Nope, Apple has actually taken a pretty strong stance against such practices, but being in the ad business meant there has been pressure on Apple to do just that (after all, more personalised ads perform better, and Apple has all the means to provide advertisers the data they need to offer them). Now that they have left the advertising business, that pressure is hopefully also gone.
I imagine Apple provided a superior experience since they manage the App development frameworks on Mac / iOS. The flop must have been inventory. A lot of advertisers are now turning to exchanges (DoubleClick, AppNexus, OpenX...) for inventory whereas Apple forced you to use iAd Workbench [0].
Buzzfeed started with fluff and then grew a news operation. Most newspapers are now having to grow their fluff operations in order to attract enough traffic to survive (see: WashingtonPost.com).
I wonder how Apple will spin this. Are they going to say they stepped away from iAds because it was a conflict of interest with the "moral contract" they had with their users or are they going to admit the truth and say it was a financial failure.
They will probably say nothing. Not a significant business for the company and the iAd program continues, just changes the approach because they didn't have any traction.
Which leads me to the question what would have happened if iAds was a financial success? Would Apple still have abandoned it or would they still be two faced and preach to the press and public, at every opportunity they get, that they're pro-user, but conveniently leave out the fact that they sell advertisers access to their users profile.
I don't know what do you mean by "planned obsolescence" in context of Apple products. I constantly see people using few years old iPhone 4S or 7 years old MacBooks. If by "obscolescence" you mean the fact that they release new and better product every year then that's nothing that I would hold against them.
There have been a few instances where someone wouldn't be too far out of line in assuming planned obsolescence with Apple. An example would be the notorious 2008 Macbook. When Apple launched Mountain Lion in 2012, it ditched support for the plastic Macbooks. So, that 2008 white Macbook my girlfriend bought only got new OS updates for 3 years, which was a pretty big bummer. For comparison, similarly equipped 2008 Windows laptops can run Windows 10 today without much fuss. In the end, her LCD started to short out anyway -- a common issue with Macbooks of that era -- so we got her a basic Toshiba laptop for about 1/2 the price of a Mac. It's still humming along nicely and I just dropped an SSD in it to give it a huge speed bump.
So, that 2008 white Macbook my girlfriend bought only got new OS updates for 3 years, which was a pretty big bummer.
I agree that the support time was too short, but this is not the complete picture. OS X Lion was the last version that runs on the 2008 MacBook and received security updates until October 2014, so the model was supported for 6 years.
In the end, her LCD started to short out anyway -- a common issue with Macbooks of that era -- so we got her a basic Toshiba laptop for about 1/2 the price of a Mac. It's still humming along nicely and I just dropped an SSD in it to give it a huge speed bump.
You are doing it wrong ;). The resale value of MacBooks is very high. My wife usually gets my current MacBook after 1.5 years and we sell her old MacBook. We usually get 600-700 Euro. 400 Euro for using a MacBook for three years in total is not bad...
The resale value for Windows laptops is typically bad. There is a company across the street where they sell 3-4 year old ThinkPads for 300 Euro.
Security updates and the ability to run the latest OS are very different things, especially in Mac-land. Unlike Windows software which generally runs on a very wide range of versions, most Mac apps assume users are only running more recent releases. For example, Firefox runs Windows versions up to 14 years ago (Windows XP, which isn't even supported by Microsoft any more) but only on Mac OS X within the last 6 years (OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard). Couple that with the fact that it is very difficult to determine when Apple drops support for a given version of OS X because they have no published schedule and don't officially announce when they drop support of a specific version. In short, the equivalent 2008 Windows laptop is still getting security updates for the OS it came with, works with nearly all major Windows software, and can be updated to the latest version of Windows without much fuss. The 2008 Macbook is running an unsupported version of OS X, can't be upgraded to the current version of OS X, and can't run quite a lot of Mac software.
Windows vs Mac resale value plays a lot into the way Windows folks use their laptops. The reason is that they generally use a given laptop until they no longer need it. My girlfriend's laptop will be 5 years old this year and was purchased for about the same amount of money it cost you to use your Macbook for 3 years. I spent another ~US$100 to upgrade to an SSD recently which will give it quite a bit more life. And it can be upgraded to Windows 10 for free if we want to at some point. Granted, it's only used for web browsing, office suite stuff, watching videos, recording and editing voice-over work etc, so it doesn't need to be the latest and greatest. So, it's really more a different use case.
Your typical pattern of buy and sell is kind of fascinating to me as a Windows user, but makes complete sense given the comparable markets and models. The wider array of Windows laptop choices in different budgets accounts for the lower resale value of higher end Windows laptops. Most users are fine spending $400 or less on a Windows laptop for the basic browsing, email, photos, videos, etc needs. High end Windows laptop users want a new machine, not a used one. So, there's not much interest in $500 used Windows laptops... they don't serve either market segment well. In Mac-land, there is no $400-500 Mac laptop option, so anyone with only that budget has to look at used models. Thus, the demand keeps the cost for a used Macbook high compared to Windows laptops.
In the end, I think we're both doing it right for our needs :)
Misleading. You're pointing to XP as a 14-year-old product. But who runs unpatched XP from 14 years ago? Nobody. It would be idiotic and even less secure than running somewhat-patched XP. This isn't even a real difference, just one created by the fact that Microsoft never bothered changing the name of XP when it was patched beyond all recognition.
As it was automatically upgraded with no charge to the end user from one service pack to another it is a single product in the context of this discussion. For comparison, at the time, Apple charged for each subsequent point release of OS X despite them often being roughly equivalent to a Windows service pack. Upgrading Mac OS X versions before Mavericks still requires payment today.
My fiance has a plastic macbook (not a 2008) that is still supported and running El Capitan. It was running sluggishly so I too dropped in and SSD and some more RAM. The Macbook has fared well compared to my 2011 MBP which has video card issues Apple wont fix.
Either way getting 5+ years out a laptop is outstanding. I went through a few Sony Vaios in that amount of time during their hayday plus a brand new computer that had the monitor go out completely. Plus I was stuck on windows which is a big pain point for me.
Looking forward to replacing the '11 MBP once another refresh happens this year.
> Either way getting 5+ years out a laptop is outstanding.
For most people who do a bit of emailing, some light www browsing, a bit of word processing and spreadsheeting, some messaging, and some very light gaming (solitaire): it's profoundly depressing that the needs of the bloated OS and the modern WWW[1] drive the need for ridiculous amounts of RAM and processor power.
[1] Not talking about app delivery here, but about a newspaper website delivering mostly text and images with a bit of CSS, which they manage to turn into megabytes of text. Like, I have no idea how a recipee for daal turns into 5 megabytes.
I can confirm this, and it's a good example of Apple's deliberate obsolescence. The 2007 MacBook 3,1 model doesn't officially support Mountain Lion, but it can be hacked to run it perfectly fine (look up ML Postfactor). Apple removed drivers from the final Mountain Lion release that would have allowed it to run on that hardware.
Those old plastic MacBooks (the original 2006 MacBook 1,1 and newer) can all run Windows 10 via Boot Camp. Installing Windows 10 will give those machines a new lease on life - various apps like Kindle & Chrome 32-bit are no longer supported / updated on those old Macs, but they'll run perfectly fine under Windows 10.
It's good that apple products are sturdy and get updates longer than other devices. There are still some issues though: There are some hindrances to repairing: Glued in batteries, soldered on RAM, soldered on/proprietary connector SSDs. This also means that apple devices can't be upgraded (not really a problem with storage on the mac, as you can use external hard drives, but on iOS devices it's a problem. Upgradable ram would definetly prolong the lifetime of a device). Even when Apple does those repairs, they're way more expensive because of those things.
Another way how Apple pushes planned obsolescence is by not giving certain features to older devices. Adblocking and the new colour temperature setting for instance are only available on 64 bit devices while older devices would be perfectly capable to also have them.
You can take your phone/laptop into an Apple Store and for <$100 the battery will be replaced in a few days during which time they lend you an equivalent device. Batteries either need to be completely removable (which increases the size) or having them glued in or not is irrelevant.
I wasn't that keen on Apple abandoning upgradeable RAM/SSD for laptops but to be honest neither has been an issue for the last few years. There isn't any applications that are driving the need for more RAM and the SSDs are upgradeable anyway.
As for mobiles does any company allow RAM to be upgraded ?
It's important to note how the retina macbook pro and 12 inch macbook are the most expensive - 70$ more than all other macbooks in the 11"-15" range. Probably because of their glued in battery that needs to be replaced as a whole together with parts of the case.
The SSD of the Macbook Air is replaceable, it's just using a proprietary slot and form factor. It would have been just as possible with mSATA cards, and is just as possible today with M.2 cards. Apple could switch to M.2 today, as they switched between slot types all the time:
http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/768/images/LSI_blog-ss...
There probably also still would be enough space for one ram slot, it's not thicker than the ssd which also sits on top of the main board.
M.2 supports both PCIe and SATA as the protocol. The SSDs in MacBooks used SATA as a protocol until a certain point. Now they use PCIe as a protocol.
But that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the physical measures of the slot and the form factor of the card. They always have been proprietary although standards that are just as good existed.
By producing worse updates without option to downgrade to previous versions, with no practical gains but to boost the new hardware sales. iOS 9 ruined the classic iOS fluidity and smoothness compared to previous release. And this wasn't the first case.
While they are very likely of "prevention of repair" on purpose (voiding your warranty, soldered stuff, yes I suppose sockets cost money and add thickness) and "style obsolescence" (somewhat indirectly due to fast-moving mobile trends), I think that in general they do things which enable people to practically use their devices longer than other manufacturers (reasonable battery replacement, older devices still receiving OS updates up to 2 years after their release date, solid hardware compared to the competition).
Planned obsolescence in these ways is not the same as "let's build it crappy / with known weaknesses so it breaks and people have to buy a new one". Mobile is super competitive, and part of Apple's brand is their [perceived] high[er than the competition] quality.
>I constantly see people using few years old iPhone 4S or 7 years old MacBooks.
Ask them how their user experience with those devices is. I know people who are still running 4s', and it's bad. Why can't my older iPad use ad-blocking? It says it's performance related, but isn't the ad-blocking supposed to improve performance? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to older devices? Nope, if I want it, get a new device.
I have and use many Apple devices. But a computer is a computer; let's not pretend that Apple has avoided hardware becoming outdated. I'm sure people hold onto their old devices because they're expensive a maintain some social cachet.
> Why can't my older iPad use ad-blocking? It says it's performance related, but isn't the ad-blocking supposed to improve performance?
Where does it say that? Lack of ad-blocking on older (pre-iPad Air, I think) iPads isn't performance related, it's because they're 32bit. A lot of Apple's new OS features are 64bit only.
My eldest started secondary school this year. She wanted a smartphone and is very happy using my old 3GS. I'd love to know what anyone might suggest as a smartphone manufacturer that does more to support their devices for longer than Apple.
I remember buying a 4th gen iPod Touch, and it was incredibly slow and buggy the day I bought it-it really needed at least 512 MB RAM, like its equivalent released iPhone 4, instead of relying on older specs to run the same operating system.
While it is noticeable, I use and iPhone 4 with 7 on it as my daily device. I definitely don't think it is unusable. Maybe my pain tolerance it high though.
Unusable? I had to use a 3GS for 5 months last year while I was waiting for my contract to expire. The phone is going on 7 years and still works with no issues although it is slow. Compared to a couple Androids that had problems after 6 months and have little to no updates.
Apple doesn't do this imo. I remember when I used Windows I had to upgrade way more often or reinstall the OS just to speed it up every 12 months. My Macs last 4-6 years and I know people happy with iPhone's that are 4 years old. I stil use a 7 year old iPod with no issues too.
Has there ever been any in-depth analysis on the cause of this slowness in windows-based computers over time? I got my work laptop around the same time as my Macbook Air - 4 years ago. While the MBA is still lovely (only flaw is that the battery lasts only ~4 hours) and the Windows laptop is truly awful, takes forever to boot and chugs along on simple tasks. I cannot think of what could be causing this, there was very little difference in their performance when I first got them.
I'd be very interested to know as well. I remember when using Windows a fresh install was at least a yearly occurrence. I've heard that it might be to do with hard drive fragmentation but I'm not sure of the details, I heard that years ago.
For all practical purposes, no the parts of an HDD do not degrade physically in a way which causes performance to reduce noticeably on a continuous scale over time. The parts very definitely do degrade physically of course, but the effect on performance for practical purposes will be rather more binary, i.e. one day it just won't work any more ;-)
What does cause the performance of the spinning disk to degrade noticeably over time is fragmentation of data. Especially in laptops, the increase of fragmentation and the correlated decrease in the performance of basically everything can be easily identified by the increased clicking and whirring noises coming from the disk (you may have noticed this on yours) - this is the heads thrashing around trying to read all that fragmented data spread around all over the disk.
Especially on older laptops, if the HDD has never been de-fragmented, it's almost certain that this is your problem and is the performance bottleneck which has been getting tighter over time. In that sense yes, HDDs do degrade over time, but not in an irreversible manner, until of course they physically crash due to parts failure.
Funnily enough SSDs are not affected by data fragmentation, because the speed with which the data is accessed is not affected by its physical location in nearly the same way (distances over the disk which are massive to motor-driver heads are irrelevant to electrons), but they do degrade physically with writes in a way which degrades performance continuously over time. The difference is though, you'd very likely never notice this on a home laptop with an SSD unless it was extremely old, generally with modern SSDs you'd have to be doing data-centre server levels of daily reads/writes to start to really worry about wearing the thing out in any noticeable way, over any sensible time period.
Does this mean iOS 10 will have a system wide ad blocker and all apps will be required to allow their ads be blocked?
Or, will there still be this split where if you want unrestricted ads you need to make a native app instead of a web page/web app which coincidentally helps lock-in and potential makes Apple money if the app charges for anything
Their only restriction on data collection is that you have to ask them for permission first, and I suspect that's going away after this announcement that Apple are no longer directly involved in approving iAd campaigns. Meanwhile, iAd uses a whole bunch of tracking data including GPS for ad targeting, some of which Apple forbid competing mobile advertising networks from making use of.
Also, I notice they forbid 'messaging that identifies the particular target for the campaign—for example, “Single men, 18–24, who live in Washington State, click here!”.' Presumably because if customers knew just how much Apple were helping advertisers target them, it'd spoil their whole we're-better-than-Google line.
