I had a bad experience with my Lenovo laptop. It had a firmware issue that caused the trackpad to become unresponsive after suspend and Lenovo never fixed it.
Made the laptop miserable to use, so I went for a MacBook instead which wouldn't have such an obvious issue be unfixed because Apple has so few SKUs to support.
Also went for it in part because I do not like Windows and macOS typically would save me when Linux support was lacking. Just had to hope for a quick port of Asahi Linux to become (unfortunately didn't happen for my M3, but thankfully it's been progressing recently).
The point is about how it was produced in first place, having taken six years to get a proper replacement, despite the supposed quality of premium Apple products.
Then there is the Antennagate on iPhone, the buggy OS releases, and plenty other examples that I can refer from what is totally unacceptable given the price point of their products.
Others aren't better, but at least they don't pretend otherwise.
Apple is held to a higher standard because they have historically reached it on a semi-regular basis. Enough that people expect it. Enough that people get personally offended whenever they fall short.
There are enough examples since Apple I, where they historical failed to do so, so much of them, that they are only around because NeXT "acquired" them, and the old founder came back into the bridge with enough time to steer the ship away from the iceberg.
The quality cult is even worse among those that never experienced old Apple.
They get so personally offended that they renew hardware almost yearly, regardless of the bugs and software issues.
For what it's worth, my first Apple was a IIe, followed by a 512K Macintosh, and I still have a first-edition NeXTWorld magazine I bought at the time.
The definition of quality in the Apple world isn't quite the same as in the nerd world, much as an Alfa Romeo fan and a Toyota fan may mean different things by quality. Joy and reliability both matter, and it's very easy for people who value them differently to end up talking past each other.
Yeah, the distortion field exists for a reason, given Liquid Glass, Swift UI issues, Tahoe and Golden Gate bugs, it is hard to have joy when they prevent work on premium hardware.
The Mac went through an OS dark ages in the 1990s.
It went through a silicon dark ages in the 2000s.
It went through a hardware dark ages in the 2010s.
It seems to be going through a user layer software dark ages in the 2020s. And it's especially frustrating because Apple is on an absolute tear with their OS, silicon and hardware right now. They've never made a better hardware product and, love it or hate it, the core OS is pretty damn solid. It's the shit they're piling into the distro—and the shit they're forcing developers to deal with—which sucks balls.
As for joy: It's hard to have joy in an Alfa Romeo that has unsolvable electrical gremlins and the engine mounts are rusted away. Except people do. It's hard to have joy in a Toyota when all driving feel is engineered out of it. Except people do.
That is a good point, but not exactly what I meant.
When I was picking out that Lenovo laptop, there were dozens of different laptops just from Lenovo alone with lots of hardware variety. Then consider all the different manufacturers I could have also chosen from.
With that much hardware, it's hard to find comprehensive reviews matching the exact laptop I was looking at. And from the few reviews I did find, none of them mentioned that issue.
A model of non-Apple laptop could have serious issues, but since it's not Apple, it wouldn't have anywhere near the same media presence an Apple laptop would. With their few SKUs and popularity, the issues are visible. I did not need to follow Macs closely to know about the butterfly keyboard issues, overheating issues, etc. I wouldn't have purchased a Mac back then given those issues.
But Apple got their stuff together and fixed that. And when I was considering the M3, there were no hints of any hardware issues from the reviews I saw and discourse I read online. And thankfully that matches my experience, it's the most robust and "it just works" laptop I've used.
PunchyHamster · · focus · HN ↗
novafunc · · focus · HN ↗
Made the laptop miserable to use, so I went for a MacBook instead which wouldn't have such an obvious issue be unfixed because Apple has so few SKUs to support.
Also went for it in part because I do not like Windows and macOS typically would save me when Linux support was lacking. Just had to hope for a quick port of Asahi Linux to become (unfortunately didn't happen for my M3, but thankfully it's been progressing recently).
pjmlp · · focus · HN ↗
cavoirom · · focus · HN ↗
pjmlp · · focus · HN ↗
Then there is the Antennagate on iPhone, the buggy OS releases, and plenty other examples that I can refer from what is totally unacceptable given the price point of their products.
Others aren't better, but at least they don't pretend otherwise.
simondotau · · focus · HN ↗
pjmlp · · focus · HN ↗
The quality cult is even worse among those that never experienced old Apple.
They get so personally offended that they renew hardware almost yearly, regardless of the bugs and software issues.
simondotau · · focus · HN ↗
The definition of quality in the Apple world isn't quite the same as in the nerd world, much as an Alfa Romeo fan and a Toyota fan may mean different things by quality. Joy and reliability both matter, and it's very easy for people who value them differently to end up talking past each other.
pjmlp · · focus · HN ↗
simondotau · · focus · HN ↗
It went through a silicon dark ages in the 2000s.
It went through a hardware dark ages in the 2010s.
It seems to be going through a user layer software dark ages in the 2020s. And it's especially frustrating because Apple is on an absolute tear with their OS, silicon and hardware right now. They've never made a better hardware product and, love it or hate it, the core OS is pretty damn solid. It's the shit they're piling into the distro—and the shit they're forcing developers to deal with—which sucks balls.
As for joy: It's hard to have joy in an Alfa Romeo that has unsolvable electrical gremlins and the engine mounts are rusted away. Except people do. It's hard to have joy in a Toyota when all driving feel is engineered out of it. Except people do.
novafunc · · focus · HN ↗
When I was picking out that Lenovo laptop, there were dozens of different laptops just from Lenovo alone with lots of hardware variety. Then consider all the different manufacturers I could have also chosen from.
With that much hardware, it's hard to find comprehensive reviews matching the exact laptop I was looking at. And from the few reviews I did find, none of them mentioned that issue.
A model of non-Apple laptop could have serious issues, but since it's not Apple, it wouldn't have anywhere near the same media presence an Apple laptop would. With their few SKUs and popularity, the issues are visible. I did not need to follow Macs closely to know about the butterfly keyboard issues, overheating issues, etc. I wouldn't have purchased a Mac back then given those issues.
But Apple got their stuff together and fixed that. And when I was considering the M3, there were no hints of any hardware issues from the reviews I saw and discourse I read online. And thankfully that matches my experience, it's the most robust and "it just works" laptop I've used.