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

The New Apple Advantage

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 354 posts

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#191

Post by mkr-hn »

jeza wrote: post #189
old-gregg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ugly as shit"? I think Lenovo machines in their matte black rubberized cases look gorgeous. It's all about what you've been pre-conditioned to like. I will not buy a laptop with a glass-covered glossy screen. That screen would be useless to me. Also I will not own a laptop without a layout like this: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/03/thinkp... It's called attention to detail and immaculate ergono…

Pre-conditioned to like. Interesting way of putting it, but then how exactly has Apple pre-conditioned people to like their designs? I think it's more likely that Apple's choice of aesthetic just appeal to the majority.

Depending on the population you constrain the definition of majority to.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#192

Post by swombat »

aw3c2 wrote: post #181
rayiner wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not using "everyday computing" as a descriptive element in the marketing copy. It's using it as a category differentiator. Let's go laptop shopping! store.apple.com. Presented with pictures of things, with the name of the line under them. I can see (I don't even have to read or select a menu, I can just see!) two types of laptops: the Air and the Pro. One is little and the other is big. Do I want a lit…

Notebook shopping for "dummies": If you are not sure what you want, make a list of things you want to do with your laptop and ask someone who knows about computers to tell you what you would need for it (gaming -> number of decent chip names, writing and internet -> nothing matters, storing a lot of movies/games -> more than XX Gigabytes of harddisk space, video chatting -> webcam & microphone, etc) Make a checklist…

Make a checklist, hire a personal shopping technical consultant (may come for free in exchange for friendship/family brownie points), learn a new vocabulary, navigate a complex product matrix and finally, hopefully, purchase.

vs.

Click on the picture that looks like what you want, tweak a few straightforward options (or leave them to default, knowing they're probably fine), buy.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#193

Post by jrockway »

sipefree wrote: post #188
jrockway wrote: post #184

I agree with this. What I like about Apple is that they don't try to be low end, and they don't try to sell low end as high end. For years, I avoided buying a Thinkpad because the screens were so shitty. "We're a Chinese manufacturer owned by the Chinese government, so we won't use Korean LCDs." Great. Now I can't see what I'm working on, making your computers completely useless. Apple doesn't pull this shit. They go…

I'd say that iTunes killed itself in the debugger because the music industry didn't want you to see what their DRM does. :/

No, it's an OS X "feature". PT_DENY_ATTACH:

http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/code/macosx/Leopard_PT_DENY_AT...

"UNIX with a GUI" at its best.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#194

Post by swombat »

X-Istence wrote: post #187
wanorris wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I now recommend to anyone I know that's nontechnical that they buy their new laptops at the Microsoft Store (we have one nearby). All the computers they sell are crapware free, and even come preloaded with the free, near-invisible MSE instead of the awful antivirus trialware most other Windows computers are afflicted with.

The Microsoft stores feel like really bad rip-offs of the Apple stores and overall their employees do not seem to be knowledgeable about the stuff they are selling. That has been my experience when walking into a Microsoft store.

To counterbalance this, I'll point out I've heard some pretty clueless things come out of the mouths of Apple Store employees too - e.g. "plugging in your macbook air into a macbook pro PSU will damage the battery" and other silly stuff.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#195

Post by mgkimsal »

dlss wrote: post #90
jseliger wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you really wanna claim that Apple has an equally confusing product lineup compared to other manufactures? That’s a quite daring claim (and also some impressive misleading quoting you are doing there). Apple doesn’t ask you to decide based on non-sensical marketing blabber like that. They use it, sure, but it isn’t central in the decision process of the buyer. One other point: all three Macs I've owned were ready…

What an odd way to decide which machine you'll use every day for the next year or more. A clean install is really easy -- maybe one hour if you sit and watch it, fifteen minutes if you use your old laptop while it's going... why would you let a cost of Setup time is part of the cost of a system. I'm sure that the apple machine isn't actually ready for you to use it out of the box -- if you're like most HN readers you…

Can you even do a clean install on most Windows laptops that are purchased, unless you also purchase Windows separately? Pretty much all Windows laptops I've seen since around 2003 don't come with stock Windows, but come with a 'recovery disk' which reimages the disk back to factory default - meaning, with the original crapware.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#196

Post by swombat »

mkr-hn wrote: post #191
jeza wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-conditioned to like. Interesting way of putting it, but then how exactly has Apple pre-conditioned people to like their designs? I think it's more likely that Apple's choice of aesthetic just appeal to the majority.

Depending on the population you constrain the definition of majority to.

How about "the overall human population"? That seems like a good constraint when we're talking about consumer electronics.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#197

Post by kristofferR »

aw3c2 wrote: post #181
rayiner wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not using "everyday computing" as a descriptive element in the marketing copy. It's using it as a category differentiator. Let's go laptop shopping! store.apple.com. Presented with pictures of things, with the name of the line under them. I can see (I don't even have to read or select a menu, I can just see!) two types of laptops: the Air and the Pro. One is little and the other is big. Do I want a lit…

Notebook shopping for "dummies": If you are not sure what you want, make a list of things you want to do with your laptop and ask someone who knows about computers to tell you what you would need for it (gaming -> number of decent chip names, writing and internet -> nothing matters, storing a lot of movies/games -> more than XX Gigabytes of harddisk space, video chatting -> webcam & microphone, etc) Make a checklist…

I'm a huge geek and even I would hate to do that. How can you expect that from ordinary non-geeky people?

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#198

Post by mkr-hn »

swombat wrote: post #196
mkr-hn wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the population you constrain the definition of majority to.

How about "the overall human population"? That seems like a good constraint when we're talking about consumer electronics.

Do you have evidence that Apple's products appeal to the majority of the human population? And don't do the TC thing and extrapolate from a SV coffee shop/your office. A sentiment poll would do. I'm sure one exists, but I looked around and couldn't find one. It wont help us determine how humans overall perceive Apple products, but it'll at least cover markets where they operate.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#199

Post by ecaradec »

The Apple way is to design amazing product, I do own an iphone and an ipad and I really like them. Apple does an incredible job at designing products.

But the Apple way is also to not be at conferences or shows but their own, to forbid developers to talk about the OS and to sue others companies using their patents. I really dislike Apple, if there was some other company that could do as amazing phones and tablets as they do, I would jump in their boat as quickly as possible. As a customer, I have absolutly no loyalty to Apple. Apple is like the crazy captain that is the only one that can pass the "Cap Horn". He is amazing at what he do but if he need to jettison you at anytime, he'll do it. You can't be safe near him.

I wished some PC maker should make a line of designed PC and deliver them with a raw Windows, without any crapware installed. Actually I thought about it so much that I considered doing just that. I talked about it with a friend who is an Apple fan. His opinion was that it couldn't work because PC buyier didn't care, he said they wanted blinking leds and things just like that and that they actually like crapware. I might reconsider my idea seeing comments there.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#200

Post by nkassis »

swombat wrote: post #196
mkr-hn wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the population you constrain the definition of majority to.

How about "the overall human population"? That seems like a good constraint when we're talking about consumer electronics.

I don't know, when I don't think Apple products are as successful in the Asian markets for example. That could many things but maybe they don't like the look.
Post reply on HN