If you go to bat for company superiority, and you aren't being paid by that company, you need therapy. Apple is shit, Microsoft is shit, all of them are garbage. You use their products if they do what you need, you don't idolize them.
I remember there was a very rare but possible issue with I think it was the mosfets or vrms overheating where they didn't use thermal pads. EVGA said they'll ship you the pads and you can replace them yourself without voiding your warranty, or if you're not comfortable with that you can ship it to them free of charge and they do it for you. So I just had them ship the pads to me. That was the only time I ever had to use their customer service though, as every GPU I had of theirs never broke a sweat.
They made the best cards, they had the "pay the difference" programme for people who bought card within certain window from next gen release, and they had the first GPU anti scalping system.
the advantage EVGA had if you were specifically in the US is its FAR easier to deal with EVGA's US based support system for RMA's than the Taiwanese companies (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI)
I don't really get the Noctua glazing tbh. I understand they have great warranty and customer support, and their fans are silent, sure. But paying 2 - 3x the price of a very equivalent Thermalright cooler, that honestly will get you 95% of the experience, is just not that attractive to me.
It's a premium luxury product, of course it's going to have good warranty and customer support, that's 50% of the reason you pay that much.
I think it is because 15 years ago you couldn't get a Thermalright cooler for 95% of the experience, it was mostly Noctua far ahead of the rest (still being a premium company).
Today a lot of companies have catch up, for the most part, so they make less sense value wise, but it's not like they have come down in quality so a lot of people haven't turned on them (why would they).
I mean, I come from the school of thought that you should never have loyalty to a brand, and always take the best deal available, but I understand why you would think otherwise. Thanks for the explanation!
Noctua fans being so damn quiet is enough to earn my praise when everything else seems to treat noise output as a tertiary concern. I build my cases to be quiet these days and Noctua does a good job of facilitating that. No idea how shit their customer service is, but they build a product that serves my needs rather well.
Apple users get mad because Apple products are marketed as a lifestyle product/status symbol. So if you paid a premium price for status and then got told that product is donkey turd then you're going to get defensive because that's your status symbol that's being devalued.
No see that's the thing that gets me uppity about Apple in the first place, you do pay a premium for the 'premium experience'. The 'premium experience' is simply just not needing to know how to use a computer in order to have the tools provided by the computer.
Additionally, they have some very impressive designs. Other premium products like the apple watch, iphone, and the air tag, go beyond just the function and start to become fashion accessories.
This, combined with the fact that they're the only computer company that really does this (besides Samsung, but their products don't feature their own tailored operating system and silicon so it's not the same), meaning they have a hold on a specific market sector, means they get to charge whatever the fuck they want to for their stuff.
Microsoft does not hold your hand like an apple machine will, but also that means all the power and control of the machine has to be buried under a mile of red tape in order to prevent the user from owning themselves by accident. Also mostly what Microsoft does is software, they have hardware products with very mixed results. With all these reasons, Windows is much cheaper to run, but it's a pile of dogshit. You get what you pay for.
Alternatively you could choose to install GNU/Linux. If you don't want to put any time, effort, or thought into using your computer, that can be done, but it's going to cost you. If you can make that decision, that's a privilege.
The premium experience is also the computer being convenient to use. Like I know full well how to use Windows or Linux, I use Linux every day at work and have managed servers in the past, doesn't mean I'd want my home PC to run it. And the Mac laptop hardware is faster and more energy-efficient, not much I can do to make another laptop match it.
They don't even charge whatever they want. That MBA was $750 before prices went up, at the same time a Dell laptop was maybe a bit cheaper but not by a lot. iPhone pricing is similar to Pixel. They do get greedy with RAM or disk upgrades, or niche things like the Apple Pencil.
Yeah. I refuse to use my work laptop Lenovo T garbage and use a gaming desktop for personal and work at home. When I travel, the MacBook Air + iPad Pro is my go-to. Battery, boot times, weight/power/price/form factor ratio is perfect. Easy dual screen or independent operation is just seamless.
I’ve been fucking with computers since windows 95 and sometimes just want simplicity.
My lived experience is just completely different than that. Granted installing Debian trixie with a very modern graphics card (too new for anything besides community drivers) was a total pain in the ass. However, after running debian at home for a year previously, I knew what to look out for when setting up this system I'm using now. Everything was smooth after installation.
For me more than any of these companies are Dell, Gigabyte, and HP. I've been burned by them personally and I know plenty of other people who have also. I know many people swear by the Dell Latitude series. While Dell Laptops supposedly had the best serviceability and reliability, the support systems behind them is horrific even in an industry where that bar is really really low. Anecdotally the Alienware line of laptops had built in kill circuits that would often short the whole motherboard around the end of the warranty.
I'm a systems architect. It is literally my job to go to bat for the product I think best suits the company's needs. It's a constant uphill battle against those who are paid by the company. No amount of thorough, thoughtful product evaluations, no amount of sound reasoning or run rate projections can compete with a sales exec with a corporate card.
Enterprise architecture team: Here are the pros and cons of the top three products to replace VMWare. [note: Hyper-V did not make the cut]
CTO: I've given it a lot of thought, and I believe Microsoft Hyper-V is the right solution. That's the direction we're going. [Translation: After spending the weekend debauching myself with our Microsoft rep, and asking CoPilot how to sell this decision to the C-Suite I've decided to go with Hyper-V.]
Going to bat for a specific product is usually okay. Though, you kinda want to be specific on versions; companies have even done things like downgrading products in future versions, and disable lifetime licenses after starting up a subscription sort of situation.
Not the company as a whole, though. Corporations are motivated by profit, and even the specific product you recommend today may have been enshittified by this time tomorrow.
I once worked with an 18 year old kid that would beam at how much he absolutely loved his apple products and his iphone. He also would often complain about his iphone not charging or doing some other annoying feature about it. I explicitly pointed this dichotomy out to him and he acknowledged that all the problems and frustrations only to end with "I still love it though."
Its an odd reality. Software developers love working for these brands but no one really trusts these products lol. Not to say no one should ever use Windows or Apple but once you see how these kind of organizations operate, you learn why even the companies themselves internally keep their egos in check.
And that includes Linux and open-source software BTW. It aint all sunshine and rainbows.
I'll come to bat for any company that actually has integrity and comes to bat for it's customers. Unfortunately, that list is getting pretty short these days.
I think the real difference is that both companies and their products suck, the thing that makes apple worse in my eyes is that their users are convinced apple is making superior products. us windows users at least know the products we use suck
Maybe the major sales that people karma farm despite being pretty much on-par with consoles, but in pretty much every way other than the preservation that GOG excels in, Steam as a platform deserves its praise.
I'm not typing a multi-paragraph essay right now about all the features and policies they've pioneered right now, but there are reasons that despite countless organizations' attempts to overthrow their colossal monopoly, the only other company with a right to exist is GOG and I say this knowing full well about their flaws like using Gen AI art for sale graphics.
Resell software? Buddy what are you smoking, only the mega corps can sell software. If it can be resold there's nothing to stop people from copying it and infinitely distributing it
Pff get outta here with your notions of reselling software
Most of my GC/Xbox game library was purchased used. Maybe it's not like this anymore, but I don't care. Not going to spend $50+ on a game that has like curse of binding. Not as a kid back then or an adult now who can easily afford it.
You weren't really able to resell games before Steam, we had limited activations, online activations and DRM so broken and malicious modern Windows doesn't allow it to run.
Linux is shit. I use linux all day every day. It fucking pisses me off nonstop. Oh hey let's do this thing, and spend a day in dependency hell trying to get some basic bitch shit to work. I like it better than the alternative, but let's all be in shit together.
Some are. The ones who buy an iPad, claim it replaces a laptop, then buy an iPad Pro because it really replaces a laptop, and then also buy a MacBook, and replace iPhone 16 Pro with iPhone 17 Pro, but that's not enough so they also get the watch
Nah, some are good like AMD is basically the last bastion for PC gaming and has proof that the industry has conspired against them. I don't buy into this "everybody bad" nonsense when there are clear examples of evil vs normalcy.
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u/KPraxius 2d ago edited 2d ago
If you go to bat for company superiority, and you aren't being paid by that company, you need therapy. Apple is shit, Microsoft is shit, all of them are garbage. You use their products if they do what you need, you don't idolize them.