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> Apple's hardware is extremely well designed and durable. The thing is it often isn't. I mean there are many vendors way worse then Apple. But it often just s

> Apple's hardware is extremely well designed and durable. The thing is it often isn't. I mean there are many vendors way worse then Apple. But it often just seems/looks/feels to be extremely well designed and durable. But if you ask someone with expertise they often can point out docents of "corners cut" which are not well designed and hurt durability. E.g. for saving some mm of high, some cents of production cost, some very small amount of weight, or likely but not provable intentional fragility to enforce their ecosystem. IMHO it's very clear that reliability and stability are secondary and looks and feel are main priority. Doesn't mean that they don't have some very good engines giving their best to make things durable but when other constraints matter more it can be hard. But it puts the reason ability of their sometimes very excessive premium prices in question. Especially if you learn of they squeeze out their supply chain in ethical extremely questionable ways while hypocritically pretending to care about issue like child labor (if you squeeze your assembly line provider so hard that they can only make profit by using child labor and disgusting working conditions then no you do not care about child labor no matter how many times you force them to sign a contract where they agree to not use child labor and have proper working conditions).

zztop44 3y ago
I’m sure a laptop manufacturing expert would notice all the corners cut. But if I, as someone who uses these computers for ~8 hours a day everyday for more than 5 years per machine, don’t notice them, then does do those cut corners really matter? That said, I agree that Apple’s strategy of maximising shareholder returns by squeezing their supply chain to just under breaking point is disgusting and that they are ethically culpable for the inevitable results. They’re probably not alone in this, but they have the most market power and probably push it the furthest. This is definitely an instance where you can hate the player and the game.
- e44858 3y ago
  Louis Rossman gives lots of examples on hist YouTube channel. For example, in one case Apple appears to have cut some corners when designing the power supply for the SSD, so that when it fails it dumps 13 volts into the 2.5 volt SSD which permanently damages it: https://youtu.be/7cNg_ifibCQ?t=309 https://youtu.be/7cNg_ifibCQ?t=309 In other videos he shows how Apple puts display data lines right next to high-voltage lines instead of separating them with a ground line, which means you’ll fry the board if you get a tiny bit of moisture in that area. So you will notice these cut corners when your device breaks and the repair costs almost as much as the original device.
- dathinab 3y ago
  > then does do those cut corners really matter? the problems with the kind of corners apple tends to cut is that they don't matter until they do (i.e. just for a small set of users) in which case you often run into fun things like needing whole motherboard replacements or similar which tends to mean getting anew laptop and hoping you did a data backup properly and apple repair doing everything they can to push off any blame (i.e. cost). I mean it's not worse then other laptops, definitely not. But for the price a "developer laptop" costs I would expect more (i.e. _lowest possible spec_ of M2 14" which allows 64GiB of RAM + 2TB SSD == 4619€). Mainly I would expect better service when it comes to repair, especially if it's needed due to not so perfect design of Apple. I mean that price are 2 and a half Framwork semi 14" laptops with maxed out Ryzen CPU and 64GiB or RAM + 2 TB SSD. For most (but not all) use cases this Framework laptop will perform comparable. And sure the Framework laptop isn't as good as Apple but it's not "just half as good" (assuming the .5 missing framework laptop is for a hypothetical expensive OS license) and Framework isn't even "cheap" for what you get ... the balance is just not right. I mean if they did other things to fill the gap like very good flexible support, actually ethical supply chain handling and/or similar it would be reasonable price I would love to pay (well and put Linux on it, but implicitly paying for a hypothetical OS license is my issue).

zztop44 3y ago

I’m sure a laptop manufacturing expert would notice all the corners cut. But if I, as someone who uses these computers for ~8 hours a day everyday for more than 5 years per machine, don’t notice them, then does do those cut corners really matter? That said, I agree that Apple’s strategy of maximising shareholder returns by squeezing their supply chain to just under breaking point is disgusting and that they are ethically culpable for the inevitable results. They’re probably not alone in this, but they have the most market power and probably push it the furthest. This is definitely an instance where you can hate the player and the game.

e44858 3y ago
Louis Rossman gives lots of examples on hist YouTube channel. For example, in one case Apple appears to have cut some corners when designing the power supply for the SSD, so that when it fails it dumps 13 volts into the 2.5 volt SSD which permanently damages it: https://youtu.be/7cNg_ifibCQ?t=309 https://youtu.be/7cNg_ifibCQ?t=309 In other videos he shows how Apple puts display data lines right next to high-voltage lines instead of separating them with a ground line, which means you’ll fry the board if you get a tiny bit of moisture in that area. So you will notice these cut corners when your device breaks and the repair costs almost as much as the original device.
dathinab 3y ago
> then does do those cut corners really matter? the problems with the kind of corners apple tends to cut is that they don't matter until they do (i.e. just for a small set of users) in which case you often run into fun things like needing whole motherboard replacements or similar which tends to mean getting anew laptop and hoping you did a data backup properly and apple repair doing everything they can to push off any blame (i.e. cost). I mean it's not worse then other laptops, definitely not. But for the price a "developer laptop" costs I would expect more (i.e. _lowest possible spec_ of M2 14" which allows 64GiB of RAM + 2TB SSD == 4619€). Mainly I would expect better service when it comes to repair, especially if it's needed due to not so perfect design of Apple. I mean that price are 2 and a half Framwork semi 14" laptops with maxed out Ryzen CPU and 64GiB or RAM + 2 TB SSD. For most (but not all) use cases this Framework laptop will perform comparable. And sure the Framework laptop isn't as good as Apple but it's not "just half as good" (assuming the .5 missing framework laptop is for a hypothetical expensive OS license) and Framework isn't even "cheap" for what you get ... the balance is just not right. I mean if they did other things to fill the gap like very good flexible support, actually ethical supply chain handling and/or similar it would be reasonable price I would love to pay (well and put Linux on it, but implicitly paying for a hypothetical OS license is my issue).