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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.
Modern app appers know that only apps can app apps, and if 600 million LUDDITES are still using LUDDITE software, that ruins it for the rest of us app appers! Apple wants to destroy LUDDITE software and replace it with good wholesome appy app apps!
Apps!
The Apple Marketing really are targeting the shallow and vacuous assholes who want to feel smug about the latest shiny?
My last PC was over 6 years old before it keeled over, and I hope this one lasts about the same.
Know what I still don't have? My first gen iPad that Apple updated until they made it useless. Know what I do have? A 3.5 year old Android tablet.
Huge amounts of people are running older machines ... and, once again, people in marketing are shallow idiots.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No way!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It was a dumb comment for sure, but turning this into a matter of class warfare or social justice is orders of magnitude dumber.
apple (and all non generic hardware pushers) needs consumers to continuously discard their old and buy its newest overpriced products with their much hyped latest features ( however unsubstantial ) in order to make profit.
this can only be achieved by social conditioning. a herd mentality is created where members of the herd feel fulfilled and happy, and be in a satisfactory social status, only when they have the latest.
so of course, they must laugh and mock at those outside the herd, make members of the herd join in laughing and mocking, more publicly the better.
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.
I find myself wondering if you ever say "need" when you mean "want". I'd be pretty surprised if you don't, in all honesty.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Apple has been playing the class warfare/have vs have-not/status symbol card for a while now. It plays to exactly what we (the general masses) intrinsically fear -- being singled out, not being "in", not fashionable, looking like a dork, etc.... It's also one of the reasons why the 99% hate the 1% -- because the 1% flaunt their wealth in front of others. Do you want to be flaunted to? Or do you want to do the flaunting to those plebeian Android/Windows/BB/feature phone users?
We have to realize that Apple is a fashion company first, a tech company second. Blue bubbles, anyone? Or are you "green with envy"?
It is vaguely unusual for someone to say it so plainly; but I'm not sure why this position would be even slightly surprising. Apple mostly sells hardware. If you sell hardware, people who are using 5+ year old PCs are lousy customers(regardless of cause: maybe they are too poor to buy the new and shiny stuff that they do want, maybe their needs just haven't changed enough to make an upgrade worth it, though they could afford whatever new and shiny stuff they felt like, the effect is the same). Why wouldn't your marketing message be anything other than encouragement to the people who do buy new stuff frequently; with a secondary focus on encouraging people with old stuff to feel that they are missing out?
>> 600 million people are using PCs that are over five years old. 'This is really sad,' he said.
No it really isn't. Most people just use PCs to write emails and surf the net. Heck even 5 year old hardware is overpowered just for that.
For your profit margins im sure, but for the rest of us we're doing just fine.
we can still access facebook, google, instagram, twitter, and a host of other top level sites to complete the tasks we see fit to complete on the internet. And as for Linux users, many slackware and gentoo afficionados routinely run nearly 10 year old hardware without concern.
Good people go to bed earlier.
When your PC is self-built and maintained with upgrades as needed, it's hard to tell the age of it. I got one part in it that's only like a year old, but I got a secondary HDD in there that's from the last decade.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
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 did get raised wages and and improved working conditions for the workers in China. But since the principle was "we hate Apple" as opposed to "protect the workers", only Apple felt pressure and only the workers on Apple products got improvements. A year or two after everybody stopped grumbling about Apple they were busted exploiting workers again.
If you actually do care about those workers then their exploitation should be the issue regardless of Apple's involvement.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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
Got a Phenom X4 chugging happily since 2009. Got a Sandy Bridge i5 2500K purring along since 2010. Even my Macbook Pro is a 2010 model, doing great since I swapped out the drive for a Samsung SSD, and my iPad is from 2012, the first to use retina and the last to use the wide (non-lightning) connector.
Sorry, Apple marketing guy. Got nothing against Apple products... they're pretty and work well. But my shit's working just fine, thank you very much, and I'll take no compulsion to trade up before I'm damn good and ready. Don't piss on me just because I know how to source reliable equipment and maintain it well.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
No, it's not disparaging the products, it's disparaging the people who own and use those products. Big difference.
And, uh, being a dickhead in a marketing launch does not magically excuse him being a dickhead.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Or, I can take that 5 year old PC that cost me $700 5 years ago, slap a new $300 Discrete GPU upgrade into it, maybe put down $30 for a bit more RAM and still have a better mostly 5 year old computer that still outperforms a new $1500 MacBook by leagues.
My last Mac is 10 years old now. MacBook Pro Core 2 Duel. I still use it to watch some stuff on iTunes with it.
My Current laptop a ThinkPad is approaching 5 years now. Compared to the new tech, it still is very fast and I have no needs for an upgrade.
My desktop is seven years old, albeit with a few updates. My laptop (a Dell E4300) I picked up off ebay for a hundred bucks and added an SSD. The desktop does almost anything I ask of it (I think XCOM2 was the only game it had a problem with, and it would probably run that with a new video card). The laptop doesn't do gaming but handles standard work tasks (web browsing, word processing) and Netflix without a problem. Most of the world doesn't need more than that.
If you're running a lot of massive builds on your local machine, running highly processor-intensive tasks, processing a massive amount of data, or are unable to run modern programs you need, it can absolutely make sense to shell out for a new machine. But otherwise (in most cases), it's just unnecessary spending on a luxury. It pollutes the environment, it's a slap in the face to *any* poorer relations or friends you might have, if you don't have trusts set up for your kids already it's kind of a slap in the face to them, and it's far from a socially responsible way to spend your money because almost the entire nonprofit world out there is trying to serve millions of people on budgets that would make you live on rice and ramen.
There are a few exceptions--maybe you are an engineer who designs hardware for the new system or needs to understand the customer experience better--but for most people, it's just a waste.
..is that Apple execs thinks we should have to upgrade perfectly working hardware every year. I put a new video card in my intel i7 920 and it still performs pretty damn good for all the tasks I use it for. This is just more proof of how far out of touch Apple is with the real world.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
My newest Apple computer is a 2011 MacBook Pro. I've upgraded the memory from 8GB to 16GB and the 500GB HD to a 1TB SSD. It also has a 1680 x 1050 NON-glossy display. Back then Apple used to make computers with options and upgrade paths. Both upgrading and non-glossy displays are no longer available, so I keep hanging on to what I like. At home it gets no better. My 2008 Mac Pro is still going strong, and no way I'm buying one of those stupid Mac Cans. I even still run a G4 Mac Cube as a web server. I forgot how old that is. So Apple, either make computers that die faster, or start making computers that I would want to own.
That said, I may buy an iPad. My daughter had hers with her last visit, and it takes REALLY sharp photos.
If you're only after really sharp photos, you'd be better off with a recent model compact camera. They're a lot cheaper, and will take much better photos.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You really need to do a search for "Ship of Theseus".
Required reading for internet skeptics
My 5 year old PC is still faster than the latest MAC and costs a quarter of the cost.
My Mac Pro is 9 years old.. because the new Mac Pro's are complete shit.