secret police can drag you out of your bed at night at the behest of a company. You have a choice whether to return or not, and if you do not, they have a choice about whether to fire you or not. It's as simple as that.

If a large enough number of people refuse their false choice (resign or move back), they might relent. And if they don't, then you're still no worse off for having made that choice. After all, resigning with no severance provides you with absolutely no benefit other than a mostly theoretical opportunity to go back to Amazon in the future. Realistically, there's no reason to believe that they'll ever hire you without you moving back, so if you're not willing to move back, then there's exactly zero reason not to just let them fire you for refusing the forced location transfer.

Furthermore, if you were hired remotely originally, then you have a strong wrongful termination claim, because forcing you into the office is at least arguably constructive dismissal. (Yes, I realize Canadian law doesn't provide precedent for Washington State, but similar principles exist here in the U.S.)

And either way, if they fire you, you will likely be eligible for unemployment, which is free money. Amazon has to pay into that fund, and if they fire a large enough number of people, their unemployment insurance costs will skyrocket, so you'll be actively punishing Amazon by refusing to leave voluntarily.

So unless you're seriously thinking about moving back and working there in person, either immediately or in the future, there is absolutely no rational reason why anyone in their right minds would resign. Let them fire you, then file for unemployment and trash them on Glassdoor. That approach does the most damage to Amazon, both financially and reputationally, and it also maximizes your income. It's a win-win. Even better, when you tell your next employer why you left your previous company, you'll immediately know whether they are decent human beings. If they reject you because of it, you'll know that you don't want to work for them.

Doesn't ANYBODY but me remember that "Napster" was actually RealNetworks? You know, the old Real.com that was the Internet's first scale, commercial streamer? Real became Rhapsody for several years. Rhapsody had no name recognition, so they bought the Napster name from it's owners... BEST BUY.

It gets weirder. Rhapsody had been Sonos' partner streaming service - and Rhapsody is also... I HEART RADIO. Now the whole Napster lot got dumped in the lap of venture capital vultures.

Meh. Boeing's recent safety record is worse than Airbus's, but flying with either of them is still significantly safer than driving a car, which nobody thinks twice about doing.

Where is the evidence that this was the case, though? When the U.S. has something like that happen, there's a formal inquiry, there's a public documentation trail showing why the actions were taken, and the consensus is that they made the right call more often than not. We're not seeing that from Israel, or if we are, it isn't being reported, and that's disconcerting, particularly given the rate of these incidents.

Hiding among civilians is not the same thing as using protected sites to run operations. One person in Hamas living in an apartment building with his/her family is not equivalent to storing vast quantities of weapons and munitions in a protected location, which is what that exception was intended to allow.

Blowing up schools with children inside is never okay. Blowing up hospitals with patients still inside is never okay. Giving them enough warning to get innocent people out is an absolute minimum standard of human decency, and failing to do that means that you're deliberately targeting civilians, hence a war crime.

The Netanyahu government can hide behind pedantic interpretations of international law all they want to, but when you look at the big picture, you don't rack up a 10:1 civilian to militant kill ratio if you're operating within the bounds of international law. There's just no way. Typical U.S. wars were less than 1:1 (ignoring any indirect deaths, which are hard to compare). And no U.S. war has ever deliberately prevented aid from getting to the innocent victims of that war. The things that the Israeli government has done are, IMO, nothing short of unconscionable. It isn't just a few incidents; it's a clear pattern of lack of concern for innocent human lives, repeated almost daily.

At this point, the U.N. commission of inquiry has concluded that Israel's actions are clear war crimes and that the intent is tantamount to genocide. There's really no defending the Israeli government's actions. They went way, WAY too far on way, WAY too many occasions to give them the benefit of the doubt. And regardless of what happens with Iran — and mind you, going after Iran's government for their proxy war against Israel is at least arguably a legitimate military action — I think it is still critical to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for war crimes committed in fighting this war, if only to serve as a deterrent to electing similar governments in the future.