<story><title>Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC</title><url>http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2016/03/21/apple-hypocritical-insensitive-pc-users-old-pc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pjc50</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Compelling reason why I had to upgrade my iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 and original iPad after less than 3 years? Painfully slow and unusable.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exactly. Upgrading is a cost; not just money but also time. I upgraded my 1st gen iPad&amp;#x27;s OS exactly once (5 -&amp;gt; 6 I think) and it was a completely horrendous experience, involving PC iTunes.&lt;p&gt;The main driver of PC upgrades, apart from improved games, is bloat and the slow deterioration of Windows installations. It&amp;#x27;s not as bad as it used to be but reinstalling the OS and cleaning the fans can often substantially improve an old PC.&lt;p&gt;I still have my original iPad, but it&amp;#x27;s used for a very limited set of things as the browser is crashy and many apps aren&amp;#x27;t available for its OS.&lt;p&gt;Users want neither forced upgrades, manufactured obsolescence, nor bogus SaaS rentalware like Adobe Creative Cloud.</text></item><item><author>slantyyz</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade&lt;p&gt;Compelling reason why I had to upgrade my iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 and original iPad after less than 3 years? Painfully slow and unusable.&lt;p&gt;Well if the compelling reason to upgrade is &amp;quot;painfully slow and unusable&amp;quot;, then maybe a &amp;gt;= 5 year old PC that still works isn&amp;#x27;t a bad thing. If I&amp;#x27;m not mistaken, my 2011 MBP&amp;#x27;s quad core i7 can still outperform the CPUs in today&amp;#x27;s Macbook Airs (the most popular Mac notebooks) in terms of pure processing power.</text></item><item><author>mikehearn</author><text>I interpreted that comment as a jab at the PC industry. The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade. Isn&amp;#x27;t that the correct interpretation, considering the whole point of bringing that up is because they&amp;#x27;re positioning a new device intended to replace the PC? I seriously doubt it&amp;#x27;s intended to mean (to quote the article) &amp;quot;LOL poor people&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Granted, this interpretation would make for a boring thinkpiece and would not get me to #1 on HN.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>livus</author><text>I concur with you on not wanting forced upgrades and manufactured obsolescence.&lt;p&gt;But I have found rentalware (specifically Adobe Creative Cloud as I use it) to be a somewhat positive experience. Adobe pushes out updates frequently enough where you see positive increment in productivity without it being an annoying update. Plus it has bought the price within affordable range for people like me who can afford the software if we save up enough for a few years but not the down payment in one go. Having the payment broken down over months makes it more manageable. I have been a convert from a pirate to a legitimate paying user just because of this. Straight out licenses for adobe&amp;#x27;s software cost more than some kidney operations in my country before this SaaS model.&lt;p&gt;Jetbrains has also moved onto a SaaS model. If they continue with legitimate updates every few months, then that subscription is also worth paying for.&lt;p&gt;The only subscription I do not see any benefit in, as a individual developer, is Microsoft Office 365. That&amp;#x27;s more aimed at business&amp;#x27;s whose full life depends on the software.</text></comment>
<story><title>Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC</title><url>http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2016/03/21/apple-hypocritical-insensitive-pc-users-old-pc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pjc50</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Compelling reason why I had to upgrade my iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 and original iPad after less than 3 years? Painfully slow and unusable.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exactly. Upgrading is a cost; not just money but also time. I upgraded my 1st gen iPad&amp;#x27;s OS exactly once (5 -&amp;gt; 6 I think) and it was a completely horrendous experience, involving PC iTunes.&lt;p&gt;The main driver of PC upgrades, apart from improved games, is bloat and the slow deterioration of Windows installations. It&amp;#x27;s not as bad as it used to be but reinstalling the OS and cleaning the fans can often substantially improve an old PC.&lt;p&gt;I still have my original iPad, but it&amp;#x27;s used for a very limited set of things as the browser is crashy and many apps aren&amp;#x27;t available for its OS.&lt;p&gt;Users want neither forced upgrades, manufactured obsolescence, nor bogus SaaS rentalware like Adobe Creative Cloud.</text></item><item><author>slantyyz</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade&lt;p&gt;Compelling reason why I had to upgrade my iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 and original iPad after less than 3 years? Painfully slow and unusable.&lt;p&gt;Well if the compelling reason to upgrade is &amp;quot;painfully slow and unusable&amp;quot;, then maybe a &amp;gt;= 5 year old PC that still works isn&amp;#x27;t a bad thing. If I&amp;#x27;m not mistaken, my 2011 MBP&amp;#x27;s quad core i7 can still outperform the CPUs in today&amp;#x27;s Macbook Airs (the most popular Mac notebooks) in terms of pure processing power.</text></item><item><author>mikehearn</author><text>I interpreted that comment as a jab at the PC industry. The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade. Isn&amp;#x27;t that the correct interpretation, considering the whole point of bringing that up is because they&amp;#x27;re positioning a new device intended to replace the PC? I seriously doubt it&amp;#x27;s intended to mean (to quote the article) &amp;quot;LOL poor people&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Granted, this interpretation would make for a boring thinkpiece and would not get me to #1 on HN.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slantyyz</author><text>I still have all three of those iOS devices (and my wife&amp;#x27;s now retired 4S) mentioned in my original post.&lt;p&gt;The saddest thing?&lt;p&gt;The iPhone 4 has only one easy job to do. Play music in my bedroom. It can&amp;#x27;t even do that reliably. My iPhone 3G (now a desk clock) is more stable than the 4.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a reason I left iOS for Android on the phone side and Windows on the tablet side. I&amp;#x27;ve been burned enough that I don&amp;#x27;t care to be burned again. Granted, Apple&amp;#x27;s devices are probably less prone to bloat now that Federighi took over from Forstall, but there&amp;#x27;s nothing compelling for me on the iOS side right now. A Pencil-enabled Mini would be very interesting, but that&amp;#x27;s about it.</text></comment>