5 ms·

> Apple has seemingly intentionally priced themselves out of reach of smaller and indie creative-types I don't think this take makes any sense. Sure, you can s

> Apple has seemingly intentionally priced themselves out of reach of smaller and indie creative-types I don't think this take makes any sense. Sure, you can spec out an insanely expensive Mac today. That's always been the case. But with Apple Silicon, there's actually never been a better price to performance ratio at the bottom end of their lineup, perhaps in Apple's entire history. An entry-level Mac Mini or MacBook Air can give an indie creator tremendous power and performance per dollar. I think you're right that Apple has lost a lot of creative professionals over the years who migrated to Windows, and the lack of plug and play GPUs may well keep some of those professionals away. But I think it's actually precisely the indies that represent Apple's best chance at making inroads into the space again over the long run. If you're a kid trying to bootstrap a new YouTube channel or experimenting with filmography and building a portfolio, it's hard to recommend a better combo than FCP and a Mac Mini for performance and cost.

nordsieck 3y ago
> But with Apple Silicon, there's actually never been a better price to performance ratio at the bottom end of their lineup, perhaps in Apple's entire history. An entry-level Mac Mini or MacBook Air can give an indie creator tremendous power and performance per dollar. The frustrating thing is just how quickly value decays with Apple's pricing strategy. When it comes to the Mac Mini/Studio, outside of some extremely niche applications, it really only makes sense to get base models. It is infuriating how much Apple charges for additional ram.
- whynotminot 3y ago
  Yeah, I can agree with you that Apple's general pricing ladder is annoying. But I'll also say as a software engineer, the MacBook Pro 16 with an M1 Max is the best tool I've ever used for my work. I dock into a thunderbolt setup with a couple high resolution monitors. I have docker running. Often multiple IDE instances with large codebases. Multiple Chrome windows with dozens if not hundreds of tabs. Zoom calls running screen shares. The machine barely gets warm and I never hear the fans. My prior work laptops would have been howling and begging for mercy. I often forget that I leave applications running, only to remember later "maybe you should kill those processes". With past work machines, I'd routinely have to hunt for processes to kill to claw back CPU cycles and quiet down the spinning fans. And then I unplug it from the dock and do all of this at the airport for a few hours. Still silent, cool, and performant. I've never seen anything like it before. And while it's not "thin and light" it's also not the heaviest workstation quality laptop I've ever used. Not sure how this fits into your personal value propositions, but I can tell you I'd pay far more than I did for this quality of a machine.
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    > but I can tell you I'd pay far more than I did for this quality of a machine. I'd buy a MacBook Pro myself, sure - except I. need. a. forward-delete. key. Sorry, but Fn+Backspace just isn't acceptable to me.
    - fooker 3y ago
      https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
> I don't think this take makes any sense. Sure, you can spec out an insanely expensive Mac today. That's always been the case. Yes, of course - but historically Apple's MacPros (and G3, G4, and G5 PowerMacs before that) had a fairly reasonable entry-prices - but in recent years (especially since 2013) the entry-price of Apple's workstation-tier machines has risen sharply over inflation: In 2005, Apple advertised[1] the PowerMac G5 for sale at $1999 - adjusted for inflation that's $3100 today, but today's equivalent: the MacPro, sells at an eyewatering $6,999[2]. While in 2013, that $1999 adjusted-for-inflation would be $2400 but the 2013 "trashcan" MacPro started at $3000. Today that would be $3900 - which itself is roughly half the current $6999. As with the Vision Pro, Apple's pricing is intended to limit demand which accomodates Apple's low-volume, US-domestic manufacturing of the Mac Pro (and everyone else can just get an iMac Pro or Mac Studio) - but this risks making Apple's workstation-class machines so inaccessible they never develop an audience, and the companies that write software for workstation-scenarios (oil-and-gas? AutoDesk? etc) will likely avoid the hassle of porting Win32 or *nix number-crunching software to Apple's hardware. Overall, it feels like Apple is trying to contrive and stage-manage their own workstation swansong - it will be beautiful, but is it wise? [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20050228225922/http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore https://web.archive.org/web/20050228225922/http://store.appl... [2]: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro :
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  That’s because most people who bought these machines 20 years ago now just buy laptops which are perfectly sufficient for their use cases. Even if there was a 3000-400 desktop Mac Pro I doubt many people would buy it instead of a MBP. If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an option as a primary machine for demanding use cases.
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    > If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an option as a primary machine for demanding use cases. Laptops, even those marketed as "mobile workstations", really can't compete with a proper desktop-experience - yes, a docking-station goes a long way with replicating connectivity options, but (in my life, at least) there's far too many qualiatative and quantiatative benefits to having a "proper" desktop for dev. ---- A major point for me is that I treat my laptops and portables as though they could/will go missing the next day - which means I'm careful to avoid putting irreplacable data on my laptop (and have Bitlocker enabled, which does noticably impact disk IO, even today) - whereas my desktop is a different, and a more trusted, environment. I'm not going to compromise my daily computing experience by using a throwaway-ish environment.
diffeomorphism 3y ago
Except that the bottom end is severly hamstrung for "creators" with just 8gb of ram and 256gb of storage at half performance. Fix both and you are at $1000+ for the Mac mini; even worse in non-$ currencies, e.g. 1150€. The performance of that one is good and great for stuff like video editing, but it is also double the price. Side note: minisforum um790 with a current amd laptop chip seems to be competitive with an m2 pro (similar power and efficiency under load, somewhat worse idle) and you can even get 64gb of ram while still being much cheaper than the Mac mini. Q: What are the cheapest macs with 32gb of ram? With 64gb?
- whynotminot 3y ago
  The half rate SSD at the entry point is unfortunate, but it takes the SSD performance from great to just fine. I wouldn't call it a deal breaker, especially at the price-point. If you can't splurge a little higher, you'll be ok. Really, getting the insanely good media encode engines built into the silicon is the point for a small indie creative shop (which is what we're talking about here). The rest of the M1/2 chip is just gravy for them.
  - diffeomorphism 3y ago
    That still leaves the ram upgrade and thus 929€ at the current apple store price for 16gb ram, 256gb storage, 1 gbit ethernet. Which again, is an okay deal for a large sized nuc, but at $1000 that is about par for the course.
    - whynotminot 3y ago
      Again, we're talking about entry level creators. I have been talking purely about the entry level models this whole time. I know what they come with. I know the specs, the upsides, and the downsides. The entry-level models are great. The best entry-level machines Apple has ever offered. They would slot into any indie-creators workflow very well. Would I recommend some upgrades if they can afford them? Yes. Some more RAM and more SSD is always a good idea. If they can't afford it? That's fine, the base models are fantastic.
ffhhttt 3y ago
> indie creator tremendous power and performance per dollar. Not with 8GB of RAM and Intel and AMD had caught up with performance per dollar. Apple is mainly competing on performance per thickness/battery life/fan volume which are still huge selling points.

nordsieck 3y ago

> But with Apple Silicon, there's actually never been a better price to performance ratio at the bottom end of their lineup, perhaps in Apple's entire history. An entry-level Mac Mini or MacBook Air can give an indie creator tremendous power and performance per dollar. The frustrating thing is just how quickly value decays with Apple's pricing strategy. When it comes to the Mac Mini/Studio, outside of some extremely niche applications, it really only makes sense to get base models. It is infuriating how much Apple charges for additional ram.

whynotminot 3y ago
Yeah, I can agree with you that Apple's general pricing ladder is annoying. But I'll also say as a software engineer, the MacBook Pro 16 with an M1 Max is the best tool I've ever used for my work. I dock into a thunderbolt setup with a couple high resolution monitors. I have docker running. Often multiple IDE instances with large codebases. Multiple Chrome windows with dozens if not hundreds of tabs. Zoom calls running screen shares. The machine barely gets warm and I never hear the fans. My prior work laptops would have been howling and begging for mercy. I often forget that I leave applications running, only to remember later "maybe you should kill those processes". With past work machines, I'd routinely have to hunt for processes to kill to claw back CPU cycles and quiet down the spinning fans. And then I unplug it from the dock and do all of this at the airport for a few hours. Still silent, cool, and performant. I've never seen anything like it before. And while it's not "thin and light" it's also not the heaviest workstation quality laptop I've ever used. Not sure how this fits into your personal value propositions, but I can tell you I'd pay far more than I did for this quality of a machine.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  > but I can tell you I'd pay far more than I did for this quality of a machine. I'd buy a MacBook Pro myself, sure - except I. need. a. forward-delete. key. Sorry, but Fn+Backspace just isn't acceptable to me.
  - fooker 3y ago
    https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago

> I don't think this take makes any sense. Sure, you can spec out an insanely expensive Mac today. That's always been the case. Yes, of course - but historically Apple's MacPros (and G3, G4, and G5 PowerMacs before that) had a fairly reasonable entry-prices - but in recent years (especially since 2013) the entry-price of Apple's workstation-tier machines has risen sharply over inflation: In 2005, Apple advertised[1] the PowerMac G5 for sale at $1999 - adjusted for inflation that's $3100 today, but today's equivalent: the MacPro, sells at an eyewatering $6,999[2]. While in 2013, that $1999 adjusted-for-inflation would be $2400 but the 2013 "trashcan" MacPro started at $3000. Today that would be $3900 - which itself is roughly half the current $6999. As with the Vision Pro, Apple's pricing is intended to limit demand which accomodates Apple's low-volume, US-domestic manufacturing of the Mac Pro (and everyone else can just get an iMac Pro or Mac Studio) - but this risks making Apple's workstation-class machines so inaccessible they never develop an audience, and the companies that write software for workstation-scenarios (oil-and-gas? AutoDesk? etc) will likely avoid the hassle of porting Win32 or *nix number-crunching software to Apple's hardware. Overall, it feels like Apple is trying to contrive and stage-manage their own workstation swansong - it will be beautiful, but is it wise? [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20050228225922/http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore https://web.archive.org/web/20050228225922/http://store.appl... [2]: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro :

ffhhttt 3y ago
That’s because most people who bought these machines 20 years ago now just buy laptops which are perfectly sufficient for their use cases. Even if there was a 3000-400 desktop Mac Pro I doubt many people would buy it instead of a MBP. If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an option as a primary machine for demanding use cases.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  > If you need a laptop anyway what’s the point of getting an another machine which is just marginally faster? That wasn’t really the case 10-20 years ago when laptops weren’t really an option as a primary machine for demanding use cases. Laptops, even those marketed as "mobile workstations", really can't compete with a proper desktop-experience - yes, a docking-station goes a long way with replicating connectivity options, but (in my life, at least) there's far too many qualiatative and quantiatative benefits to having a "proper" desktop for dev. ---- A major point for me is that I treat my laptops and portables as though they could/will go missing the next day - which means I'm careful to avoid putting irreplacable data on my laptop (and have Bitlocker enabled, which does noticably impact disk IO, even today) - whereas my desktop is a different, and a more trusted, environment. I'm not going to compromise my daily computing experience by using a throwaway-ish environment.

diffeomorphism 3y ago

Except that the bottom end is severly hamstrung for "creators" with just 8gb of ram and 256gb of storage at half performance. Fix both and you are at $1000+ for the Mac mini; even worse in non-$ currencies, e.g. 1150€. The performance of that one is good and great for stuff like video editing, but it is also double the price. Side note: minisforum um790 with a current amd laptop chip seems to be competitive with an m2 pro (similar power and efficiency under load, somewhat worse idle) and you can even get 64gb of ram while still being much cheaper than the Mac mini. Q: What are the cheapest macs with 32gb of ram? With 64gb?

whynotminot 3y ago
The half rate SSD at the entry point is unfortunate, but it takes the SSD performance from great to just fine. I wouldn't call it a deal breaker, especially at the price-point. If you can't splurge a little higher, you'll be ok. Really, getting the insanely good media encode engines built into the silicon is the point for a small indie creative shop (which is what we're talking about here). The rest of the M1/2 chip is just gravy for them.
- diffeomorphism 3y ago
  That still leaves the ram upgrade and thus 929€ at the current apple store price for 16gb ram, 256gb storage, 1 gbit ethernet. Which again, is an okay deal for a large sized nuc, but at $1000 that is about par for the course.
  - whynotminot 3y ago
    Again, we're talking about entry level creators. I have been talking purely about the entry level models this whole time. I know what they come with. I know the specs, the upsides, and the downsides. The entry-level models are great. The best entry-level machines Apple has ever offered. They would slot into any indie-creators workflow very well. Would I recommend some upgrades if they can afford them? Yes. Some more RAM and more SSD is always a good idea. If they can't afford it? That's fine, the base models are fantastic.

ffhhttt 3y ago

> indie creator tremendous power and performance per dollar. Not with 8GB of RAM and Intel and AMD had caught up with performance per dollar. Apple is mainly competing on performance per thickness/battery life/fan volume which are still huge selling points.