Oh Apple, you bastards.

[godofallu]

Yeah that was a stupid move on Apple's part.

There are other programs besides itunes which work with an ipod though. Plus getting that operating system wouldn't be that hard using the internet. If there is a will there is a way, as they say.

 

[Small Waves]

I can tell you're an Apple fanboy

>Four pages of nonstop Apple bashing
>Calling me a fanboy for not joining in on the shit-talking

haha oh wow

1: If something is only five years old and considered obsolete, then I don't want anything to do with the company who made that call.

Out of the 22 iPods that have been released, only THREE don't work with Tiger. Just use the previous generation. iPhones and iPads can work independently.

Trying thinking from a business perspective: What would they, as a company, get out of it? Their sales are clearly not slowing down for the latest iPods. The iPhone sales haven't come to a screeching halt with the release of 3GS where this would have been a MUCH bigger problem. What incentive is there for them to spend thousands of more man hours and millions of dollars to cater to an already non-existent portion of the population that is shrinking more and more each day?

 

[Super Toast]

snip

After reading some of your previous posts in which you defend Apple like a family member, I don't really think calling you a fanboy is that much of a stretch.

As for the other thing, my point is that you shouldn't have to arse around with all that stuff. Forcing people to use their hard earned money on a new iPod which has virtually no difference to the previous models is shady business practice at best, and utterly vile at worst.

Anyway, I said I wouldn't keep arguing, and I really should live up to that statement. Good day to you, Mr. Small Waves.

 

[j0frenzy]

I see this, I'm angry, and I still wouldn't go back to Windows. I would just pay to upgrade my OS to something that hasn't been abandoned.

 

[Small Waves]

As for the other thing, my point is that you shouldn't have to arse around with all that stuff. Forcing people to use their hard earned money on a new iPod which has virtually no difference to the previous models is shady business practice at best, and utterly vile at worst.

Be more practical. They're not going to bend over backwards for less than 10% of a user population when it was developed to best support a particular OS or iTunes update in mind. It's not worth the effort when the gain is so little. They've had "Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later" and "iTunes 10 or later" since September 2010 for the new iPods, and even longer for the iPhones, and you can still buy older models here there and everywhere on the internet. Why is it only NOW an issue? It's not like they released a new version of something to coincide with Lion and made it work with it exclusively. Now that would be something to get up in arms about.

I don't know why it doesn't work. Maybe it's a driver issue. Maybe the old versions of iTunes aren't equipped to work with new technology. Maybe it's Apple's passive-aggressive way of saying "Get a new fucking computer or OS".Apple is one of the biggest PC companies in the world, but is still a mere spec compared to Microsoft who have the three most widely used OSes in the world. XP, Vista, and 7 are all widely used, so there is incentive to support all three of them, while Tiger is pretty much dead.

Also enough with this "Apple are pure evil scum herp derp" bullshit. Compared to the shit Microsoft did in the 90s, they look like fucking saints.

 

[The Heik]

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.

Very true. My own personal experience doesn't qualify the statement. However, for most of my life, I've been surrounded by plenty of Mac and PC users (I grew up in a tech neighborhood), and in with regards to each OS I've seen, or been told through my friends and families' experiences (I'd estimate at about 50 per OS, not including Linux), that most Macs that have failed, failed either near the beginning of their purchase (usually a defect) or at the end of their lifespans (regular degradation). When PCs failed however, their time spread was a lot more varied, hinting that their failures were more inconsistent in nature.

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.

At this point everything with electronic parts is a personal computer. Heck, most iPhones have the pretty much the same computing power as cutting-edge computers from only a few years ago. Everything has games, however, out of pretty much every type of computer, Microsoft has been the company that's always been designing it consoles to play games.

My proof? Windows Vista.

When Vista was introduced, sure it was cutting edge and flashy, but the thing was so buggy that by the end of it I honestly half-expected a cockroach to crawl out from keyboard. Many of it's most basic programs were buggy. Many Vista Users couldn't use even the desktop sometimes without the thing crashing. It took them a over a year to fix it, and then they re-released it as Windows 7, so people had to buy it again. There is only one type of person with that much free cash and reason to repeatedly buy the cutting edge, yet not particularly care when things didn't go perfectly. That is a gamer (or possibly a lunatic). And out of all the OSs, Microsoft has the most games made for it. The last major games available on the Mac OS (prior to the advent of Steam on Mac, a very recent occurrence) were Blizzard games, and that's only because Blizzard make it's games for anything with an electrical current. Compare that to Microsoft, who has a new game coming out for their platforms every month.


Comparatively, when The Mac 10.5 Leopard came out, it's capabilities, while by no means bad, never were meant to particularly wow anyone a la Crysis style. After all, your average video presentation or music file doesn't need that big a CPU. Instead, the desktop and main interfaces were the things that got the attention, something that your average gamer has only passing need for whilst getting to the games. In addition, every Leopard came equipped with things like Garageband and iMovie, things that are primarily used for creative/constructive purposes. From what Apple itself put into their product, we can surmise that it wasn't just for personal uses.

Now granted, at this point, you can play a game pretty much anywhere, and Mac is swiftly becoming a part of this with the level of tech we put into our most basic products, but considering the focus each company gives their consoles, it's pretty clear how they view their systems.

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.

Of course everything is designed based upon the methods of input currently in use. However, when whatever applicable company is making their products, they can't exactly test them with other companies products, only their own, so as a result the products by default are optimized for the company's own products. Putting them with any other brand of products automatically puts them at a input disadvantage, no matter how small, because they simply weren't tested for them. It's as simple as that.

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.


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.)

And that's different from any other big company how? Honestly, most of these seemingly unfair practices and "schemes" are mostly because Apple is trying to prevent itself from being absorbed by the giant money-grubbing monster that is Microsoft. Do you know what happened to the last major company (Unix) who let their product's designs out in the open? Microsoft copied their design (poorly I might add) then sold it for cheaper than what Unix was offering, effectively cutting Unix's legs out from under it.

And despite this looong debate we've had, all of it it doesn't change one simple thing: No matter what the updates did, not one was ever required for the Mac to continue to function. Every one of those complainers could have simply refused the update and had it work perfectly fine for the rest of their time with it. But no, they expected that they could get a new and improved product for free. And not only that, but by the article author's own words, many of the complainers got those products as free gifts. So that is people complaining that the product they got to use for over 3 years, for free, would continue to be free even when they decided to upgrade it to a new product.

These are not legitimate complaints. This is entitled whining.

I'm sorry, but I have no longer have any sympathy for these people. Even moreso now because they can simply use the startup disks they got with their computers to reset the darn things to the factory defaults. All they need is a free hard drive to hold their relevant data, and they can not go right back to using the product they started with. So they quite literally not only have no reason complain, but no right.

 

[Arachon]

Completely off topic and probably a waste of time but I can personally attest that Richard Stallman is a colossal dickhead. he did a presentation at our uni a few months ago and never before have I wanted so much to punch a speaker. He's just a colossal tit.

His ideas are also flawed too, but they're flawed in such a way that admitting their flaws would weaken his case...so he doesn't.

RMS is a madman, a lunatic and an asshole. But he is also a visionary, if it weren't for him, we probably wouldn't have Free Software today, or Open Source for that matter. Are his ideas flawed? Yes. But they're a lot better than the alternative (proprietary software).

 

[MrGFunk]

Ouch, it doesn't effect men as my designer wife's iMac is the latest huge one and is only 8 months old but I can see the frustration this will cause.

 

[The Lugz]

And this is why people hate Apple.

Not because they're douchebags, a lot of companies are like that.

No, because they're pretentious douchebags, passing off everything they sell like it's the next technological revolution, then pulling shit like this.

Also, I hate Steve Jobs. Something about him makes me want to pummel his smirk face in with a cinder block.

Daily drop!!! 'cin-der-block cin-der-block'
( this is where we find out they use macs )

 

[auronvi]

Everyone here is going back and forth about whether or not it's Apple's fault or the users. I blame the users but I also blame Apple for attracting those types of users. Apple users buy them because they don't want to think. That's not meant as an insult it's just that when they buy a machine they want it to work and not have to worry about OS versions or if this hardware is compatible with that hardware and are the drivers up to date and all that jazz. So the reason I blame Apple is that they foster this culture and embrace it but then they do something like this that makes the users angry because now their machine no longer works how they want it.

SO, those that are arguing the users should have upgraded is counter intuitive to the reason that most of these user chose mac to begin with. With all that said, I love my Win7 and can't wait to try out and get Win8. I got to open my PC up last week, install new case fans, a new hard drive and a new video card. That is so much fun and I will never own a Mac because I know the second I open the macs case, an alarm will go off and a bunch of Mac FBI agents will break into my house and take my stuff for fear I might do something to their precious hardware. PC FTW!!!

 

[Olrod]

It's Apple's fault they deliberately made the new version of iTunes incompatible with an older version of Mac software. They must have engineered it that way on purpose otherwise why would it still be compatible with Windows XP?

 

[motyr]

Ehhhhhhhhhhh.....

iTunes 10 doesn't work with this chap's Mac because he's using a 6 year old operating system, not because of any other hardware-based complications. If he's really using a top-end Mac, he should have no problem upgrading to Snow Leopard if he really cares to.

 

[motyr]

It's Apple's fault they deliberately made the new version of iTunes incompatible with an older version of Mac software. They must have engineered it that way on purpose otherwise why would it still be compatible with Windows XP?

Yes, they did engineer it that way on purpose, because, unlike Windows, Mac OS X has gotten progressively better, not worse, since 2001.

 

[TaintedNails]

 

[triggrhappy94]

Did anyone else see that the new Mac Pro (desktop whatever) is going to have a 12 core processor?
Over compensate much?

 

[Waaghpowa]

I can't believe there are people defending this still, the fact that you need to replace 3 year old hardware for software is ridiculous, not just any software, friggin' Itunes. If you're ok with this, fine, continue to spend extraordinarily large sums of money for something that will inevitably become obsolete in 2 years.

Us windows users who use Itunes, assuming you care for it, will continue to get the most up to date software regardless of how old or new our computers are.