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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

#161

Post by astrodust »

rahoulb wrote: post #156
astrodust wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As I inderstand it, Apple isn't organised that way. They have OS teams, app teams, design teams, which work on whichever product at a given time. They don't have product-specific teams. As for Apple being tiny without the iPhone; it's huge but Apple Watch (commonly described as a failure) is estimated to be a bigger business than Microsoft's Surface business.

What I mean is that the OS people get prioritized for phone features first, computer features second. The filesystem team, which is a great example, did work for both products, but note that it hit the phone first.

Apple minus iPhone means no watch, no tablet, and marginal market share since these products help spur sales in the computer area. Using a MacBook as a hub for all your Apple devices is a compelling reason to get one.

Look at how hard it has been for Microsoft to grow market share being what is basically an OS company with no significant hardware sales to speak of.

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

#162

Post by protomyth »

raverbashing wrote: post #125
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…

They should just adapt the cheese grater to a mini itx format and work with that.

I liked the last of the G4s better since you could actually carry them comfortably and the door opened wider. I think my ideal case is a smaller G4 with doors on both sides.

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

#163

Post by logicallee »

astrodust wrote: post #160
logicallee wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your sister comment made an interesting point that McDonald's does sell the sauce in grocery stores. That is a close analogy to this (since if someone really wants a big mac, they can make a hamburger at home and, by including some of that sauce, gets something that meets some of that need.) I think that's a pretty bad business decision for McDonald's to have done.

It's a non-competing market. Nobody is going to fire up a grill in the office, make a burger, and then slap on the sauce just to save a trip to a McDonald's. They are going to use it when the otherwise wouldn't buy a McDonald's burger, like when hosting a backyard BBQ.

my analysis is different, but whatever. I think some people would make a hamburger at home rather than go to a mcdonald's when they yearn for this product.

obviously mcdonald's canada agrees with you and not me.

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

#164

Post by abritinthebay »

iainmerrick wrote: post #122
abritinthebay wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent MacPro was only a misstep in that they bet on CPU/GPU design zigging instead of zagging. It was a technically beautiful machine (still is, really) but their choices meant it became impossible to update. If the market had gone the other way we'd likely be talking about the 2016 MacPro instead.

But they didn't have to make a bet at all. They wanted to make a tiny, silent Pro machine to make a statement, but nobody seems to have cared much about that. I haven't seen a single person saying "I hope the new Pro is still really really small, even if that means it's more expensive and less expandable!"

> But they didn't have to make a bet at all.

Sure, neither does anyone... on anything. If the bet had succeeded though we'd all be calling them geniuses and suchlike. If no-one made bets like that we'd still have boring beige boxes. Hell the original Mac was a bet like that (the design was radical at the time).

The MacPro is an awesome machine. Everyone I know that has used one loves it. That's great for a pro-machine. That's exactly what Apple likes to do - create hardware that people love

They lost the bet, but it was a good bet to make. I'll take a company that makes bets like that over one that doesn't, long term.

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

#165

Post by lostlogin »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #76
vondur wrote: post #66

Apple could literally just release the new Mac Pro in the old case, with updated hardware and ports, and if it was priced closer to reality, it would make a lot of their pro users happy. I doubt it would cost them much to do so too. I'd start it off at around $1500 for an entry level 4 core Xeon with an mid-level graphics card (GTX 1060 or Radeon 480).

I believe that's probably what they will do in 2017 from Tim Cook's comments.

There is zero chance it will look the same though - they couldn't eat that particular humble pie.

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

#166

Post by accountyaccount »

dawnerd wrote: post #24
eddieroger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drivers. Apple likes the control over the hardware and software, and packages all of the drivers needed to run macOS on any blessed instance of Apple hardware currently supported (and maybe even ever created, since Intel). If you wanted, and I have done this before, you can clone a Mac made HDD and boot it from any other Mac you can get your hands on, and other than the hardware swap it's basically a reboot. If Apple…

If it's for developers they don't have to guarantee it. I'm happily running a hackintosh right now. If they made it a little easier we wouldn't have to do weird hacks to spoof hardware ids just so messages work.

What happens when developers start selling these boxes and they break? People start hating on Apple because they don't know any better.

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

#167

Post by accountyaccount »

peatmoss wrote: post #11

For people wed to commercial design apps, I can totally understand the draw of running macOS on commodity hardware. But as someone who skews more to the hacker end of the spectrum and doesn't depend on commercial software, the day-to-day qualitative experience of Linux is head and shoulders above macOS these days. Ditto OpenBSD, etc. I'll never go back. At least it does if you've already come around to using a deskto…

Linux is great until it isn't.

I'm a developer and I don't want to waste another second of my life configuring boot or managing drivers on linux.

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

#168

Post by wmeredith »

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…

> Most of the pros I work with in the industry have gone from loving the mac to tolerating the mac.

This is true of myself (UX Designer with 10+ years in the biz pushing code and design) and ALL of the creative types I associate with. I know Apple is something like 90% an iPhone company now, but I'd love to see some long term analysis on the damage they've done to themselves, and even the iPhone, by alienating ALL of the creative content creators of the world. I know I'm painting in broad strokes, but it's hard to overstate the positive mindshare and goodwill Apple used to enjoy in this community. Now they're just the new Microsoft-a necessary annoyance.

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

#169

Post by basseq »

basseq wrote: post #155
paublyrne wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem here is that Apple itself hasn't been able to keep up with demands. I think the problem is they chosen not to update the Mac Pro, not that they haven't been able to. Resources should not be an issue given their cash reserves. And frankly, even if the Mac Pro were not a profitable machine for Apple overall, they would be better served by choosing to keep it up to date, and to keep is desirable, in ord…

I suspect they got wrapped around the axle on too much industrial design and painted themselves into a corner where they couldn't upgrade it easily. The ROI of going back to the drawing board so soon was a non-starter. They're not yet at the point where their developers' grumblings are having a material negative impact on the bottom line. Yet. I hope they don't make the same mistake twice. But I don't think a hackint…

Also, note[1] that Apple isn't being stupid here. Their strategy was just wrong (namely expansion via Thunderbolt peripherals and multi-GPU performance). John Gruber suggests this is a bit of an "Oh Shit" moment for Apple, too.

[1] https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives

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

#170

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

basseq wrote: post #155
paublyrne wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem here is that Apple itself hasn't been able to keep up with demands. I think the problem is they chosen not to update the Mac Pro, not that they haven't been able to. Resources should not be an issue given their cash reserves. And frankly, even if the Mac Pro were not a profitable machine for Apple overall, they would be better served by choosing to keep it up to date, and to keep is desirable, in ord…

I suspect they got wrapped around the axle on too much industrial design and painted themselves into a corner where they couldn't upgrade it easily. The ROI of going back to the drawing board so soon was a non-starter. They're not yet at the point where their developers' grumblings are having a material negative impact on the bottom line. Yet. I hope they don't make the same mistake twice. But I don't think a hackint…

I think the grumblings are impacting the bottom line, and have penetrated the Cupertino distortion field.

The slightly panicked assertion that "Hey we're working on new Macs for pro users" earlier this year is evidence of that.

Previously the strategy seems to have been to put minimal effort into the Mac line and push it towards a closed kind-of-good-enough commodity platform designed to maximise margins not performance - basically a step up from the iPad range, for people who have an inexplicable legacy interest in real keyboards and bigger screens.

That was a very bad mistake.

It seems to be the case that Cook doesn't understand the pro market, and may even be vaguely hostile to it, for some reason. In fact there doesn't seem to be anyone at senior level cheerleading for professional users, and no reaching out for input from professional communities.

I hope the grumblings have been loud enough to steer management back to reality. If not, we're just going to hold our noses and move back to Windows for professional creative software and Linux for everything else - which might seem like a small immediate loss, but will do massive damage to the Apple brand image.

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