Wow pretty great information! Pretty much what I guessed was going on behind the scenes! I had read that nvidia started releasing their own out of frustration with apple. It is a shame that if AMD could do something more, without it being a big financial burden, that they don't do more, like their direct competition has. I'm not sure it's worth a potential battle with the richest company on earth though.
I would say that the realization, I already had with Apple long ago, (and as a graphic artist I have use a mac every day since their inception) is that for home use I can't even justify an iMac anymore. Yes their OS is great, and yes it is more trouble free IMHO than the MS side. But for me the bad far outweighs the good for a home purchasing decision. Mac is increasingly becoming a more closed, even less inclusive ecosystem where they decide what you do with your computer, and they decide when that computer, that spec wise would still be running fine on the Windows side, is obsolete and no longer supported. It has already been proven that systems, they say can't run their newest operating systems, in fact in some cases absolutely can, and do it well. Apple just chooses to make you have to pay to keep playing their game.
Next as I said, you absolutely pay to play in their ecosystem. The cost of ownership can be substantially higher on the Mac side. I know that someone will come back and argue that I have had my Mac 3x as long as any PC. They may be right, no doubt, go back a few years this was true. But their recent builds are IMHO cheaper components, not cheap just not up to the standards they once were, for example not the server class motherboards that came with earlier imacs and other other components have followed suit. You really did used to get a great machine on the inside, not just pretty on the outside. Form over function, definitely seems to be the new credo, post Steve Jobs. The failure rate of new macs is higher than they used to be. The failure rate of the new iMac Pros is alarming. They have changed their computers so the average end not being able to service them. Now some will say I know, well I service mine, but apple went out of their way for you not too and tell you themselves they are not user serviceable. Another great example of the cheap out, Mac Mini is a less capable machine than it was years ago and is no longer upgrade-able. The old mac minis go for premiums (once maxed), they could be updated, and have been maxed out in capability by refurbishers on ebay. Those are selling for more than the new ones, because they are better.
Apples goal has never really been to service as many people as they can at a fair price, but they did a better job of that in the past, they blatantly no longer even hide it. IMHO, Apple exists by exploiting the minority that really needs to use their products (like graphic artists the Adobe software and available software supporting this industry is just better on Mac), and picking the pockets clean of that 10% willing to have the next shiny thing from apple. And that's okay its a free market! They absolutely can do that and without a doubt proved it viable. Users however need to realize this and the limitations of what they buy. I sure wouldn't ever buy an iMac in hopes of a premium or even functional Windows experience, you likely will only ever get a minimal experience at best. They don't care about Windows, and IMHO it's questionable how much they care about their own users today. The dollars keep coming in from the Jones' though!
