Macintosh
Saturday, March 8, 2025 →
I’m still seeing so many articles about how expensive all Apple products are. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but it really does feel overblown.
Yes, you can spec up a Mac Studio to $14,000. There is no question it is a lot of money. But when the Mac Pro (Intel version) first came out in 2019, you could spec it up to $56,000 (around $69,000 in Jan 2025 dollars). And the M4 Ultra Mac Studio is faster. Heck, even the $599 M4 Mac mini is faster for many tasks (graphics aside).
When the pandemic hit and we stopped spending money, I got it into my head that I needed a 16” MacBook Pro, so I bought a refurbished (from Apple): i9, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD. It was $3,339. Not brand new, mind you. It was refurbished. Today, an M4 MacBook Air with 32GB RAM and 2TB SSD is $2,400. About $1,000 cheaper. I’m aware the screen is likely better on the Pro.
So, yes, Macs can be very expensive. But these headlines about cost are just to have articles to throw ads around.
Thursday, March 6, 2025 →
I was in an Apple Store recently (Apple Grand Central) and I was still quite taken with the Mac mini. It’s remarkable how small it is. And what’s even more remarkable is how comically large the Mac Studio looks. I remember when that first came out and everyone (myself included) was blown away by how small the Mac Studio was compared to the Mac Pro.
Now, when I see the models next to each other, all I can think of is how ’roided out the Mac Studio looks.
Wednesday, March 5, 2025 →
New Macs!
The M4 Airs seem like a great spec bump. Apple even lowered the price by $100 (despite the concern over tariffs).
I’ve already seen so many posts complaining about the upgrade pricing and while I agree the prices to upgrade are high, I fully spec’d MacBook Air is just north of $2,000.
That’s the same as I paid 32 years ago for my first new Mac laptop (a PowerBook 180, no color, that was too expensive) back in 1993. Of course, that’s around $4,400 with inflation. I don’t really remember the specs of that PowerBook at this point, but I don’t recall having it upgraded (I see on EveryMac I could have up’d the RAM and HD, but I bet I didn’t… I am pretty sure I bought a stock unit from MacWAREHOUSE—the catalog with the lady representative in the lower right corner).
Anyway, $2,200 doesn’t seem so bad to me. Plus the M4 MacBook Air will most surely have a longer useful life than the PowerBook 180 did.
Thursday, August 8, 2024 →
If Apple is going to make the Mac minier, now’s a good time to use that hydraulic press.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024 →
“This is some bullshit!,” Merrick Garland, presumably.
Thursday, January 5, 2023 →
Good lord. Why stop at two?
Monday, October 26, 2020 →
Apple Engineer Novall Khan feels spiritually related to AOC. Both super smart women trying to make the better world. I bet they do make it better, too.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
🍎⌨️😶 It always struck me that Apple, simultaneously, makes a great keyboard and a terrible keyboard.
But Apple has seen the light and is now striving to make more customers happy with a new 16-inch MacBook Pro that has a redesigned keyboard. While it definitely took too long, it’s fixed and now we just have to wait for it to trickle down into the rest of the lineup. I would guess not too long into 2020.
Continue reading →
Saturday, October 26, 2019 →
🍎 💻🤮 It’s hard to overstate how badly Apple has failed with its current line of portable Macintosh computers. I’ve been using a 2017 MacBook Pro for about 2 1/2 years and it’s near the worst Mac portable I’ve ever used (only the PowerBook 5300cs was worse). It’s gotta be the worst Mac portable in the modern era (I’m defining the modern era starting in 1998). At the beginning of the current design (2016), I assumed all the problems were exaggerated by people looking for more pageviews, hearts, etc. Surely there can’t be that many issues with this line of machines, right?
Yes, I could understand that maybe folks didn’t like the feel of the newly designed keyboard, but that’s subjective. But the keyboard not working correctly? That’s objective. At this point, I have a sometimes-not-working left shift key and now my keyboard is doing one and sometimes two spaces per press and the battery vacillates between healthy and needing service. It also gets hot (although I blame Chrome for that).
If I could use macOS on a ThinkPad I would. And if I could use macOS that way, I’d get the X1 Extreme.