Heck, I had this opinion back in 2008 or so.
The problem is that it's a thought terminating cliche. Once you've assigned apple customers into the rich/dumb/cultist category you become blind to the actual reasons why Apple is successful.
My own take, after using Apple stuff for 15 years now, is it's the attention to detail. It still shocks me that macOS has better support for using EMacs style text shortcuts (^A, ^E, ^K, etc) in basically any applications text field than Linux does.
ctrl+left or right arrow
> delete backwards word
ctrl+backspace
Works globally in windows.
There is such a thing as a satisfying explanation. Personally, I like Apple's hardware in general. The 2005 Mac Pros in particular are beautiful machines, possibly the nicest-looking desktop computers I've seen, inside and outside. I would still not pay what Apple asks for, when for the same money I could buy a more powerful non-Apple computer. That leads me to conclude that the people who buy Apple products have more money than me and care more about aesthetics and less about performance than me.
This is a huge part of what gives them their battery life - it’s not the OS, it’s not the node, it’s not the accelerators, it’s that they pull 1/3 the power running a browser/electron app or a word processor as x86 does.
https://i.imgur.com/Kcwo1OM.png
https://i.imgur.com/IP6vBqk.png
https://i.imgur.com/1pTFnRj.jpeg
Again, you’ve volunteered to self-identify as someone who is doing precisely what GP said: you’ve made your little box and you’ve put people into it and you’ve closed your mind to any alternative possibilities.
Yeah, it's great in terms of ops/J. It absolutely is, and if I was in the market for a laptop, I could see myself seriously considering a modern Apple laptop. But, I only use desktops, so I don't care about ops/J, I just care about ops/s. Apple desktop computers are and have always been atrocious in terms of ops/s/$.
So tell me, exactly what alternative possibility am I missing? I'm not even saying it's wrong to care about things that I don't care about, I'm just saying that the people who care about those things... care about those things? Honestly, I don't know what you're complaining about.
(Apple TV is another one... the apple tv is an A15 and is probably unironically the fastest single-thread performance I own right now. For $129 for the ethernet model. Remember, the A15 (the little brother to M2) has been in the iphone SE 3rd gen for several years now too, and Android is basically just catching up to that.)
I have a 9900K+3090 system for gaming, I have epyc and supermicro 2011-3 systems and tinyminimicro pcs for homelab. Apple doesn't add value in that area. Horses for courses. And actually that stuff complements the laptop really well for self-hosting!
But phones and laptops? Yeah, Apple hardware is literally objectively better than the competition. Strix Halo is going to be the first real challenger to a loaded-out macbook and it literally won't even launch until next year. I'm definitely keeping an eye on it etc, I'd love a little mini-PC with a strix halo, but right now apple is running at least 3 years ahead of the x86 laptop/Android phone market.
And honestly the problem even as I'm writing this - is x86 is "fine, except for laptops where you care about battery life... unless you want to do LLMs in which case Apple is still the only game in town... and if you buy AMD the HDMI 2.1 also won't work, and the real Mx-Max performance competitor on x86 should be launching next year, 4 full years after the M-family hit macbooks... and the driver situation is shit on Linux, except for Framework, which has terrible battery life instead". Not exactly great, is it?
Make an x86 laptop that isn't a pile of compromises and defects and I'll consider it. But right now it feels much more like the x86 people are the ones blindly pushing for consideration of their sacred cow far above the actual merits of the product. I'm not going to give x86 a handicap as a product on something that I'm going to use every day for the next 5 years. I want a nice laptop.
Objectively? I don't know about that. I think phone hardware is all basically the same. I'm sure there are minute differences that one of us cares about and the other doesn't, but I'd say it averages out to it all being "fine".
In terms of software... Doesn't iOS still not let you install apps except through the app store, and doesn't let apps do JIT? And don't I need OSX if I want to develop for iOS? I don't know, that seems to me like an objective disadvantage of the platform, as a user. It means I can't use my hardware however I please, at least not without some major inconvenience.
>unless you want to do LLMs in which case Apple is still the only game in town
Nah, it depends. 3090s are going for cheap nowadays, and 24 GB is enough to run some hefty models at acceptable performance, and you get a nice gaming card on top. It's not UMA, but hey, it also costs eight times less than a decked out Mac Pro. It's a shame Nvidia doesn't seem interested in bringing large VRAM sizes to the consumer or at least prosumer segment.
Also no, 24gb isn’t enough to run the good models right now. Ideally you need 40GB-ish.
Presumably this is because decoding x86 is quite difficult and x86 chips lean really heavily on SMT to keep the cores filled as a result. I’m excited to see how Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake end up working out and if efficiency is improved, but right now it’s not good, some would say objectively bad (60w peak for a literal single thread on AMD, 50w+ on intel, for scores that are +/- 5% from apple and Qualcomm).
If you feel like this is brought up a lot: consider that efficiency under light mixed workloads is pretty much the primary consideration for a large number of laptop buyers. I have a 9900k and epyc systems if I want something beyond what a laptop will deliver (and M1 Max isn’t exactly a lightweight to begin with) so this complements each other quite well.
It's also very helpful to have proper first-party driver support. Linux is a mess and not getting better. HDMI 2.1 still isn't upstreamed even 4 years after AMD started trying, for example. Windows is (ineptly) doing an ARM-to-Windows switchover and (ineptly) doing a big "AI PC" push too, in ways that are much more adversarial than apple. Hard to enunciate the difference, but it's really the same classic "you're the product, not the customer" whereas with apple that's never really in question. I do really enjoy never having to fight bluetooth drivers and whatnot. Linux is great for server PCs etc, but "year of linux on the desktop" is a meme for a reason... and "year of linux on the laptop" is even farther away.
Sounds to me like you haven't even tried using the recent laptops. My 5800u Lenovo Thinkbook is one of the best laptops I've ever owned (better than my 2018 Macbook Pro) and I've yet to be in a situation where HDMI 2.0 needs an upgrade to HDMI 2.1. I'll let you know if anyone at the office brings it up.
It's fine if you want to settle on a more expensive solution, but I concur with the parent. You are overpaying for performance with every single product in Apple's lineup, laptop or desktop. The majority of users will get equivalent or better performance on a cheaper Windows machine. This was even true back at the M1's launch, when Ryzen 7 4800us could be had at half the price of a base-model M1 Air.
So when you finally do want to upgrade, there will be a nice new shiny version of the same macbook air ready for you to buy.
I fail to see how this applies to the mouse where you can't use it while charging, let alone the whole Vision Pro thing.
As a user of Apple devices I agree with the first part (unfortunately - their RAM and NVMes are much more expensive than anybody elses) but not with the second. I live in Europe where every second person I meet has an Apple device, so it's hard to perceive it as a status symbol.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t think that this was an actual position that people honestly believed beyond 18 year old edgelords.
These gains are also available elsewhere. You are not superior, nor do you have access to superior things or ways of working, just because you buy Apple.
That is the success of the Apple marketing team making you think that way.
This is obviously a subjective debate now, its all personal opinion. I would love to have that debate calmly and intelligently, but I feel here is not the place. Maybe we will meet in another place and time and be able to figure out what the other likes and prefers in their OS choice :)
Don't you think you're generalizing from a set of cherry-picked examples? How would you even approach trying to demonstrate this?
Thanks for teaching me something today :)
They didn't say they were or did. They said that they personally get value out of that product ecosystem.
Me choosing a product because I find value in it doesn't mean that I am calling you inferior for not buying that product. It's not a zero-sum game. You're allowed to be happy with the value you find in the products you choose as well!
No they didnt, they said 'quality and productivity gains I get from their product ecosystem'. Inferring they dont get those gains from other platforms
If it bothers you that I (Some random person on the internet) prefers Apple over whatever you prefer or did not illustrate every possible alternative in my comment…well you should probably explore concern that with your therapist of choice at your next appointment.
Then apologies for misunderstanding your statement.
> If it bothers you that I....blah blah blah
Your preferences dont bother me in the slightest. It only bothers me when people claim that there are certain objective advantages in one platform over another, which you have clarified you did not do.
However you seem very quick to jump to personal statements, and suggesting therapy. Maybe you should stick to the content of the discussion and not insult people in future? You will find you get on much better on the internet that way.
Happy to do that, and suggest the same for you. You don’t need to go to such great lengths to parse out meaning where it doesn’t exist.
I wouldnt need to if people in forums were more willing to just immediately clarify what they mean in a response instead of jumping to attack the people who are questioning them.
In normal conversation, it’s generally not necessary to acknowledge all the ice creams you like and don’t like just because you mentioned how much you love chocolate. I think it would probably be a pretty normal response that if someone demanded that you do that, that you would be irritated at the absurdity of the demand and respond accordingly.
But hey, if I misread that you were being intentionally obtuse, I’m sorry.
If it bothers you that I (Some random person on the internet) prefers Apple over whatever you prefer or did not illustrate every possible alternative in my comment…well you should probably explore concern that with your therapist of choice at your next appointment.
They didn't say anything about personally being superior to other people.
It doesnt need other people chiming in trying to clarify what someone else was trying to say.
Just because that other store exists and sells a similar product doesn’t mean I have to shop there, even if other people prefer that store.
If you agree that the gains you get are also available elsewhere to people who prefer other platforms, then I objectively apologise and retract my statement.
To extend their grocery store analogy, the layout is a gain to them. You may not care, but it is tangible to some.
Your comment reads like you’re saying “all platforms must be considered equal or you find offence” but you’re ignoring subjective needs and opinions.
Someone else’s choices and priorities are not a reflection on you as a person or your choices.
What if they care about AppleScript? Nothing else has that. Or if they care about running Logic because there’s some unique plugin there?
All platforms can do everything. They are all just computers, you just have to learn how to do it.
Everything else here is subjective, which I think we agree on.
> but you’re ignoring subjective needs and opinions.
No I'm not quite the opposite. All platforms are equal if you put the time and efffort into finding the ways to do things you want to. After that, the preference on which you would like to use is subjective.
To clarify definition, needs are not subjective but opinions are.
And the idea that “all platforms meet your needs if you put in enough effort and time ” is flawed because that time and effort is part of the needs.
Again, to take their grocery store analogy: the layout doesn’t change the capability of the store. But it does provide them with the ability to get things done sooner, faster and with less cognitive load.
User experience matters more than I think you acknowledge.
People can and do change all the time. Humans instinctively stick with what they know, but in reality most people could be more efficient by learning things outside of their comfort zone. The few people that do this are rewrded greatly by having multiple strings to their bow, and being adaptive to many environments.
Those that stick with they know are super efficient in their own environment, but take them out of that and they invariably complain that they could be better if they had the tools they know.
User experience matters and it’s not just about adapting.
But we can agree to disagree, thats fine. Thankyou for the respect :)
Then I am curious, in your orignal statemnt you said you get gains from using their ecosystem. Gains over what exactly?
Could I do all these things with other manufacturers…probably. However, all these things I can do with Apple by just logging in to my devices with an Apple ID. I don’t know of any other solution or combination of hardware/software that provides that level of out of the box ecosystem just off a single login.
From what I know everyone and their dog on social media uses an iPhone Pro. Given the high usage and addiction of social media, the iPhone that shows 3 cameras on the back is still the gold standard of status. People thought (including me) that raising the price of the flagship to 1000$+ might affect sales but it didn’t. As long as Apple maintains its luxury, people will buy it no matter what you say about them. The problem is that unlike LVMH where margins are insane, Apple is still a tech company thriving on innovation. So unlike other luxury brands, Apple stock may not do as well as others.
But if you think the cult is buying something else now, just open Instagram and count how many people have selfies with a pixel and thousands of followers (who are the part of cult). You’ll have a tough time spotting one.