I got my first Mac when the Mac mini came up. It was a little more expensive than same-generation PCs but besides being OSX it was a PowerPC that never made any fan noise, and was small. I've subsequently had three Macbooks and two iPhones - but I can't afford this somewhat-better-somewhat-more-expensive racket anymore. Prices have risen too much; to boot, the quality gulf between Macs and garden-variety Dells and Acers has pretty much crashed. Macbooks have had multiple problematic years now; iPhones did away with headphone jacks; and OSX peaked at 10.6.8, where it indeed was five years into the future - but Windows 10 is decent now and even has the whole Unix toolkit with WSL.
Disclaimer: not trying to convince you, just sharing an anecdote like you did.
- I agree Apple pricing has gone out of control. I should not have to shell out 1500 EUR for a 256GB phone with a bigger display no matter what (XS Max). I mean okay, it's probably the best phone out there but come on. It's a mobile computing device, not a life's insurance bill.
- I fully agree MacBooks and desktop Macs haven't had good years in a while. IMO the MacBook Pro 2015 15" was Apple's laptop peak. They haven't produced anything worthwhile in the laptop departments ever since.
- Desktop Macs are a horrid mess where greed trumps everything else so much that even I who spent 6 figures on tech during my life cannot justify paying 5000 EUR for an iMac 27" 5K with maxed out specs (i7 CPU, 64GB RAM and 1 or 2TB SSD). Right now your only viable choice for a future-proof machine however is either the iMac 27" or the iMac Pro, and both are expensive as hell.
- macOS version, not sure, I started actively using it only a year or so ago so it feels quite good to me and is tons more predictable than Windows 10. You have to fight with Windows 10 to make it your own and not be barraged with popups. macOS in comparison stays out of the way.
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To summarize, Apple has peaked, including in the smartphone and tablet departments. Upgrades are very smallish and iterative while the price tags remain huge.
The way I see it, Apple has been coasting for a while. They need to get back on track because inevitably somebody will try and displace them.
(As a random example, Xiaomi phones are probably the best physical designs and software experience I ever had. But I still don't trust Google's binary blobs and the general baseband processor stuff so I stay away from Android.)
>I should not have to shell out 1500 EUR for a 256GB phone
Yes, we're lucky that a lot of people in the world are not in a position to fight for higher quality of life for the resources coming out of the land near them or their labor, nor do we have to pay for environmental damage from manufacture and disposal of our devices, otherwise it would be much more than 1,500 EUR.
> At least on android you can get rid of most Google code with Lineage + microg
...as far as we know. What about the baseband processor that has access to everything at any time?
> Why do you trust the Apple ones then?
Becase they took a stand and refused to introduce a security backdoor in the FBI San Bernardino case. And because iPhone hacks cost more on the net compared to Android ones. This to me indicates that iPhones are harder to crack -- so the demand is higher, suppy is lower and thus the prices are higher.
All circumstantial evidence of course, but it's what we have to go on.
That doesn't mean much when flashing their ROM means voiding your warranty though. Also, their efforts don't really count in the very important areas like the OS security itself; Google reigns supreme there, mostly.
I am a former flashing-ROMs fanboy but the truth is, you are either stuck on ancient kernels or sometimes part with functionality you prefer to still have (like rooting).
It all depends on one's perspective. There was a time when a typical PC was $5000+ in today's dollars. We just got used to Moore's law bringing cheap disposables.
You're taking it pretty far off track. This article is about listening to music.
The "premium" only applies to new products. The author here tried using a CD player, so the storage (and novelty) requirements are pretty low. A $5 used iPod would work just fine.
I got my first Mac when the Mac mini came up. It was a little more expensive than same-generation PCs but besides being OSX it was a PowerPC that never made any fan noise, and was small. I've subsequently had three Macbooks and two iPhones - but I can't afford this somewhat-better-somewhat-more-expensive racket anymore. Prices have risen too much; to boot, the quality gulf between Macs and garden-variety Dells and Acers has pretty much crashed. Macbooks have had multiple problematic years now; iPhones did away with headphone jacks; and OSX peaked at 10.6.8, where it indeed was five years into the future - but Windows 10 is decent now and even has the whole Unix toolkit with WSL.