"The missing mid-range desktop Mac"

[hestermofet]

this leaves the "prosumer" who wants/needs more than the basics but also doesn't want to start at $3000+ for a computer and a monitor.

I think the fallacy here is you are starting from the flawed assumption that you must include an Apple monitor when pricing out the Studio Mac. The Studio Mac is competitively priced with similar PC workstations, and if you pair it with a normal PC monitor, you can get a very high end system with a quality 4K display for less than $2500. This seems like a much more reasonable price point for a midrange system, and comparable to the 27" iMacs that came before it while providing way higher performance. You can get a total package for $2250 if you go with a very reasonable quality 1080p or 1440p panel instead of 4K.

So more RAM and a much beefier GPU. The difference in CPU cores is larger than it seems because the Mini has 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, for the Studio it's 8 + 2. But... even if that adds up to about twice the performance, that really only helps you with very parallel tasks. Not sure if compiling code would be much faster, for instance.

Is that difference really worth the 67% higher price? Or the 82% higher price if you're not going to use 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

For double the performance cores and double the RAM, absolutely. And buying a Mac has always meant paying for things you don't need, simply because you are stuck with one vendor and whatever configurations they offer. You've never been able to pick and choose in any meaningful way.

You are also ignoring the added ports that the Studio provides. That's worth a lot in certain use cases.

But really, everyone who has a need for a $2000 desktop should be moving to 10Gbps.

You're proposed price point seems to be a $1500... which is just the higher spec M1 iMac that already exists. Is there really space in the lineup for an additional model in between?

 

[hestermofet]

At this point the people willing to tolerate the disadvantages of a desktop aren't doing it out of frugality but a desire for high performance.

What about screen size? A lot of people I know can't stand to use a small laptop screen. Yes, you can plug a laptop into a desktop screen, but why pay extra for a screen and battery that you're not going to use?

A lot of people leave the laptop open in that scenario, and with more people working from home, that's a setup people have become very comfortable with. The default rig that most companies I've seen send out is a laptop and a 24" screen to go along with it.

As for battery? Battery hasn't mattered for ages, despite Apple's race to extend it for the past decade. A huge number of laptops are used in a stationary manner, so people have been paying for a battery they don't really use for many, many years. c.f. all the complaints online about swollen batteries as a result of leaving your battery plugged in all the time (not as common now as battery tech has improved, so swelling is the less common failure mode).

Sure, two more USB-C ports and an SD card slot on the front are nice, but a USB hub does much the same at a fraction of the cost.

A hub is a really ugly, non-Mac-like solution, and performance is way lower because you are sharing the bandwidth of the same USB bus. Extra ports on the desktop itself can improve performance dramatically, especially on a machine billed as "Studio" where you can expect many users will be connect it to very high speed peripherals such as RAID DASs and capture cards, or latency sensitive applications such as audio interfaces.

Your performance will tank if you connect those types of peripherals to a hub. I think the number and positioning of the ports on the Mac Studio is a huge feature for the targeted market.

 

[hestermofet]

Their solution has been to bifurcate the lineup between consumers and professionals, forcing prosumers to choose one or the other. Unfortunately, cognitive dissonance is a tough nut to crack, hence the xMac lives for another thread!

Don't get the cognitive dissonance thing. Disagreeing with Apple is not some kind of mental failure.

He's not even using the term right. Cognitive dissonance is when you try to align either behaviour or beliefs to an experience that causes you mental discomfort, in order to justify it. For example, when you have such a high bar to gain membership to a club that you think the club is worthwhile, even if it sucks. If anything, if being forced to choose between a consumer Mac, and a professional Mac, prosumers should be happier with their decision, instead of asking for an xMac instead as Jade proposes.

Or, for example, this classic study:

Method
Female participants were informed they would be helping out in a study funded by several manufacturers. Participants were also told that they would receive one of the products at the end of the experiment to compensate for their time and effort.
The women then rated the desirability of eight household products that ranged in price from $15 to $30. The products included an automatic coffee maker, an electric sandwich grill, an automatic toaster, and a portable radio.

Participants in the control group were simply given one of the products. Because these participants did not make a decision, they did not have any dissonance to reduce. Individuals in the low-dissonance group chose between a desirable product and one rated 3 points lower on an 8-point scale.

Participants in the high-dissonance condition chose between a highly desirable product and one rated just 1 point lower on the 8-point scale. After reading the reports about the various products, individuals rated the products again.

Findings
Participants in the high-dissonance condition spread apart the alternatives significantly more than did the participants in the other two conditions.

In other words, they were more likely than participants in the other two conditions to increase the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and to decrease the attractiveness of the unchosen alternative.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognit ... nance.html

Hmm, maybe it applies to owning a Mac more than people think.

 

[hestermofet]

I think the fallacy here is you are starting from the flawed assumption that you must include an Apple monitor when pricing out the Studio Mac. The Studio Mac is competitively priced with similar PC workstations, and if you pair it with a normal PC monitor, you can get a very high end system with a quality 4K display for less than $2500.

The problem with that is that almost every "normal PC monitor" is garbage compared with what you get on the 24" iMac. macOS since Mojave and even more since Big Sur has been designed to look right on 200+ dpi P3 displays. It has meaningful and increasing usability issues on lesser displays. P3 is not a problem, but you just can't get 200+ dpi in a commodity monitor for love or money.

This seems like a much more reasonable price point for a midrange system, and comparable to the 27" iMacs that came before it while providing way higher performance. You can get a total package for $2250 if you go with a very reasonable quality 1080p or 1440p panel instead of 4K.

Nothing with a commodity 1440p or especially 1080p (really??) panel is going to have a comparable user experience to a 5K iMac, or even a modern MBP.

I think there's a wee bit of display snobbery here. Usability issues on a lower res display? Which issues? Is anything so blurry that it is unreadable? Is there any window in a first party application that won't fit because the minimum window height is more than 1080 pixels, and it can't be changed?

No? Then there are no usability issues. Don't confuse "looks ugly" with "can't be used". I've used Windows on a display with only 600 pixels of vertical resolution. There are actual issues with usability there. Mac OS can be used just fine on a 1080p display.

 

[hestermofet]

There's no more subpixel antiliasing on non-retina monitors, which definitely looks bad. It's like text rendering is transported back to 10.1.

Like I said, don't confuse "ugly" with "unusable".

 

[hestermofet]

This probably varies across workplaces, but where I work almost no ones uses a laptop at their office.
I don't and I won't. I'm much more confortable with a full size keyboard and a large screen that is at the proper height. I don't see the point of a laptop that you need to complement with a keyboard, display and often a hub since it doesn't have enough ports.

The point is that in a modern office much of your work day is spent outside your office. My team is somewhere between 70-80% heads down at your desk work time and 20-30% meeting time. A desktop is unusable during meetings.

Also, I was talking about the typical WfH config. I've rarely seen a company send out desktops to their workers who don't come into the office. If you are getting a laptop and an external monitor (24" typically) anyway, you may as well use the laptop screen too instead of letting it go to waste.

I don't see the point of a laptop that you need to complement with a keyboard, display and often a hub since it doesn't have enough ports.

They are a lot easier/cheaper to ship and standardize a fleet around. When I started at my current company, they sent all the accessories, the keyboard, mouse, the headset, the webcam, the hub, etc, inside the laptop bag, so that's a bunch fewer items to ship separately. They probably have some intern packing hundreds of these laptop bags a day (I work at a company with 60 000 employees in my country alone, so they interns to spare for drudgework like this). The display, they are going to send anyway, even if it was a desktop.

I went on an overnight trip recently, and it was nice that I was able to leave for home a day late because I could take my laptop with me and do a half day at the hotel. I have another a weeklong trip coming over March Break, and I can leave two days early because I'll be working on the road.

Laptops are a huge boon for those who work from home, and with COVID, that's more and more people, especially in IT.

We also have ultrabooks for portability but these aren't great for working at the desk.

I think the proliferation of very capable USB-C and Thunderbolt hubs have dramatically increased the number of form factors that are "great for working at the desk".

 

[hestermofet]

As usual, we have people looking at their immediate surroundings and assuming that's the way the entire world is. If your in the corporate IT space, you are not where the majority of people are.

I don't think any one in this thread has claimed their experiences are universal. As usual, we have people loudly proclaiming that you shouldn't apply your personal experiences to the market at large, with no evidence that anyone has actually done this in the thread.

In my little world of mostly teachers, artists, healthcare and legal professionals, I don't think I have ever seen an open laptop with external display setup in someone's home. It's usually an AIO at a small desk tucked into some corner or a laptop at the kitchen table.

Very few of these types of professions work for a corporation with a WfH policy, so I don't know how your anecdote relates to any observations I've made whatsoever.

 

[hestermofet]

Believe it or not, most people don't take their work home, don't travel for business, and don't attend meetings with laptops in tow. I'm not saying that doesn't happen – obviously, it does – but I don't think it happens nearly so much as people around here think it does. Desktops exist and are sold in droves for a reason.

Here are some actual numbers from late 2020 instead of speculative anecdotes.

For people whose jobs allow them to work from home (i.e. are not in a customer facing role such as retail or bank teller):
20% worked from home prior to pandemic
71% currently working from home
54% want to continue to work from home after the pandemic ends

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-tren ... cans-work/

Employed adults with higher educational attainment and incomes are most likely to say their work can be done from home

Which overlaps nicely with the average Mac user.

Again, in terms of a Mac user's likelihood to be able to work from home, and desire to work from home:

To be sure, not all employed adults have the option of working from home, even during a pandemic. In fact, a majority of workers say their job responsibilities cannot be done from home. There’s a clear class divide between workers who can and cannot telework. Fully 62% of workers with a bachelor’s degree or more education say their work can be done from home. This compares with only 23% of those without a four-year college degree. Similarly, while a majority of upper-income workers can do their work from home, most lower- and middle-income workers cannot.

The types of workers who can't work from home because of the nature of their job typically don't even need a personal computer to begin with, they are typically using a shared computer. For example, desktops at a nurses' station, shared POS machine in a retail store, tablet or handheld computer in a warehouse, etc.

 

[hestermofet]

did: flexible offices with for every desk a screen, keyboard and dock and give everyone a laptop. (But also install wired mice rather than have everyone carry their own mouse everywhere.)

Yeah, this is a common setup, especially for workers with a hybrid structure (work in office, but a few days a week at home: a very popular option for companies still stuck in the Dark Ages and require people to come it): hoteling, where you have a mouse, keyboard, monitor and dock that you plug your laptop into. The days you come in to the office, you just pick any random desk that you already booked earlier in the week, because all the desks are configured pretty much the same.

The next choice would be desktop computers but set up such that you could log in to any desktop with your credentials and have the same experience.

I think this is an older way of doing things, and is easier to do with Windows, either via thin clients that RDP into a Terminal Server, or Roaming Profiles configured via ActiveDirectory. I don't know how to accomplish this with Mac OS, but if there is a way, it's probably not via first party tools, rather, something like JAMF.

I think this is going the way of the dodo, because it's way harder to maintain and generally requires a dedicated IT department to keep running.

 

[hestermofet]

Also, I was talking about the typical WfH config. I've rarely seen a company send out desktops to their workers who don't come into the office. If you are getting a laptop and an external monitor (24" typically) anyway, you may as well use the laptop screen too instead of letting it go to waste.

This seems pretty straightforward, but I'm gonna pull on that thread a bit.

I look at what's in front of me, I see this:

This is the problem: While I admit my second image has a bit of exaggeration for effect[0], even "don't let the laptop screen go to waste", which seems straightforward, ain't universal.

My solution to this is ditch the monitor stands and use VESA gas spring arms. Then, the monitor mounts to the edge of the desk, and you can lift them higher to clear the laptop screen. You can then push the laptop further back so that you have space for a keyboard. I use a keyboard tray to give even more desk space.

But I think this is a pretty unique configuration because of the added expense of buying monitor arms.

 

[hestermofet]

Want to work from home and will work from home after the pandemic are two different things.

My wife works as a recruiter for finance and accounting professionals. i.e., not IT workers who are historically used to working from home. It's totally an employee's market right now, and most people who are casually looking for work, or even seriously looking for work are flatout refusing any job that requires full-time office presence. There are a few industries where by the very nature of the work, even people like accountants need to be in the office (manufacturing, with an office attached to the plant), and these companies are having a seriously difficult time recruiting people. They are having to settle for a way lower calibre of candidate because any one who has any degree of talent recognizes A) the benefits of working from home in terms of work/life balance, and B) almost all good employers are open to at the very least, a hybrid structure. I've heard of many people who turn down jobs that pay 20K more, because a lower paying job lets you work from home.

When you both work from home, you can let go of one car, for example, so your costs are less. We personally went from three cars to two, and one of the ones we are keeping only saw 5000Km in the past year. So why get paid 20K more if it's all going into maintaining a car so you can commute two hours a day?

Of course, YMMV, it's all dependent on your local job market and industry.

The working world has changed dramatically, and it's becoming more like the pre-industrial world, where a large amount of labor is done at home. Factories are when people started leaving home to work, and it's a fairly unique arrangement that only represents a tiny portion of the history of organized work. Companies that are not recognizing this are going to lose big. Anyone with talent is demanding a lot more flexibility in terms of work style, especially because the economy is rebounding massively, so there's a big labour shortage right now. Employees have all the power right now. I'm even seeing it in the IT industry, where contractors are now asking double the rate they used to before the pandemic. My own salary went up 50% because I switched jobs twice during the pandemic, and got a big pay bump each time because of market conditions. Both jobs were fully remote.

Even if we assume that every one of the 62% of the above workers with BAs who claim that their job can be done at home are correct, and even if we assume every one of their employers will allow this post-pandemic, that still leaves 38% of those employees who may well be better served and have no real need for a laptop to do their job. That's still a lot of desktops.

Your flawed assumption here is that all 38% of those remaining employees require a personal computer of any kind. A LOT of the labor force works in retail, services, warehouse, manufacturing, healthcare etc where a shared workstation, a POS terminal, or a portable computer like a tablet or a handheld computer (barcode scanner type of thing) is sufficient.

Desktops just don't sell. I don't get why people are still trying to make the case that they are hugely relevant. They are not, laptops have been outselling them by a factor of at least 2:1 for at least a decade.

According to Statistica[/url], desktops sold 94.4m, 94.0m, & 79.8m in 2019, 2020, & 2021 (forecasted). To be sure, laptops outsell desktops by a good margin (173.0, 222.5, 276.8), but even the low number of 79.8m units is a lot of computers.

So basically, the "X is a really big number, so it must be significant" argument? Your own numbers show it's a fraction of portable computers, so the absolute number is frankly not that important.

 

[hestermofet]

Again. For a computer that isn't going to be used without a large screen, a laptop is a waste of money. It's a waste of materials. It's just bad.

I think this thread is devolving into how people think the ideal way to use a computer is (prescriptive) versus a descriptive discussion of how things actually are. The discussion started with someone making the observation that people with a laptop and an external screen usually run it in clamshell mode. Then I made the observation that people who work from home usually use the laptop open, because it's useful as a second screen. This setup is becoming more common because companies usually issue a laptop and a single 24" monitor to their WfH employees.

Then, we had people questioning if people really work from home at all, so desktops must still be a relevant form factor. When we have evidence presented that actually, no, the trend is towards people increasingly working from home (you can infer from that that desktops will become even LESS relevant), we're told that this won't happen after the pandemic, people will go back to the office even if they don't want to, with no reasoning or evidence given. And we have other people claiming that a laptop is useless for anyone who wants to use an external monitor, desktops are SO much better for anyone who doesn't need to be portable all the time (never mind that many laptops are used primarily stationary, plugged in)

Sure sounds a lot like "this is what I do, so most people must do it too" to me.

 

[hestermofet]

Not at all. If you use a computer in a way where you need to move it from place to place, you should probably have a laptop. If your computer never moves, you should probably have a desktop.

It's not that hard.

Except for people who don't use laptops that way, or desktops that way.

This:

This:
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000642.htm

This:
https://www.google.com/search?q=laptop+ ... 1&biw=1920

And this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_r ... 0interface.

All prove people don't always use computers the way you think they should. From the last link:

The development of the modern desktop replacement computer came with the realization that many laptops were used in a semi-permanent location, often remaining connected to an external power source at all times. This suggested that a market existed for a laptop-style computer that would take advantage of the user's reduced need for portability, allowing for higher-performance components, greater expandability, and higher-quality displays. Desktop replacement computers are also often used with a port replicator, to full enjoy the desktop comfort.

Which sounds exactly like the setup I had at one of my most recent jobs. Or anyone else who was issued a laptop like a W5xx, XPS 17, or MBP 16" issued to work from home, along with a dock and monitor.

that apparently everyone has

I never said that. Don't make up shit.

 

[hestermofet]

Sure sounds a lot like "this is what I do, so most people must do it too" to me.

So true, which is why the actual numbers matter.

Rene Ritchie mentioned on a MacWeekly Podcast that a source at Apple told him the number of people using an external display is in the mid-teens. Of course, Apple as a company skews towards consumers rather than business and professionals, but still the typical Mac user owns a laptop and uses it without an external display. It doesn't mean Apple will produce devices strictly in line with those numbers, but you can bet those numbers hang heavy over every decision.

Hundred percent agreed. Macs usually aren't issued to employees, unless you are a developer, creative, or executive, and executives need to be highly mobile and often aren't able to work from home. Creatives will often need more power than a laptop, or they require a hardwire to some sort of high capacity storage (NAS or DAS).

 

[hestermofet]

I'm just pushing back against this insinuation that everyone should (or even could) work that way

Who has argued this? Can you provide a quote?

this apparent denial that there are people with modest computing needs who just want a big screen on their desk and don't need a laptop.

Again, who has argued this? Provide a quote please. This is a patently absurd position to take because the iMac exists, and it's the number one selling Mac desktop, in addition to traditionally being one of the least powerful (certain models in the lineup).

 

[hestermofet]

The remaining Intel mini has gotta be mostly for corporate customers buying substantial numbers of machines who want a warranty and after-sale support.

I don't know how popular the Mac Mini is in corporate environments. I've usually seen Macs in businesses as either laptops for developers*, or iMacs/Mac Pros for creatives. The Mac Mini... that form factor is much better served in the enterprise by a Lenovo/Dell/HP Tiny/Mini/Micro. The Mini is not VESA mountable without additional third party (and relatively expensive) hardware, they require a special software stack in order to image as basic Word/Excel machines unlike Windows (everything can be done with first party MS tools on the Windows side), they won't work with most LOB applications unless its web-based, Mac OS doesn't have the same RAD tools to create LOB applications like Windows does, they are not repairable in-house (every repair requires shipping off to Apple. Even minor ones like RAM: Apple hasn't sold a Mini with RAM that can be user-replaced without voiding the warranty since 2012), Apple doesn't provide the same NBD on-site service that Lenovo/Dell/HP can... they're just not good fleet machines.

I think the remaining Intel Minis are just leftover stock.

*as an actual developer, none of my colleagues have ever wanted a Mac desktop

 

[hestermofet]

The Intel Mini doesn't surprise me at all. There's still a lot of Intel machines out there, and devs need something to test against. I don't see it as anything more than that.

I don't see this as any kind of major driver.

Most of them already have their Intel Macs, and also be upgrading their development machines to M1 chips, so the old development machines also become regression test machines. There should be a surplus of Intel machines to test on.

Nobody is writing new software for Intel, just like PPC development pretty much dropped off a cliff as soon as Intel machines were launched, and 68K before that when the first PPC Macs hit the market. I just don't see this nebulous "developer" thing being a big enough market to keep a whole product line around.

Because let's be honest, as an absolute percentage of developers out there, only a small number require a Mac. The developer community that's "Apple-only" is tiny, and the number of "Mac-only" developers is even tinier. There are a lot of developers who develop for iOS, but there are a lot of cross-platform development tools PLUS build services so you don't even need a Mac to write iOS apps. And if you are developing for iOS, why aren't you using an AS Mac instead of an old and busted Intel Mac?

And how many developers are writing apps that really require an Intel machine? i.e. they are targeting desktop apps for a dead-end platform? Very few developers write for Mac OS to begin with, and of those, there are enough that are writing for an already marginal platform using a dead end variant on a deprecated architecture to justify keeping one last old and obsolete product around? I just don't see it.

The point is that we're all different and have different uses for our computers and have a wide variety of computing setups. I suspect that a very large portion of people are actually Niche use cases, they are just different Niche use cases.

I think this a great take that a lot of people overlook. It's like that saying, people only ever use 80% of the features of MS Word, but they don't all use the same features.

 

[hestermofet]

The Intel Mini doesn't surprise me at all. There's still a lot of Intel machines out there, and devs need something to test against. I don't see it as anything more than that.

I don't see this as any kind of major driver.

Most of them already have their Intel Macs, and also be upgrading their development machines to M1 chips, so the old development machines also become regression test machines. There should be a surplus of Intel machines to test on.

Nobody is writing new software for Intel, just like PPC development pretty much dropped off a cliff as soon as Intel machines were launched, and 68K before that when the first PPC Macs hit the market. I just don't see this nebulous "developer" thing being a big enough market to keep a whole product line around.

Because let's be honest, as an absolute percentage of developers out there, only a small number require a Mac. The developer community that's "Apple-only" is tiny, and the number of "Mac-only" developers is even tinier. There are a lot of developers who develop for iOS, but there are a lot of cross-platform development tools PLUS build services so you don't even need a Mac to write iOS apps. I think in this day and age, if you are building a major, significant app and are only targeting iOS, and not simultaneously writing for Android, you are making a big strategic blunder. And if you are developing for iOS, why aren't you using an AS Mac instead of an old and busted Intel Mac?

And how many developers are writing apps that really require an Intel machine? i.e. they are targeting desktop apps for a dead-end platform? Very few developers write for Mac OS to begin with, and of those, there are enough that are writing for an already marginal platform using a dead end variant on a deprecated architecture to justify keeping one last old and obsolete product around? I just don't see it.

The point is that we're all different and have different uses for our computers and have a wide variety of computing setups. I suspect that a very large portion of people are actually Niche use cases, they are just different Niche use cases.

I think this a great take that a lot of people overlook. It's like that saying, people only ever use 80% of the features of MS Word, but they don't all use the same features.

 

[hestermofet]

Nobody is writing new software for Intel, just like PPC development pretty much dropped off a cliff as soon as Intel machines were launched, and 68K before that when the first PPC Macs hit the market. I just don't see this nebulous "developer" thing being a big enough market to keep a whole product line around.

I would expect most companies that ship desktop Mac apps to continue supporting Intel for at least another couple of years. The number of Intel Macs Apple will sell to such developers is obviously negligible, but enabling developers to continue supporting Intel has implications for millions of users.

Like I said, I don't think anyone is writing new software for Intel. Software packages that already exist for Intel will continue to get support, but say, the newest version of Affinity Photo or Da Vinci Resolve will stop coming out for Intel the minute Apple stops making it as easy as checking a single button in XCode to compile a Universal Binary.

You don't need to buy a new Intel Mac Mini to continue updating software that's already mostly written because you run into the most problems with regression testing when adding new features, not when fixing bugs in minor point updates. From here on out, Intel software will mostly see minor point updates.

 

[hestermofet]

I think most of the apparent hole in the lineup is just the memory limitation and hopefully the M2 fixes that. Being able to upgrade a Mini to 32GB for under $1500 will serve a lot of users, even if it doesn't have a "Pro" chip in it.

Sadly, I suspect max-RAM specs will be a factor Apple uses to delineate between "consumer" and "pro" products for a long time. If you need 32GB, in their reasoning, then you must be a pro and need a pro-level product.

I think the big differentiator between models now seems to be GPU. Which has me really wondering what Apple is up to, because the only thing you need a GPU for on a Mac is photo and video editing, which probably 85-90% of Mac users don't do on a regular basis. I mean, the bulk of the Mac buying public might be slapping together a few 1080p clips shot on their iPhone with a very simple timeline in iMovie, but they are not working with 8K ProRes on two different monitors, so won't benefit greatly from a hardcore CPU/GPU.

They're making a feature few people have a need for the main reason to buy a more expensive model.... so maybe we can expect some new paradigm shift in Mac OS, and they're prepping the market by getting the hardware out there?

And it's even more paradoxical when you consider that PC GPUs, even on a laptop, absolutely curb stomp the best GPU Apple has released yet, the one in the Mac Studio. I don't see how Apple can squeeze all that much more performance without further process shrinks, because we've been told the limiting factor for AS is cooling, and the Mac Studio comes with a very sufficient 2lb cooling solution. Why are they selling such a poorly utilized, (relatively) poorly performing feature so hard? Don't get me wrong, for an iGPU, the one in the M1 is really, really good one but it's still an iGPU which has always meant poor performance.

 

[hestermofet]

Consumer products include luxury or premium products. Professional products are just expensive. In 2022, if you want a Mac with 32GB RAM the starting price is $2,000 and goes up from there. Next year, that may change, but I wouldn't count on it.

If Apple was a luxury goods company who also services boutique pros, they wouldn't be the multi-trillion dollar company they are. Luxury companies can be very profitable, but they are never huge.

Apple's a bit weird in that they are a self-contained ecosystem, so while they probably get the bulk of their revenue (and profit) from everyman products like the iPhone SE, they still need to offer vanity products like the iMac Pro. How many pros who actually needed a pro machine bought that instead of a Mac Pro? I think a lot of those probably went to rich Apple lifestyle people who wanted the best thing on the market that still screamed Apple, and nothing screams Apple like the iconic AIO iMac.

 

[hestermofet]

Are we obliged to buy any of their stuff?

In some way it makes sense for Apple to push the prices just a hair below the breaking point of the buyer. But is that a good long-term strategy?

Anyone who spent five seconds looking into Apple knows that their stuff isn't "cheap". But for the most part, it's always been an "affordable luxury". I.e., costs significantly more than the cheap stuff, but people can afford it if they care.

But for instance the latest Mac Pro and whatever-it's-called-who-cares-I'm-never-going-to-buy-one 6K display are not affordable luxury. They're just plain very expensive. Now there's a place for that. But that place doesn't make for a billion dollar market cap. If Apple refuses to sell the systems their most loyal users want for a price they feel they can afford, that creates big problems.

How is a well-designed system defined as an "affordable luxury"? When judged against a comparably-specced PC system, pricing is similar.

For the first year or two of a product launch, Apple products always look like a good deal compared to PCs, but then the PC product refresh cycle is on a significantly increased pace because of the multitude of competing vendors. So as time goes on, the value proposition looks worse and worse. The M1 Macs look like great performers at a very competitive price right now, but that's because most of them were launched relatively recently. I don't think any of them have got a second generation yet, right?

I mean, friggin Intel Mac Mini hasn't been updated since 2018, and that thing looks like a sad, very overpriced potato.

If you think Apple Silicon means the end of that type of product that stinks up the whole fridge by staying way past its expiration date, you don't know Apple.

 

[hestermofet]

Now there's a place for that. But that place doesn't make for a billion dollar market cap. If Apple refuses to sell the systems their most loyal users want for a price they feel they can afford, that creates big problems.

Their billion dollar market cap appears to disagree with you on those points.

Their trillion dollar market cap comes from selling iPhone SEs, iPhone 13s, and MBAs. Not from selling iPhone 13 Pro Maxs and Mac Studios.

Apple doesn't have a problem selling iPhones that people can afford, because they just sell a two year old model for a much reduced price, and have done that for a while. They do sometimes have a problem offering a Mac that people can afford, though. Unlike an iPhone, when a Mac is two years old and incredibly obsolete, it still doesn't see a price reduction and is at exactly at the same high price as when it launched, but now the components are old and non-competitive in performance. Meanwhile, in iPhoneland, such a device gets progressively cheaper and cheaper, as it should.

Is this a long term problem that will affect ecosystem health? Hard to say, but I do know that the vast majority of iPhone users don't own a Mac, largely because one of the platforms is affordable whereas the other is not.

 

[hestermofet]

So, no... Macs right now aren't priced similar to comparable Windows machines. Macs are cheaper.

The comparison between Mac and PC isn't to Windows on ARM because volume PC sales are not on ARM, they are on x64. So compare to similarly priced Intel and AMD machines.

Prices are ALWAYS higher on low volume products, and Windows on ARM is extraordinarily low volume.

 

[hestermofet]

I said this near the beginning of the the thread: the most compelling reason to own a desktop PC is access to a fast GPU, followed by things like memory, cooling, and CPU core count. The market Apple is targeting know they need these resources, and then accept that they need to get them from a desktop. We here in this thread know we want a desktop, and then decide what resources we'd like. Fast desktops are still a viable consumer market because of gamers and amateur/semi-professional/vanity content creators who are more than willing to spend c. $2000 on a nice rig. The Studio (I think) nicely captures this market as well as people who benefit financially from a faster computer.

The question of whether to get a desktop keeps shifting over time, and may be shifting again. First storage caught up, then processor and memory caught up, now it seems GPU may be catching up, but cooling is still a challenge.

Desktop and M1 GPU is not even close. M1 and discrete laptop GPU is not even close (although it's damned good compared to both desktop and laptop iGPU).

And the Studio has very good cooling. By all accounts, it's virtually silent. If the M1 Ultra was capable of better GPU performance, you should be able to hear the fan, which you almost never do, because there is no point cranking up the fan on something that stays cool enough while already maxed out performance-wise. Revving the fans even higher won't gain you anything, because there is no more headroom for the GPU. So the issue is not cooling.

Processor between laptop and desktop has not caught up. The Mac Studio is quite a bit faster than the MBP M1 Pro (is that the right model name? Apple nomenclature has become as complex as Xbox), and we still have to see performance on the M1 Mac Pro which we can only assume will only be faster.

Storage on desktop and laptop is equivalent now because they use non-mechanical technology, so the physical size of the device is not a constraint. They both use flash chips which don't care if the PCB is 1" square or 5" square, so there is no performance difference between a larger form factor device and a smaller one. Not true for mechanical devices, where miniaturization will make mechanical components operate slower.

RAM speeds have always been the same between desktop and laptops as far back as I can remember. At least as long as we had halfway decent power controls in software, and sleep states. If by RAM, you mean capacity, there is simply more (potential) board space on a desktop, because the device doesn't need to be portable. So where laptops are limited to dual channel at most, desktops can have up to 8 channels (and even more on a server). This can mean orders of magnitude more RAM. There are Dell and HP desktop-form factor workstations that can take a PetaByte of RAM, but the boards on those are huge, they are even bigger than ATX, they are E-ATX or even larger.

This is simple physics. Desktops will always be faster, because the components that actually get hot are the ones that determine performance the most, and a desktop can simply provide way better cooling.

 

[hestermofet]

Most of the Windows ARM space, right now, is convertible tablets and Chromebooks that someone tried to wedge Windows onto. Sure, we could compare those to a MacBook Air and come up with the same "Macs are soooooo expensive!", just like folks did when they were comparing the latest Celeron-powered flimsy plastic garbage with a pixels-the-size-of-golf-balls screen to the lowest-end Mac in the past.

We can look down on products like this, but there are people who need a computer and simply can't afford something more than $500. On an objective level, if your platform doesn't offer products in this price range, it is expensive. That doesn't mean it's bad, it just means you prioritize different things, such as quality instead of availability to as many people as possible. I don't think "expensive" necessarily implies a value judgment, but on an objective level, yes, Macs are expensive, because there are no products less than $1000.

Steak is an expensive dish because it's out of reach of the type of consumer who can only afford to eat meat every other day. And yes, even in countries like the US and Canada, people like that exist. You don't want to know the quality of meat they can afford, but I'm happy there are products on the market that still give them access to animal protein. Burgers are an objectively cheaper product than steak, but that doesn't mean you can't buy an expensive burger that's comparable in quality to a steak, if you wanted to. But you can't buy a steak for as cheap as the cheapest burger, which means that it's a more expensive product.

 

[hestermofet]

..again somehow a machine that is quite competitive & unique in performance for the price is suddenly bad value

I don't think the argument is that it's a bad value. I think the argument is that you can't get a similar value with understandably downgraded specs in a lower-grade computer (i.e. not high end), at least in the desktop form factor.

To make a strained car analogy (no Mac thread is complete without a bad car analogy), if the cheapest 7 series BMW used to cost $100 000, and now it costs $75 000 while also performing 1.5x better, that new model would be a damned good value. But what if BMW completely eliminated the 5 series in the process, and the next step down if you want a 4-door was now a $40 000 3 series?

The 27" iMac is the missing 5 series. It's great that the 7 series is an amazing value, but what if you only needed the features of the 5 series, yet the 3 series is not enough?

Not that I necessarily agree with this argument, just trying to explain it. Even if this were true with the current lineup, it's not the worst thing in the world to have to buy more than you need, certainly better than not being able to buy enough which is what we had to deal with during the Dark Years of the trashcan. Aand Apple's been a master at upselling forever.

 

[hestermofet]

Desktop and M1 GPU is not even close. M1 and discrete laptop GPU is not even close (although it's damned good compared to both desktop and laptop iGPU).

I guess I should phrase it this way: the size of the market that can be addressed by desktop GPUs but for which mobile GPUs are insufficient keeps on shrinking.

This is true of laptops too. There are plenty of people who only own a smartphone, and that percentage of the population is growing. Soooo.... let's not talk about desktop performance in a thread about desktops? I don't really get your point. Should we not talk about Photoshop as relevant in a thread about Photoshop, because the number of use cases where Affinity Photo is enough keeps increasing?

We're to the point now where the only desktop parts that can't be replicated in a laptop are barely obtainable at all unless you're willing to pay literally four figures for a GPU. That same shift happened for storage (in terms of speed, not raw capacity) years ago.

GPUs are expensive if you want to buy one as an aftermarket part. As part of a prebuilt OEM system, it's quite easy and affordable to buy a desktop PC that absolutely demolishes anything that Apple has, including the graphics card in the Mac Pro. An MXM discrete laptop GPU would similarly be as expensive as a retail desktop PCIe GPU is currently, if such a thing were available at retail.

The high price of loose GPUs is not because there is no use case for these GPUs, it's because of extraordinary once-in-a-century supply chain issues. Retail GPUs are expensive because OEMs negotiated prices for GPUs that go into prebuilts long ago, so they are getting all those GPUs first, at the pre-negotiated affordable rate. What's leftover goes to retail, and the supply is almost nil. That's why they are expensive. Not because there is no demand for them.

I don't know what shift you are talking about WRT to storage, because the exact same storage available to desktops are available to laptops (with the exception of exotic server grade stuff like U.2), so there is no market segmentation there. They share a common market for parts.

Speed between laptop and desktop storage has been the same for at least 20 years, only capacity has differed, and it still differs today. So I don't really know what lessons are to be learned today from something that happened 20 years ago for entirely different reasons: the cheap availability of 7200 RPM in 2.5" drives.

The question is how much of the addressable market wants components that can't be cooled in the laptop form factor. As the components can do more within the laptop power budget, that portion will continue getting smaller. I brought up my own example as a case in point—I'd be happy to replace both a desktop and a laptop with just a laptop if the laptop can cool what I need adequately, which many reports on the M1 Max MBP say it can.

How much of the addressable market even wants a Mac? Why bother discuss anything unless it has absolute market dominance, and unless it appeals to 99% of the population? The same thing is already happening between laptops and smartphones, so I guess we can have this same discussion about those two form factors in 3-7 years, as components can do more and more within a smartphone's power budget. But I don't think that's very helpful to people who need a laptop. Macs and iPhones already use pretty much the exact same SoC, the only real difference is power budget and number of cores.

 

[hestermofet]

GPUs are expensive if you want to buy one as an aftermarket part. As part of a prebuilt OEM system, it's quite easy and affordable to buy a desktop PC that absolutely demolishes anything that Apple has, including the graphics card in the Mac Pro.

Hold on there. If you’re including the Mac Pro, the W6900X is available as an option as are a number of ‘duo’ options. As far as I can tell, the W6900X is basically the 6900XT but with 32GB of VRAM. In that case, nothing on the market, including a 3090, ‘absolutely demolishes’ it in raster performance (maybe you could find some RT stuff with a notable difference, if that’s where you’re going with that comment).

Yep, very true, I was thinking more the base model configs. You are totally right.

But if you start comparing to something like a duo W6800X, the upgrade cost alone for the BTO option is about twice that of an OEM prebuilt with a 3090.

Heck, just upgrading to a single W6800X Pro is within spitting distance of this complete system with a 3090.
https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/al ... d/15746586

But I take your point.

 

[hestermofet]

Workstation graphics cards are always more expensive. A single AMD Radeon Pro W6800 (the same GPU, except not in MPX format) currently retails for $2200 on Newegg. The MPX Module is $2800 as a standalone purchase.

Of course, nothing's stopping someone from buying a regular 6800XT at half the price and stuffing it in a Mac Pro either.

As far as I can tell, the W6900X and W6800X Duo are Apple-only parts. The W6900X and the Duos are priced against NVidia workstation cards, which are segmented to do things GeForce can't. But a GeForce can do a lot of things, especially the monster that is the 3090. If someone doesn't need the things that the RTX A8000 or A6000 can do (and don't look up the prices on those), then a 3090 is a real bargain even at inflated prices. Its performance is just that good, at the cost of noise and 400 watts.

Yeah you can’t make a direct comparison in terms of price, performance or pretty much anything between workstation graphics and gaming graphics. Still, the upgrade pricing for the Mac Pro is bonkers. When you go from one bracket to another, it’s like the part you upgraded from cost nothing, and you need to pay full price to upgrade.

But this isn’t anything new from Apple, and if you really need a workstation from Apple, you have no other choice, so people pay it.

 

[hestermofet]

So, no... Macs right now aren't priced similar to comparable Windows machines. Macs are cheaper.

The comparison between Mac and PC isn't to Windows on ARM because volume PC sales are not on ARM, they are on x64. So compare to similarly priced Intel and AMD machines.

...except those aren't anywhere near comparable. If I want similar performance to an M1-powered Mac, but with an Intel or AMD processor, I have to choose between constantly looking for power taps or scheduling regular chiropractic adjustments. I chose the HP Folio because it's at least trying to play in the same market.

You are only looking at one aspect of performance and saying "this is the competing product". Windows on ARM runs programs way slower than x64, so no, it's not playing in the same market. It's playing in the same market as tablets, not laptops. If battery life is the aspect of performance that's important to you, ARM is an appropriate comparison. If computational performance is important, it's a poor comparison.

Comparing a modern Mac to a mass-market Windows machine would be making all the same mistakes that folks made when they tried to compare low-end Windows machines to Macs to claim that Macs are more expensive.

If you compare an M1 Mac to a PC that performs computationally similar, the Mac is not cheaper as you stated. It's comparable, or more expensive.

I don't think people (who are serious) compare Macs to a plastic fantastic machine like a Celeron powered HP Stream, and then declare "Macs are overpriced!". You would compare to something in the same category, like the HP Elitebook. There are Elitebooks in ultrabook form factors, so in a similar weight and size class to a MBP. And they have AMD Ryzen APUs, so can be just as fast, or faster. Battery life will be less. "Constantly looking for power taps" is a huge exaggeration though, these types of ultrabook machines can easily achieve 8 hours comfortably, which is a full work day.

with an Intel or AMD processor, I have to choose between constantly looking for power taps or scheduling regular chiropractic adjustments.

The type of Windows PC that is 7lb or more (I assume that's what you mean by needing to see a chiropractor, which I wouldn't recommend btw because it's not an evidence-based profession. I'd recommend a physiotherapist instead) typically is not designed to run for more than 2 hours on battery. It's not a choice of "battery life or lightweight", because in the PC world, lightweight PCs are optimized to run longer, heavy and bulky PCs are meant to be extremely powerful at the expense of battery. So it sounds like to me either you are very unfamiliar with the PC market, or are exaggerating greatly because you have an axe to grind against PCs.

Apple doesn't make machines that compete with 7lb+ Windows desktop replacement laptops.

The Folio is a poor comparison because it's a low volume niche product that doesn't compete in the same space. You buy one of those knowing there are a lot of compromises. For example, unlike with an M1 Mac, if you are buying a Snapdragon PC, you are under no illusions that you have full official support for legacy applications.

Comparing a modern Mac to a mass-market Windows machine would be making all the same mistakes

Nobody who is serious and not a troll does this. They compare to premium Windows machines, such as ultrabooks, because Macs are premium machines. Comparing to a niche low-volume category of machine to me sounds unserious. Would you compare the Mac Pro to an office productivity desktop tower designed for Word and Excel, and declare the Mac Pro is overpriced? If the only metric of performance I cared about was how much power was drawn from the wall, the Mac Pro sounds like an even worse value. No, the Mac Pro is a niche, low-volume machine so you would compare to a similar class of machine such as an HP Z Workstation.

Then why are you comparing a machine that sells in the millions to a class of machine that's probably selling in the low tens of thousands?

 

[hestermofet]

The basic issue if you're trying to replicate the value of a 27" iMac is that the Studio Display is too expensive. There's no way for Apple to address this by introducing an additional model of headless Mac. It would have to be, like, an M1 Pro Mac mini for $200, which obviously isn't happening. So there's not going to be something cost-competitive unless they introduce another 27" iMac. (Or I guess do something completely out of left field like offer some crazy bundle deal for an M1 Pro mini + Studio Display.)

Except, I wonder if there isn't a good reason why they got rid of the 27" iMac, and why the Studio Display is so expensive. Surely when Apple settled on that form factor and resolution, they didn't expect — nobody expected — that the wider display market would still be stalled at 4K 7-8 years later. Perhaps the machine was such an unusually good value because it actually didn't have very good margins, because it was designed and priced anticipating cost reductions on 5K panels that never occurred, but Apple just suck with it because unit volume was low enough that it wasn't worth seriously restructuring the desktop lineup until there was another reason to do so (which, with Apple Silicon, there finally was).

Part of the reason why the Studio Display is so expensive is because it has a smartphone-grade processor inside that doesn't seem to do very much. Seems like a dumb design decision, but if people will still pay that much just to have a display with an Apple logo on it instead of essentially the identical monitor for much cheaper, but with an LG logo, I guess it was a smart choice in the end.

 

[hestermofet]

I don't think people (who are serious) compare Macs to a plastic fantastic machine like a Celeron powered HP Stream, and then declare "Macs are overpriced!".

That happens all the time. It's literally why people buy $500 Windows laptops. Some of them even have problems that can be solved on a $500 laptop just fine (more and more as technology marches on!), and they're even happy doing it.

For people buying a $500, they are not also seriously considering a $1000+ MacBook. That would be like saying most people who buy Honda Civics also cross shop with Mercedes C Class when deciding what to buy, and the general opinion is that Mercedes' are overpriced. No, people actually shopping in that category (Mercedes, BMW, Audi) would not conclude that a Mercedes is especially overpriced.

Nope, that's not how people shop. They don't cross-shop budget laptops with premium laptops.

So let's look at pricing: The Elitebook costs $2059. The Macbook Pro, even after paying for Apple's ridiculously priced SSD upgrades to match the Elitebook, is $1399.

Anybody buying an Elitebook at retail is doing it wrong. These are usually sold B2B through an HP sales person, since they are business-grade laptops. This means massive discounts, increased support (stuff like 5 year NBD on-site, etc). Apple simply doesn't offer this sales model. I'm sorry I used the HP Elitebook as a comparison, you mentioned the HP Folio, and I'm simply not as familiar with HP as I am with other Windows vendor so I used the only line up I knew, their business line.

There are PC vendors who sell ultrabooks a lot cheaper at retail such as Asus, Acer, and even HP, Lenovo, and Dell. I just don't know what HP offers at retail in their consumer lineup.

 

[hestermofet]

I don't think people (who are serious) compare Macs to a plastic fantastic machine like a Celeron powered HP Stream, and then declare "Macs are overpriced!". You would compare to something in the same category, like the HP Elitebook. There are Elitebooks in ultrabook form factors, so in a similar weight and size class to a MBP. And they have AMD Ryzen APUs, so can be just as fast, or faster. Battery life will be less. "Constantly looking for power taps" is a huge exaggeration though, these types of ultrabook machines can easily achieve 8 hours comfortably, which is a full work day.

One bit I'd like to gently push back on. I have one of these HP ultrabook class laptops for work. 8 hours is achievable if I do no Teams/Zoom calls and don't open Chrome (which is a reliable way to spin the fans up, as my laptop is doing as I type on it right now). One of the things the new ARM Macs offer is battery life without 8 asterisks below it.

Agreed completely, I don't think anybody would really dispute that Apple's battery life right now is head and shoulders above the industry as a whole.

It just doesn't matter for some people though. I have an HP Elitebook ultrabook from work as well, and it stays plugged in to my HP Thunderbolt dock all day long, so I can get 3 monitors and use a proper desktop keyboard. I take it off the desk once in a while, for example, I was out of town last weekend so worked from the road on Thurs and Fri, but I didn't need 20 hours of battery life. What ended up happening is I sat at another desk other than my usual one, but it still had a power plug right next to it.

But for people who really do need 20 hours of battery, there's really no option other than a Mac unless you seriously want to compromise on computational power.

 

[hestermofet]

Part of the reason why the Studio Display is so expensive is because it has a smartphone-grade processor inside that doesn't seem to do very much. Seems like a dumb design decision, but if people will still pay that much just to have a display with an Apple logo on it instead of essentially the identical monitor for much cheaper, but with an LG logo, I guess it was a smart choice in the end.

An A13 is probably < $40 on Apple's bill of materials. Given likely unit volume, it's probably cheaper to include that than to use a custom part.

$40 is A LOT for a single chip in what is typically a dumb display. It doesn't seem to do much: it doesn't provide added end-user functionality by running TV OS, it doesn't do FSAA on the image or anything unique like that to increase image quality, it doesn't upscale, it basically seems to... run the webcam and allow the attached Mac to do things like control the brightness over the display connector. All of this could have easily been handled with an off the shelf chip that probably costs under $3, so cheaper by a factor of ~13.

Maybe Apple has future plans for it, but right now it seems like a frivolous added expense for consumers that doesn't provide them much extra utility but increases cost.

Meanwhile, the Studio Display would have to be something like $799 — half the price — for a display + a decently spec'd mini to come in at $1799, the price of the last base model 27" iMac.

Yeah, I think it's been hard to compare the iMac 27" to other devices because of the included screen. It was actually surprisingly good value, if a built-in screen of that size and resolution was something you wanted. Other people in this thread are pointing out that the 27" was probably one of Apple's lowest margin Macs, so you are right, it would take quite a lot to create a similar setup at the same price. I don't really think it can be done.

But that's the nice thing about a headless desktop, you're not forced to create the exact same equivalent configuration as an AIO. You can step down to a smaller, similarly high DPI screen for less, or a bigger screen if that's something you needed. Or the same sized screen at a lower DPI. Which is probably fine for most people.

So, it does seem somewhat plausible that what happened here is that the industry decided 5K displays are a high-end specialty item

Yep, there's no commercial content at that resolution, so its only utility is for desktop productivity. I think the general consumer is probably happy with the DPI of 4K@27". If that wasn't enough, we'd see more 5K screens at that size.

 

[hestermofet]

$40 is A LOT for a single chip in what is typically a dumb display. It doesn't seem to do much: it doesn't provide added end-user functionality by running TV OS, it doesn't do FSAA on the image or anything unique like that to increase image quality, it doesn't upscale, it basically seems to... run the webcam and allow the attached Mac to do things like control the brightness over the display connector. All of this could have easily been handled with an off the shelf chip that probably costs under $3, so cheaper by a factor of ~13.

Maybe Apple has future plans for it, but right now it seems like a frivolous added expense for consumers that doesn't provide them much extra utility but increases cost.

It runs Centre Stage, Spatial Audio and Hey Siri, does it not? Isn't that why these features works on Intel Macs attached to the Display? Considering that these are already written for iOS, doing it any other way would mean either backporting them to Intel macOS or bifurcating the experience. If Apple happen to have a bunch of A13s lying about, or a sufficiently smooth production process to make more, then the "full stack" cost may be cheaper, or at least "less uncheap."

Spatial Audio is already supported on Intel MBPs from 2018.
https://www.whathifi.com/us/advice/what ... tial-audio

Maybe it runs on the A-series chip that's running the Touch Bar, I dunno, but earlier Touch Bar Macs don't support Spatial Audio.

A $50 Amazon Fire tablet supports Alexa, I don't think you need a (purely hypothetical pricing) $40 SoC for that. And again, that's a feature that Intel Macs have supported for a very long time. I think right now, Apple is probably not building in special hardware features just to support a dead-end platform. Investment in keeping Intel Macs at feature parity with M1 Macs is probably minimal.

Centre Stage sounds pretty complex, but again, why are you running that on your display, and not on your laptop/desktop? If the webcam in the display is just a standard UVC camera, any software can get the raw stream and do whatever processing it wants to it, including puppy filters and the like a la Snapchat. Any Intel CPU can handily process video to achieve a similar effect. It's just face detection, really, which my Sony point and shoot camera supports, probably via a cheap off-the-shelf ASIC. My Pentax p&s from 10 years ago had face detection too, but it's not that great. By Sony's face detection is very competitive with a smartphone.

The novel thing about Center Stage is the automatic cropping and zooming to keep the detected face in frame, but that's way less computationally intense than detecting the face in the first place.

 

[hestermofet]

However, sitting behind a 27" 4K monitor right now, I know that in theory 27" at 16x9 = 23.5" wide and 3840 / 23.5 = 163 PPI is still below the human eye's visual acuity, but in practice I never notice the pixels. So why go up to 5120 / 23.5 = 218 PPI, only to see the very many non-resizable parts of the MacOS UI shrink to sizes that I find too small?

I think the bottom line is that 99% of people can't even tell the difference between IPS and MVA/PVA, or 90% sRGB coverage vs DCI-P3, so why bother making a 5K panel when 4K is a resolution that is good enough for 99% of people? Unlike the other components that go into Macs (such as M1 chips), Apple is heavily reliant on what the rest of the industry is doing for the 27" panel that went in the iMac for economies of scale, so if nobody else is using 5K 27", Apple is stuck with a custom bespoke panel for just themselves, therefore, costs are way higher per panel than they would be for a 4K panel with the same dimensions.

I have a 27" Asus monitor at 4K. The whole thing cost less than $200. This is a very common size and resolution, so you can get monitors, forget about panels, for very cheap. 5K panels at 27" can't be as competitively priced, so no doubt Apple was taking a bit of a bath on margins, which may explain why the Studio Display is so expensive. It probably reflects real costs for such a screen, whereas the 27" panel in the iMac might have been subsidized a bit to give middle range buyers an entryway into the Mac ecosystem.

 

[hestermofet]

Maybe I'm missing something here or I've never had to deal with this, but I'm on a 5K iMac running at looks like 2048 x 1152. The "default for display" option is so tiny as to be nearly unusable. So of course the argument is that running at the default (looks like 2560 x 1440) is sharper overall and has more real estate. Granted.

However, what's wrong with a consumer running a 27" 4K display at looks like 1920 x 1080? Yes, it's less real estate than a 5K display, but this should be 2x scaling and therefore just as 'crisp' as suggested, but with larger elements all around. Correct? Am I crazy to think that's exactly what I want - larger elements even if it means less real estate - but without the performance penalty of non-integer scaling?

The benefit to integer scaling is not performance but image quality. You don’t get aliasing, or shimmering on scrolling content. Also, aspect ratio remains the same.

Scaling content, non-integer or otherwise, is virtually free from a performance standpoint on a modern computer. It can be accomplished by a half cent chip, but it doesn’t need to be on a computer because the GPU can do it blindfolded with one hand tied behind its back.

 

[hestermofet]

Visual acuity is fine but have strong astigmatism such that larger fonts are needed to reduce eye strain. Perhaps I’ll find a way to set my iMac 27” to looks like 1920 x 1080 and see if the UI is too large for me.

Any specific hardware aside, you may also want to check System Preferences > Accessibility. There are settings there for menu sizing and zoom that may work well for you.

That does the same thing as running the whole screen at 1080p, but scales by a non-integer factor. For people who have standard vision problems due to age or a common condition like myopia, running the screen at a lower res makes more sense. For people with more serious vision problems, zoom makes more sense.

 

[hestermofet]

What is astounding is just how bad the Precision is in the details. The biggest PC manufacturer using the processor from the oldest Processor manufacturer using the most supported OS in the world...and it can't sleep.

That's not exclusive to Wintel. Apple's stuff is just as bad in various ways. And possibly I'm mistaken because I don't use Windows much, but it seems to me that at least Microsoft's software is less buggy than Apple's. Not that it works better, but at least it's working poorly as designed rather than because of bugs.

Everyone has a blindspot for the things they love. There are a lot of things about Apple products that are really puzzling oversights, but maybe they don't matter to the people who post effusively about how awesome Apple products are. They do matter to some people, though.

The inability to scale text system-wide is a pretty big oversight, IMO. Apple's scaling may look better, but Windows' is more usable for people who have a hard time reading high resolution screens. YMMV of course, and it's all IME. It's especially puzzling because iOS gets this so, so right and it's frustrating that Mac OS can't do the same thing. I have no reservations about recommending an iPhone to someone with poor eyesight, because the fix is so easy in software. But there is a lot of hesitation recommending the same WRT to Mac OS. I'd rather direct someone to Windows.

I personally don't think Windows software works poorly because it's designed that way, but I'm used to using Windows since Windows 3.1. But again, that's just how I personally feel, you can feel different. If you are a newer user, or are unfamiliar with the software, it will obviously be confusing and unintuitive. But the same is true for Mac OS, IME. Unfamiliarity with something always makes it hard. I'm a very advanced user. I stopped using Mac OS daily around Sierra, and picked it up again with Big Sur. I am sooooo lost half the time. It's a bit humiliating because in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm learning to use a computer for the first time, again.

Meanwhile, I've been using iOS all along, and feel perfectly fluent and comfortable in it. Though if someone had a similar gap, they'd be similarly lost as I am with Mac OS right now.

I think the adage that "MacOS is easier to use" was certainly true back in the classic Mac OS 7/8/9 days, but it's not really true any more. The OS (and any modern OS) is just so complex these days that you really need a lot of time to get acclimatized to it. This is neither a benefit nor a drawback, it's just reality. Like any complex system, whether it's driving a car, learning to cook, or learning how to use Mac OS or Windows, it takes time to get the hang of things.

Edit: let me forstall the inevitable "Well you need to upgrade." No shit. In fact, I'm waiting for a Mac Studio to be delivered next month. However, that's an incredibly privileged response, so before you chirp it at me (or anyone else), take a moment to listen to what people are trying to say, and recognize that your means are not the means available to everyone. For many people, "Just upgrade" isn't possible.

Testify, brother. This "very helpful advice" frustrates me to no end. Some people on the Internet seem to be physically allergic to running old software, because they apparently believe they'll instantly be hacked by all kinds of baddies if they are even one version out of date. Being on the latest version has somewhat become Religion in the Apple world.