Apple Is Listening • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Is Listening

#151

Post by linguae » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:40 AM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #124

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they dropped the ball by not having two displays, though As you said, they’re going for a specific market with this product. They can always release a general-market display down the road. Focusing on a specific set of power users first is how Apple built its renowned culture, and it’s nice to see it returning to those roots.

I see people downvoting this comment, but...it's kind of true. The "kind of" part is this: Apple arguably built its culture first around the extremely hacker-friendly Apple II, then around the original Macintosh -- which was certainly expensive, but was very specifically pitched as "the computer for the rest of us." That segment is one that they're ironically a bit wobbly on right now. (The MacBook Air and the iMac a…

The sub-$3K flagship era of the Power Mac G5 and original Mac Pros is something of an anomaly.

Apple actually was able to maintain this pricing for entry-level Power Macs and Mac Pros from 1999 (I haven't checked earlier prices) through the 2013 Mac Pro model. Here is a list of prices I compiled:

  Blue and White Power Mac G3 (January 1999) -- $1,599 ($2,453 in 2019 dollars)
  Graphite Power Mac G4 (December 1999) -- $1,599 ($2,453 in 2019 dollars)
  2001 Power Mac G4 (January 2001) -- $1,699 ($2,453)
  2001 Quicksilver Power Mac G4 (July 2001) -- $1,699 ($2,453)
  2002 Mirrored Drive Door Power Mac G4 (August 2002) -- $1,699 ($2,413)
  2003 Power Mac G5 (August 2003) -- $1,999 ($2,776), reduced to $1,799 ($2,499) in November 2003
  2006 Mac Pro (August 2006) -- $2,199 ($2,787)
  2010 Mac Pro (July 2010) -- $2,499 ($2,929)
  2013 Mac Pro (December 2013) -- $2,999 ($3,289.83 in 2019 dollars, but you can still purchase an entry-level 2013 Mac Pro today from Apple for $2,999 in 2019 dollars).

Re: Apple Is Listening

#152

Post by Twisell » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:40 AM UTC

tomduncalf wrote: post #146

aiyodev wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have to visit an Apple-approved repair center to have a specialist perform the upgrade, which costs more than doing it yourself That has not been my experience. The Apple store just refreshed my 2015 Macbook pro: new screen, new bottom case, new fan, etc. Did not charge me anything. Apple products last much longer than others and are much cheaper to maintain.

Sadly I don’t believe this will be true of the newer generation butterfly keyboard laptops. Seems like the keyboards are more or less guaranteed to fail at some point and if it’s outside the 4 year extended guarantee window, tough luck, given the risk requires replacing the whole logic board. Real shame and I hope there is a new design soon addressing this!

Can you develop in which way this is supposedly worse than for say the hp laptop of my wife that ran out of warranty after 1 year without official removable battery parts sold by the manufacturer?

Also touchscreen start to literally fell off after 2 year, but can’t tell if it was weak design or if my wife was careless to be honest.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#153

Post by cromwellian » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:42 AM UTC

I'm wondering why you need so much power in 1 machine for DCC work. Wouldn't it be better to have a relatively cheap model, and when you need to Render, to farm it out to a cluster of computers?

For example, they claim the beefiest model will be 4x the old Mac Pro. But at what cost? $10,000-15,000 for maxed out system? How many cheap PC renderfarm computers can I get for that? How many cloud rendering instances could I rent?

To me, it's like they "listened" and built a Bugatti Veyron instead of a Ford F-350. The people wanting an upgradeable workstation are not looking for a max-out computer off the shelf. They simply want the capability to upgrade it over time or modify it according to their needs. In particular, for rendering 3d workloads, it seems renting cloud computers is far more scalable. If I am time limited, I can easily buy enough power to render 20x faster than this system in a crunch.

This seems more like a vanity project.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#154

Post by microtonal » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:46 AM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #129

linguae wrote: post #28

I’m glad that Apple is finally updating their Macs again, but at the same time Apple has doubled-down on its refusal to sell user-serviceable, upgradeable, and expandable hardware at prices that are within reach for most customers. The laptops have soldered RAM and soldered storage. The Mac Mini and iMac Pro thankfully have DIMMs, but in order to keep the warranty, you have to visit an Apple-approved repair center to…

I feel the same way. Macs have become more expensive and less friendly for upgrading RAM and storage, the two most important things that need to be user upgradeable for longevity and reducing e-waste (I don’t care much about CPU/GPU upgrades). Even the new Mac mini is quite expensive compared to its predecessors. Mac mini used to be the cheap and beginner level entry into Macs/macOS. The current hardware may be worth…

The 2012 Mac Mini was the high point of the Mini. Strong hardware, decent prices (I think I bought mine for 600 Euro), very serviceable. RAM was replaceable by removing the cover on the bottom (no screwdriver required). Replacing storage was a bit more work, but definitely easy for someone who has built a PC.

The Mac Mini 2014 showed the Apple to come: an overpriced, non-serviceable slab of metal.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#155

Post by Alupis » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:50 AM UTC

tjohns wrote: post #114

jarjoura wrote: post #69

I think Apple released this Mac Pro & Display at the wrong event. From every indication, it was designed for Hollywood. Developers don't need expansion, but Audio and Video producers do! Announcing at an LA event for producers and artists would have cleared any confusion. It wasn't designed for AI or ML either, because Apple is having a war with NVidia now, probably over component pricing, but who knows. Developers d…

Some of us were asking for this machine. As a developer who builds large, complex projects (it's not uncommon for a build to take 40 minutes on a 16-core Xeon workstation), the Mac Pro is exactly the type of workstation I'd be interested in. (The display is another story. That's definitely targeting the media production vertical.)

Wouldn't someone like you be better served on a 32 or 64 core Threadripper workstation then?

I assume there's I/O bottlenecking in there somewhere, but for the rest, surely you're not 100% pegging all 16 cores all the time, but more parallelism would still benefit you to a certain extent... While not costing $6k+ for a base 8 core machine.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#156

Post by swerner » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:51 AM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #153

I'm wondering why you need so much power in 1 machine for DCC work. Wouldn't it be better to have a relatively cheap model, and when you need to Render, to farm it out to a cluster of computers? For example, they claim the beefiest model will be 4x the old Mac Pro. But at what cost? $10,000-15,000 for maxed out system? How many cheap PC renderfarm computers can I get for that? How many cloud rendering instances could…

Remember the joke of “never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 full of hard drives”? That’s the render farm. Throw a ton of work at it, and it’ll get done faster than a big single machine could. What would have taken a week now takes a day.

The Mac Pro in our analogy is 5G wireless: not nearly as much bandwidth as the 747, but at much lower latency. Lots of interactive/real time applications are possible that in a farm would be bottlenecked by network bandwidth alone.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#157

Post by nexuist » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:56 AM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #153

I'm wondering why you need so much power in 1 machine for DCC work. Wouldn't it be better to have a relatively cheap model, and when you need to Render, to farm it out to a cluster of computers? For example, they claim the beefiest model will be 4x the old Mac Pro. But at what cost? $10,000-15,000 for maxed out system? How many cheap PC renderfarm computers can I get for that? How many cloud rendering instances could…

Why outsource critical work to a 3rd party cloud when you can buy this one time purchase from Apple?

Why build your own cloud and hire a ton of specialized personnel to manage a bunch of infrastructure you're not in the business of managing when you can buy this one time purchase from Apple?

Why wait around for your project to render when you can render it in real time and make changes as necessary? Remember when you had to wait 30-45 seconds for Xcode to deploy a new build just to see if your UIButton is the right color? Doesn't that suck?

The Mac Pro is for professionals, just like the Bugatti Veyron wasn't meant to be a daily driver. Sure, some rich enough consumers will get it just because they want it, but that's not the reason it exists. Anyone who makes enough money to transition their hobby into their profession won't scoff at a $10-45k price point. Truckers buy $100-200k trucks because they depend on it for their livelihood. Plumbers, electricians, etc. all buy $30-40k vans for the same reason.

The reason this computer looks so out of place on the pricing charts is because we've gotten so used to cheap $400-800 laptops that we forget there was a time when mainframes cost dozens of millions of dollars a pop. Nowadays, that market only matters to Fortune 100 corps, but it's still real and thus there's still a real demand for beast machines like the Mac Pro.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#158

Post by arcticbull » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:56 AM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #128

djmobley wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacOS with regular PC hardware? Just build a Hackintosh. It’s far easier than I thought it would be. Pick the right parts and it will work flawlessly.

Last I checked, you have to disable signature checking on kernel extensions. For some, having to trade off that level of security is a pretty big flaw.

I mean, that was standard until what 2 years ago? Not checking extensions was okay for about 42 years, I’m not sure anything really changed in the last 2. I doubt that most security experts will tell you otherwise when getting a signing certificate takes all of 5 minutes. The benefit you get is revocation but it really depends on your threat model right?

Re: Apple Is Listening

#159

Post by arcticbull » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:58 AM UTC

tomduncalf wrote: post #146

aiyodev wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have to visit an Apple-approved repair center to have a specialist perform the upgrade, which costs more than doing it yourself That has not been my experience. The Apple store just refreshed my 2015 Macbook pro: new screen, new bottom case, new fan, etc. Did not charge me anything. Apple products last much longer than others and are much cheaper to maintain.

Sadly I don’t believe this will be true of the newer generation butterfly keyboard laptops. Seems like the keyboards are more or less guaranteed to fail at some point and if it’s outside the 4 year extended guarantee window, tough luck, given the risk requires replacing the whole logic board. Real shame and I hope there is a new design soon addressing this!

The logic board does not need to be replaced. The top case includes the keyboard, touch bar and battery.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#160

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

jdminhbg wrote: post #35

linguae wrote: post #28

I’m glad that Apple is finally updating their Macs again, but at the same time Apple has doubled-down on its refusal to sell user-serviceable, upgradeable, and expandable hardware at prices that are within reach for most customers. The laptops have soldered RAM and soldered storage. The Mac Mini and iMac Pro thankfully have DIMMs, but in order to keep the warranty, you have to visit an Apple-approved repair center to…

The problem is that, statistically, nobody cares about the issues you raise. You can maybe get your problems addressed by a niche retailer, but Apple has bigger fish to fry.

How long will it have to take for people to realize that this tendency to only ever care for a virtual customer that's an average of all customers across all characteristics is in fact a market failure?