Snake oil

[skarecrow]

I stupidly didn't think about the possible war that could start because of my post, so I'll just go hide in a corner. I personally no longer use anything made by Apple because of my experiences with them, but like I always say, use what works for YOU, not what works for ME.

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

[Mr. Scram]

No I'm saying that it's a tool. It is a device for producing something. It's a complicated screwdriver. It's an income generator for me. The screwdriver happens not to disintegrate in your hands. The implication that you are a dumbass for picking a tool is immature and reminiscent of the "my dad can fight your dad" in the playground 

If something doesn't do something at all or fails to live up to its claims then that's on topic.

I'm still not quite sure what the "fixing shit" comment was meant to convey, but I understand you're saying they're tools that happen to be convenient to you? My biggest problem with Apple right now is that providing support for multiple platforms isn't always convenient or easy, but more of a logistics thing, rather than brand specific.

Unfortunately, you can see people showing this behaviour everywhere. AMD versus Nvidia. Makita versus Bosch. Ford versus Chevy. Somehow people love to live in camps and defend it to the death, typically against all reason. I'm glad not everyone likes it exactly like I do, because things would become fairly unworkable rather soon.

[CJay]

Like me with my 2x MBP's, 4x iPhones, 1x iMac, 1x Apple TV in the house 

(I use them because I make glorious piles of money rather than fixing shit)

Apple fan boi here too, our 3 main computers in our house are Mac's, but I also run a Linux server and a Windows server. Using Mac's means ease of use and a generally hassle free computing experience. They also last 7 - 10 years (my 2007 MacBook is only just EOL now) so are worth the cost.

Longevity is a regular advantage claimed for Macs and it's a claim that holds up, they do last pretty well but then so do pro grade Wintel machines, what don't last all that well are the bargain basement recycled yoghurt pot Wintel computers you can buy for a fifth of (or lower) price.

I've only just retired my HP Elitebook 6930p and the only reason is because something better came along, coupled with the prohibitive price of sticking more obsolete and now expensive memory into it.

It was getting on for 8-9 years old and still working perfectly well.

I like Macs, they work, what I don't like is Apple and the horrifically high prices they charge.

Other than that, if money were no object, I'd probably have a Mac or two.

iPhones, another story entirely, I've been trying to get to grips with one for the past fortnight (unfortunate incident involving a Google Pixel and a bowl of water), I hate it, absolutely loath the iPhone but unless I can lay hands on a decent Android smartphone I'm stuck with it for another year or more.

[djos]

iPhones, another story entirely, I've been trying to get to grips with one for the past fortnight (unfortunate incident involving a Google Pixel and a bowl of water), I hate it, absolutely loath the iPhone but unless I can lay hands on a decent Android smartphone I'm stuck with it for another year or more.

Lol, it's funny how we all have different preferences, I had an Android phone for work for 2 years and found it irritating, I've bought my own iPhones ever since and claimed work use on tax.

I dont hate Android and did like certain things about Android, I just prefer the consistency of the iPhone UI and the Family device mgmt functionality of iOS makes my life easy as a dad with young kids who have iPads.

[bd139]

Just some quantitative stuff to back up my assertions about reliability.

I'll write down my experiences quickly as I have a vast experience across lots of different platforms.

On the mobile front, I spent a number of years with Android and Windows Phone. For me, the handset is a communication and entertainment device. Both failed at that for my use cases regularly. I'm going to ignore Windows Phone which was a complete disaster across the board the moment Windows Phone 10 came out. Particularly I found that Android required a lot of maintenance, particularly at inconvenient times, all the media options were quite unreliable and the storage story was awful, including several events where 6 and 7 hosed the device entirely with qualified SD cards. Once I ended up with a randomly hosed handset on the road, stuck in a Travelodge in Manchester with a meeting to get to in an hour. I don't have time for that shit. After spending hours managing media and fixing my stuff, I eventually I just said fuck it and bought a 128Gb iPhone 6s and use Apple Music (which gets shared with all 5 household members). It has a number of irritations (everything does!) but I genuinely have to do no maintenance on it ever. It just works. Over the lifetime of the device it works out at £40/month excluding the contract but frees up between 5-10 hours of maintenance and moving files around every month. My leisure time is worth more than £8/hour to me. Also if I break it, I can walk into an Apple store and walk out with another handset on the same day because I paid for Apple Care. If you've ever dealt with 3rd party support companies who do most of the maintenance, you'll understand why this is attractive. One Motorola handset I had failed entirely after a month and came back with no repair after a month with water damage apparently. It wasn't water damaged. The repairer water damaged it because it was cheaper than repairing it. Barclaycard sorted that one out.

I'll concede on Apple Pricing on laptops. It's pretty high. My daily driver laptop was a top end 15" MBP (i7, 16Gb, 1TiB SSD) and cost me just over £3k when I bought it. But that was in 2013. I was paying around £1500 for a T-series ThinkPad before that which was lasting about 18 months and thanks to windows (which isn't all that great for us Linux and AWS wranglers) I was burning hours a month on friction and broken shit.  This thing hasn't had a single problem since I got it. Not one in 4 years. I expect to get 6 years out of it. So that's £42/month.

So I'm running my entire operation on a £82/month budget (which is a tiny fraction of my post-tax income) and get top line hardware that doesn't get in my way and when I'm tired of it, I get a quite frankly ridiculously large 30-40% return on what I sell.

A note though on subsidies. When you purchase a PC based laptop, a lot of the time you're paying less than cost price for the laptop as some of the cost is usually subsidised by Microsoft who will try and use it to upsell you subscription services (windows SKU upgrades, office etc) and crapware by third parties. When you buy a Mac, there are no subsidies. You're paying for all the services that they issue with it such as calendaring, cloud, mail, messaging, pages/numbers (which aren't that bad), mapping, navigation, contact management, the lot up front. There are two upsells which are Apple Music and more cloud storage, both of which I buy because they are cheaper than working around it to be honest and they work very well. This is evidenced by the fact that half of the new UWP apps that ship with windows 10 are advertising driven and telemetry.

I think a lot of friction people experience when moving between platforms is the naive expectation that if you walk into a room, all the chairs are going to be exactly where you want them. You have to go in open-minded and thoroughly researched and don't try and move all the chairs around.

Now there are a few turds I will say. The first is software availability. As much as I like it, some stuff only runs on windows. But that sits in a VM and stays out of the way. If windows goes pop, it gets reverted to a snapshot and the world carries on.  Also I'm not too sure about the current line MacBook Pro and the new function key display but I really rarely use function keys (as I'm a unix guy) so perhaps this isn't a problem.

[Specmaster]

Personally I prefer Android and Windows over IOS systems and the way I see it is quite simple really, the advantage of IOS however has over the others is that there is only 1 manufacturer and they can control the quality of their product and therefore their reputation because there is no-one else to blame when and if things go wrong.

I like Android really I suppose because they are far cheaper to buy than the IOS counterpart so I have always had Android and never experienced a really nasty problem with them either. I have to say as well that I have never owned or used an IOS phone either so I have no real firsthand knowledge of using and living with one.

One of the biggest dislikes about iPhones is the fact that the battery is sealed in whereas on most of the Android phones, they are easy to remove if the phone ever freezes on you and also to replace when they reach the point that they don't hold charge very well.

A company I was working for moved over to Windows 10 phones and after a bit of getting used to, using a bd139 terminology, the biggest problem with operating it was the fact that the chairs had been arranged in a different order, once learned where they were it was not a problem.

When it comes to computers, Again the path chosen was down to price point and also the choice of software, which was largely dictated by companies I worked for as the system and software had to be 100% compatible with their system which is 99% of the business community is going to Microsoft based except for certain industries that have always traditionally gone down the IOS (Apple) route.

So thats why I favour Android and Windows over Apple and IOS, not to mention that there is a far bigger choice of phones and computers then there is with Apple products and is because the OS and the platform is open for development by third parties who write software to run on it and also hardware to exploit the OS. The biggest problem is also born out of their strength, is that they do not restrict access to it and neither do they enforce as much quality control as Apple do

[chris_leyson]

Lysergic acid diethylamide is absorbed through skin but oil made out of snakes probably isn't as good, what was the topic anyway ?

[Mr. Scram]

The problem I've had so far with iOS and OS X devices is that they're not as bulletproof as they are reported to be. Something inevitably turns out not to work and unless you're a CLI wizard on that platform, you won't have much feedback about what's wrong and little to no tools to fix it. It can be a frustrating experience.

That's what I mostly like about Windows and Android. You can find pretty much any and all software you could imagine for it, you can change anything you like to the point of breaking things completely and if things break, you have a nice array of tools to help you deal with that. Though I must admit, Apple's consistent updates and some of the more secure hardware on the market is appealing. It also doesn't help that the Android software support situation currently is an utter mess, or that the freedom and control that made Windows so appealing in the past appears to be disappearing quickly due to the new Microsoft course.

[bd139]

I am a terminal wizard so I’m good (20 years of unix admin experience).

Everyone wants the App Store model because they see Apple doing well. MSFT will do a 180 when market dwindles. I hope they do anyway as I’m going to be honest and say that the most productive software stack ever was when they dropped Windows desktop, server and dev tools at the same time.

[Mr. Scram]

I am a terminal wizard so I’m good (20 years of unix admin experience).

Everyone wants the App Store model because they see Apple doing well. MSFT will do a 180 when market dwindles. I hope they do anyway as I’m going to be honest and say that the most productive software stack ever was when they dropped Windows desktop, server and dev tools at the same time.

Doing what Apple does is the stupidest thing they can do. They won't be able to match the Apple proposition, for a number of reasons I won't go into, and will lose what actually is their selling point in the process.

[bd139]

Indeed. On topic for sure, MSFT's marketing is snake oil at the moment.

[Fungus]

Indeed. On topic for sure, MSFT's marketing is snake oil at the moment.

Yep. They've spent more than a decade and billions of $$$ trying to play catch-up with Apple and Google, all the time alienating their core customer base (Windows 8 anybody?  )

[Specmaster]

One of the big things that holds Apple back from being what they could be is their approach to software. Bringing out all their regular updates to the OS and then once people with slightly older devices realise that they just bricked their device because their platform is not capable of running the latest OS. They don't offer a roll back system where in cases like that you could be rolled to the system you were running before. Thus forcing customers to update their device, which they may elect to do so but move away from Apple to one of the other platforms.

[Mr. Scram]

One of the big things that holds Apple back from being what they could be is their approach to software. Bringing out all their regular updates to the OS and then once people with slightly older devices realise that they just bricked their device because their platform is not capable of running the latest OS. They don't offer a roll back system where in cases like that you could be rolled to the system you were running before. Thus forcing customers to update their device, which they may elect to do so but move away from Apple to one of the other platforms.

I don't quite think that an accident or holding them back. Whether it's full-on intent or wilful neglect, the last update on a device always seem a lot slower than previous updates were. As a company, you don't want inevitably vulnerable devices floating around anyway, so getting rid of them isn't a terrible idea. At least on paper it isn't.

[bd139]

I’ve never actually observed any slowing down. My 2013 MBP still goes like lightning. My 2010 MBP is still supported and goes like lightning. Only thing that got a bit cranky were the 32 bit iPhones but there was a massive architectural change at the OS level when they did that switcheroo.

Apple are supporting handsets that are 5 years old and computers going back 8 years.

To be honest we cycle all our hardware in the office every 24 months.

Android - a year or patches if you’re lucky, if you’re not, none! Windows phone - they just canned the entire platform. MS has also dumped support for surface machines that are less than 18 months old. Also let’s not forget windows RT. Hmm...

We have banned android handsets and windows phone ones it has got that bad. You get a managed iOS device and that’s it.

I think a lot of knowledge about the Apple ecosystem is rumour mill at best.

[Mr. Scram]

It's not the supported devices that are the problem, it's the last update before devices lose support. But yes, the Android update situation is absolutely dreadful. Windows Phone, well, yeah.

Microsoft actually had a nice product going, but the inconsistency has killed it, along with any future mobile products. No one will be stupid enough to invest in anything new with the shaky commitment Microsoft displayed. If you want to be in the enterprise market, you have to play the long game.

[bd139]

Yeah I’ll admit that I was an early windows phone adopter and had WP7 and 8 handsets. At the time they were pretty good. WP8.1 and WP1 were turds though.

[Specmaster]

Well I was more concerned personally with desktop machines and yes there was a some very flaky releases of the Windows OS but at least you had a choice of if you wanted to update or not. I have some desktops still running windows XP to support older types of programs that are still perfectly capable pieces of software and so are the desktops, some running Windows 7, one running Windows 10, one laptop running XP and another with Windows 10 on it. Of course if I wanted to take 10 of my desktop and revert back to XP or 7 I can do so with reasonable ease, in fact I have just purchased some new copies of XP and 7 for the purpose that I can swap them about easily, is the same true for MB's

With Android, yes I agree that updates is left with the makers of the device to implement, it means that if they decide not to actively support it with updates any longer, you are still left with a workable phone / tablet as long as the apps continue to support older versions.

Compare that with the Apple updates for their iPads and iPhones where you just get a message saying that there is an update available, you only find out after you have updated that it is a one way option, no going back and that sometimes the new system can turn it into a brick if the phone is old enough that the architecture cannot support the new OS.

It is also true that if there is a major update, that some of the not so old devices really struggle to run effectively on it and seems to be positively steam driven as the new system slows it down to a crawl.

My 3 sons and wife all went with Apple for their phones and tablets and have all suffered this effect so much so that they have been forced to update to newer units because the updates affected the way that they could use them. It has gotten so bad now that they watch the various forums for reports of how the new updates have affected older units and in some cases they have stuck with older OS's because the newer ones would seriously affect them. Two of my sons are still using IOS 10, the 3rd has just upgraded his phone.

I on the other hand still have all of my older Android Tablets and phones and they are all operational even though there has been no updates for them for years and for the most part, all of the installed apps are still supported.

I do actually own an official iPad Air, iPod Classic and iPod touch, the Classic has just stopped working and Apple will not support this at all, the Touch is still working as is the iPad Air which about 18 months old, running version 10 and there is an update to version 11 if I want to update it. It is working just fine just I'm not risking it.

[djos]

I’ve never actually observed any slowing down. My 2013 MBP still goes like lightning. My 2010 MBP is still supported and goes like lightning. Only thing that got a bit cranky were the 32 bit iPhones but there was a massive architectural change at the OS level when they did that switcheroo.

Apple are supporting handsets that are 5 years old and computers going back 8 years.

To be honest we cycle all our hardware in the office every 24 months.

Android - a year or patches if you’re lucky, if you’re not, none! Windows phone - they just canned the entire platform. MS has also dumped support for surface machines that are less than 18 months old. Also let’s not forget windows RT. Hmm...

We have banned android handsets and windows phone ones it has got that bad. You get a managed iOS device and that’s it.

I think a lot of knowledge about the Apple ecosystem is rumour mill at best.

One  reason I dislike the Android platform is the poor state of end user support - it took HTC 18 months to update my phone to 4.0 and the carrier bloatware was horrendous. I eventually rooted the phone and installed a custom ROM whcih I really liked, aside from the never quite fixed Bluetooth and some other bugs.

Then I had to revert to the official ROM on the pain of losing my job with HP as they brought in security policy forbidding custom droid ROM's and made it an instantly sackable offense.

Living in the Apple walled garden isnt perfect either, but at least I never have to worry about my phone becoming abandonware 6 months after release and the carriers arent allowed to install crapware on my phone. I was also impressed by the support my old iPad 2 got, it had continual upgrades for 5 years (We keep tablets for a long time in our family, phones get replaced on contract every 2 years).

I Also dislike the cowboy attitude Google has to app security, I see almost weekly reports on infested Android apps being delivered from the play store to 100's of thousands of users. I also object to Android being almost entirely a user information collection platform to help drive Googles ad platforms.

[CJay]

One  reason I dislike the Android platform is the poor state of end user support - it took HTC 18 months to update my phone to 4.0 and the carrier bloatware was horrendous. I eventually rooted the phone and installed a custom ROM whcih I really liked, aside from the never quite fixed Bluetooth and some other bugs.

I think this thread has been derailed far enough that it should probably be split but...

Part of the problem with Android VS. Apple is that carriers have a lot more freedom to add their own bloatware and/or withhold updates on Android phones, it's more a carrier problem than a specifically Android one, choose your carrier wisely or buy your phone outright and go SIM Only and you get a better end user experience.

Apple for all the bad they can be, operate a tightly controlled eco system which is pretty much guaranteed to work well because they control it from end to end but the moment you step outside of that they wash their hands of you and you're on your own, there's no going back unless you buy back in which isn't cheap.

[Specmaster]

Part of the problem with Android VS. Apple is that carriers have a lot more freedom to add their own bloatware and/or withhold updates on Android phones, it's more a carrier problem than a specifically Android one, choose your carrier wisely or buy your phone outright and go SIM Only and you get a better end user experience.

Thats why all of my own personal phones have been SIM only and I still have workable phones as a result. Also as mentioned earlier I do have experience of both systems, and both are flawed in some way or other, end of the day you pay your money and take your pick, its as simple as that.

[The Electrician]

Has anyone seen these:

http://www.powerelectronics.com/alternative-energy/new-discovery-could-lead-commercial-production-permanent-magnet-motors?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20171115_ED-003_191&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_2_b&utm_rid=CPG05000003328974&utm_campaign=14085&utm_medium=email&elq2=a5c0e8f11f7649fc8746cb507a990c65

http://www.powerelectronics.com/alternative-energy/permanent-magnet-motor-feasible

[Mr. Scram]

Has anyone seen these:

http://www.powerelectronics.com/alternative-energy/new-discovery-could-lead-commercial-production-permanent-magnet-motors?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20171115_ED-003_191&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_2_b&utm_rid=CPG05000003328974&utm_campaign=14085&utm_medium=email&elq2=a5c0e8f11f7649fc8746cb507a990c65

http://www.powerelectronics.com/alternative-energy/permanent-magnet-motor-feasible

How many of these permanent magnet motors are they going to build? 

At least these folks used proper references. It's something.

[Bashstreet]

There are many sources of free energy only thing that cost in resource is to make methods to collect them.

[StillTrying]

Why are the editors of http://www.powerelectronics.com/alternative-energy/permanent-magnet-motor-feasible

believing this, are they nuts.

A Motor Driven Entirely by Permanent Magnets Provides Clean, Abundant and Inexpensive Energy
The most incredible discovery of the century!
Simultaneous attract and repel between two permanent magnets with opposite poles facing produces an attract-repel sequence without reversing polarity and can drive a motor without electricity.
http://www.kedronenergy.com