mkaltenecker

Oy, since when are conspiracy nuts hanging out on HN?

You should see a psychologist.

You mean, extraterrestrial origin is by far the most absurd explanation and shouldn't even be accepted as a hypothesis, right?

It’s not so much about creating beautiful documents, it’s more about making the world a more beautiful place.

Everyone uses Word. I have to stare at Word documents all the time. Why can’t I be happy when they look a bit better?

That comparison doesn’t work. At all.

That seems like an excellent trade-off to me, a prime example of how Apple is great at picking the right trade-offs.

All what you said is completely irrelevant for the vast majority of people. So Apple doesn’t trade it off against the increased convenience both Spotlight and Versions give you.

How that? Android would be 183°, iOS would be 122°, RIM would be 32°. You could easily see that Android is slightly above 50% – but I’m not really sure how the iOS marketshare would look markedly different.

Since 50% isn’t really a very important threshold (though that could be argued) I would very much argue against using a pie chart. (I prefer areas or lengths to angles.) Plus, a pie chart wouldn’t make it easy to add platform subdivisions.

It’s quite astonishing that so many people here prefer readability over correctness. What is wrong with you? Readability is optional. Correctness is not.

That’s obviously the wrong tradeoff. Never outright manipulate your data to make it more readable! If you can’t make your data readable enough without manipulating it you just can’t present your data that way. Period. Find a better way.

(I do not think there is any malice involved, though. Just pure stupidity. I mean, look at the amount of people around here arguing for readability over correctness. If they are out here, some are also working for Nielsen.)

Fashion can't be trademarked or copyrighted. You can slavishly copy a Chanel handbag if you don't also copy the logo. That's why many expensive brands use their logos in patterns on their handbags.

But why the hell should that be the case? Look at iFixit’s teardown. It didn’t look at all like the battery was firmly glued in.

What’s wrong with that if you know beforehand?

Not everything will be on Kickstarter. This is not a systematic push to move responsibility to the customers. It’s just a fun distraction.

So you completely agree that it's possible to replace the battery in a working rMBP and that it is not in any way permanently affixed to the case? The rest are irrelevant (for the purpose of this discussion) implementation details.

Yay!

But Apple knew about the consequence beforehand. It’s easy to predict. (I would expect that even companies which are not all that competent can foresee something simple like that.) I really doubt that’s the reason.

I would be interested in your source for that. Batteries are already made of very many different materials, it’s not as though glue is some sort of special material. (The label of, say, AAA batteries is glued to the metal container. The label of the Li-Ion battery of my Nokia phone is also glued to the plastic container. Maybe Apple uses a bit more glue – but glue shouldn’t be something completely new in battery recycling.)

I don’t see this as positive PR by any stretch of the imagination. This looks like Apple wanted to naughty things, got caught and had to reverse direction. Not positive.

If any conspiracy theory is plausible at all then it’s that they wanted to make EPEAT be more willing to change their standards – but I would imagine that even that is something you would rather do behind closed doors (maybe they did and it didn’t work).

(Not at all relevant to recycling, but $200 ain’t a bad price. You can expect to pay about $150 for batteries from other manufacturers, and those are often not as high-quality batteries. Batteries are expensive. In general, not just from Apple. It just sucks that you have to send your damn laptop in and not be able to access it for some time.

Exception accepted! I don’t think anyone has a problem with that kind of use. I certainly don’t.

So, yes, sometimes “retarded“ can be a neutral term.

Hm, I tend to think Apple (or any company, really) is clever enough to foresee the obvious consequences of policy changes.

This is one of those. Apple knew that certain government agencies are required to purchase only EPEAT certified hardware. They knew they would lose that business. And they nevertheless decided for the change, knowing that consequence.

That leads me to think that Apple changed direction because of other consequences they did not expect and (apparently) could not predict, in this case the public outrage.

I’m not sure, I think laptops have become longer lasting, more appliance like. I think that’s a very positive thing for the majority of people.

The only big issue I see is the battery which will definitely break. Those things have a limited lifetime (shorter than, say, five years you at least would want your laptop to make it) and there is nothing you can change about that.

That’s what I tried to explain. There is one less protective layer in the Retina MacBook compared to other MacBooks – but the same amount of protective layers compared to matte MacBook Pros. I don’t think it makes a difference.

In the Retina MacBook Pro the glass is an integral part of the display, not some separate piece glued on just cause – as far as I understand it. If it weren’t there, there would be a piece of plastic glued to the display. (And since LCDs already contain glass elsewhere I don’t think the extra glass changes the equation much.)

You would think it’s not special or worth mentioning, wouldn’t you, but it actually kind of is. Many companies respond to a crisis with very confused initial communication before they get their shit together and can internally agree on a message and strategy.

Apple has been pretty consistent in being able to just stay silent until they really have something to say. (I think that has more to do with their general lack of chattiness than anything else, though.)

Think Atennagate. It’s pretty similar.

I’m also not sure why you are worried about that. Not everything Steve did was gold. Some of the things he did were pretty toxic, and I think being unable to really admit you were wrong in public is one of those things.

If this is indeed a change in that direction (and I somewhat doubt it is) it is to me unquestionably a positive one.

Hm, I think you have a point. I’m reading tea leaves. I still think that’s an interesting point to ponder, even if the results are probably highly subjective and very much open to interpretation.

I think many people misunderstand where the glue is in the Retina MacBook Pro. They say things like “The display is glued to the case.” which is wrong.

The display assembly (the actual screen where the lights shine true) is glued together. I’m not sure but I think that part of the display is always pretty tightly integrated, probably even glued together. (I tried to find information on that and I would be very glad if someone could point me to resources about how laptop displays are usually built.)

The difference with Apple’s design (as far as I understand it) is that the frontmost layer of that assembly is also the front glass of the screen. Other laptops with glass in front of the screen put an extra layer of glass in front of the display assembly. The Retina MacBook Pro doesn’t have that extra glass. (My understanding – but please correct me if I’m wrong, I’m really not sure and I would like to know more – is that old displays had a sort of plastic outer layer, now Apple uses a glass outer layer. But that’s not that a big deal, as far as I know, since on the inside all LCDs use glass substrate also – so it’s not as if Apple introduced glass into the display assembly, some was always there, they just added more. But maybe I’m wrong about that.)

That display assembly is screwed – not glued – to the case. Behind it are the LEDs and light diffusers.

Here is a teardown of the display: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Retina-Di...

The battery is glued to the case - but it seems to that it is eminently removable with the application of some force. If you don’t care about breaking the laptop (since you want to recycle it) that should be no big deal. I mean, Apple replaces the battery for $200, no questions asked. I don’t think they replace the whole Retina MacBook Pro every time they do that, so they must remove the glued-in battery, and that inside a working laptop. If Apple can do it, so can you (especially with a laptop that’s beyond repair).

I’m thinking about whether this is an atypical reaction by Apple and I think it’s not but I’m not sure.

The pattern is typical – more or less. Some criticism appears. Apple is dead silent for a few days. Apple has a comprehensive response to the criticism. (Alternative that also happens frequently: Apple doesn’t ever mention the criticism.) That’s what used to happen in the past, that’s what nearly happened here.

The difference is that they responded with a different message pretty quickly after the criticism (arguing that EPAT isn’t such a great certification) so it’s not true that they staid completely silent.

When it comes to the message itself, I don’t think it’s that atypical. Apple rarely responds to criticism, so there are few situations we can use to compare. It’s not as big a deal as Atennagate – so they picked a less involved way to respond (basically a press release instead of a press conference) – but in every other respect it’s pretty similar.

This time there is a clearer Mea Culpa but the undertone is still that EPAT is a bad certification. (During the Antennagate press conference the undertone was that it’s not really that big of a deal – and it was a much more obvious undertone.) The tradition of Apple execs writing letters is also continued.

I would only say that Steve’s letters tended to be more about presenting arguments. That has certainly something to do with the different purposes (explain why DRM/Flash are bad vs. admit that you were wrong and reverse direction) but I still would have preferred if Bob Mansfield had explained more of Apple’s reasoning.

People go there to vent because no one in the larger community understands them. SRS is of course a place where they are understood.

It’s like a tumblr making fun of fundamentalist christian screeds. It’s not intended to convince any fundamentalists that they are wrong, but it’s a place to vent and laugh together with like-minded people.

You did not understand me. Using “gay” as a positive term isn’t a problem. “He came out first as a gay footballer” is a perfectly alright sentence. Using ”gay” (or “retarded”) as an insult is where the problem lies (with “retarded” the additional problem is that no one uses it as a positive term – and since it’s so overwhelmingly used negatively, using it neutrally isn’t really possible).

When someone tells you he likes My Little Pony and you respond with “Man, you are so gay!” then that’s a problem. You are using “gay” as in insult, as if being gay were a bad thing. That’s the reasoning behind why many people think using “gay” in that manner is a bad idea. That works analogously for “retarded”.

That’s not to say you can’t express, say, disgust at someone liking My Little Pony. “Man, your taste fucking sucks!” is a perfectly alright response no one will have a problem with (beyond disagreeing whether My Little Pony is good or bad).

Again, I don’t want to ban people from using “gay” or “retarded” as insults. But when they do I will call them out and explain my reasoning.

Grabbing someone's ass without their consent is inexcusable harassment. You do not do it. Ever.

This is simple. Not hard.

No. You are not supposed to use retarded because that word has consistently been used to insult and denigrate disabled people. It's the same with gay. You are not supposed to use it as an insult. It doesn't matter whether the person you are insulting is gay or not.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you miss the academic discussion on sexism by AUs.

You dictionary won’t help you there. Try to actually learn something about the topic, and not by reading a fucking dictionary. That’s useless.

No, those articles leave me depressed because of all the idiotic sexists that rear their ugly head in the comments.

I mean: What. The. Fuck.