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Why do you [not] buy Apple?

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Original post by AdamskiUK
Sorry, wat?

How are the retina displays marketing ploys? A resolution with a PPI which is high enough to not notice the pixels from a typical viewing distance was a brilliant idea - they were the first to push it out.

Just because they use it in their marketing doesn't make it bad. On a rMBP, you can notice the difference whilst editing text...

It's because a similarly sized screen at a lower resolution, namely 1080p, is still "retina". When was the last time you used a laptop while being less than 2 feet from the screen (which is roughly where a 15" 1080p screen would stop being "retina")? Even at 720p the distance is less than 3 feet. I would say the typical viewing distance would be somewhere around about 3 feet, but definitely higher than 2, if it's lower than I think I really am concerned for people. And just because an idea isn't explicitly stated and pushed out doesn't mean it isn't there.
Original post by itsn0b0dy
I think you mean 'cant afford'


give me one example of an overpriced apple product?


Mac Pros

Get a custom PC (if you want get a hackintosh) it will be faster for less.

Same with any PC from Apple though tbh

Same with iPhone, overpriced (I use a G2 and probably will get the G3/new Nexus) and it's not as good. The display is rubbish in comparison, and it's so much slower, the only reason it seems faster is because of the bare OS

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Original post by Jammy Duel
Well, the title says it all, why would you buy, or not buy, Apple products?
Desktops
Laptops
Tablets
Phones
Music players
[hypothetically] wearable tech
Apple TV

From what I've seen it generally is down to one of the following
-belief it's a sign of wealth
-for some products, a superior build quality, whether it's necessary or not
-fanboyism
-buying into dodgy marketing ploys
-battery life on MBPs, whether necessary or not.


I have a Mac. I love my Mac. I love it purely because I do photography for a hobby - as well as other creative things - and it is just absolutely brilliant to work with. They're also long lasting and rarely ever break. I'd also buy an iPod Touch because iTunes is - to me - the best music store out there, and iPods make a great little music playing device.

However, I'd never get an iPhone nor an iPad. Android all the way.
Original post by Mubariz
Mac Pros

Get a custom PC (if you want get a hackintosh) it will be faster for less.

Same with any PC from Apple though tbh

Same with iPhone, overpriced (I use a G2 and probably will get the G3/new Nexus) and it's not as good. The display is rubbish in comparison, and it's so much slower, the only reason it seems faster is because of the bare OS

Posted from TSR Mobile


Mac Pro fair enough, it is a visually aesthetic machine though and I would be willing to pay however much for it just so I could have it sitting on my desk.

iPhone isn't overpriced at all. Maybe 2/3 years ago you could have argued this point because it was way more expensive than samsung's equivilant at the time. Take a look today and you'll see all the iPhone's competiitors are just as, if not more, expensive. The only true competitor is the HTC One m8 (due to the aluminium unibody) and I believe that retails for £50 more than the iPhone 5s for a sim free version.

Samsung, HTC, LG etc have been ridiculous about screen resolutions and have just been competing for a number. The eye cannot differentiate between pixel densities of the iPhone and it's competitors, so what's the point of an even higher res display? (of course Apple will follow suit and increase its res because long gone are the days of Steve Jobs unfortunately :frown:

again, same story with a processor. The latest MacBook air has a 1.3ghz processor and Apple's competitors feel the need to bung in a 2.4ghz processor into a PHONE, just so they can claim their phone is faster than their competitors due to a number. Fact of the matter is, iOS runs far more smoothly than android- the OS is the limiting factor, you can make the phone as fast as you want but if its running on android it wont be as smooth as iOS. How it feel to use is what, at the end of the day, counts because a number is just a number. The iPhone doesn't need a ridiculously fast processor, it tops a lot of its competitors on benchmarks.
Original post by itsn0b0dy
Mac Pro fair enough, it is a visually aesthetic machine though and I would be willing to pay however much for it just so I could have it sitting on my desk.

iPhone isn't overpriced at all. Maybe 2/3 years ago you could have argued this point because it was way more expensive than samsung's equivilant at the time. Take a look today and you'll see all the iPhone's competiitors are just as, if not more, expensive. The only true competitor is the HTC One m8 (due to the aluminium unibody) and I believe that retails for £50 more than the iPhone 5s for a sim free version.

Samsung, HTC, LG etc have been ridiculous about screen resolutions and have just been competing for a number. The eye cannot differentiate between pixel densities of the iPhone and it's competitors, so what's the point of an even higher res display? (of course Apple will follow suit and increase its res because long gone are the days of Steve Jobs unfortunately :frown:

again, same story with a processor. The latest MacBook air has a 1.3ghz processor and Apple's competitors feel the need to bung in a 2.4ghz processor into a PHONE, just so they can claim their phone is faster than their competitors due to a number. Fact of the matter is, iOS runs far more smoothly than android- the OS is the limiting factor, you can make the phone as fast as you want but if its running on android it wont be as smooth as iOS. How it feel to use is what, at the end of the day, counts because a number is just a number. The iPhone doesn't need a ridiculously fast processor, it tops a lot of its competitors on benchmarks.


Actually phones now such as the nexus 5 onwards have been shown to be faster than the iPhone 5s.

You obviously get expensive ones, but what about the nexus 5 and lg g2. There are many cheap flagships.

The iPhone is also too fragile. Say what you want about aesthetics but when you drop an iPhone and it cracks then it's pretty sad. I've seen so many people sue iphones with cracked screens also, because they can't pay to get it fixed.

A high end Flagship phone can do so much more than an iPhone. Due to mods I can shoot 1080p 120fps, I can run many things which would be too slow on an iPhone etx

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Original post by AdamskiUK
It's not cross-platform unity I'm on about, it's cross Android handset compatibility. You make an app for a 2GHz quad core phone, you don't expect it to work very well on last year's 1.3GHz quad core phone.

Incidentally, if Intel/AMD haven't cracked quantum engineering yet, or aren't going to in the foreseeable future, then nVidia aren't going to be anywhere close. They have lots of potential upgrades for GPUs yet - we're about to see a new wave of DDR4/DDR5 memory chipsets with greater clockspeeds for the mass consumer market. I'd anticipate that this would take up the next 3 years of their cycles because the advantages are pretty huge. The CPUs are much more worrying because we can't really do much to improve them, aside from increasing caches - the next die-size for Intel is tiny. 14nm for Broadwell is a massive difference from Haswell.

It's not so much that nVidea themselves will be doing it, more that the extra funding being injected by nVidia. I think you're confused with regards to the memory, DDR4 is system memory which is what is coming, GPUs tend to use GDDR5. Thing is though, in the GPU market they still need to go smaller, either that or make the dies bigger and bigger, but even then there is a limit as to how big they can go.

While the GPU shrinks may not be as big, being 28->20->16 rather than 22->14, given rumours that, given TSMC's poor performance with 20nm, AMD might skip 20nm (which, tbh, I'm skeptical about) it could still be pretty big shrinks. As far as GPU tech goes, I'm more interested in the stacked memory with Pascal than anything else, and just how much more memory we will be seeing on cards, even if it does just lead to more of what we have today with vRAM available being more than is actually needed a lot of the time

I don't care about the userbase which isn't on the flagship phones - the S5 and the HTC One. The Nexus 5 isn't a competitor and I can't think of anything else which ranks against the S5 or the One - correct me if I'm wrong. My point was that, proportionally, the numbers with S5s and HTC Ones to the rest of the Android userbase is tiny. The devs make apps to cater for everybody, otherwise they gain nothing in ad. revenue. That means very few people will actually make apps to cater solely for the top 5 Android phones because it's not financially viable.

The difference with Apple is that they have a userbase which *upgrades* a lot. They upgrade OS - adoption rates in the range of 70-80% for the latest iterations, compared to just 5-20% adoption rates of each major iteration of Android. They also upgrade their phones - the numbers speak. 9m units sold in a weekend of the latest phones, comprised primarily of the 64-bit capable unit. That means the target for developers is much larger - they can cater for the 64-bit phones more *easily*. I'm not saying it would be a walk in the park, but it's a better situation than Android.

While HTC and Samsung may not sell quite as well, the flagship sales aren't actually that far behind the iPhone's, especially in the most recent iterations, and I imagine the One M8 will do well given I've heard little but praise about it. Part of the OS upgrading disparity will come from Apple almost forcing users to upgrade. I was listening a podcast earlier from a while back, and there was a problem with OSX, Apple would only sort out the problem in OSX 6 for users that can't upgrade to 7, if you had 7 you had to upgrade. To my knowledge this isn't really the case with Android. In the Apple camp there also seems to be, for some reason, a feeling that you HAVE to have the newest version which will help drive sales, at least more so than it seems to be in the Android camp.


I saw the article, no worries. The problem with that is it was made by an untested company and even then they predicted 3-5 years before it would be available to the general market. Also, I wouldn't mind betting that they would sign a limited period exclusivity deal to make big bucks off of either Apple or Samsung. Just a years worth of iPhone having that sorta recharging capacity ahead of Samsung could completely decimate Samsung sales, and vice versa.

The important thing is that it is coming some time, likely before the end of the decade. Personally, unless the company is bought by one of the big players I doubt they will sign into a period of exclusivity unless they are offered A LOT if money since they will be "selling" substantially fewer units.

I agree entirely - I don't want slimmer, lighter tech. It's not just a component thing; it's rigidity. Even if my next iPhone comes with Gorilla Glass 8 and is built with some super aluminomeganate alloy, if it weighs 30g and is as thin as a sheet of graphene then it just doesn't feel nice to use. I want to know my device is in my pocket so that I know if it's been stolen etc.
I have larger hands so I'm fine with larger phones, both screen size and thickness wise. To me, the only time very thin and light would matter is some time in the rather distant future when we're looking at almost sci-fi level stuff; something like a thin, transparent until used flexible panel worn on the inside of my arm. As far as current tech goes, I don't really care how thick it gets, within reason, as long as it performs well and will make it through the day.

I agree further on the laptops - my next laptop will be a rMBP 13" from Apple - I've seen a friend use it and get 9 hours *heavy* usage throughout the whole day at home from his 15" and that's got a lower official battery life than the 13". In contrast, I bought a family Samsung laptop at £500 mid last year and we're lucky if we get 4hrs with just Chrome running.

I do believe part of that comes down to Apple investing in newer battery technology while the low-mid range laptops stick with the tried and tested, reliable old batteries. Looking at the higher end, and especially the multi-thousand pound gaming notebooks the battery life isn't actually that bad, considering the amount of power they pull, Maxwell helping with that somewhat.
Original post by Mubariz
Actually phones now such as the nexus 5 onwards have been shown to be faster than the iPhone 5s.

You obviously get expensive ones, but what about the nexus 5 and lg g2. There are many cheap flagships.

The iPhone is also too fragile. Say what you want about aesthetics but when you drop an iPhone and it cracks then it's pretty sad. I've seen so many people sue iphones with cracked screens also, because they can't pay to get it fixed.

A high end Flagship phone can do so much more than an iPhone. Due to mods I can shoot 1080p 120fps, I can run many things which would be too slow on an iPhone etx

Posted from TSR Mobile

Apple is still sticking with Dual core CPUs while a lot of the competition is going quad core which is where a lot of that extra speed comes from, whether this is actually of benefit to the user or not is another matter. It's like with desktops, people stick four liquid cooled flagship cards into a rig and get amazing benchmark scores, is it actually a better rig than a three, or even two, GPU rig? Not really, the scaling is terrible.
Original post by Mubariz
Actually phones now such as the nexus 5 onwards have been shown to be faster than the iPhone 5s.

You obviously get expensive ones, but what about the nexus 5 and lg g2. There are many cheap flagships.

The iPhone is also too fragile. Say what you want about aesthetics but when you drop an iPhone and it cracks then it's pretty sad. I've seen so many people sue iphones with cracked screens also, because they can't pay to get it fixed.

A high end Flagship phone can do so much more than an iPhone. Due to mods I can shoot 1080p 120fps, I can run many things which would be too slow on an iPhone etx

Posted from TSR Mobile

I don't think you can compare a bit of plastic to an iPhone, its like comparing an old castle to a modern, state of the art penthouse flat. both of them has positives, but you're always going to want the penthouse flat in the end.

every single person I've known whose cracked their iphone has taken it to an apple store and paid £79 to get a brand new iPhone, I don't think LG would do that and 1 iphone + £79 replacement is cheaper than 2 LG G2s. One more reason to go apple, customer service.

it depends what you're going to do with it. If you're a dev and want customisability to a load of crazy ****, get an android, if you want a phone, and a damn good allrounder at that, get an iPhone.
Original post by itsn0b0dy
Mac Pro fair enough, it is a visually aesthetic machine though and I would be willing to pay however much for it just so I could have it sitting on my desk.

Up to double an equivalent windows machine? The $6000 MP is, considering all [most] aspects, roughly equivalent to a well chosen $3000 windows/linux rig.

iPhone isn't overpriced at all. Maybe 2/3 years ago you could have argued this point because it was way more expensive than samsung's equivilant at the time. Take a look today and you'll see all the iPhone's competiitors are just as, if not more, expensive. The only true competitor is the HTC One m8 (due to the aluminium unibody) and I believe that retails for £50 more than the iPhone 5s for a sim free version.

Flagship phones in general are rather overpriced though, especially considering the requirements of most people buying them. But, as Adamski said, as far as Samsung and Apple go at least, barely anything has actually changed with the latest phone iteration s.

Samsung, HTC, LG etc have been ridiculous about screen resolutions and have just been competing for a number. The eye cannot differentiate between pixel densities of the iPhone and it's competitors, so what's the point of an even higher res display? (of course Apple will follow suit and increase its res because long gone are the days of Steve Jobs unfortunately :frown:

It's just part of the game, and I have a feeling that even if Jobs was still around the res would have still gone up. Whether the size increase is actually relevant or not the dick measuring competition must go on until the consumer no longer cares.

again, same story with a processor. The latest MacBook air has a 1.3ghz processor and Apple's competitors feel the need to bung in a 2.4ghz processor into a PHONE, just so they can claim their phone is faster than their competitors due to a number. Fact of the matter is, iOS runs far more smoothly than android- the OS is the limiting factor, you can make the phone as fast as you want but if its running on android it wont be as smooth as iOS. How it feel to use is what, at the end of the day, counts because a number is just a number. The iPhone doesn't need a ridiculously fast processor, it tops a lot of its competitors on benchmarks.

Benchmarks help sell units, it's also unfair to compare a computer and a phone CPU given they have different architectures, the computer one likely being far more efficient. For one, the mobile CPU has a much larger production node, 28nm vs 22nm. The "desktop" CPU also has a substantial turbo boost, which I expect the mobile one doesn't. The "desktop" CPU is a much more mature technology.

In your own words:
its like comparing an old castle to a modern, state of the art penthouse flat.
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by itsn0b0dy
I don't think you can compare a bit of plastic to an iPhone, its like comparing an old castle to a modern, state of the art penthouse flat. both of them has positives, but you're always going to want the penthouse flat in the end.

every single person I've known whose cracked their iphone has taken it to an apple store and paid £79 to get a brand new iPhone, I don't think LG would do that and 1 iphone + £79 replacement is cheaper than 2 LG G2s. One more reason to go apple, customer service.

it depends what you're going to do with it. If you're a dev and want customisability to a load of crazy ****, get an android, if you want a phone, and a damn good allrounder at that, get an iPhone.


This is perspective, I love the look my the nexus 5 and g2, if you like the iPhone ghats your opinion honestly I don't see the appeal.

To be honest 2 LG g2's are cheaper than 2 I phones even at that price. Lol, and they are much harder to break, plus you could also get an extended warranty like that, which would be the same principle.

If you're a total tech noob then buy apple yes.

Don't have to be a tech Dev to buy Android. There is also a large range, for example if you want budget. To be very honest a Motorola G can stack up to an iPhone (it is a very smooth phone)


Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by itsn0b0dy
every single person I've known whose cracked their iphone has taken it to an apple store and paid £79 to get a brand new iPhone, I don't think LG would do that and 1 iphone + £79 replacement is cheaper than 2 LG G2s. One more reason to go apple, customer service.

The thing is, I haven't heard of any of the competitors phones breaking quite as frequently as iPhones do. Nobody in my family has ever had a broken screen and very few people I know have had broken non-iPhone screens. On the other hand, quite a lot of those I know with iPhones have had broken screens. So much for Apple's amazing build quality, I guess it doesn't extend to their iPhones, iPads and iPods, either that or their consumers just don't know how to look after mobiles.
I would not call myself an Apple fanboy in the slightest. I actually dislike the "brand" and the associated image/connotations. But this is my experience with them:

I used to have an iPhone but found the software to be pretty slow (unresponsive at times), and after a while the home button broke. I wasn't at all impressed so have a Nexus 5 now. Android is much better and I can't see myself buying an Apple phone again in the near future.

I have an iPod classic 160gb. Because it was the only mp3 player I could find with such a large HD (I have a LOT of music and want to be able to access any of it whenever I want) and it wasn't even that expensive for the amount of storage. It's like 5 years old now and still going.

I'm probably going to buy rMBP13 next month. I want an ultrabook that is light, with durable hardware, a sharp and sturdy form-factor, long battery life, 16gb RAM and at least 256GB SSD drive. I've looked at all the alternatives and despite what everyone says, if you want a high-end laptop, Apple are not particularly more expensive than their competitors. Dell are cheaper but I've got a Dell now and so many things are broken and **** about it that I will never buy a Dell again.
Original post by itsn0b0dy
I think you mean 'cant afford'


give me one example of an overpriced apple product?


http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Apple-iPhone-5c,Samsung-Galaxy-S4-mini/phones/7983,7788

Samsung: around £230
Apple: £429
Pretty similar specs, is the picture of an apple and a different operating system really worth an extra £200?

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Samsung-Galaxy-S5,Apple-iPhone-5s/phones/8202,7710

Samsung: around £500
Apple: at least £550
Samsung is superior it pretty much every way except the casing and arguably the operating system but I'd rather the extra £50 and the ability to put an SD card in my phone to store more than a miniscule amount.

Can't be bothered to compare apple to every other manufacturer but its the same story, apple charging ridiculous amounts for products which objectively are massively inferior to other stuff in their price range. You carry on buying your designer technology with the baseless belief its better than any else that's available and I'll save my money and not get ripped off by apple. :wink:
Original post by Jammy Duel
Well, the title says it all, why would you buy, or not buy, Apple products?
Desktops
Laptops
Tablets
Phones
Music players
[hypothetically] wearable tech
Apple TV

From what I've seen it generally is down to one of the following
-belief it's a sign of wealth
-for some products, a superior build quality, whether it's necessary or not
-fanboyism
-buying into dodgy marketing ploys
-battery life on MBPs, whether necessary or not.
-the high OpenCL performance


i was put off by that pretentious Jobs bloke.
Original post by RumpeIstiltskin
http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Apple-iPhone-5c,Samsung-Galaxy-S4-mini/phones/7983,7788

Samsung: around £230
Apple: £429
Pretty similar specs, is the picture of an apple and a different operating system really worth an extra £200?

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Samsung-Galaxy-S5,Apple-iPhone-5s/phones/8202,7710

Samsung: around £500
Apple: at least £550
Samsung is superior it pretty much every way except the casing and arguably the operating system but I'd rather the extra £50 and the ability to put an SD card in my phone to store more than a miniscule amount.

Can't be bothered to compare apple to every other manufacturer but its the same story, apple charging ridiculous amounts for products which objectively are massively inferior to other stuff in their price range. You carry on buying your designer technology with the baseless belief its better than any else that's available and I'll save my money and not get ripped off by apple. :wink:


the 5c was a **** idea because that was under the leadership of Cook, Jobs would never have let it happen.

I completely disagree. All of apple's competitors are senseless, they're increasing numbers in specs and not considering the ridiculousness of what they're doing. The eye cannot distinguish pixels above 300ppi on a phone and do we really need a 2.6ghz processor in a phone when the OS is the limiting factor, for example the MBA as a laptop has a 1.3ghz and its not a slow machine by any standards. Apple's competitors have gone crazy (with the screen size as well IMO).

The iPhone is worth the £50 for the aluminium unibody, the plastic S5 feels flimsy as **** and I could easily mistake it for a play phone. Do you really want to be paying £500 for a bit of plastic. You get quality with Apple which is what matters, you get good customer service with apple, which is what matters, you get a phone which does what it sets out to do, which is what maters.

Apple have kept it real done things that make the experience of owning a phone better, not just gone crazy like Samsung to say the phone is best on paper, what good is that?
People just buy because they are stupid and have money :lol:
Reply 56
I have never bought and will never buy anything from Apple. Here's why:

- It's a mainstream fad.
- Their products can be very gimmicky.
- Extremely overpriced. By far the most overpriced consumer goods I have ever seen, by far. Nothing else is anywhere near as overpriced as Apple products.
- I hate their stupid operating system and their stupid, trashy iTunes.
Reply 57
I'm not a fan of Apple and I never liked Steve Jobs very much, but I do like iPhone and iPod. I bought an iPhone 1 when I needed a phone for uni and I needed a new iPod as well, and it just looked neat. Then, last year it broke so I bought an iPhone 5. I really enjoy using it and it seems like the nicest phone around. The downside is the price, but I'd been using an iPhone 1 for the past 4 years so I decided I would go for it.

I don't like Macs very much - nothing about Macs appeal to me except their outward design. I don't like iTunes and use it begrudgingly.
Original post by itsn0b0dy
do we really need a 2.6ghz processor in a phone when the OS is the limiting factor, for example the MBA as a laptop has a 1.3ghz and its not a slow machine by any standards. Apple's competitors have gone crazy


This thread jut confirms the statement that among all OSes, OSX has the lowest percentage of expert/intermediate user (in terms of knowledge in computer science) among the users.
Original post by The nameless one
This thread jut confirms the statement that among all OSes, OSX has the lowest percentage of expert/intermediate user (in terms of knowledge in computer science) among the users.


exactly, but for real consumers that don't want raw power at the lowest cost (and have other things they want from a computer, e.g. aesthetics) Apple is good way to go.

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