Have FireWire Hardware? Apple Says "Too Bad, Go Buy New Stuff"

[analogika]

23 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

My first Apple was a Mac Classic II. The one that looked like a toaster. At the same time, I had an Atari and what we called an IBM Compatible that ran Windows 3.1 and DOS-5. I liked the Mac and Atari better than the Mac.  The Mac was OS-6 (or System 6 as it was called)

 

 The Mac Classic II came with System 7 (it was 1991)…it could run a special version of System 6 if desired though.  

 

The one with the two floppy drives (or optionally, one floppy and one HD) was the Mac SE (from 1987). My first Mac was an SE with 1 MB of RAM and a 20 MB Seagate hard drive.  

 

23 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

The Mac files needed a "Mac Header" inserted in the file. Two data fields needed to be added so that the Mac knew what program to associate the files with. There was a nifty little app that allowed me to manually enter the info.

[…]
But OSX didn't have that little app for the Mac Header info.

 

 Ah… ResEdit was the shit, back in the day. I had so much fun with it.

The idea of a file having a data fork and a resource fork, and saving format and associated application data in the resource fork was SO elegant.

 

It was one of the major, MAJOR disappointments of OS X that they eliminated the resource fork and forced every file to work with filename extensions, instead. I understand why they did it, but it was one of those details that made Macintosh so much nicer than the other systems… 

The elimination of resource forks was, of course, the reason why the Resource Editor ResEdit no longer had a purpose. 

 

23 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

That one was solved, but about 3 weeks after I bought the eMac, Apple discontinues the Power PC chip and goes to Intel. So in 3 weeks, I'm out $1,500.00 because my eMac is obsolete. The rep who sold me the eMac must have known she was selling me soon-to-be discontinued item, but they were probably trying to clear out old stock.

 

You stuck with a classic Mac running System 6 for FIFTEEN YEARS? (The eMac was dropped in Oct. 2005, and the first Intels came out in Jan. 2006.)

 

23 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

I limped along on my old Mac, which was getting flaky and crashing a lot, doing nothing on it but adding Mac headers, and using the eMac to copy disks, and cursing Apple every time (well almost). This was pre-World-Wide-Web, and I was still sending floppy disks in the mail.

 

The WWW had been around for 13 years by the time Apple moved to Intel. Their machines hadn't come with floppy drives for eight years by then. I'd been on an ADSL internet connection at home for five or six years by that point. 

Are you sure your timeline works out? 

[Notes_Norton]

28 minutes ago, analogika said:

You stuck with a classic Mac running System 6 for FIFTEEN YEARS?

I still have a working 2002 Windows XP, IBM Think Pad that I use to play music files. I used it on the gig, schlepping it hundreds of times per year, and playing it in a lot of unfriendly places.

 

I don't trade in things that are working just for a shiny new model. When I need something the new model will give me, that's when I upgrade. I had a pro saxophone from the 1960s that I used in school, and gigged with it for decades until I wore it out. I miss that one too, it was a classic, and in good shape  (mine wasn't or it would sell for 50 times what I paid for it). I have an alto sax that was built in 1925, it has the voice of an angel, but I don't bring it to the gig, so it's not worn out yet.

 

My computing needs are simple. I need to:

• Write aftermarket style and song packages for Band-in-a-Box (which is back-compatible to the things I wrote on DOS-5)
• Make MIDI backing tracks for my duo. I currently have over 650 of them. I use a Master Tracks Pro sequencer and record to Audacity.
• Turn my WAV backing tracks into a high quality mp3 and play them on stage
• Make music head charts or lyric sheets to read on stage, because I can't memorize over 650 songs.
• Write and maintain my websites https://www.nortonmusic.com and http://www.s-cats.com
• Surf the net
• Do my bookkeeping (Quicken 2004).

For what reason do I need to buy a new computer every year or so?

 

I buy good, classic clothes and wear them for years. My minivan is a 2010 and has close to 200k miles on it. Mrs. Notes' Jeep, which she bought new in 1978 still runs like a top.

 

I have a number of MIDI sound modules, the oldest being a Yamaha TX81z, Roland MT32, and Akai S900 hardware sampler (From the late 1980s). Plus newer ones I've collected through the years.

 

Unlike software synths, they don't die when the computer company decides it's upgrade or die time. Do you have any software sounds that are from the 1980s and still working?

 

And some older sounds, which have never been reproduced by a plug-in, are just right for what I'm working on. Other sounds are best on the new synths. But they are tools, and they make me money. The melodic percussion sounds of the TX and some of the LA synth sounds of the MT have never been successfully done with a software synth. They don't work on every song, but when they do, they are stellar.

Compulsive consumption is not what are into. Instead of buying new computers, new clothes, new cars, air fryers, HDTVs, espresso machines, jewelry and whatever, we travel. W've been to: All 50 US states, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. Croix & St John (USVI), all but 3 Canadian provinces, 7 Mexican states, Bahama Islands, Bermuda Islands, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Saint-Martin/Sint Maarten, Jamaica, Cayman Islands, England, Scotland, Wales, Gibraltar, The Netherlands, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Czech Republic, Austria, Australia, Russia, Japan, and China (From the Great Wall down to Hong Kong).

 

5 weeks in Australia to us was much better than buying an HDTV or some fashion items. There is more than one way to enjoy life. Some people like products, we prefer experience.

 

Perhaps that's why upgrade or die isn't for me.

 

BTW, you may be correct, the Mac Classic II may have had system 7. I bought it in 1992 when I started selling Band-in-a-Box disks. I looked it up since I wasn't sure, and Wiki said from system 6 to system 7. Since my was early I figured 6. I liked it a lot, especially since Band-in-a-Box at the time was DOS-5 based, and I have typos built into my fingers. I liked the Atari for the same reason.

 

My first home computer was a Texas Instruments TI99, but it was more of a toy than a computer. I bought a music app for it, but it didn't do much. I learned to write a little BASIC, but never followed up on that.

 

As far as I can see now, I'll not buy another Apple product, for two reasons (1) upgrade or die (2) they don't play well with others. But who knows, tomorrow something might happen to change my mind. I'm not religious about my tools, I just want them to work for me.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

 

[David Emm]

Notes makes a fair point about "upgrade or die." Two things struck me: all of my critical software instruments have made the leap across 2 and 3 major upgrades, as with the M1 and 2) I want to kick someone(s) at Apple in the taint for want of just one more USB or Thunderbolt port. If I can't have more system memory for a sane price, at least give me that added port for serious library storage on SSDs. Its a bit of a slap to trust their computer and then have to lean on 3rd party memory this heavily anyway.

 

I can live with it, because its not unlike the step up and away from floppies. E-music is an esoteric, pricey, boutique hobby. I'll grind my teeth a bit and be glad of the immense gain. Still, just one more port and my arse wouldn't be half as chapped. Oh well, its parsecs away from my days cussing over a splicing block! 

[Anderton]

FWIW Apple didn't reply to my request for comment, although I knew it was a long shot.

[The Real MC]

The longer I own Mac products the happier I am.

I was a Windows user until my WIN2K machine started disabling peripherals mysteriously for no reason.  Tried a new WIN7 machine, oops BlackIce firewall no longer works on newer OS.  Once a week that WIN7 machine was infected with malware because Windows firewall doesn't.  Had to take it off the net.

That really p1ssed me off.  Then Vista comes along and its primary requirement is all new computer, all new peripherals, EVERYTHING.

printf("Hello Apple!")

As long as I had to spend that much $$$ upgrading to Vista, I jumped shipped and bought a 12 core MP 2012.  Best computer I have ever owned, and the transition was easily than I feared.  Added a MBP and iMac.  

 

They are all frozen at OSX High Sierra because I got tired of upgrades moving menu items around on the apps (esp that blasted iMovie).  All of them have Logic 10 loaded on them, what I loved about Apple software is the license for one purchase permits the same owner to install it on up to five Mac computers.  I only use Logic for MIDI sequencing.  I have all the apps and software I will ever need on all machines so I am not worried about obsolescence with new versions.

 

Yes the MP has ports that are obsolete - no problem, all my peripherals are either TCP/IP or USB.  The MP had its first failure after I relocated.  After some research I uncovered a coin battery on the motherboard.  Replaced that and it was good as new.  Ten years on a coin battery is a LONG time.

[KuruPrionz]

42 minutes ago, The Real MC said:

The longer I own Mac products the happier I am.

I was a Windows user until my WIN2K machine started disabling peripherals mysteriously for no reason.  Tried a new WIN7 machine, oops BlackIce firewall no longer works on newer OS.  Once a week that WIN7 machine was infected with malware because Windows firewall doesn't.  Had to take it off the net.

That really p1ssed me off.  Then Vista comes along and its primary requirement is all new computer, all new peripherals, EVERYTHING.

printf("Hello Apple!")

As long as I had to spend that much $$$ upgrading to Vista, I jumped shipped and bought a 12 core MP 2012.  Best computer I have ever owned, and the transition was easily than I feared.  Added a MBP and iMac.  

 

They are all frozen at OSX High Sierra because I got tired of upgrades moving menu items around on the apps (esp that blasted iMovie).  All of them have Logic 10 loaded on them, what I loved about Apple software is the license for one purchase permits the same owner to install it on up to five Mac computers.  I only use Logic for MIDI sequencing.  I have all the apps and software I will ever need on all machines so I am not worried about obsolescence with new versions.

 

Yes the MP has ports that are obsolete - no problem, all my peripherals are either TCP/IP or USB.  The MP had its first failure after I relocated.  After some research I uncovered a coin battery on the motherboard.  Replaced that and it was good as new.  Ten years on a coin battery is a LONG time.

I am a long term Mac user as well. I worked in graphic design and printing at a few different places and they always had both Windows and Mac computers. People tend to use what they learned starting out. It has always seemed to me that Windows is a "mish-mash" of "bandaid solutions" written by various coders who apparently do not communicate with each other.  Apple has its problems but the system software coders appear to be a team. If I wanted to infect my computer I could install an "Apple friendly" version of Windows on it. I haven't and I have no plans to switch. Current computer is a 2020 Mac mini, I have an Anker 6 plugin USB port plugged into one of my 4 USB ports. I have a USB to Thunderbolt adapter plugged into another port, both of my Lacie hard drives work perfectly and are more than fast enough for the recording work I'm doing. If others are happy with Windows, I am happy for them. I'm not here to discuss the well-beaten and pointless "PC vs Mac" nonsense. I use what I use and I like it. 

[o0Ampy0o]

On 1/4/2024 at 6:26 PM, analogika said:

 

 The Mac Classic II came with System 7 (it was 1991)…it could run a special version of System 6 if desired though.  

 

The one with the two floppy drives (or optionally, one floppy and one HD) was the Mac SE (from 1987). My first Mac was an SE with 1 MB of RAM and a 20 MB Seagate hard drive.  

 

 

 Ah… ResEdit was the shit, back in the day. I had so much fun with it.

The idea of a file having a data fork and a resource fork, and saving format and associated application data in the resource fork was SO elegant.

 

It was one of the major, MAJOR disappointments of OS X that they eliminated the resource fork and forced every file to work with filename extensions, instead. I understand why they did it, but it was one of those details that made Macintosh so much nicer than the other systems… 

The elimination of resource forks was, of course, the reason why the Resource Editor ResEdit no longer had a purpose. 

 

 

You stuck with a classic Mac running System 6 for FIFTEEN YEARS? (The eMac was dropped in Oct. 2005, and the first Intels came out in Jan. 2006.)

 

 

The WWW had been around for 13 years by the time Apple moved to Intel. Their machines hadn't come with floppy drives for eight years by then. I'd been on an ADSL internet connection at home for five or six years by that point. 

Are you sure your timeline works out? 

 

@analogika do you remember these details? Are you using references to get the history in properly?

[analogika]

I remember a lot of these details — I was a Mac hobbyist in the 90s and in Mac sales and support for fifteen years, and I manage and maintain the computer backline for one of my projects. I have a pretty good feel for the chronology and when something feels off. 
 

I'll look up specific dates occasionally in MacTracker to make sure. 

[dmitch57]

On 1/4/2024 at 6:26 PM, analogika said:

The idea of a file having a data fork and a resource fork, and saving format and associated application data in the resource fork was SO elegant.

 

It was one of the major, MAJOR disappointments of OS X that they eliminated the resource fork and forced every file to work with filename extensions, instead. 

I was in the room when that decision was made. It was part of the move from the closed-off old-school OS9 world to UNIX-based OS X. Yeah a resource fork was a good idea in its time, but the problem was, it didn't play well with any other systems...any other systems, anywhere. Try to send a file to someone using any computer other than a Mac, you'd need a special tool at one or both ends. Any data channel anywhere - if it wasn't specifically designed for connecting two Macs, then it didn't handle resource forks well (at all, actually). That made the resource fork mechanism more trouble than it was worth. 

 

The move to UNIX-based OS X was a result of the Apple/NeXT merger. Lots of Apple folks were unhappy with the decision to drop resource forks. NeXT folks, who had been using UNIX for years, were more positive about it. 🙂

 

Filename extensions were and are not the replacement for resource forks. Lots of Mac files don't need or have extensions. Executables of any kind do not need extensions. Magic numbers and file headers are the modern replacement. 

 

So I guess I'm saying that this particular decision by Apple to drop an old technology was actually driven by a need for more compatibility with other systems. Quite different from the decision to drop FireWire support (which I certainly find appalling). 

[analogika]

If you'd like to share the extent of your involvement with the team that meant you were in the room, I'd really appreciate it — here or in DM. 

 

Yes, I'm in no way disputing that it was the right decision. UNIX base and interoperability were pretty much what made Apple as a company viable in the long term. 

 

But the decision, to me was very much in line with Apple's readiness to throw out a Good Thing™ that had run its course and stood in the way of streamlining future efforts. 

I see Firewire as a similar case: a great idea that made things possible that weren't previously, but keeping that makes no sense in a world that moved on twenty years ago (Windows) and a decade ago (Mac). Then again, I have no idea how easy or hard it would be for Apple to bring support into future OS'en. 

I can imagine that their way forward is harmonising development for iPad and Mac — both for their own teams, and third-party software and hardware developers. And it may just not be feasible to add Firewire support to the iPadOS model.

 

Who knows if they're planning mode-switching all-in-one devices. I could imagine them doing something like that. Not supporting drivers may be a big part of that. 

 

Do you have insights to share on that, perhaps? 

[AnotherScott]

On 12/19/2023 at 3:12 PM, Anderton said:

As far as I can tell, it's a hack that disables security

Probably only for the purpose of installing the driver. You should be able to re-enable SIP when you're done.

 

On 12/20/2023 at 7:16 PM, Anderton said:

*Correction: The quote “iPod’s battery is only designed to last for the life of the iPod. You’re just supposed to throw it away and buy a new one" was not attributed to Jobs himself. It was attributed to an Apple representative.

A little orwellian doublespeak there. No, the battery wasn't designed to last for the life of the iPod; rather, the iPod would last for the life of the battery! 

 

On 12/30/2023 at 8:26 AM, analogika said:

Have you actually verified that FireWire no longer works? 

On 12/30/2023 at 6:56 PM, Anderton said:

I haven't, because my computer can't update past Catalina. But after reading the thread, it seems more like it's possible to get it to work with the right version of Thunderbolt, right dock, and right adapters. I guess it remains to be seen whether the people who get it to work or the people who don't get it to work are in the majority.

From one comment I saw, I think the variable (or at least A variable) is whether you're starting from a fresh install of Ventura (e.g. when buying a new Mac that has Ventura or newer pre-installed), vs. someone with an older OS who updates to Ventura (or later). It sounds like maybe updating does not delete the firewire support files that are already there, but a fresh install does not install them, either. (Which would also imply that the "hack" of manually moving them in after-the-fact could be quite safe.)

 

23 hours ago, dmitch57 said:

I was in the room when that decision was made. It was part of the move from the closed-off old-school OS9 world to UNIX-based OS X.

I still miss OS9, though not as much as I did for many a year. Heck, I was a System 6 die-hard pretty much until OS 9 came out (philosophically, not in practice). System 7 was awful. It slowed my speedy Mac IIci running system 6 to a relative crawl, and was generally more complicated (except for the mercy killing of the font/DA mover), and a lot of cool INITs (system enhancements) stopped working. But by the time of OS 9, with the intervening system enhancements along with faster Macs, I made my peace. And then there was OS X. Many years of ugh. Even today, the Finder gives wrong info (I once threw out a folder that said it had zero items when, in fact, it had lots of stuff in it, it just hadn't calculated it yet), Apple Mail still makes me miss Claris Emailer... but okay, I know these days we're far beyond what would have been do-able with the old architecture. But Apple still irritates me with periodic backwards moves. I used to like iMovie...

[BurgerPalaceAudio]

This was a reality of shocking proportion when I upgraded to Ventura.  I had to BEG Apple to backdate and reload Monterrey.  I have a very reliable and workhorse Mackie mixer that works with all my DAW software.  I have to spend MONEY to replace equipment that is not obsolete!   WASTEFUL and infuriating as a studio owner and voice actor who relies fully on my mac.

[ElmerJFudd]

TB and USB interfaces are having a nice long run.  Including backwards compatibility as they improve speed and have settled on that USB-C/TB connector.   
 

FW certainly was preferable to USB at the time.  But 400 to 800 required a connector change and then they were done with it.  FireWire is dead. Long live Thunderbolt.  

[AnotherScott]

On 5/6/2024 at 2:52 PM, BurgerPalaceAudio said:

I have to spend MONEY to replace equipment that is not obsolete! 

 

Yeah, I wouldn't really have any reason to ditch my Digi 002 interface.

[jazzpiano88]

39 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

TB and USB interfaces are having a nice long run.  Including backwards compatibility as they improve speed and have settled on that USB-C/TB connector.   
 

FW certainly was preferable to USB at the time.  But 400 to 800 required a connector change and then they were done with it.  FireWire is dead. Long live Thunderbolt.  

 

I just installed a Silicon Labs Virtual Com Port driver onto the Mac USB to communicate with an external radio.   Thankfully it worked and was available, otherwise, I'd have had to purchase a PC. 

[analogika]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

 

Yeah, I wouldn't really have any reason to ditch my Digi 002 interface.

 

The last OS for which Avid supported the Digi 002 was SIERRA — which came out almost eight years ago. 

They dropped support with High Sierra in fall of 2017. 

 

Whatever happens there is not on Apple; it's on Avid. 

[AnotherScott]

18 minutes ago, analogika said:

 

The last OS for which Avid supported the Digi 002 was SIERRA — which came out almost eight years ago. 

They dropped support with High Sierra in fall of 2017. 

 

Whatever happens there is not on Apple; it's on Avid. 

 

Does "dropping support for" necessarily equate to "nonfunctional with"? But yeah, the Mac currently connected to it is indeed running Sierra. My main Mac went to Mojave a bit over a year ago, I don't know that I've ever tried the 002 on it. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that old versions of browsers stop working and that new Macs can't run old versions of the OS, I'd probably still be on Sierra. If that. 😉

[analogika]

10 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

 

Does "dropping support for" necessarily equate to "nonfunctional with"? 

 

Depends on whether you have the time, capacity, infrastructure, and interest to maintain a thorough testing environment to ensure a functioning system. 

 

I certainly wouldn't entrust my central tools to an unsupported configuration without a tested fallback. 

[AnotherScott]

1 hour ago, analogika said:

 

Depends on whether you have the time, capacity, infrastructure, and interest to maintain a thorough testing environment to ensure a functioning system. 

 

I certainly wouldn't entrust my central tools to an unsupported configuration without a tested fallback. 

It's not like I rent my facilities/services out to others, or have to meet hard deadlines. It's just for my own use. As long as something works, I'll use it. If it becomes problematic, I'll deal with it then.

[Notes_Norton]

What do I dislike about Apple? Certainly not their products. It's their upgrade or die attitude.

I know they are just trying to make a buck, but this is not respectful for their customers.

 

Do I have a right to disagree?

I created a 'fake disk' for Band-in-a-Box customers in the 1990s. Mrs. Notes and I spent over a year upgrading it to reflect the thousands of new styles and the improvements to Band-in-a-Box over the years. I'm getting ready to release it.

How much? Zero. It's Free. Why? It's the right thing to do.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[Stokely]

I've used both Apples and PCs (dos, windows of various sorts) for music and non-music things since the 80s.

Currently I'm doing music on a 2016 macbook pro.  I haven't experienced any feeling of needing to upgrade or die.   Eventually, sure I have to upgrade my OS and maybe my hardware--keeping in mind that the move to Silicon was a very big move and not something that happens even once a decade.   As far as firewire--tech comes and sometimes goes, even good tech.  A good friend's dad was very invested in his Betamax, ask him about that!  The writing was on the wall for years.    My work is mandating I move to windows 11 from 10 because 10 isn't supported--NOT looking forward to that, but it's how it goes.

Apples "cult of thin" or form over function can be quite irritating but based on the newer machines I've seen, they are dialing that back which is great.  The butterfly keyboard SUCKED, I have it on my 2016.  

I do find the inability to upgrade after purchase to be a lousy thing.   That strikes me as maybe both a money grab (can't have people putting cheaper Ram or hard drives in) but also a quality control step.

Here's the thing--pcs can work great too.  I've used many sequencers and daws, and if Apple ever drove me away (and they got close before the M1 came out) then I'd just get a pc and a different daw (currently using Logic) and move on with life.  These computers are tools,  I don't too anxious over my brand of tools though of course you have to give it more thought than buying a hammer or saw because they cost a lot more.

[JamPro]

I am happy to report that I continue to happily use my Mackie 1604 mixer with Firewire AD/DA converter in my Win 10 studio computer.  It works flawlessly.  And building that computer cost me less that one third of what an Apple computer with similar specs would cost.

[AnotherScott]

47 minutes ago, Notes_Norton said:

What do I dislike about Apple? Certainly not their products. It's their upgrade or die attitude.

24 minutes ago, Stokely said:

Currently I'm doing music on a 2016 macbook pro.  I haven't experienced any feeling of needing to upgrade or die. 

 

My 2011 Macbook Pro was my main Mac until 2022, and what really prompted be to upgrade then was it developed the common display card failure that makes it unable to drive an external monitor, which I relied on.

 

For me, the biggest "need" to upgrade doesn't come from Apple's attutude, as I mentioned, it comes from how much of the web ultimately stops working right if you don't run an up-to-date browser. It's not an Apple-specific (i.e. Safari) issue... my OS of choice on my main Mac (Mojave) is no longer supported by current versions of Chrome/Brave or Firefox either. So far, I'm okay, but I know the writing is on the wall for being able to continue to use this OS. On the plus side, my Mac (2018 Mini) is compatible with the most current OS, I'm just resistant to upgrading because I don't need the newer OS features, and I have a few things that will stop working. I'm one of those "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" guys.

 

That said, I recently picked up an M1 Macbook Air that I was able to get at a ridiculously good price, and that forces me to a newer OS. I may or may not transition to making that my main Mac. I've gone back and forth between thinking I would vs. thinking I might just dedicate it to the music rig. 

[Anderton]

57 minutes ago, Stokely said:

Currently I'm doing music on a 2016 macbook pro.  I haven't experienced any feeling of needing to upgrade or die.   Eventually, sure I have to upgrade my OS and maybe my hardware--keeping in mind that the move to Silicon was a very big move and not something that happens even once a decade. 

 

Apple's in an interesting position. Apparently there's not a big rush of people upgrading to M3 machines, even though it outperforms the M2 by 17% single-core and 21% multi-core (and has dynamic caching). I think the "problem" may be that the M1/M2 were such a leap over the Intel chips that people feel that they don't need any extra power. There are only so many video editors in the world It's the same kind of issue as with the iPhone 15, whose sales are sluggish. An iPhone 14 is pretty awesome. You can extend this phenomenon to software, too. How many people feel seriously limited by their current DAW? Probably not too many. 

 

Windows-based machines will get a big upgrade bump soon for two reasons. The first is Microsoft's heavy-handed push to Windows 11, which has much more stringent hardware requirements. People are resisting, to say the least. Market share for Windows 10 actually went up last quarter. Regardless, when Windows 10 reaches EOL, many people will either buy a new machine or switch to Mac.

 

But the second reason is the interesting one, and it may mean less people will be willing to switch to Mac when Windows 10 fizzles out. With Microsoft in bed with Qualcomm, we can expect the same improvement in Windows hardware that we saw in Macs when they went to ARM. That will make people want to upgrade much more than anything Windows 11 has to offer, and they'll get Windows 11 as part of the deal. Then, a year or so later, Microsoft will have the same issue the Mac is going through - people will be so shocked by the performance difference that future performance differences won't seem dramatic enough to justify upgrading to The Next Big Thing.

 

Hence Apple pushing its services, and Microsoft pushing more shopping-related features into their OS. Just like a tube hits saturation, we may be hitting saturation with computer performance, as far as most people are concerned.  

[Stokely]

Oh no doubt about the unneeded performance for most people.  I'm about to start using an M1 laptop that my wife wasn't using (she prefers her imac).   I'm hoping it runs circles around my 2016, which was a pretty good machine when it was purchased.  We shall see.  Point is that for what she does on a computer she needs the "power" of a new computer not at all.  Her thing is spreadsheets and a web browser!  And yeah I tried to talk her into getting an Air, which is already 10 times more power than she needs...

As you say, video editors are a tiny fraction of users.  As are those composers with the humongous templates running lots of big sample libraries.

Apple seems to be on this frenetic pace of upgrading their OS and I do find it annoying.   I'm on Ventura now and have no plans to move forward anytime soon.   There always seems to be lots of bugs and issues with every move forward. I'll wait for ".1" at the earliest!   I'll give it to Windows there, my work machine is set to auto-upgrade but it's still Windows 10 and has been for years, and not a single tool or app has had any kind of issue with any upgrade.

[Anderton]

23 minutes ago, Stokely said:

I'll give it to Windows there, my work machine is set to auto-upgrade but it's still Windows 10 and has been for years, and not a single tool or app has had any kind of issue with any upgrade.

 

Agreed. Windows has gone from one of the worst upgrade experiences to one of the best, even though Windows 11 hasn't been as trouble-free as Windows 10.

[RABid]

What I have noticed about Apple over the past couple years is they have really started missing the little things. 

 

I recently traded my iPhone 12 for a 15 Pro Max, ordered online direct from Apple, ATT version. A few issues I encountered in the process...

 

In the instructions they talk about the tool needed to swap the SIM card. Towards the end of the instructions they mention the digital SIM that does away with the physical SIM card as a safety measure to keep your SIM card from being stolen. During the process the digital SIM card was automatically set up. No mention of using the tool talked about in the beginning.

 

It was mentioned that software would automatically be transferred. In reality all software was queued for download. It would have been much quicker to transfer the software pier to pier. Issues arose with save data form some software not being transferred. I'm guessing that anything not stored on the cloud was not moved. 

 

My Apple Music playlists were very screwed up after the transfer. Playlists that had 25 songs now had maybe 5. I could not find any pattern to the confusion. After 30 minutes of digging on the web I kept seeing statements relating to not being correctly logged into your account. Well, in settings my ID was exactly as it should be. I looked through the Apple Music settings and eventually scrolled all the way to the bottom where I noticed that my Home Sharing Apple ID was the email address that I changed 5 or 6 years ago. Looked at my old phone and it had the correct email address. Not sure what happened to make it revert to the old address, but once I changed the address everything was fine. Found the same issue in two other places.

 

When I tried to sync my new iPhone to the car stereo through bluetooth my phone would start the process, then jump over to trying to connect my Apple Watch. Every few second the watch would try to connect to the phone, fail, then start the process again. I finally had to take the watch off and place it out of range before I could connect my phone to my car.

 

When I ordered the phone and agreed to trade in my old phone the directions clearly stated that they would ship my phone that day, and a few days later they would ship the return mailer with instructions on how to erase the phone before sending it back. When I got the email about trading in my phone it also said the return package would be shipped to me in a few days. After 10 days and no package I called Apple. The automated system could not tell me anything accept they were waiting for my return of the old phone. I finally managed to talk to a real person I was informed that the cardboard in the bottom of the box that I thought was padding to protect my new phone is actually the return box. I told him that all communications stated that the box would be shipped separately a few days after the phone. The reply was "Yea, not sure why they are still telling people that."

 

But enough about the phone. I decided to give away my old 17" MacBookPro and got on the Apple site to get directions on how to erase all of my data and accounts from the old computer. I found a nice, informative page that separated computers into three ages, listing a different process depending on OS system and if your computer has that apple protection chip. My computer, being 14 years old, was in the oldest category. Followed the directions, bricked the computer. Spent 4 hours trying to recover but every process I found on the Apple site failed to work. Called Apple, was informed that the directions given on the Apple support page almost always bricked the computer and unless you built a recovery thumdrive beforehand there was no way back. Something that was not mentioned in the directions.

 

Anyway, enough ranting. I notice this is happening more and more with Apple. So many little things. 

[Anderton]

But doesn't the existence of Apple TV+ make up for those kind of issues? 🤣

[RABid]

10 minutes ago, Anderton said:

But doesn't the existence of Apple TV+ make up for those kind of issues? 🤣

😝

 

I have Apple TV. It sometimes gets turned on by accident when I pick up the wrong remote.

[analogika]

2 hours ago, Anderton said:

But doesn't the existence of Apple TV+ make up for those kind of issues? 🤣

say nothing bad about Apple TV+. 
 

some of the best television ever.