Luxury Computing Store

[Glasgreat]

Apple's newish hire Angela Ahrendts ( head of retail ) who came from a company that retail cashmere scarves from £300 - £900 so it is no surprise that the mini has been gimped. It seems that quad core is now a luxury as you have to buy either a Mac Pro starting at £2499.00 or 15" rMBP at £1599 or a 21" iMac at £1759.

I have also noticed that decent dedicated graphics is now a luxury at Apple. Memory ? again another luxury from Apple since almost everything is now soldered, I expect that the 27 inch iMac will soon follow. So I have now sold off my 2012 Classic MacBook Pro and am now looking for a buyer for my Thunderbolt Display. I do like OS X, and I'm lucky enough to be able to build a good hackintosh, so that's what I plan to do. There was no need for the memory to be soldered into the 2014 mini ( I did plan to purchase the i7 ) I do think that this is planned obsolescence, extreme profiteering and not very green and wonder how long Apples business practices will last.

What are your thoughts on Apple ?

 

[Darby67]

I think this topic has been chewed on over and over again. Not much more to add, but if you are so inclined you might care to sift through the forums for your answers.

However in regards to Ms. Ahrendts, it is rather silly to think that the SVP of Retail is the one making all of the design decisions, particularly since she has been with the company less than a year.

 

[Glasgreat]

I think this topic has been chewed on over and over again. Not much more to add, but if you are so inclined you might care to sift through the forums for your answers.

I don't care if you think this has been chewed over and over or if there is not much more to add. Frankly you will find most discussions in this forum have been chewed over. Your post has an air of arrogance to it, sift through the posts may I ask are you the MacRumers database admin ? So I sift through how many posts before I submit a thread or do I ok it with you sir ?

However in regards to Ms. Ahrendts, it is rather silly to think that the SVP of Retail is the one making all of the design decisions, particularly since she has been with the company less than a year.

Where did I say that Ms Ahrendts is the one making all the design decisions, can you quote the exact line ? I thought it was Johnny Ive et al. As SVP of retail I'm sure Ms Ahrendts has good input on product pricing and marketing strategy.

Out of curiosity, is this your normal manners of introduction or is it you on your high horse having made over 370 posts vs my paltry contribution of 10 posts or just being a clown to put it mildly?

 

[Darby67]

I am sorry you are so butt-hurt over my comments of your post.

You chose to bring in Ms. Ahrendts as the primary point of your post. But now that you have clarified she really has nothing to do with the rest of your post we can continue. She likely does have a quite bit to say about pricing and such...which has been rather consistent well before and after her arrival. In fact the price with only a few exceptions for Apple computers has always been high for what you get in comparison to other manufacturers. So I continue to wonder what she is doing in your post about your dislike about Apples hardware choices...?

 

[MRrainer]

Well, the 2014 Mini could have been "better" - in the sense that it could have been made more powerful.
A fully max'ed out 2012 Mini (as from the store) wasn't that cheap to begin with.
So it only got "a little" more expensive.
And you can run two 30" displays from the 2014 (which is a a fact that I do find makes the hardware interesting).

Will that be the beginning of the end of Apple?
Nobody knows. But I hope you're not surprised to learn that Apple didn't shed the "Computers" moniker from the company name just before Christmas.
Steve Jobs himself announced it back in the day.
So people can't exactly come up with one of those original "That would never have happened under Jobs's reign" quips.

As for the "soldered everything"-design: My guess is that Apple is just leading the pack here, as every so often.

 

[dogslobber]

Apple's newish hire Angela Ahrendts ( head of retail ) who came from a company that retail cashmere scarves from £300 - £900 so it is no surprise that the mini has been gimped. It seems that quad core is now a luxury as you have to buy either a Mac Pro starting at £2499.00 or 15" rMBP at £1599 or a 21" iMac at £1759.

I have also noticed that decent dedicated graphics is now a luxury at Apple. Memory ? again another luxury from Apple since almost everything is now soldered, I expect that the 27 inch iMac will soon follow. So I have now sold off my 2012 Classic MacBook Pro and am now looking for a buyer for my Thunderbolt Display. I do like OS X, and I'm lucky enough to be able to build a good hackintosh, so that's what I plan to do. There was no need for the memory to be soldered into the 2014 mini ( I did plan to purchase the i7 ) I do think that this is planned obsolescence, extreme profiteering and not very green and wonder how long Apples business practices will last.

What are your thoughts on Apple ?

The chap from Dixon's didn't work very well so they wouldn't repeat that experiment. Hence they were always going to hire somebody who came from the more financially flexible side of the market.

Built in graphics are now good enough. The market for the Mini in Apple's eyes must be less about games and high-end graphical software which is why they made the decision to go that way. It also allowed them to reduce the price.

Now, general purposes cpu processing power is always a requirement hence the quad going AWOL is tragic. The soldered memory establishes the 2014 Mini being in crisis. But these decisions likely have nothing to do with the new retail chief. She's not there to be a hardware design influencer as that's not her background. At the very least that'll be driven by Apple's Marketing chief.

A hackintosh is a nightmare to keep current even for a techie expert. Best to leave a PC to running Linux or Windows. Sure some folk will spend all hours to make it work but the rest of us have lives.

 

[redheeler]

...
I have also noticed that decent dedicated graphics is now a luxury at Apple. Memory ? again another luxury from Apple since almost everything is now soldered, I expect that the 27 inch iMac will soon follow. So I have now sold off my 2012 Classic MacBook Pro and am now looking for a buyer for my Thunderbolt Display. I do like OS X, and I'm lucky enough to be able to build a good hackintosh, so that's what I plan to do. There was no need for the memory to be soldered into the 2014 mini ( I did plan to purchase the i7 ) I do think that this is planned obsolescence, extreme profiteering and not very green and wonder how long Apples business practices will last.

What are your thoughts on Apple ?

"planned obsolescence, extreme profiteering" I wish I could say this isn't true.

4 GB isn't enough RAM for a Mac mini, and 16 GB isn't enough storage for a iPhone 6 and certainly not a iPad Air 2. These options simply exist to force the buyer to configure it with more (expensive option at purchase with a huge profit margin), or get frustrated and buy a new one later on. Meanwhile Apple can advertise these low-capacity products at a lower price.

With the 2012 Mac mini user upgrades interfered with this process, but now with the 2014 that problem has been eliminated. Removing Quad-core from the 2014 does help to push buyers who need more power toward more expensive iMacs or even a Mac Pro, and also makes it cheaper to design and produce.

It does make me mad that Apple sells devices like this