Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/04/apple-is-above-reproach.html
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Here’s an idea. Maybe the public should stop purchasing all of Apple’s crap.
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I support Mac products in a Windows domain. They’re a pain in the ass. It’s like trying to wedge a square peg into a round hole. The iOS can’t access our networked databases meaning some kind of VM running Windows O/S is required. iOS Bootcamp does not work well, Parallels probably being the most stable, but still clumsy and expensive. Drive mappings and 802.x authentication issues abound. We run pretty heavy network security such as port authentication, so that does not help, but Mac’s are simply not designed to run in a business environment. I can see at one time a Mac being a preferred device for graphics and rendering for individuals, but with today’s Windows capabilities and the right graphics software, you can do everything with a Windows machine and much cheaper. It is really a matter of preference, but when it comes to corporate and government networking, Mac’s are not the way to go. And as far as mobile devices go… DROID!!!
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I’m going to say it’s a little ironic that a post states “making systems that work well and fail badly, designed to be end-of-lifed when the company tires of supporting them” and then champions Google products as an alternative.
Google Glass?
Google Reader?
Picasa?
Google Search Appliance?
Google Site Search?
Google Notebook?
etc, etc, etc.
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I believe that I’m trapped by the “sunk cost fallacy” mixed with actual necessity when it comes to Apple’s products.
First the necessity part: I’ve been an Art Director for the last 4 years, and for 19 years before that I was a Graphic Designer. All that time I’ve been an Apple customer. To be able to work from home as needed, my computer is an iMac. I have an old iPad Air that still works, and a newer iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. They all work great (so far).
Now the cost fallacy part: I have spent a lot of money on software and iOS apps that I use on a daily basis that I’m not even sure I could replace, and if I could it would mean spending even more money.
But the shine is coming off the Apple mighty quick for me, these days.
I stopped upgrading my phone at the iPhone 6S because they removed the headphone jack. I wasn’t tempted at all by the 8 or (hah) X. Then with the latest round of iOS updates they killed off all the 64-bit apps, of which I had many. I understand the reasoning, but it sucked. And now this nonsense.
sigh. Apple…
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Am I the only one who read the headline and was astonished that Apple has a new iPod?
Apple’s biggest iPod yet! I’m holding out for the living room console version with wood grain titanium.
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I will say this for Apple: when friends and family ask me to do informal tech support when I visit and they have a Mac or iPhone I just shrug and say “take it to the Apple Store and they’ll fix it better than I could.” It saves me a lot of time and people who can afford to pay a premium for the products in the first place don’t seem to have a problem shelling out yet more money to fix their locked-down status symbols.
I doubt that approach would work out with a public school’s installed base, but any IT department buying this hardware will get what it deserves.
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Yep. Overnight, a third of my apps were suddenly useless. Some, I used daily and had paid cash for. Another had a ton of personal details in it, now out of reach. “Needs to be updated”, my ass, Apple. What am I supposed to do about that? I wound up having to get an app to force-ably and inelegantly rip the info out of the app databases.
The walled garden has a head gardener who sometimes limes and paves your personal flowerbeds because it “needs to be updated”.
/also 6s
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No you aren’t.
I’m still using iPod 4’s like the one in this image, btw.
They’re great and very easy to repair, upgrade, etc.!
I have a box full of spare parts and adapters (sd-card, etc.) for them.
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I second that. And people act like you have 2 heads when you pull out one of the old iPods.
I like owning my music and having them on one device that nicely does the one thing it’s supposed to.
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Haha! Exactly. Some probably think we’re some hipster edgelords, even though it’s just practical and works as intended.
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I’m surprised they haven’t gone the whole hog and just poured glue into the case until it is full.
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Don’t you mean 32-bit apps? I remember them switching solely to 64-bit apps.
Um, Google Glass was an experimental product that was never released for mass consumers. Google Search Appliance was definitely repairable and supported during it’s production run. The other products you mention are software products; I don’t see how they add to environmental waste of unrepairable hardware. To my knowledge, Google has never bricked the devices of customers who used a 3rd party repair service.
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802.1x works fine on macs, (and with ioS for that matter.) It’s kind of funny that you mention it as an example, since Windows is actually the square peg compared to the Unix, linux, OsX universe, with Windows requiring extended attributes for certificates. Government web sites do design around IE (ugh IE) though, so you do have a point there.
That said, I really can’t recommend a macbook to a serious user past the 2015 model.
802.1x with Macs has a real hard time when port authentication is employed. Getting it talking on the domain is initially easy, but once it starts having port auth issues, it’s a mess.
That’s what is sort of interesting about Apple’s support: it’s vastly better than basic PC OEM/Android widget support while being almost completely orthogonal to the sort of support that institutional customers want.
“Take it to the Apple store” is a whole lot more palateable than “pay the geek squad and hope it works out”; but that is both the floor and ceiling(possible special deals excepted). You want a tech and FRUs on site next business day(never mind 4 hours or the like)? A: we don’t do that; B: By ‘FRU’ you mean ‘SKU’, right, because that’s about as granular as field replacements get.
Cheap PC support is an awful farce; but they’ll sell you real support if you want it(except Microsoft, of all people, “Surface” support is as closely copied from Cupertino as Surface industrial design is; except there aren’t as many Microsoft stores so it ends up being “you ship it to us; when we receive it we’ll ship you something back; what do you mean a week-long turnaround is unacceptable for a $2k machine sold as being for business?”
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I remember one OSX release where they nuked the GUI for 802.1x configuration and replaced it with “generate a profile with our MDM tool; because MDM is totally ready to manage real computers and OpenDirectory isn’t shiny anymore!” Did they ever walk that one back?
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