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How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

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Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#331

Post by muninn_ »

douche wrote: post #216
muninn_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're living in a transitory period as we move from a world of wires and connectors to a wireless world. This is the pain we have to endure as technology is pushed forward. If it were up to the luddites and their obsession with compatibility, a laptop would have a dvd drive, firewire, usb-a, usb-c, thunderbolt, hdmi, dvi, vga, sd, microsd,vga, and display port all in one laptop chassis. Having one single port, that c…

My laptop has nearly all of those ports, and more besides. It's fantastic. The obsession with light weight and slimness is silly. Lugging around a five pound or even ten pound laptop is not that much of a burden. Wireless technology needs to get a whole lot more reliable to get its foot in my door.

I don't really care for making the laptops increasingly thin, but the ports are just nonsense. Carrying around a 10 pound laptop with a trunk full of adapters is going to be a thing of the past and I can't wait for the future.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#332

Post by muninn_ »

beat wrote: post #147
muninn_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're living in a transitory period as we move from a world of wires and connectors to a wireless world. This is the pain we have to endure as technology is pushed forward. If it were up to the luddites and their obsession with compatibility, a laptop would have a dvd drive, firewire, usb-a, usb-c, thunderbolt, hdmi, dvi, vga, sd, microsd,vga, and display port all in one laptop chassis. Having one single port, that c…

This Luddite has rather a lot of money invested in a professional grade audio interface. Replacing it with modern connectivity would be upwards of a thousand dollars. Ouch. And it works perfectly. Why am I throwing away hardware that I like and trust for the relentless march to the future? Any recording interface more substantial than a headphone jack is wired. It's going to remain that way for a while. Audio is a qu…

You as the individual don't matter. Parts will fail, components will need to be replaced, time moves forward. The future will be those same devices (or similar) using a single cable that will be compatible with everything, or it will be wireless. If for some reason it's not, then you just buy an adapter (which people do now anyway).

Your view is short-sighted. You're saying "What about me? What about right now?".

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#333

Post by delegate »

saurik wrote: post #273
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…

> with no way to downgrade to previous XCode version. What? The Apple Xcode downloads page lets you manually download every version of Xcode going back to at least 2008. I mean: I clearly love to complain about Apple, and I am shocked anyone uses Xcode at all for any reason, but the only thing keeping you from downgrading versions of Xcode is really old copies have GUI issues on newer versions of OS X... Apple at lea…

I don't remember exactly in what way this wasn't working for me, but it was something related to Carthage and xcodebuild. The workaround, which I use to this day is to define TOOLCHAINS=com.apple.dt.toolchain.Swift_2_3 before calling Carthage.

Even if I did downgrade to Xcode 7.x, it would still add quite a bit of effort on my side, which Apple forces me to do by nagging me to update Xcode. I think it should work the other way around - Swift 2.3 still default with the option to use Swift 3.0.

In all fairness, I like Xcode - it looks nice, it's fast. It's quite good when it works well - mostly with Objective-C projects.

But the last version has been really frustrating and I think it's a step backwards, which I hope they will fix fast.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#334

Post by caycep »

I suspect this is validation of Ben Thompson's analysis of Apple's Unitary Form organization - it is great at a single focus (iOS) but has trouble walking and chewing gum. I hope this is just a sign of things in flux at Apple and they eventually arrive at a design hierarchy that privileges both desktop and mobile...

Then again, playing devil's advocate, why shouldn't it be that way? The purest, Apple-like form of computing is a computer that is seamlessly with you and adapts to everything you need. Perhaps the end-point is a single iOS device in your pocket, and when you need the desktop/bigscreen/keyboard rubric of the Mac, it would seamlessly connect wirelessly to those things, but without having to burden you with those things otherwise. In a way, having two platforms, in the long-long run, is inelegant and therefore un-Apple-like.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#335

Post by muninn_ »

beat wrote: post #257
bluejekyll wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... professional grade audio interface. What is that interface? And it's not supported through the USB-C interface?

Apogee Ensemble Firewire. A Thunderbolt replacement would be $2500. There are other, less expensive options, but I'm still stuck with a minimum of $300 (new interface that supports ADAT, reuse the Ensemble with that) and probably upwards of $1000 to get equivalent functionality. This, on top of the cost of a new computer.

Yeah it may suck for you, but it won't suck for the people that buy whatever this equipment is and then use it over USB-C once that company makes the conversion.

It's like if we had no common way of measuring things. Imagine having to walk around with like 10 different tape measures because there was no standard. It's stupid. All of these different port interfaces are just like that.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#336

Post by mcv »

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'm in the same boat. I still use my 2011 MBP for development work, and I will continue to use it until it falls apart, but I don't think I'm going to buy a new Macbook to replace it.

I love that I can open this one up and upgrade the hell out of it. It's got a better SSD than Apple ever sold for it, and more memory than Apple claims is possible. I doubt a processor upgrade is possible, but if it was, I'd be in the market for one.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#337

Post by muninn_ »

duaneb wrote: post #214
muninn_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're living in a transitory period as we move from a world of wires and connectors to a wireless world. This is the pain we have to endure as technology is pushed forward. If it were up to the luddites and their obsession with compatibility, a laptop would have a dvd drive, firewire, usb-a, usb-c, thunderbolt, hdmi, dvi, vga, sd, microsd,vga, and display port all in one laptop chassis. Having one single port, that c…

This is exactly the type of attitude that makes me dread the future. Why invest in technology at all? Wires are great, honestly. Easy to debug and use. The original zero config.

Technology in this context isn't an investment. Wires aren't investments. Wires are a cost. Imagine if your kids grow up and never have to buy a single cable for anything. How much money would that save them over their lives? What if these kids grow up in a world where things are connected, seemingly alive, because they just know about the presence of other things and can "talk" to those things and do your bidding?

This is what we're moving to. It sucks that people can't see that.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#338

Post by mcv »

x0x0 wrote: post #274
bonzini wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And more available memory, letting the OS cache more files in RAM.

the 2011s may not have offered it as configured by apple, but they will use 16g ram if you buy 8g dimms.

They do. Apple claims 8 GB is the max, but mine works fine with 16 GB.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#339

Post by _delirium »

colept wrote: post #181
_delirium wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A maxed out current iMac is a pretty competitive workstation machine imo. Not especially cheap , but not prohibitive for a company. The top of the line is currently a 4.0 GHz quad-core i7 w/ 32 GB RAM (27" model w/ the memory and CPU upgrades). I have that on my desk at work and am quite happy with it.

A maxed out iMac would depreciate within 5 years, and any particular part would render your entire system unusable for week(s). Three years later and Apple adds a new feature that for the slightest reason requires an entire hardware upgrade because you can't upgrade components individually. Then factor in that the thin iMacs have terrible heat dissipation which means the CPU can't run at full speed without overheatin…

I'm not going to claim they're really cost-competitive with PC equivalents, just that they're fast enough machines to make good workstations, and the price is within the range of what our IT considers a reasonable office workstation purchase price.

At least where I work, desktop machines aren't kept for five years anyway, so I don't think this distinguishes it from any other supplier. Our standard depreciation/replacement cycle for workstations is 3 years, whether it's coming from Apple or Dell. Obviously for home use the economics are different, but then a lot of things are different there, e.g. I build PCs from parts, and there's no way work wants people to be DIY building their own office workstations. And yeah, you can spec out a comparable Dell that's cheaper (though don't forget to add in a high-quality 27" monitor!), but not by enough to really make a dent in the IT budget one way or the other.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#340

Post by electrichead »

iplaw wrote: post #44
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…

Same boat as you. I have a late-2011 17" MBP with an i7, maxed out RAM, and a 512GB SSD. I think that the graphics processor is starting to fail and I'm starting to experience some very odd DNS-related issues with the OS. I am very unsatisfied with my replacement options.

That specific MBP has an issue with the logic board that they will replace for free. I used to have glitches as well and took it in and got a replacement. It's only until the end of the year so I would go and get them to have a look before the new year.
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