Re: Linux advocacy

On 9/26/24 1:56 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 23:27:17 -0400, -hh wrote:
 

Small form factor has been Apple's design direction now for over a
decade.
>
But it does crimp the home DIYer ...

 The Raspberry Pi comes in a smaller form factor than any Mac, yet it has
been spectacularly successful among home DIYers, makers and other such
tinkerers. “Small” does not mean “lacking in versatility”.

Well 'expandable' is easier when the product didn't ship with a case. /s

It’s not the smallness of the form factor: it’s the fact that Apple’s
full-on integrated design leaves no room for upgradeability any more. All
their Mac machines, even the desktops, are just glorified laptops now.
They have abandoned the workstation market (cf the old Mac Pro), just like
they abandoned the server market long ago.

Their current paradigm has been to upgrade with external devices, attached via the "Thunderbolt" interface.  For example, in addition to external SSD or hard drives, etc, there's external PCIe expansion boxes which are typically for GPU cards or other special interfaces (music).
And sure, having to use an external isn't as cheap as having a half-empty PC case to drop bare components into, but its still expansion.
What DFS alluded to is that not everything is upgradable by replacement, with RAM and boot SSDs are two such examples.  But in counterpoint, there's also system performance benefits from what Apple has done, so it represents a trade-off.  For example, a quick benchmark in Blackmagic design of my as-is "used" condition first generation out-of-the-box Mac Studio comes in at a mere 7000+ MB/sec Write / 5000+ MB/sec Read.
-hh