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The New Apple Advantage

daringfireball.net

251–260 of 354 posts

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#251
post #129
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be better if something I did want to read was in its place.

Fact: HN would cease to exist if everything a minority didn't want to see was blacklisted.

Fact: It isn't necessary for a majority to want something for it to make the top slot on HN.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#252

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…

> "it's a Thinkpad, but it has a shitty keyboard and a ... The "Thinkpad Edge" and the X120e and X1 actually have very nice keyboards, arguably nicer than the usual scissor switches. Except that the layout is messed up.

[deleted]

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#253
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With #2 you're being disingenuous. All computers need some work, but PCs require much more work to uninstall crapware. As for #3, only one of the laptops you listed fits comfortably in my girlfriend's purse. As for the Air's hard drive? She has zero complaints, and I doubt her (or many others) would notice tiny differences in sequential read times (which is, I think, a measure of app-opening performance).

Okay, last reply and then I leave you guys to the fate of irrational happiness paying more for worse hardware. re 2: It takes an hour to reinstall windows. If you swap out the hard drive (so a vertex 3 in a MBP), this is something you have to do with an apple anyway. One hour is not " much more work ". Don't kid yourself. re 3: If the MBA owner does anything CPU intensive they will likely profit by upgrading to the x…

That's the 2010 Macbook Air, which did indeed have a brutally slow Core 2 Duo. It would be more useful to look at the mid-2011 model, which has a processor three generations newer (due to some sort of tedious dispute between Intel and NVidia, there were never embedded NVidia chipsets for Nehalem, so Apple waited until Intel GPUs got good enough, in Sandy Bridge; they never made a Nehalem Air).

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#254
post #17

It's hardly the first time logistics has been touted as the key competitive advantage of a company. Take Nokia for example. Massive economies of scale, designs taking maximum advantage of that, and incredible supply chain management[1]. All this kept them going for a while even after the wheels fell off, but by now they pretty much have no logistical advantage left. Apple pundits seem to think that Apple's (undeniabl…

I have yet to hear anyone say that Apple place at the top will be permanent, apart from you. I do have a problem with people setting up straw men to argue with.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#255
post #106
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple had to send their engineers over to Intel to teach them how to build the chips they wanted for the Airs. They wanted lower Ghz.

The same Intel that came up with the first Pentium M? Yeah, I'm calling bull shit on this story.

While Apple probably didn't help Intel design the Core 2 Duo (they only had serious in-house processor design stuff recently, and it's ARM-oriented), it's quite possible they exerted pressure on them to make such a thing. The Core Duo and Core 2 Duo were a _major_ turnaround for Intel; they essentially abandoned the gigahertz at whatever price doctrine they'd been pursuing since the P4.

The Core Duo, in particular, was essentially _only_ found in Macs; it had very limited deployment elsewhere. It fits very well with the circumstances of the Intel switchover; Apple couldn't have used the P4M for its laptops (far too power-hungry vs the G4), or the PM (barely faster than the G4 at all, used somewhat more power).

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#256
post #27

I've ranted about this previously ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1419896 ). Most manufacturers have vast and bewildering product lines. Treat yourself to the Asus line-up: http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/AllProducts/ Most manufacturers have half-hearted and short lived attempts at introducing premium lines or models (e.g. Dell's Adamo). Buying an expensive product only to have the manufacturer discontinue the li…

I ranted about this too recently here - Apple's biggest business advantage is the trust/faith people have in the brand to remain consistent, probably even moreso than innovative. People will always come up with new stuff - other pc manufacturers do it all the time. However, there's not a long term vision of consistency to the other manufacturers, possibly because they are, in fact manufacturers, not end to end design…

While this is becoming the case, it's fairly new. Back in the day, it was well-known that buying a first-gen Apple product was extremely risky; note the problems with the original while iBook (the G3 one), the original Macbook Air, and so forth.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#257
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be better if something I did want to read was in its place.

Yeah, but you still wanted to read it badly enough that you came here to comment 3 posts deep. It's funny how someone can hate a certain type of article so badly that they will read it and comment about how badly they hate it. I mean, why go to all the effort?

I know right? It's like every time I see a post to daringfireball, I open it, hoping for some interesting reading -- Gruber is actually a very capable writer. And on occasion I do find something enlightening. But the rest of the time it's like a Rick Roll...with the HN collective pointing at me going, "HA! Got you!". And I guess that's gotten under my skin after a while since I can't understand why these Gruber posts are tolerated, even encouraged in some cases, while links to cats dancing or actual rick rolls are discouraged.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an entirely fair comparison - the x220 is currently substantially reduced in sales in NA, to the tune of over $400. It's not a reflection of the usual price of the machine, or its price in the rest of the world.

Reasonable, but wrong. The Lenovo site always has sales running. Bullshit, but effective bullshit.

Not in europe, as far as I can see. It's also particularly difficult if you want a particular model, as they certainly don't always discount the x220, for example.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#259
post #81

> It’s even worse if I just browse without searching. The options I get are just… meaningless. Yes, I want “Everyday Computing,” so I want an Inspiron. But hang on, I also want “Design & Performance,” so I want an XPS. Wait a second, I want “Thin & Powerful,” too. This is the crux of the problem with all of Apple's competitors, in the PC business and in mobile. Why choose when you can have everything? Apple's lineup…

I'm a geek and I couldn't care less what WiFi chipset is in my laptop. I was shopping for a ThinkPad X220 for someone, and it had the option of the regular screen or the "premium" screen for $50 more. They don't tell you what the "premium" screen is or why you'd want it. I presume the regular screen is shitty. Can you even imagine Apple offering such an option? A $1000+ laptop with a shitty screen, with a $50 option…

Apple actually do do this; it's a resolution bump.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#260
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same Intel that came up with the first Pentium M? Yeah, I'm calling bull shit on this story.

While Apple probably didn't help Intel design the Core 2 Duo (they only had serious in-house processor design stuff recently, and it's ARM-oriented), it's quite possible they exerted pressure on them to make such a thing. The Core Duo and Core 2 Duo were a _major_ turnaround for Intel; they essentially abandoned the gigahertz at whatever price doctrine they'd been pursuing since the P4. The Core Duo, in particular, w…

Yes. The grandfather's post claimed Apple's CPU engineers were involved, and it is that characterization I object to.

Incidentally, as I own a Thinkpad with a Core Duo CPU (July 2004 T60p, SL8VN), I think it might have been more accurate to emphasize "essentially" rather than "only."

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