6 ms·

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

by 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!
- lmm 11y ago
  That may have been by design.
- addicted 11y ago
  iTunes was awesome on Windows when it came out (until about 4.0?). Compared to its contemporaries, Music Match, which was a bloated piece of junk, and Winamp 2.x which while awesome, had a steep learning curve to get really useful (J for the win) and had an extremely unpleasant UI.
  - Alupis 11y ago
    > iTunes was awesome on Windows when it came out It forced a bundled QuickTime install (still does I believe), and back then, it tried hard to become the default media player on your system (even reverting your "no" choice after updates). This led many people to remove QuickTime, only to discover now their iTunes refused to work. It would fail halfway through sync's and upgrades of iDevices routinely, had a generally pretty buggy interface that wasn't very responsive most of the time. It's iDevice backup process was cumbersome for normal users, and often failed without the user knowing (leading to very upset individuals when they needed to restore but couldn't). Now it seems every new version redesigns the UI in major ways, causing even long term users to not know what to click, etc... If you really just listen to music, maybe it's fine. For all other purposes, it was/is horrible, however I can't complain because it generated quite a lot of work for my side repair/contract business back then.
    - baldfat 11y ago
      > iTunes was awesome on Windows when it came out Whip the Lama's A WinAmp is still better.
  - vacri 11y ago
    I had whatever version was around when the video ipods came around (and a bodgy bit of hardware that was). I couldn't sort videos the way I wanted to - itunes says that that file extension means "tv episode" instead of "movie"? Sorry, it's a tv episode. Not to mention the terrible UI with tiny targets that doesn't blend in with the user's desktop theming. Maybe that was v4+, but all I remember is hating to use itunes (including managing updates as already mentioned)
  - blakeyrat 11y ago
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  iTunes sucks everywhere. And it's a horrible UX that it's needed for syncing an iPhone. A better UX would be just to plug it in and move things around.
- tbyehl 11y ago
  | You clearly never used iTunes for Windows. IME, every terrible thing about iTunes applies equally to both platforms.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
    It's worse on Windows. The Windows version would hash file names or something. Probably to get the search features working. So once you imported your files you didn't know what was what. The Mac version probably just uses spotlight and file names were always readable.
    - tbyehl 11y ago
      My iTunes library has made several round-trips across platforms and I've never encountered anything like that. My music, apps, books, and podcast files all have consistent, readable naming schemes.
jonknee 11y ago
iLife was very important to Steve, he dedicated a lot of time demoing the apps on stage. He was a huge fan of ripping out all the features of iMovie. Same with iTunes (which has gotten a ton of criticism over the years), he was the one that kept cramming everything under the sun into it. I don't know if he was as passionate about X Code, but he sure liked to brag about having the best development environment. Interface Builder in particular seems right out of Steve Jobs' brain (even if it sucks). Here he is introducing X Code: https://youtu.be/Rh5spZrzu6c?t=59m3s https://youtu.be/Rh5spZrzu6c?t=59m3s
- agumonkey 11y ago
  There are old videos of him speaking about development environment at NeXT (against Sun). Sir Steve did like allowing 'creation'.
- gearoidoc 11y ago
  Interface Builder is superb once you get the hang of it.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    I won't start a religious war here, but IB is awesome in demos and less awesome in real world. Versioning alone is enough to make you go crazy (especially back in the .nib days!).
    - gearoidoc 11y ago
      I understand both sides of the argument - it took me considerable time to wrap me head around IB and for the longest time I just assumed I simply wouldn't "get it". Interested to how you do versioning on UI with or without IB though. Personally I just maintain branches until an agreed upon design is in place.
  - rqebmm 11y ago
    It does a great job of getting you from zero to an app, but it breaks down terribly once you try to do anything custom with it. The fact that it hides code from the developer drives me nuts.

by pbreit 11y ago

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!
lmm 11y ago
That may have been by design.
addicted 11y ago
iTunes was awesome on Windows when it came out (until about 4.0?). Compared to its contemporaries, Music Match, which was a bloated piece of junk, and Winamp 2.x which while awesome, had a steep learning curve to get really useful (J for the win) and had an extremely unpleasant UI.
- Alupis 11y ago
  > iTunes was awesome on Windows when it came out It forced a bundled QuickTime install (still does I believe), and back then, it tried hard to become the default media player on your system (even reverting your "no" choice after updates). This led many people to remove QuickTime, only to discover now their iTunes refused to work. It would fail halfway through sync's and upgrades of iDevices routinely, had a generally pretty buggy interface that wasn't very responsive most of the time. It's iDevice backup process was cumbersome for normal users, and often failed without the user knowing (leading to very upset individuals when they needed to restore but couldn't). Now it seems every new version redesigns the UI in major ways, causing even long term users to not know what to click, etc... If you really just listen to music, maybe it's fine. For all other purposes, it was/is horrible, however I can't complain because it generated quite a lot of work for my side repair/contract business back then.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    > iTunes was awesome on Windows when it came out Whip the Lama's A WinAmp is still better.
- vacri 11y ago
  I had whatever version was around when the video ipods came around (and a bodgy bit of hardware that was). I couldn't sort videos the way I wanted to - itunes says that that file extension means "tv episode" instead of "movie"? Sorry, it's a tv episode. Not to mention the terrible UI with tiny targets that doesn't blend in with the user's desktop theming. Maybe that was v4+, but all I remember is hating to use itunes (including managing updates as already mentioned)
- blakeyrat 11y ago
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
iTunes sucks everywhere. And it's a horrible UX that it's needed for syncing an iPhone. A better UX would be just to plug it in and move things around.
tbyehl 11y ago
| You clearly never used iTunes for Windows. IME, every terrible thing about iTunes applies equally to both platforms.
- 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
  It's worse on Windows. The Windows version would hash file names or something. Probably to get the search features working. So once you imported your files you didn't know what was what. The Mac version probably just uses spotlight and file names were always readable.
  - tbyehl 11y ago
    My iTunes library has made several round-trips across platforms and I've never encountered anything like that. My music, apps, books, and podcast files all have consistent, readable naming schemes.

jonknee 11y ago

iLife was very important to Steve, he dedicated a lot of time demoing the apps on stage. He was a huge fan of ripping out all the features of iMovie. Same with iTunes (which has gotten a ton of criticism over the years), he was the one that kept cramming everything under the sun into it. I don't know if he was as passionate about X Code, but he sure liked to brag about having the best development environment. Interface Builder in particular seems right out of Steve Jobs' brain (even if it sucks). Here he is introducing X Code: https://youtu.be/Rh5spZrzu6c?t=59m3s https://youtu.be/Rh5spZrzu6c?t=59m3s

agumonkey 11y ago
There are old videos of him speaking about development environment at NeXT (against Sun). Sir Steve did like allowing 'creation'.
gearoidoc 11y ago
Interface Builder is superb once you get the hang of it.
- jonknee 11y ago
  I won't start a religious war here, but IB is awesome in demos and less awesome in real world. Versioning alone is enough to make you go crazy (especially back in the .nib days!).
  - gearoidoc 11y ago
    I understand both sides of the argument - it took me considerable time to wrap me head around IB and for the longest time I just assumed I simply wouldn't "get it". Interested to how you do versioning on UI with or without IB though. Personally I just maintain branches until an agreed upon design is in place.
- rqebmm 11y ago
  It does a great job of getting you from zero to an app, but it breaks down terribly once you try to do anything custom with it. The fact that it hides code from the developer drives me nuts.