Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Android is fine, and Sony generally provide you with a very solid and clean version. I've been using Android for ages and it's never bothered me, just works. iOS annoys the crap out of me though, so maybe just personal prefs. I'd bet it would only take about 2 weeks to forget all about iOS.

I'll be ditching my HTC one (even though it's excellent, I don't need all the pixels) for the Z3 compact as soon as I can.

That Sony looks dead nice... I think I'm too far into Apple's walled garden to switch though...

Maybe, depends how you use everything. It's a weird one, I actually prefer the fact that android feels more like a traditional computer than iOS does. hard to quantify and explain.

Anyway, I'm waiting for the day when Apple release a Mac Pro with a version of OS X that is stripped down to the bare bones. And for them to re-engineer Adobe creative software. I want stripped out, fast and minimal interface. No Bloat. Or even a new mac mini with said stripped out OS for home. I'm never going to get it though.

This is going to sound old and grumpy, but I remember when I used to use a quadra (i think?) with 26mHz chip and 2Mb graphics Ram - PhotoShop 2 used to run really well. Even Illustrator could handle complex blends (no gradient mesh then!) Although I did lust after the Silicone Graphics machine the retoucher used...

I hear what you are saying butI think your concept of run well was very different back then...
But yeah, less is more at times.

I want stripped out, fast and minimal interface.

MS Windows 8

I'll get my coat..

Yep, rose tinted hindsight.

ha, fast and minimal does not equal giant colourful tiles designed to make you feel like a simpleton.

Apple have got rid of the iPod Classic.

A shame really, massive battery life and storage capacity is always a nice thing to have.

That's a genuine shame. At least you can opt for products from Cowan or FiiO that give you High Res (FLAC etc.) and expandable storage and proper DACs.

@TRA The best type

My first mac was a Powerbook 180 running System 7.1. I fucking loved it. Great 16 greyscale screen, 4mb ram, 40mb hard drive. The OS took up only 2mb of disc space and 800k of RAM, and did more than Windows 3.1 ever could. Loved those 68000 series machines.
By contrast the last one I bought, a PowerMac (6300) was a dog of a machine, and whether running System 8.5 or 9.1 it was utterly outclassed by a Windows 95 machine costing half the price.

The Macbook Pro retina that work gave me (running Mavericks now) is fucking brilliant and well worth the premium. Just wish the pound sign was on that pointless section key instead of the 3.

That proves my point that Apple should give up on mobile

I have a PB 180 in a case, with various external bits, spare battery and power supply - all fully functional. Thing is, I just don't know what to do with it! Last time I was in Sydney I fired it up for nostalgia and then realised I couldn't actually do anything functional on it any more!

*Can't-tell-if-serious.jpg

Of the people who own Apple devices, somewhere in the region of 90% have iTunes accounts. Of those, i would guess most, if not all, have an active credit or debit card already attached to them.

This is a big assumption followed by another big assumption.

A lot of iPhones are for corporate use and corporate users may not have either iTunes or a debit/credit card associated. At least... it certainly threatens the 90% figure followed by the "if not all" comment.

There is enormous potential for using the phone to pay for things, we know this because it's been proven: Japan has had NFC payments using a mobile phone for years now, and it is ubiquitous.

But let's not overstate things or wildly guess scenarios... it's a huge market and has a huge potential... it doesn't need overstating, and doing so makes it sound ridiculous when Japan has already proven the viability and scale of mobile payments infrastructure and systems.

This is a big assumption followed by another big assumption.

Fair point.

I can't directly associate the numbers in the latest earnings reports with iOS devices but iTunes has 800 million accounts and 800 million credit card numbers according to their April earnings report. That's a 40% rise on their June 2013 number of 574 million accounts.

On a mature product such as iTunes that's staggering.

It stands to reason to attribute that growth to the increase in iOS devices as iTunes music sales have dipped YoY whilst app sales have increased.

Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2014/04/23/apple-itunes-numbers/

To add to the above, according to the 2013 numbers, Apple are adding approximately 500,000 iTunes accounts. Per. Day.

...490,000 of which are existing iTunes users that try to migrate their iTunes account to new hardware, give up and just create a new account.

ha, fast and minimal does not equal giant colourful tiles designed to make you feel like a simpleton.

I was trying to be funny
: ]

Oh I got the joke. Just couldn't cut through my inbuilt reaction against Microsoft...

...fair enough!

Given the LFGSS hive minds love of a good list, we should start one containing all the things you know sweet FA about. The mobile phone industry can be added to it, along with pretty much everything about bikes.

To add to the above, according to the 2013 numbers, Apple are adding approximately 500,000 iTunes accounts. Per. Day.

Yes, but Android shipped devices outstrip Apple 5-to-1 in Europe alone, 9-to-1 in Asia, and only 2-1 in the USA.

It really isn't about that though... that's just hype. The numbers are dauntingly large for all players (except Microsoft).

Retailers desperately do want mobile payments to work, and the catch is that they will only accept 1 or 2 systems. There is only the surface area near tills, only the connectivity, and only the budget for 1 or 2 systems.

For a long time we're going to have places accept just Apple devices... and those retailers are going to have valued customers feel negatively towards the retailer for treating them as 2nd class customers. And this will work in reverse too... Android solutions will emerge very fast, and probably based on the NFC tech that is already proven and that has already rolled out over the past couple of years.

Eventually, I predict, we are going to end up with a Visa vs Mastercard thing for mobile payments. A 2 system market for mobile payments, where Android is Visa (accepted everywhere) and Apple is Mastercard (accepted most places). The eventual cost to entry is lower for Android and the market larger, and the global penetration much higher.

Every £1 Apple will make as a payments provider Android will see £2 > £8 in equivalent transaction volumes.

For me it's firmly not a "Apple are awesome, yay!" thing... it's a "mobile payments are coming to the rest of world (outside of Japan), success depends upon seamless integration at point of sale and policy around fraud". Strangely, the tech didn't appear in that sentence... the market is huge, but ultimately the big winner in the market is whomever supplies the most ubiquitous solution to the largest market... Apple will win early because they can move fast to push one solution to all of their users, but Android win long-term as the total market is so much bigger than Apple that even if it's slow to market it will bring a far huger audience and total transaction volume.

2 systems will win, Apple in the early days, Android long-term. And to consumers, we all just got taxed a little more on our transactions as another intermediary just arrived to take a few pennies out of every £1 we spend.