Wow, I’m impressed! I’m on my fourth iPhone since 2013 (employer-provided, there’s no way I would drop that much of my own cash on so many phones) and thought smartphones were complete trash until 2016, which is the first time I had an iPhone where I didn’t prefer starting up my laptop to google something. My wife had two iPods fail in four years and nevertheless only gave up on them because they quit producing the models she liked. And I’m not predisposed to disliking Apple – all of my computers from the late '80s to the early '00s were Macs – but these experiences have made me want to stay far, far away from anything Apple these days.
I still have a Sony laptop from 2002 that runs surprisingly well on a lightweight version of Linux, though I can’t get a battery for it anymore. I only recently dumped another Sony laptop that I purchased in 2006 that was running modern software in a user-friendly, but heavyweight version of Linux much better than my current work-issue laptop runs Windows 7 (no battery replacement was available and the power jack eventually failed). Not that I’m advocating for Sony here – I haven’t purchased any hardware from them since that 2006 laptop, and I’ve had similar experiences with more recent laptops from Toshiba and HP – more that I don’t think your experience has much to do with Apple, but rather with how you use the machines.
Fully agreed. I think our differing opinions of Apple are evidence of that.
I’m mostly inclined to agree with you there, though I think the average user also has seen diminishing returns from increased computing power in recent years, and therefore has held onto hardware longer. This has paradoxically created both an impression of improved quality that is somewhat illusory because in the past performance improvements led to replacement before quality was ever really tested, and an impression of reduced quality because people actually hold on to their machines long enough for them to start physically breaking – fans quit, batteries stop holding charge, keyboards wear out, etc. But certainly on the whole, when people replace their devices less often, perception of quality increases.
