I HATE APPLE

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).

But yeah, I wish I'd stopped updating apps like Facebook, Citymapper, Twitter on my iPhone 6 a long time ago so that they'd open as fast as they used to. Not all apps are so bad at all: Tweetbot still opens admirably fast, but there's too much it doesn't do now that Twitter has stopped being friendly to third-party apps.

Spotify also takes about 15 seconds to launch grrr.

it's also constantly "offline" for 10-15 seconds until it realizes that it's online.

A further symptom of our exponential hangover is bloat. As soon as a system shows signs of performance, developers will add enough abstraction to make it borderline unusable. Software forever remains at the limits of what people will put up with. Developers and designers together create overweight systems in hopes that the hardware will catch up in time and cover their mistakes.

We complained for years that browsers couldn’t do layout and javascript consistently. As soon as that got fixed, we got busy writing libraries that reimplemented the browser within itself, only slower.

It’s 2014, and consider one hot blogging site, Medium. On a late-model computer it takes me ten seconds for a Medium page (which is literally a formatted text file) to load and render. This experience was faster in the sixties.

The web is full of these abuses, extravagant animations and so on, forever a step ahead of the hardware, waiting for it to catch up.

I'm not arguing that Apple should support their old ipads indefinitely. A better alternative would be to force them to open up the older hardware that they no longer support. Allow some sort of lightweight variant of linux to run on these machines. I am certain there are enough people out there willing to work on this stuff to make something very usable and secure.

xxp

Yeah, I guess that would be a nice solution.

Are there any tablets on sale that are seriously upgradable, like being able to add RAM or even a new CPU? I realise they'd have to be a lot bulkier.

it is frustrating being unable to revert to earlier versions of apps

Spotify also takes about 15 seconds to launch grrr.

― Alba, Tuesday, February 6, 2018 10:19 AM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i fire up spotify and usually let it sit for about 90 seconds now while it sorts out my playlists and such. not good

I’m going to send each of you $5 to start an upgrade fun.

it is frustrating being unable to revert to earlier versions of apps

― mookieproof, Tuesday, February 6, 2018 11:29 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And this. I've still got an eMac stored away somewhere that obviously hasn't been updated in awhile. At least I can go back and see my 2008 Quicken tax returns if I want to.

lol apps

slow down yr life to my speed

Morbs otm tbh, nothing needs to be fast