I've used Apple computers my entire life. why I'm never buying one again

Earlier discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18562478

Is HN ever going to stop falling for this type of headline? There's absolutely no new information in this article at all; it's just a summary of the basic history and recent news about Apple, with a couple personal sentences from the author thrown in. This is classic clickbait.

It is telling that the author of this article has not yet given up his MacBook. My own move from Macbook to Dell/Linux took years, and I still find myself saying "this would be easier on a Mac." The user experience is really the best their is. Good luck with the switch... your values will be tested.

Non AMP link https://www.businessinsider.com/why-im-never-buying-an-apple...

In late 2013, I decided I really wanted a new computer. And after looking at my bank account, I decided that a good way to treat myself without going totally overboard financially would be be the 2012 Mac Mini with the quad-core i7. I liked the machine very much, I eventually upgraded the RAM, but by late 2016, I was no longer happy with the machine's performance.

At that point, I took a look at Apple's lineup and found their machines underpowered, overpriced (at least compared to my budget), and some part of me no longer liked OS X as much as I had initially.

I waited for Ryzen to become available and for the first time in more than a decade, I built my own PC and am now back to using GNU/Linux. About 20 months later, I am very happy with my decision. But I might very well have chosen another Apple machine if they had one with reasonably current hardware, at a reasonable price, which I could have upgraded later on. It is sad, because they sure know how to build a sweet computer.

Note: AFAIK, Apple computers are significantly more expensive in Europe, so the price-performance ratio might be more favorable in the US.

I've never understood why people insist on writing articles detailing, "Why I'm switching away from X." If you don't like it then don't use it. There's no need to make a big deal out of it.

Mid-2000's Apple catapulted us into the current era. OS X, iPod, the iTunes store, Macbook Pro (and Mac Pro to a lesser extent), and the iPhone, weren't just new products or good products, they were best in class. No, they created an entirely new class. They were the object of desire for anyone with eyes in their head to see how good they were. They did almost everything right, all the time, with relentlessly successful execution of features that actually made your life better in the ways that mattered. It's easy to forget how crummy and restrictive phones were in 2005. The business wins Apple pulled off against the recalcitrant music and telephone industry players.

But the fire of their innovation has slowly burned out, and with it, their vision. Like a star entering supernova, they have to try and burn progressively heavier elements to maintain the reaction. Apple doesn't profit from making desirable products any more, they have switched to exploitation. When's the last time you felt excited about an Apple product? For me it was the first retina MBP, which I ultimately didn't buy because I was waiting for a CPU upgrade... and waiting... and waiting...

I started to contemplate this too. I love Apple products and I use a 13" 2017 tbMBP at work and a 15" 2017 tbMBP at home. I, of course, have an iPhone. I have my complaints like everyone else about these products and the decisions made for software and hardware but I recently had my first moment of doubt when Apple removed Freedom from the App Store [1]. It bothered me greatly that I wasn't free to install software that I wanted to on my iPhone that I purchased unlocked and paid quite a great deal of money for. Of course, this is exactly the sort of argument that Richard Stallman makes and has been making for years. Of course, he is more extreme than me but I now understand his point well.

It was the first time that I decided to look at Ubuntu again but I just can't go back to this. I like to use my Mac for more than programming and the Mac just excels at everything else. The iPhone is so much better of an experience to me compared to an Android device as well.

However, despite all of the complaints and issues, there really isn't a computer that does everything as well as the Mac can. If all I did with my computer was programming, it wouldn't be a big deal to go Linux but then of course my iPhone wouldn't have as nice as an experience so I'd likely have to go Android too.

Unfortunately, in this new age of monopolies, I doubt I'll see a new provider arise to challenge Apple, Microsoft, or Google with either a new operating system, hardware, and software. We have to chose the system that will work the best for us individually including the possible flaws that will come with the system.

I personally think the macOS will become more and more closed as time goes and it will resemble iOS further and further. I wonder what that will mean for developers and programmers who do more than use Xcode for our own development and need a nice full featured shell...

[1] https://freedom.to/blog/freedom-has-been-temporarily-removed...

Understandable - but I think his criticism of the T2 is totally wrong we need secure computing devices, especially with biometric identification. There are banking Apps using Touch ID or Face ID.

I've just gone through this experience and switched to PC after 12 years with Apple. My MacBook Pro (mid-2012 model) kept failing literally every 2 months, Apple replaced the failed SATA flex cable six times before I finally gave up on it as a lemon & bought a PC.

For anyone else switching, do your research carefully. There are still things Apple does right. I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga, and here's some of the problems I'm having:

* The Dolby Vision HDR screen isn't actually HDR capable (though it is bright & wide-gamut).

* The HDR display has a really bad red-tint (roughly +10% red shift). I'll need to buy a colorimeter to calibrate it correctly. It clearly wasn't individually calibrated at the factory like my Dell monitor was.

* The built-in speakers are really terrible & thin sounding.

* There is a nasty audio click at the start & end of audio playback (eg a sentence played back in Duolingo). That's probably a Realtek audio driver problem rather than Lenovo's fault. Most people won't notice, but if you work with audio & use headphones it will drive you nuts. It works perfectly with my Focusrite 2i2 audio interface & ASIO drivers, though.

* It doesn't have media playback keys, which I used all the time with Spotify while working. Even my Logitech bluetooth keyboard has them, but this laptop doesn't. (Looks like the Surface Book 2 doesn't have media keys either.)

* I can't figure out how to disable two-finger click (different from two-finger tap). It seems a registry hack is required to do this, but none of the registry hacks I've tried so far work on this model.

* The usual Windows gripes. While I could uninstall Candy Crush & Fitbit Coach on the Windows 10 VM I had on my Mac, every time I try to uninstall them on my Lenovo X1 Yoga, it reinstalls them again on reboot.

There are things I like about the Lenovo, so I'll make it work. I love that I can replace/upgrade the SSD myself, that it has a touchscreen & pen, the keyboard & trackpad are better than Apple's latest butterfly keyboards. And it hasn't broken down yet! But it seems that PC makers & Microsoft still aren't painting both sides of the fence yet. If the MacBook Pros had decent keyboards & replaceable SSD / HDDs, and I could somehow trust Apple's build quality again, I'd switch straight back to Apple.

If the author loved Macs for being upgradable he was in the wrong platform.

The original Mac Pro née Power Mac, with its handle to open the case was the exception, not the rule.

The original Mac was as closed a box as you could get. RAM upgradability was a feature sneaked in

Great, someone is changing their personal computing choices.

But, why should I care? I bought a nice new pair of shoes, toe shoes in fact, should I post an article to HN about never wearing Nikes again?

Can you not link the AMP page? Thanks google.