DJDarren
Eternal shitposter who probably has something more important he should be doing.
Likes: Nice headphones, iPods, Apple stuff, music.
Dislikes: Nazis, Apple
He / Him
Mastodon: https://mendeddrum.org/@DJDarren
- 4 Posts
- 69 Comments
Yes, they really do. There were a few years of fuckups and questionable decisions, but by and large the devices they make are absolutely solid.
I have a 2011 MacBook Pro at home that’s running Monterey via Opencore as well as if it was still supported. Until recently I was using a 2015 MBP that was absolutely faultless. I now have an M2 Air that may have some issues down the line that haven’t come to light yet, but it seems unlikely. I have two Mac minis at work, a 2011 and a 2014 that are still absolutely capable for the level of work I ask of them. I’m typing this on one of them.
In terms of iPhones/iPads; I’ve had 7 iPhones and 5 iPads over the years, and the only hardware problems I’ve experienced with them have been of my own doing (broken screens, water damage, etc…).
So yeah, the 2016-2019 MacBooks had shitty keyboards and questionable I/O decisions, but otherwise the hardware was absolutely top tier.
And with Apple you can’t choose and pick like with PC. When they decide to try silly things like the touch bar you are stuck with them for years.
This is kind of a weird argument. You can’t choose which keyboard you get with any laptop.
All of this stuff makes me sad. As a long(ish)-time Apple user, it’s been sad to see them go full throttle into hyper-capital mode. They’re literally the wealthiest company on the planet because they’ve spent the past twenty years figuring out how to nickel and dime their customers. Hell, even when I bought my first MacBook back in '07, the guy in the Apple Store suggested getting the RAM upgrade elsewhere because Apple prices were ridiculous even then. Everyone knows they didn’t go with soldered RAM and storage for the performance gains…
But they make incredible hardware, so I tolerate all that shit, making me complicit in the fuckery.
I saw my wife playing this years ago, and always fancied having a go, but never got around to it.
So a few months back we got it going so it could stream to our Apple TV and off I went. Spent a few weeks playing it in the evenings and having a nice time.
Then Ubisoft put out an ‘update’ to it, that broke it completely. A massive update for a ten year old game. Cunts.
So I guess I’ll never finish it, because fuck Ubisoft.
In theory, any MP3 player / DAP that can have music loaded onto it by drag and drop could work with your iPad (assuming you have the means to connect it, of course).
But there are a number of things to consider.
Firstly; storage. Obviously, your iPad doesn’t have expandable storage, so depending on the size of your collection, you might run out of space. Using the same method you’ll need to connect the player to your iPad, you can hook up an external drive of some description. Files should be able to see it (as long as it’s formatted to exFAT or FAT). From there, using Files you can simply drag from one place to another.
However, this doesn’t allow you to change metadata or anything. There are apps you can download that will allow you to do it, but it can be a pain in the ass if you’ve got quite a bit of music.
Finally, there’s where you get the music from.
If you buy from somewhere like Bandcamp, then you can download directly to your iPad, though they don’t make it easy. You can’t buy from iTunes because the app won’t let you open them in Files. Torrents are obviously out, so is CD ripping, as there are no CD drivers for iPad that I’m aware of.
So while it’s entirely possible to run a DAP with just an iPad, it’s kind of a pain in the arse, unless you already have a ready supply of music and it’s either already tagged well, or you don’t really care about that sort of thing. As others have suggested, it might be just as easy for you to pick up a cheap PC. It doesn’t need to have any bells and whistles, just the ability to store music and have some way of managing the library.
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I quite like the 30 pin, though that may be because I coveted iPods at the time but couldn’t afford one. I had a couple of Sony hard disc Walkman, which seemed to have a different connector every damn time, meaning you couldn’t buy one dock like you could with an iPod. On top of that, it was a solid connection that clicked nicely every time. But yeah, ya boy was wiiiiiide. I have a dozen of them knocking about now, as my little collection of iPods grows…
Also, it’s hilarious that Samsung straight up copied the 30 pin for their original Tab, but flipped the pin position so the cables weren’t interchangeable.
Remember the New iPad, or the 3rd gen iPad as literally everyone called it?
Apple did try to simplify in the same way they did with Macs, but then they fragmented the iPad line so much that it was difficult to keep up, so now you have “12.9” 2022 iPad Pro" as opposed to “5th gen iPad Air”.
Still, it’s better than the abominations that Sony come out with. Looking at you, WH-1000XM4 headphones, or Bravia KD55X75WL (2023).
It’s likely more to do with the iPad Pro architecture being essentially the same as a MacBooks. Makes it easier to produce multiple devices based on the same components. But they kept Lightning on the cheaper devices because the people using them are less likely to care how they (very infrequently) plug stuff in.
Also, I feel like not enough people appreciate just how much shit Apple got for moving everything from the 30 pin to Lightning. There was a barrage of comments across the message boards from people bitching about how they’d have to replace their iPod docks and all the cables they’d amassed. There was no way Apple would have gone through that again lightly to switch to a new standard that wasn’t mature.
As an iPhone user since the 3GS, I couldn’t really give a shit which port my phone has, because I almost never actually use it. Data transfer is usually via iCloud or Airdrop, and charging is almost always on my MagSafe stand.
That said, it’ll be nice for my next phone to be able to use the same USB-C adapters that I have for my MacBook for those odd occasions they’re needed.
It’s not just politicians, it’s so many of the older people running the companies and pulling the strings.
My own boss is an absolute nightmare for not understanding that technology that could make our jobs here so, so much easier - and crucially much much more efficient. And yeah, I get that we could endlessly chase the promises of tech, but I’m forever being told to wind back my reliance on online tech because the boss won’t spend the money needed on some computers and would rather do things on paper. I just nod, agree, then carry on doing things my way, because it has proven results. There’s a bunch of us here who rely on Google Docs for collaboration software, because the boss refuses to spend any money on anything better suited. He didn’t need it back when he set up the company 20 years ago, so he doesn’t need it now!
Drives me fucking mad.
As to your point on experts; our government ministers actively reject experts who actually know about the issues, choosing instead to listen to people who’ll tell them what they want to hear.
I’m something of a patient gamer, and my wife has all the Assassin’s Creed games. A couple of months ago I decided to play Black Flag, as I remember her enjoying it back when it came out.
Got 46% of the way through the story, then a few weeks ago, completely out of the blue, Ubicunts pushed out a 2gb “update” for it, the sole purpose of which appears to have been to break it. So now I can’t finish it.
I hate Ubisoft.
until they publish the technical specs sufficient for community support and repair.
I want to see phones with no further official OS support have their boot loaders opened up so a lightweight OS can be installed on them instead. I’ve had iPhones in the past that have been absolutely rock solid after a battery replacement that lost iOS support, and with that a whole bunch of resale value. So I now tend to sell mine a year or so before they’re likely to be dropped.
But I genuinely think that I’d hold on to an iPhone that could have an alternative OS installed. This is, of course, why none of the major manufacturers allow this. Gotta put the profits ahead of the ethics.
I have a 2015 fully specced 15" MacBook Pro that I’m trying to sell at the minute, which is proving more difficult than I thought it might, partly because the M-series Airs are so compelling, but also because it’s an incredibly powerful machine that’s officially locked to Monterey, which is now two years old.
Beyond Apple’s need for financial gains, I don’t think there was a compelling reason to leave that model out of the Ventura upgrades.
I had it running Ventura via OCLP, which it had absolutely no trouble with at all. But I can’t sell it in that state because while it’s pretty stable, there is still some extra fiddling needed with running an unsupported OS.
He’s the consummate failson. Rich enough that he’ll never actually experience any tangible negativity from his various ventures, if he has a skill, it’s in self-publicity and (historically) throwing money at ventures that are already on an upward trajectory.
But I feel that all the cocaine and being surrounded by Yes Men have led to him tipping over the edge.
In fairness I’ve been a Mac user since 2007, but even with my occasional flirtations with Windows, I’ve not used anything higher than 10.
My wife’s machine is running 10. I heard her trying to install 11 via a VM the other day to see how she got on with it, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone swear at a computer quite so much in quite so short a period of time.
Her machine is still running 10.
When I came to upgrade back in February, I was this 👉🏼👈🏼 close to getting a dumb 4G Nokia because my addiction to my apps was killing me and I wanted an out. I already use a Kobo for reading, and have a couple of classic iPods for music, so I was kinda set.
But when it came down to it, I realised that I’d have been offloading an awful lot of tech admin to my wife, and that I’d have to start remembering to take my wallet everywhere, and to have cash for car parking and that. On top of that, my wife bought me an Apple Watch for Christmas, so I’d have needed to keep an iPhone around for syncing that anyway, and for using as a GPS when driving anywhere unfamiliar. I thought about getting an iPod touch instead, but ultimately that just seemed like it would be stupid.
So in the end I got an iPhone 13 mini, on the basis that the smaller screen might make me less inclined to spend hours scrolling. And that seems to have worked for me, somewhat. Also, the mini is a fucking beautiful little handset, with a lovely camera, and it only costs me £30 a month.
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This is why iPads frustrate me so much these days. The hardware is more than capable of running a decently powerful OS, but Apple are insistent on crippling them with a big version of iOS. iOS is fine on an iPhone where the limited screen size means I have no particular desire to do anything too complicated, but the same restrictions on an iPad feel like Apple don’t really know how to reconcile what the device can do with not wanting to pull customers away from Macs. I was unexpectedly gifted a 6th gen mini last week which is in front of me as I type and which I’m not entirely sure what to do with.