Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 613 posts

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#561

Post by charlesarthur »

Crito wrote: post #311
lobster_johnson wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Maps' reputation is much worse than it deserves. These days it is better than Google Maps, in my opinion: Better map pins, better graphical performance, better rendering style, better search.

I agree that Apple Maps is currently better, but I attribute that mostly to the quality of Google Maps severely degrading in recent years. It has gotten so bad, that I've dusted off my old stand-alone GPS and keep it in my car's center console. Google Maps no longer has reliability that I can count on for a road trip.

"I attribute that mostly to the quality of Google Maps severely degrading in recent years."

Seriously? I can't see how that would happen unless you're living somewhere prone to dramatic road rebuilding. Or do you mean the quality of the Google Maps interface?

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#562

Post by charlesarthur »

tracker1 wrote: post #307
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please express your opinions without using the term "brainwashing"? I think Safari and iMessages are vastly superior to Chrome and Hangouts and that doesn't make me an idiot.

How do I iMessage or FaceTime someone on an iPhone from my Android device? Do you just drop any friends that don't buy apple hardware?

You install WhatsApp, like a billion other people.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#563

Post by pjmlp »

bandushrew wrote: post #312
roymurdock wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From my perspective, their application software has always sucked. I think the main problem is not the application software (aside from iTunes and Apple Maps) - the main problem is the OS level software. During the "golden age" of apple, apps would just work. Didn't matter if it you were using Apple-provided software or "better" 3rd party stuff - crashing, lagging, stuttering was minimal. Now, many users are seeing…

"During the "golden age" of apple, apps would just work." nope. Ive been using apple software for 20 years. apple software has ALWAYS been crap. its just also been less crap than the opposition. hell, before OS X, a crashed app would force you to restart the entire computer.... I still remember long afternoons debugging a CodeWarrior application, and having to restart after every successful replication of the problem…

You just reminded me of the time when IIS extensions (ISAPI) executed in kernel space and I was tracking down a bug...

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#564

Post by puppetmaster3 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #354
nostrademons wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, there are more options than just Apple and Microsoft. I was on RedHat from 1998-1999, Mandrake in 2000, back to WinXP in 2001-2002, Mandrake again from 2003-2004, XP again in 2005 but with Ubuntu running under VMWare, switched to mostly web-based apps from 2005-2007, but ended up going back to OS X Leopard (but again, with mostly webapps) in 2009. I had a System76 laptop running Ubuntu from 2013-2015, and of co…

Twice a year (after finals each semester) I would make a ritual of spending a day or two trying to install and use linux because I believed in what they were trying to do (also, package manager!). Every single time, without fail, within those first couple days I hit some sort of show-stopping bug. Sometimes the installer wouldn't work and I'd spend that time cycling through different disk tools / CDR drives / images.…

Maybe it's you?

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#565

Post by charlesarthur »

zamalek wrote: post #534
nostrademons wrote: post #159

It's kinda weird to read commentators talking as if this was the end of a golden age of Apple. From my perspective, their application software has always sucked. It was there because you need apps to bootstrap a platform and attract enough users to attract developers. But you can't really expect a consumer electronics company to have the best application for a given niche once the niche has been identified and attrac…

You make a fair point, you can mostly avoid bad Apple software. The one choice you can't make is iTunes. Being forced to use that dreadful piece of software is why I gave my first iPhone away after little less than one week. It's abysmally incompetent as a music player. You could probably count the number of codecs it supports on one hand - a core feature of a music player is, well, playing your music. Last time I us…

"Last time I used it, it still didn't have a media library and dumped tens of thousands of songs into a flat list."

In the "Advanced" tab, which I'd expect any self-respecting HN denizen to go to first, there's a checkbox for "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" which explains that it will "[place] files into album and artist folders, and [name] the files based on the disc number, track number and song title". Mine is a very hierarchical structure - and I've had it for a decade. No flat list here.

"You have to have that garbage installed on your machine if you own an iPhone. Not interested."

Not true, either - hasn't been true since the advent of iCloud in 2011.

As to the codecs - it does do MP3 and AAC, which probably covers 95% of available content, though it doesn't do Ogg Vorbis, Quo Vadis, or various others. For that sort of thing there's VLC.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#566

Post by pjmlp »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #375
mahranch wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've got better things to do with my time. I'd rather walk into the Apple store and replace my MBA or my iPhone when I've got a problem. I don't get the comparison. It's like apple users think the only options are buy apple (expensive, but "allegedly" rarely needs fixing, works 99% of the time, lasts a long time, etc) and a PC ("allegedly" breaks all the time, requires more maintenance, requires more time to keep u…

> You can buy PC laptops with the same "just works" fidelity as apple. More options open up, and you can save yourself a fortune, if people would just eschew their brand loyalty. What do you consider a fortune? $1000? $1400? That's about two days of my time consulting. I'm fine paying the premium for what I consider a better experience. It's not brand loyalty, that's for sure. I've had a terrible, terrible time tryin…

> $1000? $1400? That's about two days of my time consulting.

On my home country people get paid 1000 euros a month!

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#567

Post by ascagnel_ »

linkregister wrote: post #448
r00fus wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Unless you're sharing different users' music across computers (which Apple has made difficult/unfeasible since day 1). Sync is one-way - what could you lose?

My personal fear is losing my photos when performing a sync. iCloud tops out at 5GB, which you can't effectively manage. It's far safer to plug your phone into a Windows machine and using the file system GUI to copy the photos to the folder you want. Using Preview to import the photos as if the iPhone is a scanner is another safe method. The multiple user/multiple computer problem that you're referencing can probably…

The free iCloud tops out at 5GB (which is low for storing device backups and photos; ideally, you should get the same storage as your device size for free). You can pay for more storage.

And if you don't want to trust iCloud with photo sync, there are other options (Dropbox does that, and Plex has a photo sync function if you want to host those files yourself).

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#568

Post by zamalek »

charlesarthur wrote: post #565
zamalek wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a fair point, you can mostly avoid bad Apple software. The one choice you can't make is iTunes. Being forced to use that dreadful piece of software is why I gave my first iPhone away after little less than one week. It's abysmally incompetent as a music player. You could probably count the number of codecs it supports on one hand - a core feature of a music player is, well, playing your music. Last time I us…

"Last time I used it, it still didn't have a media library and dumped tens of thousands of songs into a flat list." In the "Advanced" tab, which I'd expect any self-respecting HN denizen to go to first, there's a checkbox for "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" which explains that it will "[place] files into album and artist folders, and [name] the files based on the disc number, track number and song title". Mine i…

> hasn't been true since the advent of iCloud in 2011.

Assuming I'm using AIMP3 as my media player of choice, how would iCloud play into getting my song library onto an iPhone? Like Winamp and Foobar2000, it allows you to treat a removable drive as a media player.

> For that sort of thing there's VLC.

That's a non-starter. Even Windows Media Player, which is probably used by a total of three people, can be extended to support any arbitrary audio codec using a documented API. I don't get phone calls from my 90y/o father asking how to get media to work, the codec pack that I installed guarantees that almost any codec under the sun will work with almost any Windows application (notably excluding iTunes).

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#569

Post by Ensorceled »

chrisblackwell wrote: post #277

OSX fan here: Everyone is completely misunderstanding our recent criticisms of Apple software. We don't hate Apple software! We have seen a steady decline over the last few years, and so we are expressing our concerns. This does not translate to us hating the software. We know what Apple can do when it really focuses on the quality of it's software (see OSX Snow Leopard). I still think OSX is more stable and useable…

Exactly, moving my SO from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 and then, months later, to Windows 10 made me appreciate OS X despite it's recent downturn.

Re: Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

#570

Post by collyw »

Swizec wrote: post #138
Someone1234 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (comes out to be ~$60/month) Even phased like that that is a lot of money.

Is it? As a software engineer, I leverage those $60/month into $8000+/month. I think that's more than worth it. Why the hell haven't I bought a backup machine yet just in case this one breaks?

And you couldn't possibly do that on a Linux / Windows laptop?
Post reply on HN