I feel the same way about this that I feel about most technology.
Either trash it or dedicated appropriate resources to it.
I was heart broken when Google killed Google Reader. But they only dedicated like 2 guys to it and didn’t want to keep it going in a tech space where others were doing better things. If they didn’t want to outfit the GR project with the proper support, the best thing they could have done was can it. I guess they could have also sold it to someone who would have supported it better.
But I don’t see Apple selling the Mac any more than Google selling any part of it’s tech space.
Can the Mac? Are you a rabid crazy animal? Jeez, I LOVE using my MacBook or iMac… An iPad, smart phone, tablet, whatever to a Mac is like comparing a sundial to a Rolex.
Loyal Apple user since '86 here, and got turned off iOS devices with the 7 redesign. Now that the Mac is headed towards the IOS-ification of OSX to create a “seamless environment”, I’ll be switching to a PC/Linux as a primary machine for the first time in 30 years.
I honestly feel like this has been the primary driving force behind “Put everything in the cloud!”
Ugh, the tech pundits. They’ve been trying to convince me for years that the age of the personal computer was over. Once sales to low-end consumers started to be ceded to dedicated devices, that was it, pack it up, the personal computer was done. Conflating investor concerns with tech concerns.
There’s a podcast I used to listen to because I used to watch the guy’s TV show back when he was on a network. Not going to name who it is, because it doesn’t matter, he’s in the same circle as guys like Mims. He’s eat up with mobile and cloud. Somehow, we’re going to convince people that doing the thing they used to do on a 26" monitor with a 10" tablet is the better way to do it.
It’s not about convenience, though successful cloud services tend to be convenient. No, imho, it’s about control. As it is now, I’m running GNOME 3, and if I want to produce some HTML5, I can fire up Vim, Emacs, Atom, whatever, and get the job done. In the future? I’ll probably need a Creative Cloud account just to edit HTML. There will probably be some boilerplate legalese that I have to agree to that hands the rights over to Adobe. And my main computer? It’s a desktop machine built from parts (which means I’ve contributed to the decline in PC sales, unfortunately.)
I don’t know about the full thing, but if you don’t mind running decade-old software, you can run Photoshop CS2 on Wine. If you need Creative Suite, have a PC, and don’t want to reboot, you can run Windows in VirtualBox.
Oh for fucks sake-- if you use the “privilege” argument, you’ve essentially resigned yourself to computing on a cell phone. Think about it–
There’s a great mass of people who own one computing device-- in phone form.
A cell phone can be built and shipped for less resources than a desktop computer, and consumes less power than a desktop.
And a cell phone contains as much computing power as a perfectly serviceble computer from a few years ago. The gap is closing fast, too. It’s only Western decadence that leads you to seek out the latest Skylake design.
Yeah, not much better than shelving them and more expensive. It fits better into the hot / cold isle data center construct, but it still has the space hogging features of a desktop shimmed into a rack.
The MacBook Pro and Air is getting so thin, I’m wondering why anyone would want an iPad if the price of the MacBook Pro dropped closer to the iPad down the road? Nothing beats the typing speed of an actual chicklet keyboard and the MBP touchpad is fantastic and doesn’t smear up the screen with fingerprints or obstruct one’s view while using it. And, let’s face it, mobile iOS is like a child’s toy compared to a real Mac OS for many tasks.
MacBook Pro:
As the Mac laptops get thinner and lighter, the less interested I am in the iPad.
I don’t have a late model mac laptop, so perhaps I’m undervaluing the latest advances in computer anorexia, but isn’t one of the advantages of an ipad that you don’t have to open it?
That is epic. Though, for EMC prices, I’d really want a failover compressor to ensure my mission-critical sysadminin’ brews enjoy thermal reliability; and any feature licenses necessary to enable RAID-6pack storage. I’ll have to check with our rep…
Little to lose - except for Apple’s reputation! XD
I am a MacOS 9 diehard, because I just have so much old Mac software. I like the old system, it runs nicely if the programs share their resources without conflicts (pre-emptive multitasking, no memory protection). Personally, I would love to see a community developing extensions for using the still usable ancient OS. But Apple has always gone to extraordinary lengths to control the experience which the Apple name and logo represent. This is why they drop support for older hardware which conceivably could run a new OS update - because if it only sort-of runs, they look bad. This is the same company who have tried to push for eliminating expansion ports, because users should not need to tinker with their machines. Macs deliver a self-contained reproducible user experience. They would be perfectly happy if legacy systems disappeared in a puff of smoke and left only people who were showing off The New Latest Thing.
