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Comment by pkorzeniewski | Hacker News Reader

I can't wrap my head around Apple customers, most of the people I know that use mainly Apple products had a surprisingly amount of major issues with them but continued to buy Apple stuff only, it's like an addiction.. For example screen stopped working in a 3-year MacBook so what did the guy do? Bought new one because fixing was too expensive. Another one had a problem with the keyboard in MacBook which is one of the most important things in a laptop, his solution - do not part with a can of compressed air and wait to buy new one. Next example - brand new iPhone was randomly loosing WiFi connection so the guy sent it for a repair and had to wait 2 months (note that this was in eastern Europe but anyway) to get it back.

I could go on and on with such examples and I can't believe that people pay so much money and don't see a problem here. I never had any major problems with any devices I use and they all cost several times less than Apple equivalent.

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FWIW, I have owned _a lot_ of Apple products over the past decade. They have been almost universally reliable and overall pretty great to use. I _did_ have to send my 2018 MacBook Pro in for the dreaded & common keyboard repair. We also have a 2014 MacBook Pro that recently has had its battery inflate, but that was after years of service.

The keyboard thing was a real (and sucky) problem that Apple should not have let go on as long as they did. But the very small number of problems I've had through the years of using Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, AirPods, iPods, etc. gives me an overall good impression of their products.

Apple's customer satisfaction rating is industry-leading: https://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar...

I personally buy their products because they are absurdly reliable. I have 4 year old iphone 7 that works perfectly for 4 years. Ipad mini 4 - 5 years of lots of use every day. Works perfectly, battery still lasts like 6+ hours. Sometimes I wish it broke so I have an excuse to buy a new one.

iPad mini 1 - 8 years, my mom uses it for videos, facetime, reading. Still works fine.

Airpods are great.

Macbook pro 2017 - 3 years of use, works perfectly. Keyboard had its issues - had replaced it for free this year, wanted to replace a battery - they found some kind of defect there and replaced for free.

So yeah, I haven's seen anything even close to this kind of reliability and customer support. That is why when time comes I will continue to use Apple.

Before that I was a long time Android and Windows laptop user.

The problem is that everything is just awful. Pick your poison.

Apple is the most expensive but also the least... bad.

Android is fine I guess. I still prefer iPhones. They have a much nicer app experience. Android feels subpar and inconsistent.

Windows... is just awful. I deal with Windows every day on machines much faster than my macbook and it’s just slow. Opening Explorer randomly slow. Settings that are randomly forgotten. Sound and network settings spread out over 5 config screens. One laggy app can easily make the whole system feel unresponsive. Oh, and “this file cannot be opened because it is in use by another program”. Thanks. What program? I dunno.

It’s not an excuse and I’m not saying windows can work for you, but there are quite a few horrible ways to configure windows and corporate IT has figured all of them out. The state of windows in most enterprise deployments is disgusting to me.

Huge progress has been made on consolidating settings in the last couple years, unfortunately that means everyone is unhappy right now because old settings are constantly being moved to more consistent locations but you still need to know both the old and new ways.

I could offer some insights: I had my MBP's 2018 batteries recently swollen. Cost of repair is absurd ($800). I was using it as a desktop machine and I decided that was a bad idea. So I moved to Linux. Now I'm shopping for a new laptop (not for any work intensive tasks but just a portable thing) and Apple still has the best devices in the market despite all the problems I had.

This was also my first problem with Apple after 6 years of using different products. So I can tag it to bad luck. If I was having these problems with every device, I'd definitely move to something else.

You mention this as if the alternative was obvious.

AFAICT the two main alternatives are a Windows Laptop and a Linux Laptop. Each of them with their own _ton_ of problems.

Anyone in Eastern Europe should know to contact a local fixer, not attempt an official repair of which the closest location is Germany.

And at least in Germany, Berlin is full of these fixer shops that'll do a great job fixing your Mac. Usually in the neighborhoods with large arabic minorities.

For many people, the hardware is simply a container for the software. If you prefer Apple's operating system, then there's unfortunately little choice, except perhaps Hackintosh.

The answer to "why do people spend so much on Apple hardware?" used to be that they would offer fast easy and sometimes free repairs and replacements at their genius bar stores even when the product was out of warranty. I guess those days are over?

Those days aren’t entirely over (my out of warranty iMac is getting great care, my out of warranty iPhone had AppleCare and they waived the screen fee even though it expired a couple months prior - this was in 2019), but they’re at the scale that it is hard to please everybody at a profit and easy to blog about being upset.

It is baffling sometimes, but I think the inclination for people to just replace their device is why it was necessary to post this. If someone isn't rich, they should be getting more longevity out of their products, but it's easy to pressure someone into the replacement with some fuzzy numbers.

For my current mbp, (the one used in the comparison) I only have it because my late 2013 model was stolen, and needed a new machine quickly. Then I got the 2018 fn key 13" which I was forced to first replace the screen on, then the logic board, then the entire computer under warranty. They gave me the 2019 model as a replacement.

If it only were that simple... I'd gladly abandon Apple ecosystem long time ago.

For a lot of professional people it's mostly a matter of time vs cost. I am a developer, mostly working with ruby & python these days. What my options are? Mac, Windows and Linux.

Let's sum it down:

- Windows. Took them like 20 years to figure out how to make a working Terminal so no, really not a good candidate for people like me. I am glad they are catching up, but who knows when they will get stuck for 20 years on another important piece (not to mention their WSL is a prerequisite for a lot of work, and basically a VM)

- Linux. Good on paper but man, it's such a time sink. Dependency hell: you want to upgrade your httpd so you must upgrade 175+ other packages, one of which will break something. UI: clumsy but works if you have little expectations. Hardware: A mess, sleep never works, gfx performance is silly, at the end of the day mostly closed-source stuff that companies do not care about making it unreliable at best.

- Mac: Expensive? Kinda, yes, but not that much if you compare to similar hardware from other vendors (ie. Dell) assuming you do not compare apples to oranges (same cpu, same general performance, same form factor & quality). Does it break? Yes it does and it sucks. It shouldn't - not for that price, not for environmental reasons since they try to be so "green". Had my issues with Apple hardware more than once, but thank god they were not as serious as this.

Saying that linux is a good replacement for mac is like saying that k8s is good for everyone. Yes, you can deploy your blog on k8s but it will cost you a lot of time & energy. Same with linux - yes, I can work on linux, but its just sooo much faster and cheaper for me to just go and buy another MBP if my current one were to break. Some people (me) still like to play with k8s, others like to dig into linux stuff (not me).

What I am angry about with Apple is how they approach their failures rather than the failures themselves. I can understand mistakes that you cannot do anything about - famous iPhone 4 antena. They made tens of millions of devices that have an issue with antena in some edge conditions, well, shit happens, what can you do - it's not like they are going to replace all of them.

But MBP keyboards? Giving 4 years of free replacements is not the solution, a solution would be to create a replacement keyboard that would not break - and use that each time it gets replaced. Because 4 years old MBP is still a great machine that can do what's it supposed to very well, there is no reason to trash it.

If there were a law to force manufacturers to repair known defects (examples like that keyboard, screen laminate etc) for at least 10+ years, I would be first to vote for it. It's way to common for things to break after a couple years, things that could - and should - work for much more. And this is what I'd expect from companies like Apple, which would justify their green PR and prices bullshit.

>you want to upgrade your httpd

Which is something more or less impossible on the other systems you have mentioned.

Why would you say that?

On macOS, I can easily upgrade my nginx homebrew package, (same with httpd) each of them have like 2 dependencies and I don't think I ever had a conflict when doing so. Granted, not easy on windows, but see my comment about terminal ;-)

You're happy because you always want to use latest version of software and that's Homebrew works to be intended. Your latest httpd also depends on other packages but not a problem because you upgrade all packages and os.

If you want to use latest packages at all, you can use distro like Arch Linux, Gentoo, or etc.

Normal distros like Ubuntu and RHEL don't upgrade packages because of stability. If you use these distros but need latest software, you can use LinuxBrew (it seems that it's merged to Homebrew) to install latest software, or use Docker.

Anyway it's not pros for Mac but pros for Homebrew and it's also available on Linux. OTOH stable and secure macOS environment with many packages like Ubuntu, RHEL is difficult.

What are you talking about. My wife went through 2 windows laptops, and nothing by misery, until I gave her my 2013 Macbook and installed Windows on it, she's been using it for 5 years now. I ran OVER my 2015 Macbook Pro with a car last year (long story), it's bent and has rainbows on the screen but still works fine. My 5 year old iPad Air 2, which also got ran over with my Macbook, is bent but still runs fine.

I just took my almost three year old iPhone X in for an expanding battery, first real issue I've had with any of my iPhone's since I went snorkling with my iPhone 4. Since I didn't buy the extended warranty, they charged me $89CDN for the repair. Turns out they can't repair the battery, so I got a new iPhone X. Oh, that phone I snorkled with, they COMPED because I'm a good customer.

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