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A world without the Mac Pro

marco.org

11–20 of 191 posts

Re: A world without the Mac Pro

#11
post #8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix

Windows 10 has Linux subsystem now, which is Ubuntu 14.04. I would say it's at least on par now with MacOS.

Windows also has an annoyment-subsystem now, reminding you to use Edge once a day when you start Chrome. That is why I am switching my last desktop to Linux in the minutes I write this post. I will not accept an OS that tells me what I should use.

Re: A world without the Mac Pro

#12

I feel like I'm living in a crazytown where nobody sees what's so plainly obvious. Doesn't anyone remember when IBM wasn't able to deliver chips to Apple on the schedule they demanded, and customers were complaining, and they were taking a drubbing in the press for it? And Apple let their existing product line stagnate for a little while, and then we got the Intel Macs? Well, this time it's Intel and not IBM, except…

What others are seeing that you aren't is that (a) Unlike the PowerPC days when the Mac gave Apple over 90% of it's profits, it now probably accounts for closer to 10% of Apple's profits (b) The Intel excuse seriously does not fly with the Mac Pro. (c) The CEO has openly wondered why anyone would buy a PC. Some have argued he meant Windows computers, but it doesn't inspire confidence (especially since he has stated he uses an iPad pro for most of his work) (d) Clearly Apple's top priorities are making things smaller and lighter. This is out of step with a lot of "Pro" users' needs. Compare the new Mac Pro to its previous incarnation, and the changes in design priority could not be more obvious.

Re: A world without the Mac Pro

#13
post #9

> Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change. I disagree! A Linux desktop gets as good as your customization. For me nothing can replace my setup: Debian + custom Stumpwm window manager Pro users want flexibility.

I think for some people customisation is a pain, especially when you have to workarounds bugs or find some hardware configuration incompatibility.

Not saying there's anything wrong with people enjoying tinkering with their setup, but I guess the advantage OSX offers you is most of that is taken care of you on the desktop, you just install your apps on top

Re: A world without the Mac Pro

#14
post #7

> Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change. Depending on which pro needs We're talking about, I don't believe this is true anymore. I was a Linux user for many years, then an OS X user for over a decade, and earlier this year I'd had enough with being annoyed by OS X & switched back to Linux. I am extremely happy I did. I…

And if you split your time between the terminal and the browser and want what amounts to a built-in IDE, OpenBSD is a great answer.

Re: A world without the Mac Pro

#15

I feel like I'm living in a crazytown where nobody sees what's so plainly obvious. Doesn't anyone remember when IBM wasn't able to deliver chips to Apple on the schedule they demanded, and customers were complaining, and they were taking a drubbing in the press for it? And Apple let their existing product line stagnate for a little while, and then we got the Intel Macs? Well, this time it's Intel and not IBM, except…

Apple has indeed some great chip designs available. But one should not forget that the switch to Intel not only gave Apple nicer CPUs but also made Apple compatible to the rest of the PC world. You can run any x86 application on a Mac via VMware or Parallels. Moving away from Intel would kill this.

Re: A world without the Mac Pro

#16
"Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change."

When I switched in 2005 I had to convince friends I wasn't crazy. I advocated for the platform. I suffered weird incompatibilities. I dealt with bad updates. I found work arounds for non-multi-platform tools I had to run. But look how stable, how much less restrictive the platform was, I said! And it was!

The platform I switched to in 2005 wasn't Linux. It was OS X.

In 10 years the world has changed and today if you are in most of the "creative" professions, not using a Mac is the exception. You can today make a lot of arguments against desktop linux, yet for the past several years I've run it exclusively on all my main systems (laptops and desktops, work and home).

10 years ago, plenty of Windows users couldn't imagine a world in which Macs were where they are today. I mean couldn't imagine. The way Mac enthusiasts can't imagine desktop linux today. The parallels aren't exact. They don't need to be. I am neither predicting success or failure. I am simply pointing out that imagination fails and it is a mistake to say "that will probably never change."

Re: A world without the Mac Pro

#17
post #2

> Microsoft is boldly experimenting with PC hardware, but Windows and everything around Windows is woefully inferior to macOS and the Mac software ecosystem. Even if Microsoft did everything right, it would take Windows at least a decade to catch up — and they won’t do everything right. So, if you have everything already on macOS (I still hate that name change), I can get not wanting to switch. But what on Earth is i…

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Re: A world without the Mac Pro

#19
3. “Hackintoshes” aren’t good enough. ↩︎

Is this really true? Yes, there are currently support issues, but this would seem to be because Apple exclusively makes its own hardware and doesn't legally permit running their OS on anything else. Might macOS thrive if it was retargeted to (or at least officially permitted use of) high-end 3rd-party hardware? Microsoft doesn't make their own high-end workstations, and Windows seems to be doing just fine.

Re: A world without the Mac Pro

#20
post #4

Arment is way too positive on the Mac Pro's thermal design. Recently I worked on an application where we had about a dozen Mac Pros doing heavy video encoding workloads. Four of these computers started having GPU overheating issues, and turns out that this is a common occurrence on the 2013 Mac Pro. Apple has been quietly replacing units over the years (searching for the specific console error message reveals that it…

Can confirm, had a similar set up with six Mac Pros for video processing and compression. We had to replace every single one of them at least once, and some 3 times and still we feel there are heat-based performance issues that Apple hasn't addressed.

Also, I think Apple will have to come out with a new display to go with the Mac Pro.

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