rambi36

Apple products "just work"

Nothing will change. If anything, they will get stricter on their handling of cases. He may not be some super old fogie, but he's far from the modern CEO that nintendo needs. They're trapped in their own idiotic and endless cycle of rehashing and recycling fan favorites, banking almost every penny on the returning customer, or the appeal to young children. This is a business model that is bound to fail, and only shows so in the way that they have declined in the last 5 years. 
 
Good luck nintendo, you're going to fucking need it.

Apple products "just work"

Apple products "just work"

Apple products "just work"

Apple products "just work"

Apple products "just work"

Apple products "just work"

Why I switched to The Dark Side
My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
Introduction
During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
 
Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
 
Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
  Asus UX-series
This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
  Lenovo Yoga-series
This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
  Lenovo X1-Carbon
The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
  MacBook Air
This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
  Dell XPS 13
This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
  Why I now love HiDPI displays
My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
  The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
 
After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
 
Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
 
The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
  Mac OS X
Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
 
For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
  Conclusion
The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
 
The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!

inb4 Apple hate
 
 
 
I really need to decide whether I want a 6s+ or a 6s (I'm assuming there won't be any major differences/flaws between the two other than the size)...

Apple products "just work"

"How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?" - Jaden Smith
 
oh wait you said TECH quotes

I think the pricing of the iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and Keyboard are so God-damned stupid. They're stepping far into Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3 pricing for something that (for all intents and purposes) runs a phone and tablet OS. Charging $799 for a tablet version of the new MacBook would make a fair amount of sense, but this new iPad is just simply overpriced.
 
Watch it dominate the market.

Source: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/09/09/apple-blew-it-the-apple-pencil-stylus-is-here/
Main thread: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/446911-apple-2015-september-event-ipad-pro-apple-tv-and-iphone-6s/
(Didn't see this posted there, so why not make a new topic.)
 
Many things were announced today during Apple's September event, and you can read all about that in the main thread, but there were a couple products that weren't covered that I just find hilarious. Introducing the Pencil: Apple's $100 stylus. I really I was making this up. 
 
The Pencil comes with a Lightning Connector, so you can charge it via your fancy new iPad or iPhone or whatever. Now, there is one neat thing about the Pencil: the system scans twice as fast when using it. This means that the Pencil can capture more points in a stroke. It's also pressure sensitive (although I think this is because of the Force Touch display, who knows!). Lastly, shapes are converted into graphic objects. 
 
Okay, sure, it has some cool features, I will give it that, but a $100 price tag? Come on Apple. That's just overdoing it.
 

 
And now onto the keyboard. It features the new Apple Dome switch which was derived from the Macbook. It has a "woven fabric" covering the keys. The keyboard is to be used with the new iPad, which magnetically connects to it. This keyboard costs $170. Seriously, come on. My freaking Ducky Shine II (at the time when I bought it) was $150 and it's a mechanical keyboard!
 
Anyways, if you're going to buy their Stylus and their keyboard, both will be available in November.
 
And now for an image and a comment that I ripped from Facebook, because I laughed too hard when I saw these.

WHY IS 16GB STILL THE ENTRY LEVEL GODDAM IT.

"Live Photos" 
 
I.e. Gifs

Everybody now has "protruding" lenses, including the new rumoured nexus it seems.

If it still has 1GB of RAM apple.....

Space grey is actually grey this time. 
 
Im ugprading. Thats it. All I wanted. 

millions of 12 y/o's with macs for gaming PC's

it's like the LTT forum is slowly morphing into LTT youtube comments 

I'll reach out to Scott and see if he wants to borrow ours.

noooo please, why can't we have both? Have a server browser for the community non-skill based servers and skill based matchmaking for EA/DICE servers? Valve does it.

I prefer a skill-based match making system. I don't become addicted to games very easily, and don't splurge over "gooder" community servers. Not really into splurge parties.