Disappointed With Apple
I have been using Apple computers for many years. When I was young my family bought a Performa 475, and I absolutely fell in love with the Macintosh OS and Apple. I explored all over the computer, by the time I was 8 I understood the entire System Folder and was well-versed in the Hypertalk scripting language. Since then, I have had many Apple computers, including an LC, a 4400/200 PC Compatible, a Macintosh Portable, a Powerbook 165c, two powerbook 5300s, a Bondi Blue iMac, a Yikes G4, two G4 Powerbooks, and I also currently own a Newton MessagePad 2100. The Mac OS was one of it's kind, it was so elegant and organized, even a child could understand it yet it gave you incredible power. I loved the idea of the Human Interface Guidelines, and that a computer should be natural to use, Jef Raskin's ideas of a spatial interface that eventually found their way into the finder. I always dreamed of the Mac achieving complete dominance in the market, as I'm sure we all have.
Now that Apple has become a household name, I should be ecstatic. The operating system is now built on a relatively modern kernel, XNU, and although I would have preferred something more new and experimental such as the Dragonfly BSD kernel or some lightweight exokernel, Mac OS X achieves unparalleled stability and security. Unfortunately, in the switch to Mac OS X many of the conventions of the Human Interface Guidelines have been smashed, the finder's spatial interface is gone and has replace with a filesystem browsing method that feels abstracted and confusing. I am a system administrator and I see people get confused by it every day, something that NEVER happened with the old operating system. Thing are all terribly inconsistent and just awkward. Apple's fans and even former employees such as Steve Wozniak and Bruce Toggnazzini beg and beg for apple to do something about these issues while us users sit by with simply no well built and modern operating system with a proper interface. The finder is slow, multi-tasks horribly, and is obfuscated; it would not be difficult for Apple to fix these problems but they'd rather allocate those resources to designing and selling iPods.
Furthermore, I trust Apple's computers more than any other company's, and recommended them to my boss, who then bought ibooks for every employee except for me, I got a nice new powerbook
. We're using a Mac Mini as a small fileserver and all of the software gets the job done. Unfortunately, 2/3s of these computers have had already had hardware failures, something I had rarely dealt with before in the mac world. One of the iBooks had a logic board failure and we sent it to AppleCare, upon return we opened the box and read the list of things they had fixed. It had one entry and one entry alone, repaired system software. And by that, they meant they had installed 10.3 on this machine that was running 10.4 previously and removed all of our data, and that we had to send it in again to actually get the logic board replaced. My older powerbook's battery kept falling out, the clips on the laptop had broken, so after spending many hours on the line with apple support they convinced me that my problem was I needed a new battery, so they sent one right away. As you may have guessed, this did nothing, as the clips were broken on the laptop. So I told them this and sent the entire computer to them. When it was returned the repair list said "replaced battery," and it STILL fell out. On my third try I finally managed to get them to fix it. My brand new high-rez powerbook had the infamous lines between the pixels and a very bad battery when I first got it, it could hardly retain a charge for 20 minutes, so I asked for a new one, which solved that problem. Then I started to notice how hot my powerbook was getting doing simple things, I soon discovered that the temperature sensor for the GPU consistently reports a temperature of 100ºC even when I am just web browsing or playing a simple sprite based game. Unfortunately, when I took it to the Apple Store it was absolutely packed because it is christmas time so I decided to live with this for now, praying it is not damaging more of my computer. Previously I had gone into that same Apple store wearing my Glider Pro T-shirt, not a single employee had ever heard of glider before, it made me very sad.
I apologize for rambling, but to summarize, I am rather upset with Apple right now and I just want to know if and when they'll care about their computer users again.
Now that Apple has become a household name, I should be ecstatic. The operating system is now built on a relatively modern kernel, XNU, and although I would have preferred something more new and experimental such as the Dragonfly BSD kernel or some lightweight exokernel, Mac OS X achieves unparalleled stability and security. Unfortunately, in the switch to Mac OS X many of the conventions of the Human Interface Guidelines have been smashed, the finder's spatial interface is gone and has replace with a filesystem browsing method that feels abstracted and confusing. I am a system administrator and I see people get confused by it every day, something that NEVER happened with the old operating system. Thing are all terribly inconsistent and just awkward. Apple's fans and even former employees such as Steve Wozniak and Bruce Toggnazzini beg and beg for apple to do something about these issues while us users sit by with simply no well built and modern operating system with a proper interface. The finder is slow, multi-tasks horribly, and is obfuscated; it would not be difficult for Apple to fix these problems but they'd rather allocate those resources to designing and selling iPods.
Furthermore, I trust Apple's computers more than any other company's, and recommended them to my boss, who then bought ibooks for every employee except for me, I got a nice new powerbook
. We're using a Mac Mini as a small fileserver and all of the software gets the job done. Unfortunately, 2/3s of these computers have had already had hardware failures, something I had rarely dealt with before in the mac world. One of the iBooks had a logic board failure and we sent it to AppleCare, upon return we opened the box and read the list of things they had fixed. It had one entry and one entry alone, repaired system software. And by that, they meant they had installed 10.3 on this machine that was running 10.4 previously and removed all of our data, and that we had to send it in again to actually get the logic board replaced. My older powerbook's battery kept falling out, the clips on the laptop had broken, so after spending many hours on the line with apple support they convinced me that my problem was I needed a new battery, so they sent one right away. As you may have guessed, this did nothing, as the clips were broken on the laptop. So I told them this and sent the entire computer to them. When it was returned the repair list said "replaced battery," and it STILL fell out. On my third try I finally managed to get them to fix it. My brand new high-rez powerbook had the infamous lines between the pixels and a very bad battery when I first got it, it could hardly retain a charge for 20 minutes, so I asked for a new one, which solved that problem. Then I started to notice how hot my powerbook was getting doing simple things, I soon discovered that the temperature sensor for the GPU consistently reports a temperature of 100ºC even when I am just web browsing or playing a simple sprite based game. Unfortunately, when I took it to the Apple Store it was absolutely packed because it is christmas time so I decided to live with this for now, praying it is not damaging more of my computer. Previously I had gone into that same Apple store wearing my Glider Pro T-shirt, not a single employee had ever heard of glider before, it made me very sad.I apologize for rambling, but to summarize, I am rather upset with Apple right now and I just want to know if and when they'll care about their computer users again.
Comments
Originally posted by akheron01
The operating system is now built on a relatively modern kernel, VMX
Um, VMX is a name for AltiVec / Velocity Engine.
OS X's kernel is XNU.
And Chucker, why are you trying to invalidate is arguments by pointing out a technical mistake? That is geek arguing at it's most annoying.
that we have arguably the best computer operating system for consumer, business, creative and scientific endeavours is actually a blessing, apart from Apple's primary goal of making money.
sorry to hear of your dissapointment and troubles and if you have further things to share/ vent/ ask i'm sure quite a number of people on these forums will offer as much help as they can.