We were supplied Apple laptops at work. They last. Figure out your annual cost if you use it for 10 years or whatever. Maybe easier to pony up the $. The Chromebook we get now has a 2nd rate screen, some awkwardness and will do ok for our needs…
Left Android; Joined IOS
- Thread starter bykfixer
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Help Support Candle Power Flashlight Forum
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Also Apple's software optimization does wonders for battery efficiency.
I fully agree with @KITROBASKIN in that longevity makes overall cost of use lower than Windows machines. At least in my usage of iMacs and my father's iMac, they both are still going strong after 13 and 10 years, respectively. Only dust causing some slight overheating made them unreliable with kernel panics. After popping open the screen on my 27 inch, blasting the dust bunnies away, and swapping out the optical drive for an SSD (as a Fusion Drive with the HDD) breathed life back into it and has been used for another 5 years.
I fully agree with @KITROBASKIN in that longevity makes overall cost of use lower than Windows machines. At least in my usage of iMacs and my father's iMac, they both are still going strong after 13 and 10 years, respectively. Only dust causing some slight overheating made them unreliable with kernel panics. After popping open the screen on my 27 inch, blasting the dust bunnies away, and swapping out the optical drive for an SSD (as a Fusion Drive with the HDD) breathed life back into it and has been used for another 5 years.
Been on Samsung since I left my razor phone behind. Apple was busted for making updates that slowed phones down so people would buy new ones. Nope, trust issues for me. Also they copy android features and claim them as some new novel feature. (Swype...)
PhotonWrangler
Flashaholic
The Mac M2 looks like a decent choice to me. Years ago I had a 2017-ish MBP with a Windows emulator on it, and even then the Windows apps ran faster on my Mac then they did on my native Windows desktop. Nowadays if you need any of the main Microsoft office products, you can get them in native Mac versions, no emulator needed. You get the best of both worlds. The only downside with Mac (and Apple products in general) is that it's harder to get to the under-the-hood stuff if you need to. This doesn't really matter unless you're an app developer. The upside of this is increased security.
If I was in the market for a new laptop today, I would be considering the M2 MBPs as well.
If I was in the market for a new laptop today, I would be considering the M2 MBPs as well.
idleprocess
Flashaholic
The incident I'm aware of a few years back was a poorly-communicated crash fix - batteries of older phones had degraded to a point that they could no longer reliably support the system running at peak speed so the patch throttled the CPU to improve stability. I believe the models in question were well out of warranty at that point - possibly even no longer covered by extended warranty. I recall that shortly after the bruhaha they were patched again with a switch so the user could choose between stability and performance ... and AAPL may have condescended to offering battery replacements at a reasonable cost and coaching their sales/support staff to offer such services rather than advising replacement.
Apple has messed up in the past but so much is so good (Android clearly copied numerous iPhone features early on) and marketing is by nature a finesse job.
A savvy buyer will look at the good qualities of each platform and decide what is important. Can't help really appreciating long battery life, excellent image and seamless transitions so much of the time with Apple. Even if Siri has failed many requests while Google delivers much of the time.
fixer if you have an iPhone, the transfer of images to another Apple is pretty quick and easy (Airdrop)
A savvy buyer will look at the good qualities of each platform and decide what is important. Can't help really appreciating long battery life, excellent image and seamless transitions so much of the time with Apple. Even if Siri has failed many requests while Google delivers much of the time.
fixer if you have an iPhone, the transfer of images to another Apple is pretty quick and easy (Airdrop)
What bad behavior? I didn't see any 🙈
Went to best buy and look at the macbook and was ready to buy until I asked "how many ports". The guy says "2, well one if it's charging". After reading about M1/M2 chips locking out many old work arounds and how these are not in any way user servicable like adding memory,.., "show me your Asus lineup please".
The one I liked they didn't have but.... they did have an Alienware X14. I saw the price and said "outta my price range but thanks". The lad says "we have an open box buy for 1/2 off today only. Mrs Fixer says "have you ever heard of Alienware?" I said "PK uses Alienware computers". She says to the lad "he'll take it" lol.
Went to best buy and look at the macbook and was ready to buy until I asked "how many ports". The guy says "2, well one if it's charging". After reading about M1/M2 chips locking out many old work arounds and how these are not in any way user servicable like adding memory,.., "show me your Asus lineup please".
The one I liked they didn't have but.... they did have an Alienware X14. I saw the price and said "outta my price range but thanks". The lad says "we have an open box buy for 1/2 off today only. Mrs Fixer says "have you ever heard of Alienware?" I said "PK uses Alienware computers". She says to the lad "he'll take it" lol.
PhotonWrangler
Flashaholic
Nice! Alienware has a long reputation for souped up computers aimed at the gaming and video editing markets.
PhotonWrangler
Flashaholic
If you know your way around Wireshark you can test for this. I found a security camera that was phoning home to an offshore location. I was able to find and shut off that "feature." I periodically check to make sure that thisi behavior hasn't returned.
Now I certainly believe KITRO about that "message of ugliness", lol! Take this squabbling to reddit or twitter EL, it is not welcome in this community.
I bought the gamer to use for photo editing while playing music while transfering more photos/music and or making playlists. I've been using a 12 year old number that works great still but is getting long in the tooth.
I had tried an Asus Q304 tablet that's great for a college student or keeping spreadsheets etc but doing what I do kept causing me to watch that spinning "wait" circle way to often. It used Windows 10, which I never really liked anyway. My work uses 10 so I'm used to it now.
This one has Windows 11. So far it seems they removed all of the stuff I didn't like about 10 but seemed to bring back the things I liked about 7. II can definitely see some copycat Mac stuff. Perhaps being I'm used to 10 probably reduced the learning curve. But where 10 constantly pestered me to go online, so far 11 is being pretty cool about it. I'll learn what apps I want to add, add them and after that be pretty much off the web since this will be mainly used as a storage machine and archive device.
The major obstacle may be seemless transfers of photos from my iPhone, which led me to look at new computers in the first place.
chillinn
Flashlight Enthusiast
You are unique, bykfixer. Most longtime Windows users, and really those that prefer to pick and choose their own stuff to install in a beige tower, seem to have a very hard time accepting that no other hardware can compete with Apple now. Intel is really trying hard to show they can beat Apple Silicon, but at the cost of many many Watts. I don't think it will be too long before Intel abandons x86 and backwards compatibility, and they can't do it too soon. It has really hamstrung progress for, arguably, decades. How many PC users could still be running 20-30yo software? Why is it so important that it is supported forever? Intel and Microsoft should end of life them and advance. When Intel releases their own ARM processor, that's when Apple will sweat, but not before.
PhotonWrangler
Flashaholic
Up until now you had to use iTunes in order to get a "smooth" experience managing photos from any iThing. Apple is going to be phasing out iTunes in favor of separate apps for each of it's functions. I'm hoping this will produce a better experience for photo management. I've always thought that iTunes was slow, bloated and confusing.
chillinn
Flashlight Enthusiast
iTunes synced music and apps. iPhoto synced photos. But you could set up albums in iPhotos that iTunes would sync back to the device for you. But you didn't need to use iTunes or iPhotos. There are third party macOS applications, such as iExplorer and many others, that allowed you to browse the device like it was a folder, manually copy things back and forth. I was mostly concerned with getting photos off the device. Now there's iCloud, which I only like because I don't have to worry about losing photos if something happened to my computer and backups. Everything else is replaceable.
I've tried using iTunes for years but like you found it confusing and lacking.
Example: the other evening I backed up my phone through iTunes but wherethehell did everything go? Photos? Music? Documents? Where did they go? I'll just email my photos to the new computer from time to time like I do with my work phone. Either that or copy each folder monthly like I do my work computer.
chillinn
Flashlight Enthusiast
When you connect a device, once iTunes sees it, tabs should appear. Under one of the tabs is a bunch of options that you can tell iTunes what to do using check boxes, such as sync playlists or songs, photo albums, or to always pull all images off, etc. You usually only have to set everything once unless you're swapping out a lot of songs all the time. Once you set that, whenever you sync, it will do what you expect. It isn't as intuitive as Apple wants to believe it is, but once you know it well, it's just annoying. You don't like it because it's unfamiliar, but when you really get to know it well, you'll just be annoyed. I am on an older system and haven't seen the new Music app. Apparently it's less annoying. When you use iCloud for everything, you never have to sync except for your music, backups just happen in the background. Apple gives away iCloud space with every device, just an Appelized DropBox, really, syncs all device data and keeps system backups.
The exclusionary, follow the path we decide, share only through Apple confines, had me turn away from iTunes two computers ago. Google Photos handles it for me, videos and stills. Never paid them anything but understand it may not work for all.
I have an HP at work and work iPhone. Each month the phone generates a new folder. I just copy that folder to the HP. Easy enough.
The trouble recently was when I tried to move 44,000 pictures to a machine not ready to handle such a task. They made it little by little but it was an ordeal to make it happen. Won't make that mistake again.
The trouble recently was when I tried to move 44,000 pictures to a machine not ready to handle such a task. They made it little by little but it was an ordeal to make it happen. Won't make that mistake again.
PhotonWrangler
Flashaholic
I've had this experience as well. I suspect there's a lot of overhead in the traffic between the iPhone and the desktop.
Sometimes one or the other I'm not sure which, would just go "not gonna do it, read my lips, no new pictures".... a box would pop up and say "communication lost". Sometimes after 100 photos, sometimes after none. Then upon reconnect the circle of wait would just spin and spin...
Trying the import route it kept getting stuck on a picture of my dog we had to put down last year. A really good one too. Like 18 minutes later it would still be stuck on that one photo.
The iTunes thing hid everything. I could command prompt this and that to find them but what a pitb that is.
There's a ba-jillion apps and software that claim they are the solution but I'm not ready to plunk down $24.95 to see it get stuck on that picture of the dog again. My shiney new laptop has a phone app..., android that is.
It seems like iOS 8 or 10 or whatever played real nice with Windows 7. But iOS 12+ and Windows 10 seem like the Tom and Jerry.....
Trying the import route it kept getting stuck on a picture of my dog we had to put down last year. A really good one too. Like 18 minutes later it would still be stuck on that one photo.
The iTunes thing hid everything. I could command prompt this and that to find them but what a pitb that is.
There's a ba-jillion apps and software that claim they are the solution but I'm not ready to plunk down $24.95 to see it get stuck on that picture of the dog again. My shiney new laptop has a phone app..., android that is.
It seems like iOS 8 or 10 or whatever played real nice with Windows 7. But iOS 12+ and Windows 10 seem like the Tom and Jerry.....
