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Apple Should Stop Selling Four-Year-Old Computers (theverge.com)
It's been a while since Apple upgraded its MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro models. Four years, one month, and twenty-four days, to be exact, in case of the MacBook Pro. Apple is inexplicably still selling the exact same models for its Mac line that it introduced in 2012. Pretty much every Windows OEM has had an Intel Skylake-powered processor in its laptops for more than a year now, but Apple's computing lineup is still shipping with the three-to-four years old processor, and graphics card. Things have gotten so bad, that MacRumors' Buying Guide, which is considered to be an "online institution" among Apple nerds, has flagged all of Apple laptops as "Don't Buy" In a column, The Verge's Sam Byford says that Apple should stop selling the old laptops. He writes: Apple iterates quickly and consistently in mobile because the rate of technological progress is so much more dramatic in that arena. The company does amazing work to keep its iPhones and iPads ahead of competitors, performance-wise. Simple Intel processor upgrades are less important to laptops these days, however, and I'm finding this 2012 MacBook Pro fine to work from right now -- faster than my 2015 MacBook, at least, which is enough for my needs. But that doesn't mean it isn't unconscionable for Apple to continue to sell outdated products to people who may not know any better. Is the company really saving that much money by using 2012 processors and 4GB of RAM as standard? Even an update to Intel's Haswell chips from 2013 would have brought huge battery life improvements. Apple is bound by the whims of its suppliers to a certain extent, and it may not always make sense for the company to upgrade its products with every single new chip or GPU that comes out. But there's a certain point at which it just starts to look like absent-mindedness, and many Mac computers are well past that point now. [...] If Apple doesn't want to keep its products reasonably current, that's its prerogative. But if that truly is the case, maybe it shouldn't sell them at all.It's also ironic, coming from a company whose executive not long ago made fun of people who had five years old computer. Folks at Accidental Tech Podcast also discussed the same recently.
You should be buying a Mac as a fashion accessory. Gotta let everyone at the coffee shop know how hip and cool you are.
The company does amazing work to keep its iPhones and iPads ahead of competitors, performance-wise.
Um....
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The 2012 laptop is faster than the 2015 laptop but Apple should stop selling it ... why, exactly?
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I didn't realize Apple was selling computers specifically designed for four year olds. Where can I get one for my daughter?
Pretty much every Windows OEM has had an Intel Skylake-powered processor in its laptops for more than a year now, but Apple's computing lineup is still shipping with the three-to-four years old processor, and graphics card.
Ahem. That's a bald-faced lie. The 2016 MacBook now has a Skylake processor.
Exhibit A.
IOW, nothing but Clickbait. As usual.
They seem to work just fine as they are! Shit, I still have a 2008 Macbook (original Al case) the works just fine too. Maybe a color change would make Sam happy.
Conservative, mod down for violating
You think the machines weren't horrendously overpriced on day one either?
I have 10 Macs in the next room (I work in schools).
I guarantee you that they get one-hundredth of the usage of any other PC on site. And yet they cost nearly 8 times as much. And we give the kids free-reign, a lot of the staff use Mac at home, our systems are mostly online so support either setup, they are tied into our AD and file storage, they are connected to the same network, etc.
He have several hundred iPads. Those get use. But the Macs? Even the children barely bother to touch them, even when given free time in the room they are in. I've seen the same at many other schools.
The irony is that the only piece of software we regularly use them for used to be Mac-only and is now dual-platform. So they are literally lame ducks. And, no, our volume licensing doesn't allow us to use them via Boot Camp as they were NOT originally purchased with a copy of a Pro or Enterprise version of Windows. Even if it did, why would we do that rather than just sell them off, buy three or four equivalent PC's for each, and then just use those instead?
Mac's aren't anything very special at all. Their hardware is lacklustre, and pretty fixed, and over-priced, and their management is much more complicated than necessary for such "user-friendly" machines.
Honestly, two were stolen on an open day one year. I could have literally bought - there and then - six PC's for the price of the replacement new Macs that the insurance company forced us to have. Do I honestly get three times the functionality out of the Macs than the PCs? Nope. Not even in a school with music, drama (theatre shows, movie recording, etc), etc. departments using the facilities all day every day.
Last time I received a helpdesk ticket for them for something not working, we found out that the machine in question hadn't been switched on for three months (and, no, it wasn't a holiday). Timetabled classes of 20, 10 Macs in the room, you work that out.
I've even run Mac OS in a VM, and I honestly don't get the fuss at all. In fact, it run faster as a resource-limited VM on my Windows-based laptop that was also running over VM's than it did on the original hardware itself.
Don't even get me started on stupid proprietary cables that add nothing but cost, obstructions to centralised management of the machines, and - honestly - if I hear the word keychain one more time I will scream (it tends to be new users, but still, it drives us insane).
Three times I have submitted plans to remove the entire room and replace it with an IT suite with twice the machines and each time the only justification for refusal is how much it had cost to install them originally. I even factored into one of the proposals the ridiculous second-hand price they attract as a way of funding the change entirely.
But, still, they get 1/10th the usage of any other machine I manage. And one of those is in a cupboard.
This is a sensible strategy. Moores Law is over. Intels processor performance is only 30% better than it was 5 years ago. Computers aren't improving much year over year overall. The last jump in decent improvement was the introduction of SSD's. I am sorry to say it looks like digital computing is a dead end: we won't be seeing AI or the Singularity everyone wishes for with digital computers.
A quick check of Wikipedia would tell you what most people who follow Apple already know: that Apple has a habit of quietly revving its current computers without much fanfare, upgrading their computers on a regular basis.
The current 13 inch and 15 inch MacBook Pros that Apple sell were last updated early 2015. (This correlates with Apple's own on-line store.)
It's not to suggest their current models aren't a little long in the tooth. And it's not to suggest that Apple may be a little behind in using the latest and greatest processors--though one problem Apple has is that they sell quite a bit of volume, so sometimes being on the bleeding edge may not permit them to get the volume of parts they need. But they most certainly are not selling a 4 year old computer.
Thunderbolt is kind of an bust & Intel low pci-e count does not really help. But at least with skylake they will get DMI 3.0 that moves the 2.0 X4 DMI link to 3.0 X4.
Also the big thin push hurts them more with cutting ports and only having 1 TB bus so that all ext stuff has to shear the TB link with DP data. Now if they do put some stuff like E-net and wifi on the DMI / chipset bus. Then in the laptops / mini they can switch the X16 to X8 video (if the system has an non Intel gpu) X4 TB 3.0 X4 pci-e storage or with out video X8 2 TB 3.0 buses X8 2 X4 storage.
Now the macpro is a real bust and with 1 cpu the pci-e lane count does not give them the room to do TB 3.0 without an lot of changes. Like switch the video to X8 X8 freeing up 3 X4 links for TB and 1 more X4 for the 2th pci-e storage card. or adding an 2rd cpu giving them room for 2-4 storage cards and 4-6 TB 3.0 buses + 10 GB e-net.
It is never too late to join the glorious PC master race.
As it happens, I am writing this on a 4-year old MacBook Pro. It is fast and reliable and I have yet to find any Mac software I want that I cannot run. If I lost this one, I would definitely want to buy a replacement, but I don't feel a need to upgrade just because. Now, I know that having the latest-greatest CPU is cool, but what exactly would that buy me if I bought it?
This! A hundred times this! I can't even recall the number of times people asked for more battery life for their iMacs!
One part of me agrees, but another part of me says If the stuff you need to do still runs OK then whats the problem?
Apple is completely a walled garden so they can also control the software bloat.
It seems most of the push for new consumer hardware is actually because Microsoft themselves are always shovelling more and more sloppy and pointless resource-gobbling crap into Windows, and that the culture that Windows itself follows and encourages is to write temporary files and other crap all over the C: drive without ever deleting it.
I've met enough non-technical people that somehow believe that the thing to do is to to buy a new PC every time they fill up their old one or when it slows to a crawl because they can't stop installing shit that runs in the background.
As for MacRumors, they seem to be of the opinion that a major update is on the way and it is worth waiting to see before buying. I agree with that sentiment if you do not absolutely need one now or want the free Beats...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This entire suggestion is stupid unless consumers enjoy paying for obscenely priced factory memory and non-removable hard drives, which these components being replaceable are two great features that still exist in this "dinosaur" model they're still selling.
And yes, I'm still considering biting the bullet to buy one for those specific reasons, since Apple has gone the asinine route and forces you to buy their memory and hard drive upgrades at time of purchase for every other model they sell. I already own a late-2012 i7 Mac Mini (which is almost identical hardware to this model) that absolutely SCREAMS with 16GB RAM and SSD upgrade, so I'm already familiar with how this "ancient" laptop would likely perform with some minor replaceable components.
Once this model disappears, you will be forced to purchase damn near every hardware upgrade you might ever need up-front and all from Apple. Dunno about anyone else, but I won't be enjoying that stupidity at all.
Before Steve Jobs died Apple were completely creaming everyone in basically everything they did innovation and consumer experience wise. No one else made nearly as good laptops, the iPad was as big a revolution as they get in electronic devices, the iPhone was a complete revolution that bankrupted any company that didn't clone it virtually down to the appearance of every icon in GUI, the iPod, iTunes bankrupted all major record stores, etc -- every 2 years or so they would come out with something that blew everything else out of the water.
Now in the 5 years all we have is a stupid watch.
The difference between Apple with Jobs and Apple under Cook couldn't be starker. This is new to you people??
The whole article summary is cookoo flamebait. First Apple does have skylake processors in it's line up. https://apple.slashdot.org/sto...
They just don't use the intel model name "skylake" on their product descriptions.
The alleged website saying "dont buy" is not complaining about this. For example the macpro they list as "don't buy" is actually "can't buy". Apple doesn't list that model in it's store. And their reasoning for not buying it is because it's not a retina version, and there's not any price difference with the retina.
Finally like every single computer maker, mac does have a range of models and guess what the lower end ones have slower procesors. But they also get an hour longer battery life than the i7 models.
Guess what? the track pads don't have two buttons! Alert commissioner gordon!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The discussion was about performance, not price. You just moved the goal post.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
But they most certainly are not selling a 4 year old computer.
They actually are. As of this writing, the non-retina Macbook Pro is still available for sale on Apple's site. Go to apple.com, click Mac -> Macbook Pro -> Buy and then scroll about halfway down the page. That model, which is being sold for $1099, hasn't been updated since June 2012, though it did have a $100 price cut in July 2014.
Intelligent responses welcome, flames will be met with marshmallows.
It's been a while since Apple upgraded its MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro models. Four years, one month, and twenty-four days, to be exact, in case of the MacBook Pro.
Way to go with the half-truths.
The obsolete 2012 Macbook Pro is indeed still on Apple's books -but Its long been banished from the main MacBook Pro page on Apple's website and tucked away at the bottom of the "Buy" page. Presumably because some big customers still want a spinning rust hard drive and an optical drive. Nobody who has done 5 minutes of research would buy one unless that's what they wanted.
Meanwhile the flagship Retina Macbook Pro range got new processors and unique haptic touchpads just over a year ago, and the (probably to be discontinued) MacBook Air got a minor bump this spring. The MacBook got Skylake in the spring and the 27" iMac got Skylake last November.
Now, Apple do have a problem - 15-month old computers still aren't sexy - but its partly due to Intel's woes with the various configurations of Skylake chips which have been trickling out gradually over the last year. E.g. the 15" Retina Macbook Pro really needs the i7-6x70HQ chips with Iris Pro which weren't launched until Q1 this year, the i7 version of the 13" rMBP needs the i7-6567U which, according to Intels ARK site, hasn't been launched yet. The architectural speed-up with Skylake isn't that huge, so using a chip with lower TDP or inferior GPU just for the sake of "Skylake" can easily end up as a downgrade.
Dell, HP et. al. have a million models and are happy to build systems around whatever chips are available today - they have some pretty tempting MacBook-killers but you do have to look carefully at the power rating & GPU of the processor before declaring a winner. Meanwhile, Intel have started the hype for Kaby Lake before finishing the Skylake range - its possible that Apple will wait for that, since it has Thunderbolt3 on-chip and Apple are presumably going to standardise on TB3.
Not completely defending Apple here - the Mac Pro is nearly 3 years old, the Mac Mini 2 years. Both of those were also affected by Intel delays but there ought to be something Apple could have done to maintain interest. Chances are, the Mac Pro (basically a dedicated Final Cut X machine and a waste of money if you don't run OpenCL software) just isn't selling. The Intel delays aren't exactly new and its within Apple's power to maybe design some new Macs around available chips. Unfortunately, Tim Cook has been doing a very good impression of someone more interested in watch straps than full-featured computers, so people are worried.
But, no, folks: the flagship Retina MacBook Pro is not starting kindergarten this year, and the rumor sites are flagging them "don't buy" because they're expecting new models by the end of the year.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I don't own any Macs, but my next computer will be a Mac. It's more than a fashion statement.
Linux still doesn't "just work." If it does "just work," it's probably because you have old hardware. Linux will probably never be ready for the desktop unless hardware stops changing.
Microsoft? They've completely crossed the line with Windows 10. They're trying to make it like a big phone with invasion of privacy and telemetry. Microsoft has abandoned power users. I suppose gamers still need to use it, but they're giving up a lot.
Chromebooks aren't made for power users and are glorified web browsers.
What's left? Macs. They have good support, a desktop that works, and are based on BSD. Since it's not really a gaming platform, having the latest and greatest specs aren't that important, but generally they have solid specs. Expensive? They retain their resale value. I wish I could get rid of my 2014 Asus Zenbook even though it's really fast. Windows 10 is horrible and the drivers are constantly breaking when there are updates. I doubt I'd get a fair value on eBay or Craigslist, and I don't want to expose myself to fraud and/or idiots.
I am so sick of Slashdot posting bold-faced lies and FUD on their front page. You can buy Macbooks with Skylake, which is a CPU architecture that wasn't even released until about a year ago, and Macbook Pros with Broadwell, an architecture released in early 2015.
If you buy a 13" Macbook Pro (latest generation) on apple.com right now, it will come with a CPU and chipset released to market by Intel about a year and a half ago, not four years ago.
And if you're complaining about the physical chassis, well, maybe it's just that Apple has reached what they consider to be the optimal layout and dimensions for their chassis. I mean, IBM/Lenovo hardly ever changed their ThinkPad physical design characteristics for a number of years in the mid to late 2000s, until Lenovo started messing with a good thing, and ended up utterly ruining the ThinkPad brand and stopped providing the features that people who bought them wanted/needed.
I am not an Apple fanboy; I think the company is pretentious, greedy, anti-competitive, and significantly less visionary with the loss of Steve Jobs. The very little they do for open source is overshadowed by their aggressive litigiousness and the walled garden platform they created.
BUT -- and this is a big thing for me -- Apple can do *more* with 4 or 8 GB of RAM than Microsoft can do with 16 GB of RAM. Their software is extremely well-designed, optimized for fast, high-fidelity displays, and the font rendering is beautiful and second to none. They don't have a ton of old legacy code like Windows does; the legacy that does exist has easily been swept under the rug in favor of new designs. And being based on BSD is a huge plus for software dev.
The efficiency and responsiveness of Macbook Pro and iPhone has made me appreciate and admire these *products* that I own, even though I only started buying Apple products in 2015 after spending decades swearing I never would and preferring GNU/Linux or Windows-if-absolutely-necessary.
I'm tired of having to grossly over-spec my machines (and often end up paying even more than I paid for my Apple products) for trash software like Microsoft Windows and Android, two great examples of over-engineering plus bloat plus the worst parts of an open or semi-open platform (security vulnerabilities, malware, etc.) ... A $1800 MBP with a year-old processor and 8 gigs of RAM is faster, more enjoyable to use, lighter, and has better battery life than a $3000 13" Windows 10 "ultrabook". And my $1000 iPhone 6S Plus with 2 gigs of RAM is faster, far less buggy, completely free of bloat, and easier to use than any Android phone on the market.
Again, I'm not an Apple fanboy. I don't love the company and I have zero loyalty to them. I dare someone else to do better. For years I thought everyone else *did* do better, but it's clear to me now that I was actually deluding myself into thinking that having 4 gigs of memory wasted by background service bloat on Windows was "necessary".
I'm very satisfied with their products right now and extremely dissatisfied with their competition. I'd actually recommend to those in the market for a laptop to seriously consider the Macbook Pro. It's not ideal for gaming, of course, but it's great for anything from content creation to heavy web surfing to flash games and even does VMs extremely well in VirtualBox or VMware. And I also do some heavy C++ and Java dev on this box. It just never slows down no matter what I do. Love it.
Late-2011 17" here, bought it in 2012 when they were discontinued, 16GB RAM and a 480GB SSD (from about two years ago). The trackpad has worn out, but I have a replacement on order. I immediately downgraded it to 10.6.8 (it shipped with 10.7), and only recently upgraded to 10.9. I also recently purchased a used Core i7 Mac Mini (6,2) which I haven't upgraded from 8GB RAM yet.
I had one PPC and two Intel Aluminum era Powerbooks, and that case was flimsy crap (for instance, CDs wouldn't eject because the case frame went out of alignment). The Unibody is a lot more sturdy, and mine has been through more than its share of abuse and is still ticking, aside from the trackpad.
Current Apple hardware isn't as good as it was back in 2011 before they became obsessed with Retina displays and gluing shit together, but it still isn't quite as bad as the 4-digit PowerPC era.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
It's all about what happens when you drop it. Plastic cases fall to pieces.
Perhaps it is flamebait, but it brings up an interesting (to me) question. At this stage of the game, Apple makes most of its money off of its mobile devices. Sure, it still sells Macs - and people still like and buy them. But Mac's aren't their core business any more - and their single-supplier model has kept that part of their business capped at a pretty modest volume.
Maybe now it would finally make sense for Apple to license OS/X to other OEM's. That way, they'd make some money off of the software (they could charge at least as much as Microsoft does), and possibly grow the ecosystem. I suppose there'd be a chance of HP or Samsung building devices could outsell Apple's, but Apple's certainly capable of competing with the best. And they don't have to license it to low end crap OEM's. And, of course, they wouldn't license iOS, but while OS/X is still relevant, they ought to consider taking a chance.
I'm not saying this because I want a Mac clone - I personally don't like OS/X much, and I use Linux at home. But it'd be interesting to see the market shaken up a bit.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
They were the first company to drop PS2 ports in favor of USB.
They never used PS2, they used their own ADB. And even after they stopped putting ADB ports on the back of computers, they still used ADB for their laptop keyboards until they went with Intel.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I've notice that Apple has really shit the bed when it comes to... well... everything. It's like since Jobs died, Cook pulled the rudder right off the boat and now he's just standing there, looking confusedly at the rudder in his hand.
But it's another thing entirely to be charging massive premiums for hardware so old that I'm surprised the parts are even still being manufactured. Where is Apple sourcing their parts at this point, Ebay?
I want a new Mac for work, and I want to give employees the option of using a Mac instead of Windows, given how brain-damaged Microsoft is being with respect to Windows 10, but I'll be damned if I'm going to drop 2-3k per machine on hardware whose PC equivalent can be purchased for peanuts on Craigslist.
As far as CPUs are concerned, they arn't really that big of a deal because lets face it, the past *several* generations of CPUs from Intel have only incremental differences in performance. Most of the differences have gone into power efficiency improvements, and support for newer accessory technologies like DDR RAM, USB, PCI, onboard GPU, etc. But there have been massive jumps in what GPUs can do, and currently available Macs are a joke by comparison. Right now, for example, there's not even any point in porting current AAA games to Mac because the hardware won't be able to run them.
There is something to be said about taking the conservative approach for some things, for example one thing I like about OSX is that Apple doesn't make massive fundamental changes the way Microsoft does. And Apple's support is still second to none. But Apple really needs to pull their thumb out and start refreshing their hardware.
Apple has a massive opportunity right now with the whole Windows 10 fiasco, very similar to how IBM had an opportunity with OS/2 during the turbulent switch between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Unfortunately, also like IBM, I'm expecting Apple to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory because they're management is too paralyzed by their own undeserved egos to do what needs to be done.
My four year old macbook still works better than most new PC's