iMac Pro - coming soon!

In article , -hh
wrote:

Nope. It simply isn't "Rocket Science" difficult to go
model stuff, such as just how many peripheral drives I'd
need to add to a Mac Pro, mini or even iMac.

The simplest example being Time Machine - - if one wants
the merest level of redundant backups, that's going to be
two physical boxes on any of these systems, vs two empty
bays in a Mac Pro. From there, it is trivial to price
how much a Thunderbolt-2 or -3 external drive costs vs a
bare drive of the same capacity to calculate the "Apple Tax"
derived solely from form factor.

Case in point, a comparison from OWC:

flawed comparison.

Cheapest TB external drive they sell; price = $190:

time machine does *not* need a thunderbolt 2 drive, nor should the
drive be internal either.

a usb 3 drive is more than adequate, and a 4tb external usb 3 drive
sells for $100 or so.

more likely, a mac pro user would use a nas that they probably already
have.


Or, to be more realistic, a two bay by 4TB each external
for a mere $750:

or to be disingenuous, you mean.

In article , -hh
wrote:

... the vast majority of the macs apple sells are macbooks, ...

The MacBook Air is also way overdue for update.

the update is called the retina macbook and 13" macbook pro escape.

Nope.

nope right back. both are replacements for the aging macbook air.

This is tech, and prices classically go down over time, not up by 50%.

they also improved the product, giving it much better specs.

products with better specs cost more. no surprise there.

Notwithstanding the aging MBA and mini, Apple doesn't have any
Mac products for sale for under $1K ... indeed, none that are even
close (MB is $1299 starting - - that's 30% more).

so what?

Apple priced both of them wrong to be that.

they're selling rather well so they didn't price them wrong.

The fact that they're still selling "****loads" of MBA's shows otherwise.

you're assuming the other macbooks are not selling well.

apple said the new touchbar macbook is selling better than any other
previous macbook, so while the air is selling ****loads, the touchbar
macbook is selling multi****loads.

it only needs to sell well enough to justify keeping it around.

it's also *really* hard to make a macbook air with a retina display

Then don't. YA example of a solution in search of a problem.

if you don't consider a retina display to be important, then they *did*
update the macbook air.

you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.

(the upgrade that people want) that's the same thickness and has the
same battery run time as well as at the same price point as the
existing macbook air.

Keywords: same thickness, same battery, same price.

keywords: not possible.

adding a retina display will make it thicker and use more power, which
means it will need to have a bigger battery for the same run time,
which means a higher price as well as thicker and heavier.

the retina macbook was a complete redesign, with a core m initially to
fit the very tight power budget, but now there's an i5 and i7 version.

At $1300 to $1500 versus
$900 (although discounted to $829), that's a 40-50% jump and clearly
into another market segment.

the macbook air 13" starts at $999, not $900.

Nope.

nope right back.

you can't be that stupid.

Its $899 on Apple's own website:

yep, you are that stupid.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/M...ir-16ghz-dual-
core-intel-core-i5?afid=p238%7CscBG4ggBV-dc_mtid_1870765e38482_pcrid_522433117
30_&cid=aos-us-kwgo-pla-mac--slid--product-MJVE2LL/A

Availability: Out of stock
Originally released 2015

that's a refurb of *last* *year's* *model* and it's not even available
anyway.

major ****up on your part.

the macbook air starts at $999, exactly as i said:
https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/
Starting at $999

And discounted to $829 as of today at B&H:

that's b&h's choice and that price will go back up at some point, or,
they could be clearing stock because they know something about what
apple is going to do, in which case, when they're gone, they're gone.

the macbook 13" is $1150 at b&h today. that price will also go back up.

b&h has sales every so often on all sorts of stuff. you can't compare
sale prices with new prices, nor can you compare it with discontinued
items that aren't even available.

it's also slower than the
macbook pro escape and slightly bigger. still, if you can get one for
$829, that's a very good deal.

**because** its price puts it into a different market segment: the next
cheapest Mac notebook is $1299 ... a 57% higher price.

and has higher specs too.




The Apple touchbar is merely a touchscreen with a different marketing name.

From a UI principle the same points apply to both.

nonsense.


Now if it could only do something profoundly different ... hey, can
I use a thumbprint go certify a transaction, like I can on my iPhone?
Nope.

wrong.

Touch ID on Mac notebooks will eventually get to where Apple Pay is
on iPhones ... but it isn't really there today. Until Touch ID is accepted
for website orders at B&H, Amazon, etc, instead of merely Apple's small
garden of iTunes, App Store, etc - - it hasn't become a paradigm shift.

apple pay is accepted for website orders at b&h and many other sites.

wrong yet again.




as i said, should use it before bashing it.

Oh, grow up. One doesn't have to personally go visit the moon to know
that it is a dead & desolate place.

the problem is that you keep criticizing things that don't actually
exist.

first you say there's no touch id, except that there is, then you say
it won't work at b&h, except that it does.

you say gorilla arms is an issue, except that it's not because the
touchbar is in exactly the same place as the fkeys it replaced, so if
fkeys didn't cause gorilla arms (which they didn't), then neither would
the touchbar (and it doesn't).

not only is it clear you've never used it, but that you don't even know
much about it.


the touchbar macbooks have a touch id sensor and work quite well for
authenticating purchases in the app store, itunes store and apple pay
transactions in safari at apple or third party web sites. even logging
in can be done with a fingerprint.

touch id can also be used with third party apps, such as password
managers or any app that needs to authenticate.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207054

had you used a touchbar macbook, you'd have known it has touch id.

Its been out a year; can I go buy stuff at B&H with it today? Nope.

wrong again.

b&h has supported apple pay in safari since early this year, shortly
after the macbooks were released.

So it simply isn't a big paradigm shift: its just a poor man's
touch screen ... for which Apple is laughing all the way to the bank
because its cheaper than making a full touchscreen.

it's not a poor man's touch screen at all. not even close to correct.

Its 1/10th of an iPad and as such, the core hardware will be 1/10th
the cost (less, actually).

completely wrong.

the touchbar is essentially an apple watch with a really long display,
complete with a secure element, a t1 arm-based processor and running a
modified version of watch os.

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/791871966328320000
To elaborate: Touch Bar¹s T1 runs a watchOS ramdisk with a dfrd that
takes pixel buffers over USB and displays them with IOMobileFramebuffer
https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/791872723681239040
TL;DR Touch Bar runs watchOS, and macOS sends it framebuffer data
over USB. This presumably then relays multitouch events back to macOS.
https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/791873429750374400
So this T1 chip is a standalone ARM device running its own variant of
iOS, and managing the security of input devices (TouchID, camera, Bar)

And it isn't even all that profoundly new of an
idea: HP sold its version of it back in the mid-1980s.

not even remotely close to what apple has.

if you think the touchbar is the same as that, then you really have
*no* clue and aren't interested in facts.




and that it isn't being used
(yet) for secure financial transactions.

yes it is. see above.

or see below, apple pay in desktop safari:
https://support.apple.com/library/co...are/images/en_
US/applepay/macos-sierra-safari-lululemon-applepay.jpg

And is that JPG from within Apple's ecosystem or a fake?

it's a jpg from the link earlier in the post, which you obviously
didn't even bother to look at.

as i said, you should use it before bashing it.

Sure, it has potential, but
its time has yet to come.

the time is now.

Even though this first deployed in 2016, it still isn't at Amazon or B&H.

And ApplePay on the iPhone is still pedantically "here", but when one
actually goes to use it, you find that stores who have deployed it are
still the rare exception, not the rule.

complete nonsense.

apple pay is pretty much everywhere, other than most restaurants for
cultural reasons rather than technical reasons.

any pos terminal that's emv certified supports contactless, but some
merchants are stupid and intentionally disable that, which not only
prevents apple pay and android pay from working, but also prevents tap
to pay with a card too. some merchants are even dumber than that and
still use msd, but that's another topic.

i estimate around 70-80% of the merchants i visit support apple pay,
including my dentist. many cashiers say 'no' when asked because nobody
taught them about it, even though the store actually supports it and
are surprised to see it work.


The basic problem that Apple has right
now though is in their business model, because if they put it into
a separate USB keyboard, what stops an existing desktop Mac
owners to buy a new keyboard instead of a new Mac? Nothing,
if that's really what Apple wanted to do. Always follow the money.

that doesn't make any sense.

FYI, it assumes that the new keyboard wouldn't cost $1000.

obviously.

someone who wants a computer isn't going to buy a keyboard instead. it
does not make any sense, no matter what price the keyboard is.

but even if they did buy a touchbar keyboard instead of a new computer,
apple still retains a customer.

Does that help you figure it out, buttercup?

knock off the attitude.

if anyone needs to figure stuff out, it would be you.

you have *so* much wrong.

if someone is considering buying a new mac, they're not going to buy a
keyboard instead and call it a day.

Apparently, someone has forgotten about all of those Apple Fanboys who
constantly bragged about Macs longer lifespans.

macs do have longer lifespans.

apple goes well out of their way to support older hardware.


The Mac simply isn't a low profit commodity product to really justify
the
incredibly stretched out lifecycles. Apple simply no longer cares to
delight all of their Mac customers.

nonsense.

http://fortune.com/2016/11/02/apple-phil-schiller-macbook-pro/
Speaking to The Independent in an interview published this week,
Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said
that the new MacBook Pro is so far the most popular professional
notebook his company has ever released.

clearly ...

Nope. You cheated by moving the goalposts. Tsk, tsk.

i'm not moving a thing.

you said:
Apple simply no longer cares to
delight all of their Mac customers.

while apple can't delight *all* of their customers (no company can), ...

That's what you should have said the first time.

that *is* what i said the first time.

that's not moving anything and is *exactly* on topic.

Incorrect; you avoided the point the first time, and only after you were
called on it did you actually directly address the point.

incorrect. i addressed it the first time.

if apple was not delighting customers, as you claim they're not, sales
would go down, not up.

Raw sales aren't everything, because world population is up too .. so how
do you know that you've actually made a net advance?

Given their upside potential from their tiny overall marketshare vs Windows,
Apple has grossly underperformend in terms of marketshare. Profits, sure,
but as metrics, you've not differentiated between more customers versus
simply extracting more cash from the same (or fewer) customers.

apple has been growing marketshare faster than the industry itself,
which is actually shrinking.

*you* personally may not be delighted with what apple is building and
that's perfectly ok. no company can make a product that satisfies
everyone.

My personal discontent is what opened my eyes ... and why my holdings
of APPL stock are on the table now too for financial divestment.

it's your money. do what you want.

it's up over 1% today.






aperture was basically iphoto on steroids, which was not a good
strategy from the start, and they ran into a number of obstacles along
the way.

And that makes it impossible to fix ... how? Don't forget how Apple did
have an iPhoto -- Photos library conversion tool.

photos was a ground up rewrite, something long overdue. converting to
the new library format is not difficult. writing the new app is.

aperture was iphoto on steroids, and due to design decisions made for
iphoto 15 years ago, they ran into problems, some of which were not
solvable, and that's partly why they scrapped iphoto as well.

photos is *much* faster than iphoto ever was.






On the contrary: nospam probably does understand, but to defend
Apple always, to the point of irrationality is a higher 'fanboy'
priority.

like every company, apple's engineering resources are *not* unlimited,
so they have to prioritize.

But of course - - but that argument fails when you see that the Mac
Divisions is self-sustainingly profitable ... more so than the iPad group,
but gosh golly! The iPads got more regular hardware updates!
Follow the money (again): if it isn't being reinvested at the same rate
as other Divisions, then it is a cash cow death spiral.

wrong on that too.

the ipad mini 3 was essentially the same as an ipad mini 2 (same cpu,
etc.) but with a touch id sensor and minor differences in cellular band
coverage. that's not much of an update.

the ipad mini 4 came out two years ago and hasn't been updated since.
it uses an a8 processor, with the a11 a couple of weeks away from
release.

The mini has been getting updates on an average of every 322 days, and
the latest was only 160 days ago (source: MacRumors)

macrumors considers *any* change to be an update.

that update 160 days ago was a *price* *change*, not a hardware update.

it's still the same ipad mini 4 from 2 years ago. all they did was
discontinue versions under 128 gig of memory and slid the 128 gig into
the $399 price point, where the 32 gig used to be.

that's not an update. that's a price change. it's the exact same mini 4
that came out 2 years ago, just cheaper. as i said, it's still an a8
processor, which in a couple of weeks, will be 3 generations old when
the a11 is released.

the current ipad 5th gen is actually an update to the 4th gen from five
years ago. the air 2 was discontinued. on the other hand, it's less
expensive and is selling rather well. specs ain't everything.

Average = 367 days; currently 160 days since last update.

Plus there's now the iPad Pro. Average = 220 days & 80 days since last
update.

you don't understand what you're looking at.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_Pro
The 12.9-inch version of the iPad Pro was announced during an Apple
Special Event on September 9, 2015...

...The second generation of iPad Pro was announced on June 5, 2017 at
the 2017 WWDC

that's *nearly* *two* *years* between updates.

tl;dr - they're not updating ipads anywhere near as often as you claim.

... and sure, they're making nice notebooks, and yes, they're ~80% of
sales today

which is why they're a higher priority than the mac pro.

There's still a huge difference between "low" priority and "none".

which is why they didn't discontinue them. they're still on the list.



they haven't discontinued the mac mini and mac pro. they're simply
not a priority. eventually they'll be updated.

They're IMO unlikely to ship by this Christmas, which is pretty much
the deadline - - anything later than that is "Too Little, Too Late".

who set this mythical deadline??

The Market. Never heard of Osbourne?

the osborne effect is a myth.

yet another thing you don't understand.

osborne failed because of gross mismanagement and running out of money,
not because they pre-announced a successor.


The iMac Pro does appear to be a 'Hail Mary' attempt to salvage
some face

not really.

Then why hasn't it shipped?

because it's not done yet. duh.

the existing imac is their best selling desktop, so they decided to
make a pro version of it.

The announcement was clearly in response to their "We ****ed Up
the Mac Pro" bit back in April.

the imac pro has been in development since well before april, likely
starting some time in early 2016 (typical cycles are ~2 years).

And Apple NEVER does vaporware.

Until now, that is.

nonsense.

iphone, announced 6 months prior to its release.
ipad, announced 3 months prior to its release (4 months for cellular)
mac pro 2013, announced 8 months prior to its release.
apple watch, announced 7 months prior to its release.
intel transition, announced 7 months before first intel mac and more
than a year to complete.

and there's more. while not exactly vaporware, everyone knows that new
iphones are released every september.




In all likelihood, the desktop line will be cut yet again, with the mini
and Mac Pro becoming the mysterious "Modular" which is extremely
undefined - - even today, four months after the "We ****ed up" press
back in April - - and that does not bode well because it means that
Apple wants to do something "special" instead of KISS, and that
means it end up being an even more expensive Albatross than the
****ing Trash Can was.

in all likelihood, that is completely wrong.

Time will tell. Care to make a welchproof charity wager of $100 that
Apple's "solution" will not require some new Apple proprietary something
that will be a vendor lock?

they haven't before so why would they start now?

apple has said they have plans for the mini. they already said they
have plans for the pro. combining the two makes zero sense.

Where have they said - - explicitly - - that the two won't be combined?

i didn't say they did. i said they have stated they have plans for the
mini & pro.

i also said that combining them makes no sense, and it doesn't.

why would anyone combine a $400 mini with a ~$3000 mac pro into one
model? it's absurd.


TL;DR summary: I used to be long, but my APPL Stock is now also
on my "chopping block" watch list to sell before its too late. Apple
is doing pretty well with iOS & Services, but that's structurally risky.

it's also what's growing rapidly.

the future is mobile, not the desktop.

We will always need trucks.

nowhere near as many as we used to, and for more specialized tasks.



Post #3:


so while you 'can' get a 5k system on the pc side, it's going to be
clunky and more expensive.

Unlikely that it will be as clunky as the current gen Mac Pro:

https://www.cultofmac.com/235224/the-sad-truth-about-expansion-on-the-new-mac-pro-image/

...and add "Dongle-Gate" to this for all of the laptops. Good thing
they only cost like $2 each, right? /S

the reality is that dongles are not required.

only those who don't actually have the product whine about dongles.

as i said, you should use it before bashing it.

Nope. It simply isn't "Rocket Science" difficult to go model stuff, such as just
how many peripheral drives I'd need to add to a Mac Pro, mini or even iMac.

The simplest example being Time Machine - - if one wants the merest level
of redundant backups, that's going to be two physical boxes on any of these
systems, vs two empty bays in a Mac Pro. From there, it is trivial to price
how much a Thunderbolt-2 or -3 external drive costs vs a bare drive of the
same capacity to calculate the "Apple Tax" derived solely from form factor.

time machine doesn't need a thunderbolt 2 drive and certainly not a
thunderbolt 3 drive.

it's also not an apple tax, since thunderbolt is an industry standard
and the macs support usb 3, which is much cheaper, and for most
external drives , not the limiting factor.

On Monday, August 28, 2017 at 2:12:54 PM UTC-4, nospam wrote:
-hh wrote:

... the vast majority of the macs apple sells are macbooks, ...

The MacBook Air is also way overdue for update.

the update is called the retina macbook and 13" macbook pro escape.

Nope.

nope right back. both are replacements for the aging macbook air.

This is tech, and prices classically go down over time, not up by 50%.

they also improved the product, giving it much better specs.
products with better specs cost more. no surprise there.

IIRC, Dvorak said years ago, "the machine you want always costs $5K"

However, the PC technology has effectively plateaued, as it has
reached the point of "good enough" rather than clambering for
more power as it was in the 1990s. As such, the market response
has been the prices have been in a decline. Particularly when
one looks outside of Apple, the mainstream machine no longer
costs $2500 ... or even in many cases, $1000. It has primarily
been for this reason that Apple "owns" the over-$1K segment:
the average PC for the average user no longer costs that much
in the commodity-centric Windows market because the customers
have forced cost savings to be passed along to said consumer.

Notwithstanding the aging MBA and mini, Apple doesn't have any
Mac products for sale for under $1K ... indeed, none that are even
close (MB is $1299 starting - - that's 30% more).

so what?

Consumers actually pay attention to how much things cost; Film at 11.

Like it or not, cost is a strong differentiator for market segments.
Its why you don't find any new Porsches for sale for less than the
$33.6K average US new car retail price, as well as no $500 Macs,
but you do find Hondas and PCs in these lanes and they sell because
they successfully meet consumer's primary needs.



Apple priced both of them wrong to be that.

they're selling rather well so they didn't price them wrong.

The fact that they're still selling "****loads" of MBA's shows otherwise.

you're assuming the other macbooks are not selling well.

Incorrect: I'm merely illustrating how _your_ claim does
not logically support _your_ own argument.


apple said the new touchbar macbook is selling better than any other
previous macbook, so while the air is selling ****loads, the touchbar
macbook is selling multi****loads.

Apple says lots of things ... and then doesn't provide the hard
data for independent confirmation.

Plus if you want a new 15" MacBook Pro, Apple provides no real
choice in the matter: you pay for the "Touchbar Tax" even if you
don't want it.

Similarly, the non-touchbar 13" MBP is a gimped machine. Even if
you buy all of the upgrades, it still isn't the equal of a TB 13".


it only needs to sell well enough to justify keeping it around.

"****loads" was your claim - - and now you're backing away from that.


it's also *really* hard to make a macbook air with a retina display

Then don't. YA example of a solution in search of a problem.

if you don't consider a retina display to be important, then they *did*
update the macbook air.

Incorrect, because the 1.8GHz was previously sold. Apple simply
discontinued the 1.6GHz configuration because that slower CPU
effectively went out of supply.


(the upgrade that people want) that's the same thickness and has the
same battery run time as well as at the same price point as the
existing macbook air.

Keywords: same thickness, same battery, same price.

keywords: not possible.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

adding a retina display will make it thicker and use more power, which
means it will need to have a bigger battery for the same run time,
which means a higher price as well as thicker and heavier.

But one doesn't utterly need a retina display to read email texts,
nor many other productivity tasks. As such, not everyone needs it
and thus, there is a market for the thinner-instead-of-retina, etc.

You're failing in the "Better is the Enemy of Good Enough" paradigm.


the retina macbook was a complete redesign, with a core m initially to
fit the very tight power budget, but now there's an i5 and i7 version.

Just as how I don't need a 5K desktop display, there's also customers
who simply do not need a retina display either. Just because they're
pretty does not mean that everyone is going to be willing to accept
its cost & performance trade-offs.


At $1300 to $1500 versus
$900 (although discounted to $829), that's a 40-50% jump and clearly
into another market segment.

the macbook air 13" starts at $999, not $900.

Nope.

nope right back.

you can't be that stupid.

Its $899 on Apple's own website:

yep, you are that stupid.

My apologies for mistakenly citing the older 1.6GHz version;
I should have finished the morning coffee.

But despite you trying to make a big deal out of this
so-called '****up', you failed to dispute that my point
still holds: even at "only" a 30% difference, the MBA
sells "****loads" despite its lower hardware specs.
This illustrates that the Capitalistic Marketplace has
voted with its wallet, demonstrating that they're
effectively in two distinct market segments.


it's also slower than the
macbook pro escape and slightly bigger. still, if you can get one for
$829, that's a very good deal.

**because** its price puts it into a different market segment: the next
cheapest Mac notebook is $1299 ... a 57% higher price.

and has higher specs too.

"Better is the Enemy of Good Enough" --- which is why this:

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/average-windows-laptop-costs-456-down-14-percent-in-24-months

https://www.statista.com/statistics/203759/average-selling-price-of-desktop-pcs-worldwide/



The Apple touchbar is merely a touchscreen with a different marketing name.

From a UI principle the same points apply to both.

nonsense.

Gosh, how *convincing* you are!


Now if it could only do something profoundly different ... hey, can
I use a thumbprint go certify a transaction, like I can on my iPhone?
Nope.

wrong.

Touch ID on Mac notebooks will eventually get to where Apple Pay is
on iPhones ... but it isn't really there today. Until Touch ID is accepted
for website orders at B&H, Amazon, etc, instead of merely Apple's small
garden of iTunes, App Store, etc - - it hasn't become a paradigm shift.

apple pay is accepted for website orders at b&h and many other sites.
wrong yet again.

On their mobile app, sure...but we've been talking about the Mac.
Ditto for Amazon and a couple of other large online retailers.

In any event, having to enter in my CC details onto B&H on an
average of ~6x/year isn't really going to result in any sort
of huge time savings for me...even if we argue that it saves
me 5 minutes, that's 30min/year, which at a KISS direct labor
rate of $50/hr means that it's time-until-payback is...20 years.

as i said, should use it before bashing it.

Oh, grow up. One doesn't have to personally go visit the moon to know
that it is a dead & desolate place.

the problem is that you keep criticizing things that don't actually
exist.

The touchbar *still* doesn't exist on desktop Macs.


you say gorilla arms is an issue, except that it's not because the
touchbar is in exactly the same place as the fkeys it replaced, so if
fkeys didn't cause gorilla arms (which they didn't), then neither would
the touchbar (and it doesn't).

Incorrect. My point is that there are UI factor parallels, so the
historical criticism of the first should apply to the second,
and your response has been a vacuous "no". That's why the
structure of the above is "..so if...then...".


not only is it clear you've never used it, but that you don't
even know much about it.

It still doesn't exist on Mac desktops.

And from what I've read on it in product reviews, I've not seen
any positive indications that it has meaningful potential to
change my life such as through more productive workflows.
Until there's tangible evidence that it is valued *and* germane,
it simply fails to be an adequately differentiated product
of value for my interests.


the touchbar macbooks have a touch id sensor and work quite well for
authenticating purchases in the app store, itunes store and apple pay
transactions in safari at apple or third party web sites. even logging
in can be done with a fingerprint.

touch id can also be used with third party apps, such as password
managers or any app that needs to authenticate.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207054

had you used a touchbar macbook, you'd have known it has touch id.

Its been out a year; can I go buy stuff at B&H with it today? Nope.

wrong again.

b&h has supported apple pay in safari since early this year, shortly
after the macbooks were released.

And Amazon? Adorama? And so on?


So it simply isn't a big paradigm shift: its just a poor man's
touch screen ... for which Apple is laughing all the way to the bank
because its cheaper than making a full touchscreen.

it's not a poor man's touch screen at all. not even close to correct.

Its 1/10th of an iPad and as such, the core hardware will be 1/10th
the cost (less, actually).

completely wrong.

Oh, so then the touchbar display is physically LARGER than an iPad?

the touchbar is essentially an apple watch with a really long display,
complete with a secure element, a t1 arm-based processor and running a
modified version of watch os.

Which illustrates even more "stealing from the parts bin", which
drives down Apple's actual fab costs even further...reinforcing
my point.




And it isn't even all that profoundly new of an
idea: ... sold its version of it back in the mid-1980s.

not even remotely close to what apple has.

Oh really? So then you can immediately name the product
that I'm referring to, without even any prompting of
the company name at the time (recused from the above).
Have at it then: name that product without peeking.


and that it isn't being used
(yet) for secure financial transactions.

yes it is. see above.

or see below, apple pay in desktop safari:
https://support.apple.com/library/co...are/images/en_
US/applepay/macos-sierra-safari-lululemon-applepay.jpg

And is that JPG from within Apple's ecosystem or a fake?

it's a jpg from the link earlier in the post, which you obviously
didn't even bother to look at.

Of course not, because most of the crap that you post is crap.


as i said, you should use it before bashing it.

Sure, it has potential, but
its time has yet to come.

the time is now.

Even though this first deployed in 2016, it still isn't at Amazon or B&H.

And ApplePay on the iPhone is still pedantically "here", but when one
actually goes to use it, you find that stores who have deployed it are
still the rare exception, not the rule.

complete nonsense.

apple pay is pretty much everywhere, other than most restaurants for
cultural reasons rather than technical reasons.

Maybe in your neck of the woods, but not the places I've been.
I've gotten pretty tired of asking about Apple Pay because of
just how many "I don't knows" and "No's" and "Let's Try {failed}".


any pos terminal that's emv certified supports contactless, but some
merchants are stupid and intentionally disable that, which not only
prevents apple pay and android pay from working, but also prevents tap
to pay with a card too. some merchants are even dumber than that and
still use msd, but that's another topic.

Oh, so it all works perfectly ... except that there's "stupid
merchants" everywhere who have it disabled - - gosh, you've once
again accidentally confirmed the point I was making. In the end,
the consumer doesn't give a damn about the details for why
something doesn't work ... all they care is the pragmatic bottom
line of if it worked, or not.


i estimate around 70-80% of the merchants i visit support apple pay,
including my dentist. many cashiers say 'no' when asked because nobody
taught them about it, even though the store actually supports it and
are surprised to see it work.

Yay, you.

The basic problem that Apple has right
now though is in their business model, because if they put it into
a separate USB keyboard, what stops an existing desktop Mac
owners to buy a new keyboard instead of a new Mac? Nothing,
if that's really what Apple wanted to do. Always follow the money.

that doesn't make any sense.

FYI, it assumes that the new keyboard wouldn't cost $1000.

obviously.

It should be, but I didn't make that point explicit and
you weren't getting my point.


someone who wants a computer isn't going to buy a keyboard instead. it
does not make any sense, no matter what price the keyboard is.

But what about the customer who wants the feature, but
who doesn't necessarily need a new computer yet? That's
the point I was making.

but even if they did buy a touchbar keyboard instead of a
new computer, apple still retains a customer.

It depends on if Apple really is thinking strategically,
instead of merely the next Quarter's profits. If Apple
is only thinking short term, they'll obstruct old Macs
from being able to use a new touchbar keyboard.


Does that help you figure it out, buttercup?

knock off the attitude.

You started it, hypocrite.

if anyone needs to figure stuff out, it would be you.

Hey "buttercup", here's YA example of your Ad Hominem behavior.


if someone is considering buying a new mac, they're not
going to buy keyboard instead and call it a day.

Apparently, someone has forgotten about all of those Apple
Fanboys who constantly bragged about Macs longer lifespans.

macs do have longer lifespans.

apple goes well out of their way to support older hardware.

So is Apple going to allow old Macs to use a new touchbar
keyboard .. or will they contrive some obstruction, to try
to coerce customers into earlier Mac replacements?

I know: we don't know.

But time will tell...and Apple's choice will telegraph a
message regarding their attitude towards their Mac customers.



The Mac simply isn't a low profit commodity
product to really justify the
incredibly stretched out lifecycles. Apple
simply no longer cares to
delight all of their Mac customers.

nonsense.

http://fortune.com/2016/11/02/apple-phil-schiller-macbook-pro/
Speaking to The Independent in an interview published this week,
Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said
that the new MacBook Pro is so far the most popular professional
notebook his company has ever released.

clearly ...

Nope. You cheated by moving the goalposts. Tsk, tsk.

i'm not moving a thing.

you said:
Apple simply no longer cares to
delight all of their Mac customers.

while apple can't delight *all* of their customers (no company can), ...

That's what you should have said the first time.

that *is* what i said the first time.

Not when you selectively cherrypicked the TB MBP and effectively
ignored the actual desktop MP & mini hardware of contention.

that's not moving anything and is *exactly* on topic.

Incorrect; you avoided the point the first time, and only after you were
called on it did you actually directly address the point.

incorrect. i addressed it the first time.

if apple was not delighting customers, as you claim they're not, sales
would go down, not up.

Raw sales aren't everything, because world population is up too .. so how
do you know that you've actually made a net advance?

Given their upside potential from their tiny overall marketshare vs Windows,
Apple has grossly underperformend in terms of marketshare. Profits, sure,
but as metrics, you've not differentiated between more customers versus
simply extracting more cash from the same (or fewer) customers.

apple has been growing marketshare faster than the industry itself,
which is actually shrinking.

Mostly true, but that point doesn't answer the question I raised.


*you* personally may not be delighted with what apple is building and
that's perfectly ok. no company can make a product that satisfies
everyone.

My personal discontent is what opened my eyes ... and why my holdings
of APPL stock are on the table now too for financial divestment.

it's your money. do what you want.

But of course.


it's up over 1% today.

As if watching hour-to-hour noise means anything.
Ditto for day-to-day too. Everything in context.



aperture was basically iphoto on steroids, which was not a good
strategy from the start, and they ran into a number of obstacles along
the way.

And that makes it impossible to fix ... how? Don't forget how Apple did
have an iPhoto -- Photos library conversion tool.

photos was a ground up rewrite, something long overdue. converting to
the new library format is not difficult. writing the new app is.

aperture was iphoto on steroids, and due to design decisions made for
iphoto 15 years ago, they ran into problems, some of which were not
solvable, and that's partly why they scrapped iphoto as well.

And that observation obstructs Apple from ever being able to write
a new & improved version of Aperture ... how?


photos is *much* faster than iphoto ever was.

Of course its faster: its customer UI image data management
tools are crap, so its using the paradigm of "do less with less"



On the contrary: nospam probably does understand, but to defend
Apple always, to the point of irrationality is a higher 'fanboy'
priority.

like every company, apple's engineering resources are *not* unlimited,
so they have to prioritize.

But of course - - but that argument fails when you see that the Mac
Divisions is self-sustainingly profitable ... more so than the iPad group,
but gosh golly! The iPads got more regular hardware updates!
Follow the money (again): if it isn't being reinvested at the same rate
as other Divisions, then it is a cash cow death spiral.

wrong on that too.

the ipad mini 3 was essentially the same as an ipad mini 2 (same cpu,
etc.) but with a touch id sensor and minor differences in cellular band
coverage. that's not much of an update.

the ipad mini 4 came out two years ago and hasn't been updated since.
it uses an a8 processor, with the a11 a couple of weeks away from
release.

The mini has been getting updates on an average of every 322 days, and
the latest was only 160 days ago (source: MacRumors)

macrumors considers *any* change to be an update.

that update 160 days ago was a *price* *change*, not a hardware update.

it's still the same ipad mini 4 from 2 years ago. all they did was
discontinue versions under 128 gig of memory and slid the 128 gig into
the $399 price point, where the 32 gig used to be.

that's not an update. that's a price change. it's the exact same mini 4
that came out 2 years ago, just cheaper. as i said, it's still an a8
processor, which in a couple of weeks, will be 3 generations old when
the a11 is released.

Even so, it is then 719 days since a "significant" refresh, which
is still significantly more recent than both the mini (1047 days)
and Mac Pro (1348 days) ...oh, and the MBA too (903 days).


the current ipad 5th gen is actually an update to the 4th gen from five
years ago. the air 2 was discontinued. on the other hand, it's less
expensive and is selling rather well. specs ain't everything.

Average = 367 days; currently 160 days since last update.

Plus there's now the iPad Pro. Average = 220 days & 80 days since last
update.

you don't understand what you're looking at.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_Pro
The 12.9-inch version of the iPad Pro was announced during an Apple
Special Event on September 9, 2015...

...The second generation of iPad Pro was announced on June 5, 2017 at
the 2017 WWDC

that's *nearly* *two* *years* between updates.

That's the 12.9" iPad pro. The above is the data for
the 10.5" iPad pro.


tl;dr - they're not updating ipads anywhere near as often as you claim.

Incorrect: I'm merely using MR's data "as is", based on the
criteria that they use. You're trying to use a different criteria,
but even when this is examined, your Mac updates aren't as good
as they would have otherwise appeared either:

MBA (903 days): 2.47 years & counting
mini (1047 days): 2.87 years & counting
Mac Pro (1348 days): 3.7 years & counting*

* - based on Apple's April remarks, isn't even expected until
2018, which parametrically would be lifecycle replacement
intervals of 1473 to 1838 days (4.04 to 5.04 years).



... and sure, they're making nice notebooks, and
yes, they're ~80% of sales today

which is why they're a higher priority than the mac pro.

There's still a huge difference between "low" priority and "none".

which is why they didn't discontinue them. they're still on the list.

Being on the list doesn't automatically mean that they're
still in actual production. For all we know, the production
line could have ended two years ago, and everything they're
selling today is simply existing (excess) inventory stock.

I don't have any sources which substantiate that these items'
production lines are still running ... do you? If not, don't
assume that they are. **Especially** when your claim is based
on them having a very low sales volume.

they haven't discontinued the mac mini and mac pro. they're
simply not a priority. eventually they'll be updated.

They're IMO unlikely to ship by this Christmas, which is pretty much
the deadline - - anything later than that is "Too Little, Too Late".

who set this mythical deadline??

The Market. Never heard of Osbourne?

the osborne effect is a myth.

yet another thing you don't understand.

Sorry buttercup, you're wrong.

osborne failed because of gross mismanagement and running out of money,
not because they pre-announced a successor.

Actually, Osborne inadvertently created a Natural Experiment
which because there were multiple contributing factors, the
two effects were conflated and can't be definitively separated.

In any event, even though the mismanagement element has
become an item of academic study, the initial - - and the
broad populist understanding of the term - - is restricted
to just the first part (vaporware announcement). Given how
Microsoft later used Vaporware announcements to freeze out
competitors, the effect has been definitely proven to exist;
the only thing that remains unknown (and which will be forever
unknowable) is what the percentage breakdown was for Osborne
specifically.


The iMac Pro does appear to be a 'Hail Mary' attempt
to salvage some face

not really.

Then why hasn't it shipped?

because it's not done yet. duh.

They've had years to sort out the Mac Pro's thermal design
flaw ... and they've had months since their public confession,
so what's taking them so long?

Apple's rate of net profits (~$10B/q) translates into a free
cash flow of $100M (~400 Man-Years)**PER DAY**, so there simply
isn't any viable "inadequate resources" excuse to be made.


the existing imac is their best selling desktop, so they
decided to make a pro version of it.

The announcement was clearly in response to their "We ****ed Up
the Mac Pro" bit back in April.

the imac pro has been in development since well before april, likely
starting some time in early 2016 (typical cycles are ~2 years).

And Apple NEVER does vaporware.

Until now, that is.

nonsense.

iphone, announced 6 months prior to its release.

Had to, because of FCC regulations.

ipad, announced 3 months prior to its release (4 months for cellular)

Ditto.

mac pro 2013, announced 8 months prior to its release.

They were in similar straights of bad press from neglect; did
you not see the "We want a new Mac Pro" pages in social media?


apple watch, announced 7 months prior to its release.

Another FCC registration device? I'd have to doublecheck.

intel transition, announced 7 months before first intel mac and more
than a year to complete.

Necessary for software transition ... and if memory serves, the
reference designs were available much earlier than 7 months.


and there's more. while not exactly vaporware, everyone knows
that new iphones are released every september.

Yes, these are historical observation of patterns, but that's
precisely why the replacement lifecycles for the mini & Mac Pro
are considered to be grossly behind schedule.


In all likelihood, the desktop line will be cut yet again, with the mini
and Mac Pro becoming the mysterious "Modular" which is extremely
undefined - - even today, four months after the "We ****ed up" press
back in April - - and that does not bode well because it means that
Apple wants to do something "special" instead of KISS, and that
means it end up being an even more expensive Albatross than the
****ing Trash Can was.

in all likelihood, that is completely wrong.

Time will tell. Care to make a welchproof charity wager of $100 that
Apple's "solution" will not require some new Apple proprietary something
that will be a vendor lock?

they haven't before so why would they start now?

Where "haven't before" excludes a half dozen video ports, which
most recently has included Thunderbolt 1 & 2, and TB-over USB-3.1


apple has said they have plans for the mini. they already said they
have plans for the pro. combining the two makes zero sense.

Where have they said - - explicitly - - that the two won't be combined?

i didn't say they did. i said they have stated they have plans for the
mini & pro.

Which is a nothing statement on your part.

i also said that combining them makes no sense, and it doesn't.

Try listening to yourself: you have noted that they're both
have very low sales, and that this is why they've not been
updated, so then why would this low sales volume *not* be a
motivation to streamline production from two into one?

why would anyone combine a $400 mini with a ~$3000 mac pro
into one model? it's absurd.

See above.

TL;DR summary: I used to be long, but my APPL Stock is now also
on my "chopping block" watch list to sell before its too late. Apple
is doing pretty well with iOS & Services, but that's structurally risky.

it's also what's growing rapidly.

the future is mobile, not the desktop.

We will always need trucks.

nowhere near as many as we used to, and for more specialized tasks.

But its still not a zero trucks.

And the irony here is that roughly a decade ago, Apple's
sales volume was a fraction of what it is today, yet
on the desktop, there were 20% more basic desktop models
variants than today (and more Apple displays too).
And sure, notebooks are a factor in this, but their
model count hasn't changed a lot: pre-Intel, there were
five (12", 14" iBook, 12", 15" 17" PB) and while the
immediately post-intel it dropped to three (MB, 1", 17"),
the 11" & 13" MBA's follows, restoring the count to five,
which has dropped today to just four.



Post #3:


so while you 'can' get a 5k system on the pc side, it's going to be
clunky and more expensive.

Unlikely that it will be as clunky as the current gen Mac Pro:

https://www.cultofmac.com/235224/the-sad-truth-about-expansion-on-the-new-mac-pro-image/

...and add "Dongle-Gate" to this for all of the laptops. Good thing
they only cost like $2 each, right? /S

the reality is that dongles are not required.

only those who don't actually have the product whine about dongles.

as i said, you should use it before bashing it.

Nope. It simply isn't "Rocket Science" difficult to go model stuff, such as just
how many peripheral drives I'd need to add to a Mac Pro, mini or even iMac.

The simplest example being Time Machine - - if one wants the merest level
of redundant backups, that's going to be two physical boxes on any of these
systems, vs two empty bays in a Mac Pro. From there, it is trivial to price
how much a Thunderbolt-2 or -3 external drive costs vs a bare drive of the
same capacity to calculate the "Apple Tax" derived solely from form factor.

time machine doesn't need a thunderbolt 2 drive and certainly not a
thunderbolt 3 drive.

True, Time Machine per se does not routinely need that much speed,
until you actually have to run a restore. And another trade-off
aspect is that the equipment is easier to manage when they're all
basically the same.

However, TM was being cited as just the most basic and common
use case example.

Similarly, while USB 3 will certainly be a "good enough" for some,
its theoretical bandwidth is 625MB/sec, while some folks have
already had desktop systems which equaled (or outperformed)
this performance level in the real world for the past half decade.
As such, their new hardware would need to be justified by being
even faster. M.2 is one such interface example, and wouldn't be
a stretch at all to adapt from current Mac notebooks into a
next gen Mac Pro desktop. Oh wait ... did I happen to hear that
Apple isn't using the M.2 standard, but their own proprietary variant?


it's also not an apple tax, since thunderbolt is an industry
standard and the macs support usb 3, which is much cheaper,
and for most external drives , not the limiting factor.

Since Windows PCs still sell towers with internal HDD bays,
to try to claim that that this isn't primarily an "Apple Only"
additionally incurred expense is logically problematic.


-hh

On Monday, August 28, 2017 at 2:12:54 PM UTC-4, nospam wrote:
-hh wrote:

Nope. It simply isn't "Rocket Science" difficult to go
model stuff, such as just how many peripheral drives I'd
need to add to a Mac Pro, mini or even iMac.

The simplest example being Time Machine - - if one wants
the merest level of redundant backups, that's going to be
two physical boxes on any of these systems, vs two empty
bays in a Mac Pro. From there, it is trivial to price
how much a Thunderbolt-2 or -3 external drive costs vs a
bare drive of the same capacity to calculate the "Apple Tax"
derived solely from form factor.

Case in point, a comparison from OWC:

flawed comparison.

Every comparison will be flawed somehow. What's your specific complaint?

Cheapest TB external drive they sell; price = $190:

time machine does *not* need a thunderbolt 2 drive, nor should the
drive be internal either.

See above: "The simplest example being Time Machine".
That means that TM is not the SOLE reason for data storage.


a usb 3 drive is more than adequate, and a 4tb external usb 3 drive
sells for $100 or so.

True, one can find all sorts of unreliable crap in the
USB external HDD market. A solid Enterprise Class 4TB
will run you $130-$150 bare, plus the enclosure.


more likely, a mac pro user would use a nas that they
probably already have.

Been there, done that. Have you already forgotten how
Diesel suggested that just a week or so ago and got beaten
up by both of us?



Or, to be more realistic, a two bay by 4TB each external
for a mere $750:

or to be disingenuous, you mean.

Nope. When I first started to sort out what the market
offered to replace for my current configuration (equal, not
better), the answer to the lack-of-internal-bays was that
I'd need at least two Promise Technology "Pegasus" R4 units
or equivalent. FYI, having two R4's was superior to having
a single R6 or R8 unit from both reliability and configuration.
That's what I was alluding to with the $3K unit that I identified
that was *less* capable than what a 2012 cheesegrater can do.

While I've not looked around lately for newly available
alternate sources, the Promise R4 (with 4 * 2TB) sells today
for $1350 each. Times two would be $2700. Now I wouldn't
consider this to be an optimal solution, but understand also
that this is merely an approximation of maintaining the status
quo, as its NOT really an upgrade over my current hardware.

And with a budget of $2700, looking at bare 6-8TB drives to
drop into a tower, those run in the $200-$300 range, which
means that one could pick up ~20TB while save nearly $2K per seat.


-hh