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Major difference between the 90s and now is the market dominance that Apple has with their iOS platform. As a company having a closed ecosystem which they can p
by vinayan3 7y ago
Major difference between the 90s and now is the market dominance that Apple has with their iOS platform. As a company having a closed ecosystem which they can push in their own direction. The most important piece is that it drives their revenue either from app purchases, in-app purchases, subscriptions, and Apple services.
I'm speaking mostly about their mobile platform... Mac laptops / desktops are another thing... Specifically, I think the lack of a reasonably affordable desktop solution for developers is kind of a bumper. We need upgradability and openness for drivers to make it viable. There are use cases for a less expensive desktop that developers would buy.
- dvdbloc 7y agoDoes the Mac Mini not satisfy this need? At least for the desktop requirement, I’m aware it may not satisfy your driver requirements.
- nexuist 7y agoThe new Mac Mini starts at $700+ and still requires a separate monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers etc. Certainly not meant to be portable, so if you're a developer and want a laptop (as many developers do) your next choice is a MacBook which is well over $1k. You can buy some shitty Windows laptop to make Android apps on for $400. Will it be a good experience? Absolutely not; but at least you can get it done.
- saagarjha 7y agoApple no longer sells the MacBook; the cheapest portable they sell today is the MacBook Air.
- oscilloscope 7y agoThe latest MacBook Air starts at $849 refurbished. Quite a good value even compared to Windows laptops. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FREA2LL/A/refurbished-133-inch-macbook-air-16ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5-with-retina-display-silver https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FREA2LL/A/refurbished-133...
- saagarjha 7y agoIt’s essentially five year old technology and I don’t see it being supported for much longer. I’m not sure I can recommend it anymore :/
- mort96 7y agoThe Mac Mini is sort of limited by the lack of any graphics horsepower and the lack of stand-alone displays from Apple. You also can't get one with a really powerful CPU. It's a cool machine, but the tiny form factor is fairly limiting.
- saagarjha 7y agoThere’s the Pro Display XDR, but it’s obviously quite expensive.
- mort96 7y agoYeah, I'd expect nobody to buy a $6000 display+stand for their $1000 machine, except for special circumstances where a movie studio or something needs a reference monitor and just a weak machine to just show images on it. That's not exactly the mainstream desktop use case.
- tracker1 7y agoIIRC, it's relatively cheap as a reference monitor for the price. Way more than I'd want to pay, but compared to some of the studio alternatives.
- mort96 7y agoIt is. I'm not saying it's a bad or overpriced monitor. I'm saying it absolutely doesn't fit the common somewhat budget-conscious desktop use case.
- askafriend 7y agoMac Mini supports Thunderbolt 3 which has enough throughput to run a powerful external GPU with minimal (~10%) efficiency loss.
- KibbutzDalia 7y agoHa!
- vinayan3 7y agoNot really. It'd be nice to have a Nvidia eGPU but that's not supported anymore. Apple controls this and there isn't much we can do to change their choice of which GPUs are supported in the OS. PS: My use case would be for CUDA stuff. It being a Mac is nice because I can directly use it as a development machine. So having a Linux desktop at home is the best alternative and SSHing into it.