It is a lot worse than we thought

hmmmph . . . .
apple. . . .

heh. . . . .

i use android. . . .18. . .

a lot!

 

I just try to look up some reliable brands, I have owned Samsung, iPhone, Windows phone and currently Xiaomi, out of all these, Xiaomi had the best cost/spec ratio with decent warranty.

In comparison iPhone would have cost almost double the Xiaomi with similar specs.

Brands are good way to separate quality from trash. For example with computers, not a single HP laptop I know of (12) hasn't lasted beyond 2 months in normal use, same with printers(5), this is why I will never buy hp. You just need to know the brand.

 

I am well aware that HP makes a fortune from stationeries. I am referring to PCs. I personally do not mind if it costs them 1 cent and they sell it for $100 as long as they do not cheat consumers with planned obsolescence. A cheaper alternative will always be available and you are forced to adjust your price eg something like this

Xiaomi is one of the best brands I have used. Sadly, their 4G did not work in my area so I traded the phone in and got a Huawei. Since I use my phone as a mobile hotspot when required. The value in their brand is pretty ridiculous, that is why low barrier of entry is a good thing. If we had the same in many other industries, real competition will lead to the consumer winning.
Patent and copyright rules have to be updated to fit the 21st century. That Apple can sue you for uploading a phone manual online is ridiculous

 

ne... ne... ne... how does this work? Company policy?? Why can't you connect your laptop/pc with their network?

 

Louis Rossman has been hating on Apple for these practices for years lol

I personally shill Lenovo. Their repair policy is very nice. I had a thinkpad t440s under warranty. If any part wasn't working, I filed a request for repairs. Lenovo sent a repair technician to me with all the potential parts that would need to be replaced and replaced them. As for Apple, more than likely, you'll have a waiting period for the repairs done for you in a different location; my repair was quick.
Also, Lenovo laptops are pretty repairable by the average user. I hated the touchpad on the t440s, so I replaced it with the type that's on the t450s. It wasn't a hard replacement. If you wanted to do that to a Mac, good luck lol

I'm also kinda sad that phone companies aren't making replaceable batteries anymore. I really like my LG V20.

It's more a problem of you don't really own your device. Apple would rather you buy a new product than to fix your old one. Apple Genius Bar gave the guy an estimated cost for repairs that was nearly the cost of the computer. These weren't even all the parts of the computer. IF they were only able to sell those repair parts at that high of a price, they wouldn't be able to sell the computer as low as they can.

Also, Apple has been purposely making it difficult for people to independently repair their products. They've started gluing in the batteries (which is unnecessary). They purposely made software that caused the iPhone to stop working if the home button was replaced. I believe for the new Mac Books, they made it so that if you try to repair your device, you will have to bring it to Apple anyway because the device will stop working without Apple's software to allow it to after a repair.

The problem is that even though you paid for your device, you have to pay a ridiculous amount to repair your device if it breaks.

 

Hahaha nice, I have had an even better experience with HP. I got my laptop replaced two times with brand new laptops with better specs than my original laptop. Their laptops are usually crap so I got a new laptop every two years lol
I transferred the warranty and new laptop to my sister who didn't extend the warranty so I couldn't get a 4th laptop haha. Lenovo is great but HP warranty is better as you simply get a new laptop haha. I complained and my new laptop came 2 year warranty instead of one.
I will never buy an HP product even if I am paid now though lol.
PS I initially planned to get a Lenovo but they were out of stock so I got the HP that came with a free printer

 

lol I haven't bought a Lenovo product directly from Lenovo, but the repairs were from Lenovo. I've heard that HP wasn't bad with respect to repairs, but I have no personal experience with that aspect of HP.

Speaking of right to repair and printers... I know some printers have ink cartridges that make it so (1) the printer will tell you that it's out of ink even though it's not, and (2) make it so you can't just refill the catridges.

 

Hahaha I am not surprised. That is why I prefer it when "hacks" are not posted as YouTube videos that are available publicly
Maybe do what fan subbers did years ago and some still do: Password protect the subs on livejournal communities that require permission to join lol. It was so frrustrating. Pirate streaming sites still got the subtitles though. It was completely pointless lol

 

I saw this on youtube yesterday lol

 

Cant introduce security risks

 

Wow thats something i been wanting to know.
Ive experienced all this printer problems that ive decided to not buy one anymore..
Even tho the shop keeps insisting for me to buy a new printer rather than buying old expensive cartridges models.

 

I’ve used apple products as well as other brands and each have their pros and cons.

Apple makes their products with a certain specification to both limit variables and optimize their software. This means it has the reputation of being hard to upgrade and lacks the diversity windows, linux, or android can provide. They produce their product top to bottem in a very constrained way and as a result they can and do provide their own technicians... at a cost usually charged to warranties which the devices are not expected to last longer than. Warranties are after all a guarantee the device will last at least that long and with the natural turnover with new generations of technology, there is no need to lengthen it. That is true of most tech however. The big complaints on this front are largely in the sense that it’s next to impossible for the average owner to fix it themselves as apple making its parts available to third parties would not only cut their ability to pay in house techs, but also be a security risk to their users.

Also, the production method above means their products are less prone to errors than others. To be fair, I did experience plenty of BSOD on old apple models. I’ve noticed a trend that apples errors have decreased as much as Microsoft has increased. This isn’t really a fault in Microsoft, but I’ll get into it in a moment.

Games also are rarely made exclusively for Macs and once they are, it’s usually well past the date of pcs. Even when there are games it is not certain if they will run well. I heard people were burnt by people trying to game on MacBook airs. Granted, my own windows laptop would get hot enough to cause artifacting around that time.

All in all, what I want to say here is that although I do not praise the ground Apple walks on, I also don’t believe every rumor. There is no perfect brand. They are also not devil incarnate. I’d rather picket Geek Squad. Best Buy fires employees if they ask the person if they tried restarting the device without charging them.

In a lot of ways, Apples method has a lot going for it that I can respect even if I don’t have much interests in their products. Programming these days is... so messy. It primarily relies on drivers and tends to ignore most of the architecture. Not to mention the bloat. Fully complete and functional programs in the past were limited by space and the hardware. They were maybe a few bytes and yet, accomplished what they needed to. Now, there is very little need to constrain yourself while making programs due to size or memory and something has been lost as a result. Or I should actually say too much has been gained. People add just *one* more feature, because they can. Whether for sales or personal preference, excess and bloat become (to me) a large issue.

With games, the focus is less on the plot or mechanics and more on looking nice and being marketable, if not just a remake / continuation of an old franchise. There are games of the past I still enjoy more and it’s not just nostalgia. Somehow the creators managed to put an entire and complex little world inside of a few kilobytes at most.

With OS... I don’t think I have to talk about bloatware. Linux is the most free on this front rather than Apple or Microsoft. I’ll talk about Skype for a moment. I used to love it. It was simple, it had emotes, it had video... I was able to keep a relationship with my folks over a long distance without strain. Now, so many new features have been added that it wasn’t even useable the last time I installed it. Literally broken to the point I couldn’t send a message. Don’t even get me started on how much I chew out my shiny (actually matte black) windows 10 computer for how many resources it uses while idling or starting compared to my win xp. It takes a solid minute or two just starting up so I rarely turn the thing completely off. I have over a terabyte or space with os on an ssd, 20 gb of ram, and a gtx980 video card. It has no excuse!! I also did a fresh clean install of the os when I switched drives. I don’t know why it hates me so.

#rant over

To;dr Apple isn’t the best by any means for many reasons, but there are a few things they do right and the constraint and aim for simplicity in design appeals to me personally. Please don’t set me on fire.

Spoiler

@Parth37955 sempai, are you proud of me for ranting? Also, @Tony it’s been a while since you heard me rant and the content this time... I feel like a crazy person tbh

 

They are mainly a scam but also the primary source of income for printer companies. There is no winner.

the data is for the consumer and given to each consumer. It’s a hard arguement why it would benefit the consumers more than the people posting it when Apple can provide that online or in the mail themself. Not saying Apple is good, but those laws protect people other than Apple too.

Sorry for second post and fingers crossed for merge. I didn’t want to tag you for rant unnecessicarily when it was me venting and not directed at anyone in particular >_<

 

I've used iPhone 3s (used tobe my brother's) around 4 years ago. Since it was a gift, I just take it for granted.
But still can't help to felt that this phone is a scam compared to another platformed android smartphone. And you cant do many thing without an account, can't dowload app from Apple store without account, and can't download from third party either,
since I can't make account because I don't have credit card(?), Well, don't really remember because of what.

 

I do not disagree with your point if I start a PC rental business I would use Macs as they are more reliable
The issue is on right to repair and Apple fanboys who worship the ground they lay on
Apple products are premium by default. I would argue that a $2,000 Samsung or MSi or Alienwwillilll do just as well as a Macbook
Expecting the same performance from mass produced PCs by ASUS that gets HP Dell etc printed on it is not realistic. I refuse to spend over $200 on a PC now. I rather 5 $200 PC than one $1000 PC

Apple has been screwing people with refreshes too just like Sports games by EA
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple...e-further-strains-its-relationship-with-pros/

 

The problem is that Apple wants complete and full control of all their products even after the user has purchased them. Rather than your product, your Apple device becomes more of something that Apple is lending you to use.

What exactly is the security risk in letting third parties repair Apple products? There already exists Apple-certified third party repairs, who get fucked over by Apple. (They get charged the ridiculous prices for the repair parts in the video, and if they request a part that they are not "certified" to repair, they get a fine from Apple instead of the actual part.) I can see how some third party repairs, who have no idea how to actually repair the phone, could really fuck up the device, but I fail to see how that impacts the user's security, especially with respect to data.

It's rather hard to get parts of Apple devices unless you get it from China. A non-Apple certified Apple product repair shop attempted to get refurbished iPhone screens from China, and they were confiscated by customs because they were "counterfeit."


Additionally, a large tech YouTuber, Linus of Linus Tech Tips broke a part of his Mac while trying to open it up. He knew that he wasn't qualified for warranty anymore, and he wanted to pay to fix it. He wasn't trying to use his YouTube stardom to get anything from Apple because he wanted to see if such a repair could be done for the average user. (Another big tech YouTuber did use his YouTube stardom for a repair from Apple, and he got a brand new device, but he wondered if Apple would have done the same for the average person.) The first time he went to Apple, he was told that it could not be repaired. Later, he was given a price similar to the cost of his device.


Yeah, Geek Squad also has terrible practices, and I wouldn't recommend them.

Microsoft also has unsavory practices. They jailed a man, who was distributing restore CDs. On the CD was a software that would let a user restore their Windows operating system, but only if the user already had a copy of Windows. The software was available for free on Microsoft's website. (The man wasn't complete guiltless though since he did make the CDs look like genuine Windows products.)

I'm not saying that the problem is the high prices of printer ink. I'm saying the problem is that they literally don't allow you to use all your ink. The video talked about some cartridges with a chip that made the printer think that there was no ink even though there was still quite a bit of ink in the cartridge. And if you try to replace the ink in the cartridge, it will not allow you to use the printer. It's not the high prices of printer cartridge; it's the methods some printer companies use to force the user to buy cartridges even though you still have enough ink.

 

Tbh it’s more apples security than the users security. Partially to prevent counterfeits, partially to protect IP from things like reverse engineering, and yes partially to protect the users. There are often gaps in programming and even in hardware itself that can be data leaks. I think one I heard about (not apple) was how some data was cached for use by the cpu in such a way that it wasn’t protected by the security measures programmed into the system. I just meant that limiting and processing the trained technitions and parts themselves adds another layer (even if it’s small) of Information security.

I think that clothing markets have many more issues with counterfeits, such as Chinese factories reselling or copying designs to use them. Apple could sue if they lost valuable designs in such a way, but the gains wouldn’t make up for the losses. Actually there are a lot of things Apple probably parts out with or without peoples knowlegde since I have not looked into it too deeply. It’s very expensive to produce each part “in house” and I don’t know if Apple even claims to. They certainly have more than one factory to keep up with demand.

I also don’t doubt you on the ink cartridges although I do think that giving away excess ink for free that the consumer cannot even use is really stupid (on the part of manufacturer or anyone else involved in design production and sales) if there is no reason beyond the surface. A legitimate reason would be something like a minimum amount of ink or internal pressure being required for ultimate efficiency or something. Maybe a reason like inkjets that are too low could dry very easily or the sensors are set to assume something below a certain amount is dry. As long as the ink is extra and not part of what is being advertised in the volume of ink, I’d be okay with such reasons. There is so much higher of a chance it’s a greedy idiot though. I do know for a fact that most cartridges and printers these days do contain chips that prevent using off brands or similar cartridges. A company I worked for in the past would use it as an innocuous example of a “secure” chip with protected design data that required extra security measures.

 

Apple historically just got their grove due to Jobs locking in a digital sales contract with the music industry. Due to that luck they were able to get themselves the "cool" factor.

Otherwise, their customer experience is one of the worst. If my laptop breaks in the middle of winter, why the hell do I want to go out of my way to take a train/car to an Apple store in middle of below zero degrees weather. Do I have nothing better to do with my life? Most of the big brands offer in-home warranty at prices similar or less than Apple's warranty. Not only is the in-home warranty at my own convenience, it is also a TON better because you can easily get things covered that aren't normally covered.



As for the ink stuff, people still use Ink? Laser is the way to go.

 

True. HP usually just send me a box with a prepaid shipping label.
I have never understood how laserjet printers work. Care to explain? I use to believe to both used ink

 

Yeah, they have that option for warranty, but I prefer on-site warranty where I see what they are doing. I can also play a few tricks to get extra perks like have them replace my battery for free at end of the warranty to extend the lifespan of my PC or have them fix cosmetic damage

It uses a toner (some use a drum too but I stay away from those). A toner can do far more prints than an ink cartridge, and best of all it doesn't dry up. I've been using the same toner for over 3 years now. In comparison, I had to buy a new ink cartrage like every year, and worst of all it wasn't because I was printing so much but because part of it dries up!