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Apple Is Listening

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Re: Apple Is Listening

#301

Post by lioeters »

xenospn wrote: post #137
newscracker wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve been using my 2013 MBP every day since it came out, through my previous startup, an acquisition, and now my new startup. It’s been perfect, except for the fact that it only has 8GB of ram, and cannot be upgraded.

I have a late 2013 MBP as a second work machine, which was upgraded to SSD + 16GB of RAM, and it runs like a champ. Admittedly, the upgrade was quite delicate, and the WiFi stopped working afterwards.

Anecdotally, a friend of mine built a beefy PC running macOS for his main work computer (i9, 64GB RAM, etc., for about half the price of a Mac Pro). It's completely built of generic, modular parts (other than the proprietary OS), with ability to extend and repair. Apparently, Apple is listening but money speaks louder than user freedoms.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#302

Post by PascLeRasc »

pier25 wrote: post #297
PascLeRasc wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can protest by using a Hackintosh. I'm sure Apple's aware of how big the Hackintosh community has become and I think it's part of the reason we're seeing niceties like upgradable RAM on the new Mini and iMacs.

I seriously doubt the Hackintosh community has gotten any bigger than it was 5 tears ago. Any numbers to back that claim? Also, the Mini and the iMacs have always had upgradeable RAM.

Here's subscribers over time to /r/hackintosh [1] - about 600% growth over the last 5 years. Also, the 2014 Mac Mini removed the ability to upgrade RAM [2], but now it's back with the 2018 Mini.

[1] https://subredditstats.com/r/hackintosh

[2] https://www.macworld.com/article/2836399/new-mac-mini-restri...

Re: Apple Is Listening

#303

Post by graeme »

jasonkester wrote: post #147
colmvp wrote: post #10

Back in 2012, I bought the original rMBP. It fit everything I needed: it was thinner than my previous laptop as it had no optical drive, it was lightweight, it had a gorgeous screen, good enough keyboard, and seemed like a reasonable price for a higher end laptop work computer. I've used it everyday since 2012, and aside from the battery which I eventually replaced, it's been functioning without a hitch. From the 90s…

The worrying part is that in order to keep using the good MacBooks from the past, you need to keep them on the OS version that they shipped with. I have a 2012 MacBook Air that was crazy fast, weighed four grams, and even ran windows 7. Sure, the drive was small, but it was perfect. But some time in 2015 or so I made the terrible strategic blunder of upgrading to the latest OS version. Performance immediately dropped…

Things have reversed with the ipads. Ios 12 is faster than 11, and maybe even faster than 10. And early reports indicate that 13 is faster than 12.

Well worth updating on your machines that support them.

Dunno if the same focus has extended to new macos's, am not on the newest one.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#304

Post by gyc »

eatmyshorts wrote: post #89
dcosson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest annoyance with the iMac though is you can’t, say, work from home with your work laptop and plug it into the screen. This is another case with macs where the situation 8 years ago was much better since they used to have target display mode. From what I understand, they killed it because they needed to use a custom format to drive the 5k screen initially. Now regular DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 have enough bandwidt…

You can if the laptop is a Mac: https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/imac-secondary-displ...

I do not believe this works on the 5K iMacs.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#305

Post by [deleted] »

nathana wrote: post #218
Alupis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're targeting Apple platforms with your builds, just how does a Threadripper workstation address the problem? (And don't say Hackintosh...)

[deleted]

Re: Apple Is Listening

#306

Post by Alupis »

vbezhenar wrote: post #179
Alupis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're building Apple projects, it might be hard or impossible to offload that to other operating system.

GP said they were using a Xeon workstation, so I assumed it's not an Apple offering already.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#307

Post by oarsinsync »

Hackbraten wrote: post #274
arcticbull wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Have you recently tried to get Apple to hand out a kext signing certificate? Convincing Donald Trump of climate change being real seems easier than that.

I assume you're being downvoted because of the unnecessary political commentary.

However, I am curious as to the process for getting a kext signing cert, as that plays a part in the value of having the certs in the first place or not.

I didn't mention anything about serial numbers and the fun and games that goes on there when trying to get a Hackintosh working with iMessage/Facetime/iCloud services, which is a bit of a mixed bag. There could be security implications related to that, that haven't been worked out of the woodwork yet, but the kernel extensions feels like the biggest risk there.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#308

Post by kyboren »

gonvaled wrote: post #201

I would like to remind international users that making use of American technology makes you a pawn in the current trade war. The US is a counterparty risk.

Huawei is a nice example here: even Chinese SOEs are critically dependent upon US technology.

It is just not possible to buy any modern workstation/desktop, laptop, or smartphone without exposure, as you put it, to "US counterparty risk". Buying an Apple workstation is not significantly riskier than, say, a Lenovo workstation.

And by your logic, wouldn't buying a workstation from a Chinese manufacturer also make you a pawn in the current trade war, albeit a pawn for the other side?

Re: Apple Is Listening

#309

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

Angostura wrote: post #182
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…

Actually, I'm in the middle of writing an e-mail to the Tim address at Apple, saying that if it takes the environment seriously (and I commend them on what they have done so far) they really need to take the next step, be truly 'courageous' and prioritise repairability and expandability in their forthcoming products. Apple in the last 20 pushed the boundaries in terms of sleek and slim, but I argue those are last cen…

>Actually, I'm in the middle of writing an e-mail to the Tim address at Apple

He won't read it. His PR team will respond instead.

>if it takes the environment seriously (and I commend them on what they have done so far)

They don't it's just PR. The stuff that they should do if they took the environment seriously are offloaded to companies like Foxconn which don't care about their public image.

>be truly 'courageous' and prioritise repairability and expandability in their forthcoming products.

They won't do that unless they get to a point that they just can't increase their margins or expand to other countries anymore. They even further invested into locking their computers on a semiconductor level( t2 chip).

>Apple has the clout and profile, that if it took a stand and said 'we are going to make our products a few milimeters thicker, we are going to make them so that they can be upgraded, we realise that this will hit sales and profits, but this is the planet we are talking about', they could probably pull other members of the industry behind them'.

That doesn't make them money. They didn't become the biggest tech company by not focusing on making money.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#310

Post by ktta »

Alupis wrote: post #306
vbezhenar wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're building Apple projects, it might be hard or impossible to offload that to other operating system.

GP said they were using a Xeon workstation, so I assumed it's not an Apple offering already.

iMac Pro has a 18-core Xeon W option.
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