JCC Is the cult of Apple losing its shine

All I know is that I really want a phone that has a built in tazer and attachable katana.

 

One of my friends has a torch that doubles as a tazer.
He's scary sometimes.

 

Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8 > iPhone 5

 

In my experience anti-Apple people are more hardcore about it than pro-Apple people.

 

For me it's simple—in my experience, user interface, intuitiveness and aesthetic are all superior with Apple.

That's it.


-JR

 

Apple's always pissed me off in that I feel like I have less control over with their products. I know they're supposed to be "easier" but I find them harder, especially because I can't tweak them. And I can't right click. What the heck.

I do think apple tends to have better graphics though. I'll give it that.

 

So has your experience been confined purely to Apple and you're comfortable with that?

Let's look at the way the phones under Android vs iOS function as music players. You cannot drag and drop music onto your iPhone at all; and even when you could drag and drop on the older iPods it had to be via an Apple mandated piece of software. I want to add music to my Galaxy? Drag and drop. No sync'ing with a clumsy, and now frankly ugly, proprietary interface program.

Hell, the same applies for movies, pictures, or even just using the phone as a USB hard drive. It has a visible file system, unhidden, which is the opposite of iOS. Because Steve Jobs decided that's what you wanted.

The ability to share files from an Android device is roughly a thousand times easier and more useful than to share from Apple, because Steve Jobs decided that's what you wanted.

I do love that Apple now offers a swipe down notification bar. Very original and yet instead of copying Android and adding features, they copied and took them away - you guessed it, because Steve Jobs' successor decided that's what you wanted.

though to be fair Apple has a great feature which lets you chose which wi-fi to connect to from the home screen and not without drilling down into the settings menu and oh. Wait. No, no it doesn't.

And as for MacOS - my ex-wife only ever ran Macs. I've been using PCs since MS-DOS days, and I found I was lost in MacOS. I've had no trouble with Android OS, Linux or Ubuntu but Apple, for all the claims of intuition, never seemed like it was built with the mentality of "what would a user do next". Rather; "what a user should do next is X".

To be fair, Steve Jobs got bitch-slapped with the open palm of karma for his titanic arrogance but I just find this whole "easier, more intuitive" comment to be an excuse to justify overspending on a machine or device largely to fit in. Unless the hipsters at the coffee shop are all using DAW or CAD software and not just writing their next novel.

On MS Word.

 

That seems like an exceptionally difficult dichotomy to pull off, they're incredibly similar under the hood. Hell, most of the reason I use a Mac is because LaTeX is optimized for commercial Unix-likes.

 

Under the hood, probably but by that argument the entire Windows GUI is Mac-like under the hood given developmental histories.

Or are you talking about MacOS and Linux both being Unix variants?

 

I'd just like to point out that this beezel thread now has two pages. So.

 

Fact.

 

An apple does lose its shine after about a week and a half. Then I have to go and buy more.

 

The latter. I find it pretty easy to switch between the two because of that.

 

Right. The Linux version I used, which has only ever been on a friend's machine (he runs dual boot Linux and Win7), kept a windows style task bar and based on that I had no trouble navigating to files etc. Linux I suppose is not for average joe use so using it for basic tasks is not really benchmarking it; but pound for pound Win7 over MacOS X wins hands down in ease of use.

 

My MacBook Pro had a failed hardrive, and apparently Apple is being sued because of that.

 

I love my iPhone, iMac and iPad, but when I went to the launch morning to get my iPad it did feel rather unsettling, almost cultish. Wouldn't do it again that's for sure.

 

My main annoyance with Apple is what Ender said in terms of transferring music and video files. Not only is syncing an annoyance, you also have to make sure the files are in a particular format that Apple likes. Click and drag wins every time. The inability to expand memory is also a huge negative - and a blatant way of making more money.

The samsung s4 is just as aesthetically pleasing as my old apple was. In fact the size of the apple screen seems way too small once you're used to the s4.

 

Yeah, I have an S3 and I was struck by how tiny the 5/5S looked in comparison. Why is it so small (that's what she said)?

 

I click and drag files into iTunes, which then converts them automatically into Apple file formats. Then my iPhone auto-syncs over my WiFi network at home without prompting and my new music is there.
EDIT:

So it fits in your hand and you can use it one handed. I have a 5S for personal use and my work provides me with a Galaxy 2. I have above average sized hands and I still can't use my Galaxy perfectly one handed. I have to readjust my grip to hit different parts of the screen or go two handed.

 

I can use my phone one-handed just fine-- well, I have trouble texting one-handed but that'd be true of any phone-- and I don't have particularly large hands. Eh.

 

So how do you go in copying .avi or .mkv to iTunes?

Do you drag and drop into a coverter first?

I figured since you were already stretching credibility here we might as well just take the handbrake off and go hog-wild implausible.

 

Dunno. I've only ever had the need to do it with mp3s and mp4s. I literally drag them from the folder they are in into the open iTunes application and it works flawlessly. If it doesn't work for avis or mkvs, oh well, I've never had a need or desire for that functionality so I really don't care if it's lacking.

 

Ugh, that reminds me of what a pain in the ass it is to get FLAC into iTunes, mostly because Apple (of course) has its own lossless format.

 

So let me get this straight, for the privilege of buying an elite product that has less functions then other products on the market, I get to pay more and get a less stable product that prevents me from doing things I want. This is a commercial cult that will eventually fade away. People will wake up to the fact that Apple isn't what its cracked up to be. Samsung and the others just keep making good product without the leaders telling us what we should be liking and what we shouldn't be liking. Apple became what a dying man wanted, the last bit of control in his life. He couldn't control his death so by controlling what the users should have on their phones he is reaching out from the grave and saying this is how he will remain in control. I will tell you what you will want in your ipad and iphone and you will be happy and spend all your money with me.

 

OK so I guess what I'm saying is... no.

What I do is this; have my Android device connect to my PC.

Open a folder in Explorer.

Drag the music, including FLAC, to the SD Card attached to my phone

wait for copy.

Play.

I don't have to sync my device to an insipid and clunky proprietary interface. I don't have to import my music into that interface so I can send it to my device. Middle man is gone entirely.

My device doesn't care about the format. It's just not a jerk like that.

Claiming you can drag and drop without putting the caveat "(into iTunes)" is a bit dishonest.