mattinoz

AppleZulu said:

cgWerks said:

AppleZulu said:
They didn't put the charging port on the bottom because that was the only place left after they eliminated all the other places where they didn't want to put it. They put the charging port on the bottom because it would prevent people from leaving it plugged in while they use it. 

Any evidence for that? Why haven't they done that with the rest of their products?

Well, it seems pretty self-evident, if you're not all tense and offended by the port being on the bottom. Then there's also the fact that the patent for the mouse includes drawing with a cord out the front "for the purposes of example," but notes that "the force sensing mouse may not include a cord in various implementations, and/or may communicate with an associated electronic device utilizing various wireless communication methods such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and so on." So they had a completely elegant-looking design with a cord coming out of the front, but yet when they made it wireless, by golly, the port's on the bottom. It's a wireless mouse. It's not meant to be plugged in while you're using it. 

Ironically, there's a popular self-help book called Who Moved My Cheese that seems to address the sort of angst some people feel about the charging port being on the bottom of this wireless mouse.

cgWerks said:

entropys said:
Oh, it is pretty obvious the design is deliberate to stop you using it plugged in. Thing is, I want to use it plugged in.

That's actually a good point. Aside from charging, some wireless devices communicate over USB when plugged in vs BT (not sure about the MM2), which gives that option if something is interfering with signals, or can bypass pairing issues when booting, etc. (Again, not sure if the MM2 can do that, but some BT devices do.)

mr. h said:

The whiners who are trying to argue the case for an xMac do themselves a great disservice by poo-pooing the new Mac Pro. It makes you look like you are unable to process information logically and makes it more likely that people will just dismiss everything you have to say.

I do think that there is a very good case for the xMac, but there's no need to rubbish the Mac Pro in order to make said case. The new Mac Pro is a seriously awesome and absolutely gorgeous machine, as is the XDR display, and despite the fact I'm nowhere near the target market for these things, it still made me almost giddy with excitement when it was announced - and it's been a long time since any hardware announcement from Apple had me so excited. It was just so refreshing to see Apple take this stuff seriously and produce a correspondingly uncompromised product. The Mac Pro is expensive. But it is also good value. And as for the XDR display, that is just astonishingly good value - come on, this thing is better in every way than a monitor costing $40+k, and it costs $6k - if that's not staggeringly good value, I don't know what is. 

Now, having said all that, there does still remain the question - why on earth is Apple making the entry cost for a configurable machine on the macOS platform $6000??? It's like they actively don't want to sell more Macs! It's a decision that just baffles me. You can't seriously tell me that Apple offering an xMac that starts at $999 is going to cannibalise a $6000+ workstation? They are completely different products for completely different markets and there is simply no way that someone who would consider buying a $6k workstation would end up buying a $1k tower instead, and equally and just as importantly, visa versa. Here is what I would envisage an xMac consisting of:

A tower design with easy access to innards, but something much simpler and less high-end than the new Mac Pro
Support for intel Core i3, i5, i7, i9 desktop processors
Support for up to 64 GB RAM (in DIMM Slots)
NVMe SSD (user upgradeable)
two PCIe slots
dedicated graphics options (but not supporting anything like the MPX Modules for Mac Pro).

And what would the $999 option consist of? Take the $799 mini and put those specs in a tower:

• 3.6GHz quad-core 8th-generation Intel Core i3 processor
• 8GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory
• Intel UHD Graphics 630
• 128GB SSD

This configuration would have both PCIe slots empty. Adding a dedicated graphics card would enable macOS dynamic graphics switching.

BTW - just looked at the Mac Mini, and Apple's prices for storage and RAM are quite simply disgusting and totally unjustifiable. So that's the reason they don't have an xMac.

anome said:

I didn't realise this was meant to be a "Global Flagship" store. I'm not surprised they've given up on Federation Square, though. Melbournians are very conservative and parochial. Comes from their inferiority complex over Sydney. Kind of like Chicago and New York.

Apple, if you're reading this, if you want to open a bigger store in Canberra, I'd be willing to go there. And at least a few hundred other people would, too...

Just don't put it in Perth. No-one wants to go to Perth.