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The New Apple Advantage

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Re: The New Apple Advantage

#321

Post by kitsune_ »

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.

Apple products are classical status symbols. Interesting to me is the idea that aesthetically, the original iMacs were worlds apart from the current models and it took Apple more than one try to find a classical design that worked.

The current Zeitgeist seems to favor classical designs. This is different to the 80's or the 70's where the intellectual and creative class were much more anti-capitalist. To me it feels like it's pre-68 again.

Current life models are schizophrenic. On the one hand people plaster their agency's rooms with aesthetically pleasing objects, Eames chairs, iMacs, Tizio Lamps to please themselves and their corporate clients. On the other they think they are enlightened rebels, aware of climate change, the 3rd world, and the dangers of nuclear energy.

I think there's no radicalism any more, no ideologies, no visions. In reality, I think this generation is full of conservative tagalongs, appeasers, yuppies in disguise.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#322

Post by slowpoke »

eropple wrote: post #314
slowpoke wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why you are being downvoted, because it's the truth. It's exactly what Apple does. While yes, no one should need to understand how a TV/Car/Computer/ works under the hood, how is that an argument to stop people who WANT to know ?

You're free to learn. Just not with their software. You know that going in, it's not a secret if you've done your due diligence regarding these things about which you purportedly care. Personally, I grew out of computers-as-ideology a long time ago. I'll trade the ability to run GDB on my media player the zero times I'll ever want to do it for a fantastic user experience for the other 100% of the time I'm using my co…

> Just not with their software.

Again, why? It's still not an argument to hide what the program does on your computer. To put it bluntly, it's bullshit and you know it.

> I'll trade the ability to run GDB on my media player the zero times I'll ever want to do it for a fantastic user experience

That's completely besides the point - this has nothing to do with the "user experience" (which is quite the opposite of "fantastic", but that's my opinion), and everything to do with the fact that Apple restricts your freedom.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#323

Post by dlss »

biot wrote: post #180
dlss wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply. It cleared up my misunderstanding -- I think HN readers don't do a good job thinking when it comes to Apple stories. (for those curious here is the breakdown of why pbreit is wrong: 1. The guy I was replying to is by definition an HNer, and was talking about buying an air over a sony SB due to reinstall concerns. My "how odd" was in reply / directly to him. 2. Macs aren't ready to use out of the…

Regarding #2: plug in your previous Mac's Time Machine drive and it takes two minutes to initiate a restore. All your apps and data are restored automatically for you while you sit back and have lunch. What's that process like on Windows?

Windows also has backup solutions. If you use one of those setup time is similarly decreased. Please google first next time.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#324

Post by slowpoke »

rbanffy wrote: post #309
slowpoke wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people may have been spoiled by operating systems like Linux or BSD, where you can look up each and every line of code that comprises the whole software stack I'm quite sorry, but what? Spoiled by having the freedom we should have for every technology? It's kind of like saying that "Some people are spoiled by having civil liberties, but most people don't care about those".

> It's kind of like saying that That was the point ;-)

I might have misunderstood you then. :)

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#325

Post by dlss »

achompas wrote: post #245
dlss wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're here linking benchmark charts, because as a power user you believe power users represent a large subset of computer owners. We don't. We're in the minority. My girlfriend, and everyone else in the humongous non-power-user subset, does not care about how a Vertex 3 can bury an Air's SSD. She doesn't know the Vertex exists! If she did, she'd probably ask why she should spend $300 on it if her Air already works a…

> implying that power users are the only ones who should think about performance.

1.0 second is about the limit for the user's flow of thought to stay uninterrupted. This turns out to make a big difference in productivity. See http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html

I'm talking about anyone who values their time. You're talking about secretaries looking at cat pictures. You're also doing that on a thread started when a HNer said he purchases laptops via the same method.

Please:

1. Read the whole thread to ensure your "points" weren't already made elsewhere

2. Consider not replying when you don't have any information not obviously inferable from your previous post.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#326

Post by kristianp »

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…

One thing not mentioned is how hard it is to buy a non-mac laptop with higher than 1366x768 resolution. That's just not enough vertical lines for modern UIs. When is the standard resolution going to get higher again?

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#327

Post by dlss »

LaGrange wrote: post #307
dlss wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my point: you wouldn't on a MBA like computer. You would on a high-performance small formfactor laptop like the x220. See my other replies for more information

No, you'd do it on a Mac Pro, or, if you want to try and save money, on a PC hidden in a closet somewhere. You'll need a PC hidden in a closet somewhere as soon as you need a cluster anyway. Same for compilation, Xcode even makes it easier for you to set up a distributed build. Now, there are reasons to get a strong laptop. A good one is if you need some serious power on the go. Are you running that bioinformatics so…

No, you'd use EC2 servers to avoid doing your own maintenance, and you'd do so as a last resort because GUIs are useful and remote development is laggy. http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#328

Post by jrockway »

salgernon wrote: post #241
antihero wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is utterly fucked up. How dare they say you can't look at the code that is running on the hardware you purchased.

gdb /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes (gdb) fb ptrace (gdb) run [ breaks at ptrace ] (gdb) return [ type 'y' to return to the parent, skipping the call ] pirate your music or whatever you wanted to do. I'm not sure who this was supposed to prevent from doing what, although I'm sure that it wouldn't be in there if there wasn't a contractual obligation to do something for the people providing them with con…

If you skip the ptrace call, you can't "pirate your music or whatever you wanted to do". The whole point of running GDB is to call ptrace.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#329

Post by SamReidHughes »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #311
SamReidHughes wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

I really love my MacBook Pro's keyboard. It's clean, with just as much keys as I need. I hate laptops with 110 keys, most are useless keys like page up/down, home/end, print screen, ... If I need to navigate to next page (which I often do), I just hold down 'fn' and press the down arrow. End? 'cmd+right arrow'. Admittedly, Print screen is a little harder to remember for the average user ('cmd+shift+3/4'), but MacBook…

> If I need to navigate to next page (which I often do), I just hold down 'fn' and press the down arrow. End? 'cmd+right arrow'.

So you have to use two hands instead of one, which is great, because two is better than one. Do you disable right clicking on the trackpad and use command+click for that, too?

> Thinkpad's keyboard is much better than that the average PC laptop keyboard, except for page up/down keys getting in the way all the time.

Yes, I often have that problem, where I'm in the middle of typing something, and suddenly I think, there's a Page Up key on this keyboard. Just knowing that the Page Up key is sitting there, all on its lonesome in the top right corner, waiting, such a naughty little key that wants to snuggle in the brief touch of scar tissue at the end of my pinky, distracted me for 15 minutes when typing this reply.

> Oh and I absolutely hate the media keys on laptops...

This is where you reveal yourself to be a crazy person.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#330

Post by alastairpat »

ambler0 wrote: post #237
alastairpat wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been reading Gruber for a couple of years now and I really believe that it's not nearly as critical/analytical or interesting as it used to be. While previously he would write much more in-depth articles (often of a technical nature relating to OS X or Cocoa/Obj-C) now I feel he is really just writing what his audience wants to hear and, what's more, 95% of the time simply linking with a sentence of commentary.…

"Some of his links are interesting but for the most part they're either criticising one extreme or showering praise on the other." I tend to agree, but I don't think this particular piece is an example of that. It frustrates me that the HN crowd has such a hard time rationally discussing Apple (let alone something written by, gasp , GRUBER)

I've only been active on HN for a few months now and didn't realise there was such animosity towards Gruber, although I had picked up on the Apple discussions - sorry if I was feeding this.
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