5 ms·

With apple's recent behavior, the updates may not be upgrades, but trade-offs.

by Joeri 10y ago

wmeredith 10y ago
Seriously. I hope the updates aren't adding more retina screens to more surfaces I don't look at.
astrodust 10y ago
I think they're having trouble finding their way in the post-PC world. Jobs knew this day was coming, that the PC would take a back seat to other devices, and brought up the analogy of Apple as BMW: The German company started out building motorcycles and while car sales soon vastly eclipsed that, they continued making really good bikes. It was a point of pride for them. If Apple goes back to that approach, of making Really Good Computers because they can, selling them not at a loss but at a respectable price for a respectable product, they might piss off fewer in their developer slash power user camp. I'm not sure this is their current strategy. The "Pro" monicker seems to be a little diluted in terms of meaning these days.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  It's not a post-PC world. It's a post-everyone-needs-a-PC world but definitely not a post-PC world.
  - redwall_hp 10y ago
    Something something Steve Jobs "truck" analogy. We're in a world where the masses don't need/want a PC (which is unfortunate, since that will arguably mean children will have less access to fully-functional computers in formative years when they may develop an interest in programming, but I digress). Apple, a company that claimed to grasp that concept just a few years ago, is completely failing on it right now. So, they make their money on phones and tablets, the devices for the "I don't need a real computer" people. Logically, that means the laptops should be targeted at the people who actually do need/want powerful and flexible computing devices...or they should drop them entirely if they don't wish to service that demographic any longer. Instead, we have this bizarre situation where Apple is delivering underpowered and overpriced machines. They're expensive and overkill for people who want luxury Facebook/word processing machines, and they're expensive and underpowered for people who want to do real computing. It's very inconsistent and out of touch. One thing that not enough people are bringing up: who in their right mind sells a "Pro" machine with 256GB of storage? In essence, every machine ships with half the storage they did five years ago. Yes, they're using NAND now, but the cost-per-gigabyte for raw NAND isn't that expensive. For a $2000 laptop, it should bloody well come with at least 512GB of internal storage, with a reasonably priced 1TB upgrade. I can forgive the 16GB limit on the RAM, but storage? On a machine that was marketed for video/photo/software professionals? You lose all of your mobility when you have to tote around an external drive to carry your footage/photos/VMs/builds/whatever.
    - aianus 10y ago
      > They're expensive and overkill for people who want luxury Facebook/word processing machines They cost less than $2k. Amortized over 4+ years, they're extremely affordable for the middle class. People spend more on coffee.
      - astrodust 10y ago
        The resale value on four year old coffee is also really low. Meanwhile a four year old MacBook Air sells for at least a few hundred.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      > Instead, we have this bizarre situation where Apple is delivering underpowered and overpriced machines. Underpowered for you. Overpriced for you. Maybe they're not being made for you. Now perhaps this is Apple's mistake, but the fact is they're chasing after a market that's not you. It's people who don't care that the notebook is $2K, that the CPU isn't the best it could possibly be. They're buying more than just specs and a low price tag. > They're ...overkill for people... So are they underpowered or overpowered? Make up your mind, man! Is a Ferrari a better car than a Civic because it can go faster? Is a Ford F-150 terrible because it doesn't have low-profile tires and a rear engine? Apple is just one vendor of many, we have options as consumers, and some people like their products. A $2K notebook is not expensive, every vendor makes one at that price point and most have astonishingly terrible trackpads. A $3K notebook carries a premium, but it's a luxury product. It's not intended to be cheap. Apple's mistake might be not differentiating their product line properly, for actually splitting out the actual "Pro" as in professional from "Pro" as in "Pro-sumer". Having to make one model that will sell in the millions of units does impose a lot of constraints. Dell makes a bazillion different models of laptop, they can afford to take chances, but they also churn them over quickly. Apple doesn't roll that way, not today anyway. They prefer to focus on keeping the product line lean, and really get behind a few good models. Maybe this is going to hurt them in the long run. We'll see.
      - redwall_hp 10y ago
        >So are they underpowered or overpowered? Make up your mind, man! Not sure if you have bad reading comprehension or if you're just omitting text to support your argument. They're underpowered for me. They're underpowered for people who need a "real" computer. For the people they're aiming the new portable at, they're completely overkill and completely overpriced. They're the new MacBook Air, essentially.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    > It's a post-everyone-needs-a-PC world. Yes, that's post-PC. Just as post-mainframe meant mainframes were no longer in charge, it didn't mean mainframes didn't exist.
- narrator 10y ago
  It's not a post-PC world. It's more like a Kaby Lake has the same performance as Sky Lake world and Intel is not able to figure out process technology beyond 14nm world. Apple could put an Nvidia 1080 and a Skylake i7 in the pro and an i5 in the mini. I guess and that would be a decent upgrade. Nothing super exciting, but decent. The next refresh is going to be even more depressing than this one if Intel doesn't figure out new process technology.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    PCs aren't extinct, but they're not in charge. That's what "Post PC" means. Mainframes still exist, they're faster and more powerful than ever, but if you argued that because they are that they're somehow still dominant you'd be laughed out of the room. Phones are the single most popular computing device and your average person spends more time on their phone than they do on their computer when excluding work.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

With apple's recent behavior, the updates may not be upgrades, but trade-offs.

by Joeri 10y ago

With apple's recent behavior, the updates may not be upgrades, but trade-offs.

wmeredith 10y ago

Seriously. I hope the updates aren't adding more retina screens to more surfaces I don't look at.

astrodust 10y ago

I think they're having trouble finding their way in the post-PC world. Jobs knew this day was coming, that the PC would take a back seat to other devices, and brought up the analogy of Apple as BMW: The German company started out building motorcycles and while car sales soon vastly eclipsed that, they continued making really good bikes. It was a point of pride for them. If Apple goes back to that approach, of making Really Good Computers because they can, selling them not at a loss but at a respectable price for a respectable product, they might piss off fewer in their developer slash power user camp. I'm not sure this is their current strategy. The "Pro" monicker seems to be a little diluted in terms of meaning these days.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
It's not a post-PC world. It's a post-everyone-needs-a-PC world but definitely not a post-PC world.
- redwall_hp 10y ago
  Something something Steve Jobs "truck" analogy. We're in a world where the masses don't need/want a PC (which is unfortunate, since that will arguably mean children will have less access to fully-functional computers in formative years when they may develop an interest in programming, but I digress). Apple, a company that claimed to grasp that concept just a few years ago, is completely failing on it right now. So, they make their money on phones and tablets, the devices for the "I don't need a real computer" people. Logically, that means the laptops should be targeted at the people who actually do need/want powerful and flexible computing devices...or they should drop them entirely if they don't wish to service that demographic any longer. Instead, we have this bizarre situation where Apple is delivering underpowered and overpriced machines. They're expensive and overkill for people who want luxury Facebook/word processing machines, and they're expensive and underpowered for people who want to do real computing. It's very inconsistent and out of touch. One thing that not enough people are bringing up: who in their right mind sells a "Pro" machine with 256GB of storage? In essence, every machine ships with half the storage they did five years ago. Yes, they're using NAND now, but the cost-per-gigabyte for raw NAND isn't that expensive. For a $2000 laptop, it should bloody well come with at least 512GB of internal storage, with a reasonably priced 1TB upgrade. I can forgive the 16GB limit on the RAM, but storage? On a machine that was marketed for video/photo/software professionals? You lose all of your mobility when you have to tote around an external drive to carry your footage/photos/VMs/builds/whatever.
  - aianus 10y ago
    > They're expensive and overkill for people who want luxury Facebook/word processing machines They cost less than $2k. Amortized over 4+ years, they're extremely affordable for the middle class. People spend more on coffee.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      The resale value on four year old coffee is also really low. Meanwhile a four year old MacBook Air sells for at least a few hundred.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    > Instead, we have this bizarre situation where Apple is delivering underpowered and overpriced machines. Underpowered for you. Overpriced for you. Maybe they're not being made for you. Now perhaps this is Apple's mistake, but the fact is they're chasing after a market that's not you. It's people who don't care that the notebook is $2K, that the CPU isn't the best it could possibly be. They're buying more than just specs and a low price tag. > They're ...overkill for people... So are they underpowered or overpowered? Make up your mind, man! Is a Ferrari a better car than a Civic because it can go faster? Is a Ford F-150 terrible because it doesn't have low-profile tires and a rear engine? Apple is just one vendor of many, we have options as consumers, and some people like their products. A $2K notebook is not expensive, every vendor makes one at that price point and most have astonishingly terrible trackpads. A $3K notebook carries a premium, but it's a luxury product. It's not intended to be cheap. Apple's mistake might be not differentiating their product line properly, for actually splitting out the actual "Pro" as in professional from "Pro" as in "Pro-sumer". Having to make one model that will sell in the millions of units does impose a lot of constraints. Dell makes a bazillion different models of laptop, they can afford to take chances, but they also churn them over quickly. Apple doesn't roll that way, not today anyway. They prefer to focus on keeping the product line lean, and really get behind a few good models. Maybe this is going to hurt them in the long run. We'll see.
    - redwall_hp 10y ago
      >So are they underpowered or overpowered? Make up your mind, man! Not sure if you have bad reading comprehension or if you're just omitting text to support your argument. They're underpowered for me. They're underpowered for people who need a "real" computer. For the people they're aiming the new portable at, they're completely overkill and completely overpriced. They're the new MacBook Air, essentially.
- astrodust 10y ago
  > It's a post-everyone-needs-a-PC world. Yes, that's post-PC. Just as post-mainframe meant mainframes were no longer in charge, it didn't mean mainframes didn't exist.
narrator 10y ago
It's not a post-PC world. It's more like a Kaby Lake has the same performance as Sky Lake world and Intel is not able to figure out process technology beyond 14nm world. Apple could put an Nvidia 1080 and a Skylake i7 in the pro and an i5 in the mini. I guess and that would be a decent upgrade. Nothing super exciting, but decent. The next refresh is going to be even more depressing than this one if Intel doesn't figure out new process technology.
- astrodust 10y ago
  PCs aren't extinct, but they're not in charge. That's what "Post PC" means. Mainframes still exist, they're faster and more powerful than ever, but if you argued that because they are that they're somehow still dominant you'd be laughed out of the room. Phones are the single most popular computing device and your average person spends more time on their phone than they do on their computer when excluding work.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]