I’ve used Apple computers my entire life. why I'm never buying one again
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
>But I don't like owning things I can't tinker with or fix even a little, both out frugality and a desire to create a little less waste in the world.
Perfectly good reason. Apple is not going to stop trying to make its products just a bit thinner, or otherwise pursue some other overall aesthetic design goal. Repairability absolutely takes a back seat.
>As noted by Business Insider, Apple is increasingly becoming a luxury brand.
Not quite true - that is, they have ALWAYS gone for the higher margin. They flirted with very expensive watches, but that seems to have gone away. They have always gone for the high end though.
But that’s fine, they’re betraying what they used to stand for (the things that brought us to them in the first place) so it’s not worth it anymore. I’ll never buy an Apple computer again either. And I’m not a casual Apple user. Bought my first Mac (with a black screen in the age before hard drives) when I was 12 (mom paid for half but the rest was money I saved). Worked in the my campus’s first iMac lab. Deployed and maintained macs for the next decade. I was loyal not to a brand but to a product focused company- because they took care of their customers, because their products just worked, because they were fighting for something better than the boring mess that was windows. They appealed to education customers and creative people. The products cost more, but lasted longer and were a joy to use. They made big moves and bold plays that in retrospect were sound. Eliminating the floppy drive, taking a chance on FireWire. But lately they’ve gotten arrogant and disdainful. “Ask me again later” is a slap in the face. How about “No” motherfucker? USBC is a fucking joke. It was a mistake and they simply can’t admit it. Everybody has a handful of dongles on their desk, more complexity for no gain. Charging over usb is fine, but is it really better than MagSafe? (No, no it is not) Where can I buy a usbc keyboard? Maybe from the company going all in on USBC? Nope.
Whatever, I’m done. I went Linux two years ago and never looked back. Tried to go to Android too, but it’s just too terrible. I’ll ditch my iPhone too when I can no longer buy one with a headphone jack.
In conclusion fuck Apple. And to all the apologists saying get over it? No. They’re destroying something that used to be great. I refuse to forget. I’ll take the spirit they have abandoned and I’ll make it mine. I’ll hold them as an example of what not to do, and example of where not to go wrong. And I’ll never forget. Neither should any of you.
Apple doesn't sell USB-C keyboards because Apple doesn't sell wired keyboards at all anymore.
> USBC is a fucking joke. It was a mistake and they simply can’t admit it. Everybody has a handful of dongles on their desk, more complexity for no gain. Charging over usb is fine, but is it really better than MagSafe? (No, no it is not)
There's substantial gains in USB-C. For example: no-fuss 4K monitor hookups that also act as charging connections.
OTOH, I'm also forced to recognize that my learning and growth had pushed me out of the space of the "computer for the rest of us." But I'm sadly not quite ready to leave.
This implies that apple started as a layman's computer, and their market position has remained stable over the last, say, 15 years.
I'm not sure that's true. While your capabilities and requirements may have grown in that time, I think Apple made a similar and opposite transition, away from a (relatively) low quantity of high power users to a high quantity of low power users.
This movement has left a palpable void in computing. You can get great tech specs anywhere, but apple's hardware and OS usability are something special, and no longer being the target of that blessing is a heavy blow.
This is an idea that I find comes up a lot, but that I don't feel is common knowledge, so if anyone feels differently about it, or can validate it with some data, I'd really like to know.
But while Mac might take a hostile approach in terms of hardware, Windows takes one with their software. I feel stuck. I also find linux still too janky and don't have the same patience I did as a teenager to go through myriad settings and configuration files just to get things working or looking good.
For a laptop, been using a $300 chromebook. With Crostini I get all my linux apps that I use hassle free. I also use Google Docs and Sheets and Bitbucket for my personal stuff - I switch between my laptop and desktop seamlessly. I use my work Citrix if have to work from home (eg. MS Office).
Nothing on my Mac that I miss.
I had a chromebook for a bit and I really loved it but felt too uneasy with Google having 100% supervision over all of my internet activities.
I've made peace with the google privacy issues. The convenience made me more pragmatic instead of idealistic, but I hear you.
I suspect it might seem less burdensome to people who are used to it, just as I imagine getting going on Ubuntu - which feels effortless to me - might be a slower, more confusing process for people who aren't already used to it.
So that's the bigger issue. Windows Subsystem for Linux starts to make a difference, and I just don't have time to fight Linux.
I know people are going to say "Linux is great now! You just have to do these 3 things to get Wayland working with the thingamabob" and at that point, I'd be perfectly happy with a hackintosh if it means I have to fiddle. But I don't have time to fiddle.
The whole "having to tweak Linux" is a tired old meme.
This is the problem I’ve faced with Linux at least. I’ve been able to achieve something close-ish to what I want in a Linux desktop setup, but no matter what there’s always a list of papercuts that I can’t really do much about short of writing my own DE (good luck with that with the insanity of X and the bad docs of wayland/libweston/etc).
If you want it to look and behaviour just like Windows 7 or Mac OS iDon'tCare, then you might be lucky and find a premade theme that does that work for you.
Whereas no amount of effort can decrapify the adware in Windows.
(This is usually the scenario where people say "Yes! all you have to do is swap ___ with ___ and tweak this one setting, and it's done!"
So I do know my way around Linux distributions.
Tweaking Linux is something I still have to do occasionally, like hacking around video acceleration, handling OpenGL rendering problems, or connecting to wlan routers.
But in reality the failure rate of Apple is only half of HP and Dell. Initial Cost 40%+, and repair cost 100% more. And for business / professional users, HP and Dell make same day replacement to fixing. Apple? Try that with Genius Bar.
Whatever it is, I think Apple is on the verge with consumer confidence collapse. Next 2 year will be crucial.
A good place to mention https://puri.sm. Repairability is one of their selling points, along with the openness.
From my POV the apotheosis of OSX was 10.6.8, so my daily driver on my 2013 retina MBP (Mojave) is... SLS 10.6.8, virtualized in Fusion. When this machine dies, that's it, no more Apple anything.
My laptops from college and law school both still work, and the one from law school (an HP laptop that was in many ways a rough precursor to MS' Surface line) still has 70% of its original battery life!
A key point in why I despite Apple products: the first year of law school, roughly 90% of the students used Apple laptops. By the start of the second year, 50% of the students used Apple laptops. By the end of law school, only a handful of students still used Apple laptops; all of them were the type that babied their computers. The problem is that Apple laptops simply weren't built to survive the rigors of school, and those laptops were stronger than the ones Apple sells today.
So, based on the experience of roughly 300 students at my law school, I say that Apple is only the best value for the money if someone else is paying for it and the AppleCare service plan. If it's your own money, Apple is the worst value.
I just run Ubuntu because it’s so common, but I’ve tried a handful of other distros. Some are quite nice. I do miss Omnigraffle though, and my Apple purchased music is unplayable. I should sue them and set legal precedent forcing them to unlock on request.
I think the straw for me was the fact that I had to factory reset my entire MacBook down to the "ROM" just to get the left side of my keyboard to work.
The author doesn’t actually say which of the possible upgrades he personally did, and how he benefited from it, and thus how he has suffered since the ability to custom upgrade components was taken away. I think he just likes the idea. He won’t like the reality of the hassle of a PC, and I hope he writes a follow-up article when he “returns” to Apple. And loads of people I know who have moved _from_ a PC to a Mac actually have benefited, without the need to then upgrade the already-powerful (Apple) computer they now own.
Anyway, the need to upgrade was driven by software that was ahead of the curve. This was good, people were making and improving Mac software! And they still are, without the correspending need to upgrade RAM to make it run. It just runs. I started with a PowerBook 170 (maybe it was 190?), and worked my way up through models, upgrading ram or HD as needed. I worked with people using windows... holy moly, their misery was non-stop. And it’s still that way!