Friday 29 December 2017

I thought everybody already knew that this is how Apple operates?

From the BBC:

Apple has apologised after facing criticism for admitting it deliberately slows down some ageing iPhone models.

The company now says it will replace batteries for less and will issue software in 2018 so customers can monitor their phone's battery health. Some customers had long suspected the company slowed older iPhones to encourage customers to upgrade.


I know very little about this stuff, but that is their whole business model and I always suspected that they did it.

The clincher for me was after I bought my second Mac Mini in 2013 (or thereabouts), the bloody thing didn't have a CD/DVD drive, the 'genius' in the shop told me that Apple didn't make external CD/DVD reader/writers but I could just buy any generic one and plug it in.

So I bought a Samsung device for £40 which worked absolutely fine... until it stopped working a year or two later. I went back to the shop and the 'genius' told me that Apple now made external CD/DVD reader writers and Mac Minis were no longer compatible with the generic ones, so I had to buy an Apple one for about £80.

That's the clever bit about Apple - it doesn't just sell software (market largely cornered by Microsoft) or hardware (highly competitive with slim profit margins), it does both and they are interlinked in such a way that once you set off down the Apple road you are pretty much stuck on it for ever.

So much so, that there aren't any rival MP3 players any more. Well, there are of course, but they are all crap. Believe me, I tried to wean myself off IPods a year ago and I tried about three others which all went back to the shop after a couple of days and I ended up buying another IPod (good old Currys, with their "don't ask, don't tell" returns policy!). "

9 comments:

jack ketch said...

A few years back a generous friend, at least I thought they were being generous, gave me their Ipad1. Needless to say they are no longer on my xmas card list.

Strangely enough one of the few things it did do really well (once I had sent Apple an E-note from my mommy, all my personal info and a DNA sample just to be allowed to turn the fucking thing on) was display pdfs so I recently hauled it out of the Cupboard of Doom , intending to use it to display some textbooks which I needed to be able to see/read in precise detail (obscure German shorthand symbols and Anglo-Saxon writings).

But of course one doesn't just wander into Mordor nor does one just simply transfer a pdf to an Apple product ,oh no.

Managed it in the end by emailing the pdf to myself , once I had found out how to download gmail attachments on an ipad (the built in gmail app of course won't allow it).

God knows what the thing cost originally but now its only use is as an ebook reader....which it does do rather well.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JK, good anecdotal, that's the sort of thing i mean.

Shiney said...

Spot on....

"You don't know the power of the Dark Side, young Padawan....... once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will....”

As I keep saying to both my children.... they are 'iSheep' while me, being an old git and a cheapskate, (and paranoid to boot) use Linux and Owncloud.

My wife has been lured onto the dark path via an iPhone (the ultimate light sabre?) and now has an iPad and MacBook Air. Unfortunately, to keep up, I now have an iPhone as well.... but the bloody thing won't talk to my Linux computer (well since iOS 8 anyway).

James Higham said...

Wonder what was going wrong - old age catching up, methought.

Rich Tee said...

I have a couple of Sandisk MP3 players, both cost me £20-£30. If you use a pair of quality in-ear buds the sound quality is very good. They can take 32GB memory cards as well. They can behave strangely when the battery runs low (eg. the buttons stop working), but otherwise I am very pleased, given the price point.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Sh, do you need the iPhone? Overpriced tat if you ask me.

JH, certainly not, it's them not you.

RT, I'm sure I tried one of those. The sound quality is nigh identical on all MP3 players, it's the uploading songs and creating playlists that was slow to the point of being impossible.

Rich Tee said...

MW, I've always understood that if you want more functionality nowadays you're expected to use your smartphone, which has effectively killed off the premium market.

Shiney said...

@MW

Do I 'need' and iPhone? Nope. Is it crap? Yep.

But iMessage and the Family photo sharing app only works on iOS. and as I said... my family are iSheep. Grrrr.

Mark Wadsworth said...

RT, true. But I'm old fashioned. I've got a £20 Nokia 110 for making actual calls, an iPod for music and a Motorola for mucking about on the internet.

Sh, aha, they are dragging you down with them.

Mrs W bought The Lad an iPhone in a moment of madness, luckily he left it in his jeans and it got laundered to death, so that was the end of that. We've now all got normal Samsung or Motorola phones, which are all compatible with everything, in particular WhatsApp which is really rather good.