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Comment by mariodiana | Hacker News Reader

Given the audience, and the accepted notion that Apple, as a business, wants people to buy their hardware, isn't Schiller's comment meant as something of a joke?

This is what's wrong with the Internet! The reaction reminds me of Madeleine Albright's comment about there being "a special place in Hell for women who don't support other women," a comment she made at a Hillary Clinton function. Apparently, Ms. Albright has been making this comment at the end of speeches for years. Do you know why? Because in the context it's funny. It's funny because it's exaggerated, quasi-ridiculous thing to say. But, the last time she said it, at the Clinton rally, people in the Twitterverse -- or whatever we're calling it -- took offense and went crazy.

I'm sorry, but both Albright's comment and Schiller's comment are benign jokes. The Internet manufactures outrage.

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So? It's still a shitty joke, and in the Apple case it breaks a key rule of comedy by punching down.

It also leaves a really bad taste in your mouth for the rest of the address because instead of Apple trying to increase profits by building better products, it starts to become Apple guilting people into buying things they don't need just because their possessions are old. It especially feels crappy when no product they unveiled was anything except a yearly iteration.

If a web developer gets frustrated by having to support Internet Explorer 8, is that offensive? "How dare you! You're punching down at people who are stuck with Windows XP!"

The internet is very good at being offended by everything.

Not upgrading from IE8 is the same as using a laptop made 5 years ago now?

My point is that no one has this outrage machine when web developers whine about Internet Explorer, even though plenty of people are stuck using it for financial reasons, just like people who are stuck with five-year-old computers, and as a developer, I actually do find it frustrating when I have to support older hardware.

I'll admit the choice of the word "sad" might have been poor, but it's hardly worth getting offended over.

Aren't there better alternatives to IE that don't cost money? That doesn't seem to be the same at all. Much of the reason older PCs are still useful is because the software is still mutable, often at no monetary cost.

Plenty of companies cannot upgrade away from IE because the cost would be too high. I worked at a company that only worked with IE7 at one point.

Sure, I could have said "just use Firefox" or "just use Chrome...It's free!", but that wasn't really an option.

Now, granted, I'm aware that a company is not the same as a person, but it was just a dumb example I used to kind of point out that getting offended because Apple "punched down" is kind of arbitrary.

Why wasn't using Firefox or Chrome an option? They're free. Maybe corporate policy prohibited it, but that means it's basically a choice to keep using old and broken stuff.

People find Apple's statement offensive because the people who use old PCs tend to be poor, so that statement was basically shitting on poor people for not having the means to buy new electronics. I don't see how your example compares.

Their web app broke when using anything but Internet Explorer 7, and they couldn't afford to upgrade it to modern web standards (they actually did get an estimate to do exactly that), so no, they didn't have a choice, really.

I'm done with this topic; be as offended as you want.

Are you under the impression that it's not possible to have two browsers installed simultaneously?

Are you under the impression that all web pages and all web applications have been created with utmost respect for the standard and only the one standard (and not a specific browser in mind) and have been maintained for the last 10 years ?

Because those applications, that only work with IE (and not a too recent one !) do exist, and are a PITA to work with. It's not like the application would have some glitches or some CSS properties that don't render correctly with Chrome or Firefox; it's a real "does not work".

I struggle to understand the relevance of this comment. What have I said that indicates I think such web apps don't exist? Of course they do. My point is that they don't mean you can't run a better browser, for other web stuff.

It's obvious you never worked for a large bureaucratic company having to support many intranet legacy web apps. Of course you can run another browser for the other stuff. This is about the financial costs of software resulting in "corporate standards" including some ancient browser.

This is not at all unusual. And it's hardly a thing to flame the messenger on. It's just a reality some people deal with.

I covered that above: "Maybe corporate policy prohibited it, but that means it's basically a choice to keep using old and broken stuff."

I acknowledge and understand that some web sites require ancient browsers and some companies have policies prohibiting alternatives. I just don't see that being at all related to poor people using old computers, because poor people do it out of necessity, while corporate policies are a choice. I'm not flaming the messenger because of these policies, I'm just getting a bit annoyed that people keep telling me irrelevant things and criticizing me for things I'm not saying.

There's a huge difference between running outdated software with serious security problems and using older hardware that might be perfectly capable of running a modern OS and modern web browsers. I own both a 7 year old desktop PC and a 5 year old laptop that I use occasionally when I need to run some Windows-only program, and they're both perfectly capable of running Windows 10 and every other piece of software I've thrown at it.

Not punching down is a key rule of comedy? That would be news to the majority of working comedians.

Apple expects it's customers to spend ~1100 every two years on their products. So it's sad for Apple that people are waiting 5 years to think about new hardware.

No, this isnt a joke. The reaction of the audience showed that clearly. How pityfull they shook their head to confirm how "sad" a five year old windows computer is.

That part of the keynote was really so ugly-spoiled-hipster-narrow-minded that i really started to think about switching to windows for the first time after 12 years of apple usage.

Is it a joke that Apple mark their computers as "obsolete" and stop providing support after they've been available for 5 years?

This "joke" might have a chance at being funny if they didn't apply the punchline to their own stuff.

A product is marked "vintage" after 5 years have past since the date its production was discontinued, and "obsolete" after 7 years.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624

>I'm sorry, but both Albright's comment and Schiller's comment are benign jokes.

if you think that's a joke, I feel sorry for you. you must give just about everyone the benefit of the doubt regardless of context.

> I'm sorry, but both Albright's comment and Schiller's comment are benign jokes. The Internet manufactures outrage.

The internet distributes messages. People manufacture outrage because it's good PR.

It aggregates it rather than manufacture it. It's really something.

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