I wrote a compiler for an ObjC-like language (with less brackets), which can produce binaries for any of {Mac, Windows, Linux, WASM, Arm A9 (Zynq), m68k or 6502} running on any of {Mac, Windows, Linux}. So you can produce a dev-signed Mac binary on a Linux box. I’m just going through extending that output range to mobile {Android, iOS} and I’ll release it as open source.

The compiler docs for the language (xc) are at https://compile-xc.org/ - feel free to browse.

I didn’t think getting the signing working for Mac/iOS was terribly hard.

Oh, that's all, is it.

Yep, you're right 1 hour max /s.

Browsers are the most insecure attack surface of any aspect of modern computers. Apple's s/w is built using standard engineering decision-making - can we rely on X being there ? Why yes we can, so we can delegate this function to that system framework which we've tested is all secure.

Except that all breaks down when someone installs a 3rd party browser. Now the security model of the system depends on the security model of the installed browser, and that's just not acceptable. It may be the user's fault that they installed but you can guarantee that Apple will be holding the can at the end of any argument over why their nudes are now all over the internet.

I have been using a web browser (since Mosaic / Arena) for over 30 years. Never in that time have I wanted the URL bar (and by extension the tabs bar since they're intimately linked) to be any other place than right there at the top of the window in plain view. The URL-bar/swipe-control is a heinous change that ruins literal decades of muscle memory and expectation.

It is not a "good thing", from my perspective.

For similar reasons, I loathe tab groups as well. I like the way tabs worked *anyway*. I have yet to see a single use-case (for me, and how I use them) that works as well as leaving the frigging things alone and letting me manage them as I see fit.

And yes, hiding UI is bloody annoying. I still haven't managed to work out how to use the phone in portrait mode properly yet. Instead of instant availability and instant access to what I actually want to do, I now have to study the damn thing and figure out how the hell I'm supposed to do

This Safari redesign is the first time I'm genuinely thinking of ditching Safari. It's that bad.

The author (mytek) made an 8-bit motherboard ... and then he made another one that fits into the XL disk drive chassis (so it fits with the rest of the XL/XE time peripherals).

To coin a phrase: “I wish I had mod-points” - orange man is indeed bad. Let’s see if this goes down too...

I work at Apple Park. It's the worst office environment I've ever had the misfortune to have inflicted upon me. Working in that gilded shithole has me looking elsewhere for work now, and I've been at Apple for many a year.

It's form over function, it's the fact that everyone has the noise-cancelling earphones (the good Bose ones, not the crappy Beats ones) and it's the complete lack of respect that is implied. My dog has a larger kennel (not that he uses it in CA weather very much) than I have desk-space.

Yes.

It seems to me that US people (I only say the US because that's where I live, I don't know if it's as common elsewhere) seem to think Brits are nice people, and you can get away with shit around them. Brits are *not* especially nice. Brits are *polite*, there is a huge difference. The velvet glove conceals an iron fist, and it's generally easier to be polite back than to piss them off overmuch.

I imagine his questioning will be somewhat more ... in depth ... than it would have been previously. There is no time limit on select-committee investigations, like in the US congressional hearings. If it takes several hours, then it takes several hours...

Um, no ?

I'm 48, have been working for Apple for the last 14 years or so, and live and work in the Bay Area. Sure, things are expensive, and once I stop being paid we'll bail to the Oregon coast or similar for retirement, but life is pretty good.

My wife is a full-time mum, my kid goes to a nice school (better than I ever had), the mortgage will be paid in 5 years or so, and we've just got a puppy (a Newfie :) I'm intending to stay until retirement. I'm hardly the oldest in my group (R&D) either, and I work alongside people who've been here for longer than I have (some of them go back 25 years) and who are older than I am. Age is not a barrier, at least at Apple, if you're good enough.

One is sufficiently exasperated by another's fucking idiocy and ignorance, that one goes to the nearest aircraft hanger, grabs the chocks that prevent planes from just rolling away, and forcibly places them into the fucking ignorant idiot's stomach, by way of the mouth.

One's blood pressure immediately drops, along with the fucking idiot; dead, that is.

Depends. Could be a blip (in geological time) of a few decades or hundreds of years, or the system could be bistable, and the new pattern becomes the norm for the next millennia or dozen.

Yeah. It was.

And during the demo, which was running full-screen (windowed), they reduced the size of the window to 1/4 screen, and you could see 3 other ones running at the same time.

The word I was looking for is "Gobsmacked" :)

Don't get me wrong, I think the Acorn team did an amazing job with the first ARM chip, and when I saw the "Lander" demo running on an Archie, my jaw dropped. I spent the next term's student grant money on buying one, then worked 2 jobs to pay for it. Worth it.

I don't think Apple was involved in the first chip (that was an Acorn thing), but by the time ARM had morphed from the marketing "Acorn RISC Machine" slogan to an actual company, they were there, contributing quite a bit if you believe my colleague.

From the Wikipedia page: "The company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology."

One of my colleagues was working with Acorn at the time (yes, I'm old, so is he) and he will talk your ear off about how the groups collaborated, and what IP Apple contributed, as well as the improvements made to the chip layout to help out the board-design people.

Apple are supposed to be "completely re-thinking" the Mac Pro. Maybe their solution is to have a "compute brick" plugin architecture, for which you can either have N fast cheap ARMs, or N fast expensive x86s. Similarly for GPUs...

Silicon Graphics did it with the Origin 350. With today's miniaturization, it could be possible to do it on a much smaller scale.

Apple was one of the founders of ARM. An ARM license doesn't cost them very much at all.

Manufacturing chips on the scale of Apple's iPhone means the cost per chip is relatively low. The NRE is done; at that point the more you can manufacture the cheaper it is per unit. Certainly paying Intel to manufacture chips and sell them (even at the margin that Apple can command) is going to be more expensive for Apple.

As for benefits... Apple has always wanted to own the whole shebang. They get to know ahead of time what the schedule's going to be, they get to dictate the chip's abilities, and they already have the design capability in-house. I *think* it'll be cheaper for Apple, with lower thermals and higher efficiencies with potentially a better designed chip. Whether the user sees benefits from that is up for debate.

There are certainly issues with compatibility and emulation, and I don't have a good answer for that. I suspect, if Apple go ahead and do it, they will have a good-enough answer for a transition. As for recompiling etc., they'll just require an ARM64 variant of any app in the app-store for a year or so ahead of any transition in order to be listed. That'll be sufficient IMHO to get almost everyone on-board.