Slashdot Mirror
Apple Blocks Lawrence Lessig's Comment On iOS 7 Wi-Fi Glitch
destinyland writes "A glitch in iOS7 has cost "a significant number" of Apple users their Wi-Fi access, according to ZDNet. But they also report that Apple is now censoring posts in their "Apple Support Communities" forums where users suggest possible responses to their loss of WiFi capabilities (including exercising their product warranty en masse). "We understand the desire to share experiences in your topic, 'Re: wifi greyed out after update to ios7,'" read one warning sent to Lawrence Lessig, "but because these posts are not allowed on our forums, we have removed it." Lessig — who co-founded Creative Commons (and was a board member of the Free Software Foundation) has been documenting the ongoing "comments slaughter" on his Twitter feed, drawing attention to what he says is the Borg-like behavior of Apple as a corporation. Lessig "is now part of an angry mob in Apple's forums who upgraded to iOS 7 and lost Wi-Fi connectivity," ZDNet notes, adding that as of this morning their reporter has been unable to obtain an official response from Apple."
Walled garden is walled.
What did you expect?
(EVE Online oblig: Damage Control II works in PvP!!11one)
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
You must be new here; most of the time the news slams Microsoft and praises Apple.
Apple is really strict about not letting people give out certain kinds of technical advice or speculation on their support forums, on the not-unreasonable basis that things posted there have Apple's tacit approval. When I hung out on Nokia's support boards it was similar.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The first post has been removed by Apple
Fortunately I can't read it, becuase my iPhone lost wi-fi access.
I don't care about Apple one way or the other. But stories like this keep me informed that I should continue hitting "Not Now" when my iPad bugs me to upgrade to iOS7, and that matters to me. So no, not bored.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Inquiring minds want to know.
I just upgraded my iPhone 4S from iOS 6 to 7, and I haven't experienced any issues with my WLAN connections. I am sure that this whole posting is about the comment censorship, but this doesn't highlight which Apple products are supposedly being disrupted.
.
I, for one, applaud Apple's efforts to keep the Apple support forums all singing praises for Apple and its products. When I visit those forums, I do not want to see critique of Apple and its products. I want my visit to be positive and cheerful.
I am so happy that Apple is providing such a wholesome environment for me to visit and discuss Apple's products.
It's funny that they'd censor the iOS7 forums given the nasty language bandied about in the iWork forums about the evisceration of the office suite. I suppose that they don't care about iWork (it certainly shows).
If you buy an iPhone, you have already given up most of your freedoms (regarding your phone), so what's the point bitching about it afterwards.
Please mod this "+1 Insightful Troll" -- oh wait, this category doesn't exist. :O
Maybe their wi-fi doesn't work.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
I've read about glitches when one does an update, so I wonder if the Wi-Fi problem would go away if someone backed up their device (would have to be dumped to a computer with iTunes), did an erase all, then followed it up by a DFU restore. This method pretty much ensures that all data stored on the device is erased. Then the device can be restored, apps/music reinstalled, and things back to normal.
This also stems from a general IT lesson I learned. If possible, when it comes to OS upgrading time with major number versions [1], one is best off rebuilding a server from scratch than updating it, due to cruft left behind from the previous OS, and other inconsistencies which might cause issues later on. Sometimes this isn't possible, other times, it is easily done.
[1]: The cautious exception are RPM based Linux distros which are really just stacks of filesets snapshotted and regression tested at a certain point in time. Those, I can just increment the version number, run yum upgrade, and be done with it, since it is more of a large update than a major version upgrade. Even with these, it doesn't hurt to install from scratch since it seems that RPM databases tend to get corrupted over time.
IOS7 == Win8 == UNITY == BARF
You haven't been here in a few years, have you?
Applies to the guy who owns the press.
Apples behavior is pretty much expected, I doubt few if any companies would ever let people use their resources to organize action against them. It seems Lessig is going a little over the top in his reaction to this. It can hardly come as a shock to him.
are you seriously braindead to buy Apple products with your world view AND think it will work differently?
When every story on slashdot was "Microsoft sucks" and every comment was "If only Apple could get enough momentum to crush Microsoft."
Oh how the times have changed... different companies, same bitches. You people are never happy. LOL.
I, for one, welcome my new Apple Overlords.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Especially if you write that everyone should return their phones.
Use another forum to get your word out Lessig. You know how this game is played.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
all that matters is that I look cool when I hold it.
I think Samsung took all the cool. Although the wind of coolness is definitely with LG right now.
You must be new here, /. has been anti apple since Android came out years ago
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Over-react much? I have iOS 7 on an iPad, no problems with wifi. Also run a 15,000 member apple community and haven't heard any wifi complaints. I think this "angry mob" is just a angry man. Apple has no reason to censor anything, there's lots of complaints on the forums already
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Buy a new iPhone........
I wanted to like apple, but after 3 broken cables, not being able to use better cables from Belkin but not apple licensed, I give up. iOS7 made my hotspot useless and 80 percent not being able to connect to it, battery life went to charging three times daily. No thanks.
When every story on slashdot was "Microsoft sucks" and every comment was "If only Apple could get enough momentum to crush Microsoft."
What days you are referring to? Microsoft still produces second quality software to the competition, but is a monopoly. Something they still are in the Legacy Desktop Software. Everybody was aware that Apple were/is going nowhere. There model simply does not allow it. They bundle their OS with commodity hardware and double the price...make lots of money, "crush"(sic) not so much.
Most here have lamented the dull duopoly(I still do). Which hasn't changed. The fact that Apple is now an electronics company is proof of the fact.
I've been in the Apple developer program since it started. "Rolling back to an older version" has never been supported so I believe the notion that "Steve would've done it that way" is a bit far fetched.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Last time I checked it is still possible to downgrade to iOS 6... They have not blacklisted those upgrades yet so if you download the ipsw file you should be able to downgrade it until a fix is available...
Portions of the Slashdot community have been anti-Apple since the "hacker proof" sealed box Macintosh came out in 1984.
at broken shiny things I wodner if they would do the same against NSA supplied iphones.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Check with Apple if you're holding your iPhone correctly.
Disclosure: I am an Apple fan -- but I absolutely will not defend the practice of purging negative comments from community forums. I think censorship is probably the single most frustrating experience anyone can have in a forum, warranted or not. I speak from experience: I've been censored recently as well -- in an entirely different forum, and for reasons which seemed entirely unreasonable to me. Ironically, I had made the egregious error of trying to help.
In responding to a thread about a bug, I described one software development methodology (scrum, if that matters) to a crowd of discontent gamers in the Steam forum. I then painstakingly crafted a reasoned explanation for why that process necessitates that this particular bug in an older game (Half-Life: Opposing Force, which had been recently ported to both Linux and Mac) simply won't be fixed anytime soon, because the Steam developers are almost certainly entirely wrapped up in the development of Half Life 3. I then went on to speculate (and I suspect this is where I went wrong) that as soon as we see a fix to that bug, we should all be on the lookout for the impending release of HL3. A short time later, that entire thread had suddenly vanished from the Steam forum, with no explanation.
And the problem crops up elsewhere as well; forum admins are frequently overzealous, especially when they see something that they view as a potential slight to their corporate overlords. It's a very unfortunate trend, and as I see it, the only way to avoid being unreasonably censored is to post your comments elsewhere, where -- hopefully -- unbiased management will leave your commentary on controversial matters intact. (Slashdot might qualify as such a haven... I know I haven't been censored here. Yet.)
We looked into this, but couldn't find a way to officially issue iPhones without running afoul of HIPAA/HITECH, GLB, SOX, and FDA regs on security and privacy.
The stock iPhone and Android offerings aren't much better than Blackberries without BES. In the USA, you can't store privileged information on some random other company's servers unless you have a contract with the hosting company that transfers your legal responsibilities, and no telco (or Google, or Apple) is going to take on our legal obligations given the extremely harsh penalties for failure. With a BES server that's no big deal, since you have your own mail storage, etc.
We can issue androids with tuned software that don't let the end-users screw up, but if users want iPhones they have to buy their own and sign a document that says they take personal responsibility for managing any legally privileged information that they can access through their position with the company.
Everybody's happy now. The people who want the company to do the right thing legally, the Apple junkies who have their shiny, the users who have company androids, it's all good. The Apple users grumble about cost but they understand they could have had free androids so the grumbling's just for show.
No one invited you here, Mr. Cook.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Come on Mr Lessig with your pedigree I would have peg you as an Android user likely somebody running a custom rom at least.
Apple has no reason to censor anything,
If Apple has no reason to censor, then why are the comments disappearing from the forum? If people are legitimately experiencing wi-fi connection issues, shouldn't others be aware of it and Apple take the appropriate action?
Or is Apple following the path of Nikon which refused to acknowledge the oil-on-the-censor issue on some non-insignificant portion of their D600 camera, then less than a year later released the D610 which miraculously doesn't have the issue but which is the exact same camera? Is that possibly why Apple just pushed out the 7.3 update?
However, if people are having issue with wi-fi, how are they supposed to get the update since updating requires a wi-fi connection?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You're not going to hear those complaints because they don't have WiFi.
At times like this, I am reminded that the alternative to fragmentation and forking and all manner of inconsistencies is monoculture. When monoculture works, it works nicely and that's all that most people have in mind when they strive for it. But the other side of that coin? What affects one, generally affects them all.
I wouldn't worry too much - the chances of this affecting you are minimal. I've upgraded 6 different devices to iOS 7 over the last month (I waited until the 7.0.2 fix for the lock screen/security issues though) and haven't had any problems...this is the first I've heard of any WiFi complaints (and I read quite a lot of Apple stories).
I like Apple. What I can't stand is their users. Every system have design flaws, Apples have plenty of them but for some reason the RDF is too strong.
Seriously, just look at their USB power adapter. Who the fuck designs a switched regulator and places the switch diode on another PCB than the transformer? Also, folding back the low voltage part over the buffer capacitor doesn't seem like the brightest thing to do.
Personally, I as someone who overall likes Apple as a company, doesn't own anything but a Mac, but has had the chance to use their mobile products and do like them, I will first say I believe that the Slashdot crowd generally gives Apple a fair shake. Granted, this is not always flattering, but it is typically correct non-the-less.
Second, Apple stories garner among the highest number of comments and therefore user interaction and ad views. Based on this it is clear that the Slashdot crowd likes discussing Apple related stories, which works out well for Slashdot since it (presumanbly) generates ad revenue. That is what is known as a 'win win'.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
".. Also run a 15,000 member apple community."
sure you do.
I've noticed my iPhone switches to 3G when I'm at home, which it never used to do. If I'm in the same room as the AP then it rarely does it, but otherwise it's a bit hit and miss. Thankfully I get a reasonable 3G signal where I live, and I have a pretty good data plan so I've not seen a huge impact. But I am looking forward to Apple fixing this.
Posters are not allowed to attempt to compromise the lingering Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, Apple is perfect, and perceived issues are figments of your imagination. Please remit all your money to Apple and thank us for the privilege to partake in our excellence. Thank you. :p
All depends on your bias. The community, including the editors, are diverse enough that the techie culture wars play out in what stories get run and what spins are put on them by OPs.
Though at the moment, hating Microsoft is passe, while all the cool kids hate Apple.
If Apple has no reason to censor, then why are the comments disappearing from the forum? If people are legitimately experiencing wi-fi connection issues, shouldn't others be aware of it and Apple take the appropriate action?
Exactly. As you just said, Apple has no reason to censor posts in their forums, and thus they aren't. Clearly, in the hysteria that quite reasonably surrounds any Apple product release, these people must have simply forgotten that they never made such blasphemous and hurtful posts against Apple, and are clearly just mistaken about ever having posted anything at all.
I find it annoying apple has time to delete posts like this but almost never actually help people in their support forums. When I bought a new Mac Mini last year, there was a known issue with their shitty HDMI adapter included with the device and Ivy Bridge chip in the unit. Apple did eventually fix it, but their support people denied it's existence while the forms were full of complaints. If they guy would have said "it's a problem and we're working on it" I would have been a happy guy. Instead, I got some bullshit about reinstalling OS X on a brand new computer I had for 2 hours.
I've had wifi problems with Apple TV on and off for years and apple never fixes it. It's no shock their weird in kernel DHCP would freak out right? Apple probably did some new speed hack in iOS 7 and broke that too.
butbutbut...the housing is smoooooth and silllly whiiite...smoooth and shinyy...
I think this "angry mob" is just a angry man.
Yes, because as anyone who's familiar with Lessig's work knows, he's *so* hot-headed, overly emotional, and generally unreasonable. Watch the 'angry man' rave!
/sarcasm
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
I have another experience, this new iOS 7 improved or nearly eliminated my WiFi dropouts, the known WPA2 handshake problem that has been affecting some routers and iOS 6.
The same question might be asked of you fanboys: Don't you get tired of defending the windmills?..or does it help compensate for lack of self-worth? That's what apple marketing predates on. It's right up there with scientology.
I manage 44 devices in building that use iOS7, this week I've had 108 wifi connection issues on those 44 devices and it's only Tuesday.
The 121 devices running Mac OS, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Linux that I manage have had 0 wifi connection issues.
I don't think it has a thing to do with being "anti-Apple" but in reality folks just waking up and realizing the quality of Apple products has seriously gone down hill since the passing of Jobs.
Say what you will about Jobs, and from what I've read I'd say he was probably a sociopath, but the man did care about the quality of his products. If given the choice of shaving pennies and making something low quality or going for the better tech and raising the price Jobs always seemed to go for the latter which is probably why they built up a rep for quality products. Compare this to Cook who came from the supply side of Apple and seems to be more concerned with stock price and maximizing profits than he does with quality and frankly it shows, with iPhone 5s suffering BSODs and having maps that are a joke and now this?
I'm sorry but the longer we go past the death of Jobs the more it looks like Apple is taking a page from Sony's book and trading on past reputation by putting out less quality products priced as if it were quality. So while you see it as bashing I see it as customers waking up and realizing the much vaunted Apple quality just ain't what it used to be.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
he was made whole (got a 5 instead of the 4s he purchased in July 2013 (a 4s? this year? really?)
and continued to complain (in a non constructive/technical way) despite the fact that he was made whole by his carrier... so if it works for the VAST majority of users, and his problem was resolved by getting new hardware.. why continue?
stopped reading after the first few lines - Lessig is a fucking crybaby.
http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/65338904338/wow-or-from-the-when-apple-became-the-borg-department
There are far too many of us affected for this to be a coincidence or consumer caused problem, I had a 16gb white 4s purchased in July 2013 and wifi was completely greyed out no matter what fixes I was advised to try.
I have been successful in my claim and am now in receipt of a brand new iPhone 5, this was provided to me by the phone shop I signed my O2 contract with last year.
Good luck and persevere
Later, I tried to post a question to the post — basically asking whether Apple indeed scrubbed comments, meaning it was worth it for them to censor the community, just not respond to it — but it wouldn’t post.
Every system have design flaws, Apples have plenty of them but for some reason the RDF is too strong.
The RDF has grown weaker every day since Jobs' death. A cult can only outlast its cult leader if it becomes a full-blown religion. And something tells me that Tim Cook is no St. Paul.
I've upgraded all my iOS devices, everyone I know that own one has also upgraded. No issue so far. Your pick.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
You haven't been here in a few years, have you?
Since I don't have access to a time machine, I cannot have been here in a few years. Maybe you could tell us your experience of the future Slashdot?
Apple regularly remove bug reports, broken functionality and test cases demonstrating problems. There is no need for them to censor this, other than PR people trying to create the illusion that there are no problems. They've been doing this for several years.
Apple has no reason to censor anything, there's lots of complaints on the forums already
And yet they do it. Frequently. Here's a few more examples.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
There's been an actual analysis of the USB power adapter in question, and it turns out that the design is both more efficient than most on the market, and *safer* than many of the el-cheapo models available on the market (having the appropriate physical gaps between various sections of the power conversion process).
Also run a 15,000 member apple community and haven't heard any wifi complaints.
What in the nine hells is an "apple community"? And why haven't we nuked it from orbit several times yet?
I don't think it has a thing to do with being "anti-Apple" but in reality folks just waking up and realizing the quality of Apple products has seriously gone down hill since the passing of Jobs.
This is a hardware problem, from a phone that came out while jobs was still alive. Troll much?
However, if people are having issue with wi-fi, how are they supposed to get the update since updating requires a wi-fi connection?
Oh, I don't know, use a USB cable and iTunes!?!? Seriously, it doesn't "require" a wifi connection. And you should be hooking into iTunes regularly anyway to make backups of the phone.
Why would a man like Lawrence Lessig, who obviously values openness and freedom, use a locked down, walled-in garden device?
I have a 2011 Macbook Pro.
This machine has the architechture which involves the Intel CPU with an onboard
GPU which is used for basic graphics and an external AMD Radeon which is used
for more intensive graphics.
The "geniuses" at the Apple Store have tested my computer three times and failed to
reproduce the issues I am having with this machine, which include kernel panics,
bizarre mutations of the on-screen graphics, and outright lockups. So far I have
invested well over 20 hours of my time in calling Applecare reps, visiting the Apple Store
Genius Bar, and driving to and from the Apple store. Apple has refused to install RAM which
is "known good" and let me take the machine home for a few days to use the machine and
see if the faults continue, yet the problems for some reason only occur when I use the machine
for extended periods ( 12 - 14 hours is routine usage ) and so using the machine is the only
way to determine if the machine works properly or not.
Essentially Apple has done everything to make this experience unpleasant, time-consuming,
and thus far there has been no resolution to the machine's problems. Apple has steadfastly refused
to consider that the problems my machine is having are hardware-related, and has instead insisted
on doing not one but two "clean installs" of OS X. After both of these clean installs, the machine has
continued to have problems and thus the clean installs have solved nothing.
I have had many other issues with Apple hardware resolved quickly and easily at the same Apple store,
but I sense there has been a "sea change" in how Apple directs its store employees and Applecare
employees to deal with problems. The company which used to consistently provide me with a customer
service experience which was among the best I have ever experienced has changed, and the experience
they are providing me now is unnecessarily difficult and has worked against solving the problems my Macbook
is having. Of course, those people who have been following Macbook Pro model issues for some time
will be aware that the Macbook Pro which uses software-enabled graphics switching and an AMD or Invidia
graphics processor will be aware that these Macbook Pros are infamous for having problems.
I suppose all of you who hate Apple will laugh at this story.
It seems I will soon be going the ranks of people who used to buy Apple products,
because the practical reality is that Apple stuff costs too much for me to subject myself
to this poor customer service. I can get this kind of idiotic "genius" service most anywhere,
while paying perhaps a third as much as I would pay for a Macbook Pro. I reckon this is
also as good a time as any to ditch the iPhone and all the rest of the nice looking Apple hardware
I have which doesn't actually work as well as I'd like.
.
I sounds like you do actually care about Apple one way or the other. If you didn't care you wouldn't be concerned with upgrading your iPad.
This is a hardware problem, from a phone that came out while jobs was still alive. Troll much?
A software update that came out this year counts as a hardware problem from before Steve killed someone by gaming the organ transplant system? You'll have to explain that logic to me...
If you've been using computers, smartphones, tablets etc. for any length of time, you should already know:
NEVER install "version 1" of ANYTHING!
Or rather it used to.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Portions of the Slashdot community have been anti-Apple since the "hacker proof" sealed box Macintosh came out in 1984.
I've been anti-Apple since I could never afford one when I was young (Atari/Amiga FTW!). But Apple has a long track record of abusing it's customer base. On a good year, it shoots itself in the foot on customer support. On a bad year, they have to re-hire Jobs to save the company.
TFA is yet another "shooting itself in the foot on customer support" moment, pretty much par for the course. But the next time they make one of their big mistakes, who will save them now?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
He states that people fixed this "software issue" by heating the phone up to 300, sounds like the wifi chip has a lose connection. The update is a coincident, and with millions of phones out there and only a handful of people with issues it's safe to assume that the two are not related.
Wrong, they are most definitely censoring, they are trying to keep their stock price up, only it's backfiring.
The fucktards in charge are mindless cash groupies, trying to engage in orgiastic delight in the sycophants and apple fan-boyz mindless support of all things Apple even when their updates brick their iCrap product line.
All the more reason this one will NEVER own an Apple product, ever.
That's because posts are being removed, I should know apple staff threatened to notify my ISP info continued to post. All I was trying to do was let other 4s users know they were not along. My local apple store looked me in the eye and said they had not heard a single issue. Open your eyes from being apple blind, we are not trolls, apple haters or Samsung employees, we are real people why feel they have a genuine case. I exercised my rifts under sale of goods act in the uk and have been provided with a replacement free of charge despite being out of warranty. How would you feel if you were one of these people who are having their freedom of speech taken away. Wake up and smell the ****! The consumer has not created this issue, apple have as it appears there are a number of handsets that had a manufacuring fault that only came to light recently, you may think its coincidence, but to the hundred, possibly thousands (who knows as apple remove their posts) of people who have 4s that are not fit for purpose, how do you think they feel?
iPads aren't affected toy knowledge, the pattern seems to show its specific to 4s that are over 12 months old. My iPad works perfectly well, but my 4s randomly used up my data allowance in 9 days (during sleeping hours), then would tab connect to wifi and then overheated and that was that
You must be new here, /. has been anti apple since 1998 and we made fun of OS 8
Hell no, we revel in the almost daily saga of Apple fuckups and missteps. It's like watching a 30 minute comedy only the people we are laughing at think they are serious and think they are innovators, rather than simply idea thieves throwing other peoples work together haphazardly and incorrectly.
If English isn't your first language, don't make fun of someone using common phrases correctly.
Oh okay, now that a celebrity is involved I should care more than I did before? I'm glad apple treated him evenhandedly-- just like any other commenter they want to nullify. Is Slashdot now a check-out like celebrity rag for nerds?
Mod this +1
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Apple needs to hire an old priest and a young priest and exorcise the demon spirit of Jobs from the forums!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
and why is Apple actually admitting to doing it
iphones have always had quality antennas.
Or is Apple following the path of Nikon which refused to acknowledge the oil-on-the-censor issue on some non-insignificant portion of their D600 camera, then less than a year later released the D610 which miraculously doesn't have the issue but which is the exact same camera?
At first, I read "Nixon". And I was really wondering what the hell he had to do with cameras.
Jicehix
Oh wait, http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/08/07/0250248/how-apple-and-amazon-security-flaws-led-to-mat-honans-identity-theft?sdsrc=rel
Look I hate the "security questions" bit much more than the next guy, but as long as Apple doesn't secure your account with proper two factor authentication you've got to consider that someone could steal your AppleID and change the password.
Of course, if they can do that then they can also change your "security questions" ... which is part of why I hate that model.
Hopefully Cook learned his lesson after hiring some exec from a discount chain, to manage the Apple Retail operations. That was a disaster, and though it took a year to hire a replacement, the new retail exec at least comes from a place that cares about image and quality over penny-pinching.
Hint: if the post you're replying to has been modded Funny, you should probably check that you're not about to Whooooooosh before you post.
You must be new here, /. has been anti apple since Android came out years ago
The question then is why was Lessig — who co-founded Creative Commons (and was a board member of the Free Software Foundation) using an iPhone in the first place?
You sort of expect just a little more dogfooding that that from a pontificater like Lessig.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Are you serious, Apple has a history of heavily censoring their forums to remove any possible blemishes to their product lines.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
"Say what you will about Jobs, and from what I've read I'd say he was probably a sociopath, but the man did care about the quality of his products. If given the choice of shaving pennies and making something low quality or going for the better tech and raising the price Jobs always seemed to go for the latter which is probably why they built up a rep for quality products. "
I am not so sure about this. I readily agree it is a common belief that Apple has (or had) some kind of commitment to quality, but for years their products have been using the exact same components as basically everyone else. Open up a Mac from any of the last 10+ years and you will find the same CPUs, RAM, hard drives, graphics cards, etc as found in most PCs. I think by charging a lot more for the same components, putting them in a pretty case, and doing some very effective advertising they created a sense of added quality in their fan's minds without actually spending any extra pennies on actually providing anything above average. I don't know how well these same concepts apply to the iThings as they are not so easy to open up and look at the vendor names on the components :) but I suspect it's much the same as Apple's strategy with PC hardware. There have certainly been a fair number of hardware and software defects in the iPhone line (antenna-gate, the daylight savings fail, the daylight savings fail II (aka revenge of the incompetence), various crazy bandwidth consumer glitches, and so on), most of which predate Jobs untimely demise.
There is quite a bit of evidence to support how irrelevant factors can make huge influences on perceived "quality", for instance I recall watching a video where utility water out of garden hose was served in a fancy bottle and folks were asked if they preferred it to some major brand bottled water. Vast majority picked the hose water if it's packaging was made to appear "premium" compared to the alternative. Apple seems to have found ways to package their products to inspire a similar reaction.
-Lod
Are you serious,
Did you even read past the first sentence of his post?
I handed out 23 5Cs to my staff a week after it was released. I also updated 10 iPads of various models to iOS 7. I've yet to have anyone complain about WiFi problems either on our work network or in the field on client networks.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
I'm sorry but the longer we go past the death of Jobs the more it looks like Apple is taking a page from Sony's book and trading on past reputation by putting out less quality products priced as if it were quality. So while you see it as bashing I see it as customers waking up and realizing the much vaunted Apple quality just ain't what it used to be.
Good. This is a good thing, Apple and Jobs' visions of computing need to die an ugly spiraling death. Jobs' was the worst thing to happen to personal computing. Him and his silly app store junk. I mean no disrespect for the dead, but I'm glad Jobs is gone, and even more pleased Apple is circling the drain. Good riddance.
It's like a microcosm of the country as a whole
I thought the big attraction of iOS 5 (two versions ago) was the ability to backup to iCloud and do further system software upgrades without needing to buy a Mac, buy Windows for your PC, or even buy a PC in the first place.
I've had lots of problems before and after 7.0.3. More than once I have had to reboot to regain sending email (receiving is fine). My 2nd phone, a Blackberry using activesync just like my iPhone, was still sending and receiving email no problem so I know it wasn't something with the server.
Other problems include buggy podcast playing. I've updated the podcast app so I hope it will be more stable.
I also REALLY do not like the way a "hard reset" no longer closes all apps. This is a big deal for businesses where users just aren't going to close all the apps themselves. Come on Apple, what are you doing to us?
Disclosure: I used to work for Apple in their Customer Relations Department.
You are correct that the perceived quality of Apple products is just the same Chinese manufactured products in a flashy shell with really good advertising. I know they've been doing this since the return of Steve Jobs to apple and the candy colored iMacs. I can't speak about before that time. How they managed to create the perception of superior quality products while using the same cut-rate manufacturers used by Dell while at the same time instituting Apple's infamous "No Return" policy is baffling to me. You couldn't even return same day D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival) equipment to the store you bought it from. You had to take it in for repair. Add this with the debacle of the Power Mac G4 Cube which had over a 33% D.O.A. rate that Apple was denying and their success can't be explained by anything short of Jobs making a deal with the devil. It's that illogical. Needless to say that it was not a fun time to work for Apple Customer Relations.
Their policies have improved some, mostly due to the work of the Attorneys General of several states and the European Union but, they still use the same manufacturing facility that all the other electronic companies use (Foxconn). So all they still do is put it in a pretty package and charge more for it. Yet, people still fall for it in droves. *sigh* I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
If you're stuck on 5 GB/mo cellular or 10 GB/mo satellite Internet, every bit of server-side filtering helps. Not everyone is in a position to buy cable or fiber Internet.
Dr. Lessig has long since moved on from copyright advocacy to researching a fix for the regulatory capture that led to imbalanced copyright laws in the first place.
well, you pool of 6 clearly proves it's ok.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't know about "perceived quality". I just had a fan go bad and slight flaws in my retina screen. I brought the laptop to the Apple store. Overnight the laptop was open, the screen replaced the fan cleaned for me and the system works perfectly. No hassling for hours having to reboot again and again on the phone with a tech support person who was trying to avoid doing anything. That's not perceived quality, that's real customer service.
I also have a 12" G4 laptop that I bought during the 10.3 days (about a decade ago) that I use as a spare. Still works perfectly. My in laws are using a powermac which was updated from OS9 to OSX 10.2 which is almost 13 years old. No one has had to bother with it for a decade in terms of maintenance.
Yup...
This quarter $37.5b in revenues and $7.5b in profits. That's circling the drain?
Apple is upset about people losing their cool and advising people to return products over a minor software issue. Their forums contain valuable information about "blemishes" from years back, advice and fixes on thousands of issues.
.
Given the number of happily-satisfied Apple users (is there any other kind of Apple user), maybe the number of anti-Apple stories published should be zero.
You must be new here; most of the time the news slams Microsoft and praises Apple.
I'm not new and have no idea what you're talking about. Microsoft doesn't count, they've been messing up ever since the iPad took them by surprise.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Apple has a long track record of abusing it's customer base.
I bought some Apple products and don't feel abused. I also run Fedora as my main desktop so no RDF here. I recently had a problem with my iPhone and they happily replaced it. I'm not sure what TFA is really about but personally, I've not had any problems with iOS7 (wifi or otherwise) and neither has my family.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
"It works for me, therefore the bug must be trivial or non-existent"
Are you really posting that here, of all places? Like, really? If there's "lots of complaints on the forums already," clearly there are a lot of people who do have problems with WiFi and it would be prudent to avoid doing something that would precipitate that loss.
Apple has been dying since 1982.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
fucktards in charge are mindless cash groupies
Someone mod this guy funny.
Not exactly...
I'm looking at my new(ish) 15" MacBook Pro. Here are the differences between it and my previous laptop, the Samsung 15" RC-512:
* The screen/lid does not flex when I open it (the Samsung did exactly that - freaky as hell at times)
* Ditto for the case when I pick it up.
* I can run a hellishly complex CG scene through LuxRender without kicking the CPU thermals and causing the whole laptop to shut down (The Samsung required a bit of a cool-down period before I could even reboot the stupid thing)
* I can run the aforementioned renderer, LibreOffice, and Chrome all at once in OSX without an appreciable slowdown. Windows 7? Not so much. Even Linux would struggle at times on the Samsung box if I dared to do that.
* The hard disk hasn't failed, and I've had the MBP for 4 months now... about 2 months longer than the HDD held up on the Samsung.
* The screen and color balance is far nicer, and the image far crisper. Also, I suspect that given AppleCare, I don't have to put up with static from customer support like I did when a dead pixel showed up on the Samsung at around month 7.
* Drivers? Who has to care about that anymore?
Meanwhile, a couple of other bits that put me firmly in the Apple-buying camp:
* My wife's iPad took a tumble a month ago, cracking the screen. $40 and a trip to the Apple Store later, she had a new one, all sync'd up with the data from her old one. No static from the counter at all (it costs about $80 or so IIRC for the factory 2-year accident protection plan, but damned well worth it so far, as it has already paid for itself.)
* Last year, I found out they had a recall on the old Gen1 iPod Nanos. I fished through some old boxes, found my old 2GB critter, and sent it in. Apple sent back a 6th-gen 8GB Nano... all of this free of charge. I bought the thing in late 2005.
* I bought a dual-G5 PowerMac in 2004. I gave it away to a friend, still fully-functional (with OSX 10.3 on it) in June of this year.
* I did the same thing in 2005 with an old PowerBook laptop built in 1994 - the battery was down to holding maybe 20 minutes charge or so, but damn - no laptop battery from that era hold a charge after 10 years... this one still did, and it still ran MacOS7 just fine.
When you can show me an OEM that has that kind of quality and service at the same (let alone cheaper!) prices, come talk.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Really? My iphone 4S and my wife's iphone 4s both drop calls all the time. Almost every call I make I have to redial at least once. Never happened with any other phone.
Apple is new new Microsoft. The king is dead, long live the king!
Add this with the debacle of the Power Mac G4 Cube which had over a 33% D.O.A. rate that Apple was denying and their success can't be explained by anything short of Jobs making a deal with the devil.
Really? My Cube held up just fine in spite of my worst efforts.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
My iPhone 4S and my wife's iPhone 4S both have been upgraded to iOS 7 and have no issue with WIFI at all. Where did they come from?
Blackberry, net income 2009 - 2011 ... oops... 2012, $1.164B ... 2013 $646M net loss....
2009 - $1.893B
2010 - $2.457B
2011 - $3.411B! You call that circling the drain?
Mere net income quarterly or yearly does not give you the whole picture. Or else you'll be in the same situation with BlackBerry. You're right though. It's now actually called, "Circling the RIM."
Sorry, forgot the link to the data, if anyone's actually even interested.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/221666/net-income-of-rim-since-2009/
"oil-on-the-censor". I see what you did there.
This depends on what year you're talking about. In the early days, up through OSX (don't remember the version) that's pretty much true, though again, not totally. He was fanatic on quality, but he also didn't like to admit a mistake. So he would have ensured more thorough testing. Towards the end, though, we have seen numerous "misfeatures" being released. This, admittedly, sounds worse than most, but I seem to recall one event of machines being bricked...and Apple being quite reluctant to fix things. (I don't remember whether they ever did or not, or whether they fixed *some* of them.)
So. It might have happened under Jobs, but he would have worked harder to prevent it. But he might well not have been any more willing to admit it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
> You couldn't even return same day D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival) equipment to the store you bought it from.
You can, since I did exactly that twice.
According the my cult of Apple colluges Apple never delivers any products with bugs and software on Apple devices never crashes. So this wifi not working problem on IOS 7 does not exist thus is heresey and his comments absoulty deserve to be censored. He is lucky he isn't flogged to death in public for his blasphemy. It would serve him right and serve as a reminder to others who speak out of turn.
Well, How can anyone expect anything else from Apple. People that likes Free software and Open Source shouldn't use their products, as again and again Apple screws them.
Oh well your anecdotal evidence proves there must have not been a 33% DOA rate then. Did you happen to buy at least 68% of them?
People spend entirely too much time connected to the internet and not enough time admiring the intrinsic beauty that is the iPhone.
I think this "angry mob" is just a angry man. Apple has no reason to censor anything, there's lots of complaints on the forums already
The RDF is so strong in some people that even Apple themselves can't overcome it! Comments have been disappearing and they even admitted to removing the poll.
For more than a decade, every time Apple does something unpopular or questionable, there's at least one guy who comes in saying "now if this were Microsoft, you'd all be up in arms."
Taking shots at Apple has been as much a part of Slashdot's history as hot grits and goatse. From back in their belagured days, through the first iMac, through the first iPod, straight on through the post-Jobs era.
Exactly. I know people who have returned products within the window when a new version of it is released without any hassle.
That was a missed opportunity, OS8 was positively stable when compared with the abortion which was OS7.5.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Because once Steve Jobs passed away they suddenly had to hire 10,000 employees to make up for it, then train them to program, debug, solder, assemble hardware, test, manage projects, and all those hundreds of other jobs that Jobs personally performed without help.
Its true that Apple is a walled garden, and also true that Apple fubared the wifi in their new OS, and should have tested it before releasing it. Now they have attempted to bully pulpit their detractors by attempting censorship. Enter out-of-band anger and the "Streisand Effect"(tm). They could have done a mea culpa, stated that they were working on a fix and apologized to users. Instead they go all borg and attempt using sticks and censorship. Oh that will fix things. So now everyone on /. knows, the pitchforks are out and torches are lit Apple has earned full Streisand. Let the rants and dumping begin.
You're blaming their users for a USB design flaw that only seems obvious if you're an electrical engineer?
/. bashed Apple when Jobs was alive. But I do agree that Jobs gladly spent the time and money making every product the best on the market and charging extra for it, so if you were buying Apple at least you knew you were getting a good product. I hope Apple continues that tradition. The maps fiasco happened shortly after his death so I think that would have happened no matter what and the 5s is just the 5 that is revamped and Jobs oversaw the development of the 5. The iPhone 6 being released Fall 2014 is what will be the interesting phone since Jobs had no part of the 6. Will they maintain the high quality we've come to expect? Or will Apple build plastic phones with giant screens like Samsung? Who knows, Apple could do anything on the next generation phone.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Arguably the most ethical response is to leave the original comment there, but preface it with a note from tech support suggesting that the recommendation is not correct and giving reasons why.
That's their current policy, I would expect a web archive link for your comment to be relevant.
Uhh... come again? I don't know what your definitions of D.O.A or "take it in for repair" is, but I've taken in faulty Apple hardware to Apple stores "for repair" and got totally new ones. Not just me either, I've had colleagues that had similar experience.
The best case was my colleague who had a slightly cracked 3gs screen which was totally his fault. We went to the Apple store at lunch time "for repair" and came out with a new phone at no cost. This was right after the 3gs came out.
There's _your_ anecdotal evidence against mine.
Now if you're talking about Apple re-sellers, that is a different problem and nothing to do with Apple.
Did they also censor Barbara Streissand's comments? Just kidding, it's such a given to make that joke about Apple, she practically works in their PR department, lol.
In early 2011 BlackBerry was fine. Though they had been forced downmarket since about 2006. That being said, jad they released a product the quality of the Z10 then they would have been fine. Their problems in terms of releases came after with failure and delay.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5460803 for "How to locally sync an iPhone with OS X Mavericks? iCloud is NOT an option."
Not everyone wants to use the clouds!!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Yes, now you can. Again thank your Attorneys General and the E.U. for that.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
To be fair, I didn't post backup to my statement either. I never took a copy of the Apple internal knowledge base pages to post, I'm afraid.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
This. Exactly this. Noone with ethics could buy this. No matter technology or quality.
What does it mean, "appended to the end of comments you post"
You know, prey is also a verb.
Just because you worked in one department long ago doesn't mean you know what's going on in the others now, or even have much of a grasp of the other industries your corporate overlord was involved in.
The factories at Foxconn and elsewhere who manufacture parts for gadgets like the iPhone "bin" those parts according to levels of failure risk. Apple strong-arms or buys their way into use of the higher-binned parts. That is why many more Mac Pros from 2006 are still humming along than the boxen slapped together for HP, Dell, Sony, and so on for the same year.
I worked at Apple for over five years. I flew to Shanghai and assisted with diagnostics in the factories. I was there. You were wedged in a call center booth collecting hearsay to gripe anonymously about later online. Figures that you'd be doing it here in the forgotten wastelands of Slashdot.
I don't think I've ever seen a laptop do that. Even Sony VAIO's, with the super thin cases that felt like they would break if you applied pressure never did that.
Pretty sure it would be fine using Windows 7 or Linux on the Mac (I get better performance on Windows and Linux on my MacBookPro 15" because OS X's I/O scheduler is pretty terrible in comparison, fairly noticeable when you use a HDD instead of a SSD. Just get some large read/write operation going and it just blocks other read/write operations notably).
If you run Windows on a Mac, you have to, because Apple never bothered adding stuff like audio support to their Bluetooth drivers for Windows. OS X Mavericks drivers don't play well with DisplayLink which worked fine on previous versions. VirtualBox drivers stop working, which worked on previous versions. A whole bunch of CUPS printers stopped working with OS X Maverick's CUPS...
Lenovo so far has been better and cheaper for me (and they don't insult me with a 'pro' line of laptops with only two USB slots and no kensington locks).
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
OK, I'm not getting this. Why should I care about switched regulator designs and/or "folding back the low voltage part over the buffer capacitor"? I'm not an electrical engineer, and am not really qualified to judge the aesthetics of power adapter design. Does this make it less effective? Less reliable? Less safe?
The antenna issue with the 4 was legit, although as far as I could tell overblown. If I licked my finger and put it on a certain spot, I'd reliably lose one bar.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The first computer I ever owned was a Mac. From then on, even though I always also had a PC, (with BeOS and Windows both, incidentally).. I always switched to doing my stuff on the Mac when I wanted to de-stress myself. It wasn't really suitable for serious work except audio and graphics though, because OS 8x was prone to bringing down the entire farm when it crashed. When OSX appeared, having had some experience with unix-y systems already (I know.. i know.. BeOS is not unix related.. regardless) I soon got to like this BSD based system. Each major upgrade was better, faster, and more compatible than the previous.. and nothing was ever changed simply for "changes' sake". Even after classic compatibility was dropped in 10.5, there were workarounds (like Sheepshaver) that seemed to work, and the swich to Intel did open up the door for new opportunites. About the time that Steve Jobs first got sick, and (entirely understandably!) lost some of his focus, Snow Leopard (10.6) came out. No significant new features except the app store, but lots of functions were dumped, such as things power users had come to depend on being able to alter, for instance, contextual menus, and other tweaks that allowed for a smoother and faster workflow. Themes and other modifications, which can be very helpful also, as some were helpful in reducing eye fatigue, were completely blocked, putting some companies which had been the staunchest Apple supporters, entirely out of business.And, boy oh boy was it slower. On an iMac which was 3 months old when 10.6 came out, it ran more than four times as slow,. Finder windows would take 5 or 6 seconds to open, on a good day. In fact the Finder was worse than it had ever been before. I swear it felt as responsive as my old days with a 386 felt. My Vista partition on the same machine feels very snappy, in fact as responsive as Win95 feels on a P4. Not surprising, as the windows "experience index" showed 5.8, which, I gather, is a pretty good number. Anyways, every upgrade since then has been worse, and due to forced obsolescence, such as minimum requirements for an application, where there was no good reason for having to make the upgrade, other than due to the compiler they chose to use. Every upgrade since 10.6 has introduced more bugs, incompatibilities, etc. I get that Apple doesn't like Java. But so what? I need it online. Why disable everybody's choice? Java now does not work at all online. Apps I bought not that long ago, are now useless. I get crashes again that bring down the whole PC, again. 8 gigs of memoryisn't even enough for the newest versions of OSX. If you think this comment is long you should see my list of all the thingts rthat were changed for chang's sakle, or functions that have been removed altogether. Did you know you no longer can even choose to do a search for *either* file name OR contemnts?. And because they have an extremely closed attitude to their programming, no third party tweaks appear any more. And soo much more wrong. The reason I wrote such a long comment is to show I am not a "mindless" Apple hater. I supported them for many many years. , and it is their current completrely disrespectful ,arrogant, inefficiently coded, and poorly thought out attitude to their desktop OS (all recent traits that never would have appeared in the Jobs era) that raised my hackles., and I haven't even gone into the iMac graphics bug...Their attitude towards their devices is, also, I see, rubbing a lot of poeople the wrong way. Currently, however, I am willing to give all one more "good old college try" with Mavericks 'Nuff said..
...just commenting the wrong way. If they would just comment the right way as our dear lord Steve originally intended, then these problems wouldn't arise.
You are just holding it wrong! It seems that apple is the Big Brother that they were against in the commercial in 1984.
I keep trying to get help on their support forum, but they are deleting my post over and over. Here it is:
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
No, but we get bored with it. (not of)
It differentiates their brand. Re the design, they got fairly good marks for the actual output regulation, compared to most (but HP, kudos to us for that)
http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html
Wtf is it with you people? Lose and loose are not interchangeable!
You've always had a good sarcasm detector.
Apple's wifi glitches are as old as the 802.11 protocol itself, and they've always covered them up with cloak-and-dagger. OS X wifi was buggy in Lion, and the "fix" in Mountain Lion made it even worse. The college kids working the Genius Bar have been holding the company line that "it must be the router". Now that censorship is involved, we have a slashdot story and a scandal. The Streisand Effect has been well documented. In the age of digital reproduction, censorship just plain doesn't work anymore. It didn't work for Barbara, it didn't work against Wikileaks, and it sure as hell isn't going to work for crApple. Some PR manager in Cupertino is probably--hopefully--losing his job right now.
As a former IT manager at a "mac shop" iOS development company, this story surprises me... not at all.
Oh gosh. Now Slashdot knows. You do realize that, while a decade ago that meant something, now it's meaningless. There aren't enough eyeballs here anymore to Slashdot an IIS4 server running on a 128bps fractional T1. Okay, maybe if it was running NT 3.5.1.