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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> The market is clear replaceable batteries and head phone jack just are not at the top of their wish list.

No, the problem is that Apple can do whatever the fuck they want and people still will literally rip the entire stock out of Apple Stores. The newest Macbook Pros still have 16GB RAM tops and not a single miniDP or USB connector, thus leaving people with a pile of useless junk when they upgrade (or have to replace, e.g. due to dead mobo) their older Macbooks. Not to mention the ultra ... "keyboard". People still keep buying them by the masses.

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>No, the problem is that Apple can do whatever the fuck they want and people still will literally rip the entire stock out of Apple Stores.

Ie. "the world is idiots and I know better" as opposed "people have different priorities".

>The newest Macbook Pros still have 16GB RAM tops

And for a very good reason. Low-powered (suitable for laptop use) support for 32GB memory wasn't there in Intel chipsets. But not only you didn't bother to investigate, but you know better.

>and not a single miniDP or USB connector, thus leaving people with a pile of useless junk when they upgrade

Or, you know, they can buy a couple of $10 USB-C cables or a $50 hub and be done with it. I prefer the move towards USB-C only faster, than them releasing yet another laptop with 5 different types of ports that will drag on the migration.

People aren't idiots. But if you swapped Apple's high-level design choices with, say, the LG V20's high-level design choices, people would still buy the Apple phone over the LG V20.

They're buying the brand, and they're making the call that having something that has Apple-level quality is better than buying a design they would prefer with inferior quality.

But that doesn't preclude Apple's high-level design choices leading to objectively inferior quality (even if the objective inferiority is only to a hypothetical Apple that made better high-level design decisions.)

> They're buying the brand

They're more buying the vendor lock-in. When I have invested 4-digit sums into Apple Music, Apple Movies and games, I can't port that all over to Android. Yes, I can port DRM-free music over, but no such luck with movies and games - there are games like Real Racing where you can sync progress across platforms but they're rare.

Add in that Apple will (as evidenced in the article!) artificially slow down phones to the point of being unusable, and you have the explanation why people keep throwing money at Apple. It's like gamblers throwing more and more money into the slot machine - it's the sunk cost fallacy.

When I have invested 4-digit sums into Apple Music, Apple Movies and games, I can't port that all over to Android. Yes, I can port DRM-free music over, but no such luck with movies and games

Yes you can port most movies over. Download Movies Anywhere (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/movies-anywhere/id1245330908...), link your iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and/or Vudu account and any movies you bought from one service from a participating studio automatically shows up as a purchase in any of the other stores.

I've tried it and it works.

>They're more buying the vendor lock-in. When I have invested 4-digit sums into Apple Music, Apple Movies and games, I can't port that all over to Android

You very easily can, the lock-in argument is tired.

For one, Apple Music exists for Android: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205365

And even if it didn't, it's a subscription service. Nobody invests much in it, except your monthly subscription. One can cancel at anytime and go to Google Play, Amazon, Spotify, etc.

As for the music download (paid songs), from the major vendors it was Apple who famously spearheaded the "kill music DRM" thing, and has been offering DRM-free music for a decade or so. Which, one can easily play on Android, etc. No lock-in there either.

Games? As if mobile games or even computer games are not casual and replaced by new ones every so often? Plus, with Steam et al, aren't those transferable as well?

Same with movies. Who even buys those? It's the era of Netflix, subscriptions and at least renting.

>there are games like Real Racing where you can sync progress across platforms but they're rare.

As if that's what's holding people from moving away the Mac...

> Plus, with Steam et al, aren't those transferable as well?

No, they are not. The only thing to buy anything on iOS is the App Store, and it is not transferable - the only things transferable on the iOS Stores are, as both you and I mentioned, music (of course, excluding music bought prior to the no-DRM switch!) and stuff like newspaper subscriptions bought on iOS stores but bound to an account on the newspaper's platform.

Steam is for OS X only (not iOS) and there are no major games on OS X that are not available on Windows (but a huge number of games not available on OS X, thus creating a lock-in to Windows).

> Same with movies. Who even buys those?

It's about the collection you have. I personally have no stakes in that game as all I have is physical media, but I know people with four-digit-sums investments in digital movies and other purchases. For them, the vendor lock in is real (and it's not just Apple - I, for example, got my Amazon account blocked for unpaid bills back from a time where I was financially ... unstable, to say the least, and I literally have no way of ever getting that account reinstated and thus access to my three-digit-worth ebook collection!).

>No, they are not. The only thing to buy anything on iOS is the App Store, and it is not transferable - the only things transferable on the iOS Stores are, as both you and I mentioned, music (of course, excluding music bought prior to the no-DRM switch!)

I was speaking of the Mac. Who "invests" in iOS games, and would care to play them for years on end? For the huge majority, it's a casual thing.

Same with movies. Anybody who invested "four-digit-sums" in digital movies should just move on, like people did with VHS, DVD, and other early formats (and people had even more substantial collections there -- they had been burned enough times not to invest in digital movies). Besides, their "digital movies" already would look archaic in today's 4K screens (unless the service updates them).

>and it's not just Apple - I, for example, got my Amazon account blocked for unpaid bills back from a time where I was financially ... unstable, to say the least, and I literally have no way of ever getting that account reinstated and thus access to my three-digit-worth ebook collection!

That's a separate issue -- not being able to reinstate a rental account is crazy, especially if one doesn't only think of US, Japan, Western Europe and co, but the huge 70% of the world, where temporary issues with stability (in jobs, economy, etc) can often lead people to unpaid bills.

> Who "invests" in iOS games, and would care to play them for years on end?

I'm not talking about games only, there also is a vast amount of productivity software on the iOS platform.

> For the huge majority, it's a casual thing.

And for those who fall into the category of "whales" in F2P or pay-to-win games, it's sometimes six figures.

> like people did with VHS, DVD, and other early formats

For a DVD, I can grab an USB DVD drive - or my BD player. Which will play back anything down to a CD-ROM. The content is easily accessible, and if I want I can do a bit perfect backup even for copyrighted stuff with AnyDVD. For a VHS tape, I actually have a dual-head player - it can do recording on both tape and DVD, as well as transfer a VHS tape to DVD. (Yes, tapes are really oldschool)

I'm not talking about games only, there also is a vast amount of productivity software on the iOS platform.

How much productivity software exists on iOS that's available for Android that you don't pay for via a subscription that allows you to use the same software on any platform?

>Add in that Apple will (as evidenced in the article!) artificially slow down phones to the point of being unusable, and you have the explanation why people keep throwing money at Apple.

You can slow down an iPhone quite a lot until it gets as slow as a brand new flagship Android phone at top speed: http://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-8-iphone-x-vs-android-fl...

Also, the slowdown only occurs if and when the battery is at the end of its useful life. My iPhone 6 from 2014 still runs as fast as ever, and considering the OS update policy of Android phone makers, my iPhone is also a lot cheaper per year than any comparable Android phone.

That said, I find it completely idiotic on Apple's part to slow down the phone instead of letting users know when the battery is at its end of life.

> with 5 different types of ports

No, instead you have two, with differing capabilities but the same form factor. And you have way more than 5 different cable types, each capable of different things, again, with the same form factor.

I'm not yet convinced this is an improvement.

Never had a problem with those "5 different cable types, each capable of different thing, with the same form factor".

All of those can be used to do the same thing -- just with a smaller powered current, and/or slower speed.

Just don't buy crappy cables:

https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10916264/usb-c-russian-rou...

Just buy high-end USB-C cables from a reputable vendor and you are set. As long as some product (e.g. a printer or hard drive) comes with a specific USB-C cable, use it with that, and it will be good for it. End of story.

Do you consider Apple a reputable vendor? Becuase https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MLL82AM/A/usb-c-charge-ca... handles power and USB 2 only. No USB 3, no Thunderbolt, no HDMI, no DisplayPort.

As far as I can tell, the advice should probably actually be "Buy high end Thunderbolt 3 cables from a reputable vendor."

The decision by Apple to only sell a "charge cable" is one of the most baffling things to me. What on earth are they thinking?

Offering it a cheaper price for one of the most common uses where people need > 1 cables (one for home/office etc)?

Or the fact that's very easy to just buy another one for data/video etc?

I guess the standard could do with some color coding, but it's not like its the end of the world. Or worth it to have N different connector technologies just so we can differentiate what does what.

I can see why they sell the cheaper charge cable.

But why in the world don't they also sell an Apple-branded Thunderbolt 3 cable?

On my 2017 touchbarless 13 inch MBP, there are two ports with the exact same capabilities. Is that still not true for the 4-port models?

The four port models have reduced bandwidth on the right hand side ports.

https://arstechnica.com/video/2016/11/the-2016-13-and-15-inc...

It's kinda true - ports on one device have lower throughput for Thunderbolt.

>>The newest Macbook Pros still have 16GB RAM tops

>And for a very good reason. Low-powered (suitable for laptop use) support for 32GB memory wasn't there in Intel chipsets. But not only you didn't bother to investigate, but you know better.

You're actually proving his point for him. This excuse wouldn't work for anyone else but Apple.

Of course normal DDR4 is perfectly fine to use in laptops (compared to lpddr3) without severely damaging your battery life, other manufacturers manage to do it just fine. And while I'd agree that ekeing out those extra standby (because there isn't even much difference in load efficiency between the two) minutes is great for the smaller devices, it becomes ridiculous when one consciously orders a device with a 45W TDP Quadcore CPU, 2TB SSD and dedicated GPU with 4GB GDDR5.

>Of course normal DDR4 is perfectly fine to use in laptops (compared to lpddr3) without severely damaging your battery life, other manufacturers manage to do it just fine.

Not according to Intel either, so the point is moot.

Yeah, no. Just...no. (EDIT: To clarify - I call BS.)

People have different priorities, but most people are also not smart or rational.

> Ie. "the world is idiots and I know better" as opposed "people have different priorities".

The point is, people who desperately need more resources on OS X for whatever reason - be it game development, video/photo editing or even using a web browser - are stuck since years on Apple. With nothing more than Chrome, Excel, Word, Slack, iTerm and Outlook running, I have all my 16GB RAM and 15GB swap usage. I actually work (as a web dev) exclusively in the terminal on a remote server via ssh, because phpStorm, Eclipse or any other IDE on the laptop plus a server environment makes it unbearably slow.

> Low-powered (suitable for laptop use) support for 32GB memory wasn't there in Intel chipsets. But not only you didn't bother to investigate, but you know better.

Laptops in the Windows area have had 32GB support since over 7 years with the release of the Dell M6500 (https://www.geek.com/chips/dell-ships-a-17-precision-m6500-l...). Apple has not even fucking tried supporting what their actual power users need, all in the name of "we have to build a laptop as thin as a feather". Yes, it would have eaten battery life - but why not do the same as the Windows manufacturers did and use a bigger battery?

Apple could have kept selling the MacBook line as low-powered/long-battery-lifed version for those who just want to look like hipsters by having a MacBook, and the MacBook Pro line as powerhorses for the mobile work force of 2017. But no, they screwed up both user groups - the hipsters get to carry a suitcase full of ugly dongles for even the most basic tasks, and the power users watch in awe at the Windows colleagues, who have a crappy OS but a machine that can literally do work.

> Or, you know, they can buy a couple of $10 USB-C cables or a $50 hub and be done with it.

I'd like to be able to plug in a USB thumb drive without a dongle that I'll lose, forget or having it loaned (aka stolen) by a coworker in less than a week. Or, Apple even removed the HDMI port, right after people started building HDMI sockets in conference rooms instead of VGA which was the norm for the latest 20 years. Thanks for having to buy yet ANOTHER dongle. Oh, and a new dongle for the keyboard, another one for the mouse, a new one for wired Ethernet... and no, docking stations are not a solution, not in a "flexible office" layout with different generations of Mac and Windows hardware.

The only thing that actually DID turn out well is that the power brick and the cable are now separate - but oh wait, the new cable can actually break instead of having it flap out elegantly... and because the plug is long instead of short and stubby like many Windows laptops have it, it's prone to cats trying to sit on it, and bending it in the process.

For all of the times that I've had to work from home and forgot my charger at work, I'm glad that Apple didn't decide to use the power vampire configuration in the MBP.

Intel dropped the ball here. There are battery life expectations in the prosumer market and Apple would not have come close to them withing sticking to the low power configuration.

It's also not even remotely the only laptop brand that made that same decision.

> There are battery life expectations in the prosumer market

That's what the MacBook line was supposed to cover, and MacBook Pro, like the name said, was the professional line.

> It's also not even remotely the only laptop brand that made that same decision.

But from those brands which cater to enterprises, there is always the ultra-high-power lineup that power users can choose from. HP has the EliteBook range, Dell the XPS range and Lenovo the ThinkPad P. Some of them I can even order with 64GB RAM.

Apple leaves me at a quarter of the RAM. Apple has left power users like me standing in the rain. The problem is that it's really hard to switch, because Windows 7 nears its end of business and I won't touch anything above it with a 10 feet pole due to privacy and UI problems, and Linux is way too buggy when it comes to energy efficiency, new hardware support or proper support for Optimus and friends. Of course Hackintosh would at least solve the UI problems but it's difficult enough on a desktop platform, and I would never dare to use a Hackintosh for work stuff due to the legal issues.

> That's what the MacBook line was supposed to cover, and MacBook Pro, like the name said, was the professional line.

That ship sailed away pretty much right around when Intel Macs started shipping. Stop clinging to the past, honestly.

That market is deader than dead in every brand. Even Thinkpads. Especially Thinkpads. The only strong market (read: at the scale that Apple sells products) that exists for performance (read: 17") laptops is in gaming. It's also _tiny_.

> Stop clinging to the past, honestly.

Not much to cling for, actually - I jumped ship from Windows only three years ago and back then, it was fine. The problem is that software seems to have evolved as if RAM is an infinite resource (hello, Electron apps, especially Slack). Windows ecosystem has kept up with the demand, Apple... not so much.

> That market is deader than dead in every brand.

But it nevertheless exists in every major brand, and big companies buy them en masse, or at least: enough of them to make the manufacturing of these models worth itself. Only exception is Apple, and that's part of why professionals are highly afraid that Apple has lost its track.

> The problem is that software seems to have evolved as if RAM is an infinite resource (hello, Electron apps, especially Slack)

This is a point I'm 100% in agreement with you on! :)

> But it nevertheless exists in every major brand, and big companies buy them en masse, or at least: enough of them to make the manufacturing of these models worth itself.

I used to be in a role where I had purchasing information for computers for a nationwide big-box retail chain. You would be surprised at how low the order quantity on some of those 17" laptops is. I'm not talking about for the stores but for the manufacturer. Often it's in the low thousands (per market, of which there's really only 4 and for those laptops really 2). Those big laptops are a price anchor to sell more mid-range laptops that have higher margins. Big laptops get the least amount of hardware design engineering effort/QA. Their volume is low enough that the support costs are minimal, even if many of them malfunction or fail. Toshiba in particular is notorious for this.

Apple sells north of 5 million Mac computers a quarter. A freakin' quarter! It is absolutely not profitable for them to divert attention to low volume products. The opportunity cost lost is enormous. They could spend their efforts making the existing inventory a fraction of a percent cheaper or more successful and it would dwarf any profits made from a 17" laptop.

Most of those other brands can afford to sell 'performance' laptops mainly because they have to: they aren't selling 20 million laptops a year. Keep in mind, PC sales have _cratered_ and Lenovo is bleeding money. So is HP, but this year they had an up year...mostly off of selling Chromebooks.

> Their volume is low enough that the support costs are minimal, even if many of them malfunction or fail. Toshiba in particular is notorious for this.

Toshiba isn't what I see in enterprise environments... there I see HP and Dell, but especially Lenovo/Thinkpad.

> It is absolutely not profitable for them to divert attention to low volume products. The opportunity cost lost is enormous.

I agree with you on the general point. The problem and danger for Apple is: their initial success and brand was built by artists (no matter if photo, video or audio) and designers where the performance of Apple equipment pretty much left Windows based systems dead in the water. When these professionals jump ship to Windows, the appeal of Apple as "hip" and "modern" gets lost.

Apple does not have much time left to prevent this - people doing heavy loads like 4K or 8K video work are already jumping ship left and right where possible (of course, anecdata rather than scientifically valid data, but the trend is alarming) because Apple equipment fails to deal with the requirements on every front... especially as more and more video production shifts to 4K.

Apple isn't that alarmed by it. The artists have been leaving for a long time. Creative Cloud and Office 365 were the final nail. Apple is still selling increasing numbers of laptops every year. Apple hardware has lagged for those kinds of workloads for like 6 years.

The only video production houses I know still using Apple only buy it because the people in charge of purchasing either are 10 years out of date or they want their clients to see all the slick, expensive hardware they have around the office as a truth signal.

The market has proved that Apple doesn't have to care.

Which brand in this market actually made the same decision? I honestly can't think of one.

Are you kidding? Every single laptop brand with a thin model went for the low-power 16GB, long-battery life configuration. Look at Lenovo!

Remember, we're talking about MacBookPro class here: ~2kg, 45W TDP Quadcore, dedicated graphics.

Lenovo T-Series: DDR4. HP Zbook: DDR4. Dell XPS/Precision: DDR4. Asus Zenbook Pro: DDR4.

Or did you really want to compare with an x1 carbon? Apples and oranges.

> No, the problem is that Apple can do whatever the f* they want

Industrial wide problem based on consumers voting with their money.

Samsung and the rest of Android is also following the same thing. No replaceable battery and no head phone jack.

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