It's not just the neglected update cycle. Macs in general are simply... worse, with regard to the quality of their hardware. Their thermals are piss-poor, their port selection is barren, the new...
It's not just the neglected update cycle. Macs in general are simply... worse, with regard to the quality of their hardware. Their thermals are piss-poor, their port selection is barren, the new butterfly keyboards manage to be both noisy and shallow, and they're even less repairable than they were 7-8 years ago (I mean, look at the Mac Pro). All this results in a machine that looks beautiful... and pretty much nothing else. I used to like Macbooks for their reliability-- my MBP from 2010 still works perfectly. I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole nowadays.
I'm in the exact same boat. Currently typing this on my Late 2010 Macbook Pro albeit with upgraded SSD and 8 gbs of ram but it still works perfectly fine. I was just in BestBuy trying out the new...
I'm in the exact same boat. Currently typing this on my Late 2010 Macbook Pro albeit with upgraded SSD and 8 gbs of ram but it still works perfectly fine. I was just in BestBuy trying out the new MBP keyboards and it's like typing on cardboard. Total crap! Wasn't the idea behind the Pro line is that users with technical expertise could keep the "body" of the device and keep upgrading the internals to keep it current? It's clear that Apple has moved away from their original core user base and are focused on the mainstream user market. I wish apple would produce a "developer" line which would go back to the DIY-upgrade devices.
Yeah, it's a real shame. I've upgraded to a Thinkpad T460 since, and I'm loving it. The keyboard is tactile, with tons of travel, and the machine itself is built like a tank. Everything is fairly...
Yeah, it's a real shame. I've upgraded to a Thinkpad T460 since, and I'm loving it. The keyboard is tactile, with tons of travel, and the machine itself is built like a tank. Everything is fairly accessible and upgradeable, as well.
OS X itself hasn't gotten much better either. Unfortunately Apple computers as a whole have really stagnated, which is a shame because I really hope we don't have a return to the days when Windows...
OS X itself hasn't gotten much better either. Unfortunately Apple computers as a whole have really stagnated, which is a shame because I really hope we don't have a return to the days when Windows completely dominated the desktop landscape :/
Let's not forget about Windows having its own issues for the past decade too. I would take a more stagnant desktop over the detrimental changes Mircosoft has been forcing. I'm just sitting here in...
Let's not forget about Windows having its own issues for the past decade too. I would take a more stagnant desktop over the detrimental changes Mircosoft has been forcing.
I'm just sitting here in a corner and waiting for more Linux adaption haha
If Linux could play games built for Windows systems consistently without the need for additional configuration--just download, install, and play--then I would be ditching Windows completely. But I...
If Linux could play games built for Windows systems consistently without the need for additional configuration--just download, install, and play--then I would be ditching Windows completely. But I spend enough time troubleshooting and debugging problems at work and just don't have the patience to go through all of that hassle just to be able to play a game, which is what I do to relax, not pile on more work to be done.
Exactly. Software people need (or really want) is made for Windows, so they have no easy choice but Windows. The barrier of entry for any other operating system is too high that Windows dominates...
Exactly. Software people need (or really want) is made for Windows, so they have no easy choice but Windows. The barrier of entry for any other operating system is too high that Windows dominates regardless of how good the competition is.
The situation is getting a little better with Steam pushing for Linux support, and lots of games supporting multiple platforms now.
I think one of the bigger problems will be older software that will likely never be ported over natively, e.g. existing games with Windows support only. Large Steam libraries immediately come to mind.
I think one of the bigger problems will be older software that will likely never be ported over natively, e.g. existing games with Windows support only. Large Steam libraries immediately come to mind.
I’ve used macOS since 10.4 and I can say for me it hasn’t needed to. It has been rock solid even through the PowerPC → x86 transition and now a native file system transition. It has seen so many...
I’ve used macOS since 10.4 and I can say for me it hasn’t needed to. It has been rock solid even through the PowerPC → x86 transition and now a native file system transition. It has seen so many incremental improvements, but I am thankful that they have been largely incremental. That, to me shows Apple’s respect for me as a user. If Apple starts radically changing macOS over short release cycles, that would be a bad thing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. C.f. that time they tried to replace mDNSResponder.
To think the other way: Macintosh hardware are so successful in the past, that people have little incentive to replace them every few years, the market gets saturated, Apple can't make profit of...
To think the other way:
Macintosh hardware are so successful in the past, that people have little incentive to replace them every few years, the market gets saturated, Apple can't make profit of it.
That's way it get worse now. It's a strange cycle of death.
Except your average consumer is going to replace their device every few years regardless since they don't know how to upgrade the device, don't want to risk breaking it or voiding the warranty,...
Except your average consumer is going to replace their device every few years regardless since they don't know how to upgrade the device, don't want to risk breaking it or voiding the warranty, and don't feel like learning how to work around OS upgrade restrictions. Apple's decline in hardware quality and removal of expansion capabilities is designed to force both average consumers and advanced users to upgrade.
Sounds like exactly what other PC makers. LOL. That's how business works. I hope there's another early-Apple-like challenger which will disrupt the market.
decline in hardware quality and removal of expansion capabilities
Sounds like exactly what other PC makers. LOL.
That's how business works. I hope there's another early-Apple-like challenger which will disrupt the market.
FYI, Apple licenses their text-to-speech from Nuance, so you may be able to find it licensed elsewhere. Then again, it’s possible Apple has tweaked it substantially from what they buy from Nuance.
FYI, Apple licenses their text-to-speech from Nuance, so you may be able to find it licensed elsewhere. Then again, it’s possible Apple has tweaked it substantially from what they buy from Nuance.
We used to have ~12 die hard Mac users here. I think all but 2 have convert over to Linux (mostly Ubuntu) over the last year or so. Unless they do something pretty amazing I don't think they're...
We used to have ~12 die hard Mac users here. I think all but 2 have convert over to Linux (mostly Ubuntu) over the last year or so. Unless they do something pretty amazing I don't think they're ever going back.
Since you can buy a fully loaded Dell XPS (16GB, 4K screen, 512Gb SSD, i7 CPU) for ~$1400 or grab a NUC off the shelf it's kind of hard to convince the bean counters that you need a $2000+ Mac.
The Macbook Pro is the best laptop on the market, even if the specs haven't been updated in some time. A new Windows laptop is STILL shit compared to it (when specs aren't your sole comparison)....
The Macbook Pro is the best laptop on the market, even if the specs haven't been updated in some time. A new Windows laptop is STILL shit compared to it (when specs aren't your sole comparison).
But, Apple is taking these rock solid machines down a very dark path, eventually leading to custom chips, no backwards compatibility and the general death of the product. Perhaps there's no way to reverse this and I'll have to run a garbage Windows laptop again.
What metrics are you using to make that decision? To be clear, I am typing this on my MacBook Pro, which is my daily use machine - 8+ hours per day, generally, I'm using it. I am a big proponent...
The Macbook Pro is the best laptop on the market, even if the specs haven't been updated in some time. A new Windows laptop is STILL shit compared to it (when specs aren't your sole comparison).
What metrics are you using to make that decision?
To be clear, I am typing this on my MacBook Pro, which is my daily use machine - 8+ hours per day, generally, I'm using it. I am a big proponent of using the right tool for the job, and it used to be that without any question to me, the right tool for a developer was a MBP. I don't think that's the case any more; this isn't a bad computer by any means, but I prefer my Surface Book to it in almost all ways.
The most important metric of all: Usability. Parts of that are clearly measurable, like power, usefulness, tools, features, performance. But, I feel the more important are the hard-to-measure...
The most important metric of all: Usability.
Parts of that are clearly measurable, like power, usefulness, tools, features, performance. But, I feel the more important are the hard-to-measure metrics that make these devices so usable (and why you still have one, and why I'm typing this with a Macbook Pro right now). I'm talking about things that are so good they fade away and you might not see them. Like superior sleep/hibernate/power performance, like the very useful migration options/features, like reliable nature of this hardware/software mix (when it's working of course), like fairly innovative things that Apple eventually scrapped like Magsafe and the keyboard (the good one before this crappy one I'm typing with now).
Apple essentially made something they designed from (presumably) the ground up to work for their software, MacOS. While nothing is perfect, this design paradigm has made some of the most amazing laptops verses the "Design it for everything" approach to Windows that is essentially abstracted from all manufactures' hardware designing for that platform.
I find my Surface Book to have the similar - in some cases superior - usability. The hardware is inarguably better. The software is now sufficient for me to use it as a daily machine. Macs don't...
I find my Surface Book to have the similar - in some cases superior - usability. The hardware is inarguably better. The software is now sufficient for me to use it as a daily machine.
Macs don't just "win" anymore. My daily machine has a shitty keyboard, a touchbar that is stupid, chronic hardware problems, chronic sleep / hibernation / power performance issues. It is less good than the Surface Book in almost every way; the only thing that keeps me on the mac is OSX and even that is getting more and more annoying.
I think Apple needs to do something, and they need to do it soon, or people like me (who aren't "apple fanboys", but just used the machines because they were better) are going to start moving away... to the things that are better.
If performance is all you care about, get a gaming laptop, if you want upgradeability and something bulletproof, get a business laptop, if you want sleek and pretty, there's some windows machines...
If performance is all you care about, get a gaming laptop, if you want upgradeability and something bulletproof, get a business laptop, if you want sleek and pretty, there's some windows machines (that actually have cooling) with that too, I'm not sure where you're getting those facts from...
I'm certain this is happening. Think about it. Microsoft, apple, google and fb are trying to get everything into the cloud. Once they succeed ... there will be no `files' for you to manipulate or...
I'm certain this is happening. Think about it. Microsoft, apple, google and fb are trying to get everything into the cloud. Once they succeed
... there will be no `files' for you to manipulate or take with you. The whole notion of 'files' will cease to exist.
... there will be no computing like there is now: general purpose hardware will be replaced by mobile grade, cheap as fuck, dumb machines that are nothing but a portal to the `cloud'. Battery life will be insane because no actual computing is being done on the device itself.
... there will be no freedom in computation. When your device is nothing but a black box that acts as an intuitive, user friendly portal to your stuff on someone elses computer, that someone else WILL dictate what you can and cannot do.
... even less people than now will understand what a computer actually does. which makes it easy to make those people believe that they are not to be trusted with this kind of resposibility.
Think of it this way:
Data is fundamentally different from matter, it is merely represented by matter. To manipulate data, we just need ONE tool: the universal turing machine. The world is full of matter and there exist infinite machines to manipulate it. Those specialist machines are being developed and sold for good money. We are currently almost at the limit of how small cpu's can get (7nm lithography). Where is the money in a universal machine that cannot even be improved in the forseeable future? These companies want to sell video-watching machines, reading machines, spreadsheet machines, calling machines and so on.
As someone who works in an environment where all production code is run on servers, I can say that running heavy compute loads on my laptop doesn’t make sense. As long as I can ssh to the server...
As someone who works in an environment where all production code is run on servers, I can say that running heavy compute loads on my laptop doesn’t make sense. As long as I can ssh to the server and run heavy jobs there, cloud computing is fine by me (and it has been fine since before that terminology came about). If you force me to use a system where I can’t use ssh and a good, modern terminal emulator, then I’ll politely put in my two weeks notice. I don’t want my laptop to need to have a beefy processor. I totally get the idea of something like the iMac Pro, though. I think Apple’s Mac product line right now is unappealing because their vision of personal computing is being hamstrung by Intel. If/when Apple bites the bullet and starts shipping Macs with their own CPUs, the Mac lineup will start to be much more attractive from a compute standpoint. But I’d argue that the current MacBook (yeah the fanless 12” one) is an ideal notebook as long as you have a beefy nonportable machine at home or in the cloud. Where Apple seems to have dropped the ball have been people doing heavy media editing and production where having beefy local compute resources is essential. Thunderbolt was the promised panacea there, but it seems this hasn’t panned out as hoped. And I think Intel is to blame there as well.
Being able to login to a remote system and do your computations there is fine as long as you have control over that system. My argument is that for many users, mostly non power users, this freedom...
Being able to login to a remote system and do your computations there is fine as long as you have control over that system. My argument is that for many users, mostly non power users, this freedom is eroding away.
For example, when the largest market for music is not in selling it (cd's, files etc) but simply in delivering the music to your ears (spotify, itunes) then slowly but surely the places to get the former go away. I'm willing to pay, say, 20 - 30 cts for a song in FLAC format. but i simply do not know a place where i can get them. My only option is subscriptions, which are bad for your wallet over time because the cost does not amortize. Let alone having to move to another service, or not having an internet connection.
What happens to non power users affects us too after some time, and then we still lose freedom.
Did those users really ever have that power? I’d argue no. And they never really wanted that power. That’s part of the reason that personal computers have been so schizophrenic in terms of user...
My argument is that for many users, mostly non power users, this freedom is eroding away.
Did those users really ever have that power? I’d argue no. And they never really wanted that power. That’s part of the reason that personal computers have been so schizophrenic in terms of user interfaces. When Apple finally said "no" to trying to server power users and non-power users simultaneously with iOS, then non-power users finally had a good OS (for them, obviously not for power users).
I’m willing to pay, say, 20 - 30 cts for a song in FLAC format. but i simply do not know a place where i can get them.
I really feel for you, but what can an individual do?
Your best bet is to buy AAC music from iTunes and convert with XLD.
Beyond starting a massive campaign to drive up computer literacy, there’s really nothing you can do to combat rent seekers from wresting control of content from non-power users.
I will never stop campaigning for more computer literacy. I think it really starts to become comparable to basic human rights because computers decide ever more about people's lives and everyone...
I will never stop campaigning for more computer literacy. I think it really starts to become comparable to basic human rights because computers decide ever more about people's lives and everyone should have the right to know how that decision is being made. If they don't want, then there's nothing you can do but the option should always be there.
I have been very serious about computer literacy, mainly from a privacy perspective, for a couple of years. When i started it i took a few steps back from what my online presence has become. I removed all social media and got all my files off other peoples computers, replaced most proprietary software with software that had good open source alternatives, started to vigourously manage my own network & DNS, switch to an ethical email provider, use a vpn, and so on and so forth. This all sounds like a hassle, but would argue that my life got better. For example, i might not notice when the internet is down for up to a few hours because i'm not dependent on it anymore for music, video or basic work.
Doing all of this took effort. Efforts arise from bad default settings, from unintuitive interfaces, or incompatibilities. Apple did a good job on GUIs and default settings, but they suck at compatibility. Microsoft really sucks at all three of them. We (power users, developers, sysadmins) have the responsibility to make it easy for everyone to understand what is going on if they so choose and protect them from any soft- or hardware that tries to obscure it. Especially when people are, in good faith, using something that taps into their activity, gathers data, and sells that data off to the highest bidder, without their absolute full knowledge and consent about what is going on.
Not really, after you reach transparency[1]. I just like to have the most information that could possibly descibe anything that falls within perception for archival reasons. [1]...
Not really, after you reach transparency[1]. I just like to have the most information that could possibly descibe anything that falls within perception for archival reasons.
Please no ;~; I've fallen in love with computers as they are now, I love my saved pictures, my hoard of MP3s, my downloaded videos, I don't ever want to move to the braindead series of apps that...
Please no ;~;
I've fallen in love with computers as they are now, I love my saved pictures, my hoard of MP3s, my downloaded videos, I don't ever want to move to the braindead series of apps that everything wants me to use....
I'm a lifetime Mac user. I started on my parents Mac Plus and my first machine was a Performa 630. I lived though (and owned one) in the clone era. I ran the os x beta. I had the first Bondi iMac....
I'm a lifetime Mac user. I started on my parents Mac Plus and my first machine was a Performa 630. I lived though (and owned one) in the clone era. I ran the os x beta. I had the first Bondi iMac. A G4 sawtooth tower. The first 12 inch macbook. Still have an iMac now.
But my laptop for travel is a Lenovo, and in struggling to justify a new iMac as my current one gets ever slower.
They aren't leading the tech wave anymore and the integration they offered no longer makes their hw so much better than others. I love my iPhone x and Apple watch but the laptop and desktop experience just isn't keeping up.
It's not just the neglected update cycle. Macs in general are simply... worse, with regard to the quality of their hardware. Their thermals are piss-poor, their port selection is barren, the new butterfly keyboards manage to be both noisy and shallow, and they're even less repairable than they were 7-8 years ago (I mean, look at the Mac Pro). All this results in a machine that looks beautiful... and pretty much nothing else. I used to like Macbooks for their reliability-- my MBP from 2010 still works perfectly. I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole nowadays.
I'm in the exact same boat. Currently typing this on my Late 2010 Macbook Pro albeit with upgraded SSD and 8 gbs of ram but it still works perfectly fine. I was just in BestBuy trying out the new MBP keyboards and it's like typing on cardboard. Total crap! Wasn't the idea behind the Pro line is that users with technical expertise could keep the "body" of the device and keep upgrading the internals to keep it current? It's clear that Apple has moved away from their original core user base and are focused on the mainstream user market. I wish apple would produce a "developer" line which would go back to the DIY-upgrade devices.
Yeah, it's a real shame. I've upgraded to a Thinkpad T460 since, and I'm loving it. The keyboard is tactile, with tons of travel, and the machine itself is built like a tank. Everything is fairly accessible and upgradeable, as well.
OS X itself hasn't gotten much better either. Unfortunately Apple computers as a whole have really stagnated, which is a shame because I really hope we don't have a return to the days when Windows completely dominated the desktop landscape :/
Let's not forget about Windows having its own issues for the past decade too. I would take a more stagnant desktop over the detrimental changes Mircosoft has been forcing.
I'm just sitting here in a corner and waiting for more Linux adaption haha
If Linux could play games built for Windows systems consistently without the need for additional configuration--just download, install, and play--then I would be ditching Windows completely. But I spend enough time troubleshooting and debugging problems at work and just don't have the patience to go through all of that hassle just to be able to play a game, which is what I do to relax, not pile on more work to be done.
Can confirm -- playing games and installing software easily are the only things keeping me tethered to Windows, which I otherwise despise.
Exactly. Software people need (or really want) is made for Windows, so they have no easy choice but Windows. The barrier of entry for any other operating system is too high that Windows dominates regardless of how good the competition is.
The situation is getting a little better with Steam pushing for Linux support, and lots of games supporting multiple platforms now.
I think one of the bigger problems will be older software that will likely never be ported over natively, e.g. existing games with Windows support only. Large Steam libraries immediately come to mind.
I’ve used macOS since 10.4 and I can say for me it hasn’t needed to. It has been rock solid even through the PowerPC → x86 transition and now a native file system transition. It has seen so many incremental improvements, but I am thankful that they have been largely incremental. That, to me shows Apple’s respect for me as a user. If Apple starts radically changing macOS over short release cycles, that would be a bad thing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. C.f. that time they tried to replace
mDNSResponder.To think the other way:
Macintosh hardware are so successful in the past, that people have little incentive to replace them every few years, the market gets saturated, Apple can't make profit of it.
That's way it get worse now. It's a strange cycle of death.
Except your average consumer is going to replace their device every few years regardless since they don't know how to upgrade the device, don't want to risk breaking it or voiding the warranty, and don't feel like learning how to work around OS upgrade restrictions. Apple's decline in hardware quality and removal of expansion capabilities is designed to force both average consumers and advanced users to upgrade.
Sounds like exactly what other PC makers. LOL.
That's how business works. I hope there's another early-Apple-like challenger which will disrupt the market.
FYI, Apple licenses their text-to-speech from Nuance, so you may be able to find it licensed elsewhere. Then again, it’s possible Apple has tweaked it substantially from what they buy from Nuance.
Doesn't mac's text to speech system date back to the 90s? Or did they swap it out at some point with the stuff from Nuance.
I don’t know the full history—I just know that I’ve spoken to Nuance representatives who mentioned Apple as a customer.
We used to have ~12 die hard Mac users here. I think all but 2 have convert over to Linux (mostly Ubuntu) over the last year or so. Unless they do something pretty amazing I don't think they're ever going back.
Since you can buy a fully loaded Dell XPS (16GB, 4K screen, 512Gb SSD, i7 CPU) for ~$1400 or grab a NUC off the shelf it's kind of hard to convince the bean counters that you need a $2000+ Mac.
You could also hackintosh macOS right on to that XPS too, if you wanted. A hackbook pro, so to speak.
The Macbook Pro is the best laptop on the market, even if the specs haven't been updated in some time. A new Windows laptop is STILL shit compared to it (when specs aren't your sole comparison).
But, Apple is taking these rock solid machines down a very dark path, eventually leading to custom chips, no backwards compatibility and the general death of the product. Perhaps there's no way to reverse this and I'll have to run a garbage Windows laptop again.
What metrics are you using to make that decision?
To be clear, I am typing this on my MacBook Pro, which is my daily use machine - 8+ hours per day, generally, I'm using it. I am a big proponent of using the right tool for the job, and it used to be that without any question to me, the right tool for a developer was a MBP. I don't think that's the case any more; this isn't a bad computer by any means, but I prefer my Surface Book to it in almost all ways.
The most important metric of all: Usability.
Parts of that are clearly measurable, like power, usefulness, tools, features, performance. But, I feel the more important are the hard-to-measure metrics that make these devices so usable (and why you still have one, and why I'm typing this with a Macbook Pro right now). I'm talking about things that are so good they fade away and you might not see them. Like superior sleep/hibernate/power performance, like the very useful migration options/features, like reliable nature of this hardware/software mix (when it's working of course), like fairly innovative things that Apple eventually scrapped like Magsafe and the keyboard (the good one before this crappy one I'm typing with now).
Apple essentially made something they designed from (presumably) the ground up to work for their software, MacOS. While nothing is perfect, this design paradigm has made some of the most amazing laptops verses the "Design it for everything" approach to Windows that is essentially abstracted from all manufactures' hardware designing for that platform.
I find my Surface Book to have the similar - in some cases superior - usability. The hardware is inarguably better. The software is now sufficient for me to use it as a daily machine.
Macs don't just "win" anymore. My daily machine has a shitty keyboard, a touchbar that is stupid, chronic hardware problems, chronic sleep / hibernation / power performance issues. It is less good than the Surface Book in almost every way; the only thing that keeps me on the mac is OSX and even that is getting more and more annoying.
I think Apple needs to do something, and they need to do it soon, or people like me (who aren't "apple fanboys", but just used the machines because they were better) are going to start moving away... to the things that are better.
I've posted this before, but this really opened my eyes regarding Apple hardware "quality": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8
Seriously? This is not common for Macbooks at all.. given that, I would be walking away too.. I'm still holding on though :)
If performance is all you care about, get a gaming laptop, if you want upgradeability and something bulletproof, get a business laptop, if you want sleek and pretty, there's some windows machines (that actually have cooling) with that too, I'm not sure where you're getting those facts from...
I wish I could still agree but I'm struggling to see why.
Apple is not making this easy.
Didn't you know? Personal computers are obsolete. It's all in the cloud now...
I'm certain this is happening. Think about it. Microsoft, apple, google and fb are trying to get everything into the cloud. Once they succeed
Think of it this way:
Data is fundamentally different from matter, it is merely represented by matter. To manipulate data, we just need ONE tool: the universal turing machine. The world is full of matter and there exist infinite machines to manipulate it. Those specialist machines are being developed and sold for good money. We are currently almost at the limit of how small cpu's can get (7nm lithography). Where is the money in a universal machine that cannot even be improved in the forseeable future? These companies want to sell video-watching machines, reading machines, spreadsheet machines, calling machines and so on.
As someone who works in an environment where all production code is run on servers, I can say that running heavy compute loads on my laptop doesn’t make sense. As long as I can
sshto the server and run heavy jobs there, cloud computing is fine by me (and it has been fine since before that terminology came about). If you force me to use a system where I can’t usesshand a good, modern terminal emulator, then I’ll politely put in my two weeks notice. I don’t want my laptop to need to have a beefy processor. I totally get the idea of something like the iMac Pro, though. I think Apple’s Mac product line right now is unappealing because their vision of personal computing is being hamstrung by Intel. If/when Apple bites the bullet and starts shipping Macs with their own CPUs, the Mac lineup will start to be much more attractive from a compute standpoint. But I’d argue that the current MacBook (yeah the fanless 12” one) is an ideal notebook as long as you have a beefy nonportable machine at home or in the cloud. Where Apple seems to have dropped the ball have been people doing heavy media editing and production where having beefy local compute resources is essential. Thunderbolt was the promised panacea there, but it seems this hasn’t panned out as hoped. And I think Intel is to blame there as well.Being able to login to a remote system and do your computations there is fine as long as you have control over that system. My argument is that for many users, mostly non power users, this freedom is eroding away.
For example, when the largest market for music is not in selling it (cd's, files etc) but simply in delivering the music to your ears (spotify, itunes) then slowly but surely the places to get the former go away. I'm willing to pay, say, 20 - 30 cts for a song in FLAC format. but i simply do not know a place where i can get them. My only option is subscriptions, which are bad for your wallet over time because the cost does not amortize. Let alone having to move to another service, or not having an internet connection.
What happens to non power users affects us too after some time, and then we still lose freedom.
Did those users really ever have that power? I’d argue no. And they never really wanted that power. That’s part of the reason that personal computers have been so schizophrenic in terms of user interfaces. When Apple finally said "no" to trying to server power users and non-power users simultaneously with iOS, then non-power users finally had a good OS (for them, obviously not for power users).
I really feel for you, but what can an individual do?
Your best bet is to buy AAC music from iTunes and convert with XLD.
Beyond starting a massive campaign to drive up computer literacy, there’s really nothing you can do to combat rent seekers from wresting control of content from non-power users.
I will never stop campaigning for more computer literacy. I think it really starts to become comparable to basic human rights because computers decide ever more about people's lives and everyone should have the right to know how that decision is being made. If they don't want, then there's nothing you can do but the option should always be there.
I have been very serious about computer literacy, mainly from a privacy perspective, for a couple of years. When i started it i took a few steps back from what my online presence has become. I removed all social media and got all my files off other peoples computers, replaced most proprietary software with software that had good open source alternatives, started to vigourously manage my own network & DNS, switch to an ethical email provider, use a vpn, and so on and so forth. This all sounds like a hassle, but would argue that my life got better. For example, i might not notice when the internet is down for up to a few hours because i'm not dependent on it anymore for music, video or basic work.
Doing all of this took effort. Efforts arise from bad default settings, from unintuitive interfaces, or incompatibilities. Apple did a good job on GUIs and default settings, but they suck at compatibility. Microsoft really sucks at all three of them. We (power users, developers, sysadmins) have the responsibility to make it easy for everyone to understand what is going on if they so choose and protect them from any soft- or hardware that tries to obscure it. Especially when people are, in good faith, using something that taps into their activity, gathers data, and sells that data off to the highest bidder, without their absolute full knowledge and consent about what is going on.
Rather tangential, but do lossless music formats really make a difference to the ear?
Not really, after you reach transparency[1]. I just like to have the most information that could possibly descibe anything that falls within perception for archival reasons.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(data_compression)
Please no ;~;
I've fallen in love with computers as they are now, I love my saved pictures, my hoard of MP3s, my downloaded videos, I don't ever want to move to the braindead series of apps that everything wants me to use....
What's a computer?
Kill it with fire!
I'm a lifetime Mac user. I started on my parents Mac Plus and my first machine was a Performa 630. I lived though (and owned one) in the clone era. I ran the os x beta. I had the first Bondi iMac. A G4 sawtooth tower. The first 12 inch macbook. Still have an iMac now.
But my laptop for travel is a Lenovo, and in struggling to justify a new iMac as my current one gets ever slower.
They aren't leading the tech wave anymore and the integration they offered no longer makes their hw so much better than others. I love my iPhone x and Apple watch but the laptop and desktop experience just isn't keeping up.