macplusplus

tjwolf said:

WTF?  What does this mean for all the open-source stuff developers depend on?  E.g. apache projects?  Will Apache go through through this signing process?  What about stuff installed via 'brew'?  Java VMs, etc., etc.....

canukstorm said:

commentzilla said:

canukstorm said:

wizard69 said:

avon b7 said:

This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.

Exactly!    They really need a midrange desktop with a bit more capability than the Mini.    Imagine a Mini in a taller case with a GPU card and a couple of SSD slots.  Then against n maybe AMDs new APUs next year might have the GPU performance to upgrade the Mini.   By the way the goal for the GPU is compute capability.   I only mention that because bozzos immediately try to imply that I want a gaming machine.  This isn’t the case at all but rather it is to leverage the growing adoption of GPU compute in applications.  

So essentially an iMac 5K but without the screen.  Plus, there's nothing wrong with wanting a gaming machine.  It's one of the fastest growing segments in the desktop space.

At best you'll get a trashcan in another form factor in the $3000-$5000 range with upgradable RAM and Graphics Cards and no PCIe slots or CPU upgrades. By the time you add it up, it will cost the same as a 5K iMac with similar specs and no monitor. That will be the price of admission for semi-upgradability, just like the MacMini. I'd be pretty happy with that.

Re-purposing the trash-can Mac could work. 

avon b7 said:

normm said:

avon b7 said:

This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.

Everything in engineering is a tradeoff.  For example, putting all chips in sockets makes them replaceable and perhaps upgradeable, but dramatically reduces reliability, because connectors are so much less reliable than soldered joints.  Adding connectors also increases size and weight, which is not the right tradeoff if the goal is lightness and compactness.  Most of the decisions made in mobile devices that make them hard to fix are not made out of perversity, but to make them better at being mobile. Eventually you put everything into one super-small and super-light chip, and iFixit has nothing to repair.

Too many past Apple decisions have involved trade-offs that weren't really necessary in the first place.

That is how we ended up with laptop components in desktop machines.

Like saying "this is the design. Now engineer everything to fit inside it".

The socket vs soldered issue really doesn't hold much water when one of the most common failures of iMacs for example was failed graphics cards which slow cooked themselves to death, accumulated dust and are extremely inaccessible. 

While trade-offs will always exist some decisions were taken because things like accessibility were never on the cards from the outset. That is why you had to remove the protective glass, display and other components on my last iMac, just to get at the hard drive.

Now, SSDs are soldered onto laptops and if one fails you have to take the whole machine in.

On laptops, the top case, keyboard and battery are all unnecessarily dependent on each other (that's without getting into the butterfly debate). Once again, certain considerations simply weren't on the table from the get go.

I'd take a socketed option over any soldered/glued on option on a Mac - every time. Especially as I've not had a single issue with socketed components. Not even had to re-seat RAM. On the other hand just about every single Apple laptop battery I've had has swollen and required replacing.

At the end of the day, it would be nice to have choice but that is denied us. 

This Mac Pro could exist in a far lower cost version with all the upgradeability but the only reason it doesn't exist is because Apple doesn't want it to exist.

Given the choice, many users would opt for such a machine but that would take a bite out of the iMac - and that's why it doesn't exist.

I'd love for Tim to call my bluff and get one onto the market and let the market (us) decide.

volcan said:

I’ve never been a big fan of Ive. Perhaps it is my bias against the British version of the English language. He seems so pretentious and particularly elite with his royal title.

Perhaps it is just my bias because I am a native Spanish speaker and we still have an ongoing cultural conflict with England. Spanish is such a phonetic language. It just hurts my ears to hear him speak English. I have no problem with American English.