Apple being Apple again. Just why does anyone actually like that company?

  • Kribensis@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    This is a Reddit-style circle jerk. A LOT of people like Apple, because even though they’re almost as remorseless as Amazon or Microsoft or Google when it comes to maximizing profits, they build good products, create new product categories, and they’ve been doing both of those things for 40 years.

    Is this a sleazy thing to do? Yup. Is it as sleazy as Meta intentionally allowing its algorithm to push softcore kiddie porn to teen Instagram users? Nope. Not even in the same ballpark.

    • heavy@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      Ah, sounds like what-about-ism. Metas behavior doesn’t exempt Apple from criticism. That logic tends to drive all of our standards and expectations down.

      Theres room to criticize and expect more from all of these companies who are more than capable of doing better.

      • Kribensis@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        That’s fair. It is whataboutism (is that one word or 7?) And, I’m pissed off not only that Apple is messing with basic DMA compliance, but that they literally forked all their software rather than do this in the US.

        At the same time, I hate Apple the least of big tech, since they actually do give a crap about building good products and have done quite a bit of that. One can make the argument that zero other big tech companies do.

        Should we expect more of all of them? I’m not gonna die on that hill! It is way, way too late to stop this corporatocracy, but one can hope.

        • chingadera@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Apple builds marketing, not good products. There was a time they were innovative, and it is not now. Their price/performance ratio is laughable.

          • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
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            9 months ago

            I have to disagree when it comes to laptops: the gap has closed a bit now, but there’s still no intel- or amd-based alternative that comes close to the MacBook air in terms of performance/battery life at the £1000-£1200 price point. When the M1s first came out, the fanless MacBook air shattered the intel i9 MBP in any conceivable metric other than pure GPU power (which the MacBook Pro could use for about a minute before overheating).

            Even if expensive, the current MacBook lineup is really compelling. If you’re prepared to spend £3000 on a laptop, you just can’t get anything similar in terms of performance, battery life, and noise. You might get a workstation like an HP ZBook with similar oomph but then you’re looking at a beast that weighs 50% more than a comparable MBP, has the fans buzzing all the time at full blast, and lasts a couple hours on a battery charge. I’ve used my work MacBook Pro (M1 Max) for a full Atlantic flight of ≈9 hours and it still had juice to go.

        • vividspecter@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          At the same time, I hate Apple the least of big tech, since they actually do give a crap about building good products and have done quite a bit of that.

          That’s an incredibly low bar. There are exceptions of course but I’d argue there really is no need to use “big tech” software much of the time. Smartphones are probably the most challenging, but desktops and laptops? Easy to avoid.

        • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldOP
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          9 months ago

          since they actually do give a crap about building good products and have done quite a bit of that

          That hasn’t been true for quite a few years.

        • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          is that one word or 7?

          It’s a word, with a formal dictionary definition: “the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue”.

          It has it’s origins in politics.

    • Specal@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      They do sell good products… Kinda. But they are professional scalpers and scammers. iPhones get their performance nerfed via software after a few years to force you to upgrade. They charge Quadruple price for ram upgrades in their laptops. Now they’re removing, not dropping support, but actively removing a feature that they themselves do not have to develop to stop you installing a feature on a device that you pay for.

      Apple do not make superior products, apart from the iPad that’s a genuinely superior product. They sell a walled garden that you have to pay continuous subscriptions to stay in. The subscription in this sense is their app store.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        My five year old iPhone runs like it did when I first got it, and I’ve never formatted it.

        • BReel@lemmy.one
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          9 months ago

          My dads iPhone 8 is finally starting to lose some of its battery life. But it’s overall performance is totally fine.

          I think a lot of people forget that most humans doesn’t need 100000000000gb of ram and 20trillion gbs of storage.

          I’m using 65gb of storage, including the os… on my baseline 128gb model.

          Most people aren’t editing 8k videos on their iPhones lol. They’re sending a text message.

          • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 months ago

            Yeah seriously. This community hates Apple so much, but so many people here know nothing about their hardware or software. It’s really bizarre. I’m a Windows/Linux user, but I’ve got an iPhone because it’s the absolute best for longevity and privacy if you want a device where you don’t have to fuck about. I’m on my computers all day, I don’t want to have to think about my phone at all.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      they build good products

      Which they charge x4 the value, and always underdeveloped one or two key features in order to scalp further inordinate amounts of money from their users to overcome the underperforming feature they neutered intentionally. Anyone buying from Apple is a chump getting taken advantage of and somehow is convinced to be proud of being abused by a corp.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Is this a sleazy thing to do? Yup

      That makes it illegal. The DMA explicitly requires gatekeepers be “proactive” (that’s their words) towards opening up their platform. Removing features just in the EU is the opposite of that.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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      9 months ago

      Besides iPod and iPhone. What product category did Apple create that wasn’t there already?

      Imo Apple rolls good solutions, but they very rarely actually innovate.