And it doesn’t necessarily mean you get a lot more work done, but you do the things you always wanted to but couldn’t afford the time. For me it would mean more elaborate textures on my objects which take a lot more time. Now you could do the same animation as before in the same time but with better textures. Everyone who does this kind of work knows what they would use more power for.
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Simply outrageous.
And pretty fucking creepy too, by the way.
After years of support after OSX really gained traction with more warnings than you could shake a stick at.
Honestly you might as well fuss about stopping support for Motorola 680x0 CPUs.
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A pity how Apple cut the number of available sockets in half in their latest workstation revision, and no longer makes rackable compute nodes at all(Who else remembers when Xgrid was Apple’s high-performance darling?).
They appear to have either bet that the future belongs to OpenCL (No CUDA for you), or that anybody doing larger-than-single-socket jobs is probably only buying macs for their desks, and using whitebox linux clusters on the back end.
With the ‘IKEA Waste Paper Bin’ Mac Pro, Apple is attempting to mold the preferences of the Professional market in the way they have in the cell phone and laptop markets.
Unfortunately, professionals are an entirely different breed from consumers, and have come about to their preferences for things being done a certain way (like internally expandable cases) through years of daily experience, rather than by being influenced by marketing and UI flash as consumers are.
Its all about the aerodynamics.
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Toyota seem to survive okay selling insanely reliable vehicles. Same for Mercedes Benz.
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Twenty Four threads-- iirc, the xeons are hyper threaded.
That’s fine so long as you understand it and plan around it.
You can sell lots of cheap tat frequently, or build something that lasts and uses less resource over the same period of years.
Daily use. Kids all over it. Movies are great. Now that it’s “old”, I’ve got a super bit of kit to take on the plane, on vacation, etc. It’s all synced up, been dropped a thousand times, replacement cost is extremely low.
I look at it like this - it does stuff that nothing else that cheap can reliably do, and I like, for leisure life, the OS. I don’t worry about the wee details.
Part of why Apple does have higher margins on its hardware is due to the fact that they expect it to have a longer lifespan. Apple seems to expect its hardware to last longer, and plans accordingly.
Part of the whole issue is that Apple has no interest whatsoever in the low-end (what I call “disposable”) market, preferring to instead make mid- and high-end devices. This is pretty common knowledge, and part of that is that Apple knows that a high-end device will not be replaced as often – you buy it because you want something that will last.
I don’t think Apple is in a position yet where they have to look at current iPad owners as a hinderance to sales, as market saturation is not there yet. Instead, I see Apple (and the other tablet makers) still iterating on what people want in a tablet, and there are enough people out there interested in a tablet that I doubt that the market is saturated yet.
Well, they finally killed me,a few years ago, after almost 30 years of loyal suffering.
That problem has been fixed, though.
My solution fixed it for me three years ago.
Forced obsolescence by software, it’s worked well for them in the past
Can you give specific examples of this by Apple that’s more egregious than say, Microsoft? In my experience with Mac computers, I’ve found that Apple has often bended over backwards making things like Classic and Rosetta to allow usage of older software. Now that Rosetta is gone, there is literally only one discontinued app I have out of many hundreds that relies on it and I can still run it via emulation if I’m desperate. If a company chooses to discontinue an app, I can’t really blame Apple for that especialy considering it’s now a decade old.
On the other hand, I’ve updated my Windows OS and found that the only alternative was to immediately purchase updates to make software work with it. The Windows “compatibility mode” has often been lacking and third party software simply stopped working no matter what I try. To make out Apple as the lone villain seem a bit disingenuous to me.
Or are you just referring to iOS? I don’t use the iOS except for testing purposes. I use Android. Anyway, I’m just wondering if you can back up your statements with examples?
My experience with their planned obsolescence has been with iOS exclusively. Their regular computer OS is no worse than Microsoft or anyone else. Apple’s own development tools erase previous versions, forcing app developers to abandoning old, working apps.
Here’s a rant from a developer who details the issue:
http://kanjibox.net/ios/blog/archives/2011/11/support-for-older-devices-running-ios-4-2-1-and-earlier/
I’m not saying Apple is alone in this, Canon is just as egregious when it comes to holding back operational modes on lower priced items that can be unlocked with firmware updates, but Apple does appear to be on a “you’ve used that device for two years, you should get a new one” track. Why else do replacement batteries cost half as much as the device itself? Because they are trying to encourage you to just spend that money on a new one.
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My experience with their planned obsolescence has been with iOS exclusively.
Ah, now I see.
Their regular computer OS is no worse than Microsoft or anyone else.
Agreed, but I think they’ve been overall much better than MS (in this regard) if we are to be factual there.
Apple’s own development tools erase previous versions, forcing app developers to abandoning old, working apps.
Agreed. That has been annoying for devs (including me). But I do think there has been (perhaps) in some cases some advantages to the consumer in the gains in performance, battery life, security, etc. by optimizing code for advances in hardware and forcing devs to comply.
Similarly, I see people whine about the battery not being easily removed in the extremely light and thin MacBook Airs. But when other manufactures try to match Apple, they end up having to do the same thing. In other words, except in cases when Apple and others are purposefully being dicks, it’s often a “give and take” situation when it comes to legacy support.
Here’s a rant from a developer who details the issue:
Support for older devices running iOS 4.2.1 + Planned Obsolescence Rant « KanjiBox Dev Blog
It’s good to note that the dev writes that Apple isn’t worse than others in this regard. But, like you and the dev, I wish they’d rise above others.
I’m not saying Apple is alone in this
I wish they were.
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Ah, but 200 mph is a perfectly vald speed. 80 mph is the suggested speed to go with the flow.
As a visual artist, the one obvious upgrade that would convince me to buy a new iPad would be native support for a precise, pressure-sensitive stylus that utilizes palm rejection for drawing. No external gizmos, no fat rubber tipped stylus, no calibration required. Just an iPad that actually works well as a digital sketchpad. Basically an Apple version of the Wacom Cintiq Companion line but without the price tag.
My issue is in making devs comply they are cutting off support when a device could be 18 months old. My Gen 2 iPod touch is still a fine piece of hardware, the battery still works, few scratches on the screen, but as a result of no more support for 4.2 when 5 came out, it essentially bricked itself when all the apps updated one morning.
A day or two later resulted in a workaround, and apparently this has been fixed, but an update to a single generation of software that happens every 12-18 months negating previous hardware spells a planned program to cause people to buy more hardware.
I consider Microsoft a software company that is now getting into hardware to keep their software relevant and Apple is a hardware company that runs a little software division on the side to get you to buy more hardware.
