There are more Mac users being added per quarter at an all time unprecedented rate.
4-5 million Macs per quarter.
4 million laptops. 1 million desktops.
How is that defections? (from the mac pro? How many are defections?)
A negligible amount. A few thousand here and there. If Apple were that worried why not rush out a pro last year? The iMac is the consumer sales flagship desktop and the design flagship of Apple's design philosophy (sealed, AIO, basic upgradeability...just drive it...no under the bonnet...)....and even that took ages for the update. The sales of the pro no longer matter. M$ no longer matters. Office no longer matters. Cheap tower no longer matter (just ask Dell and HP). Windows no longer matters. Internet Explorer for the Mac no longer matters. The G5 no longer matters. Those are the old days. They aint coming back...
Remember when Apple sold less than 1 million Macs per quarter? Apple now sells more desktops per quarter than they did back entire Mac line in the 'good old days...'
Apple doesn't even care about Adobe any more. They gave them the finger big time over Flash. And chainsawed their legs off with the initial release of Final Cut.
Now it doesn't matter.
I remember using Photoshop 4 and doing great art on a Power Mac tower. Fond days.
I can do just as well with Pixelmator...or for comic art? Even better with Manga Studio. Between those two, pretty much covered with an iMac. For far, far cheaper than my original 'Power Mac' and Adobe suite purchase.
The power shift has long since passed.
Let Adobe 'enjoy' their power grab with 'cloud' photoshop.
I won't be following them.
I'd like to see a new Mac Pro. But I won't be celebrating it's probable price. (not by the time you add the cost of monitor...and gpu...)
Actually I have posted before that Apple used to have all four members of my family, myself, wife and two daughters as Mac users. They all have iDevices but all three have left Apple for computing needs and have switched to Windows.
You are not alone in that regard. However I'm not too certain those reverse switchers have been that happy with the move back to Windows.
I'm the only Mac user left in the house.
So sure Apple is wealthy. But Apple is losing sales to some previous Mac users. The question is why.
Apple is doing fairly well with Mac sales but I'm not too sure they are aware of the loss of existing customers. The greatest loss seems to be at the high end so maybe they just don't care anymore.
I'd like to hear your explanation. I could be just like the rest of the family and switch. But instead I'm here fighting FOR Apple instead of walking away.
Obviously you don't care. I'm trying to figure out if Apple cares why it has lost previous customers.
Some people don't really get it. Apple has been screwing themselves by ignoring the Macs to go after the gold of the iOS branch. Too many think that a decades old computer line up is the way to run a progressive company. The reality is that Apple has squandered opportunity to offer bleeding edge Macs that could capture the imagination of the computing world. They have the money, they have the talent but they just don't have the will to offer the definitive computing platforms.
Some people don't really get it. Apple has been screwing themselves by ignoring the Macs to go after the gold of the iOS branch. Too many think that a decades old computer line up is the way to run a progressive company.
Decades old? What do you mean by that they just refreshed everything except the pro last year.
Also, hate to tell you but they make more money in iOS than OS X.
Hard if hearing are we. What is significantly different about the Mini or the Mac Pro especially over. He last few years.
What do you mean by that they just refreshed everything except the pro last year.
A refresh is not a new product nor is it an attempt to redefine the platforms.
Also, hate to tell you but they make more money in iOS than OS X.
So, Ford makes more money selling trucks, that doesn't mean they should ignore every other platform. The fact is Apples hardware, in part because of OS/X, is the only upbeat news in a market that is down hard.
What is significantly different about the Mini or the Mac Pro especially over. He last few years.
A refresh is not a new product nor is it an attempt to redefine the platforms.
So, Ford makes more money selling trucks, that doesn't mean they should ignore every other platform. The fact is Apples hardware, in part because of OS/X, is the only upbeat news in a market that is down hard.
So the Mac Mini is 'stale', is that it?
The xMac crowd's argument can be summed up thus: "We want something new from Apple. Now give us the same computer everyone else has been selling for the last thirty years!"
The xMac crowd's argument can be summed up thus: "We want something new from Apple. Now give us the same computer everyone else has been selling for the last thirty years!"
I wouldn't consider myself part of the xMac crowd, but if you've kept up with Wizard's prior more detailed descriptions, he hasn't really described that at all. I think the topic has come up so many times all of us glance over details in the discussion. Everyone else ships notebooks. If I cut a description of the macbook pro down to a parts list as you and Lemon have done here, it would sound the same way, more of the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.
I can do just as well with Pixelmator...or for comic art? Even better with Manga Studio. Between those two, pretty much covered with an iMac. For far, far cheaper than my original 'Power Mac' and Adobe suite purchase.
It pleases me greatly that you mentioned Manga Studio. I always thought that was such a cool program. Adobe is weird. They price things like photoshop based on an extreme range of professional markets, yet the tools that are added and refined do not always reflect the price. Legacy bugs hold out release after release. It's ridiculous. They finally improved upon some of the brushes with CS6. Prior to that the sampling had been absolute ass for years. The way it sampled gave me a lot of kinds in long brush strokes when drawing much of the time, yet I couldn't replicate that in other drawing programs or on paper. The other annoyance was the way pressure sensitivity was handled. It's still ridiculously limited when it comes to the 32 bit toolset. You can't just retouch things out of hdr panos the same way as you would with a fixed point image. This makes cleanup much more tedious (you've mentioned lightwave, obviously you know what spherical hdris are used for).
Hard if hearing are we. What is significantly different about the Mini or the Mac Pro especially over. He last few years.
A refresh is not a new product nor is it an attempt to redefine the platforms.
So, Ford makes more money selling trucks, that doesn't mean they should ignore every other platform. The fact is Apples hardware, in part because of OS/X, is the only upbeat news in a market that is down hard.
So Apple has to reinvent the wheel in every release? Frak, the next Mac I buy better have a frigging robot with lasers as an attachment. That'll be better than a cable to keep it secure.
Who said Apple was ignoring the Mac? OS X is updated every year and the macs just for refreshed!
I think the xMac crowd such as wizard just want a good discrete graphics card and not have to buy an all-in-one machine.
That is part of it though I believe the need for a discrete GPU card will go away soon. In fact at some point an integrated GPU with unified memory access will be an excellent performer once software catches up. It will be interesting to see if Apple will have Mac OS/X updated to support unified memory access this year.
The other parts of the equation are expandability and serviceability. The ability to get to the disk or solid stte memory module is a huge factor and should not involve a shop full of tools. Expandability includes RAM, drive bays and a slot or two. None of these features should take more than a few seconds to exploit. In other words if I need to add a drive the cover pops off and everything is laid out plainly for quick access. The same thing goes for RAM.
Oh and possibly most important don't squander the potential for performance to some ill advised marketing strategy. The Mini is a nice machine and all but its thermal limitations simply means that you can never realize top end performance in the box.
So Apple has to reinvent the wheel in every release?
Did anybody say that? The problem is when you look at the Mini or the Mac Pro there is nothing innovative in these boxes any more. The Pro now has gone for years with zip and the Mini only gets an update to what ever is the low performance solution for this round of processors.
Frak, the next Mac I buy better have a frigging robot with lasers as an attachment. That'll be better than a cable to keep it secure.
At least it will be more secure than the owner.
Who said Apple was ignoring the Mac?
It is pretty obvious that the desktop line has been ignored.
OS X is updated every year and the macs just for refreshed!
So? I mean really OS / X supports the laptops too. I'd just like to see the same innovation that has made the AIRs a great success be put into the Mini or for that matter an XMac.
That is part of it though I believe the need for a discrete GPU card will go away soon. In fact at some point an integrated GPU with unified memory access will be an excellent performer once software catches up. It will be interesting to see if Apple will have Mac OS/X updated to support unified memory access this year.
So you think Apple will not use a discrete card in any machine? As long as nVidia and AMD keep making high end cards, I hope Apple puts them in at least one machine. Maybe the need for so-called "low end" cards will go away though I hope high end cards stick around.
So you think Apple will not use a discrete card in any machine? As long as nVidia and AMD keep making high end cards, I hope Apple puts them in at least one machine. Maybe the need for so-called "low end" cards will go away though I hope high end cards stick around.
The low end is typically the first to lose such things, as we've already seen in smaller notebooks and the mini. At the same time Apple has gone for higher end cards in the last few imac generations than they did prior to that. In terms of high end cards in general, development costs are basically subsidized by the low end cards.
[...] Oh and possibly most important don't squander the potential for performance to some ill advised marketing strategy. The Mini is a nice machine and all but its thermal limitations simply means that you can never realize top end performance in the box.
I'm looking at my mini right now, and wondering what impact it would have on my life if it were an inch higher or a couple inches bigger across. The answer is: none.
Then I thought about whether its appearance was an influence on my purchasing decision. Again, nope. I bought the old style too, and the decision was based on having something smaller and less expensive than the tower for less demanding tasks. It could have been the size of a toaster and I still would have bought it.
Obviously there are benefits to smaller size -- less material, lighter shipping demands, easier placement -- BUT, as you say, when the push to make it smaller starts interfering with usefulness, one has to question the designer's priorities.
[...] It is pretty obvious that the desktop line has been ignored.
I don't agree with you there. They thoroughly user-proofed the iMac just six month ago.
As much as I hate the move to gluing things together to save a few pointless millimetres, you gotta give Apple credit for the display and new drive technology in the last revision. Those developments were just overshadowed by the fact that some models continue to use ridiculously slow drives that your corner computer store doesn't even carry anymore that are all but impossible for the user to replace.
That isn't what I was saying, at least not what I was trying to say. ????????
You have to understand that Dave was thinking about himself in these posts. To put it another way, we are not far away from the point where integrated GPUs, even Intels, will be good enough for Dave. I'm not sure if Haswell is the point where this becomes true or not.
So you think Apple will not use a discrete card in any machine? As long as nVidia and AMD keep making high end cards, I hope Apple puts them in at least one machine.
I suspect that this will not be an issue for you for some time. What is good enough for me today will probably be rather pathetic looking on a machine with a very high resolution display.
Maybe the need for so-called "low end" cards will go away though I hope high end cards stick around.
The writing is on the wall. Both AMD and NVidia saw this coming thus the shift to APUs. If one waits for the next manufacturing node to hit manufactures will be able to double the size of the Integrated GPU. So if Haswell doesn't do it we probably only need to wait a year or two. I use double loosely here because in many cases the integrated GPU is already larger than anything else in the chip and in some cases everything else. The i86 complex in these SoC will soon become nothing more than another functional block in support of the GPU.
I actually like the Mini in some sense, if you think of it as a small compute module that doesn't burn lots of watts. Some seem to think that my desire for an XMac means I hate the Mini. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I'm looking at my mini right now, and wondering what impact it would have on my life if it were an inch higher or a couple inches bigger across. The answer is: none.
I'm actually seeing instrumentation makers building the Mini into machines. These guys would likely be frustrated by a change in the Minis size. Me, as long as it sits nicely on a book shelf I wouldn't complain.
Then I thought about whether its appearance was an influence on my purchasing decision. Again, nope. I bought the old style too, and the decision was based on having something smaller and less expensive than the tower for less demanding tasks. It could have been the size of a toaster and I still would have bought it.
What is frustrating is the huge gulf between the Mini and the Mac Pro. It is almost a $2000 difference and for many the Mac Pro simply isn't the right machine.
Obviously there are benefits to smaller size -- less material, lighter shipping demands, easier placement -- BUT, as you say, when the push to make it smaller starts interfering with usefulness, one has to question the designer's priorities.
Apple probably was looking long term when the last spin was done to the Mini. That is they had the expectation that 5 years down the road the Mini would be a very powerful machine. Each generation of parts allows Apple to clean up the design a little bit more. That is great for the Mini as it has been vastly improved over the last few years. However you still can't put a top performing chip in the machine simply due to the power limitation. I don't see Intel giving up on desktop processors in the 45 to 85 watt range anytime soon so the Mini eliminates a whole class of performance potential. This is one of the reasons that the hope for an XMac doesn't die with me, we mis out on a whole range of performance between the Mini and the Mac Pro.
Comments
As for defections? LOL.
There are more Mac users being added per quarter at an all time unprecedented rate.
4-5 million Macs per quarter.
4 million laptops. 1 million desktops.
How is that defections? (from the mac pro? How many are defections?)
A negligible amount. A few thousand here and there. If Apple were that worried why not rush out a pro last year? The iMac is the consumer sales flagship desktop and the design flagship of Apple's design philosophy (sealed, AIO, basic upgradeability...just drive it...no under the bonnet...)....and even that took ages for the update. The sales of the pro no longer matter. M$ no longer matters. Office no longer matters. Cheap tower no longer matter (just ask Dell and HP). Windows no longer matters. Internet Explorer for the Mac no longer matters. The G5 no longer matters. Those are the old days. They aint coming back...
Remember when Apple sold less than 1 million Macs per quarter?
Lemon Bon Bon.
Apple cares.
Just look at their stores and see what they care about.
Buy it. used it for 3-5 years. Throw it. Sell it. Hand it down. Buy another model. More profit for Apple share holders etc.
It aint X-Macs or upgradeable (tinker box) designs.
Want to add your own display? Buy a mini. Buy a pro off ebay if you're a European customer...
There was a time when you could pull out an entire innards of a Cube.
There was time when you could buy a cheap blue and white G3 entry tower and see the door drop down...
There was even a time when the first white iMac flat design could be put face down and serviced.
What happened to those?
Lemon Bon Bon.
Apple doesn't even care about Adobe any more. They gave them the finger big time over Flash. And chainsawed their legs off with the initial release of Final Cut.
Now it doesn't matter.
I remember using Photoshop 4 and doing great art on a Power Mac tower. Fond days.
I can do just as well with Pixelmator...or for comic art? Even better with Manga Studio. Between those two, pretty much covered with an iMac. For far, far cheaper than my original 'Power Mac' and Adobe suite purchase.
The power shift has long since passed.
Let Adobe 'enjoy' their power grab with 'cloud' photoshop.
I won't be following them.
I'd like to see a new Mac Pro. But I won't be celebrating it's probable price. (not by the time you add the cost of monitor...and gpu...)
Lemon Bon Bon.
Some people don't really get it. Apple has been screwing themselves by ignoring the Macs to go after the gold of the iOS branch. Too many think that a decades old computer line up is the way to run a progressive company. The reality is that Apple has squandered opportunity to offer bleeding edge Macs that could capture the imagination of the computing world. They have the money, they have the talent but they just don't have the will to offer the definitive computing platforms.
Decades old? What do you mean by that they just refreshed everything except the pro last year.
Also, hate to tell you but they make more money in iOS than OS X.
Apple is a selfish company I am getting to realize recently . They are in trouble with Samsung and are losing out also.
Originally Posted by marvfox
Apple is a selfish company I am getting to realize recently . They are in trouble with Samsung and are losing out also.
Nothing you've said is true.
Originally Posted by wizard69
What is significantly different about the Mini or the Mac Pro especially over. He last few years.
A refresh is not a new product nor is it an attempt to redefine the platforms.
So, Ford makes more money selling trucks, that doesn't mean they should ignore every other platform. The fact is Apples hardware, in part because of OS/X, is the only upbeat news in a market that is down hard.
So the Mac Mini is 'stale', is that it?
The xMac crowd's argument can be summed up thus: "We want something new from Apple. Now give us the same computer everyone else has been selling for the last thirty years!"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
So the Mac Mini is 'stale', is that it?
The xMac crowd's argument can be summed up thus: "We want something new from Apple. Now give us the same computer everyone else has been selling for the last thirty years!"
I wouldn't consider myself part of the xMac crowd, but if you've kept up with Wizard's prior more detailed descriptions, he hasn't really described that at all. I think the topic has come up so many times all of us glance over details in the discussion. Everyone else ships notebooks. If I cut a description of the macbook pro down to a parts list as you and Lemon have done here, it would sound the same way, more of the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.
I can do just as well with Pixelmator...or for comic art? Even better with Manga Studio. Between those two, pretty much covered with an iMac. For far, far cheaper than my original 'Power Mac' and Adobe suite purchase.
It pleases me greatly that you mentioned Manga Studio. I always thought that was such a cool program. Adobe is weird. They price things like photoshop based on an extreme range of professional markets, yet the tools that are added and refined do not always reflect the price. Legacy bugs hold out release after release. It's ridiculous. They finally improved upon some of the brushes with CS6. Prior to that the sampling had been absolute ass for years. The way it sampled gave me a lot of kinds in long brush strokes when drawing much of the time, yet I couldn't replicate that in other drawing programs or on paper. The other annoyance was the way pressure sensitivity was handled. It's still ridiculously limited when it comes to the 32 bit toolset. You can't just retouch things out of hdr panos the same way as you would with a fixed point image. This makes cleanup much more tedious (you've mentioned lightwave, obviously you know what spherical hdris are used for).
So Apple has to reinvent the wheel in every release? Frak, the next Mac I buy better have a frigging robot with lasers as an attachment. That'll be better than a cable to keep it secure.
Who said Apple was ignoring the Mac? OS X is updated every year and the macs just for refreshed!
That is part of it though I believe the need for a discrete GPU card will go away soon. In fact at some point an integrated GPU with unified memory access will be an excellent performer once software catches up. It will be interesting to see if Apple will have Mac OS/X updated to support unified memory access this year.
The other parts of the equation are expandability and serviceability. The ability to get to the disk or solid stte memory module is a huge factor and should not involve a shop full of tools. Expandability includes RAM, drive bays and a slot or two. None of these features should take more than a few seconds to exploit. In other words if I need to add a drive the cover pops off and everything is laid out plainly for quick access. The same thing goes for RAM.
Oh and possibly most important don't squander the potential for performance to some ill advised marketing strategy. The Mini is a nice machine and all but its thermal limitations simply means that you can never realize top end performance in the box.
So you think Apple will not use a discrete card in any machine? As long as nVidia and AMD keep making high end cards, I hope Apple puts them in at least one machine. Maybe the need for so-called "low end" cards will go away though I hope high end cards stick around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
So you think Apple will not use a discrete card in any machine? As long as nVidia and AMD keep making high end cards, I hope Apple puts them in at least one machine. Maybe the need for so-called "low end" cards will go away though I hope high end cards stick around.
The low end is typically the first to lose such things, as we've already seen in smaller notebooks and the mini. At the same time Apple has gone for higher end cards in the last few imac generations than they did prior to that. In terms of high end cards in general, development costs are basically subsidized by the low end cards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
[...] Oh and possibly most important don't squander the potential for performance to some ill advised marketing strategy. The Mini is a nice machine and all but its thermal limitations simply means that you can never realize top end performance in the box.
I'm looking at my mini right now, and wondering what impact it would have on my life if it were an inch higher or a couple inches bigger across. The answer is: none.
Then I thought about whether its appearance was an influence on my purchasing decision. Again, nope. I bought the old style too, and the decision was based on having something smaller and less expensive than the tower for less demanding tasks. It could have been the size of a toaster and I still would have bought it.
Obviously there are benefits to smaller size -- less material, lighter shipping demands, easier placement -- BUT, as you say, when the push to make it smaller starts interfering with usefulness, one has to question the designer's priorities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
[...] It is pretty obvious that the desktop line has been ignored.
I don't agree with you there. They thoroughly user-proofed the iMac just six month ago.
As much as I hate the move to gluing things together to save a few pointless millimetres, you gotta give Apple credit for the display and new drive technology in the last revision. Those developments were just overshadowed by the fact that some models continue to use ridiculously slow drives that your corner computer store doesn't even carry anymore that are all but impossible for the user to replace.
You have to understand that Dave was thinking about himself in these posts. To put it another way, we are not far away from the point where integrated GPUs, even Intels, will be good enough for Dave. I'm not sure if Haswell is the point where this becomes true or not.
I suspect that this will not be an issue for you for some time. What is good enough for me today will probably be rather pathetic looking on a machine with a very high resolution display.
The writing is on the wall. Both AMD and NVidia saw this coming thus the shift to APUs. If one waits for the next manufacturing node to hit manufactures will be able to double the size of the Integrated GPU. So if Haswell doesn't do it we probably only need to wait a year or two. I use double loosely here because in many cases the integrated GPU is already larger than anything else in the chip and in some cases everything else. The i86 complex in these SoC will soon become nothing more than another functional block in support of the GPU.
I'm actually seeing instrumentation makers building the Mini into machines. These guys would likely be frustrated by a change in the Minis size. Me, as long as it sits nicely on a book shelf I wouldn't complain. What is frustrating is the huge gulf between the Mini and the Mac Pro. It is almost a $2000 difference and for many the Mac Pro simply isn't the right machine.
Apple probably was looking long term when the last spin was done to the Mini. That is they had the expectation that 5 years down the road the Mini would be a very powerful machine. Each generation of parts allows Apple to clean up the design a little bit more. That is great for the Mini as it has been vastly improved over the last few years. However you still can't put a top performing chip in the machine simply due to the power limitation. I don't see Intel giving up on desktop processors in the 45 to 85 watt range anytime soon so the Mini eliminates a whole class of performance potential. This is one of the reasons that the hope for an XMac doesn't die with me, we mis out on a whole range of performance between the Mini and the Mac Pro.