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Slashdot Asks: What Do People Misunderstand or Underappreciate About Apple? (fastcompany.com)
In an interview with Fast Company, Apple CEO Tim Cook says people who have not used his company's products miss "how different Apple is versus other technology companies." A person who is just looking at the company's revenues and profits, says Cook, might think that Apple "is good at making money." But he says "that's not who we are. In Cook's view, Apple is: We're a group of people who are trying to change the world for the better, that's who we are. For us, technology is a background thing.
We don't want people to have to focus on bits and bytes and feeds and speeds. We don't want people to have to go to multiple [systems] or live with a device that's not integrated. We do the hardware and the software, and some of the key services as well, to provide a whole system. We do that in such a way that we infuse humanity into it. We take our values very seriously, and we want to make sure all of our products reflect those values. There are things like making sure that we're running our [U.S.] operations on 100% renewable energy, because we don't want to leave the earth worse than we found it. We make sure that we treat well all the people who are in our supply chain. We have incredible diversity, not as good as we want, but great diversity, and it's that diversity that yields products like this. What do you think?
We don't want people to have to focus on bits and bytes and feeds and speeds. We don't want people to have to go to multiple [systems] or live with a device that's not integrated. We do the hardware and the software, and some of the key services as well, to provide a whole system. We do that in such a way that we infuse humanity into it. We take our values very seriously, and we want to make sure all of our products reflect those values. There are things like making sure that we're running our [U.S.] operations on 100% renewable energy, because we don't want to leave the earth worse than we found it. We make sure that we treat well all the people who are in our supply chain. We have incredible diversity, not as good as we want, but great diversity, and it's that diversity that yields products like this. What do you think?
This whole article is clickbait trolling, getting the fanboys out to bloviate about how the Apple ecosystem is more than the sum of it's parts, and the haters to then reply about how that is comical horseshit, proven by single anecdote; etc.
Welcome to the new Slashdot.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I am thinking it must be a slow news day and the article's title is a big fat troll to start an Apple flame-war.
From all outward appearances they are pretty much exactly the same as any of their competitors. Worse in some ways. They appear to make their products in other countries and import the products into the USA. They appear to evade paying taxes whenever possible. They try to force customers who have paid for an imported hardware product to only buy software from their store.
Which part am I mistaken about?
Clang, LLVM, WebKit, launchd, Grand Central Dispatch. CUPS web interface went from "13 year old with HTML" to "This is usable" after Apple hired the developer.
I left Apple product a while ago. But I can say for almost certain that I wouldn't have the career I have now or a household running FreeBSD/Linux if it wasn't for OS X' underpinnings.
Ironically I've actually used some of my PPC knowledge at work because a lot of embedded automotive controllers are based on the e200 cores.
I know this is cliche and can be nitpicked. On the whole, their closed wall system works in that applications just work. And they work for a long time. I am the proud owner of a 5 year old MacBook that I use daily. I am the proud owner of an Iphone 7+ and an Ipad Pro. Data movement between the devices is automatic and just works. Granted it costs me .99 a month for a stupid iCloud account, but it just works.
Their machines last. I have gone through numerous Dell, HP, Toshiba laptops. After a year or two they are close to seeing the trash can. Don't see that with Apple products.
I am not a fanboi, but just appreciate that things work.
There USED to be something special to misunderstand or underappreciated.
But that's all done now.
Apple is now just another HP or Dell
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
We're a group of people who are trying to change the world for the better, that's who we are. For us, technology is a background thing.
This pretty concisely sums up everything that is wrong with the tech industry: this sort of smarmy hubris is why everybody else wants to repeatedly smack Teh Tech Bros with a length of hose.
People don't appreciate that:
1. It's much harder to create good industrial design than it is to copy it. When the Macbook Air was released, it was breathtaking. So were the first few iterations of the iPad and the iPhone. After the first big wins, it gets much harder to play the "smaller, faster, more storage and sleeker" game.
2. Technology matures. Many people rant that Apple's innovation around the iPhone and iPad has slowed. Of course it has, because all of the obvious things have been done over the last decade. It's like automobile technology -- once manufacturers figured out where all the basic components needed to go, they have cheerfully chugged along for decades with gradual improvement.
3. If you're the market leader, there is no value in going down-market. Apple does an outstanding job of maintaining margins without resorting to selling a bewildering array of phones at all price points in a desperate attempt to gain market share. Nobody wants a Samsung J3 or an LG K4. They're cheap pieces of junk that you only buy if you can't afford a decent phone.
4. Maintaining and developing iOS is a massive undertaking that Apple's competitors (with the exception of Google) don't have to undertake. We've seen Samsung's attempt at a third-party OS, and it was dismal.
We don't want people to have to go to multiple [systems] or live with a device that's not integrated
When your device doesn't integrate with anything else then your device sucks. There is a standard called USB why don't you use it? Apple is an extremely annoying company with the "not invented here" mentality. If I have to bring a different cable for every iDevice everywhere I go I will not buy your product.
might think that Apple "is good at making money." But he says "that's not who we are
It's easy to make money when you don't pay any taxes.
Of course there's a touch screen macOS... It's called iOS. Apple made a very conscious choice to not just ship the same OS for both touch screens and mouse interfaces, because the two fundamentally work differently.
Having tried to use generic windows software on windows on a touch screen device, I have to say, I agree with Apple - MS's solution isn't a solution.
At least that's an honest answer to what a publicly traded company is supposed to do, and what Apple consistently does. The rest of it makes me want to go vomit in a walled garden, it's just about as believable as Monsanto, the Koch Brothers or any other megacorp that's saying they are making the world a better place.
I love fingerprints all over my screen. So awesome. Every smudge, every streak. All computers should look like that, especially ones with 15 inch and larger screens.
Apple makes a lot of money by removing freedom. People are not free to fix their devices. People are not free to use any platform to develop for iOS. People are not free to install apps from anywhere. People are not free to access a filesystem directly on iOS. People are not free to find a complete replacement for iTunes, you will always have to come back to it for some purpose. Never has any company been able to apply so much manipulation to users of their products. On top of that, they are doing everything they can to rob people of income through taxes which is something societies desperately need. It makes me sick to tell you the truth.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Case in point: I was just given an iPad (company anniversary gift). It's my first Apple device. After a month of trying to get it to work for me, I'm probably going to have to turn it into a streaming/gaming device for my kids. Why?
Apple's trust model is broken. On iOS, apps are assumed to be not trustworthy, so they put them in a sandbox. This means one app can't access another app's local files. On the other hand, for some reason, the cloud is assumed to be trustworthy. If I use iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, or any other cloud provider, I can open and save files to any cloud folder.
I've spent a couple years de-cloudifying myself because as we all know, the cloud is just somebody else's computer. According to my philosophy, therefore, the cloud is inherently untrustworthy, and I don't want my data on somebody else's computer. This is why my devices have local storage: to hold my data. If I want to share it, I use Syncthing (https://syncthing.net) and I can then access it on the local storage of one of my other devices. I'm therefore not sharing todos, notes, files, or anything else I choose not to share with Apple, Google, Amazon, or anybody else who may decide at some point to mine my data.
On Android, I have the choice to configure my device this way. On my iPad, I do not. It is, essentially, then, not my device. It's Apple's. It's bound to their trust model, which says Apple is trustworthy (their apps can access the new "On my iPad" file selector), but 3rd party apps are not (even sync apps like Resilio Sync or Syncthing). Their trust model, therefore, makes the device useless to me.
Sure, what Tim Cook says has some truth to it: if I were willing to share all my stuff on other people's computers, I would be able to use the iPad without thinking about "bits and bytes and feeds and speeds." But their "whole system" means sharing personal life data to an unprecedented extent with Apple. That's not bringing humanity to computing. That's giving over our humanity to be stored by one or more corporations. It's a classic example of forging an easy path for Lemmings to go--where? And that's the problem. We don't know if we're heading for the safe exit or dropping off the cliff.
A walled garden that exhibits many of the characteristics of a cult. In fact smartphones themselves almost seem like an addiction. So one might view Apple as a drug dealer ;)
;)
;)
Don't get me wrong, I do have 2 macs and a Developer ID and do iOS development work for In-House deployment. In addition to the other development work i do.
But from top to bottom, it is all about regulation (by Apple) and control (by Apple). Those who have not been through the development process from beginning to end. Have no idea how many hoops you need to jump through. I think one spends almost as much time getting the app deployed. As is spent developing it. And things are changing all the time. Such that even the individuals at Apple give bad advise about how to go about things. But I will also say, this they do try to help
I will also say this, while the learning curve was very steep. Now that I know my way around quite well. The 2+ years of on the side self education was worth it.
Just my 2 cents
...your taxes then?
Why? What obligation does Apple have to give money to the government outside the legal minimum in taxes they're required to pay? If Apple can take advantage of a loophole that allows them to legally avoid paying taxes, more power to them. If you're paying more taxes than you are required to, you're an idiot.
is how often people misunderstand the key approach of Apple. technology is a background thing. No person or company in the history of mankind ever changed the world for the better by approaching the tool to attain their goal as "a background thing." technology as we know it is arguably one of the most fundamental and incredible expressions of human thought and progress in our entire existence. The most damning conclusion from this sentiment is that Apple is admitting theyre just along for the ride.
technical readers of slashdot will surely agree that most of apples effort of late to 'change the world for the better' has revolved around ostentatious and overpriced status symbols masquerading as technological achievements. From charging to thunderbolt to simple interaction with the product (homepod anyone?) its abundantly clear "the world" is something theyre interested in curating themselves instead of participating in.
Good people go to bed earlier.
And underappreciate nothing.
Easy.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
A brown-nosing call to Apple fanboys everywhere.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
I dont understant why Apple didnt choose BeOS.
Im only half joking.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Except they took the deal with Ireland despite the fact that it was an illegal agreement with the EU. I have a hard time believing there wasn't a little bit of selective ignorance applied there.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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They don't use systemd, do they? At least not yet.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
...but you gotta understand why Apple is still a player:
What alternative do you have today? Android? Pc? If that was left - there's really no competition to drive innovation forward.
Apple appeals to people who wants their technology to be not only functional, but pretty. It's like you're buying a lifestyle choice, you're not only purchasing a computer or yet another phone - you're buying a fashion statement, and you can still do what others do - but with less fuss and less nerding around drivers, updates, viruses etc.
The virus part is partly due to the fact that 90% of the world still owns a PC, so the viruses on Apple die a natural death of starvation...aka...it's not that easy to spread them because they're depending on an infrastructure to support them, which is poor (for them) to say the least. Same with Linux - Linux is as prone to viruses as Apple and PC would ever be, but they're so rare amongst desktop users that this is rarely an issue. Android "linux" however ...is an entirely different story.
I work at IT-helpdesk in an organization with 200K+ workers, and we know this by heart, because we support Apple IOS, Android, Windows AND Linux.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The biggest taxpayer was the most profitable: Apple, which reserved $15.8 billion for income taxes on $59 billion in operating income.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/c...
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
"We make sure that we treat well all the people who are in our supply chain." Because all of those not treated well all ended up jumping to their deaths at the Foxconn factory.
Flamebait question, but I'll bite:
When I switched to Apple about 10 years ago, I thought I'd dual-boot Linux and/or Windows on it, and check out OS X out of curiosity. That I'm still buying their stuff is as good an evidence as I have that they are doing something right, at least as far as my experience is concerned.
It turned out that I never installed Linux, and the Bootcamp Windows install was used mostly for games, and then less and less, and the most recent iMac I bought doesn't even have one anymore.
So what do they do right? Stuff simply works. I've spent countless hours on my previous Linux machines (and Windows, DOS, etc. before that) configuring things just the right way, installing that tool and this to get things to work the way I need them - and still something always failed. The first thing I noticed on my first Mac was that drag & drop actually worked! At that time, on Windows, it was a gamble and half the time it did some shit you didn't want, while the other half of the time it simply didn't work at all.
The same is true for the iPhone. I bought the first one, and it was the first smartphone I owned. Had owned various PDAs and mobile phones before, but the iPhone was the first smartphone that got things right and simply worked.
Tim is right that Apple considers technology to be simply the tool that enables them to do the actual thing that needs to be done. For a nerd, that is at first difficult to get, but more normal people get it immediately. They don't buy a phone for the CPU or the graphics performance or the memory size. They buy it to make calls, take pictures, check their calendar (and today, to use whatever app is hip this week).
From my personal experience, what people misunderstand about Apple is that they use technology the way regular people use it. An airplane is something that gets you from A to B. Only airplane nerds care about wing span, horse powers, control schemes and other details. Most people want to get places and preferably not die, and all the tech is just there to serve that purpose. Apple thinks like that. In all their products and designs, you always see that they are trying to reduce, to take away, anything that is not necessary for the primary task.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
What a bizarre meta article ...
Anyway:
The whole point about Apple is that anyone gets it within a few minutes of using their devices. That's Apple. If you don't get Apple, no amount of explaining will help. Even people who have solid reasons to steer clear of Apple appreciate Apple.
This question is awkward and pointless in so many ways it's almost metaphysical.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
because we don't want to leave the earth worse than we found it.
Which is why your hardware has to be thrown out every three years because you refuse to allow it be upgraded which would extend its life.
Which is the manufacturing process to create your products involves scooping out giant holes in the ground to extract small quantities of rare minerals, and all the resultant waste products.
Which is why you just built a huge flying saucer for your headquarters, chewing up who know how many resources so people can walk into glass walls and doors.
I could go on, but whenever I hear someone who's head of a multi-billion dollar company talk about sustainability and eco-friendliness, it makes me wonder how they can eat their own crap every day. And yes, I'm including companies like Patagonia and North Face who have their overpriced products made in China, one of the worst polluters on the planet.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Apple is a consumer electronics company.
It was founded by a Product guy not an engineer
They dont care about being innovative and the first to come out with a feature - they almost never are the first on anything
Their focus is on making a device which just works which even the dumbest user cant screw up too badly.
They will copy the innovations of others, round out the rough edges, simplify, dumb down and make something which meets the needs of 80% of the target market
They do not invest in core engineering research. They invest in design, ops, integration, QA, service.
Its the Nanny state approach not the Ayn Rand approach which most Silicon valley startups have.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Apple is all about moving money into their own pockets. Nothing more, nothing less. Stop making profits if you want to convince me. Until then, apple is no better than any other company out for my money, or any thief or robber.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
They're easy to use.
I have never ever found an Apple product easy to use. My brother convinced my parents to ditch their Win7 machine for a Mac. I warned them against it, saying I couldn't help them with it if they did. They got it anyway. And it's been a disaster. I get all kinds of questions that I have no idea how to answer because I don't live in that universe. I am sure a Mac person would be able to easily help them, but they got it under the pretense that it was so easy to use that you didn't need any support for it. Now it could be that it is just my brother's misguided advice, because he's a dumbass. He can't help them either, but pretends like he can.
I got my daughter an ipod a few years ago, and she used it for facetiming her friends who had iphones, as well as music. It was fine, but to get music on it was a nightmare, every single time I put more on there for her. I never ever got it to work smoothly. Since she got her own phone (android) it's simple for her to get music.
I seriously don't understand how people think their products are easy to use.
But I run linux, so i know I am likely the odd one out.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Apple's trust model is broken.
I think you misspelled "secure"
This means one app can't access another app's local files.
Incorrect. An application CAN access another apps local files, but it has to do it through a channel the application specifically allows for.
That keeps rogue apps from modifying random files in other apps without you knowing, because the user is explicitly telling the system they want to open this file from this app in some other application.
On Android, I have the choice to... ...completely fuck yourself over. That's sort of fine for people who actually understand computer security and the implications of opening a file system. For the rest of the Earth it is a horrific disaster which we have suffered from for decades now.
But their "whole system" means sharing personal life data to an unprecedented extent with Apple.
No, it means putting it on your devices. Apple does not see nor use this data - iCloud stuff is encrypted, Apple does not look at it, and you do not have to use iCloud if you do not wish.
It also means carefully allowing access to this data to exactly who you choose, not to everyone because of massive holes in the security model.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Clearly they are attempting to influence the Apple-Microsoft election.
"You may find better elsewhere, but you'll never pay more."
They used to say that about IBM, but it applies to Apple too. To be fair, I've had iPhones for years and I have an iMac at home and I do like the iMac. I think Time Machine is a really nice, hugely user friendly backup program that has worked really well for me when I've needed it. It hasn't been too hard to get stuff to work on a Mac, unlike Windows where, well, you know. Macs are good computers for people who might be, uh, technically challenged because they tend to last and they're not too hard to setup and do what you need to do. They're good for people who know their techno stuff too. They have a really easy to use feature that lets me change keyboard languages and the rare times I need to type in Cyrillic, I change to a Cyriilic keyboard, type my stuff and switch back to the US mode. Really could not be easier.
You know what, in that circumstance everyone is still personally responsible for $Y. I have underpaid taxes myself my accident in the past, and there was no one giving me a break because I was given the wrong information. It doesn't matter who the wrong information came from, the tax payer is responsible for understanding what they are liable to pay, period.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Sweet. That means their iphone has USB-C, right?
Nope, you're a retard.
Total amount of taxes paid means nothing; they are one of the richest companies they SHOULD be paying more than anyone. Are they the largest contributor in terms of percentage of revenue?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
While Apple's been criticized a lot lately for their software (Siri, bugs in iOS, closed ecosystem, etc), their main strength has always been their amazing hardware. From the AirPods to the iPhone X, they've been killing it lately. It's incredible how many people you see walking around NYC with AirPods nowadays. I can't remember any other headphones since the original Apple Earbuds taking over so quickly.
Is it even possible to install Linux on a mac natively? Last time I tried you couldn't even boot off linux on a flash drive because of restrictions they put in the firmware.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
He should lower the prices so that his super special technology can be put in the hands of more people and make the world better, faster. Or was he lying?
Tim says: to underappreciate Apple products correctly you should exclude the following list of violated principles and values:
Those are childish and unrealistic ideals, you would be nothing less than a stallmanite for upholding such values (it's not about technology remember)... instead you should focus on the following product centric list in order to correctly underappreciate Apple by seeing how they are changing the world for the worst:
You missed the infused humanity!!
No, he was just pointing out that today the bit of humanity that Apple infuses into its product today is greed....and possibly a love of dongles.
Everything.
But I don't think that most people actually MISunderstand. More like "Willful Ignorance".
Some people constantly and reflexively run to the most over-the-top, avaricious, out of all reasonable control and above all, SINISTER, "motives" behind each and every utterance, change, mistake or announcement that Apple makes.
That, and the constant meme of "Well, I can do that for $10" or "Nobody but (100s of millions of) sheeple buy CRapple Products."
It just gets old. Apple certainly isn't perfect; but if their products and/or policies don't suit you, there's a whole world of other stuff out there for you. I promise: Apple won't mind one little bit if you don't buy their products.
But then again, that's what REALLY bothers those people, isn't it?
I've used both iPhone and Android. I have gripes about both, but the iPhone UI and feature set is just overall "cleaner". Android is more ad-hoc: the rhyme and reason for the UI design is unclear and may take longer to get used to. Plus, the Android retailer seems to put crap-ware and poorly-tuned features on Android. Apples guards against that more than Google.
Apple's philosophy seems to be "do fewer things but do them well", while Android is a bit more wild-west in feel. You can roam further away, but you are also more likely to get arrows in your back.
If you mostly use just basic features: phone, text, email, calendar/reminder, maps, common social media, and web-browsing; then iPhone will be less hassle.
But Android has better map-integrated searches of stores and services because it's connected up with Google-Maps. You can still use Google-Maps on iPhone, but Apple doesn't make it as smoothly integrated into the default map feature, probably because they want you to use their search engine to control recommendations (ads). But Google is still the king of search. (The Google Maps downloaded app wasn't so great on iPhone when I tried it, but that was a while ago.)
Table-ized A.I.
If Apple truly wanted to "change the world for the better" then they wouldn't be focusing on a business model revolving around pushing non-upgradeable, non-repairable, non-recyclable computers and electronic devices with built-in planned obsolescence, along with technological and marketing pressure to "encourage" users to throw them away and replace them every two years. Along with a cult-like marketing campaign that carefully grooms their userbase into treating their products like fashion-statement status-symbols versus actually useful tools/devices, ensuring they can get away with pricing them 2X more than they should be and users not caring that they're getting fucked up the ass sideways with an unlubed iPod Hifi every time they buy something Apple.
They don't care about the world. They don't care about their slave/child labor forces. They don't care about the environment, their userbase, or anything except extorting as much money from their gullible consumer sheep as they can.
My "misunderstanding" about Apple products is that any new phone I buy will be out of date in a time measured in months. Whether that means it will become unsupported, won't run new stuff, can't be repaired or becomes incompatible with the other hardware you'd expect to work - I can't say. But I have this feeling that within a year to 18 months it will be one of the above.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
...your taxes then?
Why? What obligation does Apple have to give money to the government outside the legal minimum in taxes they're required to pay? If Apple can take advantage of a loophole that allows them to legally avoid paying taxes, more power to them. If you're paying more taxes than you are required to, you're an idiot.
Maybe so, but how does that jive with:
TC: For a casual observer who hasn’t been a user of our products, the thing that they might miss is how different Apple is versus other technology companies. A financial person just looking at revenues and profits may think, They’re good [at making money]. But that’s not who we are. We’re a group of people who are trying to change the world for the better, that’s who we are."
Apple exported hundreds of billions of dollars of profit from the US to foreign holdings in such a way that NO government would tax that money. Apple didn't give it to charity. They didn't use it to fund scholarships. They didn't start a foundation to cure diseases or house the homeless, or any other purpose that could "change the world for the better". They didn't even pay dividends to investors. Instead, they stuck it under their mattress.
percentage doesnt matter. total number of dollars spent by apple was more than any other company. stop feeling like you are entitled to the work (money) of others
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
only thing that matters is total dollar amount. not percentage. and apple paid more than 99.9999 percent of americans will make in their lifetime in 1 year. Stop acting like you are entitled to the work (money) of others
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
is there any proof they sent the money earned in america overseas? I hate apple, but still
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Oh so as long as Apple pays 'a lot' that's enough then? As long as they pay more than me I should just look the other way?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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What I don't understand, is why they only make consumer-level stuff. They don't make anything, hardware or software-wise for businesses. It's a shame that small and medium sized business users really only have one choice for a coherent software ecosystem. Microsoft works, and is affordable, but it would be nice if Apple gave them some kind of competition in this arena.
I don't respond to AC's.
In one month Apple will pay more taxes than you will in a lifetime.
Well, given that they make billions in sales, I sure as hell hope so!
But the real (non-fanboy) question is: which one of us will be paying more as a percentage of our total taxable income? I bet it won't be Apple.
but they got their start as a Veblen good. I had an MP3 player back in the day and the iPod was no where near the best. Creative's players had better sound and better controls. And besides being a brick the Zune was amazing.
What Apple had was an expensive device that everyone could see you owning. This is similar to what Beats by Dre did, and it's exactly why Apple bought them.
Now, I don't find Apple devices play that much better together then Windows ones. My kid is all Apple (iPhone, iPad, Macbook and iTunes music) and the stuff breaks just as often as my Windows + Android setup. But my Windows pc isn't OEM, so no bloatware. I tried a Windows laptop for her and the bloatware manufactures load on it made it unusable. I found this out after she took it to college, had it break, and I let her buy a Macbook to replace it. When I got my hands on the Windows laptop all it took was a reinstall without the bloat to make it work.
Apple's killer feature is they're not trying to squeeze every penny out of their customers. I don't think that's because they're good hearted, I think they're afraid of killing the goose laying all those gold eggs.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And conversely, no mouse support on iOS, which I'd also like to see. An iPad with a keyboard cover would make a pretty neat small "laptop", but without a mouse you can forget about doing anything seriously productive.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Man, posting a story like this to the Slashdot of today, all I can say is:
It's a Trap!
I haven't noticed a recognizable change in the average Slashtard Apple-Hater in the past 5 years here.
What do you see that's different?
I know what it's like to be misunderstood and underappreciated. Like Apple, people often fail to grasp just how awesome I am. BECAUSE THEY JUST DON'T LISTEN.
Anyway, I hope Apple perseveres and doesn't give up because some day they'll get their due and the haters and losers will have to come crawling back on their knees and admit they were always wrong about Apple - that scrappy little underdog company that just never gave up.
Honestly, since I know you have Apple gear, I can't tell if you just forgot the sarcasm tag, or if that's how you GENUINELY feel...
They underappreciate Apple's wealth. They're worth over $900 Billion, racing towards the trillion dollar line. That means they could give away iPhones, tablets and Macs for free and still go on for years and years to come. However, don't worry, Apple will continue to put a premium price on tech they have bought and rebranded as their own. Just like in the 90s...
In a world dominated by Facebook and Google, Apple is hands-down the most privacy and security-focused major vendor. There's something important to be said for that.
Yup. And they have long-ago realized that that position is actually a MARKETABLE FEATURE. Thus, they have every reason in the world to CONTINUE to hold onto that DIFFERENTIATION.
I just wish the Slashtard Apple-Haters would see that.
Apple. Isn't that that company run by that dead guy that said "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."?
Apple still behaves like the post-mortem vehicle of Steve Jobs' hatred. Towards Google but also towards everybody getting in its way, including their own employees. Apple is a patent troll that makes some of the most closed systems on the planet, heavily censors everything and routinely uses lawsuits to indirectly bother non-Apple consumers. Everything built on Apple is eventually lost to society, locked in Apple walled gardens, written in Apple languages and dialects, built on Apple API's and accessible only with access to very recent keys only Apple can provide. Apple wants to control you. They want everybody to lock the fruits of their labor in their Apple jail, only for other people in the Apple jail to use. Forever. Everything they do seems to be specifically tailored to that purpose.
I'm not going to deny Apple has the best user experience, the best integration and the best hardware. But I feel that's not what it's about to Apple; they see their superior user experience as a means to lock their users into their products. Its secondary to their primary goal: controlling everything.
As a musician and a photographer, but especially as a developer, I actively avoid their products. I feel I should not contribute to their apparently dystopian ideal future. Not as a consumer and not as a contributor to their ecosystem. And in 20 years, when I'm using my own ugly software and remixing my own crappy music or browsing through my own badly processed photos without having had to buy the latest Apple products to do so, I'm going to be fucking happy I kept my independence.
Oh. And they're liars. They especially like to lie about their open sourciness. I think the developers of OpenDarwin and KHTML can say a thing or two about that. Apple likes to use open source in their marketing. And then it releases unmergable forks, unrecognizable derivates or uncompilable dumps. Or they release something that works flawlessly and then completely wipes the fruits of the original developers off the face of the earth, like they did to KHTML with Webkit. They are absolutely not interested in giving back but they are very interested in creating the impression of giving back. They're not just an open source leech (which I think would be just fine!); they are a leech that acts like it isn't a leech. They are dishonest assholes and I - as a developer - will never trust them.
0x or or snor perron?!
when I was learning electronics Apple was closed to all and IBM PCs were open to experimenting and 3rd party software. I've hated Apple ever since.
Never had an Apple ][ then, I suppose.
Here Here! This spells out the issue exactly!
I find that these devices are crippled to sell functionality back to the user. That's Apple's business model. Thousands of man hours are poured into these products to prevent functionality and it damages the world.
So? We all know that Apple is great at pandering to the majority. That in itself is one of the problems with the company; if you have a slightly uncommon use, most devices will we workable in some way. An Apple device will fight you, even though they sell some of them as *professional devices*.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
We're a group of people who are trying to change the world for the better, that's who we are
Whole Foods is a group of people who are trying to change the world's food supply for the better.
Yes, that's all fine, but when you gouge people for your products in the process, it kind of takes the shine off your noble intentions.
there wasn't anything impressive about the iPhone. What made is so amazing is that Apple was able to break up the cartel run by the Cell Phone companies and get some decent tech in. That plus they welcomed third party devs at a time when a cell phone dev kit started at $25k. I can't speak to the Macbook air much. I know Sony was doing the equivalent for Windows laptops but at even worse price points. They were also built like tissue paper. I bought my kid an air recently. I'll be interested to see how it holds up (and moderately terrified, the thing was $1200).
I don't really want innovation, I want improvement. Longer battery life and better radios is what I want. That's why I went with an Android.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Vendor lock-in. If they REALLY wanted to make a better world, they'd stop pushing vendor lock-in so hard.
My wife's department gave her a new MacBook Pro, but other than that the only Apple gear in this house is the Apple-branded Smart Butt Plug that I'm using as I type this. Which by the way hasn't held a charge since its last OS update.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Just more of them over the years (or more accounts... :-) ). And I think they've gotten a bit more obnoxious and obtuse.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not to mention they don't exactly provide other ways to share files with other devices.
Yes they do, in iOS11 any application can be a file provider - so for example in Files.app, Dropbox is a location I can save files to from any app, and read from on other devices.
What that will not do that iCloud does, is synchronize app directories across devices. But it is a way to easily share files via any service you like (assuming they have an app that includes system file support).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was very much into Apple mid 2000's, but post 2012 might as well just buy a tablet. I had a 2009 Macbook Pro that is still in use by my Mother-In-law. Core2Duo, 8GB of RAM, 1TB Harddrive when I gave it to her. I put an SSD in it, and loaded Win 7 when Apple dropped support. Had a co-worker ask me to take a look at a Macbook air the other week, liquid damage. It's a tablet with some proprietary m2 like SSD tacked on. three circuit boards, a battery, and a trackpad. Replacing the keyboard on one of these is a nightmare. Same thing with the new Pro model laptops. Then they took everything pro out of the MacBook Pro. In the quest for thin and light the ports, graphics, and everything else have been stripped from the 13.3. I moved to Linux for just about everything. KDE gives OS X a run for the money on the desktop and Ubuntu/SuSE/Mint, etc... provide an excellent Stable platform with a little research.
How do we mark the article +1 flamebait?
The same way we mark a USER as -1 Slashtard.
I am not really sure there is anything to misunderstand here. Apple makes machines for people who want simple, Fisher-Price style interfaces to do repetitive tasks. They take a hint from BMW and sell them as high-end gear, despite often using older parts or being slow as mud. To compensate for this, Apple sells itself as a revolutionary, hip, politically liberal company. They have been doing this since 1983 or so. When an individual behaves this way, we call them a fucking hipster. I am not sure why the rules should be different for a mega-corporation that hides its profits overseas to avoid taxes. That's just common sense, cheating on your taxes, and it's as American as apple pie and multiple independent re-entry vehicles.
Alternative Right.
Let's be realistic, Apple hasn't been innovative in a very long time. They're certainly not offering anything that isn't available from many others.
The only thing that really makes them innovative, is their ability to sell computing hardware at an obscene markup to millions still willing to pay for the fashion statement that it is. They're not a tech company; they're a fashion company. Once they lose their fashionable edge, they will crash and burn faster than Milli Vanilli on The Voice.
And Tim Cook trying and deliver a You-Just-Don't-Understand shtick? That's like listening to a Millennial justify a resume that consists of bong hits and Guitar Hero high scores.
I gave up on Apples after all the trouble i had getting my IIe to do anything remotely worthwhile compared to the (new at that time) pc's. Useful software for the Apple was non-existent.
I gave up on Mac's after i found i could drop data onto a floppy (3.5), and 10 minutes later the same computer couldn't even read the floppy anymore. One of our IT guys said "of course, floppies are notoriously temperamental and go bad all the time." And i get it, those floppies (3.5) i used back in 1986 for some WP files on a 3.1 PC are completely crap now.... oh wait, they actually still work (which yes, is a little bit surprising considering the abuse they've taken from my less than perfect storage of them).
Apple/Mac... why bother spending more for less.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I might have some loathing for Apple but I loathe clickbait garbage like this even more. Please have some respect for yourself.
Their own words:
"We don't want people to have to focus on bits and bytes and feeds and speeds. We don't want people to have to go to multiple [systems] or live with a device that's not integrated."
This is like a car manufacturer saying "we don't want people to focus on horsepower or cylinder volumes or top speeds" Sheesh.
Not quite. Google "feed and speed" and see what comes up. They are terms from machining that involve configuring tooling to get a job done. If you want to turn or mill a piece of metal, you can't just throw it on a machine, hit a button, and everything just works. You need to know the proper feed rate and spindle speeds to use. These depend on several factors, including the material being machined, the type of cutting tool (carbide vs high speed steel), dimensions of the material and tooling. Cook is saying that Apple likes to hide all that from the user so they can just get the job done.
What, are you people blind? It's right between the audio jack and the quick-release tab for the replaceable battery. I swear, what a bunch of trolls.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Privacy, maybe. Security? Not so much. For many corporate users, new major OS releases have to be delayed by a number of months while internal tools are updated to support them. This means there are a *lot* of high-value computers running at least the immediate previous version of the OS. When the Spectre/Meltdown patches came out, Apple took more than two *weeks* after the High Sierra update before they released the fixes for the previous two versions of macOS, during which time attackers were actively working on creating functioning exploits. Leaving some of your highest-value targets vulnerable is really not the way you do security right.
And they shipped High Sierra with a bug that let anybody get root privileges without a password. And I think I remember reading that they had to pull the OS X update after that and rerelease it because somebody failed to merge those patches in.
I'm not saying their security is a disaster, mind you. Mistakes happen. But in my experience, Apple doesn't have a culture of learning from mistakes, but rather a culture of punishing the people who made the mistakes. The result is that instead of seeing failures as a driving force to improve their infrastructure to ensure that critical bug fixes don't get stomped on, improve their QA and testing to ensure that the bugs don't appear in the first place, etc., I would expect a few low-level engineers to get punished in their annual reviews, and for nothing to improve. And that serious flaw in Apple's culture ensures that these sorts of mistakes will keep happening over and over, just as they always have. Maybe eventually they'll happen one too many times, and someone will say, "Hey, this looks like a systemic problem," but it will take a lot longer than it would take in companies that have a no-fault postmortem culture.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
There are any number of appliances that the average person own which present the same kind of barriers that Apple products do in terms of hackability. Try rewriting the sofware that runs on your microwave or your television and see what happens.
The difference is that you are okay with appliances for some things but not okay with a computing appliance. Probably because you're a dick that doesn't want computers to be easy to use for non-technical people.
It's not really any surprise that their CEO is trying to spin Apple as the perfect business, who really only cares about taking the time to make best in class products that make everyone's life better....
Once you strip away the hype? I think what you have is a company that's been VERY successful because it stuck it out, competing head to head with Microsoft when nobody else would. (Sure, Linux and BSD were always there but they're free products .... not strictly commercial ones developed only by a specific group of paid developers.) Off of decades of name recognition and respect for the brand (many teachers, artists, publishers and others who considered Apple computers the superior tool for their crafts for a long time) ... the company was able to expand into new areas, like selling watches, set top TV boxes, and a whole online media store for subscription streaming and purchased music and video content.
These days? Yes, I think they make a lot of design decisions intended solely to boost profit margins. All the dongle adapters for things are a great example. But those who are invested in the Apple ecosystem will grit their teeth and pay up, because it beats redoing the whole environment (now including home control via HomeKit!) to use Windows and/or Android based alternatives.
Personally, I use a mix of Mac and Windows and some Linux here and there. I'm relatively platform agnostic. The "cloud" makes that increasingly easy to do, these days. But I still don't regret my decision to pay out big $'s every 3-5 years or so, to keep one of the higher end configurations of both a desktop Mac and a notebook portable Mac. The resale value to get rid of them when I'm ready to upgrade far exceeds what I get for the Windows PC stuff, so that helps.
Yes.
https://www.irishtimes.com/bus...
http://fortune.com/2012/04/29/...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.finfacts.ie/Irish_f...
http://dukeundergraduatelawmag...
https://www.thecasecentre.org/...
If you really want to look under that rock, the spoiler is that it comes down to definitions of words like "is" and "in," there is not really much dispute about the facts. It just depends who you ask if listing the money on one ledger or another changes where it was really "made."
All of Apple's defenses are blatant lies to people who focus on the physical transactions rather than the creative theories that involve profits actually being "made" literally on the ledger itself, as if a company is paid merely to record its profits. But lawyers will disagree with various parts of that, depending which lawyers they are.
only thing that matters is total dollar amount. not percentage.
Dude, I'm high as fuck too but that's the stupidest thing you said all week.
I just checked, and in all four view modes, clicking on a file or folder in Finder shows the full path to the file and the filename at the bottom of the finder window. This is in OS X 10.12.6.
Does that count as a contortion?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The last desktop replacement laptop was the glorious 17 inch dual drive, express card 2012 laptop. The last great desktop they made was the Mac Pro 5,1.
There is literally no replacement for these workhorses. Why? Apple wants to sell unfixable machines, un-upgradeable machines because it's easier for them. All of their current desktops are laptops in desktop housings. They are not built for heavy loads where they're running hot for a huge portion of their duty cycle.
Of course, the people who need such machines are the ones with options, and probably a fair bit of fault tolerance, this is why Hackintoshes are being built by the people who need their computers to use all 110 volts coming out of the wall.
Oh, and for Chrissakes, how hard is it to build a matte screen, Apple?
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Are you an idiot or do you want to play us for idiots?
...
If your Mac did not boot from the usb flash drive, then the flash drive most likely did not contain a boot loader.
Or you did not instruct/allow the Mac to boot from a flash drive,
How retarded are you that you claim the firm ware does not allow certain OSes to boot (from a flash drive)?
Yes, the whole text above is intentionally bold
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I use OSX, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Android on a regular basis. Apple's user experience is far more polished than everyone else's.
I actually asked if it was possible yet. It's not that it was impossible before, but you had to do all kinds of things for EFI and it was too difficult to be worth it. Now apparently there is a utility that does all those things, but it still begs the question; why do Apple devices always have to be so different? I was shocked that it didn't just work like any other Intel laptop.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Apple is the biggest company pushing USB-C right now.
Yes now, maybe. But what about all the other devices in the past?
Maybe that works for you but Apple pays millions in taxes every year,
The Interweb doesn't agree with you:
apple tax avoidance
No idea what your problem is, but google is your friend, e.g.: https://www.lifewire.com/dual-...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I for one don't appreciate how iFruit allow some of their indirect manufacturing partners to lower their productivity by completing their suicide attempts and therefore drive down the profits of the mothership by a small fraction of a nano-cent.
Requiem for the American Dream
And, from the article:
"Many Linux distributions are able to run very nicely on a Mac, though there can be challenges to installing and configuring the OS."
Which is what I've been saying from the beginning.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Much like Nicholas Cage's unwavering dedication to never compromise who he is by "acting" like someone else, Apple has never compromised aesthetics for the sake of "productivity" or "usefulness" or even "not being a shiny brick." They are absolutely dedicated to aesthetics, which shows everywhere from their marketing campaigns to their "products" to their offices - which are themselves designed in such a manner that their own employees can't navigate without bumping into glass walls (but don't worry, they have skin-tone bandaids to cover up the concussions and enough coffee to ensure their employees are too dehydrated to drool.)
Back before Android, they could have licensed IOS to the other major vendors at reasonable prices. There would be different versions, at different price points, including something for the low end.
Then they would own the whole market. Android would not exist. Everything would sell through the App store. Who would want anything else on a phone if IOS was available and had all the apps. And they could prevent Samsung competing with them at the top end through licensing restrictions.
As it is, they are fantastically profitable. But Android is clipping at their heals. Today, Apple's physical phones are no better, there software not much better, and the Apple brand is softening as people have choices.
They pulled two rabbits out of the hat. iPod and iPhone. It is unlikely that they will pull out a third.
So I forecast a long slow decline. The Android cat is out of the bag. They do not control the market. They have no presence in the bottom and middle. And soon they will not even dominate the top end. Android undermining IOS will be similar to the way that Microsoft came in under IBM, HP, DEC etc. and eventually ate their lunch.
But Apple started as a hardware company, just like Microsoft started in software, and Nokia in timber. Most things die like they were born.
if Apple was the only brand of computer out there. The problem is you are saying that walled gardens shouldn't exist at all, simply because you don't like them. Nobody in Apple land is arguing that Android/Linux/Windows shouldn't exist (well, maybe Windows).
I tell my friends who compare Macs to PCs that you can spend $350 on PC - but it will be lousy. No matter how much you spend on a Mac - it will be a good computer. You can buy a lousy PC, but you can't buy a lousy Mac.
Apple will replace an iPhone battery for $29. Sure, I can do it myself, for a little less, but for $29 while I wait at the Apple store, I'll take it
chris watts íë¦ìS ì(TM)ì
For most of my life, I've been a PC user (Linux when possible, but always a Windows desktop hanging around for gaming and certain cross-platform development). My use cases span all sorts of different application areas, from gaming, to productivity, video and image editing (Adobe CC products), software development, and even dabbling a bit in scientific computing.
Since about 2015 I've gradually started buying into the Apple ecosystem, and while it can never displace my Windows desktop, their devices do have distinct advantages in certain spaces. The reason I buy them is for these specific advantages, and I do so while acknowledging their drawbacks. I make informed product purchases that are not really based on emotion, but on specific qualities or features that make them better than competitors.
For example:
(1) iPhone: My first Apple product was an iPhone 6S Plus. I'm actually glad I avoided the 6, because that device is fatally flawed by design because the aluminum is too easy to bend, causing Touch IC disease. I originally bought the iPhone because I was sick and tired of security patches taking months to land on Android devices, and the sometimes extremely arbitrary and short support cycles for Android devices. Also, I've felt that overall Android devices and applications are buggier than iOS and most big iOS apps. This is with my experience on Android mostly ending around the Note 4 era. My suspicions about Apple taking smartphone security more seriously than anyone else were confirmed when their chief of security gave a talk on iOS Security at Blackhat, providing a deeper insight into the tremendous security architecture of their platform. Oh, and they now have a bug bounty program like every other good technology company (as of 2016).
(2) Macbook Pro: My first MBP was a 13" of the last gen before they introduced the Touch Bar. When the Touch Bar came out, I handed down my non-Touch Bar MBP to a family member, and got myself the Touch Bar 13". The killer features of the MBP hardware, for me, are TouchID making it both fast and secure to unlock my Mac, and the extremely good touchpad. Palm detection is flawless, it's perfectly sensitive, and clicking is faster and easier than any other touchpad I've ever used. People who think their own Windows laptop has a good touchpad haven't tried a 2016-or-newer MBP touchpad. Seriously, it's so good that I prefer it over a mouse for all use cases except FPS gaming.
I don't think the MacOS platform itself is anything incredible; it's approximately a sidegrade from Windows 10 in terms of what it can do. In some ways Windows 10 is better; Nvidia, Intel and AMD generally provide better support for OpenGL extensions on Windows than they do on Mac, so if you're using OpenGL (or developing with it), you probably will be frustrated by the level of GL extension support on MacOS. This is entirely due to Apple's inattention to that and focusing on Metal. That said, I subjectively think MacOS's disk encryption, tiered storage (Fusion Drive), overall filesystem design (APFS), and application installation management (.dmg/.pkg) is better than the scattered mess of Windows.
The main killer feature of MacOS, for me, actually might end up being supported on Windows just as well soon due to Ubuntu on Bash on Windows; anyway, that feature is the excellent UNIX compatibility. Homebrew is a lifesaver. Being able to run my favorite FOSS with basically an "apt-get" (okay, "brew install", same difference) is awesome. Windows isn't quite there yet, because they have a lot of missing features; just installing a random package, there's a fairly high chance that some functionality in the translation layer isn't there, and you won't be able to use the program. Homebrew actually compiles all the FOSS UNIX software I need *natively* for the Mac platform, since the POSIX, etc. standards are baked into the core of MacOS (based on BSD), but are just now being tacked onto Windows in a new (and largely incomplete) subsystem.
Because of the great package support for FOSS
However there is no mytical Apple thing preventing a Mac from booting Linux from an USB stick: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Another question to ask would be how other large multinational companies are at paying taxes. Is Apple doing anything out of the ordinary?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've tried installing Linux on laptops that came with Windows, with mixed success. The advantage of a Mac is that you're already running Unix.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We own a bunch of Apple products. They were great. Once upon a time. It's like superman has died..... Ehem. I haven't seen much to be happy about out of apple for years and now they've removed Easter from the calendar and kept BS other dates in there, it's the beginning of the end for them. They're too PC. Short on ideas, just like PC people are. They're starting to suck. The whole industry is beginning to suck other than the Linux area. That is where it's at today.
Time is ripe for someone else to step in with say a Linux based machine and clean up big.
Apple Apple Apple, Apple Apple, Adobe Adobe, industry standard, Apple Apple, only computer designed for graphics, Adobe Apple Apple...
OMG grown ups support open source when ever possible.