4 ms·

I've been an apple fan since the '70's. My first Mac was a Mac Plus. At that point, I truly was a diehard fan because I viewed it as 10X better than the PC worl

I've been an apple fan since the '70's. My first Mac was a Mac Plus. At that point, I truly was a diehard fan because I viewed it as 10X better than the PC world. The engineering was amazing, both for hardware and software. It did have practical problems based mostly on not enough memory being available, but I forgave it because it was so darn beautiful in so many ways. I would tell everyone who would listen to get a mac, and a number of people who would have otherwise been using PC's got into the mac world because of me. My affection for Apple has been slowly diminishing over the years. At this point, the fact is that their software is absurdly unreliable and isn't even well designed in the UI department, even though great UI was their main way of attracting fans. I do still use all the built-in apps, including iTunes. They enable me to do what I want to do even though I regard some aspects of iTunes' design as ridiculously bad. I don't have a lot of motivation to change. I've figured out that, for instance, in order to do a search of Apple Music, you have any of the iTunes tabs selected EXCEPT Store. I can use it even though I find the design to be very lacking. I have pretty much lost all my loyalty to Apple at this point, between the unreliability and the poor design. The main thing that's keeping me in the Apple world is the fact that I just have to believe that reliability has gotten so bad that no matter what kinds of blinders they've been wearing, they're going to have to see that something is seriously wrong, and start to seriously work to address the situation. And I'd rather not have to adjust to new OS's, and I'd like to be able to stay familiar with Apple software so I can keep helping people I know who are using it (in many cases, due to me). I am hopeful that in a year or two, reliability (if not UI design) will be decent again. I'm even hoping that this will be explicitly addressed by Tim Cook in his next keynote. The reliability situation is so obviously bad that he really should discuss it. I think Steve Jobs might have done so if things had gotten to this point--but I don't think they would have gotten this bad under him, even though there were major problems under his tenure.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tjr225 9y ago
Are they really unreliable? I use a 2013 macbook pro (that I bought refurbished mind you) and it works just as well as the day that I bought it, except that the mute key doesn't work. The 2015 mbpr I used at my previous employer seemed just as sturdy. I also abused an iphone 5s for years until an upgrade to an iphone 7 earlier this year. Seems like a pretty stable device. I don't see these problems. Now I'm stuck with a thinkpad at work that has garbage battery life and an infuriating track pad. Every Android phone also turned out to be a turd (Galaxy S3, Moto X). Now that I have a file browser on iOS I don't think I'll ever go back- especially when you consider that Apple is basically the only company in the big 5 that at least publicly goes to bat for your privacy.
- garyrob 9y ago
  Apple hardware still seems excellent to me. It's the software that's unreliable.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    ^ This. Apple's hardware is second to none, and iOS is mostly alright but it feels like MacOS lags behind further and further with each release. Though I suppose Apple isn't selling the software so they have no reason to improve it.
    - garyrob 9y ago
      I respectfully disagree about iOS being mainly airtight. The biggest problem is probably that new iOS updates frequently destroy battery life. Also there have been bizarre problems with the spell checker. But I do agree that macOS is worse.
  - chucky_z 9y ago
    I've personally had different experiences in a professional workspace. I'm currently sitting at a ~15% replacement rate (e.g.: Apple saying they cannot fix it, and giving us a new one) across ~12 touchbar MBP's. We have 2 of the 13" MBP's sans touchbar and they've been relatively trouble free. That's similar to Macbook Air's, which I despise in the workplace simply because they seem to randomly die much more than other models. All of our 2012-2015 MBP's are still going very strong. We have not replaced a single one.
- Benjamin_Dobell 9y ago
  I've had a Late 2013 MBPR (basically maxed specs at the time) since 2013 and with every major OS update performance very noticeably gets worse. It's literally a matter of installing the update, rebooting and being more sluggish, it's not gradual, it's poor software. Do you have a dedicated nVidia chipset? If so, you'll also be encountering a plethora of driver bugs introduced in High Sierra, most noticeable watching videos in a browser or viewing WebGL content. The USB stack has been a joke since they rewrote it and made it closed source to hide their incompotence. I would have stopped installing updates long ago if I wasn't regularly forced to update XCode.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tjr225 9y ago

Are they really unreliable? I use a 2013 macbook pro (that I bought refurbished mind you) and it works just as well as the day that I bought it, except that the mute key doesn't work. The 2015 mbpr I used at my previous employer seemed just as sturdy. I also abused an iphone 5s for years until an upgrade to an iphone 7 earlier this year. Seems like a pretty stable device. I don't see these problems. Now I'm stuck with a thinkpad at work that has garbage battery life and an infuriating track pad. Every Android phone also turned out to be a turd (Galaxy S3, Moto X). Now that I have a file browser on iOS I don't think I'll ever go back- especially when you consider that Apple is basically the only company in the big 5 that at least publicly goes to bat for your privacy.

garyrob 9y ago
Apple hardware still seems excellent to me. It's the software that's unreliable.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  ^ This. Apple's hardware is second to none, and iOS is mostly alright but it feels like MacOS lags behind further and further with each release. Though I suppose Apple isn't selling the software so they have no reason to improve it.
  - garyrob 9y ago
    I respectfully disagree about iOS being mainly airtight. The biggest problem is probably that new iOS updates frequently destroy battery life. Also there have been bizarre problems with the spell checker. But I do agree that macOS is worse.
- chucky_z 9y ago
  I've personally had different experiences in a professional workspace. I'm currently sitting at a ~15% replacement rate (e.g.: Apple saying they cannot fix it, and giving us a new one) across ~12 touchbar MBP's. We have 2 of the 13" MBP's sans touchbar and they've been relatively trouble free. That's similar to Macbook Air's, which I despise in the workplace simply because they seem to randomly die much more than other models. All of our 2012-2015 MBP's are still going very strong. We have not replaced a single one.
Benjamin_Dobell 9y ago
I've had a Late 2013 MBPR (basically maxed specs at the time) since 2013 and with every major OS update performance very noticeably gets worse. It's literally a matter of installing the update, rebooting and being more sluggish, it's not gradual, it's poor software. Do you have a dedicated nVidia chipset? If so, you'll also be encountering a plethora of driver bugs introduced in High Sierra, most noticeable watching videos in a browser or viewing WebGL content. The USB stack has been a joke since they rewrote it and made it closed source to hide their incompotence. I would have stopped installing updates long ago if I wasn't regularly forced to update XCode.