5 ms·

Hey Apple, a Five-Year-Old Computer Isn’t ‘Sad’

amelius 11y ago
The deeper problem is capitalism. Too bad nobody ever comes up with good ways to fix it.
- collyw 11y ago
  There are plenty of suggestions on how to fix it, but those in power make sure they never see the light of day.
  - rhinoceraptor 11y ago
    There were some 'suggestions' attempted in the 20th century, and they lead to the deaths of millions of people.
  - amelius 11y ago
    Well, you can generate suggestions all you want, but obviously, making a solution see the light of day is part of the problem.
- djsumdog 11y ago
  capitalism, consumerism and planned obsolescence. These three things are destroying our planet. Climate change is a non issue by itself. Pollution (of all kinds, not just CO2, but the toxic sludge from coal plants and Chinese cellphone factories) are non issues compared to the economy of scale we've constructed around new shit.
mariodiana 11y ago
Given the audience, and the accepted notion that Apple, as a business, wants people to buy their hardware, isn't Schiller's comment meant as something of a joke? This is what's wrong with the Internet! The reaction reminds me of Madeleine Albright's comment about there being "a special place in Hell for women who don't support other women," a comment she made at a Hillary Clinton function. Apparently, Ms. Albright has been making this comment at the end of speeches for years. Do you know why? Because in the context it's funny. It's funny because it's exaggerated, quasi-ridiculous thing to say. But, the last time she said it, at the Clinton rally, people in the Twitterverse -- or whatever we're calling it -- took offense and went crazy. I'm sorry, but both Albright's comment and Schiller's comment are benign jokes. The Internet manufactures outrage.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  It aggregates it rather than manufacture it. It's really something.
- m3rc 11y ago
  So? It's still a shitty joke, and in the Apple case it breaks a key rule of comedy by punching down. It also leaves a really bad taste in your mouth for the rest of the address because instead of Apple trying to increase profits by building better products, it starts to become Apple guilting people into buying things they don't need just because their possessions are old. It especially feels crappy when no product they unveiled was anything except a yearly iteration.
  - tombert 11y ago
    If a web developer gets frustrated by having to support Internet Explorer 8, is that offensive? "How dare you! You're punching down at people who are stuck with Windows XP!" The internet is very good at being offended by everything.
    - m3rc 11y ago
      Not upgrading from IE8 is the same as using a laptop made 5 years ago now?
      - tombert 11y ago
        My point is that no one has this outrage machine when web developers whine about Internet Explorer, even though plenty of people are stuck using it for financial reasons, just like people who are stuck with five-year-old computers, and as a developer, I actually do find it frustrating when I have to support older hardware. I'll admit the choice of the word "sad" might have been poor, but it's hardly worth getting offended over.
        mikeash 11y ago
        Aren't there better alternatives to IE that don't cost money? That doesn't seem to be the same at all. Much of the reason older PCs are still useful is because the software is still mutable, often at no monetary cost.
tombert 11y ago
What the hell? This story has made the front page of HN three times now. Even if it were a "real", important story, hasn't it been thoroughly covered?
- studentrob 11y ago
  No kidding. I don't know if I'm more sad if (a) this is a PR campaign or (b) independent people feel hurt that a marketing guy touted his own product over a competitor's during his own company's product demo. Even in the case of (b) it definitely isn't HN news worthy. There's nothing interesting or high tech about it. Just another day in the world of marketing.
nextos 11y ago
I own a 5-year-old MacBook Air 11, which has run only Linux since day 1 (and it does an admirable job at it, unlike other Macs, but that's not relevant here). So for all practical purposes this is a PC with an Apple logo. It it is really snappy, silent, and battery lasts approximately 5 hours. There's nothing sad about it. Sad is having to trash fine hardware because its manufacturer won't release updates. Sad is having new versions of OSes running slower and slower. Sad is planned obsolescence.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Sad is not being able to upgrade RAM and HD. I love my rMBP, but I know it won't last as long as it could have if I could upgrade it. I think most of this comes not from planned obsolescence, but from a ridiculous drive for thinness. Apple is obsessed with thin.
  - vu3rdd 11y ago
    Very nicely said! Sad is also being at the mercy of Apple to do "upgrades" of software, being at the mercy of Apple for security fixes.. the list goes on.
draw_down 11y ago
This again?
logicallee 11y ago
(I wish to delete this comment.)
- ktRolster 11y ago
  I hope we at least get a 20ghz cpu (in consumer boxes) before we hit the limit of speed increases. (and adding more cores isn't the same)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikeash 11y ago
    20GHz at what IPC? Performance isn't just clock rate and core count, there's also been a big improvement over the years in how many instructions the CPU can execute per clock cycle. GHz has been more or less stagnant since the P4, but single-core speeds have still gone up significantly.
georgespencer 11y ago
tl;dr: lots of people on the internet can't take a joke.
- mempko 11y ago
  Jokes from people with power are more than jokes.
ch8230 11y ago
Schiller's comments are out of touch with the reality many people face but the author took the Schiller's comments way too personally.
apdinin 11y ago
Devil's advocate here... and I'm adding the caveat that I still use my iPad 1 daily (with the grandfathered, unlimited data plan). A lot of this is about generating revenues. At the end of the day, Apple is a public corporation. It's not a charity. Apple's primary reason for existence is to generate shareholder value. It's hard for a device company to do that if they aren't... you know... selling devices. Apple doesn't believe everyone should buy a new Apple product every 5 years. Sure, they'd love it, but that's not the market they're targeting. Apple has branded itself as a luxury technology brand. Would someone make this same argument about Lexus or Rolex or Coach? If you can't afford that shiny new Macbook, there are plenty of alternate options. No one is forcing people to buy Apple products. Beyond pricing, older technology can limit software innovation. What if every App developer out there -- including the folks at apple developing the latest versions of iOS -- still had to support my "ancient" iPad 1? Legacy support would put a lot of young companies out of business. As a developer, one of things that costs me the most time is cross-device support. It's a huge drain on resources, and not every company can afford it.
maker1138 11y ago
Someone said something that I disagree with! The horror! The outrage! It should be illegal! That's one of the biggest problems with society today. People need to learn to grow up.
dblooman 11y ago
What is amusing is that Apple build such good quality Macbooks now, people are keeping them for 5 years. My 2 and half year old MBP handles any dev task I throw at it fine, can't imagine replacing it for a couple more years at least. I also know a lot of gamers, they are happy playing at 1080p with 2500 or 3500 series CPU's as they are mostly playing CS:GO or Dota 2.
- azurelogic 11y ago
  I just refurbed my '09 13" MBP. New thermal paste, cleaned the intake/exhaust, new battery, replaced the battery indicator/sleep sensor (ribbon cable got damaged). All in: ~$70. It still has 8 GB RAM and an SSD from my previous upgrades. It runs El Capitan just fine, and the fan is barely audible. I'm going to be so disappointed when I eventually drop cash on a rMBP, knowing that I'll never be able to do all of that in the future.
sdegutis 11y ago
We have a perfectly good iPhone 3G (not even 3GS, just plain old 3G) which I think I bought in 2009. But it can't access the App Store anymore. Like, it literally won't show the page correctly if you try loading it up. The CSS is all broken, and none of the buttons or links actually work (presumably the JavaScript is broken too). So probably around 2012 I bought an iPhone 4 (not even an iPhone 4S, just plain old 4). And even though the App Store still works on that, it was dropped by iOS 8, so we can't even get most of the useful new apps that come out, because most (if not all) of them require iOS 8 or higher. This is Apple's attitude towards anyone who isn't spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on their products every 2 or 3 years: you're sad and pathetic, and screw you. Back when Steve was in charge, they had top notch hardware and it lasted forever. Anyone who still has an original iPod knows those things still work amazingly well, they were built to last. But now Apple's software and hardware is going downhill quickly, so the high price tag is no longer justifiable. They've gone the way of Thinkpads after Lenovo took them over. I felt like a fool in 2012 or 2013, when I suggested to my employer that instead of buying me a MacBook Pro work computer, he buy a Mac Pro, because it would be around longer, and all we'd need to do was swap out the internals to upgrade it, which would be much cheaper than buying a whole new MacBook Pro. Literally like less than a year later, Apple came out with a brand new type of Mac Pro, completely ditching the kind they had what seemed like forever until then, and it's all incompatible internals now. Honestly I'm tired of Apple's crap and I'm abandoning ship. I'll still use this stupid MBP that I bought for myself a few years ago, but when it inevitably dies in a few years and can't be fixed, I'll probably look into older IBM Thinkpads and switch to Linux full time.
mempko 11y ago
I have a 7 year old mac at home. Much slower now with Apple's latest OS, even with RAM upgrade.
godzillabrennus 11y ago
I have an almost 9 year old MacBook Pro from before the unibody redesign. It runs El Capitan fine. I lend it to friends and family during a crisis. Apple computers last far longer than 5 years.
digi_owl 11y ago
I think everything but the HDDs and the PSU in the desktop i am typing this on is approaching a decade of service (PSU because the fan burned out, but then it was in turn salvaged from an older build).
smrtinsert 11y ago
I would say Apple is out of touch with reality but the homeless and the poor feel compelled to buy iphones so what do I know.
- collyw 11y ago
  How do you know poor people bought their iPhones? They may have been handed down after someone else's 18 month contract was up. (When I travelled in some remote parts of Nepal the people were very poor but many had smartphones. There weren't any mobile shops for hundreds of miles, so my guess is that they were gifted to them).
Ccecil 11y ago
Currently all of my PCs, laptop and DSLR are over 5 years old and running strong. I am still using my HTC evo 4g I got 5 years ago...I replaced the battery once but that is all. It is a shame we live in this world where things are thrown out every couple years...cars become "too expensive to fix" after a couple years (or totalled by insurance companies due to minor accidents). I wish there was an easy solution...but I don't see anything changing when the major corporations encourage this type of planned expiration date.
devy 11y ago
Yes, Phil's comment about 5-year old PCs still in use might seem to be out touch for a lot of people especially the ones who aren't Apple products' demographics. But consider these points: 1) Moore's Law was still in effect in the past five years. iOS devices hardware have been taking full advantage of that. So for roughly the same price range, you will get a 12x more performant hardware [1] for the same price, probably more energy efficient device too. Ain't it better if you can afford? 2) Apple started to emphasize their environmental friendliness (including energy efficiency) in manufacturing process and product raw materials and has been advancing their game each year[2]. So a once more toxic product made 5 years ago might be manufactured less so. In the process of replacing this 5-year old product, it is actually moving us forward to a more environmental friendly life style. Similarly, like the light bulb evolution: incandescent -> CFL -> LED etc. There are probably other connotations behind that comment when Phil said it. Since 2/3 of the revenues were from selling iOS devices[3], Apple is still a hardware company like it or not. If they can sell you a piece of faster, more energy efficient and environment friendlier hardware than the one from yesteryear and in the mean time making a huge profit from that, wouldn't it be merrier for both them and the consumer? [1] https://browser.primatelabs.com/ios-benchmarks https://browser.primatelabs.com/ios-benchmarks [2] http://www.apple.com/environment/ http://www.apple.com/environment/ [3] http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q1-2016-financial-results-how-many-iphones-ipads-watch-macs-sold-revenue-results-3581769/ http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q1-2016-financial...
- pfg 11y ago
  > 2) Apple started to emphasize their environmental friendliness (including energy efficiency) in manufacturing process and product raw materials and has been advancing their game each year[2]. So a once more toxic product made 5 years ago might be manufactured less so. In the process of replacing this 5-year old product, it is actually moving us forward to a more environmental friendly life style. Similarly, like the light bulb evolution: incandescent -> CFL -> LED etc. That's an odd argument to make. Producing a new device (as opposed to continuing to use your existing one) will always be worse for the environment, other than with regards to your first argument (energy efficiency). Even with energy efficiency in mind, it's questionable at best - CPU/GPU performance is only part of the equation, and recent devices certainly don't use 12x less energy compared to ones from 5 years ago.
stared 11y ago
I have Macbook Pro Mid 2009 (with RAM and SSD upgrades) and it still works fine. They should be proud that they make laptops that last longer than na few years! But I well understand why they would prefer to have people trashing them after 3 years. I do consider buying a new... but only once matte display becomes an option. (I prefer a slower laptop to a glossy, distracting mirror.)

The deeper problem is capitalism. Too bad nobody ever comes up with good ways to fix it.

collyw 11y ago
There are plenty of suggestions on how to fix it, but those in power make sure they never see the light of day.
- rhinoceraptor 11y ago
  There were some 'suggestions' attempted in the 20th century, and they lead to the deaths of millions of people.
- amelius 11y ago
  Well, you can generate suggestions all you want, but obviously, making a solution see the light of day is part of the problem.
djsumdog 11y ago
capitalism, consumerism and planned obsolescence. These three things are destroying our planet. Climate change is a non issue by itself. Pollution (of all kinds, not just CO2, but the toxic sludge from coal plants and Chinese cellphone factories) are non issues compared to the economy of scale we've constructed around new shit.

Given the audience, and the accepted notion that Apple, as a business, wants people to buy their hardware, isn't Schiller's comment meant as something of a joke? This is what's wrong with the Internet! The reaction reminds me of Madeleine Albright's comment about there being "a special place in Hell for women who don't support other women," a comment she made at a Hillary Clinton function. Apparently, Ms. Albright has been making this comment at the end of speeches for years. Do you know why? Because in the context it's funny. It's funny because it's exaggerated, quasi-ridiculous thing to say. But, the last time she said it, at the Clinton rally, people in the Twitterverse -- or whatever we're calling it -- took offense and went crazy. I'm sorry, but both Albright's comment and Schiller's comment are benign jokes. The Internet manufactures outrage.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
It aggregates it rather than manufacture it. It's really something.
m3rc 11y ago
So? It's still a shitty joke, and in the Apple case it breaks a key rule of comedy by punching down. It also leaves a really bad taste in your mouth for the rest of the address because instead of Apple trying to increase profits by building better products, it starts to become Apple guilting people into buying things they don't need just because their possessions are old. It especially feels crappy when no product they unveiled was anything except a yearly iteration.
- tombert 11y ago
  If a web developer gets frustrated by having to support Internet Explorer 8, is that offensive? "How dare you! You're punching down at people who are stuck with Windows XP!" The internet is very good at being offended by everything.
  - m3rc 11y ago
    Not upgrading from IE8 is the same as using a laptop made 5 years ago now?
    - tombert 11y ago
      My point is that no one has this outrage machine when web developers whine about Internet Explorer, even though plenty of people are stuck using it for financial reasons, just like people who are stuck with five-year-old computers, and as a developer, I actually do find it frustrating when I have to support older hardware. I'll admit the choice of the word "sad" might have been poor, but it's hardly worth getting offended over.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        Aren't there better alternatives to IE that don't cost money? That doesn't seem to be the same at all. Much of the reason older PCs are still useful is because the software is still mutable, often at no monetary cost.

tombert 11y ago

What the hell? This story has made the front page of HN three times now. Even if it were a "real", important story, hasn't it been thoroughly covered?

studentrob 11y ago
No kidding. I don't know if I'm more sad if (a) this is a PR campaign or (b) independent people feel hurt that a marketing guy touted his own product over a competitor's during his own company's product demo. Even in the case of (b) it definitely isn't HN news worthy. There's nothing interesting or high tech about it. Just another day in the world of marketing.

nextos 11y ago

I own a 5-year-old MacBook Air 11, which has run only Linux since day 1 (and it does an admirable job at it, unlike other Macs, but that's not relevant here). So for all practical purposes this is a PC with an Apple logo. It it is really snappy, silent, and battery lasts approximately 5 hours. There's nothing sad about it. Sad is having to trash fine hardware because its manufacturer won't release updates. Sad is having new versions of OSes running slower and slower. Sad is planned obsolescence.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Sad is not being able to upgrade RAM and HD. I love my rMBP, but I know it won't last as long as it could have if I could upgrade it. I think most of this comes not from planned obsolescence, but from a ridiculous drive for thinness. Apple is obsessed with thin.
- vu3rdd 11y ago
  Very nicely said! Sad is also being at the mercy of Apple to do "upgrades" of software, being at the mercy of Apple for security fixes.. the list goes on.

draw_down 11y ago

This again?

logicallee 11y ago

(I wish to delete this comment.)

ktRolster 11y ago
I hope we at least get a 20ghz cpu (in consumer boxes) before we hit the limit of speed increases. (and adding more cores isn't the same)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeash 11y ago
  20GHz at what IPC? Performance isn't just clock rate and core count, there's also been a big improvement over the years in how many instructions the CPU can execute per clock cycle. GHz has been more or less stagnant since the P4, but single-core speeds have still gone up significantly.

georgespencer 11y ago

tl;dr: lots of people on the internet can't take a joke.

mempko 11y ago
Jokes from people with power are more than jokes.

ch8230 11y ago

Schiller's comments are out of touch with the reality many people face but the author took the Schiller's comments way too personally.

apdinin 11y ago

Devil's advocate here... and I'm adding the caveat that I still use my iPad 1 daily (with the grandfathered, unlimited data plan). A lot of this is about generating revenues. At the end of the day, Apple is a public corporation. It's not a charity. Apple's primary reason for existence is to generate shareholder value. It's hard for a device company to do that if they aren't... you know... selling devices. Apple doesn't believe everyone should buy a new Apple product every 5 years. Sure, they'd love it, but that's not the market they're targeting. Apple has branded itself as a luxury technology brand. Would someone make this same argument about Lexus or Rolex or Coach? If you can't afford that shiny new Macbook, there are plenty of alternate options. No one is forcing people to buy Apple products. Beyond pricing, older technology can limit software innovation. What if every App developer out there -- including the folks at apple developing the latest versions of iOS -- still had to support my "ancient" iPad 1? Legacy support would put a lot of young companies out of business. As a developer, one of things that costs me the most time is cross-device support. It's a huge drain on resources, and not every company can afford it.

maker1138 11y ago

Someone said something that I disagree with! The horror! The outrage! It should be illegal! That's one of the biggest problems with society today. People need to learn to grow up.

dblooman 11y ago

What is amusing is that Apple build such good quality Macbooks now, people are keeping them for 5 years. My 2 and half year old MBP handles any dev task I throw at it fine, can't imagine replacing it for a couple more years at least. I also know a lot of gamers, they are happy playing at 1080p with 2500 or 3500 series CPU's as they are mostly playing CS:GO or Dota 2.

azurelogic 11y ago
I just refurbed my '09 13" MBP. New thermal paste, cleaned the intake/exhaust, new battery, replaced the battery indicator/sleep sensor (ribbon cable got damaged). All in: ~$70. It still has 8 GB RAM and an SSD from my previous upgrades. It runs El Capitan just fine, and the fan is barely audible. I'm going to be so disappointed when I eventually drop cash on a rMBP, knowing that I'll never be able to do all of that in the future.

sdegutis 11y ago

We have a perfectly good iPhone 3G (not even 3GS, just plain old 3G) which I think I bought in 2009. But it can't access the App Store anymore. Like, it literally won't show the page correctly if you try loading it up. The CSS is all broken, and none of the buttons or links actually work (presumably the JavaScript is broken too). So probably around 2012 I bought an iPhone 4 (not even an iPhone 4S, just plain old 4). And even though the App Store still works on that, it was dropped by iOS 8, so we can't even get most of the useful new apps that come out, because most (if not all) of them require iOS 8 or higher. This is Apple's attitude towards anyone who isn't spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on their products every 2 or 3 years: you're sad and pathetic, and screw you. Back when Steve was in charge, they had top notch hardware and it lasted forever. Anyone who still has an original iPod knows those things still work amazingly well, they were built to last. But now Apple's software and hardware is going downhill quickly, so the high price tag is no longer justifiable. They've gone the way of Thinkpads after Lenovo took them over. I felt like a fool in 2012 or 2013, when I suggested to my employer that instead of buying me a MacBook Pro work computer, he buy a Mac Pro, because it would be around longer, and all we'd need to do was swap out the internals to upgrade it, which would be much cheaper than buying a whole new MacBook Pro. Literally like less than a year later, Apple came out with a brand new type of Mac Pro, completely ditching the kind they had what seemed like forever until then, and it's all incompatible internals now. Honestly I'm tired of Apple's crap and I'm abandoning ship. I'll still use this stupid MBP that I bought for myself a few years ago, but when it inevitably dies in a few years and can't be fixed, I'll probably look into older IBM Thinkpads and switch to Linux full time.

mempko 11y ago

I have a 7 year old mac at home. Much slower now with Apple's latest OS, even with RAM upgrade.

godzillabrennus 11y ago

I have an almost 9 year old MacBook Pro from before the unibody redesign. It runs El Capitan fine. I lend it to friends and family during a crisis. Apple computers last far longer than 5 years.

digi_owl 11y ago

I think everything but the HDDs and the PSU in the desktop i am typing this on is approaching a decade of service (PSU because the fan burned out, but then it was in turn salvaged from an older build).

smrtinsert 11y ago

I would say Apple is out of touch with reality but the homeless and the poor feel compelled to buy iphones so what do I know.

collyw 11y ago
How do you know poor people bought their iPhones? They may have been handed down after someone else's 18 month contract was up. (When I travelled in some remote parts of Nepal the people were very poor but many had smartphones. There weren't any mobile shops for hundreds of miles, so my guess is that they were gifted to them).

Ccecil 11y ago

Currently all of my PCs, laptop and DSLR are over 5 years old and running strong. I am still using my HTC evo 4g I got 5 years ago...I replaced the battery once but that is all. It is a shame we live in this world where things are thrown out every couple years...cars become "too expensive to fix" after a couple years (or totalled by insurance companies due to minor accidents). I wish there was an easy solution...but I don't see anything changing when the major corporations encourage this type of planned expiration date.

devy 11y ago

Yes, Phil's comment about 5-year old PCs still in use might seem to be out touch for a lot of people especially the ones who aren't Apple products' demographics. But consider these points: 1) Moore's Law was still in effect in the past five years. iOS devices hardware have been taking full advantage of that. So for roughly the same price range, you will get a 12x more performant hardware [1] for the same price, probably more energy efficient device too. Ain't it better if you can afford? 2) Apple started to emphasize their environmental friendliness (including energy efficiency) in manufacturing process and product raw materials and has been advancing their game each year[2]. So a once more toxic product made 5 years ago might be manufactured less so. In the process of replacing this 5-year old product, it is actually moving us forward to a more environmental friendly life style. Similarly, like the light bulb evolution: incandescent -> CFL -> LED etc. There are probably other connotations behind that comment when Phil said it. Since 2/3 of the revenues were from selling iOS devices[3], Apple is still a hardware company like it or not. If they can sell you a piece of faster, more energy efficient and environment friendlier hardware than the one from yesteryear and in the mean time making a huge profit from that, wouldn't it be merrier for both them and the consumer? [1] https://browser.primatelabs.com/ios-benchmarks https://browser.primatelabs.com/ios-benchmarks [2] http://www.apple.com/environment/ http://www.apple.com/environment/ [3] http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q1-2016-financial-results-how-many-iphones-ipads-watch-macs-sold-revenue-results-3581769/ http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q1-2016-financial...

pfg 11y ago
> 2) Apple started to emphasize their environmental friendliness (including energy efficiency) in manufacturing process and product raw materials and has been advancing their game each year[2]. So a once more toxic product made 5 years ago might be manufactured less so. In the process of replacing this 5-year old product, it is actually moving us forward to a more environmental friendly life style. Similarly, like the light bulb evolution: incandescent -> CFL -> LED etc. That's an odd argument to make. Producing a new device (as opposed to continuing to use your existing one) will always be worse for the environment, other than with regards to your first argument (energy efficiency). Even with energy efficiency in mind, it's questionable at best - CPU/GPU performance is only part of the equation, and recent devices certainly don't use 12x less energy compared to ones from 5 years ago.

stared 11y ago

I have Macbook Pro Mid 2009 (with RAM and SSD upgrades) and it still works fine. They should be proud that they make laptops that last longer than na few years! But I well understand why they would prefer to have people trashing them after 3 years. I do consider buying a new... but only once matte display becomes an option. (I prefer a slower laptop to a glossy, distracting mirror.)