Apple's had a shockingly bad week of software problems
theverge.com
theverge.com
They have to do better than this. Having a Twitter user report one of the biggest bugs this decade? That's really weak. Releasing an update that undoes that? Pure amateur hour by the guys we really trust with privacy. Separately, lately they've treated me ridiculously bad (and it's _never_ been like this) at the Apple Store on a failed logic board for my 7 Plus to no fault of my own (saying I was 41 days out of warranty, sorry), so I called Apple Care and they promptly took care of it for me, but should I really have had to jump through all those hoops? Really soured me.
I'm also on 3-month long thread with an iTunes Adviser (hi Grant) trying to convert some damn gift cards from iTunes to Apple Store. The easiest request ever. Now he's just no longer picking up his phone, voicemail, or responding to emails. Can't tell you the frustration involved in this (my dad had accidentally selected Apple iTunes instead of Apple Store when redeeming his Wells Fargo rewards)
Having said all that, I'm still support these guys - why, I don't know anymore. That'll be changing soon, for sure.
Its really odd that a company riding so very high on cash would spend so much brand reputation to save a few pennies here and there. It was their generosity taking care of customers that helped their brand become so valuable in the first place.
Only way to truly vote is with your wallet. But Android is no less evil. Google will sell your data like a slave master to the highest bidder.
And Apple Support is non-existent. Documentation about APFS and RAID is thin on the ground. Phone support told me in no uncertain terms that my Mini's number was not a Server so I could not access Enterprise Support, and of course the consumer level folks do not know anything about RAID (or even multi-drive systems). It's been a total shitstorm.
Never have I been so proximate to just dumping them and telling them to piss off, but I also know I won't, because I am too deeply invested in their integrated ecosystem (macOS, Mac Pro, MacBook, iOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple Music...)... except I am starting to think it might make sense to tell them to piss off integrally and voting with my feet.
You’ve just solved a mystery for me: at one point I was struggling (and failing) to get Time Machine to restore from my Synology NAS. Now you’ve explained why!
It gets way to hot, more and more features are no longer available through Server.app, and Spotlight on MacOS Server has never been great (at least not better than on an up-to-date Synology NAS these days). Each update was a reason for bad sleep …
Since all the software we were using as local installations moved to SaaS, only file storage and Resilio Sync are left – band oth can be done with a NAS or cloud services like Google Team Drive / Google Drive File Stream. The latter has great reliability and many useful compliance features.
I do have Linux and DragonFlyBSD machines as ’real’ servers, the former being a Mathematica grid for my numerical heavy lifting.
As for Ubuntu or another Linux distro, I do use Linux and DragonFlyBSD on my servers and to host my Mathematica grid.
Outside Pixel, updates on Android are an embarrassing shit show. I did a three year detour to Android, but never again. Update after update things were broken until and you had to wait 6 months to get an update that was supposedly fixing things.
As someone who considers privacy important, Linux and BSD are the only credible alternatives to the Mac. Unfortunately, a lot of software that I use nearly daily is missing, because the Linux ecosystem does not have a strong ISV ecosystem (Little Snitch, OmniGraffle, Things, DeckSet, LaunchBar, Alfred, Arq, 1Password, Tweetbot, Affinity Designer/Photos, etc.) and does not support some hardware well (Sonos, etc.).
BitWarden is a fantastic FLOSS alternative to 1Password, Emacs’ org-mode for Things is perhaps the finest of its kind and easy to get started with with a distro like Spacemacs, a plethora of Alfred alternatives, Marp for DeckSet, i could go on but at this point i just want to throw up my arms and shake you.
i’ve switched dozens who were sick of proprietary lock-in. it doesn’t sound like you’re sick enough.
However, the open source alternatives for the software I mentioned (and other software) are simply not good enough for me. The additional 'problem' is that open source software that I use, such as Emacs, Latex, compilers, etc. work fine on macOS.
(I used Linux and BSD full-time on the desktop from 1994-2008.)
Stop buying Samsung.
A few years ago I grew so sick and tired of iOS’ arbitrary restrictions compared to Android that I skipped from the iPhone4S to the iPhone6+ with a Google Nexus 5 device, but it was a really hellish experience because I never managed to get things to sync right.
I’ve never heard of anyone being able to do this, iTunes gift cards can very easily be obtained for +20% off of face value and the same cannot be said for Apple store cards.
It was the most honest mistake ever, but we're paying the price for it. Sent them all the documentation involved (including everything from WF). It's just converting money from one card to another, they _can_ do it, but they don't want to.
As Dave said, iTunes cards are seldom sold at face value, often coming at up to 30% off. Apple Store credit is worth face value explicitly. This isn't Apple's problem. Sell the cards privately (you will take a loss) and be more careful next time.
Also, a more relevant analogy would be if you accidentally chose a Roomba using your WF credit, it was delivered home, and then realized you actually wanted a Braava. You’d hope that iRobot would be ok with you returning the Roomba and then sending you an equivalently proved Braava instead. If they didn’t that would be even more excusable because it’s a physical product with shipping costs, etc. The scenario mentioned is a digital transfer of funds which should be significantly easier.
Your Analogy is actually correct, exchanging items that is equivalent "value" or higher priced.
I'm imagining this as of those jeff@amazon.com emails. I do not imagine it would end up as "we have the customer's money, they made an honest mistake, so fuck the customer."
Apple is all about the customer (or was at least, shareholders can get pretty pissy these days), and I was trying to spend more(!!) at the Apple Store.
Either way I'm glad I shared my story, thanks HN.
Quick screenshot of our conversation: https://i.imgur.com/bhw4K1k.png
It got to a point where I didn't want to email anymore in worries of being accused of harassing the guy. To this day, no reply or call back.
To be clear, I didn't take a pass at WF, they were so unbelievably helpful that I was like, wait--- why don't I just go straight to the source? And that's how I landed at Apple to help resolve this issue.
I'm surprised you think Apple can't (or should, in your words) this honest mistake. Mistakes happen, what can I say. I'm taking the fall for this even though it was my dad, but it just as well could have been your girlfriend, your brother, your mother. Doesn't matter, you'd want everyone to have the same level of customer support.
I think imgur just shows it funny (one with the black-out, one with the whitespace)
WF was where I went to first and they were absolutely unwilling to help - but I expected that.
Apple's response was unexpected and I think that's why it soured me. I used to always tell people, just go to Apple they'll take care of it for you.
Privately selling was my last resort like you said, and I already talked to my dad that next time, let's just get the cash and use that anywhere, instead of locking it into Apple (he was about to buy an iPad Pro so he figured why not, bless his heart)
He loves that iPad Pro lol.
You universally can't transfer iTunes cards to Apple Store cards. I just got Apple Store gift cards with some Apple purchases -- are you saying that I just need to act disappointed enough to get it? That I need to be as demanding and foot stomping of a customer, then it makes sense?
There is a point where the customer is wrong. I'll take the downvotes, but Apple says no to countless people every year who make irrational demands. They still manage to exist.
This was an honest mistake of selecting Apple iTunes instead of Apple Store. Sure, the mistake was certainly on our end, but Apple has always taken care of these easy requests.
Why? Because these things happen! And when you understand where the customer is coming from, and they have proven and shown all the documentation requested, why not service the request? Especially when you're the world's most valuable company, it makes no reason not to because customer loyalty is how you got there.
This really should be a no brainer for Apple, even if they do t allow it.
In fact probably they already lost much more in support.
This is called personal responsibility and is a good thing. Accept fault and move on. It's possible to try and ask for help for honest mistakes but you definitely don't blame them for it.
Having said that. I dont think Apple should and could convert those Gift Card. iTunes Gift Cards have promotion and discount. I think that is entirely Wells Fargo's problem.
I won't even touch Mac OS until it's past the 3rd revision. Reminds me of old Windows where you waited for SP3.
Apple are forward looking in development - meaning they don't seem to be doing much regression testing for things like performance with last years model - or if they are, they don't care.
I'm not letting ios11 anywhere near my phone based on the usability impact I've seen on others, which leaves me open to old security vulnerabilities. Microsoft security patch old operating system versions - its kinda ironic how the 2 companies have switched places.
That's the kind of thing Apple made fun of Windows Vista for in the Get a Mac ads.
OS X sucked horribly until 10.2 and wasn't decent IMO until 10.3.
Android on a Pixel XL 2.
If Apple doesn't care to maintain any quality standards, then it's not worth paying the price premium. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At least Microsoft is listening to their users!
Changing, to who?
I am genuinely asking because I really don't see any alternatives, which I agree is unfortunate and sad, but, I just don't see them right now.
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Bugs far worse than this are discovered on a weekly basis. This one is just easy to exploit so it’s been hyped up by people who would normally ignore slightly more technical descriptions of much worse vulnerabilities.
Describing this as “one of the biggest bugs of the decade” is insane when you see stuff like the Eternal* exploits released by TSB.
How bad this is depends entirely on your circumstances. If your Mac is only accessible to people you fully trust then good for you. Otherwise this bug is potentially far worse than anything that could be launched over a network by anonymous attackers.
Not the case here. This bug only¹ allows you to log into an unencrypted Mac, which you should of course never leave unattended.
>How bad this is depends entirely on your circumstances. If your Mac is only accessible to people you fully trust then good for you. Otherwise this bug is potentially far worse than anything that could be launched over a network by anonymous attackers.
Are you equally worried about the DMA attacks which affect most computers and are not widely considered vulnerabilities?
It feels to me that you're creating a rather unrealistic threat model here.
>If your Mac is only accessible to people you fully trust then good for you.
If this isn't the case then why does the device contain data which makes a compromise by an adversary with physical access problematic?
>Otherwise this bug is potentially far worse than anything that could be launched over a network by anonymous attackers.
Only in an absurd scenario where you store sensitive plaintext data on a publicly accessible machine and expect it to remain secure. At this point no software is going to save you.
¹ Worth noting here that it also affects some Remote Desktop configurations which is the only actually somewhat serious part of this bug.
I'm thinking of Macs placed on desks in living rooms, home offices and small companies around the world, accessible to spouses, flatmates, parents, coworkers, cleaners, etc.
99% of these "adversaries" will never have heard of various other ways of breaking into a computer and they might never do anything that actually feels like breaking in.
But if all that stands between you and reading all of your spouse's emails is entering "root" into the username box, that may be too much of a temptation.
So yes I'm afraid these things are a normal, if undesirable, part of life. And then there are all the other groups I mentioned (flatmates, coworkers, parents, cleaners).
Among the millions of Mac users, there will be many who don't want those around them to sift through their emails, browser history, bank account statements, etc.
The attacker must already have access to exploit this, and one would have to be utterly clueless to expect that an attacker wouldn't be able to get root some other way.
Apple is on track to become the shittiest most alienating company on the planet. For a company I loved, I don’t think I could hate them more and be more consistently disappointed.
I wish I didn’t dislike android because I’d leave this hot pile of apple shit behind at this point. Their focus isn’t on creating content it’s on consuming it. They’ve lost track of the creatives and innovators.
- macOS High Sierra critical flaw with root admin access
- macOS High Sierra update released, but breaks file sharing
- iOS 11 crashing on some iPhones due to a date bug
- macOS High Sierra fix not installing correctly on some systems
-iOS 11.2 released early to fix iPhone crash bug
Yeah I would say that is a pretty bad week
https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2017/20171124_2015-macO...
> - macOS High Sierra fix not installing correctly on some system
But 10.13.1 has been out for a while, the root issue only resurfaces if you upgrade from 10.13 -> 10.13.1 after the patch is automatically installed.
Apple, you have gone from one of my favourite companies in the world, to one of my most hated. I will never buy a new, non-upgradable, RAM-soldered-to-the-board, overpriced, underpowered, piece of shit computer from you again. And you can take my word on that.
I dunno... You really need to fix something like this quickly and you might not have time for a really good QA round; so you rush it. Could they do better, sure.
You really need to ship an operating system that doesn't get into a crash reboot cycle at the turn of a new month.
Meanwhile, just this year we had these bugs here and before that we had the "password got stored in hint field" one with new FS[0], some other one with keychain stealing[0], the Unicode problem with the new FS, the iPhone calculator bug with intentionally laggy animated + button ignoring input.
I'd expect them to walk on (colibre) egg shells for a few weeks now, some of these bugs are absolutely embarrassing (compared to bugs like Debian's OpenSSL RNG bug for example, which is a more nuanced one that requires real analysis and thought to find and understand properly as opposed to "my password is just shown" that anyone can understand).
I'm pretty negative towards Apple for reasons but if someone told me a year ago they'd have so many bugs in such a short time period I'd say they're being disingenuous since Apple has many real downsides (that it's users mind not care about but I happen to) but top quality.
[0] - http://mashable.com/2017/10/06/high-sierra-password-fix-appl...
Here's how I'd model it. The main decision point on Apple's part is how long to QA the fix before pushing the release out. As soon as the build finishes? 3 hours of testing? 1 day? 3 days? 2 weeks? The longer you test, the lower the probability of introducing a regression or having an incomplete fix, but that probability never drops to zero.
You could come up with an "expected after-patch defect severity over time" graph that goes down (due to more QA) in a way similar to exponential decay, and compare with that with the known before-patch severity of the root access bug (which was extremely bad in this case, obviously). A simple way to make the "how long to test" decision is to say that if the expected after-patch severity is lower than the known before-patch severity, then you should release. (That doesn't mean you need to stop testing, obviously.) A more nuanced decision-making process would take into account the confidence level from the QA process, the overhead of the release process, and the bad PR of releasing a buggy fix. But still, if the software has a terrible flaw and you have a fix that you're reasonably confident won't make things worse, it probably makes sense to release it.
Apple ended up taking about a day to release a fix. My understanding is they also released it as a user-initiated update for a while, then later forced the update on everyone, which seems like a fine strategy to reduce risk of widespread regressions.
Inventing a rating system, I'd say the severity of the root bug was 100 and the severity of the file sharing bug was 10, so the patch they released was an improvement even to users who ran into the file sharing bug. So over the course of multiple patches, their computers got better, even if was from terrible to bad to normal. I also think it's not obvious that another day of testing would have caught the file sharing bug, and taking 2 days to release a critical security fix is much worse than taking 1 day, in my opinion. So my impression is Apple generally made the right choices about how to release the patch, even if it's crappy that there was a regression and that such a bad security bug would exist in the first place.
Premium is about the whole package delivering high value - at a reasonably high cost, too. Fashion is almost 100% about aesthetics, at a much higher price. Not much value in relation to price except for branding and the exclusivity aspect (which is tied to the very high prices). But fashion often has little to do with the quality/price ratio of the product. See those ridiculous diamond-covered $50,000 phones with 3-year old specs and OS versions.
I believe Apple is also selling some ridiculous $17,000 smart watches now. The similarly priced Xeon-based Mac Pros almost enter this category, too.
It's about culture and priorities inside the company. The moment I saw them shift towards the "fashion" aspect, I knew things would start to go downhill for Apple in terms of quality as well as value per product.
If they don't check and rectify their priorities soon, they're going to have much bigger problems in the long term, maybe unfixable problems.
Absolutely. Like what does "Pro" mean in Apple-speak right now? A workhorse for serious professionals who earn their living with their tools, or the luxury version of the regular consumer version? There's a TV ad in the UK that says the Macbook Pro would be perfect for a first-year undergrad... That's not who I'd imagine a real "Pro" product was aimed at.
Convert the current Macbook Air into a 13" Macbook that is more in line with the Air's price. The Pro should be a pro machine. Plenty of ports and no touch bar non sence, but keep the Touch ID sensor.
'macOS High Sierra APFS Performance is Inferior to HFS on Apple’s Fastest SSD: all cost, no benefit, at least not yet.'
https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2017/20171124_2015-macO...
it's amazing how stuff will bitrot on HFS+.
From the same article: the engineers contend that Apple devices basically don’t return bogus data. NAND uses extra data, e.g. 128 bytes per 4KB page, so that errors can be corrected and detected. (For reference, ZFS uses a fixed size 32 byte checksum for blocks ranging from 512 bytes to megabytes. That’s small by comparison, but bear in mind that the SSD’s ECC is required for the expected analog variances within the media.)
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/27/ios-11-autocorrect-issu...
In Norwegian we have "a" and "å", they are on completely opposites ends of the keyboard and are not used interchangeably, but they always changes one to the other.
I've tried to contact support about it, even Google, as the problem persist on Android as well, but they never get back to me. So I'm assuming it's working as intentional. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple...
Obviously there is benefit to adding more people, it's just that that benefit takes time to offset the cost of onboarding.
Communication does place an upper limit on the number of people who can work on a specific project, and later the total number of projects that can interact.
Something exploratory like what what the GP was suggesting doesn't require huge teams or a lot of interaction between teams, at least until the problems are identified and need to actually be resolved.
Throwing more people at different programs, where they are needed, e.g. some to work on Mail.app, some to work on a better Calendar, some to work on Pages, etc, is a totally viable solution.
If the extra QA ends up slipping the release date of Mac, fine. Better to slip a date than ship software which breaks users and erodes trust.
Unlike some other commenters, I don't see this as so much of an engineering issue. Bugs are bugs and inevitable; at the end of the day, to ship quality software you have to test it. That's what's missing here.
(Not to say that good engineering practices can't make it easier to reach that quality bar, or that very bad engineering practices can't make it impossible [whack-a-mole phenomenon], but that doesn't seem to be Apple's problem here.)
No. Testing can never ever hope to give you bug-free products.... coding discipline and relentless pursuit of simplicity in design can.
The question is not why the testers didn't catch the "root with no password" bug - the question is really how it was possible to have it, in the first place.
From a point on, extra testing won't help you. I kinda doubt that the main problem here was "not enough testing"
E.g., the root-login-bug slipping back in is inexcusable. That bug should've entered in a "make sure this doesn't" regress list and be tested every release. Yet, it wasn't.
Everybody would rather spearhead the new iPhone XI project, than spearhead the "add 10% to the battery life on 4-year old MacBooks" project.
You'd need an incentive program to offset fame/pride. For example, "150% pay for working on non-sexy projects" or "additional points for tangible improvements or bug fixes to legacy code".
Also called "salary increases", "promotions" and "bonuses". Not just for the people who do the sexy new projects. Because let's face it - you're being rewarded far better in a corporation for releasing something new, than for fixing something old. And keeping something old working perfectly with no issue? Well, nobody hears about you, so probably you're not doing anything, you're lucky if you're not fired.
(I'm exaggerating, of course; but unfortunately, not much)
And now you’re telling me companies explicitly choose “date-driven, please”.
(disclaimer, I don't actually use any Apple products at the moment.)
No. It's a security bug, plus a botched fix at a time when the quality of Apple software has been lower than ever (keep in mind this macOS also had the "Shows password as password hint" bug). Moreover, it's a sign that quality control and internal processes at Apple are seriously lacking.
> In another sign that the company has prioritized the iPhone, Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there's no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team. There is now just one team, and most of the engineers are iOS first, giving the people working on the iPhone and iPad more power.
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple...
It showed when I submitted a feature suggestion for a macOS app and the Apple employee apparently only skimmed the submission, didn’t check the category, and closed it because the feature exists in the iOS app. I resubmitted the feature suggestion and made sure to additionally mention in the description text this is meant for macOS (as the submission category states) so they don’t close it again.
I follow this stuff with a fair amount of interest and I'm still confused, god help the average consumer who just followed the nagging update prompts.
But with you having enabled "download updates in the background".
Go to Systems Prefs > App Store and tell us what your preferences are set to.
Apple has screwed up big time lately, but "hur-dur, muh mac is doing what it's supposed to do an I'm MAD bout that" isn't part of the problem.
Downgrading to Sierra fixed it... I still don't know what was causing the reboots.
How much longer before this meme dies?
It will die when the competition makes it better, and from what I've seen the competition seems to continue doing great at shooting themselves in the foot
Linux distros lack product vision, Windows looks like every click you make go through 5 backward compatibility layers and a core dating from the first Windows NT that was never refactored.
For example? All I see is outdated design and hardware. Only "incredible" hardware I can think of is the new chip in iphone x.
The Macbook Pro is the best laptop out there as a power/battery life/build quality combo (having to spend for a "dongle" or new USB-C cables is not a technical concern for its technical capacity).
The iPhone X is top notch (pun intended) and has been praised in reviews all around the world. The AirPods have been described as mostly magical by their users (I'd add to that).
The Apple Watch is the best in its kind technologically, and has overtaken the #1 traditional watch maker in sales (and moves more units than competitive smart-watches). It's the only one that was deemed most accurate in its health measurements (heart, etc) from all smartwatches too in competitive tests.
The iPad continues to be the best tablet technology wise.
So?
Says who? I think Surface book/pro and Dell XPS have caught up and in some ways surpassed MBpro.
> The iPhone X is top notch
Don't disagree, but the hardware is nothing special. We have had this quality and refinement in Android flagships for a couple of years now. Apple has just caught up to the state of the art.
> The Apple Watch is the best in its kind technologically
Bullshit. Smart watches with better features, better hardware and better battery life have existed for a long while now. The iwatch is good, but not better than any other comparable watch out there, hardware-wise.
> The iPad continues to be the best tablet technology wise.
I think you're repeatedly conflating sales/revenue numbers with hardware and technological superiority. MBpro, iphone x, iwatch, ipad all are very well made and very high-tech products. They all have nice hardware. I am particularly impressed by the face mapping tech in iphone. But all of them are about at par with any high-end laptop, phone or tablet. In fact there are laptops with windows hello, which work very well for face login. The Galaxy phones pack in a lot of hardware features and have had a futuristic design which apple has just come around to copying. There is no clear hardware superiority in apple's products.
Reviewers, for one. Dell XPS is nowhere near the build quality of a MBPr, the Surface Pro is close but no cigar.
>Don't disagree, but the hardware is nothing special.
In what way? It's the fastest smartphone available, smoking the competition. The camera and image processing is one of the best, if not the best, on any smartphone. AR processing. Best in class sensors. Smoking fast graphics. Most custom designed by Apple. What else would it need? Magic unicorn engine, it doesn't have.
>Bullshit. Smart watches with better features, better hardware and better battery life have existed for a long while now.
Anything concrete -- some specific model, so that we can do a comparison for those "better features, hardware and battery life"?
>But all of them are about at par with any high-end laptop, phone or tablet.
"About at par" is the best one can say.
What other brands full featured, actual app ecosystem smartwatch is the form factor of the 38mm apple watch? Which of them have LTE even as an option? It's smaller than some of the fitbit type trackers, even.
You can gripe over other things about it, but no one else makes a _small_ smartwatch like it that isn't severely limited in some way
You have to be joking. Apple charges $2k just to get a quad-core CPU or more than 8GB of RAM. Soldered, mind you, so you can't just replace it later. Oh, and I hope you don't need more than 500GB of storage!
Build quality tends to include things like, you know, being able to fix it when things inevitably go wrong, rather than throwing it in the bin and paying $2k+ for another lottery ticket.
> The Apple Watch is the best in its kind technologically, and has overtaken the #1 traditional watch maker in sales (and moves more units than competitive smart-watches).
And Trump managed to get elected president. I guess that says more about the average consumer than about the product they're selling.
> The iPad continues to be the best tablet technology wise.
When was it ever?
Well, I have 1TB or storage on mine, so?
Second, whether it has cheap replacement options is not exactly a criterion about if it's the best out there or not.
Besides, any competitor product I can buy that doesn't have "soldered RAM" and would allow me to upgrade its RAM 2 years in the future, will also have lost more of its resale value compared to an Apple laptop.
I might as well sell my used MBPr for plenty of $$$ and buy a new model with more RAM 2-3 years down the road, than buy something that I can upgrade but would be selling for much much less than what I bought it for.
>Build quality tends to include things like, you know, being able to fix it when things inevitably go wrong
Horses for courses. I'd rather treat it as an opaque box, which either works or doesn't. I don't want to be the mechanic of my laptop.
>rather than throwing it in the bin and paying $2k+ for another lottery ticket.
Or you know, buying Applecare for it, and having the customer support that most people have rated as #1 in satisfaction in relevant surveys in the US for more than a decade.
>And Trump managed to get elected president. I guess that says more about the average consumer than about the product they're selling.
Well, Hillary got the popular vote, so where does that leave your argument?
>When was it ever?
Yes, since it's inception. In fact the competition for the first 2-3 years was so bad, it was laughed out of the market (not to mention the first competitors managed to cost even more than the iPad itself).
Where is that listed? The biggest one I can find on apple.com has a 512GB drive.
> Second, whether it has cheap replacement options is not exactly a criterion about if it's the best out there or not.
Presumably you'd be using it for a couple of years, not just right now.
> Besides, any competitor product I can buy that doesn't have "soldered RAM" and would allow me to upgrade its RAM 2 years in the future, will also have lost more of its resale value compared to an Apple laptop.
Have fun with your pyramid schemes.
> Or you know, buying Applecare for it, and having the customer support that most people have rated as #1 in satisfaction in relevant surveys in the US for more than a decade.
Yes, because I'm fond of paying more to (barely) solve the problem that they created in the first place. The $400 + $300 per incident add up to enough to just buy another laptop from a more competent manufacturer. Or you could just repair it, and keep the change.
It's one of the customization options they give. Perhaps it's not available for the 13"? (I have the 15")
>Presumably you'd be using it for a couple of years, not just right now.
Yes, usually use them for 3 years or so before replacement (previous model I had was a 2013 one, new model is a 2017). But I pick a model based on my needs down those 2-3 years. If I have a feel I'll be needing more disk, I get a bigger disk from the start.
>Have fun with your pyramid schemes.
Selling a used laptop (or anything) is hardly a pyramid scheme. For one, it doesn't usually get more than 1 sale, making the whole "pyramid scheme" accusation moot.
>Yes, because I'm fond of paying more to (barely) solve the problem that they created in the first place.
The payment is on top of the standard warrantee, and includes accidents and such that are not covered by most warrantees, so...
>add up to enough to just buy another laptop from a more competent manufacturer
Well, good luck with that.
It's easy to see where Cook falls short. It's much harder to figure out what went right at Apple because of his leadership, that otherwise would have gone awry.
What is "bold" about it, specifically?
Making the bet that people are ready to pay a lot more just for the sake of having something that feels nicer to use is also what makes the iPhone X a bold step, although some of the techs existed in different forms in the previous iPhones. Yes, I'm using the word 'feels' here, it's about things like FaceID, 3D Touch, Taptic Engine and all the other things that make the iPhone X experience radically different to using something like the android competition. They actually had to completely redevelop 3D Touch for the iPhone X, the old 3D Touch technology depended on the LCD backlights which aren't a thing with OLED.
They're things that don't dramatically improve productivity and they're not things that can be considered major features like having a better camera (like the Google Pixel 2 marketing). They're things whose sole purpose of existence is to make interacting with the device feel nicer. It's something that does not exist in android land.
It's that sort of thing that makes me keep using Apple's laptops too, despite the many things I do not like about them (like the all USB-C ports). The Taptic Engine + Force Touch, oversized trackpad makes doing things like dragging something across the screen with only one finger feel so much better than what you have to do with other trackpads which require either pressing the trackpad itself on the bottom area or pressing a button. I'm still amazed they managed to make vibrations feel like you clicked a physical button.
However I do think the SW part has been going down for a while. Maybe not enough resources or management takes it for granted.
And unfortunately to me bugs like "fails the 2nd time" or "fails at a specific date" (and yes I think the same of Android's missing month bug) means there are developers who don't know what they are doing.
Release early/often is categorically unsuitable for proprietary, closed software development, especially for a company like Apple which directly targets end users and has made a name for producing stuff which 'just works'.
As such I don't think Apple actually follows release early/often, they just seem to think they can get by with less testing than they actually should. They also have a tendency to concentrate efforts on superficial 'improvements' while they lack the same drive to improve basic infrastructure.
- Apple Watch
- AirPods
- Apple Pencil
- Apple Music
- HomePod
- ARKit
Apple has significant challenges in front of them, as evidenced by this week, and Cook shoulders the responsibility for that. But, he is not Ballmer, and Apple had major security bugs and issues under Steve.
I hope the "Cook is Ballmer" trope will quickly die.
17+ years later, and 10000 articles about how Macs aren't really immune to viruses (duh), OS X/macOS still doesn't have any virus outbreak that wasn't actually a trojan in fact, that at worst affected only like 1% of the user base or less.
Windows had actual viruses affect tons of people regularly.
Smartwatches are an Apple invention? Wireless headphones are an Apple invention?
I call shenanigans.
Both Apple Watch and AirPods have essentially captured their entire market.
Take a look at apple’s new patents . There is some serious innovation happening. There is also an attempt to replace iPhone with headgear. Although, current quality bar is a matter of concern
I guess that's the burden of following Steve Jobs. His personal brand was pretty synonymous with Apple and Quality.
IMO I think Tim Cook needs to go. He's a perfectly fine CEO for most companies but not Apple. Apple needs an opinionated CEO who is in touch with the average American(and the normal curve). Tim Cook says things like "If you only work for money, you will never be happy", which reveals how out of touch he is with most Americans.
If some lawyer decides to stand up against Apple and start a class action suit for breaking so many people's phones through iOS 11 to the point of being unusable, I'm sure they will get a lot of supporters.
I really don't care for another iPhone and I don't like being forced to upgrade because my current iPhone which used to work perfectly fine and is not even an old phone is completely broken. All apps take more than ten seconds to boot up. And I know I'm not alone because I've seen other peoples phone in person.
There should be a crowdfunding platform for class actions like this.
Yes I'm "forced to upgrade".
1. They keep popping up those notifications and block my workflow until I give in and upgrade to the latest iOS version.
2. My phone is virtually unusable right now. Like I said, all apps take about 10 seconds to "launch", during which all I see is a white screen. And in many cases it just crashes after the ten seconds. I have to reboot the app to even get it to launch after the ten seconds of loading. I think this counts as being "forced to upgrade" since I have no option to downgrade the OS and my phone is unusable.