Technology Apple

[masta247]

Well, Apple usually puts rather cheap parts into their notebooks. Yes, they are much more expensive here but also even the best Macbook is not as fast as an above-average Asus, which is much, much cheaper. Hell, there are 13-inch Asus notebooks that are much faster than the Air and cost less than half of Air's price.
Also I don't know about Apple service since they don't offer it here (!), they send customers to third party companies, not the best ones to be more specific. However to be honest I've never had any issues with PCs or laptops I've had so maybe that's why it's not important for me and I'm not willing to pay more for extraordinary service. I'm willing to pay for a better product though and that's why Apple laptops are a no-no for me, even if I wanted to pay more for a laptop I'd rather buy Asus or at least go for a Vaio - imo their design is nicer, even though it's similar to Apple's.

Also I quite doubt that chart because of Sony and Lenovo which offer the best service I've heard of. Sony basically fixes your hardware at your home the day you call them so you don't have to wait, then ask you to fill a survey for a chance to win a HD camera and give you Sony gadgets for your trouble. I've never seen a company topping that and according to that thing above they're only average.

I don't know about the buzz about HP laptops but they really are barely a small part of what they were even a few years ago, they were in top 3 of notebook manufacturers. They don't sell well these days and they don't have great laptops.
I do give credit for Apple's design, yes. Ipad 2 is still one of the best made tablets and Macbook air is one of the most stylish notebooks, sure.

Now as for people who use Apple stuff I barely know any but if someone does it's usually someone with little idea about computers who wants a "cool" laptop or "I want an Iphone because I want an Iphone" people. I'm yet to see a geek who uses Apple computers, at my university I sometimes (rarely) see a macbook amongst people who don't study IT but for example graphics. Geeks I know treat it as a principle to oppose Apple products actually.

 

[dilla]

Well, the American university scene must be different. I can most definitely vouch that MacBooks to PC sightings on many campuses, including my own, is close to 50/50, if not >%50 in Apple's favor.

The opposition against Apple products amongst geeks is mostly a herd mentality. Most morons still think Macs "can't get viruses" and many use it as a reason to buy one. People also think Macs "can't right-click" because of the trackpad on the current notebooks and the single-button on Macs of the past. They use this as one reason to NOT buy Apple products.

I can respect someone that doesn't want to be a trend-follower like most Apple users are stereotyped to be, nor do they want to shell out the cash for one, or simply can't see the hardware fitting their needs. But it's another to simply hate Apple because it's the cool thing to do. It fits some people's needs, it doesn't fit others. I don't game so I don't need that. I certainly benefit from the free software used for image and video editing. Not to mention GarageBand, which is, admittedly, a novelty. That's how I spend my time on my computer. No gaming. I realize those things still require a solid set of hardware specs, but I have never had any issue with lag or unresponsiveness. If I did, I just spend $50 and get 8 GB of RAM and sell this 4 GB set.

Also, it's not much of a loss when Apple notebooks have higher resale value. And I've seen the opposite, people keeping their MBPs since 2007 and earlier, still chugging along just fine. What're PCs built to last for, two..three years before something goes bad or a key pops off?

 

[Pittsey]

^

Depends on the user.

My Pc is mint. Cost me £200 about 3 years ago, and still boots in 30 seconds. Never had a virus or spyware. Didn't even bother with a virus checker for 18 months as I was worried it would slow the boot time. Not a thing wrong with any of it.

But I had an Acer laptop that fell apart. And that cost me £700. Acer is a no, no.

 

[dilla]

Acer does suck shit. A friend had one two years ago. Lost touch with him, but it was a POS. Not sure if he still has it.

My dad has an Acer desktop. It's shit too.

If I had to buy a Windows machine, it would be an ASUS. I knew this for a while. So if my parents aren't quite up to switching to OSX, I'd definitely tell them to get that.

 

[masta247]

I can respect someone that doesn't want to be a trend-follower like most Apple users are stereotyped to be, nor do they want to shell out the cash for one, or simply can't see the hardware fitting their needs. But it's another to simply hate Apple because it's the cool thing to do. It fits some people's needs, it doesn't fit others. I don't game so I don't need that. I certainly benefit from the free software used for image and video editing. Not to mention GarageBand, which is, admittedly, a novelty. That's how I spend my time on my computer. No gaming. I realize those things still require a solid set of hardware specs, but I have never had any issue with lag or unresponsiveness. If I did, I just spend $50 and get 8 GB of RAM and sell this 4 GB set.

Also, it's not much of a loss when Apple notebooks have higher resale value. And I've seen the opposite, people keeping their MBPs since 2007 and earlier, still chugging along just fine. What're PCs built to last for, two..three years before something goes bad or a key pops off?

Like I said I've never had any issue with my PC or a laptop. And I have one laptop since 2004 (IBM) and it's on almost all the time. I have my PC since 2006 and since then I've always had it upgraded to be high-end all the time and I've never had any problem.

For geeks it's not just the cool thing to do to hate Apple (well, it is but it's not the only reason). Most of all it's what Apple does as a company and their products. Unethical marketing, the fact that they lie and claim things they've done what they really haven't not done, that their products are waay overpriced for what's inside, for their restrictions and limitations. For most geeks these are all things of honor that Apple violates and it pisses them off. It's like totally the opposite of how they believe an IT company should act. It also annoys me to some extent since it makes the market go wrong way.

 

[dilla]

Can you give me examples of "Unethical marketing, the fact that they lie and claim things they've done what they really haven't not done."

I understand they use certain language and wording techniques, but hell, that's marketing, man. What have they claimed to have done?

 

[masta247]

The easiest way would be to point to any Steve Jobs speech. That's what Apple fans seem to mimic that makes them so annoying. He's good with "our products are just awesome and best at everything, everything else sucks and copies us, and of course they lie too, they said it themselves!". Then people really believe that and they're first to point out how someone copied Apple design, yet nobody seems to see how Apple copies everyone else.

What annoys me the most is how every technology they come up with is "best, new and revolutionary ". Be it facetime (video calls), retina display (ips panel from LG), their "own", "revolutionary A4 chip developed by Apple engineers" in Iphone 4 (Samsung's Hummingbird, castrated, with older gpu), Macbook air as the fastest sub-notebook (yeah, right). Then their lies - 'there's nothing wrong with Iphone4' (you're holding it wrong, our phone is awesome) and obviously the "signal fix" issue (displaying more signal than there is as a fix), then the 'Safari is faster than Chrome and Firefox' thing (yeeeah) AND "you need Safari to do this and that and no other browser does it". Well, with Safari they actually paid some html5 test sites to display "you have to download Safari to view this oO". There are shitloads of things like this and those above are just off the top of my head. That's straight lying and most people won't check out on these claims any further - they'll believe that and think that they have the best product. Interesting article on that matter here:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/06/08/lies-statistics-and-apples-marketing.aspx

Also they're unethical if it comes to their competition. Suing Samsung was ridiculous, just to stop a company that's about to sell more phones, stealing their market share. Well, these patents are so silly that every company could sue every other company for hundreds of patent infringements.

Here are some points:
http://www.thejawatech.com/2010/07/14/apple-lies-about-iphone-4/
http://www.techtalkz.com/blog/general/the-unlawful-unethical-underdog-1.html (last 2 paragraphs and comments)
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=9960 (from Apple-fanboyish website)
http://www.thebrowserworld.com/2008...distribution-scheme-is-unethical-mozilla-ceo/

This was also severely modified by fanboys but lists a lot of Apple scandals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Apple_Inc.

 

[dilla]

Well, doesn't a lot of this have to do with Steve Jobs and his dictatorship rule over the company? I mean, you said it in the first sentence that Jobs is a prime example of what is wrong with Apple.

He brought Apple back from the almost-dead. That's a huge feat. But maybe that got to his head a little bit. Ok. A lot.

There's a reason Apple products used to be a niche thing. Now, I agree, it's more of a fashion trend, but don't discount those that actually enjoy their products and buy with genuine interest and passion for them. I can't say I'm there yet, at least not for computers, but if I could do it again, I would certainly buy a MacBook Pro again.

Sure, the OS has been locked down by Apple, but while I'm not one to use a $1,000 laptop solely for browsing and email, I'm not advanced enough that I actually reach a point in my use of the OS that I think, "shit, I can't go any further because Apple blocked me off from it."

I knew about the A4 chip thing, that it was a slightly dumbed-down version of Samsung's Hummingbird, but Apple takes pride in being somewhat more independent than other companies. I think Samsung maybe one of the few that actually does more things in-house for their products. Maybe that's why they made the small change to call it their own. Legally, that's correct, no?

HTC lost two patent cases, right? Sure, it's suing someone over peanuts, but in this day and age in this litigious society (American society, at least) it probably wasn't done to get money for Apple. but more so to put a damper on others' progress. Sure, it's shitty, but it's clearly legal. I can understand some not liking that. But it doesn't hurt me that one billion dollar company is suing another billion dollar company. it really doesn't, nor should it.

 

[S O F I]

Two things I want to say.

1. Google uses Mac computers, not PCs. That should say something.
2. The reason a lot of college kids in the US have Macs is because Apple had pretty good student deals on them. It was usually a discount + free iPod or free printer. Now, apparently, you just get $100 credit for the App Store.

I hear Microsoft is giving out XBOXes with PCs purchased.

 

[Casey]

/\ Actually, my cousin, and other people I know who work at Google all use Ubuntu.

 

[dilla]

Two things I want to say.

1. Google uses Mac computers, not PCs. That should say something.
2. The reason a lot of college kids in the US have Macs is because Apple had pretty good student deals on them. It was usually a discount + free iPod or free printer. Now, apparently, you just get $100 credit for the App Store.

I hear Microsoft is giving out XBOXes with PCs purchased.

Google uses Macs but the root of the change is "not Windows" because it's such a popular target. Not because the other two major (relatively) OSs are more secure. Chrome still sucks dick on OSX, at least it did for the longest time. I actually enjoy Safari more but I miss somethings about Chrome such as certain extensions. However, the browsing experience on Safari is slightly better for me.

And I agree the discounts helped, but they were only for about two or three months. Late-June to mid-September. And you still had to buy the iPod Touch or printer and then mail in a rebate. So it still cost about $1200 for an 8 GB iPod Touch and a white MacBook. Compound it with the Apple premium and it still wasn't an easy choice as cheaper equivalents were available. That means the price of fitting-in and/or the durability/quality of Apple products was totally worth it to all those students. But again, this only happens for about 2.5 to 3 months out of the year. Students still buy Apple products year-round, especially for Christmas or their birthdays. The iPod discount definitely helped, but you gotta explain the high revenue the other nine months.

And I think the $100 gift card is still an amazing value. If you recently bought a Mac, you get the upgrade to Lion for free. That really doesn't happen too often with PC manufacturers. Then on the App Store, iWork is $60. Even then, Word, Excel, Powerpoint (their Apple equivalents) are sold separately. Most students only need PowerPoint and Word. That's $40. You can choose which service you want. Then there's the apps that may help in note-taking, or Twitter/Facebook/other social media apps, games, and tons more. With each app around $1-$5, you can buy ten more apps for your Mac, shaping it even more to your liking and how you're going to use it.

I said this because you said "just an App Store card." Well, it can get a user a ton of stuff. Sure, the choice of an iPod Touch, whether to keep or sell, would be nice, but the gift card is nothing to scoff at.

BTW, Lion is pretty damn awesome. Someone told me it was Apple's Vista. Don't give a shit. I have lost functionality of nothing from Snow Leopard. All my apps work. One thing that's giving me a tad of an issue is setting up my Mail app to connect to Exchange servers for my Auburn email. But I'll call the school and ask if the instructions have change from Snow Leopard. Otherwise, the reviews from major blogs seem to be mostly positive.

 

[S O F I]

/\ Actually, my cousin, and other people I know who work at Google all use Ubuntu.

My friend is starting work in their San Fran office in August and from what he tells me, they use OS X. Obviously, different teams might use different OSs depending on the nature of the work. Also, you get a new MBP when you get a job there. It's kinda cool. He was bummed he didn't get a Nexus S though haha.

 

[S O F I]

Google uses Macs but the root of the change is "not Windows" because it's such a popular target. Not because the other two major (relatively) OSs are more secure. Chrome still sucks dick on OSX, at least it did for the longest time. I actually enjoy Safari more but I miss somethings about Chrome such as certain extensions. However, the browsing experience on Safari is slightly better for me.

And I agree the discounts helped, but they were only for about two or three months. Late-June to mid-September. And you still had to buy the iPod Touch or printer and then mail in a rebate. So it still cost about $1200 for an 8 GB iPod Touch and a white MacBook. Compound it with the Apple premium and it still wasn't an easy choice as cheaper equivalents were available. That means the price of fitting-in and/or the durability/quality of Apple products was totally worth it to all those students. But again, this only happens for about 2.5 to 3 months out of the year. Students still buy Apple products year-round, especially for Christmas or their birthdays. The iPod discount definitely helped, but you gotta explain the high revenue the other nine months.

And I think the $100 gift card is still an amazing value. If you recently bought a Mac, you get the upgrade to Lion for free. That really doesn't happen too often with PC manufacturers. Then on the App Store, iWork is $60. Even then, Word, Excel, Powerpoint (their Apple equivalents) are sold separately. Most students only need PowerPoint and Word. That's $40. You can choose which service you want. Then there's the apps that may help in note-taking, or Twitter/Facebook/other social media apps, games, and tons more. With each app around $1-$5, you can buy ten more apps for your Mac, shaping it even more to your liking and how you're going to use it.

I said this because you said "just an App Store card." Well, it can get a user a ton of stuff. Sure, the choice of an iPod Touch, whether to keep or sell, would be nice, but the gift card is nothing to scoff at.

BTW, Lion is pretty damn awesome. Someone told me it was Apple's Vista. Don't give a shit. I have lost functionality of nothing from Snow Leopard. All my apps work. One thing that's giving me a tad of an issue is setting up my Mail app to connect to Exchange servers for my Auburn email. But I'll call the school and ask if the instructions have change from Snow Leopard. Otherwise, the reviews from major blogs seem to be mostly positive.

Yeah, but without a doubt, the $100 credit is of less value than the iPods that Apple gave out. That's my point. The offering is lower now.

Gizmodo keeps bitching about Lion so I'm going to wait haha.

 

[masta247]

Well, here people at Google use laptops (not Apple-made) with linux systems, usually Ubuntu and during Google events that we've organized I noticed a lot of anti-Apple power coming from Google employees, especially during Google IO extended when they were loling at Google emps using Macs during the event. Some Google marketing people apparently use Macbooks though.
However Apple computers aren't popular here. One of my professors uses a Macbook but she's a total noob, a business/management (theory) professor.

When I was in London, then Slovakia and Austria I didn't notice any Apple devices other than Iphones and some Ipads in London. So I see that it's mostly an American thing.

 

[dilla]

America: we buy the prettiest, most expensive things. Because we can.

 

[dilla]

Yeah, but without a doubt, the $100 credit is of less value than the iPods that Apple gave out. That's my point. The offering is lower now.

Gizmodo keeps bitching about Lion so I'm going to wait haha.

Yeah, I acknowledged that people can barely make $100 selling a $100 gift card to the App Store. An even transaction, might as well use the card yourself. But I feel that in the long-run, most people will benefit more from software ought using the the gift card than they would owning or selling an iPod Touch. Sure, you make more money that way that could be spent right back in to the App Store, but in this day and age of smartphones becoming ever-so-popular (read: almost standard/necessity), it won't be long before people find little to no utility from solely an MP3 player. Perhaps Apple plans on discontinuing iPods of all kinds within the next five years, and that's why they stopped selling iPods now. To prepare for the future and not having to worry about having to service iPods ten years from now.

This is purely speculation. I read no blogs about this kind of stuff so there's no bias. But after reading about these announcements and thinking about it, I don't think it's too far-fetched.

 

[Pittsey]

My friend is starting work in their San Fran office in August and from what he tells me, they use OS X. Obviously, different teams might use different OSs depending on the nature of the work. Also, you get a new MBP when you get a job there. It's kinda cool. He was bummed he didn't get a Nexus S though haha.

A girl I know worked there (London office) last Christmas. She got a Nexus S for Xmas. The whole staff did.

 

[dilla]

Picturing Steve saying this made me chuckle. What a badass.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/21/epic...feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+osxdaily+(OS+X+Daily)

 

[dilla]

And...if this happened, the Xbox Live app for it might be boned. Good thing I (Syn) have Netflix.

http://www.cultofmac.com/is-apple-s...m_campaign=Feed:+cultofmac/bFow+(Cult+of+Mac)

 

[Casey]

I especially liked the part where an advert for an SGS2 appeared directly underneath the article.