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[Weaver]

When I sat inside a Lamborghini at a dealer’s I actually didn't like it. The windscreen seemed a million miles away and was raked at such a shallow angle that it felt too weird, and I am not tall, but I felt as if I were a bit too tall for it. The interior did not feel very impressive in quality terms. I was heartbroken, having long been a fan from afar. And the paint job on some Ferrari cars is really rubbish, as my wife once said very forcefully to the dealer.

Apologies for being a million miles off topic. I was just thinking about expectations (in ignorance) versus reality. I am prepared to pay for quality but am then unforgiving.

[chenks]

Shall I read “No” from your response?

On a more general note, and this one may keep marketing consultants in pointless jobs for decades, but I wonder why so many “Apple haters” are people who have never been Apple customers?

Not that Chenks has given any indication whether or not he/she has ever been an Apple customer, my question stands, either way. 

you seem to be attempting to jump to many conclusions there, and mistankingly so.
and yes i have been an apple customer of many products over the years, but gradually moved away from them when i saw the quality in the products dropping (and the price increasing).

[johnson]

With you chenks.

Apple were at the forefront of premium hardware, late 00s to early 2010 MBPs offered build quality and finish that you could not buy elsewhere, and the early iphones were marvels, ceramic and gorilla glass when every other manufacturer was putting out wobbly plastic crap. But the competitors caught up and now you can get the same or better quality without the premium. I didn't like Jobs, but since hes gone they have not innovated or offered anything remarkable to command the increasing premium they charge, just look at those ridiculous touch buttons they added to the MBP, or the iphone that bent in your pocket. I'm sure there are exceptions, but unless you are wedded to the eco system its hard to find reasons to still be brand loyal to Apple.

[Weaver]

I use Apple kit because of the security being decent without any config. I only had high security before because I put in a lot of work designing far-from-standard locked-down security configurations for Windows boxes, and now I am too exhausted to do all the admin and support for my wife that would otherwise be needed to keep her safe with windows, especially because of various new windows apps needing to be carefully reviewed. So when she became an Apple fan and tried an iPad out, I found out that iPads can do 70% of what I need to do and 100% of what she needs to do, and in the end we found we did not need Windows boxes any more. As I became more ill, I could not sit upright at a desk, so desktop machines and laptops became unfeasible. Really good laptops are very expensive and cannot be used so easily in bed. I would not use Android because of multiple concerns about security and because I am suspicious about Google as a company. I hated Windows 8 so much that I just retired all my Windows boxes at that point. Everything I had is backed up on SSDs in situ. Janet demolished not only my big desk, but also her own and turned the upstairs office into server room plus woman cave.

[pxr5]

In my household there have only ever been 2 apple devices. An Ipod Nano, 3rd gen iirc for my son. And an Iphone 4 my wife had. The Nano didn't get used much before it was out of date and when I did try to use it I really didn't like the interface. It also had me do something which makes me cringe inside to this day - install itunes. Horrendous software. I did try to live with it, but even then I could sense it trying to take over - turning me/us down the apple route. Thankfully I had a new PC not long after and found an alternative. The iphone, well that was a disaster. My wife hated it. Maybe she got a lemon, but it never worked properly. She just wanted something simple that just worked, which is what Apple is supposed to be all about - it didn't and got ditched for a Samsung S4, much to my wife's relief.

So no. There is no love for apple from me. I don't hate them particulary, I even admire them in a way - but I know I will never own an apple product ever.

[Ronski]

Kitz sums it up perfectly, I'm sure more people are wising up to the way Apple rips everyone off and forces the user/software vendors to do/accept want Apple thinks is right. Just look at the contempt they show loyal Macbook Pro users who feel abandoned. Read the comments on the follow blog post.

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/06/15/developer-slams-lack-of-mac-updates/

[Bowdon]

I think Apple proves something that I've observed for years online, if you restrict a product people want it more, even if it costs more than rival products.

I think the key selling point of Apple products as been they are simple to use and can inter-connect with each other. It is hassle free from a user experience.

I've never owned an Apple product in my life. But I've had experience of the Apple Mac computers at school back in the day, and also chatted to people who only buy Apple computers. It feels like Apple will hold your hand and guide you through a process. Which is good if that is what you want. But it comes at the expensive of customisation (though the downside of customisation is you can more easily mess something up).

I've been watching some of the My Mate Vince videos recently on youtube and he's been putting up videos of him buying broken items from ebay and trying to fix them up. In the last video that I've just started watching its been two Iphones. They both had problems but one of them had been registered to some Find Me apple app that apparently when the owner tries to sell it they can't remove the find me lock. So they can only sell it on for parts. So once you get the phone if you put that lock on it you can no longer sell it as a phone.

[Weaver]

Being incredibly restricted is either a really good thing, a really bad thing or a bit of both. Some of the restrictions on iPad apps are insane. I suspect though that they were motivated by a desire to ensure that apps can always be uninstalled.

Ordinary users in the windows world are surrounded by a morass of horrible apps that are completely chaotic and herculean efforts have been made to stop stupidity like the dll-hell syndrome while practices continue such as leaving stuff in random locations, polluting the filesystem, putting user data in places that belong to the o/s and putting executables in the wrong place. Apps can not in general be uninstalled reliably; there are the risks of breaking the system or leaving it permanently polluted ever time you install then try to uninstall an app. My wife would if unchecked like to just try out an app. With windows, unless you do so on a test system, then you are mad or an ignoramus. There is no guidance for wintel victims about whether apps are well-designed or trustworthy.

Microsoft should have protected users by only allowing certified apps, but then they would not have had the financial success they did have from a massive developer base. Profit before users’ well-being.

With the iPad, Janet can just try any app out, and I do not have to be the bad guy all the time, telling her not to take the risk, as I know it will always uninstall. Apples horrible restrictions even protect battery life by preventing apps from thrashing in the background, computing like crazy because of polling, or getting into infinite loops.

[chenks]

Apps installed on OSX (now MacOS) can/did do the same thing as windows apps by putting files all over the place.
some very high profile apps were just as bad on OSX as they were on Windows.

and there have been some rogue apps appear in the iOS appstore (as there have been on any platform).
iOS is not immune from bad/rogue apps, although Apple like to imply they are immune.

the "profits before users' well-being" made me chuckle... you honestly believe apple puts "well being" before profit? they are a business, and a highly profitable business and that means they almost certainly put profit ahead of anything else. locking people into their eco-system is a prime example of this.

[Ronski]

I'm with chenks on this one.

[Weaver]

chenks I was referring to Microsoft, and was not referring to Apple at all. I have nothing to say about OS/X and you are absolutely right about comparing it to windows, as far as I know. I have only seen a Mac once, we had the original one at work which I played with a lot, studying it, and thought the o/s was insane.

I did not intend that piece to be pro Apple. The good things that have happened on the iPad are historical accidents, which came out of the totally insane idea that the iPad is an iPhone because they wanted to cheaply get all the iPhone apps over with no effort, not even the necessary effort, being expended. The iPad has spent ten long, long years trying to evolve back towards sanity, not being an iPhone any more and towards starting to be a normal capable computer but hopefully without all the security naïveté that others have inherited.

I do have to say that the hardware is amazing though on these modern phones and iPad type machines, not referring to Apple specifically at all.

The software could be a lot more adventurous particularly the networking. I think their networking protocols are way too conservative, as if they are scared to advance out of the comfort of 1980s unix-inspired practices. For example I would like to see apps able to roam between different IP source addresses; Apple have already done some work in this area but have not capitalised on it properly - it gets used for Siri and that is about it. I want my iPad to understand routing protocols, and also to switch from wlan nic to 4G seamlessly when the internet goes down, which is not the same thing at all as the wireless LAN going down, obviously. Apple content caching works when hosted by a Mac as server, but what about an Apple TV as server (maybe I have missed it, can't see it mentioned though). The naughty Apple sleep proxy service - what a clever idea, on the other hand, and more ideas like that are where we should be going. When the internet goes down, my iPad just has apps hanging or giving incorrect error messages, no help at all. It should be detecting network errors and diagnosing them with detailed analysis too, but you currently get none of that, not even a correct and reliable error message, but I want it all. I am a big SCTP fan, and I would like to see Apple promoting the protocol to developers to see what opportunities if any it might provide. I suspect that Facetime and iMessage use the internet all the time even when the corresponding parties are in the same LAN, which is utterly insane. (Apologies if I have got this wrong.) Fixing it would be trivial. That stupidity means that sending a picture or even worse a video clip using iMessage is incredibly slow because of my crummy 1.1 Mbps upstream speed when it only has to travel 5 m across the room. (Yes, I know, use Airdrop, which uses a weird mixture of Bluetooth and 802.11*, possibly for good reasons.) Some of this is the applications’ fault obviously. However more adventurous core networking educates app developers and core networking software devs can inspire change and the exploitation of new opportunities.