I interpreted that comment as a jab at the PC industry. The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade. Isn't that the correct interpretation, considering the whole point of bringing that up is because they're positioning a new device intended to replace the PC? I seriously doubt it's intended to mean (to quote the article) "LOL poor people".
Granted, this interpretation would make for a boring thinkpiece and would not get me to #1 on HN.
>> The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade
Compelling reason why I had to upgrade my iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 and original iPad after less than 3 years? Painfully slow and unusable.
Well if the compelling reason to upgrade is "painfully slow and unusable", then maybe a >= 5 year old PC that still works isn't a bad thing. If I'm not mistaken, my 2011 MBP's quad core i7 can still outperform the CPUs in today's Macbook Airs (the most popular Mac notebooks) in terms of pure processing power.
> I seriously doubt it's intended to mean (to quote the article) "LOL poor people".
He didn't mean to but this is the general reflection of the culture that permeates Apple as a company and the bubble in which they live.
I remember once one of my wealthy friends saying "I don't understand why people live in one bedroom apartments". I stared at her for a solid minute to determine if she was joking but no, she was dead serious. She genuinely did not understand. She was born and raised in a wealthy family and she just had lost track of the rest of the world.
Schiller and the Apple execs have similar blinders on and once in a while, the mask drops in a public speech because the speech writers and their proofreaders have similar blinders on and didn't realize the enormity of the implication.
I don't think that it means "LOL poor people" either. But I do think that it's bullshit marketing talk. Apple is perfectly happy to be proud (rightly, I think) of the enduring utility of older pieces of Apple hardware -- but if some other company's hardware continues to be perfectly serviceable for 5 years, that's sad?
Also, if you have a 5 year old PC that's genuinely not serving your needs any more, sure, you could pay $600 for an iPad Pro that also probably won't serve your needs, or you could pay around $400 for a new PC that will serve your needs.
Yup. Clock-for-clock, Skylake is about 10-20% faster than Sandy Bridge, IPC improvements have been <5% per year. The apparent improvement since that time has been slowly cranking up the stock clockrates. If you overclock a Sandy Bridge to >4 GHz, which is extremely reasonable, then it keeps up just fine with a Skylake in most tasks.
CPU performance is largely "good enough" for most users. OS bloat has finally stopped: Win8.1 is just as fast as Win7 (and is more stable) and Win10 is faster and skinnier. Most users don't do anything intensive and probably wouldn't even notice if you substituted in a low-end processor. For those that do have big needs, GPU offloading has taken off in a big way.
This is kind of unfortunate in other respects. CPU performance (especially single-threaded) is extremely important for high refresh rates. At 144hz there's no margin for any weak link in the system. But I recognize that I'm kind of a niche user in that regard.
Agreed that the "LOL poor people" is probably not the intention however I am sure the internet will have a field day with it. With that in mind it will likely generate some really interesting discussions around the quality and longevity of Apples products.
Imho smart phone tech is plateauing and I get the feeling Apple is going to struggle more and more to justify the prices they charge for iPhones and other products. My iPhone 5 (4/5 years of use) broke 3 weeks ago, and after reviewing prices of phones I just couldn't bring myself to spend 3/4 times the amount on a phone when I can get one "just as good", but Android.
In fact I was chatting to a friend who recently also went from iPhone to Android, something he said that I took to heart was that spending more than R3500 (about $230) on a cellphone is an unnecessary luxury. I am willing to bet that limit could be pushed down too.
I built my desktop from scratch (for the first time) in 2005, added a couple components from other computers as they died, and still use it with no issues. I've thought about upgrading components in it, but since they haven't died yet, and it still works just fine, there's just not much of a point.
Just bought a like-new PC on ebay for $200. It's not about being poor because anyone who says they can't scrape up $200 if they had to, is lying to you.
It's the shocking fact that (especially if cash strapped) you can live your life, without constantly buying more and newer things.
Of course Apple's stance is, you must buy our new products every year. But I can get on Facebook and email and whatever else on my $200 PC just fine - the value isn't there for alot of people.
Yes. The irony is that iPhone and iPad are no better as explained in the article(s)[0].
"Based on my experience with Apple hardware newer than my laptop, I’m guessing it’s the former. Since 2011, I’ve bought a couple of iPhones (both dead), numerous connectors and power cords (all dead; I’ve switched to knockoffs), and a replacement laptop battery (currently half-dead and in need of replacement)."
I agree with your interpretation. It would seem to have more to do with the slowing sales numbers for tablets as well as the incorrect assumption we would be in a post-PC era at this point. That day will come eventually and while large tablets may not be the answer, Apple is certainly hoping it will be. There has to be a good bit of concern at Apple that they are still largely dependent on the iPhone.
There is quite a large cohort of PC users with minimal needs beyond a web browser for email, news and some basic entertainment (Youtube and simple gaming). Google has also done an amazing job with the Chrome ecosystem providing web services that meet all of these needs.
As someone sitting at a nearly 5 year old Macbook Pro, I took the comment as an off hand throwaway. I understand not liking the comment, but this isn't news. A company thinks everyone should be using the latest of their products. Oh no.
I swear, if a modern tech company went up and said 'We think you should buy our product", someone would start yelling about how its insulting how a company is endorising capitalism and materialism.
We've gone from "Won't somebody think of the children" to "Won't somebody think of every single possible group that is possible to somehow offend in some way"
What apple is saying today is something that it has always said - but its only recently that people in america are too poor to buy american products.
I grew up around windows and linux, and whenever I tell that in a job interview - people think I am not being serious since "real developers" use mac.
In my first software job - I was told to abandon my personal cheap linux and use the company's brand new expensive apple - even though I was more productive on my cheap linux.
Apple has always been like that, its just that most people who come from money do not hear it.
Edit:
Also you will notice this in poorer countries - a strong ecosystem for recycling exists everywhere outside of the US/UK.
When I brought my first bike in the UK, I wanted to repair it and was told to just ditch it and get a new one !
It was extremely odd to me since I expected that bike to last at-least 20 years.
When my 3 year old laptop stopped working - I had it repaired rather than buy a newer one - even though repairing was almost as expensive as getting a new one. It just fell really wrong ditching a laptop rather than repairing it.
Maybe you are right - western societies do worship materialism.
It's not that poor people are offended that apple makes fun of them for not buying their products.
It's that we live in a world that systemically vilifies and denigrates poor people for not lifting themselves up by their bootstraps, learning programming, and starting a company and solving income inequality on their own.
And while our culture is collectively shitting on poor people, we are lauding the great entrepreneurs and business people at apple and the likes for being objectively better.
That is why it's offensive. Not because poor people are offended, but because is SHOULD offend you at how obtuse it is.
It's sad that a full five years later, CPU performance/USD has barely moved at all. RAM is half the cost now, SSDs a quarter the cost. Not sure about how GPUs have developed?
(Edit: The GTX 960 which today also costs 200 USD seems to be about twice as fast as the GTX 460.)
The average person goes to Walmart/Bestbuy/BJ's/Staples and spends $475 on some shitbox laptop. The 25th percentile user (ie. millions of people) probably spent $275-325.
That average person who bought that average PC in 2011 has an aging HP/Dell/Asus laptop with a failing battery, $30 Celeron or AMD processor, 2GB memory, integrated graphics, a 500GB 5400rpm disk and integrated graphics.
I have an even shittier PC than you (Celeron 2.6 GHz for 40 USD, no dedicated GPU) and it is still absolutely fine for everything I do (web development, image processing in python, typing papers in TeX, editing images in Gimp, ...).
If I had to upgrade one component it would be my 22" monitor which is 6 or 7 years old but even for this there is no need.
And replacing my PC with an iPad Pro? lol, wtf? No TeX, no Python/matplotlib, no SublimeText/vim/emacs, no real filesystem, ...
btw, I think you can drop a SSD into almost any shitty PC/Laptop and make it usable again. Before SSDs I had to update my PC quite often because it always felt slow, but SSD have been an absolute game changer for me. I even revived my old trusty T61s by adding a SSD and now it is good again.
GPUs have developed a lot. I had a high-end card a couple of years ago, and now I can barely run Elite: Dangerous. For the upcoming VR headsets I would definitely need a new GPU. Apple doesn't even have a computer on offer that would be powerful enough for the VR headsets (Oculus/Vive).
8GB RAM is also the bare minimum.
GPUs are much better now since GTX 460 but that's all you'd need to upgrade in this computer (and some storage) if you wanted to play current AAA games in 1080p or even at 1440p.
The head of marketing thinks that using a competitor's product is "sad".
In response, this article calls Apple:
"Insensitive". Offensive. "Hypocritical". "Insulting". And worst of all, promoting inequality by building high quality, expensive products and forgetting the needs of the poor.
Really this isn't terribly offensive. They're selling a product they think is superior, in their [marketing] minds the world would be a better place if you were pulled from the womb, slapped on the ass, and handed an iPad Pro, to be renewed every generation of gadget.
The Apple presentation stage is not the Basilica of St Peter. These are marketing pronouncements, not moral ones and analyzing them as such is such intense naval gazing that it's actually bad for your neck. If Apple hates the poor it's for no reason other than that they're outside their customer base.
Perhaps I have some wires crossed from too much time as a sysadmin, but I take a 5 year old (+) PC (or any machine, really) as a mark of pride, not any bit of shame whatsoever. It speaks to a high degree of reliability which often speaks well of the operator (even if just "choosing robust hardware" is a component of this)
Some stories to add some color to this:
Ran a very primitive file sharing server for my university on a dual P(2 or 3, don't quite remember) machine that was probably around a decade old by the time they finally ended up retiring it.
My home fileserver is a ~10 TB 4U monster, running on (conveniently) 5 year old hardware and very boring FBSD. Outside of moving apartments, it has not had unplanned downtime once, I will continue using it as long as this is true and would be sad if I didn't get another good few years out of it.
I _WISH_ I could get the same lifetime out of desktop PCs but I tend to find assorted parts failing at an asymptotic rate around 3-5 years. The world in which we all use <5 year old hardware is a sad one, to be avoided, to my eyes. (To clarify, I don't mean this in any luddite sense, I don't believe tech should stop moving forward, but I long for more robust products with longer viable lifespans, such that one can make a choice to upgrade rather than waiting for the inevitable.)
I'm not a fan of moralistic handwringing, particularly when it's brought about by uncharitable interpretations of what is clearly just marketing. This and the related articles are such poor quality that it makes me sad to see them get so much traction here. It's the sort of thing I'd expect at dailytech or slashdot.
Ive had that exact same feeling since my iPad 1's life was effectively ended by software updates. It was the quickest device to become obsolete I've ever owned.
We definitely need a strong reduction in the introduction of new technology that replaces old, still working hardware. This is so wasteful. Along with this, we need centrally planned production of consumer goods to control the pace of change and prevent overproduction, and these goods need to be have government set prices to insure that everyone can afford them.
It is ironic that Apple is mentioning this as I believe this is going to spell the end of their era of massive profits. Phones now are getting to the state where much like PCs, the older phone is good enough, and the new phone is not substantially better. There will always be people buying a phone for .2ghz more CPU or some slightly higher res screen, but the days of rapid evolution of mobile devices are over, and Apple is going to have problems selling someone a $6-800 phone every year or 2.
But with new OS versions, older phones quickly start to show their age. An iphone 4 or iphone 4s on the latest version of iOS it supports is really sluggish and slow (and no easy way to put iOS6/7 back on it)
If there's something sad about that fact, it's that the industry has delivered so little value in the past 5 years that not many people feel compelled to upgrade!
Actually, my main development tower is about nine years old.
And in that time, I've upgraded the processor, doubled the memory, upgraded the hard drive to an SSD, switched the video card twice, upped the number of connected monitors from one to three, and upgraded the OS from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 10.
It was pretty leading edge when I built it, and it's still pretty leading edge today. What's sad is the expectation that I should throw my computer away every 18 months.
Jesus christ, they are in the business of selling computers. This faux outrage over a salesman trying to sell his computers is gross - what's wrong with people?
Now watch as every blog tries to scramble to see who has the most outrage and who is the largest victim.
Some people need to feel offended just as I need my morning coffee.
I'm not even counting how old is my pc/laptop and that's the thing I like about PCs - there's hardly anything new that triggers my Gear Acquisition Syndrome.
I still use my 2009 MBP. I upgraded to an SSD drive and 8 gigs of ram. I don't game on it, but I can do almost all of my development on it. I'll admit it's slower then my 2013 MPB at work, but I see no reason to spend more money on a working computer.
My second computer is a Chromebook. My oldest daughter uses it for school work and we couldn't be happier. It's much better then our iPad (which we don't use anymore).
You know what makes me really happy? Any computer being used for fun/interesting/productive things, not just 'the latest ones'.
As a die-hard retrocomputing enthusiast with far more old computers in my basement than new, I'm biased. But I sure think that the time has come for the compute industry to start highlighting the need for lesser computing power, but yet still more productive computing.
8-bit computers are awesome. 16-bit machines superb! Get yourself set up with these systems and you can entertain yourself for hours and hours. 8-bit is a great way to learn software development - 2 hours of 8-bit coding a week will keep you sharper than sharp when the time comes to go back to the hipstertools-de-jour. (I kid, I kid.)
Point is this, folks: old computers never die - their users do.
[+] [-] mikehearn|10 years ago|reply
Granted, this interpretation would make for a boring thinkpiece and would not get me to #1 on HN.
[+] [-] slantyyz|10 years ago|reply
Compelling reason why I had to upgrade my iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 and original iPad after less than 3 years? Painfully slow and unusable.
Well if the compelling reason to upgrade is "painfully slow and unusable", then maybe a >= 5 year old PC that still works isn't a bad thing. If I'm not mistaken, my 2011 MBP's quad core i7 can still outperform the CPUs in today's Macbook Airs (the most popular Mac notebooks) in terms of pure processing power.
[+] [-] incepted|10 years ago|reply
He didn't mean to but this is the general reflection of the culture that permeates Apple as a company and the bubble in which they live.
I remember once one of my wealthy friends saying "I don't understand why people live in one bedroom apartments". I stared at her for a solid minute to determine if she was joking but no, she was dead serious. She genuinely did not understand. She was born and raised in a wealthy family and she just had lost track of the rest of the world.
Schiller and the Apple execs have similar blinders on and once in a while, the mask drops in a public speech because the speech writers and their proofreaders have similar blinders on and didn't realize the enormity of the implication.
[+] [-] aetherson|10 years ago|reply
Also, if you have a 5 year old PC that's genuinely not serving your needs any more, sure, you could pay $600 for an iPad Pro that also probably won't serve your needs, or you could pay around $400 for a new PC that will serve your needs.
[+] [-] Mikeb85|10 years ago|reply
Or maybe the PC world did so well 5 years ago that Apple hasn't provided them a compelling reason to switch to an iPad?
[+] [-] paulmd|10 years ago|reply
CPU performance is largely "good enough" for most users. OS bloat has finally stopped: Win8.1 is just as fast as Win7 (and is more stable) and Win10 is faster and skinnier. Most users don't do anything intensive and probably wouldn't even notice if you substituted in a low-end processor. For those that do have big needs, GPU offloading has taken off in a big way.
This is kind of unfortunate in other respects. CPU performance (especially single-threaded) is extremely important for high refresh rates. At 144hz there's no margin for any weak link in the system. But I recognize that I'm kind of a niche user in that regard.
[+] [-] markatkinson|10 years ago|reply
Imho smart phone tech is plateauing and I get the feeling Apple is going to struggle more and more to justify the prices they charge for iPhones and other products. My iPhone 5 (4/5 years of use) broke 3 weeks ago, and after reviewing prices of phones I just couldn't bring myself to spend 3/4 times the amount on a phone when I can get one "just as good", but Android.
In fact I was chatting to a friend who recently also went from iPhone to Android, something he said that I took to heart was that spending more than R3500 (about $230) on a cellphone is an unnecessary luxury. I am willing to bet that limit could be pushed down too.
[+] [-] npatrick04|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnud|10 years ago|reply
I understand this is sad for Apple, but I don't see how it's sad for me?
[+] [-] dpweb|10 years ago|reply
It's the shocking fact that (especially if cash strapped) you can live your life, without constantly buying more and newer things.
Of course Apple's stance is, you must buy our new products every year. But I can get on Facebook and email and whatever else on my $200 PC just fine - the value isn't there for alot of people.
[+] [-] ignoramous|10 years ago|reply
"Based on my experience with Apple hardware newer than my laptop, I’m guessing it’s the former. Since 2011, I’ve bought a couple of iPhones (both dead), numerous connectors and power cords (all dead; I’ve switched to knockoffs), and a replacement laptop battery (currently half-dead and in need of replacement)."
[0] https://www.techinasia.com/awkward-moment-apple-mocked-good-...
[+] [-] treebeard901|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neovive|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pier25|10 years ago|reply
What if instead a Mercedes representative had said:
> People with cheap 5 year old cars is sad
Just before presenting its new car?
Would you think the same?
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sudosushi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NikolaeVarius|10 years ago|reply
We've gone from "Won't somebody think of the children" to "Won't somebody think of every single possible group that is possible to somehow offend in some way"
[+] [-] wrong_variable|10 years ago|reply
What apple is saying today is something that it has always said - but its only recently that people in america are too poor to buy american products.
I grew up around windows and linux, and whenever I tell that in a job interview - people think I am not being serious since "real developers" use mac.
In my first software job - I was told to abandon my personal cheap linux and use the company's brand new expensive apple - even though I was more productive on my cheap linux.
Apple has always been like that, its just that most people who come from money do not hear it.
Edit:
Also you will notice this in poorer countries - a strong ecosystem for recycling exists everywhere outside of the US/UK. When I brought my first bike in the UK, I wanted to repair it and was told to just ditch it and get a new one !
It was extremely odd to me since I expected that bike to last at-least 20 years.
When my 3 year old laptop stopped working - I had it repaired rather than buy a newer one - even though repairing was almost as expensive as getting a new one. It just fell really wrong ditching a laptop rather than repairing it.
Maybe you are right - western societies do worship materialism.
[+] [-] praptak|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LesZedCB|10 years ago|reply
It's that we live in a world that systemically vilifies and denigrates poor people for not lifting themselves up by their bootstraps, learning programming, and starting a company and solving income inequality on their own.
And while our culture is collectively shitting on poor people, we are lauding the great entrepreneurs and business people at apple and the likes for being objectively better.
That is why it's offensive. Not because poor people are offended, but because is SHOULD offend you at how obtuse it is.
[+] [-] gracenotes|10 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure that is part of the job description of marketers.
[+] [-] johansch|10 years ago|reply
- Intel Core i5 2500K, 3.3 GHz, quad-core (200 USD)
- 8B (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz C9 (100 USD)
- 120GB 2.5" SSD Intel X25-M G2 (200 USD)
- GeForce GTX 460 1GB (200 USD)
It's sad that a full five years later, CPU performance/USD has barely moved at all. RAM is half the cost now, SSDs a quarter the cost. Not sure about how GPUs have developed?
(Edit: The GTX 960 which today also costs 200 USD seems to be about twice as fast as the GTX 460.)
[+] [-] Spooky23|10 years ago|reply
The average person goes to Walmart/Bestbuy/BJ's/Staples and spends $475 on some shitbox laptop. The 25th percentile user (ie. millions of people) probably spent $275-325.
That average person who bought that average PC in 2011 has an aging HP/Dell/Asus laptop with a failing battery, $30 Celeron or AMD processor, 2GB memory, integrated graphics, a 500GB 5400rpm disk and integrated graphics.
[+] [-] yoodenvranx|10 years ago|reply
If I had to upgrade one component it would be my 22" monitor which is 6 or 7 years old but even for this there is no need.
And replacing my PC with an iPad Pro? lol, wtf? No TeX, no Python/matplotlib, no SublimeText/vim/emacs, no real filesystem, ...
btw, I think you can drop a SSD into almost any shitty PC/Laptop and make it usable again. Before SSDs I had to update my PC quite often because it always felt slow, but SSD have been an absolute game changer for me. I even revived my old trusty T61s by adding a SSD and now it is good again.
[+] [-] facepalm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piva00|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Grishnakh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Too|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielvf|10 years ago|reply
The head of marketing thinks that using a competitor's product is "sad".
In response, this article calls Apple: "Insensitive". Offensive. "Hypocritical". "Insulting". And worst of all, promoting inequality by building high quality, expensive products and forgetting the needs of the poor.
It's an article designed to produce a response.
[+] [-] BWStearns|10 years ago|reply
The Apple presentation stage is not the Basilica of St Peter. These are marketing pronouncements, not moral ones and analyzing them as such is such intense naval gazing that it's actually bad for your neck. If Apple hates the poor it's for no reason other than that they're outside their customer base.
[+] [-] existencebox|10 years ago|reply
Some stories to add some color to this: Ran a very primitive file sharing server for my university on a dual P(2 or 3, don't quite remember) machine that was probably around a decade old by the time they finally ended up retiring it. My home fileserver is a ~10 TB 4U monster, running on (conveniently) 5 year old hardware and very boring FBSD. Outside of moving apartments, it has not had unplanned downtime once, I will continue using it as long as this is true and would be sad if I didn't get another good few years out of it.
I _WISH_ I could get the same lifetime out of desktop PCs but I tend to find assorted parts failing at an asymptotic rate around 3-5 years. The world in which we all use <5 year old hardware is a sad one, to be avoided, to my eyes. (To clarify, I don't mean this in any luddite sense, I don't believe tech should stop moving forward, but I long for more robust products with longer viable lifespans, such that one can make a choice to upgrade rather than waiting for the inevitable.)
[+] [-] oldmanjay|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colund|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pengwin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zepto|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielvf|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] specialp|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookiemonsta|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 21|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tombert|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dublinben|10 years ago|reply
Tinder Adds “Swipe The Vote” so you can hook up with your candidate.
You decide whether either of these are more deserving.
[+] [-] agentgt|10 years ago|reply
IMO He's catering to the audience of Apple enthusiasts (who are the ones that watch Apple events generally) and not making fun of poor people.
Its sort of analogous to when Jobs said: "It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell" -- about iTunes on Windows computers
Oh so Jobs thinks Windows users are Evil since they are in hell right?
[+] [-] apatters|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnhattan|10 years ago|reply
And in that time, I've upgraded the processor, doubled the memory, upgraded the hard drive to an SSD, switched the video card twice, upped the number of connected monitors from one to three, and upgraded the OS from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 10.
It was pretty leading edge when I built it, and it's still pretty leading edge today. What's sad is the expectation that I should throw my computer away every 18 months.
[+] [-] sergiotapia|10 years ago|reply
Now watch as every blog tries to scramble to see who has the most outrage and who is the largest victim.
[+] [-] dcustodio|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c0achmcguirk|10 years ago|reply
signed, people who take offense at a off-hand remark like this.
Grow some thicker skin and stop wasting my screen real estate with irrelevant non-stories like this.
[+] [-] imaffett|10 years ago|reply
My second computer is a Chromebook. My oldest daughter uses it for school work and we couldn't be happier. It's much better then our iPad (which we don't use anymore).
[+] [-] studentrob|10 years ago|reply
There are now two articles on the HN front page about this utterly pedantic topic which boils down to marketing. Unbelievable.
[+] [-] fit2rule|10 years ago|reply
As a die-hard retrocomputing enthusiast with far more old computers in my basement than new, I'm biased. But I sure think that the time has come for the compute industry to start highlighting the need for lesser computing power, but yet still more productive computing.
8-bit computers are awesome. 16-bit machines superb! Get yourself set up with these systems and you can entertain yourself for hours and hours. 8-bit is a great way to learn software development - 2 hours of 8-bit coding a week will keep you sharper than sharp when the time comes to go back to the hipstertools-de-jour. (I kid, I kid.)
Point is this, folks: old computers never die - their users do.