Do you own any Apple products, and what is your approach to them

[maplepants]

I've got loads of Apple stuff. Desktop, laptop, phone, iPad, HomePods, Apple TV, AirPods, all the accessories you'd need to make all the stuff work. Also from work I've got a Macbook Pro and iPhone.

 

What I really like about it is how well all the stuff works together. Copy from one device and paste on another with the same Apple ID is something I use constantly. AirDrop, AirPods being on basically all my devices at once, there are just countless quality of life features. 

 

My 1st Gen Pixel Buds are in many ways my favourite headphones. But they're very annoying to use with both my iPhone and my Macbook compared to how easy it is to move my AirPods Max between my TV, iPad, Desktop, laptop, iPhone, sharing audio with my wife's devices. 

 

I love my Windows gaming PC when I'm playing games on it. But a lot of the basics of using it as a computer suck.

 

With my Apple stuff I find that basically everything except Siri works. And even the HomePods minis are actually really great if you limit yourself music (played via other AirPlay speakers), timers, and Shortcuts. It's a big caveat I know, but I feel better about that asterisk than I do about Amazon or Google's tracking.

[4bettingrags]

Apple seems to have a cult-like following, one I will never see myself being emotionally invested in tbh. I'll never become a slave to their exploitative techniques or their eco-system, nor will I feel obligated to "upgrade" every year, as so many do just to get validation from their peers. Having said that, I do own an iPhone 11 Pro Max. It works, it's simple to use, and it's unrivaled in terms of security.

[Erioch]

6 hours ago, Arika said:

The worst thing about Apple devices is Apple as a company.

Second worst are their evangelists.

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, Arika said:

The worst thing about Apple devices is Apple as a company.

Yeah, In my opinion every one should watch a video from Louis Rossmann about Apple. So at least they know what they are getting themselves in to.

[4bettingrags]

29 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Yeah, In my opinion every one should watch a video from Louis Rossmann about Apple. So at least they know what they are getting themselves in to.

TBF, that video is old/irrelevant.

 

Not condoning their practices, but it's not nearly as bad as it was then.

[Donut417]

24 minutes ago, 4bettingrags said:

Not condoning their practices, but it's not nearly as bad as it was then.

Are the machines repairable? No. Can 3rd parties get parts easily? No. Does Apple try to push you to upgrade rather than fix? Yes. All points Louis brings up. Hes points are not only valid today but they now can be directed at many more companies.

[SansVarnic]

-= Cleaned =-

Let's refrain going down the path unnecessary discourse.

[RabbidEwok]

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Yeah, In my opinion every one should watch a video from Louis Rossmann about Apple. So at least they know what they are getting themselves in to.

Really you shouldn’t, he’s a fraud who can’t even read a repair manual. 

[saintlouisbagels]

I own basically every iPhone from 6s to current.

I can't give up on iMessage or FaceTime since most of my friends and family are on iMessage, and other essential friends are on Discord.

 

AirPods gen 3 for work (situational awareness and being able to hold conversations), AirPods Pro Gen 1 for gym (with Comply Foam tips), and AirPods Gen 2 for general usage

Apple TV 4K gen 2 - love the remote and the speed

iPad Pro 11" M2 for no particular reason - sometimes I use it as a second screen for YouTube

MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro - primary laptop. INCREDIBLE battery life and I've never heard the fan in my 2 years of ownership. I rarely play video games, and when I do, I actually appreciate the very limited selection to avoid "decision paralysis"

Mac Studio M2 Ultra - 16GB RAM on the laptop was not enough *sigh* so I went straight to future-proofing

Apple Studio Display - glossy screen is stunning. speakers and microphone quality are amazing. Wish it had more than 1 input. I connect my 2080Ti gaming desktop via USB-C to USB-C when I play something like Baldur's Gate 3

[maplepants]

21 hours ago, igormp said:

Only have a work issued MBP 14". The battery life is pretty good and performance is ok (specially considering that it's a laptop, but still far behind my desktop)

The ARM Macbook Pros are really good work laptops. They've got loads of power, especially on battery.

 

My office was redesigned after COVID to make more comfy spaces (so that people might be interested in showing up more). 

 

With my M2 Pro MBP I can sit anywhere I want and work just fine all day. My colleagues with Windows laptops are basically chained to their desks by not just the poor battery life but also the hilariously gimped performance they face when running on battery. 

[igormp]

21 minutes ago, maplepants said:

The ARM Macbook Pros are really good work laptops.

A tad expensive, but yeah, can have management stuff similar to what you can achieve on windows, while being good enough for developers to work on.

21 minutes ago, maplepants said:

They've got loads of power, especially on battery.

But it's still a laptop, whenever I need to do anything really resource intensive I'll still find myself remoting into a proper machine.

22 minutes ago, maplepants said:

With my M2 Pro MBP I can sit anywhere I want and work just fine all day. My colleagues with Windows laptops are basically chained to their desks by not just the poor battery life but also the hilariously gimped performance they face when running on battery. 

I mean, I guess you're comparing to those chunk laptops that barely stand an hour on battery life. For the use case I said above where I'm mostly using remote machines and the laptop is just a glorified dumb terminal, many thin and light laptops are almost as good IMO.

I guess the problem is the lack of a premium 13~14" AMD laptop with a 70Wh+ battery, so a MBP 14 really has no competitors.

[maplepants]

6 minutes ago, Fennick_Fox said:

The Apple "ecosystem" does nothing that can't be accomplished on Android/Windows.

This isn't true at all. There's nothing like AirPods for Windows / Android. My AirPods Max are paired to my Apple TV, Macbook Air, Mac Studio, iPhone, and iPad. And due to audio sharing they're basically paired to my wife's devices too.

 

As much as I love my Pixel buds they just don't come anywhere close to AirPods.

 

Universal clipboard also has no true parallel on Windows + Android. KDE Connect is cool but really clumsy compared with universal clipboard and AirDrop. 

 

Before moving into the Apple ecosystem I was using first gen Pixel Buds, a Pixel 2, and a Surface Laptop. That Android + Windows user experience is much worse than a Macbook, iPhone, and AirPods.

[maplepants]

22 minutes ago, igormp said:

A tad expensive, but yeah, can have management stuff similar to what you can achieve on windows, while being good enough for developers to work on.

Depends on your organization, but if instead of my M2 Pro MBP I got our departments standard issue Windows laptop it would have saved 200€ or so.

 

25 minutes ago, igormp said:

But it's still a laptop, whenever I need to do anything really resource intensive I'll still find myself remoting into a proper machine.

Same, but I do make use of the local computer resources quite often. I wouldn't be able to work with just an iPad running Blink and Outlook.

28 minutes ago, igormp said:

I mean, I guess you're comparing to those chunk laptops that barely stand an hour on battery life. For the use case I said above where I'm mostly using remote machines and the laptop is just a glorified dumb terminal, many thin and light laptops are almost as good IMO.

I guess the problem is the lack of a premium 13~14" AMD laptop with a 70Wh+ battery, so a MBP 14 really has no competitors.

There really is no competition. You can get Windows laptops with way more power than any Macbook. And you can get Windows laptops with decent batter life. But there's basically nothing with good battery life, decent power, and decent power on battery.

 

Plus, this might just be a personal preference, but the terminal options on Windows are just not good. Windows Terminal is a huge step up, but you still have to choose between the jank that is powershell or the jank that is WSL.

[igormp]

16 minutes ago, maplepants said:

Depends on your organization, but if instead of my M2 Pro MBP I got our departments standard issue Windows laptop it would have saved 200€ or so.

 

When I got in my current place I was given the option of a Z13 or a M2 Pro MBP, almost went for the Z13 (which was 1/4 of the price here) until I found out we can't really use linux due to compliance reasons. While I find MacOS bad, Windows is a way worse experience for my daily work, so I just went with the fruit.

17 minutes ago, maplepants said:

Same, but I do make use of the local computer resources quite often. I wouldn't be able to work with just an iPad running Blink and Outlook.

50 minutes ago, igormp said:

Fair, it's a matter of use case anyway. People won't be buying macbooks for Solidworks or FPGA stuff, in the same vein other's won't be buying a hefty dell precision just for sending emails.

20 minutes ago, maplepants said:

There really is no competition. You can get Windows laptops with way more power than any Macbook. And you can get Windows laptops with decent batter life. But there's basically nothing with good battery life, decent power, and decent power on battery.

If your needs are right in this intersection, the yeah, but I guess there are many needs in the other ends too, as in: you can buy a mac just for the insane battery life, or an ultra chip for the insane perf, and if that's all you need you can find windows laptops alternatives. But again, agreed that there's nothing really equivalent if you need something right in between.

21 minutes ago, maplepants said:

Plus, this might just be a personal preference, but the terminal options on Windows are just not good. Windows Terminal is a huge step up, but you still have to choose between the jank that is powershell or the jank that is WSL.

Me neither, hence why I have a Mac now, as said above lol

[rikitikitavi]

22 hours ago, Kisai said:

On the other end, the Macbook Air and iMac may as well be thrown away after 3 years. That is wasteful.

This/your approach is what creates e-waste.

 

Sure, someone might realize that their tool suddenly doesn’t meet their needs. However you don’t usually jump from work that only requires ggl docs to building massive language models on the same device.

 

You should know what you are buying this tool for and pay premium ahead of time, cause everything is soldered - not convenient, but it doesn’t create obsolete devices in 3 years.

 

This reminds me of a Q&A from a podcast (I believe it was ATP) where reader asked smth like this:

 

… dear [podcast], how to persuade my wife to upgrade her devices… cause I’m a ‘tech nerd’ and I can’t stand her using an old iPhone 13 and M1 Air… I want to buy her newer ones, but she says she doesn’t need them…

 

This is the bane of sustainability, consumers buying for the sake of novelty (and excusing themselves as being ’tech nerds’).

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, Fennick_Fox said:

If it was 2017, I feel like you'd have a convincing argument about why the iPhone is the best phone for example. However, in 2023 the arguments just don't hold water anymore. The Apple "ecosystem" does nothing that can't be accomplished on Android/Windows. There's an Airdrop feature, Handoff feature, iMessage-style messaging (if you use RCS), and full device ecosystems being built by companies like Samsung and Google. Why use an ecosystem that works with only Apple devices, when you can use one that works with ALL devices? No matter the brand of device I choose, I have continuity. You get all the benefits of Apple without being trapped in the walled garden. It's a no-brainer honestly.

Unfortunately, patently untrue. Google want you to use just their ecosystem. Samsung wants you to use just their ecosystem. Same with Sony, LG, Huawei, etc.

 

The only thing that makes Android slightly attractive over Apple, SOMETIMES, is that it fits a better edge case than an iPhone on the cheap end. Like it's easier to get a $99 throw-away/pre-paid phone that is just more e-waste ultimately on Android. No Wireless carrier is willing to subsidize an iPhone, and hasn't done so since their introduction. But they're still willing to get you to overpay for garbage phones. So Android burner phones are a thing. iPhone burner phones are not a thing.

 

 

5 hours ago, maplepants said:

 

With my M2 Pro MBP I can sit anywhere I want and work just fine all day. My colleagues with Windows laptops are basically chained to their desks by not just the poor battery life but also the hilariously gimped performance they face when running on battery. 

This is true, I've stated elsewhere before that nobody should ever use a laptop smaller than 15", because all manufacturers design 11-14" laptops for battery life, which means you typically end up with U parts in them. There were a few laptops at the last client I worked with that I snuck in a RAM upgrade by junking another identical model where the screen was damaged or the battery had warped the frame too much to be able to type on it. But these were basically 8GB single SODIMM models that I pulled a matching 8GB from. There were so many "broken" "ultrabook" types that were barely 3 years old at some point.

 

15" laptops (eg XPS/Precision 5xxx) from dell, despite being somewhat harder to repair due to the screws used to make it smaller, are also a lot more solid than the 11-14" latitudes, which I often found having to replace batteries every 9 to 12 months.

 

8 minutes ago, rikitikitavi said:

This approach is what creates e-waste.

 

Sure, someone might realize that their tool suddenly doesn’t meet their needs. However you don’t usually jump from work that only requires ggl docs to building massive language models on the same device.

Nah, the client whom I speak of above, orders equipment on a per project basis. Engineers get precision 7000's, but managers keep wanting these junk-tier latitude's because they are small and light, but also take an hour to load a CAD drawing, and in a few cases, making iGPU or RAM fail.

 

Like if Apple Silicon versions of AutoCAD/Civil3D/Revit existed, they would absolutely own this market segment. But Autodesk does not make MacOS versions, since *points to Mac Pro lacking GPU upgrade problem*

 

8 minutes ago, rikitikitavi said:

You should know what you are buying this tool for and pay premium ahead of time, cause everything is soldered - not convenient, but it doesn’t create obsolete devices in 3 years.

 

But many engineering projects are not 3-year projects. A Subway can be as short as 5, you're not going to throw away the equipment you used on Phase 1 when you start Phase 2.

 

Every time the client had a new project (like even during the bidding phase), new equipment was ordered for every new employee. That equipment was replaced every 3 years, and during Covid was extended to 5 years. But I was often replacing first and second generation i7 laptops with 8th and 9th generation ones. Even deploying these 8th/9th gen laptops when 10th gen was the current model. I held onto every 6th gen piece of equipment that wasn't broken, but sent everything older to be recycled. Sure, you could make a 4th gen laptop last longer, but they didn't have SSD's in anything older than a 4th gen.

 

Like if I could convince clients to buy Apple, or not buy Apple, I would straight up tell them that if the software you need is simply MS Office and a web browser, buy an iPad or an Apple Silicon Mac. No Wintel laptop is good at this. Clients were deploying iGPU Intel U parts with 8GB of RAM in 2019, and they sucked then, and they suck now. Apple should be selling 12GB or 16GB RAM models as their base configuration in 2024. If you need anything more powerful, then sacrifice the portability and get a Wintel desktop.

 

 

[divito]

Very disappointed in this forum.

[Needfuldoer]

I was a Mac user when Apple was doomed. I cut my teeth on Macs back in the early 90s, but switched to PCs in the early 2000s. 

 

My work phones have been a succession of iPhones, but my personal phone is a Pixel. I had a second-gen iPod Nano when it was relevant, and the last iPod Classic is still the benchmark for portable music players in my opinion. 

[Mark Kaine]

I actually don't ... approach is to avoid at all costs ~

 

proprietary bs must die!

[Average Nerd]

I have always been a Windows/Android user, but I doubt that I will ever switch to Apple, especially as a replacement of my laptop, unless Windows bites the dust, since I use various pieces of software that aren´t compatible with MacOS. No doubt, Apple has made some great innovations, especially with the M-Series Chips, but I have currently zero need for those (and not the budget either).

[merch22]

use

iPhone:best entry point and hub for apple products. used iphone 4 6 7p,and jump to14pro, also have a andrid phone all the time sence befor get 7p.

iPad:ipad pro was so over kill for a tablet. but its very hard to downgrade...used ipad first gen ipad mini first gen ipad pro11 first gen,now use ipad pro 12.9 m1.  

AirPods Pro:best earplug for sleep, linus was  tell the truth. can not put a cost for performance on that.

 

used

Apple Watch:used first gen S4 S6, but now oura ring is better to trace my sleep or other things and my g-shock is better to tell me time.

macbook:own one in apple+intel age,but normal intel ultrabook was better that time.

 

plan to get MBP 14 inch for that screen and the mac os compatibility get better, 

only problem is the price,

[nether1234]

I have an iPad. It's certainly not as important as my phone or PC, but it's easier to travel with and sooo much better than a phone or laptop when I'm just sitting on the couch browsing the internet or playing games.  

[mousesnob]

Following the merging of software between Oppo and Oneplus I was under the impression that stock Android was about to become harder to get.....

 

Long story short it was between the Pixel and the iPhone 13 Pro. However, the retailer had also bundled in a pair of AirPods gen 2, which I knew were really good. So i bought the iPhone. Not too impressed but since I'm less of a phone nerd these days (was into ROMs and custom kernels) I've found it to do the job and I have no complaints. I do wish I bought the 13 Mini rather than the Pro though.

 

Began looking into getting a new laptop since I would begin my master's this summer and my Lenovo had a terribly decayed battery. NotbookCheck raved about the new m2 air. I decided to buy it and I'll honestly say that its the best laptop I've ever had. I would not want it to be my only computer though.

[porina]

I used to own various Apple products through the ages, but none at the moment, with no specific plans in the foreseeable future.

 

iPod mini - gift from work, wouldn't have bought it otherwise. Was a solid music player for the time.

Mac Mini Intel - bought myself to play with. It was awful with MacOS. Actually ran better with XP installed on it (which was the current Windows at the time). I even got upgraded ram but it wasn't enough for MacOS.

iPhone 8 Plus - my work phone for a time. It worked but I still find Android UI generally better.

iPad Mini - bought myself as it was the best performing silicon for a small gaming tablet at the time, but build quality and design is worse than every Android tablet I've owned before and after, even budget no name ones from China do better. Found the screen to scratch very easily, and the body being so thin it bent. Replaced with higher end Android tablet. Silicon is slower, but experience in every other way is better.

 

I wont rule Apple products out, but they're going to have to make a product that works for me. I'm clearly not in their main target audience right now.

 

[cooky560]

I have single iPhone because I like them, I don't own any other Apple devices as my computing needs require a Windows (and sometimes Linux) workspace