Comment by thx-2718 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thx-2718 | Hacker News Reader

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"But even this way, apple devices have by far the longest lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners easily - so is it really fair to call them out, or is it just baseless emotional reaction?"

Why reply that criticism of Apple must be purely an emotional one? Kind of diminishes your argument here.

Immediate search result for repairable phones:

https://www.androidcentral.com/best-sustainable-repairable-p...

https://shop.fairphone.com/en/buy-fairphone-4

Here's a laptop that you can upgrade:

https://frame.work/

Lifetime for Apple isn't as long as you make it out to be when batteries need replaced and software support for hardware ends:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/macos-sonoma-drops-s...

"Also, what you heard about locked down components resulted in better security, a much lower risk of theft, and a much more clean second-hand market (where you won’t be sold a phone with a cheap chinese shittier screen for example)."

Apple could just release stuff that didn't break so easily too so no need to risk changing out a screen if it ain't broke. There are plenty of ways to increase security of the device without making it less consumer friendly.

Additionally since the context here is whether Apple has been hacker friendly or not, why shouldn't you be allowed to upgrade and change the hardware of YOUR device? As in, you want to put in more storage or change the screen to one that's better in some manner (maybe it's just cost) then you ought to be able to.

That is it should be the device owners choice whether or not to replace their screen with one from Apple or a cheaper one.

Going with the first link. The "best" phone is not globally available. The second "best" comes with three years of OS updates. I stopped reading there; three years is a much, much shorter lifespan than you get with iOS or MacOS.

Also, say you have one of these phones, and are in a major city, then break it. How will you get the parts you need to repair it? How many hours will you be without a phone?

With Apple phones, it's typically same day service to get it repaired. Worst case, you can get a new phone with your data mostly transferred, again, same day.

The Ars article you link is pointing out that Apple is dropping software support for laptops that are 6 years old. That's better than pretty much any other vendor.

As far as laptop repairs go, frame.work is probably the best non-apple option, but they don't have a fixed policy for how long replacement parts will be available. The story is similar for Apple:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624

says they provide parts for up to 7 years, and battery swaps for up to 10 (subject to part availability). I hope frame.work will be able to do better, but I challenge you to find any laptop company significantly better than this.

(Other than soldered ram and disk, I honestly don't care about third party parts. It's not like Apple replacement part markups are insane or there are significantly better parts available. I've definitely never used third party parts for other brands of laptops, even when they were available. However, I've been repeatedly screwed over getting other brands of laptops repaired, especially under warranty.)

Anyway, I get why Apple has a bad reputation for support and repairability. There objectively bad. However, that doesn't mean they're not simultaneously also the best option (or close to being the best).

I am sorry but you're missing the point here.

I'm not arguing over better hardware (performance) or price. I am arguing over hack-ability; that's it. I hope you can understand that.

> I'm not arguing over better hardware (performance) or price

Neither was the comment you replied to.

They were arguing that Apple provides excellent hardware support (in terms of repairs and how long they take) and lifetime (in terms of how long updates are provided for the device).

Hackability is irrelevant. Apple clearly doesn’t target that market and hadn’t since the Apple II days.

Would you buy a Lamborghini and complain it makes a terrible truck?

That’s not something Apple designs their products for, and their users are either fine with that or willing to make the trade off for the other things Apple does prioritize.

None of the machines on that list are more hackable than a Mac though.

Some are more "hackable" than an iPhone, but only in some strange symbolic way, since once you de-googled android is somehow more user-hostile than iOS and completely unhackable in practice (in the sense that I can't make it do what I want and also be usable as a daily driver that lets me do stuff like pay for stuff, use public transit, charge my car, park, or take an uber/lyft).

I'm a happy owner of a pine book pro, and a pc engines router; I get it. However, I don't think there are any viable Linux laptops or phones that compare favorably to the linux laptop + phone I had a decade ago.

Scratches head at how framework laptop is less 'hackable' than a Mac but okay.

"(in the sense that I can't make it do what I want and also be usable as a daily driver that lets me do stuff like pay for stuff, use public transit, charge my car, park, or take an uber/lyft)."

So either the hardware you bought isn't letting you do what you want with it (this includes iPhone too!) Or you become a better hacker and get it to work yourself.

So the only option has 1/10th the hardware of an older iphone with shittier camera than that.. for me that’s not a good deal. Framework laptops are insanely expensive for again, worse hardware. Isn’t the point of linux to run on anything?

Also, every device needs battery replacements, like this is just the physics/chemistry of batteries and it has an absolutely doable price for any apple device.

What breaks easily on an iphone? They are quite sturdy phones with metal casing. They wouldn’t get sold after 5-7 years of active use if they weren’t sturdy. And glass will still be breaking when it meets with big enough force - I again don’t see your point.

> re hacker friendliness

The RAM has different architecture on the M series, so it can’t be replaced even theoretically. Also, every moving part is one more point of potential breaking, plus it takes up space. This is not a rasppi, different design goals/constraints.

You can put in a worse screen but one will be able to see that in the settings so they can’t be scammed.

> Framework laptops are insanely expensive for again, worse hardware.

1199 EUR is not insanely expensive, specially considering that I can put up-to 64GB of RAM in a Framework laptop with a reasonable amount of money, while I would need to pay almost the price of a full Framework laptop to do the same in a Macbook Pro [1]. This is IMO, insanely expensive.

And yes, I can definitely use those amount of memory during mass rebuilds that I sometime like to do in NixOS. I don't even try to do those same workloads in my macOS because they start to become hugely slow once you hit the swap.

[1]: by the way, this get even worse considering that I also need to upgrade from an M2 Pro to M2 Max to have the option to do so. I just did a quote for the cheapest Macbook Pro with 64GB of RAM, and I got a 4000EUR quote for 512GB of storage that is laughable low for something that expensive. At that price, I can get 2 of the most expensive Framework AMD and I would still have sufficient money to get another one of the older Intel ones as a spare.

Mind you, the two kinds of RAM are not directly comparable.

Sure, I never said so. It doesn't mean that there isn't workloads that benefit from more RAM (even if it is slower) or that the Apple's RAM prices are insane.

Not to mention I can't find anything on them having ECC capabilities but I could be wrong.

If you like the hardware or software that you use then I am happy for you.

"This is not a rasppi, different design goals/constraints."

That we can agree on.

Apple is a business with specific goals and so far as a business in terms of profits they have been successful.

All I wanted to point out was that Apple is not hacker friendly in my opinion, and I have listed good reasons that you don't want to accept. There's no amount of going in circles here that will change either point of view I fear.

Have a blessed day!

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