# Should we be outraged at Apple for this, or is there an explanation?



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 4, 2018)

Apple preventing third-party iMac Pro & 2018 MacBook Pro repairs, internal document says


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## MatFluor (Oct 4, 2018)

Does that really surprise you?


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## Vik (Oct 4, 2018)

Doesn’t help being outraged anyway. But Apple has mainly become phone company who also makes TV-boxes, sells/streams music, is heavily involved in cars, payment services, have 600 people working on the iPhone cameras, and also makes Macs and software - but insist that we have been living in the post-PC era for a while. So they can afford losing their PC department and the demanding customers which come with it, and therefore also afford to make unpopular Mac-decisions.
They may even think that they’ll just make the best Macs they can, even if this means ridiculous prices, and if that doesn’t generate enough profit, they’ll close the Mac business - long term. I like that they are still releasing Logic versions with many improvents. And I’m not saying that “the Mac is dead” - not at all.

But the downgrading of the Mac minis, no touch screen laptops, many years between Mac Pro updates, still only 32 gb in the MBPs and unpopular decisions like the one you refer to has unfortunately been ‘expected behavior’ for some time now.


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## jcrosby (Oct 5, 2018)




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## JEPA (Oct 5, 2018)

the future is the music production on an iPhone


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## samphony (Oct 5, 2018)

JEPA said:


> the future is the music production on an iPhone


Wrong!

iPad


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## NYC Composer (Oct 5, 2018)

I’d be outraged if there was a chance in hell that I’d shell out for either of those puppies at today’s prices.


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## steveo42 (Oct 5, 2018)

When I first saw pricing I thought I was either seeing things, once again, or that Apple had actually managed to introduce some massive leap in technology worthy of the price. Upon closer examination I realized that these are basically way, way, overpriced ho-hum machines. There is no way I would spend that kind of money for that level of performance. I suspect Apple is seeing how far they can push the envelope before their base market finally refuses to pay.


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## garyhiebner (Oct 5, 2018)

cough, cough.....Hackintosh....just saying


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## EvilDragon (Oct 5, 2018)

Once they move to ARM you can forget about Hackintosh. Or you can at least forget about being up to date with macOS, I guess... Well, considering macOS is probably going to be iOSified, it might not be a huge loss for music production. But it all remains to be seen.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Oct 5, 2018)

JEPA said:


> the future is the music production on an iPhone


In the future everyone's iPhone will come with an instant composer app. Just slide a puck up and down for "epic" and "emotional", left and right for "simple" and "complex", it'll spit out songs to your auto-generated slideshows in iMovie.


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## ka00 (Oct 5, 2018)

Aren't they just preventing repairs from "unauthorized shops", as stated in the article? Couldn't that be a good thing for customers, to know they are dealing with a reputable third-party who has received authorization?


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## sean8877 (Oct 5, 2018)

JEPA said:


> the future is the music production on an iPhone



This guy is actually doing pretty well with just his iPhone:


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## Alex Fraser (Oct 5, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Apple preventing third-party iMac Pro & 2018 MacBook Pro repairs, internal document says


Should we be mad? I don't think so.
If my Mac goes pop, it's going to the big shiny building with the Apple logo on it. I'd prefer it to be repaired by trained staff with the appropriate tools and guarantees in place.

It's no different with modern cars.


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## gsilbers (Oct 5, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> Once they move to ARM you can forget about Hackintosh. Or you can at least forget about being up to date with macOS, I guess... Well, considering macOS is probably going to be iOSified, it might not be a huge loss for music production. But it all remains to be seen.



so true. i could be halucinating but OS X seems to be getting actually worse on each release. like getting dumbed down and more and more iOS integration features are poping up. with arm im guessing the plan is to fuse both together one day. some ios apps have been getting very complex and seems the coding is easier for programmers. 

my prediction is that apple is waiting a long time for the new mac pro release because they are switching to arm and its better to have it on the new mac pros (with the imacs and laptops shortly after) since the mac pros last a very long time. i still have a 2009 model!. 
so we might have a very cool mac pro thats upgradable and a real winner for the pro market but with the hassle that it comes with that new chip in which everyone will have to upgrade the software like in the old universal binary days. which i dont think i can survive!


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## Olfirf (Oct 5, 2018)

I recently came to realize, it doesn’t really matter any more what they will do with Mac Pro in 2019. I am pretty sure of leaving Mac OS for audio production until 2019. Should we be outraged? I’d rather say I am more and more not caring for anything Appple does. The integration between iOS used to be a thing, but you can get most of that by properly configuring your Windows/Android devices properly. Apart from that: how often do some essential integration feature break on iOS? How often did I send pictures to my mail adress, just because iCloud sync did not work? It is simply a myth today, that Apple „just works“! The only reason I am still partly on it is that my last switching experience was at the worst possible time with Windows 8 ... wouldn’t that have been the worst MS OS ever released, I probably would have stayed, as most things still worked pretty well. What is more to say ... if you can forget about Logic (which ain’t that hard!), there is no reason to stay Mac other than masochistic tendencies.  I am actually just writing this down to remind myself ... so, if you love you Mac, please just ignore me!


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## Wally Garten (Oct 5, 2018)

sean8877 said:


> This guy is actually doing pretty well with just his iPhone:



When he's forty, though, he's gonna want a bigger screen.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 5, 2018)

Olfirf said:


> wouldn’t that have been the worst MS OS ever released



No, sir. That title definitely belongs to Windows ME.


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## Wunderhorn (Oct 5, 2018)

Apple is forgetting that the creative community is what kept the company alive in its crisis in the 90s. By they way they act now towards professionals it feels very ungrateful.
BTW. not only this issue with repairs and dumbing down of the general OS, but they also stripped most features away from Mac OS server recently.
Not to speak about the Mac Pro... They promised to be "transparent" about its future. We haven't heard ANY update since. I have the feeling that they don't even have a solid concept for it. Next year will show. It will determine if I will be jumping ship as well. Sad.
I think the only part of Apple that has it together right now is the Logic Team.


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## NYC Composer (Oct 5, 2018)

I understand the frustration, but my 10 (!) year old Mac Pro is still solid, my 5 year old Mac Mini is great, my iPhone 6 could be better sounding but is fast and works well, my recently bought 2017 refurb iPad is lightning fast and very nice to look at. I’ve seen Vader helmets (6 core 3.5) for $1500.

The trick with Apple is probably to stay behind the curve. If you need the latest and greatest, you pay through the nose.


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## Wally Garten (Oct 5, 2018)

NYC Composer said:


> I understand the frustration, but my 10 (!) year old Mac Pro is still solid, my 5 year old Mac Mini is great, my iPhone 6 could be better sounding but is fast and works well, my recently bought 2017 refurb iPad is lightning fast and very nice to look at. I’ve seen Vader helmets (6 core 3.5) for $1500.
> 
> The trick with Apple is probably to stay behind the curve. If you need the latest and greatest, you pay through the nose.



I mean, this is part of the frustration, though -- at least for me: the products are getting WORSE over time, in terms of maintaining useful life. I have a 7-year old Macbook Pro that I was able to upgrade to 16 GB memory and an onboard 500 GB SSD, giving it a lot more life. On the new models of the MBP, the memory is soldered in place, and my understanding is that they're moving toward making the drives non-replaceable, too. The old model of "keep your Mac forever" (and/or "wait a few years, buy an older model, and trick it out") is something they now actively seem to be discouraging.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 5, 2018)

ka00 said:


> Aren't they just preventing repairs from "unauthorized shops", as stated in the article? Couldn't that be a good thing for customers, to know they are dealing with a reputable third-party who has received authorization?



It's a good thing if you want to pay a lot more for repairs at the Apple Store! They're not authorizing repair places for these machines.

I agree with Larry - Apple has a history of making great machines. If I wanted to bore people, I'd even mention my 21-year-old PowerMac 9600 running a librarian for an old synth (Yamaha VL1).

Unless there's something I don't know, this is hardly a continuation of that trend! What I don't go along with is the usual kvetching about how Apple makes its money from iPhones and they've abandoned "pro users."


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 5, 2018)

NYC Composer said:


> The trick with Apple is probably to stay behind the curve. If you need the latest and greatest, you pay through the nose.



That wasn't always the case. Historically, used Macs hold their value very well.

But they were $2500, not $7000.


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## ironbut (Oct 5, 2018)

I can't help but wonder if this is aimed at the tech repair guys in Shenzhen (and places like it), where mods on all Apple products is out of control (as far as Cupertino is concerned).
I'm thinking it'll be just like the shops that work on the latest cars. They have to buy specialized equipment to work on them and keep paying for software updates.


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## procreative (Oct 5, 2018)

I cannot see how this is practical or workable (not to mention within the EU, legal). I dont think they have the resources to repair products if they make it so they are the only ones permitted.

In the UK there are many "authorised service centres" my duaghter had her iphone 8 repaired under warranty at one called Albion.

But I reckon just like all the phone unlockers, there will be places who find a way round this "problem" and once its out of warranty, who cares what they want you to do.

Trouble is all they need to do is release Logic XX with some super duper new features and make it need Mojave as a minimum and straight away all us "power users" with our suped up cheesgraters will probably have to fall in line.

In the meantime my 2009 Nehalem flashed to a 5,1 is running great with 2x3.46GHz, 128GB RAM and SATA3 SSDs.


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## Olfirf (Oct 5, 2018)

NYC Composer said:


> I understand the frustration, but my 10 (!) year old Mac Pro is still solid, my 5 year old Mac Mini is great, my iPhone 6 could be better sounding but is fast and works well, my recently bought 2017 refurb iPad is lightning fast and very nice to look at. I’ve seen Vader helmets (6 core 3.5) for $1500.
> 
> The trick with Apple is probably to stay behind the curve. If you need the latest and greatest, you pay through the nose.


Well, maybe you were just lucky! My 5 year old Mac mini only used for office work had a motherboard defect. I had to pay more than half of the price for a new one to get that fixed and replace the also damaged hybrid drive with a new ssd. The 5.1 Mac pros were certainly built well, but you have to take into account that for most people using them today there is hardly any component in them that is not replaced. The 2013 models are difficult to repair in many cases. Just look up the price for a replacement d500 ... All I am saying is, there are so many things that make things unnecessarily expensive. And for what? For a PC that just stands there in the studio? The iPads are pretty good compared to other mobile devices. That is not where I see a lot of problems except for the price of memory. I am just saying the PCs that Apple offers are to expensive and not in the line with what a so called pro customer really needs. That also goes for Mac OS enhancements. If Apple really cared that much for the pros, why wouldn't they make their OS work better for real time audio? To a logic user their Mac might appear to work very well, but as soon as you use VEpro or Cubase you realise how bad it works. I am not making that up! Do some research and you will find out for yourself! And I don't believe Steinberg or VSL are not trying to make it work equally well on both platforms. The truth is, you simply pay more to get less performance with every Mac you can buy vs a PC. Apple could easily just build a new tower with a good thermal design, exchangeable stock components! They could have done that multiple times during the last 5 years. A lot of people would have bought it. Why do you think they take the time until 2019 to do it? That would be all I would have wanted from them and I am almost certain at this point that the 2019 Mac Pro will not be the thing I will have waited for 7 years.


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## Jeremy Gillam (Oct 5, 2018)

The only thing keeping me with Apple at this point is not wanting to be a green bubble person in a blue bubble town.


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## NYC Composer (Oct 5, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> That wasn't always the case. Historically, used Macs hold their value very well.
> 
> But they were $2500, not $7000.


Very true. I have always bought refurbs that were about a year out of date, and I've always paid between $2k and $2.5k.


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## NYC Composer (Oct 5, 2018)

Wally Garten said:


> I mean, this is part of the frustration, though -- at least for me: the products are getting WORSE over time, in terms of maintaining useful life. I have a 7-year old Macbook Pro that I was able to upgrade to 16 GB memory and an onboard 500 GB SSD, giving it a lot more life. On the new models of the MBP, the memory is soldered in place, and my understanding is that they're moving toward making the drives non-replaceable, too. The old model of "keep your Mac forever" (and/or "wait a few years, buy an older model, and trick it out") is something they now actively seem to be discouraging.


Yes, this is very true. I find it the most discouraging part of the present trends in Apple Computers. It seems they're no longer satisfied getting a premium price-they also want to own the sale of any peripherals or make you buy a pre-configured unit with few if any upgrade options.


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## JEPA (Oct 5, 2018)

Apple is degenerating since Steve Jobs passed away.. We lived a golden era, Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates can't live forever...


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## LamaRose (Oct 5, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Apple preventing third-party iMac Pro & 2018 MacBook Pro repairs, internal document says



This is complete BS... par for the course for Apple these days... they just want to lock us out from purchasing better 3rd-party warranties.



Alex Fraser said:


> Should we be mad? I don't think so.
> If my Mac goes pop, it's going to the big shiny building with the Apple logo on it. I'd prefer it to be repaired by trained staff with the appropriate tools and guarantees in place.



Just don't give them the opportunity to claim that you mishandled it...


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## Geoff Grace (Oct 5, 2018)

Outraged about _this_? Have you been watching the news lately? _(Okay, that was a rhetorical question. I'm sure you have.)_

Regardless, yeah it looks like another nail in the coffin for having it your way when configuring Macs. But then, Apple hasn't exactly been the Burger King of the computer industry.

Nonetheless, I'm a happy customer when it comes to Apple stability and tech support. In my experience, Apple mops the floor with Microsoft in that area. If I have to be locked into Apple in that regard, well then, that's what I would have chosen anyway.

Best,

Geoff


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## EvilDragon (Oct 6, 2018)

JEPA said:


> We lived a golden era, Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates can't live forever...



Bill doesn't have much to do with Microsoft these days anyways.


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## jcrosby (Oct 6, 2018)

ka00 said:


> Aren't they just preventing repairs from "unauthorized shops", as stated in the article? Couldn't that be a good thing for customers, to know they are dealing with a reputable third-party who has received authorization?


No. Apple "certified" repairs are incredibly price-inflated if you don't have Apple care.
So, if you bought a device and skipped Applecare where are you going to have it fixed? A place that can do the same quality work with aftermarket parts for 25% of the cost? Or an Apple store, or authorized service center who can charge you 4-5 times the price for parts that cost them the same but get an _official _seal of approval?

There's a simpler reason why they're pursuing this though.... Apple attempted sue a 3rd party repair shop in Norway last year and got publicly embarrassed for failing. They claimed the repair shop was guilty of trademark infringement despite the parts being aftermarket. As if that's not shitty enough, Apple's used DHS and ICE to seize merchandise from non-authorized US repair shops... So no, it isn't good for anyone.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...independent-iphone-repair-shop-owner-and-lost

If you're really outraged about Apple getting a hard on for shutting down local repair shops then join Right To Repair. Simple as that...
https://repair.org/legislation/

https://www.consumerreports.org/con...ake-it-easier-to-get-a-phone-or-laptop-fixed/


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## MartinH. (Oct 6, 2018)

ka00 said:


> Aren't they just preventing repairs from "unauthorized shops", as stated in the article? Couldn't that be a good thing for customers, to know they are dealing with a reputable third-party who has received authorization?


I think you might want to do some research on how that whole system works:



The guy repairs Apple hardware for a living and is a big advocate of the "right to repair". All Apple ever does is make it harder and harder to get their hardware repaired - even for the official authorized service providers as the video above explains. Shops like his would be able to provide much better hardware repair support to their customers, if it was possible for them to just buy replacement parts for the hardware, but they can't. They have to buy and stockpile defective hardware and turn those mainboards into "donor boards" to take functioning chips from there as replacement for defective chips (and probably still do a better repair job than some AASPs - just because you have some certificate that doesn't automatically guarantuee competence of all employees).
Sure there are some bad apples (no pun intended) among the unauthorized repair shops as well, he complains about those all the time too. But your attitude of blindly trusting the official "seal of approval" by Apple, treating all unauthorized shops as untrustworthy, doesn't look to me like one, that you'd uphold if you did just a little digging for facts on how the apple hardware repair situation really is and whose fault it is.


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## lokotus (Oct 6, 2018)

look, this is simply capitalism. You need to surpass your achievements every year, just to stay at the profit level you had last year. This means higher prices (see iPhone etc), cheaper production or stricter rules (preventing third party etc...) that ultimately end up being your own profit growth. If you don't like their strategy, don't buy their products, and they realise it very soon and change their strategy. No need to be outraged at something that is a part of how our current sociatey operates and works...


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## Erick - BVA (Oct 6, 2018)

No desire to ever move to Apple products. Have never had the desire, and since apparently they've been on a decline lately, I suspect that desire will never come.


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## jcrosby (Oct 6, 2018)

lokotus said:


> look, this is simply capitalism. You need to surpass your achievements every year, just to stay at the profit level you had last year. This means higher prices (see iPhone etc), cheaper production or stricter rules (preventing third party etc...) that ultimately end up being your own profit growth. If you don't like their strategy, don't buy their products, and they realise it very soon and change their strategy. No need to be outraged at something that is a part of how our current sociatey operates and works...


It's a violation of antitrust, the same reason why the US still has 3 performing rights organizations, consent decrees etc... (I'm not saying BMI, ASCAP, etc aren't without flaws either...) Capitalism is one thing, laws that are stringently enforced on one set of entities, but become leverage for a single larger entity isn't capitalism, it's corporatism.

We're also talking about the first company to surpass a trillion dollar valuation. It's not like Apple needs to sweat runoff lost to small repair shops to remain profitable. Not by a mile. Or a trillion of them.


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## Fab (Oct 6, 2018)

meh who cares, from my perspective most daw can run on multiple operating systems.

---

I imagine larger studio setups with multiple machines and commitments to them will suffer though!


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## procreative (Oct 6, 2018)

I am still not sure this would be legally enforcable. The car industry used to insist on authorised dealers in the UK, mortgage lenders used to insist on their own insurance provider etc...

These things were outlawed and you are entitled to use whoever.

If its an out of warranty repair, I do not reckon they will get away with forcing you to use Apple only repairs.

If they do try it, I would not be surprised to see a class action suit. In the EU, I reckon they woul not even try it.


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## Saxer (Oct 6, 2018)

I used my last three studio Macs for about seven years each. In studio world (even when working in the box) it's a lesser item.
I don't like a lot of Apples update and marketing strategies. But that concerns others in the same way like MS, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Nestlé, Monsanto... and the list goes on. And on. And on.


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## GtrString (Oct 6, 2018)

I feel sort of in the hands of whatever they decide. Im not going back to a Microsoft system in my lifetime, with all the daily software/hardware hassles and corporate paternalism. At least with Apple I can have a functional and reliable system that helps me optimize time with music production.

I could want more flexibility to customize and do small repairs, though, but considering that Microsoft is the alternative, its not a dealbreaker for me (at least yet).


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## hawpri (Oct 6, 2018)

"iFixit confirms you can still repair your own iMac Pro or MacBook Pro"
https://www.engadget.com/amp/2018/10/05/macbook-pro-imac-pro-repair-t2/

There's no mention of Mac Pro specifically, but I think this is relevant enough information to mention it here.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 6, 2018)

lokotus said:


> look, this is simply capitalism. You need to surpass your achievements every year, just to stay at the profit level you had last year. This means higher prices (see iPhone etc), cheaper production or stricter rules (preventing third party etc...) that ultimately end up being your own profit growth. If you don't like their strategy, don't buy their products, and they realise it very soon and change their strategy. No need to be outraged at something that is a part of how our current sociatey operates and works...



Is your heart really in that argument?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 6, 2018)

procreative said:


> These things were outlawed and you are entitled to use whoever.
> 
> If its an out of warranty repair, I do not reckon they will get away with forcing you to use Apple only repairs.



It's only the iMac Pro and 2018 MacBook Pro (so far?), both of which are probably still under warranty.

This is the issue:

"new software locks have been put in place that make the machines “inoperable” unless Apple’s proprietary System Configuration software is run after a repair."


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## garyhiebner (Oct 6, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> No, sir. That title definitely belongs to Windows ME.



Wasn't Vista a shocker as well!


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 6, 2018)

I for one have zero intention of not using Macs, for one reason: I like them.


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## dzilizzi (Oct 6, 2018)

garyhiebner said:


> Wasn't Vista a shocker as well!


Actually, once they did SP1 for Vista, it worked well. Unfortunately, by that point, people hated Vista. 

I have a fairly new iPad that I like. Other than that, each time I think about buying an Apple computer, the price for what I can get has stopped me. That and the bad experience with an iBook that crashed everytime I added a second plugin to a track. This does not help. 

I guess if they don't need repairs, it doesn't really matter. But I live over an hour from the nearest Apple store and my husband's iPhones regularly have problems that are not always reproducible at the store. Fortunately, it is at a nice mall. I still am happily using my Note 3. I think I'm on my 3rd battery. He's had 4 phones in the same time. Doesn't make me confident in their longevity.


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## NYC Composer (Oct 6, 2018)

dzilizzi said:


> Actually, once they did SP1 for Vista, it worked well. Unfortunately, by that point, people hated Vista.
> 
> I have a fairly new iPad that I like. Other than that, each time I think about buying an Apple computer, the price for what I can get has stopped me. That and the bad experience with an iBook that crashed everytime I added a second plugin to a track. This does not help.
> 
> I guess if they don't need repairs, it doesn't really matter. But I live over an hour from the nearest Apple store and my husband's iPhones regularly have problems that are not always reproducible at the store. Fortunately, it is at a nice mall. I still am happily using my Note 3. I think I'm on my 3rd battery. He's had 4 phones in the same time. Doesn't make me confident in their longevity.


My experience is the exact opposite. I blew a power supply in my Mac Plus in the late 80s. I blew something in my G5 while changing out RAM- prolly wasn’t sufficiently grounded. My white plastic 2008 laptop’s case was crap- they replaced the keyboard. It limps, but still works. I’ve had various dumb software problems occur when Apple does something stupid.

All in all, as my total history of problems over 30 years of using Apple products, I’d say that’s pretty convincing. At present, I have a working Mac Pro, G5, G4, Mini, laptop, two working iPads (the iPad 2 is slow as hell and cracked but works) an iPhone 6 and an iPhone 3 I just couldn’t kill. I had a half dozen other Macs I gave away or sold, all working.


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## dzilizzi (Oct 6, 2018)

NYC Composer said:


> My experience is the exact opposite. I blew a power supply in my Mac Plus in the late 80s. I blew something in my G5 while changing out RAM- prolly wasn’t sufficiently grounded. My white plastic 2008 laptop’s case was crap- they replaced the keyboard. It limps, but still works. I’ve had various dumb software problems occur when Apple does something stupid.
> 
> All in all, as my total history of problems over 30 years of using Apple products, I’d say that’s pretty convincing. At present, I have a working Mac Pro, G5, G4, Mini, laptop, two working iPads (the iPad 2 is slow as hell and cracked but works) an iPhone 6 and an iPhone 3 I just couldn’t kill. I had a half dozen other Macs I gave away or sold, all working.


I had a bad experience with Toyota as well, brand new car, starter cable broke after a month, battery at 3 months, etc... had to fight to get them to fix anything. My friend's lasted years with no problems. So it is probably me.


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## wayne_rowley (Oct 7, 2018)

Looks like a non-issue for the moment:

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/06/ifixit-repairs-2018-mbp-without-apple-diagnostics/


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## garyhiebner (Oct 7, 2018)

dzilizzi said:


> Actually, once they did SP1 for Vista, it worked well. Unfortunately, by that point, people hated Vista.
> 
> I have a fairly new iPad that I like. Other than that, each time I think about buying an Apple computer, the price for what I can get has stopped me. That and the bad experience with an iBook that crashed everytime I added a second plugin to a track. This does not help.
> 
> I guess if they don't need repairs, it doesn't really matter. But I live over an hour from the nearest Apple store and my husband's iPhones regularly have problems that are not always reproducible at the store. Fortunately, it is at a nice mall. I still am happily using my Note 3. I think I'm on my 3rd battery. He's had 4 phones in the same time. Doesn't make me confident in their longevity.



Haha, you haven't used an Apple since an iBook. Gosh!

Here in South Africa the certified Apple support is so terrible. I had a MacBook under warranty and I knew the problem was the trackpad. I told them but they said it wasn't. It took them 2 weeks to eventually figure out that yes, it was the trackpad. Then they need to order the part. So it took a month for a simple faulty trackpad to be replaced. So I have lost all hope of any good technical support for Apple here in South Africa and have gone the Hackintosh route (yes I know my days are numbered with their new proprietary CPU down the line, but thats still gives me give or take 7-10 years on a. Mac with an older OS), cos I know I can easily replace the hardware parts myself instead of having to send it into our terrible Apple support centres and wait for ages, while I lose time doing work. Sorry about the Vent, but Apple support is terrible here.


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## Vik (Oct 7, 2018)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/no-apple-hasnt-activated-a-secret-mac-repair-kill-switch-yet/


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 7, 2018)

wayne_rowley said:


> Looks like a non-issue for the moment:
> 
> https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/06/ifixit-repairs-2018-mbp-without-apple-diagnostics/



Good. Hope that remains the case.


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## MartinH. (Oct 9, 2018)




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## NYC Composer (Oct 9, 2018)

I am totally on board with Right to Repair, however this is not a documentary, as you can see the Rossman Repair logo at the bottom of the video.


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## Puzzlefactory (Oct 9, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Apple preventing third-party iMac Pro & 2018 MacBook Pro repairs, internal document says




Hopefully won’t reach me in referb land for a while.

I guess when it does I’ll have to switch (oh god dare I say it) to a windows machine and Cubase.


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## Dietz (Oct 9, 2018)

GtrString said:


> Im not going back to a Microsoft system in my lifetime, with all the daily software/hardware hassles and corporate paternalism. At least with Apple I can have a functional and reliable system that helps me optimize time with music production.


Hmmmm .... my early 2013 Windows 7 machine is maybe the most "quiet" machine I ever owned, in every respect. Not a single sign of "paternalism".  The best DAW I worked with so far (and there were quite a few, also more recent ones).

Compared to my Macs' constant attempts to update the OS, to open iTunes (a.k.a. The Virus), and all those blocks when trying to work with stuff I just downloaded ...


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## lokotus (Oct 9, 2018)

MartinH. said:


>



I mean its ott like we don't have alternatives, right ? go win....


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## MartinH. (Oct 9, 2018)

NYC Composer said:


> I am totally on board with Right to Repair, however this is not a documentary, as you can see the Rossman Repair logo at the bottom of the video.



It is an excerpt of a (possibly biased) CBC documentary that he himself posted on his channel, if you go to the youtube page of the video, he links the full video in the description. So you are both right and wrong in a way.




lokotus said:


> I mean its ott like we don't have alternatives, right ? go win....



I try to stay out of the religious PC/Mac wars, but I am a happy Windows 7 user. I tried to legit switch to Macs about a decade ago, and to be honest nothing in the world has made me appreciate Windows more, than trying to switch to OSX. I'm just not cut out to use something like OSX. I've also had more trouble in shorter time than I ever had with windows, and in the time since I went back to Windows I have seen my Mac-using collegues go through a _lot _more issues with incompatibilities between their Mac hardware, OSX versions, and their software than I went through in the same time-frame.

At the time where I bought my Mac I was really fed up with Windows - basically ragequitting... but trying out the supposedly "greener gras" on the other side of the fence, has increased my satisfaction with Windows tenfold.

I'm not hearing much good about Windows 10 though, so I do what I (successfully) did with Vista, I try to skip it and use what I'm familiar and happy with for as long as I can. But every time I say that, someone comes along and says "Microsoft has said Windows 10 will be their last windows version" or something like that, and then I get depressed because I reject that forced update bullshit and any form of "lack of control over my own computer".


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## Dietz (Oct 9, 2018)

MartinH. said:


> I have seen my Mac-using collegues go through a _lot _more issues with incompatibilities between their Mac hardware, OSX versions, and their software than I went through in the same time-frame.


This. 8-)

... it's just that the "Mac-using colleague" is me again, in my case. :-P


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## Geoff Grace (Oct 9, 2018)

I think on both Mac and Windows, it's very important to pick the right OS. For instance, if you jumped into High Sierra when it was first released, you would have found that a great deal of your music software was incompatible. I believe that most of this was due to the new Apple File System that debuted with High Sierra. It replaced the HFS+ file system, which Apple had used since System 8. This was the biggest system-wide change in the Mac platform since migrating to Intel a decade ago. Most music software is High Sierra compatible now, but it took nearly a year for some developers to get there.

If you jumped into Windows 10 when it was first released, your privacy was probably being violated by Microsoft. My understanding is that Windows 10 still defaults that way; but thanks to a series of updates, you can work around it by configuring settings. More on that here:

Windows 10 privacy guide: How to take control

I have heard both iOS 11 and High Sierra referred to as "Apple's Vista." Time will tell whether Apple has bounced back with iOS 12 and Mojave.

In the meantime, I'm still on Sierra; and I've kept my wife's PC on Windows 7.

Best,

Geoff


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## NYC Composer (Oct 9, 2018)

I stayed on 10.6 Snow Leopard for as long as I could-rock solid OS. 
When I was forced to move up, I went to Mountain Lion, very solid. I ended up with El Capitan, no problems.

Overall, my many and varied Macs have been the least of my worries, but I’m not anti-Windows at all. I advise young musicians to start with a Windows machine because they’ll get more power for less money.

People always want to start these Mac vs PC wars though, even now.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2018)

Dietz said:


> Compared to my Macs' constant attempts to update the OS, to open iTunes (a.k.a. The Virus), and all those blocks when trying to work with stuff I just downloaded ...



Dietz, you have to turn that off!

I don't know exactly what you're referring to, but that doesn't happen on my machines, and I promise you it's not because I'm smarter than everyone else!

(And yes, iTunes is a complete sack of fertilizer. Most of their software is way better than that.)


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2018)

Geoff Grace said:


> For instance, if you jumped into High Sierra when it was first released, you would have found that a great deal of your music software was incompatible. I believe that most of this was due to the new Apple File System that debuted with High Sierra



Yeah, I think I posted my adventures going back to Low Sierra after that failed experiment.


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## Dietz (Oct 9, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Dietz, you have to turn that off!


You don't say. That's like on a Windows-machine, then!

;-D


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## kitekrazy (Oct 10, 2018)

MartinH. said:


> It is an excerpt of a (possibly biased) CBC documentary that he himself posted on his channel, if you go to the youtube page of the video, he links the full video in the description. So you are both right and wrong in a way.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It gets worse outside a DAW forum when the delusional Linux users chime in. I'm not a fan of the evolving OS. While I don't use Mac I do get emails from developers to avoid the latest update until they come up with a fix. It seems like Apple and MS copy each others' bad ideas. iTunes reminds me more of MS products than Apple.

Windows 10 is great. The forced updates for non security issues is bad. But recently I've had to roll back to previous versions because they have some boneheaded developers breaking network things. Quality control is terrible. Oddly enough those using insider builds don't have some of these issues you read about. Most of the updates are not appealing for DAW users.


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## chimuelo (Oct 10, 2018)

Geoff Grace said:


> I think on both Mac and Windows, it's very important to pick the right OS. For instance, if you jumped into High Sierra when it was first released, you would have found that a great deal of your music software was incompatible. I believe that most of this was due to the new Apple File System that debuted with High Sierra. It replaced the HFS+ file system, which Apple had used since System 8. This was the biggest system-wide change in the Mac platform since migrating to Intel a decade ago. Most music software is High Sierra compatible now, but it took nearly a year for some developers to get there.
> 
> If you jumped into Windows 10 when it was first released, your privacy was probably being violated by Microsoft. My understanding is that Windows 10 still defaults that way; but thanks to a series of updates, you can work around it by configuring settings. More on that here:
> 
> ...




I left Windows 7 because Micro$oft said 8.1 was NVMe version of 7.
Sure the RAM Snapshots are great and speed up boot times to seconds.
But as soon as NVMe support came to 7 I went back and enjoy stability and no nagware or reminders to update on an offline PC.
Windows 10 PC has become the gaming/entertainment and video archiving PC.

There just no need to fix something that already works.
These apps and OSs that demand updates no longer convince me. I fell for that when I went to x64 just to find out the Giga switch was elevated to 8GBs and 32 bit.

I’ll learn 10 and continue exploring its advantages but not on my Audio PCs.


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## noises on (Oct 10, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> It's a good thing if you want to pay a lot more for repairs at the Apple Store! They're not authorizing repair places for these machines.
> 
> I agree with Larry - Apple has a history of making great machines. If I wanted to bore people, I'd even mention my 21-year-old PowerMac 9600 running a librarian for an old synth (Yamaha VL1).
> 
> Unless there's something I don't know, this is hardly a continuation of that trend! What I don't go along with is the usual kvetching about how Apple makes its money from iPhones and they've abandoned "pro users."


Nothing boring about any conversation that relates in any way with a VL1. Still my favourite synth 24 years later. Any recommendations for visual editing for those without the above mentioned PowerMac?


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## noises on (Oct 10, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> No, sir. That title definitely belongs to Windows ME.


What did they honestly expect from a product called ME. myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME); postviral fatigue syndrome; chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome


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## dzilizzi (Oct 10, 2018)

I'm a PC user so I may have this wrong, but I hear a lot of complaints about the OS updates causing incompatibility issues. It usually relates to having to pay the WUP with Waves, which I haven't had to pay since ProTools went AAX. Now Icould maybe understand changing the file structure to work with faster SSDs or larger drive sizes, but it doesn't make sense not to make systems that aren't backwards compatible. I have 12 year old programs that still run perfectly on my Windows 10 machine. Is it really that hard?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 10, 2018)

noises on said:


> Nothing boring about any conversation that relates in any way with a VL1. Still my favourite synth 24 years later. Any recommendations for visual editing for those without the above mentioned PowerMac?



There's a Yamaha editor, I think, but you need to pony up $10 for an old Mac to run it on. 

If you get one, PM me and I'll see whether I can find it.

I use the Opcode Galaxy stuff - only because my old sounds are in that format.


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