[HN Gopher] Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerizati...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks,
etc
Author : thm
Score : 431 points
Date : 2025-06-09 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| elpakal wrote:
| Hopefully not bound to SwiftUI like seemingly everything else
| Apple Intelligence so far. But on-device llm (private) would be
| real nice to have.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| "The framework has native support for Swift, so developers can
| easily access the Apple Intelligence model with as few as three
| lines of code."
|
| Bad news.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Swift != SwiftUI
| samcat116 wrote:
| The api looks like "give it a string prompt, async get a string
| back", so not tied to any particular UI Framework.
| turnsout wrote:
| Thank goodness... this will hopefully help keep app bundle sizes
| down, and allow developers to avoid calling AI APIs for trivial
| stuff like summaries.
| amluto wrote:
| > This year, App Intents gains support for visual intelligence.
| This enables apps to provide visual search results within the
| visual intelligence experience, allowing users to go directly
| into the app from those results.
|
| How about starting with reliably, deterministically, and
| instantly (say <50ms) finding obvious things like _installed apps
| when searching by a prefix of their name_? As a second criterion,
| I would like to find files by substrings of their name.
|
| Spotlight is unbelievably bad and has been unbelievably bad for
| quite a few years. It seems to return things slowly, in erratic
| order (the same search does not consistently give the same
| results) and unreliably (items that are definitely there
| regularly fail to appear in search results).
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| User: yells Feedback into void.
| cube2222 wrote:
| Fwiw, spotlight in MacOS seems to be getting a major revamp too
| (basing this on the WWDC livestream, but there seems to be a
| note about it on their blog[0] too), pushing it a bit more in
| the direction of tools like Alfred or Raycast, and allegedly
| also being faster (but that's marketing speak of course, so
| we'll see when Fall comes).
|
| [0]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/macos-
| tahoe-26-makes-...
| catoc wrote:
| "How about starting with reliably, deterministically, and
| instantly (say <50ms) finding obvious things like <...>
| searching by a prefix of their name? As a second criterion, I
| would like to find files by substrings of their name"
|
| Even I can, and have, build search functionality like this.
| Deterministically. No LLMs or "AI" needed. In fact for
| satisfying the above criteria this kind of implementation is
| still far more reliable.
| amluto wrote:
| I've also written search code like this. It's trivial, at
| least at the scale of installed apps and such on a single
| computer.
|
| AI makes it strictly worse. I do not want intelligence. I
| want to type, for example, "saf" and have Safari appear
| immediately, in the same place, every time, without popping
| into a different place as I'm trying to click it because a
| slower search process decided to displace the result. No
| "temperature", no randomness, no fancy crap.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Quicksilver worked great back in the day before Spotlight was
| ever even a thought.
| busymom0 wrote:
| I have no idea what happened to my Mac in the last month but
| for some reason, spotlight isn't able to search by name any app
| name anymore. Like if search for Safari, it will show me
| results for everything except the Safari app. Even tried
| searching for Safari.app and still no results. It can't find
| any apps.
| visarga wrote:
| I guess LLM and AI are forbidden words in Apple language. They do
| their utmost to avoid these words.
| iambateman wrote:
| LLM's get six mentions in this article.
| mbowcut2 wrote:
| Nah, I think they made it model agnostic, which is kinda smart.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Search for "large language model" instead of "LLM".
| simonw wrote:
| They took the clever (in my opinion) decision to rebrand "AI"
| as "Apple Intelligence", presumably partly in order to avoid
| the infinite tired "it's not really AI" takes that have
| surrounded that acronym for decades.
| meindnoch wrote:
| It's about as cringe as that Chinese guy with the funny-
| shaped head, who said a few years ago that AI for him means
| "alibaba intelligence".
| Geee wrote:
| And that's why we haven't heard of him since then.
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| Because they don't own it, or the models they (don't) own
| aren't good enough for a standalone brand? Sure seems like it.
| simonw wrote:
| Is there a beta we can install to try out these models yet?
| mathewsanders wrote:
| This press release says it will be available "starting today"
| through developer program
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-supercharges-it...
| bitpush wrote:
| What model are they bundling? Something apple-custom? How capable
| is it?
| jjice wrote:
| Apple has their own models under the hood I believe. I remember
| from like a year or two ago they had an open line called "ELM"
| (Efficient Language Model), but I'm not sure if that's what
| they're actually using.
|
| I am excited to see what the benchmarks look like though, once
| it's live.
| tough wrote:
| they also use their ANE and CoreML for smaller on-device
| stuff
|
| https://huggingface.co/apple
| simonw wrote:
| They described their home-grown models last year:
| https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/introducing-apple...
|
| I'm assuming this is an updated version of those.
| alwillis wrote:
| They're also working with Anthropic on a coding platform:
| https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/02/apple-anthropic-ai-codi...
| sabareesh wrote:
| Good move, not sure they are exposing other modalities as well ?
| dedicate wrote:
| Okay, the AI stuff is cool, but that "Containerization framework"
| mention is kinda huge, right? I mean, native Linux container
| support on Mac could be a game-changer for my whole workflow,
| maybe even making Docker less of a headache.
| marviel wrote:
| yeah -- I saw it's built on "open source foundations", do you
| know what project this is?
| underdeserver wrote:
| The CLI sure looks a lot like Docker.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| Being able to drop Docker Desktop would be great. We're using
| Podman on MacOS now in a couple places, it's pretty good but
| it is another tool. Having the same tool across MacOS and
| Linux would be nice.
| mgreg wrote:
| There's also Rancher Desktop (https://rancherdesktop.io/).
| Supports moby and containerd; also optionally runs
| kubernetes.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Orbstack
| samgranieri wrote:
| I have to drop docker desktop at work and move to podman.
|
| I'm the primary author of amalgamation of GitHub's scripts
| to rule them all with docker compose so my colleagues can
| just type `script/setup` and `script/server` (and more!)
| and the underlying scripts handle the rest.
|
| Apple including this _natively_ is nice, but I won 't be a
| able to use this because my scripts have to work on linux
| and probably WSL
| 9dev wrote:
| Migrate to Orbstack now, and get a lot of sanity back
| immediately. It's a drop-in replacement, much faster, and
| most importantly, gets out of your way.
| shellac wrote:
| If I had to guess, colima? But there are a number of open
| source projects using Apple's virtualisation technologies to
| run a linux VM to host docker-type containers.
|
| Once you have an engine podman might be the best choice to
| manage containers, or docker.
| acedTrex wrote:
| Colima is my guess, only thing that makes sense here if they
| are doing a qemu vm type of thing
| mbreese wrote:
| That's my guess too... Colima, but probably doing a VM
| using the Virtualization framework. I'll be more curious if
| you can select x86 containers, or if you'll be limited to
| arm64/aarch64. Not that it really makes that much of a
| difference anymore, you can get pretty far with Linux Arm
| containers and VMs.
| mmcnl wrote:
| My guess is Podman. They released native hypervisor support
| on macOS last year.
| https://devclass.com/2024/03/26/podman-5-0-released-with-
| nat...
| stock_toaster wrote:
| My guess is nerdctl and containerd.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Should be easy enough, look for the one with upstream
| contributions from Apple.
|
| Oh, wait.
| niteshade wrote:
| Seems to be this: https://github.com/apple/containerization
| sho_hn wrote:
| vminitd is the most interesting part of this.
| paxys wrote:
| It's impossible to have "native" support for Linux containers
| on macOS, since the technology inherently relies on Linux
| kernel features. So I'm guessing this is Apple rolling out
| their own Linux virtualization layer (same as WSL). Probably
| still an improvement over the current mess, but if they just
| support LXC and not Docker then most devs will still need to
| install Docker Desktop like they do today.
| jzelinskie wrote:
| The screenshot in TFA pretty clearly shows docker-like
| workflows pulling images, showing tags and digests and
| running what looks to be the official Docker library version
| of Postgres.
| paxys wrote:
| Every container system is "docker-like". Some (like Podman)
| even have a drop-in replacement for the Docker CLI.
| Ultimately there are always subtle differences which make
| swapping between Docker <> Podman <> LXC or whatever else
| impossible without introducing messy bugs in your workflow,
| so you need to pick one and stick to it.
| tough wrote:
| https://opencontainers.org/
| cogman10 wrote:
| If you've not tried it recently, I suggest give the
| latest version of podman another shot. I'm currently
| using it over docker and a lot of the compatibility
| problems are gone. They've put in massive efforts into
| compatibility including docker compose support.
| darkwater wrote:
| Yeah, from a quick glance the options are 1:1 mapped so an
| alias docker='container'
|
| Should work, at least for basic and common operations
| tensor wrote:
| Apple has had a native hypervisor for some time now. This is
| probably a baked in clone of something like
| https://mac.getutm.app/ which provides the stuff on top of
| the hypervisor.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| Using a hypervisor means just running a Linux VM, like WSL2
| does on Windows. There is nothing native about it.
|
| Native Linux (and Docker) support would be something like
| WSL1, where Windows kernel implemented Linux syscalls.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Surely if _Windows_ kernel can be taught to respond to
| those syscalls, XNU can be taught it even easier. But,
| AIUI the Windows kernel already had a concept of
| "personalities" from back when they were trying to
| integrate OS/2 so that zero-to-one for XNU could be a
| huge lift, not the syscalls part specifically
| literalAardvark wrote:
| Exactly. So it wouldn't necessarily be easier. NT is
| almost a microkernel.
| 9dev wrote:
| Yep. People consistently underestimate the great piece of
| technology NT is, it really was ahead of its time. And a
| shame what Microsoft is doing with it now.
| kergonath wrote:
| > the Windows kernel already had a concept of
| "personalities" from back when they were trying to
| integrate OS/2 so that zero-to-one for XNU could be a
| huge lift, not the syscalls part specifically
|
| XNU is modular, with its BSD servers on top of Mach. I
| don't see this as being a strong advantage of NT.
| petersellers wrote:
| Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor, so Linux and Windows are
| both running as virtual machines but they have direct
| access to hardware resources.
|
| It's possible that Apple has implemented a similar
| hypervisor here.
| tensor wrote:
| > The Containerization framework enables developers to
| create, download, or run Linux container images directly
| on Mac. It's built on an open-source framework optimized
| for Apple Silicon and provides secure isolation between
| container images
|
| That's their phrasing, which suggests to me that it's
| just a virtualization system. Linux container images
| generally contain the kernel.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > Linux container images generally contain the kernel.
|
| No, containers differ from VMs precisely in requiring
| dependency on the host kernel.
| tensor wrote:
| Hmm, so they do. I assumed because you pulled in a linux
| distro that the kernel was from that distro is used too,
| but I guess not. Perhaps they _have_ done some sort of
| improvement where they have one linux kernel running via
| the hypervisor that all containers use. Still can 't see
| them trying to emulate linux calls, but who knows.
| froggit wrote:
| > I assumed because you pulled in a linux distro that the
| kernel was from that distro is used too,
|
| Thst's how docker works on WSL2, run it on top of a
| virtualised linux kernal. WSL2 is pretty tightly
| integrated with windows itself, stil a linux vm though.
| It seems kinda weird for apple to reinvent the wheel for
| that kind of thing for containers.
| froggit wrote:
| > Thst's how docker works on WSL2, run it on top of a
| virtualised linux kernal. WSL2 is pretty tightly
| integrated with windows itself, stil a linux vm though.
| It seems kinda weird for apple to reinvent the wheel for
| that kind of thing for containers.
|
| Can't edit my posts mobile but realized that's, what's
| the word, not useful... But yeah, sharing the kernal
| between containers but otherwise makes them isolated
| allegedly allows them to have VMesque security without
| the overhead of seperate VMs for each image. There's a
| lot more to it, but you get the idea.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is as native as any Linux cloud instance.
| neuralkoi wrote:
| In case you're wondering, the Hypervisor.framework C API is
| really neat and straightforward:
|
| 1. Creating and configuring a virtual machine:
| hv_vm_create(HV_VM_DEFAULT);
|
| 2. Allocating guest memory: void* memory
| = mmap(...); hv_vm_map(memory,
| guest_physical_address, size, HV_MEMORY_READ |
| HV_MEMORY_WRITE | HV_MEMORY_EXEC);
|
| 3. Creating virtual CPUs:
| hv_vcpu_create(&vcpu, HV_VCPU_DEFAULT);
|
| 4. Setting registers:
| hv_vcpu_write_register(vcpu, HV_X86_RIP, 0x1000); // Set
| instruction pointer hv_vcpu_write_register(vcpu,
| HV_X86_RSP, 0x8000); // Stack pointer
|
| 5. Running guest code: hv_vcpu_run(vcpu);
|
| 6. Handling VM exits:
| hv_vcpu_exit_reason_t reason;
| hv_vcpu_read_register(vcpu, HV_X86_EXIT_REASON, &reason);
| bandoti wrote:
| What about macOS being derived from BSD? Isn't that where
| containers came from: BSD jails?
|
| I know the container ecosystem largely targets Linux just
| curious what people's thoughts are on that.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Conceptually similar but different implementations.
| Containers uses cgroups in Linux and there is also file
| system and network virtualization as well. It's not
| impossible but it would require quite a bit of work.
| McAlpine5892 wrote:
| BSD jails are architected wholly differently from what
| something like Docker provides.
|
| Jails are first-class citizens that are baked deep into the
| system.
|
| A tool like Docker relies using multiple Linux
| features/tools to assemble/create isolation.
|
| Additionally, iirc, the logic for FreeBSD jails never made
| it into the Darwin kernel.
|
| Someone correct me please.
| dboreham wrote:
| > what something like Docker provides
|
| Docker isn't providing any of the underlying
| functionality. BSD jails and Linux cgroups etc aren't
| fundamentally different things.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| ,,Container" is sort of synonymous with ,,OCI-compatible
| container" these days, and OCI itself is basically a retcon
| standard for docker (runtime, images etc.). So from that
| perspective every ,,container system" is necessarily
| ,,docker-like" and that means Linux namespaces and cgroups.
| pjmlp wrote:
| With a whole generation forgetting they came first in big
| iron UNIX like HP-UX.
| 9dev wrote:
| Does it really matter, tho?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Some people think it matters to properly learn history,
| instead of urban myths.
| bandoti wrote:
| Another reason it matters is they might have done it
| differently which could inspire future improvements. :)
|
| I like to read bibliographies for that reason--to read
| books that inspired the author I'm reading at the time.
| Same goes for code and research papers!
| p_ing wrote:
| OS X pulls some components of FreeBSD into kernel space,
| but not all (and those are very old at this point). It also
| uses various BSD bits for userspace.
|
| Good read from horse mouth:
|
| https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/D
| a...
| bandoti wrote:
| Thank you--I'll give that a read. :)
| LoganDark wrote:
| I wonder if User-Mode Linux could be ported to macOS...
| wmf wrote:
| It would probably be slower than just running a VM.
| msgodel wrote:
| If they implemented the Linux syscall interface in their
| kernel they absolutely could.
| vips7L wrote:
| Aren't the syscalls a constant moving target? Didn't even
| Microsoft fail at keeping up with them in WSL?
| asabil wrote:
| Not Linux syscalls, they are a stable interface as far as
| the Linux kernel is concerned.
| koito17 wrote:
| Linux is exceptional in that it has stable syscall
| numbers and guarantees stability. This is largely why
| statically linked binaries (and containers) "just work"
| on Linux, meanwhile Windows and Mac OS inevitably break
| things with an OS update.
|
| Microsoft frequently tweaks syscall numbers, and they
| make it clear that developers must access functions
| through e.g. NTDLL. Mac OS at least has public source
| files used to generate syscall.h, but they do break
| things, and there was a recent incident where Go programs
| all broke after a major OS update. Now Go uses libSystem
| (and dynamic linking)[2].
|
| [1] https://j00ru.vexillium.org/syscalls/nt/64/
|
| [2] https://go.dev/doc/go1.11#runtime
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| They're not really a moving target (since some distros
| ship ancient kernels, most components will handle lack of
| new syscalls gracefully), but the surface is still pretty
| big. A single ioctl() or write() syscall could do a
| billion different things and a lot of software depends on
| small bits of this functionality, meaning you gotta
| implement 99% of it to get everything working.
| NewJazz wrote:
| They didn't.
| rjsw wrote:
| FreeBSD and NetBSD do this.
| enceladus06 wrote:
| WSL throughput is not enough for file intensive operations.
| It is much easier and straightforward to just delete windows
| and use Linux.
| pjmlp wrote:
| WSL 1.0, given that WSL 2.0 is regular Linux VM running on
| HYPER-V.
| wmf wrote:
| They Sherlocked OrbStack.
| ale wrote:
| That's a good thing though right?
| wmf wrote:
| It would be better for the OrbStack guy if they bought it.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Apple sees some nice code under a pushover license and
| they just can't help themselves.
| wmf wrote:
| Interestingly it looks like Apple has rewritten much of
| the Docker stack in Swift rather than using existing Go
| code.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| Well, Orbstack isn't really anything special in terms of its
| features, it's the _implementation_ that 's so much better
| than all the other ways of spinning up VMs to run containers
| on macos. TBH, I'm not 100% sure 2025 Apple is capable
| anymore of delivering a more technically impressive product
| than orbstack ...
| avtar wrote:
| I thought it's more like Colima than OrbStack
|
| https://github.com/abiosoft/colima
| pjmlp wrote:
| Microsoft did it first to Virtual Box / VMWare Workstation
| thought.
|
| That is what I have been using since 2010, until WSL came to
| be, it has been ages since I ever dual booted.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've squeezed containerization into the title above. It's
| unsatisfactory, since multiple announced-things are also being
| discussed in this thread, but "Apple's kitchen-sink
| announcement from WWDC this year" wouldn't be great either, and
| "Apple supercharges its tools and technologies for developers
| to foster creativity, innovation, and design" is right out.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
| bearjaws wrote:
| Title makes sense to me.
|
| It seems like a big step in the right direction to me. It's
| hard to tell if its 100% compatible with Docker or not, but
| the commands shown are identical (other than swapping docker
| for container).
|
| Even if its not 100% compatible this is huge news.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Small nitpick but "Announces" being capitalized looks a bit
| weird to me.
| cube2222 wrote:
| It's title case[0].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Then you would expect "frameworks" to be capitalized as
| well.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
| n2d4 wrote:
| They labeled it a nitpick. Seems fair.
| dang wrote:
| Me too - I thought I'd fixed that! Fixed now, thanks.
| nodja wrote:
| > Apple Announces Foundation Models and Containerization
| frameworks, etc.
|
| This sounds like apple announced 2 things, AI models and
| container related stuff I'd change it to something like:
|
| > Apple Announces Foundation Models, Containerization
| frameworks, more tools
| dang wrote:
| The article says that what was announced is "foundation
| model frameworks", hence the awkward twist in the title, to
| get two frameworkses in there.
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| Orbstack has been pretty bulletproof
| mmcnl wrote:
| It's cool but also not as revolutionary as you make it sound.
| You can already install Podman, Orbstack or Colima right? Not
| sure which open-source framework they are using, but to me it
| seems like an OS-level integration of one of these tools.
| That's definitely a big win and will make things easier for
| developers, but I'm not sure if it's a gamechanger.
| rnubel wrote:
| All those tools use a Linux VM (whether managed by Qemu or
| VZ) to run the actual containers, though, which comes with
| significant overhead. Native support for running containers
| -- with no need for a VM -- would be huge.
| mmcnl wrote:
| Yes, it seems like it's actually a more refined
| implementation than what currently exists. Call me
| pleasantly surprised!
| SpaceNugget wrote:
| there's still a VM involved to run a Linux container on a
| Mac. I wouldn't expect any big performance gains here.
| timsneath wrote:
| The framework that container uses is built in Swift and also
| open sourced today, along with the CLI tool itself:
| https://github.com/apple/containerization
| thde wrote:
| > Meet Containerization, an open source project written in
| Swift to create and run Linux containers on your Mac. Learn how
| Containerization approaches Linux containers securely and
| privately. Discover how the open-sourced Container CLI tool
| utilizes the Containerization package to provide simple, yet
| powerful functionality to build, run, and deploy Linux
| Containers on Mac.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/346/
| shellac wrote:
| > Containerization executes each Linux container inside of
| its own lightweight virtual machine.
|
| That's an interesting difference from other Mac container
| systems. Also (more obvious) use Rosetta 2.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| The ground keeps shrinking for Docker Inc.
|
| They sold Docker Desktop for Mac, but that might start being
| less relevant and licenses start to drop.
|
| On Linux there's just the cli, which they can't afford to close
| since people will just move away.
|
| Docker Hub likely can't compete with the registries built into
| every other cloud provider.
| aequitas wrote:
| There is already a paid alternative, Orbstack, for macOS
| which puts Docker for Mac to shame in terms of usability,
| features and performance. And then there are open
| alternatives like Colima.
| cromka wrote:
| How does it compare to Podman, though?
| pjmlp wrote:
| That is why they are now into the reinventing application
| servers with WebAssembly kind of vibe.
| 9dev wrote:
| It's really awful. There's a certain size at which you can
| pivot and keep most of your dignity, but for Docker Inc.,
| it's just ridiculous.
| amelius wrote:
| They got Sherlocked.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| FWIW, here are the repos for the CLI tool [1] and backend [2].
| Looks like it is indeed VM-based container support (as opposed
| to WSLv1-style syscall translation or whatever):
| Containerization provides APIs to: [...] - Create
| an optimized Linux kernel for fast boot times. - Spawn
| lightweight virtual machines. - Manage the runtime
| environment of virtual machines.
|
| [1] https://github.com/apple/container [2]
| https://github.com/apple/containerization
| cogman10 wrote:
| WSLv1 never supported a native docker (AFAIK, perhaps I'm
| wrong?)
|
| That said, I'd think apple would actually be much better
| positioned to try the WSL1 approach. I'd assume apple OS is a
| lot closer to linux than windows is.
| mrbonner wrote:
| The containerization experience on macOS has historically been
| underwhelming in terms of performance. Using Docker or Podman
| on a Mac often feels sluggish and unnecessarily complex
| compared to native Linux environments. Recently, I experimented
| with Microsandbox, which was shared here a few weeks ago, and
| found its performance to be comparable to that of native
| containers on Linux. This leads me to hope that Apple will soon
| elevate the developer experience by integrating robust
| containerization support directly into macOS, eliminating the
| need for third-party downloads.
| nottorp wrote:
| Docker at least runs a linux vm that runs all those
| containers. Which is a lot of needless overhead.
|
| The equivalent of Electron for containers :)
| minimaxir wrote:
| They also just announced that Shortcuts can use these endpoints
| (or Private Cloud Compute or ChatGPT).
| retskrad wrote:
| After reading the book "Apple in China", it's hilarious to
| observe the contrast between Apple as a ruthless, amoral
| capitalist corporation behind the scenes and these WWDC
| presentations...
| bigyabai wrote:
| This just in: company that spends billions on marketing is
| effective at marketing their products. News at 11.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _News at 11._
|
| ...10 Central and Mountain.
| digianarchist wrote:
| iPadOS and OSX continue to converge into one platform.
| xattt wrote:
| Calling it: Apple allOS 27 incoming next year, with Final Cut
| Pro on your Apple Watch.
| rconti wrote:
| Multi-user iPadOS when?
| olyjohn wrote:
| Never, it'll be single user MacOS.
| xp84 wrote:
| When they figure out how to make it not dent sales of
| individual devices. If you and your spouse could easily share
| one around the house for different purposes but still having
| each of your personal apps and settings, you might not buy
| two!
| alwillis wrote:
| > If you and your spouse could easily share one around the
| house for different purposes but still having each of your
| personal apps and settings, you might not buy two!
|
| I get it, but an iPad starts at $349; often available for
| less.
|
| At this point, an iPad is no different than a phone--most
| people wouldn't share a single tablet.
|
| Laptops and desktops that run macOS, Linux, Windows which
| are multiuser operating systems have largely become single-
| user devices.
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| this aged so well https://github.com/apple/ml-fastvlm/issues/7
| cpldcpu wrote:
| There is almost no information under the link
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Apple's integration of AI into its MacOS is the one reason why I
| am considering a switch back to Linux after my current laptop
| dies.
| jw1224 wrote:
| If that's the one reason, have you considered just... not using
| the AI features?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Sure you can for now. But what when it's forced upon you to
| use them?
| jw1224 wrote:
| Well if that hypothetical situation ever happens, you can
| just switch to Linux then.
| sph wrote:
| Why do you care if they switch now?
| jug wrote:
| There is no real need and the issue is hypothetical?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I find it offensive to have any generative AI code on my
| computer.
| azinman2 wrote:
| So, then don't do that? It's not like it's automatically
| generating code without you asking.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I didn't say "generating code", I meant I find it
| offensive to have any code sitting on my computer that
| generates code, whether I use it or not. I prefer
| minimalism: just have on my computer what I will use, and
| I have a limited data connection which means even more
| updates with useless code I won't use.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I think I know what you meant. You mean you don't want code
| that runs generative AI in your computer? But, what you
| wrote could also mean you don't want any code running that
| was generated by AI. Even with open source, your computer
| will be running code generated by AI as most open source
| projects are using it. I suspect it will be nearly
| impossible to avoid. Most open source projects will accept
| AI generated code as long as it's been reviewed.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Good point, and you were right. I was ambiguous. I meant
| a system that generates stuff, not stuff that was
| generated by AI. But I'd rather not use stuff that was
| generated by AI, either. But you are also right. That
| will become impossible, and probably already is. Not a
| very nice world, I think. Best thing to do then is to
| minimize it, and avoid computers as much as possible....
| dkdcio wrote:
| I promise you there is Linux code that has been tab-
| completed with Copilot or similar, perhaps even before
| ChatGPT ever launched
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| That is true. I actually was ambiguous in my post,
| because I meant code that generates stuff, not that was
| generated by AI, even though I don't like the latter,
| either.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I find it offensive to have any generative AI code on my
| computer._
|
| Settings - Apple Intelligence and Siri - toggle Apple
| Intelligence off.
|
| It's not enabled by default. But in case you accidentally
| turned it on, turning it off gets you a bunch of disk space
| back as the AI stuff is removed from the OS.
|
| Some people are just looking for a reason to be offended.
| echelon wrote:
| This reads like the crotchety and persnickety 60-somethings in
| the 1990's who said the internet was a passing and annoying
| fad.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I do think there is a lot of valid criticism of the internet.
| I certainly don't think it's an annoying fad but I do think
| it has caused a lot of bad things for humanity. In some ways,
| life was much better without it, even though there are some
| benefits.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Actually, most "AI" cults blindly worship at their own
| ignorance:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV7C6Ezl35A
|
| The ML hype-cycle has happened before... but this time
| everyone is adding more complexity to obfuscate the BS. There
| is also a funny callback to YC in the Lisp story, and why
| your karma still gets incinerated if one points out its
| obvious limitations in a thread.
|
| Have a wonderful day, =3
| sph wrote:
| It is impossible to have a negative opinion of AI without
| silly comments like this just one step removed from calling
| you a boomer or a Luddite. Yes all technological progress is
| good and if you don't agree you're a dumb hick.
|
| AI maximalists are like those 100 years ago that put radium
| everywhere, even in toothpaste, because new things are cool
| and we're so smart you need to trust us they won't cause any
| harm.
|
| I'll keep brushing my teeth with baking soda, thank you very
| much.
| echelon wrote:
| On the other side of that are the people screaming that AI
| is murder.
|
| There are lots of folks like this:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtistHate
| pests wrote:
| I was musing before sleep days ago about how maybe the
| internet still is just a fad. We've had a few decades of it,
| yeah, but maybe in the future people will look at it as
| boring tech just like I viewed VCRs or phones when I was
| growing up. Maybe we're still addicted to the novelty of it,
| but in the future it fades into the background of life.
|
| I've read stories about how people were amazed at calling
| each other and would get together or meet at the local home
| with a phone installed, a gathering spot, make an event about
| it. Now it's boring background tech.
|
| We kind of went through a faze of this with the introduction
| of webcams. Omegle, Chatroulette, it was a wild Wild West.
| Now it's normalized, standard for work with the likes of
| Zoom, with FaceTiming just being normal.
| aquariusDue wrote:
| A few years ago I would've said you were incredibly
| cynical, but nowadays with so much AI slop around social
| media and just tonnes of bad content I tend to agree with
| you.
|
| Now the Cyberpunk pen and paper RPG seems prophetic if turn
| your head sideways a bit https://chatgpt.com/share/684762cc
| -9024-800e-9460-d5da3236cd...
| antipaul wrote:
| With a single toggle, you can turn off Apple Intelligence
|
| See (System) Settings
| mohsen1 wrote:
| iPad update is going to encourage a new series of folks trying to
| use iPads for general programming. I'm curious how it goes this
| time around. I'm cautiously optimistic
| msgodel wrote:
| Isn't it still impossible to run any dev tools on the iPad?
| robterrell wrote:
| IIRC Swift Playgrounds goes pretty deep -- a full LLVM
| compiler for Swift and you can use any platform API -- but
| you can't build something for distribution. The limitations
| are all at the Apple policy level.
| eastbound wrote:
| You can't run Docker on an iPad.
| codethief wrote:
| > New Design with Liquid Glass
|
| Looks like software UI design - just like fashion, film,
| architecture and many other fields I'm sure - has now officially
| entered the "nothing new under the sun" / "let's recycle ideas
| from xx years ago" stage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_%28user_interface%29
|
| To be clear, this is just an observation, not a judgment of that
| change or the quality of the design by itself. I was getting
| similar vibes from the recent announcement of design changes in
| Android.
| kif wrote:
| I love it. Reminds me of Windows 7. The nostalgia is too strong
| with this one.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| I used to find these changes compelling but now I think they
| are mostly a pain in the ass or questionable.
|
| Proof of a well-designed UI is stability, not change.
|
| Reads to me strongly of an effort to give traditional media
| something shiny to put above the headline and keep the
| marketing engine running.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I kind of hate it. Every use of it in the videos shown so far
| has moments where it's so transparent as to have borderline
| unreadable contrast.
| summarity wrote:
| The last example in the first carousel is the worst, the
| bottom glass elements have complete unreadable text
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Same. And white on light blue is just as bad. Looks like I'll
| be using more accessibility features.
| SlowTao wrote:
| I agree with you, I hope they quickly tweak this into
| something more readable. There could be a really nice mid
| ground here.
| daveidol wrote:
| To me it looks more like Windows Vista's "Aero" than OS X's
| "Aqua".
| buildbot wrote:
| Yes, I immediately thought of Windows Aero too!!! I wasn't
| able to enable it until I got a 9800GX2 a few years later,
| very cool at the time combined with the ability to have
| movies as your desktop background. It was a nice vibe.
| SlowTao wrote:
| And I couldnt be happier to see it back. I have not been a
| fan of the flattening of UI design over the last 15 years.
| spike021 wrote:
| I'm usually on board with Apple UI changes but something about
| all the examples they showed today just looked really cheap.
|
| My only guess is this style looks better while using the
| product but not while looking at screenshots or demos built off
| Illustrator or whatever they're using.
| hbn wrote:
| I love that we're getting some texture back. UI has been so
| boring since iOS 7.
|
| Sebastiaan de With of Halide fame did a writeup about this
| recently, and I think he makes some great points.
|
| https://www.lux.camera/physicality-the-new-age-of-ui/
| adolph wrote:
| Open link and type into this box "physicality is the new
| skeumorphism"
|
| Read on and:
|
| _They are completely dynamic: inhabiting characteristics
| that are akin to actual materials and objects. We've come
| back, in a sense, to skeuomorphic interfaces -- but this time
| not with a lacquer resembling a material. Instead, the
| interface is clear, graphic and behaves like things we know
| from the real world, or might exist in the world. This is
| what the new skeuomorphism is. It, too, is physicality._
|
| Well worth reading for the retrospective of Apple's website
| taking a twenty year journey from flatland and back.
| breadwinner wrote:
| Liquid Glass is not adding a dimension. It is still flat UI,
| sadly. They just gave the edges of the window a glass like
| effect. There's also animation ("liquid" part). Overall, very
| disappointing.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Just one or two years ago I remember a handful of articles
| popping up that Gen Z was really into Frutiger Aero, that's the
| first thing I thought of, with the nature themes and
| skeuomorphic UI elements.
|
| https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-gen-z-infatuated-frutige...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_Aero
| codethief wrote:
| Thanks, I wasn't even aware the style had gotten a name in
| the meantime.
| SlowTao wrote:
| Back when Jobs was introducing one of the Mac OS X versions,
| there was a line that stuck with me.
|
| Showing off the pulsating buttons he said something like "we
| have these processors that can do billions of calculations of
| second, we might as well use them to make it look great".
|
| And yet a decade later, they were undoing all of that to just
| be flat an boring. Im glad they are using the now trillions of
| calculations a second to bring some character back into these
| things.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| He was selling. The audience were sales. OS's were fully
| matured at that point. Computers were something you buy at a
| store. It was a selling point.
|
| A decade later they were handling the windfall that came with
| smartphone ascendancy. An emergence of an entirely new design
| language for touch screen UI. Skeumorphism was slowing that
| all down.
|
| Making it all flat meant making it consistent, which meant
| making it stable, which meant scalability. iOS7 made it so
| that even random developers' apps could play along and they
| needed a lot of developers playing along.
| sho_hn wrote:
| In fact, Apple once did a version of Aqua that did an
| overengineered materials-based rasterization at runtime,
| including a physically correct glass effect.
|
| It was too slow and was later optimized away to run off of pre-
| rendered assets with some light typical style engine procedural
| code.
|
| Feels like someone just dusted off the old vision now that the
| compute is there.
| visiondude wrote:
| Excited to try these out and see benchmarks. Expectations for on
| device small local model should be pretty low but let's see if
| Apple cooked up any magic here.
| chakintosh wrote:
| Some 15 years ago, A friend of mine said to me "mark my words,
| Apple will eventually merge OSX with iOS on the iPad". And with
| every passing keynote since then, it seemed Apple's been inching
| towards that prophecy, and today, the iPad has become practically
| a MacBook Air with a touch screen. Unless you were a video
| editor, programmer who needs resources to compile or a 3D artist,
| I don't see how you'd need anything other than an iPad.
| jeron wrote:
| ipad hardware is a full blown M chip. There's no real hardware
| limitation that stops the iPad from running macOS, but merging
| it cannibalizes each product line's sales
| chakintosh wrote:
| The new windowing feature basically cannibalizes MacBook Air.
| threetonesun wrote:
| A Macbook Air is cheaper than an iPad Pro with a keyboard
| though. Not to mention you still can't run apps from
| outside the app store, and most of these new features we're
| hoping work as well as they do on MacOS, but given that
| background tasks had to be an API, I doubt they will.
| tarentel wrote:
| There's still software I can't run on an iPad which is
| basically the only reason I have a MacBook Air. Maybe for
| some a windowing system may be the push to switch but that
| seems doubtful to me.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I told that to John Gruber and he said never will happen
| omega3 wrote:
| Does an iPad allow for multiple users?
| crooked-v wrote:
| Yes, but only if it's enrolled in MDM, bizarrely enough.
| alwillis wrote:
| > Yes, but only if it's enrolled in MDM, bizarrely enough
|
| In education or corporate settings, where account
| management is centralized, you want each person who uses an
| iPad to access their own files, email, etc.
| thimabi wrote:
| I don't think that's bizarre at all, there's a clear
| financial incentive for things to be this way. Apple can't
| have normal people sharing a single device instead of
| buying one for each.
| eastbound wrote:
| I wish Apple provided the MDM, rather than relying on a
| random consumer ecosystem of dodgy companies who all charge
| 3-18$ per machine per month, which is a lot.
|
| Auth should be Apple Business Manager; image serving should
| be passive directories / cloud buckets.
| paxys wrote:
| The fact that they haven't done it in 15 years should be an
| indication that they don't intend to do it at all. Remember
| that in the same time period Apple rebuilt every Macbook from
| scratch from the chipset up. Neither the hardware nor software
| is a barrier to them merging the two platforms. It's that the
| ecosystems are fundamentally incompatible. A true
| "professional" device needs to offer the user full control, and
| Apple isn't giving up this control on an i-Device. The 30% cut
| is simply too lucrative.
| LoganDark wrote:
| If anyone wants to read up on how much effort Apple actually
| went through to keep Apple Silicon Macs open, take a look
| here: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/security/#per-
| container...
|
| Secure Boot on other platforms is all-or-nothing, but Apple
| recognizes that Mac users should have the freedom to choose
| exactly how much to peel back the security, and should never
| be forced to give up more than they need to. So for that
| reason, it's possible to have a trusted macOS installation
| next to a less-trusted installation of something else, such
| as Asahi Linux.
|
| Contrast this with others like Microsoft who believe all
| platforms should be either fully trusted or fully
| unsupported. Google takes this approach with Android as well.
| You're either fully locked in, or fully on your own.
| amoshebb wrote:
| the only macbook I've tried to put linux on was a t2
| machine, and it still doesn't sleep/suspend right, so I'm a
| bit skeptical that apple is really leading the way here,
| but maybe I've just not touched any recent windows devices
| either
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Nothing Apple can do to iPadOS is going to fix the fundamental
| problem that:
|
| 1. iPadOS has a lot of software either built for the "three
| share sheets to the wind" era of iPadOS, or lazily upscaled
| from an iPhone app, and
|
| 2. iPadOS does not allow users to tamper with the OS or third-
| party software, so you can't fix any of this broken mess.
|
| Video editing and 3D would be possible on iPadOS, but for #1.
| Programming is genuinely impossible because of #2. All the APIs
| that let Swift Playgrounds do on-device development are private
| APIs and entitlements that third-parties are unlikely to ever
| get a provisioning profile for. Same for emulation and
| virtualization. Apple begrudgingly allows it, but we're never
| going to get JIT or hypervisor support[0] that would make those
| things not immediately chew through your battery.
|
| [0] To be clear, M1 iPads supported hypervisor; if you were
| jailbroken on iPadOS 14.5 and copied some files over from macOS
| you could even get full-fat UTM to work. It's just a software
| lockout.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Then why break it off as iPadOS?
| losvedir wrote:
| I don't use an iPad much, but it's been interesting to watch
| from afar how it's been changing over these years.
|
| They _could_ have gone the direction of just running MacOS on
| it, but clearly they don 't want to. I have a feeling that the
| only reason MacOS is the way it is, is because of history. If
| they were building a laptop from scratch, they would want it
| more in their walled garden.
|
| I'm curious to see what a "power user" desktop with windowing
| and files, and all that stuff that iPad is starting to get,
| ultimately looks like down this alternative evolutionary
| branch.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Its obvious isn't it? It will look like a desktop, except
| Apple decides what apps you can run and takes their 30% tax
| on all commerce.
| burntalmonds wrote:
| I think practically everyone is better off with a laptop. iPad
| is great if you're an artist using the pencil, or just
| consuming media on it. Otherwise a macbook is far more powerful
| and ergonomic to use.
| ZeroTalent wrote:
| I don't understand why my MacBook doesn't have a touchscreen.
| I'm switching to an iPad Pro tomorrow. I use Superwhisper to
| talk to it 90% of the time anyway.
| dexwiz wrote:
| My theory is because of the hinge, which is a common point
| of failure on laptops. Either you are putting extra strain
| on it by having someone constantly touching the screen, and
| some users just mash their fingers into touch screens. Or
| users want a fully openable screen to mimic a tablet
| format, and those hinges always seem to fail quicker. Every
| touchscreen laptop I've had eventually has had the hinge
| fail.
| raydev wrote:
| Apple is capable of solving it if they want to. They
| don't want to (yet at least).
| thetallguyyy wrote:
| Because MacBooks have subpar displays, at least the M4 Air
| does. The iPad Pro is a better value.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I think perhaps you are overestimating the computing needs of
| the majority of the population. Get one of the iPad cases
| with a keyboard and an iPad is in many ways a better laptop.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Or maybe a stand and separate keyboard. Better ergonomics
| than a laptop that way with similar portability.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Any keyboard you recommend? I'm looking around myself.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Something wireless would be nice for portability IMO,
| e.g. Apple or Logitech Bluetooth. Security considerations
| there though.
|
| I wouldn't want a numpad. A track point would be ape.
|
| I struggle with keyboard recommendations b/c I'm not
| fully satisfied lol.
| nottorp wrote:
| But the majority won't pay extra for an ipad and a
| keyboard, when they can pay less for an air with everything
| included...
| threeseed wrote:
| > practically everyone is better off with a laptop
|
| The majority of the world are using their phones as a
| computing device.
|
| And as someone with a MacBook and iPad the later is
| significantly more ergonomic.
| solomatov wrote:
| I prefer MacBook to iPad most of the time. The only use
| case for iPad for me where it shines is when I need to use
| a pencil.
| focusedone wrote:
| I used to think that, not having used an iPad. Now I carry a
| work-issued iPad with 5G and it's actually pretty convenient
| for remote access to servers. I wouldn't want to spend a day
| working on it, but it's way faster than pulling out a laptop
| to make one tiny change on a server. It's also great for
| taking notes at meetings/conferences.
|
| It's irritatingly bad at consuming media and browsing the
| web. No ad blocking, so every webpage is an ad-infested
| wasteland. There are _so many_ ads in YouTube and streaming
| music. I had no idea.
|
| It's also kindof a pain to connect to my media library. Need
| to figure out a better solution for that.
|
| So, as a relatively new iPad user it's pleasantly useful for
| select work tasks. Not so great at doomscrolling or streaming
| media. Who knew?
| pkage wrote:
| There's native ad blocking on iOS and has been for a while
| --I've found that to significantly enhance the usability of
| the device. I use Wipr[0], other options are available.
|
| [0]: https://kaylees.site/wipr2.html
| nottorp wrote:
| I use Wipr on my phone, the experience is a lot worse
| than ublock origin on desktop...
| athenot wrote:
| Whether or not they eventually fuse, I don't know--I doubt it.
| But the approach they've taken over the past 15 years to
| _gradually_ increase the similarities in user experience, while
| not trying to force a square peg in a round hole, have been the
| best path in terms of usability.
|
| I think Microsoft was a little too eager to fuse their tablet
| and desktop interface. It has produced some interesting
| innovations in the process but it's been nowhere near as
| polished as ipadOS/macOS.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I wish they'd focus on just enabling actual functionality on
| iPad - like can I have Xcode please? And a shell?
|
| I dgaf what the UI looks like. It's fine.
| dcchambers wrote:
| > The iPad has become practically a MacBook Air with a touch
| screen. Unless you were a video editor, programmer who needs
| resources to compile or a 3D artist, I don't see how you'd need
| anything other than an iPad.
|
| No! It's not - and it's dangerous to propagate this myth. There
| are so many arbitrary restrictions on iPad OS that don't exist
| on MacOS. Massive restrictions on background apps - things like
| raycast (MacOS version), Text Expander, cleanshot, popclip, etc
| just aren't possible in iPad OS. These are tools that anyone
| would find useful. No root/superuser access. I still can't
| install whatever apps I want from whatever sources I want.
| Hell, you can't even write and run iPadOS apps in a code editor
| on the iPad itself. Apple's own editor/development tool - Xcode
| - only runs on MacOS.
|
| The changes to window management are great - but iPad and
| iPadOS are still extremely locked down.
| msgodel wrote:
| They can't do this. It would destroy their ability to rent
| their iOS users out because they'd have access to dev tools and
| could "scale the wall."
| renrutal wrote:
| With Microsoft opening Windows's kernel to the Xbox team, and a
| possible macOS-iPadOS unification, we are reaching multiple
| levels of climate changes in Hell. It's hailing!
| Bengalilol wrote:
| > I don't see how you'd need anything other than an iPad.
|
| For the same price, you still get a better mac.
| nehalem wrote:
| I wonder what happened to Siri. Not a single mention anywhere?
| m3kw9 wrote:
| hope to show you more later this year. was like the first thing
| they said about apple intelligence
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I like that there's support for locally-run models on Xcode.
|
| I wish I thought that the Game Porting Toolkit 3 would make a
| difference, but I think Apple's going to have to incentivize game
| studios to use it. And they should; the Apple Silicon is good
| enough to run a lot of games.
|
| ... when are they going to have the courage to release MacOS
| Bakersfield? C'mon. Do it. You're gonna tell me California's all
| zingers? Nah. We know better.
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| yeah, getting better LLM support for XCode is great!
| bandoti wrote:
| Not sure about that Liquid Glass idea.
|
| Ultimately UI widgets are rooted in reality (switches, knobs,
| doohickeys) and liquid glass is Salvador-Dali-Esque.
|
| Imagine driving a car and the gear shifter was made of liquid
| glass... people would hit more grannies than a self-driving
| Tesla.
| dorian-graph wrote:
| Will they ever update Terminal.app?
| garciasn wrote:
| Just use iTerm2 (Warp or Kitty are two other options out of
| many) and be done w/it; why would Apple even worry about this
| when so few people who care about terminal applications even
| think twice about it?
| Onavo wrote:
| Also ghostty
| dorian-graph wrote:
| I've tried all of them, including ones that yourself, and
| others, haven't mentioned like Rio. I stand by wanting
| Terminal.app simply updated with better colour support, then
| it's one less alternative program to get.
| davidcox143 wrote:
| Unlikely to happen soon. It's maintained by one engineer who is
| very against anything resembling iTerm2.
| visiondude wrote:
| They did!!! At least color options. Just announced at platform
| state of the union
| dblooman wrote:
| Can someone who uses Xcode daily compare to say Cursor or VsCode
| how the developer experience is. Just curious how Apple is
| keeping up
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| XCode so far is very rudimentary. miles behind VSCode in
| autocomplete. autocomplete is very small, single line, and
| suggests very very rarely. and no other features except
| autocomplete exist.
|
| very good to see XCode LLM improvements!
|
| > I use VSCode Go daily + XCode Swift 6 iOS 18 daily
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Several years ago XCode also had "jump to definition" and a
| few other features.
| babyshake wrote:
| Does the privacy preserving aspect of this mean that Apple
| Intelligence can be invoked within an app, but the results
| provided by Apple Intelligence are not accessible to the app to
| be transmitted to their server or utilized in other ways? Or is
| the privacy preservation handled in a different way?
| jonplackett wrote:
| I think they just mean private from Apple. I don't see how they
| can keep it private from the developer if it's integrated into
| the app
| esafak wrote:
| Does this mean we will longer need Docker Desktop or colima?
| badc0ffee wrote:
| That's what it sounds like:
| https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/346
| N_A_T_E wrote:
| > New Design with Liquid Glass Yes, bringing back aqua! I even
| see blue in their examples.
| pxc wrote:
| I hoped for a moment that "Containerization Framework" meant that
| macOS itself would be getting containers. Running Linux
| containers and VMs on macOS via virtualization is already pretty
| easy and has many good options. If you're willing to use
| proprietary applications to do this, OrbStack is the slickest,
| but Lima/Colima is fine, and Podman Desktop and Rancher Desktop
| work well, too.
|
| The thing macOS really painfully lacks is not ergonomic ways to
| run Linux VMs, but actual, _native_ containers-- macOS
| containers. And third parties can 't really implement this well
| without Apple's cooperation. There have been some efforts to do
| this, but the most notable one is now defunct, judging by its
| busted/empty website[1] and deleted GitHub organization[2]. It
| required disabling SIP to work, back when it at least sort-of
| worked. There's one newer effort that seems to be alive, but it's
| also afflicted with significant limitations for want of macOS
| features[3].
|
| That would be super useful and fill a real gap, meeting needs
| that third-party software can't. Instead, as wmf has noted
| elsewhere in these comments, it seems they've simply "Sherlock'd"
| OrbStack.
|
| --
|
| 1: https://macoscontainers.org/
|
| 2: https://github.com/macOScontainers
|
| 3: https://github.com/Okerew/osxiec
| NewJazz wrote:
| What would these be useful for?
| wpm wrote:
| Same thing containers/jails are useful for on Linux and *BSD,
| without needing to spin up an entirely separate kernel to run
| in a VM to handle it.
| tensor wrote:
| MacOS apps can already be sandboxed. In fact it's a
| requirement to publish them to the Mac App Store. I agree
| it'd be nice to see this extended to userland binaries
| though.
| Etheryte wrote:
| You can't really sandbox development dependencies in any
| meaningful way. I want to throw everything and the
| kitchen sink into one container per project, not install
| a specific version of Python, Node, Perl or what have you
| globally/namespaced/whatever. Currently there's no good
| solution to that problem, save perhaps for a VM.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Hmm have you tried devenv?
|
| https://devenv.sh/
|
| UV is pretty good for python too.
| haiku2077 wrote:
| uv doesn't provide strong isolation; a package you
| install using uv can attempt to delete random files in
| your home folder when you import it, for example.
| NewJazz wrote:
| People use containers server side in Linux land mostly...
| Some desktop apps (flatpak is basically a container
| runtime) but the real draw is server code.
|
| Do you think people would be developing and/or distributing
| end user apps via macOS containers?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Orchestrating macOS only software, like Xcode, and software
| that benefits from Environment integrity, like browsers.
| raydev wrote:
| Clean build environments for CICD workflows, especially if
| you're building/deploying many separate projects and repos.
| Managing Macs as standalone build machines is still a huge
| headache in 2025.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| It's not that macoscontainers is empty, it's that the site is
| https://darwin-containers.github.io
|
| Read more about it here - https://github.com/darwin-containers
|
| The developer is very responsive.
|
| One of Apple's biggest value props to other platforms is
| environment integrity. This is why their containerization /
| automation story is worse than e.g. Android.
| pxc wrote:
| Ah, that's great! I'd forgotten it moved and struggled to
| track it down.
| xyst wrote:
| back to "glass" UI element/design? Early 2000s is back, I guess.
|
| Edit: surprised apple is dumping resources into gaming, maybe
| they are playing the long game here?
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > Every Apple Developer Program membership includes 200GB of
| Apple hosting capacity for the App Store. Apple-Hosted Background
| Assets can be submitted separately from an app build.
|
| Is this the first time Apple has offered something substantial
| for the App store fees beyond the SDK/Xcode and basic app
| distribution?
|
| Is it a way to give developers a reason to limit distribution to
| only the official App Store, or will this be offered regardless
| of what store the app is downloaded from?
| Klonoar wrote:
| Huh. Does this cover if you use public CloudKit databases...?
| pjmlp wrote:
| WebKit is also being swiftified, as mentioned on the platforms
| state of the union.
| Klonoar wrote:
| As in they're integrating Swift into the WebKit project, or
| exposing Swift-y wrappers over WebKit itself?
| pjmlp wrote:
| There is probably going to be a session later this week, the
| reference seemed to imply they are integrating Swift into
| Webkit project for new development.
| Illniyar wrote:
| Oh, Apple is doing windows Aero now? Wonder how long that one'll
| last.
| bearjaws wrote:
| All this focus on low power gaming makes me think Apple wants to
| get in on the Steam Deck hype.
| SlowTao wrote:
| Apple is in a reasonably good place to make gaming work for
| them.
|
| Their hardware across the board is fairly powerful (definetly
| not top end), they have a good API stack especially with Metal.
| And they have systems at all levels including TV. If they were
| to just make a standard controller or just say "PS5 dualshock
| is our choice" they could have a nice little slice for
| themselves.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| As I understand it, Apple has a long history of entitlement
| and burning bridges with every major game developer while
| making collaboration extremely painful. They were in a much
| better place to make gaming work 10 years ago when major
| gaming studios were still interested in working with them.
| bigyabai wrote:
| They better have a partnership with Sony in the works, then.
| Valve and Apple's approach to supporting video games diverged a
| decade ago. Hearing "Steam" and "Apple" uttered in the same
| breath is probably giving people panic attacks already.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Until Apple-ported games are able to be installed from Steam
| instead of the App Store, you can count me out.
| raydev wrote:
| They've been hyping up their hardware capabilities and APIs for
| years now.
| bishfish wrote:
| I sure hope they provide an accessibility option to turn down
| translucency to improve contrast or this UI is a non-starter for
| me. Without using it, this new UI looks like it may favor design
| over usability. Why don't they do something more novel and let
| user tweak interface to their liking?
| encom wrote:
| >favor design over usability
|
| That's... kinda what Apple is famous for.
| mrbonner wrote:
| I don't understand the foundation models here. Are they new LLMs
| trained by Apple such as Qwen?
| wmf wrote:
| Yes.
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| But actually released in 2024?
| gdubs wrote:
| There's a different thread if you want to wax about Fluid Glass
| etc [1], but there's some really interesting new improvements
| here for Apple Developers in Xcode 26.
|
| The new foundation frameworks around generative language model
| stuff looks very swift-y and nice for Apple developers. And it's
| local and on device. In the Platforms State of the Union they
| showed some really interesting sample apps using it to generate
| different itineraries in a travel app.
|
| The other big thing is vibe-coding coming natively to Xcode
| through ChatGPT (and other) model integration. Some things that
| make this look like a nice quality-of-life improvement for Apple
| developers is the way that it tracks iterative changes with the
| model so you can rollback easily, and the way it gives context to
| your codebase. Seems to be a big improvement from the previous,
| very limited GPT integration with Xcode and the first time Apple
| Developers have a native version of some of the more popular
| vibe-coding tools.
|
| Their 'drag a napkin sketch into Xcode and get a functional
| prototype' is pretty wild for someone who grew up writing
| [myObject retain] in Objective-C.
|
| Are these completely ground-breaking features? I think it's more
| what Apple has historically done which is to not be first into a
| space, but to really nail the UX. At least, that's the promise -
| we'll have to see how these tools perform!
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44226612
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| > And it's local and on device.
|
| Does that explain why you don't have to worry about token
| usage? The models run locally?
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| > You don't have to worry about the exact tokens that
| Foundation Models operates with, the API nicely abstracts
| that away for you [1]
|
| I have the same question. Their _Deep dive into the
| Foundation Models framework_ video is nice for seeing code
| using the new `FoundationModels` library but for a "deep
| dive", I would like to learn more about tokenization.
| Hopefully these details are eventually disclosed unless
| someone else here already knows?
|
| [1] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/301/?tim
| e=1...
| tough wrote:
| they mention kata, so is this using kata underneath instead of
| their Hypervisor.framework?
|
| im confused
|
| https://katacontainers.io/
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor
| cayleyh wrote:
| Repo says it uses Hypervisor.framework on Apple Silicon
| devices.
| sheerun wrote:
| k
| xpe wrote:
| > including over 250,000 APIs that enable developers to integrate
| their apps with Apple's hardware and software features.
|
| This doesn't sound impressive, it sounds insane.
| can16358p wrote:
| I hope they don't turn Liquid Glass into Aqua... which I hated.
| The only time I started to like the iOS interface was iOS 7 with
| flat design. I hope they don't turn this into old, skeuomorphic,
| Aqua-like UI by time.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| The video on Containerization.framework, and the Container tool,
| is live [0].
|
| It looks like each container will run in its own VM, that will
| boot into a custom, lightweight init called vminitd that is
| written in Swift. No information on what Linux kernel they're
| using, or whether these VMs are going to be ARM only or also
| Intel, but I haven't really dug in yet [1].
|
| [0] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/346
|
| [1] https://github.com/apple/containerization
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