Some people seem to be suffering from reading comprehension issues. I’ll try to keep it simple. Knocking on Apple’s door has nothing to do with anything.
The yearly Apple updates are banal and pointless. OS X has not really improved in any substantial way since 10.6. Apple is just moving the cheese around to make life difficult for third-party developers and to have something to announce in their yearly feature lists. Apple’s goal with these endless updates is to force people to buy more computers.
I’m not concerned with what Apple does. Apple has lost me as a customer many, many years ago. Since Apple has made their hardware almost impossible to upgrade or even repair, my company buys very few Apple computers and when we buy, we buy used known good models, pre-butterfly keyboard. The new generation M1 will eventually make its way into our system as it’s the first real improvement in over a decade: runs cooler, runs fast, long battery life, good graphic performance without fans running. The latest laptops come with what appear to be reliable keyboards and a reasonable complement of ports including MagSafe (why MagSafe should be on version three and not on v1 or v2 is a mystery – to force more charger sales, we run MagSafe 1 chargers everywhere with MagCozy so we can use a single set of chargers for every MBP at our house or in the office).
When Apple made repairable hardware with a proper set of ports, we bought a lot of Macs and I bought a new MacBook Pro every year or two, either reselling them or passing them on in the company. We don’t use iCloud, iMessage, Apple Music or any of Apple’s lock-in privacy-free cloud crap services.
So that the relationship with Apple – hostile, minimalist. Why do we keep using Apple computers? We want tor run first-rate third-party software like DxO PhotoLab (just one of many). The alternative is Windows spyware by design. While PhotoLab would run on Windows, most of our third party software we like would not. Anyone who suggests again I stop using Mac computers is a dunderhead who has not understood any of the above and is incapable of basic logic.
I’ll help. I loathe Apple but there’s one alternative. Windows. And Windows is significantly worse, with its own list of issues such as hideous user interface, insecure by design, spyware by design. Moreover I really like the third party shareware Mac developers and their software and don’t much like the freeware and inexpensive PC software (FastStone stands out as a company much to admire, though as the software is made for Windows is pretty ugly).
Returning once again to the main point – I don’t care what Apple does any more. I don’t trust them, I don’t like them. Companies who don’t pay their taxes, try to screw their customers out of legitimate warranty issues (built-in graphic cards which burn out, built-in keyboards which randomly break, built-in screens which fail), who don’t respect the environment and who fight right to repair in court just aren’t on my Christmas card list. I will do Apple no favours. I’m not a friend of theirs, I will not recommend to most people on Windows that they switch (sadly I did switch many, many people in the period from twenty years ago until ten years ago).
But this is not about Apple. This is about DxO who are running a draconian compatibility policy: OS -1. It’s not what DxO was doing when I first spent €250 on their software and it’s not what I signed up for. The shenanigans with Nik releases has been contemptible. The OS -1 policy is not acceptable and is customer-hostile.
All DxO has to do here is match CaptureOne’s compatibility policies and live up to their original OS -2 policies.
Some sharp stick in operations in DxO thinks he can pull a fast one on the customers and not provide any kind of reasonable OS support. This will save money for DxO he says as he rubs his greedy palms together, we’ll be rich he cackles, no one will notice.
Wrong answer. We will notice. Professional photographers will continue to ignore DxO despite the good engineering. Loyal customers will be angry. Word-of-mouth (already pretty shaky after four dubious Nik upgrades) will turn negative.
Any theoretical savings (and they are not very big, PhotoLab is a cross-platform application so it is not entirely dependent on Apple or Windows built-in libraries) are long up in smoke over the long term marketing fiasco which OS -1 will bring down on DxO’s head.
CaptureOne manages to do OS -3 (keep in mind C1 releases later than PhotoLab). What the heck is wrong with DxO? Professional apps maintain OS -2. If DxO cannot manage OS -2, they are positioning themselves as software for amateurs only.
) and treat it as part of the Apple experience. Shrug their shoulders and pay up