Why Apple is Bullsh!t Now

Very interesting. Makes me wonder what exactly those Macs were required to run. I'm not surprised if Windows for Workgroups 3.11 took up less RAM; that was an older operating system, wasn't it? From 1993 or so?

But CPU power and such is what I have in mind. Apple built impressive machines with the PowerPC chip, especially when the G3 came along. Maybe the OS was more of a RAM hog than Windows, although I imagine that Windows 95 and NT 4.0 changed that a bit. I know that system requirements went up considerably compared to Windows 3.x.

 

We are talking 1995-1996. The OS in use were W4W, and Mac OS 7.5.

On average, corporate computer systems tend to run 2-4 years behind most users. While for you and me at home upgrading an OS is not a big deal, it is a major issue for a corporation that has thousands (or tend of thousands) of systems, and various hardware and software that must work without an issue. That is why we saw things like Lotus Notes in use into the early 2000's. And DoD computers running Windows XP into around 2012 and beyond.

Heck, when I worked at Hughes when Boeing bought them out in 2001-2002, they had upgraded all the way to NT 4 (released 1996), and Win2K (released 1999) was their next planned upgrade in 2003.

That is more an issue of how the CPU itself functions.

When you talk about how CPUs function, there are 2 main schools of how this is done. One is RISC, or Reduced Instruction Set Computer. In essence, most simple tasks are handled by the CPU, while more complex tasks are passed off for the compiler to handle. This tends to make code much faster to work, but requires more memory in order to swap information to and from the CPU-Compiler. This is how computers like the Macintosh (and most Motorola chips) operate, as well as the SUN, SPARC, Alpha, and Amiga systems operated.

The other is CISC, or Complex Instruction Set Computer operate. In this, the CPU is designed to handle as many operations natively as it can. It may be a bit slower at accomplishing these functions, because the code that operates the CPU is larger and more complex. But the trade-off is that it requires much less RAM to do this, and involves less swapping of information between the RAM and CPU.

Now this was a huge deal from 1985 and 2005 and so, and this is what drove a lot of the comparisons between RISC and CISC. For most of that time, RAM was really expensive (and measured in single digit Megabytes), and CPU speeds were measured in the double digits of Megahertz. Today it is much less important, when memory is measured in multiple Gigabytes, and multi-core CPUs clock equivalent speeds of multiple Gigahertz. And that is still when both are running equivalent 32 bit code.

When you are comparing say 2 computers with 8 MB of RAM and a CPU that clocks 100 MHz, then the differences for the code can be significant. When you are talking about a system running double triple digit Gigabytes of RAM and 4-8+ 64 bit CPUs at an equivalent rate of 6,000+ GHz, then the differences between RISC and CISC largely vanish.

This is why some groups in that time period (Desktop Publishers, Graphic Artists, Video Editors) gravitated towards the systems that ran on RISC processors. Mac made it's name in DTP, while the Amiga made it's name in video editing. Both ran on RISC, which was able to use the power of RISC to it's advantage.

Meanwhile, tasks that required raw CPU power (CAD-CAM, Spreadsheets, Databases, etc) gravitated towards CISC (Intel X86, and all clones from the likes of AMD, Cyrix, etc). Especially in the early days when investing in an X87 math co-processor was worth investing in. The raw number crunching power for tasks like this was almost designed to take advantage of CISC where the workload could be shared between CPU and compiler.

I remember doing video and audio compiling in the early 2000's. That was really the last golden age for the Mac, when compiling say a 3 minute video clip in Final Cut Pro on a Mac took a fraction of the times that Adobe Premiere would do it on a single core PC (which is why for those that did that professionally I often was building computers with 2-4 CPUs on a PC).

But today, when you are talking about an 8 core 64 bit CPU, the differences are pretty insignificant. Now it is simply more about what you are more familiar in working with. Myself, I have used Adobe Premiere for 20 years and have worked with Adobe Audition since it was known as Cool Edit Pro (Adobe bought it in 2003).

And a bit of trivia here. Anybody that has seen the TV miniseries of The Stand (1994) may find the way it tends to cut fairly often between cameras a bit unusual. There are almost no scenes without a camera cut longer than 90 seconds. This is because it was the first movie of feature length or above to use digital editing, it used an early release of Adobe Premiere. That was actually a limitation of that early version, and they had to work around that in order to edit the movie (which was also shot entirely on a high definition [for the time] videotape). Today "filming" entirely in digital and editing that way is the norm, and almost nobody actually works in "film" anymore. But at that time, it was really groundbreaking.

And to give an idea of what we are talking about, at that time compiling a minute of video on a op of the line CPU (80486DX4-100) would have been roughly 45 minutes to an hour per minute. By 2003 it had dropped to around 10 minutes per minute compiled. Today, it is around 1 per 1, where a 15 minute video will take around 15 minutes (or less) to compile. So RISC has become insignificant when compared to CISC.

 

Cool. I had no idea that RISC entailed a need for more RAM to accomplish the same tasks. Shoot, in the mid 90s, I was just a kid concerned with playing games and making cartoons in HyperCard I loved the Mac for its superior GUI and ease of use, and felt that Windows was just ripping it off. I definitely did not have an adult perspective on architecture or the operating systems involved until, oh, the 2000s at the earliest. I eventually moved away from Mac to Linux, first on Apple hardware and then on PC hardware. These days, I run a self-assembled AMD rig with either Linux Mint or Fedora (Fedora at the moment), but I do have some old systems around for fun. I have Windows 98 SE in Russian on an IBM Aptiva system that I recently picked up and fixed up pretty affordably, for instance, and System 7.5.5 on a Performa and Mac OS X 10.4.11 and 10.5.8 on a late 2005 dual G5 all presently hooked up. These days, I only care about having the ability to run some cool games if I feel like it.

QEMU is finally getting to where it can emulate a PPC Mac, which I think is great and very much needed. I want all of those old platforms to be available in some way for the future.

 

LOL forgot I already responded to this thread.

 

Well, I admit my experience in computers goes back quite a bit longer than most. I started banging out code on keypunch cards in COBOL in IBM 360 mainframes, and have worked with most computers from the early 1980's, from the Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 400, and PET to the ones used today.

And I frequently think back to the famous lines of the newest Battlestar Galactica. "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again". I remember the platform wars, and the OS wars. Where we had many different operating systems competing for users and coders, and each one was trumpeted as the "wave of the future". Yet since around 1992 (over 26 years ago) none of them has ever come to be. The Amiga and Atari users have largely all died off, and the 2 main camps left are still the Microsoft users, and the Apple users (who are really just another fork of the Unix-Linux users).

And the programmers are still largely following those 2 groups. The MS ones are still the dominant ones, while the Linux ones are actually most in the phone area, making yet another iteration of Candy Crush Farm so somebody can waste some time blasting plants with zombies or some such. But nothing really serious works at that level. And in this I am purposefully ignoring the serious Unix-Linux things like servers and the like, because less than 1% of users are even aware that this end even exists. Yes, when I set up a server at my business or at home I of course use a variant of Linux. But as far as say my wife is concerned, it is just another drive letter for her to store things. It is literally is invisible to her.

Like here. Political Forum may be run on a variation of Linux, Microsoft, Mac, or even a system running TRS DOS or Amiga DOS. For those of us that use it, it does not matter a single bit.

Heck, I stood alone even in the early 1990s, doing things like multi-taking in DesqView and DOS that most thought was impossible in 1992. I once was really considered a "power user", and was the first I knew to get into multi-core 64 bit processors and 64 bit OS years before most did. But for the most part in the last 10 years I have fallen back and watched, as I saw most of the industry stagnate and change little other than an insane push for "Frames per second" and the like, which is largely meaningless.

Heck, I only dumped my 22" CRTs in 2007 when I joined the Army, and realized lugging 2 100+ pound monitors was not realistic. I traded them for 2 20" LCDs, and still think the guy I traded with got the better end of the deal. And I still laugh as some dude with $2,000+ in video cards brags he gets "90+ FPS", not even realizing that with a 60 Hz LCD the ultimate FPS that he will ever see is 60 because of the limitations of LCD technology. At least if I still had my CRTs with that setup I actually would have seen that "90 FPS", since it ran at 120 Mhz.

Yea, I can talk with the rest of the uber-geeks when comparing different iterations of Mint, and if Sonya is much of an improvement over Rosa. But for most users, this really does not matter at all. They just want to know if their version of Office 2013 is good enough or if they should upgrade to Office 2019.

 

Apple is above my pay grade.

 

I like Apple....

 

Most sheep like apples.

 

I had many apple products over the years starting with the first powermac G5 model.
I still have a 2010 iMac gathering dust somewhere. I had an iPhone 3 which died a couple of month after waranty expired. The only durable apple product that I still use are my iPad 3 and an old Apple IIe.

But I won't spend a single cent on newer apple stuff where everything is glued or soldered in. Also when I buy a tool, which those products really are, I don't care about the social agenda of the tool maker. So I'm not really their target customer base which is now base on looks or prestige.

 

Duh, I have no idea what you are talking about.

 

Retrieving data from damaged iPhones: Repair expert says Apple misleading customers

A few months ago, The National took a documentary look at allegations that Apple was indulging in abusive business practices, including regularly overcharging customers for simple repairs. Tonight, CBC's Terence McKenna follows up that story with a look at new evidence that Apple is intentionally misleading customers about the possibility of retrieving data from damaged iPhones. His story begins with an elderly couple in Newfoundland and Labrador.​

 

I never understood their love affair..

 

Apple is STILL LYING about iPhone Data Recovery after called out by CBC--The National

 

They want to be part of the "in crowd". The "cool kids", who use the "cutting edge" to "change the world".

If it is anything that Steve Jobs was good at, it was selling the company and it's product like it was a religion. And the irony is, he largely did not give a damn, he knew he was pulling along people to make himself rich. His entire rise was more about charisma and putting one group against another in office politicks to get what he wanted.

And when he got booted, he took his money and made a new computer company. One that lost money from day 1, and speculated that a little video creation company would be a good long term investment.

Funny thing is, when Apple tried to bring it back, one of his requirements was that they buy out his failing computer company, exchange his stock in it for Apple stock, and let him have complete control. And once they did he then sold off most of his Apple stock, and threw out decades of MAC OS in favor of a UNIX clone he had been using in the NeXT.

Nothing he ever did was incredibly original. He simply had a P.T. Barnum ability to catch the attention of people, and the Svengali ability to have people believe almost anything he told them. And get his followers in media to blast out his message often enough to forget that his products were not even original in the first place.

I still laugh when people wonder what we used before the "iPod". And they look shocked when I inform them that Apple was actually very late to the game. MP3 players first came out in the mid 1990's, but the limitation of storage size kept them mostly a curiosity. By 2000 more serious models were coming out, with enough storage space to hold hundreds of songs, not just a dozen or so. Then a year later Apple came along, and it was like the Messiah had come, nothing before mattered.

I did a computer show on a local public access UHF station in the LA area in 1998. And the very first episode I did was on digital music. MP3 was already a growing thing, and some of us were still playing around with MIDI. I showed how you could hook up a synthesizer to a computer and make it do some great tricks. Then convert CD to MP3. I even featured the Diamond Rio PMP300, brand new and with both 32mb of RAM, it also had a slot for a 128mb SmartMedia card!

All Apple did was sit back and wait until the product matured a bit, and the pesky RIAA suit was settled (which was won by the Rio, but cost the company millions).

 

I resisted apple for a long time
Then my boss decided to get us an apple phone
And once you become familiar with one system
It is frankly inconvenient to switch to a different system

That said, i have had two android devices
And wax not thrilled
One device was an early pad...
I was always hearing about android system updates
But the manufacturer never seemed in a rush to offer it on my device... also, as I understand it, manufactures are not thrilled to give long term support for their devices

My second device was a free android phone
Lots of garbage apps pre loaded
And frankly, i had a hard time doing the most simple things on that phone. I know that eventually i could have learned.... but just was not interested to make that effort. On apple, there is an article or youtube video to answer all my questions

Also, apple interoperability is kind of nice for me.... if i get a call on my iPhone, it also rings on my ipad mini so i do not have to go find my phone

I also like air print convenience

Also.... i have a friends with android
several find their her phones confusing
With apple, there is always someone around to help out

Don't get me wrong... there are also things i dislike about apple
But now that i have apple, i have no compelling reason to switch

I agree that prices are high... then again i buy a used phone on ebay and it meets my needs for many years. So for me, the cost is not really an issue

 

For the first, that is common because of how the OS is handled.

When a company decides to use Android, they select which build of the program to use. Most commonly, that is the one that is out at the time it is built. And because of the rapid change in hardware or software, it is up to them to decide if they want to do the work to make future versions work seamlessly. That involved testing and tweaking it to work on their device, make new drivers, etc. Then push it out to all the current users.

With the "half-life" of modern technology being so short, most do not bother. They just do whatever patches are required for stability and security, and expect the user to move to a newer device well before the OS is antiquated. Of course if you are tech savy there is nothing from you doing all the work yourself and trying to manually update it with a newer version.

For the second, that has been around since the mid 1990's. Makers get a small incentive to install software onto systems already, be it computers, tablets, or phones. This also lets them sell the device for less and still make a profit. Once again, there is nothing stopping you from removing them. Every time I get a new device I spend quite a bit of time removing crap I will never use.

Of course, I also tend to be way behind the "technology curve" when it comes to such devices. My phone is mostly for phone calls, messages, and reading books. And in the last 12 years I have only owned 1 phone which was considered "higher end" at the time, my Motorola Q9. I used that for years, then moved to an older Palm Treo.

When I retired that finally in 2012 I moved to a Moto Q (I miss actual keyboards), then my current Galaxy Prime in 2016 (a mid-line phone even then). And so long as my Galaxy Prime keeps working, I see no reason to move to anything else. People often laugh at my 3 year old phone, I could not care less. It does what I need, and that is not much. It is more book and phone than anything else (although it also lets me listen to old Casey Kasem shows during long road trips).

 

Without meaning to be a reflexive apple fan boy.... this is an acknowledgment of an annoying shortcoming of android devices.... the manufacturers do not invest so much in customer/device support

Again, this is an acknowledgment of an understandable, yet annoying reality of android devices

Another aspect of the android universe is that different manufacturers “enhance” their user experience by developing a customized user interface. This means that to some degree you will a”ways be a little lost if someone hands you a device from another manufacturer. Also, customization can be good, or bad... or more likely, a combination of both. One persons “really clever idea” can be another person’s bewildering bone head design choice.

Not all of apples ideas are great, but at least you know what to expect when someone hands you an iphone

Btw, as much as it is true that there are “apple fanboys”.... there are reflexive apple haters as well... so i guess it all balances out

 

This is typical of anything that is essentially "Open Source". Without some monolithic company that owns everything from the battery to the software allowed on a device, this is always going to be an issue.

Apple is only able to keep that level of control because they refuse to allow anything they do not approve to be used on it. And since they own it 100% they can do that.

Android on the other hand is only one of a slew of operating systems, that the makers use and support to differing degrees as they desire.

Not unlike the PC really. If you get an Apple, you use the Apple OS, or nothing. If you want to use an Apple OS, you get Apple hardware or nothing.

Have a PC? Feel free to use DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, XP, Win 10, Linux, OS/2, or anything you desire. Nobody will tell you otherwise.

Myself, I am much less a "fanboy" against any OS, as much as I have a long hatred of some monolithic company trying to control everything I want to do.

I am not that by a long shot. I started professionally as a "Mac Tech", and handled an original Mac (and Lisa before it) long before I ever touched a PC. I have even worked in "Apple Shops", where we all used Apple (even though our main product used a variant of Chrome).

However, this long experience also showed me a lot of the flaws in Apple, "warts and all". It is not a bad product, I simply can not stand the ironic fact that they have more in common with the "1984" world they tried to demonize than the companies they tried to claim actually were that way.

 

Because the bull ate the apple. That's easy.

 

I can certainly understand why you feel as you do
And i agree that there are various compromises that are built in to living in apple’s walled garden
But there are also advantages
many people value the apple advantages more than they are bothered by the apple compromises

I enjoy looking at youtube review videos that discuss all the new phones
And what i see is that there is no perfect phone. Every phone has good features, and less good features. From what i can tell, apple is usually not the very best in any area.... but they are reliably pretty good In almost every area.

And apple products remain “good” for longer periods. I can buy a used apple 7 or 8 and it will meet all my needs with apple software support for many years. The cost difference for this choice does not seem prohibitive, i can stick a new chip in the new phone and immediately use iCloud to transfer everything my old phone to my new phone... everything works the same.... all done.

Yeah, i cannot do all the customizations available on android... but i don't want to do those customizations....

Well, yeah. Apple spews a lot of marketing nonsense

I am sure there are wonderful android phones
But there is no compelling reason for me to switch

 

Here is the thing, I really could not care less about phones. It is a... phone. A tool I use to talk to other people. It is not a status symbol, it is not who I am. I no more care about what phone I use than I do what car I drive. It also is just a tool, I refuse to put a lot of money into something like that. And for my purposes, my $100 3 year old phone works perfectly.

Hell, my dad does not even own a cell phone! He sees no reason to buy one, and is the last person I know who has a land line phone and no other.

And that is the thing, Apple is pretty much out of the computer business. In fact, if it was not the reason for their foundation they would probably be more happy getting out of it entirely. Sales of Mac and related computer only products has waned until it is less than 10% of their business (9.1% actually). In 10 years that is down from the already low mark in 2009 when it was 40%.

No, Apple is no longer a computer company, it has not been for over a decade. It is a gadget maker, which keeps chasing the "newest thing" and trying to stay relevant, while the actual "computer industry" has pretty much forgotten they exist. I actually think that if it was not for all those they convinced over decades that the "Mac is the only computer you should ever own", they would get entirely out of it. But like the leaders of any religion, they know the backlash they would get if they were to drop them.

 

Apple

Apple Card can be damaged by wallets and jeans

Apple has advised owners of its new credit card to keep it away from leather and denim.

Keeping the card in a leather wallet or in the pocket of a pair of jeans could cause "permanent discolouration".

...

Apple has published a guide advising customers how to "safely store and carry" their Apple Card.

... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49435687

--------------

From the guide:

How to safely store and carry your titanium Apple Card

• Store your titanium Apple Card in a wallet, pocket, or bag made of soft materials.
• Place your card in a slot in your wallet or billfold without touching another credit card. If two credit cards are placed in the same slot your card could become scratched.
• Don't place or store your titanium Apple Card card near magnets. If your card is placed close to a magnetic latch on a purse or bag, the magnetic strip can become demagnetized.
• Don't place your titanium Apple Card in a pocket or bag that contains loose change, keys, or other potentially abrasive objects.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210399

 

https://www.xda-developers.com/best-stock-android-phones/


edit: https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/

 

Does anyone know if Apple still blocks porn on their i-phones ?

That's really bullshit.