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The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

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Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#41

Post by sahaj »

GVIrish wrote: post #27
threeseed wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years Apple released the iMac which did away with SCSI, ADB, RJ232 etc in favour of USB. What they have done now with the MacBook Pro is exactly the same thing. They are trying to establish USB-C as the one port to rule them all just like they successful did with USB-A. Yes change can be hard and some people like yourself clearly struggle more than others. But change is needed sometimes to push the industry forwar…

Unifying to one standard port is kind of cool, except for the fact that not even Apple's other devices use that type of connection and users will have to buy dongles for almost everything. That represents a concrete step backwards in user experience. There is a time to be bold and throw your weight behind a better standard, but there's also a time when doing so makes things inconvenient with little to no benefit. Tha…

The next iPhone will likely have a USB-C port. They couldn't have changed the lightening port on the iPhone after only being on the iPhone for a single generation.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#42

Post by rjbwork »

sumoboy wrote: post #40

I don't think it's a role reversal at all, rather everybody has been chasing Apple for so long the competition has caught up and surpassed in some aspects. Who doesn't have a laptop that hasn't been modeled after the macbook. Also remember that everything Apple introduces doesn't turn to gold every time, they have plenty of product feature failures. The only innovation I saw yesterday which will be copied really came…

>Who doesn't have a laptop that hasn't been modeled after the macbook.

As soon as they can pack the power i'm looking for in my laptops into an apple style case, i'll be there. Until then i'll be sticking with my boxy black Clevo.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#44

Post by mywittyname »

jfoutz wrote: post #18
wnevets wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more like $pple, am I rite?

App£e. or Appl€. Ideally you could use the $ symbol but there's no s in Apple. Sure, you can just throw in whatever character you want, but !nevets doesn't make a lot of sense. what you're shooting for here is a pun. You want something that looks like a regular character, so @pple is kind of cute, but there are two obvious problems. One, it kind of looks like a direct message to pple, which falls apart. &pple isn't b…

This is HN humor at its finest.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#45

Post by dpark »

sahaj wrote: post #41
GVIrish wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unifying to one standard port is kind of cool, except for the fact that not even Apple's other devices use that type of connection and users will have to buy dongles for almost everything. That represents a concrete step backwards in user experience. There is a time to be bold and throw your weight behind a better standard, but there's also a time when doing so makes things inconvenient with little to no benefit. Tha…

The next iPhone will likely have a USB-C port. They couldn't have changed the lightening port on the iPhone after only being on the iPhone for a single generation.

You think they're going to ditch lightning after everyone buys a bunch of accessories? They could, but I doubt it. What would switching to USB C do for Apple?

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#46

Post by nathas »

bradleybuda wrote: post #43

I'll keep buying Apple hardware (even if the latest rev isn't great) since macOS is the only usable operating system. Windows is (still/increasingly?) a tire fire that's only useful if you're a gamer, and Linux is for programmer-masochists.

Why do you think Windows is a tire fire and OSX is usable?

I used my first OSX machine ever earlier this year. I wanted to add some extra keyboard commands, so I had to download a 3rd party program that had to unlock accessibility controls and essentially take full control of the machine. That's absurd to me.

I also hit tons of external display problems. Things wouldn't connect or sync right, desktops not correctly moving to the right screens, no window snapping even though it's a high res screen, etc.

I hit way more beach balls/lags than I do with my modern Windows machines.

Windows 7 was solid, Windows 8 was a bit of a mess (as has been every 1st iteration of Windows [98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10]), but Win 10 is really enjoyable.

It's unfortunate that the BSODs caused largely by shitty drivers in Windows 98/XP has hounded the Windows ecosystem for over a decade, even though the driver verifier has fixed the vast majority of those.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#47

Post by sliverstorm »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #13
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hacker" as in "Hacker News" is from an even more distant past. The word just got appropriately decaffeinated, so as to be acceptable within our current iteration of group think.

I tried going to a 'hacker' meetup in my city. It was disappointing. I was asking people if they were programmers, the median reaction was "a programmer? oh lord no, I'm a [marketing/UI/non-technical] person". It seems the term was coopted and gutted by some in the startup scene. (I'm aware there are legitimate hackers in the startup scene, this was just one particular event in one particular city.)

Even if it wasn't non-technical people, it seems the pop culture of "hacker" attracts all the worst stereotypes of geeks. The really sharp ones don't seem interested in self-identifying as "hacker".

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#48

Post by lloyd-christmas »

threeseed wrote: post #24
aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive narration. What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to write new plays. Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at MS products up unt…

> Apple doesn't have anything to stand out anymore They have execution and commitment. When I buy a MacBook Pro I can expect to get many years of use out of it. The hardware execution is almost always exemplary and they will continue to support it on the software side during that tenure. Buying a Windows or Android product feels like you're only going to be supported for a year or two and that's it.

I'm typing this on a 2013 macbook. I use it everyday/allday. I also have a fully functioning Asus laptop from 2009. I'm reasonably confident my 2005 inspiron is still kicking. Those two laptops are still running on their original charger. I'm on my third macbook charger in 3 years. I have a box full of broken apple chargers from merely glancing at the cord. I think you're drastically overestimating the macbook's ability to stand out of the crowd in hardware.

In regards to software, Windows XP support lasted 13 years. OSX comes out with a new version every year. Over the last few years, each is buggier than the last. Ever since Mavericks, I wait 6 months into each release for them to fix the load of bugs before I actually do the upgrade. El Capitan, especially, was just an all-around mess.

I love this computer, but I can still effortlessly criticize it in both hardware and software. They are simply not what's made the macbook stand out against a sea of black laptops.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#49

Post by kristopolous »

rbanffy wrote: post #33
kristopolous wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always found it offensive that they used long deceased, mostly anti materialist socialists to peddle consumer electronics (as if mother Teresa would be using an ipad with her name etched in the back). They should have tried using a living legend without permission like Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky and see how that went...

A computer is just a tool. It's not as important as what it enables you to do.

Sure, but if you verbalized what they were saying "Here's our spokesperson, Mahatma Gandhi" and they say, brought out some actor dressed as the guy telling you how great the iPhone 7 is at the keynote, most people would probably find that in terrible taste.

The ones with civil rights leaders were particularly offensive. Yes, lining up for a new laptop is just like apartheid and the march on Selma. I mean honestly, how garish and impertinent can you get.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#50

Post by munchbunny »

rayiner wrote: post #39
aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive narration. What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to write new plays. Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at MS products up unt…

Microsoft lacked taste and the ability to execute. With the Surface Book, they absolutely nailed taste. But they still have no ability to execute (the SB suffered at launch from firmware glitches that took months to iron out: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/new-firmware-finally-... ).

Ironically (because of the Macbook announcement) if Microsoft had chosen to go with previous generation Intel processors, they probably could have avoided those firmware issues. Those are mostly ironed out now, no thanks to Intel.
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