Apple has always been about moving forward, about pressing customers to buy the latest and greatest. Product pacing has been high in Cupertino (except for the Mac Mini, obviously), and this is obviously a good thing if you're an Apple bean counter. Most Apple fans more or less accept this planned obsolescence without question, but the company may have just gone a little too far.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-10-12
her 800mhz G4 iMac (lamp) purchased in 2000 and is running Mac OS X 10.4.6 isn't still working.
Its not at all surprising that it is still working. There is nothing unusual about this. Go into small businesses and charities all over the place, and you'll find Dells and Compaqs as old as or older than this working just fine. Some are running Win 98, some XP.
What is amazing is that people seem to think there is something unique about Apple hardware when it lasts the normal length of time for all computer hardware.
The reason people swap out PC hardware sooner is nothing to do with longevity of the hardware. Its for three reasons.
One, they want the increased performance. Probably Mac users do too, but they do without.
Two, they want to run new software (and this, obviously, applies to Mac owners as well).
Three, and this does not apply to Mac owners, its real cheap. You buy a new base unit, it comes with OS installed, or you put your favorite distro on it, and its not a size of purchase you have to think about much. Its not like buying a Mac. And you get to reuse your monitor which makes it cheaper.
Mac owners hang on forever to obsolete hardware because its too expensive to replace. PC owners throw out perfectly well functioning hardware and replace it with something faster because they can afford to and they feel like it.
Mac people then conclude that their hardware was better quality and lasted longer. No, it was just more expensive.
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2005-07-06
"The myth of course is that Apple hardware lasts longer."
Hmmmm - you had better tell my wife that her 800mhz G4 iMac (lamp) purchased in 2000 and is running Mac OS X 10.4.6 isn't still working. Sure it isn't as fast as current computers but she does all the normal stuff that normal people do on computers. Except maybe pron. I don't think she surfs for that but maybe she does. The same is true without 2001 800mhz G4 PowerBook
Sure she can't have me install OS X 10.5 or let her run the newest version of iLife.
I was able to install the newest version of iWork (I bought the family pack for it) which runs on all of our computers except for the 1998 original iMac version b. That still works for surfing the web and doing e-mail too running Mac OS 9.2 and is the only Mac we have with anti-virus software.
I was thinking about updating both but she likes the look of her iMac lamp and the new MacBook doesn't have a firewire port so I can't connect our Sony digital 8 video camera to it. So in a way, our old PowerBook is better than the new MacBook. And I don't feel like spending an additional $500 just for a FireWire port.
I do also have a Nov '06 white 24" iMac Core2Duo which I've installed the new iLife on. The learn keyboard and guitar looks pretty cool. I've only peeked at it. The new iMovie is MUCH improved though I may still need iMove '06 (I restored it from TimeMachine - very easy - very cool). Guess I'm glad a waited for the Core2Duo version.
Edited 2009-02-04 16:02 UTC