A bit of a fluff piece, as these articles tend to be, but still a fun and great read.
“No. 1, the importance and value of great hardware has not diminished in any way,” he said. “Across the board, our goal is to make the best in the categories we choose to compete in. It’s what we’re doing and it’s reflected in customers choosing our products over anyone else’s. So I do think people are showing with their choice that they do value quality and beauty of the hardware and that is not diminishing.”
“I have never heard anyone say, ‘Because I like to keep my stuff in the cloud, I will take a cheap piece of hardware and I want it to be ugly.’ All things being equal, of course, nobody wants that,” Schiller said.
While I personally believe Apple’s software leaves a lot to be desired, and even though Apple sometimes makes absolutely ridiculous hardware choices (5400RPM? Seriously?), there’s no denying that when it comes to the sheer feel of Apple’s hardware – such as my iPhone 6S, or retina MacBook Pro – they really are in a league of their own. They say the latest Galaxy phones and the new Nexus 6P come close, but I haven’t used them yet.
In any event, especially compared to other PC OEMs, Apple is so far ahead it’s not even a contest anymore, really. Let’s hope Microsoft’s hardware efforts finally – finally – lights a few fires.
and other comments.
Well, my now displaced 2012 15in MBP now runs CentOS like a dream.
The hardware is great. I say that as someone who has been in this industry since 1975 writing software and desiging hardware.
It takes a lot of abuse that other laptops (and my junk drawer contains plenty of evidence) just don’t get anywhere near.
I hear ‘but all Apple kit is outrageously expensive!!!!!’
Sure it is expensive. But you get what you pay for. I’ve had equally expensive Dell’s that won’t stand up to the treatment that I seem to dish out these devices[1].
The nearest ones are the old Thinkpads. Not the newer Lenovo ones but the proper IBM ones.
I recently bought a 2015 MBP. As usual moving everything from the old one to the new was as easy as ever. Connect up the time machine backup disk and away you go. Boy, is it fast. The PCI-E Storage makes the SSD’s on the old one seem like floppies. I think a lot of other high end laptops will have this storage very soon.
My only gripe is the lack of ports. (see [1] below.)
2xUSB3 + Thunderbolt + HDMI is not that great expecially for a device in this price range. After using it for a month, my usage has changed. I find I don’t need many more. A cheap 4 port USB-3 hub solved the connection of my KB and Mouse. I don’t like BT peripherals. It powers my 4K display so photo editing is a dream.
So it isn’t perfect but in 23 years of using Laptops, this is by a long way the best Laptop I’ve every had.
I agree with Thom that sometimes the Apple software leaves a lot to be desired but on the whole the package works very well.
[1]Over the years, I’ve owned/used laptops from DEC, Compaq, HP, Lenovo, Asus and Dell. My current work machine is a maxed out HP Elitebook 8770W.
Thinkpads may have been super robust and well engineered, but they were as ugly as sin — black plastic bricks. Apple’s genius is in making their PCs look amazing AND very durable. Couldn’t exactly say the same about all their products … iPhones seem unnecessarily fragile sometimes, though that’s more in relation to abuse (drops etc) where other products will often start coming apart or failing with normal use.
The old Thinkpads followed a sort of brutalist industrial design. Just like many people really like the look of chunky stainless professional-style kitchen appliances in their homes, the industrial-strength aesthetic of Thinkpads was always part of the appeal. In other words, ugly was a feature, not a bug.
Not for me… I find those old IBM ThinkPads, especially ultraportable X series amazing in terms of looks. They look great to me, basically exactly what a laptop should look like.
So far, nobody has ever tangibly demonstrated to me why the looks of hardware matters, and I’d be willing to give $100 to anyone who can do so. Does the ‘sex appeal’ of a device impact its performance in any way? Does it make it more reliable? Does it help me get things done faster? I have often kept myself up at night wondering why some people care if the box is beige or not. I just don’t understand it. At all. Not even a little.
So, Mr. Phil “I’ll make this computer look like an imperial torture droid and call it innovation” Schiller… if you’ve never heard somebody say they don’t give a shit if the hardware is ugly or not, then I guess I’m the first.
Edited 2015-10-28 21:16 UTC
I’d agree 100x. Give me an ugly piece of crap that works well and costs less.
Plus, I personally just don’t like the feel of the iphone. Its too heavy and too boxy. Holding iphones since they went away from the curved back, it seems like they want to jump out of my hand and break themselves.
But the mac mini is ok. I can’t be mad at them for finally offering a cheaper device that lets you choose the monitor.
Not only that, it actually degrades the functionality of device in some cases:
http://photofocus.com/2014/05/04/the-nightmare-of-replacing-a-batte…
Yep, everything is rosy in Apple land.
With phones, tablets, TVs, monitors and screens on any computing device you spend all your usage time looking at them, so aesthetics should matter. Who wants to look at ugly?
What I don’t get is when people pretend that looks don’t matter; this is disingenuous stuff.
Aesthetics vary from person to person. It matters but hell not everybody is into Apples particular brand of minimalism.
Um, I’m looking at the screen the entire time, so who gives a shit? It’s not like I spend hours staring at my phone/tablet while masturbating over how sexy it is. If you do that, maybe you should get one of these:
https://s.yimg.com/os/publish-images/news/2014-06-28/08826320-fe6d-1…
Edited 2015-10-28 22:55 UTC
The company which emphasizes the appearance and ‘feel’ of their hardware is currently the largest company ( by market cap ) in the world – larger then Google and Microsoft combined.
So this certainly matters to a very large number of consumers, even if your not among them.
Edited 2015-10-28 22:36 UTC
Well, sure. But it’s a bit disingenuous of Phil Schiller to pretend people like me don’t exist, just because we’re not among those who consider the ‘sex appeal’ of a gadget to be the most important factor in their purchasing decision. THAT is the crowd that Apple caters to, and the fact that there are so many of them speaks volumes about how shallow and materialistic our society has become.
I buy bread from the local bread company. It costs about 20% more than the “cheap” national brands, but it is always fresher, tastes better, and lasts longer. So that makes me shallow? How is that any different?
This is what I find ironic…
I started buying Apple hardware almost exclusively after reluctantly buying a Mac Mini for doing iOS development about 5 or 6 yeasr ago (i.e. for work). It was nice. It ran windows great. No stupid wall wart, elegantly designed, small, quit, etc. etc. So I decided I would try one of their laptops and got a 13″ Macbook Pro for my next laptop. Same thing, loved the keyboard, its tough as nails, nothing creeks, nothing flexes, it performs well, screen is perfect, etc. etc.
Know what? After using that for about 2.5 years I decided to replace it with a Macbook Air. I Put it up on ebay and got about 70% of what I paid for it… Since then I got a Macbook, but my employer paid for that, so I kept the Air. But I looked on ebay and I could easilly get 50%-60% of what I paid for it 3 years ago.
My point is: If you take care of your hardware and keep it looking nice most of the time Apple hardware is actually cheaper in the long run. I have never, in 20 years and lots of computers, had a PC that I could do anything with after 3 years other than dismantling for parts or outright tossing in the garbage.
But yeah, I guess that makes me shallow…
It would be interesting to see, esp. with their mobile gadgets, if Apple started making their products with plastic that was just as durable as what they’re using now. I wonder if they’d lose any customers. I bet they’d lose quite a few …
I buy bread from the local bread company. It costs about 20% more than the “cheap” national brands, but it is always fresher, tastes better, and lasts longer. So that makes me shallow? How is that any different?[q/]
It’s different because you’re not buying the bread for how it looks. You’re buying the bread for the specific things that it’s made for – taste and freshness.
Most people who buy Apple products are not developers or designers and thus do not buy Apple products for the reasons you do. That is an empirical fact that you shouldn’t take personally.
In my family and friends circles I have 5 laptops 5 to 11 years old that are still being actively used. 2 of them are used by my parents (so they don’t have to share), 1 by a friend of mine and 2 of them by myself. I have bought all of them myself. For me, 3-year old laptop is a new laptop. If you need to throw away your laptops after only 3 years, you are doing something seriously wrong…
I still have an IBM X41 in daily use (circa 2005), my most used PC is a 2008 HP 8510w, also from the same era a Lenovo X200 (SSD upgrades inject new life into pretty much anything). I have a few machines that have been left behind by SSE2 requirements and headless machines running fine from the last millennium, coming up to the 20 years you mentioned.
Exactly. I am also a proud owner and daily user of both x41 and x200 (with SSD). Well, recently exchanged my x200 for a second x41 just because I love those x41 so much, I had to have second one 😀 It is maxed out on RAM (2GB) and has ultrafast CF card instead of that slow 4200RPM IBM HDD, so it is rather usable even today… x200 could have easily been my main production PC after putting SSD in it, but I also have a powerful desktop, so no need for a powerful laptop.
I’ve had my Thinkpad T60 for 8 or 9 years now. Tough machines. They probably don’t make them like they used to but I don’t know because most Lenovo’s I see are not T series anymore. Personally I like the black industrial design more as well. I think you maybe just used to buy cheap crap PCs and want to compare them to Mac’s that are twice as expensive. It’s true that there are a ton of cheap and poorly made PCs out there but there are not really any cheap Macs. Plenty of PC makers make nice high end PCs. Samsung actually makes some really sleak looking machines that Apple lovers ought to love.
Indeed. People should stop liking what you don’t like!
Edited 2015-10-29 00:44 UTC
I have yet to see a Apple product that I would want. They look nice but there will be roadblocks that will irritate the hell out of me in every one of them.
A friend once said “With Apple things are either easy or near impossible.”
It’s fine if you always find yourself in the easy side of the use cases.
Virtually any laptop that isn’t a bottom of the barrel piece of crap is fast enough for me. I can easily find a PC laptop that is way faster than my Macbook. So what? I don’t need faster – I just need fast enough…
Faster means about as much to me as looks mean to you – next to nothing. Making a fast computer is pretty damn boring really, use a decent CPU and put enough memory in it and an SSD. Everyone makes fast computers.
What I need is small and portable. I care way more about getting a really good screen, keyboard, and trackpad in the smallest package possible than speed. There are a few PC laptops that might make my short list (Dell XPS, Surface Book maybe), but I have had consistently good experiences with Apple hardware so I am reluctant at this point to switch back…
Anyway, you have posted about this lots of times before. This may be difficult for you to believe given your obvious tunnel vision, but most people do not buy computers based on performance. You are a member of a very small minority…
They buy what people they trust tell them to buy, or they buy what the idiot at BestBuy pushes them towards, because they don’t know better. They absolutely do not make informed purchases based on knowledge of the specs, that is a tiny minority.
What they will do, however, is use their experience with a brand for future purchases. Buy a Dell that turns out to be lemon? Never gonna buy a Dell again…
THAT is why Apple’s Mac sales keep growing when the rest of the industry is shrinking. It isn’t “sex appeal”, its that once people buy one they tend to keep buying them, because they don’t disappoint you. They are consistently well made and reliable machines. They cost a bit more, but you get what you pay for.
Read his quote again:
“I have never heard anyone say, ‘Because I like to keep my stuff in the cloud, I will take a cheap piece of hardware and I want it to be ugly.’
He didn’t say cheap and unreliable, nor did he say cheap and under performing, or unstable, or insecure. He said cheap and UGLY. So tell me again how it’s not about the sex appeal, when Apple keeps beating us over the head with it time and time again about how thin and beautiful their shit is? It’s practically all I hear from them.
They also beat us over the head time and time again about how fast they are, and about how reliable they are, and about how secure they are, and about how long the battery will last, etc. etc. etc. But since you are convinced that Apple is fixated on looks (hint: they’re not) all you seem to hear is that part…
Sure, they certainly care about how their products look, but it isn’t to the exclusion of everything else. Its not even really that important for most of their products, at this point it is simply a given.
I don’t expect the next Macbook model to wow me with its looks – I expect it to more or less look exactly like the one I have now. And the one before that. and the one before that… What I do expect is it will be better in some, as you like to use the work so much, tangible way – and it probably will be.
By that measure, I should have never bought a Mac after my first. The hard drive failed in the first two years. Certainly not after my second, which was never properly fixed under warranty. (Even though it was brought in several times, they insisted upon fixing the symptom rather than the cause. My second and my fourth both had issues with the power supply.
Now I’m not going to scream about how terrible Apple hardware is because of those experiences. I use Macs because of the functionality of the OS. The hardware is good and certainly a lot better than the typical consumer PC. Yet suggesting that you can’t find comparably, or better, designed PCs is misguided. Apple is one vendor that serves a limited part of the market. There is going to be some consistency in their products because of that. In contrast, there are many PC vendors and the largest vendors serve a huge chunk of the market. You’re bound to find a few rotten apples in the bunch simply because certain segments of the market are very cost conscious.
Anyone who isn’t filthy rich is cost conscious to some degree. That is what frustrates me about how people argue this. There is an implication that only wealthy people with money to burn buy Apple products, which is ridiculous. The vast a majority of Apple customers are not filthy rich, far from it.
Sure, Apple sells $10k Mac Pro models. I don’t know anyone who even owns a Mac Pro, hell Ive never even seen one in person myself. That is an item priced to only a certain segment of the market, no argument.
But they also sell $999 Macbook Airs and $1100 iMacs, and I see those everywhere. Yes, you can certainly buy a computer for $300, but those are not the computers Apple competes in the market against – they are competing with everyone else’s $1k computers.
Lots of people spend $1k or more on a computer, but somehow if you choose to spend it on an Apple you are rich, where as if you spend it on a Dell or a Lenovo or something else somehow that makes you cost conscious? Makes no sense to me at all.
Yeah, if you are reading this on a $300 laptop or an 6 year old hand-me-down HP with worn out keycaps I guess you have a right to say people buying $1k computers are rich. Im not trying to sound elitist, not everyone has that kind of money lying around.
But there are people reading this that have GPUs in their machines that cost nearly as much as my laptop… Im not saying your one of them or anything, but lets be real – if you spend $500 on a GPU you are just as shallow and materialistic as anyone spending $1k on a Mac, by which I mean you are neither. It just means you care about graphics performance enough to spend extra money to get it. I care enough about consistency, reliability, product lifespan, and an overall good experience to spend a little extra to get it.
So far, nobody has ever tangibly demonstrated to me why the looks of my trouser matter, and I’d be willing to give $100 to anyone who can do so. I recently bought a pair of perfectly good durable trousers made from good quality denim and they cost a lot a lot less than so called fashionable ones that apparently look better – as if that mattered when it comes to trousers. All that matters is that they cover my legs, don’t fall down and have the right number and size of pockets. Ok so that they are bright pink with lots of blue polka dots and have 42 inch flares at the bottom but why on earth would that affect their utility as a pair of trousers?
I have never seen any pink devices with blue polka dots. So try again, nimrod.
Some of the ugliest PCs from my point of view are so ugly they might as well been pink devices with blue polka dots! OK, we get it. You don’t care about how anything looks in this world. A large part of the rest of the world does!
I personally bought my MacBook Pro because it (to me) had the most attractive looks while still being able to deliver on the performance and other technical criteria I had. Oddly enough I do the same when buying a car, where its visual appearance from the outside also is part of the equation of what I buy.
Yeah, because iDevices can’t look ugly: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=iphone+cover+pink+blue+polka+dots…
So you are saying that you wouldn’t use a device that was pink with blue polka dots but you would wear trousers that were pink with blue polka dots?
The point I was making through my trouser metaphor is that people who loudly proclaim that appearance, design, aesthetics, mean nothing to them are not telling the truth. Everybody cares about those things in relation to almost all the objects in our lives. Everybody. Its just that some people are not conscious of the design and aesthetics choices they are actually making.
Its also very important not to confuse design with appearance. It would be a mistake to think that design is just the wrapping around some content. Design is about the totality of how we interact with an object.
Well, I think you’ve finally met the exception, my friend. Now, don’t get me wrong… if I were trying to decide between two things and everything else was equal, I guess i would pick the one I thought looked the best, but it would be the absolute LAST thing I would consider. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know what my latest car looked like until I already owned it. Had my dad go and pick it out since he knows a lot about cars, and paid him a ‘finders fee’, because I hate shopping for cars.
Edited 2015-10-29 21:59 UTC
Economics proves that people value aesthetics. The fact that, across all kinds of manufactured goods, consistently people pay a premium for products that are more “expensive looking” even if they don’t perform better (and often when they’re actually inferior) demonstrates that you’re the outlier.
I’ve spent a lot of time on iPads and reasonable bit of time on iPhones. Superficially they look good but functionally they are absolute shite.
Glass and aluminium are about the worst structural materials you could ever choose for portable devices. Aluminium is not a premium material. It is a very cheap and very soft metal that actually costs less than polycarbonate. Gorilla Glass was invented by Dow in the 1960s – it is not some miracle material invented by Apple boffins. The fact that most iPhones are kept in cases defeats the entire purpose of the metal body.
The shape of the iPhone defies all ergonomic principles.
The entire iOS interaction experience shows that the iPhone and iPad are nothing more than scaled up media players with an exceedingly clumsy interface.
El Capitan is the buggiest OS X release I have ever seen since I started using OS X (Tiger). Crashes everywhere and I have never been able to open Safari for more than a fraction of a second. 10.11.1 changed nothing
How is that?
Its rockstable here. Running on a MacMini and and MacBook. No problems whatsoever.
I did upgrades for the last three iterations of OS X , never a fresh install.
But maybe that would help in your case?
What hardware are you running it on?
Edited 2015-10-29 00:46 UTC
MacBook Pro 17″ early 2011
That is the age of my MacMini .. I’ve got an old 2008 MBP i did not upgrade jet. I think I will try this next week. We will see if this causes any problems.
I did a lot of tinkering wich my installations (custom kernel-molules, MacPorts Environment) but nothing seemed to bother the upgrade.
Did you use some strange Safari extensions?
If this is not the case I would rather go for a hardware problem like faulty memory.
According to the App Store you are not the only one running into troubles, but the Safari crashing still seems odd.
“Did you use some strange Safari extensions?”
In fact I don’use Safari, only occasionally. But now it doesn’t work.
“If this is not the case I would rather go for a hardware problem like faulty memory.”
Thanks. I can test the hardware
I haven’t had a problem with El Capitan in particular, but several El Capitan-era add-ons and products have certainly proven to be buggy for me. The Calendar app and Office 2016 in particular.
Apple’s laptops feel great as long as you don’t try to use them in scenarios where a really portable laptop is required. Try using MacBook whie riding a bus or a train while standing up, I challenge you. The same old ThkinPad x200 with extended battery will run circles around any MacBook in this scenario — not only you can get a solid grip on it from the back holding onto extended battery, but it also is incredibly solid while held like this. Keyboard is perfect because you can reach all but the very furthest corner keys without moving your hand. Trackpoint is just incomparably more precise than any touchpad in this case, too…
Also, MacBook is only great as long as you don’t have to do any seriously fast typing. No matter how long would you train to type fast on Apple-like keyboard, you will never ever reach same speed as you would reach using ThkinPad keyboards. Believe me, I have tried…
So, all in all, Apple hardware feels and is great only as long as you are using it on the desk in the office, or in a coffee shop. But, I think this is what 99,9% of people do with their laptops anyway.
Having said that, Apple laptops are probably the only ones that even come close to ThinkPads in terms of hardware and build quality. Every other modern laptop manufacturer produces absolute rubbish… Even respectable Dell Latitude became pile of crap lately.
Edited 2015-10-29 06:47 UTC
..but to say that “In any event, especially compared to other PC OEMs, Apple is so far ahead it’s not even a contest anymore, really.” that is going way to far. If I have a look at the best machines from Dell, Asus, Lenovo and Microsoft they are all extremely well build and beautiful.
Googles ChromeBook? Amazing.
Microsofts Surface Pro? Perfect.
Lenovo’s Yoga? Beauty.
Asus Zenbook? Wow!
Dells XPS? Infinity
Meanwhile I look at the MacBook that has the keyboard keys imprinted on the screen because it closes too tightly and the Apple pencil that has a battery that last a couple of hours and will surely not break of when you charge it like this: http://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Apple-Pen…
When all you make is expensive hardware you should of course only make good quality hardware. But is the opposite also true? Does good quality hardware and beautiful looks also mean it has to be expensive? I think some HP Chromebooks proof that that is not needed.
And do looks matter? Yes they do.
Tangible evidence 1: When a software rollout went wrong everyone got the Starter Edition of Windows (unactivated). We got an enormous amount of complaints that people couldn’t change their desktop background.
We got a few complaints that Windows was nagging for activation
And we got 1 complaint that the machine didn’t have the required features available.
Tangible evidence 2: My wife refers to her MacBook and my iPad as “friends” and preferred to use them over her better specced PC. It wasn’t until she put a custom Decal on her new Surface Pro 3 that she started to feel some love for a PC.
Tangible evidence 3: The whole aftermarket for phonecovers that hide beautiful and ugly phones alike
Tangible evidence 4: Whenever I use somebody else’s computer or phone I have to look up everything and am way less productive. With a customised homescreen/desktop I enjoy working with a machine much more and I am more productive.
I’ll stack my Dell XPS 13 against any available Macbook, including the Air.
Smaller, lighter, bigger battery, more pixels, great build quality, and an odd location for the camera.
OK– You have me on the last one. Except I don’t use it. So I still don’t care.
It’s really disingenuous to call Apple’s hardware far ahead of the competition, especially when considering devices at similar price points.
For instance, back when Apple was still selling the pudgy, slippery plastic-backed, fake chrome sporting iPhone 3GS, HTC was selling the beautiful and perfectly built Nexus One (or Desire).
Nokia’s N9 and it’s polycarbon unibody could easily stand up to any comparison with Apple’s iPhone 4.
Then there’s the many flaws that Apple’s designs have had over the years, such as the bulging plastic side of the original unibody macbook pro.
Yes, they make good stuff, but the tech media tends to gloss over their less successful products pretty quickly (iPhone 5c anyone?).
There is no competition between Mac hardware and the rest of OEM?
Really?
REALLY?
Keep outraged prices aside. Let’s check a couple of components:
1. Apple Keyboards are mediocre at best (macbook pro), pure shit at worst (air and, even worse, macbook 12). Insufficient travel to almost no travel, insufficient to non-existant resistance, etc. The best keyboards on market? Seriously? For touchtypist who type thousands of words per day, Apple keyboard are BAD choices or directly ridiculous ones
2. Displays. Apple Displays are standard at best, trashy at worst. Displays of macbook pro are not enough for people who really need a PREMIUM display. TN screens of macbook air are outrageous for a 1.000 plus euro on 2015. On 2011 they’re not acceptable, but on 2015, don’t use IPS is a bad joke.
3. ultrabooky-anorexic-thinny laptops. Is thinness a valid metric of a PC value? I admit that weight is an important value (non essential), but thinness???? A thin laptop has less air volume for refrigeration. Maintenance is directly impossible. All kind of margins are reduced, and therefore is not possible to expect more than, say, three years of probable life of a paper-razor-skinny laptop. some mm more offers more air volume, more margins, more resistance, etc.
4. Metal is not good nor “plastic” is not bad as “religious” terms. Indeed, aluminium is not the best option, given its shock resistance. Given that magnesium is a better option, some specific high-resistance polymers are better than any metal for laptop building. Lighter, more resistant to shock, isolating, etc. At least, outside components should be polycarbonate-based, given that part of the skeleton needs to be metallic.
So, please, affirming that Apple is beyond the capabilities of the rest of the OEMs is a bad joke, or a laughable sentence made by a non-technical user.