Comment by rleigh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rleigh | Hacker News Reader

Hard to argue with any of his points, I've felt the same way about the state of Mac hardware and software for even longer. The software quality has been on a slow but sure slide for well over a decade at this point. The quality of Catalina is not good. Recently I've been using it more and have regular system crashes. There are serious bugs in the kernel. Big Sur looks like another step down in polish and quality. "More iOS" is simply bad strategy for a desktop operating system. I want a tool for professional work, not a locked down and dumbed down entertainment appliance.

10-15 years back, paying the premium for an Apple system got you a premium product. And back then, the premium was not excessive for the gain in hardware build quality and the software. Today, that is no longer the case. The value proposition is just not there. You're paying very inflated amounts of money for mediocre performance, nice looking but sorely limited hardware, and bad quality software.

I don't know what exactly Jobs did, but post-Jobs was when I felt the software quality start to slide.

I assume he had amazing attention to detail.

I assume that Apple's next chapter started coincidently with the leaving of Steve Jobs. Of course, I do not know if Jobs would be cool with today's Apple. But he certainly worked hard at turning it into the cash cow it is nowadays. So in other words, we are in a different cell of the BCG Matrix today.

"It's not that Steve was magical. It's that he was f*ing terrifying."

you have source on that quote? I searched and couldn't find anything.

Sorry, I don't. Vague memory says it was something someone said in a Facebook comment thread. Not very helpful, I know.

> Today, that is no longer the case.

My feeling is the opposite: There used to be an Apple hardware premium that was not (to me) justifiable at the time.

But as the software slowly declines, so does the premium - it feels to me like the M1 macs are priced with almost no premium anymore - there is nothing comparable right now (battery-life-wise, processors-speed-wise), but even with the Intel ones, a similarly specced base hardware is similarly priced (and the mac has much higher build quality than e.g. dell and hp in my experience).

The place where you still pay Apple premium is the upgrades (more memory, more disk). But overall, there's isn't much of a premium paid anymore when buying an Apple.

Counterpoint, would you buy a machine in 2020 to service as a developer laptop or desktop with 8 gb of ram and 512 gb of storage? Saying that the premiums are "just the upgrades" sort of ignores what those upgrades actually are and how much they cost.

Not really related but I got a surface pro to replace an Android tablet and even though I'm a native Linux user I find myself doing some light dev work on it. It's quite pleasant even with only 8gb of RAM. It only cost $700 though. If it was more expensive if be pretty unhappy about all the many, many deficiencies.

My partner has a new MacBook, a lot more expensive, and the performance is atrocious.

512GB for a dev laptop? Yes I would. For 16GB RAM you pay +$200, even with that added the total price is still pretty low given what you get.

Wait, the base spec has 8gb? Can you even start chrome up on there? I'd be scared of running out with chrome and a few tabs....

I've been running Chrome on my Arch desktop with 8GiB of RAM just fine for the last couple of years. Usually averaging to 20 tabs

would you buy a machine in 2020 to service as a developer laptop or desktop with 8 gb of ram and 512 gb of storage?

As my only computer, probably not. As a portable computer that I can easily carry around with me and use for ~70-80% of my work, absolutely. The M1 Macbook Air is the first Apple computer in I don't know how many years I'm seriously considering buying.

You're missing the fact that the M1 Macbooks are barely usable for anything else than browsing ( no Docker, no Adobe suite, etc.) and are the first generation. If they were too expensive even fewer people would risk buying them.

As for build quality, have you actually used and seen a recent premium Dell or HP? The difference in quality is minimal.

Adobe will make it happen and docker too. That's just a question of time. As oppose to Microsoft, Apple is taking to switch to arm seriously. Adobe currently has app running natively on the ipad. Between docker and the browser, there is a lot a work you can do, the world is not binary.

As for price, when you build a comparable system, price are similar between companies.

I think the beta version of native photoshop is already out?

I haven’t tried but reports are that rosetta2 works ok. Further, I’ve been doing a lot of software work over the last decade without using Docker - it’s useful for some thing la but far from a necessity in general.

I haven’t used a recent premium HP - I used them a lot in the past though (that’s the reason I won’t touch them....). I have used a recent premium Dell. No dice. Nothing except the premium Thinkpad is in the same league in my opinion and experience. And the comparable thinkpads are comparable in price.

You know these are the low tier macs right? They did the same with the first intels...I am really concerned with us collectively having such poor recency bias. We’re only at the beginning of the transition. These macs they replaced were already bottom feeders and their punching above their weight. Give them by this time next year and we’ll have a better argument to form.

You (and I) are clearly not the target market.

95% (guessing) of the people use their computer only for email/browsing and gaming. Apple is a premium brand for them, bought as a statement (I am cool, or something).

People pay premium for most things: clothing, watches, cars, etc. Many of these more expensive things we buy do not differ much of the competition, except for being a well known brand.

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