11 ms·

Despite Apple's anti-competitive ways, I am often impressed with their attention to details such as these. Glad there is still sanity out there in the world of

Despite Apple's anti-competitive ways, I am often impressed with their attention to details such as these. Glad there is still sanity out there in the world of "always listening" devices.

thebruce87m 6y ago
I wish people would qualify their “Apple Hate” every time they mention it. It would make it easier to know who’s opinions to discount. An alarming number of people still believe Apple slowed down all their old phones for the sole purpose of selling them new ones for example.
- simonh 6y ago
  I wish we lived in a world where people only said things like that they believed.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    I think we do. The problem is that people often believe things based on perception and snap judgement, which are often wrong. And once somebody has some "knowledge" even if gained through unreliable means, displacing that "knowledge" is rather difficult. It's an artifact from evolving in a world where snap judgments were often the difference between life and death, and the person who assumed the rustle in bushes was just the wind, but it was actually a tiger, did not live to propagate. However, the paranoid person who thought it was a tiger every time the wind rustled the bushes, did survive to propagate. Our current political system is pretty good evidence of people believing strongly enough in ideology to destroy the lives of others. I think they really do believe the stuff, and that's why it's so dangerous.
    - simonh 6y ago
      I don't know. I suspect a lot of people spreading fake news, conspiracy theories and crap like this know perfectly well it's rubbish.
      - freedomben 6y ago
        Certainly some people do that, but I would imagine it's a very small subset that are either trolls or consequentialists who feel the end justifies the means who originate it. Most who spread it are useful idiots (I use the word idiot very lightly. It's easy for anyone who is human to get suckered by a fake news story here or there). I have quite a few family and friends that unintentionally spread fake news because they really thought the story was real. One in particular is extremely hateful toward fake news but made a conclusion based on a headline that turned out wrong (we don't all have time to read every story we see, as much as we'd want to).
- bakedbeanz 6y ago
  They did absolutely slow down their older phones, but it comes down to whether you believe that their explanation of why was the whole truth. https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/apple-agrees-to-settlement-of-up-to-500-million-from-lawsuit-alleging-it-throttled-older-phones/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/apple-agrees-to-settlement... I'm not an Apple hater or a fanboy. I've owned a number of Apple devices in the past. However, they have their issues just like any other tech company, but their devoted following does seem to be more cultish than that of, say, Microsoft or Google.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    You could ask any non-Apple industry personnel about what happens to batteries after years of constant usage and all of them will agree that eventually you eventually won't be able to pull the power you need to keep the phone running fast. Getting a new battery always fixed this, Apple just was performing this power management without telling the user before ios 12.1.
    - derivagral 6y ago
      A big point of this is how user-hostile replacing a battery on a phone has become for flagship mobile devices, which makes this situation a bit worse IMO.
    - thebean11 6y ago
      But if I'm an average user and my phone is slow, my first thought isn't "hey I should get the battery replaced". It's perfectly reasonable to assume the phone would still be slow, so why not just buy a newer model? It's a lie of omission, which you could reasonably interpret as a trick to get people to upgrade.
      - Lownin 6y ago
        If you're an average user and your phone is spontaneously rebooting, you probably think to replace it even more.
- shaklee3 6y ago
  I don't hate them, but I find their hardware is typically not as good as the competition, and for a higher price. I also think most people that buy Apple devices don't know this, or just refuse to believe it. For example, I can't tell you how many times I've heard "I tried a Moto g and it's horrible! My old iPhone was better", or "this $300 Dell laptop is way worse than my MacBook". Of course a $1000 phone is better than a $200 phone, and likewise for the laptops. But when you start looking at high-end laptops like the surface series, or phones like oppo/Huawei, it's usually in favor of the non-apple.
  - Hnrobert42 6y ago
    Well, with Oppo and Huawei in particular, its pretty easy to beat the competition with state sponsored industrial espionage subsidizing their R&D costs.
    - shaklee3 6y ago
      Samsung, too.
  - jakear 6y ago
    People don’t buy specs, they buy experiences. If the Android has 12GB ram and some super fast processor, but runs in a GC’d runtime that stutters when collecting and unloads background apps with high frequency, it’s not actually better than whatever’s in the iPhone. Plenty of videos out there comparing opening a bunch of apps in a cycle on iPhone vs Android. Android wins the first open, iPhone destroys on the second. (iPhone is able to keep all apps in suspense, whereas android unloads them)
    - shaklee3 6y ago
      I think you will need to be more specific. I have never seen a difference in high-end phones with Apple versus Samsung or any of the other Android phones with the latest Snapdragon.
      - 6y ago
- webmobdev 6y ago
  > I wish people would qualify their “Apple Hate” every time they mention it. Sure, let me do that: Apple is a corporation and it is stupid to believe that they care more about you than making profits. This applies to any corporation. I've particularly noticed that the US citizens are increasingly buying into this propaganda that corporations can better protect their rights than a democratically elected government. And that is just sad and dangerous. We should be campaigning for our privacy rights directly with the government, and not just hope that some corporation will act benevolent towards us. (And it is not a coincidence that this "news" came up in the social media feeds when the [news about exploits that granted unauthorised access to your camera through Safari is going around](https://www.ryanpickren.com/webcam-hacking-overview https://www.ryanpickren.com/webcam-hacking-overview).) The issue here is that instead of adding a physical switch to disable the microphone and camera, Apple is again asking its users to blindly trust it. We just have to take their word for it that it will work. They can always blame a bug in the firmware if somebody finds a way to exploit it tomorrow ... (Note: I mentioned the Safari exploit only to point out that there is some negative news which obviously a corporation would like to bury with some positive publicity. It is commendable that Apple paid the discoverer a nice bounty and will be fixing it soon.) Edit: And, ofcourse, the downvotes begin as the social media management team steps in.
  - lrdd 6y ago
    I don't think caring about the user and making profits are mutually exclusive. A company that is interested in delivering what the user wants and needs will often make profit. It's not a case of 'with the user' or 'against the user'.
    - jay_kyburz 6y ago
      I think the OP is trying to say that there is no evidence that apple cares about the user, only its own image in the eyes of users. There is always an antagonistic relationship between buyers and sellers. Buyers want more money for less features, Sellers want more features for less money. There is no such thing as "with the user", unless the users are shareholders in the company.
  - 6y ago
- geekifier 6y ago
  > I wish people would qualify their “Apple Hate” every time they mention it. Apple hate? I'm a Mac convert, and I admire most of their hardware and design. But it's no secret they purposely refuse to interoperate with other vendors, and purposely develop proprietary technologies to keep you within their ecosystem. The recent acquisition, and subsequent planned shutdown of Dark Sky is just one recent example. Part of it is just the business model, I guess. For example, Google's apps are widely available across a variety of devices, since it gives Google the juicy data that they're after. For Apple, which is not an ad company, the incentive might not be there for opening their apps up to a wider audience. Since I cannot justify a $1k+ phone for myself and my family members (I am content with my $500 S10e), and I have a mix of Mac, Linux, and Windows devices, the Apple applications (however well designed) are sadly out.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Apple will always make the right choice—until it messes with their business model. There are uncountable examples of ways in which they have intentionally crippled their own hardware and software to prevent users from using their own purchase.
- nixpulvis 6y ago
  Apple is easy to hate if you want stuff that you can trust to work over time. Anything that locks you in as much as they do is not a friend of mine (anymore). They aren't the worst player, or even close really however. It's just there's a lot of power and influence in that company, so you hear a lot about it.
the_pwner224 6y ago
> attention to details such as these Don't a nontrivial amount of people use their macbooks closed in a vertical docking stand? This will require them to use an external microphone. That said, my experience with similar laptops (XPS 15) has been that closing it just exacerbates the shitty thermal limitations so it's not really practical. Not sure whether this mode of usage is viable on newer macbooks.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Don't a nontrivial amount of people use their macbooks closed in a vertical docking stand? This will require them to use an external microphone. Wouldn't they have to use an external microphone anyway, since in clamshell mode, the microphone is facing directly into the closed display? AFAIK, MacBooks of any flavor don't have external microphones.

Despite Apple's anti-competitive ways, I am often impressed with their attention to details such as these. Glad there is still sanity out there in the world of "always listening" devices.

thebruce87m 6y ago

I wish people would qualify their “Apple Hate” every time they mention it. It would make it easier to know who’s opinions to discount. An alarming number of people still believe Apple slowed down all their old phones for the sole purpose of selling them new ones for example.

simonh 6y ago
I wish we lived in a world where people only said things like that they believed.
- freedomben 6y ago
  I think we do. The problem is that people often believe things based on perception and snap judgement, which are often wrong. And once somebody has some "knowledge" even if gained through unreliable means, displacing that "knowledge" is rather difficult. It's an artifact from evolving in a world where snap judgments were often the difference between life and death, and the person who assumed the rustle in bushes was just the wind, but it was actually a tiger, did not live to propagate. However, the paranoid person who thought it was a tiger every time the wind rustled the bushes, did survive to propagate. Our current political system is pretty good evidence of people believing strongly enough in ideology to destroy the lives of others. I think they really do believe the stuff, and that's why it's so dangerous.
  - simonh 6y ago
    I don't know. I suspect a lot of people spreading fake news, conspiracy theories and crap like this know perfectly well it's rubbish.
    - freedomben 6y ago
      Certainly some people do that, but I would imagine it's a very small subset that are either trolls or consequentialists who feel the end justifies the means who originate it. Most who spread it are useful idiots (I use the word idiot very lightly. It's easy for anyone who is human to get suckered by a fake news story here or there). I have quite a few family and friends that unintentionally spread fake news because they really thought the story was real. One in particular is extremely hateful toward fake news but made a conclusion based on a headline that turned out wrong (we don't all have time to read every story we see, as much as we'd want to).
bakedbeanz 6y ago
They did absolutely slow down their older phones, but it comes down to whether you believe that their explanation of why was the whole truth. https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/apple-agrees-to-settlement-of-up-to-500-million-from-lawsuit-alleging-it-throttled-older-phones/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/apple-agrees-to-settlement... I'm not an Apple hater or a fanboy. I've owned a number of Apple devices in the past. However, they have their issues just like any other tech company, but their devoted following does seem to be more cultish than that of, say, Microsoft or Google.
- judge2020 6y ago
  You could ask any non-Apple industry personnel about what happens to batteries after years of constant usage and all of them will agree that eventually you eventually won't be able to pull the power you need to keep the phone running fast. Getting a new battery always fixed this, Apple just was performing this power management without telling the user before ios 12.1.
  - derivagral 6y ago
    A big point of this is how user-hostile replacing a battery on a phone has become for flagship mobile devices, which makes this situation a bit worse IMO.
  - thebean11 6y ago
    But if I'm an average user and my phone is slow, my first thought isn't "hey I should get the battery replaced". It's perfectly reasonable to assume the phone would still be slow, so why not just buy a newer model? It's a lie of omission, which you could reasonably interpret as a trick to get people to upgrade.
    - Lownin 6y ago
      If you're an average user and your phone is spontaneously rebooting, you probably think to replace it even more.
shaklee3 6y ago
I don't hate them, but I find their hardware is typically not as good as the competition, and for a higher price. I also think most people that buy Apple devices don't know this, or just refuse to believe it. For example, I can't tell you how many times I've heard "I tried a Moto g and it's horrible! My old iPhone was better", or "this $300 Dell laptop is way worse than my MacBook". Of course a $1000 phone is better than a $200 phone, and likewise for the laptops. But when you start looking at high-end laptops like the surface series, or phones like oppo/Huawei, it's usually in favor of the non-apple.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  Well, with Oppo and Huawei in particular, its pretty easy to beat the competition with state sponsored industrial espionage subsidizing their R&D costs.
  - shaklee3 6y ago
    Samsung, too.
- jakear 6y ago
  People don’t buy specs, they buy experiences. If the Android has 12GB ram and some super fast processor, but runs in a GC’d runtime that stutters when collecting and unloads background apps with high frequency, it’s not actually better than whatever’s in the iPhone. Plenty of videos out there comparing opening a bunch of apps in a cycle on iPhone vs Android. Android wins the first open, iPhone destroys on the second. (iPhone is able to keep all apps in suspense, whereas android unloads them)
  - shaklee3 6y ago
    I think you will need to be more specific. I have never seen a difference in high-end phones with Apple versus Samsung or any of the other Android phones with the latest Snapdragon.
    - 6y ago
webmobdev 6y ago
> I wish people would qualify their “Apple Hate” every time they mention it. Sure, let me do that: Apple is a corporation and it is stupid to believe that they care more about you than making profits. This applies to any corporation. I've particularly noticed that the US citizens are increasingly buying into this propaganda that corporations can better protect their rights than a democratically elected government. And that is just sad and dangerous. We should be campaigning for our privacy rights directly with the government, and not just hope that some corporation will act benevolent towards us. (And it is not a coincidence that this "news" came up in the social media feeds when the [news about exploits that granted unauthorised access to your camera through Safari is going around](https://www.ryanpickren.com/webcam-hacking-overview https://www.ryanpickren.com/webcam-hacking-overview).) The issue here is that instead of adding a physical switch to disable the microphone and camera, Apple is again asking its users to blindly trust it. We just have to take their word for it that it will work. They can always blame a bug in the firmware if somebody finds a way to exploit it tomorrow ... (Note: I mentioned the Safari exploit only to point out that there is some negative news which obviously a corporation would like to bury with some positive publicity. It is commendable that Apple paid the discoverer a nice bounty and will be fixing it soon.) Edit: And, ofcourse, the downvotes begin as the social media management team steps in.
- lrdd 6y ago
  I don't think caring about the user and making profits are mutually exclusive. A company that is interested in delivering what the user wants and needs will often make profit. It's not a case of 'with the user' or 'against the user'.
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    I think the OP is trying to say that there is no evidence that apple cares about the user, only its own image in the eyes of users. There is always an antagonistic relationship between buyers and sellers. Buyers want more money for less features, Sellers want more features for less money. There is no such thing as "with the user", unless the users are shareholders in the company.
- 6y ago
geekifier 6y ago
> I wish people would qualify their “Apple Hate” every time they mention it. Apple hate? I'm a Mac convert, and I admire most of their hardware and design. But it's no secret they purposely refuse to interoperate with other vendors, and purposely develop proprietary technologies to keep you within their ecosystem. The recent acquisition, and subsequent planned shutdown of Dark Sky is just one recent example. Part of it is just the business model, I guess. For example, Google's apps are widely available across a variety of devices, since it gives Google the juicy data that they're after. For Apple, which is not an ad company, the incentive might not be there for opening their apps up to a wider audience. Since I cannot justify a $1k+ phone for myself and my family members (I am content with my $500 S10e), and I have a mix of Mac, Linux, and Windows devices, the Apple applications (however well designed) are sadly out.
monadic2 6y ago
Apple will always make the right choice—until it messes with their business model. There are uncountable examples of ways in which they have intentionally crippled their own hardware and software to prevent users from using their own purchase.
nixpulvis 6y ago
Apple is easy to hate if you want stuff that you can trust to work over time. Anything that locks you in as much as they do is not a friend of mine (anymore). They aren't the worst player, or even close really however. It's just there's a lot of power and influence in that company, so you hear a lot about it.

the_pwner224 6y ago

> attention to details such as these Don't a nontrivial amount of people use their macbooks closed in a vertical docking stand? This will require them to use an external microphone. That said, my experience with similar laptops (XPS 15) has been that closing it just exacerbates the shitty thermal limitations so it's not really practical. Not sure whether this mode of usage is viable on newer macbooks.

reaperducer 6y ago
Don't a nontrivial amount of people use their macbooks closed in a vertical docking stand? This will require them to use an external microphone. Wouldn't they have to use an external microphone anyway, since in clamshell mode, the microphone is facing directly into the closed display? AFAIK, MacBooks of any flavor don't have external microphones.