geirnoklebye

Soli said:

Bottom line: Apple owes you nothing over what they purchase agreement included, just as you own them nothing but the cost of the machine that you choose to by.

Apple's success was built on the long term commitment if its Macintosh user base and before that the Apple II base. Without this commitment, it most likely would have gone extinct sometime in the 1990-ties. 

The expectation from the committed user base is that Apple keep investing in them and their needs, and not just deliver a point in time box like most PC manufacturers do.

Apple used to deliver products that in sum comprised an ecosystem that their committed user base could live happily in, and Steve Jobs in particular understood how important this is for the longevity and continued success of the company.  

Under Tim Cook, Apple has started peeling away components of the ecosystem removing items such as screens, not upgrading network components, TM capabilities and capacity, lobotomizing the server software, remove server configurations, not refreshing existing systems for literally years, remove the ability for the users to add and replace components to their system such as disk, memory, GPU, battery and other techcnologies gets cheaper and more capable over the lifetime of the system. Now most configurations are frozen in time, while before they could evolve and serve the user better over its lifetime.

Their obsession with anorexic thinness produce as a result systems cannot be fully utilized or expanded because there is no more room in the thermal envelope for faster components (we see this both in the trashcan and the new iMac Pro), or connecting the system for use in a real world situation leaves the user with a dongle and docking station hell, or a bunch of additional box clutter on their desktops (MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iMac Pro.) Just to illustrate the madness of the situation, do a quick search for "rack mount for Mac Pro" and have a good laugh!  

 

And are are you actually claiming Apple is a design by committee company!? 

They are on fast track to become one. 

k2kw said:

geirnoklebye said:

Will it take them to 2019 to give the mini a decent bump too? I have 4 x 2011 i7 server models waiting for an upgrade. It gets a little bit tiresome to scour e-bay for used 2011/2012 server configs.

I would not hold my breath waiting for a Mini.   They have never committed to making a new model.   At least last year they gathered in several journalists/bloggers to say that they had missed the direction of the market for the MacPro.   They said that the Mac Pro would not come before 2017.   Now they say 2019.    It will probably get here by Q1 2020.   Both the mini and the Pro's sell in lower volume compared to laptops and the iMac, but apple probably makes much less profit on the mini just because thats the difference between a $500 machine and a $5,000 machine.   The Mini may not get any attention due to the need to dedicate those people to other projects.   Its gone the way of the iPadMini.   I tend to think both products would get more sales if they were updated.

Well, of course the mini sell in lower numbers when they don't do anything to keep it current. People (both new and existing customers) want to get the best deal possible at the moment of purchase, but models that have not seen a refresh in 2, 3, 4 years increasingly sound like a bad deal and people put it off or get something entirely different. 

AFAIK Cook recently said the mini was an important part of Apple's future.  We need to see proof of the pudding, Tim. 

It's another sign Apple have lost their bearing when it comes to the importance of building ecosystem for and around the Mac. It will also be a loss for small business wanting independence from Microsoft and cloud hosting solutions. It is also a telltale that whatever new Pro and "mini" configurations are planned for 2018 and beyond will have no server class capabilities.

Soli said:

 


 A system like that would immediately be dubbed "the ashtray". - So now we got the Trash Can and the Ash Tray.