With the more than capable entry level iPad at $329 and often on sale for as low as $249, Apple is more than just a premium luxury company. That iPad runs the same robust iOS 12 that the current iPad Pros do and runs it well.
There’s always a market for “cheap and nasty” but not necessarily much profit in it. The market that Samsung seems to be going for, though, is “expensive and nasty”. It will be mind boggling if people who shell out over $2,000 for a Fold, will simply say “oh well, it’s Samsung, what do you expect” when their Fold dies after a couple of days. Even if the device was not without its obvious manufacturing flaws, the look of it is simply horrid. The notch size and positioning simply defies logic; it’s a dodgy, budget looking device, sold for a premium price.
So while the Fold is obviously destined for failure, the media will continue to support Samsung (largely due to their advertising spend) and #Foldgate will be swept under the carpet. The fandroids will continue to buy expensive and nasty Samsung’s, simply because they’re not Apple. And the cycle will continue...
Here’s a view of the Fold not shown in Samsung’s marketing...
it looks like a badly designed 2007 Nokia E90. That phone was actually quite elegant.
Could Apple's lock on premium luxury be eclipsed by an era of good-enough gear?
Expanding on the above question is this second question:
Is your existing Apple gear "good enough" to you because you would be losing functionality by purchasing the newest Apple gear?
To which I answer: YES
My mid-2015 top-end 15" MBP is "good enough" because to purchase a newer MBP would mean lose of "Pro" features important to me. SD Card slot, USB-A ports, MagSafe, a good keyboard, extension power cord in the box, the list goes on.
So Apple is not merely in danger of good enough gear from rivals, but it is also in danger of losing sales to the Mac faithful if they don't start remembering the practical day-to-day needs of The Rest of Us.
Another way of posing your question is,
Where should you get off the legacy train and get on the bullet train?
Clearly Apple was correct in moving on from the internal floppy diskette drive, etc, etc. not everyone is ready to make the jump, but as surrounding tech also moves forward the legacy stuff Apple leads in moving on from will fall away for all computer users.
For example, when I purchased my MacBook Air a bunch of years ago the GoPro cameras didn’t have wireless transfer capabilities. My GoPro HERO 7 Black, however, can transfer files wirelessly to the GoPro app running on my iPhone. And when I want to transfer via cable directly to my new MacBook Pro, well, guess what cable the GoPro uses... yup, USB-C.
Time will come when those legacy ports on your older Mac will seem antiquated. Apple is usually leading the way in this regard.
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
Same here buddy. My MacBook is from late 2008. It is 11 years old, running smoothly , and it does so looking 5 times better than your machine.
The difference is that the good looking machine is running an old OS X 10.11 while the ugly one is capable of running the latest version of Windows 10. Following the original post about longest lifespan, the ugly one is ahead considering it's running a modern OS. Still, both devices are to old for modern applications.
Nonsense. The capabilities of a machine depends on the CPU. You cannot override CPU’s physical limitations with the OS, no matter how modern it is. Windows support of earlier machines is because those were crap in terms of security. This a just a burden on Microsoft, not progress.
Not quite. At a cost of speed, "physical limitations" of CPUs apart from speed can oft be "overridden" with software emulation. If the CPU is 64 bit, and it's running Windows 10, it can run pretty much all modern software, albeit much more slowly than a modern CPU. Oh, and it gets security updates.
To increase your signal to noise ratio please go to ark.intel.com, find Intel Core Duo under Legacy Intel Processors, compare it to today’s 9th generation Intel. Then please tell us what capabilities can you implement via software emulation to make it run as 9th gen Intel !...
A Core Duo will always run as Core Duo regardless of the OS or whatever software emulation you implement. In most cases a legacy machine will run faster under its native OS, XP Vista or whatever, not to mention also the legacy driver support. Windows 10 forums are full of people screaming because of the lack of legacy driver support and reverting back to their legacy OS for that reason. Yes you get a modern OS and most probably better security but you lose the fingerprint reader or the sound card...
You'll note I said 64-bit. Core Duos are not 64 bit. But in any case, it is possible for a 32-bit CPU to do 64-bit calculations, but they are much slower as they're done in software. Like I said, if an older CPU doesn't support an extension of x64 that a modern piece of software uses, the missing extension is emulated in software. It is much slower, as I said, but it allows modern software to run on older CPUs. If this wasn't the case, it would mean software would always have to be written for the lowest target CPU that the developer thinks may be used. Otherwise the software would crash as soon as an unsupported instruction was encountered. No developer would specifically target a 9th gen i9, as it would only be supported on a tiny subset of systems.
Driver support is a different beast entirely, that's up to the manufacturer of the peripheral on a PC. If a manufacturer keeps the peripheral updated, even a 15 year old peripheral will run just fine in Win 10. Apple supplies all the drivers for Macs and could keep old drivers updated to ensure they worked on newer OSs, so your point is moot; the same issue would not pertain to Macs.
And to prove my point, the Church-Turing thesis corroborates exactly what I said above.
What is the point of “emulation” in this? We are not talking about the emulation of a few missing instructions among processors of a couple of generations old, we are talking about decade old architectural differences. You cannot emulate a higher architecture in a decade-old lower architecture, that is the opposite. Theoretically you can as an undergraduate homework, or you can emulate this and that, but the industry has yet to see a “i9 emulator” for Core Duos.
But, what is your point? Windows 10 runs on these old processors, obviously not as fast and smooth as on a modern CPU, but it works and get regular updates.
What’s your point? Windows 10 will also run on the same generation old Mac. Hahaha
Imagine a company looking through your mail, tracking where you go & what you buy to send advertising to you. In the past that would have been intolerable. But that is what Google does. It mines data on its apps, ties it to the user and uses that data to send individualized ads to the customer. This is how Google makes most of its money.
I minimize that kind of data tracking as much as possible & part of how I do that is to carefully use Apple products to reduce data tracking for ads. In addition, Apple has top notch customer service & devices which have OS support/updates for many years. The Apple ecosystem works well across its devices. Apple products by & large are simple to use & yet are very powerful.
For all those things which benefit me, I’m willing to pay a reasonable amount more.
You don’t think Apple would do the same? Tim Cook talking about privacy isn’t a guarantee. He may one day make the “pragmatic” decision to sell your data.
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
Same here buddy. My MacBook is from late 2008. It is 11 years old, running smoothly , and it does so looking 5 times better than your machine.
The difference is that the good looking machine is running an old OS X 10.11 while the ugly one is capable of running the latest version of Windows 10. Following the original post about longest lifespan, the ugly one is ahead considering it's running a modern OS. Still, both devices are to old for modern applications.
Nonsense. The capabilities of a machine depends on the CPU. You cannot override CPU’s physical limitations with the OS, no matter how modern it is. Windows support of earlier machines is because those were crap in terms of security. This a just a burden on Microsoft, not progress.
Not quite. At a cost of speed, "physical limitations" of CPUs apart from speed can oft be "overridden" with software emulation. If the CPU is 64 bit, and it's running Windows 10, it can run pretty much all modern software, albeit much more slowly than a modern CPU. Oh, and it gets security updates.
To increase your signal to noise ratio please go to ark.intel.com, find Intel Core Duo under Legacy Intel Processors, compare it to today’s 9th generation Intel. Then please tell us what capabilities can you implement via software emulation to make it run as 9th gen Intel !...
A Core Duo will always run as Core Duo regardless of the OS or whatever software emulation you implement. In most cases a legacy machine will run faster under its native OS, XP Vista or whatever, not to mention also the legacy driver support. Windows 10 forums are full of people screaming because of the lack of legacy driver support and reverting back to their legacy OS for that reason. Yes you get a modern OS and most probably better security but you lose the fingerprint reader or the sound card...
You'll note I said 64-bit. Core Duos are not 64 bit. But in any case, it is possible for a 32-bit CPU to do 64-bit calculations, but they are much slower as they're done in software. Like I said, if an older CPU doesn't support an extension of x64 that a modern piece of software uses, the missing extension is emulated in software. It is much slower, as I said, but it allows modern software to run on older CPUs. If this wasn't the case, it would mean software would always have to be written for the lowest target CPU that the developer thinks may be used. Otherwise the software would crash as soon as an unsupported instruction was encountered. No developer would specifically target a 9th gen i9, as it would only be supported on a tiny subset of systems.
Driver support is a different beast entirely, that's up to the manufacturer of the peripheral on a PC. If a manufacturer keeps the peripheral updated, even a 15 year old peripheral will run just fine in Win 10. Apple supplies all the drivers for Macs and could keep old drivers updated to ensure they worked on newer OSs, so your point is moot; the same issue would not pertain to Macs.
And to prove my point, the Church-Turing thesis corroborates exactly what I said above.
What is the point of “emulation” in this? We are not talking about the emulation of a few missing instructions among processors of a couple of generations old, we are talking about decade old architectural differences. You cannot emulate a higher architecture in a decade-old lower architecture, that is the opposite. Theoretically you can as an undergraduate homework, or you can emulate this and that, but the industry has yet to see a “i9 emulator” for Core Duos.
But, what is your point? Windows 10 runs on these old processors, obviously not as fast and smooth as on a modern CPU, but it works and get regular updates.
What’s your point? Windows 10 will also run on the same generation old Mac. Hahaha
Yes, that is exactly the point! Because macOS will not.. Did you even bother to read the thread?
So leading they threw practicality out the window in regards to ports. Here we are several years after the USB-C debut and still USB-A is found everywhere. Who in their right minds wants to throw out all those thumb drives and legacy USB-A peripherals? Nobody. And to make them work with newer MacBook "Pros" you need dongles, which are a bother.
With regard to the butterfly keyboard, big-time Apple fan John Gruber, who is so pro-Apple that Apple often grants him sit-down interviews to top Apple executives, had a few choice words to say:
"...it used to be the case that Apple’s notebook keyboards were widely hailed as the best in the world — that’s no longer the case, and I think that’s a problem."
I side with John. I love Apple, but I'm not blind to reality. They are in many ways NOT leading the way, and that needs to change.
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
There's a difference between having it run a specific OS and having a good experience running it. Sure, Apple could also allow for a 2006 Mac to run macOS Mojave, but would the user have a good experience, no.
You are also not the norm. Most consumers don't keep their computers around for 12yrs.
Also, I have a friend who works for a company that has Lenovo laptops and he says they're the biggest pieces of shit they have. The repair person while as well setup shop there because he's there at least once every other week fixing something on a laptop.
Yes, it is unusual to use a 12 year old computer, but since it does what I want it do and does it well, I keep using it. And, running an out of date OS is not a good experience.
As for your friend, I would question him on that claim because business class Lenovo's are generally regarded as "bullet proof". The model I mentioned is the only model I have torn down completely (it's brother got drowned with some coffee) and it has a titanium frame inside a solid case supporting everything. I was totally impressed with its design. And, then you get to the manual which shows you how to replace every part, screw by screw, all the way down to the CPU -- so the machine is very maintainable all the way down to replacing the thermal grease.
But, the point of the post was not to trash Apple or brag about ThinkPads. It was in response to the claim that Macs & Apple products in general have the "longest lifespan" of all -- which they don't. (And, with their increasing trend toward being non-repairable and non-upgradeable they are actually going in the opposite direction)
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
Same here buddy. My MacBook is from late 2008. It is 11 years old, running smoothly , and it does so looking 5 times better than your machine.
The difference is that the good looking machine is running an old OS X 10.11 while the ugly one is capable of running the latest version of Windows 10. Following the original post about longest lifespan, the ugly one is ahead considering it's running a modern OS. Still, both devices are to old for modern applications.
Nonsense. The capabilities of a machine depends on the CPU. You cannot override CPU’s physical limitations with the OS, no matter how modern it is. Windows support of earlier machines is because those were crap in terms of security. This a just a burden on Microsoft, not progress.
Not quite. At a cost of speed, "physical limitations" of CPUs apart from speed can oft be "overridden" with software emulation. If the CPU is 64 bit, and it's running Windows 10, it can run pretty much all modern software, albeit much more slowly than a modern CPU. Oh, and it gets security updates.
To increase your signal to noise ratio please go to ark.intel.com, find Intel Core Duo under Legacy Intel Processors, compare it to today’s 9th generation Intel. Then please tell us what capabilities can you implement via software emulation to make it run as 9th gen Intel !...
A Core Duo will always run as Core Duo regardless of the OS or whatever software emulation you implement. In most cases a legacy machine will run faster under its native OS, XP Vista or whatever, not to mention also the legacy driver support. Windows 10 forums are full of people screaming because of the lack of legacy driver support and reverting back to their legacy OS for that reason. Yes you get a modern OS and most probably better security but you lose the fingerprint reader or the sound card...
You'll note I said 64-bit. Core Duos are not 64 bit. But in any case, it is possible for a 32-bit CPU to do 64-bit calculations, but they are much slower as they're done in software. Like I said, if an older CPU doesn't support an extension of x64 that a modern piece of software uses, the missing extension is emulated in software. It is much slower, as I said, but it allows modern software to run on older CPUs. If this wasn't the case, it would mean software would always have to be written for the lowest target CPU that the developer thinks may be used. Otherwise the software would crash as soon as an unsupported instruction was encountered. No developer would specifically target a 9th gen i9, as it would only be supported on a tiny subset of systems.
Driver support is a different beast entirely, that's up to the manufacturer of the peripheral on a PC. If a manufacturer keeps the peripheral updated, even a 15 year old peripheral will run just fine in Win 10. Apple supplies all the drivers for Macs and could keep old drivers updated to ensure they worked on newer OSs, so your point is moot; the same issue would not pertain to Macs.
And to prove my point, the Church-Turing thesis corroborates exactly what I said above.
What is the point of “emulation” in this? We are not talking about the emulation of a few missing instructions among processors of a couple of generations old, we are talking about decade old architectural differences. You cannot emulate a higher architecture in a decade-old lower architecture, that is the opposite. Theoretically you can as an undergraduate homework, or you can emulate this and that, but the industry has yet to see a “i9 emulator” for Core Duos.
But, what is your point? Windows 10 runs on these old processors, obviously not as fast and smooth as on a modern CPU, but it works and get regular updates.
The point was “Windows 10 runs, macOS doesn’t run” nonsense. If Windows 10 runs, that is not better than XP or Vista and to what expense? According to the forums to the expense of losing legacy driver support for parts of your machine. Church-Turing thesis doesn’t resolve the missing driver issue.
The main factor now driving Apple profitability is the software (iOS, MacOS), not the hardware.
Apple’s hardware is being destroyed by a ‘design extremism’ that prioritises thinness and minimalism over functionality. This results in faulty keyboards, lack of ports and the removal of much loved features Ike Touch ID and MagSafe cables.
Jony Ives has much to answer for in this respect. But Tim Cook won’t challenge him because he is basically a supply chain management guy, and feels out of his depth when it comes to design aesthetics and functionality.
If Steve Jobs we’re alive today he would tell Ives, ‘I don’t care how elegantly thin the new MacBook is, if the keyboard doesn’t work it’s trash! And stop removing stuff from our products that people really like - like ports, and TouchID. We’re not creating art here, we’re trying to make products that folks love to use and can rely on! If this means they have to be a little thicker - make them thicker, God dam it!’
If Jobs was in a particularly bad mood, he might add, ‘Look Jony, you’ve had a good run here at Apple, but all this adulation and success has gone to your head. You’ve become a design extremist, and our products are suffering for it. If you don’t prioritise functionality over thinness it’s time for you to move on.’
Not to disagree with what you're saying, but Jobs valued both design and functionality -- he refused to trade one for the other. He liked his cake with ice cream. It wasn't either/or, one or the other - it was both.
Good article. “Good enough” will always be popular with the budget crowd, which uses price as the primary purchase consideration. Affordable luxury brands like Apple will continue to do fine with those who do not select based on price alone, and consider the value derived from better built systems and devices.
This is fine. There will always be both, likely in any product category from smartphones to hammers. Tho only in this product category will we see the price people creating accounts and posts to spin the narrative of decreasing sales to somehow imply their knockoff brands are “winning”.
I'm not at all sure that "good enough" is only popular with the "Budget Crowd". No responsible person should want to pay more for something they don't need or want. ... Although I could afford a Rolls, Bentley or Porsche, I'm happy with my Honda. It serves my needs well.
In the case of laptops or smart phones, why would a person who sits at a table and browses the internet or checks email or facebook need or want an expensive, high powered, high end product? In the case of laptops, a $2,000 laptop would simply be a waste of money.
Oops, you compared high priced car brands to Hondas. You should have realized that Honda in your comparison is Apple. Affordable and with a good balance of form and function, plus better build quality than a Rolls Royce, and maybe even a Porsche.
Huh? No, Apple products are not mid range priced like Honda's. They are relatively expensive -- particularly when you look at the Mac line and particularly when you compare them based only on hardware features. Apple does produce some mid-range priced iPhones -- but those are older models, not state of the art. And, their Mac line is just plain expensive, high end stuff.
That's not to trash them: because, while they do carry a high price, they also provide high levels of VALUE -- generally, you get what you pay for. But, they aren't cheap or even mid-range.
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
Yeah like a windows computer runs perfectly with 4gb of ram and 256 mb of video memory. Sorry but no.
Sorry, but it does run pretty much perfectly -- although it would benefit from an SSD. As for your complaint of 4Gb RAM* & 256Mb of video memory, MBA's came with 4Gb and no video memory up until 2017.
(* Actually, the 2006 Thinkpad with a 32bit processor can only use 3Gb of its available 4Gb of physical RAM. But, it still does just fine with it).
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
I thought the OP said Apple devices, not laptops specifically when referring to the longest lifespan in the business. Most of the planned obsolescence claims I have seen refer to iPhones and not Apple,s other hardware. You have to admit more folks are using older Mac laptops than they are 12 year old Thinkpads.
So yes a non Mac can have a long service life but it isn’t as likely in my opinion. My two macs at home are both late 2011 ( Mini & Air ) and they both ares still running strong. This is possible, but not typical for windows machines of the same age in my experience. Just my 2c ...
Huh? You compare a 2011 machine to a 2006 machine to say it's service life is as long? Let's talk in another 5 years.
But, again, I am not trashing the Macs. Merely contesting the statement that Macs have the longest service life of all. They do if you compare them to crappy HPs, but not other, high end, well made machines.
Could Apple's lock on premium luxury be eclipsed by an era of good-enough gear?
Expanding on the above question is this second question:
Is your existing Apple gear "good enough" to you because you would be losing functionality by purchasing the newest Apple gear?
To which I answer: YES
My mid-2015 top-end 15" MBP is "good enough" because to purchase a newer MBP would mean lose of "Pro" features important to me. SD Card slot, USB-A ports, MagSafe, a good keyboard, extension power cord in the box, the list goes on.
So Apple is not merely in danger of good enough gear from rivals, but it is also in danger of losing sales to the Mac faithful if they don't start remembering the practical day-to-day needs of The Rest of Us.
Another way of posing your question is,
Where should you get off the legacy train and get on the bullet train?
Clearly Apple was correct in moving on from the internal floppy diskette drive, etc, etc. not everyone is ready to make the jump, but as surrounding tech also moves forward the legacy stuff Apple leads in moving on from will fall away for all computer users.
For example, when I purchased my MacBook Air a bunch of years ago the GoPro cameras didn’t have wireless transfer capabilities. My GoPro HERO 7 Black, however, can transfer files wirelessly to the GoPro app running on my iPhone. And when I want to transfer via cable directly to my new MacBook Pro, well, guess what cable the GoPro uses... yup, USB-C.
Time will come when those legacy ports on your older Mac will seem antiquated. Apple is usually leading the way in this regard.
An analogy to your argument is: Should GM stop producing vehicles with gasoline engines and go strictly with fully electric only power trains -- (even though they can't meet the needs of most users) just because that is where the industry is headed?
I suppose Google cannot be as bad as you said, considering Apple agreed to accept billions of dollars from Google to make their search engine default in iOS and macOS devices, right?
and how difficult is it to change the search engine and homepage in MacOS? It is easy.
I rarely do searching on my phone so there really is little history to pilfer.
90% of Google domains, 100% of FB and Twitter are all blocked at my home firewall. It is amazing how fast pages load with all that crud disabled.
You know what is easier? Apple doing something to support their privacy stance, and choose a search engine that respects privacy. Don't you think that instead of receiving billions of dollars from Google, they should invest a few millions / billions in a company like DuckDuckGo?
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
I thought the OP said Apple devices, not laptops specifically when referring to the longest lifespan in the business. Most of the planned obsolescence claims I have seen refer to iPhones and not Apple,s other hardware. You have to admit more folks are using older Mac laptops than they are 12 year old Thinkpads.
So yes a non Mac can have a long service life but it isn’t as likely in my opinion. My two macs at home are both late 2011 ( Mini & Air ) and they both ares still running strong. This is possible, but not typical for windows machines of the same age in my experience. Just my 2c ...
Huh? You compare a 2011 machine to a 2006 machine to say it's service life is as long? Let's talk in another 5 years.
But, again, I am not trashing the Macs. Merely contesting the statement that Macs have the longest service life of all. They do if you compare them to crappy HPs, but not other, high end, well made machines.
A look at the second hand markets will disprove you. It is well known that the Macs have better second hand value because they last longer. A PC too may last even longer than a Mac provided that you can live with continuous DIY tinkering. At these fringe cases the issue becomes more of a sentimental one than a technical one. We cannot come to a conclusion by continuously autopsying dead models, we just have to respect people’s sentimental ties with their legacy investments. Meanwhile I have a gut feeling that the trend is towards a shortened lifecycle regardless of the model or brand: as long as the processors become more powerful the Heat emerges everywhere and controlling the heat becomes the first and foremost engineering task. “Cold” devices are the mainstream practical solution (smartphones, tablets) and for “hot” devices designing to dismiss the heat first (thinner, lighter) is the starting point in this war against Physics.
Imagine a company looking through your mail, tracking where you go & what you buy to send advertising to you. In the past that would have been intolerable. But that is what Google does. It mines data on its apps, ties it to the user and uses that data to send individualized ads to the customer. This is how Google makes most of its money.
I minimize that kind of data tracking as much as possible & part of how I do that is to carefully use Apple products to reduce data tracking for ads. In addition, Apple has top notch customer service & devices which have OS support/updates for many years. The Apple ecosystem works well across its devices. Apple products by & large are simple to use & yet are very powerful.
For all those things which benefit me, I’m willing to pay a reasonable amount more.
I suppose Google cannot be as bad as you said, considering Apple agreed to accept billions of dollars from Google to make their search engine default in iOS and macOS devices, right?
Oops, you forgot what Tom Cook said on that very issue. iOS/Safari has controls that limit the data even Google can collect.
Oops, I remember Cook answer in the interview, “Look at what we’ve done with the controls we’ve built in,” Cook said. “We have private web browsing. We have an intelligent tracker prevention. What we’ve tried to do is come up with ways to help our users through their course of the day. It’s not a perfect thing. I’d be the very first person to say that. But it goes a long way to helping,”
Could it be that the "no so perfect thing" is the enough information Google need from Apple customers to pay billions of dollars per year? Taking that aside, way is Apple, who praises their privacy POV make business and accept money of one of the worst companies in business privacy-wise, and makes them the default search engine for their users? Does it makes sense to you?
Oops, you forgot to included the key point...
In a recent interview on Axios on HBO, Tim Cook opened up about this issue. When it comes to default search engines, it’s all about the merit.
“I think their search engine is the best,” Cook said. And as far as the privacy issues are concerned, Tim feels confident that Apple is doing enough with Safari to stop Google from tracking Apple users.
“Look at what we’ve done with the controls we’ve built in. We have private web browsing. We have an intelligent tracker prevention. What we’ve tried to do is come up with ways to help our users through their course of the day. It’s not a perfect thing. I’d be the very first person to say that. But it goes a long way to helping.”
Oops, I know that TC talks about the privacy mechanisms Safari has, but in the same line of the conversation he mentions they are "not a perfect thing". When you add to this that Google pays $9B in one year to Apple to make Google Search the default search engine in iOS and macOS, don't you think that Google is gaining something? Don't you think that Apple should stop receiving money from a company with awful privacy practices as Google (at least that's what you read in articles and comments in this website) and invest a few millions (or even billions) in a search engine that respect privacy, like DuckDuckGo? That would in line with Apple privacy stance. The agreement they have with Google don't helps their privacy case.
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
Same here buddy. My MacBook is from late 2008. It is 11 years old, running smoothly , and it does so looking 5 times better than your machine.
The difference is that the good looking machine is running an old OS X 10.11 while the ugly one is capable of running the latest version of Windows 10. Following the original post about longest lifespan, the ugly one is ahead considering it's running a modern OS. Still, both devices are to old for modern applications.
Nonsense. The capabilities of a machine depends on the CPU. You cannot override CPU’s physical limitations with the OS, no matter how modern it is. Windows support of earlier machines is because those were crap in terms of security. This a just a burden on Microsoft, not progress.
Not quite. At a cost of speed, "physical limitations" of CPUs apart from speed can oft be "overridden" with software emulation. If the CPU is 64 bit, and it's running Windows 10, it can run pretty much all modern software, albeit much more slowly than a modern CPU. Oh, and it gets security updates.
To increase your signal to noise ratio please go to ark.intel.com, find Intel Core Duo under Legacy Intel Processors, compare it to today’s 9th generation Intel. Then please tell us what capabilities can you implement via software emulation to make it run as 9th gen Intel !...
A Core Duo will always run as Core Duo regardless of the OS or whatever software emulation you implement. In most cases a legacy machine will run faster under its native OS, XP Vista or whatever, not to mention also the legacy driver support. Windows 10 forums are full of people screaming because of the lack of legacy driver support and reverting back to their legacy OS for that reason. Yes you get a modern OS and most probably better security but you lose the fingerprint reader or the sound card...
You'll note I said 64-bit. Core Duos are not 64 bit. But in any case, it is possible for a 32-bit CPU to do 64-bit calculations, but they are much slower as they're done in software. Like I said, if an older CPU doesn't support an extension of x64 that a modern piece of software uses, the missing extension is emulated in software. It is much slower, as I said, but it allows modern software to run on older CPUs. If this wasn't the case, it would mean software would always have to be written for the lowest target CPU that the developer thinks may be used. Otherwise the software would crash as soon as an unsupported instruction was encountered. No developer would specifically target a 9th gen i9, as it would only be supported on a tiny subset of systems.
Driver support is a different beast entirely, that's up to the manufacturer of the peripheral on a PC. If a manufacturer keeps the peripheral updated, even a 15 year old peripheral will run just fine in Win 10. Apple supplies all the drivers for Macs and could keep old drivers updated to ensure they worked on newer OSs, so your point is moot; the same issue would not pertain to Macs.
And to prove my point, the Church-Turing thesis corroborates exactly what I said above.
What is the point of “emulation” in this? We are not talking about the emulation of a few missing instructions among processors of a couple of generations old, we are talking about decade old architectural differences. You cannot emulate a higher architecture in a decade-old lower architecture, that is the opposite. Theoretically you can as an undergraduate homework, or you can emulate this and that, but the industry has yet to see a “i9 emulator” for Core Duos.
But, what is your point? Windows 10 runs on these old processors, obviously not as fast and smooth as on a modern CPU, but it works and get regular updates.
The point was “Windows 10 runs, macOS doesn’t run” nonsense. If Windows 10 runs, that is not better than XP or Vista and to what expense? According to the forums to the expense of losing legacy driver support for parts of your machine. Church-Turing thesis doesn’t resolve the missing driver issue.
So, "the forums" and I have different experiences then. I dual-boot my old HP laptop between Linux and Windows without any driver issues at all. But I know some colleagues have had issues with non-signed legacy drivers, which I guess is a good thing, from a security point of view. What nonsense are you referring to, wasn't the original statement true? Of course Windows 10 is better than Vista. Have you tried, or are you just trolling?
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
Same here buddy. My MacBook is from late 2008. It is 11 years old, running smoothly , and it does so looking 5 times better than your machine.
The difference is that the good looking machine is running an old OS X 10.11 while the ugly one is capable of running the latest version of Windows 10. Following the original post about longest lifespan, the ugly one is ahead considering it's running a modern OS. Still, both devices are to old for modern applications.
Ever heard of dosdude1? My 2009 Mac runs macOS 10.14 just fine. Its probable that the 2008 Mac is similar capable.
Diminishing returns is here. Apple’s planned obsolescence as well. Who will prevail? The customer who has no sense will.
You’re high. Apple devices have the longest lifespan in the business — both in official support terms (iOS), and in real world useful lifespan. My primary desktop is a 2011 iMac. I have an iphone 4s that was used as a primary device by a family member until a year or two ago and now is a backup device. What other brand has the same support and lifespan longevity?
My Lenovo Thinkpad T60P laptop is over 12 years old and runs like it was new -- but with a modern OS and I'm thinking swapping its main harddrive for an SSD. How does Apple have the "longest lifespan" ?
Same here buddy. My MacBook is from late 2008. It is 11 years old, running smoothly , and it does so looking 5 times better than your machine.
The difference is that the good looking machine is running an old OS X 10.11 while the ugly one is capable of running the latest version of Windows 10. Following the original post about longest lifespan, the ugly one is ahead considering it's running a modern OS. Still, both devices are to old for modern applications.
Ever heard of dosdude1? My 2009 Mac runs macOS 10.14 just fine. Its probable that the 2008 Mac is similar capable.
Thanks for the heads up. I hadn't heard of it. It might come in handy some day.
Comments
it looks like a badly designed 2007 Nokia E90. That phone was actually quite elegant.
Another way of posing your question is,
Where should you get off the legacy train and get on the bullet train?
Clearly Apple was correct in moving on from the internal floppy diskette drive, etc, etc. not everyone is ready to make the jump, but as surrounding tech also moves forward the legacy stuff Apple leads in moving on from will fall away for all computer users.
For example, when I purchased my MacBook Air a bunch of years ago the GoPro cameras didn’t have wireless transfer capabilities. My GoPro HERO 7 Black, however, can transfer files wirelessly to the GoPro app running on my iPhone. And when I want to transfer via cable directly to my new MacBook Pro, well, guess what cable the GoPro uses... yup, USB-C.
Time will come when those legacy ports on your older Mac will seem antiquated. Apple is usually leading the way in this regard.
What’s your point? Windows 10 will also run on the same generation old Mac. Hahaha
With regard to the butterfly keyboard, big-time Apple fan John Gruber, who is so pro-Apple that Apple often grants him sit-down interviews to top Apple executives, had a few choice words to say:
https://daringfireball.net/2019/02/my_2018_apple_report_card
Short quote from that page:
"...it used to be the case that Apple’s notebook keyboards were widely hailed as the best in the world — that’s no longer the case, and I think that’s a problem."
I side with John. I love Apple, but I'm not blind to reality. They are in many ways NOT leading the way, and that needs to change.
And, running an out of date OS is not a good experience.
As for your friend, I would question him on that claim because business class Lenovo's are generally regarded as "bullet proof". The model I mentioned is the only model I have torn down completely (it's brother got drowned with some coffee) and it has a titanium frame inside a solid case supporting everything. I was totally impressed with its design. And, then you get to the manual which shows you how to replace every part, screw by screw, all the way down to the CPU -- so the machine is very maintainable all the way down to replacing the thermal grease.
But, the point of the post was not to trash Apple or brag about ThinkPads. It was in response to the claim that Macs & Apple products in general have the "longest lifespan" of all -- which they don't. (And, with their increasing trend toward being non-repairable and non-upgradeable they are actually going in the opposite direction)
That's not to trash them: because, while they do carry a high price, they also provide high levels of VALUE -- generally, you get what you pay for. But, they aren't cheap or even mid-range.
As for your complaint of 4Gb RAM* & 256Mb of video memory, MBA's came with 4Gb and no video memory up until 2017.
(* Actually, the 2006 Thinkpad with a 32bit processor can only use 3Gb of its available 4Gb of physical RAM. But, it still does just fine with it).
But, again, I am not trashing the Macs. Merely contesting the statement that Macs have the longest service life of all. They do if you compare them to crappy HPs, but not other, high end, well made machines.
What nonsense are you referring to, wasn't the original statement true? Of course Windows 10 is better than Vista. Have you tried, or are you just trolling?
Its probable that the 2008 Mac is similar capable.