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Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

latimes.com

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Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#61

Post by mmastrac »

roymurdock wrote: post #50
mmastrac wrote: post #3

It's not just software. While I'm still a fan of Macbooks, I'm getting close to abandoning ship thanks to the increasingly un-repairability of these things. I have a Macbook from ~2008 that's still functional as a media PC thanks to memory/SSD upgrades and battery replacements over the years. My current Macbook Pro has memory soldered on to the motherboard and a battery glued to the case. The SSD is technically repla…

Had to buy a new laptop to replace a 2009 MBP recently. Chose the mid 2012 non-retina display. Took out the disk drive and put in my own SSD and RAM. Does everything I want it to do without the slightest complaint. All told I probably paid ~$700 less for a comparably powerful machine with 10x the internal storage of a late model MBP retina, albeit heavier and with a slightly inferior display. Next time I need to upgr…

Yep. That was the last Macbook that I would consider to be "adequately repairable". I handed one of those down to my kid after replacing the optical drive with an SSD (creating a fusion drive) and loading it up with RAM. It's still very usable as a desktop/gaming Mac. I've even replaced the battery in it once (IIRC it was glued in, but in a way that was reasonably simple to extract).

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#62

Post by wwweston »

I'm having similar thoughts about OS X itself.

I have two MacBook Pros right now. One is a 2008 champ that's still going despite having been dropped several times. It's got an SSD and maxed out RAM, running Snow Leopard. It actually does really well.

One is the last 2012 pre-retina that just dropped out of Apple Care last August. It's running Mavericks. It has sleep/wake issues. Firefox can actually trigger a restart of the entire machine. It actually seems notably less stable than Snow Leopard.

I'm afraid to upgrade. I actually don't know anyone who didn't have problems with Yosemite. I've been trying to figure out if El Capitan is actually better.

Or, if not, how I can escape the platform after pretty much 15 straight years of making it my personal choice.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#63

Post by stestagg »

untog wrote: post #38

I don't much care about the software - I haven't used iTunes in years, don't use Mail, etc. etc. - it's the operating system I care about. Wi-fi has been buggy on OS X for literally years now. And each new major release seems to bring some new pain point where it refuses to turn on, refuses to connect, doesn't transmit data... and on and on. There's no way Apple can't know about this - it must drive their own employe…

I've found that wifi is buggy generally with lower end APs. It may be Apple employees generally have a better class of router/wifi

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#64

Post by dceddia »

ghrifter wrote: post #12

Two apps I use the most on my iPhone are Podcasts and Music. On my PC (windows) I use iTunes often. Both the iPhone apps and the modern version of iTunes are an utter, over-designed mess. It felt like the core programming functionality was there, until some UX designer got a hold of the front end of those apps and decided to fubar it beyond recognition. There is _Literally_ no way to just look at all music on your iP…

This kills me. In an older version of iTunes (not that long ago), I could open it up and see every song in my library in one big long list. Typing a few characters would find the song I wanted. When that song finished playing, it would just play the next one in the list.

Now, it's just as you say - hard to find specific albums or artists or songs, and once I do, I can't quite tell what it'll do when a song finishes playing. Since I found it through the search box, and not in a list... will it play the next song in the album? In a playlist? Will it just stop?

What I don't know is whether my feelings about the new interface is logical, or if it could be summed up as "you damn kids." Is it a paradigm that I'm just not used to yet, or is the UX objectively bad?

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#65

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

drhayes9 wrote: post #35
sithadmin wrote: post #19

>Mossberg pointed to "a gradual degradation in the quality and reliability of Apple’s core apps." He fingered iTunes for the desktop ("I dread opening the thing"), and the Mail, Photos, and iCloud programs. As somebody that's used a Mac for 90%+ of all computing-related tasks since OS X was released, all of the above-mentioned apps/services have been dead to me for years. I honestly can't remember the last time I pur…

Do you have any recommendations for a music player that isn't iTunes?

I use Vox.

It's not the best player ever, but it's free, it's better than iTunes, and it does all I want.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#66

Post by Someone1234 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #55
roymurdock wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had to buy a new laptop to replace a 2009 MBP recently. Chose the mid 2012 non-retina display. Took out the disk drive and put in my own SSD and RAM. Does everything I want it to do without the slightest complaint. All told I probably paid ~$700 less for a comparably powerful machine with 10x the internal storage of a late model MBP retina, albeit heavier and with a slightly inferior display. Next time I need to upgr…

> Obviously there's a very large target market of folks that just want their tech to work and will happily drop a few hundred bucks each time they need to upgrade or repair. But it's hard to go back once you've opened up your computer and seen how cheap/easy it is to replace some of these extremely modular components. I imagine my mindset will change as I get older and have less time/more disposable income. There is.…

> (comes out to be ~$60/month)

Even phased like that that is a lot of money.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#67

Post by dasil003 »

aditya wrote: post #20

Wow, that's a lot of media hoopla. Let's be real, Apple's never been a software company -- they've always made excellent hardware and good enough software that people will deal with because they want their amazing hardware. No one has ever said anything about any Apple software compared to what people say about their hardware. Software's not in their DNA and I think all this media attention will just fade after a whi…

Apple definitely had some misses over the years, but this is deeply unfair to a company that has basically designed the entire landscape of consumer software that we see today. The Apple was copied by IBM, Mac OS was copied by Windows, and iOS was copied by Android (which was pre-existing but was completely redesigned in the image of iOS).

If you want to see a hardware company that doesn't get software, look no further than Sony. Apple's main problem is that they don't get cloud services. This is where Apple can't compete with Google in the same way that Sony couldn't compete with Apple.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#68

Post by sjm-lbm »

mmastrac wrote: post #3

It's not just software. While I'm still a fan of Macbooks, I'm getting close to abandoning ship thanks to the increasingly un-repairability of these things. I have a Macbook from ~2008 that's still functional as a media PC thanks to memory/SSD upgrades and battery replacements over the years. My current Macbook Pro has memory soldered on to the motherboard and a battery glued to the case. The SSD is technically repla…

The extra annoying part is that Apple's total lack of reputability is starting to spread to competing products - a lot of Android phones have dropped user-replaceable batteries, for instance, and a sizable amount of good Windows ultrabooks are about as repairable as MacBooks.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#69

Post by andrewingram »

cesarbs wrote: post #30
skorecky wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does suck the repairability is next to none but they have the best looking hardware out there. I have yet to see any other manufacture come close to what Apple can do hardware wise. A metal laptop enclosure is basically unheard of outside of Apple sadly. I would like to see someone step up.

Do you buy hardware based on what it looks?

Actually, yes. Given my computer is always on display on a desk or table in my home, I consider it to be a piece of furniture. Therefore aesthetics are as much a consideration as they are for anything else I buy for for my home.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#70

Post by pekk »

mmastrac wrote: post #3

It's not just software. While I'm still a fan of Macbooks, I'm getting close to abandoning ship thanks to the increasingly un-repairability of these things. I have a Macbook from ~2008 that's still functional as a media PC thanks to memory/SSD upgrades and battery replacements over the years. My current Macbook Pro has memory soldered on to the motherboard and a battery glued to the case. The SSD is technically repla…

This lack of repairability is actually not a recent thing at all. For example, I worked a support job in the late 90s where a high proportion of Applecare complaints were resolved with "replace the motherboard." With PCs we just replaced the offending part, which was rarely the motherboard.

The worst part of this is that Apple's success has dragged the rest of the market toward things like non-replaceable batteries.

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