Cogs can think.

My Twitter followers (haha) already could’ve seen it on my Twitter account, but I’m “officially” quitting Apple (just like Adam).

I will no longer buy any of their products. I will no longer use any of their computers, mobile devices, or software.

Some Mac zealots on OSNews often think I’m an anti-Apple zealot, but I’m not. I like Apple’s products. I’ve owned (and own) a lot of Apple products. I bought my first iMac somewhere in 2004, and ever since, I’ve had numerous Macintosh machines in my home. iBooks, PowerBooks, PowerMacs, iMacs, you name it. I’ve bought lots and lots of their software. I’ve been to their press events. As OSNews’ managing editor, I have a review agreement with them.

But I’ve had enough. They treat their developers like ass. They lock down their platform to insane levels. They treat their users like shit. They actually try to enforce their silly, unlawful EULAs.

I still think Apple makes the best general purpose laptops. I still think the iMac is the best desktop money can buy (I bought one for my parents only a few months ago). I still think Mac OS X is a nice - albeit highly overrated - piece of software. Oh, and iWork is still fcuking awesome. But I cannot use their products knowing their anti-consumer and anti-developer attitude.

Apple is rotten. To the core.

It takes blood, sweat, and tears to build an image, Apple. It takes only a second to tear it down. It’s the geek crowd that got you where you are today. Lose them, and you will lose everything.

Sometimes, the internet is just AWESOME.

quote:
Originally posted by stanrich:
“Blu-Ray???

A dead-end technology so why would Apple bother to offer it?

Figures M$ would be touting it.”

At some point in the future, Apple will offer built-in Blu-Ray drives. Of course, by that time the story will be that the dead-end technology has been resurrected and that Apple did the smart thing of abiding their time. And then a few years later, the Mac fan’s history will have been revisioned such that it was actually Apple entering the market that forced everybody else to pick up Blu-Ray support, and thus rescued Blu-Ray and turned it from a disaster into a great success.

And a bit further down:

Hmm, I think this insightful and engaging discussion is omitting a key point which out to be more adequately considered. Lisa is cute. I’ll believe anything she tells me.

Like, totally. My first thought was… Well, let’s just say that whenever I need to leave town (and thus drive past the school) I make sure it’s at either 12:00, 13:00, or 15:30. Do the math.

When even MacDailyNews - of all places - agrees with your article, then there’s something seriously wrong.

I’ve been spending lots of time on Mac websites the past few days since Safari 4’s release, and the community is torn. Half got used to it after a few days and thinks it’s the next best thing since sliced bread - the other half hates Safari 4’s tabtitlebar to bits. It’s not very common to see the Mac community so torn up over something. Usually only a few mouthy people disagree with Apple’s wisdom, but rarely are they with this many.

Funnily though, looking at the OSNews comments’ section - no one is actually able to refute any of the arguments put forth by the detractors. If you like the tabtitlebar, that’s fine, great, awesome - but that doesn’t mean that everyone else has to like it too, or that those that don’t like it are idiots, arrogant, or “killing OSNews”.

It just means that Apple has to go back to the drawing board - or piss off half of its userbase.

Cupertino’s choice. There’s always Camino, Omniweb, and Firefox.

Let’s talk Apple. My problems with Apple - aside from it being a rather dictatorial and anti-consumer company - lie mostly in the lousy hardware it has the guts to market as “high end”, complete with matching price tags. Software-wise, I have a lot of respect for Apple. Mac OS X is a very sexy, well-designed, and stable operating system, with tons of features that make using my computers a lot easier. However, I am forced into buying their crap hardware in order to run their software - which sucks balls.

Here’s my track record with Apple hardware. Read it and weep.

• iMac G4 700Mhz 15″. Died after a few years due to massive logic board failure.
• iBook G4 1Ghz 12.1″. Case became cracked and started falling apart within a few months. Was only used at home.
• PowerBook G4 1.25Ghz 15″. Hard drive exploded for no reason, and suffered from the infamous upper memory bank failure that Apple refuses to fix.
• PowerMac G4 dual 450Mhz. Resuming from sleep leaves one processor inactive, and usually leads to kernel panics.
• PowerMac G4 Cube 450Mhz. Power button doesn’t work, case cracked.
• The only Mac that hasn’t died on me yet is my iMac G3.

Apple zealots claim that you’re not only paying for design and brand, but also for quality; Apple is a premium brand, much like some car and high-end audio brands. I’m sorry, but looking back upon my own Apple product track record, how on earth can I take those zealots seriously? My non-Apple machines NEVER die on me. Te only thing that ever died was a 40GB drive after servicing me for 8 years.

It’s bogus. Apple isn’t a premium company, and never has been either. Premium means buying speakers that last for 35 years. Premium means servicing your products for decades, and fixing any issue that pops up beyond the user’s control, without question. Apple doesn’t do that. You have to drag them kicking and screaming into the limelight with class action lawsuits before those fcuks up in Cupertino will instate a replacement program for anything.

Apple hardware is junk. Pretty junk, yes, but I much rather pay 1/6th of the price of a Mac Pro, and have the same performance, with higher quality, but with a less attractive case and no Apple logo. Cupertino’s hardware division can suck a big fat cockcicle.

Several small things.

I have a new main desktop computer, built it myself from hand-picked parts. AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processor (4x2.2Ghz), 4GB of gaming RAM from Geil (whatever the hell gaming RAM means), and a fancy motherboard that can connect the on-board graphics chip to a discrete one via SLI. Also bought a red Asus case and a power supply picked because it was silent. It’s a blazing-fast machine now, and I’m really happy with it.

It set me back a mere 320 EUR. I forgot to order cooling paste, so I quickly drove to town to buy a tube of the stuff, and as I walked by the Apple store and noticed the prices, I couldn’t help but chuckle.

I also have a new job. I can’t say much about it, but it’s nothing fancy. I’m quite happy with it, in any case. This new job does mean more time for OSNews, which is always a good thing.

I bought This Is Alphabeat today, Alphabeat’s debut album. Great stuff.

Last night’s new Battlestar Galactica episode kicked major ass. Awesome stuff.

That will be all.

To all those people who claim that Apple is already in the netbook market because of the iPhone/Touch:

Bwahahahahhahahaha.

Seriously now.

Bwahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahhahahahahahaha.

Bye now.

I bought an XBox 360 today, hooked it up to my 32″ HDTV via HDMI, and I’ve been playing Fallout 3 ever since. There is no way to explain in words just how beautiful this game is in high definition on such a TV. You really have to see it to believe it.

I sold my PowerBook to get the money, seeing after I bought my Aspire One, added a normal hard disk to it, and installed Vista on it, I never really looked back to the PowerBook - it was collecting dust. I have a PowerMac G4 for my Mac OS X needs now, so the PowerBook was just a useless piece of 15″ metal to me.

I’m really happy with the 360. Just to be safe, I bought 3 years of full insurance for the device, for just EUR 44.95. I can pee on it and they still have to replace it. HA HA.

May I introduce the latest addition to my computer family?

After waiting for months and months for a decent offer, I’ve bought a PowerMac with Dual G4 450Mhz processors, 1MB L2 cache each, 1GB of memory, 80GB HDD, and a dual layer DVD burner (oh, and a ZIP drive - automatically I dug up my old ZIP disks, who knows, when the world ends, and the US government flips the kill switch on all USB drives, MY 8 ZIP DRIVES WILL STILL WORK). It has a rather crummy Ati Rage 128 Pro whatever 16MB video card, so you can guess what’s next on my wish list.

The PowerMac G4 is from the days when Apple design was playful and a little bit crazy - contrary to the boring and clinical computers they put out today. Apple machines today are pretty, but also rather void of any emotion. The PowerMac G4, with the Cube and the iMac G4, represent the last truly astonishing hardware from Apple.

Let’s hope they can break their cycle of boringness coming Tuesday. I’m not keeping my hopes up, though.

My parents bought their first mp3 player today. They bought the new iPod Nano. I was - obviously - tasked with buying it for them, setting it up, and uploading the first few CDs. This is my first hands-on experience with an iPod that lasted longer than 3 seconds (I’m the world’s worst geek). Two things.

1. You need an iTunes account for downloading artwork. If you don’t have an account, and don’t want one either, like my parents or myself, you need to rely on 3rd party applications to draw artwork from Amazon’s database. Hardly what I call user friendly.
2. I set the Nano up at my own house, using my PowerBook (I don’t wish to infect my Windows box with Apple’s crappy Windows software). Later today, I visited my parents’ to give them the Nano and give them some instructions on how to add albums to iTunes and the Nano - and things went tits up. Apparently, an iPod first hooked up to a Mac cannot be connected to a Windows machine (what my parents have) afterwards. As a geek, I know this is a HFS+ issue, but what about all those normal users Apple always says it targets? Why couldn’t they just format the device with fat32 in the first place, like all other players do? Or, better yet, why don’t they include an HFS+ driver in iTunes:Windows? Why don’t they warn me upon first hooking the Nano up? Give me a bloody choice at least? Now I had to reset the Nano, loosing all the work I had already done!

First iPod experience: EPIC FAIL.

The hard drive in my PowerBook G4 just died.

I have hard drives happily at work that pre-date the first coming of Christ, but of course, Apple had to put in a cheap, crappy drive and now I’m fcuked.

The funny thing? System Profiler sees the drive, but Disk Utility doesn’t. I’m - naturally - out of warranty, so, uhm, yeah.