cloudguy

0. Mx Macs may indeed run Windows natively ... but it will be ARM Windows which even Microsoft acknowledges is largely useless except for (some) first party and web applications. It was why the Surface Duo uses Android instead of Windows. And unless I am wrong Apple has closed the door on emulating Windows themselves. So a solution for x86 and x86-84 Windows applications would need to be via 32 and 64 bit virtualization.

1. On the eGPU front it is not so much the hardware or even protocols. Instead, the APIs are different. When on Intel this wasn't an issue ... the APIs are the same. But with Apple Silicon it is Metal or nothing. While that is GREAT for iOS and Apple Arcade and other stuff developed for Apple using Apple provided tools, other stuff isn't going to be compatible unless third parties do it, and even if that happens Apple won't support it.

Remember my previous rants. Apple never wanted to join the Intel platform and support their hardware and software stuff in the first place. They were PROUD of not doing so in the 80s, 90s and early 00s. They only went to Intel, put iTunes on Windows and things like that because it was necessary to survive. 

Now Apple doesn't need that stuff anymore. Macs are going to sell regardless ... they have a very dedicated customer base especially among creatives and you can't even develop iOS, watchOS etc. apps any other way. So it is going to go back to how it was before. Apple doesn't want you running Windows. They don't want you using GPUs designed for Windows. They want you to rely on their hardware and software and have the opinion that between their first party stuff, the iPad apps coming over plus web and cloud tools, that is more than enough for anyone who wants to make it work. If you cannot or do not want to, it isn't as if Wintel is going anywhere.

Convergence WITH their mobile hardware and apps. Divergence FROM the Windows stuff that they have always hated. And now that Microsoft is doing more stuff with Android and Samsung on Windows 10 and collaborating with Google in even more areas, even more so.

It is going to go back to when Apple people and Windows people were different populations who use computers to do different things, which is the way that it has been for most of these companies histories. The key difference is that thanks to Apple's prowess in mobile, there are far more Apple people than there were in 1983, 1993, 2003 or 2013.

Paging DED! The gaming industry needs to step up and support Macs. Before now ignoring Macs made sense for reasons that I don't get into. But now? A $699 Mac Mini is a legit gaming rig!!!

Steam, Origin, Epic ... they all need to use macOS. Don't nearly all the major engines have tools to port games to macOS? If they don't, they need to develop them. It is the job of gaming companies to support the best hardware for the benefit of gamers. Right now the Mac Mini and the MacBook Air represent the best hardware and the best value for gamers. From what I have read, the Mac Mini and MacBook Air give performance roughly equivalent to about a $1400 device that has a recent Intel Core i7, 16 GB of RAM and a 4 GB Nvidia graphics card. 

Gaming industry, you had legit reasons before but now they are gone. Do gamers right by supporting the best hardware and the best value!

Fidonet127 said:

cloudguy said:

Basically, claiming that the low end of the market doesn't have legitimate needs and doesn't deserve good products to meet them isn't just classism, but it is bad economics. 

Nobody is claiming this at all. In the mean time, my child with their 2018 or 2019 HP Chromebook gets knocked offline several times a week and sometimes several times a day. My Apple products have no such problems, even though my Macs are 2014 models. This is despite having good internet, upgraded the wifi to wifi 6 mesh system, adding a stand and a fan to keep his school laptop from having problems. 

First off, your 2014 MacBook would be:
1. Way more expensive than $100-$300
2. Against procurement policy to purchase since rules generally prohibit buying used/refurbished devices due to warranty/service issues
3. Even more prone to breaking and needing to replace than brand new Macs

Also:
1. They would still need an IT staff to manage. That is a lot of money.
2. And what would these schools run on these Macs anyway? You guessed it ... Google Classroom. Which is what the vast majority of schools that chose iPads over Chromebooks are running anyway, as are the schools that are still using Windows laptops. Apple tried to address this area by working something out with Pearson to deliver ebooks to iPads, but it was just that - replacing textbooks with iPads - plus whatever learning apps that third parties put in the App Store. Google Classroom is a comprehensive solution for education that Apple can't match. A lot of people hate it - there was this software engineer for Slack who wrote an oped ripping it - but right now the choice is between "flawed" (Google Classroom) and "nothing" and flawed beats nothing every time. 

Also, allow me to point out that if your kid's Chromebook has a USB 3.0 port - and even cheap Chromebooks made as far back as 2015 do - then a gigabit ethernet to USB adapter works fine. Even some Wi-Fi to USB dongles do! A problem that is easy to fix if the real issue isn't being upset at being forced to use something other than an iPad or MacBook in the first place.

CloudTalkin said:

razorpit said:

Common sense says winner, however with us already having incredibly high school taxes and schools still ask us to supply pencils, crayons, glue sticks, etc., I don't see this moving many of these over the horrible Chromebook's my kids now have.

Yeah, it is hard to argue when looking at school budgets.  A school can purchase 5 MBA's or 15 Chromebooks ($250 avg).  I don't share your opinion about Chromebooks.  Sure, there are some crappy models.  That happens when multiple vendors put out competing products.  There's always going to be someone willing to race to the bottom.  But a good .edu Chromebook can be had for $250-300.  Besides, the type of laptop isn't really that important in the grand scheme imo.  It's the curriculum and teacher that matter most.

It isn't $250. Unless a school system has a bad procurement officer or find themselves in a bind - due to having a bad procurement officer - Chromebooks can be obtained in bulk from special suppliers like CTL and Sector 5 via B2B channels frequently for $150 and at times under $100. Also, while there are many advantages to a Mac or iPad there is one factor you aren't considering. If you want a refresher of that factor, view the infamous "playtime" sequence of Toy Story 3: kids break stuff. So schools will either pay $250 for a "ruggedized" Chromebook that is nearly impossible to break short of driving a minivan over it or $99 for a Chromebook that is easily, cheaply replaceable when broken. Also, if it is broken or lost by the little 10 year old what happens to the data? If it is an iPad or Mac, it is gone. If it is a Chromebook, it is all in the cloud. (You can even configure it to automatically sync the "Downloads" folder, the only local storage, to Google Drive.) So issue a new Chromebook, have the kid sign in again with the same account and it all pops up again in a few minutes. 

Sorry, one can hate Google forever for putting a touchscreen UI with Android as opposed to "doing the right thing", continuing with their Blackberry clone until they went out of business - which would have allowed Microsoft who also had a touchscreen UI to dominate the market in their place which would have gained Apple and its fans what exactly except an even bigger, more powerful and influential Microsoft thanks to its billions in market share and tens of billions in revenue from mobile added to their already crushing market share in PC, cloud and enterprise with the very hostile Ballmer still running it to this day very likely - but Chromebooks are a very good, workable technical and product solution to a real problem that addressed an actual market need. The last data from Canalys stated that it isn't just schools buying Chromebooks anymore either. Small and medium-sized businesses are buying them as well as using the GSuite for their data processing and communications needs i.e. corporate email, videoconferencing, teleconferencing, collaboration, etc. even business telephone numbers and service from Google Voice if you want it. The hardware and the software cost a fraction of what Microsoft charges to provide the same and you don't need to hire - or more accurately contract - an IT staff to manage it. (For example, a $500 Chromebox can serve as videoconferencing hardware. Feel free to imagine what videoconferencing hardware normally costs.)

Basically, claiming that the low end of the market doesn't have legitimate needs and doesn't deserve good products to meet them isn't just classism, but it is bad economics. Just because Apple exercises their perfectly valid right to choose not to meet that need doesn't mean that it is bad when other companies do. Quite the contrary in fact. Feel free to wish that it was someone - anyone - but Google, but in the process go ahead and propose a business model that actually works. Everyone else that has tried to go up against Microsoft in this market - supplying products and services to schools and small enterprises - has failed, Google hasn't and there is a reason for that: they came up with products and a business/revenue model that is actually scalable and viable where others failed to do so.

22july2013 said:

I'm sure the Apple-haters will come out of the woodwork again, today. Bear in mind that even 30% is a lot less than the 100% markup that was always the case when selling software in boxes in retail outlets. 

Where you are wrong:

1. Users of other platforms have as much right to criticize Apple as Apple fans do in criticizing not only competitors like Microsoft, Google and Samsung but longterm partners like Intel whose CPUs are still going to be in the vast majority of Mac models available for least a year and which you same Apple fans still want people to buy to prevent the Mac market share from cratering.

2. Plenty of these so-called "Apple-haters" regularly buy Apple products. Including myself. I hold my Macs to the same standards that I hold the Android, ChromeOS, Windows and Linux devices that I use: I praise the things that I like about them and criticize the things that I do not. So do "Apple haters."

3. The 100% markup thing was Apple public relations. Good grief, I take what every corporation that is trying to sell me something - as well as every politician that is trying to get me to vote for them - with a grain of salt, even the companies whose products I like and consistently buy and the politicians that I generally support. Look, by the time the app store was created and certainly by the time it became large and influential enough to be considered its own marketplace with a billion consumers, buying software on CDs was long dead. Good grief, some companies had even stopped manufacturing computers with CDs by then! People were downloading Microsoft Office, video games, programming IDEs, video and audio editing software, operating system updates etc. over the Internet by then. The software CD/DVD sections were gathering dust. Do you know what the #1 casual video game entity was 10-15 years ago before iPhones and iPads - and yes Android devices - came along and killed them off? PopCap Games. So huge that EA bought them. While they - and their competitor BigFish Games - would send you a CD if you asked them for one, their entire business model was download based. What Tim Cook went to Congress and claimed was the software distribution model before home Internet usage by local telephone and cable companies - as opposed to junk like AOL - became widespread.