techconc

michelb76 said:

Xed said:

bsd228 said:

The Intel NUC hasn't died.   Like the IBM PC, it has been coopted by legions of OEMs offering original NUC sized compute units for $200-500.   
$270 got me a hex core AMD with 2.5gb ethernet, 16gbs, and a win 11 license to toss as I please.  Smaller than the Mac Mini of today, and in the same ballpark on power.  Takes an M2 and a 2.5" drive.  

They won't have the GPU, but that's not what they're used for.   

If they are in the ballpark on power usage of the Mac mini then their performance has to be awful in comparison if they are x86.

Well, it's not. The Intel vPro ones handily beat out the M1 for example, and the new ones are about the same as the M2, except hey use more power on max perf. These NUC's are great for installations, video displays, home control systems, etc. They run a ton of apps that have no equivalent on MacOSX, so depending on use-case these are still very good computers.

Nope.  Your comment is not even remotely true.  The latest NUC 12 pro gets crushed by the M2 Mac Mini.
https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/intel-nuc-12#

No matter how you spin it, the M2 Mac Pro is a real disappointment.  Full stop. 

The only excuse I’d give Apple for this disappointment is if they felt it were more important to formally complete the Apple Silicon transition than it was to provide a proper pro machine.  So, if this is a stop gap measure to hold us until this time next year, then fine.

The Mac Pro is meant to be the flagship device… the pinnacle of Mac performance.  Instead, it’s a Mac Studio with PCI slots.  At the very least, an M2 Extreme (2 M2 Ultra chips) is what users are expecting.  Apple seems content on comparing to a 4 year old Intel Mac Pro while ignoring the current Intel / nVidia 4090 based solutions.   That would address the CPU / GPU scalability concerns or at least help mute them.
The other concern is memory.  192 GB is fine for most solutions, but there are very high end needs which go well beyond that.

Here are my initial thoughts...

Positives

• On the positive side, I do believe Apple will bring a best in class product to market.  As this type of device goes, this does look pretty cool (for what it is).

Negatives

• Apple continues to completely miss the boat on gaming.  The demo should have feature a AAA game as a reference for what is possible for others.  A vague mention of Apple Arcade doesn't cut it. 
• "Starting price" of $3499 pretty much makes this a non-starter from the majority of people who don't actually need a device like this.  

Maybe at half the price, with some future version maybe based on something like an M5 chip and a large catalog of games, etc. would this be compelling for me.  I'm curious to try it, but doubt I'd get one anytime soon (after it's released).

About seven years after it introduced Retina displays, Apple began using displays with even higher pixel densities, such as Super Retina on iPhone X with 458 ppi. However, the company didn't explain why it needed to increase resolution beyond what it thought the human eye could perceive.

Maybe it wanted to satisfy that small proportion of people who have vision better than 20/20. Maybe people were holding their iPhones closer to their eyes. Or perhaps it was simply to keep up with Samsung's Galaxy line (if you believe Samsung's marketing).

Overall, good article.  However, you seem to be missing why this pixel density increase was necessary.  This article assumes all pixels are created equal.  They are not. The original claims about Retina display and pixel density were based on standard pixels that each contain an RGB stripe.  When Apple switched to OLED screen with the iPhone X, they moved to a Samsung display which uses Pentile (or Diamond) based pixels.  Pentile pixels don't each contain an RGB color.  They use 1/3 fewer sub pixels.  Why?  It's cheaper to manufacture.  Also, they get to advertise a higher pixel density (higher is better, right?).  However, it was clear that Pentile based displays need a higher resolution.  I can go through the math to explain this, but suffice to say that a Pentile based display REQUIRES higher pixel density in order to achieve the same level of sharpness. 

Edit:  A Pentile display at 458ppi has an effective resolution of 374ppi.    sqrt(458x458x2/3)=374

AppleZulu said:

It's pretty clear at this point that the decision to create Apple Maps was based on a lot more than a dispute over turn-by-turn directions. That may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, but what was clear at that point was that mapping and location services were going to be a core function of iOS, not just a standalone app. GPS wasn't even included on iPhone until the 3G model was released. Fairly quickly for Google, location data was becoming one more data goldmine to sell to advertisers, and Apple didn't want iPhone to become an unrestrained sellout of its customers. More importantly, Apple couldn't cede what was rapidly becoming a central function of its device to its primary rival.  So a decision was abruptly made to take a hard turn off the previous course and it took a few iterations to get through the "recalculating" phase. 

I think you need to take history into context here.  Back in the day, it was very common to get directions as a series of instructions.  There were many services out there such as MapQuest, etc. to provide this information.  Yes, standalone GPS devices existed, but that typically wasn't what you had with computers.  Apple's first Maps app was just that, you could find things and get a list of directions on how to get there. 

Meanwhile, Google started putting real GPS based turn-by-turn directions onto their Android devices.  Apple wanted that feature as well. That's when Google laid out the demands to Apple to provide user data in exchange for that level of Maps services.  Apple was very privacy minded and unwilling to do that, so they created their own mapping service.  Whatever rift existed between Apple and Google at time from Google copying Apple was more of a sidebar than the driving decision for Apple to role their own maps service.