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Comment by HackerThemAll | Hacker News Reader

I never really understood the craze for the overpriced Apple products. After many years of using PCs with Linux and Windows, I got forced to use a MacBook Pro as the company laptop and I found it hard to use. The OS is so limiting, Finder so crappy, oh my. There are some advantages, like the hardware is good, but on the other hand there are countless tiny issues where "Apple knows better" such as tying mouse scroll direction to the trackpad direction which is awkward for me. And now this what you're describing. So no, thanks, I'll stick to ThinkPad.

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If you don't know where to find the checkbox to disable natural scrolling (you can ask Apple's built in search, even) I don't think anyone should be listening to your opinion on Apple.

That's unnecessarily harsh. Try disabling mouse acceleration without Googling anything; where's the search entry for that? Why is there no Preferences option for it?

Windows, KDE and GNOME all expose this as a GUI toggle. macOS doesn't.

You don't buy Apple because it's good. You buy it because it's what the cool people use.

Imagine applying for a SF startup job and letting them know you use a Windows computer.

At best they will politely tell you to fuck off. But they might blog/X about the idiot Windows user who imagined they could be cool enough to work for them, all coated in a plausible "a craftsman takes care of using good tools, sharp knifes, ..."

> You don't buy Apple because it's good

You do, because their hardware is very good. Denying this is just silly.

There is no contradiction. I agree Apple hardware is good. But it's not why you buy it (well, maybe you personally do, but you are not representative of the median Apple client)

Do you have any sources for this? I agree that people tend to follow their peers, or seek things that communicate a higher social status, but like, Apple's hardware just is also very good, and that could easily be why someone stays with them, even if they were prompted by status.

If it was that simple mainstream Linux success would be one good marketing campaign away.

Their hardware is really good, their software is fine — at least as good as all the others to the average user I think, the integration between their products is good, and their marketing is obviously top tier.

I don’t think they’d be as successful if their products were not premium hardware.

I’d love an arm based laptop with a great screen and trackpad running Linux for work.

Apple hardware is good, but not uniquely good. There are plenty of other good computers out there, Apple hardware isn't in some special tier where nobody can touch them.

Isn’t that what I said? That it’s very good?

I had a surface laptop, it was fine, not as good as a MacBook imo.

Had a razer laptop, it was good, got very hot though.

Had an X1 Carbon Extreme that I liked, wasn’t as good build quality or screen or camera or trackpad as my MBP from work at the time though, was still expensive af.

What are you thinking of that’s better than a MacBook Pro?

By that logic, why don't Macs outsell the sum of Windows machines? If people buy Apple devices for the quality, Macs should outsell Windows machines 5:1.

In reality, I think it's well understood that 95%+ of customers (for Apple, Google and Microsoft) don't make any evaluation of device quality. They buy whatever they see their peers use, because they want to identify with the [luxury|convenience|hardworking] lifestyle of their comrades and idols: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest

> By that logic, why don't Macs outsell the sum of Windows machines?

That’s incorrect, because I never said that everybody buys a computer because of hardware quality, or any other reason. All I said was that Apple has great hardware and it’s part of the reason for their success.

Dell, Lenovo, HP sell more units than Apple, but they likely don’t make more profit on that segment of their business.

> You buy it because it's what the cool people use.

I apparently define cool people differently :joy:

> Imagine applying for a SF startup job

No, thanks :joy:

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