lorin schultz
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Apple should keep Lightning for now, but USB-A has to die
It continues to irk me that buying apple's most expensive laptop means that I also have to buy expensive cables to replace the ones that come with Apple products. Instead of saddling me with another USB-A cable I can't use and making me buy a stupidly expensive replacement, I wish Apple would at least give me a choice!Soli said:I know my desire is unpopular, but I'd personally like to see Apple address this by dropping the PSU (and EarPods) from all iDevices. This would save money and waste on many levels, including making the box considerably smaller which means they could both ship and store more units of all their iDevices in the same space. They could offer both a USB-A and USB-C-to-Lighting cables, or both a USB-C-to-Lighting cable with a USB-A(m)-to-USB-C(f) adapter for a year or two, since cables do wear out over time, are much less expensive, and require much fewer harder to recycle parts that aren't nearly as bad for landfills.
The little SanDisk external SSD I picked up for a gig a few weeks ago solves the problem brilliantly (see photo). I'd like to see more vendors adopt this approach.
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Apple should keep Lightning for now, but USB-A has to die
I think you may be in the minority. I'm not saying Apple cables are bad, but they're prone to failure same as any other cable. We've had the computer end of two MagSafe power adaptors go south on us, but that's over six years so I don't know if that's good or bad.fastasleep said:
$150? Bullshit. I've never had an Apple Lightning cable stop working, only 3rd party cables. None of my laptop chargers have failed either, and I still have my nearly 8 year old original MagSafe.rsantana said:Lighting cables has been Johnny Ive’s Achiles heel, an inexplicable engineering and design disgrace.
For decades, Apple cables (AppleTalk and ADB) represented the quality and sturdiness of Apple hardware. Nobody ever even think of one of those failing or breaking. Nowdays, you have to annualy (with luck) include in your family budget at least $150 to replace Apple lighting cables and laptop power bricks because cable failures. I love Apple computers...but man...their cables stinks..!
We have USB-A to Lightning cables all over the house, and usually replace two per year. Again, I don't know if that's good or bad.
We're spending about $75/year on replacement cables for Apple stuff.
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How to work with, edit, and share HEIC images without data loss
There are two major problems with H.264 as a source for post-production.macplusplus said:
Just out of curiosity, how H264 can be a pain at the editing stage? It is almost the default codec today with all its standard and pop-culture variants. I understand that H265 may not be needed in much of the cases, but the issues with H264 should not be that severe right now?lorin schultz said:
Thanks for the advice, but as I mentioned, space is not a consideration for me. Quality is, particularly since the vast majority of what I capture, still or video, is not the end product but an element to be incorporated into a larger project. H.264 is a pain at the editing stage, and H.265 is even worse. Same situation with JPEG and HEIC.macplusplus said:
Just leave the Camera setting as HEIC, as shown in the article. Since that setting also affects video compression, setting it to JPEG will unnecessairly revert to H264 instead of H265, then the video will take twice more space.lorin schultz said:Is there an option to save in a format with LESS compression instead of even more?
I don't store thousands of photos on my phone and have lots of storage capacity so file size isn't an issue. Image quality is. It would be nice to have a choice of something lossless, or at least only gently compressed. It makes editing so much easier.
There is no point to get obsessive-compulsive with the iPhone camera if yours is a recent model. There are some apps that saves in RAW format but these may create more problems than they resolve to non-OCD people.
The first is the frame structure. One of the ways H.264 reduces file size is to record only "unique" pixels for most frames. It only stores a complete picture in any particular frame when it absolutely has to. So it starts with a complete picture for Frame 1. For frame 2, it records only what has changed since Frame 1, not a whole image. Same with Frames 3, 4, 5, etc. until there's enough change to force a new full-picture, like on a cut to a different shot.
The editing software obviously can't work on a partial frame, so the editor is either restricted to only being able to cut and make changes where full frames exist, or the footage has to be converted into a format that compares the partial frames to the full frames and reconstructs full images for each frame. That is obviously a time-consuming process. (Some software will do the conversion in the background so it's invisible to the user, using terms like "rendering," but it still takes time and limits what the editor can do while it's processing.)
The second problem is the enormous amount of data compression. It's intended as a delivery format, so it throws away parts of the image data that are perceptually acceptable. That's fine when it's applied at the final stage, but it interferes with processing like effects and color grading that may be applied during editing. Then, since the finished edited product needs to be in a consumer-friendly format (like H.264), it suffers going through another round of heavy compression. It's like dubbing VHS tapes -- the quality gets worse with each successive copy generation.
As a delivery format, which is what it was intended to be, H.264 can actually look very good. It just isn't a good choice for an acquisition format.
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If you think Tim Cook is 'robbing' you, then so was Steve Jobs
Somehow the option to buy an older model iPhone escaped my attention. That's a valid point and is something I will look into.nht said:
Price increases in the Mac product line represent the move to higher performance in the components for SSD, TB3, screen density, etc while achieving the size and weight desired for that product line. The cost for software development increases because the OS is more complex than it was.lorin schultz said:
I hear you, except that price increases are accelerating compared to the past. Why are costs so much higher lately than they used to be?radarthekat said:
Or maybe the ratio of costs to selling prices have remained steady for cutting edge technologies. If it were milk or toasters we were talking about then I could understand your implication that input costs should not be increasing and perhaps even be going down. But Apple is doing the same thing today as it was doing 10, 15, 20 years ago; developing new products with increasing performance and capabilities. Seems that will always remain the same percentage of total costs.lorin schultz said:To pick a nit:
Consistent gross margins don't tell me anything about changes to the affordability of products. One doesn't need to be a financial analyst to figure out that the price of a 15" MacBook Pro is substantially higher, even after inflation, than it was five years ago. If the reason for that isn't growing margins, then obviously costs have also increased. Maybe Apple has a problem with cost control and/or spending decisions?
It may well be that this is just how much it costs to make fancy-pants computers now. I'm neither qualified nor adequately informed to offer an opinion about what Apple should or could do. All I'm saying is the current approach is moving the income level required to be an Apple user even higher. Our middle-class household can no longer afford the products we used to buy on a three-year cycle. Maybe I need to just accept that and walk away. I hope not, though.
Thus margins indicate that costs have increased and not profits.
Also, the needs of most middle-class households can now be met by iPads or lower tier Macs rather than 6 core i7 15" MBP. The downside to the product line is that the direct replacement for a MBP from 3 years ago has a smaller screen but likely also costs less.
Apple still provides the iPhone 7 at $449 when talking about iPhones. The iPhone 8 is $599. The three year old iPhone 6s was $649 at launch. The 8 is a solid upgrade at $50 less than your $649 replacement budget. The Xr costs $749 but is 6.1"...so it's a worthwhile stretch if you want to go that route and the same price as the 6S Plus. So if your phone was a 6S Plus in 2015 the Xr is a direct replacement at the same price.
There's just this extra tier above the tier that you purchased in 2015 and there isn't a smaller option anymore.
That you don't like the upgrade path doesn't mean that Apple has priced it out of the range of a middle-class household. If you could afford a $649 phone every three years in 2015 you can afford a $599 iPhone 8 in $2018. The Xr should be $649 next year if the pattern holds and be an excellent replacement for a 3 year old iPhone 7.
Call it "gaslighting" but the complaints are simply entitled bullshit. There's no "acceleration" in price increase. The replacement for the 6S Plus is the Xr at the same price point. There wasn't a replacement for the 6S but a viable replacement is $50 less expensive than the 6S was in 2015. The Xs is a higher tier product than the 6S was.
6S->7->8->Xr
I still get to gripe about the laptops, though. My wife absolutely insists on a 15" screen. Non-negotiable. Anything smaller is a deal-breaker. Apple offers that screen size ONLY in its most expensive model. That means buying screen size also means paying for things we don't need. That would be okay if the price were similar to previous generations, but it's not, mostly because the faster-than-the-speed-of-light storage chips Apple is using cost three spleens and a kidney to get decent capacity, and because it's soldered in place there's no way for us to cross-grade to a third-party solution that trades excessive speed for adequate capacity.
I also strongly disagree with you that there is no acceleration of price increases. We've only been Mac users since 2007, but in that time we've replaced MacBook Pros and minis twice. Each time the cost of the new machine was similar to the one it replaced. This time it costs half-again as much as before because the storage upgrade is so expensive. It may be argued that the storage is so much better that the cost increase is justified, but that doesn't change the fact that the price of Apple laptops is rising faster than it used to.
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Apple confirms T2 coprocessor blocks some third-party Mac repairs
You've got the actions right but not the intent.GeorgeBMac said:mac_dog said:Or, it could be that Apple wants to maintain some semblance of quality control. And how does someone infer “planned obsolescence”? All that does is fuel the fire of apple’s detractors.Yes, quite true...Even here at ai in a recent article on upgrading the MacMini (probably in the comments) we were told that we should re-install the original memory in the Mac Mini after we break it and ask Apple to fix it for us under warranty -- so Apple wouldn't know we were doing some DIY on it.And that's from the cult of the faithful!
You're right, the advice is If you have third-party RAM in your Mac, you should put the stock Apple RAM back in before sending the machine to Apple for repair. The reason for that is not to be deceptive, though. It's to allow an orderly, thorough, timely diagnostic and repair process. First, it's possible the third-party RAM is the problem. Putting the stock RAM back in will expose that. Second, since Apple justifiably won't assess products it didn't sell, leaving third-party parts in the machine just delays getting the problem resolved.
Apple doesn't care if you install third-party RAM. All they're saying is don't expect them to fix it while components outside their control are installed. That's reasonable.
