Tim Cook: Apple 'Spending an Enormous Amount' on 'Macs of the Future'

[NT1440]

They did a great job the first couple of times, then they yanked the rug out by abruptly removing PPC emulation in Lion. That cost some of us a lot of money. After that I'm not sure I totally trust Apple to transition to another hardware architecture without inflicting some pain on users.

Uh, it wasn't much of a sudden removal. Anyone with a developer ID and looked into it could see that the upcoming release did not include Rosetta, if I recall correctly it was even mentioned onstage at WWDC. What business are you in that you are forced to adopt a new operating system without even researching if it has the technologies needed for the job?

 

[cgsnipinva]

Stop being deliberately obtuse. You know very well what the poster meant is a machine:

• That does not have a built in monitor.
• Has a discrete graphics card that is user upgradeable after purchase.

I'll even leave off the PCI expansion slot business that normally is part of this type of request.

They want a machine that is a regular desktop computer but without the expensive professional graphics cards, Server processor, or ECC RAM the new Mac Pro has. The iMac is not a traditional desktop computer, it's an All-in-One (i.e. a laptop computer built on the back of a monitor too big to be portable). The main market for the AIO is consumers who would be perfectly suited with a laptop performance-wise, but don't really plan on taking the computer anywhere to start with. It also has the added benefits of being easy to set up since you don't have to connect the computer and other components together (it's pretty much the same as the original iMac in this regard), and it takes up less space than a desktop machine. It's an "appliance computer", a "mom computer", but it's not a replacement for what the poster is asking for.

I like it when folks try to pretend this type of machine has no market simply because Apple does not offer it. A desktop mini-tower is the most popular form factor of Windows PC, which is still what 80%+ of people are buying when it comes to computers. Stop trying to explain away this form factor's popularity and funnel these users into a Mac Mini, or an iMac, instead claiming that it's the machine they really want. It's not. And to say otherwise makes you look like a bunch of kool-aid drinkers with no balls to ask for what you really want in a PC because Apple must Know Best.

I would agree. I think that could be achieved with the Mac Mini with a discrete graphics card. I love my Mac Mini but a boost in power and capacity would be great. With modern components shrinking ever more you could squeeze more power into the current form factor.

 

[Larry-K]

The architectural shifts executed by Apple have been insanely smooth. What's your beef?

You and I clearly have a different idea of what insanely smooth is, although I would never coin such a phrase.

 

[FoxMcCloud]

I can imagine them reusing the Mac Pro design but as simply a Mac. Single gfx, standard ram, standard CPU. Those 3 things would drop the price to like £500 easy.

 

[MWPULSE]

Apple had too many products that no one was buying. Apple still doesn't make that many products:

MP3 Players
Phones
Desktops
Laptops
Apple TV
Wireless Routers/Backup
Tablets

It's a pretty tight ecosystem, with room to grow. Even if Apple makes the iWatch and a full-size Apple TV, that's only two more products, which only serve to augment what they're already doing. They're not out there trying to build printers or stand-alone cameras. And they don't leave failing products on the market.

If I remember they were making printers and cameras in this same timeframe. Along with all manner of things computing. (the 17" is obviously one of those failing products. They didn't see much revenue stream from it...maybe they will bring it back though! Who knows)

I think the ecosystem they have atm is perfect in terms of size, they can add things like TV's and watches if they wish. I always try and imagine a home with an Apple centric system. Airport express, wireless lighting, and a smart watch with voiceover. Macs that are sync'ed to the TV to play movies and such like via the home network.

Some of those things are already possible!

 

[IJ Reilly]

Uh, it wasn't much of a sudden removal. Anyone with a developer ID and looked into it could see that the upcoming release did not include Rosetta, if I recall correctly it was even mentioned onstage at WWDC. What business are you in that you are forced to adopt a new operating system without even researching if it has the technologies needed for the job?

Uh, it was... for the vast majority of users who aren't developers. What this did is force me to stick with Snow Leopard for many years, which totally fouled me up when MobileMe was dropped at the same time, and I lost a bunch of services I'd used for years. They didn't even cushion the blow by supporting iCloud in Snow Leopard. A huge mess.

 

[fullauto]

Pleeeeeeeeeeeease give us a prosumer version of the new Mac Pro with an i7 and Radions!

A mac pro-like mini would be awesome.

If they made new iMacs that were Mac Pro-like, components in the weighty cylindrical base with thin & lightweight adjustable / pull-down retina display, touch enabled with digitiser, MagSafe apple light-pen, wireless charging for pen / keyboard, trackpad & mouse, touch ID, Siri.. Nom nom nom

 

[whitedragon101]

The 17" can hardly be called a halo product, as it is one of the most expensive products in the line-up.

I'm not sure there is a real definition of "halo", but realistically these are cheaper products that serve as a stepping point to the more expensive products in the product line: iPod -> MacBook -> iMac.

In general a halo product is one which improves the brand or product image of the company and hopefully drive sales. It doesn't in itself need to sell. For example a car company making the fastest sports car in the world. The super-car doesn't in itself need to even make a profit. But hopefully people will buy from their normal range as the super-car will have made the brand seem high tech and cool.

The idea with a 17" rMBP is that it could be 4k and apple could say the worlds first 4k laptop = Halo effect

(For full disclosure : All of the above is just words to make me feel better as deep down I know they will not make a 17" rMBP. As while awesome though the 17" was Apple thought the $200,000,000 a year revenue the 17" MBP brought in was not enough..... sigh)

 

[147798]

How about a touch screen OSX mac

 

[Wololo]

1. Update the Mac mini already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2. 17" MBP: Where the heck did it go?
3. Why is the TB display lower-res than the RMBP screen? Makes no sense.
4. Quit putting horrible Seagate hard drives that break after 13 months in the iMacs. Use Hitachi.

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How about a touch screen OSX mac

It wouldn't have any advantage.

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Uh, it was... for the vast majority of users who aren't developers. What this did is force me to stick with Snow Leopard for many years, which totally fouled me up when MobileMe was dropped at the same time, and I lost a bunch of services I'd used for years. They didn't even cushion the blow by supporting iCloud in Snow Leopard. A huge mess.

Yeah, it's ridiculous that Windows XP has better support for iCloud than Snow Leopard does. And hopefully keeping Rosetta alive was very difficult – only that would justify removing such a great feature.

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If you want top performance nowadays, there's no choice but Intel. See how we got there.

Why do Nintendo game consoles (and the Xbox 360) use IBM PowerPC? It's not a rhetorical question; I'm just asking in case anyone knows.

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Tidied up? I have only used OS X at a store to research the system.. but, from I've seen it's almost perfect. What am I missing?

Heh, there's a crucial part. Are you using Mavericks? If so, you must have gotten lucky if you think it's almost perfect. I even have a few complaints about Mountain Lion, mostly about the weird new file saving system. Alright, whose idea was it to remove "save as"?! Who did it?!

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Apple needs to recreate legacy support back to MacOS Classic. We need access to our old data to move into the future. To do that we need to be able to run older software that never got upgraded and never will get upgraded. Apple should provide legacy support for software.

PowerPC yes, but why Mac OS 9 and below? What hasn't been updated to OS X besides tools meant for classic OSs such as floppy copiers? I can say that OS X actually has bad legacy support within itself. Many things made for 10.5 and below won't work on 10.7 or higher.

 

[peterdevries]

In general a halo product is one which improves the brand or product image of the company and hopefully drive sales. It doesn't in itself need to sell. For example a car company making the fastest sports car in the world. The super-car doesn't in itself need to even make a profit. But hopefully people will buy from their normal range as the super-car will have made the brand seem high tech and cool.

That also sounds plausible. There probably isn't a fixed definition, but I always interpreted a halo product as an entry product that a consumer would buy and that would function as a gateway to the rest of the eco-system.

I'm not sure whether e.g. a 4K 17inch MacBook Pro would prompt people to buy other Apple products if they don't buy that specific product in the first place. I'm sceptical that the new Mac Pro or maybe a new 4K screen would directly increase the sales of Apple's other products. I think it is rather the other way around.

 

[bingefeller]

Looking forward to the "really cool things" and "really great stuff" coming this year!

 

[star-affinity]

I'm happy with my iPad Air but it hasn't changed my life, and the 1gb of ram in it truly sucks.

Yeah, wonder what's Apple's reasoning behind only 1 GB RAM is? And then we have cheaper Nexus 7 tablet that has twice the RAM (2 GB).

In what way are you seeing the limitations of 1GB RAM on the iPad Air? I just have an iPad 2 and a Nexus 7 (2013) so they aren't a good comparancement.

 

[ICEMAN-sven]

Yeah, wonder what's Apple's reasoning behind only 1 GB RAM is? And then we have cheaper Nexus 7 tablet that has twice the RAM (2 GB).

In what way are you seeing the limitations of 1GB RAM on the iPad Air? I just have an iPad 2 and a Nexus 7 (2013) so they aren't a good comparancement.

The 1GB RAM was the biggest mistake in the Air. And the main reason I do not want a current Apple tablet. From a engineering standpoint, it was stupid. 64 bit OS and Apps uses more RAM. The code is bigger, the data-structures are bigger. Basically the 1GB in the Air are equivalent to 700-800 MB in the iPad 3 or 4. It is a downgrade.
I suspect somebody really wanted his bonus badly. From 1GB to 2GB RAM would add roughly 2-3 US$ to the BOM per unit. I assume Apple estimate to sell 35 to 50 million iPad Air & Mini Retina. So 2.50 x 40000000 = 100000000 US$ more profit.

In the first iPad, Apple also did the RAM mistake. I thought this days are behind us, but greed always takes his victims.

 

[Menneisyys2]

The 1GB RAM was the biggest mistake in the Air. And the main reason I do not want a current Apple tablet. From a engineering standpoint, it was stupid. 64 bit OS and Apps uses more RAM. The code is bigger, the data-structures are bigger. Basically the 1GB in the Air are equivalent to 700-800 MB in the iPad 3 or 4. It is a downgrade.
I suspect somebody really wanted his bonus badly. From 1GB to 2GB RAM would add roughly 2-3 US$ to the BOM per unit. I assume Apple estimate to sell 35 to 50 million iPad Air & Mini Retina. So 2.50 x 40000000 = 100000000 US$ more profit.

In the first iPad, Apple also did the RAM mistake. I thought this days are behind us, but greed always takes his victims.

I don't think it was a mistake. They were definitely aware of the huge memory usage of the UIWebView caused by the Retina screen (the memory-hungry UIWebView's problems have been widely discussed for years) and, on top of that, the effects of moving to 64 bits.

Planned obsolescence instead, particularly with the iPad Pro rumours around. They do want to force you to purchase the next, less-dumbed down model.

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I'm not sure whether e.g. a 4K 17inch MacBook Pro would prompt people to buy other Apple products if they don't buy that specific product in the first place. I'm sceptical that the new Mac Pro or maybe a new 4K screen would directly increase the sales of Apple's other products. I think it is rather the other way around.

Yup, the other way around. I am too a "17" (or even larger) or nothing" guy. I decided not to purchase anything Apple under 17", even if this means

- I have to stick with my 2010 17" MBP longer than initially expected
- I'll need to switch to a PC capable of running OSx86.

Under-17" screens are just too small for my needs and I can't use external monitors in my no-electricity summer cottage, where I spend 5-6 weeks a year.

 

[Abazigal]

I don't think it was a mistake. They were definitely aware of the huge memory usage of the UIWebView caused by the Retina screen (the memory-hungry UIWebView's problems have been widely discussed for years) and, on top of that, the effects of moving to 64 bits.

Planned obsolescence instead, particularly with the iPad Pro rumours around. They do want to force you to purchase the next, less-dumbed down model.

Not sure if I am the only one who thinks an iPad pro is the wrong way moving forward, though I suppose that's another argument for another thread.

That said, I wonder how this resonates with Steve Job's vision of a post-PC era where tablets would take over most of the computing tasks that people used to do on a PC, leaving PCs for the really heavy-duty work. Makes me wonder just how much Apple is committed to it.

If you think about it, the main problems plaguing iOS devices (namely, the iPad, which most people view as a netbook replacement) is lack of true productivity software, but the software can't happen without the specs to support it. And Apple goes through the trouble of introducing a 64-bit processor, with just 1 gb of ram...

Would have made more sense to bundle 2gb of ram in last year's iPads, then double it to 4gb of ram for this year's refresh. 4gb of ram and a quad-core ARM processor should suffice for moderately taxing tasks on the ios-versions of apps like photoshop.

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Yeah, wonder what's Apple's reasoning behind only 1 GB RAM is? And then we have cheaper Nexus 7 tablet that has twice the RAM (2 GB).

In what way are you seeing the limitations of 1GB RAM on the iPad Air? I just have an iPad 2 and a Nexus 7 (2013) so they aren't a good comparancement.

IOS7 definitely chews up more memory. You notice the limitations when you fire up an app, and it terminates a background process like playing of music or airplay (which worked perfectly fine under IOS6) to free up more ram.

I wish Apple would have just bundled in more ram and upped the price accordingly. Apple products tend to be quite price-inelastic in that regard. I would pay it, even if it is an extra $50 margin.

 

[Rogifan]

Getting out of Wall Street is the only way to deal with Wall Street.

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Jony Ive needs to be removed from software authority entirely.

Why, so we can go back to Microsoft Bob aka iOS 6?

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You can't just spend money to create new products beyond a certain point. Human talent and current tech limitations remain limiting factors no matter how much money you spend.

If Apple did everything people here wanted then we'd get posts whining about how Apple's product lines are too complex betraying Steve Jobs as when he came back he drastically simplified Apple's product lines. No matter what Apple does someone here will be waiting to tell us what a bad idea it is and how much the product sucks.

 

[kobalap]

Prediction: Apple's answer to Windows 8 touchscreen convertible PCs.

Done "properly". However that looks.

With regards to touch screens,

"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical.

It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn't work, it's ergonomically terrible.

Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence pads.

For a notebook, that's why we're perfected our multitouch trackpads over the years, because that's the best way we've found to get multitouch into a notebook.

We've also, in essence, put a trackpad -- a multitouch track pad on the mouse with our magic mouse. And we've recently come out with a pure play trackpad as well for our desktop users.

So this is how were going to use multitouch on our Mac products because this (he points at someone touch laptop screen) doesn't work."

With regards to convertibles or hybrids,

"The competition is different...they are confused," Cook said. "They chased after netbooks. Now they are trying to make PCs into tablets and tablets into PCs. Who knows what they will do next? I can't answer that question, but I can tell we have a very clear direction and very ambitious goals. We still believe deeply in this category and we are not slowing down on innovation. We have been really hard at work on the Mac and we have exciting new products."

In my opinion, The only way Apple builds products like these is if they succumb to the noisy few and the press which frankly, neither ever knows as much as Apple's internal research and usability study teams do.

 

[Thomas2006]

Full OS X on ARM...

Why do people want this? What people want this?

Steve Jobs said the heart of the Mac is the operating system, not the hardware. Running the full OS X on ARM would:

1. make it easier for Apple to come up with new hardware since they could choose which processor would fit better.
2. provide an easy transition for iOS apps (games mostly) to run on Macs natively.
3. let Apple TV add "game console" to its résumé.

I am sure there are many people that would buy an ARM-based Mac. Apple can still sell the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, in addition to an ARM-based Retina MacBook.

 

[kobalap]

I can imagine them reusing the Mac Pro design but as simply a Mac. Single gfx, standard ram, standard CPU. Those 3 things would drop the price to like £500 easy.

And they would sell only a fraction of those as they do the mac mini. In other words, not worth the effort.

 

[Michael Goff]

If you want top performance nowadays, there's no choice but Intel. See how we got there.

Yeah.

The problem is that you'll always need to go x86 for the bigger power. Either that, or you'll just have another chip that uses thru same amount of power. It will stop Apple from buying Intel, though.

Steve Jobs said the heart of the Mac is the operating system, not the hardware. Running the full OS X on ARM would:

1. make it easier for Apple to come up with new hardware since they could choose which processor would fit better.
2. provide an easy transition for iOS apps (games mostly) to run on Macs natively.
3. let Apple TV add "game console" to its résumé.

I am sure there are many people that would buy an ARM-based Mac. Apple can still sell the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, in addition to an ARM-based Retina MacBook.

And it would make sure that whichever version of OS X they sold with the ARM chip had absolutely no apps!

 

[Moonjumper]

A mac pro-like mini would be awesome.

If they made new iMacs that were Mac Pro-like, components in the weighty cylindrical base with thin & lightweight adjustable / pull-down retina display, touch enabled with digitiser, MagSafe apple light-pen, wireless charging for pen / keyboard, trackpad & mouse, touch ID, Siri.. Nom nom nom

Sounds like an updated iMac G4. It was the best looking Mac ever, and was far more functional because of the massively adjustable screen. Redoing that with the current materials and design language would be amazing.

 

[147798]

How about a bluetooth apple game controller with the iPads? Something all games can write to.

 

[herbapou]

I hope Tim Cook doesn't think an "ultra-slim 12-inch Retina MacBook" = a new product category

imo the "new categories" are going to be the revamp Apple TV set top box and the wearable. Maybe something between the iPhone and the iPad mini could be a new category.

Not a new category:
Bigger screen iPhone
Bigger screen iPad

 

[Menneisyys2]

IOS7 definitely chews up more memory.

Disagreed. As I have two GSM iPad 3's, I could directly compare the memory usage of 6.1.2 to 7.0.4 on them. (See my dedicated benchmarks here at the iOS7 forum.) I didn't find much difference in the free RAM available after booting in.

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Not sure if I am the only one who thinks an iPad pro is the wrong way moving forward, though I suppose that's another argument for another thread.

Well, if Apple does it right and gives us:

- Wacom
- true multitasking with multiple windows (even a Win8-type two-arbitrary-apps-in-parallel-panes would be OK)
- of course, the necessary RAM to back this up,

then, it'll be a killer with the Wacom folks like me. Assuming it's sensibly priced, of course. It should cost considerably less than the MS Surface Pro 2.