14 ms·

There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. I didn't like Jobs but respect his a

by dplgk 11y ago

There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. I didn't like Jobs but respect his ability to achieve things. Perhaps, the years of oversimplifying applications has created an Apple that can't handle complex applications? Or, there's a chicken and egg question: XCode and the surrounding tools are atrociously buggy and hostile to the developer and it seems to increase with each release. Is this a symptom of what's going on inside Apple or a cause - perhaps Apple's own developers are dealing with the same hellish development experience and are just happy when something can compile without crashing Xcode. Or, perhaps, at some point, software becomes too complex for humans to deal with. Windows got so much flack over the years. It wasn't the prettiest but it worked and did what it said. Sure it BSODed sometimes and had some memory problems but it handles infinity more hardware/software/driver situations than OS X. Visual Studio is a dream, if you're into that ecosystem. MS dev tools are actually very nice.

daheza 11y ago
I haven't read much about Jobs but I wonder how he achieved the perfection in his product. Force the teams to work overtime to correct the bugs? Did he double the QA size in order to catch all these bugs? Did he demand that all code checked in must be at incredibly high standards, thus forcing the devs to QA more of their own code?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- kzhahou 11y ago
  They weren't perfect by far. For years I've seen people struggle to figure out something as basic as creating a playlist or syncing to a new device. It's perhaps always been better software than windows counterparts, it always fallen short of the "intuitive" goal it's aspired to (and frankly, bragged about)
- knughit 11y ago
  He went on stage and gave a sock presentation that made everyone forget about the bugs. Users judged the book by it's well-kerned prettily animated cover. This is the same old tripe about the young generation's moral decline, and rose-tinted rearview glasses.
  - DigitalJack 11y ago
    Exactly this. Snow leopard was a great release in terms of quality, but leopard wasn't. Many releases had critical flaws that needed a point release in less than 2 weeks.
  - glhaynes 11y ago
    Imagine how many "this never would've happened if Steve were still alive" articles would be written if the iTunes 13 installer were to delete users' entire hard drives like iTunes 2's did (http://www.wired.com/2001/11/glitch-in-itunes-deletes-drives/ http://www.wired.com/2001/11/glitch-in-itunes-deletes-drives...).
- bkeroack 11y ago
  With Jobs, it wasn't so much what you have right now as it was where he was taking you. To the bright, beautiful future where everything was different and better. One could overlook the imperfections because the vision was so appealing. Now that he's gone (and without anyone with his charisma to take over), the public is left to contemplate the ignoble reality of the current product sitting in front of them. The sense of wonder and possibility is absent.
- yggydrasily 11y ago
  This is the best explanation I've ever seen. Just lots of focus, attention to detail, and iteration until they got it right: http://inventor-labs.com/blog/2011/10/12/what-its-really-like-working-with-steve-jobs.html http://inventor-labs.com/blog/2011/10/12/what-its-really-lik...
- ktRolster 11y ago
  The Steve Jobs method: hire really good people and inspire them to work to the best of their ability. Apple UIs were better because they were doing what ESR suggested at a time when the rest of the world was smashing every new option into the right-click menu. Occasionally I'll still hear someone say, "Oh, just put that in the right-click menu." The right click menu isn't a trashbin to dump things that don't fit elsewhere. In any case, here is ESR's UI advice: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html
ssharp 11y ago
OSX doesn't need to handle that many hardware and driver issues, so I don't see how that's relevant to a Windows comparison. I've been using OSX since just after Panther. I generally agree with the idea that some things started getting worse after Snow Leopard, but I still don't think it's come close to a point where I'd actually move back to Windows or try out desktop Linux. And I'd say Windows had far more issues that BSODs and memory problems. I've used Window for music production for years (by the time I switched everyday stuff to OSX, I was locked into my music workflow and haven't cared to spend the time learning a new package like Logic, even after all these years). The way I survive Windows problems is pretty simple: never plug in an ethernet cable. I'm sure things are far better now, but for a large part of the past 15 years, doing so opened you up to a lot of problems and required utilizing software you simply should not have to install in order to have a functional system. Also, a high percentage of OSX users have no idea what XCode is, let alone care if it's not as nice as VisualStudio.
- koralatov 11y ago
  It's sad that so many people, myself very much included, now stick with OS X merely because ``it's not quite shitty enough to switch''. When I switched to the Mac initially, I switched because it was vastly better option than XP; now, I feel that lead has been eroded and that Windows 10, while different, isn't far behind OS X in most respects.
  - zimpenfish 11y ago
    Windows 10 is -in my limited experience- awful. Admittedly I don't use it for much more than gaming, light browsing, and occasional ssh sessions but it's painful to use, the apps aren't great, and it frequently craps out with weird error messages (e.g. "The required TCP protocols not installed on this machine" actually meant "The NAS isn't responding").
    - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
      I've found the opposite, its been rock solid for me.
ebbv 11y ago
Give me a break. Steve Jobs put out plenty of crap products and buggy software over the years. Don't pretend like he had a perfect record just because he's dead.
kps 11y ago
For OS X, the decline began under Jobs with 10.7. I'd always assumed it was simply that Apple no longer cared about computers; in Jobs' own words, “milk the Macintosh for all it's worth and get busy on the next great thing.”
- masklinn 11y ago
  10.7 was a pretty low point, but OSX quality has been inconsistent throughout, with a few high points late in release cycles. And it's always panned in .0 releases (same historical issue with initial hardware revisions).
- msvan 11y ago
  Context: that's a quote from 1996.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >For OS X, the decline began under Jobs with 10.7 So what issues do you have with 10.11? Because I don't see anything to complain about. Then again, I also didn't see anything troubling in 10.10, 10.9 and 10.8, with the exception of their ill-fated transition to a new DNS backend, which they later reverted. A few bugs here and there, yes. Nothing I haven't seen since 10.2, or that's not comparable to the kind of issues I have with Windows 10 or the Ubuntu box I use for development (actually that's far worse, but I digress).
  - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
    Caveat: i havent used it on my main machine yet, so a lot of this is impressionistic; feel free to correct. Still a total disregard of Fitt's law. Horribly inconsistent keyboard support. Behaviour that should be trivially configurable seemingly set in stone. Still, I think, impossible to cut a file in Finder. However many shots that take, apple can't get WiFi working properly. The transparency is an abomination. If you want something more 'big picture', I think all the changes introduced over the lifetime of OSX have been a bit piecemeal with no overall, unifying process. For example, full-screen mode gets bolted on, rather than nicely integrated with other window actions. Notifications blossom into a side panel, but there's an overlap with bouncing icons in the dock. Etc. There are some great ideas there, but we could really do with an OS11 that picks the best ones and presents them together, in a clean interface, in which they all belong.
jonknee 11y ago
A lot of awful software shipped under Steve Jobs. X Code has always been a buggy mess, iTunes bloated greatly under Steve (remember Ping?), iMovie '08, etc etc.
- pbreit 11y ago
  Jobs didn't care about Xcode. iTunes was decent or even good. He hated social and reluctantly allowed Ping to go forward. iMovie is a tiny niche. I agree with OP. There is no way Steve would have allowed some of the current stuff to see the light of day.
  - Alupis 11y ago
    > iTunes was decent or even good You clearly never used iTunes for Windows.
    - danso 11y ago
      You clearly have never read his biography ;) via an All Things D event: > What’s more, thanks to the popularity of iTunes on PCs, Apple has become a major Windows software developer. “We’ve got cards and letters from lots of people who say that iTunes is their favorite app on Windows,” noted Jobs. “It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in Hell.” That quip apparently caused Bill Gates to become quite angry: https://books.google.com/books?id=6e4cDvhrKhgC&lpg=PA463&ots=ckuUBaRYb9&dq=%E2%80%9CIt's%20like%20giving%20a%20glass%20of%20ice%20water%20to%20somebody%20in%20hell%22&pg=PA463#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CIt's%20like%20giving%20a%20glass%20of%20ice%20water%20to%20somebody%20in%20hell%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=6e4cDvhrKhgC&lpg=PA463&ots...
      - cheald 11y ago
        I can only conclude that the people sending such letters had only previously used GTK+ apps on Windows or something.
      - jonknee 11y ago
        Steve Jobs publicly mentioning only praise about things Steve Jobs made? Unbelievable!
robmcm 11y ago
The software that had "the focus of Steve" was generally very high quality. However there were a number of rotting products at Apple while he was still in charge. The problem now is none of the SVPs seem to have that attention to detail, or they are too stretched doing numerous things.
ktRolster 11y ago
> There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this Maybe. I felt like the quality started going downhill shortly after iOS came out, starting with low-level APIs, then xcode, then making it into user-level applications. My theory is that a lot of the really experienced engineers (the one who started with NEXT and OpenStep) left when they were rich after the iPhone stock jump. So really there is nothing Steve Jobs could have done unless he had a developer education program or something.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  >> "My theory is that a lot of the really experienced engineers (the one who started with NEXT and OpenStep) left when they were rich after the iPhone stock jump." While possible true I think the real issue is resources being spread too thin. Remember they had to delay the release os OS X one year as all their engineers were working on iOS? Now they're doing yearly releases of both OS's. I'm sure they've hired more engineers but pre-iOS there were probably lots of engineers who had been working exclusively on OS X for years and were able to maintain quality. New people take time to get up to speed.
- addicted 11y ago
  I agree. I don't think this is a Steve Jobs thing at all. In fact, I think post Steve Jobs Apple actually pays a lot more lip service to better software than they did before. I simply think the attempts to build stuff in common with iOS is taking its toll.
  - biot 11y ago
    Aren't you contradicting yourself? If post-Jobs they only pay lip service to quality but with Jobs they actually took action, doesn't that suggest Jobs may have been a positive influence on quality?
    - addicted 11y ago
      I think the action they take is about the same. They pay more lip service these days. I wouldn't be surprised if they are actually putting more work into better quality these days, but stuff is just more complex (e.g., everything is cloud based. Imagine OSX today, except running MobileMe, .Mac, etc. as the cloud backend instead of iCloud, which while it has its issues, is way better than those disasters).
bsbechtel 11y ago
>>Or, perhaps, at some point, software becomes too complex for humans to deal with. I'd say rather that things need to be simplified and features removed in order to improve quality. Every new Mac or iOS release touts XXX number of new features. If you want to offer the best products, having more features isn't necessarily a prerequisite.
- lubonay 11y ago
  I can't upvote this enough. So many products have been ruined by feature creep, it's sad to even think about it...
  - abakker 11y ago
    Its interesting to think about - is feature creep uniquely in the domain of software? I don't think so. There is plenty of software that has been immune to it (think everyday developer tools, command line stuff, etc). Often the apps with the least amount of feature creep are the ones where they are bounded by the APIs they talk to, i.e. if the API (which they don't control) is static, they can't really add any more features. Outside of software, we see a similar thing, a wrench (or spanner) hasn't gotten many new features, because the bolt that it turns isn't changing. the goal is roughly the same. The only appreciable changes have been in ergonomics, and even these are effectively static. On the other hand, we have cars, which are suffering from so much feature creep it is unbelievable. every year, car engines get a little bit more efficient, but they also get heavier, bloated with more systems, infotainment, seat adjustments, window adjustments, etc.As a result, the efficiency of the improved powertrain seldom makes appreciable performance difference. (yes, there are outliers). Cars then, might be the equivalent of "the ultimate app" which does everything for you, but loses sight of its purpose. Meanwhile, we have a long history of leaving single tools alone, and they tend to work great. The trouble is that in the world of physical tools, the workflow changes/context switching between using one tool and then another is easy. Meanwhile, in software, feature creep ends up being the solution for poor context switching between apps. In an ideal world, working on an image in photoshop and then pixelmator, and then illustrator, and then publishing to wordpress would be as seamless as using a wrench, then a screwdriver, and then cleaning things up with a rag. Unfortunately, software interface constraints almost necessitate feature creep as the "simplest" way to add functionality, even when convoluted menus, hotkeys, and naming conventions obscure utility.
jsingleton 11y ago
I agree with a lot of the sentiment in this discussion and from the article. It feels like Apple software is getting worse from my perspective but I wonder if a change in the target market has a part to play. Perhaps the HN crowd is not a significant Apple demographic any more? When I got my first Mac back in the PowerPC days it was definitely a step up. In the past I feel that Apple was targeting power users. Today I think they are going after casual users. Probably capitalizing on the general popularity of iOS. I've still got a couple of old Macs but they're all running Windows now. Visual Studio still has the occasional lock-up whatever hardware it's on. At least you don't have to sign in to an app store to update it though.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
> Windows got so much flack over the years. It wasn't the prettiest but it worked and did what it said. No. Just No. Windows loves to "forget" things. Things like Bluetooth devices. Or wifi devices. Windows likes to update your laptop for you when you're trying to close it ("Don't turn off your computer..." Wait, what? I have a plane to catch!). Windows scatters files all over the place! And that registry. UGH!
- jhasse 11y ago
  When closing your laptop Windows goes into standby. It should only install updates when shutting down and it tells you that beforehand. So it "did what it said" ;) > Windows scatters files all over the place! Just have a look into your Library folder on OS X. Also some programs don't use that, but create a dot folder in your home directory. Maybe I'm missing something though? I haven't used OS X much lately.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Library is pretty well organized. Settings go in Library/Preferences, cache files in Library/Caches, persistent files that don't need to be exposed to the user go in Library/Application Support, and they're all organized by app name or bundle ID. Apps which use dot folders in the home directory need to be smacked until they stop, but the OS can't really control where (non-sandboxed) apps put things, it can only establish conventions and encourage apps to follow them.
    - jhasse 11y ago
      I can't look it up right now, but I think it's called "Library Support" or something? Anyway: When I was writing a program for Mac OS I had to choose the name of the folder myself. Using the app name or bundle ID seems to be just a convention, I don't see the difference to %AppData% on Windows or ~/.config on Linux. Also I remember a tool I used when I had a Macbook which helped you remove all the files when uninstalling something. I think it was this one: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/25276/appcleaner http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/25276/appcleaner I remember some programs even putting files in other directories than Library Support.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
> Windows got so much flack over the years. It wasn't the prettiest but it worked and did what it said. No. Just No. Windows loves to "forget" things. Things like Bluetooth devices. Or wifi devices. Windows likes to update your laptop for you when you're trying to close it ("Don't turn off your computer..." Wait, what? I have a plane to catch!). Windows scatters files all over the place! And that registry. UGH!
btbuildem 11y ago
> Visual Studio is a dream, if you're into that ecosystem. MS dev tools are actually very nice Most likely because dogfooding
- codesushi42 11y ago
  Huh? Apple devs use Apple dev tools, and they are still terrible. Like it or not, but MS tends to be very good with productivity software, be it Word, Excel, or Visual Studio.
munificent 11y ago
> the years of oversimplifying applications has created an Apple that can't handle complex applications? Ah, you've fallen for the illusion. Those "simple" Mac apps you love are fantastically complex to implement. It's the user experience that is simple, and it takes a ton of sophisticated engineering to pull that off. You can think of it as there being a certain fixed amount of complexity in the user attaining some goal. You can make your software simpler by foisting the complexity on to the user: just make them do all of the nit-picky tasks. If you want to make it simple for them to achieve their goal, your app is going to have to contain that complexity itself.
coldtea 11y ago
>There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. I didn't like Jobs but respect his ability to achieve things. You probably wasn't paying attention when Job was running things. OS X 10.1 was a mess -- it took until several updates to become somewhat usable. The Finder was half-arsed for a decade. Mail.app had several issues. The Windows versions of iTunes was crappy. OS X releases that are now praised as "the best ever" etc, got tons of complaints for introducing bugs and instability. XCode has been historically crap (and it's much better now). And don't even get me started on the state of their Cloud offerings under Jobs. Hardware wise the same. Every new release, from the original iPod to the iPad was met with complaints and bickering ("No wifi? Less space than a Nomad? Lame") -- even if it actually took wifi and batteries 5 more years to even start making practical sense to have on such a device for syncing. Aside from specs people complained about, there were also all kind of other HW issues, from the overheating G4 Cube, to the logic boards dying on G3 iBooks, to cooling goo spilling from G5 towers, the crappy "round" mouse, and lots of other stuff besides. That said, I don't buy the "Apple software went downhill as of late" thing. First, because as said there were always issues. Second, because in normal use I don't see any particular decline. If anything things have got better, to the point where we complaint about trivial stuff. The thing is Apple of today puts out a heck of a lot more software and hardware products than the rosy Apple you remember. I'd take iTunes in the back and kill it though -- as the latest redesigns are absolutely crap from a UX perspective. Then again, I wouldn't call that a programming quality issue -- more of a "idiotic focus and shoving on our faces of BS online music platform issue". >Or, there's a chicken and egg question: XCode and the surrounding tools are atrociously buggy and hostile to the developer and it seems to increase with each release. The opposite. XCode was "atrociously buggy" in the 3/4/5 era and before, and has gotten quite better in the 6/7 series (despite having to support a whole new language). In fact a large list of early XCode 6 crashing bugs have been squashed months ago -- which was (as reported) around 90% of them.
- yeukhon 11y ago
  > The Windows versions of iTunes was crappy. Oh joy. I remember those days when people were angry because plugging your iPod into a new PC means wiping your library! > That said, I don't buy the "Apple software went downhill as of late" thing. Perception on Mac after people switch from Windows to Mac OSX immediately is awesome. The perception is different if you use Mac OSX for a long time and suddenly you see computer frozen every few days and requires a hard reboot. Many of that have to do the software you are running at the time, but why a sudden OS freeze, mouse couldn't move? That can't be a fault with Office / Skype, it has to be either a OS issue, or underlying hardware issue. Mac OSX is generally really great, it doesn't feel slow compare to a lot of the PC out there. Polished UI and very responsive. In some release you do see slowness opening between finders or moving from one setting view to another. Those are defects people will cry and ask those defects weren't caught by the performance team.
jad 11y ago
> There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this Says everyone who disagrees with any decision Apple makes. "Steve would have had the same opinion about this I do!" Statements like this are just you projecting your own opinion onto him.
_pmf_ 11y ago
> There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs ... that's the guy with the skeuomorphic preferences, right? The one who, at the first iPhone release, told developers that they don't need native apps because using HTML + WebView is enough, right? Just to make sure we're on the same page here.
- elsurudo 11y ago
  Not everybody hates skeumorphism, especially when not taken to an extreme (okay, Apple under Jobs often did take it to an extreme... like the leather Calendar app). But skeumorphism, when used properly, provides affordances and hints to the user. > told developers that they don't need native apps because using HTML + WebView is enough That's because the SDK wasn't ready for developers yet. You must remember that, first and foremost, Jobs was a great salesman. If you don't yet sell it, it's a piece of crap and unnecessary, right? And when you _do_ sell it, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
  - doomlaser 11y ago
    No, they weren't going to do a public SDK, until after the huge sustained public outcry. I understand the plan was to work with select third parties on a case by case basis, sort of akin to standalone game consoles.
    - elsurudo 11y ago
      Oh really. That, I wasn't aware of. Well, at least they saw the cash cow that the App Store could become at some point, and acted. It's good to change your mind when new information comes to light.
    - macintux 11y ago
      I hear that repeated a lot, but I haven't seen any real evidence to back it up. It seems equally plausible, especially given how quickly they announced the SDK after the iPhone release, that Apple was preparing for it but not ready yet (and/or wanted to give themselves time to work out the early kinks in all of the other parts: working with AT&T, supporting the new device and new OS, etc, etc).
lips 11y ago
Seems like many people are not making enough of the distinction between choices and bugs. Sure there are bugs in lots of stuff, and that's an entirely valid conversation, but there's also a layer of confounding choices. Some make sense from an "corporate" perspective, some... -iTunes bloat is a choice, and bugs. -Mail.app is mostly bugs. (non-standard .mbox was a choice) -Final Cut X was a choice. -Eschewing strong AppleScript support in native applications is a choice. -The app store(s) are a choice. -Allowing core utilities like Contacts and iCal to stagnate and be outshone by 3rd parties (BusyMac) was a choice. -Aperture+iPhoto=Photos was a choice. (So was selling Aperture after it was EOLed) -FFF
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  > The app store(s) are a choice. In that case, allow me to summarize some of the choices that went into building the Mac App Store. - It's a web view. No local caching of layout or anything. If your network connection hiccups, instead of a reasonably rendered error message, you get this: http://i.imgur.com/5xNgwMH.png http://i.imgur.com/5xNgwMH.png - Text in the search box is blurry. I'm not 100% sure why, but I think someone made a choice to render it with its y-position at a half pixel increment. And then nudge it down so it comes into focus when you click on it. Because really, what sort of asshole would still be using a low DPI screen? http://i.imgur.com/gj3mqrz.png http://i.imgur.com/gj3mqrz.png - How many Install buttons does an update need? Eh, let's choose two. Two's a nice number. And have that "Update All" button stick around even though all updates were already installed. https://i.imgur.com/p9QoCqZ.png https://i.imgur.com/p9QoCqZ.png - Earlier today, though it didn't lend itself to screenshots, my Xcode "Install" vs "Installing" button that couldn't decide what mode it wanted to be in and just bounced back and forth instead. Why choose one when you can be both! - The "Check for Unfinished Downloads" menu. Do you know what happens when a download doesn't finish? Or why it's not presented in a sane way in the normal UI? Me neither. Instead of gracefully handling errors, let's choose to bury them in a secret menu that people will happen upon via StackOverflow searches when their installation keeps failing with no indication of why. https://i.imgur.com/xkgP0lc.png https://i.imgur.com/xkgP0lc.png A+ design work right there. Excellent choices.
  - lips 11y ago
anonbanker 11y ago
Windows handles maybe an eighth of the hardware that works in Linux. Visual Studio is nice, if you're not writing in Rust, Perl 6, Ruby, Objective C, D, Scala, Smalltalk...
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  And what IDE on Linux handles all those, without installing 30+ plugins?
  - anonbanker 11y ago
    Certainly not Visual Studio. Maybe it'll be taken seriously again if it were ported to the platforms where development is happening nowadays.
rmc 11y ago
> There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. Remember Antennagate? The iPhone 4 had a serious hardware fault that significantly degraded it's signal. Jobs himself was the one who said to a customer "You're holding it wrong"
smrtinsert 11y ago
The cult of jobs exemplified. There were absolutely issues under Jobs, but somehow his sheen made people ignore them.

by dplgk 11y ago

daheza 11y ago

I haven't read much about Jobs but I wonder how he achieved the perfection in his product. Force the teams to work overtime to correct the bugs? Did he double the QA size in order to catch all these bugs? Did he demand that all code checked in must be at incredibly high standards, thus forcing the devs to QA more of their own code?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kzhahou 11y ago
They weren't perfect by far. For years I've seen people struggle to figure out something as basic as creating a playlist or syncing to a new device. It's perhaps always been better software than windows counterparts, it always fallen short of the "intuitive" goal it's aspired to (and frankly, bragged about)
knughit 11y ago
He went on stage and gave a sock presentation that made everyone forget about the bugs. Users judged the book by it's well-kerned prettily animated cover. This is the same old tripe about the young generation's moral decline, and rose-tinted rearview glasses.
- DigitalJack 11y ago
  Exactly this. Snow leopard was a great release in terms of quality, but leopard wasn't. Many releases had critical flaws that needed a point release in less than 2 weeks.
- glhaynes 11y ago
  Imagine how many "this never would've happened if Steve were still alive" articles would be written if the iTunes 13 installer were to delete users' entire hard drives like iTunes 2's did (http://www.wired.com/2001/11/glitch-in-itunes-deletes-drives/ http://www.wired.com/2001/11/glitch-in-itunes-deletes-drives...).
bkeroack 11y ago
With Jobs, it wasn't so much what you have right now as it was where he was taking you. To the bright, beautiful future where everything was different and better. One could overlook the imperfections because the vision was so appealing. Now that he's gone (and without anyone with his charisma to take over), the public is left to contemplate the ignoble reality of the current product sitting in front of them. The sense of wonder and possibility is absent.
yggydrasily 11y ago
This is the best explanation I've ever seen. Just lots of focus, attention to detail, and iteration until they got it right: http://inventor-labs.com/blog/2011/10/12/what-its-really-like-working-with-steve-jobs.html http://inventor-labs.com/blog/2011/10/12/what-its-really-lik...
ktRolster 11y ago
The Steve Jobs method: hire really good people and inspire them to work to the best of their ability. Apple UIs were better because they were doing what ESR suggested at a time when the rest of the world was smashing every new option into the right-click menu. Occasionally I'll still hear someone say, "Oh, just put that in the right-click menu." The right click menu isn't a trashbin to dump things that don't fit elsewhere. In any case, here is ESR's UI advice: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html

ssharp 11y ago

OSX doesn't need to handle that many hardware and driver issues, so I don't see how that's relevant to a Windows comparison. I've been using OSX since just after Panther. I generally agree with the idea that some things started getting worse after Snow Leopard, but I still don't think it's come close to a point where I'd actually move back to Windows or try out desktop Linux. And I'd say Windows had far more issues that BSODs and memory problems. I've used Window for music production for years (by the time I switched everyday stuff to OSX, I was locked into my music workflow and haven't cared to spend the time learning a new package like Logic, even after all these years). The way I survive Windows problems is pretty simple: never plug in an ethernet cable. I'm sure things are far better now, but for a large part of the past 15 years, doing so opened you up to a lot of problems and required utilizing software you simply should not have to install in order to have a functional system. Also, a high percentage of OSX users have no idea what XCode is, let alone care if it's not as nice as VisualStudio.

koralatov 11y ago
It's sad that so many people, myself very much included, now stick with OS X merely because ``it's not quite shitty enough to switch''. When I switched to the Mac initially, I switched because it was vastly better option than XP; now, I feel that lead has been eroded and that Windows 10, while different, isn't far behind OS X in most respects.
- zimpenfish 11y ago
  Windows 10 is -in my limited experience- awful. Admittedly I don't use it for much more than gaming, light browsing, and occasional ssh sessions but it's painful to use, the apps aren't great, and it frequently craps out with weird error messages (e.g. "The required TCP protocols not installed on this machine" actually meant "The NAS isn't responding").
  - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
    I've found the opposite, its been rock solid for me.

ebbv 11y ago

Give me a break. Steve Jobs put out plenty of crap products and buggy software over the years. Don't pretend like he had a perfect record just because he's dead.

kps 11y ago

For OS X, the decline began under Jobs with 10.7. I'd always assumed it was simply that Apple no longer cared about computers; in Jobs' own words, “milk the Macintosh for all it's worth and get busy on the next great thing.”

masklinn 11y ago
10.7 was a pretty low point, but OSX quality has been inconsistent throughout, with a few high points late in release cycles. And it's always panned in .0 releases (same historical issue with initial hardware revisions).
msvan 11y ago
Context: that's a quote from 1996.
coldtea 11y ago
>For OS X, the decline began under Jobs with 10.7 So what issues do you have with 10.11? Because I don't see anything to complain about. Then again, I also didn't see anything troubling in 10.10, 10.9 and 10.8, with the exception of their ill-fated transition to a new DNS backend, which they later reverted. A few bugs here and there, yes. Nothing I haven't seen since 10.2, or that's not comparable to the kind of issues I have with Windows 10 or the Ubuntu box I use for development (actually that's far worse, but I digress).
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  Caveat: i havent used it on my main machine yet, so a lot of this is impressionistic; feel free to correct. Still a total disregard of Fitt's law. Horribly inconsistent keyboard support. Behaviour that should be trivially configurable seemingly set in stone. Still, I think, impossible to cut a file in Finder. However many shots that take, apple can't get WiFi working properly. The transparency is an abomination. If you want something more 'big picture', I think all the changes introduced over the lifetime of OSX have been a bit piecemeal with no overall, unifying process. For example, full-screen mode gets bolted on, rather than nicely integrated with other window actions. Notifications blossom into a side panel, but there's an overlap with bouncing icons in the dock. Etc. There are some great ideas there, but we could really do with an OS11 that picks the best ones and presents them together, in a clean interface, in which they all belong.

jonknee 11y ago

A lot of awful software shipped under Steve Jobs. X Code has always been a buggy mess, iTunes bloated greatly under Steve (remember Ping?), iMovie '08, etc etc.

pbreit 11y ago
Jobs didn't care about Xcode. iTunes was decent or even good. He hated social and reluctantly allowed Ping to go forward. iMovie is a tiny niche. I agree with OP. There is no way Steve would have allowed some of the current stuff to see the light of day.
- Alupis 11y ago
  > iTunes was decent or even good You clearly never used iTunes for Windows.
  - danso 11y ago
    You clearly have never read his biography ;) via an All Things D event: > What’s more, thanks to the popularity of iTunes on PCs, Apple has become a major Windows software developer. “We’ve got cards and letters from lots of people who say that iTunes is their favorite app on Windows,” noted Jobs. “It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in Hell.” That quip apparently caused Bill Gates to become quite angry: https://books.google.com/books?id=6e4cDvhrKhgC&lpg=PA463&ots=ckuUBaRYb9&dq=%E2%80%9CIt's%20like%20giving%20a%20glass%20of%20ice%20water%20to%20somebody%20in%20hell%22&pg=PA463#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CIt's%20like%20giving%20a%20glass%20of%20ice%20water%20to%20somebody%20in%20hell%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=6e4cDvhrKhgC&lpg=PA463&ots...
    - cheald 11y ago
      I can only conclude that the people sending such letters had only previously used GTK+ apps on Windows or something.
    - jonknee 11y ago
      Steve Jobs publicly mentioning only praise about things Steve Jobs made? Unbelievable!

robmcm 11y ago

The software that had "the focus of Steve" was generally very high quality. However there were a number of rotting products at Apple while he was still in charge. The problem now is none of the SVPs seem to have that attention to detail, or they are too stretched doing numerous things.

ktRolster 11y ago

> There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this Maybe. I felt like the quality started going downhill shortly after iOS came out, starting with low-level APIs, then xcode, then making it into user-level applications. My theory is that a lot of the really experienced engineers (the one who started with NEXT and OpenStep) left when they were rich after the iPhone stock jump. So really there is nothing Steve Jobs could have done unless he had a developer education program or something.

k-mcgrady 11y ago
>> "My theory is that a lot of the really experienced engineers (the one who started with NEXT and OpenStep) left when they were rich after the iPhone stock jump." While possible true I think the real issue is resources being spread too thin. Remember they had to delay the release os OS X one year as all their engineers were working on iOS? Now they're doing yearly releases of both OS's. I'm sure they've hired more engineers but pre-iOS there were probably lots of engineers who had been working exclusively on OS X for years and were able to maintain quality. New people take time to get up to speed.
addicted 11y ago
I agree. I don't think this is a Steve Jobs thing at all. In fact, I think post Steve Jobs Apple actually pays a lot more lip service to better software than they did before. I simply think the attempts to build stuff in common with iOS is taking its toll.
- biot 11y ago
  Aren't you contradicting yourself? If post-Jobs they only pay lip service to quality but with Jobs they actually took action, doesn't that suggest Jobs may have been a positive influence on quality?
  - addicted 11y ago
    I think the action they take is about the same. They pay more lip service these days. I wouldn't be surprised if they are actually putting more work into better quality these days, but stuff is just more complex (e.g., everything is cloud based. Imagine OSX today, except running MobileMe, .Mac, etc. as the cloud backend instead of iCloud, which while it has its issues, is way better than those disasters).

bsbechtel 11y ago

>>Or, perhaps, at some point, software becomes too complex for humans to deal with. I'd say rather that things need to be simplified and features removed in order to improve quality. Every new Mac or iOS release touts XXX number of new features. If you want to offer the best products, having more features isn't necessarily a prerequisite.

lubonay 11y ago
I can't upvote this enough. So many products have been ruined by feature creep, it's sad to even think about it...
- abakker 11y ago
  Its interesting to think about - is feature creep uniquely in the domain of software? I don't think so. There is plenty of software that has been immune to it (think everyday developer tools, command line stuff, etc). Often the apps with the least amount of feature creep are the ones where they are bounded by the APIs they talk to, i.e. if the API (which they don't control) is static, they can't really add any more features. Outside of software, we see a similar thing, a wrench (or spanner) hasn't gotten many new features, because the bolt that it turns isn't changing. the goal is roughly the same. The only appreciable changes have been in ergonomics, and even these are effectively static. On the other hand, we have cars, which are suffering from so much feature creep it is unbelievable. every year, car engines get a little bit more efficient, but they also get heavier, bloated with more systems, infotainment, seat adjustments, window adjustments, etc.As a result, the efficiency of the improved powertrain seldom makes appreciable performance difference. (yes, there are outliers). Cars then, might be the equivalent of "the ultimate app" which does everything for you, but loses sight of its purpose. Meanwhile, we have a long history of leaving single tools alone, and they tend to work great. The trouble is that in the world of physical tools, the workflow changes/context switching between using one tool and then another is easy. Meanwhile, in software, feature creep ends up being the solution for poor context switching between apps. In an ideal world, working on an image in photoshop and then pixelmator, and then illustrator, and then publishing to wordpress would be as seamless as using a wrench, then a screwdriver, and then cleaning things up with a rag. Unfortunately, software interface constraints almost necessitate feature creep as the "simplest" way to add functionality, even when convoluted menus, hotkeys, and naming conventions obscure utility.

jsingleton 11y ago

I agree with a lot of the sentiment in this discussion and from the article. It feels like Apple software is getting worse from my perspective but I wonder if a change in the target market has a part to play. Perhaps the HN crowd is not a significant Apple demographic any more? When I got my first Mac back in the PowerPC days it was definitely a step up. In the past I feel that Apple was targeting power users. Today I think they are going after casual users. Probably capitalizing on the general popularity of iOS. I've still got a couple of old Macs but they're all running Windows now. Visual Studio still has the occasional lock-up whatever hardware it's on. At least you don't have to sign in to an app store to update it though.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

> Windows got so much flack over the years. It wasn't the prettiest but it worked and did what it said. No. Just No. Windows loves to "forget" things. Things like Bluetooth devices. Or wifi devices. Windows likes to update your laptop for you when you're trying to close it ("Don't turn off your computer..." Wait, what? I have a plane to catch!). Windows scatters files all over the place! And that registry. UGH!

jhasse 11y ago
When closing your laptop Windows goes into standby. It should only install updates when shutting down and it tells you that beforehand. So it "did what it said" ;) > Windows scatters files all over the place! Just have a look into your Library folder on OS X. Also some programs don't use that, but create a dot folder in your home directory. Maybe I'm missing something though? I haven't used OS X much lately.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Library is pretty well organized. Settings go in Library/Preferences, cache files in Library/Caches, persistent files that don't need to be exposed to the user go in Library/Application Support, and they're all organized by app name or bundle ID. Apps which use dot folders in the home directory need to be smacked until they stop, but the OS can't really control where (non-sandboxed) apps put things, it can only establish conventions and encourage apps to follow them.
  - jhasse 11y ago
    I can't look it up right now, but I think it's called "Library Support" or something? Anyway: When I was writing a program for Mac OS I had to choose the name of the folder myself. Using the app name or bundle ID seems to be just a convention, I don't see the difference to %AppData% on Windows or ~/.config on Linux. Also I remember a tool I used when I had a Macbook which helped you remove all the files when uninstalling something. I think it was this one: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/25276/appcleaner http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/25276/appcleaner I remember some programs even putting files in other directories than Library Support.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

btbuildem 11y ago

> Visual Studio is a dream, if you're into that ecosystem. MS dev tools are actually very nice Most likely because dogfooding

codesushi42 11y ago
Huh? Apple devs use Apple dev tools, and they are still terrible. Like it or not, but MS tends to be very good with productivity software, be it Word, Excel, or Visual Studio.

munificent 11y ago

> the years of oversimplifying applications has created an Apple that can't handle complex applications? Ah, you've fallen for the illusion. Those "simple" Mac apps you love are fantastically complex to implement. It's the user experience that is simple, and it takes a ton of sophisticated engineering to pull that off. You can think of it as there being a certain fixed amount of complexity in the user attaining some goal. You can make your software simpler by foisting the complexity on to the user: just make them do all of the nit-picky tasks. If you want to make it simple for them to achieve their goal, your app is going to have to contain that complexity itself.

coldtea 11y ago

>There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. I didn't like Jobs but respect his ability to achieve things. You probably wasn't paying attention when Job was running things. OS X 10.1 was a mess -- it took until several updates to become somewhat usable. The Finder was half-arsed for a decade. Mail.app had several issues. The Windows versions of iTunes was crappy. OS X releases that are now praised as "the best ever" etc, got tons of complaints for introducing bugs and instability. XCode has been historically crap (and it's much better now). And don't even get me started on the state of their Cloud offerings under Jobs. Hardware wise the same. Every new release, from the original iPod to the iPad was met with complaints and bickering ("No wifi? Less space than a Nomad? Lame") -- even if it actually took wifi and batteries 5 more years to even start making practical sense to have on such a device for syncing. Aside from specs people complained about, there were also all kind of other HW issues, from the overheating G4 Cube, to the logic boards dying on G3 iBooks, to cooling goo spilling from G5 towers, the crappy "round" mouse, and lots of other stuff besides. That said, I don't buy the "Apple software went downhill as of late" thing. First, because as said there were always issues. Second, because in normal use I don't see any particular decline. If anything things have got better, to the point where we complaint about trivial stuff. The thing is Apple of today puts out a heck of a lot more software and hardware products than the rosy Apple you remember. I'd take iTunes in the back and kill it though -- as the latest redesigns are absolutely crap from a UX perspective. Then again, I wouldn't call that a programming quality issue -- more of a "idiotic focus and shoving on our faces of BS online music platform issue". >Or, there's a chicken and egg question: XCode and the surrounding tools are atrociously buggy and hostile to the developer and it seems to increase with each release. The opposite. XCode was "atrociously buggy" in the 3/4/5 era and before, and has gotten quite better in the 6/7 series (despite having to support a whole new language). In fact a large list of early XCode 6 crashing bugs have been squashed months ago -- which was (as reported) around 90% of them.

yeukhon 11y ago
> The Windows versions of iTunes was crappy. Oh joy. I remember those days when people were angry because plugging your iPod into a new PC means wiping your library! > That said, I don't buy the "Apple software went downhill as of late" thing. Perception on Mac after people switch from Windows to Mac OSX immediately is awesome. The perception is different if you use Mac OSX for a long time and suddenly you see computer frozen every few days and requires a hard reboot. Many of that have to do the software you are running at the time, but why a sudden OS freeze, mouse couldn't move? That can't be a fault with Office / Skype, it has to be either a OS issue, or underlying hardware issue. Mac OSX is generally really great, it doesn't feel slow compare to a lot of the PC out there. Polished UI and very responsive. In some release you do see slowness opening between finders or moving from one setting view to another. Those are defects people will cry and ask those defects weren't caught by the performance team.

jad 11y ago

> There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this Says everyone who disagrees with any decision Apple makes. "Steve would have had the same opinion about this I do!" Statements like this are just you projecting your own opinion onto him.

_pmf_ 11y ago

> There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs ... that's the guy with the skeuomorphic preferences, right? The one who, at the first iPhone release, told developers that they don't need native apps because using HTML + WebView is enough, right? Just to make sure we're on the same page here.

elsurudo 11y ago
Not everybody hates skeumorphism, especially when not taken to an extreme (okay, Apple under Jobs often did take it to an extreme... like the leather Calendar app). But skeumorphism, when used properly, provides affordances and hints to the user. > told developers that they don't need native apps because using HTML + WebView is enough That's because the SDK wasn't ready for developers yet. You must remember that, first and foremost, Jobs was a great salesman. If you don't yet sell it, it's a piece of crap and unnecessary, right? And when you _do_ sell it, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
- doomlaser 11y ago
  No, they weren't going to do a public SDK, until after the huge sustained public outcry. I understand the plan was to work with select third parties on a case by case basis, sort of akin to standalone game consoles.
  - elsurudo 11y ago
    Oh really. That, I wasn't aware of. Well, at least they saw the cash cow that the App Store could become at some point, and acted. It's good to change your mind when new information comes to light.
  - macintux 11y ago
    I hear that repeated a lot, but I haven't seen any real evidence to back it up. It seems equally plausible, especially given how quickly they announced the SDK after the iPhone release, that Apple was preparing for it but not ready yet (and/or wanted to give themselves time to work out the early kinks in all of the other parts: working with AT&T, supporting the new device and new OS, etc, etc).

lips 11y ago

Seems like many people are not making enough of the distinction between choices and bugs. Sure there are bugs in lots of stuff, and that's an entirely valid conversation, but there's also a layer of confounding choices. Some make sense from an "corporate" perspective, some... -iTunes bloat is a choice, and bugs. -Mail.app is mostly bugs. (non-standard .mbox was a choice) -Final Cut X was a choice. -Eschewing strong AppleScript support in native applications is a choice. -The app store(s) are a choice. -Allowing core utilities like Contacts and iCal to stagnate and be outshone by 3rd parties (BusyMac) was a choice. -Aperture+iPhoto=Photos was a choice. (So was selling Aperture after it was EOLed) -FFF

wlesieutre 11y ago
> The app store(s) are a choice. In that case, allow me to summarize some of the choices that went into building the Mac App Store. - It's a web view. No local caching of layout or anything. If your network connection hiccups, instead of a reasonably rendered error message, you get this: http://i.imgur.com/5xNgwMH.png http://i.imgur.com/5xNgwMH.png - Text in the search box is blurry. I'm not 100% sure why, but I think someone made a choice to render it with its y-position at a half pixel increment. And then nudge it down so it comes into focus when you click on it. Because really, what sort of asshole would still be using a low DPI screen? http://i.imgur.com/gj3mqrz.png http://i.imgur.com/gj3mqrz.png - How many Install buttons does an update need? Eh, let's choose two. Two's a nice number. And have that "Update All" button stick around even though all updates were already installed. https://i.imgur.com/p9QoCqZ.png https://i.imgur.com/p9QoCqZ.png - Earlier today, though it didn't lend itself to screenshots, my Xcode "Install" vs "Installing" button that couldn't decide what mode it wanted to be in and just bounced back and forth instead. Why choose one when you can be both! - The "Check for Unfinished Downloads" menu. Do you know what happens when a download doesn't finish? Or why it's not presented in a sane way in the normal UI? Me neither. Instead of gracefully handling errors, let's choose to bury them in a secret menu that people will happen upon via StackOverflow searches when their installation keeps failing with no indication of why. https://i.imgur.com/xkgP0lc.png https://i.imgur.com/xkgP0lc.png A+ design work right there. Excellent choices.
- lips 11y ago

anonbanker 11y ago

Windows handles maybe an eighth of the hardware that works in Linux. Visual Studio is nice, if you're not writing in Rust, Perl 6, Ruby, Objective C, D, Scala, Smalltalk...

FireBeyond 11y ago
And what IDE on Linux handles all those, without installing 30+ plugins?
- anonbanker 11y ago
  Certainly not Visual Studio. Maybe it'll be taken seriously again if it were ported to the platforms where development is happening nowadays.

rmc 11y ago

> There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. Remember Antennagate? The iPhone 4 had a serious hardware fault that significantly degraded it's signal. Jobs himself was the one who said to a customer "You're holding it wrong"

smrtinsert 11y ago

The cult of jobs exemplified. There were absolutely issues under Jobs, but somehow his sheen made people ignore them.