Waiting for Steve Jobs: Can Apple Regain Its PC Edge?

American Thinker ^ | 06/03/2017 | Mike Konrad

[SeekAndFind]

Starting this Monday, Apple Computer's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC 2017) is slated to start in San Jose, Calif. The conference is held annually to discuss Apple's new technologies, and software creators are encouraged to interface with Apple Engineers in labs and workshops.  Ticket prices this year were $1,599 and since demand exceeds supply, a lottery had to be held to disburse the tickets.

The conference is as much show as technology, and we probably can expect CEO Tim Cook to condemn Trump's pullout from the Paris Climate Agreement. But what has everybody on edge are the rumors that some of the Mac line of products will be updated.

That's important because Apple has let its once-famous – and once-highly regarded – Mac line of computers to lay stagnant.  Neither the 27” nor the 21.5” iMac were upgraded in 2016. Worse yet, when the smaller 21.5” iMac was last upgraded in 2015, it did not come with the then -new Skylake processors, but was saddled with the older Broadwell CPUs and offered no graphics card option. Then to add insult to injury, it came with an insultingly slow 5400 RPM hard drive as standard. The “state of the art” smaller iMac could not be upgraded after purchase, and one had to buy the added RAM and faster storage at Apple's inflated mark up.  Still, even if max'd out at 16GB RAM,  with the older Broadwell i7 CPU (processor), and with no graphics card option, how could it be considered state of the art?

Then there was Apple's revered Mac Mini, which had not only been the province of those who could not afford the iMac;

[Organic Panic]

Yeah. Don’t listen to me. I just maintain NX with class a surfacing and 5x CNC, MasterCAM, NASTRAN. None of which are ported to Mac. I don’t know anything about software, hardware, or the requirements the software companies require you to use before they even take a tech support question. Just a stupid aerospace engineer am I who started with HPUX way back when, with Unigraphics and CATIA. BUT HEY. You can run BEOS with mac on with emulated hardware compatibility and play solitaire.

[Organic Panic]

Apparently you haven’t run all windows software.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Apple selects what hardware it chooses to support for its own puropses,

Therein lies the rub, Apple knows best what you need.

[momincombatboots]

Not sure I am ready to cough up thousands for a Mac. We paid stupid money for our two iPads.

[Swordmaker]

Not sure I am ready to cough up thousands for a Mac. We paid stupid money for our two iPads.

Why would you pay mythical "thousands" for a Mac? I sure don't. You can have a very good iMac for under $1000 on Apple's refurbished store, which has the same warranty as a brand new iMac. If you already have a good monitor, you can get a Mac mini for approximately $500. For most people's uses a Mac mini will do just fine. You can use your existing PC keyboard and multi button mouse or buy Apple's keyboards and touch mouse to go with it for about $100 more. Done.

[momincombatboots]

Had a lot of trouble with the mini. i have thought about the refurbished ones, just haven’t found a deal on one with a great processor. Since you have had good luck, maybe I will look again.. if I can find one with a great processor... maybe. My old mac laptop from 2009 is still running, slowly, for my youngest. Thanks for posting.

[Swordmaker]

Yeah. Don’t listen to me. I just maintain NX with class a surfacing and 5x CNC, MasterCAM, NASTRAN. None of which are ported to Mac. I don’t know anything about software, hardware, or the requirements the software companies require you to use before they even take a tech support question. Just a stupid aerospace engineer am I who started with HPUX way back when, with Unigraphics and CATIA. BUT HEY. You can run BEOS with Mac on with emulated hardware compatibility and play solitaire.

And multiple reviews of the Mac have stated it is the best hardware on which to run Windows. Aerospace engineer, huh?

Here are some Aerospace engineers from the Jet Propulsion laboratory with their computer of choice using some of that software you claim won't run on Macs.

Strange, JPL's and NASA's Aerospace engineers disagree with you. I see possibly two Windows PCs in that room. They used Macs for the Curiosity Mars Lander program. . . and many of them were running OS X, natively. IBM also disagrees with you as they are switching all 250,000 of their employees over to Apple Macs.

[Swordmaker]

Apparently you haven’t run all windows software.

No, I haven't, but I do run a cross platform consulting business. . . and I have yet to see a piece of software that will not run on Apple hardware. Given the physical construction of Apple hardware, there may not be enough slots available for some additional hardware on modern Macs but there are ways around that if one wants to go through those hoops. I don't recommend that. In that case, a PC is a far better choice. However, the discussion was about software and there is nothing about a Mac's architecture that precludes it from running any software that will run on any other computer that will run Windows based software. In fact, it will, as many reviews from Windows centric reviewers have asserted, Apple hardware will generally run it better and more reliably.

[Organic Panic]

Like I said I am just some dumb hick who knows nothing. My God you apple fans are a sensitive lot. The only more sensitive lot is going to a gun forum and criticising a Glock.

So feel free pointing out how stupid and ignorant I am. I have a business to run.

[Swordmaker]

Like I said I am just some dumb hick who knows nothing. My God you apple fans are a sensitive lot. The only more sensitive lot is going to a gun forum and criticising a Glock.

No, Organic, if you were just a dumb hick, you wouldn;t have made ex cathedra pronouncements about what could or could not be done on Apple products you apparently have not used. Instead, when I pointed out you were wrong, you then tried a fallacious appeal to authority argument and set yourself up as the authority expecting people to believe you due to your claimed authority. . . when you have no experience with what you were claiming to be an authority on. I DO have experience on which to make such claims and I hoist you on your own petard.

[Svartalfiar]

As Apple seemingly retreats from the top tier, Microsoft and HP have moved in with high-end products, particularly Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 laptop and Microsoft Surface Studio (which begins at $2,999, only only offers an i5 and 8GB RAM to start, which is criminal) and HP’s Envy line of laptops.

I really don't understand this. With the tiniest bit of research/knowledge, you can build your own computer, or find a small-time computer guy to do it for you. I've got an 8-core 4Ghz processor, 16G of ram, a 500G solid state, a 2T 7200 drive, a pretty good video card, and an awesome massive tower case. I can play (almost - haven't found an exception yet) anything on Steam at extreme/best settings, 1080p. Altogether a total of $1500. (add $100ish since I already had a monitor.) For $3000, you should be able to get a machine that can do just about anything except quantum computations. Seriously.

[Enlightened1]

Since Steve Jobs has passed the company has become far less innovative and their products are becoming pricey. Funny since this is coming from a company that prides itself of being for the little people.

Furthermore, the pricing is not impressive either. It was a lot better and reasonable under Jobs. Steve would have new products for about $200 that can be financed over 2 years. That model made sense. Today Apple wants you to pay about 1000k for the new iPhone that will be rolling out in the fall.

If Apple really wants people to buy a new product every 3 years, then they are going to have to come down on price.

I can see Apple slowly pricing their selves out of the market. All of their competitors should be completely caught up and possibly ahead within 3 years. Their competitors are certainly more innovative.

I have no doubt that if Steve Jobs was alive, then Tim Cook would have already been fired.

[Enlightened1]

Watch this video on 100 Features wishes for iOS 11.

Just by what this guy says and shows... You can clearly see Apple is missing a lot of features.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM_2QL5yKHA

[gibsonguy]

“MacOS core is NeXt OS. Do your homework. It supports an extremely limited range of hardware.”

An even more ignorant remark. Apple is.. Forget it, you are so ignorant on this it’s not worth my time.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Here’s a box of chocolates Forrest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT

[gibsonguy]

IOS? We are not talking about the Phone & Pad OS.