Comment by Recurecur | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Recurecur | Hacker News Reader

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"This isn't thinking different, this is thinking backwards. They tried that once, didn't with so well and it was the first thing Jobs reverted when he came back."

Times have changed. Macs are down to a pretty small percentage of Apple's revenues - what Apple needs is widespread uptake of macOS to promote the ecosystem of macOS + iOS.

"Apple knows bit from iOS and OSX that one of their defining advantages cones from their close ties of hardware and software. They won't give that away again."

Apple is using almost completely generic PC hardware at this point. See my other post regarding hardware.

"The drama around the new MBPs is all about price. No idea why they went so high but if they were more in line with with PC pricing there would be very little complaint."

Not at all. Much of the drama around the new MBPs was how anemic they look compared to other "pro" laptops. They don't even support 32 GB of RAM, much less 64. No ECC. No Xeons. No "pro" level graphics chips.

Apple is the largest and arguably richest company in the world. Surely it could do a much better job of serving the many market segments. One size does not fit all!

"Times have changed. Macs are down to a pretty small percentage of Apple's revenues - what Apple needs is widespread uptake of macOS to promote the ecosystem of macOS + iOS."

What do you mean widespread uptake? What software doesn't run on either? iOS has the largest app store and best apps by a country mile while OSX runs everything that matters and is the preferred dev machine (at least for OSS devs) due to its Unix roots.

"Apple is using almost completely generic PC hardware at this point. See my other post regarding hardware."

It is way way way easier to optimize a few specific pieces of hardware working together than trying to support all of them. It becomes a worse experience for end users and a distraction for the company. The mobile space is the most stark example of this. (where the hardware is also pretty much all the same)

"Not at all. Much of the drama around the new MBPs was how anemic they look compared to other "pro" laptops. They don't even support 32 GB of RAM, much less 64. No ECC. No Xeons. No "pro" level graphics chips."

I'm a dev, I work on terrabyte size databases, though I may have liked to have 32 gigs of ram, the truth of it is I hardly ever am using even half of my 16. Sure seems to me most of the blame falls on good old Moore's Law no longer keeping up. It isn't Apple's fault that today's procs are only 25% faster than those from four years ago. The old retina's had the advantage of still being in an era of faster processor revs as well as being able to bring SSD's to everyone, which was also a huge performance boost.

What are the "pro" level graphics chips used for? Seems mostly games no?

Mark my words, all the brew-haha over the current gen will blow over in six to twelve months as type-c becomes more common and accessory makers get on board. Apple will rev in two years with more RAM, their fancier fitted battery and whatever the current gen proc is, but everything else will remain the same.

"What do you mean widespread uptake?"

I mean a higher percentage of people with systems running macOS. Macs are currently hovering at somewhere around 10% of systems purchased in the US. That means there's 90% potential growth...

Folks with macOS systems are MUCH more likely to want iOS devices, which is where Apple is making most of its profits these days.

"I'm a dev, I work on terrabyte size databases, though I may have liked to have 32 gigs of ram, the truth of it is I hardly ever am using even half of my 16."

I frequently run into yellow or pink memory conditions in System Monitor on my 16 GB MBP. VMs in particular suck up a lot of memory. Since modern laptops can support 2x and even 4x the amount of memory, shouldn't the customer get to decide how much is optimum? Many engineers and scientists can use as much RAM as they can get their hands on...

It's also time to move to ECC as we move to these large memory sizes. HP and Lenovo both offer laptops with ECC RAM.

"What are the "pro" level graphics chips used for? Seems mostly games no?"

Nope. "Pro" level graphics chips (like, you know, the ones included with the Mac Pro) are used for CAD and other high-end professional graphics apps, as well as GPU compute.

Even the high end consumer GPUs should be offered, again why should Apple dictate to their customers what's optimal? Let the customer decide!

"Mark my words, all the brew-haha over the current gen will blow over in six to twelve months as type-c becomes more common and accessory makers get on board. Apple will rev in two years with more RAM, their fancier fitted battery and whatever the current gen proc is, but everything else will remain the same."

If so, don't expect to see Apple expand its marketshare significantly. It is not serving its customers as it should.

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