Get your super good monitor stand right now!

[cybdmn]

21 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

I noticed a strong shift of opinion for the first time when they announced to deprecate OpenGL on future versions of their OSs,

 

 

This is really a dick move, this and to have no Nvidia cards for the MacPro, because nobody wants to use OpenCL when he could use CUDA.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

29 minutes ago, cybdmn said:

 

 

In fact they have the video still on their own website. They started to try taking down videos where the moaning of the audiences is volumed up.

 

And from my experiences you are the exception, most apple haters have no clue what they talking about, and the thread starter is an good example for that.

 

You don't even know anything about me yet you come with amazing conclusions. You claim am an apple hater yet I don't even have qualms with most of their products. I didn't even care when they altered how they handle batteries nor earbuds, Nor anything about mac books, tablets or iphones. You talk as if I've never seen a monitor bigger than 13 inch yet I have 2 +50 around, and an extra one with no use for; not attached to anything. They aren't top of the line designs (Because why would a non-graphic designer get one) but all 3 combined come close to the price of the apple one.

 

  Then again all you want is someone to scream at by your tone. You should stop your past experiences with people from making conclusions about people you've never talked with before; Especially ways that give you off as someone not worth ever discussing anything again with. 

[Graf Zahl]

5 minutes ago, cybdmn said:

 

This is really a dick move, this and to have no Nvidia cards for the MacPro, because nobody wants to use OpenCL when he could use CUDA.

 

Don't forget: Apple deprecated OpenCL, those poor souls have to use Metal!

 

[Space Marinara]

One of my biggest regrets is taking the plunge with an Apple imac after a ~10yr absense from computers. I was taken in by their marketing toward creatives only to have them immediately break their grace period guarantee on the key software I was basing my purchase. Not only that but they had me jumping through hoops, including paying twice for the damn thing before rejecting it (yes- they would only refund the newer version when they should have refunded the older).

 

While this was happening I was trying to get the geniuses to solve why the audio was changing volume randomly when they discovered a hardware fault and sent away for a replacement. Another imposition. I later found out the volume problem was due to a pair of limiters acting as a safety feature on the output. Why didn't their staff know about that?

 

Since then I've had to buy extraneous conversion cables to connect anything to it and software goes out of date without warning. Not to mention there are many programs I'd like to use that just aren't available on this platform. I won't even go into their graphics/sound/mouse drivers (yeah they really care about creatives). It's honestly been a shitty experience from the go.

 

The reason I'm sharing this? Because I'm not a brand-loyalist. I have no stake in any company because I wasn't a computer user for so long. If anything I'm Apple-allegiant because that's what I'm most used to now.

[cybdmn]

Yes, they act as if every developer just want to use XCode to develop Apps for iOS and Mac OSX.

[Fonze]

4 hours ago, cybdmn said:

 

You still don‘t get it. This whole thing has an target audience of customers who mostly buy that monitor with the $200 adapter, and put it in their racks.

and those who will buy that stand won‘t care about the price, because they normally buy monitors at prices up until $40k, which are connected to workstations which often cost even more.

 

You would be surprised what stuff like that cost in this league. $500 for a fucking camera handle for Red movie cameras for example.

 

I don't understand why the proportionality of pricing justifies so vastly overcharging for any piece of equipment, regardless of whether or not the buyers have any sense of the value of money.

[cybdmn]

You know, every price is justified everywhere as long as the customers will pay. And in this case, it is a stand for just this one monitor, which isn't cheap aswell. Not that this is anything you could buy to put it on any monitor.

 

And if you would buy that monitor, but won't pay for that stand, you could just take the $200 VESA adapter, and attach it to any stand.

 

What i don't get is, why people even moan about some hardware they never ever going to buy. As i said before, this stuff is nothing the most of us have any use of. It's like moaning about the prices for a big truck, when you live in a city, where you use public transportation every day, because you have no room to park a car.

[Graf Zahl]

As I said before, it looks like most people are mocking Apple for the clumsy presentation that gave all the wrong impressions.

 

[Fonze]

19 minutes ago, cybdmn said:

You know, every price is justified everywhere as long as the customers will pay. And in this case, it is a stand for just this one monitor, which isn't cheap aswell. Not that this is anything you could buy to put it on any monitor.

 

And if you would buy that monitor, but won't pay for that stand, you could just take the $200 VESA adapter, and attach it to any stand.

 

... so if its compatible with any stand then why don't people save themselves 1k dollars and use a cheaper stand?

 

Don't get me wrong I can understand when certain hardware or more-so software components are among the best available in the world but this stuff... isn't exactly that.

 

Also your point that every price is justifiable is simply incorrect. Monopolies can charge whatever they want for their products when they control the market and customers will pay, but that situation is the opposite of justified because said monopoly controls the industry and market. A second example is people gouging ticket prices outside of an event, selling their tickets for many times more than the tickets were originally worth. And yet...:

 

Quote

every price is justified everywhere as long as the customers will pay.

 

??? Have you considered the real world implications of such an idealistic and narrow point of view?

 

Also, what I dont get is why you didn't answer my original question:

 

1 hour ago, Fonze said:

 

I don't understand why the proportionality of pricing justifies so vastly overcharging for any piece of equipment, regardless of whether or not the buyers have any sense of the value of money.

 

 

[ReaperAA]

I gotta admit tho, Apple is the only company that can make a brick for 1000$ and still convince people to buy it and say it's a superior brick.

 

[Graf Zahl]

Sure, but only because part of their customers are a supremely stupid lot.

 

[crazyflyingdonut]

7 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

part of their customers are a supremely stupid lot.

The above quote is very true. There is an episode of "Jimmy Kimmel" where in reaction to the then-upcoming then-unnamed Apple smartwatch (which would later go on to be the Apple Watch) he buys a Casio wristwatch, slaps an Apple logo on it, and goes outside and showing it off to random strangers and tricking them into thinking it's the new "iTime". The people eat that shit up like dogs! Hilarious sayings from the people such as "If it's Apple, it's good." are rampant as well.

 

[printz]

Why not just manufacture a stand yourself, and fit it with the monitor? Is this $999 stand supposed to have micrometric precision?

[MFG38]

14 hours ago, printz said:

Why not just manufacture a stand yourself, and fit it with the monitor? Is this $999 stand supposed to have micrometric precision?

 

For that price, I expect nothing less than picometric precision.

[geo]

On 6/7/2019 at 9:43 PM, Fonze said:

I could never understand why so many companies overspend on frivolous knick knacks. I worked at a company that bought $10k machines that were basically tablets with a POS system. Smart phones are $20 at walmart. My current employer spent over $100 each on walkie talkies and it's 2019. A monitor stand that's $1k; I'm not at all surprised that companies will be dumb enough to buy it but it is nevertheless amazing that of all the things to do with money, even being greedy with it, that companies will waste it in such a way. Makes you wonder if at some point the value of money is truly a relative thing.

My friend's company gave all employees some $500 phone. They get them at a bulk rate and one of those you look good we look good. Your clients see our things, and they want them. The employees hate the phones. They're Microsoft phones.

 

Perhaps making something so laughably overpriced is a marketing strategy. Now people are talking then we just put it on discount.

[Graf Zahl]

36 minutes ago, geo said:

Perhaps making something so laughably overpriced is a marketing strategy. Now people are talking then we just put it on discount.

 

It's still an item for professional customers only so discounts are not really relevant. In such an environment spending $999 doesn't mean much if it increases productivity.

The bad press, on the other hand, is something that's better avoided.  They better had just skipped the presentation of the stand, and all would have been fine and people would be talking about the monitor itself, maybe, instead of an inconsequential accessory.

 

[Eurisko]

This is laugable

[geo]

54 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

It's still an item for professional customers only so discounts are not really relevant. In such an environment spending $999 doesn't mean much if it increases productivity.

The bad press, on the other hand, is something that's better avoided.  They better had just skipped the presentation of the stand, and all would have been fine and people would be talking about the monitor itself, maybe, instead of an inconsequential accessory.

 

I missed how it increased productivity. I went to a doctor's office and their monitors are on giant mechanical arms so they can easily move everything... for their receptionists who are stuck in a seat. I can understand the giant mechanical arms to move around to show people, especially elderly or wheelchair patients. Chances are they were more than $1,000.

 

The only thing keeping Apple afloat is proprietary technology. Imagine if they put in the IBM / PC standard into an Apple shell.

[Linguica]

1 hour ago, geo said:

Imagine if they put in the IBM / PC standard into an Apple shell.

 

Macs ARE PC compatible. How else do you install Windows on one?

[crazyflyingdonut]

3 hours ago, geo said:

They're Microsoft phones.

Yeah, Microsoft recently gave up on trying to make their own phones (some of Ballmer's mistakes are attributed to why Windows Phone/Windows Mobile/PocketPC/Windows Embedded/Windows CE were not successful).

[insertwackynamehere]

It always seems like there is this outdated notion of the Apple user being a rich bumbling idiot. When I was in middle school in the early 2000s I was one of those rabid PC fanboy types and would get angry just thinking about Apple existing. In my head, PCs were great because they were challenging and you could take them apart and mess around and constantly fix Windows and when other people had "viruses" or whatever you could impress them by fixing their system as well.

 

I can't relate to that mindset anymore and have been a Mac user since the late 2000s/early 2010s. I don't have the animosity towards PCs that I once had towards Macs. Also, in my computer science program in college it was 99% Apple users, 1% PC users with some *nix distro and then negligible Windows users. In the professional world, it's been the same, although it would be obviously different in work environments that requires Windows for compliance or Windows software development or gaming I assume. But it really isn't just this large swath of idiots buying Apple products for the logo, it's people who like Apple products.

 

This is a complete aside to the stand argument but it seems like every discussion about "oh man Apple really boggled this one!" leads to the same sort of discussion of Apple being a brand-whore brand and every product they ever create is actually a failure no matter how long-lived it is or how many people like it. And then those same people call anyone acting defensively a "fan-boy" when ridiculous amounts of effort are pumped into being angry about products that the angry person has no intention of ever purchasing in the first place.

 

Also, the subset of hardline privacy advocates who hate Apple and banked on Android being more like Linux than Windows are right now in sweating "which button" meme mode now that Google and Huawei are absolutely awful with privacy whereas Apple is actually positioning itself as the privacy advocate company. This is because they have been championing Android phones as always being better OS and better specs with Huawei being the forbidden fruit of phone manufacturers which is completely at odds with their (completely justified if not hypocritical) rage against corporate and government privacy violations.

[Graf Zahl]

 

7 hours ago, insertwackynamehere said:

It always seems like there is this outdated notion of the Apple user being a rich bumbling idiot. When I was in middle school in the early 2000s I was one of those rabid PC fanboy types and would get angry just thinking about Apple existing. In my head, PCs were great because they were challenging and you could take them apart and mess around and constantly fix Windows and when other people had "viruses" or whatever you could impress them by fixing their system as well. 

 

The "rich bumbling idiot" type of customers exist, and it's a fact that they seem to be the core audience they target, judging from their product decisions.

How else can you sell a smartwatch that isn't a standalone product but requires an iPhone to work? Or sell a speaker that only works with other Apple hardware where the entire competition produces products that are universally compatible? You need rich bumbling idiots to sell such things - no sane person would buy them.

 

 

I work with Apple hardware on a daily basis and have to jump through Apple's hoops even more often, it's just not fun if the main problems you have to deal with is the fight against Apple's restrictions.

Apple treats developers like utter shit - forcing them to do double duty on a yearly basis to fix problems due to some inane deprecations that never should have happened in the first place. Let some software be idle for a year or two and chances are it won't work anymore on Apple's latest system, and so on.

 

7 hours ago, insertwackynamehere said:

I can't relate to that mindset anymore and have been a Mac user since the late 2000s/early 2010s. I don't have the animosity towards PCs that I once had towards Macs. Also, in my computer science program in college it was 99% Apple users, 1% PC users with some *nix distro and then negligible Windows users. In the professional world, it's been the same, although it would be obviously different in work environments that requires Windows for compliance or Windows software development or gaming I assume. But it really isn't just this large swath of idiots buying Apple products for the logo, it's people who like Apple products.

 

I know these people, too, but that doesn't change the fact that Apple seems to tailor its products to the "rich bumbling idiot" type. I only need to look at the MacBooks being used at my workplace. The one I use is a bit older, from 2014 and has a decent set of connectors. The one my boss uses is a more recent model with only an USB-C port and it's a horrible mess to use as a professional working machine because everything has to be routed through that single tiny port which causes serious problems.

 

And let's not mention the heat problem. Those MacBooks tend to become hot quite fast and then throttle down performance. The main project I work on takes 5 minutes to compile normally, but when it gets hot takes 10 minutes. Setting up the Windows version of it, it compiles in 2 minutes, but that doesn't help if you need to develop for iOS.

 

So to summarize - and this has been the main tenor of Apple over the last years is that they are in the process of losing the core customer base that made them big in the first place: The power users who chose Apple for their superior hardware build quality and software support. But these days these qualities seem to have gotten lost. New Macs look ever cheaper and cost the same as the previous model - there's barely anything on offer that might satisfy a professional developer - either buy the totally overpriced high end model or deal with an underpowered system made out of the cheapest components.

 

The Windows laptop my brother bought last year for €400 has better performance than a MacBook that cost over €1000! It even got a real graphics card and doesn't depend on Intel integrated garbage.

 

On top of that I constantly have the problem that if I look for some tools I need to solve a one-shot problem, I surely find some for Windows and for Linux. For Mac? "Give me some $$$ and we are in business." So I either have to ask the higher-ups for permission or load the Windows version in a VM.

 

 

 

7 hours ago, insertwackynamehere said:

  This is a complete aside to the stand argument but it seems like every discussion about "oh man Apple really boggled this one!" leads to the same sort of discussion of Apple being a brand-whore brand and every product they ever create is actually a failure no matter how long-lived it is or how many people like it. And then those same people call anyone acting defensively a "fan-boy" when ridiculous amounts of effort are pumped into being angry about products that the angry person has no intention of ever purchasing in the first place. 

 

Apple really boggled this one. There's no need to discuss it. Any smart person would have just skipped presenting that stand. It was an utterly stupid and clueless move.

What's there to defend here? Like I said before, I don't question the product, I question the presentation.

But what's very evident is that a few years back there was hardly any negative user comments about Apple products in such articles whereas these days they are full of sarcastic and cynical comments.

No, I don't expect these to have an immediate fatal effect, but all things combined over the last years shows a company that seems to have lost touch with part of its user base. If you look more closely at their numbers this is starting to affect them. Apple is currently hiding that erosion behind higher prices so on the market they still look fine - but their absolute sales numbers tell a different story.

 

 

7 hours ago, insertwackynamehere said:

Also, the subset of hardline privacy advocates who hate Apple and banked on Android being more like Linux than Windows are right now in sweating "which button" meme mode now that Google and Huawei are absolutely awful with privacy whereas Apple is actually positioning itself as the privacy advocate company. This is because they have been championing Android phones as always being better OS and better specs with Huawei being the forbidden fruit of phone manufacturers which is completely at odds with their (completely justified if not hypocritical) rage against corporate and government privacy violations.

 

Why on Earth are you trusting Apple more than those other players?

To me they are all the same - with one huge difference: Apple is so opaque that I have no clue whatsoever WHAT they do! With the others I have an idea.

If they want to position themselves as the preserver of privacy they have to change their attitude a lot and quit being that stuck-up company they currently are.

 

[holaareola]

At least vs Android I think they're naturally better on privacy than Google just by the nature of their business.  If your lifeblood as a company is advertising, there are natural tensions between your interest and your users'.    And while Android may be open source, in reality most deployments of it are so tied to Google's services that many apps wouldn't function without them and some flagship features too.

[seed]

1 hour ago, holaareola said:

At least vs Android I think they're naturally better on privacy than Google just by the nature of their business.

 

And on a surface level at least, iOS seems to be noticeably less filled with bloatware than Android (never owned an iPhone, so this is solely based on what I've seen at friends who have used them for years).

 

This is something that I find frustrating everytime I buy a new Android-based phone, it's almost like there's increasingly more bloatware in them (pointless app, or too many of them, too many services and things running by default, etc).

[Graf Zahl]

The bloatware is indeed a problem, but that's not Android, that's the manufacturers and the carriers (for carrier branded phones) who are the guilty parties.

Just like with Windows. Most of the garbage is put on the system by the retailers. (Which is why I'd only buy systems from shops that assemble them themselves.

[seed]

16 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

The bloatware is indeed a problem, but that's not Android, that's the manufacturers and the carriers (for carrier branded phones) who are the guilty parties.

Just like with Windows. Most of the garbage is put on the system by the retailers. (Which is why I'd only buy systems from shops that assemble them themselves.

 

Yeah, I've been speculating that it could be something on the manufacturer's side rather than the OS itself. At least the apps issue, services not so much.

 

Some put a shit ton of apps on the phones like there's no tomorrow. My previous phone was an HTC which could only be upgraded to Android 6.0, but holy fuck only after I reset it the first time I noticed just how many pointless apps were installed by default, and most of them could not even be uninstalled, like seriously?

 

It seems to vary greatly between manufacturers, things are much better now on my current phone than they ever were on the HTC.

[crazyflyingdonut]

25 minutes ago, seed said:

Yeah, I've been speculating that it could be something on the manufacturer's side.

 

Some put a shit ton of apps on the phones like there's no tomorrow.

The people who make those apps have probably gotten paid to have their apps on there.

[zen4040]

next up, ipaper $9999999

[DuckReconMajor]

*looks around nervously at Apple products*

Yeah, those Apple fans sure are stupid! Heh heh..

 

On 6/15/2019 at 3:31 AM, Graf Zahl said:

The one I use is a bit older, from 2014 and has a decent set of connectors. The one my boss uses is a more recent model with only an USB-C port and it's a horrible mess to use as a professional working machine because everything has to be routed through that single tiny port which causes serious problems.

 

And let's not mention the heat problem. Those MacBooks tend to become hot quite fast and then throttle down performance.

 

Ugh this. I hope like hell my 2015 Macbook Pro never dies, because F every model that's come out since. What is this Touch Bar nonsense (that even Mac fans admit they hate)? Also, though I love my Macbook, god forbid I try to run any game from the past decade at medium settings without the sound of a boiling tea kettle piercing my ears.

[kb1]

On 6/13/2019 at 1:24 PM, Fonze said:

 

I don't understand why the proportionality of pricing justifies so vastly overcharging for any piece of equipment, regardless of whether or not the buyers have any sense of the value of money.

Very much this.

 

I don't care who's buying it - it's a monitor stand. I mean, more power to Apple if someone would be dumb enough to buy it...hell, for $1k I'll stand there and hold the monitor...