Yea, I remember when PowerMacs could be had at a wide variety of price points. That was nice.
If Apple doesn't want to serve the "I need a decently powerful machine but don't want to waste money on what is basically a status symbol" market, maybe they should license MacOS to someone who does. Something like that might actually bring me back to the platform. As it is, I stick to PCs running Linux.
Yeah, I've waited years for this machine, was excited when it came out, and in an epiphany last night, will probably pass on it and opt for a beefed up Mac Book Pro instead. It will be cheaper and fill my needs.
I'm a programmer. If I want to prototype a multi-component stack, I've got a Raspberry Pi Cluster running K8 for that. If I want to play around with deep learning, I'll just spin up EC2 instances. Games? Let's be honest. That war was lost decades ago. I've got a good PC rig for that now. The days of a general machine to do everything are gone.
The only issue is the storage space, which I can get from a multi-bay drive enclosure.
They used to do this and it almost led to the death of the company. I’m sure they’re quite hesitant to try again. Instead, you can look into the hackintosh project
They’re making money, now - they have no reason to license MacOS, and all the more reason not to.
Apple’s hardware/software combination is the reason a lot of us have stuck with them for so long. It’s quality control. No drivers to fuss with; just plug in and go.
That was back when Apple was primarily a desktop computer manufacturer. In any case, they could place restrictions on licensed clone makers to avoid cannibalizing sales of their more popular products (e.g., no laptops).
If Apple doesn't want to serve the "I need a decently powerful machine but don't want to waste money on what is basically a status symbol" market, maybe they should license MacOS to someone who does. Something like that might actually bring me back to the platform. As it is, I stick to PCs running Linux.