Tuesday, April 5, 2016

I'm soured on Apple

Apple computers that is. I have an iPhone 5 which no longer communicates with my much older MacBook. I took it to the "friendly" Apple store and they flat out told me "dude, you need to upgrade your computer." No genius fix. No advice. No nothing. Just a smug admission that they believe in planned obsolescence.

I took some great video of a tarantula and the mud caves at Anza Borrego, but, I am unable to share them because the files are too huge to get off my phone. This used to be breeze -- a snap -- with communicating devices, but no more.

I am a longtime Apple customer, going back to the 1980's. To be honest, I've been disturbed by the stances the company has taken since Steve Jobs died. They are both sucking and blowing it.

28 comments:

edutcher said...

Jobs was a one of a kind innovator, from the days he and Wozniak worked at Xerox PARC.

The corporate types haven't got that rock the boat spirit.

For myself, the one time I tried an Apple (about 20 years ago), I wasn't wowed at all.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I'm so vain..

If it makes you feel any better, Microsoft sucks and blows, too.

edutcher said...

Well, you expect that. Microshaft makes all the software in Fords these days and The Blonde is forever wanting something fixed.

Linux is a much better deal.

Shouting Thomas said...

Pretty happy with my iMac. It's over six years old and still going strong.

And, as Macs usually are, just about immune to viruses and malware.

chickelit said...

Shouting Thomas said...Pretty happy with my iMac. It's over six years old and still going strong.

My MacBook is even older. As I said, it's a communication problem between the two working devices.

Sydney said...

I had to update my iPhone OS the other day so an app I use for my job would keep working. Since the update, I can't listen to music on the phone without it being shuffled. Very irritating when you are listening to an album that has music with distinct movements such as a symphony or a mass. I don't have time to keep messing with it, so I've gone back to listening to CDs when driving in my car.

chickelit said...

I don't want a simple solution that involves buying a new made-in-China device. This is a software issue that could be solved by geniuses in Cupertino -- even if half of them are H1-B visa holders.

/Trump

edutcher said...

Software can be transferred by ESD, but hardware, and its capacity, also plays a part. Are you sure you couldn't get a new whatever?

(somehow I seem to remember Macs aren't upgradeable, but I could easily be wrong)

bagoh20 said...

Of course they created your problem on purpose. Nothing stops it from being backward compatible but the marketing department. Can't you just email the files to yourself?

Anyway, As you well know, Chickie, we did get the The Baby Jesus (El Nino) this year. It did create a nice bloom here in the fields behind my house next to LAX.

Last year I posted some photos of foxes and a video of my Trumpette in those fields and I remember that DBQ commented about how dry it looked from the drought, which it definitely was.

I took some picture of how it looks now, with a little rain. It won't last more than a few weeks, but it's nice while it lasts. We do live in a virtual desert.

An album with current photos and the stuff from last year for comparison.

Back Acres

rhhardin said...

It's called bit rot. Stuff that used to work doesn't work.

It's usually caused by idiot graduate students improving things, when what's needed is a stable system so that you can code for it and it stays coded.

rcocean said...

Great photos bags. Those foxes look hungry. Hope they survived the drought.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

How about reversing iTunes back to older releases?

Does your computer allow to do that?

Chip Ahoy said...

Are you open to suggestion?

*sips Cubalibra*

Consider skip the laptop for now. Think about getting the photos off your phone, great photo by the way, and safely tucked away online, say in two places like Flickr and Photobucket or Picasa, or what have you. Where they will be safe and your weary mind lifted of its burden, and you can back to happily snapping away.

Download to your phone a Flickr app.
Same thing with Photobucet.
Same thing with Picasa. Wait, Google bought Picasa So perhaps upload to them. Full size photos if you are allowed that and your phone plan is reasonable.

Also, I've had very good luck with card readers. In my case it goes memory card in camera to card reader. Then card reader plugged into laptop, its own separate memory now. From memory card to Photoshop on laptop for adjustments. Then adjusted photos from laptop TO THE WORLD ! by uploading to those places I mentioned and sharing from there.

Once online their addresses can be used other places, say, to show here. Or they can be printed on towels and coffee cups or shower curtains, or very large canvas prints for a mere $100.00. Your picture BLAM large as they go for $100.00 printed professionally, packaged expertly, transported brilliantly bing bong right to your door. Recommended.

That would be one way to quell your angst.

You will need a way to get photos from your phone to card reader. Then attach the card reader to your laptop. I do this with my Mac Air that also finds very large groups of very large files too much to handle. Put all that on a separate memory card and ease the burden on your laptop. It's inexpensive. $20.00 for a good card reader $1.00 for a cheap one that only plugs in. It's USB.

How to transfer pictures from an i-Phone to a USB stick. YouTube video

I phone USB stick. They're trying to skim the Apple market. Little known off brands for $28.00 AIZBO I-FLASH DRIVE WITH MICRO SD (scroll)

Howzabot that huh? Huh? What? Two positive suggestions right there. Two ideas right there that I believe either one will work out for you. Two different approaches to your conundrum and they're both viable. Howzabot that huh? Huh?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I get a new computer every 2-3 years.

chickelit said...

AA wrote I get a new computer every 2-3 years.

That's you, not me.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

well, you can push it, but as you said above, it's a conspiracy of planned obsolescence. I'd rather buy a new one every 10 years.

chickelit said...

Bags: the files are too big: they bomb my Cox email.

Lem: I'd like to "downgrade" the iTunes on the iPhone. That is the origin of the problem, actually. It is not possible, even resetting the iPhone to factory settings (I asked the "geniuses").

@rhhardin. I agree. I'd add that they are little assholes as well.

Chip: I like the idea of transferring to a stick. It is subversive towards Apple which is something I'm in a mood to do.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Nice, Bagoh. Park-LAX-Chez-Trumpette looks lush.

edutcher said...

AprilApple said...

I get a new computer every 2-3 years.

I held onto mine for 10 until I needed some new parts and it was a bit much. You should be able to hold onto a machine for at least 5, maybe 8, I'd think.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I usually end up smashing it with a hammer. ;-)

GOODSTUFF said...

I son is having BIG problems with the updates

rcocean said...

I get a new wife every two or three years. But a computer? No way.

ampersand said...

My Lenovo laptop is 12 years old, I had to replace the fan several months back. No updates for Vista or internet Explorer, I only use it when I have to travel or help my elders when fixing their problems. Epic browser works fine though.

My HP desktop is about 9 years old, bought as a backup when my Lenovo had issues including a one month wait for parts during the China Olympics. No Vista or IE updates. The AMD processor is slow as hell too. Used just as a backup.

My main HP was a revelation, I bought one for a poor relative. When I noticed it's speed I had to get one for myself. Intel for me from now on. Microsoft has done something to IE that makes it run like a pig.My PC has windows 7, I skipped the upgrade to windows 8 but will need to upgrade to Windows 10 shortly. I guess if my 84 year old neighbor can handle 10 so can I

Lem are you still running Windows 10? Did you get used to it?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

It shows you how much of a difference one person truly can make.

I'm with ST on this. I'd had PCs since 2001, until I got a blue screen on one that was only a few years old. I got a Mac after that and have generally been quite satisfied. Some things are a little quirky, but the focus on a decent user experience is and should be the most important thing.

We had Apples when I was a kid (before Steve Jobs was booted out). He really did understand that the purpose of these things is to open up creative tools that work and not to bog everyone down with a phony need to stay on top of a bunch of technical know-how that doesn't apply to your primary use. That's for their designers and technicians.

What a shame if Apple degrades into a tech company just like any other, now. I predict if it follows that path it will regress to something that can't compete. It had its own niche all this time - all to itself. It's just not meant to be an ordinary tech company.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

With all the processing speed and storage capacity that's become normative there's absolutely no reason whatsoever why any ordinary user should need to get a new computer every 2 - 3 years. That's just ludicrous. Our needs have plateaued relative to Moore's Law. You're just changing to something less buggy, which should tell you something. Maybe stay off all those rigged websites with pop-ups galore, or weird "betcha didn't know" photo galleries.

ampersand said...

We had one programmer,a Chinese national, whenever someone asked for improvements he always came up with reasons why it wasn't possible to do it. Everyone started referring to him as Dr.No.

rhhardin said...

This laptop I've always used as my main machine, a Dell Inspiron 1200, was cheap on sale for being old in 2005.

Just add a large monitor and keyboard.

XP rules.

I upgraded it to the maximum, 1.256 GB ram. It was pretty hopeless with its native 256mb.

Firefox, I notice, hovers around 351mb of ram just by itself, so you can see the problem.

TTBurnett said...

Of course Apple is like every other tech company. Its products have just been, historically, rather better—especially in the laptop department since the days they went Intel and gave up the weird, underpowered Power PC architecture.
They then leveraged digitally-distributed music and invented the smartphone.
Hard stuff to beat.
Everyone else has been trying for a long time, and they are now within spitting distance. Apple has, at best, a third of the phone market, but they make, by far, the most money at it. That's because they aren't stupid.
Apple has been content to leave the ever-shrinking business desktop world to Microsoft, because, well, music.
And high-profit phones.
Not to mention high-end, no-longer-overpriced laptops.
And did I say music?
Because, historically, they've not been stupid.
Now, Microsoft has hit them with the Surface in several guises, and with numerous 3rd-party clones. Then there is Windows 10.
The various Surfaces aren't cheap, like MacBooks aren't cheap, but they're damn good.
And Windows 10 is, by any measure, at least as non-suckish as El Capitan. In fact, it's like God finally had a chance to be a Windows developer.
And now, for you geeks, there's Windows Subsystem for Linux. Bash on Windows??!!
Steve Jobs is doing 78 RPM.
Meanwhile, developers are eyeing their old MacBook Airs, and wondering about a nice, new Dell XPS.
And I'm writing this in a new, high-spec MacBook Pro running Windows 10.
Welcome to the slightly narrow, but still fun future of computers, where they're all just "tools," and no longer religions.
That's as opposed to "devices."
You mean you don't have an Android phone??
P.S.— Apple has the same corporate culture as anyone. Try finding a culturally-conservative (or Trump-supporting, for that matter) technology company anywhere.
And, speaking of Trump, just what does Kaspersky think of Putin?