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Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

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Re: Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their iPhones have reached a peak, where it appears people are no longer willing to pay so much for them. They may have reached peak growth, but the numbers show that outside China (which in hindsight appears to have larger economic issues), millions of people buy iPhones. Are all the current iPhone users going to suddenly switch to Android? Very unlikely. By all accounts the XS is a great phone. If I had anything…

>You realize that Apple has so much money they can do both. Not with the same dollar. We shouldn't forget what giving money back to shareholders means. It means that Apple cannot think of anything to invest that money in that's more promising than what investors can find elsewhere. You could say it's prudent and honest. Instead of wasting all that money on stuff that never yields a return they're handing it back thei…

Again, thinking binary is incorrect here. Apple is spending 10B+/year on R&D [1]. They clearly can think of something. I guess it could be argued they should be the top R&D spender (they are trending that way), but even if they were they would still have enough money do stock buy backs and pay dividends. The amount of money they make is staggering.

Apple has traditionally not be an acquirer of large companies. I know many people argue for them to do some big acquisition. I'm not sure that's a good idea.

Apple Maps specifically has improved a lot since release. I can't remember the last time I used Google Maps. Apple is also collecting street view data [2].

Apple has plenty of areas to improve, but it is not from the lack of R&D spending.

[1] http://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/MCeJl2Yc?from...

[2] https://maps.apple.com/vehicles/

Re: Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also comparing OSX to windows, you can actually mostly drive windows from the keyboard without resorting to hand warping shortcut combinations reminiscent of Megadrive Streetfighter cheat codes. As a long-time Win user, having wrist pain, this is the killer thing for me. Everything about a Mac feels extremely unergonomic to me. Many things are not doable from keyboard at all. AFAIU most of the Mac developers do all…

You may find Control-F2 helpful. It focuses the menubar, at which point you can navigate the menus by typing/arrow key, Spacebar to focus, and Enter to select. It helps me avoid a lot of mouse usage. ...come to think of it, I should probably give that a binding on my ErgoDox somewhere.

Cmd-Shift-/ triggers menubar search too, which lets you just type the name of the menu entry you want and hit enter.

Re: Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

#224

Apple appears to be coming to some sort of head at this point. This is speaking as someone heavily invested in Apple products and shares. Their iPhones have reached a peak, where it appears people are no longer willing to pay so much for them. They are too damn expensive, with nothing to justify their costs. I am one of the morons who upgraded to the XS, but only because I needed the 512GB storage. If not for the inc…

And here I am switching to Mac after a lifetime on Windows. All the things you say about Apple might be true, but the alternative is substantially worse. Microsoft dropped the ball way more than Apple ever did with Windows 10. And hardware quality among laptop manufacturers is frustratingly inconsistent, even within the same brand. My last Lenovo worked great for 5 years despite being a low end machine. My much more…

> the alternative is substantially worse

There’re other alternatives than Windows. I’ve been using Linux near-exclusively on my personal machines for almost two decades now, and I’m quite happy with it. Then there are the BSDs.

Re: Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

#225
From the article: "Issues with the way the new chip synchronizes timing causes dropouts and glitches in the audio stream. (It seems basically all USB 2.0 audio interfaces will be impacted. This of course unfortunately leads users to blame their interface manufacturer, but the fault lies with Apple.)"

As someone who works with a lot of pro audio gear on the Mac, I can say that it's hard to describe what a show stopper this is. Glitches and dropouts are a catastrophic problem for almost anything involving sound, and they're right: If you're having those kinds of problems, you run immediately to the interface manufacturer.

Still, I'm not sure many people using pro-grade audio interfaces (mine cost almost as much as the computer itself) are still using the USB 2.0 bus. Thunderbolt has been pretty enthusiastically embraced by the industry.

Re: Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to (smart)phones, you don't really have much choice. You either consent to being exploited by Google, or you pay a pound of flesh to Apple. As for the pricing of the phones, nobody is forcing you to upgrade every year. I've done that ever since the original iPhone came out, but when i bought the X, i also decided to only upgrade every 2-3 years to justify the cost. MacBooks are a sad story though. I'm "…

True. We need a 3rd player on this market that does not do surveillance and produces products with reasonable price. A business focused phone would be great. There are very few applications that you could get away.

Business focused and reasonable price usually don't go together.

Anyway, you had Blackberry which was well regarded in the business world. But they are losing to Apple and Android, and now a Blackberry is just another Android smartphone. They still provide physical keyboards though.

On the consumer side, you had Windows Phone that tried to compete with Android. It was actually a nice OS, coming from a companies that did smartphones before Apple, and with one of the best regarded manufacturers at the time (Nokia) on their side. It didn't work.

The other alternatives include the Samsung backed Tizen, and now Sailfish OS.

All that to say that we had some attractive alternatives, backed by major players, and yet, no one wants to leave iOS and Android, even when provided with a compatibility layer.

Re: Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

#227
post #99

Interesting as I don't seem to have this issue on the two 2018 MBP I've had. Originally I had a release day i7/32GB/1TB/560X model but it had a power/charging issue so Apple replaced it with an i9 model which has been perfect. I have worried a lot about the keyboard breaking but so far it has been fine. I actually really like working on it now with the exception of the TouchBar which is the most useless change to key…

It seems like people are comparing current Apple products with a mythology of Apple products that never actually existed -- an invented fiction where in the past the hardware and software was the height of perfection.

Every Apple device and software product ever has had a number of issues, many significant. As you mentioned, however, the competitors hardly do better -- the litany of absolutely devastating faults with Dell devices I've experienced (paramount being that they never lasted more than a small fraction of the promised battery life) makes Apple look untouchable.

Apple should do better. For one MBPs should have something better than a cheesy 1 year warranty, especially given the fears about keyboards et al -- it essentially forces an AppleCare+ purchase. But the claims that this is a deadly direction seem dubious.

Re: Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

#228

Honestly, I'm really disappointed with Apple for pro use lately. 1) not testing stuff thoroughly - the i9 mbpro overheating saga ("fixed" by firmware upgrade), this T2 usb2 dropout (which probably isn't fixable at all) - unacceptable. 2) releasing significant GPU upgrade 2 months after a flagship mbpro release - I and many others were screwed by buying the latest and greatest (the most expensive laptop I've ever boug…

Which mbpro are you referring to on the GPU upgrade? Ive not been keeping up. I will add that the T2 chip seems to be a solution looking to create a problem. I had a lot of grief with my iMac Pro and the T2 chip causing kernel panics. I had to re install Mac OS and that seemed to resolve it for the most part. I use my imac pro for audio so Im thankful I have a thunderbolt interface. If I had spent that 5k for a space grey paperweight I think I would be pretty furious.

Re: Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

#229
post #228

Honestly, I'm really disappointed with Apple for pro use lately. 1) not testing stuff thoroughly - the i9 mbpro overheating saga ("fixed" by firmware upgrade), this T2 usb2 dropout (which probably isn't fixable at all) - unacceptable. 2) releasing significant GPU upgrade 2 months after a flagship mbpro release - I and many others were screwed by buying the latest and greatest (the most expensive laptop I've ever boug…

Which mbpro are you referring to on the GPU upgrade? Ive not been keeping up. I will add that the T2 chip seems to be a solution looking to create a problem. I had a lot of grief with my iMac Pro and the T2 chip causing kernel panics. I had to re install Mac OS and that seemed to resolve it for the most part. I use my imac pro for audio so Im thankful I have a thunderbolt interface. If I had spent that 5k for a space…

The 2018 Macbook Pro (introducted in July) got an update with Vega graphics in October

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/30/18042572/apple-amd-vega-...

Re: Apple’s Latest Macs Have a Serious Audio Glitching Bug

#230
post #7

That's a weird glitch, and generally I'm not a fan of apple hardware (I think it's overpriced, that their keyboards suck, that they don't have enough ports, and I don't enjoy working in osx), but this article comes off as almost biblically haughty. Apple should have tests around clock updates affecting external audio quality? I mean, maybe after this bug being discovered, sure, but before, was that a connection that…

Reliable low-latency audio is the reason why musicians buy Macs. Linux isn't an option, because the proprietary software we need generally isn't available for Linux. Windows is massively problematic because of the Deferred Procedure Call mechanism - badly written device drivers can steal priority from the audio device driver, causing dropouts and glitches in audio playback and recording. If you're going to use a Wind…

This. And I think everyone who works with pro audio is stuck with, "Well, where else are we supposed to go?" We'd switch platforms tomorrow if we thought we had a better option.

It's also important to understand the context. We spend thousands of dollars on near-field monitors, cables, interfaces, and other kinds of external hardware. If it's a fully rigged up studio, we're talking millions. The "Apple tax" is not really an issue for us, because it's one of the least expensive purchases in our tool chain. I own plugins that are more expensive than the laptop I use to run them.

Edit: You could argue that the people who are really getting burned here are the "prosumer" bedroom producers. That has to be put in quotes, because some of these "bedroom" folks are basically pro-level producers. I'm sure there are lots of people running USB 2.0 interfaces for an in-the-box rig with Ableton or whatever. They are paying the Apple tax, and they deserve way better.

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