iamthegtiguy

I was done with Apple Music years ago when it completely destroyed my (legally) ripped collection of lossless music.  It also corrupted my library of 3,000+ past iTunes purchases -- something Apple has yet to fully fix.

I still love Apple products, but I will be damned if I ever try Apple Music again.  And I sure hope Tidal doesn't fold. 
1) That may have occurred because of you linking to Apple Music, but that's Apple issue, specifically with a bug(s) in their OS and/or app. That means you should be wary of Apple, in general, not Apple Music.

2) After that happened did you at least decide to start backing up your data? At some point the user has to take responsibility for not taking precautions. That doesn't mean that Apple wasn't at fault, but it means you also have a personal responsibility. Like if a woman has a stroke while driving and runs off the road onto the sidewalk and hits you. While that's not your fault the car drove up on the sidewalk, if you walking and holding an iPad up to your face watching an episode of The Benny Hill Show on YouTube whilst walking there's a finger to be pointed at you, too.e>

So you made some decent points. But streaming Tidal from an AppleTV, for example, digitally plugged into a high-end Amp with a high-end DAC does sound wonderful. As for my music files, I did have it backed up. But that isn't the point -- the files are fine, it's everything else that is the problem. Because the iTunes interface has become more draconian over the years, it has hobbled my entire music collection. For example, Apple "doubled" or "tripled" my purchases of about 2,000 songs on iTunes. It never charged me for this, but my Apple-sourced iTunes song history indicates that I made multiple purchases of many songs and albums. The result is that no matter how I arrange my library on iTunes, many, many albums have two and three versions of the identical song. And these files get pushed directly onto all of my apple devices, because the internal iTunes library indicates that I bought multiple versions. This eats up valuable space on my iPhone. It also makes these albums completely unlistenable, unless you want to listen to each song two or three times in repetition. Whenever I call into Apple to try to get it fixed (I have probably tried 3-4 times over the past couple years), I get put on hold for hours, and end up being hung up on or never called back. Additionally, my iTunes library file, which dates back to 2004, became completely corrupted by Apple Music when I unsubscribed. This was, of course, during the initial 90-day period back before Apple had Apple Music functioning well. But at that point, I just gave up on the whole damn thing. Rather than create a brand new library file, I just use Tidal now, and am very happy with it.

Maybe I am one of the 2% referenced in the Article, but without x64-based software being able to run smoothly on the Mac, I (and my small firm) will have to migrate back to Lenovo laptops.  We have third-party proprietary software that only runs on Windows, so we use a combination of parallels and bootcamp to run this limited software.  Hopefully if macOS does shift to ARM, there will be some sort of efficient x64 emulation -- but I am not holding my breath.  Not to mention I will lament the loss of being able to play PC computer games on bootcamp on my MacBook Pro.  Eh, I will still use my iOS and tvOS devices just fine.

Actually, to me, it looks like the opposite.

The *biggest* complaints from the pro market all revolve around the perceived lack of customizability and expandability of the current Mac Pro.

So what does Apple do?  They make one that will undoubtedly be even more proprietary and harder to customize and/or expand.

This article is beyond absurd. Sometimes I wonder about this place and its editors/writers. First off, it makes the obvious logical fallacy of assuming that because Apple now sells a $1,550.00 smartphone, that all of that pricing MUST be due to the phone being so expensive to manufacture to such a high standard. I've got news for you: there's a reason that Apple has the highest profit margins in the industry -- and it's precisely because Apple DOES NOT plow all of its revenues into developing superior phones. Sure, it plows some of the revenue in, but (by the largest margin in the industry), Apple charges sky high prices because (1) people (at least in the past) are wiling to pay it; and (2) it creates huge profits for Apple. Look, I've been using iPhones for over a decade. I have had them break in many, many ways. Are they a bit more durable than a $200 cheapie android? Of course. Is the software more streamlined and easier to use? Of course. But this article totally misses the point. All signs point to the fact that Apple's share price has dropped because of: (1) issues with China, including tariffs; and (2) Apple has finally pushed the pricing envelope too far. The reality is that Apple has for a long time pushed a strategy that is good for investors, good for consumers, and that creates the world's best phone platform. These items are not mutually exclusive here. There's no need to pretend that they are. This article is based upon a conclusion that is wholly absurd.

anonymouse said:

iamthegtiguy said:

I may be in the minority, but I was really hoping that Apple's pro line stayed intel, and the consumer line migrated to ARM processors.

Absent something really amazing happening, I will need to shift my small firm back to Lenovo laptops in a couple of years.  We currently use MacBook Pros with parallels and windows to run legacy windows software, etc., where the developer has not yet made a MacOS version, and is certainly not going to make a MacOs version for ARM processors.  So I (and my business) am one of the small percentage of Mac users who relied on the Intel processors and is going to get burned by this.

That said, I am warming to the idea of Apple Silicon for my personal laptop, etc.  I will miss the option of using Bootcamp to game on my MacBook Pro with its discrete graphics card, but streamed gaming services like Nvidia Now are slowly obviating the need to game on your local machine at all.

Well, another way to look at it is that Boot Camp and Parallels, et al. enabled these developers to be lazy and point users to this kind of solution, rather than doing what they should have and providing native support. With that option going away, at least some of them may need to rethink that strategy.

I agree with you there.   But for what I do (I am a tax lawyer who specializes in a nuance-within-a-nuance of the tax code), the software I use MIGHT be licensed to 150-200 other firms in the entire country.  And it's not hugely expensive software.  So the company that makes it already has virtually zero incentive to make a MacOS version.  Now that I (presumably) won't have parallels x86 support, it will just be simpler to switch back to PCs.  And that isn't really a bad thing, necessarily.  But the fact is that there are "pro" users out there who are not in the creative/graphics/video production fields who may have to migrate away from Apple hardware because of this. Again, though, Apple knows this.  It's not the end of the world. 

flaneur said:

iamthegtiguy said:

On the balance, as Apple's "premium" notebook offering, this thing is pretty unimpressive.

The best part, by far, is the touch strip.  Hopefully developers are able to exploit its usefulness by integrating critical functions into easy-to-use gestures and buttons.  However, for people like me, who use my notebook in clamshell mode 90% of the time, the touch strip is useless (unless apple releases an external keyboard with one integrated).

The downsides, however, are numerous:

1) One-generation old processors, in a BRAND NEW model computer;

2) HDD storage still heinously overpriced (high end Samsung 1TB SSDs can be had for $300, why is it a $400 UPGRADE to 1TB??);

3) Ram still limited to 16GB (this doesn't affect me, but there are some professionals who will feel the pinch of this);

4) All USB-C.  I find it shocking that, for the first time in Apple's history, if I go out and buy an iPhone 7 and a new MacBook Pro, the two are incompatible with one-another without a dongle/converter.

At the very least, the new MacBook Pro should come with some sort of "docking strip" that plugs into a USB-C port and sports a host of legacy inputs.  But nothing like that is forthcoming.  Really, this thing should have had 3 USB-C ports, a USB 3.0 port, and potentially an HDMI-mini port.  Then, over time, phase out the USB 3.0 port and the HDMI port.

I will probably buy a 15" model with 1TB + 460 Video Card.  But $3,300+tax is a tough pill to swallow with the above limitations.  Maybe when this is available at Adorama for $3,100 with free shipping and no sales tax I might bite.

I guess, in short, my biggest issue isn't the fact that Apple wants to charge premium prices for this thing.  It is that the hardware is not premium-level hardware, by and large. 

I do, however, hope that the touch strip takes off!

The current generation processors are not availble in the quantities Apple needs, otherwise you'd get them. But now that the form factor has been updated, the processors will be integrated in as they become available.

Your carping about memory price. A $100 surcharge over Samsung's retail seems low to me. How do you know if Samsung or whoever isn't overcharging Apple due to scarcity, for example? Do you think memory grows on trees?

Because it's the "upgrade" price.  In other words, high bandwidth SSD's in the 1TB configuration are essentially a $300 part to the general public now, which means that Apple probably pays closer to $250, even with Apple's proprietary M2 interface.  The 512MB configuration probably costs apple ~$125.  So while it costs Apple ~$125 for the upgrade, they charge $400.

This type of gouging didn't used to bother me back when I could just buy components and swap them myself.  But now that Apple uses a proprietary M2 interface, you are stuck paying the ridiculous prices.