There are still some things they do very well.
I needed to scan some documents with a Lide 210 scanner. With Preview on the Mac I can get a decent scan to PDF and have a file that is about 0.5 MB with no problems that is legible. With Win10 the default driver is incredibly crippled so I either end up with a 10+ MB file or I end up with something totally illegible. I ended up buying a copy of VueScan to do scanning on Win10.
:-/
The MacMini is (or at last was - I haven't checked recently) a great little machine if one doesn't have to do heavy graphics stuff, and really there's no reason why one couldn't plug in some external graphics module via Thunderbolt (or whatever) - it doesn't all have to be inside the little box. But who knows if Apple has any interest in keeping it a usable computing platform.
:-/
Agreed that it's senseless to make the iMac such a closed system. They could easily have a panel on the back to replace RAM, HDs, and optical drives. If they want them to be disposable then they really should have them on a "subscription" plan the way so many of the SW houses do. It would even out their income from the platform, too.
But, as you have pointed out, since they make so much money on the iPhone and its environment, its hard to see them ever investing much in the Mac again. It seems very short sighted (people aren't going to be writing iPhone apps on their phones - not without some sort of keyboard/mouse/monitor interface anyway - and servers aren't going away (and are in fact becoming ever more important - they're just getting smaller), so they shouldn't let the Mac whither the way they have...
Cheers,
Scott.
:-/
The MacMini is (or at last was - I haven't checked recently) a great little machine if one doesn't have to do heavy graphics stuff, and really there's no reason why one couldn't plug in some external graphics module via Thunderbolt (or whatever) - it doesn't all have to be inside the little box. But who knows if Apple has any interest in keeping it a usable computing platform.
:-/
Agreed that it's senseless to make the iMac such a closed system. They could easily have a panel on the back to replace RAM, HDs, and optical drives. If they want them to be disposable then they really should have them on a "subscription" plan the way so many of the SW houses do. It would even out their income from the platform, too.
But, as you have pointed out, since they make so much money on the iPhone and its environment, its hard to see them ever investing much in the Mac again. It seems very short sighted (people aren't going to be writing iPhone apps on their phones - not without some sort of keyboard/mouse/monitor interface anyway - and servers aren't going away (and are in fact becoming ever more important - they're just getting smaller), so they shouldn't let the Mac whither the way they have...
Cheers,
Scott.