txsbaker75

I'm curious why Apple doesn't just take the parts for the iMac 21" and install them in a MacMini shell with a breakout adaptor to provide the rear panel connections. It would make it much easier to support & update. They might have to modify the motherboard design slightly to accommodate both case designs, and possible tweak the case designs, too. But that would seem to be a comparatively easy way to offer a low end, up-to-date spec PC with or without display. In fact, they could do it with 2 chassis designs and offer the same thing for the 27" iMac components for a midrange desktop offering. My $0.02, as ever.

Hangouts is not actually a bad service, but it suffers from too many incomplete/promised features and Googles schizophrenic communications strategy. If they would have just focused their efforts on the features they promised instead of letting it linger while they propped up Voice, Messenger, Jabber, Also/Duo, etc. then they could have consolidated it into a powerful cross-platform service/app with industry gravitas. Instead, they're chasing Apple, Skype & Slack in a downward spiral to irrelevance. Based on their history, how many partners will invest in this knowing Google doesn't usually follow through on their numerous other projects. And, yes, it is an investment for a business to roll this out. Just the end-user training can suck up hundreds of man-hours for a large organization. Add in the lost time while employees fumble with new apps/services until they become proficient enough to be productive, and your talking a lot of money.

I wish they'd make a Vega upgrade option for the Mac Pro 2013. It seems entirely possible to do. IMHO the Mac Pro is a great workstation that is whisper quiet at full load. My Promise Raid system is louder than it, and you should hear my MacBook Pro when I push it. I'm not sure what the fuss regarding internal storage is about. How many actual users of these things keep projects on internal storage? NLE projects should always be on external storage. If you're in a big studio, you probably have a SAN or at least a high-speed NAS. I mostly deal with video and some photo, but I like to keep my photos in a RAID volume, too. I would assume most photo editors would do the same.

I've seen several articles on the Go device touting that it doesn't need a phone or PC to operate. Where does it get the content from? What kind of processing power can it have for $199? Rift requires a substantial computer and graphics card to run, and Gear requires an $800 phone. Is it essentially a VR iPod? Since it's Gear compatible, it likely runs Android in some form. Personally, I think Apple is right on this technology. It's neat, but it's too niche and the applications are very limited right now. No one wants to strap a display to their face for very long. The ergonomics alone are problematic; add to that the as-yet untested long-term impact on vision... AR makes more sense for real-world applications, but the tech is even further out than VR.

Why not make this a feature of the App Store on the Mac, and create a separate Windows App Store app? That would consolidate the features in more logical places while reducing the scope (and bloat) of iTunes. Apple could even help developers highlight apps that have macOS/iOS features.