I hate the tribalism regarding Apple products. There are loyal fanboys who won’t hear a bad word about Apple, and then there are Apple haters who criticise everything about them.
I wish we had some more nuance in this debate. The reality is that there are advantages and disadvantages to Apple products. I’ll outline a few:
Advantages
Long iOS support. Typically you can expect an iPhone to be supported for 5-7 years, which is well above the average in the industry.
No bloatware or adverts on the iPhone
Better privacy than Google Android/Microsoft Windows
High-end hardware, e.g. M1 chip in MacBooks.
User friendly design. Nice user experience.
Disadvantages
Overpriced. Seriously all Apple products are more expensive than the competition.
Anti-consumer business practices that influence the industry. They normalised removing the headphone jack and using non-removable batteries, which other manufacturers followed. Another anti-consumer practice is using their proprietary Lighting port, rather than USB (luckily the EU should be forcing them to adopt USB-C and removable batteries soon). Also, no SD card slot because they want you to use iCloud
Walled garden. No support for side-loading apps
Required to use iTunes to add/remove music to the iPhone, which is a problem if you use Linux (you’d have to use Wine to install the Windows version as a workaround)
I like to say that there are two Apples, Apple the designer and Apple the business.
Apple the designer is one of the best in the world. Yes they have blunders but they consistently put out some of the highest quality hardware and software. The current design language of the iPhone is beautiful, MacOS has its issues but it’s a good OS, the seamlesness with which Apple devices work together is nothing short of incredible. They have some of the best engineers and designers in the world and it shows. (I’ll never forgive them for the mouse though, that thing is a travesty)
Apple the business is a ghoul who hates its users and competition, would rather you buy a new phone than repair your broken one and, if they could, would make your device implode if you do anything they don’t approve of. I’m still waiting for them to be benevolent enough to allow me to code on an M1 iPad, a device that has all the power of a mac but is completely knee capped by its OS.
I love Apple the designer, but unfortunately Apple the business makes it impossible for me to support them.
I agree with everything you said except the lightning port. The lightning port came out 4 years before USB C did and it did a much better job than any other port on the market at the time. Apple wasn’t going to make that investment if they weren’t going to stick with it for a while, for one every iPhone user would hate having to switch cables again that quickly, but also there was no guarantee USB C was going to succeed. Apple even participated in creating the USB C spec, as I detailed in another comment. Honestly I think the lightning port is actually better than USB C for what it does: incredibly thin, non clogging, waterproof phone port.
They should not have used it for other junk like the fucking Magic Mouse or whatever other mice or keyboard peripherals there were used for.
The issue isn’t that Apple made the lightning port. The issue is that USB C has been standard on THEIR OWN DEVICES since 2012. I understand not wanting to switch immediately after introducing a new port, but I would argue that USB has been the clear winner ever since the Switch came out in 2017, which was still 6 YEARS ago.
Apple would not have changed to an objectively better port if it weren’t for the EU regulations.
Also, lightning better than USB-C? A USB 2.0 port that transfers at 1/100th the speed? You’re insane.
It wasn’t even announced until 2012, much less have any sort of spec. The spec wasn’t even finalized by the USB Implementers Forum until 2014 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C
Apple would not have changed to an objectively better port if it weren’t for the EU regulations.
… they already switched on all their other devices. Why would they have not switched eventually?
Also, lightning better than USB-C? A USB 2.0 port that transfers at 1/100th the speed? You’re insane.
Yes. I don’t give one shit about transfer speed, just like the majority of phone users (not just iPhone users - all phone users). You sync using the cloud. If you’re using a cable to sync you are in the minority
I use Iphone and Ipad just for the banking. I distrust Android. It is an open system, and used a lot more for data collection than Apple’s ecosystem is. The return you get from a data request between apple and an Android system is vast. I refuse to use Facebook and the likes.
I never buy the latest edition of Iphone anymore. I have done in the past, but the idea of spending £1200 on a phone seems stupid to me. I have very few apps on both the Iphone and Ipad. I use a PC for other stuff. Iphone hardware is good with the CPU side of things, but the cameras are very inferior compared to some android phones.
I use a windows PC to move my own music to my iphone, but it is a hampered system. I really do not understand why they have not been brought to the spotlight of the monopolies commission because of how bad they hinder transfers. I have a process I have to follow to get new music on my iphone. Anyone who wants movies on their apple products should look at VLC. It is the easiest method. I should add I haven’t added new music for a long time. This could have changed, but I would be sceptical until I saw it for myself.
I look down on anyone buying a Macbook. They are total dogcrap, and massively overpriced. They are designed to fail in many areas, the latest being the SSDs that are causing surges in the motherboard, which destroys it. Apple constructively inhibits any repairs behind software encoding and pressure it puts on 3rd party suppliers. They lobby US government to restrict self repairs. You are literally throwing money into Apple’s bank account for very little return.
Intel macbooks deserve the hate, but the apple silicon ones are genuinely impressive to the point of being worth it until the competition catches up in terms of ARM performance, especially in terms of battery life.
When was the last time Apple used an Arm chips over intel ?
According to the Wiki, this was 2005. X86 software and GPUs were behind apple by quite a way back then. Did they still add Arm to later versions?
Originally X86 was not built with graphics processing in mind. It did not really show anything worth while until the Nvidia viper GPUs in the mid 90s. Prior to that Amiga had the best for graphics processing. I seem to remember Lightshow being the software for Amiga (don’t quote me on that, it is from memory). PC became the best for gaming when Voodoo release their first card (possibly 97/98), but they still could not compete with an Apple in graphic processing. Amiga had fell away by this time.
Sorry, but Techreader agrees with me on this one. Apple Macbooks are simply not worth the money spent on them. Techreader does not mention the way Apple inhibits servicing or upgrades. A problem that does not exist at that level on the PC platform. Even with a laptop the CPU, memory and HDD are interchangeable. Apple does not want you to upgrade; they want you to spend 10X the cost by buying a whole new product.
@Syldon@1993_toyota_camry I bought a Macbook Pro in 2008 and used it happily (with little performance degradation) until 2018 when the displays logic board died and that vintage wasn’t being supplied any longer.
I’ve honestly never heard of a PC laptop lasting 10 years like that, except maybe by grannies who put it in a cozy every night, just play solitaire on the thing and never heard of a Windows update.
Lol, seriously my friend do not repeat that argument. OFC people use very old PCs. If you had a mac running for 10 years, this is not a regular event. The guy mentioned in this post, Louis Rossman, has made a lot of cash from pointing out the flaws behind the Macbook design. He makes a good living repairing them.
The company I worked for had 286 PCs running the stock system all the way up till 2013. This is a PC that was running for 24 years before they considered replacing it. The company was not some back street mickey mouse set up who didn’t want to spend cash. This was one of the major car companies. Large companies do not change things that are critical to the operation without a lot of effort to makes sure it goes right. They rely heavily on old systems because they know they work. This is very much the case across a lot of large companies.
@Syldon and I run a file server that’s now 16 years old, running Linux as happily as the day we bought it… of course, after it’s had its CPU, memory and hard drives upgraded multiple times. For 3 times the price of a Mac of the same vintage and no idea after the upgrades.
I never meant to imply you couldn’t get quality PC gear, you very much can, but as soon as you do you’re paying just as much or more than a Mac.
The PC vs Mac debate was old and tired in the 90s and now it’s just dead.
I don’t know, I have an M1 Mac Mini and it is awful, I’ll never buy another M chip. It’s fast when you’re just using a single program, but having more things open and it slows right to a crawl. Plus it’s inability to do actual virtualisation is a real pain.
Very odd… i multitask and run both paravirtualized (arm) and virtualized (x86) linux and windows without issues. You are more likely on the base model and out of RAM.
It is the base model, I have about 2gb of ram free but it does run out quickly and due to apple bullshit there’s no way to just open it and upgrade the ram (also, how the hell do they think 8gb is acceptable?). And they’re capable of emulation, but not true virtualisation and things like VirtualBox don’t run at all, unless that’s changed recently because I admit I haven’t looked into it since I found it was impossible after I got the machine.
Also once I have a single docker container running, it causes things like chrome to crash all the time, and I can’t even run chrome, vscode, insomnia and a docker container together. Absolutely trash machine, doesn’t compare even slightly to my 6 year old i7-8700k machine that’s fully customisable. I don’t see any reason to ever get another arm machine, and definitely not another Mac.
8GB is more than enough for someone who only does a little light web browsing and sending the occasional e-mail. Anyone who needs more from their computer is expected to know better and not order the base model. 32GB is workable, 64GB is better.
I have a MB pro with M1 Max and 64GB RAM and it’s an absolute beast. I can throw everything at it and it doesn’t break a sweat, and I’m a demanding user. I’m a developer and have a lot of software running all the time, 400+ tabs open in Safari, lots of PDF files and other documents open. I’m also running it with 2 high-res monitors (5k2k ultrawide and a 4k). Lots of work related apps (e.g. Teams, Outlook, and bullshit like that). The fan doesn’t even come on. Not even when I compile a large codebase using all 10 cores. It’s an absolute monster. And all that in a 14” laptop. Easily the best computer I ever used.
Cherry-picked. There are phones without ads or bloat. And, given the incompatibility between facetime/iMessage and apps standardized across all other platforms, I consider these to be bloat.
User friendly design. Nice user experience.
Subjective. I support a number of family members whose grandkids suggested iPhones. Whether it’s swooshing, skootching, swiping, tapping or banging it against a guardrail, I haven’t learned and they can’t remember how to bring up the main app screen now that the functional button was removed – like, none of them. I’m just here to fix their email passwords, and I leave the UX issues to said grandkids.
I hate the tribalism regarding Apple products. There are loyal fanboys who won’t hear a bad word about Apple, and then there are Apple haters who criticise everything about them.
I wish we had some more nuance in this debate. The reality is that there are advantages and disadvantages to Apple products. I’ll outline a few:
Advantages
Disadvantages
iPhones are easy to use, if you do EVERYTHING their way.
I like to say that there are two Apples, Apple the designer and Apple the business.
Apple the designer is one of the best in the world. Yes they have blunders but they consistently put out some of the highest quality hardware and software. The current design language of the iPhone is beautiful, MacOS has its issues but it’s a good OS, the seamlesness with which Apple devices work together is nothing short of incredible. They have some of the best engineers and designers in the world and it shows. (I’ll never forgive them for the mouse though, that thing is a travesty)
Apple the business is a ghoul who hates its users and competition, would rather you buy a new phone than repair your broken one and, if they could, would make your device implode if you do anything they don’t approve of. I’m still waiting for them to be benevolent enough to allow me to code on an M1 iPad, a device that has all the power of a mac but is completely knee capped by its OS.
I love Apple the designer, but unfortunately Apple the business makes it impossible for me to support them.
I agree with everything you said except the lightning port. The lightning port came out 4 years before USB C did and it did a much better job than any other port on the market at the time. Apple wasn’t going to make that investment if they weren’t going to stick with it for a while, for one every iPhone user would hate having to switch cables again that quickly, but also there was no guarantee USB C was going to succeed. Apple even participated in creating the USB C spec, as I detailed in another comment. Honestly I think the lightning port is actually better than USB C for what it does: incredibly thin, non clogging, waterproof phone port.
They should not have used it for other junk like the fucking Magic Mouse or whatever other mice or keyboard peripherals there were used for.
The issue isn’t that Apple made the lightning port. The issue is that USB C has been standard on THEIR OWN DEVICES since 2012. I understand not wanting to switch immediately after introducing a new port, but I would argue that USB has been the clear winner ever since the Switch came out in 2017, which was still 6 YEARS ago.
Apple would not have changed to an objectively better port if it weren’t for the EU regulations.
Also, lightning better than USB-C? A USB 2.0 port that transfers at 1/100th the speed? You’re insane.
It’s literally impossible for USB C to have been
It wasn’t even announced until 2012, much less have any sort of spec. The spec wasn’t even finalized by the USB Implementers Forum until 2014 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C
… they already switched on all their other devices. Why would they have not switched eventually?
Yes. I don’t give one shit about transfer speed, just like the majority of phone users (not just iPhone users - all phone users). You sync using the cloud. If you’re using a cable to sync you are in the minority
I use Iphone and Ipad just for the banking. I distrust Android. It is an open system, and used a lot more for data collection than Apple’s ecosystem is. The return you get from a data request between apple and an Android system is vast. I refuse to use Facebook and the likes.
I never buy the latest edition of Iphone anymore. I have done in the past, but the idea of spending £1200 on a phone seems stupid to me. I have very few apps on both the Iphone and Ipad. I use a PC for other stuff. Iphone hardware is good with the CPU side of things, but the cameras are very inferior compared to some android phones.
I use a windows PC to move my own music to my iphone, but it is a hampered system. I really do not understand why they have not been brought to the spotlight of the monopolies commission because of how bad they hinder transfers. I have a process I have to follow to get new music on my iphone. Anyone who wants movies on their apple products should look at VLC. It is the easiest method. I should add I haven’t added new music for a long time. This could have changed, but I would be sceptical until I saw it for myself.
I look down on anyone buying a Macbook. They are total dogcrap, and massively overpriced. They are designed to fail in many areas, the latest being the SSDs that are causing surges in the motherboard, which destroys it. Apple constructively inhibits any repairs behind software encoding and pressure it puts on 3rd party suppliers. They lobby US government to restrict self repairs. You are literally throwing money into Apple’s bank account for very little return.
Intel macbooks deserve the hate, but the apple silicon ones are genuinely impressive to the point of being worth it until the competition catches up in terms of ARM performance, especially in terms of battery life.
When was the last time Apple used an Arm chips over intel ? According to the Wiki, this was 2005. X86 software and GPUs were behind apple by quite a way back then. Did they still add Arm to later versions?
Originally X86 was not built with graphics processing in mind. It did not really show anything worth while until the Nvidia viper GPUs in the mid 90s. Prior to that Amiga had the best for graphics processing. I seem to remember Lightshow being the software for Amiga (don’t quote me on that, it is from memory). PC became the best for gaming when Voodoo release their first card (possibly 97/98), but they still could not compete with an Apple in graphic processing. Amiga had fell away by this time.
Today.
All their computers are Arm now.
Sorry, but Techreader agrees with me on this one. Apple Macbooks are simply not worth the money spent on them. Techreader does not mention the way Apple inhibits servicing or upgrades. A problem that does not exist at that level on the PC platform. Even with a laptop the CPU, memory and HDD are interchangeable. Apple does not want you to upgrade; they want you to spend 10X the cost by buying a whole new product.
@Syldon @1993_toyota_camry I bought a Macbook Pro in 2008 and used it happily (with little performance degradation) until 2018 when the displays logic board died and that vintage wasn’t being supplied any longer.
I’ve honestly never heard of a PC laptop lasting 10 years like that, except maybe by grannies who put it in a cozy every night, just play solitaire on the thing and never heard of a Windows update.
Lol, seriously my friend do not repeat that argument. OFC people use very old PCs. If you had a mac running for 10 years, this is not a regular event. The guy mentioned in this post, Louis Rossman, has made a lot of cash from pointing out the flaws behind the Macbook design. He makes a good living repairing them.
The company I worked for had 286 PCs running the stock system all the way up till 2013. This is a PC that was running for 24 years before they considered replacing it. The company was not some back street mickey mouse set up who didn’t want to spend cash. This was one of the major car companies. Large companies do not change things that are critical to the operation without a lot of effort to makes sure it goes right. They rely heavily on old systems because they know they work. This is very much the case across a lot of large companies.
@Syldon and I run a file server that’s now 16 years old, running Linux as happily as the day we bought it… of course, after it’s had its CPU, memory and hard drives upgraded multiple times. For 3 times the price of a Mac of the same vintage and no idea after the upgrades.
I never meant to imply you couldn’t get quality PC gear, you very much can, but as soon as you do you’re paying just as much or more than a Mac.
The PC vs Mac debate was old and tired in the 90s and now it’s just dead.
I don’t know, I have an M1 Mac Mini and it is awful, I’ll never buy another M chip. It’s fast when you’re just using a single program, but having more things open and it slows right to a crawl. Plus it’s inability to do actual virtualisation is a real pain.
Very odd… i multitask and run both paravirtualized (arm) and virtualized (x86) linux and windows without issues. You are more likely on the base model and out of RAM.
It is the base model, I have about 2gb of ram free but it does run out quickly and due to apple bullshit there’s no way to just open it and upgrade the ram (also, how the hell do they think 8gb is acceptable?). And they’re capable of emulation, but not true virtualisation and things like VirtualBox don’t run at all, unless that’s changed recently because I admit I haven’t looked into it since I found it was impossible after I got the machine.
Also once I have a single docker container running, it causes things like chrome to crash all the time, and I can’t even run chrome, vscode, insomnia and a docker container together. Absolutely trash machine, doesn’t compare even slightly to my 6 year old i7-8700k machine that’s fully customisable. I don’t see any reason to ever get another arm machine, and definitely not another Mac.
8GB is more than enough for someone who only does a little light web browsing and sending the occasional e-mail. Anyone who needs more from their computer is expected to know better and not order the base model. 32GB is workable, 64GB is better.
I have a MB pro with M1 Max and 64GB RAM and it’s an absolute beast. I can throw everything at it and it doesn’t break a sweat, and I’m a demanding user. I’m a developer and have a lot of software running all the time, 400+ tabs open in Safari, lots of PDF files and other documents open. I’m also running it with 2 high-res monitors (5k2k ultrawide and a 4k). Lots of work related apps (e.g. Teams, Outlook, and bullshit like that). The fan doesn’t even come on. Not even when I compile a large codebase using all 10 cores. It’s an absolute monster. And all that in a 14” laptop. Easily the best computer I ever used.
Cherry-picked. There are phones without ads or bloat. And, given the incompatibility between facetime/iMessage and apps standardized across all other platforms, I consider these to be bloat.
Subjective. I support a number of family members whose grandkids suggested iPhones. Whether it’s swooshing, skootching, swiping, tapping or banging it against a guardrail, I haven’t learned and they can’t remember how to bring up the main app screen now that the functional button was removed – like, none of them. I’m just here to fix their email passwords, and I leave the UX issues to said grandkids.
deleted by creator