Simples: You describe the fallacies, call out the straw men and explain what details the hand-waving has ignored.
Instead, you're making a classic ad hom argument by attacking me, saying that I'm upset and clouded by emotion.
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Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'
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Simples: You describe the fallacies, call out the straw men and explain what details the hand-waving has ignored.
Instead, you're making a classic ad hom argument by attacking me, saying that I'm upset and clouded by emotion.
No disrespect taken
I know what you mean.That is why I said 'It is a matter of preference'. Windows is certainly not a terrible OS but MacOS is not perfect either. I switch between both on a daily basis and both have their pro's and con's, but both are very usable OS'es. Where one has more user friendliness the other has more flexibility. I just use the tool that fits my purpose best for certain needs.
Point duly noted.Ok, let's have a knock-out coin-tossing tournament: 1024 people pair up, toss a coin and the winner goes through to the next round. After 10 rounds there will be a single winner who has won 10 tosses in succession: that person must be some sort of coin-tossing genius, right?
I guess my issue is more that the majority of Apple-related news seems to be treated with general skepticism here. I get that there are many die-hard Mac users here who are more than a little upset over Apple's apparent neglect of the Mac computer line, and it just seems like that unhappiness has spilled over to just about everything else that Apple has done, is doing, or rumoured to be doing in the future.
It's like so long as the Mac mini isn't updated, Apple could announce the cure for cancer and it would still be received with extreme bitterness and negativity.
The convenient excuse (I find) usually ends up being a variation of the "Apple sheep will buy anything" diatribe. Which is no less frustrating.
The more long-winded answer is that (I believe) Apple is generally misunderstood by the critics, but it's also more unpalatable as it requires the critics to basically acknowledge and admit that they were wrong in their assumptions all along. Which in turn just causes them to double down on their predictions that Apple will one day fail.
And no doubt that Apple will not remain as successful forever, but say Apple falls from grace 10 years from today. Yes, that person might eventually be right, but he would also have been incorrect enough times that in the larger scope of things, he would have been wrong.
The new ones might have faster processors, but they are way less capable out of the box. After the initial investment, you need to spend more money on cables, external devices and adapters to match the standard capabilities of the previous generation of laptops.
The only possible answer is: because Apple doesn't want to.
Failures don't happen overnight. I don't think Apple will "fail" by any means. However, growth wise I think they will plateau eventually unless they start growing their business outside of selling phone hardware. Based on the statista graph that someone posted a few pages back, it's clear it's starting to stagnate. Now of course Tim Cook may verbally say we are "growing", he could mean it in a different context.
Apple news has historically been treated with skepticism because many people are dumbfounded by its popularity despite how limited it is compared to some of its competitors.
I'm well aware of Intel's chips and fabrication struggles, but there are still a serious lack of updates.
-No updated Mac Mini since Haswell, we've had Skylake, Kabylake and Coffee Lake available.
-iMac while relatively up to date (although why no six core Coffee Lake chips?) could do with a redesign, it's a bit embarrassing when Dell is showing them up - those giant bezels are a bit past it.
-Macbook Air needs to die.
-Still selling a hugely expensive Mac Pro with very outdated silicon
I get the strong feeling Apple just doesn't care or isn't focused on Macs anymore. There's a lot they could be doing despite Intel's failures.
I actually agree that iPhone sales are more or less beginning to stagnate. Not necessarily out of any failure on Apple’s part. Just that the high end of the market has become saturated and moving forward, Apple will look at how to better monetise each individual user (eg: pay more for more services and hardware).
That likely means doubling down on wearables as the next area of growth. I can understand why Apple is focusing so much on this area, even if it means neglecting the Mac.
I'm pretty sure that brand loyalty is a major factor: phones, certainly, are as much fashion items as they are tools.
With Macs, there's also the sheer amount of effort required to switch to Windows or Linux - but once you push people past the point where they're prepared to switch, that cuts both ways - you'll have a hard time switching them back. I'd have switched back to Windows over a year ago if my new Surface Book hadn't died within its 30-day money back window, before I'd got comfortable.
Thank you! Too many comments here are blaming Intel for Apple's problems.
You're right... Intel 8th-gen chips have been available for months. And everyone except Apple has shipping laptops with those chips inside.
So what does that say?
It's even less of an excuse for desktop chips. Not only has Intel made regular updates to low-power desktop chips that would be suitable for a refreshed Mac Mini... Intel themselves have jumped into the mini-desktop market with the Intel NUC series.
Meanwhile... the Mac Mini has sat untouched for years. So again... what does that say?
Look... there's no doubt that Intel has run into production issues over the years.
But considering that everyone else seems to update their machines on a fairly regular cadence... but Apple doesn't... the problem points to Apple... not Intel.
The way people blame Intel around here... you'd think HP, Dell, Lenovo and others have been stuck selling Haswell/Broadwell machines for the last few years.
But they haven't. That's just Apple....
Yes, I am going to blame Intel for a part of the lack of updates to Apple hardware.
Intel's troubles with moving to the 10nm prcoess for it's CPUs and backtracking on release dates multiple times, along with it playing fast and loose with what constitutes an "8th Gen" CPU, which are really Kaby Lake CPUs (Kaby Lake-R) and it's 14nm, 14nm+ and 14nm++ aren't Apple's problem per se, but sure do screw around with release schedules. This has been happening since the Broadwell fiasco forced Apple to continue to rely on Haswell as Intel released Skylake before there was enough Broadwell chips to even matter.
Regarding everyone's dismay around the lack of updates at WWDC, I submit the following -
- When the Coffee Lake desktop lineup was launched on October 5th of 2017, Intel did not release all of the CPUs that Apple would need to fill out the 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac lineup. Missing were the Core i5-8500 and i5-8600, which were launched in Q2 of 2018. Apple is not going to update part of the lineup with Coffee Lake and leave some with Kaby Lake, they aren't Dell. Also, see 8-core Coffee Lake-S and Z390 updates rumored for September release below.
- When the Coffee Lake mobile lineup was launched in August of 2017, Intel only released the 15w U-Series CPUs, and those CPUs did not have Iris Graphics, just the standard Intel HD Graphics iGPUs. If Apple does launch 15w U-Series CPUs at all, they will most likely be custom parts with Iris Plus GPUs that Intel has not disclosed yet or the 2017 nTB 13" MacBook Pro will die on the vine with Kaby Lake inside like the 2015 MacBook Air.
- The remainder of the Coffee Lake mobile lineup, the 28w U-Series and th 45w H-Series, were recently launched in April of 2018. These are 4-core and 6-core parts that will find their way into the 13" and 15" Touch Bar MacBook Pros. OEMs are using these CPUs now, but a good mix of Kaby Lake CPUs are also offered, which makes me wonder what supply is looking like currently.
- Intel is on the verge of releasing an 8-core Coffee Lake desktop CPU (Coffee Lake-S), probably to be called the Core i9-8800K, along with a brand new chipset for desktops, the Z390. I am hoping that Apple waited to update the iMac, so that it could implement both the 8-core CPU and the Z390 chipset. Sure, there is some overlap with the entry level iMac Pro, but I think Apple will actually kill the 8-core version of the Pro and add a 22-core version later this year to keep the gap clear.
- Intel released a new Thunderbolt 3 controller (Titan Ridge) in January that Apple better be implementing as Intel stopped selling Alpine Ridge rather abruptly. Titan Ridge adds DisplayPort 1.4 and USB-C host compatibility to Thunderbolt. DisplayPort 1.4 support is crucial for Apple to be able to offer an 8K display for the 2019 Mac Pro. Despite a teardown of the iMac Pro stating that it has two Alpine Ridge TB3 controllers, I am hoping Apple actually implemented Titan Ridge and that a firmware update in 2019 will allow the iMac Pro to use whatever displays Apple actually releases.
- Intel also introduced two new mobile chipsets suitable for a 2018 MacBook Pro refresh, the HM370 and QM370, in April of this year.
- Intel has still not introduced a Coffee Lake version of the 5w Y-Series CPU that would be suitable for the 12" MacBook. At this point, no one knows (or is saying), if Apple will continue using the Y-Series, or if the next version will be Coffee Lake, Cannon Lake or Ice Lake. Needless to say, this is not Apple's fault in any way, shape or form.
- Intel staggered its 8th-Gen launch on purpose to make sure they could get adequate supply into the channel for its OEM partners. Apple may be aggresive with supply chain when it comes to the iPhone, but it has absolute control over it. In contrast, Apple must wait on Intel to have an adequate supply of production CPUs and has to validate them before shipping to the general public.
The lack of updates at WWDC do not upset me in the way that the lack of a Mac mini update do. It is INEXCUSABLE that Apple has left the mini on the vine to rot, when Intel has consistently released NUCs that make the mini look like the dinosaur that it is. The mini should be that entry level computer for those who want to move to the Mac, but don't want or need an iMac or a mobile device. The mini should have mild to wild options and be that tinkerers Mac (removable RAM and upgradeable storage). I would buy a Hades Canyon style Mac mini (Vega 8709G) in a heartbeat.
From everything I have read in this and many other articles on MacRumors, most people in the forums want Apple to build and sell them a "Mac". Not an i-, not a mini and not a Pro. Simply a Mac, a beautiful tower with a variety of Core i5 and i7 options (not X-Series), DDR4 RAM slots, plenty of MacPro 2012 style drive bays, non-proprietary flash storage (standard M.2 NVMe) slots on the board and 3-4 PCIe slots (x16 and x4) for either AMD or NVIDIA GPUs, Thunderbolt 3 and USB Type-A. Mostly, a more expandable and customizable iMac sans display. It would not be that hard to make, but sadly, Apple (Tim Cook, Jony Ive and Phil Schiller) does not have any interest in doing so, or they would have done it by now. That sort of thing is a relic of the past in their eyes. In some ways, it is a relic, but I think they would be very surprised to see just how many relics they sell every quarter if they released one. I know I would.
Great and exhaustive post on the Intel chips. Every year it's the same thing, it takes months for Intel to release all the different SKUs for the new chips and longer to get into volume but the very second they make a press announcement on any of the SKUs or anyone ships any of them everyone here freaks out. The 2016 MBP thread was the embodiment of that. Intel were very late with the HQ chips Apple wanted but, because Dell et al were shipping some other variant it was obviously a clear sign that Apple had abandoned MBPs/Pros. Every damn time.
Agreed. I suspect I might know what’s going on with why they’ve made such a mess of things re. their lineup.
Howver, turning their pro machines into ultrabooks with soldered on SSDs and RAM just to make a thin form factor is inexcusable for a pro product.
And it’s not okay for the iMac either, which has had the ability to upgrade the HDD/SSD and RAM for over a decade.
I mean who sees the back of the computer? It’s as if the entry level iMac has become a computer solely meant for receptions of advertising agencies.
It’s ok for a MacBook, which is the very definition of a boutique computer.
And maybe (maybe!) it’s ok for a Mac mini.
As I’m looking into this more, it’s really clear that Appe is compromising the usefulness of its products with its obsession with making everything that it does as small and as thin as it can.
No pros are asking for Apple to shave off a few mm off its pro products at the expense of power and upgradeability.
Especially when its competitors provide solutions that can be upgraded (mostly by the user) and when Windows is ‘good enough’ now & getting better every 6 months, feature-wise.
Relying on those open source project is a risky track, but I must admit it’s the best bet for cross platform tools to look at, but this will be at the mercy of Metal API (which is not standard and will move as Apple wish) and hope they can keep the project afloat with each major release of OS X. Let’s hope this good work project stay afloat for a long time.
Apple could use any CPU they wanted.
Every other manufacturer does fine by Intel's lineup.
They find what they need to make ultrabooks and workstations and consumer portables.
They ship them on time; not too long after Intel refreshes the lineup.
Only Apple insists on designing using the restrictions you have mentioned above. Result = $5,000 laptops using ancient, objectively bad 7th generation chipsets when everyone else in industry is on the massively faster and more efficient 8th generation.
Intel publishes their release schedule and roadmap well in advance. So it's not like this was surprising to Apple.
And let's remember that Apple ships a tiny quantity of computers. So it's not like there is a supply constraint.
If Dell, Lenovo, and HP can get enough to satisfy their hundreds of millions of enterprise customers, Apple can get enough to satisfy all 12 consumers who are still loyal to the brand. (Since creative pros left a long time ago.)
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OEMs rush out designs based on the new generation as soon as they possibly can because ZOMG 8TH GENERATION INTEL CORE is one of the few differentiators they have. Apple can and do wait on the chip they actually want since macOS and their hardware is what differentiates them.
As for "objectively bad 7th generation chipsets" it's difficult to understand why you even thought that was credible. Suddenly 7th gen is "objectively bad" because something a few percent faster was released two months ago? Any point you may have would be more credibly expressed without the exaggeration and amateur dramatics.
If that 8th-gen processors were octa-core, perhaps someone would have a point. Max RAM capacity is also a point. There should be a 32GB option for hardcore media editors and scientists. 32GB ou even 64GB would be nice to simulate some big data scenarios.
"- Again: If Dell can do this, right now, why can’t Apple?"
EXACTLY
This in a nutshell is what kills the very tenuous "blame Intel" arguments.
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7th generation is objectively bad relative to the 8th generation.
The gains between these two generation are in the order of 50-100%+, depending on the metric.
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/kaby-lake-refresh-8th-gen-vs-7th-gen
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel...aby-Lake-performance-comparison.244318.0.html
https://www.pcgamer.com/intels-8th-gen-processors-deliver-a-huge-jump-in-performance/
I don't see anyone rushing designs to market. Dell and HP are shipping some of the best hardware ever created -- reviewed to be better in most or every way. Literally "the Macbook Pro people want but Apple won't build".
The 8th generation is the same size, but generates less heat and draws less power. So it's effectively drop-in for existing platforms. And we have seen all the tier-1's doing exactly that.
Or, because of its' new power efficiency, better hardware can be built around it. Some vendors have done that as well, and are shipping.
Only Apple has done absolutely nothing and are still selling last year's old, low-performance, power-hungry chips at this year's full price.
I agree that Apple's hardware is differentiating them, but not in the way that they were hoping.
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Great. So when Apple release the MBPs later in the year based on the chips they wanted, that were released just a couple of months ago, you'll be able to agree that they are objectively high performance. Glad we could sort that out.
For the few minutes that a Macbook "Pro" can run at full clock speed before it overheats, I'm sure it will benchmark comparably to its' peers running the exact same chipset:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-macbook-pro-13-non-tb-review.2056971/
It's peers meanwhile presumably have magical cooling solutions that let them run full tilt forever. Because that's totally a thing in laptops.
Well, that's all the proof I needed. I now see the error of my ways. It only took you 2 months and 342 relentlessly negative posts but today you have made a convert.
Stating the truth.
It's possible to cool a mobile processor well enough that it doesn't throttle.
That way a professional can work at full performance all day.
Other manufacturers allow this, Apple doesn't.
I've been posting for >15 years. Watched every keynote live or nearly live since 2001.
Have owned a cube, TiBooks, AlBooks, and MBAs personally.
Mac admin as part of my day job. Have supported every individual Mac and iOS product line released since 1999 except the "garbage can" Mac Pro tube thingy. (And iMac Pro if you count that as its' own line, but who has ever even met one of the 6 people who bought those?)
AAPL holder for a long time too -- not anymore though. I'd rather go to the track.
When Apple was amazing I told people that.
Now that Apple has decided to poop the bed, I tell people that.
Want me to lie? Want me to pretend that everything is fine?
It ain't fine, and the fact that there are 136,000 views and 2023 posts in this thread is your proof.
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Huh? You can easily upgrade/replace the RAM on the non-pro iMac.
The storage, yeah that's more tricky, but if a disk dies on you it is replaceable.
Indeed. I call that Apple's anorexia.
It really makes no sense for pro products, but even for consumer products why sacrifice repairability to win a couple of mms at best?
I am hoping Apple will knock it out of the park this autumn and there will be a collective sigh of relief - including from me.