Apple is lucky that Windows is kind of a disaster, or I feel like switching would be closer to a no-brainer.
This is what keeps me with Apple. I have used Windows all my life and I got sick of the pile of mixed garbage and "sort of works" behaviors. Snow Leopard and an iPhone sold me on the Apple brand. Now Apple is making me regret it. But I despise Windows and Linux is trash to me.
Good stats for those who keep defending Tim Cook as an amazing CEO.
The evidence is starting to mount.
First Apple stops innovating, which then leads to crappy products, and now we see market shares decline... It really is time for him to go!
The board needs to oust him as soon as possible before it's too late!
Who do you think decides on the business direction? The board of directors. Shareholder's profit interests. This is the real problem with most every huge corporation. They become disconnected from their own product and lose all sense of vision while chasing the perpetual growth delusion. Tim Cook's failing is in not dominating the board like Jobs did. He might've been a narcissistic ass or a sociopath, but he was successful enough and had good enough vision for those negative traits to service the consumers when he pushed his vision through the corporate BS.
Apple has always been the esthetically more pleasing alternative with superior operating platform. Windows 10 is catching up though and PC makers are finally starting to put out some seriously elegant looking machines.
Elegance shouldn't stop at "looks". Every sexy new Windows laptop or desktop I've examined in person is flimsy, creaky, noisy, and frail.
Apple really missed an opportunity by ignoring Mac updates year after year. I really wish they would license the Mac technology for another company to sell Macs if they don't feel they have the energy to do it anymore.
I'm on the fence about this. The Mac OS benefits from being built to run on a limited scope of hardware. Windows isn't just a disaster due to itself; it suffers with being expected to cover functionality on millions of pieces of variously incompatible pieces of hardware. The biggest thing that drove me away from building PCs wasn't Windows. It was the voodoo of hardware compatibility and the buck-passing of support.
But I would definitely like to buy a replacement content creation workstation... and apple isn't offering what I want there. I'm definitely not returning to Windows unless Apple actually ceases Mac development.
So, computer sales is down, iPad sales is declining, iPhone sales dropped for first time, iPod is dead, Apple Watch sales probably also declining. Not much of a growth company.
* "are"
More importantly: growth can not be perpetual. Chasing perpetual growth is a delusion of capitalist insanity. What do we get from perpetual growth? Overpopulation and cancer. No economy will EVER support perpetual growth.
it's rough being a mac computer consumer. Corporate doesn't care about even yearly refreshes on each product line. which blows.
At this point, i am considering the next Macbook Pro... but if it isn't what i want... i may go PC. no point in my 100% loyalty. already dual boot.
No corporation is loyal to anyone but themselves. They're not loyal to customers. Hell, they're not even loyal to their nation of origin. There's zero reason for a consumer to show loyalty to a corporation. (same for employees, these days; until corporations discover value in loyalty to their employees, they deserve no loyalty from them)
Doesn't this sort of feel like deja vu? You know back when Steve was fired and Apple walked merrily into the wilderness and got lost?
Yes. I've been seeing this for a long time. I was giving Apple leadership the benefit of the doubt but the shark was jumped at iOS 7. I'm not shouting "doom", but I am shouting "totally lost their vision".
No worries. Their margins are huge compared to any others. I'm a happy shareholder!
Thank you for proving my point about who runs Apple.
Yeah the top-end Skull Canyon Nuc looks like a great contender to the Mac mini, if you don't mind the external power brick.
I PREFER external power bricks.
1. Silent.
2. No heat added to case and computing components.
3. Replaceable without performing surgery on the computer. Often replaceable with third party product.
All computers should use them.
Of course that's what I'm saying. They are not computers in that a pro/power user can use day to day. As a musician, I can't make a studio quality recording even on the iPad Pro. Will it get to the point that I can? Maybe. But in the meantime, I need a traditional computer to do what I do. I suspect I'm not the only person in this boat.
This is where my frustration on waiting for a new Mac Pro comes from. Except, I'm not just waiting for a new music machine. I'm also waiting for a new photography workstation.
I'm currently on my last modern-ish MacBook Pro. It's a 2009 13" that can't be upgraded to Sierra. My 15" died of nvidia GPU heat death a couple years ago and I've been reluctant to push my 13" as hard for risk of GPU failure. I'm poor, and I hate cheap junk, and I hate Windows and PC hardware. So I have been sitting on a "new computer nest egg" for years, waiting for Apple to offer the workstation replacement I need. I cannot afford to buy a new machine every 5 years, let alone the ridiculous 3 years the industry pushes now. I buy once and that it for a long time.
A 15" display is frustrating enough. 13" and smaller is ridiculous, especially with the need to zoom to see your image at 100% and then zoom in to edit it. Retina-resolution is taking way too long to be standard in computers. The Mac Pro should've had it from day one. Even today, Mac Pro and high-ppi is seriously clunky and unreliable. (I can't afford to replace a dead iMac retina if the GPU fails thanks to laptop style components and poor heat dissipation design, and I don't want the fan noise)
I hoped I could do some photography on my iPad Pro (yes, despite being 12.9"; having retina resolution eliminates some zooming). Little did I realize that the thing came with zero support for raw photos. Maybe iOS 10? But what will iOS 10 break for me? Apps? How much more sluggish and buggy will iOS 10 be?
Sick of this.
Using Logic and wave editing tools isn't exactly comfortable on a 15" display, but it's perfectly usable. Not at 13".
So, yeah. With you on the need for a workstation from Apple. Laptop components are not acceptable for workstations (unless you're wealthy enough to buy replacement computers every couple of years, which is environmentally frelled-up).
I see popular musicians on obviously old 08 Macs, if they can get by with that, I am sure you can with anything sold within the last few years. What kind of music are you creating that couldn't be handled by a XEON based Mac Pro with 64 GBs of RAM?
I think for you, it just boils down to a case of you wanting the latest and greatest, nothing wrong with that. At the same time, nothing wrong with Apple hardware over the past two years that could prevent you from doing what you want, because I see musicians using PowerPC based Macs with Cinema displays and they are on Billboard making millions.
Depends on what associated outboard gear (and requisite connections) the musicians are using in their studios, what software they need/want to run (that's why some people still have old PPC machines or are still running Snow Leopard, because of required PPC support), which OS they have vs which one their choice music software supports (want the latest Reaktor? You must upgrade to Mavericks or later)...
The longer you hold off on upgrading, the less you upset your ecosystem. But the consequence is that your software stops being updated and you're eventually forced to upgrade. Once you do that, you're then faced with the likelihood of replacing outboard gear as well because the company that made it has abandoned it and it doesn't work on new OS versions or newer buses ("FireWire to thunderbolt", or "USB 2 to USB 3" works in some cases, but not all). The longer you wait, the more stuff needs replacing. The more stuff that needs replacing, the more likely you are to want to buy into the newest standards so that you can stay with that one machine for a long time again.
Where's thunderbolt 3 or display port 1.3???
Not on Macs.
It also depends on what else they need to do with their machines. For me, I need a music workstation to ALSO be a photography production workstation. Laptop displays aren't large enough and third party display support sucks (and Apple sells no independent Retina display). Mac display options are piss poor unless you can buy a retina iMac (and can afford to replace it when constant heavy GPU and CPU use kills it).
I think the general trend is that there will be less and less updates to the Mac lines from now on. First of all, CPU upgrades are happening less frequently than before, and moreover, each increment is bringing less performance increase now. Hence, even if Apple updates their Mac lines with each CPU refresh from Intel, people will still skip more than before and upgrade less. We get like 5% speed increase with a new line of CPU's from Intel, which is quite irrelevant.
Speed is not the issue. Support for new buses and standalone high-ppi displays IS the issue. Why would you want to buy a machine that lacks either of these when you're a content creator that needs access to vast amounts of high speed external storage, low latency audio devices, and retina-style display capability?
