Apple Thread - The most overrated technology brand?

[Commodore 128]

I did a trade in from my two year old Samsung Galaxy to an iPhone 16 Pro. It takes some getting used to for the UI. I would say so far, you would need at least one curated Apple subscription to get the most out of the ecosystem, which I assume Apple fully intended.

Luckily, they are generous with three month trials built in with your new devices. Arcade, Music, TV, News. They want you to experience all of what Apple could bring. Apple Arcade is competent so far. No ads or microtransactions for a selection of games in exchange of a monthly fee isn't bad if you want to fool around. I haven't tried Apple Music yet.

I have icloud+ so my family and I can use icloud drive but I've never bothered with any of the other stuff. Arcade, meh, don't play games on the phone. TV, just torrent dat shit. News, might as well be browsing reddit r/all. I did try Music for a while, but the song discovery on it was crap. Spotify keeps me on my toes with new stuff that I've never heard of but wind up enjoying, where Apple Music was always like "Hey guy, ever heard of Foo Fighters?!? ".

 

[The Last Stand]

I have icloud+ so my family and I can use icloud drive but I've never bothered with any of the other stuff.

Oh, if you have an Apple device, iCloud+ is a must. That finite space on your device would fill up in an instant, especially if you take lots of photos or text a lot.

 

[JoseRaulChupacabra]

I recently got a 16 Pro Max after being on Android forever. I dunno why the fuck I did that.

Well, actually, I do. It's the screen. I compared it with Samsung phones in the store and for whatever reason, the iPhone display just kinda looks better. I contemplated getting a Pixel, but they're not supported where I live. I know getting any Apple device is essentially entering a findom relationship as the paypig, but it's not like an equivalent Samsung is that much cheaper nowadays.

I noticed it seems to be less friendly to one handed use, and I miss the back button, but a lot of the stock apps on this thing is nice.

Academic professors (meaning people who have never designed a successful UI in their lives) proclaimed that drop shadows and the like are "dishonest" because, after all, those aren't really 3D objects, and an "honest" UI is therefore perfectly flat glyphs. Moreover, those glyphs need to disconnect from the real world, like how the "erase" button looks like a physical eraser in many programs, or "save" looks like a floppy disc. That's "dishonest," too.

This is wild. I know UI/X people are a bit cookie and prone to fart huffing, but this is faggiest thing ever. But it doesn't surprise me given how those people tend to be.

The explanation given to me for flat design was the low capacity in older phones, so they do flat shit to minimize storage requirements.

 

[LegoTugboat]

Some curious little things coming out about the Games app and the frame generation.

This is basically second hand though, but it sseems that the Games app tries to show all games on a Mac, not just downloaded from the App Store.

The second is that the frame generation works with the preview crossover as well, so it also applies to Windows games.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

The explanation given to me for flat design was the low capacity in older phones, so they do flat shit to minimize storage requirements.

That’s hilariously obvious bullshit.

A 128 by 128 icon is the same amount of pixels whether it be flat or skeuomorpic in design.

Tell me you didn’t actually fall for that one.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

I have icloud+ so my family and I can use icloud drive but I've never bothered with any of the other stuff. Arcade, meh, don't play games on the phone. TV, just torrent dat shit. News, might as well be browsing reddit r/all. I did try Music for a while, but the song discovery on it was crap. Spotify keeps me on my toes with new stuff that I've never heard of but wind up enjoying, where Apple Music was always like "Hey guy, ever heard of Foo Fighters?!? ".

Why go through the hassle of torrenting shit you have already paid to stream?

That’s nigger logic personified.

 

[Commodore 128]

Why go through the hassle of torrenting shit you have already paid to stream?

That’s nigger logic personified.

I think you misunderstood, I'm not paying for apple TV I just torrent the few things I want to watch on there (severance, slow horses).

 

[Retard Marine]

A 128 by 128 icon is the same amount of pixels whether it be flat or skeuomorpic in design.

But depending on the exact pixel content it may compress better or worse.

Still, "flat shit to minimize storage requirements for older phones" is obviously bullshit. Or how come it's the older phones and OSes which have less shitty and flat UIs than newer ones? Storage capacity has only grown as time has passed.

 

[glow]

I haven't tried Apple Music yet.

On apple devices, it's nice but the windows port is unforgivably shit so I can't quite dump Spotify yet. Spotify does do much better recommendations also but I'm finding asking various chat AIs for similar music is doing a better job, so all I need to do is a bit of scripting there to put some playlists together. Because I'm an oldfag I like to listen to entire albums in order and Apple does a much better job of that and building a collection of albums.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

On apple devices, it's nice but the windows port is unforgivably shit so I can't quite dump Spotify yet. Spotify does do much better recommendations also but I'm finding asking various chat AIs for similar music is doing a better job, so all I need to do is a bit of scripting there to put some playlists together. Because I'm an oldfag I like to listen to entire albums in order and Apple does a much better job of that and building a collection of albums.

Apple Music recommendations are trained by your listening habits and library, so not using it until the recommendations improve is basically guaranteeing they won't.

 

[barrow greeter]

not going to update to ios "26", going to use a shortcut for my settings app so the red bubble they never take off until you update doesn't appear.

 

[FMW13]

I have icloud+ so my family and I can use icloud drive but I've never bothered with any of the other stuff. Arcade, meh, don't play games on the phone. TV, just torrent dat shit. News, might as well be browsing reddit r/all. I did try Music for a while, but the song discovery on it was crap. Spotify keeps me on my toes with new stuff that I've never heard of but wind up enjoying, where Apple Music was always like "Hey guy, ever heard of Foo Fighters?!? ".

I sold my Apple TV and I just use my smart tv for streaming. Love music though super convent and dolly Atmos with my AirPods does make some of the songs I hear sound really good. Yeah I never bothered with arcade as I don't play games anymore, since losing some weight I'd rather go out for a bike ride than sit on my ass all day and let my brain get rotted from games.

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

I sold my Apple TV and I just use my smart tv for streaming. Love music though super convent and dolly Atmos with my AirPods does make some of the songs I hear sound really good. Yeah I never bothered with arcade as I don't play games anymore, since losing some weight I'd rather go out for a bike ride than sit on my ass all day and let my brain get rotted from games.

I love my AppleTV. Airpods paired with it is the tits. If i try to stream a pirated sports stream, it isn’t very ideal to stream from my phone to my AppleTV. It freezes up or buffers every few minutes.

Apple music is pretty cool. But Atmos is either hit or miss for me. Daft Punk’s RAM is one of the best albums i’ve heard in Atmos. But Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle sounded like absolute garbage when it was re-released on Atmos. It’s been fixed but still doesn’t sound good. If i use Hi-Fi Lossless, the volume will randomly increase to make the song sound like garbage. So i have to turn it off. But on blutooth, it’s a big waste since you can’t do Lossless through blutooth.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

I love my AppleTV. Airpods paired with it is the tits. If i try to stream a pirated sports stream, it isn’t very ideal to stream from my phone to my AppleTV. It freezes up or buffers every few minutes.

Apple music is pretty cool. But Atmos is either hit or miss for me. Daft Punk’s RAM is one of the best albums i’ve heard in Atmos. But Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle sounded like absolute garbage when it was re-released on Atmos. It’s been fixed but still doesn’t sound good. If i use Hi-Fi Lossless, the volume will randomly increase to make the song sound like garbage. So i have to turn it off. But on blutooth, it’s a big waste since you can’t do Lossless through blutooth.

You CAN do lossless over Bluetooth, but it requires better headphones than AirPods. My Sony XM5 earbuds and AudioTechnica BT-50 Bluetooth cans do it, and it is wonderful.

AirPods can't do lossless properly due to the dynamic range of them only being the dollar store-level 20Hz to 20KHz range, which can't even fully reproduce sound from lossy files and streams to begin with. The volume jumps you get are down to coming from a passage that has a lot of sounds outside the range of the drivers and then back to mostly falling within that range.

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

You CAN do lossless over Bluetooth, but it requires better headphones than AirPods. My Sony XM5 earbuds and AudioTechnica BT-50 Bluetooth cans do it, and it is wonderful.

AirPods can't do lossless properly due to the dynamic range of them only being the dollar store-level 20Hz to 20KHz range, which can't even fully reproduce sound from lossy files and streams to begin with. The volume jumps you get are down to coming from a passage that has a lot of sounds outside the range of the drivers and then back to mostly falling within that range.

Cool. Thanks for the recommendation and information . My knowledge of bluetooth is that it could not do Lossless.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Cool. Thanks for the recommendation and information . My knowledge of bluetooth is that it could not do Lossless.

Bluetooth 5.0 and above support it, and some companies had ways to make it work for as low as the 3.5 spec with proprietary software. It is mainly a question of bandwidth.

Just keep in mind, headphones and especially earbuds that can do it are not cheap. My XM5 buds list at $500CDN a pair, and cans that do it start around $300 or so regardless of brand.

 

[asr]

I've recently been enjoying just streaming my flac collection that I have externally onto my apple TV via vlc, it's pretty fucking kino. I imagine that there's better and more efficient work flows to this though. My chain has basically just been macbook -> apple tv via VLC smb function.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

I've recently been enjoying just streaming my flac collection that I have externally onto my apple TV via vlc, it's pretty fucking kino. I imagine that there's better and more efficient work flows to this though. My chain has basically just been macbook -> apple tv via VLC smb function.

If it works in a way you are happy with, don't sweat other ways to do it.

In other news, MacOS 26 Developer Beta 2 is out, and is a little faster than DB 1 was. I am liking where things are headed.

 

[Doggo]

I upgraded my iPad a few weeks ago. Well, more like sidegraded. I went from a Pro M1 to a mini 7. It does everything my pro did, but I can actually type with thumbs, and I can just about pocket it in a pinch. Apart from the 60Hz screen, I don’t miss anything about the pro. Cellular 256GB models for both.

Apple still accepted a trade in despite the old iPad being slightly bent and having a shagged battery. According to the battery stats, this mini had been sitting in the box for nearly a year. It is a 256GB purple mini with cellular, though. How many of those can there be out there?

But all in all, I’m digging the smaller size. It’s small enough that it goes literally everywhere with me, and fits in my smallest bag.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

I upgraded my iPad a few weeks ago. Well, more like sidegraded. I went from a Pro M1 to a mini 7. It does everything my pro did, but I can actually type with thumbs, and I can just about pocket it in a pinch. Apart from the 60Hz screen, I don’t miss anything about the pro. Cellular 256GB models for both.

Apple still accepted a trade in despite the old iPad being slightly bent and having a shagged battery. According to the battery stats, this mini had been sitting in the box for nearly a year. It is a 256GB purple mini with cellular, though. How many of those can there be out there?

But all in all, I’m digging the smaller size. It’s small enough that it goes literally everywhere with me, and fits in my smallest bag.

The less-common colors are usually only produced during the initial run, which is why they become rare later on, and are somewhat stale stock when you buy them this far from launch.

On a side note, have you installed iPadOS 26 on it yet? It's surprisingly stable in the Developer Beta release, so it's worth going for it now, rather than waiting for September to roll around.