bkkcanuck said: I have no problem with macOS as a name since the operating system started out as Mac OS X -- then changed to OS X at the time Mountain Lion was released. X of course originally started out as the version number. I never got use to referring to the OS without "Mac" preceding it.
How long before they start calling it 'System' again? Maybe macOS 10.14 will be renamed System 10.14.
You are confused -- that is a different operating system. Mac OS started at version X.
Apple should bring more headless Mac models and less iMacs. Save the display for many years of use, far beyond CPU becomes obsolete!
I can't for the life of me figure out what Apple's strategy here is. I paid just about $4K even for my 2009 Mac Pro. So the iMac pro is starting at $5K. WTF? So will Mac Pro start at $7K? Or are they going to milk iMac pro for 6/10mo until Mac Pro comes out then drop the price? Or maybe Mac Pro will start out less since it doesn't have a monitor? I'm truly baffled.
Likely the Mini is going to Apple heaven with the iPods, and the a version of the new Pro will come down from the stratosphere. (But it will still be pricey compared to an iMac with a monitor.)
I don't think the Mini is going to Apple Heaven -- when they had the 5 press people in to discuss the future Mac Pro (in a state of panic)... the question was asked and answered that the Mini is still "important". If they were going to discontinue that line they would have removed it from the lineup completely during the last Mac refresh at WWDC (or 2 weeks either side). I think what form it takes is dependent on the Mac Pro to some extent and how they implement modularity. Based on them not answering anything the future plans it indicated to me that there were two possibilities on timing.
The timing of the Mac Mini upgrade was sometime this year (August to October timeframe) - and they did not feel the need - nor want to pre release any details as to take away from the official announcement (Apple does like it's wow announcements).
The Mini's design is dependent on the Mac Pro's modularity and target market segment. I tend to think it is more likely #1 though.
But look at that wording - “still important”. I don’t remember the actual wording myself, but if that’s what they said, I don’t feel good about it. Sometimes when I quote, I leave out words before and after, but I try to keep the ones that have meaning in the statement. If they just said that it was “important”, I would feel better about it.
the problem here is that we don’t know what the sales are. The notebooks are assumed to be about 70% of sales, and iMacs are assumed to be most of the rest, with a tiny proportion of Mac Pro. Where does that leave the Mini? So for a while the Mini has been on life support. No real upgrades.
sometimes Apple doesn’t understand their own business. If sales of a product are falling, they don’t bother with it. Look at the 2013 Mac Pro. So, as it falls further behind in technology, the sales fall even faster. They don’t even think that using new chips every year will boost sales, even if the form isn’t thrilling everyone. So they let it languish. The only reason why they decided to have that meeting, and to recommit with a new model that’s considerably more advanced, is because the Mac Pro is a very high profile product, despite the sales numbers, and even because of the sales numbers. If pros keep deserting the platform, but in increasing numbers, then Apple can’t say that they are the choice of the creative community anymore, and that will tarnish their image, and possibly even hurt sales overall.
but what, exactly, does the Mini stand for? It was aimed at people who already had a Windows machine, hence no keyboard or mouse. Anything to cut costs to bring it in line with Windows machine costs. But now, does Apple really care about that market? With the pc market shrinking for years, though their own pc business has been steady, possibly Apple no longer feels that the Mini is bringing in enough new Mac users to matter. Use cases such as small servers in hotels, cruise ships and such are just small fry sales, maybe in the tens of thousands a year. Maybe even 100 thousand. But that’s too little to sustain a product line at Apple. For Dell, Hp and others, where they have multiple lines of computers, and multiple lines within those lines, a model that sells a couple of hundred thousand a year between Pro and consumer sales would earn it a permanent home, with regular upgrades. But not at Apple.
a good thing and a bad thing about Apple is that all of their products must be iconic designs. They don’t, and won’t, produce a product that sells in a minimal fashion. They won’t produce a product that isn’t great looking, both in feel, and look. That’s good in a number of ways, but it’s also bad, because where does an inexpensive little product, like a Mini, fit into that? So maybe they could be more practical, and replace the expensive aluminum case with a plastic one, like their routers and A Tv. That would cut costs. They could also make it a bit taller, to make it easier to upgrade.
but if they feel that it’s a computer product, like all of their other computer products, it’s GOT to be aluminum. That’s too bad. If they did something to cut $50 off the price, that would help sales. Remember that when it first came out it started at $499.
I think Apple knows that the Mini is a fairly diverse use - but unknown of the number. I think the reason why the Mac mini quad-core server was discontinued was that they felt that the niche would overlap too much with the 2013 trashcan Mac Pro (low end) -- and that if quad-core performance was necessary in a small package they would go up to the trashcan Mac.
Assuming the modular Mac Pro is larger and higher in cost than the trashcan, that opens up a wide gap that will likely need to be filled. I would have originally thought a Mac mini would just have a quad-core option, but after seeing WWDC and the external (sizeable) eGPU that the niche would have to be filled by a i7-7700K Radeon 580 graphics version to fill the need from the upscaled Mac mini and the low end trashcan market. It is sort of a less complicated small form factor instead of an ungainly eGPU that can not be looped back into the laptop monitor (i.e. VR/AR development)
What is the market for Mac Mini... anyone that needs a computer in a small relatively inexpensive model (with the same markup %) that either need it as a single purpose server or as a small development small desktop (that don't need nor want to maintain battery of a Laptop, and are averse to all-in-one computers - and there are quite a number of them -- especially with developers that often have multiple machines. (you only can look at one computer at a time for the most part). When the Mac mini was originally introduced it was envisioned as a computer for switchers... but that is a small rather insignificant part of the mini market place (IMHO).
Small development box to go along with a small laptop for VR development.
Small form factor for single purpose server or co-location services for the most part developers (single purpose would be a git server, or other).
Small form factor for those techies like me are averse to all-in-one computers (there are a large number relatively speaking to the mini marketplace). The second most component to go after the hard drive -- is the monitor. (I have had 3 or 4 monitors fail). And many techies with multiple computers (like me - I have 5) ... I don't need a monitor and keyboard for each of them.
Trade shows where your monitor might be hanging and larger than a desktop monitor.
I just think the replacement design for the Mac mini is going to be heavily dependent on what a modular Mac Pro is (so once they nailed down that they will know what to release as the complete Mac mini line -- though not the entire line needs to be redesigned). The reason the Mac Pro will take longer is it is going to be a complete redesign from anything in the line up -- so they have to settle on the basic design, then design how to fit the widest "professional" audience, then they have to build a new manufacturing line from the ground up and test the manufacturing line before production starts (the Mac mini is likely to be based on existing designs and will likely be quicker to retool for).
Whoa! Where do you get the idea that a $699 machine is going to compete, on any level, with a machine that starts around $3999? For all the server uses for the Mini, it would in no way compete with the Mac Pro. They’re for entirely different use cases.
wow, I just don’t see that scenario at all. If the Mini is going to remain in the line in some form, the the computer it won’t be competing with in any way, is the Mac Pro. It’s also a minimal machine for software developers. It’s just too slow, and doesn’t have enough RAM, or a worthwhile GPU. It’s never been intended for any of that. The server version was for use cases in which servers had low demands. They were used in bunches.
The Mac Mini 2012 quad core (in a configuration that was not worth upgrading just to quad core) was $999... that was with 4GB of memory and a 5400RPM 1TB spinning rust drive. If you were going to stick with that configuration - it would not be worth going for the higher end processor. I seem to remember spec'ing out a reasonable configuration and it was getting closer to $2,000 than $1,000. A base model Mac Pro in 2012 was somewhere around $2,900. I believe my 8-core Mac Pro from 2008 was one that was much more affordable at $2,400ish (not sure if that was the 4 core price I remember, or maybe that was when the Canadian dollar was higher.... and it would have been bought when I was in Canada; the price now in Canadian would be pathetic). I just think though it was pushed out of the line out on size and that neither was cheap anyways.
If they were going to get rid of the Mac Mini - they would have done so when they did house cleaning - discontinuing things like the Airport, monitor and a few other things or around WWDC at the time. After seeing the push into VR and basically only one computer (less than the Mac Pro) capable of VR (the top of the line iMac at $3,700+) without a design nightmare of an external eGPU that ... is sort of flakey... and not ready for prime time.... I think they will update what is now the 2-core Mac Mini - and by the time they do that the "rumoured" Core i7-8550U (quad-core suitable for the 13" MacBook Pro i.e. 17 to 20 watt).
Basically if you look at Apple showing off a MacBook Pro with a rather massive case and power supply which connects only to an external display - that solution is a rather poor solution for VR. As such I think there will be push to find something to plug that hole. Up until the AR/VR push Apple had no interest in putting a reasonably powered GPU in any computer but the Mac Pro.... I think that changes... As such I still have a gut feeling that they will come out with a Mac that slots into around $2,000+ that is not the Mac Pro... because the Mac Pro will start north of $3,900. I very well might be disappointed, but I think the time is right for Apple to maybe overdo it because I think they are in a state of panic.... then a few years down the road start to rationalize the lineup again. I think the push into VR changes things going forward.
The reason why they showcased the external eGPU, the case, the 3rd party Vive VR glasses -- is because Apple's solutions are still in the incubator / development state and they felt the need to release something. The stuff above, and the inviting in of 5 people to talk about far distance plans -- to me is indicates a state of panic and the feeling that they can't wait until everything is ready.
The external GPU just is darn ugly on the desktop and smacks of desperation.
I don’t remember any Mini configuration from Apple that came close to $2,000. And when buying a Mac Pro, few people would buy the low end configuration. What would be the point to that?
the 4 core version was $2,500. My Mac Pro from 2009 had two Xeons, running at 2.91 GHz. I think it’s 2,91. I could be off by a digit or so on the end there, each with four cores, and the 4870 GPU. I upgraded the RAM later as well as the drive. But my machine cost $4,200.
more recently, because we may not see a new Mac Pro until somewhere in 2018, with some saying not until 2019, though I find that hard to believe, I bought a 2012 Mac Pro from a Mac vendor on eBay that referb’s the machines and gives a year warranty. They have an excellent rep. That machine has two 6 core Xeons running at 3.47Ghz, with 64GB RAM. That cost me $2,000. I replaced the GPU with a 7970. That was another $259. While this machine is much more powerful than my older model, even those Xeons have a problem keeping up with my 2017 iPad Pro 12.9” in single thread performance. It’s pretty amazing.
so I’m looking forward to the new Mac Pro. From what Phil and co. said about what Apple was planning, I’m thinking, considering the new iMac Pro’s starting price of $4,999, that this is going to be a pretty expensive machine going in, even on the low end. So I’m now thinking it will cost me a good $10,000, sans monitor, because I’ll buy a new 5k DCI-P3 model.
so where does the Mini fit into this? Nowhere. If Apple still wants it, it’s going to be the total opposite of this, a very small, low power device. It’s perfect for audio/video servers, and indeed, many A/V servers in the home are Minis. Since some commercial home A/V servers are powered by the Arduino, the Mini can even be said to be overpowered. If Apple decided to take the Mini seriously,which they haven’t for years, they would advertise in audio/video publications about the Mini being a great home server, and possibly, would even have modified software specifically for that use. Then they could do a deal with Roon, the biggest software developer in that area, and come out with lossless music streaming. Apple could sell quite a fe Minis that way, and sell music subscriptions as well. But they won’t, because it’s Apple.
i have other areas in which the Mini is a great fit, but Apple won’t do any of those either, because they’re Apple, and Apple just doesn’t do that. They miss out on a lot of things, because they won’t “stoop” to market to particular markets unless they’re in the millions a year.
i don’t think Apple is panicking at all. They see steady pc sales for them where the Windows market is slowly retrenching. They see resurgent iPad sales, which I hope will be a new constant. They see rising iPhone sales again after one year of a drop which I, and others, have clearly explained. Watch sales seem to be doing well, software and services are doing very well. Sales to enterprises is doing very well, for the Mac as well as for iOS devices. Overall, if China hadn’t retrenched, though it looks to be growing again, sales would have been up by another $4 billion last quarter.
the problem is that Apple isn’t really interested in something that they consider to not be selling up to their expectations. So if Mini sales are below $1billion a year, they may be looking to get rid of it. And likely, sales are well below that. As I said earlier, they don’t upgrade certain models for years when sales drop. That just leads to a vicious cycle. Sales drop more because people can’t upgrade, and others see a machine that really several years old. Then they don’t upgrade because sales are dropping. At some point, they just get rid of it.
My memory gets scrambled since I change countries and currency fluctuations....
But take a 2012 Mac mini ($999USD) - Apple installed RAM from 4GB to 16GB, change the drive from spinning rust to an SSD (I believe 256GB was the option back then), add in a keyboard and mouse.
So sales of PCs are plummeting. Of course; the hardware is shit, the software is shit, and they break on a two year cycle. But the number of users of computers isn’t shrinking. So where are they going? Are they really just going to phones? Yes, a phone can do everything that the vast majority of these “light browsing+facebook” automatons would’ve been doing on their el cheapo PCs in the first place, but the experience would be… garbage. How is it that a phone’s comparatively worse UI and minuscule screen is a more palatable option for them than a proper computer–even a PC? And does this not signal an opportunity to make a PC just for that kind of use? Ugh, making myself sick just thinking about that idea…
What about a Mac Nano? An aluminum Mac Mini in the Apple TV form factor? In fact, just give it basically Apple TV internals. Or, rather, iPhone/iPad internals. There’s an ARM version of OS X (I don’t see myself ever getting used to calling it macOS…), right? Like, a full-on version? Or at least one that isn’t stripped down to iOS-levels of barebones? Why not put that on there? Have it run Safari, iWork, iTunes, iLife, and the Mac App Store’s content only. I don’t like the idea, but that’s the only thing the vast majority of people seem to care about these days. Make it $299. BYOKDM. Or honestly, what are these people doing? What have they moved to from cheap PCs that Apple can scarf up?
Well, at 3 to 4% a year, they’re not plummeting. But it does add up after a few years. The max pc sales, including macs was about 350 million a year, several years ago, and now it’s down to about 255 million. It’s taken years to drop to that, and in the beginning it was dropping about 10% a year. Also, PCs last a good long time. I’ve got a number of friends whose Windows machines are going strong after 8 years.
and that’s one of the problems. It’s the same problem Apple experienced with the iPad. They last a long time, and for what most people use them for, a newer model wasn’t appealing. And that’s the major reason why the user base isn’t really shrinking. Yet. At some point, as older machines are taken out of commission, new sales won’t replace them all. It’s just like birth/death rates in countries. Even when the birth rate is below replacement, it takes years for that to have an actual affect in population, the population will even continue to increase, abet at a lower percentage, until it catches up with the new reality.
in Asian markets, where most of the computer growth was happening in the past 10 years, or so, large phones, and to some extent, tablets, have taken most of the growth. Since in China, India, Vietnam and other countries in the Pacific Rim, as well as other less advanced countries around the world where computer ownership was always low to begin with, a lot of people are actually moving past the computer, and going directly to phablets and tablets. That’s going to hurt in several years.
my wife, who is an attorney, knows another who runs his entire office off his iPhone. It may be hard to believe, but he says that the professional software is all there, and he has no problems reading and typing.
Mac Nano? Um, no. Please don’t start with the ARM Mac. That’s something totally different, that would require a lot of work. It’s not something that Apple can just plop down. There is a lot of difficulty with software compatibility there, and don’t make light of that. It’s a real, serious problem.
You are confused -- that is a different operating system. Mac OS started at version X.
Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 beg to differ.
I love that this still works in Sierra, by the way.
Just because they held the same name, does not make them the same Operating System. The Operating System is basically a re-skinned version of NeXTSTEP OS.... you just have to look no further than the API which is prefixed with "NS" (Short for NeXTSTEP).
Comments
the 4 core version was $2,500. My Mac Pro from 2009 had two Xeons, running at 2.91 GHz. I think it’s 2,91. I could be off by a digit or so on the end there, each with four cores, and the 4870 GPU. I upgraded the RAM later as well as the drive. But my machine cost $4,200.
more recently, because we may not see a new Mac Pro until somewhere in 2018, with some saying not until 2019, though I find that hard to believe, I bought a 2012 Mac Pro from a Mac vendor on eBay that referb’s the machines and gives a year warranty. They have an excellent rep. That machine has two 6 core Xeons running at 3.47Ghz, with 64GB RAM. That cost me $2,000. I replaced the GPU with a 7970. That was another $259. While this machine is much more powerful than my older model, even those Xeons have a problem keeping up with my 2017 iPad Pro 12.9” in single thread performance. It’s pretty amazing.
so I’m looking forward to the new Mac Pro. From what Phil and co. said about what Apple was planning, I’m thinking, considering the new iMac Pro’s starting price of $4,999, that this is going to be a pretty expensive machine going in, even on the low end. So I’m now thinking it will cost me a good $10,000, sans monitor, because I’ll buy a new 5k DCI-P3 model.
so where does the Mini fit into this? Nowhere. If Apple still wants it, it’s going to be the total opposite of this, a very small, low power device. It’s perfect for audio/video servers, and indeed, many A/V servers in the home are Minis. Since some commercial home A/V servers are powered by the Arduino, the Mini can even be said to be overpowered. If Apple decided to take the Mini seriously,which they haven’t for years, they would advertise in audio/video publications about the Mini being a great home server, and possibly, would even have modified software specifically for that use. Then they could do a deal with Roon, the biggest software developer in that area, and come out with lossless music streaming. Apple could sell quite a fe Minis that way, and sell music subscriptions as well. But they won’t, because it’s Apple.
i have other areas in which the Mini is a great fit, but Apple won’t do any of those either, because they’re Apple, and Apple just doesn’t do that. They miss out on a lot of things, because they won’t “stoop” to market to particular markets unless they’re in the millions a year.
i don’t think Apple is panicking at all. They see steady pc sales for them where the Windows market is slowly retrenching. They see resurgent iPad sales, which I hope will be a new constant. They see rising iPhone sales again after one year of a drop which I, and others, have clearly explained. Watch sales seem to be doing well, software and services are doing very well. Sales to enterprises is doing very well, for the Mac as well as for iOS devices. Overall, if China hadn’t retrenched, though it looks to be growing again, sales would have been up by another $4 billion last quarter.
the problem is that Apple isn’t really interested in something that they consider to not be selling up to their expectations. So if Mini sales are below $1billion a year, they may be looking to get rid of it. And likely, sales are well below that. As I said earlier, they don’t upgrade certain models for years when sales drop. That just leads to a vicious cycle. Sales drop more because people can’t upgrade, and others see a machine that really several years old. Then they don’t upgrade because sales are dropping. At some point, they just get rid of it.
But take a 2012 Mac mini ($999USD) - Apple installed RAM from 4GB to 16GB, change the drive from spinning rust to an SSD (I believe 256GB was the option back then), add in a keyboard and mouse.
Well, at 3 to 4% a year, they’re not plummeting. But it does add up after a few years. The max pc sales, including macs was about 350 million a year, several years ago, and now it’s down to about 255 million. It’s taken years to drop to that, and in the beginning it was dropping about 10% a year. Also, PCs last a good long time. I’ve got a number of friends whose Windows machines are going strong after 8 years.
and that’s one of the problems. It’s the same problem Apple experienced with the iPad. They last a long time, and for what most people use them for, a newer model wasn’t appealing. And that’s the major reason why the user base isn’t really shrinking. Yet. At some point, as older machines are taken out of commission, new sales won’t replace them all. It’s just like birth/death rates in countries. Even when the birth rate is below replacement, it takes years for that to have an actual affect in population, the population will even continue to increase, abet at a lower percentage, until it catches up with the new reality.
in Asian markets, where most of the computer growth was happening in the past 10 years, or so, large phones, and to some extent, tablets, have taken most of the growth. Since in China, India, Vietnam and other countries in the Pacific Rim, as well as other less advanced countries around the world where computer ownership was always low to begin with, a lot of people are actually moving past the computer, and going directly to phablets and tablets. That’s going to hurt in several years.
my wife, who is an attorney, knows another who runs his entire office off his iPhone. It may be hard to believe, but he says that the professional software is all there, and he has no problems reading and typing.
Mac Nano? Um, no. Please don’t start with the ARM Mac. That’s something totally different, that would require a lot of work. It’s not something that Apple can just plop down. There is a lot of difficulty with software compatibility there, and don’t make light of that. It’s a real, serious problem.
I love that this still works in Sierra, by the way.
Up until its discontinuation, iPhoto’s icon filename was still NSApplicationIcon.icns. They had just forgotten to ever change it.
Dwarven Lord Ryzen Threadripper swings his mighty "Zen" battle axe and rolling a natural 20 crits the orc doing x399 points of damage...