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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.
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.
Except for the very, very few 'pro' products they've (reluctantly) released (and barely updated), they've basically given up on the Pro crowd, and are clearly only concentrating on 'gadget' devices for consumers, not meant for professionals (creators, etc.): iDevices, AppleTV, AppleWatch & HomePod.
AC comments get piped to
As a society, we have become obsessed with never-ending growth and progress. It's not good enough that a company provides jobs and turns a profit. It has to show "growth". It's not good enough that a given computer can perform all sorts of useful functions. It has to be reinvented as more powerful every 374 days.
I do agree that a Mac Mini should cost less now than it did over three years ago. But what's wrong with good enough? I recently went shopping for a new TV. I expected that with 4K TVs being common now, I should be able to pickup a 1920x1080 TV for a good price. I was wrong. I ended up making a deal on a 4K TV, even though I almost never watch anything in 4K.
I've owned every single model of Mac Pro, but enough is enough. I used to do music production and sound design primarily using Logic and Pro Tools on Mac Pros, but the last iteration was my breaking point. The juice just wasn't worth the squeeze any more, and I found much better tools for Windows (Cockos Reaper, Pro Tools, etc). After decades of loving the work-flow and support and quality, I just got the feeling Apple was jerking users around and just didn't care about the desktop platform any more. Happier now.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Apple's Mac division has really kind of gone of the rails in recent years. They've made multiple repeated bizarre design decisions and they seldom update their hardware. While is hasn't been all bad, it's getting hard to recommend the Mac to people I previously would have done so without hesitation. They cater to a fairly specific customer and that's fine but they aren't even doing a very good job of that anymore.
It's pretty clear that the focus of management is on the iPhone. Understandable but I think they are shooting themselves in the foot. A lot of the value proposition from Apple comes from the tight ecosystem integration. Without that it's not so compelling to buy an iPhone or an iPad. Honestly I don't see a lot of tight integration in ways that are useful to me.
I have a Mac Mini and I'm about to replace it but probably not with another Mac Mini and the way things are going not with any other type of Mac either. Apple just isn't investing in the Mac and if they cannot be bothered in spite of the massive cash hoard they have then why should I care either? Apple should be making the Mac the best type of PC available and they just aren't. They are nice enough but they're behind the technology curve at this point. I don't think they need to be bleeding edge but they aren't even close to the edge on PCs anymore. Either they are incompetent or they just can't be bothered and I tend to favor the later theory.
Is that real? $5000 for a laptop? That can't be right. The most expensive one I can find on their site is an absurd $2800.
[This post was written on a $200 laptop].
I don't respond to AC's.
Someone called it on these forums a LOOOONG time ago that Apple was trying to convert Macs into iOS devices. Hell, I think Jobs was still alive when that assertion was made and with iOS apps coming to Macs (which will likely become the ONLY way you'll get new Mac software soon since the Mac app store wooed sooo many iOS developers /sarcasm), we're seeing it come to realization and soon to past.
Damn shame that we'll have to look to Google or Microsoft soon for advancement in PCs especially considering that both of them believe in this "app store" philosophy too. Sigh....
Totally forgot about them. Sure, some useful little tools for some people, but really they are small potatoes. That said, this guy is somewhat right in what he says but my 2009 and 2011 iMacs are running fine. My only concern (and a big one too) is that at some point a future OS upgrade will not be compatible with the aging computers. That I why I avoid upgrading the OS.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Apple is destroying one of their best markets. That is, people who use it for pro audio and also graphic workstations to some extent. The hardware compatibility silliness and lack of updates and support if pushing tons and tons of audio people away. I organize raves and electronic music shows. Apple machines used to be considered the premium choice for live performances and DJ software, but it has all changed in the last few years. For the first ever since laptops became a thing on stage, I've seen former die hard Apple users make the switch to Windows over the last couple years.
Apple has made it clear that they just don't care about professional media customers anymore, unless they are the kind that can buy $4000 of new gear every year. But even then, people are catching on that it's just not very cost effective anymore. Not to mention that Windows performance and stability has drastically improved too, making it a viable switch, that didn't used to be the case.
The $5,000 machine mentioned is the iMac Pro, a desktop. The $5,000 base model comes with pretty strong specs. 3.2GHz 8-core Xeon W, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Radeon Pro Vega 56, and a 27" 5k display.
Apples recent iPad commercial says it all.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
That was many years ago.
I got something called a Message Pad 2100, that thing was an awesome wonder (ipad predecessor) invention that packed a whole lot of power for 1993, it packed a punch of 162 MHz, could talk, had a large touchscreen, could bring you to the internet, even wireless with the right PCMCIA card.
I'm no mac fan, especially not today - but back in its heydays with powerpc and a promising new architecture, those things were the beast within the graphics industry, nearly all printing & ad bureaus worth their salt had to have one.
Today - it's all about bling-bling, and looking gorgeous (because frankly, that part they got right). But they're expensive, old-tech consumables that you can basically throw away after a few years of use, because they won't support them anymore. And if you've seen a few experienced repair tech's videos on youtube - there are downright design-flaws that has been repeated thorough the production of the mac's the last 5-7 years.
Mac needs to find its roots again, when innovation and driving our world of tech forward actually meant something.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Imagine a Mac with the newly announced 32 core Threadripper in an ATX case that can be fully upgraded. But instead we will get four core 16gb MBPs with inadequate ports again. They didn’t even announce hardware at WWDC because they are so weak at it.
Also the $5K imac pro sucks to thin / storage locked to the MB / over priced upgrades and it's hard to change the ram on your own.
And the T2 chip is chained off the DMI bus and not some of the open CPU pci-e lanes.
Not just Apple really... but yes especially Apple. Companies seem to be very focused on a mobile first approach. Which is perfectly fine. The reality is that many of us still need mouse and/or keyboard and large screens for productive applications. And we probably don't need faster processing, or more RAM or much more storage so spec. stagnation is real in the desktop and laptop space.
Personally I would like to see better "docking" abilities for smartphones in hardware and software so you can just plop your phone down on a desk with a big monitor and keyboard/mouse and start working on a larger screen where you can get all the apps you need. And it would be good if it was much more seamless across android and iphone.
There is another level of creativity and productivity to be had if we can realize more of that future level of integration that has been the stuff of sci-fi for years.
We seem to be closer than ever, but the impediments are both the security of letting devices communicate more freely and the arbitrary divisions of proprietary software hardware stacks that keep our technology apart and makes it less useful than it could be.
The iMac Pro is a desktop machine. Still pretty overpriced of course.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
Dell / hp / others all do specs bumps / price drops over time. But apple still has 5400RPM hdds in the imacs.
Apple looks for ways to make system thinner and thinner and takes ports away.
The real issue here is Intel, not Apple. There is no point in updating any of Apple's computer line as long as Intel can't get their upgrade cycle running smoothly. Add in all the security flaws and you have another reason not to update anything.
Intel can announce all the crap they want and trickle out a small number of chips, but Apple won't jump on board until they can get mass quantities of CPUs...
Apple would be better off doing their own CPUs....
E
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
Dear Apple,
Please spin off your laptop division. Anyone technical with a Mac won't buy crap from your store anyway, and the integration points with your iPhones aren't worth it. (Many of us use Android phones and use your laptops they understand Unix commands and because random system upgrades won't take us offline for half a day at a time.)
Thank you.
Signed,
Most of Your Customers
apple needs to let some like HP sell pro workstations that run mac os in areas where looks or forcing video cards to use TB is not an big deal.
HP does TB loop back cables to tie DP out into an TB add in card. But no apple has to say that looks like crap and we can't do it.
Microsoft is rewriting Excel in JavaScript.
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Processors have improved dramatically since 2006. I selected 3 chips that were all relatively high end for a desktop but reasonably affordable and popular chips (not extreme CPUs) from the stable of Intel corp. Namely: Q6600, I5-2500K, I5-8600K. The Core 2 Quads came out late 2006/early 2007, Sandy bridge in 2012 and Coffee Lake 2018, so a relatively even timeline distribution. Shortly after launch the Q6600 was $280, 2500K $220, 8600K $260.
Take a look at the benchmarks and performance scores, not to mention platform changes. We also went from no standard SATA SSDs during C2Q's reign to NVME SSDs for the 8600K. Just because you only use excel on small data sets which can still be done with a C2Q doesn't mean that there haven't been large gains.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/c...
Yes the locked people are using hackintoshs just to get hardware they need.
Next Macintosh will be a docking station that connects users' hardware to their virtual Macs in the cloud. Latency might suck for a few, but for 90% of Mac users with simple io devices like mice and other pointers being their only hardware, it would be fine.
What's a computer?
That is all.
The Quad Core Mac Mini I bought in 2012 is faster than any Mac Mini sold in 2018. Get it together, Apple.
I've been on Apple's platform since 1990, I saw it through the horrid time before Jobs' return. What did Jobs do? He made the mac cool again, sure, but he also made amazing machines with an amazing OS (OSX is the only reason I still am on the platform) and it was embraced by the pros - graphic designers, video editors, music producers... the performance, stability and workflow was unmatched. Now look at it. The only powerful machine they make is well out of the price range of all but the largest companies. The next step down is pathetic to say the least. Design and video professionals leave the platform in droves, why? because Apple made sad, underpowered machines covered in marking wank and focused on their gadgetry. Apple - shape up, or ship out. Unless you make a top end machine for $2500 that can be used in professional 4k video editing, motion graphics, audio production, graphic design, as well as support the huge potential of the mac gaming market (which never has been tapped but always should have been) - then go home and get lost. Make it modular, allow us to customize and upgrade our machines. Be good enough so we can love the mac again. Stop making $2000 facebook machines, make us machines we can be proud of. Unless you do this - my next machine will not be a mac, something I haven't done in 28 years.
That doesn't show dramatic improvement to me. 218% improvement from chip 1 to 2 (in 6 years), and 430% from chip 1 to 3 (in 11 years!!). You wouldn't even notice the difference.
After all... Apple consumers are more than happy to to pay a premium to get outdated tech. Why would any company bother to invest in new products when the mindless masses continue to buy the old crap and paying full price?
At this point I wouldn't be too surprised if Apple is deliberately letting Mac hardware die off because they really are secretly working on moving the entire product line to a new ARM-based Apple chipset. I don't really think that's a good idea, and I'd much rather them just get out of the PC hardware business and make a "designed for MacOS" hardware spec that third parties could build in any form factor they wanted. Sadly Apple never seems to call me to see what I want.
But why in the hell would you pay a huge premium for something that is only "good enough"?
That only suggests that Apple people, such as yourself, care about your image more than substance.
The MacBook Air has been last updated a lot more than 374 days ago.
The last "update" was only a small 100MHz upgrade on the CPU of the low-end model but it's still the same old Broadwell CPU, the same used in the 2015 MacBook Air.
The last update to the MacBook Air was about 1150 days ago. And it's still using a TN display in 2018.
For the money Apple are asking for their computers, they can't possibly be proud of the specifications.
#DeleteFacebook
By PC's you mean Windows? The same Windows that kicked me out of a game last night to install some updates?
Or by PC's do you mean non-Apple laptops? The same laptops that are also beginning to have non-replacable components just like Apple's laptops?
This is not about vendor lock-in, it's about the whole industry catering to the lowest common denominators and our needs as power users being pushed aside.
#DeleteFacebook
And 3 years from now, it's still going to be the same machine, with the same $5000 price tag.
Even the new so-called Mac Pro iMac throttles itself before the fans spin up. This is laptop engineering, not desktop engineering and I fear they may have lost that expertise. As someone who depends on a Mac Pro 5,1, sorry but it looks like my next machine will be a Hackintosh. I don't need the latest bell and whistle on the desktop. What I do need are:
Something that I can depend upon for a high availability duty cycle
Using all 110 volts coming out of the wall
Spinning as many large hard drives as I can fit in the box
PCI cards for the SSD raid boot, swap file SSD, full size graphics card and communications card
And I'm no-one special.
Addressing that third point, Our German friends have a wonderful word: Kablesalat (literally cable salad). The current Mac Pro iMac and Coke Can Mac Pro force you to have multiple power bars nearby for brick on string external power supplies for all of your hard drives. Jesus? Who thought that was a practical idea for given how the cable transformers are made it's often impossible make full use of the sockets.
If the answer is put them all in a single raid box you're missing the point. Not everything needs to should be or should be a raid.
If anyone at Apple is listening: you're telling people who want to buy from you, and have options, and are sophisticated enough to be fault tolerant, to f*** off. Well, do as you will but it seems to me you should reserve that attitude for people who don't have options.
PS, can you make another seventeen inch laptop large enough to hold hard drives? Those new video cameras soak up a lot of hard drive space.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Nobody asked for the fucking iMac Pro, just like nobody asked for the fucking trashcan Mac Pro.
It would be nice if the industrial designer was pushed aside and Apple let the engineers design computers and then order the industrial designer to make it look nice. It's currently the other way around and unfortunately engineers can't break the laws of physics.
#DeleteFacebook
My laptop runs everything I want to run fine. Why would I want to "upgrade" to something "better" if it's not actually any better at what I want it to do?
I'd much rather they spend their money fixing system bugs.
I was pretty disappointed when I downloaded the 10.14 Developer Beta and was told that it wouldn't install on my Mac Pro....a machine with 12 logical cores running at 3.2 Ghz, 32 GB of RAM, 512 GB SSD, and a 3 GB ATI Radeon 7950 that's Metal compatible . The release notes say that support for this machine is coming in a later beta release, but who knows when this will happen.
I realize that my machine is about 6 years old, but Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04 run just fine on it. They really need to release this Mac Pro tower that's been rumored, because I sure don't want to move to the trash-can or an iMac.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
I've owned nothing but Mac desktops since 1990, but I stopped taking software updates from them for all Apple products about two years ago. iPod, Mac Pro, Powerbook, AppleTV, iPhone, iWatch. For years I've advocated for Apple, particularly when they went with Unix underpinnings for the OS. But I'm done. The declining software quality has become too aggravating. And now that they've merged macOS and iOS groups, despite their claims this doesn't mean the end for the mac line, it really seems like it is.
That being said, I loathe the alternatives. I'm just going to keep using everything I've got until it won't work anymore and then find something to switch to that will hurt the least.
Ninety percent of the market uses Excel to work on small data sets.
I use Excel to keep track of my grocery bills, and sometimes to add up travel expenses when I take a trip.
I expect a faster processor would add *microseconds* to my free time.
People could move to Windows 10.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The problem is that while their hardware still meets your use case, it does not for others and they have no offering for those people. It just means their market can do nothing but get smaller.
Microsoft is rewriting Excel in JavaScript
They are not. What they are doing is adding javascript support, which is bad enough, to office 365. They are not re-writing one of their core products in javascript.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Also the $5K imac pro sucks to thin / storage locked to the MB / over priced upgrades and it's hard to change the ram on your own.
And the T2 chip is chained off the DMI bus and not some of the open CPU pci-e lanes.
Because they dedicated the PCI lanes to Thunderbolt.
Still has 5400 RPM HDDs in the Mac minis too.
#DeleteFacebook
there's plenty of room to improve video editing, film production, computer programming, scientific research and even business finance. AMD's doing a brisk business with 16 and 32 core desktop processors. I don't see anything close to that on offer from Apple.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I don't think it is obsolesce business model, but the shift to mobile systems. While 2006 is pushing it, 2012 is a better time. But with most software being designed to run systems smaller then the CPU of the systems of these times. There has been a lot of work, shrinking down the bloat in the software so it will work on mobile devices or push a lot of the work to the cloud.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm a big Mac fan - I've been using them as my main computer since 1993.
With that said, the stagnation got to be too much. I picked up an HP Envy recently that costs about half of what an i7 does on the Mac side, and it has one of the new 15 watt TDP chips in it so it is cool and has decent (but not spectacular) battery life. Sure, I die a little every time I need to use Windows 10 - but at the end of the day I just couldn't spend too much money on hardware that seems to be somewhat flaky.
Tangentially, why the hell can't Microsoft figure out high-res displays? Are my choices really teeny-tiny or big-n-fuzzy? Sheesh. And if it were just legacy support, fine - but it's the situation with MS's own bundled apps!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Hey, I'm a big Apple fan. The thing that's unfortunate right now is: if you are at a point where you should upgrade systems--- laptop life, OS support, etc--- all of the offerings are underwhelming: dated and not price-performant. Apple has always been a premium option but you'd usually get premium, up to date hardware for it until the past few years.
I'm on a Linux laptop these days and I hope they fix it so I can go back to everyday use of MacOS.
I went that route for awhile too, but it would break every time a system update was released (admittedly, this was about 10 years ago). Is this still a problem?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
it kinda the way apple is, its the "state of affairs" of things. apple is knife focused on iOS devices. and mac is yea we do that to.
32GB ram laptops are not uncommon, even 64GB can be had... and now lenovo is pushing out a 128GB ram laptop apple? 16GB....
there is alot of people that need power, and apple is not paying attention to them. so they are moving to windows in most cases a few to linux
but most are going to windows 10, not becuase the love windows.. but because they can get better hardware.
I know this is controversial, but if Apple isn't going to care about the hardware any more, perhaps it's time it pulled out of the market and sold macOS as a standalone product for third party PCs. And if they don't want to support it, they can contract that out too, maybe even partner with someone like Canonical (who have a great track record on making a third party OS work on everything out of the box.) With Intel and AMD controlling the entire non-standardized part of the hardware chain it's easier than it's been since the early nineties to produce a single OS that'll work on everything anyway.
It's always been the OS, not the hardware, that's made me crave Macs, but I haven't owned one in over ten years because I just don't trust them with hardware any more, and can't get a Mac with a specification I'm comfortable with.
If they no longer even care, then it's time to let their platform blossom.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's not even Microsoft planned obsolescence. It's the crappy hardware that most Window installations run on.
The difference between a 5400 RPM spinner and SSD is like night and day. I guarantee you give people with spinners the option to upgrade to a SDD and 95% will.
-The Fake Woz
I've been a mac user since 1984. My current laptop is a 2010 MacBook Air, which still feels like a solid machine. Of course, I can't upgrade to the latest macOS, and my MacBook is past the 5 year lifespan I originally expected. So what is next?
I use macOS and Ubuntu Linux on a daily basis. I never liked Windows, for reasons, and for years, all of the new software I've installed on my MacBook has been open source. And I'm increasingly using software that depends on OpenGL, which has been deprecated by macOS.
Up to now, I have been super happy with my MacBook -- the hardware is brilliant, and open source software mostly just works (I use homebrew). But that's no longer the case for what Apple currently offers. Although I consider the MacBook pro trackpad to be best in class, the keyboard issues are troubling, and the loss of OpenGL will be a show stopper. The MacBook Pro is no longer the premium, best in class laptop that it used to be, and is still priced as. Although I don't feel the need to run the very latest hardware, the lack of hardware updates on Mac computers is a signal that Apple doesn't give a shit, and you would be buying in to a dying ecosystem.
Suppose Windows 10 linux emulation supported graphics out of the box, so I could run X11 apps, Wayland apps, any of the desktop environments like KDE or Gnome, and OpenGL apps. And suppose I could disable all the Windows spyware. Then I'd seriously consider a Windows laptop. Microsoft just bought Github, so we can hope that they will eventually get a clue and fix these problems. But that's still years away, I would guess.
So I'm going to replace my old MacBook with a Linux ultrabook. Right now, the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition looks like the overall best replacement for a 13" mac laptop. Other options I've looked at: System 76 Galago Pro and Purism Librem 13.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
On the Canadian Apple store the price for a 15 inch MacBook Pro with 2TB storage and a 3.1GHz CPU is $5,379. That's why I switched to PCs. The Windows Linux subsystem means that Windows 10 can approximate a Mac well enough that the huge gap in both price and performance means it was more than worthwhile to switch.
The scary thing is that a year or so ago when they were announcing these new macs with only one type of port and the silly touch bar Microsoft were announcing their new Surface Studio with dial controller and the MS presentation looked far more like the Apple of yesteryear while the Apple roll out looked more like an old-Microsoft one!
Old macs are generally inline with old PC's... you're in denial of you think your comp is running like it did new. Mac, windows and android all slow down over time with updates.
I have definitely experienced that with iOS; but never with macOS.
After death of Steve Jobs MacOS development practices are same as Windows and I bet it will only be becoming worse with time. The way finance works there's simply no economic incentive for excellence in design of computers. Apple has enough financial cushion so they can afford to be lazy and make mistakes, and they'll use this opportunity to full extent.
I realize that my machine is about 6 years old, ... I sure don't want to move to the trash-can or an iMac.
There is no point - the trash can itself is about 4-5 years old now and its GPUs have less than half the power of modern ones yet Apple still charges for them like they were new. After waiting for a viable desktop replacement for years the final straw was the new laptops with one type of port, no function keys, old GPUs and a terrible keyboard. Windows 10 is not as good as MacOS but the better and cheaper hardware more than makes up for the difference.
...but he got shit done. (I didn't intend for that to line up, but I'm happy it did :D). He was also into the details and into consistency. Tim is a nice guy which is exactly why things are slipping. The elimination of the headphone port under Jobs would have been universal or at the very least consistent in a column (all iPads, iPods, iPhones for example) and the AirPods would be billed as THE solution. That with wireless power... "Wires? Where we are going, we don't need wires!"... cue commercials of people just grabbing their iPads etc. from the charging pad, throwing them into a bag or pocket, putting in their AirPods, music blasting, and heading out the door. Smooth, seamless, etc. Instead we've got mixed support for wireless audio / headphone jacks and wireless charging. Jobs would have squeezed to make sure they were all released together. Tim is more laid back about it and is like, "Don't worry about it. We'll release each of the parts when they are ready, staggered even. No big deal." I suspect the same is happening with the hardware. Combine that with delays on the Intel side... and you've got quite a wait. One good thing about Apple, once they do release something it is pretty well done (although that seems to be slipping too). :P
incremental OS updates and things like 1st party battery service have to not arbitrarily drop support just because machines are 4-5 years old.
The latest iOS and OSX operating system updates both announced they would support exactly the same devices as the previous OS versions.
Actually, they only announced that for iOS 12. MacOS Mojave has contracted the "supported" Mac base to basically those released mid-2012 or newer.
The issue seems to be Apple's decision to go all "Metal", and Macs earlier than mid-2012 do not have a Metal-Capable GPU.
The car industry release annual models of their cars.
It is often no major changes, but it is a revised version, a few changes, perhaps a new pricetag.
If nothing else it keeps the enthusiasts... enthusiastic.
And... memory and storage is rather cheap in 2018. Apple, however, charge a lot for quite little. Just a little RAM/storage bump would suffice for a new model.
Apple are just terrible 2018.
Apple makes trendy gadgets for the atechnical. It's a very profitable business to be sure. But there is not a lot of "geek cred" in Apple's products once their novelty has worn off.
It's not so much about you wanting to upgrade or not, it's about new users wanting to buy in or not... or when your hardware fails, which it will eventually.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
My Late 2013 MacBook Pro has kept up fine with my work needs (typically, developing distributed applications with IntelliJ IDEA on Lightbend's stack). After near five years, I'm considering an upgrade once a new model's released with more memory. Every year? Not for me, but I have seen an upgrade cycle that rapid with commodity machines.
With Macs is always the same. As soon as a significant upgraded specs machine is anounced, you buy it, with max CPU and RAM (since those are soldered). Skimp on the (removable) SSD if you must.
When Updated machines just hit, they are price-competitive with whatever has similar specs in the PC world (apple uses their scale to get good deals from component suppliers, and pass a very, very little part of the savings to us).
then hold on to it for a Very, very long time. Because, after a couple of semesters without upgrades, thos machines stop being price-competitive with their similar specd PC equivalents. If you are "forced" to buy a mac ahead of time, buy 2nd hand.
When the next significant update hits, lather, rinse, repeat.
Since this tends to align with my personal tastes, I have no Problem, but some people can not (or do not want) to operate in that pattern, I feel for them.
My MacBook aluminum Unibody Late 2008 lasted me (with SSD and RAM upgrade) until 2015. Now I am rocking and Early 2015 Air (maxed CPU, Maxed RAM, Downgraded SSD). And by the looks of it, this Air will last 7 years as well...
Yes, I am not a pro. Nowadays I am just a lousy cloud (mostly openstack) trainer and architect.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
apple also need at least 2 dual wide pci-e X16 slots with that + 3-4 m.2 slots + at least 1 sata 3.5 SSD / HDD bay.
AMD for apple to go with all ATI video cards.
With computers it isn't quite so simple.
Your inputs are changing. Let's use a simple example of someone dealing with videos or photos. Resolutions and color depths have increased to where they overwhelm the memory and storage available in older equipment. The processing of these files also takes longer.
Hard drives fill up, log files get longer, patches accumulate, caches grow larger, temp directories fill up. Software is installed but rarely cleaned back out, so total number of processes climb. Drives fragment, software gets more complicated.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The worst part about Apple neglecting the Mac is their cheerful statements about hardware that has not been updated for 3, 4 or 5 years being "important" to them. If you are abandoning the Mac, tell people so they can adjust. Stringing them along with false statements of commitment while the hardware becomes ever more obsolete is a sure way to alienate even the most rabid fan.
Tim Cook quote from October 2017: "I'm glad you love Mac mini. We love it too. ... we do plan for Mac mini to be an important part of our product line going forward."
Last upgrade to Mac mini = 2012. (elimination of quad core in 2014 does not count as an upgrade)
You are claiming that a human being cannot detect a doubling or quadrupling in computation speed? Interesting argument.
Personally I just moved from a Core2Duo to an i7. I already had an SSD and plenty of RAM. I can certainly feel a difference in the two computers, though I suppose you'll say it is in my head.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
OS X cannot really take advantage of multi-core hw. Faster processors are not coming out really - just more cores. You will notice that Apple purposely omits certain command lines like vmstat and sar.
Performance-gains were modest in the last couple of years. Only very recently has Intel been offering substantial performance-gains (via core-count increase) from one generation to the next.
I think that only with the current top-of-the-line i7 non-Pro iMac has the Geekbench-score basically doubled to what I have on my 2012 i7 Mini.
It remains to be seen how Apple is going to push forward, though. Intels roadmap goes up to 28 cores for their desktop-chips, AMD has a 32-core ThreadRipper2.
The 18-core iMacPro will actually look a bit wimpy next to one of those.
I guess they need to redesign their whole lineup for the upcoming core-count explosion.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
My gaming PC cost me $1000 years ago and it works just fine.
Steam has plenty of games for macOS.
But there is simply no reasonable Mac to buy.
We have a MacBook Pro from 2012. It is upgraded to 16GB of RAM and a 1TB hybrid/fusion drive. Total money spent is not much more than $1500. Can't get anything (Apple) close to 16GB/1TB for $1500 in 2018.
I have to admit, that's what I'm curious about IRT the iMac Pro.
Apple's apology tour last year talked about how they put themselves in a "thermal envelope" with the Mac Pro where, basically, they couldn't upgrade to the new Intel CPUs because their design just wouldn't be able to handle the heat. What was unsaid was that Apple didn't want to spend the money to redesign it because, while profitable, the Mac Pro doesn't sell that many units.
So what I'm curious about is what's going to happen when Intel releases the next generation of Xeons. Will we see an upgraded iMac Pro? I'd like to think that Apple learned their lesson and designed the iMac Pro so that it could handle hotter CPUs. But I have my doubts.
And, frankly, if I'm plunking down $5000 for a computer, it better have the latest and greatest therein.
You probably need to replace your Crapple keyboard, looks like none of the vowel keys are working any more.
When I finally bought a laptop in 2006, I got myself a MacBook. Used it successfully for seven or eight years until I decided to get myself a used 2011 MacBook Pro, because by this time Apple had already made both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro into systems I didn't want. Since then, I've had to replace the logic board on the 2011 Pro once due to the graphics card failure and it recently started showing signs of the problem again. I got into the configuration and disabled the discrete graphics card to make sure I can keep using the laptop for a while longer. Which, of course, means that it's even less useful for games and other graphic-intensive work than it was before. So when I finally decided to buy myself a desktop as well, I didn't even consider Apple. When I finally replace that laptop, I'm not going to buy Apple. I don't use a iPhone or an iPad. I can't buy an iPod Classic anymore. Once I replace that laptop, I have no reason to deal with Apple again. It might not be much of a financial loss, but it's still the loss of one more customer and the creation of someone who will no longer recommend Apple to others.
95% of people will not know the difference, nor notice it in their general use.
Not notice the difference between an OS running on SSD and not? No way.
Do they *need* SSD? Probably not. But virtually eliminating IO bottlenecks allows many other functions to proceed faster... and not talking just about boot speed and initial load here.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
A Trojan horse to what? Bank accounts?
#DeleteFacebook
Yeah..... I'm only a hobbyist with the music recording or production thing, at best. (Many years ago, I spent a lot more time and focus on those things. These days, I just try to keep up with them as a side interest.)
I've also chosen to use Macs as my primary systems at home for the last 10+ years now. I owned several Mac Pros too. I got a LOT of mileage out of both my 2006 and 2008 model. Picked up a used 2010 model after that. but wound up reselling it for a small profit when the opportunity arose. Plugged along with the 2013 "trash can" Mac Pro until just recently. I decided to buy the new iMac Pro as its replacement, only because Micro Center stores kept selling the base model for $1,000 off. And at that price, it really seemed like a pretty good value.
I agree that Apple has been basically stringing along the computer-using community for several years now. If they didn't release this iMac Pro AND someone quickly put the discount on it, though? I would have been done with the Mac moving forward.
There are a lot of arguments to be made why it's worth sticking with the Mac. All of my existing software investment would be one, as well as the investment in the rest of the ecosystem that just works well together. (I have a number of HomeKit devices here, for example -- and my wife and I have gotten used to keeping all of our schedules on iCloud shared calendars.) But everything has a price limit -- and that $5,000 starting point for a new "Pro" series desktop exceeded mine.
The notebook computers are really not where I want them to be either. I have one of the new 13" Macbook Pros, courtesy of my work. There are times I really like things about it, such as the overall size, weight and look of it. But other times, the dongle collection gets on my nerves, and I'll never agree with Apple's decision on the new keyboard design on them. The battery life is great and the screen is crisp. But I *really* want a better GPU in one of these. This new idea to sell external GPUs feels like a band-aid LONG after the bleeding has gone on.
The state of music software today is such that I don't think there's any need to stick with OS X though. The single biggest benefit to Mac is probably the lack of hassle configuring things to reduce latency. But Windows PC speeds have gotten so fast now, I'm doubtful that optimization is as necessary as it used to be.
And as I mentioned in another post, the $5000 base model was on sale for $3,999 almost as soon as it came out, at all Micro Center stores. You had to go in to buy it in store to get the price. But my experience was that their stores were well stocked with them, and they did restock several times when they sold out at one.
They ran that sale again several times, as well as another sale where it was $799 discounted. I saw other stores like Best Buy do similar sales in response. So many of the iMac Pros people purchased were for far less than that $5,000 price tag.
I see you, Tim Cook.
CPU technology is approaching a plateau; hopefully, in the long run, it's not an endless plateau, but over the next several years we will hit the known limits of process technology without a major revolution in how silicon chips are made. We've already seen a slowing CPU speed growth curve, and GPUs/etc. will catch up soon, so measuring "new" by the traditional metrics of CPU speed and cores is going to become pointless. Hopefully we'll still see a bit of growth in number of cores, co-processors, etc., but the same limits will apply there; there's only so much heat/power/cost you can deal with in laptops and home systems.
I know statements like this have been made before (I remember the "1 micron" barrier :-) ) but this time I think it's much more real.
basically, they couldn't upgrade to the new Intel CPUs because their design just wouldn't be able to handle the heat.
I believe it was the GPUs, not CPU - CPU TDP has stayed pretty steady (and as a result, performance has been pretty stagnant). T the GPU complexity has been continuing to go up, bringing lots more heat.
The new iMac Pro is, apparently, almost completely unsupported by Apple (very few to no technicians trained to service them).
Worse, they're badly engineered as well. The stand/VESA mount issue is beyond the point of farce.
They're willing to fuck over major reviewers with huge reach on repairs for these expensive devices.
So. How's Apple going to treat YOU with YOUR significantly less expensive device?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I have that one, the fastest Mac Mini I could get, and also a 2010 Mac Pro, which is the most powerful "pro" machine. I have upgraded it close to the max, 6-core 3.4GHz Xeon, 32GB RAM, USB3, e-Sata, 2x500GB SSD & 2x2TB HD (didn't touch graphics as I don't game) and I've been waiting for them to give me something to replace it with all these years, but they really don't care about power users anymore...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Absolutely. As a filmmaker who also does animation in After Effects & Cinema 4D I am [futilely] hoping that Apple updates their MBP lineup to reintegrate all the ports they eliminated. Thunderbolt, USB, remove the Touch Bar, and especially bring back the magnetic charger since I can be clumsy af. Right now I'm still using a Mid 2014 MBP and will continue to do so until I'm either forced to switch back to a PC or Apple gives me back some basic options. Animating isn't pretty right now, but luckily I don't have gobs of it to do since I mostly do basic film productions, but I would kill to get a better graphics card, it's getting painful.
My mid or late (can't recall, I'm at work) MacBook Pro from 2013 "suffers no detectable slowdown or inability to handle complex websites, etc" as well. Mind you, a 500GB SSD, Intel i7, and 16GB of RAM should still be decent, even today.
That being said, though, the chances of my next computer being an Apple are 50:50. I'm probably going to come back to Linux and just have a decent mid tower PC.
Apple is the iPhone company now, like Xerox used to be the toner heads and HP became the ink company.
If you look at Cook's products, they're all inspired by the iPhone. Short (2-3 year) life cycle, no user updatable parts, glued together. Cook knows how to turn a profit. He doesn't know how to make computers.
You need to set up fonts for the high res display. Windows doesn't always do it automatically.
I forget how but you could open up the Control Panel, search for Cleartype or Cleartext(?) and configure it.
It puts up some sample renderings and you select the ones which look the best. Then the display looks fine.
You forgot the 90% after that first sentence... of what you MEAN...
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No need to repeat the same exact comments others have made as they are spot on about how Apple now only appears to cares about its mobile division. (even if their corporate double-speak says otherwise)
But the kicker here is that they will not allow any third-party company to make absolutely balls-to-the-wall cutting-edge machines to run OS-X on probably because they couldn't stand the thought of someone else staining this hallowed image as a technology leader that memes people into paying higher prices for their hardware, therefore the only real alternative for pro users who have to come rely on OS-X's stability and want to keep it as their desktop of choice is to install it on commodity PC hardware as a Hackintosh.
That being said, and even though we must all eventually upgrade, the late 2011 17" 2.5 GHz core i7 laptops are currently still selling for very high amounts on eBay, and so are their spare parts as all of those who are still using them are not upgrading to anything else. These machines can be fitted with 16 Gigs of RAM (Apple says 8 but that's known to be a lie) as well as upgraded to two internal disks by removing the DVD drive (one high-capacity SSD and one traditional 2.5" hard drive), so they are portable workhorses and can still be used for most everyday tasks as long as the this doesn't involve 4K video or other high-performance gaming.
What an ironic turn of events for a company that only managed to stay afloat because it kept providing media professionals with the tools they required to create content with, and that now appears satisfied with merely making stuff for people to consume content with.
Most pro users will eventually have no choice but to migrate to Windows 10 or figure out a way to use their existing OS-X apps with Hackintosh.
Ninety percent of the market uses Excel to work on small data sets.
And the rest of them should be using a different tool because Excel isn't designed to do what they are trying to use it for.
The old versions of Excel had limits on the number of columns and rows much tighter than was required by the hardware because the devs knew that anyone getting close to them was using the wrong program. Now they support the abuse, for better and worse.
I have to confess that I don't know much about Mac keyboards, but I gather that the Prime Directive of Thinness means that keyboard feel and key-travel are way down the list.
I really like my Corsair mechanical gaming keyboard (though I am not a gamer). The buckling-spring feel of those Cherry key-switches is wonderful.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
right.. it's called vm_stat, and sar was removed from MacOS since sierra but there's still the official Apple repository for sar:
https://opensource.apple.com/s...
Download sar.c, sar.h and also sadc.h and sadc.c from a sibling folder.
Compile and test:
clang sar.c -o sar -I . ./sar -A -f test > testout
clang sadc.c -o sadc -I . -framework Foundation -framework IOKit
terminated by signal SIGFPE (Floating point exception)
And output, testout looks like this:
17:32:23 %usr %nice %sys %idle
17:32:23 pgout/s
17:32:23 pgin/s pflt/s vflt/s
17:32:23 device r+w/s blks/s
17:32:23 IFACE Ipkts/s Ibytes/s Opkts/s Obytes/s
17:32:23 IFACE Ierrs/s Oerrs/s Coll/s Drop/s
New Disk: [disk0] IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/SATA@1F,2/PRT0@0/PMP@0/@0:0
17:32:23 %usr %nice %sys %idle
17:32:23 0 0 0 0
17:32:23 pgout/s
17:32:23 nan
17:32:23 pgin/s pflt/s vflt/s
17:32:23 nan nan inf
So it compiles, data can be collected and kindof processed, but not fully.
I've found the Apple repository of SAR thanks to this superuser answer: https://superuser.com/a/581128
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But the Genius Bar might have access to parts by then! Yay! Repairs!
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
...Sucks.
Pretty much all laptops do...
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Better performing hardware for a much cheaper price. Stability to boot.
> Old macs are generally inline with old PC's
Except "Old Macs" are your only option. "Old Macs" are being sold as "New Macs" at the same high price points Apple has long be famous for.
Outside of the Apple reality distortion field I can get an "Old PC" for CHEAP or a MUCH better "New PC".
Consider this another iteration of "ANY monopoly is bad".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Many modern applications look fine - Chrome for instance, which I'm typing in right now. Everything scales well according to the settings in both the control panel and the settings (another WTF in Windows... why two control panels???). But many of the built-in Windows things, and almost every "standard installer" is fuzzy, scaled up from a low resolution.
Actually, your comment made me go check - and it looks like MS updated a lot of the formerly fuzzy-looking applications in the April update. My complaint is actually not nearly as applicable anymore. My last struggle was with a somewhat janky cross-platform application, not one of the internal programs.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Apple's margin is extremely high on phones. It's one of the reasons it is a darling of Wall Street.
What's the margin on new PC hardware? Minimal, even for Apple.
If Apple were to come out with new computers every year, they would have a higher amount NRE on their books, and the components to make their computers would be more expensive to boot. Older components on a large scale are cheaper by a long shot. Apple can't compete with smaller companies since it needs parts on such a scale when it releases new computers that manufacturers can't keep up. By not investing in new computer development, Apple is playing the dangerous game of having a locked in market, overcharging those who use their gear, and expecting it to last -- or not caring about its users at all.
Apple may be on the egregious side. But they're far from the only offender here. *Everyone* seems to be letting their real computers stagnate in favor of gadgets. And I suspect that it's not even the fault of any of them; but a result of Intel's recent trend of sitting around with their thumbs up their bums.
About three years ago, I bought a top-end iMac with a core i7 CPU that tops out "turbo boost"ing at 4Ghz. Leaving aside "pro" model and Xeons, the top-end iMac now is an i7 @ 4.2Ghz... which you would think would say something bad about Apple. But a quick check for the top-end consumer non-Xeon HP and Dell machines that I could find, turns up machines specced at core i7s topping out at most 4.6hz. That's better; but not by much. Granted, an i7 @ 4Ghz today is not quite the same thing as an i7 @ 4Ghz from three years ago. But the improvements are fairly incremental and underwhelming yawners... especially considering we've had two full 18-month Moore cycles in the meantime. The Intel of old would have improved its product lineup considerably more than they have bothered to do these last 36 months.
Perhaps this is the root of the persistent rumors of Apple switching to its own ARM-based chip designs? After all, that's pretty much how Apple wound up on Intel in the first place... IBM was letting the PPC G5 stagnate and Motorola pretty much checked out entirely.
Imagine all the people...
Dell / hp / others all do specs bumps / price drops over time. But apple still has 5400RPM hdds in the imacs.
Apple looks for ways to make system thinner and thinner and takes ports away.
For the iMacs, Apple is pushing Fusion Drive if you don't want a pure SSD. Fusion Drive is merging an SSD and the slow 5400 RPM HDD into a large device with the goal that the frequently used files and areas are available at SSD speeds, while things you access seldom is available at the HDD price (the Apple version of that, anyway).
I'm with the original poster. I don't see why it matters whether the mac hardware is "stagnant". I care about whether it does what I want it to do.
My laptop runs everything I want to run fine. Why would I want to "upgrade" to something "better" if it's not actually any better at what I want it to do?
I'd much rather they spend their money fixing system bugs.
If all you want it to do is what you want it do and don't care about it being able to upgrade or do new things, why would you spend extra on a mac to begin with? Unless you purely want it as a status symbol. You're paying premium prices for old designs because it's in a pretty case.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I'm not sure what you think is "behind the technology curve" with the iMac Pro or the 2017 MBP. Even the 2017 iMacs are up-to-date, too.
Yes, we ALL know the Mac mini and Mac Pro are SADLY in need of a refresh; but don't damn the entire BRAND, just because they have let a couple of products languish.
A "couple of products languish"? They only have a couple of products! They've got basically three desktop machines (with various configurations) and the iMac is the only one that is even remotely up to date as I write this. The Mac Mini and Mac Pro are not even close to the best hardware available in their respective market segments right now. They are better on the laptop side of things but their decisions there haven't been universally great either. (16GB max ram on MBP? One USB-C port for the whole machine?) I understand that they sell more laptops than desktops but that's not an acceptable excuse. With the billions Apple has in the bank I'm fairly confident that it isn't a resources problem so that means it is a decision rather than a limitation.
Most damning to my mind is that Apple still can't seem to figure out how to really tightly integrate the software between their Macintosh computers and their phones and tablets and other devices. The Mac has kind of become the bastard step child. Ironic since the real value proposition for any Apple machine is in the software. Put Windows on a Mac without OS X and nobody is going to pay a premium for that. People buy Apple products for the software and Apple really is a software company. If they are going to bundle their software with hardware as they have always done, then the hardware for their Macintosh line needs to be better than it currently is and needs to remain so. Otherwise one can find more value in a Windows or Linux box for a lot of use cases.
Apple has no been a company that believes they need to release a new Mac "just because" for several years now, and it isn't as if Intel has made great SIGNIFICANT progress on their "roadmap" in recent years.
Apple charges premium prices for their products and historically they've been good enough to justify that pricing. That's fine but with premium pricing we should fully expect to get a premium product including hardware that is somewhere close to the best available at the time of purchase. With as few products as Apple has in their lineup (by design) they should have NO problem keeping their products at or near the best available in their respective categories. And currently it is undeniable that they routinely fail in this test in their Macintosh division particularly with their desktop machines.
As a society, we have become obsessed with never-ending growth and progress.
You say that as if I'm supposed to axiomatically agree that it is a bad thing. Sorry but growth and progress ARE good things.
It's not good enough that a company provides jobs and turns a profit. It has to show "growth".
That's correct. Do you understand why? If I'm going to invest in a company I'm going to expect a return on my investment. Companies that don't grow don't provide a return. Companies that don't grow are replaced by those that do and the jobs go to the ones that are growing. Companies that don't improve their products lose to those that do and their profits follow.
It's not good enough that a given computer can perform all sorts of useful functions. It has to be reinvented as more powerful every 374 days.
Quite so. I want to be able to do more tomorrow than I can do today. Otherwise we may as well still be living as hunter gatherers. Maybe you aren't old enough to remember when computers weren't a part of our daily lives but I am and it's better now that they are. And I want the ones tomorrow to be better than the ones today. The paper phone directory was "good enough" but the internet is better. Rotary phones worked fine but mobile phones are better. Societies that don't steadily improve their technology stagnate and fail. You really don't want that.
I do agree that a Mac Mini should cost less now than it did over three years ago. But what's wrong with good enough?
What's wrong with it is that I'm not going to buy it when there is something else available that is better. Apple charges premium prices for their devices so it's not unreasonable to expect their products to *gasp* actually be premium products. Selling a computer that basically hasn't been updated for 3 years for the same price you did 3 years ago is just either arrogance or stupidity. Apple has by design a small product line and they have plenty of resources (esp cash) so there really is no excuse for them selling any products that aren't best in class or nearly so. If some other company comes out with a better product then I'm going to buy that instead.
Even for that configuration, it's an insane price.
My washer uses tech from 20 years ago. It cost $250 delivered. The latest washers cost nearly $1,000.
You can buy a washer for considerably less than $1000. $1000 gets you a top of the line unit. Most of them cost $400-700 and adjusted for inflation that is roughly the same as your price from 20 years ago. Price competition on appliances like these is incredibly intense so no, prices have not gone up at all on an inflation adjusted basis and the products actually have gotten modestly better too.
My clothes still come out clean. And the Dryer dries them.
And they almost certainly consume more energy and more water doing it. Just because it works well enough for your purposes doesn't mean you'd buy the same unit today if you were in the market.
When my 20 year old toaster died, I want another one just like it, not some shiny contraption with electronic doodads that add no value to what I want to do, which is toast bread.
Poor analogy. Toaster technology is fully mature and hasn't advanced meaningfully in the last 20 years. PC technology has advanced more in the last 6 months than toasters have in the last 50 years. Sure PCs are a more mature technology than they were 10 or 20 years ago but compared to most other products they still are improving at a breathtaking pace. A PC you buy today will for the same price point be notably better for most use cases than one you bought just 3 years ago.
Nobody is saying you have to upgrade for no purpose but if you are in the market for a computer you simply aren't going to buy a 3 year old model unless you have a very specific reason to do so. The reason is because the state of the art has moved significantly in that relatively short time span.
There's Moore's law, but really the hardware mfr's have been focusing on mobile for the past 10 years, cuz that's where the money is.
I'm with the original poster. I don't see why it matters whether the mac hardware is "stagnant". I care about whether it does what I want it to do.
My laptop runs everything I want to run fine. Why would I want to "upgrade" to something "better" if it's not actually any better at what I want it to do?
I'd much rather they spend their money fixing system bugs.
I've been using Macs since the mid-90s. And I would like to be changing out my mid-2011 iMac soon.
But the only real differences are that the new skinny iMacs run cooler, and I can't bootcamp Windows 10 on it. Which is fine - My Windows 7 bootcamp has 100 percent uptime and doesn't suffer from Windows 10 update disease.
So unless it breaks on me, I have no good reason to upgrade, unless I go the MacPro route.
And at 7 years, it's getting kinda old. I don't know if Apple can continue just selling replacement keyboards and magic mice.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
My point is that is really hasn't. My laptop already does all the things I need to do with it.
That does not matter for purposes of buying a new one. All that means is that you aren't going to upgrade until you either get a new use case requirement or it breaks. And when you do replace it you almost certainly are not going to buy the same model even if it worked just fine. You are going to buy something that most likely is technologically superior to whatever you are currently and likely for the same or less money. Because why wouldn't you? It's like buying a new car that gets notably better gas mileage and goes faster for the same money as what you bought 3 years prior. Nobody is going to buy old inferior technology unless they absolutely have to. And companies that don't keep up with the state of the art are going to lose sales to companies that do keep up. Right now Apple is not keeping up in their Macintosh division.
I'm a big Mac fan - I've been using them as my main computer since 1993.
With that said, the stagnation got to be too much. I picked up an HP Envy recently that costs about half of what an i7 does on the Mac side, and it has one of the new 15 watt TDP chips in it so it is cool and has decent (but not spectacular) battery life.
Hehe, I have one of the Envy's as well. Have you had any update problems? Solid Laptop that. I have the need for multiple audio outputs, and updates bitch those up more often than not. The latest one was an error that traced out to a Creative Soundblaster dongle that I plugged into the thing once to see if it still worked. The cure was to go to creative and download and install new drivers, but first I had to rummage through junk drawers to find the damn dongle because it wouldn't install the new drivers without the dongle.
Windows problems.
Sure, I die a little every time I need to use Windows 10 - but at the end of the day I just couldn't spend too much money on hardware that seems to be somewhat flaky.
Tangentially, why the hell can't Microsoft figure out high-res displays? Are my choices really teeny-tiny or big-n-fuzzy? Sheesh. And if it were just legacy support, fine - but it's the situation with MS's own bundled apps!
Stockholm Syndrome. Their fans will put up with anything and still sing the All Praise to Redmond song.
In other words, The amount of crap you will willingly put up with is the amount of crap you'll get.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I know that there are cars on the market that can hit top speeds of 200 miles per hour. They may be "technologically superior", but I don't buy one because it is capability I don't need and will never use.
If Apple sold a reasonably-specced computer (either a mini or a tower) that let me upgrade the memory, storage, and video card whenever I desired, I'd click 'Buy' on that immediately. Since they don't, they're forcing me to question whether I really need to continue using macOS.
Right now my desktop is a Hackintosh that I built in 2011. Over the years I added more memory, upgraded the HD to an SSD, and upgraded the video card a few times. I boot into Windows for games, and into macOS for most everything else.
But frequent rebooting back and forth is a pain. Recently I've been getting into VR (HTC Vive) and have been thinking about building a new computer with current parts ... and I've been putting thought into how much I really need macOS, given that so many of the apps and services I use are online and cross--platform. Do I want to continue dual-booting? Or do I want to run macOS in VirtualBox (which apparently has problems with sound, and FaceTime and iMessage don't work)? Or do I want a Mac mini, or to build a small Hackintosh with an ITX-based PC, so I can remote into it from Windows with VNC? Or do I want to wean myself off macOS entirely?
My realization is that I use macOS for lifestyle stuff. Using the Safari web browser is nice because it has access to the same bookmarks I have on my iPhone and iPad. Photos is a good library app for the photos I take with my iPhone. macOS is generally easier to get around in ... though it absolutely sucks for games. And so I will continue to need to run both operating systems for now.
And don't even get me started on Mac laptops.
Has anyone else noticed its support and quality are going downhill too? Bugs, issues, etc. Also, its support is lame like its $29 battery issues in old iPhones a couple months ago:
iPhone 6+'s $29 battery recalls. Apple sent to the wrong e-mail address even though it was never used when preordering the $29 batteries over the phones. Even their e-mails confirmed the correct addresses. How in the world did Apple messed up with two incorrect (Apple ID) e-mail addresses when the preorder confirmations were correct? They were never changed! No e-mails and calls about the delivered batteries for over four months!
Following up for status updates had incompetent people like setting up two appointments for two iPhones 6+es. There were two openings back to back (3:40 and 3:50 PM PDT). The gal gave us the first one, but the second one was gone. We wanted to save a trip since its store was far. What the heck? Supervisor wasn't any better.
Why only seven days in advance and not more?
Why didn't Apple not tell authorized repair centers like Best Buy's Geek Squad that there were no batteries during appointment setups back in January 2018?
Argh! We need really need Steve Jobs back. Oh yeah... :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Same here. I got a Dell Precision running Ubuntu and just didn't look back. OSX just has bug after unfixed bug piling up, now persisting across versions. The hardware is stagnant, and other than the case, the MBP is no longer a premium experience. If I'm going to get a mainstream machine, I might as well pay a mainstream price for it.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Wait....a 128gb solid state drive and 8gb of ram isn't good enough for you? What kind of power user are you? /s
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Clearly the Mac Mini is the 'leetest of the bunch
Apple has given up on being "cool" in favor of being "rich".
Had been very happy with them, since getting an MBP back in '09 and cutting the WinDoze cord.
Unfortunately, it's getting to be a little long in the tooth. Have already lost one USB port, getting spontaneous re-boots and logouts. It's annoying, and as old as the machine is, no sense throwing money at replacement parts from eBay.
Still need a good rig, though, and am not interested in something glued and soldered that I can never work on.
So, recently, spent around the same amount as that '09 MBP and built a Hackintosh.
It's not a laptop anymore, but gosh, does it run!
Intel Z370 (using onboard graphics), i7 8700, 32GB DDR4, M.2 drive, 28" 4K screen, Matias keyboard (over the last nine years, my fingers have gotten really used to the touch on that MBP)
Everything works, running High Sierra. Did have to spring for a Broadcom WiFi/Bluetooth card, but fortunately Intel lets you remove the one they included.
Still want a portable box for when I'm away from the desk, so am going to reload the MBP and see if that breathes some life into it. If not, will just find a middle-of-the-read laptop and build another Hackintosh. (It's just for on the road, so no need for super-cow powers.)
This is really too bad for Apple, because if they had just continued to make excellent hardware that folks could actually work on, I would have spent the money on them instead.
I haven't had driver problems (yet), but I know from experience to back up Windows drivers (and while I'm at it, make a full-drive image) straight out of the box. And while the drivers haven't yet been a problem, the first 3 days I had the laptop were spent with it sitting on the counter downloading and applying a gazillion Windows patches, rebooting itself, telling me it is done, me checking and nope - there are more, rinse, repeat. Fun times, fun times. Waiting for Apple to get their act together again.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So we have:
2008: Core2 Quad Q6600 - 2.4GHz / 4 core / single thread 924 / CPU mark 2958
2010: i5 2500K - 3.3GHz / 4 core / single thread 1898 / CPU mark 6474
2017: i5 8600k - 3.6GHz / 6 core / single thread 2517 / CPU mark 12802
It took two years to get an honest doubling in performance.
It took seven years to get a doubling in performance with 50% more cores, but only 50% more single thread performance. And this explains why I am happily using Intel CPUs from 2010-2012 without giving a fuck about getting something faster.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
They’re not bad deals when they are newly updated; the aesthetic premium is small. Totally right when they are as old as they are now, though.
Really? Stick a crowbar into your wallet and buy a new machine. Seriously. Machines have a MTBF of around 5 years. You're just asking for trouble. Display cards are way better now, so are the CPUs, memory, disk, etc. You'll thank me later.
Not having any updates for over a year also means that Apple has missed out on the most interesting year of CPU upgrades in a long time. On the Intel side, we got the first mainstream six core CPUs for desktops, the first six core H-series (power laptop) processors, and the first quad core U-series (mainstream laptop) processors. These all meant performance improvements of 30 to 40%, a much bigger jump than we have seen for a while. (Nothing new in the Y series yet; that's probably waiting for the 10nm Cannon Lake.) And AMD debuted Ryzen and Mobile Ryzen, offering a viable alternative to many of Intel's processors.
So over on the Windows side, we have a bunch of new systems that are quite a bit faster at multi-threaded workloads than the ones you could get a year ago. But Mac users are totally missing out. (The iMac Pro uses a Xeon workstation and server processor, and that line did not get the same dramatic performance jump that the consumer processors did; higher core counts have been available there for a while.)
I think Apple has little to no interest in upgrading their laptops as long as the vast majority of PC laptops keep having the same crappy displays with narrow viewing angles and low contrast. It doesn't matter if they're 2x as powerful for half the price if I can't trust them for even adjusting the brightness and contrast of photos on the road.
The only laptops with decent displays cost not much less than a MacBook. And without Mac OS, which is still more appealing than Windows.
OP speaks true. But as a front-end developer, what other machine am I supposed to buy that can do all of the following?
Windows 10 has come a long way with its Linux integration re: command line, but I've yet to find anything that comes close to approximating Font Book or LinoType Explorer X.
The I5 2500K was a 2011 release, not 2010. The Q6600 was 2007, not 2008. Your timelines are vastly different from reality. See the links direct from Intel regarding release dates
https://ark.intel.com/products...
https://ark.intel.com/products...