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Arbiter Odie wrote:

End User wrote:

I'd die if someone took away my Magic Trackpad 2. I suffer with mice on my Linux/Windows rigs.

Touch-screens on Windows devices are definitely 1/10.

Both my sister and I have found that using the magic trackpad with one hand and the mouse with the other is surprisingly effective. For some stuff the trackpad is better, and other stuff the mouse wins at, so you get the best of both worlds this way.

Do you have a third arm for the keyboard?

End User wrote:

HERETIC wrote:

lso apple thinks you should all be using tablets instead.

Mobile CPUs are getting very powerful. My 12.9" iPad Pro is a rather handy work device.

Input devices: compare my robust mechanical keyboard with a touchscreen interface? the precision of a mouse with a touchpad?
Screen: even if you put 20Mpixels on it, as 12.9" screen is not comparable with a comfortable 3-screen setup.
Storage: sure, you can use the cloud over Wifi and store your 200MB document in 20sec or wait 1sec to save on your PCIe SSD
Computing power: Yesterday I had to wait 2h for a work to finish on my i7 macbook pro. It would probably finish in 1h in a proper workstation. Run this on the tablet. Call me when the battery explodes.
Tablets are great and many people get serious work done on a tablet. But please don't underestimate a real workstation...

ptsant wrote:

End User wrote:

HERETIC wrote:

lso apple thinks you should all be using tablets instead.

Mobile CPUs are getting very powerful. My 12.9" iPad Pro is a rather handy work device.

Input devices: compare my robust mechanical keyboard with a touchscreen interface? the precision of a mouse with a touchpad?

Depends on if you want to do work truly on the go. iPads do accept keyboard inputs and for precision input Apple offers a pencil. These do impact their portability but are optional for when you need it.

ptsant wrote:

Screen: even if you put 20Mpixels on it, as 12.9" screen is not comparable with a comfortable 3-screen setup.

The iPad actually supports video output over HDMI. By default it is operates in mirrored mode but application developers can invoke the second display as an extended workspace. So you don't get three but you can get two on an iPad.

ptsant wrote:

Storage: sure, you can use the cloud over Wifi and store your 200MB document in 20sec or wait 1sec to save on your PCIe SSD

Recent iPads do have PCIe based storage. Certainly they don't rival the latest NVMe drives on PC where controllers can take advantage of additional NAND channels and higher power envelopes. In this context, the recent iOS devices are doing pretty well to compare to a typical SATA SSD.

The real issue isn't speed here but rather storage capacity for work that would regularly require 200MB+ documents.

ptsant wrote:

Computing power: Yesterday I had to wait 2h for a work to finish on my i7 macbook pro. It would probably finish in 1h in a proper workstation. Run this on the tablet. Call me when the battery explodes.
Tablets are great and many people get serious work done on a tablet. But please don't underestimate a real workstation...

Tablets are certainly constrained by their power envelope for bulk processing jobs that a workstation doesn't suffer from. However, I do think you've missed the change from where tablets couldn't previously be considering for doing that work to it can be done with an overnight processing while plugged into a wall. If you need to do processing like this on the go, it is an option. The real competition isn't from workstations for getting the job done fast but rather laptops who can get the job done nearly as fast as a workstation. There are beefy laptops like your Core i7 MacBook Pro but also far weaker ones like that Core M based vanilla MacBook where the difference difference in speed with an iPad Pro is rather small.

The thing here is that Apple has been pushing tablet performance gains forward at a remarkable pace where as Intel has been more incremental in its low power offerings. The baseline performance hasn't moved much but rather Intel has been focusing on power savings to fit into smaller devices as well as agressively leveraging turbo for burst performance. This does give Apple an opening in a few generations (assuming their current pace of improvement) to clearly enter the performance range of lowend laptops.

the wrote:

The real competition isn't from workstations for getting the job done fast but rather laptops who can get the job done nearly as fast as a workstation. There are beefy laptops like your Core i7 MacBook Pro but also far weaker ones like that Core M based vanilla MacBook where the difference difference in speed with an iPad Pro is rather small.

The thing here is that Apple has been pushing tablet performance gains forward at a remarkable pace where as Intel has been more incremental in its low power offerings. The baseline performance hasn't moved much but rather Intel has been focusing on power savings to fit into smaller devices as well as agressively leveraging turbo for burst performance. This does give Apple an opening in a few generations (assuming their current pace of improvement) to clearly enter the performance range of lowend laptops.

Apple have already put their iPad Pro tablet into the performance range of low-end laptops, they did so in part by making the current-gen. MacBook so weak that the iPad Pro is a better machine.

This is what I'd do if I were trying to shift my userbase from the former to the latter, it's rather effectively moving the Overton window on laptop performance (within the Mac-using community).

Within a few generations all the Macs will be weak at this rate, look at the last few releases of the Mac mini and 13" MacBook Pro with their pathetic CPUs...

Tablets are certainly constrained by their power envelope for bulk processing jobs that a workstation doesn't suffer from.  However, I do think you've missed the change from where tablets couldn't previously be considering for doing that work to it can be done with an overnight processing while plugged into a wall.  If you need to do processing like this on the go, it is an option.  The real competition isn't from workstations for getting the job done fast but rather laptops who can get the job done nearly as fast as a workstation.  There are beefy laptops like your Core i7 MacBook Pro but also far weaker ones like that Core M based vanilla MacBook where the difference difference in speed with an iPad Pro is rather small.

The thing here is that Apple has been pushing tablet performance gains forward at a remarkable pace where as Intel has been more incremental in its low power offerings.  The baseline performance hasn't moved much but rather Intel has been focusing on power savings to fit into smaller devices as well as agressively leveraging turbo for burst performance.  This does give Apple an opening in a few generations (assuming their current pace of improvement) to clearly enter the performance range of lowend laptops.

I agree about the convergence of low-power intel and high-end "portable" devices. The Macbook is a perfect example. If I were happy with a Macbook, I would also probably be very happy with an Ipad+optional keyboard. So there clearly is a market for this kind of device: low-power, very portable. Personally I would lean to the Macbook because I prefer keyboards, but I can see very well someone doing all the work on something like the iPad Pro or the Surface. Marketing work in the form of presentations to a small group, taking notes, looking at content (for example, doctors looking at patient files on a portable device) are perfect examples.
In the end though, I believe that those who could migrate to the tablet or mini-book/netbook form factor have already done so. I don't believe there is a huge amount of growth in that segment because people who are happy with a 2015 Macbook are not the kind of group who will upgrade to the 2017 Macbook (unless you sort of force them to or convince them that it is the coolest gadget on the planet). However, I know I would be tempted by a macbook pro that could run 50% faster with 32GB RAM, for example. Some professionals simply need all the power you can get.

End User wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

End User wrote:

Anybody that says you need a PC to do real work should take their head out the sand. I can do network/server management from my phone for goodness sake.

Yes, but can write a book or an essay using a phone? What about media creation?

Microsoft Word on a phone? Yes
Connect an external full-size keyboard to a phone? Yes
Photo taking on a phone? Yes
Photo editing on the phone? Yes
Video recording on a phone? Yes
Video editing on a phone? Yes

It's almost like it's a computer!  

That's why binary "yes" and "no" is not effective. I "can" record music on an iPad but I have found it to be a bigger pain than it's worth. Garage Band is OK for what it is, but fine editing (split, trim, align) is still best and most easily done with a mouse and keyboard. Also all those sample libraries and that sweet sweet processing power.

ptsant wrote:

I agree about the convergence of low-power intel and high-end "portable" devices. The Macbook is a perfect example. If I were happy with a Macbook, I would also probably be very happy with an Ipad+optional keyboard. So there clearly is a market for this kind of device: low-power, very portable. Personally I would lean to the Macbook because I prefer keyboards, but I can see very well someone doing all the work on something like the iPad Pro or the Surface. Marketing work in the form of presentations to a small group, taking notes, looking at content (for example, doctors looking at patient files on a portable device) are perfect examples.
In the end though, I believe that those who could migrate to the tablet or mini-book/netbook form factor have already done so. I don't believe there is a huge amount of growth in that segment because people who are happy with a 2015 Macbook are not the kind of group who will upgrade to the 2017 Macbook (unless you sort of force them to or convince them that it is the coolest gadget on the planet). However, I know I would be tempted by a macbook pro that could run 50% faster with 32GB RAM, for example. Some professionals simply need all the power you can get.

The main thing I see driving future iPad growth is in the business sector. If/when Apple fully integrates iOS management into LDAP/Active Directory, I can see several large businesses start to migrate away from lowend PCs based upon support and software costs savings (the hardware costs will be a wash). IT admins continue to get to use their tools for device management. End users get an easier to use and more portable system to maintain.

As for the vanilla MacBook, it really needs another USB-C port. Per the recent articles about internal Apple development, they were even considering adding a Lightning port which still would have been an upgrade as that could charge the device and kept the USB-C port free. I do think that the 2017 MacBook model will add another port and a few other features. TouchID I can see happening, maybe 16 GB of RAM option.

I will agree that there will always be a user base that needs as much power as necessary. Thankfully the upgrade cycle here is rather regular but Apple has seemingly fallen asleep to when their suppliers release new parts.

As someone who used to run Apple hardware and has the disposable income to do so again, the dilapidation of the MacOS platform is just sad.  Gaming support is almost as bad as LinuxLOL, hardware is outdated and massively overpriced, etc.

the wrote:

The one area where Apple hasn't seen long term trends correctly is with their OpenGL and Vulkan support. Apple certainly lags behind in official OpenGL support (4.5 current vs. 4.1 from Apple) though vendor extensions make up for a good chunk of support. Apple should still update to remove reliance on those vendor extensions. Vulkan support does need to be added to gain feature parity with the other big name OS on the market. I'm actually surprised that it wasn't mentioned for macOS 10.12. Though Apple does have Metal and adding Vulkan support to macOS doesn't seem to mesh well with recent reports of how Apple is de-empahsizing the Mac internally.

I'm fairly certain that we will never see Vulkan under macOS nor iOS/tvOS/watchOS. Metal has replaced OpenGL as the primary GPU API for all Apple hardware.

the wrote:

Probably something that Apple should have dropped a long time ago has been its file system: HFS+.

APFS (Apple File System) will be introduced in 2017 across macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS.

the wrote:

Nowadays, macOS is a pretty well polished product that continues to evolved. With the current yearly update pace for features, it does make each revision seem smaller than the last but when looking at the aggregate whole over a decade they have changed a lot.

A list of my favourite recent additions to macOS:

• Universal Clipboard - Copy on one device and then paste on another
• Handoff - foreground app shows current task across all devices
• Auto Unlock with Apple Watch
• Cellular calls across all devices

Kretschmer wrote:

As someone who used to run Apple hardware and has the disposable income to do so again, the dilapidation of the MacOS platform is just sad.  Gaming support is almost as bad as LinuxLOL, hardware is outdated and massively overpriced, etc.

Absolutely nothing new on the hardware side of things. One can go back 10 years to find similar comments (by me).

It is widely known that one does not game on a Mac. That is why people like me build gaming PCs.

As mentioned by others in this thread the current iMac is relatively current (6700K + R9 M395X) but the lineup is definitely in line for a refresh in 2017.

ptsant wrote:

I agree about the convergence of low-power intel and high-end "portable" devices. The Macbook is a perfect example. If I were happy with a Macbook, I would also probably be very happy with an Ipad+optional keyboard. So there clearly is a market for this kind of device: low-power, very portable. Personally I would lean to the Macbook because I prefer keyboards, but I can see very well someone doing all the work on something like the iPad Pro or the Surface. Marketing work in the form of presentations to a small group, taking notes, looking at content (for example, doctors looking at patient files on a portable device) are perfect examples.

I'm old school so, even though I have a 12.9" iPad, I use a 2015 MacBook (which I absolutely adore). The MacBook is powerful enough to run Windows 10 Pro in a VM so it is a perfect little mobile powerhouse. My need for Windows centres around one legacy app which I am replacing soon so, once that need goes, I could get rid of the MacBook and roll with just the iPad.

My vision, both at home and at work, is to get everything into the cloud (be that local or remote). As someone mentioned earlier in the thread I'm basically using my devices as ultra mobile terminals.

ptsant wrote:

However, I know I would be tempted by a macbook pro that could run 50% faster with 32GB RAM, for example. Some professionals simply need all the power you can get.

Alternatively, a business can use something like VMware Horizon + NVIDIA GRID to handle the CPU/GPU side of the equation. A professional user with an iPad or a MacBook then has access to amazing amounts of CPU/GPU power while preserving their mobility. Client hardware becomes less of an issue when one leverages the power of remote hardware (be that in the next room or on the other side of the world).

the wrote:

As for the vanilla MacBook, it really needs another USB-C port.

As a 2015 MacBook user I can safely say that the MacBook does not need another USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port. What it needs is one Thunderbolt 3 port.

The only time I use the port on my MacBook is to clone the drive. Apart from that I rely on 802.11ac and the cloud for data transfers.

End User wrote:

My vision, both at home and at work, is to get everything into the cloud (be that local or remote). As someone mentioned earlier in the thread I'm basically using my devices as ultra mobile terminals.

ptsant wrote:

However, I know I would be tempted by a macbook pro that could run 50% faster with 32GB RAM, for example. Some professionals simply need all the power you can get.

Alternatively, a business can use something like VMware Horizon + NVIDIA GRID to handle the CPU/GPU side of the equation. A professional user with an iPad or a MacBook then has access to amazing amounts of CPU/GPU power while preserving their mobility. Client hardware becomes less of an issue when one leverages the power of remote hardware (be that in the next room or on the other side of the world).

It could work in theory. In practice, we have very significant and specific security restrictions (biomedical research) and I need to transfer files to/from different institutions with different networks and different access policies. Even within the network of a given institution there are machines open to all other machines and others that can only be accessed from the wired network or by first doing SSH to another machine etc.

In fact, it can get so complicated and inefficient that despite the Gbit network speeds when I need to transfer TBs of data, I'm often physically transporting a fast HD from one building to another by walking.

I'm sure an elegant cloud solution could be found but it isn't a priority for our IT department. For the moment, I'm better off having a reduced copy of my work "universe" on 2-3 machines instead of relying on spotty Wi-Fi, mobile tethering and the like.

Huge virtualized solutions are great if you're in a huge corporate environment. From what I can tell, the people hurt most by Apple's poor life choices are the independent creative types that built the company.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Huge virtualized solutions are great if you're in a huge corporate environment. From what I can tell, the people hurt most by Apple's poor life choices are the independent creative types that built the company.

QFT andI'm totally gonna steal "Apple's poor life choices" for future conversations

Apple will refresh the Mac Pro with whatever is succeeding the A10 Fusion and it will likely include iOS instead of Mac OS.

x86 just doesn't cut it in today's world.

ptsant wrote:

n fact, it can get so complicated and inefficient that despite the Gbit network speeds when I need to transfer TBs of data, I'm often physically transporting a fast HD from one building to another by walking.

A gigabit network is atrociously slow for an enterprise environment. Gigabit ethernet bandwidth is so slow I've planned out a new 10GbE network/server infrastructure for my personal abode.

ultima_trev wrote:

Apple will refresh the Mac Pro with whatever is succeeding the A10 Fusion and it will likely include iOS instead of Mac OS.

x86 just doesn't cut it in today's world.

• I've no doubt that Apple is running macOS on ARM in their labs (and has for many years)
• iOS is not suited to a desktop/workstation environment in its current form
• ARM has absolutely nothing close to what Intel offers when it comes to high end desktop and server x64 CPU power

derFunkenstein wrote:

From what I can tell, the people hurt most by Apple's poor life choices are the independent creative types that built the company.

I support an office of "creative types". They seem rather happy using the combination of iMac/Creative Cloud/Cintiq (visual artists) and MacBook Pros (writers).

The iMac is now what the Mac Pro was originally (the creative types workstation).

The new MacBook Pros are really nice.

The big problem with Apple's lineup is the Mac Pro and the Mac mini. I think Apple should follow what they do with their laptop lineup - have a Mac line and a Mac Pro line - all using a very similar (but not the same) form factor with both lines having a range (low to high).

derFunkenstein wrote:

From what I can tell, the people hurt most by Apple's poor life choices are the independent creative types that built the company.

Kind of ironic that NOW 99.9% of their customer base is the DUMBed down facebook crowd.

End User wrote:

My vision, both at home and at work, is to get everything into the cloud (be that local or remote). As someone mentioned earlier in the thread I'm basically using my devices as ultra mobile terminals.

Seems someone has sussed apples evil plan-
Hmmm Chromebooks-They seem to be doing good-That's a idea we can steal,then we can put our own custom CPU in all our lappies,and maybe even a dock
for our phones,and people won't need a lappy or desktop any more...........................................................................

HERETIC wrote:

Kind of ironic that NOW 99.9% of their customer base is the DUMBed down facebook crowd.

Sad that people like you are saying things like this.

DancinJack wrote:

HERETIC wrote:

Kind of ironic that NOW 99.9% of their customer base is the DUMBed down facebook crowd.

Sad that people like you are saying things like this.

There some truth to that. The way Apple is going I wouldn't be surprised at all if they kill off the Mac Pro and MBP. The creative types who built Apple up will be forced to switch over to Windows or Linux.

whm1974 wrote:

DancinJack wrote:

HERETIC wrote:

Kind of ironic that NOW 99.9% of their customer base is the DUMBed down facebook crowd.

Sad that people like you are saying things like this.

There some truth to that. The way Apple is going I wouldn't be surprised at all if they kill off the Mac Pro and MBP. The creative types who built Apple up will be forced to switch over to Windows or Linux.

Good grief. No.

Due to a very recent life decision (I've decided to sell my abode which requires a shift to a minimalist footprint due to "staging" - something about too many computers and wires), I've switched to Windows 10 Pro as my only workstation (gaming). Oh my word does Windows 10 Pro suck compared to macOS. Apple at its worst is better than Windows (apart from gaming).

End User wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

DancinJack wrote:

Sad that people like you are saying things like this.

There some truth to that. The way Apple is going I wouldn't be surprised at all if they kill off the Mac Pro and MBP. The creative types who built Apple up will be forced to switch over to Windows or Linux.

Good grief. No.

Due to a very recent life decision (I've decided to sell my abode which requires a shift to a minimalist footprint due to "staging" - something about too many computers and wires), I've switched to Windows 10 Pro as my only workstation (gaming). Oh my word does Windows 10 Pro suck compared to macOS. Apple at its worst is better than Windows (apart from gaming).

If you want a more Unix-y experience, you could try dual booting into Fedora.

HERETIC wrote:

End User wrote:

My vision, both at home and at work, is to get everything into the cloud (be that local or remote). As someone mentioned earlier in the thread I'm basically using my devices as ultra mobile terminals.

Seems someone has sussed apples evil plan-
Hmmm Chromebooks-They seem to be doing good-That's a idea we can steal,then we can put our own custom CPU in all our lappies,and maybe even a dock
for our phones,and people won't need a lappy or desktop any more...........................................................................

You are spot on apart from the fact that I am using iPhone/iPad/MacBook/MacBook Pro for my mobile needs. I guess I am onboard with Apple's evil plan.

Chromebook? Hell no. Copious amounts of local storage is vital. Even my phone has 256GB of local storage. Why would I want a laptop with next to no local storage? The cloud is there to sync data for use across a wide range of devices. Cloud only storage is a fail.

NTMBK wrote:

End User wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

There some truth to that. The way Apple is going I wouldn't be surprised at all if they kill off the Mac Pro and MBP. The creative types who built Apple up will be forced to switch over to Windows or Linux.

Good grief. No.

Due to a very recent life decision (I've decided to sell my abode which requires a shift to a minimalist footprint due to "staging" - something about too many computers and wires), I've switched to Windows 10 Pro as my only workstation (gaming). Oh my word does Windows 10 Pro suck compared to macOS. Apple at its worst is better than Windows (apart from gaming).

If you want a more Unix-y experience, you could try dual booting into Fedora.

I've got an aging dual X5650 ESXi 6.5 server that runs all my local cloud (Ubuntu) VMs so I've got the Unix-y bit covered. I temporarily transitioned to a Windows 10 rig primarily because it is my gaming setup. Windows is the gaming king. I just bought Fallout 4 on sale via Steam for $26.39 CDN!

NTMBK wrote:

If you want a more Unix-y experience, you could try dual booting into Fedora.

Only if you like living on the bleeding edge (with all the good and bad that implies), and don't mind upgrading to a new version of your OS every year if you want to stay current on security patches.

These days I just want my OS to do its job, stay out of my way, and not force me to deal with the potential disruption of a version upgrade any more frequently than once every 2-3 years.

(Currently a happy user of Kubuntu 14.04 LTS, and in no big hurry to upgrade... will probably throw 16.04 LTS on my secondary system soon to start familiarizing myself with it, but for my main desktop and laptop I will likely remain on 14.04 for at least another year, and may end up skipping 16.04 and going straight to 18.04.)

DancinJack wrote:

HERETIC wrote:

Kind of ironic that NOW 99.9% of their customer base is the DUMBed down facebook crowd.

Sad that people like you are saying things like this.

As a stand alone statement I agree,but if you had not wiped derFunkenstein's statement it makes sense.
In a galaxy far far away(before apple started making phones) apple took pride in being perfectionist-backed
up by their design teams and q/a.
Fast forward to today,and we think of-your holding it wrong-bumpgate-piss color screens-screens peeling-
iphone battery problems-touch disease-mac pro battery problems-and the list goes on-yes it's SAD.
SAD that apple is penny pinching to reduce BOM for MOOOOOOAR profits on products that already
have a HUGE markup.
And all that before you even get to lack of innovation,or even keeping up hardware wise..............