- The word “mistake” was not uttered, but this is about as close as we’re going to get to Apple admitting they miscalculated with the current Mac Pro’s concept. One word that was uttered, however, was “sorry”. Here’s Schiller, after being asked whether they already had an external design in mind for the next-gen Mac Pros:
We’re not going to get into exactly what stage we’re in, just that we told the team to take the time to do something really great. To do something that can be supported for a long time with customers with updates and upgrades throughout the years. We’ll take the time it takes to do that. The current Mac Pro, as we’ve said a few times, was constrained thermally and it restricted our ability to upgrade it. And for that, we’re sorry to disappoint customers who wanted that, and we’ve asked the team to go and re-architect and design something great for the future that those Mac Pro customers who want more expandability, more upgradability in the future. It’ll meet more of those needs.
Fuck 'em. That little catastrophe is four fuckin' years old now and you're just now thinking "maybe we ought to try and retain some of our pro users"?
- Federighi: “I think if you use Xcode downloads as a metric, it’s possible software developers are actually our largest pro audience. It’s growing very quickly, it’s been fantastic.”
If you've ever found something in Linux that claims to run in OS X, you've downloaded XCode.
- or examples of the type of software that the current Mac Pro isn’t well-suited for, Federighi mentioned VR: “Those can be in VR, those can be in certain kinds of high end cinema production tasks where most of the software out there that’s been written to target those doesn’t know how to balance itself well across multiple GPUs, but can scale across a single large GPU.”
It's almost as if Media Composer and Symphony were being optimized to run on PC. I know this: I'm running 16 cores at performance easily three or four times better than the hottest Mac Pro available and the rig cost me $3k out the door. Not only that, but right next to me is a nine (9!) year old mac pro that runs faster than the current $7k mac pro. By the time the new ones come out, the fucker will be ten.years.old. And maybe computer technology sits still more than it used to but I have an eight core virtualized server chip capable of clocking to 4.5GHz and it cost me less than a thousand dollars eighteen months ago. If I wanted that kind of performance in MacVille I'd be out $25k.
- Fuck 'em.
My anecdote: I had PC computers I never really liked, then I bought the first iPhone. It just worked. Well. It was slick, it was easy, it was intuitive. I bought an iPod. I bought a MacBook which I loved. Another iPhone. An iPad. Another iPhone.
Then Apple soldered the memory and hard drive to the motherboard. Eventually my 2008 MacBook wasn't cutting it, so I bought a four year old MBP on eBay and increased the RAM to 16 GB for $70 (it's $200 to upgrade from 8 to 16 GB on current MBPs). My 2.9 GHz i7 is probably an older processor by current standards, but it's $300 to move from a standard 2.7 GHz i5 to a 3.1 GHz i7. For $400, Apple will replace the standard 128 GB storage with 512 GB. For $150 I can replace the spinning disk in this computer with a 525 GB SSD. Once I pull the trigger on the SSD, I'll have spent less than $850 and am not convinced doubling that for a new MBP would have given me a significantly better experience.
I just don't see Apple as a brand making items that are targeted to me anymore. If they sold a MacBook Pro with user replaceable parts, maglock charging + two USB ports, if they sold an iPhone that had USB-C (Lightning is a dead-end), came with USB-C earbuds but still had a headphone jack, I'd keep shelling out for their products.
If (when) this iPhone dies, a new one is no longer the top of the list. I hope this computer will last at least a few more years, but if I had to replace it today I'd be looking at a Surface. The little HP laptop I have at work is a nice enough experience. And Windows 10 looks nice.
What really put the nail in the coffin in my mind was having the "courage" to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone and leave Lightning, then roll out a MBP with USB-C and a headphone jack.
It's just my anecdote, one user whose Apple spending isn't even a blip on the sales in my neighborhood, but I think they've screwed up.
I was on my fifth Windows phone by the time the iPhone came out. And it was a thing of jealousy, no doubt. Only - no keys. No FTP. No... copy and paste. No APP STORE. it was definitely form over function but the form was spectacular. King of the hill at the time was this guy:
But yeah. Once the iPad was out it was game over. I had a white Macbook at the time and you could take 'em apart if you were brave. Memory? No prob. Battery? Went through three. Hard drive? Two of 'em. Now? Now I'm on a 6-year-old Air because I front-loaded it with all the whizbangs and it's still fast enough for what I do on it, which is nothing.
I have a new Mac Mini. Hard drive died on it. Can you replace the hard drive? No. Even though it's spinny platters. Why? Because Apple uses proprietary firmware on their drives now. Why? Because fuck you, that's why. So the stupid thing has a thunderbolt SSD dangling off of it with the OS on. Because that's the world now.
There was a time the Mac Mini was a form factor all its own. Now? Now you can get a Windows PC the size of your finger. Stab it into an HDMI port and connect to it over bluetooth and wifi. Woot has a Mini form-factor Windows box every second Wednesday. I've even got a spare slot in the KVM; I could buy one, install Linux on it and spend less than $300.
We grabbed a Surface for the office. Microsoft often discounts them steeply; we got the hot one with a free keyboard cover for $700, I think. It's a great little rig, even if it's awkward to type with in your lap.
- What really put the nail in the coffin in my mind was having the "courage" to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone and leave Lightning, then roll out a MBP with USB-C and a headphone jack.
God I fucking forgot about that.
- I had a white Macbook at the time and you could take 'em apart if you were brave. Memory? No prob. Battery? Went through three. Hard drive? Two of 'em.
This is exactly me. When that thing finally died I looked at everything Apple had to offer and decided nothing under $2k was worth buying and I sure as shit don't have $2k for a laptop. I don't answer anymore when people ask for laptop recommendations. Dell is shit, HP is shit, Lenovo and ASUS are shit, Apple solders everything and removes all the ports. I wish it were as easy to build your own laptop as it was a desktop but that will never happen.
When I ever decide to buy another one I might get a Surface but that's not really a laptop and I can't stand the keyboards they slap on them.
Apparently if you wanna get dumb about it there are companies like Origin what will let you get stupid with it. But I haven't needed to get stupid with it.
Yet.
dunno. Might have to mix a short film while away from my rig which means I might be leaning that way.
Awwww you beat me to it.
They are seriously fucking around so hard right now it's killing me. I got the new Macbook Pro with touchbar. 90% of the time I use my keyboard - you know - one with real fucking keys instead of little touch shits? But when I have to use my keyboard on the computer I am literally pounding the fuck away like theres 8 years of dust and grime underneath these shitty little pads and I can't push down hard enough for it to realize I'm typing letters. The `T` and the left-shift are the worst. My pinky is seriously gaining muscle strength.
Kevin is looking at new computers and it's all a joke. The pricing is terrible, what you get is terrible, you can't update anything anymore and it's terrible. This marketing is ripe for the taking. Someone do something with it. please.
In my dreams, Adobe buys Avid and ports Creative Cloud to Linux.
I'll say this - all these dilettantes bitching about Windows 10? They're clearly used to being able to fix their shitty operating system rather than being stuck with all aspects of it. Windows is definitely a paleolithic operating system but at least it isn't a dick to you because it can be.