5 ms·

Why should they? The market dictates the price. If people are buying Apple products at those prices then why should Apple lower their prices? The answer is th

Why should they? The market dictates the price. If people are buying Apple products at those prices then why should Apple lower their prices? The answer is they shouldn't.

wmf 7y ago
Ah yes, the "market" for macOS machines with PCIe slots.
- uncle_j 7y ago
  While you may scoff enough people are willing to pay the extra for Mac OS and a high level workstation to justify their prices.
liquidise 7y ago
Indeed it does. Which nicely explains the rising popularity of Hackintosh's, particularly among developers and other technologists. AMD Hackintosh's[1] in particular have skyrocketed in maturity and simplicity since Ryzen. 1: https://amd-osx.com/ https://amd-osx.com/
- uncle_j 7y ago
  Apple are locking down the platform via proprietary chips etc. It isn't a long term solution and shouldn't be relied upon.
  - reanimus 7y ago
    To be fair, the Hackintosh community is pretty persistent. They added opcode emulation into the kernel, for example, to handle running on CPUs without the expected instructions (older AMD CPUs back in 10.8 or so). I wouldn't be surprised to see the cat-and-mouse continue.
    - close04 7y ago
      Wonder what happens when Apple starts "enforcing" a Tx chip to boot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors#Apple_T1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors#Appl...
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      This sounds really interesting, do you have any links that I could follow to learn more? Is it setting an invalid opcode exception handler?
      - reanimus 7y ago
        They released a whitepaper on it, yeah. It was a bit annoying to dig up, but Archive.org comes to the rescue: https://web.archive.org/web/20100217014904/http://xnu-dev.googlecode.com/files/SSE3%20Emulator.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20100217014904/http://xnu-dev.go...
        saagarjha 7y ago
        It's strange that I can't find any source code for this…
        reanimus 7y ago
        https://github.com/sinetek/xnu-amd/tree/master/osfmk/OPEMU https://github.com/sinetek/xnu-amd/tree/master/osfmk/OPEMU
        saagarjha 7y ago
        Thanks! I still wonder how usable programs that utilize SSE3 with this, but it's a pretty cool workaround.
    - JoelTheSuperior 7y ago
      Indeed though keep in mind that the current method for running macOS on AMD doesn't use this and instead relies on patching through Clover. The downside being that whilst the OS itself may run any applications that use an opcode that isn't implemented will simply crash.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    I'd been running Hackintosh and an rMBP for my desktop and laptop respectively... this past year I've passed on both and now running Linux for my personal desktop, and will be getting a new laptop within the next few months, some of the Ryzen Asus laptops coming soon are interesting. Although still not without issue, my workflow has aligned so much with Linux and it's finally reached a good enough point for my day to day use... not having to use the VM based mac or windows docker has been really nice (WSL isn't good enough imho).
  - einpoklum 7y ago
    So, explain to me again how "the marked dictates the price"? ...
    - uncle_j 7y ago
      I know you are being facetious, however there are options which the market provide. 1) Other companies that are willing to sell you workstation and laptop computers that you can run other operating systems on such as one of the Linux variants, Windows, BSD etc. Nobody is forcing you to buy a computer from Apple. 2) There is a thriving second hand market of Apple machines just look at ebay, craigslist, gumtree etc. If a new Apple machine isn't worth it to you, you are free to buy alternatives. I am going to buy one of the newer Lenovo Thinkpads as I don't think the MacBook pro is worth it to replace my ageing Macbook Pro.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  > Which nicely explains the rising popularity of Hackintosh's, particularly among developers and other technologists. Can you provide a citation for this? Having worked with literally thousands of engineers, I have never seen a hackintosh in real life.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    I personally know of a iOS software house where all developers use hackintosh, so yeah it's popular.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      Which you can derive from there being at least one hackintosh shop?
      - rumanator 7y ago
        It's the only iOS software house I personally know, so in my POV it represents 100% of macos/iOS shops. YMMV.
      - BubRoss 7y ago
        You put together all your information from anecdotally never seeing one.
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    I believe he’s wrong and they are not meaningfully rising in popularity. Hackintoshes started as soon as the Intel transition, and they do exist (I’ve seen a couple personally, both built around the Leopard era when tools were mature and the desirability of iCloud/iMessage integration was lower.) Today there aren’t many people who need to push computing beyond the relatively affordable Mac Mini and iMac configurations. Most Hackintosh practitioners want Apple to release the “XMac,” a cheap and configurable desktop tower* and operate their Hackintosh in its stead. It’s a respectable hobby, though, like iOS jailbreaking or emulation, and for persistent people it does let them run MacOS on more powerful hardware than they could afford. * https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/ https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/
rubyn00bie 7y ago
The market price is the equilibrium of both supply and demand. What you're saying is the fact people are buying their machines means they shouldn't change price or value proposition... because there are in fact purchases; which, is quite frankly, baffling, to me, a humble idiot. Mercedes must think their EQC is positioned perfectly in the market with 55 sales? I now imagine Magic Leap will be leaping to raise prices with their next version?
- uncle_j 7y ago
  > The market price is the equilibrium of both supply and demand. Obviously. > What you're saying is the fact people are buying their machines means they shouldn't change price or value proposition... because there are in fact purchases; which, is quite frankly, baffling, to me, a humble idiot. If Apple are selling the machines in sufficient quantities at whatever they are priced at (I haven't cared to look) then obviously Apple's customers think they are worth it. It isn't really more complicated than that.
  - rubyn00bie 7y ago
    You assume without any facts or supporting evidence that they are achieving optimal sales. What you're saying is literally something you're just making up out of thin air. It's okay to be completely full of shit, just don't market it as truth.
    - uncle_j 7y ago
      Just doing a quick web search and the company made $224 billion dollars in 2018. Do you honestly think they aren't achieving optimal sales? The proof is in the pudding and they have a very very large pudding. > It's okay to be completely full of shit, just don't market it as truth. I know you think you are being big brained but not everything is "you must provide a citation". It is pretty obvious Apple knows the market well, knows exactly what they can and can't charge for certain products. You pretending otherwise because I haven't provided you with a citation is a complete joke, it is like asking someone to cite for evidence that the sky is blue.
caseymarquis 7y ago
Elasticity?

Why should they? The market dictates the price. If people are buying Apple products at those prices then why should Apple lower their prices? The answer is they shouldn't.

wmf 7y ago

Ah yes, the "market" for macOS machines with PCIe slots.

uncle_j 7y ago
While you may scoff enough people are willing to pay the extra for Mac OS and a high level workstation to justify their prices.

liquidise 7y ago

Indeed it does. Which nicely explains the rising popularity of Hackintosh's, particularly among developers and other technologists. AMD Hackintosh's[1] in particular have skyrocketed in maturity and simplicity since Ryzen. 1: https://amd-osx.com/ https://amd-osx.com/

uncle_j 7y ago
Apple are locking down the platform via proprietary chips etc. It isn't a long term solution and shouldn't be relied upon.
- reanimus 7y ago
  To be fair, the Hackintosh community is pretty persistent. They added opcode emulation into the kernel, for example, to handle running on CPUs without the expected instructions (older AMD CPUs back in 10.8 or so). I wouldn't be surprised to see the cat-and-mouse continue.
  - close04 7y ago
    Wonder what happens when Apple starts "enforcing" a Tx chip to boot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors#Apple_T1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors#Appl...
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    This sounds really interesting, do you have any links that I could follow to learn more? Is it setting an invalid opcode exception handler?
    - reanimus 7y ago
      They released a whitepaper on it, yeah. It was a bit annoying to dig up, but Archive.org comes to the rescue: https://web.archive.org/web/20100217014904/http://xnu-dev.googlecode.com/files/SSE3%20Emulator.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20100217014904/http://xnu-dev.go...
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        It's strange that I can't find any source code for this…
        reanimus 7y ago
        https://github.com/sinetek/xnu-amd/tree/master/osfmk/OPEMU https://github.com/sinetek/xnu-amd/tree/master/osfmk/OPEMU
        saagarjha 7y ago
        Thanks! I still wonder how usable programs that utilize SSE3 with this, but it's a pretty cool workaround.
  - JoelTheSuperior 7y ago
    Indeed though keep in mind that the current method for running macOS on AMD doesn't use this and instead relies on patching through Clover. The downside being that whilst the OS itself may run any applications that use an opcode that isn't implemented will simply crash.
- tracker1 7y ago
  I'd been running Hackintosh and an rMBP for my desktop and laptop respectively... this past year I've passed on both and now running Linux for my personal desktop, and will be getting a new laptop within the next few months, some of the Ryzen Asus laptops coming soon are interesting. Although still not without issue, my workflow has aligned so much with Linux and it's finally reached a good enough point for my day to day use... not having to use the VM based mac or windows docker has been really nice (WSL isn't good enough imho).
- einpoklum 7y ago
  So, explain to me again how "the marked dictates the price"? ...
  - uncle_j 7y ago
    I know you are being facetious, however there are options which the market provide. 1) Other companies that are willing to sell you workstation and laptop computers that you can run other operating systems on such as one of the Linux variants, Windows, BSD etc. Nobody is forcing you to buy a computer from Apple. 2) There is a thriving second hand market of Apple machines just look at ebay, craigslist, gumtree etc. If a new Apple machine isn't worth it to you, you are free to buy alternatives. I am going to buy one of the newer Lenovo Thinkpads as I don't think the MacBook pro is worth it to replace my ageing Macbook Pro.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
> Which nicely explains the rising popularity of Hackintosh's, particularly among developers and other technologists. Can you provide a citation for this? Having worked with literally thousands of engineers, I have never seen a hackintosh in real life.
- rumanator 7y ago
  I personally know of a iOS software house where all developers use hackintosh, so yeah it's popular.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    Which you can derive from there being at least one hackintosh shop?
    - rumanator 7y ago
      It's the only iOS software house I personally know, so in my POV it represents 100% of macos/iOS shops. YMMV.
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      You put together all your information from anecdotally never seeing one.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  I believe he’s wrong and they are not meaningfully rising in popularity. Hackintoshes started as soon as the Intel transition, and they do exist (I’ve seen a couple personally, both built around the Leopard era when tools were mature and the desirability of iCloud/iMessage integration was lower.) Today there aren’t many people who need to push computing beyond the relatively affordable Mac Mini and iMac configurations. Most Hackintosh practitioners want Apple to release the “XMac,” a cheap and configurable desktop tower* and operate their Hackintosh in its stead. It’s a respectable hobby, though, like iOS jailbreaking or emulation, and for persistent people it does let them run MacOS on more powerful hardware than they could afford. * https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/ https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/

rubyn00bie 7y ago

The market price is the equilibrium of both supply and demand. What you're saying is the fact people are buying their machines means they shouldn't change price or value proposition... because there are in fact purchases; which, is quite frankly, baffling, to me, a humble idiot. Mercedes must think their EQC is positioned perfectly in the market with 55 sales? I now imagine Magic Leap will be leaping to raise prices with their next version?

uncle_j 7y ago
> The market price is the equilibrium of both supply and demand. Obviously. > What you're saying is the fact people are buying their machines means they shouldn't change price or value proposition... because there are in fact purchases; which, is quite frankly, baffling, to me, a humble idiot. If Apple are selling the machines in sufficient quantities at whatever they are priced at (I haven't cared to look) then obviously Apple's customers think they are worth it. It isn't really more complicated than that.
- rubyn00bie 7y ago
  You assume without any facts or supporting evidence that they are achieving optimal sales. What you're saying is literally something you're just making up out of thin air. It's okay to be completely full of shit, just don't market it as truth.
  - uncle_j 7y ago
    Just doing a quick web search and the company made $224 billion dollars in 2018. Do you honestly think they aren't achieving optimal sales? The proof is in the pudding and they have a very very large pudding. > It's okay to be completely full of shit, just don't market it as truth. I know you think you are being big brained but not everything is "you must provide a citation". It is pretty obvious Apple knows the market well, knows exactly what they can and can't charge for certain products. You pretending otherwise because I haven't provided you with a citation is a complete joke, it is like asking someone to cite for evidence that the sky is blue.

caseymarquis 7y ago

Elasticity?