dpkonofa

I never suggested that they should, in either case. I'm just saying that there are things that are lost by completely ignoring backwards compatibility. There are plenty of Mac-only applications that aren't games that are now obsolete and unusable because of architecture changes.

I'm not sure why you're responding to me. Nothing that you're saying is anything that I've mentioned or brought up. I know what the downsides are. I'm just saying that the goals that Apple has optimized for have resulted in a loss of things that many would consider valuable.

I think most people, me included, are more than happy with the trade-off. That doesn't mean that nothing of value was lost in each transition.

>What was the alternative? Sticking with 65x02, 68K, or PPC?

No, including an interpreter like they did (Rosetta) was an alternative. The "alternative" really depends on what the goals were. For Apple, their goal is modern software and hardware that works together. That's antithetical to backwards compatibility.

>They could have stuck with x86 I guess. But was moving to ARM really a bad idea?

I don't think I ever suggested that it was or that they couldn't have...

>They were able to remove entire sections of the processor by getting rid of 32 bit code and saving memory and storage by not having 32 bit and 64 bit code running at the same time.

Yes, and, in doing so, they killed any software that wasn't created for a 64-bit system. Again, for even a purely historical perspective, the amount of software that didn't survive each of the instanced transitions is non-negligible. Steam now has an entire library of old Mac games that can't run on modern systems anymore because of the abandonment of 32-bit without any consideration for backwards compatibility. Yes, there are emulators and apps like Wine and CrossOver than can somewhat get these things working again but there's also a whole subsection of software that just doesn't work anymore. Again, that's just a byproduct of Apple's focus on modern codebases that are currently maintained but it's still a general detriment that so much useable software was simply lost immediately because of these changes when there could have been some focus on maintaining compatibility.

This would be great if things like open source were more supported in the "real" world. Unfortunately, you're describing exactly why a community means nothing in this situation unless the community is giving back to the project. When the "original tinkerer" moves on, everything depending on that project breaks when everything else changes around it.

>Apple has been able to migrate between 5 processors during its existence by breaking backwards compatibility and even remove entire processing subsystems from ARM chips by removing 32 bit code compatibility.

I would consider myself an Apple evangelist, for the most part, and even I can recognize what's been lost by Apple breaking backwards compatibility every time they need to shift direction. While the philosophy is great for making sure that things are modern and maintained, there is definitely a non-insignificant amount of value that is lost, even just historically but also in general, by the paradigm of constantly moving forward without regard for maintaining compatibility with the past.

Critical thinking is one thing but that "thing" is a process rather than an individual item. Critical thinking, like science, is a process that iterates upon itself. You analyze the information you have and make a conclusion based on that information. The "critical" part comes in when you take a step back and then use that same process to analyze your conclusion and poke holes in it, checking to see if the information you have supports that hole or supports the conclusion.

It's like saying that a computer is one thing despite the fact that the one thing is made up of multiple pieces.

What part of it makes it fanfiction to you? Multiple authors of the document are now in cabinet positions in the new administration.

Where were you for the last 8 years? If there's one thing the GOP is great at, it's coalescing around votes. Even with the thin margins, there are ways for them to achieve their goals quickly. I think you're not giving them enough credit here...

>Elon and Vivek have no authority to close a federal agency, and Trump doesn’t either.

You're right but the Republican-led House and Senate absolutely do have the power to both do that and grant these guys the power to do it.

Why anyone would think we're going to get more transparency this time around is beyond me. President Obama started the federal Open Data initiative and Trump, almost as quickly, neutered it just short of axing it. If they cared at all about being transparent, they would have worked on the Open Data initiatives rather than shrouding everything in further secrecy.

>All this hyperventilating over DOGE is distracting from actual issues to worry about

It's not hyperventilating. It may start as a task force but it can easily and quickly be upgraded to a full-on department of the federal government by Congress.

You say this as if Trump will also not be in control of both sides of Congress. All it takes to make this a department of the government is a vote in Congress.

For what it's worth, it was part of Project 2025 - something one of the candidates claimed to know nothing about...

Which view is that? I highly doubt that there's any view that fits the criteria you just posited.