anonconformist

canukstorm said:

Soli said:

canukstorm said:

rezwits said:

Seems like studios will "kinda settle" by getting a Mac Pro, i.e. this will be something they don't really want to go BACK to for some places.

But the XDR Display SEEMS to be the reason they will really really want to be ok settling...

I have read a few comments from people that just really only want the display!  ha

You don't need a Mac Pro to be able to use the Pro XDR display

"Pro Display XDR is compatible with the following Mac models running macOS Catalina 10.15.2 or later:

• Mac Pro (2019) with MPX Module GPUs
• 15-inch MacBook Pro (2018 or later)
• 16-inch MacBook Pro (2019)
• 21.5-inch iMac (2019)
• 27-inch iMac (2019)
• Any Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports paired with Blackmagic eGPU or Blackmagic eGPU Pro"

https://www.apple.com/ca/pro-display-xdr/specs/

And of course any PC that supports TB3 with a video card that push that resolution.

I was under the impression that Apple-branded displays and displays designed for Macs (LG UltraFine 4K / 5K) only work with Macs.  Or is that incorrect?

That is incorrect.

entropys said:

wood1208 said:

When Apple agreed to repair and extend keyboard warranty, class action law suit is immaterial. But, if this law suit continues than at most Apple might have to agree to repair more than current 4 years from the purchase date.

Even pre 2015 Macbook Pro keyboard has kind of high keys. Butterfly keyboard has very low keys, There are users who like either or don't care. But, Magic keyboard seems likable by most.

Yes, I am at a loss what they can claim compensation for? Free repairs? Oh, wait.

I'll work on a charitable assumption that you're not being sarcastic and you honestly don't understand why this may matter.

If all you use your laptop for is for appearance, then sure, perhaps it's no big deal: you can move over to some arbitrary laptop while your regular laptop is down.

It's true, people aren't absolutely required to buy Apple laptops, they can also buy Apple desktop machines, too.  You may be thinking to yourself (like an idiot earlier in the thread) that nobody is bending your arm to buy an Apple laptop, get a Windows machine.  For a lot of things, that's valid, if you're wanting a cheaper system you can replace easily with another cheap system.

However, Apple laptops don't cater to the cheap laptop-using crowd, and a MBP is certainly not a cheap machine: it's a tradeoff between being portable and powerful, and for those that have a reasonable need for that combination of things, a good buy, until it starts eating their time.

"Nobody needs a Mac laptop!" someone may say.  What if they're doing MacOS/iOS/other Apple platform development?  Sure, they can still do it with another form factor Macintosh, but what if there's a valid reason to need it to be portable?  Anyone suggesting people carry around a non-laptop and calling it "portable" aren't serious.

I live in the Seattle area and do developer support at a big tech company by day (and when doing on-call, weird hours of the morning on the weekend) and iOS development otherwise.  I'm not a graphic designer or anything like that: just a developer with lots of experience.  What do you think my time is worth per hour?

I just bought a 2019 16" with maxed out GPU, 1 TB SSD, 64 GB RAM (I run virtual machines) to replace my 2016 15" MBP, largely due to the keyboard issue (though I've not had a fatal problem with mine, yet, but that's easily foreseeable) and not nearly as much RAM as desired, that's going away.

If things went perfectly smoothly, I could get in and out of the nearest Apple Store in about an hour to drop off my laptop if it needed to be repaired, but then I'd need to disrupt my schedule to do that after regular work hours not only to drop it off, but to pick it up once it was fixed.  That's 2 hours alone right there.

I have Parallels installed on my machine: that requires a per-machine machine-locked license.  If I am forced to spend time taking my laptop for repair, I also need to get a backup machine and switch over licensing for a short time for Parallels, or do without it.  It's common that such per-machine licensing schemes don't allow you to switch back and forth too often or for more than a fixed number of times, who wants to deal with getting into it with their Support?  What if you have other applications that also are licensed like this?

What if you have someone's data on your machine that you're not allowed for legal or security reasons to have on a machine when you take it in for repairs?  All that costs you time, and time is money, quite a bit of money.

There are legitimate business reasons to have a laptop that's sufficiently powerful, and being a consultant of some form is one of them: time is money.  Wasted time is wasted money and lost revenue, because you can never get that time back.

That's why there's a reasonable justification for a lawsuit: these are machines that claim to be for professionals, but history has shown enough people have them out of commission for extended time periods for a cause that was readily avoided, and Apple should have reasonably figured out quicker than they did.  Sure, Apple has extended the "free repair" program longer than normal Apple Care, but that doesn't help users that otherwise treat their machines perfectly and have them go out of commission get their time back.

It seems the people filing this want the race for the bottom to result in everything being “free” (well, to them) and developers bear the costs.

adding more app stores doesn’t necessarily help bring developer costs down, or profits up: it has a time cost to deal with any store, and having more to deal with will be more expensive for developers who already have cheapskates thinking things are too expensive to pay for.

in the long run, once there’s not enough money for developers, the platform self-destructs and everyone loses.

randominternetperson said:

Honest question (not snark): what tasks require/make use of 256 gig of RAM?  Video editing I assume.  Anything else?  Massive ML projects?

Ray tracing (computer animation where it’s procedurally-driven) is an example where a beautiful 5k display, maximum RAM and CPU capability is never enough.

it’s a task that a single frame takes a huge amount of time to render, and you’ve got thousands of them, while also invariably seeing “oops, doesn’t look as good as hoped!” Pops up.  It parallelizes wonderfully if you’ve got the resources.

There are other things that can readily use such resources, such as doing MMO level video game design and testing/development for all the assets in a database that’s ideally kept in RAM because time is money, and huge displays make it easier to see all the editing controls along the edges while seeing what the game would look like in 4k, as an example.

Software development on such a system is nice, as I found with my 5k iMac I can look at about 750 lines of code at once (several columns) which can come in handy.  Most software development won’t be sped up by having that much RAM, though, as much as having an SSD and more CPU cores for builds, but using some debugging tools can result in huge amounts of captured telemetry to analyze.

HenryDJP said:

Well, I'm not a developer, so congrats to the winners! BUT...I feel like I have the best seat in the house for the Keynote anyway. I'll be right here sitting in my dining room with a fresh cup o Joe watching the keynote on my 2018 MBP 15". No money spent on gas, lodging or food. Kitchen and bathroom are only a few steps away. LOL. Can't wait for next Monday. I'm not into paying for streaming services (other than Netflix) but I'm sure Apple will be offering something intoxicating. 

If you’re a developer the most valuable part of the conference are the labs where you can get help, and potential contacts you make with other developers and those looking for people.

The sessions otherwise are recorded and yes, you have the best seat watching on your computer with it being best to have the videos played on your large 4K tv while you optionally follow along on your computer.