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Apple's Middle Age

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Re: Apple's Middle Age

#51

Post by torstenvl »

jasonsync wrote: post #19

Apple’s growth is almost entirely inwardly-focused when it comes to its user-base: higher prices, more services, and more devices I find myself increasingly stuck in an Apple 2011 - 2013 universe. For starters Apple has not yet provided a viable upgrade for my primary desktop machine: a 2011 Mac Mini (2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 with 8 GB ram and SSD). The specs on the current 2018 Mac Mini lineup are considerable…

Agreed. I switched whole-heartedly in 2006, when the combination of Unix, mainstream UI, professional apps, and "It Just Works" showed a lot of promise. The fact that my 2006 MacBook Pro lasted for six years earned a lot of loyalty.

But there doesn't appear to be any strategy or overarching vision anymore. Changes are introduced haphazardly, almost schizophrenically. There is zero focus on software or hardware quality. "Design" at Apple is no longer about the marriage of tech and artistry, but about tech being trumped by artistry.

- Make the keyboard work better? Maybe marginally with Gen 2 butterfly switches, but it's still mostly about the "wow" factor of the Touch Bar.

- Make iTunes work correctly? Nah. Just change the UI.

- Extensive pre-release regression testing for High Sierra? Nah. Ship with root access bugs and a new wallpaper.

- Keep making best-in-class wireless routers? Nah. Not sexy enough.

Apple has abandoned the values that led it to become so rich. It is still profitable, and probably will be for some time, but eventually its wellspring of good will from past successes will run dry. Features don't matter if they don't work.

Re: Apple's Middle Age

#52

Post by simonh »

eastWestMath wrote: post #29
jasonsync wrote: post #19

Apple’s growth is almost entirely inwardly-focused when it comes to its user-base: higher prices, more services, and more devices I find myself increasingly stuck in an Apple 2011 - 2013 universe. For starters Apple has not yet provided a viable upgrade for my primary desktop machine: a 2011 Mac Mini (2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 with 8 GB ram and SSD). The specs on the current 2018 Mac Mini lineup are considerable…

I just looked on the Apple store app and you can get a Mac mini with a 3.0ghz dual core i7 and 16 gb of ram.

Sure, but the CPU offerings haven't been updated since 2014. It's only a marginal upgrade on the 2011 and 2012 models.

Re: Apple's Middle Age

#53

Post by Shikadi »

gktreop wrote: post #10
everdev wrote: post #6

My Windows devices since 97 were consistent top of the line and rarely lasted more than 2 years before they slowed to an unbearable speed. In 2012 I switched to Mac and still use the same MacBook Pro which still runs as quick as it did 6 years ago. It was a huge investment at the time but turned out to be cheaper than the 4+ Windows machine I likely would have cycled through not to mention the boot time and performan…

You switched to Mac at the same time as Moore's law was winding down, heck, my 2010 Thinkpad T410 with W10 is my everyday machine.

Just a pet peeve, Moore's law isn't tied to performance, it's tied to transistor count. Also, it has been pronounced dead every year for a very long time, but it hasn't actually been dead until the last few years, and some people might even argue that it's still not dead. Your comment is still completely relevant though, since performance increases affecting average users began to slow around then

Re: Apple's Middle Age

#54

Post by pjmlp »

everdev wrote: post #6

My Windows devices since 97 were consistent top of the line and rarely lasted more than 2 years before they slowed to an unbearable speed. In 2012 I switched to Mac and still use the same MacBook Pro which still runs as quick as it did 6 years ago. It was a huge investment at the time but turned out to be cheaper than the 4+ Windows machine I likely would have cycled through not to mention the boot time and performan…

My personal laptop now with Windows 10 Pro, was bought in 2009 just as Windows 7 was barely new.

Still going strong.

Re: Apple's Middle Age

#55

Post by baxtr »

adventured wrote: post #20
jballanc wrote: post #8

Any article that speculates on Apple's future viability in the market would be remiss not to mention Apple's unprecedented cash hoard. Currently, Apple is sitting on $126B in net tangible assets. With 100,000 full-time equivalent employees, that means that Apple could pay every one of their full-time equivalent employees (which, as a reminder, includes a large number of retail employees) an average yearly salary of $…

That's not actually how things unfold when a company gets into trouble. Your scenario is the perfect, idealized, never-happens outcome. We have dozens of historical examples at this point, from elite, massive corporations unraveling: what they basically never do, is the strictly rational idealized scenario. What actually happens is closer to chaos loaded with self-interest and stupidity by management and the board. T…

I agree, Apple is doomed. They always have been

Re: Apple's Middle Age

#56

Post by fhood »

winkeltripel wrote: post #49
fhood wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I can agree with you on this. In ~2016 I built a PC (i7, 24GB RAM, 1.5TB ssd, gtx 1080) and my 2014 17 inch mbp has slowly been closing the gap. This is probably more due to software optimizations than hardware, but things just open and close more smoothly and quickly these days on the laptop. I think the real issue is that Windows hasn't been effectively utilizing the RAM I've given it.

I've found that windows benefits from being reinstalled every once in a while. Try a fresh install of Windows 10, and see where that gets you?

I suspect you are right, but I really, really, don't want to take the time to do that.

Re: Apple's Middle Age

#57

Post by mattkrause »

energybar wrote: post #39
ekianjo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ISS is going to be de-orbited by 2020. You don't have much time left to visit it, and NASA does not operate any shuttle service anymore.

Prolonged till 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station_pr...

(You’re both missing the joke)

Re: Apple's Middle Age

#58

Post by logiclion »

everdev wrote: post #6

My Windows devices since 97 were consistent top of the line and rarely lasted more than 2 years before they slowed to an unbearable speed. In 2012 I switched to Mac and still use the same MacBook Pro which still runs as quick as it did 6 years ago. It was a huge investment at the time but turned out to be cheaper than the 4+ Windows machine I likely would have cycled through not to mention the boot time and performan…

I think the performance improvements have drastically changed due to the adoption of SSDs in Apple's line up. The Macbook Pros in the early 2012 started to incorporate them around that time. Windows laptops took awhile to catch up starting with 'ultrabooks'

Re: Apple's Middle Age

#59

Post by bhauer »

maxsilver wrote: post #31
everdev wrote: post #6

My Windows devices since 97 were consistent top of the line and rarely lasted more than 2 years before they slowed to an unbearable speed. In 2012 I switched to Mac and still use the same MacBook Pro which still runs as quick as it did 6 years ago. It was a huge investment at the time but turned out to be cheaper than the 4+ Windows machine I likely would have cycled through not to mention the boot time and performan…

That was true in the late 90s. It's not really true anymore. I built a Windows PC using parts from MicroCenter back in 2014. Core i5-4690K, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, GTX 970 running Windows 8. It was around $1400 USD at that time, if I remember correctly. It's now 2018. That same PC with all it's original hardware, is now running Windows 10 just as quickly as always. Not only is the performance still great, but my 4-year-…

Indeed. I've been using home-built PCs since the 1990s, more than a dozen in total, each with lifespans of 4 or more years (many overlapping with one another in periods of usage). Most using some flavor of Windows NT starting with NT 3.5.

In all that time, I've never experienced a computer getting slower during its usage lifetime. It's a story I have read and heard from others, but I don't know if it's real but caused by some usage behavior I don't exhibit or imagined.

I do know that in the 1990s and even more recently, but to a lesser extent, when I examined other peoples' Windows computers I would find they had installed legions of third-rate applications that were on the precipice of being malware. And this was a cascading problem because people would install something harmful to their PC such as iTunes, Quicktime, or RealPlayer and then attempt to resolve the resulting performance problem by installing a snake-oil system-tuner which in turn made matters even worse. Or they would install an anti-virus tool and their system would slow to a crawl. Unraveling all of this was never fun.

My decades of experience with Windows is that if you simply avoid harmful software, performance will remain essentially uniform. The systems do not decay by some natural process as many popular stories imply.

Re: Apple's Middle Age

#60

Post by Shikadi »

fhood wrote: post #56
winkeltripel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that windows benefits from being reinstalled every once in a while. Try a fresh install of Windows 10, and see where that gets you?

I suspect you are right, but I really, really, don't want to take the time to do that.

Windows 10 has a nice feature to "refresh" which supposedly re-installs Windows while keeping programs and settings. I haven't tried it, so no idea how well it works, but it might be worth your time
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