zbuzz, you need to dial it down. You’re in personal insult territory several times in your posts.
I’ve never owned a computer that wasn’t a Mac, and I sure as hell don’t want to be stuck using some other operating system when this is the one I know well.
But the last version of MacOS X I thought was a full-blown improvement over its predecessor was 10.3
and…
- nods *
I want out-of-the-box support for two external monitors plus the built-in screen.
I’d like at least a 17"laptop screen, no interest in downgrading to 15". I’d spend more to get a 19".
I have 16 GB RAM in this one; I think I’d like 64 in the next one.
Ideally I’d like two actual physical hard drives. Maybe one solid state and one ocean-sized conventional HD, maybe 4 TB or so.
A laptop to me is a portable computer, not a “mobile device”. I don’t particularly want a toy.
zbuzz, my big issue with your arguments is that you’re not offering your own perspective. As in, “No, you’re wrong, but here’s what’s really going on.”
As for my individual points, they are hardly opinions I hold all by my lonesome, as other commenters in this very thread demonstrate. As the articles I linked to demonstrate.
There is a big difference between not innovating and going out of business. Sears was at the top of its game in the 1970s. By the early 80s, the bloom was off the rose. By the early 90s, it was inarguable that the company had gone downhill and was still headed in that direction. But it has hung on for decades without doing anything particularly special in a declining segment of the economy.
With $1 billion in cash, Apple could outright suck for the next 20-30 years and still be a going concern. Of course, that’s not going to happen. It’s going to continue to build pretty good phones, tablets, and computers. My hope is that it does wow us again, and I doubt that it won’t to some degree or another. But right now, in terms of innovation, the company doesn’t seem to be in an especially good groove.
My own perspective on what? Apple or your posts? My perspective on your posts is that you have very poorly thought out your argument and I have addressed that explicitly. If you are asking what is my perspective on Apple, my answer is that that is immaterial. Just because you say “Apple is failing” does not mean that I must argue “Apple is not failing.” My only argument here is that you are bad at making your case, not anything about Apple necessarily.
This is an example of how I think your argument, in fact your entire way of arguing, is poor. I have already shown you what poor examples your links are, how they do not say what you think they say (by your own admitting even), and how they are written by someone who has close ties to Apple’s competition, and how you used one to cherry pick data and place it out of context. Yet, you STILL appeal to those articles as clean examples that back you up. Why do you do this? At the very least, before you once again bring them up, you have to explain why you think those articles are valid in light of my showing you how they are not. Here’s a thing- there are plenty of well-reasoned articles out there about how Apple is failing behind. That’s a big topic. But just because you can find one doesn’t mean it validates your argument. You used Apple’s lack of a modular keyboard as a specific example. Find one that makes that same claim and that offers reasonable, unbiased evidence for it and link it here.
I don’t care if your opinions aren’t held by your lonesome. I don’t care what percentage of the posters in this thread think Apple is or isn’t innovating. It doesn’t have to be about Apple, but Apple is a subject I am familiar with, so these are the threads we see each other in. It has nothing to do with Apple’s innovation or lack thereof. It has to do with HOW you make your case. If I’ve gotten off message on that front from time to time, that’s on me.
Mmkay, dude, I give up. Feel free to not comment on my posts in the future. I think you and I have different perspectives on how discussions on the SDMB are supposed to work. IMO, you are treating this as a court of law in which you are the DA or something. I am looking for insight on the topic and learning what the other posters think about them.
I’m sorry you feel you should bow out. It’s not my intention to make this a battle between us.
Indeed. Microsoft did this during the Ballmer years. I mean there was no fear that it was going to go bye-bye, but they did stop doing anything interesting for a number of years until Nadella came along.
Yes. I know several people who have done so.
Well, no. The iPad doesn’t run OS X
Depends. What are your computing needs.
It’s true that there’s no Apple tablet that runs OS X. And there never will be. This is Apple’s vision of the future. Clearly it doesn’t fit what you want from a computer. It doesn’t fit what I want from a computer, either, but for different reasons.
OS X is an OS designed to be used with a mouse/trackpad driven pointer and keyboard. Making a device that runs OS X that doesn’t ship with a mouse and keyboard isn’t part of Apple’s plan.
I believe what you’re overlooking here is that the Surface keyboard is not as good a keyboard as the one built into a Macbook. It’s not bad. In fact, it’s pretty impressive for what it is. But it’s not something that I’d be happy typing on for hours at a time, which is what I want to be able to do with a laptop with a built-in keyboard.
If there’s anything that Apple is unquestionably good at, it’s state of the art industrial design. Sorry, I just think you’re wrong here. It’s way harder to mill a laptop out of a single piece of aluminum than it is to make separate parts that fit together. Apple does this because it makes the laptops stronger (which really means lighter for the same strength). Suggesting that it actually does the opposite is completely incorrect.
Look, I get that it sucks when you spill something on your laptop. But that doesn’t mean that it’s the only consideration. Making every laptop slightly crappier to make it easier or simpler to repair when something goes wrong is a tradeoff, and it’s one Apple has chosen not to make.
I would basically like a Surface Pro that is a bit bigger that runs OS X.
That’s cool, just make it have a touch screen and make the keyboard/trackpad detachable.
You know what’s even better than the MacBook keyboard? The $50 USB keyboard that I bought to use when the keys went out. And I am still using it now for longer typing jobs, as it is just easier to type on. I think Apple could figure it out.
I agree, but I think there have been some missteps in recent years, and other companies have caught up. E.g., the iPhone design was a leader for years. Now you can get phones that come free with a plan that don’t look any worse.
I agree that there are tradeoffs, but I think that strength and weight would remain fine, at least with the non-Air laptops. But what would make Air even more Air-y would be a totally detachable keyboard.
As I said above, some keys have gotten less sensitive over time simply from 3.5 years of use. It’s a pain to send the whole machine out to fix that. At least have a quick turnaround time at the Apple store for that!
But I also don’t agree with your implication that the MacBook is now somehow a perfected design. I think the Surface is a better design. But YMMV and all that. 