Also, the headline is jumping to conclusions, this is what the poster wrote:
" It is unclear what the source is, but most people are suspecting the deprecated audio driver on Windows."
I'm betting the amp is integrated into a multi function chip or codec where it was selected because of integrated features rather then matched to the required speaker power.
I've been using Macs since the mid 80s, and I'm trying to think of some, but am drawing a blank.
The only possibilities I can think of are the two processor switches (680x0 -> PPC followed by PPC -> Intel) or maybe the first release of OSX (but that's not necesarily hardware related).
I don't remember a release with so many weird issues, that honestly should've been picked up pretty early during the design and acceptance phases.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5e7whh/update_bootca...
and have since also updated their drivers
> https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5e7whh/update_bootca...
At one point, the iBook G3 had a 73% failure rate...
I got hit by the 2011 MBP issue a year or so in. I had to buy a new laptop because Apple didn't issue the repair order until well after my AppleCare expired and I wasn't going to pay $500+ for the repair not knowing whether Apple would eventually pick up the tab.
And what's worse it just hints a deeper issues, the 6/6plus bendgate and the more recent display gate were kinda meh, now this line which not only had some questionable design choices but also has multiple hardware issues.
Things just seem to be broken.
Apple customer support refused to live up to the text of their manual, even when I read directly from it and requested that they repair the faulty GPU because I had remained within the terms of the manual.
They lost my business.
2016 was a bad year. New iPhone has been the worst selling one in relative numbers since the iPhone. New MacBooks has several issues and controversial choices, while not bringing anything substantial to the table. New Watch changes are so small, nobody noticed an update.
People are disappointed.
Mine died right (weeks) after my AppleCare ended.
Because a local authorized Apple dealer would fix it without an appointment (vs the local Apple Store), I took mine there.
I did upgrades too, but I always keep my original RAM and HD in case I get a nitpicky tech. I stuffed those in there (with a fresh OS install) when I sent it for repair and had no issue.
A friend of mine who has two of the same models but were not bricked yet - he had mixed experience at the Apple store. For his first one which was glitching badly, the Genius gave him a hard time because it was not glitching at the store (in spite of the repair order not indicating that the issue needed reproducing). They ended up fixing it, but not without causing stress to my friend.
My friend then repaired the second one right before the repair order was ending but did not get a hard time from the Apple Store for that one.
Because I had to choose between spending $500 on replacing a board (I already had replaced mine once under AppleCare - they basically just put a new version of the defective board in, and it started glitching in less than 3 mos) or spending a little more on a new laptop, I opted for the latter. And at that point, I was officially on the path off of OSX.
I would have stuck around if Apple issued the repair order sooner (i.e., before my MBP bricked). Apple historically has had a great reputation for making people whole again. Given how much I spent on my 2011 MBP, I expected better, sooner.
And the speakers were probably chosen for form factor.
Absolutely refused to fix it, wanted $1500 to replace the logic board and the liquid cooling system. I've refused to buy Apple ever since.
There was a gap of several months where 2011 MBP owners' AppleCare had expired before the Repair Order was issued - and people like me whose machines had failed were faced with a hard choice - pay >$500 for a fix or buy a new laptop.
Prior to the repair order, the logic board replacements had the same GPU defect. I had my logic board replaced once already under AppleCare, and it got GPU glitches within 3 months of the repair. There was no point in replacing it again and again only to get the same problem over again.
The GPU problem is genuinely fixed with the post-Repair Order boards though.
I imagine the situation was even worse for people who did not buy AppleCare.
i fear they are going into a mid-late 1990s period of stagnation and product confusion, but this time there's no steve jobs.
The first item on the list contains this gem:
> Anyhow, Apple put a 32-bit CPU on a 16-bit bus and created a monstrosity that worked okay as long as you didn’t use the modem or a network connection.
And the PowerBook 5300 was on the honorable mentions list. I remember that machine: it was notorious for the batteries catching on fire. And I've got personal experience with one of the machines on the honorable mention list, the Performa 630: the IDE hard drive was the bane of my existence back then, and the use of the execrable 68LC040 meant I was locked out of using certain software.
Oh, and here's another, much longer, list, from the same website: http://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-macs/
Early adopter is a misnomer, because these are not prototypes nor dev boxes. This are released to the public computers that should be in working order.
I'm not big on new hardware, so I don't follow releases like this too closely. However, this seems to be one of the worst consumer hardware releases in recent history.
The sound always seemed to be louder and more distorted in Linux than in OS X, but I have never tested the level with a microphone.
It's all relatively minor in isolation; voicemail consistently fails to load messages multiple times before it succeeds, voicemail occasionally crashes, apps get stuck halfway down the screen after I swipe to check the notification screen, texts and iMessages sometimes show up hours or days late, notifications appear on the lock screen but are missing when I unlock the phone, the weather app sometimes displays a blank temperature, web sites have broken behavior with auto-playing, the state of the device when using volume controls changes unpredictably, and so on.
Most of these are undoubtedly caused by my service provider, or a 3rd party app, or me fat-thumbing an interface, or my complete misperception of a UI paradigm, or are otherwise not Apple's fault. But that's entirely besides the point, because we're talking about my emotional reaction, not reality, and we're talking about something Apple used to bend over backwards to control.
If the common narrative about Apple's modern successes being rooted in design sensibilities is correct, I don't see them being able to sustain leadership in the areas where they've been leading. The good news for Apple is that there still aren't better alternatives for customers who are heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. The bad news is that there eventually will be, and also that there is material economic harm in keeping customers but losing their enthusiasm.
Also the audio jack on the bottom: can no longer use headphones and prop the phone up on a desk when using FaceTime (which is surely a common use-case)
1. What do you mean relative numbers?
2. Any stats to back this up, as I've seen conflicting data?
Regardless, of course it's not going to be a big seller. It's the 10th(?) generation of a device everybody already owns. It's also the third year running the design hasn't changed at all (presumably as they want to make a big splash on next years 10th anniversary).
As for the MacBook's, in my experience ordinary people don't really put all that much decision making into buying a computer. They want something that looks nice and almost any computer on the market has the power they need for Word, Facebook, and email. The touch bar is something all my non-tech friends think is really cool and makes them want a new MacBook.
The Watch update may not have amounted to much but you're completely ignoring watchOS 3 - that was huge. They managed to make a pretty crappy device really good with only a software update. Early adopters don't need to splash out another load of cash on a piece of hardware, they can get most of the benefit through a free software update.
While I agree there has been nothing mind blowing I also haven't seen anything mind blowing on an Android device or software update, a PC, or any wearable device. Also, I really struggle to find things that my iPhone/Mac don't do that I need them to do. What substantial new features did you seek from the new MacBook?
The annoying part is Apple silently ignores defects for a while till it becomes unpopular not to. But yeah, Apple has had design defects in several Laptop cycles. over heating issues, hinge breakage, the infamous swollen battery, retina coating issues, etc etc.
Still, they should have honored what they promised in their manual. The fact that I even had to break out the manual (via PDF) is an annoyance. The representative's failure to honor that language, even as they readily admitted that yes, that was an official Apple manual, and the manual says I should be covered...but we're not going to cover this repair because we're not going to cover this repair...that was where I lost patience. I left the store and vowed to never buy another Apple product.
Consider, for example, the original Power Mac G4 release. There were three levels available: 400MHz, 450MHz, and 500MHz. Turns out Apple had overreached with the 500MHz speed, so they had to roll it back to 350/400/450. Quite an embarrassment at a time when Apple was struggling to convince people that their PowerPC chips outperformed Intel and were therefore worth a bunch of extra money.
The new MacBook Pro is a pretty decent machine. It has some typical first-generation hardware problems, and the design certainly doesn't make everybody happy, but it's not bad. And Apple has released outright bad machines in the past.
I know there is a perfect misalignement of stars between Apple release plan and Intel roadmap. But that is still scary for the future of the Mac line. It looks like half-assed effort to give a last kick in the laptop area before slowing things down like with the Mac Pro.
2016 is really not living up to its expectations.
It's a slippery slope of optimization that only works when you control the OS (or drivers at least) and the hardware together, but one slip-up can be catastrophic.
If they just kept making the same stuff with minor hardware updates, you would hear much less criticism, if any at all.
As a proof, look at the complaints about their newest products, here or elsewhere. They all focus on the new features. Nobody is complaining that Apple is not trying to bring new stuff to the table. On the contrary, the problem is that they are trying hard to innovate on something that should stay in "maintenance mode."
It may be a cultural American thing, because I really don't understand why they are doing it. I think they are shooting themselves in the foot.
New iPhone 7 Data Suggests Sales Slower Than iPhone 6S - http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/10/03/iphone-7-s...
[edit] You have actually more data here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-ipho...
If you compare 2016 Q4 to 2015 Q4, iPhone sales are retracting. Same for 2016 Q3 against 2015 Q3. I don't get what the debate is. It's public data.
Apart from promoting the the App Store, has Apple done anything to promote or enhance it's cloud offerings? I don't recall hearing anything about iCloud in a very long time.
> voicemail consistently fails to load messages
AT&T? I've noticed this to be the case for AT&T users regardless of whether it's iOS or Android. Their visual voicemail is unreliable.
> or me fat-thumbing an interface
I routinely run into issues trying to use iOS on iPhone 5/SE test devices for work. The touch targets are so small I have cock my fingers at weird angles to be able to hit buttons. The App Store purchase buttons are some of the worst offenders. It's almost like Apple stopped testing their UI on small screens after the iPhone 6 came out.
Does this fix the other numerous and varied complaints about the Macbook Pro? Does it change the fact that they're not doing anything that's noteworthy in a positive way? Does it fix slumping iPhone sales?
Does it change the fact that more and more pro users are getting sick of the tyranny of Apple and moving away from them?
Nope.
I read stories on the Apple Support boards related to repairs on the 2011 MBPs and some people were getting laptops back from Apple with RAM upgrades missing, etc. And because of the Geek Squad horror stories (yes, I know Apple is not the Geek Squad - but better safe than sorry), I'd rather just give them a working HD with no data on it.
-- edit
Having said all of this, you can't swap out parts with the newer macs as easily since they're not as user-serviceable as the 2012 unibodies and earlier.
No worries here. I'm happy the landscape is getting more competitive.
Though, who actually cares about this and why?
Anyway, I recently switched to iOS for an experiment and my biggest gripe is: no back button. Instead of a conveniently placed button, I have to always reach up to the upper left corner of the app to go back.
My second biggest gripe is that links from Apple's shitty programs only want to open in Safari instead of my browser.
And third, I can't organize my icons the way I want to. Typical Apple: No choices. Their way or the highway. Fuck you power-users and people who know what they want.
1. Try finding a close-up of the keyboard of the function key model on the MacBook Pro website. It seems it is just not there or I'm failing to find it. Previously Apple used to have a design section where you could see the products from all angles.
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/
2. The online shop is just horrible. Even finding the store takes a while and the icons look like clip-art. Complete mess.
http://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all-accessories
3. This is how the Apple Pencil and the Mighty Mouse are supposed to be charged:
https://i.imgur.com/CvcaGze.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/P8M8pqO.jpg
The Mighty Mouse is also an ergonomic disaster.
4. The iPhone case with battery pack has an aweful design. Who would ever let this pass?
https://i.imgur.com/DyvTE3w.jpg
5. It also feels like the "Designed by Apple in California" book was published 20 years early. It's just like the new Star Wars movie, all those recent sequels of the n-th iteration and Marvel comic adaptations. Nobody innovates anymore and people just replicate what worked well before or only improve it incrementally.
I only meant in the strategic sense. If the future of personal computing is to be lightweight terminals and hardware requirements pushed into the cloud, Mac hardware and macOS might provide less growth opportunity than other business units. This is completely debatable, but is at least plausible.
> voicemail
Verizon for me.
> fat-thumbing an interface
I should also mention I have it set to the largest interface settings, and I'm a 32 year old with 20/20 vision.
The only thing that is different now is the piling on of negative social media commentary that adds no value. This is why we can't have nice things.
I don't know where you're getting this from. Between me and my family, I know of at least 6 tech companies that use tens of thousands of MBPs and most of the users there are professionals. The complaints we are seeing on reddit is not indicative of the number of laptops Apple is selling.
I wasn't trying to make a massive deal about it, for what it's worth. Every phone I've had for probably 8 years has had the jack on the top instead of the bottom where I'd want it. It's fine. I was just chiming in to say there are legitimate reasons why it's not necessarily obvious that there's a correct answer.
Technically, the 12" MacBook was worse than the MBP refresh in every way: Only one USB-C port, extremely underpowered, flimsy keyboard. Commenters everywhere ridiculed it, but it was obviously an "optional" product. So what, Apple often releases things that are too far ahead of the curve for most people. (Voice-controlled iPod shuffle, anyone?)
But by calling it the new MacBook Pro, they've pretty much guaranteed that none of its laptops will ever be thicker again, or come with "older" ports, or with a traditional keyboard. They've put upper limits on all its laptops now. It's not that I am disinterested in the 2016 release. I also can't imagine how the 2017-2019 releases could possibly appeal to me, unless they surprise us with a MacBook Pro SE.
This is not like the disappointing 2014 Mac mini, which Apple can fix overnight just by updating the parts. knocks on wood...
https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2012/12/10/how-to-fry-spea...
I don't want to compare a $300 browser-in-a-box with a $2000 laptop, but issues like this aren't unheard of.
You can swipe from the left corner of the screen to go back (do this with 3D touch and it switches to your previous app). You don't need to reach the top for the back button every time.
Apple's differential has always been the UX. If they lose that, they'll need to be the best in something else.
Worst off, Apple is likely to create a third iPhone model which is highest end, premium and meant to milk more cash. Apple still think all its fanboy can tolerate its strategy of high profit from RAM add ons. It is likely due to political thingy the next 4 years will make Apple hard sell to convince users that iCloud is safe.
TouchBar and Retina ID is making the MacBook Pro hardware more complex. But how long will finger print tech last before the next tech take over? They are making something that is not applicable for other Mac models such as iMac (so you build a TouchID panel on the side of the screen?), Mac Pro and Mac mini. I believe Apple is retiring Mac Pro and Mac mini next, but will need to keep iMac due to sale volume. Someone please tell me how feasible it is to implement Touch ID on external keyboard? This whole thing does not look like holistic design to me, something like how you need to turn back the Apple MagicMouse in order to charge.
Which top tier computer manufacturer other than Apple is selling 3 year old computer hardware? I hope Apple will never use the word 'magic' in their ads anymore. I hope Apple has the courage to adopt USB-C for its iPad and iPhone. I hope Google will lower Pixel by $200 dollars. I hope Google will develop its own Linux notebook for its own employees and then the rest of the world. I hope Microsoft will develop a version of Windows on top of Linux core and file systems. Or the Surface group just buy Canonical. I hope Facebook will have an App Store for us to run React Native app or something like WeChat mini app over the web.
The charging port on the back of the mouse is done to stop people from using it with it plugged in, which ruins the overall design, and since most people are lazy, they'll leave it plugged in all the time. Apple designs its products by thinking of an ideal use case first. Then they will try their hardest to make people use it in that ideal scenario.
I don't quite see the WTF here. I understand Apple's design decision and think it's actually quite clever, despite what it looks like at first glance.
I had an Android for awhile and the hardware back button made no sense to me. I thought most phones eventually moved to a software back button. I never really knew if I would be going back inside the app, to the last app I had open, to the home screen, or if I was at the end of the queue and it did nothing. Apple took much longer to add it, but I prefer the context their implementation has and gestures for it.
> And third, I can't organize my icons the way I want to.
I have no idea what you're talking about. This is what it sounds like you're talking about[1]. I don't think it was in the original iPhone (2007), but I see references dating back to Jan 2008.
[1] http://i0.wp.com/content.screencast.com/users/Fosteronomo/fo...
You can plug it into an iPad, but you really don't have to.
Currently I don't see anyone at Apple who's an innovator. They're all talented execution guys, but they're not inventors.
There's a difference between invention and refinement. Apple has been doing a lot of refinement, but very little invention. And increasingly even the refinement is kind of sketchy.
There were definitely missed opportunities.
Apple could have turned Apple TV into Alexa - which would not only have been very cool, but would also have given everyone a reason to buy Apple TV.
Apple could have owned the domestic IoT space and added a layer of security and reassurance that's missing from current products.
Apple could have taken podcasting and created the video and audio creator's market now owned by YouTube.
Don't like these? There were others.
Instead we got bigger, smaller, thinner, shinier... Plus a payment system which is kind of limping along, a failed car project, a not very attractive watch, and increasingly un-special hardware and software that's actively frustrating influential professional users.
Parallels doesn't run the Bootcamp drivers, but perhaps the drivers are similar.
Besides, you could always write software that damages your hardware. For example you could kill your hard disk or SSD quite easily with bad file using code (just recently Spotify had a bug that could kill an SSD in a short period of time by writing TB of data), and lots of other things besides.
The debate is that these public data don't tell much, if anything at all. Slower sales than 6S is not bad, since that had record sales anyway. Second, Xmas are not yet here. Third, there are also other news, like:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/28/apple-killing-it-i...
Or the news that the new MacBook Pro retina had the most orders than any MBP on its arrival.
"Probing memory-mapped PCI devices may have unpredictable results and may theoretically damage your system, so once again we discourage its use." 1
It's sort of like the software industry dynamic of having a QA department. In some places, you have QA and they catch the occasional bug. The engineers take that seriously, work hard to improve, and avoid having the same kind of bug again. But in other places with QA, QA is expected to catch the bugs, so engineers just throw stuff over the wall. In places without QA at all, most engineering groups learn to self-manage quality, because when they don't they feel the pain.
In effect, QA breaks the feedback loop between making a bug and organizational pain, meaning that the upstream organization loses its incentive to get and keep its shit together. This can happen in Hollywood, too, with "fix it in post"; people get sloppy.
So my concern is that yielding to the short-term economic imperative could lead to an undisciplined hardware organization. Then you get long-term economic harm because you waste a lot of resources (and worse, lengthen your cycle time) due to having to fix a bunch of stuff in software. And that lack of discipline eventually leads to quality issues that you can't fix in post, or don't fix in post because they're too busy chasing obvious bugs to catch the subtle ones.
You can see why I might think that forcing phone number to equal identify might be a bad idea.
I understand that I'm an unusual case, but I'm sure plenty of other people go through something similar this every couple years if and when they switch phone numbers or providers or move.
But in the bad old days before we could do that, engineers and companies learned lessons when they made something that precluded the hardware from ever reaching the market. Some organizations are still going to learn those lessons. Many won't. I'd expect the latter category to still have significant catastrophic failures. It's just that they'll come later and be part of an amorphous "normalization of deviance" culture, rather than a clear learnable lesson of "before we order 100k of these, make sure to X".
Question: how do people you haven't been in contact with manage to find you, if you change your number every 2 years?
The Android OS implements the software back button, not the apps...and it's always at the bottom of the screen where I can easily reach it. iOS does not implement any such back button - each app has to implement its own and the convention on iOS is to place that back button all the way in the upper left corner of the screen which is very inconvenient to reach for.
> I have no idea what you're talking about. (re: organizing icons)
So, let's imagine that you have 3 app icons on one of your home screens in iOS...
Can you put one of them in the lower right corner? Nope.
Can you put one of them all the way on the right side while the other 2 stay on the left? Nope.
Can you do anything to position them absolutely? No you cannot.
You must resort to jailbreaking or other hackery (like blank icons) to make this work.
People contact me via email. Apple's iMessage is the only chat client I've been able to use effectively, because they tie identity to email, not phone number.
That's fucking bullshit.
Here's what the person I responded to wrote:
> Seems like a reasonable and responsible solution to this issue. Perhaps the "Apple is imploding" comments were a bit premature.
Then I responded that nobody actually addressed those "Apple is imploding" comments....
What the fuck is your deal man? Can't stand anybody who doesn't love Apple like you do?
