That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people • Hacker News Board

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#571

Post by justaaron » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 9:40 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #251

ar0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on the interpretation of Phil Schiller's statement. You are basically arguing "for many people an iPad is a better computing device than a PC because there is less that can go wrong with it". Which I think is a very valid point, however it does not hinge on how old these PCs are - your argument works just as well for new PCs without properly configured backups and anti-virus protection. If you read…

> What the author of the article finds offensive - and which also put me off when watching the live presentation - was the suggestion that using old hardware is "sad". Using old hardware is sad. I work in a depressed area and we constantly fix our students computers. 5 years is a long time on a hard drive and the forced Windows 10 upgrade has been a pain to people on 5 year old hardware. Its fine for technical people…

yes, forgive us for trying to resolve an essential issue of how our tech isn't green nor is there lifecyle management even on the horizon...

i see that apple and their ilk are expressing pure altruism.

because that's what consumers need, more convenience... well, Apple has created a good deal of inconvenience, what with iTunes confusing "management" of all iOS devices and all... but god forbid anyone be inconvenienced on the way to the cash register...

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#572

Post by SyneRyder » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 10:33 AM UTC

sanityinc wrote: post #567

zerohm wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The computer that by far gets the most use in my house is a 2009 Mac Book Pro. I've upgraded the hard drive to an SSD so it's still quite snappy. The monitor is still bright and colorful. All the keyboard keys still have good action. The mouse pad physical click is the only thing that has fizzled out and I could fix that for $100. So yeah, it doesn't look great when Apple says "replace your 5 year old computer"…

Check to see if the battery is swollen -- that happened a lot with those machines, and typically interfered with the trackpad click.

Yup, had this with my 2006 MacBook, and a new battery fixed it.

(Incidentally, when I last went to buy a replacement battery from an Apple Store, they wouldn't let me install it myself even though the polycarbonate MacBooks had user replaceable batteries. They insisted I bring in my MacBook and leave it with them overnight to have a Genius install it. I ended up cancelling it and getting a NewerTech battery replacement, which is both cheaper & has better battery life than the Apple model.)

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#573

Post by e12e » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 11:11 AM UTC

smarx007 wrote: post #180

rileymat2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if I was suddenly without money, the iPhone would be what I would want to give up. The utility of the device is incredible: Mapping. Phone. Internet. Email. Alarm Clock. Calendaring. Photography. If anything we should work to get smart phones in the hands of the poor. It would be a great way to improve their lives for a somewhat modest cost. I am not sure it is all for looks. Maybe we could quibble abou…

First, let's get the internet part clear. Mobile internet is consistently more expensive that fixed line (in xUSSR at least). And as somebody with more than 1 degree, I can tell you that you don't need an iphone map, phone, alarm, or camera functionality to make your life better, while internet and email on a mobile device is counterproductive. If you really want to save money and get better, go buy a core 2 duo desk…

If you need a cell phone to be available for calls and texts (say, to set up a job interview...), it might be cheaper to have a cell contract with data, than to have a cell contract and DSL at home.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#574

Post by sametmax » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 11:14 AM UTC

eric_h wrote: post #499

sametmax wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Looks like I might need to pick up a new iPad.." That is insane. I can load all webpages on any laptop from 5 years ago. A browser doesn't become "slower". Even with bigger pages, they are still web pages, not 3D games. It means the ipad itself is, for some reason, rendering itself slow. And you can't do anything about it because you can't hack it. And your idea of the solution to the problem is to buy a new one ? M…

In the last 5 years, bloat on web pages has increased considerably . Tracking script counts on all pages has gone way up, and I very frequently will find that if I leave some web pages in a background tab, their memory usage will climb into the gigabytes, even for pages that are mostly just text! Since the ram on those older devices is not getting any bigger, of course web pages are going to get slower.

Yes, but it still web pages. Not meteo simulations. And I just tested in on an old asus with a dead battery and a broken screen. It's fine to surf on the web. Watch videos. Listen to music. You could do it 10 years ago already with even older computers. Your ipad is lying to you.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#575

Post by e12e » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 11:35 AM UTC

fpgeek wrote: post #90

consto wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My laptop has a touch screen, and I have it disabled in device manager to stop people (including me) touching it.

Conversely, my 7 year old daughter dramatically prefers her guest account on my touchscreen laptop as opposed to the non-touch Chromebook we had intended for her to use. She just has a hard time wrapping her head around the idea of a screen that doesn't do anything when you touch it.

I actually always thought the part of "the mother of all demos"[1], where "the mouse" is introduced is a bit awkward, like they know it's a poor hack. Just because we've got a lot of mileage out of it, doesn't mean it's a great input solution. One IMNHO good indication of that is that children (not just your daughter :) seem to overwhelmingly seem to prefer touch input.

I'm mostly in agreement with the article, but the author also misses some things, I think:

> Yes, the iPad Pro has a very fancy stylus. That’s great for artists, but the vast majority of people aren’t artists and don’t care.

> Yes, the iPad Pro has a very fancy, true-to-color screen. That’s great for artists, but the vast majority of people aren’t artists and don’t care.

I think good touch and pen input really still is the obvious better way to input. It doesn't work well (enough) without a few decades of UI engineering and real-world testing -- but a "real" digital drawing pad and touch interface is probably a very sensible way to spend the improvements Moore's law have given us: My Amiga 2000 had 4?MB of ram and a 7Mhz processor, my current desktop has four cores at 4Ghz and 16GB of RAM. Using some of that to go from 4096 colours and 320x256 to 24bit 4K or 8k along with real-time input in the form of free-form painting/writing seems reasonable.

Just because it's so hard to paint with a mouse that most computer users aren't digital artists, while everyone that's been given pen and paper will have at doodled is a great indication that we need better input for our digital devices. As for the better screen - I think getting pixel resolution on par with print resolution can only be a good thing. Personally I find it much more comfortable to read a thousand pages at high dpi, than at "standard" +/- 1080p on a 20-24" monitor.

[1] http://www.wired.com/2010/12/1209computer-mouse-mother-of-al...

"The Mother of All Demos, presented by Douglas Engelbart (1968)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#576

Post by Klinky » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 12:25 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #466

Klinky wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you walk into a phone store you're going to get upsold on the high-end phones, broken into small monthly payments. Also there are still many value phones being sold that are pieces of crap. A poor person may be better off spending $20/mn on the latest iPhone that "just works" than getting a budget phone for $10/mn that crashes from not enough memory, has a terrible touchscreen and will be unusable in 1 year. The…

I doubt it's an upsell conspiracy, because the iPhone isn't the only high-end phone that can be upsold. More likely that the iPhone is viewed as an image luxury good. Same with ridiculously expensive flat screen TVs.

A lot of flagships do have the luxury vibe. That doesn't change the fact that most are bought with monthly installment plans, which makes the cost seem reasonable. Maybe poor people are getting them to not look poor or because their kid's peer group has them, but likely the user experience and usefulness of the phones is going to be better on a flagship. The technology hardware market is rife with products that seem to target the technically ill informed. Apple is known to "just work", that has been their schtick forever, even if it's not entirely true. It's similar to helping a grandparent buy a computer. Maybe those saying "you can do X on a cheaper smartphone", should go stand outside these stores and offer their consultancy services for free.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#577

Post by Lawtonfogle » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 1:10 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #344

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It buys them signaling. Why is that a good thing?

Because signalling affects how people treat you in every aspect of your life; everything from customer service to job prospects to your love life.

And we should be providing welfare to help people get better custom service and improve their love life? When we are talking about providing for people's needs, this wasn't part of the agreement. If we want to expand welfare, let's be upfront about it and decide what we expect in return for that welfare.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#578

Post by rdancer » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 1:23 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #530

bluthru wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you mean. Are you saying that Apple doesn't support their customers well because they don't spend time writing software for 10 year old hardware?

Once you have cross-platform support, keeping it is not very hard. And most of their code works on 32-bit Arm . So it would not be an unreasonable burden. Computers have slowed down. Basic support for for 10 years is not a crazy idea.

You cannot have 100% platform support of 100% quality 100% of the time. Compromise has to be made. If you're not making an explicit compromise by mercilessly cutting platform support, you're implicitly compromising schedule and quality. Apple have always been the best by far at prioritizing quality, and making hard choices, well above and beyond anybody within any industry they enter. They have always fixed the most painful problems first, and leaving the less important ones to later or never. They are willing to leave a gap in their lineup for two or three quarters because an SKU would fail some obscure quality metric[1][2]. Even so, thy have already had some unpleasant bug creep over the past few years[0]. It's not like they are leisurely coasting and twiddling their fingers — had they been supporting old hardware, software on new hardware would have been measurably worse.

[0] https://marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-grou... [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/226520/Apple_Explains_White_i... [2] iPhone 6S available 25 September 2015, iPhone SE available 31 March 2016

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#579

Post by protomyth » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

justaaron wrote: post #571

protomyth wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What the author of the article finds offensive - and which also put me off when watching the live presentation - was the suggestion that using old hardware is "sad". Using old hardware is sad. I work in a depressed area and we constantly fix our students computers. 5 years is a long time on a hard drive and the forced Windows 10 upgrade has been a pain to people on 5 year old hardware. Its fine for technical people…

yes, forgive us for trying to resolve an essential issue of how our tech isn't green nor is there lifecyle management even on the horizon... i see that apple and their ilk are expressing pure altruism. because that's what consumers need, more convenience... well, Apple has created a good deal of inconvenience, what with iTunes confusing "management" of all iOS devices and all... but god forbid anyone be inconvenience…

> yes, forgive us for trying to resolve an essential issue of how our tech isn't green nor is there lifecyle management even on the horizon...

Compared to the machines I see, Apple tech is green and recyclable.

> i see that apple and their ilk are expressing pure altruism.

Nobody said that, but you go with the hyperbole

> because that's what consumers need, more convenience...

Yes, they do. Time spent on computing maintenance is time they could be spending getting work done or trying to learn something new.

> well, Apple has created a good deal of inconvenience, what with iTunes confusing "management" of all iOS devices and all..

The people here with iPads and iPhones don't use iTunes at all. It might be a crappy experience, but it is avoidable.

> but god forbid anyone be inconvenienced on the way to the cash register...

People want stuff that just works. Forcing people to invest time to fix and learn arcane things is not a solution and impacts poor people's ability to do things. They don't have the spare time or resources.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#580

Post by bryondowd » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

smarx007 wrote: post #377

bryondowd wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I pay $5 for the limited data plan on my phone, here in the US (Walmart Family Mobile). That's on top of $25/mo primary line and $20/mo additional lines. The cheapest internet line for my home I could find was around $30 at a promotional rate, which bumped up to $45 after a year. Yes, I can get more data per dollar out of that $45 line, but aside from entertainment purposes, I can get by on my 1GB of data. Or I…

I now live in EU and can relate to your experiences. But when I was referring to what struggling folk need, I meant what can really improve their position. And I hope you understand that it's not something like 9gag, but udacity. And udacity is a pain on a tablet (let alone phone) if you do the exercises.

Well, a phone is enough for many useful services. Putting in applications, gathering information, etc. Then there's tethering for a cheap internet solution if you can get a hold of a desktop/laptop.

But really, if we're talking about improving one's lot through education, the best bet would probably be a local community college, which should have their own computer rooms. I don't know much about udacity and the like, but I'm not sure there's a route there for people in my neck of the woods, at least. Any local tech jobs want a Bachelor's degree.