MP All Models Do I need a Mac Pro?

[Soba]

I haven’t upgraded my OS since High Sierra because it doesn’t support my Raid set up. As of the 2019 Adobe Suite upgrade, I can’t run the latest versions of Photoshop Etc because my OS is too old. Increasingly I am getting spinning wheels, nothing major but even just a few seconds seems like an age when you’re used to things being instantaneous. It just feels like a good time to have an overhaul of the whole system to bring me up to date.

Perhaps you would be interested in upgrading your existing system to squeeze another year or so out of it? This path isn’t for everyone, but it might be worth considering, especially since the 2019 Mac Pro is so new that it might be good to see how things settle out with it before investing.

Can you post some details of your system’s current storage (including your RAID setup), CPU, RAM, and graphics card?

 

[thisisnotmyname]

Do you think your main work will be print for the next ten years, though? I used to work exclusively in print and my industry changed almost overnight (entertainment/music) but now my work is all digital, and has also moved into 3D and animation which includes GPU rendering. I started off as a print guy working in QuarkXpress and Photoshop and ended up using Cinema4D, After Effects, ZBrush, Octane and Redshift. I would seriously consider future proofing yourself with a machine that enables a smooth transition into a digital workflow potentially working on animated projects and motion graphics, and to keep an eye on VR and AR. Remember what Steve said - "don't follow the puck, skate to where the puck is going to be"

"'Skate to where the puck is going - Wayne Gretzky' - Michael Scott"

 

[sigmadog]

I'm in essentially the same position as the OP. Graphic design for print and (in my case) illustration, some web, a very tiny amount of video and some sound (jack of all trades!) in my small business home office. I'm running Sierra on my 4,1 --> 5,1 and have hit a wall with Adobe CC (the latest versions are not compatible with my system). So I've got to move to a new system. Can't upgrade the OS because reasons.

For what I do, the new Mac Pro, as desirable as it may be, is overkill. The iMac isn't for me as I do my own color calibration and I've had bad luck with Apple screens in the past.

I can get a 2018 i7 Mac Mini with 64GB 3rd party RAM, eGPU, external SSD, and USB enclosures for my spinning HD's for less than half the cost of a base Mac Pro. The goal for me isn't a ten year system; more like a four or five year at most. I think the mini should fit the bill just fine. If it croaks early, I can replace it without much hassle because everything is modular.

I'm waiting until March or April, just in case any spec bumps arrive.

 

[bsbeamer]

I'm waiting until March or April, just in case any spec bumps arrive.

Would wait until around WWDC if you’re hoping for a spec bump. Personally hoping we’ll see a “Pro” version of the mini in next 12-18 months with i9 or Xeon and a 128GB+ RAM support option. Doubt it’ll happen, but know I’m not the only one that would purchase.

 

[Krevnik]

My problem with Mac mini thermals is related with my use case. From a pure engineering stand point, the 2018 Mac mini do not have a thermal problem since it's designed for a very different and lighter use case than mine, while MP5,1 was designed for a flat out CPU usage and that was my own comparison point in the previous post.

Eh, I don't buy this rebuttal at all, not in the light of your previous claim:

I get the CPU around 90ºC for hours and I don't see it running it this way continuously for a long time, it will definitively fail.

The iMac, iMac Pro and Mac mini will all sit here under load. It's the nature of the cooling system in the face of newer desktop CPUs that will turbo and eat up all the thermal headroom available if you let it, and Apple lets it.

My argument about the iMac/mini being similar isn't about the cooling, but the fact that they are both 90+C under load, operating at the limits of their respective cooling designs. In those conditions, if temperatures would lead to failures, we've got the iMac 27" back to at least 2015, and the iMac Pro since 2017 that should also provide an indicator on if these temperatures will lead to problems. And so far, I've not seen evidence suggesting these temperatures are. The iMac Pro and the 2018 Mini have weaned places where I've worked off the Mac Pro entirely, even when we are talking about work that runs these things flat-out for over 10 hrs a day, easily. If we were working these to death, the people I work directly with would be planning out next moves by now.

Yes, the Mac Pro will run cooler, but that wasn't the argument you made. Your claim is that using a Mini under these loads will lead to failure. Which I don't buy for a minute.

As for which fan is like the other. The iMac runs at 3800 RPM flat out, the Mini at 4400, while the MBP is 6200. From a mechanical standpoint, they all suck due to the need for high RPMs and thin motor mechanisms, but the MBP is running nearly 2000 RPM faster than either the iMac or the Mini under full load. The extra thickness of the Mini helps a lot here.

-----

Would wait until around WWDC if you’re hoping for a spec bump. Personally hoping we’ll see a “Pro” version of the mini in next 12-18 months with i9 or Xeon and a 128GB+ RAM support option. Doubt it’ll happen, but know I’m not the only one that would purchase.

Yeah, if they made an i9 version, I'd buy in a heartbeat. The catch is that they literally can't without changing the design. And the i9 used in the MBPs doesn't really pull far enough ahead of the 8700 to be worth it, IMO.

 

[blesscheese]

My advice --> don't buy the first generation of any product!

Otherwise, the new Mac Pro looks beautiful. I'm waiting...

 

[AidenShaw]

My advice --> don't buy the first generation of any product!

Agree. If the car is called "all new", wait a year.

 

[macguru9999]

My advice --> don't buy the first generation of any product!

Otherwise, the new Mac Pro looks beautiful. I'm waiting...

Your assuming there will be more than one generation..... remember that the 2013 mac pro is still at gen 1 after six years !! BTW my local officeworks store is selling off those 6 core trashcans for $2200usd (16gig ram 256SSD 3.5ghz) If there was a gen 2, with TB3, I would probably buy one as a mac mini substitute. that would have made it a deal, but with TB2, nah.

 

[Jeffncou]

Perhaps you would be interested in upgrading your existing system to squeeze another year or so out of it? This path isn’t for everyone, but it might be worth considering, especially since the 2019 Mac Pro is so new that it might be good to see how things settle out with it before investing.

Can you post some details of your system’s current storage (including your RAID setup), CPU, RAM, and graphics card?

Thanks.

RAID
Bays 1 & 2 each contain a 240GB SSD (RAID 1). These are for my OS, apps and live projects.
Bays 3 & 4 each contain a 1TB HDD drive (also RAID 1), used for Archiving only, so not important that these are slow.
CPU: 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
RAM: 24GB – 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC. 2x8GB and 2x4GB
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

 

[Jeffncou]

I just wonder, for print you need color proof system, don't you? And the 6K includes a lot of them. So it would be a perfect fit 4u. What monitor are you using?

I am working in the web business so I'd need a cheeper "non-color-proofed" 6K monitor.

If you already have the monitors you need, the MacPro would be a good choice for you I'd say.

My monitor is a Lacie526. It's fine for now, but probably also about 10 years old, so not sure how much longer it will last. It cost about £800 I think. Not sure how much I would need to pay for a CMYK proofing monitor now. It could be a lot cheaper because tech has advanced, on the other hand it could be seen as a more niche product as the general trend seems to be brighter, thinner, lighter.

 

[ssgbryan]

nah, the crowd of usual suspects would just complain that they can't buy the base version of that device for $1k and stuff it full of parts from newegg.

or they'd be upset that it's socketed for Intel

or they'd be upset that there aren't Nvidia drivers

or, or, or....

No pleasing some people.

That is what happens when your workflow outgrows what Apple makes.

Apple has ceded the HEDT to WinAMD.

 

[Krevnik]

I can't speak for color management as I have no real experience with color calibration so I cannot say whether it is worse, equal, or better to macOS.

Yeah, it's definitively worse on Windows. Windows is the whole reason wide gamut monitors come with an sRGB emulation mode. And a lot of this sits on the fact that GDI+ itself is ancient and barely supports color management at all.

Meanwhile, Apple has been working to deprecate and close the holes that allow apps to avoid giving a real color profile to the OS when doing their own pixel work. Right now if you don't use profiles, it (rightly) assumes you probably meant sRGB, and will handle it correctly on wide gamut displays.

Regarding the mis-mash of different design philosophies that comes with evolution. A new OS supports a new technology but not everything can take advantage of it right out of the gate. Application developers need time to utilize it. Even the OS developer needs time to migrate supplied applications over, Apple is not immune.

I'm talking about Microsoft itself. They brought in "Metro" in Win 8, but have yet to fully embrace it after almost 8 years, instead you get a mix of new and old in system settings and other areas. Now the buzzword is "Fluent" and Microsoft's own use of the design language is spotty because they basically announced it to the world once they had the fully formed thought, and not when they had products lined up ready to go with it.

A fresh install of Windows 10 simply isn't consistent with itself. Sometimes you wind up with forward/back browser-like navigation (which itself is jarring because of how rarely it is used, and how Metro buttons basically refuse to call attention to themselves), other times you have modal dialogs. Sometimes, you have Metro, other times you have Win7, and you might occasionally run into Fluent.

Then there's the backwards support. Given Windows' strength in this area it is possible to run very old applications. Applications which may given the appearance of a mis-mash of technology. For example: One program I use, ACDsee version 3.1, is almost 20 years old. As it is an old application it has the old look and feel of contemporary Windows versions at the time of its release. Is this a mis-mash? Or should I upgrade to a later version which had a modern look to it?

Yeah, I wasn't even thinking about the third party apps. But generally, if you want a consistent experience out of third parties, the platform has to do some tending to the garden rather than let it run wild. It doesn't help that Microsoft basically has left devs to fend for themselves trying to modernize apps built on Win32/GDI+. They wanted them to use .NET, which effectively demands a re-write, good luck with that. Now there's UWP, but it's not a complete platform yet, despite existing for years.

TBH, my thoughts are that Microsoft shouldn't have tried to bring Metro to the desktop wholesale at all. Some things like tiles in the Start Menu (and a tablet mode for that start menu) in Win 10 are good choices. But Metro apps themselves much less so. It speaks a lot to the real difficulty of bringing a desktop OS to tablets and getting it right. And in a way, they are still paying for those choices, even in Win 10.

Ironically, despite getting slammed for picking Obj-C for MacOS X back in the early 00s, Apple has done so much better on the API front it's not even funny. Apple has always supported mixing old and new (C/C++ Carbon + Obj-C Cocoa, now Obj-C Cocoa + Swift Cocoa, PowerPC + Intel, 32-bit + 64-bit) in a way that gives developers time to adjust. Something I wish Microsoft did more of, and less "Here's this new thing, fully formed, and almost wholly incompatible with the old, and silo'd away from everything else" and then wonder why adoption rates suck for the new thing.

And yeah, I'm a developer, I've spent time on both platforms, and I actually like C#/.NET. And I can certainly get work done on Windows, and I've watched it evolve over the last couple decades. But it definitely isn't my favorite platform to use or develop on, for reasons mostly in Microsoft's control.

 

[cambookpro]

Do you think your main work will be print for the next ten years, though? I used to work exclusively in print and my industry changed almost overnight (entertainment/music) but now my work is all digital, and has also moved into 3D and animation which includes GPU rendering. I started off as a print guy working in QuarkXpress and Photoshop and ended up using Cinema4D, After Effects, ZBrush, Octane and Redshift. I would seriously consider future proofing yourself with a machine that enables a smooth transition into a digital workflow potentially working on animated projects and motion graphics, and to keep an eye on VR and AR. Remember what Steve said - "don't follow the puck, skate to where the puck is going to be"

Whilst this is true, it's a lot of money to spend on a 'just in case' scenario. If OP does have to go from print to 3D work overnight, surely the better move is to buy what they need for now then upgrade in the event that their work does drastically change.

I'd say if OP is managing with a 2009 MP with 24GB RAM, a new high-end Mac mini should be more than sufficient - and at 50-60% of the cost of a base 7,1 MP (which may not be sufficient, e.g. only has 256GB internal storage), for the same overall outlay it could be completely replaced once. Yes the GPU isn't amazing, but even with something like a BlackMagic eGPU Pro it still costs a lot less.

I guess it comes down to what you value - if you really want flexibility and are set on keeping it for 10 years no matter what, the MP is likely a better option.

 

[defjam]

A fresh install of Windows 10 simply isn't consistent with itself. Sometimes you wind up with forward/back browser-like navigation (which itself is jarring because of how rarely it is used, and how Metro buttons basically refuse to call attention to themselves), other times you have modal dialogs. Sometimes, you have Metro, other times you have Win7, and you might occasionally run into Fluent.

Is it possible you could point to examples of what you're referring to? Something that especially sticks out and causes no end to usability problems would be ideal. I don't doubt there are some inconsistencies to be found but I think that's common for all operating systems which have evolved over time. I do know earlier versions of Windows 10 utilized non metro ways of doing things. I believe some of the Control Panel applications were such examples. However Microsoft changed them to Metro in a later release. I know that Apple went through the same with OS X throughout the years.

Yeah, I wasn't even thinking about the third party apps. But generally, if you want a consistent experience out of third parties, the platform has to do some tending to the garden rather than let it run wild. It doesn't help that Microsoft basically has left devs to fend for themselves trying to modernize apps built on Win32/GDI+. They wanted them to use .NET, which effectively demands a re-write, good luck with that. Now there's UWP, but it's not a complete platform yet, despite existing for years.

This is effectively an application developer issue and not something inherent to Windows. One might even fault Microsoft for forcing this but even that is not an inherent failure of Windows.

TBH, my thoughts are that Microsoft shouldn't have tried to bring Metro to the desktop wholesale at all. Some things like tiles in the Start Menu (and a tablet mode for that start menu) in Win 10 are good choices. But Metro apps themselves much less so. It speaks a lot to the real difficulty of bringing a desktop OS to tablets and getting it right. And in a way, they are still paying for those choices, even in Win 10.

Many disliked the wholesale move to Metro with Windows 8. But that has been addressed with Windows 10. There are design elements of Windows 10 I dislike but I consider that more a personal preference. Microsoft isn't going to be able to please everyone with every detail. As for Metro apps I don't use them myself.

 

[Soba]

Thanks.

RAID
Bays 1 & 2 each contain a 240GB SSD (RAID 1). These are for my OS, apps and live projects.
Bays 3 & 4 each contain a 1TB HDD drive (also RAID 1), used for Archiving only, so not important that these are slow.
CPU: 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
RAM: 24GB – 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC. 2x8GB and 2x4GB
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

I'm a little confused because Creative Cloud should still run on High Sierra; it is officially supported. I suspect it might be your graphics card that's the problem, but others who are more knowledgeable on this point can comment.

There are several opportunities for upgrade of your current system, if you wish to consider it.

With a new graphics card (and ignoring the RAID question for the moment), you can move to Mojave. This should get you Adobe support for at least another 2 years (which is as long as Mojave is supported by Apple).

I'm wondering about your RAID setup. Is there a reason you need RAID 1? Your work doesn't sound as though it would need this kind of system availability. You could achieve massive performance gains by moving to NVMe storage on a PCIe card—likely by about a factor of 10—if you wish to invest there. RAID 1 will not protect you against most causes of data loss and any concerns in that vein can be mitigated by good backup practices. (As the saying goes, RAID is not a backup.)

You can improve your RAM performance by using a matched set of 3 DIMMS. You might want to consider a set of 3 x 16GB.

You can replace your CPU with a faster quad core or a 6-core up to 3.46GHz. A capable CPU would also allow your RAM to run at 1333MHz, as well. You can even replace your entire CPU riser board to install dual CPUs, though this would be pricey and you almost certainly don't need this.

Even if you replace your RAM, CPU, and graphics card, you're only looking at spending a few hundred dollars USD. Storage upgrades will cost a bit more, but you will notice a very significant performance boost if you move off of the SATA SSDs mounted in those built-in drive bays.

 

[bsbeamer]

I'm a little confused because Creative Cloud should still run on High Sierra

Adobe CC 2020 video apps 100% work with High Sierra, but not every METAL implementation is improved. Official High Sierra support will likely end in Q3/Q4 2020. Many apps are no longer compatible with Sierra (officially). Adobe's policy is supporting the THREE latest macOS versions: 10.15 Catalina, 10.14 Mojave, 10.13 High Sierra.

 

[Jeffncou]

I'm a little confused because Creative Cloud should still run on High Sierra; it is officially supported. I suspect it might be your graphics card that's the problem, but others who are more knowledgeable on this point can comment.

There are several opportunities for upgrade of your current system, if you wish to consider it.

With a new graphics card (and ignoring the RAID question for the moment), you can move to Mojave. This should get you Adobe support for at least another 2 years (which is as long as Mojave is supported by Apple).

I'm wondering about your RAID setup. Is there a reason you need RAID 1? Your work doesn't sound as though it would need this kind of system availability. You could achieve massive performance gains by moving to NVMe storage on a PCIe card—likely by about a factor of 10—if you wish to invest there. RAID 1 will not protect you against most causes of data loss and any concerns in that vein can be mitigated by good backup practices. (As the saying goes, RAID is not a backup.)

You can improve your RAM performance by using a matched set of 3 DIMMS. You might want to consider a set of 3 x 16GB.

You can replace your CPU with a faster quad core or a 6-core up to 3.46GHz. A capable CPU would also allow your RAM to run at 1333MHz, as well. You can even replace your entire CPU riser board to install dual CPUs, though this would be pricey and you almost certainly don't need this.

Even if you replace your RAM, CPU, and graphics card, you're only looking at spending a few hundred dollars USD. Storage upgrades will cost a bit more, but you will notice a very significant performance boost if you move off of the SATA SSDs mounted in those built-in drive bays.

Sorry for the confusion. I worded my answer badly. What I meant was I didn't upgrade to High Sierra, I am running Sierra. So the latest version of the Adobe products not working is inline with the officially supported version.

Upgrading the graphics card sounds like a good option to provide compatibility with the latest cc suite. Here is one from a dealer that I purchased from in the past, any good do you think? https://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/product_info.php?products_id=1170

 

[tommy chen]

macupgrades is too expensiv exact OWC is


8GB version

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-Pulse-Radeon-GDDR5-Graphics/dp/B071CQ5LRV

 

[Soba]

Sorry for the confusion. I worded my answer badly. What I meant was I didn't upgrade to High Sierra, I am running Sierra. So the latest version of the Adobe products not working is inline with the officially supported version.

Upgrading the graphics card sounds like a good option to provide compatibility with the latest cc suite. Here is one from a dealer that I purchased from in the past, any good do you think? https://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/product_info.php?products_id=1170

@IndioX has good advice above.

The 580 is a great choice, but it is also a physically wide card that can interfere with neighboring cards. Do you have any other PCIe cards installed in your system?

 

[tommy chen]

the sapphire pulse RX580 (not the nitro+) will fit good in a original 5.1
and leaves the slot2 usable

in a 4.1 I realized that there was less space here.
and therefore the insulation plate must be replaced by an insulation foil.

which is not the worst idea even in 5.1 too

https://www.amazon.com/Temperature-Resistant-AIYUNNI-Polyimide-Sublimation/dp/B07N4PJTBJ

 

[Jeffncou]

Thanks for all your input.

I've made a decision to go all in, and buy the new MacPro, but delay buying it until Autumn 2020.

In the meantime I am going to upgrade my existing Mac with a new graphics card and extra ram.

As others have advised, short term this will give me access to the latest Adobe CC Suite, plus if there are any teething problems with the new mac they will hopefully be sorted by the time I am ready.

 

[Soba]

Thanks for all your input.

I've made a decision to go all in, and buy the new MacPro, but delay buying it until Autumn 2020.

In the meantime I am going to upgrade my existing Mac with a new graphics card and extra ram.

As others have advised, short term this will give me access to the latest Adobe CC Suite, plus if there are any teething problems with the new mac they will hopefully be sorted by the time I am ready.

Good luck. I recommend buying your RAM from a vendor that guarantees compatibility with your Mac.

If you need suggestions for overhauling your storage to accommodate a newer version of macOS, post back and I’m sure many here can offer input. There is also a pinned thread on this topic at the top of the forum.

 

[DoofenshmirtzEI]

Still, if you're buying with a 10 year life cycle in mind...

The economics dictate going 10 years on a MacPro for the OP. On a mini, they could upgrade much more often and still come out ahead price wise.

 

[Krevnik]

Is it possible you could point to examples of what you're referring to? Something that especially sticks out and causes no end to usability problems would be ideal. I don't doubt there are some inconsistencies to be found but I think that's common for all operating systems which have evolved over time. I do know earlier versions of Windows 10 utilized non metro ways of doing things. I believe some of the Control Panel applications were such examples. However Microsoft changed them to Metro in a later release. I know that Apple went through the same with OS X throughout the years.

Control panel is still an example. Too many places where you get dumped into dialogs that aren’t touch-friendly (despite the Metro design change done for the sake of touch-friendliness), mixed in with browser-like navigation, the App Store is another. In general, any Microsoft-written Metro app follows one design paradigm, while the rest of the platform still follows the Win 7 paradigm. They’ve never really adopted one or the other in Win 8/10, and now they want to bring in a third with Fluent.

Apple has made changes, but they are more incremental, and at least since the death of brushed metal, Apple has done a much better job sticking with one vision and dragging everything along into the future as they go.

On some level, Catalyst seems like it will threaten that track record though, based on the Apple apps built on it so far.

This is effectively an application developer issue and not something inherent to Windows. One might even fault Microsoft for forcing this but even that is not an inherent failure of Windows.

I have to disagree. It’s up to the platform to steer, guide, and provide for developers. Fail to do so, cultivating an ecosystem where it only works because you have the larger addressable market, and it becomes fragile and vulnerable to competitors.

Or you try something like Windows Phone and fail to capture the market at all because your platform is garbage and developers refuse to support it because of lack of addressable market.

C# has a fairly strong server and LOB presence, and it should for being a mature language introduced 17 years ago, despite slow inroads on Windows PCs that it’s still dealing with. But Swift has already overtaken Objective-C in 5 years for new code being written. And it’s starting to make inroads on server as well, despite being so young and volatile.

Many disliked the wholesale move to Metro with Windows 8. But that has been addressed with Windows 10. There are design elements of Windows 10 I dislike but I consider that more a personal preference. Microsoft isn't going to be able to please everyone with every detail. As for Metro apps I don't use them myself.

As someone who works building functional designs, I really don’t agree that it has been addressed, just iterated on. But maybe I’m close enough to the meat grinder here that things that bother me in the quality of the UX don’t bother folks just trying to get their work done. But it’s a reason my main home machine is still a Mac, but I think my final argument is that its tough to say when Windows is “good enough” to draw Apple users away. We’re approaching what works for us in subjective ways, so there’s no good way to measure it except for some assumed “average” Apple user.

That said, I think I’m done derailing someone else’s thread on this.

I've made a decision to go all in, and buy the new MacPro, but delay buying it until Autumn 2020.

In the meantime I am going to upgrade my existing Mac with a new graphics card and extra ram.

As others have advised, short term this will give me access to the latest Adobe CC Suite, plus if there are any teething problems with the new mac they will hopefully be sorted by the time I am ready.

Not a bad plan. I went the Mac Mini route myself, and don’t regret it. But my workload isn’t like yours. When my photo hobby work is nearly real-time as it is, and my code work is still fast enough due to incremental builds, it’s hard to justify 4x the cost for making my wait times 5 seconds instead of 10, at least at this point in my life.

 

[defjam]

Control panel is still an example. Too many places where you get dumped into dialogs that aren’t touch-friendly (despite the Metro design change done for the sake of touch-friendliness), mixed in with browser-like navigation, the App Store is another. In general, any Microsoft-written Metro app follows one design paradigm, while the rest of the platform still follows the Win 7 paradigm. They’ve never really adopted one or the other in Win 8/10, and now they want to bring in a third with Fluent.

I'm going to need something a little bit more specific. Settings is where Microsoft wants users to configure their Windows 10 systems. Control Panel is still present but it is legacy. With that said can you point me to a specific control panel that suffers from the issue you're referring to?

Apple has made changes, but they are more incremental, and at least since the death of brushed metal, Apple has done a much better job sticking with one vision and dragging everything along into the future as they go.

Much better does not mean there aren't design inconsistencies in macOS.

I have to disagree. It’s up to the platform to steer, guide, and provide for developers. Fail to do so, cultivating an ecosystem where it only works because you have the larger addressable market, and it becomes fragile and vulnerable to competitors.

Microsoft has provided all of the tools and resources necessary. If developers do not want to take advantage of them, and I can understand why they may not want to do so, that's entirely on them. Regardless an application developers decision not to do so is their decision and not a failing of Windows.

Or you try something like Windows Phone and fail to capture the market at all because your platform is garbage and developers refuse to support it because of lack of addressable market.

I LOVED Windows Phone. Still have my HTC 8x. The problem with Windows Phone was Microsofts seemingly lack of interest in developing it. Phone selection was weak and one didn't know if a new version would ever come out or not. I do blame Microsoft for some of Windows Phones failure but I can understand why they may have given up given the huge head start Apple and Android had.

As someone who works building functional designs, I really don’t agree that it has been addressed, just iterated on. But maybe I’m close enough to the meat grinder here that things that bother me in the quality of the UX don’t bother folks just trying to get their work done. But it’s a reason my main home machine is still a Mac, but I think my final argument is that its tough to say when Windows is “good enough” to draw Apple users away. We’re approaching what works for us in subjective ways, so there’s no good way to measure it except for some assumed “average” Apple user.

Maybe you are. As an end user I am not seeing what you're seeing in my day to day usage of Windows and it's why I've asked for examples. I'm sure I've stumbled across them from time to time but I guess I've never really given it much thought as I didn't see any need to.