In your experience with *both* Android & iOS mobile devices, have you also found the iOS devices severely lacking in WiFi sensitivity (resulting in dropped connections when Android devices are still working fine)?
This is a question borne out of experience setting up WiFi for dozens of local neighbors, some of whom use Apple ipads & iPhones, and others who use Android mobile equipment.
Almost always, in my own personal experience in my own large home with multiple iPads and Android phones, and in the large homes of my neighbors, the Apple iPads and iPhones almost always have *far worse* WiFi reception than do the Android phones.
Has this been your experience also? If so, why do you think this is the case?
------------------------------------------- NOTE: Jeff is honest to a fault, so, his opinion matters greatly.
Nope. About the same range. At least the same range within some reasonable tolerance range, such as +/- 10% or so. Note that I consider "range" to be somewhat equivalent to your "sensitivity" where "sensitivity" is limited to receive only and does not involve the antenna or environmental situations. Also note that anecdotal evidence of a problem is not definitive as measurements such as "range" and "sensitivity" tend to follow a bell curve.
I'll resist the temptation to offer my opinion of Apple engineering and RF design. Well, maybe not totally. This is my play on the iPhone 4 antenna grip problem in 2010: Steve Jobs was right that all phones have the antenna grip problem. He just didn't mention that the iPhone 4 had it 10 times worse than the others.
How far worse? How did you measure "reception"? What were you measuring? Using wi-fi receive signal strength from an app or counting "bars" isn't worth much. These vary substantially between devices and is affected by temperature.
Yes of course. Since I don't like Apple, every Apple is by definition far worse than Android. Or course, for a nominal bribe, I can reverse the situation.
Jeff lives on a fault. Being honest improves my karma, and prevents earthquakes from ruining my day.
In the past, I've offered you various ways of running a controlled range (performance) test. The next time you get your hands on a test device, try it. It's quite easy.
You will need a reasonably fast computah running iperf ver 2, iperf3, or jperf. This turn the compoutah into an iperf server by running just: iperf -s The computah should be connected via an ethernet cable to the users router. Gigabit ethernet is nice for measuring maximum speeds, but that's not what we're doing here.
Next, you'll need a iperf client on the phone or tablet. There are iperf clients for most OS's. Note that iperf2 and iperf3 are quite different and not really compatible. If the version is not specified, it's probably iperf2.
Android:
IOS:
PC, OS/X, Linux, etc:
Note that most Linux mutations ship with iperf2 and that iperf3 must be installed. You can have both iperf and iperf3 installed at the same time:
JAVA (runs on anything that groks Java and does pretty graphs): JPerf is iperf2 not 3. Version 3 is for higher speed wireless. Don't mix versions.
Tutorials on iperf and jperf:
I recommend the HE (Hurricane Electric) versions which will test either IPv4 and IPv6.
YouTube video of a typical test:
Some notes I made from a talk on iperf and jperf:
Connect your test phone or tablet via wi-fi and just run a test to see if it works. If you're running Jperf, you should see something like this: Note that the max speed is about 60 Mbits/sec.
If you insert a wireless repeater in between the wireless router and the client, you get this mess: Note the drastic drop in maximum speed. I'll save my rant against mesh networks for another day.
Now comes the big trick. Temporarily change the speed of your wireless router from "automatic" to a fixed speed and/or protocol. For
802.11g, that would be 54 Mbits/sec. For faster protocols, it can be faster. If you have an 802.11ac wireless router, leave both 2.4 and
5GHz on. However, if you're testing with a lesser protocol, enable only one frequency band at a time, so that you know which one you're testing. I would initially do the test using 802.11g and 54Mbit/sec because higher speeds and protocols allow for fallback, which will produce odd results.
By fixing the speed and protocol, you're eliminating the ability of the wireless router to slow down the wireless connection speed and thus improve the range. As you walk away from the wireless router, instead of a general slowdown, you'll see an abrupt drop in speed, possibly followed by a disconnect. The typical 2.4GHz 802.11g system will go about 10 meters before the speed drops abruptly. Measure and record this distance along with the test conditions (devices, frequency, protocol, fixed speed, etc).
You'll find indoor testing to vary substantially, mostly depending on reflections and wireless router antenna positions. Outdoors works better, but only if you don't have any interference. Try to pick an empty channel (good luck with that).
If you're lazy and don't want to deal with servers and iperf, you do something similar with just ping. You still have to set a fixed speed and protocol, but you don't get the pretty graphs and data. Just continuously ping the wireless router. At some point, the latency will drastically increase, followed by 100% packet loss, and possibly a disconnect. This is not as precise as iperf because you're not saturating the pipe with traffic, but probably good enough.
That's all there is. The "range" of a device, which is a measurement of the overall radio design, antenna, internal noise, packaging, orientation sensitivity, etc quality, should give you a clue as to relative quality of the various test devices. If everything you test craps out at approximately the same range (using the same speeds and protocols), then as far as I'm concerned, they're all the same. However, if you see substantial variations, then you can legitimately claim that Apple and Android devices are different.
Incidentally, you can also try it pointing iperf to a public server instead of your own iperf server. Note that you'll be measuring the speed of your internet connection, not the speed of the wireless. I wouldn't do that for the range test. Iperf public servers: Also, if you want to be sick, try running iperf over a cellular data connection.
Just do it. I didn't spend an hour writing all this so that you lean back in your chair and deliver your "impressions" or "feelings". Such things as range can and should be tested. If you need help, you know where you can try to pry me out of my hole.
it was comparable to other phones and in many cases, those other phones were substantially worse, even dropping to no service, something the iphone 4 didn't do.
palm pre drops to no service:
droid incredible drops to no service:
droid 2 had serious issues: The signal on one of the two units we received is all over the board, dipping from full signal down to nearly none whilst sitting in the
says that four out of four of their units show endlessly fluctuating
bad luck with his, as well. Thats 6 review units, all showing signs of signal woes. Not a good sign.
I remember those findings near the end of the whole Antenna Gate circus. It was comical seeing comparable phones also drop signal when "held wrong". I recall the Apple trolls denying that reality back then too - just as they apparently still are today. : D
Interesting. Very interesting, as I have Apple and Android devices, and my WISP has dealt with them, and almost *every* home that complains about piss poor WiFi reception is an Apple home where I help out.
Fair enough.
I have had the two iPads tested at the Apple Genius bar, and they passed "that" test, even though they both fail miserably at having the same WiFi reception as all four of my Android devices have.
I *knew* you had tested Apple antennas in the past! "The worst phone I tested dropped the rx signal 16 times (-12dB). The iPhone 4 rx signal dropped 100 times (-20dB) to 288 times (-24.6dB) . That's a 6 to 18 times worse signal drop for the iPhone 4. Little wonder it drops calls. My guess(tm) is that something more than detuning the antenna is happening. I suspect that the receiver front end might be slightly regenerative, where touching the antenna kills the regeneration and the associated sensitivity."
In all cases in "my" house, I had my Android devices on a flat surface within a foot of the iOS devices when the Android devices would easily connect home broadband router at the far fringes of the home, while the iOS devices failed to make any connection.
I had to solve the problem by setting up a spare WRT54G router as a wired extension (crawling under the house and cursing Apple the entire time), so, the fact that the WiFi reception of the iOS devices sucks compared to that of the Android devices caused me considerable effort.
In addition, as you know, I assist my small WISP in setting up customers and troubleshooting when they have WiFi problems. Almost invariably, the Apple-based customers are highly non technical, so, they call up with problems that aren't really the WISP's prerogative, such as the fact they can't connect to either his or their routers (he insists everyone have a router so he gives them one if they don't have their own).
Almost always, if not always, I put their iDevices next to my Android device to test WiFi connectivity and signal strength at the distance that the customer complains.
Even though the tools available to sniff WiFi issues on iOS devices are downright primitive, you "can" easily see that the Android devices "connect" to the router at distance while the iOS devices are oblivious of the router at the same distances.
Working in the other direction, I start with the iOS device in one hand, and the Android device in the other hand, using the primitive iOS tools and the more sophisticated (aka modern) Android sniffing tools, so that I can see the BSSID and perceived signal strength (in case there are multiple SSIDs of the same name, as I have in my own setup), and almost always, if not always, the iOS devices *drop* the connection well before the Android devices do (I generally walk outside until the Android device drops the connection).
After having done this so many times, whenever we get a call, we ask if they're using Apple equipment, and, if they are, we know what's going on.
While my grandkids play games almost exclusively on the iDevices, the main problem "I" have with Apple is that it's primitive in terms of being able to do useful things, e.g., WiFi reception sniffers on iOS are primitive in comparison to what's available on Android.
Given the century-long cycles, you already had yours in 1989. Let someone else have their faults!
Looks like iPerf is available on iOS & Android & Windows & Linux!
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I don't have any fast computers - but just basic laptops.
This is good that we an lay two mobile devices on a desk and run the same iPerf utility to check performance.
I'd just pick one. Probably iPerf2 for compatibility.
I'd stick with iPerf 2.
Interesting that Mike Pennacchi set up a linux box running iperf -s. Then he runs Android iperf -c to get 10.0.10.80 as the linux box. Then he runs Android iperf for 60 seconds & gets 50Mbps throughput.
With iPerf, not only Android but even the primitive iOS phones can be turned into powerful network-troubleshooting tools!
This is great information!
You used iperf3, but I'd probably use iPerf 2 only because I want simple compatibility with iOS and Android, Windows, and Linux.
Are the three graphs (purple, green, and blue) different access points? Or are they different ports on the computer (1840, 1872, & 1860)?
Thanks to you, I set up a *wired* extender out of my spare WRT54G router, as you had explained, long (long) ago, that the extender is faster, in effect, than the repeater - even though the repeater is easier to set up (but not easily set up on a WRT54G v5 due to lack of memory).
I've never done this. I'll have to check how to set the speed on the Netgear WNDR2400 router and the Linksys WRT54G router. I'm sure the speed is currently set at defaults.
Hmmmm....
Ah. That makes sense!
Eureka! That's the test I need to run!
That's a PERFECT test! My hypothesis is that the iOS devices will drop in half the distance that the Android devices will drop - but that remains to be seen in the test.
We're in the boonies. Empty channels aren't hard to find. Especially in the 5MHz range.
In general, for utilities, the limitation is that iTools don't allow powerful tools, but it seems, on iOS, apparently there is a simple ping app from MochaSoft:
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Android, as would be expected for a mature mobile operating system, has a bunch of usable ping utilities, e.g., StreamSoft makes:
formatting link
I would agree with you.
If the two devices under test crap out at the same time, then they're equivalent. If the Android device craps out at twice the distance of the iOS devices, then the hypothesis is supported.
Of course, I'd have to test multiple random devices to be sure of the data.
I've already many times over seen substantial variations. So, what remains is only a more rigid test, as you have proposed.
Cellular is not in the cards; just WiFi.
I will set up the iperf 2 on the various devices and test this out!
Well, you're certainly entitled to an opinion. Personally, I prefer opinions based on repeatable tests, measurements, numerical results, and calculations. However, I'll accept your assertion for what it's worth. However, I did make one mistake. The iphone wasn't 10 times worse, but more like 6 to 18 times. Citing my web page: "The worst phone I tested dropped the rx signal 16 times (-12dB). The iPhone 4 rx signal dropped 100 times (-20dB) to 288 times (-24.6dB). That's a 6 to 18 times worse signal drop for the iPhone 4... "
One problem was that I didn't have access to an iphone 4 at the time of the controversy. None of my friends would trust me to jailbreak their phone just so I could get a signal strength reading in dBm instead of "bars". So, I had to use the test results from the Anantech article. A friend has an iPhone 4 that he's not using, so I could probably repeat my test given sufficient inspiration.
Yeah, that was cute. Initially, Verizon phones would stay connected for quite a while after total loss of signal. I put a VZW iphone 4 in a shielded box during a call, waited up to about 2 minutes, and was able to resume the call uninterrupted. Nicely done by VZW. However, AT&T was initially a different story. I did the same test with an AT&T phone (not an iPhone) and found that it would disconnect after only a few seconds. About a month later, after AT&T announced that they had "upgraded" their network to match capabilities of the new iPhone, it would also stay connected after 2 minutes of carrier loss.
I have an old VZW Palm Pre somewhere in the office. I'll try it on Mon or Tues.
Interesting test. He's in a weak signal area. Grabbing the phone drops the signal level enough to produce a loss of connection. That's not surprising. It would be more interesting if he put the phone in the Field Test Mode to see how much the signal drops. If the phone is right at the bitter edge of disconnecting, and the signal drops a few dB, I would expect it to umm.... disconnect. Note that all the phones used in my test showed about a 9 dB drop in receive signal from a death grip, which would produce exactly the same results in a weak signal area as the Palm Pre.
This is almost as bad as the Pre test. Instead of being in a one bar weak signal area, he's got 2 bars. I'm not so sure that the HTC Droid Inedible (VZW only) has the antenna at the bottom. I tried to find it on the iFixit teardown at: and couldn't find it. Other users are also having problems: "FIX HTC INCREDIBLE S RECEPTION ANTENNA ISSUES" (6:42) Fast forward to 4:35 to see what he's done. In other words, not the best phone or antenna system. Of course, the author doesn't care about potential SAR problem.
That's just a crappy phone. It could be anything from bad design, bad implementation, bad parts, bad metering, or just having a bad day. I assume that this has something to do with your defense of Apple, but I lack the wisdom to make the connection.
I don't have a proper 802.11 tester, but can make some fairly good BER (bit error rate) and signal level tests on my messy workbench. Yeah, it's all antiques but it's probably better than what you'll find at the Genius Bar: Mostly, I find that RFI/EMI from the computah section of a smart gizmo causes most of the loss of wi-fi reception problems. For example, my Droid X and X2 would show reduced sensitivity when the display backlighting was on full compared to when it was dim. My guess(tm) is that most of the wi-fi radios are quite good, but in proximity of the computah noise generator, don't do as well. How Apple or Android compare, I don't know.
Well, that's a fairly good side by side comparison. However, it might not be the radios. One of my customers is all Apple. They must have one of everything, although wisely, they never buy the latest devices. I had problems with range at their house. My Chrombook, Nexus 7 tablet, and Moto G phone were also having range problem. I eventually found a neighbor with Roku 2 and 3 boxes streaming away furiously
24x7, with both located near facing windows. I convinced the neighbor to let me connect the Roku boxes with ethernet cable (3ft and 6ft away), which eliminated the problem. Range was then dramatically improved.
You'll get no sympathy from me. I do that all the time. However, my days of crawling under houses are largely over thanks to health issues. I was pulling wires and installing wall jacks last week for about a day, and still haven't recovered. Maybe I'll learn to like power line connected wireless repeaters instead.
Ok, the first step to solving a problem is to blame someone. In this case Apple. I tend to allow other options, such as junk routers and interference. I carry a WiSpy 2.4Ghz spectrum analyzer, that isn't limited to seeing wi-fi devices. Amazing what I find out there.
However, I did have problems with the older Apple Airport wireless routers. Even the Apple products would not stay connected. Almost anything could connect, but didn't stay connected. Streaming was the big problem, where it would disconnect abruptly and without much provocation. I usually solved it by temporarily replacing the router with a Linksys equivalent. Current favorite is a Linksys EA2700. Range is not so good because it's a lower power device than most. I don't care because if a customer want's to go through walls, I just sell them another EA2700 router.
You're being generous. I use my Android phone and tablet as if they were test and diagnostic equipment. I don't know what Apple allows, but as I recall from using an iPhone 3G for a while, it's not much. I had to jailbreak my 3G to install something useful. Here's the latest version:
If you recall, I offered exactly the same song and dance to you about
2 years ago. There were versions for just about every OS available at the time, but I must admit, were somewhat crude. So, this time, please run the tests, and you can thank me later.
Sorry. You'll need a fairly fast computah if you're going to do tests with gigabit ethernet or 802.11ac. The idea is to make sure that everything involved is faster than the wi-fi link. You'll also need to use iperf3 to get accurate numbers for the higher speeds. However, we're not interested in how fast you can go. We're looking for when the data no longer is flowing smoothly or when it drops out. You can get away with almost anything that looks like a computah and will run iperf. I have an microSD card that I use on a Raspberry Pi 2 box as a quick an dirty iperf server. It won't do gigabit, but I usually don't need such test speeds.
Yep, but always have a reference machine handy that you know for sure that runs fast and well. When everything you test runs badly, and you don't know if the problem is with everything you're testing, or with the server, router, network, interference, etc, it's always nice to have a tie breaker.
Try jperf for starters. It's the easiest to use and includes the iperf2 binaries in the package buried in a subdirectory. If you want to do speed testing, switch to iperf3.
Yep.
It was 3 separate runs of the program. The numbers are NOT port numbers. I was doing some fiddling with the setup and wanted to see what produced the best throughput.
Jeff, This nospam guy is actually one of the smarter ones here, along with Rod Speed and the smartest guy here, who is David Empson. The problem though, with nospam, is that his only playbook is verbatim what Apple Marketing feeds him. He has no other repertoire.
Where, for others' benefit, 9 decibels is 3db times 3 which is 1/2 times
1/2 times 1/2 the signal strength, which is 0.125 the original signal strength (or around 1/8th the original signal strength if I did the math correctly).
Jeff - you have to understand that nospam thinks *exactly* like Apple Marketing thinks. Thousands of times, he finds the absolute worst example he can find in Android land, to compare with Apple.
For example, he tries to compare $50 Android phones to $800 Apple phones, and then says that the Android phones stink. Or, he picks the absolutely most expensive Android phone he can find on the planet, to compare with the iPhone, and says conclusively that iPhones cost exactly the same as Android phones.
In fact, I have a recent thread where I compare PERFORMANCE of a $300 Android phone to the iPhone 6, and he pooh poos that because I didn't use the absolutely most expensive Android phones on the planet to make my performance tests.
At first you wonder why he thinks like Apple Marketing, but then you just get used to it once you understand that: a. He buys only on cachet (so anything bad about Apple is a threat) b. He buys based on fear (so anything outside the walled garden is scary) c. He can only think of the single solution Apple Marketing gives him
Once you realize *everything* he says is imbued by those three tenets, then you realize why he sounds exactly like Apple Marketing sounds.
The funny thing about nospam, Jeff, is that you can be honest with him, but he will *never* be honest with you.
If you (or I) have a favorable datum about Android versus iOS, we speak it out, and weigh it proportionately. Nospam is the consummate Apple marketing guy. He is so afraid of facts, that he will *never* speak anything out against Apple, even though he surely must be aware of the huge flaws.
At first I couldn't understand his duplicity. I thought it was stupidity. But he's duplicitous because of the three things I said: a. He's *protecting* his purchase decision (at all costs!) b. He's *protecting* against anything *outside* the walled garden c. He's *protecting* against the one-button-mouse mentality that Apple Marketing has and always has had.
So nospam will *never* see both sides of the coin. Never. And even if he did - he'd never admit it.
On the other hand, you: a. Buy by price:performance so performance is just a set of numbers which is nothing to fear b. Buy what works for you with the equipment you use, and not necessarily only one brand of equipment c. Try every solution that makes sense, and not just the single-button-mouse solution that one manufacturers' marketing team specifies
Until you understand these three things, you'll never understand why nospam writes what he writes (nor most of the other Apple Aficianados).
a. They care only about style b. They are fearful of anything not told to them by Apple Marketing c. They can only think of one-button-mouse style solutions proposed by Apple Marketing (which only work inside the walled garden).
Anything outside those three areas, they "just give up". In fact, they're so used to "just giving up", that it's not funny in that is so different than your mental makeup.
i've never tried to compare a $50 android phone with an $800 iphone, ever.
what i said was that similar specs have comparable prices, and they do.
phones with similar specs to an iphone are something like a samsung galaxy s7 or note 5.
you're also ignoring that apple and google have different business models, something you refuse to acknowledge, let alone even begin to understand.
you're also ignoring all of the android phones that are *more* expensive than the iphone.
the initial price doesn't make matter a whole lot anyway because people will pay far more than the difference in price in a couple of months of service fees.
Without the rubber cover, which is now epidemic, the iPhone 4 was 6 to
18 times worse in signal loss compared to various cell phones. With the rubber cover, it's about the same as most other smartphones. At the time when I ran the test, rubber covers for the newly released iPhone 4 were not available. I can repeat the test if I can borrow an iPhone 4 from a friend. So can you. It's quite easy but there are a few tricks. Bug me if you want details.
True for AT&T because, as I previously indicated, AT&T would disconnect if the carrier was lost for only a few seconds. That was later increased which hid any disconnects caused by carrier loss. You can test how it works with any cell phone. Make a call and then put the phone inside a shielded box (microwave oven will do) for varying amounts of time. Last time I did this on VZW, I could disappear for a bit less than 2 minutes, and continue my call from where I left off.
I just tried it on VZW at home. I called my house phone from my ancient LG VX8300 cell phone. I then put it inside the microwave oven. After 2 minutes, I was still connected. However, I'm not sure if the signal went to zero. I could see that the phone showed zero bars through the oven door, but the VX8300 will still work showing zero bars. I'll see if I can find a weaker signal location and a better shielded box later in the week.
It's easy enough for you to try the same thing. Note that it doesn't matter what phone you use. You're testing how the cell site responds to a loss of carrier. Any phone will suffice.
Yep, and sales is of paramount importance. Everything else, including quality, repairability, product life, and even price are of secondary importance. If it sells, it must be good (for the company).
I thought about it. I really hate to agree with you, but the antennagate thing had nothing to do with Apple. Apple's only contribution was designing a phone that highlighted a bad setting by AT&T in their cell sites. The problem disappeared when the rubber bumper made the iPhone 4 act more like other phones of the period, and when AT&T tweaked their settings. As an added bonus, Apple also tweaked the relationship between receive signal level and the number of bars indicated. Later, they graciously allowed users to see the actual numbers in dBm. Prior to that, jailbreaking was required. You can read about how it was necessary to get into the field test mode in order to see numbers at:
Those problems were not concocted or in any way fabricated for the occasion. They were quite real. Whether they were significant or worth fixing is a very different story.
These days, product lifetimes are sufficiently short that the next generation of product is already in the pipeline when the previous product is introduced. In some product areas (i.e. disk storage and SSD's), there can be as many a 3 generations in the pipeline at the same time. That means there's absolutely no incentive to fix the current product when the next generation will be released shortly. If there are any real problems, current owners are simply told to wait for the next generation to be released, which will surely have those problems solved. The reality is often quite different.
Hardly. There are plenty of problems still left to solve. For example, how about product life and servicability? Did you know that your Apple products are designed for a 5 year product life? Ever wonder what Apple does with cell phones that have been returned for repair?
That's only a problem when one hates something specific, like Apple. It's not considered a problem if one hates everything equally. Don't worry. I have plenty of bad things to say about Google and Android.
At the time (2010), it was necessary to jailbreak an iphone in order to obtain signal strength numbers. The field test mode was also initially disabled in the iphone 4. Read the Anantech article mentioned above for a memory refresh.
Excuse me? Since when does hating something lead to dishonesty? I might hate a vendors products, possibly for good reason, and offer my opinion on the matter if asked, but I certainly would not poison my position by lying about what's wrong with their products. I might also not like a vendor due to political, social, economic, or personal reasons that have nothing to do with their products. From what I've disclosed, you would not be able to determine if it's one of those, or whether it's a quality, service, price, performance, design, or usability problem that I might have with Apple. Assumption really is the mother of all such screwups.
Taking your statement at face value, are only people that offer favorable opinions of Apple allowed to comment because they're presumably the only ones that are honest? Perhaps you might want to rephrase your statement.
Drivel: I found my old iPhone 3G and decided to see if it still works. I charged up the battery, turned it on, and it complained that it could not make a secure connection. Fine, that's Apple for set the date and time. Once I did that, I was deluged with about 4 years of gmail stored on the Google server. That was followed by about 200 reminders and appointments, each of which had to be individually acknowledged. When I checked for updates, it proclaimed that everything was up to date. Not too bad for an old phone.
i don't need to borrow one since i still have mine.
i had *no* problems whatsoever with reception and no tangible difference between it and the 3gs it replaced.
bullshit. no cell carrier keeps a call connected that long without any connection.
put it on defrost cycle.
i prefer real world tests in normal use.
my iphone 4 was not significantly different than any other phone i have, whether it's other iphones, android and old school flippers, and that's in both city and fringe areas.
all of those are contributing factors to sales.
if the product was shit quality, unreliable, etc. it would't sell well. people generally want quality stuff.
the reality is that the iphone 4 was very reliable, other than the home button for early production runs, something that was easily fixed and later modified at the factory to be more reliable.
jailbreaking was not required to put earlier iphones into field test mode.
apple removed that in the iphone 4 and then put it *back*.
the problem was concocted.
'holding it wrong' is something that affects every single phone, but gawker media, who had just had its ass handed to it for buying a stolen iphone 4, decided to attack apple and get its revenge.
apple often makes changes *during* product lifecycles.
they aren't.
in fact, i have a 12 year old mac mini running 24/7 as a low end server and just put an ssd in it because the hard drive was over 10 years old.
that doesn't mean they're designed for 5 year life.
it means apple stops supporting products after 5 years, or 7 years as required in california, where you are.
every company cuts off support after a while, often *less* than that.
look at what android phone makers do, who drop support within a year or two.
don't believe everything you read.
apple recycles phones and even designed and built a robot named liam to do it.
Liam is programmed to carefully disassemble the many pieces of returned iPhones, such as SIM card trays, screws, batteries and
to recycle. Traditional tech recycling methods involve a shredder with magnets that makes it hard to separate parts in a pure way
Liam separates the insides of an iPhone with robotic precision so,
copper. Ultimately, these components can be sold to recycling vendors that focus on specific materials, such as nickel, aluminum, copper, cobalt and tungsten (a conflict mineral), and turn them into something else that can be reused, rather than dumped in a landfill. Some of these materials take decades to decompose and leak toxic materials into the ground along the way.
yet you don't.
they removed it in the iphone 4 and then put it back in the next update, which was a couple of weeks later, if that (i'd have to check the dates).
prior to the iphone 4 it was there.
it means what you say is heavily biased.
except that you do lie about them, as you did above.
i never said that at all.
every product has good and bad points. nothing is perfect. pick the best tool for the job.
anyone who repeatedly cites the bad things about one company and ignores when other companies do the very same thing (or worse) is dishonest.
I don't care. I don't pass judgment upon the writers of usenet articles, only on the content of their articles. The author could be evil incarnate, and I would still take their comments seriously. I also value their opinions based solely on their ability to substantiate them. In other words, no numbers, no tests, or no references, and it goes to recycling.
Not a problem. Everyone lies, but that's ok because nobody listens.
Ah, my favorite topic... me.
Wrong. I hardly buy anything new for myself. I buy plenty for my customers, but for myself, I buy used, refurbished, and recycled hardware. Most of my computers were machines replaced by my customers in an upgrade. Almost nothing I own was purchased new. Performance (numbers) is way down the list because it is cheaper to tolerate mediocrity and do battle with the bleeding edge of technology.
Sorta. I have a few brands that I prefer. However, even the best companies have produced defective products and probably will continue to do so erratically. There's also quite a bit of private labeling of other companies products. I do tend to favor manufacturers with which I have a working relationship, or know someone on the inside, as that makes it easier to deal with surprises and problems.
Sorta. My customers also was ease of use. That makes self configuring devices, wizards, and one-button connect features attractive. For myself, they just get in the way of diving into the menus and making it do what I want. While not a single button solution, I really like the Chromebook philosophy of letting Google do everything. I can literally setup a Chromebook in minutes, and have it ready to use without the hassles of endless updates, virus scans, malware scans, bloatware, etc. Customers want easy and so do I (because we're all fundamentally lazy).
Nope. They throw money at the problem. Applecare is all about buying failure insurance. Out of warranty repairs are very expensive. Flat rate exchange instead of repair is all about inspiring a premature upgrade. Some parts are unobtainable. When I fix a PC or PC laptop, I can get cheap parts from the cannibals on eBay. I can do the same with Apple parts, but not for current model products.
Incidentally, in Dec 2009, I did a price comparison between various Apple products and the closest equivalent Dell products: The 13" MacBook was a bargain at the time, but all the other Apple products were about twice the price of Dell. Prices do not include shipping, Applecare, or Dell extended service contracts. I haven't checked, but I think the situation is much the same today.
Nope, they don't give up. The average Apple product user assumes that since Apple products are nearly perfect, whatever is wrong must be something they had done. Although I don't do much work on Apple products, the few that drift into my office generally start out by asking if it was anything that they had done wrong to cause the problem. There's a related problem where users are afraid to ask for help because they assume that Apple makes things so easy, that if they have a problem doing something, it must be their inability to understand, rather than something Apple did wrong.
Apple... making easy things easier, and difficult things impossible.
for instance, there's nothing comes close to the retina imac 5k.
dell sells a similar 5k display *without* a computer for roughly what apple sells the entire imac, which now has a wide-gamut display. not only that, but it's expected to be updated in about a month or so.
With all due respect, your unsubstantiated opinion does not do much for me. An example of equivalent PC and Apple products would be more useful than your astute pontification. Also, you seem to have an aversion to supplying numbers. A few of these would also improve your credibility.
It was quite difficult to do the Dec 2009 comparison. I was recovering at home from surgery and was still somewhat drugged. It took me all day to nail down the details. Even so, there are differences between the Dell and Apple products in CPU speeds, memory types, Firewire ports, and included accessories such as the mouse and keyboard, which are options on Apple products but generally included with Dell products. Even with these differences, the ratio was still about 1:2, except for the 13" MacBook.
Is it really necessary that I have to do all the research? All that's necessary is for you to include a URL pointing to the two computers and displays with prices. Ok, I'll do the grunt work this time for you and see if you're right.
I presume you mean the Apple 27" Retina 5K iMac computer. The screen is 5120 x 2880. B&H has it for $1,900.
I'll also assume that you're referring to the Dell XPS 27 Touch All-In-One Desktop: The screen is 2560 X 1440 or 1/4th that of the Apple display. Prices vary from $1,700 to $2,700.
So, you're correct that Apple is indeed cheaper than Dell for roughly equivalent computers and with a better built-in monitor. Apparently, some things have changed at Apple in the last 7 years. I'll try to be more careful when making price comparisons in the future. I'll probably update the spreadsheet as time permits.
Of course, this has nothing to do with any alleged wi-fi range differences between Apple and Android products, which was the original topic of this discussion.
for some tasks, apple is the *only* choice. for others, windows is the only choice. for most tasks, things are fairly close, but mac users are generally more productive.
i did supply numbers.
you neglected a few differences, such as that mac os x is equivalent to windows ultimate, not home.
i assumed someone familiar with product pricing would know the status quo.
that's the middle model, but you can always configure to order.
$1799 for the base model:
and as i said, the imac is due for an update, expected in a month or so, which means the above specs are about to change.
you assume wrong.
i specifically said the dell 5k display, which has the same 5120 x 2880 resolution and is $2k msrp:
that display was originally $2500, but then apple came out with the imac 5k and dell had to cut its price.
street price is $1500ish these days, except that's only the display.
you still need a computer that can drive that 5k display, which means a dual video card and dual cables because one single displayport currently can't support 5k.
ok.
there aren't any significant differences in normal everyday use.
No, you didn't. You did in your previous posting, but only after I guessed wrong as to what you were comparing.
Actually, I'm not familiar with current retail PC or Mac pricing. I don't buy machines for my customers very often. Prices change so often that I have requote bids several times before the actual purchase. If I need prices, I get them at as near to the time of purchase as possible.
Sorry, but I thought you were comparing the price of equivalent computers with build in displays, not comparing an Apple all in one iMac, with a component system from Dell. Your point about pricing is still correct, but it would be helpful if you would be more specific about what you're comparing.
Prove it. I supplied two very easy methods where you can test that assertion using commonly available software (iperf and jperf) that will run on most any device. I can run the test for you if you can't seem to load one program on your Mac desktop or laptop, change one setting in your router, and load one lousy app on your tablet. However, I don't see why I should run it for you. I suspect that you would not accept my results and conclusions as you did in my iPhone 4 death grip test. The problem is that you don't really know for sure what will happen. Well, neither do I. I've run the test many times, but never side by side comparing the range for various client devices. It's always been to optimize something in the router, usually for highest throughput, not for maximizing range.
So am I. Sometimes trolling is useful. I'm tired of unsubstantiated assertions from all sides. Time to test the various claims.
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