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Comment by deregulateMed | Hacker News Reader

>Apple requires new hardware so they can vertical integrate and save money

"This is great, Intel suxxxx"

>Microsoft requires a hardware upgrade for security

"This is bad news"

No idea what causes the human brain to rationalize corporate choices, but Apple gets apologies and praise. Microsoft/Google gets hate.

Maybe I'm a negative Nancy and negatively respond to everything, but I don't think I've ever seen people defend a Google or Microsoft choice. Brand loyalty is quite a psychology trick. I think we should praise Google and Microsoft for not hacking our brains.

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to my mind, what sucks about Microsoft's 'hardware upgrade' is that it will drive the entire PC industry to build hardware that has a proprietary Microsoft lock on it. Secure Boot is not an open standard, it is a Microsoft owned and controlled lock. I have already run into enterprise grade machines that forced secure boot, making them useless in our organization. I haven't found any info on the 11 logo certification, but for 8.1 they required it and required that it not be able to be turned off. I'm all for increased security, but I'm also for general purpose computing. If I buy a machine with a particular instruction set, I should be able to some way execute any code I want on that computer. Same goes for Apple, though to be fair, it is possible to execute any code I want on an M1 Mac, I would just have to essentially reverse engineer the hell out of everything. And yes Apple should provide at least a basic level of documentation for targeting their hardware and they do not. I am a slightly more charitable to their position because they brought brand new capability to market-- Microsoft is just corralling the vendors into tacking their propriety firmware lock onto the same technology stack. If this was a chip manufacturer initiative, say AMD wants to bring new capabilities and security by only accepting signed OS builds I would be far more receptive to that position, so long as there was a reasonable, accessible and equitable path for getting your builds signed.

Google hacks our brains all the time with the youtube algorithm. Until Win10 you could say that Microsoft, like Apple now, makes its money directly on their products, but with Win10 and all the telemetry there, plus the fact that it is a free upgrade that is no longer the case.

Plenty of choices has been defended on behalf of Microsoft (frequently because people realize that they had to make those choices based on the absolute requirement of backwards compatibility), and plenty of people have defended Googles choices.

But the only company that you mentioned who do not hack our brains today is Apple.

Apple has always been somewhat of a walled garden. Google/Microsoft have not. So when they make moves to put up walls, people get upset. Meanwhile, apple gets a pass because "well, they already have security requirements that prevent me from doing stuff".

From looking at previous discussion on this here, in no way shape or form do they get a pass. Quite right too.

"Walled garden" is marketing speak for "walled prison".

These are probably different people praising and complaining. It could be that some people use Windows because of it's track record of backwards compatibility and this is an unwelcome change. It is not necessarily brand loyalty, it could simply be brand expectations.

because Microsoft's requirement seems to come out of nowhere for a piece of thing nobody knows or gives a shit about TPM wtf is that?

apple new OS still works on very old machine, even intel one, they know how to "transition"

something microsoft seems to suck at, they are stuck with their legacy bullshit after all

> apple new OS still works on very old machine

Very old Apple machine maybe.

> TPM wtf is that?

Something of great value in the area of security. Generally a good thing to have, and so also a good idea for MS to want.

> apple .. know how to "transition"

I've just sold my M1 Air, and an updated ThinkPad is out for delivery. That's after nearly two decades of being a Mac user (alongside Windows and Linux).

And it is because of the Apple transitions (well that, plus even the latest [fixed] keyboards are only half as good as a ThinkPad).

First the then-latest OS (about a year ago; I can't remember exactly) made all my 32 bit games and applications effectively unusable, so I started collecting 64 bit ones instead. At which point we got the M1 to put x64 on life support too.

That's two rounds of lost software in a couple of years.

(Before anyone says it, I know about Rosetta 2. My M1 Air did indeed run x64 software - faster in fact that my Intel machine did. But I also know from Rosetta 1 days [PowerPC/Intel] that decent support for the deprecated architecture is probably to be measured in low single digit years.)

Well, it's all about tradeoffs. I've also used Thinkpads, and yes, you might get a better keyboard and all the freedom in the world, but you also get a much, much worse trackpad, a not half as good screen, worse durability, worse battery, a terrible webcam, etc.... windows is not any better than MacOS by any metric, and Linux, well, good luck setting up your screens, gestures, suspends might work or not depending on distrubution.

Nothing is perfect... not even thinkpads... and the tradeoffs imho are not worth it.

It is indeed about trade-offs, you're right.

I've been running Macs (alongside Windows/Linux) since the first Intel ones many years ago, and have owned the M1 Mac too. They are great machines, but the general (often automatically accepted) assumption that Macs are better hardware is a little annoying (and I do mean general; this is not aimed at your comment).

* The ThinkPad does have a worse trackpad and battery. However the battery is replaceable, which compensates quite nicely.

* It doesn't have a worse webcam at all; it's a fairly common complaint that the Mac has a very basic webcam.

* Macs are durable, more so than almost all Windows laptops. Many ThinkPads do better in that regard, though - usually the chunky ones that I go for, so I accept there is a trade-off there as to get equivalent durability I sacrifice on the form factor.

* The trackpad is indeed worse (it is good enough, but still a trade-off).

* The screen isn't worse (assuming you choose a decent ThinkPad). It is dimmer, but conversely unlike the Mac I can use my matte ThinkPad display in direct sunlight.

* Windows (for me) is far more conducive to keyboard jockeys than Mac OS, and is far more accomodating for accessibility.

All of which means that personally I saw the M1 Mac as the compromise, in that I sacrificed the better keyboard, screen, expandability, webcam, durability, backwards compatibility, and accessibility, all to get a longer battery life. Not a price worth paying.

I'm against both, it's just harder to avoid the results of Microsoft's decisions.

Well "Think Different" certainly happened :/

80% of people simply use Windows and don't complain that much. The other 10%+ are simply brainwashed by Apple marketing. If somebody believes there is another fitting explanation, I'd like to hear it.

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