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If there's no updates this year...
- Thread starter Zellio
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Technically speaking the iMac average days count is being skewed by the mid cycle refresh of part of the line. For instance the late 2014 high end 27" iMac 5K wasn't updated until the Late 2015 update. So that would be 362 days. That puts the current iMac lineup at 82% into it's retail store life cycle when compared to last year.
However if you figure that based on the lack of parts to upgrade the current king of the hill 4GHz 395X variant it might be more like the 2013 release cycle which was 387 days. That would put the iMac at 77% into it's retail store life cycle.
It's not quite as near to the end as the report indicates but it is close enough where I would only suggest making the purchase if you need it. Of course that is my go to answer. I would only ever suggest upgrading when you need to. It's so expensive to keep current on the Mac devices.
However if you figure that based on the lack of parts to upgrade the current king of the hill 4GHz 395X variant it might be more like the 2013 release cycle which was 387 days. That would put the iMac at 77% into it's retail store life cycle.
It's not quite as near to the end as the report indicates but it is close enough where I would only suggest making the purchase if you need it. Of course that is my go to answer. I would only ever suggest upgrading when you need to. It's so expensive to keep current on the Mac devices.
people don't seem to care.. i walked in and couldn't believe how many people were buying MacBooks with the free beats for college offer.
Exactly Apple`s perfect target audience the "uninformed", we as ever here are in a distinct minority...
As for Beats, I would rather a discount and put it towards a decent set of IEM`s, Westone springs to mind. All rather typifies Apple these days, gimmicks, emoji`s & watchbands. Personally I am an Expat in China and I see the opposite with the Apple stores thinning out, even with no price increase here.
Q-6
this is the issue. Enough buy apple doesn't get the message. So we who want a bit more fall under some "bad" categories.
Cat I We are expecting too much and its fine for me category.
Its when you narrow down what they do, or expectations this gets hazy. I surf, use office stuff and play vids they say....Well then yes current offerings are fine for that.
I do data analysis using packages like R, video projects growing in size and complexity from pro res 422 source and dabbling in audio now to fix audio tracks when I can't get it better on site (I can't control bad sound systems in say clubs or bad mixmasters working the dj/sound both).
To which they say well you are special a special case. We aren't...my apple journey started in 2011 when I saw them market mbp for video and audio work...and they had special sites to entice me education wise. This is the mbp in the realm of science education. Even mentioned bioinformatics by name...an area of interest I was studying at the time.
Still does for the video and the audio...but a growing number of us wonder why. Dell and others have been busy in this realm making the pseudo workstation laptops. They have me drooling a bit. NO change by 2019 when this mid 15 I will consider "paid off" in terms of length of service for what I paid....I probably will stop drooling and start owning one of them.
Cat II. we are the apple haters, how dare we criticize apple...
20 years and change in this area. I have seen first hand companies grow and get better by listening to feedback, the criticisms and the attaboys. Some mainstream applications out there I recall with clarity their humbler roots. They were shareware once. Some old bitter vets will remember. Hayes modem still a thing...you could and did order the massive monthly shareware disks via mail (edit: postal mail....you know that man or woman in a blue uniform...drives something called a mail truck I think lol). Since for some...it was easier to have the applications mailed on disk than dl it. 256K warning?...man...I remember envying 56K.
Here is the app demo , please give me $25. Gave the 25, gave them their "man great stuff here but.....this an issue, can you tweak this" mails and posts on support forums as the internet expanded. Overtime some of the made it into the product. Or the uber product that built on me paying old boy/girl a few bucks 20 years ago.
No product at version 1...or version 10 is perfect. Not even apple is that good. ! million users, no legit issues in the user base....that doesn't happen. In IT, hell, in anything.
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My local Apple Store(s) completely sold out of MacBooks with the beats offer. Some could care less if their is a refesh near or not.
I will burn my late 2011 15" mbp if there's no update this year. Unfortunately, I will forever be an Apple laptop sheep, so I'll still end up buying whatever they come up with.
Other then the fact that they are not upgradeable at all MacBooks are amazing machines. If they where no so greedy in making everything soldered in it I'd love them more. Tim has been a bad influence on the company.
While many people are still buying them, falling sales numbers particularly the laptop line show that Apple needs to do something.
It's very simple. Stop soldering everything. Allow the parts to be serviceable again. That dos for all of their lines of machines. Also beef up their OpenGL and Metal to run better. Make games run as best they can on the hardware and then build a gaming machine in a serviceable tower format using desktop grade parts. Provide nVidia graphics and support SLI.
The iOS devices do so well because of games. Embrace it on the Mac and be a welcoming haven from the tyrant Microsoft and their abuse of end users with forced updates and data mining on their Windows 10 machines.
I believe it could a new golden age for Apple.
There WILL be updates "this year".
Count on it.
Bigger question is will they be worthwhile"
Q-6
They will be worthwhile for the vast majority of users, they will provide decent upgrades to the best chips available in their class, the 13 inch rMBP will get the 64mb eDRAM that will give a big boost to the iGPU, the 15 inch will get a new class of dGPU (probably AMD and probably not nearly so different from the NVIDIA that everyone is obsessed with) they will get better battery life and thunderbolt 3, the ability to run 5k screens over one cable and get ddr4 ram up to 32gb.
They will never go back to user upgradeable ram they will probably still use a proprietary SSD interface although NVMe looks inevitable.
If any of this is not what you want from a laptop then you will have one option and that is to buy something else.