Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Nov 10, 2020 2:36:08 GMT -8
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,099
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Post by Dave on Nov 10, 2020 2:43:33 GMT -8
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,099
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Post by Dave on Nov 10, 2020 2:49:03 GMT -8
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,099
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Post by Dave on Nov 10, 2020 2:59:29 GMT -8
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Post by Lstream on Nov 10, 2020 5:03:47 GMT -8
And this is why I will not be switching until I get comfortable on the software compatibility story. Which will include an inventory of everything I use, and knowing for sure I am not leaving anything behind. I still think that this is the right move, but for sure the transition period is uncertain.
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Nov 10, 2020 6:38:08 GMT -8
Yes, I agree. In the long run the change will be better for Apple and AAPL but interim it may be best to wait and see. I would hate to be one of those that bought the new MacPro costing $10k+ only to lose the use of your favorite software. Well, we may have some answers in a few hours.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Nov 10, 2020 7:13:11 GMT -8
And this is why I will not be switching until I get comfortable on the software compatibility story. Which will include an inventory of everything I use, and knowing for sure I am not leaving anything behind. I still think that this is the right move, but for sure the transition period is uncertain. It all depends on how edge case your usage is. I bought the last PPC iMac version at the end of 2006, using my annual 25% employee discount for the first time. That computer lasted, and I don't remember feeling put out by support shifting, though I did end up with a similar Intel one maybe 3-5 years later. But it's the edge cases, whether you are running special software, either old or new, that can get you. In ~2003 an update like 10.3 or 10.4 killed printing from VirtualPC, which I was using at the time to print stamps from the then PC only Stamps.com. A bit of an edge case. Same with this year, going to 10.15. I like being able to run older software occasionally. It's like having a spare tool in your garage, that you don't need very often (or ever), but you know you have it if you need it. I had older versions of Office, BBEdit, TextWrangler, and Toast. Sure, I could upgrade them. But all tended to be in the "run a couple times a year, once a year, or never" category. Each person's usage is different. But in a production environment, I'm sure there will be a "test it out' window, just as big IT departments often lean towards.
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Post by Lstream on Nov 10, 2020 7:22:43 GMT -8
I am not much of an edge case at all. Most of stuff is pretty standard. But all it takes is an app or two, to force one to wait. For example, I play poker as a hobby. Strong preference is for live, but that is dead for a while. So I rely on two apps. The app from the site itself, and a companion app that tracks my results. Lack of support for those would be a show stopper. Getting 90% compatible does not work in this type of situation.
I lived through the last transition. Had to use virtualization apps for a while. But it really did take a while to go entirely native. I don’t think I would go the virtualization route again, even if it is an alternative. I would just stay on my 2019 MacBook Pro until the transition gets to a state where I am comfortable.
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mark
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Post by mark on Nov 10, 2020 7:38:34 GMT -8
I am not much of an edge case at all. Most of stuff is pretty standard. But all it takes is an app or two, to force one to wait. For example, I play poker as a hobby. Strong preference is for live, but that is dead for a while. So I rely on two apps. The app from the site itself, and a companion app that tracks my results. Lack of support for those would be a show stopper. Getting 90% compatible does not work in this type of situation. I lived through the last transition. Had to use virtualization apps for a while. But it really did take a while to go entirely native. I don’t think I would go the virtualization route again, even if it is an alternative. I would just stay on my 2019 MacBook Pro until the transition gets to a state where I am comfortable. If you have a 2019 MacBook Pro, it'll last for a long time anyway. By the time you need to switch over, almost all compatibility issues will have been addressed, either by being solved, or by new software being written. In my case, I still have a 2012 (!) MacBook Pro and will need to decide ASAP (the battery is shot, and Apple doesn't replace them anymore, only 3'rd parties do the job nowadays).
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chinacat
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AAPL Long since 2006
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Post by chinacat on Nov 10, 2020 8:22:23 GMT -8
It will be interesting to see what role the App Store plays in the compatibility issue. I wonder if Apple has or will provide support for transitioning apps to the new hardware, as well as how long they will offer and support old apps. Have any app developers on the board received any information?
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JDSoCal
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Aspiring oligarch
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Post by JDSoCal on Nov 10, 2020 8:31:19 GMT -8
One has to believe that Tim and Co are sharp enough to have some sort of accommodation for legacy apps on the new silicon, probably through emulation. Interesting piece on ad spammers panicking about the zeroed IDFAs on iOS 14 (opt-in to ads tracking instead of opt-out). The untold story about zeroed IDFAs on iOS 14 devicesHard to cry for the invasive, snooping ad industry. Curious if and how Apple will find a way to monetize all of this.
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Post by Lstream on Nov 10, 2020 8:39:34 GMT -8
I am not much of an edge case at all. Most of stuff is pretty standard. But all it takes is an app or two, to force one to wait. For example, I play poker as a hobby. Strong preference is for live, but that is dead for a while. So I rely on two apps. The app from the site itself, and a companion app that tracks my results. Lack of support for those would be a show stopper. Getting 90% compatible does not work in this type of situation. I lived through the last transition. Had to use virtualization apps for a while. But it really did take a while to go entirely native. I don’t think I would go the virtualization route again, even if it is an alternative. I would just stay on my 2019 MacBook Pro until the transition gets to a state where I am comfortable. If you have a 2019 MacBook Pro, it'll last for a long time anyway. By the time you need to switch over, almost all compatibility issues will have been addressed, either by being solved, or by new software being written. In my case, I still have a 2012 (!) MacBook Pro and will need to decide ASAP (the battery is shot, and Apple doesn't replace them anymore, only 3'rd parties do the job nowadays). Sounds like you will be an early adopter then. Looking forward to your thoughts.
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JDSoCal
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Post by JDSoCal on Nov 10, 2020 8:51:58 GMT -8
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chinacat
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Post by chinacat on Nov 10, 2020 9:43:54 GMT -8
One has to believe that Tim and Co are sharp enough to have some sort of accommodation for legacy apps on the new silicon, probably through emulation. Agreed. I am just interested to see how they approach it. For example, at what point will legacy apps disappear from the App Store?
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Nov 10, 2020 10:51:50 GMT -8
Nice Apple!
Chinacat, maybe a Mac Mini and a display will work for you. It's a good setup, and my parents used that setup with 2 27" displays for a few years, often pushing an occasional workload as my mom did as a graphics designer.
Though I like having a big display, or formerly a couple of them, those MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros look tempting.
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JDSoCal
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Aspiring oligarch
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Post by JDSoCal on Nov 10, 2020 10:58:09 GMT -8
One has to believe that Tim and Co are sharp enough to have some sort of accommodation for legacy apps on the new silicon, probably through emulation. Agreed. I am just interested to see how they approach it. For example, at what point will legacy apps disappear from the App Store? Well we got the answer on emulation, Rosetta 2. Sounds like the transition to M1 will be a lot easier than past SOC migrations, as developing for Apple is much simpler now with Apple's development tools. Yes it was a big infomercial, but several developers in the Apple Silicon presentation said they had new M1 versions of their apps running in one day. To be clear, no company on earth can do what Apple is doing, even if they wanted to. It was funny to see the PC Guy at the end, but they should have incorporated him better. Like have him pushing a shopping cart in an imaginary computer store, grabbing random CPUs and GPUs and motherboards and other components, and OS's of all different makes, and cobbling them together to make a frankencomputer (as every PC company besides Apple does). THEN explain how Apple does it all in one building, 100% APPLE hardware made for specific APPLE OS and apps that are made with APPLE development tools. Apple software which is made for Apple hardware which is made for Apple software. No cobbling!
It was also cool to hear the chime coming back.
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Post by Lstream on Nov 10, 2020 10:59:47 GMT -8
Still digesting this. Impressive performance and battery life improvements. But seriously hampered by Apple being ridiculously cheap with ports. 2 and that's it. If you use one for power and one for an external display, you are done, without some kind of adapter. Cmon - that's ridiculous.
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Post by Lstream on Nov 10, 2020 11:00:57 GMT -8
Re emulation, sometimes I think there are caveats. Will be interesting to see if there are any here.
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JDSoCal
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Aspiring oligarch
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Post by JDSoCal on Nov 10, 2020 11:10:28 GMT -8
Still digesting this. Impressive performance and battery life improvements. But seriously hampered by Apple being ridiculously cheap with ports. 2 and that's it. If you use one for power and one for an external display, you are done, without some kind of adapter. Cmon - that's ridiculous. Well they do call it a Mini for a reason. Presumably the Mac Pro will have lots of ports and be pretty friggin' fast. Dare I say, "Wicked Fast"? (Old IIfx owners might get the allusion).
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chinacat
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Post by chinacat on Nov 10, 2020 11:14:01 GMT -8
Nice Apple! Chinacat, maybe a Mac Mini and a display will work for you. It's a good setup, and my parents used that setup with 2 27" displays for a few years, often pushing an occasional workload as my mom did as a graphics designer. The thought did cross my mind
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Post by Lstream on Nov 10, 2020 11:34:09 GMT -8
Still digesting this. Impressive performance and battery life improvements. But seriously hampered by Apple being ridiculously cheap with ports. 2 and that's it. If you use one for power and one for an external display, you are done, without some kind of adapter. Cmon - that's ridiculous. Well they do call it a Mini for a reason. Presumably the Mac Pro will have lots of ports and be pretty friggin' fast. Dare I say, "Wicked Fast"? (Old IIfx owners might get the allusion). I was referring to the MacBook Pro notebook. My current one has four ports. New ones max out at 2.
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Post by aapltini on Nov 10, 2020 11:59:26 GMT -8
I did my part. Maxed out Air. Really need an iMac but can’t wait. Looks like it will be screaming fast for Logic Pro.
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JDSoCal
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Aspiring oligarch
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Post by JDSoCal on Nov 10, 2020 12:46:44 GMT -8
Apple really is about monetizing the cloud, so they de-emphasize USB ports. It's one reason I won't buy an iPad - no removable media.
Another good for stockholder, bad for end user policy.
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Post by rezonate on Nov 10, 2020 13:39:26 GMT -8
Watched the releases. None of them move me to make any changes. Sure the performance is amazing, but that is achieved due to Big Sur - which would render many bits and pieces across my setup inoperable (at least until updated patches arrive, if ever). And why top out at 16gb RAM, and only two USB-C/TB3 ports? Crazy limitations. I'll be watching for version 2.0 Mac Mini and any new releases (MBP 16") with the M2 chip.
Still see these releases as moving the needle and planting a solid flag, especially if their metrics are correct: 50% of all new mac purchases (in an otherwise crushing year) are new to the Mac.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Nov 10, 2020 14:13:37 GMT -8
Still digesting this. Impressive performance and battery life improvements. But seriously hampered by Apple being ridiculously cheap with ports. 2 and that's it. If you use one for power and one for an external display, you are done, without some kind of adapter. Cmon - that's ridiculous. FWIW, it's the same number of ports as a MacBook Air from 2 years ago. It seems like too few, but really our issue in nearly 2 years of use has been needing an adapter for just about everything. I bought a 5 pack of the adapters (to standard USB size), which we use for jump drives or attaching to the printer. We've never hooked it to an external display or TV, since we don't have the HDMI adapter. But many of the HDMI adapters, like some from mono price, have multiple things on them for nearly the same price as one with just HDMI. It all depends what you want to do on it. If you're mostly a road warrior, and want it thin and light, it's good. But you need to step back to thinking of it like a Powerbook Duo, where it needed to dock to something to do just about anything. There were full docks with video, SCSI, ADB, and other ports, made to have a big CRT sitting on top. Or they had smaller docks that had just some of those things. Personally, mostly using my computers at home, I don't really like the idea of needing various adapters. And I see that both the cheap HP and ASUS laptops we bought for the kids have a bunch of ports, including normal sized USB ones and HDMI, all for $350. They aren't quite as trim and lightweight, but they come in pretty well considering. But, it is a different priority, and one does have to realize that there are tradeoffs to get the small and stylish footprint that the MacBook Air has. On the plus side, with such amazing battery life, you don't have to have it plugged in too often, thus you get 2 ports instead of just one EDIT: Didn't see that the 13" MacBook Pro only had a pair of ports, plus audio. Granted they can do USB 4, and Apple is selling 2 Intel based version with higher specs and prices that have 4 ports (can do usb 3.1). I'm sure they had their reasons, but agree that 2 seems too few on the Pro.
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Post by Lstream on Nov 10, 2020 14:56:53 GMT -8
Yes, my notebook of choice is the Pro, so that is the product my comments were directed at. Really interested in how emulation and the balance of the software story turns out. I don’t want to downplay the overall accomplishment of the M1. It is super impressive. Really like the differentiation it delivers.
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Post by dmiller on Nov 10, 2020 16:08:21 GMT -8
Watched the releases. None of them move me to make any changes. Sure the performance is amazing, but that is achieved due to Big Sur - which would render many bits and pieces across my setup inoperable (at least until updated patches arrive, if ever). And why top out at 16gb RAM, and only two USB-C/TB3 ports? Crazy limitations. I'll be watching for version 2.0 Mac Mini and any new releases (MBP 16") with the M2 chip. Still see these releases as moving the needle and planting a solid flag, especially if their metrics are correct: 50% of all new mac purchases (in an otherwise crushing year) are new to the Mac. I would have preferred to have a 32GB RAM option (as both a developer and advanced photographer using Adobe apps). “However”: the 16GB ceiling is likely a result of the architecture. M1 has the “unified RAM” built -into the chip itself- for greater speed. They probably couldn’t fit more than 16Gb into the package. 2 instead of 4 USB-C ports (yes they are Thunderbolt 3; no they aren’t Thunderbolt 4 for the fastest possible speeds, but TB3 is still plenty fast enough at these price points) is a little disappointing. This is the same across all 3 new M1 systems, so it’s either some sort of limitation (reasons unknown) or a way of saving cost. The systems they’re replacing (at least for the Pro and Mini) had 4. With that said, for the majority of people, 2 is fine, and any inexpensive adapter will add another with pass-through for power. The better hubs and docks add more goodies for varying prices. The performance increases are from the M1 PROCESSOR, and the other hardware improvements (SSDs are twice as fast, which itself is amazing), not from Big Sur itself (which isn’t going to produce any performance gains when running in Intel hardware). Be very clear about that. I’m stoked about this. 🙂
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Post by dmiller on Nov 10, 2020 16:12:39 GMT -8
Yes, my notebook of choice is the Pro, so that is the product my comments were directed at. Really interested in how emulation and the balance of the software story turns out. I don’t want to downplay the overall accomplishment of the M1. It is super impressive. Really like the differentiation it delivers. Based on what they’ve said today (3x faster running natively, with even greater GPU gains), then emulation on -shipping hardware with the M1- (not the dev kit hardware with older and slower A series processors and with conventional “non-unified RAM” integrated into the processor chip itself), emulation is likely to run applications at least “as fast as” on existing Intel A9 systems, with potential to even exceed native performance on Intel. That’s huge.
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Post by Lstream on Nov 10, 2020 16:46:42 GMT -8
Yes, my notebook of choice is the Pro, so that is the product my comments were directed at. Really interested in how emulation and the balance of the software story turns out. I don’t want to downplay the overall accomplishment of the M1. It is super impressive. Really like the differentiation it delivers. Based on what they’ve said today (3x faster running natively, with even greater GPU gains), then emulation on -shipping hardware with the M1- (not the dev kit hardware with older and slower A series processors and with conventional “non-unified RAM” integrated into the processor chip itself), emulation is likely to run applications at least “as fast as” on existing Intel A9 systems, with potential to even exceed native performance on Intel. That’s huge. My memory is kind of fuzzy, but I kind of remember from the last transition, that certain types of apps could not run in emulation mode. Not concerned about performance, more concerned if there certain types of apps that will not run.
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mark
fire starter
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Post by mark on Nov 10, 2020 19:23:03 GMT -8
If you have a 2019 MacBook Pro, it'll last for a long time anyway. By the time you need to switch over, almost all compatibility issues will have been addressed, either by being solved, or by new software being written. In my case, I still have a 2012 (!) MacBook Pro and will need to decide ASAP (the battery is shot, and Apple doesn't replace them anymore, only 3'rd parties do the job nowadays). Sounds like you will be an early adopter then. Looking forward to your thoughts. Hmmm, I really want a 16 inch pro model ... not yet. Maybe I'll settle for a 13 inch pro model, but I can't see any major differences between the air and the 13 inch pro other than some battery life.
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