amos2000

Most people who are likely to use this equipment to a professional standard already own it. They don't need to replace it other than this problem. At some point in the future they will need to replace it, at some point in the future I'll need to replace my 2015 macbook, and when I do, for a wide variety of reasons, I'll be really tempted not to get a mac. That is ultimately the issue here.

Should I replace my £100,000 Digico mixer (if I'm the Barbican, for instance) As a mixing desk, there is pretty much none better in the world than a Digico SD7; that's what they thought anyway, and they have basically an infinite budget. Digico don't do USB3. Or should I just replace my mac with a pc? Below the stratospherically wealthy level, most venues I'm aware of, other than the big arenas, are perpetually on the brink of financial collapse, or some way over the brink; they don't want to be forking out more than they need to. Any users in the arts, (outside the commercial music industry, are very likely skint; Theatre doesn't have much money outside Broadway and the West End; Dance only in the big national theatres; to say nothing of art. Students, of course, and also many academics, are skint. And yes, the semi-pros you're implicitly sneering at, who make up the large majority of the customer base for a lot of Apple products. But by the way, where do professional users come from? Do they pop into existence fully formed and fully funded?

Also, though, I don't only do live sound engineering, and music performance. I also do lights using a cheap USB-DMX adaptor. And video stuff, which at the moment can go through thunderbolt, or hdmi, but on the new laptops they took those sockets off, didn't they, so it's not enough that I'll have to have chains of dongles hanging precariously out of my laptop, live, with an audience in the room; but also I'll have to replace ALL my equipment.

Uh no. I'll just hang on to my current mac and equipment, not accept any updates, and switch to PC when it all gives up. I may well disconnect this one from the internet, and keep using it until the hardware fails.

I assume this is a glitch that they'll get round to at some point. I mean, I wouldn't be certain... this does fit with the intransigent way they have always abused and insulted any customer who wants to plug equipment into the computer. What I'm saying is, they better fix it. This might be the last straw, or they may be already beyond the last straw.

...I mean, the power supply, for God's sake; if you are professionally using a macbook live on stage, ie constantly moving it, connecting it and disconnecting it, you will get through one power supply a year at best, unless you do a simple operation with a cable tie that Apple could extremely easily build into it if they didn't want to milk us for £80 a year. It's not a big deal, in a way, apart from the £80, but it's insulting, and it shows us what Apple thinks of us, and it makes us think, do we really want to tie ourselves into more of this?