Apple should stop selling four-year-old computers
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theverge.com
[1] http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/56968e64c08a80492c8...
[2] http://www.anandtech.com/show/10183/intels-tick-tock-seeming...
It seems like Apple is hoping the consumer won't notice and still buy the brand as though it's a designer item and not electronics. I suspect that this is not the primary motivation for their current lack of new tech. I think that the largest part for this regression from the cutting edge is a consequence of no longer having Steve Jobs pushing every part of the company for its utmost.
Apple, when you anthropomorphize the actions of the company as a whole, comes off as arrogant. They had earned this by actually delivering the best you could buy. The best laptops, the best phones, the best music players, the best tablets. With the exception of tablets, this is no longer true, in any category (not even phones). And that is the issue.
Not whether the device is still good enough. It ought to be the best, because that was what we came to expect from Apple. The premium ought to be a no-brainer because you get what you pay for. It isn't like that anymore and if you're a fan of Apple (and I have been since the Apple IIe) then you really wish it were.
If I can only expect to get 3 years of use from a laptop, that's pretty disappointing. Especially one that starts at $1300. Or $1550 if you want the warranty to actually cover it for that period.
Also it's not my primary work tool. If your company wants to buy you one, great, but spending my personal hobby budget on outdated gear is a harder sell.
And yes, $43/month over 3 years is a lot of money. $1550, in fact. Breaking it down like that to make it feel like a smaller number is a shitty trick that only works because we have bad instincts at math.
If this thing ever dies on me I'm just going to switch to Ubuntu.
You are in for a long wait. I can't imagine they'll ever release that size again. Apple's definitely shifting quickly to the 2 or 3 options that cover 95% of the market.
If you want the absolute screen size: indeed, I doubt there will be another. But if it's all about the pixels, you can already do better than the 17.
No matter how good your eyes are, you can only go so small without stuff becoming blurry. Personally 15"/1080p is about as small as I can go without text becoming unreadable without HiDPI scaling, and some of my friends complain about reading text on my laptop as it is.
So, for me, switching to a higher-DPI screen is not an option since it just means a higher cost, awful blur for the many applications that don't support DPI scaling, and somewhere between no and very diminished benefits. At the same time I'd never want to give up on all the extra screen real estate so 17" (or bigger!) would inevitably be the only option for me.
Also, preference and I'm not a huge fan of being so loyal to one company that they dictate my preferences. Been s pretty loyal Apple customer for laptop, phone, wife's computer, parents and iMac for since about 2005-2006. Between things like reducing their product line, not updating machines, not letting me set my own DNS on my phone and making political statements via their software the luster has worn off quite a bit.
For example, my tolerance for small text at 1:1 is about 160 dpi (4K on a 27" monitor), which is much lower than the 220 dpi of your Retina 15. Having said that, my eyes would have a better chance of tolerating the same 2880x1800 resolution on a 17" monitor at 200dpi.
At some point, that extra resolution is going to get wasted on a small screen if you're more interested in real estate over crispy retina text. I have a 4K 15.6" laptop, and there's no way in hell I could tolerate it at 1:1 with my aging eyes.
Anyone who buys a MacBook Pro today, before whenever it is the line gets updated, will be happy with it, which is of course a good thing. (Outside of being hit by hardware issues or something)
When the line is updated, you probably won't notice a performance difference between the current model and whatever the next one is. The time of huge improvements with every processor upgrade has long since past, the RAM speed will not be that much different and it will be using solid state storage at again about the same speed as the current model. This is why people will keep their hardware longer.
A lot of hardware upgrades are now coming from when the hardware no longer supports the latest OS. Sierra will work with MacBooks going back to 2009, and they had upgradable RAM and storage so even those laptops will be able to run the latest OS with performance that is acceptable to most people.
All of this means that Apple is going to have a slower cycle for hardware bumps since the cost of a rapid cycle probably doesn't bring the revenue spike it used to.
But the real upgrade would be to models that either already had integrated graphics (and now will have much faster integrated graphics), or that had GPUs (and with the new pascal/polaris generations, will likely have much faster and less power hungry GPUs).
You might also notice improvements in SSDs, though I'm skeptical that despite large relative improvements most workloads really benefit much - after all, any semi decent SSD will have largely moved most bottlenecks out of the I/O subsystem, and then it really won't matter much if you reduce those last few milliseconds of latency even further. Some people will notice, however, and what you will notice is that you don't need to choose between fast or large as much anymore - a 1TB ssd is pretty affordable, and smaller SSDs might even be classified as "cheap" by macbook standards.
Still, I last updated (my non-mac laptop) just after haswell was released, and discounting SSD size and GPU, modern laptops seem very unattractive. Due to the glass screen fetish nowadays; most are heavier and more fragile to boot - my 13-inch, more than 3-year old laptop weighs 929g, and the battery still lasts many hours. It's fallen a few times and has a few nasty scratches and one nicked corner, but... upgrades still seem kind of pointless. Are you really going to upgrade for a crappy-but-less crappy iGFX or a larger SSD?
So when software support gets phased out, you might be able to get a few extra years on Linux if you wish to do so.
Heat is an issue, but with upgraded RAM and a SSD, it's gets the job done.
Mainly, I mostly use it as an Ubuntu machine at this point.
It kind of depresses me that three years is considered a long lifetime for a computer.
The author of the article was writing about non-retina MBPs, which are still for sale.
A mid-2015 15" rMBP purchased today is running a two-year-old processor from a three-year-old architecture. And the GPU, should you get the discrete GPU option, is from a four-year-old architecture (it's a GCN 1.0 part).
Although if the Broadwell parts weren't really an upgrade, then it does not matter. The old ATI part would be more annoying.
I also kind of understand why Apple didn't go with Skylake yet. Seeing all the problems with power management states in Linux and Windows land, it looks like they decided to skip this generation until that gets fixed.
It can probably last over ten years for the average person, if good care is taken.
Tech enthusiasts are the ones who can see through the marketing and upgrade-treadmill BS; the "average person" can end up buying a new machine when they fill up their hard drive.
For tech enthusiast who enjoy smartphones unfortunately a 8 year old phone won't cut it. I have 4 year old Nokia Lumia that still runs fine and with an average 1.5 days of battery life (it used to live 2 days, it's aging). It works well for me because I care about basic apps, GPS, internet browser, and email. But for more apps heavy users most apps won't work if the phone isn't on the latest OS version, and most old phones can't upgrade to the latest OS version. For instance if Facebook stops maintaining messenger on windows phone 8.1, I'd loose my most used app. Fortunately the market share for 8.1 in emerging markets is still important enough for fb to keep a quality app.
I've much more often been frustrated by my phones. My last phone was at the point where I'd expect ~1 second delay for any interaction, whether that was opening an app or scrolling in a webpage. I think as the current one ages I'm going to start eliminating apps and wiping the phone more frequently than I do now, because I'd rather have all that money going toward my desktop and laptops.
A bit off topic topic, but is there any reason 32-bit Windows is still a thing? Every Intel processor I've seen since Atom failed is 64-bit.
Here's an Intel blog post from last year talking about it: https://blogs.intel.com/evangelists/2015/07/22/why-cheap-sys...
Heh, I use Linux (NixOS) with XMonad, st and Emacs, so it's always pretty responsive. Not used Windows in over a decade, so I can't comment on its speed.
> But for more apps heavy users most apps won't work if the phone isn't on the latest OS version, and most old phones can't upgrade to the latest OS version.
My phone runs Debian, so I haven't had any problems keeping up to date :)
I use a 5 yo phone (Motorola Defy+). It runs Android 4.4.4, thus far I've not seen a valid reason for wanting something newer. It still runs for about 4 days on a single charge, using the original battery.
Things start looking bad for the tech industry when people start showing off with 'old' stuff instead of brand-spanking new.
I have an Android 4.4 phone, and while it has worked acceptably for me right now as I am self-employed, if I were working for a company that required me to have access to sensitive customer data, having a phone that still received security updates would be a hard requirement.
..which reminds me I have some more work to do, given the recent publication of https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-07-01.html
I understand that we talk about this sort of thing quite a bit, but I can't imagine actually doing it myself. My phone is just supposed to work for me so I can get my real work done and have time to enjoy outside of it. I'm not supposed to work for it.
I'd guess you have to really enjoy working on that sort of thing, but then again you called it "work to do", so I'm not sure.
I have seen SSDs on ebay with the converter built in, maybe kill two birds with one stone?
Performance is more than acceptable, the thing boots (Linux) in a few seconds (that is, a few seconds after BIOS has done its thing of course). In other words, those 3€ for the adapter (incl. shipping) were well spent...
Meanwhile, most of the components in my desktop are older than three years, and it's doing just fine.
That, to me, is the real tragedy/travesty. There should be some eco-EU-law or something against that, a bit like the micro USB charger standardisation. I say this typing from a 2008 (or was it 2009?) MacBook on which i've been able to replace the RAM (8GB), disk drive (SSD, single biggest improvement) and battery (lasts longer than when new from factory now), and all of those upgrades weren't expensive at all. Of course i run Linux and XMonad and pretty much the only graphical app is Firefox with NoScript, but still, i can't see myself forking out hard $$$ for a non-maintainable machine. The upgradability isn't even the big deal for me, because as someone else pointed out these days computers are "fast enough", it's the fact that certain components are just going to fail (especially the battery). And it absolutely sends sickly shivers down my spine that people are being forced to landfill perfectly okay hardware because of a battery becoming worn out. Seriously Apple, where have your holistic eco-friendly principles gone?
Make no mistake: ever since the AT/XT days the useful lifetime of a computer has been in the three year range because of the nature of matter and the physics we exploit to make digital circuits do what they need to do. Can you still use a 20 year old computer that runs Word Perfect 5 on MS-DOS 6.22 and isn't really made to do much more? Of course. And of course, you'll still be able to run OSX Panther on a 2005 MacMini for years to come, but you can't use those things for anything new or modern, you've created a little time machine that can only do what we wanted to do in 1985, or 1995, or 2005, instead of in 2015 (or soon enough, 2025).
Most of us want to use those new programs that rely on new algorithms that require the faster hardware, or old algorithms that massively benefit from faster hardware - we want spreadsheets to take less than seconds, not more than minutes, for ever-more complex work; we want games that run smoothly, not "not at all" or at 1 or 2 frames per second; we want our internet browser to start when we tell it to, not after a period of time that is long enough to wonder whether it even started at all.
Things all have lifetimes, and for computers that lifetime's about 3 years, and has been for decades. On the upside, computers are ships of Theseus: most of the time, we can just swap out broken parts for new parts, including faster parts, so really the lifetime of a single, unadulterated, intact computer is three years, but with a few hundred bucks every three years, we can keep pulling it back into the modern age until at some point nothing of the original remains - and the lifetime of THAT computer is much, much longer.
I usually get 5 years from my notebooks (batteries are an issue, of course)
My dad ran Ubuntu for a decade on my 13 year old workstation. He couldn't do anything I could do on my laptop. A Pentium IV with HT was good enough for his LaTeX and his MCMC simulations.
Not if you compensate for how much extra you paid for it.
> As a browser and a ssh machine it's good enough.
So you're just offloading the needed upgrades to someone else, while still ALSO needing to maintain your own computer (though to a lesser degree).
Unless you need the extra battery capacity (how often do you need to work for several hours without being close to a plug?) then it's much simpler to just run everything locally. Plus you don't need an internet connection! Plus using an IDE or anything else graphical will actually be a bearable experience!
It's not how much you pay for your computer, but how much you spend per year, on average, that counts. If a computer does its job for twice as long as the other, it's reasonable to pay up to twice as much for it.
Surely you mean "He could do everything I could do on my laptop"?
I wonder if there's a way to solve this problem that doesn't involve buying a new computer every three years.
In terms of software requirements, I think most people don't play heavy requirement games, and for basic personal and office tasks, the 2/4 threaded CPU's of the past few years have been up to the task of browsing, office suites (with responsive spreadsheets), and media.
I can't get a pair of shoes to last me 2 years. The fact that my 2013 MacBook Pro is still working is fairly surprising to me.
I just ordered a new touchpad sticker and keyboard for my 5 year old Thinkpad. I expect to replace the batteries within the next year, but other than that, I expect it to go to 10+ years, even though my previous Dell laptops did not make it past 5 years.
Three years is also not a long time considering the price of a MacBook. The basic model starts at $1299 [1]; $400/year for computing is a lot of money.
My two year old Chromebook is definitely a piece of crap; the motherboard is warped from having dropped it on carpet (carpet!) once, and the monitor has scratches caused by the keyboard. But that's okay, because I bought a very low end model that only cost $200.
Of course, chances are that any other notebook might fail sooner, and I assume that my careful handling has increased the longevity of the device.
I sometimes get the "new tech" itch, but I haven't convinced myself that I'd get enough benefit to retire this thing, yet.
Things run a bit slower for the apps that get unnecessarily bloated over time. Including some websites. Still fast enough day to day to not really matter. I was used to it about 3-4 years ago. Thanks to software improvements, my laptop actually got better over the years. ;)
For newer work - as needs change, specs change, it's advantageous to get new equipment to meet changing needs (generally faster processing in my case).
I've since upgraded to whatever the latest model is, and I've donated my old MBP to my parents, who are happy to use it
Personally I'd really like to see more powerful GPUs in MacBooks...
Must be rose-tinted glasses. Apple has been about peddling (what would otherwise be) low-end budget computers to fashion enthusiasts for massive markups for at least a decade.
I'm personally not a fan of the vendor lock in with Apple. You can spend similar money and get something that isn't difficult to replace the ram on, with slightly better specs, more disk space, etc. As long as you're cool with a plastic case ;)
This machine feels pleasant to use. It doesn't frustrate me or get in my way. (Unless I'm using finder or other awful OS X programs, but I'm not afraid of the terminal, so I just don't use those.)
this is a great machine! or in my case: it was a great machine, sadly there was an accident with a kid and some coke so I bought a late 2015 mac book, which is the worst computer I owned ever (see my review here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12165132 )
hope your mac book air stays with you for a long, long time, I miss mine....
If you knew that you need extra sub port all the time - why did you purchase this model? You could have easily get the mba or the retina 13" if you need more ports and longer battery life. I have the retina MacBook and I bought it only to be used as a web dev machine during my travel since I don't need sub ports and I can get 6 hours of work in sublime text + Apache running with no problem.
I think a lot of people who have issues with MacBooks are just not using a correct tool for the work, if you need a work machine with sub ports - don't buy the MacBook in the first place, it's not meant for that.
The MB is garbage. It's aimed at the Kardashians of this world. I'm starting to think the delay in refreshing other Mac lines is a desperate attempt to coax people into buying MBs which would otherwise go unsold.
What I like about apple laptops and computers is that each of them is aimed at specific work type environment, and when people choose a wrong tool for the job they should blame themselves not the tool.
The problem is that Apple are selling MBs as the evolution of MBAs (which will never get a Retina upgrade etc etc), when they are clearly in a different category. The MB is overall less powerful and flexible than the MBA was, so a large segment of people "upgrading" is naturally disappointed.
> it's a perfect machine for browsing Internet and Word work on the go
It's a very expensive machine for browsing and Word. The market is literally full of alternatives "for browsing and Word" with same or better specs and better price points. Where the MBA was indisputably the best "thin all-use laptop", the MB is basically an expensive Chromebook with an Apple logo.
should I have done more due diligence - YES (but you know, once your beloved air gets the kids&coke treatment you tend to panic), am I owning now a piece of chunk I can't wait to get rid of (with the hopefully coming soon mac book pro generation) - YES
Not if "specs" includes thickness and weight. At the moment there is one laptop that's thinner, the HP Spectre, and the MacBook has a higher resolution screen, significantly less weight, and better battery life; it's up there on weight, too, excluding convertibles that have a separate keyboard.
Umm, YYMV. I am typing this on an MBR. I primarily use it for programming (mainly C++ and Lisp development in Emacs, but I have written two in-house iOS apps with Xcode). It has MS Office on it, though I must admit I mainly use that for docs other people have sent me, though I do use powerpoint. I am not a gamer.
The external adaptor doesn't really support the promised UHD output (it's flakey and unusable at those resolutions so I think your term "garbage" could apply to it) though it does support 1080p. In practice I mostly use it without an external display. The machine is so portable I don't think I could ever go back to a larger machine -- even my kid's MBA seems brobdignagian next to the MBR.
Xcode definitely felt a bit cramped on the small screen, but I'm not a fan of graphical IDEs (or IDEs in general) so that was the least of my concerns. I did most of the code development in Emacs anyway.
I found that in practice I almost never used ports on my MBP. I don't sync my phone to my computer any more; I used the built in MBP SD card reader but discovered I can read from my waterproof camera over wifi so don't miss that. I have a USB A port in my video adaptor but have yet to plug anything into it. I have never been much of a user of removable media.
I use my phone for presentations. I would use the computer but the "garbage" video adaptor is too flakey. Actually the phone is fine.
Oh, and I just checked with my GF who described my buttocks as "tight and cute". So I can confidently say that I do not fit the profile of a Kardashian.
(The Apple product that makes the least sense to me is the iPad...but that's a different discussion).
USB Type C isn't really baked yet (in the supply chain) so I guess this is part of the price for being on the bleeding edge.
I think Apple would have done better to have added Type C into another MB first, alongside the existing ports. But apart from the external display problem I really do like the MBR.
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2aGogRd
I have an iMac from 2009 which is totally fine for day to day basic stuff, the kind of usage your average person requires.
I have a 2014 rMBP which is far more than enough for an average user. I use it as my primary development machine and push it pretty hard. Would I like something faster? Sure. But it's not too bad in that capacity.
I also have a 2016 rMB which is more than enough for basic usage and it's not too bad as a development machine. I prefer coding on my MBP but the difference is small enough that I've stopped bringing my work computer home with me.
Long story short: Except for a relatively small group of people with niche needs, people don't need new hardware anymore.
The Iphone 5 is good enough for the job but you wouldn't you buy an Iphone 5 for $800, would you?
The thing is that if you take today a 2012 MBP the last ones that were upgradables you can, for a few hundred buck make it much more powerful than and 2016 MBP
And no, PC sales are not declining because of the slowing down of Moore's law, but obviously because of smartphones and tablets.
Good enough for a lot of people, but if it matters to you, and you really want a mac, perhaps the external GPU is the option for you.
EIT: It is actually on sale, but US-only (hence why I couldn't see it with UK settings).
Ports are way too wobbly unless you use your laptop as desktop. I love ability of using 2 external displays with MacBook keyboard and trackpad just right there in the center. But move the computer a centimeter and displays disconnect. Moderately painful!
It's not "obviously" declining because of smartphones and tablets, at least not to me. Pretty much everyone has a computer (in the US), as it doesn't make sense to do many things on your cellphone (like write emails). They just aren't upgrading because they don't need to.
The only people I know who dont have computers are my friends working heavily blue collar jobs. Even most of them have laptop's, only a few don't have anything.
Couple years outta college? People are still using the PC they bought for college probably. I don't know a whole ton of people who went to college anyways.
Hipmunk?
Using a smartphone to do anything other than send short messages and read the web frustrates me to buggery, but for those people who find using a computer frustrating or tedious anyway a smartphone mustn't be much different or even probably a better user experience.
It's all social media/chat apps for them now.
Booking flights is easy, I use Kayak.
And those who have, no upgrades, but shining new cell phones and tablets.
That's not how it works.
I think an Ivy Bridge laptop would still be OK now with some upgrades. It would be hot and have bad battery life compared to Haswell, which was a big upgrade. I still think you would be crazy to spend 1000+ on such an old computer though.
TBH my next computer won't be an Apple laptop unless the next iteration is truly something special. They have gotten too expensive here in Japan.
As Apple started moving to SSD's, I believe they stopped caring about minimizing disk seeking when considering changes to their virtual memory implementation. I had a Macbook Pro with 16GB of RAM and a spinning-rust hard drive, and was constantly getting beachballs when switching between applications (I had FREE RAM and was getting beachballs!!!).
(Apple's ~2012 virtual memory behavior was a strange beast -- it appears it would page an application's memory out to disk so that it could hang on to some disk cache. This was different than what I had become used to in Linux, which always prioritizes application memory needs above disk cache).
Disabling the pagefile solved the beachballs, but with the downside that when I did run out of RAM, the machine basically ground to a halt. I later upgraded that machine to use an SSD, re-enabled the pagefile, and was back to smooth running.
Is bloat the problem? Possibly. More likely it was shifting priorities (minimizing pagefile access probably just wasn't a priority anymore).
But if that is true ( Which align with my own experience ) this would really annoy me. SSD or not, it should ALWAYS fill up the memory first.
If Apple's customers are not still seeing those big payoffs from new technology then it becomes a game of costs. Changing a product mix every few years has its own costs - as demand for new PCs drops, these costs become harder to justify for an OEM.
It is totally possible that a 5- or 10- year refresh cycle keeps engineering and support costs down enough to be worthwhile if consumers accept the technology meets their needs. New technology will still make it to the end user here, but Apple is not going to do it at any cost - they are masters of profitability.
At what point the energy savings compensate recycling the computer and getting a new one? At what point does the reduced amount of materials warrant dropping a product line and scraping the tooling used to make it?
Some people may be able to. I really don't think you can say "anyone".
I've had my Air since 2013, and it's really starting to struggle. With Docker, especially.
That's 2 or 3 years more than the Macbook Pro that I would have undoubtedly paid more for.
Even more mundanely the 8k textures for Real Solar System on Kerbal Space Program don't even load on my MBP because the GPU RAM is too low for them.
My Hackintosh has a Geforce 980 in it which is leaps and bounds above what I can buy directly from Mac and solves a lot of these problems for me, but it is occasionally finicky and doesn't like to boot up and I wouldn't recommend it to a friend of mine who has an actual dayjob that involves a lot of video editing.
Most surprisingly, Gnome 3 does not feel like a compromised choice in comparison to OS X. It's not a seamless experience by any means. That said, I'm really digging some of the UI choices they've made. It's a UX that's committed to a vision of how the user should interact with the computer.
I remember a time when the Mac also felt like a strongly opinionated experience, designed by and for humans. It no longer feels so. It feels aimless and stagnant, even regressive in some ways. It feels designed by committee rather than vision or voice. The changes do not seem to serve any higher purpose than making the UI look cool in screenshots. I miss the high-contrast controls, readable fonts, always-visible functionality, personable quirks, etc.
I still use a Mac all day at work, and I still respect it as a good tool for getting shit done, but I really wonder about the point of it. If I can pick up a free alternative like Ubuntu Gnome and actually feel happy and productive quickly, what's left to recommend the Mac? If Apple doesn't care any more, why should I?
(Alright, now y'all can light me up.)
To this day it has worked perfect. Battery still has 89% capacity and with a SSD upgrade and adblock it's as fast as I need it. OS X works and looks about the same. Meanwhile I've seen lots of Acers die and Windows being the fiasco it is.
So in my mind Apple and OS X has been a really reliable work horse that I don't need to fuss with.
I confess that I've seldom had the Windows stability issues that people always mention, so I don't see that as a big deal.
Here's what is most commonly mentioned that Linux "can't do". Maybe some things on this list haven't bitten you yet, but it's worth reviewing:
• Fewer games. It's not as bad as comparing Linux to Windows, but even Mac has games that don't have a Linux port. Wine is pretty impressive these days -- if you are willing to mess with the command line and config files and searching random internet posts for how to get the game to work.
• "Professional" software. Microsoft, Adobe, nVidia and Autodesk all openly refuse to support Linux. Whatever their reasons, it means that Linux users must do the format conversion to something that does run on Linux. Arguably that's a good thing because proprietary data formats mean archived data can't be opened in a decade, but day to day it's super painful.
• Driver issues #1: plugging random things in via USB. Linux has impressive driver support for things that are well understood. But the lesser well-standardized hardware (printers, scanners, wifi dongles, ...) may not work. Know before you buy. Windows again has it best, but knowing if it runs on Mac is usually printed on the packaging. (And Linux is not.)
• Driver issues #2: Actually Linux wins out if you're willing to wait a few years because Linux will gain driver support for quirky fringe hardware over time. macOS actually DROPS support for things over time.
• Driver issues #3: Very new hardware like VR headsets are going to be an adventure in cobbling together new kernels, the latest software versions built from source or downloaded from an unstable branch, ... [1]. Or, sometimes the answer is: nope, never going to get Linux support.
[1] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/first-steps-with-open...
Buy the PC of your dreams, install Windows 10 on it, then install VMWare Workstation. Put the linux distro of your choice in vmware, enjoy! Everything will just work, consistently, elegantly, and without hassle.
Play your games with Steam in Windows of course, and thanks to Windows handling all the drivers, you can enjoy issue-less plug-and-play with USB and everything else. Merely install the apps that only work in Windows.... in Windows, and keep the rest of the dev-work in the linux VM.
The only caveat I can think of, is that you don't get 2d GPU hardware acceleration, vmware will accelerate 3d, but not 2d for say, compiz. I usually turn off these random 2D type effects so I don't notice that. Virtualbox is an option of course, but it still doesn't feel solid enough to me. At some point Hyper-V will have enough GPU acceleration with vmconnect that Windows 10 Pro + Hyper-V will be plenty (I know it has RemoteX acceleration now, but afaik that's only for Windows Server...).
I've loved this solution so much, I actually copied my VM over to my Retina MacBook Pro so I can use the linux VM for development work on the go. OSX handles ensuring the wifi always works, and the VM sees it as a reliable hardwired connection, no issues.
After 15 years of being a hardcore OSX/Apple user(fanboi), I cannot be more happy with the past 18 months since switching to this configuration. Cheaper than the Apple ecosystem, and waaaay faster hardware.
I started dual booting an year ago and a few months ago switched for good.
Now I'm using Win10 and VMware Workstation 12.1 and some Fedora/CentOS VMs. 3D acceleration screams and my desktop just works.
Workload involves working with Linux servers all day, developing inside the VMs, etc. Everything else I do natively on Windows.
I wish it had turned out differently over these 10+ years (with a pure OSS desktop) but that's where I find myself today.
(Why? Because I wanted to play some Windows-only games without having to reboot. Drivers were not a problem thanks to USB attaching in libvirt. That’s how I got to play Elite: Dangerous “in” Linux.)
A printer and a WiFi dongle work out of the box, probably because they aren't the newest technology.
> And Linux is not.
My WiFi dongle advertised Linux support—and it's just the cheapest thing I found.
I think anything older than a couple of years is generally well supported.
YMMV.
I'm really hoping that Apple moves away from spinning disks all across the Mac mini lineup.
http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2016/03/21/apple-hypocritical-...
"There are over 600 million PCs in use today that are over five years old. This is really sad, it really is."
I don't get the obsession with notebooks. Why do I want to spend 4X the amount of money for something that last 4 years if I am lucky. For the <1% of time I am not working from my desk? In meeting I prefer people NOT to bring a notebook, this way they pay attention and I can get them out of the room and back to work faster.
And given that you swap out the employee computers well before they break down, the shorter lifetime of notebooks doesn't matter. What matters is that your employee can take her device to a meeting room, or to a customer site.
It turns out, many people spend much more than 1% of their time not working from their desk.
I switched to a notebook in 2006, and now spend less than 20% of my time working at a desk.
As long as you have a proper SSD (and now should be the time to get NVME models); the rest of the hardware is barely relevant.
Creative arts will probably always be Mac, but we are an all Adobe institution after the Final Cut Pro X fiasco so even that is not a certainty.
1) I have to obey a couple of very un-fun local laws and will buy old machines rather than deal with problems in that area
1) Basically, no data may be shared unless approved by a local institution. Its legacy from other groups taking the data we generate and writing grants to get money that never benefits the local people or institutions. A long, long story that someone should write a book on.
A data breach should be equivalent to having paper documents stolen from a safe, unless there is negligence. Did you check with a lawyer, right?
I had questions answered by a local authority. Data breach would be interesting because it would go federal pretty quick.
Have you looked at total cost of ownership? From the ‘Every Mac we buy is making and saving IBM money’ - IBM article:
"Just 5 percent of IBM’s Mac using employees need to call the help desk; In contrast an astonishing 40 percent of PC using staff call the help desk."
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2998315/apple-mac/every...
A pretty key point to consider, since people who prefer "non-standard" technology tend to be more tech-savvy users, who require less support.
I'm sure that Chrome users also call the help desk less frequently than people who use Internet Explorer (or Safari for that matter).
Assuming that you don't find another alternative, then I assume buying old Macs would then be okay?
I'm not sure what the rationale is for not buying one year old laptops if performance is about level (Skylake was not that earth shattering).
Its one year closer to being EOL, plus Apple has been on a bit of a no software support for older models streak. The money needs to stretch as far as possible, we're not rich.
No, it was way better earlier. We had some incredibly old PowerPCs running forever. Now, I have 64-bit Xeon boxes that aren't supported.
Surface might be close, and we haven't bought an iPad Pro yet.
That's an odd way to put it, as if your people are being eccentric for expecting fully-functional computers. iPads have their uses, but they're not at all comparable for many tasks. It's as if you'd tried offering people motor scooters as company cars, and were surprised when they wanted "real vehicles."
1) in the dictionary definition sense
I do agree with the general direction of your comment. For example, The business office would not be a place to even consider iPads. 27" iMacs and 34" LG 21x9 monitors are much appreciated by that crowd. Spreadsheet lovers love 21x9 displays.
I was also checking on them, but the management of them always ended up on needing Google Apps for Work and getting licenses for their management. It looks like it is impossible to have them plugged into on-site software, independent of Google...
The problem is that the machine and user provisioning is dependent on Google. I want to be able to load the machine with certificates, VPN profiles, Wi-Fi settings, proxy settings, IdM configuration, directory info, etc independently from Google. Imagine, if Google servers ceased to exists tomorrow: the machines and all the provisioning processes must still work, as if nothing happened. Yes, not paying per device/per month for quasi-monopoly service is also desirable.
none of which you seek is exclusive to ChromeOS, except the default lack of native desktop apps.
Why should then I waste time with third party distributions for Chromebook, with users getting big scary warning at boot time about firmware signature? Or even worse, being forced to maintain my own distribution, with the same big scary warning? (CentOS/Fedora do pass the Secure Boot check, they are signed).
Chromebooks are a very good idea if you a) have mostly web applications (or a occasional RDP/Citrix one) and b) you don't mind being forced into Google services. Currently, even companies that are in a) situation may be better off with the classic Windows+AD+Group policies solution, if they have any reason why not go for b).
If you use linux in an IT environment, you are likely maintaining your own package list and configurations anyway. spending 4 minutes untarring an entire distribution to a chromebook post-firmware-flash is pretty painless. Spending 15 minutes installing GalliumOS is brain-dead simple, should you not have the sysadmin skills.
Chromebooks are a very good idea if you want a cheap computer that can run a full desktop stack. They can even run Windows, should you enjoy dark patterns in your operating system choice.
I'm continually impressed how good Chromebooks are in terms of battery life, portability, and utility. Just wish it was easier to run desktop apps on it.
An $800 Dell XPS will serve them much better, last them much longer, and keep them much happier.
A $500 Chromebook might be an even better choice.
Unless you have no escape from the Apple eco system lock in, it's almost impossible to recommend a mac to anyone anymore. Even if Apple does come up with a great refresh to their lineup, their treatment of the mac over the last couple of years means they might simply do this again, which means I really cannot recommend them anymore. Apple has pretty much destroyed all teh goodwill they built up with me, and the only way I can recommend a mac anymore is if they open up OS X to all hardware makers (but then, I'd trust Windows which has been doing that for decades, over OSX which has not and Apple would almost certainly have trouble supporting OSX on non Apple devices).
And finally, because of how deliberately tied up Apple's ecosystem is, that means I cannot recommend iPhones/iPads anymore despite iOS being a superior platform anymore.
I genuinely feel Apple is trading away their past reputation in an effort to extract money from consumers who may not know better.
I am writing on exactly such a device, and I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to upgrade. The display is incredible, it's every bit as fast and responsive as the day I bought it, it doesn't creak or feel like it's about to fall apart. When you think back to the late 90s, when operating a five year old laptop felt like using a mechanical typewriter, it's truly amazing. I wonder if this will serve as some sort of high water mark for Apple product design. This machine has literally turned out to be years ahead of its time.
> there’s a certain point at which it just starts to look like absentmindedness
Yes, but there's also a certain point at which a computer is fast enough, powerful enough, capacious enough, has enough battery life...
The 2012 MBP is by no means state-of-the-art, but it is objectively good enough for most purposes.
The 256gb SSD proved to be a slight adjustment, but hasn't been a major issue thanks to streaming.
Maybe you should try it again? Some OS X power users/'influencers'[1] are using and recommending Hackintoshes[2] for the performance boost as you have the flexibility to add heavy-lifting GPUs and add a butt-load of 3rd party RAM (since it will be non-soldered).
1. I forgot the name(s), I'm not into the Apple 'scene' 2. This is without OEM driver support, so the compatible hardware list has to be carefully curated. Imagine a world were OEMs could officially provide OS X drivers...
It's 2016, people treat laptops like any common electronic household item, and the majority of non-Apple laptops, especially Dells, start to look pretty ragged after less than 2 years.
That's why MacBooks tend to have a decent resell value, whereas you cannot even give other old laptops away.
All of Apple's products are essentially business grade, and you're definitely paying for the premium.
People tend to overrate Apple's build quality simply because it really is miles ahead of anything else one can purchase at Best Buy or other retail stores.
And IMO Thinkpad,latitudes and elite books have much better keyboard that the current MacBook, but apple still wins in screen and battery performance
In 2010, I received a brand new Mac Mini. We had at that point been using the Dell laptop to run Hulu and Netflix, and I decided to swap in the Mac Mini. Turns out the Mac Mini couldn't run 1080p without chugging a little bit, but the laptop from four years earlier had no problem keeping up.
It mostly sat in a drawer, as I needed something faster for video and audio work. Over the years I'd try out Windows upgrades as they came through. Another fun point - It came with Windows XP. When the Win 7 beta came out, I installed that just to see - it ran surprisingly well. Back in the drawer it went until Windows 8's preview came out - that also installed without any issue, and ran surprisingly well. When Windows 10 rolled around, it actually upgraded from the Windows 8 beta to a full-fledged installation of Windows 10. Never ended up paying for an upgrade to the operating system!
The internal wifi did burn out at some point, and I'm sure the screen was dimmer than when I'd first gotten it, but other than that? You could browse the internet and run some basic apps.
We finally donated it a couple of months ago. I can't argue about the resell value of Dell laptops, but that E1505 had build quality in spades, and better longevity than the equivalent Mac. Can you even put the latest OS X on a Macbook from a decade ago?
I sell old laptops. Apple and non Apple laptops sell very well. It's true that Macs get more money but it's not true there isn't a market for non Apple laptops
For most people, buying a new computer is something you do when your old one breaks. I know Apple cultivates itself as a "professional's brand" but that's not really the case anymore. Every 18 year old with a pocket full of graduation money next to her iPhone grabs a new Mac, and any Mac she grabs will perform a vast majority of the tasks she needs.
The real question is not "why does Apple still sell.." It's "why do people still buy ...?"
Answer: because it works.
People buy because they don't know any better. Wait until every new Mac in the fall has USB C connectors.
I currently have two apple laptops, an old macbook that came with Tiger and use it to test beta versions of OSX. It's running El Capitan right now but is almost unusable.
My main computer is a rMBP that came with Lion. It worked better (faster, snappier) with Mountain Lion than it does with El Capitan.
There was just one dud of an OS in there (Mavericks? I think) where the machine would just bog down over the week and I had to reboot it every 2 weeks just to regain performance. That was improved with the next release, and now on El Cap I only ever reboot for security updates (two months or so of uptime)
OS X does tend to get more RAM-hungry with each version though, so I recommend everyone to max out the RAM when they can.
It seemed was a time in the history of OS X (up through Snow Leopard) where the reverse was true, and it's certainly not true that the OS must become less efficient with each iteration.
Why are you introducing an irrelevant tangent into the conversation? I have an old Dell in my closest that has Linux on it. But once again, that's irrelevant to this conversation.
The computer you're running is 6 years old. Apple doesn't sell it anymore. It's also possible to replace the HDD with a new SSD.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2389+H...
Even so, most people would use your 2010 iMac with much satisfaction.
Oculus won't support any Macs because the hardware isn't that good:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/4/11159700/oculus-rift-mac-su...
Apparently not:
>Oculus won't support any Macs because the hardware isn't that good
Apple sells expensive computers. Customers are not buying cutting edge hardware, they're buying middling hardware that is designed to work with the specific operating system.
I dual boot Windows 10 even Windows 8/8.1 my 17 inch Macbook Pro 8,3 even with 2.3GHz i7 CPU 8GB RAM and 512 SSD is like a hair dryer fans on constantly never stopping but not when using OS X.
It's fine with Yosemite 10.10.5 but I am hesitant to upgrade to El Capitan 10.11.6 anytime soon. I may even downgrade to Win 7 if I can but I hear MS is insistent on people using Win 10 even if they will not push it out you can still get it.
If you look at Apple's product releases over the years, and with overlapping products, you can really see Apple market research at work. iPad Pro 9.7 vs iPad Pro vs iPad 9.7. How many people want pro/not-pro, how many people want pencil/not-pencil, how many people want big/little. One of the Apple product managers said "I survey customers by counting how much money they will give me for a feature." His point was that customer surveys of people who aren't buying are aspirational, but what people actually pay for, that is actionable.
The question is no doubt being pondered, "If we offered a retina MBP with a built in optical drive, how many people might buy it?" The tooling of the body cavity its clearly an investment that you don't make for less than a million or so machines.
But I agree that the fundamental question is flawed, there is no reason to "upgrade" a product that is meeting all of its customer requirements. But customers asking the question suggests that requirements may have shifted.
As a recent high school grad (Class of 2015), this resonates with me. A bunch of my classmates (Classes of 2014-16) bought Macbooks/MBA/MBP for college. For the vast majority of them, their Mac was a non-essential splurge. Their use cases corresponded with Chromebooks (available for < 1/2 the price of their purchased Mac) quite well.
A major reason why so many of my classmates bought Macs is because my high school handed out the lowest-end, 11" MBA to every student. We all got indoctrinated into the Mac world.
The business cycle continues!
The non-Retina MBP is effectively discontinued because it's largely replaced by the Retina version, and has been for many years.
They still sell the non-Retina MBP (in one size only, no 15") just for few people that absolutely need a built-in optical drive in their MBP for some specific reason.
The non-Retina MBP is not meant for the general public. If you walk into an Apple Store without knowing anything, the chances of you walking out with one is less than 1%, it's hard to find and store employees will recommend something better for your needs.
"The Retina MacBook Pro is 442 days into its current cycle, despite refreshes coming every 268 days on average in the past."
The key here is "built in," because Apple also sells a USB external optical drive. In fact a 13" retina MBP + USB optical drive is lighter than the 13" non-retina MBP by itself.
Actually there are a few reasons people still buy the old MBP, but price is probably the main one.
It's not a hardware problem. My MacBook Pro's HD 4000 drives a Retina screen, the Air's current HD 6000 certainly could too. Microsoft and Dell have been shipping Retina screens and 16GB ram ultrabooks for 2 years now -- but we're forbidden from using it for iOS development.
I totally get that it's more fun to go "Scrooge McDuck" swimming through their iPhone money. But if Apple could kick out just a basic spec bump from 1-2 years ago for the Air, I'd be thrilled.
/s
My iPad collects dust, only modern apple products I regret buying.
Never found a decent use case for the thing. Dad loves it though.
The quote from the article is bogus:
>People that buy Apple products do so because they want the best; in hardware terms, at least
No, people buy them for the brand/perceived lifestyle/design/MacOS. Only the professionals by it for the "best hardware", the majority of their customers doesn't care, they just assume that the hardware is fine.
The majority of Apples customer will NEVER use their laptop for other than browsing, email and light word processing and for that purpose it's absolutely fine. In fact it's overkill.
Even for a person like me that do Python/Django development, it's still a fine laptop and it will continue to be fine for a long time.
It's a little expensive though. It seems like the price should have come down a little by now.
Honestly there's nothing wrong with the current line of Apple hardware, in terms of performance (and excluding the Mac Pro, which doesn't make any sense at all, given it's target audience)
Apple is failing the professional market significantly, and not just in hardware. They've also been killing off their pro software offerings. It's making a lot of us very uneasy.
They design for people who have the most money, who pay them most often and the ones there are the most.
Some bloke wanting 16gb of ram doesn't meet that criteria and never will.
Hell, when it first came out the Mac Pro was aimed almost above most professionals needs. A solid desktop with 32gb ram and a top end GPU would more than suffice for most professionals in graphics, development, and data analysis.
Besides, even if they were not targeting professionals, they would still be failing that market. Targeting a market is not a prerequisite for being judged suitable for a market.
The bigger issue I have is with the lack of attention to hardware and core OS issues. I'm not sure if they are just distracted building the new iCar or what, but all I want for them to do is to ship a reliable version of OS X (like they have historically) and to ship solid hardware that isn't 3+ years old. The other options (PC, Linux) are not viable alternatives yet for creative industries (in my opinion).
Upgradable storage, memory, and an optical drive. It's cheap and not that outdated.
One thing that is often overlooked is that the trackpad click is much better on the 2012 than on the Force Touch models. There is a really satisfying click, mostly because it has so much more room to travel. That was a big part of my decision to stick with the 2012 over any 2015 MBP or MacBook models. I feel about the 2012 MBP Trackpad the same way some folks feel about a Model M or Das Keyboard.
I have two MBPs. One is a 2008 that is beat to hell at this point but still functions pretty darn well with an SSD and maxed out RAM. It's good enough I've been able to do most day-to-day development with it and audio production up through this summer. If it were effectively invulnerable and weren't eventually going to stop receiving OS updates (or if security/compatibility weren't a concern), I could conceive of using it indefinitely for most work.
I also have a 2012 that is still adequate (though, weirdly, sometimes worse in terms of locking up, not sure if that's the later version of OS X or no SSD). I bought it not because I needed anything newer, but because I didn't want to be stuck searching for a replacement when the 2008 fails. And perhaps interestingly, I bought it used because Apple has decided to no longer offer a 15" model with a matte screen that's upgradable anymore.
I may suffer from a lack of nannying instincts that make these sort of hyperbolic assertions hard to swallow. Is it a common impulse to want to save all those poor people from themselves for no particular reason? If they "don't know any better", it's pretty clear they don't have a personal reason to care, and this entire sentiment becomes rather condescending in that light.
I'm using a Macbook Pro Retina that I got in the 2013 refresh cycle, and if it were to get stolen tomorrow I'd buy a Windows PC to replace it because buying essentially the same laptop three years later for the same price makes no sense when the rest of the industry has moved on a lot more. As the "tech guy" in my extended family and friends group, a lot of people come to me for laptop-buying advice, and I haven't been able to recommend anything Apple in over a year.
A new pair of jeans isn't going to have some amazing new development compared to the pair you had 25 years ago. Same YKK zipper, etc.
Do you really think a new Mac is like a 20 year old graphing calculator? How about an iPhone or iPad? Nokia phone? Am radio? Is a Tesla different from a Ford model T?
Anyway, It's completely frustrating to me even my most financially disabled friends will, to this day, look to spend $1200 as much on a Mac laptop or an iPhone when they could get an equally powerful, used machine for $150. A close friend of mine just spent $300 on a used G5 iMac from 2006... I told him not to but he didn't listen. He has had to learn the hard way that the computer is slow, won't accept updates, won't run any new software or drivers, etc. because Apple's branding black magic is that powerful, that it could completely trump the well reasoned advice of someone knowledgable about the subject that you've known for years.
It's not unlike the idea they won't learn to sew to save money on clothes, or learn to change their own oil to save car maintenance fees. Was your advice an offer of convenience for them, or an offer of lifestyle conformity?
The expectation of effortlessness is all tied up in the marketing. The marketing promises a kind of magic, which I feel is bullshit, a fantasy world where you don't have to think about the clothes, they just appear on your shelf, when in reality, they're actually made by a person, whether that person is your Amish grandmother, a friend, a kid in an Indonesian factory, or you yourself. And someone is going to have to wash them when they're dirty, and fix them when they have holes or do the work of recycling them...
Computers require effort and attention and energy to maintain no matter what, even Macs (especially macs...). If not up front, then somewhere down the line. It's fascinating to live in a time when it's arguably easier to install Linux on a given computer than Mac OS or even Windows. This is new. My advice to people is that learning some user friendly Linux is a good investment of technical energy. It's like buying a used car instead of a brand new one. You could spend $10000 rebuilding that used car before you made a dent in the cost of a new one. For a lot of people, the time it takes to keep a used car working well is worth the trade-off..
BTW, I've had a lot of success hooking people up with old (2011) i5 Thinkpads running Linux and/or Windows. They run great and people really like them. Mine has 16GB of ram in it goes real smooth. I use lots of tabs. Too many tabs. And Bitwig. Bitwig works great on an old thinkpad with Arch!
I will never understand why perfectly normal human beings do this, whether it be against Apple or Google. I have an Apple sticker on my car because I'm proud of where I work. On four separate occasions now Google fans have come up to me after I've parked and tried to convert me to an Android fan or make fun of me for being an "Apple fan," assuming the sticker represents my status as a demagogue for one side. (One guy asked me if I felt inferior for not having root on my phone and I had to resist answering the question honestly, but it would have been really fun and confusing for him.)
My own family gets sheepish and embarrassed when they buy an Android phone because their partisan friends have trained them to think that I'd react explosively to this grievous slight instead of the truth, which is that people should buy what works for them and it's not really any of my business. I don't actively sway people toward Apple products or discourage them from buying what they want. Sometimes a Mac is the answer, and sometimes it isn't. Their purchasing choice has arguably no effect on me personally, and this applies to other things too, like cars. As you're discovering, in general, people don't listen anyway and instead quietly form a negative opinion of you.
Speaking personally, there are things I dislike and like from Apple and there are things I dislike and like from Google. I simply cannot connect with the mindset of red vs. blue, us vs. them, vim-vs-emacs, all-or-nothing that people get frothed up like this about. It's your prerogative to despise Apple and I'm fully supportive of your decision to do so. I'm just saying it strikes me as weird to invest part of your humanity in despising an inanimate entity that creates products as opposed to just not buying the products. I'd say this about people who despise Google, too, and I'm only using that example because it seems like the war of our time (and because you probably carry an Android device, given the market).
Am I the only one who feels like it's just not worth it to hate a company? I don't even hate Comcast, and they've given me plenty of reasons. I don't even hate patent trolls; they've identified a strategy that is legal and shitty and exploit it. That's capitalism. Maybe it's just me and, before you think it's partisan, I felt like this before ever being personally vested. I've just got far better things into which to invest my hatred.
(Only my personal opinion, speaking for me alone.)
[1] In Germany at least some of those magazines were quite good. Haven't read any recently though.
Reviewers are a totally different animal and orthogonal to my point; I'm not arguing that reviews should cease. You're talking to a guy who respects film reviewers individually and recognizes patterns and traits of certain reviewers (like Ebert or Travers or Tom Long, who I dearly miss in retirement -- if I were on the fence for any film in the last decade I read Tom), so I definitely value review as an industry. Hell, Broadway might argue review is an essential part of the industry, I reckon, since there are many people who wait for the Times to review a play before buying tickets.
I don't despise Apple or Google, and my general approach is "Use it if it works reliably and is useful." I'm not particularly tribal, in that sense.
However, I do despise MS, because in my experience the software is absolute crapware and full of avoidable bugs. It has literally wasted days of my life. And I know I'm hardly unique.
In the general case, people despise corporations for the same reasons they despise people: if someone lies to you, rips you off, wastes your time, or makes promises and then doesn't deliver, you'd be a fool to respect them.
Tribalism is only half the story. The rest is that corporations make an implicit - non-legal, but still heavily implied - contract when they create consumer relationships.
Apple used to be very good at this. There was an implied value proposition: "Expensive, but beautiful, original, inventive, and outstanding" and Apple did a competent job of delivering on it.
Recently Apple has become noticeably less good at it.
You can dismiss Android fanboys for tribalism, and that's a fair point.
But it's a very bad idea for a corporation to ignore customer satisfaction, and to assume that its deliverables will never change the perceived value of the social contract it makes with consumers.
I don't "hate Apple" because I'm partisan, I'm frustrated more generally at a whole bundle of abuses and orthodoxies of the religion of mass marketing, and to put it bluntly am frightened about the perpetuation of ignorance, put forth for short term profit, suffocating the grass roots of human knowledge as we speed blindly into an era of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and genetically modified organisms.
Ubuntu Mate 16.04 works on PowerPC Macs, and will keep the machine alive for a few years if need be. It's much slower than OS X 10.5.8, though, at least on my iMac G4.
So they'd need to refresh with Skylake, which would add lead time, particularly with how long it took to ramp up Skylake manufacturing yield.
Meanwhile, if they were going to leverage anything from Skylake for OS X features (looking at you TSX-NI), they wouldn't want to refresh the desktop until they could get it there too, which would probably mean Xeon E[57] v4, and that only came out this quarter.[1]
So I'd probably blame this current delay on refreshing on a ripple from Intel's Broadwell/Skylake timeline debacle, and Apple deciding to merge any intervening hardware upgrades into the next iteration forward.
[1] - The slight oddity with this logic is that the Xeon E[57] v3, Q2 2015, _does_ have working TSX bits, so they could have conceivably shipped that, even though it's "technically" Haswell. Maybe they got scared when Intel had to use the chicken bits to disable TSX in the first Haswell revs? [2]
[2] - http://www.anandtech.com/show/8376/intel-disables-tsx-instru...
Look at the 12" Macbook. This, to me, is just too much compromise. Only one port and it's USB-C and it's the power?? Compare this to the healthy amount of ports on the HP Spectre in what is still a small form factor. Add in the terrible (IMHO) keyboard, pointless Force Touch and lack of tactile feedback on the trackpad.
Yet the Macbook Air remains with a relatively crappy display. For year it was suggested it wasn't economical/possible to add a retina display to this form factor. The Macbook is proof to the contrary.
Plus with the 12" Macbook, 13" Retina MBP and 11" and 13" Macbook Airs, it seems clear that not all these SKUs are going to survive.
I have a 2011 13" Macbook Air as my personal laptop. At the time I considered it to be about perfect in terms of portability and power.
But the design is getting pretty long in the tooth now. Crappy (relatively) display. Look at the Dell XPS 13 and 15s as inspiration. For one, they have really thin bezels.
The Mac Pro? Introduced with much fanfare 3 years ago and hasn't been updated since.
Mac mini? Coming up on 2 years without an update. And we lost the quad core options.
This all comes as Apple has pushed the iPad Pro as a laptop replacement.
My point is that with the Apple ecosystem (and many others) there's a halo effect. People buy into part of it based on the complete range, regardless of whether or ot they'll buy into the rest. They have the option.
The sense I get from Apple is they're no longer interested in the PC/laptop segments. They seem to no longer care about power users even though power users are influencers.
Also, it seems like the days of only horrible trackpads on PCs might finally be over. At least it seems like some models might have decent trackpads.
Can Apple really think tablets are the future? Maybe they aren't but we're a long way from that. The UX on an iPad Pro with a keyboard is as terrible as Steve Jobs used to say it was (Jobs famously called touchscreens with keyboards terrible).
So even if Apple does update their lineup later this year I'm not sure I'm going to buy in because the writing seems to be on the wall.
At this point a Dell XPS 13 or 15 seems like the way to go.
Also, they dramatically reduced its utility by removing the optical drive.
It is stupefying that you cannot buy a mac mini with an optical drive. It's ridiculous. It takes most of the interesting use-cases off the table and makes many other use-cases a pain in the ass.
I would have kept buying mac minis, continuously, every 3-4 years, forever. Instead, I bought two of the fastest/latest ones with optical drive and that's all I'll ever have.
You can buy a USB DVD-RW for about $20. I am glad most laptops and small form factor PCs are doing away with the drives as default.
The mac mini is about the form factor. The form factor is broken if there's a second device hanging off of it.
That perfectly describes my problem with the tubular Mac Pro. Call me old school, but I loved the old Mac Pro chassis and its internal expandability.
Its surprising because the mac + ios system is such a powerful combination. With MS at least trying lately with their pen enabled devices, bash on windows, and general lack of complete disdain for customers, they may be getting ready to eat Apple's lunch.
Compare that with 4 year old laptops, little real innovation in mac os (the latest I can recall is implementing Windows 8's window system for full screen and making dev's lives harder with all the security changes in el cap) and it starts to make you wonder.
Not saying Windows is better than Mac, just wish Apple would stop pulling an MS and actually try with their OS.
Yes, the iPhone delivers the lion's share of revenue, but the Mac is still an important product category.
To me, the problem seems to be one of focus. The extreme centralisation that Apple inherited from the Jobs era means that, when the leadership is focussed on a particular product or product category, be it the iPhone, the Apple Watch, or a new service like Apple Music, then progress in all other areas grinds to a halt.
I can understand that Apple wants to avoid the Microsoft problem of having multiple, independent business units that end up distrusting and working against one another, but the complete opposite situation isn't healthy either. A company of Apple's size and means should be able to do more than one thing at once.
A few years ago, Apple had a perfect opportunity to finally break the Mac out of its 5-10% niche of the PC market. Windows 8 was a dud, while Apple's brand and reputation were at their zenith, and their hardware had a huge edge in terms of quality and aesthetics over anything other PC vendors were putting out. The time was right for a huge push of the Mac. But they didn't do it.
Perhaps it was absent mindedness. Perhaps it was a lingering fear of taking on Microsoft in their own territory. Perhaps they genuinely believed the PC/laptop market was going to be disappear and be replaced by tablet computers. But for whatever reason, they blew their chance. And if I was an Apple shareholder, I'd be pissed about it.
It's not that Apple doesn't play in these markets. The Mac mini is their offering for the mid-range, for example, and the iMac and Mac Pro are for the high-end desktop market. But as the article points out, they have left these products without updates for years, at precisely the moment they should have been capitalising on their brand momentum and the rest of the industry's problems.
Why haven't Apple made a decent docking solution yet?
Except for the whole Windows 10 malware fiasco. They just couldn't help themselves it seems..
Would have probably upgraded all the computers I manage if they hadn't been such dicks about it. I'm sure they'll find new and interesting ways to break Windows 7 out of spite now but it is what it is.
So, my guess would be that their replacement hardware isn't ready. Follow-up question is: why is the hardware not ready?
Possible answers (with varying degrees of realism) include:
- they don't think they need it yet.
- they wanted to have it ready, but hit some snag designing or producing it.
- they are designing their own ARM CPUs, and want some more room to ensure that they will be faster than the old hardware.
- they are designing their own ARM CPUs, and hit snags doing so.
I would think it is one of the first two, but it would be more interesting if it were one of the last two.
* They have issue getting USB-C/Thunderbolt 3.1 right, power usage wise
* They are trying to incorporate TouchID, which requires custom chip like in iPhone, such chip takes time
* They want P3 extended sRGB for the retina screen but has issue with supplier.
* They are building a new trackpad that can support Apple Pencil, and it takes time.
* They have move majority of Mac hardware people to focus on ARM chip based Mac.
* They have a brand new overhaul design, but Johnny Ive is too busy with flagship building
* They are teaching customers that you only need to buy a new Mac every 5 years.
But there is no excuse for Apple not to make an interim upgrade with whatever new generation of Intel CPU.
Adding a channel for using up last-gen stock has, after all, been stated as the main reason for the existence of the iPod Touch.
Their other products should have been updated by now. Especially the Mac Pro and Mac Mini. And they've been skimping on the graphics card for lower end models. The price/performance has been very frustrating as you can get a good (e.g. Alienware) desktop with the same high end graphics as the high end iMac but for the same price as the low end model now.
Their laptops are still good even at the price, but the rest of the line could be much better.
As an aside, what do you mean by “calibrate a monitor”? ColorSync arrived in 1993.
1. Every Mac since the early 90s has had support for color management
2. Most people doing serious color work have to buy a more expensive, professional-quality display – as has long been the case on every platform. This was a staple of reviews for printing, photography, scientific/medical imaging, etc. publications, along with comparing color calibration devices, and a big reason why CRTs persisted longer those fields than the general market.
Heck, a decent HP DreamColor / EIZO / NEC display costs almost as much as the top of the line 15" MacBook Pro.
When people on this thread compare MacBooks to "chromebooks" I don't even know what that means... It could be any number of manufacturers using any number of combinations of hardware to run a common OS. Just because it has the latest Intel doesn't mean the rest of the components aren't subpar. Even if they are higher quality, it wouldn't nearly stack up to the millions of users that have tried and tested the exact configuration of my MBP.
Most of the professional community feels the same way, even within the last year [1]
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#tech...
My Late 2013 MacBook Pro is running so smooth that I have no doubt that I would keep it for at least another 2 to 3 more years before looking into replacing it with another MBP. So In between now and then, why even bother to look for another computer? Apple probably saw the same that users would keep their Apple computer long enough before needed another major replacement to buy new ones every 3 to 5 years or so. IMO, for everyday tasks or even medium-to-high CPU instense tasks, current MBP handles very well, given that you are not a gamer or 3D CG designer.
Secondly, for the price you pay, it makes no reason to look into another Mac every or every other year. Serious, the author Sam Byford's 2012 MacBook Pro should be fine running everyday tasks. Mine is only 1 year newer, so if mine running so well, so should his. Admittedly, having SSD makes a HUGE difference in terms of stability and performance. I encourage everyone should have it. Maybe that's what the author's really missing out.
People are interpreting "PCs are extremely good and capable now" as "PC is dead".
[1] https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2015/12/11/codecs-are...
This is the main thing for me - I'm still using a 2012 rMBP as my main machine, and I have no complaints about performance except often when you try to make the most of the performance it's capable of, it overheats and throttles down. Especially a problem in the summer.
I won't pay $2000 for a laptop from Apple that has these things already soldered in.
In the end I still couldn't justify it as I want an I7 which they no longer sell with the ability to add ram and SSD.
You can still buy the 2012 Macbook Pro with an i7. You must BTO:
13-inch MacBook Pro
2.9GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
4GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM — 2x2GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Cost is $1249. Bring your own RAM and SSD to upgrade as desired.
I usually look on EBay for a new one, and $700-$800 (with no tax) is a price point that I'd be willing to pay. I've never seen a new i7, though.
At $1300 (with tax), I could get a pretty nice Thinkpad or Dell Precision with quad core 6th gen Intel and still use the ram and SSD.
Everything that formerly lived happily in the enclosure of a Mac Pro now had to live in a stack near a laptop or new Mac Pro cylinder. The more compact Mac Pro exacerbated workplace sprawl rather than helping it. Macbook Pro models faced the many of the same issues.
I have been nursing along an early 2009 Mac Pro, praying is does not have a major component failure because apple has left me as a photographer/videographer out in the cold. While I realize the Intel processor road map has created challenges for Apple, they need to get updated machines into the market or face defection from people like me who have been Mac Zealots since the mid-80's.
Maybe things are different now? Or maybe I didn't get my hands on some better ones, but how can companies sell so much junk?
I mean, don't get me wrong. If I were to replace it I don't want to pay top dollar for old hardware. Makes me wonder if has something brewing the the desktop space.
> it’s an open secret among Apple employees that the “101” still sells surprisingly well — to a nearly tragic degree, given its age and mediocrity.
> Geeks like me often wonder why anyone would still buy such an outdated machine.
> I’m right there with everyone else who’d strongly advise against buying this machine for most people who’d ask me
Also: if you hold down alt-R for performing Internet Recovery on a Mac it downloads the OS it came out of the store with. No idea why. I've had to internet recover a 2013 MacBook Air a week ago and it downloaded... Mavericks.
We are in a weird period in terms of PC hardware. Things settled down and people expect new shiny hardware every year or two. But why? Get used to it, you don't buy latest car model every 2 years. If a machine gets the job done use it to every last bit.
Bought rMBP 13" (maxed out) in November and I can see myself using it for 5 years easily! Consumer society is hungry and they want redesign, shiny new specs every year. But those times are 20 years behind us. So just enjoy in your machines... :)
Few businesses are going to be interested in investing into regular updates to a segment that is being significantly reduced in size. More likely, Apple will cut how many PC models / variations they sell, and the business will slowly fade until it's a nearly meaningless portion of their business. In ten years the traditional PC market will be 3/4 smaller than it was at the peak a few years ago, and that drop will go the same for the Mac.
I say this when I compare this to my HP pavilion sleekbook which did not have any trouble so far in the last 3 years.
The thing is, your next upgrade is probably going to involve a device with soldered on memory and a chassis that isn't as conducive to end-user hardware upgrades as the model you have. The upgradability gravy train pretty much ended with the 2012 unibody models. The only way you can maximize the life of your next purchase is to buy the maximum spec'ed machine. Doesn't sound like a problem, but maxing out an Apple BTO machine gets expensive fast.
I thought my 2011 15" MBP would still be my main machine today (the specs still hold up today), except mine was one of the models that had the overheating GPUs and it got bricked and stopped booting. It wasn't until after I switched to a Windows laptop that Apple finally acknowledged the problem and issued a repair order. By that time, they had basically lost me as a customer of their computer products.
Desktop space is a whole different story, though. Although the resale value on the Apple stuff seems to hold up a bit. I've had friends upgrade to a newer machine for the price they would have paid for a PC just by selling the old Mac. I suspect that too will slowly change as time goes on.
(Was just looking at eBay for example - I could sell the Mac Mini that I have and only had about a $100 loss on it. I bought it almost two years ago now.)
Why should Apple mess with a good thing? The market supports selling the machines they have at the prices they ask. No need to spend NRE costs on new kit.
[0] Meaning Web devs, engineers, and scientists, most of whom can't stand Linux. The only thing that matters in software is the experience of the user.
The Mac "equivalents" where they exist are far inferior.
How does the Mac have better available software these days?
1. 3dsmax is but one 3D/animation program, most are multi-platform (see Maya, Cinema 4d, Modo etc...). No, it's not the "industry standard".
2. PLM software like Inventor and SolidWorks are underrepresented on the Mac. Software like Fusion 360 and OnShape[0] are beginning to make up for this
3. AutCAD is available for macOS. Has been of about 5 years. Autodesk in fact produce plenty of software for the Mac... [1]
4. No, but there is Xcode. And IntelliJ.
5. No Excel? Microsoft appear to disagree. [2]
Based on your comment, you have no clue what you are talking about, and I'm so bored of seeing this nonsense every time this comes up. Please, stop.
[0] https://www.onshape.com/ [1] http://www.autodesk.com/solutions/mac-compatible-software [2] https://products.office.com/en-gb/excel
In my considerable experience using Office on Mac in tandem with Office on Windows, the Mac experience is severely, severely degraded in comparison.
Extreme slowdowns in large documents, odd crashes, and difficulties handling macros are pretty much the defining experience for Office 365 on Mac for me.
I'm a buyer of their refreshed MBP ... whenever that comes to market.
That's what I did for Emacs, find, bash, etc. and it works fine.
Something light with a Retina display, minimum 13" and a good CPU. Basically a Thinkpad X1 Carbon with OSX.
Also from what I have seen prices of MacBooks seem to have been going down quite a bit.
> At CES 2016, Lenovo announced a massive overhaul of its ThinkPad line. In addition to unveiling new ThinkPad X1 notebooks, tablets and convertibles, Lenovo also unveiled refreshes to its X, T and L series ThinkPad as well as a new ThinkPad 13. Except the ThinkPad 13, which comes with options for either Windows or Chrome operating systems, all the ThinkPad models unveiled come with Intel's sixth generation Skylake processor, giving them a boost in performance and battery life.
So no, Dell isn't selling anything that is nearly as outdated as what Apple is selling, for substantially more money.
Increased battery life and hopefully a lighter 15" retina Macbook Pro will be a compelling reason to upgrade.
Moreover, now that Windows 10 Anniversary Update has the integrated bash shell, this makes the Windows platform finally much more competitive for Open Source software development.
My last Mac Mini went 4 years before I upgraded to the current model, and honestly there's not a lot of performance difference between the two, at least for my use cases.
Imho Apple will upgrade when sales will slow down below a certain threshold.