brianjo

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brianjo
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  • iMac 24-inch M3 review: A clear sign that Intel Mac support is ending soon

    Since they are committed to the stupid power brick, it would have made sense to add a couple USB or thunderbolt ports there as well, tidying up the desk workspace.

    Hell, even better would be to move all of the brains into the brick and calling it a Mac Mini, thus making the display just a display, allowing you to upgrade the machine by replacing the brick instead of the whole machine...
    OctoMonkeywilliamlondonAlex1Nroundaboutnowappleinsideruser
  • Apple confirms that there is no Apple Silicon 27-inch iMac in the works

    mike1 said:
    I am ordering the new iMac to replace an older PC. I was strongly considering a Mini and using it with my existing monitor or buying a new monitor. I can not find a monitor, short of a Studio Display, that looks anywhere near as good as what's built into the iMac.
    The huge advantage to the Mac Mini is you can swap it out and keep the same display for many years.  The Mac mini isn't much larger than the stupid power brick of the iMac.

    If Apple would sell a decent display below the studio display line, it would make the mini the go to choice. Now the mini is still a go to choice, but the display money goes to others. (and yes, there are displays that are nearly as good as the iMac, if not better)
    Alex1Ndarkvaderwatto_cobra
  • M3 24-inch iMac vs M1 24-inch iMac -- Specs, price, and features, compared

    I wish Apple would offer reasonably priced standalone displays for the Mac Mini.  Since the move to a power brick for the iMac, they might as well just put the whole computer in the brick (ala mac mini) and a separate display.

    The mac mini is an AWESOME computer, and an ideal choice for many, but the options for good displays build to Apple standards is lacking.  If Apple could offer a $750 24 inch iMac styled display, it would be perfect.
    williamlondonAlex1N
  • New low-cost MacBook rumored to take on Chromebooks in education

    AppleZulu said:
    This is not going to happen, for a number of reasons. 

    First and foremost, Apple simply doesn't pursue the bottom end of the market. It isn't profitable, unless you use low-quality components, scrape and sell your customers' data, or both. Choosing to do either thing would undermine the core principles of Apple's trillion-dollar. business. Apple just doesn't cater to the high-volume, low-margin market.

    Second, MacOS has to run reliably on the lowest-end MacBook and the highest-end Mac Pro. There are limits to writing an OS that makes good use of a $7,000+ powerhouse machine and is also spare enough to run a much, much less powerful notebook. This is why there is always a trailing-edge cutoff for supporting old models, and also why there is still no MacBook SurfacePad hybrid thing. 

    Perhaps they'll market a version of the iPad to the education crowd, but even with that, the cheapest iPad currently available is a hundred bucks more than a chromebook, and that's before you add a keyboard to it.
    While Apple doesn't cater to the garbage super low end market, they do high volumes of better products. Losing the education marketshare to Google is a HUGE deal and bean counters in schools look at the cost more than anything else.  When Google comes in at initial costs at a fraction of the price of what Apple is offering, it's hard to say no.

    As far as MacOS running on a range of machines, there's nothing preventing the OS from running better on faster machines.  The cutoff of old machines has very little to do with the processor capabilities of the old machines. It's largely an accounting issue, as the cost of the OS is built into the sell price of the machine. Back when they charged for the OS, it easily ran on many more flavors of machines.  Now their accounting sets a finite cutoff date based on the end selling date of any particular model, which is roughly 5 years after sales end.  There are plenty of cracks that let you run the OS on older model machines, and performance is rarely an issue.

    Functionally compared, the iPad is a closer match to a chromebook, but Chromebook has been branded as a 'laptop' vs a 'tablet' so cost comparisons get tossed out the window.
    muthuk_vanalingamFileMakerFellerwatto_cobra
  • Your next Wi-Fi router could be a light bulb thanks to the new LiFi framework

    Apple used to have Powerbooks with built in light based networking, and it operated at the same speed as wired LocalTalk, a whopping 230.4kbps. The next iteration brought IrDA which was an industry standard that allowed communication to other devices beyond just between macs. Speed was increased to 4Mbps which made it quite useful for file transfers.  This was especially useful, as WIFI wasn't in many machines yet.

    The line of sight limitation was often a challenge, but on the same token, limiting to line of sight at the time was a handy security method to prevent others from connecting to your machine.
    watto_cobra