Do you think we'll ever get PPC era quality again?

[Project Alice]

So, this has been something that I've noticed over the past could years since I've gotten back into using modern macs.

The first mac I ever had was a tray loading iMac, rev D running 8.6. Then I got a slot loader with Tiger, and a G3 iBook with Tiger. I immediately fell in love with OS X, and even the classic Mac OS. I was coming from using mainly Win XP on a PC that at the time had a fairly quick Athlon XP CPU. I still preferred using the G3s with OS X. This was all in around 2004-2005. Later I daily'ed an iBook G4 until 2013.

Since then I've been through a few different macs, and was never able to afford an intel mac until 2013, I had a MacBook Pro 2,1 2.33Ghz. Mac OS X was still okay, I had it running Lion and Mountain Lion. But the computer itself had a few weird issues that I pretty much blamed on the logicboard. I sold it, and I didn't have another mac again until I got a PowerMac G4 QS, which I still have today (along with a crap load of other PPC macs).

As of now, I have a few intel macs. My daily is a 3,1 Mac Pro 2008 running Mojave. I have three other 2009 Macs that are running High Sierra. Now hardware wise these computers are all pretty solid.. But the operating system.... I have so many problems with Mac OS now that I actually prefer Windows 7, which unfortunately near EOL. I don't like 10 all that well, but it actually compares to "new macOS" in stability. From random crashes, kernel panics here and there that don't pertain to hardware. Ever since mojave, my Mac Pro can't even wake from sleep or even just the display shutting off. It requires a hard-reset. Sure it could be its "unsupported nature". As I type this I'm working on my dads 2012 i7 mini. That thing runs so slow you'd think I had just installed mojave on a G3 somehow. Even he said he was more impressed with the iBook G4 back in the day then he is with his mini.

I feel like I'm rambling on here so I'll try to get to the point. I have a lot of PPC macs, I consider myself a collector at this point. 99% of the PPC macs work. And I use a few of them almost every day. Mainly a sawtooth with Leopard, and a 15" PowerBook G4 with Leopard. They are 100% stable, all the time. I have never had a single problem with a PPC Mac running OS X, other then a few small things over the years. But as it is I consider PPC macs way way more stable. I feel like "macOS" is almost as bad as windows (key word is almost). Which is part of the reason I cling to these PPC macs, aside from the fact they're better looking imo. I think a lot of it is these yearly releases, which I think is the dumbest thing ever. No quality control. They just focus on the next big thing after 6 months, which is what Win 10 does. If I could use Snow Leopard (which is newer than the still-supported Windows 7 btw) then I would use it every day. Unfortunately SL is even harder to use today then PPC macs because of the user base.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Calum2]

I wish

 

[eyoungren]

Apple's concern now is selling as much hardware as they can. I think even, that their focus is more on iDevice than Mac.

Everything is so mass produced now to a much larger market share that they can afford to have a defect ratio that is greater than it was with PowerPC. Additionally, their 'ecosystem' has 'trapped' enough people that they can push out garbage or software with stunted features to keep stringing people along. It's hard to leave this 'system' when your workflow is built around it. And there are few competitors that have offered better or even viable alternatives.

Quality really isn't relevant to Apple anymore, but it helps when your competitors quality is still so far behind that yours is still perceived as decent or good.

Lastly, people have been trained to drop money every so many years because what came before is obsolete. Planned obsolescence may or may not have a part in that, but it's not really significant anyway when your quality is no longer as good as it used to be.

In short, Apple is trading off it's past reputation and using it's software and customer service to keep customers hooked. Apple makes so much damn money it costs them practically nothing to replace computers or devices under warranty.

 

[bobesch]

This is/was my way:
Only PCs up to 2009 (DOS/Win3.1/98SE/XP-pro/7pro)
Currently WinServer'08 network at the office. It's ok as a closed network situation. (And it does cooperate well with my Macs).
Started to use a Mac in 2009.
Tried Linux/Ubuntu (mainly in a VirtualMachine on my Macs, but also on eeePC)
So except from my office-network I'm working with Macs since 2009.
Intel-Macs: starting with Leopard there were some glitches with my hardware (scanner) during transition from Rosetta to Carbon to 64bit, but finally everything worked fine (and my everyday-Mac is a c2duo 15" MacBookPro A1260 with an SSD-drive, which fits all my needs)
PowerPC-Macs: started to pay attention in 2015 after my MBair got stolen. First used as an iBookG4-Beamer-companion. (Then things somehow got out of control for a while ... )
I didn't encounter any trouble with PPC&Leopard/Tiger or IntelMac&Leopard-ElCapitan that felt worse that Windows or kind of restricted like Linux and I'm fond of running Windows 98SE/2k/XP/7 and Linux as a virtual machine on my intel A1260 early-2008 MBP.
At some level it's a matter of RAM and an SSD-harddrive and rebuilding the system from the scratch ...

When it comes to a/my point of view about hardware/OS:
- PPC /w os9/Tiger/Leopard: fine as they are.
- intel Mac:
13" core2duo and i3/5/7 preRetina MacBookPro: reliable (last OSX may range from ElCap to current)
15"/17" preRetina MacBookPro: c2duo are good (OSX up to ElCap). Avoid 2010/11 MBP because of GPU-failure. Mid-2012 non-retina MBP are ok (and quad i7 are pretty fast) and do offer the *LAST* option of swapping the hard-drive for a "cheap" big SSD.

Currently I'm fiddling with Ubuntu/Linux, but so far I didn't find a backup procedure, that does fit my needs.
When it comes to a Mac: "DEVONthink"/OSX is my butter&bread and my workflow and paperless-office.
Win10 currently is no option - except from (maybe) a mandatory new windows-server-version for my business ... I just don't like it anymore and there's nothing I couldn't do with Mac or Linux.

 

[Dronecatcher]

My Mac experience from 2001 has been far more PPC than Intel but I feel the PPC side has been superior in terms of build quality and software reliability/support.

 

[filmbuff]

PowerPC? It was all downhill after the oh-forty.

 

[timidpimpin]

We are in the age of disposable hardware, and I blame the very phone culture that I myself am part of. Once smartphones had been around for a few years, they started becoming cheaper and more disposable. This lowers manufacturing costs, and also gets more money from the customer by selling them a product that isn't exactly built for longevity quite often.

This concept started getting into Macs and many PC's by having things that should be expandable soldered. A computer like that is essentially a big phone, as that's exactly how that hardware is built also.

 

[z970]

You just described 70% of all current Mac users' experiences and opinions. Myself included.

Just the other day, I was helping my father upgrade his iMac to macOS Mojave.

Now, he's got multiple partitions with multiple versions of OS X on them. All formatted as HFS+. When you upgrade to Mojave on an SSD or a fusion drive (which he's got), the installer automatically partitions the filesystem as APFS and does not take the liberty of telling you anything about it, or allow you any way at all to turn off this ""feature"".

The problem with this, is that APFS was introduced in 10.13, in 2017, and Apple did not bother to update any previous OSes with APFS compatibility in doing so. Not only that, Windows (to my knowledge) is not able to see APFS partitions, Linux distributions (at least until the mainline kernel gets a patch) are not able to see APFS partitions, and of course anything older than High Sierra is not able to see APFS partitions, locally or over the network.

So, we install Mojave, and of course we're oblivious to the fact that it uses APFS thanks to the programmed lack of displayed notices. We boot into it, configure some things, boot back into an HFS+ OS for some reason via Startup Disk, and we get the nasty surprise right out of the blue, that the Mojave partition is completely gone, as if it was a Linux drive (which Apple also purposely chooses not to be compatible with).

Because he needs to transfer data between partitions, this was a brick wall that would always inevitably get in the way. So because no version of Disk Utility prior to 10.13 is able to see APFS drives, we could not delete it and start over (thanks, Apple).

After getting the idea to use my elementary OS thumb drive to boot into the live environment and try deleting the partition that way, GParted did not explicitly recognize the APFS formatted partition, but it still saw it nonetheless and we were able to take it out, reformat it as fat32 (which is something any version of Disk Utility CAN see), and boot back into HFS+ OS X to reformat it to HFS+, or, OS X Extended (Journaled). This is not the first time Linux has saved my @$$ (and his, most of all), and it certainly won't be the last.

Following a heavy bout of thinking, researching, cursing, and frustration, we eventually found out that High Sierra did not cut off all ways to turn off APFS conversion, unlike Mojave. Long story short, we ended up using a terminal command (and a few other accompanying parameters) to launch the command line High Sierra installer without converting the drive to APFS.

After it was installed and confirmed working under HFS+, we were finally able to put it away, which was good because it ate up a great chunk of our day. Though he did miss dark mode. (something many Linux distributions have had for years)

I don't know what he's going to do once High Sierra enters EOL, and he's forced to deal with the APFS brick wall one way or another. It also does not help that said date is now fast approaching given Apple's limit of a 3 year maximum OS support period since Lion, which was also the first OS to axe custom installations offered in Snow Leopard and below, which if still alive could have saved us and millions of other people a lot of trouble.

-

Neither he or I can believe that Apple implementing APFS without driver updates for older releases went by with as little outcry as it did, and completely furthers the notion that Apple customers (or at least the iOS crowd) are totally complicit with the idea of "Apple knows how to do your computer better than you".

...What else can you expect from technically illiterate people that live for Snapchat on their iPhone Xes (Apple's primary market)...

I suspect I'm widely-regarded in these forums as heavily obnoxious for continuing to spout the same statements (even though 90% of a forum's purpose is to offer user opinion and experience), but I will say that I genuinely have not felt as much anger or frustration with any OS as much as OS X 10.9+. I've never actively fought any operating system, which includes even Windows 10, as much as I have any Apple branded operating system newer than 2013. And I've never been happier with my machines (even the PowerPCs) ever since I jumped ship on OS X in April 2018 to a system that gives me the respect I deserve as the user I am.

That is all.

 

[timidpimpin]

Sadly... the only real way to have a more PowerPC era experience with modern hardware is to build a Hackintosh. That way you can buy quality parts and put them in a quality case.

It's the perfect mix really... the selection and expansion of a DIY system along with running a Mac OS. I don't need an Apple logo on my hardware. I only need it on my OS.

At the moment I'm contemplating buying a 2018 Mac Mini or building a Hackintosh.

 

[weckart]

and of course anything older than High Sierra is not able to see APFS partitions, locally or over the network.

Sierra actually can and does up to a point, as I found out and a lot of people stuck with that because they found HS buggier. Otherwise, Paragon offered a free driver for read access for El Cap and Yosemite

https://www.paragon-software.com/business/apfs-kit-mac

which it replaced with this

an APFS to HFS+ converter, including system volumes for those with installer's remorse.

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/apfs-hfs-converter

and still offers a paid driver for R/W access for Windows

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/apfs-windows

 

[Project Alice]

Sadly... the only real way to have a more PowerPC era experience with modern hardware is to build a Hackintosh. That way you can buy quality parts and put them in a quality case.

It's the perfect mix really... the selection and expansion of a DIY system along with running a Mac OS. I don't need an Apple logo on my hardware. I only need it on my OS.

At the moment I'm contemplating buying a 2018 Mac Mini or building a Hackintosh.

True to a point. I had a hackintosh for awhile, it was when Mountain Lion was new. ML was one of the OSes I still liked a lot. I think this yearly release thing makes that harder too. And apple doesn't support their OS worth a crap. And then the main browsers drop out soon after. I mean cmon its easier for me to run a current browser on XP then it is just snow leopard. Luckily for the older Macs we can always fall back to Windows or linux because of that.. It's just, what's the point of owning a Mac at that point?

You just described 70% of all current Mac users' experiences and opinions. Myself included.

Just the other day, I was helping my father upgrade his iMac to macOS Mojave.

Now, he's got multiple partitions with multiple versions of OS X on them. All formatted as HFS+. When you upgrade to Mojave on an SSD or a fusion drive (which he's got), the installer automatically partitions the filesystem as APFS and does not take the liberty of telling you anything about it, or allow you any way at all to turn off this ""feature"".

The problem with this, is that APFS was introduced in 10.13, in 2017, and Apple did not bother to update any previous OSes with APFS compatibility in doing so. Not only that, Windows (to my knowledge) is not able to see APFS partitions, Linux distributions (at least until the mainline kernel gets a patch) are not able to see APFS partitions, and of course anything older than High Sierra is not able to see APFS partitions, locally or over the network.

So, we install Mojave, and of course we're oblivious to the fact that it uses APFS thanks to the programmed lack of displayed notices. We boot into it, configure some things, boot back into an HFS+ OS for some reason via Startup Disk, and we get the nasty surprise right out of the blue, that the Mojave partition is completely gone, as if it was a Linux drive (which Apple also purposely chooses not to be compatible with).

Because he needs to transfer data between partitions, this was a brick wall that would always inevitably get in the way. So because no version of Disk Utility prior to 10.13 is able to see APFS drives, we could not delete it and start over (thanks, Apple).

After getting the idea to use my elementary OS thumb drive to boot into the live environment and try deleting the partition that way, GParted did not explicitly recognize the APFS formatted partition, but it still saw it nonetheless and we were able to take it out, reformat it as fat32 (which is something any version of Disk Utility CAN see), and boot back into HFS+ OS X to reformat it to HFS+, or, OS X Extended (Journaled). This is not the first time Linux has saved my @$$ (and his, most of all), and it certainly won't be the last.

Following a heavy bout of thinking, researching, cursing, and frustration, we eventually found out that High Sierra did not cut off all ways to turn off APFS conversion, unlike Mojave. Long story short, we ended up using a terminal command (and a few other accompanying parameters) to launch the command line High Sierra installer without converting the drive to APFS.

After it was installed and confirmed working under HFS+, we were finally able to put it away, which was good because it ate up a great chunk of our day. Though he did miss dark mode. (something many Linux distributions have had for years)

I don't know what he's going to do once High Sierra enters EOL, and he's forced to deal with the APFS brick wall one way or another. It also does not help that said date is now fast approaching given Apple's limit of a 3 year maximum OS support period since Lion, which was also the first OS to axe custom installations offered in Snow Leopard and below, which if still alive could have saved us and millions of other people a lot of trouble.

-

Neither he or I can believe that Apple implementing APFS without driver updates for older releases went by with as little outcry as it did, and completely furthers the notion that Apple customers (or at least the iOS crowd) are totally complicit with the idea of "Apple knows how to do your computer better than you".

...What else can you expect from technically illiterate people that live for Snapchat on their iPhone Xes (Apple's primary market)...

I suspect I'm widely-regarded in these forums as heavily obnoxious for continuing to spout the same statements (even though 90% of a forum's purpose is to offer user opinion and experience), but I will say that I genuinely have not felt as much anger or frustration with any OS as much as OS X 10.9+. I've never actively fought any operating system, which includes even Windows 10, as much as I have any Apple branded operating system newer than 2013. And I've never been happier with my machines (even the PowerPCs) ever since I jumped ship on OS X in April 2018 to a system that gives me the respect I deserve as the user I am.

That is all.

Looks like you have pretty much the exact mindset as I do. I don't have any issue with APFS, though. Though my main Mac is a Mac Pro, which has billions of ports and a total of 5 internal (2 APFS, 2 HFS+, and one is Windows). drives that cross platform integration isn't an issue on that. I keep an external hard drive around that's got HFS+ on one partition and exFAT on another for near seamless PPC Mac, intel Mac, and windows integration. As someone else said above Sierra 10.12 can use APFS, it just won't tell you that directly. You can format it from the command line, and they'll automatically mount.

 

[Traace]

APFS is also a container.

In fact I have a APFS container that contains several ext4 & swap linux partitions. I use clover (that has APFS EFI drivers) to boot into GRUB and start linux with it.

Ofc you can also read/write to other partition inside a APFS container from linux. as @z970mp mention there is no drivers inside the kernel.
But there is a user-land driver already: https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse
I'm using that and it works.

Edit: apfs-fuse is read only. sorry. But you can still mount r/w ext4 or whatever inside a APFS container just fine

 

[eyoungren]

Neither he or I can believe that Apple implementing APFS without driver updates for older releases went by with as little outcry as it did, and completely furthers the notion that Apple customers (or at least the iOS crowd) are totally complicit with the idea of "Apple knows how to do your computer better than you".

...What else can you expect from technically illiterate people that live for Snapchat on their iPhone Xes (Apple's primary market)...

You've identified a certain quality of the modern Apple customer/tech user. These people want instant gratification. They don't want to think about the tech they are using, they don't want to engage with it beyond what they are forced or required to know and they just don't want to be bothered with how to use it. In fact, if they could get away with not having to think about it at all they would much prefer that.

Apple caters to this and it's why they remain popular. As long as customers aren't willing to open the box, Apple can do whatever the hell it wants inside the sealed box as long as it benefits the customer.

I detest this sort of person for a variety of reasons, but suffice it to say that thinking seems to be anathema to them. And that is the customer Apple wants.

Apple is now the PC in the 1984 commercial.

 

[Amethyst1]

We might get PPC quality again...

 

[AL1630]

I think the problem is that people want Apple devices and won't settle anything else, to the point of making fun of people for using android. Because of this Apple can release a product of questionable quality and people will still buy it.

Modern tech culture also says that you have to have the latest devices, the result being that people replace their devices every couple years, either because it's already 'old' or because something is broken. When I hold a PPC laptop, it feels a LOT more rugged than the MacBooks at the Apple store. Those feel fragile and easy to damage.

As long as people keep buying and loving Apple the way they do now, we probably won't ever see a return to late 90s - early 2000s product quality. In fact, I would expect even more disposable type products like Airpods, which see a noticeable decline in battery life (non-replaceable) after a year or two if the reports here are right.

For me, there's no point in having brand new technology that costs hundreds or thousands when I can buy an older device that works 90% as well for 25% of the price.

 

[eyoungren]

I think the problem is that people want Apple devices and won't settle anything else, to the point of making fun of people for using android. Because of this Apple can release a product of questionable quality and people will still buy it.

There is some truth in that.

I was involved in a thread here on the iPhone forum. The OP was complaining that the Apple silicone case was garbage. Eventually it came out that given the choice between a quality third party product or garbage from Apple, he would choose Apple garbage every time. He would only buy Apple and the fact that the product was garbage didn't matter because it had an Apple logo on it.

I would argue though that there are less of these people (at least in the iPhone forum) then there used to be. So many people are hanging on to older iDevices now. Lately the argument has been that the device is a tool, not a status symbol.

Not sure how that's going to affect Apple over the long run though. All they have to do is reduce their prices and the throwaway aspect of technology will continue.

 

[Raging Dufus]

Apple is now the PC in the 1984 commercial.

Damn, what a burn! Your comment is not getting the appreciation it deserves, perhaps because many here are simply not old enough to appreciate it. Spot on.

Apple as we now know it will likely fade from the scene. There are indications that the company is shifting its focus to be more service-oriented, which likely means even less development on the hardware front; and perhaps an emphasis towards serving a broader market on the software front. Given the lack of attention they've paid to the Mac, it wouldn't surprise me if at some point in the future they simply stopped producing new versions of the Mac OS altogether. The linked article makes it look like they're preparing to diminish their iPhone business in favor of becoming a service-oriented company.

This is just the normal progression of business. It reminds me of the transition of Sega from being a top-notch game console producer to being only a game publisher (which again you'd have to be of a certain age to remember). There was a time when Sega consoles were the best gaming hardware one could buy, and they even outsold Nintendo for a while. But they made a few missteps, the market caught up to them, and they abandoned the hardware business. They're still around and successful, but bear little resemblance to what they were in their late 80's/early 90's heyday.

Assuming that smart devices don't take over the world and push traditional computers out of the way entirely, I think it's reasonable that somebody will rise to fill the vacuum Apple leaves behind it. The software could come from somewhere in the Linux space; and it's heartening on the hardware front to see things like Raptor's Talos and Blackbird desktop systems, and the PowerPC notebook project. People may scoff, but Apple itself had much humbler beginnings.

 

[z970]

Sierra actually can and does up to a point, as I found out and a lot of people stuck with that because they found HS buggier. Otherwise, Paragon offered a free driver for read access for El Cap and Yosemite

https://www.paragon-software.com/business/apfs-kit-mac

which it replaced with this

an APFS to HFS+ converter, including system volumes for those with installer's remorse.

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/apfs-hfs-converter

and still offers a paid driver for R/W access for Windows

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/apfs-windows

Yeah... I suspected Sierra might know a little more about APFS than El Capitan or older.

I just left it out to be sure. I was mainly going off of memory, and I may have mixed Sierra with High Sierra at some points.
[doublepost=1550530307][/doublepost]

You've identified a certain quality of the modern Apple customer/tech user. These people want instant gratification. They don't want to think about the tech they are using, they don't want to engage with it beyond what they are forced or required to know and they just don't want to be bothered with how to use it. In fact, if they could get away with not having to think about it at all they would much prefer that.

Apple caters to this and it's why they remain popular. As long as customers aren't willing to open the box, Apple can do whatever the hell it wants inside the sealed box as long as it benefits the customer.

I detest this sort of person for a variety of reasons, but suffice it to say that thinking seems to be anathema to them. And that is the customer Apple wants.

Apple is now the PC in the 1984 commercial.

I'm glad I joined this forum and I get to talk with you people.

Some very insightful folks around here. And some smart youngsters, I must add.
[doublepost=1550530807][/doublepost]

Assuming that smart devices don't take over the world and push traditional computers out of the way entirely, I think it's reasonable that somebody will rise to fill the vacuum Apple leaves behind it. The software could come from somewhere in the Linux space; and it's heartening on the hardware front to see things like Raptor's Talos and Blackbird desktop systems, and the PowerPC notebook project. People may scoff, but Apple itself had much humbler beginnings.

I have to check out the PowerPC notebook project. I used to have the inclination that my next laptop would be ARM-based (I would have invested in the Pinebook, but I heavily suspect they're China-based...), but the viable and supported options are slim to none, based on what I've seen. Though I would prefer a POWER derivative over ARM, in any case.

 

[Project Alice]

Adding fuel to the fire, I just made this thread (I'm pretty annoyed because I've been working on this for 2 hours now). Seems that something as simple as copying some files over to another device has been botched by apple now.

 

[2984839]

Unfortunately we are the exact opposite of Apple's marketing targets, and frankly, it makes no sense for Apple to build things for us. We don't want to throw out our laptop in 2 years and I suspect most of us want control over the hardware, not a severely limited, glued-together device that can't be repaired and relies on subscriptions for all of its functionality. That's not going to make them much money.
[doublepost=1550539632][/doublepost]

This is/was my way:
Only PCs up to 2009 (DOS/Win3.1/98SE/XP-pro/7pro)
Currently WinServer'08 network at the office. It's ok as a closed network situation. (And it does cooperate well with my Macs).
Started to use a Mac in 2009.
Tried Linux/Ubuntu (mainly in a VirtualMachine on my Macs, but also on eeePC)
So except from my office-network I'm working with Macs since 2009.
Intel-Macs: starting with Leopard there were some glitches with my hardware (scanner) during transition from Rosetta to Carbon to 64bit, but finally everything worked fine (and my everyday-Mac is a c2duo 15" MacBookPro A1260 with an SSD-drive, which fits all my needs)
PowerPC-Macs: started to pay attention in 2015 after my MBair got stolen. First used as an iBookG4-Beamer-companion. (Then things somehow got out of control for a while ... )
I didn't encounter any trouble with PPC&Leopard/Tiger or IntelMac&Leopard-ElCapitan that felt worse that Windows or kind of restricted like Linux and I'm fond of running Windows 98SE/2k/XP/7 and Linux as a virtual machine on my intel A1260 early-2008 MBP.
At some level it's a matter of RAM and an SSD-harddrive and rebuilding the system from the scratch ...

When it comes to a/my point of view about hardware/OS:
- PPC /w os9/Tiger/Leopard: fine as they are.
- intel Mac:
13" core2duo and i3/5/7 preRetina MacBookPro: reliable (last OSX may range from ElCap to current)
15"/17" preRetina MacBookPro: c2duo are good (OSX up to ElCap). Avoid 2010/11 MBP because of GPU-failure. Mid-2012 non-retina MBP are ok (and quad i7 are pretty fast) and do offer the *LAST* option of swapping the hard-drive for a "cheap" big SSD.

Currently I'm fiddling with Ubuntu/Linux, but so far I didn't find a backup procedure, that does fit my needs.
When it comes to a Mac: "DEVONthink"/OSX is my butter&bread and my workflow and paperless-office.
Win10 currently is no option - except from (maybe) a mandatory new windows-server-version for my business ... I just don't like it anymore and there's nothing I couldn't do with Mac or Linux.

I generally agree with this list.

The 2012 non-Retina is probably the last good one. I had a 2011 13" MBP (non-AMD GPU) that I liked. It was fast, it had the ports that I needed, and everything could be replaced if necessary. I have a 15" mid-2014 Retina MBP which is nice but it lacks ethernet, which is turning into a real problem for my job (I outright refuse to carry around/lose adapters).

 

[timidpimpin]

How about this as a first Hackintosh.

 

[z970]

Unfortunately we are the exact opposite of Apple's marketing targets, and frankly, it makes no sense for Apple to build things for us. We don't want to throw out our laptop in 2 years and I suspect most of us want control over the hardware, not a severely limited, glued-together device that can't be repaired and relies on subscriptions for all of its functionality. That's not going to make them much money.

You couldn't have put the situation better, my friend.

People are only still buying Apple products and are only currently in the ecosystem because they fell in love in the PPC days. Absolutely nobody is still actively moving to Apple and feeling satisfied with their decision aside from the previously mentioned modern Apple user that does not want to know anything about their computer.

People who moved to Apple in the PPC days did so because they were innovative, and produced superior computing solutions that were heads over tails better than anything else available on the market. Then they unknowingly got trapped in the ecosystem and are not only getting increasingly frustrated with Apple's business decisions, they are also finding it exceedingly difficult to move on and away, what with their iTunes Libraries, iTunes Movies, iMessages, iApps, application-dependent documents and data, etc...

As it happens, my father fits in this category of p!ssed off Apple users very well.

I don't see anybody who hates what Apple is doing now to continue to remain on the Apple ship past 2020. Their totalitarianism also goes far beyond technology, if you do a couple searches.

 

[B S Magnet]

Unfortunately we are the exact opposite of Apple's marketing targets, and frankly, it makes no sense for Apple to build things for us. We don't want to throw out our laptop in 2 years and I suspect most of us want control over the hardware, not a severely limited, glued-together device that can't be repaired and relies on subscriptions for all of its functionality. That's not going to make them much money.

Perhaps, but one could just as effectively evince a case that Apple’s approach for durable products and aptly-supported operating platforms are core principles that enabled them to make enough money to begin with to gain a footing onto which they could abandon those core principles for those which they have since embraced.

 

[mryingster]

Sadly... the only real way to have a more PowerPC era experience with modern hardware is to build a Hackintosh. That way you can buy quality parts and put them in a quality case.

It's the perfect mix really... the selection and expansion of a DIY system along with running a Mac OS. I don't need an Apple logo on my hardware. I only need it on my OS.

At the moment I'm contemplating buying a 2018 Mac Mini or building a Hackintosh.

I'm at the same crossroad. I've been holding on, waiting for a new MacMini, and I'm pretty satisfied with what we got from Apple and the new MacMini, excepting for the soldered on SSD, and I am hesitant with the T2 security chip. The hackintosh route will get me what I actually want, but it's also adding in just a little bit more hassle everytime I need to do an OS update and hope that nothing breaks.

I'm only here for the OS. Hardware-wise, Apple sells nothing I actually want.

 

[2984839]

Perhaps, but one could just as effectively evince a case that Apple’s approach for durable products and aptly-supported operating platforms are core principles that enabled them to make enough money to begin with to gain a footing onto which they could abandon those core principles for those which they have since embraced.

I agree that this is why Apple became big. But that was when Apple was a niche brand competing against the titans and it made sense to market to professionals with quality, high-end gear. The success of the iPod and iPhone really changed them. They realized they can make a lot more money by targeting the public, and subsequently dumbed down their hardware and software to match this shift in strategy. By this point, this was possible because they had become a cult thanks to the iDevices and the public has never cared about soldered-on components, port selection, or durability anyway.