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

[HurtinMinorKey]

There is no monopoly. AMD laptops exist.

lol, and they have a whopping 5% market-share. AMD chips exist because Intel let's them survive, otherwise the FTC has promised to break Intel up.

So if the use of "monopoly" in this context is too informal for your taste, let us simply agree that Intel has dominant market power.

 

[peterdevries]

lol, and they have a whopping 5% market-share. AMD chips exist because Intel let's them survive, otherwise the FTC has promised to break Intel up.

So if the use of "monopoly" in this context is too informal for your taste, let us simply agree that Intel has dominant market power.

You can ridicule my comment, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Customers have sufficient possibilities to choose from if they don't like Intel for whatever reason. HP, Lenovo and Acer all offer AMD options, and these are the largest PC sellers on the planet.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

Bring back the 17 inch MBP or something equivalent! PLEASE???

Pretty please, with milk and sugar on top.

I don't understand why my phone and iPad both have LTE, but not my MacBook Pro.

Agree 100%. Cell capability should be ubiquitous on MBP-class devices.

17.1" 4k at the same PPI as retina Macbook Air.

Yes, please!

Better re-release a 17" with current specs (meaning 4K Retina screen) and preferably DVD bay (that is, dual-spin config)...

--

Exactly. The 17" is already the size where you don't any more need external monitors for serious for example coding. (And the only way of my using a Mac during the Summer holiday - in rural Finland, in my summer cottage, we don't have electricity to power an external monitor.)

4K = 3840x2160 or, 3840x2400 preferred. 17" size was/is (still using it) perfect. Two drive bays, but, I'm cool on DVD. DVD should be external; what I want is 256GB SSD and an accessible bay for a high-capacity device (HD or SSD). Oh, and the 17" has a true matte screen, of course.

I want a real Mac Pro with slots. A Macbook Pro 17" with matte 1920x1200 display, two storage PCIe SSD slots, SATA port and user upgradable RAM.

I love the 1920x1200, but, would like the option of 3840x2400. Please!

YES PLEASE!! My MacBook Pro 17" (Jobs-era) is turning three this year ;(. I love it, but it won't last forever. What am I going to do when I need a new laptop? No way am I ever using Windoze. I'd get an iMac, but need portability.

Maybe Apple will come up with a keychain drive virtual projector computer one day, but until then I'll be needing a decent sized portable screen!

The 17" hi-res 1920x1200 matte was the best MBP display ever.

A 17" rMBP sounds like something worth spending part of that enormous amount of money on

pretty pretty please?

Now bring back the 17" MacBook Pro with a 4K Retina screen!

Funny how many bright people want this!

I still have a vague hope they will bring it back as a halo product. i.e a product that improves brand image by its awesomeness even if not many buy it.

They sold 50,000 17" per quarter (before it was cancelled) which is a drop in the ocean compared to other apple products but still justifies itself as a product line.

It was 50,000 units per quarter sold largely to a very important market segment-- creative content producers and programmers.

Full OS X on ARM...

They must have it running on the A7. It could make a lot of sense.

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.

Makes me wish for the removable battery in the 2007-2008.

Agree completely. The 17" is just such a useful screen size, and, it is barely bigger than 15.5" big plastic laptop PC.

 

[Cubytus]

OSx is far far far far from perfect.

No OS is perfect. All have bugs and issues.

How well you enjoy using them however is completely subjective.

And it has been on a downward slope since Snow Leopard. Functions were cut, or pushed back into command line mode, OS is less compatible, and isn't centered on the user anymore (see ugly notification center, and blander design), and less practical (no reinstall media?).

As for using a 17" in a non-electrified cottage: how can you recharge it, then?

 

[moxin]

Mac Mini Tower please
without crappy laptop parts

 

[kazmac]

...

Up the quality control considerably and cut prices on BTO.

I'd like a new Mac Mini. Sooner rather than later.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Apple definitely should develop a product targeted right at that unpowered Nordic summer cottage market opportunity!

You can ridicule my comment, but that doesn't make it any less true. There are cases when you simply can't use external monitors for an extended time (weeks or even months). Complete lack of electricity (apart from the meager current coming from the sun panels only sufficing for topping up the mobile phones, 12V radio receivers and nighttime additional light), common in rural Finland, is one of them.

----------

As for using a 17" in a non-electrified cottage: how can you recharge it, then?

I leave it in the closest electrified house for some hours to recharge.

 

[star-affinity]

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.

Anand at AnandTech is reasoning like this about the 1 GB RAM in iPad Air:

”In general you’re looking at a 20 - 30% increase in memory footprint when dealing with an all 64-bit environment. At worst, the device’s total memory usage never exceeded 60% of what ships with the platform but these are admittedly fairly light use cases. With more apps open, including some doing work in the background, I do see relatively aggressive eviction of apps from memory. The most visible case is when Safari tabs have to be reloaded upon switching to them. Applications being evicted from memory don’t tend to be a huge problem since the A7 can reload them quickly.

The tricky part is you don’t really need all that much more memory. Unfortunately as with any dual-channel memory architecture, you’re fairly limited in how you can increase memory capacity and still get peak performance. Apple’s only move here would be to go to 2GB, which understandably comes with both power and financial costs. The former is a bigger concern for the iPhone 5s, but on the iPad Air I would’ve expected a transition sooner rather than later.”

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7460/apple-ipad-air-review/9

 

[HurtinMinorKey]

Customers have sufficient possibilities to choose from if they don't like Intel for whatever reason. HP, Lenovo and Acer all offer AMD options, and these are the largest PC sellers on the planet.

"sufficient possibilities" what does that even mean? Just because those companies offer a few lines with AMD (most of them really cheap), doesn't mean there is healthy competition in this part of the semiconductor market. So if you don't think Intel has a dominant market power then I guess you have a different understanding of what market power is.

 

[twoodcc]

4k iMac would be nice. so would a mac mini that's really a mac pro mini

 

[peterdevries]

"sufficient possibilities" what does that even mean? Just because those companies offer a few lines with AMD (most of them really cheap), doesn't mean there is healthy competition in this part of the semiconductor market. So if you don't think Intel has a dominant market power then I guess you have a different understanding of what market power is.

I know what dominant market power is and I agree that Intel has it. We weren't discussing that.

You mentioned that Intel has a monopoly and I responded to that by saying that there isn't a monopoly.

 

[PROF FAART]

You can ridicule my comment, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Customers have sufficient possibilities to choose from if they don't like Intel for whatever reason. HP, Lenovo and Acer all offer AMD options, and these are the largest PC sellers on the planet.

I agree.

 

[nixfu]

Read between the lines people....

He is talking about:

A MAC MINI TOWER!


WHoooo!

 

[reyesmac]

The macs of the future he speaks of look nothing like the current macs, at least not internally. The only thing that comes close is the iPhone and Macbook internals. The low end (higher volume selling) Macs of the future use Apple made processors and system on a chip style tiny motherboards. They will also be about as long lasting as an iPad as far as longevity goes. Unupgradable and made to become obsolete with every OS update. They will cost 30% less than current models or can be purchased with subscription/phone contract like plans and will be very cheap to produce so that Apples margins actually increase despite the lower prices. They will be very popular and make Apple lots of money. They will also mark the end of how Apple used to be. Some of their choices don't make sense in a world where they use the same components as PC makers but charge way more. It will make more sense in a world were lower clocked Apple chips outperform PC components by a high margin. With nothing comparable on the PC side they can charge whatever they want for it. Its like how Samsung makes a phone that sounds nice but can't outperform an iPhone in most tests. The Macs that still use PC components will all have a $2,000 starting price. And thats how Apple will gouge the low and the high end of their product lines. Or maybe not, its just my opinion.