mkaltenecker's comments

Oy, since when are conspiracy nuts hanging out on HN?

You should see a psychologist.

You mean, extraterrestrial origin is by far the most absurd explanation and shouldn't even be accepted as a hypothesis, right?

It’s not so much about creating beautiful documents, it’s more about making the world a more beautiful place.

Everyone uses Word. I have to stare at Word documents all the time. Why can’t I be happy when they look a bit better?

That comparison doesn’t work. At all.

That seems like an excellent trade-off to me, a prime example of how Apple is great at picking the right trade-offs.

All what you said is completely irrelevant for the vast majority of people. So Apple doesn’t trade it off against the increased convenience both Spotlight and Versions give you.

How that? Android would be 183°, iOS would be 122°, RIM would be 32°. You could easily see that Android is slightly above 50% – but I’m not really sure how the iOS marketshare would look markedly different.

Since 50% isn’t really a very important threshold (though that could be argued) I would very much argue against using a pie chart. (I prefer areas or lengths to angles.) Plus, a pie chart wouldn’t make it easy to add platform subdivisions.

It’s quite astonishing that so many people here prefer readability over correctness. What is wrong with you? Readability is optional. Correctness is not.

That’s obviously the wrong tradeoff. Never outright manipulate your data to make it more readable! If you can’t make your data readable enough without manipulating it you just can’t present your data that way. Period. Find a better way.

(I do not think there is any malice involved, though. Just pure stupidity. I mean, look at the amount of people around here arguing for readability over correctness. If they are out here, some are also working for Nielsen.)

Fashion can't be trademarked or copyrighted. You can slavishly copy a Chanel handbag if you don't also copy the logo. That's why many expensive brands use their logos in patterns on their handbags.

But why the hell should that be the case? Look at iFixit’s teardown. It didn’t look at all like the battery was firmly glued in.

What’s wrong with that if you know beforehand?

Not everything will be on Kickstarter. This is not a systematic push to move responsibility to the customers. It’s just a fun distraction.

So you completely agree that it's possible to replace the battery in a working rMBP and that it is not in any way permanently affixed to the case? The rest are irrelevant (for the purpose of this discussion) implementation details.

Yay!

But Apple knew about the consequence beforehand. It’s easy to predict. (I would expect that even companies which are not all that competent can foresee something simple like that.) I really doubt that’s the reason.

I would be interested in your source for that. Batteries are already made of very many different materials, it’s not as though glue is some sort of special material. (The label of, say, AAA batteries is glued to the metal container. The label of the Li-Ion battery of my Nokia phone is also glued to the plastic container. Maybe Apple uses a bit more glue – but glue shouldn’t be something completely new in battery recycling.)

I don’t see this as positive PR by any stretch of the imagination. This looks like Apple wanted to naughty things, got caught and had to reverse direction. Not positive.

If any conspiracy theory is plausible at all then it’s that they wanted to make EPEAT be more willing to change their standards – but I would imagine that even that is something you would rather do behind closed doors (maybe they did and it didn’t work).

(Not at all relevant to recycling, but $200 ain’t a bad price. You can expect to pay about $150 for batteries from other manufacturers, and those are often not as high-quality batteries. Batteries are expensive. In general, not just from Apple. It just sucks that you have to send your damn laptop in and not be able to access it for some time.

Exception accepted! I don’t think anyone has a problem with that kind of use. I certainly don’t.

So, yes, sometimes “retarded“ can be a neutral term.

Hm, I tend to think Apple (or any company, really) is clever enough to foresee the obvious consequences of policy changes.

This is one of those. Apple knew that certain government agencies are required to purchase only EPEAT certified hardware. They knew they would lose that business. And they nevertheless decided for the change, knowing that consequence.

That leads me to think that Apple changed direction because of other consequences they did not expect and (apparently) could not predict, in this case the public outrage.

I’m not sure, I think laptops have become longer lasting, more appliance like. I think that’s a very positive thing for the majority of people.

The only big issue I see is the battery which will definitely break. Those things have a limited lifetime (shorter than, say, five years you at least would want your laptop to make it) and there is nothing you can change about that.

That’s what I tried to explain. There is one less protective layer in the Retina MacBook compared to other MacBooks – but the same amount of protective layers compared to matte MacBook Pros. I don’t think it makes a difference.

In the Retina MacBook Pro the glass is an integral part of the display, not some separate piece glued on just cause – as far as I understand it. If it weren’t there, there would be a piece of plastic glued to the display. (And since LCDs already contain glass elsewhere I don’t think the extra glass changes the equation much.)

You would think it’s not special or worth mentioning, wouldn’t you, but it actually kind of is. Many companies respond to a crisis with very confused initial communication before they get their shit together and can internally agree on a message and strategy.

Apple has been pretty consistent in being able to just stay silent until they really have something to say. (I think that has more to do with their general lack of chattiness than anything else, though.)