Given the audience, and the accepted notion that Apple, as a business, wants people to buy their hardware, isn't Schiller's comment meant as something of a joke?<p>This is what's wrong with the Internet! The reaction reminds me of Madeleine Albright's comment about there being "a special place in Hell for women who don't support other women," a comment she made at a Hillary Clinton function. Apparently, Ms. Albright has been making this comment at the end of speeches for years. Do you know why? Because in the context it's funny. It's funny because it's exaggerated, quasi-ridiculous thing to say. But, the last time she said it, at the Clinton rally, people in the Twitterverse -- or whatever we're calling it -- took offense and went crazy.<p>I'm sorry, but both Albright's comment and Schiller's comment are benign jokes. The Internet manufactures outrage.
I own a 5-year-old MacBook Air 11, which has run only Linux since day 1 (and it does an admirable job at it, unlike other Macs, but that's not relevant here).<p>So for all practical purposes this is a PC with an Apple logo. It it is really snappy, silent, and battery lasts approximately 5 hours. There's nothing sad about it.<p>Sad is having to trash fine hardware because its manufacturer won't release updates. Sad is having new versions of OSes running slower and slower. Sad is planned obsolescence.
What the hell? This story has made the front page of HN three times now. Even if it were a "real", important story, hasn't it been thoroughly covered?
We have a perfectly good iPhone 3G (not even 3GS, just plain old 3G) which I think I bought in 2009. But it can't access the App Store anymore. Like, it literally won't show the page correctly if you try loading it up. The CSS is all broken, and none of the buttons or links actually work (presumably the JavaScript is broken too).<p>So probably around 2012 I bought an iPhone 4 (not even an iPhone 4S, just plain old 4). And even though the App Store still works on that, it was dropped by iOS 8, so we can't even get most of the useful new apps that come out, because most (if not all) of them require iOS 8 or higher.<p>This is Apple's attitude towards anyone who isn't spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on their products every 2 or 3 years: you're sad and pathetic, and screw you.<p>Back when Steve was in charge, they had top notch hardware and it lasted forever. Anyone who still has an original iPod knows those things still work amazingly well, they were built to last. But now Apple's software and hardware is going downhill quickly, so the high price tag is no longer justifiable. They've gone the way of Thinkpads after Lenovo took them over.<p>I felt like a fool in 2012 or 2013, when I suggested to my employer that instead of buying me a MacBook Pro work computer, he buy a Mac Pro, because it would be around longer, and all we'd need to do was swap out the internals to upgrade it, which would be much cheaper than buying a whole new MacBook Pro. Literally like less than a year later, Apple came out with a brand new type of Mac Pro, completely ditching the kind they had what seemed like forever until then, and it's all incompatible internals now.<p>Honestly I'm tired of Apple's crap and I'm abandoning ship. I'll still use this stupid MBP that I bought for myself a few years ago, but when it inevitably dies in a few years and can't be fixed, I'll probably look into older IBM Thinkpads and switch to Linux full time.
Currently all of my PCs, laptop and DSLR are over 5 years old and running strong. I am still using my HTC evo 4g I got 5 years ago...I replaced the battery once but that is all.<p>It is a shame we live in this world where things are thrown out every couple years...cars become "too expensive to fix" after a couple years (or totalled by insurance companies due to minor accidents).<p>I wish there was an easy solution...but I don't see anything changing when the major corporations encourage this type of planned expiration date.
What is amusing is that Apple build such good quality Macbooks now, people are keeping them for 5 years. My 2 and half year old MBP handles any dev task I throw at it fine, can't imagine replacing it for a couple more years at least. I also know a lot of gamers, they are happy playing at 1080p with 2500 or 3500 series CPU's as they are mostly playing CS:GO or Dota 2.
I have Macbook Pro Mid 2009 (with RAM and SSD upgrades) and it still works fine. They should be proud that they make laptops that last longer than na few years! But I well understand why they would prefer to have people trashing them after 3 years.<p>I do consider buying a new... but only once matte display becomes an option. (I prefer a slower laptop to a glossy, distracting mirror.)
Yes, Phil's comment about 5-year old PCs still in use might seem to be out touch for a lot of people especially the ones who aren't Apple products' demographics. But consider these points:<p>1) Moore's Law was still in effect in the past five years. iOS devices hardware have been taking full advantage of that. So for roughly the same price range, you will get a 12x more performant hardware [1] for the same price, probably more energy efficient device too. Ain't it better if you can afford?<p>2) Apple started to emphasize their environmental friendliness (including energy efficiency) in manufacturing process and product raw materials and has been advancing their game each year[2]. So a once more toxic product made 5 years ago might be manufactured less so. In the process of replacing this 5-year old product, it is actually moving us forward to a more environmental friendly life style. Similarly, like the light bulb evolution: incandescent -> CFL -> LED etc.<p>There are probably other connotations behind that comment when Phil said it. Since 2/3 of the revenues were from selling iOS devices[3], Apple is still a hardware company like it or not. If they can sell you a piece of faster, more energy efficient and environment friendlier hardware than the one from yesteryear and in the mean time making a huge profit from that, wouldn't it be merrier for both them and the consumer?<p>[1] <a href="https://browser.primatelabs.com/ios-benchmarks" rel="nofollow">https://browser.primatelabs.com/ios-benchmarks</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.apple.com/environment/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/environment/</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q1-2016-financial-results-how-many-iphones-ipads-watch-macs-sold-revenue-results-3581769/" rel="nofollow">http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q1-2016-financial...</a>
I think everything but the HDDs and the PSU in the desktop i am typing this on is approaching a decade of service (PSU because the fan burned out, but then it was in turn salvaged from an older build).
I have an almost 9 year old MacBook Pro from before the unibody redesign. It runs El Capitan fine. I lend it to friends and family during a crisis. Apple computers last far longer than 5 years.
Someone said something that I disagree with! The horror! The outrage! It should be illegal!<p>That's one of the biggest problems with society today. People need to learn to grow up.
Devil's advocate here... and I'm adding the caveat that I still use my iPad 1 daily (with the grandfathered, unlimited data plan).<p>A lot of this is about generating revenues. At the end of the day, Apple is a public corporation. It's not a charity. Apple's primary reason for existence is to generate shareholder value. It's hard for a device company to do that if they aren't... you know... selling devices.<p>Apple doesn't believe everyone should buy a new Apple product every 5 years. Sure, they'd love it, but that's not the market they're targeting. Apple has branded itself as a luxury technology brand. Would someone make this same argument about Lexus or Rolex or Coach?<p>If you can't afford that shiny new Macbook, there are plenty of alternate options. No one is forcing people to buy Apple products.<p>Beyond pricing, older technology can limit software innovation. What if every App developer out there -- including the folks at apple developing the latest versions of iOS -- still had to support my "ancient" iPad 1?<p>Legacy support would put a lot of young companies out of business. As a developer, one of things that costs me the most time is cross-device support. It's a huge drain on resources, and not every company can afford it.