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On The Sad State of Macintosh Hardware (rogueamoeba.com)

Quentin Carnicelli, the chief technology officer at Rogue Amoeba, a widely-reputed firm that produces several audio software for Apple's desktop operating system: With Apple recently releasing their first developer beta of MacOS 10.14 (Mojave), we've been installing it on various test machines to test our apps. The inevitable march of technology means Mojave won't install on all of our older hardware. There's no shock there, but the situation is rather distressing when it comes to spending money to purchase new equipment. Here is the situation, as reported by the wonderful MacRumor's Buyers Guide: At the time of the writing, with the exception of the $5,000 iMac Pro, no Macintosh has been updated at all in the past year. Here are the last updates to the entire line of Macs: iMac Pro: 182 days ago, iMac: 374 days ago, MacBook: 374 days ago, MacBook Air: 374 days ago, MacBook Pro: 374 days ago, Mac Pro: 436 days ago, and Mac Mini: 1337 days ago.

Worse, most of these counts are misleading, with the machines not seeing a true update in quite a bit longer. The Mac Mini hasn't seen an update of any kind in almost 4 years (nor, for that matter, a price drop). The once-solid Mac Pro was replaced by the dead-end cylindrical version all the way back in 2012, which was then left to stagnate. I don't even want to get started on the MacBook Pro's questionable keyboard, or the MacBook's sole port (USB-C which must also be used to provide power). It's very difficult to recommend much from the current crop of Macs to customers, and that's deeply worrisome to us, as a Mac-based software company.

4 of 525 comments (clear)

  1. There is an alternative by eclectro · · Score: 1, Informative
    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  2. Re:How About "Good Enough"? by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 4, Informative

    Your old washer used 40 gallons of water per load. A $1,000 washer can use as little as 12 gallons for a full load.

  3. Re:Apple only a consumer-level gadget company now. by greenwow · · Score: 2, Informative

    Especially since they haven't allowed memory upgrades beyond 16 GB for over six years! We still have hundreds of four+ year-old MacBooks since we can't upgrade them for more memory. Just sucks having engineers waste time with old and slow laptops, but at least they still basically work unlike a Dell or other PC laptop. As soon as Apple finally allows more memory, we're going to replace most of the laptops used in our company.

  4. Re:Apple only a consumer-level gadget company now. by irving47 · · Score: 3, Informative

    UMAX, Power Computing, Motorola (I think), etc... When Jobs came back, he made the licensing agreements so ridiculous, nobody wanted to continue, so they died out within a year or two, having had the terms changed on them so drastically.

    --
    I had a sucky sig.