21yr_mac_user

So the force touch was reason to get rid of the headphone jack because "there wasn't enough room". So they delete lots of stuff but don't bring it back. I'm am sick of the billion dongles for my 8+ I need 2 just to charge on the plane it is a PITA and half the time the dongle (I have 2 sets) is in the wrong room. I would buy any new iPhone in a heartbeat if it had the headphone jack. I just bought a used iPad pro 2nd gen before they gutted the headphone jack.

And no I'm not buying new headphones - I have a nice pair of top of line studio monitors which cost hundreds and there is zero reason to replace them because Apple wants to sell air buds and Beats. Honestly the feds should just force all phone companies to put back headphone jacks - it's anti completive monopoly behavior.

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.

most of the old pro market just wants an i7/i9 and no stupid all in one sealed crippled design. Apple just puts in Xeons to justify cranking up the price. You can get killer PC i7 desktops for $700 and i9s for under 2k. Apple should do the same. We just want an iMac motherboard with handful of PCI slots and upgradable CPU,SSD,RAM,graphics and a few SATA TB3 USB3.1 connectors

I got fed up waiting for a new reasonably priced expandable Mac Pro a few months ago, and boy I'm glad I stopped waiting based on this stratospheric pricing. I’m a lifelong apple fan but have been disillusioned lately with the bean counter upsell shenanigans under Cook. Every Apple product these days has a serious omission, defect, upgrade lockdown or pricing issue with upsells. It’s disheartening for someone who has been owning and using macs since 1987. I am the definition of a fanboy - but I won't waste hard earned money and shouldn't have to to stay in the apple universe.

Ordinarily if Apple had equivalent products me buying a hardware update to my old trusty 'ol maxed out 2008 MacPro would be expected – however Apple simply has no products I want for a desktop at any reasonable price. I just want a comparable cost update to my 2008 Mac Pro format – big case lots of slots and drive bays, dedicated high end graphics – most everything is upgradable (and I have upgraded most everything on my 2008!)

As a note using a standard PC desktop price decrease graph I found and taking the ratio for my $2,689 dual processor 8 core mac pro in 2008 -  I would expect to pay $1,900 for my next 8 core mac Pro with a 1 TB SSD which is the norm these days, not $5999 starting for 256GB! Most of small pros like me just want an i7/i9 not a Xeon. An example a Dell precision 5820 tower i7 is $1739. If you upgrade to 1TB SSD and an i9 with tons of upgrade options it is $2800. Apple should match that. I also would like an open machine not locked down SSDs via the Apple T2 chip. I’d also like a choice of NVIDIA graphic cards. Also I've done gov work - no project is going to spring for the new Mac Pros - projects have IT budgets and you can only justify Macs if they are a little more - price gouging doesn't pass procurement checks.

So I took matters into my own hands – and built a new mac desktop a "PoweriMac G3-i7" to hold me for the next decade. It will almost for sure be my last Mac. In a decade at the current trend there will be so few Mac users left and the apps availability will be so subpar that it won't be worth it. iPhones made it because of the initial first to market huge install base. Steve rescued the Mac because of reasonable pricing to rebuild market share - Tim's apple is a short-sighted money grubbing bean counter that is slowly killing off the mac. A few big hollywood corporate clients can't support an entire computer platform.

So I bought a 2017 iMac 5k i5 with a broken display on eBay for $985, upgraded the memory ($271) i7-7700k CPU ($279) and 1 TB High End HP EX920 4xPCI NVMe SSD ($149) plus adapter (faster then Apple SSD), OWC drive dock ($50), plus a bit on fans, coolers ($152) cables and lots of time and trial and error on the cooling system. I shoved the whole $2k kit into my old PowerMac G3 Blue and White case which I gutted (kinda of sad actually to gut it – but I was never going to turn it on again – at least it got a second life!). I had to do a major cooling system redo when the iMac fan was too loud and insufficient - so I added a dedicated CPU cooler at the expense of a memory slot. I already own 3 big good monitors and don't want any more. 

I was going to get a 2019 iMac 5k /i9 when it came out and upgrade the motherboard – but the Vega 48 graphics weren’t much faster than mine – it definitely wasn’t worth extra $2k!

My $2k 1TB SSD 40GB RAM PoweriMac G3-i7 Pluses over an iMac
-        Retro Cool as heck !! (priceless) – all front panel buttons work!
-        Use my existing monitors – with antiglare coatings 1x 38” and 2x 24” monitors
-        Easily upgradable – just open up the side! Want a 2 TB SSD - 10 min and $250
-        Easy to fix and clean – just open up the side!
-        Easy to check the power and boot status – motherboard status LEDs are visible through the case
-        NVMe read write status light is optically piped to the front – computer not responsive – see if SSD is working!
-        CD/DVD R/W Drive! Yes I still sometimes need it.
-        2x Internal SATA slide in hard drive bays with room for 1 more with case power switches. All locked up securely – try that iMac!
-        Improved cooling with dedicated twin low RPM fans for CPU and GPU - doesn’t get above 100F/38C running flat out for hours and is quieter than my 2008 Mac Pro.
-        Extra heatsink from my old PowerMac G3 CPU heatsink parts on Intel Platform Controller Hub Die which got quite hot – not available on iMac!
-        Extra heatsink from my old PowerMac G3 CPU heatsink parts on SSD Controller which got warm under heavy write operations – not available on iMac!
-        No T2 chip!!! unlike the new MacPro
-        Don’t want the camera (can always attach one if I need it, and my apple 24” has one but I never use it.
-        Don’t want the speakers – my other monitors have them
-        Wifi / Bluetooth antennas are far from my head and body and I have external high gain antennas with way improved performance.

Am I the only one sick of the Mac Pros not being able to have i5/i7 (and now i9). The forced Xeon crap is getting old - especially since it's primary for data servers which Mac Pros are not and aren't used that way. IMHO it has always been an excuse to jack up the price of Mac Pros. I just want an i7 (or i9), in a Mac pro. It's a 500-800 in the decent PC small desktop world.

I even looked at buying an i7 iMac motherboard and putting in a cheap PC case (or my old mac pro case). but the iMac motherboard is not very expandable.

Chance of new new Mac Pro having i5/i7/i9 - 20% tops. Why can't Apple just give us what we want! I'll pay an extra grand - but no more.

I use primarily macs for home and my business but I IT a small medical clinic and bought 6 surface pro3s for electronic medical records. They are nice - the docs fill out the forms with the styluses because it is 3x more efficient then trackpad - but they still have a track pad option. They can use primarily in desktop mode. They are very light and have all day battery life. I think they don't sell as well because they are a premium product and that excludes 80% of the PC market - I mean an i7 in 1.73 lbs form factor! The "new" macbook (which I have and love except for the keyboard and dongles) is 2 lbs for a crappy slow processor. Instead of criticizing Microsoft here - we should be asking the same or more of Apple. An Apple Surface Pro4 clone - iOS/Mac OS, touchpad key cover - full travel keys, iPad Pro pens and 1.5 lbs with magsafe and new and legacy usb and display ports and a OEM complete dock solution with ethernet and tons of ports would sell like absolute hotcakes.

If you use PCs and haven't tried a Surface Pro4 - do so. Its an incredible piece of engineering and makes iPads redundant (and that may be why Apple won't knock them off).

I just wish Apple would step up it's Mac game so we can have decent competitive (in HW and price!) products - I mean touchbar - what were they thinking other then - Apple design committee meeting: "well we got to keep appearing innovative and we can't copy so lets try a touch bar - yea that's the ticket". And those new laptop keyboards.. - I use them but just absolutely hate them - it's not growing on me after 2 years and counting...