Well, no. What Apple loves to do these days is to make their software simple for anyone to use with just a few clicks, but to include all the features you might want, hidden a bit to not scare the iPhone crowd. Their software and OS are extremely powerful, just simplistic on the surface, by design.
Again, no. It rankles me that the iMacs aren’t user-upgradable, but unless you’re a POWER UZAR, they’ll serve you well for 5-8 years easily. And power users aren’t buying iMacs, anyway. Their RAM upgrades are notoriously expensive, but by a few hundred bucks.
From what I understand even those $3-4k units have limitations or expected limitations in terms of how long and how much you can upgrade to keep them around. If you’re a small operation or freelancer if you’re going to drop that kind of cash on a system you need it to be around for a long time. But if there’s a cap to how long and far you can take it do to hardware and design issues, or the long standing MacOs compatibility limits that’s less likely. There seems to be a lot of concern about the expandability of even those top tier models. And you can get comparable or better performance by building out a PC for less money. With few to no concerns about expandability or life span.
The older towers are sort of hitting their end of life. Given the motherboards in them with new processors and video cards coming out and a bunch of other tech that’s transitioning this year. They’re won’t necessarily be another set of parts available to improve them. So thy best of what you can cram in there now is just about the best its gonna get. I suspect some of the worry over the longevity on the new desktops is down to the same, the last revision is the same tech that’s about to go out.
I suppose the next revision could mitigate or change that. But this last round already had most of the people I know outside of design move from teetering on the edge to can’t do it no more. Though its been a very long time since it made sense for me to even consider a MAC so I’m getting all this second hand.
I’m using a 2008 Mac Pro tower and really the only issue I’ve had is that machines before 2010 or so can’t upgrade to Sierra, but honestly, that’s a minor issue so far. The ones made 2010-2012 can use the latest MacOS. But quite honestly, they’ve got years left in them, easily. There’s no shortage of compatible video cards and RAM at decent prices, and swapping in SSDs keeps them going speedily. At least for my use – if it can run the Adobe suite well, great. Places like MacSales.com are dedicated to keeping Macs running well.
My earnest hope is that Apple realizes the need for mid-range professionals to have a decent upgradable machine that’ll last awhile, as you say, and that I can keep my hardware running decently until then.
Wildly varying battery life 3-10hrs.
Lots and lots of crashes, especially on power wake.
Uses very heavy handed CPU throttling to avoid a fan.
Meager upper ram limits 16gb.
Reduced number of external monitors supported.
Removed all the ports except for the 2 new usb-c.
Very overpriced for the specs.
No touch screen but instead a 1cm tall touch screen bar replacing critical keys, it is always changing so the only way to use it is to look down and hunt and peck. (not accessible for disabled users)
The mess of dongles and adapters you are required to carry to interface with anything, previous macbook pros were champs and not needing any of that shit. hint, it isn’t thinner if you have to carry a lot of extra crap or your power adapter everywhere.
I’m a long time apple user, but the new macbook pro holds about as much appeal as the headphone jackless iphone7, meaning none. I develop out of a back office in a phone/computer repair shop that handles all the apple repairs for the area, not a single tech here has a single nice thing to say about the new macbook pro except the color and screen gamut.
I get wanting to go light, but that is what the macbook and macbook air are all about, the pro is supposed to be, well PRO. Not worse in countless ways then previous macbook pros.
The demand for 2013-2015 macbook pros has skyrocketed since they released this huge disappointment.
ah…you are using an older one that everyone loves and extrapolating that experience to the new one. there is a reason everyone loves your era mbp and are dissapointed with the new one, they are not the same beasts anymore and people with your expectations from older machines are finding the newer ones don’t live up to what they’ve come to expect.
To clarify: the iPhone 7, like most modern Android phones, has transitioned to Lightning headphone jacks to get rid of a bulky legacy port and improve sound quality. The iPhone 7 comes with a free adaptor to let you use any kind of headphones out there on it. I’m not sure why that’s an issue.
That’s exactly my question. @nungesser is implying that Apple’s iPhone 7 is joining some kind of Android move to Lightning when Android is firmly rooted in the standard analog port that works with damn near anything in the universe. It would have to be a hell of a phone to get me to move from the 3.5mm jack.
Apple has a fascination with music playback and moving it to a digital signal they can control from iTunes on. I found iTunes too structured from the get go when it came to just finding my own audio files and haven’t used it for years, I doubt it’s loosened up.
Do any of those models not have 3.5mm jacks, though?
Having a USB port for charging and data transfer, which will also work with certain accessories such as headphones, is different from having “transitioned to a USB headphone jack.” Unless it’s made clear that the primary headphone jack is now the USB port (which I don’t think is really possible while most headphones are 3.5mm unless you actually remove the 3.5mm jack as Apple has), I don’t think you’ve “transitioned to” anything.
Well I was really talking more about hardware than the os. Intel and AMD are both announcing their latest processors this week. Both of which come with new chip set. That means the most powerful componant that will slot into your 08 tower is already on the market. Same goes RAM, transitioning from ddr3 to ddr4 and possibly 5. There’s a bigger push for m2 in the ssd market over SATA 3. Gpus tend to remain backwards compatible, but you run into bios support issues. Particularly with older boards that are no longer getting updates. Layer the restricted compatability that comes with mac on there and you got problems. Then tack on space, power, and heat concerns in for the 2013 trash can revision.
So there are in fact plenty of parts out there that will swap in. But how many of those parts represent practical steps up in performance over each other? there’s a very limited number of better faster, stronger parts that will work. And they won’t be (likely) designing or releasing any more. How long can you expect yesterday’s part to remain on the market? So even with the best of the best plugged in now. Those years of service are years of service where the tower falls behind instead of keeping up. Ability to keep up is the primary reason your model of tower was (and is) so popular.
I’ve found myself on the wrong end of one of these tech transitions before. Though on the PC side. Depending on the part. Between one to three years I was buying refurbed and NOS legacy parts to keep it on its feet. Upgrade possibilities started shrinking rapidly. So somewhere around 2 years after chip sets, ram and drive interfaces changed I wasn’t gonna eek any more performance out of the thing, And it was all about keeping it running cheaply till I could build a new one. And that was with a thoroughly mid grade box, initially a lot of head space to improve things.
If you have to operate near the top tier of performance that all gets more important. Particularly if your running into big resource hogging transitions like the HD transition. And now 4k or 8k in video.
I worked at Microsoft from 1997 from 2006 (on Internet Explorer mostly, which was part of the Windows division). The week I left in 2006, I bought a Mac and have refused to run Windows full time since then. Dogfooding nightly builds turned me away forever.
I’m having to think about the future now because Apple is clearly not advancing their hardware at all. I have a Linux laptop and I want to love Linux (and I’ve been using it for 20 years as well) but I just kind of hate myself every day I only use Linux…
There are at least a couple models that have no 3.5 jack. It’s testing the waters rather than some mass movement. Since Apple has patents on the Lightning port, I wonder which way the docking device makers will go, Lightning or USB-C?
Apologies for my misstatement. What I meant was that an increasing number of Android phones are moving to USB-C, and that it looks to become a new standard over the next few years.
They did ditch the headphone jack, the lightning port was already there and is NOT a headphone jack, yes there is an adapter you can use, and a few new lightning headphones, but that doesn’t make it a headphone jack and claiming it is, is disingenuous at best. They did not do it for improved sound quality, and the traditional port is far from bulky, it fits in much smaller devices. the adapter apple provides is way more bulky and would negate any “improved” sound quality, which negates both points for many users and actually makes things worse for them.
why is it an issue? it might not be for you personally, but for many, their phone is their primary music device.
many use the headphone jack while charging. many people don’t want to carry around adapters and dongles. the new macbook pros don’t include a lightening jack but rather a regular headphone jack, you can’t even charge your phone or use your lightening headphones on the new macbook, unless more adapters and dongles. They couldn’t even be bothered to switch to the new industry standard usb-c port on their phones despite the fact that is where android phones are going and what they’ve switched to on their computers. it is a total shit show with no clear standardization on apples part.
Well, I can plug my headphones into the lightning port on my old iPhone 6, and the sound quality is a marked improvement over the identical 3.5 port earbuds I was using. So, er, YMMV?
[quote=“redesigned, post:76, topic:92243”]
the traditional port is far from bulky
[/quote] It’s bulkier than the USB-C / Lightning port, by millimeters… but these days just a few millimeters here or there are what’s needed for engineers to Tetris in new chips or larger batteries.
I’m definitely a Windows type. Every time I have used Apple software it has felt like a complete train wreck to me. The MacBook my employer had for demos (running Windows) was also just kind of weird and I didn’t see the appeal.
The one Apple product I’ve owned was a used iPod Classic I bought on eBay about 3 years ago – at the time, I still wanted a hard drive based MP3 player, which was already an obselete idea. It was fine hardware-wise, but I hated iTunes and used a Winamp plugin instead. (I felt the same about the 2nd/3rd generation hard-drive Zunes: great hardware, shit software.)
I experimented with Linux a couple of times and both of them ended poorly. I decided it was not worth my time.
So for me: Windows for software development, music production, gaming, and general stuff. Android phone (I don’t totally love Android but I’m used to it, and found I dislike my mom’s iPhone more). No MacOS. Linux in a VM when forced to, which is rare.
can you plug them into a new macbook or macbook pro without an adapter? nope. can you plug them into any other audio device? nope.
I’ve noticed the same level of difference between cheap ear buds and expensive ones. I wonder the difference if you compared the exact same headphones with the other jack, likely not as much as you think.
It was more about controlling the digital audio chain end-to-end which as we all know is not a good move for consumers.
lightening headphones will always be pricier because they have to contain DSP, DAC, amps, and draw way more power. likely there will only be a few made, and they will only work during this small blip in history when lightening ports are even a thing, how long does apple stick with their proprietary ports before switching to new proprietary ports? if history is any indicator, not long.
one direction, and less by 4-5x the other direction.
trying to group the proprietary lightening bullshit that isn’t even on apple computers anymore, with the standardized usb-c movement is a bit awkward, don’t you think? why do their new flagship computers have regular audio jacks and not lightening ports if these new lightening headphones are so dope? Why can they not even get their crap together to standardize between products? really they should have made the switch to usb-c everywhere if they really want one port to rule them all dongle adapter hell, but well, apple knows best until they don’t.
like i said, shit show. and i want to like apple stuff…i try, but they’ve been making it more and more difficult.
You might not agree with all of the above points, but it hopefully helps you understand why it is an issue.
