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  • qhd - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    "for the annual developer exodus that is Apple's World Wide Developers Conference"

    I like this sentence. It's probably just a slip of the keyboard, but not entirely untrue as Apple increasingly caters to casual cafe-goers and alienates its professional users, kind of like how the Mac Pro became more style over function a few years ago, and MacBook Pro became more and more of a throttling machine. Please don't fix this sentence as I kind of feel it's representative in a way :).
  • jeremyshaw - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    I only wonder how long will perception catch up to reality. I once thought the Retina macbooks were among the best laptops money could buy. High DPI display with wide gamut, more powerful versions of regular Intel GPUs, blazingly fast SSDs, decent battery life, etc.

    Turns out, it was mostly a facade.
  • III-V - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    Why's that?

    I'm sure there's plenty of stuff out there that doesn't get the attention it deserves. But I see this more as a failing of companies like Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc. who are too afraid to rock the boat and keep doing things the way they've always done them. I'm not so much praising Apple here, as I am condemning the very obvious conservative, timid behavior of their competitors (although Dell and HP have certainly made bold moves in other directions... consumer PCs seem like an afterthought). Any one of them has had years upon years to, say, model Apple's marketing. They're just sticking with what works, and they take little risks... which is sort of contrary to what business is all about. Their shareholders very clearly have them by the balls.

    Anyway, I used to sell laptops, and I've repaired thousands of them. I hold Apple in very high regard from a quality standpoint, despite all of the attention around their issues. Ignoring the early MacBooks (non-pro, the black and white plastic ones were pretty junky).

    My only real complaint is that they have a tendency to fly a little too close to the sun, and their consumers are the ones that get burnt (say, the recent keyboard issues, which has frankly gotten a bit pathetic at this point). The upfront cost of Macs is high... the maintenance cost is ludicrous.

    And again, I am sure there's better stuff out there. In fact, I know there is, but I also know that some of these products are even more grotesquely expensive, as they lack the economies of scale that Apple has.

    But there's some sort of comforting consistency with Apple's execution. Their relatively small number of offerings makes it easy to keep track of how things have changed over the years, and it's easy to discern whether or not their newer models are worth the upgrade. Dell and the gang have a real clusterfuck of offerings that are a nightmare to keep track of. In contrast to their marketing, Apple's modesty in making changes to their Mac lineup plays very much in their favor.

    I've got some real moral issues with some of the things Apple does (and doesn't do... you've got an atrocious amount of cash on hand... meanwhile, middle class America's on the edge of collapse), but the products themselves are generally better than what Dell/etc offer. I am saying this despite the years I've spent in repair and being acutely aware of their recalls and failings, and despite being a huge fan of Louis Rossmann, who is one of their loudest critics.

    Do I think they're worth the money? No. They're a very bad value proposition, for sure. But they're a safe bet, and for people who have no shortage of money, but an acute shortage of time, Apple's a pretty great choice. Most people buy Apple for the wrong reasons, but when you're loaded, it makes a ton of sense. You get your IT guys in your business to do the research as to what's the best product for your needs, you have your secretary go pick it up from the store, and drop it off whenever it breaks. You're too busy making bank to worry about nickle and diming (and the people who ought to be penching pennies aren't, and are attempting to copy your lifestyle, as if that's sustainable).
  • cfenton - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    Most of those perceptions were accurate six or so years ago. When I bought a 2013 15" Retina Macbook Pro, there was nothing out there that ticked the same boxes. I could get something equally fast running Windows, but it was bulky and heavy in comparison, or it had a weak battery, or it had a bad screen. The screen was the biggest thing. Windows 8 high DPI scaling was pretty terrible back then and it was much more difficult to find information on color calibration.

    Now several other PC manufacturers make competitive products, which is great to see.
  • BigMamaInHouse - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    Fingers crossed to see the New Mac Pro with AMD parts :-).
  • jeremyshaw - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    It's guaranteed to have AMD parts - a GPU. Nvidia will not open source their drivers for Apple and Intel isn't in that market.
  • BigMamaInHouse - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    I am hoping for other Parts too- Maybe TR 3000 Inside with Radeon VII and PCIE Gen4 NVMe SSD Raid ? ;-)
  • Pat_2409 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    While soon available, Apple has to invent them before using them
  • willis936 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    I hope they explicitly say they will support moltenvk.
  • yeeeeman - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    Regarding the wifi comment in this live blog, I wonder how much better 11ax will fare in the same situations compared to 11ac.
  • storapa - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link

    We'll have to wait and see. While the writer didn't mention anything specific, I think there's a couple of new features targeted at that specific use case (makes a lot of sense since 11ac is already fast enough for most use cases with limited number of users):

    1. MU-MIMO.
    While it was a part of 11ac Wave 2 / Wifi 5 wave 2, it was not mandatory for 11ac/Wifi 5. In 11ax/Wifi6 it is now mandatory, and Wifi 6 wave 2 adds support for MU-MIMO when sending data from the client to the AP.

    2. OFDMA
    Long story short (and over-simplified), Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple‑Access allows multiple clients to share a channel.

    3. TWT
    Target Wait Time allows the AP to control when and how often a client is allowed to communicate (reducing overhead from collision and re-transmits)

    Note that we'll have to wait until Wifi 6 Wave 2 until we can use OFDMA and MU-MIMO together.
  • Alistair - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    I was interested in the new Mac Pro, then I saw that it has the same specs as the current Mac Pro, but it is 50 percent more expensive. $4000 was a good price Apple. $6000 is a joke. I'll go build a 12 core Ryzen 3900X now...
  • Alistair - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    The old $4000 Mac Pro came with 2 video cards for $4000. Now we get one for $6000... you can't make this up. Same storage, same processor. So you lose a video card and get double the memory (and memory prices have dropped in half in the last 6 months, so it costs the same), and pay an extra $2000 for the PSU and motherboard and case.
  • Glaurung - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    $2000 extra gets you eight PCI slots instead of none, and up to four GPUs.. A massive power supply and cooling system, instead of wimpy ones. Two internal SSD slots instead or just one.

    The entry level system isn't the one that anyone in the target market will buy - this computer is made explicitly for professional video editors, who are all salivating over the idea of being able to buy the maxed out system with 4 gpus, 28 cores, and a video codec acceleration card that will let them work with multiple streams of raw 8k video at full resolution in real time.
  • sorten - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    A $6000 computer with a $50 SSD. Wow.
  • peevee - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link

    It's a $1000 computer with $50 SSD. They just want $6000 for it.

    $1000 for a monitor STAND should be a hint.
  • farhadd - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    02:42PM EDT - Pro stand is extra - $199
    It's actually $999 (which is bananas)- the $199 part was the VESA adapter (also bananas, for the record)
  • flgt - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    "Apple employees are chanting. A high school pep rally would not be an unfair comparison"

    Ha!
  • poppsiej - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    How do I hide this content from my creative team...I don't want to spend $15k a workstation for what is basically outdated technology...
  • web2dot0 - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link

    How is getting 8 PCIe slots and 4GPU a outdated technology?
  • RSAUser - Friday, June 7, 2019 - link

    That CPU is outdated, PCIe 4 released. This thing is already dead in the water based on hardware specs by next quarter on TR release and probably new AMD GPU lineup.
  • Cullinaire - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link

    From trash can to cheese grater...I cannot wait to see what design language they will come up with next!!
  • Speedfriend - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link

    02:52PM EDT - Macs will send out a Bluetooth beacon

    02:52PM EDT - Which can be picked up by iPhones

    02:53PM EDT - "Encrypted and anonymous"

    So if you use a Mac, Apple is continually tracking where you are by broadcast Bluetooth from your Mac regardless of whether you switch it off and then picking this up with others users iPhone to forward back to the mothership?

    Seems like an invasion of my privacy
  • gund8912 - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Turn off find my device, problem solved.
  • web2dot0 - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link

    MacPro is basically a supped up quiet version of Supermico sys-7049gp-trt

    For those of you not familiar with super workstations
  • EnzoFX - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link

    The cheese grater aspect... it's weird. It's not just holes on a flat surface is it. There's some depth funkyness going on there, I'm not sure I like it, it's almost triggering trypophobia in me lol.
  • V900 - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link

    It’s an awesome machine, but hoo boy, it sure is ugly!

    As for the monitor? Absolute madness! Quite telling that they almost lost the crowd when they got to the 1000$ stand.

    You can get similar stands for a few hundred dollars. Heck, you can get a good monitor AND a stand for the price that they charge just for the stand.

    Totally shameless. And heck, this is coming from an Apple fan!
  • gund8912 - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Please let me know where I can get similar stand for few hundred dollars, I want to buy one for myself.
  • gund8912 - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    The Canon DP-V3010 4K Reference Display for $19,990.00 ? pretty insane price, new high for a 4K Display.
  • peevee - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link

    $1000 monitor STAND - is it new high or new low?
  • Vickie2L - Wednesday, June 19, 2019 - link

    I'm not so much praising Apple here, as I am condemning the very obvious conservative, timid behavior of their competitors.

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