4 ms·

If you price like for like sure. My issue is usually that I almost never do. I usually fall into needing something akin to a mac mini but slightly bigger. Th

by rrmm 6y ago

If you price like for like sure. My issue is usually that I almost never do. I usually fall into needing something akin to a mac mini but slightly bigger. The last mac pro I bought was a dual-G4 model when the gap between the mac pro and lower end models didn't seem so severe. (Although I obviously do not represent a sizeable demographic of the market). For Apple, not catering to every particular consumer whim/need out there is just smart business. But for the consumer, that is just another weakness of the mac ecosystem.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
If you include the iMacs (e.g. the iMac Pro), I think there aren’t really all that many gaps in the product line, spec or price wise. It’s mostly that you can’t necessarily get the machine you want in the form factor you’d like.
- hakfoo 6y ago
  That's sort of a deal-breaker for a lot of use cases. Think of all those small corporate desktops out there which are beefier than a Mac Mini and wired to cheapo VGA-only 19" LCD monitors because finance isn't going to pay to replace a working screen. The iMac form factor is never gonna compete there. And of course the neglected "I just want internal drives or expansion cards" demographic. I;m not sure if the cheese grater design fixes it, but with the trashcan Mac Pro, there were plenty of configurations where the equivalent Dell/HP/Lenovo workstation was one clean self-contained box stuffed with PCI-e cards and SATA/SAS drives, and the Mac Pro was an angry squid of Thunderbolt, USB, and power cables to feed an array of external drives and devices. I understand that their brand is based on seamless design and we-make-the-decisions-for-you presentation, but it feels like there'd be an opportunity for them to use a small-scale clone program as a market research tool. Have it sell the form factors that Apple won't. The long-whined-for xMac. Units with servicable/cleanable designs for embedded markets. A mini-ITX Mac mainboard you can fit into existing kiosk/appliance designs. A rebranded Toughbook running MacOS. Something in a huge rackmount/server cube case that you can fit with a dozen internal drives. Frankly, I'd envision it as a wholly-owned operation, that charges over-the-odds prices. If people are still willing to put their money where their mouth is, they can claim epiphany and make an Apple version of the same design. If not, they can declare the business a failure, shutter it in a year, and start over next time they want to trial a product.

by rrmm 6y ago

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago

If you include the iMacs (e.g. the iMac Pro), I think there aren’t really all that many gaps in the product line, spec or price wise. It’s mostly that you can’t necessarily get the machine you want in the form factor you’d like.

hakfoo 6y ago
That's sort of a deal-breaker for a lot of use cases. Think of all those small corporate desktops out there which are beefier than a Mac Mini and wired to cheapo VGA-only 19" LCD monitors because finance isn't going to pay to replace a working screen. The iMac form factor is never gonna compete there. And of course the neglected "I just want internal drives or expansion cards" demographic. I;m not sure if the cheese grater design fixes it, but with the trashcan Mac Pro, there were plenty of configurations where the equivalent Dell/HP/Lenovo workstation was one clean self-contained box stuffed with PCI-e cards and SATA/SAS drives, and the Mac Pro was an angry squid of Thunderbolt, USB, and power cables to feed an array of external drives and devices. I understand that their brand is based on seamless design and we-make-the-decisions-for-you presentation, but it feels like there'd be an opportunity for them to use a small-scale clone program as a market research tool. Have it sell the form factors that Apple won't. The long-whined-for xMac. Units with servicable/cleanable designs for embedded markets. A mini-ITX Mac mainboard you can fit into existing kiosk/appliance designs. A rebranded Toughbook running MacOS. Something in a huge rackmount/server cube case that you can fit with a dozen internal drives. Frankly, I'd envision it as a wholly-owned operation, that charges over-the-odds prices. If people are still willing to put their money where their mouth is, they can claim epiphany and make an Apple version of the same design. If not, they can declare the business a failure, shutter it in a year, and start over next time they want to trial a product.