Opinion: Apple isn't ripping anyone off

[Dabombinable]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

Yes. He hates them but he needs them to exist. He doesn't want people buying MacBooks but knows that if people actually listened to him he would be out of a job. 

And he's gone over exactly why he has problems with Apple (and at the same time provided examples). He actually wouldn't be out of business BTW. He'd just be fixing other brands of devices as those would be brought to him instead.

Also, a fair few problems that he has to fix (repairs that Apple ARS aren't allowed to do) are kind of ones that come down to problems with the design itself leading them to have reduced functional lifespans or simply being more fragile than it should.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

He actually wouldn't be out of business BTW. He'd just be fixing other brands of devices as those would be brought to him instead.

I watch his videos, he’s said it himself. You can’t make a profit repairing other brands of laptop. There simply isn’t enough volume of single models. 

 

He would be out of business.

3 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Also, a fair few problems that he has to fix (repairs that Apple ARS aren't allowed to do) are kind of ones that come down to problems with the design itself

Yes, what’s your point?

[Dabombinable]

5 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

I watch his videos, he’s said it himself. You can’t make a profit repairing other brands of laptop. There simply isn’t enough volume of single models. 

 

He would be out of business.

If people listened to him, and didn't go with Apple's products, then it stands to reason that other brands would being bought instead. Ergo that wouldn't apply and he wouldn't go out of business.

 

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Yes, what’s your point?

Point is you're trying to act like there is no reason at all to dislike Apple. When there are uite a lot. Especially with their behaviour over the last couple of years.

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

If people listened to him, and didn't go with Apple's products, then it stands to reason that other brands would being bought instead. Ergo that wouldn't apply and he wouldn't go out of business.

Nope. It would only make it more difficult for him to find parts. 

[Dabombinable]

5 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Nope. It would only make it more difficult for him to find parts. 

How so? Few device manufacturers go out of their way to limit access to spare part, or have severe restrictions on who can buy them and exactly what repairs are allowed (eg. Apple do have those severe restrictions).

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Nope. It would only make it more difficult for him to find parts. 

our local repair shop can repair just about anything, parts are not a problem for all the major brands. Hell they even gave me a quote to replace the screen in an rather less popular AMD based HP 14".

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

How so?

More people buying different products further segments the amount of inventory and lowers the volume of a single item that you can realistically have in inventory. 

 

It wouldnt be profitable. 

[mr moose]

14 minutes ago, JustAnotherTechGuy99 said:

Hello all,

 

Ok so this conversation seems to be recycled around all tech circles constantly so let us try and be realistic here. Apple Inc. builds, maintains, develops, tests and supports their own hardware and software. Because of that, they must ensure they have enough capital coming in to continue that while maintaining research and development. Yes, they are pricey, that is no lie however, ask anyone and they will all agree Apple take their time in producing quality.

Many people have disagreed with Apple over the following which are but not limited to:

• Removal of the headphone jack on their devices

• Insisting on only using Thunderbolt 3/USB 3/C ports

• Removal of Touch ID

1) I am personally an Audiophile ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiophile ) and there are people that claim a digital to digital audio signal is better for overall sound quality, others argue for analog only. Mathematically if you look at an audio spectrum from a trigonometric point-of-view of an analog signal it is curvy, which in theory, allows an infinat amount of audio data to be stored and played. Digital however, on the same view point is squared off and looks like a stair case, limiting the amount of data to a fixed amount.

 

Overall, another point of view is most people (unless you are an Audiophile) are using lossy audio ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_compression ) instead of lossless audio ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_compression).

In a nutshell, if you buy a CD you are getting lossless audio which is easily 900 – 1,400+ Kbps per second. Lossly on the other hand which uses the .MP3 or .AAC formats (there are more but .MP# and .AAC are the most common) are limited to a maximum of 320 – 256 Kbps which is a major difference.

 

Many studies have been conducted and the conclusion is that the majority of people cannot tell the difference between the audio quality (regardless of the fact you need to train yourself to). Back on point, it is not a major issue they removed it as long they keep the 15 dollar adapter alive. Linus also pointed out in this Techquicke video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzHOWK_MZA )

that Apple argued the removal of the jack allows more room to make better phones which of course, is completely subjective since they can just make a larger/thicker phone.

 

2) This had caused a major headache with many people especially in tech circles in the Apple and non-Apple spectrums. The general consensus is Apple wanted to make money off of adapters, while not completely incorrect (since the are still a business)

I personally concluded they foresaw the future of Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3 becoming the eventual de facto standards and simply jumped ahead of everyone else. You CAN buy USB C USBs and even USBs with two connectors, one a USB A and the other USB C.

 

3) This one was not as big, but after Face ID was first announced on the iPhone X Apple did remove Touch ID, and while Linus himself has expressed displeasure about this, who cares! Face ID a great technology, but I suppose options are even better.

 

Overall, (while I can go into more depth) Apple (while expensive) do place a lot of effort into their products, if you do NOT like them they literally have a feedback page at ( https://www.apple.com/feedback/ ) and if you think about it leaving feedback there is more effective than ‘crap posting’ on the Internet, unless you want to do both. Lastly, I also easily assume they take a bit of an advantage regarding the whole ‘Apple as a brand’ concept, it is great for business, and unlike U.S. citizens, I am in Australia, we essentially pay DOUBLE! While you were all complaining about the iPhone X costing 1k, we were charged roughly $1,800+, so you cannot cry wolf. : P

 

I also want to make it clear I am not a ‘fan boy’ and I like both Microsoft, Apple and Linux (except Google) I am just tired of people ignoring the reality.

 

Thank you.

Sincerely,

JTAG

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am an engineer in my spare time, I have been involved in music and I have been what some people call an "audiophile" since vinyl was the shit (not the second time around, the first time).  Double blind testing puts most audiophile claims to bed, I wouldn't use it as an analogy for anything except maybe to illustrate why placebo is a thing. You can only train yourself to hear so much, after that if you fail a double blind test then it is because you can't hear sufficient difference to accurately pick a test subject, not because you are under pressure or any of the other silly excuses people have dreamed up to explain away reality.

[Dabombinable]

16 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

More people buying different products further segments the amount of inventory and lowers the volume of a single item that you can realistically have in inventory. 

 

It wouldnt be profitable. 

Parts are generally ordered in as needed....

[Blademaster91]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

More people buying different products further segments the amount of inventory and lowers the volume of a single item that you can realistically have in inventory. 

 

It wouldnt be profitable. 

Louis and about every other  third party board level repair tech have to buy whole laptops for parts just to make repairs, because Apple goes really out of the way to limit replacement parts. That doesn't sound very profitable either, unless you get enough business and can charge the right price for the repair.

Repairing other higher end PC's wouldn't be profitable for one because most of them don't break for stupid reasons as Apple's laptops are often designed to fail or are more fragile than they should be at the price people are paying for a high end computer.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

@Blademaster91 we get it you hate Apple. 

 

can you prove part shops have to buy whole new laptops for parts?

[billstelling]

4 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Louis Rossman has direct conflict of interests against apple.

HE does not have a natural stand.

 

So everything he said need to be taking with a grain of salt.

 

But normally people believe what they wanna believe.

Bunk,, His company exists because of Apple and their snake oil business practices. He started it because of the lack of repairability offered by Apple for their products. If Apple wasn't in the business of scalping it's customers, his business would not exist..

[billstelling]

21 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

@Blademaster91 we get it you hate Apple. 

 

can you prove part shops have to buy whole new laptops for parts?

can you prove they don't?

Oh, and by the way, How you doing "hero". Yeah, I remember you from Neowin...

 

Plenty of unused units from locked used systems/phones that can never be used again...

[Blademaster91]

33 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

@Blademaster91 we get it you hate Apple. 

 

can you prove part shops have to buy whole new laptops for parts?

Saying I "hate" Apple is a strong claim, while on the other hand people blindly defend Apple on everything.

I dislike Apple for their policies and their practices to screw over the consumer, they also seem to ignore what many of their consumers want, alot of their diehard fans even criticize stupid crap like the gimmicky touchbar, soldered in RAM and SSD's, and aren't upgrading from their older laptops that have a better selection of I/O ports.

I'd like to see you prove that they don't though. If you've ever seen Louis Rossmann's videos, they sometimes swap components from other boards if they don't have the part available, and its not like you can just replace the screen on a macbook, you have to replace the whole top lid.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

13 minutes ago, billstelling said:

can you prove they don't?

I never claimed they don't. I just asked for proof that they do. 

 

2 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

they sometimes swap components from other boards if they don't have the part available

that's individual components like resistors etc. I highly doubt you can get individual mono components from other manufacturers. 

[Teddy07]

Apple seems to get more desperate. Now they seem to start paying people to spread their corporate propaganda.

[Blademaster91]

44 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

that's individual components like resistors etc. I highly doubt you can get individual mono components from other manufacturers. 

It is components including IC's which are difficult to obtain since Apple won't provide them, and usually fail in ways that other manufacturers hardware just doesn't fail nearly as often. As mentioned its a terrible waste and bad for the environment when Apple would rather toss away the whole thing.

And its not like you can just replace things like a macbook keyboard, either the keyboard has to be ripped out from the top case with special tools, or replace the whole top case, stuff like that is designed to not be repaired.

 

[Henker]

20 hours ago, campy said:

The big issue with Apple is that they have been lobbying for years to take away a consumers right to repair or use of 3rd party repair services.

They want you to only repair through Apple and they want to charge you an obscene amount of money so you're more likely to just buy a newer product instead.

They also void your regular warranty if you get any repair done at a non authorized repair shop and somehow find that out.

 

Its a tactic that basically goes: "buy our products and you're locked Into our system".

 

I don't care about Apple being what it is otherwise, you pay more for a lesser product because "Apple". And that's fine, as a consumer you buy what you want. We got die hard brand loyalists on these forums who claim anything that isn't xyz brand is garbage. But their deceptive and overbearing methods of keeping an Apple consumer tied to Apple is borderline illegal at this point. 

You have a right to get the property you own serviced under warranty, of course some stuff has to cost money, but when the repair costs more than the item is worth for no reason other than that's what Apple decides to charge you, that's a problem.

 

The wizard of Woz has said many times before he's ashamed of the direction Jobs pushed the company, it was never meant to be like this.

 

When I bought an iPhone, I bought it because it think it's the best phone for me. Not because it's Apple. Other phones may have a sharper screen and more ram, but that doesn't make it better. It's about the user experience.

[Yoinkerman]

6 hours ago, Teddy07 said:

Apple seems to get more desperate. Now they seem to start paying people to spread their corporate propaganda.

They don't need to pay people, their cult followers will do it for free

[Noctus]

22 hours ago, Henker said:

I saw this video by Louis Rossmann: 

And everyone is going wild in the comments that people who buy Apple are stupid because they rip you off...

But in my opinion this is not a ripoff. It's a standard for their post warranty repair process. The Macbook in the video had indications of widespread water intrusion. Apple is not in the same business as Louis Rosssmann. They sell new computers and service them under warranty. They offer post warranty repair service, but it has boundaries. The policy is that they won't go fishing around for root cause analysis. In order to accept an item for repair, it must meet certain qualifications. Checking for water intrusion is one of them. All CBC has proved is that there is a market for computer repair. This is sensationalism, not journalism.

 

BY THE WAY

Just look at Huawei and Samsung costumer service reviews... 

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.huawei.com

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.samsung.com/uk

 

[mr moose]

40 minutes ago, JustAnotherTechGuy99 said:

Hello Mr Moose,

 

I would disagree on the premise that a double blind back-to-back audio hearing sessions would offer a higher rate of  failing since people would be deliberately focusing on the audio. From my experience, if the tests are conducted at different times without the subject knowing what audio to listen for, they can hear the difference.

 

Sincerely,

 

JTAG

That is precisely why they do work,  if you can't tell which is which or which is better when you have nothing to steer your conscious then there isn't a quantifiable difference. That is why the double blind test are the gold standard in testing for anything related to human reaction or perception.

 

 

 

 

[Amazonsucks]

On 1/10/2019 at 3:14 PM, Henker said:

Just look at Huawei and Samsung costumer service reviews... 

Lots of companies prey on the ignorance of the average person. They dont just do it regarding computer repair either.

 

Just because other companies do it too, doesnt make it any less wrong.

 

Ripping people off like Apple etc does should not be standard procedure. Justifying it and normalizing it as you are attempting to do is like that other thread about it being ok for tech companies to help the government spy on innocent people. The same thing i said about that mentality applies here.

 

 

It seems that there are people attempting to create a false consensus for some gain based motive, justify a stance they know is objectively wrong to themself by creating false consensus or simply astroturf. Either way, what theyre doing with these new "justification threads" is pretty obvious to anyone who is even slightly awake...

[lacion]

the weird thing here is the assumption that Apple is worst than other because of that. these practices go way beyond apple and the tech industry, but people for some way have that need to love something and hate something to extreme fanboy rates. I would not be surprised that in the next 50 years people will treat their fav tech company as religions.

[corrado33]

First off, all of the apple haters out there who are saying "Louis Rossman this, Louis Rossman that" seriously, go search around on youtube and you'll find another Louis Rossman for every brand out there.

 

It's clear that he freaking hates his job and protrudes a lot of that hate onto apple products because likely the vast majority of people who bring them in are stupid. He's even said that most often the damage he deals with is caused by liquids. Now, do you... REALLY think that apple has the time to poke around on your personal board to find the fried component, then replace said component, then GUARANTEE it'll work for another X years? Hell no. I highly doubt ANY computer company would do that. PROVE ME WRONG. Do you REALLY think the people at the "genius bar" are smart enough to poke around your motherboard to find the fried component? Fuck no. Hell, I build robots and my own printed circuit boards and even I couldn't do that. Computer motherboards are wicked complicated, often with 4-6 layers of copper. Sure, it may look fine, but what if the copper in the 3rd layer heated just a bit too much and there is now a hairline fracture in the trace. It'll still work.... for a while. But that's not a risk apple is willing to take. Nor an expense. That type of job would require hiring TONS of electrical engineers. Do you know how much money it takes to hire an electrical engineer? A decent freaking amount that's what. In the end, the simple fact is that YOU can't fix your computer, therefore YOU have to pay someone ELSE to fix it. See "I" never cared about the cost of mac repairs because I always did them myself. Oh no I voided the warranty what shall I ever dooooo......

 

I do think how apple is trying to limit 3rd party repairs is shitty, but that's politics.

 

I do think how apple seems to pick form over function is shitty, but that's BUSINESS. Honestly, answer me this, how many people do you think will use an apple computer to the point where it thermal throttles? 10%? 20%? 

 

As for soldering stuff to motherboards.... you apple haters may want to look around in the ultra thin and light laptop category a bit more... I think you'll find many of the brands have done this. Sure, apple may have done it a bit more, but is that really a reason to crucify them? It's a cost saving measure, and 90% of apple owners never open their device anyway. You'd likely make the same decision in their shoes. "Who to cater to.... the 10% of our customers who are techies and will be smart enough to replace some ram or the 90% of college kids using mommy and daddy's money to buy a laptop for college?" Any business person who wants to continue to make money will always cater to the majority of their customers. Personally? I hate it, but hey, they, like linus media group, have to cater to the majority of their viewers, not the minority number of technies in the audience. 

 

The truth is... people have somehow gotten technologically dumb over the last 2 decades. In the 80s, you had to KNOW how to use your computer. You had to know how to program, how to use the command line, how to troubleshoot programs that didn't work, how to install drivers. Modern operating systems render all of these things null. They do it for you. I'd argue that the technological "intelligence" of the average computer user now has gone down since the 80s and 90s. Yes, WE are a tech community... mostly. WE don't like their decisions, but WE don't represent the majority of their profits. Hell, most of us don't even BUY prebuilt computers. Or, if we DO want a mac, we go on craigslist and buy it off of some sap who bought it 5 years ago and kitted it out with everything. Then you get a 5 year old computer with probably now mid range hardware at a fraction of the cost as if you were to buy it new. I'd argue that MOST of you have never even USED a mac long enough to "get used to it." You probably used it twice in your school's computer lab and said "This isn't windows" "Where's my start bar" "How do I quit applications." blah blah blah. Personally I think Mac OS is a vastly superior OS to Windows 7 or 10. Absolutely no comparison. It's built on a much better platform and it shows. It really does. 

 

As for the cost of their products? Meh. Yeah, they're a bit expensive for what you get. That's why you buy a used one on craigslist after the poor (or rather... rich) slub who bought it new wants an upgrade. But hey, it's a prebuilt, what can you expect? It's absolutely unfair to compare them to a home built PC. 

 

A lot of what makes me angry with people hating on apple is ignorance. People say "well why does it cost $X to give me 128GB more space when I can buy a 128 GB SSD for $50." Well, first off you need to start thinking. Apple solders these things to the motherboard so you're purchasing a product that there are fewer of. Secondly, that extra 128 GB would often have to fit in the same space that the original 32 GB sat in. Which means higher density chips, which means more expensive chips. It's not just 32 GB + 96 GB. It's literally taking the 4 8 GB chips out and replacing them with 4 32 GB chips. Do a bit of googling for the price of SD cards and you'll start to understand why that's an issue. (Actually 8 GB SD cards are expensive because they're rare now... not sure if the analogy will hold up.) And sure, if you actually DID do the math and figured out how much more it would cost apple for those more expensive chips, yes, I can guarantee you it'd be less that the extra cost they're charging you. But the fact is.... if you could do it.... you wouldn't have to pay them to do it for you.... You're paying them a service fee, essentially. (Not literally, but you get the point. It's something that you can't do, therefore they can charge whatever the hell they want for it you'll HAVE to pay it, because you can't do it.) If you're sick of the prices of their upgrades, just invest in a $300 hot air machine, go buy the new chips, spend another $100-$300 learning how to solder those chips without ruining the rest of the board (good luck) and do it yourself.

 

Now, you probably think I'm an Apple shill. Technically, I've owned an apple computer for all of my computer using life. I've had many other computers, and my main computer now is a win 10 machine I built myself. Personally, I don't like what apple has become right now. I hate the "thin and light" push they've seem to become stuck on. I want my beefy G5 mac back. I want the original Mac Pro. But alas, I represent a minority in their sales charts. I want an iPhone that's the same size of my iPhone 4... with bezels... that's pretty strong and a huge honkin battery, but again, I represent the minority. 

 

People like to pick on apple because their products don't have the same specs as a "comparable" PC, but what they refuse to remember is that apple is essentially a console. Apple is a playstation 4 pro while microsoft/any windows PC seller is... well... a PC. That playstation 4 can play games at 30/60 fps that your admittedly much more powerful PC can only play at 30/60 fps. How does that work? Well apple only has to deal with a small amount of hardware, meaning their software is better suited to USE that hardware, and makes use of lesser hardware better than an equivalent PC. 

 

Apple isn't developing these "shitty" products because they think they're good. They develop these products because they think they'll SELL. And they do.... in droves. Apple is a business, they're trying to make money. I HOPE.... that with their most recent round of iPhone sale "failures" that they'll start changing their mind and go back to the old days (When Steve was around), but I doubt it. At this point, this method has worked too well for too long. 

 

What really annoys me is the sheer disdain that LMG has for apple. Ever notice that when they make a video about a product they don't like that's NOT apple the product name is never in the title? But when it's an apple product, they plaster the name ALL OVER the clickbaity title. Because they know all you apple haters out there will sop it up and get the ad revenue flowing in. 

 

Apple dis videos seem to be LMG's cash cows. And from what I considered a once relatively unbiased tech review channel, it makes me sad. 

[Amazonsucks]

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

I HOPE.... that with their most recent round of iPhone sale "failures" that they'll start changing their mind and go back to the old days (When Steve was around), but I doubt it. At this point, this method has worked too well for too long. 

Did you see their stock price?