Wrong. The ability to replace parts or with newer versions that work with the machine is considered an ability to upgrade. Just because it's locked into one manufacturer, a few, or many, does not change the fact you can upgrade.
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Teardown of New Mac Pro Reveals Surprising Amount of Accessibility, Circular Daughterboard
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Wrong. The ability to replace parts or with newer versions that work with the machine is considered an ability to upgrade. Just because it's locked into one manufacturer, a few, or many, does not change the fact you can upgrade.
This shouldn't be surprising. The Mac Pro line has always been one of the best designed computers in terms of accessibility. My old G5 was very modular and many of the components could be removed with no tools. Fans were installed in little cradles with handles for you to pull them out. Nice latch that requires no tools to pull the side of the case off and many other nice touches to make pulling the system apart easy.
no.. in short, i'm attempting to point out the glaringly obvious-
- macs are expensive
- they don't sell the computer you all want
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a 'pro-sumer version' would be cool;
That form-factor, with non-workstation Graphics - aimed at cross-fire/SLI gaming - non workstation cpus and a funky colour case - metallic or something; which is basically a MPc as someone called it.
That form-factor, with non-workstation Graphics - aimed at cross-fire/SLI gaming - non workstation cpus and a funky colour case - metallic or something; which is basically a MPc as someone called it.
I think you get a hell of a lot save the GPU with the right configuration. I've got a Quad i7 with dual RAID0 hard drives and 2TB of internal drive space that reads/writes at 280MB/sec with 8GB of ram, dual-monitor support, USB3 and Thunderbolt with Gigabit Ethernet and FW800. Other than a gaming class GPU, what am I missing that I didn't get "much"?
If I had used dual-SSD, the thing would be nearly as fast as a 4-core Mac Pro from the previous year other than graphics and that Mac Pro didn't have USB3 and yet it cost 1/2 the price (just over $1k). I've got a USB3 Blu-Ray drive (got it on sale for only $55 from Memorex via NewEgg) and with VLC I can play commercial Blu-Rays to boot. Frankly, the Mini kicks arse except for GPU thing and I think with an HD5000 it wouldn't be bad for casual gaming. Even the HD4000 plays most games from 2-3 years ago just fine and about half the games from today (i.e. non-first person shooters). I bought it for a server, but I seem to have over 3 dozen games on it not counting emulators (like C64, Amiga, Atari 2600 and Arcade) or VMWare Windows 98 and XP (in which case the number would be high enough I wouldn't want to count them all).
I'm talking about the trend of making stuff small, and non-repairable, regardless of the product,,, so yes, i am surprised something small that you can pick it up easily is also "fully" upgradable..
You don't get much if you're relying on Apple specs. Yes you can add Raid0 SSD/HDD but that means you need to buy and configure them yourself. Then there is RAM you also need to upgrade yourself. It's not particularly awesome out of the box. Hence "you don't get much".
Graphic is actually the only thing that prevents a mobile computer from being a great system or completely replacing good ol' desktop. Mobile CPU is catching up nicely with its desktop counterpart. Add SSD into a mobile system and you're as fast as you can get. But good gfx simply needs more power, something a mobile components could never do. Laptop computer (including Mac Mini) simply have to wait for die shrink in years just to get the same performance of desktop graphic from 3 or 4 years ago.
Yes, they hate fragmentation. That is why you can't have an headless xMac, because the form factor would be no different from a Mac Pro. The entry-level quad-core Mac Pro is all you wished for in an xMac, except price.I thought Apple hates fragmentation?
Deal with it, cheapskate!
No that's a Mac Pro. I've tried it and adding a second hard drive to the Mac mini isn't easy. It is doable, but not easy. Also the Mac mini is vastly overpowered, CPU and GPU are idling all the time. If it had a battery, Apple would have replace that speedy CPU with a slower ULV variant a long time ago. The unnecessary dedicated GPU was replaced with a more suitable integrated GPU anyway. If the Mac mini doesn't meet your personal power requirements, than there is the Mac Pro for you. But if you think the Mac Pro is suddenly too powerful, than you don't really want power anyway. It all comes down to making an honest decision.
No there is nothing in between. To create a truly separate device, that isn't just different for being different, you have to optimize the form factor for another use case. For example, the iPhone isn't the best mobile device for reading websites. One or two inches more wouldn't change that. You have to go the full way to at least 8 inch before you reach a new class of devices with recognizable new capabilities. And only than you have a product that has a right to life for a purpose.
People are buying and selling useless devices all the time. That doesn't matter. People where buying millions of Netbooks and than they vanished. The whole PC industry saw something in Netbooks that wasn't there. The concept was flawed from the beginning and no one realized it for a while.
Product categories only survive when they are the optimal solution to a problem under the constraints of current technology. There is need for high-performance computing and low-performance computing. But nothing in between. You don't want a small and quiet computer and complain about it being too small and too quiet. And you don't want fast and complain about fast.
Admit it, your only fundamental complain about the Mac Pro is it's price. Otherwise it would be perfect as an xMac replacement. But if you want your powerful computer to be also cheap and upgradeable, why look for a Mac and not a PC? Cheap computers exist and they come with drawbacks. Make a decision!
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The theoretical xMac is a computer that uses consumer desktop-level parts... the same type of parts you'd find in the rest of Apple's consumer Mac line. You know... Intel Core i5 and i7 processors... consumer graphics cards... etc. The same parts that come in the iMac... but without the screen.
That does NOT describe the Mac Pro... which is a workstation with Intel Xeon processors and workstation graphics cards.
Yes... I know the xMac doesn't exist... but that doesn't stop people from discussing the xMac.
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Why does Apple offer 2 sizes of iPads... 2 sizes of iMacs... and 3 sizes of laptops?
But 1 size of iPhone is all everyone would ever need?
No, but if everyone imagined their perfect Mac and Apple built them all they'd have a huge number of different computers. Those who weren't too sure on what to buy would have so much choice they'd just become confused. This was one of the things Steve Jobs worked against, and it helped turn the company around.
Lots of people say the MacBook Air and Pro should merge into one, or Apple should make an iPad/MacBook Air hybrid, or that they should add phone capabilities to the iPad mini.
It's seems like Apple has a nice range of devices, each of which are great at specific things. There's no all-rounder.
You missed my words. I said it is NOT MY IDEA of upgradeable. I don't want to pay Apples ridiculous pricing. And it is PROPRIETARY!
No, that describes the Mac mini. Consumer desktop-level parts without a screen. The same dual-core i5 and quad-core i7 and the same integrated IntelHD graphics you'd find in the rest of the lineup. What did you say? That's not your understanding of desktop-level? In Apple's book it is, because there is always something else to optimize for.
See? Even the Mac Pro is constrained by its own limitations. Everything Apple builds is optimized for size, heat and energy. You can never replace a part with something that draws more power, emits more heat or is ever so slightly bigger. Because when you optimize for something, than there is no headroom in any direction. Put a more powerful CPU in the Mac mini and it starts to need a heatsink, a faster spinning fan and a bigger power supply. It all blows up till you have essentially a Mac Pro. Or worse, you could even end up with a tower.
Oh, the xMac exists! You just don't see it, because it is better known under its other name, the Hackintosh. There you have it all, standard non-proprietary desktop-parts, from different vendors at cheap prices, in a big box with a lot of fans. You just have to care for your own driver support. Not happy?
Well you knew, there would be downsides. If you ask for something, you have to give up something in return.
Two sizes for iPhones come at a cost, for developers, for customers, for suppliers, for everyone. Even just offering one more color option comes at a cost. Apple is the one to decide whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
MacBooks come in four different packages, because each form factor generates a whole new product. There are vast performance differences between a quad-core 15-inch rMBP and a dual-core 13-inch rMBP. And there are huge mobility differences between a 11-inch MBA and a 13-inch MBA. In addition windowed OSX apps are not that much optimized for only one screen size as fullscreen iOS apps are. Don't make a mistake, there is only one size of iPad resolution, iPad mini and iPad Air are essentially the same, from a developer viewpoint.
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Nope. That's probably a major reason they are able to support both GPU at x16.
I can think of a couple good reasons. One because at the time you buy the machine it is the "right performance" and those needs go up later. And two, because it is what you can afford at the time, particularly if later the price for the chips has dropped making the total cost much less.
For example, right now I have a mac pro 2009 with eight cores of 2.26Ghz. I can buy a brand new 12 core for $7k. Or I could swap out the CPUs for 12 cores 3.33 for about $2k total. Sure, I may only be getting 90% of the performance improvement ("only" doubling my processing power, most likely) but at under 30% of the cost. So which one of those two choices is the "silly" one? And on top of that, for anyone with a significant investment in PCIe cards?
And you keep missing the point that anyone who starts out with 4 or 6 cores always has the option of going to 8 and 12 cores in that same generation, at prices much lower than they were initially. That's worst case assuming there are no new chips that are socket compatible.
So do I, which is why I've never suggested doing that. You talk about buying a new machine after three years, I'm saying it's nice to have the option of doing a CPU upgrade after three years (and probably for pretty cheap at that point). And doing an upgrade that increases the number of cores is going to give you a hell of a lot bigger upgrade than 10%. On my particular machine I could more than double performance for a fraction of what a new high end MP would cost.
No question that this isn't the optimal time to buy a computer or motherboard if CPU upgrade is a priority, it would be better to jump in at the start of intel's next socket. But even assuming no further chips were released for this socket (which would surprise me), there are perfectly valid justifications for doing a CPU upgrade.
Wow, it's an "obsession" now? Or maybe you're just being a drama queen.
The technology isn't that advanced per say however the motherboard market has been pretty stagnant as far as custom designs are concerned. It's pretty much always a rectangular board since those are easiest to mass manufacture.
Since Apple has the financial capacity to be bold when it wants, it properly kicks markets in the ass in it's ever more efficient designs. I'm happy Apple exists to drive innovation and design in modern technology. They manage to do it without compromise. It's either 100% or nothing.
Since Apple has the financial capacity to be bold when it wants, it properly kicks markets in the ass in it's ever more efficient designs. I'm happy Apple exists to drive innovation and design in modern technology. They manage to do it without compromise. It's either 100% or nothing.
Can't agree. A big part of the problem is the CPU choices in the mini and iMac. If they would switch the mini to desktop parts they could make it a lot more powerful but keep it in the same price range. And even in the case of the iMac, there is a six core i7 available (and only $600) but apple doesn't use it. I assume partly because of heat and partly because they want to minimize overlap between those and the Mac Pro. Maybe Apple likes the gaping hole in their product line, but it's not great for consumers.
If they would beef up the mini so it had the same specs as the iMac (four ram slots across the board), and allow BTO six core i7 in both, that would probably satisfy many of the folks asking for an xMac.
And we likely will see iPhones with larger screens as time goes on. If "phablets" are selling big enough, Apple will make them sooner or later.
Strongly disagree. Part of this design is serviceability but much of it is ease of configuration and assembly. Apple put a LOT of effort into this design. They will swap out newer versions of the various boards but assuming it works as well as they intend, I would expect to see Apple stick with this same basic design for years, same as they did with the cheese grater.
That motto only makes sense for notebooks.
Sure, why not. It's not an unreasonable request. There's a giant gap in the middle of Apple's product line that they could easily fill but don't. It would be like a car company that only sold a one seater Smart car and a giant SUV that seats ten. I'd even argue that intel's six core i7 is some of their best bang for the buck…and it's the one chip that Apple completely ignores.
No, it's that apple really isn't making the computers that user wants. A true midrange machine simply doesn't exist.
Check your facts. The mini maxes out with i7-3720QM which is a mobile chip. IF they ever upgraded the mini to actual desktop parts (and went up to the same spec as the iMac, including ram slots) I would consider that much closer to what people want in xMac.
If you say so. I'm not saying it was the best possible value, but my Mac Mini 2012 Server came configured from the Apple Store I shopped at with the two 1TB drives and 8GB of ram. All I had to do was back it up to my external drive and use Disk Utility to make a RAID0 configuration and then copy back to the RAID0 drive setup (and the external is my backup drive). So, in short, yes my Mac Mini DID come from The Apple Store with that hardware. You can get an SSD installed instead. If you want a dual-SSD, I suppose you would need to buy the adapter and put the second one in, but that's not terribly different from installing a drive in a tower (i.e. the 2012 Mini is simple to open and access the drives and ram).
Which never was the goal anyway. Apple doesn't care for lower prices and they don't maximize for power alone, not even in the Mac Pro.
There is as much overlap between iMac and Mac Pro, as there is between iPhone and iPad, both running on the same A7. The form factors and their respective use cases are different, no matter the chips.
Customers have voted otherwise with their wallet. The Mac business is just as profitable as the whole OEM-PC business combined.
The Mac mini is already beefed up. You can't do more in that form factor. And the traditional desktop is dying anyway. To survive you have to escape to the extremes, Mac mini or Mac Pro. The game is not about silencing critics or filling a demand. That's what Dell does. The goal is to create a combination of qualities no one else can provide. You want to be the only offerer of such a kind of computer, so that no one can deny you that 40% margin. Apple can make anything, except a "normal" computer. You can't charge a premium for something that isn't extraordinary in one way or another.
Apple already asks its third-party developers to create two user interfaces for iOS apps, one for iPhone and one for iPad. Which is already double the amount of work you have to do for an OSX app.
They might change the resolution again, like they did with the taller iPhone 5. Or they might change the hardware to be bigger or smaller, while running at the same resolution. But they will never add a third size of UI to exist between iPhones and iPads. The costs of such a three sizes strategy would outweigh the benefits by a magnitude.
And somehow users keep giving Apple their money despite they don't get what they want.
It is only a mobile chip, if you put it in a laptop. In a Mac mini its a low-heat chip. People don't want xMac, they want Mac Pro but can't afford it. So they fantasize about an imaginary cheap yet powerful dream computer. Apple isn't in the business of making things affordable. Quite the opposite, they are in the business of creating unique experiences and capabilities. An xMac that is not very small, not very fast, not very quiet and not very special at all, is also not worth very much to anyone. Not even to the people who demand it.
Great way to point out exactly the problem with Apple. Instead of designing the product the user actually wants, they invent some sort of "goal" that's totally unrelated.
Nobody wanted a really small desktop computer, just a headless option cheaper than the mac pro. But instead of creating that, they make a machine that sacrifices price and performance for the sake of size, which nobody cared about in the first place.
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that a six core i7 is available but not used by Apple.
Otherwise what? Mac sales are OK but we can only speculate that they are better than they would be with other options available.
Exactly. Which is why it was such a dumb choice to pick such a small form factor.
I do agree that the whole point of the mini is to come up with an excuse to charge more. Some people buy into the contrivance of design for design sake, personally I'd rather get a good value for what I'm paying.
I never said they would. I don't see why they would have to just to make a bigger phone.
Some users. And other users take their money elsewhere. I was ready to buy a new mac years ago and finally gave up and built a hackintosh instead because no mac available was a good fit for me. I wish I could have given Apple that sale but they didn't make it an option.
It is a mobile chip and even Intel says so. If you try and pound nails with your shoe, that doesn't magically make your shoe a hammer.
No, believe it or not I actually would love to have an xMac.
I guess a moderately powerful dream computer, and while it would be entirely realistic for Apple to build it, they're the ones who have taken a practical possibility and turned it into a fantasy.
Sometimes not but I'd argue they have put out a number of products that could be considered affordable based on what they offer for the price, and versus the competition.
Not very fast? Where did you get that from? Fastest iMac is $2200 (and yes, that's the one faster than the mac pro). Even if you pretend that the screen doesn't exist and it's headless, that's a decently fast mac for $2200. Take off the 27 inch screen and change nothing else and shouldn't that save at least a few hundred bucks?
And then go from the i7 quad to i7 six core and that only adds another $300, up to $2500. Even without subtracting out the cost of the screen that's similar CPU performance to the Mac Pro six core for a grand cheaper. And frankly if Apple shipped that it would be special as hell, probably the most special computer Apple has shipped in years.
So don't tell me that decent performance at a decent price is fantasizing. As far as I'm concerned the fantasy is Apple having the opportunity to build a machine that would fly off the shelves (and they could even make their standard markup on!!!) but refusing to do it because they can't figure out how to bolt on a puppy dog and a unicorn.
I swear, it's almost as if every time Apple designs a product at the end they sit down and say, hey this is really great but we have to throw in just one or two goofy design decisions to keep people from being totally happy with it...
Oh wow. The existence of Mac Mini, iMac and MP is a solid fragmentation by itself! Why would it be fragmented to have one, single form-factor along all desktop Mac? It would be a simple, unified design so Apple could just forget about whole complexities of building three desktop products. Instead they focused on ONE kind of product.
Like I said, does iPad with 16GB WiFi physical design is different at all from the one with 128GB LTE? Buying the highest end of iPad doesn't give you anything to differentiate other than storage and cellular despite the fact you're paying almost twice the price. Does that prevent iPads to be profitable?
Oh .. I'm a [cheapskate] who actually can afford to own several Macs which in total costs the same with a hex MP + TBD setup, so this cheapskate doesn't buy the MP because he is not willing to buy a MacPro at such price and configuration.
Only few people buying the mini and iMac for the form-factor alone. They don't actually [love] the philosophy alone. Which Mac desktop do you think sells most? The iMac. Why? It's the cheapest? No. It's practical? No
Because it has the sweet spot between price and performance.
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Or maybe a Mac Pro Mini. It's a Mac Mini but circular, space gray, and has six cores and a single graphics unit. I'd buy that for $1200.
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I would also buy that for $1200.
Oh I see I had been uploading the OS incrementally each year. You would need the Appstore so Lion at least I think.
You may be able to do this...
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-to-install-os-x-mavericks/
or
http://www.macworld.com/article/2056564/how-to-install-mavericks-over-leopard.html
if you must avoid the $20
or don't have/get hold of a family pack or something.http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard
a giant g__a__p? how you figure?
are you talking about a giant gap in user needs/experience/performance or something else entirely?
can you tell me what use you have in which the top mac mini is drastically underpowered and the entry mac pro is drastically overpowered?
where is this giant gap you're speaking of? please explain.
-entry mac mini
-maxed mac mini
-entry mac pro
-base mac pro as designed (6core/d500/16GB)
-well configured mac pro (8+core/d700/etc)
what's missing? how is there no midrange.. of course there's a midrange and all (or- most, by far) usages are covered in the line up.
i get it.. if you don't consider the imac then there's an apparent missing midrange price (jumps from ~$1500 to $3000) but as far as actual performance needs, apple has the bases covered..
(and ignoring the imac as part of the offerings is sort of ridiculous because it truly does fit in there but for sake of argument, i'll leave it out since some people seemingly think it's not to be considered a desktop)
The Mac Mini is slow, noisy, and has not been updated since 2012.
The iMac has a decent CPU, but only mobile graphics, and the display is built in. So it's useless for games, and you're now getting rid of a perfectly good display when you buy a new system. Or you have to replace the machine if you want 4K. (assuming the 2014 iMac gets a 4K display)
The Mac Pro uses workstation-class CPUs, ECC RAM, and dual GPUs. It's basically designed for Final Cut.
A mid-range option would use an LGA1150 CPU (Haswell) up to 32GB of DDR3, and a single gaming-class GPU - preferably Nvidia.
AMD GPUs are best used for OpenCL, and dual GPUs are not great for gaming - especially anything from AMD prior to Hawaii.