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

Apple’s 2016 in review

chuqui.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 408 posts

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#361

Post by jdcarter »

chaostheory wrote: post #350
jdcarter wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My household has been Mac-only for about 20 years, but I finally gave up waiting for a decent Mac Pro or a powerful Mac Mini. Last year I put together a PC for about $1500 [1] which looks great and completely demolishes any Mac for GPU-heavy tasks, thanks to its Nvidia GTX 1070. The build was super-easy (my 10 year-old daughter did half of it) and the machine worked perfectly the first time I powered it on. And, much…

Even when I was happy with Apple, OSX was never a good platform for games.

I'm torn on that. I spent years playing games exclusively on a Mac and didn't feel like I was missing that much. Given how bad the Mac gaming scene was in the 2000's, in the 2010's we've seen an explosion in the number of excellent games coming to Mac from both AAA and indie publishers. Seems like ever since Steam came to macOS, the games have followed.

If gaming is a secondary use of your computer, a Mac isn't quite as bad as people make it out to be. Especially if you enjoy indie games, it seems like all of them run on Mac, and most of them have modest hardware requirements. Example: I play a ton of Rimworld, and it runs exactly the same on my modest Mac and my killer PC. It's mostly AAA titles where you miss out.

I finally got to where I wanted a machine whose primary use would be games, and for that case you're correct, a half-decent PC crushes any Mac on any gaming metric.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#362

Post by secabeen »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #338
caconym_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure "pure neglect"? What are the features you're missing in the current Mac lineup? Which products from other manufacturers make a meaningful improvement on Apple's offering for "devs"?

Here's one piece of anecdata, not for a "dev" but for another high-end use case: professional photography. My wife is a professional photographer. Her current photo-editing computer is a Windows 7 desktop with 16 GB of RAM. We know Windows 7's days are numbered, so we're starting to think about her next editing computer. The two most obvious options are (a) some Apple product, or (b) a computer running Windows 10. He…

Looks like the only blocker for Windows 10 is the "minimal unplanned downtime." Although Windows 10 does have mandatory updates, I have yet to see one that requires immediate and sudden reboots. Yes, if you get prompted for an update reboot and delay it a few times, the system will eventually force the update, but a simple workflow change of rebooting the system every night when you're done working with it and are going to bed would eliminate the unexpected updates and the associated downtime.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#363

Post by shuntress »

Guyag wrote: post #190
visarga wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is not into the next wave. If it were, it would be a powerhouse of deep learning hardware and software. The next wave is going to be robotics and conversational agents. You can't make a new Apple with slightly better laptops and phones any more. If, at least, they developed and opened up Siri in the last few years... but it's dead in the water.

Do you know any good resources on the future of conversational agents? In terms of what need they fulfil - I don't use Ok Google/Siri/Cortana, and rarely use my Echo but for music, and find it hard to understand where they fit in. Home automation is the only thing that comes to mind ("only").

The term they should be able to fulfill is natural interaction with a humans.

You should be able to crawl into your car and sputter "take me cough to the hospital" to which the car vocally responds "Right away" then drives itself to the hospital.

edit: Meaning, this interaction should play out exactly the same as if you had a full time driver/butler whos only job is to sit in the driver seat of your car and wait for your commands.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#364

Post by lobster_johnson »

wyager wrote: post #55
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #8

In 2009 I bought my first Apple product: an 8GB 13" MacBook Pro that cost $3000 ($1000 for the extra 4gb, like a dumbass). Quite soon after I got an iPhone 3GS. Now every computer in the house (family of four) is an Apple. Every phone is an Apple. Even AirPlay was an influencing factor in selecting a hi-fi receiver (HTR7065). Apple TVs sit next to actual TVs. Yesterday I replaced our fleet of TimeCapsules and Airport…

> Now its just incremental phone updates. And the software side of those updates is bad . Apple hardware is probably better than ever. The mechanical engineering and precision involved blows away anyone else in consumer electronics. The new MacBooks and iPhones are truly works of art compared to the cheap injection-molded stuff everyone else is pumping out. But the software just keeps getting worse and worse. My iPho…

Your issues really sound like they're hardware-related. It's not surprisingly that hardware problems would occur in a few instances, given that Apple is pumping out millions of these. Fortunately, Apple is pretty good at replacing defective specimens.

Counter-anecdotally, I've owned a sequence iPhones starting with the 3G, and I've never experienced any serious glitches, ever. I remember Safari used to crash a few times a week on iOS 8, but that's ages ago.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#366

Post by lobster_johnson »

erichocean wrote: post #86

Apple is a company that is following the process they learned when Steve ran the show, without any clear understanding of why that process exists. As a result, they are unable to adapt to adapt that process to the external world while remaining true to the underlying principles. What you see is the predictable result: ossified thinking couple with a rigid adherence to "what makes them great". all criticism falls on d…

Apple also fired the closest thing they had to a second Jobs, Scott Forstall — the man largely responsible for iOS — apparently for being difficult to work with (!).

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#367

Post by pier25 »

scott_karana wrote: post #339
pier25 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be able to ignore the instructions you have to be able to read them first. ;) Although all this is irrelevant since Apple phased out mag safe, the "ears" that hold the cable, and added a removable cable.

Fair point about the ears and user replacability. Still, Apple's Lightning cables are also extremely vulnerable to bending and abrasion. What makes you think their USB-C cables will be much better? Non-technical customers who can't afford to buy new cables, or don't know to use better aftermarket cables, are already known to resort to using springs from pens as ad-hoc strain relief: https://www.google.ca/search?q=iph…

> What makes you think their USB-C cables will be much better?

Nothing, but at least those can be replaced without having to upgrade the whole power brick.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#368

Post by mikeash »

Xixi wrote: post #343
mikeash wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're stuck conforming to an artificial schedule of once a year major releases. They won't let themselves take the time they need to get things right anymore. It's no surprise quality has gone down.

Quality usually don't go up when releasing less frequently, quite the opposite. The more you change things, the more likely you are to have severe bugs. When Apple was releasing major OS upgrades less frequently, you usually had to wait until a .4 or .5 point upgrade to have something usable. The first release of macOS Sierra (10.12.0) was vastly more usable than the first release of MacOS X Snow Leopard (10.6.0). I…

At least they had time to reach that .4 or .5 version. Now they pop out a new one before the old one is fixed, and we're stuck in a never-ending cycle of suck.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#369

Post by Apocryphon »

illumin8 wrote: post #337
bangonkeyboard wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve... They had one. Tim fired him.

Yes, but Forstall was responsible for skeumorphism across all of iOS, so I'm not certain he really was as visionary as Jobs.

Not to mention, the Maps fiasco happened under his watch.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#370

Post by [deleted] »

lostboys67 wrote: post #194
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key take out here is "faster" Even that part is mostly wrong. A fast horse can run more than 40MPH which about all you can expect from a car in a city. The main reason most people don't own a horse isn't that a car is faster. Users ask for things that are obvious. No kidding faster is better. Can we have it cheaper and more reliable too? If you ask most people in 1870 how to improve those aspects of a horse the…

Your ignoring the massive additional logistic costs that horse drawn transport has vs mechanised.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN