docno42

GeorgeBMac said:
The hypocrisy is palpable:  We espouse the glories or Capitalism and denigrate the supposed failures Communism.  But, when that communist system succeeds we get all butt hurt and hysterical. 

(But, the part of that story that's missing is that China is both -- it uses capitalism where it does best and it uses socialism where it does best.  It's a merger of the two -- but neither side will admit that.  It doesn't fit their narrative).

China can not sustain the artificial propping up of what has made them sustainable.  Their wagering they don't have to - they just have to do it long enough to break the west - and sadly we have far too many who have played along willingly while gaslighting about it the entire time.

Sweeny is indeed an Epic ass (nice!).  He is also mostly correct.  I was listening to the guys on the Apple Insider podcast talk about this and it suddenly dawned on me - the core issue here is trust - or a lack of.  

Apple treats every developer as if they are hostile.

Seriously?  Rouge Amoeba, who has been a Mac developer for decades, can't be trusted with private API access?  

Apple are a bunch of cowards hiding behind policy - that they created!  Why does everyone have to be treated the same?  Answer: they don't.  But it's far easier to treat everyone the same.  No critical thought required - just numbly point to the policy, claim your hands are tied and then conveniently ignore the fact that you made the policy that is tying your hands in the first place. 

What's even worse - they can't even do that correctly!  They don't even enforce their overly simplistic policy consistently.

They can't even hid behind crying poverty (lack of resources) - they have the largest market cap!  

So what's the issue?  They don't care.  I long thought Marco Arment was going overboard with his thoughts on Apple abusing developers - but the more I critically analyze this whole thing and get below the superficial arguments, it becomes more and more apparent that Apple does indeed developers as an annoyance and something they have to begrudgingly deal with - rather than a group they value and respect.

foregoneconclusion said:
Those kinds of statements prove that Apple's approach to iOS is providing choice to consumers, not limiting it. Forcing iOS to be Windows/Android is narrowing consumer choice. 

Forcing Apple to offer users the ability to put software on their devices outside of Apples oversight is not narrowing choice.  And no, I'm not talking about loading android on iPhones (seriously?!?) but just the ability to put apps from other sources into iOS.  

Apple adding that takes *nothing* from you if you choose not to avail yourself of that option.  iOS continues to work as it always had.  However after that change, people who want software Apple doesn't approve of will now have the choice to run it if they so desire.  That's more choice.  

elijahg said:
I said "we know the M1 is an evolution of the Ax iPad chips" and "some of the iPads are very cheap". Never mentioned the Pro being cheap. We also know the M1 is a beefed up Ax CPU. It was not designed from scratch, so it's not that expensive, most of the R&D has been paid for by the iPhone. 

So now you are an expert in costs between engineering different SOCs?  If there isn't that much of a difference between the chips then why not just standardize everything on the same chip?

Gee, maybe there are significant cost differences to justify having different versions of the chips?

Just maybe?

Good god, I'm used to baseless speculation around all things Apple but this thread is one of the more ridiculous I have seen in a long time.

elijahg said:
The issue is Apple has changed their M.O. of the last 40 years - or more specifically Cook has. Macs were great value in the days of Jobs - now, not so much. And in some cases: RAM/storage, not at all. Apple used to make computers for their customers, now Apple makes computers for their shareholders.

You are out of your mind delusional or an ignorant wippersnapper.  You want to talk about "the good 'ol days" - let's talk real Mac's.  My Mac Plus.  Got it at a discount for $2100 off a teacher that bought it and tried to convince the school to buy it.  $2,100 in 1987 is almost $5,000 in todays dollars adjusted by inflation and depending on which estimating tool you use.  Out of curiosity I looked it up because I figured someone was going to toss down the "good old days" card sooner or later.  God bless my crazy parents for buying it for me (and the advantages of being an only kid).  I went straight from 8 bit computers to a 32 bit machine with a GUI and mouse (OK, not a pure 32 bit machine but still way better than the PCs of the day).  

That was for a computer with a 9" MONOCHROME screen, screen resolution you couldn't fit a calculator widget from today on and 1 megabyte of RAM.  I went in with 10 other people for a bulk RAM order to get a discount and we were over the moon at scoring 1 megabyte (MB, not GB) of RAM for $90 a stick.  I got four to max my machine out at 4 MB.  Twice the amount of the $200 difference people are raising so much fuss over.  Actually it's worse than that adjusted for inflation, but screw it - at face value it's already ridiculous.  Let's not even discuss the $700 external 40MB SCSI hard drive either.  I still don't like to think about it.  

So yeah, I have plenty of reason to see the comments in here and deem them beyond hysterically pathetic as well as funny too.  You people are getting computing power (and COLOR!) we could have never dreamed of at a fraction of the price.  So enough of the ridiculous pining for the "good 'ol days" BS because they most assuredly never were nearly as good as people choose to remember them.  

Apple wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar concern if they only made computers for their shareholders; another ridiculously absurd assertion - that sounds good in comment threads but makes zero sense otherwise.  Next you'll tell me that central planning will really work *this time* and all the previous failures throughout history were just because those people were morons but we are much smarter now.  Heh - Adam's penned it as satire but perhaps we are descendants of phone sanitizers after all 

titantiger said:

Put another way, the base Mac Mini is $699.  Pair it with a nice $300 LG 4k display (24") and an Apple keyboard and Mouse and you're only at about $1150.  Same M1 chip, same 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD.  But more ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and even the ability to swap out the screen as a bonus if you wanted to later.  Add a webcam for $100 and you're still $50 under this crippled iMac's price point.

Yet for the premium that "crippled" iMac delivers a much more compact and practically cable free computing experience. 

You may not value experience, but focusing on the sum of the parts instead of individual parts is what made Apple the most valuable company on the stock market and let them blow past Microsoft - something that seemed impossible for over 30 years.

So they must be doing at least a few things right