Some tribalism, and the perception that Apple is an extreme luxury brand (which is partly Apple's own invention) for things like the $999 monitor stand or $700 wheels. In actuality, most of...
Some tribalism, and the perception that Apple is an extreme luxury brand (which is partly Apple's own invention) for things like the $999 monitor stand or $700 wheels.
In actuality, most of Apple's consumer tier products are roughly the same price as the competition. Compare the Macbook Air to the LG Gram, for instance. Similar specs, similar price. Or the iMac to the cost of building a similarly speced PC + a 5k monitor (oftentimes the PC config is more expensive!). Or the AirPods to the other "true wireless" iems.
On the other hand, Apple will absolutely mark the fuck up "pro" tier equipment, because they know the production company with hundred million or billion dollar budget will not give a shit about paying $17,000 for a Mac Pro, and will think the $10,000 for the XDR monitor a bargain.
I think the other part is that Apple just completely avoids the gamer market, which is really the primary consumer market which actually cares about specs anymore. Which makes their pro lineup seem ridiculously expensive to PC gamers.
I would also add that "tech nerds on the internet" really love their numbers, and Apple isn't amazing at the numbers across the market (apart from the iPhone/iPad). They're good at the intangibles, the feel of using the product, the build quality, the software experience, etc. You can't put a number to those.
I think this is key. The vast majority of people who insult Apple online have never actually used an Apple product. There's a value in those intangibles that make people who like them quite happy...
They're good at the intangibles, the feel of using the product, the build quality, the software experience, etc. You can't put a number to those.
I think this is key. The vast majority of people who insult Apple online have never actually used an Apple product. There's a value in those intangibles that make people who like them quite happy to pay a bit more than perhaps the product is worth on paper. People who actually use Apple products almost always end up liking them, or at least understanding why some people do.
I'm similar to OP. I spent a decade bashing Apple and thinking people who bought Apple were stupid, before the first iMac. Then I got the first iMac and honestly ever since then you'd have to pay me good money for me to use a non-Apple computer or phone as my personal computer. I still have to to use Windows and Android regularly and hate every minute of it. It's rare that using my iPhone and Mac isn't a pleasure.
Yeah, well when you're used to paying AVID $100,000 for a system, suddenly $27,000 for the system doesn't seem so bad!
On the other hand, Apple will absolutely mark the fuck up "pro" tier equipment, because they know the production company with hundred million or billion dollar budget will not give a shit about paying $17,000 for a Mac Pro, and will think the $10,000 for the XDR monitor a bargain.
Yeah, well when you're used to paying AVID $100,000 for a system, suddenly $27,000 for the system doesn't seem so bad!
I wouldn't say that I hate Apple, but I've never owned anything they make and don't plan on it. A few things that people point out: Their walled garden approach to what they make is a big one for...
I wouldn't say that I hate Apple, but I've never owned anything they make and don't plan on it. A few things that people point out:
Their walled garden approach to what they make is a big one for me. I like having control over what I own and iPhones don't give you that like Androids do. I can remove the battery from my phone and swap out the SD and SIM cards on my own if I want, although I know a lot of Android phones don't let you do those things anymore either.
Lack of compatibility with existing outside systems, like removing the headphone jack and needing adapters for ports on Macbooks. That's also a big one for me.
The occasional snobbery is a turn-off for some, like the insistence that iPhone cameras are better than Android ones, that Macs are better for video and art editing, the handful of times I've seen people on the internet complain about someone in their message group not having an iPhone so they don't have as much functionality as they would on iMessage (if I understand it right).
The price is another important point for me. My sister's college insisted she get a Macbook when you can buy Windows laptops with the same specs for half the price or less.
I guess I don't fit your definition since I'm not loud about it, but those are all things I feel about Apple to some degree or another and I would guess that's where the hate comes from.
I'll defend this choice. There's three groups of computer consumers: the common kind, the people who game, and the people who use it for specialized work. For "normal" people, specs don't matter....
The price is another important point for me. My sister's college insisted she get a Macbook when you can buy Windows laptops with the same specs for half the price or less.
I'll defend this choice. There's three groups of computer consumers: the common kind, the people who game, and the people who use it for specialized work.
For "normal" people, specs don't matter. Like, at all. What does matter, especially for a college student, are things like: how much does it weight? How's the form factor? How nice is the screen to read? Can I just "do" the things I want to do, like browse the internet, open pdfs, and read email without issue?
Similarly TIERed (as in, same form factor, roughly equivalent screen, etc) windows laptop cost very similar amounts (as long as you don't go too much into "pro" territory). Compare an Air, with an LG Gram for instance. Sure, you can find things with a better CPU, and more RAM, and more storage (which are big, chunky, and made of plastic)... but that's not an apples to apples comparison, when those things honestly don't matter.
As an anecdote, I came into college years ago with a powerful 15'' windows/linux dualboot, and after multiple issues, the pain the in ass that is switching OSs commonly, linux's poor GPU drivers for nvidia at the time (this was a big issue), I eventually spent $1000 of my own hard owned poverty college money on a macbook, and it was worth every penny.
And that was when I was a junior in CS.
Edit: almost forgot but the track pad on macbooks is so, so, so much better than ANYTHING on the market, and that's huge for college students who often use their laptops in a variety of random places and often will have to use the track pad.
But if specs don't matter, what are you spending an extra five hundred or thousand dollars for? Is the experience on a Macbook that much better? I get that specs don't matter for a lot of people,...
But if specs don't matter, what are you spending an extra five hundred or thousand dollars for? Is the experience on a Macbook that much better?
Similarly TIERed (as in, same form factor, roughly equivalent screen, etc) windows laptop cost very similar amounts (as long as you don't go too much into "pro" territory). Compare an Air, with an LG Gram for instance. Sure, you can find things with a better CPU, and more RAM, and more storage (which are big, chunky, and made of plastic)... but that's not an apples to apples comparison, when those things honestly don't matter.
I get that specs don't matter for a lot of people, but for the people that do care, I don't think you can brush off a better CPU and more RAM and storage. If I wanted to drop $2000 on a laptop, this random Asus laptop I found on Amazon has a higher resolution, twice as much RAM, a better graphics card (as far as I can tell, I'm not an expert), a slightly better processor, and comparable storage to the base model of the 16-inch Macbook Pro on Apple's website. I know you mentioned that Apple's pro stuff is more expensive, but that was the only non-super thin Macbook I could find, and if you're buying based on specs you're probably not going to get a super thin laptop anyway.
I'm sorry in advance if this comes off as confrontational, I worry that I'm being overly aggressive.
Yes, its the device you spend like 40+ hours on as a college student, it's absolutely worth it for it to look and feel nice, for it to be a high resolution and high DPI display, for it to be...
Is the experience on a Macbook that much better?
Yes, its the device you spend like 40+ hours on as a college student, it's absolutely worth it for it to look and feel nice, for it to be a high resolution and high DPI display, for it to be incredibly light, and for it to have good battery life and a small charging brick.
As a bonus, for CS people it's nice to have a Unix derived OS with a polished UI.
but that was the only non-super thin Macbook I could find, and if you're buying based on specs you're probably not going to get a super thin laptop anyway.
But who's in this market who needs a super powerful laptop and doesn't care about thickness? Either they're a gamer, in which yes, stay far away from macbooks, or they're a pro, in which case they have money to burn on their tools.
The tradeoff you're making is significantly thicker, uglier, lower DPI screen, and Macos preferences. I would compare to the Air, which is really the laptop Apple wants most people to buy. That's...
The tradeoff you're making is significantly thicker, uglier, lower DPI screen, and Macos preferences. I would compare to the Air, which is really the laptop Apple wants most people to buy.
That's not an Apple thing. The Gram also has the same comparison to the ThinkPad.
Now, in particular about appearance, whether or not you care is up to you, but it's certainly a valid want for something you spend so much time with.
That's not the thesis, though. The thesis was "OP's niece is wasting her/her parents money on a computer that's overly expensive" To which my response is that it's not overpriced, you have to make...
the thesis statement here is that Apple is great and Windows and its associated hardware sucks. We've already passed that point.
That's not the thesis, though. The thesis was "OP's niece is wasting her/her parents money on a computer that's overly expensive"
To which my response is that it's not overpriced, you have to make other tradeoffs as you move lines. What you purchase when you buy apple laptops are real benefits over competitors, not the apple logo tax.
My thesis is that you get what you paid for with apple products. It's not the right to have the fancy logo, it's actual pros and cons for the dollar.
The thing that I realized when used a mac for the first time is the incredible intangibility of a lot of the specs of a good screen. Resolution isn't the only thing. I had a 4k Lenovo Thinkpad but...
You can get a 4k screen on the T480. Differentiating above that is fine, but it's not a concern for a gigantic majority of people.
The thing that I realized when used a mac for the first time is the incredible intangibility of a lot of the specs of a good screen. Resolution isn't the only thing. I had a 4k Lenovo Thinkpad but every time the screen tried to display the orange bar on hacker news the screen would dim perceptibly. It was really weird. Scrolling to the top of the page on HN would cause my screen to get darker on this display.
Refresh rate, color accuracy, responsiveness, these are all things that contribute to a good screen and that I've realized make using the device so much nicer. I bought the new iPad Pro when it came out and it is far and away the best screen I've ever used. For a while I couldn't stop browsing Flickr because all the pictures were so pretty.
Apple spends a whole bunch of money on their screens, in specs, but also (just as importantly) in quality control. Screens are notoriously difficult to make consistent, but Apple has a pretty good track record in making high quality screens consistently.
Oh man, I cheaped out and got a Dell display for my MacPro a few years ago, and it had so many weird issues like this. There was a certain color of gray (which happened to be the background color...
I had a 4k Lenovo Thinkpad but every time the screen tried to display the orange bar on hacker news the screen would dim perceptibly. It was really weird. Scrolling to the top of the page on HN would cause my screen to get darker on this display.
Oh man, I cheaped out and got a Dell display for my MacPro a few years ago, and it had so many weird issues like this. There was a certain color of gray (which happened to be the background color of most Xcode windows for a few years) that would just flicker. No other color seemed to do it, but any part of the screen showing that exact shade was just hard to look at. It was so weird. I heard a lot of good things about Dell displays, but never again will I buy one after that experience. (Luckily a later version of Xcode changed its colors slightly and that no longer happens.)
Yes, I remember that. It sounds like you're trying to say that that somehow makes Apple's products look bad. But they didn't design or manufacture it. They merely sold it as a 3rd party product in...
Yes, I remember that. It sounds like you're trying to say that that somehow makes Apple's products look bad. But they didn't design or manufacture it. They merely sold it as a 3rd party product in their stores, just like I'm sure BestBuy or CDW did. Once they found out there was a problem, they pulled it until the problem was fixed, so this doesn't really seem like a ding against Apple to me. It's no different than if you went into a Microsoft store and bought a bum monitor. And the monitor wasn't specific to Apple's products. People with Windows machines that bought it also suffered the same issue. Does that make Microsoft look bad in your eyes?
I guess I'm not sure what you're trying to say. My point about the Dell monitor was that some other manufacturers don't build products as well as Apple. Your story reinforces that point. Was that your intent? It doesn't sound like it was.
I think you’ve got a good point, and you don’t even have to move outside of products Apple manufactures to find things that don’t work well. Their butterfly keyboard design had huge issues and was...
I think you’ve got a good point, and you don’t even have to move outside of products Apple manufactures to find things that don’t work well. Their butterfly keyboard design had huge issues and was reviled by many.
I would maybe make the argument that Apple gets QC and design right more consistently than other companies (they’re definitely not perfect) but that’s just a feeling that I don’t have numbers to back up.
I can totally see how if you disagree with that statement it could be frustrating to see it everywhere.
I've used a T580, an XPS15 2017, and a XPS13. They've all had subpar track pads. The indicator I use is how much my fingers cramp after an hour and how much I wish I had a mouse. Sometimes I don't...
I've used a T580, an XPS15 2017, and a XPS13.
They've all had subpar track pads. The indicator I use is how much my fingers cramp after an hour and how much I wish I had a mouse.
Sometimes I don't even use a mouse if I have it with apple track pads.
For what it's worth, I don't like trackpads at all (so I'm not a big laptop person in general) and Apple's whole 'Control +', 'Options +', etc. methods significantly turns me off. I also miss...
For what it's worth, I don't like trackpads at all (so I'm not a big laptop person in general) and Apple's whole 'Control +', 'Options +', etc. methods significantly turns me off. I also miss two-finger clicks and other gestures regularly enough to be annoyed. Maybe some of it is simply being a lot more accustomed to PC navigation - I never actually used a Mac til my early 20s, at which point I used their no-right-click mouse, another annoyance - but I think I'm acclimated enough now. I've found Macbook trackpads to be okay, not that noticeably different from any other.
FWIW, if it bugs you, you can use any USB mouse with a Mac and all the buttons just work. I've been using Logitech mice for like 20 years without problem. The OS fully supports right-clicking on...
FWIW, if it bugs you, you can use any USB mouse with a Mac and all the buttons just work. I've been using Logitech mice for like 20 years without problem. The OS fully supports right-clicking on things, as well as scroll wheels and scroll wheel clicks. My current mouse has something like 6 buttons and most of them do something.
I know that, but what was the point in the first place of having the single-click mouse for a company that claimed to be so design- and UX-centric? It surely wasn't to make things easier for the...
I know that, but what was the point in the first place of having the single-click mouse for a company that claimed to be so design- and UX-centric? It surely wasn't to make things easier for the user, and I'm sure there was some marketing BS cooked up to sell it to consumers, which they ended up abandoning. It echoes the stuff they were talking around whichever iPhone it was, 4 maybe, that they advertised as remaining a smaller size (when everyone else was making bigger screens) because they designed it for one-handed operation... and then the next model they put out is a bigger screen size like Samsung.
Not saying you're doing this, but I always find it amusing how people rail on the iPhone for having lightning instead of USB-C, and rail on the Macs for having USB-C. It's not the feature set so...
Lack of compatibility with existing outside systems, like removing the headphone jack and needing adapters for ports on Macbooks. That's also a big one for me.
Not saying you're doing this, but I always find it amusing how people rail on the iPhone for having lightning instead of USB-C, and rail on the Macs for having USB-C.
the handful of times I've seen people on the internet complain about someone in their message group not having an iPhone so they don't have as much functionality as they would on iMessage (if I understand it right)
It's not the feature set so much as iMessages don't use text messages, but once an Android phone is in the mix all the messages are coming out of people's text message allowance. Not so relevant these days though when most plans include unlimited texts, but in the early days of the iPhone it was an understandable gripe.
I certainly don't know much about what ports Macs and iPhones have, I just know I've seen a fair share of adapters for things like VGA ports /shrug Thank you for articulating that, I wasn't sure...
Not saying you're doing this, but I always find it amusing how people rail on the iPhone for having lightning instead of USB-C, and rail on the Macs for having USB-C.
I certainly don't know much about what ports Macs and iPhones have, I just know I've seen a fair share of adapters for things like VGA ports /shrug
It's not the feature set so much as iMessages don't use text messages, but once an Android phone is in the mix all the messages are coming out of people's text message allowance. Not so relevant these days though when most plans include unlimited texts, but in the early days of the iPhone it was an understandable gripe.
Thank you for articulating that, I wasn't sure what the difference is.
You would absolutely need an adapter for VGA. But wouldn't you for most modern, high-end PC laptops too? Even DVI is pretty much a relic by now with how much better the alternatives are. I do...
I certainly don't know much about what ports Macs and iPhones have, I just know I've seen a fair share of adapters for things like VGA ports /shrug
You would absolutely need an adapter for VGA. But wouldn't you for most modern, high-end PC laptops too? Even DVI is pretty much a relic by now with how much better the alternatives are. I do personally agree the whole ports thing is stupid though. My current MacBook has only USB-C ports. It's definitely stupid for a Pro machine, and I'd rather a selection of ports, particularly an ethernet port. Though adapters aren't nearly the issue people make them out to be.
I should have specified that this was all 5+ years ago, sorry. You are right, I doubt many laptops have VGA ports anymore.
You would absolutely need an adapter for VGA. But wouldn't you for most modern, high-end PC laptops too? Even DVI is pretty much a relic by now with how much better the alternatives are.
I should have specified that this was all 5+ years ago, sorry. You are right, I doubt many laptops have VGA ports anymore.
I'm sorry, I'm still confused. What do you mean by this? There's tons you can do on both systems. I google things for both systems all the time and always find results. I'm not sure if you're...
In Windows, or Mac OS, once you hit the point where the documentation stops, nobody can help you. You're screwed.
I'm sorry, I'm still confused. What do you mean by this? There's tons you can do on both systems. I google things for both systems all the time and always find results. I'm not sure if you're saying something patently untrue or if I'm just not understanding you.
People tinker extensively with both systems, and there's a wealth of resources and communities out there to help you.
Okay, you seem to be in a pretty niche area then. And Linux, where every single tiny aspect of it can be changed and customised, is unquestionably going to be the better solution. But I'm not...
Okay, you seem to be in a pretty niche area then. And Linux, where every single tiny aspect of it can be changed and customised, is unquestionably going to be the better solution. But I'm not clear on how this relates to the systems being "understandable and transparent." You supported it by talking about non-technical partner. They're going to be totally out of their deph doing what you describe on any OS.
How about I give you a much more relatable example, then? Once upon a time, it was my job to install Quickbooks Point of Sale on a specific PC. This piece of software is built on top of Microsoft...
How about I give you a much more relatable example, then?
Once upon a time, it was my job to install Quickbooks Point of Sale on a specific PC.
This piece of software is built on top of Microsoft SQL Server, so in order to install it, the install script first attempts to install a version of it called Microsoft SQL Server Express. The install script would fail every time; the only thing it would tell me was that it failed to install Microsoft SQL Server Express.
So I did the common sense thing and went to Microsoft's website and downloaded the dedicated installer for SQL Server Express. I ran it and it also failed, but this time it gave me an error code.
That error code, however, was absolutely useless. There was zero public documentation whatsoever of this type of error code. Googling it presented me with nothing. The only way I could ever solve the problem would be to break into microsoft's development servers and hope and pray that they had some kind of internal documentation, or to find the specific person who created the error code and ask them what it meant. We weren't paying for Microsoft SQL server, so there was zero support for it.
(And in an act of karmic justice, not even Intuit themselves could be arsed to support their own POS and instead rewrote it as a SaaS solution so they could vacuum more money out of their johns customers.).
I'm sorry but I'm still not getting it, or you're just claiming something different to what you initially did. You seem to be saying "I can google niche things more easily" which seems very...
I'm sorry but I'm still not getting it, or you're just claiming something different to what you initially did. You seem to be saying "I can google niche things more easily" which seems very different than Windows/macOS being less "understandable." I'm not sure that's true, but it's not a point I would argue against. I've googled things plenty of times for all three systems an found the answers I was looking for.
If we are telling war stories... I used to work in tech support. Before Google. Before Yahoo. Every error was a complete mystery back then. Except for that one guy who had access to the source code.
Googling it presented me with nothing.
If we are telling war stories... I used to work in tech support. Before Google. Before Yahoo.
Every error was a complete mystery back then. Except for that one guy who had access to the source code.
Sure there's more that's possible with Linux, that's the "selling" point of it. But it's absurds to say it's more "understandable" than the other systems for that reason.
Sure there's more that's possible with Linux, that's the "selling" point of it. But it's absurds to say it's more "understandable" than the other systems for that reason.
The way you presented the term was deeply misleading then. You implied, very strongly, that you were using understandable in the way I interpreted. But I'm not going to argue Linux isn't more...
On the other hand, Ubuntu has something absolutely crucial going for it: it's understandable and transparent. I have never had an issue with an Ubuntu-based operating system that a web search did not turn up at least 80% of a solution for, and usually it's literally as simple as "click here, paste this, go on your way." My completely non-technical partner uses a Linux laptop I gave him, and I haven't touched it in months. Same with my mom, who uses it, and LibreOffice, full time for her academic work.
The way you presented the term was deeply misleading then. You implied, very strongly, that you were using understandable in the way I interpreted. But I'm not going to argue Linux isn't more "understandable" in that it's open source, so I guess we're done. You could have just said "it's open source," though.
I quoted how you did. You say it's understandable and transparent, say how easy it is to google things, then reference two non-techie people who can use it without help, all in the same paragraph....
I quoted how you did. You say it's understandable and transparent, say how easy it is to google things, then reference two non-techie people who can use it without help, all in the same paragraph. You definitely didn't follow up your "understandable and transparent" claim with any explanation of the ability to access and change any part of the OS or "understand" (read: have access to) the deep, deep levels of it. At least not until I asked for clarification. But we're definitely into "pointless arguing" territory now, so I'll stop.
I really don't think anybody has, at any point, argued that Linux isn't more customisable and open to modification. You just used "understandable" in what I still maintain was a deeply misleading...
I really don't think anybody has, at any point, argued that Linux isn't more customisable and open to modification. You just used "understandable" in what I still maintain was a deeply misleading and largely incorrect way. We've not had anything to actually discuss for about 5 comments now. Your core point is valid, I've at no point argued otherwise. You just chose to initially express it in a very bizarre way. You clearly have a passionate love for Linux and deep hatred for Windows and macOS, and that's fine. You do you. Nobody's trying to tell you to do anything else.
Really? I've always gotten the sense that the Linux community has a "compile it yourself" mentality, which even as someone who's fairly tech-savvy drives me insane. I've done my work exclusively...
In my experience, Ubuntu has a lot of people on the 'net with a decent familiarity with its internals who are willing to answer questions by diving into source code, finding the failure, and coming back to you with an answer you can use. Yes, sometimes that answer is "this hardware isn't supported", but I've heard that just as often in my attempts to do cutting edge stuff - VR, at the time I was doing it, or actual good MIDI routing - on Windows.
Really? I've always gotten the sense that the Linux community has a "compile it yourself" mentality, which even as someone who's fairly tech-savvy drives me insane. I've done my work exclusively on Ubuntu for the last year and trying to find instructions for things like a screen reader was like talking to a wall. "Go read the Orca instructions", but I did and they didn't help and that's why I went looking elsewhere.
It seems to me like blind contrarianism. Disagreeing because it's cool to disagree. Disagreeing just to feel special, wiser, or more 'in-the-know'. It is somewhat of...
It seems to me like blind contrarianism. Disagreeing because it's cool to disagree. Disagreeing just to feel special, wiser, or more 'in-the-know'. It is somewhat of i-have-the-better-product-elitism.
Why do people have long arguments in forums or what-not about why their Samsung is better than your iPhone? It can't just be because they are super friendly and want to inform them of a better product to buy in the future... To me, and many others who aren't caught up in that tech scene, it simply seems like them stroking their ego.
In reality most people don't give two fucks about whether your phone can customize your home screen or put in a micro SD card and my phone can't. So why argue about it and call Apple owners misinformed and dumb? What good does that do?
My guess, taking into account what I've observed from being younger and actually having friends like this, is that most of the hate is from younger people that spend a lot of the time on the internet. Elitism around having a better product is enforced by younger tech communities that reside on reddit or youtube. It's crazy to me that there are literally huge communities (or various forms of entertainment) around having an OS on your phone. Android is just a tool, implemented in myriads of different ways across phones, and it's not even that different from iOS.
I personally have an Android phone and Windows PC. I got my Android phone just because it was $100 cheaper with a good deal and had a bit better specs. It would be elitist to act like my phone is insanely better and I am insanely smarter. Got my Windows PC because I like to play games and upgrade it. It would also be elitist to think that a Mac wouldn't be better in some situations.
It's another form of tribalism, where people attach part of their identity to a product they use or a choice they've made, and then get upset at being told (or even just having it implied) that...
It's another form of tribalism, where people attach part of their identity to a product they use or a choice they've made, and then get upset at being told (or even just having it implied) that they made the "wrong" choice. And like you said, internet communities especially love finding ways to attack and denigrate the "out-groups" that made a different choice. I've always loved this comic.
It happens with phone OSes, video game consoles, car manufacturers, programming languages, text editors, and so many other things.
I think it's also stronger when the choice requires some level of "commitment", where it's harder to have or use multiple of the options. For example, not many people have both an Android phone and an iPhone. This can be one of the reasons that it seems to affect younger people more as well, since they usually have less money, so they could be committing to a single phone/console/whatever for years.
Tribalism is a great word to explain it! Your thoughts about the commitment and younger people are probably true too, because at a younger age a phone or computer is a big purchase and is going to...
Tribalism is a great word to explain it! Your thoughts about the commitment and younger people are probably true too, because at a younger age a phone or computer is a big purchase and is going to be a big part of their life when they use it for hours every day.
Yeah. I do think that the hate that is simply criticism of Apple and not tied with anything else would not be elitist. However, much of the hate I see includes something other than Apple as an...
Yeah. I do think that the hate that is simply criticism of Apple and not tied with anything else would not be elitist. However, much of the hate I see includes something other than Apple as an alternative (whether it be Android, Windows, OnePlus, ThinkPad). Also, arguing that Apple is bad heavily insinuates that something is better, and while the hate may not explicitly be Apple vs _______, it seems to me that the 'I have the better product these apple buyers are so dumb' mentality is still in the hater's mind.
I think it's not just Apple, this is part of the human nature. For anything that has loud fanboys there will inevitably be loud anti-fanboys. See also: YouTubers, fidget spinners, Hollywood...
I think it's not just Apple, this is part of the human nature. For anything that has loud fanboys there will inevitably be loud anti-fanboys. See also: YouTubers, fidget spinners, Hollywood celebrities, music in general (including hate for broad things such as music genres), etc.
Leaving the issue of fanboys aside, I get a sense from using Apple products that they take a dim view of me as a consumer. They feel user-proofed, to the extent that my experience is frustrating...
Leaving the issue of fanboys aside, I get a sense from using Apple products that they take a dim view of me as a consumer. They feel user-proofed, to the extent that my experience is frustrating and straight-jacketed. Some of their official stances have been laughably bad as well, in line with the lying @tindall mentions.
I do like the focus they have on design though; they have lots of welcome little touches, as simple as the Macbook magnetic connection for the power charger, for example.
It's used to vent the frustration of the unjust inequality in our society. Having a brand that markets itself as a status symbol be so predominant in culture causes people to defend the 'less...
It's used to vent the frustration of the unjust inequality in our society. Having a brand that markets itself as a status symbol be so predominant in culture causes people to defend the 'less valuable' devices as just as good, or maybe even better, than the measure society values it at.
I own Apple products, but I still find a lot of Apple fandom to be annoying. I divide my annoyance into two phases: the first is before Steve Jobs died, and the second is after. For phase one, you...
I own Apple products, but I still find a lot of Apple fandom to be annoying. I divide my annoyance into two phases: the first is before Steve Jobs died, and the second is after.
For phase one, you could pretty much attribute it to the "Reality Distortion Field" and its effects on Apple diehards. I remember an Apple fanboy aggressively insulting me because I disagreed with a rigged benchmark that Apple made showing how "great" their PowerPC chips were compared to Intel chips. TL;DR: The work being submitted for benchmarking would be sped up by using SIMD instructions in the processor. In the PowerPC case, this means using AltiVec, and in the Intel case, this meant using MMX and SSE. The PowerPC benchmark was built to use AltiVec, while the Intel benchmark was compiled without using any Intel SIMD instructions.
Then you get into stupid things like the antenna issue with the iPhone 4 (was that the one?) where, "you're all just holding it wrong."
Post-Jobs, my annoyance is primarily with two things:
Their "thinner at all costs" mantra that they seemed to have going for a while. The butterfly keyboard was garbage that was only necessary to facilitate a lower-profile laptop. Meanwhile, they still try to do Reality Distortion -- there's no problem at all, you're just not typing correctly!
New UX features that are confusing and non-discoverable. Somehow I get my iPad into multi-window mode, but I have no idea how it works, how I got there, or (most importantly) how to get out of it. I think that Jobs would never have allowed some of this stuff to ship.
I grew up in an apple hold in the 90s/00s with various imacs and ipods. I got an iphone for HS graduation and then bought a macbook pro for college. As I got older, I realized that Apple's...
I grew up in an apple hold in the 90s/00s with various imacs and ipods. I got an iphone for HS graduation and then bought a macbook pro for college.
As I got older, I realized that Apple's priorities with both hardware and software are not my priorities. Perhaps I'm just not the target audience. I want to be able to change the settings for software programs. I want more ports instead of a thinner laptop. I want more battery life and a headphone jack instead of a super thing phone and headphones that I have to charge.
During college, it was great because I had access to a *nix environment for programming, but didn't have to worry about having a scary linux error the night before a project was due. Linux has come a ways since then and is way more usable and is my primary home laptop and work OS (specifically Fedora) - though I do have a windows machine for gaming.
The other thing I ran into was Apple making changing to their software - usually silently and usually without the option/setting to change behaviors. I liked my integrated RSS feeder in mail, until it disappeared one update. I liked the way my image viewer didn't open the previous images I had open...until one day it I updated and that was the new normal. After so many changes I disliked, with no settings or options to customize it, I just stopped updating my macbook for long periods of time. It wasn't ideal - but I was tired of my computer no longer doing the things I wanted it to do.
I'm much happier on linux. Linux desktops have matured greatly in the past decade from when I first started - and short of specialty software (gaming, adobe suite, etc) - they are just as functional and are fully-fledged operating systems. And even the specialty software tends to have alternatives or are getting easier to work with. The past few years have been great for linux gaming for example.
I'm sure I'm considered more of a "power user" - but ultimately it just comes down to Apple doesn't value the same things I do.
I had a 2015 Macbook for about three years, and while it ran great for 99% of the time, I did have issues. It locked up on occasion. It would somehow delete my wifi security certificate. If...
I had a 2015 Macbook for about three years, and while it ran great for 99% of the time, I did have issues. It locked up on occasion. It would somehow delete my wifi security certificate. If something didn't work right, I found it was significantly harder to figure out why than it was with Windows.
I remember we once had an issue with an Epson plotter (around 2014) where, no matter how we added it to the Mac it would never receive the print job. That took us a week to work through until someone tried adding the printer through Microsoft Word (of all things!) and somehow that was a different enough method for OSX that it finally worked.
I've seen many more strange behaviours on Windows machine, either by quality or volume, but that people act shocked that Macs are, in fact, imperfect computers does give me a small amount of distaste. They've been sold the idea that it Just Works but there are things about them that rub me wrong just as much as there are things on Windows.
Also, there's always some joker around that asks why I have an Android instead of an iPhone and then starts quoting synthetic benchmarks at me as if that's a replacement for my preference for using Android one-handed over iOS. I prefer iOS more on tablet than Android; and I like OSX better on laptops and Windows for desktops. No system is perfect and I'm open to the idea that there is always a different way to do something. I think, if anything, it's the Apple fans that grate me more than Apple products. But, hey, they still rank higher to me than pretty much all of r/Android so take that as you will.
I really like a lot of Apple's hardware, especially their older stuff. The fit and finish is unmatched, and in ye olden days repairs were trivial. I had an iPhone 6S, and you could open it up with...
I really like a lot of Apple's hardware, especially their older stuff. The fit and finish is unmatched, and in ye olden days repairs were trivial. I had an iPhone 6S, and you could open it up with 2 screws, and replace whatever you needed (except the damn touchid home button). Same story with the macbook pros pre-2012. You could pop em open, upgrade your ram, hard drive, etc. Also, the iPad is still the only tablet worth a shit. That said, my main gripes with them these days are some really dumb design decisions, and how locked down and unrepairable their devices are. The charging port on the bottom of the magic mouse for example. Or still not having a usable file manager on iOS without jailbreaking, or their refusal to support technologies like Vulkan and newer OGL versions and instead roll their own graphics API. Lightning on the iPhone, no more headphone jack, the list goes on.
For many people, it works fine. If an iPhone does everything you need it to do, I would recommend it. But some things are just impossible. I can't put a 250gb SD card in an iPhone. I can't upgrade the ram on a macbook. Mac OS is actually pretty decent but it seems to be languishing quite a bit these days, and I prefer to run Linux where I get better hardware support and an officially supported package manager.
Being that you repaired Windows machines (and based on my own experience doing the same work), you were likely witness to the most absurd, idiotic, and bull-in-a-china-shop acts of the users....
For almost fifteen years I used and earned a living repairing Windows machines... Over that same time period, even though I knew a great deal about how to use a Windows machine, I still had monthly headaches. Some were incredibly frustrating and took hours to troubleshoot.
In 2008 I decided to purchase an iMac. I now have my second iMac. I've only had one problem... One small problem in twelve years.
Being that you repaired Windows machines (and based on my own experience doing the same work), you were likely witness to the most absurd, idiotic, and bull-in-a-china-shop acts of the users. During this time I assume you did not repair Apple machines. Why do you think that Apple technicians don't have the same experiences?
What Apple does have is outstanding customer service and access to their own troubleshooting library. They can have this because they have a walled ecosystem. Apple knows the ins and outs of every circuit in their hardware and every line of code in their OS. And if an Apple technician can't fix it with the tools they are given, they simply replace it because it's easier to do so than to troubleshoot. Windows has to contend with thousands of manufacturers giving billions of users the ability to seemingly replace hardware at random with the full expectation for it to work flawlessly when they do so; and when it doesn't the "it's Microsoft's fault."
The same goes for software. Windows allows you to do absolutely wondrous, amazing things, to customize and change anything and everything to your heart's desire and the expectation is that you pay the consequences of your actions should you screw it up. Apple simply does not. When you remove the option to screw change something, you eliminate the possibility of it being a problem.
A perfect example can be found in automobiles. This is the engine bay of a 90's era Lexus. Everything is accessible, everything can be easily replaced, it is inviting, inciting, and open. To contrast, this is the engine bay of a late model Lexus. It says one thing and one thing only: Look, but do. not. touch. To most, one of these is pretty and one is not. To others one of these shows infinite possibilities and the other is a bleak hellscape where creativity is actively discouraged. One is Windows, one is Mac.
This of course doesn't mention any of the points already covered like marketing, tribalism, cost, perceived value, aesthetics, and so on.
I would argue, that most people don't give a crap. That most people can't be buggered learning a new OS. That only a small noisy minority care to criticize Macs, and a similar small noisy minority...
I would argue, that most people don't give a crap. That most people can't be buggered learning a new OS. That only a small noisy minority care to criticize Macs, and a similar small noisy minority care to criticize PCs.
Even back in the 80's, there were die hard PC users, and die hard Mac users (plus die hard Amiga users, who ultimately died out.)
Yet computers back then were total crap compared to today. Now everything is amazing. But people still like to complain.
I mean, I like to bag on Apples butterfly keyboard as much as the next guy, but did I say no to a butterfly keyboard Mac for work? Nope.
Some tribalism, and the perception that Apple is an extreme luxury brand (which is partly Apple's own invention) for things like the $999 monitor stand or $700 wheels.
In actuality, most of Apple's consumer tier products are roughly the same price as the competition. Compare the Macbook Air to the LG Gram, for instance. Similar specs, similar price. Or the iMac to the cost of building a similarly speced PC + a 5k monitor (oftentimes the PC config is more expensive!). Or the AirPods to the other "true wireless" iems.
On the other hand, Apple will absolutely mark the fuck up "pro" tier equipment, because they know the production company with hundred million or billion dollar budget will not give a shit about paying $17,000 for a Mac Pro, and will think the $10,000 for the XDR monitor a bargain.
I think the other part is that Apple just completely avoids the gamer market, which is really the primary consumer market which actually cares about specs anymore. Which makes their pro lineup seem ridiculously expensive to PC gamers.
I would also add that "tech nerds on the internet" really love their numbers, and Apple isn't amazing at the numbers across the market (apart from the iPhone/iPad). They're good at the intangibles, the feel of using the product, the build quality, the software experience, etc. You can't put a number to those.
I think this is key. The vast majority of people who insult Apple online have never actually used an Apple product. There's a value in those intangibles that make people who like them quite happy to pay a bit more than perhaps the product is worth on paper. People who actually use Apple products almost always end up liking them, or at least understanding why some people do.
I'm similar to OP. I spent a decade bashing Apple and thinking people who bought Apple were stupid, before the first iMac. Then I got the first iMac and honestly ever since then you'd have to pay me good money for me to use a non-Apple computer or phone as my personal computer. I still have to to use Windows and Android regularly and hate every minute of it. It's rare that using my iPhone and Mac isn't a pleasure.
Yeah, well when you're used to paying AVID $100,000 for a system, suddenly $27,000 for the system doesn't seem so bad!
I wouldn't say that I hate Apple, but I've never owned anything they make and don't plan on it. A few things that people point out:
I guess I don't fit your definition since I'm not loud about it, but those are all things I feel about Apple to some degree or another and I would guess that's where the hate comes from.
I'll defend this choice. There's three groups of computer consumers: the common kind, the people who game, and the people who use it for specialized work.
For "normal" people, specs don't matter. Like, at all. What does matter, especially for a college student, are things like: how much does it weight? How's the form factor? How nice is the screen to read? Can I just "do" the things I want to do, like browse the internet, open pdfs, and read email without issue?
Similarly TIERed (as in, same form factor, roughly equivalent screen, etc) windows laptop cost very similar amounts (as long as you don't go too much into "pro" territory). Compare an Air, with an LG Gram for instance. Sure, you can find things with a better CPU, and more RAM, and more storage (which are big, chunky, and made of plastic)... but that's not an apples to apples comparison, when those things honestly don't matter.
As an anecdote, I came into college years ago with a powerful 15'' windows/linux dualboot, and after multiple issues, the pain the in ass that is switching OSs commonly, linux's poor GPU drivers for nvidia at the time (this was a big issue), I eventually spent $1000 of my own hard owned poverty college money on a macbook, and it was worth every penny.
And that was when I was a junior in CS.
Edit: almost forgot but the track pad on macbooks is so, so, so much better than ANYTHING on the market, and that's huge for college students who often use their laptops in a variety of random places and often will have to use the track pad.
But if specs don't matter, what are you spending an extra five hundred or thousand dollars for? Is the experience on a Macbook that much better?
I get that specs don't matter for a lot of people, but for the people that do care, I don't think you can brush off a better CPU and more RAM and storage. If I wanted to drop $2000 on a laptop, this random Asus laptop I found on Amazon has a higher resolution, twice as much RAM, a better graphics card (as far as I can tell, I'm not an expert), a slightly better processor, and comparable storage to the base model of the 16-inch Macbook Pro on Apple's website. I know you mentioned that Apple's pro stuff is more expensive, but that was the only non-super thin Macbook I could find, and if you're buying based on specs you're probably not going to get a super thin laptop anyway.
I'm sorry in advance if this comes off as confrontational, I worry that I'm being overly aggressive.
Yes, its the device you spend like 40+ hours on as a college student, it's absolutely worth it for it to look and feel nice, for it to be a high resolution and high DPI display, for it to be incredibly light, and for it to have good battery life and a small charging brick.
As a bonus, for CS people it's nice to have a Unix derived OS with a polished UI.
But who's in this market who needs a super powerful laptop and doesn't care about thickness? Either they're a gamer, in which yes, stay far away from macbooks, or they're a pro, in which case they have money to burn on their tools.
The tradeoff you're making is significantly thicker, uglier, lower DPI screen, and Macos preferences. I would compare to the Air, which is really the laptop Apple wants most people to buy.
That's not an Apple thing. The Gram also has the same comparison to the ThinkPad.
Now, in particular about appearance, whether or not you care is up to you, but it's certainly a valid want for something you spend so much time with.
That's not the thesis, though. The thesis was "OP's niece is wasting her/her parents money on a computer that's overly expensive"
To which my response is that it's not overpriced, you have to make other tradeoffs as you move lines. What you purchase when you buy apple laptops are real benefits over competitors, not the apple logo tax.
My thesis is that you get what you paid for with apple products. It's not the right to have the fancy logo, it's actual pros and cons for the dollar.
The thing that I realized when used a mac for the first time is the incredible intangibility of a lot of the specs of a good screen. Resolution isn't the only thing. I had a 4k Lenovo Thinkpad but every time the screen tried to display the orange bar on hacker news the screen would dim perceptibly. It was really weird. Scrolling to the top of the page on HN would cause my screen to get darker on this display.
Refresh rate, color accuracy, responsiveness, these are all things that contribute to a good screen and that I've realized make using the device so much nicer. I bought the new iPad Pro when it came out and it is far and away the best screen I've ever used. For a while I couldn't stop browsing Flickr because all the pictures were so pretty.
Apple spends a whole bunch of money on their screens, in specs, but also (just as importantly) in quality control. Screens are notoriously difficult to make consistent, but Apple has a pretty good track record in making high quality screens consistently.
Oh man, I cheaped out and got a Dell display for my MacPro a few years ago, and it had so many weird issues like this. There was a certain color of gray (which happened to be the background color of most Xcode windows for a few years) that would just flicker. No other color seemed to do it, but any part of the screen showing that exact shade was just hard to look at. It was so weird. I heard a lot of good things about Dell displays, but never again will I buy one after that experience. (Luckily a later version of Xcode changed its colors slightly and that no longer happens.)
Yes, I remember that. It sounds like you're trying to say that that somehow makes Apple's products look bad. But they didn't design or manufacture it. They merely sold it as a 3rd party product in their stores, just like I'm sure BestBuy or CDW did. Once they found out there was a problem, they pulled it until the problem was fixed, so this doesn't really seem like a ding against Apple to me. It's no different than if you went into a Microsoft store and bought a bum monitor. And the monitor wasn't specific to Apple's products. People with Windows machines that bought it also suffered the same issue. Does that make Microsoft look bad in your eyes?
I guess I'm not sure what you're trying to say. My point about the Dell monitor was that some other manufacturers don't build products as well as Apple. Your story reinforces that point. Was that your intent? It doesn't sound like it was.
I think you’ve got a good point, and you don’t even have to move outside of products Apple manufactures to find things that don’t work well. Their butterfly keyboard design had huge issues and was reviled by many.
I would maybe make the argument that Apple gets QC and design right more consistently than other companies (they’re definitely not perfect) but that’s just a feeling that I don’t have numbers to back up.
I can totally see how if you disagree with that statement it could be frustrating to see it everywhere.
I've used a T580, an XPS15 2017, and a XPS13.
They've all had subpar track pads. The indicator I use is how much my fingers cramp after an hour and how much I wish I had a mouse.
Sometimes I don't even use a mouse if I have it with apple track pads.
I suppose, but the other way is a very common opinion.
And objectively they definitely have the largest surface area.
For what it's worth, I don't like trackpads at all (so I'm not a big laptop person in general) and Apple's whole 'Control +', 'Options +', etc. methods significantly turns me off. I also miss two-finger clicks and other gestures regularly enough to be annoyed. Maybe some of it is simply being a lot more accustomed to PC navigation - I never actually used a Mac til my early 20s, at which point I used their no-right-click mouse, another annoyance - but I think I'm acclimated enough now. I've found Macbook trackpads to be okay, not that noticeably different from any other.
FWIW, if it bugs you, you can use any USB mouse with a Mac and all the buttons just work. I've been using Logitech mice for like 20 years without problem. The OS fully supports right-clicking on things, as well as scroll wheels and scroll wheel clicks. My current mouse has something like 6 buttons and most of them do something.
I know that, but what was the point in the first place of having the single-click mouse for a company that claimed to be so design- and UX-centric? It surely wasn't to make things easier for the user, and I'm sure there was some marketing BS cooked up to sell it to consumers, which they ended up abandoning. It echoes the stuff they were talking around whichever iPhone it was, 4 maybe, that they advertised as remaining a smaller size (when everyone else was making bigger screens) because they designed it for one-handed operation... and then the next model they put out is a bigger screen size like Samsung.
Not saying you're doing this, but I always find it amusing how people rail on the iPhone for having lightning instead of USB-C, and rail on the Macs for having USB-C.
It's not the feature set so much as iMessages don't use text messages, but once an Android phone is in the mix all the messages are coming out of people's text message allowance. Not so relevant these days though when most plans include unlimited texts, but in the early days of the iPhone it was an understandable gripe.
I certainly don't know much about what ports Macs and iPhones have, I just know I've seen a fair share of adapters for things like VGA ports /shrug
Thank you for articulating that, I wasn't sure what the difference is.
You would absolutely need an adapter for VGA. But wouldn't you for most modern, high-end PC laptops too? Even DVI is pretty much a relic by now with how much better the alternatives are. I do personally agree the whole ports thing is stupid though. My current MacBook has only USB-C ports. It's definitely stupid for a Pro machine, and I'd rather a selection of ports, particularly an ethernet port. Though adapters aren't nearly the issue people make them out to be.
I should have specified that this was all 5+ years ago, sorry. You are right, I doubt many laptops have VGA ports anymore.
I'm really struggling to understand what you're claiming here. In what way it is more understandable and transparent than macOS, or even Windows?
I'm sorry, I'm still confused. What do you mean by this? There's tons you can do on both systems. I google things for both systems all the time and always find results. I'm not sure if you're saying something patently untrue or if I'm just not understanding you.
People tinker extensively with both systems, and there's a wealth of resources and communities out there to help you.
Okay, you seem to be in a pretty niche area then. And Linux, where every single tiny aspect of it can be changed and customised, is unquestionably going to be the better solution. But I'm not clear on how this relates to the systems being "understandable and transparent." You supported it by talking about non-technical partner. They're going to be totally out of their deph doing what you describe on any OS.
How about I give you a much more relatable example, then?
Once upon a time, it was my job to install Quickbooks Point of Sale on a specific PC.
This piece of software is built on top of Microsoft SQL Server, so in order to install it, the install script first attempts to install a version of it called Microsoft SQL Server Express. The install script would fail every time; the only thing it would tell me was that it failed to install Microsoft SQL Server Express.
So I did the common sense thing and went to Microsoft's website and downloaded the dedicated installer for SQL Server Express. I ran it and it also failed, but this time it gave me an error code.
That error code, however, was absolutely useless. There was zero public documentation whatsoever of this type of error code. Googling it presented me with nothing. The only way I could ever solve the problem would be to break into microsoft's development servers and hope and pray that they had some kind of internal documentation, or to find the specific person who created the error code and ask them what it meant. We weren't paying for Microsoft SQL server, so there was zero support for it.
(And in an act of karmic justice, not even Intuit themselves could be arsed to support their own POS and instead rewrote it as a SaaS solution so they could vacuum more money out of their
johnscustomers.).I'm sorry but I'm still not getting it, or you're just claiming something different to what you initially did. You seem to be saying "I can google niche things more easily" which seems very different than Windows/macOS being less "understandable." I'm not sure that's true, but it's not a point I would argue against. I've googled things plenty of times for all three systems an found the answers I was looking for.
If we are telling war stories... I used to work in tech support. Before Google. Before Yahoo.
Every error was a complete mystery back then. Except for that one guy who had access to the source code.
Sure there's more that's possible with Linux, that's the "selling" point of it. But it's absurds to say it's more "understandable" than the other systems for that reason.
The way you presented the term was deeply misleading then. You implied, very strongly, that you were using understandable in the way I interpreted. But I'm not going to argue Linux isn't more "understandable" in that it's open source, so I guess we're done. You could have just said "it's open source," though.
I quoted how you did. You say it's understandable and transparent, say how easy it is to google things, then reference two non-techie people who can use it without help, all in the same paragraph. You definitely didn't follow up your "understandable and transparent" claim with any explanation of the ability to access and change any part of the OS or "understand" (read: have access to) the deep, deep levels of it. At least not until I asked for clarification. But we're definitely into "pointless arguing" territory now, so I'll stop.
I really don't think anybody has, at any point, argued that Linux isn't more customisable and open to modification. You just used "understandable" in what I still maintain was a deeply misleading and largely incorrect way. We've not had anything to actually discuss for about 5 comments now. Your core point is valid, I've at no point argued otherwise. You just chose to initially express it in a very bizarre way. You clearly have a passionate love for Linux and deep hatred for Windows and macOS, and that's fine. You do you. Nobody's trying to tell you to do anything else.
Really? I've always gotten the sense that the Linux community has a "compile it yourself" mentality, which even as someone who's fairly tech-savvy drives me insane. I've done my work exclusively on Ubuntu for the last year and trying to find instructions for things like a screen reader was like talking to a wall. "Go read the Orca instructions", but I did and they didn't help and that's why I went looking elsewhere.
It seems to me like blind contrarianism. Disagreeing because it's cool to disagree. Disagreeing just to feel special, wiser, or more 'in-the-know'. It is somewhat of i-have-the-better-product-elitism.
Why do people have long arguments in forums or what-not about why their Samsung is better than your iPhone? It can't just be because they are super friendly and want to inform them of a better product to buy in the future... To me, and many others who aren't caught up in that tech scene, it simply seems like them stroking their ego.
In reality most people don't give two fucks about whether your phone can customize your home screen or put in a micro SD card and my phone can't. So why argue about it and call Apple owners misinformed and dumb? What good does that do?
My guess, taking into account what I've observed from being younger and actually having friends like this, is that most of the hate is from younger people that spend a lot of the time on the internet. Elitism around having a better product is enforced by younger tech communities that reside on reddit or youtube. It's crazy to me that there are literally huge communities (or various forms of entertainment) around having an OS on your phone. Android is just a tool, implemented in myriads of different ways across phones, and it's not even that different from iOS.
I personally have an Android phone and Windows PC. I got my Android phone just because it was $100 cheaper with a good deal and had a bit better specs. It would be elitist to act like my phone is insanely better and I am insanely smarter. Got my Windows PC because I like to play games and upgrade it. It would also be elitist to think that a Mac wouldn't be better in some situations.
It's another form of tribalism, where people attach part of their identity to a product they use or a choice they've made, and then get upset at being told (or even just having it implied) that they made the "wrong" choice. And like you said, internet communities especially love finding ways to attack and denigrate the "out-groups" that made a different choice. I've always loved this comic.
It happens with phone OSes, video game consoles, car manufacturers, programming languages, text editors, and so many other things.
I think it's also stronger when the choice requires some level of "commitment", where it's harder to have or use multiple of the options. For example, not many people have both an Android phone and an iPhone. This can be one of the reasons that it seems to affect younger people more as well, since they usually have less money, so they could be committing to a single phone/console/whatever for years.
Tribalism is a great word to explain it! Your thoughts about the commitment and younger people are probably true too, because at a younger age a phone or computer is a big purchase and is going to be a big part of their life when they use it for hours every day.
Yeah. I do think that the hate that is simply criticism of Apple and not tied with anything else would not be elitist. However, much of the hate I see includes something other than Apple as an alternative (whether it be Android, Windows, OnePlus, ThinkPad). Also, arguing that Apple is bad heavily insinuates that something is better, and while the hate may not explicitly be Apple vs _______, it seems to me that the 'I have the better product these apple buyers are so dumb' mentality is still in the hater's mind.
I think it's not just Apple, this is part of the human nature. For anything that has loud fanboys there will inevitably be loud anti-fanboys. See also: YouTubers, fidget spinners, Hollywood celebrities, music in general (including hate for broad things such as music genres), etc.
It's rare the anit-fanboys are so much louder than the fanboys, though.
Leaving the issue of fanboys aside, I get a sense from using Apple products that they take a dim view of me as a consumer. They feel user-proofed, to the extent that my experience is frustrating and straight-jacketed. Some of their official stances have been laughably bad as well, in line with the lying @tindall mentions.
I do like the focus they have on design though; they have lots of welcome little touches, as simple as the Macbook magnetic connection for the power charger, for example.
It's used to vent the frustration of the unjust inequality in our society. Having a brand that markets itself as a status symbol be so predominant in culture causes people to defend the 'less valuable' devices as just as good, or maybe even better, than the measure society values it at.
Anyone who used Apple products in the 90s should be able to relate to that.
I own Apple products, but I still find a lot of Apple fandom to be annoying. I divide my annoyance into two phases: the first is before Steve Jobs died, and the second is after.
For phase one, you could pretty much attribute it to the "Reality Distortion Field" and its effects on Apple diehards. I remember an Apple fanboy aggressively insulting me because I disagreed with a rigged benchmark that Apple made showing how "great" their PowerPC chips were compared to Intel chips. TL;DR: The work being submitted for benchmarking would be sped up by using SIMD instructions in the processor. In the PowerPC case, this means using AltiVec, and in the Intel case, this meant using MMX and SSE. The PowerPC benchmark was built to use AltiVec, while the Intel benchmark was compiled without using any Intel SIMD instructions.
Then you get into stupid things like the antenna issue with the iPhone 4 (was that the one?) where, "you're all just holding it wrong."
Post-Jobs, my annoyance is primarily with two things:
Their "thinner at all costs" mantra that they seemed to have going for a while. The butterfly keyboard was garbage that was only necessary to facilitate a lower-profile laptop. Meanwhile, they still try to do Reality Distortion -- there's no problem at all, you're just not typing correctly!
New UX features that are confusing and non-discoverable. Somehow I get my iPad into multi-window mode, but I have no idea how it works, how I got there, or (most importantly) how to get out of it. I think that Jobs would never have allowed some of this stuff to ship.
I grew up in an apple hold in the 90s/00s with various imacs and ipods. I got an iphone for HS graduation and then bought a macbook pro for college.
As I got older, I realized that Apple's priorities with both hardware and software are not my priorities. Perhaps I'm just not the target audience. I want to be able to change the settings for software programs. I want more ports instead of a thinner laptop. I want more battery life and a headphone jack instead of a super thing phone and headphones that I have to charge.
During college, it was great because I had access to a *nix environment for programming, but didn't have to worry about having a scary linux error the night before a project was due. Linux has come a ways since then and is way more usable and is my primary home laptop and work OS (specifically Fedora) - though I do have a windows machine for gaming.
The other thing I ran into was Apple making changing to their software - usually silently and usually without the option/setting to change behaviors. I liked my integrated RSS feeder in mail, until it disappeared one update. I liked the way my image viewer didn't open the previous images I had open...until one day it I updated and that was the new normal. After so many changes I disliked, with no settings or options to customize it, I just stopped updating my macbook for long periods of time. It wasn't ideal - but I was tired of my computer no longer doing the things I wanted it to do.
I'm much happier on linux. Linux desktops have matured greatly in the past decade from when I first started - and short of specialty software (gaming, adobe suite, etc) - they are just as functional and are fully-fledged operating systems. And even the specialty software tends to have alternatives or are getting easier to work with. The past few years have been great for linux gaming for example.
I'm sure I'm considered more of a "power user" - but ultimately it just comes down to Apple doesn't value the same things I do.
I had a 2015 Macbook for about three years, and while it ran great for 99% of the time, I did have issues. It locked up on occasion. It would somehow delete my wifi security certificate. If something didn't work right, I found it was significantly harder to figure out why than it was with Windows.
I remember we once had an issue with an Epson plotter (around 2014) where, no matter how we added it to the Mac it would never receive the print job. That took us a week to work through until someone tried adding the printer through Microsoft Word (of all things!) and somehow that was a different enough method for OSX that it finally worked.
I've seen many more strange behaviours on Windows machine, either by quality or volume, but that people act shocked that Macs are, in fact, imperfect computers does give me a small amount of distaste. They've been sold the idea that it Just Works but there are things about them that rub me wrong just as much as there are things on Windows.
Also, there's always some joker around that asks why I have an Android instead of an iPhone and then starts quoting synthetic benchmarks at me as if that's a replacement for my preference for using Android one-handed over iOS. I prefer iOS more on tablet than Android; and I like OSX better on laptops and Windows for desktops. No system is perfect and I'm open to the idea that there is always a different way to do something. I think, if anything, it's the Apple fans that grate me more than Apple products. But, hey, they still rank higher to me than pretty much all of r/Android so take that as you will.
I really like a lot of Apple's hardware, especially their older stuff. The fit and finish is unmatched, and in ye olden days repairs were trivial. I had an iPhone 6S, and you could open it up with 2 screws, and replace whatever you needed (except the damn touchid home button). Same story with the macbook pros pre-2012. You could pop em open, upgrade your ram, hard drive, etc. Also, the iPad is still the only tablet worth a shit. That said, my main gripes with them these days are some really dumb design decisions, and how locked down and unrepairable their devices are. The charging port on the bottom of the magic mouse for example. Or still not having a usable file manager on iOS without jailbreaking, or their refusal to support technologies like Vulkan and newer OGL versions and instead roll their own graphics API. Lightning on the iPhone, no more headphone jack, the list goes on.
For many people, it works fine. If an iPhone does everything you need it to do, I would recommend it. But some things are just impossible. I can't put a 250gb SD card in an iPhone. I can't upgrade the ram on a macbook. Mac OS is actually pretty decent but it seems to be languishing quite a bit these days, and I prefer to run Linux where I get better hardware support and an officially supported package manager.
Being that you repaired Windows machines (and based on my own experience doing the same work), you were likely witness to the most absurd, idiotic, and bull-in-a-china-shop acts of the users. During this time I assume you did not repair Apple machines. Why do you think that Apple technicians don't have the same experiences?
What Apple does have is outstanding customer service and access to their own troubleshooting library. They can have this because they have a walled ecosystem. Apple knows the ins and outs of every circuit in their hardware and every line of code in their OS. And if an Apple technician can't fix it with the tools they are given, they simply replace it because it's easier to do so than to troubleshoot. Windows has to contend with thousands of manufacturers giving billions of users the ability to seemingly replace hardware at random with the full expectation for it to work flawlessly when they do so; and when it doesn't the "it's Microsoft's fault."
The same goes for software. Windows allows you to do absolutely wondrous, amazing things, to customize and change anything and everything to your heart's desire and the expectation is that you pay the consequences of your actions should you screw it up. Apple simply does not. When you remove the option to screw change something, you eliminate the possibility of it being a problem.
A perfect example can be found in automobiles. This is the engine bay of a 90's era Lexus. Everything is accessible, everything can be easily replaced, it is inviting, inciting, and open. To contrast, this is the engine bay of a late model Lexus. It says one thing and one thing only: Look, but do. not. touch. To most, one of these is pretty and one is not. To others one of these shows infinite possibilities and the other is a bleak hellscape where creativity is actively discouraged. One is Windows, one is Mac.
This of course doesn't mention any of the points already covered like marketing, tribalism, cost, perceived value, aesthetics, and so on.
I would argue, that most people don't give a crap. That most people can't be buggered learning a new OS. That only a small noisy minority care to criticize Macs, and a similar small noisy minority care to criticize PCs.
Even back in the 80's, there were die hard PC users, and die hard Mac users (plus die hard Amiga users, who ultimately died out.)
Yet computers back then were total crap compared to today. Now everything is amazing. But people still like to complain.
I mean, I like to bag on Apples butterfly keyboard as much as the next guy, but did I say no to a butterfly keyboard Mac for work? Nope.