Oh aye, I wasn’t suggesting that they have to know ALL of the tech to be able to post on a tech forum, I’m just surprised that they’re completely unaware of it, given it’s ubiquity on the tech forum over the past month or so.
IANAL and could be wrong, but it is not the case that the T’s&C’s we all have to agree to aren’t necessarily legally binding, because people can’t be expected to read and understand them all.
With that in mind, it doesn’t matter what the user agrees to if they have no practical alternative available to them.
When I bought my first MacBook in ‘07 I asked the guy in the store about upgrading the RAM. He told me that what Apple charged was outrageous and pointed me to a website where I’d get what I needed for much less.
I feel that if Apple could have soldered the RAM back then, they would have.
I’m not gonna stand up and declare that 8gb is absolutely fine, because in very short order it won’t be. But yeah, currently for an average use case, it is.
My work Mac mini has 8gb. It’s a 2014 so can’t be upgraded, but for the tasks I ask of it it’s ok. Sure, it gets sluggish if I’m using the Win11 VM I sometimes need, but generally I don’t really have any issues doing regular office tasks.
That said, I sometimes gets a bee in my bonnet about it, so open Activity Monitor to see what’s it’s doing, and am shocked by how much RAM some websites consume in open tabs in Safari.
8gb is generally ok on low end gear, but devs are working very hard to ensure that it’s not.
Speaking personally, I don't think they're dumbed down. They're pretty straightforward to use, sure, but they do what I need them to.
In terms of the hardware; I have a 2011 MacBook Pro at home that's still just about as solid as the day I bought it. The battery's dead, but that's to be expected for its age. I'm typing this on a 2014 Mac mini that's running the latest macOS perfectly through OCLP. My main computer is a 15" M2 MacBook Air that is a genuinely impressive machine. If anything, Apple have kinda shot themselves in the foot, making devices that last far longer than their software support allows.
Was looking on /r/Apple last week and was shocked by the number of people who are apparently full on free market champions or Apple shareholders or both. That place has always had it's fair share of them, but they seem to have been ramped up to the max now.
I've been a user of Apple devices since I got my first MacBook in 2007. I now have an iPhone, iPad, a selection of Macs of various ages, and a couple of Apple TVs. As much as I'd like to switch to Linux, I don't really see it happening because I like Apple's hardware too much.
With all that in mind, I think the EU are doing sterling work. Shame my country voted to leave it...
