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LTT in the news! IMac pro video featured in multiple articles from 'news websites'

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1 hour ago, HappyDog_420 said:

Hi community,

Here is the link to the article https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/18/apple-refusing-to-fix-youtubers-imac-pro-claims-low-on-facts-light-on-details

 

After watching Linus' video: Apple REFUSED to Fix our iMac Pro, I was bit shocked by - what I find is - Apple's lack of professionalism. So I just googled the issue and read some articles about it. Then, I stumbled about this biased gem:

 

On what basis can the author claim that? Anthony obviously only dropped the screen! How can one conceive that any damage came the motherboard??

 

Yeah Linus, you should respect the system, especially when it's as anti-consumer as that. The system is obviously king here, not the customer
 

Are you for REAL? Now you are really considering that the whole motherboard is broken? How can a screen replacement cost more than the whole product?

All in all, this article frustrated me even more than Linus' video. It makes a baseless hypothesis, encourages anti-consumer behavior and just - 5500$ repair... If this article is representative of the average Apple Consumer's point of view, then no wonder Apple has no shame in having such toxic business-model and such a bad support.

Very simple really, Linus quite clearly says he needs a screen, motherboard and PSU at the end of the video.

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2 hours ago, Valentyn said:

'll hold off until the new Mac Pro is out.

Don't hold your breath. MacRumors (or 9to5Mac) did an article around the marketting of the upcoming Mac Pro: it's specifically marketed so that if it's modular, but not conventionally upgradable, Apple didn't technically lie to you. The current Mac Pro is modular...

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2 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Don't hold your breath. MacRumors (or 9to5Mac) did an article around the marketting of the upcoming Mac Pro: it's specifically marketed so that if it's modular, but not conventionally upgradable, Apple didn't technically lie to you. The current Mac Pro is modular...

I'll wait until it's out before passing judgement.

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4 hours ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

@LinusTech

 

Please make this a WAN Show topic, people defending Apple on this matter seem to have this perception that you didn't understand how the product worked (which itself is laughable) and they for some reason because you show the product disassembled they can't put themselves in a situation where the product wasn't disassembled.  

LTT getting into a protracted ideological battle of words with die hard Mac supporters is really not going to benefit LTT.  LTT's beef is with Apple refusing to repair a thing it sells even at the owners expense, it's not a beef with fanboy nerds in comment threads and forums.

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4 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

LTT getting into a protracted ideological battle of words with die hard Mac supporters is really not going to benefit LTT.  LTT's beef is with Apple refusing to repair a thing it sells even at the owners expense, it's not a beef with fanboy nerds in comment threads and forums.

Yeah I fully understand where you are coming from, it's just I was saying that they have this perception for some reason. 

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The time Linus replied to me on one of my threads: 

 

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Only an Apple fanboy can defend a company that refuses to fix a $5000+ machine.

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28 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

I'll wait until it's out before passing judgement.

I'm just saying don't hope for the moon with the system. I'm considering picking up one and a Wacom Cintiq Pro as an xmas gift to myself.

Come Bloody Angel

Break off your chains

And look what I've found in the dirt.

 

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Seems she was struggling

Something is wrong with this world.

 

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The blood is on your hands

Why did you come to this world?

 

Everybody turns to dust.

 

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The blood is on your hands.

 

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What the F is it with that title?!

Ill-informed YouTuber bemoans Apple repair policies after breaking iMac Pro.

 

The amount of Apple defending from both sites linked in this topic is ridiculous. You know what, we who are smart enough and won't take this nonsense, will buy from brands that will support their product and gives us the right to repair. Let Apple arse kissers continue to support Apple's behavior, and once their own Apple things breaks, they can get a taste of their own bs.

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4 pages and no Dr. Mac ??? I must still be asleep

 

Annnnd apple is shit... Dafuq do you deny some one repairs when they are paying for them >.>

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It is apple. I hate to say it, but they aren't bringing about innovation anymore. They just sell over-priced products with their logo now. They run a proprietary OS that is just their personal distro of a linux distro.

 

Their support has always been subpar and they are known for handicapping their products via updates to make the new products more appealing.

 

They were founded on being the best solution for video/music/image editing, yet are now severely under-performing compared to much lower cost options. They have a very limited upgrade path outside of purchasing a new machine... and their once time better security is going downhill as more and more malicious software is being designed to compromised their systems.

 

I honestly hope to see the downfall of apple sometime in the future. 

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8 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

It is apple. I hate to say it, but they aren't bringing about innovation anymore. They just sell over-priced products with their logo now. They run a proprietary OS that is just their personal distro of a linux distro.

 

Their support has always been subpar and they are known for handicapping their products via updates to make the new products more appealing.

 

They were founded on being the best solution for video/music/image editing, yet are now severely under-performing compared to much lower cost options. They have a very limited upgrade path outside of purchasing a new machine... and their once time better security is going downhill as more and more malicious software is being designed to compromised their systems.

 

I honestly hope to see the downfall of apple sometime in the future. 

and yet they never really did any innovation, mostly stoled others ideas, always sold over priced products, always been subpar and were known for handicapping their products via updates to make the new products more appealing, and always had a very limited upgrade path outside of purchasing a new machine.... and yet they put some fruit logo on it and see the money roll in.

 

nothing changed and doomsday scenarios seem really unreasonable.

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18 minutes ago, asus killer said:

and yet they never really did any innovation, mostly stoled others ideas, always sold over priced products, always been subpar and were known for handicapping their products via updates to make the new products more appealing, and always had a very limited upgrade path outside of purchasing a new machine.... and yet they put some fruit logo on it and see the money roll in.

 

nothing changed and doomsday scenarios seem really unreasonable.

I despise apple, but they did have a few innovations in there day. Originally macs were a viable options over Microsoft products for creativity needs. They did bring about some pretty big innovation leaps with the Ipod, Ipad, and Iphone. However, though they have been pretty stale in comparison to android offerings from big manufacturers particularly Samsung.

 

That being said, they have been going downhill for a while now IMO. With Jobs getting sick and then passing they have lost the last little bit of a spark or hope they had. Now it is just lots of ridiculous lawsuits claiming people stole their copyright ideas or releasing the same products with an extra usb port.

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21 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

So I get treating consumers like shit but may I ask: What kind of serious business would have an IT department that would OK these pros for workstation use?

 

-IT Bob: "Bill we're going to imac pros for the workstation users. They're like 10k a piece"

-Bill: "Ok Bob and what about service plans for them"

-IT Bob: "Oh you can't actually service these, not even Apple will repair them"

-Bill: "....So 10k for Workstations that are basically disposable....yeah tell the workstation users we'll be getting PCs for them I don't care how hip the imacs are"

You would be surprised at how many companies allow this. I know a couple of guys who work IT for some major companies where I live (one of them even wrote an O'Reilly book on Xenserver). They both love and hate Macs. They love them because typically they don't have as many calls on them. They hate them because when they do have a call on them they are unfamiliar with them and/or they cannot be repaired through what they consider normal channels.

 

In my time I have encountered a great many creative professionals (photography, both still and motion; musicians; graphic artists; publishers; etc) who know all of the ins and outs of their other equipment such as cameras, but are absolutely clueless when it comes to computers. Often they are married to a particular software package on a particular platform. If they have been using Macs for a long time then the cost of the learning curve to switch platforms may outweigh the cost of a new iMac Pro. 

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15 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

Discussing this issue over in the general discussion area, and I looked up a couple other related articles, and found one that was pretty cool. Apparently Canadian leadership believe they don't get treated as fairly as their American neighbors, which I would definitely see as being a HUGE issue. Maybe there can be hope for Canada? Their quote:

 

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2018/04/black-eye-for-apple-canadas-popular-host-of-linus-tech-tips-posts-his-latest-video-titled-apple-refused-to-fix-our-imac-pr.html

Linus has often mentioned that the Canadian marketing departments are rough to deal with. There was even a joke in one of his videos about establishing a US office just over the border so that they could deal with the US marketing departments.

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13 hours ago, asus killer said:

just one question: did anyone at Apple even bothered to say anything about this?

 

One a side note this is why i don't think reviewers, Ytubers, etc... should accept offers. If this was a offer Linus would have talked to the PR dude that offered the mac pro and this would probably not have happened. This is a review from the perspective of the consumer and they all should be like this one. I get that smaller channels have to accept offers, not the big ones. @LinusTech

 

And for all the shit everyone is trowing at Apple (and deserved) they are not the only ones pulling shady stuff at customer care (or don't care) 

 

Apple is not going to provide samples for someone like Linus in the same way they would for someone like iJustine. Apple is and always has been a bit of a propaganda machine. Now they are big enough and powerful enough that they can essentially ignore marketing to Youtubers in a way that a company like Asus or Gigabyte cannot.

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2 hours ago, AngryBeaver said:

It is apple. I hate to say it, but they aren't bringing about innovation anymore. They just sell over-priced products with their logo now. They run a proprietary OS that is just their personal distro of a linux distro.

 

Their support has always been subpar and they are known for handicapping their products via updates to make the new products more appealing.

 

They were founded on being the best solution for video/music/image editing, yet are now severely under-performing compared to much lower cost options. They have a very limited upgrade path outside of purchasing a new machine... and their once time better security is going downhill as more and more malicious software is being designed to compromised their systems.

 

I honestly hope to see the downfall of apple sometime in the future. 

I don't think I've seen a post where virtually everything isn't just spun badly, but is dominated by false statements.  And I don't mean that it's saying things I don't agree with, I mean they're flat-out objectively wrong.

 

Apple is still kicking out innovative tech, it's just that a lot of it has gone into components.  Face ID brought IR face recognition to smartphones.  Its audio division is doing some impressive stuff (whatever you think of HomePod's not-so-bright voice control, the sound is outstanding for the size; the iPad Pro and other devices are benefiting, too).  And remember, the whole reason your phone has Google Pay/Samsung Pay/etc. is because Apple Pay came first.  I suspect you're clinging to the mythologized version of Apple where there was some completely revolutionary product every year or two under Jobs... which just isn't true.  There were six years between the iPod and the iPhone, for example.  The big breakthroughs tended to have significant gaps, and it's awfully simplistic to assume that Jobs would have pioneered some radical invention by now if he were still around.

 

And now a simpler factual error: macOS has never been based on Linux.  It uses some core technology from FreeBSD, which is Unix-based, not Linux.  This is not a distro with some cosmetic layers thrown on top -- most of the code in macOS is Apple's own.

 

How was Apple founded on media editing when the company was started in 1976?  I won't deny that their dominance of media editing has faded somewhat, but it's more that they have a reputation for media editing.  And that reputation didn't really start in earnest until the late '80s and '90s.

 

It's also objectively false that they underperform in media editing compared to "much lower cost options."  It depends on what you're looking for.  To start: if Final Cut Pro X or Logic makes sense for your editing workflow, they kick the ass of Adobe's options on any platform.  A video that takes, say, 15 minutes to encode on Premiere (Mac or Windows) might take roughly half that time on a decently equipped Mac.  And please don't do the thing where you price out a gaming PC and then compare it against an iMac Pro, because serious creators will laugh at you.

 

Apple is certainly under more pressure security-wise, but saying that it's going "downhill" is a bit much.  That embarrassing password goof aside, the practical threat to a Mac is still much lower, and it's not just security-through-obscurity playing a role.

 

Also, and this may be my biggest concern... why do you want to see the downfall of Apple?  Hurray, Apple is no more!  All hail the eternal Google and Microsoft monopolies where choice, competition and freedom are dead!  No, you want Apple to improve, not to go away.  Apple is why Microsoft embraced touch and made its own PCs; Apple is why Google iterates Android as aggressively as it does, and why the Nexus/Pixel lines exist; Apple is why Samsung has features like dual cameras and Samsung Pay.  You need that major alternative to the monocultures of Android and Windows so that they don't stagnate.

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17 minutes ago, Randogg said:

Apple is not going to provide samples for someone like Linus in the same way they would for someone like iJustine. Apple is and always has been a bit of a propaganda machine. Now they are big enough and powerful enough that they can essentially ignore marketing to Youtubers in a way that a company like Asus or Gigabyte cannot.

iJustine is a YouTuber, you know that, right?  So are Marques Brownlee, Jonathan Morrison and a host of others who've received review units and otherwise special treatment from Apple.  The company has been ramping up its interactions with the YouTube community in the past couple of years.

 

The issue isn't whether or not someone is a YouTuber, it's the specific circumstances around why this iMac Pro broke and what LTT is hoping for.

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4 minutes ago, Commodus said:

iJustine is a YouTuber, you know that, right?  So are Marques Brownlee, Jonathan Morrison and a host of others who've received review units and otherwise special treatment from Apple.

 

The issue isn't whether or not someone is a YouTuber, it's the specific circumstances around why this iMac Pro broke and what LTT is hoping for.

I'm not as familiar with Marques Brownlee or Jonathan Morrison. iJustine on the other hand is essentially an Apple Evangelist. Her criticisms of Apple products are no where near as harsh as Linus's. In other words, from what I know of Apple I can't see them sending him things on the same scale as iJustine.

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51 minutes ago, Commodus said:

It's also objectively false that they underperform in media editing compared to "much lower cost options."  It depends on what you're looking for.  To start: if Final Cut Pro X or Logic makes sense for your editing workflow, they kick the ass of Adobe's options on any platform.  A video that takes, say, 15 minutes to encode on Premiere (Mac or Windows) might take roughly half that time on a decently equipped Mac.  And please don't do the thing where you price out a gaming PC and then compare it against an iMac Pro, because serious creators will laugh at you.

Apple is certainly under more pressure security-wise, but saying that it's going "downhill" is a bit much.  That embarrassing password goof aside, the practical threat to a Mac is still much lower, and it's not just security-through-obscurity playing a role.

Also, and this may be my biggest concern... why do you want to see the downfall of Apple?  Hurray, Apple is no more!  All hail the eternal Google and Microsoft monopolies where choice, competition and freedom are dead!  No, you want Apple to improve, not to go away.  Apple is why Microsoft embraced touch and made its own PCs; Apple is why Google iterates Android as aggressively as it does, and why the Nexus/Pixel lines exist; Apple is why Samsung has features like dual cameras and Samsung Pay.  You need that major alternative to the monocultures of Android and Windows so that they don't stagnate.

Apple pay is still very much a niche but so is the whole paying with your phone thing,and the security premise behind Apple devices is overhyped advertising, apple pay was easily hacked being able to root login to a mac so easily is unacceptable it shouldn't gotten past testing, mac is only secure as it makes up about 8-10% of the computer market.

The home pod didn't sell very well because it lacks features and is overpriced compared to other smart speakers, the ipad pro being a larger version with a pen? Not sure how that is successful versus something like a Wacom tablet.

However meanwhile content creators and professionals are looking at building "gaming" PC's instead because a fancier AIO imac that runs hot,throttles down the cpu, doesn't have a workstation GPU and can't be user serviced isn't a replacement for a true workstation.

And it is the opposite really when Google,Samsung,and MS are the alternatives and choices of more freedom, rather than being locked into Apple's closed ecosystem of proprietary software & hardware. Need to connect headphones or standard USB 3.0? Well you have to buy a dongle for that. MS did sort of follow making their own PC's however they are way ahead in touch and innovation, Apple giving you a gimmicky touch bar isn't very innovative in comparison.

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1 minute ago, Randogg said:

I'm not as familiar with Marques Brownlee or Jonathan Morrison. iJustine on the other hand is essentially an Apple Evangelist. Her criticisms of Apple products are no where near as harsh as Linus's. In other words, from what I know of Apple I can't see them sending him things on the same scale as iJustine.

 

Brownlee is generally regarded as the best-known tech YouTuber with over 6 million subscribers (for reference: iJustine has 4.7 million).  Morrison, meanwhile, has about 2.4 million.  Neither is particularly scathing toward Apple, but they can and will call it out over things they don't like.

 

And that's the thing: a lot of the people here assume LTT doesn't get review units or event invitations because it dares to be critical of Apple, but that's not really true.  Hell, I've seen major tech news outlets like Engadget and The Verge offer sharp criticism of Apple gadgets and still get access.  It's more that Apple tends to avoid outlets whose criticism frequently goes into tirades, or where it looks like they're trying to stir up drama.  Why would Apple bend over backwards to court a site whose Mac reviews frequently boil down to "but I'm a gamer, so I'd rather have a Windows PC?"  

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I have been following Apple pretty closely since the mid 90's. I have only ever had one Apple product die on me that I was the original owner of, and I have owned several of their products. I was an Apple fan before Steve Jobs came back when everyone thought they were going out of business. I have used Macs from the Macintosh SE to the G4 Mac Mini. I have also owned multiple iPhones, and iOS is my preferred mobile platform.

 

Having said all of that, what happened to LTT does not surprise me. Apple has always put rather onerous requirements on their authorized service centers. Apple hardware has always been somewhat specialized, hence the need for certification in the Apple world. Even Dell and HP which use some proprietary things in their systems (PSUs with non-standard pinouts among other things) are not as difficult to deal with as Apple's hardware. Apple wants it that way. 

 

In the late 90's when I was attending the University of Georgia I did some "under-the-table" work for a guy that was trying to get certified to repair Macs. I don't think there was a service center close by, but because he was not selling Macs he could not be authorized to repair them. Even without the certification he did a ton of work because he was so close to the University. He did not have a contract with the University or any departments, but he did do work for pretty much every department there. 

 

Apple has also always had very expensive replacement parts. I remember many times seeing replacement motherboards for Macs cost as much as the retail of a new Mac. This was happening all the way back in the mid-90's when it was normal to spend $2k for a mid-level system.

 

I have also followed what can colloquially be termed "The Mac Web" since the 90's. Sites like Mac OS Rumors, Accelerate Your Mac, Apple Insider, and Low End Mac have been around for many years and all fall into a category of sites that could be considered Apple Evangelists. They typically have content that is favorable to Apple (Lowendmac.com has turned into more of a community and info resource than news). However even I was surprised at how hard the Apple Insider and Mac OS Rumors articles were towards LTT. This is especially true as traditionally Apple has been no friend to the Mac Web.

 

The fact that Apple will not sell them replacement parts is just absurd.

Edited by Randogg
I left off the closing sentence.
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55 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Apple pay is still very much a niche but so is the whole paying with your phone thing,and the security premise behind Apple devices is overhyped advertising , Apple pay was easily hacked,and being able to root login to a mac so easily is unacceptable it shouldn't gotten past testing, mac is only secure as it makes up about 8-10% of the computer market. The home pod didn't sell very well because it lacks features and is overpriced compared to other smart speakers.

However meanwhile content creators and professionals are looking at building "gaming" PC's instead because a fancier AIO imac that runs hot,throttles down the cpu, doesn't have a workstartion GPU and can't be user serviced isn't a replacement for a true workstation.

And it is the opposite really, Google,Samsung,and MS are the alternatives and choices of more freedom, rather than being locked into Apple's closed ecosystem of proprietary software & hardware. Need to connect headphones or standard USB 3.0? Well you have to buy a dongle for that. MS did sort of follow making their own PC's however they are way ahead in touch and innovation, Apple giving you a gimmicky touch bar isn't very innovative in comparison.

Ergh, more straight up false claims.

 

Apple Pay isn't invulnerable, but it was not "easily" hacked.  It took years to discover a vulnerability.  And remember, because Google Pay and Samsung Pay (via NFC) basically use the same concept, that means they're susceptible to similar attacks.

 

As I said, the "Macs are only secure through obscurity" claim is false.  There are multiple high-level design decisions that help it out.  By default, a Mac won't run non-App Store apps that aren't signed by trusted developers; you have to purposefully loosen that security.  You can also lock it down to only App Store apps where you only really got that ability on Windows PCs through Windows 10 S (and its subsequent "S mode").  MacOS' nature as a Unix-based OS means that access permissions have always been tightly controlled where it took ages for Windows to move toward that approach.  You get the idea.

 

Also, I'm scratching my head at talking about creators building gaming PCs in one breath and then lambasting Apple for not having workstation GPUs in another (never mind that this claim is inaccurate -- they're Radeon Pro Vega chips).  And whether or not it's AIO doesn't dictate whether it's a workstation, it's the performance.  I agree that some pros absolutely shouldn't consider an iMac Pro, but I see it as geared more toward creators who don't need internal expansion (which is more than you think) or may even prefer a system they can easily cart to where it's needed, like a movie set.  Throttling or not, it's still damn fast and will outperform a comparable Windows PC in video editing performance when using Final Cut.

 

Yes, Apple has a closed ecosystem, but please don't fool yourself -- different spins on Android do not make for true diversity in smartphones, nor does a different variety of Windows PCs make for true diversity in computers.  It's like arguing that a one-party dictatorship is really a democracy because you had your choice of candidates from the same party.  Real choice, competition and freedom means having the option of something genuinely different, not just shades of the same thing.

 

(Also: Apple, like the Android OEMs that have followed it into ditching the headphone jack, includes a headphone dongle in the box.  I do think Apple should include a USB 3.0-capable cable in the box.)

Edited by Commodus
Grammar
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23 minutes ago, Randogg said:

I have been following Apple pretty closely since the mid 90's. I have only ever had one Apple product die on me that I was the original owner of, and I have owned several of their products. I was an Apple fan before Steve Jobs came back when everyone thought they were going out of business. I have used Macs from the Macintosh SE to the G4 Mac Mini. I have also owned multiple iPhones, and iOS is my preferred mobile platform.

 

Having said all of that, what happened to LTT does not surprise me. Apple has always put rather onerous requirements on their authorized service centers. Apple hardware has always been somewhat specialized, hence the need for certification in the Apple world. Even Dell and HP which use some proprietary things in their systems (PSUs with non-standard pinouts among other things) are not as difficult to deal with as Apple's hardware. Apple wants it that way. 

 

In the late 90's when I was attending the University of Georgia I did some "under-the-table" work for a guy that was trying to get certified to repair Macs. I don't think there was a service center close by, but because he was not selling Macs he could not be authorized to repair them. Even without the certification he did a ton of work because he was so close to the University. He did not have a contract with the University or any departments, but he did do work for pretty much every department there. 

 

Apple has also always had very expensive replacement parts. I remember many times seeing replacement motherboards for Macs cost as much as the retail of a new Mac. This was happening all the way back in the mid-90's when it was normal to spend $2k for a mid-level system.

 

I have also followed what can colloquially be termed "The Mac Web" since the 90's. Sites like Mac OS Rumors, Accelerate Your Mac, Apple Insider, and Low End Mac have been around for many years and all fall into a category of sites that could be considered Apple Evangelists. They typically have content that is favorable to Apple (Lowendmac.com has turned into more of a community and info resource than news). However even I was surprised at how hard the Apple Insider and Mac OS Rumors articles were towards LTT. This is especially true as traditionally Apple has been no friend to the Mac Web.

 

The fact that Apple will not sell them replacement parts is just absurd.

I generally agree that Apple can be onerous in some aspects of its repair... certainly prices.  LTT's issue is complex, but my beef is that it's trying to create a fuss over something that isn't exactly a secret (Apple is picky about repairs, shocker) and isn't going to affect the vast majority of Mac buyers.

 

And yes, MacRumors, AppleInsider and the like are certainly very much kinder to Apple than many outlets, but the irony is that those sites don't get Apple review units and, outside of AppleInsider, don't get event access (I'm not actually convinced that AI gets in with a media pass).  The company seems much more interested in news organizations based on their audience size than whether or not they'll say flattering things.  I've seen the Wall Street Journal slam Apple over products more than a few times.

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2 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I generally agree that Apple can be onerous in some aspects of its repair... certainly prices.  LTT's issue is complex, but my beef is that it's trying to create a fuss over something that isn't exactly a secret (Apple is picky about repairs, shocker) and isn't going to affect the vast majority of Mac buyers.

 

And yes, MacRumors, AppleInsider and the like are certainly very much kinder to Apple than many outlets, but the irony is that those sites don't get Apple review units and, outside of AppleInsider, don't get event access (I'm not actually convinced that AI gets in with a media pass).  The company seems much more interested in news organizations based on their audience size than whether or not they'll say flattering things.  I've seen the Wall Street Journal slam Apple over products more than a few times.

I was probably a bit too kind in my description of Apple's treatment of the Mac Web. Quite frankly, even in the late 90's when the company needed all of the positive press it could get, Apple was horrible to the Mac Web. That is one of the reasons that it is so surprising that they have traditionally been so defensive of Apple.

 

LTT typically advocates for the consumer. This may be part of that. I have seen them go on tirades and rail against companies with onerous repair policies in the past. This could be part of that. I like to think that LTT is not going crazy with clickbait as that has never been their MO in the past. 

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