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Totally off-piste, but...
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Posted by satis
Apr 26, 2021 at 09:10 PM
Pierre Paul Landry wrote:
>And the next time you suffer a power failure and lose your >precious work, you’ll regret not buying a battery powered
>device.
I keep my desktop on 24/7, and my backup software does nightly backups, in addition to using background cloud backup. I’ve used desktops for probably twenty years this way and I have never once lost any data from power failure.
More, since I want a desktop and not a portable, and since notebook batteries degrade when not regularly used and recharged, and they have a limited lifetime as well, the cost in effort to periodically discharge and recharge, and then deal down the road with a diminished battery, is a detriment and not an advantage. And since I don’t need a small second screen off to the side I’d be paying for something I don’t need and wouldn’t use.
So I do not see the need for a notebook Mac for my desktop needs. For portable use I have other devices.
Posted by tightbeam
Apr 26, 2021 at 10:33 PM
Pierre Paul Landry wrote:
>And the next time you suffer a power failure and lose your precious
>work, you’ll regret not buying a battery powered device.
>(not to mention the obvious and numerous other advantages of a portable
>computer)
I imagine most people back up to the cloud these days, and even if they don’t, a UPS device is relatively cheap.
The advantage of a NON-portable computer is that when finally I get up from using it, I’m not tempted to take it with me.
Posted by xtabber
Apr 27, 2021 at 02:27 AM
The iMac is perfect as a point-of-sale system for trendy boutiques and I suspect many will be sold for that purpose. As a working computer, not so much. It has all the disadvantages of a laptop and none of the advantages. With respect to the colorful new models, I consider a 24” screen too small for serious desktop work, and this one is not even height adjustable. Also, consider that the M1 gets its speed mainly from being a SOC, integrating CPU, GPU, RAM and storage on a single circuit board. That means that neither memory nor internal storage can ever be expanded beyond what the system came with initially.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Apr 27, 2021 at 08:03 AM
Well, I guess this depends on what you mean by “serious desktop work”. I still do serious work on my 2013 MacBook Air (with just 4GB of RAM), although I was foolish enough to install Big Sur on it, which has slowed it down somewhat. I don’t, of course, run heavyweight graphics apps on it – but for writing, e-mailing, web searching, databasing and most other office tasks, it’s perfectly adequate. Not as good as my MacBook Pro, of course, but still.
The newly integrated M1 system is closest in concept to a smartphone or iPad – while you could argue that’s not good enough for “serious desktop work”, I think you would be grossly underestimating the serious work you can do on e.g. an iPad (and I don’t just mean the latest M1-based Pro models). There are plenty of good examples of prolific creators who have been using iPads as their main “desktop” tool for years (Federico Viticci is just one name to spring to mind). There are those who argue iPads aren’t suitable for intensive team-oriented office use; Federico’s example would suggest that’s simply not true. You can certainly do serious team-oriented work on a MacBook Air, even an old one.
I think it’s very easy to fall back into the “I need a heavyweight, supercharged desktop to do any serious work” mentality. And of course you may do! Perhaps you’re a videographer or a heavy user of Adobe Creative Suite? In that case, I could see your point. But for many people, “serious desktop work” is everyday stuff which the new iMacs are more than capable of supporting. As for extending the machine – well, okay, but again, you’re into graphic art, developer or serious gamer territory there. Not into “desktop work” territory. Modern networking means that desktop machines are rarely more than nodes in a broader system, and that’s the way more and more users, companies and services treat them.
xtabber wrote:
The iMac is perfect as a point-of-sale system for trendy boutiques and I
>suspect many will be sold for that purpose. As a working computer, not
>so much. It has all the disadvantages of a laptop and none of the
>advantages. With respect to the colorful new models, I consider a
>24” screen too small for serious desktop work, and this one is not
>even height adjustable. Also, consider that the M1 gets its speed
>mainly from being a SOC, integrating CPU, GPU, RAM and storage on a
>single circuit board. That means that neither memory nor internal
>storage can ever be expanded beyond what the system came with initially.
>
>
>
>
Posted by satis
Apr 27, 2021 at 01:27 PM
xtabber wrote:
>The iMac is perfect as a point-of-sale system for trendy boutiques and I
>suspect many will be sold for that purpose.
Apple has a global PC marketshare of around 10%, and last breakout I saw (unofficial, as Apple no longer breaks out by model) said around 20% of its Mac sales were iMacs, with *quarterly* Mac revenue of $9 billion. (Gartner estimated 6.9 million Macs sold in the last quarter of 2020.) https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/11/mac-shipments-up-4q-2020-gartner/ So Apple sells 2-4+ million iMac per year, which sounds like an awful lot of trendy boutiques.
MadaboutDana wrote:
>Well, I guess this depends on what you mean by “serious desktop work”
I’m used to seeing people trying to dismiss Macs, and specific Mac models, for decades. I do serious work on my 3 year old Intel iMac, running FCPX and music DAWs and Photshop/Lightroom, and some hardcore Excel sheets. These M1 Macs will do everything I need faster, quieter, cooler and under warranty.