What's so fantastic about Apple?

[Darat]

No, it probably wasn't intended as an ad hominem argument, just a bunch of the same type of snark you have thrown out in other parts of the thread. I apologize for misconstruing/misrepresenting your anti-apple snark.

Again you are making things up - the "anti-apple snark" is your delusion and has nothing to do with anything I have posted to this thread.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Again you are making things up - the "anti-apple snark" is your delusion and has nothing to do with anything I have posted to this thread.

OK, if it wasn't snark, how was your comment intended ?

 

[kajata]

And just had a sneak peak at an iPad-not-3 at a developers this afternoon and the comments in the press regarding the display are in no way exaggerated. It really is the best display I have ever seen - on anything - whether TV, monitor, laptop screen and so on, jaw-dropping is the word to describe my initial reaction to viewing hi-res photos.

I got mine this morning and seeing the finest of fine print on web pages in such great clarity is something else.

iPad is my principal web-surfing and book reading device so I'm very excited about this.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Apple Ranks Highest in Customer Satisfaction among Smartphone Manufacturers,

For a seventh consecutive time, Apple ranks highest among manufacturers of smartphones in customer satisfaction. Apple achieves a score of 839 on a 1,000-point scale and performs well in all factors, particularly in ease of operation and features. HTC (798) follows Apple in the smartphone rankings.

Fantastic

 

[kajata]

Apple Ranks Highest in Customer Satisfaction among Smartphone Manufacturers,

For a seventh consecutive time, Apple ranks highest among manufacturers of smartphones in customer satisfaction. Apple achieves a score of 839 on a 1,000-point scale and performs well in all factors, particularly in ease of operation and features. HTC (798) follows Apple in the smartphone rankings.

Fantastic

Don't those people know the iPhone doesn't run flash?!

Damn marketing!!!

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Don't those people know the iPhone doesn't run flash?!

Damn marketing!!!

USA Today ipad review

The bottom line
• Pro. Stunning screen, 4G speeds (on certain models), decent dictation and improved camera optics. Strong battery. Apps galore.
• Con. Shooting with camera can be awkward. No Adobe Flash. No camera flash. No expanded storage.

USA Today keeping consumers in the know, no worries

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Don't those people know the iPhone doesn't run flash?!

And imagine what the score would be like if they only had an SD card slot and multiple USB ports!

Seriously, I'm probably going to try to swing an iPad 3 before my birthday in August. Though quite honestly for now my first gen iPad is still soldiering on just fine - I'm posting this on it right now. Still, I expect more and more apps will be like iPhoto and only run on a "2" or above.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Mike Daisey writes and performs fascinating, compelling evening-length monologues about his life experiences. He has staged shows about being a college theatre teacher, about visiting South Pacific islands that once were home to cargo cults, about the secret history of the Department of Homeland Security and more. He always uses his unique experiences as the launchpad for extended observations and commentary about the world. His latest monologue is "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," which starts with his self-described affection as a "fanboy" for Apple products, and goes on to what he saw during his visits to the Foxconn factories in Shenzhen, China, where hundreds of thousands of workers, some as young as 12, work 16-hour shifts to assemble products by hand. When workers started killing themselves by jumping off factory roofs, management's response was to install nets to catch them. He even pretended to be an American businessman looking for someone to make stuff for him, and got guided tours of the facilities. Daisey's shows are not available anywhere except live (now on Broadway, well worth the price), but he recently appeared on "60 Minutes." I like Apple stuff, too, but we pay a high price for it (and all our other ****, as Daisey calls it), and not just in dollars:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7396762n
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/18/ap/tech/main20121861.shtml
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2011/10...ny-and-the-ecstasy-of-steve-jobs-review.html?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/t...ses-the-agony-and-ecstasy-of-steve-jobs.html?
http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/p/monologues.html

Oh noes. Mike Daisey was full of ****.


'This American Life' Retracts Its Damning Episode About Apple And Foxconn


It turns out the person at the center of the center of the report, Mike Daisey, "partially fabricated" key details.
Specifically, he didn't actually meet underage employees. He never met with an employee who had his hand mangled by toxic cleaning chemicals.

 

[Babbylonian]

A friend bought the new iPad yesterday. The screen really is as awesome as people say. Sitting next to him at the Starbucks watching him play around with it, I was able to easily read text that wasn't possible under the same conditions with the iPad 2 - I can say this with some assurance since we were meeting up so that he could hand the iPad 2 over to me.

On that subject, I have to say that after using Android for a couple years, I've already fallen in love with the iPad. It doesn't have the customization possibilities of Android but that's become a double-edged sword as the wide variety of available Android configurations (both hardware and software) introduces more and more issues over time. My Nook Color running Cyanogenmod started out just fine but it seems like every app update results in more incompatibility and crashes. I gave up trying to play any games on it.

Anyway, I love the iPad 2; it's fantastic. I particularly enjoy Flip Board and played around with that until 2 in the morning last night.

 

[This is The End]

What's this I see? A valid complaint about how Apple handles their software and hardware?

source

...Retina-ready apps consume two to three times as much of the iPad’s nonexpandable storage than pre-Retina apps. To update their apps for the new display, software companies must redo their graphics at much higher resolution, which means much larger files.

(Worse, each app is usually written in single, universal version for all iPad models. So those apps will eat up the same extra space, pointlessly, on older iPads, too — and even on iPhones, since many apps are written to run on both the tablet and the phone. In other words, iPhone owners, too, will wind up losing storage space because of this graphic-bloat ripple-down effect.)

Aside from that this seems odd:

A tiny microphone now appears on the [new iPads] on-screen keyboard. Tapping it lets you speak to type, exactly as on the iPhone 4S.

For most people, that’s a huge blessing; typing on glass has never been a joyous activity. The recognition is fast and accurate, at least when you have a strong Internet connection (the transcription is actually performed by faraway servers).

Would the obvious conclusion be that 'speak to type' does not work if you don't have internet or if your internet connection is very weak or down?

ETA: Why do I picture kids in China transcribing the speach for you?

Surely the software for it isn't that big. It's probably not on the iPad itself because the base model only has 16 GB of storage. Then again, doesn't it fit on iPhones, or do they have the same limitation.

And OnlyTellsTruths is just stirring the pot with the the complaint is all those beautiful higher resolution graphics take up unnecessary space on devices that don't support them. Having beautiful graphics is now known as 'graphics-bloat'

Seriously? "Having beautiful graphics is now known as 'graphics-bloat'" is what you get from this:

(Worse, each app is usually written in single, universal version for all iPad models. So those apps will eat up the same extra space, pointlessly, on older iPads, too — and even on iPhones, since many apps are written to run on both the tablet and the phone. In other words, iPhone owners, too, will wind up losing storage space because of this graphic-bloat ripple-down effect.

If I am to believe the article, the old hardware has very limited space and is getting updates for features it doesn't support.


How about the 2nd part of my post? Any thoughts?

 

[Fast Eddie B]

If I am to believe the article, the old hardware has very limited space and is getting updates for features it doesn't support.


How about the 2nd part of my post? Any thoughts?

I'm going to soldier on with my first gen iPad for a while. And my wife, Karen, is perfectly happy with the 2 she got in January.

Yes, I have gotten a lot of updates to apps recently, whose main new feature is support for the retina display.

You just made me go look at my on board storage. For now, I have not noticed any appreciable bloat in app size, though I'm sure there is some. I don't know if the app store is smart enough not to push retina graphics out to earlier machines to save space.

We both have the smallest 16gb models, yet when I just checked and still have just 9.0 used and 4.8 available. This does take judicious use of storage. My workaround is I keep virtually no music or podcasts or movies on the iPad at any time, using the cloud as much as possible. My iPhone4 is the 32gb model and that's where I tend to keep music, though with iTunes Match there's no longer a need for that either. When I do bite the bullet for a 3 I will go for at least the 32 mb model - apps and files are likely to not get any smaller over time and I'd like the breathing room.

Karen managed to fill hers up, but a quick check showed she was downloading iTunesU video courses and not deleting them when done.

But having started with a 128k(!) Mac, it still feels weird to moan about only 16gb of storage on a device costing about 1/4 of what my original Mac cost!

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Karen managed to fill hers up, but a quick check showed she was downloading iTunesU video courses and not deleting them when done.

But having started with a 128k(!) Mac, it still feels weird to moan about only 16gb of storage on a device costing about 1/4 of what my original Mac cost!

One area of legitimate criticism regarding apple product pricing is the extortionate price you pay for internal storage memory on their iOS range of products. For instance in the UK you pay £80 for the additional 16Gb for a 32Gb iPad.

 

[megaresp]

One area of legitimate criticism regarding apple product pricing is the extortionate price you pay for internal storage memory on their iOS range of products. For instance in the UK you pay £80 for the additional 16Gb for a 32Gb iPad.

Agreed, but whadaya gona do? If a person wants the benefits of iOS s/he has to live with the downsides too. C'est la vie.

I guess the question any given person must ask is how big a deal is it really? I had an instinct my own use would mean most of the files used by the device would be stored elsewhere (dropbox, various web servers), and that has turned out to be the case. So I haven't regretted my decision to go cheap

But let's say I had a need for the 64GB model. That's an additional one-off expense of £133.33 (my business is VAT registered). This has no noticable impact at all on my taxable profit over the course of a fiscal year. If I needed the extra storage I wouldn't hesitate for a moment. And I certainly wouldn't waste time fretting about the fact I'm paying over the odds relative to another device.

Apple's greater crime is far more serious and should be the sole focus of this thread - the unforgivable use of the word 'resolutionary'

 

[stevea]

So Apple products are all shiny on the outside, and mostly hollow on the inside, and like the Christmas joint that will be fit for the dumpster in a short time. And yes they cost a lot which is why they will always be dogged by me-too producers. That aside there is some good and even useful technology there but it's sadly all depends on proprietary lock-in, technology silos. When your first interaction with your new phone is that that it needs your credit card number to do anything useful - then you're being locked-in to the apple view of technology.

Apple failed failed in the PC market (6% market share is failure) not b/c their product wasn't better than MS/PC but because their price points, limited products and closed-view made it a poor choice for most people. MS did a better job of supporting anything/everything on a PC.

They seem to be doing better at getting all the sheep into the Apple corral for phones and pads. In part b/c people currently expect these systems to be pretty limited in scope. That story hasn't finished playing out, but I expect they will win those markets. The consequence is that they will then become the hated big-business monopoly (like MS) instead of the insurgent technology rebel firm.

So the imagery changes, and with the black-clad guru gone it seems likely we will soon see the end of new-product night vigils by the sycophants. In any case we will soon discover how much of the company model was based on Jobs ego, and how much was technology & value.

 

[kajata]

So Apple products are all shiny on the outside, and mostly hollow on the inside, and like the Christmas joint that will be fit for the dumpster in a short time. And yes they cost a lot which is why they will always be dogged by me-too producers. That aside there is some good and even useful technology there but it's sadly all depends on proprietary lock-in, technology silos. When your first interaction with your new phone is that that it needs your credit card number to do anything useful - then you're being locked-in to the apple view of technology.

Apple failed failed in the PC market (6% market share is failure) not b/c their product wasn't better than MS/PC but because their price points, limited products and closed-view made it a poor choice for most people. MS did a better job of supporting anything/everything on a PC.

They seem to be doing better at getting all the sheep into the Apple corral for phones and pads. In part b/c people currently expect these systems to be pretty limited in scope. That story hasn't finished playing out, but I expect they will win those markets. The consequence is that they will then become the hated big-business monopoly (like MS) instead of the insurgent technology rebel firm.

So the imagery changes, and with the black-clad guru gone it seems likely we will soon see the end of new-product night vigils by the sycophants. In any case we will soon discover how much of the company model was based on Jobs ego, and how much was technology & value.

It's like you scanned the comments section of a thousand blog postings and collected the most tired and stereotypical of Apple complaints and condensed them into one post. Fun!

 

[Fast Eddie B]

So Apple products are all shiny on the outside, and mostly hollow on the inside, and like the Christmas joint that will be fit for the dumpster in a short time. And yes they cost a lot which is why they will always be dogged by me-too producers. That aside there is some good and even useful technology there but it's sadly all depends on proprietary lock-in, technology silos. When your first interaction with your new phone is that that it needs your credit card number to do anything useful - then you're being locked-in to the apple view of technology.

Apple failed failed in the PC market (6% market share is failure) not b/c their product wasn't better than MS/PC but because their price points, limited products and closed-view made it a poor choice for most people. MS did a better job of supporting anything/everything on a PC.

They seem to be doing better at getting all the sheep into the Apple corral for phones and pads. In part b/c people currently expect these systems to be pretty limited in scope. That story hasn't finished playing out, but I expect they will win those markets. The consequence is that they will then become the hated big-business monopoly (like MS) instead of the insurgent technology rebel firm.

So the imagery changes, and with the black-clad guru gone it seems likely we will soon see the end of new-product night vigils by the sycophants. In any case we will soon discover how much of the company model was based on Jobs ego, and how much was technology & value.

C'mon...

...that's just a parody of what an Apple hater would say...

...right?

I mean, you can't be serious???

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Now even MORE fantastic-ness for Apple investors.

In a conference call today, it was announced that Apple would be paying out about $10b in dividends, starting at a $2.65/share quarterly dividend starting in September. In addition, they will use some cash to repurchase shares to avoid dilution which would otherwise occur with employee stock options.

The call is online here: http://investor.apple.com/

Stock is again flirting with $600.

I wonder how many shareholders like me are already mentally preparing to reinvest their dividends in more fantastic Apple stuff?

Woo Hoo!!!

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Seriously? "Having beautiful graphics is now known as 'graphics-bloat'" is what you get from this:

If I am to believe the article, the old hardware has very limited space and is getting updates for features it doesn't support.

Pretty much.
Yes, you will end up 'losing space' on older devices. This 'problem' already happened with iphone/ipad universal apps, and then again with iphone4 'retina' apps. I don't think it was any kind of a major issues then, nor do I think it is now.

How about the 2nd part of my post? Any thoughts?

Uhm I don't think little kids in china are doing the transcription

Yes, dictation won't work with no internet. It compresses and sends sounds files to apples servers to be processed. If you need offline transcription, maybe dragon dictation or a different app would work offline, idk.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

So Apple products are all shiny on the outside, and mostly hollow on the inside, and like the Christmas joint that will be fit for the dumpster in a short time.

And like a chocolate Easter bunny !

And yes they cost a lot

Or not costing a lot, in the case of ipod touches, iphones and ipads....

which is why they will always be dogged by me-too producers. That aside there is some good and even useful technology there but it's sadly all depends on proprietary lock-in, technology silos. When your first interaction with your new phone is that that it needs your credit card number to do anything useful - then you're being locked-in to the apple view of technology.

Apple failed failed in the PC market (6% market share is failure)

Apple has 91% of market for $1,000+ PCs, says NPD

Nine out of 10 premium-priced PCs sold at US retail is a Mac

For the past 20 quarters, sales of Apple Macs - remember them? - have grown faster than the PC market

OMG - THE FAILURE OF IT ALL.

not b/c their product wasn't better than MS/PC but because their price points, limited products and closed-view made it a poor choice for most people. MS did a better job of supporting anything/everything on a PC.

Or because you defined failure in such a worthless way.

They seem to be doing better at getting all the sheep into the Apple corral for phones and pads. In part b/c people currently expect these systems to be pretty limited in scope. That story hasn't finished playing out, but I expect they will win those markets. The consequence is that they will then become the hated big-business monopoly (like MS) instead of the insurgent technology rebel firm.

So the imagery changes, and with the black-clad guru gone it seems likely we will soon see the end of new-product night vigils by the sycophants. In any case we will soon discover how much of the company model was based on Jobs ego, and how much was technology & value.

Haven't we already discovered that ?

 

[TheL8Elvis]

One area of legitimate criticism regarding apple product pricing is the extortionate price you pay for internal storage memory on their iOS range of products. For instance in the UK you pay £80 for the additional 16Gb for a 32Gb iPad.

Personally, I would like the prices to be lower in general. Especially the price discrepancy between the ipod touch and iphone (no-contract). (IE iphone being priced so much higher but being very similar hardware just without a cell radio)

But what methodology does one use to arrive at the conclusion that the price difference for higher capacity storage is too high ?

What would an appropriate price be ?

As was said (much earlier) in this thread, if they are selling every 'extortionately' priced ipad/iphone/ipod they make, then it seems obvious that they aren't priced too high, right ?