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The Mac Pro Lives

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Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#441
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…

Ubuntu Unity is actually pretty slick, and enables tiling prety easily. I agree Canonical should have first-party laptops and demand quality. But Apple not having an open package management ecosystem, where people can manage/create their own repositories, kills it for me.

> But Apple not having an open package management ecosystem

It's not from Apple but Mac OS has Macports and Brew for this just like Windows has Chocolatey

Unity makes the Linux desktop usable now, but I still wouldn't call it slick. Even if it leaned more on KDE instead of Gnome it still doesn't feel right compared to either Mac OS or Windows.

Going on a tangent, I still wish Apple would release a screenless iMac. Not as much people want or need a screenless Macbook Pro (Mac Mini) - the 16 GB RAM limit is annoying and thunderbolt is lacking as opposed to just SATA, and not as much people can justify or afford a modern Mac Pro. If Apple wanted to see the market demand for that, they should try tracking sales of used old-gen Mac Pros on ebay.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were really serious they would make an open letter or they would write out to their Mac Pro users personally. That way their "openness" would actually make sense and they would show they really cared. Pushing this to a little elite group of bloggers is just an amateurish move on Apples part.

Well now we're talking about subjective opinion. To me, press releases and corporate double-speak are petulant. Actual engineers speaking frankly to journalists, to me, is the height of professionalism.

All this is subjective. When Jobs wrote an open letter about not supporting flash that wasnt a press release that was him taking responsibility and adressing something heads on.

Making it engineers job to adress a leadership issue is exactly the wrong kind of frank.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#443
Too late, I moved away from Apple. My current setup is Windows as desktop and I log in to linux for dev via X11. I am still testing the setup, but so far it has been a very positive experience. I'll share my complete setup on my blog when I consider it stable.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#444
post #355

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 don't remap esc to caps-lock. I use my caps-lock key all the time. My number keys have to be shifted to use, so I just use caps-lock instead.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#445
post #347
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can afford that, but many can't.

I really dislike this argument. If you are not doing any serious work, then yes, Apple products are a luxury. If you are doing serious work, then you can afford Apple products easily. Let's say you spend $10k on your 2-year updated hardware. That comes at roughly $14/day. That's about how much I pay for coffee daily (cafes + Nespresso capsules) Edit: And that doesn't include the re-selling price. I do give my old har…

> Edit: And that doesn't include the re-selling price

I second this. Just take a look at prices on Ebay for old metal Mac Pros.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#446
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not bloggers. Religious fanatics.

Not sure why this was downvoted as it's completely accurate. Apple invited a well-known, Apple fanboy to an exclusive meeting with high level execs (feeling special yet?) to break this news - pretty much the best case scenario to break disappointing news.

"Religious fanatics" is a dumb phrase. Gruber has and can be very critical of apple and everyone. OP was just unhappy that Gruber doesn't share the same opinions as they do.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#447
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 love OSX but never understood why people pay so much for those apple displays. we use them at work and they suuuuuck. super heavy, can't adjust height, can't put it in portrait mode which is .. I don't know useful 40% of the time, glares like a mofo, and cost 2x-3x similar quality displays from not Apple. Is the look of them that desirable? i finally switched for same reso Dell units on my desk and really happy abo…

For a long time, Apple displays were the only displays that also provided a proper laptop dock. Not just a cheap USB-to-XYZ-multiport-adapter with the limits those bring, but a real dock connected via PCI-in-a-wire Thunderbolt, making the ports on the back of the monitor just as good as ports on the machine itself. Combined with the monitor's MagSafe adapter and a MacBook of some sort, you had a beautiful setup: the only wires you needed to switch from laptop mode to desktop mode were the monitor's MagSafe and thunderbolt cords. Just keep all your desk hardware plugged into your monitor, and save the macbook's power adapter for when you actually needed to charge on the go.

There's also something to be said about the consistency of the old Apple displays. I've seen dozens at this point and none had noticeable backlight issues, and they look good right out of the box instead of requiring the user to switch off 15 gimmick settings to get a proper picture.

They had their issues but they did several things right.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I just long clicked (5 seconds) on the green button and all it did is maximize the window. Tried long click + drag, didn't work. What am I missing?

Works for me, long click, it resizes to left half horizontally, then when I release it fills vertically. On the right side is a collection of my other windows, I tap one and it fills the right side.

Alas, it's not resizing the windows, but creating some sort of new virtual desktop and sticking them in it.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#449

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.

The feature that allows a current Mac Pro to be placed on a desk comes at the price of more important features like being able to easily upgrade and expand a Mac Pro. Could be wrong but I feel that's one thing that OP wanted to express.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#450
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP and I'm no professional but Photoshop alone is the reason I can never have enough RAM.

I use Photoshop a ton and currently I'm convinced it doesn't even TRY to use the ram. I open it up and it just seems to use about 2GB and happily chug away on swap rather than taking a bite out of my 32GB

IIRC it has a configuration setting to tweak how much RAM it is allowed to use
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