Probably not. Most people really interested in a highly modular computer aren’t interested in a Mac, even a modular one. They’ve already got Linux and Windows project boxes to work on and configure to their hearts’ content. Second, there’s only so much change of components that can be done in a computer of the Mac mini’s form factor. Third, the PC market is pretty saturated these days, no model sells like hot cakes. If the Mac mini makes about 1% of Apple’s sales and Apple controls about 10% of the computer market, that makes the Mac mini about 0.1% of all computers sold. That probably qualifies it as one of the most popular individual models of computer (probably more popular than any one make or model of Dell computer, for instance). Even if there were high demand for a modular Mac mini, I doubt it would grow sales that substantially.
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The end of Tim Cook's reign is near.
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Probably not. Most people really interested in a highly modular computer aren’t interested in a Mac, even a modular one. They’ve already got Linux and Windows project boxes to work on and configure to their hearts’ content. Second, there’s only so much change of components that can be done in a computer of the Mac mini’s form factor. Third, the PC market is pretty saturated these days, no model sells like hot cakes. If the Mac mini makes about 1% of Apple’s sales and Apple controls about 10% of the computer market, that makes the Mac mini about 0.1% of all computers sold. That probably qualifies it as one of the most popular individual models of computer (probably more popular than any one make or model of Dell computer, for instance). Even if there were high demand for a modular Mac mini, I doubt it would grow sales that substantially.
I dunno about that. I wear glasses for vision correction. While there are times and places where I’d prefer just having plain old glasses, if I could see and navigate through a recipe I’m trying to prepare while my hands have, say, batter on them, or if I could see my to do list lickety split, that would have a lot of value to me (probably more than 3D movies or VR gaming, certainly more than the Metaverse).
Sorry, I think you misunderstood (so I must not have been clear enough). I agree (and forgot about the whole ultrabook business, so I will say the Air was a big deal market wide), I meant that the Air was probably the last “big deal” or “new thing” in laptops prior to Apple Silicon.
too bad as i am not a fan of cook and would love to see him leave
They can survive it forever. That is how monopolies operate. They only have to be at par with what is going on in Android and Windows, and both of those are a mess in themselves.
Next CEO that Apple picks is unlikely to be any better, and might even end up screwing up operations and finances, areas where Cook has done well.
How many Steve Jobs type of CEOs do we have in the world?
How many consumer companies are executing well (customers actually excited by the product, not using it because they don’t have a choice)?
I can’t think of even one for each of the above.
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Most people aren’t excited about a new Apple product only people on forums like this are excited for them.
Look at the new headset thing they released the general public don’t actually give a stuff about it.
True. It’s an entirely different thing opining on an online forum vs just going out to the product because you know you will be purchasing it.
Enough kids are already sucked into the Apple ecosystem. Why? Because their parents. If parents have an iPhone, kid has an iPhone too. And probably Apple TV in the household too, with that iCloud family subscripiton.
But a decent Computer with 32GB of Ram and 1TB SSD, which is the average joe standard in 2024, would be hilariously expensive if there wass an Apple on it....
But that kid wants and needs an Apple.
Tim Cook wants to squeeze the lemon by denying an upgradable machine, much to the liking of all millionaires and billionaires , who hold Apple stock.
Jobs would have been totally fine with a base mac mini, that the kid could max out on his own in the following years. As long as the kid becomes and stays an Apple customer.
Now, out of spite, the younger generation might turn against the company, making it a brand for old people.
This is why Tim Cook utterly suks as a visionary. But that is part of his job.
What’s the point of the above? Some strong opinions with a dash of hypotheticals?
Because it seems to me apple is hitting it out the park overall.
Even if some have gripes.
Tim is 64 and wealthy I can't imagine him staying too much longer, what else does he have to prove?
That’s a fair point, he’ll probably be retiring some time in the next few years or so. But I suppose he’ll be retiring on his own terms and not on the board’s (or THIS board’s terms, for that matter!).
I'd argue that there are plenty of people who want new Macs, or love them. I'm an old school computer nerd (My first Mac was a IIcx that I rebuilt from parts), but I have to tell you that I love my insanely thin, ridiculously fast MacBook Pro. Sure, I'd love to be able to swap out the storage or the ram, but not at the price of the light weight sleekness my Mac is now. And I've done the upgrade route before, plenty of times, and it seems less and less worth it. Now, I do buy the extra ram and sometimes extra storage, but honestly, it's not that noticeable. Heck, I have two kids in college and I was having a Very Serious discussion with them about backing up their stuff before the school year started... when I found out that all of their school work was stored in the cloud (Drive or OneDrive), by default, and everything else was in iCloud. Both of them have base storage MacBooks (one Air, one Pro, both M1). I would guess they represent the average Mac user way more than I do, with my TB of storage and double the ram. They are both very excited about new iPhones, and sometimes iPads, but their computer needs are more frequently "is this the latest one" or "is this a good deal".
They'd be every bit as thin and light with socketed RAM and NVMe
No magical tech or wizardry design needed
Whoever comes next better hire a goddamn QA team and assign developers for fixing issues because the current state of Apple software is a sorry mess to say the least.
I have almost no issues with Apple's software. They did release a MacOS update that would kill IntelliJ a little while back, which as an issue for me. But they fixed that pretty quickly, and I can't remember the last time something like that happened.
My systems have been very stable. Could I just be that lucky?
The Music app is trash, but that's not because of "bugs," it's because it's poorly architected and low quality/effort.
My systems have been very stable. Could I just be that lucky?
The Music app is trash, but that's not because of "bugs," it's because it's poorly architected and low quality/effort.
I'm hoping his resignation is the 'one more thing' at WWDC
I agree.
But let me be the devil's advocate and propose that he has put Apple in a position to be financially secure for the foreseeable future. I know that's not insanely great and inspirational, but I think it's a major reason Jobs chose him as his replacement. He might announce a leadership transition soon and retire in a few years.
The Apple Vision failed spectacularly?? Far too early to tell and it's not intended to be mass market at this point obviously. iPhone sales took 2-3 years to really ramp up with the 3GS and then 4.
All the other stuff is just your own relatively trivial complaints about products.
Investors (the only people whose opinions really matter) have seen their money 20X under his tenure and don't care about any of those. And neither do most customers. 8GB of RAM is ******, but it's supposed to make you upgrade $200 to 16. Most people buying a $2000 laptop aren't crying over that.
What company has done better over the same timeframe? I really don't know who is pumping out better products than Apple at this point.
I wasn't implying magic but I don't see how they can fit a reliable socket for industry standard RAM or NVME in the current laptop form factors - Close, probably, but not as thin while still matching the speed and bandwidth. And if 80% or 90% or 95% of their users never upgrade their components, why compromise? Not passing on judgement on those that do; I was once one of you.
Mr. Cook is making the best decision for the company, which includes maintaining the aura around their products, whether we agree with that or not. I'm generally pleased with Apple under the current administration.
How about like this:
And the socket literally fits inside a regular sd card. There is no reason for even the slimmest iPhones not to have this.
Edit: An iPhone shooting pro-res video could fill up that 1 tb card in 13 hours. I've personally shot conventions where I shot that much in a day.
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That’s horrendously slow compared to the NVMe drives they currently use…
Claims of omniscience?
As far as using such a thing for upgradeable RAM or SSD storage in a laptop, this might be a bit of a bummer:
In my calculation I used a 220MB/s data rate from Apple's web site. If I dial it down to 190MB/s it is still just 15.5 hours. Do you know what else will take 15.5 hours? Copying the footage to an external drive so that you can use the same built-in memory next week! And you'll have to do that twice, since you'll need backups.
An SD card can transfer 1 TB in a second, simply by ejecting it and handing it to someone else to back it up for you. Then you stick in another card and start filming. That is how any serious pro does things. Having an SSD hanging out of an iPhone's USB'c port while you are trying to film is such an obvious point of failure: That is probably the number one reason not to take Apple's "pro video" claims seriously. They have seriously hobbled their product just so they can charge ridiculous prices for storage.
Edit: In the above situation, the real world example is this: Your storage is full. How long until you can get back to recording? If you are using internal iPhone memory, the transfer rate will probably be faster than 220MB per second. But it will still be several hours in which you can't use your phone. And can you power an iPhone externally while it is connected to an SSD?
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