now apple needs a real desktop or at the very lest least a imac with a EASY TO GET TO HDD SLOTs. NO other AIO makes you take the screen off to change the HDD and most of them have at least 2 hdd slots.
Taking the screen off takes about 2 minutes, and once you get past the "scary factor", isn't a big deal at all. Every single one of the online repair guides makes it about 5 steps too hard. There is specifically enough slack in the display cabling to allow the replacement of the iMac's HD WITHOUT completely removing (or even disconnecting) the display panel.
And don't replace the hdd with a SDD on a card.
Sorry. Apple is ahead of the curve. Everyone will be doing it soon, and it makes a TON of sense.
The mini needs to be a little bigger so it can have been cooling and a easier to open case.
They made the 'mini MUCH easier to add RAM to; which is as far as MOST people want to go. The mini is called the mini because it is. Making it even 25% bigger would not significantly improve cooling, but would make it appear far less "mini" and far more "cube" like.
But what apple really needs is a $1000-$1500 (base price) desktop with a mid-range video card in a X16 slots + 1-2 open pci-e slots. with 4 ram slots and at least 2 hdd bays.
While I personally would like Apple to fill that gap, they obviously don't. And they are making enough money at this point that they make their own weather, market-wise.
keep the big mac pro tower at the $2500++ UP range With PCI-E slots and high end / pro video cards. Some pro work needs pci-e cards as well good cpu power.
And I certainly agree with you here. But this is exactly why Apple doesn't see the need to have a "midrange tower". And as Thunderbolt devices become more available, they will have an increasingly-valid argument there.
So, SEVENTY percent isn't enough "margin" for someone who's ONLY "investment" is in the DEVELOPMENT?!? No manufacturing, advertising, hosting, bandwidth, payment processing, packaging, et FUCKING cetera, and you have the temerity to call that "grabbing all the margin"???
Oh, and what "Carriers" are you talking about? The cellphone carriers that can't WAIT to get on the iPhone gravy train?
Excuse my ignorance of Android architecture; but isn't there some equivalent to the DOS/Windows BIOS for Android?
Nope. In fact, having a basic text-mode that can be easily programmed with a generic driver is a bit of an anomaly to the PC world; most other architectures don't really have anything comparable.
I was speaking more of the "driver connector" end of things, where the BIOS (you know; the Basic Input Output System) interfaces the vagaries of chipset register mapping and such to the OS-side of things.
I wonder if this will continue for Apple.
iOS 6 is a yawner. Yes, what we need -- more facebook integration. Already, there is a backlash against FB. The latest Android announcement had some cool items in it including another method of protecting against piracy that does not depend on if a device is not rooted.
Sorry, no. All of these products were WELL defined and development started long before Jobs' untimely departure from this plane. In fact, I read an article shortly after his death that said that Apple had FOUR YEARS worth of products "in the queue" when Jobs died.
So, your comment MAY be relevant around 2015 or so...
I've heard before that Apple will stop making hardware
Apple stopped making hardware a long time ago. They design it, they badge it, they sell it. They don't make it. (Not that there's anything wrong with that in principle, although it can become tough when the people who do make the stuff start to sell it to end users themselves, which inevitably happens)
So, you're saying that, like pretty much everyone else, Apple uses Contract Manufacturers to execute THEIR designs?
So you mean the core demographic of who Apple is trying to sell devices to? I saw so many posts to facebook thanking jobs and only jobs for their cool pretty devices when he died. Apple's core demographic are people who are too dumb to use a computer, do you think that they will have any vested interest in who actually made it? No, they literally think that Jobs personally designed, built, programmed, tested every device, and just happened to be hanging out in the back room of the apple store they bought the device from, too busy working on the next big thing to personally hand deliver it to them.
Apple's core demographic are people who are too dumb to use a computer
Ahem. Embedded developer with over 3 decades of experience here, and unabashed Apple fan, who has, whenever possible, used Macs even in my development work.
I don't know what conferences you've been attending; but Apple has a large (and ever-growing) following among engineering, scientific and IT professionals. In fact, it is the people who have suffered at the wheel-of-torture that is Windows, and have tried valiantly to use Linux as an alternative (and failed), that are among the strongest Apple supporters.
And it is precisely BECAUSE they understand computers that they are so happy to use one that DOESN'T either fight them at every turn and make them feel like they should be happy the OS maker lets them do ANYTHING (Windows); or that make it such that simply MAINTAINING their computer becomes a second-job (Linux), that they are more than happy with OS X.
You can't resolve this with a generic Android build which anyone can install because mobile phone hardware isn't sufficiently standardised as to allow this.
Excuse my ignorance of Android architecture; but isn't there some equivalent to the DOS/Windows BIOS for Android? Phones are getting way powerful enough to support such abstraction, aren't they?
Why would I do that? There's no point in arguing with trolls.
Sez the person who has done exactly that for THREE rounds now...
Sure sounds like you're admitting it to me. I couldn't be exactly doing that if you weren't a troll.
Still, I will humour you - however, you'll have to provide actual citation as to how Google has "failed" in their objectives. Otherwise it's a bit like me saying you've failed as a human being - without any explanation as to why, it's a largely redundant comment.
Well, now you've upgraded to semantics games. Still a non-sequitur. But I'll bite:
If you read the comment I was responding to, it would be obvious to what I was referring, to wit:
" the Google mandates are more to ensure quality rather than consistency"
Ensuring Quality: All one has to do is read. There are some REALLY SHIT PHONES out there that run Android. So, how do Google's "Mandates" ensure "Quality"?
Consistency: Well, the OP had already conceded that point; but this entire article (and the meeting-of-the-minds that it reports on) wouldn't even exist if Google's "Mandates" would have enforced CONSISTENCY, would they?
However, trying to compare Andriod to iOS isn't exactly fair. iOS has ONE line of hardware to support, manufactured by the same company, which makes it pretty damn easy when one hand is talking to the other, and you're only dealing with one hand.
Except for the fact that it is at the OEM-level that Android's "backporting" would be done, and in that regard, each OEM is in NO DIFFERENT POSITION than Apple; since they have to concern themselves ONLY with THEIR hardware.
So, that's just a bloody excuse for the OEMs to use (and BTW, they don't even BOTHER to even try to use it, they simply either ignore the issue completely, or say "tough". "You ain't getting teh new shiny."
Well let's see, your name is "macs4all" and your comment was highly critical of Google thus it was obviously you trolling. I feel I addressed that quite appropriately.
Nope. You simply launched a completely non-sequitur ad hominen attack. You did not address the CONTENT of my post in any meaningful way whatsoever.
I thought the Apple plan was to deliver gimped versions of iOS, with missing features, to phones below the current version?
Would you rather have a new version of the OS, with all but say, one or two features (that your hardware wouldn't support, or support well enough to be useful), or what you have now; which is NO NEW VERSION AT ALL?
Open enough for me to type this post on a phone which did not even have android installed when I bought it and runs the latest ics now.
Depending on the hardware, that could have been trivial. But assuming that you didn't cheat and use a phone that is essentially the same, hardware-wise, as a supported phone (which I believe you did); you DO realize, of course, that you represent the skills of about.000000001% of Android owners, right?
And you ALSO realize, of course, that you have no life, if you have time to mess with that, instead of just doing what the rest of the 99.999999998% of the Android users do, and simply purchasing an Android or iOS phone, right?
The way I figure it, from the cellphone manufacturer's point of view, offering an upgrade to the latest version of Android may not be in their best interests: in doing so, they are missing out on a chance to up-sell you on a newer model.
So.... That makes Apple the GOOD GUY here?
Amazing, since the slashdot mindset is that Apple is always doing EVERYTHING to get "Apple fanbois" to buy "Teh New Shiny(tm)", right?
Time for the slashdot mindset to change. But that won't happen.
Well, I can blame Google for not doing more to stop the carriers from playing those games, but I doubt it would do any good, as that level of deference seems to be reserved for Apple.
Are you REALLY that BLIND?
If GOOGLE WANTED TO, they could fix this once-and-forever with a simple update to the OEM and Carrier agreements.
Please tell me what choice the OEMs and Carriers would have. Google should (and likely does) have individual agreements with the OEMs (there are, after all, only a handful of those). If they say "You will not get new OS versions unless you agree to these terms..." WTF choice would those OEMs have? Do you REALLY think that GOOGLE itself doesn't get involved DIRECTLY with these OEMs in development of drivers, etc?
Similarly, another amendment to the OEM agreement would be to prevent the OEM to allow a CARRIER to further modify the OS at the BINARY level (they can still load all the crapware they want, but the USER must be able to chuck it in the dustbin); because it is the OEM that is "enabling" the CARRIER to do this. But since the OEM can then point "upstream" to GOOGLE's "no mods" provision, the CARRIERS would have NO CHOICE but to go along, since they can't build handsets themselves, and even if they could, they would then become "OEMs" as far as Android licensing goes.
No need to bring SJ back from the dead for this (although that would probably scare the OEMs into agreeing even faster!). It's simple contract law. Don't like the agreement, Mr. OEM? Pray I don't modify it further!
Now, tell me how OEMs could get around this. By developing their own "Android versions"? Yeah, that would help the (very real) problem of fragmentation. Nope. That would end up making Android utterly irrelevant in a helluva hurry.
The manufacturers and carriers would never go for it,
They would if GOOGLE would change their OEM and Carrier licensing agreements, which they WOULD do IF they weren't complicit in all this.
Think about it. Do you REALLY think that, as the OS provider, Google doesn't have enough power to do this?
Yet you fandroids just go on about how Android is "free" and "open".
Well, "walled gardens" come in many shapes and sizes... Like the victim of some sort of some Nigerian scam, slashdotters have (by and large) been sucked-in by Android SIMPLY because "It's free. It's open. I OWN my device."
Well then, enjoy your 3 generations-behind "open" device.
Tell me: How "open" can Android be if we are even HAVING this discussion?
Manufacturers WANT fragmentation to create "distinctive features". Otherwise their bland product must compete for same priced or cheaper priced offerings from all other competitors.
The above requires rediscovering the wheel give that they MUST customize the OS* for every "fresh and new" hardware choice and every Moto-blur-type idea they conceive... let alone how each feels they can disable mainline features in order to push their own paid-subscription-based offerings.
Amazing how Apple solved all that with a combination of internal development policies (make OS version updates available for several hardware versions back, even if some newer features have to be sacrificed for those users). and carrier licensing agreements that say, in no uncertain terms: "WE are selling this phone to OUR customers; you are simply a STOREFRONT. Hands off! The OS is what it is because WE (Apple) said so. Take it or leave it. If you don't, there are plenty of other STOREFRONTS (carriers) that will be glad to..."
Slashdot Mirror
now apple needs a real desktop or at the very lest least a imac with a EASY TO GET TO HDD SLOTs. NO other AIO makes you take the screen off to change the HDD and most of them have at least 2 hdd slots.
Taking the screen off takes about 2 minutes, and once you get past the "scary factor", isn't a big deal at all. Every single one of the online repair guides makes it about 5 steps too hard. There is specifically enough slack in the display cabling to allow the replacement of the iMac's HD WITHOUT completely removing (or even disconnecting) the display panel.
And don't replace the hdd with a SDD on a card.
Sorry. Apple is ahead of the curve. Everyone will be doing it soon, and it makes a TON of sense.
The mini needs to be a little bigger so it can have been cooling and a easier to open case.
They made the 'mini MUCH easier to add RAM to; which is as far as MOST people want to go. The mini is called the mini because it is. Making it even 25% bigger would not significantly improve cooling, but would make it appear far less "mini" and far more "cube" like.
But what apple really needs is a $1000-$1500 (base price) desktop with a mid-range video card in a X16 slots + 1-2 open pci-e slots. with 4 ram slots and at least 2 hdd bays.
While I personally would like Apple to fill that gap, they obviously don't. And they are making enough money at this point that they make their own weather, market-wise.
keep the big mac pro tower at the $2500++ UP range With PCI-E slots and high end / pro video cards. Some pro work needs pci-e cards as well good cpu power.
And I certainly agree with you here. But this is exactly why Apple doesn't see the need to have a "midrange tower". And as Thunderbolt devices become more available, they will have an increasingly-valid argument there.
iApp makers are mostly not making money and carriers don't like Apple grabbing all the margin. Bad news.
Riiiiight.
Troll Away, Troll Away, Troll Away, Troll Awayyy-ay...
So, SEVENTY percent isn't enough "margin" for someone who's ONLY "investment" is in the DEVELOPMENT?!? No manufacturing, advertising, hosting, bandwidth, payment processing, packaging, et FUCKING cetera, and you have the temerity to call that "grabbing all the margin"???
Oh, and what "Carriers" are you talking about? The cellphone carriers that can't WAIT to get on the iPhone gravy train?
Excuse my ignorance of Android architecture; but isn't there some equivalent to the DOS/Windows BIOS for Android?
Nope. In fact, having a basic text-mode that can be easily programmed with a generic driver is a bit of an anomaly to the PC world; most other architectures don't really have anything comparable.
I was speaking more of the "driver connector" end of things, where the BIOS (you know; the Basic Input Output System) interfaces the vagaries of chipset register mapping and such to the OS-side of things.
I wonder if this will continue for Apple. iOS 6 is a yawner. Yes, what we need -- more facebook integration. Already, there is a backlash against FB. The latest Android announcement had some cool items in it including another method of protecting against piracy that does not depend on if a device is not rooted.
Ahem. Here is a list of the improvements in iOS 6. Certainly not as huge a list as the iOS5 upgrade; but also hardly just improved FB (FuckBuddy) integration.
The Retina Display Macbook Pro has a cool screen, but cannot be repaired or upgraded.
Neither can your TV, BD Player, A/V Receiver, or Microwave, either. So what?
And of course "cannot be repaired" means "by MOST end-users". So my comparison stands.
Mountain Lion?
What? Here's the list of new features and improvements in Mountain Lion (which, BTW, costs a whopping $20. A WHOLE lot of engineering time for that low of a price, eh?)
Jobs's RDF is gone.
Sorry, no. All of these products were WELL defined and development started long before Jobs' untimely departure from this plane. In fact, I read an article shortly after his death that said that Apple had FOUR YEARS worth of products "in the queue" when Jobs died.
So, your comment MAY be relevant around 2015 or so...
I've heard before that Apple will stop making hardware
Apple stopped making hardware a long time ago. They design it, they badge it, they sell it. They don't make it. (Not that there's anything wrong with that in principle, although it can become tough when the people who do make the stuff start to sell it to end users themselves, which inevitably happens)
So, you're saying that, like pretty much everyone else, Apple uses Contract Manufacturers to execute THEIR designs?
So you mean the core demographic of who Apple is trying to sell devices to? I saw so many posts to facebook thanking jobs and only jobs for their cool pretty devices when he died. Apple's core demographic are people who are too dumb to use a computer, do you think that they will have any vested interest in who actually made it? No, they literally think that Jobs personally designed, built, programmed, tested every device, and just happened to be hanging out in the back room of the apple store they bought the device from, too busy working on the next big thing to personally hand deliver it to them.
Apple's core demographic are people who are too dumb to use a computer
Ahem. Embedded developer with over 3 decades of experience here, and unabashed Apple fan, who has, whenever possible, used Macs even in my development work.
I don't know what conferences you've been attending; but Apple has a large (and ever-growing) following among engineering, scientific and IT professionals. In fact, it is the people who have suffered at the wheel-of-torture that is Windows, and have tried valiantly to use Linux as an alternative (and failed), that are among the strongest Apple supporters.
And it is precisely BECAUSE they understand computers that they are so happy to use one that DOESN'T either fight them at every turn and make them feel like they should be happy the OS maker lets them do ANYTHING (Windows); or that make it such that simply MAINTAINING their computer becomes a second-job (Linux), that they are more than happy with OS X.
and lack of options.
Which is clearly unconscionable, because you don't still have an entire universe's-worth of options...
You can't resolve this with a generic Android build which anyone can install because mobile phone hardware isn't sufficiently standardised as to allow this.
Excuse my ignorance of Android architecture; but isn't there some equivalent to the DOS/Windows BIOS for Android? Phones are getting way powerful enough to support such abstraction, aren't they?
Sure sounds like you're admitting it to me. I couldn't be exactly doing that if you weren't a troll.
Still, I will humour you - however, you'll have to provide actual citation as to how Google has "failed" in their objectives. Otherwise it's a bit like me saying you've failed as a human being - without any explanation as to why, it's a largely redundant comment.
Well, now you've upgraded to semantics games. Still a non-sequitur. But I'll bite:
If you read the comment I was responding to, it would be obvious to what I was referring, to wit:
" the Google mandates are more to ensure quality rather than consistency"
Ensuring Quality: All one has to do is read. There are some REALLY SHIT PHONES out there that run Android. So, how do Google's "Mandates" ensure "Quality"?
Consistency: Well, the OP had already conceded that point; but this entire article (and the meeting-of-the-minds that it reports on) wouldn't even exist if Google's "Mandates" would have enforced CONSISTENCY, would they?
However, trying to compare Andriod to iOS isn't exactly fair. iOS has ONE line of hardware to support, manufactured by the same company, which makes it pretty damn easy when one hand is talking to the other, and you're only dealing with one hand.
Except for the fact that it is at the OEM-level that Android's "backporting" would be done, and in that regard, each OEM is in NO DIFFERENT POSITION than Apple; since they have to concern themselves ONLY with THEIR hardware.
So, that's just a bloody excuse for the OEMs to use (and BTW, they don't even BOTHER to even try to use it, they simply either ignore the issue completely, or say "tough". "You ain't getting teh new shiny."
Aha, by your own admission you are trolling then.
No. Just using the label YOU attached.
BTW, it's now up to FOUR volleys with NO SIGN OF A COGENT ARGUMENT from you.
What are you? Like 10 years old?
Any of those reasons alone is sufficient why there should be no forced upgrades.
Were you implying that Apple FORCES upgrades?
I sit here tying this on my Mac running OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger) (now THREE (soon to be FOUR) major OS X versions back).
Why would I do that? There's no point in arguing with trolls.
Sez the person who has done exactly that for THREE rounds now...
So obviously the problem is not that "You don't argue with 'Trolls' "; but rather that you HAVE NO ARGUMENT.
Well let's see, your name is "macs4all" and your comment was highly critical of Google thus it was obviously you trolling. I feel I addressed that quite appropriately.
Nope. You simply launched a completely non-sequitur ad hominen attack. You did not address the CONTENT of my post in any meaningful way whatsoever.
And just how does that address the content of my comment?
I thought the Apple plan was to deliver gimped versions of iOS, with missing features, to phones below the current version?
Would you rather have a new version of the OS, with all but say, one or two features (that your hardware wouldn't support, or support well enough to be useful), or what you have now; which is NO NEW VERSION AT ALL?
Thought so...
You need to learn a little something about history.
I don't need to learn anything about this particular history. I was there.
But I agree with your analysis.
the Google mandates are more to ensure quality rather than consistency.
Too bad it has failed to do either, and miserably, too.
Open enough for me to type this post on a phone which did not even have android installed when I bought it and runs the latest ics now.
Depending on the hardware, that could have been trivial. But assuming that you didn't cheat and use a phone that is essentially the same, hardware-wise, as a supported phone (which I believe you did); you DO realize, of course, that you represent the skills of about .000000001% of Android owners, right?
And you ALSO realize, of course, that you have no life, if you have time to mess with that, instead of just doing what the rest of the 99.999999998% of the Android users do, and simply purchasing an Android or iOS phone, right?
Manufacturers and carriers are goog's PARTNERS, not enemies. Goog will do everhing to keep the carriers happy. You, the customer, are an afterthought
Exactly what I posted!
"But GOOGLE doesn't care about you any more than the OEM or Carrier does."
So, how is it that I am "naive" again?
The way I figure it, from the cellphone manufacturer's point of view, offering an upgrade to the latest version of Android may not be in their best interests: in doing so, they are missing out on a chance to up-sell you on a newer model.
So.... That makes Apple the GOOD GUY here?
Amazing, since the slashdot mindset is that Apple is always doing EVERYTHING to get "Apple fanbois" to buy "Teh New Shiny(tm)", right?
Time for the slashdot mindset to change. But that won't happen.
Well, I can blame Google for not doing more to stop the carriers from playing those games, but I doubt it would do any good, as that level of deference seems to be reserved for Apple.
Are you REALLY that BLIND?
If GOOGLE WANTED TO, they could fix this once-and-forever with a simple update to the OEM and Carrier agreements.
Please tell me what choice the OEMs and Carriers would have. Google should (and likely does) have individual agreements with the OEMs (there are, after all, only a handful of those). If they say "You will not get new OS versions unless you agree to these terms..." WTF choice would those OEMs have? Do you REALLY think that GOOGLE itself doesn't get involved DIRECTLY with these OEMs in development of drivers, etc?
Similarly, another amendment to the OEM agreement would be to prevent the OEM to allow a CARRIER to further modify the OS at the BINARY level (they can still load all the crapware they want, but the USER must be able to chuck it in the dustbin); because it is the OEM that is "enabling" the CARRIER to do this. But since the OEM can then point "upstream" to GOOGLE's "no mods" provision, the CARRIERS would have NO CHOICE but to go along, since they can't build handsets themselves, and even if they could, they would then become "OEMs" as far as Android licensing goes.
No need to bring SJ back from the dead for this (although that would probably scare the OEMs into agreeing even faster!). It's simple contract law. Don't like the agreement, Mr. OEM? Pray I don't modify it further!
Now, tell me how OEMs could get around this. By developing their own "Android versions"? Yeah, that would help the (very real) problem of fragmentation. Nope. That would end up making Android utterly irrelevant in a helluva hurry.
The manufacturers and carriers would never go for it,
They would if GOOGLE would change their OEM and Carrier licensing agreements, which they WOULD do IF they weren't complicit in all this.
Think about it. Do you REALLY think that, as the OS provider, Google doesn't have enough power to do this?
Yet you fandroids just go on about how Android is "free" and "open".
Well, "walled gardens" come in many shapes and sizes... Like the victim of some sort of some Nigerian scam, slashdotters have (by and large) been sucked-in by Android SIMPLY because "It's free. It's open. I OWN my device."
Well then, enjoy your 3 generations-behind "open" device.
Tell me: How "open" can Android be if we are even HAVING this discussion?
Manufacturers WANT fragmentation to create "distinctive features". Otherwise their bland product must compete for same priced or cheaper priced offerings from all other competitors. The above requires rediscovering the wheel give that they MUST customize the OS* for every "fresh and new" hardware choice and every Moto-blur-type idea they conceive... let alone how each feels they can disable mainline features in order to push their own paid-subscription-based offerings.
Amazing how Apple solved all that with a combination of internal development policies (make OS version updates available for several hardware versions back, even if some newer features have to be sacrificed for those users). and carrier licensing agreements that say, in no uncertain terms: "WE are selling this phone to OUR customers; you are simply a STOREFRONT. Hands off! The OS is what it is because WE (Apple) said so. Take it or leave it. If you don't, there are plenty of other STOREFRONTS (carriers) that will be glad to..."
You DO realize, of course, that the statements:
...and
If I ran the word[sic] (and I really think I should), things would be different. It would be illegal to have phone contracts longer than 2 months.
Let consumers decide the best products.
Are mutually exclusive concepts, right (Government control vs. Market Forces)?
But what can I expect from a person who wants to rule the word ???