sandor

Apple Silicon Macs are staying in use longer than Intel Macs

sandor

July 2024

blastdoor said:

kiwimachead said:

Apple silicon is a game changer but people forget how much of a difference SSD hard drives made when they were introduced. Our 2011 MBA (SSD) died this year. It kept going well beyond software support ending and the only repair was a battery replacement. Without SSD the Intel processor would have been practically unusable a long time ago. I had a MacBook Pro with HDD (also 2011 model year) for work around 2014-2016 and it was so slow as to be almost unusable compared with the humble MBA.

SSDs were definitely a huge upgrade.

...Mac OS does a great job of prioritizing system responsiveness to the user,...

We must not be working with the same Finder.

I have seen no substantive reduction in beach balling from 10.13 through macOS 14.

in our environment, i would estimate at least one daily force restart (hold power button down) because of a beach balling Finder.

Kernel panics have definitely improved - we have 10.14 & 10.15 machines that panic at least once per week, however we very rarely see the macOS 13/14 machines panic.

Apple Silicon Macs are staying in use longer than Intel Macs

sandor

July 2024

Incidentally, the M1 has decreased service time for our office computers (about 50 & a mix of iMacs & Mac minis with a smattering of MacBooks)

Our last big batch was 2012 - ram and SSD upgrades provided an incredible lifecycle for this mature generation of Apple computers - many achieving more than a decade in service.

The first gen M1 machines have already been replaced with less that 4 years of service - the lack of an upgrade path, combined to the change in our office structure, has EOL'ed these machines much faster than the last of the upgradeable Intel Macs.

At this point, we are being forced to max out ram & step up internal storage to much higher levels in hopes of getting 5 years of service out of them.
More money up front & paying a premium for the higher specs, but hopefully it will work out better than our initial batch of M1 computers.

The speeds are great, but on the corporate side the lack of upgrade paths for the ram and storage is aggravating.

It's always been wonderful to chat with other departments who are engaged in a constant stream of component replacements with their Wintel machines many even within the first year or two. By 3 years, the major components typically have all been replaced.
Our Mac hardware has had incredibly lower support costs which completely outweighed the purchase premium.
The M1 changed the math for the worse.

Apple Towson union files labor complaint against Apple over withholding benefits

sandor

November 2022

radarthekat said:

mikethemartian said:

sbdude said:

Apparently the unionizers didn't understand what a union is or how it works. You signed a contract, now live with it. Can't wait for the NLRB to tell them exactly that.

They haven’t negotiated a contract with Apple yet.

And maybe that’s the reason Apple is holding back. Why give something for nothing to people who insist on negotiating everything.

They leaked an announcement the day prior to a unionization vote.

Apple was trying to dangle a "secret" carrot to entice workers not to unionize.
Jacka$$ corporate maneuver.

There is literally nothing Apple has done in the past 20 years that should entice their lowest paid workers to kowtow to corporate greed bosses.
Unions unite workers against robber barons. Sadly, in many ways Apple falls into this group.

New iPad requires USB-C Apple Pencil adapter for pairing & charging

sandor

October 2022

entropys said:

Maybe some of these posters are Auxio, but that does not excuse Apple putting a product out to market that requires an adapter to charge a key accessory sold by the very same company, when a design tweak of the accessory (a USBc connector, it could be a pencil gen 1b) or adaptation of the iPad to the 2nd gen pencil already available for years. doing this is a despicable move that is pretty damn shameful. And worse, user unfriendly.

What would Steve Jobs have done? Tore the supply chain bean counter that proposed the very idea a new waste disposal outlet.

Apple has been the king of dongle world forever!

At work we have a drawer full of ADC to DVI/VGA/USB, DVI to VGA, FW800 to FW400, Thunderbolt 1 to everything, Lightening to 3.5 mm, Lightening to SD card, HDMI to DVI, Lightening to USB, USB to ethernet, plus all the 30 pin adapters, plus all the Thunderbolt 2 & 3 adapters, plus all the USB-C adapters.....

The list goes on and on - usually $29 a pop, but necessary.

Jobs would have loved a single-port Macintosh, regardless of dongles. He loved "There is no step 3!"
While he made some great moves for the company, remember, he also brought forth some doozies, things like Ping (if Coldplay and Lady Gaga are hyping its unveiling....

)