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back to article Apple gives world ... umm ... not much new actually

When Microsoft revealed its Surface Studio last year , more than a few observers looked at its 28” touch screen and accompanying Dial touch wheel and wondered whether Apple could offer something similarly startling for workstation-class users. The answer to that query appears to be a solid “no” because Apple's new “iMac Pro” …

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  1. AMBxx Silver badge
    Windows

    Sign of a mature market?

    Not sure if this is just a sign of a mature market or if Apple have just run out of ideas.

    Did they get it right first time with iOS, so now just need minor tweaks?

    I'm sure similar discussions were held about Blackberry and Nokia at their peaks too.

    If something dramatic is going to shake up the market, it doesn't look like it will come from Apple. I'm pretty sure it won't be from Microsoft either, regardless of how clever their dial thingie is.

    14 1 Reply
    1. djstardust
      Reply Icon

      Re: Sign of a mature market?

      Sign of Apple giving customers as little as possible for as much money as they can get.

      Apple are a greedy corporation that focus only on margins and profit. The customers are just an inconvenience to them.

      19 13 Reply
      1. Hans 1
        Reply Icon
        Holmes

        Re: Sign of a mature market?

        Sign of [insert_company_name] giving customers as little as possible for as much money as they can get. <br />[insert_company_name] are a greedy corporation that focus only on margins and profit.

        Welcome to the beautiful world of "businesses", "share prices", "investors", and "dividends". You will notice that apple is not all that more expensive than the competition, when you take build quality into account, plus, they come with macOS.

        15 26 Reply
        1. big_D Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Sign of a mature market?

          @Hans1 and macOS is good, because? I had to drop OS X on my iMac and switch to Linux and Windows 7, because Apple stopped bringing out security updates for Lion a couple of years ago and that is the last version of the OS that runs on the hardware, Microsoft on the other hand will continue to support the Apple hardware for another 2 years.

          As to build quality, I still have an Acer notebook from 2004 and a Sony from 2010. Both are still running (and the batteries are still working), the Sony got an SSD upgrade and is still fast enough for most day-to-day tasks. My iMac sits somewhere in the middle, it is a late 2007 model.

          13 5 Reply
          1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: Sign of a mature market?

            @Big_D "I had to drop OS X on my iMac and switch to Linux and Windows 7, because Apple stopped bringing out security updates for Lion"

            Well maybe you should consider updating your machine. Lion was RTM in July 2011, FFS. And if your hardware only supports up to Lion, it's at least 9 years old.

            7 14 Reply
            1. big_D Silver badge
              Reply Icon

              Re: Sign of a mature market?

              And? My Acer notebook is from 2004 and that still runs a supported version of Windows. Like the iMac, it isn't my main machine, but it is still used for some tasks.

              12 5 Reply
            2. Rainer
              Reply Icon

              Re: Sign of a mature market?

              I've got an iMac from 2008. It runs El Capitan. A bit slow, but it's still OK to watch youtube and basic surfing.

              I wouldn't want to open my inbox with it (it has 2m mails or so).

              It can't run Sierra, though. But El Capitan is good enough for most use cases.

              0 0 Reply
          2. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Sign of a mature market?

            It's pretty easy to get Windows 10 working on old 20"/24" iMac 2008 onwards. The irony that Windows 10 work better on older 2008 macs. The Windows drivers need to be gathered and extracted from newer iMac Bootcamp 5.1/6.0 installs, but it runs fine, as long as your Nvidia graphics card doesn't have signs of fatigue (common).

            The drivers for ATI Radeon HD 2600 Graphics seem to work best on these older models, but Nvidia seems pretty stable, if the graphics card is 100%, but that isn't often the case on machines this age.

            Haven't bothered with trying "forcing" to get macOS Sierra running. If I can't do this with original files, I don't bother. I wouldn't trust 'those hacks' to force it. El Capitan is pretty good still, so not really an issue.

            It's annoying Apple go the route of absolute blocking of new macOS installs, rather than just warning it might not run properly, because often it's only a small hardware change required, i.e. upgrade of the Network card and it would be compatible. (upgrading the Broadcom Network card from BCM94321 to BCM94322).

            Apple should really be proud that their classics 2008/2009 24'' imacs (there isn't really any direct replacement either) are still running and kept out of landfill, not forcing machines into landfill for no obvious reason, forcing users down routes of attempting malware ridden "software fixes" to support macOS Sierra.

            Would be nice if it became just a warning, instead of an absolute block on install, for High Sierra. Listening Apple?

            13 0 Reply
            1. Rainer
              Reply Icon

              Re: Sign of a mature market?

              You can recycle them for free.

              You can fill out a form on their website and they'll send you a box.

              So, technically it's not landfill ;-)

              3 1 Reply
              1. CommodorePet
                Reply Icon

                Re: Sign of a mature market?

                > You can recycle them for free.

                Sure, as long as you now realize you effectively leased the computer, you never bought it.

                4 1 Reply
          3. FIA Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: Sign of a mature market?

            I had to drop OS X on my iMac and switch to Linux and Windows 7, because Apple stopped bringing out security updates for Lion a couple of years ago and that is the last version of the OS that runs on the hardware,

            That does make it over 10 years old. That's not an unreasonable lifespan, is it? I have similar age imac as a second pc and it is annoying that more and more apps won't update, however in the grand scheme of things that doesn't seem unreasonable as it's due to lack of investment by a company I've given no more money to. I feel I got my monies worth to put it another way.

            Microsoft on the other hand will continue to support the Apple hardware for another 2 years.

            They'll continue to support the OS, If a security update broke an Apple specific driver I doubt they'd provide a fix.

            [...] My iMac sits somewhere in the middle, it is a late 2007 model.

            Are you sure? if it is you should be able to upgrade to El Capitan.

            2 1 Reply
            1. Anonymous Coward
              Reply Icon
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Sign of a mature market?

              Over the weekend I pulled out my old Mid 2009 White Polycarbonate MacBook from a cupboard. I brought a new (and crappy) battery from Amazon as Apple no longer sells them and a 256GB SSD. I threw the old 120GB hard disk back into a drawer and charged the battery up.

              I downloaded El Capitan for free from the Apple App Store (I was lucky and I'd downloaded it before, otherwise you're looking at a torrent) and installed it via a 32GB SSD drive acting as a USB drive.

              Installed first time, loaded up some parental controls software and gave it to my two young daughters to use in their bedroom (hence the parental controls). It won't (easily) run Sierra as Apple has made that a little more difficult. I did manage to get Sierra installed but my particular version of Macbook wasn't a very good candidate for Sierra as the brightness controls didn't seem to work. To be honest El Capitan isn't a bad system and so went back to that.

              It runs well for an eight year old laptop, the keyboard (surprsingly) is fine, the SSD makes a big difference, the new battery is till a load of crap as all of the cheap ones are. 4GB is adequate for my kids needs, I did ponder putting Linux on it, but decided on OS X as they really need Office. Since Office 365 Home is £55/year for five computers and we have five computers, thats £11 a year, thats 20p a week. I'm not arguing with MS over two pints of milk a week.

              Whilst I'd like a new Macbook (I'm typing this on a early 2013 Macbook Pro Retina), my current Macbook is fine. It runs XCode, Genymotion, Affinity design stuff, Office 365, SQLite, it gets used for hours every day and still looks like new for a four year old machine,

              Whilst Apple may have moved from innovation to iteration, it still makes pretty good products that work for quite a considerable time. They're not cheap, but the quality still seems to be there.

              (Other products may also be good)

              2 0 Reply
        2. John Bailey
          Reply Icon

          Re: Sign of a mature market?

          "Welcome to the beautiful world of "Apologist fanboys", "religious zealots", "astroturfers", and "consumer fashion victims". You will notice that apple is not all that more expensive than the competition, when you take over engineering and general bad design into account, plus, they come with macOS."

          FTFY

          8 7 Reply
      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sign of a mature market?

        > Sign of Apple giving customers as little as possible for as much money as they can get.

        Cost of iOS 11 update for mobile devices released since 2014: £0

        Cost of macOS High Sierra update for Macs released since 2009: £0

        Looks more like customers getting new features for no outlay, for many years to me.

        11 9 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Sign of a mature market?

          Just look at the CPU lineup in the laptops.

          Always well behind the curve, using cheaper chips (but never cheap as chips) for increased profit margin.

          Took them more than 1 year after Intel released Skylake to release new laptops with that chip. By that time the competition were dishing Kaby Lake-based machines.

          USB C for Macbook Pro in Last year's release? USB C - my a**e. And no, not because of the peripherals but for the ability to carry external battery and have 14-16 hours with no mains outlet. What do they do - add USB C to the ghastly Macbook (non-Pro).

          Innovation (last year)? Some dubious touch-scroll bar cum FN keys. If they were so concerned about the touch capability they better release touch screen (not that I m going to use one).

          P.S. All the above written on Macbook

          14 1 Reply
          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Sign of a mature market?

            "Took them more than 1 year after Intel released Skylake to release new laptops with that chip. By that time the competition were dishing Kaby Lake-based machines."

            I hardly see this as an issue. Intel recently went full mad at releasing new stuff with no new value vs. old stuff, every 8-10 months now, and quite frankly, after Haswell, there's hardly any reason to put the new stuff vs. the old.

            6 4 Reply
            1. big_D Silver badge
              Reply Icon

              Re: Sign of a mature market?

              Well, Kaby Lake was rushed out of the door due to design flaws in Skylake... So, instead of skipping Skylake completely and going with the "fixed" Kaby Lake, they decided to not only release a superceded chip, but one known for its design flaws, especially in the power management area.

              7 0 Reply
            2. Anonymous Coward
              Reply Icon
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Sign of a mature market?

              True - 14nm for 14nm. So what?

              However if I pay top dollar (pound, actually) I expect decent components, not something which is already 1 year old. Just so that they can even further squeeze their overinflated margins on the hardware.

              And this is not only Kaby lake vs Skylake.

              Do yourself a favour and look at the CPUs of every Macbook release vs release date of the CPUs for the last few years.

              Liking Macs doesn't mean I am mug who will look at Tim Cook's mouth and believe that every new marginal improvement is supposed to be revolutionary.

              P.S. big_D - couldn't have said it better than you! Shows the attitude Apple have towards their customers.

              10 0 Reply
        2. big_D Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Sign of a mature market? @AC

          Cost of macOS High Sierra update for my iMac? A new iMac... In fact, the price was due when Mountain Lion came out... I bought a Windows PC instead.

          10 4 Reply
    2. big_D Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Sign of a mature market?

      Windows Mobile 10 is way ahead of iOS in many ways. It lacks apps and support from third parties, but it shows what Apple could have done.

      iOS is probably the most backward mobile OS at the moment. It lead the pack half a decade ago, but that is a long time in IT and the competition have overtaken it in most areas.

      I used to use iOS, but after having used WP8/WM10 and Android, I wouldn't go back.

      I currently have a Nexus 5X and a Lumia 950. I prefer the 950, but the apps I use most (Fitbit & WhatsApp) are poorly written under WM10 (Fitbit loses its Bluetooth connection once a day and needs to be re-installed, WhatsApp took to randomly waiting a few days, before telling me, that I had waiting messages).

      16 20 Reply
    3. wolfetone Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Sign of a mature market?

      "Not sure if this is just a sign of a mature market or if Apple have just run out of ideas."

      They've gone from Sierra to High Sierra.

      10.14 will probably be Low Sierra.

      10.15 will probably be Where's Sierra.

      10.16 will probably be Ford Sierra

      10.17 will probably be Ford Sierra Cosworth.

      10.18 will probably be Desperately Seeking Sierra

      So yeah, I think they've ran out of ideas.

      45 1 Reply
      1. Bangem
        Reply Icon

        Re: Sign of a mature market?

        "10.18 will probably be Desperately Seeking Sierra"

        Genius sir!

        8 0 Reply
        1. TRT Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Sign of a mature market?

          Que sierra, sierra.

          9 0 Reply
      2. DontFeedTheTrolls
        Reply Icon

        Sierra

        Treasure of the Sierra Madre

        "Badges! we don't need no stinkin' badges"

        7 0 Reply
        1. D@v3
          Reply Icon

          Re: Sierra

          Bring me the head of Sierra Garcia.

          1 0 Reply
      3. WallMeerkat
        Reply Icon

        Re: Sign of a mature market?

        They're an American company, so probably GMC Sierra. The Ford was called Merkur XR4Ti over there.

        4 1 Reply
        1. Chemical Bob
          Reply Icon

          Re: Sign of a mature market?

          "They're an American company, so probably GMC Sierra."

          Or, for those who remember Oldsmobile, Cutlass Ciera (I *know* it's not spelt the same)...

          1 0 Reply
      4. Simon Harris
        Reply Icon

        Re: Sign of a mature market?

        I'm going to start making washing lines for ocean liners' laundries.

        That'll be a High Sea Airer.

        12 0 Reply
        1. Chemical Bob
          Reply Icon

          Re: High Sea Airer

          Alternatively, Hi-C (tm) Error.

          2 0 Reply
      5. macjules
        Reply Icon

        Re: Sign of a mature market?

        .. and not forgetting that 10.18 will run on the new 50" iPads

        Q: When are you going to bring out professional computers or displays Mr Cook?

        A: STFU and have an extra inch on your fondleslab.

        5 2 Reply
        1. djstardust
          Reply Icon

          Re: Sign of a mature market?

          My 2009 Mac Pro has Windows 7 ultimate running on it and it's sweet as a nut.

          I removed the Apple HDD completely and it only now has a SSD with Windows on it.

          That was really the end of excellent Apple hardware. It all turned to shit after that.

          5 2 Reply
      6. Al Black
        Reply Icon
        Unhappy

        Re: Sign of a mature market?

        So Steve Jobs is really dead, then?

        0 0 Reply
        1. TRT Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Sign of a mature market?

          I miss the old x-serve. A proper powerful 1U solution, with dual-PSUs and very easy servicing. :(

          1 0 Reply
    4. sanmigueelbeer
      Reply Icon
      Alert

      Re: Sign of a mature market?

      Not sure if this is just a sign of a mature market or if Apple have just run out of ideas.

      Steve Jobs is gone. He was the one who had the ideas. Jobs was the one who changed the world and how we interact with our phones.

      The old fart that's taken over is just enjoying the fruits of Steve Jobs' creative mind.

      Unless someone can come up with something big, something new, Apple has just hit the apex of their glory.

      14 9 Reply
    5. Ilsa Loving
      Reply Icon

      Re: Sign of a mature market?

      It's a sign that Apple is now being run by a pointy-haired MBA that has no vision beyond maximizing dongle revenue.

      2 0 Reply
  2. Hans 1
    Meh

    What is so great about the surface pro ? Look, I have yet to see anyone using touch input, yet ...

    As for comparing Apples to Lemons, HP Z2 comes with an i3 at the mentioned price AND does not even have decent Ethernet, maxes out at 32Gb RAM... might as well compare to the venerable raspberry pi.

    Ohh, and don't think for one second I am an Apple fanboy, hey ... as long as they solder RAM/storage, I will shop elsewhere ...

    20 6 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Look, I have yet to see anyone using touch input, yet ...

      Touch input on a productivity laptop I agree with. Pen input, on the other hand, is amazingly useful for some applications. It is also something Microsoft got right pretty much right from the day one, and is still doing right more than 15 years later.

      15 4 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Stop

      "What is so great about the surface pro ? Look, I have yet to see anyone using touch input, yet ..."

      Yet again RTFA

      ...WWDC When Microsoft revealed its Surface Studio last year ,.....

      Surface STUDIO, not Pro.

      https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/store/d/surface-studio

      9 1 Reply
      1. Mark 65
        Reply Icon

        Seems a pretty limited use case. Most media professionals, especially in photography, will be using Eizo ColorEdge level monitors, Wacom style tablets of varying sizes and not putting grubby fingers on the screen like in the MS site photos. I don't blame Apple for not bothering with a touch screen.

        2 1 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          " don't blame Apple for not bothering with a touch screen."

          Yup, touching a designer's screen is totally verboten. It is however a good way to really piss the off

          1 0 Reply
        2. robin thakur 1
          Reply Icon

          It is a pretty limited use case indeed. As snazzy and interesting as the colour dial thingy looks in MS's PR videos I can't really see many people using them because designers don't really like to change their workflows especially not to something which is proprietary and new fangled (unless Apple release it)

          Microsoft having suddenly decided to start targeting creatives post SP3 with more useful pens and the dial thing and it is viewed skeptically by most. As somebody else noted above, touching the main screen is still a big no-no in design circles and you can add Cintiqs and Wacom pen Tablets to any computer which will work a lot better in a way that the industry has been using for decades and is a known quantity...

          1 0 Reply
    3. cream wobbly
      Reply Icon

      Yer HP Z2?

      I mean, the top Jags aren't to my taste either. If I had that sort of money I wouldn't be buying one. But I also wouldn't fool myself by comparing it to a Fiat 500.

      1 1 Reply
      1. Dave 126 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        I'm with Hans - it's odd the article compared a Surface desktop with the upcoming iMac Pro - sitting between their respective releases has been new CPUs from Intel, which also have a bearing on maximum RAM available within a thermal design range. This stuff should be fairly objective and clear cut.

        The subjective (or rather harder to quantify objectively) stuff is the ergonomics... One could have a workflow that involves using a stylus and a mouse and keyboard. A case could made for either using a separate tablet for the stylus input (I.e iPad Pro + iMac), or for integrating the stylus input into the desktop (I.e Surface). I suspect that software support (both 3rd party and native OS support a la Continuity) could well be a deciding factor. Other stylus input options are available!

        I find these interesting questions. It's a shame to gloss over them just for the sake of oft-repeated snark.

        1 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    In slight fairness to Apple...

    They've finally remembered the iPad and updated iOS to make better use of it. The demos did look pretty slick (as demos usually do), but we'll see come autumn. The new iMac Pro is truly a beast in svelte clothing; I'm not sure many people really want to rack mount Apple kit anyway, so nowadays a super-powerful an all-in-one makes more sense. Sure it uses the same screen as the standard iMac - but they've further improved the screen, and it's brilliant, probably best-in-class. And High Sierra has some good changes under the hood.

    But the 'Siri everywhere' bit leaves me cold, as does the HomePod speaker, as does the continued fiddling with the deeply ugly and dull Apple Watch. The augmented reality support could be cool, but you know that somehow it'll mostly end up being used to insert adverts into your photos.

    But Cook's Apple is a very different company to Jobs'. For all his talk, I don't feel that Cook truly gets innovation or has any sort of vision like Jobs did. Jobs brought us the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone. Cook, the deeply dull Apple Watch and the identical looking Apple Watch 2. There wasn't so much cheering at this year's event, and even the (presumably paid for) whooping sounded rather forced. A lot is riding on the iPhone 8. Come September, we'll know.

    9 0 Reply
    1. Arthur the cat Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: In slight fairness to Apple...

      They've finally remembered the iPad

      But the Mac Mini seems to be the red haired stepchild of Apple's line up. They were neat little home machines, especially the unibody models up to 2012 which let you upgrade memory without hassle. Now Mac Minis are under-powered, over-priced and looking very stale. Apple should either produce a sensible update or put people about of their misery by announcing that Minis are dead.

      9 0 Reply
      1. WallMeerkat
        Reply Icon

        Re: In slight fairness to Apple...

        I've had 2 Minis - a G4 and an i5. I remember back in 2005 they were seen as the "headless iMac".

        They were a nice little machine, use your own screen or take it in to the main TV, something you can't do with an iMac.

        But they do seem to be forgotten. Possibly because they're the "cheap" Mac.

        With the iMac Pro effectively replacing the Mac Pro, it looks like all Mac products will now either take 'i' or 'book' form, with no more screenless macs.

        2 0 Reply
        1. thegroucho
          Reply Icon
          Devil

          Re: In slight fairness to Apple...

          There is no such thing as 'cheap' Apple products.

          3 2 Reply
          1. cream wobbly
            Reply Icon

            Re: In slight fairness to Apple...

            There is no such thing as 'cheap' Apple products.

            And equally:

            There is no such thing as 'poor value' Apple products.

            The lowest-spec Apple device is still a good device. If it doesn't meet your needs, you're a sample size of one. There are hundreds of thousands for whose needs it would easily meet. Personally, I run a Mac Mini for movies only. I don't need the machine to do much beyond play DVD media from the external disk, and pull down a big stream from Amazon Video into an HTML5-compliant browser, then push it out the back through an HDMI cable and HDCP stripper so I can watch HD on my projector. Since that one's getting old, I'm going to look into the latest ones.

            Windows and Linux still don't have proper DVD player and using one browser.

            1 3 Reply
      2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: In slight fairness to Apple...

        Apparently, the headless Mac's will come in 2018. Again, apparently, there is a lot of redesign going on.

        As you said, the Mac Mini was once a nice little box especially the i7 version. HP don't want to sell their versions here at the moment which given the spec really sucks.

        The 27in iMac has a delightful screen. That may temp me to get one 'when the boat comes in'.

        In the meantime, my XEON (8 core, 64Gb) Hackintosh + Dell 4K screen will do nicely.

        3 0 Reply
        1. Dan 55 Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: In slight fairness to Apple...

          How much do you need to redesign a Mac Mini, apart from undoing the stuff that they did to the 2014 model.

          0 0 Reply

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