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Ask Slashdot: What Is the 'Special Appeal' of Apple Products?
Reader dryriver writes: As someone who comes from MS-DOS/Windows PCs background, I've never quite understood the appeal of Apple's products. I don't think Apple's products are terrible or anything, but I just fail to see what is so special and different about Apple's electronics that many Apple users would never dream of switching to a non-Apple product. Where does the 'special appeal' of Apple products reside? And why are Apple users so very loyal to Apple products, even though with Apple's pricing policy, you rarely get the best bang-for-the-buck in a product?
It was a boring afternoon. This should prove entertaining.
( ( - - - Fan boys here. Haters there - - - ) )
They are rectangular! And they have amazing rounded corners!
To name just one thing, I like to control when my computer updates. I don't want it updating in the middle of a presentation.
I have a 2011 MacBook Air that i use at home, and it works as well today as it did the day i got it. This thing has seen some shit, man...and every single component still works flawlessly.
I can't say that about *any* other computer that i've ever owned.
Not everyone is trying to optimize compute performance per $ or any othe sort of technical spec per $. Some of us just want to be happy with our phone and laptops and some of us can afford to pay more than rock bottom prices for them.
There's a lot of weird ego stuff in these discussions on all sides. But beyond that, try to understand that everyone isn't trying to optimize the same things.
Ok, /. editor (oh, well, that's why) consider this postable?
Why in the world would a
Besides, is the person who asked like 6 yrs old or something? Or just woke up after falling asleep in 1971 next to his IBM TTY connected to a DEC PDP-8L?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I used to buy PC laptops and desktops to run Linux and found I was always having issues unless I bought top spec equipment and even then for laptops the build quality was subpar unless you spent a lot of money so I would kill laptops each year with all the hard use and travel. I tried my first Mac back when the G4 iBook came out and that lasted 3x longer than any PC I had had and when I retired it, it went to my wife and continued to work for another 6 years in various uses. That's the thing, the Macs may not be the best bang for the buck but you get a well integrated and supported UNIX on hardware that is built to last so unless you're very cost sensitive at the time of purchase, the Mac will save money and be a better long term experience. Nothing to do with hipster this or shiny that, I'm a scientist working in genomics and the vast majority of my peers also use Macs. PCs running Linux are second most popular and Windows PC are a pathetic third place. We use Linux extensively for computing but for desktop and portable use a Mac is terrific.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
After a long day at work, either smashing my head against against the codeface down the Linux-mines, or being assaulted by a wide variety of sadistic corporate-grade Windows software, I get home tired and worn out.
I can put on the TV, sit on the sofa with my macbook, and not have that paranoid feeling that it's going to do something unpleasant and surprising. It won't interrupt me demanding to update, and then reboot my machine without saving 5 minutes later, despite me pressing the button that looked like it said "Don't do that". It won't shart itself because upstream decided to replace upstart with systemd during the last update, and now it won't load vital start up dependencies.
I don't want my home life to be as arduous as my work life. I have precious enough time to myself without having to fight my computer.
In my experience, it's the customer service. Apple has a couple of orders of magnitude better customer service than the rest. When I had a defective Samsung phone, my option was to go to the carrier store and hope they could help me. Usually they couldn't do so in any way that was convenient to me. When I first got an iPad, after a couple of months, a pixel died. I made an appointment at an Apple store and within 7 minutes of my arrival, I had a replacement device in my hands being restored from backup. Shortly after, I bought an iPhone as a result.
Additionally, most Android devices have a software update life cycle of maybe a year if you are lucky, compared to the 2-3 years that Apple will support their devices.
That's about it. Whereas there are lots of choices of window manager, user toolsets (editors, mail clients, etc) on linux/X11, I don't want choice. I want one thing that works well.
The more unix windows becomes, the more likely I'll be willing to switch - but it's still a very long way off. And in general I like the productivity apps on OSX better. It's rare for me to use my windows (game) machine without cursing how drivers work, the updates, etc.
I don't have Mac computers anymore. I do have an iPad.
I was a huge fan of the Mac. I still have a "Fat Mac" in my garage.
When they came out, I was intrigued. I wanted to see it, try it. Almost immediately I started getting shit about the IBM PC being better and how the Mac was a toy, etc. So pretty much I just got one to say Fuck You to those people.
It's been better than PCs, it's been worse than PCs. At this point, I own a 10 year old PC just because I wanted to play some PC games back then. Now, it is used merely for porn, web, email.
Computers are no longer these things that you get because they are special, expandable, supports this or that.
Computers are toasters. You turn them on, do what you need, then turn it off.
The only people caught up in this whole Mac vs PC shit are the manufacturers and Fan Boys. Everyone else just wants to be able to watch the latest celebrity sex tape.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The Mac is good because you're not forced to update (unlike Windows).
The iPhone is good because you CAN update (unlike Android).
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Technology at its face is complicated. Sure once you learn its intricacies it's not so hard to follow its ebb and flow. Jobs had his programmers obfuscate the underlying technology such that the average person could just go about using the device without knowing anything about how the device worked. So people use Apple products because it hides the "hard" stuff and lets you do the fun stuff. It's also the reason techs tend to dislike them. The obfuscation goes beyond hiding into locking down features that can be useful if you know what you're doing. With Jobs gone and his ideals within the company all but faded we are starting to see cracks. If Apple strays from the simple but complicated mantra too far they'll lose their audience.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
A bit like owning a porche 911 or a corvette
Yeah, yeah... Feeding the troll...
Porsche is spelled with an s in it.
"porche" is just french for "porch".
The 911 is pretty much the best sports car on the planet that can still be used as a daily driver. Calling it a 'crap car' is just being petty, and probably jealous.
The Corvette is more hit and miss as a car, and it's no 911, but in terms of raw fun per dollar it's pretty hard to beat.
Ironically though you are probably right about the Apple. The *mystique* (here you actually do want the 'french' word. mystic is just wrong.) and bragging rights is a big part of the appeal. Apple is a cooler brand than Android or Samsung or LG etc... but Apple's brand strength is fading, IMO.
During Steve Jobs' era (2nd term) Apple mobile (iPod, iPhone, iPad) products had a great usability, amazing attention to detail, and clean aesthetic design. Steve pushed designers and developers beyond what was imagined, product had to work intuitively. That is why no one else was able to deliver a successful handheld (HP, PalmOS, etc). Unfortunately Apple diluted aesthetic and focus with multiple color versions and self-competing product lines (you can buy iPhone 7+, 7, 6+, 6s, se in 6 colors). On the other hand it always has been a club where you feel better b/c you have "luxury" (aka. higher priced item) than someone else.
YMMV:
* Command key instead of Control key means I can do my typical cut/copy/paste shortcuts, and still have "ctrl-c" for break in a Terminal window.
* Command key with thumb more ergonomic than ctrl key with pinky.
* Terminal.
* Real file system without 256 character path limits - I know ntfs has recently patched this one.
* Symlinks. I mean real symlinks.
* Touchpad gestures
* Unix based vs. unix added on (MS moving in the right direction now with bash)
As someone who comes from Kia/Hyundai background, I've never quite understood the appeal of Porsche's products. I don't think Porsche's products are terrible or anything, but I just fail to see what is so special and different about Porsche's cars that many Porsche users would never dream of switching to a non-Porsche product. Where does the 'special appeal' of Porsche products reside? And why are Porsche users so very loyal to Porsche products, even though with Porsche's pricing policy, you rarely get the best bang-for-the-buck in a product?
Let me start by saying that I hate Apple products. The only reason I have any is because I inherited them. But I do have to admit that FaceTime is way ahead of Microsoft's Skype or any of Google's many products. It just works. Seriously. My kids can use it easily to call me and it just works. I do not understand why, but the same just can't be said about other products, Skype in particular. No matter what whenever I try to video chat with someone via Skype, it takes a least half an hour for the other side to get it working, even my Mom who works on computers for a living. Half the time Skype will connect but the camera just won't work on one side or the other. Other times it just won't connect, or someone won't be visible, or the audio won't work, etc.
But FaceTime just works.
Just about everything else about iOS sucks, however,
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Some of these are out of date, and most are laptop only, but my list:
-Magnetic power adapter. Maybe I'm rougher on them than your average user, but 3 of the 4 laptops I owned from 1999-2009 all died because of the AC jack failing/coming unsoldered/etc. To the point where I had to hold the plug at certain angles to maintain charge.
-OS X was the polished Unix OS I'd been looking for after 10 years of dabbling with Linux but it always being unwieldy/unsupported enough to keep me on Windows
-Laptop Touchpad + gestures. In 2009 there was no comparison, I'm not sure how far PC laptops come along in this regard since then, or how much is locked behind BS Apple patents.
-Laptop Build Quality. My MacBook Air in 2009 was an amazing revelation after years of plastic PC laptops that all creaked if you held them by the corner. My perception is that the PC manufacuters have caught up here and you can get all metal cases unless you buy super bargain basement.
-This was always avoidable on PC, but Apple didn't force crapware down your throat on a new laptop purchase.
So why is the Apple Distortion Field cracking for me?:
-They got rid of the magsafe power adapters
-They got rid of ports than I need (HDMI, SD Card, traditional USB, Headphone fucking jack) in the name of going all USB-C. I would have been fine with phasing the USC-C ports in with at least a single traditional USB port for backwards compatibility.
-Price
-Gluing/soldering in components like RAM/SSD. That should be outlawed in the same way that a non-standard shaped gas tank connector which forced you to always go to Exxon stations is.
-Focus on cloud shit that I don't want, or focus on locking down/iOSifying shit that I don't want. I'm for the most part OK with locked down defaults so long as I can go into System Preferences and tell it 'I'm an adult'
I will consider my parenting to be a success if my kids never end up thinking like this.
That's pretty much why I like and use Apple products. I have used three laptops in the past 14 years: a high-end HP laptop, a mid-range from Lenovo, and the MacBook Air. HP's laptop worked fine for two years, but things started to get messy after that. Opening more than half a dozen tabs on Chrome would turn the laptop into a room-heater. Ubuntu never really worked with issues on that laptop. Lenovo's laptop worked fine for four years, but it started to run into same issues after a point. I have been using the MacBook Air (2013) for last three and a half years and I have had zero issues with it. It just works every single time. I would like to give something else a try as soon as this device dies. Windows 10 and Ubuntu run better on Paralles (a VM) on the MacBook Air than any laptop I have tried them on.
It took me less than three days to feel home on OS X (now macOS). Coming from Ubuntu and Windows, things were a lot different, but my impression OS X is just a dumbed down version of Windows in terms of complications. Everything is in right front of you. While I see no use of Siri that they introduced last year, and all the bells and whistles around PiP, and things like having two windows placed side-by-side, working on OS X has never made me feel frustrated. Again, for the things I need a laptop for, the MacBook Air has continued to deliver, so I have no reason to look elsewhere.
People who don't use Macs love to compare tech specs. People who do use Apple's computers tend to compare their overall experience, which includes software, support, and aesthetics and many other human factors.
I'm sure the notion that Macintosh offers *MORE* bang for your buck seems absurd to tech spec oriented folks. But indeed millions of people do indeed buy Macs, iPhones and Apple's other products, because they feel a better product is worth spending a little more.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Maybe if they jailbreak, but there has yet to be an iOS compromise in the wild for phones that are not jailbroken.
Mainly I like the OS. I like the GUI more than what Windows and Linux has to offer. I like the UNIX underpinnings.
I like that I can (almost) seamlessly integrate a Mac workstation into a Linux environment with shared scripts and file system paths.
I like the focus on lightness and size for my laptops while still giving me more than enough performance when I'm on the road. I travel alot.. every half pound helps when I'm on the road.
I like how it handles quicktime media (a standard in the visual effects industry) better than Linux or Windows.
I like how well (though not perfectly) integrated the various devices and services are.
I like the company's attention to environmental and human issues -- they're no even in the same universe as perfect but I don't see anyone else doing better for my money.
Personally I love the new keyboard on the Macbook Pro and I don't miss the physical function keys.. the touchbar is really great. Though I would have preferred that there was a haptic feedback like on the touchpad.
I like not being abandoned by a carrier or phone manufacturer for OS and security updates.
All around, for my needs and my money, they're just better. Not for everyone obviously.. but there's nothing that they're currently doing or not doing that would cause me to switch at this point. One day maybe.. but I would be giving up quite alot.
The 911 is pretty much the best sports car on the planet that can still be used as a daily driver
You misspelled Nissan GT-R.
This is the equivalent of arguing over page 4 vs page 5 of a Victoria Secret lingerie catalog. You both are right, both cars are works of art.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
I've been a Mac user for a really long time. I've owned a lot of them over the years. And a lot of PCs.
I used to support Windows and Linux machines (servers/desktops) in various capacities at various employers. (Federal and state government and corporate.)
I really enjoyed having a machine that worked consistently every time I turned it on. (or now, when I wake it from sleep. I reboot so rarely these days). Predominantly, the only time my Macs exhibited strange behavior was when they had hardware issues.
It wasn't like Windows 95 which would refuse to acknowledge some random accessory because a change had been made to the registry by some other app. I never had to worry about some $.30 interface chip crashing the machine because the vendor had cut corners writing the driver software and I bumped into a crash situation trying to do an every day task, like printing. Or plugging in a USB device.
Or Windows 98 which was a slightly more stable house of cards.
Or Windows XP which was a breeding ground for viruses and system compromises no matter how securely you locked the system down. I remember when you would race to install Service Pack 3 on Windows XP before the IP scanners would compromise the machine. Never had to worry about that on the Mac.
I've never had to deal with Microsoft's wavering tendencies to see how invasive their software could be on your machine. Yes, I'm looking at you, Internet Explorers 4 through 7. And you too, Active Desktop.
And before you hold Linux up as the shining jewel of computing perfection, I have two words for you: dependency hell.
Side note: My personal uptime record is on a Linux file server. 253 days without a reboot. A nice Dell box with a SCSI RAID array. Supporting a 200 user design department the entire time (server hosted home directories and a few other services, not just a file server.) Stayed up just a hair longer than the school year. Then I decided to perform a package update. It took 3 days to get the machine back to its former state.
My Macs have always "just worked" more often than most PCS. Yes, they've had their problems. I ran a lab of them in a student environment for years. Many of them worked perfectly fine in a fairly abusive situation. And yes, there were a few machines with problems. There was one Mac G4 that had all of it's internal components replaced twice. The only original part was the external case, and it still never ran 100%. But even at 90%, it was more consistently reliable than most of the Dell's in the lab across the hall.
A week ago, I finished an 11 day Deep Dream render on my MacBook Pro. (No NVidia card, so CPU only). I continued to use the machine for my daily tasks while that render ground on. It never hitched, I never had a problem. Even though it was eating up CPU resources like crazy. Heck, I even let it go to sleep a few times and accidentally let my battery run to zero after forgetting to plug it back in. And when I woke it up/restored it from suspend, everything continued on as though nothing had gone wrong.
Yes, Apple, Macs and the OS have their flaws. But they're consistent flaws. Yet they still offer the one thing I've struggled to find in the Windows or Linux worlds: A user experience I can trust.
Reeses
Tapping an icon, is tapping icon. It doesn't matter whether it's iOS or Android. The settings are where the only real major usability differences are. On iPhone, within a version, the settings are going to be the same for all devices. Even between versions, the changes aren't usually that drastic. I'm an Android user, and more than capable of handling the differences between version and manufacturer. I, generally, know what I'm doing. But when I help someone over the phone, I'll hope they have an iPhone.
Contextual menus are potentially the fastest task, because they appear right under the cursor (small distance). And both Windows and Mac OS handle those okay.
But the second fastest tasks are the corners of the screen - they may be far from the cursor (particularly if the cursor is near one corner and going to the opposite diagonal), but the target size is infinite. Throw the mouse towards a corner and you'll eventually land there. Mac OS uses those corners, and has, ever since OS v.1. It's very easy to click on the Apple menu, for example.
Third fastest are the edges. They may be similarly far from the cursor as edges, but they're not quite infinite in size - go too far to the left or right, say, and you miss a menu at the top of the screen. But you can't possibly go too far up. Or click on something in the dock - left or right, you may miss, but you can't miss by going too far down. And this is something Windows has always screwed up. Taskbar Items have a bottom edge, so rather than being an infinite size downwards, they are only 15 pixels in height. Suddenly, rather than being one of the fastest items to click, they're one of the slowest - potentially far from the cursor, and with a tiny target.
Similarly, the menu bar... All Mac programs have their menus at the top of the screen, extending infinitely "up". They are the third fastest things to get to. Windows programs have their menus... in a tiny slice at the top of a window somewhere in the middle of the screen. And because they depend on the position of the window, not only are they small, and far from the cursor, they're in a different physical position for every window! You can't even use muscle memory to hit the menu!
So, that's part of the special appeal. The Mac UI is consistent and optimized for speed. The Windows UI is inconsistent and appears to be reverse-optimized, selecting the slowest possible design choices.
I bought a newly released Android phone, there was nobody in line to talk to. No fun but much quicker.
Apple aren't perfect - their current hardware line up leaves much to be desired, which lead to me recently having a fling with a MS Surface Book: I wanted to mess with the tablet/stylus idea for a project I'm working on, plus the Surface range seemed like the closest thing to a windows "reference platform" that should showcase WIn10 at its best. The Surface Book failed within the 30 day "easy returns" period - now, other people have had good experiences with the SB so I'm not going to knock it on that basis, but there were other more fundamental reasons why I bailed and got my money back rather than accept the offer of a new replacement machine.
I'd also note that I've used DOS, Windows and Linux, MacOS and various others on and off since forever (ISTR there must have been at least one occasion when I used WIndows, MacOS ('classic' and X), Linux, RiscOS and VMS. Windows 95/NT5/2000/XP was my daily driver from about 1996-2006 before I switched to Mac, and I've always had a Win7 VM on my Mac for testing websites and stuff. What I'm saying is: this is not "eek, the keys are a bit different" - I can cope with things being "a bit different", I already mostly know how to use Windows (I've developed for Windows, whereas everything I've written on the Mac has been crossplatform) and I'd been getting real work done on the Surface before it failed.
Mac advantage 1: Mac OS and Mac OS apps are, typically, just nicer: they're responsive (click the mouse and, generally, there's an instant response - even if its only an hourglass you know you've clicked something). On windows, frequently, there was no sign of anything happening for a second or so. Apps tend to be consistent and designed with more "attention to detail" than you see on Windows.
Examples: Apple Mail is not the best Mail client by a long chalk and receives much abuse, but select part of a message and hit reply and you get a new message with just that text quoted. How else should it work? I now know where all those silly huge chain emails come from - because that's what Win10 mail and Outlook force you to do. Someone on the 'To' line ought to be on 'CC' instead? Just drag them - the App recognises each address as a discrete object. On Windows, carefully select the email address by hand, copy & paste, being careful not to mess up the separating commas. Outlook 2016 is feature-rich but usability poor - not even properly integrated into the Win 10 notification or calendar system and I had to install a third party plug-in to stop it quitting (and hence stopping checking for new mail) every time I closed the window. Outlook wouldn't talk to my Google calendar or address list (and Outlook 2016 still doesn't do Google 2-factor login). Win10 Mail/Calendar/Contacts did a bit better - and knows about Google - but its feature-restricted (failed me when I needed to drag a message from my Google account to an Exchange folder) plus it has a horrible, space-inefficient design that assumes you're going to run it full-screen.
That's one example. There are, of course, lousy Mac OS apps, too, but generally they adhere to a much higher standard of 'thoughtful touches' than Windows.
As for Mac vs. Linux - Linux rules for server-side, but when it comes to GUI everything nasty you can say about Windows' responsiveness and attention to detail applies to Linux with two scoops of ice-cream and a cherry on the top. Linux GUI's design brief is "give us a horribly over-engineered windowing system, make it networkable but so clunky that VNC is a better solution for remote access, add a desktop manager that looks like - but doesn't work like - NeXTStep because I'm a Unix hacker and as long as I can run 6 copies of vim and 6 bash shells side-by-side I'll be in hog heaven." Or at least, that was the situation until Gnome 3 and Unity came along - which was like being rescued from the Titanic by the Marie Celeste.
Mac advantage 2: Win10 is still a ghastly hybrid of Windows 7 and The UI Formally Known as Metro. It didn'
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
BMW is a better car analogy. Porches are nice little sports cars but BMWs are amazing everyday drivers. They're perhaps the only daily driver built completely with the driver in mind—the way the shift, handle, the engine harmonics, the cabin design. Everything is tweaked for an optimal driving experience.
When I bought my BMW my wife was skeptical. She didn't want me to get it because she didn't want people to think we're snobby. It only took one ride for her to realize there's a reason people get attached to them. Sure, there are lots of people who drive BMWs because it's fashionable and they want to be seen in an expensive car. But the reason most BMW owners consistently buy BMWs is because almost everyone has to drive a lot. When spend a lot of your time doing something you want to enjoy it.
Guys who like to work on cars don't like BMWs. A mechanic looks underneath and wonders, "Why the hell are there two control arms and a giant ass trailing arm on the rear end? Changing those bushings would be a nightmare." An engineer looks underneath and thinks, "Damn that's the most symmetrical undercarriage I've ever seen."
Macs aren't designed for those who tinker under the hood. They're not designed for cheapskates who value money more than experience. They're designed for those who want to do work (or whatever) on their computer rather than work on their computer.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I've been running OS X for years. My current hardware is a mac pro ca. 2009, a 12/24-core, 64 GB, 3 GHz, quad-drive, 8-monitor setup. It's newish to me, I bought it used last year, (finally) replacing, in 2016, a 2008 8-core I purchased new in 2008. Apple's current mac pros are not of interest to me. Not even slightly.
So the thing is, over the years, for this platform, I've bought a lot of OS X based software. I bought it thoughtfully for the most part, and so most of it remains useful to me.
So as far as suddenly developing an itch for Windows (or linux) goes for my daily driver... nope. It's simply not practical.
This occurred, it seems to me, because the system was in fact highly reliable, none of my Apple machines ever had a hardware failure, and as that software pile grew, the "I'm invested" hooks got in deeper and deeper. It's not even that the application software is the same as (or even better than) it would be under Windows - sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't - it's just the fact that it's already there, I already paid for it, and I see no reason to do that again. I do very much like that I can open a terminal and hammer away at what amounts to a very familiar *nix environment. That seems to me to be one of the major differentiators vs. Windows. Not linux, linux is (obviously) a comfy *nix environment, but linux's graphics environment (no standard, OS-supported GUI) deters me from developing for it, so, it's not in the running to be my desktop, even if I could get over all that already-purchased software. OS X and Windows are both fully adequate graphics platforms for developing the kind of applications I work on, so that's where my interest remains.
Today, Apple doesn't sell a computer I would buy, but, there's always EBay. Apple's Mac Pro platform didn't turn into something of no interest to me until 2013 or 2014 if you go by hardware actually shipping. So there are about four years left for me to... "upgrade"... to. And in that time, Apple may finally come with a tower design I'm willing to buy into again. And my current machine seems quite capable and fast to me, so I'm not feeling any real pressure.
I expect my software will keep working just the same, Windows will continue to not run it, and so Apple it will continue to be, one way or another.
It doesn't hurt that I can open a VM with Windows and/or linux any time I need to (and I do need to, because I build win/osx cross platform software, and our web servers are all linux machines, so there are reasons to have a working linux image on my desktop as well.) I just never have to leave OSX to do that, which is damned convenient (VMWare FTW.)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.