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Are modern Macs in a sad state?

I knew the Mac desktop show was winding down when Apple moved to an x86 processor.

Truth be told, the desktop line is more of a status thing than a revenue center for Apple. I'm surprised they haven't discontinued it.
 
I think one reason they don’t update anything but the “professional” stuff often is that Mac hardware lasts longer than PC hardware from a software usability perspective.

I have a mid 27” 2010 iMac i7 with 16gb of ram. Yes I did upgrade to a 1TB SSD but other than that and a periodic clean out of dust inside it’s still going strong with the latest OS. If I tried that with an 8 year old PC it would be unusable. The only thing I can’t do is work on 4K video in Final Cut Pro, for that I use my MacBook Pro with touchbar and a 27” thunderbolt monitor. Now I agree I hate the keyboard because it’s loud, but when using Final Cut or Omnigaffle the touch bar is actually useful, way more than a touchscreen. There are so many “controls” in those tools that the context sensitive touch bar saves me time.

As for the Mac Pro cylinder, we have one at work. Very cool looking and small but very stupid. They should have known they backed themselves into a thermal wall. Intel keeps making processors that are hotter and consume more power. Their latest stunt with the 28 core machine with special cooling is a perfect example. Apple should just get away from Intel and make their own processors and optimize them to have a Rosetta like emulator for legacy Intel software and native stuff going forward.
 
Same here. I have just replaced my 7 year old iMac 27 (it also had a mid life ssd upgrade), it still runs everything fine and is now with my mum who was using a 10 year old iMac 17. I now have the newer iMac 27, and even the older one ran most games acceptably.

The main difference in the new one was retina & usb3. The faster gfx and more memory are nice to have but no really noticeable in day to day stuff.
 
The problem is technology is not changing much now. Nothing is really getting faster, smaller, or better in any way. There is no reason to upgrade something every year unless it breaks or service is artificially limited. People are getting tired of "upgrading" computers, cell phones, and other electronics in general. The new stuff is the same as the old stuff, except new stuff is more likely to spy on you in order to make the companies a few extra bucks.
 
Look at the detail in their 2017 Form 10-K filing. The overwhelming bulk of Apple's revenue comes from the iPhone. Services are next in terms of revenue, then the entire Mac line (portable and desktop) and then iPad. Consider that the Mac segment makes up both desktop and portable MacBooks, I suspect that the sale of desktop Macs is probably down there in the noise. I suspect that the profit margin on the iPhone is substantially greater than that of a desktop Mac.

It's very clear from the 10-K what product segments are growing and what is not.
 
So by coincidence I remarked upon this very fact today here

https://majzel.blogspot.com/2018/06/scarolinaunixg.html

As a lifelong UNIX user and advocate I'd probably be an active macOS user except for one painful fact.

The hardware. Not only does Apple unfairly IMHO restrict macOS to its hardware platforms (yes I know fully about Hackintosh), but if you then bite the bullet even their most powerful computer is underpowered and don't even look at the price unless you have some smelling salts ready.

Since their smartphone market and revenues have gone from strength to strength, their visible enthusiasm for producing current desktop or deskside products has tended to zero. Laptops (macbook pro only obviously, all else is tosh!) are still fairly competitive relatively speaking.

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To further add salt to the wounds Apple even admitted their current Mac Pro was uncompetitive, then promised a new one, then backed off saying it would be delayed, but as a stopgap consider the iMac Pro ($$$). Google it. It's almost like they are saying to paid punters "Prove how dedicated to the brand you are but publicly showing yourself and others that you are a total idiot and prepared to buy our overpriced $$$ desktop and deskside hardware."

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Hackintosh under VMware is the choice of many to get past some of these defects, but with any OS upgrade you have the distinct possibility to have to rollback to your previous snapshot. (You did make one right :) because everything might just break ) . And with a Hackintosh something between small and importantly large might not work too well or at all

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I'll just finish by mentioning that anybody who loves to know and follow Apple should follow Louis Rossmann. What a guy.
https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup

Now as they say, you know everything

regards marcus
 
Corey986 said:
I think one reason they don’t update anything but the “professional” stuff often is that Mac hardware lasts longer than PC hardware from a software usability perspective.

I have a mid 27” 2010 iMac i7 with 16gb of ram. Yes I did upgrade to a 1TB SSD but other than that and a periodic clean out of dust inside it’s still going strong with the latest OS. If I tried that with an 8 year old PC it would be unusable.
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My 8 year old MacBook is still useful, but only because it's running Windows. Even thought it's 64-bit Core 2, Apple dropped support for it shortly after I acquired it. My 8+ year old Windows PCs are at least still getting updates and OS support... including the MacBook under boot camp. My first and last Mac.
 
Apple does not spend the time and effort to update their computer lineup because it is not as profitable as other areas and still sells anyway. They took computer out of their name for a reason.
 
tezza said:
.. Is this an accurate state of affairs?
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I think if you only focus on the hardware specs as this blog does, much of the advantage of owning an Apple iMac or such is missed. It's true, for the up-the-nose prices we pay (especially in NZ) you could buy much faster generic hardware and run Windows or Linux but from an overall product design point of view I'm pretty happy with my iMac for day-to-day use.
 
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It is all subjective anyway, depends what you do with it, and what you like. Unless you are doing gaming or some sort of high level graphic design I think most macs currently available are fine. I also dabbled with hackintishes, the hardware is cheap but the cost in time is quite big, and not very good when I spend 50+ hours a week using a machine, have to be confident it will work.
 
Corey986 said:
I think one reason they don’t update anything but the “professional” stuff often is that Mac hardware lasts longer than PC hardware from a software usability perspective.
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What's the point of long term support software when the underlying hardware is garbage. Apple has had horrific design flaws, intentional crippling of hardware and hardware level sabotage since the original 1984 mac. folklore.org has lots of great information about how Steve Jobs intentionally sabotaged the designs of the Mac under his tenure and how the engineers tried to secretly get around it. Today is a different story, Apple just wants to maintain their 90%+ profit margins at all costs.

Macbooks after the 2012 model started to integrate the RAM and SSD onto the motherboard, glue in the battery, and as a final "**** you" to the customer, riveted in the keyboard to the case. Macbooks are designed to be $2000 throwaway items, Apple doesn't want you to be able to fix your machine and has done everything in their power to prevent it. Like using ICE to raid 3rd party repair shops under the guise of selling counterfeit goods and seizing shipments of parts in customs to have them destroyed.

Apple is one of the most anti-consumer companies in the world, and it's bizarre how people have a Stockholm syndrome relationship with such a toxic company.
 
Corey986 said:
I think one reason they don’t update anything but the “professional” stuff often is that Mac hardware lasts longer than PC hardware from a software usability perspective.

I have a mid 27” 2010 iMac i7 with 16gb of ram. Yes I did upgrade to a 1TB SSD but other than that and a periodic clean out of dust inside it’s still going strong with the latest OS. If I tried that with an 8 year old PC it would be unusable.
Click to expand...

I'm using an 8 year old PC with a 250GB SSD, 500GB HHD, 1TB HDD, 8GB ram, 2GB GPU, 3.5GHZ AMD Athlon x4. I could probably get another 5 years out of it lol.
 
I think PC hardware last longer with respect to application software and OS support. Apple seems to kill off systems sooner then the PC side.

Anything that supports x64/8gb+ of RAM and has 4+ cores will be usable for a long time on the PC side of things (might need a GPU upgrade).
 
Unknown_K said:
Anything that supports x64/8gb+ of RAM and has 4+ cores will be usable for a long time on the PC side of things (might need a GPU upgrade).
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If all you need a PC for is internet browsing and office work, a dual core or fast single core can still be good for this task. I have customers with Core 2 Duo machines and they're still fine with them.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Apple is one of the most anti-consumer companies in the world, and it's bizarre how people have a Stockholm syndrome relationship with such a toxic company.
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I had that attitude until I bought an iPhone three years ago.
 
Apple computers this day are just expensive X86 boxes packed on a shiny chassis.
Most people purchase them for the "status" of having a mac, is like it make you smarter just by having it.
Also the quality of the hardware is bad, they fail fast and servicing the hardware is expensive.
 
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