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iMac Pro

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Re: iMac Pro

#171

Post by csomar »

bluedino wrote: post #170
csomar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that even Apple can't repair it? I had problems with my Macbook Pro and they specifically ordered an item from Apple and shipped it to repair the machine.

Something like the iMac, if the video card goes out on it (common problem) the only replacement part is from Apple and costs $600 so you might as well just throw the whole thing out (or sell it for parts)

600-800 is probably where I draw the line but if your configuration costs $4,000 then you might think it is worth it. Also Apple offered to "buy the damaged part" in my case (though I'll need to ship/reship) so if you are US based it might be cheaper.

Re: iMac Pro

#172

Post by H1Supreme »

coryfklein wrote: post #169

Re: "Can't upgrade it like a PC" I have found that my Apple devices retain value much better than a PC, so when 2-3 years have passed I sell the old one, recouping some cash, then buy a new/new-ish one. That "upgrade" costs more than only buying new RAM but when considering that you get brand new _everything_ the price is about right IMO. Good luck taking that PC with an 8-year old motherboard and $1200 in upgrades a…

Who buys computers for their resale value? An 8 year old mac is worth exactly jack shit (I have one, it's fetching $150 on eBay). You buy a computer for it's performance and usability.

And, putting a new graphics card in your computer for a couple hundred dollars is more desirable, imo, than trading it in. Especially considering that CPU performance has not increased substantially in the last couple years.

Re: iMac Pro

#173

Post by H1Supreme »

People buy desktop Mac's for the OS. Period. If Apple sold licenses for MacOS, no one would be spending $5,000 on a new iMac pro. They would spend half that for a dual GTX-1080 wielding juggernaut of a desktop. Or, about a grand for something reasonable.

Either way, no one would be trying to convince themselves that this thing is somehow worth this price tag. Because it's not. Luckily, it's piss easy to install macOS on PC hardware, if that's your bag. All the new Nvidia cards work great too.

Re: iMac Pro

#174

Post by coryfklein »

H1Supreme wrote: post #172
coryfklein wrote: post #169

Re: "Can't upgrade it like a PC" I have found that my Apple devices retain value much better than a PC, so when 2-3 years have passed I sell the old one, recouping some cash, then buy a new/new-ish one. That "upgrade" costs more than only buying new RAM but when considering that you get brand new _everything_ the price is about right IMO. Good luck taking that PC with an 8-year old motherboard and $1200 in upgrades a…

Who buys computers for their resale value? An 8 year old mac is worth exactly jack shit (I have one, it's fetching $150 on eBay). You buy a computer for it's performance and usability. And, putting a new graphics card in your computer for a couple hundred dollars is more desirable, imo, than trading it in. Especially considering that CPU performance has not increased substantially in the last couple years.

> Who buys computers for their resale value?

I never said people do. But it certainly is a positive factor that Apple computers have that others don't.

Most don't pick a PC just for the capability of upgrading the graphics card 4 years down the road. But it certainly is a positive factor that PCs have that others don't.

> Especially considering that CPU performance has not increased substantially in the last couple years.

Which, if true, would not count as evidence in favor of interchangeable CPUs. Are there other parts that haven't increased substantially in the last couple years?

Re: iMac Pro

#175

Post by jonknee »

H1Supreme wrote: post #173

People buy desktop Mac's for the OS. Period. If Apple sold licenses for MacOS, no one would be spending $5,000 on a new iMac pro. They would spend half that for a dual GTX-1080 wielding juggernaut of a desktop. Or, about a grand for something reasonable. Either way, no one would be trying to convince themselves that this thing is somehow worth this price tag. Because it's not. Luckily, it's piss easy to install macOS…

> Or, about a grand for something reasonable.

A comparable display alone runs more than a grand.

Re: iMac Pro

#176

Post by valuearb »

jmull wrote: post #121
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a programmer and so buy middle of the line macbook pros with mid range CPUs, mid range RAM, and integrated GPUS. Ironically, my wife, a designer, always chastises me for getting such slow hardware: turns out what works for a programmer doesn't work for soemone who has to use a lot of Adobe CSS :). I assume this iMac pro would be for her, not for me.

That makes sense to me... I do some side work which involves media assets and that’s where my current machine is slow. I only “slice and dice” the completed assets in order to add them to the app so it’s not really a problem. But if I were working with that stuff all day, I’d want as much power as I could get. But as a programmer, my biggest and by far most frequent bottleneck is when my computer is idle and I’m sitt…

As a programmer I'm reading this while waiting for a 4 minute Swift compile on a MacBook Pro

Re: iMac Pro

#177

Post by valuearb »

Someone wrote: post #157
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most is really ambiguous here. By units sold? Probably not (mass quantity low end laptops aren't upgradable). By dollar amount sold? Definitely not (Apple has an outsized share of the market based on revenue). By new models? Probably.

”Apple has an outsized share of the market based on revenue” On profit, I can believe, but on revenue? Even at 10% market share, Macs would have to be five times the price of PCs to bring in equal revenue.

Apple has about 7% of pc market world-wide. It's average sales price is around $1,200 to $1,400 (haven't checked lately). Average PC maker ASP is $500-$600, so Apple likely has 15-20% of market by revenues, and more than 50% of market profits, given it's 15-20% margins vs. 2% PC maker margins.

This is all PCs. In laptops it's likely that Apple's share is even higher.

Re: iMac Pro

#178

Post by terminalcommand »

cjsuk wrote: post #144
dman wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the possibility that you just had a bad machine?

I have clearly had three bad machines. I've got an X201 and a T440 as well. The Z620 was especially bad, but the X201 and T440 are perfect hardware-wise and existed before the whole windows 10 thing. The software is the main problem.

I'm using an X201 with Win 10 right now. The driver support was significantly better on Linux. With TLP and a lightweight window manager like i3, the battery consumption was miles better than windows. Without Wifi I was able to reduce the consumption to 8-9 W an hour, with wifi it was around 11-12W.

When I first switched back to windows, I was shocked to see the battery consumption being around 22 W. Lenovo's own battery management driver helped a lot. If I'm using firefox nightly I can reduce it to 16-18W an hour.

From my observation it seems to me that windows draws a lot of power when the system under low load, even on battery saver mode. With linux you can tune the battery consumption far better.

Performance-wise, due to Windows background services I experience occasional lags. The anti-malware engine, indexes etc. consume a lot of CPU cycles. The real bottleneck on X201 is the CPU. Due to heavy CPU usage, my laptop sometimes overheats and closes itself. I have only experienced this on Chakra Linux with an unstable version of KDE. Other linux distros and FreeBSD were absolutely fine.

Wifi connectivity was also very problematic. First couple of weeks wifi adapter stopped working everytime after I woke the laptop from sleep.

Now I don't have much to complain besides lags and the mediocre power consumption. Firefox nightly has helped immensely for a fluid browsing experience.

The bottomline is, for x201, if you want stability and performance but a more conservative experience go for linux. If you want a hassle-free cohesive but slower system go for Windows.

PS: Bugs on Windows might stem from X201 being an old machine.

Re: iMac Pro

#179

Post by valuearb »

strictnein wrote: post #83
jmnicolas wrote: post #3

If they manage to get the 18 core processor without thermal throttling it will be a real feat of engineering, but I doubt it's possible. Throttling or not, I wish I was rich enough (we're probably talking about a 6 to 8k machine here !).

> we're probably talking about a 6 to 8k machine here ! Yeah, the retail on that processor is $2k.

$5k is the base price.

Re: iMac Pro

#180

Post by allwein »

bischofs wrote: post #108

Linux is getting better as a desktop OS. I hope that continues so Apple gets some competition - Marketing an all-in-one as a Pro machine is just arrogant, I don't care whats under the hood the form factor is wrong. I have been using mint 18 with cinnamon 3 and its a nice GUI and rock solid stable. It runs my dev env but also 24/7 servers and a few daemons. I just added some more ram for cheap (up to 24GB ) to run mor…

What is "donglegate"?
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