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Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

arstechnica.com

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Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#101

Post by 1_2__3 »

panglott wrote: post #4

Why not allow developers to build their own Macs? The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with note…

Because Apple is about as done as it can be with general purpose computing. I think it's safe to say they will make no more significant investments in it. Closed ecosystem computing is their golden goose now, they have zero interest in anything else. The margins for what they're doing now are too high for them to give that up.

Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#102

Post by 1_2__3 »

panglott wrote: post #4

Why not allow developers to build their own Macs? The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with note…

Because Apple is about as done as it can be with general purpose computing. I think it's safe to say they will make no more significant investments in it. Closed ecosystem computing is their golden goose now, they have zero interest in anything else. The margins for what they're doing now are too high for them to give that up.

Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#103

Post by astrodust »

pinaceae wrote: post #50
panglott wrote: post #4

Why not allow developers to build their own Macs? The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with note…

The core business model of Apple is to sell hardware. That simple. That's why macOS, etc are free now. That's why they're ramping up their enterprise partnerships behind the scenes to ensure big apps run best or even first on iOS and macOS. IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge). You can argue if that is the correct approach or not, bu…

As much as that's true, Apple has been trying to dig deeper into "services" over the last decade. App sales, music sales, movie sales, cloud services, anything they can do to expand their software ecosystem to make it more versatile and useful on hardware they never produced.

If in some conceivable future Apple could make enough money on the "pro" market looking for OEM-style rigs to fund development of macOS through the macOS App Store, or through OS sales, they would probably at least consider it.

The problem Apple has is success. If you're managing a team of top talent and you have two products, one of which rakes in hundreds of billions, the other which is mere tens, which team do you think gets the best people?

It must take a lot of determination to keep really great people on the macOS team instead of poaching them for iOS. Apple's strategy of using the same OS core for both platforms probably helps in that regard: They can put their best people in the middle without concern about their full potential being wasted.

It's a really tricky spot to be in. If Apple had no phone business at all they'd be a tiny company, but they wouldn't have the same stress about where to place people.

Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#104

Post by thoraway25455 »

pinaceae wrote: post #50
panglott wrote: post #4

Why not allow developers to build their own Macs? The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with note…

The core business model of Apple is to sell hardware. That simple. That's why macOS, etc are free now. That's why they're ramping up their enterprise partnerships behind the scenes to ensure big apps run best or even first on iOS and macOS. IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge). You can argue if that is the correct approach or not, bu…

> Cisco (has) special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge

I despise Cisco as much as anyone else, but this statement merits a citation.

Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#105

Post by astrodust »

logicallee wrote: post #59
panglott wrote: post #4

Why not allow developers to build their own Macs? The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with note…

Why doesnt McDonald's let you build a big mac at home - it's not like people don't have access to lettuce, tomatoes, hamburger buns, meat, cheese, mayonnaise, pickles, etc. The only thing we really need is the sauce that makes it a big mac. hey before I answer you wanna take a stab at that question? EDIT: I don't know why I was downvoted, it's a fairly close analogy.

People have reverse-engineered everything about that, including the sauce. What's your point?

People also go to fast food restaurants to get food quickly. Preparing it yourself saves you zero time, it destroys the value of the Big Mac.

If you're going to make your own burger, you can sure as shit do better than a Big Mac.

Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#106

Post by lallysingh »

deagle50 wrote: post #63

Profit margin, plain and simple. I'm willing to pay a premium for the best laptop, been using macbooks exclusively for years and they are actually a great value for the quality of the components. But I will not pay 3x for comparable desktop that I can't upgrade just to run MacOS.

Yeah, and upgrade parts are far too much of an an (ahem) apples to apples comparison. Seeing a 20-30% markup on a graphics card might make people reconsider the value they're getting on their macbook or iPhone.

There's some brand reputation to protect here.

Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#107

Post by melling »

rtkwe wrote: post #25
melling wrote: post #6

Do we really need a full tower? Isn't most of the space in a traditional PC "trash can" form factor wasted? The graphics card size would need to change, but it would be great if we could shrink the case and still have all the power of a desktop.

Full towers have a couple benefits against smaller cases, thermals and space for expansion (internal hdd's, additional graphics cards, etc.). Smaller cases really suffer from lack of expansion space and often severely restrict the components you can use just based on the volume you can work with.

Yes, the expansion capabilities are well understood.

Applying an 80/20 rule, one or two graphics cards, and a couple of drives should pretty much cover it.

Apple could offer a large and small form case. The real problem is heat, right?

Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#108

Post by jhbadger »

pinaceae wrote: post #50
panglott wrote: post #4

Why not allow developers to build their own Macs? The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with note…

The core business model of Apple is to sell hardware. That simple. That's why macOS, etc are free now. That's why they're ramping up their enterprise partnerships behind the scenes to ensure big apps run best or even first on iOS and macOS. IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge). You can argue if that is the correct approach or not, bu…

And the idea that selling an alternative proprietary OS for PCs is viable business model doesn't really seem to be supported. Neither NextStep nor BeOS could make any inroads into the PC world after giving up their own hardware.

Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#109

Post by xref »

pinaceae wrote: post #50
panglott wrote: post #4

Why not allow developers to build their own Macs? The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with note…

The core business model of Apple is to sell hardware. That simple. That's why macOS, etc are free now. That's why they're ramping up their enterprise partnerships behind the scenes to ensure big apps run best or even first on iOS and macOS. IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge). You can argue if that is the correct approach or not, bu…

> IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge).

I assume you're talking about Apple's iOS, not Cisco's IOS? What special APIs does Cisco have in Apple iOS, I couldn't find anything from a quick googling?

Re: Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower

#110

Post by rjbwork »

iamatworknow wrote: post #83
toddmorey wrote: post #46

Boy did they drop the football in this area. I always thought the advantage to making the switch to more common PC architectures was the ability to keep pace and support a wider array of components and technologies. Instead, they over-designed the enclosure and froze the high-end range of the platform. Creating a simple, but reliable tower design (optimized for speed rather than size) would have been extremely well r…

Deleted this comment because it's apparently rubbing people the wrong way that I experienced poor performance using Adobe programs on a Windows machine and decided to share that experience.

If you want to go full speed optimization:

Go with about 4-8 times as much RAM, and Ramdisk your commonly used programs like PS/LR, and make sure you have a large swap space on a dedicated NVMe SSD. Also consider getting higher performing RAM. https://pcpartpicker.com/product/x3yxFT/corsair-memory-cmk32... is a relatively cheap high-performance RAM module. More ram per stick will get more expensive and have higher CAS latency.

Get at least a 7700k and OC to at least 4.8Ghz, though most will go higher. Consider buying from a known-bin site, such as https://siliconlottery.com/collections/all/products/7700k52g which has a chip known to perform stably at 5.2GHz.

Consider getting a high-end quadro instead of a consumer-level card- the P4000 is a good entry-level, while a P6000 is an absolute monster, though probably overpriced. NVidia claims better performance in Photoshop and Lightroom using those instead. http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe.html

Consider a high-end Z270 ASRock motherboard. They are almost always the best choice for making everything else work together optimally.

You can always get better performance with more hardware and better configuration if you need to - is it worth it to you over buying a Mac though, and will the performance of that Mac actually be better?

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