this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Apple
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I have a lot of apple kit - I appreciate their over-engineered approach to a lot of hardware, and I like their approach to privacy.
But they do make mistakes in design - the puck, the aerials, butterfly keyboards, unrepairability of design…
And one thing I really hate is their response to those errors. Its almost always to blame the user. I just wish they would be honest.
There's nothing over-engineered in Apple products. They are the least amount of effort and maximum amount of polish to dazzle the masses so people think price is justified and give feeling of quality.
Throughout the history they have failed to fix common and known issues in generations of laptops. They chose cheaper version of aluminium which caused the bending of the phones. They reduced cost of manufacturing by removing a single drop of glue beneath a single chip which resulted in number of their plus sized phones to lose touch functionality.
Over-engineering would mean devices are robust, easy to repair and almost never need a repair. Apple is anything but that and their solution is usually to suggest buying a new device or charge you like you are buying a new device. All you need to do is see Louis' video on repeated engineering failures from Apple. Granted it's an old video, but if you watch the video you will see Apple doesn't really improve quality, just reduce price.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I think their engineering is pretty good, personally. I travelled a lot with a laptop from 2000 to about 2020, and my windows laptops would always die after 2 years - hinges, cracks in the body, screen cracks and so on. Moving to apple’s laptops in about 2011 meant I got 5 years out of each (air then a pro). I’m now on a second pro, but the old pro is still trucking along.
I’m not going to defend all their decisions, there’s a lot of questionable stuff in there (keyboards, sticking to lightening, mice…). But their hardware, both laptop, mini and pro) has been solid.
You are right about repairability. I think that has never been a key feature for them hence the glue, security screws and other crap. Fortunately there are governments around the world that are pushing for repairability, consistency with usb-c, replaceable batteries and more. So I think all manufacturers will be upping their game now, which is awesome.
All manufacturers reduce cost - supply chain management and manufacturability are the processes to drive that. Apple are really good at the supply chain side, that was Tim Cook’s focus as COO. What I don’t like is that they are able to keep their incredibly high margins (far higher than any other manufacturer) thanks to their software, interoperability and walled garden.
I got sick of my Windows laptops falling apart tbh, needed a laptop that could actually handle being used as a laptop, and not destroy itself over time from heat cycling and excessively stiff hinges.
This ended up driving me to purchase a used Mid 2012 MBP (a1278) and running Linux on it because I'm not really a MacOS person.
Why this model? Replaceable RAM, replaceable battery, replaceable SSD, disk drive can be removed to make the machine lighter OR outright replaced with an additional SSD/hard drive.
Louis Rossmann has a gigantic library of repair videos for this model, which was another major contributor driving my decision.
I still use it today - it's charging beside me with one of those USB C PD to Magsafe 1 adapters 😅
That was an awesome laptop with upgradable components. Nice!
IIRC weren’t some of the peripheral drivers a bit dodgy.
Yepp, I really like it personally.
Sadly some are, but neither are dealbreakers for me - the SD card slot runs at USB2.0 speeds most of the time, the Wifi driver has to be modified and recompiled to run on newer kernels. Aside from those I haven't had any problems really.
I also swapped out my keyboard drivers for an alternative that turns the Eject button into a "delete" key, and swaps around two of the modifier keys for a more familiar layout.
I find it pretty neat that the caps lock light is programmable, and that the machine has an IR receiver!
That caps lock light is so cool, but I guess it makes sense since keyboard drivers need to change it.
A great form factor with a superior OS (IMHO).
In your case am afraid it is survivor bias. We are not talking about individual cases here. If you want to go case by case basis I have never had ThinkPad last fewer than 10 years. In fact I never had ThinkPad die on me. But they do break just like any other machine. Many of Apple's laptops had issues when you used them too hard because they would blow hot air on glued parts or parts sensitive to heat shortening their life span. I strongly recommend watching video I've linked.
It could well be survivorship bias, but I did represent the examples as personal. Having said that - I did a quick google for « laptops with longest lifespan » and most of the reviews had apple at #1 or 2.
In common with you, most of my previous laptops (5 or 6) were thinkpads like yours, usually the tablet style for OneNote (which is awesome BTW). They never survived the rigours of the road. Perhaps that’s why I had a different result to yours - I used to travel 3-6 months a year.
Apple products are opposite of hardware porn. How can you call it as such when their solution for poor choice of solder compound, which resulted in GPU desoldering, was to glue piece of rubber which pushed on the GPU? How can you call it porn, when their SATA cables are constantly failing from 2011 models, constantly? How can you call it hardware porn when Apple cheaps out on single drop of glue to hold touch driver chip not to get broken resulting in Max series of phones massively dying after couple of years of use?
What you sound like is a victim of great marketing campaign.
Then I apologize and strongly recommend you take a look at Framework laptop. That thing is truly modular to a point that you can upgrade CPU on a laptop, chose your own ports and repair pretty much everything. And machine comes in a metal body, very thing and lightweight.
I’m an old Linux-head (actually started out developing tools for 10’s of variants of unix - compilation flags providing custom versions). I would love to have my mac mini running linux though, that would be awesome. I don’t think you can yet.
You'd never be able to upgrade it though.
Don't they have soldered RAM?
They sure do, and its a complete bastard. Soldered ram and disk.
My latest laptop has 96GB RAM (I run a lot of VMs) and 4TB SSD. I think I should get the full 5 years out of it.
The old ones didn't.
I actually have one right here sitting in front of me which was used to develop iOS application (as Apple forces you contractually to use Apple machines for, at the very least do the final build of an iOS app to push to their store) and I actually bought a lower specced model and upgraded the memory myself as that was the cheaper option.
However if I'm not mistaken the model generation after that (or maybe 2 generations) came with soldered memory.
On repairability of design is not a mistake it's a feature.
Repairability has just never been a high priority for them (which is bad). But it is becoming so, thanks to various governments forcing the issue.
Who... Who's gonna tell em?
I am quite sure this is a legal issue. If they admit the mistake, probably customers in many countries would be allowed a free replacement or refund. And then shareholders would sue the company because it is mandatory to work on maximising profit.
Sad, but true. If a CEO is not maximising profit, then the shareholders can sue, and the board (who represent the shareholders) can replace the CEO.
I wish this structure had a longer term view so that a CEO can also do what’s right - such as make decisions that might lose money now, but have a greater long term value (where value is not only defined by share price, but also things like goodwill, reputation etc).
Unrepairability isn't a mistake. It's a feature (for Apple).
I wouldn't call their projects overengineered. They're overdesigned.
That's kinda the big difference between apple and everything else. Apple products are impeccablly designed with engineering and flexibility of use as an afterthought at best.
It's why they're often years behind on the actual tech, but have it implemented in a very clean, "pretty" manner.
Other companies get the tech out there and offer more flexibility for the power users, but they don't have the polish off Apple products.
No doubt. I'm not an Apple fan, but I do respect most of their engineering/designs. And it's too bad that all companies were more honest.