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Comment by elzbardico | Hacker News Reader

This is still the strongest apple advantage: design, engineering and build quality.

Recently I wanted to buy a second notebook so I could leave my MBPro at home in trips where I didn't want to work, but still had a machine that run linux and windows for some quick idea or even some light gaming.

Decided for a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro. Expensive machine, but slightly cheaper than a MacBook Air. good i7 11gen processor, excellent battery life, very light but with surprisingly good thermals, 1tb SSD, but unfortunately no option to have it with more than 16GB RAM.

Anyway, was very satisfied with it, and it was so light that I was even booting it with linux and doing some programming on it.

But, one day I just opened the lid by the sides, heard a crack, and the gorgeous OLED screen had cracked.

Of course I didnt abuse it, I just opened it, without excessive force or speed. But the screen is very fragile, the lid is paper thin, but not rigid enough, it seems, to avoid this problem.

And of course, Samsung says it was my fault, and I will have to pay the fix.

And yes, I know people have plenty of complaints about apple, but I never had encountered such an obvious problem with an Apple product. Have they not stress-tested this stuff?

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> And yes, I know people have plenty of complaints about apple, but I never had encountered such an obvious problem with an Apple product. Have they not stress-tested this stuff?

I'm not going to argue that many of Apples products aren't well built but MBPs have had their share of problems too. Such as

- The butterfly keys being extremely easy to break? (I have a few keys on mine that don't work properly any more)

- Or USB-C right side of the MBP causing the thermals to increase so much that the CPU throttles? (this also affects me)

- Or the ribbon cable that connects the screen getting worn down with repeated opening/closing that it breaks? (happened to a friend)

In fact, I've had more issues with my current MBP than I have with any of my previous laptops and thus cannot wait to decommission in January.

I do also have an iPhone and Apple Watch. My iPhones have always been flawless but my Apple Watch is around 18 months old and the speaker is already failing.

The watch and iPhone experience has been fantastic (even with the failing speaker) but I really can't see me getting another MBP. Not just because of the hardware problems I've had but also because I just don't think macOS is particularly good these days either. The OS panics far too often (MBPs really don't like to be docked and on docked regularly), it handles ageing batteries the worst (to the extent that a failing battery will brick the device where as at least with Linux you can still run the machine off the mains), it takes forever to verify applications on launch (sure I can turn that off) and it's nowhere near as performant as it once was. Frankly it's left me craving a Linux workhorse again.

I feel Apples love for IT professionals has diminished over the last decade and all the emphasis in build quality has gone towards their range of gadgets.

> I'm not going to argue that many of Apples products aren't well built but MBPs have had their share of problems too

Yep Apples stuff definitely has a lot of build problems as well. You can also watch one of Louis Rossman's rants for perpetual internal design issues that cause machines to be more fragile than they need to be.

Although the one thing speaking in favor of buying Apple despite this is that they sell so many of the same machines that when one of these major design issues pop up, it's likely to build up enough steam and bad publicity that they fix it/implement an extended warranty repair program, whereas there's never a critical mass of people buying and complaining about the "Samsung Galaxy Book Pro" for Samsung to respond.

> Although the one thing speaking in favor of buying Apple despite this is that they sell so many of the same machines that when one of these major design issues pop up, it's likely to build up enough steam and bad publicity that they fix it/implement an extended warranty repair program

Apple has never admitted fault for their shoddy MagSafe charger cable insulation, which always end up disintegrating and spewing blue stuff all over my furniture.

I've had multiple cables flake over the years, and every time I bring the the charger to a Genius bar (so far: Australia, Japan, and Singapore), they've always fallen back to "policy" and blamed it on me for not taking care of it properly.

I hate to say this but I've been an Apple user my entire life and have always had a work and a home Macbook (amongst other machines) and also manage an entire team of Macbook users and we've never had the problem you're describing even once so it seems like either you have really bad luck and have gotten these repeated failures by luck or Apple was right and you're not taking care of these properly.

I'm talking over 200 Macbooks over the course of the last 14 years and not a single one has done what you're saying Magsafe, USB-C, or otherwise.

> we've never had the problem you're describing even once so it seems like either you have really bad luck and have gotten these repeated failures by luck or Apple was right and you're not taking care of these properly.

Well, I'm not the only one around me who's faced such problems, and they aren't caused by stress because the cables disintegrate at various points, not just near the MagSafe connector.

My guess is that it's humidity at work, since Singapore, unlike Cupertino, is ridiculously humid all year round — whoever sourced the white insulation for MagSafe cables probably didn't test them in high humidity environments.

Maybe not with Samsung but I've found other manufacturers to be better. Asus, for example, were very quick to resolve a battery issue I had for a laptop that was out of warranty. They even offered me a gift for my inconvenience. Apple, on the other hand, are only willing to fix issues if you pay them a substantial amount. Often a figure that approaches the cost of a new device.

I've heard plenty of anecdotes of people getting Apple to fix their Mac hardware even outside of warranty. Mostly in the US where they seem to care more about customer support. It's all anecdotes though so I have no idea how common it is.

I'd wager they get their stuff fixed out of warranty due to a class action lawsuit, rather than good will. Apple never wanted to fix any of my broken iStuff, even if I wanted to pay for it.

They (Apple support representatives) will lie to your face, telling you that to replace a headphone jack or a charge port, one has to replace the whole motherboard, totalling the device.

They can do even worse. I tried to get my battery replaced on an iPhone 5s and sent it via UPS. They returned it with a broken power button and refused the battery change for that reason. Apple support did not help and the “geniuses” of the local Apple Store were condescendingly pushing the fault on me. That was just before leaving for 1 month of vacation overseas.

Indeed there are plenty of examples of suboptimal Apple designs.

2015 Retina MBP, the trackpad cable runs over the battery, and the heat from the battery means I have to replace the trackpad cable every 6-12 months.

Earlier Intel aluminum iMacs would literally toast the LCD if you ran Windows on them, because the fans wouldn't ramp up enough, even if you had all the Bootcamp drivers properly installed. Sometimes this would happen in MacOS also. Needed to run 3rd party fan control programs, or you'd end up seeing brown areas on the screen around where the CPU and GPU heatsinks were.

As far as enclosures go, yes Apple stuff is physically pretty sturdy.

You’ve replaced your trackpad cable 6-12 times? That’s is incredibly uncommon. I never had any problem with mine.

Try cleaning the speaker with distilled water and the speaker cleaning feature that pumps the water out of the watch.

is that this water lock thing for when you swim with it?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210931

May be brash of me, I would assume all water resistant watches have water lock, but the speaker thing sounds so apple-y.

I can't comment on the wider smart watch market but I do know my wife's Samsung smart watch has a similar feature to vibrate water out of the speaker.

Thanks, I will try that

Funnily enough the exact same thing happened to my work Macbook. Display just stopped working one day. Work sent it back to Apple to repair which took them a few weeks.

I once owned a iBook (back in the PowerPC days) that had to go back to Apple on no less than four different occasions to fix faults. All repaired under AppleCare as I fortunately had the foresight to pay for it at the time of purchase.

I've also owned other brands of laptops and I've not had any with the amount nor the severity of faults I've observed on Apple laptops.

I write this on my own ex-lease Lenovo X1 Carbon which has survived a 1m drop with a corner hitting a hard surface. Thankfully the only issue is the occasional black/darkening of an area of pixels on the lower-right corner of the LCD. I can 100% guarantee if it was a Macbook it would have been the end of it, no question whatsoever (given I've seen Macbook die from much less impact).

Actually for further anecdata I’ve dropped several of my MacBook Pros (unibody) from a meter or more, one open from a ladder bumping pretty hard to a few of the bottom steps. And I’ve never gotten more then scratches and bumps in the casing. Additionally I’ve never had Apple Care and the times I’ve had problems Apple have always repaired it free of charge under warranty, including a full battery replacement on my Retina MacBook Pro when it was 3 years old and got the battery service warning.

I’ve had the hinge of my old ThinkPad crack after about a year of normal use and been told it’s my fault. I’ve also had multiple screens go bad on my old HP Entreprise laptop/mobile workstation. Both of these laptops were more expensive then all the MacBooks I owned prior to them.

The engineering of the X1 Carbon is amazing. Durability is a design goal, it even has channels for directing liquid ingress away from the most vulnerable parts. Whilst not a guarantee against failures, it certainly doesn't hurt!

My own OG X1 Carbon (i7/8/256) still works today, and, amazingly, receives firmware updates. It is 9 years old.

Lenovo have massive presence in the corporate market. My experience of their ThinkPad range is that they are built to withstand the type of abuse that comes from being used by people who have no emotional attachment to them whatsoever.

My shop has started refurbing and recycling machines between staff, as a cost cutting measure. My last device came complete with someone else's Coca-Cola residue all over the internal case and fan vents. Clearly a Friday afternoon job at the refurb outfit. Liberally doused with IPA, dried off and reassembled by my own hands, and it’s still running fine. Good design channeled the liquid away from anything valuable.

I'd be trying to keep my IPA out of the keyboard, La Fin du Monde is sometimes pretty fizzy.

Ohhhh, you mean that IPA. Way less tasty, probably more useful in this context.

Ha! I wouldn't waste a good Jaipur or Neck Oil on a work computer.

Thanks! That's an interesting perspective, and helps explain how it's lasted as long as it has when bought with own money and cared for as a personal laptop.

Great to hear you managed to salvage yours from liquid sugar! Most laptops would struggle with just water alone.

Hah just cracked an X1 extreme gen1. And because it's "custom" (64gb ram), Lenovo is struggling to fix the screen. Guess there's an anecdote for anything :)

P.S. MacBook pro still works ;)

during a delivery once, i caught a curb, flipped upside down on a bicycle, landed laptop down, bent the frame of my 2014 macbook pro, and the screen survived undamaged. still using the same laptop today, no issue. anecdotal evidence… is anecdotal.

Hah, I did also the same thing, except I was cycling home in the rain. Just got to my house and clipped the curb. Landed on my back, and all I had in my flimsy backpack was my 2015 MBP. The base had a large dent in it - but when I opened the lid, it just prompted me for my password. Had that machine for years afterwards.

I’ve caught a tram track (Melbourne) which caused me to go sideways. Only later did I notice that the corner of my MacBook Air … probably c. 2010? … was noticeably bent. Didn’t affect anything at all.

I did the exact same thing with the same MacBook Air in Adelaide trying to catch the last train home after work.

That was about a decade ago thought.

More recently I saw this:

The law firm Bursor and Fisher filed a class action lawsuit against Apple this week over unusually common screen cracks on M1 MacBooks, reports 9to5Mac. The firm is accusing Apple of knowingly selling laptops with fragile displays that tend to crack under normal use in some cases and then refusing to repair them without charge. Bursor and Fisher is now seeking compensation for all expenses associated with repairs.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-m1-macbook-cracked-s...

I still make good use of my 15" 2012 macbook pro retina. Bummed that macos 10.15 is the end of the road for OS upgrades, bc the hardware has held up amazingly well for almost a decade. Including weeks at a time at sea, countless motorcycle trips and flights...

You should take a look into OpenCore Legacy Patcher

I have a 2012 going strong too. Battery has been charged and recharged less than my work 2016 but is in much better health. Upgraded it to 16GB RAM and put a 1TB SSD in it. It has worked flawlessly (it's the i7).

Do you know if there are any issues reported running a 2012 with OpenCore Legacy Patcher? Looks an interesting project I may make use of.

Are there any actual reasons the 2012 hardware cannot run Big Sur?

I have one of these I may want to bring back into service and have the same question.

thanks for the tip!

More anecdotes. My previous Macbook (2014 model? maybe 2016?) had a screen delamination issue; didn't get to the visible area of the screen, but I stopped using it because I got a new one from work at that point.

Current one had an issue with one speaker not working properly, that (and the whole top <_<) was replaced under extended warranty. More recently, the screen has borked, faulty ribbon connector I think, but that's another very expensive and fiddly fix, I probably won't bother since I work on an external screen all the time anyway.

Yet I know lots of people with defects in Apple products. I replaced multiple laptops. Is there real evidence of fewer defects?

No, they are the same as everything else, people constantly say they are superb on here, but looking up reliability surveys says otherwise:

https://www.geckoandfly.com/6311/the-most-reliable-laptop-su...

This link states in 2018 Apple (1st place on reliability with 665 pts) was 2-3x more reliable than Samsung (2nd place 270 pts). Then in 2019 Apple suddenly became half as reliable (now 130pts) as Samsung? Seems suspect at best.

They seem to rank based on all service calls to their third party IT firm. Apple's top service calls were printer and email help (40% between them) and hardware was 0.53%.[1]

[1] https://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/apple-mac-2021...

That reliability matches my anecdotal experience. I've had multiple failures of the 2019-2020 MacBook Pro 15" & 16" models. Gone through 4 machines, and these mostly sat on desks during the pandemic. One machine due to keyboard stickiness to the point of unusability (this of course is the most known issue). Two slow logic board failures (increasingly frequent kernel panics until the machine no longer worked); the second one I didn't wait until it fully failed. One display failure.

I just switched to the new M1 Pro 16" which I'm hopeful has resilience that matches my earlier Macs that would last 4+ years -- it seems like Apple has reverted 5 years of design choices with this model (ports, MagSafe, weight, thickness, edges, keyboard -- of course with better battery/performance/screen).

I have a Consumer Reports account and doing a quick search the only laptops with a 5/5 "Predicted Reliability" rating are from Apple, everything else is a 4/5 or less

It looks like LG would be the likely 2nd place as well, since they're the only brand besides Apple consistently getting a 5/5 on "Owner Satisfaction"

The Gram series has been phenomenal in my experience, especially considering the price.

I had a LG Gram. Awesome. So light, had latest gen CPU when Apple didnt. All the ports that Apple didn’t have. Linux worked too. The only reason i went back to Apple is the trackpad. If Linux sorts that out, back to LG Gram.

Yes, it is unavoidable. But have you tried dealing with apple support versus samsung support?

I’ve destroyed two MacBook Air screens, also because the lid isn’t particularly rigid. The MacBook Pro is definitely more durable, no issues after 12 years of owning them. I’m now much more careful with my MBA.

The virgin Macbook screen vs the chad grain of brown rice https://twitter.com/kaxamdays/status/1438403620391763971

I buy Windows laptops for the purpose of running Linux. Little things do happen like bezels coming loose, coil whine and fan noise.

I have been happy with Apple for over a decade. My MBP 2018 was an exception. The rubber seal around the screen deteriorated. The touch bar has a dead area ($750 to fix, not fixing). Bulging batteries had to get replaced. That generation of MBP was GARBAGE based on my research trying to fix mine. Waiting to see if new M-based MBP have the quality pre previous generations of MBP had.

My friend uses an M1 as a power user for about a year. Great battery life, almost never uses the fan, super fast, no battery issues, no Linux support with graphics acceleration yet and he cracked his screen and Apple care fixed it. I don’t think the butterfly keyboard is around anymore.

It’s fabulous but so is my much worst Lenovo x250 with 16GB I got, and a new 1080p screen on recently, still very happy with it.

Same here! Running an X250 with 8GB of memory and an i3 for engineering in university. Of ciurse I'm not doing any simulations or computations with it but for everything else it's an absolute dream. One of the last ThinkPads to have the hot swappable battery system and it's highly repairable. 12" screen size is perfect for an on-the-go laptop in my opinion. I'm running Fedora with i3 on it to maximize the screen real estate I can get out of it and it's lovely. Even compiling programs and similar sctivities aren't a bother to be honest. Very happy, let's hope it stays with me for a few more years!

I regret getting the 12.5in screen, it’s terrible for posture. The t460s is about the same weight with a 14in screen. I am sure it will perform fine, but the screen is really small and bad for posture I hope you’re using the dock and not using it too often as a laptop. I love it as the epitome of the best half netbook/ultrabook with excellent performance with a few tradeoffs like 1 ram slot.

I remember my Macbook screen getting damaged from the keyboard. Was a 2013 model.

Their charging block also give up after a few years. The harness of the cable have failed on most of my magsafes.

I also remember my phonecalls kept disconnecting because I held my iPhone the wrong way so it blocked the reception.

Saying Apple doesn't have design flaws is quite ignorant.

Trust me, the Flexgate was just as bad and Apple tried to cheat their customers, including me.

My MB Pro had both design flaws with its screen connection (750 € for a faulty 5 € display cable, look it up) and key switches. And don't even get me started on my iPad Pro, that thing had to be replaced two times because the area around the home button isn't stabile enough. Now on the third one I am having pretty bad screen bleeding.

On the contrary my workstation PC has not failed me once in two years. Never again I will buy an Apple product.

While my entire friends circle are apple fanboys I stayed away from it because of the cost. Once I had the resources tried MacBook air and now all the devices in my home are replaced by apple one by one. Except for Alexa, never got used to Siri.

Out of interest, what would you say is better about a Mac specifically (both the hardware and software) compared to a standard windows or linux pc/laptop, aside from build quality (my thinkpads have never let me down)? I've been tempted by a mac for a few years but never close enough to pull the trigger

For me, as a mainly Linux user :

  - build quality ;
 
  - general characteristics (screen quality, weight, size factor, build materials);
 
  - power/battery life balance (the M1s are amazing);
 
  - can be mostly handled like a Linux-ishy thing not too far away from my desktop computer thanks to Nix;

  - the gorgeous trackpad.

Frankly, it's not just one thing. It's the seamless experience. Your experience might be different but coming from bulky Lenovo laptop with windows on it to the sleek machine which you are able to just open the lid and get to work is mind blowing for me.

On Mac, I don't remember the last time I shut down my machine or close the applications. All with out sacrificing the battery time. It's just there for me when ever I want to get back to work.

If you are on the fence, give it a try.

I think the main thing keeping me on the fence is probably games. I wouldn't call myself a massive gamer or anything, but I do like to play occasionally. Obviously with macsthats both a hardware and software issue.

Other than that, last I checked everything else I use daily is compatible with the new M1 chips (though I need to double check Godot Mono) so it really is just that holding me back. Not sure if I'd go with a macbook or mac mini since it'll be in the same place 90% of the time, but I think they're probably comparable either way.

Battery life and hibernate behaviour is unmatched on a Mac. Nothing else comes close. I’ve never rebooted less.

The trackpads are absolutely the best by a long way in my experience too, every other laptop's trackpad feels like cheap crap once you've tried a MacBook's one in my opinion. I even replaced my mouse with an external trackpad, I've not used a traditional mouse in a year.

How did that worked out ergonomically ? Does it work with other devices (still need to login into a windows machine to connect to linux work machine) ?

I'm 100% on macOS now after a job change, but yeah it does work with other devices. I know someone using one on a Linux desktop without issues although it did need a little tweaking apparently, can't speak for Windows but I've heard they work too!

As for ergonomics it fits my workflow of having lots of virtual desktops and full screen apps open, panning between them with the trackpad. Especially when on a laptop the gesture-based approach feels a lot quicker than picking up a mouse. I'm becoming more and more of a terminal monkey these days so it's less relevant but I'd still recommend them to anyone.

Absolutely, you are always in the flow. With the new machines with the finger print sensors the experience is even smoother no need for typing the password as well.

> This is still the strongest apple advantage: design, engineering and build quality.

The thing is, Appple's hype wave is huge. I NEVER see this kind of blog post about Samsung or Huawei or Sony devices. Yet many of their devices are marvels of engineering, too.

Look at the tone of this article:

> The construction would make an origamist blush.

Make we can get an experienced electronics comment on this kind of congratulatory comment: are Apple devices that special? (I doubt it) Or do they just have an awesome grassroots marketing environment or are great at astroturfing?

I get the impression that part of this is also caused by Apple being American. The US is great at marketing and there is a degree of nationalism involved since there aren't that many American consumer electronics companies left. I remember going to some attractions in the US and thinking: this is hot garbage but for sure they're awesome at promoting it in movies and TV series and whatever.

No. In practice the samsung cutting edge stuff that looked like a marvel of engineering was just fluff with small irritating stuff that compounds over time. Samsung is obsessed with features, not with perfecting them.

I agree, the iPhone was a handheld Unix computer, the Samsung Galaxy looked like it could do the same things but it was just worst.

I'm strictly talking about tech and assembly here.

We have a custom website fawning over Apple internal electronics being folded a certain way.

I doubt Samsung's internal engineering is worse. Especially since they make components for everyone else. For example they have the best screens in the smartphone world.

Yes, it seems bizarre that the dismissal of various other devices as Chinese (Huawei laptops?) doesn't impact Macbooks, which are also all made in China.

The Huawei laptops look excellent Apple copies from what I can see.

I guess you didn't purchase the iPhone 6, or perhaps you had very large pockets. A phone that bends semi-/permanently when placed in pockets was a ridiculous oversight.

Apple replaced the bent iPhones on the spot for free. That said, the iPhone 6 represented peak Jony Ive. I'm glad he's gone. Apple has walked back their obsession with thinness in favor of maximizing utility, all to the benefit of the user.

No, they eventually admitted it was their fault, they didn’t admit fault when the iPad came bent recently, or the MacBook Pro had failures. But with Steve Jobs alive it wasn’t hard to get your handhelds like the iPhone or iPod replaced, now they blame you or make you wait forever.

I agree about Jony, the iPhone 5 was peak Apple design, and it comes back with no headphone jack in the 12.

The generosity of Apple's support during Steve's era was unparalleled. It created a great deal of goodwill for the company within the iPhone/Mac community. Like you said, supports now is delayed, difficult, rigid, and merciless.

Somewhere along the line, Apple forgot that its retail stores and support were products in and of themselves.

They also grew exponentially and started serving everyone, not just technophiles. Support at such a large scale is an interesting problem. The apple store in my city always has lines out the door and the store is huge. They probably have to handle everything from broken devices to general troubleshooting, and for everyone from tech empathetic individuals to ludites, old people to young, and reasonable to agressive and entitled. All face to face in their stores.

They had those before too. They could have just sent them away with a refurb like they used to, in and out quickly instead of corralling them waiting for screen repairs.

For 25+ years I'm not sure I've ever thought of the Mac market as primarily technophiles, so much as a crowd interested in the "pursuit aesthetic" and notably not interested in looking behind the technical curtain.

The user group that was technical was a relatively late demographic. But Macs were always (well, since my memories in 90's) targeted towards this odd trifecta of the media production crowd (high-dollar professionals and aspiring high-dollar creators), academics, and grandparents (people with money who just wanted things to 'work'). Still seems that way to me, I guess. The closed nature of the hardware and the traditional lack of servicing to people who wanted to "break" things even on the software front was always a bit off-putting to technophiles until relatively recently (2013-2020ish?), but I might say there was a bit of a blind eye towards the faults in light of the awesome advantages. The fading appeal is likely just a more honest assessment of the platform/ecosystem in light of improving options (linux from the factory with working drivers, WSL). I mean, thank God for Apple driving quality in hardware and software. Maybe that's what you meant by technophiles - those with a love of what technology can be in its most refined and integrated sense, rather than the nerds who love to tear shit apart and improve it.

Phones, on the other hand, are an everybody thing, but that broad appeal goes back even to the first iPhone at the turn of the century to my memory. Ever since Apple has had stores, I think the phone/ipad/accessory/gadget crowd has been an ever-present customer.

Just my opinions, worth what you paid for 'em.

We may indeed have a slightly different definition of technophile, to me it's early adopters and "gadget" people. One of the first recipiets of a Mac was Stephen Fry for example, but I imagine he has less interest in code or hardware, just enthusiastic about what the device can do for the user.

The early adopters of smartphones were people excited by what it could offer, I remember being distinctly dissapointed at what seemed like a closing ecosystem, opaque hardware and an end of an era in general computing. Things have progressed since then and so has my outlook mind you.

Even as a software developer I would not consider myself a technophile and certainly not an early adopter. More a begrudingly up to date luddite.

> Just my opinions, worth what you paid for 'em.

Considering the cost of my internet in Australia that may actually be non-zero! But they were worthwile opinions, so I'll accept that cost.

> One of the first recipiets of a Mac was Stephen Fry for example, but I imagine he has less interest in code or hardware, just enthusiastic about what the device can do for the user.

Douglas Adams was a fan as well [1]. He wrote sometimes in a Mac magazine whose name escapes me at the moment. He was an über-technophile.

https://lowendmac.com/2016/douglas-adams-author-and-mac-user...

They got into shrinking hardware and made great consumer gadgets that were not expandable with hardware but much better. The first iPhone had a headphone jack, it didn’t need a weird one like the Sony Erickson, I don’t think the palm had one. I had used a Mac in grade school with a mean teacher that died of cancer (they said thats why she was so mean, I don’t buy it), it played crappy math games, and Oregon trail, it looked weird since I was used to windows and my friend got a Mac laptop for school that was nice I think it was a G3 or something. No more locked down than any laptop of that era.

The iPod didn’t have expandable storage, but nobody did and AA or AAA batteries sucked. The iPhone didn’t have battery or storage upgrades but it was a full Unix computer in your pocket.

Remember the ipod not only didn't have expandable storage, they were still using a mechanical disk until at least second gen, I think.

Just a shout out to the Frontier Labs NexIIe. Awesome little MP3 player that took compact flash storage and ran on a AA batteries back in the day.

It was like 2001 or something. I had iPods as well, but loved that NexIIe.

- used the same media I had in some of my earliest digital cameras.

- could double as an external hard drive.

- ran on batteries you could buy anywhere, including lithiums.

- had an equalizer.

- displayed ID3 tags.

- had a blue on black backlit character LCD that wouldn't kill your night vision.

- Smaller form factor than the ipod and lighter (it was mostly air and cheap plastics).

It stood up to cold temps and wipeouts when out snowboarding. No special connectors - 3.5mm audio jack and usb.

Here's a period review. The fact that it's described as being smaller than a "pack of smokes" really dates it I guess. <:D https://bjorn3d.com/2002/10/frontier-labs-nex-iie-mp3-player...

Steve Jones mentioned why he chose mechanical, it stored more songs, in 2002 you didn’t have many gigabytes. The iPod was the size of a deck of cards, it wasn’t much larger. You listed an MP3 player you needed to add storage to, when SD cards were 8mb or 16mb for the period.

You could get 2GB flash on the iPod nano. I wouldn’t have liked the nex one, the battery life was probably worst, the iPods had good monochrome at the beginning, and the good ones they were fighting were the rio karma which also used HDD, battery, and the Archos were good too, and no different aside from the iPod needing iTunes.

Hey, don't forget about these bundles of engineering awesomeness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive

Apple brought it on themselves with their anti-repair stance. Third party repair companies are literally begging them for parts so they can service Apple products. In other industries, there are a large number of quality technicians who can service consumer products without a problem.

Yeah it was so easy to walk in with a problem knowing Apple was gonna take care of it (except the MacBook problem but I didn’t use a MacBook). You knew you didn’t need an appointment, 20 mins in to get a nice person who looked at it, saw your problem and said ok well take care of it, here’s another one.

Incredible service at that time, something that Samsung and others didn’t have. Now I get some asshole that says it’s not an issue or it’ll take 2hr to fix the screen, then they break it anyway and give me another phone that isn’t unlocked and I have to go again or call the carrier because Apple fucked up.

I had very very negative experience with Apple hardware issues and I agree so much about how bad is the service now.

First time on a very brand new MacBook Pro (1 day old). The laptop screen was glitching for no reason. The service center took it for repair, and when they gave it back, they visibly damaged the computer in the process (with a screwdriver they damaged part of the case), and then denied causing the damages.

At the end, they didn't even fix the issue (they changed motherboard, when it was obviously a screen or screen cable issue, not a motherboard one because the issue didn't appear on screenshots nor on external monitors).

I had to take the losses, I hate this company so much for this, by principle.

Second time, the MagSafe-style charger of my other MacBook computer took fire, Apple never acknowledged the issue, and neither offered replacement and pointed only to legal and stopped responding.

This company really has shitty processes handling defects in their own products.

I keep buying because the alternatives are very weak in comparison and outdated, but really, if you get a bad product from Apple you are fucked.

You should have complained more, I never would get that service, and my friend has had his screen replaced and never had problems as long as he had applecare or was under warranty.

>I keep buying because the alternatives are very weak in comparison and outdated, but really, if you get a bad product from Apple you are fucked.

I think the M1 is great but I wouldn't use a normal x86 from them.

Telling someone in effect "they're holding it wrong" after being severely scalded by a company and then recommending their products probably isn't going to get them to switch back.

> I keep buying because the alternatives are very weak in comparison and outdated, but really, if you get a bad product from Apple you are fucked.

I didn’t try/need convince them to continue buying Apple, I wouldn’t buy an x86 from them.

I had a 2008 iMac HDD fail when it was barely out of warranty in either late 2009 or very early 2010 and was charged full price for the repair, then a "we'll recycle it for free" when my barely 1 year old iPod Touch decided to stop connecting via USB after updating it to iOS4.

In 2013 the same Apple store replaced a 3rd party stick of RAM in my iMac for an Apple one for free when I sent it to fix the bad hinge on that year's model.

That sucks, I had never gone in after warranty though, maybe once it was under a month and they gave me another one. Usually if you get a nice genius they’ll help you out, I didn’t try after the warranty and just repaired it myself. Knowing how bad they are now, I will never set foot in one again and I’d rather repair it myself after a year.

Yes, that's why I say that I understand that people have their complaints.

I had an iphone 6, never had a problem with it, but, I never seated with it with my back pockets, as this would be exceedingly uncomfortable for me; also never knew anyone with a bend iphone 6 too, but I understand that this was not the experience for a lot of people.

But as I told, I am talking about my experience with apple products. Maybe I am lucky with apple stuff.

I chose the iPhone because of the “just works” nature but now they’ve made it impossible to get photos off using Windows (disconnects in copy, iTunes or DCIM, tried workarounds, due to heavily walled garden no other app can be used to get 500 photos off). Lots of people online with same issue.

If I can take photos and copy them off I might as well go back to androids.

I feel your pain. Two different possible solutions:

1. Turn off automatic image conversion, and then retry copying over USB: it takes a while to convert HEIC to JPEG, and an eternity to convert HEIC to MP4. It's something like Settings > Photos > Transfer to Mac or PC > keep original format

2. Install a file transfer app on your phone and computer, like Resilio Sync or Photo Sync.

My family's phones use Resilio Sync that sync with a NAS on the bookshelf and PhotoStructure (I'm the author).

That sounds annoying, but honestly pretty much any cloud backup service will sort this for you iCloud's not great, but Google One, Dropbox etc all work fine on iPhone.

I’m using MS and while it has copied a lot I’m not convinced it copied everything. Renaming and reformatting means I’ll spend some time making sure

>If I can take photos and copy them off I might as well go back to androids.

You're not supposed to connect your iPhone to a PC via cable like a caveman. You're supposed to buy a Mac and pay for an an iCloud subscription and then everything just works automagically via the cloud. /s

Samsung has never had great build quality in my experience - they seem to focus on looks above all else, with throwaway hardware that never gets software updates. I wonder why you went for a galaxy book pro? Why not buy a Thinkpad or Dell? They can have their own issues but the build quality should be much better.

I wanted a second machine, and the main criterias where 1) Run linux fine. 2) Intel Evo 3) As light and thin as possible.

Yeah, I was stupid :-(

A lot of the M1 macbooks had similar issues where displays would crack seemingly without any abuse. All in the name of thinness. I wouldn't suppose that it's the users or horrible design at fault, but rather an issue where some tolerances were not met, so some of the parts in production are less durable than what is needed to execute the design.

The last time I cracked an Apple display doing something like that was fifteen-ish years ago, when the plastic hinges were seizing and crimping the lower display panel. It’s not the sort of thing that they have problems with anymore.

They do, of course, have new problems, but it supports your point that they have been here and done that over a decade ago.

I mean, there were some mishaps in apple line too. First macbook airs had faulty hinges. Mine broke, and I was using my mbair as a "mobile desktop", rarely opening it between home and office, because I was afraid it will broke off completely. I had to wait for replacement lid (which was free) for half a year.

I don't remember which iPhone it was, but didn't one launch with the problem that the entire phone could be "bent" by having it in the back pocket and sitting down? (or similarly putting some force)

And their reactions to it was "its your own damn fault"?

iPhone 6 (Plus).

I recently pulled out my 2018 13" Macbook pro after quitting my job and not having touched this laptop in a while. The keyboard had a couple of issues with repeating keys...and I was out of the warranty period.

Thankfully, Apple has a keyboard service program, and they fixed it for free — in late 2021. No questions asked. With a one year warranty on their fix.

This was just before thanksgiving and it took them just about 3 days to fix from when I dropped it off to when I picked it up, even though it was shipped to a repair center.

That being said, I might not buy a new one for a while because I like having bootcamp to play games and the M1 makes that impossible.

I agree with what you have said, I have my fair share of Apple products, and they didn't disappoint me.

Those are 3 advantages

Aren't their recent laptops an overheating mess, not to mention needing dongles to plug anything in?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29197975

Their recent laptops use Apple silicon and are anything but an overheating mess. There are plenty of things to complain about but heat has been solved.

Jony Ive’s reign of terror is over. Butterfly keyboard is gone too.

Charging DisplayPort Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40Gb/s) USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s) USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s) Headphone

The keyboard replacement was the biggest improvement to me in the latest MacBooks.

I'm not an Apple person but I do like to keep tabs. Tried the butterfly keyboard and hated it so, so much - and that's not even touching on the function key row.

(As a Streamdeck user it would have been awesome if they had kept the touch screen strip _and_ restored the missing row of keys. Missed opportunity there.)

The touch strip turns off if you don't use the keys for a few seconds. So if you are programming and thinking during debugging, you might want to press a function key to step into/over/continue. But the touchbar has turned off, so you need to press another key on the keyboard to wake it up (fn perhaps) and then look down at the touchbar to find the F key because it is impossible to locate as there's no tactile sensation of which key you're pressing.

And then repeat the process a thousand times per day. It's very wearying. And the keyboard is deafeningly loud. A typewriter would probably be quieter.

I say this using a 2016 Macbook for work. Apple replaced the touchbar a few weeks outside the return window that was the result of the class-action lawsuit on the keyboard, which I am very grateful for. The keyboard had numerous keys not working properly (left shift most noticeably) and the touchbar had developed a fault where it would flash a white block next to the power button, constantly.

Apple had to replace the keyboard, the battery, the touchbar and entire top level of the Macbook as part of the repair on the keyboard.

I have a 2012 Macbook as my main machine and that is infinitely better - battery was less dead even though it had more recharges than the 2016; it has ports I can actually use; it has a SD card slot so I can get photos off my camera; the keyboard backlight is actually visible; the keyboard is actually nice to use etc. etc. The only drawback is the speakers on the 2012 aren't great compared to the bass-heavy 2016.

But anyway all is solved on the new Macbooks but I need to sell a kidney to afford one...

Thanks for those insights! Having the display time out just adds insult to injury. I saw someone made a script to send commands to it every 60 seconds, essentially keeping it on, but that also would then disable normal power saving functions.

I've got my Streamdeck hard mounted in an enclosure on my rig underneath my monitors, and the commands are always accessible. Absolutely love it; I'm guessing the touch bar wouldn't come close in functionality for my purposes. They are also physical buttons.

A few grand is nothing to scoff at, but if you use it for half as long as your older one then a reasonably kitted-out 14" would work out to ~$80/month.

I didn't know that about the touchbar, that's pretty awful. It's also a shame they couldn't manage to integrate their fancy taptic engine stuff.

Ports are back on the new machines tho--removing them seemed so braindead, but then again I'm not an industrial design machina so what do I know.

Yes the lifetime out of my old one has been great, so I am pretty confident I'll get the same lifespan out of my other 2016 one no problem.

I'll ponder what device to get next since I might just get a Mac Mini at home. I already have a gaming/development PC and a Linux Pi so I can keep up to date on each OS/system and just use a very cheap "stealable" laptop for out-and-about but can connect home.

Just use an external keyboard

>Jony Ive’s reign of terror is over.

You do know he is consulting for Apple.

Yeah and you notice the iPhone 12 and return of more ports?

Their latest laptops barely if ever turn on their fans. Your link references the prior Intel generation.

I’ve run my M1 Max all night blasting every core doing heavily vectorized math computations and when I come back in the morning the small room it was in isn’t even noticeably warmer than ambient temperature and the fans aren’t even on.

Isn't the M1 Max pulling like 30-40W tops? I don't understand why that would ever be expected to create a noticeable temperature change. I doubt any laptop CPU would create a noticeable difference.

Yeah, low power draw is kind of the M1 Max’s thing. My desktop PC crushes the M1 Max when doing workstation type tasks. But for content consumption and even light workloads it’s very efficient.

That's kind of my point.

Meanwhile I can use my desktop as a personal heater if I max it out (Threadripper Pro 64 cores).

That seems to be a reference to the previous iteration right?

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