Video Pros Moving from Mac to Windows for High-End GPUs
mjtsai.com
mjtsai.com
While Apple is focusing on trying to create the thinnest notebook on every generation, other companies are actually making useful computers, laptops or otherwise.
Right now, I've decided to take the money I'd spend on the cheapest Macbook to buy a desktop system, plus a chromebook. I can have mobility and a lot of performance, for a fraction of the price.
Even Windows is becoming more viable again, ubuntu core and all.
The XPS 15 is another option. Even with a significantly larger battery it doesn't seem to have better stamina than the MBP. It's apparently been plagued by QA problems, and offers a choice only between a 1080p and power-hungry 4K (can't get high-DPI and 10 hour battery life in the same package).
I suspect, looking at the sales numbers, that you're wrong. Apple is giving up on a certain group of users (who need fast GPUs). They gave on those users years ago by shipping crappy OpenGL drivers. But they've correctly perceived that common users don't want ports, or expandability. They want a fast machine with a great screen and all-day battery life, and they want to hit those metrics in the smallest package possible.
By the end of the month I had gone slightly loopy (seriously - MacBook withdrawl is real), gave up and bought a 2015 rMBP. Personally I find macOS, and its deep integration with Apple's hardware, too intuitive and 'invisible' to the way I work to give up on it.
I use both Linux Mint and MacOS on a daily basis and I can't say that one really is better than the other. I'm sure it would be the same with Windows if not for the fact that I need some unix-y stuff.
I do have a use case that I would really like to get on my primary laptop that neither Mac nor Linux currently offer: Detach screen and use stylus to annotate pdfs. If I was using windows on a surface this would be a major part of my workflow, and I would find it impossible to switch back. Doesn't prove that Windows is superior. (Maybe I will end up dualbooting Windows and Linux on a Surface or Yoga or some such thing eventually).
After being on Mac for about a decade, it only took a week of using Windows full time before going back on the Mac felt foreign to me.
If I spent a week or so full time on the Mac, the reverse would probably happen.
These days I only care that my main tools work on whatever operating system I use (it's a great era for end users now that so many tools are cross platform). There are things about every OS'es main UI that bug me, so I don't find myself being loyal to any one particular OS.
IMHO In their quest for simplicity, that have made a very good GUI for users, but hell for professional developers who DON'T only use the command line. One of my lifelong friends swears by his MBP, but he only uses the command line.
I could go very far into detail here and list all of the extremely annoying limitations that I run into, but instead I'll respond to your vague complaints with my own. Apple quite obviously wants absolute control over their device and their software whereas Microsoft lets me to do whatever I want with my computers and my software.
I have to have a Mac to make iOS apps, but as soon as those are no longer a thing I'll toss all my Mac stuff straight into the garbage.
The hardware fit and finish is also second to none, and runs windows just fine if that's your thing.
The alternative on windows is a machine that spies on me, has horrible ui bugs and inconsistencies I run into constantly, and decides to auto update and reset all my privacy settings in the middle of the night while I am using the machine.
Not to mention it is often used with some awful trackpad. I haven't tried them all but I have never seen a non-mac trackpad I could go back to.
Windows seems to be a combination of 90's era throwbacks and 2edgy4you Metro design. If they've managed to improve this stuff recently I would be interested in switching, since there's a huge tax on hardware specs with Apple computers.
Not in my experience. My Windows 10 automation/unscrew-up script alone is like 5 kloc. And I bet 70% of that script could be replaced if I had real control of the system, like dropping a .config file in some folder instead of having to find hidden settings with nonsensical names deep down the regedit hole. Another example, you have to use some stupid hacks to make sure there are no Flash DLLs in your pc. No matter what you do they always come back in some security update.
Whatever is left after bricking it, I suppose?
You do know that there were actual lawsuits against Microsoft over the Windows 10 auto upgrade right?
https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Against-Windows-10-Microsoft-...
Even assuming that issue was overblown, I distinctly remember that Catbert-style perma-nag message appearing on each login asking me to upgrade. Microsoft doesn't even deem its users worthy of a simple "Don't bother me again" close window.
Let us conservatively say about 10% of the 300 million people who supposedly got the Windows 10 update didn't actually want it. That's about 30 million folks who would disagree with this notion that Microsoft "lets me do whatever I want with my computers and my software".
The best thing Microsoft and Dell have going for them in the laptop space... the 2016 MacBook Pro w/Touch Bar. It was a dud. The GPU issues were the final straw for me.
I thought that switching back to Windows would be a HUGE hassle. The Windows Subsystem for Linux took the pain out of it. That, and I no longer have to fight the we-don't-have-a-macOS-version of $APP issues.
If Apple doesn't care about their computers, why should their users? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My least favorite thing is I have to use the Registry to fix it
I'm a little conflicted about my next Apple purchase as well, but for me, the XPS 15 hasn't been the answer.
Just one experience amidst many, I know...
Given that everyone's got a different use case, every laptop, regardless of maker, has some fatal flaw to someone.
As someone who has a lot of trouble using any trackpad (including Apple's) that doesn't have physical buttons, should I view buttonless trackpads as a tradeoff or a flaw?
I don't care about the design tradeoffs made for esthetic reasons, I only care that I struggle with them and get stressed out by them. So to me, the lack of physical trackpad buttons on a laptop is a design flaw, even though it might be a completely sensible tradeoff for 99% of the population.
I'm running a 2014 and so disappointed they soldered on the ram, and their SSD is a wierd format nobody else is using. I'm not planning on upgrading any time soon though.
I think the Apple/Mac pro market is really being abandoned in favor of the laptops.. but how much of their base can they piss off before it starts taking other segments with it?
That would depend on your criteria. For example my MSI laptop blows my mbps out of the water performance wise (I have 2 mbps btw 2014 and 2016- so no mac hating here), but it's about 4 times heavier :) but I don't have to haul it around too often.
If I had to haul a PC laptop around - for mbp - comparable form factor/weight I'd look at high end razer laptops. I'm also not a fan of glossy screens, razer has a matte screen option available (so do MSIs but again they are BIG).
Compared to the 13" rMBP, you get a smaller display and almost two hours less battery life (and people are up in arms about the 13" rMBP being a regression on the battery life front compared to the previous model). It's not a replacement for the rMBP, just a less good, but cheaper, alternative.
speaking of battery life - not sure that once you get into 6 hrs vs 8hrs type difference it's all that important.
I think the Alienware 13 is an ugly, heavy brick (in fairness, you can get uglier), but it basically ticks off everything I need on paper.
My max acceptable weight for a laptop - irrespective of size - is around 5.5 lbs, so it barely makes that, but once you get past the esthetics, it's a fantastic machine. It's available with a quad core CPU with multiple options for GPUs (including the 1050Ti which kills the battery less than the 1060), a nice array of current and future ports, user replaceable wifi, RAM and SSD, and the option for an OLED screen. Oh, and it's also got physical touchpad buttons, which are something I've been missing for a long, long time.
Because my last two laptops have been quad core, I struggle with the idea of replacing my laptop with an ultrathin laptop that has an ultrabook processor that would be slower than what I currently have.
Every time I think the XPS15 is the one for me, I look at the Alienware 13 and change my mind.
The one thing I really hate about the Alienware 13R3 is that it's a "gaming" laptop and the matching gaming bling, but that's a rant for another day.
Some people just need or want a beefy desktop built with upgradable components (in addition to a laptop).
Or, crazy idea here, they could licence their OS if they don't want to make pro gear anymore.
Maybe some are too young to remember 'Power Computing', the company that licensed MacOS in the 90s. That was juuuuust before Apple ran in to major problems, and had to file bankruptcy. The first thing Jobs did when he came back was borrow 55 million dollars from Bill Gates and buy back all the licenses and shut down production of all mac clones. One of the only true things Apple has is its reputation for quality. You want to bleed that out, you would do it by allowing clones, thus bringing about the destruction of the brand as a whole.
A clone program now would have a totally different dynamic, since Apple is incredibly successful rather than close to bankruptcy. I still don't know if it would make business sense for them, but for Mac users like me it would be absolutely terrific.
Apple never filed for bankruptcy protection.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/051115...
I think Apple makes high end computers for consumers now.
They just don't cater to special audiences like they did before, which is unfortunate for people who don't want computers that cater to consumers (i.e., content creation pros, developers, etc).
I can't blame Apple for following the money, but it is what it is, I guess.
Another one to chime in that I don't consider this crazy...any more.
It didn't work the first time around partly because the cloners had much smaller volume and could therefore always scoop Apple on the most profitable high-end gear, which didn't have component availability.
The licensing model was always a gamble, with the hope that the loss of margin would be offset by an increased base. The problem was that it was "bet the company" stakes at the time, and when it didn't quite work out as hoped they had to shut it down or shut down the company.
Now the Mac line in general and the pro line in particular is a sufficiently insignificant part of the overall business that they could afford the gamble.
Apple is a hardware company. What you're suggesting doesn't make business sense for Apple. They rely on being able to sell new hardware. Allowing upgrades wouldn't make sense. A laptop last for five years, for most people, being able to slap in extra memory, a new graphics card or just a new SSD would "rob" Apple of a sale of a new computer for an additional two or three years.
I think they should give people what they want - a high powered upgradable machine. If they don't want to make it upgradable, then they should at least refresh it annually.
Personally, I think letting the trash can linger on for over 3 years is a pretty loud indicator that Apple's not exactly concerned with the line and that, internally at least, they're well aware of just how big a mistake the design was. Of course, it's possible that it's just a reflection of far larger problems with how the company views and supports its Mac engineers.[0] Plus, the Mac Pro's manufacturing here in the US is problematic for the company. That little political ploy can't be easily reversed, especially with the anti-trade FUD that's so prevalent now.
If Apple were willing to acknowledge the problems, they could certainly design a restrictive licensing program that would allow third-parties to build Macs that target higher-end professionals without cannibalizing their consumer lines too much while avoiding some of the problems from the 90s. Strict design requirements for case aesthetics, limitations on software bundling, and other requirements could be used to limit third-party machines to high-end machines to avoid eating their consumer and laptop sales.
Not that I expect it to happen, or even be considered. But something has to change if Apple wants to keep their hold on creative professionals who are now either being forced to switch, doing extensive upgrades on their old Mac Pros to bide as much time as possible, or building Hackintoshes
0. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple...
This is already worked like gangbusters for them for monitors: http://www.macworld.com/article/3169308/macs/apple-stores-st...
Microsoft beat Apple for a decade, then Apple beat Microsoft. Both companies are still around, making fortunes. Even Yahoo's still around.
I don't mind using macOS, it's a pretty nice experience, definitely nicer than windows but when I buy an Apple machine the thing I'm buying is definitely the hardware and I'm not convinced the clones do a good enough job of matching that, can I get 14 hours of battery life from the leading air-clone?
HN is a North American bubble, mostly Silicon Valley. Apple computers are a thing only in North America and parts of Europe.
It's a strange problem, because there is plenty of demand for it, and I think we all appreciate the outsized role that GPUs play these days; to not offer support for 50-80% of the GPU market seems like a rather poor strategic decision. Particularly since you're really only talking about a team of 30 or 50 within Apple to help Nvidia, the drawbacks are minimal.
This has been an ongoing problem since the summer. Some have reverted back to using several 9xx cards (which have spiked in price) while others have switched platforms. Lacking any real progress on this, I would suspect many in this situation would abandon OSX permanently by the end of the year. And if you give up OSX on your desktop, the incentive to stay in that environment on your laptop, tablet, and phone go way down.
This is a serious problem and the only outcomes are either a) Nvidia GPUs are supported, or b) OSX is abandoned, because the simple fact is that Nvidia GPUs are more important long-term than the entire sum of Apple's hardware; I can replace a tablet or desktop or laptop, but I can't replace a Pascal TITAN X.
This fits the "operations guy running the company" narrative.
I've purchased the second generation (new) Macbook this year, and must say, I'm delighted. I honestly don't get what all the fuss is about. It just works.
Why would I change something that works really well with something that might work well?
Many of us, developers, don't care 1 split second if the OS we are targeting has any kind of UNIX support.
Mac is still a good platform for developers writing OS X, iOS, tvOS and watchOS applications.
You have a point but I think it's undeniable that a significant share of developers wants a UNIX environment. Me included.
I don't deny there are developers that care about UNIX, and even I do care, occasionally.
What I don't accept is that for whatever reason now to be a developer one has to breathe UNIX, as if there wasn't anything else a developer might be.
This is yet another reason why sometimes I wish Apple had bought Be instead.
What I did is, buy an XPS 13 preinstalled with Ubuntu 16.04.
It is the best of both worlds: support for the latest hardware and trusted Unix like system
cheers!
FWIW, I have found the new MacBook Pros fairly incredible. They are thinner and lighter, which is quite valuable for people who use notebooks on the go, while still being more powerful than their predecessors.
If I had one complaint it's that they didn't keep around the old 15-inch chassis for a model with more ram and a bigger battery. Made just have one model and aim it at a very specific niche.
But overall, they are very good notebooks. You can power multiple 5K displays from them for God's sakes.
The keyboard shortcuts, the UI inconstancies, and on linux the lack of native apps (specifically evernote) just didn't cut it for me. As trendy as it is to hate on Apple right now, MacOS is far and away the best operating system for developers and power users. It's not even close.
Having a single main modifier key on apple (⌘) is SOO much faster and more productive than switching between (alt) and (ctrl) modifiers for switching windows, copy/pasting, new window/tab, etc. It just kills my workflow.
I love my pc build and Arch Linux is pretty good. But I'm currently scoping craiglist for used iMac 5k's. The productivity loss just isn't worth it.
I mean I knew what I got into, I just hoped Apple won't neglect the people made its platform desirable for the masses.
I hope this is just a wave serving the 'starbucks pros', and next time we get to get a decent update.
Why would developers switch from mac to windows? If they're alienated by what Apple is doing, they're unlikely to be happy with Microsoft. Linux, sure.
Of course, I think this is exactly the sort of misprediction people on HN tend to make, where it turns out that (surprise) Apple actually knows more about market demands than random internet commentators. Remember how we were predicting that the new Touch Bar MacBook Pro would fail hard, but it ended up being the best selling MBP ever?
As for MacOS looks - Windows also are releasing update to their visuals this year which looks pretty darn aesthetically pleasing. [0]
[0] https://blogs-images.forbes.com/amitchowdhry/files/2017/02/P...
With early Windows 10, the Settings app didn't even have a title bar so there was no clear demarcation from the window grey to the titlebar grey - how would I know that the grey bar at the top was the way I moved the window but the grey bit beneath the grey bit at the top DIDN'T move the window??
With current Windows 10, the Settings app finally has a title bar that has a colour like all other applications. But the paradigm we learned 20+ years ago (double click top left to close the window) and the ability to get the window menu HAS GONE. I can still press Ctrl-space and get the window menu but the ability to get the window menu from a Metro app or a metro-style app using the mouse has completely gone.
So now I have to learn another method of interacting with the basic building block of the system - windows. When each window behaves differently according to the "metro or not" measuring stick, this does not make for a great user experience. And this is me coming from using Windows since the 90s. How do you think new users and my mum is going to get on??
What's the point of having window guidelines if Microsoft themselves don't even follow them??
So although the screenshot is aesthetically pleasing, I remain very concerned about the direction usability is taking on the platform.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
Best-selling to developers? Not a chance.
I find it hard to see any realistic alternatives for MacBooks in software development. They give you all the tools you need from the Windows world that are not available on linux like Office, Photoshop etc. and it is still a UNIX system which can do all the stuff that linux can without kernel panics, crashes, bugs and other crap. Also unlike Windows or Linux, a single macOS installation can last pretty much forever and doesn't need to reinstalled every year because of the lost performance like Windows. And last but not least MacBooks are well optimised for the hardware they run on which gives them 1.5-2.5 times the performance with the same hardware as on Windows or Linux.
The whole thing about complaining about new MacBooks is same thing as with iPhones. People complain because it's trendy to whine about anything Apple does even if they would create eternal world peace and still everybody will buy them because there is nothing better or even similar on the market.
Says the guy who suggests Linux as a desktop.
If i need to build code that apple says can only be built on a mac, i simply spin up my mac VM and point some tools dont need to drink any koolaid to get the job done.
MDI + keyboard skills beats vim ninjas any day of the week.
This is EXACTLY what I did. I build my own PC (after more than a decade not doing it) and bought an Acer R11. Couldn't be happier!
Ehhhhh, as long as there's money to be had in iOS land, I'm not sure that's true.
Contrary to internet commenters complaining that it's impossible to launch new iOS apps, iOS shops still make a ton of money. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I saw a lot of video professionals jumping to the Adobe Ecosystem or to things like DaVinci for the GPU rendering.
In my case I ended up selling my mac, and with the money build good PC for the price. I feel stupid of not building one from the beginning. Good bye external disks and weird perif; hello SSD, RAID Storage, expandable RAM, and a GPU with CUDA that I can upgrade in two years, without trashing the rest of the system.
This is not a debate of Mac vs PC (that can go forever), or a PC Master Race propaganda, but the Mac Pro it's a bad taste joke. I get the idea of the "apple tax", but it's ridiculous here. The CPUs, SSD, and RAM are old, but specially the fact that the GPU it's soldered in the Motherboard it's just stupid. GPU are one of those rare things were you can still see the double of performance in each new iteration.
I love my Macbook Pro because reasons, but in Desktops, the PC it's the King.
I'm aware of the Apple ecosystem synergy, and I don't find it surprising that an individual who uses all Apple products experiences a kind of lock-in dysphoria that makes any other alternative appear unattractive, but at the end of the day, when hardware performance is a critical factor in the type of work being done, I just can't justify the insane rigidity and mark-up of Apple's desktop products.
In a dream world they'd make all iOS devices USB-C, release new Mac Pros, all types of laptops, and all of them able to use the same Thunderbolt 3 eGPUs, RAIDs, etc, albeit at different levels of performance.
When you look at the public reaction to iPhone dropping the headphone jack (I agreed with) and the revenue from wireless headphones, we know nothing compared to the analysts locked in a vault at Apple who knew more about making money for their company.
And yet, I still think of the not-quite dichotomy of the two Steves. Making out-of reach-tech available to everyone, and making tech available to cool-people, where cool-people turned out to be a large superset of 'everyone'.
However, I’m aware that my case is abnormal. The only thing preventing me from owning a high-GPU Windows machine for certain kinds of work is that I haven’t yet figured out how to use it for rendering remotely, since I move around a lot and I can’t bring it with me due to the bulk. So far I’m just sticking to 2D.
If I were a stakeholder, I’d be against Apple trying to dominate the professional market. People increasingly have multiple computers for different tasks so there’s more win in focusing on whichever market has thicker margins.
You might be thinking "well all phones will work well with your Mac" but before I started with iPhones I had Nokias for years and that they didn't.
I've had generation after generation of iPhone because of my Macs.
If Apple give up or continue to put out poor value machines (they don't have to be cheap they just have to be good value to my business) then I'll move everything to other vendors.
If that happens I'll probably never return to Apple's ecosystem regardless of which segments of the market are most profitable to Apple.
It's like the halo effect in reverse.
Apple has a massive massive pile of cash sitting around (over $200 billion) and I'd be surprised if standard investments make a higher return than actually investing in their Desktop line.
That's what confuses me about Apple's approach. Just because you make less margin in a line doesn't mean you shouldn't do it...
Once these people start working on Windows machines, the benefit on an iPhone is reduced. It's still a great phone, but they might go for an alternative. Same applies to iPads.
Apple should wake up quick. The extraordinary sales numbers of the iPhone seem to have made the company live in a bubble where there is just the phones that matter. But who knows for how long smartphones are going to stay relevant and if a new piece of technology is going to replace them...
> Apple reports record profits in first quarter
> It was Apple's most profitable quarter ever, raking in $78.4 billion. It also sold 78 million iPhones in the three months leading up to New Year's Eve — more than any previous quarter.
> Net income was almost $18 billion. In other words, a license to print money.
http://www.marketplace.org/2017/01/31/tech/final-note/apple-...
So, tell me, why should they make an extra effort? They're good as they are.
Abandoning designers and developers means gradual erosion of your position as leading personal computing platform; the opinion leaders are no longer on your side telling everyone how great your products are.
Now this might be a really smart strategy when you factor in mobile and cloud computings impact on personal computing. Hard to say how that will play out. My guess is it's a big mistake to leave designers and developers behind, especially as we enter the era of VR content creation.
I just tell them "Get a T-Series Thinkpad"
And, of course, they'll trust the answer much more if it's the same thing the expert is using.
I'm personally still 2 versions behind on osX because of Aperture. Now I heard photos can do many of the things aperture can except that you can't organize your library. Wut? Yeah, a real pro would switch to Lightroom right? And Lightroom is also available on Windows. As is Bash. As are multiple desktops. And finally Windows machines are getting quality trackpads and in it is easy to buy upgradable Windows PCs. Still I'd wish the Adobe suite was available on Linux though...
This was my last Mac, especially now that Dell and HP seem to finally understand that people are willing to pay for quality hardware.
If I may so humbly suggest it: people on Hacker News and the like are (please excuse the corporate speak) thought leaders and trend setters for similar reasons. Developers are well ahead of the public on what's actually useful as their jobs require much more out of a system than a casual user. It's obvious there is some amount of the HN community that are unhappy with Apple's offerings and are switching to other vendors.
Sure Apple is printing money now: the general public are ready buyers of Apple product. No doubt Apple's incredible marketing is largely responsible, but there's an undercurrent of opinion based on what people like HN members use and some small percent is shifting away from Apple. I don't think anyone can really predict the long term trend here: we'll only really know in retrospect, but it is possible if that trend grows then public sentiment will eventually follow suit.
It's dangerous to coast the way they are.
I do predict a visible shift of developers from Apple to MS - not to do Windows development, but to do general development on a Windows device... and possibly in a Linux shell within Windows.
There's just so many layers of abject garbage in Windows. These are there for legacy reasons, but they're also a giant hassle if you're trying to work as a developer.
Some Linux distributions are rough around the edges, but few of them are as tired and worn out as Windows is.
macOS at least burns off the underbrush once in a while. There's few 32-bit apps in the wild now, most everyone's gone 64-bit. PowerPC is history. The driver landscape, while significantly more limited than Windows, isn't filled with broken garbage and junk that works on Windows 7 but not 10 or vice-versa.
Microsoft's strength is legacy support: Applications from fifteen, even twenty years ago still run. This is also their biggest problem.
It's hard to believe but security is where Apple won the war. My friends with android phones are still rocking Android 5 Lollipop and that tells you something.
The ability to browse a legible file system on the computing device that I own is not some trivial preference which can be so lightly dismissed. It is a huge deal to a lot of people. There are at least half a dozen reasons why I vastly prefer my Android device over iPhone (after using the latter exclusively for many years), but this one is enough all by itself.
Anyway, their personal machines are still all Macs, iPhones, etc. Different products for different uses.
I wonder what thinking lead to that product. Did they think the pro market would be worth it to them to keep investing in keeping the product up to date and then it turned out not to be worth the investment? Although, even before then the Mac Pro was only updated sporadically... Was it all just Jony Ive design hubris? Who is the Mac Pro designed for?
Apple consistently chooses form over function, but they don't usually let the scales tip this far. The last time they fucked up this bad was the Mac Cube, but back then Apple was proactive enough to kill the Cube within 6 months. It really surprises me that Apple hasn't come out with something to replace the current Mac Pro.
Microsoft realized that the niche creative-type markets that Apple has historically owned tend to be broad-market influencers, and they've started to target them with products like the Surface Pro and Surface Studio.
Competition is great, and it will be interesting to see if Apple will rise to it or fade away.
The current Mac Pro replaced the old Mac Pro, though. That's the difference. If you don't like it, your only other choices are iMac (built in monitor) or Mac Mini (horrifically underpowered).
Apple could kill the Cube without consequence, but the current desktop Mac lineup is so limited there is no alternative.
It's not the built in monitor that's the problem, is the overheating with the assorted noise and possibly thermal throttling if you use it for something that actually maxes out the CPU/GPU.
Well, and the lack of expandability. While the portable MacBook Pro equivalents are about the same thing (look at Dell XPS 13 pricing), Apple right now has nothing for developers/power users on the desktop side.
Yeah it's worth pointing out that the trashcan runs silent at full pelt, while the iMac sounds like a jet engine.
Keep this in mind when you imagine a row of 10 3d/video artists rendering away all day.
Does it? For example, in the laptop space, Apple has consistently shipped the largest batteries of any notebook without an external battery pack.
Or the apple pencil?
The 2016 13" MBPs have between 49.2 and 54.5 watt-hours.
The XPS 13 9360 has 59 watt hours, for one.
Like the latest MacBook Air with only one port, which means you need to carry it with a hub dangling from it like a freshly used condom?
How is that good form?
And quite honestly, the single port Macbook isn't a completely horrible idea, Apple is just trying to push a new standard like they always do. It's an entry level computer that does just the basics. How many peripherals are necessary on a computer with those specs? You certainly can't do any games on it, most printers nowadays have a wireless function to connect to, it has Apple's trackpad which is pretty darn good for navigation, else it has Bluetooth for external mice, which can be had for very cheap now with good performance.
I'm all for more options; I don't have a Macbook because my old 2012 Macbook Air feels about right to me in terms of minimalist form with enough function to still do what I want. But I can see how you'd work with a Macbook without running into issues with the port. The majority of the time I use my laptop is just having it plugged in, or I have it when I'm traveling and don't want a bunch of stuff plugged in anyways.
Apple's idea isn't far off from how most people use the laptop.
Or plug in to a monitor without mucking about with my power cable.
Or... Just about anything, really. I don't get the choice of a single port over 2 or 3, besides they wanted to push a "unified" (read: confusing) standard but didn't have the board room to operate 2+ of the ports (eg, if they had two, you probably couldn't charge from both).
Furthermore, today's demanding professional are tomorrows Joe Schmoes: having the hearts and minds of pioneers would them better see what's coming on the horizon. It just seems silly not to invest money to keep the power-user niches happy.
They could do this, but they have yet to prove that they will do it. Ever since Jobs, Apple has been hyper fixated on focused, profitable product lines. The Pro is out of step with that, and I bet with laptops making up the bulk of their computer sales, we'll start seeing them move away from the iMac too.
My only guess right now is that they still feel they need the Pro to maintain their computer business, but I fear they are slowly becoming just a gadget company and will forget their roots.
Apple's claim is staked on high-margin products, so it needs an elite cachet much more than say... Xiaomi or Dell. And you can signal that to consumers with one-of-a-kind high-end products that operate on the absolute cutting-edge of various creative, technical, and scientific niches.
There doesn't seem to be anyone at Apple speaking for creatives any more. Certainly no one who gets really excited about working with musicians, artists, film directors, and so on, almost as an equal.
Cook has the mindset of an accountant who is a media and trinket consumer, not the mindset of an inventor with creative aspirations. Likewise the rest of the executive team.
To be fair, there aren't many people like that around. But it would cost Apple virtually nothing to host some product focus groups with creative talent to ask "What do you want...?"
But even before the integrated Mac Pro, they regularly let it go two years between updates of the pro model. They must have known when designing the machine that they wouldn't be keeping it up-to-date and that it would quickly become obsolete?
Apple also has the issue of trying to align their releases to their PR schedules. When a component (like a CPU generation) slips, it really messes with their update cycles (see: MacBooks). This doesn't matter so much to consumer devices, but pros are more sensitive to this, and letting pros upgrade their machines mitigates this to some extent.
However, Apple is now milking the old glory and failing to build tomorrow's glory. It's the classic beam counter mistake. It's probably time to short Apple soon.
Actually, photos do not do much justice to it. In real life it is way more impressive. The upper part looks like it floats on a colorful aura. The design is an obvious copy of Mac Pro, but they made it way better.
Seriously? Perhaps I'm biased because I own one, but it's pretty much the most awesomely-designed desktop computer ever IMHO, at least from a hardware/cooling/looks perspective. The real problem, I thought, is that Apple seems to have left desktops behind to rot
The point is, most professionals upgrade the same computer multiple times over it's life, particularly for fast-moving components (the GPU, in this case).
Making them basically completely impossible to upgrade significantly reduces the long-term value of the mac pro.
The problem is that Apple has chosen not to put any resources into non-portable devices and so the problem isn't an expense but an absolute lack of options other than switching platforms.
Alternatively they could have used industry standards in the first place, certainly for the internal SSD connection.
It doesn't help that they've also failed to keep either their openGL, openCL or Metal drivers competitive either.
The latter one is the big one. You can't just leave an unupgradable professional focused machine sitting on the shelf rotting.
The Mac Pro is probably one of the last Apple products to have Jobs' fingerprints on it, too
They're in a bit of a bind here. They can't cater to every niche need, they're not going to make these quirky, narrow-use spec machines. They can't compete on price compared to hand-built. They can't compete on performance compared to the ultra-high end workstations from other vendors.
Maybe if they opened up a limited licensing program for macOS on desktop machines to a handful of premium vendors that are willing to adhere to certain constraints they'd have a way out of this jam.
I've purchased Apple products for 12 years (and for my entire company for 7 years).
It always seemed to be the obvious choice; it just worked, reliably and with a better user/developer experience than alternatives.
This year both me and my team have started moving away. My next phone will be an Android device and we're now not buying Macbook laptops for new recruits.
Windows, Ubuntu or Elementary OS offer a better experience. I personally can't take the restrictions I'm getting from MacOS and iOS. I'm also infuriated to see my machine being close to unusable a couple times a week while "kernel_task" eat up 120% of my CPU.
The only reason I was still sticking with Apple was the hardware, but that too went downhill. The iPhone's screen is brittle. The battery is capricious. My latest 2 visits to the Apple store resulted in a unusable track pad and a damaged screen on my Macbook (which were then claimed to not be covered by Apple Care).
Others around me share my frustrations.
It may be anecdotal, but 3 years ago I would never have considered buying anything but Apple. I've reached the tipping point and I'm not the only one it seems.
I thought I was the only one. SourceKit also leaves something to be desired as far as CPU usage goes. I've seen 400%+ usage rates.
Ultimately it's just that I'm very attuned to my phone, so I want to delay and minimize hassle with it as much as possible. The same reasoning isn't always true of every device I own (I run Linux, hack things, I'm quite used to playing with my devices), but I think this is fairly reasonable. I don't really blame anyone who uses Android and feels the exact same way (by all means, I'm sure it's a perfectly reasonable alternative since the Android 2.0 days of yore, when I first went to iOS).
I might pick up a refurb Nexus as a work/burner phone for traveling though.
Did I mention I don't want to have to re-purchase FFVII again?
Flagship android phones are close to flawless not only in hardware but in the integration with Google services, which are far beyond anything Apple has the ability to provide. As a Samsung S7Edge owner I simply cannot relate.
My point is that using Android means to entrust an advertising company with access to every last bit of your personal information.
Trying to limit what they can learn about you is what I compared to training a dog to guard your sausage.
The story was that for this expansion, you'd add external chassis. I'm not a video person, so I'm curious why this didn't pan out?
All the busses are there, inside the device, but nope, you have to drop several hundreds of dollars (or more) on a box that squirts them over a expensive wire because marketing and design said so.
Apple saw where the market was going and that an iMac or MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt/USB3 peripherals can do the work that required a fully decked desktop machine 6-7yrs ago, which is great for the vast majority of creatives. But in doing so they have left a segment of the creative community without the expandability, upgradeability and speed necessary (3D, CGI and some VR, etc). But some of these were never really strongholds for Apple anyway.
As a 20+yr veteran editor who has used just about every NLE on the market, my money and time goes to FCPX unless my clients specify otherwise. It's the fastest, most versatile and most stable product out there and the only one that feels like it is truly evolving away from the original late 80s NLE paradigm. And while its use in the high end market (film, tv and commercials) in the US is minuscule, it's global footprint is growing.
Stack Overflow surveyed that 20% of developers use a Mac.
So lets say there are 4 million developers using a Mac. And lets say they buy a new Mac every 3 years. Then 1.3 million developers buy a Mac each year.
Apple sold 20 million Macs last year. So lets say 6.5% were developers and 10% of those developers are complaining about the new Mac series. If I am right that means that 130 thousand developers are complaining. That's 0.65% of Apple's customers.
Now I don't believe Apple is stupid. They are in business longer than some people here are alive.
So I can very much imagine that Apple decided to go for 2% more customers while losing 0.65% of them while making even more profit.
That little group is power users. New adopters. Influencers. In the late 2000s, if you saw someone using a macbook pro, you knew he was some kind of professional, and most likely, something "sexy" - a developer, photographer, designer... This user base, professionals who care about quality over price, helped create the Apple company image. They loved Apple products and were voluntary apple advocates - I know I was. I convinced several friends and family members to switch to Mac because I sincerely believed that the extra cost is worth ease of use. And because I'm a power user (in their eyes), they believed me. And that same company image helped sell iPhones - the main Apple profit driver.
But now the same high-paid professionals are switching away. "Regular" users are going to see it, sonner or later; how do you convince them that this "Apple quality" still exists, when they see the power users trashing it?
I would be surprised if Apple didn't augment their line up with other power products in the medium term though.
Look at Microsoft. They've been there and are currently investing quite a lot to get developers to use their software.
If Apple were clever, they'd look ahead, but it seems they go for good quarterly results instead and repeat the same mistakes others have already made. It has all the markings of a company in decline.
All sorts of decisions that are actually bad for consumers can be justified by pointing to money, doesn't mean they're good decisions. e.g I bet dongle sales have skyrocketed since the iPhone 7 and new MBP.
They were in business when Jobs was there, they almost went out of business when he left the first time. Now that he's gone for good don't for one second believe their position will last forever.
If you're doing specialized work you may need a specialized system, but you're an exception to the rule.
Most developers are stuck in Sublime or Visual Studio all day.
Their other motivator for moving away from the Macbook is buying a new one would cost an arm & a leg, whereas you can get a much more powerful machine for a fraction of the price from someone else.
Actually, Apple has been selling price competitive or even cheap machines compared to other offerings with similar performance for years. From 2007-2015 Apple consistently had the best prices for pro laptops and desktop machines among offerings with comparable build quality.
The $300 price bump for equivalent machines in 2016 and disappointing spec upgrades in 2015 and 2016 are a new deviation.
The price performance advantage of Windows machines is returning from a very long hiatus. And for Mac users it's unwelcome.
Tim Cook's Apple, of course, is all about high margins and raising average selling price. They're eating the seed corn to squeeze out more short term profits. We'll see how long it lasts.
I'm an iOS developer. I'm sure if Apple were making decent machines I would be more optimistic about my job. But the current situation is making me prepare for an escape route. I'm sure there are many others who feel the same, and that will have a knock on effect on the iOS world.
Introducing OS X as the mobile Unix platform of choice on top of the first ever drop dead gorgeous notebook (The Powerbook G4 Titanium) declared Apple as the platform for discerning power users. Those power users could confidently brag about their systems, giving free advertising to non-power users. The halo effect of which can still be seen today, trickling down to Joe Coffee in your local cafe. How much longer that lasts in the wake of mis-steps like the touch bar is questionable though, even in the wake of massive unit sales to the broader public.
This article is about high end video / graphics users, and workstations are a slightly different use case. But not much. Once these users move off Mac, who is going to be left to champion the desktops?
Incorrect. There are plenty of discerning power users who prefer the power of a good UI over a good CLI. What you meant to say is "for power users who happen to use UNIX".
Even at peak reality distortion Apple had a whole 6% share of the desktop market. Just enough to be annoying to the rest of the world. They definitely never had a monopoly on these so-called "discerning power users".
It's interesting that in some ways Microsoft may be doing the same. They cut support for older CPUs, they cut a lot of their workforce for QA, and seem to be focusing too.
It'd honestly kind of cool if they margins reaching specialty users became so small that they stopped getting supported so Linux fills in the gap. I mean, the transition is bad, but the end opportunity for Linux and diversity in general seems good.
Isn't cutting support for old hardware the exact opposite of what Apple is doing? These guys are mad because they can't get the latest and greatest hardware from Apple, not that their obsolete system won't run macOS.
But yeah, in terms of apple not having a system for latest GPUs it is different.
Apple machines are now appliances that cannot be modified. They are throw away, so spend your dollars wisely.
Indeed in our household it works they other way around: My completely non-technical wife has prohibited me from buying non-Apple products. ("You know how whiney you get every time you buy a non-Apple product.")
That's pretty damn cute. I can see why you married her :-)
Even the editors I know that cut on Adobe Premiere which is available for both PC and Mac aren't switching from Mac, which honestly has surprised me a bit because of the greater choice in hardware. But for most video editors at this level, you're just trading speed in one area for problems in another. Editors whine and complain every time there is a tiny change in the interfaces they use, they hate change. They have been forced to embrace FCP and Premiere over the years (and complain about it incessantly). Very few will choose to make the jump to Windows for the same reason.
As you step down the ladder, the move will make sense for some. Your all-in-one facilities or one man bands (production and all aspects of post handled by one or two people). But in my experience, this group has already been heavily invested in the Windows side because of the cheaper initial costs (that money you save early will be spent later and the Windows post-house will cost as much or more than a comparable Mac post-house, at least it did when I was an engineer).
And the other aspects of video post production, the CG, 3D and compositing sectors already heavily lean toward Windows or Linux and have for over a decade.
There just isn't a huge need for massive speed increases in the hardware side for most video editors. We've gone from needing very fast, high end systems with fast (and expensive) SAN storage to laptops and SSDs that allow us to do more, faster than ever. iMacs or MacBook Pros are all the average editor needs, with more and more working remotely from home. I cut a project for the NBA over the holidays on the first gen USB-C MacBook and years ago cut a project for REEBOK on the just released MacBook Air. Both these projects came up unexpectedly while I was traveling but went off without a hitch on underpowered hardware (that I bought for web surfing and writing).
That's not to say that I wouldn't appreciate (and most likely purchase) a new and expandable Mac workstation. But for the most part, I'd be spending money to just spend money. It wouldn't speed up 98% of my job. And that other 2 percent isn't slow enough to cause me any issues.
It seems like all of their priorities are related to everyday consumers (beats headphones, air buds, several new phone models every N months, etc.).
Why would apple waste their engineering man-hours building products for any market except the common consumer who aspires to be part of the wealthy crowd?
I think this helped Apple's "hip" image among consumers. When you, say, see your favorite electronic band in concert and notice the Apple logo on their laptop, that reinforces the impression that these computers aren't "stodgy" Windows PCs (ala the ads 10 years ago in this direction -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Mac)
Many "common" consumers have a creative hobby to be honest as well, and I think developing pro tools can help develop consumer / prosumer versions. See: Garageband, a consumer oriented DAW from the folks that made Logic Pro.
So most likely it's simply better business to cater to the consumer/prosumer part of the market and ignore "true pro" gear.
Thinking that just because a tech company is big and therefore has the brightest minds there running the products and as such they can't go wrong and it's us, the users, that just don't understand their fantastic strategies is, as we can clearly see from the past, just not true.
Just look at Microsoft in the 2000's for instance. Or at Yahoo in the end of the 90's.
It's kinda neat that with Apple it might be exactly the reverse.
I still don't think it'll happen though, and even if it did, you'll be paying Mac Pro prices for a Dell/HP.
Windows has always been the majority of video editing till about 2009 when Final Cut was the buzz word. I HATE Final Cut and just its vocabulary was so frustrating. Most were either Premier or some special Linux farm for HUGE projects. Apple won due to the idea that creatives used Apple and nerds used Windows. I always was the Amiga guy then the Linux nerd (Light Works is great but the plug ins are limited)and now I just am happy to not have to use Final Cut for anything.
As a former developer now Project Manager, I don't code much anymore, but I tinker with stuff every now and then. I got into gaming for the first time since I built a custom PC back in 2004, and you know what? I love it! I thought I was "past that" phase in my life, but I enjoy my Windows 10 Desktop PC.
I still miss the Mac, and man do I miss the retina screens! But I feel macOS is simply now a legacy product to Apple that they simply cannot afford to ditch, not so much for business - obviously that would be bad - but I think it would be much worse from a PR perspective more than anything. And the whole thing bothers me. I feel like macOS is now an obligation for Apple to string along, but its real focus is now iOS. We all know iOS is the future, who are we kidding? At least with Windows 10 I feel Microsoft is trying to add neat features and updates annually now, and since mobile passed them by in the dust they have to scramble desperately to get Windows 10 in the forefront of tech enthusiasts again. I think for developers it's working (or at least they're trying very hard). I'm kind of excited for built in VR functionality, ubuntu core (WSL) seems really promising for developers.
Windows 10 is amazing, and being able to pick and choose components is personally very freeing.
Not only do I wish they could rethink the Mac Pro trash can, I wish they could design the Mac Pro with Server Rack in mind.
As it stands now, when someone asks me what computer to buy I have to interrogate them on their exact usage pattern and then spend a couple of hours looking at all the different Apple products to see which one might serve them best. 10 years ago it was simple; you just want to send email, browse Facebook from home, get an iMac. If you wanted to compile code at Starbucks, get a MBP. Goofing off at the library, get a MB. Simple.
Even so, Apple to this day doesn't chase after every conceivable ecological niche in the market. They only sell two headless Mac models (ignoring internal component options). The Airs are likely on the way out, so their clash with the MacBook is likely just a temporary transitional thing. Many of the products you listed are actually just different generations of the same thing.
Adobe Premiere Pro? Avid? something else?
Works great with the Razer laptops though!
(BTW, you can't even buy any Mac with a decent GPU anymore, no matter what the form factor!)
The hard truth is that we pro folks aren't that lucrative. Pro users probably sit in the bottom of a smiling curve with high-volume consumer products on the one side, and high-revenue Enterprise on the other. To a company like Apple, pro users represent the worst of both worlds.
That's why you also see "media storage" companies like G-Technologies, who introduced pro products (like the late G-Speed) only to abandon that market for high-volume, low-touch consumer products like LaCie Rugged.
I want a new MBP with an nVidia GTX 1080 as much as the next guy, but I'm not holding my breath.
Signed
- A Mac Pro owner that is seriously considering getting something else.
To this day, I have a negative opinion of Microsoft for their questionable practices in the past and god knows they've been lambasted in the past for their general attitude (though it feels like this is starting to change). Apple on the other hand can totally afford to rehash their products from a few years ago, sit on a stash of gold, disappoint designer and programmers alike for years, leave Mac OS on a sidetrack and never has to face any kind of serious backlash.
It really says a lot about their marketing genius.
I seriously doubt that it simply has not occurred to anyone at Apple that not providing higher end GPUs and other features that various professions rely on will mean losing their business. Especially since the internet has been screaming that at them for a good while now.
I feel like an idiot. I multibox videogames and my $1,000 entry-level alienware frequently out performs this $5,500 art piece.
I need a machine that is large, powerful, and expandable. The Mac Pro isn't this.
I don't like Windows, but the only programs I'm going to use are Protools and Ableton Live. Just like on my gaming computer, which essentially just runs Steam (and games) I can deal with it.
For live sets, I'll keep using a Macbook Pro, because if one breaks I can buy another in any city in 5 minutes and I will know it will work almost immediately for what I need.
Been a mac user for 15 years. It was hard to make the jump but I came to the realisation Apple just doesn't care about my work and therefore my money anymore.
Phones are much more available (always with you) and personal (sometimes you don't want to share stuff with your whole household).
99% of us developers don't. Even if you have a lot of VMs.
I guess no one cares at Apple: if the hugest slice of revenue comes from phones and tablets...
due to the inherent bandwidth limits that Thunderbolt has as compared to the buss speeds of these GPU cards
There probably are applications that need every single GBps of the x16 connector, but just saying "bandwidth limitations" isn't sufficient - see also the common SLI setup which switches to x8/x8 if two cards are installed.
Why would they continue dumping money into refreshing Intel-based systems when they screwed them on 32GB of ram in the LPDDR4 thing on the new rMBP?
Can you imagine how annoyed the Apple people are that they can't sell you a $499 32gb ram upgrade along with your $1299 1500gb SSD upgrade on your $4299 computer?
Apple's future is ARM and to expect any more powerhouse Intel systems from them was folly even a year ago.