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Not just lack of hardware updates, but the lack of complete system categories. It's the height of hypocrisy to tout a green approach to things, while not even o

Not just lack of hardware updates, but the lack of complete system categories. It's the height of hypocrisy to tout a green approach to things, while not even offering an upgradable machine, e.g. a tower. All-in-ones like the iMac are usually discarded if either the motherboard or the display goes south, whereas a tower is easily fixed. Also, power users are left out in the cold, with the Mac Pro the only system fitting that category - and it's dated and deficient in many ways. Apple should bite the bullet and license macOS for third-party hardware. The Hackintosh community has things working pretty well today, and Apple could charge substantial money per license (notionally at least $200). Pretty good for just selling bits. That move would completely revitalize the Mac landscape, and would be a giant boost to iDevice adoption. Think Different! Sadly, I don't think current Apple management has the vision to do the right thing. Apple will likely continue a slow decline unless that changes. (BTW, "ctrl-[" is an excellent alternative to the regular Escape key...personally I prefer it.)

nicpottier 10y ago
This isn't thinking different, this is thinking backwards. They tried that once, didn't with so well and it was the first thing Jobs reverted when he came back. Apple knows bit from iOS and OSX that one of their defining advantages cones from their close ties of hardware and software. They won't give that away again. The drama around the new MBPs is all about price. No idea why they went so high but if they were more in line with with PC pricing there would be very little complaint.
- Recurecur 10y ago
  "This isn't thinking different, this is thinking backwards. They tried that once, didn't with so well and it was the first thing Jobs reverted when he came back." Times have changed. Macs are down to a pretty small percentage of Apple's revenues - what Apple needs is widespread uptake of macOS to promote the ecosystem of macOS + iOS. "Apple knows bit from iOS and OSX that one of their defining advantages cones from their close ties of hardware and software. They won't give that away again." Apple is using almost completely generic PC hardware at this point. See my other post regarding hardware. "The drama around the new MBPs is all about price. No idea why they went so high but if they were more in line with with PC pricing there would be very little complaint." Not at all. Much of the drama around the new MBPs was how anemic they look compared to other "pro" laptops. They don't even support 32 GB of RAM, much less 64. No ECC. No Xeons. No "pro" level graphics chips. Apple is the largest and arguably richest company in the world. Surely it could do a much better job of serving the many market segments. One size does not fit all!
  - nicpottier 10y ago
    "Times have changed. Macs are down to a pretty small percentage of Apple's revenues - what Apple needs is widespread uptake of macOS to promote the ecosystem of macOS + iOS." What do you mean widespread uptake? What software doesn't run on either? iOS has the largest app store and best apps by a country mile while OSX runs everything that matters and is the preferred dev machine (at least for OSS devs) due to its Unix roots. "Apple is using almost completely generic PC hardware at this point. See my other post regarding hardware." It is way way way easier to optimize a few specific pieces of hardware working together than trying to support all of them. It becomes a worse experience for end users and a distraction for the company. The mobile space is the most stark example of this. (where the hardware is also pretty much all the same) "Not at all. Much of the drama around the new MBPs was how anemic they look compared to other "pro" laptops. They don't even support 32 GB of RAM, much less 64. No ECC. No Xeons. No "pro" level graphics chips." I'm a dev, I work on terrabyte size databases, though I may have liked to have 32 gigs of ram, the truth of it is I hardly ever am using even half of my 16. Sure seems to me most of the blame falls on good old Moore's Law no longer keeping up. It isn't Apple's fault that today's procs are only 25% faster than those from four years ago. The old retina's had the advantage of still being in an era of faster processor revs as well as being able to bring SSD's to everyone, which was also a huge performance boost. What are the "pro" level graphics chips used for? Seems mostly games no? Mark my words, all the brew-haha over the current gen will blow over in six to twelve months as type-c becomes more common and accessory makers get on board. Apple will rev in two years with more RAM, their fancier fitted battery and whatever the current gen proc is, but everything else will remain the same.
    - Recurecur 10y ago
      "What do you mean widespread uptake?" I mean a higher percentage of people with systems running macOS. Macs are currently hovering at somewhere around 10% of systems purchased in the US. That means there's 90% potential growth... Folks with macOS systems are MUCH more likely to want iOS devices, which is where Apple is making most of its profits these days. "I'm a dev, I work on terrabyte size databases, though I may have liked to have 32 gigs of ram, the truth of it is I hardly ever am using even half of my 16." I frequently run into yellow or pink memory conditions in System Monitor on my 16 GB MBP. VMs in particular suck up a lot of memory. Since modern laptops can support 2x and even 4x the amount of memory, shouldn't the customer get to decide how much is optimum? Many engineers and scientists can use as much RAM as they can get their hands on... It's also time to move to ECC as we move to these large memory sizes. HP and Lenovo both offer laptops with ECC RAM. "What are the "pro" level graphics chips used for? Seems mostly games no?" Nope. "Pro" level graphics chips (like, you know, the ones included with the Mac Pro) are used for CAD and other high-end professional graphics apps, as well as GPU compute. Even the high end consumer GPUs should be offered, again why should Apple dictate to their customers what's optimal? Let the customer decide! "Mark my words, all the brew-haha over the current gen will blow over in six to twelve months as type-c becomes more common and accessory makers get on board. Apple will rev in two years with more RAM, their fancier fitted battery and whatever the current gen proc is, but everything else will remain the same." If so, don't expect to see Apple expand its marketshare significantly. It is not serving its customers as it should.
dkonofalski 10y ago
On the contrary, the ability for Apple to re-use and re-manufacture their products makes them more green. Apple computers tend to be recycled and resold for far longer than PCs (and their resale value is stupidly high for a tech product). I doubt that all-in-ones, and specifically the iMac, are usually just discarded as it's pretty easy to replace both of those things. I would be curious to see if you have any kind of support for that statement.
jen729w 10y ago
> Apple should bite the bullet and license macOS for third-party hardware Please, please, no. Presumably you've never gone through this particular form of hell: 1. You have a [Toshiba|Dell|HP] laptop. You've upgraded something. You need [graphics|sound|network] drivers. 2. You go to [Toshiba|Dell|HP].com to get those drivers. You navigate to the "Support" page for your laptop model. 3. You - you, the user - are presented with options. Do you want the AMD network drivers, or the Intel? Err. What? Why should I know? I typed in the model number of my machine. You, the vendor, should know what's in it! But you don't. This is infuriating madness. It's one of the many things I hate about the Wintel ecosystem. Opening up the Mac leads us down that path. Please no.
- Recurecur 10y ago
  In the case of Hackintosh, the easiest builds use already supported hardware. The reference builds on tonymacx86.com need very little if any tweaking. There are also high quality third party drivers, for instance Creative Labs, Logitech and NVIDIA Web Drivers. If things move more to using USB C and Thunderbolt, that situation will only get better and better. In short, it's already a non-issue.
- aianus 10y ago
  They could license it for specific models only and ship the necessary drivers with the OS just as they do now.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  Those days are over for PCs. Drivers are automatically installed by Windows Update.
grzm 10y ago
Apple should bite the bullet and license macOS for third-party hardware. Apple is a hardware company that also makes software that makes the hardware compelling. The first time around licensing the OS was part of the near bankruptcy of Apple. I can't imagine them trying that again.
ScottBurson 10y ago
Agreed on licensing macOS. They don't need to make it available to everyone; they just need to work with a couple of carefully selected manufacturers to fill one or two niches that they consider too small to bother with themselves, like developers/power users.

nicpottier 10y ago

This isn't thinking different, this is thinking backwards. They tried that once, didn't with so well and it was the first thing Jobs reverted when he came back. Apple knows bit from iOS and OSX that one of their defining advantages cones from their close ties of hardware and software. They won't give that away again. The drama around the new MBPs is all about price. No idea why they went so high but if they were more in line with with PC pricing there would be very little complaint.

Recurecur 10y ago
"This isn't thinking different, this is thinking backwards. They tried that once, didn't with so well and it was the first thing Jobs reverted when he came back." Times have changed. Macs are down to a pretty small percentage of Apple's revenues - what Apple needs is widespread uptake of macOS to promote the ecosystem of macOS + iOS. "Apple knows bit from iOS and OSX that one of their defining advantages cones from their close ties of hardware and software. They won't give that away again." Apple is using almost completely generic PC hardware at this point. See my other post regarding hardware. "The drama around the new MBPs is all about price. No idea why they went so high but if they were more in line with with PC pricing there would be very little complaint." Not at all. Much of the drama around the new MBPs was how anemic they look compared to other "pro" laptops. They don't even support 32 GB of RAM, much less 64. No ECC. No Xeons. No "pro" level graphics chips. Apple is the largest and arguably richest company in the world. Surely it could do a much better job of serving the many market segments. One size does not fit all!
- nicpottier 10y ago
  "Times have changed. Macs are down to a pretty small percentage of Apple's revenues - what Apple needs is widespread uptake of macOS to promote the ecosystem of macOS + iOS." What do you mean widespread uptake? What software doesn't run on either? iOS has the largest app store and best apps by a country mile while OSX runs everything that matters and is the preferred dev machine (at least for OSS devs) due to its Unix roots. "Apple is using almost completely generic PC hardware at this point. See my other post regarding hardware." It is way way way easier to optimize a few specific pieces of hardware working together than trying to support all of them. It becomes a worse experience for end users and a distraction for the company. The mobile space is the most stark example of this. (where the hardware is also pretty much all the same) "Not at all. Much of the drama around the new MBPs was how anemic they look compared to other "pro" laptops. They don't even support 32 GB of RAM, much less 64. No ECC. No Xeons. No "pro" level graphics chips." I'm a dev, I work on terrabyte size databases, though I may have liked to have 32 gigs of ram, the truth of it is I hardly ever am using even half of my 16. Sure seems to me most of the blame falls on good old Moore's Law no longer keeping up. It isn't Apple's fault that today's procs are only 25% faster than those from four years ago. The old retina's had the advantage of still being in an era of faster processor revs as well as being able to bring SSD's to everyone, which was also a huge performance boost. What are the "pro" level graphics chips used for? Seems mostly games no? Mark my words, all the brew-haha over the current gen will blow over in six to twelve months as type-c becomes more common and accessory makers get on board. Apple will rev in two years with more RAM, their fancier fitted battery and whatever the current gen proc is, but everything else will remain the same.
  - Recurecur 10y ago
    "What do you mean widespread uptake?" I mean a higher percentage of people with systems running macOS. Macs are currently hovering at somewhere around 10% of systems purchased in the US. That means there's 90% potential growth... Folks with macOS systems are MUCH more likely to want iOS devices, which is where Apple is making most of its profits these days. "I'm a dev, I work on terrabyte size databases, though I may have liked to have 32 gigs of ram, the truth of it is I hardly ever am using even half of my 16." I frequently run into yellow or pink memory conditions in System Monitor on my 16 GB MBP. VMs in particular suck up a lot of memory. Since modern laptops can support 2x and even 4x the amount of memory, shouldn't the customer get to decide how much is optimum? Many engineers and scientists can use as much RAM as they can get their hands on... It's also time to move to ECC as we move to these large memory sizes. HP and Lenovo both offer laptops with ECC RAM. "What are the "pro" level graphics chips used for? Seems mostly games no?" Nope. "Pro" level graphics chips (like, you know, the ones included with the Mac Pro) are used for CAD and other high-end professional graphics apps, as well as GPU compute. Even the high end consumer GPUs should be offered, again why should Apple dictate to their customers what's optimal? Let the customer decide! "Mark my words, all the brew-haha over the current gen will blow over in six to twelve months as type-c becomes more common and accessory makers get on board. Apple will rev in two years with more RAM, their fancier fitted battery and whatever the current gen proc is, but everything else will remain the same." If so, don't expect to see Apple expand its marketshare significantly. It is not serving its customers as it should.

dkonofalski 10y ago

On the contrary, the ability for Apple to re-use and re-manufacture their products makes them more green. Apple computers tend to be recycled and resold for far longer than PCs (and their resale value is stupidly high for a tech product). I doubt that all-in-ones, and specifically the iMac, are usually just discarded as it's pretty easy to replace both of those things. I would be curious to see if you have any kind of support for that statement.

jen729w 10y ago

> Apple should bite the bullet and license macOS for third-party hardware Please, please, no. Presumably you've never gone through this particular form of hell: 1. You have a [Toshiba|Dell|HP] laptop. You've upgraded something. You need [graphics|sound|network] drivers. 2. You go to [Toshiba|Dell|HP].com to get those drivers. You navigate to the "Support" page for your laptop model. 3. You - you, the user - are presented with options. Do you want the AMD network drivers, or the Intel? Err. What? Why should I know? I typed in the model number of my machine. You, the vendor, should know what's in it! But you don't. This is infuriating madness. It's one of the many things I hate about the Wintel ecosystem. Opening up the Mac leads us down that path. Please no.

Recurecur 10y ago
In the case of Hackintosh, the easiest builds use already supported hardware. The reference builds on tonymacx86.com need very little if any tweaking. There are also high quality third party drivers, for instance Creative Labs, Logitech and NVIDIA Web Drivers. If things move more to using USB C and Thunderbolt, that situation will only get better and better. In short, it's already a non-issue.
aianus 10y ago
They could license it for specific models only and ship the necessary drivers with the OS just as they do now.
marcoperaza 10y ago
Those days are over for PCs. Drivers are automatically installed by Windows Update.

grzm 10y ago

Apple should bite the bullet and license macOS for third-party hardware. Apple is a hardware company that also makes software that makes the hardware compelling. The first time around licensing the OS was part of the near bankruptcy of Apple. I can't imagine them trying that again.

ScottBurson 10y ago

Agreed on licensing macOS. They don't need to make it available to everyone; they just need to work with a couple of carefully selected manufacturers to fill one or two niches that they consider too small to bother with themselves, like developers/power users.