jasenj1

SpamSandwich said:

It has a VESA mount, so there are plenty of alternatives.

You can buy a VESA mount.

I really have no idea who the $1000 stand is aimed at? And the perception factor is way off - if Apple wanted to reinforce the opinion that they are an overpriced, luxury brand for people with more money than sense, this stand will do it.

P.S. Perhaps for those in the know in the niche that use this sort of monitor a $1000 stand is reasonable. But the to the ignorant masses it seems laughably overpriced.

There was an audible groan in the room when they announced the $999 stand. Devs recognize a Pro display costs Pro money, but that much for a stand? Too much.

I have an original Mac sitting on my shelf, and it still starts up. And I have a Mac SE that I used in college that also still runs. And an aqua G3, but I haven't started that in ages. I remember paying over $3000 for the SE, a huge investment for a college kid (well, my parents). I bought Apple stock in the `90s at my first job. My broker at the time questioned the wisdom of my choice. Since then the stock has split multiple times, I've sold some for my first house downpayment, and it makes a chunk of my retirement. When I bought in, I never dreamed Apple would grow as huge as it is.

And it's amazing the OS is still based on UNIX. I'm eagerly awaiting the creative destruction that will replace the current OS foundations.

bitmod said:

This Mac Pro is a Formula 1 car. ... Doesn’t mean we aren’t professionals just because we aren’t Formula 1 drivers.

Many car manufacturers make purpose built race cars. Those are "professional" vehicles designed to show off the engineering prowess of the company, test new tech, and be used for marketing. They are not designed for bus drivers, Uber drivers, or delivery drivers - who are equally "professional".

This new Mac Pro is for the top-tier "professionals" who need massive computing power on their desktop. Are there many other types of professionals who need less power? Yes. But this machine is an engineering showcase intended for those with extreme needs.

Are there other machines with better GFlop/$ ratios or TByte/$ ratios? I suspect so - but Apple seemed to claim this machine offers a jump up from any other available machine - in specific areas.

Would it be nice to see a 3 slot version? Yes. But maybe Apple sees that hardware space is already filled by Windows machines and they don't want to compete there. Apple is a prestige brand and this is a prestige piece of hardware. (But $1000 for a monitor stand!? LOL.)

StrangeDays said:

neilm said:

AppleInsider said:

Case Western Reserve University economics professor Susan Helper noted "China is not just cheap," as it is a country where the presence of an authoritarian government means "you can marshal 100,000 people to work all night for you."

Yeah, nothing chilling about that...

Graveyard factory shifts have exited in the US as well. There are generally three shifts in a max capacity plant. 

My recollection is that at the big manufacturing companies like Foxconn the employees live in company owned dorms. So it is very easy to marshal a surge workforce - you go roust them out of bed. We don't live that way in the USA - and we don't want to.

StrangeDays said:

Well, you got one part right. This sort of equipment is not for you.

Can you please enlighten me & the rest of the masses on what makes Apple's stand worth $1000?
The monitor I understand - it's very high-end with features most users don't need or care about, but those who do are willing to pay the money for - and it is cheaper than similarly featured monitors. Great. How does that comparison work with the stand? If $1000 is a fair price, what makes it so?

KidGloves said:

So, so close... Looks incredible. I could put up with 16GB of RAM but I see this only supports 2 monitors. I need 3 with my setup. Doh!

(I did not read the entire thread. Wow! 9 pages!)

I think it would have been much better if Apple had announced these discounts when they introduced the machines. Tim Cook (or whoever) standing up and saying, "We recognize people still need to connect to non-USB-C devices, so we're making all Apple adapters 50% off and deeply discounting third-party USB-C devices that we sell," would have gone a long way to fostering some good will. Instead, this looks like a reactionary move to backlash. "Oh! You still need to connect to non-USB-C things? You won't buy our shiny new toy? Umm... How about a discount?"

alcstarheel said:

tzterri said:

I think I'll stick with my $20 ones. http://amzn.to/2cassfE

I'm sure those sounds amazing.

With some EQing the sound of cheap earbuds & headphones can be improved quite a bit. One area Apple really falls behind in is providing system-wide EQ. I use Boom 2 on my Mac and have EQ profiles for AirPods, an external Bluetooth speaker, and my "serious" headphones.

VisualSeed said:

The next step should be to make a hypercard style development environment that lets someone build simple apps using swift as the programing / scripting language. The apps could be imported into Xcode at some point in the future and extended. 

That would be cool. I know people made a lot of very amazing things with Hypercard back in the day. It was approachable, well-defined, but flexible and with hooks into more powerful capabilities.

And I'd really like to see this Swift Playground on macOS. Real keyboard, ability to save projects to files, etc. The iPad may be OK for initial concept exposure, but I can't imagine doing any significant amount of writing on it.

I did watch the keynote. What I heard was "people are going to learn to code by using this app. And they'll change the world!" No. They will dip their toes into programming, get a little exposure to general concepts and tasks, and from that be able to learn whether they want to move on to really learn how to be a developer. Just as with music lessons: you give a kid some lessons, they learn a few things and find out if they have a knack for it and/or enjoy it. They may never be a concert pianist, but they may enjoy playing Christmas carols at family gatherings, and listen to music with greater understanding than others. Or for another analogy: Everyone learns English, but not everyone goes on to be a novelist. Knowing some basic coding I think will become like English or math: everyone knows a little bit, but few are actually very good at them. I felt the demo oversold the Playground app.