Oh Apple, you bastards.

[The Artificially Prolonged]

This is why dual booting windows/linux is the best way to go. Apple why screw over the people who use your OS?

 

[J.McMillen]

The real problem here is that many people jumped into the Apple pool without first learning about the Mac culture. I've had several friends over the years who were long time Mac users (20+ years). They would tell (warn) anyone who was thinking about getting a Mac what they were getting into. Namely that you need to keep your OS up to date, and if your machine was too old it was time to look at getting a new one.

As for Mr. Jones and his Macbook, it's his own fault for not upgrading the OS and his Macbook isn't too old. I have a 5 year old Macbook running 10.6.7 and it works just fine. I can't say as much about my old G4 EMac, because as soon as Apple switched to Intel I knew it's days were numbered. But I did get a lot of good use out of it, and there are things it can still do.

Now go check Amazon and see how much upgrading to Windows 7 costs. The Home version is around $100-$120 dollars which is about what Leopard costs when it came out. The big difference? As long as your Mac met the minimum hardware requirements you were probably going to have a trouble free upgrade (not guaranteed but pretty dang close). As for W7, no telling since it might not have drivers for an important piece of hardware (like your hard drive controller). When you can't keep your OS running long enough to install a 3rd part driver before it crashes, it's not much of an upgrade.

Now I'm no Apple fanboy, I've owned numerous Dos/Windows computers since 1990 and had both a Commodore 64 & 128 before that (1982-ish). I didn't get my first Apple till 2003, so I came in much later but I at least had knowledge of what I was getting myself into. Namely not being able to play most of the games I like on it, and having to upgrade the OS from time to time. And from the rumors I've seen I might not be able to upgrade my Macbook to 10.7, but I also know I can't run W7 without upgrading my XP machine either. I'm getting a lot of good use out of both (10.6/XP), i just wonder which one I'll feel I have to upgrade first.

 

[player3141]

But if you upgrade you get all of these AWESOME featues:

Mac app store- you can download your software, its only what everyone else has been doing for years!

Launchpad, you can look at all of your apps and find the one you want with ease(if you have less than 5 apps)

Full Screen Mode- wow... just wow...

Mission Control- its just like alt-tab, only sexier

Gestures- its like sign language for computers

Auto Save- This is a new and revolutionary idea

Versions- In case you spent hours on a document making it worse

Resume- *cough* hibernate *cough*

Mail 5- web based email clients are so old, devoting an entire program to it is much more efficient

Airdrop- an adhoc file transfer with an awesome sounding name

Filevault- all of your files an encrypted, so you can pirate in confidence(piracy is illegal, wrong and you should never do it. DONT HURT ME MODERATORS!)

Lion Server- Its so simply, even you can use it!

 

[Kilo24]

By the way, Apple have just done what Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft have all done with their consoles in the past.

Agreed, to a certain extent. The previous consoles still work for their primary purposes. But Apple crippled the functionality of previously working hardware; even if it only takes a $25 upgrade to fix, it's still an exploitive business practice that rakes in massive amounts of money for a simple refusal for implementing backwards compatibility (a decision which I sincerely doubt was made because of the difficulty of programming.) I suggest looking for a free alternative to anyone affected by this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iPod_managers

Forced exclusivity like consoles and Apple (especially with iTunes and the App Store) practice creates a lot of money-making opportunities at the cost of dramatically crippling the potential value of the product. Even if you would never write a single line of code for that platform or want to mod the hardware, you're still getting punished because the exclusivity prevents competition. Therefore the products that the company releases don't need to be good enough to beat what people will make for free (or much cheaper).

Putting so much effort in destroying the capacity of your own product is a rather perverse method for securing profits, and it's the primary problem that I have with Apple. And why consoles are going to remain pathetically behind in terms of their software like web-surfing and playing digital media as compared to PCs - no competition means the software suffers.

 

[darkonnis]

A long time ago. Apple where the under dogs, being beaten down by big bad microsoft by software which may or may not have been rightfully theirs.
Then slowly gaining the support of the old school computer crowd, those who hated windows enough to actually go mac way before it was popular. They realised that they could make money, and as it turns out, the under dogs, the good guys of this story if you will, have turned out to be just as bad if not worse than the very people they're trying to replace.

I do not own any apple products for this reason, i quite like what google is doing i just hope that they dont go the same way.

 

[The Heik]

*bigsnip*

I still have a UNIX box from 1987 with 16kb RAM that hasn't crashed yet, and still runs like a dream. The only fault it has is that the motherboard battery died, so you have to remind it what it's master and slave drivers are. Haven't had to replace anything, either. Does that make it a superior machine to any Macs or modern day PCs? Rhetorical question to answer your 1998 Mac story, and show that comparing an old machine to a new machine is rather silly. It runs UNIX mainly, but also has partitions for OS/2 DOS and Windows 3.1.

Oh, yeah, and "average joe" almost never slaps bits together without help. Because there's too much money involved in a machine to do something that stupid. Either they get the info which is readily available and stop being "average joes," or they get somebody with experience. I'm actually restoring a 1972 Chevelle right now, and do you think that I wouldn't research parts that I need? That I'd go out and buy a C4 transmission just because I need a transmission and it was cheap? Hell no, I'm not THAT stupid, I'd research and learn that a C4 is a Ford, and I need a TH-400 transmission because I'm not going to invest that much money into a project an make mistakes. Don't think your fellow man is as stupid as you wish he was, it's unbecoming.

But look at the current Mac Books. It's not really a supercar anyway. It's like a car that's gets worse performance and costs twice as much, but looks prettier, and has a nicer radio. Besides, look at the article as it said that 3 year old hardware can't use the new media software. I sincerely doubt it's because the hardware lacks the power to run a media player.

My laptop is 3 years old and cost $1000 back then, and I put about $300 into upgrading the dual HD bays and the RAM. I just looked up some MSRP pricing, and you have to spend over $2000 on a macbook to get superior hardware, as mine has a 2.0ghz quad core CPU, Radeon HD 4650 GPU (not anything special, but pretty good for a 3 year old laptop), and upgraded ram and disk space. Sure, the new i7 may be on a $1500 model, but the rest of the specs are pathetic. Oh, and remember, mine is still 3 years old.

Now, if my lappy has competitive performance to machines that cost double, what is the benefit from the mac? A few pieces of software maybe, but Linux comes with plenty of free 3d accelerators and graphic manipulation programs that is good enough for anything not professional, and if you're good enough, it can be.

TL;DNR, Mac hardware is competitive with PCs 3 years ago, and still cost double. The big reason why Windows running PCs crash so often is because they are on the cutting edge of hardware technology that it takes Macs months or years to catch up to, and the hardware has usually been stabilized by then.

You may have misinterpreted a few of my statements here, so just for clarity:

1) Strawberry Mac example: This was a statement of the computer's reliability more than it's longevity (because honestly, If I wanted to go for longevity, then I would have pointed out a calculator I have at home that something like 40 years old and it still works). The Mac lasted 12 years running newer programs despite the fact that it was out of date, yet the 2005 PC that we kept well within it's parameters and tech crashed.

2)Muscle Car vs Sportscar: This wasn't a statement of the respective platform's power, it was just me taking from the car image to smoothly represent the ideas of that image. I know that Macs are inferior in terms of base firepower, but that's because they were never intended for it. Apple has always been an advocated of refined design over cutting edge tech. While their parts don't have the power of other current platforms, Apple has designed it so that their Macs will get optimum performance out of them. If you were to take the same equivalent parts for a Mac and a PC and place against each other, the Mac design would get more out of said parts, and function more smoothly than the PC.

Going back to a car example, PC's would be custom streetracers, while Macs would be a refined street car. The PC is incredibly powerful because it has the best tech, but because it's parts haven't been fully checked out with each other and are running at maximum capacity, they are far more likely to burn themselves out. The Mac on the other hand, has all it's parts tested and retested for as many eventualities as possible, and it always runs at it's optimal level.

This is because Macs have always been work computers, where reliability and efficiency are the primary concerns, while PCs have been historically following the trend of gaming consoles. Honestly, when your game fails it's annoying but not terrible, but when your work project goes pear-shaped, it is a minor disaster. So what your paying for with a Mac is knowing that you've the least likely possibility of failing and that everything you do has been designed to work was smoothly as possible

3) Average Joes: In this case I simply meant that even if your average joe does his research, a professional who specifically worked on your model more reliably gets the work done because they know it inside and out. And besides, I've seen plenty of average joes do things slapdash. Heck there are entire TV shows about people who are the worst examples of doing things by themselves ([a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%27s_Worst_Handyman"]Canada's Worst Handyman[/a] comes to mind)


And as for you (damn you for posting after I started this post, making me have to go back get your post *grumble* ;P)

Sorry to say it buy you're dad messed up, or quite frankly doesn't know what he's doing too well. I have a 2004 refurbished Windows XP machine, which is quite literally a piece of shit (it cost me $300 then), and it still has never broken down (Hardware wise) and apart from a couple viruses, is a completely functional machine. I could download the latest itunes and the latest version of most programs that weren't too labour intensive (Games, photoshop, etc), and putting in about another $300 and a weekend I could probably get it to run essentially every program with the exception of some games. So even if we don't account for the fact that the current price of my machine has severely deteriorated, I would have spent about 600 to get a decent functional machine which is way lower than the price of any current mac.

Honestly, the only thing apple has going for them is that their laptops are light and thin, and they have great support for the ipods and iphones through the app store.

Please see my previous statements on non-matching parts causing problems. No matter what parts and programming you use, if they weren't designed to work specifically with each other, there is a decent chance that it will fail. However, not all PCs will fail, as the chance of failure depends on the specific parts chosen. For example, if you were to picks hardware from the same brands, you would have a smaller chance of it failing because they are more compatible.

In addition, I know text doesn't translate tone well, but your statement seemed somewhat derogatory towards my father. For the record, he does know what he is doing. He has worked at the CBC for 20 years, and a recent joining of the Radio and Television sectors of the CBC, where the work staff was "streamlined" (aka diminished) he was one of the few individuals not even considered among possible firees because he knew almost every radio audio system (aka computers) in the building inside and out. He knows his stuff.

If this is not the case please accept my sincere apologies, though in either case I would request that in the future you are a little more clear and considerate in speaking of people you do not know, because you'll never know who you may insult.

 

[LikeDustInTheWind]

"The only way to win is not to play"

That basically sums up my ideas on most Apple products.

 

[Custard_Angel]

If this happened to a Microsoft patch you can bet your arse that someone would create an unofficial patch to solve the problem, or create an alternative to using iTunes to manage these devices.

 

[Kilo24]

1) Strawberry Mac example: This was a statement of the computer's reliability more than it's longevity (because honestly, If I wanted to go for longevity, then I would have pointed out a calculator I have at home that something like 40 years old and it still works). The Mac lasted 12 years running newer programs despite the fact that it was out of date, yet the 2005 PC that we kept well within it's parameters and tech crashed.

It's anecdotal evidence. That's not very strong. There are PCs that I've had problems with right out of the (metaphorical) box, and ones basically without problems despite heavy usage. Unless you're part of an IT business, or go through a computer a year, your experiences are unlikely to be statistically significant.

It's not useless info, but reliability reports from some place that goes through many more computers would be much better. Unless every Mac never fails and every PC craps out after 6 months, many people will have the same story as you do but the Mac's and the PC's roles will be reversed.

2)Muscle Car vs Sportscar: This wasn't a statement of the respective platform's power, it was just me taking from the car image to smoothly represent the ideas of that image. I know that Macs are inferior in terms of base firepower, but that's because they were never intended for it. Apple has always been an advocated of refined design over cutting edge tech. While their parts don't have the power of other current platforms, Apple has designed it so that their Macs will get optimum performance out of them. If you were to take the same equivalent parts for a Mac and a PC and place against each other, the Mac design would get more out of said parts, and function more smoothly than the PC.

Going back to a car example, PC's would be custom streetracers, while Macs would be a refined street car. The PC is incredibly powerful because it has the best tech, but because it's parts haven't been fully checked out with each other and are running at maximum capacity, they are far more likely to burn themselves out. The Mac on the other hand, has all it's parts tested and retested for as many eventualities as possible, and it always runs at it's optimal level.

This is because Macs have always been work computers, where reliability and efficiency are the primary concerns, while PCs have been historically following the trend of gaming consoles. Honestly, when your game fails it's annoying but not terrible, but when your work project goes pear-shaped, it is a minor disaster. So what your paying for with a Mac is knowing that you've the least likely possibility of failing and that everything you do has been designed to work was smoothly as possible

That's the image that Apple presents. How it actually bears out is less certain.

"Equivalent components" are a much bigger crapshoot than you specify. I presume you're talking about equivalent in power level, rather than equivalent in price? If so, I'd place a little agreement here that Macs would be more likely to do relevant optimizations, but not knowing much about the architectures relative to eachother I can't really qualify that.

But Macs are still personal computers - and outside of gaming - are still used for much the same uses. They're not really narrowed-down relative to PCs, so there's not a lot of really specific interactions that you can rely on from a software perspective.

We've also entered a time in which most conventional uses for computers are pathetically easy for even a low-end computer to handle, so all but the most basic optimizations are not really noticed by most users. Knowing this, developers don't care as much about pouring effort into optimizations as they do about adding more features (see Microsoft Word.)

Because of that, my guess is that the code and design for Macs is still kept pretty similar to those of PCs. That way, they can use things designed for PCs with much fewer modifications. The coding time that would be spent correcting optimizing performance for the end-user (which with a decent computer might translate to a few more seconds of wait time for conventional use, or maybe 15 more minutes spent downloading) is more profitably spent fixing bugs, adding features, or working on another program.

Please see my previous statements on non-matching parts causing problems. No matter what parts and programming you use, if they weren't designed to work specifically with each other, there is a decent chance that it will fail. However, not all PCs will fail, as the chance of failure depends on the specific parts chosen. For example, if you were to picks hardware from the same brands, you would have a smaller chance of it failing because they are more compatible.

It's not each component being designed to specifically work with a specific other component, it's each component conforming to a standard like USB or SATA on hard drives, and the motherboards (or whatever bit we're talking about) being guaranteed to support that standard. If there's only a few pieces that either support or implement that standard, then it's effectively being "designed to work specifically with each other"; indeed, there are many such standards that have died off. But the few that have become standard are ubiquitous, and if a product doesn't work on those, they are almost certain to be restricted to niche appeal.

To my knowledge, Mac's components are designed more for internal company-defined standards and not publicly defined ones, and therefore they have a monopoly and each component has no reason to remain competitive. If they conformed to public-defined standards, the actual utility of the product would skyrocket because other companies would make better products for cheaper. But they don't, because they're more worried about losing their revenue from exclusivity than making their product the best it can be.


I will say that (from what I have seen recently of the iPhone) Apple does put a lot of attention to the UI, and often does very well in comparison to other companies. They wrapped up a lot of functionality in their iPhone which - although much of the functionality was already existing in other phones in some way or another - really needed a unified, easy-to-use UI in a way that computers *didn't* need.

Other than that, Apple's survival is due to smart manipulation of their brand image and draconian non-competitive practices. The former bears no relation to the actual products, and the latter actually actively hurts the products for the user (as the OP is evidence for.)

 

[Rafael Dera]

Rather then point out the obvious (apple are a bunch of greedy bastards), I'm going to be constructive for a change:
Why not manage your music library and whatnot with winamp? it's fully compatible with the ipod and it runs just fine under wine (or darwine). Sweet, sweet irony.

 

[Nemesis729]

I think this is appropriate at this point.

I remember the first time I played with Mac II, and hated it because I was a UNIX baby. Never really warmed up to Apple.

Assuming all the parts in the mac car are Styrofoam than ya that's perfect

 

[Johnnyallstar]

I think this is appropriate at this point.

*snippic
I remember the first time I played with Mac II, and hated it because I was a UNIX baby. Never really warmed up to Apple.

Except the top right pic should be the mustang.

Yeah, I'm not a Fix Or Repair Daily guy, more of a GM muscle car guy. I'm working now on restoring a beautiful 4 door 72 chevelle. In the market for a new engine now. The straight six had to go, and I'm looking for a decent big block. Only trying for a very reasonable 500-600 HP and probably 550-620 torque.

 

[Saviordd1]

This is why apple should put more effort into their ipods and iphones....AND STAY THERE

 

[Annoying Turd]

I've never owned an apple product, excluding that ipod touch 4 I got from my uncle.

Why all the hate for a company? You guys should get a girlfriend.

 

[Small Waves]

Back when the first iPod's that were able to play videos came out, you needed Leopard to use it. Why? Because it was impossible for Panther (10.3) to provide the new features of the later versions (videos, pictures, games, picture camera, etc.) because that shit didn't exist until YEARS later. It's the year 2011. Snow Leopard (10.6) has been out for two years, and Leopard (10.5) even longer. There is no excuse to use anything older, especially when new Macs come pre-installed with the latest operating system and this author considers £39 as "pocket change" for a third or fourth grader.

I cannot fucking believe this is news to anyone or why it's worth getting up in arms over. It's your own fault for thinking that your new gizmo with loads of features that older iTunes versions weren't made in mind for could work with an OS that's over half a decade old. This is a complaint that a computer novice would make. It would be like Apple fanboys saying that Windows sucks because none of their computers in the 1990s can handle High Definition video with the default hardware, or hate on the PS1 for not reading PC game discs.

Shame on him for not having a lick of foresight or doing an ounce of research first, and shame on anyone who is using this as ammo to go on a "Macs suck" crusade.

 

[Olrod]

It's fun reading the pro-Apple comments on the news article, and how they completely miss the point of it.

One comment on there deserves reposting, though:

Basically Apple is forcing people to upgrade their computers simply to use or even merely put music on another independent device.

No state-of-the-art technology is needed to do such a thing. On all of my phones and mp3 players, you plug in the USB (no special adapter needed) and drag your music onto the device. No drivers or program needed. Nothing.

And none of the devices needed me to phone home to get authorisation before I could use them either.

The issue is not "spend the damn 30 quid", the issue is that Apple?s whole system is designed to keep you on the treadmill buying more, simply because they have decided it is time for their tithe.

Even Windows XP, which is over 5 years old, can work with the latest version of iTunes. The Mac can't unless you pay extra money to Apple for a new O.S.

 

[JET1971]

lol I wont even get an iphone. i have an older creative Zen mp3 player with 4gb internal memory and a 32 gb expansion card so far it plays any song or video i put on it and does what its supposed to do perfectly; play videos or music. my phone i have a plain nokia razer and it does calls perfectly fine. and for portability... i have a netbook running windows xp. I did use an ipad this weekend and all i can say is... no thanks ill keep my netbook, it has a keyboard and no limitations like google street view didnt work on the ipad.

Get the iPad 2. You can facetime with all your Apple friends, it has a dual core, plus a lot of iOS games are unmissable.

Umm No way. had 2 different ipads in the house this weekend. had no interest in owning either and facetime? lol what? is that like facebook or something? if it is i dont have an account or will ever have one.

 

[Small Waves]

It's fun reading the pro-Apple comments on the news article, and how they completely miss the point of it.

One comment on there deserves reposting, though:

Basically Apple is forcing people to upgrade their computers simply to use or even merely put music on another independent device.

No state-of-the-art technology is needed to do such a thing. On all of my phones and mp3 players, you plug in the USB (no special adapter needed) and drag your music onto the device. No drivers or program needed. Nothing.

And none of the devices needed me to phone home to get authorisation before I could use them either.

The issue is not "spend the damn 30 quid", the issue is that Apple?s whole system is designed to keep you on the treadmill buying more, simply because they have decided it is time for their tithe.

He is trying to introduce new technology to an operating system which is incapable of recognizing it because it lacks the features to work with it. To fall off this treadmill, you would need to be paralyzed from the waist down because he had FOUR YEARS to get something newer. They've been using Tiger (10.4) for four years, and it's only NOW they realize it cannot do something they want it to do. Aside from the most recent versions of the Nano (Gen 6), Touch (Gen 4), and Shuffle (Gen 4), all other iPods work with Tiger.

I am able to relate to their experience. Two years ago, I was using a 5+ year-old hand-me-down Macbook that had only 256MB of RAM. I found out that my 3rd Gen iPod Nano didn't work with Panther (10.3) and I needed Tiger (10.4) or better and I had a Leopard install disc with four more uses, but in order to install this new OS, I needed at least one gigabyte of RAM and the original Macbbok G4 came with only 256MB. Solution: I bought a 1GB RAM stick and installed Leopard and was then able to get my Nano to work with my laptop instead of the house computer. Every G4-era Mac can run Leopard as long as they have 1GB of RAM.

Today, I have a Macbook Pro which runs Snow Leopard, which was released in June 2009, and it will be able to run Tiger (10.7) when it comes out (wow this treadmill is so fast NOT). Leopard is still a great Mac OS that is armed to the teeth with various applications and still runs all external hardware that Apple has released to date, including all iPods, iPhones (needed 10.5 since 3GS), and even the iPad (both only run on 10.5 or newer). I can see people still not having Snow Leopard since you need an Intel Mac to run it, but still using anything lower than 10.5 in 2011 while still having the cash to throw around for the latest iPhone is inexcusable, and bitching about it only shows he did not read the instructions. They all have the minimum required OS needed to use all of this stuff on the main Apple site, for fucks sake.

Within the next year or two, I expect Apple to release new versions of their gadgets that cannot continue progressing without sacrificing Leopard or non-Intel Mac support. Technology waits for nobody, and if you get left behind, tough luck.