It’s not as if a Mac couldn’t support Apple Pencil input. Chromebooks and Windows computers have supported stylus input for ages now.
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Mac Shipments Estimated to Be Down Over 20% While Demand Surges in Q1 2020
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It’s not as if a Mac couldn’t support Apple Pencil input. Chromebooks and Windows computers have supported stylus input for ages now.
Apple could sell more hardware if their software didn't suck so bad.
Catalina should be named Everglades, it's so infested with bugs and crap. Basic bugs. Go into the control panel and start typing in something in the control panel search box. Then it darkens the whole panel and highlights the control panel items that match your search. Ok so far. Now click on one of them. It's stuck in this quasi-dark-light mode with no way to get out of it.
Does anybody at Apple care? Or do they all just do the needful?
Catalina should be named Everglades, it's so infested with bugs and crap. Basic bugs. Go into the control panel and start typing in something in the control panel search box. Then it darkens the whole panel and highlights the control panel items that match your search. Ok so far. Now click on one of them. It's stuck in this quasi-dark-light mode with no way to get out of it.
Does anybody at Apple care? Or do they all just do the needful?
Maybe you need a Mac, but plenty of people here on these very forums are productive and creative on their iPads. As iPadOS grows more useful and competent, the iPad will continue to erode and blur the lines where you need to choose a Mac over an iPad. Apple themselves have held the iPad back as much as they have the Mac at the altar of the iPhone.
I love my MacBook Pro and macOS, and for some tasks, it is still the best or has the least friction, but your view is clearly stuck in 2010, and doesn’t really reflect reality anymore.
Apple will drop prices big time when they go to their own ARM processors and a desktop version of iOS...
Sales will go up because it is like getting a desktop iPhone...
This week's Target Ad is pushing the iPad as your "next computer"... (Apple's marketing obviously).
Target Weekly Ad
weeklyad.target.com
A more competitive price is what Apple needs to fix the catastrophe in its mac lineup and adopt M.2 form factor connector by stop using proprietary storage for the sake of repairability and become less hassle for the customer and Apple.
You can hook up a Wacom to the mac, and I had a Wacom, but then it's just a worse version of iPad's workflow. You are drawing with a stylus but you are looking at your screen. Looking at your screen and writing on your screen is much better. Any stylus based workflow that used to be done on the Mac is simply better on the iPad if you can do it on the iPad. There's no going around this.
It's not whether iPads do everything better than a laptop. That's impossible. But if they can do most of the work you do better than a laptop, then it's just better to carry only an iPad compared to carrying only a laptop. If you can carry both of them at all times, then by all means use the tool better for the job. But then your backpack is getting heavier. And juggling files between more gadgets is always worse.
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The desktop line up ought to go back to an iMac line up under £1000. And Tower above £1000.
Air below £1k. Macbook Pro above £1k.
The quad was nice and easy to understand.
With a nice, affordable 'iMac' style monitor that will go with the tower and the laptops.
There is no guarantee that Apple will not pocket the profits with the move to arm.
Back when Apple were 20% more expensive than the competition. I could rational that. But eg. Mac Mini. You're out a thousand quid...no monitor, k/b, mouse or graphics card? Geeze. And yes. 8 Cores are mainstream now no thanks to Apple and Intel but thanks to AMD.
eg. iPad Pro used to cost £565 here in the UK. Now it's the best part of £1000.
The iPhone is now a £1000 reach. (Not for all models.)
But it shows the shadow of greed has over taken Apple in their quest to keep shareholders and not customers happy.
Selling 8 gigs of ram with hard drive desktops would prove unpopular and integrated crappics (see the Mac Mini 'update') even more so. Who knew?
Azrael.
The iPads are good at what they are primarily intended for. The 'common' 9/10 things we use computers for. I never did like the form factor of laptops. Not very sofa or bed friendly.
Laptops. I just felt they were portable desktops.
And for art? Procreate is breathtaking.
The iPad 12.9 and the Pencil are imposing. Wacom have competition.
I'd like to see a 16 inch iPad Pro though.
Azrael.
Would you care to tell me what I'm looking at here? The statistics you're citing are mostly behind a paywall, and depending on what you're citing, I may agree with you.
That said, while "numbers don't lie," they often don't tell the whole story either.
Whilst Intel haven't done that much in the last 5 years or so, Apple have played along with them putting premiums on top of Intel premiums at the checkout.
Intel didn't force them to use Hard drives in their iMacs. They have SSDs in the Mini and Macbook Air...but not the iMac?
Intel didn't force them to be stingly with 8 gigs of ram and charge a 200£ mark up for another stick of 8 gigs.
Intel didn't stop them from reducing the border on their iMac or improving the cooling in the iMac. They've had two years since the intro of the iMac Pro to bring that benefit to the mainstream iMac. The mini gets a better cooling system...but the iMac still has the thermal fryer for your components.
Intel didn't stop Apple from offering a proper mid tower or jack prices up to 6k for a tower.
Apple's just had two 'non' updates to the Mini (why no 8 core? Why no superior graphics?) and the iPad?
Apple milk their tech these days. The updates are achingly drawn out. Not as fun as they used to be. They're coasting.
Azrael.
No, actually I'm a mathematician.
So I simply write on my iPad. Any of my research or teaching material is done with Pencil.No kidding. :/
All Apple have to do is put a less exotic motherboard, the latest 9900 Intel or AMD cpu 8/12/16 core into a a mid tower with a standard SSD and a Radeon 5700xt for around £2500. It's a trivial thing for Apple to do.
But they want to test how much the mark will bare. With the latest sales figures. They have their answer.
I had to laugh at the 'refurb' prices of the Mac Pro.
Azrael.
Exactly. Way back when in the 6s days, the top model flagship iPhone (6s Plus) was $750 and even before that the Mac Pro (starting at was somewhat attainable to enthusiasts, at $2499 for a base model 2012. Now the Mac Tower PC (Mac Pro and before that, Power Mac G5) starts at $5999 (!) and the flagship iPhone at $999. Apple may need to gut their margins, but they should eliminate all spinning HDDs, and reduce the cost to upgrade RAM. This would make a lot of fiscally conservative users very happy and would make a compelling case to switch. The base model iMac starts at $1099, but thats for the crappy model with a 7th gen mobile CPU and no retina display. How is that worth over a grand??? The MacBook Air used to start at $900, now its $999, but that is a fair increase with all the improvements. But now too many ppl are priced out of Mac, except for buying used.
My grandfather was a prominent mathematician and theoretical physicist, and I myself have a degree in applied mathematics.No, actually I'm a mathematician.
My grandfather used a pen and paper his entire life to do his work, and he used a typewriter to type up his articles and books before sending them to publishers.
You could do the same. You don’t need an iPad or Apple Pencil.
I find that hard to argue with.
Steve Jobs has been gone ten years now (just about.) And you can tell.
Apple have adopted a supply chain, nickle and diming, scrooge the pooch(!) but keep the shareholder's happy mantra. It's profit. It's not about the product. It's about milking the product. Teh sales guys have taken over the product guys. And the 6 year debacle with the Mac Pro tells us that unless, somehow, anybody didn't 'get that.'
The value isn't there in the Mini, the iMac or the Mac Pro.
The Macbook Air isn't so bad.
But in the main, Apple's stores have facilitated a boutique pricing that has been pushed to its limit with £1k metal stands.
You could get two very nice BenQ creative monitors at 4k res'/32 inches for that.
It's very simple. Stop buying.
The last time I bought an iphone was four years ago. The last time I bought an iPad was when Steve was still alive. And the last time I bought an iMac was in 2012.
Steve didn't sell at rock bottom prices. But he was, mostly, in the main, fairly priced.
Tim Cook's Apple is 'something else.' It doesn't have the charm of the Steve Jobs that rocked the G3 towers and the jelly baby iMacs.
M$ aren't the rubbish they used to be. The Surface 2 'iMac' is a natural evolution which Apple could have gone with and the Apple Pencil...a natural creative workstation. But no...still milking a ten year old design.
When M$ went head to head that Winter? It was an inflexion point. An embarrassing with Apple cruelly exposed...as having lost their mojo.
Maybe a kick bottom gaming eMachine iMac will be launched with a jaw dropping 'Apple Art pencil' input screen at this year's WWDC.
Pencil input doesn't mean a multitouch Mac. But I find the Surface 2 very compelling.
Azrael.
Its not Intels fault for doing all the things you mentioned, but it is their fault for overpromising and under-delivering, and stagnating over the past few years. I bet AMD is looking pretty attractive to Apple right now, especially if they could get equivalent performance for lower prices (not that they would pass the savings on to the consumer). The Mac Mini does not have an 8-core and fancy GPUs b/c it is thermally limited. With TB3, users can just use an eGPU. The iMac seriously needs a redesign, or at least thorough update though. It would be nice to see price cuts across the line, especially with all the economic uncertainty, and thus ppl being less willing to spend.
There was a huge run on laptops a couple weeks ago. Businesses were stocking up on laptops to prepare for WFH and you couldn't find a business laptop from HP/Dell/Lenovo to save your life.
Consumers, yes, but at work, the vast majority is still desktops.
I did do this before the iPad. I wrote with pencil on paper and then typed it in Latex on my Mac. But now I'm writing with Apple Pencil into my iPad, so all my writing is always with me all the time. It's amazing. I can use different colors immediately which helps when I work, erasing is much easier and I can use handwriting recognition tools to translate my math symbols directly into Latex code. The whole process is much better now.
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Also don't forget that computers last much longer than before. Upgrading is done less and less. I used my last MBP for 8 years. I don't think I ever used the same Mac for more than 5 years before that one. Computers are faster than our workflows. It's the human that's slowing things down now, not the computer. Of course there are exceptions but you get what I mean.
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It is Apple's fault staying with Intel when there are better options in the market for CPU and GPU (See the Nvidia debacle) But they let politics and profits get in the way of the best product for the consumer.
And yes. That's worked out well for Apple. $$$. *looks. It worked out even better for me. I stopped buying. (Historically, I've spent ten thousand on Apple. I wish I'd kept the money in the bank. Though I did love my Computer Warehouse PPC CLone in 1997. Back when you could still get a £2k tower. Not 'cheap' but not insane at around 6k.)
The Mac Mini was a lazy update. They used to put dedicated graphics in the mini. And boast about it. It's a desktop. Make it a bit taller with a superior heat sink in there. All they had to do was make room for some gpu like the do in the Mac Book Pro which is thinner than the mini. Apple want to give you a bare bones fillet and charge you double.
Sure, an eGPU. Why not. But a chassis is £200 at least. And the Radeon 580 is another hundred or so. It would be easier for Apple to leverage it's design powers to include a dedicated gpu. Or pick AMD's integrated Vega option. The integrated 'crappics' on the Mini are nothing short of a disgrace.
The imac is ten years old as we all know.
Apple have a choice of suppliers and have had a year or so now to take advantage of AMD's superior CPUs. It seems Apple isn't about offering the best cpu deal. They'd rather offer lesser cpus for more money.
Stagnation. They're a 1 trillion dollar company that has capitulated to the 'sales guys.'
Jobs would turn in his grave.
Azrael.
But for you the iPad and Apple Pencil replaced a paper notepad, a regular pencil, and a simple text editor (aka typewriter). Computers were designed to do more than that.
My grandfather would write an algorithm for his mathematical models and my Mom would code it and run it on a mainframe for him. Can you do all of this on the iPad?
Well, again, instead of writing Latex code on my Macbook Pro, which is a computer, I write into the iPad with pencil, use recognition that automatically changes it into Latex code. So iPad replaces Macbook Pro and my paper and pencil.
You can write code on your iPad certainly but I'm not a coder and I don't use my Mac, or my iPad to write code. But an iPad would not be ideal to write code. There are no native compilers running on an iPad as far as I know.
No one argues that the iPad cannot be a replacement for a text editor when you use an external keyboard and a pointing device. It can also be a replacement of a paper notepad and a pencil/pen. Once you go beyond that, the productivity of the iPad follows the laws of diminishing returns. It is a lot easier to work with spreadsheets on a computer, one can’t run a serious compiler on the iPad, system administration of computer systems from the iPad is frustrating, etc.
iPad can certainly replace a computer for most consumers, but it’s far from replacing a computer in most professional applications.
You can be intelligent without having to go to college or be in the creative/content creation business...one of the dumbest statements I’ve read on this forum.