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[#] Wed Nov 11 2020 15:38:42 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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Macs have generally been ok in quality, but I think the real value proposition for Apple as opposed to other vendors has always been that they offer a fully integrated end-to-end experience, from the hardware to the software to the services that surround them. Their original edge was in usability, but the competition has largely closed that gap at this point.

For something that "lasts" ... at home, I've gone back to a build-my-own desktop so I can keep upgrading and servicing it myself. Admittedly that's more difficult to do if you want a laptop.

[#] Wed Nov 11 2020 16:59:00 EST from LoanShark

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Yup. I got fed up with Dell desktop hardware about a decade ago, and have been back on the build-your-own train ever since.

(With this one particular Dell desktop that was a problem, it was a Core 2 Duo in Dell's more or less proprietary BTX case/motherboard design. Started having hardware issues and I bought grey market motherboard, power supplies in an attempt to breathe new life back into the thing, until I just gave up and decided that it would be far more cost effective to start using open-systems parts and upgrade anything that needed repairing. Dell has since gone back to ATX, but it's too late for them to regain my business, and there would still be the issue that OEM Windows licenses don't always carry forward across component upgrades.)

My current Windows retail license is probably 9 years old, maybe more, and I haven't done a clean reinstall in a long time. I make it a point of pride to just keep indefinitely carrying the same license forward, and deal with whatever migration issues come up. :)



This machine was originally installed on a MBR/BIOS setup, and has since been migrated to GPT/UEFI without reinstalling. Was this a pain in the ass? Yes.

[#] Wed Nov 11 2020 18:46:19 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Wed Nov 11 2020 15:36:40 EST from Ragnar Danneskjold @ Uncensored
Mine clearly varies significantly. I collect a lot of old hardware too. I'm actually surprised how many machines still run and run well. I'm generally happy with Apple products, but they've lost a number of things over the past few years. Again, the only Mac that I've had that up and died is a relatively recent one.

Laptops generally suck. I don't care what brand they are.

I think laptops generally get abused With that said, I agree that most laptops suck. I've been very particular about the brands I've bought - and have always picked well. I had a Toshiba Satellite 486DX color, one of the first, when they were the "ultimate laptop" to own. I gave it to my sister-in-law, she used it through Jr. High into high school, and it never died. She gave it back to me. I have an HP DV8339US 17" laptop I bought in my 30s from the Good Guys in Sacramento where the hostage situation took place. It is a Centrino Duo. It is still running fine. I've got a Lenovo T61. It is a much sought after Lenovo Core 2 Duo, to this day. It won't die. 
People buy cheap Dell Latitude laptops, cheap Toshiba laptops, cheap MSI laptops... and they die. 
People buy expensive gaming laptops, and they're not good gaming machines, and they're not good laptops, and they're trying to do too much, and they die. 
But Macs are the most expensive, and seem to have the most problems of any brand of PC - along with maybe Microsoft Surface. And ultimately, when you get down to brass tacks, that is all they are. 

Just another Intel based PC. They're not really *special* at all. 

 

 



[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 10:20:30 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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That's one of the reasons I'm kind of looking forward to seeing the ARM based Macs. It'll be something different, something a little bit special. And it will be interesting to see if Apple can pull it off. They seem to be good at these transitions, having done it twice before. It will be especially fun to watch Apple succeed at this where Microsoft failed.

I am not an Apple user. Their platform simply isn't a fit for me. But I enjoy watching what they do, and they do seem to have a knack for moving the entire industry forward by pioneering things no one else is willing to try.

[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 12:28:38 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Thu Nov 12 2020 10:20:30 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored
That's one of the reasons I'm kind of looking forward to seeing the ARM based Macs. It'll be something different, something a little bit special. And it will be interesting to see if Apple can pull it off. They seem to be good at these transitions, having done it twice before. It will be especially fun to watch Apple succeed at this where Microsoft failed.

I am not an Apple user. Their platform simply isn't a fit for me. But I enjoy watching what they do, and they do seem to have a knack for moving the entire industry forward by pioneering things no one else is willing to try.

I've been FAMOUSLY wrong about Apple being able to pull off unlikely things, in the past: 

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/techrepublic-out-loud/why-the-ipad-will-fail-to-win-significant-market-share/


I think ultimately, Android did win the war... and that was my actual thesis. But the headline did not age well. 

With that said, I think Apple *lies* about Performance, and always has. The 2011 Unibody Macbook Pro i7 was supposed to be WAY faster than an i7 PC. Thunderbolt 2, which never took off, buried USB and they were getting more out of the ATI Radeon and i7 than PC designs. 

Unfortunately, if you USED it like that, it cooked itself. 

Now they're claiming their Mac Silicon ARM iPads are outperforming Intel cores. I simply don't believe that. I don't think it is an apples to apples comparison. The physics of it doesn't really make sense. I don't think they're out designing and out-engineering Intel on gate architecture for *performance*. They're great at optimizing for battery life. 

But more than that, they've been making claims like this since the Mac 68k machines - and they've always been theoretical wins. Real world, it doesn't work out quite like that. "You've got the fastest machine? But can you do this? No? Why not? It would be so much better on your FASTER machine. Show me another incredible demo of what it COULD do!"

The logic of dumping Intel and going ARM and making all OS X and iOS apps cross platform compatible kind of escapes me. 

But I'm not going to say it won't succeed. They have a very loyal cul... following. 

 



[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 15:01:50 EST from Ragnar Danneskjold

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Eh - the older I get, the more I realize, none of it really matters. We can all talk about how fast a machine is, which architecture is best, etc. etc.


It's meaningless.

All that matters is how much work you can get done with the least amount of intrusiveness and problems.

If switching to ARM gives me 20 hour battery life, I'm all for it.

After spending 2+ decades with photography as a hobby, I see the same thing.
People arguing about which cameras are "better". But in the end, when you look at a picture, do you have any idea what kind of camera was used?

Nope.

And a lot of the most iconic photos ever take were shot with downright primative equipment.

All that matters is getting the shot.


[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 15:26:18 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Thu Nov 12 2020 15:01:50 EST from Ragnar Danneskjold @ Uncensored
Eh - the older I get, the more I realize, none of it really matters. We can all talk about how fast a machine is, which architecture is best, etc. etc.


It's meaningless.

All that matters is how much work you can get done with the least amount of intrusiveness and problems.

If switching to ARM gives me 20 hour battery life, I'm all for it.

After spending 2+ decades with photography as a hobby, I see the same thing.
People arguing about which cameras are "better". But in the end, when you look at a picture, do you have any idea what kind of camera was used?

Nope.

And a lot of the most iconic photos ever take were shot with downright primative equipment.

All that matters is getting the shot.

Well, and a lot of that is very subjective. What works best for me may not work best for you. The things you value in your workflow may not be the things I value. I think this is what people lose in these discussions. 

You prefer a certain set of factors that are different than the factors I value - and in fact, we probably have different *goals* too. But what happens is both sides get defensive seeing the other person's objections as, basically, a *personal* attack. 

I'm a systems guy, I've never had a failed Linux or Windows install thereafter prevent me from falling back or clean installing a different Linux or Windows system without resetting non volatile ram. My experience with Macs focuses on their systems integration, robustness and reliability - from an engineering and support perspective, not from an end-user perspective. 

An end user who basically drives their Mac like a car and takes it into the shop to have a mechanic fix it might find it more reliable than a PC - OS X is a *good* OS, for the most part, and is very user oriented... making things that are arguably still complicated far more simple in most cases in *user* space. 

But ultimately - I agree completely - and I feel that way about most systems. People get invested in their choice as an extension of themselves - and someone picking a different solution becomes a rejection of them personally. 

If I say "this sucks about Mac," a lot of people hear, "I think you suck if you choose Mac." 

You want to have fun, go onto Facebook, join the retro computing communities, and stick around long enough to see collectors of original equipment, people who use emulation, and people who use FPGA solutions all fight with one another over 35 year old technology that your PHONE can do without breaking a sweat. 

They also have fights about LCDs vs. CRTs and 16:9 vs. 4:3 aspect ratios. 

People are tribal, and if you're not in their tribe, you're the enemy. 

 



[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 17:16:40 EST from Nurb432

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I have always been a fan of ARM even back in the days of Acorn. But i hate the modern Apple..  So i'm torn here to be honest. It may start out as 'true' ARM, but of course they will keep adding their own proprietary extensions and if anyone even thinks about replicating or using them ( re: API lawsuits in play now ), expect their lawyers to descend upon you like Democrats on loose money...

( and to show you how much i like ARM, this is being posted from an NVIDIA Jetson NX.. via a RK3399 based VPN tunnel back to my house. I left my PinbookPro at home today...)

 

And yes, the buy-out of ARM scares the pee out of me. Could be great, but absorptions like that never seem to work out in the long run for the ones being absorbed ( RE: Oracle + sun... )

 

 



[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 19:31:29 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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It worked out great for MySQL. Oracle bought the company, Monty made a pile of money, forked the code, and all of the users came to MariaDB with him.
I can't think of a better outcome.

Whether Apple "extends" ARM depends on what they intend to do with it. If they simply wanted to be in control of their own architecture, then ARM was just a good starting point. If they wanted to be in control of their own fabs, ARM makes sense, but they probably could have cut a deal with AMD, who are fabless anyway. If they just want to get out from under the x86 boot, ARM is a decent way to go and they wouldn't need to change it.

Of course, if all they wanted was to lock Mac OS out of non-Apple hardware, there are easier ways to accomplish that than changing the entire CPU architecture.
Just slap an Apple-specific TPM on the board and make the OS look for it.

I don't really understand why anyone would build a Hackintosh anyway, except as a curiosity. If someone is into tinkering with the hardware and software, Mac OS isn't really going to be their favorite environment anyway.

I'm fine with Apple and Mac OS and them doing their thing. It just isn't for me.

[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 19:32:27 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Well, allow me to keep it interestingly on topic. I was surprised today to find that Dex, the Samsung app that streams your phone's desktop to your PC - works far better on the Mac than on my Surface Pro 5/Windows 10 device. I've never been able to do the drag and drop from the Dex window to the Windows 10 desktop. I end up resorting to just dragging it over the old fashioned way from the Explorer - but it worked great on my Sierra based Mac. 

I was shocked. Android on ARM playing better with OS X than with Windows is not something one expects. 



[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 19:43:35 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Thu Nov 12 2020 19:31:29 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored


Of course, if all they wanted was to lock Mac OS out of non-Apple hardware, there are easier ways to accomplish that than changing the entire CPU architecture.
Just slap an Apple-specific TPM on the board and make the OS look for it.

I don't really understand why anyone would build a Hackintosh anyway, except as a curiosity. If someone is into tinkering with the hardware and software, Mac OS isn't really going to be their favorite environment anyway.

I'm fine with Apple and Mac OS and them doing their thing. It just isn't for me.

Apple is user-land Nirvana. I love the Apple mail program. You just type in your user name, and it takes care of all the rest. It makes Outlook look like a dinosaur - and it is a really good client front end. Probably my favorite thing about OS X, honestly. 

The touch pad gestures of Apple are really superb, too. There are some places in the user interface where Windows 10 has caught up, or even surpassed OS X... But in general, the user experience is superior on OS X. 

But they're damn expensive - so some people want the Apple user experience without paying the hardware costs - and a Hackintosh has become increasingly simple to do, and less likely to experience problems integrating with the full Apple experience. 

The other reason is because it is GOOD to have more than one Apple, in case your real one eats shit... when they self-destruct, it isn't always as easy to get it back on an Apple as it is with a Windows or Linux PC. 

And I think that if you want to tinker with the hardware and software - Apple can actually be MORE challenging if you really learn the ins-and-outs of all the obscure, poorly documented things under the hood... people figure out what those kexts do and actually really hack the core OS engine. I'm good at that kind of stuff - but with Macs, I just follow the instructions of someone who understands the OS framework WAY better than I do. 



[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 19:50:37 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Mac OS X streaming my Note 10+ desktop running Basilisk 68k Mac Emulator running Mac Classic OS 7.5.3... 

cuz... stoopid. 



[#] Thu Nov 12 2020 20:18:06 EST from Nurb432

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lol

Thu Nov 12 2020 19:50:37 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

Mac OS X streaming my Note 10+ desktop running Basilisk 68k Mac Emulator running Mac Classic OS 7.5.3... 

cuz... stoopid. 


 



[#] Fri Nov 13 2020 08:41:59 EST from Ragnar Danneskjold

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Latest Mac update is an abortion so far. Download 12gb, won't install with a meaningless error. Can't easily delete it. And what's worse, discovered that every app tries to open a connection to the mothership for some reason, and it was down. Luckily it was easily blocked editting /etc/hosts, but still.
This is disturbing to say the least.

This is honestly the first time I've had this kind of problem, and once again indicative of the fact that Apple needed an asshole at the helm.

[#] Fri Nov 13 2020 12:46:22 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Fri Nov 13 2020 08:41:59 EST from Ragnar Danneskjold @ Uncensored
Latest Mac update is an abortion so far. Download 12gb, won't install with a meaningless error. Can't easily delete it. And what's worse, discovered that every app tries to open a connection to the mothership for some reason, and it was down. Luckily it was easily blocked editting /etc/hosts, but still.
This is disturbing to say the least.

This is honestly the first time I've had this kind of problem, and once again indicative of the fact that Apple needed an asshole at the helm.

Which OS, Mojave, Catalina? 

And is it an update from one major to another major release, or just a patch to one? 

I mean, Apple absolutely wants you tied into the ecosystem - so phoning home is actually basically integral to the OS. I hate that Microsoft is going that way too. 

But I do enjoy saying terrible things to Siri. 

 



[#] Sat Nov 14 2020 11:37:02 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

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Can't easily delete it. And what's worse,
discovered that every app tries to open a connection to the mothership

for some reason, and it was down.

I'm starting to hear noise about this on tech news sites. What's the deal with that? It really calls home every time you open an app? Did they think they'd get away with that?



[#] Sat Nov 14 2020 13:59:28 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Sat Nov 14 2020 11:37:02 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

I'm starting to hear noise about this on tech news sites. What's the deal with that? It really calls home every time you open an app? Did they think they'd get away with that?


Got a link? I'd like to read up. 

 



[#] Sun Nov 15 2020 08:10:27 EST from Nurb432

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They did, and they will. Its apple. Their fan base will take whatever is given to them and ask for another, at a higher price.

 

Sat Nov 14 2020 11:37:02 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

I'm starting to hear noise about this on tech news sites. What's the deal with that? It really calls home every time you open an app? Did they think they'd get away with that?


 



[#] Sun Nov 15 2020 08:22:45 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Sun Nov 15 2020 08:10:27 ESTfrom Nurb432 @ Uncensored

They did, and they will. Its apple. Their fan base will take whatever is given to them and ask for another, at a higher price.

 

The difference is that Apple has faltered traditionally with bad decisions without Steve Jobs at the helm. 

A lot of the appeal of Apple has been in a cult of personality. They've actually stumbled fairly consistently since Job's passed on. The iPhone has been seen as iterative and even as a step backwards in the current generation by many longterm iPhone users - iPad has consistently lost share to Android tablets, and the tablet market is really a passing fad at this point - not nearly as hot as it was. I think people found some utility for them, and a lot of people found a LOT of utility for them, but overall, there are a lot of dusty tablets sitting somewhere between a large phone and a nice laptop around the world at this point. Among artists, in particular graphic design artists and CGI artists - Apple has had a significant loss of favor as their GPUs lagged behind those available on WinTel offerings for a long time, Surface aggressively courted this market with devices designed to make a Surface more like an Intuios Cintic, they've made their MBPs impossible to upgrade at all, and the butterfly keyboard was a disaster. 

 I've been hearing more and more very loyal Apple users saying they were either disappointed with the performance of Apple, or that they had walked away completely. 

If their vision of this doesn't deliver - Apple could find themselves in big trouble. 

But I do see a lot of *optimism* among those who drink from the Fountain of Saint Steve, too. More than I expected are *eager* to move from Intel performance based CPUs and GPUs to consumer grade, low power, low performance mobile device chips as their fulltime computing platform. 

Of course, with that said, I run my Citadel on a Pi - and a friend of mine were just talking about how you could easily make a home rack and use Pi boards as mini blade servers in a Linux cluster to get some really inexpensive, really powerful home server horsepower that didn't brown-out the neighborhood when you powered it up. 

 



[#] Sun Nov 15 2020 08:34:51 EST from ParanoidDelusions

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Jobs was really good at refreshing the platform in ways that kept it feeling innovative and bleeding edge, trendy and fashionable, and lux. 

I hear people bemoaning the new MBP designs all the time and missing the old unibody style, in particular, the lit up Apple Logo. The shiny mirrored one on the new ones is really no different than the Windows logo on the back of a Surface as far as making a machine "stand apart" in the airport sitting at the gate. 

The revival of Mac from the brink of death had a lot to do with *not* being a beige box, but instead, a dayglo, transparent plastic eyesore that looked like candy. As people started to realize that this actually looked a little trashy and adolescent - like the last neon excretion of the 80s flaming out, they moved into the G4 designs with muted silvers and blues, white under acrylic, and black of the iMacs and iPods of the time then transitioned into the aluminum body Macs and glass faced iPhones, and cheese grater Mac Pro desktops. 

But they haven't had a real major refresh for more than a decade. A Centrino Duo unibody that is 32 bit looks a LOT like a modern Mac Book Pro. 

This becomes a problem for lots of companies, when the look of their brand becomes so iconic that any little change offends the purists, but the look becomes so static and so definitive of a moment in time that it is seen as too conservative and as a relic of a time gone past. 

It is difficult for a brand to overcome this. Look at how badly Disney and Cadillac struggled with rebranding and reinvigorating their brands. 

Apple may be in for a difficult transition. Especially with Windows 10 having re-established that the OS productivity desktop is vital and necessary for real computing, and that Windows 10 is still the dominant platform for doing that kind of work. 

 



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