A very simple reason I use apple products.

Hello ALL,

A happy tale of corporation looking after the customer, and not a reason to flame.

I am not in the least bit ashamed to admit that I have nothing in my life (computer wise), home or work, that is not apple centric.

reasons for this are not important, and nothing is meant by such a statement, except to emphasize why this post is written.

my own preference for a computer is a laptop, and the absolute top of laptop performance and usability has always been a 17inch MacBookPro.

until they stopped making them at the end of 2011, my world falls apart!

so in late 2011 I wander across the world and find myself in america where I tested one, it was very nice, nothing to compare.

back in the UK I managed to get a second hand one, a month old, the owner was unable to work with it (I am convinced it was bill gates).

now I have my prize!, add an SSD, wow super faster, add 16GB RAM, maxed out, as good as anything I could imagine, the performance in real terms is still way beyond my partners brand new MBP that is 5 years newer.

quite obviously there is a very sad end to this story.

my lovely MBP suddenly went wibbly wobbly.

the screen eventually just was grey.

my first thought was ‘st what the fk can I do now’

mr duckduckgo said there was salvation, for some unknown reason the graphic card on my laptop was possibly faulty (not apples fault, but they honour the issue)

today, more than 5 years after I bought my favourite computer, second hand, I took it to an apple shop.

I now live in spain, I have no paperwork for the purchase of the laptop.

I went to the genius bar, gave them the print out of the apple web site detailing the apple policy of supporting ALL products with a PRODUCTION DEFECT for 5 years, YES 5 YEARS, I was amazed.

the guy in the genius bar plugged an ethernet cable in to my laptop, it scanned it for 2 minutes, he said ‘yes your machine is broken and it will be fixed, it is in the special repair program, you will come back in 2-3 weeks and it will be like a new hole’ thankfully my spanish is good enough to know what he meant, and we both laughed about it.

YES I am banging the apple drum, but really, 5 years, I am absolutely astonished that ANY company is willing to accept responsibility for any issue this long after manufacture.

so now, in 2-3 weeks I will receive my laptop back, it is still one of the most capable computers available, it (she)will have a new heart and I will get more than 5 years of top level computer power available to me.

this is why I use apple, just in case any one asks.

Please could any reader just accept the comments as a positive experience with my chosen supplier, it is not an attack against any other platform.

mark

HI Mark,
There have been several excellent examples of where Apple’s support is top notch. I’ve had products repaired for free in their 13th month, and so has my wife.

What I complain about is the degradation in quality of their software, and I know I’m not alone. There’s simply too many features that should work (but don’t) and frameworks that have become broken and forgotten about. Not to mention the abandonment of Pro users.

The other day I was in an electrical store and saw a Acer (Taiwanese yeah) tablet, it’s about the size of an iPad mini, but runs Windows 10 with touch screen and a keyboard/trackpad combo in the case. For $200 US. I was blown away and started to play with it, it wasn’t fast, but would certainly do what we use an iPad for and having the possibility of being able to hammer out Xojo code on the device was also appealing. It also charged from micro (or mini) USB, so I don’t even need to bring another charger.

Then when I tried to do more than poke at the screen, the keyboard was horrible to type on and the trackpad was useless. Certainly not upto Apple’s standards on keyboard/trackpad, but then again it was only $200 US. Although I can always hook up a real keyboard and mouse to it as it had a full sized USB port also.

When our iPad 2 finally keels over (it crashes very frequently now, but it 5 years old), I’m very tempted by this little Acer, full blown OS and USB. Or crippled OS and Lightning/Bluetooth.

good reply Sam,
we have not communicated previously directly, nice to see you.
as I said I do not want to start flame wars, I don’t use anything non apple, except to support neighbours, and then I am just ‘the computer guy’ which I expect 99% of readers will understand.

I get over here (Espana) all the UK TV, in the adverts there is a really horrible group of adverts by microsoft.
they are really not nice about my favourite computer, when you see them you(or I), might think how is it legal that they can say what they do, and why do apple not defend themselves.
I expect they do not respond because the instigators have such a minimal market reach its not important.
how sad there is nothing to address the market leader.

I gave my very old and ancient mother an iPad 4 years ago, initially to Skype me in my new spanish home.
mmmmmmm, now she has racing channel on it, Skype and a load of other stuff I don’t know about, but pay for, on the app store.
she appears to win a load more than she bets!

the point being, she has the original iPad, I got it it as it was released, and it still works perfectly and meets all her needs.

the overall silly point I am saying is that my own experience of my chosen device is entirely positive, I don’t use other devices like you do, why do you have USB devices connected, or flash cards. I can not find a reason to do so.

I have to laugh, ha ha ha, sorry, text is not great.

quoting, and you KNOW I am correct!!!

“When our iPad 2 finally keels over (it crashes very frequently now, but it 5 years old), I’m very tempted by this little Acer, full blown OS and USB. Or crippled OS and Lightning/Bluetooth.”

we both know that nothing (android product) currently available will be either around in 5 years nor wanted by the buyers of such products.
which brings me back to the ‘please don’t flame’ comment.

I have seen all your comments regarding recent OS X releases.
my own issues are related to SERIAL data ports, I don’t care about anything else.
I am still using Yosemite purely because serial ports still work fine.
I have VM of El Capitan, its not great for me!

nothing is perfect, but I am happy to be working in a fully managed, closed walled, extended and long reaching environment without USB ports or SD cards that I have never seemingly missed.

Well…

I have also had this service, on a few occasions, and It does give you a good feeling… However, Im in the UK and under EU law we have a right to expect things to have a lifespan that is relative to its cost/ quality, regardless of the ‘warranty’. i believe the term is ‘sufficiently durable’. this lasts i believe for six years.

All apple is doing is honouring that legal obligation.

Now, other retailers/Manufacturers will twist and turn and evade responsibility until you threaten them with court action, but apple just cough up and fix things. which i would say is a marketing strategy, and one that works very well for them, after all, Im now on my 5th Mac and in all honesty cant see myself moving away in the near future.

[quote=291146:@Russ Lunn]Well…

I have also had this service, on a few occasions, and It does give you a good feeling… However, Im in the UK and under EU law we have a right to expect things to have a lifespan that is relative to its cost/ quality, regardless of the ‘warranty’. i believe the term is ‘sufficiently durable’. this lasts i believe for six years. [/quote]

No. Not even for a MacBook Pro or an Alienware PC.

No. Proof: The extended warranty program is world wide.

By EU law the warranty is 2 years.

[quote=291150:@Eli Ott]@Russ Lunn EU law we have a right to expect things to have a lifespan that is relative to its cost/ quality, regardless of the ‘warranty’
By EU law the warranty is 2 years.

[/quote]

Yes, thats the warranty… and THEN there is the durability test. If, say a dishwasher would reasonably be expected to last 5 years and it breaks down in 2 years and 6 months then you still have the right to have it fixed, by the manufacturer.

This of course comes down to how much you pay and the manufacturers claims of quality. If you buy a cheap computer for #100 and it breaks outside the warranty then you probably have small chance of getting much done.

If you buy a premium branded laptop that is sold on being the worlds finest computer, you can expect it to last a lot longer. If it doesn’t, you can take it back and have it fixed (as long as you can demonstrate you took good care of it and didn’t throw it around and shower with it.)

But this is not EU law.

“A key fact is that your relationship in the Sale of Goods Act is with the retailer, not the manufacturer.”

“It works like this. For the first four-five weeks you have a “right of rejection” - if the item you’ve bought breaks down, you can demand a refund.
For the next six months, you are entitled to replacement or repair of the goods. It is up to the retailer to prove there was nothing wrong with it if they wish to get out of having to do the work. And then after six months, there is still a duty to replace or repair faulty goods, but the onus is on you, the consumer, to prove that there was something wrong.
And the key time span is six years. That’s how long goods may be covered by the Sale of Goods Act. It all depends on what “sufficiently durable” means. If a light bulb goes after 13 months, the consumer is not going to be overly gutted. If their washing machine goes after the same time span they are going to be livid.”

See “Five consumer laws you really ought to know”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8253915.stm

So Apple has absolutely no obligation beyond the warranty if you did not buy from Apple directly.

Did you ever see the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” adverts? I thought they were great, but in reality it’s just what MS is doing to Apple now.

Pleased to hear that, we gave my mother-in-law my wife’s old original iPad, I don’t know what she did, but it got to a point where you couldn’t open any apps on it, they’d simply crash and go back to the iPad’s “Finder”.

I bought my own mother an iPad mini, which like your Mum, my mother has been going great with it since. Except someone got into to her iCloud account and changed her information, so Apple won’t let her back in. She got very upset with them, had to change her credit card and so on. She still uses it to buy stuff from Amazon and we now Facebook chat instead of FaceTime. Next time I’m back int he UK, I’ll have to take her and her iPad to an Apple store so that they can she see is who she says she is.

I tried to use an iPad as a second computer, but the onscreen keyboard is a real slowdown, then there’s the crippled OS, which really makes it impossible for me to use as a second computer. I’m not a big fan of Bluetooth, I get fed up with unreliable connections and poor battery life. I love the Apple Magic Trackpad, but got myself a battery for it with a USB connector and use a USB keyboard when working.

I also cannot run Xojo on an iPad, nor Photoshop or most of the apps I use in my daily life.

[quote=291145:@Mark Carlton]we both know that nothing (android product) currently available will be either around in 5 years nor wanted by the buyers of such products.
which brings me back to the ‘please don’t flame’ comment.[/quote]
I do feel that Apple’s OSes are far better than Android / Windows, but the colossal amount of bugs and issues that now arise from Apple’s neglect of their core user base are REALLY pissing me as they cause my grief on a daily basis.

My #1 problem with my last iPhone and my current iPhone, is that Apple Music sucks as an application. I always listen to music while driving and for some reason Apple Music frequently forgets, where in song it was last, even what song it was playing last. 90% of the time when I start to listen to music, it plays the very first song in my album. I didn’t have this problem in the 80s, only for a short while in the 90s (with the first Discman I purchased), iOS 8 didn’t have this problem.

I’m not looking to start a flame war, just want to air that while Apple do some things well, they’re forgetting who they are and why a lot of us purchased their products. I’ve filed lots and lots of bugs since the first beta of Yosemite, most have been ‘closed’ with only a couple being fixed.

What really blew me away about the Acer, was it’s just like an iPad, but it can be used as a real computer, I can run Xojo on it and hook up a proper Keyboard/Mouse and maybe even a screen.

Ah… Thats the difference, I use USB for input devices and SD cards from my cameras (which the SD card reader in my MacBook no longer works so I have to use a USB SD Card reader instead). I use USB memory stick to take an additional copy of my work with me, wherever I go and I have a second stick for exchanging data between My Mac and my Wife’s Mac when we’re not at home (Because AirDrop no longer works).

An no, nothing is ever perfect, which is where we come in as programmers. We make things better :slight_smile:

hmm. I thought it was, since all our laws are EU laws. If its not, then hey-ho!

I Didn’t know that, and I wasn’t really considering that I would take anything back to the manufacturer, I was thinking I would go back to who I bought it from, and they would sort it out with the manufacturer.

On the couple of occasions Ive used this, (One was a TV that was 3 years old with a 12 month warranty - I just quoted ‘sale of goods act’ to the salesman and he went off and organised a repair) it has worked fine for me.

And in the case of apple, I don’t know why anyone would buy apple products except from apple. you might save about £10 and loose out on the service.

They currently get me REALLY riled on Apple’s behalf.

Some hipster draws a couple of blobby squiggles on screen, claims it to be a theatrical masterpiece, and then says ‘I could never do THAT on a Mac’
Really?
A 10 year old could do that squiggle with a crayon. Its hardly engineering at the cutting edge.

What they are getting at is the touchscreen aspect, but in the words of the song ‘that dont impress me much’.
Yeah, if Apple put touchscreen out, people will be pleased.
But for me, its right up there with the cigar lighter in my car.
Not really gonna get used.

But Sam’s Acer…
I can feel a new advert coming:

‘So I have this tablet and it works as a real computer, and I got change from $200
You cant do THAT with a Mac or a Surface…’ :slight_smile:

[quote=291168:@Jeff Tullin]‘So I have this tablet and it works as a real computer, and I got change from $200
You cant do THAT with a Mac or a Surface…’ :)[/quote]
Ha ha!

Well, that’s the two things that keep me from considering Mac: high price in relation to features/performance compared to Windows PCs, and their recent OSes have been plagued with bugs and broken framework features that look like at least some will never get really fixed. My wife claims that the death of Steve Jobs correlates with the loss in quality, but who knows really.

Higher price and buggy software? Pass.

OSes are buggy. All OSes are buggy, just not all in the same place or in the same way. I will borrow a line from the original Ghostbusters: “Choose… choose the form of The Destructor.” In other words, select your OS and with it, your pains and your gains.

I selected a Win 10 Lenovo 710s over a similarly spec’ed MacBook Air for my daughter a few months ago. The several hundreds of dollars difference was the deciding factor. ( while I am more Windows, she is more Apple but speaks Windows fluently) For the record, she uses it daily and does not have a single problem with it or Windows. Will she use the computer in 5 years? I don’t know. Just the same that I would not know whether she will use a macbook air in 5 years.

Perhaps in a different context I would make the opposite choice. All depends on which Destructor I think is the right death at the moment.

[quote=291145:@Mark Carlton]we both know that nothing (android product) currently available will be either around in 5 years nor wanted by the buyers of such products.[/quote]My youngest daughter has a 2012 Nexus 7 (Asus) and I have a company issued 2013 model. I think your assumption is likely to be incorrect for the high quality Android devices that get their updates direct from Google. In fact I was so impressed with the Nexus tablets that when my eldest son wanted a laptop I specifically went for an Asus.

I also have an 8" dual booting Windows 10 / Android 5 tablet from a Chinese manufacturer named Ployer. I bought it direct from China on Aliexpress and it was < £70 including shipping. It’s not bad but only Windows gets updates and Android is rooted which I guess is either good or bad depending on you politics. I bought it just because I was curious about Windows 10 on a tablet (which I’ve actually grown to quite like). I must have had it around 6 months now and so far so good.

Windows 10 is buggy just as much as Sierra. No more, no less. True, a Mac costs more than a fast PC.

It does count for hobbyists and regular end users.

That should not be any relevant to someone who develops to sell software. I have a Mac, I have a fast PC, and frankly would not hear of developing in a VM. Any serious developer must actually know and use the target hardware to deliver good apps.

To develop for iOS, I have an iPad. To develop for Android, I have a Galaxy Tablet.

Now, it is true I tend to like better iMac for everyday stuff like email and web browsing. But that’s me.

When Sam says Sierra is buggy, though, it is because he creates very high end apps with extremely elaborate declares. For everyday work with Xojo, the kind of bugs he describes hardly ever show.

Overall, I think both Apple Sierra and Windows 10 are great tools, with very little issues for the end user.

the thread appears to have slightly moved off topic:-

as I said originally, this thread was purely to show that not all companies are solely about doing as little as possible for the most money and, in my own experience, the paying of what some people think of a premium is nothing of the sort.
apple products may sometimes cost more money, but only at the point of purchase, this does not equate to them being more expensive.

I can sell my 5 year old MacBookPro for about £1000, which when taken into account on the original price, then amortise it over the 5 years work it has done, it is £200 per year.
when I say work, it does work, it is on almost continuously and moved about the world regularly.

I am not sure which other product in this sphere, from any other company, might be as good value as that, and yes I use windows and linux on it, which are entirely stable and means there is no reason to have any other machine with me ever.

none of which is intended as a comment on products I do not use nor have any reason to do so, I am purely saying a positive thank you to a company I have had a happy and positive relationship with.

surely no one can see that in a bad light!

Mark

Sure, you can run Windows on a Mac. But for me as a developer, I am sorry, it is not sufficient.

The Mac double buffering will mask flicker, which can be very bad on a real PC if controls are stacked. To me it is a minimum to see how the app will look on the same kind of machine end users will have.

The Mac keyboard does not work like the PC keyboard. In particular, the PC Keyboard may offer a numeric keypad, and importantly the shortcut keys used by Windows are different. Cmd is the Windows key usually reserved for system shortcuts, and some emulators such as VMWare are well intentioned, but make it react as Ctrl. If I was to develop for Windows on a Mac, I would get an inexpensive USB PC keyboard to make sure my app has the required feeling and ergonomics to comply to Windows guidelines.

I understand you are fond of your Apple hardware, and there is certainly nothing wrong about that.

Michel, I am a developer too, for several platforms, I do have ancient hardware running ‘real’ versions of win and Linux, but in development I never ever use them as VM is so good it works without issue on 99% of situations, that I have.
I really should end test in the real hardware, but have found over the years that my applications do not have any differences in the VM. save how ugly they look on windows, which is impossible to change.

That does not mean that everyone should rely on the same, but in my jaunts about the world making software I thankfully have found no need to carry anything other than 1 laptop with me.

Jeff, I am with your feelings about these adverts, they are really so bad and utterly without truth it amazes me they are made or shown.
but after thinking about it realized that if ‘ms’ sell 20 million more surface PRO this year that is probably 18 million(just a guess haha) more than they sold in the last 3 years, or how ever long it is since they tried to compete with the market leader.

I have heard about people owning the surface and seen people on Facebook talking about them, I have never actually seen one in real life any where.

This may be because I travel a lot and spend significant time with professional developers, using leading edge technology to make my living, as I have done for the last 38 years.

using logic, all the users of the other device mentioned must be doing something else with it, like drawing squiggly lines on plans for theatrical backdrops.

if ‘ms’ actually told the world what their sales of their amazing hardware portfolio was then everyone might be able to see the impact of these really obnoxious and embarrassing adverts, which is not going to happen I suspect, neither will an increase in sales regardless of how competent the product may or may not be, I suspect it is really great, if you like windows, and it will do everything you could ever wish.
it should be selling like hot cakes, I have no idea why it sells virtually nothing compared with others on the market., nope had a long think, can’t come up with a single reason.

sam, I keep mums iPad 1 offline now, it does her bits and pieces no problem, now I gave her an iPad mini which she is using to call me on Skype (she is UK I am Spain), it might as well be a different companies product as she does not seem to understand that updates do not mean it is going to blow the iPad up or delete all her horse racing websites!
whichever she uses seems really to be no issue, and at 81 I am very pleased she is so confident in the iPad she will use it every single day.
I just have to be sure I do not tell her its a computer as she seems to find them frightening!

Thanks everyone for joining in the thread, not much more to add I suspect.

regards

mark