the day i buy a dell is the day i collab with adele.I think it means you need to buy Dell now
never.
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Not an assumption. It's a fact.
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Apple Adding Late 2012 iMacs to Vintage and Obsolete Products Pilot Program at End of January
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never.
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I am stuck on an older OS, Sierra or something. But it still runs just fine. Hopefully none of the hardware breaks like you mentioned.
I feel you. I sold my Mid-2010 last summer, hoping the refresh would occur in the autumn. Still waiting (using a 2013 MacBook Air) but a bit cramped now on 13" instead of the 27".
Yeah I feel your struggle. I’m assuming this will be the year since it hasn’t been redesigned since 2012. But then again the iMac Pro is from 2017 and has the same design so maybe they’ll just do spec bumps.
We’ll see. I need a new iMac, external hard drive and printer. All 3 are oldddd.
No doubt about it Apples computer line up is such poor value at the moment.
Got my eye on my next machine so decided to price up laptops. Here in the UK:
Dell XPS 15 non touchscreen model, I9, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB, 1TB SSD = £2399.99
The equivalent 15 Inch MacBook Pro - I9, 32 GB RAM, Radeon 560X 4GB, 1TB SSD = £ 3689.00
That is absolutely insane.
Great, so you're comparing the most basic specs only. What about the expensive stuff? Like SSD speed, display quality, 4x Thunderbolt 3 with USB PD charging, Touch Bar, Force Touch Trackpad... And then there's the "little" things like speakers, keyboard, 16:10 aspect ratio, materials, construction and build quality, thickness, weight.
Not saying the Dell isn't good value. It's 35 % less than the MBP yet probably not 35 % worse depending on who you ask, but the MBP is unarguably a significantly better device overall. The MBP's price certainly isn't "insane" in comparison. It's a premium price for a premium device.
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No, you've decided that I just listed the two models and their specs with their respective prices.
For what its worth for most plus points you can give the Mac you conversely give something else to the XPS, for instance
The Macbook has four thunderbolt ports but that is all it has, the XPS has one thunderbolt, two USB 3.1 gen 1 ports, an SD card reader, gigabit ethernet and HDMI.
The Mac has a better trackpad than the XPS but it has a keyboard that a lot of people dislike and its reliability issue means that it can reasonably be described as a selling point, not sure how useful the Touch Bar is either although Touch ID is nice. The XPS is marginally lighter than the 15 inch MBP aswell so that isn't a plus for the Mac. I think many would prefer the Nvidia GPU of the Dell also.
The Mac would be value if it was marginally more expensive the fact that a fully specced out MBP is nearly £1300 more than the equivalent XPS is ridiculous. Fully specced out XPS only £50 more expensive than the base model MacBook Pro 15.
Crazy.
You're forgetting that adding those legacy ports is dead cheap in comparison. It makes the device bulkier though.
Can the XPS even charge via USB PD through its lone Thunderbolt 3 port?
I'm also talking about the things that make the MBP expensive, whether or not one personally might see value in them. The MBP's keyboard for example probably costs a lot more than the XPS's, no matter if you dislike it as a keyboard or not (I for one dislike typing on anything else now, and I've got the 2016 version).
To me, the Touch Bar is great, but it might not be worth the added cost for you. It's an expensive component though which warrants a higher price.
The XPS isn't lighter, at 2 kg it's about 200 grams heavier actually.
Construction and build quality (expensive!) of the MBP are unparalleled, only Razer's offerings come anywhere near. I mean, just look at how the ports are integrated on the XPS, and keep in mind that thing still is a $2000-3000 laptop:
You might not value a clean build & construction (including the interior) as much as I do. In that regard, most current notebooks (even expensive ones like the XPS) are at a level where Apple was 15 years ago, at most.
As I said, you pay a premium if you want a premium device. At £1300 (35 %) less, the XPS is equivalent in the basic specs you named, but that doesn't mean it's an equal device overall. It also doesn't mean it's necessarily worth 35 % less, that will depend on who you ask.
I wouldn't mind lower prices for the MBP, but they certainly don't seem "crazy" to me.
Now if you want to argue it's crazy that the 13" 2017 model without Touch Bar is still offered at the original price, or that the ancient MBA wasn't discontinued or massively reduced when the new one came out, I'm totally with you.
Im not forgetting, I dont care. If Apple made a computer more expensive to produce in the process of removing most of the ports that its customer finds useful then that is just plain ill thought out.
The XPS can charge over Type C, not sure why this is much of a plus to anybody really. On a machine that only has 4 Type C/TB3 it reduces you to three ports when charging though.
Again, if Apple made the computer more expensive adding a butterfly keyboard which is has reliability issues that is plain poor product design decision. The touchbar is completely pointless, they don't offer a fully powered version without it because they know nobody is choosing it.
I do value construction just not at over third extra. Its a professional tool, I'm not wearing it to a party.
Premium device with a badly designed unreliable keyboard that has a repair program out for it?
At no point did I say they were equal I just dont think the Macs (terrible) keyboard, touchbar, removal of all ports apart from USB C/Thubnderbolt 3, SSD Speeds and built quality justify that £1300 premium.
The Touchbar in particular is a completely pointless adornment that everybody could've lived without. In fact you are one of the very few people (outside of Apple PR) claim that the keyboard and touchbar add anything at all.
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That all comes down to what I'm trying to say all along: If you don't see added value in the MBP enough to justify the higher price, that's fine, you're free not to buy it!
However that doesn't mean it's not worth its price, it's just not worth it to you.
By the way with regard to the Touch Bar, remember the people clamoring for an external Magic Keyboard with Touch Bar and Touch ID? That might not be a majority, but they exist.
They do exist but I wonder how many would choose the touchbar given the option of a marginally cheaper model without it. My guess, very few.
Interesting that the touchbar hasn't been added to any of the Macs released since, isn't on the new MBA even though Touch ID is, non of the revisions of the 12 inch Macbook have it and two and a half years on there is still no sign of it on an external keyboard.
A swing and a miss for most I think and I think Apple know that.
Main reason for MB and MBA not having it: It's expensive, and differentiating the MBP.
As for the external keyboard, maybe they don't see enough demand yet, maybe they're concerned about the looks of releasing a USD 350+ external keyboard, maybe they haven't figured out connection yet or power consumption or security, maybe it's something else or all of that, who knows.
What I think the long term vision behind the Touch Bar and ever-growing Force Touch Trackpads is: A large unified touch input area / secondary screen with sophisticated haptic feedback to emulate the feel and precision of physical keys, knobs, sliders and so on, replacing/unifying current keyboards and trackpads.
Perhaps we could see something like that in MBP's as early as 2020? Probably depends on cost and how far advanced Apple's haptic feedback technology has by then.
That might completely revolutionize how we interact with computers. Touch Bar is a humble first step.
The problem I see with the unification of a touch bar is Apple hasn't done anything to actually unify the touchbar on their products.
the Touch bar exists literally on the MacBook Pros. Dock your MBpro closed to use external devices when home and you loose the workflow of the touchbar. There's no 3rd party touchbar keyboards, or even first party. The touchbar therefore becomes a very specific product. ONLY usable on MacBook Pros when being used as a laptop specifically.
I'm honestly not against the Touchbar. I think it would have been great alongside a standard F key row as an additional input, not a replacement.
I think though that Apple themselves seem quite disjointed regarding the touchbar. As I said above, the lack of ANY touchbar outside of the MacBook pro makes it look like they don't even trust it to take off.
I think Apple needed to release 2 seperate lines of MBPros. one with and one without. Every device available with, should also have a SKU without (and cheaper).
However on the "Value" side of things, While some people might think that 2 or 4 USB-C ports > other ports, it's hard to justify the cost of that alone as such a massive variance with competition on the market. Apple doesn't exist in a vacuum by themselves and do need to be price concious enough to be able to compare to the rest of the market.
I had to finally replace my 2011 MBA (I reallllllly stretched it's life out). 2gb RAM and 64gb storage wasn't enough anymore. I need something that I can do some work on (mostly remote these days, so keyboard/mouse, but not necessarily needing a lot of horsepower locally)
I ended up with a laptop that has a 3200x1800 touch screen IPS display, 16gb of RAM, 250gb NVME SSD, proper keyboard. i7-7500u. has Thunderbolt 3, 2xUSB-3.1 and HDMI out. And it was only $1300 CAD. Same specs out of the MBpro (non touchbar) and the MBpro would be $2600 CAD. or 2x the price.
And if you follow the financials and numbers that have come out recently, it looks like pricing of their laptops, while it helped on revenue numbers for a while, have caused the sales of Macs to slow down considerably.
I think what I'm trying to say is that if Apple is having a problem with their higher end pro stuff not moving because people think that there's not enough value there for the price, than they need to offer devices that do have that value. I think the best way would be to release non-touchbar veresions of the MacBook pro that are comparable in performance and featureset of the larger ones, but without the TB and a good $300-400 cheaper. if it is in fact hte touchbar driving those prices so high.
the Touch bar exists literally on the MacBook Pros. Dock your MBpro closed to use external devices when home and you loose the workflow of the touchbar. There's no 3rd party touchbar keyboards, or even first party. The touchbar therefore becomes a very specific product. ONLY usable on MacBook Pros when being used as a laptop specifically.
I'm honestly not against the Touchbar. I think it would have been great alongside a standard F key row as an additional input, not a replacement.
I think though that Apple themselves seem quite disjointed regarding the touchbar. As I said above, the lack of ANY touchbar outside of the MacBook pro makes it look like they don't even trust it to take off.
I think Apple needed to release 2 seperate lines of MBPros. one with and one without. Every device available with, should also have a SKU without (and cheaper).
However on the "Value" side of things, While some people might think that 2 or 4 USB-C ports > other ports, it's hard to justify the cost of that alone as such a massive variance with competition on the market. Apple doesn't exist in a vacuum by themselves and do need to be price concious enough to be able to compare to the rest of the market.
I had to finally replace my 2011 MBA (I reallllllly stretched it's life out). 2gb RAM and 64gb storage wasn't enough anymore. I need something that I can do some work on (mostly remote these days, so keyboard/mouse, but not necessarily needing a lot of horsepower locally)
I ended up with a laptop that has a 3200x1800 touch screen IPS display, 16gb of RAM, 250gb NVME SSD, proper keyboard. i7-7500u. has Thunderbolt 3, 2xUSB-3.1 and HDMI out. And it was only $1300 CAD. Same specs out of the MBpro (non touchbar) and the MBpro would be $2600 CAD. or 2x the price.
And if you follow the financials and numbers that have come out recently, it looks like pricing of their laptops, while it helped on revenue numbers for a while, have caused the sales of Macs to slow down considerably.
I think what I'm trying to say is that if Apple is having a problem with their higher end pro stuff not moving because people think that there's not enough value there for the price, than they need to offer devices that do have that value. I think the best way would be to release non-touchbar veresions of the MacBook pro that are comparable in performance and featureset of the larger ones, but without the TB and a good $300-400 cheaper. if it is in fact hte touchbar driving those prices so high.
I used a WD 256G external SSD and formatted it with APFS.
It's so much faster.
I just opened mine up, inserted an SSD with a cloned copy of my HDD, sealed it all up again and.....brilliant!
Total time do the job - about 35 mins.
Total time do the job - about 35 mins.
I am actually thinking of doing just what you suggested (re: replacing current drive with SSD), but does Apple adding the late 2012 iMac to the vintage list impact the availability of software updates? I was hoping to get a few more years out of this thing, but I don't want to spend the money on the upgrade kit if this is the last year I'll be able to download the latest OS. If the next OS update won't work on this thing, I think it's time to throw in the towel and upgrade (and sell this one while it still has some value).
It's getting harder and harder to afford the upgrades on the Apple products I own (iPhone, iPad, Watch, AirPods, Apple TV, iMac) so I try to extend the life out of what I have when I can!
Any feedback/advice would be appreciated!
Your 2012 imac will be able to run Catalina and any and all updates related to Catalina.
Beyond that, its uncertain/unlikely.
But imo, being able to run catalina or mojave makes any mac good for the next several years.
Personally I have a 2017 imac which will be able to run a few OS’s past catalina, but frankly, I’m staying on Mojave for the foreseeable future ... probably a couple of years.
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Me too. I updated to an SSD a few years back and it has been rock solid. No OS updates after High Sierra though.Getting all I can out of my 2011 iMac with optical CD drive.
It seems that after El Capitan. Apple has pursued a more aggressive approach in deprecating old models. As there was little change from Mountain Lion through El Capitan. Then starting with Sierra. It looks more like they are on a Tick Tock cycle for OS updates and model deprecation.
As Catalina represents the second time the 2012 model iMac is at the minimum requirements. The next version will likely drop support for the 2012 iMac. Then it will probably jump to the 2014 or 2015 model. Although there will still be security patches for a couple years and most software will continue support for a few years.
Who knows. Given their seeming animosity towards nVidia. It could be the next macOS will drop any nVidia models. Along with their Intel only base models. Touting greater Metal integration as a new OS feature.
Maybe they won't drop support. I just find it hard to believe old model Mac's will get another run of four OS revisions. That was more of a fluke. As prior to that great 10.8 to 10.11 run. Previous versions of macOS only kept the base requirements for one or two revisions.