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Who's buying?


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View Poll Results: What are you buying?
Apple Watch 5 16.13%
New MacBook (2015) 1 3.23%
Retina MacBook Pro 5 16.13%
MacBook Air 1 3.23%
Apple TV 2 6.45%
None 16 51.61%
Fellatio 1 3.23%
Voters: 31. You may not vote on this poll

Who's buying?
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PB PM
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2015-03-20, 11:17

Quote:
Originally Posted by Messiahtosh View Post
That's not a very long break...
From an iPhone standpoint no, from a computer standpoint yes. For a while I was buying a new Mac every two years, now it's been four. I doubt I'll buy another Mac for a another year or two at the least.
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Messiahtosh
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2015-03-20, 11:26

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
From an iPhone standpoint no, from a computer standpoint yes. For a while I was buying a new Mac every two years, now it's been four. I doubt I'll buy another Mac for a another year or two at the least.
I think most people who have been using Macs since the early days are used to only upgrading every 4-6 years. That was one of the big selling points (total cost of ownership) for Apple back in the megahertz myth days.

"We are reviewing some 9,000 recent UNHCR referrals from Syria. We are receiving roughly a thousand new ones each month, and we expect admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond." - Anne C. Richard, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
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turbulentfurball
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2015-03-20, 13:30

I voted none. I'm currently rocking an iPhone 5 that's pretty much good as new. I got it replaced under warranty with only 2 months left to go in my 2 years, so it's got a new battery. I'm keeping it to use contract free when I emigrate and may get a 6s this autumn depending on my financial situation at the time.

I want an Apple Watch. I can't justify one, and I tend not to get the 1st rev of Apple things, so I'm happy to wait.

I have a 13" rMBP mid 2013. I'm not seeing the 4GB RAM as an issue at all yet, but I don't exactly do any heavy work with it.

So yeah, nothing except maybe a new iPhone, but not really bothered either way. (But, if there's a 4 inch 6s I'll be all over that like maple syrup on pancakes)
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Brave Ulysses
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2015-03-20, 14:00

Quote:
Originally Posted by Luca View Post
We're mostly old-timers here. Apple used to be exciting and unique. Now it's a huge consumer electronics company that caters to the masses. Not to single them out; lots of companies lose touch with their "roots" as they grow larger. Apple has basically told creative professionals (the people who used to buy Mac Pros, or Power Macs before that) that they don't want their business anymore. And their consumer level stuff is looking increasingly overpriced as competing products get cheaper (while also being faster).

But again, I don't want to completely single Apple out. There's been a stagnation across the entire PC industry - there's little reason for people to buy new computers. Combine that with the high price of Macs and the decline in personal income and I'm not surprised that no one is buying new toys.
I think you are right on a few things but a bit off on others.


Apple has always been a very interesting company to me for many many reasons but one thing that took me a while to realize (and maybe come to terms with) is that Apple really has never been in touch with their "roots". Or maybe more accurately, Apple's true roots are not what Apple fanatics and diehards think they are or what they should be. The cult around Apple has pretty much always been fan created and driven and not driven or even supported by Apple. The only time Apple really started to cater to their cult was in the mid 90s with the Apple Evangelist program and Guy Kawasaki. And honestly, that time period and mindset was really weird. It wasn't something that had always been a part of Apple and it hasn't been since. it really catered toward the social misfits and these aging office hippie/nerds who had been Mac owners since the 80s and were clinging onto them.... almost more out of their fear of change than anything else. I mean, in hindsight it all just seems very silly and bizarre..... mac users flocked to see Sinbad speak at MacWorld and defended the benefits of aging IO systems and an aging operating system that had severe technical limitations.

That was also the only time where Apple really catered to specific strong markets and demographics, and it nearly killed them.

When Jobs returned, All of that changed. If a cult connection is required I would argue that In his mind Apple was not a cult for its users, but a cult for its employees. And that Apple did things for Apple the Apple way. And consumers would like it because the Apple way is the best way and Apple knows best. Steve never had any interest in pandering to the Apple faithful. Sure, he would take advantage of them at a keynote address, but his decisions were based on his own ambitions, ideas, and Apple's and what he thought people would like. I think we all found Apple to be very exciting at this time because it was like a real life willy wonka factory of technology. Design was not who can make the most minimalist and thinnest computer. Designs were fun, colorful and emotional. And I think it's clear that Apple focused on creativity with its products not to pander to creative professionals but because thats what Steve and others at Apple felt technology was best used for. That unfortunately has really shifted in the last decade. Technology is now used for social networking.... almost exclusively.


What I feel has been lacking from Apple in the last 5-7 years is strength in Apple's software. The software user experience, ingenuity, and quality seems to be severely lacking. It has become more complex, and they are not as good at identifying common software problems, workflows and frustrations and implementing a new way of doing it that is much simpler yet somehow as powerful if not powerful.

In my opinion the Apple of the last decade is a modern day marvel.... not for its software or inventions but entirely because of its incredible operations and manufacturing scalability and efficiency. It's easy to forgot that Apple was notorious for not being able to meet demand with really anything. Any time a new product was released and was hot, it would be backordered for months. 1 Million Macs a quarter seemed to be some kind of bizarre operational barrier that was impossible to move past. Operational and manufacturing mistakes (missed deadlines, lags, huge shipping gaps, canceled announcements, etc) were very common place

Since the iPhone.... Apple has not made an operational/manufacturing mistake yet. They have scaled at an incredible rate while maintaining a level of hardware and industrial design quality superior to what anyone else has even attempted in small batch quantities, never mind 70 million iPhones in 3 months.

It's very clear to me that since the iPhone, Apple has very much been Tim Cook's Apple. His focus is on those operational aspects and he simply kills it on them. It is incredible.


But without Steve, that creatively and fun is a bit lost. Even the Watch, while beautiful, and supposedly Apple's most personal product ever, just seems to be lacking that one thing that Steve would have been like...."hey, check this out, we've been doing things this way for 30 years, but we changed that, look how fucking cool this is". Apple Pay comes the closest but it was dulled down a little bit by the timing.

Quote:
I think part of it is that Apple's competitors have caught up, and a lot of the stuff Apple used to do has become commonplace. Apple aren't cutting edge anymore. Their software has become bloated, slow, and difficult to use. Their computers are overpriced and underpowered. The best bang for your buck is definitely NOT with Apple. That's not to say they don't make high quality hardware, but you pay through the nose for it.
The best bang for your buck has NEVER EVER been with Apple. Ever. If anything Apple is closer to being the best deal in town than ever before right now. In fact, in certain product categories it is almost indisputable that Apple is better on price.

And Apple's hardware from a specification point of view has also hardly EVER been cutting edge. Sure they use to have their Photoshop faceoff every year, but it was marketing.


Apple's hardware is far superior these days than it has ever been. I don't think the software is anywhere close.
  quote
Wrao
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2015-03-20, 20:27

Yeah, Apple's operational backend is damn near a wonder of the modern world. It's talked about, but I don't think it's talked about enough. To put it bluntly, they've effectively made the law of large numbers their bitch.

Their software is also languishing in a huge way with many of their formerly marquee and competent programs like iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband being ridiculous shells of their former glory, stripped down to near uselessness with stunningly obtuse efforts by Apple to persistently reinvent the wheel every time they do a major update. (Though I do think iPhoto is pretty powerful it leaves much to be desired from a workflow sense, no batch processing? in 2015? ffs)

It's probably dumb to try and bridge the two but there almost seems to be a correlation here. In the calculus of ruthless efficiency and logistics dominance, if you have to make a sacrifice anywhere, software is the logical place to do so. You can always issue a patch, you can also commit to a 1-2 year development cycle of improvements. But hardware fuck-ups, particularly at the staggering scale in which Apple operates, can't be resolved anywhere nearly as easily.

Couple that with the general sense that Apple is spread a bit thin, shifting employees around and not necessarily keeping their attention trained on anything lower than iPad levels of priority for long and suddenly they find themselves with sub-standard software.

But then third-party development is also as robust as it has ever been too and the OS X App store has helped push that along. But I still feel like there are big gaps in terms of really good robust software solutions for several things that Apple used to smoke.

Still though, it'd be wrong, I think to suggest Apple's competitors have necessarily caught up here either. Samsung has long been slammed for releasing shitty, half-baked software that is more gimmick and pushed out to boast about some functionality than actually being thoughtfully designed or useful. Google has some of the worst design sense of any major tech company and consistently finds themselves designing and redesigning UIs and then scrapping them and redesigning them again and sliding in and out of things that work really well with things that don't, meanwhile a lot of their best stuff, while competent and full featured can be ludicrously wasteful on system resources. Chrome, Google+, Maps and others. MS has done well with some things but Windows 8 was largely a cock up, and they seem completely out of the picture in mobile software.

So I'm not convinced it's just an Apple problem, but it perhaps does stand out with Apple a bit more because their software used to be so much better and something about them that really stood out and tied together all of their well designed hardware.


Meanwhile, I have little incentive to buy much of anything new lately because well... all my current kit works great. iPhone 5S zips along perfectly, 2011 iMac has some frustrations now and again but it's still performant as ever when I'm doing work or pushing it. My iPad Mini sucks since iOS7 but iPad usage is weird enough anyway that it doesn't matter that much.

We can talk about why this all is for hours but I think in some ways, the answer is a simple question of consumer tech having largely passed the threshold of 'good enough' some years ago to where the 20-30% improvements in speed and novel improvements in refinement made every year don't seem anywhere near as important as they once did when each new generation used to open up entirely new possibilities of what you could even do and *that* alone was exciting and interesting. Today, I know I'll still get good use from a 2011 iMac into the foreseeable future and that a 2015 or 2016 iMac would mostly only let me do all the exact same stuff at a negligible level(in terms of how much I care) of comfort/performance improvement.
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Messiahtosh
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2015-03-20, 20:46

Well damn...the takeaway from this thread so far is that Apple needs to get its shit together in desktop software.
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PKIDelirium
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2015-03-20, 21:56

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses View Post
Since the iPhone.... Apple has not made an operational/manufacturing mistake yet. They have scaled at an incredible rate while maintaining a level of hardware and industrial design quality superior to what anyone else has even attempted in small batch quantities, never mind 70 million iPhones in 3 months.
I'd say the white iPhone 4 was a pretty bad snafu.
  quote
Quagmire
meh
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2015-03-21, 08:38

Quote:
Originally Posted by PKIDelirium View Post
I'd say the white iPhone 4 was a pretty bad snafu.
At least Apple delayed it until it was ready and didn't put out a half assed product. Maybe the only thing they should have done is not announce a white model until they knew it was ready, but I guess they figured it wouldn't take as long as it did.

giggity
  quote
Chinney
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2015-03-21, 09:20

Quote:
Originally Posted by Messiahtosh View Post
Well damn...the takeaway from this thread so far is that Apple needs to get its shit together in desktop software.
Agreed, but it is not just a desktop issue. iOS also needs work. And actually, the issues are related, as Apple moves to bring the mobile and desktop experience together - something that is a contributing factor to many of the problems.

I am confident that Apple has not abandoned software and is committed to a long term vision that will address many of the current issues - though not as fast as we would like.

Great posts by BU and Wrao, above. Thanks.

When there's an eel in the lake that's as long as a snake that's a moray.
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Brave Ulysses
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2015-03-21, 09:21

Quote:
Originally Posted by PKIDelirium View Post
I'd say the white iPhone 4 was a pretty bad snafu.
You are correct. I completely forgot about that. Probably because I have never been interested in buying the white model of any iOS product.

In hindsight that was a very odd exception to apple's operational success.
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Messiahtosh
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2015-03-25, 06:25

So I wonder who voted for the new MacBook?

Here's a good story: last night, my wife and I went to an Apple Store for an appointment that she had set up for an issue with her iPhone. We arrived on time and had her iPhone restored to factory settings and were ready to get things done; her phone is an iPhone 5 that had an active recall on it for the sleep/wake button, which hasn't worked on the phone almost the entire time she's owned it. The store employee attempted to install some sort of application onto the phone for hardware diagnostics, but was unable to do so. The employee tried numerous computers and asked others for assistance but to no avail.

Time began to tick away and our late evening appointment was turning into an hour+ for what should have been a simple process where they took our phone and issued out a loaner replacement for the 1-2 weeks it would take to fix ours.

I am pleased to report that without coaxing, Apple simply replaced my wife's phone with a brand new one of identical specs. It was a nice gesture, given the extended wait time, but it was unexpected and certainly not demanded. I'm sure my wife's phone will end up on the refurb store sometime soon, so Apple won't lose out very much, and they kept us from feeling down about the whole situation.

"We are reviewing some 9,000 recent UNHCR referrals from Syria. We are receiving roughly a thousand new ones each month, and we expect admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond." - Anne C. Richard, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
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curiousuburb
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Join Date: May 2004
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2015-03-25, 10:04

Looks like there's already a Chinese clone of the Apple Watch in the wild...

Hands-on with an Apple Watch rip off - BBC News

But I think I'll hold out for a real one, thanks.

All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.
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Windswept
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2015-03-25, 21:15

Quote:
Originally Posted by turbulentfurball View Post
I'm keeping it to use contract free when I emigrate...
I guess I missed this news. Are you moving to Canada, the U.S. or...? ...if you don't mind my asking.
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turbulentfurball
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2015-03-27, 13:13

Quote:
Originally Posted by Windswept View Post
I guess I missed this news. Are you moving to Canada, the U.S. or...? ...if you don't mind my asking.
Canada! Good guess.

Speaking of taking my phone with me, I've been looking at phone service in Canada. I currently pay £15 a month for 300 minutes, 3000 texts and unlimited data. That's a bargain compared to what Rogers and Telus offer.
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PB PM
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2015-03-27, 15:24

Yes, cell phone service here in the Great White North isn't so, great.
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Chinney
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2015-03-27, 20:26

Yup. Big country, thin population, higher costs per paying customer, lack of competition.

On the other hand, maple syrup is definitely cheaper here than in the U.K.
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PB PM
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2015-03-28, 10:06

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chinney View Post
Yup. Big country, thin population, higher costs per paying customer, lack of competition.
That's the argument the telecoms use anyway, despite the fact that taxpayer dollars cover most of the cost of the infrastructure.
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Messiahtosh
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2015-03-28, 11:59

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
That's the argument the telecoms use anyway, despite the fact that taxpayer dollars cover most of the cost of the infrastructure.
Have a link to detail that?
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PB PM
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2015-03-28, 19:12

I don't have any specific links, searches just come up with useless information, but this issue has come up a number of times when discussions about the CRTC and the networks come up on reliable major radio here in Vancouver. It has been mentioned that as much as hundreds millions (maybe more) of taxpayer dollars have gone into building the cell phone networks in Canada through Federal government grants. To find the exact details some hunting through grant applications would be required I'm sure.
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Windswept
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2015-03-29, 18:42

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chinney View Post
Yup. Big country, thin population, higher costs per paying customer, lack of competition.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
I don't have any specific links, searches just come up with useless information, but this issue has come up a number of times when discussions about the CRTC and the networks come up on reliable major radio here in Vancouver. It has been mentioned that as much as hundreds millions (maybe more) of taxpayer dollars have gone into building the cell phone networks in Canada through Federal government grants. To find the exact details some hunting through grant applications would be required I'm sure.
Cell phone networks/infrastructure these days have become pretty much as important as crucial utilities like the electric grid. As Chinney said, in places with low population, where customer fees could never even remotely have covered the cost of such infrastructure, the government (i.e. the taxpayer) has had to subsidize these vast expenses or the infrastructure would never have been built in current decades.

Companies that provide cell service would never on their own have spent the kind of funds needed without the incentive and cooperation of government. This is exactly the kind of situation where a federal government is most useful, and the cell phone users of Canada have benefited, though their fees may still be high.
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Messiahtosh
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2015-03-29, 21:22

Quote:
Originally Posted by Windswept View Post
Cell phone networks/infrastructure these days have become pretty much as important as crucial utilities like the electric grid. As Chinney said, in places with low population, where customer fees could never even remotely have covered the cost of such infrastructure, the government (i.e. the taxpayer) has had to subsidize these vast expenses or the infrastructure would never have been built in current decades.

Companies that provide cell service would never on their own have spent the kind of funds needed without the incentive and cooperation of government. This is exactly the kind of situation where a federal government is most useful, and the cell phone users of Canada have benefited, though their fees may still be high.
You don't think that customer fees from the more densely populated areas would have covered the cost of additional infrastructure investment? Expansion not only would allow a provider to bring on more customers, but it would also bring a marketing advantage to them in the form of a message such as: "look at how big an area our network covers." I think the corporate entities are quite happy to be in such a relationship with government, but I think this is actually an area where taxpayer dollars need not be spent in the same way as highway expansions were. Maybe I'm wrong!

"We are reviewing some 9,000 recent UNHCR referrals from Syria. We are receiving roughly a thousand new ones each month, and we expect admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond." - Anne C. Richard, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
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