wiggin

cpsro said:

Since when does an all-in-one computer consist of two parts bolted together? Wowsers, is that ugly!

nomadmac said:

How about police doing their job and ticketing people?
My wife was sent to the hospital and our VW totaled when she was rear ended by a distracted driver. No ticket was issued.

There is no way an iPhone can determine whether someone is a driver or a passenger or a rider on a bus.

The problem is even when a ticket is issued, it's almost always only AFTER an accident has taken place. Imagine if they only ticketed drunk drivers if they caused an accident. I know police forced are already heavily strained as it is, which lets these "minor offense" go under the radar. The more people get away with it the more they do it. How often have you seen people in their cars talking on the phone without a hand-free device in broad daylight? Clearly current enforcement efforts have not been a deterrent to this behavior, and after an accident is too late.

StrangeDays said:

ElCapitan said:

lkrupp said:

ElCapitan said:

God forbid they ship a Pro model with the features people are asking for.

There is one time to think different, and another time to listen. They thought different on the Pro already and it was not quite the ticket!

... Real pros don’t have time to fiddle-fart around with slots

Do you even understand how stupid you sound? - Or understand how real Pro systems are used?

It's not stupid. You're confusing DIY with pro. I work pro in enterprise, and in enterprise we pay for new machines, we never ever crack open the case and perform DIY mods ourselves.

DIY and tinkering != professional. 

To use your earlier quote: "Your use case != everyone's use case"

Where I work it's a regular occurrence to open up computers to repair/upgrade them. Replace failed/failing drives, power supplies, RAM, etc. But then again, we use PCs which make that a much easier, more feasible proposition than it would if we were using sealed up Macs. If you are an independent or small-scale shop (or use computers that are not upgrade/repair friendly) it probably doesn't make sense to have staff with those skills. But to say it doesn't happen anywhere in enterprise is false.

zoetmb said:

It's not that I don't believe the rumors, after all - Apple hasn't updated the Express to ac, but I think we'll know for sure if we see Apple Retail and/or the website selling a third party router.

Considering that Apple has been removing ports from machines because "everything is wireless anyway", it doesn't really make sense to me that they'd abandon this line.   On the other hand, while the supposed team was still working on this product line, what the hell were they doing day-to-day?  Airport Extreme 802.11ac and Airport Time Capsule 802.11ac were released in June of 2013, 3 1/2 years ago!   Airport Express 802.11n was released in June of 2012.  

Maybe they got rid of the team (or moved them on to something else) because they were unproductive.  Maybe a new team is coming in.   Although Apple doesn't make printers, scanners, computer speakers, monitors and many other desktop devices, I consider their router to be part of the ecosystem.  I'm surprised Ive would want a third-party's router sitting on a desk, although if he doesn't care about a monitor, then he wouldn't care about the router (which in the case of third party routers don't necessarily sit on a desk anyway). 

My suspicion is that the Airport and Apple TV teams will be merged into a single line of mesh and smart home products. Not necessarily a complete line of smart products like light switches and garage door openers, but things that complement Apple's other technologies like Airplay, network connections, etc. One device acts as the hub (this could be a router or Apple TV or some new device), and other devices can be added to the mesh network as needed. Either to extend the wifi network or add capabilities like Airplay, a remote Ethernet connection, network storage, etc.

qwwera said:

Metriacanthosaurus said:

qwwera said:

I say they change it, but not the phone end.

That makes even less sense. USB-A charging is ubiquitous. There is ZERO incentive for Apple to change USB-A to USB-C on the iPhone until USB-C starts to take over USB-A in the real world.

The Mac is a completely different story, that shouldn't even require explanation.

What do you mean it doesn't make sense? The other end of the iPhone cable is the old USB that is not even supported on the new MacBooks. It's cleaning the Apple ecosystem of the old USB connection.

Not to mention that one could probably argue that there are enough USB A to Lightning cables on the planet already to fulfill the need until the last USB A port is banished. And they are readily available at the corner drug store. So if Apple switched to USB C on the computer/charger end of the cable, then if anyone still needed a USB A version they likely either already have several of those cables in a drawer someplace or can very easily obtain one for only a few bucks. 

macsince1988 said:

This is absolutely a non-story.  Warning signs and precautionary roped off areas are (and have been) incredibly common around the Chicago area during the winter, almost anywhere where there is a roof and heavy pedestrian traffic.  Here in Chicago, we call this problem “winter”.

Yes, but no.

Yes, there are signs like that all over Chicago in the winter. But no, they are not for snow and ice falling off the roofs of buildings. Every person here who has stated or implied that need to rethink their conclusions.

Those signs are because of the snow and ice that accumulates on the facades (ie, the sides, window frames, and architectural elements) of the buildings. Not the roofs (at least not the flat roofs of larger buildings which is what we are talking about here). Chicago has only gotten a few inches of snow so far this winter. How many of these signs are you seeing around other than the Apple Store? I've seen none on my 15 minute daily walk across the Loop each morning and afternoon. If the Apple Store is already having this problem after such light snow, what on Earth are they going to do when it really snows?!?

Absolutely an architectural design failure. And a failure of the city to not catch this when they reviewed the building permit (too many $$ in their eyes, perhaps). Living and working in this city you come to expect this when walking past the high-rise building during the deep winter and especially the spring thaw when all the accumulated ice and snow starts melting and detaching from the sides of the buildings. You wouldn't expect this from a relatively low building like the Apple Store and so early in the winter when there as been very little snow.

tenthousandthings said:

philotech said:

I think the new mini is a fine machine and probably worth the money (in Apple categories of course - no doubt that you will get away with less in the Windows PC world). However, what people are complaining about ist that the entry level bar to an Apple PC has been raised considerably over time: The initial mini was USD 500 IIRC and now we are at USD 800, even taking into account inflation that's a lot more.

Nope. $600 in 2005 at launch, stayed at $600 until 2014 (with a brief period at $700 in 2010), when it dropped to $500 with all upgradeability removed.

The $500 cheap mini only existed in the crippled 2014 edition.

US $600 in 2005 dollars is about $775 in 2018 dollars. So the $800 price is a course correction. $700 would have been better, but if it stays at $800 for the next ten years, the low end will be a bargain in 2028!

[TLDR: The 2018 mini is not an upgrade of the mini. It is Apple’s response to calls for a mid-range, mini-tower class computer (with the upgrades on the outside, thus the large number of Thunderbolt ports that someone was questioning earlier in this thread). Now the complaints are that the lower-end purposes for the mini have been abandoned via the price increases.]

Before you tell somebody they are wrong, you should make sure you are right. You are not.

The original 2005 Mac mini (PPC) had a base price of $499. I believe the $599 base price came with the upgrade to Intel CPUs. Inflation should be partially offset by the general trend of technology getting cheaper, but even still I wouldn’t argue that Apple should still have a $499 offering. A $599 offering I think was expected by most folks.

For pro users, the new Mac mini is probably an OK deal. But where I disagree with the article’s argument (for argument’s sake?) was that the mini was primarily aimed at the pro market and that pros were the only ones complaining about the lack of better options. The 2018 model has shifted the mini to being a pro machine in lieu of the non-existent mid-range headless Mac people have also been asking for. Yes, pros used the mini before that. Server farms used it. And the 2018 model most certainly addresses those markets.

But it comes at the cost of dismissing the hobbiest/prosumer market and the switchers (although I always had doubts how big that market was). Those who maybe didn’t need the power all of the time but wanted it for occasional heavy tasks. Folks using it for home automation, HTPC, personal/home server. And folks who had a monitor already or preferred to purchase one separately for much less than the incremental cost of getting a monitor built into an iMac.

I have three Mac minis: 2005, 2009, 2012 (which I bought from Apple refurb after the downgraded 2014 came out). None of them were purchased because I necessarily needed a new computer. None have ever been my primary computer. At the prices offered at the time, they were as much impulse purchases as anything else. Getting the most CPU I felt reasonable knowing I could upgrade RAM and storage (which I did on every single one of them). If the only option would have been to predict what my future needs would be and buy that much RAM/storage from Apple at the time of purchase, I probably would have never purchased a single mini (and certainly not three!).

It’s too bad Apple couldn’t have come up with a way to also have a $599 option. I don’t know where the cost savings would come from, but I’m sure they could have come up with something if they had wanted to. Less expensive SSD (if not for the “true pro” use case, is the blazing fast SSDs Apple is using necessary)? Fewer TB ports (non-pros certainly don’t need four)? Options for 4-core i5 and i7 processors?

It’s not necessarily that the 2018 Mac mini isn’t a fair value for the prices offered, but that it’s no longer desirable for at least a portion of the classic target customer for the mini. A $799 base price is no longer an enticing entry point into considering getting a mini. The cost of internal storage is my biggest complaint. I need more storage, but it doesn’t all have to be expensive, top of the line SSDs. Yes, easy enough to add external storage, but that costs more compared to internal and is unappealing for some applications such as HTPC or wherever space is limited. My 2012 mini has 3 TB of internal storage (1 TB SSD + 2 TB HD) which can hold all the files I want on the mini (SSD) plus the Time Machine backups for our laptops (HD) without cluttering my space with cables and external drives.

That’s why I believe what they were really trying to do with the 2018 mini was address the complaints about the lack of an expandable mini-tower class computer. Again, look at all those TB ports! And that’s fine. The new mini fits the bill. The new target audience can upgrade their minis with external GPUs, fast storage, and other expensive TB accessories. But the cost of entry has gone up considerably, and in so doing Apple has abandoned the mini’s original purpose in life, which is why you are still hearing complaints.

macxpress said:

WestCoaster said:

I have been using Macs professionally for twenty years—and like many, feel the divide between Apple and its professional users has become intolerable. Specially given the price point Apple is asking for these new models. 

I have been embarrassingly close to being a "fan boy" for Apple... and I want nothing more than continue what has been a great relationship. But, for me personally, I just don't know if that is possible any more. That really upsets me to even say, but that goes to show the connection people have had with Apple. It has been/is, a relationship, unlike the Win-box ilk.

People end marriages for a lot less! Watch out, Apple (tongue in cheek).

I need another coffee...

So go buy something else thats as good or better as what Apple is offering. 

Oh wait...

What you fail to realize is that it's not about wanting something that's better than what Apple is offering. It's about wanting Apple to offer something "better" (in quotes because "better" is entirely dependent on what your individual criteria are). Either way, it's still about wanting something Apple. Sog just posted above yours about Apple no longer being a niche company and no addressing a "massive market." If that is true, why do they still maintain such a limited product lineup? Yes, we know, we know...efficiency of scale (hyper-efficiency can hit a point of diminishing returns), inventory simplification (because their inventory app will crash if they add another SKU), and limited resources (how much money do they have in the bank?).

I know Apple can do no wrong and should never be questioned, but isn't wanting something better what drives innovation and progress? Or at the very least gets you a discount on your USB-C and TB 3 accessories through the end of the year. 

applesauce007 said:

jvmb said:

rogifan_new said:

red oak said:

This, if true, is a bad move.  3rd party solutions are (still) a mess.  Their software absolutely sucks.  There is no integration with Apple products.  

This, plus the decision not to make their own monitors, makes Apple very unreliable has I look at my personal tech roadmap.  I increasingly can't count on them 

I don't get it as why wouldn't Apple want people to buy this stuff from them. Why cede accessories to other companies? The less of this stuff Apple produces the easier it is for people to leave the Apple ecosystem.

I don't get it either. I mainly use mac not because of the OS, but because of the ecosystem. That ecosystem used to justify the higher margins. I have read through instructions to set up time machine on a NAS and I rather pay $100 more for a router than having to deal with setting that up and troubleshooting that.

I think the problem is that the Mac is no longer the center of the ecosystem. The iPhone is now the center and the Mac is an accessory used to sell more iPhones. The routers are not as important as iPhones don't use time machine. Apple prefers that you back up to iCloud.

Even Microsoft seems to be moving away from the PC OS being their main product. After a failed attempt to move to mobile, they are now focusing their attention on cloud applications and enterprise cloud computing. Ironically, Google is now now getting in the router and PC business.

The next version of WiFi called 802.11ax is too fast for homes and small businesses.  It is meant for interconnecting big corporations and even cities.
Apple will live that up to companies like Cisco, HP and Juniper Networks amongst others.

Apple's routers aren't one trick ponies. What about larger/faster storage and USB ports that could actually keep up with network capabilities we already have. And the Express was never even upgraded to 802.11ac and, I believe, still doesn't have gigabit Ethernet ports. (Gigabit ports didn't matter when it only had one port because you were constrained by wireless speeds, but the Express has a WAN and a LAN port so it can be a bottleneck when passing data across the ports.)

jvmb said:

rogifan_new said:

red oak said:

This, if true, is a bad move.  3rd party solutions are (still) a mess.  Their software absolutely sucks.  There is no integration with Apple products.  

This, plus the decision not to make their own monitors, makes Apple very unreliable has I look at my personal tech roadmap.  I increasingly can't count on them 

I don't get it as why wouldn't Apple want people to buy this stuff from them. Why cede accessories to other companies? The less of this stuff Apple produces the easier it is for people to leave the Apple ecosystem.

I don't get it either. I mainly use mac not because of the OS, but because of the ecosystem. That ecosystem used to justify the higher margins. I have read through instructions to set up time machine on a NAS and I rather pay $100 more for a router than having to deal with setting that up and troubleshooting that.

I think the problem is that the Mac is no longer the center of the ecosystem. The iPhone is now the center and the Mac is an accessory used to sell more iPhones. The routers are not as important as iPhones don't use time machine. Apple prefers that you back up to iCloud.

Even Microsoft seems to be moving away from the PC OS being their main product. After a failed attempt to move to mobile, they are now focusing their attention on cloud applications and enterprise cloud computing. Ironically, Google is now now getting in the router and PC business.

So another move to "encourage" users to subscribe to expensive iCloud storage? In a couple of years we are all going to be paying Apple $50/month for the privilege of living in the walled garden.