Steve did release Mac Pro in 2000.

[Akira Shimazu]

I was kinda looking back at the Golden Age of apple. and i wa stunned that how Steve Jobs did good job with the apple product in comparison with other product. like MacBook Air 2008 the thinnest shit. looking back at the new Mac pro with XDR display. it looks ridiculous. like not-so powerfull hardware and overpriced. the old apple did aim marketing good with only add few hundred dollar with outstanding product. now it feeld like they increase the price overtime with the same design like it's predecessor. only to improve just a little bit. one of the example is the Power Mac G4 cube which is older version of Macpro.. to be honest the old G4 realy beat the shit out of computer form factor in 2000. but now its kinda meh... what is your thought about this?.

[kelvinhall05]

cook bad, jobs gud

 

*orange arrows*

[Yeroh]

This is such a pointless comparison. Steve Jobs lived in an age when smartphone and notebooks alike weren't where they are now. The product lines have become stagnant over the past few years, so even if Steve Jobs were still alive, he wouldn't be able to present a revolutionary new feature every year. I don't think anyone doubts that the guy was immensely capable when it comes to marketing, but people need to stop worshipping him as though he invented every major technological breakthrough during his lifetime.

[Commodus]

I wish folks would stop with the "Jobs always did everything better" crap.  It's looking at history through rose-tinted glasses, often from people who weren't paying attention the first time around.

 

Power Macs had their problems.  I remember the Power Mac G4 "mirrored door drive" was notoriously noisy.  The G4 Cube?  It looked cool as all hell, but there were problems with the case cracking... and it sat in this awkward middle ground where it was neither the fastest nor a good value.  You bought it because it looked good.  And when you say "not-so-powerful hardware and overpriced," remember that Apple under Jobs struggled with G4 and G5 performance -- that's part of why it switched to Intel chips.

 

The new Mac Pro is incredibly expensive, but it's largely on par with what you'd expect for a Xeon workstation with a highly customized enclosure.  Pro Display XDR?  It's actually a bargain compared to a $40K reference monitor.  I suspect many of the people grousing about the Mac Pro's cost do so not because it's actually overpriced (it's not), it's because they don't like that it's not meant for them.  They'd love it if Apple made a version based on Core i7/i9 chips, regular RAM and consumer graphics, and they're frustrated that the real-world Mac Pro is designed for... well, pros.

[Sauron]

53 minutes ago, Yeroh said:

as though he invented every any major technological breakthrough during his lifetime.

FTFY.

 

Nothing he marketed was invented by him. Sometimes it was invented by the engineers he hired, more often it was... reimagined by them. Never by Jobs. Kind of like Musk if you think about it, taking all the merit for things they didn't do just because they invested the money.

[Akira Shimazu]

18 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I wish folks would stop with the "Jobs always did everything better" crap.  It's looking at history through rose-tinted glasses, often from people who weren't paying attention the first time around.

 

Power Macs had their problems.  I remember the Power Mac G4 "mirrored door drive" was notoriously noisy.  The G4 Cube?  It looked cool as all hell, but there were problems with the case cracking... and it sat in this awkward middle ground where it was neither the fastest nor a good value.  You bought it because it looked good.  And when you say "not-so-powerful hardware and overpriced," remember that Apple under Jobs struggled with G4 and G5 performance -- that's part of why it switched to Intel chips.

 

The new Mac Pro is incredibly expensive, but it's largely on par with what you'd expect for a Xeon workstation with a highly customized enclosure.  Pro Display XDR?  It's actually a bargain compared to a $40K reference monitor.  I suspect many of the people grousing about the Mac Pro's cost do so not because it's actually overpriced (it's not), it's because they don't like that it's not meant for them.  They'd love it if Apple made a version based on Core i7/i9 chips, regular RAM and consumer graphics, and they're frustrated that the real-world Mac Pro is designed for... well, pros.

hm.. this is new knowledge for me. so the XDR and macpro base model is Equal to price per performance?

[Commodus]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

FTFY.

 

Nothing he marketed was invented by him. Sometimes it was invented by the engineers he hired, more often it was... reimagined by them. Never by Jobs. Kind of like Musk if you think about it, taking all the merit for things they didn't do just because they invested the money.

I'd say Jobs had some very top-level ideas, but you're right that designing and implementing them largely came down to the people under him.  He was mainly good at realizing where the industry needed to go and marshalling everyone to make that happen (for example, fixing MP3 players, smartphones and tablets).

[BuckGup]

10 minutes ago, Sauron said:

FTFY.

 

Nothing he marketed was invented by him. Sometimes it was invented by the engineers he hired, more often it was... reimagined by them. Never by Jobs. Kind of like Musk if you think about it, taking all the merit for things they didn't do just because they invested the money.

Musk did invent somethings though and I doubt being in a position like that is easy. Waz is a lot more humble and was the brains in the beginning 

[Sauron]

27 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I suspect many of the people grousing about the Mac Pro's cost do so not because it's actually overpriced (it's not), it's because they don't like that it's not meant for them.  They'd love it if Apple made a version based on Core i7/i9 chips, regular RAM and consumer graphics, and they're frustrated that the real-world Mac Pro is designed for... well, pros.

Some configurations, particularly the base models, make absolutely no sense for both the pro and the consumer market. They're just too expensive for no reason and clearly just targeted at people who buy them for bragging rights. The higher end versions probably make more sense when compared to other high end prebuilt workstations, though that's not to say those workstations aren't themselves overpriced considering what they actually offer - the pro market is known for letting companies get away with jacked up margins just because their clients can't afford to do things any other way.

1 minute ago, BuckGup said:

Musk did invent somethings though

What things?

1 minute ago, BuckGup said:

I doubt being in a position like that is easy.

Boo hoo, being rich is hard.

 

Obviously he does some work, just like everyone else who works with and for him - that doesn't mean he should get praise for things he didn't do and that took hundreds of people years of work.

2 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Waz is a lot more humble and was the brains in the beginning 

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[Origami Cactus]

31 minutes ago, Commodus said:

  Pro Display XDR?  It's actually a bargain compared to a $40K reference monitor.

Yes but does it actually have all the neccesary features to be a reference monitor? Doubt.

It might be comparable to $10k prosumer monitors, but not a single person is not going to get it instead of an actual reference monitor.

So like an Audi is a bargain compared to Lamborgini, different use cases.

[Commodus]

1 minute ago, Wolfycapt said:

hm.. this is new knowledge for me. so the XDR and macpro base model is Equal to price per performance?

It's hard to say exactly how good the price-to-performance ratio is, but it's competitive.  And it's important to remember that the new Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR don't directly compete with past gear.  In the heyday of Power Macs, Apple was using the same basic chip designs in its high-end systems as it was in consumer models like the iMac. That's not strictly true here -- Xeons are very explicitly designed for highly parallel workstation tasks where a Core i9 is more for an enthusiast playing Call of Duty or editing RAW photos.

 

The Pro Display XDR, meanwhile, occupies a space Apple has never entered before -- the world of very-high-accuracy monitors meant for artists and editors.  They're not quite as fanatical as some reference monitor makers, but that's part of its advantage.  You get nearly all the perks of a reference monitor while paying a fraction of the price.

[Commodus]

3 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

Yes but does it actually have all the neccesary features to be a reference monitor? Doubt.

It might be comparable to $10k prosumer monitors, but not a single person is not going to get it instead of an actual reference monitor.

So like an Audi is a bargain compared to Lamborgini, different use cases.

In some cases it could serve as a reference.  The aim, from what it looks like, is to be a primary monitor whose accuracy you can trust in pro environments rather than a dedicated display you use to proof everything.  It's certainly a better value if you're running a small creative studio and can't afford to blow a third of your IT budget on one reference monitor.

[Blademaster91]

15 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

Yes but does it actually have all the neccesary features to be a reference monitor? Doubt.

It might be comparable to $10k prosumer monitors, but not a single person is not going to get it instead of an actual reference monitor.

So like an Audi is a bargain compared to Lamborgini, different use cases.

LIke an Audi its still overpriced IMO, but I agree if someone has an actual studio they're going to have the deep pockets for an actual reference monitor.

And no matter what that "value" $999 Apple stand is a meme because a manufacturer should include the stand. As for the Mac Pro I think people are upset because Apple didn't go with AMD Threadripper or Epyc, which are much better than a Xeon at up to half the cost, or use standard Pro WX cards instead of some proprietary Vega card nonsense.

[Origami Cactus]

12 minutes ago, Commodus said:

It's certainly a better value if you're running a small creative studio and can't afford to blow a third of your IT budget on one reference monitor.

Yes but in this case you weren't going to buy a reference monitor anyway, you would have bought a 3k Asus ProArt monitor, which would have been good enough.

 

My point is that it is a designer class monitor (asus proart etc), not a reference class monitor, so why people compare it to 40$k monitor and call it a better value? Hell a 10k reference monitor is "better value" than a 40k one. If you compared it to a similar 10k monitor it would be fine, but i don't get it where people are taking the "40k" sum from?

[Sauron]

57 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Xeons are very explicitly designed for highly parallel workstation tasks

That's what Intel says but aside from extremely specific circumstances they are no better than consumer chips. Intel artificially inflates their price by gating multisocket support behind the xeon platform but the chips themselves are nearly identical - for 99% of even the pro market it makes absolutely no difference so long as the cores are there.

 

Also AMD exists.

[Commodus]

55 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

Yes but in this case you weren't going to buy a reference monitor anyway, you would have bought a 3k Asus ProArt monitor, which would have been good enough.

 

My point is that it is a designer class monitor (asus proart etc), not a reference class monitor, so why people compare it to 40$k monitor and call it a better value? Hell a 10k reference monitor is "better value" than a 40k one. If you compared it to a similar 10k monitor it would be fine, but i don't get it where people are taking the "40k" sum from?

A ProArt tops out at 4K; a Pro Display XDR runs at 6K.  That's rather important if you either want to display full-res 4K video while your editing tools are on screen or want a better full-screen preview of greater-than-4K material.  I imagine Apple believes there's an audience that wants a more future-proof display and is willing to pay more for it.

 

Reference monitors typically cost in that $40K (maybe $30K) range.  Apple and others effectively argue that the Pro Display XDR offers nearly everything a reference monitor can provide while costing a fraction of the price, which could be very alluring for some media editing shops.

[DrMacintosh]

Going by the numbers, Tim Cook is a better CEO than Steve Jobs ever was. Tim Cook has released more products for more people, brought the prices of those products down so more people could afford to own Apple Products compared to Steve Jobs, and has made Apple more money than Steve Jobs did. 
 

It’s easy to look back at the past and view it with a positive lens, but the reality of the past is usually somewhat different. 

[KarathKasun]

If Steve was that wonderful, we would not have Apple stuff... we would have neXt stuff.  He brought OS X back with him, that was about it.

[Commodus]

On 9/22/2019 at 1:38 PM, KarathKasun said:

If Steve was that wonderful, we would not have Apple stuff... we would have neXt stuff.  He brought OS X back with him, that was about it.

He did a lot of things, to be clear.  He was quite perceptive at identifying technologies that could solve real problems, and for having clear ideas of what he wanted from products (sometimes products that were his idea, sometimes not).  For instance, he not only recognized the value of multi-touch for devices, he realized that it would best be used on a phone first (initial work had focused on a tablet).

 

The issue is that many people now have a hagiographic view of Jobs... and ironically, it's often the Anything But Apple types who believe this more than the fans.  They 'need' to set up Jobs as the flawless visionary to make Cook look like a failure instead of the competent-but-uninspired CEO he is.  The reality of Jobs was somewhere in between this Saint Jobs image and the "he did nothing" claim you made.  He helped usher in some of the most influential products in tech history, but he's also the guy who insisted on the G4 Cube and iPod Hi-Fi.  

[star_pilot475]

On 9/22/2019 at 8:29 AM, Wolfycapt said:

not-so powerfull hardware

Edit: in all seriousness, it’s not slow. Sure, it’s overpriced but  it has quite powerful hardware.

Edited September 23, 2019 by star_pilot475

[KarathKasun]

7 hours ago, Commodus said:

He did a lot of things, to be clear.  He was quite perceptive at identifying technologies that could solve real problems, and for having clear ideas of what he wanted from products (sometimes products that were his idea, sometimes not).  For instance, he not only recognized the value of multi-touch for devices, he realized that it would best be used on a phone first (initial work had focused on a tablet).

 

The issue is that many people now have a hagiographic view of Jobs... and ironically, it's often the Anything But Apple types who believe this more than the fans.  They 'need' to set up Jobs as the flawless visionary to make Cook look like a failure instead of the competent-but-uninspired CEO he is.  The reality of Jobs was somewhere in between this Saint Jobs image and the "he did nothing" claim you made.  He helped usher in some of the most influential products in tech history, but he's also the guy who insisted on the G4 Cube and iPod Hi-Fi.  

No, the ideas existed before him, even in the markets he "pioneered".

 

He was a stickler for UI and function integration, nothing more.  He did bring about some OS kernel level improvements to the MAC world for sure, taking them from the pre OS X garbage to an actual tried and true workstation OS.  OS X was absolutely "something", its the basis for ALL Apple products today.

 

I will not give him any credit outside of that though.

[Crunchy Dragon]

On 9/22/2019 at 10:35 AM, Commodus said:

Power Macs had their problems.

Yes indeed, the higher end G5s were plagued with heat, noise, and TDP issues.

[KarathKasun]

On 9/22/2019 at 10:09 AM, Commodus said:

It's hard to say exactly how good the price-to-performance ratio is, but it's competitive.  And it's important to remember that the new Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR don't directly compete with past gear.  In the heyday of Power Macs, Apple was using the same basic chip designs in its high-end systems as it was in consumer models like the iMac. That's not strictly true here -- Xeons are very explicitly designed for highly parallel workstation tasks where a Core i9 is more for an enthusiast playing Call of Duty or editing RAW photos.

 

The Pro Display XDR, meanwhile, occupies a space Apple has never entered before -- the world of very-high-accuracy monitors meant for artists and editors.  They're not quite as fanatical as some reference monitor makers, but that's part of its advantage.  You get nearly all the perks of a reference monitor while paying a fraction of the price.

The same logic applies to the PPC eMac/iMac and higher end worksations of the day.  The consumer stuff had next to no L2/L3 cache while the PowerMacs had tons of L2/L3, and that was all that differentiated most "workstations" from "consumer" systems.

 

The Dual G5 PowerMac was one of, if not the first, consumer available dual proc systems.  You could go into a Frys Electronics and demo one then buy it on the spot.  Dell/HP/Sun had nothing like that in a consumer visible space.  Apple pioneered the wrokstation grade hardware at a retail outlet thing, not the hardware itself.

[Sauron]

On 9/22/2019 at 7:38 PM, KarathKasun said:

If Steve was that wonderful, we would not have Apple stuff... we would have neXt stuff.  He brought OS X back with him, that was about it.

neXt was a dummy company, it only ever existed to make the OS and force Apple to buy it (and bring Jobs back). Jobs had insider information and knew Apple had a dire need for an OS.

[KarathKasun]

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

neXt was a dummy company, it only ever existed to make the OS and force Apple to buy it (and bring Jobs back). Jobs had insider information and knew Apple had a dire need for an OS.

Didnt need inside information to know that.  OS 8 & 9 were a freaking mess,  everyone using Mac OS back then knew it.  System crashes due to its horrid multitasking were VERY common.

 

Also, NeXt was THE defacto publishing platform.  Everything about the OS was centered around being WYSIWYG.  What was on the screen was exactly what you would get in print.