Complaining About Microsoft And Apple
 

First, I'm going to complain about Microsoft.

I've mentioned before being positive on Windows 10. I use it in a Parallels VM and have had a good experience with it.

However, something bothers me, and I don't understand why Microsoft does it this way.

Windows 10 seems to be installing upgrades and patches all the time. I went to Microsoft's site and officially there has been about one update per month since 10 went production in mid 2015. Hmm. I'd swear I'm seeing updates more often than that.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12387/windows-10-update-history

In comparison, Apple seems to update Mac OS about once every other month, after the initial release and a short flurry of quick initial updates.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_El_Capitan
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_Sierra

Since I'm running 10 in a VM, frequent updates are not as irritating as if I actually had to hard restart my MacBook Pro each time Windows wants to update. But it is still an irritant.

Now I'm going to complain about Apple.

Siri doesn't communicate anything like how a real person would communicate, and that's because when she doesn't understand you, that's the end of the conversation. A real person asks you questions to clarify, or asks you how to spell a word that it doesn't recognize. For example, suppose you tell Siri "send a message to Silka". Your friend happens to be named Silka (yes, I recently made a friend with this name). Siri has no idea what that word is or how it is spelled. A person would ask "how do you spell that" and you'd say "S I L K A", and you'd carry on the conversation. But Siri is too stupid to do that. As far as I know, there no way to spell unusual words or names for Siri. WTF. Is everyone at Apple named Tom, Jane, and Mary? Granted, I don't know of any consumer voice driven AI that can accept a spelled-out word. But that doesn't make Siri less irritating.

Okay, I'm done. I just suffer through weekly Windows updates and ignore Siri.

I don't yet have Win 10. I'm still running 7. I have 7 set to download but not install updates until I tell it to install them (and possibly pick which updates I want to install). Sometimes an update will sit there a few days, sometimes several weeks before I get around to installing and if necessary, rebooting.

Yeah, Siri does occasionally have issues, but all in all, it's not bad for certain fairly simple things as long as you don't through an usual proper name at it. That's a genius idea that you had about Siri asking "how do you spell that" when it doesn't understand.

Ubuntu.

Stop with the Ubuntu crap.

Teach Siri to Correctly Recognize and Pronounce Names in Your Address Book

Indeed - we all know that pure Debian is the One True Way.

:D


Seriously though, Ubuntu is going a little crazy. Linux Mint 18 - based on Ubuntu, without the dumb ass GUI design changes.

I have Win 7 here at work and it seems to update every few weeks.

FYI, I was getting a bit annoyed at the Win10 update frequency as well. However, on the latest update, it failed to take, and ended up "restoring the previous version". I then made sure the "defer upgrades" box was checked in Updates, and also have the "give me updates for other Microsoft products" box unchecked. Also have it set for notification vs. automatic download. So far so good.

You can also just disable it completely in "Services" (scroll down to Windows Update>right click>properties>choose disable>done).

The thing is, my skepticism of Microsoft security is such that I don't want to delay or skip updates to 10.

Blasphemy! :D

What's Siri?

Computers & tech used to be about doing things better. Now it's about making as much money as possible with the minimal outlay.

Agreed, it's now like every other business and industry out there. Uninspiring.

Overall I like my iPhone and iPad. My wife LOVES her iPad and likes her iPhone. It is solid equipment and software EXCEPT for iTunes. That is the worst piece of software I have EVER used and I still have a copy of DOS 1.1 that came with a PC I had. Heck I used a Commodore 64 before and even back to a Vic 16 with a cassette tape drive. iTunes still wins as the worst software of them all.

My biggest complaint about Windows 10 is it treats every computer as if it is a laptop and the owner will absolutely want to play on all the social sites and sync to all the other devices anyone could own.

The need a version for business that is concentrated on pure performance. Forget all the on-line connectivity, just a safe solid web browser and no gaming, no social connections, one drive, weather, news, tablet mode, money, and all the other bloat ware, and most of all no Cortina. Just make my hardware as fast as possible for work. My workstation computer has two giant video cards, a 12 core CPU, 8 hard drives and 128 gig of ram. No games.

I would argue iPhoto is worse than itunes, but it's close.

I have no major issues with iPhoto or iTunes, but I've been using those apps for a long time and don't do too much with either. iTunes tries to cram so many different functions into one app - iPhone sync, music, movies, podcasts, streaming music, etc. A single purpose app is often simpler, e.g. Spotify. iPhoto is being phased out in favor of Photos, which puzzles me. Why not simply improve iPhoto?

On Windows 10, all I ever use it for is productivity stuff. Excel, Word, Outlook. I really haven't noticed the groovy multimedia social stuff getting in my way, although I do see that it is there. I guess that, compared to previous Windows, I'm most impressed by 10's stability. In about a year of using 10, I've experienced two or three freezes (like, have to hard shut down) and one corruption that required reinstallation. For Windows, that seems pretty good. It is a slick, speedy OS most of the time.

We're deeply into the Apple ecosystem of iPhones, iCloud, Mac, Apple Music, so I'm not inclined to move to Windows as my main OS. But I'm perfectly happy working in 10 half the time, via Parallels.

If my company would ever move our corporate machines to 10, I'd be delighted.

I did read that IBM is moving to Macs and has found much lower administration costs that way.

Maybe I don't do enough with iTunes for it to be annoying, but I haven't had a problem with it in many, many years (maybe 10-12 years). A couple of times that it's been updated, it has changed the interface a bit, and I have to search to figure out how to get back to the way I want to see things. For playing music, it seems to work fine. I also have movies and shows loaded into it that stream to my AppleTV, and it works fine for that as well as the books and PDFs that is manages for my ipad. It's not perfect, but the issues that I have with it are small, and mostly revolve around the meta-data that's associated with various files.

Weird, I've been running Win 7 for several years, and have had very, very few issues that you call "freezes" in that time. I also let my PC run 24x7, and only normally reboot if I have to for some sort of upgrade.

We have been slowly moving towards the Apple ecosystem. First it was an iPad for me, then an AppleTV, then a Macbook Air for the missus, then we both got iPhones, and after getting to know her Macbook so I could show her around, I decided that my next PC will be an iMac so now I'm waiting for my HP All-in-one computer to die or become outdated, but it won't. It just keeps ticking along and doesn't show signs of slowing down which is probably good, because I plan to get one of the 5k 27" iMacs and spec it out so it lasts a long time which will be pricey.

Me too. I was really hoping that Apple would have introduced new versions along with the MacBooks last month.

My plan is to order it with the fastest processor, the least amount of memory, the best video card, and a 1TB SSD. I fill it up with memory from OWC which will save me a lot of cash. I will get a OWC ThunderBay 4 four drive enclosure for my Time Machine and CCC clone drive. I will have one big drive for data storage and another to clone it to for backup.

I'm torn on the Mac desktop thing. I absolutely want (require, even) dual monitors, triple is even better, and I hate it when monitors don't match.

At one point, you could get an iMac plus matching Apple monitor, it was spendy but doable. Now Apple no longer makes monitors, so an iMac is no-go for me, unless someone makes a monitor that looks exactly like an iMac.

The other option is a Mac mini driving dual aftermarket monitors, which is the way I went for my last desktop purchase, but Apple is no longer making a quad-core Mac mini. If the next Mac mini (assuming Apple ever updates that product) remains a dual-core machine, that will make it a no-go for me.

So where will that leave me? I'm surely not paying $5000 for a Mac Pro. I might get a MacBook Pro 15" and run dual monitors for three screens. But only having USB-C ports means you need a fistful of dongles, or a dock, the latter would be fine if it works very well. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what Apple does with the Mac line from here.

If I were Apple, I'd have developed a MacBook Pro 17" that does everything the super power users want: 64 GB RAM, SD + HDMI + standard USB + USB-C ports, and ESC key. Introduce it with an updated Mac Pro. Price it high, accept that it's a low volume product.

Mac Pro starts @ 3000...

Yeah, but unless you want a base model with the slowest processors, the least RAM, just 256GB storage, etc, you're at $5000 pretty quick.

That is crazy money!

Yea, we paid that for our new gene wine IBM AT 6 MHz with 1 meg of ram an a 32 meg hard drive with IMB DOS 3.3 back in 1986.

Wow, I hadn't realized. I know that a couple of years ago, you could buy Apple 5k 27" monitors (for $999), which seemed crazy, but would have given you matching 27" monitors. I also have had at least dual monitors for many, many years, and at work have been using anywhere from 2-4.

I think for my home PC, I could get by either using the 27" to display 2 programs and/or using the OSX multiple desktop feature which is great. I remember when windows and Linux were hot for the multiple desktop thing. It was pretty moderate in practice, but the OSX version seems to work much better.

Have had a Mac since the 512. Apple is continually coming out with new tech and abandoning old. I remember the cries of horror when they discontinued the floppy. And then the CD drives. Am assuming with the speed of USB-C and the relatively cheap new peripherals people will want, it will be a moot thing in 6 months. I've got a drawer with old dongles I never use. Will be interesting to see what is coming down the pipe.

Come to think of it had to go to dongles with the last laptop upgrade to be able to use my firewire 400 devices.

I've heard of photographers being upset with the loss of the SDcard slot to download pics from their camera. My camera can do that wirelessly but I usually just use the USB cable because it recharges the camera batteries while I am downloading the pics.

Back in the early 90's I heard about Apple going to Firewire. This was long before it came out. There was talk of using Firewire for all the peripherals including monitor and keyboard, and also wired network. Seems like that has actually happened with USB-C.

The only place dongles bother me is if I have to carry them with my laptop when going portable.

Those are LG displays, not Apple displays. You used to be able to buy an Apple branded monitor that basically looked just like an iMac.

Those are just LG displays that Apple is making that don't look anything like an iMac.

So, I priced up an Intel NUC. Top of the line unit with an 6th gen i7, 3.5GHZ, with a 512GB M2 SSD, 32GB of 2133MHZ RAM, 31.5" 4K display and Windows 10 Pro:

$1478.59

If I were to build an "ultimate" multi display drafting unit, with the 2nd from the top Intel CPU, top mother board, multiple video cards top of the line, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSB, etc, with 3 31.5 4K displays, it would be under $3K.

Edit - 2nd from top CPU is i7-6900K and is ~$1000, top CPU i7-6950k, is only $600 more. performance is less than 5% better.

The money is in the tech support and after-sale service now and no longer in the sale of a quality product. :rolleyes:

And you can do it with "industry standard" pieces that can be easily replaced or changed out if your software needs require it. Our big workstation had dual Nvidia 9800 cards and each card has two cooling fans. We needed to install a new software package for doing 3D mapping and pulled one of the 9800 video cards and replaced it with a Quadro K4200 and bought a 3D monitor with the glasses that the software company recommended. The 4200 is slower at pure graphics calculations but it does the 3D real well. There is not quite enough room to have all three cards on the motherboard with the other cards we have in there.

I can say first-hand that the 5k 27" Mac is mind-blowing even after months of ownership and use. Excellent product. If I ever get to a point where I can do Revit, Vectorworks, Maya, SketchUp and 3DS on a laptop all day (and admittedly the new MacBook Pro 15" I have comes close...) I'll ditch a desktop platform. For what I do the 5k iMac makes work almost enjoyable.