And then your RAM is incompatible with the new motherboard, and your new CPU and GPU require a beefier power supply because everything uses more power these days, and then you need a new cooling solution because everything runs hotter.
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Apple killed my interest in ARM and Macs
- Thread starter LambdaTheImpossible
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And then your RAM is incompatible with the new motherboard, and your new CPU and GPU require a beefier power supply because everything uses more power these days, and then you need a new cooling solution because everything runs hotter.
These are both really underrated points. I could justify a high-end macbook pro much easier when I could boot camp it and play games with it.
You know what is nice though? When my wife's PC's motherboard went out, I just replaced it and she was back up and running for like $200...try doing that with these M-series macs.
That is not as bad as you think. Inflation from 2020 to 2023 tends to be estimated around 20%…
There are many simply calculators, but here is one example.
www.officialdata.org/us/inflation
Which shows $1 in 2020 has an equivalent buying power of $1.19 in 2023.
That all said, I do agree those end of life Intel iMacs were a very good value. Which is why I said buy-in-large. There are a few exceptions here and there, like the iMac, but if you look at Apple’s entire Mac lineup pre vs post Intel, I believe my statement stands.
I know. It’s so weird someone wants to start a conversation on a forum to see if he’s alone! It’s good you were here to post the usual (and super useful) “I don’t get it thread”. It’s important we don’t question Apple and question each other. Apple after all is perfect in every way. It is us that are not worthy.
Apple really killed my interest in Macs when they soldered everything on, and the upgrades are 4x more expensive than retail.
storage & memory upgrades should be available, or at the very least affordable. which they are definitely not.
storage & memory upgrades should be available, or at the very least affordable. which they are definitely not.
I think he may be talking about Microsoft authenticator, which has the same application name:
I get the logic here, but allow me to share a different perspective:
* In all my years of Apple devices I've never had any internal components fail that would necessitate a motherboard replacement in the first place. All the phones, iPods, iPads, MacBooks, watches, not once. Nor have I had that happen with any of my friends and family with all of their Apple devices. I have however had two of my own gaming PC motherboards fail.
* In both those instances it ended up being a trigger to upgrade to a newer platform anyway, which meant I had to at least upgrade the CPU and RAM anyway.
* By the time a desktop PC has hit the point you want to sell it, it's often not worth that much to sell, has a unique combination of parts, and the hassle and cost of shipping such a large and heavy item. Whereas a MacBook, iPhone, iPad, those things hold on to their value so well and they're so easy to ship that you can greatly offset the cost of completely upgrading to a new device.
(and an aside - in my line of work I've seen plenty of Dell laptop motherboards, SSDs, RAM, etc fail - so easy to swap out, yet I've never had any MacBook motherboard or SoC component failures in the first place.)
Edit: ^ Actually I have to correct the above, I did see a colleague's MacBook motherboard killed by a swollen battery. Fixed under warranty, but it happened.
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“The hell,” in this case, is Apple’s compliance with institutional shareholder demands for a >35% margin on all sales.
I also had a 2017 MBP with a battery failure -- after warranty and AC. Not worth fixing because the case was very distorted -- cheaper to buy a used one instead, but I went with a Mini.
You do understand that your use case is very very very niche? Apple is a business and they have main customer segment thay brings them most of the profit. That is the mass market they are designing for. I think your argument is a bit like if I was complaining that my family car doesn’t also have features for sports driving and tractor features for working in the field, and it killed my intrest in family cars 😊
But, by not having bootcamp there will be more pressure on developers to create a macOS version of their software. Otherwise they’ll run the risk of users switching to competing software that does support macOS. I think it will be good for the Mac ecosystem in the long term, they may have the market share to pull it off at this point. All part of Apple’s master plan
I tried the magic touchpad. There are three problems with it for daily use:
1. There is a noticeable latency over bluetooth. You can actually feel the lag with it if you compare it to the touchpad in an MBP. That makes fine positioning very difficult.
2. The BT craps out occasionally and it can take a couple of seconds for it to catch up. I have seen this on two completely separate macs in different places, one of them being in the Apple Store so I suspect this is a hardware or firmware problem.
3. It's really not accurate enough to do fine work. When you lift your finger slightly the cursor can and does move slightly.
None of these issues occurred with my MX Master 3.
That only matters if you sell the thing. It usually gets handed down and used until it is dead here. I'm only selling this to regain capital for my PC purchase.
Dell, yeah that's normal. I've got two dead ones in the cupboard from work and a limping one that they gave me to replace them. Oh and a large collection of docks. I have however run a sideline of thinkpads for the kids for the last 15 years and my oldest one currently is a 2015 one and is still absolutely fine.
That's all I want.
As I said I had a good 20 years. I'd like another good 20 years. But it's not looking like it's going to happen unless things change for me.
I can't say I've ever noticed any of this, but I also use my trackpad over usb lol. Thing is, I switch between 2 computers every day and if I didn't have it connected via USB I'd have to re-pair the damn thing every time I switched!
The drawback of leaving it plugged into USB is after 2 years, my first magic trackpad's battery bloated up so I had to replace the unit.
And they're expensive!! So that sucks. Thing is, I use it in the middle of a split keyboard and it's such a comfortable setup, and I couldn't find a satisfying alternative. Sigh.On the rest of the comments I'm reading in this thread, eh? It's a mixed bag. I really hate iCloud and yet I'm still paying the $38/mo for the apple one family plan when I already have multiple years of office 365 family (and the 1tb onedrive). Why? Because Apple makes it a ****ing nightmare if you don't. Without icloud, managing photos is a PAIN IN THE ASS. And even with iCloud, it's a ****ing pain in the ass. I hate it.
Like, I have pictures that I take and share with my family. Ya know what? The photos app has this cute feature with little videos that only works on your personal albums. Not shared albums. So the only person in my family who gets those is me.
Also, there isn't a way to just download your entire photo library from icloud photos all in 1 shot. You have to let the Photos app download it at its own pace. That can take days, or weeks...
And don't even get me started on "Screen Time" and its many, many bugs and bad design issues. For example: https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/31/screen-time-is-broken/
Now, the annoying thing being a nerd that likes all kinds of computers and electronics, is you get the joy of experimenting with different products and finding out all the flaws. I'm not saying that I'd drop my Macs for Windows machines. I have both. Windows is an awful, awful product. I only use it for gaming and casual computing on my gaming machines. I like Linux a little better but, eh, it reminds me too much of work, so idk.
The only "volatile" thing is the CPU and motherboard and you usually get a 3 generations out of each. Not that I would bother upgrading in that window. I mean that bit of the PC was £400 (CPU+RAM+motherboard).
That's like 2 Apple upgrades here in the UK(+8Gb RAM +256Gb more SSD) 🤣
If I do, the guts of the machine will go in my eldest's desktop PC (she has a Ryzen 3400G at the moment)
Well there is until you find the other one doesn't work.
Man, 25, who sold kidney to buy iPad bedridden for life after organ fails
Wang Shangkun, now 25, was so desperate for Apple's flagship iPod and iPad devices, he decided to sell his kidney in 2011 on the black market in East China
www.mirror.co.uk
Honestly some of this is a revelation for me. I've been in the Apple echo chamber for ages and convinced it was the right solution for me. Turns out it wasn't. It always pays to actually remain objective.
On that basis I did a light Kepner Tregoe decision analysis initially (to keep myself honest) and a LOT of research and introspection before I did this and came up with the following...
This is all backed up with data / examples which is a 7 page word document I'm not linking here as it contains personal info. The 2-6 years of Apple lifespan is the span of actual hardware problems I've had where I would have to go back to Apple Store and get something replaced or repaired. iPhones require more repairs than anything (I did run 5 of the things for my family) and none of them broke from user issues for example. Mostly screen problems including fading and dark spots strangely across all models from iPhone 6s to 12 (3 handsets).
But as someone else said here, it's not a religion. The above is objective as was the original post. I do not have a problem if you are still happy using Apple stuff. I am just stating my position because it needs to be tested to make sure I am objective.
You can also look at it from the other perspective. Other companies are artificially limiting the clock on certain SKUs to incentivise upgrades. Apple just gives you the full clock on all SKUs, and differentiates them by the number of cores. In other words, it's not really the case that Apple limits the clock on desktop, it's that they don't limit the clock on laptops.
Although I do agree that it would be nice if the frequency was higher on the desktop machines. In my A17 Pro frequency/power analysis I have speculated that the architecture could allow higher clocks. With the M3 announcement, I believe my analysis to be wrong. But who knows, maybe we will still see higher clocks on the Mac Pro. I certainly hope so.
That's a popular view, but it's mostly based on some misconceptions/poor wording in a 2020 interview. Apple has explicitly stated that they are not considering direct Windows boot and recommend the use of virtual machines instead. BootCamp would be technically possible, but require a lot of cooperation and a significant dedication of resources from both Apple and Microsoft to make possible, so I don't see it happening. Licensing is the smallest problem, custom nature of Apple Silicon is the real issue here (would require new drivers and changes to Windows kernel).
I think making lists like these are a great way to approach things, and it illustrates very well that Macs are indeed not the best choice for you. There are some points that I don't really agree with (like window management and backups), but that's the effect of personal preferences. One quick note though: nothing here has to do with ARM, it's just the usual Mac vs. Windows PC debate.
I certainly understand the OP's viewpoint. I left the Windows platform post NT era because the OS just was that bad. Joined the Mac community for OSX, which was a dream OS on every level by comparison. My last Mac was a 2010 MacPro Tower running Mohave. That thing kept me in the Mac ecosystem even though I did not upgrade any further right until the first ARM Macs were announced. It was at that moment that I realized the Mac ecosystem wasn't for me anymore. The very same failings I found with Windows back in the day were the very same failings I saw in the MacOS of today.
So, like clockwork, I abandoned ship and switched back to the Windows platform. Haven't had a single reason to switch back. Like others have pointed out, the world really does run on Windows. I haven't worked at a single job in which Windows wasn't the default OS. Bootcamp allowed me to live in both worlds on a single machine. My early days of switching to a Mac entailed two machines with a KVM setup to allow me to function. Bootcamp changed all that. Today you are back to a multi-machine setup again. I chose not to go down that path.
I do believe Apple is banking more on the zealot nature of Apple users than on the actual products that they are pushing out. It's sort of like buying Levi jeans because you've always bought them only to find out that the bargain no-name brand that you can buy at Walmart is 1/10th the cost and lasts 200% longer. At some point, you're just buying a name and no longer a product worthy of the name.
On the one hand, everyone embraces the idea of being a cord cutter, stick it to the cable company, not going to pay a fortune for stuff I can stream for easily half the price. But Apple is that cable company now. Owning a Mac today isn't cord cutting, it's a cable subscription. It truly has become the "Microsoft" of this decade. Funny how times have changed.
So, like clockwork, I abandoned ship and switched back to the Windows platform. Haven't had a single reason to switch back. Like others have pointed out, the world really does run on Windows. I haven't worked at a single job in which Windows wasn't the default OS. Bootcamp allowed me to live in both worlds on a single machine. My early days of switching to a Mac entailed two machines with a KVM setup to allow me to function. Bootcamp changed all that. Today you are back to a multi-machine setup again. I chose not to go down that path.
I do believe Apple is banking more on the zealot nature of Apple users than on the actual products that they are pushing out. It's sort of like buying Levi jeans because you've always bought them only to find out that the bargain no-name brand that you can buy at Walmart is 1/10th the cost and lasts 200% longer. At some point, you're just buying a name and no longer a product worthy of the name.
On the one hand, everyone embraces the idea of being a cord cutter, stick it to the cable company, not going to pay a fortune for stuff I can stream for easily half the price. But Apple is that cable company now. Owning a Mac today isn't cord cutting, it's a cable subscription. It truly has become the "Microsoft" of this decade. Funny how times have changed.
I think I had a nightmare where I dreamt I bought an Android phone and a Lenovo. Woke up screaming.
JK, I have a Lenovo Legion for gaming, it's a nice laptop, but it really can't compare with Apple Silicon Macs. But Android? Whooo boy. Good luck with that.