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How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

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Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#501

Post by Volt »

smacktoward wrote: post #348
rz2k wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the era of PowerPCs was a little different, with Apple far ahead of PCs for a while, then well behind. Apple could have released Skylake 13" class laptops a long time ago. Possibly they thought there would be suitable Kaby Lake processors with Iris by now. These MacBook Pros are expensive, but they really are not more expensive than similar machine with matching specs. Given that, here's what I think would…

I don't know that PPC Macs were ever far ahead of PCs, performance-wise at least. At best there was a relatively big leap from "much slower than what you can get in a PC" in the tail end of the 68040 era to "pretty close to what you can get in a PC" in the early PPC days. But then PPC performance stagnated and left Apple in the lurch again, which helped drive the eventual jump to Intel.

G3/G4/G5

Especially in the Pentium 4 era.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#502

Post by jc4p »

natch wrote: post #482
jc4p wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice that you quoted this part: > I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. but didn't mention it in your retort to the rest of that paragraph. You can't upgrade the new macbooks. I am typing this from a 2015 Macbook Pro Retina, I bought it with the biggest hard drive they offered at the time, and am currently doing development off a thunderbolt hard drive. Do you know how much that sucks? I wo…

Your code doesn't fit in 1TB? What kind of development is that?

Not the code, the databases. And actually the specific databases I need to run (we have minimal PII scrubbed versions we use for local testing) could live on my internal HD but I don't have enough storage for all my files + the backup files of the DBs for restoring + the restored database files.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#503

Post by [deleted] »

natch wrote: post #482
jc4p wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice that you quoted this part: > I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. but didn't mention it in your retort to the rest of that paragraph. You can't upgrade the new macbooks. I am typing this from a 2015 Macbook Pro Retina, I bought it with the biggest hard drive they offered at the time, and am currently doing development off a thunderbolt hard drive. Do you know how much that sucks? I wo…

Your code doesn't fit in 1TB? What kind of development is that?

[deleted]

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#504

Post by dirkg »

All the technical stuff aside, the simple fact is Apple enjoys a level of brand loyalty and market hype unlike anyone else, which is why they can afford to do practically whatever whatever they want and get away with it.

Their every decision now is weighed much more towards profitability and upsell/obsolescence than user satisfaction/usability/advancing tech.

The fact that the new MacBook is the fastest selling ever, despite all its negative press, is proof.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#505

Post by tbrock »

beat wrote: post #16

My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I d…

Yeah that's just not correct.

The CPUs and GPUs from 5 years ago were good but the current generation of intel cpus are much faster and the video cards are in an entirely different realm.

Source: owned 2011 MacBook Pro that was decked out, own current MacBook Pro

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#506

Post by wyclif »

jawngee wrote: post #194
_delirium wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A maxed out current iMac is a pretty competitive workstation machine imo. Not especially cheap , but not prohibitive for a company. The top of the line is currently a 4.0 GHz quad-core i7 w/ 32 GB RAM (27" model w/ the memory and CPU upgrades). I have that on my desk at work and am quite happy with it.

It's not competitive at all to a hackintosh. I have an i7 overclocked to 4.6 GHz, 64GB of RAM, 6GB GPU and it was almost $1400 cheaper. It took maybe a day and a half to put together (the last PC I put together out of parts was a pentium). Everything works, including Thunderbolt 3. It's also way better looking, imho.

What guides do you recommend?

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#507

Post by jsz0 »

beat wrote: post #16

My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I d…

> less I/O functionality

ThunderBolt 3 is certainly not less IO functionality. It provides the highest performing / most versatile IO that's ever been available in a laptop before. I get your point that it's not exactly the physical connector you need but that's a small price to pay for what is pretty close to desktop level expansion on a laptop.

> maybe I'll just start paying for a cloud-based dev environment

That's really the best option for developers in most cases. I can't imagine ever going back to being limited by the resources of any individual computer (much less a laptop) when cloud resources are so inexpensive and offer so many other advantages.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#508

Post by wildmusings »

jen729w wrote: post #353
Recurecur wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just lack of hardware updates, but the lack of complete system categories. It's the height of hypocrisy to tout a green approach to things, while not even offering an upgradable machine, e.g. a tower. All-in-ones like the iMac are usually discarded if either the motherboard or the display goes south, whereas a tower is easily fixed. Also, power users are left out in the cold, with the Mac Pro the only system fitt…

> Apple should bite the bullet and license macOS for third-party hardware Please, please, no. Presumably you've never gone through this particular form of hell: 1. You have a [Toshiba|Dell|HP] laptop. You've upgraded something. You need [graphics|sound|network] drivers. 2. You go to [Toshiba|Dell|HP].com to get those drivers. You navigate to the "Support" page for your laptop model. 3. You - you, the user - are prese…

Those days are over for PCs. Drivers are automatically installed by Windows Update.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#510

Post by pfranz »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #402

I've started to wonder if I'm the only one who isn't understanding the problem in general. The MacBook is fine – the new models are quite expensive, and I'm sure having to carry some dongles could be annoying, but it's a lovely machine and there are obvious reasons and long-term benefits for those choices. I'll definitely consider purchasing one when the next refresh allows the processor and memory options to be bump…

Sorry if I rehash the same old points. I think it's easy to knock Apple because of, "what have you done for me lately?" For awhile Apple was making really impressive changes to their laptops every year or two; slotload DVDs were standard, backlit keyboards, a great touchpad, latchless (magnetic) lid, fantastic battery life, magsafe, retina. People would still complain when they dropped a port or got rid of user-swappable batteries or DVD drives--all things that made sense long term, but the pros beat the cons. Recent changes weren't big pros (to me): clickless touchpad, force touch, low-travel keyboard, out of band wifi. It's still weird and frustrating that retina and SSDs aren't standard (when friends and family are looking to buy macs).

I also feel like recently they've been jumping in, redesigning and dumbing stuff down, then abandoning it. Disk Utility was fine. Now I have to use the command line or third-party apps for common things. Mac Pro is another example. I'd say Aperture to Photos is another example.

I was at the Apple Store today and looked at the new Macbook Pros. Not only is magsafe gone, the LED on magsafe let you know if it was charging and if it was full is gone. I wouldn't care if it was a special USB-C cable that only Apple sold or put it on the chassis. A button that lights up half a dozen LEDs to let you know approximately how empty your battery is no longer there either. Both of those are things were really nice to have. I also really dislike the keyboard. Every single Apple laptop I've bought I've had to replace or upgraded RAM, hard drive, and battery. It sucks when you have a minor issue and your only option is to "replace the logic board." The iPhone or Apple Watch doesn't even come with a USB-C cable. That's quite a few regressions and I'm skeptical if the new things compensate.

I think USB-C is an inevitability. I think their problem was holding out so long for new Macbook Pros caused two problems; the expectations were too high because of the wait and they dropped too many ports too quickly for pros. There wouldn't be as large of an outcry about the max RAM if the release from 6 months ago had the same issue or if I could just buy last year's model with 2 USB-C ports and 2 USB-A.

Sadly, I don't see anything I like better not made by Apple yet. My plan is to buy a newer, used Macbook Pro and hope I can make the jump at some future update. I'm sure the current laptops are great as-is for many people.

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