Why is it the more I read the EEVblog forum, my expectations of Apple keeps...

[olkipukki]

    Well, I'm thinking of beginning a new company which will have over 40 employees.  We will be creating a Cell Phone/tablet PC app which will need to run on Android, IOs, Windows, plus a piece of hardware to be designed in house which we are already married to Altium.  Now, I know we need at least 1 Mac to compile the IOs project.

You want more than one Mac not only for compilation, but management submissions to App store and support as well.
What would happen if next macOS / XCode update wipe something from your single-only Mac?  In general, enough power to run a few macOS VMs on Mac to cover some worst-case scenarios.

I run Altium on my Macbook in VMWare Fusion under Win10,
that's okay for occasional stuff (such a new footprint creating, quick project review etc.) while traveling, but this is not my workhorse.

I considered to buy Mac Pro "trash can" then first time saw it at WWDC'13. I thought: "This is going to be my next workstation and I finally stop assemble custom builds, but not now, let’s wait a version 2". After chatting with a few Apple's representatives and trying to find out how they managed to cool this machine down on heavy loads, got overall answer: "We have a fan there!"  , not convinced, I don't need a heat blower on my desk. Since then, no version 2 and Apple still planning to release a next build in 2019! 

We all know, Apple threw away server products long time ago without alternatives and do not provide any roadmaps (well, they admitted MacPro mess  and what - does it help?)

  In house, we will be creating a 100% specialized audio music editor which my software developer has given me the choice of making Win, or MacOS, or, even Linux based.

You have a genius developer! I would assume we are talking about some kind of cross-platform framework (aka Qt etc), right?
Can your dev complete work 25% faster on macOS rather than Win/Linux? Very unlikely...

At least 30 of the employees will be the editors running this software and they will need matched headphone audio setups which cannot change, and will need replacing as failures are expected over at least 10 year life of the company.
 

Would your 30+ employees work more efficient on macOS compare to Win/Linux? Doubted...


 

   Now, do I trust I can go with Mac PC and for the next 10 years, always get the same replacement MACs with identical audio outputs, or, do I stick with generic PCs.

     So far, I'm getting the feeling that serious computing MacOS may not be the way to go.  I feel as time goes on over the 10 years, to keep my in house 'reference' audio lab functioning as hardware bits will need replacing, placing my business in the hands of Apple would be a move like a gamble.

Sorry, but still unclear why macOS? 
You probably not for a 'cool' factor too, otherwise bought all 40+ iMac Pro's by now 

The true gambler is playing against odds for some benefits. In case of Apple, looks like "kamikaze" mode.

[Harb]

30 machines, 10 years , constantly processing Large Video files, never turned of from the day they get installed....... you might have to let me know when that will happen lol

Those certainly are not laptops which I was meaning. Video processing on 10y old hardware sound stupid regarding performance.

10 Years of using Mac as high end editors has never let us down.....ever......The oldest machine in use is probably 6 years old and still does its job faultlessly........I know PC users hate to hear it, but I have no brand or OS preference, and Mac just leads the way for us, and until it doesn't, I will continue to use them......The only people I know that have multiple edit facilities and use PC have either entered into a supply and service contract or are using software that requires it.

[Mr. Scram]

Another one of these threads?

[nctnico]

In house, we will be creating a 100% specialized audio music editor which my software developer has given me the choice of making Win, or MacOS, or, even Linux based.  At least 30 of the employees will be the editors running this software and they will need matched headphone audio setups which cannot change, and will need replacing as failures are expected over at least 10 year life of the company.  Now, do I trust I can go with Mac PC and for the next 10 years, always get the same replacement MACs with identical audio outputs, or, do I stick with generic PCs.

Expecting 10 years is way too optimistic. Besides that I'd have the software written cross platform so you can always change to a different platform later on. In a professional setup you'll also want headphone connectors which are able to deal with people forgetting to unplug them so any consumer hardware is out already.

[wn1fju]

Here's a completely non-technical opinion of Apple.  I've never owned an Apple product until about 6 months ago when I got the itch to buy
an iPad.  At $329 (US), it seemed reasonably priced, so I drifted over to my local Apple store at lunch-time. 

Being that it was my first ever visit to an Apple store, I was somewhat puzzled at the nine large tables with all of the Apple products - NONE
had a label next to them saying what it was and what the price was.  I've never been in a "retail" store where the descriptions and/or prices
were not prominently displayed.

I managed to identify the iPad I wanted.  It then took over 30 minutes before a "representative" would talk to me.  I kept asking and
they kept saying that I was third on the list.  And this includes the woman who was standing around doing nothing.  When I approached her,
she said "I'm a manager - all I do is make sure things are going smoothly."  Well, how about selling me one to make things "go smoothly."
Not a chance.

Bottom line:  I had to threaten in a very loud voice that I was about to walk out before someone reluctantly came over and took my money.

It was the worst retail experience I've ever had, and I will never go to an Apple store again. 

[BrianHG]

  In house, we will be creating a 100% specialized audio music editor which my software developer has given me the choice of making Win, or MacOS, or, even Linux based.

You have a genius developer! I would assume we are talking about some kind of cross-platform framework (aka Qt etc), right?
Can your dev complete work 25% faster on macOS rather than Win/Linux? Very unlikely...

Yes, I have a developer who trained on all desktop PC OS, specializes in Delphi, and also programs in Xamarin for the portable OSs, as well as SOC embedded systems programmer.  Anyways, I've decided to have the editor developed in Win and I'll equip my editing PC with Server 2016.  It wont make a difference to the editors, but, if I ever loose my programmer, and further development or additions are needed to the editor, I'll have less hassle finding a coder who can work in Windows.
As for deployment on iPhone and handling iTunes, this is one area which Apple will have to keep supporting in some fashion, unless they want to close down their app store.  So, I know I will still need to buy a few Macs, but I don't think I make them my companies backbone for everything else.

[BrianHG]

In house, we will be creating a 100% specialized audio music editor which my software developer has given me the choice of making Win, or MacOS, or, even Linux based.  At least 30 of the employees will be the editors running this software and they will need matched headphone audio setups which cannot change, and will need replacing as failures are expected over at least 10 year life of the company.  Now, do I trust I can go with Mac PC and for the next 10 years, always get the same replacement MACs with identical audio outputs, or, do I stick with generic PCs.

Expecting 10 years is way too optimistic. Besides that I'd have the software written cross platform so you can always change to a different platform later on. In a professional setup you'll also want headphone connectors which are able to deal with people forgetting to unplug them so any consumer hardware is out already.

Yes, I still have to look into this, though since tuning bass, mid range and treble across multiple tracks need to be matched to the human ear, my editing departments manager will be choosing the headphones & a properly rated quality USB dac for the job.  Luckily, the 30 editors wont be doing any recording, for that, I only need 1 small studio.

I expect the headphones and DAC units will need replacement over the decade.

[BrianHG]

  Speak of the DEVIL, this bothers me...

[bd139]

That’s pretty shit!

Similar story with one of our surfaces though, a throw away job also. The thing delaminated and the audio stopped working and MSFT wouldn’t do a warranty swap out or repair. User got a Yoga instead and we cancelled the PO for more surface machines. Fuck em.

Our office machines are all HP Z series workstations. Those are rock solid but same problem. Can’t get parts even from HPE. Whole industry is a nightmare.

At this point I’m almost certain your best bet is buy a clone/DIY PC and take on the integration risk if you want a higher performance machine.

Tempted to get my old desktop PC out and chuck Debian on it now.

[wraper]

Similar story with one of our surfaces though, a throw away job also. The thing delaminated and the audio stopped working and MSFT wouldn’t do a warranty swap out or repair.

It's not similar in any way. That was some sort of warranty reject, probably because of mechanical damage. Linus case has nothing to do with warranty. Break the screen on $ 5k DESKTOP computer, no repair for you, no matter how much you want to pay.

[bd139]

Fair point, I concede.

Incidentally I decided to dig my old desktop out and use it with Debian instead of the mac. Typing on it now. See how long I last on the platform. All good so far.

This is a sub $100 machine i.e. entirely disposable (core 2 E7500, 4Gb RAM, cheap samsung SSD, 17" 1280x1024 TFT)

[CNe7532294]

That’s pretty shit!

Similar story with one of our surfaces though, a throw away job also. The thing delaminated and the audio stopped working and MSFT wouldn’t do a warranty swap out or repair. User got a Yoga instead and we cancelled the PO for more surface machines. Fuck em.

Our office machines are all HP Z series workstations. Those are rock solid but same problem. Can’t get parts even from HPE. Whole industry is a nightmare.

At this point I’m almost certain your best bet is buy a clone/DIY PC and take on the integration risk if you want a higher performance machine.

Tempted to get my old desktop PC out and chuck Debian on it now.

I've literally been doing DIY PC building for decades. I highly encourage it. I made a compaq computer last for 11 years (2002 - 2013). The one before that was from '97. This one I'm typing on is 5 years now. Oh how time has flown. Its actually not that hard to assemble your own computer then update it as time goes on. Just get a good motherboard, and PSU (600 - 800W should suffice as a gamer). Everything else is just an accessory or something you can use temporarily to upgrade later. Heck you can even make your own case if you have access to equipment from a friend or yourself. You can even save previous parts. This current one still uses the IDE/PATA HDDs for storage via a SATA to PATA converter. Also, I see no reason to change for another decade. CPU manufacturing is slowing down despite Moore's law and bitcoin/crypto is making video cards a literal sh*t show with cards that used to be $400 max going for $1000+USD.

What got me into dumpster diving/repair/restoration was partly due to my digust with throw away mentality and the impact on the environment. Its funny how tech companies tend to put on a nice face about being clean and all (apple and microsoft stores sure look futuristically clean don't they?) when nothing else can be further away from the truth. Out of sight out of mind I suppose.  I fear nothing is going to change at all unless we all truly stand up to all the BS all these companies, CEOs specifically, have been doing for a long while. They just keep on pushing the envelope to see how far they can go. Unfortunately mainstream buyers loves taking it up..... well you know. Plus we're already screwed with our 401Ks on the line. 

[bd139]

This one I'm using now isn't a home built one but it's an old HP enterprise desktop. I just did a dmesg. Here's the last BIOS date:

[    0.000000] DMI: Hewlett-Packard HP Compaq 8000 Elite SFF PC/3646h, BIOS 786G7 v01.13 07/20/2011

The thing goes like fucking lightning with xubuntu on it. Going to use it exclusively for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.

I built my own PCs from about 1995 to 2008. After that there were so many quality enterprise workstations and laptops on the market it wasn't worth it. But those are drying up now.

[borjam]

Don't take this as unanimous support for the NT kernel. ACTUAL issues include an absolutely bloated kernel and operating system, terrible spying and bloatware practices (Apple isn't innocent of this either, nor is pretty much anybody these days,

This is interesting. Can you mention sources or observed facts? If you have any kind of proof you can get them indicted even with securities fraud, because they seem to be hiding the amount of money being made with that "spying". Go for it!

Also don't forget you still have your competition in the Unix/Linux world that are as stable, if not more so, with options like OpenBSD being a respected veteran in being tough and secure as balls.

I have been using FreeBSD since 1995 or so, even tinkered with driver code. It's great but, sadly, some of the stuff available for Mac OS X is not available for FreeBSD.

And for some of us who work on Unix systems, Windows annoyances can get really offensive.

[bd139]

And for some of us who work on Unix systems, Windows annoyances can get really offensive.

This is actually the thing that kills me. There's never a wall in front of a task.

[Mr. Scram]

This is actually the thing that kills me. There's never a wall in front of a task.

What do you mean exactly?

[Ampera]

Bloatware I consider to be the entire phone, but I do not suppose that's what you were getting at.

Apple is a modern company, and they keep and likely sell analytical data they gather from you using their services.

While current versions of public BSD don't have everything OS/X has, as a personal opinion, OS/X doesn't have anything that I would want. I am aware this is my personal opinion, and places like publishing houses have loved and still love their overpriced slabs, but most of what you can do on a Macintosh, you can do on a PC with NT and Linux (and by superset, BSD)

I work both with Linux and NT on the regular, with Linux being by far my favourite. (I've dabbled with BSD and even Illumos, and while the latter I can understand not having what I was looking for, with it being an entirely different beast, I could never even get nVidia drivers to work on BSD despite closely following multiple guides that all seemed to conflict with each other.)

Apple is a company that is only here to make money, and when you keep that in mind, their practices make sense. They have an army of very very loyal followers that will buy almost whatever they throw out regardless of what crap it has in there. Apple doesn't need good PR, because they sell so many heavily marked up devices to so many people while treating their customers like shit. They have successfully proven that if you can make someone think they are getting a slick and powerful device, you can sell pretty much whatever you want.

I have a very different perspective of mobile devices as a person, considering I am one of the very rare people who does not regularly use a smartphone. I use tablets, sure, and for that I of course need Android, but as for phones, I own a 70 dollar BLU R1 HD that is connected up to my network almost never. I rarely use it, and I can have it be flat for days on end and I don't even notice or care.  I see these devices as mini computers, a way to do some of what I can do on the desktop in a very portable, very enjoyable form factor, and when I start to get limited with what applications I can even run on a device, I get annoyed greatly.

This is actually the thing that kills me. There's never a wall in front of a task.

What do you mean exactly?

What Mr. Scram said.

[bd139]

This is actually the thing that kills me. There's never a wall in front of a task.

What do you mean exactly?

With a Unix machine I sit at the machine, do the job and go home.

With a Windows machine I sit at the machine, fix it, do the job, fix it again and go home.

[bd139]

Apple is a modern company, and they keep and likely sell analytical data they gather from you using their services.

https://www.apple.com/uk/privacy/

They are the only vendor which explicitly says it doesn't. This is also incidentally why they are the only mobile devices allowed in some parts of the financial sector here in the UK at this point.

[Mr. Scram]

https://www.apple.com/uk/privacy/

They are the only vendor which explicitly says it doesn't. This is also incidentally why they are the only mobile devices allowed in some parts of the financial sector here in the UK at this point.

Like how Zuckerberg says it's your data and Facebook won't ever sell it?

[Distelzombie]

I'd trust a rooted android everything. An iPhone? Drop it once and you basically have to throw it away. Nope. My HTC 10 survived many cruel falls until the screen gave up because something had fallen onto it. Try that with a generc iPhone.

[bd139]

https://www.apple.com/uk/privacy/

They are the only vendor which explicitly says it doesn't. This is also incidentally why they are the only mobile devices allowed in some parts of the financial sector here in the UK at this point.

Like how Zuckerberg says it's your data and Facebook won't ever sell it?

Actually if you read the terms it doesn't say that at all.

I'd trust a rooted android everything. An iPhone? Drop it once and you basically have to throw it away. Nope. My HTC 10 survived many cruel falls until the screen gave up because something had fallen onto it. Try that with a generc iPhone.

A rooted android is an easy attack vector. Once SELinux is fucked up on Android the whole game is over. Also most of the attack vectors for Android phones are via the front door i.e. drive by and app store based infections.

I wouldn't trust ANY android phone regardless of status. Spot the number of penetration testers who own android phones as an example...

As for durability of iPhones my 6s takes a hell of a beating. I've dropped it onto concrete a few times. Has a cheap TPU case on it (cloned apple one). Plus it has been in a sink of water.

[Ampera]

If I truly gave a shit about security, I wouldn't own a phone. Or a laptop. Or anything that could be easily picked up and nicked.

Apple can say what they want, I call bullshit. If Apple is an asshole enough to completely deny to even offer paid parts to repair a 5,000 dollar computer they sold very recently, I don't underestimate them whatsoever. This, however, is a level of pedantry that is an educated shitpost doesn't deserve.

Anyways, I find security to be an interesting concept. Give the wrong person the right motivation, and most security doesn't matter. There are few ways to be a completely secure person, so I believe the best a technology minded person can do is not be stupid. I like to think I'm not, but I have proven to myself before how little of a shit I can give sometimes. The general idea I take is be responsible with passwords, keep anything that doesn't need to be on the internet off the internet, and partake in at least halfway responsible information acquisition techniques. That I believe is a way to avoid 80% of the traps out there.

To secant, the conversation at hand is one of trying to justify your purchase, and it always has been. If you like Apple devices, and you have reason for owning one, go right ahead. The immature part of me may make fun of you, but the serious part of me doesn't really care. If someone asks me what to do, I would never suggest Apple (unless they are asking what the best method to burn their money was). There are still reasons to use Apple if you're a specific kind of person, but I believe in a world where Apple is solely not needed.

The funny thing about Apple, is that everybody loves to hate them. They are the short guy in your group that eats crow 24/7, but you still like each other regardless. I like to hate Apple, and I believe they do help to make the world more fun. Microsoft, on the other hand, I hate that I have to hate them because I am in a way forced to give them a prominent role in my life. I can type this forum post on Linux, but the moment I wish to boot up Fusion 360, it's back to my copy of Windows. There are alternatives, but it's still annoying to have to use them, and as a gamer, there are just some games that don't run on Linux regardless of what you do.

Microsoft has me by the balls, and like to piss me off however they can. While Apple is fun to pick on, Microsoft is just absolutely annoying. He's not a good friend you mess with, he's the guy that keeps barging in on your conversations trying to join your group of friends, while spewing all his fandom crap that nobody cares about, but you can't kick him out because he works a few cubicles over from you, and you might have to ask him for his bit of a project.

 

[bd139]

I'll quote a colleague of mine. Microsoft is like owning a pet rabbit; most of the time it's cute and fluffy, but the rest of the time it's biting you and fucking your leg and leaving shit everywhere.

[Ampera]

I'll quote a colleague of mine. Microsoft is like owning a pet rabbit; most of the time it's cute and fluffy, but the rest of the time it's biting you and fucking your leg and leaving shit everywhere.

I own a pet rabbit, and I would rather have her than Microsoft. It's never really bitten me, it's never tried to fuck my leg (it is a female rabbit, so that's probably why) and it shits in a tray. I'll throw pictures here if anybody wants.

Honestly, most of the time, I don't notice Windows' bullshit, but it bites me in the ass on occasion. Whenever I use Windows, I just start to miss the elegance of a properly tuned Arch Linux install. It's almost orchestral the way it all works together, and MATE with Docky makes the best operating environment I have ever used.