sirozha

sflocal said:

And the Internet trolls and iHaters will continue to compare the XDR monitor to these and cry the XDR is too expensive.

XDR is too expensive. Many people in the US can not afford a car that costs $6,000. Apple should make a replacement for the 27” LED Thunderbolt Display that was released 10 years ago. 

Even though I can afford a $6,000 display, I will never buy it. I won’t appreciate its benefits over a 5K display, and $6,000 for a display is a huge waste of money in my case. I would buy a 27” 5K display made by Apple for $1,000, though. 

Project Catalyst is another deliberate step toward the new hybrid device, which I call macPad. This device will be a fusion of the iPad Pro and the MacBook. Below are the bullet points why I've believed for several years now that the macPad is on the Apple's roadmap even though initially Apple vehemently denied that such device would ever be released.  

• iPad's touch interface is not suited for a professional use in the upright position regardless of how powerful the CPU and the GPU of the device is. Apple tried to mitigate the lack of a pointing device by releasing the Apple Pencil, but that didn't change the fact that in the upright position, using touch (with a finger or a stylus-like device) is inconvenient. Steve Jobs himself justified the absence of touch screen on the Macs by the same reasoning - it's unergonomic to extend your arm to touch a vertical screen, it's imprecise, and it strains one's arm after prolonged use. It's no accident that Apple has finally announced support of desktop pointing devices (mouse and trackpad) in the first release of the iPadOS. 
• Apple's A-Series CPU and GPUs designed in house provide excellent power-efficiency-to-performance ratio and outperform Intel lower-end CPUs and GPUs. However, the CPUs and GPUs designed by Apple cannot rival higher-end x86_64 CPUs. Those higher-end Intel CPUs are also much more power hungry with excessive heat dissipation requirements that makes them impossible to be used in a tablet-size device or in a very portable and thin laptop. Therefore, Apple has been able to create the CPUs/GPUs that outperform the ones made by Intel only in the very portable niche of the personal computer spectrum. This means that Apple cannot completely eliminate x86_64-based Macs by transitioning to its own CPU/GPU platform across the entire Mac line of computers. Yet, it's possible to transition lower-end Macs, such as the MacBook, perhaps the MacBook Air, and perhaps the lower-end MacBook Pros to the ARM architecture utilizing the A-Series CPUs and GPUs designed by Apple in house. 
• Project Catalyst is finally released in the wild so that iOS developers for the iPad can now quickly port their iPad apps to macOS. This decision will make it possible to cross-compile millions of iOS apps that currently work on the iPad. What will it achieve? Within a year, there will literally be millions of cross-compiled iPadOS/macOS apps available on the App Store. Thousands or even tens of thousands of them will be enterprise-level apps that will have two UIs: touch-based UI for iPadOS and pointing-device based UI for MacOS. 
• The detractors of the hypothesis that Apple is planning a transition from x86_64 to ARM have been saying for a while that the lack of Mac applications supported on the ARM architecture will prevent Apple from making such a move. Additionally, they criticize the idea of the "Rosetta-in-Reverse" emulation framework due to the performance hit that it would take on the Apple's A-Series CPUs, rendering the performance of the x86-based Mac apps on the ARM-based architecture dismal and killing the entire project as a result. It's the old "chicken-or-the-egg" dilemma: how do you transition the hardware platform without having the content built for that platform ahead of the transition? Guess what? With Project Catalyst, the apps will be ready for the new platform before the transition to the new platform commences. The millions of iPadOS apps that will have been already cross-compiled for x86_64-based macOS will be able to quickly recompile for the ARM-based macOS by simply selecting a different macOS architecture in the new version of Xcode. All the UI work required for those apps will already have been done when the developers initially compiled the iPadOS apps for the x86_64-based macOS. 
• In the past few years. many customers and financial analysts have been extremely critical of Apple for increasing the prices of high-end Macs. What many of us do not realize (and what the Apple's marketing fails to explain to the customers) is that the majority of people who bought Macs in 2018 (when 6-core MacBook Pros were introduced) and in 2019 (when 8-core MacBook Pros were introduced) no longer had to buy Pro-level Macs at those sky-high prices. The type of performance that 6-core and 8-core Macs provide is an overkill for 90% of Mac users, who would be well served by cheaper Macs with lower, yet sufficient, performance available in the lower-end MacBook Pros, the 2018 MacBook Air, and even in the MacBook. Therefore, in the future, Apple will likely draw a line in the Mac offerings between the computers geared to the consumer (priced under $2,000), which can serve 90% of Mac users, and the computers priced well above $2,000, which are geared toward the real "Pro" users, who require extreme levels of performance from their Macs. 

I believe that Apple is going to announce a hybrid macPad device during the next WWDC in 2020. By that time, there will have been millions of cross-compiled iPadOS/macOS apps available on the App Store. Apple will use the next generation of A-Series CPUs and GPUs developed in house to combine the functionalities of the iPad Pro and the MacBook in the same macPad device. In my opinion, Apple will continue to support iPadOS-only devices in the non-Pro iPad line; additionally, Apple will continue to carry higher-end x86_64-based Pro-level Macs that will remain macOS-only devices. There will probably be an additional framework released for Xcode that would allow x86_64-based macOS applications to be cross-compiled for the ARM-based macOS platform, which would allow macOS-only applications to be easily ported to the new ARM-based macOS. The new macPad device will look like the iPad Pro but will come with a docking solution - a keyboard/trackpad stand or case combination that will plug in the docking connector on the macPad. When the macPad is undocked, only the touch (iPadOS) UI will be exposed in the apps. When the macPad is docked, only the pointing-device-based (macOS) UI will be exposed in the apps. The look and feel of the cross-compiled iPadOS/macOS app will change based on whether the macPad is docked or undocked. 

The following product lines will result from the Apple's transition to the ARM architecture:

• iPhone: ARM
• iPad (non-Pro): ARM
• macPad (hybrid of iPad Pro and MacBook and perhaps MacBook Air): ARM
• MaBook Air (may not survive the transition): ARM or killed off 
• iMac: ARM or x86_64 (4-core)
• MacBook Pro (6-core and 8-core): x86_64
• iMac Pro: x86_64 (6-core and 8-core): x86_64
• Mac Pro: x86_64 (8-core and up): x86_64

Finally, the new hybrid macPad device will cost between $999 and $1999, based on the specs. There will be several configurations of the macPad with different amounts of RAM, perhaps two screen sizes, different amounts of storage, perhaps presence of absence of 5G, etc. The higher-end macPad device will cost $1999 and will include a larger screen size (perhaps 13"), 16 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Wi-Fi 6, and perhaps even 5G cellular card, although the larger screen and the 1TB SSD may take the price above $1999. I expect the macPad to be announced during WWDC 2020, and the release of the macPad to occur in the fall of 2020 for the 2020 winter holiday shopping season. 

I used a mouse with the iPad six years ago. I thought the experience was much superior to having to touch the iPad when the iPad was standing upright. The mouse support with a Bluetooth mouse was available back then with a jailbroken iPad. It was a little wonky, as it was non-native, but as I recall, even the right click worked with the Apple Magic Mouse. 

When I first bought the iPad in 2011, I tried to use it as a laptop replacement. I gave it a serious effort, but after months of trying hard, i realized that it was just wishful thinking. The iPad was intentionally crippled by Apple to prevent it from cannibalizing the Apple laptop line. The device was very promising, having quickly killed the Netbook niche of Apple’s competitors. Yet, its crippled functionality kept it from being used for many business applications. 

I haven’t bought a new iPad since 2013. iPad Air and iPad Mini 2 were the last ones I bought. We haven’t powered up the Air for over a year now. My son still uses the iPad Mini 2 for watching YouTube. Until Apple brings the official pointing device support, I’m not interested in the iPad at all. My enthusiasm with the iPad was killed off by Apple’s stupid stubbornness in keeping pointing devices support off the iPad platform. I think 8 years of insistance on the touch-only paradigm is long enough to realize that you were wrong about it. Additionally, the MacBook line is such a small fraction of the Apple’s bottom line now that making the iPad a universal business-application platform would not hurt the bottom line but only boost it. I, for one, would buy a couple iPads (or rather hybrid macPad) devices if Apple ever made them. Otherwise, I’m not interested in the iPad touch-only interface. 

georgie01 said:

Good, mouse support doesn’t belong on touch devices (except in exceptional circumstances). If you want to use a mouse then use macOS.

Total BS

sflocal said:

I'm a huge fan of Tim Cook, but I have to disagree with him here.  Sure, the tariffs will hurt in the immediate timeframe, but with what China has been doing for ages, I'd gladly take a little pain now for a long term gain in the long run.  China needs a strong smack in the face and a message sent that we (the world) will no longer continue the status quo.

My opinion of this is that what we are facing is karma. We wanted cheap products, and the corporations wanted cheap labor. We found cheap labor in China 35 years ago, and we have been enjoying cheap products made in China for nearly two generations. In the process, we have lost our ability to manufacture domestically. We no longer have manufacturing engineers, who are all either dead or retired. We will now have to hire Chinese engineers to teach us how to set up manufacturing processes domestically. While we have lost the manufacturing capabilities, the Chinese realized that they needed to have the IP rather than being an assembly line for the West. So, they have come up with all sorts of schemes to obtain the IP. They stole, they copied, they required joint ventures with western companies who wanted to sell in China, etc. First, they copied mindlessly, but then they realized that they needed to learn the technology. So, they started sending their students to the US and other western countries, and the Chinese government paid full tuition, room, and board for their students. The requirement was to bring back whatever the IP the students could steal from the universities. When the students graduated, they received Green Cards and offers to work for American companies in the US. They started stealing IP from the companies they were working for. Fast forward two decades, and we now have Huawei that's applying for more patents than any other western high-tech company. Huawei is a leader in 5G cellular tech. They are no longer stealing IP; they are now creating IP based on the two decades of copying, stealing, learning, and finally inventing. 

Because of our stupidity and greed, the Chinese are living in the 21st century country, whereas most US cities look like they did in the early 1900s. Our railroads are dilapidated, while the Chinese are riding is bullet trains. We have not won a single war since WWII (except the Grenada invasion), while having the largest defense budget in the world that exceeds the defense budgets of the next six countries combined. China has built the second strongest military in the world while having spent a fraction of the US defense budget. If, God forbid, there should be a war between the US and China, it's absolutely not clear who would come out on top in a conventional military conflict. A war with China would be the most catastrophic war that the US has ever entered.

The Chinese have executed flawlessly on their modernization program. We are the only ones to blame for what happened. Had it not been for our greed, the Chinese would still be living in adobe huts with roofs made of straw.