[Gamefan]

I really feel that Apple is trying to reposition themselves as a two tier provider. One tier for professional use (photographers, video editors, publishers, programmers). The other tier being home based professionals (aspiring photographers, home video creators, YouTubers, etc.).

Much like how SGI was, Apple will continue to sell these products as high as the market will bare.

Just my two cents.

[Shiunbird]

Well... I would love to be able to justify a new machine.
I still remember getting one of the old Flight Simulators, I think it was 2000 or 2002. Compatible with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP. And MSFT made so that Windows 95 ran on a 386, even though it was a dog (my poor cousin really suffered).

Now we have the opposite. Old hardware is fast enough, but no one bothers. Take my money, I'd pay the 300-400 bucks to get a new version of macos for my classic Mac Pro.

Now yes, let's say I assault the piggy bank and pay 4-5K for the last Intel Mac Pro. For how long am I still going to get security patches? A year? Two? Stop coercing me to throw good hardware in the trash bin. Let me pay for the software.

Or Windows 11 and the bizarre artificial system requirements...

What happens next? "Oh, we are so ecological, saving the planet, trying to be carbon neutral"
bite me.

I still remember that I could not properly run fruitloops in my Pentium 500 and my friend could on his 800. It actually made a difference.
Now? Unless you are rendering stuff or compiling very complex code (which you could arguably still run overnight).

Anyway, I repeat myself. No one wants my money.

[jwhat]

Hi Shiunbird,

yes agree, "desktop" hardware like Mac Pro 2019 is still well capable of supporting vast majority of use cases.

Apple is driving change in desktops to align with its iPhone / iPad cycle (~ 1 year) which is all about the camera, battery life, portability and fashion.

Not sure what the cycle time is on HP / Dell Desktops/Notebooks.

Given current level of compute, having desktop/notebook cycle of no more than 2-3 years would make sense.

Conversely on server/cloud side there is no such thing as "too" fast, as all available capacity gets consumed pretty quickly.

i am with you, if Apple (& ISV) continued to support Intel macOS for next 10 years then I doubt I will need to update my Mac Pro 2019 in that time, as my prior Mac Pro 2012 was only forced out of service due to eol of OS and ISV support.

Looking at the sales trend: https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/con.../worldwide

Maybe the flattening in demand will bring some sanity to the cycle time and built in obsolescence model
or
maybe AI hype will send all and sundry to throw their existing machines in bin and run off to get new ones !

BTW I like the Linux/Ubuntu LTS SW model, it is really helpful to software development.

Cheers from Oz,

jwhat/John

[Shiunbird]

I just don't trust Apple anymore. I got REALLY burnt when they discontinued Aperture, was not at all pleased when they canned Shake, and I just can't trust that I will be able to keep operating my equipment as Apple moves forward with the enshittiPadfication of macos.

It''s not my full time job, but I take photographs professionally (a couple clients per month) and, for example, I can download and bundle metadata from my film camera using a USB data dumper that connects to the camera serial port, allowing me to update the scanned files with EXIF and important tracking and copyright information.

The company that made the USB device went bust. The software already does not work in mojave, but works under Windows 10. So I am starting to understand companies that just freeze their environment instead of upgrading. There is no newer version of my film camera - Nikon halted production 2 years ago. So what I am to do? Keep my Mac Pro with mojave and Windows 10, and use a separate qubes os device for Internet tasks. Hopefully the metadata software will keep working long in Windows 11, so I can run a VM for that if necessary.

I rent a garage with my band and we spent a few years installing audio interfaces and other kind of equipment. The vendor decided to stop supporting later releases of Windows 10 and macos. Am I going to throw away 5000 USD of completely functional audio interfaces? Last time I flew home, I helped a friend who is a professional musician in a recording session. I spoke to the studio owner, who was rocking a classic Mac Pro, and I heard the same story. "This studio cost 1 year of my gross income. It is insured. The day it breaks or catches fire, I will replace it. Otherwise, it stays as it is. I'd love to get a new Mac Pro and play with the newest Logic, but ¾ of my hardware is not supported anymore."

So, well, thanks, can't run 32 bit software anymore (and other incompatibilities). Some people can afford upgrading. Maybe I would. But it just does not exist, and I can't bring myself to have a personal financial loss for someone else to have a private profit. This is bloody rent. I'd be honestly happy to pay a few hundred bucks for a new release of the drivers adding support to the new OSs a few releases newer to the originally supported. As I'd rather pay a few hundred bucks for a new release of macos, one that would support the devices I have.

But the world is addicted to "free".

I am ok to pay someone to provide me a service. We shake hands, done deal. Paying extra money for absolutely no gain is something I find very hard to accept.

BY THE FUCKING WAAAAY
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/...scription/

[robespierre]

BY THE FUCKING WAAAAY
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/...scription/

Before the antitrust judgment against Ma Bell, you had to rent your telephone. OK, if they were more clever, they would have called it a subscription to a "forever" telephone but it's obviously the same thing, no matter what newspeak is used. With "Cloud" software and "subscriptions" for option packages in cars, the economy is circling back to the old rentier-capitalism mode of accumulation.

[weblacky]

Without going too far down the rabbit hole I will agree that MacOS should really turn paid again. I too would prefer to be in a longer platform support if they just asked for money occasionally. Now that there's been the architecture switch Intel will be quickly pushed off the board just as fast as PowerPC was pushed off the board.

As a daily driver I still enjoy using the newest macOS software along with brew and GCC and even CLang through Xcode, occasionally. But I understand that for a business workflow I wouldn't trust my Mac simply because there's no directive in Apple to keep old things running, old software compatibility, old API's, and even hardware that can run just fine is retired based on dates or what generation of graphics processor has.

Assuming I was making money with these things and I didn't have anything too specialized I probably would still try to use macOS whenever I could as the basic business administrative platform but I already have some equipment that's Windows only and it's getting more so as I'm assembling a workflow. Then again that's where it's sort of always been, so I don't mind going back as long as there is in fact a path for me.

The inability to run Intel Vs on the newest Apples Macs hit me incredibly hard. I used to treat my laptop and desktop as an all in one machine that could do anything and run everything. It even justified the high cost and personal expense. Now that I can't do that anymore I'm relegating Macs more toward treating them like Chromebooks, that just have enough power to perform administrative and daily tasks well but I don't need awesome power anymore because I can't do anything with them that needs awesome power. I used to run two or three VMWare Fusion VMs at a time, back then I would need that much power. Now a nice spec MacBook Air would do the job, no reason for a MacBook Pro or anything like that, what the heck am I going run that needs that much power? My options became so much more limited. Until Microsoft has a native booting Windows OS for Apple silicon we're in a bad way. It also means that there may be no second life for Apple machines anymore. Once the MacOS support is two out of date you can't run Linux on them and you can't run Windows on them, so they truly become trash even though they still might work fine.

[Shiunbird]

Yea...

I used to have a full-native, macos-only workflow, back when I first migrated to macs with my first job (dual booting 10.3 and OS 9).

But since Apple started going full-rubbish, I ended up getting to the point where I don't require the newest release of macos for nothing. I boot into macos for running my scanner and my printer, or when I need to look at my old Aperture libraries. I keep a Windows XP VM to synchronise my Jornada 720 with my nextcloud server. Windows native on my mac pro for flight simulator or camera EXIF updates.

I dumped Adobe a few months ago and I can get by even with pre-historical GIMP on HP-UX. I don't really need much in that regard. RAWs are processed using Nikon's software - I get the camera set the way I want, the software can read the settings, so I spend almost no time editing anything.

90% of my day job is text or terminal based, and I run it from wherever I am booted in, be it irix or nextstep or freebsd. I boot a Windows VM when I need to check some windows-only crap, like the Intune-replacement powershell scripts I am writing to keep track of my colleagues' machines. I like being on irix or nextstep for work, as I avoid internet distractions.

My brother has a new macbook air, and I just don't like it. The battery life is amazing, it's cool and runs silent. But the user interface is highly schizophrenic and it just throws notifications at you all the time. Update this, update that, do this, do that.

And I don't look forward to paying subscriptions for computer mice.

[jwhat]

BY THE FUCKING WAAAAY
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/...scription/

Boy do I really need one of those mouses, mine is way too cheap  !!!

Makes me nostalgic for "Apple Mighty Mouse" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Mighty_Mouse

Another Apple "first"  

Cheers from Oz,


jwhat/John