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What Bugs Apple Fans About Apple
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Jan 18, 2008 03:37 PM
from the stock-complaints-falling-of-deaf-ears dept.
from the stock-complaints-falling-of-deaf-ears dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Forbes.com went to MacWorld to ask Apple fans what bugs them about the computer and gadget maker. Turns out the lack of replaceable batteries, need to buy Vista separately, and most of all the stock price bugs people."
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Submission: What Buts Apple Fans About Apple by Anonymous Coward
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What Bugs Apple Fans About Apple? (Score:5, Funny)
What bugs Apple fans about Apple (Score:5, Funny)
*ducks*
*runs*
Re:What bugs Apple fans about Apple (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:What bugs Apple fans about Apple (Score:5, Funny)
This can get as ugly as you want it to be.
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Yeah! That Stock Price! (Score:5, Funny)
I was much happier with Leopard (or Leo, as I affectionately call her) when the price of Apple stock was a couple bucks higher!
Spend more for this, people! I want to congratulate myself for using my computer again!
Re:Yeah! That Stock Price! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Leave it Forbes... (Score:5, Funny)
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My boss and I make jokes about Apple, Inc. vs. Apple Computer, Inc. Dropping computer in the name was not just to aid in the sale of phones. I think Apple has lost some focus on their computers. Leopard has not been as big as they had hoped. We're putting off the upgrade at work as long as possible. Leopar
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
18:07 up 112 days, 8:57, 5 users, load averages: 0.93 0.24 0.08
As I'm typing this, my desktop has been up 42 days. So, might I humbly suggest that it is not the OS that's your problem, could it be an application? (And yes, I also use my desktop as a file server/terminal for my cluster, that's why it stays up so much.)
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Agreed fully. Leopard, while not as big a disaster as Vista, was not a solid release - not in the same way that Tiger was largely problem-free. I'm still getting MANY network driver problems (refusing to talk to my router's DNS, but only when looking up CERTAIN entries), some BSODs were eliminated with 10.5.1, but IMHO some of them were so serious and easily encountered that it should never have been in any shipping version.
Feature-wise I'm liking Leopard, the unification of the UI is definitely a step fo
Not a generic PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but why should that be Apple's responsibility? Apple is there to advertise and sell MacOS X. People buying Macs are for the moost part buying it for MacOS X. If some people want Windows presinstalled on the system, then they could always pay extra and have a shop do the work for them. Apple offering Windows as a 'Build To Order' option would likely cause confusion about their confidence in their own OS.
Apple shouldn't make it any more easier to use the competing OS than they already have. They aren't a generic computer seller and the more the can convince you to drink the cool-aid the better for them. Anyone who believes in their OS, whether it be Linux, Windows, BSD or Amiga, amongst others, are going to have the same attitude.
As to your gripes about Leopard, I am not sure how you are getting such a bad experience. I haven't rebooted for over a month and I use it daily, putting the system to sleep at night. The usual causes for exessive memory usage, on my computer, have been leaks in Firefox and when that happens I kill Firefox and relaunch it. Admitly one computer has gone done once in a while, and the kernel panic clearly points to an ATI driver issue.
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Re:Leave it Forbes... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Leave it Forbes... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple sells two million copies of Mac OS X Leopard in first weekend [macdailynews.com]
Additionally, Jobs revealed in his keynote that in 90 days, Apple had shipped 5 million copies of Leopard (which of course, means retail boxes plus new machines, but Leopard undoubtedly helped sell those machines). This resulted in 20% of the installed base running the new OS in 90 days.
You were saying?
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Re:Leave it Forbes... (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that really bug me about Apple now is that they seem to have completely forgotten how QA is supposed to work. I have filed more bug reports for Leopard since its release than for any other OS (including on that is reproduceable and causes the user's home directory to be rendered inaccessible by any Leopard machine). I have raised my standards a lot for what kind of bug I should file with Leopard. With Jagwyre and Tiger I filed bugs that were UI regressions or caused irritation. With Leopard I'm only filing ones that are major UI regressions or cause serious data loss and I'm still filing a lot more than I was.
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Re:Leave it Forbes... (Score:5, Funny)
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Lack of acknowledgment of my market segment (Score:5, Insightful)
With that said, I don't like Apple's computer lineup. We have a good selection on notebooks now: cheap, ultra portable, and powerful.
Ok, now for desktop: cheap, all-in-one, and powerhouse workstation. Problem is: where is the regular computer? For anybody who wants a reasonably specced system (better than Mini, not as tricked out as the Pro) with no monitor added, there's just no good choice. I already have a monitor. Not only do I not want another, but I can't use it: I share my monitor between multiple systems and you can't do that with an iMac. iMac also has no upgrade slots for new video cards etc.
I have an old G4 that does well. I have a hacked x86 "Mac" box that fits my computing needs. I have an Apple TV, and I have an iPod. I love Apple's stuff. I just wish that they'd make a "real" Mac that fit my needs so I wouldn't have to resort to building one.
Re:Lack of acknowledgment of my market segment (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Lack of acknowledgment of my market segment (Score:4, Interesting)
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Using the video output, your desktop was mirrored and did not span the two screens. (I don't know if the newest models still do this.) There were firmware hacks to get around this completely artificial restriction, which Apple put into place to differentiate their consumer line machines from their professional line.
I haven't tried it a newer iMac, but a quick check on their specs page [apple.com] seems to indicate that they've lifted this restriction. From the "Graphics and video" section:
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Apple tends to back away when it gets demonstrated to them that such restrictions don't work. The dual-monitor hack detailed above; They used to artificially restrict you to Apple-branded wifi cards in OS X even when other cards of the same chipset would have worked--they backed down when people kept hacking the OS to use whatever brand Wifi card they wanted; People kept jailbreaking the iPhone, so soon we're going to get an official dev kit.
They may back away when the restrictions don't work, but it doesn't seem to encourage them to stop implementing them in the first place. The company is no longer in the situation where they need to pull this sort of stunt and yet they continue to do so. That's something that annoys me about Apple.
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Old complaint... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Old complaint... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Dude, I used to be the same way.
But, then, I went fiddling around with it, and for starters, if you enable the options:
tap two fingers on the touchpad = right click
put two fingers on the touchpad and move them = scroll
And I have to agree with an above poster, now that I've had these features (fleetingly, damnit, i hated giving the macbook pro back when i quit my last job), I can't stand to use touchpads without them. Once I had this stuff enabled, and knew how to use it, I couldn't have cared if the damn t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But in answer to your post, we are talking about trackpads here, rather than external mice. Of course a two-button mouse is preferable to a one-button mouse. Of course, the external mouse Apple ships is a two-button mouse. I don't prefer it myself, but it does have two buttons.
Few who have taken the time to learn the Apple trackpad would consider going to back to a less-capable style, unless they have a
greed (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, the new software for the iPod touch is a $20 download. This is the same software that's a free update for the iPhone. Even the new software for the Apple TV is a free upgrade. If I were an iPod touch owner, I'd be pretty offended that I have to pay $20 (well, disregarding free jailbreaking options and whatnot) for an update that iPhone users get for free.
Remember iTools? The free service that gave you mail, web storage, etc. if you were a Mac user? In July 2002 it was rebranded as
iTouch upgrade fee = Sarbanes-Oxley requirement (Score:3, Informative)
IANAL, but someone explained to me that, unlike with the iPhone, Apple doesn't account for the iPod Touch on a subscription basis, so they're required to charge something for upgrades in order to comply with the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002, otherwise known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Thank you so much Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, et al). Appare
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Why is it that Apple seems to be the only company affected by this issue? Why is it that the Microsoft Zunes, albeit pieces of trash, were able to get free upgrades to generation 2 software granting them new features like wireless sync? Why is it that every piece of hardware I can think of that comes with firmware updates seems to be able to g
market share (Score:3, Insightful)
We Apple fans like to see Apple do well, but probably more in terms of selling more products (higher marketshare, becoming more popular in society, etc.) than just higher profits (most of us aren't in it for the money, after all).
As an investor if I held Apple shares I'd want Apple to have a bigger market share but more importantly sell more. As a user I also want Apple to have a bigger share, as well as BSD, Linux, and Solaris. The more diverse the OS market the better.
FalconRe: (Score:3, Insightful)
The attitude that "almost but not quite" is good (Score:5, Interesting)
I use macs at home and at work, and they are great machines....most of the time. Maybe I'm a perfectionist, maybe I'm just expecting too much, but so many of Apple's tools are great most of the time. However they have flaws that make them annoying to unusable in certain situations, and at least the Apple of late seems unwilling to fix them.
Example: Airport extreme with airdisk. When the thing is working it is perfect, however, in my experience the disconnects are really annoying, and it disconnects much more than my airport express ever did. Also, when, out of the box, I tried to bridge it with said express it went into infinite reboot mode till I did a factory reset. Again, in theory a great product but when I pay a premium for Apple products I expect it work right 99% of the time, not 90%.
Their server products are another great example of how Apple's products, on the surface anyway, are great, but in practice it tends to fall apart. We are rolling out an LDAP system and it has been nothing but problems. Apple has done a seemingly good job of making a really slick open directory server tool, but there are just too many bugs to make it worth while. A particularly nasty one, that has been reported to Apple but Apple refuses to fix, is that for some international users certain actions will change the time zone to Cupertino, which can wreak havoc with systems. Come on Apple, we paid a lot of money for this system, the least you can do is get the time zones correct. The server also has almost no meaningful error messages(took me forever to figure out the effects I was observing was related to the time zone bug, the Workgroup manager went on its happy way, authenticated me, then didn't do anything afterwards, not a single error message). Similar problems with getting Remote Desktop to work with Directory authentication. All I get is a "Authentication failed" message with no additional information either on the target machine or the server! Come on Apple, you went through a lot of effort to develop this system, but all that is wasted if you don't give me proper error messages!
Ditto with iPhone content management, the system works great 90% of the time, but the inability to give the user more flexibility with content management can lead to frustration and hacks that require playlists of playlists......
I don't know why Apple refuses to address these issues. None of them seem like they would be incredibly hard/expensive to fix, but Apple just seems to have the attitude that if it works in the general cases, there is no need to investigate the extremes and fix whatever problems may arise.
Re:The attitude that "almost but not quite" is goo (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know why Apple refuses to address these issues. None of them seem like they would be incredibly hard/expensive to fix, but Apple just seems to have the attitude that if it works in the general cases, there is no need to investigate the extremes and fix whatever problems may arise.
I think that for the most part... "You already paid for it, why should we do any more." Apple just doesn't fix shit unless they've got egg on their face. Pretty much security and catastrophic bugs. Everything else waits for the next version.
I don't like Vista (still run XP on most of my systems) but at least Microsoft documents their bugs and work arounds instead of pretending nothing is wrong.
On the other hand, Apple is cheap. A 130 dollar OS and 80 bucks for a suite of tools for total noob's isn't a bad
partnering with AT&T (Score:4, Insightful)
Compared to that, my disgruntlement with their video hardware across the line is a minor thing. The exact nature of that disgruntlement depends on the model in question. Suffice to say that apple has my heart in the portable sphere for offering well spec'd, decently priced, and well-integrated portable Unix with their powerbooks/mac pros but I really wish they had something in the mid-range desktop line that wasn't an iMac (the mini is a bit too constraining, already have a nice monitor rendering the imacs moot, and the pro is far too over-spec'd/expensive for my needs). I'm half-way considering building a hackintosh for my next desktop. (It's either that or ubuntu most likely. Vista is right out.)
And which people did they talk to? (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows Vista? Ummmm this is entirely misrepresented here. Yes, some people might be upset that they have to plunk down $200 for vista, but think about it. That's not a problem with apple and no one focuses that gripe at apple. That's all the fault of Windows being way too expensive. It's that or they start bundling windows and making the mac $200 more, which I don't want. Apple has lots of great programs that are comparable to most windows programs.
Stock price? Everyone's stock price is hurting right now! We are a month from a recession, the stock market is tanking, and a stock going down after an expo is not unusual, in fact it happens a lot. It's called profit taking. Investors ride the short term wave of hype, and when the hype is done, they get off the wave as fast as they can. After the expo there's no more momentum keeping the stock moving upward quickly.
Ask a real apple fan what cheeses him. Like for example that A2DP isn't supported on the iphone, or any iPod. That's my #1 beef right now right after the battery issue.
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Attitude... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll still argue that the biggest weaknesses with Macs is the "we have decided what you need, and that's exactly what you get" attitude. Regardless of how much one may love Apple design, it still remains that one size does not fit all, and a lot of Apple's decisions work against people who have every good reason to do things in another way.
To wit - my preference for a Delete key instead of dragging files to a trash icon is not a weakness on my part, it's a more than reasonable preference. Regardless of all the keyboard options and such, there are many times when I simply prefer to press Delete.
Of course Vista is no better, and wrestling it into submission can also be frustrating, but I have heard few Vista users trying to argue that its deficiencies are in fact strengths.
The Command key (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Attitude... (Score:4, Informative)
What strange and pointless article. Macs have all sorts of well documented deficiencies in either hardware or design, and even the most loyal fanbois will usually acknowledge them.
I am coming to believe that the rabid fanboi is a mythological figure. I have never once actually encountered such a person.
To wit - my preference for a Delete key instead of dragging files to a trash icon is not a weakness on my part, it's a more than reasonable preference. Regardless of all the keyboard options and such, there are many times when I simply prefer to press Delete.
Try hitting Cmd-Delete.
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Re:Attitude... (Score:4, Informative)
Command-period has been the "cancel" keyboard shortcut on Mac OS for over 20 years, I suspect it will work where you're talking about with the progress bar.
And check out "full keyboard access" stuff in the system preferences, you'll find that not only can you use the keyboard for menu activation and such, you can also create your own custom shortcuts for almost any operation in any application you like. The keyboarding capabilities of the Mac OS are superior, overall, to pretty much any other system I can think of. Add on Quicksilver or something similar and it can get downright crazy how much you can accomplish in arbitrary applications without touching a mouse.
If you're somewhat new to the Mac, I recommend picking up one of David Pogue's books, he provides a great mixture of theory and practical information about how things are designed to work.
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Re:Attitude... (Score:4, Insightful)
which is fair enough if they've only had Windows experience so far. but so many seem in such a hurry to scream and rant. if they just took the time to learn the "Mac" way of doing things or asked questions rather than bitching it would be better.
when I got my first Mac I loved learning all the new things. I'd think "it would be great if I could do..." then spent some time searching. more often than not it was there. maybe not "obvious", but powerful nonetheless if you put a little effort in, e.g. there's no reason why Apple-Shift-4 should save a copy of a selected screen area as a file on the Desktop, but it does, and it rules.
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an annoyed Apple customer (Score:4, Insightful)
A few things have really irked me lately that were not true in the past.
- OS upgrade pricing. There is none, just buy it new. Used to be the system software was distributed free.
- Leopard "improvements". This has been hashed out elsewhere, but reduced functionality in the dock and non-movable sections in the finder sidebar are irksome, regardless of purported internal improvements.
- Many more app crashes. In APPLE products.
- Inconsistent user design, focus on chrome and glitz rather than usability.
- Ongoing arrogance and hubris, as witnessed in the $20 iPod Touch software upgrade. Again, quite the kick-in-the-nuts for early adopters.
Lots of things are right with Apple, but I am not that happy with the trend that I am afraid I am seeing.
My thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a Mac fanboy, hell I don't even own a Mac, but the biggest annoyance for me is Apple's gap in their product portfolio.
Take the laptops. The cheapest is £699. A similarly specified Dell would be about the same (or more) but for a lot of people they simply don't need everything that the MacBook offers. So if you want a laptop for email, the web and a little bit of word processing then you have a choice between a £699 MacBook or a £299 Dell. Yes the former has a bit more polish, but is it really worth the extra £400? Not for the casual/basic user.
Take Mac Mini's. There is nothing headless that sits between the most expensive Mac Mini (£499) and the cheapest Mac Pro (£1,429). I have a perfectly good monitor and I don't want to have to be forced to buy a new one every time I upgrade my PC - so I'd like to avoid the iMac.
That's about it really.
What bothers me about Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, that actually is what bothers me about Forbes. You'd think after looking like complete and utter fools for letting Dan Lyons keep writing false, misleading, or just stupid articles about Linux with respect to the SCO farce, they would rein him in a bit. Instead, he starts acting like a complete ass yet again with the fake Steve Jobs thing. The negativity that they have toward any non-Microsoft (and non-SCO, as it were) software is bizarre.
Forbes should be a credible source of news, but given their level of maturity in reporting in areas for which I have a high degree of knowledge, I wouldn't trust them in any other category. Ever.
It's pathetic.
You're kidding, aren't you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Subservience to the music industry (Score:3, Insightful)
Then Apple came out with the Airport Express. A great idea--stream audio from your iTunes library to your home stereo. However, Apple encrypted the data so that it could not be sniffed and somehow copied out of the air. Why? According to Apple, they had to do that so as not to offend the music industry. And to make matters worse, they didn't even add a way to send encrypted audio to it. So it only worked with iTunes.
After that, Apple started selling music videos in the iTunes Store. But there is no way to transfer the audio portion of the music video to a CD or an iPod. So if you like the song and you like the video, you need to buy them separately, even though the song is part of the video. What gives?
And, of course, most recently, Apple added ringtones to the iTunes Store which you can install on your iPhone. But you can only make ringtones from music that you purchased on the iTunes store. So you first have to pay 99 cents to buy the full song--possibly twice if you already bought it on CD--and that gives you the privilege of spending 99 cents again for a ringtone! Why? Well, because the music industry wanted it that way.
What happened to Apple, the consumer's friend, the fair-use sweetheart?
I was especially galled by the ringtone thing. Here was a perfect opportunity for Apple to stand up and say, "It's ridiculous for you to have rebuy a song to use it as a ringtone!" To, once again, show itself as the consumer's friend. Instead, they bowed under pressure from the music industry. What's even more annoying, though, is the mewling Mac mavens who immediately chime in, "Well, at least you're not paying $3.99 a year like all those other guys charge!"
What are you talking about? (Score:3, Informative)
What laptop are you looking at that starts at $2000?
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And honestly, if you're looking for a $600 laptop you REALLY shouldn't be comparing with MacBook Pros, or any high-end laptop like that. Apple has never made secret that it builds only mid-high end machinery, not low-end budget computers.
I've been moving my family, friends, and gf to Macs for a while now, and they're much happier than they've ever been. Between $1100 and $600 you get a heck of a lot more performance (not always relevant to them), but the peace of mind of not being subject to malware, troj
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http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/giftcard/ [apple.com]
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I've been a Mac faithful for about 15 years. I have owned every high-end apple laptop since the G3 Wall Street. The reason I have owned every high end laptop is that one of them always seems to have a major problem a year into using it. It could be a bad hard drive, motherboard, screen problems, or an OS upgrade that doesn't upgrade well and kills my system so many times, that I say f'it and get a new machine.
I definitely recommend the AppleCare extended warranty. Yes, if it breaks, it's a pain to be without your computer for awhile while it's being fixed, but my experience with Apple's service has been excellent. All computers have a chance of something breaking; Apple computers are only slightly more likely to break than others.
If it's not a machine going down, it's the lovely hanging mac. Some app has a problem, and you get the endless rainbow of death, or better yet, a frozen screen. Now all OS' have issues, and I have always loved my Mac(s), but the time has come for me to part ways with Apple (well, except for my iPhone).
That's very peculiar. Of course a crashed app can give you the spinning rainbow, but that happens to me on Vista all the time too (minus the spinning rainbow). A frozen screen sho