Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Instead, they over-designed the enclosure and froze the high-end range of the platform. Creating a simple, but reliable tower design (optimized for speed rather than size) would have been extremely well received, would be nearly free money, and would have done wonders for the brand and their connection to creative pros.
Most of the pros I work with in the industry have gone from loving the mac to tolerating the mac. They are certainly looking around. I don't love Windows, but I have to admit that the Adobe Creative Suite now sings on a modern Windows machine.
It seems like the same group that made the new Mac Pro made the top-loading Mac Mini that kids put coins in, destroying the CDROM drive in the process. All form, no function.
This is true of myself (UX Designer with 10+ years in the biz pushing code and design) and ALL of the creative types I associate with. I know Apple is something like 90% an iPhone company now, but I'd love to see some long term analysis on the damage they've done to themselves, and even the iPhone, by alienating ALL of the creative content creators of the world. I know I'm painting in broad strokes, but it's hard to overstate the positive mindshare and goodwill Apple used to enjoy in this community. Now they're just the new Microsoft-a necessary annoyance.
This Apple is starting to go rotten.
I thought the Apple advantage has been workflow. For example, OS X is color-managed at the OS level. You can easily create a custom profile for your display without expensive 3rd party equipment.
And OS X uses the same language as PDF to composite the display, so it's easy to produce (color managed) PDFs from any application.
Plus Windows could actually multitask much better. My Dual P3-933 is still the fastest machine I've ever used compared to the hardware of the time. Amazing how much better a dual core (NT/2000) machine was.
Having a beautiful case that takes a standard ITX board would be great. Yeah, you might not get dual-gpu that way, but even a good ITX would be a huge step up from what they have now...
Without proprietary hardware, there is not enough money in the market for them to bother with a tower in the first place. It would also put the "it just works" aspect of the Apple brand at risk, should customers use 3rd-party hardware components that wind up not functioning properly due to unofficial drivers. Apple has a public image to maintain, and they will not expose themselves to having customers claim that their Mac Pro "isn't working", blaming Apple instead of looking to the 3rd-party hardware manufacturer.
Take a look at the Passmark list here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
The i5 scores in at 7995, and the i7 4960HQ is 9770. If you are really CPU bound, there are going to be some big advantages for the i7 here.
Of course, if performance is so bad on the Windows machine that it is nearly unusable, then there is probably something else causing the issue.
Go with about 4-8 times as much RAM, and Ramdisk your commonly used programs like PS/LR, and make sure you have a large swap space on a dedicated NVMe SSD. Also consider getting higher performing RAM. https://pcpartpicker.com/product/x3yxFT/corsair-memory-cmk32... is a relatively cheap high-performance RAM module. More ram per stick will get more expensive and have higher CAS latency.
Get at least a 7700k and OC to at least 4.8Ghz, though most will go higher. Consider buying from a known-bin site, such as https://siliconlottery.com/collections/all/products/7700k52g which has a chip known to perform stably at 5.2GHz.
Consider getting a high-end quadro instead of a consumer-level card- the P4000 is a good entry-level, while a P6000 is an absolute monster, though probably overpriced. NVidia claims better performance in Photoshop and Lightroom using those instead. http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe.html
Consider a high-end Z270 ASRock motherboard. They are almost always the best choice for making everything else work together optimally.
You can always get better performance with more hardware and better configuration if you need to - is it worth it to you over buying a Mac though, and will the performance of that Mac actually be better?
It's very possible that there's something else going wrong with my Windows desktop as it's setup now, and it should be running better than it does. Whatever that may be, I'm unsure. I would expect the programs to at least be usable, but they aren't.
And this isn't directed at you in particular, but I should probably make it clear (since for some reason my comments have been getting downvotes) that I'm not saying that Windows computers in general are incapable of running these programs, and I'm not a Mac fanboy in any sense of the word. I'm relaying what I've experienced. If I click and hold an adjustment brush, drag it an inch, let go of the mouse button, then move the mouse to another area of the screen, the program shouldn't lag to the point where it doesn't even register that I let off the adjustment brush and give me a stroke that goes across the entire photo. And yet it does. It doesn't benefit me at all to lie about it.
Edit: I'd love an explanation as to why this was downvoted as well.
Besides SP600 is not considered a particularly good SSD
Pretty much all SATA3 SSDs claim the top speed of 500MB+ read/ 300MB+ write which is a best case scenario.
Many lesser SSDs have problems in random read writes.
I have CS running on and old i3 machine with 8 GB of RAM with an SSD and an integrated video card, and Photoshop runs as fast as in my MBPr i7.
The real problem here is that Apple itself hasn't been able to keep up with demands. If they were able to enhance and sell a "new model" of Mac pro every 6-12 months, the problem would go away. Nobody wants a hackintosh, barring the long tail of people who like building PC's anyway. (And that's an enthusiast market, not worth catering to.) A vast majority of pros would just buy a new machine every couple years. So the problem, then, is that there's no "new machine" for them to buy.
Positing that the solution is to offer an upgradeable tower implies that Apple can't keep up with demand. Which, let's be honest, they can't. But the better solution here is to build a Mac Pro that Apple can upgrade in the form of a new model. That enthusiasts can upgrade it as well is a moot point (or an additional benefit).
Hell, they could even have a Genius-led support model that swaps out the guts of your machine every 12-24 months. Apple-Hardware-As-A-Service?
I think the problem is they chosen not to update the Mac Pro, not that they haven't been able to. Resources should not be an issue given their cash reserves.
And frankly, even if the Mac Pro were not a profitable machine for Apple overall, they would be better served by choosing to keep it up to date, and to keep is desirable, in order to keep their developers happy.
They're not yet at the point where their developers' grumblings are having a material negative impact on the bottom line. Yet.
I hope they don't make the same mistake twice. But I don't think a hackintosh-inspired tower with the upgrade path left solely to the buyer would be a good strategy.
The slightly panicked assertion that "Hey we're working on new Macs for pro users" earlier this year is evidence of that.
Previously the strategy seems to have been to put minimal effort into the Mac line and push it towards a closed kind-of-good-enough commodity platform designed to maximise margins not performance - basically a step up from the iPad range, for people who have an inexplicable legacy interest in real keyboards and bigger screens.
That was a very bad mistake.
It seems to be the case that Cook doesn't understand the pro market, and may even be vaguely hostile to it, for some reason. In fact there doesn't seem to be anyone at senior level cheerleading for professional users, and no reaching out for input from professional communities.
I hope the grumblings have been loud enough to steer management back to reality. If not, we're just going to hold our noses and move back to Windows for professional creative software and Linux for everything else - which might seem like a small immediate loss, but will do massive damage to the Apple brand image.
Now, within the pro market, notebooks are far-and-away #1, iMacs are #2, and the Mac Pro is #3 (and is described as "single digit" sales percentage). Would you care about 1-3% vs. the other 97%?
The problem is that that 1-3% are probably very vocal and the "trend-setters".
Even among pro users, notebooks are by far the most
popular Macs. In second place are iMacs. The Mac Pro is
third. Apple declined to describe the Mac Pro’s share
of all Mac sales any more specifically than “a single-
digit percent”, but my gut feeling is that the single
digit is a lot closer to 1 than it is to 9.In terms of sales, sure, the models that are selling the best are also the ones that have been refreshed recently: https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac
The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with notebook sales?
Apple likes the control over the hardware and software, and packages all of the drivers needed to run macOS on any blessed instance of Apple hardware currently supported (and maybe even ever created, since Intel). If you wanted, and I have done this before, you can clone a Mac made HDD and boot it from any other Mac you can get your hands on, and other than the hardware swap it's basically a reboot. If Apple let me build a tower and drop anything I wanted in to it, they can't guarantee that anymore, and even if it's just amongst developers, it hurts their brand experience.
No, all kinds of companies will start offering machines as 'ready for macOS', and we'll see the same problems.
This would only be true in a world where Ars Technica, The Verge, and other publications did not exist.
Apple would suffer from poor performance reviews for any sort of driver issue. Plus, "not guaranteed to work" is the opposite of Apple's ethos, which is "it just works."
Apple has made it easy enough for hackitoshes to work by being lax with people running MacOS.
BTW, this isn't quite assured when copying a Hackintosh to another Hackintosh. Chameleon kernel injections are device specific. Different motherboards require different injectors.
That simple.
That's why macOS, etc are free now. That's why they're ramping up their enterprise partnerships behind the scenes to ensure big apps run best or even first on iOS and macOS.
IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge).
You can argue if that is the correct approach or not, but it is Apple's DNA now - and all the issues in the pro segment stem from it. Not enough hardware to be sold, why bother, etc.
If in some conceivable future Apple could make enough money on the "pro" market looking for OEM-style rigs to fund development of macOS through the macOS App Store, or through OS sales, they would probably at least consider it.
The problem Apple has is success. If you're managing a team of top talent and you have two products, one of which rakes in hundreds of billions, the other which is mere tens, which team do you think gets the best people?
It must take a lot of determination to keep really great people on the macOS team instead of poaching them for iOS. Apple's strategy of using the same OS core for both platforms probably helps in that regard: They can put their best people in the middle without concern about their full potential being wasted.
It's a really tricky spot to be in. If Apple had no phone business at all they'd be a tiny company, but they wouldn't have the same stress about where to place people.
As for Apple being tiny without the iPhone; it's huge but Apple Watch (commonly described as a failure) is estimated to be a bigger business than Microsoft's Surface business.
Apple minus iPhone means no watch, no tablet, and marginal market share since these products help spur sales in the computer area. Using a MacBook as a hub for all your Apple devices is a compelling reason to get one.
Look at how hard it has been for Microsoft to grow market share being what is basically an OS company with no significant hardware sales to speak of.
I assume you're talking about Apple's iOS, not Cisco's IOS? What special APIs does Cisco have in Apple iOS, I couldn't find anything from a quick googling?
I despise Cisco as much as anyone else, but this statement merits a citation.
hey before I answer you wanna take a stab at that question?
EDIT: I don't know why I was downvoted, it's a fairly close analogy.
http://fortune.com/2017/03/28/mcdonalds-sauce-bottles-canada...
McDonald's has a dozen different burgers and you can get them made however you want. You can even get a double Big Mac if you need one and you can supersize the fries and drink. You can even take the burger home and add more ketchup, mustard etc.
So, your assertion that Apple be more like MacDonald's is spot on.
People also go to fast food restaurants to get food quickly. Preparing it yourself saves you zero time, it destroys the value of the Big Mac.
If you're going to make your own burger, you can sure as shit do better than a Big Mac.
They are going to use it when the otherwise wouldn't buy a McDonald's burger, like when hosting a backyard BBQ.
obviously mcdonald's canada agrees with you and not me.
The Big Mac sauce is the McDonald's signature brand. It's not a competitor to their main product. It's not inherently convenient, it's just familiar, and could serve to reinforce the brand and promote sales of their core product.
apple can prevent you from making a mac at home, even if you know the recipe (via licensing).
At least it does if you've already come around to using a desktop formfactor. For me I get lots of physical RAM (R / Pandas) a mechanical keyboard, and one of those straight-out-of-the-90s Logitech marble mouses that you'll pry from my cold dead fingers. Hardware support in Linux/*BSD for any Intel graphics based system is a total non-issue.
Casting your own preferences as implicitly "hacker" and pulling out some "qualitative experience" (which among nerds is best read as "subjective preferences") stuff is pretty silly.
My main workstation is a Lenovo Thinkpad with dual 1440p external monitors, and haven't run into issues losing heads, however, I wrote my own auto-detect and screen layout wrapper for xrandr so that it would consistently do what I wanted. Basically, my window manager makes calls like: `xrandr --output DP-2-1 --left-of eDP-1 --auto --primary --output DP-2-2 --left-of DP-2-1 --auto --output eDP-1 --auto` when I connect to my docking station and `xrandr --output eDP-1 --auto --primary --output DP-2-1 --off --output DP-2-2 --off --output HDMI-2 --off --output HDMI-1 --off` when I disconnect. MacOS's screen arrangement consistency was pretty great, though - on par with the consistency of my own script.
I think the improvement of moving from MacOS to Linux for me has been that I don't have to try to figure out how the OS "magic" works to make it do what I want, because there is no magic, it's just scripts I've written myself and I understand them because I wrote them.
For me, there came a point when making Free nixen do what I want became easier than making macOS not do what I didn't want. Returning to Linux/*BSD from my decade long sabbatical to macOS, I've been delighted by the things that have changed, but even more delighted by some of the things that haven't.
Did you ever try using the built-in Terminal.app? I've never had any speed issues with it.
I also spent my high school years working on a roadster in the garage with my father, and once I had money I thought I'd like to do that again, but it turns out that knee room, heated seats, airbags, side impact safety, a DSG and not having to fuck around with my car all goddamned weekend trumped my need to tinker, and so it sat in the garage.
Instead I tinker with other things, like frameworks, databases, video games, and plants. And my computer Just Works.
And yes, that's exactly what I meant by "qualitative experience." I was actively calling out that the opinion voiced in my comment was, like, my opinion man.
People are entitled to their preferences, and you clearly have yours neither is "silly" but we can still politely disagree.
If you wanted to move to macOS/Windows you couldn't, because you wouldn't bear their inferiority when it comes to hacker things, so aren't you also captive?
But, if I wanted to buy the latest Adobe Creative Suite and run it in Linux, I have no real recourse.
So I guess in that sense, my statement could be made more precisely as: Obligate users of such commercial software suites as Adobe Creative Suite are captive users of either Windows or macOS.
But they don't, for the same reason you stay on Linux. The fact that you can run bash on Windows is not such a huge difference if for other reasons you don't.
They don't want an inferior experience, even if they could tolerate it if strictly necessary.
Perhaps—and I've certainly met professionals that claim to use those tools. However, I've met others who claim (rightly or wrongly) that Gimp and Audacity are not perfect substitutes for other commercial packages.
Have you tried elementary OS? If you are looking for a comparable polished experience I think you will be surprised (in a good way).
For you, perhaps. But given your preamble it strongly suggests your conditions make this boil down to "for someone who wants to use Linux, Linux is better."
For a start: Linux is not a monolithic ecosystem. The sheer number of qualifiers that are needed (what flavor? What window manager? What hardware? because driver hell is still a thing) make this statement meaningless.
At best you can say "I've found a combination of hardware and many pieces of software that work better for me."
Good! Happy for you. Seriously.
For a developer like myself I can do anything I want to in MacOS and I don't have to fight it to get it working right - it "just works".
In a way this mirrors the iOS and Android debate: for those who like hyper-customization of their OS then of course Android/Linux is better. It's better due to a fundamental precondition of the requirements.
For the rest of us - those who don't find that as important - the other system is superior because you don't have to do that.
I love Linux and use it every day, but this kind of statement is the same thing the Linux crowd has been saying since the early 2000s (is it the year of Linux on the desktop yet?) and while it is more true now than ever it still masks it's very real issues to mass adoption as a primary OS
I just recently installed the currently frozen Debian testing (with the intent on staying on it once it replaces the previous stable) and there was nothing to configure, it just works, even starting with a minimal install (no DE) there was nothing to configure, just pull the right packages (like bluez, pulseaudio-module-bluetooth etc) and I could pair with my wireless headphones etc. If you install a complete DE like Gnome or KDE from the metapackages you don't even have to install anything yourself, it just works out of the box. Even for people like me who do minimal installs and run tiling wm there is little to nothing to configure. apt install xorg will get all you need for Xorg to work and autodetect your hardware, echo "exec dwm" >> .xinitrc will get your startx session up.
The early 2k had the massive amount of suffering between very poor WiFI support (lots of kernel drivers out of tree, need to compile them yourself and pray the API was synced with the current kernel or do it yourself), terrible state of audio stack (pulseaudio has gotten a lot more stable now, and is better than what we had in early PA days, or ALSA days), terrible state of GPU support (with mostly nvidia being okay, but still you would have to be more careful with kernel upgrades. Now you can even run a rolling release distro like arch, and pick a LTS kernel). But now it's great. You don't need the proprietary driver for AMD cards, intel iGPUs work fine, NVIDIA requires the proprietary driver for performance but the open source drv will still help you get a decent X session up in the first time install, audio just works, bluetooth just works, wifi just works. Even wifi with proprietary drivers, like the broadcom ship on my mac, it's just a matter of apt install broadcom-sta-dkms and it just works. Even Debian doesn't shy away from distributing the proprietary packages in the non-free repository and it's smooth sailing.
Linux missed many window of opportunities during times when it really could have become closer to a mainstream OS. What is funny, is that in my opinion, Linux is now as ready for mainstream purposes as it could ever be, but the opportunities for it will not come again.
And then we have the locked down versions that are getting popular, like Chrome OS, which is really linux underneath. We'll probably see more of that, not less, in the future, but it's not too bad as long as we have the freedom to unlock the bootloader and install what we want. Google is in a good position to bring an alternative to MacOS/Windows, although it won't be GNU/Linux as we know it in full, but it's close enough.
One area that still needs work, though, is consistency. I can understand why this wouldn't be an issue for some, but it when running Linux it feels like I almost spend as much time getting the UI, little behaviors, etc to match up and be consistent between applications/DE/etc. Quite often you can't get 100% of your desired behavior.
I'm a developer and I don't want to waste another second of my life configuring boot or managing drivers on linux.
It's even more so in programming. Go to any developer conference, whether it's for Rails, C, Java, Haskell or whatever: a huge percentage there will have MacBook Pros, much much more than the percentage of Mac users in the general market (e.g 10% in the general market and 40 to 60% in developer circles).
Which goes to say how silly the notion that "Mac's are for users who don't know about computers" is.
Macs are for users who want a working GUI and/or a UNIX subsystem, and don't want to do any self-building and/or tinkering.
I honestly haven't heard that argument in years from anyone I'd consider in touch with the current state of tech.
And for a decade I was right there with you on the OSX == *nix plus creature comforts.
But the landscape has changed since that argument held sway for me. Linux has gotten way less fiddly, and the size of my scripts to keep macOS on the straight and narrow has gotten larger.
I'm actually opposed to thin things or design aberrations like trash can mac. I'm paying for that after all, with money or engineering trade-offs.
The best of both worlds would be officially supported hackintosh (that is, curated list of hardware parts, which are guaranteed to work for some reasonable period (15 years or something like that). But I don't think that would happen, Apple is greedy corporation and wants piece of pie from everything.
> I'm not really into macOS, I can use Linux or Windows just fine, but macOS is not that bad.
I think it's safe to say that you fall outside of Apple's target demographic.
It is. I don't care a lot about design either (although I care a lot about user experience), but many people /do/ care for design, and are willing to pay a premium to get that design.
The previous tower Mac Pros are massive machines - massive beyond the point of practicality for many purposes. They're also insanely heavy to the point of impracticality. Not all pros want/can live with something 3 feet tall that consumes several square feet of floor space.
The "right" path forward for the pro-desktop Mac is IMO something in between - something that maximizes extensibility and versatility without completely embracing the gigantor-ATX-case-on-the-floor direction.
I'm wondering about the practicality of something more like mini-ITX - small enough to be practical, but allowing access to all the core bits (RAM, CPU, GPU, HDDs).
Apple could sell the full systems with a great looking case, and DIY enthusiasts could have a fast path to a hackintosh with a MB that's far less likely to blow up when updates happen.
Something like a notebook or a smartphone? Thin, light, and pretty have a bit more bearing on these things because you carry them around and other people see them. The value you place on this sort of "form v. function" balance will vary but I can certainly see how "form" can have some legit worth.
But with a high-end workstation I feel that there's much less of an argument to be made for the importance of "form" past a more basic level of build quality and form factor. It might matter a little bit more on a workstation than something like a server that lives in a rack 24/7 but when considering a high-powered workstation purchase, I care very little about it being thin, light, pretty, or unique in shape. Power, flexibility, and "upgradeability" matter vastly more.
I'm curious how you came up with that number? Are you currently still using anything PC related from 2002?
Most of my pc cases are easily 15 years old. They have been upgraded when needed and have none of the same parts, but at no point did I have to trash the entire thing and start over. Just the simple standard of having mobos and pss fit has been incredibly useful in decreasing waste, both physical and monitary. Obviously this whole poiny is moot with apples current hardware strategy becoming even more untouchable black box like.
And i'm on HN so I obviously use a model M from the late 80s early 90s. No scarcasm here.
Why do you want a Hackintosh? It sounds like you want the exact opposite of a Mac.
2 16x PCIe card slots: YES
2 4x PCIe card slots: NO, use Thunderbolt 3 instead. Every time Apple can push a device maker to switch from slow PCIe to Thunderbolt, that's another device that's usable with a MacBook Pro.
4 3.5" hard disk bays: NO
1 3.5" hard disk bay: MAYBE
2–4 PCIe Flash storage bays: YES
2 optical/Zip/floppy drive bays: HELL NO. Most users rarely use optical discs, and almost no one uses both bays. An external drive is actually more convenient, because you can put it somewhere on your desk when you need it, and put it away when you're done. Then you can place the tower wherever you like, because you won't be stuffing discs into it. In addition, ever since the Blue and White G3, Apple has had to rig up some doors to hide the off-white plastic of the optical drives. Never again!
The starting price will go back to $2499, like it was in 2012. The B&W G3 started at $1599, $2340 in today's dollars.
If Apple offered me a dead-silent Mac Mini, even one with not much CPU capability, I would use it for tracking -- that is, right in the room where I'm recording. Also for Skype stuff for podcast recording, and streaming; probably two of them. These machines don't need to have a lot of CPU to record; they only have to do a modest amount of live audio processing. They don't have to run dozens to hundreds of instances of plug-ins like when I'm mixing.
Then the Mac Pro can go in the room where I'm mixing and mastering. So quiet is important but dead silence in the Pro is not really a requirement for me.
Not to mention Apple doesn't seem to care about the developer and/or professional consumer anymore.
It's just such a shame that getting a high performance desktop that runs OSX is such a hassle.
What support? NeXT once had a fax that they sent you with the listed hardware that it worked on. Its even easier now that Intel has shut out all third-party motherboard chipsets. Your paying for legality, not support.
That's extremely disappointing for a "workstation". :(
If that's the problem, then why not create a subsidiary firm and call it, I don't know, Pear, Gala, McIntire, Darwin or something. Let this firm build hackintoshes from off-the-shelf components. The trick is then to remove any reference to Apple and every logo from the OS. People "in the know" would be able to buy a Pear and use it just like a Mac.
This would be really cheap to pull off, just give some people a factory and a few million dollars, and would put next to no strain on Apple proper. It's really just buying a few blessed components, putting them together, and creating a boot disk with the needed kexts. Any mom and pop computer shop can do that if it weren't for legal issues. In the next year's iteration you can talk about custom hardware / buying at scale.
Oh, you mean Mac clones ;-).
What I'm trying to say is it depends entirely on execution if it works or not. I wouldn't go the way of outsourcing it to others. I would make the clone company a 100% daughter company of Apple, and at the same time I would crack down hard on other Hackintoshs (legally and technically). Apple can milk their cash cow and eat it, too (aehm, I mean their cake).
Since they have the blessing from Apple, they could literally say on the package "This PearPC is also a genuine Macintosh" or even better "The operating system, PearOS, is A macOS". So you would say "yes, I run a macOS".
Dimensions are pretty much locked down by what types of video card technology they wish to support, really would love a new solution that doesn't use the typical slots we still have today.
With regards to the mini, my only beef was when I wanted to integrate with my home theater white boxes just don't fit. It had to hide.
They adopt industry standards when convenient, but would be perfectly content to make a Pro machine locked to Moore's Law and 3-year turnovers.
Dongles. Dongles are your Pro future.
Apple don't want to be associated with the "Gamer".
https://medium.com/the-missing-bit/leaving-macos-part-1-moti...
Apple is a Software company, You just have to buy their Hardware first to use it.
Apple lately has been too focused, or too worried about the Design of the product and lost sight of its main direction.
To more accurately phase it, Apple is an Ecosystem company. You use its Software, Hardware and Services across all ( most ) segment.
I'd argue Mac Pro should be the one of those segment, ( representing 1% of the total Mac Sales, and more like 0.1% of Apple's total revenue ) where they should make it impossible for average consumer to come up with a similar spec Machine with similar price. It doesn't mean Apple is making a loss, it is more likely Apple is just making very little profits on it.
The Apple now, or the Mac Ecosystem now is very different to 20 years ago. iPhone manage to pull in Lots of new developers and Pros.
What are our options?
Windows? Where Microsoft is collecting every bit of data possible while pushing ads.
Linux? I'm a geek and Linux is annoying, I've been a Unix guy since 1984. I run it on my daily laptop only because I'm not willing to spend $2,000 extra for a Macbook Pro with the same specs as a $750 Dell Laptop because it weighs 9oz less
MacOS is the only real game in town.
Apple knows they are in the drivers seat and they are skull fucking the public to the best of their ability. If you doubt it, see their quarter of a Trillion in cash. If they release just a Mac tower it might just break the spell and convince people they are getting skull fucked.
I am hoping that Apple returns to this sort of design philosophy. It's quite frustrating that many of their iMacs are not (easily) user upgradable. Upgrading an HDD to an SSD requires cutting adhesive, suction cups to remove the display, disconnecting not-meant-to-be-disconnected cables from comically delicate sockets, and similar feats of delicacy.
The Mac Pro redesign applied the same sort of anti-consumer bullshit.
The Mac Pro towers were pretty different, but if anything they were the aberration, going in a more Unix workstation direction.
Trying to apply that sealed appliance approach to every single product is sometimes a mistake, as demonstrated by the Mac Pro misstep.
It was a technically beautiful machine (still is, really) but their choices meant it became impossible to update.
If the market had gone the other way we'd likely be talking about the 2016 MacPro instead.
They wanted to make a tiny, silent Pro machine to make a statement, but nobody seems to have cared much about that. I haven't seen a single person saying "I hope the new Pro is still really really small, even if that means it's more expensive and less expandable!"
Sure, neither does anyone... on anything. If the bet had succeeded though we'd all be calling them geniuses and suchlike. If no-one made bets like that we'd still have boring beige boxes. Hell the original Mac was a bet like that (the design was radical at the time).
The MacPro is an awesome machine. Everyone I know that has used one loves it. That's great for a pro-machine. That's exactly what Apple likes to do - create hardware that people love
They lost the bet, but it was a good bet to make. I'll take a company that makes bets like that over one that doesn't, long term.
In their recent discussions around the upcoming redesign, it sounds like they didn't realize they were making a bet at all. If they had, they should have monitored it more closely and been a lot quicker out of the gate with the redesign.
A possible defence is that Apple had other priorities at the time, and wasn't paying full attention to the Pro. But it's mystifying why the world's biggest company by market cap can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
The MacPro is an awesome machine. Everyone I know that has used one loves it.
It's funny it hasn't been more successful, then! Although I certainly believe you. It's definitely possible for it to be popular with a niche while failing in the wider market.
There's a reason people complained about the lack of upgrades and it wasn't because no-one bought one.
Your suggestion would be the most un-Apple thing I've heard. They never do stuff like that because they believe in their solution as being the best.
They could have been right - that was the bet. What you describe is not a bet at all!
Of course it is! Not all bets have to be all-in. Having a backup plan would have reduced the downside if the Pro wasn't a hit. It would also add a little risk, sure, of being perceived as cowardly or unfocused by going for such an "un-Apple" approach.
When a product like the Mac Pro is widely perceived as a failure, and you have to resort to the extremely un-Apple thing of discussing your future roadmap, it seems to me very reasonable to ask what might have been done differently, and why.
I still say that if Apple had kept their eye on the ball, they would have known within a couple of years that the Mac Pro wasn't working as intended. They could and should have started work on a more modular replacement a year or two ago. It would have been shipping now and they wouldn't be in the embarrassing situation they're in.
Wikipedia's summary seems fair: "By 2016, reviewers started to agree that the Mac Pro was lacking in functionality and power, and should be updated by Apple. Apple later revealed in 2017 that the thermal core design had limited the ability to upgrade the Mac Pro's GPUs and that a new design was under development, to be released in 2018 or 2019."
Either it took them a year to figure out the problems with the current design and realize they needed to go back to the drawing board, or (I'm guessing) it was just allowed to languish and no serious investigation was done until fairly recently.
(Take all this with a pinch of salt, of course! I'm a random internet pundit and not actually running one of the most successful businesses of all time.)
I owned a late 2013 Mac Pro for several years and it had the vision right. It was just too early and they gave up on it too quickly. I want v2 with a similar design, slightly upgraded CPU, thunderbolt 3 ports, and integrated graphics. Then pair it with an eGPU enclosure (like razer core), and get OSX to support this feature natively.
I also own a Razer Stealth along with the Core, and it's a great setup. Only downside is they have to work with some shit software (Windows and terrible drivers). Apple would have the ability to own this experience from top to bottom.
I don't think trying to stuff everything into a box makes sense anymore. Apple has paved the way with connectivity options, fast graphic switching, and fast bus speeds. Continue forward instead of going backwards.
In my current job I don't need a mac anymore, so I'm switching to a NUC which I'm thinking it'll be best to run Qubes on. But I do have existing mac/ios projects that I'd like to support, thus the need for a virtual hackintosh.
I really hope that they'll make a new Mac Mini extensible like the 2012 again.
There's clearly a market for high powered desktop workstations but you can't currently buy the best hardware if you want it to (officially) run MacOS.
Apple held my attention for years because I need Adobe software and prefer a Unix enviroment. I'm pretty happy using using a Windows 10 desktop with Windows Subsystem for Linux now. My workflow is pretty much the same as it is my MacBook now. So much so that I'd probably do the same with my next laptop.
There's some brand reputation to protect here.
Applying an 80/20 rule, one or two graphics cards, and a couple of drives should pretty much cover it.
Apple could offer a large and small form case. The real problem is heat, right?
https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/12/17/1840
...integrated graphics are plenty good enough for a lot of use cases, but you're right in assuming the graphics card would need to change. Current GPUs require a lot of extra power and cooling that requires a (mini-)tower form factor...
That being said, if you want a smaller case, you can get that as well. It really depends. You have flexibility, and you get what you need. This is something Apple has been missing for some time now.
It is a software license issue. Technically it would be something like unlicensed distribution/copying.
Practically speaking they don't care though. The machine building market is vanishingly small and the licensing gives Apple plausible "we never said it would work" deniability.
It's a bit of a strange area. Either way - it's not illegal due to any specific thing Apple does. Other copyright/IP law may apply though.
I agree it's not due to anything specific about Apple - it's just that it's an illegal copy as you are not the copyright holder and so have no right to make a modified copy or download a copy or modified copy.
Mostly not! Seeding a torrent however counts as distribution. Using the software is against the EULA on ToS usually though.
It's kind of like how, back in the day, if you bought pirate software from a guy in a market they were the criminal, not you. Copyright law is mostly about infringement which requires distribution.
It's how torrent sites stay (mostly) legal: they don't actually distribute the files (usually).
I bought an m.2 solid state and a wifi adapter that is known to work well with hackintosh's (the stock wifi card wasn't compatible), and another 8gb of ram for another ~$150.
I followed this (https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-dell-inspiron-15-75...) guide to get a nice hackintosh out of this laptop. Obviously this is a decent bit more difficult for the regular computer user to do.
So for ~$850, after 'hackintoshing' this computer, I get: A laptop that gives me the choice to boot into an SSD imaged with latest OSX Sierra, or the regular 5,400 rpm Windows 10 drive. The last thing I want to do with this laptop is exchange the 1tb 5,400 windows drive for a 1tb SSD.
When booted into Sierra: The software runs exactly the same as using a real mac. I've done some video editing in Final Cut, some audio work in Ableton, streamed 1080p youtube / netflix videos no problem. There's decent battery life, as the guide above shows you how to disable the nvidia graphics card entirely when running OSX (doesn't work anyways) to save battery. The specs are comparable to a modern macbook pro, and in one case even better.
Pros - Actually get 4k resolution/screen
Cons - SD card reader does not work - Mobile graphics Nvidia 960m does not work, but intel 530 HD graphics card does just fine - Backlight adjustment doesn't not work (could probably spend time to get it to work, but I'm fine without it for now) - Trackpad is a little too sensitive
Sames - Hardware: Core i7, 16gb ram - Full airdrop support
Where am I going with this? In my opinion the general public is becoming more tech savvy. If Apple does not embrace the culture of people wanting to experiment with code (theirs or not) on different devices, then they are putting themselves at a disadvantage. The guides to make hackintoshes are more than likely getting easier and easier as time goes on and support grows. (this was my second attempt and first success)
What a disappointment this macbook pro reveal was. So instead of spending $2,399.00 on a new 15" macbook pro, I decided to hack together a very comparable one for ~$850.
I'll take the $1,550 savings for a little software and screwdriver work, even with a couple of minor issues, any day.
As long as those dedicated apple fans eat it up, I don't expect anything to change anytime soon. But for everyone else who can't afford those business practices, there are ways like what I did above to get what you want without breaking the bank.
The difference is that Apple could do anything to accidentally or intentionally break future updates. It would be in their right to do so, since it is illegal to run macOS on non-Apple hardware [1].
I bought a 2016 MBP for 1480 Euro (after the educational discount) and it will always work without a hassle. I don't have to worry if the latest minor release that also has security fixes breaks anything. That, plus Apple's great support (had to use it twice in 10 years and in both cases I had new or fixed hardware within 2 hours) is worth the extra cost to me.
An additional factor is that Apple hardware is often less expensive mid/long-term. I now buy a new MacBook every 1.5 years or so, my wife gets my current MacBook, and we sell her old one for 800-1000 Euro. So, we both have state-of-the-art MacBooks for ~400 per 1.5 year, or 133 Euro per year per person. There is a store across the street from my office where they sell second hand Dells and Lenovos. Three year old models go for around 300 Euro. So the resale value on other laptops is pretty bad.
Of course, I can understand that when you are on a tight budget, a Hackintosh can be attractive :^). When I was a student, I started with a Hackintosh. But after a month I realised it was easier to get a reasonably-priced Mac Mini ;).
[1] I also find it quite risky, unless you verify the Clover + custom kext source code and compile them yourself.
If I had unlimited funds, I would probably just build a desktop, since they have a really good monthly recap of what hardware works with the current software. https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017
I guess that's sort of where the line is drawn is you can't really "build" a laptop. Seems like there are a few good Dell models that chose hardware that works with mac, though. I'm sure in the near future we'll start seeing more 4k capable hackintosh laptops.
Apple would probably go the exact same route as they did the last time and fail just as miserably.