Hacker News Reader

Comment by meritt | Hacker News Reader

While your statement is reasonable, it's interesting seeing a Mac user complain about things being too expensive. Is it fundamentally worse to overcharge for software over the hardware?

View on HN

You misunderstand me, it has nothing to do with Windows being "too expensive", the point is that you've paid for it and they still abuse your privacy and shove ads down your throat at every opportunity.

By way of comparison, I willingly and happily pay more to use Apple hardware and software specifically because that money buys me a hell of a lot more privacy, security, and functionality than the equivalent amount of money would buy me in the Microsoft / PC ecosystem.

I am not misunderstanding you. Your entire comment was centered around a perceived unfairness regarding price:

> most expensive version of their OS.

> they charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars for.

To be clear here, I'm not defending Windows. I agree with you that what they do is not constructive for their users. I'm merely pointing out it's ironic for Mac users sit on their throne and decry Windows' practices while paying significantly more for non-upgradeable Mac hardware when if you really gave a shit about security and privacy, you'd buy reasonably priced PC hardware and install a linux distro.

Last I checked, App Store is absolutely filled with advertisements that I didn't request. Why is it so significantly worse that Microsoft happens to place theirs within Explorer? I think both are rather frustrating when you already paid for the software and/or hardware.

Are you seriously trying to claim that Macs are overpriced by hundreds of dollars by trying to compare them against an ATX desktop? Or do you have some more reasonable comparison in mind of Apple and non-Apple products that actually compete in the same market segment, and where the Dell/Lenovo/HP/whatever is significantly more upgradable?

And do you have any reasonable complaints about the security and privacy of a modern Mac with the T2 chip, or are you saying that anyone who cares at all about security should run Linux and spend 30% of their time wrangling with SELinux policies?

Not a parent commenter, but I have some examples of upgradeability/repairability. Dell XPS line of laptops has upgradeable storage and screwed-in batteries. 15" variant has upgradeable RAM and wireless card. The keyboard is attached with screws instead of being permanently fixed to chassis and costs significantly less to order and replace yourself should you find a need for it. Similarly in the worst case scenario, there are replacement motherboards on eBay for $550 or sometimes less which you could again order and replace yourself (or upgrade your base CPU option with).

And both 13" and 15" Dells have a fingerprint sensor which is as snappy as Touch ID without being bundled with a thin strip of touchscreen and a $200 price hike.

That's because these laptops are designed to be serviced on-site by repairmen who are not always so bright. So I imagine, similar HP offerings are as robust.

Dell's and HP's phone support and warranty support are super awful, though, so this may be a factor for you. For me, the difference between a drink spill costing $600 (and I do it myself) on a $2500 Dell versus $1500 (and I have to lose my files/get a new system) on a $1600 MBP (both true stories) is significant and I'm not rich enough to go for latter.

I think the problem is not that windows pro costs money. The problem is that Microsoft also sells a second-class version of their OS that is really shitty.

From a pure brand perspective, the smart move for Microsoft would be to stop selling windows home.

And while they are at it rethink the "OS as a service" strategy. I don't get the often cited comment on how Microsoft transformed itself under Nutella. They just take the steps they are forced to make because a lot of developers ran to different platforms.

I think MS-software to be less attractive than any time before. Be that windows, their office suite or their cloud landscape, which mainly excels at being slow. And stronger competitors are not the reason for decisions that are mostly not consumer oriented.

But the subscription model for windows makes a lot of sense, I think. Leaving people on older versions is the same as selling a crippled version of your OS

I have mixed feelings on this one... tbh, I wish I could pay MS $5-10/month to nuke all the passive-agressive ads. I reluctantly do so for YouTube already.

It seems to me that no matter what happens two classes of users are going to be created: those that can pay for security and those that cannot. Ultimately Apple's pricing means all their users are first class - hence security as a bread-and-butter feature on their platforms. In MSFT's case they're going to have low and high cost consumers, so they segment those users into the two relevant classes.

None of this is good, for anybody involved. IT security is like vaccines, it only works if everybody's got them. This one of my biggest issues with the current "ads let us have free software" defense of the advertising craze. Ads let us segregate users based on what features they can afford not to have, and unfortunately for most laypeople it's security and privacy that's on the chopping block.

What a mess. Typed from my iPad Pro.

> Ultimately Apple's pricing means all their users are first class - hence security

Yeah... Good luck running the latest version of iOS on an older iPhone. (Many are still have a 5/6 and you really don't want to update those if you value a reasonable experience and latency.)

I have a couple Android devices and I can't get them to update at all. I'm sure there's some kind of solution, but my time is really valuable to me: If all I have to do is spend £1k every four years (£20 a month) to not worry about this, it's a done deal.

You do realize you're attacking the _one_ company which supports their phone for the longest period, do you?

IOS 12 can be installed on the 5S, which is the oldest 64 bit phone. It was launched in 2013.

iOS 12 runs on everything through the 5S, and notably improved performance over iOS 10/11 on the same devices. [1] is a bunch of benchmarks from back in the beta period.

My kid has it on a 6, and it's legitimately good performance there.

Good luck getting the latest Android onto a 5 year old handset without jumping through some non-trivial hoops.

[1]: http://www.iphonehacks.com/2018/09/ios-12-performance-improv...

I'm not speaking hypothetically, but from experience. I have a 4 year old 200gbp Android phone running Pie, took 10 minutes.

I also have an iPhone 8, this is an Ok phone but is a worse experience than the 4 year old Android phone. Despite the cost being much higher, the screen is worse quality, for instance.

My partner has a 6 and it is remarkably slower than both. To the point where you sometimes just want to give up on whatever you were trying to do while waiting for a map or Spotify to load.

Maybe your experience is different to ours, but I'm only reporting what I see from using all 3.

Which cheapo Android has a better screen than an iPhone 8??

OnePlus X specifically, but pretty much any that has a decent AMOLED.

At the risk of wading into the iPhone vs Android battle...:

iPhone 8 vs Nexus 6 from 2014, back when Google marketed that series as reasonable Dev devices, not necessarily flagships.

326 ppi vs 493 ppi

750 x 1334 pixels vs 1440 x 2560 pixels

IPS LCD vs AMOLED

Somewhere there is a tongue in cheek meme comparing a sister phone, the Nexus 4, from 2012 against a 2016(?) iPhone and it's quite interesting how many features the Android phones had and were mildly credited for that when copied to iPhone were /world changers!!1/

Granted, Android phone manufacturers have wised up and besides things like the Nokia 6.1 you can't really get a good mid-range Android phone any more... it's mostly clustered around either the humble Moto E or the Note 9 price points.

I know my G1 had online contact syncing and updates while the iPhone still required a USB adapter.

> I'm not speaking hypothetically, but from experience. I have a 4 year old 200gbp Android phone running Pie, took 10 minutes.

You're lying. Installing a custom third-party Android ROM is way more than a 10 minute process, your OnePlus X is barely more than 3 years old, and there's a huge difference between a random OS image you downloaded from a forum online and manufacturer-supported OS updates for a 5 year old phone.

>Yeah... Good luck running the latest version of iOS on an older iPhone. (Many are still have a 5/6 and you really don't want to update those if you value a reasonable experience and latency.)

Spoken like someone who's never actually used a 5 or 6 running iOS 12.

Nope I speak from experience, we have a 6 with iOS 12.

Also have an 8, which admittedly is an ok phone if horrendously overpriced but work paid for it so I can't complain.

> unfortunately for most laypeople it's security and privacy that's on the chopping block.

I think this is why we need legislation: The free market obviously can't sort this out to peoples' benefit.

I have a couple Android devices I can't figure out how to update, so I'm afraid to use them for anything serious. If the author isn't responsible for writing crappy code, and I can't fix it, then where's my lemon law?

I agree, but have one nitpick - it's not that the free market can't sort this out, but that this is exactly the solution the free market is set up to organically create. Can't afford the tech? Sell your identity to marketers! That's all free market and I don't think we give the "free market" (scare quotes because we're so far from that in actuality it's painful) enough credit for creating these exact problems.

It is not a better solution to take away the freedom of people who are willing to sell their privacy. For some, it’s the only way to afford a computer.

I imagine that people who buy a Mac, want to have a Mac and it's their choice to pay. Maybe I am wrong. But people who buy a PC, have no choice but pay the Microsoft tax for the pre-installed Windows on it.

So, yes, it is reasonable to be angry when they put advertisement on the hardware that you paid on the OS that you paid together with the hardware. It is creepy, and belittling too.

Luckily IT professionals have yet the choice to install something else. Let's see how long it takes until we have no choice what software is allowed to run on devices that we buy.

Sorry for the rant.

I totally agree, Apple's markup on products must be astronomically high.

Am I the only one who doesn't see where the roughly $1000 price gap between the Honor Play and the newest(?) iPhone XS Max?. Their brand is really not worth that much to me anyhow.

"iPhone: About 1250 EUR, Honor Play: About 320 EUR" [1]

[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?&idPhone2=9230&idPhone...

For sure apple has a markup, but there is no way the Honor Play compares to the iPhone XS Max. Starting with the camera.

It also has that blank area at the bottom, whereas Apple had to basically invent some insane hardware gymnastics to not have that on theirs. The iPhone X screen bends around backwards at the base.

What do you mean by blank area?

I don't really know what to call it, although I've seen tech sites call it a "chin". The screen doesn't extend right to the bottom.

The 'chin' on newer Android phones is pretty thin anyway. And with gesture navigation becoming more common (see the newest Pie version, but plenty of OEMs offered gesture navigation before), starting the gesture from the "chin" (outside the touch area) is a nice convenience. The newer iPhones have that horizontal line at the bottom anyway, so it's not even clear what the cleanest design is.

Yeah I actually don't mind it at all. Just saying there's extra hardware (and R&D) expense in doing it Apple's way, in terms of the production cost of those two phones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com