Apple The Brand

[Scully]

I see; I misunderstood. I got the impression you were complaining because the cost was yours personally.

I own iPhones and a MacBook Pro; and admittedly I'm no techno geek but I can do everything I need to regarding my artwork on those. Personally either of those cancels out the use of an iPad. I find Apple products easy and straightforward to use.

While my current models do what I require of them I don't feel seduced into upgrades of any kind.

[buze]

I started programming at 12yo on an apple 2. After that I was a professional mac developer well over 20 years, I even worked for apple for years, writing their fax/telephony software in the mid/late 90's.

In 2007 I decided to stop doing that, mostly at the advent of the App Store, as I could see the cutthroat free-for-all market that it would become; not interested.

 

I still use a Hackintosh (a VERY beefy PC running OSX) and I still have an iPad 1 (that still has 2 weeks battery life!) but I since switched to Android, without regrets I have to say. Yeah, the kit is not as shiny, but I don't care, I change every other year anyway.

 

It's *tech* people, it's junk; if you want a watch, buy a nice mechanical one, it'll last you more than 2 years. I can *promise* you it will improve the battery life of your phone (true! you won't wake the phone every X minutes to check the time ;-))

[Billy.]

 

Because I work in education and we got a art faculty grant. We mostly use windows of course, we have around 600 windows based stations.

 

So all that complaining about expensive Apple stuff and it's not even your money?

[four-wheel-drive]

I ordered an apple 12" laptop some years ago it cost me over £900 and when it arrived from Ireland all of the instruction books was in French as I had never used one before that peed me off as I did not even do French in school and had problems getting them to send me English instruction books so I returned it and got a Toshiba 14" one for £400.

 

I tend to think that most of this apple thing is down to people showing off look at me I have got a really expensive computer tablet or phone not a cheep one like you so I must be better than you I am not saying that they are not good but are they really worth so much money..

[Billy.]

I tend to think that most of this apple thing is down to people showing off look at me I have got a really expensive computer tablet or phone not a cheep one like you so I must be better than you I am not saying that they are not good but are they really worth so much money..

 

Yeah, they are worth it. Especially when you come to sell it five years later and it's still worth half what you paid for it.

 

I don't think I've ever sat there and thought that about my Apple equipment. I just know that I've bought something which is fast, reliable and has been designed to suit my area of work.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Billy.

[grrclark]

 

Look I run a very large network, we invested £100,000 on an Apple Xserv running open directory synching with Active directory a couple of trolleys of Macbooks and a load of iMacs for music and image editing. To replace this kit with the current offering from Apple it is going to cost us around £150K. To put this in perspective we could halve the cost going down the PC road with Adobe creative cloud.

 

If you were to figure in the cost of support for the Apple environment to the Windows environment how does that then stack up for cost?

 

I would wager that if you had enough stats to work it out that any additional capex for the Apple environment will be more than cancelled out over the length of term of depreciation by the increased opex cost of support for the Windows kit.

[Scully]

I ordered an apple 12" laptop some years ago it cost me over £900 and when it arrived from Ireland all of the instruction books was in French as I had never used one before that peed me off as I did not even do French in school and had problems getting them to send me English instruction books so I returned it and got a Toshiba 14" one for £400.

 

I tend to think that most of this apple thing is down to people showing off look at me I have got a really expensive computer tablet or phone not a cheep one like you so I must be better than you I am not saying that they are not good but are they really worth so much money..

My MacBook Pro cost me £999.00 about four years ago and came with no instruction at all. It wasn't an issue. Because of the way it is dedignef there is room in there for an upgrade if I ever want one.

The rest of your post says more about you than anyone else.

[cromwell7]

What I've noticed about MacBook users from my experience is they seem to keep their laptops a lot longer and upgrade the hardware etc,

But windows laptop users seem to be changing every year.

I have an iPhone as FaceTime seems to work really well on every wifi network and 3/4g.

I went back to iPhone after my galaxy s4 didn't last, cheap plastic back and flimsy front but now they are all aluminium maybe I would go back.

[Spoon]

Had a look a few years back on Apples site about a Mac for my Dad (he's getting old, so he's starting to think they might be good). Want additional storage? It was £200 for an extra hard drive, the same make and model that could be bought by itself anywhere else. £160 for installation? Er, no.

 

Apple stuff looks good, works because its scope is more limited than competitive products (which is a good and bad thing) and is charged at fashion icon prices.

[Billy.]

Had a look a few years back on Apples site about a Mac for my Dad (he's getting old, so he's starting to think they might be good). Want additional storage? It was £200 for an extra hard drive, the same make and model that could be bought by itself anywhere else. £160 for installation? Er, no.

 

Apple stuff looks good, works because its scope is more limited than competitive products (which is a good and bad thing) and is charged at fashion icon prices.

 

And you own how many Apple products?

 

£160 for installation? You're either making that up, or went to someone who isn't an authorised seller.

(Edit - I'm guessing you were saying that the drive is £40 elsewhere and the rest must be the installation fee)

Edited November 28, 2016 by Billy.

[Davyo]

I dont know where the 'hold it's value'comes from comes.Imac 4mths old lost £500,2 iphone 5c's struggled to get near £100 each.3 ipad 32g mini's again 4mths old got about £100 each.Lastly a Macbook that was only a few months old still had the plastic film on it £480 or £500 if i remember rightly.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Davyo

[AVB]

I don't dispute that it is a bit of a fashion statement but there are few things in life as good as opening the box of an apple product. The packaging itself is beautiful.

 

What I also like about apple kit is that is just works. You never have to worry about driver for this or update for that. And for that simplicity itself I will pay a premium.

 

Davyo - you are getting ripped off I think.

[Davyo]

I don't dispute that it is a bit of a fashion statement but there are few things in life as good as opening the box of an apple product. The packaging itself is beautiful.

What I also like about apple kit is that is just works. You never have to worry about driver for this or update for that. And for that simplicity itself I will pay a premium.

Davyo - you are getting ripped off I think.

All private sales mate,kept having to lower the prices just to get shot to the point your practically giving it away.

[four-wheel-drive]

My new dell 16.5" laptop cost me £200 just the other week it came with Linux Ubunto on it but that was no good for me so we put Linux Mint 17.3 on it and it works fine and the best thing is Unlike microsoft it will never need anti virus to stop it getting bugs on it ok it is not as fast as a more expensive one but it does what I want.

 

I also got at little dell Chrome book that is very fast surfing the net but does everything in the clouds which I hate so I only use it as a safe computer to use for my banking.

[four-wheel-drive]

My MacBook Pro cost me £999.00 about four years ago and came with no instruction at all. It wasn't an issue. Because of the way it is dedignef there is room in there for an upgrade if I ever want one.

The rest of your post says more about you than anyone else.

here you go again putting people down I probably could have worked out how to use it if I wanted to but it bugged me that I paid so much for it and they did not even bother to put an instruction manual in a language that I could understand I feel sorry for you sitting up there all by yourself on your perch looking down on us pore thick people.

[srspower]

 

So all that complaining about expensive Apple stuff and it's not even your money?

 

It's my budget! I have to do 'strategic planning' for the I.T infrastructure all so it can then be largely ignored by those who control my budget. This means fluctuations in price make a LOT of difference.

 

 

I see; I misunderstood. I got the impression you were complaining because the cost was yours personally.

I own iPhones and a MacBook Pro; and admittedly I'm no techno geek but I can do everything I need to regarding my artwork on those. Personally either of those cancels out the use of an iPad. I find Apple products easy and straightforward to use.

While my current models do what I require of them I don't feel seduced into upgrades of any kind.

 

I think they are fantastic products and incredibly simple to manage using workgroup manager and apple remote desktop and unix makes it easy to script simple tasks. And I especially like the fact apple have kept their desktop OS separate from their mobile OS unlike Microsoft. But it all comes down to price. I use a Macbook Pro at work and at home and I love Final Cut Pro X for video editing but I just can't justify the price now.

 

 

 

If you were to figure in the cost of support for the Apple environment to the Windows environment how does that then stack up for cost?

 

I would wager that if you had enough stats to work it out that any additional capex for the Apple environment will be more than cancelled out over the length of term of depreciation by the increased opex cost of support for the Windows kit.

 

Well to put it in perspective I recently bought 30 Lenovo Intel Core I5 Laptops with 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD hard drives and they cost £280 each with 3 years on site warranty, obviously that was a steal but they are 'only for education'. Now with a similar discount for a similar number of Macbook Pro's several years ago we paid around £760 per station. That was a price the art faculty wanted to pay but now? It's going to be at least £200 more per station. Then there is the Apple server, it's still running 10.6 server using augmented user records to synch with active directory. It's a whole new system now which means a huge amount of work to get the server 'Sierra' ready. In contrast Windows 10 PC's/Laptops are supported perfectly well using my old MS 2008 servers.

[Davyo]

here you go again putting people down I probably could have worked out how to use it if I wanted to but it bugged me that I paid so much for it and they did not even bother to put an instruction manual in a language that I could understand I feel sorry for you sitting up there all by yourself on your perch looking down on us pore thick people.

I think the user manual is actually installed on them.How you find it i havnt a scooby doo

[Spoon]

 

And you own how many Apple products?

 

£160 for installation? You're either making that up, or went to someone who isn't an authorised seller.

(Edit - I'm guessing you were saying that the drive is £40 elsewhere and the rest must be the installation fee)

 

Aye, didn't make that clear. £160 mark up for an extra drive.

 

There are 3 Apple products in this house. The Ipad was decent, until iOS8 drove the responsiveness in to the ground. Funnily enough when it goes in low battery mode it runs as smoothly as it used to, but they disabled low battery mode unless its a phone. The 5c is a work phone, and is a consistent source of frustration. I won an ipod touch about 7 years ago and it still runs fast and has a good battery but now most apps won't run as they need higher than iOS5\6. The fact that I had to also use iTunes made a simple USB mp3 player far more attractive.

 

I've otherwise used a MacBook Air and I was left feeling I could have more power, the same dimensions and more flexibility for less price. Desktop wise, as a gamer there isn't much point in going near a Mac...

[Billy.]

 

It's my budget! I have to do 'strategic planning' for the I.T infrastructure all so it can then be largely ignored by those who control my budget. This means fluctuations in price make a LOT of difference.

 

I'm not trying to sound sarcastic here. I couldn't imagine the stress of having to budget money given to me for free in a grant...

 

 

I've otherwise used a MacBook Air and I was left feeling I could have more power, the same dimensions and more flexibility for less price. Desktop wise, as a gamer there isn't much point in going near a Mac...

 

So basically you've got a few iOS devices and had a bit of a go on a MBA and complained about a lack of processing power from it. I'm not surprised you felt you needed more power, it's a notebook! It was purposefully designed for portability and battery capacity over power.

 

I asked how many Apple devices you've got because your post screamed that you didn't have any real experience using Macs... Which was correct.

 

I'm not being rude, it just gets me when people perk up with their dislike or false information on Macs and they've never spent any decent amount of time using them.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Billy.

[Spoon]

 

I'm not trying to sound sarcastic here. I couldn't imagine the stress of having to budget money given to me for free in a grant...

 

 

So basically you've got a few iOS devices and had a bit of a go on a MBA and complained about a lack of processing power from it. I'm not surprised you felt you needed more power, it's a notebook! It was purposefully designed for portability and battery capacity over power.

 

I asked how many Apple devices you've got because your post screamed that you didn't have any real experience using Macs... Which was correct.

 

I'm not being rude, it just gets me when people perk up with their dislike or false information on Macs and they've never spent any decent amount of time using them.

 

I didn't say it was lacking power, but that I felt I could get more power and the same portability for a lower price. I don't have a huge experience with Macs, because they're completely useless for my primary usage. My first post was that basically that what experience I do have makes me believe that you get a very tailored experience at fashion brand pricing.

 

I don't think you were being rude and I don't think anything I've said is false information. But I do think you're setting off the Mac fanboy alarm

[grrclark]

Well to put it in perspective I recently bought 30 Lenovo Intel Core I5 Laptops with 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD hard drives and they cost £280 each with 3 years on site warranty, obviously that was a steal but they are 'only for education'. Now with a similar discount for a similar number of Macbook Pro's several years ago we paid around £760 per station. That was a price the art faculty wanted to pay but now? It's going to be at least £200 more per station. Then there is the Apple server, it's still running 10.6 server using augmented user records to synch with active directory. It's a whole new system now which means a huge amount of work to get the server 'Sierra' ready. In contrast Windows 10 PC's/Laptops are supported perfectly well using my old MS 2008 servers.

 

That's an interesting point.

 

For sure the Apple kit is going to cost more than non Apple kit with a similar specification. Is there a premium attached for the brand? without a doubt.

 

I suspect that you have misunderstood my point about Microsoft support costs, for whatever reason Microsoft take it upon themselves to have their own take upon perfectly acceptable otherwise open standards. Take for instance Active Directory which is no more directory services than flea in the air, where they could have worked from the x.500 standard or LDAP they simply wrapped more and more code around the flawed domain model with the result that AD is utter ********.

 

Likewise with their version of DHCP or DNS, they eschewed a perfectly good open standard that works fine and dandy in favour of their own slight variation that is still fundamentally underpinned by netBIOS and WINS code that they have continued to extend. Take a look in the registry of the latest OS and you will still see keys and values for LanManager that was the forerunner to Windows NT.

 

The net result of all of this is that there is always an excessive overhead required with an MS environment unless you are running the most vanilla of systems that is wall to wall MS and even then there are still things that are unnecessary.

 

So yes in order to get Apple or UNIX kit to run in a Windows server environment then you will have a buggeration factor, however that is the fault of Microsoft and not the other way around.

 

Like for like, if you were to split it down, the cost of Microsoft support is excessively high in relation to supporting an Apple or UNIX based environment.

 

None of that justifies a premium price on the Apple kit of course, but if you take a full life cycle cost Apple will cost you less than a PC equivalent.

[Scully]

here you go again putting people down I probably could have worked out how to use it if I wanted to but it bugged me that I paid so much for it and they did not even bother to put an instruction manual in a language that I could understand I feel sorry for you sitting up there all by yourself on your perch looking down on us pore thick people.

I don't need to put you down; you do a pretty good job of that yourself.

I never called anyone thick or 'pore'....you did.

If you don't want to use apple products then don't; its quite simple. I just can't understand why you want those who do, to be made to feel elitist for doing so.

In my experience it's not a perfect system, but then again, which is?

[Deker]

... and admittedly I'm no techno geek but I can do everything I need to regarding my artwork on those. Personally either of those cancels out the use of an iPad. I find Apple products easy and straightforward to use..

 

 

This is where Apple win, I don't mean to be disrecpectful but to non-techies Apple stuff just works as you can't really do anything wrong, which is also the downfall if you're a techie, you can't tweak it to make it do exactly what you want and if you don't like the Apple way then you're screwed.

 

I'm a Microsoft person as I like the kit I buy to do exactly what I want it to do (it's also my job), I find Andriod is very similar, I work in a tech business and the only people who really shout for Apple products are the less tech savvy guys who want to look a bit flash in meetings.

 

Deker

Edited November 29, 2016 by Deker

[Davyo]

I;m the thick none techie type i'm afraid, or maybe i didn't give myself a chance to to learn the apple system all seemed a bit alian to me.Even the bouncy task bar i could even set up right thats how none techie i am. I totally lost it when i spend ages sorting out my picture album (in a fashion) then the next week an new iso thing came out and jumbled them all up. That' when i spat the dummy out good & proper wish i'd spend more time trying to get to grips with it rather than spitting the dummy out and flogging the lot.

[Billy.]

 

which is also the downfall if you're a techie, you can't tweak it to make it do exactly what you want and if you don't like the Apple way then you're screwed.

 

I'm a Microsoft person as I like the kit I buy to do exactly what I want it to do (it's also my job), I find Andriod is very similar, I work in a tech business and the only people who really shout for Apple products are the less tech savvy guys who want to look a bit flash in meetings.

 

 

Ever heard of Terminal? I might get the Apple bingo card out for this thread, I'm almost at a full house.

 

Another person to add to the "I know all about Apple and I'll tell you how it works, purely because I know how an iPhone works" pile.