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derekamoss

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 18, 2002
1,491
1,143
Houston, TX
I'll tell you my story. Growing up in school I used Apple computers (Apple II's and I think System 5) and at home Windows Computers starting with Win 3.1 and dos and then 95, 98, ME and even beta tested XP. The only reason at that time I would want a Win PC over a mac was because of the user interface and gaming. I liked how Macs worked better but Windows had a much better and user friendly interface at the time. In HS (1998-2002) I had a Desktop PC and totally experienced Napster coming out and spending 30 mins to download a song because I was on dial up, and was right when I got a desktop computer with a cd burner in it and my first car which had a cd player in it. Some people forget how exiting it was to actually not by a cd for just one song, or wait on the radio for a song and how you no longer had to record a song on the radio and have to fast forward and rewind just to hear it. It was cool not to actually do all the stuff you had to do for a mix tape you wanted to give to someone. Oops whole nether topic.

Apple released OS X about a year before I graduated and when I saw it I wanted to just do away with my PC and by a Mac because they finally made an operating system I wanted to use because it looked awesome. So when it became time for me to pick out a laptop as a graduation present, I picked an iBook with a 700mhz g3 processor, which had 10gb storage and 256mb of ram. And my PC at the time was a Pentium 4 1.8ghz processor, with 30gb's of storage and 512mb of ram. And the iBook felt just as fast and capable as the PC. After that I only had Apple products, eMac, 12' PowerBook, 13' MacBook and finally because I was in the Navy and had saved up money because I was on a six month deployment a 15" MacBook Pro and which I thought of it as, ok Derek you are finally in a place where you can purchase something just because you want it and not have to buy a computer you didn't really want because I knew I couldn't reasonably afford it and until I switched in 2012 had only Apple products. I literally convinced every single person in my immediate family to switch to apple.

I had the first iPod where you couldn't even use it if you didn't have a mac and bought every generation after for a few years cuz I just had to have the latest tech. I bought the first iPhone and said I will never use anything but an iPhone again until I switched. I had the first iPad even. But what made me do my first switch was the phone. I loved iOS at first it was awesome and didn't mind that I couldn't do anything that apple just didn't feel like incorporating into the OS. I didn't want to jailbreak but literally couldn't understand why Android and Windows Phone had the things that everyone else gets to enjoy but my iPhone doesn't. At first I just waited because I figured they would update iOS with it and kept thinking that all the way to the iPhone 4. At that point I realized Apple literally will just do what it wants to do and not what the people who are buying their products to make them money want. And saw Apple changed something only after they realized like 2 years after the fact that they were stupid. So I switched to Windows mobile and got a phone for the first time below $300 dollars and was better spec'd than my iPhone. For $199 I got a Nokia 1020 that had a 42mp camera and actual high end camera optics with 16gb storage, a mini sd card slot to expand up to 128gb's if I wanted to. and 512 ram and a much larger screen. The Apple phone 5 that I could have gotten with the larger screen cost $499 with 8gb storage and no possibility of expansion, a 5mp camera and probably I thing 256 ram. Also wow, I can customize my home screen icons by size, color and arrange them however I want instead of a grid of icons which apparently only Apple thinks every single person loves that and have never had a thought about customization.

Also at this time I wanted a tablet that could be a PC and bought an ipad and I knew it couldn't replace my laptop but it allowed me to browse and consume stuff like I wanted in a tablet form. It didn't take long to realize thats all it was, was a blown up iPhone literally. They just made the iPhone huge and didn't actually really do anything to make a good tablet experience. I was ok with it at first because I figured this was a building block and would eventually add tablet features to the iPad but it just stayed pretty much a blown up iPhone. Well when it came time to buy a new laptop, Apple had made it to where I couldn't live without touchscreen on a tablet and would love it on a laptop. Well since they pretty much blue balled everyone with getting us to love touchscreen in our phone' and tablets and made it something we just expect from then on and just couldn't make an Apple OS X tablet, I looked at other options and found the Surface RT. It might not have been able to run games and win32 applications because it was ARM but at least Microsoft made sure it had the full office suite and had a actual multi-tasking interface, and probably the best tablet UI out there. And on top of that, could use it like a laptop when the need arises. Plus, I thought being able to write on a screen was pretty freaking awesome, and completely changed my school and work routines by going all digital notes instead of paper and pen. For a student, a surface is literally the best thing you could get to be more productive in school. Windows 8 gets a lot of crap and a lot of desktop users complained about them trying to actually affect change, but I can tell you, there probably was only a few who complained if they were using a tablet because Windows 8 had the best tablet experience. Eventually I bought a Surface Pro 3 & 4 and yeah they have had a few problems but every Apple product at the beginning has had problems as well and people were willing to put up with them because they were passionate about it.

Most people don’t know this but OS X 1.0 had huge tradeoffs. It came with OS 9 and OSX because of things like OSX didn’t even have a DVD player program when they released it. You had to reboot into OS 9just to watch a DVD. So people who say Macs just work and they don’t understand why someone would buy a Surface even though it has a few known issues when they bought it are just the same as the people who are eventually going to buy the new MacBook Pro even though there are certain aspects they really don’t like. They are passionate about the product and brand. Since Jobs died Apple I believe has lost their passion and are only in it for profits which was Microsoft a while ago. Now it has flipped. You can tell the people building the Surfaces are passionate about it and have been listening to customer’s. Apple actually used to do that too. When the iPod first came out Jobs said it was only good for music and was monogram and people said they wanted a colder screen and it happened, but he still said it’s only for music and people said they wanted to see photos and videos on it and jobs said who would want to watch a video on that small of a screen. Guess what happened, iPod Photo came out and the next year iPod Video came out. Jobs actually wanted the customers to love the products. Now Apple could care less about what the customers wanted as long as it puts money in their pockets, looks good on the stock exchange, and give the board members what they want. More money and better stocks. People say they don’t want a laptop thinner and want a bigger battery, want OSX on an iPad, but Apple realizes if we do what people actually want it would cannibalize iPad sells because tim cook thinks an iPad can replace a computer and only because he doesn’t know anything Technical and is a person who only knows profits and margins. If all you use is excel all day, yeah an iPad can replace a computer so he keeps it from evolving because its what he wants. The new MacBook pros are probably really only the laptop Johnny wanted to continue to make new stuff, and he doesn’t have to worry about paying for dongle. It’s not about what the customers want. I left the Apple ecosystem because I thought it had become stagnant but now I see how much it was really only about getting people invested in their ecosystem so they can drain your wallets. Whereas Jobs wanted to get you invested in his ecosystem because he thought it was better than everyone else’s.
 
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derekamoss

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 18, 2002
1,491
1,143
Houston, TX
Dude. Paragraphs.

Your presentation style and choice of technology sort of complement each other nicely ;)


Was written on my mobile so formatting wasn't a high priority on the list. (I thought of it as a really freaking long text)
:D:eek::cool:

But it is now edited for your viewing pleasure!
 
Last edited:

davidwes

macrumors 6502
Dec 28, 2004
307
141
I'm curious, you said you went from an iPhone 4 to a Windows Phone because it could do more things?

iPhone 4 could multitask, Windows at that time couldn't. iPhone 4 had tethering, Windows couldn't. And windows had no apps!

Although, I should say that doesn't devalue your argument. I too was considering moving from Apple to a Surface, mostly because I could use it as a note-taking machine which I like and I could combine my iPad and macbook air into one machine. Now that the iPad Pro can do note taking, I haven't decided what to do yet.
 

derekamoss

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 18, 2002
1,491
1,143
Houston, TX
Your presentation style and choice of technology sort of complement each other nicely ;)
I'm curious, you said you went from an iPhone 4 to a Windows Phone because it could do more things?

iPhone 4 could multitask, Windows at that time couldn't. iPhone 4 had tethering, Windows couldn't. And windows had no apps!

Although, I should say that doesn't devalue your argument. I too was considering moving from Apple to a Surface, mostly because I could use it as a note-taking machine which I like and I could combine my iPad and macbook air into one machine. Now that the iPad Pro can do note taking, I haven't decided what to do yet.

Yeah I will clarify that a bit. First I wasn't much of an app or game person when it came to my phone. I just used it to call and watch the occasional Netflix. I'm not big into social media or anything so apps like Facebook or Instagram or whatever weren't really a problem not having. I switched to windows phone honestly because I thought iOS was looking really really bland and was bored of its UI such as the app screen where you just have the same sized icons 4x4 over and over again. Windows had the metro theme with tiles that you could change size, color, what info was displayed and each tile could be live, so when an e-mail comes in the outlook app tile changed from icon to new email from... and I just thought that was better looking and more fun. When I got the iPhone I used to have fun using it and eventually it just became a phone. Going to Windows Phone was kinda the same, was having fun learning the phone. Windows phone could multi task at the time of the iPhone4. Old Windows phones running os 6 and below couldn't but when I bought the Nokia it had Windows OS 7 which had multitasking and everything the iPhone had. Ive had tethering since it first became available on the iPhone and it carried right over to my Lumia 1020, used it all the time.

As for moving to From Apple to Surface and also even iPhone to Windows Phone was because I didn't want a tablet and PC, I wanted a Tablet that could be a PC. iOS at this point just doesn't allow it. For a while I still had my MacBook Pro around because the windows store didn't have a Torrent App and the RT couldn't install Win32 Apps. but when the first torrent app hit the store I literally quit using my MacBook most of the time Except for the occasional diablo 3. Even my windows phone had a torrent client. It was an Arm Tablet but had a decent keyboard you could attach, full office suite and a full windows desktop and metro environment. Eventually I saved up for a Surface Pro 3 and could play diablo on that and left the MacBook behind. Now when I play a pc game I just hook up an xbox controller to the Surface and play, its like a portable xbox. I hadn't done the note taking digitally until I got the surface pro 3. At that time I was going to vet tech school and with the surface I could have two apps open side by side, one being onenote and the other powerpoint and while the teacher was going through lecture I could take notes on the actual PP slide and take all my other notes in onenote while recording the whole lecture online. Onenote is a hidden gem. It can search my own handwriting for words if I need to look up something and its not perfect all the time will do ink to text for you. It also has a usb port so I can hook up a hard drive or thumb drive and also it only came with a 128gb ssd, it had a MicroSD card slot and I could expand. Believe it or not I have diablo 3 installed to the sd card and run it off that with really no difference. The iPad pro takes steps towards being able to have a productive workflow environment but its no where near close, its still just a blown up IPhone. On the surface I can run CAD software or App Development programs, or anything I pretty much want. With the iPad Pro I would still have to have a laptop to do somethings. Right now I have a dock at home with a screen and just put the surface in and pretty much have a desktop, when I want to just browse web on the couch I just pull it out and have the tablet. When I go to school I attach the Type cover, which believe it or not really does feel like a laptop keyboard and also has a fingerprint scanner in it. And one of the things I didn't realize I would now not be able to live with out is Windows Hello facial Recognition. In the past 6 months I might have had to type my Pin to login for or five times and that was only because it was to bright and was getting reflection because it will unlock in the complete pitch black dart. I literally pick it up hit the button to wake the screen and in 3 seconds am logged in without doing anything. And I easily get 7hrs battery life out of this if I am trying to be conservative. Right now I am convinced I wont own anything other than a Surface unless something crazy comes out. Oh and it is even going to work with their new OEM developed VR tech. And the HoloLens, Have you seen that? If not check it out. That's the first time Ive been excited about emerging tech in a LONG LONG time.
 

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Jun 11, 2009
11,488
5,413
I'm actually an English major, though you might not tell from this post, so I tend to write ALOT on something that could be explained in less words lol.:):cool:;)

I understand, I was an English major a looong time ago and tend to write too much at times.
 

burgman

macrumors 68030
Sep 24, 2013
2,798
2,385
I'm actually an English major, though you might not tell from this post, so I tend to write ALOT on something that could be explained in less words lol.:):cool:;)
Why take the straight road when twists and turns add to the experience. ;)
I'm still in awe you wrote that on a mobile device
[doublepost=1479397786][/doublepost]
I'm an English major too, and we learned economy of writing, and tailoring your message to your audience.
You...... Again :(
 

derekamoss

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 18, 2002
1,491
1,143
Houston, TX
Why take the straight road when twists and turns add to the experience. ;)
I'm still in awe you wrote that on a mobile device
I understand, I was an English major a looong time ago and tend to write too much at times.

Trust me it's bad. You should here the complaints I get about my text messages to people. Apparently texts are supposed to be short and sweet and not a full conversation I've been told. :D
 

bgro

macrumors 65816
Jul 6, 2010
1,143
697
South Florida
Been looking hard at the surface pro with all the holiday deals. Not ready to pull the trigger yet but can definitely see one in my future at some point.
 

derekamoss

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 18, 2002
1,491
1,143
Houston, TX
Reading this tempts me to upgrade from my Pro 3, but the Pro 5 is so close.
Wait for the 5. I had a 3 and was content until the screen cracked. Don't get me wrong the 4 is awesome but I still would be waiting for the 5 otherwise.
[doublepost=1479935123][/doublepost]
Fewer, not less.
Touché
[doublepost=1479935833][/doublepost]
I'm an English major too, and we learned economy of writing, and tailoring your message to your audience.
Really? Should I have put "My Essay" in the topic to make it more clear on who my targeted audience would be? If I had been asked to write something, tailoring it would have made sense to the targeted audience. Writing something that is my own experience, that no one has to read, seems like it could fall in to however I would want it to be tailored.
 

burgman

macrumors 68030
Sep 24, 2013
2,798
2,385
Wait for the 5. I had a 3 and was content until the screen cracked. Don't get me wrong the 4 is awesome but I still would be waiting for the 5 otherwise.
[doublepost=1479935123][/doublepost]
Touché
[doublepost=1479935833][/doublepost]
Really? Should I have put "My Essay" in the topic to make it more clear on who my targeted audience would be? If I had been asked to write something, tailoring it would have made sense to the targeted audience. Writing something that is my own experience, that no one has to read, seems like it could fall in to however I would want it to be tailored.
The ignore button will save you a lot of frustration with some members. :)
 

bopajuice

Suspended
Mar 22, 2016
1,571
4,348
Dark side of the moon
I'll tell you my story. Growing up in school I used Apple computers (Apple II's and I think System 5) and at home Windows Computers starting with Win 3.1 and dos and then 95, 98, ME and even beta tested XP. The only reason at that time I would want a Win PC over a mac was because of the user interface and gaming. I liked how Macs worked better but Windows had a much better and user friendly interface at the time. In HS (1998-2002) I had a Desktop PC and totally experienced Napster coming out and spending 30 mins to download a song because I was on dial up, and was right when I got a desktop computer with a cd burner in it and my first car which had a cd player in it. Some people forget how exiting it was to actually not by a cd for just one song, or wait on the radio for a song and how you no longer had to record a song on the radio and have to fast forward and rewind just to hear it. It was cool not to actually do all the stuff you had to do for a mix tape you wanted to give to someone. Oops whole nether topic.

Apple released OS X about a year before I graduated and when I saw it I wanted to just do away with my PC and by a Mac because they finally made an operating system I wanted to use because it looked awesome. So when it became time for me to pick out a laptop as a graduation present, I picked an iBook with a 700mhz g3 processor, which had 10gb storage and 256mb of ram. And my PC at the time was a Pentium 4 1.8ghz processor, with 30gb's of storage and 512mb of ram. And the iBook felt just as fast and capable as the PC. After that I only had Apple products, eMac, 12' PowerBook, 13' MacBook and finally because I was in the Navy and had saved up money because I was on a six month deployment a 15" MacBook Pro and which I thought of it as, ok Derek you are finally in a place where you can purchase something just because you want it and not have to buy a computer you didn't really want because I knew I couldn't reasonably afford it and until I switched in 2012 had only Apple products. I literally convinced every single person in my immediate family to switch to apple.

I had the first iPod where you couldn't even use it if you didn't have a mac and bought every generation after for a few years cuz I just had to have the latest tech. I bought the first iPhone and said I will never use anything but an iPhone again until I switched. I had the first iPad even. But what made me do my first switch was the phone. I loved iOS at first it was awesome and didn't mind that I couldn't do anything that apple just didn't feel like incorporating into the OS. I didn't want to jailbreak but literally couldn't understand why Android and Windows Phone had the things that everyone else gets to enjoy but my iPhone doesn't. At first I just waited because I figured they would update iOS with it and kept thinking that all the way to the iPhone 4. At that point I realized Apple literally will just do what it wants to do and not what the people who are buying their products to make them money want. And saw Apple changed something only after they realized like 2 years after the fact that they were stupid. So I switched to Windows mobile and got a phone for the first time below $300 dollars and was better spec'd than my iPhone. For $199 I got a Nokia 1020 that had a 42mp camera and actual high end camera optics with 16gb storage, a mini sd card slot to expand up to 128gb's if I wanted to. and 512 ram and a much larger screen. The Apple phone 5 that I could have gotten with the larger screen cost $499 with 8gb storage and no possibility of expansion, a 5mp camera and probably I thing 256 ram. Also wow, I can customize my home screen icons by size, color and arrange them however I want instead of a grid of icons which apparently only Apple thinks every single person loves that and have never had a thought about customization.

Also at this time I wanted a tablet that could be a PC and bought an ipad and I knew it couldn't replace my laptop but it allowed me to browse and consume stuff like I wanted in a tablet form. It didn't take long to realize thats all it was, was a blown up iPhone literally. They just made the iPhone huge and didn't actually really do anything to make a good tablet experience. I was ok with it at first because I figured this was a building block and would eventually add tablet features to the iPad but it just stayed pretty much a blown up iPhone. Well when it came time to buy a new laptop, Apple had made it to where I couldn't live without touchscreen on a tablet and would love it on a laptop. Well since they pretty much blue balled everyone with getting us to love touchscreen in our phone' and tablets and made it something we just expect from then on and just couldn't make an Apple OS X tablet, I looked at other options and found the Surface RT. It might not have been able to run games and win32 applications because it was ARM but at least Microsoft made sure it had the full office suite and had a actual multi-tasking interface, and probably the best tablet UI out there. And on top of that, could use it like a laptop when the need arises. Plus, I thought being able to write on a screen was pretty freaking awesome, and completely changed my school and work routines by going all digital notes instead of paper and pen. For a student, a surface is literally the best thing you could get to be more productive in school. Windows 8 gets a lot of crap and a lot of desktop users complained about them trying to actually affect change, but I can tell you, there probably was only a few who complained if they were using a tablet because Windows 8 had the best tablet experience. Eventually I bought a Surface Pro 3 & 4 and yeah they have had a few problems but every Apple product at the beginning has had problems as well and people were willing to put up with them because they were passionate about it.

Most people don’t know this but OS X 1.0 had huge tradeoffs. It came with OS 9 and OSX because of things like OSX didn’t even have a DVD player program when they released it. You had to reboot into OS 9just to watch a DVD. So people who say Macs just work and they don’t understand why someone would buy a Surface even though it has a few known issues when they bought it are just the same as the people who are eventually going to buy the new MacBook Pro even though there are certain aspects they really don’t like. They are passionate about the product and brand. Since Jobs died Apple I believe has lost their passion and are only in it for profits which was Microsoft a while ago. Now it has flipped. You can tell the people building the Surfaces are passionate about it and have been listening to customer’s. Apple actually used to do that too. When the iPod first came out Jobs said it was only good for music and was monogram and people said they wanted a colder screen and it happened, but he still said it’s only for music and people said they wanted to see photos and videos on it and jobs said who would want to watch a video on that small of a screen. Guess what happened, iPod Photo came out and the next year iPod Video came out. Jobs actually wanted the customers to love the products. Now Apple could care less about what the customers wanted as long as it puts money in their pockets, looks good on the stock exchange, and give the board members what they want. More money and better stocks. People say they don’t want a laptop thinner and want a bigger battery, want OSX on an iPad, but Apple realizes if we do what people actually want it would cannibalize iPad sells because tim cook thinks an iPad can replace a computer and only because he doesn’t know anything Technical and is a person who only knows profits and margins. If all you use is excel all day, yeah an iPad can replace a computer so he keeps it from evolving because its what he wants. The new MacBook pros are probably really only the laptop Johnny wanted to continue to make new stuff, and he doesn’t have to worry about paying for dongle. It’s not about what the customers want. I left the Apple ecosystem because I thought it had become stagnant but now I see how much it was really only about getting people invested in their ecosystem so they can drain your wallets. Whereas Jobs wanted to get you invested in his ecosystem because he thought it was better than everyone else’s.

I'm a speed reader. I read your whole post in 8 seconds. I really liked the part about the dog...



And yes things are a changing and maybe not for the better. We all must make choices.
 
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apolloa

Suspended
Oct 21, 2008
12,318
7,802
Time, because it rules EVERYTHING!
Hmmmm amazon in the UK have the Pro 4 256gb 8gug ram i5 at £988 and the i7 same spec is £1088... I'm getting really tempted, the Pro 5 will certainly be 200 pounds at the very very least more in the UK, and no one is selling the 2014 15" MacBook Pro new anymore.

Can the Pro 4 i5 run an external monitor and play Crysis 1 and Starcraft 2 at decent settings and 30fps? That's the only taxing thing I'll be doing on it.
 

derekamoss

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 18, 2002
1,491
1,143
Houston, TX
The ignore button will save you a lot of frustration with some members. :)
Yeah, I don't post often in forums. Been a member since 2002 and probably have less posts than someone who signed up last year.:) I read them a lot but haven't done enough to realize the ignore button is probably the best option.
[doublepost=1480057642][/doublepost]
Hmmmm amazon in the UK have the Pro 4 256gb 8gug ram i5 at £988 and the i7 same spec is £1088... I'm getting really tempted, the Pro 5 will certainly be 200 pounds at the very very least more in the UK, and no one is selling the 2014 15" MacBook Pro new anymore.

Can the Pro 4 i5 run an external monitor and play Crysis 1 and Starcraft 2 at decent settings and 30fps? That's the only taxing thing I'll be doing on it.
Yeah it can run those games. I have Starcraft 2 and it runs on decent settings getting 50 frames easily. Haven't ran it on an external monitor so don't know. What I did do was buy an Xbox one controller and tried out some games from uverse like Dead Space 3 which is a lot more GPU intensive and I only had the 4gb ram model and it ran it no problem. It was kinda like having a portable xbox.
 
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derekamoss

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 18, 2002
1,491
1,143
Houston, TX
Hmmmm amazon in the UK have the Pro 4 256gb 8gug ram i5 at £988 and the i7 same spec is £1088... I'm getting really tempted, the Pro 5 will certainly be 200 pounds at the very very least more in the UK, and no one is selling the 2014 15" MacBook Pro new anymore.

Can the Pro 4 i5 run an external monitor and play Crysis 1 and Starcraft 2 at decent settings and 30fps? That's the only taxing thing I'll be doing on it.
I would go ahead and get it. The surface pro is my only PC now. I don't have a laptop anymore or an iPad to watch movies and search internet. Well worth it in my opinion.
 
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