An Apology

[DalekSec]

Since i first started getting into Computers (back when i was 13/14) I've always had a deep hatred for Macs and Apple, ask anyone i know they always known me as the biggest anti-apple guy!

 

Fast forward 10 years, last month i brought my first Mac, to the bemusement of many, and i gotta say, i love it.

 

The Macbook is extremely well built, the OS is clean and easy to use. I'm even starting to prefer it to Windows 10! (I would never fully go over, i'm still a PC gamer/builder at heart!)

 

But anything i need doing now that doesn't require the firepower of my main PC i use my Mac for.

 

Sorry i'm sorry for hating on Macs for the last 10 years or so, i am now fully converted.

 

So to be clear, i love my Macbook... but i still hate Apple as a company, just in the way they work!

 

... just if they came with RGB

[NB9457]

In the unlikely event you have a problem, the customer service is some of the best I've ever had.

 

When I had my iPhone, it had a single dead pixel, so took it to Apple, they said they'd repair and apologised they were busy and said it'd take them just over an hour to put a new screen in.

 

Fast forward a year later, the Samsung Galaxy comes out so I give it a try, not long after having it, microphone stops working, took just shy of three weeks to get it back.

[unixman_again]

Why do you hate the way Apple work? With Apple you buy the complete solution. With M$ you buy an o/s and then you have to buy some hardware to run it on. Different marketing strategies. Apple is akin to buying a car. Microsoft is akin to buying a kit car. Kit car are usually unfinished and unreliable.

[davethetekkie]

You're not alone... this time 10 years ago I HATED Apple... I couldn't understand why they could charge over a grand for a laptop with a £600 spec for anyone else's money. Fast forward and here I am typing this on my MacBook Pro with my iPhone SE and iPad Air 2 close at hand. As you say, the build quality is top notch on all and the integration between devices is fantastic. Just a shame their gear ships without any gaming chops of any description... I'll soon be building a new basic gaming PC to sit alongside this!

[3s-gtech]

Much as some things with Apple equipment drive me crazy (mostly random permissions issues with OS X and the inability to lock certain parts of iOS down) I like their stuff very much. Our 7 year old Macs are still fighting fit and work beautifully. They were a faff to upgrade but not impossible. Our iPads are surviving well. My own iPhone 4s and now 5 have been a delight to use after Android, totally sold on them. I would have a Mac as a second home machine, but residual values on ancient ones are still very high!

[XiJ]

I've been accused of being an apple fan boy - which is partly true I guess - but only cos I tried both and the more I used my mac the more it just seemed 'to work'. This was an early WinXP era and I haven't really looked back. Win7 was much better than I thought and I quite like many Win10 things (apart from the intrusive windows update).

 

My 27" iMac is from 2011 and with an SSD and 2tb hdd I can't find a reason to justify changing. Same for my MBP 2012 15" which has a 1tb SSD and Quad core i7. And an Ethernet port

[3s-gtech]

Macs love SSDs. The difference seems to be even more pronounced than with a Windows PC. IME an old Core 2 Duo iMac with SSD is quicker than a Broadwell i5 powered Mac Mini with HDD.

[LeMarchand]

Since i first started getting into Computers (back when i was 13/14) I've always had a deep hatred for Macs and Apple, ask anyone i know they always known me as the biggest anti-apple guy!

 

Fast forward 10 years, last month i brought my first Mac, to the bemusement of many, and i gotta say, i love it.

 

The Macbook is extremely well built, the OS is clean and easy to use. I'm even starting to prefer it to Windows 10! (I would never fully go over, i'm still a PC gamer/builder at heart!)

 

But anything i need doing now that doesn't require the firepower of my main PC i use my Mac for.

 

Sorry i'm sorry for hating on Macs for the last 10 years or so, i am now fully converted.

 

So to be clear, i love my Macbook... but i still hate Apple as a company, just in the way they work!

 

... just if they came with RGB

 

 

I do appreciate that their kit is well built, and they have forced others to improve their design, but I just can't reconcile the "good" they have done against the whole "App Store" and increasingly closed system approaches that they have engendered.

[SpuffMonkey]

Why do you hate the way Apple work? With Apple you buy the complete solution. With M$ you buy an o/s and then you have to buy some hardware to run it on. Different marketing strategies. Apple is akin to buying a car. Microsoft is akin to buying a kit car. Kit car are usually unfinished and unreliable.

 

I'd say MS is driving a car - its some effort but you can go where and when you like, Apple is catching a train - its fast & easy, but you go where they tell you and when they tell you

[stevejp]

I'd say MS is driving a car - its some effort but you can go where and when you like, Apple is catching a train - its fast & easy, but you go where they tell you and when they tell you

 

Agreed - but, for the majority (IMO) of tech users - just your average joe, so not the esteemed inhabitants of this forum - that is what they want and need. They don't want to be fiddling around with the innards (ooh-er, matron!) of their computer every year, or struggling with software glitches, conflicts and half-thought-out upgrades. They don't want or need to go 'where and when they like', they just want it (to paraphrase) to work - to do what they need to do in they easiest way possible. And, most of the time, that's what Apple kit does. Yes, of course there are the 'shiny, shiny' fashion is king brigade, who fall for the advertising hype, but there are many others who are willing to pay the premium for a hassle-free tech experience.

Just my opinion - no offence meant to anyone!

[GrumbleDook]

As a long time Mac Evangelist ... you use what you need.

Most of my machines are Apple devices but I liked my OnePlus3T as much as my iPhone SE.

I'm moving my work machine to a windows 10 device mainly because some of the thing I want/need to do are too much of a faff on macOS.

 

Excel for Mac sucks compared the the windows equivalent.

 

Where group mail management is needed outlook on windows is what you want ...

 

For personal use, the Apple ecosystem works for me and my family ... but we know what we are getting into.

[SpuffMonkey]

Agreed - but, for the majority (IMO) of tech users - just your average joe, so not the esteemed inhabitants of this forum - that is what they want and need. They don't want to be fiddling around with the innards (ooh-er, matron!) of their computer every year, or struggling with software glitches, conflicts and half-thought-out upgrades. They don't want or need to go 'where and when they like', they just want it (to paraphrase) to work - to do what they need to do in they easiest way possible. And, most of the time, that's what Apple kit does. Yes, of course there are the 'shiny, shiny' fashion is king brigade, who fall for the advertising hype, but there are many others who are willing to pay the premium for a hassle-free tech experience.

Just my opinion - no offence meant to anyone!

 

Yeah - I agree entirely - you plug it together and it works! For most people that's a definite plus - its just us techies that like to fiddle and go our own ways

[Davit2005]

My 6/7 year old iPhone 4 is still going strong and is now my dads.

 

At one time I had 3 MAC's, I only got into them to support my role in a secondary where they had some in the Media dept. I've never bought one new but looking at a MAC mini at the moment. The one issue with them is difficultly to expand all but the Pro models once you have bought them.

 

But for that they are very reliable and well built, not thrown together from a parts bin.

Edited September 4, 2017 by Davit2005

[GrumbleDook]

My footrest is an iMac DVSE (booted up twice a year to make sure it is ok), two 10 year old Mac Minis as emergency devices (I don't like using them too much as the lack of patches make some use dubious), home media server is 7 year old unibody MBP and present work device (until the XPS 13 turns up) is another unibody. Main home machines for me and better half are iMacs (coming up to 5 years old and going strong).

 

It is worth saying that I did boot up my old SuSE box to clear off some files a few weeks ago ... that was on an old Athlon 1000 box (a rebuilt box from Tiny) so other devices can keep going too.

[Ephelyon]

It is worth saying that I did boot up my old SuSE box to clear off some files a few weeks ago ... that was on an old Athlon 1000 box (a rebuilt box from Tiny) so other devices can keep going too.

 

+1 for SuSE!

 

The distribution more latterly styled as "openSUSE" is now my go-to for Linux - gotta love YaST2!

 

I also still have a boxed original version of "SuSE Linux Personal 9.1" on my bookshelf... =]

[unixman_again]

I run openSuse on my home box; I've been running it for three years. It's great except for the dreaded systemd. I'm going to reinstall it soon and try PCLinuxOS - the only rpm distro without systemd.

 

17 years of Linux at home now (I've never owned a Windows box) and I first used Linux professionally in 1997.

[Lonix]

Since i first started getting into Computers (back when i was 13/14) I've always had a deep hatred for Macs and Apple, ask anyone i know they always known me as the biggest anti-apple guy!

 

Fast forward 10 years, last month i brought my first Mac, to the bemusement of many, and i gotta say, i love it.

 

The Macbook is extremely well built, the OS is clean and easy to use. I'm even starting to prefer it to Windows 10! (I would never fully go over, i'm still a PC gamer/builder at heart!)

 

But anything i need doing now that doesn't require the firepower of my main PC i use my Mac for.

 

Sorry i'm sorry for hating on Macs for the last 10 years or so, i am now fully converted.

 

So to be clear, i love my Macbook... but i still hate Apple as a company, just in the way they work!

 

... just if they came with RGB

 

Funnily enough I was the other way around. Had my experiences with Macs well before I became to loath them. I've said this many times it's not the Apple logo nor the OS. It's the expense and what they generally get used for (my experience).

 

Some one walks in and see's a fancy piece of kit and before they know anything - they want it.

They get told you plug it in, it works, you get everything you need - they want it.

 

Sadly.. again my experience (something I personally fall out with people over - even techies) is the lies that get fed to the above for them.

 

They get purchased, plugged in and work - brilliant. Few weeks in to term "can we get", no problem is that all? "Yes". Few weeks/months later "can we get". Repeat the process until they are almost a replica of a Windows Vanilla setup. To be used as a word processing and internet browsing machine. Well worth the £800+ expense per device. I will then be told to budget for them while I have it slashed, I will be told I can't afford to replace 10 year old equipment while I must replace the Apple devices with a non existent budget......

 

They are fantastic, beautiful and high spec equipment. It's usually those that 'push for it' and the high cost that's the issues with quite a few people - especially me.

 

Plus - no one is willing to make decisions nor take responsibility for the mess that occurs (AKA - those that push for it). Only my experience though!

[pcstru]

I used to be a bit of a Linux evangelist, now I believe I have learned the truth - all technology is a bit rubbish, the only difference between platforms is where you encounter that rubbish, and your choice is effectively what rubbish you are willing to put up with. Which might sound a bit negative about technology but it's not. I'm in constant awe that any of this rubbish works at all. The fact that it is all a bit iffy round the edges just makes that more of a miracle.

[GrumbleDook]

 

A classic that says it all!

[unixman_again]

I used to be a bit of a Linux evangelist, now I believe I have learned the truth - all technology is a bit rubbish, the only difference between platforms is where you encounter that rubbish, and your choice is effectively what rubbish you are willing to put up with. Which might sound a bit negative about technology but it's not. I'm in constant awe that any of this rubbish works at all. The fact that it is all a bit iffy round the edges just makes that more of a miracle.

 

We experienced less problems back in the big iron and mini days. The problem is computers these days are cheap and nasty. I was only thinking the other day, how I never experienced o/s crashes on the £60,000 (that's 1997 pounds), IBM RS/6000 that was my development machine. I really miss the days when I regularly worked in £1,000,000+ boxes, and you had to know what you were doing before you were even allowed to look at one.

[pcstru]

We experienced less problems back in the big iron and mini days. The problem is computers these days are cheap and nasty. I was only thinking the other day, how I never experienced o/s crashes on the £60,000 (that's 1997 pounds), IBM RS/6000 that was my development machine. I really miss the days when I regularly worked in £1,000,000+ boxes, and you had to know what you were doing before you were even allowed to look at one.

Blimey, I think I've crashed every machine I've worked on, from micro's to big name mainframes. Mind you, they were so slow, it was sometimes hard to notice!

 

I don't miss COBOL.

[Patrick]

Don't mind the OS but i prefer windows i'd say. I own a Macbook 2010 model and it's still chugging along with decent battery life, the thing is tight as drum and feels like it was built yesterday. I don't have a problem with Mac's, but i see no reason to use them other than just wanting to pay the extra for the nicer feel.

[jthompson]

I had a similar epiphany back in 2011 when I decided to buy a 13"MBP. Hated it for the first couple of days and nearly returned it, but then my approach do doing things with it began to slowly align with the OS a bit more. I've grown to love it as a home machine, and it's still going strong after an SSD upgrade and fresh install.

 

I'd argue the build quality thing though. The hinges were faulty after a few months and I had to have them replaced, and the original DVD drive gouged some disks and also needed replacing. And the chargers are really poorly designed.

 

Whilst I love my 2011 MBP, I can't say that I'd want to buy any of the current models. No onboard ethernet and soldered storage, etc.

[Koldov]

My experience with Apple has not been so great if I'm honest.

 

I had never even been near an apple device until I started working at school.

 

Now, I DO have a Macbook Pro.... I use it for Garage Band only (occasionaly Youtube or Onedrive to upload music). The OS cannot be updated and therefore various things such as the browser cannot be updated either. Youtube complains that the browser is unsupported and I cannot find a name brand one that will install. Onedrive just shows a blank page now and I cannot see my files (probably due to the outdated browser issue). If fact sometimes I find it a bit difficult to find files on the hard drive. Possibly this is due to me being used to Windows Explorer, but to me that is logical. I understand that Macs are made more with the basic end-user in mind who never really wants to dig in to the OS, so a lot of things aren't really intuitive (again maybe a Windows comparison issue) although I guess that for a full-time geek user of MacOS, everything can be done.

 

I was gifted an iPhone 5 (but now upgrading to one without a headphone socket is not an option), which apart from the well known battery issue (which is understandable given its age) works fine, but is overkill as I have not bought in to the Apple world, don't use 99% of the apps and don't use Apple email etc.

 

Talking of sockets using something without VGA in this school would just make another load of issues. In fact there are a few older style sockets missing from the new Macbooks (forcing you to upgrade everything you want to connect it to). I also hear that newer Macbooks cannot have their RAM upgraded as it's soldered to the motherboard...?

 

Also it's insistance on using iTunes/app store for everything is driving me mad, especially how it organises everything, creates albums, makes copies...... I do a fair amount of music creation and like to listen to my tracks on my phone while I'm pottering about. I use the Groove app as putting everything into iTunes from a PC is a pain.

 

Now I'm getting nagged that my iCloud storage (or whatever it's called) is nearly full and I should purchase some more! What is it full of? Backups that I never asked it to do... and that I can't seem to access...

 

I also now have 120 iPads stuck on an outdated OS (they really aren't THAT old).

 

Oh and also the fact that after the Head purchased his new shiny, I had to spend hours making everything work like Windows (SIMS, MS Office/Outlook etc.).

 

So you know, I think that really an Apple device in an Apple world connecting to other Apple devices is fine. As said earlier in the thread, it seems that for the end user who doesn't want to think too hard and have pretty much everything done for them, Apple works hard to deliver this immersive scenario (and keep you buying their products). But, try to step outside the Apple 'box' and it all becomes very difficult to make it do what you want.

 

I do understand that Apple make their own OS and devices, so it makes a lot of sense for them to concentrate on making their 'brand' work and less sense for them to be concerned about integration with other manufacturers (of OS's or devices). It also makes sense for them to drop support for older models, as all companies eventually do (although up until Win 10, I had managed to install 7 on every piece of equipment in this place!) and it just irks me that I have (as most have said here) a perfectly well built quality laptop becoming less useable by the day as it is unable to upgrade to the latest OS.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I will say that soldered RAM is fairly common now. Most ultrabooks have it as a matter of course.

And to be fair to Apple, the modern Macbook pros are pretty much all 16GB which is plenty for a laptop usually.