kiltedgreen

As for Apple getting expensive ...

I bought the original Macintosh in 1984 (9” B&W low res monitor, 128K RAM, 400K floppy disk, no hard disk) with an ImageWriter dot matrix printer.

Cost?

£2,500

GeorgeBMac said:

AI seems to forget that Microsoft is not a hardware company.   When they sell hardware it's mostly to exploit and demonstrate their software.

And, with that, Microsoft left Apple in the dust.

Nearly a decade ago they developed an OS that works either in touch-screen mode or touchpad mode.   And, since then they have proceeded to refine and perfect it. 

Meanwhile, Apple is stuck back a decade or two ago where you still need to buy and carry two devices:  One for touch-screen and one for touchpad mode.

The Windows OS provides freedom to the user:  he can use touch-screen when that works best then switch to touchpad when that works best.

Apple is lagging behind.

I can hear Steve now:   "This is crap!   Fix it!"

...  And, I am sure that they will.  Apple has always hated it when Microsoft made them look bad.

At work people have been given HP 2 in 1 laptops where the screen can be used with touch and all are running Windows 10. In the whole time I’ve been in the company, nobody has removed the screen to use it as a tablet, the only time I ever see people use its touch capability at all is when they want to swipe up or down the screen or to tap a large button. Nobody ever chooses from menus, uses tools or anything remotely similar in touch mode. I was training four people yesterday and two said “I never use the touch screen as it’s so small and you can’t see what you’re doing”. These devices have screens about the size of my iPad’s but I would never use them to work on (We plug them into large monitors at work ) whereas I can easily work on my iPad for hours with no problem.

Because Apple made the correct decision to make an iPad with touch screen and laptops without, Microsoft felt they had to differentiate themselves from Apple by combining the two. You say that the Windows user can use touch-screen when that works best. The thing is, its best is never as good as an iPad because it’s a kludge designed for force a desktop OS into a tablet and both are compromised for the worse.

also, in breaking news: Steve Jobs is dead and cannot talk to you and you can’t hear him. And a final comment from SJ:

“We’ve done tons of user testing on this,” says Jobs. “and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. It gives great demo. But after a short period of time, you start to fatigue. After an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn’t work. It’s ergonomically terrible. Touch surface want to be horizontal.”

Appleout is lagging behind? Hmmm.

nunzy said:

Apple does NOT "view itself as a software company". Apple is, and views itself as a portable device company. That is how Apple changed into a world class corporate powerhouse.

“And so, the big secret about Apple, of course -- a not so big secret, maybe -- is that Apple views itself as a a software company." ~ Steve Jobs.

Remarkable, isn’t it?

foregoneconclusion said:

henrybay said:

The class action should also include the lack of adequate keyboard travel on the new MacBooks. Shallow keys are terrible for long writing sessions. They are not much better than writing on an iPad. 

My own suspicion is that what people think is a lack of "travel" or "feel" is actually a lack of "wobble". The butterfly mechanism was specifically introduced to cut back on the wobble of the key when struck vs. the hinge design. It also seems unlikely when looking at prior keyboard designs that the keys are really traveling much further physically. There may be a difference, but you're probably talking about fractions of a millimeter.

My own suspicion is that you've never tried typing on one of the new MacBooks.

I am typing this on a 2015 MacBook Pro but I've visited my nearest Apple shop before I bought this (used) model and tried the new ones, specifically those with the Touch Bar. When typing on the new MacBooks it takes only a second to realise that its key travel is noticeably less than that of the keys on the keyboard on which I'm now typing. Absolutely nothing to do with "wobble".

boltsfan17 said:

I think it's great what Apple is doing, however green energy still impacts the environment in a negative way. Wind turbines kill a ton of birds each year. There needs to be more regulation so these wind farms can't continue to kill thousands of federally protected birds with impunity each year. 

The whole wind turbines and birds thing is a distraction. If I can quote from a 2014 article in Treehugger:

"But if the goal is to save birds, we have to look at the actual facts on the ground and not just at whatever story makes for the catchiest headline.