Apple was much more open about future plans in the early 90s. Apple talked about the PPC transition long before hardware was available and said they were switching to PCI for the second generation PPC Mac’s before the first generation ones ever shipped or slightly thereafter.
But it seems clear that Apple is going to have the same problem with ARM that it had with PPC. It’s already falling behind on the high end. The ARM MacPro is laughably incapable compared to high end x86 processors and they still have no GPU story to compete with Nvidia on the high end.
I’m sure Apple could design something capable of competing with high end Intel CPUs. They just don’t have the stomach for it because the market for really high end Mac’s are so small.
Any time this comes up I try to entertain the idea of using a much faster computer without MacOS and then realize that the OS is ~70% of the complete user experience for me. I am not sure what percentage of users are like that. I have ptsd just thinking about the whole multivendor fuckery what it means to have hardware devices with drivers that barely work most of the time. After using a computer on a daily basis for three decades I have no idea why people wasting time with bad software other than being a work requirement. I still use Windows for work and the amount of time is wasted on that platform is insane. The majority of staff at current co agrees that Windows is a dead end. The most notable ‘innovation’ ms has in win11 is the removal of adjustable scrolling direction. I seriously thought it was a joke that was executed somebody at ms trolling people just to even consider using win11. Apparently this is ok.
Anyways, back to the subject if Apple start to ship Raspberry Pis from tomorrow then I still don’t care and buy Apple until they ruin MacOS, in which case I switch to a job that does not require a computer.
As a happy Mac convert, the drivers are not perfect (video is especially buggy and Sonoma only made it worse). I personally experienced driver issues very rarely mostly on machines I personally built (the story for OEM-qualified configurations is even better) and Windows does plenty better than the Mac UI, in my opinion.
> I have ptsd just thinking about [...] what it means to have hardware devices with drivers that barely work most of the time.
Same, but for my macbook pro. Bluetooth implementation is borked and I can't even use a single device properly - I have to constantly unpair/pair my headphones. If I use 2 devices there is some stuttering in sound. But if I use 3 - all devices stutter, unless I kill some bluetooth daemon, then it works normaly for 2-5 seconds and goes into the bork mode again.
But then the software is awful too:
1. Switching between workspaces takes up to a full second before the new workspace becomes active even after disabling all animations
2. Some windows just randomly decide to not show the three control buttons and it becomes impossible to close them without messing with the process.
3. For simple screen recording I have to open Quicktime player. Then the screenshot tool becomes screen recording tool with no apparent way to return it back to the screenshot tool.
And these are just the ones I experienced this/last week. Don't get me started on mouse getting stuck in a secondary monitor or disappearing completely and other shitty UX experiences I've had being forced to work with macos for the past 2 years. Can't wait to move away and not look back.
Can't comment on the Bluetooth issue, since Apple devices have the least BT issues for me by far. But for screen recording there's the cmd+shift+5 shortcut (or the Screenshot App) to do the same thing without opening Quicktime player.
It is the only platform giving these bluetooth headaches and the reason my nice BT headset sat in the closet for almost a year.
Regarding the screenshots, I've just learned these shortcuts, but if I open the screenshot tool using CMD + Spacebar + "screenshot", it often just defaults to screen recording and I see no option to switch that.
If they developed a competent eGPU implementation (currently entirely unsupported in Silicon Macs as far as I know), then that and another tier or two of CPU options fitted into the Studio line sounds more like Apple's style. The trashcan, for all its misgivings, was still pleasantly small and a small, quiet workstation bolstered by exclusively external expansion strikes me as ever-so-Apple.
And of course we keep the Mac Pro above that, meant for almost nobody.
You're right, they don't appear to be chasing these markets aggressively right now, but some of the stuff they're doing suggests that might change.
In terms of maximum RAM, I also wonder if their Unified Memory is also a factor. there's only so much you can cram into a single SOC. I suppose they could support off-chip stuff, but something something bandwidth.
But it seems clear that Apple is going to have the same problem with ARM that it had with PPC. It’s already falling behind on the high end. The ARM MacPro is laughably incapable compared to high end x86 processors and they still have no GPU story to compete with Nvidia on the high end.
I’m sure Apple could design something capable of competing with high end Intel CPUs. They just don’t have the stomach for it because the market for really high end Mac’s are so small.
Whether it matters is the question.