I must say that Apple does innovate their products quickly, and although every time it inconveniences a few, Apples see the market likely going elsewhere...
With that said, and I am sure like many of the members of the Mac Pro forum, I jumped over to the Macintosh Platform because they started using Intel chips and providing, although certainly not the best experience for Windows (on notebooks at least due to battery life and driver's not being optimized, etc.) they have come a long way since 2006. I enjoyed OS X very much due to the window management functions, not needing Touch on a desktop or notebook really, and the polish of OS X with a UNIX foundation. The ability to install homebrew, VMware Fusion, which integrates nicely with ESXi/vSphere, and the power of a 12-core workstation, it was a very nice workstation and one of the most versitle (how many other Xeon workstations can you install Windows XP Professional on and run it straight on the bare metal if you so wanted to, all the way to Windows Server 2019).
I can take care of most of my tasks in VMware if I need to perform lab work or testing, and occasionally if I need the full power of the OS, I will install it onto its own SSD or partition, but I rarely need to do that. I have also been spoiled by the fact the 2012 Mac Pro has been a wonderful machine, and still is. I have always had a portable Macintosh to go along with it, and a ThinkPad for work that is only in Windows.
My 2012 MacBook Pro non-retina is on its last leg as it has been used a lot, but has all ports, optical drive, and SSD (slow compared to today's standards, like the SATA 2 in the Mac Pro, but there are workaround).
I have been considering upgrading the MacBook Pro to a 16" with all almost all upgrades, but that is a lot of $$$ out of the gate since they are not internally upgradable. Not to mention the dongles I would have to deal with. So I have been thinking out loud on this-
1) There are upgrades for the MacBook Pro as long as they are external. External storage, RAID, GPU, etc.
2) VMware Fusion works fine for my needs, but how long will VMware innovate it if the writing is on the wall? Likely a new version of OS XI but will that be it? Will we see support for connecting and doing basic administration and uploading VMs to a production vSphere infrastructure?
3) Obviously other OSs that run natively will likely not be possible; at least not soon. Sure Microsoft could release a Windows 10 ARM version, but that really would not do much as it would still lack x86 support.
I prefer the window management, gestures, and other things that OS X provides, and using other OSx virtualized, but the demo today left me little hope that it would only be an improved version of VirtualPC that was written for the PowerPC platform to run x86 software, with a large overhead penalty.
By the time I spec'ed out a new MacBook Pro 16" I feel it would already not be getting the optimized applications it could have, as Apple will be pushing toward optimizing and providing the best AXX experience. The new Mac Pro, as much as I would like to have one, is not economically feasible.
As Apple mentioned in the Keynote, the ARM platform without a doubt will scream running OS XI and iPad, iPhone and AppleTV apps, but I do not develop for those, so that is of little use to me. If I thought I could get several years of good use before the MacBook got to where it was put on the back burner compared to the ARM platform, and it would not be long until we started seeing applications that were not Universal, but required ARM processors, it would be like the Mac Pro being cut-off at 10.14. I think that was widely expected and I don't think we can complain as we got a killer workstation with long use out of it. Same for my MacBook. To be happy with an eight-year-old computer is something I can't complain about. It may be that what brought me to the platform may make me abandon it - another transition.
Apple has clearly aimed the new ARM machines towards their developers for iOS, and I can understand that. The PPW numbers show it to be a good decision, to continue meeting the needs of people that occasionally need a GUI in their VM, based on the demo it will be similar to WSL on Windows 10. It is great for CLI an background services, but anything that interacts with the desktop or is to be used very much using a GUI, I am thinking due to emulation it would something to be desired.
I think the best thing to do is let everything simmer for a while and see how the software vendors react before pulling the trigger. However I must say the i9 processor in the MacBook is very impressive, and I do not intend to move to a Google phone. Ever.
Would love to hear others thoughts on this that may be stuck deciding the same thing.
Thanks!
With that said, and I am sure like many of the members of the Mac Pro forum, I jumped over to the Macintosh Platform because they started using Intel chips and providing, although certainly not the best experience for Windows (on notebooks at least due to battery life and driver's not being optimized, etc.) they have come a long way since 2006. I enjoyed OS X very much due to the window management functions, not needing Touch on a desktop or notebook really, and the polish of OS X with a UNIX foundation. The ability to install homebrew, VMware Fusion, which integrates nicely with ESXi/vSphere, and the power of a 12-core workstation, it was a very nice workstation and one of the most versitle (how many other Xeon workstations can you install Windows XP Professional on and run it straight on the bare metal if you so wanted to, all the way to Windows Server 2019).
I can take care of most of my tasks in VMware if I need to perform lab work or testing, and occasionally if I need the full power of the OS, I will install it onto its own SSD or partition, but I rarely need to do that. I have also been spoiled by the fact the 2012 Mac Pro has been a wonderful machine, and still is. I have always had a portable Macintosh to go along with it, and a ThinkPad for work that is only in Windows.
My 2012 MacBook Pro non-retina is on its last leg as it has been used a lot, but has all ports, optical drive, and SSD (slow compared to today's standards, like the SATA 2 in the Mac Pro, but there are workaround).
I have been considering upgrading the MacBook Pro to a 16" with all almost all upgrades, but that is a lot of $$$ out of the gate since they are not internally upgradable. Not to mention the dongles I would have to deal with. So I have been thinking out loud on this-
1) There are upgrades for the MacBook Pro as long as they are external. External storage, RAID, GPU, etc.
2) VMware Fusion works fine for my needs, but how long will VMware innovate it if the writing is on the wall? Likely a new version of OS XI but will that be it? Will we see support for connecting and doing basic administration and uploading VMs to a production vSphere infrastructure?
3) Obviously other OSs that run natively will likely not be possible; at least not soon. Sure Microsoft could release a Windows 10 ARM version, but that really would not do much as it would still lack x86 support.
I prefer the window management, gestures, and other things that OS X provides, and using other OSx virtualized, but the demo today left me little hope that it would only be an improved version of VirtualPC that was written for the PowerPC platform to run x86 software, with a large overhead penalty.
By the time I spec'ed out a new MacBook Pro 16" I feel it would already not be getting the optimized applications it could have, as Apple will be pushing toward optimizing and providing the best AXX experience. The new Mac Pro, as much as I would like to have one, is not economically feasible.
As Apple mentioned in the Keynote, the ARM platform without a doubt will scream running OS XI and iPad, iPhone and AppleTV apps, but I do not develop for those, so that is of little use to me. If I thought I could get several years of good use before the MacBook got to where it was put on the back burner compared to the ARM platform, and it would not be long until we started seeing applications that were not Universal, but required ARM processors, it would be like the Mac Pro being cut-off at 10.14. I think that was widely expected and I don't think we can complain as we got a killer workstation with long use out of it. Same for my MacBook. To be happy with an eight-year-old computer is something I can't complain about. It may be that what brought me to the platform may make me abandon it - another transition.
Apple has clearly aimed the new ARM machines towards their developers for iOS, and I can understand that. The PPW numbers show it to be a good decision, to continue meeting the needs of people that occasionally need a GUI in their VM, based on the demo it will be similar to WSL on Windows 10. It is great for CLI an background services, but anything that interacts with the desktop or is to be used very much using a GUI, I am thinking due to emulation it would something to be desired.
I think the best thing to do is let everything simmer for a while and see how the software vendors react before pulling the trigger. However I must say the i9 processor in the MacBook is very impressive, and I do not intend to move to a Google phone. Ever.
Would love to hear others thoughts on this that may be stuck deciding the same thing.
Thanks!
