A couple of years back I was going to buy a maxed-out quad-core mini-Mac but knowing that a new model was about to be announced, I waited.
They dropped the quad-core and it was almost immediately unavailable.
Now, in all fairness this was because a quad-core with the newer CPU required a different motherboard to the dual-core, so this was an Intel/economies of scale issue.
However there is still no quad-core option available.
I got tired of waiting and put together a (much cheaper) Gentoo Linux box.
I was then looking at buying a MacBook Pro laptop, but couldn't see the point in paying a premium for older hardware. I bought a Chromebook Pixel instead.
I am not regretting either decision.
I bought the iPhone SE because I knew it would be the last iPhone with a headphone jack. I don't expect Apple to have a change of heart so no doubt when the time comes to replace my iPhone I will have to buy Android.
It's a shame. Apple used to care about users because it needed to look after them. That made good engineering a priority. Nowadays it believes in good marketing instead. And so for example we have ever thinner iPhones that mechanically flex and eventually cause screen issues if they don't just break outright.
With Apple you pay a premium price for a premium product. It's no longer a premium product - but it's still a premium price.
Great esthetics at the expense of good engineering has been Apple's way for a long time. Whenever there is a choice between making something look nice vs, making it be durable or last long, they opt for it to look nice. If they can make you fall in love with a device, you won't mind paying to replace it when it breaks.
Tell me, what is the logic behind buying a beautiful but fragile iPhone if you must encase it in an Otter Box just to survive daily use and the occasional drop? Who cares how thin it is or about the hue of the rose gold if it's buried inside a thick case?
I read a story about how Apple despised the look of Dell charging cables with their thick cable reinforcers everywhere a cable interfaced with a plug or electrical component. So Apple made thin cables with no reinforcers that would easily get damaged from normal use, and people would have to go buy more cables.
Why have iPhone screens been so fragile? Because they are pretty. All my iPhone friends would keep using their cracked phones because they didn't want to pay to fix them. What's so pretty about walking around with a cracked screen?
The world was a better place when Nokia engineering was a dominant influence. Attractive durability is superior to what Apple sells.
lol what? i'm not sure where you get that sentiment but apple has always been about good engineering. sure they've had their design flaws and mistakes, but more often than not they are pushing the boundaries of what can be done(minus what i consider their latest phone offerings)
i think you're forgetting in the age of plastic laden laptops the things like the air were considered impressive engineering wise. overpriced, sure. but solid. the built quality of my old macbook pro was leaps and bounds beyond any pc equivalent at the time. apple trackpads/screens and touch sensitivity have still yet to be matched.
you can criticize apple's pricing, proprietary lock-in and a host of other things, but i think quality of engineering is definitely not one of them.
They dropped the quad-core and it was almost immediately unavailable.
Now, in all fairness this was because a quad-core with the newer CPU required a different motherboard to the dual-core, so this was an Intel/economies of scale issue.
However there is still no quad-core option available.
I got tired of waiting and put together a (much cheaper) Gentoo Linux box.
I was then looking at buying a MacBook Pro laptop, but couldn't see the point in paying a premium for older hardware. I bought a Chromebook Pixel instead.
I am not regretting either decision.
I bought the iPhone SE because I knew it would be the last iPhone with a headphone jack. I don't expect Apple to have a change of heart so no doubt when the time comes to replace my iPhone I will have to buy Android.
It's a shame. Apple used to care about users because it needed to look after them. That made good engineering a priority. Nowadays it believes in good marketing instead. And so for example we have ever thinner iPhones that mechanically flex and eventually cause screen issues if they don't just break outright.
With Apple you pay a premium price for a premium product. It's no longer a premium product - but it's still a premium price.