The reason MacOS is seen as a working computer is because if anything breaks about it, it isn’t considered a computer anymore by Apple, it is considered e-waste.
I guess I don’t get this attitude about macs. I switched to mac when I was traveling a lot in 2007 and saw how portable they could be compared to other laptops. It’s almost 2025 and I just bought my third one last year. My kids are still using my 13 year old MBA for homework, and the hardware is absolutely solid.
They put out the best commodity hw on the market IMO. The rest is subjective, and everyone is entitled to their preferences.
Also no mention that macos actually flows from the last Berkeley release of BSD and still has significant interoperability/portability with other variants. Oh well.
Yeah, you take it back in and they fix it. Or you fix it yourself. Just like any other computer. If your issue is something hardware related, Apple will still fix it, it just costs a lot because you’re paying for it in every part of the engineering. You can also go to third party repair shops and have them fix it for cheaper.
I gave a friend a powermac g5 that I had gotten for free as a teen, gave it to them 10 years ago, and it still works too, it’s just slow. That means nothing.
You don’t get this attitude about Macs? Are you willfully blind?
Plug a 1080p monitor into a Windows or Linux machine and notice how text is crisp and readable, because they use sub-pixel text rendering, a technique in use for decades to make text readable on lower resolution monitors.
Now plug that monitor into a MacOS computer and notice the text looks like trash because Apple ripped out their sub-pixel text rendering system to force users to buy their fancy high res monitors.
Font rendering on Linux is still hit and miss. Recently had to troubleshoot an issue where only the titles of Wikipedia articles in Flatpak Firefox on OpenSUSE looked like ass, with other text, or all text in other browsers and another distro rendering OK.
I don’t actually own a 1080p monitor (nor an apple one), and that’s a pretty specific reason to hate macs of high resolution is your desire. I’m sure there are no similar issues with other platforms that someone could find as a reason to [presumably] turn their PCs into ewaste- which is the actual topic of this thread.
Hyperbolic much?
From another thread on this topic:
Even Microsoft themselves are moving away from it. They just left it on Windows as is for those who use old, standard-res LCD. Their subpixel antialiasing (ClearType) has been disabled by default on Microsoft Office (and many of their productivity products) for years.
The reason why they are moving away from subpixel antialiasing is because, the sole reason for it exist is for the shortcoming of standard LCD, where it has a big “pixel” that consist of row of RGB “subpixel”. Say if you want to draw a line of 1.5px, obviously you can’t divide that pixel in half. What people did was by using some of the “subpixel” to made up that 0.5px (e.g. it’ll only light up the blue subpixel if the 0.5px is to the left, or conversely the red subpixel if it’s tho the right). Here is an example. By using subpixel rendering on standard LCD, you can “fool” the user by adding that extra colour on the side, which when viewed on standard LCD, it will look smooth rather than those jagged colour.
Now, obviously this “illusion” will only work on display with big pixel consist of (in order) red, green, and blue subpixel. Now, since many people are moving away toward high resolution display (Apple’s main reason) and there are many other display type with different subpixel arrangements (Microsoft’s main reason, and also Apple’s with their OLED products), there is no reason to use subpixel rendering anymore (in fact, using it on any display other than LCD will look worse).
I don’t actually own a 1080p monitor (nor an apple one), and that’s a pretty specific reason to hate macs of high resolution is your desire.
No it is one example amongst hundreds of Apple not prioritizing backwards compatibility or even just third party compatibility, because it would be a little extra effort for a couple software engineers, and as a result we get piles and piles of physical e-waste.
As a company Apple takes no responsibility for their role in compatibility and ensuring that our (society’s) broad ecosystem of products keeps functioning, they only put effort into making sure that their products, that they profit off of, work and keep working.
I could never imagine playing defense for a trillion dollar company. “It works for me so I like it.” is a perfectly valid response, but you’re trying to somehow defend their horrible practice of a walled garden, a practice that creates huge amounts of e-waste.
No I explicitly called out their walled garden in my comment when I complained about them not putting effort into third party compatibility.
Their software engineers not writing a little extra code that can be copied and pasted onto every chip for literally nothing, results in millions of physical devices having to be mined out of the earth, melted and refined into raw materials, engineered and machined into parts and components, assembled into physical devices and tested for quality control, then shipped out to consumers.
Don’t fucking start acting like the effort it takes for them to maintain software compatibility is a big fucking burden compared to what they make the rest of society do.
So in your opinion, a trillion dollar company that made billions and billions in pure profit after all their salaries and costs, over the course of decades, can decide that they have no responsibility to reduce e-waste and everyone else in society should throw their stuff out and pay them more money?
And that’s ok to you? On a moral and ethical level?
How the honest fuck are you defending an excessively profitable company not supporting (and in several cases, explicitly going out of their way to break) third party accessories and forcing consumers to pay more money and generate more e-waste?
Or is your opinion is that you bought into the Apple ecosystem, so they can do no wrong?
Plug in a random USB C hub off Amazon that works with windows, Linux, android, raspberry pis, and windows laptops from 13 years ago and watch it not work on any Apple device because they do not and have never put any effort into compatibility.
Go outside, give your head a shake, and stop simping for trillion dollar corporations.
If you are saying the “iWaste” comment is about repairability not reliability, I get that. My take is maybe that if something has a long lifespan despite not being repairable, it might be have a longer life before becoming waste or recyclables.
I do like that the EU is mandating user replaceable batteries and other changes and support most right-to-repair legislation.
It can’t have a longer life than something that’s repairable and upgradable.
Even if we imagine Apple used the highest quality components, which they most certainly didn’t, anything dying means you need to completely replace the internals of your device. It’s like saying a car that needs an engine replacement because of a dead spark plug can have a long life.
Edit: I’ve lost the thread a little as this started about laptops not mobile phones. I’m leaving this comment here as the points may be valid even for laptops, but I’m too bored to do any more research. Thanks for the great and civil discussion.
I would agree that a theoretically completely upgradeable and repairable device is better, but I think the real world implementations generally aren’t that good.
It’s hard to get to statista’s summary of lifespan of phones without a subscription, but many summaries that use their data say something like:
In general, the average lifespan of a smartphone is 2 to 4 years. According to reports, the iPhone lasts 4-10 years, followed by Samsung units, which can last 3-6 years. Huawei and Xiaomi units have an average lifespan of 2-4 years, while OPPO units have 2-3 years.
Perhaps there is better data out there that would change my mind, but I haven’t seen it. If Apple products are iWaste, then it appears nearly all other products are even more wasteful. All the data I have seen points to Apple products as generally having a long lifespan followed by an excellent free recycling policy (https://www.apple.com/me/recycling/).
This was a problem when they were selling Apple IIs
MUGs came into being because Apple provided zero support and overcharged for proprietary hardware. So the only recourse was to find a hobbyist, and they were glad to help.
The reason MacOS is seen as a working computer is because if anything breaks about it, it isn’t considered a computer anymore by Apple, it is considered e-waste.
I guess I don’t get this attitude about macs. I switched to mac when I was traveling a lot in 2007 and saw how portable they could be compared to other laptops. It’s almost 2025 and I just bought my third one last year. My kids are still using my 13 year old MBA for homework, and the hardware is absolutely solid.
Edit: Lol, downvote reality. My favorite pastime.
they dont like when you point out that as obnoxious as apple can be, they put out good products
They put out the best commodity hw on the market IMO. The rest is subjective, and everyone is entitled to their preferences.
Also no mention that macos actually flows from the last Berkeley release of BSD and still has significant interoperability/portability with other variants. Oh well.
Did you have anything break on them? Because that was my point.
Repairing Macs costs a fortune, because Apple rather you buy something new than repair them.
I still have a Windows 98 machine that fully functions. It is just slow.
Yeah, you take it back in and they fix it. Or you fix it yourself. Just like any other computer. If your issue is something hardware related, Apple will still fix it, it just costs a lot because you’re paying for it in every part of the engineering. You can also go to third party repair shops and have them fix it for cheaper.
I gave a friend a powermac g5 that I had gotten for free as a teen, gave it to them 10 years ago, and it still works too, it’s just slow. That means nothing.
You don’t get this attitude about Macs? Are you willfully blind?
Plug a 1080p monitor into a Windows or Linux machine and notice how text is crisp and readable, because they use sub-pixel text rendering, a technique in use for decades to make text readable on lower resolution monitors.
Now plug that monitor into a MacOS computer and notice the text looks like trash because Apple ripped out their sub-pixel text rendering system to force users to buy their fancy high res monitors.
Font rendering on Linux is still hit and miss. Recently had to troubleshoot an issue where only the titles of Wikipedia articles in Flatpak Firefox on OpenSUSE looked like ass, with other text, or all text in other browsers and another distro rendering OK.
I don’t actually own a 1080p monitor (nor an apple one), and that’s a pretty specific reason to hate macs of high resolution is your desire. I’m sure there are no similar issues with other platforms that someone could find as a reason to [presumably] turn their PCs into ewaste- which is the actual topic of this thread.
Hyperbolic much?
From another thread on this topic:
No it is one example amongst hundreds of Apple not prioritizing backwards compatibility or even just third party compatibility, because it would be a little extra effort for a couple software engineers, and as a result we get piles and piles of physical e-waste.
As a company Apple takes no responsibility for their role in compatibility and ensuring that our (society’s) broad ecosystem of products keeps functioning, they only put effort into making sure that their products, that they profit off of, work and keep working.
A little extra effort times “hundreds” of examples is a lot of extra effort…
Okay then. Thanks for your viewpoint.
I could never imagine playing defense for a trillion dollar company. “It works for me so I like it.” is a perfectly valid response, but you’re trying to somehow defend their horrible practice of a walled garden, a practice that creates huge amounts of e-waste.
No one defended walled gardens. The conservation was about deprecating lesser used functions. Stop trying to use terms you don’t seem to understand.
No I explicitly called out their walled garden in my comment when I complained about them not putting effort into third party compatibility.
Their software engineers not writing a little extra code that can be copied and pasted onto every chip for literally nothing, results in millions of physical devices having to be mined out of the earth, melted and refined into raw materials, engineered and machined into parts and components, assembled into physical devices and tested for quality control, then shipped out to consumers.
Don’t fucking start acting like the effort it takes for them to maintain software compatibility is a big fucking burden compared to what they make the rest of society do.
So in your opinion, a trillion dollar company that made billions and billions in pure profit after all their salaries and costs, over the course of decades, can decide that they have no responsibility to reduce e-waste and everyone else in society should throw their stuff out and pay them more money?
And that’s ok to you? On a moral and ethical level?
How the honest fuck are you defending an excessively profitable company not supporting (and in several cases, explicitly going out of their way to break) third party accessories and forcing consumers to pay more money and generate more e-waste?
Or is your opinion is that you bought into the Apple ecosystem, so they can do no wrong?
WTF are you smoking? I just pointed out my last laptop from them is 13 years old and still going strong. Show me another brand that lasts like that.
Let me be clear: FUCK OFF
@[email protected] please keep it civil. If you feel someone’s comment is pointless, just block them and move on.
Plug in a random USB C hub off Amazon that works with windows, Linux, android, raspberry pis, and windows laptops from 13 years ago and watch it not work on any Apple device because they do not and have never put any effort into compatibility.
Go outside, give your head a shake, and stop simping for trillion dollar corporations.
* iWaste
I tried to find a good study of laptop lifespan by brand. The best thing I could find was a consumer reports survey from 2023.
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/laptops-chromebooks/laptopreliability-a7029273631/
They rated Apple as the #1 laptop for reliability. I don’t think that is “iWaste.”
This lines up with what I’ve seen, but even as a career IT person my personal sample size ain’t that great.
I dislike that current Apple products aren’t very repairable, but appreciate that they are very recyclable and durable.
Repairability, not reliability
If you are saying the “iWaste” comment is about repairability not reliability, I get that. My take is maybe that if something has a long lifespan despite not being repairable, it might be have a longer life before becoming waste or recyclables.
I do like that the EU is mandating user replaceable batteries and other changes and support most right-to-repair legislation.
It can’t have a longer life than something that’s repairable and upgradable.
Even if we imagine Apple used the highest quality components, which they most certainly didn’t, anything dying means you need to completely replace the internals of your device. It’s like saying a car that needs an engine replacement because of a dead spark plug can have a long life.
Edit: I’ve lost the thread a little as this started about laptops not mobile phones. I’m leaving this comment here as the points may be valid even for laptops, but I’m too bored to do any more research. Thanks for the great and civil discussion.
I would agree that a theoretically completely upgradeable and repairable device is better, but I think the real world implementations generally aren’t that good.
It’s hard to get to statista’s summary of lifespan of phones without a subscription, but many summaries that use their data say something like:
Perhaps there is better data out there that would change my mind, but I haven’t seen it. If Apple products are iWaste, then it appears nearly all other products are even more wasteful. All the data I have seen points to Apple products as generally having a long lifespan followed by an excellent free recycling policy (https://www.apple.com/me/recycling/).
Still using my 2011 15” MacBook Pro!
This was a problem when they were selling Apple IIs
MUGs came into being because Apple provided zero support and overcharged for proprietary hardware. So the only recourse was to find a hobbyist, and they were glad to help.
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