I HATE APPLE

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

the slow phone movement

I was reading this David Hockney quote about how artists can humanize technology and it seems like apple could use more artists if that's true

*runs to code app that makes images slow-render on your phone late 90s AOL style*

The thing that really lags is end user-facing software development as a mature practice. Part of it's the evolution of APIs and the loss of compatibility, part of it is having server-side resources that eschew versioning and compatibility for having a single maintained version of an API live at any time.

Imagine every new software revision is a new take on the highway system. I decide that the way forward is small electric cars, so I redesign every road, stop light, parking lot to be the absolute best choice for my new car. I also design the car to work exactly on these roads -- I don't even need half the legacy features, because it'll never drive on a road that predated my new car's existence.

That's how a lot of software design works, and it's completely insane.

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.

this is so otm. just send yr link to a .txt file. i just want the information i don't need the presentation.

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

― mookieproof, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 02:59 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me too, and it's the sole reason i have never bought another ipad

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.

― silverfish, Wednesday, 7 February 2018 03:59 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i find it interesting that apple pushed the ipad 2 & 3 all the way to ios 9, which utterly crippled those models, and then decided to abandon them

repurpose old ipads as digital picture frames. imo

I used to have a nicely jailbroken ipad air. Then one day I made the fatal mistake of letting it update to 10.2.1, at which point the jailbreak era has really gone to shit - I tried Meridian, COf3, Saigon and none of them work. I'd love it if some hotshot found a crack for rolling back to any older IOS systems, that would stick it to them. But I suppose anyone that good probably ends up working for them.

alba your argument about security is pretty convincing. herrman's piece is pretty good but he could have gone farther. as caek says it's not just hardware that gets abandoned, it's the entire macos that feels that way. frankly even ios feels behind the times, has felt behind the times, for years. why is itunes syncing so janky? it's not because of security. it does feel like people are having their ways of doing things deliberately sabotaged (gaslighted??)

is windows or android « ahead of the times » ? I have to use both for my kids and they seem at least as shitty. is there a with the times alternative ?

artisanal DOS

i dunno i've never used them. i just feel like such a mook trying to like, copy two words from one app and paste them into another app

oh uh i HAVE used windows and yes it feels ahead of the times a little! or it at least feels actively paid attention to. macos increasingly feels like some desolate, empty conference centre after everyone's gone home

there are consumer televisions with slicker UIs than macos at this point

I wish someone had paid attention to how to get my daughter’s calculator to sync w windows 8 tonight. peripherals like that are always a crapshoot and I don’t know if it’d have been easier on Mac OS. but this sucked tonight.

are you just talking about like YouTube now? my orange livebox would be a shitty place to write an article.

We just got a ps4 and the ui is so frustrating. i keep having to google how to do things.

Nintendo Switch is my favorite computer, would use for email

Facebook on desktop looks really janky too. i know nobody cares about desktop anymore but man. it's like looking at your previous orders page on Amazon or something.