Hackers gonna hate

http://nickchaves.com/post/hackers-gonna-hate

by shawndumas • 14 years ago

28 30 14 years ago

roguecoder• 14 years ago

Two years is a short life span. My 2001 ThinkPad is under-powered, but now used by a four-year-old who otherwise wouldn't have access to a computer.

Two year product life cycles are incredibly brief for people who aren't circuit-heads like us.

keymone2• 14 years ago

define "life span"? a laptop only "used by four-year-old" is pretty dead laptop. can it fully replace your every-day development/whatever machine?

donall• 14 years ago

The laptop he's talking about is from 2001. It's 11 years old. Of course it can't replace a modern dev machine! However, it still works as a machine and a 4 year old child is using it as an introductory machine. That doesn't sound like dead laptop; it sounds like one that has exceeded expectations and continues to work in a limited capacity (like a Mars rover!).

Avshalom• 14 years ago

The laptop I'm using now, and have been using for a bit over a year now is --not sure of the exact vintage but-- pre-2004. It is my every day machine at home.

Now I haven't actually upgraded it in that time, so it's not really a data point against unserviceable machines but it's sure as hell a data point against 2 year life spans.

orangethirty• 14 years ago

My main workstation (does 80% of the work) is an old Lenovo R61 thinkpad. About 5 years old, no repairs whatsoever. Well, if we don't include all the OS installs I've borked. It does need a new fan, but I plan on replaicing it.

benwr• 14 years ago

I think the dichotomy here between PCs and Macs is harmful to the discussion. I don't think of Apple as a bad guy here any more than Microsoft, whose UEFI secure boot is just as hack-unfriendly. The point remains that there is value in being able to fix your own devices.

alanh2• 14 years ago

Absolutely disingenuous and/or dickish to call the preference for maintainability/extensibility/hackability/repairability “Luddite.” Not to mention, throwaway culture is short-term anti-environment thinking.

smoyer2• 14 years ago

I think iFixit provided a useful commentary on how the new Apple products are made. If people still buy them after knowing they're not as expandable, serviceable and recyclable as they used to be then at least they knew what they were getting.

My biggest issues were the lack of a socket for RAM and the use of glue to bond the glass and aluminum.

As a side note, I have. PowerBook Wallstreet G3, a five year-old Compaq and a nine year-old Dell that are all still functional and in good shape. The Powerbook and the Compaq both have over 100k miles of travel on them and I'm convinced the biggest factor determining longevity of a laptop is the owner.

It's true that your batteries are somewhat beyond your control and there are some models with known issues (e.g. hinge problems), but how can I only person that's never had a laptop just up and die on them. I've also have had five or six other laptops assigned to me by the companies I've worked for over the last 15 years and I've generally turned them in to be upgraded (processor and RAM limitations).

mdonahoe• 14 years ago

Did your laptop make a daily commute to work in a bag? Did you walk or drive?

smoyer2• 14 years ago

Yes, it made a daily commute in a well-padded backpack. I drove in the winter and rode my bicycle when the weather was suitable. It also flew across the country at least once per month.

polemic2• 14 years ago

Either the author does not know the meaning of the word "Luddite", or is making presumptions on what people value in technology.

Kyle Wiens was clear: Apple was experimenting with two divergent strategies - small, portable and inflexible vs larger, modifiable and upgradeable. Neither is anti-technology or anti-progress, they're just different paths.

Instead, Nick first assumes that the first option represents progress and draws his inference from there. This allows him to look down his nose at Kyle's clearly superior knowledge of Apple's product history and strategy.

Of course, this is ass-backward.

EDIT: --

Well there you go. John Gruber, who snarkily wrote off Kyles well written analysis as a whine, has linked back to Nicks categorical imperative.

I'm sorry, but that is the worst sort of circle jerk.

hsmyers• 14 years ago

When he says "Do we imagine that such progress is achieved through the kind of Luddite thinking that leads people to value "hackability" over never-before-achieved levels of precision and portability?" he pretty much proves that he does not understand either the word Luddite or it's origins. Essentially Ned Ludd was rebelling over looms that had been 'hacked' with the technology of the day. A complete contradiction to what the author said.

polemic2• 14 years ago

And let's be honest, referencing Avatar, Minority Report and moral philosophy(!) raise a few red flags about the quality of the argument too :D

maytc• 14 years ago

I think laptops are becoming like smartphones in their design. After two or three years of use and when they break, you go out and buy a new one. It is much cheaper (opportunity cost speaking) for the user to get a new faster computer and the company to sell out new model than having companies pour a significant amount of time and money to have repairable components.

dfc• 14 years ago

"When we look at futuristic computing devices in movies such as Minority Report or Avatar, do we think 'Neat, but those definitely don't look upgradeable. No thanks.'"

When did "movie coolness" become a legitimate metric (let alone an important metric) to gauge the value of technology?

"devices that are more about the human interface and less about the components is a form of a categorical imperative"

If you are going to toss around weighty philosophical terms like "categorical imperative" I think it is important that you do not beg the question in the process. The author assumes that "hackability" is not a component of the human interface? In my opinion the human interface includes a discussion of user serviceable/upgradeable hardware. It is certainly not the most important aspect but of the human interface but it is on the list.

I also think it is a little curious that the author does not mention what brand of PCs he bought. If I had to guess I would say that the omission was because it was hardly an apples to apples comparison. All of my thinkpads have lasted a lot longer than two years...

If we are going to talk about human interfaces lets drop the CSS floating vignette/border/frame thingy...

unimpressive2• 14 years ago

>"Do we imagine that such progress is achieved through the kind of Luddite thinking that leads people to value "hackability" over never-before-achieved levels of precision and portability?"

There's a lot of irony in linking people to the word Luddite when the author himself uses it incorrectly.

jfoutz• 14 years ago

I love that inserting a sim correctly is somehow a "hack". I've literally talked my then 75 year old grandmother through reseating memory over the phone.

If anything, the closed nature of the hardware is going to make actually fixing things a lot more valuable.

unimpressive2• 14 years ago

This too, if we've degraded the options for "Hackability" to upgrading the components, then we may as well just say that the machine isn't hackable. (If the capability was designed to be there and is used for it's intended purpose then it doesn't qualify as a hack; period.)

jtchang• 14 years ago

This conversation is ludicrous. All I want is ram that isn't soldered in so I can upgrade it at a later date. If this takes me out of the Apple's target demographic (which I most certainly believe it does) then so be it.

stickfigure2• 14 years ago

This.

There are two components in modern computers that are experiencing Moore's Law-style rapid improvement: RAM and SSD. Whatever you buy now is going to be obsolete (or half the price) in two years.

This means that I either have to overspend for bleeding-edge RAM capacity now, or replace the whole machine later. Neither are attractive options - especially with Apple's large built-in margin on upgrades.

alanh2• 14 years ago

> Moore’s Law: RAM and SSD

Not true with RAM, at least for capacity!

My late-2008 MacBook Pro has been upgraded to 8GB of RAM, which is the maximum available for all current MacBook Pros except the new Retina edition (16GB). Just barely doubling in 4 years ≠ doubling every ~2 years.

Likewise, SSDs are not doubling in meaningful specs every two years, either.

mindcrime• 14 years ago

Do we imagine that such progress is achieved through the kind of Luddite thinking that leads people to value "hackability" over never-before-achieved levels of precision and portability?

OK, that makes no sense whatsoever. I don't think the OP really knows what he's talking about on this bit. "Luddite thinking" is what leads to a desire for upgradability and hackability? Really? WTF?

If anything, it's exactly the opposite. Hackers are the ones who like to take things apart, explore them, explore their boundaries and find ways to push them beyond their boundaries and do things they weren't meant to do. If you can somehow make that into an analogy for Luddite thinking... well... your analogy is flat wrong.

chavesn• 14 years ago

Being brief in the quote you've replied to meant that I poorly communicated what I actually meant.

The analogy was meant to communicate the harm of hanging on to methods of the past longer than necessary. Consumer hacking in terms of computer hardware is in decline.

I absolutely value hacking in any new technologies, I believe it to be essential to progress (totally agree with your comment on pushing the boundaries). But when it's time for things to progress again, I don't want to be caught arguing against those methods for the sake of my own need to tinker.

My chief complaint with Wiens is that he argues for consumers as a mass market to "draw a line" in support of user-repairability. I don't see that as forward-thinking at all.

koeselitz• 14 years ago

>> Do we imagine that such progress is achieved through the kind of Luddite thinking that leads people to value "hackability" over never-before-achieved levels of precision and portability?

I don't think that's precisely fair. I'm not exactly a fan of King Ludd - I like machines a lot, I like taking them apart and putting them back together and doing cool things with them. For this reason, though I think they're really neat, and I've even thought about it just because they're so cool, I don't think I'll ever buy a Macbook.

Even so, I am not foolish enough to believe everyone is just like me on this count. I've even recommended Macbooks to at least three friends, helping them purchase and set them up, not that anybody needs much help with such intuitive machines. They're just not for me, and I know why - because I'd like to be able to disassemble them, and at the very least I'd like to be able to add or replace my own RAM.

Does that really make me a Luddite?

mkmkmmmmm• 14 years ago

No, it makes the author a moron that wants to jump on a bandwagon to get a few pageviews.

eagsalazar• 14 years ago

I'm at peace with the upgradablity issue. It is personal taste so whatever. I agree with others that it is a silly debate and that the author is overly butt-hurt.

However, his "rebuttal" completely ignores the 2nd half of the original article's point: the new macbooks, and all ipad, are not recyclable despite what Apple says.

Not that Apple has a monopoly on callously diluting terms like "all natural", "recyclable", "free range", etc to increase profits and mislead consumers, thereby, eh, destroying the...EARTH. But still, even as the norm, it's pretty f-ing evil.

kposehn• 14 years ago

We, as hackers, are not the target.

Apple is targeting everyone else; they are selling to the rest of the world, the people who want something that works and don't care a whit about upgradability.

The only people that care about upgrading hardware are an extreme minority and Wintel salespeople.

After all, when was the last time your uncle Bob, that guy who does some computer stuff but is not a power user, told you he needed to upgrade his ram?

stevewillows• 14 years ago

My main concern with this entire 'non-upgradeable' situation is having to eventually recycle a laptop due to one or two components that could have been replaced or upgraded.

My Dell XPS1640 isn't the best by any stretch, but I know that I can repair the hinges and upgrade the ram when I need to.

I'd rather spend more money upgrading and refurbishing a system than just buying another because it won't run the eventual CS8.

"Shame to let a good toaster go to waste over a frayed cord” - Proposition Joe, The Wire

Hackers gonna hate

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