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> Apple's communications are borderline dismissive to people who are less fortunate and less lucky I'd agree if we were in a 3rd world country somewhere, but w

> Apple's communications are borderline dismissive to people who are less fortunate and less lucky I'd agree if we were in a 3rd world country somewhere, but we (probably both) aren't. People who need to save $200 on a tablet where we live very likely do not need said tablet at all. In the end we just often buy inferior products (in design, functionality and longevity) in order to be able to purchase a larger total number of unnecessary items. We absurdly feel we've put our money to better use if we spent it on more things, most of which we cannot put to good use anyway. It's why we get to buy so much broken crap these days (I was going to keep Apple vs. Everyone out of this, but I still use my 1st gen iPad while the only Android tablet I ever bought, an Archos HD97 never worked properly - due to flaky WiFi hardware apparently). > Is it any wonder Tesla, despite Musk's claims, is working his way from the top of the market, and not the bottom? Musk explained this many years ago. It has nothing to do with the cost of design: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-p...

mrcwinn 13y ago
Fair point, but if you believe that tablets are a gateway to cheap education and interactive learning for children (I do), I wouldn't say that poor communicates don't need tablets. I know it might seem like a luxury, an excess, or something you _want_ but do not _need_, but I'm not sure that's the case. I think it's easy and more impactful to get a cheap tablet in the hands of someone in need to help them learn, than a big computer. Particularly in urban communities, there might be something pretty profound about getting more tablets in front of young kids. It's up to them what they search for and what they learn, and it's up to us to nudge them in the right direction in terms of pre-loaded apps and websites - but I do believe there's something there. I don't care ONE BIT if the aluminum bevel is more beautiful or less beautiful, in that case. Anyway, I think you and I generally agree. I would just say you don't have to go to a third world country to find someone who wants to save $200 on a tablet. You can find communities right here in America where their children have limited access to quality education, or bad temptations outside of classroom hours, and I would argue a cheap tablet _with the right content and direction_ might have a real impact. Not that we should be outsourcing parenting to computers............ :-)
- lazyjones 13y ago
  I'm not convinced (yet?) that tablets are good for children. I might be a bit too old, lacking the parenting experience, but I'm skeptical because a tablet might consume too much time better spent on exploring the rest of the world and it comes with a lot of content built by people whose primary consideration wasn't to teach children, but instead to make a quick buck. It might be better than TV (arguably...), but interacting with other people, animals, more "natural" objects ranks a lot higher with me...
  - hippee-lee 13y ago
    This weekend, in between makeing a home for a catapiller we found on the way home from the park and riding bikes in the circle at the end of our street, my daughter said, 'daddy can we play the game (Hopscotch) where me make the animals move when we touch the screen. And she doesn't even know that I am showing her how to program (with an ipad). I'm sure there are android, windows, etc equivalents. My point is that as her parent/teacher/friend it's up to me to show her when to use it as a tool for school, learning, manipulating and when to use it to consume. This is a much finer line as she can easily get lost in tangents of rainbow loom videos and forget that she started watching them to learn to weave a new bracelet. But apps like Hopscotch are genius for disguising logic, creative and critical thinking into a fun activity she considers a game. So I posit that they are good. Like anything else good they should be used in moderation and it's up to the parentals to teach them how to use the tool instead of consuming from the tool. Both actities are using the tablet, but without moderation and guidance it's like giving a child access to unlimited money and expecting them to manage their finances themselves. With regards to the quick buck apps - I tell here we don't download those b/c they just pop annoying adds and the other games she wants that have in app upgrades she has to save up her allowance ($3/week) if she wants them. I'm saying that I think one can have both the tablet interaction along with the 'natural' interaction. And I say this as a biology major who grew up on 5 acres with a natural aquifer and a ravine that fed a 50 acre swamp. The onus is on the parents of the touch screen generation to recognize the dual potential for both creation & learning and consumption of the devices. The hard part is showing them how to balance the two or taking it away altogether and catching catapillers with them.
ameister14 13y ago
$200 is not a small amount of money for most people. It's also pretty offensive how you casually decide what people do and do not need. Sure, I technically don't need a lot of things; I could probably live on a diet mostly consisting of cabbage, egg and rice. Does that mean I should, if I can't afford to eat foie gras?
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > Does that mean I should, if I can't afford to eat foie gras? This is just begging for a scathing reply. Please eat healthy food and if necessary, buy fewer Android tablets to afford it. Foie gras likely isn't good for you, cabbage, egg and rice is probably a much better diet.
  - ameister14 13y ago
    How is that begging for a scathing reply? >People who need to save $200 on a tablet where we live very likely do not need said tablet at all You essentially said that if you cant afford the 200 dollars more for an arguably better product, you don't actually need it or its substitutes. I made an analogy with food. Just because I can't afford to eat something expensive doesn't mean I shouldn't eat anything beyond the cheapest basic staples. I could have just as easily made the analogy in another way, say with tools: i.e. if I can't afford the extra 200 dollars for a better, more powerful drill, I don't need a drill at all. A tablet is in essence a tool, just like a drill is. The reason I found this offensive is because you're talking about need as if you're its great arbiter. You don't know if a guy making 500 dollars a week needs a tablet for some reason, but you at least appear to think he doesn't deserve one if he can't afford the apple model.
    - lazyjones 13y ago
      > I made an analogy with food. But electronic gadgets aren't food. One of my points was that they are (to the extent we spend money on) not necessary. It's indicative of an attempt to derail this that you chose an analogy with, of all things, food (which is kinda necessary, don't you agree?). > You don't know if a guy making 500 dollars a week needs a tablet for some reason, but you at least appear to think he doesn't deserve one if he can't afford the apple model. If had meant to imply that, I'd have written it that way. I made a broad, general statement because that's exactly what I was trying to communicate: we (that includes me) spend too much on gadgets, the cheaper, the better, without thinking about actual need and quality first (before price). I'm not going to judge individual decisions without looking into them, so don't insinuate that I would.
Iftheshoefits 13y ago
On the other hand, my ASUS tablet I bought over two years ago, the first generation of its kind, still works as well as it did then, which is pretty damn good, while the macbook pro I was inflicted with for work crashes regularly (as in "spinning rainbow/beachball of doom my screen is frozen I have to hard-reset" crashes). But that sleek aluminum case sure looks nice (to some--to me it looks a bit like its trying too hard to be some kind of futuristic/industrial hybrid). I have got some news for you: the quality of parts in your Apple products isn't significantly better than those in its competitors, because they are from the same sources over in east Asia.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  If your MacBook Pro has less than 8 GB RAM, I'd upgrade. Also, your hard drive may be about to crash.
- Bud 13y ago
  Uh, that's not a crash. That's a sign you need to either do your spring cleaning better, or take it to your IT guy and find out what's hanging. My first guess: your disk is nearly full. This will choke any machine.
  - vacri 13y ago
    If your computer freezes, it's a crash, regardless of the underlying reason. The computer is no longer responding properly. Something has broken. It might be reasonable that it has broken, like an aged drive that needs replacing, but it's still broken/crashed/whathaveyou. Disk being nearly full choking any machine? No. Stopping some things from working properly if they want to write new files maybe, but it shouldn't make your operating system unresponsive. If a writable drive was required to run a responsive OS, you wouldn't be able to do neat tricks like read-only mounted linux desktops.
Amezarak 13y ago
> People who need to save $200 on a tablet where we live very likely do not need said tablet at all. In the end we just often buy inferior products (in design, functionality and longevity) in order to be able to purchase a larger total number of unnecessary items. We absurdly feel we've put our money to better use if we spent it on more things, most of which we cannot put to good use anyway. This statement seems totally divorced from my reality. I live in the US, albeit one of the poorer states. I do, however, make nearly twice the median household income. My mortgage consumes approximately one-quarter of my after-tax income. But $200 is definitely a significant amount of money to me. Nearly all my money is spent on necessities - by which I mean food, electricity, medical, propane, gas, household and car repairs, etc. I am left over with a few hundred dollars a month in "spending" money, of which I prefer to save at least half. I am definitely not spending that in an endeavor to comfort myself with a bunch of junk. But it would take some serious consideration and a really, really good reason for me to spend an extra $200 on a product. There must be some extra use case extremely important to me to justify spending an extra $200 - just better design or some bonus functionality is not sufficient. That said, I do take longevity into account - I am typing this on a nearly 8 year old Dell laptop - because I try to look at the total cost, and buying a replacement factors into that. In my experience, people either do what I do, or just give up altogether and buy cheap because that's all they can afford and its Good Enough. It's difficult for me to even fathom having the attitude that "if you can't spend $200 more, you don't need it." I would argue that I do "need" a tablet (as far as anyone does) - I travel frequently and it would be very nice to have, and even when I am at work I walk around a lot. But I'm not looking at an iPad and cost is the main consideration there. For me it's down the a Kindle Fire (cheap, OK for consumption, call this a probably) or Surface Pro (expensive, but would be much more useful for my use cases, but not very likely because of cost.)

mrcwinn 13y ago

Fair point, but if you believe that tablets are a gateway to cheap education and interactive learning for children (I do), I wouldn't say that poor communicates don't need tablets. I know it might seem like a luxury, an excess, or something you _want_ but do not _need_, but I'm not sure that's the case. I think it's easy and more impactful to get a cheap tablet in the hands of someone in need to help them learn, than a big computer. Particularly in urban communities, there might be something pretty profound about getting more tablets in front of young kids. It's up to them what they search for and what they learn, and it's up to us to nudge them in the right direction in terms of pre-loaded apps and websites - but I do believe there's something there. I don't care ONE BIT if the aluminum bevel is more beautiful or less beautiful, in that case. Anyway, I think you and I generally agree. I would just say you don't have to go to a third world country to find someone who wants to save $200 on a tablet. You can find communities right here in America where their children have limited access to quality education, or bad temptations outside of classroom hours, and I would argue a cheap tablet _with the right content and direction_ might have a real impact. Not that we should be outsourcing parenting to computers............ :-)

lazyjones 13y ago
I'm not convinced (yet?) that tablets are good for children. I might be a bit too old, lacking the parenting experience, but I'm skeptical because a tablet might consume too much time better spent on exploring the rest of the world and it comes with a lot of content built by people whose primary consideration wasn't to teach children, but instead to make a quick buck. It might be better than TV (arguably...), but interacting with other people, animals, more "natural" objects ranks a lot higher with me...
- hippee-lee 13y ago
  This weekend, in between makeing a home for a catapiller we found on the way home from the park and riding bikes in the circle at the end of our street, my daughter said, 'daddy can we play the game (Hopscotch) where me make the animals move when we touch the screen. And she doesn't even know that I am showing her how to program (with an ipad). I'm sure there are android, windows, etc equivalents. My point is that as her parent/teacher/friend it's up to me to show her when to use it as a tool for school, learning, manipulating and when to use it to consume. This is a much finer line as she can easily get lost in tangents of rainbow loom videos and forget that she started watching them to learn to weave a new bracelet. But apps like Hopscotch are genius for disguising logic, creative and critical thinking into a fun activity she considers a game. So I posit that they are good. Like anything else good they should be used in moderation and it's up to the parentals to teach them how to use the tool instead of consuming from the tool. Both actities are using the tablet, but without moderation and guidance it's like giving a child access to unlimited money and expecting them to manage their finances themselves. With regards to the quick buck apps - I tell here we don't download those b/c they just pop annoying adds and the other games she wants that have in app upgrades she has to save up her allowance ($3/week) if she wants them. I'm saying that I think one can have both the tablet interaction along with the 'natural' interaction. And I say this as a biology major who grew up on 5 acres with a natural aquifer and a ravine that fed a 50 acre swamp. The onus is on the parents of the touch screen generation to recognize the dual potential for both creation & learning and consumption of the devices. The hard part is showing them how to balance the two or taking it away altogether and catching catapillers with them.

ameister14 13y ago

$200 is not a small amount of money for most people. It's also pretty offensive how you casually decide what people do and do not need. Sure, I technically don't need a lot of things; I could probably live on a diet mostly consisting of cabbage, egg and rice. Does that mean I should, if I can't afford to eat foie gras?

lazyjones 13y ago
> Does that mean I should, if I can't afford to eat foie gras? This is just begging for a scathing reply. Please eat healthy food and if necessary, buy fewer Android tablets to afford it. Foie gras likely isn't good for you, cabbage, egg and rice is probably a much better diet.
- ameister14 13y ago
  How is that begging for a scathing reply? >People who need to save $200 on a tablet where we live very likely do not need said tablet at all You essentially said that if you cant afford the 200 dollars more for an arguably better product, you don't actually need it or its substitutes. I made an analogy with food. Just because I can't afford to eat something expensive doesn't mean I shouldn't eat anything beyond the cheapest basic staples. I could have just as easily made the analogy in another way, say with tools: i.e. if I can't afford the extra 200 dollars for a better, more powerful drill, I don't need a drill at all. A tablet is in essence a tool, just like a drill is. The reason I found this offensive is because you're talking about need as if you're its great arbiter. You don't know if a guy making 500 dollars a week needs a tablet for some reason, but you at least appear to think he doesn't deserve one if he can't afford the apple model.
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    > I made an analogy with food. But electronic gadgets aren't food. One of my points was that they are (to the extent we spend money on) not necessary. It's indicative of an attempt to derail this that you chose an analogy with, of all things, food (which is kinda necessary, don't you agree?). > You don't know if a guy making 500 dollars a week needs a tablet for some reason, but you at least appear to think he doesn't deserve one if he can't afford the apple model. If had meant to imply that, I'd have written it that way. I made a broad, general statement because that's exactly what I was trying to communicate: we (that includes me) spend too much on gadgets, the cheaper, the better, without thinking about actual need and quality first (before price). I'm not going to judge individual decisions without looking into them, so don't insinuate that I would.

Iftheshoefits 13y ago

On the other hand, my ASUS tablet I bought over two years ago, the first generation of its kind, still works as well as it did then, which is pretty damn good, while the macbook pro I was inflicted with for work crashes regularly (as in "spinning rainbow/beachball of doom my screen is frozen I have to hard-reset" crashes). But that sleek aluminum case sure looks nice (to some--to me it looks a bit like its trying too hard to be some kind of futuristic/industrial hybrid). I have got some news for you: the quality of parts in your Apple products isn't significantly better than those in its competitors, because they are from the same sources over in east Asia.

stcredzero 13y ago
If your MacBook Pro has less than 8 GB RAM, I'd upgrade. Also, your hard drive may be about to crash.
Bud 13y ago
Uh, that's not a crash. That's a sign you need to either do your spring cleaning better, or take it to your IT guy and find out what's hanging. My first guess: your disk is nearly full. This will choke any machine.
- vacri 13y ago
  If your computer freezes, it's a crash, regardless of the underlying reason. The computer is no longer responding properly. Something has broken. It might be reasonable that it has broken, like an aged drive that needs replacing, but it's still broken/crashed/whathaveyou. Disk being nearly full choking any machine? No. Stopping some things from working properly if they want to write new files maybe, but it shouldn't make your operating system unresponsive. If a writable drive was required to run a responsive OS, you wouldn't be able to do neat tricks like read-only mounted linux desktops.

Amezarak 13y ago

> People who need to save $200 on a tablet where we live very likely do not need said tablet at all. In the end we just often buy inferior products (in design, functionality and longevity) in order to be able to purchase a larger total number of unnecessary items. We absurdly feel we've put our money to better use if we spent it on more things, most of which we cannot put to good use anyway. This statement seems totally divorced from my reality. I live in the US, albeit one of the poorer states. I do, however, make nearly twice the median household income. My mortgage consumes approximately one-quarter of my after-tax income. But $200 is definitely a significant amount of money to me. Nearly all my money is spent on necessities - by which I mean food, electricity, medical, propane, gas, household and car repairs, etc. I am left over with a few hundred dollars a month in "spending" money, of which I prefer to save at least half. I am definitely not spending that in an endeavor to comfort myself with a bunch of junk. But it would take some serious consideration and a really, really good reason for me to spend an extra $200 on a product. There must be some extra use case extremely important to me to justify spending an extra $200 - just better design or some bonus functionality is not sufficient. That said, I do take longevity into account - I am typing this on a nearly 8 year old Dell laptop - because I try to look at the total cost, and buying a replacement factors into that. In my experience, people either do what I do, or just give up altogether and buy cheap because that's all they can afford and its Good Enough. It's difficult for me to even fathom having the attitude that "if you can't spend $200 more, you don't need it." I would argue that I do "need" a tablet (as far as anyone does) - I travel frequently and it would be very nice to have, and even when I am at work I walk around a lot. But I'm not looking at an iPad and cost is the main consideration there. For me it's down the a Kindle Fire (cheap, OK for consumption, call this a probably) or Surface Pro (expensive, but would be much more useful for my use cases, but not very likely because of cost.)