iamthegtiguy

anonymouse said:

iamthegtiguy said:

I may be in the minority, but I was really hoping that Apple's pro line stayed intel, and the consumer line migrated to ARM processors.

Absent something really amazing happening, I will need to shift my small firm back to Lenovo laptops in a couple of years.  We currently use MacBook Pros with parallels and windows to run legacy windows software, etc., where the developer has not yet made a MacOS version, and is certainly not going to make a MacOs version for ARM processors.  So I (and my business) am one of the small percentage of Mac users who relied on the Intel processors and is going to get burned by this.

That said, I am warming to the idea of Apple Silicon for my personal laptop, etc.  I will miss the option of using Bootcamp to game on my MacBook Pro with its discrete graphics card, but streamed gaming services like Nvidia Now are slowly obviating the need to game on your local machine at all.

Well, another way to look at it is that Boot Camp and Parallels, et al. enabled these developers to be lazy and point users to this kind of solution, rather than doing what they should have and providing native support. With that option going away, at least some of them may need to rethink that strategy.

I agree with you there.   But for what I do (I am a tax lawyer who specializes in a nuance-within-a-nuance of the tax code), the software I use MIGHT be licensed to 150-200 other firms in the entire country.  And it's not hugely expensive software.  So the company that makes it already has virtually zero incentive to make a MacOS version.  Now that I (presumably) won't have parallels x86 support, it will just be simpler to switch back to PCs.  And that isn't really a bad thing, necessarily.  But the fact is that there are "pro" users out there who are not in the creative/graphics/video production fields who may have to migrate away from Apple hardware because of this. Again, though, Apple knows this.  It's not the end of the world. 

bsimpsen said:

horvatic said:

Unless they can keep all the features that are currently in place including Bootcamp it would be the worst mistake Apple could do.

Let me rephrase this for you...

Unless Apple can keep that 2% of Bootcamp users, attracting 10% more people to the Mac would be the worst mistake Apple could do.

In articles here and elsewhere in recent years, I've read that the cost of an Intel CPU in an entry level MacBook Pro is in the vicinity of $200, or as much as 20% of the cost to build the machine. The cost of the A family CPU in an iPad Pro is about $50, and outperforms the Intel part. I imagine Apple will pocket some of the $150 savings and pass the rest to the customer, along with the performance improvement (particularly battery life). Even if the price and performance gaps are smaller than rumored, they're still going to be significant.

If you think that improvement in the price/performance ratio for Macs won't attract more people to the platform than Apple stands to lose (2%max), I'd like you to explain why.

You make a reasonable point, but my only comment is that I would bet (I obviously don't have the data to support this -- only Apple does) that the average bootcamp user of a Mac is: (1) buying more expensive, higher margin Macs; (2) much more technically sophisticated and a die hard Apple fan (or they would just buy a Windows PC and forget about it); and (3) much more likely to be higher income and own many other higher margin Apple products.

As I stated above, I am an avid bootcamp user.  I also have over 10 Apple TVs (and we frequently buy Apple content on them) at my houses, I have 4 ipads, multiple Macs, an apple watch, and many sets of airpads in my family.  Not to mention the firm that I own uses Macs (but we NEED bootcamp functionality).

The counter-point, though, is even if I have to stop using Mac computers, I will probably still continue to use all of the other (higher margin) Apple products, so maybe Apple isn't that concerned.

sflagel said:

netling said:

Not for NYC to LA, or international flights... you would have to take the charger and charge them mid-flight... Sony, Bose and Plantronics wins in that ball park. 

Are you saying you wont use them because you have to take the charging case with you, to get 24 hours worth of use out of them? The CHARGING CASE is too large to take on an international flight? I don't know if you use the current AirPods, but you don't have to worry about the charging case, it is tiny; and you will need one at your destination anyway (even for the Bose ones).

My god, every time there is a new product reveal, some of you reveal just how unbelievably myopic your tech world view is.  This may shock some of you, but not every Apple product is a perfect solution for every use, and it is OK to complain when Apple products lack reasonable functionality -- even if it's functionality that you, personally, might not utilize.

These are NOISE-CANCELLING headphones. Many people put them on for an entire flight, not for music, but to CANCEL AMBIENT AIRPLANE NOISE.  When you have to wake up or stop what you're doing and charge the headphones for 15-20 minutes in the middle of the flight, it does sort of defeat the purpose for certain users.  It is perfectly reasonable for a person to expect that noise-cancelling headphones would hold a charge for a 5-hour flight.  It doesn't mean that the airpods pro suck, nor does it mean that it is a bad product. But it is a reasonable critique/observation.

I have a set of first and second generation airpods.  Their extreme ease of use is what keeps me coming back to them.  Their middling sound quality, mediocre max volume, and iffy fitment get annoying.  I still put on a set of quality audiophile headphones if I'm stationary and want decent sound.

Hopefully these new pro models will up the ante on sound and volume.  If these actually produce a respectable sound, these could be the holy grail of headphones.  I will be picking up a set on day 1!

 

dysamoria said:

AppleExposed said:

wizard69 said:

randominternetperson said:

entropys said:

canukstorm said:

StrangeDays said:

jumpcutter said:

sflocal said:

cynegils said:

Lets hope that one of those lessons is not "Pricing will start at cost X eleventybillion!"

Stop being so overdramatic.  The Mac Pro is priced similarly to WinTel counterparts of EXACT specs and the monitor is far cheaper than the competitors reference-level monitors.  Funny how you folks don't complain about the prices of those monitors.

We do not need Broadcast quality monitors first of all. You do not know if the WinTel counterparts had the same specs. All Ternus said was one priced at $8,000. No one knew the specs. Why did the iMac Pro's basic configuration have a 1TB SSD and the Mac Pro starts at 256 GB. That is being very stingy despite the high cost! Comparing that Studio Display to a Sony BVM is a bit absurd. A $999 monitor stand is just as absurd. No one asked for a 6K monitor anyway. How is it the 27" iMac has a 5K monitor without the "Apple Tax". Apple is just damn Greedy.  

Nope. This product just isn’t for you. If you don’t know why this monitor is special, you don’t need it. 

I do agree with @jumpcutter ; that a base storage amount of 256GB on the base-model Mac Pro isn't justified especially considering that the base-model iMac Pro comes with 1TB SSD.  Given its target market, 1TB SSD should be standard on the new Mac Pro.  Other than that, I have no issue with the new hardware announced.

The storage is just enough for the OS and the target apps. It is clearly user upgradable for those that want more. But I suspect the people actually buying this would not use internal storage for their very large content anyway. So for this particular”ar product it is probably right. It is not right for a nonuser upgradable iMac with a very different use case.

Exactly right.  This is like complaining about how much storage is included on data center servers.  The people who need these types of machines are going to be working with massive files and will use appropriate storage solutions.   

I would offer up this 256gb isn’t enough room to install a reasonable amount of applications these days.       I’m not even talking demanding professional like media creators.  Frankly I would not even consider that much storage for a developers machine these days. 

By by the way yes I know bulk storage will go to another device of maybe an internal array.   I’m rather shocked really at the rate that apps use up storage these days.   This doesn’t even take into consideration the need to run VM’s.  To put it simply 256gB is not defensible for even moderate pro usage.  

I'm sorry but doesn't the Mac Pro have the option to install extra drives?

Most Pro studios will store their media onto another drive because it decreases drive failure. In this case, a base model with 256GB is more than enough. IDK what programs are eating up 200GB?

Shows how "pro" the complainers on their forum are.

Another arrogant declaration of who is and is not a pro... Here’s some info for you to consider:

Music professionals can end up with hundreds of gigabytes of audio on their machines. Part of this is the sample libraries installed as part of Logic X, Kontakt, BFD, and so on. Then there’re the actual audio tracks; hundreds of gigabytes of data for busy studios. You don’t, ideally, want to store these on external devices due to added latency. External devices are certainly used, but you benefit greatly from using the fastest storage device for this content, which is usually the internal device (especially when it’s the kind of SSD found in these machines, rather than an external mechanical drive that is better used for archiving and transport of vast data stores).

So I do take issue with almost all of your posts.  It started out that you were complaining about an "ordinary person" not being able to afford this new Mac Pro, and now you've morphed it into a "not all pros need 28-core computers" argument.

Before I start, I just want to point out that if you don't want the $6,000 monitor, you don't need to buy it.  BAM.  Now the new Mac Pro is a $6,000 computer, and not $12,000, as you keep claiming.  

I know that your old Cinema Display only cost $800, yada yada, but Apple is generally out of the monitor business (along with the router business, etc.).  It's a low-margin market segment, and there are a great many companies out there that make lovely monitors.  This new $6,000 item is a halo product that is a specific item, for a specific professional user.  If you don't want it, don't buy it.  You can buy any number of extremely high quality monitors presently for under $500.

As for this computer itself, you seem to be glossing over the fact that this is expensive, in part, because the relative cost of server-grade components has gotten much higher over the past decade.  Add in a custom motherboard that cost a fortune to engineer, expensive RAM (memory is much more expensive than a few years ago), and various other factors, and this thing was destined to cost a lot more than prior modular Mac Pros.

Does Apple probably make a fairly fat profit margin off this thing?  Of course. But Apple always has.

The real issue, I think, is that Apple still doesn't make a high end (although not quite "professional") desktop computer using desktop components.  Apple could easily make a machine that has 90% of the peak performance (in 98% of applications) of this Mac Pro using desktop motherboards, processors, memory, etc. and charge $3,000 for it.

But for a large number of reasons (demand, product cannibalization, etc.), Apple has declined to do it.      

While I understand your frustration, I think it's silly to be "angry" about the new Mac Pro.  It is what it is.