I HATE APPLE

My wife got the Surface Laptop, and it is pretty sweet.

I stopped really caring about any sort of hardware junk a few years back and mostly care if the damn thing is functional and does all the crap I want, since most of the code I'm writing doesn't run anywhere near my own computer. I like a nice screen on my phone and stuff though.

I think I crossed over into this realm a few years back. All of this hardware, no matter how much propaganda you throw at it, is basically just office supplies now. I'm more interested in $100 disposable laptops running QubesOS than I am by whatever form of the ubiquitous 15" MBP barge I've been towing around since 2004.

/I feel like 10+ years ago I wasn't constantly, constantly forcing crashed/hung/frozen programs to quit/

my macbook is that old, w/ somewhat newer but not up to date os and browser, and the browser hangs all the fuckin time. some other programs too, but browsers are the worse. really thwarts the use of force quitting, too, since it can take forever to even get the window up to confirm.

I'm with Mordy though that I just do not follow Apple anymore; I can't figure out where they are going, what they're doing, and if it will be successful despite my many reservations (it probably will). They are starting to lose me.

― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, January 30, 2018 4:25 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not sure if it's just me getting older or the inevitable end of an era or actually related to some kind of gradual post-Jobs deterioration, but I definitely feel this too. Apple is losing that sense of being on some other plane of corporations and sliding back toward just being another phone and computer maker. Their product line makes no sense anymore, their decisions make no sense, they haven't presented a game-changing concept in a long time and seem to mostly follow and improve on (questionably at that) rather than lead.

you can pay with your face now

plus you've got the singing poop so

their products used to make life better p much but are now arguably making life (both individual and civic) worse. gotta be giving them corporate cognitive dissonance, which can only be relieved by extracting all possible money available in the global economy and then doing nothing with it

tbh absolutely no companies make devices that make any sense to me as far as computers go

Apple basically ruined the PC market by making the iPhone, literally an earth-changing hit. Mac laptops were "fun" for years, but compared to the iPhone they are "work" and effectively a niche product without a future outside of the "enterprise". Apple is still doing great engineering work with the iPhone (mainly with the SoC design) that could translate into devices that people want and don't make life worse (cf. stet above), I still might want an ARM macbook if it's extremely thin and runs for 12 hours.

computers are weird now and I'm old

I've been doing computers since age like 4 or something and I'm basically over it

"what's a computer?"

apple hit the law of diminishing returns and thought they could overcome it! can't make anything else thin anymore so they made the keyboard thin and bad. i think it's an encouraging sign they pulled back from 'thinnest ever' with the new iphone and instead gave that space to battery. i don't know where they can walk the macbook pro back to except by returning to the old keyboard and putting in usb 3 slots. maybe OLED screen? processor performance has plateau'd innit, my two regular use computers are both coming on 4 years old and both still run starcraft great.

who is the apple of the now, now that apple isn't the apple of the now?

10 years ago to the month:
https://www.macworld.com/article/1054770/tech-events-dupe/applename.html

ugh I just want a machine that doesn't suck to use, I hate having to use windows machines on the rare occasions I have to. I think I just love the way the fonts render in os x? I've been a mbp user since 2001, and every day of work on it is a joy. I'm just a writer, almost entirely in latex, so it's nothing heavy---oh, and I work with a LOT of pdfs. and I work in multiple languages. all of this is a joy, and on windows it's sucked (I haven't used the latest windows as much but it's on my daughter's laptop so I've experienced it). I don't know if linux would be ok: I hate hacking, and I want beautiful font rendering. and it's not just retina: even my 2001 mbp was beautiful to look while writing.

ugh.

has anybody tried a dell xps?

i'm using my MBA until it breaks, but all my colleagues have and XPS. they're all linux devs though so ymmv. the trackpad is not quite as nice, and the webcam position is a genuine problem if you use it. but otherwise they are great.

s/and/an

xxp my coworkers have some giant honkin' xps laptops. I had to replace mine last year and missed out, but management somehow convinced the people who order laptops that since we're doing heavy virtualization junk they need the monster mobile workstation model

they seem ok

it seems like every non-apple trackpad still sucks ass? maybe the microsoft surface ones are ok

that was the thing about the newer macbook pros that actually seems good, that bigass trackpad

the way the fonts render in os x

windows 10 is the least bad i've ever seen this but yeah i still can't shake the feeling that all font drawing looks cheaper on windows

trackpad on my lenovo is... ok... but still less responsive (and its two-finger scrolling it janky)

i prefer the red trackpoint button to the trackpad ... i used to have a super nice IBM thinkpad that i got from work and i loved the trackpoint ... do they still have those?

xp yeah everything looks shittier on windows!

i wonder if i could run OSX on an XPS ...

how would you all react if apple's answer to the next iteration of what a laptop should be is just a really nice typewriter? (Zero latency! Amazing type resolution! Instant printing! Intricately machined parts!)

Apple is losing that sense of being on some other plane of corporations and sliding back toward just being another phone and computer maker.

yeah this. i'm struggling to think of a major innovation in the past few years (although airpods are seriously clever).

some of their products are definitely best in class, like the apple watch (all the competition is basically terrible), but they're still issuing phone cables that don't plug into macs. the homepod is an echo riff. the iphone x is an essential phone/mi mix riff. apple music is a spotify riff (and it took them two years and a complete rebuild to make it even faintly reliable).

however my 8+ is the best and sturdiest phone i've ever owned, and my series 3 watch is apparently indestructible, so there's that.

the ipad pro is the only non-accessory thing that feels like it changes anything, but it's aimed at a niche market

i forget it exists all the time tbh

how do you feel the ipad pro changes things over the ipad?

For digital artists, the pencil and Pro amount to a portable Wacom Cintiq

wacom has those though, no? also, surface pro.

iPad pro has a sweet-ass screen too

I have the first gen one, the newer one is even nicer

So this idea that apple has lost its mojo is supported by the iphoneX sharing some passing resemblance to some other devices but being nicer on one hand, but countered by the iPad pro sharing a passing resemblance to some other devices but being nicer on the other? I feel like there's some unmined reasons behind this difference of perception.

Having this Android phone has led me to wonders that Apple has tried to hide from me for so long.

Like this version of Firefox may only work with a Chinese keyboard and keeps taking my picture, but the screenshots!

https://i.imgur.com/b9MqDVn.png

So this idea that apple has lost its mojo is supported by the iphoneX sharing some passing resemblance to some other devices but being nicer on one hand, but countered by the iPad pro sharing a passing resemblance to some other devices but being nicer on the other? I feel like there's some unmined reasons behind this difference of perception.

not sure who you’re addressing with this, but imo the iphone x is not a revolution and the innovations are gimmicky (so far faceid is just another mode of authentication plus talking monkeys, and oled is hardly a new thing)

can you think of other apple releases that you feel more warmly towards, yet they also could be described as derivative and gimmicky?

They execute really well from the conspicuous consumption standpoint. AirPods and wired white headphones, re-orientation of the camera on the x.

The AirPods are fantastic that’s true I give them props for that

can you think of other apple releases that you feel more warmly towards, yet they also could be described as derivative and gimmicky?

maybe but how would that diminish my point?

I'm not sure any smartphone, tablet or computer manufacturer has produced anything revolutionary in years. It's just incremental improvements on a limited set of established dominant designs. Apple's never really been much of a first mover in any case - fast follower with a more refined version of the product. iPod, iPhone, iPad all had earlier versions competitors and apple achieved an early level of sophistication. Even if they had an edge that edge is diminished as competitors catch-up, all that really remains is personal preference, brand loyalty and ecosystem lock in. I'm likely always to have an Apple phone and apple computer because I am too lazy to rebuild my personal ecosystem.

Also the iPhoneX is a really good phone IMO. I briefly flirted with getting a Xiaomi as I am already in the xiaomi ecosystem for smartphone and wearables, but too much disruption.

i don't care if the products are revolutionary or not. i'd just like for their laptop computers and pro hardware to not be abandonware.

ipad pro is cool. the phone is fine.

The difference between writing on the iPhone vs a computer is 8 fingers and man that’s a lot

the back of the SE works well as a cup / small glass toaster on a surface like a couch.

I basically agree about all these Apple disparagements but the iPad Pro with Pencil has been truly lifechanging for me in that I have been able to draw fully finished comics pages for the first time since I fucked up my arm 4.5 years ago.

Despite that, oddly, I don’t feel love for it the way I did my first iPhone and iPad let alone good grief my iPods.

that's really interesting -- what do you guess would account for the emotional difference?

this is precisely my experience, right down to the age of my ipad

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/magazine/what-i-learned-from-watching-my-ipads-slow-death.html

yeah, I have an ipad 2 at home and it just seems so wasteful of a product right now. It's still usable for netflix but anything which requires frequent input (games, web browsing) is inevitably slow.

I also have a 13 year old desktop pc at home, which still works fine for the things I need it for. Had to replace a couple of components over the years, obviously, but as long as the motherboard and cpu hold up I see no reason to replace it.

I understand why these things are different, but it seems like old ipads should still be usable. You should be able to install an old OS which was designed for the processors and RAM of older ipads. There should be laws for this kind of stuff so that a lot of very usable electronic equipment doesn't just end up in landfills.

otm

I suppose a counter-argument might focus on security: exploits are found in older OSes and companies feel they can't support and patch them for ever. Yes, you could say, well it's my choice to live with the risk but people often say that insecure machines only create problems for the whole networked world.

A lot of it is also not Apple's sole responsibility: even if you had an old iPad still zippily running an old version of iOS, the moment you tried to browse the web you'd find that it struggled with modern sites. Not to mention third-party app developers bricking old versions of their apps after a certain amount of time (BBC iPlayer comes to mind).