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Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

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Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#141

Post by lobster_johnson »

enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

I'm also considering a switch, but Windows drives me up the wall whenever I touch it. macOS has been getting uglier and more awkward to use the last few years, but Windows is still the king of ugly.

So I've been considering Linux as my first option. I fired up a few VMs and dipped my toes in various Linux desktop environments: Elementary, Fedora 25, and Ubuntu (Unity) so far. These are all GNOME 3 variants. And... oh boy. Linux land really needs some kind of unifying revolution to happen, because this is a mess. Things have gotten a little smoother in the decade or so since I was last exploring Linux desktops, but it's like they're still figuring out what it's supposed to even be. GNOME feels like it's stuck between trying to be Windows and OS X, with some super weird details (like the launcher thing) that makes it feel like they had plans to build a touch screen OS for tablets or something. Meanwhile, there's little consistency between apps (and Elementary tries to remove menu bars as a concept, what's up with that?), and everything feels put together randomly by people with widely divergent ideas of what a kind of desktop environment to aspire to. It also struck me how much competition there is -- there are at least three GNOME forks (two of 3.x, one of 2.x), for example -- a situation which seems to exist partly due to infighting.

Maybe with out tweaking and plugins and customization you can beat it into some shape that lets you work efficiently, but the experience put me off, to be honest. I don't like being that negative, but I was a bit shocked about how bad it was. Mint was next on my list, but I'm not sure I will continue since it's another GNOME 3 fork.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#142

Post by legodt »

"Cook cites the far better performance of desktop computers, including screen sizes, memory, storage and more variety in I/O"

A bold statement considering that the only I/O on the current iMac is 4x USB, 2x thunderbolt, Ethernet, SD card, and a 1/8 jack- a collection of ports bested by all but the most anemic computers

Edit: fixed port thanks to HillaryBriss. I was actually too generous in my original listing of ports

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#143

Post by dragonwriter »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #137
bane wrote: post #47

I kind of feel like, once you're talking publicly about things like if you are committed or not, you probably aren't and are trying to keep people from fleeing while you figure out what to do or while some long-term strategy kicks in.

Except that Cook is cited as giving an explicit assurance. A manager can lie only once before they get a certain reputation, and I doubt that Tim Cook would spend his one lie on this.

A manager can lie many times.in their career. There's, usually, a declining (with a each lie) degree of reliance put in each statement after a first lie, but that's very different from only being able to lie once.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#144

Post by kalleboo »

protomyth wrote: post #20
nodesocket wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean really the only component you're ever going to be able to upgrade is RAM right? Are you suggesting it should be possible to swap out CPUs in iMacs?

In the old PowerMac you could switch out the CPU. I seem to remember a clone that you could put a dual processor card in also.

I upgraded my PowerMac G4 Quicksilver to dual-CPU

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#145

Post by gct »

enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

/r/hailcorporate

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#146

Post by shmerl »

jms18 wrote: post #131
JohnTHaller wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if Safari catches up, everyone is still forced to use it on their iPads and iPhones as their mobile browser rendering engine and no competition is allowed in that space. So, it will still be "the new IE" but worse than the old IE since competition is locked out at the OS level.

> and no competition is allowed in that space. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ios/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrome-web-browser-by-google... http://www.opera.com/mobile/mini/iphone I cannot agree with "no competition is allowed in that space." Edit: I just saw the remark for "mobile browser rendering engine" -- that is true.

> I cannot agree with "no competition is allowed in that space."

Since it uses Apple's engine underneath, you can't work around their ban on free codecs in the browser for example. Same goes for support for multiple HTML5 features (how about MSE for starters?). So it is clearly anti-competitive.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#147

Post by dawnerd »

enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

Latest Macbook Pro drove me to finally switch to Ubuntu for my main dev machine. It sucks not having some of the mac apps I'm used to but I've had nearly 0 problems since switching.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#148

Post by gurneyHaleck »

wl wrote: post #38
sengork wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be interesting if Apple resurrected the old fan-less Cube design/concept for the desktops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4_Cube The time is right now especially given the age and non-expandability of the Mac Pro.

I think the reason why we're stuck with the current Mac Pro is because Apple learned the wrong lesson from the Power Mac G4 cube. It was beautiful but few people bought it because you could get the more powerful and expandable Power Mac G4 for less money. This time around, Apple didn't build the the tower nearly everyone in this market would have bought instead of the trash can.

Very true. The Mac Pro is eternally reminiscent of a trash can, and it feels hazardous leaving it out in the open, because maybe someone might actually mistake it for one and drop an empty coffee cup in it.

The lack of expandability makes it feel like a doomed purchase, and costing more than $2,000 means spending on something that might prove obsolete in a year (or possibly less) feels extremely frivolous.

Extensible hardware allows us to rationalize a big purchase with the mindset that there's an intent to future-proof with an investment that allocates room for growth.

That concept does not exist with the Mac Pro form factor at all. The purchase is not even slightly user-servicable. Only a subscription to a service/maintenance agreement (read: applecare) provides nigh-full-replacement insurance. And basically, you're just paying for the privilege to gamble. You'll never get to change your old toy into a new toy.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#149

Post by golf1052 »

enjo wrote: post #125
taigeair wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on its impact on how you do development? One reason I still have a mac is because it's so developer friendly. Linux is very time-consuming to make things work with and is incompatible with various hardware. Also some mac software is great.

Windows 10 have built a very impressive Linux compatibility layer. It's not a VM, they are executing native ELF binaries using the windows kernel. They run a version of Ubuntu 14.04 on top of it that most notably includes package management. It's currently missing upstart, so some things don't work nicely, but MOST things work just fine. I believe upstart is available on some preview versions now. Everything on our d…

Hopefully you're just opening files on the Windows side in the subsystem: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/11/17/do-n...

Also why can't you use Docker for Windows for your Docker needs?

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#150

Post by BoorishBears »

jpalomaki wrote: post #132
lisper wrote: post #26

What I really want is for my state (SSD, RAM, maybe the CPU, but probably not the GPU) to be easily detachable from my human interface devices (keyboard, mouse, display). I want to be able to use a desktop in one place, then unplug a small unit which contains the aforementioned state (i.e. the equivalent of a sleeping laptop but with no keyboard or display), carry that someplace else, plug it in to a different set of…

This is want I have been dreaming about. While sitting by the desk, I want to use desktop class CPU since there's no need to save power. However I don't want to drag a workstation class laptop while traveling. I've tried having two different computers. Dropbox makes it easier, but still you have the problem that you need to maintain two separate systems. I think technically this is not so far fetched. With the portab…

Isn't this the same as the gaming-oriented laptops that have offered external hot-pluggable docks for dedicated GPUs in the past?

Iirc there are even generic Thunderbolt based docks that could hook up some of the beefiest desktop GPUs to a laptop.

The CPU aspect is still an issue, but high end full voltage mobile CPUs are pretty powerful, and can still scale down power usage.

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