Apple Ranty review

[BoredSysAdmin]

Now I made pretty clear so far - I'm thoroughbred Google enthusiast. I use everything google and I encourage others. However end this year a vendor got my free ipad air 2 32g wifi.
Pros: It's absolutely fast, smooth. It has an amazing screen and fingerprint scanner on the home button.
It's also very thin and despite that - it has excellent battery.
BUT:
What the hell they have done with the app store??? Now every single search I get an ad as first result.
Another awesome benefit is search for app returns iphone ONLY or ipad ONLY results, but you can in one search look for both without switching. For example looking for Citi banking app. Hint: You're not going to find it in default "ipad only" search. Isn't Apple's IOS ecosystem of apps supposed to be shinning light of excellence (vs even Google's one) yet - every single search brings tonnage of crappy casual "free to play" (but highway robber very quickly) apps and games

For crying out lout - ipad air 2 is almost as fast as fastest nvidia tablet in most task, but I am struggling to find games which use it in full or even near. Help? It would be nice to have have sort of filter, apps compatible with only gen x hardware.
Massive Huge icons with massive spacing. I have no idea why people are so fanatical about it.
Safari browser is fast, but utterly overly simplified. I don't care about Siri

It's rubbish. I'm seriously considering now giving it to wife and myself back to Samsung built ancient Nexus 10 tablet I bought used year ago or so

 

[Irvrobinson]

Is your real name Michael Blair? That guy on Seeking Alpha who is always recommending short positions on Apple stock? ;-)

BTW, the Citibank app is the only banking app I've tried that has that filtering glitch, out of six or seven I use. I just write it off to Citibank programmers not being able to read. I dumped Citi completely until Costco stupidly switched to them.

I never even noticed those app store ads until you mentioned them. I think Apple stole the idea from those ads on Google's search results. Of course, on Google searches I always click on the ad results, even if the link I'm looking for is the first returned result, because I own Google stock.

If you hate that iPad so much just sell it.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Seeking Alpha is for most part bunch of bullies and idiots. But even blind man would see that Tim Cook is a decent manager, but not a visionary.

Not saying the Citi has great app, but at least it somewhat easy to find easy to find on Google Play store, unlike on Apple's.

Ads in app store - Not first idea Apple "inspired" by and last one. However my feeling that search in Google play store returns just better (more relevant) results. Unsurprisingly really since these are same guys who made search engine so great it become a verb - http://www.dictionary.com/browse/google?s=t
And the biggest difference is that in google search ad might actually be the item that you're looking for.

Like I said, rather than selling it - wife will likely be using it.

also if anyone has great suggestions for ios only games which showcase excellent graphics - I'm all ears.

 

[haraldo]

I do have a quite old HP Chromebook 12, it's slow, inconvenient but I still love it for what it's good for. When writing wiki pages, there's simply hardly anything better. (Maybe Macbook 12). I prefer the Chromebook even to a top specced Dell XPS 16 or a Macbook pro 15 for this use case.

Why? It's extremely light, amazingly good keyboard for such a small cheap thing, without Internet it's a brick but that's no issue as in Norway now you easily get 60GB/month with free roaming in EU, I never yet managed to get Close to the limit.

The Chromebooks are really under-rated IMHO

Well, I'm getting more into the Apple sphere, iPhone 6s and Macbook pro 15. Some months ago I bought an iPad Pro 9.7 with pencil and I just love it. I travel loads and there are no more books with me now, iPad is great and it saves me travel-weight. It's the first devce I had wher I can easily / comfortable read anything anywhere.

I believe it's true what they say, the Apple products work incredibly well in unison

But.... we need both Google and Apple, at least I do
I didn't even get to Google Drive and Google Docs....... I'm a heavy user.......

The games I use is reading docs, playing with Virtual Machines and our SaaS services

I agree that Tim Cook is a great manager but not a visionary. Apple would not be where they are without Tim Cook, when Steve Jobs was the visionary, Tim Cook was absolutely essential in the operations part in order to be able to produce the units; It's Tim Cook's unique operations competence and vision that made Apple able to scale enough and produce enough iPhones and iPads. At least thats what some Apple insiders have claimed.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Since Steve gone, I've yet to see a single new product from Apple. All minor changes improvements. I hear a lot of complaints from photographers about new MacBook "pro" on how the had removed useful features and added useless ones. Removing headphones port on iPhone is not same as removing floppy or parallel ports.

 

[Irvrobinson]

Since Steve gone, I've yet to see a single new product from Apple. All minor changes improvements. I hear a lot of complaints from photographers about new MacBook "pro" on how the had removed useful features and added useless ones. Removing headphones port on iPhone is not same as removing floppy or parallel ports.

This is incorrect. The difference between an iPhone5 and a 7 is not minor, and either are the differences between old iPads and the new Pro models. You're trivializing a huge amount of engineering. And you're forgetting the Watch (which I personally have no use for).

Here's a better question... what is the rest of the industry, like Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and Amazon doing? Dumb products, failed products, evolution, or nothing. That's because basic innovation, like the iPhone is really difficult and rare. It doesn't come along very often. To most non-technical people I know, it's the breadth and ease of interoperability of the Apple ecosystem that grabs them, not every little feature of every device. I still hear comments like it being so cool that you take a picture on your iPhone and it is near-instantly available for doing whatever on your Mac, or looking at it on your TV with AirPlay. The majority of the buying public is easier to please than a curmudgeon techno-nerd like yourself. I think you hate Apple so much you just expect genius and innovation from them beyond what you're expecting from anyone else. To me, Apple is just another big high-tech company, and when I like their stuff I buy it, and when something better comes along I switch.

 

[rojo]

I prefer android over ios as well, but since you've got the iPad regardless I'll point out a couple things you might enjoy about it

#1: SoundPrism. Install it from the app store and amuse yourself for hours. I wish this were available for android.

#2: The iPad makes a thoroughly enjoyable ebook reader. It doesn't have android fbreader's tts capabilities, but I still prefer iPad's reader over all other android e-readers.

I wouldn't ever buy an iPad. Like you, I got one from work. My daughter dropped it on ceramic tile for the second time a couple years ago and I haven't bothered to have the screen replaced again, but those are the things I remember enjoying most about it.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

This is incorrect. The difference between an iPhone5 and a 7 is not minor, and either are the differences between old iPads and the new Pro models. You're trivializing a huge amount of engineering. And you're forgetting the Watch (which I personally have no use for).

Here's a better question... what is the rest of the industry, like Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and Amazon doing? Dumb products, failed products, evolution, or nothing. That's because basic innovation, like the iPhone is really difficult and rare. It doesn't come along very often. To most non-technical people I know, it's the breadth and ease of interoperability of the Apple ecosystem that grabs them, not every little feature of every device. I still hear comments like it being so cool that you take a picture on your iPhone and it is near-instantly available for doing whatever on your Mac, or looking at it on your TV with AirPlay. The majority of the buying public is easier to please than a curmudgeon techno-nerd like yourself. I think you hate Apple so much you just expect genius and innovation from them beyond what you're expecting from anyone else. To me, Apple is just another big high-tech company, and when I like their stuff I buy it, and when something better comes along I switch.

Let's agree to disagree.

Yes, I skipped the Apple watch, but to be fair - Apple weren't exactly invented the wheel. First linux watch was made in 17 years ago back in Feb 2000.
In 2009 Samsung had made this:

And finally LG and Samsung introduced their first true smartwatches whole year before Apple did.
So, not quite new idea or vast improvement on existing idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch

Different between iphone 5 and 7 is exactly 2. Number 7 is larger and it is also latest version of iPhone sounds much more interesting for indoctrinated ones in the cult of Apple (They also had the "courage" to remove above mentioned headphone port). The rest is bs for the nerds like me could drool over the spec sheets (faster cpu, storage, slightly better camera in low light etc....), but IOS experience in large hadn't changed at all besides few small new features.

Curmudgeon techno-nerd - I like that

I disagree with on complete lack of innovation in the industry. It's there, if one looks hard enough.
EV cars, especially Tesla S were (imo still IS) revolutionary, Drones with cameras, finally (better) VR and AR becoming mainstream. HDR (after mostly never really taken off xvYCC), AI (Google's Deepmind, AlphaGo system had beaten every human opponent it ever took on - and Go is exponentially harder than chess.
RasberyPi - it's not really new, but to make general purpose and very functional computer kit for $25 is revolutionary. Video cards - due to lack of competition in high performance desktop/laptop processors space from AMD, Intel performance is stalling to completely laughable launch of the latest Kirby Lake series, besides slightly updated video, new DRM - it's absolutely identical in every way to previous generation. But speaking of video card - luckily the competition is there and thanks to that you could buy today entire Playstation 4 Pro for mere $400 and be able to play games in 4k.
Good luck with that only 3 years ago. PCIe NVMe - it brings levels of storage performance only huge corporations could afford only 5 years ago.
3D printers became common and cheap.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I prefer android over ios as well, but since you've got the iPad regardless I'll point out a couple things you might enjoy about it

#1: SoundPrism. Install it from the app store and amuse yourself for hours. I wish this were available for android.

#2: The iPad makes a thoroughly enjoyable ebook reader. It doesn't have android fbreader's tts capabilities, but I still prefer iPad's reader over all other android e-readers.

I wouldn't ever buy an iPad. Like you, I got one from work. My daughter dropped it on ceramic tile for the second time a couple years ago and I haven't bothered to have the screen replaced again, but those are the things I remember enjoying most about it.

OMG, I love fbreader with calibre and library hosted on public dropbox is pure heaven for ebook worm.
I don't read now much as I used it - but doing it in fbreader is a pleasure. Even on 4" smartphone I used last time

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I do have a quite old HP Chromebook 12, it's slow, inconvenient but I still love it for what it's good for. When writing wiki pages, there's simply hardly anything better. (Maybe Macbook 12). I prefer the Chromebook even to a top specced Dell XPS 16 or a Macbook pro 15 for this use case.

Why? It's extremely light, amazingly good keyboard for such a small cheap thing, without Internet it's a brick but that's no issue as in Norway now you easily get 60GB/month with free roaming in EU, I never yet managed to get Close to the limit.

The Chromebooks are really under-rated IMHO

Well, I'm getting more into the Apple sphere, iPhone 6s and Macbook pro 15. Some months ago I bought an iPad Pro 9.7 with pencil and I just love it. I travel loads and there are no more books with me now, iPad is great and it saves me travel-weight. It's the first devce I had wher I can easily / comfortable read anything anywhere.

I believe it's true what they say, the Apple products work incredibly well in unison

But.... we need both Google and Apple, at least I do
I didn't even get to Google Drive and Google Docs....... I'm a heavy user.......

The games I use is reading docs, playing with Virtual Machines and our SaaS services

I agree that Tim Cook is a great manager but not a visionary. Apple would not be where they are without Tim Cook, when Steve Jobs was the visionary, Tim Cook was absolutely essential in the operations part in order to be able to produce the units; It's Tim Cook's unique operations competence and vision that made Apple able to scale enough and produce enough iPhones and iPads. At least thats what some Apple insiders have claimed.

Chromebooks rock. One just have to get right one. My techno illiterate, computer destroying mom, is now on only second HP Chromebook 14 (Ivy Bridge Celeron, 2gb ram and 16gb flash). It's absolutely more than fast enough for casual internet browsing and absolutely bulletproof since I never needed to support it.

 

[rojo]

OMG, I love fbreader with calibre and library hosted on public dropbox is pure heaven for ebook worm.
I don't read now much as I used it - but doing it in fbreader is a pleasure. Even on 4" smartphone I used last time

I like fbreader because I'll be in the middle of a book and my wife will say, "Go get me some Taco Bell." I just head out to my truck, enable Bluetooth on my phone, activate tts in fbreader, and listen to my book while I drive. That feature is also great for long trips. For tts engine I like Ivona Voice with the UK English language pack. She can't quite pronounce "muggles" or "supply" correctly, but I understand her well enough to follow the story.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I like fbreader because I'll be in the middle of a book and my wife will say, "Go get me some Taco Bell." I just head out to my truck, enable Bluetooth on my phone, activate tts in fbreader, and listen to my book while I drive. That feature is also great for long trips. For tts engine I like Ivona Voice with the UK English language pack. She can't quite pronounce "muggles" or "supply" correctly, but I understand her well enough to follow the story.

If you haven't tried calibre - do so. it's free and it's awesome. I also used 3rd party tool to convert calibre's library to format fbreader understands natively (not as simply epub, but as remote library), but I don't remember the name. It was a java based tool.

edit: This is what I'm talking about:
https://fbreader.org/content/documentation/own-opds
http://dearauthor.com/ebooks/create-your-own-cloud-of-ebooks-with-calibre-calibre-opds-dropbox/

 

[Irvrobinson]

Curmudgeon techno-nerd - I like that

Glad I could amuse you.

I disagree with on complete lack of innovation in the industry. It's there, if one looks hard enough.
EV cars, especially Tesla S were (imo still IS) revolutionary, Drones with cameras, finally (better) VR and AR becoming mainstream. HDR (after mostly never really taken off xvYCC), AI (Google's Deepmind, AlphaGo system had beaten every human opponent it ever took on - and Go is exponentially harder than chess.
RasberyPi - it's not really new, but to make general purpose and very functional computer kit for $25 is revolutionary. Video cards - due to lack of competition in high performance desktop/laptop processors space from AMD, Intel performance is stalling to completely laughable launch of the latest Kirby Lake series, besides slightly updated video, new DRM - it's absolutely identical in every way to previous generation. But speaking of video card - luckily the competition is there and thanks to that you could buy today entire Playstation 4 Pro for mere $400 and be able to play games in 4k.
Good luck with that only 3 years ago. PCIe NVMe - it brings levels of storage performance only huge corporations could afford only 5 years ago.
3D printers became common and cheap.

Other than 3D printers, which have nothing to do with the big high-tech companies, that is a pretty weak list.

 

[haraldo]

One small thing that is really cool....

I use the Duet app on iPad pro and Mac, with this setup I can use iPad as second monitor, which means that I have dual monitor setup wherever I go