Apple still makes great products. Nothing can beat a MacBook (especially the new ones), AirPods work pretty well. Many (most?) people that use iPhones or Apple Watches love them.
For example on you phone you will get a red alert in settings … when you click it … says Try apple music for 3 months .. or will say setup apple pay … or sometimes say sign in with icloud. (even after declining multiple times)
These are just ads disguised as systems alerts … hurts the experience and comes off as cheap.
Also on Apple Computers and Phones alike it keeps asking to sign in and use icloud. But then gives you only 5gigs of space … not enough to even backup your phone and then tries to upsell a monthly fee for expanded storage.
The software is designed to confuse users into purchasing when simply taking photos. New iphone with 64 gigs of storage 40 gigs free …. user gets message they are out of space in icloud and can purchase more space. They are quite aware that many users are not savy enough to know they don’t need to use icloud at all with photos or anything. Every time you update the phone it prompts you to “sign in” or “create and account”. Again comes off as cheap and pushy.
I can go on and on but money crunchers are definitely at the table with software these days.
This is a premium phone at a premium price paired up with a range of premium-priced accessories. I know I get more than the value out of these devices than I’m putting in but damn does it feel like Apple isn’t just double-dipping, they’re like quadruple-dipping at least.
There’s the money I paid, there’s the money I pay to Apple for services that I do actually want, which, fair, some things have an upkeep cost, there’s the money I pay to 3rd party developers which Apple takes a cut of, and then there’s the money they’re charging developers to put ads in my face when I do open the App Store. There is such a thing as a value-add, and your example of the 5GB iCloud storage? The fact that this is the base level no matter what model phone you purchase just feels downright cheap, and that’s theoretically shared with a Mac or an iPad or both. Actually gutter-dwelling penny-pinching coupon-clipping lentil-dieting cheap.
iAd came before that - but it had a goal of benefiting everyone - users, developers and advertisers. "High quality" ads, privacy focused targeting, developers get a cut and as a result they remove other more invasive ad networks. Unfortunately it didn't work out, and with Tim Cook now at the helm the numbers for search ads spoke a little more loudly than before.
For PiP videos I have to play, lock the phone then press on play and then it might either continue the background video or play music from my library which I never really use.
The other day my iPhone would just reload and I still have no idea why? Did it run out of memory? Screen would freeze and it would stop on a black screen and then reload.
I don't remember these bugs from when I used to use an iPhone, but maybe I just didn't pay attention to them. When I travel and use a travel SIM it keeps asking me to switch everything to the new SIM. Default calls, iCloud, default messages. I say no to all of them but it still switches some of them.
Using apps from two different countries is a nightmare as well.
I do appreciate the speed of this device but ALL of these things are non-issues on Android. Something is off IMHO
Not sure what's going on with the music. I sometimes have it play random Apple Music when first connecting to CarPlay. Outside of that itt fairly reliably removes music when paused from the lock screen after a few minutes which honestly can be annoying, but keeping it on there forever isn't great either.
And the problem is that Apple was considerably undersizing the battery compared to rivals and then compensating by throttling the CPU once it aged.
That said, I've had two trusted Apple Premium Partners that I would go to when I was still an Apple user and they were an absolute delight. Unfortunately back then I was living in a major city in Germany with tons of Premium partners, so nowadays that I don't really have a homebase and only have an iPhone I don't really know where to go for competent support.
Their point about restarts does feel like a defect though.
My new problem is with Apple TV and the Dynamic Island. Now by default when I walk into a room where my wife is watching TV, the phone will pick up the proximity and show me the remote as a live activity (Which is great, usually.) Then I use my phone for something and have no sound as my volume is down and the buttons aren't responding at all (seemingly.) It turns out if ATV is in the dynamic island, your hardware volume buttons now exclusively control the TV volume, and the only way to change the phone volume is to go into control center and swipe around.
They have other product lines with more than enough room to grow in the market, but they have to hunger for it, like they did from 1998 to 2008 with the Mac, and 2007 through the current day with the iPhone. Almost anything Apple puts out will sell in quantity as long as it doesn’t have exactly a voice-controlled UI, and while Microsoft and Intel are busy shitting the Wintel bed Apple is putting out top-tier high margin computer hardware with obvious gaps on the low-end, the middle and the ultra high-end and the thing keeping Apple from fully capitalizing on that is they’re shitting the bed with their own OS and tunneled in on nickel-and-diming their existing install base.
The global music industry was $26B in 2021: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60837880
The global movie industry in 2021 was $90.2B: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/movies-e...
The global TV industry in 2021 was $259.16B: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/televisi...
Grand total: $375.36B
Apple’s revenue in 2021 was $394.3B, and some portion of that is already accounted for in the Music, Movies and Television revenue for 2021 but if they really want to grow, then they need to go back to their roots: hardware running software of quality. Services will only be a segment and most of their “services” revenue depends substantially on the size of their hardware’s install base. They can still offer those, but if you build good products, the profit will follow. Apple was the one that built their business on that philosophy.
Either that or become a bank.
This is the real question: How is Apple going to fill the gaps you see in the low end PC market, where there are very small profits to be found, without cannibalising it's own high end profit margins?
For the wintel PC makers market share is all that matters because they are all trapped in the commodity sector, so volume is the only way to grow profits. Apple isn't, it's a premium brand, so the economics it lives by are completely different. Analysts have been getting this wrong about Apple for decades, in fact pretty much my entire adult life, and I'm in my 50s.
Commodity companies can afford to stagnate their products, Cocacola makes the same sugar water they did before I was born. Premium product companies cannot afford to do that, they have to constantly invest in renewing and updating their products. Apple has been doing that for almost their entire existence (modulo a period of stagnation in the 90s when the execs didn't understand their own business).
On the software side I don't really agree, yes they have quality issues, but so does all software and they have incredibly complex stacks these days. They're constantly pushing forward with new software features, that's part of the problem, new features means new bugs.
Only if you don't invest in testing - and Apple sadly has fallen to the trap of "bananaware" (ripens at the customer) as well as everyone else. "We ship it once it is good quality" has been replaced by "we ship it as soon as it can survive the presentation at WWDC and fix the bugs later on". For commodity manufacturers this can be excused by low profit margins (even though I don't like it), but Apple could literally double their developer headcount and they wouldn't feel it in their bottom line.
Appleonia and Facebookistan. Even though the latter may turn out to be just a parking lot with a MCDondalds
I think News looks at what you choose and offers more of the same.
I don't have specific examples, I'm just going off the several times in the past year where I've seen a news story covered in five different ways, then I see an incredibly slanted headline notification from apple news that is woefully inaccurate.
Also, Fox is just the other side of the same coin- left or right wing, when it matters, Fox is no different from CNN. It's all fake garbage. Just wait until you're belief systems or personal experiences don't exist within the mainstream collection of proffered views, and you'll see how fake all of it is.
1) advertising does not belong in Settings
2) notifications - especially system notifications - should not be abused for pushing ads
With regard to iCloud - 5 gigs is stingy compared to Google drive etc., but it's more than enough for the most essential parts: iCloud keychain, continuity, and storage for non-media apps like contacts/calendar/reminders (if you use them). The part I object to is using the OS for advertising.
I pay the $0.99/mo for extra storage but every time I do it, I wince a little and it costs them literally pennies to avoid giving me a bad taste in my mouth. I wish there was a way to self-host iCloud backups.
iCloud backups of device backups requires a Mac, then setting to sync via Wi-Fi.
No more macs and iphones for me, that and the app "numbers" have been the very last straws.
The ads are super irritating, I can't believe a phone by the company that supposedly cares about user experience is pushing a fucking credit card offer. But that really shouldn't be surprising, considering...
After the casino ads took over the App Store, it became apparent that they're just bullshitting about safety and trustworthy computing. Because why not, if you care about those things, where are you going to go, Android?
Today's Apple is a mercenary bucket of quarterly-reporting driven MBAs. Any brand loyalty or trust I used to feel is gone. I stay logged out of Icloud, because if I don't, things keep uploading... stuff... to them, which absolutely should not happen, but does.
So, Apple is qualitatively no better than MSFT at this point, worse in some ways. At least Redmond does't affect a smirky superior shithead attitude in their software.
Hopefully they’re at least vetting the casino apps. The only thing worse than shady casino ads are ads for shady casinos.
- They removed iPhone sync from Music (nee iTunes), which makes sense, but the replacement in Finder doesn't support directories in file transfer. It shows them, you cannot expand them, placing files in a directory is possible and results in the files becoming inaccessible. Doubly stupid that the working file sync was in the Music app and not in the file management app.
- AirDrop on macOS just hangs all the time. I am completely unable to send files from my laptop and the interface is just a beach ball.
It really gives me hope that Apple is letting Linux play catch-up; I'd love to see a Linux experience that targeted the low-level usability of macOS 10! I'm talking OS-wide support for bundles, proxy icons, unified notifications interface... The target isn't moving any more, so it's reachable.
I agree but Apple had lot of software issues when Jobs was CEO. Software can get incredibly complex and subjective to the user using it.
The ReactJS type is doing fancy thin gs on screens and does it for the money and for all sorts of places. The APFS builders are more likely to be passionate and look for specific work. But 30 years ago the ReactJS types would be working for corporations using VB but the system programmers would be doing similar to now.
System programmers have always been rare and I suspectr less motivated by money more by having interesting work that affects many people.
I'm of the opinion that nobody makes a really nice user experience. My #1 complaint on every platform, website, device, OS, and software can be summed up as "Stop doing what you're doing, and do what I want." Computers and software should be tools that serve the user. They need to know their place!
>These are just ads disguised as systems alerts … hurts the experience and comes off as cheap.
Devil's advocate: I think a lot of users are idiots. Anyone who's been in software for a while will discover this: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*zffZ0ysfR4BokVvSxo...
I think you're not wrong that they're disguising these ads as alerts. But if it helps the user who doesn't care, or more importantly - doesn't understand - backup their photos for when they drop their phone in the lake will be better off, and overall happier with the whole experience. Save someone's irreplaceable photos one single time and you'll likely have a customer for life. Apple is very good at this kind of thing. People make fun of apple fans as idiots, but... it's hard to argue apple doesn't know their customers.
In OSes.. Windows, Android, Linux GUI are all jankier. Apple Music’s closest competitors are all electron-based resource hogs? Safari is still the best mobile browser
I think it only appears that way on an iPhone. I've long believed that there are extremely subtle problems with Chrome and Firefox on iPhone devices that somehow magically don't appear on their Safari browser. Slow scrolling, strange micro lag... somehow on Safari it's better. Yet on my Android phones Chrome and Firefox work smoothly with no issues whatsoever. Also Safari objectively lacks browser features.
Ha. https://caniuse.com/?compare=ios_saf+16.1&compareCats=all#re...
Fortunately nowadays I don't need to support this browser anymore on my new company.
And I'd say Firefox for Android has Safari for iOS beat by mile. I can use add-ons like Ublock Origin and no script, plus stuff like background video fixer to play YouTube videos in the background. And I can't think of a single thing it lacks over Safari.
That being said FF has made some stupid decisions - like the lack of homepage on Android. Like... WAT?!?!
In some cases software quality suffers not because of the inherent complexity but because it's changed for the sake of change.
One example is the Books app that was updated in iOS 16. The update brought some new features but also changed the UI/UX for no reason, making it unpleasant to use. There's no dearth of similar examples with Google's apps too.
I don't really mind having switched to an iPhone when I got one provided because for all the discussion, ios and Android are nearly identical but I miss both Chrome and especially Firefox. Android Firefox has actual uBlock. The experience is miles better than Safari.
Also, apple tries to lock with hardware so might, I find it too much frustrating. For example copy paste feature from iphone and mac os won't work if we don't login. And, 2fa is compulsory
Apple hardware is top notch but software is ewwww...
Crypto carbon footprint is mind-boggling, estimates are 200 million tonnes of CO2 since the launch, not including the CO2 emitted to manufacture the hardware.
Coinbase, that popularised all that mining to the general public should be considered as evil as other large CO2 emitters. And worse, all of these carbon emissions are for nothing, crypto seem only to be contributing to more exchanges crashes, fraud, money laundering and crime. With nothing to show on the positive side.
https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption
Nor do I agree with your assessment of banning Bitcoin because its power usage doesn’t match what we would like. I assume we all somewhat believe in the free market and the free market is solving this problem. Bitcoin price appreciation has been anemic at best and is only about 2% over the SP500 (+54%) in the past five years. Ethereum is quite a different story. +177%. Innovation is working.
How much power and materials are wasted when Apple releases incremental changes with a new number each year to resell the same thing to materialistic buyers annually? Should they ban themselves for the greater good of the planet? I’d say so.
https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/apples-colossal-e-w...
>Assuming the ecosystem was made up entirely of iPhones, an iPhone, on average, weighs 150g and are 130mm long. This means that you're looking at a pile of iPhones weighing 250,000 metric tons (the Empire State Building weighs in at roughly 330,000 metric tons), and if laid end-to-end would circle the Earth more than five times.
And that’s just the e-waste. How much energy went into making them, how many dollars were wasted paying salaries and gas etc.?
You can read Apple’s environmental report. And read the recent publications that analyse the environmental impact of crypto. And one of the biggest moves that Apple and Google can do as companies, to lessen the environmental impact is actually banning bitcoins and crypto.
As someone who cares about the environment, I advocate for it. I don’t have any investments to Apple or Google or Bitcoins. Please, disclose any crypto investments, should you advocate for these.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting#Environment...
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/04/apple-expands-the-use...
What are the positives of crypto? I haven’t noticed any for 10 years it had been around. Only exchange crashes and hacks like MtGox, Fed investigators having to fight Silk Road and the crazy near-fraud exuberance of FTX and alike.
data centers providing Netflix streaming services would consume around 370 TWh per year (Kamiya 2020) [1]
While BTC uses 87 TWh. [2]
1. https://blogs.salleurl.edu/en/energy-consumption-data-center....
"Apple makes some good products but is evil" is valid criticism of Apple, which shepherdjerred hasn't disagreed with. "Apple is making bad products these days because they are lead by marketing and sales people" isn't valid criticism of Apple (in shepherdjerred's, and my, opinion).
Apple is at a scale where pithy Steve Jobs quotes don't aptly describe their relationship with the economy or world governments. We cannot trust them to do the right thing, so our best hope for turning them around is holding them accountable for the things we want.
Can you be more specific of the proofs you are talking about? I've been using Mac for 20 years and haven't noticed issues that indicate a declining trend.
As the GP mentioned there have been great products that Apple introduced in the last few years. So your evidence is wrong, or at most inconclusive, to show that marketing and sales people have taken over at Apple, resulting in worsening products and services.
> but much like Nestle they refuse to heed our warning until it's too late.
The fact is Apple has continued to grow phenomenally in the last decade. They may indeed head to a decline, but I can't see evidence of that. Can you? Are you confident that you can see the future where others can't?
Also, pretty sure effectively all chocolate benefits from child labor because of where cocoa trees are located.
Is there any list of ethically sourced chocolate brands? The world is becoming stupid place to live with all these monopolies :(
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263855/cocoa-bean-produc...
Same with mining for materials for electronics, as well as refining and manufacturing of them effectively happening in one country.
There was a documentary that showed the price of a chicken sold in a store and how much the chicken farmer makes vs the retail price and I can’t say the situation is wildly out of tune with retail or the big SAP/ERP consulting
It's more like Apple demanding a cut of your call charges.
That said, Apple's monopolistic practices create a ripe oppty for Android to own web3's watershed moment
But it's ok because you have the option of building your own store on your own island and convincing enough people to relocate to your island to buy chicken direct.
(F-Droid is right there. It's relatively trivial to install on an Android device. As is, last I checked, replacing the whole Android OS).
Libertarianism is like the tide on hackernews, it's quite confusing
I think we are both pushing the metaphor beyond usefulness
The hardware it's running on?
I don't see an issue. If users have a concern, they can use another platform.
ETA: it does seem to be the kind of thing that the market will sort out... If apple is going to build a reputation for being hostile to use as a crypto transaction platform, then Android is just a quick trip to the nearest Best Buy away.
> If users have a concern, they can use another platform.
They can't. Apple locks the bootloader even after purchasing/unlocking the device. It would be nice if we could though!
> it does seem to be the kind of thing that the market will sort out...
No, I think the arbitrary limitation of what you can execute on hardware you purchased will be a bit more of a sticking point than that. At least when we're addressing the single largest corporation in modern American history, Europe seems to agree with me.
They do it because it allows them to capture the revenue for use of their computing appliances and it saves them every headache of having to provide customer support for hardware they sell that isn't running an operating system they wrote.
Serving your use case isn't what they make computers for. Google does though. I recommend switching platforms.
I can run Doom on a refrigerator but it's still a refrigerator. Apple makes computing appliances.
Me personally? I might just let it happen (especially if it goes hand-in-glove with some other benefit, like lower cost). Or if it's too annoying I'll switch refrigerators.
> Having multiple choices benefits everyone and forces the OEM to not make bone-headed moves
That's the business model of the alternatives to Apple. Apple's business model is value delivered through vertical integration. For their end-users, they're building a better product because they own and control the hardware, OS, and software ecosystem.
It's Nintendo-Seal-of-Approval thinking, and it's not inherently wrong so long as there are alternatives (and there are many, just none that have a supported path to using Apple's hardware).
> You're arguing that Apple shouldn't do good things because... Apple doesn't care?
I don't think Apple sees opening the bootloader as a good thing. It increases the ways the machine can be in a broken state with the only benefit to people tech-savvy enough to just use other hardware. And, of course, from a pure-business standpoint, it might kick a leg out from under the money-made-through-vertical-integration stool, which is of concern to them.
You think that having to switch a working major appliance for another because of a post-purchase update by the manufacturer is an acceptable cost for consumers to have to take on? I assume this is because you think the free market forces always end up optimal in the end somehow, and that regulation will cause more harm than good?
People buy into Apple for a certain security that the company does its best to vet the store contents. Stepping on their ability to do that diminishes the product value for the intended consumer.
Well, there are other options.
Other options, such as how the EU is going to force Apple under threat of government force to make changes.
Anti trust laws have existed for a century now. We can make new ones, or use those existing uncontroversial laws to apply to the newer tech monopolies.
If Apple doesn't like it's then they can stop selling their product in every country where this is the law. (So that includes the entire EU, and hopefully the USA soon, as there are laws in Congress being considered right now).
So I can see how the EU might see a way towards saying "Your ownership of the vertical stack makes you a market-maker and market-caller on a very lucrative app market; you bear some responsibility to making that market fair and competitive." This is the same kind of thinking that caused France to crack down on Amazon offering discounts on books that undercut local booksellers because they could collapse the booksellers' guild (even though Amazon's shipping integration means they actually can afford to charge so little).
But in the US, the first hurdle such a case has to cross[1] is "Why doesn't the user and app maker just go to Android if Apple's so bad?" Which, indeed, is the question I'm asking myself here; Coinbase could just jump ship and offer their app only on Android, and then, hey, the Android ecosystem is slightly better than their competition.
[1] ... unless the law changes, of course, as you've observed. I can imagine something coming out of the John Deere tractor "right to repair" angle, though I haven't been following this space.
There are other hardware manufacturers than Apple?
With the same argument you can say - open access to every device which will diminish a lot of the security by increasing the attack vector.
Why isn't my TV open or my Xbox or my PS? Why can't I edit the code of Windows is not such a stretch based on your arguments?
Also why should companies be forced to open stuff? They market it as a closed system - maybe respect the consumers who like closed systems. There are options for you - it's other vendors. So you have a choice. But even if you didn't there is no reason or expectation you should have a choice if the market doesn't want to cater.
One possible solution is for apple and other manufacturers to be forced to sell developer devices where the restrictions are minimal or non-existent. That I think will solve your quarrel.
I have made a choice to use apple because I know all purchases for digital products go through iAP so my card details are never passed to the developer in any way. It makes me sleep better at night. I don't want other options.
I don't want to be offered the choice with 28-27% discount because it will make me share my creds (we know most ppl will choose the cheeper option and I admit I will do so as well from time to time).
I don't need the additional cognitive overhead because some developers are unhappy they have signed up to terms they don't like.
Honestly everyone that complains about the 30% so far hasn't given me a good reason other than greed. It's not a better UX, it's not a more secure option, it's not in my best interest (except the argument it will be cheaper but we all know that if possible most if not all companies will just pocket the 28-27%), it's not respectful of my choice of OS (again my reason is that I WANT the iAP as the only option).
But it's just capitalism. I'm not going to take the phone out of the hands of those for whom the answer is "Yes."
Didn't apple ban that game company because of showing an itemised bill to customers, showing how much apple was getting at every purchase?
But devil's advocate - It's agains apple's Dev ToS and I don't get an itemised bill showing me a breakdown of how much Visa or MS charge me when making other payments.
I want to know the name of the company to see if they do the same when I make a purchase with a debit card.
We need something to break this duopoly mobile market otherwise it is always gonna be problematic.
Agreed on breaking duopoly though. I'm pretty hopeful about Linux on mobile these days, there's some pretty big developments lately.
Fixed :')
When nobody's looking I've been known to enjoy a Hot Pocket or two, though... I can feel my dignity slipping through my fingers as I type this.
MacOS on Apple Silicon for an extremely long time (maybe it's solved now? 2 years later?) which caused incredibly glitchy, almost unusable cursor movement if you let your battery drain to 0%, then plugged it back in and woke it from hibernate.
Screen Time in macOS is unbelievably, ludicrously, fully broken. Nothing about it works almost at all. Metrics for children don't show up. Web filtering falls open after a few hours at random (presumably because the background services crash). The "site not allowed" page predates HTML5 and randomly doesn't work. You can't block built-in apps like Apple News, the best you can do is set a 1-minute time limit. Tons of IP Addresses and Apple phone-home addresses get blocked on the "allowed sites only" mode resulting in constant popups. I had to pay for Qustodio because it's just useless. Also, it has elementary bugs that are horrifying. For example, the pane where you add allowed websites doesn't remember websites you just added when you dismiss it - so if you open the pane again without a reboot, and add another site, it forgets the one you added last time you opened the pane.
However janky other things might be on macOS, Screen Time with "Allowed Sites Only" is by far the most broken thing on macOS, bar none. Try using it with your younger children and rage in frustration as it crashes-open silently and allows Private Browsing with no filtering after a few hours.
They all miss the point. The problem with Apple in it's relentless mission of maximising vertical integration, is that you are forced to align with their decisions at every single level, whether it's technical, social or political. "Cult" doesn't do it justice, Apple is has gone far beyond this.
Most other proprietary tech is not like this because the pieces are smaller with some reasonable degree of either interchangeability or combinability. Apple isn't neutral technology it's some kind of political entity. When you sign up, you are handing over all control, which is fine until they do something you don't like at which point your only choice is abandon the entire thing or accept it - I don't give a crap about NFTs, but I give a crap about some things, and I don't want to be part of an ecosystem where I can be pushed around. I don't blame the people who are stuck in it, it's hard to exit something that can define a lot about how you work with technology, they are essentially the victim of a big bully with a very difficult to stomach exit strategy.
The second example is, I think, a perfect example of what most large companies do, which is to neglect specific features in favor of others. People want to work on the "new hotness" rather than maintain something written 10 years ago by a team that no longer exists.
I don't think either suggests that Apple software is getting worse as a whole. The simple fact that they rolled out an entirely new architecture and it's worked pretty flawlessly (except for some fraction of people when the battery drains to 0 and it hibernates and needs a restart) suggests to me that they aren't just resting and pulling in money based on their monopoly status (which they don't even have in any industry).
The first real shit app was iTunes. And ever since then, the OS has just stagnated while they put more software in to sell music, apps, and cloud storage.
Which is why I speculate that overall, it might not be better. You had to wait a couple years to get the fixes. Now they probably ship the fixes and new features on a more regular basis.
True... but this one has caught me, over and over, and it makes me paranoid of a low battery. Before I just had a lazy habit of not getting off the couch until the battery actually died from 0%. Now I panic the moment it turns red, because the cursor bug quickly makes working miserable and requires a restart for my sanity.
> I don't think either suggests that Apple software is getting worse as a whole.
To me, it suggests they are letting more surface-level bugs get a pass than previously. Before, they might have had poorly designed software once in a while, but not things this basic and easily discoverable.
But 2 years of this bug was embarrassing.
You should try windows...
I would argue the opposite.
Their software has historically been terrible.
OG iTunes ranks at the top of the worst pieces of software I've ever used - rendered the iPod almost useless for me.
Their software is still unimpressive, but I'd argue it's trending in the right direction.
The App Store is functional. Safari is not terrible. Their email client is fine. The Apple TV UI is pretty snazzy, etc.
Music App sometimes breaks. It just doesn't play certain sections of some songs, even on replay, closing the app doesn't help; a device reboot is required to play songs in their entirety. And this happens on both devices that are connected via hardwire as well as wifi/LTE.
Considering Apple's revenue it is ridiculous how long bugs persist in their applications.
I actually have a whole laundry list of things I consider regressions in the Music app, but I'll just regale you with the most frustrating one for my use case:
If you use Home Sharing with wired headphones, it works. If you use wireless headphones with a local music library, it works. If you use wireless headphones and Home Sharing, it does not work. The program refuses to play anything. This was a nice surprise when I first tried to use Music after getting this laptop.
(I'm actually really curious if anybody else experiences this behavior -- anybody reading please chime in if so!)
https://9to5mac.com/2021/11/19/apple-podcasts-app-store-rati...
Once they saw they could make money selling music, they started focusing on that and pushing that POS down your throat. Then when they finally realized they could sell apps on iPhones, that's where the focus went. The OS has stagnated since then, IMO. Their bread and butter has been selling apps, music and cloud storage, and it's clear (IMO) that's where all the actual development focus has gone.
Also the e-mail client is trash. It is supposed to support MS Exchange, and my co-workers and I used to use it at work just fine with OS 10.14. It was an awesome replacement for shitty Outlook. Once 10.15 came out, it would quit syncing, freeze up, stop sending email, etc. This was not just once in a while, it would literally quit working almost immediately. I was forced back into Outlook again. It felt like they never tested it with Office 365 even once. But of course, their own e-mail services work fine with it.
...iTunes was originally released with MacOS 9. It predates the public release of Mac OS X.
It abso-fucking-lutely is terrible
Argh. I hate it when this happens. It's infuriating that this hasn't been fixed yet.
I actually just found one that has me scratching my head...
If I plug a USB-C -> Ethernet adapter in to my M1 MBP on OSX Ventura...it brings down the entire network.
Just ethernet + adapter + power is fine, plug it into the laptop, entire network dies.
All wired devices on the network (except for an AP strangely enough) drop all connections and can't get DNS responses.
I haven't had the time to dig in further than that yet though.
Someone did reply with this link[0], which may be the same or similar to what I'm experiencing just a different scenario.
[0]: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/05/11/usb-c-hubs-breaking-ether...
Turned out that it happened when one specific USB-C dongle with ethernet and PD was left powered on but not connected to the computer (I think there were other preconditions as well like it was powered-off and you connect power to it but not a computer to it). The device will then decide to go into DHCP server mode and start sending advertisement packets and the switch would start broadcasting them, the internal firewall would see this and start blocking the switch and in turn turn off the AP that was connected to it so 26 ports would be offline essentially. Most of us were on wifi and everyone who was on an ethernet (3 ppl) would go "FFS internet is unstable again. Stupid switch is probably buggy", disconnect their cable and go on wifi. Plus they never really reported it as they had work to do and Wifi kinda worked so not a big issue.
It was just a really cool moment when we found out what caused it and we fired up Wireshark and looked at the traffic and we were right. I haven't had a moment of so much joy in a really long time.
Still trying to determine why and when though, as this adapter used to be fine.
[0]: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-7-port-type-c-hub-with...
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache;sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
One thing that really annoys me that I don't remember from High Sierra is this weird "overbounce"/"overscroll" functionality. This drives me absolutely nuts! Preview does this for example, and actually so does Firefox (but you can disable it there).
If you open up a PDF in Preview, set the zoom so that a full page width is entirely within view (i.e. no scrolling needed), then scroll a bit to the side anyway, you'll see what I'm talking about. The viewport moves even though the full page width is in view. I've found that this triggers even when I'm trying to scroll down, resulting in a weird, glitchy scroll feel.
I feel like I should temper the bad with the good a bit though. For example I have not had Bluetooth fail randomly with this new computer, whereas it failed quite a lot on my last one -- often requiring a reboot to fix.
No seriously, I'm baffled. How was this released?
iPhone is everything that I expected Android to be, but has failed to become. As the smartphone market has matured, iPhone and Android are essentially at parity in functionality.
Android is completely fragmented and isolated. Every brand is pushing their slightly broken version of their integration. Everything is buried behind clicks/apps/configurations. I've been amazed at how well my various Apple devices integrate and how well they optimize for the flows that I care about most.
For example, using the AndroidTV remote requires closing your current app, pulling up the app launcher, scrolling to AndroidTV, waiting for the app to load, waiting for the app to find devices, pick a target device, wait for the device to load, try to use a half-assed AndroidTV app. Switch back to whatever app you were using before.
By contrast, iPhone places it in the command center. Pull down from anywhere, click the remote-icon, boom, control your TV. Doesn't even mess with your current app.
It's exactly the same on Android - pull down the notifications shade and click on the TV remote icon.
Is it good hardware? Yes. It's pretty. It's manufactured well. But to me it's basically akin to a Porsche skinned car with a motor & transmission from a US manufacturer circa 2001. It just isn't as great as everyone makes them out to be. The M series is a huge improvement, but if I'm spending my personal money I'm not plunking it down on any Apple laptop. I get far more bang for my buck with shopping out a top tier Lenovo quite honestly. They're not perfect either but I've recently invested in a new T series and handed down a T470 to a family member. Over the course of that time I've replaced one of the two batteries (in less than 20 minutes) with common tools, I've upgraded the RAM, I've upgraded the NVME and I've upgraded the wireless. All making the laptop faster and more relevant. Sure, Apple wins hands down on the convenience ecosystem. But to get things done and build things the Lenovo is my choice all day long. I don't need a Retina screen and I could care less if a pair of Airpods connects to it.
If paying the premium is worth it for those frivolous things then great. But I'm sick of the hardcore shilling of Apple as a serious work machine. Sure if you're doing A/V - I get that. But besides being better on power consumption (I still get ~7 hours out of the T470) there's no draw anymore for me. The software ecosystem has taken a huge hit over the years in quality on OS X and Apple has made too many breaking transitions for me to trust their hardware with my dollars anymore.
Finally, privacy. It's clear at this point Apple's position on privacy is a marketing effort and little else. They do just as little as they really need to make it feel "better". But Apple doesn't much care about privacy but would rather control the walled (with dollars) garden.
To clarify I'm not running Windows on my personal hardware.
Some of those things (e.g. 'garbage keyboard') are subjective. Others, like high CPU usage and external video issues, are things that most don't seem to run into. I'm not saying that excuses the problems or invalidates your experience, but I hope that you can acknowledge that most people don't have that problem with their MacBooks.
I agree that the software side of Apple products in general aren't great. There are so many issues.
1. install xcode, which requires apple id, which your company might not support
Or
2. Side load git, which your company's security policy might prohibit?
They dropped support for every graphics APIs except their own. They launched a greenwashing campaign that is always out of stock of parts, updates are mandatory regularly regress performance on old hardware, and we all know you're paying an apple premium for the same performance as something 60-70% the price.
They used to define good build quality, but most laptops are pretty sturdy these days.
I know this is a little weird, and I have never talked to another person with this problem, but all of the cheap plastic ones, strangely textured ones, smooth-yet-somehow-massively-friction ones all make my skin hurt. The Apple one doesn't for whatever reason.
I think I had a Gateway laptop a long time ago that also didn't heat my fingers to temperatures comparable to the surface of the sun or cause me pain to use. Like a really long time ago.
I go to the local store and try out track pads every so often (like once per year maybe?), and they are all just shit. That's enough to keep me buying Macbooks for now.
Like I said, this is a weird issue that I have never known anyone else to have, but it is a pretty critical one for me.
Also, I just want to point out, that I only mean the materials of the track pad itself, not the drivers or anything. I have no complaints about e.g. Linux track pad drivers. I put Fedora on my wife's Surface Pro 8, and the track pad drivers there are fine, for example.
I miss ssh clients that don't Philip K Dick me. I miss syncthing. I miss being able to use non-Apple services to sync my photos. I miss being able to run any apps I want from the web without identifying myself to a vendor. I miss NewPipe and I miss background apps and I miss basic local mp3 players that don't report what I play to remote parties against my will.
WinMo was SO AWFUL, man.
re: SSH clients, what does "PKD me" mean? Have you tried Blink?
I need my phone, however. Some stuff like having a Google maps with GPS are very valuable. Being able to join a meeting call while still going out is also another advantage. Then you have a bunch of apps that now I can live without but don't want to (like Apple Pay, Banking Apps, Taking a photo...)
Point is: If there is an alternative, I'd switch immediately. And please don't suggest Android as that is Apple with extra-messy-steps.
At what? Price? Performance? Gaming? I/O?
If you know a product that does, please let me know so I can buy one and run Linux on it :).
For the iPad it’s obvious, for the mac:
- third party OS support non existent (Asahi linux is good, but nowhere near completion), no dual-boot for windows anymore
- unix compatibily has fallen behind with the Apple Silicon move
- GPU capabilities unavailable for existing windows/Linux frameworks (gaming and ML impacted)
- kernel extensions getting deprecated impacts many hacks that were QOL improvements
- no touchscreen (you may want it or not, but arguably it has potential for use)
- no flip screen (goes hand in hand with the touchscreen)
They could solve these in the near future, and none of these are individually deal breakers, but cumulatively these are enough limitations that a worse hardware platform coming with better software becomes a viable choice in many cases.
Personally I’m planning moving away to probably a Chromebook + linux or windows laptop when my current setup finally dies.
You could upgrade the ram on the 16" versions though which is nice. Although this is still not something I have ever done on a laptop. The new Macbooks now have easily replaceable batteries which is a welcome change.
- It randomly disconnects bluetooth for 30-40s. Especially annoying during calls. When your headset & keyboard stop working and you don't have a way of make anyone know.
- The processor goes full throttle out of blue. Makes my fan go 100% for good 5-10 minutes.
- From time to time it refuses to wake up my monitor and I need to force shut down it.
I have a Dell monitor with a mouse connected to it. I can connect my Linux laptop with a single USB3 for monitor, mouse and power. The MacBook does the same.
I run two monitors off my M1 mbp - works for me
Lucky you. It works horribly for me - any time the screen is locked (corporate policy locks it after a certain period of inactivity) the OS forgets all about the external screens.
When I unlock the machine, all my windows are on the internal screen.
There's a setting somewhere along the lines of "each display is an individual workspace" that "fixes" the issue by making each screen an independent workspace, which still won't remember where the windows are.
I didn’t believe the hype until I got one at work and it just had… zero jankiness. And it is as good as the day I got it
Small rant ahead.
In the last updates they changed how alarms are set (rotatory dial to enter the numbers one by one and back to rotatory dial next update). Why did they change that? I believe just for change sake. Also I could see if I had an alarm set at a quick glance (next to wifi indicator top right); now it only shows on the lock screen. I wish they would let it be or hid it under a configuration option, but that goes against Apple minimalism.
While all of these changes were happening there were small bugs on the alarms, like the one with different timezones documented on a short video here https://twitter.com/mejutoco/status/1526100127668224002
Don't get me wrong, Apple is so ahead of other companies. I think until more companies rise to their standards they won't polish these issues, since they face no competition. But they are not perfect.
Outside the US it's far more common to see Android phones and PCs. If you make 1k per month, buying a 1500$ phone makes less sense.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Air, but my big Windows laptop can do different thing. For music Logic alone is worth buying a cheaper Mac. But good luck gaming on a MacBook air vs a gaming laptop. Both cost the same price after all
But that gaming laptop will have your back in serious pain if you carry it every day around a college campus.
When I was younger I had the most fantastic time installing Ubuntu on a Chromebook
Macbooks are just overpriced basic laptops. A lot of people just use them to run Linux software but it's way worse than running it on Linux. Performance is great if all you're doing is video editing, which is what youtube reviewers love to focus on. For the rest of us, it's bleh.
I would love for apple to license the M1/M2 to Lenovo.
All things considered, it wasn't much of a change. Ios and Android are not particularly different.
The problem is all of these product lines were likely already in R&D during the Jobs era (With the exception of maybe AirPods.) Not the current designs of course, but the ideas. I think the real test will be this upcoming year and the supposed launch of the Apple headset, as I don't think there will be any greater test of Apple's current design/marketing/hardware/software prowess. People are already sour on the idea of the "metaverse" so it'll be interesting if Apple can sell something new/different/useful in the space.
Macbooks no longer can run Windows and don't quite run Linux yet (the two largest OSes in the world, and Linux On The Desktop(tm) is a bigger market share than OSX), iPhones still can't run Android after all these years (the majority phone OS), and Apple Watches suffer the issues all the smart watches have (no real good use case, battery lives of a day or less, violates "zero distraction" ethical concerns, sensors are fulltime uploaded to the cloud and there are no good Federal controls on personal data in the US, etc).
I see no reason to ever buy Apple until they actually catch up to the rest of the world. Apple is a cult, and a very expensive one to buy into.
The only people I know that own iPhones IRL are older people who aren't tech savvy (and all of them admit they don't know how to use their phone, and only make phone calls, text messages, and Facebook shit with it); I don't know a single Gen X, Millennial, or Gen Z (in or outside of the tech industry, in or outside of the US) with one.
If Android is "not suitable for real world usage", then no phone is.
*what?*
How does that change if the majority is small or large? Like 1% or 10% what difference do you think that makes?
Where do you live? Overwhelming majority of tech people I know in the US and UK use MacBooks and iPhones. That’s academia, systems programming, web services. Very very rarely see anyone using anything but macOS.
Most of the tech people I know have long since dropped Apple because of death by a thousand cuts. If you would have asked me even 5 years ago, I would have said half of them still belong to the cult of Mac, but not anymore; the only ones remaining are non-tech older folk.
A lot of HN's userbase lives in the silicon valley and the SF area, so maybe this is just a rather narrow focused regional thing? I only ever hear of cult members living in either the valley or SF, or alternatively, in Seattle, hardly anywhere else.
The reality is most people with a phone use an iPhone. Any tech or academic conference I go to, most people are using MacBooks.
Are you sure you aren't just confusing all the milled aluminum laptops with Macs, and all the black glass slabs with iPhones? I've even had someone confuse my OnePlus as an iPhone (until I showed them that I didn't have that giant ugly notch that iPhones have; apparently running Android wasn't a big enough hint to them).
No it’s literally over 50% iPhone.
https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/us-smartphone-market-share
https://hypebeast.com/2022/9/apple-iphone-overtakes-androids...
https://www.engadget.com/iphone-overtakes-android-us-market-...
See?
I don't know how they qualify those results; they don't publish anything resembling scientific work. Like, how do they counter-balance that Android users need to replace their phones less often? Apple users usually buy the new phone every gen, instead of every 3rd or 4th gen (Apple screens and batteries tend to die quickly); so, it seems active Apple users should be 1/3rd or 1/4th of active devices, not half.
Sales in of themselves don't mean much if you're comparing Apples to oranges (ahem) with a disposable phone vs one that isn't.
This is unsubstantiated nonsense. The resale values of iPhones are indisputable evidence that you are full of it.
Your comments in this thread are beyond stupid. Everything you’ve said is the opposite of true.
That is not true. In fact the opposite is true. The average iPhone will last longer than the average Android phone.
https://valorvortech.com/how-long-can-a-smartphone-last/
You are also saying on one hand that most iPhones are purchased by older non tech-savvy people while at the same time claiming that those same people buy a new phone every generation. That is hard to believe.
Nothing like the trifecta of ipod/itunes/iphone under Steve.
I have quite a few computers on my desk these days.
* Late model Windows laptop
* M1 MAcOS laptop
* iPad
* Android phone
* Raspberry Pi
The point of telling this story is the computer with, by a long distance, best development environment/tools is the Raspberry Pi.
As for user experience, the Windows machine is not too bad, the iPad and Android phone are horrid limited little things. I prefer the Pi, but I can recognise the quality of the MacOS environment. My taste is with the Raspberry Pi. Especially because I can turn of the (fucking) GUI and use it in true text mode.
I learnt programming on the then magical Macintosh computers 1989-1992. They were really something technologically. So far ahead of anything else within ten times the cost.
Those days are gone for Apple. Thank you for the memories.
The best development environment for _you_ is the Raspberry Pi.
Most people are going to want a GUI. Most users (even the vast majority of developers!) are not comfortable using a terminal 24/7. Most are going to be using whatever IDE they learned on, or whatever their team uses. That's certainly going to be a full GUI IDE that is resource-hungry. Even not considering those aspects, just compiling code takes forever.
I've tried using a Raspberry Pi before as a day-to-day device. It works okay, but you're going to miss speed quickly
Does it have Excel with macros?
Windows games and Steam games? Some. See https://applesilicongames.com
App Store games, including iPad games? Lots of them.
Apple Arcade? Check, some 200+ curated games including some interesting exclusives like Fantasian.
Game streaming services? Yep.
Remote play from Steam/Xbox/PlayStation/etc.? Yep.
> Does it have Excel with macros?
Yes, it does. You might be surprised to learn that the first release of Excel was for the Macintosh in 1985. A Windows version was released in 1987.
Some of the games I play on Mac: Slay the Spire, Civ 6, Through the Ages, Nova Drift, Wizard of Legend and quite a few visual novels/text based games.
Hmmm, I would call most of them indies.
Can you confirm this change? It must have been in last few years.
Macs had Excel for a long time, but in the past it was a simplified, toy version of the program not suitable for real work.
from personal experiance the mouse movement in almost any game on my m1-pro before i sold it was borked, and even 'native' games that were supposed to work didn't feel good at all
tabbing out of counter-strike go usually froze my macbook requiring a restart
the ergonomics of the laptops are generally also poor (keyboard is flat, glossy screen, limited angle on the screen hinge so it requires serious hunching )
I mostly play strategy games like Civilization and Stellaris. Sometimes Factorio and League of Legends.
I replaced my gaming desktop with the $700 entry-level Mac Mini that came out in 2020; it had the same hardware as a MacBook, just a different form factor. It worked well. I wasn't playing at high graphics, but games worked well. I went back to my full desktop after a few months because I wanted better graphics.
My Mac Mini only had 8 graphics cores on the base M1 with 8GB of RAM. If you bought one of the newer M series devices I think you'd have a pretty good experience if gaming isn't your top priority.
> Does it have Excel with macros?
Didn't Microsoft do a full port of Excel in the last year or two?