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Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

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Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#72

I interpreted that comment as a jab at the PC industry. The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade. Isn't that the correct interpretation, considering the whole point of bringing that up is because they're positioning a new device intended to replace the PC? I seriously doubt it's intended to mean (to quote the article) "LOL poo…

I built my desktop from scratch (for the first time) in 2005, added a couple components from other computers as they died, and still use it with no issues. I've thought about upgrading components in it, but since they haven't died yet, and it still works just fine, there's just not much of a point.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#73
post #27

If anything its a fairly strong statement on the ruggedness of the PC platform. I have a 2500k i5 in my old desktop. With a new-ish videocard I play all the newest AAA games at high quality. Its incredible how the x86 world really hasn't had any huge performance bumps and how a Q1 2011 CPU is still competitive. Also, there's the larger narrative of people buying tablets and putting off PC upgrades, so the PC ages. Do…

> I have a 2500k i5 in my old desktop. > Its incredible how the x86 world really hasn't had any huge performance bumps and how a Q1 2011 CPU is still competitive. Actually you can have twice as fast desktop CPU today than your 2500k, and not for some number crunching you'll maybe never need (even though it's the most important thing for others) but for such common tasks like compiling the code: http://techreport.com/…

Where is the doubled single core performance? We have more cores now, but they are almost as fast as 3-4 years ago.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#75

I interpreted that comment as a jab at the PC industry. The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade. Isn't that the correct interpretation, considering the whole point of bringing that up is because they're positioning a new device intended to replace the PC? I seriously doubt it's intended to mean (to quote the article) "LOL poo…

Just bought a like-new PC on ebay for $200. It's not about being poor because anyone who says they can't scrape up $200 if they had to, is lying to you.

It's the shocking fact that (especially if cash strapped) you can live your life, without constantly buying more and newer things.

Of course Apple's stance is, you must buy our new products every year. But I can get on Facebook and email and whatever else on my $200 PC just fine - the value isn't there for alot of people.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#77
Really this isn't terribly offensive. They're selling a product they think is superior, in their [marketing] minds the world would be a better place if you were pulled from the womb, slapped on the ass, and handed an iPad Pro, to be renewed every generation of gadget.

The Apple presentation stage is not the Basilica of St Peter. These are marketing pronouncements, not moral ones and analyzing them as such is such intense naval gazing that it's actually bad for your neck. If Apple hates the poor it's for no reason other than that they're outside their customer base.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade Compelling reason why I had to upgrade my iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 and original iPad after less than 3 years? Painfully slow and unusable. Well if the compelling reason to upgrade is "painfully slow and unusable", then maybe a >= 5 year old PC that still works isn't a bad thing. If I'm no…

Surely true, phone hardware was quite 'limited' at first, unlike PC which were mostly capable of swallowing any task thrown at them (unless transcoding 1080p in real time or rebuilding LFS counts). On PC the main issue is: subpar and/or unsupported GPU (to avoid burning the main cpu for entertainment), absence of SSD, bad software stack.

>> Surely true, phone hardware was quite 'limited' at first

Well here's my problem with that argument. The 3G, 4 and iPad 1 were quite fast until the bloated OS upgrades started coming out.

The one thing that would keep me from being bitter is if Apple offered an easy way to downgrade to the original OS version of each one.

I don't run a lot of apps. The most important apps to me are the ones that come with the phone. If that meant living without some apps and new features but being able to keep the devices in use longer, I would have surely made that trade-off.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#79
It is ironic that Apple is mentioning this as I believe this is going to spell the end of their era of massive profits. Phones now are getting to the state where much like PCs, the older phone is good enough, and the new phone is not substantially better. There will always be people buying a phone for .2ghz more CPU or some slightly higher res screen, but the days of rapid evolution of mobile devices are over, and Apple is going to have problems selling someone a $6-800 phone every year or 2.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#80
post #7
post #5

I think I have a rusty, almost 5 year old PC lying around. It has an Intel i7-2600K overclocked to 4.6 GHz, 24 GB RAM, 240G SSD and a Radeon 6950 GPU that can run most games well in fHD. Most of the machines Apple sells are actually slower than this PC.

That's a great exception to the rule. The overwhelming majority of computers Apple is talking about, are probably shitty $400 PCs that were underpowered from day one, which are just barely chugging along. Because that is actually what most people buy.

Thing is, OS bloat has finally ground to a halt. Win8.1 wasn't really any slower than 7, and Win10 is actually faster in my experience. So really, you don't need a stronger machine today than you did five years ago. Any perceived slowdown is just the result of malware, fragmentation, and DLL buildup - refresh the OS and maybe install an SSD and they're fine.

I'm using a laptop from 2010 with an i7-720QM and an SSD, and it's perfectly snappy. I frequently let it do light encoding tasks while I'm using my desktop.

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