• DJDarren@thelemmy.club
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      3 months ago

      Gaming aside (though that particular gap is beginning to close) I honestly can’t think of anything I’ve wanted to do with my various Macs over the years that I couldn’t because of macOS.

      The closest I can get to is running radio station playout software, but that was less something I needed to do, and more an itch I fancied scratching at that moment. Other than that, my Macs have always had a way to do exactly what I wanted with them.

    • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      Wasn’t that always the case? I mean compared to my IBM PC clone, mine did way more and cost way less. And it was upgradeable. And mine could play games.

  • 0^2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    Guess it’s as good a place as ever to remind everyone who uses Patreon that if you are subscribing through Patreon app on iOS that prices are going up in Sept by 50-60% and if you want to save money go through the actual website. This is Apple charging more not Patreon.

    Edit: Apple is forcing Patreon to abide by the 30% Apple store fee this going through Patreon App on iOS will increase costs for end users by at least 30%; easiest solution is subscribing through the website, still being able to access content through the iOS app.

    https://www.imore.com/apps/your-next-patreon-sub-might-cost-more-if-youre-paying-with-iphone

    This is a common trend actually, don’t subscribe to services through Apple iOS apps if you want to save money. And to a lesser extent Android.

    • tyler@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      Apple is not charging 60% more. That is patreon. How this drivel spreads is beyond me. Apple charges 30%. This has been pretty fucking consistent for a decade. Patreon is telling creators to raise their prices because they (patreon) aren’t going to take the loss, they’re going to force it on their userbase. Patreon could easily just eat the 30% or even 15%, but that would cost them profits so they don’t. And then they claim Apple is costing users a 60% price increase. Fucking ridiculous.

      • Prime@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 months ago

        You are mistaken there. 60% increase means that patreon gets just as much as they get now, because 60/160 is approx 30%.

        Also, just eating 30% margin is absolutely a problem and far from easy

        • tyler@programming.dev
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          3 months ago

          I’m not mistaken. Even Patreon doesn’t claim the apple change will cost 60%. https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/11111747095181-Creator-fees-overview

          And 60% of 160 is almost 40%, nice rounding down there to make your numbers sound better. And what the fuck does that have to do with anything anyways??? 30% of 100 is 30%. I’m saying that the creators shouldn’t have to do anything.

          Why does Patreon even have a fucking app!? There’s no need for it at all. This ridiculous rise of companies creating useless apps just so they can harvest your info in addition to the info they’re already harvesting from you just signing up.

  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 months ago

    Most of Apple’s history, actually.

    Macs have a reputation for being expensive because people compare the cheapest Mac to the cheapest PC, or to a custom-built PC. That’s reasonable if the cheapest PC meets your needs or if you’re into building your own PC, but if you compare a similarly-equipped name-brand PC, the numbers shift a LOT.

    From the G3-G5 era ('97-2006) through most of the Intel era (2006-2020), if you went to Dell or HP and configured a machine to match Apple’s specs as closely as possible, you’d find the Macs were almost never much more expensive, and often cheaper. I say this as someone who routinely did such comparisons as part of their job. There were some notable exceptions, like most of the Intel MacBook Air models (they ranged from “okay” to “so bad it feels like a personal insult”), but that was never the rule. Even in the early-mid 90s, while Apple’s own hardware was grossly overpriced, you could by Mac clones for much cheaper (clones were licensed third-parties who made Macs, and they were far and away the best value in the pre-G3 PowerPC era).

    Macs also historically have a lower total cost of ownership, factoring in lifespan (cheap PCs fail frequently), support costs, etc. One of the most recent and extensive analyses of this I know if comes from IBM. See https://www.computerworld.com/article/1666267/ibm-mac-users-are-happier-and-more-productive.html

    Toward the tail end of the Intel era, let’s say around 2016-2020, Apple put out some real garbage. e.g. butterfly keyboards and the aforementioned craptastic Airs. But historically those are the exceptions, not the rule.

    As for the “does more”, well, that’s debatable. Considering this is using Apple’s 90s logo, I think it’s pretty fair. Compare System 7 (released in '91) to Windows 3.1 (released in '92), and there is no contest. Windows was shit. This was generally true up until the 2000s, when the first few versions of OS X were half-baked and Apple was only just exiting its “beleaguered” period, and the mainstream press kept ringing the death knell. Windows lagged behind its competition by at least a few years up until Microsoft successfully killed or sufficiently hampered all that competition. I don’t think you can make an honest argument in favor of Windows compared to any of its contemporaries in the 90s (e.g. Macintosh, OS/2, BeOS) that doesn’t boil down to “we’re used to it” or “we’re locked in”.

  • WereCat@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    “The more you buy the more you save” - NVIDIA

    Seems like they both went to the same school

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I had an Apple ][+ in 1982 and an Apple ][c in 1984.

    Cost less is a relative term depending on application.

    They were cheaper than full business model IBM computers (who hadn’t much entered into the home computer market) but significantly more expensive than other home offerings such as commodore or (shudder) radio shack.

  • kersplomp@programming.dev
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    3 months ago

    This post was maybe true 5 years ago, but PC laptops have really started to suck. My macbook air was only $300 and it’s way better than my work’s $1k+ Dell laptop in terms of performance and battery life.

  • corbin@infosec.pub
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    3 months ago

    The M2 Mac Mini is $599, or $499 if you can get the education discount. There is not a (new) Windows PC in that price range that has the same performance (especially performance-per-watt) and Thunderbolt 4. The M1 MacBook Air is getting a bit old, but it’s on sale for $600-700 pretty often and will knock the socks off most PCs in that price range, especially in build quality.

    Apple’s pricing gets ridiculous when you try spec’ing up with certain memory or storage upgrades, sure, and most internal upgrades are a no-go. The base models of most of their computers are incredibly competitive, though.

    • LANIK2000@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      At 600 you can get a computer with an actual graphics card. The only outstanding feature of the M1/2 macs is the very low power consumption, the rest is quite subpar.

      • corbin@infosec.pub
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        3 months ago

        A $600 PC with a dedicated graphics card is probably going to have a worse CPU than an M2 or M3 Mini, and probably no Thunderbolt. You would only be cross-shopping a PC like that with a Mac Mini if you were thinking of graphically-demanding productivity work, like video editing or Blender. If it’s for gaming then the Mac wouldn’t be in the running at all.

        • LANIK2000@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Except for their low draw and thus unmatched battery life on portable devices, the M chips are honestly not impressive performance wise. Not really the appeal, even tho Apple is trying tooth and nails to pretend that that’s a selling point with their unlabeled graphs.

          I mean if you really don’t want a GPU (which IMO is a must, given proper hardware acceleration which makes up for any CPU short comings, but I digress), that leaves you with a much bigger budget for the CPU, and now it’s no longer close enough to the M chips, but an absolute slaughter.

  • HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 months ago

    Does a small handful of things extremely well, is otherwise stupidly limited by choice and costs way too much.

    Think different, even if it means thinking worse.

      • HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 months ago
        1. Best trackpads. By far. Gaming? Use a controller. I will die on this hill.
        2. All of their OSes are a great user experience. They’re stable, they’re intuitive, and–most importantly–they’re aesthetically pleasing.
        3. Logic Pro.
        4. Actually, basically every app that Apple makes is pretty good. I would swap out the majority of the software on my Pixel for Apple apps if it wasn’t proprietary and exclusive.
        5. iPhone videos are outstanding. My Pixel can’t match my old 13 Pro’s video, and it’s a newer phone. Photos are also slightly worse here, but not after some editing.
        6. Objectively better build quality if you ignore planned obscelecense. My MacBook just feels well built. It feels sturdy and durable even if a speck of dust can kill the display, and every factor of the build is just better than anything else available. Phones are mostly up to spec, but my Pixel just doesn’t feel as nice as my old iPhone, especially the objectively worse button and camera layout.

        Mostly everything else? No. I can’t install cool FOSS projects on my phone, or know what’s running on it. I prefer Linux as an OS, but not any DE compared to macOS. I’ve also had some periods where stuff doesn’t just work, such as iCloud fucking my free space and wiping almost my entire system when I try to fix the issue as per instructions I was given by an employee. Then, there’s just that Apple is gross. I don’t need to explain that, or anything about repair. Else… the closed source software is excellent closed source software. The unrepairable, proprietary hardware is excellent hardware.

        They’re just a few steps from being better than any other company or project… a couple of several thousand mile long steps.

  • RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Well, that button probably dates from the late 80s or early 90s, when Apple was comparing Macs to branded IBM PS/2s and such that were sold to schools and enterprises.

    And they weren’t wrong, at the time. Those PS/2s were fuckin’ expensive.

    • zik@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      There’s a reason why no-one bought IBM PS/2s. They were horrible value for money.

      The real competition at the time was the thousands of other brands selling PCs. By that time IBM was plummeting in sales and other companies were selling most of the PCs. That’s where 95% of the market was.

      • RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Certainly, but Apple was comparing itself to other computer companies with international reach, not to the white box PCs coming out of the Floppy Wizard store in the strip center.

        • zik@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          A lot of larger companies like Compaq etc. were making “respectable” PCs by then and selling them in big quantities in direct competition to IBM.

    • linkhidalgogato@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      apple was never cheaper than their competition, and when IBM got into PCs they were also not even comparable in quality anymore. Reality is that even in the early days apples was also more expensive and they relied on a dedicated fan base to sell their trash, to be fair they sorta earned their reputation in the super early PC space with actually good products but when IBM came in, it had better PCs at lower prices and apple was basically riding on pure brand power. Then they had a few good hits with the ipad and later the iphone (tho the ipad was not as significant at the time as people seem to think it was looking back) and now they have been entirely eclipsed when it comes to phones and are once again reliant on hype and brand recognition.

      It is not a unique history by any means but i feel it is especially egregious considering just how shit apple products are and how expensive they are.

      • bluewing@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        You for got to mention the free and heavily discounted prices to get Mac computers into schools to get kids hooked on them. Which is something they still do to this I think.