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."

Comments

Meanwhile...

[rwven]

...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.

Re:Meanwhile...

[serviscope_minor]

My Current laptop a ThinkPad is approaching 5 years now.

Snap! Mine's a W510. Actually, it might be older than 5 years. Well, I say laptop, I use it as a portable desktop which I take home once every few weeks or so.

It's acceptably fast, not a speed demon nor a slacker. A very few things could be faster, but I don't bump into them often enough to upgrade. It also holds desktop sized SSDs and has 16G RAM so it's fine for just about everything I do.

My eee900 is even older. 8 years, I think, though gmail is getting almost unusable though in the web client (50% speed, 50% screen space). Proper clients still work fine and trolling^Wbrowsing on slashdot is fine too.

Re:Meanwhile...

[MightyMartian]

When we looked at upgrading our hardware last autumn (most of our systems are Dell Vostros with 2 or 3gb of RAM bought in 2009 and had Windows Vista Pro), we decided that there was nothing new hardware could offer most of the staff. All but a few staff are basically running a browser and Office 2010, which these older systems run quite well. While I'm no fan of Windows 10, at the end of the day, it just seemed a better investment to buy Windows 10 licenses, upgrade the forty or so workstations we have, and factor attrition through hardware failure into the equipment budget. Yes, there's a bit of a gamble, in that we could have twenty of these seven year old computers crap out in one year, but we have a few spares and don't view it as a significant risk.

Save for certain applications (mainly graphics intensive or calculation intensive applications), PCs really peaked in the last decade, and the gains to be had to updating to the newest hardware isn't likely even be noticed by most users. The chief reason to even upgrade the operating system is because Vista's EOL is approaching, and it is getting rather long in the tooth (Chrome support will be pulled soon).

The Quiet Classism of The Gadgeteers

[RobotRunAmok]

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...

How it used to be

[david_thornley]

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?

Re:Really Sad?

[93 Escort Wagon]

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.
 

Re:It's official then?

[wile_e_wonka]

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.