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The reason motorcycle companies invest in racing is not just to establish cred, but to actually push the boundaries of technology and innovation that they can t

by smegel 10y ago

The reason motorcycle companies invest in racing is not just to establish cred, but to actually push the boundaries of technology and innovation that they can then incorporate into their "consumer" models. A "true Pro grade" computer offers no such advantage - in fact most of the innovation comes from making things smaller and thinner - as soon as you take away the weight/size restriction, sure you can make supercomputers in a box, but it's also pretty darn easy to do so. And the final point - consumer bike customers usually watch bike racing, and probably dream of being a pro bike racer - few Mac customers could care less about "digital creative professionals" and don't really want to emulate being one of them.

ktRolster 10y ago
few Mac customers could care less about "digital creative professionals" and don't really want to emulate being one of them. What do you think most Mac users want?
- smegel 10y ago
  A next-gen iPhone.
robbrown451 10y ago
I think that's unlikely. There are far more economical ways of pushing boundaries of technology than racing. And the technology for racing really only has a very small overlap for the sorts of R&D needed for a market competitive car or motorcycle.
solatic 10y ago
>A "true Pro grade" computer offers no such advantage - in fact most of the innovation comes from making things smaller and thinner - as soon as you take away the weight/size restriction, sure you can make supercomputers in a box, but it's also pretty darn easy to do so. Except that it's not easy to put supercomputer-level performance in a lightweight box (with decent battery life) that you can slip into your bag. If Apple really wanted to push the boundaries in that way - getting great performance while still using an impossibly small laptop - there's actually a few directions they could've gone in, namely anything where you push computation into the cloud and then see the results locally. Basically come to market saying "you Windows/Linux schmucks and your tons of local VM's. You don't need that, we'll run your VM's in the cloud, and we'll make it Apple-easy for you to do so." No more local rendering, local building, nothing. The original assets are kept on some Apple cloud, a cache is kept on your machine, and whenever you start an operation, it starts the operation both on the cache and on the Apple cloud, and if the Apple cloud finishes first, then the results are returned to your computer. Unfortunately, Apple just doesn't care anymore about its professional customers. It started with the EOL for XServe (which could've been transitioned, along with OS X Server, into a private-cloud oriented offering) and it has worked its way down into its end-user offerings.

by smegel 10y ago

ktRolster 10y ago

few Mac customers could care less about "digital creative professionals" and don't really want to emulate being one of them. What do you think most Mac users want?

smegel 10y ago
A next-gen iPhone.

robbrown451 10y ago

I think that's unlikely. There are far more economical ways of pushing boundaries of technology than racing. And the technology for racing really only has a very small overlap for the sorts of R&D needed for a market competitive car or motorcycle.

solatic 10y ago

>A "true Pro grade" computer offers no such advantage - in fact most of the innovation comes from making things smaller and thinner - as soon as you take away the weight/size restriction, sure you can make supercomputers in a box, but it's also pretty darn easy to do so. Except that it's not easy to put supercomputer-level performance in a lightweight box (with decent battery life) that you can slip into your bag. If Apple really wanted to push the boundaries in that way - getting great performance while still using an impossibly small laptop - there's actually a few directions they could've gone in, namely anything where you push computation into the cloud and then see the results locally. Basically come to market saying "you Windows/Linux schmucks and your tons of local VM's. You don't need that, we'll run your VM's in the cloud, and we'll make it Apple-easy for you to do so." No more local rendering, local building, nothing. The original assets are kept on some Apple cloud, a cache is kept on your machine, and whenever you start an operation, it starts the operation both on the cache and on the Apple cloud, and if the Apple cloud finishes first, then the results are returned to your computer. Unfortunately, Apple just doesn't care anymore about its professional customers. It started with the EOL for XServe (which could've been transitioned, along with OS X Server, into a private-cloud oriented offering) and it has worked its way down into its end-user offerings.