Go ahead and call me a fanboy but... Apple really nails the "it just works".
I'm a software engineer, and I'm happy to get my hands dirty with some code. But when it comes to my devices, I really don't want to waste my time trying to figure out why this or that device, doesn't pair with, or work well with, my other device.
Apple just does this better than anyone else.
I recently got an Apple watch and the setup process was sublime. Pairing with all my other devices, was effortless. Instantly my watch was "mine" with everything I need on it.
The LTE setup was mostly painless too. There was a bug in the process that was on Verizon's end, but other than that, getting my phone paired to my number was a breeze.
The pairing with my phone, and my mac, is what makes this whole ecosystem special. It just works, and it works pretty damn well. Yes, you can get most of this functionality on a windows or linux machine, with an android phone, airpod replicas, and an android based smart watch but the fluidity of the apple integration is unmatched.
This is what (some) people are willing to pay more for.
I have a different take on this. I'm an apple machine user. I work on an iMac Pro everyday and have used mac/ios for over a decade. But i've also extensively used Android, Windows, Linux etc extensively.
From what I've experienced it is true that when using apple with apple, it just works. that is true and i won't dispute that. they own the ecosystem so they can handle the integration well, obiously. But the opposite is also true. When using apple with non apple, it (sometimes) just doesn't work or works poorly. When i use the same device on Windows or Android (linux is a different beast), it just works when it won't with iOS or Mac. and sometimes i just want to use a brand thats not apple...
I think for many apple users these days, they believe that Android/Windows still have the problems they faced back in 2009 and havent extensively used either since switching.
Android pairs newer bluetooth devices essentially the same way apple pairs airpods now and windows doesnt still have all the issues from windows vista that made them switch in the first place and has support for way more devices than apple ever will.
I'm not trying to make the point that one is better than the other, my point for apple users is that the experience on windows/android isn't as bad as they think it is and my point for windows/android users is that you're not missing out on much or anything at all from the apple ecosystem.
Buy devices that fit your use case and budget. its as simple as that.
I think you've nailed it. I also made this observation. So many time I'll be talking to another dev about macOS v. linux for example, and they'll say something like, "I don't want to have to compile my kernel" or they'll describe something that makes it clear they haven't tried any Linux distro in a long time. I'll usually ask, "when was the last time you tried it?" and at that point they'll usually realize what they're doing and say something like, "It's been probably 15 years, maybe things are better now?"
Yes, things are better. If I compared the first iPhone to an Pixel 4, the iPhone isn't going to compare nicely. It's always worth making sure you are comparing apples to apples (no pun intended ;-))
I've recently given Linux another try, for use on a machine meant as a media server, and also to drive my family "video call station" (i.e., combine big TV, webcam and a bluetooth audio widget with mic and speakers so that the kids can talk to their grandparents in COVID times). Went with the most main stream distro, Ubuntu 20.04.
Result: couldn't get the Bluetooth conference widget working. Googled around for hours and tried all kinds of things, including compiling and installing kernel modules and replacing the bluetooth stack. Nothing worked. No, this is not an exotic non-standard protocol, it's a standard one (I think aptX or so? sorry, forgot the details again already; but I googled around and found lots of people with similar issues, and then many "solutions", none of which worked; see above)
Anyway, I am back to plugging in my MacBook each time we want to video conference, and will soon install Windows on the media server (no matter how much I hate the thought).
I really want to use Linux for this kind of stuff, but it's 2020 and I can't get a Bluetooth widget working that works flawlessly on various Macs, Windows machines, iPhone, iPad and an Android phone.
So while things may be better, they are still far from where they could be, I am afraid.
With "media server" I generally meant: "device hooked up to the speaker and AV receiver for video playback, couch surfing, perhaps the occasional game (mostly via emulators).
Yeah, adding the microphone and camera is going beyond that, but it's convenient to use the computer already hooked to the TV instead of, you know, hooking up yet another one. Also, how does Airplay give me access to the camera mounted on top of the TV (an old phone, BTW)? Also, how is that relevant for my comment at all? :-)
Airplay can share a screen and through that it can share a FaceTime call - or at least I thought it could and Googling suggests it can. This entirely depends on your ‘old phone’ being an iPhone.
I tried Linux recently (Ubuntu, I believe it was 19.10 but might've been 18.04 lts). Within minutes of booting I was searching for answers to questions that one should never have to ask (specifically, it was something to do with sound - it wasn't outputting or it was going over HDMI instead of the plugged in Aux Jack.) Linux may have gotten better, but it feels just as unfinished and confusing to me as it did 20 years ago when I first booted knoppix.
Oh it’s plenty obtuse, but you can get a lot working in a very reliable fashion.
My daily driver is a Mac but Ubuntu is great for messing about - it really is baffling how simple things can turn into hours of pain though.
> they'll describe something that makes it clear they haven't tried any Linux distro in a long time.
I use Linux for work.
In Ubuntu 20 air pod pros still don’t pair properly - I can use the earphones but not the headset microphone.
Then there are minor annoyances like plugging in an
external monitor and keyboard to a closed laptop (thinkpad) and not having it wake up (need to open and close the case), or closing the case but then the power management doesn’t work properly so if it’s not plugged in to power, then when I open it the next day the battery is drained and the laptop has shutdown - losing any unsaved state.
Finally (and this is the main one preventing me from using Linux on my personal laptop) Chinese fonts on Linux are awful. Not only are the default fonts ugly but applications do a poor job of rendering them, often getting baselines offsets between subsequent characters wrong, making characters on the same line jump around.
It’s altogether a subpar experience especially compared to macOS.
> In Ubuntu 20 air pod pros still don’t pair properly - I can use the earphones but not the headset microphone.
Do you really blame Linux over Apple for that? Bluetooth on Linux isn't great, that's totally true, but a big source of problems is the device makers. They often test against only the system they are targeting, and leave the rest. Nearly every bluetooth implementation has issues, but the Linux one is never tested/developed with like others.
> Then there are minor annoyances like plugging in an external monitor and keyboard to a closed laptop (thinkpad) and not having it wake up (need to open and close the case), or closing the case but then the power management doesn’t work properly so if it’s not plugged in to power, then when I open it the next day the battery is drained and the laptop has shutdown - losing any unsaved state.
I agree, this is insanely stupid. By all means I don't think things are perfect yet, but they are definitely better than they used to be. There are also easy things you can do to avoid these things, such as sleeping your laptop from the Gnome widget (or just run `systemctl suspend -i`) and it works every time. just open the lid to resume working. It's annoying that you have to do that for sure, but in my opinion learning simple workflow changes like that aren't a big deal in exchange for the FLOSS aspects, but everyone is different. Choice is what makes things great!
I don't blame anyone, and I understand the reasons, but at the end of the day I still can't use devices I can use everywhere else, and I'm reminded of that daily when I need to plug wired headphones in instead.
Power-management issues I've learned to work around - but again is something that requires regular actions/changes in behaviour that serve as a continual reminder that there are issues.
Chinese font issues I've given up on entirely and I just have the UI in English.
Don't get me wrong, macOS has plenty of issues too, and it feels like the overall software quality has been in a gradual state of decline for at least a decade, but it doesn't have the same continual reminders of issues that I get when using Linux, and the fonts always look nice regardless of language.
I recently had an SSD failure and tried using Ubuntu 20.10 to fix my (heavily tweaked to get things mostly-working) older Ubuntu installation. After many hours fiddling with startup settings I still cannot get the live USB to boot to anything other than a black screen. This is a ~2008 graphics card with mature open source drivers. I can get a console if using safe graphics mode but then no network connectivity either. Who knows about sound, haven't got there yet. All the same issues as 15-20 years ago.
When I was last using this machine regularly, most biannual upgrades broke one of these three things anyway (and, no: the tweaks were not obscure things that caused the breakage, and several failed attempts were made to revert them, report them, or look into the causes, and they obviously don't affect the live USB).
On earphones I reserve my judgement since my Sony 1000XM2 works really well and I don't have advanced needs like switching devices constantly or sharing the audio with another person.
On desktop OS or smartphone I cannot agree with this sentiment though. I used Arch Linux (arguably the best Linux experience I've had by far) on Thinkpad for 3 years and used Nexus/Pixel for 5+ years. Starting from last year I finally had enough and switched back to Macbook + iPhone. God were the devices much, much reliable and my life much easier. At least I didn't have to worry about random stuffs like Bluetooth disconnection, lack of proper HiDPI support or the camera taking 5 seconds to start/simply freezing.
I am super excited to be jumping back into Linux as of this month. But I will say, even though the issues are different, I still have a lot of issues. Things do not "just work." Some of that is simple expectation setting.
With Linux, you know that something can work if you just give it enough elbow grease. The same is true on macOS, but the ecosystem does not tempt you unless its something you actually need. On Linux, the ecosystem says, "oh, that weird thing you want to do you? YES! You can do it! It's normal! Go for it!" And then you do, and you have issues, and everyone is like "oh that sucks but also you were trying to do a weird thing." The blessed path is less clear.
Have taken the blessed path on Ubuntu 20.04LTS with a Lenovo workstation, however on updating the bootloader spontaneously decided to Bork itself. Could possibly try and fix it, however this is not something I want to mess with right now so currently using WSL v2 and Docker on Windows 10 and not having any problems. It is nice to be able to add 2/4/8gb of storage and 128gb of ram for dirt cheap, something that is not possible with a mac though.
Seriously- who is more likely to put app ads in my start menu (candy crush and friends) when I pay for the ‘pro’ version of their os? Apple or windows?
Can you guarantee my Samsung TV won’t start showing me ads? Hint - they already do.
My next Samsung smart phone from Verizon won’t have trash bloat ware on it and won’t prompt me endlessly for Samsung pay?
That I can get an item fixed easily at any of their retail stores?
Sure - stuff out there works - but figuring out the perfect phone carrier / phone provider for example is annoying. Where is download boost on Verizon? Oh, it’s disabled.
Even apples phone experience is much more consistent across all carriers. Why these other folks bundle 10 Verizon and another batch of junk themselves as user value enhancing boggles my mind
> Android pairs newer bluetooth devices essentially the same way apple pairs airpods now
This isn’t really the part of Apple’s Bluetooth that I appreciate. What I find immensely useful is when you want to switch the headphones from one device to another. Apple’s solution isn’t 100% accurate, but on any given day, it’s common for me to switch my AirPod Pros from my phone to my watch to my laptop to my Apple TV. Before I switched over to all Apple gear, I needed to either spend 5 minutes re-pairing my headphones or (what I really did) have dedicated Bluetooth headphones for my TV.
This is the major benefit for me... the seamless switching, not the pairing.
Nowadays we can switch a device connect to headphone by connecting from the device. It's not good as like Apple's proprietary solution, but the rest of the world is also improving since 2010. I also like NFC but it's less adopted.
Of course everyone's experience is different but Apple's software is pretty far from "Just Works". Especially their macos with the recent update to Big Sur as well as multiple OS updates during Catalina. In the 1 year I have owned a 16 inch macbook pro it's bricked on me twice because of their "Just Works" OS updates and had to take it to the Apple store to get it reset. Not to mention the issue of not being apple to open non-apple apps at one point due to a bug on their side. I have had issues with Windows and Linux, but nothing close to bricking my machine. It seems to me Apple's way of doing business is if it's not an Apple product, we have no interest. They really want to lock you in which is fine cause they are a business but that mindset is extremely dangerous in my opinion.
Yeah, I didn't have the "it just works" experience. The last iPhone I owned was an iPhone 3s, and an update nearly bricked it by slowing everything down on the phone.
I guess "it just works" as long as you keep upgrading to their latest. That's true with deprecations in every product line, but it's not something I'd pay a premium for, especially when it doesn't exist.
My experience with Apple recently has been quite rocky. I recommended a family purchase a MacBook Pro but they ended up getting bit by the keyboard bug, which basically compromises the entire experience really badly.
I tried the Apple smart home ecology on the argument of privacy and I’m getting frustrated at the disparity in quality vs Google. For example, there’s a noticeable probability of multiple devices picking up AND redundantly entering a command, like adding a reminder. Often, often times, another Siri device will take over from the local one in front of me and say, “Sorry, I can’t do that,” even though it could if the right device picked up.
Apple is still a top recommendation but they aren’t a no brainer. The more you use your brain the less you end up on the bad side of the Apple ecology, like with the sticky keyboard issue.
It's not true. Take the Apple TV vs Roku. Roku is so easy to use, so reliable, similar capabilities. They just nail it. Apple TV's remote is so confusing error prone and unintuitive my wife refuses to touch it, and I make mistakes with it much more than Roku. We put up with it only for the exclusives (Apple TV, HBO Max) and Apple only features (Apple device mirroring)
Same, everything else feels… "stiff" and somewhat clunky compared to an ATV4K, and the next best option Roku has serious privacy issues.
I will say though that oddly, the Siri remote got a little worse in its ATV4K revision — most notably, triggering a jump back/forward 30s is much harder on the newer remote. As a result I've paired my old original Dev Kit remote with the ATV4K, which works beautifully.
Well I like my Bose headphones, which use a single AAA battery but they are corded. Wireless anything is a hard no for me due to poor experience with it. I know a lot of people disagree.
So why are you even posting in a topic about a pair of wireless headphones? You're not the market. You have no recent experience with similar products. What was your point?
Maybe if you stay in the ecosystem. I used an end of 2013 Macbook Pro at work that was bought for a research project. Latest hardware at the time. Had all kinds of problems connecting it to my Android phone. Apple "just works" is a myth. I have had as many problems with Apple hardware as with most other hardware. The chances that some random device will "just work" is probably highest for Windows 10. I'm saying that as a Linux user (by choice) and sometimes forced Windows 10 and OSX user.
I also recall some issues when developing Arduino stuff because of the USB connection to the Arduino.
If you want the best platform for connecting random vendors together, I would probably go with Windows/Microsoft.
If you want the best platform for seamless vertical integration nothing is better than Apple. That's why people get so excited about new Apple products. It's a new shiny toy that they know will work excellently within their ecosystem.
Not to discount your experiences, but I use FreeBSD, Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android devices, professionally and personally, and I don't have many problems getting these devices to talk to each other.
>Had all kinds of problems connecting it to my Android phone.
MacOS doesn't have native MTP support. You can use a third party tool on MacOS or an SMB client on Android.
I loved my AirPods. Then the batteries gave up the ghost, and I was left with small, expensive, probably toxic electronic garbage. It ruined the brand for me and I can't imagine buying another pair of AirPods.
- Do an in warranty battery replacement (within 1 year)
- Pay a repair shop or apple for a new battery.
- Apple runs one of the most comprehensive recycling and trade-in programs out there. Every store offers both trade-in value for devices that have it and free recycling for those that don't.
Surely it will be possible to replace them in repair shops? Not for the home gamer obviously, but neither are screen repairs - and I’m really happy with my third party screen repair.
My AirPods also lack battery capacity now, to a degree that it’s annoyingly short. I accidentally came over a second pair, but yeah a new pair of earphones every two to three years sounds expensive to me.
Problem is, they work so spectacularly well otherwise that I don’t know how that I could stand anything else. Part of this is that Apple seem to intentionally make other headsets work less well. For example by not routing calls through the headset by default, such a joke.
But at least it’s small? I mean, one dead laptop is the equivalent of many lifetimes worth of AirPods in terms of waste.
Of all the things that could be disposable this seems like the least concerning. A Tesla contains orders of magnitudes more plastic, electronics, and batteries that will one day be junk and you will go through maybe 3 sets of AirPods before you trade in for a newer model EV?
Cars in general are pretty wasteful, even outside of the manufacturing process. I'd be surprised if Teslas wasted more raw 'energy' when totaled compared to the waste caused by extracting, refining, transporting, and then burning oil and all the human labor that goes into that.
I'm all-in on Apple, and I don't see that changing. And generally, the above has been my experience too. But I recently bought a wireless magic keyboard and trackpad for a standing workstation with a monitor in the corner of our living room. I'd expected to be able to switch between our two laptops seamlessly so that whoever happened to need it could use it, but no - you have to explicitly unpair the keyboard and trackpad from one computer before re-pairing it to the other. That means finding it wherever my wife left it, turning it on or at a minimum logging in and all the rest of the dance, every single time. It drives me insane.
I have a shitty $50 brand x bluetooth speaker that does it better than this. I want to listen to some music, I pair with it. My wife wants to listen to some music later? She just pairs to it and she's done. It doesn't seem that hard to get right.
Could be bad design, or could be good shared-space / privacy-focused design. Letting someone else yoink a connected input device in a hypothetical coffee shop or office with 50 people nearby is a recipe for annoyance or even for privacy-invasion. (Even if it only lets you grab devices you've previously been paired to, that's still an easy thing in an office where a lot of the equipment is more communal.)
My recollection is that the magic keyboard / trackpad insta-pair if you connect them via wire. Would plugging them each in to a lightning cable for a second to switch their allegiance work better for you than manually unpairing? Obviously it's still a hassle.
I have a Logitech k380 which in my opinion does this in an intuitive way.
There’s 3 dedicated buttons for paired Bluetooth devices (fn + 1,2,3) and hitting them just pairs to the device. And you can reassign a button to another device by holding fn+1,2,3.
When you turn it on it pairs to the last device it was paired to.
New Logitech master mouse I bought does it really well. One button under to switch between three computers.
That said... I really hope we can move away from Bluetooth, it’s the least reliable and most errorprone thing on todays computers.
I don't have much experience with Apple stuff, but recently I was tasked with getting a Macbook onto the most recent OS revision.
I actually never managed to do it, and had to call for backup. In order to eventually do it, this other person had to install multiple updates, each of which seemed to only be accessible from some different piece of UI, and a lot of the process seemed to trial and error and dead-ends.
I don't think Apple stuff "just works" nearly as well as people claim it does.
Having performed every OS update from OS X Jaguar (10.2) to macOS Big Sur, I'm surprised by your experience. macOS releases have always been complete and not in place upgrades over previous versions.
Once the OS releases became free and were no longer distributed on physical media there was a time when releases would be downloaded from the App Store. OS updates have moved from a dedicated Software Update app, to the App Store app and now into System Preferences. For I'm not sure how long, OS installations have been effectively click and approve the license with no other input required for the past decade (and with increasingly less information displayed during the install process).
I've recently installed OS X 10.4 Tiger (from 2005) and Windows 8 Pro, both from original media to blank drives, the OS X installation was much less frustrating (most notably because I didn't have to dig up a license key).
New versions of OS X and macOS have been released as full versions, but in OS X (ie 10.##) the App Store and System Preferences methods are absolutely in-place upgrades. Big Sur is actually a full system update via any method.
"For I'm not sure how long, OS installations have been effectively click and..." agree to legal contract titled 'Terms and Conditions' that, if anyone read them, would clarify a TON of technical misconceptions and speculations (but ironically does not provide much legal clarity).
I've recently installed OS X 10.10 - macOS 11.0 dozens of times each with no eyes or hands, and at least one of the people involved was frustrated every single time. People shouldn't have to have experience installing every release of the last fifteen years to install the latest without struggling.
Because Microsoft has had to pay so much attention to it - and maybe Apple has not - the Windows update process is at the very least far more informative about what’s going on - status of installation before and after any reboot. Updating OS on wife’s MacBook seems like comparatively opaque process. Which is fine if things “always work”, but they don’t.
Yeah I'm a MacOS fanboy, but it really irked me when they got rid of the (hard to find but extremely useful) log output during OS updates a few major versions back. It saved me a lot of time once when it showed that it was backing up files that I didn't care about. Now there is no option to view the log during installation.
I've been fortunate to never run into any failed updates (and I've done many) but as they remove features like this and 32 bit support, I'm looking at other options for my next machine.
Apple just works until it doesn’t. I have used Apple products for many years but a a perfectly fine 2013 15” MBP dying on me because of bad RAM has made me reconsider. That’s something that should be a cheap and quick replacement
It was in excellent condition other than that, so I don’t think age matters. Do you think it’s reasonable to buy a whole new car because the tires are worn out?
I'm a software engineer, and I'm happy to get my hands dirty with some code. But when it comes to my devices, I really don't want to waste my time trying to figure out why this or that device, doesn't pair with, or work well with, my other device.
Apple just does this better than anyone else.
I recently got an Apple watch and the setup process was sublime. Pairing with all my other devices, was effortless. Instantly my watch was "mine" with everything I need on it.
The LTE setup was mostly painless too. There was a bug in the process that was on Verizon's end, but other than that, getting my phone paired to my number was a breeze.
The pairing with my phone, and my mac, is what makes this whole ecosystem special. It just works, and it works pretty damn well. Yes, you can get most of this functionality on a windows or linux machine, with an android phone, airpod replicas, and an android based smart watch but the fluidity of the apple integration is unmatched.
This is what (some) people are willing to pay more for.