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IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

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Re: IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

#181

Post by greedo »

kayoone wrote: post #124

The thing is, every company in the comsumer PC space would go the exact same route as Apple if they could. Look at Dell, HP etc trying to mimic Apples every move in the consumer computing space. Microsoft doing an AppStore model in Windows 8 etc. If its not Apple, somebody else would gladly take its place and it might be the fate of any of todays most popular consumer computing company. Now of course you can still us…

I'm old. I remember back in the 70's, a neighbor of my grandparents who was building his own color TV. This was probably around 1973, and I think it might have been a HeathKit. I thought that was the coolest thing! Unsurprisingly, there weren't a lot of people building their own TVs.

I've paid my dues, physically building servers, installing various BSDs from stacks of CDs, fighting with compilers on Solaris x86, queuing my jobs on my university's PDP11. Now I'm content to just use OSX, or RHEL, or even AIX if required. But I continually try to avoid transferring my own preferences into a jeremiad against whatever's popular.

Apple will continue to do well as long as it serves its customers. It's gone from being Apple Computers Inc. to Apple. That's a hint of where they see their focus being.

Re: IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

#182

Post by rjbond3rd »

knightni wrote: post #135
kitsune_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I own a Lenovo Thinkpad x220. It's perfect (for me). Its keyboard is reason alone that it beats the MacBook Pro. On top of that, I bought it back in 2011 for around 960 USD (converted). The configuration included an i5-2520M, 8GB of RAM, 320GB HDD, an 80GB m-SATA SSD and an upgrade to a 3-year on-site warranty.

I really love my work thinkpad, except I'm not a big fan of trackpoints, and the touchpad is truly hateful. For work that's fine because I'm always docked, but I probably wouldn't consider them for personal use for that reason alone.

Have you tried changing the stock rubber cap to the vastly more ergonomic concave model? It gives you much finer control, effortlessly. It's a popular aftermarket part available for a couple dollars on auction sites.

Re: IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

#183

Post by rayiner »

microtonal wrote: post #90
shimfish wrote: post #37

It's simply stunning to me to see how long it's taken the computer geeks to work this out. Apple stopped making toys for you over a decade ago and you are only just realising it now? I guess this is another consequence of the filter bubble. As all we read on the internet is the opinion of other geeks, we forget that geeks are hopelessly outnumbered by normals and they are the ones Apple is targeting and reaping the r…

There is also a contingent of UNIX users who use Mac OS X pragmatically. I have never had the illusion that Apple wasn't a consumer device company at heart. But Macs have been great UNIX workstations for the last decade or so. Once they make more serious attempts to turn their laptop line into 'iOS computers', I'll switch back to Linux or BSD. But for now, it is good hardware with a good UNIX operating system.

Apple has made no attempts to turn Macs into "iOS." it's copied some features, like full screen, but the system is as developer friendly as ever (and more unix compatible than ever).

Re: IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

#184

Post by smacktoward »

shimfish wrote: post #37

It's simply stunning to me to see how long it's taken the computer geeks to work this out. Apple stopped making toys for you over a decade ago and you are only just realising it now? I guess this is another consequence of the filter bubble. As all we read on the internet is the opinion of other geeks, we forget that geeks are hopelessly outnumbered by normals and they are the ones Apple is targeting and reaping the r…

We forget that geeks are hopelessly outnumbered by normals and they are the ones Apple is targeting and reaping the rewards.

This was always Steve Jobs vision and it's not like it was a secret.

Nah, Steve Jobs' vision wasn't to make computers for "normals." That was Jef Raskin's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin) vision. Steve Jobs' vision was to make computers for Steve Jobs.

Re: IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

#186

Post by rayiner »

pjmlp wrote: post #161
microtonal wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a contingent of UNIX users who use Mac OS X pragmatically. I have never had the illusion that Apple wasn't a consumer device company at heart. But Macs have been great UNIX workstations for the last decade or so. Once they make more serious attempts to turn their laptop line into 'iOS computers', I'll switch back to Linux or BSD. But for now, it is good hardware with a good UNIX operating system.

When I was at CERN, back in 2004 they made a session at the IT building showing us how great it would be to use Mac OS X as UNIX workstation. Those days are long gone it seems.

How so? Nothing is changed.

Re: IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

#187

Post by ebbv »

Another day another one of these absurd, self-righteous blog posts.

What's hilarious to me is that only Apple draws this kind of posturing and absurdity.

You don't see blog posts like this about Dell or Sony. But you DID see posts like this about Microsoft in the '90s.

It's really more about standing up and decrying whatever company is on top than anything else. People feel like by slagging on the top tech company they are taking a stance as an independent, righteous, thoughtful person.

When in reality they are taking the most obvious, boring position available.

Re: IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

#188

Post by comex »

DigitalJack wrote: post #68
aneth4 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is so wrong with iCloud? It does exactly what I want it to do - back up my phone and sync my data between devices. Maybe people try to use it for more than this?

I can tell you what is wrong with iCloud. It's supposed to be a sort of magical data sharing, but apparently it's only partially magical when it comes to OSX. Go ahead, make a keynote deck, or numbers spreadsheet. Save it to "the cloud," now go look at your ipad or iphone. Where the hell is it? So much for magic. Sharing is a royal pain in the ass with iOS. The gyrations I have to go through to move data from an ios…

It's indeed hard to defend the lagginess, but since the praise is going to Google, it's worth noting that iCloud predates Drive by quite a while, and as far as I know, although you can use a combination of Drive, Google Cloud Messaging, and the Backup API to get a similar experience on Android, it's relatively complicated.

Re: IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

#189

Post by w0utert »

jasonlotito wrote: post #172
w0utert wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you have any cognant and articulate arguments why this guys opinion (which I happen to currently share) is a stupid opinion to have, by all means, I'm interested... Nowhere did I say his opinion was stupid, I'm not one to judge opinions. All I'm saying is that I don't see any value in reading it, particularly not in the context of HN. The cognant and articulate argument (?) here is that the internet has plenty…

> All I'm saying is that I don't see any value in reading it, particularly not in the context of HN. OT: Do not read the article. Furthermore, do not comment on the article, nor should yo up vote it. If you feel the article violates some aspect of HN, flag it. However, if your reason for commenting is to just say: "I don't see any value in reading it, particularly not in the context of HN." then you are not contribut…

>> This is not an attack. Merely an observation. You value the quality of HN. Be the quality. Don't be the problem.

I agree with most of what you wrote, except this part. Maybe I'm being naive but I believe discussion about stuff you don't like about a community-driven platform like HN might actually improve it. To me, the fact that articles like this hit HN more and more often, is separate from the discussion you can have about it.

>> People enjoy different things. You do not want to judge, so don't

You are twisting my words. I don't want to judge opinions, but that doesn't mean I can't have my own, and it also doesn't mean I can't express them in relation to the stuff that gets upvoted on HN. In everything I wrote about this article don't think I've passed any judgement on the author's opinion itself. You say 'people enjoy different things' as if that justifies anything that gets posted on HN. Lots of people enjoy reading about ponies, but you don't see a lot of articles about ponies on HN, and I don't think many people think that's a bad thing.

All I'm saying is that in the time I've been visiting HN, the information value of the articles upvoted on HN is going down. If this continues, before you know it HN will be like Gizmodo with a really crappy layout. Telling me to 'just don't read the articles' or 'just don't upvote them' is a pretty negative conclusion to draw from this discussion don't you think?

Re: IRecognition: I am no longer Apple's Target Market

#190

Post by knightni »

rjbond3rd wrote: post #182
knightni wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really love my work thinkpad, except I'm not a big fan of trackpoints, and the touchpad is truly hateful. For work that's fine because I'm always docked, but I probably wouldn't consider them for personal use for that reason alone.

Have you tried changing the stock rubber cap to the vastly more ergonomic concave model? It gives you much finer control, effortlessly. It's a popular aftermarket part available for a couple dollars on auction sites.

I haven't, actually - thanks, I'll take a look.

I'm very attached to really good, big touchpads though - losing gesture support is hard!

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