Apple Thread - The most overrated technology brand?

[Ginger Piglet]

The iPhone 13 or whatever the shit it is will apparently ditch ports for a magnetic connector and pogo pin system.

Which will make everyone buy new chargers and accessories, just as planned.

Why don't they just go the whole distance and make it so that you have to rebuy all your apps through the App Store with each upgrade.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

I don't understand why anyone who buys the 64GB option of any smartphone expect five years of OS Upgrades to go smoothly. Mobile OS's are not the same as desktop as they all binder in all the planned obsolescence desktop OS's do but apply even worse ones. iOS had turned my 32gb 3GS into an 8GB terminally ill computer. I noticed with each update it shaved off four, to twelve, to sixteen gigs off the original storage until the final update knocked it down to 8GB. At that point the battery was decayed so it didn't matter after the second one.

Optimization requires memory too.

128GB is already stretching it as a minimum for OS updates, as you'll be somewhere within the 50GB range or less once enough security patches or the fifth OS upgrade is rolled out. At least that's what I've observed with iOS, not even Jailbreaking can prevent it. Keep flashing that older version of iOS and your experience will be a notch less shitty.

Or just don't spend $500+ on overheating shit bricks.

 

[Coffee Shits]

I don't understand why anyone who buys the 64GB option of any smartphone expect five years of OS Upgrades to go smoothly.

You should aim your sights a little lower. Normies don't ask what a gigglebyte is, they just know bigger number means good!

 

[Least Concern]

Even though I'm still making do with an older iPhone that has a headphone port, I can't remember the last time I used it. I've gone all Bluetooth when it comes to headphones both for my phone and my laptop and I'm pretty happy with it. It's to the point that a device which had a headphone jack but no Bluetooth support would be more of a bother to me than the inverse at this point. I didn't think this day would come, but it has.

Wireless charging, though, strikes me as weird. Radio waves that charge batteries somehow? How can that be nearly as efficient and useful as a direct cable connection? Is it dangerous? Would my cats get canceraids if they go and sleep on my nice warm phone while it's on my charging mat?

But who knows. Perhaps in five years I won't be able to imagine using a cable to charge a phone either.

 

[Strange Looking Dog]

You're right about everything up to here. There still are a wide swath of professionals, myself included, in fields like multimedia production and web development who will continue to buy Apple hardware until the grave, if it's available for us to buy. There's not many of us but we are stubbornly (perhaps foolishly) loyal. And Apple recently acknowledged our existence when they ditched the dumb trash can Mac Pro for the decent, if comically expensive, Cheese Grater 2.

They acknowledged me! Apple really does care to take even more of my money!
You know you could always just use a skin for a somewhat more civilized os if you like their creativity inducing aesthetics that much

Wireless charging, though, strikes me as weird. Radio waves that charge batteries somehow? How can that be nearly as efficient and useful as a direct cable connection? Is it dangerous? Would my cats get canceraids if they go and sleep on my nice warm phone while it's on my charging mat?

But who knows. Perhaps in five years I won't be able to imagine using a cable to charge a phone either.

It's not that efficient, but power's pretty cheap. We'll find out how dangerous all this shit was in the next 10-20 years when people start getting exotic new disorders, that's how it always goes.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Wireless charging, though, strikes me as weird. Radio waves that charge batteries somehow? How can that be nearly as efficient and useful as a direct cable connection? Is it dangerous? Would my cats get canceraids if they go and sleep on my nice warm phone while it's on my charging mat?

Unlikely. This belongs in the same category as "5G causes Covid-19" in that it fundamentally misunderstands physics. Radio waves aren't high enough frequency to break chemical bonds. In fact, until, I don't know, 7000G comes out and they start using X-rays and induced gamma emissions to transmit data, you've nothing to worry about.

 

[Strange Looking Dog]

Unlikely. This belongs in the same category as "5G causes Covid-19" in that it fundamentally misunderstands physics. Radio waves aren't high enough frequency to break chemical bonds. In fact, until, I don't know, 7000G comes out and they start using X-rays and induced gamma emissions to transmit data, you've nothing to worry about.

You can still heat stuff with radio waves, and while the energies involved with this are comparatively small I don't think it's fair to dismiss it as having no effect when you consider the concentration of these devices.
Cancer or no we're probably going to find out it's been fucking with the environment, and there's been talk for a while that it's being interfering with the migrations of insects and birds.

 

[Pissmaster]

Even though I'm still making do with an older iPhone that has a headphone port, I can't remember the last time I used it. I've gone all Bluetooth when it comes to headphones both for my phone and my laptop and I'm pretty happy with it. It's to the point that a device which had a headphone jack but no Bluetooth support would be more of a bother to me than the inverse at this point. I didn't think this day would come, but it has.

Wireless charging, though, strikes me as weird. Radio waves that charge batteries somehow? How can that be nearly as efficient and useful as a direct cable connection? Is it dangerous? Would my cats get canceraids if they go and sleep on my nice warm phone while it's on my charging mat?

But who knows. Perhaps in five years I won't be able to imagine using a cable to charge a phone either.

Headphone jacks are one of those things that are just nice to have for when you're in a pinch, and essential to anyone who needs immediate response when they press something on-screen, i.e. musicians. The jack is versatile and even Apple themselves have had devices that charge and transmit data over it (iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen), so keeping their proprietary connector whilst getting rid of it, all while claiming how space is such a premium is obvious bullshit. Then you've got phones like the Galaxy Note 9 that manage to have both a headphone jack and an entire, full-sized stylus, all while being physically no bigger than any of Apple's Plus-sized phones.

Wireless charging is just inductive charging, and it's been around for ages. Electric toothbrushes have used it for a very very long time, and why it took this long to finally make it into phones, I have no idea.

 

[byuu]

https://sigpipe.macromates.com/2020/macos-catalina-slow-by-design/

If I understand that correctly, the latest macOS phones home to ask for permission before launching any process.
This is just completely insane.

 

[Least Concern]

https://sigpipe.macromates.com/2020/macos-catalina-slow-by-design/

If I understand that correctly, the latest macOS phones home to ask for permission before launching any process.
This is just completely insane.

You're a little off. Emphasis mine:

Apple has introduced notarization, setting aside the inconvenience this brings to us developers, it also results in a degraded user experience, as the first time a user runs a new executable, Apple delays execution while waiting for a reply from their server.

So that's not every time you launch a new executable and certainly not every time you launch a process.

I was able to replicate the delay with the code in the article; the first run took about 500ms whereas the second run took 5. I think aside from just the checksum check there was some CPU optimization going on there, but who knows.

Anyway, I can see how this would be a pain for developers who both create and test new binaries all day and have slow Internet connections, and there should probably be a "please just let me step on my own dick" check box for those people, but I've been happily using Catalina since its release and my machine hasn't felt any slower either for work or other stuff - quite the opposite, actually.

As for this part:

Apple has a few file system locations that require user permission to access them, for example ~/Desktop, ~/Documents, and ~/Downloads.… This delay is for each of the privileged locations accessed, and while the result is cached, the cache only last until next relaunch of the application.

This is incorrect. The permissions persist between application relaunches. Sometimes I'll get asked again for permissions by an app that should already have them, and I'm not quite sure what the pattern is there - perhaps new permissions are required every time the app is updated? Anyway, it's certainly not every time the application launches, though I can see how it might feel that way to a Mac app developer that's constantly creating and testing new binaries, and again there should probably be a "developer mode" checkbox for those people.

 

[byuu]

So that's not every time you launch a new executable and certainly not every time you launch a process.

Well, the article says it's cached so it won't delay with repeated calls. But how long does that cache persist? Is it gone after a reboot? Is there a size/time limit?

 

[Least Concern]

Well, the article says it's cached so it won't delay with repeated calls. But how long does that cache persist? Is it gone after a reboot? Is there a size/time limit?

No idea. It might make sense to not check again if the checksum of the binary hasn't changed, but maybe they want to periodically check again just in case a binary got added to a list of known malware on Apple's side since the last check (if that's indeed what's happening here).

All I can say is that, subjectively, Catalina has not made my Mac slower, and I consider myself a power user, so I doubt any normies would notice a difference either. YMMV.

Unrelated: Tim Cook once again wears his bleeding heart on his sleeve with a tl;dr memo about the George Floyd clusterfuck. He doesn't say "black lives matter" per se but he gets very close. They'll also be closing stores in certain areas as stores with valuable electronics behind large windows are understandably tempting targets in the places where shit is going down.

I feel bad for the grunt retail workers. They finally are able to go back to work after the coof shutdown only for the store to be closed again a couple days or weeks later because of this whole thing. I hope Apple is supporting their low-level employees financially instead of just making press releases about the donations they're making to "a number of groups."

 

[Ginger Piglet]

You can still heat stuff with radio waves, and while the energies involved with this are comparatively small I don't think it's fair to dismiss it as having no effect when you consider the concentration of these devices.
Cancer or no we're probably going to find out it's been fucking with the environment, and there's been talk for a while that it's being interfering with the migrations of insects and birds.

Yes you can. But the worst that it will do is give you a hot ear. It won't give you burns or radiation poisoning.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Best Mac toaster to me is the first Mac Mini.

It's sort of like a game console with its' size.

Also it has no built-in display, so one can hook it up to any kind of display, from TVs to old CRTs (max res: 1920 x 1080).

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

Now there's one of the insiders saying the iphone 13 might be usb-c with punch hole selfie cam, and face id under the screen, at least the smallest one I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T2PzEMAvPk

Never been an iphone guy but I love tiny phones, the upcoming ones got me really interested

I stole a 160 gb iPod classic off a rich kid at school 12 years ago

oh god don't tell me it was YOU who made Mitchell decide to become an hero

 

[Ex Cummunicated Sasser HD]

Which will make everyone buy new chargers and accessories, just as planned.

Why don't they just go the whole distance and make it so that you have to rebuy all your apps through the App Store with each upgrade.

To be fair, they should have done this right from the start. the 30pin iPod connector was crap by the time the first iPhone came out, and Mag safe connectors were the best ever thing Apple released. The lightning cable was better, but still a point of weakness to this day... Although they really fucked up when they ditched the Mag safe in favour of USB3. That was such a dumb move. They had essentially solved charger port issues (solder breaking, tripping over cables etc) then went back to something even worse...

 

[LegoTugboat]

Best Mac toaster to me is the first Mac Mini.

It's sort of like a game console with its' size.

Also it has no built-in display, so one can hook it up to any kind of display, from TVs to old CRTs (max res: 1920 x 1080).

Yeah, it's interesting because Apple originally planned for it as a switcher machine, get the Windows user to buy one and use it, which it certainly got attention and certainly helped bring the whole mini PC idea to the public, it actually ended up being liked for home entertainment, since it could power a decent size monitor (at the time), could act as a CD/DVD player, and could stream videos. This was the time when high speed broadband still had to... y'know, buffer movies, and Netflix took about a month to get TV shows that had aired.

The mini PC idea's around still, and there's a few others out there, like Intel's line which offers an Extreme version with skull (that has LED lights so you can make the eyes glow red, no joke)

I'm not going to say the Mac Mini's perfect, I mean it desperately needs some dedicated GPU love, and I'd certainly hope they update it more then every 4 years.

Granted, Apple can't really change the size of the Mini because of small customers like this.

That's Mac Stadium, who operate approximately 8000 of the things in custom-made racks, which is just insane.

 

[Ex Cummunicated Sasser HD]

Best Mac toaster to me is the first Mac Mini.

It's sort of like a game console with its' size.

Also it has no built-in display, so one can hook it up to any kind of display, from TVs to old CRTs (max res: 1920 x 1080).

1st Mac Mini was a G4, and is the only hardware capable of running AmigaOS 4 natively, apart from the ludicrously priced Amiga stuff... It's max res was actually 1920x1200 though, and you could run another 1920x1200 screen also with the USB graphics card that macsales put out.

2nd Mac Mini was an Intel Core solo 32bit 1.5Ghz with 256MB ram, but it was really easy to upgrade it to 4GB and drop in a Core 2 Duo 2.67ghz, as it was so easy to do, as it was all socketed, and had 64bit support even though it was a 32bit chip. Like apple always do though, they locked that model out of upgrades after Snow Leopard for no reason, but a few alterations to a few kexts and it lasted til Mountain Lion and was still unnoficially supported til 2012. Not bad for something that was released in 2005 as a budget mac.. It was also the first intel mac too, you could get the intel mac mini and they were still selling powerbooks, ibooks and G5 iMacs and Mac Pros... Think the iMac was the second one to go full intel.

 

[Kot Johansson]

2nd Mac Mini was an Intel Core solo 32bit 1.5Ghz with 256MB ram, but it was really easy to upgrade it to 4GB and drop in a Core 2 Duo 2.67ghz, as it was so easy to do, as it was all socketed, and had 64bit support even though it was a 32bit chip. Like apple always do though, they locked that model out of upgrades after Snow Leopard for no reason, but a few alterations to a few kexts and it lasted til Mountain Lion and was still unnoficially supported til 2012. Not bad for something that was released in 2005 as a budget mac.. It was also the first intel mac too, you could get the intel mac mini and they were still selling powerbooks, ibooks and G5 iMacs and Mac Pros... Think the iMac was the second one to go full intel.

Most of those early 32-bit EFI intel macs can support up to El Capitan, provided they have a 64-bit CPU.

 

[Kiwifarmsname]

Which will make everyone buy new chargers and accessories, just as planned.

Why don't they just go the whole distance and make it so that you have to rebuy all your apps through the App Store with each upgrade.

because that would mainly benifet the guys who made the app