benjer

SpamSandwich said:

As Rene Ritchie of iMore noted, use the iOS 11 calculator app and quickly enter this calculation:  1 + 2 + 3 

The iOS 11 animations prevent normal operations because they are so intrusive. The calculator slows down and it interferes to the point of affecting calculations.

Wow! I hadn't put 2 and 2 together (you're welcome), but I've been so frustrated using my calculator the past few weeks; I thought it was operator error and that I've just been mis-typing or not hitting the plus sign correctly when adding several numbers in a row. Now I know why.

I have a 6s, and I've noticed:

• Occasional quick battery drain (dropping 30-50% in a much shorter time than usual)
• Auto brightness takes longer to respond or dims/brightens significantly at times even when my location/light does not change
• In settings -> wifi when I am not already connected to a network, my phone does not list any available networks, and I need to turn wifi off and on again to see available networks.

I'm not sure if these are due only to the update, but I did not notice them before iOS 11.

It's interesting to reflect on the history of Apple and where they are now. On one hand, the products that get the most press are different—mobile today, desktop/laptops back them. But still, the best selling point (at least when steer people toward a macOS or iOS device) is that "It just works."

AppleInsider said:

"Do you really want to pound your competitor to the ground and look like the bully," said campaign Executive Producer Mike Refuerzo. "Thankfully at that point we were the underdog, so we could be a little more hard-hitting."

Apple will always be a bit of an underdog because of marketshare. Sure, some people now see Apple as a bully, but as long as Apple continues to focus on higher-end (and higher priced) devices, they will always be able to be hard-hitting because most people will not have an Apple device.

Is there any data on how many Mac users have upgraded their RAM and hard drive after purchase, especially in years past when it was easier for a typical user to do it on their own? For me, being able to do those upgrades myself was a selling point in the past, but I wonder if I'm in more of an extreme minority than I imagined.

I'm wary of not being able to upgrade RAM and hard drives myself, for two reasons: 1) memory and storage space goes down in price over time, so doing it myself a couple of years after purchase (or when AppleCare was up) is a way of saving money on upgrades, and 2) It's how I've kept older Macs running longer, dating back to my PowerMac G3. Even getting a hard drive replaced at the Apple Store for my work Mid-2012 MacBook Pro last month was only $130 (500GB HDD), which I didn't consider too bad a price, especially considering it's not as easy to do it my self on that machine compared to older Mac machines.

When I hear that the hard drive is fixed to the motherboard, what I hear is that once I'm out of warranty, it will cost far more to repair if the drive dies. Am I wrong in this? I understand that SSDs will last longer than HDDs under most conditions (and SSDs are getting better by the year), but I would be really annoyed to have an SSD fail a few months after AppleCare runs out and find out that the cost to repair it is well above the $150-$200 range.

I understand the difficulty with buying adapters (and having them clutter your workspace), not to mention the cost. That alone will probably prevent me from buying a Mac with only USB-C/TB3 ports for a few years. I'm in the nonprofit world, and unless I really need the power that the new MacBook Pros provide, it would not be a good use of funds to buy a new MacBook Pro that also required extra money to get new adapters, peripherals, or both.

However...

If Apple is committed to the form factor of USB-C/TB3 (so that for at least 5 years, Macs will use that same form factor), I think it's a good move. I will miss the MagSafe plug, but I would like it if I had four ports that would all fit my flash drive (yep, still use one occasionally), power cord, external hard drive, external monitor etc. Of course, it's a pain when old peripherals require an adapter (such as the move to lightning port), but if Apple sticks with it, it really will make things easier in the years to come.

If they abandon it after only a few years, however, then I'll be angry.