5 ms·

I feel like I exist in the "enthusiast" segment which Apple completely ignores.

sneak 7y ago
Apple enthusiasts buy Macbook Pros or iMacs. There’s nothing wrong with integrated displays. In fact, it saves on a ton of cable mess, and they are usually worlds better than what you would plug a computer into anyway.
- mantap 7y ago
  There's everything wrong with integrated displays. You can't use it for dual displays. You can't upgrade the display withhout upgrading the computer. And if you get a bad case of stuck pixels, you need to carry the thing to a mall and pay out the behind for a replacement panel which requires complex surgery on the device.
  - tekknik 7y ago
    apple will send you a box to ship it back in
- pier25 7y ago
  > There’s nothing wrong with integrated displays What? There is a lot wrong with AIOs. 1) Cooling is atrocious 2) Dust problems 3) Very difficult repairs and almost impossible upgrades (with some exceptions such as RAM) 4) No internal expansion. You save a cable with the monitor but you add cables for everything you want to add. 5) Once some component dies you have a very expensive monitor that can't be used for anything. 6) Much like laptops, tablets, and smartphones it's an environmental disaster.
  - Terretta 7y ago
    Why don’t people complain that toasters aren’t expandable? Apple builds appliances made from hardware and software.
cstross 7y ago
What is the cost (for Apple) in straight up R&D dollars of building a new model of Mac? And how much does it cost them to tool up for manufacturing and create the logistic chain to put it in customers' hands? Remember that Apple aims to sell a vertically integrated stack, all the way from their own cases, motherboards, and PSUs up through the OS and core apps. The point of this is to deliver a specific user experience that they control, and also to keep competitors out of their pool (they allowed licensed Mac clones circa 1994-96 and it didn't end well). While they still buy in CPUs from Intel and other components (RAM, video chipsets, SSDs, hard drives) from other suppliers, these are generally low-level components -- as low level as Apple can get -- and even then they're trying to build self-owned stacks so they're not dependent on anyone else (e.g. the A-series processors in the iPhone and iPad) -- a lesson they learned the hard way thanks to Motorola with the 68K and subsequently PowerPC architecture. (I'm guessing Tim Cook personally has bad memories of the failure to deliver a mobile G5 back in the day.) Anyway ... Developing a new machine from the ground up has got to cost in the tens of millions, at least. (Look at the sunk costs that went into the new Mac Pro, for example.) Are there enough "enthusiast" customers with system-building interests out there to make such a beast net-profitable, after taking into account the brand dilution implication of stacking up too many SKUs (as they did in the Bad Old Days of the first half of the 1990s, before the Return of Jobs)? I'm guessing they've done the calculation and concluded the answer is "no", at least for the time being.
- pier25 7y ago
  > I'm guessing they've done the calculation and concluded the answer is "no", at least for the time being. It's possible but I doubt it. Does Apple know how many of its iMac customers would prefer a tower? Or how many sales they've lost to hackintoshes?
  - Terretta 7y ago
    Yes, they do, in part because they opened up previously in the heyday of people building their own systems, and continue to engage deeply on the enthusiast asks right now contra-posed against their broader market understanding. Roughly, they figure out which enthusiast things will appeal to the larger market, and make it all work, fully integrated. Per the curve shown in Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm”, HN exists largely on the left of the chasm, Apple is a trillion dollar company because it understood how to shift to the right of the chasm. Visual explanation (.png): https://smithhousedesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/smithHOUSE-design-digital-marketing-consulting-phoenix-crossing-the-chasm.png https://smithhousedesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/smit...
mantap 7y ago
It's not just the enthusiast segment. It's the pro segment. Apple can't conceive of a professional who does anything other than edit videos or audio.
- lliamander 7y ago
  Their marketing collateral for their XDR display shows it with some code on the screen. The notion that either the display or the Mac Pro itself makes any sense for a developer is laughable.
  - Terretta 7y ago
    You can test run an awfully large K8s platform in there ...
    - mantap 7y ago
      If you're running Linux anyway, you might as well buy a 3990X, get 64 cores instead of 28, and use the money you saved to go on vacation.
      - tekknik 7y ago
        you don’t buy a $6k base machine to swap the os to linux, the entire reason to buy a mac is macos. also there’s a lot of us who still don’t trust AMD procs. I personally don’t as the only CPU I’ve ever had burn up was a bulldozer while transcoding. I’ve never even had the slightest problem with Intel procs so until AMD somehow reproves themselves to me without me spending a dime (which obviously will never happen) I don’t even consider them when speccing out a new machine
        mantap 7y ago
        K8s is kubernetes, Linux containers. If you want to run it on macOS or Windows it runs inside a Linux VM. You might as well buy a Linux computer and SSH into it from your Mac, is the point.
novok 7y ago
Nerds: Give us the xMac! Example from 2001 / 2005: https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/ https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/ Apple: NEVER!

Apple enthusiasts buy Macbook Pros or iMacs. There’s nothing wrong with integrated displays. In fact, it saves on a ton of cable mess, and they are usually worlds better than what you would plug a computer into anyway.

mantap 7y ago
There's everything wrong with integrated displays. You can't use it for dual displays. You can't upgrade the display withhout upgrading the computer. And if you get a bad case of stuck pixels, you need to carry the thing to a mall and pay out the behind for a replacement panel which requires complex surgery on the device.
- tekknik 7y ago
  apple will send you a box to ship it back in
pier25 7y ago
> There’s nothing wrong with integrated displays What? There is a lot wrong with AIOs. 1) Cooling is atrocious 2) Dust problems 3) Very difficult repairs and almost impossible upgrades (with some exceptions such as RAM) 4) No internal expansion. You save a cable with the monitor but you add cables for everything you want to add. 5) Once some component dies you have a very expensive monitor that can't be used for anything. 6) Much like laptops, tablets, and smartphones it's an environmental disaster.
- Terretta 7y ago
  Why don’t people complain that toasters aren’t expandable? Apple builds appliances made from hardware and software.

cstross 7y ago

What is the cost (for Apple) in straight up R&D dollars of building a new model of Mac? And how much does it cost them to tool up for manufacturing and create the logistic chain to put it in customers' hands? Remember that Apple aims to sell a vertically integrated stack, all the way from their own cases, motherboards, and PSUs up through the OS and core apps. The point of this is to deliver a specific user experience that they control, and also to keep competitors out of their pool (they allowed licensed Mac clones circa 1994-96 and it didn't end well). While they still buy in CPUs from Intel and other components (RAM, video chipsets, SSDs, hard drives) from other suppliers, these are generally low-level components -- as low level as Apple can get -- and even then they're trying to build self-owned stacks so they're not dependent on anyone else (e.g. the A-series processors in the iPhone and iPad) -- a lesson they learned the hard way thanks to Motorola with the 68K and subsequently PowerPC architecture. (I'm guessing Tim Cook personally has bad memories of the failure to deliver a mobile G5 back in the day.) Anyway ... Developing a new machine from the ground up has got to cost in the tens of millions, at least. (Look at the sunk costs that went into the new Mac Pro, for example.) Are there enough "enthusiast" customers with system-building interests out there to make such a beast net-profitable, after taking into account the brand dilution implication of stacking up too many SKUs (as they did in the Bad Old Days of the first half of the 1990s, before the Return of Jobs)? I'm guessing they've done the calculation and concluded the answer is "no", at least for the time being.

pier25 7y ago
> I'm guessing they've done the calculation and concluded the answer is "no", at least for the time being. It's possible but I doubt it. Does Apple know how many of its iMac customers would prefer a tower? Or how many sales they've lost to hackintoshes?
- Terretta 7y ago
  Yes, they do, in part because they opened up previously in the heyday of people building their own systems, and continue to engage deeply on the enthusiast asks right now contra-posed against their broader market understanding. Roughly, they figure out which enthusiast things will appeal to the larger market, and make it all work, fully integrated. Per the curve shown in Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm”, HN exists largely on the left of the chasm, Apple is a trillion dollar company because it understood how to shift to the right of the chasm. Visual explanation (.png): https://smithhousedesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/smithHOUSE-design-digital-marketing-consulting-phoenix-crossing-the-chasm.png https://smithhousedesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/smit...

mantap 7y ago

It's not just the enthusiast segment. It's the pro segment. Apple can't conceive of a professional who does anything other than edit videos or audio.

lliamander 7y ago
Their marketing collateral for their XDR display shows it with some code on the screen. The notion that either the display or the Mac Pro itself makes any sense for a developer is laughable.
- Terretta 7y ago
  You can test run an awfully large K8s platform in there ...
  - mantap 7y ago
    If you're running Linux anyway, you might as well buy a 3990X, get 64 cores instead of 28, and use the money you saved to go on vacation.
    - tekknik 7y ago
      you don’t buy a $6k base machine to swap the os to linux, the entire reason to buy a mac is macos. also there’s a lot of us who still don’t trust AMD procs. I personally don’t as the only CPU I’ve ever had burn up was a bulldozer while transcoding. I’ve never even had the slightest problem with Intel procs so until AMD somehow reproves themselves to me without me spending a dime (which obviously will never happen) I don’t even consider them when speccing out a new machine
      - mantap 7y ago
        K8s is kubernetes, Linux containers. If you want to run it on macOS or Windows it runs inside a Linux VM. You might as well buy a Linux computer and SSH into it from your Mac, is the point.

novok 7y ago

Nerds: Give us the xMac! Example from 2001 / 2005: https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/ https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/ Apple: NEVER!