Comment by Taywee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Taywee | Hacker News Reader

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It's the combination of OS and price. When Apple is very often double or more the price for competitive products, charges exorbitant prices for modest upgrades (currently $200 difference between 8 and 16 GB RAM. Over $400 for 1 TB SSD when a good 1TB M.2 goes for about $55), the OS is annoying and restrictive, and my choices for replacement OSes are all very experimental compared to non-Apple hardware, why would I spend significantly more for a significantly worse experience?

And I'm happy to pay for quality tools, but I'm not spending $20 for copy-paste (edit: hyperbole. Every time I find some missing simple functionality that is available for free and easy on Linux, the Apple equivalent is available on the app store for a significant charge. Some games are simply more expensive on iOS than elsewhere because the developers know Apple users will pay more). Apple is still largely in the "luxury designer product with a consumer base of 10% historical savvy users who prefer it and 90% rich kids who like the logo and don't mind flushing money down the drain for a brand".

> When Apple is very often double or more the price for competitive products

This is a complete lie. I've used PCs for 30 years and I'm not an apple fanboy but when you actually look at the market, there's only very few products that can compete to the macbooks to begin with and they're always in the same price range or more expensive.

> charges exorbitant prices for modest upgrades (currently $200 difference between 8 and 16 GB RAM.

This is true, but it's also true in the PC world. And PC laptops increasingly come with soldered RAMs so you don't even have the advantage of upgrading it yourself anymore.

Macs are PCs.

And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module. Maybe Framework is just singularly better, but that's still a reason to not buy Apple for me.

> Macs are PCs.

This is just being pedantic. "Mac vs PC" is just a widely known way to distinguish between Mac's and non-Mac's.

> And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module. Maybe Framework is just singularly better, but that's still a reason to not buy Apple for me.

Ok now instead of looking at number of GB of RAM you get per price and show me quality and efficiency between these. I'm no hardware nerd/genius but from what I understand the Apple Silicon was out performing even what Apple CLAIMED in their keynotes and that caused everyone to scramble because they couldn't sit on their thumbs anymore. (Cough Intel)

So yeah, you may get same numbers of RAM, but that RAM isn't equal.

Apple marketing made "Mac vs PC" to try to differentiate themselves, and I refuse to adopt their marketing terms as if they are facts. Most people who work with computers will call a Mac a Mac, but won't use the "PC" category as if it doesn't include Apple PCs.

Apple Silicon is really good for what it does. Apple does not create its RAM and the RAM is indeed equal for a significant markup.

It's more than that. Historically (from 80's onward), "PC" meant "IBM PC or compatible." You could argue that x86 Macs are actually PCs.

Yeah, and you could argue that ARM and RISC-V Windows and Linux wouldn't be PCs, but I don't really see the value in using the terminology for such a dated use. It's not really useful anymore since none of the same software is compatible across different OSes anymore.

"Mac vs PC" was way after Windows software was already not compatible with IBM PCs, so by that point, the implication was just "PC == x86", and Apple was already transitioning to Intel as well. "PC" being tied to a specific Intel processor is confusing. It's all very bizarre and mostly marketing.

It's very much of a piece with Apple's infamous "what's a computer" iPad ad. Apple have always been trying to position their products as existing in some sort of technological alternate universe ("Think Different"). They go out of their way to avoid applying conventional terminology; you will never see them call AirPods "earbuds", for instance. This extends even down to the banal - their just-announced AR goggles are fastened to the user's head by way of a "Head Band", because heaven forfend such advanced technology be sullied with anything so prosaic as a "strap".

This relentless self-othering has a dark side; apart from being good marketing, it also conveniently excuses behavior that might otherwise be regarded as unacceptable - much like how rebranding small LTE-enabled computers as "mobile" reset user expectations across the board for things like admin control, advertising in the UI, the worth of software, and other pesky social mores inconvenient to the money-extracting classes.

Pedantic perhaps, but not a terrible thing to draw attention to.

My definition: Does it run x86 Windows, without a VM or emulator? Then it’s a “PC”

> And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module

To be fair to Apple, theirs is LPDDR5 rather than DDR4, and it’s built into the SOC so it’s a different product.

You can currently only buy a system with 16gb of DDR5 from framework as part of a preorder bundle, not separately, and that’s a c£400 bump which makes the system much more expensive than the mac.

To be fair to framework, they are going to release a separate ddr5 module according to their store which will be cheaper than the Mac option, but if you are buying right now (which is what counts) then Mac is cheaper.

All my laptops including recent ones have upgradeable RAM and SSDs. I usually buy laptop with smallest amount of RAM and SSD and then upgrade those myself. Way cheaper.

> Every time I find some missing simple functionality that is available for free and easy on Linux,

So basically you'll exploit the charitable developer who spent countless hours developing the software rather than pay them a fair price for their work. This is why people develop for Apple platforms first - because the people who buy Apple will actually pay them for their time and labour.

That's an insultingly uncharitable read, and is loaded with some pretty unfair assumptions.

I am a programmer, and I contribute plenty of FOSS code. Very often, I find a solution with some issues and submit PRs. I'm not arrogant enough to do a couple hours of work and charge $20 per download for it, and I'm not a useful enough idiot to work for free for Apple, so I guess that bars me from doing the same on MacOS (even though I have to work with it for work). I guess if some of my code is general enough, some well-meaning Apple FOSS users can port it over.

It's interesting to me how much comradery and work for the general community is done in the open for and among Linux and BSD users with only the expectation that others will do the same for them, but many Apple users I've run into are like you, treating the simple desire to make things better for people with absolute derision and disgust. I guess if you aren't maximizing profit, why do anything at all, right?

> I'm not arrogant enough to do a couple hours of work and charge $20 per download for it,

How do you know it took whoever "a couple of hours of work"? How much time and effort do they have to put in to maintaining the software? And how much training and work did it take to get them to the point of being able to make the program in the first place?

> Ever heard the story of Picasso and the napkin? Legend has it that Picasso was at a Paris market when an admirer approached and asked if he could do a quick sketch on a paper napkin for her. Picasso politely agreed, promptly created a drawing, and handed back the napkin — but not before asking for a million Francs.

> The lady was shocked: “How can you ask for so much? It took you five minutes to draw this!” “No”, Picasso replied, “It took me 40 years to draw this in five minutes.”

It's not about maximising profit, it's about people getting paid for their time and work.

Mostly by looking at the level of functionality and comparing to other software, cross referenced against my career as a programmer.

Somehow, I constantly come across lifelong programmers who insist on working for free. They get software for free, give their software away for free, and very often have encompassing philosophies of software freedom (and often freedom of information and data in general). I find it very sad that the idea of mutual support and love of software and art without money changing hands is regularly met with such resistance from people who haven't experienced the joy of being in a community that doesn't constantly look to extract cash from their own.

I know what exploitation is, but it's not the group of programmers working for the good of one another.

Food, shelter and electricity cost money. Unless these holier-than-thou programmers inherited wealth, they're going to have to do something to acquire money to pay for these necessities for keeping alive. If not, technology evolves at a crawl because everyone who codes can only do it as a part time hobby around their actual job. Which would go some way to explaining why half the open source software in the world such as Gimp is absolutely dreadful in comparison to the private offering.

Money is the best system we've come up with for the exchange of value of labour across industries, but you are welcome to go visit a farmer and attempt to agree on how many lines of code are equivalent to five parsnips and a dozen eggs.

I've been organizing a large-ish volunteer-run gaming convention for 20+ years. One thing I've noticed is that while people with stable jobs (such as developers) are often willing to contribute their expertise for free, freelancers (such as artists) often expect to get paid.

The reason is quite simple. A stable job is much like inherited wealth. Because your income is reasonably guaranteed, you can live your life without trying to turn every opportunity into a business transaction.

As some of us are professional event organizers, we often compare our convention to professionally run events. In some aspects, we are really amateurish, as we are just a bunch of volunteers doing things for cheap. In other aspects, we are better than professionally run events. We can choose to do the right thing without having to worry about business models and profitability.

Sometimes money is what gets boring but necessary things done. And sometimes money is the reason why we can't have nice things.

Hacker News: Home of the Mandatory "Go Fuck Yourself" Clause

Why is charging $20 per download arrogant? I'd presume you wouldn't do it for any price, which means you're effectively charging $(infinity) per download.

And you got the audacity to complain that some people try to make a living while providing a presumably valuable service/app for their users. "Treating the simple desire to make things better for people with absolute derision and disgust" eh?

I have refused to develop any software for Apple's OS or hardware for about 30 years now, because Apple has always routinely stomped on anyone who disagreed with their corporate ambitions - clone makers, reverse engineers who figured out how to use part of their libraries without permission, open source coders trying to write services compatible with Apple's stuff, and others.

Basically the company is hostile to anyone threatening their control, they're the champion of closed source and proprietary much more than IBM ever was.

Why is the Linux version free?

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