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I’m glad that Apple is finally updating their Macs again, but at the same time Apple has doubled-down on its refusal to sell user-serviceable, upgradeable, and

I’m glad that Apple is finally updating their Macs again, but at the same time Apple has doubled-down on its refusal to sell user-serviceable, upgradeable, and expandable hardware at prices that are within reach for most customers. The laptops have soldered RAM and soldered storage. The Mac Mini and iMac Pro thankfully have DIMMs, but in order to keep the warranty, you have to visit an Apple-approved repair center to have a specialist perform the upgrade, which costs more than doing it yourself. After over two years of waiting, the Mac Pro announcement was a huge letdown since the cost of the only user-serviceable Mac has doubled from $2999 to $5999, alienating Mac Pro users who can afford a $2999 computer but not a $5999 one. It’s one thing for me to buy a “disposable computer” when it is priced very low. It’s another thing for me when you can’t upgrade or service computers with premium-priced parts in them. This is a trend I don’t support. Unfortunately the only way to protest Apple’s business decisions is to leave the Mac, which means giving up macOS, which I find a more productive environment for me than Windows or any of the Linux desktops like KDE and GNOME. I started using macOS back when Macs were user-serviceable, upgradeable, and reasonably affordable. I continue using the Mac for macOS, but I’m finding myself alienated by Apple's business decisions. I wish the situation for personal computer operating systems were better. I want PC hardware with an operating system that has the same power, attention to detail, usability, and reliability that macOS has. At this point I am willing to spend my spare time on such a project.

the_pwner224 7y ago
> in order to keep the warranty, you have to visit an Apple-approved repair center to have a specialist perform the upgrade, which costs more than doing it yourself At least in the US (and presumably in the EU which is much better about this sort of stuff) this is not legal. You can upgrade it on your own and Apple still has to honor the warranty. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2018/04/ftc-staff-warns-companies-it-illegal-condition-warranty-coverage https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2018/04/ftc-s...
- Maxious 7y ago
  In Australia too, Apple has gotten in trouble for their "error 53" technical measure to discourage third party repairs and not repairing devices that had that error https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-takes-action-against-apple-over-alleged-misleading-consumer-guarantee-representations https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-takes-action-agai... This follows an earlier infraction over refusing to repair faults after a year without AppleCare https://www.crn.com.au/news/apple-agrees-to-two-year-warranties-after-accc-wrist-slap-367969 https://www.crn.com.au/news/apple-agrees-to-two-year-warrant...
- simonh 7y ago
  I've done user-upgrades of the RAM on all my desktop Macs, and subsequently had repairs done under warranty here in the UK. Never had a problem and one at least two occasions the Apple engineers knew about the RAM upgrades. In fact the last HD replacement on my iMac was done free even out of warranty, I think because I mentioned I'd had it happen before on a previous Mac.
jdminhbg 7y ago
The problem is that, statistically, nobody cares about the issues you raise. You can maybe get your problems addressed by a niche retailer, but Apple has bigger fish to fry.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  How long will it have to take for people to realize that this tendency to only ever care for a virtual customer that's an average of all customers across all characteristics is in fact a market failure?
  - prepend 7y ago
    As long as it remains a market success. It’s not a market failure yet. I think all these little slights pile up to make it collapse, but I’ve been waiting 30 years and it seems to be getting worse in that more companies are getting huger by meeting the 95% at the expense of the 5%.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Looking at Apple's sales and customer satisfaction ratings, I'm not quite sure you understand what the term Market Failure means.
    - DennisP 7y ago
      Actually I think they fully understand it. "Market failure" does not mean that a company fails to sell something. Here's the definition: > Market failure is the economic situation defined by an inefficient distribution of goods and services in the free market...In traditional microeconomics, this is shown as a steady state disequilibrium in which the quantity supplied does not equal the quantity demanded. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp GP claimed there are demands not being met, because suppliers make more money selling to a "virtual customer that's an average of all customers across all characteristics." If that's correct, arguably it is a market failure, and that's consistent with those suppliers making lots of money selling to that average customer.
mseidl 7y ago
So, about the cost. This Mac Pro is for editing 8k raw video. Which is Hollywood stuff, shot on cameras that cost 10s of thousands of dollars, on top of 100s of thousands of dollars of lenses and budgets 10s to 100s of millions.
- shard972 7y ago
  That huge market of hollywood film editors as opposed to programmers.
- la_barba 7y ago
  You will not be editing raw 8K video using the tiny 8 core CPU and 256GB storage space of the base model which the parent was referring to ($6000). Its true that for Hollywood projects, the price of this might not be a huge deal, even with the baller fully speced out model. Heck in my own industry (pharma) we're paying thousands and thousands of dollars for software that doesn't do much except have the magical 21CFR compliant sticker that regulators look for.
  - dijit 7y ago
    I wouldn’t put much emphasis on the storage. Most places that are doing video editing at this level are using all flash based SAN networking over 10/100GB Ethernet/fibre. As for the CPU, I agree. However I’m not 100% sure on how much can be offloaded to the GPU these days, 5-ish years ago when I was working with video editors a lot, it wasn’t much that could be offloaded. Maybe it’s improved a lot.
    - CondensedBrain 7y ago
      I got Vegas Pro Edit from a Humble Bundle recently. Almost everything seems to be GPU accelerated.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
RickSanchez2600 7y ago
With Apple making the Mac Pro so expensive it opens up the grey market for Hackintosh PCs to run MacOS at a fraction of the cost. If Apple wants to beat the Hackintosh they need an ATX based Mac that doesn't cost $5999 but more like $999 that can be upgraded with a better graphics card and etc.
- root_axis 7y ago
  Hackintosh is fun for a tinkerer but not really practical for someone that just needs to get work done. I say this as someone who dislikes macOS and has tried the hackintosh approach in an attempt to build iOS apps without having to buy a mac. You can make it work, but it's a big pain and all bets are off when an update comes down the line.
  - cutler 7y ago
    All I've ever had to do after an upgrade is re-run my MultiBeast config. What's so difficult? My quad-core i7 hackintosh is still going strong after 9 years of daily use.
  - konart 7y ago
    Wasn't a pain even with an AMD CPU back 6 years ago. Doubt it is pain now.
  - baxuz 7y ago
    I think that the new low level security chips, replacement parts with signed firmware and more and more software features getting baked into encrypted hardware is gonna be the end of hackintosh quite soon
    - mantap 7y ago
      They will have to support Macs without T2 chips for many years into the future. I predict that MacOS's premier status will be disappear before Apple manages to lock it down. The Mac app development community is dying. Apple strangled it to death with the heavy handed Mac App Store sandboxing policies. Nobody wants to develop exclusive Mac apps anymore.
djmobley 7y ago
MacOS with regular PC hardware? Just build a Hackintosh. It’s far easier than I thought it would be. Pick the right parts and it will work flawlessly.
- oarsinsync 7y ago
  Last I checked, you have to disable signature checking on kernel extensions. For some, having to trade off that level of security is a pretty big flaw.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    I mean, that was standard until what 2 years ago? Not checking extensions was okay for about 42 years, I’m not sure anything really changed in the last 2. I doubt that most security experts will tell you otherwise when getting a signing certificate takes all of 5 minutes. The benefit you get is revocation but it really depends on your threat model right?
    - Hackbraten 7y ago
      Have you recently tried to get Apple to hand out a kext signing certificate? Convincing Donald Trump of climate change being real seems easier than that.
      - oarsinsync 7y ago
        I assume you're being downvoted because of the unnecessary political commentary. However, I am curious as to the process for getting a kext signing cert, as that plays a part in the value of having the certs in the first place or not. I didn't mention anything about serial numbers and the fun and games that goes on there when trying to get a Hackintosh working with iMessage/Facetime/iCloud services, which is a bit of a mixed bag. There could be security implications related to that, that haven't been worked out of the woodwork yet, but the kernel extensions feels like the biggest risk there.
PascLeRasc 7y ago
You can protest by using a Hackintosh. I'm sure Apple's aware of how big the Hackintosh community has become and I think it's part of the reason we're seeing niceties like upgradable RAM on the new Mini and iMacs.
- pier25 7y ago
  I seriously doubt the Hackintosh community has gotten any bigger than it was 5 tears ago. Any numbers to back that claim? Also, the Mini and the iMacs have always had upgradeable RAM.
  - PascLeRasc 7y ago
    Here's subscribers over time to /r/hackintosh [1] - about 600% growth over the last 5 years. Also, the 2014 Mac Mini removed the ability to upgrade RAM [2], but now it's back with the 2018 Mini. [1] https://subredditstats.com/r/hackintosh https://subredditstats.com/r/hackintosh [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/2836399/new-mac-mini-restricts-ram-and-storage-upgrades-but-hints-at-pcie-ssd-possibilities.html https://www.macworld.com/article/2836399/new-mac-mini-restri...
    - pier25 7y ago
      Not convinced about the subreddit stats tbh. I've been subscribed for many years but I stopped building hackintoshes 3 years ago. It's a shame the comments/posts are limited to 1 year only. Thanks, I didn't know the 2014 model didn't have upgradeable RAM. The last one I bought was the 2013.
- jammygit 7y ago
  Or Ubuntu
newscracker 7y ago
I feel the same way. Macs have become more expensive and less friendly for upgrading RAM and storage, the two most important things that need to be user upgradeable for longevity and reducing e-waste (I don’t care much about CPU/GPU upgrades). Even the new Mac mini is quite expensive compared to its predecessors. Mac mini used to be the cheap and beginner level entry into Macs/macOS. The current hardware may be worth the price, but Apple has clearly missed making something that’s a lot more affordable (with cheaper parts, fewer ports, etc.).
- xenospn 7y ago
  I’ve been using my 2013 MBP every day since it came out, through my previous startup, an acquisition, and now my new startup. It’s been perfect, except for the fact that it only has 8GB of ram, and cannot be upgraded.
  - earthnail 7y ago
    Used my 2010 MBP through uni life, startup life and acquisition. After which I allowed it to retire. But it served me a solid seven years. I'm actually one of these few people who's also happy with the new MBP.
    - simonh 7y ago
      Outside HN and other techie watering holes, happiness with the new MBPs is absolutely fine[1]. I'm not saying there aren't problems, I passed on getting a new MBP due to the keyboard issues myself[2], though I'm ok with the touch bar. There are real weaknesses in the current designs, but for the vast majority of users none of this is much of an issue. [1]https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/25/apple-devices-earn-highest-customer-satisfaction-score-among-pc-and-tablet-makers/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/25/apple-devices-earn-high... [2] Though this means I wouldn't be included in purchaser satisfaction ratings, because I didn't purchase.
      - mantap 7y ago
        I'm sorry but I don't believe that a product that is added to the keyboard repair program on release day is absolutely fine. Apple doesn't have confidence in the new MBP and neither should anybody else. The new MBP is basically gambling. You take your money to the Apple Store. They give you a computer, and a year down the line you see if that computer still works. Apple products used to last an age, that is what justified the price. There are many people in this thread using old MBPs, including myself. The more expensive a computer, the longer it is expected to last. It is quite normal to expect 5 years of use out of these things. I see plenty of evidence that this keyboard design is not capable of that.
aiyodev 7y ago
> you have to visit an Apple-approved repair center to have a specialist perform the upgrade, which costs more than doing it yourself That has not been my experience. The Apple store just refreshed my 2015 Macbook pro: new screen, new bottom case, new fan, etc. Did not charge me anything. Apple products last much longer than others and are much cheaper to maintain.
- tomduncalf 7y ago
  Sadly I don’t believe this will be true of the newer generation butterfly keyboard laptops. Seems like the keyboards are more or less guaranteed to fail at some point and if it’s outside the 4 year extended guarantee window, tough luck, given the risk requires replacing the whole logic board. Real shame and I hope there is a new design soon addressing this!
  - Twisell 7y ago
    Can you develop in which way this is supposedly worse than for say the hp laptop of my wife that ran out of warranty after 1 year without official removable battery parts sold by the manufacturer? Also touchscreen start to literally fell off after 2 year, but can’t tell if it was weak design or if my wife was careless to be honest.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    The logic board does not need to be replaced. The top case includes the keyboard, touch bar and battery.
bitL 7y ago
> which means giving up macOS, which I find a more productive environment Get Ubuntu, install Docky and Macbuntu theme if you want to keep familiar desktop around before you fully convert to Linux.
- cutler 7y ago
  Ever considered building yourself a Hackintosh? It's a no-brainer these days.
  - bitL 7y ago
    Yeah, NUC8i5/8i7 with 64GB + TB3 eGPU and you are set for a few years...
- golergka 7y ago
  Does Ubuntu run Final Cut?
  - bitL 7y ago
    What's the point of this question? Stating the obvious that voluntary platform lock-in has consequences? That software from Apple doesn't run on anything else than Apple hardware (iTunes being an exception)? It runs DaVinci Resolve and Pixar's RenderMan natively. CS6 runs reliably under Wine as well. Can you run 3DS Max on macOS? So, isn't macOS a pro environment then?
    - layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
      For what it’s worth, you can run 3dsmax in Parallels like you can run CS6 in Wine...
      - bitL 7y ago
        OK, so the same with running macOS in VirtualBox or VMWare under Linux/Windows. But that's probably not what they asked for.
Angostura 7y ago
Actually, I'm in the middle of writing an e-mail to the Tim address at Apple, saying that if it takes the environment seriously (and I commend them on what they have done so far) they really need to take the next step, be truly 'courageous' and prioritise repairability and expandability in their forthcoming products. Apple in the last 20 pushed the boundaries in terms of sleek and slim, but I argue those are last century's imperatives. Apple has the clout and profile, that if it took a stand and said 'we are going to make our products a few milimeters thicker, we are going to make them so that they can be upgraded, we realise that this will hit sales and profits, but this is the planet we are talking about', they could probably pull other members of the industry behind them'. Conspicuous non consumption might be the new fashion statement.
- Aromasin 7y ago
  The new trend should be, in my eyes, to make electronic hardware similar to that of a good leather jacket or pair of denim jeans. If it tears, you patch it. If it fades, you dye it. That same mentality of repair used to exist, but as design has become obfuscated and electronics micro-sized, there's little you can do as a consumer. Collective thought should have been "Well, if it can't be repaired by the consumer, the onus of responsibility for repairing it therefore lies with the manufacturer for making it so difficult." Instead it seems to have gone the route of "Well, it can't be repaired by the consumer. I guess the only choice is to pay the manufacturer hundreds for repairing it, or dispose of it and buy a new one for near the same price." If any company is going to go this route though, it's not going to be Apple. It harkens back to the days where Wozniak and Jobs argued whether or not to put slots into the Apple 2, and Jobs won that one of course. His legacy runs strong in the company. [EDIT] Apologies, Jobs relented in the instance of the Apple 2, mainly because that was Woz's baby. Later models did not allow for playing with the hardware however.
  - amelius 7y ago
    > It harkens back to the days where Wozniak and Jobs argued whether or not to put slots into the Apple 2, and Jobs won that one of course. The Apple ][ had expansion slots.
_ph_ 7y ago
I so much agree. The price difference to all its predecessors is killing the otherwise brilliant new machine. I actually had set aside about 5 to 6k for a Mac Pro with a screen, but no luck for me. I am currently using a 27" iMac, but I would like to have a desktop class graphics card and the 27" screen is a bit small compared to the 30" available before. My only hope is, that on the footsteps of the Mac Pro, there will be other updates to the Mac line upcoming. And if Apple is actually listening: stop screwing users up with memory and storage pricing. A healthy premium I would happily pay, but not several x factors vs. market prices. At least give users reasonable upgrade abilities. Having an iMac on my desk also makes it difficult just to add a PC to my setup, as I would need a screen on top of this (and my desk space is scarce), but one day I might do the step - recent Gnome desktops have become very nice, and with Wayland the Linux display stack is getting nicer too.
- zemvpferreira 7y ago
  If the desktop graphics card is your primary reason to upgrade, consider an egpu. They’re a stable solution in osx and not that expensive. Turned my ageing macbook into a nice vr rig.
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    Just that I would need a new machine, my iMac still has TB2.
ohiovr 7y ago
I got scared and fed up with Windows 10 and retreated to Mac OS for 5 years until I had a fiasco of a time trying to upgrade my mac pro to Mojave. During the time I used Mac OS I became familiar with Bash and some Unix ways of doing things. I found Bash to be really useful and powerful compared to the command interpreter in Windows. I had a big interest in virtualization and along the years of using the mac I tried all kinds of linux servers in VMs for research and self education. I never did like ubuntu's standard desktop. I tried them all. After the Mojave fiasco I thought I'd buy a mid range computer with the latest Nvidia card (partially just because I could do that and I could not do that with mac). My mac was on the cliff edge of planned obsolescence anyway (Apple decides for you when it is time to upgrade). Long story short it is indeed difficult to get used to Linux. You have to develop a survival attitude first. I found that changing one thing like fstab could make the system unbootable. Sudo can ruin your system fast if you are not careful and an expert. I did not want to be either careful or an expert just to get work done. So to survive my poor administration skills I found I could lean on a program called TimeShift which works a lot like timemachine for Mac. Its really like the best parts of Time Machine combined with Windows' restore points. Anytime I am about to install something new or tweak something that has the potential for causing a disaster I take a few minutes to make a snapshot via TimeMachine/Rsync. I can always go back, and if I really mess everything up I can boot into a live cd and run TimeShift from that. TimeShift unfortunately does not do home directories very well but there is another gui/cli program called BackInTime that I use for the Time Machine like solution for my home directory and a couple others. I use rotating backups. I have backups on a big 8 TB external drive and then I rsync that to a copy drive and leave that one offline in case my main machine gets poisoned by ransomware. So thats my survival technique.. But is it worth it? It took me about a month to figure out what to do for disasters and bad configurations and I spent about a month deciding what "distro" to use. I tried all flavors of Ubuntu, and tried Mint but settled on Debian with the Cinnamon desktop. I got to say I really like cinnamon, it is very ram hungry but ram is cheap so it isn't a problem for me. It supports high dpi (well 2x at least). The file manager is great, it even has ftp built into it. Context menus work good, right click to open as root, or open a terminal. Cinnamon is a classic take on well established principles in UI design that were perfected over a decade ago, instead of changing things just to change them. But so what if there are no good applications! I have a multimedia background so that was my interest. I used to use Photoshop cs6 for years but Adobe is too incompetent and greedy to rely on for the future. My photo editing needs have not changed much since I bought it in 2008 so Gimp isn't too far behind what I owned since then. I just tried using lightwave recently but it fails to work even in a VM so I decided to learn Blender. I could not justify purchasing Modo even though it is available for Linux. Main thing is Muscle memory. The proof is in the pudding for art programs. If people are doing amazing things with it, the software has merit. So I have a lot of optimism that I can still get some nice work done. Visual studio code on linux is really nice. There were some snafus I had to get around but when it is setup its terrific. I never used Microsoft office at home and my office requirements are simple. But if I did need it, I could use Office 365 on a web browser I presume. I just need the occasional word processor and spreadsheet. Video editing on Linux is still a sore point but I like Olive editor and I am trying to support it with Patreon. It feels a lot like an early verion of Sonic Foundry Vegas. I in no way will ever miss Adobe Premiere Debian has tens of thousands of software packages that are just a apt install away. That is a gigantic value. I don't have to worry about Window's malware as much as linux malware. I don't have to upgrade my hardware according to Apple's schedules and demands. I have access to the latest or near to the latest Nvidia hardware. Desktop computing today is a disaster. I hate windows, I can't afford to waste money on inferior hardware and pray that the designers don't forsake my professional platform for consumerish goals. Debian isn't the only or the best linux perhaps. But if I didn't have Linux I would just give up on computing entirely and work at a factory or something.
empath75 7y ago
> Apple has doubled-down on its refusal to sell user-serviceable, upgradeable, and expandable hardware at prices that are within reach for most customers. This is like saying Ferrari has doubled down on its refusal to sell a budget hatchback for families.
- coldtea 7y ago
  No, it's saying like a company building "computers for the rest of us", that had traditionally had lines affordable by common pros, now only sells stuff suitable high end pro studios and cheaper mass market stuff, with no in-between regular pro tier. They already have models in the "regular hatchback for families" range (and had since forever). It's the mid-tier that suffers.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
pier25 7y ago
I agree. I want an upgradeable Mac tower, but I certainly don't need a Xeon workstation with ECC memory even if I can afford a Mac Pro. I'm quite happy with my 5K iMac so far, but I'm worried about future repairs and upgrades.

the_pwner224 7y ago

> in order to keep the warranty, you have to visit an Apple-approved repair center to have a specialist perform the upgrade, which costs more than doing it yourself At least in the US (and presumably in the EU which is much better about this sort of stuff) this is not legal. You can upgrade it on your own and Apple still has to honor the warranty. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2018/04/ftc-staff-warns-companies-it-illegal-condition-warranty-coverage https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2018/04/ftc-s...

Maxious 7y ago
In Australia too, Apple has gotten in trouble for their "error 53" technical measure to discourage third party repairs and not repairing devices that had that error https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-takes-action-against-apple-over-alleged-misleading-consumer-guarantee-representations https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-takes-action-agai... This follows an earlier infraction over refusing to repair faults after a year without AppleCare https://www.crn.com.au/news/apple-agrees-to-two-year-warranties-after-accc-wrist-slap-367969 https://www.crn.com.au/news/apple-agrees-to-two-year-warrant...
simonh 7y ago
I've done user-upgrades of the RAM on all my desktop Macs, and subsequently had repairs done under warranty here in the UK. Never had a problem and one at least two occasions the Apple engineers knew about the RAM upgrades. In fact the last HD replacement on my iMac was done free even out of warranty, I think because I mentioned I'd had it happen before on a previous Mac.

jdminhbg 7y ago

The problem is that, statistically, nobody cares about the issues you raise. You can maybe get your problems addressed by a niche retailer, but Apple has bigger fish to fry.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
How long will it have to take for people to realize that this tendency to only ever care for a virtual customer that's an average of all customers across all characteristics is in fact a market failure?
- prepend 7y ago
  As long as it remains a market success. It’s not a market failure yet. I think all these little slights pile up to make it collapse, but I’ve been waiting 30 years and it seems to be getting worse in that more companies are getting huger by meeting the 95% at the expense of the 5%.
- simonh 7y ago
  Looking at Apple's sales and customer satisfaction ratings, I'm not quite sure you understand what the term Market Failure means.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    Actually I think they fully understand it. "Market failure" does not mean that a company fails to sell something. Here's the definition: > Market failure is the economic situation defined by an inefficient distribution of goods and services in the free market...In traditional microeconomics, this is shown as a steady state disequilibrium in which the quantity supplied does not equal the quantity demanded. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp GP claimed there are demands not being met, because suppliers make more money selling to a "virtual customer that's an average of all customers across all characteristics." If that's correct, arguably it is a market failure, and that's consistent with those suppliers making lots of money selling to that average customer.

mseidl 7y ago

So, about the cost. This Mac Pro is for editing 8k raw video. Which is Hollywood stuff, shot on cameras that cost 10s of thousands of dollars, on top of 100s of thousands of dollars of lenses and budgets 10s to 100s of millions.

shard972 7y ago
That huge market of hollywood film editors as opposed to programmers.
la_barba 7y ago
You will not be editing raw 8K video using the tiny 8 core CPU and 256GB storage space of the base model which the parent was referring to ($6000). Its true that for Hollywood projects, the price of this might not be a huge deal, even with the baller fully speced out model. Heck in my own industry (pharma) we're paying thousands and thousands of dollars for software that doesn't do much except have the magical 21CFR compliant sticker that regulators look for.
- dijit 7y ago
  I wouldn’t put much emphasis on the storage. Most places that are doing video editing at this level are using all flash based SAN networking over 10/100GB Ethernet/fibre. As for the CPU, I agree. However I’m not 100% sure on how much can be offloaded to the GPU these days, 5-ish years ago when I was working with video editors a lot, it wasn’t much that could be offloaded. Maybe it’s improved a lot.
  - CondensedBrain 7y ago
    I got Vegas Pro Edit from a Humble Bundle recently. Almost everything seems to be GPU accelerated.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

RickSanchez2600 7y ago

With Apple making the Mac Pro so expensive it opens up the grey market for Hackintosh PCs to run MacOS at a fraction of the cost. If Apple wants to beat the Hackintosh they need an ATX based Mac that doesn't cost $5999 but more like $999 that can be upgraded with a better graphics card and etc.

root_axis 7y ago
Hackintosh is fun for a tinkerer but not really practical for someone that just needs to get work done. I say this as someone who dislikes macOS and has tried the hackintosh approach in an attempt to build iOS apps without having to buy a mac. You can make it work, but it's a big pain and all bets are off when an update comes down the line.
- cutler 7y ago
  All I've ever had to do after an upgrade is re-run my MultiBeast config. What's so difficult? My quad-core i7 hackintosh is still going strong after 9 years of daily use.
- konart 7y ago
  Wasn't a pain even with an AMD CPU back 6 years ago. Doubt it is pain now.
- baxuz 7y ago
  I think that the new low level security chips, replacement parts with signed firmware and more and more software features getting baked into encrypted hardware is gonna be the end of hackintosh quite soon
  - mantap 7y ago
    They will have to support Macs without T2 chips for many years into the future. I predict that MacOS's premier status will be disappear before Apple manages to lock it down. The Mac app development community is dying. Apple strangled it to death with the heavy handed Mac App Store sandboxing policies. Nobody wants to develop exclusive Mac apps anymore.

djmobley 7y ago

MacOS with regular PC hardware? Just build a Hackintosh. It’s far easier than I thought it would be. Pick the right parts and it will work flawlessly.

oarsinsync 7y ago
Last I checked, you have to disable signature checking on kernel extensions. For some, having to trade off that level of security is a pretty big flaw.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  I mean, that was standard until what 2 years ago? Not checking extensions was okay for about 42 years, I’m not sure anything really changed in the last 2. I doubt that most security experts will tell you otherwise when getting a signing certificate takes all of 5 minutes. The benefit you get is revocation but it really depends on your threat model right?
  - Hackbraten 7y ago
    Have you recently tried to get Apple to hand out a kext signing certificate? Convincing Donald Trump of climate change being real seems easier than that.
    - oarsinsync 7y ago
      I assume you're being downvoted because of the unnecessary political commentary. However, I am curious as to the process for getting a kext signing cert, as that plays a part in the value of having the certs in the first place or not. I didn't mention anything about serial numbers and the fun and games that goes on there when trying to get a Hackintosh working with iMessage/Facetime/iCloud services, which is a bit of a mixed bag. There could be security implications related to that, that haven't been worked out of the woodwork yet, but the kernel extensions feels like the biggest risk there.

PascLeRasc 7y ago

You can protest by using a Hackintosh. I'm sure Apple's aware of how big the Hackintosh community has become and I think it's part of the reason we're seeing niceties like upgradable RAM on the new Mini and iMacs.

pier25 7y ago
I seriously doubt the Hackintosh community has gotten any bigger than it was 5 tears ago. Any numbers to back that claim? Also, the Mini and the iMacs have always had upgradeable RAM.
- PascLeRasc 7y ago
  Here's subscribers over time to /r/hackintosh [1] - about 600% growth over the last 5 years. Also, the 2014 Mac Mini removed the ability to upgrade RAM [2], but now it's back with the 2018 Mini. [1] https://subredditstats.com/r/hackintosh https://subredditstats.com/r/hackintosh [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/2836399/new-mac-mini-restricts-ram-and-storage-upgrades-but-hints-at-pcie-ssd-possibilities.html https://www.macworld.com/article/2836399/new-mac-mini-restri...
  - pier25 7y ago
    Not convinced about the subreddit stats tbh. I've been subscribed for many years but I stopped building hackintoshes 3 years ago. It's a shame the comments/posts are limited to 1 year only. Thanks, I didn't know the 2014 model didn't have upgradeable RAM. The last one I bought was the 2013.
jammygit 7y ago
Or Ubuntu

newscracker 7y ago

I feel the same way. Macs have become more expensive and less friendly for upgrading RAM and storage, the two most important things that need to be user upgradeable for longevity and reducing e-waste (I don’t care much about CPU/GPU upgrades). Even the new Mac mini is quite expensive compared to its predecessors. Mac mini used to be the cheap and beginner level entry into Macs/macOS. The current hardware may be worth the price, but Apple has clearly missed making something that’s a lot more affordable (with cheaper parts, fewer ports, etc.).

xenospn 7y ago
I’ve been using my 2013 MBP every day since it came out, through my previous startup, an acquisition, and now my new startup. It’s been perfect, except for the fact that it only has 8GB of ram, and cannot be upgraded.
- earthnail 7y ago
  Used my 2010 MBP through uni life, startup life and acquisition. After which I allowed it to retire. But it served me a solid seven years. I'm actually one of these few people who's also happy with the new MBP.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Outside HN and other techie watering holes, happiness with the new MBPs is absolutely fine[1]. I'm not saying there aren't problems, I passed on getting a new MBP due to the keyboard issues myself[2], though I'm ok with the touch bar. There are real weaknesses in the current designs, but for the vast majority of users none of this is much of an issue. [1]https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/25/apple-devices-earn-highest-customer-satisfaction-score-among-pc-and-tablet-makers/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/25/apple-devices-earn-high... [2] Though this means I wouldn't be included in purchaser satisfaction ratings, because I didn't purchase.
    - mantap 7y ago
      I'm sorry but I don't believe that a product that is added to the keyboard repair program on release day is absolutely fine. Apple doesn't have confidence in the new MBP and neither should anybody else. The new MBP is basically gambling. You take your money to the Apple Store. They give you a computer, and a year down the line you see if that computer still works. Apple products used to last an age, that is what justified the price. There are many people in this thread using old MBPs, including myself. The more expensive a computer, the longer it is expected to last. It is quite normal to expect 5 years of use out of these things. I see plenty of evidence that this keyboard design is not capable of that.

aiyodev 7y ago

> you have to visit an Apple-approved repair center to have a specialist perform the upgrade, which costs more than doing it yourself That has not been my experience. The Apple store just refreshed my 2015 Macbook pro: new screen, new bottom case, new fan, etc. Did not charge me anything. Apple products last much longer than others and are much cheaper to maintain.

tomduncalf 7y ago
Sadly I don’t believe this will be true of the newer generation butterfly keyboard laptops. Seems like the keyboards are more or less guaranteed to fail at some point and if it’s outside the 4 year extended guarantee window, tough luck, given the risk requires replacing the whole logic board. Real shame and I hope there is a new design soon addressing this!
- Twisell 7y ago
  Can you develop in which way this is supposedly worse than for say the hp laptop of my wife that ran out of warranty after 1 year without official removable battery parts sold by the manufacturer? Also touchscreen start to literally fell off after 2 year, but can’t tell if it was weak design or if my wife was careless to be honest.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  The logic board does not need to be replaced. The top case includes the keyboard, touch bar and battery.

bitL 7y ago

> which means giving up macOS, which I find a more productive environment Get Ubuntu, install Docky and Macbuntu theme if you want to keep familiar desktop around before you fully convert to Linux.

cutler 7y ago
Ever considered building yourself a Hackintosh? It's a no-brainer these days.
- bitL 7y ago
  Yeah, NUC8i5/8i7 with 64GB + TB3 eGPU and you are set for a few years...
golergka 7y ago
Does Ubuntu run Final Cut?
- bitL 7y ago
  What's the point of this question? Stating the obvious that voluntary platform lock-in has consequences? That software from Apple doesn't run on anything else than Apple hardware (iTunes being an exception)? It runs DaVinci Resolve and Pixar's RenderMan natively. CS6 runs reliably under Wine as well. Can you run 3DS Max on macOS? So, isn't macOS a pro environment then?
  - layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
    For what it’s worth, you can run 3dsmax in Parallels like you can run CS6 in Wine...
    - bitL 7y ago
      OK, so the same with running macOS in VirtualBox or VMWare under Linux/Windows. But that's probably not what they asked for.

Angostura 7y ago

Actually, I'm in the middle of writing an e-mail to the Tim address at Apple, saying that if it takes the environment seriously (and I commend them on what they have done so far) they really need to take the next step, be truly 'courageous' and prioritise repairability and expandability in their forthcoming products. Apple in the last 20 pushed the boundaries in terms of sleek and slim, but I argue those are last century's imperatives. Apple has the clout and profile, that if it took a stand and said 'we are going to make our products a few milimeters thicker, we are going to make them so that they can be upgraded, we realise that this will hit sales and profits, but this is the planet we are talking about', they could probably pull other members of the industry behind them'. Conspicuous non consumption might be the new fashion statement.

Aromasin 7y ago
The new trend should be, in my eyes, to make electronic hardware similar to that of a good leather jacket or pair of denim jeans. If it tears, you patch it. If it fades, you dye it. That same mentality of repair used to exist, but as design has become obfuscated and electronics micro-sized, there's little you can do as a consumer. Collective thought should have been "Well, if it can't be repaired by the consumer, the onus of responsibility for repairing it therefore lies with the manufacturer for making it so difficult." Instead it seems to have gone the route of "Well, it can't be repaired by the consumer. I guess the only choice is to pay the manufacturer hundreds for repairing it, or dispose of it and buy a new one for near the same price." If any company is going to go this route though, it's not going to be Apple. It harkens back to the days where Wozniak and Jobs argued whether or not to put slots into the Apple 2, and Jobs won that one of course. His legacy runs strong in the company. [EDIT] Apologies, Jobs relented in the instance of the Apple 2, mainly because that was Woz's baby. Later models did not allow for playing with the hardware however.
- amelius 7y ago
  > It harkens back to the days where Wozniak and Jobs argued whether or not to put slots into the Apple 2, and Jobs won that one of course. The Apple ][ had expansion slots.

_ph_ 7y ago

I so much agree. The price difference to all its predecessors is killing the otherwise brilliant new machine. I actually had set aside about 5 to 6k for a Mac Pro with a screen, but no luck for me. I am currently using a 27" iMac, but I would like to have a desktop class graphics card and the 27" screen is a bit small compared to the 30" available before. My only hope is, that on the footsteps of the Mac Pro, there will be other updates to the Mac line upcoming. And if Apple is actually listening: stop screwing users up with memory and storage pricing. A healthy premium I would happily pay, but not several x factors vs. market prices. At least give users reasonable upgrade abilities. Having an iMac on my desk also makes it difficult just to add a PC to my setup, as I would need a screen on top of this (and my desk space is scarce), but one day I might do the step - recent Gnome desktops have become very nice, and with Wayland the Linux display stack is getting nicer too.

zemvpferreira 7y ago
If the desktop graphics card is your primary reason to upgrade, consider an egpu. They’re a stable solution in osx and not that expensive. Turned my ageing macbook into a nice vr rig.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  Just that I would need a new machine, my iMac still has TB2.

ohiovr 7y ago

I got scared and fed up with Windows 10 and retreated to Mac OS for 5 years until I had a fiasco of a time trying to upgrade my mac pro to Mojave. During the time I used Mac OS I became familiar with Bash and some Unix ways of doing things. I found Bash to be really useful and powerful compared to the command interpreter in Windows. I had a big interest in virtualization and along the years of using the mac I tried all kinds of linux servers in VMs for research and self education. I never did like ubuntu's standard desktop. I tried them all. After the Mojave fiasco I thought I'd buy a mid range computer with the latest Nvidia card (partially just because I could do that and I could not do that with mac). My mac was on the cliff edge of planned obsolescence anyway (Apple decides for you when it is time to upgrade). Long story short it is indeed difficult to get used to Linux. You have to develop a survival attitude first. I found that changing one thing like fstab could make the system unbootable. Sudo can ruin your system fast if you are not careful and an expert. I did not want to be either careful or an expert just to get work done. So to survive my poor administration skills I found I could lean on a program called TimeShift which works a lot like timemachine for Mac. Its really like the best parts of Time Machine combined with Windows' restore points. Anytime I am about to install something new or tweak something that has the potential for causing a disaster I take a few minutes to make a snapshot via TimeMachine/Rsync. I can always go back, and if I really mess everything up I can boot into a live cd and run TimeShift from that. TimeShift unfortunately does not do home directories very well but there is another gui/cli program called BackInTime that I use for the Time Machine like solution for my home directory and a couple others. I use rotating backups. I have backups on a big 8 TB external drive and then I rsync that to a copy drive and leave that one offline in case my main machine gets poisoned by ransomware. So thats my survival technique.. But is it worth it? It took me about a month to figure out what to do for disasters and bad configurations and I spent about a month deciding what "distro" to use. I tried all flavors of Ubuntu, and tried Mint but settled on Debian with the Cinnamon desktop. I got to say I really like cinnamon, it is very ram hungry but ram is cheap so it isn't a problem for me. It supports high dpi (well 2x at least). The file manager is great, it even has ftp built into it. Context menus work good, right click to open as root, or open a terminal. Cinnamon is a classic take on well established principles in UI design that were perfected over a decade ago, instead of changing things just to change them. But so what if there are no good applications! I have a multimedia background so that was my interest. I used to use Photoshop cs6 for years but Adobe is too incompetent and greedy to rely on for the future. My photo editing needs have not changed much since I bought it in 2008 so Gimp isn't too far behind what I owned since then. I just tried using lightwave recently but it fails to work even in a VM so I decided to learn Blender. I could not justify purchasing Modo even though it is available for Linux. Main thing is Muscle memory. The proof is in the pudding for art programs. If people are doing amazing things with it, the software has merit. So I have a lot of optimism that I can still get some nice work done. Visual studio code on linux is really nice. There were some snafus I had to get around but when it is setup its terrific. I never used Microsoft office at home and my office requirements are simple. But if I did need it, I could use Office 365 on a web browser I presume. I just need the occasional word processor and spreadsheet. Video editing on Linux is still a sore point but I like Olive editor and I am trying to support it with Patreon. It feels a lot like an early verion of Sonic Foundry Vegas. I in no way will ever miss Adobe Premiere Debian has tens of thousands of software packages that are just a apt install away. That is a gigantic value. I don't have to worry about Window's malware as much as linux malware. I don't have to upgrade my hardware according to Apple's schedules and demands. I have access to the latest or near to the latest Nvidia hardware. Desktop computing today is a disaster. I hate windows, I can't afford to waste money on inferior hardware and pray that the designers don't forsake my professional platform for consumerish goals. Debian isn't the only or the best linux perhaps. But if I didn't have Linux I would just give up on computing entirely and work at a factory or something.

empath75 7y ago

> Apple has doubled-down on its refusal to sell user-serviceable, upgradeable, and expandable hardware at prices that are within reach for most customers. This is like saying Ferrari has doubled down on its refusal to sell a budget hatchback for families.

coldtea 7y ago
No, it's saying like a company building "computers for the rest of us", that had traditionally had lines affordable by common pros, now only sells stuff suitable high end pro studios and cheaper mass market stuff, with no in-between regular pro tier. They already have models in the "regular hatchback for families" range (and had since forever). It's the mid-tier that suffers.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

pier25 7y ago

I agree. I want an upgradeable Mac tower, but I certainly don't need a Xeon workstation with ECC memory even if I can afford a Mac Pro. I'm quite happy with my 5K iMac so far, but I'm worried about future repairs and upgrades.