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The Mac Pro Lives

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Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#401

Post by protomyth »

LordKano wrote: post #119
Haul4ss wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's not Apple's business model? They did the licensing thing in the mid-90s. Mac clones were a thing. To license macOS means to support infinite hardware variations, and to rely on OEMs not to suck. It is an impossible technical problem for a company whose whole ethos revolves around integration of h/w and s/w.

To license macOS means to support infinite hardware variations, and to rely on OEMs not to suck. Kind of. Apple had to approve any clone designs. It wasn't as willy-nilly as the PC market. At the time Apple allowed cloning, Apple itself had a large number of varying models to support. Apple's big problem was that the clones were faster and cheaper. For example, the Umax C500 was available up to 240 Mhz while the Powe…

The Daystar Genesis MP generated a lot of "holy cow" moments.

Plus, we are in a different world these days. Intel hardware, due to Intel's keeping the bus proprietary and getting rid of the chipset makers, is a lot more generic than back in the day. NeXT and a lot of open source projects today have a list of hardware you can use. The list for today is a lot shorter. I think a lot of companies would thrive on making good macOS machines.

I really think Apple should just stop making any PC other than the MacBook and iMac lines. That's where their heart is anyway. License the OS for $250 a pop and sell for the same. If they are that concerned about what happened before, limit the sold macOS to Xeon cpus only. That will get rid of all the portables that might reduce their MacBook sales.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#402

Post by dragonshed »

Keyframe wrote: post #298
taude wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran a Hackintosh for about 1.5 years. I just recently went back to Windows 10 after the integrated Linux sub-system came out with the update. Most of the software/tools I use run in both OS X and Windows, so it wasn't a huge deal breaker for me. One thing I didn't like about the Hackintosh was maintaining it during updates, having to wait for the right NVidia web drivers, and then remembering how to update all the…

Well, you don't have to wait for the right Nvidia drivers anymore since they've stopped releasing them. 980 GTX Ti is as far as it can go now.

You still need to update them in tandem with OS updates, but your point is well taken.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#403

Post by m_fayer »

Eun wrote: post #222
csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

Window management in OSX is horrible. Finder is even more horrible. It reminds me of the Windows 95 Explorer. A network drive hangs? Good luck with Finder..., the whole system halts.

The fact that finder doesn't let you retrieve or enter your current FS path just like a URL in a browser is criminal.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#404

Post by pat2man »

m_mueller wrote: post #367
scholia wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best keyboard-only UI (although ribbons were a big step backwards in that regard - very hard to discover now) Use the Alt key. For example, open Word and press Alt to show the keyboard commands. If you want the keyboard commands for the Home tab, press H as shown. Alternatively, to open the Ribbon and show the keyboard commands for the Home tab, press Alt-H. So, if you want to center some selected text in Word,…

As I wrote I still do consider keyboard UI on windows the best, because it's AFAIK the only widely supported destop OS with full keyboard control of the GUI. But the Ribbons are not for me - it's a menu system that's also trying to be a context aware palette, which makes it worse than either a classic menu (easy to skim though and find what you want, especially on MacOS) or a palette (can be placed wherever it's the…

macOS does have keyboard menu control and it is pretty good. http://lifehacker.com/321595/access-the-dock-and-menu-bar-fr...

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#405

Post by makerofthings »

audunw wrote: post #355
chefandy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since the whole virtual escape key thing– being a default layout vim user for 20+ years– I'd love to follow suit, but I need Adobe Creative Suite. The tools available on Linux aren't even ballpark. Getting OS X on a VM has always been fussy and frustrating, and if I wanted to work with Windows I'd just use a Windows laptop. On top of that, the apple magic trackpad is just great. Fussing with extracted boot…

> Especially since the whole virtual escape key thing– being a default layout vim user for 20+ years I really don't understand how there can be vim users that haven't remapped escape. Like, if you care about ergonomics enough to complain about making a rarely used key into a touch key, how can you not care enough to remap that key if you use it more often? And Mac OS even has built-in support to remap caps-lock to es…

I've been using the escape key for vim since I started work as a programmer 21 years ago. That's a long time and I really don't want to change it. I know it might seem silly to you, but I'd switch to Linux on an XPS before I'd upgrade to a Mac with no escape key. (Not that I have to, plenty of Macs available without the touchbar)

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#406

Post by emptythought »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #364
nottorp wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Touchpad support. I think most people who haven't used an Apple laptop extensively are not aware that the touchpad actually works, and you do not need to carry an external mouse to use the device comfortably.

Precision touchpad gestures on Windows 10 solves that problem, especially on the Dell XPS/Precision machines. It's really, really good.

Nah.

We have those at my work, and we also have an iMac with a magic trackpad, and several of us have macbook pros.

It's a huge improvement, but it's maybe 75% of the way there. And the points at which it's NOT there are very noticeable and annoying. There's still regularly times where the trackpad just gets totally confused and you can't move the cursor for 1-2 seconds. Mehhhhhh

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#407

Post by skinnymuch »

icebraining wrote: post #182
mikeash wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transaction costs (both the explicit "we take a percentage" kind, and the hidden ones like the risk of being ripped off) are pretty significant, so no, not really.

Not in my experience, but in any case, it's still equivalent to buying at that reduced price.

It's not equivalent. Buying is far easier than selling.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#408

Post by docmars »

mikestew wrote: post #295
csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

I'd be buying the new Macbook Pro in a month. I know one is discouraged from questioning whether a commenter read the article, but I'll point out that Gruber is on about the Mac Pro, which is a desktop machine. I'll doubt the new one will have "longer battery life".

Wait, you don't use your Mac Pro as a coffee warmer on the bus? I can only get a solid 30 minutes out of mine. ;)

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#409

Post by jonas21 »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #300
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple themselves admitted as much. They focused too much on making something beautiful and small. Neither of those things matter to a pro, especially for a desktop. And not only that, even Apple with its vast resources cannot keep the machine up to date because the components are so tied to the case design.

A nicely designed item is unrelated to where it should be placed. The OP was specifically saying that Apple lost the Pro market because the unit "demanded" to be put on the desk which is absurd since the Mac Pro can be placed anywhere that the cables allow it to.

I think the OP's point is that the Mac Pro is not a nicely designed item. Design is all about tradeoffs. In this case, Apple had to decide whether to prioritize form factor and appearance or upgradability and performance. They chose the former, which turned out to be the wrong design for the target market.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#410

Post by Eric_WVGG »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #170
ianwalter wrote: post #112

I wish there was more info on the Pro Display. I thought Apple was "out of the display game". I wonder if the UltraFine issues played a part in this.

Serious question: What room is there for improvement and innovation in displays for MacPro's target users, aside from price-reduction? I can see how photographers want faithful color reproduction with a wide gamut, good image consistency across the whole display, good resolution, and a decent size (maybe 32" tops?) But AFAIK, monitors with those qualities are already available. The only thing I can think of that woul…

There currently isn't a single external display with a screen as good as the current iMac (that is, 5k resolution, P3 color). It's a sure bet that the next Apple display will match that.

The last Thunderbolt Display had USBs, ethernet, additional thunderbolt, even Firewire, and I use all of them. I can scarcely find a third-party Thunderbolt (not Displayport, Thunderbolt) display that has more than a couple USB ports, let alone the rest.

Believe me, I'd love to settle for a cheaper Dell, but as soon as you throw in a serious Thunderbolt dock (they start at $200), you're spending nearly as much, and now you've got some clunky lunchbox on top of your desk to boot.

I don't see any signs that the market won't repeat this pattern.

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