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That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

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Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#581

Post by RUG3Y »

nsgi wrote: post #549
RUG3Y wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is that simple. This is how we learn as young people what is important in life. It gives us character. I was poor growing up, I always had garbage clothes and shoes, and people made fun of me. I learned that if someone made fun of my shoes, they didn't have very much character. I also learned that shoes don't matter too much, as long as I have a pair that protects my feet. All of this focus on self-esteem and conf…

> I learned that if someone made fun of my shoes, they didn't have very much character. Isn't that basically learning self-esteem and confidence?

It could be, but the focus is different because I'm not counting on my iPhone to artificially give me the confidence that I lack.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#582

Post by gurkendoktor »

blktiger wrote: post #196
rockshassa wrote: post #12

I just can't bring myself to feel the author's anger, in any capacity. He wants to position this as a jab against those who build their own PCs, but that is utterly irrelevant. What percentage of those 600 million five-year-old PCs do you really think are being thoughtfully maintained by modders? Does the author realize that most people do not want the responsibility of maintaining their own hardware? Or that they do…

I don't think Apple is thinking about the money aspect here. Instead they find it sad because many of these people are missing out on _progress_. Especially with regards to ease of use. Many of these people would be much better served with an iPad than with the PCs that they use now.

But then what does the age of the computer have to do with it? Computers haven't changed a lot in the last five years. Someone who would be overwhelmed trying to keep a Windows box from 2011 virus-free would be just as overwhelmed with one bought in 2016.

(Am I the only one who thinks of desktop computers when reading "PCs"?)

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#583

Post by Dylan16807 »

rdancer wrote: post #578
Dylan16807 wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have cross-platform support, keeping it is not very hard. And most of their code works on 32-bit Arm . So it would not be an unreasonable burden. Computers have slowed down. Basic support for for 10 years is not a crazy idea.

You cannot have 100% platform support of 100% quality 100% of the time. Compromise has to be made. If you're not making an explicit compromise by mercilessly cutting platform support, you're implicitly compromising schedule and quality. Apple have always been the best by far at prioritizing quality, and making hard choices, well above and beyond anybody within any industry they enter. They have always fixed the most…

>had they been supporting old hardware, software on new hardware would have been measurably worse

Might not have been measurable, and might just cost an extra engineer without really harming anything.

If they had gone 64-bit-only, I'd be much more in agreement with you. But if you're still supporting a 32 bit platform, you have a lot of restrictions put on you, and the marginal cost of keeping support for a second 32 bit platform is not a big deal.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#584

Post by rdancer »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #583
rdancer wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot have 100% platform support of 100% quality 100% of the time. Compromise has to be made. If you're not making an explicit compromise by mercilessly cutting platform support, you're implicitly compromising schedule and quality. Apple have always been the best by far at prioritizing quality, and making hard choices, well above and beyond anybody within any industry they enter. They have always fixed the most…

>had they been supporting old hardware, software on new hardware would have been measurably worse Might not have been measurable, and might just cost an extra engineer without really harming anything. If they had gone 64-bit-only, I'd be much more in agreement with you. But if you're still supporting a 32 bit platform, you have a lot of restrictions put on you, and the marginal cost of keeping support for a second 32…

You vastly underestimate both how different these old systems are, how many resources it takes to support every additional platform, that the burden increases non-linearly, and what kind of weird release-blocking bugs those extra platforms may introduce, delaying fixes and hogging resources.

At minimum, slow systems require gracefully degrading GUI, which increases complexity by an order of magnitude. The graphics card capabilities are a much better first approximation than the word width.

If it took just a few extra engineers, or a few thousand, to fix the bugs that they have, Apple would have done it. The Mythical Man-Month, and all that.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#585

Post by EliRivers »

leni536 wrote: post #566
EliRivers wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about all the people who are not random strangers? The people who can have a material effect on my life and will do so, in part, on their assessment of my worth? Shall I ignore them as well? What does that get me? The points I was making without spelling them out explicitly, before being confronted with the sad fact that too many people appear to have been watching the Hallmark Channel, are that there is no…

Well, my friends really don't care what kind of phone I have.

I genuinely don't believe you. I believe they look at your phone and that influences the opinion they have of you. I believe that if you tell yourself this isn't true, you're deceiving yourself. If I believe this, some of them do too, and that makes it true. I don't think I've ever met anyone who looked at the latest iPhone the same way they looked at a ten-year old phone held together with tape and a rubber band.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#586

Post by Dylan16807 »

rdancer wrote: post #584
Dylan16807 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>had they been supporting old hardware, software on new hardware would have been measurably worse Might not have been measurable, and might just cost an extra engineer without really harming anything. If they had gone 64-bit-only, I'd be much more in agreement with you. But if you're still supporting a 32 bit platform, you have a lot of restrictions put on you, and the marginal cost of keeping support for a second 32…

You vastly underestimate both how different these old systems are, how many resources it takes to support every additional platform, that the burden increases non-linearly, and what kind of weird release-blocking bugs those extra platforms may introduce, delaying fixes and hogging resources. At minimum, slow systems require gracefully degrading GUI, which increases complexity by an order of magnitude. The graphics ca…

They still support slow systems, just ones that happen to be 64 bit. You're being ridiculous when you say a few thousand engineers couldn't do it. This could be almost completely separate from ongoing development. man-month would not be a problem.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#587

Post by tachyonbeam »

kybernetyk wrote: post #116
vbezhenar wrote: post #32

I can't imagine how I would replace my laptop with iPad. Some tasks are definitely doable: Web browsing, Mail processing, Music listening, Skype (though chatting on iPad is terrible because you have to switch around all the time, losing your focus, may be split apps might help, can't experience it, because my iPad have RAM like 15-year old PC). Generally speaking for power user every activity on iPad is strictly wors…

I think the iPad Pro project is Apple's last try to re-vive the tablet form factor. Tablet sales are going back, no one I know makes real good use of them (even my elderly mother prefers her MacBook to her iPad for browsing, etc). My friends all own an iPad in some incarnation but it usually is just a dust collector. And I don't have only techie friends. If the iPad Pro fails as the iPad did I think Apple's going to…

I think you're absolutely right. There are now larger phones that do most of what a tablet does yet are much more mobile. Phones are also a device everyone can justify buying.

For everything that involves producing content, a laptop is going to be more comfortable and more powerful than a tablet. And the new Surface tablet's killer feature is... A keyboard! So you can use it as a laptop. Of course you're going to need a keyboard. Every student out there needs to write essays. Everyone else is writing e-mails, reports and blog posts.

Lastly, the price point of tablets, and their specs, are just awkward. Less than 500 gets you some device with a weak processor, very little RAM, and almost no storage. To get a higher end model you need to pay 700-900. For that price, you can get a very good laptop.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#588

Post by spronkey »

zerohm wrote: post #512
SyneRyder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two 10-year old PCs in active use on my desk right now - both are running Windows 10, one is playing back Netflix right now while I type this on a third (brand new) machine. The kicker? Those two 10-year old "PCs" are actually MacBooks. They still run fine & do everything I need those machines to do - but I had to install Windows 10 on them, because Apple stopped supporting their own hardware. A machine that m…

This. The computer that by far gets the most use in my house is a 2009 Mac Book Pro. I've upgraded the hard drive to an SSD so it's still quite snappy. The monitor is still bright and colorful. All the keyboard keys still have good action. The mouse pad physical click is the only thing that has fizzled out and I could fix that for $100. So yeah, it doesn't look great when Apple says "replace your 5 year old computer"…

They used to. Retina Macbooks? Zero upgrade path. Can't even replace the batteries in them without risking your life. And eventually Apple stop providing battery replacements, and your machine is dead.

My PC, however, has components that are oh, 10 years old? Sure, it has a 1-year old motherboard, CPU, 3 year old RAM, a 2 year old GPU, and a mix of SSDs and HDDs, but the case I bought in 2006, as with my MX518 mouse.

This kind of longevity of components is good for us. Throwing out your appliance every 5 years because Apple decided to solder RAM instead of sacrifice 1mm of thinness and provide a slot is good for Apple, and Apple alone.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#589

Post by spronkey »

mrbill wrote: post #164

I just bought a "new to me" laptop. Refurb Thinkpad T420s from 2011. I added 16G RAM, two Intel SSDs, an Ultrabay battery, and an 802.12ac wifi card. Grand total: less than $325. This will be my primary portable for at least 2-3 years, and it's already four years old. Just because I can afford Apple doesn't mean I can justify the 2x price premium, or that "old" hardware isn't capable.

The best thing is that said a high end model of said T420s is more capable than, literally any 13" MacBook ever produced (with the notable exception of display quality).

I'm not the biggest fan of the x20 series Thinkpads due to many stupid niggles (electrical noise, fan noise, LCD quality, build quality issues, driver issues, bad trackpads etc etc etc), but if what you need is a computing tool... well....

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#590

Post by peterashford »

I'm typing this on my home PC which is over 5 years old. I've replaced the gfx card, CPU and memory and it plays Battlefield 4 pretty well. I also use it for programming (I work in game dev). Why would I replace this very serviceable PC for a Apple toy which will be unsupported as soon as its manufacturer thinks they can get away with it in an attempt to get everyone on their must-upgrade-to-the-latest-thing merry-go-round. I appreciate quality hardware and fashion in tech a-la Apple makes me puke.
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