And not to say that Apple ends up purchased by Ford (or insert more relevant company here) - just that Volvo hit the plateau of good enough that the iPad2 quickly ascended to.
And yet somehow there are far, far more Apple customers (including Mac users) than there were when Apple dropped [insert technology]. Only now are Mac sales slowing after a solid decade-plus of growth, mostly achieved by absolutely killing it in the consumer space (as opposed to enterprise).
IMHO the term you were looking for was not āApple fansā but rather āa large number of consumers.ā (Not all of them, of course. That would be silly.)
Iāll admitāwhen I got a first-generation iMac in 1998 (which I won rather than bought) I was a little peeved that it didnāt have a 3.5" disk drive. Seems a funny thing to miss now.
it essentially bricked itself when all the apps updated one morning. ā¦ A day or two later resulted in a workaround, and apparently this has been fixed
Iām not sure what the issue is there then? Itās happens. Just the other day, Windows 8.1 update was pulled because it bricked a bunch of computers and tablets. This has been a problem for at least over a decade where all the major software/hardware companies decided to make consumers unaware, unpaid beta testers.
Thatās why I donāt update anything until all the trigger-happy masses have updated and worked it over first. I let others be the unpaid beta testers, then Iāll use the more incremental updates.
an update to a single generation of software that happens every 12-18 months negating previous hardware spells a planned program to cause people to buy more hardware.
Iām not sure itās diabolical as much as itās just the āgive and takeā we see from the difficulties of providing legacy hardware support. Of course, just like any other major corporation, I wouldnāt put it past Apple to dick over consumers for profit, thatās for sure. So, I dunno.
Apple is a hardware company that runs a little software division on the side to get you to buy more hardware.
On many levels for sure, but if the software and services werenāt compelling it would destroy Apple. I love the quality, durability, functionality and practicality of my little, square iPod Shuffle hardware, but the ease of use with iTunes and the shuffleās voice interface, etc. is extremely compelling to me as well.
I have a rather expensive Creative Zen audio/video player and its software interfaces are a joke compared to Appleās stuff. I bought the Zen for extremely cheap because if was mislabeled as broken at a thrift store (score!). I was excited once I got it home and got it working, but now Iām going to sell it for a profit and exchange it for a superior Apple product because I want a better interface. The Zenās hardware quality seems āokā (although Iāve noticed some dead pixels already) and itās cool that it accepts external flash memory storage, but they just canāt compete with Appleās innovation and ingenuity when it comes to the entire package. The overall experience is subpar and I find myself fidgeting with it, fighting with it and wasting time that I donāt with my Apple products.
I find that scenario happens a lot. That said, despite Appleās advantages, when it comes to tablets and smartphones I prefer Android because the price is vastly lower and thatās too compelling. Especially considering I break tablets a lot being in my backpack along on hikes, mountain biking, etc. Itās not a matter of if Iām going to destroy my little tablet, itās a matter of when.
I agree on the phone front. My iPhone 5 is my first smartphone, bought only after my old flip phone (about 6 years old) started randomly powering down. Death throes. And I expect this iPhone, now a year old, to last a bare minimum of two more years. Iāll be seriously ticked if it dies anytime before then, but itās well built so Iāll also be very surprised if that happens. Not the least bit tempted by the 5s, and like you surprised and dismayed by how often people change phones.
On the other hand, I also have an iPad mini. Great little machine, and really quite powerful all things considered. But I am tempted by higher resolution, faster processor and, especially, more storage. A phone doesnāt really need much storage, at least not the way I use it, but among the best uses for a tablet (IMO) is loading photos for viewing while travelling, rather than carrying a laptop for that purpose. That means local storage is important to me, so Iām unlikely to have my current iPad as long as my phone. It does feel silly and wasteful to trade up after less than a year, so I will hold out as long as I can, but itās really unlikely Iāll have this iPad for three years or more.
I do not understand the developerās rant at all. It is possible - though tricky - to support older devices and iOS versions. Especially if you donāt do heavy stuff and keep away from cool new features you might not really need for your app.
The userās comment below has been addressed by Apple, as older versions of the software can be downloaded if your device doesnāt support the newer one.
With regards to software: iOS is only a couple of weeks old and has a share of over 50%. iOS 6 had an adoption rate of well over 90%.
And yes, I know people who are stuck on older iOS with their iPhone 3gs.
Did you ever compare the difference in specs between the old and current models? Those 4 years difference are easily 4 to 5 times the generation gap in PC years.
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If itās the sports car thing that Apple is going for ok, great, but I thought someone might be able to point out a wide market use for a 6 core cpu that isnāt serviced well enough by the more widely used 4 core solution.
Running virtual servers, but I donāt think thatās what Appleās going for with the Mac Pro.
*Edited to add block quote
Which is why no iOS devices have an SD slot, which in turn is why hell will freeze before I buy one.
Heh. I donāt have an iPad and donāt want one, but this seems symptomatic of the sort of thinking that led to so many people doomsaying the thing in the first place. All us geeks and techies were going around yelling āThe feature set is terrible! The hardware is underpowered! Itāll never sell!ā and meanwhile several million people went right on happily using it for all sorts of productive things, because they didnāt know they werenāt supposed to like it.
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Perhaps, but Apple still (for some reason) sells the iPad TWO, right now, today.
They do not sell the iPad 1.
So empirically speaking, the first version became obsolete much sooner than subsequent models, as any rational observer would have noted at the time.
I donāt understand Appleās thinking with offering the iPad 2 instead of the 4, nor do I understand the reasoning behind the 5c instead of just keeping the 5 (and I think you can still get the 4s?).
Only a numpty would buy an older generation iPhone or iPad for a negligible saving (particularly the phone).
Schools (you donāt want them to turn over an entire cart of two-year old devices) and corporations. Particularly those corporations that have molded enclosures/mountpoints shaped for iPad 2s (for PoS or control systems).
People talk about still using PCs that are 4 or 5 years old. Either those were computers that were just as expensive as a similar Mac, or they were self built, and then still not cheap. Iāve never owned a Mac for less than 5 years. Back in the days of 10.1, 10.2, etc, each version actually made my Pismo laptop seem faster. They actually improved their code. Now Apple is doing what all manufacturers do, they focus on the latest new feature designed into the new hardware design from Intel or Arm. Silicon gets cheaper and cheaper, why spend a cent on making anything run better on older hardware. They are also bumping up against physical limits of what people need. I donāt want a phablet, so donāt make the screen bigger. I donāt want my phone to fold in half, unless it folds back without a scratch or crease, so it canāt get much thinner. Screen resolution is getting better than my eyes. Imagine if they chose a form factor and stuck with it, then sold upgraded internalsā¦ they claim to be concerned with the environment, but just saying that everything is glass and metal and mercury free doesnāt make it more green than making something that can be upgraded. And they could probably make MORE money faster on upgrades.
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Iām on a late-2009 MBP (like @daneel) and the upgrade is good. There were some issues along the way with some of the other OS X versions (10.7 especially) - inexplicable poor performance, apparently broken stuff - and it had me so frustrated at times that I considered going back to Snow Leopard (which is what my MBP came with).
But all the problems I had steadily disappeared, and have been gone entirely since whatever the last one was (10.8), and this one (10.9) is supposed to offer significant performance improvements under the hood (the stuff daneel mentions is truly worthless, but thereās much more to it than that), which seem to be true in my limited testing. Itās worth it for users of older computers to upgrade.
The fact is I think Apple does still care about OS X, because though itās taken a while, in its current state theyāve gotten almost everything right. And when there are no obvious big features to work on (not that there arenāt a lot of things they could do), they put a lot of effort into behind the scenes stuff, which have improved dramatically in many different ways since 10.5.
Iām really not a fanboy but I donāt want to use any other OS (I came to OS X from Linux) and I donāt want them to make major changes without slowly introducing them (which is what they do), because it works great as it is. And I think they know that, and theyāre careful with it, and they clearly try to ensure older machines can run the latest versions - the upgrades are dead simple and work without a hitch.
With mobile devices they canāt do that because the underlying stuff is changing a lot more quickly. My Nexus One simply canāt run the latest couple versions of Android, and I donāt complain about thatā¦ itās beyond obsolete. So are early iPhones and the original iPad, though since Apple kept the interface so consistent (unlike on Android), at least until the latest iOS, many people donāt realize that.
It appears to add something else: itās faster. It feels way faster, and the battery life has improved greatly in my bossā laptop (I donāt know about mine, as it got stolen a couple of months ago). And the Calendar and Notes and Contacts look great once again, no more skeuomorphic crap. Oh, and iCloud keychain too.
Thank you! Itās only 8:30am, and Iāve already learned one new thing today.
So this morning my daughter, whoās a pro on IOS, is trying to watch BBC iPlayer, which is very easy to use. Sheās on Windows.
System boxes keep popping up because she right-clicks accidentally. Somehow IOS and OSX, itās intuitive what to do next, the kids never have an issue. Windows? āwtf daddy?ā
Case closed.
Well, I donāt use mine for games (except for the SNES emulator, which works great), and itās perfect as an ebook reader and for web browsing. Thatās essentially all I use it for.
Also, obsolete or not, I bought mine used for a $100 from a wealthy couple that wanted to upgradeāwhich is, by the way, the best way to buy any Apple product IMO 
Itās nice to see other people still using old stuff 
Iām still using a 1st gen Droid that my dad sent my way when he upgraded. Iāve been using it as a mobile Anki study tool for when Iām sitting still for any short period of time (itās not connected to a phone service of any kind, either).
Iām going to upgrade my 2008 MBP to Mavericks today, now that Iāve gotten a bit more confirmation from your post and other sources that itās actually better than Snow Leopard, which has been too good to change over the last few iterations.
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