brassicGamer wrote:

... Apple eschews everything this community holds dear - reparability, longevity, upgradeability, and a personal relationship with your hardware.

^ Epic sentence.

snorg wrote:

... The only thing I'd like to upgrade on it is a 1 terabyte SSD if they drop down to the $150 range ...

We're now close to 1TB SSDs for $200: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … 6-596-_-Product

snorg wrote:

What kills me is this hobby is so bad for the environment, I used to upgrade all the time I try to go as long as I can now between upgrades. I often buy used or refurbished gear, since in addition to being slighly more "green" it is easier on my wallet.

This is the issue in my mind. Buying new stuff is fun, I get that, but eWaste is a massive problem. Companies like Apple are always going to push the consumer to upgrade, I get that too, so I think ultimately the responsibility lies with the consumer. In the 90s and naughties there did exist an imperative to upgrade regularly, and it's going to take a while for that idea to wear off.

badmojo wrote:

it's going to take a while for that idea to wear off.

it's forced via software on us, that is imho the main reason; someone mentioned windows 7 memory needs as a reason to upgrade - thats not the whole truth, windows 7 can be cut down to sub 1gb, it's the slower hard disk operation and more graphical bloat that really makes the update a necessity;

My W500, W510 and W520 all work great.

My iPhone 4S had a dead battery. In case I could have replaced the battery I would have continued using it. Now I have a 5S: works fine.

PeterLI wrote:

My iPhone 4S had a dead battery. In case I could have replaced the battery I would have continued using it. Now I have a 5S: works fine.

Not working, as intended.

If Apple actually had something substantial for that claim with their PCs being regularly updated to be powerful, then that statement would have weight.

Apple highs are shit as always. 😀
P.S. Write this on 12-years old P4 (my main retro rig). Works 24/7 around 6 years now. Maybe later I will replace 2 SATA HDDs to 2.2 TB ones... And maybe much later I will combine something on Q77 (Ivy Bridge + PCI)...
P.S.S. WinXp Sp3 of course...

I'm talking about the average user here but Apple computers usually outlasts PC. They are built to high standards and upgrading to the latest OS is free.
On a PC most people upgrade the entire PC rather then just the OS.
Mrs Early 2011 MacBook pro has had a larger HDD and more RAM, but does everything she needs from a business machine, running the latest OS
Its only with Windows 10 can PC users finally upgrade to the latest version for nothing.

One thing to consider is that a lot of Apple's target market here is likely laptop users... and a 5 year old laptop was either Arrandale or early Sandy Bridge. Battery life isn't great on that era of hardware unless you have a business machine with twelve batteries hanging off of it, performance isn't great on mobile platforms back then (Sandy Bridge has held up far, far better on the desktop than it has on mobile, due to the mobile efficiency gains (which don't translate to high-clock efficiency gains) that Intel's made over the years, allowing higher and higher clock speeds in mobile TDPs).

My main rig is from 2009. Core2 Quad Q9550, 4GB RAM, more than enough HDDs (all mechanical), GTX 560 Ti, and other less important stuff. I only changed the GPU in 2013 to GTX 560 Ti from GTS250 and I also changed all the HDDs at least twice (for reasons of data safety), and that's it. To say the truth, the newest games I played with it are FarCry 3 and Crysiş 2, and it runs them well. Apart from that, I have more than 350 titles from GOG all waiting for me to play, which are almost always from 2008 and before. This means practically, I already have all the games I will play for the next 10 years are on hand, so no need for any new games. For the other tasks, even my previous rig (Athlon 64) was more than enough.

So, is it really "unbelievable" that I don't want/need an upgrade for the forseeable future, as long as nothing dies?

Heck, I just changed my trusty old Nokia 5800 a couple of months ago with a second hand Iphone 4, since the poor Nokia finally died. Not because I can't buy the latest one, but since my friend offered it to me since she is not using it anymore. A lovely little machine in perfect condition and still 100% useful, and covering all my mobile needs.

I have Thinkpads well over 5 years old that work just fine (Thinkpad T61).

A 5+ year old ex gaming rig is decent enough for todays internet centric use. You just need a 4 core CPU and 4gb+ of RAM plus a decent video card. The switch to x64 and RAM requirements are what causes most people to just buy a new machine.

The world is in a 3 year upgrade cycle that isn't needed anymore.

And how many 5+ year old laptops are high-end ThinkPads? (Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the A9X were actually faster than many lower-end R61s and T61s...)

The plateau in performance demand for consumer workloads is real, but old consumer laptops are probably not at the plateau, and have other problems.

Also, SSDs are a huge boost to performance, and IIRC, 6 Gb/s SATA wasn't reliable until Sandy Bridge? And a T61 needs a modded BIOS to run 3 Gb/s...

(For desktops, though, the plateau even on low-end hardware has been reached for quite a long time... and for high-end hardware (i5-2500K or better), a 4.5 year old gaming rig is still perfectly fine for even high-end gaming, just keep upgrading GPUs.)

The way I see it, performance per Watt, is THE main area of improvement over the last few years. So mobile devices are actually seeing most of those.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

The way I see it, performance per Watt, is THE main area of improvement over the last few years. So mobile devices are actually seeing most of those.

I remember when they first introduced the ATOM processors. 99% of the general population turned their noses to them. The rest of us nearly shat ourselves. The fastest of which used 8 watts. E-I-G-H-T. And for basic computing they worked great. Not to mention the chips were the size of your thumbnail.

It's really sad, there are only 600M PC users with brain. No offence to anyone, I just can't get the new tendency to throw away your gear when it's got some malware... It's like throwing away your car because it got dirty.

P.S. When I go to the mall with my wife and send her rushing through clothing stores, I choose a convenient spot on a sofa in front of Apple Store and play Doom or Heroes II on my 20-year old Toshiba Libretto. Nothing cheers you up like a small act of rebellion 🤣

RacoonRider wrote:

It's really sad, there are only 600M PC users with brain. No offence to anyone, I just can't get the new tendency to throw away your gear when it's got some malware... It's like throwing away your car because it got dirty.

P.S. When I go to the mall with my wife and send her rushing through clothing stores, I choose a convenient spot on a sofa in front of Apple Store and play Doom or Heroes II on my 20-year old Toshiba Libretto. Nothing cheers you up like a small act of rebellion 🤣

I like it. ViVa la revolution brothers and systers(SP)!!! It took Apple how many years

Consumer culture issues aside, there's also a big point that DRAM prices have been stagnating the last few years (from the low they hit around 2011/2012) as they tend to end up doing once in a while for one reason or another, so a well-stocked system configured 5 years ago might be MORE expensive to build or upgrade now than it was back then. (aside from second-hand parts, and even then RAM prices -for current-ish DDR3 1333/1600/1866- haven't been particularly cheap)

And aside from gaming, the only real benefit from buying/buyilding a totally new system now compared to 5 years ago in the low-to-mid-range cost/performance category would be power consumption ... unless you want an AMD CPU/APU, in which case you're probably not going to gain much performance/watt efficiency there either. (actually, if you put together a low power Intel based system around 2011/2012, you probably wouldn't gain all that much now either)

And the gaming end is a separate issue too, though on the tweak-happy user on a budget, you also won't gain much from a total system upgrade, especially looking at only new parts. (CPU upgrading an older AM3+ compatible or LGA-1155 based system might make sense depending on what your existing setup is -especially since the old Phenoms/Athlons lack some newer multimedia instructions even if a game doesn't gain much from the 6 or 8 integer cores- and a second hand i5 or i7 might be a good upgrade on a slower -or non overclockable- i5 or i3 or Pentium Dual Core -which was a solid budget gaming option back in 2012) GPU upgrades are obviously the more typically meaninful option, though.

Also a shame e-waste is the main (or only) option for dealing with old components/systems for most people. Trade-in or donation to used PC warehouses/dealers is a lot nicer, or just local listing sales (Craigslist/etc). Not to mention the level of waste/incompetence (on top of poor working conditions) involved in most e-waste recycling operations. Old game consoles are more likely to end up donated to thrift stores at least (and old home computers that haven't ended up trashed yet -but not owned by someone savvy enough to sell them themselves) and a lot of thrift stores have developed online stores and auctions with less and less ignorant listings of more popular old tech (and tech in general). But on the PC end, anything bigger than a graphics card or maybe motherboard tends to be harder to sell online. (OTOH, as various organizations and people get more savvy, the super cheap deals also start disappearing)

I wonder if overseas PC scrappers have gotten wise of some of that too and started sorting out stuff useful for resale rather than scrapping. For that matter, given the performance envelope demand in some overseas countries, I'd think there'd be big potential business for sorting and refurbishing discarded components rather than totally scrapping it. (for vaguely new-ish and general-purpose usable stuff, not VINTAGE )

Monitors are just a pain to deal with though ... heavy and/or fragile (be it CRT or LCD) and expensive to ship. (pretty much only good for buying/selling/donating locally -including the off-chance you do have a warehouse operation in your area)

And granted, overseas scrapping operations wouldn't even be economical to use if it wasn't for a ton of other economic binds, exceptions, and general backwardness/disparity (and lack of regulation) that makes shipping stuff back and forth super-long distances actually worth the waste of fuel, time and other resources. (compared to local recycling, reprocessing, refurbishing, etc) But any more on that would tend to get pretty political. 😜

And just some fun little anecdotes but: until I think 3 years ago, my grandpa was still using the old PIII-733 system for day to day stuff (mostly email and office and some photo/video use) that Dad had put together for him some 10 years prior which itself was a Compaq workstation Dad got from IBM's discard pile when he worked there. (oddball RDRAM based system too, upgraded from 256 to 640 MB late in life before it finally got retired) And Grandma's still using her 2008 HP Pavilion 9700 (I'd probably still be using mine for day to day stuff if the HDD hadn't crashed when the system fell off my desk -still working with a new drive, but I switched to a desktop build back in 2013 for most stuff)

Overseas recycling works because the Asian ships that would be leaving the US empty need ballast anyway so might as well take e-waste or scrap metal.

I run a Pentium M 1,5Ghz @ 2Ghz (Pinmod FSB) with 2Gb DDR2 Ram 533/Dual Channel and a 8800GT GeForce with 512Megs.
It runs very fast and i can do almost all Stuff with it.
Windows 7/8.1 runs very good. Only Windows 10 fails on it (Constant CPU use ~20-30%)..
No P4 i know runs that good..
Even the 3,4Ghz Netburst thing is slower 😳

Well.... Apple has become a joke and a shell of their former self, ever since Steve Jobs died.
Perhaps they will go the way of the Commodore now. They would have if he had not rejoyned in 1997.
Now. For me at least. It seems as they are starting to take up bad bussiness habbit yet again.
Telling the world how great they are and at the same time stepping on everyone else.

At least, I like how they have managed that iPhone FBI issue.

For me, the pinnacle of Apple was in the day's of Leopard/snow-leopard.
I really wanted to have a black macbook in those years.
Now it is all a unified platform. I am not a big fan of those idea's, of having universal apps.