5000 Dollar Apple arcade machine - E-sport oriented Mac rumored for 2020 release

[Bombastinator]

31 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

There wouldn't be any limitations though, that wouldn't make sense.

Heh.  They would for Nvidia, and if Nvidia is on the esports board that makes the rules it will happen.  Rules are just rules.  It DID happen in auto racing.  I was talking history right there.  Shelby was hated by everyone in racing in the 1960’s because he won fricken EVERYTHING.  Frequently 1,2,3, and not infrequently all the shelby’s followed by everyone else.  There’s a reason the guy was famous till the day he died.

 

If I was Nvidia/MSI/Corsair/Asus/etc.. and knew my products were about to be made to look like shit far and wide by Apple/AMD because they could make higher draw video cards work pecause GPUs have outgrown standardized slot heat limitations what might I do?

 

1: make longer cases that could hold bigger radiators 

2: increase the 2 slot standard to 3 or 4 slots

3: start looking at watercooling GPUs to get the radiator out of the slot in the first place and break the limitation

4: gain control of the board of an esports federation and make the competition illegal.

[NumLock21]

3 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Apple not got powerful gpu because  use amd

rgb not important in esports

xeon not for gaming

nvidia got better gpu than amd

 

Is that clear enough?

NO!

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

I trust Apple more than whatever that is you're blabbering about.

I thought it was an interesting post, actually.  Not the RGB stuff that was more a statement of “I have no idea what esports are or how sports promotion works”

the stuff about CPUs and GPUs was possibly salient though.  They’d need to be fitting their machines with specifically gaming optimized parts.  Xenons aren’t optimized for gaming.  And Nvidia DOES own top honors for fastest GPUs atm.  It would be very Ford v. Ferrari.

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Apple not got powerful gpu because  use amd

rgb not important in esports

xeon not for gaming

nvidia got better gpu than amd

 

Is that clear enough?

Heh.  Here’s the issue.  No one over the age of 12 who doesn’t work in marketing thinks RGB has anything to do with winning esports.  Sure, there’s tons of RGB.  It’s there because while the players are playing to win the people who hired that hall and put up the prize money, and made any part of esports possible at all are there to sell computing stuff and they want to make it look as visible as possible.  I’m kinda surprised esports gaming boxes aren’t shaped like inadequately clothed women.

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, dizmo said:

AMD doesn't make such a GPU, and they won't work with Nvidia. So. They can't really do any better.

They don’t make it right now anyway.  They’ve done it before though.  They even did Some for the Mac pros already.

[sazrocks]

Maybe this would get apple to actually fix their graphics drivers. Their OpenGL implementation has been broken for like the last decade...

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, sazrocks said:

Maybe this would get apple to actually fix their graphics drivers. Their OpenGL implementation has been broken for like the last decade...

That would be a requirement.  If their equpment isn’t at least equal they can’t get anywhere at all.  With equal equipment and a gigantic pile of money they could get somewhere.  If they’ve got actually better equipment they could conceivably kick ass.   If they’re behind though they’re toast.

[NumLock21]

21 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

 Xenons aren’t optimized for gaming.

You're right they aren't. They're used in lamps not CPUs.

As for Nvidia, they blew their chance, so it would be difficult for Apple to even reconsider on using them.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

You're right they aren't. They're used in lamps not CPUs.

As for Nvidia, they blew their chance, so it would be difficult for Apple to even reconsider on using them.

It’s what they did to blow it that interests me.  Nvidia won’t show their source to ANYONE.  Binaries only.  That was the problem Apple had.  The Nvidia cards were burning up machines and Apple knew it was a code problem and Nvidia wouldn’t fix it or even tell them why stuff was breaking. Is it because it’s terribly messy and awful and they don’t want anyone to know what a pile of garbage it is?  Or is it because there’s something in there that’s really really interesting?

[Guest]

this will sell so well. cant wait to see !!

[NumLock21]

23 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

It’s what they did to blow it that interests me.  Nvidia won’t show their source to ANYONE.  Binaries only.  That was the problem Apple had.  The Nvidia cards were burning up machines and Apple knew it was a code problem and Nvidia wouldn’t fix it or even tell them why stuff was breaking. Is it because it’s terribly messy and awful and they don’t want anyone to know what a pile of garbage it is?  Or is it because there’s something in there that’s really really interesting?

Nvidia GPUs were defective, this lead to recall, extended warranty, and free repair on the Mac with a Nvidia GPU. Those who had paid for the repair were given refunds. Apple was not happy about it. Nvidia left a bad first impression, and Apple made note to themselves, to never use Nvidia parts in the future.
Their GPUs weren't the only problems, their chipset weren't that great either, which is why Intel prevented them from making chipset for the Intel platform.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, floofer said:

this will sell so well. cant wait to see !!

Not sure about that at 5k.  

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Nvidia GPUs were defective, this lead to recall, extended warranty, and free repair on the Mac with a Nvidia GPU. Those who had paid for the repair were given refunds. Apple was not happy about it. Nvidia left a bad first impression, and Apple made note to themselves, to never use Nvidia parts in the future.
Their GPUs weren't the only problems, their chipset weren't that great either, which is why Intel prevented them from making chipset for the Intel platform.

These may both be true.  Or I’m misremembering it.  Refunds were given.  I remember that bit. I got one. Iirc it wasn’t the first time Apple used Nvidia stuff though.

[NumLock21]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

it wasn’t the first time Apple used Nvidia stuff though.

They might have, but it's was a eons ago, and I'm not going to bother looking it up.

[Guest]

47 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Not sure about that at 5k.  

5k is chump change for a  reliable computer in a business

[Guest]

Imagine war not breaking out in every Apple thread.

[porina]

Interesting idea. A push by Apple into gaming is well within the limits of their bank account, and running some kind of e-sports event will raise their profile and may sell more "regular" Macs once they get similarly upgraded.

 

This would be a multi-step approach.

1, build some flagship gaming Mac. If they're looking into it now, maybe they'll have big navi to play with. They will have a partial advantage in that direct comparisons against nvidia wont be possible and Apple fanboys will just say it is the best gaming system regardless. If titles are on both PC and Mac, then indirect comparisons may be possible.

2, Apple could drop some coin to make sure major title optimisations are done well on the Mac, console style, due to the known hardware combos.

3, set up a Mac only e-sports league. Throw money at it, they'll get momentum going.

4, build gaming capable Macs. Well, more capable than Intel integrated. Actually, on that point, if Apple don't switch to AMD CPUs at some point in the future, when Intel finally get their next architecture desktop CPUs out, the integrated graphics in those are improved also. Not going to change the world, but will suck less than current offerings.

 

The only question is if Apple will really believe this will be a money maker for them to do so. Does it fit in with the brand vision?

[Curious Pineapple]

If the hardware is upgradable, they ditch that stupid T2 chip idea for the product, use industry standard SSD's, RAM and a socketed CPU WITH a standard cooler footprint then Apple could make a damn quick gaming machine.

 

However if they take the usual approach then they will be manufacturing an expensive console with a locked down store and a limited user/fan base.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

They might have, but it's was a eons ago, and I'm not going to bother looking it up.

I’m not either.  I do remember the machine I got the refund about.  It was one of those black plastic MacBooks.  Had all kinds of removable bits you don’t see anymore .  The CD player was a bay, there were dual pci card things the size of credit cards, (those turned out to be handier than expected when new ports came out) the hard drive was externally removable.  It was easily 2.5” thick.  I was still in college I think.  Long time.  Card did get hot.

[NumLock21]

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I’m not either.  I do remember the machine I got the refund about.  It was one of those black plastic MacBooks.  Had all kinds of removable bits you don’t see anymore .  The CD player was a bay, there were dual pci card things the size of credit cards, (those turned out to be handier than expected when new ports came out) the hard drive was externally removable.  It was easily 2.5” thick.  I was still in college I think.  Long time.  Card did get hot.

Those PCI card things you're talking about was PCMCIA and then it got replaced by the newer Express Card. Those things are extremely useful when it comes to upgrading for a laptop. Express card had 2 sizes, 34/54. 54 slots works with both size cards, while 34 only works for 34 size card and not 54.

[TetraSky]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

E-sports teams buy their own hardware?! One would think the majority of an esport franchise’s income would be the amount of money they ARE PAID to use hardware.

Yes, I did mention sponsors in the last paragraph that you've quoted.

And yes, e-sports teams do have to buy their own hardware in the beginning, since they don't exactly have all the sponsors needed to get free stuff at that point. If your team isn't famous or filled with already relatively famous people, you're getting peanuts.

I just don't know any sponsor who would be willing to buy fancy Apple computers to an entire team of players, when their brand is no where near that computer in the first place... Unless they get things like clothes or stickers or whatever else.

[Bombastinator]

30 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Those PCI card things you're talking about was PCMCIA and then it got replaced by the newer Express Card. Those things are extremely useful when it comes to upgrading for a laptop. Express card had 2 sizes, 34/54. 54 slots works with both size cards, while 34 only works for 34 size card and not 54.

Yep.  Those are them.  They were useless at first but wound up allowing me to get another year out of my machine at the end.  One more gone technology.  I’d kind of like to see something nvme done like that.

[Bombastinator]

29 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Yes, I did mention sponsors in the last paragraph that you've quoted.

And yes, e-sports teams do have to buy their own hardware in the beginning, since they don't exactly have all the sponsors needed to get free stuff at that point. If your team isn't famous or filled with already relatively famous people, you're getting peanuts.

I just don't know any sponsor who would be willing to buy fancy Apple computers to an entire team of players, when their brand is no where near that computer in the first place... Unless they get things like clothes or stickers or whatever else.

I’m seeing m more and more similarities to auto racing in esports.  The sponsor would be Apple of course.  They’d have to give the machines to teams.  If Apple is going to build esports systems it means they’re going company racing.  Company racing is not something that is considered a good thing to merely dip ones toe into.  I’m remembering that line from ford v Ferrari “go to war”.

 

...Thinking about this more, this is something that might be really really worth it for Apple.  They’re really sort of the only big computer company left.  Compared to everyone else they’re huge, and they’re the only company with any integration.  They could mop up.  IBM isn’t in the home computer space anymore.  I don’t know how big, say dell or Lenovo are, but I think they’re a lot smaller.  They’d have to commit though.  That ford v Ferrari movie didn’t talk about how much stuff went into those race cars or how long it took to get where ford got. They did a whole lot of losing before they did any winning.  The most famous tech ford invented for that thing prior to the movie wasn’t the integrated brake thing it was a computerized gear shift that allowed them to simulate the entire race course.  It wS something so hard to do that a company like Ferrari couldn’t make one.  Big high dollar innovation went into that car and it took years.

Edited December 28, 2019 by Bombastinator
“Thinking” addendum added

[BuckGup]

If Apple allowed anything other than Metal maybe Vulkan that would be assume

[Bombastinator]

20 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

If Apple allowed anything other than Metal maybe Vulkan that would be assume

I don’t know what that means.