crApple's disposable products

[vk6zgo]

@benemorius:
So what do you suggest as alternative ? Critiquing is one thing... Coming up with a solution another...
Surely you don't mean socialism where a street sweeper makes the same as a brainsurgeon ? That too has been tried and the outcome was a society of streetsweepers , no food on the plank.

The fact is that Socialism & Capitalism in their pure forms have not been tried.
You would have to go back to "Year One"to see if they worked!

My feeling is that neither of them would work in that situation either!

The Soviet Union was just another Dictatorship using Socialism as its cover story.
There were a lot of street sweepers,but there were a lot of Party bosses living like kings,off the back of the poor deluded Workers.

It is notable that many Bosses, of whatever political persuasions, adopt the trappings of Feudalism,while feeding the "mugs" a lot of crap about whatever other "ism" they purport to represent.

The more successful societies of the present day,have a mix of Socialism & Capitalism,which works quite well.

Some things which are essential to any Nation-State must be in the hands of the Government,(hence the taxpayers),such as the Military forces,Customs,Law Enforcement,& a few others.
A private company can go broke & close its doors,the Army can't!

 In some countries a lot of services are provided by the State,others rely on the Private sector to provide many services.
Neither emphasis is better for every country,or permanent!

[free_electron]

That's not going to replace complex equipment (people are not going to make their own HDTV's);

aha. Here is a little element that almost anyone overlooks ..
Apple does NOT sell computers .... they sell appliances ! (apple-iances ? iAppleances ?)

Their machines are really treated like a dishwasher or a fridge. You buy the model you want and use it as-is. sure you can install software on it , but the base machine is an appliance ...

So if you want something you can tinker with ... buy something else ...

[saturation]

Many Apple products are manufactured either by cheap Chinese labor [ Foxconn] or automated robotic plants, or a mix of both.  Therefore cost to make complete units could be less than the cost to package, inventory, and distribute parts, and the personnel to man such, in USA or other first world country labor rates. 

While some transcendent conspiracy could be postulated, Occam's razor suggests the more plausible reason, a purely economic one, is likely a true reason.

In short, we have a system which does not merely allow, but in fact encourages and rewards waste, greed, and corruption.
(Oops. It's fascinating how one little paragraph can turn in to a novel during a routine proofread.)

[FJV]

Additionally, more and more males are adopting color, style, trend, entitlement, and time savings marketed products that have traditionally been targeted to women in that manner. Male marketing appealed to perceived need and quantitative specifications that logically presented a case why a product was better. Male's relative social status is hierarchal oriented, not horizontally where conformity is valued until recently.

Considering the past when "the ships were made of wood and the men were made of iron", the men wore make up and whigs, I don't really "get" the whole male female thing talked about here.

[jerry507]

This thread is hilarious. People are complaining about computers that can't be fixed (despite the fact that they are most of the time), and that Apple is just out to design computers that only last until Applecare runs out. News flash: Apple computers actually have resale value because they do continue to work. For a very long time. My MBP is from 2007, and despite a lot of serious dents and dings it still works just fine. I've replaced the fan twice without serious issue. That is likely the only mechanical part that will ever wear out. My optical drive died after a bad fall years ago. I never bothered to fix it because I absolutely don't care.

The SSD will wear out on these new ones, and it can be replaced. The motherboard is a single unit like every other computer and it will be replaced rather than repaired, as to do so would be a giant waste of money (by any vendor). The ram is soldered on, not a fan of that. But on the other hand the majority of their customers just buy it with all the ram in it they need.

Incidentally their warranty costs are a very manageable, 1% of annual revenue. That's hardly a product that wears out all the time.

Computers don't need to be super flexible and upgradeable. Technology advances so fast there is rarely much you can really do. Besides putting a new drive and more ram in my computer, there is nothing that I can do to really any laptop. I don't really like that I can't put more ram in it, but the cost difference is small compared to the total cost. It's ALWAYS a mistake to say that what YOU want is what MOST people want. Most people on this forum are already hostile to Apple products, so why exactly do you think you know what their customers want?

[Uncle Vernon]

Apple computers actually have resale value because they do continue to work. For a very long time.

Is this the bit where we're all supposed to swoon?

Incidentally their warranty costs are a very manageable, 1% of annual revenue.

And this helps the consumer how? For that matter it could also bring about the conclusion that there is an underspend on warranty.

Computers don't need to be super flexible and upgradeable.

For those  that this applies to Apple could be a viable option.

Most people on this forum are already hostile to Apple products

most skivvy wearing Macophile zealots are prone to wild generalisation. 

so why exactly do you think you know what their customers want?

And you are better qualified to offer opinion because? ...............

[free_electron]

. My MBP is from 2007

That's nothing in lifespan. My oldest machine
Case dates back to 1998, so does the power supply. A good yearly dusting with a blast of compressed air... Antec supply.
Motherboard and cpu date from 2000. Ram was upgraded several times. Harddisk is from 2002 graphics bosrd from 2005. Optical.. I dont know it was the first dvd recorder hp dvr100.. Later upgraded to a dvr 200 with a free trade in ( hp recalled the 100's because they promised a firmware update to do dvd-r , but could only do dvd+rw... )
Pentium iv 1.8 ghz.. Runs win xp . As smooth as the first day it was installed. Only software it runs is some compilers for embedded processors and the driver software for my dataman 48 programmer as well as my hilo all03 programmer.
Ik keep it around because it is my only desktop that still has a printerport and two serials...

Its probably worthless as a computer but a new device programmer would set me back quite an amount of money...

[T4P]

This thread is hilarious. People are complaining about computers that can't be fixed (despite the fact that they are most of the time), and that Apple is just out to design computers that only last until Applecare runs out. News flash: Apple computers actually have resale value because they do continue to work. For a very long time. My MBP is from 2007, and despite a lot of serious dents and dings it still works just fine. I've replaced the fan twice without serious issue. That is likely the only mechanical part that will ever wear out. My optical drive died after a bad fall years ago. I never bothered to fix it because I absolutely don't care.

The SSD will wear out on these new ones, and it can be replaced. The motherboard is a single unit like every other computer and it will be replaced rather than repaired, as to do so would be a giant waste of money (by any vendor). The ram is soldered on, not a fan of that. But on the other hand the majority of their customers just buy it with all the ram in it they need.

Incidentally their warranty costs are a very manageable, 1% of annual revenue. That's hardly a product that wears out all the time.

Computers don't need to be super flexible and upgradeable. Technology advances so fast there is rarely much you can really do. Besides putting a new drive and more ram in my computer, there is nothing that I can do to really any laptop. I don't really like that I can't put more ram in it, but the cost difference is small compared to the total cost. It's ALWAYS a mistake to say that what YOU want is what MOST people want. Most people on this forum are already hostile to Apple products, so why exactly do you think you know what their customers want?

They charge 5x the market price for extra RAM, geddit? I think you most probably are a crApple dickhead

[amyk]

This thread is hilarious. People are complaining about computers that can't be fixed (despite the fact that they are most of the time), and that Apple is just out to design computers that only last until Applecare runs out. News flash: Apple computers actually have resale value because they do continue to work. For a very long time. My MBP is from 2007, and despite a lot of serious dents and dings it still works just fine. I've replaced the fan twice without serious issue. That is likely the only mechanical part that will ever wear out. My optical drive died after a bad fall years ago. I never bothered to fix it because I absolutely don't care.

The SSD will wear out on these new ones, and it can be replaced. The motherboard is a single unit like every other computer and it will be replaced rather than repaired, as to do so would be a giant waste of money (by any vendor). The ram is soldered on, not a fan of that. But on the other hand the majority of their customers just buy it with all the ram in it they need.

Incidentally their warranty costs are a very manageable, 1% of annual revenue. That's hardly a product that wears out all the time.

Computers don't need to be super flexible and upgradeable. Technology advances so fast there is rarely much you can really do. Besides putting a new drive and more ram in my computer, there is nothing that I can do to really any laptop. I don't really like that I can't put more ram in it, but the cost difference is small compared to the total cost. It's ALWAYS a mistake to say that what YOU want is what MOST people want. Most people on this forum are already hostile to Apple products, so why exactly do you think you know what their customers want?

You forgot about the battery, the part that's likely to wear out before anything else in a laptop.

[saturation]

http://gizmodo.com/5919149/your-brain-scan-looks-different-on-mac-and-pc

Another reason real engineers use PCs, and Linux !

.. kidding aside, one real problem is the researchers failed to check their calibration during the studies and relied on the metrology schedule.

[jerry507]

They charge 5x the market price for extra RAM, geddit? I think you most probably are a crApple dickhead

This is a great example of the kind of idiot statements that come with Apple bashing. Two points. First, going from 4GB to 8GB costs 100$. Given that they ship with 2x2GB sticks which you'll have to replace anyway, you need 8GB of ram. A quick, stupidly simple, search of Newegg reveals that this would cost you around 50$ for some reasonable mid range ram. 5x suddenly becomes 2x. If you bothered to check your numbers like any reasonable engineer, you wouldn't be posting stupid stuff in this thread. Second, I looked at a Dell Alienware M14x laptop on Dells webpage (again just look the minimum number of steps to get there, nothing special). It comes with 6GB of ram and they want 75$ to go to 8GB. Granted, it's a sample size of one but the point is they don't actually charge any more than any other laptop manufacturer does. They ALL extort around 100$ out of you for the first step. Given that nearly all of them will ship multiple DIMMs instead of just one, you're always going to be buying that 50$ worth of new ram and never reusing the old stuff. This point is just absolutely garbage.

As to Uncle Vernons points, Apple computer owners very often times sell their old machines to offset the costs of their new ones. Getting 50% or more of the original purchase price back is a very nice thing. If we were talking about cars you wouldn't balk at the concept of resale value. Most PCs typically have low resale value, to the point where we usually don't even think about trying. But because we're talking about APPLE here, we can't consider any reasonable thought so F resale value all the way! Also, you must not understand what it means to have low warranty costs. If you recall, warranty costs are entirely paid by the manufacturer. Either they try and screw you out of any warranty repairs or they do a good job of making products with low failure rates. You probably have no experience with Apple warranties but everyone I've ever known has been quite happy and never been denied a warranty repair they deserved. They even replace bad power adapters which are nearly always bad because of excessive wear. Batteries are also replaced under Applecare (only because it's unlikely that your battery will die in the first year, it's also covered on the manufacturer warranty).

And free_electron, you're comparing apples and oranges. Desktops are not laptops. You can't upgrade a motherboard, graphics card or optical drive in a laptop. In every single mainstream manufacturer these components are fixed, and you'll only be looking at a new HDD and new ram. I upgraded both HDD and ram in my MBP because I knew I could do it for less myself and I also waited a year or two because I didn't have the money up front. While the latter is something a lot of people would like to do, the former isn't. Many, if not the vast majority, of every day consumers don't upgrade either over the lifespan of the machine. For 100$, it's not exactly ridiculous to just put the ram in up front. The SSD is upgradeable, just not a existing standard drive. New drives will be released for it, and yes they will probably cost a small percentage more. It's not ideal, but what is? This is quite dumb and they should have used a standard drive socket.

And amyk, thanks for that. You're absolutely right. Apparently it's 200$ to get it replaced. The older ones (that even *gasp* had to be replaced by a tech!) were only 130$ (the same price as the even older user replaceable ones...). That is absolute crap. Not sure why they had to glue it in instead of screws.

If you have little idea what you're talking about, it all seems terribly out of line and outrageous. Then you compare it to the rest of the market and oh look, pretty standard. Surprising.

[T4P]

Ha. I owned a HP with a high failure rate and they WILL entirely fix the laptop, i believe every part in the laptop broke at least twice if not thrice
Continue your dickhead stories about apple and bullshit about them all the way, all my laptops now have low failure rates and if they do break the repair centre takes it in.
Your love of this dickhead company called "Apple" has batteries that die after a year ... SADLY MINE DOESN'T and i'm always on the road

By the way, if you didn't know, you open up ANY laptop, they aren't soldered in, you can buy a similar CPU off-shelf and replace it?

Fair enough? The GPU's mostly uses MXM standard, which can again be replaced with a bigger model if you prefer

Looks like after all your years with apple you failed to realise other manufacturers actually MAKE laptops with INTERCHANGEABLE parts

Okay, look at this, really, it might not be that high over there but local Apple shops are charging a full brick for 4GB to 8GB < That's 200$ !
I bought my 4GB DDR3-1600 sticks for only 30$ !

So conclusion ? apple makes products that you can't touch, completely locked up, non-servicable and entirely useless
So far i saw from HP, Acer, Fujitsu ? I tore them down before
Processor : Interchangeable !
RAM : Upgradeable, no problems, fujitsu and acer came with 1 ram slot filled
GPU : The only laptop with discrete graphics is my fujitsu and it uses the MXM-3 standard (ALL current cards use this profile)
Board ? : Tough luck if this one spoils, who cares anyway
LCD Panel ? : Replaceable ODDLY!
Battery ? : Okay, it's not BUT AT LEAST IT'S NOT FREAKING GLUED ON
Keyboard : Replaceable AGAIN
DVD Drive : Hot swappable on the HP and fujitsu but again it's replaceable
Now the biggest part HARDDISK ! It is ... SATA3 and easy to put back! Damn they have a door for it
What else ... FANS : They are available off-the-shelf
Power supply : Fujitsu uses nearly the same plug for all laptops, not a big deal, HP might not but once again not a big deal
There's a reason fujitsu uses a 95W power supply for all laptops

So your statement : "You can't upgrade a motherboard, graphics card or optical drive in a laptop" makes you dimmer then a dimwit
" SOMEBODY GET ME MY VOLTAGE DOUBLER I HAVE A GENUINE ISSUE HERE "

[Omicron]

makes you dimmer then a dimwit

I 'm sorry, but this kind of language belongs in the school playground. It's fair enough to have an opinion and we all visit forums like these to be able to discuss. But it would be nice if some basic politeness can be shown. You may have strong feelings about this topic. That still doesn't mean that anyone with a different opinion than yours should be stamped "dimwit".

[G7PSK]

The only laptop worth having is a Panasonic toughbook. They are truly indestructible (well almost) you can drop them wet them sit on them they will even stop a bullet.

  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1783054/posts

[A Hellene]

Apparently, MacBooks cannot stop bullets.



Source (haaretz.com)


-George

[free_electron]

join the pissing contest 

mac user piss in neatly aligned trajectory , all aimed in the same direction hitting the preset target at the same distance. no droplets on the floor.
PC users piss in two general direction (depending if they are linux or windows pissers) , not realing caring if they splatter a bit on the floor. They'll mop it up later. if they encounter a pc-pisser from a different camp they turn at each other trying to get the 'other camp' wet. If i mac user joins they will call a temporary truce and form a pc-vs-mac alliance team up trying to get mac pisser wet , or at least break his concentration.

Outsiders looking at the pissing contest and get the urge to let it rip too ... like really baaaaad , but they don't know how to get their fly open ...

[lowimpedance]

I don't know which is more pointless and dull:

1/ Listening to people who ARE NOT FORCED to buy Apple kit, rant on about it.

2/ Listening to Apple apologists defend, and create obscure reasoning for everything Apple.

You're all bickering as if this even matters; it's a Mac - buy it or don't, who cares? Noone.

huh.................... reminds me of a recent thread !! 

[Uncle Vernon]

As to Uncle Vernons points, Apple computer owners very often times sell their old machines to offset the costs of their new ones. Getting 50% or more of the original purchase price back is a very nice thing.

That's nice for them, just a damn pity so many of them cannot do it quietly. I hear that collectors of antique clocks can return a tidy profit too, and couldn't give a flying fernando about that either.

If we were talking about cars you wouldn't balk at the concept of resale value.

We are not and again I couldn't care less about any Prius or POS heap of euro crap you maycare to bang on about.

Most PCs typically have low resale value, to the point where we usually don't even think about trying.

You could see a similar trend for most hammers It doesn't preclude their being an extremely useful tool. WTF buys any tool for it's resale value?

But because we're talking about APPLE

Well actually we were talking about Apples deliberate obsolescence of their products. I guess that was your invitation to  don the skivvy and bang on senseless about the virtue of white plastic.

here, we can't consider any reasonable thought

Clearly! You've undergone the Apple thought modification and now see it as your born again role to evangelise to PC users everywhere.

Also, you must not understand what it means to have low warranty costs.

No the only misunderstanding is your inability to STFU with your Apple evangelising, and your inability to consider that any opinion that differs with your own could actually be a valid one.

If you recall, warranty costs are entirely paid by the manufacturer.

No they are not! I don't see Apple subsidising the cost of a cross state trip to face some condescending twerp labelled genius. Nor do I see any recompense for the hours lost convincing said twerp that yes it is broken regardless of whether or not that eventuality was ever considered in his customer interface manual.

Either they try and screw you out of any warranty repairs or they do a good job of making products with low failure rates.

That or any one of the myriad other possibilities you have failed to consider.

You probably have no experience with Apple warranties

You probably have no experience with the principle of an open mind. HTF do you no what exposure or have or have not had? Just your in-considered guesses.

but everyone I've ever known

Well there is an indicative sample group. Did you all come to the same conclusion or was it something your read from the grand wizard's fortnightly newsletter?

has been quite happy and never been denied

Yeah yeah, and the girl with big norks plays a mean tambourine. Meanwhile back in reality land.

They even replace bad power adapters which are nearly always bad because of excessive wear.

How? HTF do your wear out a PSU. If the product has a given life, then surely it's ancillaries should last for a similar period.

Batteries are also replaced under Applecare (only because it's unlikely that your battery will die in the first year, it's also covered on the manufacturer warranty).

So only parts unlikely to fail are covered?

If you have little idea what you're talking about, it all seems terribly out of line and outrageous.

Perhaps you'd care to ponder on your own advice!

Then you compare it to the rest of the market and oh look, pretty standard. Surprising.

For the most part Apple is the only one of the majors welding the bonnet shut on service replacement across their entire product range, if you cannot grasp the implications of this your skivvy is way too tight!

[jerry507]

Lots of stuff that has little to do with the topic at hand and wasn't well thought through regardless.

If it's perfectly acceptable for someone to post a poorly thought through topic with plenty of factually incorrect information, why isn't it perfectly acceptable for others to respond telling them exactly that? The topic wasn't started as a boast about Apple being awesome, but it was responded to by plenty of people who just can't "do it quietly."

[A Hellene]

There is a fairly new documentary about planned obsolescence, called The Light Bulb Conspiracy (2010) and it can be watched on YouTube:


The documentary begins with an extended reference to the first organised successful attempt of planned obsolescence by the Phoebus Cartel in 1924, whose members, that were manufacturing light bulbs, 'fixed' the life expectancy of their bulbs at less than 1,000 hours.

Though I am not pointing fingers at Apple for their obvious planned obsolescence policies only, there is the general concept of the finite earth resources against the infinite 'printing' (or the generation) of fiat money out of thin air: You cannot print minerals, oil or any other raw materials, while you can print fiat money without restrictions; which means that the current economic model is seriously flawed; yet this model is still evangelised at the Academia and the consumers are conditioned to follow it religiously...

But noooo: We have to keep on replacing out shiny iShit before it gets too old and the other sheeple begin thinking of us as old-fashioned or, even worse, as poor... We are proud capitalists --whatever that means!

I have recently written something similar, about the fraudulent Keynesianism, the economic theory according to which, every person (human or corporation) should be accumulating interest-bearing debt (borrowing fiat money) like there is no tomorrow --especially those who already are heavily indebted...


-George

[Uncle Vernon]

« Reply #51 on: Today at 19:56:54 »
You are ignoring this user.

If only nature had an ignore or reset function too. Some people just beg for a [Ctr]+[Alt]+[Del]   

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--Please, please, folks, is it really necessary to get so hateful and personal in a discussion where there are two sides both of which comprise millions of people. They cannot all be D*ckheads, and non of them needs to STFU. It has been my experience that people who get extremely hostile at the drop of a hat, are the first ones to run and tattle to the moderator, if anyone says anything they do not like. We have even seen someone get so angry that they accused their opponent of hijacking his own thread.  And on another occasion a person stated that the person he was arguing with had a deficient [intelect]. So sometimes these guys can provide (unintentional) humor, but mostly they just drag down the tone of this respected forum.

--I have even seen people who insult the nationality of individuals they disagree with. Some people seem to use fighting words and profanity, instead of cogent argument. I really enjoy a vigorous debate in this forum, but when people start getting hateful and personal, I can only conclude that they feel they are loosing the argument.

"All I wants of you, Cap'n Simmons, is plain seevility, and that of the commonest goddamndest kind!"
Zeph W. Pease

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[A Hellene]

Speaking previously of the seriously flawed economic model of our debt based economy, please admire its wisdom in global scale, presented by the economics professor Antony Davies, Ph.D:


Here is the debt chart alone.


-George

[SeanB]

Wonder if i should send Dave one of my old light bulbs, made some time before 1939.

[jerry507]

Sorry "Uncle Vernon", but your pedantic nature and multi-quoted foolishness just causes my eyes to see this:

It's a really sad thing that you cannot BEAR to be wrong, and quite an unattractive character flaw.

Couldn't have said it better myself.