I have been a Mac head since early 90s, and have never owned anything but Mac computers in all that time. Typing this from a Mac Pro lap top. I have had Iphones since the first Iphone, so that should confirm my Mac head bonafides. I have had enough of paying more for less and less it seems. I refuse to pay over 1k for a phone that does not even have a memory card slot, no dual SIM, etc. Much of what the Iphone did so well, such as photos, and quality DAC for music, exists in other phones, perhaps even exceeding the Iphones. I stayed with Apple mostly for the OS, but again, Android based phones have caught up, and are just as easy to use apparently. My searching around found a brand not common (yet) in the US, but popular in other parts of the world, OnePlus. T Mobile started selling them, and they’re a good $300 or so less than top of the line Iphone or Samsung, and my hands on experience with them was really impressive.
Speed, screen quality, 90hz refresh rate, specs, etc top of the line. I’m mostly worried about having to learn a new OS being a Mac head for so damn long, but I just can’t justify Iphone prices anymore and the blatant intentional built-in obsolescence. This may also be my last Mac computer as there’s virtually nothing inside a Mac other than the OS that’s proprietary and worth spending so much extra $ for. PS, went to T Mobile just see the phone, purchased directly from the company unlocked for the same price and will use with AT&T. If I don’t like my first Android based phone, at least now I will know the difference. I will review it once I have some time to get used to the new OS and such with a verdict.
So far, a few days, I’m impressed with it, but learning the new OS is a PITA.
If we’re talking comps vs phones, macs run on PC PC hardware already and other than the OS, nothing really propitiatory in them at all anymore. One of many reasons It’s hard to justify the substantial $$ differences. I like Mac OS, I like how they all play nice with each other so well, but they’ve lost the edge on all that it seems.
All true, but you can run MacOS as fast as on a $5000 iMac Pro on a $1500 PC build - and you can update the processor, graphics card, etc, as needed. For example, all it takes is a BIOS update to allow my Hackintosh to jump from an i7-8700 to an i9-9900K if I want ('course I have to buy the new processor). Also M.2 SSDs, inexpensive fast dual channel RAM, and so on. You can even jump to virtualization and run both MacOS and Windows 10 on the same computer with per-thread OS assignment for the processor, access to graphics cards @ native speeds, quick snapshots of OS states so you can very quickly fix problems/roll back updates, and a bunch of other cool stuff.
I’ve never heard of One Plus until your post. It appears that the phone is Chinese. Aren’t you concern that it could suffer the same fate as Huawei? I haven’t shopped for a phone in 3 years. No I’m not an iphoid.
Without going into a crazy sounding rant, I cannot adequately express how much I despise Apple the company, everything they are and do. And I have an iPhone. And it is a daily frustration. Since day one I have wanted to take an axe to it, but as you all know there are certain things it does that my EDC flip phone just can’t. I dropped it for a Samsung thinking ANYTHING was better and it probably is but I don’t have the GD time to relearn all the non-intuitive quirks and to overcome the non-user-friendly aspect… reluctantly I ditched it and went back to the devil I know. And the devil they are… Apple is like an invasive species and virus all in one. I predict and hope they fall hard in the next five years.
No reason paying for anything else my bushmaster is as good as your noveske they use the same parts
Great hardware is great hardware though but it’s the OS we interact with
So buy a high end workstation or build your own or buy a Mac for top quality parts
The rest are poor/garbage meaning pre made or cheap pc based on spec
A GPU same model one is more so why ?
same reason some bolts are more even though both are for the AR platform
So parts are not parts alone way more to it
Same goes for phones !
privacy issues on Android no thanks for me
Apple is not what it was but still a great company
Take the MacBook Pro only screens that can compare are the dell xps15 (not the 2n1) when you pay for the nicer screen same as the Lenovo x1 and get the better and HP dreamcolor all others are not as good delta E numbers suck etc…
apple is usually the best then dream color the dell is good but inconsistent then the Lenovo
Might not matter to you and you might not see it but it’s there just like a high end AR vs a cheap junk one
Same goes for the parts inside
ASUS makes great motherboards and cheap ones and can spec build to manufactures so getting a ASUS does not make it great
Ford makes some great exotic insane cars and some junk econo boxes Dell makes a few nice machines most are not though the good ones are as much or more then apple even in the Xeon workstations so pricing is based on quality of parts just like nice ARs would be
for security etc… OS X various flavors of *nix
Windows and google suck compared to those two
If I was to buy a PC laptop would be the dell XP’s 15 latest model 4K screen update the memory and WiFi and storage on my own or the Lenovo
Another great daily driver for most is the hp 360 forgot exact model about $1500 really nice 2n1 with great specs and very good screen but not great but will be plenty for most folks
Phones nothing but apple for security reasons why update all the time ? Save the money every 3-4 generations is fine these days
Resale on iPhones is way better then any android though just like resale on Mac computers is so far above any windows device
Our studio has 3 Mac pros a new Mac mini with a egpu and custom built intel 7820 with a 1080 GPU storage nVME etc…proper quality PSU etc… we use it just for tethered captured and off work gaming but plan on hackintoshing that thing plan on vanilla method see how it goes before I go Tonymac way Hahahahaha
Timely thread with the new Mac pros today insane nice but for most nobody needs Xeon anymore and proprietary GPU again yuk
But the hackintosh thing is fun good to have both and feel folks who like tech should be using both win and OS X to keep toes in both but master one of them
New iPhones don’t offer a huge improvement? Sounds like you don’t actually need a new phone?
My first iPhone was a 5 right when they came out. The 6 came out and it seemed a reasonable upgrade to me. ATT charged me 200$ for an upgrade.
7 came out. I saw no improvement over my 6 that would make me want a new one. My 6 continued to be great.
X came out. I bought one. It was an improvement over my 6 I’d owned for 4 years.
I think you screwed up. You saved 300$ for what? You lost iOS, and seemed to not even need a new phone. Smart choice would have been keep your iPhone another year to get the 300$ value that way. Who knows maybe in a year they’ll have a new iPhone that is an improvement over your current one.
I’m sympathetic Will, but my iPhone, expensive as it is, works great. I have zero incentive to switch, but I hope your conversion goes well. Likewise my Mac computers. I have a buddy who stridently kept trying to convince me how great his Hackintosh. That thing causes him more headaches than I could ever bring myself to face. I realize some people love that kind of tinkering. I used to love that kind of tinkering, but my days of tinkering and troubleshooting home-brew kludged computers are long behind me. Frankly, I don’t care what it costs…I need my computer and my phone to WORK. Every time I turn it on.
I had the same issue with PC stuff years ago. Once I switched to apple I stopped paying attention to my machines and more on my work. Productivity trumps tech, so find what works for you.
Apple continues rolling out their privacy policies which I appreciate. They just announced a string of new privacy features. While I don’t trust apple anymore than the others, at least they are working at minimizing users’ exposure.
I’ve had my iphone 6 for years now and its still running fine. I just can’t see paying $1K for a phone. I’ll keep running this one until it’s no longer supported or it dies.
I have hearing aids (I love my wife) and selected them without regard to compatibility with any particular phone…the audiologist said that all quality phones and quality hearing aids are compatible…no issues. I can hold the phone up to my ear and use the phone just fine. The hearing aids I bought do have Bluetooth, however, so I can answer and talk on the phone with my iPhone in my pocket. I can also change hearing aid settings from the iPhone app, adjusting volume and/or changing between different frequency response curves. That’s kind of cool…to be able to adjust the response of the hearing aids according to environment (noisy room, one-on-one, music, etc).
I contend that there’s no substantive difference between iPhone and any other quality cell phone out there relative to hearing aid compatibility. Buy a cheap phone or cheap hearing aids…yeah…I can see that phone issues might be a problem. As to Bluetooth…bluetooth is bluetooth.