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

How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 587 posts

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#81

Post by Pigo »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #58
ythn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the devices I've ever owned, my Apple devices have had the most hardware failures. My iPhone 4S's headphone jack stopped working. I bought a replacement and installed it myself (which was a nightmare) but it was still broken. Turns out the logic board had an issue and replacing that is hundreds of dollars. My Macbook Pro 2010's hard drive cable failed. New one was $50. I've never had any hardware issues wi…

This has been my experience also. It seems like Apple is delivering premium hardware and build quality -- they're certainly charging premium prices -- but in my family I can think of at least five show-stopping hardware failures with Apple products in the past few years, and zero such failures with a comparable number of Windows/Android devices. In addition, Apple's hardware specs no longer justify premium prices, in…

I can appreciate, and respect, a user who is honest about a preference. People who throw out "it just works" give you guys a bad name.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#82

Post by visarga »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #8

I find it remarkable that a company the size and profitability of Apple seems unable to do more than one thing at a time. Simply not enough engineers?

> Simply not enough engineers?

I was wondering the same thing about Windows back in 2004, when I switched to mac.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#83

Post by electic »

kruipen wrote: post #65
electic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro. Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen. Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile. To be honest, I really found myself using the keyboa…

The touch screen on the Surface has one killer application: scrolling while reading. It's very natural to scroll content with a thumb on the edge of the screen.

Yes, but you have to lift your arm up. It is far far faster to scroll through a web page with the touchpad.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#84

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

beat wrote: post #16

My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I d…

> This week, my mother's crappy Windows computer died, and I bought her a Chromebook. It was great!

Yeah, no kidding. I have a $160 Toshiba Chromebook that is great for most tasks.

Apple's risk in dropping the Premiere/FCP crowd is that the mass audience they are seeking will discover how good Chromebooks are, and the price tradeoff, and use them with Google cloud services for pretty much everything.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#85

Post by bsenftner »

delegate wrote: post #57

Hardware is not the only problem Apple has right now vis-a-vis developers. Apple's flagship IDE, XCode, is also lagging behind, at least when talking about C++ development, but even Swift doesn't get too much love it seems. Having used it since at least version 5, XCode 8 has been a frustrating experience for me starting from day one, when it defaulted to Swift version 3.0 and so broke all of the existing Swift proje…

XCode is the #1 reason I was never able to fully commit to a Mac. Hell, I was a Mac beta tester back in '83! (At age 17.) I've owned one, and used them as my main email machine for decades, but I never could wrap my head around the IDE poverty that is XCode. Even when I wrote Mac software, I did not use XCode, or whatever they called it back then. These days, I still have a Mac for email and it is my main system for personal web surfing, but any and all technology development takes place on some flavor of Windows or Linux. Plus, my $350 gaming desktop PC was easily upgraded to 32GB RAM and 3 4K displays - Apple can't touch that, and the entire system, counting monitors, was under $2K.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#86

Post by cookiecaper »

electic wrote: post #37
beat wrote: post #16

My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I d…

I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro. Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen. Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile. To be honest, I really found myself using the keyboa…

The Surface's touch screen is not meant for full-time use. It's a hybrid device. If you need a pure tablet, get a pure tablet. I really like my ThinkPad Yoga's hybrid featureset.

I hate to say it, but this post definitely has the ring of fanboyism.

The build quality of the Surface is "nowhere near a MacBook Pro" ... without specifying anything that's actually worse.

The point of the MBP is "always to be leap years ahead" on specs, but in reality, they never really are; they're usually comparable to other high-end laptops, although they are normally the priciest by about $1k and among the least repairable/extensible.

Speaking of gimmicks, you've apparently seriously suggested that Apple just need to make even thinner edges.

Maybe I'm just a tasteless philistine like all the other non-Mac users, but personally I think you may've had a bit too much kool-aid.

I used a 2007 MBP as my main computer for a while (and it was my only laptop for years), and I've also used a work-issued 2013 MBP for extended periods of time. There are certainly nice things about Macs (I ended up loving the Retina display much more than I expected to), but they're not the end-all be-all.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#87

Post by bla2 »

I wonder how much of this is new. Having multiple competing prototypes is something Apple also did in the Jobs area. Attrition of "more than a dozen" doesn't sound extremely high for a year and a half. Every shipping product in this world has some of its features cut for launch, with the features often making it into v2 if the product is successful. I mean, it's an interesting article, but the same article could probably have been written 4 years ago when everyone was happier with the Mac.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#89

Post by jaxondu »

electic wrote: post #37
beat wrote: post #16

My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I d…

I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro. Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen. Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile. To be honest, I really found myself using the keyboa…

> Fix the battery issue.

I don't think there is any hardware/software issues for the poor battery performance in latest MacBook Pro. The TouchBar uses AppleWatch CPU under the hood, and anything with a screen will suck up battery rather badly. They might be able to squeeze some more juice by software update. Its likely noticeable improvement will come with the refresh next year. The one thing Apple needs to do is the price. Many are pissed that they pay so much premium but get worst battery performance than last year model.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#90

Post by ohyoutravel »

electic wrote: post #37
beat wrote: post #16

My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I d…

I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro. Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen. Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile. To be honest, I really found myself using the keyboa…

I really like the touchscreen on my Surface Pro and don't find it gimmicky. It's very useful, especially to scroll while reading an article, or to use it in "tablet mode," or just to hit buttons on command prompts. I don't use it for everything, but it is good at making small efficiency improvements in my overall life with my computer. Not accusing you of anything, but I suspect if Apple released a laptop with a touchscreen, people like you would change their tunes on calling it "gimmicky."
Post reply on HN