Comment by dgregd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dgregd | Hacker News Reader

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> What frustrates me the most is that Apple never admits a mistake

In corporate politics that would be a suicide. Only Jobs was powerful enough to make mistakes.

Anyway it is shocking what Apple does now. During Jobs Apple removed product features only used by laggards. Now Apple removes the features used even by pragmatists and early adopters[1]. Do you known how many people moved exclusively to wireless headphones and TH3?

Another surprising thing is ignoring the professionals. They are in minority and it is hard to see them on sales charts. But they are opinion leaders.

Many people overpay for Apple products because they want to look as real professionals. Majority don't care which laptop is the thinnest, they use products used by opinion leadres. With current trend, in 5 years Apple brand might be associated with rich bozos buying gold phones. Just look at the Mercedes S vs Tesla Models S sales in last 2 years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

> Many people overpay for Apple products because they want to look as real professionals.

Just stop right there, OK?

Look back through my comments and you can see I've made this point a few times, but I'll make it again just for you. Mac laptops are sturdy, well made devices. My workstation provided by work is a lenovo W series laptop. I can push the bottom screen bezel and it flexes a full half inch. The plastic above the keyboard flexes also. The trackpad is meh (and TINY!). For the price (which at the time of purchase was not really inexpensive), it is cheap plastic crap.

My rMBP is solid. Feels wonderful to type on. The screen hinge stays put and doesn't shimmy. The keyboard feel solid with no flex. It's worth the price, especially compared to a lot of the junk that's out there today.

> but I'll make it again just for you. Mac laptops are sturdy, well made devices

You misunderstood me. I agree that Apple products have the best build quality. But Apple was always something more than a well build luxury product. MacBook Pro was a tool used by professionals to create good things. Without professionals, it is just another luxury product. And ordinary luxury product won't have that high sales.

I'm typing this on a Lenovo X200 and I don't know what you're on about. This is easily the best laptop I've ever used in terms of durability and sturdiness. Yeah, I can press on that lower bezel and get that flex, but who the hell does that? When I shut the laptop, that bezel is safely tucked away in a very solid case. The thinkpads know where it matters.

The macbook pro I used to use had a big dent in the front after only a year of use, and several scratches and dings. This X200 is over 10 years old and has _no_ signs of wear, and all of the hardware supports Linux _perfectly_ OOTB. It has a far better keyboard, too, plus a fingerprint reader and the famous little thinkpad light. I also used a Thinkpad T420 for a while, which has many of the same benefits and packs more of a punch.

Subconciously I take a professional with a good thinkpad more seriously than one with a Macbook.

> Yeah, I can press on that lower bezel and get that flex, but who the hell does that?

Someone who values quality? It's not like I jab it all the time, but knowing it does it irks me. So glad I wasn't the one who paid for this junk.

> The macbook pro I used to use had a big dent in the front after only a year of use, and several scratches and dings. This X200 is over 10 years old and has _no_ signs of wear,...

So, you've matured and take better care of your things. Good!

> Subconciously I take a professional with a good thinkpad more seriously than one with a Macbook.

That makes absolutely zero sense.

A great example of the reality distortion field. You like Macs and they don't flex, that's great. But they are simply not more durable than a Thinkpad. You're rMBP is unlikely to survive even a single drop, the glossy glass screen would crack. The Magsafe cable has to be thin and light and is prone to failure. The keyboard on the Thinkpad has more travel and is better to type on. Apple make many trade-offs in their designs.

My lenovo would fare far worse in a drop. It's a flimsy, plastic, overweight piece of junk.

Edit: I disagree about the keyboards, kinda. I have here a late 2014 rMBP, a Lenovo W530 and T510. I prefer the mac keyboard. I hate the w530 keyboard, but the t510 keyboard is really nice (it's before lenovo did the redesign).

The MacBook Pro design makes trade-offs that many don't want. Personally, I don't like the thinness obsession, the aluminium, the glossy screen, the keyboard, the glued battery, the port choices. What really scares me, with all the evangelism, is that one day I won't be able to go buy my "oversized plastic junk", because all the PC vendors will be making MacBooks. Apple doesn't need your evangelism, they are the richest corporation in the world. We need a healthy industry with products that make different trade-offs. So please let's recognise the trade-offs and not argue which is better.

I don't disagree that there are trade-offs. My point was, I still feel it's a solid device and weighing the pros/cons, I still bought a rMBP. My issue was the idea that I bought it simply because I want to "appear" as professional. I _am_ a professional (developer) and still chose it because the pros (at the time) outweighed the cons (for me).

This whole meme that people who buy Apple are sheep is getting old.

Which begs the question, why aren't there more manufacturers trying to compete in that space? Apple is successful because they have no competition at the top of the market.

> In corporate politics that would be a suicide. Only Jobs was powerful enough to make mistakes.

To wit: an insignificant change (dropping skeuomorphic UI) was coincident with Scott Forstall being canned.

> Many people overpay for Apple products because they want to look as real professionals. Majority don't care which laptop is the thinnest, they use products used by opinion leadres.

I used to think this way, until I went through 3 PC laptops in 2 years. Macs are worth every penny of the premium Apple commands, and more.

That said, to keep me as a customer they are going to have to do a better job convincing me they aren't planning to discontinue the Mac lineup. And they'll have to offer a more convincing spec bump over my 2014 15" rMBP, which remains borderline-overkill for my needs.

>I used to think this way, until I went through 3 PC laptops in 2 years. Macs are worth every penny of the premium Apple commands, and more.

Maybe you should stop shopping for cheap, consumer-grade crap and get a real laptop like a Thinkpad or Latitude.

Then we're into the same price category as Apple, for anvil-esque hunks of plastic with tiny trackpads and low-resolution screens.

The Thinkpad Helix 2 I'm currently sat at cost me 600 quid earlier this year (and is the 8Gb RAM model so not completely un-comparable to the lower end of the new macbooks)

The Latitudes I get are hunks of magnesium and aluminum, not plastic.

I don't give a shit about trackpads; I use the Trackpoints (which Macs don't have) since they're much easier and faster to use, and a separate mouse most of the time. No touchpad compares to a real mouse, just like a touchscreen keyboard will never compare to a real keyboard.

They're available with high-resolution screens, and even better, they're matte (Macs are not, they're glossy), so I can see them in different lighting situations.

Finally, I get mine at dirt-cheap prices by buying them used, because corporations buy these things in bulk and only keep them for a couple of years before liquidating them. So there's a very healthy used market with machines in excellent, near-new shape because they don't hold their resale value the way Macs do with their cultist followers (and the fact that most people have zero awareness of enterprise laptops). And since computers aren't actually improving technologically any more, a 3-year-old laptop in excellent condition is just as productive and useful as a brand-new one, but at a fraction of the cost.

> No touchpad compares to a real mouse

Depending on your work, I think this is an outdated viewpoint.

Apple sells large, detached trackpads, and they're quite popular amongst people I know (all hardcore programmers):

https://www.apple.com/magic-accessories/

I personally still prefer a mouse when at a desktop, but it can't be denied that Apple's trackpads and their gesture support are incredibly good.

> Maybe you should stop shopping for cheap, consumer-grade crap and get a real laptop like a Thinkpad or Latitude.

If only that were true. Lenovo products are high priced chunks of thin, flexible plastic.

You're basically comparing 30th floor office space to a freaking warehouse.

Had a latitude 7440 before my Mac. The difference is still significant, sometimes I have to boot it back up and this makes me sad. The touchpad alone is worth upgrading for.

Forstall got canned for the Maps fiasco. Which, by the way, Apple did apologize for, in a public letter from Tim Cook.

I hope you are not comparing $700 PC laptops to a $2k MBP here, because there are a lot of very rigid and durable PC laptops available.

The problem with this is that dgregd claimed that MBP owners overpaid for their laptop. So in order to contest that claim it's natural to compare a MBP against a cheaper PC laptop to demonstrate the differences. Once you're comparing a $2k PC laptop against a $2k MBP, it's a lot harder to maintain the narrative that the MBP user overpaid.

A $1400 MBP - I bought it on clearance after the 2015 refresh. And I was thinking more of my $900 2011 MBA.

The PCs all failed spontaneously; it's not even like I dropped them or anything. And only one was the hard drive.

While this sounds nice, I don't think it's correct. If people really bought products because they wanted to use the same thing professionals use, then everyone would be running around with Thinkpads and Latitudes, not Macbooks. And they would have turned their noses up at iPhones and bought Blackberries instead. Apple stuff is just fashion accessories (though for the iPhone, I will grant that it was a quantum leap over the state of the art at the time, but not any more, and this doesn't apply to the situation with notebook computers). They use their marketing to convince rubes that their stuff is the best made, but it's not actual professional gear.

As for Mercedes S vs. Tesla Model S, that seems like an apples-and-oranges comparison there. The Mercedes isn't electric. EVs are fundamentally different vehicles from gas-powered cars, and someone who really wants an EV is not going to even bother looking at gas-powered cars in the same price range. That would be like looking at a really nice microwave oven and then buying a really nice set of stainless-steel cookware instead; sure, they can both be used for cooking, but they're really different approaches to the problem and not normally used for the same thing.

Interesting how I get down-modded to oblivion any time I make a post that challenges the Apple Kool-Aid. Maybe instead of "Hacker News", this place should be renamed "Hipster News" if it's just a congregation place for Apple cultists.

Please keep posting! Hacker News needs people like you. People who "Think Different" and challenge the status quo.

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