razmataz

Rayz2016 said:

elijahg said:

It’ll be interesting to see whether Apple reduces the price of the Macs to correspond to the much cheaper ARM CPUs, I bet they won’t. 

Wouldn't have thought so. 

With Intel, Apple didn't have the R&D costs associated with building its own processor. Now that they're doing the processor themselves, this won't make things necessarily cheaper. Bear in mind that these ARM chips aren't actually ARM. They're  custom-designed silicon from the ground-up that just happens to run the ARM instruction set, and have been crafted to bleed the last iota of performance out of MacOS/iOS. Apple will use every trick in the book to surpass what they had with Intel.

Well, if the rumor is correct (big if) then they aren't going after the Intel high end at first since they are aiming for the lower end Macs. And, unlike Intel, what would be the rush for Apple to invest early in user IPs such as PCIe 5.0 if they integrate the GPU and do something for solid state storage. Apple already architects their own ARM SOCs on rather powerful iPads, lots can be leveraged from that without adding so much cost. If you time it right, you can buy a very good iPad for $300 these days, with a decent processor and a tremendous screen. So it is not a stretch to think they could do better on the Mac price. But I also don't expect prices to be reduced, one of the goals is probably to increase margins to sustain the valuation of the company even though the Mac business doesn't seem so big. The ever rising iPhone prices do a better job of achieving that.

I can't help but think one of the main goal is to gain substantial battery life and better cooling solutions. In turn this will improve the form factor a lot. Then throw in lots of hardware IP to give it an edge over the competition which will require years of standard deliberation to come to similar solutions that are universal and necessarily more complex. I see Windows as the Swiss Army knife of computers, whereas Apple aims to do the mainstream simpler and usually gets there faster. The possibilities are endless with their kind of resources.

 

GeorgeBMac said:

Based on Libertarian, Free Market principles, if that's all one is looking at, then yes, Apple's practices are anti-competitive.

But, if one looks at the whole picture then, like any and every government, Apple sets rules.   And those Rules & Restrictions are designed to protect both the brand and the consumers who buy that brand.   One simply can't separate the two.

Perhaps a good analogy is to look at AT&T:   various private enterprise groups wanted to start their own telephone companies, so they used anti-competitive rulings to take down one of America's premier companies.  The result:  AT&T was destroyed, the start-ups failed and America and Americans lost.
(Interesting side note:   Without AT&T we may not have ever had an Apple as hacking into its systems with their blue box was Steve & Woz's first taste producing a marketable product together)

Personally, I welcome the security and peace of mind ApplePay gives me and do not want that interfered with.   Likewise, I wish that Apple would increase and improve its policing of 3rd party apps on the App Store.

... One of the reasons I favor Apple is its stability, security and privacy protections.  Opening up to third parties would make it more Microsoft like.

....... Perhaps that emphasis on security & privacy stems from the founders initial efforts as entrepreneurs by hacking one of America's most prestigious organzations?

But, with lots of money sloshing around, there will always be people and organizations looking for a slice of that pie -- and (mis)using government to get it.

I doubt the EU can be viewed as market libertarians. But on a wide range of subjects they often express a genuine concern for a "level playing field". I think they are going to investigate this under that lens. We'll see what comes out. The perceived problem with the technology sector is that in many areas it is often winner-takes-all. The argument  against curtailing the leader is that it slows down progress to force competition. Maybe there is a balance to be found once the innovator's position is extremely well established, and I doubt the innovator would ever do it without a bit of prodding.

Out of interest, do you see allowing other payment systems threatening interference with the security and peace that ApplePay gives you? I'm not seeing it.

Not everyone is lining up dozens of these.  It would be nice for home users to fit a mini in a 1U in a small server + AV rackmount.  For example, 5.6 x 5.6 x 1.6 is 5x5x2 with some some change to spare. I'm thinking they must have tried this every possible way before they settled on this current form. Is there a hard constraint that the footprint be square?  

quench said:

the company (Apple) that helped them become a worldwide sensation.

I'm sorry but many of the opinions here are seriously misinformed.  
For this to get 10 likes also tells me that some of the readership is also misguided. 

CheeseFreeze said:

... not an Apple product and without the Apple design thinking behind it ...

Although SEIKO does have low end stuff to make some products widely accessible, it remains that SEIKO is one of the premier brands mixing technology and style in the world: watches, eyewear, etc. Those colors might seem garish today but in the 80's that was the bee's knees, just look at the Apple logo of yesteryear. The beige box Macs of the day would not score too many points today either.  But a classic SEIKO self-winding watch still holds fray today from both a technological and style standpoint. And it can still be had at a reasonable price with the right options. I can't think of anything that Apple has made which has kept as much relevance over time, but that's expected. And if it used AppleTalk then clearly it leaned on Apple "thinking", heck this thing pretty much had notifications...

I'm seeing this as Apple wanting to keep the market segmented so they can keep on selling you three devices: an iPhone, an iPad, and a Mac. It is a triple bonanza. If not already, very soon the iPhone or the iPad will be powerful enough for the Mac/PC compute needs of most users, quite capable of running both at the the same time if the need be. The CPU is there, the solid state storage is there, the RAM density is maybe lacking for the more powerful use cases. What some seem to be suggesting is making the Mac a very niche product by giving most of its capabilities to the iPad. Without some serious external pressure from competitors, I don't see the incentive to do that, not any time soon. Oddly enough I think it is the iPhone and IPad that are much harder to merge due to the screen size difference. That would require a thin device whose screen can be made bigger if the need be (unfolded, etc.). But again, that goes against the interest of profit, breaks the simplicity of keeping things the same way they are now while needlessly introducing risk. Yes, the latest devices allow for new capabilities not possible recently. Just have something at the ready and very stable in case competition comes knocking. Even then, because of the ecosystem, they would have a few years to react to it.  

I was intending to rackmount this puppy with a 10Gbps ethernet port. But at 2 inches tall, this new mac mini > 1U (1.75"). Is there a way to strip down some height so that it fits in a 1U space (1.75")? I thought they made a point in their presentation to show that previous Minis have been rackmounted. So I'm hoping there is a solution to this? Thanks.