
I’ve used Apple computers my entire life.  why I'm never buying one again - Varcht
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-im-never-buying-an-apple-computer-again-2018-11
======
Isamu
It's just a product. Not something to feel betrayed over.

>But I don't like owning things I can't tinker with or fix even a little, both
out frugality and a desire to create a little less waste in the world.

Perfectly good reason. Apple is not going to stop trying to make its products
just a bit thinner, or otherwise pursue some other overall aesthetic design
goal. Repairability absolutely takes a back seat.

>As noted by Business Insider, Apple is increasingly becoming a luxury brand.

Not quite true - that is, they have ALWAYS gone for the higher margin. They
flirted with very expensive watches, but that seems to have gone away. They
have always gone for the high end though.

~~~
true_tuna
It’s not just a product. Apple is so much more. Trying to say it’s just a
product is either severely misguided or a lie. Apple is a whole lock-in
ecosystem. Good luck getting your music out of iTunes. iMessage is not
available on other platforms. Can I pair my Apple Watch to my android? Can
another platform project to an Apple TV?

But that’s fine, they’re betraying what they used to stand for (the things
that brought us to them in the first place) so it’s not worth it anymore. I’ll
never buy an Apple computer again either. And I’m not a casual Apple user.
Bought my first Mac (with a black screen in the age before hard drives) when I
was 12 (mom paid for half but the rest was money I saved). Worked in the my
campus’s first iMac lab. Deployed and maintained macs for the next decade. I
was loyal not to a brand but to a product focused company- because they took
care of their customers, because their products just worked, because they were
fighting for something better than the boring mess that was windows. They
appealed to education customers and creative people. The products cost more,
but lasted longer and were a joy to use. They made big moves and bold plays
that in retrospect were sound. Eliminating the floppy drive, taking a chance
on FireWire. But lately they’ve gotten arrogant and disdainful. “Ask me again
later” is a slap in the face. How about “No” motherfucker? USBC is a fucking
joke. It was a mistake and they simply can’t admit it. Everybody has a handful
of dongles on their desk, more complexity for no gain. Charging over usb is
fine, but is it really better than MagSafe? (No, no it is not) Where can I buy
a usbc keyboard? Maybe from the company going all in on USBC? Nope.

Whatever, I’m done. I went Linux two years ago and never looked back. Tried to
go to Android too, but it’s just too terrible. I’ll ditch my iPhone too when I
can no longer buy one with a headphone jack.

In conclusion fuck Apple. And to all the apologists saying get over it? No.
They’re destroying something that used to be great. I refuse to forget. I’ll
take the spirit they have abandoned and I’ll make it mine. I’ll hold them as
an example of what not to do, and example of where not to go wrong. And I’ll
never forget. Neither should any of you.

~~~
crooked-v
> Where can I buy a usbc keyboard? Maybe from the company going all in on
> USBC? Nope.

Apple doesn't sell USB-C keyboards because Apple doesn't sell wired keyboards
at all anymore.

> USBC is a fucking joke. It was a mistake and they simply can’t admit it.
> Everybody has a handful of dongles on their desk, more complexity for no
> gain. Charging over usb is fine, but is it really better than MagSafe? (No,
> no it is not)

There's substantial gains in USB-C. For example: no-fuss 4K monitor hookups
that also act as charging connections.

------
sircastor
I feel this way a lot myself. I've been a Mac user my entire life and feel
like Apple isn't interested in making a machine for me. The designers favor
identity brand over functionality (for my purposes anyway).

OTOH, I'm also forced to recognize that my learning and growth had pushed me
out of the space of the "computer for the rest of us." But I'm sadly not quite
ready to leave.

~~~
RickS
> my learning and growth had pushed me out of the space of the "computer for
> the rest of us." But I'm sadly not quite ready to leave.

This implies that apple started as a layman's computer, and their market
position has remained stable over the last, say, 15 years.

I'm not sure that's true. While your capabilities and requirements may have
grown in that time, I think Apple made a similar and opposite transition, away
from a (relatively) low quantity of high power users to a high quantity of low
power users.

This movement has left a palpable void in computing. You can get great tech
specs anywhere, but apple's hardware and OS usability are something special,
and no longer being the target of that blessing is a heavy blow.

This is an idea that I find comes up a lot, but that I don't feel is common
knowledge, so if anyone feels differently about it, or can validate it with
some data, I'd really like to know.

------
marrone12
I have been using Macs for the past 12 years and am nearing the end of my
rope. I received the toucbar MBP through work and I hate it due to all the
reasons popularized.

But while Mac might take a hostile approach in terms of hardware, Windows
takes one with their software. I feel stuck. I also find linux still too janky
and don't have the same patience I did as a teenager to go through myriad
settings and configuration files just to get things working or looking good.

~~~
appleiigs
Linux has been pain-free for me this year. Ubuntu Budgie and Pop!_OS distros
feel polished to me now on my desktop. With Budgie I don't do any config at
all. I did do about 15 mins of config with Pop and got it looking and set up
exactly how I like it. Settled on Pop as my daily driver.

For a laptop, been using a $300 chromebook. With Crostini I get all my linux
apps that I use hassle free. I also use Google Docs and Sheets and Bitbucket
for my personal stuff - I switch between my laptop and desktop seamlessly. I
use my work Citrix if have to work from home (eg. MS Office).

Nothing on my Mac that I miss.

~~~
marrone12
That's cool. I have a small (11") windows laptop that I put Ubuntu on and it
took me a bit to have all the display settings to work properly, especially
with HiDPI and weird scaling. Nothing ever looked quite right for me.

I had a chromebook for a bit and I really loved it but felt too uneasy with
Google having 100% supervision over all of my internet activities.

~~~
appleiigs
Yes, dealing with HiDPI is one of the configs I did have to do. I have Pop on
another laptop and I kept scaling at 100%, but increased font size by 1.5x via
gnome-tweaks. Annoying to have to do it, but it's a one time adjustment and
doesn't look frankenstein to me. The 1.5x font adjustment is just one input
box via settings tab - not messing with terminal.

I've made peace with the google privacy issues. The convenience made me more
pragmatic instead of idealistic, but I hear you.

------
snowwrestler
Is HN ever going to stop falling for this type of headline? There's absolutely
no new information in this article at all; it's just a summary of the basic
history and recent news about Apple, with a couple personal sentences from the
author thrown in. This is classic clickbait.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Upvoted for truth, but I don't know if geeks will ever stop falling for
technology holy wars of the day. Emacs vs vim, spaces vs tabs, Apple vs [X],
etc. One day it will be neuralink brain gel vs Arthur C. Clark's brain caps.

------
atonse
I'm sort of tired of all these reasons (high upgrade pricing, needless
thinness, keyboard reliability, repair hostility), but I am having a bigger
problem moving away from MacOS and the tight integrations.

So that's the bigger issue. Windows Subsystem for Linux starts to make a
difference, and I just don't have time to fight Linux.

I know people are going to say "Linux is great now! You just have to do these
3 things to get Wayland working with the thingamabob" and at that point, I'd
be perfectly happy with a hackintosh if it means I have to fiddle. But I don't
have time to fiddle.

~~~
Daishiman
Linux requires _literally_ no fiddling on recent Thinkpads.

The whole "having to tweak Linux" is a tired old meme.

~~~
kitsunesoba
Maybe if you’re OK with the defaults on whatever DE the distro ships with.
Once you start trying to bend the stock DE to your will or install some other
DE/WM setup, you’re likely going to be faced with an endless rabbit hole of
tweaking and configuration to get the result you’re seeking. Your only hope
for escaping this is finding a DE with defaults you like or forcing yourself
to adjust to whatever bits of incongruence that exist between whichever DE and
your personal preferences.

This is the problem I’ve faced with Linux at least. I’ve been able to achieve
something close-ish to what I want in a Linux desktop setup, but no matter
what there’s always a list of papercuts that I can’t really do much about
short of writing my own DE (good luck with that with the insanity of X and the
bad docs of wayland/libweston/etc).

~~~
madez
You are comparing apples with oranges. If you tried to modify the behaviour of
the desktop of other OS'es to the extent as you want with Linux, then that
would be a fair comparison.

If you want it to look and behaviour just like Windows 7 or Mac OS iDon'tCare,
then you might be lucky and find a premade theme that does that work for you.

------
ksec
I have abosutely no problem with Apple devices being thinner, and near
impossible to repair. As long as, say the average Apple computer requiring
repair is less than 0.1% per year. On a 100M Mac user scale, that is 100,000
repair per year. Apple could easily give them free replacement or fix it for
them for free. That would be perfect.

But in reality the failure rate of Apple is _only_ half of HP and Dell.
Initial Cost 40%+, and repair cost 100% more. And for business / professional
users, HP and Dell make same day replacement to fixing. Apple? Try that with
Genius Bar.

Whatever it is, I think Apple is on the verge with consumer confidence
collapse. Next 2 year will be crucial.

------
eridius
I thought we'd abandoned the practice of writing articles that start by
bragging about the author's "Apple fanboy" cred, followed by comparing Apple
to a religion. I can't possibly take any article seriously that still does
that.

------
fghtr
>Anyone have recommendations for a good PC?

A good place to mention [https://puri.sm](https://puri.sm). Repairability is
one of their selling points, along with the openness.

~~~
wnscooke
1399? For a base ssd of 120? 4 gb of ram? The only people who will buy this
already have the bodies and guts of other laptops scattered around their
workshop cause they already fiddle. Don’t get me wrong, options and
alternatives are always nice, but presented as a solid alternative to a Mac...
nope.

~~~
fghtr
A tiny company cannot make a cheap quality product in small quantities. If you
feel repairability and freedom are important, it is worth it though.

~~~
crooked-v
When I read "repairability and freedom" and yet the site wants to upcharge me
$70 to go from 1x4GB to 1x8GB RAM, I get kind of dubious.

------
jet_32951
The writer addresses hardware only, not discussing the number of software
nuisances that have been added. Using Mavericks on an ADSL connection was next
to impossible because it insisted on downloading 300MB of trivia right out of
the box - an update for some plaything like Garageband. Finally tamed the
"phone home" tendencies with Little Snitch.

From my POV the apotheosis of OSX was 10.6.8, so my daily driver on my 2013
retina MBP (Mojave) is... SLS 10.6.8, virtualized in Fusion. When this machine
dies, that's it, no more Apple anything.

------
taylodl
The last computer I ever upgraded was a machine I built in 1997. Meanwhile my
Macs are lasting 7-8 years. I haven't used an MBP with the Touch Bar, so I
can't speak to that (the two MBPs I have currently are a 2012 and 2015 model).
As other commenters have stated I'm certainly not switching to Windows. I love
Linux on servers but I'm not thrilled with running Linux on a laptop. So it's
Apple. For me they're still the best value for the money.

~~~
gamblor956
I have Windows computers built 10-15 years ago that can still play modern
games at respectable frame rates.

My laptops from college and law school both still work, and the one from law
school (an HP laptop that was in many ways a rough precursor to MS' Surface
line) still has 70% of its original battery life!

A key point in why I despite Apple products: the first year of law school,
roughly 90% of the students used Apple laptops. By the start of the second
year, 50% of the students used Apple laptops. By the end of law school, only a
handful of students still used Apple laptops; all of them were the type that
babied their computers. The problem is that Apple laptops simply weren't built
to survive the rigors of school, and those laptops were _stronger_ than the
ones Apple sells today.

So, based on the experience of roughly 300 students at my law school, I say
that Apple is only the best value for the money if someone else is paying for
it and the AppleCare service plan. If it's your own money, Apple is the worst
value.

~~~
taylodl
Interesting. That hasn't been my experience at all. I don't know how many
times my 2015 MBP has been in my backpack when it's fallen off a table or
whatever. My MBP isn't in any kind of enclosure or anything and my backpack is
one of those you get during registration at a conference. That is to say it's
nothing special and in fact is rather cheap. Meanwhile my MBP keeps chugging
along without even a scratch. It's definitely not being babied - I can tell
you that! :)

------
Teckla
Apple's high base prices and obscene upgrade prices finally crossed some hard
to describe psychological barrier where I'm concerned. Bye, Apple. :(

------
sneakernets
I'm old enough to see Apple go from selling computers you had to put together
yourself in your garage, to selling the most hacker/tinkerer-hostile products
ever made.

I think the straw for me was the fact that I had to factory reset my entire
MacBook down to the "ROM" just to get the left side of my keyboard to work.

------
exabrial
For anyone looking to dump Apple, check out
[https://elementary.io](https://elementary.io) for an operating system!

~~~
true_tuna
Elementary doesn’t allow you to store things on the desktop. This seems like a
silly place to take a stand.

------
wnscooke
All those saying they won’t buy another Mac will silently regret this once
their new windows machine is infected with malware, slows down, or otherwise
suffers from all of its ailments. Unless they are already proficient in Linux,
one of those will drive them nuts with the relatively limited software
offerings.

The author doesn’t actually say which of the possible upgrades he personally
did, and how he benefited from it, and thus how he has suffered since the
ability to custom upgrade components was taken away. I think he just likes the
idea. He won’t like the reality of the hassle of a PC, and I hope he writes a
follow-up article when he “returns” to Apple. And loads of people I know who
have moved _from_ a PC to a Mac actually have benefited, without the need to
then upgrade the already-powerful (Apple) computer they now own.

Anyway, the need to upgrade was driven by software that was ahead of the
curve. This was good, people were making and improving Mac software! And they
still are, without the correspending need to upgrade RAM to make it run. It
just runs. I started with a PowerBook 170 (maybe it was 190?), and worked my
way up through models, upgrading ram or HD as needed. I worked with people
using windows... holy moly, their misery was non-stop. And it’s still that
way!

~~~
neuralRiot
I've been a windows user since 3.1 on a 486 and i've abused the hardware and
software installing all kinds of dubious devices and software and I don't
recall having a unrecoverable or unrepairable problem because i could always
open my computers and replace whatever part was damaged or backup-restore in
case of software problems, now having to replace a laotop for a dirty keyboard
seems outrageous to me, but I don't blame Apple, it's like going hiking with a
pair of Armani shoes and complaining because they're uncomfortable and break
easily.

