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That Awkward Moment When 'Apple Mocked Good Hardware and Poor People' (dailydot.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a DailyDot article: Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, took the stage in Cupertino, California, earlier this week to explain some of the new features and specs on the new iPad Pro. Between showing off a new display and camera, Schiller also took some digs at Windows and PC users, specifically calling out those users who are on computers more than five years old. Schiller said that 600 million people are using PCs that are over five years old. 'This is really sad,' he said.
C. Custer, reporter for Tech in Asia also didn't like Schiller's remarks. He writes: If Apple's really targeting those 600 million old PC users, it seems to have done a pretty poor job. It's been more than five years since I saw the need to upgrade my primary computer, and nothing about the iPad Pro presentation made me rethink my position at all. But of course, Apple isn't really targeting those people. That was mostly just a cheap shot, a jibe at all of us poor fools who haven't yet seen the light. That's why the audience laughed knowingly, and even applauded. "Using the same machine for five years? How barbaric! Thank god we live in civilized society, where everyone throws their gadgets out and buys new ones every two years."
C. Custer, reporter for Tech in Asia also didn't like Schiller's remarks. He writes: If Apple's really targeting those 600 million old PC users, it seems to have done a pretty poor job. It's been more than five years since I saw the need to upgrade my primary computer, and nothing about the iPad Pro presentation made me rethink my position at all. But of course, Apple isn't really targeting those people. That was mostly just a cheap shot, a jibe at all of us poor fools who haven't yet seen the light. That's why the audience laughed knowingly, and even applauded. "Using the same machine for five years? How barbaric! Thank god we live in civilized society, where everyone throws their gadgets out and buys new ones every two years."
...The coworker sitting next to me us using a 5.5 year old macbook pro and defending it as "still as good as anything new."
What a barbarian.
What about all the poor SOB's who can't afford to upgrade their broken Apple shite because it's ridiculously fragile & over priced
Sounds like you have no experience with Apple! No experience!
I manage about six hundred Dell Latitude laptops and almost nine hundred Apple MacBook Pro 13" laptops. Despite having around 2/3 as many Dells and that we buy the Apples used off lease so they're an average of five years-old versus less than eighteen months for the Dells, nearly 90% of our support tickets are from users with Dell laptops. When a five year-old used Apple is more than ten times less troublesome than a much newer Dell, you're full of crap with your "fragile" claim.
Interesting coming from a company that will sell you a 3y9m old machine today (http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MD101LL/A&step=config#). Reports are that they still sell rather a lot of them, because they're upgradable, repairable, and work just fine.
As for me, my 2010 MBP literally came out of a garbage skip. Found it with a bulging/burst lithium battery (far from an Apple-only issue). $50 worth of eBay grey market battery later, and I have a pretty solid machine for XCode and Mac testing. If it weren't for that, I just wouldn't test or dev anything for Macs. Couldn't afford to.
The rich boys and their expensive toys, about which they understand a fraction.
It's tough to show off your new Porsche to the Marketing chippies around the watercooler, so your new Apple-thing will have to suffice...
Apple doesn't have anything to be smug about, period. Phil Schiller is a jerk trying to sell unneeded junk to stupid people. I say "junk" because that's what all machinery eventually becomes.If it does the job you need it to do, you're an idiot for replacing it!
That said, I may buy an iPad. My daughter had hers with her last visit, and it takes REALLY sharp photos.
Free Martian Whores!
Way back when, Apple was claiming that its computers lasted longer, and retained their usefulness longer, than other computers. Suddenly, this is supposed to be a problem?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You know, at its core I did get the point of the message ... there were many many years where Microsoft really only saw the world as Office+Outlook+Exchange in corporate environments.
When Apple was giving video editing tools and useful stuff for having a digital life, Microsoft ... well, Microsoft still had Solitaire.
Apple's reputation for a seamlessly working ecosystem is well earned when the guy who installed my fireplace was all happy he lived in an Apple household and hadn't had to fight with technology in a long time.
My Windows 8.1 box (once I disabled Metro, their start screen, and their annoying store) ... well, it seems to have the exact same utilities in it as it did in Windows 2003. For a company who spends billions on research, that's pretty pathetic.
But Apple always shunned the whole "compete on specs" thing, so that their marketing guy is suddenly doing this seems like they've got a new breed running the show, and that's a shame if this is the attitude it's bringing..
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This is the fundamental problem all computer makers face. The relentless advance of computing tech has far, far outpaced the computing needs of most people for at least the past 10-15 years. As long as the hardware keeps functioning, those people have no real need to buy anything new... so the manufacturers have to resort to other tactics (appeals to snobbery, techno-lust, inventing new "must have" features, etc.).
And, as others have pointed out, that comment of Shiller's was especially out of place given how many Mac users point to their still functional and useful "ancient" Macs. Heck, I've got a 2006 MacBook Pro that's still happily humming along, playing the role of our home media server. The battery is basically non-functional; but that's irrelevant for it's designated task.
#DeleteChrome
5 years ago, using a 5 year old computer could be rough. All but the most powerful machines seemed to be largely unusable by that age. But 5 years ago, 64 bit multiple core processors became common. 8 gigs of ram or more was suddenly commonplace. Hard drives under hundreds of GBs were uncommon. And then cheap SSDs came on the scene, reviving old hardware everywhere.
So, yeah, anymore a 5 year old computer is commonplace. I purchased my home desktop in 2010 (Dell XPS 8300, if I recall correctly, with a core i7 and 8 gigs of RAM), I added a 100 GB SSD in 2013 for use as the boot/OS drive, a second monitor around the same time, and a 4 TB drive for media storage in 2015. Although I am a relatively techie person, I see no need whatsoever to purchase a new computer within the next few years. Normally I want to be up with the times, but I am having a hard time seeing what I am missing out on. USB C, I guess? I can't think of anything else.