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The New Apple Advantage

daringfireball.net

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Re: The New Apple Advantage

#281

Post by YooLi »

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…

The iTunes GDB brouhaha was in 2004. Before that you could run iTunes under GDB and in fact Apple had a dev doc showing you how to. It turned out that it was quite easy to get around the PT_DENY_ATTACH system call. You could still run every other Apple app under GDB. It's not hard to see why Apple would have that restriction placed on iTunes.

So if I take your word on your story, that since that day in 2004 when you supposedly discovered you couldn't run iTunes under GDB and you vehemently swore off Apple, and it now being 2011 when you've finally found a good laptop, you've used shitty laptops for 7 years? All for something that 1. was easily skirted around, 2. Anyone could see Apple's motivation for doing so.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#282

Post by kleptco »

armandososa wrote: post #95
socratic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to make this point below in a more subtle way, but you take on the issue more directly. Gruber's arguments never make any sense. Historically, he changes his opinions more or less based on what Apple is currently doing. He adds little value, and it seems clear that he's making a lot of money as a pro-Apple cheerleader from his blog posts. (Which is fine, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't make him a good news…

Could we possibly, as a community, just agree that a blacklist of Gruber posts is good for us? If I am to be considered to be part of that community then no, I can't agree with that. I actually like quite a lot the way he writes even if I don't agree with him most of the time. In fact, I think the community has already agreed that they like Daring Fireball posts, otherwise it wouldn't be on the front page. We can agr…

DF is an evangelist for the Apple religion, so he reliably brings out the true believers. This stuff might be entertaining but it's certainly not informative. BTW, this is part of the diabolical genius of Apple - it is not a consumer choice, it is belief system.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#283

Post by jarek »

glenra wrote: post #144
jarek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flights from SFO to Hong Kong / Shenzen area sound difficult to come by...

Yep. Depending on the airline you might do direct SFO->Hong Kong or there'd be a stop in Tokyo (Narita) or some other inconvenient location. It was one or two flights a day, not every couple of hours. Heck, I'll bet it's not a lot better now. let's take a look! Suppose I want to fly on United to Hong Kong next Friday. Kayak tells me that if I miss the one that leaves at 1pm (direct flight - total time 14 hours 5 minu…

Um, I'm not entirely convinced that a high-level Apple employee on critical business would be restricted to any particular airline. If you're willing to pay, between SFO, LAX, and YVR you should be able to find a flight heading for southern China in any next four hours, except maybe at 12:30 AM.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#284

Post by jgh »

Had a similar experience about a month ago when my wife said she wanted a new laptop for school, but wanted it small and light.

So she thought Netbook. I told her she'd be pretty unhappy with a netbook's performance. So I began looking for an "ultraportable" laptop in the 11" range that was nice and light/small for her, but still fast enough to have the performance she would expect and be happy with.

I considered the Lenovo X220 or whatever it was, it was on sale from like $1400 or whatever to $900, but unavailable in any stores around here and she really wanted to see it first. There is an Acer(?) one that just came out, but it was like $1700 or so. The new MBA? $1000 and does exactly what she wants. I was pretty shocked to find that the MacBook Air was the most reasonably priced laptop in that size range.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#285

Post by jarek »

yardie wrote: post #176
gergles wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy, isn't it? Apple would never charge for an upgrade from a shitty screen on a $1000+ laptop. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40663/2011-09-09_2245.png

The point is the Lenovo screen doesn't say what Premium gets you. Only that it is a $50 option. Your pic has glossy, Hi-res glossy, and hi-res matte.

To be fair, briefly explaining the value of an IPS to those not familiar with it is not trivial. If they just put "IPS" instead of "premium" they'd be rightly maligned for using meaningless acronyms. I suppose something like "IPS technology for truer colours" might work, but...

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#286

Post by jarek »

Artagra wrote: post #230
padobson wrote: post #212

If you're going to attack Gruber for being an Apple apologist to the point of utter irrationality, then you don't want to attack the substance of this post, but rather its use in supporting his thesis: Apple is the best run business in the world. More specifically to this post: Apple sells laptops better than anyone else. I refute it thus: http://m.techcrunch.com/2011/07/14/apple-continues-slow-but-... Apple is a dis…

You need to remember that Apple decides to avoid certain markets (want a laptop less than $1000? Apple won't sell it to you). Also, sales do not equal profit. I think Apple is hugely successful, both in terms of selling computers to individuals (Vast majority of Apple sales are above $1000, Apple has a 90% market share of retail PCs sold that are above 90% [1]) And they are hugely profitable [2]. 1: http://macdailyne…

What share of the retail PC market is the over $1000 part? 90% of, say, 20% still wouldn't be much.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#287

Post by henrymazza »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #227
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…

> "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.

It's funny, it's the most Macbook like layout I've ever seen on a PC!

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#288

Post by bane »

illumin8 wrote: post #165
bane wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're in violent agreement. But we can summarize the vast majority of Grubers posts thusly: "Something about Apple = Great" then generate a dozen or so threads of nothing but either fawning praise for Gruber or the same repeated complaints about his bias. At this point Gruber posts and the follow up "conversation" (I'm using it charitably at this point) are something one could probably machine generate, then…

If you can write a bot that posts cogent arguments in favor of Apple products, you can put Gruber out of a job. Kill two birds with one stone!

Now that's not a fair competition! If you drop the requirement for "cogent" and make it equal then I could probably muster something up.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#289

Post by prewett »

nkassis wrote: post #200
swombat wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hear China has a 20% Apple tax, as they are classified as luxury goods. Also, RMB -> US$ is 6.5:1, so assuming that the price is in US$, Apple products cost 6.5 times more from an economic standpoint. I hear that apartments in Beijing are 2000-4000 RMB/month. A MacBook Air at $999 is about 6500 RMB, so that's 1.5 to 3 months' rent (plus the 20% luxury tax). $1000 is probably not anywhere near 3 months' rent for us.

So I don't think it's the looks. If a MacBook Air were priced at 2000 RMB, I bet they'd be really successful in the largest Asian market.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#290

Post by aw3c2 »

kristofferR wrote: post #197
aw3c2 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They can always just pick the one that looks best.
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