Apple, wtf is wrong with you?

http://daniel.morrione.net/2013/03/20/apple-wtf/

by od2m • 13 years ago

73 121 13 years ago

daniel.morrione.net

auctiontheory• 13 years ago

Likewise the new iTunes. But at least that's not a key component of my daily wage-earning. I feel your pain.

endgame• 13 years ago

iTunes has always been a dog.

cremnob• 13 years ago

>I have been meaning to take her to Apple but honestly… dragging an iMac through South Coast Plaza to the Apple store is a fucking miserable proposition, so I’ve been putting it off.

There's your problem.

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

I can't agree. Ihad the same reaction, but as I read through the story it became clear that this was a simple driver/software problem that could (and should) have been patched with a nightly update. You shouldn't need to go carting a large and expensive piece of hardware into the store in these days of high-speed internet service.

On an unrelated note, tiny gray text on black makes it really hard to switch back to HN, so I can't blame you for not making it to the end. Ow.

silencio• 13 years ago

I want to agree, I really do.

But I have had the same graphics corruption problem mentioned in the beginning of the post, and it most likely is a hardware failure. It took a few phone calls and 4 visits to the Apple Store (5 minutes away) spending a few hours waiting to talk to half a dozen different people because they didn't want to fix it. This was after I had video/pictures documenting the problem (complete with hardware serial #) but no reliable way to reproduce and it wasn't reproducing for them with their stress tests. All that clusterfuck for one repair. Plus it was a MacBook Air, nowhere near as big as an iMac. If I wasn't so fuming mad and I was just being logical, I would have picked up a new laptop instead of waiting. Oh wait, this was a laptop I had bought because the last MacBook I owned keeled over after repeated repairs and the store manager offered me 20% off this one for my troubles.

Yesterday I went in to the store with my iPhone that had shattered glass all over the front and the genius looked at it and wanted to know what I wanted help with. No, really, you think I'm coming in for a software issue? It was so hard for me to assume he was being helpful rather than thick.

There are times when I deal with really awesome Geniuses, and I have countless stories of how awesome the Genius Bar used to be (red phone and actual geniuses and all, when all the Apple Stores in the world were countable on one hand). But there are times Apple really sucks for support and I can't say I blame the OP for not wanting to go. I always think twice before I think about going to the Apple Store nowadays :(

geuis2• 13 years ago

Why is that a problem, beyond a desktop being heavy? I don't see any Dell/HP/Samsung/Lenovo/etc stores around for him to drag a pc desktop to. If there happens to be a Microsoft store around, he'll meet nice people but not get much help.

smith70182• 13 years ago

He's saying the "problem" was that the author was too lazy to fix it in the first place, I believe.

fpgeek4• 13 years ago

Dell, HP and Lenovo (I'm not sure about Samsung) all have support options where they will send someone to your house to fix things. To me, that sounds a whole lot nicer than carrying an iMac to an Apple Store, no matter how good the support is when I get there.

kalleboo2• 13 years ago

Yeah, Apple should provide support like Dell (used to? dunno about know) where they can send a tech to your home, or send you parts to swap yourself.

sbuk10• 13 years ago

Maybe that is the case with an expensive business class extended warranty...

unimpressive• 13 years ago

I can't remember the last time that my Xubuntu install broke.

Though somehow it makes perfect sense for one of the people who helped build Gentoo to be disgusted with Linux.

burnblue• 13 years ago

TL:DR: "My mac broke. I didn't actually bring it in to get it fixed, but fuck Apple for not fixing it anyway."

Aloha• 13 years ago

Sounds like he didn't even call apple for help over the phone. When my ThinkPad breaks I'm on the phone to Lenovo right away.

Margh4• 13 years ago

Do you actually think that taking it into an Apple store would have ended in the tech reflashing the GPU?

Besides the fact that transporting it could damage it further, he would probably would have just been told it was end of life or needed a new GPU altogether and the chances of them having said GPU in stock would be next to nothing.

Maybe it's just my area but Apple stores here do not actually repair products, they just tell you to buy a new one.

r00fus2• 13 years ago

> Besides the fact that transporting it could damage it further

This is just silly - a computer is not a trauma victim, it's a piece of hardware.

My experience has been that they've spent two days isolating a problem on my 2005 iMac which I caused by using 3rd party RAM with the wrong timing - issue didn't appear well after I replaced the RAM (I replaced the RAM again, it worked fine).

charonn02• 13 years ago

When talking about his unreliable iMac:

> When a tool has served me well and needs to be taken care of, I feel I owe it that kindness for all its done for me.

and then, when he wants to bash Linux:

> A computer is a tool, that’s all. When it ceases to work reliably we have to move on.

Why the double standard?

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

There's a fair bit of research suggesting that we unconsciously value things in proportion to what we pay for them. Since Linux is free, it's a lot easier to be unsentimental about your Linux installation, even if that's not wholly rational (eg it represents a larger investment of time or expertise).

beatgammit• 13 years ago

I don't know, I'm irrationally sentimental about my Linux installation and completely laissez-faire about my Windows box...

With Windows, if it gets jacked up, I just re-install, but with Linux, I feel I'm indebted enough to figure out what's wrong and fix it.

geuis2• 13 years ago

You take care of your tools. Over time, even well cared for tools wear out. When that happens, a new tool is needed.

charonn02• 13 years ago

I tend to agree, however the author is not applying this principle to all cases. Hence, a double standard.

belorn• 13 years ago

I especially like how he took the latest and greatest version of raid tools, compiled it by hand, and was surprised that something broke. He doesn't say it, but could it just possible be that it was a alpha build? a non-long term release?

There are reason why debian takes painful months to create releases. They don't just say "ooo, this Friday, lets just pull what ever the git repository has and use that". Windows has also gone down this road. When windows 8 was released, the software was actually a half-year old since beta. if ones is using beta windows 8 and its raid had broken down, would one blame windows or one self?

josteink3• 13 years ago

I reacted to this as well:

> Well, as someone who helped found Gentoo Linux, fuck Linux. It’s the absolute best thing for servers, AND NOTHING ELSE. If you’re running Linux on the desktop, you’re a person who would rather fix his computer than use it.

He even mentions Windows 8 as a more viable option. WTH?

As someone who actually uses Linux on the desktop I have to very much disagree. I install it. It works. Every time.

Ofcourse he came from Gentoo Linux which has been rideculed internet-wide time and time again for their incessant need to über-optimize ever single little thing way beyond pointlessness.

His error in is generalizing this onto the rest of the Linux-world, and guess what? That's just so extremely wrong and not even close to a normal user these days. I haven't even bothered compiling my own "optimized" kernel the last 5 years. Shocking! I know!

This guy is a hardcore Linux geek converted into hardcore Mac-fanboy (polar opposite), sold on the "it just works" idea, because things didn't use to just work in the world of Linux.

The transition must have been wonderfully liberating. But now he finds that his newfound hero has abondoned him and that it was not the saviour he had hoped for and he is lost.

Had he only known he could return to his roots and find everything he wanted right there.

sbuk10• 13 years ago

I going to try my damned not to be rude, but it's hard. For the large part, you've not said anything wrong, in fact I agree with you, other than this;

"This guy is a hardcore Linux geek converted into hardcore Mac-fanboy (polar opposite)"

Why?

Why are using and being a fan of Linux and being an Apple user (or for that matter a Windows user) mutually exclusive? You don't have to buy into the hardcore Stallmanian crap to use it or to enjoy it and even be a fan, hardcore or otherwise. Just as you don't have to succumb to some of Apple's more creepy policies in order to use there laptops etc. I find this attitude in tech particularly irksome. In the past, I have reacted aggressively, which serves nothing other than to get everyones backs up, but I honestly find that quote actually offensive, not to mention deeply myopic and childish. It also irk me that I'm irked by it. The whole community would be better severed by a collective laissez-faire attitude rather than constantly championing their choice or view as the one true path. Like I said at the beginning, I agree and this rant has been bubbling under the surface and I feel better for saying it. Feel free to ignore me.

jack57• 13 years ago

"This guy is a hardcore Linux geek converted into hardcore Mac-fanboy (polar opposite)"

I disagree that these are polar opposites. I have been a Windows guy most of my life, but after switching to Linux, I have learned to appreciate the merits of the UNIX basis of OSX.

lake99• 13 years ago

"and Linux… Well, as someone who helped found Gentoo Linux, fuck Linux. It’s the absolute best thing for servers, AND NOTHING ELSE. If you’re running Linux on the desktop, you’re a person who would rather fix his computer than use it."

Yeah, right. Say that to my many linux-using friends who can't write a simple "hello world" program to save their lives. Despite "[helping] found Gentoo Linux", the author comes off as a moron when he makes such comments about "Linux", whatever the heck it means here.

sagarm2• 13 years ago

Gentoo was the first distro I used, hell, I even did a stage 1 install multiple times, and I understand his perspective perfectly. "Ain't nobody got time for that" indeed.

I'm a happy Ubuntu user now (right now, actually). I hope he gives Ubuntu a try sometime; it's leaps and bounds more reliable and tinker-free than Gentoo ever was.

edit: she => he

wutbrodo2• 13 years ago

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but who are you talking about when you say 'she'? I thought it may be the author, but his name is "Daniel" (and there's an avatar picture of _him_ in one of the comment replies).

vacri3• 13 years ago

If he helped found Gentoo, then perhaps he's in part responsible for the stupid things it does that other distros don't.

beloch4• 13 years ago

I hate to break it to you, but Apple is very focused on increasing product turnover. Every other PC and laptop vendor is going through rough times because the obsolescence curve on Windows PC's has gotten so slow to fall off. A five year old PC can run Win8 (or Linux) pretty fine actually, so sales are in the scuppers.

Would you want to install Mountain Lion on a five-year old Mac? Hell no!

Apple saw that hardware was starting to last longer and took steps. Part of their solution was to try to innovate. Retina screens, multi-touch trackpads and an increased focus on gestures to justify their use over mice, etc.. Another part was to drive costs, and prices, down. Besides placing price pressure on the competition, occupying a lower price-bracket means people are more likely to upgrade more often rather than trying to nurse their old hardware along for as long as possible. This is the good. The other parts of their attack on long obsolescence cycles are not so good.

All traces of easy upgradeability have left Apple's product line. You now need special tools to get into pretty much any Apple laptop, and they use propriety connectors for everything. Want to pop an off-the-shelf SSD into your Air? Not gonna happen. Yes, you can order Apple compatible parts and tools online, but this is not by Apple's design. They'd probably sue those guys into oblivion if they were really doing a lot of business.

Apple laptops feel great in the hand, as if they're built to last generations, but they're actually horribly delicate in some respects. The Air can be bricked by a mere drop of liquid in the wrong spot (this actually happened to me. One drop. I'm not kidding.). The proprietary screws and integrated battery mean you can't remove the potential to stop the damage before it happens and then clean things up yourself. It's a horrible feeling watching your laptop fry itself knowing it could have been saved if it had been designed with a removeable battery. You'll get no sympathy from Apple either. Their warranty does not cover spill-damage. When this happened to me, the repair bill was literally larger than what I paid for my air in the first place! Subtle hint?

Software glitches and poor support for older hardware are only the latest in a long sequence of Apple's moves to keep you buying new hardware. Have the geeks looked at your obsolete macbook, tsk'd, and subtly hinted that while you could continue suffering with that old beast, a new laptop would be very cheap and work much better!

Apple is not stupid. They're actually really freakin' smart. I'd be willing to bet OSX users replace their laptops, on average, more than twice as often as Linux or Windows users.

neotek• 13 years ago

>The Air can be bricked by a mere drop of liquid in the wrong spot (this actually happened to me. One drop. I'm not kidding.)

I'd like to know more about this.

visarga4• 13 years ago

I killed a slim keyboard the same way. Keys are non removable. There is no way to fix it.

beloch4• 13 years ago

I was sitting at a table and a friend set his travel mug down too forcefully. You've probably seen this happen many times. Set a travel mug down the wrong way and liquid will slosh against the opening you drink through, causing a single drop to pop out. In this case a drop of coffee arc'd neatly across the table and landed right on the cracks of one key on the upper-right of the keyboard. The Air was still running, but I powered it off immediately and turned it upside down to try to get the liquid out. I thought nothing really got in and tried to power it up a minute later, but the Air was kaput. I doubt one drop would have shown up on the spill detection gizmos Apple uses, but I was honest about the incident. For my honesty, Apple declared it spill damage and offered to repair it for an exorbitant fee, which I declined. To add insult to injury, the geek I encountered was one of the most obnoxious tech-support people I've ever run across. Stereotypical fat, pimply teenage nerd. He actually joked, "Gee! That was an expensive cup of coffee! Hur hur hur hur.". This guy was worse than all the Microsoft fanboy stereotypes Apple ads have lampooned over the years. I swore off Apple products on the spot and have been free and clear ever since. It's actually kind of amazing, but an outsourced Indian call center or even a complete lack of customer service would have been better than the insensitive and offensive way that geek dealt with me.

ozataman• 13 years ago

They're counting on the fact that for most users Apple products and OS X are much better than alternatives today. So they are theorizing that people will put up with this kind of strategy. In a classic example for the pattern, this is how they are opening themselves up for attack. I wish someone would genuinely rise up to the challenge, if for nothing else, to force Apple to once again be nicer to its customers.

sounds• 13 years ago

Though there is money to be made doing this (and I also wish it might happen) ...

The capital investment required to go head-to-head against Apple, for now, seems to be keeping competitors away. When a company like Samsung or Lenovo to makes some moves in this direction, it might be a good thing.

beloch4• 13 years ago

To be honest, I didn't like OSX when it first came out and, despite my best efforts, could not force myself to like it when I gave it another chance a couple years ago. It's an OS that demands the user to conform to it's way of doing things rather than conforming to the users way of doing things. That's fine for some people, but not me. I like the feel of Apple's hardware and find their prices very reasonable, but they're simply not built to last. This is a tragic and fatal flaw for what would otherwise be great hardware for running another OS on.

The only thing Apple truly has going for it is branding. Mac's are freakin' fashion accessories these days. I'm not sure if any other manufacturer can duplicate Apple's marketing genius, but I think we can already see Apple's trendiness fading. A big part of what built Apple's brand up over the last decade was being the plucky underdog fighting the MS man. Now Apple is "the man". Samsung's Apple-bashing ads might be heavy-handed, but they're almost identical to the ads Apple used to run against MS.

taligent3• 13 years ago

  Want to pop an off-the-shelf SSD into your Air? Not gonna happen.

A typical SSD is larger than the MacBook Air. But you can add third party SSD modules:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Air_2012

  The proprietary screws and integrated battery mean you can't remove the potential to stop the damage before it happens and then clean things up yourself.

You can buy a pentalobe screwdriver for $10 from iFixit or $2 from eBay. You can also buy third party batteries off eBay.

vacri3• 13 years ago

I hope they deliver before the liquid hits the critical circuits!

As opposed to just about anywhere else, which will have standard screwdrivers. Visiting another office? What do you mean you don't carry around your pentalobe screwdriver?

bitcartel2• 13 years ago

Yes, but if OWC didn't throw in a special USB case, the original SSD module would be useless as you can't plug it into any other laptop, nor can you realistically sell it.

I wish Apple would support the mSata interface. A lot of other manufacturers do, the drives are tiny, and you can get them in capacities up to 480 GB now.

keeperofdakeys• 13 years ago

There is a connection called mSATA, which allows a mini pci-e plug to double as a IO port. Nearly all ultra-books use this connector, and there are many good SSD products that use it. Apple have continued to change their adapter in different revisions, depreciating many lines of third-party SSDs for Airs. While mSATA may not have been in common use when the Air was created, it is now incredibly common.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

Yes, you can use unauthorised hacky methods to change batteries. A laptop beautifully designed for tiny thiness is a bad example to use, because there are obvious trade offs.

Look at things like the Power Mac G4 - amazing design, really lovely internal layout, really easy to change anything.

I have no idea what Apple's equivalent product is today, but I do know that changing anything is harder, and that Apple is keen for people not to modify anything.

That's okay. Homogeneous install base makes support much easier and better. (Compare to blue-screens on Windows caused by shoddy graphics card drivers provided by vendors). But it sucks for people who know what they're doing and who want to make changes. Apple products are expensive, and not everyone wants to change machine every 1.5 years.

alex_doom• 13 years ago

Yes but consider the resale value on most Macs. When I upgrade every two years, I only have to shell out about $500 for a faster machine.

schmidtty• 13 years ago

> OSX

It is actually OS X.

tolmasky2• 13 years ago

I would actually agree to sign a contract the bound me to upgrade my Apple hardware every 1.5 years if it would guarantee they stop ruining Mac OS X. My problem isn't so much the fact I have to replace these things so often, its that its not even that great day 1 anymore. With the exception of AirPlay perhaps, just about every major facet of OS X has gotten so progressively worse for my workflow: Safari (bogs my computer down no matter how much ram I have), dual display support (a joke since Lion), Messages (buggiest piece of software I've ever used in my life, by a long shot), iTunes (same as Safari), etc etc etc

Edit: I'd like to point out one other thing. Before anyone chimes in with how Windows or Linux or other PC makers are worse, I completely agree with you. My position is that while Mac OS X may still be the "best", it has been a long time since it has been "good". I find little consolation in the fact that it is not "as broken" as everything else, nor do I think that's anything to be particularly proud of. Especially with the amount of money I've given them.

rozap2• 13 years ago

Ok honest question and I hope you don't take this the wrong way:

Preface: Today two of my co-workers were lamenting over a similar phenomenon that you described, in addition to describing their MBP hardware troubles (dead motherboards, in this instance). Their solution was to buy another macintosh.

Why is this the solution? I don't buy the argument that other PC makers are worse. If my laptop died after 2 years, especially if I paid Apple prices for it, I'd be so pissed off that I would buy just about anything but another Apple device.

Have you tried using a quality PC with a modern distribution of Mint or something installed? I think you might rethink your position about "everyone else being worse". Take this with a grain of salt, I've had the same dell laptop for 5 years with Xubuntu and 0 problems. If I didn't have that experience my outlook would likely be different.

katbyte3• 13 years ago

Ditto to that, i was a huge fan of OSX until lion and mission control. Started to use win 7 with dexpot and some other customization and haven't booted to OSX in at least 6 months now.

jasonlingx2• 13 years ago

>Would you want to install Mountain Lion on a five-year old Mac? Hell no!

Why not? I have, works perfectly...

> Apple is not stupid. They're actually really freakin' smart. I'd be willing to bet OSX users replace their laptops, on average, more than twice as often as Linux or Windows users.

I disagree. And the strong resale value of their products testify to this.

konstruktor• 13 years ago

That does not automatically imply reliability. One can see the fact that the unit lasted long enough for resale as an extended QC cycle at the reseller's expense.

seivan• 13 years ago

I've had my Air since it came out. Still solid. Still SSD. I compiles are a bit long, and flash kills. But still solid built.

sbuk10• 13 years ago

It's like you think the other PC makers are any better. Not to defend Apple, but this is an industry malaise, and it's been going on for a lot longer than you think. Is it right that they do it? No. Of course not. That said, my 2007 iMac is still perfectly serviceable. It won't receive the next OS X update, but by then it'll be at least 6 years old. I doubt the components would cope - much like my 2006 HP Compaq nc6320 (catchy name) ran Windows 7 well enough but won't run Windows 8 and struggles with most of the recent Linux distributions. There is nothing wrong with feeling let down and putting your money elsewhere, as a consumer that is your right. I'd argue that your reasoning in this instance is flawed.

adlpz2• 13 years ago

The point here is that we used to buy Apple (and pay their price) just because they weren't like the rest of the industry. That doesn't hold anymore.

medikoo• 13 years ago

I have Mountain Lion on early 2008 MBP, and it works really well.

What's funny any problems that I had with this computer (Wifi port permanently turning off), started with one of the Leopard upgrades, it was just fixed once when I upgraded to Mountain Lion (what a nice surprise) but it wasn't long, issue got back with one of the first ML updates.

Otherwise machine works really well, so it's not necessarily true that installing new OS on old hardware trashes it.

megaframe• 13 years ago

I've been running the same install of Ubuntu since 2007 with 0 issues. I've replaced the main hard drive doing a dd to migrate, swapped the entire MB/CPU/RAM and Video card, booted right up no issues. I run a raid 5 mdadm setup, with 0 issues took 5min to setup the first time been working since. Upgrading to the latest mainstream releases and package updates automatically along the way.

I get the anti Linux sentiment I use to use Gentoo before Ubuntu/Debian became so viable and it was/is painful to say the least. I'm not going to say I always agree with everything Canonical does with Ubuntu but I could make the same argument for OSX and Ubuntu has been amazingly stable.

So to anyone out there on the fence with OSX and fearing Windows, Linux is so much better these days. Approaching the ease of OSX.

robocat• 13 years ago

Similar experience - desktop running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS with mdadm Raid has been brilliant. Could still get up-to-date packages for most things I need. Recently replaced with a laptop, wanted faster CPU+SSD, not because of any issues with Ubuntu.

pkaler• 13 years ago

"I’ve been struggling with my baby, a mid-2010 27″ iMac for months now. She’s been unstable for better than a year now, and it keeps getting worse. After a few minutes, or hours the screen gets corrupted. Little discolored squares appear and flicker and dance, eventually she hard locks. I have been meaning to take her to Apple but honestly… dragging an iMac through South Coast Plaza to the Apple store is a fucking miserable proposition, so I’ve been putting it off."

Your fault.

My daily machine is a mid-2011 MacBook Air and it works like a dream.

My old machine was a late-2007 MacBook Pro. It's logic board started acting up about a year after I bought it. I didn't buy AppleCare. Apple fixed it out of warranty at no cost to me.

Take it in. Apple will most likely fix it. Most likely at no cost to you. The machine has been acting up for a year. You chose to write a whiny blog post rather than take the machine in. That's your fault.

Margh4• 13 years ago

Is it really unreasonable to expect a patch for a reported software issue?

Taking a 27" for repairs is a little bit different to taking a laptop.

Also: cool that they fixed your laptop for free, but keep in mind that was 5 years ago. 5 years ago Apple gave me a new iPod (for free) because the battery died. Now I have to pay $80 or something to have my current one sent away for a few weeks for a battery.

edit: spellung

coldtea• 13 years ago

>Is it really unreasonable to expect a patch for a reported software issue?

No. But it's unreasonable to expect a patch pronto, while they must be investigating the issue (that the steps in the forum solved the issue, doesn't mean they cover every aspect of it, or that they work with everybody that has the issue).

And if the issue can't be fixed with a simple patch but needs several steps, it's reasonable to take your computer to them and have them perform them.

kalleboo2• 13 years ago

Taking it in means I'm without my work machine for a week. Ridiculous in this case where it's really a software fix.

lucb1e• 13 years ago

> It's logic board started acting up about a year after I bought it. I didn't buy AppleCare. Apple fixed it out of warranty at no cost to me.

Don't know about where you live, but here there are actually laws concerning the minimum warranty. If something internally breaks within a year, you're certainly going to have warranty. I'm not sure about two years.

I think Apple actually got sued once for misleading advertisements, trying to get people to buy the AppleCare pack while they had warranty anyway.

Tmmrn2• 13 years ago

> logic board

I'm not an apple user so I had to google what that means. Apparently it is a synonym for mainboard and it seems to be mainly used for apple computers. Is there a reason to use "logic board" instead of "mainboard"?

josteink3• 13 years ago

Probably the normal Apple marketing reason: make the things they use seem unique, and also trademarkable.

For instance, you can only get Apple-equipment with "Retina-display". Ofcourse you get higher DPI displays from a lot of vendors, but they cannot offer you a "Retina-display".

Same for the "Facetime-camera", or front-facing camera as the rest of the world calls it.

sbuk10• 13 years ago

It's what they were called when Woz developed the Apple 1 microcomputer in the mid 70's. They were also called logic boards by everyone else until around the mid 80's and the rise of the IBM PC.

humbledrone2• 13 years ago

> The exact moment I quit Linux was when an emerge pulled the latest raid-tools and broke my raid array.

Yeah, that's Gentoo. Such is life when you're running locally-compiled binaries that, depending on your USE flags, have been compiled with a combination of settings that nobody in the whole world has ever tested before.

I'm running Ubuntu Precise right now, and can quite honestly say that I have not done a single system maintenance task in the six months since I installed it and set it up. It just works. Granted, I'm not doing anything too fancy with it, just basic software engineering.

YokoZar• 13 years ago

Yeah. I hate to sound snarky, but a Gentoo user swearing off desktop linux for good is exactly why we shouldn't be using Linux as a brand name. Ubuntu and Gentoo are miles apart in terms of how well tested they are on the desktop, and lumping them both under the Linux brand leads to this sort of confusion.

wutbrodo2• 13 years ago

Exactly. I expect this from people who don't know anything about Linux or the concept of OSes in general (e.g. when people hear I use Linux they assume it's for "servers and programming" only), and frankly it's quite understandable in that case. It's a damn sight more odd seeing someone who "helped found Gentoo" be seemingly incapable of distinguishing between Gentoo and other Linux distributions in terms of system maintenance.

Tmmrn2• 13 years ago

I found that funny too. Using one of the distributions known for the heavy customizability and for being a "do it yourself" distribution and then complaining that he has to spend time on it?

On the other hand, he uses apple hardware and loses "100′s of hours of productivity" (why didn't he just have it repaired) and what about it? "Long live Apple"

Such is the mentality of another apple user. (I realize that probably the vast majority of apple users are the ones I don't read about). But those that do and often end up having an article here... really?

olgeni• 13 years ago

> Such is life when you're running locally-compiled binaries that, depending on your USE flags, have been compiled with a combination of settings that nobody in the whole world has ever tested before.

I do exactly that on FreeBSD and never lost any raid whatsoever, possibly because the "raid stuff" tends to come together with the rest of the OS. There are probably issues that go beyond local compilation and flags.

humbledrone2• 13 years ago

Yeah, the USE flags was just an off-the-cuff example of how one-off a Gentoo system can be. Similar to your story, I ran Gentoo for years without any massive disasters, but there was definitely (for me) a nontrivial amount of regular maintenance.

I still thing Gentoo's great, and I'm glad I had a little fling with it, but ultimately I decided that the maintenance overhead was just too high for a workstation.

eridius2• 13 years ago

Phenomenally stupid article.

Dude obviously has graphics card issues. Refuses to take it in to be serviced. Acts all surprised when an OS update includes revisions to the graphics drivers, which caused the bad behavior to worsen. Decides the right course of action is to pen an internet screed against Apple because, well, I have no idea.

The funniest part is, NVidia and ATI produce the graphics drivers, so if he wants to be mad at someone, he should be mad at them.

Margh4• 13 years ago

> revisions to the graphics drivers ... caused the bad behavior to worsen

not exactly the intended behaviour of driver updates

Zr402• 13 years ago

No, it's the behavior of malfunctioning hardware. The new drivers happen to trigger the malfunction in a different way.

smith70182• 13 years ago

Thank you for being the sane one here. This "engineer" didn't even understand that Apple doesn't write the drivers and "BIOS" for the card; how can I take his rant seriously? Not to mention he started it with "my computer has been acting up for the last year but, y'know, who has the time to take it in? You'll never guess what happened... it got WORSE!!" Feign surprise.

nivla• 13 years ago

>This "engineer" didn't even understand that Apple doesn't write the drivers and "BIOS" for the card

I would have agreed with this argument had he installed a custom graphics card but this is not the case here. It came included with the product, so its Apple's responsibility to make sure it works. Say you buy a new car from Ford and the tires wear out in 6 months, despite Michelin being the manufactures, wouldn't you still blame Ford for it?

Alright, let's take a HN friendly example. Say you run a medium B2B startup and one day the API that a lot of other businesses depend on goes down. The reason could be attributed to a strange bug in the new Ruby/Django/PHP update. Would you still pass the blame to Ruby/Django/PHP or would you accept responsibility for it?

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

I don't see how it makes any difference who writes the GPU drivers. Apple's entire business model is selling all-in-one solutions and the price you pay for that as the vendor is the whole box is your problem from the customer's perspective.

GPU driver issues? I don't care if they are Nvidia's (or AMD/ATI's) bugs, Nvidia (or AMD/ATI) is your GPU vendor, you have them fix that shit and just deliver that to me in an OS update. Otherwise your shit is busted.

If my Honda car had some firmware in it programmed by some 3rd party shop in China and it started acting up, I would damn well demand Honda figure out how to get it fixed regardless of whose bug it was. They are the ones who sold me the integrated solution, it is now their problem. Same thing with Apple devices, especially since they've chosen to create an ecosystem of computers with no user serviceable or replaceable parts.

visarga4• 13 years ago

The "dude" didn't complain that there were bugs. He complained that the bugs had no official fix after hundreds of people have reported them.

taligent3• 13 years ago

10.8.3 came out days ago.

Apple may or may not have an official fix. Either way it it takes time for Apple to QA before pushing it out to tens of millions of users.

mosselman• 13 years ago

Welcome to hacker news. I bet if I write up some fake article about "Why I left [popular company], and why you shouldn't" I'll get in the top list in no time.

Articles like this one are popular as well. Just write some nonsensical nostalgic story about some sort of computer or digital device, whining about how the company who built it has sold its soul and you are golden as far as HN kudos are concerned.

The reason people like this type of article is probably because, 'back then' was when they knew very little about computers. Now, when you reach a certain level of experience and knowledge, that magically looking Mac will suddenly be 'just a computer'. People don't want to go back to the olden days here you'd type commands into your Commadore 64, but they want to go back to that naive state of mind where when your computer did want you wanted it to, it felt like magic.

mrilhan2• 13 years ago

Didn't read your rant since it was impossible for my human eyes. I may bill (!) you for the temporary loss of productivity. Your BG and color scheme are horrible, I would rather blend and drink my left foot than read your blog again.

mixmastamyk2• 13 years ago

Assuming you were born, how did you survive in the days of DOS?

MikeAmelung• 13 years ago

DOS didn't have a gradient gray background; it was black.

visarga4• 13 years ago

I use Readability in Chrome. It makes the text nice with one click, everywhere I want to read an article.

mrilhan2• 13 years ago

You're right, I actually have it installed too, I should've just done that and moved on. This particular blog with the patterned/hypnotic background really hurt my eyes in the morning, and I guess I was cranky enough to take it as an insult :)

jsz0• 13 years ago

From what I've seen Apple still does a far better job than other PC makers in this area.

drivebyacct2• 13 years ago

For all the things I dislike about Apple and iOS, I really can't say enough good things about their hardware. Even so much that I will wait until Q3 just to see if they release Macbook Airs with a high(er) res screen instead of grabbing the XPS13 today with a 1080p 13" screen. (And I doubt the XPS13 is any more serviceable).

> which is scary because Windows 8 is unadulterated bullshit, and Linux… Well, as someone who helped found Gentoo Linux, fuck Linux. It’s the absolute best thing for servers, AND NOTHING ELSE. If you’re running Linux on the desktop, you’re a person who would rather fix his computer than use it.

What a steaming load of shit.

batiudrami• 13 years ago

This guy writes about operating systems the way I used to when I was 12. There is perhaps a valid point (I don't know, I don't use a Mac) hidden in terrible writing and fanboy opinions.

rozap2• 13 years ago

This article is just plain stupid. Apple's service isn't what it once was, their hardware is lower quality now, blah blah blah...we all know that. Have you been living under a rock for the past 3 years?

You kidding me? For the vast majority of OSS development and use, linux is by far the easiest solution. People (including me) use linux because they DON'T want to fuck around with shoe-horning software into running on a Mac or Windows. It's just the simplest solution for using and developing open source software. The above quotation may have been true about 6 years ago, but it sure as hell isn't true now.

Welcome to 2013.

jjkmk• 13 years ago

Agreed, as some one who has extensive admin and dev knowledge in OS X/ Win / Linux I find Linux to be the easiest to manage and install in a desktop environment.

DannoHung• 13 years ago

My experiences with Apple hardware in the past 7 years do not mirror this.

In total, I have seen three serious problems with mine and my families computers: 1) Failed hard drives 2) RAM that went bad 3) A clusterfuck of problems on a 17" MBP pre-unibody (Apple eventualy got it working, but it's on its last legs in general now because the owner refuses to install patches).

This is across, I wanna say... approximately 20 Apple devices ranging from phones to iMacs.

They're not perfect, but compared to the amount of problems from when everyone I knew had Windows PCs, I take a lot fewer support calls.

visarga4• 13 years ago

I can't tell how many times I have went to Apple forums to find threads hundreds of posts long and spanning multiple years without a fix.

Why don't they send some of those geniuses to fix these problems? Can't they afford to support their products?

tluyben2• 13 years ago

My 2008 Macbook really works like a charm, always has, always does. That was my second Mac after I tried them in the 90s (and hated it). I was very happy so in 2010 I bought, for a very large wad of cash, a MBP with an i7. Nothing but problems; problems which don't appear when you go into the store except the lousy battery life which they said is because I run too heavy software (which I don't mostly and the 2008 had/has no issues with it).

The magsafe internal part of that MBP is also of much lower quality; one of the pins 'disappeared' and Apple replaced the magsafe and the external charger. Now the same pin disappeared but I'm out of warranty and they want E600 to repair it.

Thinkpad, here I come.

kayoone• 13 years ago

Why is it that Apple users are so damn opinionated ? Jeez, just use what works for you.

Guess what ? I use a Windows Desktop and really like it. Its fast, i can built it myself and works with everything. My web development is done on an ubuntu vm in the cloud so i dont care where my tools run. Id probably run Linux but as i do some game programming and my tools arent availabe there, i cant.

I also own a Macbook Air, i really like the hardware and battery life. Its a really solid mobile device. I dont like OSX too much but it runs my tools so i dont care. As PC laptop makers have catched up alot in the past 2-3 years id probably buy an ultrabook next as there are more choices and they are a bit cheaper.

So what ? No hardware/software is perfect, just use what works for you.

r00fus2• 13 years ago

Most Apple users actually aren't that opinionated - it's just that the opinionated Apple users are more vocal than the Windows crowd. I'd say the Linux crowd are more opinionated than Apple users.

szc• 13 years ago

There is a prevailing assumption that this problem is "caused" by bad software. This might be the case, but bad hardware could also be part of this!

A lot of modern hardware has programmable parameters, "core voltages", PLL parameters that control running frequencies and the timings for DMA / memory access state machines.

Who's fault is it if the hardware vendor says use X, Y and Z for these parameters. And they include the same parameters in the software they supply and....

What if some %'age of the hardware doesn't actually produce the timings the configuration parameters specify, or does "really bad things"?

In reading the "source" article, there is a pointer to a discussions.apple.com thread. The "fix", if you go and read the thread, is on page 21 from Andrew Humphreys. What his solution does is change the timings and clock speeds for low power and idle modes of the GPU. Reading between the lines, the low power / clock speed settings don't work and will cause corruption. His changes are derrived from people having problems running Windows 7. The same changes seem to help people running OS X.

Perhaps someone from the Linux community will be willing to force the ATI GPU cards in question into low power / performance modes and see if corruption occurs.

I've no knowledge of what the parameters Andrew is overriding actually do, but for a portable platform "faster" almost always results in higher power usage, heat and therefore shorter battery life.

This might not be such an issue for desktops, if you can tolerate the noise of increased cooling.

Getting pragmatic about this, how could you design a Q/A test for this? Do you really afford to wait X number of minutes before / after each test to make sure the GPU is cold enough to go into low power mode? What if you decide to use hardware that can cool the GPU faster so you could get through all the tests -- doesn't that make the tests invalid as you are no longer using HW customers will get?

As a final note, there might be evidence that some graphics drivers were updated ~1 week before 10.8.3 was shipped. The evidence is in /System/Library/Extensions/

Apple, wtf is wrong with you?

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