I’m curious to see if there’s any change to the replacement rate of Macs. It seems normal for people to use the same laptop for four or more years — a far sight longer than the two-year life expectancy of laptops twenty years ago, but about half of the replacement rate of smartphones.
There's one benefit of these DIY designs that seems under-reported: Apple can now develop stuff like the "neural engine". Chips that aren't just faster or more efficient than Intel offerings, but also do different things.
I think there's almost no chance that I'll be upgrading to an M2 Pro next year or the following, but there's every possibility that the M3 Pro won't just be a faster Apple Silicon chip. If future Macbooks are more than just "the same thing but faster," dorks like me will be retiring our computers a lot faster.
Yeah, and hold off for now. I'm the guy making sure that new onboards don't get blocked by M1 (as you can't but Intel anymore). Segfaults in docker/qemu (amd64 and arm64) are numerous: I can't build our otherwise boring (and recent) docker images locally - it has to go to a Linux ARM server. What truly bends my mind is that I am getting framerate/audio/input hitching on the desktop when one of the broken containers pegs 3 of the cores at 100% (and it's not just my machine).
It's a circus, wait for M2 or M3 unless your workload is influencing, blogging, and checking email.
I mostly do React/web dev and some dabbling with SwiftUI. I spent most of 2021 doing that on an M1 Air and it was a joy.
((The only kink I’ve run into was trying to deploy a serverless app; Docker did indeed make that a nonstarter. So I just accomplished it the old fashioned way (a dippy little VM running in a cloud server). Not a deal-breaker.))
Most of my friends are graphic designers who use Adobe apps (nearly all ported to ARM). The only reason most of them haven’t upgraded is because they want 27” iMacs.
What on earth do you think most people do with computers?
What they will do is be faster and more widely adopted. Docker (and everyone else) will do the heavy lifting to fix those, including any that are specifically Apple bugs.
This experience has done nothing but prove my previously unsubstantiated beliefs. I am pushing for Linux laptops at work.
Everything else has been an absolute breeze though (and so fast!).
I think you are going to be out of luck there.
>Gurman claims that Apple has developed two SoCs for the new Mac Pro, codenamed 'Jade 2C-Die' and 'Jade 4C-Die'. These SoCs would have 20 or 40 CPUs cores, which would be significantly more than anything Apple has planned for its MacBook range. Both have performance and power-saving clusters though, split 16/4 and 32/6. Gurman also expects 'Jade 2C-Die' and 'Jade 4C-Die' to feature 64 or 128 GPU cores, a huge uplift on the GPUs found in the current Mac Pro.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-is-reputedly-developing-...
If the (very likely) 2-die version is released, that'll be 64 Apple GPU cores. If the (likely) 4-die version is released, that'll be 128 Apple GPU cores. Coupled alongside that would be up to 32 Performance cores and 8 efficiency cores. That should be good competition for anything NVIDIA and Intel Xeon.
Are people really still replacing their phones every two years? Mine always last for 4+
China is already the worlds largest economy in terms of raw output (PPP terms).
China is already the worlds largest consumer market.
There’s a reasonable chance it exceeds USA in nominal GDP it if it grows at 5+% till 2030. This year they grew at 8.5 %
Not with their current demographic trends.
There are some scattered final assembly here and there, like screwing together the Mac Pro in Texas, and I think the iPhone production in India is non-trivial, but for all intents and purposes the vast, vast majority of Apple's production happens in China, performed by Chinese nationals, who are themselves subject to Chinese law, in facilities wholly inside of Chinese jurisdiction.
It doesn't matter much if Apple sells a single unit in China, from a "kowtowing to the Chinese government" perspective: China controls Apple fully as without China's consent and permission, Apple cannot produce anything for sale in significant quantity.
Keeps blowing my mind how consistently services keep growing. Highest margins too. Just printing money!
I have a windows desktop for gaming and Microsoft seems to constantly try to push their bullshit. Whether it’s opening edge at start/changing my default browser, making me use the Microsoft Store or Microsoft accounts (they do this for Minecraft now, and the install experience through downloading minecraft from the web is now hilariously broken), or even shilling something at the log in screen, Microsoft just does not give a fuck about making their UX seem cheap to push their bloat.
Woah I had no idea this was a thing! Since Google is forcing the old free workspace users into paid accounts this year, this will be a great replacement. Thanks, I'll have to look into this.
Edit - just to add that IBM dominated computing for a long time with this model. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Apple has become so big in what is a much bigger market.
How quickly we forget that Apple just had 2 generations of complete dogshit laptops.
The only issue is the keyboard, which is now on its third replacement. The extended replacement program ran out last year, but they still replace keys for free.
This is a 2017 MacBook. They upgraded my 2012 model for the price of a battery swap because the 2012 parts were out of stock. In other words, I've been going for 10 years on the same laptop purchase.
They're not perfect laptops, but they're still the best ROI I've had on a laptop, and far better than any laptop I've had before.
I don't know, the 2015 MacBook Pro was well regarded.
I do, latest macs have terrible linux compatibility for now, with apple not doing much to help in providing support for it (M1)
They keep fixing and breaking their keyboards, the latest macs are better in this aspect but until even 2 yrs ago, they used to break quite frequently
Apple making it so hard to develop ios apps on a non apple device, definitely brings additional pain, I don’t want to use apple for my computer.
Saying it as someone who really enjoys using the iphone.
I get why people like macbooks so much, but saying “You never blame yourself for buying Apple” is untrue
For me, that would stand for thinkpads and even then primarily for the older ones.
marcan (lead dev of Asahi Linux) seems to disagree:
Looks like Apple changed the requirements for Mach-O kernel files in 12.1, breaking our existing installation process... and they *also* added a raw image mode that will never break again and doesn't require Mach-Os.
And people said they wouldn't help. This is intended for us.
Regardless, when my mail carrier changes their route to get to my house 30 minutes faster I don't take it as some sort of sign that the UPS cares about me more than the others. It seems more likely to me that Apple saw the logistical value in not breaking their own kernel requirements with every release, and that happens to be serendipitous with the greater development community as a whole. If Apple wanted to help the Linux community, we would know because they'd be releasing UNIX kernel blobs so people wouldn't be forced to spend years re-writing code that already exists. But of course, that's not how their industry works. If Torvalds gave Nvidia just one middle finger for their treatment of Linux, it's hard to imagine how many he'd like to give Apple these days.
Indeed. There is no evidence of them abusing streams of user information.
This means we will soon enough have a situation where a corporation controls the primary medium of communication of the citizens. At this point a smart society would consider how to regulate this situation to safely prevent domination abuse, but I doubt it will happen.
In the US.
And while I agree that anything nearing a de facto monopoly should be strictly regulated, I think any effort should be directed at any messaging app with a large user base, e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger.
So long as there is a near substitute for Apple smartphones, I fail to see what that is sufficient grounds for anti-trust action.
The messaging apps are not a good example of monopoly violations. They are all market options which have many many solutions. WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Signal, iOS Messages, SMS, Discord, Slack, Google Hangouts, MS Teams, Zoom, Skype, and a thousand web forums have similar capabilities. The comms market is remarkably healthy. What most people complain about is the contract they agree to which has lots of restrictive clauses (some which are very vague). Those general contract terms in SaaS services is what I would aim to regulate, rather than the biggest incumbents in the disparate comms apps.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
Apple has not (in my recollection) sought to exert control over content of what is being said or shared among users. In fact, they seem to keep quite a distance from wanting to know or be responsible for that.
And you're claiming that iMessage is the "primary medium of communication of the citizens"? That is just a little overblown, don't you think?
I would argue, if you have that position, maybe you should spend your energy or concern on cable TV news and other media outlets, who do far worse, with far less share of their markets.
You may want to search for Telegram and Apple.
They also block apps that involve politically controversial content, or content that they disagree with (e.g. pornography).
Announced but not (yet) implemented.
> analyze your locally-stored photographs for child photography
Nope. Only the ones on iCloud.
> and upload questionable photos to the cloud for human review
Also a misrepresentation.
> or content that they disagree with (e.g. pornography).
True. And yes, I should have a wank to whatever I please. Legality permitting.
It is so easy to criticise Apple. So many angles to attack them on. So don't misconstrue facts. There's really no need.
Do you have kids? Daughters? Would you like better control over what they're exposed to? Being given the tools to track screen time, purchases and control where possible exposure to objectionable content for immature minds isn't a bad thing.. provided it is opt-in. Which the feature always was before the news cycle chose their own narrative.
In addition to Google scanning everything in your Google account looking for child pornography for the last decade?
>a man [was] arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect's Gmail account
https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/06/why-the-gmail-scan-that-le...
In addition to Google scanning your online account looking for copyright violations?
And on the 2nd point, they like any company, have to obey the laws of the countries they operate in. Whether they should operate in countries that call for them to censor political content, that's a different question. I'm sure you would say that companies have to follow the local laws.
How is that not a bigger monopoly?
Doesn't this imply that parents are the one purchasing it for them? Would be interesting to see how many stick with iPhone when they start earning for themselves.
And it's not Google.
Also please, that should probably be done by a company that is not Google.
Future concerns about what Apple might do in future are nothing by comparison.
But 90% of them will still be doing all of this on an Apple device. Yet you think Facebook is the company to worry about, not Apple?
So you just demonstrated that teens have so much choice. Why are you concerned that they're doing it on an Apple device then, if an iPhone is just the hardware on which all these apps operate, and has nothing to do with what's said within the apps?
They control what messaging apps you are allowed to install on your iPhone.
Then there's the App Store being both a point of control, a burden on developers, and highway robbery with Apple's 30% cut.
They approve apps to be sold/distributed on their platform based on rules about what those apps do or are allowed to do, and whether they comply with local laws.
You're leaning towards making it sound like they decide what messaging apps you're allowed to use based on what you plan to say (content wise) on them.
Wow. Crazy! This has literally never happened before.
But objectively: monopoly is a bad thing. We’re still recovering from Microsoft’s dominance of desktop computing.
Once you have a near monopoly it’s practically impregnable to disintegrate. As you have a wealthy company which is actively harming those efforts.
Abuse of monopoly is a problem.
Remember all the “Apple is doomed, Tim is a bean counter” comments when Jobs handed over the reigns?
Yea. Ok.
And every cycle of quarterly results there’s surprise on HN.
The decline for pro users will continue, I think. Of course a behemoth of 2 T$ won't fail tomorrow
Jobs wanted Apple to deliver the best of the technology that mankind has to offer whereas Cook wants Apple to deliver the best in the market.
This is what makes me nervous. They struck absolute gold with the iPhone, what happens if they don't catch the next wave?
Depending on your viewpoint these can be highly disruptive plays - smart phones were going no place for many demographics until the iPhone came out. Android was going to be a cheaper blackberry clone until they saw what iPhone was doing.
But another view of the iPad famously was the Slashdot single-line review, "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
Phones were a bit of a blind spot in the market. There should have been a lot more investment going on.
Phones are expensive devices that people update often (with "often" really being a function of the demographic), where the price was disguised in many markets via carrier subsidies and cellular contracts. The carriers were often trying to figure out how to get more customers and get them to pay for more services, so charging for data tiers on top of minutes and messaging was attractive.
Nokia had teams that understood this and obviously the company in general was capitalizing on how much money was going into phones, but they were highly dysfunctional in terms of massive amounts of duplicated work (e.g. little commonalities between hardware or OS on dozens of phones released every year). An example of Nokia trying to leverage cellphones to go into a new market would be the N-Gage.
In terms of markets they tend to go after, VR would be the one where I might worry they missed the wave. Some of that is not knowing if VR actually has broad demographic appeal though - there are technology leaps still needed for many people to tolerate longer headset usage, and most computer applications aren't really VR as much as they are 'large virtual monitor' - you don't see N-dimensional word processing as much as games and experiences. Their money is obviously on AR having much broader appeal.
There are certainly cases where market disruption attempts have failed, such as the HomeKit ecosystem. The more open (and cheaper) ecosystems that Google and Amazon have had managed to get significantly more adoption by manufacturers. For that reason they now seem to be aligning much more with and driving new industry standards instead, such as Matter.
All the rumors about them investing toward a full self-driving car product is really odd, because it goes against so much of their formula for incremental evolution of product lines - seems about as likely as them releasing a television or refrigerator.
I can see technology companies looking at the automotive industry and thinking those traditional manufacturers are struggling with the technology side and that maybe they can do a better job.
I'll be surprised if it ever sees the light of day though, the car side is hard as well.
That was said about the first iPod in 2001, not the first iPad in 2010, and it was said by (editor in chief) CmdrTaco himself.
What happens if they don’t catch the next wave? In that case, they will still be wildly successful. They’ve already had the iPad, which is the clear winner in the tablet market. They’ve already had the Apple Watch, which is the clear winner in the smartwatch market. They’ve already had the AirPods, which is the clear winner in the earphone market. None of these are the one-in-a-generation products that the iPhone is, yet they are all massive successes that bring in tonnes of money.
Apple will probably never have a hit as big as the iPhone ever again… but that’s perfectly fine and not at all incompatible with massive success and huge profits.
I just want a phone that works well, works with everything (virtually nobody builds serious apps just for Android and not iOS), and allows me to go about the rest of my day with ease.
I don't think Steve Jobs would let a 'Your battery is under 10%', 'interruptive' notification stay this long on a phone.
If you took out a screenshot of system preferences from OS X tiger or something and compared it to today, see how easy it is to find things on that one. Even with simple things such as the wording of 'General' vs 'Appearance'.
But I’ve never had a Dell or HP laptop come without a bezel scratch or something like that. So in my books, Apple are still a league ahead on quality, even.
Of course not! If there was dust it would immediately brick the keyboard.
Many Apple products in particular OSX was pretty bad during Jobs era.