Question The sundering- of this site.

OtherEric wrote: When we lost Bob we also lost the cabal (tincc) mailing list. Prior to that, even authors who weren't currently that active were still in the loop to some degree. We never did get the list up and running again, and it made it easier for people to drift away.

CrazyMinh wrote:

OtherEric wrote: When we lost Bob we also lost the cabal (tincc) mailing list. Prior to that, even authors who weren't currently that active were still in the loop to some degree. We never did get the list up and running again, and it made it easier for people to drift away.

Why haven't they stumbled across the new site then??? You'd think that they'd look for their old work and find this site once more, but they haven't???

E. E. Nalley wrote: I wonder what it is about the human condition to never be grateful for what you have? Why is the glass always half empty? The grass greener on the other side of the fence? Envy certainly earns its place as a Deadly Sin.

On a side note, Minh, can I buy you a new keyboard? Your ? and ! keys seem to stick a lot...

Rose Bunny wrote: E.E. ... you mean we don't have you ankle-chained to your desk, demanding you write more Adventures of Spirit-Chan Whateley material?

CrazyMinh wrote:

OtherEric wrote: When we lost Bob we also lost the cabal (tincc) mailing list. Prior to that, even authors who weren't currently that active were still in the loop to some degree. We never did get the list up and running again, and it made it easier for people to drift away.

Why haven't they stumbled across the new site then??? You'd think that they'd look for their old work and find this site once more, but they haven't???

E. E. Nalley wrote:

Rose Bunny wrote: E.E. ... you mean we don't have you ankle-chained to your desk, demanding you write more Adventures of Spirit-Chan Whateley material?

Chained? *blink blink* Promise?

Anne wrote: Let me ask this and hopefully not seem like an asshole... Is (or has) anyone considered restarting an author's mailing list? I know this is quite a bit of work (more than I probably want to do) but maybe we have someone who is young, and has a vision for the site that meshes well with Kristin?
Just my $.02 (and worth not that much) and thoughts..

JG wrote: That's because apple products are overpriced trash

JG wrote: took me some work to find my shit again. not all are tech savvy. some of us are creeping upward in age and just tired.

I know at least one of us has persistent health issues.

i have persistent lung problems and a fun mental health issue that interferes with my ability to focus. add to this a learning disorder.

so my coping skill usually involves a raised middle finger to whatever or whoever is agitating me. some people cant find that, and just keep going.

but until they confide in me, I won't know

Sir Lee wrote: I wouldn't go as far as call Macs "trash", but "overpriced," yes, no doubt about it. Even Apple fanboys talk about the "Apple tax." And as Apple focused more and more on mobile devices (like they are a small startup lacking the resources...), Mac specs have suffered. C'mon, MacPro anyone? Apple supposedly top-of-line, high performance computer only has hardware refreshes every Jupiter orbit or so? Not to mention the recent throttled CPU on the Macbook Pro (again, an allegedly top-of-the-line machine)...

There was a time when Macs were the best machines you could get, and if you paid a premium for them, you could justify it by the lack of comparable products from other sellers. This is no longer the case. You still pay the premium, but you get a machine with lackluster specs: last-year CPUs and GPUs, throttled CPUs, no touchscreen, bad keyboards... they are nice, for mid-range machines, but are priced as ultra-premium ones.

Schol-R-LEA wrote: Would this be a good time to mention that I am so fed up with x86 hardware that I am considering using my RaspPi 3 as my daily driver (or more likely, getting a more beefy SBC such as a Renegade Elite or a Rock64 Pro specifically for that purpose)?

Kristin Darken wrote:

Kristin was more polite,

On the surface, yes.

E. E. Nalley wrote: You don't have to take our word for it, we didn't delete her posts. If you search for the user name Tristra and set the time to any you can find them. A word of caution; your mind may not survive stupid and entitlement of THAT MAGNITUDE...

You've been warned!

JG wrote: Sorry, thread got derailed so I could troll and determine who the apple fanboys/girls are for future torment.

Rose Bunny wrote: Apple made good computers back in the day, the downfall began when they switched from the Motorola chips.

JG wrote: their downfall came when they started selling the hardware equivalent of a 500-700 dollar desktop for 1500 as far as I'm concerned.

Kristin Darken wrote: Considering the weather hitting Hong Kong atm, I suspect Spirit can supply the noodles.

Cheep PCs can’t support high end support costs, and Apple is proud of the support it gives to its customers. Apple can’t sell cheep computers and give them good support, so Apple doesn’t sell cheep computers.

Yolandria wrote: Im sorry Spirit but i can't let this slide without a comment.

Cheep PCs can’t support high end support costs, and Apple is proud of the support it gives to its customers. Apple can’t sell cheep computers and give them good support, so Apple doesn’t sell cheep computers.

Refused repair Refused repair pt2 Lots of interesting tid bits about Apples amazing "Snicker" support.

Schol-R-LEA wrote: It's more complicated - and, in a way, political - than that. LTT is a rather big channel, whose main schtick is doing tear-downs of any and all hardware. While I doubt that they were initially planning to trash the device, they do tend to play fast and loose specifically so they can 'test' the manufacturers' support.

Because they are a popular channel, they are used to having vendors bend over backwards for good reviews; in fact, in most cases they are usually doing the tear-down on hardware specifically loaned to them by the manufacturers with the understanding that this is what they do, and as a result they usually get things to go through their support channels that otherwise would be rejected out of hand.

They aren't entirely disingenuous about this - they are careful to make it clear that the videos are sponsored and that the hardware is being provided to them with such an understanding. While they don't really make it clear to the viewers just how much the rules are being bent, they do mention that you can't expect to get quite this level of support if you do this stupid thing yourself. My understanding is that the few times they've called out for it, they handwaved it as being a 'simulation' or as 'hyperbole' meant to show what would be seen if there were a less... ah, deliberate failure in a user's system.

And since even their harshest reviews tend to be pretty softball, the vendors usually are willing to play along. Seriously, even when he was slagging off on, say, the AMD Vega Frontier Edition graphics card , it was with stereotypical Canadian politesse.

If the worst you have to say is that it is 'early access hardware' (which it literally was, being a preview card mostly only sold to reviewers) while complaining about the poor quality of the colored lighting and the lack of proofreading in the manual - on a piece of equipment that other channels were pushing into the wicker man and readying the hot pokers for - you can bet that the vendors will love you.

However, when Apple decided not to play along, Linus Sebastian had a rather unbecoming hissy fit over it, and decided to turn the heat up.

That's right, he was deliberately trying to pressure Apple. The company that was about to become the first to break a trillion dollars in capitalization. The company with one of the most notoriously rabid fanbases in the world.

I like a lot of LTT's videos (though more as entertainment than as tech news, TBH), but how Linus thought this was a good idea is anyone's guess. It wasn't as stupid as, say, Digital Homicide subpoena'ing Valve for the personal information of the users who had been big meanie poopyheads towards them over their shitty games, but it wasn't much more likely to work than that had been.

Anyway, he went on to hook up with one of the repair shops who are fighting Apple in court over unauthorized iPhone repairs, and tried to present it as a 'David vs Goliath' scenario. To say that this didn't go down well would be to put it mildly, but the fact is that most of LTT's viewers are PC gamer rig builders, and as such tend to sneer at Apple reflexively. So, while he burned a lot of bridges, his core viewer base just ate it up.

So it wasn't so much a stupid move as it was a dick move.

CrazyMinh wrote: Speaking of which, have you visited the new HQ, and is is as awesome as the pictures?? Big, round, Stargate-shaped building???

Phoenix Spiritus wrote:

Yolandria wrote: Im sorry Spirit but i can't let this slide without a comment.

Cheep PCs can’t support high end support costs, and Apple is proud of the support it gives to its customers. Apple can’t sell cheep computers and give them good support, so Apple doesn’t sell cheep computers.

Refused repair Refused repair pt2 Lots of interesting tid bits about Apples amazing "Snicker" support.

That guy is an idiot.

He pulled his computer to itty little bits and photographed it with absolutely no ESD protection and then posted all over the internet what he had done and then when it no longer worked blamed us.

Let’s be clear here electronics are very delicate and are supposed to be handled carefully, every single pice of electronics in that computer potentially has ESD damage, what were we supposed to do scan it all with an electron microscope to work out what was and was not damaged?

If Apple fixed it once we would then be on the hook warranty wise for any ESD damage we missed in the first attempt at repair. If the computer had been pulled apart by an Apple Authorised Tech and something broke Apple will stand by you, to the point of giving you a new computer if they can’t fix it. If you pull your computer apart yourself and break it it’s no more our responsibility to fix it then if you drove a car out of a new car lot and into a tree.

CrazyMinh wrote:

Schol-R-LEA wrote: It's more complicated - and, in a way, political - than that. [...]

So it wasn't so much a stupid move as it was a dick move.

Hey, I'm with you man. The only reason I use a apple laptop is because it's a MacBook Air, and therefore both lightweight and portable for uni use.

Rose Bunny wrote: This topic has derailed worse than AMTRAK.

lighttech wrote:

Rose Bunny wrote: This topic has derailed worse than AMTRAK.

Hey AMTRAK is cool!

now the California high speed rail project--now that is a mess!

but AMTRAK is okay for the most part but one thing...who was the moron that got rid of service between LA and Lost wages! LV???

the weekend, drunk express was the shit!

if cali wants a high speed rail project that will get finished...that is the best bet and Nevada WILL pay for it or the casinos WILL! and be done in a few years!

Rose Bunny wrote:

lighttech wrote:

Rose Bunny wrote: This topic has derailed worse than AMTRAK.

Hey AMTRAK is cool!

now the California high speed rail project--now that is a mess!

but AMTRAK is okay for the most part but one thing...who was the moron that got rid of service between LA and Lost wages! LV???

the weekend, drunk express was the shit!

if cali wants a high speed rail project that will get finished...that is the best bet and Nevada WILL pay for it or the casinos WILL! and be done in a few years!

I said AMTRAK because they've had several notable derailment accidents.

Phoenix Spiritus wrote:

JG wrote: their downfall came when they started selling the hardware equivalent of a 500-700 dollar desktop for 1500 as far as I'm concerned.

Common, you know that’s a cheep shot, even PC centric sites admit that when you do like for like (i.e. similar performance in a similar form factor) Apple computers are about the same price as any other PC, Apple just doesn’t sell cheep form factors (i.e. minitowers) nor do we sell cheep PCs period, so you need to look at mid-ranged and high end PCs to get like for like comparisons.

Kristin Darken wrote: Apple has always been good at one thing. They don't do cutting edge. They let other people do cutting edge and then they combine all the features and feedback from which bits of cutting edge worked and what didn't and they put together a stable working version while everyone else moves on to the next cutting edge. As a result, the average user gets a positive experience without having to deal with the sorts of technical problems that apply when you're working with hardware that no one has drivers for yet... or requires a polite balance of resources, etc. Add onto that, Apple markets very well. They have established a community of users that are solid supporters that has nothing to do with the hardware that they sell.

They consistantly paint themselves as the 'artist' computer of choice... a claim that is based on one historical fact: once upon a time, Adobe (and specifically Adobe fonts) were only available to Apple. This was important because these were the first True Type fonts, the first that were properly scalable within the context of your page layout. Everything else about that claim has always been a nonsense argument. Sure, they're better than the stock graphics and sound on a PC motherboard... but who runs a PC for sound or graphics work and doesn't use a high end card atop the basic system?

No... the only real advantage I've ever seen to Apple systems is stability... and that's predictable. You can't add components from a hundred different companies to the hardware of your Apple system. PC? Who knows what company your graphics card is, your memory is made by, your sound card... ethernet, etc, etc... and every one of those things needs drivers, has to be up to date with what Microsoft is doing with the OS, and so on. But that potential market created blue screen of death? Comes with the benefit of competition bringing price tags down. And EVERYTHING about PC's is competitive, even CPUs, motherboards, memory, harddrives, all of it. So yes, PC is more or less guaranteed to be more powerful and have the better price tag. Apple will likely continue to be more stable (though most mid-range PC's that actually compare performance wise with an Apple are just as stable.. where you'll see the difference is in two systems released at the same time). And more expensive.

If the community and stability is worth that extra price tag to you... then there is nothing wrong with Apple.

..