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Apple Made Me Buy a Windows HP Workstation
- Thread starter Mark Holmes
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While this borders on conspiracy theory logic, its not without a fragment of truth. At the time of the nMP intro Apple was getting hammered with bad press for exploiting slave like labor practices in China. So the move to U.S. assembly was largely a P.R. move. And if you need a P.R. win it just makes sense to use the Mac with lowest unit sales to pull that off.
The redesign can be explained by a number of more likely motivations. Among them would likely be:
1) Reduce material costs
2) Reduce size and weight to reduce shipping costs
3) Reduce configuration options to reduce product support issues
4) Create a show piece to allow Apple to wag its design wang in everyone's face
My conspiracy is that 4 was a bigger motivation than any of the others.
Call it what you want, but Yes Apple was getting horrible PR about all the overseas manufacturing. Obama specifically called out Tim Cook and asked him to bring manufacturing jobs to the US. Apple then touts this secret new Product that will be designed and manufactured in the United States. Hell they even had a Teaser Trailer that actually played in movie theaters before Major hollywood releases. In the end it really was a proof of concept and more of an Art Piece than a functional computer. Think 20th Anniv Mac or the PowerMac Cube. It really isnt meant to be purchased and used. They did it once, and never updated it and now its old as hell and people are frustrated because apple basically puts no focus on it. Why?! because they have committed to US manufacturing of the Mac Pro while everything else can be made overseas. the profit margin is too slim if even existant at all for Apple to throw any resources at for future development. This whole process basically killed the Mac Pro because they will never be able to produce another Mac Pro overseas so it essentially kills R&D momentum on it. RIP Mac Pro.
I'm pretty sure the Mac Pro is only assembled here... I don't buy this argument. Its not just the Mac Pro thats not being focused on, its their entire line of computers.
When Tim Cook goes zipping onto the WWDC stage in a Rose Gold Apple iGolfCart, you'll know we're doomed.
And Eddie Cue will say the coolest thing in the iCart are the speakers.
The redesign can be explained by a number of more likely motivations. Among them would likely be:
1) Reduce material costs
2) Reduce size and weight to reduce shipping costs
3) Reduce configuration options to reduce product support issues
4) Create a show piece to allow Apple to wag its design wang in everyone's face
My conspiracy is that 4 was a bigger motivation than any of the others.
And 1-3 can be summed up as greed. The margins on the cMP were already very good.
for sake of argument and assuming 1-4 were true..
2)- i've shipped my mac pro many more times than apple shipped it.. so if 'reduced shipping' were a deciding factor, it's me the end user benefiting moreso than greed of apple.
3)- more reliable/dependable product.. again, that's me benefitting the most.
..not saying apple and/or the shareholders etc aren't greedy by any means .. just saying these aren't, imo, strong examples of their greed.
Yes probably true, but just think of all the millions of "If Apple made a car, it would...", analogies that could finally be assessed for their literal accuracy. And it would finally put an end to any new entries. That has to be worth a few billion dollars just for that.
Hey Siri, don't hit that kid!!!
I'm sorry, I can't look up "don't hit that kid" right now.
I joined this forum to reply to this thread. It struck such a chord. I'm a serious home music recorder (pro tools on a Mac Pro 2010). It all started when I wanted to get a new hard drive back up system and to start using a serious orchestra sample library, and thought why not go thunderbolt, it's the fastest thing around? OK, so need a new Mac. The old one won't take TB. Went through all the same frustration as described in this thread: a £5.5k Mac and then I need a chassis to host PCIE and buy extra ram but only to 64GB and get a slave mini and external ssds etc. Etc. Probably going to spend 8K. I repeat £8K. And then I thought, for that cash I should wait for the next iteration of the Mac Pro, so I'm not dropping that spend on a 3 year old Mac. But then started thinking, what if there is no Mac Pro, or it becomes even less compatible with the rest of the world?? I've spent to the most amount of money possible for a system that's dying on its arse. I can't even upgrade the damn thing to thnderbolt 3 when that arrives alongside USB-C which would at least start to bring computing worlds together.
I get why Apple are going where they are going, but I also think the investment in a professional Mac Pro platform has a huge halo effect on the community, which others have mentioned. It might even be a loss leader, but it supports a broad Apple ecosystem that so many have bought into. You take one part of that system away and the rest eats itself.
Of course there was an answer that despite all my misgivings about a new Mac investment, my subconscious, was keeping from me. Buy a PC.
There just doesn't seem to be any other choice. Investing that much in an outdated system/platform that cannot be upgraded and stands a very good chance of being defunct over the next few years is just not tenable.
So what's happened to PCs over the last 10 years?
I'm going through the exact same thing - I came to the conclusion that Apple don't care because they have made no attempt at producing a high-end Skylake laptop. Mobile is definitely on their roadmap, but while Dell, HP and Lenovo have all been producing workstation-class laptops for months, Apple have produced nothing.
I decided to Ebay all my Mac kit (rMBP, nMP) as the laptop can't support my workloads any longer (I need more than 16GB RAM for VMware) and I think the nMP is a dead-end.
I've dusted off an old PC and upgraded the GPU. Sure the CPU doesn't compete with the 6-core Xeon in the Mac, but the GPU is a lot quicker. Broadwell-E is just around the corner so I'll swap out the CPU, MB and RAM and have a 10-core machine from the proceeds from the nMP with change left over. Dell Precision 5510 looks like the laptop I want, it's ligher than a rMBP and supports 32GB RAM. I can also upgrade the RAM and SSD as I choose as they aren't soldered on.
The PC landscape looks quite good these days. Windows 10 is pretty good and there are some good hardware choices available too.
Unless Apple produce a complete new line up of Macs at the WWDC I'll be placing an order with Dell for that laptop and saying good bye to Apple. I'll also be trying to wean my family off their Apple kit as it needs replacing too - no more iPad's or iPhones.
Dell is really pushing prices down, it seems. I just priced out a T5810 workstation with 64GB and a E5-2687W v4 12-core Xeon @3.0ghz for $4K. That's half the price of a nMP that uses a slower processor two generations older.
Apple included new kext for skylake based iGPU since March, they're obviously working on something but Intel is having chip problems for the GT4e parts that the Macbook Pro would use. Though since the Skull Canyon NUC is shipped, i'd assume that the chip problems are worked out.
There was this Samsung keynote with that creepy dancing kid.
I want that at WWDC at least
And mine (5.1 2010 6-core) is from china (produced last week of 2011).
You can look it up : http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com/Desktop/index.php
The only thing You need is the serial number of your machine.
Regards
Jean
that's unfair! they will probably update it at next WWDC. They will probably use v3 processors.. so that it won't be 2 generation behind anymore!
So a lot of us -&- myself included have read and continue to read the negative things everyone is saying about the Mac Pro and I too like many others have waited for a few things to come before making that mega purchase of a full top spec Mac Pro but sadly Apple never delivered.
That being said can you folks imagine if instead of giving the Mac Pro an update what if Apple was to just cut it completely from the line up and discontinue the line altogether? LOLLL
That being said can you folks imagine if instead of giving the Mac Pro an update what if Apple was to just cut it completely from the line up and discontinue the line altogether? LOLLL
I don't think they will but does it really matter? They did sabotage on the mini but people will continue to buy it because it's the cheapest entry point to the Mac ecosystem. When you ignore the Mac Pro you probably lose a fan and apple enthusiast. Removing something which is not desired anymore ain't that worse.
I desired the Imac but the i7 and 395x is 4000$CAD (8gb ram). I can afford only the minister a cheap Imac.. I always had PC in the house, it's my last Mac unless a miracle happens.
If Apple isn't capable of producing feasible hardware configurations for people who really work with their software anymore, then they should consider selling the operating system freely like Windows so we can put our own machines together. Another option would be to sell a base-set which would include the mainboard, PSU and tower to allow for thunderbolt and OS protection.
I'm done as well.
I only read the OP first post. What you get for your money just isn't worth it anymore, that combined with the amount of non user friendly apps, bugs and the noticeable decrease in quality of their software has decided for me as well it's time to go back to Windows.
I've had this MBP for over 8 years, it still works, but since Mavericks it's going down hill. I honestly apologize to my laptop for infecting it with this 'virus', for I feel he's dying slowly from this OS. And of course because of their TOO strict policy you can't revert without the use of some backdoors.
There was a time I looked forward to updates because you could notice an improvement, now I just hate them because you know it won't get any better. I looked forward to keynotes, now it's just the same usual boring stuff.
I only read the OP first post. What you get for your money just isn't worth it anymore, that combined with the amount of non user friendly apps, bugs and the noticeable decrease in quality of their software has decided for me as well it's time to go back to Windows.
I've had this MBP for over 8 years, it still works, but since Mavericks it's going down hill. I honestly apologize to my laptop for infecting it with this 'virus', for I feel he's dying slowly from this OS. And of course because of their TOO strict policy you can't revert without the use of some backdoors.
There was a time I looked forward to updates because you could notice an improvement, now I just hate them because you know it won't get any better. I looked forward to keynotes, now it's just the same usual boring stuff.
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I disagree. Apple just held a sneak peek at the the future of FCPX at NABB. There is no way they'd let the Mac Pro die on the vine so long as they are still invested in improving FCPX. Say what you will about the nMP, as I agree with most criticisms of the machine (I own 2 of them) but there is currently no better machine for FCPX. I cannot imagine why apple would continue to develop that platform if the best machines for running it were discontinued.
Not sure what you mean by this. I can download and run older versions of OS X from the App Store and install them, or go all the way back to Snow Leopard on my System Installation Disc.
Well, I don't mean to invalidate your experience, but more than 8 years of service out of a laptop seems pretty good. Sorry to hear about your 10.9 woes, I had a similarly frustrating experience when I updated my early '07 iMac to Lion.
But for perspective: I doubt a Windows laptop from 2007/2008 would run Windows 10 comfortably! Matter of fact, I have a generic '09 Asus laptop and it struggles even with Windows 7 (it came with Vista and that was even worse). It did run Ubuntu 11 and 12 pretty well for a while, though.
As a rule, I usually make a backup of a fine running system before I update the OS, so I can always revert if things aren't working well.
Good luck!