KidGloves

Apple has what, 8% of the X86 market. I can't see how they could be in any kind of regulatory trouble with this. Your 'new competitor' line is also puzzling. The silicon industry is packed with competitors. Apple seems to be good at staying near the top of the pile. Having total control over both Mac and iOS would fit right in with how they like to do things. After all, they've been blaming Intel a lot for all manner of holdups. Being able to custom design their next generation of chips would have been something they would be up for doing. Unless of course, they are about to exit the x86 market altogether...

People cleverer than me will be able to give good reasons but why does Apple not buy AMD? Market cap is just over $30B, more than affordable for Apple.

hackintoisier said:

What are others' thoughts on whether it makes sense (or not) for Apple's design decision to stop developing expandable Macs? Some users will never open their Macs, others will want to tinker. But older Macbook Pros circa-2009 were expandable in some ways (users could swap out their SATA HDDs for SATA SDDs, and could also upgrade the RAM). Why take away expandability from macOS users? It's not like we have other macOS hardware suppliers to officially choose from.

On the desktop front, Apple could totally market a monitor-less midrange desktop that is more powerful than the mini, but not as powerful as the pro, but is expandable.

And they could simply call it the Macintosh (aka xMac):
- Standard NVME M.2 connectors
- Less PCI-E slots than the Mac Pro
- Non ECC DIMM slots
- Support for LGA 1151 Intel Core Processors (e.g., Coffee Lake Core i9-9900k)
- User-expandable

Until Apple markets an expandable Mac, I'm perfectly fine with my midrange (EXPANDABLE) Hackintosh.

As Apple no longer caters for my needs I've been thinking of going down the Hackintosh route. I'm reasonably handy around computers but worry about reliability, crashes, application issues etc... and especially updates. Could you possibly give a quick rundown of how you have found the process yourself?

How do Dell, HP etc... manage to have a range of workstations, from low powered slimline desktops to full-size Mac Pro competitors? They cover the spectrum from Mac Mini prices right up to tens of thousands for high spec models.

As Apple users, we get ONE machine supplier. ONE. It boggles my mind that they refuse to cater to their audience properly. The Mac Mini is a crippled machine. It only has 2 rams slots, both filled with 4GB sticks that have to be binned if you want to upgrade and don't want to pay the outrageous Apple price. The power supply is internal and causes thermal throttling after a very short period of heavy use. Considering what it costs it offers VERY poor value for money.

If I want to use the 3 monitor setup I love, I have to go for this thing or spend six grand on a Mac Pro. Absolutely awful situation. Crippled desktop or something WAY more than I need. What a choice.

In the 90's graphic and website designers were a core, possibly THE core, audience that stuck with Apple through the dark days. Now I feel completely abandoned. If I move to Windows I can get a superb, expandable machine for around 2K that has proper graphics, multiple internal drives, and real power.

Apple now, more than it ever has, looks greedy. I could always justify the extra cost in the past due to how poor Windows was, but it's got so much better that making the jump is becoming more appealing all the time.

Looks amazing though I would like to see how the likely crippled $5999 version compares to similar PC workstations. I can't help thinking that the Apple Tax is back with a bang. The stuff looks like it's fantastically engineered (probably over the top for 90%). Anyone want to guess how much RAM the $5999 version will ship with?
We're talking a base version that's DOUBLE the price of the current base. That's a big jump in anyone's book.