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I did a phone lease before and hated it, mainly because they lost my phone when I returned it and gave me grief for months (carrier, not apple). Is the old Apple TV now EOL, or is it going to get the new OS but without all the coolest stuff? I'm guessing it's locked to whatever version it's on now.
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Sep 10, 2015 00:54
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Michael Scott posted:Again, technical nitpick, but the carrier plans are not a lease, but instead a 0% APR purchase plan, and you own the phone, and you do eventually owe the entire amount on the device unless you take advantage of their switching options. Yeah it does sound better than the deal I was (mis)sold at least. Phones in the US work quite differently to over here too, although I need to work my head around that before I migrate.
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Sep 10, 2015 01:08
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iPad tends to get the iPhone features a generation behind. Plus it would take away some of the features of the pencil (although even with the 3d touch I expect the pencil works better).
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Sep 10, 2015 01:44
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Khablam posted:Not to take this on too much of a tangent, but buying Mac hardware to run Windows just seems like the worst possible idea if you have anything resembling a budget to work to. Maybe look at reviews to find some that don't fail? My company has a dozen laptops bought in 2010 and the only one which has failed has been dropped. Even if you believed failure within one year was likely (it isn't), wouldn't you be best served by simply running a warranty? But if your budget allows you to buy a Mac, then why wouldn't you? If it doesn't and the laptop is something that's important to you, then maybe wait a bit and save up? They're good at running Windows. Real drat good. Hell, they're good enough at running Windows that Microsoft use them at their conferences. And failure rate is important, I agree. However, customer service if the item fails is also important and the fact you're recommending ASUS of all people makes me think you have never dealt with them. Here's what people who have to deal with them think of them. I've got a $200 Asus router and the menus feel like they were translated from Chinese by a 4th grader, nothing they make screams 'polished'. (e: ha, that link doesn't help my cause as there's a lot of 1* for Apple too. But ASUS are notorious in the industry for being utter, utter cunts when it comes to repairing/returning faulty hardware and even in the best cases you can't just drive down the road and have it taken care of in a day or two.) My last laptop through my work place was a Toshiba Satellite Pro and the fact that it had the word Pro stamped on it was a loving joke. It was a nasty, plastic piece of garbage where the company branding started to melt off. The screen was hideous, the keyboard abysmal and the trackpad (like most PC laptop trackpads) was unbearable to use, when it actually worked, because it constantly needed disabling/reenabling. The idea that someone would recommend one of these things is beyond me. In retrospect, I took my 5 year old iMac to the Apple store down the road a month or two back, and got a new graphics card put in it for free without quibbles as I was getting some screen corruption issue. It's now back on my desk, and it's had two repairs in it's lifetime (both for free) and works perfectly well still. I didn't pay anywhere near retail for it, because it's not hard to get discounts on Apple gear. I was and am a PC use since i was 10 years old, and in 23 years I've had a lot of gear come and go by. I switched to Apple stuff primarily because I was sick and tired of loving about with computers and just wanted things that did their job, rather than me spending evenings with cases open and tools everywhere. Anyone who asks me what laptop do I recommend, regardless of OS, it's going to have an Apple logo on the back of it. EL BROMANCE fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Sep 11, 2015 |
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Sep 11, 2015 11:05
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But they are? Have you done a bootcamp install on your girlfriends MacBook? As said, there's a reason that Microsoft and other PC companies use Apple hardware when they do presentations and the like where stability has to be guaranteed. You're dealing with a very small set of well known components that have excellent driver support. It's a known quantity. I've only bothered to BootCamp once, because I have other PCs here, but the install was excellent and the driver support went further than I expected with regards to using my mouse and keyboard with full functionality on hot keys and the like. It's a nice touch, at least. I don't know much about Squaretrade as I've never used them... do they offer a service where I can literally take my laptop into my town centre (10 minutes walk) and speak face to face with the person who'll be undertaking my repair? Genuine question. That's the kind of service I cherish, and when I got dodgy service from Apple last year, I was pissed and I let them know. The service I've received from them this year has been absolute 5 star all round though, and I'm happy to recommend them again. You say 'premium Windows laptop', but how many choices are there really? In a similar conversation I had last year, the only brand someone could think of was Lenovo, and let's face it - Lenovo ThinkPads are not IBM ThinkPads. I was going to drop about $1,200 on a Windows laptop when I switched over about 10 years ago, and even then I would've struggled to have found a laptop that actually met my criteria. Sony definitely charged that amount of money, but Vaios were and always will be complete poo poo. I've got a tab open on a big UK computer reseller, and only have premium stuff listed. Acer (lol), Asus, Toshiba, Lenovo. None of whom I feel after years of dealing with their products that I could trust with $2,000 of purchasing power. I'm not a rabid fanboy or anything, but when I leave the country next year I can't see me rebutting any PC hardware as I don't have any real use for it anymore and I've kept it for legacy purposes only really. Maybe if the wife doesn't mind me hiding a server somewhere, then I'll probably buy something dedicated to that, but 99% of the stuff hanging off it will be Apple branded.
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Sep 11, 2015 17:38
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Khablam posted:This discussion can't go anywhere because you've made your choice based on personal experiences (this is fine) and hand-wave any larger discussion on the issue (not fine but I don't really care to change your mind). This is true, and I understand your POV too but it's clear we're both coming from very different sides of this. The OP who you responded to originally and the target case for my argument specifically said he 'despised Windows laptops', which was why he was considering a MacBook. He's also got other elements from the Apple ecosystem, and he didn't say anything either way about maybe using OS X too. quote:I think if you're honest, you'll see writing "lol" to review a line of laptops that are empirically the most reliable isn't really fair, and leaves nothing to be really said. We're in a world where Acer are now the top end? Holy poo poo. I'm not being sarcastic or facetious, I wrote 'lol' while looking at an (admittedly older) Acer laptop that was under my chair because of how bad it was. Maybe they've really, really upped their game recently. Last I saw, I could've sworn they were knocking out MacBook Air clones at best. quote:There are lots of very tangible reasons why someone would want a non-Apple piece of hardware And this is where we really, really differ. I left the checkbox game years ago, and have zero desire to go back. Too long wasting time comparing motherboards against each other, "Well this one has 6 USB sockets, while this one has 4 on board SATA, but 2 of them are JMicron and they suck and... " blah. Hours of my life I'd want back. But to be specific - optical media? I have working drives in the house, and I use them maybe once a year. Swappable batteries? Only time I ever needed to swap a battery was because it was Sony built garbage that died out of the blue and needed to be replaced, and I don't recall ever seeing anyone walking around with a stack of li-on batteries in their laptop case. HDMI built in? Doesn't every Apple laptop have this? I'm sure they do. Maybe not that new MacBook (the gen 1 one) but it's pretty standard. VGA built in? Last thing I needed to connect to VGA was a Dreamcast, and I don't spend my life dealing with decrepit projectors. eSATA? holy poo poo. Well the only eSATA gear I have needs port multiplication and I have a gut feeling most laptops don't have that as part of their eSATA spec, which would make it useless to me anyway. It's building to checkbox lists, how many people actually need this poo poo? Because most of it is poo poo. I honestly could not give one crap about a geekbench score, because again - I left that crap behind, in the same way I left having PCs with their cases off for most of their lives, and dealing with a myriad of bullshit that was actually getting in the way of me doing what I wanted to, rather than CJing the computer. A number on a screen is just a dick waving contest between nerds who have nothing else better to do with their lives, not people who are looking to buy a good computer. I've also never understood this fascination some people have of hanging as many devices off their laptop at once. While that new MacBook thing wouldn't be my first purchase, I could easily survive off a single USB port. quote:It's also much cheaper than an applecare extended warranty if you're going beyond one year. You're making a lot of assumptions there. I didn't have extended warranties on my iMac, it was 5 years old when I walked into the store, it was fixed within a few days and it didn't cost me a penny. But again, it's all down to what the OP wants, and he sounds like someone who is sick to death of dealing with Windows laptops, in his own words. He's probably sick to death of us too now 
EL BROMANCE fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Sep 12, 2015 |
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Sep 12, 2015 01:26
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In my case, I paid about £1,200 for a fully loaded iMac (it was about £1,900 retail, but retail is for suckers) and I'll probably get £6-700 for it when I sell it in two months. That's a pretty drat good return on investment, and when I move I'll be buying the equivalent model they have out. Hoping for a new 5K that doesn't have the issues a 1st gen problem comes with.
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Sep 12, 2015 11:15
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Ah, It was a combo of the big 'once per year' staff discount of 27% or whatever it is plus a one off credit combination I did through a friend, if it was 'one neat trick' I would've shared it. I'm unlikely to get as good a deal ever again sadly, but I always fish around for who's not going to use their big discount and throw them some incentive to throw it my way. Even educational discounts are pretty good though, think the standard on most hardware is close to 20%, it's a shame you can't stack that on a refurb (unless you can and I'm mistaken). Refurb is a good way of you have no access to discounts through work/edu though. I've never had seen anything bought through it that didn't look brand new. Managed to get an accidental discount when I bought an OG iPad for my mum when the 2nd came out and they reduced it for a bit. They weren't supposed to allow anything against that, but the system allowed it. One of the bosses wasn't happy about that apparently ha. But that return on my old hardware will make a nice dent on my new purchase, which I'll have to work out a way of getting cheap in a new country. Should be fun!
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Sep 12, 2015 12:07
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TinTower posted:I have never needed eSATA ever. I have a 4 bay enclosure I connect over USB because it needs port multiplication to work, and the esata interface on my premium ASUS motherboard of course doesn't support it. I could 'fix' this for about £20 and some messing about, but I just don't care enough.
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Sep 12, 2015 12:37
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I only ever bootcamped on my iMac so things like trackpad etc never became an issue, but my housemate has a fully loaded current gen MBP from his workplace and he's booted into Windows a lot for gaming (don't tell them) and I've not heard him complain about anything. If it was just the internal graphics chip, would he be able to play the newest GTA cranked pretty highly? I'm pretty sure that'd be beyond the scope of the chip, so it must be using the real GPU for that. It looked really good from what I could see anyway. He also plays a ton of Kerbal Space Program, but I'm not sure if it's quite as taxing, I expect not. But yeah, he spends hours in Windows and I've not heard him complain once. He loves that machine, but I'm not going to deny that it was very, very expensive. The battery life seems excellent too regardless of OS, but I'm always keen to plug in whenever I can. Obviously being on battery for long periods of time is going to be down to the owner. I think the current ones are rated at 12 hours, so even if Windows took a hit off that, it's still an impressive amount. We still don't really know the OPs expected use beyond a paragraph though, so we can both hypothesise about what he'd want to fit our own agendas.
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Sep 12, 2015 14:13
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