There is a replacement for HDMI though, more and more TVS are supporting Airplay. We live in a world where we want to get rid of wires, not be stuck with them.
I have Airplay on my TVs, I don't even use HDMI to hookup my macbook to my TV.
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MP 7,1 Apple has lost the plot on the pro market
- Thread starter brofkand
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There is a replacement for HDMI though, more and more TVS are supporting Airplay. We live in a world where we want to get rid of wires, not be stuck with them.
I have Airplay on my TVs, I don't even use HDMI to hookup my macbook to my TV.
If apple does indeed bring back SD card and HDMI on MBP then apple would have changed their mind. Why would Apple bring those back? its cause apple did their research.
Airplay is only 30hz. ewww
Still HDMI is not anywhere for the next 10-15 years.
They cater to what Apple thinks their users will want, irregardless of if they have actually requested it.
I'm sure dropping the floppy ticked a lot of people off. Oh, dropping the CD drive in the MBP's did too. Dropping them in the iMacs did for sure. Denying Blu-ray ever even existed really chapped a lot of butts. 4 ports when the average PC notebook has often twice that many, PLUS HDMI, and often eSATA and other obscure ports too was amazing. Apple resisted that well.
I'm not thinking that I can afford to follow Apple on any more grand adventures in the future. I may upgrade my IMP, and may sell my new MBP. But their intransigence on ports and upgrades is indefensible IMO. Their cost is out of line with other options, granted their is a large breech in capability, but for those that can't use that capability becuase they have an Intel processor, does it matter. I see the Mx processors as being the natural, and perverted extension of Apple's 'closed door agenda'. They will soon supply their own components for much of their products. Can they provide their own consumers to buy them?
I may be labeled a heretic, or worse, but for me, it's gotten far too rich to play along, and I'm not a pro. I do some heavy lifting, at times, but not continuously. Apple won't miss me.
*shrug*
It may not just be 'the pros' that Apple eventually loses. The Apple Silicon is, for me, a bridge too far. Will a 'pro' user sign on for that? It remains to be seen.
You forgot one thing. The design needs to be thermally handicapped so Apple will be forced to sell the same model for the next ten years. This information on the dead-end design must not be admitted until long after professionals are convinced that Apple has completely abandoned the pro hardware market. ?
It won't be thermally handicapped with Apple Sillicon. Period.
Apple put Xeons and AMD GPUs in the trash can and they were not at power efficient and created too much heat.
As Apple Silicon Mac Pro Cube will perfect for a SoC design.
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wow, can't apple make their own SoC?
Does Apple have to always rely on Intel and AMD?
Bit of a stretch to say "perverted extension of Apple's 'closed door agenda".
It was good choice that Steve Jobs engineers went for their Apple made SoC for the iPad. That choice then
enabled apple to make the M1.
Apple's design ethos has always to make a computer thats fully vertically integrated which no other company in the world can do right now.
The M1 is just the start. You seen how intel reacted and Macs have what 7% marketshare. Now by the end of this year when the more powerful SoCs come in MBP, I am sure "perverted extension of Apple's 'closed door agenda" will be a even more of a success for Apple and for consumers.
Just so you know, Google is making is their first foray into making their own SoCs for their pixel later this year, apart from apple. Google will another tech company will have vertical integration, for their phones and Chromebooks.
Apple has always done this, across decades of time, random people have always complained because ... it's human to complain. It really hasn't put much of a dent in their market cap. If you can afford to buy Apple products and choose to use them, then it's probable you can afford to buy some hubs/adapters even if you don't feel like it.
Whether or not AS is ever "pro" enough depends an awful lot on how much effort Apple is willing to devote to custom designs used by an incredibly niche percentage of their demographic. Apple tends to wake up every half decade, make some token concessions to "pro" users, and then go back to sleep/selling boatloads of iOS and consumer-oriented devices.
Typing on a Mac Pro 2019, fully expecting to be using the same workstation 3+ years later, with updated graphics card(s) -- hoping for the best, but expecting not too much given Apple's track record with the MP. On the flipside it has more than paid for itself, it's a beautiful workstation, and I'm not feeling terribly constrained by all the things it cannot do.
The Trashcan and Cube are so last week ... it needs to be a Floating Sphere or it's No Good.
Apple will continue to sell the Intel Mac Pro for a. LONG time and will also update it this year or next year with ice lake xeons.
Feedback surveys only do so much. Apple is going to do what Apple is going to do. They had TONS of complaints about the 2016 redesigns. They rectified the keyboard because it was causing actual issues that was costing them money. They rectified the escape key on the Touch Bar, because it didn't interfere with what they wanted for the Touch Bar. Those feedback surveys only do SO much. At the end of the day, Apple is 100% in control of its own destiny and will only do an about face if THEY feel they need to.
The important distinction here is that the average person buying a MacBook Pro/Air is ambivalent about ports until they actually need to plug something in. A dongle works, but it's inconvenient. It also costs additional money that wasn't required before.
You're not wrong about this. However, most non-techie folk don't care about technological inconveniences until they are confronted with them. I've witnessed this in action with many friends that I've consulted through buying USB-C-only MacBook Pros and Airs. It's all smiles until I tell them that in order to use their one or two USB-A peripherals, they need to buy a $70 adapter. $70 isn't nothing. Especially during this economic climate, that could be a week of food on the table or the difference between getting to work in the morning and not getting to work in the morning.
See, that's where your logic falls apart. Ambivalence does not equal acceptance when you are given no other option and when, again, most non-techies don't care until they're confronted with it.
That's definitely the Apple kool-aid talking. Apple has a LONG history of operating with an "Apple knows best" attitude for its users. Those that play along 100% are rewarded with a mostly stable and consistent user experience. Not everyone can afford to (or even wants to) do that.
It is a bit too early to call "never". Definitely, I would say "not soon" at this point. The snooze button is probably set to macOS 13 at this point. Two major things in play still here:
1. Apple is going to herd ("force") more developers to spend much more time and effort into optimizing for the Apple GPU . Plus it is less work for Apple as they try to mature their stack. They haven't done 128 GPU drivers every either. Apple isn't finished. Substantial number of developers are still coasting on Rosetta ( or haven't even thought of getting started ).
2. Looing at what has come out at WWDC 2021 so far I have a suspicion that Apple could be waiting on a future AMD (and/or maybe Intel ) GPU. If look at the texture compression tools that Apple just released the Intel/AMD compression is DCn tech while the Apple GPU can do and ATSC ( Apple GPU does PVRTC (PowerVR) too but nobody should be using that for new code. It is deprecated) . For iOS/iPadOS the only option is ATSC. In the mobile world GPUs ATSC is common. The biggest hold outs are AMD and Nvidia ( predominately desktop add-in-card players). Intel has some their most recent iGPUs. AMD/Samsung likely are working on something for the mobile variant that should release in next year or so.
Also AMD has "Smart Access" memory but is pretty far from the shared internal memory bus version of Unified Memory that Apple works with. Something like CXL over PCI-e v5 would have less limitations to a non-homogenous but more Unified Memory. [ AMD is doing something similar with CNDA2 and they next gen EYPC CPUs that will link them with an updated Infinity Fabric so that the CPU-GPU are on unified memory for HPC workloads. ]
Doing a GPU driver for Apple used to be a modest list of demands/requirements . I think they have shifted it to an even taller stack for an even smaller potential rewards. If Apple GPU is in every mac system sold there is no "embedded design" contract to win for a 3rd party. 3rd partys are solely left with add-in cards via slots and eGPU slots.
For a while IBM and Nvidia worked on better memory bus transfer integration between Power CPUs and Nvidia via NVLINk. When both partners want to do something it can happen.
For AMD it may be like the Lando - Vader dialog exchange in the "Empire Strikes Back".
Lando : That was never part of our deal
Vader : perhaps you feel you are being treated unfairly.
Lando : This deal is getting worse all the time.
That would be drifting into the "never" catagory. It wouldn't necessary be Apple unilaterally closing the door , but AMD walking away also. [ AMD isn'the the AMD of 6-7 years ago looking for contracts to keep the lights on. they are making money. Buying Xlinix for billions. Begging Apple for scraps isn't necessary. ]
Ironically, Intel might be more motivated to get any kind of contract so willing to put up with the "bad deal" just to move more GPU units. However, with the crypto driven shortage... they can probably sell about every GPU they can make if they keep the prices close to the MSRP even if not the most bleeding edge in performance. If Intel isn't too greedy they can get back into the GPU game without Apple.
[ Nvidia was already in the extremely likely "never" category even before the Apple Silicon transition started. ]
If Apple gets "stuck" at 128 GPU cores they will need some outlet for a less unified Memory way to add in more GPGPU cores. If they need process shrinks on SoC and RAM to more forward then they'll probably need some partners. I don't think Apple is going to have a good feed for just how much they may have painted into a corner until they have deployed to lots of customers with a large variety of real world workloads.
The Intel - MPX-with-AMD-RDNA2 is the backstop if they are.
Intel's GPU becomes competitive and it is a creditable 3 way race between Nvidia , AMD , and Intel to improve top end GPUs. Apple out hustling all three of them is dubious. Maybe folks at Apple are drinking gobs of Cupertina kool-aid but that just isn't a good long term bet to make. Removing dGPUs from the whole line of standard configurations would be a huge win Apple. There is a point there where get tooooo greedy and try to band them altogether. At that point Apple would be stepping on some customers getting more work done in a timely fashion over time and it would probably generation blowback.
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I would wait for the Apple Sillicon 16" MBP comes and compare that with latest i9 11XXXX HK and AMD 6800M laptop
before jumping to conclusions. One thing for sure is the perf per watt is gonna be excellent.
I say 16" because thats the next Pro Mac that most people will buy. @deconstruct60
before jumping to conclusions. One thing for sure is the perf per watt is gonna be excellent.
I say 16" because thats the next Pro Mac that most people will buy. @deconstruct60
There is positive and negative signs in lack of the driver. Upside, is that it probably helping to push a Xeon W-3300 series update of the larger Mac Pro product through.
Apple's objective appears to be to shoot for something in the RX 5700/6700 ball park for the iGPU. If their primary goal is the be the GPU in the standard configurations sold across the whole Mac line up then could open the door later for BTO and eGPU options. ( may or may not be enticing to AMD )
I was hoping Apple saying something like they were going to open the window in 2022, but I can see possibly them keeping that more restricted info for now.
So it is a bit of a neutral sign. Not good. But it probably isn't a final move either.
Looking at some of this years WWDC sessions I suspect that Apple knows that their 128 core GPU implementations won't work to their full potential if developers do not seriously optimize for their GPU architecture. They are more worried about that than enabling what they would probably deem a "distraction". (although many Mac Pro users wouldn't see it as a distraction.) . In short, some of this just as much about trying to change the inertia in the Mac applications code base as it is about dGPUs.
Apple gave themselves a two year window to do the transition and frankly it really should take two years. When Apple first introduced APFS at WWDC they arrogantly said that it was going to roll out as the prime file system in macOS, iOS , everything in one year. iOS sure; one single SSD possible . MacOS with HDDs, hybrid HDD-SSD, SSD .... external drives , etc. The complexity were no where near the same....with the exact same timeline ... yeah right.
Same thing here. Apple going to be comletely finished in 12-14 months... probably not. And it didn't happen for far (and done by October probably isn't happening either. )
First of all I dont see my post as a "verdict" , but i'm perfectly fine with that.
As with every mortal, I may misunderstand the content of your posts , nevertheless I'll describe the impression I get reading your posts.
I read a lot of asssumptions in your posts e.g. " the knee jerk reaction is that cheaper is better.", "There is no argument like: "I'd like it if it was cheaper" etc etc etc ....
Based on these assumptions you come up with a statement .
After stating your point of view , you close further interaction, criticism or whatever by "slamming the door" e.g. a middle finger , "happy to let this rest " etc.
The only reason why I react on your posts , is because I dont support this narrow-minded attitude to put it subtle....
As stated by many others , Apple seems to have made a transition from "Pro" to " Elite".
Apparently for some of us , criticize Apple is unthinkable and pure blasphemy ....
Whether you own a company with 100s of employees , or being an artist with limited resources, money is and will be at least a consideration when it comes to investments.
If I need a car I can very well compare a Ferrari with a Fiesta , why not?
Both are vehicles that bring me from A to B.
It may be easy to stick to your own opinion and not tolerate any discrepancy .
How about some respect and consideration for the point of view of others?
Sounds to me like upper class 1st world behaviour.
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I have spend much of my adult life on forums. I have lived though more "discussions" than I'd like to remember.
Not supporting my "narrow minded ways", doesn't prompt a reaction. You could have read my post, though about it, and thought to yourself "wow, I don't agree at all". No further posting necessary.
Complaining about the Mac Pro price is like standing outside a Ferrari dealership, banging on pots and pans chanting "lower the price!, lower the price!"
All while the actual Ferrari customers have to wade through the crowd to get into the shop. No bigge. But it would have been smoother to not have the crowd there.
Not saying the crowd doesn't like Ferraris, or that they would buy one if they were 1/4 the price. Couldn't Ferrari buy cheaper leather, include fewer HP, or just not mark up the price? More could buy the cars for sure.
I'm happy to hear you'll respect my point of view and not quote me directly going forward. The reason 'closed the discussion down' in my second post, is that I had already realised what a mistake the first post was after I posted.
There is no upside for me in discussing this further. Going in, I was hoping to reduce the pot-banging, and nudge the forum back to 'happy thoughts' and productivity tips, but since I am not willing to follow up on the "discussion" I'd rather exit quickly. I apologise once for any inconvenience caused, and perhaps a second time—in advance— for not responding to future posts on this topic directed at me.
I sincerely wish you all good luck in your 'influence campaign', as I'm assuming that is what it is.
At this point I wouldn't hit the panic button about the drivers because it's abundantly clear from this year's WWDC the pandemic slowed a lot of stuff down. iPadOS was mostly just getting stuff the previous iOS version had, and most of the new features in Monterey are stuff that's also on iOS or extensions to existing features. While I'm not optimistic about dGPU/eGPU support on AS (or at least most models) it's also absolutely not something they would (or particularly should) prioritize compared to everything else they've got to do in the migration.
Has Apple EVER had the "plot" on the pro market? I've been using Apple products, almost exclusively, in my home for over 3 decades. I have a 7.1 Mac Pro today along with a Mac Mini, M1 MB Pro, Intel MB Pro, and over a dozen other consumer level Apple devices...and I fully understand my video/image editing needs could be just as easily met on a maxed out iMac (and within the next year, very probably, on a maxed out MX AS product.)
I've never felt like Apple had a strong focus on the broader "pro" market. Their Pro desktops have always been niche. Am I wrong in thinking they could completely abandon the Mac Pro line, and the "pro market," and the net effect on the company would be like pouring a half-cup of water out of a 5 gallon bucket?
Edit: To be clear, I don't think they will abandon the "pro" market. I'm 100% the evidence there are people willing to shell out the $$$ to have the best products they offer, to continue living within the ecosystem, even if it's more than what I truly need for the work I do.
I've never felt like Apple had a strong focus on the broader "pro" market. Their Pro desktops have always been niche. Am I wrong in thinking they could completely abandon the Mac Pro line, and the "pro market," and the net effect on the company would be like pouring a half-cup of water out of a 5 gallon bucket?
Edit: To be clear, I don't think they will abandon the "pro" market. I'm 100% the evidence there are people willing to shell out the $$$ to have the best products they offer, to continue living within the ecosystem, even if it's more than what I truly need for the work I do.
I've been using Apple products for decades as well side by side with Windows computers. Apple did have a hold on the PRO market back in the day.
PRO in the last decade has been used loosely by Apple in trying to re-write what professionals will need versus what we really want. A pro shouldn't be one that has limited expandability and connection points to accommodate a variety of gears needed to do the work.
I'm hoping with the release of the Mac Pro 2019, they are getting back to their senses and actually releasing pro computers down to laptops (and not pretend to be a pro by slapping a label).
PRO in the last decade has been used loosely by Apple in trying to re-write what professionals will need versus what we really want. A pro shouldn't be one that has limited expandability and connection points to accommodate a variety of gears needed to do the work.
I'm hoping with the release of the Mac Pro 2019, they are getting back to their senses and actually releasing pro computers down to laptops (and not pretend to be a pro by slapping a label).
No, the way to get the market to move forward is to make the new standard better than the old standard to give users some sort of payback for the inconvenience of adapters and dongles.
The problem with USB-C is that, for the majority of applications, it boils down to the same old USB 3.1 protocol, or DisplayPort (held back at version 1.2a by Intel's controllers until ~2018) over an excitingly different cable. For many users, the only reward for dongling-up is to get back the functionality that had been taken away.
Then there's the problem of the lack of one-to-many USB hubs in USB-C format: I have half-a-dozen or more USB2/3 A/B devices on my desk (some bought in the last year), so I have a 7 USB3-A + 3 charge desktop hub hanging off the iMac. Not a problem as it stands (the hub can connect via a dongle if needed) - but the lack of anything comparable for USB-C means I'm going to need a mixed economy of Type A and Type C connectors for the foreseeable future.
Even Thunderbolt 3/4 is only a modest 2x (with caveats) speed improvement over Thunderbolt 2 - but with USB 3 being fast enough for all but the fastest NVMe drives and highest-end A/V equipment it's only needed by a minority, and only a minority of those need more than 2 ports running at that speed... not that anybody is suggesting that TB3/4/USB-C should be dropped, just balanced with other types of port.
Dropping serial/ADB/Localtalk inconvenienced a lot of people - but replaced it with something 100x faster and non-Apple-proprietary that could also replace the expensive & complex SCSI interface for scanners, removable drives (Zip etc.) which were then becoming a mainstream requirement. Dropping optical drives - again, inconvenienced some, but downloads were already taking over for software and media distribution, you could hold several CD images on a memory stick by then & access them much faster and it removed a huge chunk of unreliable mechanics from laptops.
USB-C? Has a reversible connector, and now you have to block a Thunderbolt port to charge your laptop. Oh, and rather than the passive DP, VGA and HDMI adapters you could use with the DP++/Thunderbolt connectors you need more expensive "smart" cables with embedded circuitry. Magical. It was a pretty transparent attempt by the industry to get people to buy new stuff without actually coming up with any new innovations. All they needed was a replacement for the fugly USB 3 Micro-B connector for mobile applications.
Even Intel's decision to switch Thunderbolt to USB-C reeks of "strategy" rather than any actual technical need.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but most of your statements are subjective and anecdotal at best. For example, you consulting your friends is entirely anecdotal. Personal experience isn't wrong or shouldn't be dismissed but anecdotal evidence isn't valid and does not represent all Macbook user exeperience.
For example, if my 2019 Mac Pro all of a sudden crashed and didn't turn on anymore, that does not mean the 1000's of other Mac Pros sold will all of a sudden crash and not turn on anymore. Unless apple finds evidence of many more Mac Pros crashing and not turning on anymore but even then, they will discover it only affects a small percentage of Mac Pros.
Additionally, social media or forum posts, while valid, do not represent the majority of Apple experiences.
Also your point about not caring about an issue unless being confronted with it, that pretty much applies to most products sold... Every product has its limitation.
The butterfly keyboard is an exception, the numbers likely reached a certain threshold where they had to change it.
I have an advanced degree in Statistics and am a Data Scientist as well so I think of everything in terms of Statistics.
On top of that there was the previous years "Google I/O" (and other competitor) catch up. Real time assistance conversation demo; done couple of years ago on competitors system. Enhanced network security if pay for Cloud storage ... ( not same implementation but general idea... been done a while back). Cloud continuous build and integration... macstadium , Amazon , Azure probably has some "oh crap, there goes some revenue" moments but largely yet another cover of what partners were already handling.
Not sure how eGPU support could be narrowed down to a limited set of model. It isn't like Apple is keeping Thunderbolt segmented off any of the Mac models (e.g., the second iteration at MacBook that was one USB wonder). Keeping it out of iPadOS sure. But once the basic drivers are in macOS would be hard unless there is some show stopper hardware glitch in the M1's.
As for dGPUs, Apple is on 'warpath' to remove those from as many new Macs as possible. They probably plan on complet removal on every up through the iMac 27". And Mac Pro that would be the default entry model's only GPU. The standard configs there could be all iGPU also (with dGPU relegated to BTO options ... or not if spec bumped full sized , Xeon W-3300 option in another form factor).
Apple's priority isn't just on their own stuff. Leaving this "buried" also changes the priorities at the external developers' meetings on where to allocate GPU specific optimization time and resources to. "which time percentage spit option do we choose on this port ... only one .. well , time allocation meeting over". Apple isn't using a 'carrot' here to motivate port allocation time. They are using a 'stick'. Once they have a 2 year lead over the competition, then I can see them letting other player ( to accept all the new 'rules' for GPU drivers) to get in.
The M1's do Ok versus the low end competition, but the high core count Apple GPUs probably lean more heavily on Apple GPU specific optimizations to be competitive at the higher end of the competition scale. Apple needs better 3rd party software to get a competitive foothold there.
Is there something great about USB-C (and the older Thunderbolt plugs) that I'm missing? I snapped one of those connectors not too long ago when fumbling behind a monitor, not much force applied. The TB2 cable from my Trashcan to the screen is a bit whack - twist the computer just slightly and it'll start showing artifacts and blackouts on screen until firmly stuck back in. I have no idea at all how this could have happened since I rarely touch the machine and cable and devices are all 1st-hand owned.
Generally the small connectors attached to a stiff cable seem problematic and lead to cables slipping out with slight pressure applied. I wonder how long-lasting these designs can possibly be.
In comparison USB-A seems fairly indestructible. You can slam it in like a rifle mag. Well - in theory - since it takes about three attempts to find the correct orientation.
Generally the small connectors attached to a stiff cable seem problematic and lead to cables slipping out with slight pressure applied. I wonder how long-lasting these designs can possibly be.
In comparison USB-A seems fairly indestructible. You can slam it in like a rifle mag. Well - in theory - since it takes about three attempts to find the correct orientation.
And they could even price it NOT insanely. Yeah, this is the point I go back to every time. They could. The only reason they don't is because Wall Street culture makes most of the decisions these days.
It all depends on the specific part and its maker, on each end. You can have good tight connections, or poor ones, with pretty much every connector type, though some are worse than others.
Are the smaller ones more frail? Maybe? I don't move things around much... partially because of loose connections: I have USB-B connections that are so loose that adjusting the device's placement causes disconnection (looking at you, M-Audio jackasses). Same for Firewire 800 on one of my drives. Never liked that connector, in specific, though; FW400 was a better connector. My girlfriend's got a USB-C MacBook Pro and one device to connect to it (a thunderbolt hub with other sockets). It was my first experience with USB-C and I found the connection to be much more robust and solid than I expected.
As for what's great about USB-C: there's no BS about which way the connector goes! I HATE this about USB-A. There's also no BS about which end is for which device. USB-C is how USB should have been ON DAY ONE. I would happily put USB-A to USB-C adapters on all my devices... but I still don't even have a single computer with USB-C (I'm poor and keep waiting for the right machine on which to blow my computer savings).
Like you said: "...it takes about three attempts to find the correct orientation."
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No no no no no no no!
This mindset that everything should be wireless is utterly crazy. There is only so much bandwidth, and we are constantly degrading the quality of image and sound in order to use wireless connections for things that need a lot of data to go back and forth. HD looks great compared to old style broadcast TV, but STREAMING HD still looks like CRAP when the bandwidth drops or when the image is dark (compression sucks at dark scenes).
Cables and physical media will always be where the most quality is to be found.
Hell, I can't even get Airplay to WORK AT ALL most of the time. When it DOES work, it's ugly.