4 ms·

Am I a jerk if I say "and what?" Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm getting old and crotchety. But listening to and reading the same old things about Apple over and

Am I a jerk if I say "and what?" Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm getting old and crotchety. But listening to and reading the same old things about Apple over and over (and over and over) again is getting really, really old. "Apple might not invent much but they take things and perfect them!" "Steve Jobs was a genius" And my personal least favourite: "Apple is so successful because they can combine the software and hardware into a single whole" Maybe some or all of that is true, but I'd estimate that at least 5% of what I read/hear in a day is about the genius of Apple. That's partially my own fault for being so into tech of course, but how did we end up here? This is not me hating on Steve Jobs or Apple. I just don't understand how people can keep wanting to talk about the same thing ad infinitum. These are things my drunken non-tech friends try to convince me of when they feel like "dropping some knowledge". I don't mean for this to be a rant at all. I just remember a time when folks in tech circles gave praise for folks building really cool, novel shit. The article above is proof of Apple getting praised for that once upon a time, but how many times can we revisit this? Even at the time Apple did the iPod and just moved right on doing other cool things. Now I just feel like we're driving on a road to nowhere viewed through a rear-view mirror with rose-tinted glasses. Wasn't that why Steve got rid of all the heritage Macs when he went back in '97? I expect to get down-voted to oblivion for this, and I get that it's for good reason. I'm definitely getting crotchety, then. But we really did build and discuss really cool things once upon a time. I miss those days.

kem 10y ago
Not just you. I have similar sentiments, if not exactly the same. To me, the ipod was a double-edged sword, because I felt like it introduced, or at least reinforced, many UI choices that are actually very poor. The onion parody of the keyboardless laptop (http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no--14299 http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary...) is funny precisely because it's true. I'd argue that Apple's UI choices have been popular as much for creating a cache of sophistication as for actually being useful. Binding multiple functions to the same physical element on the ipod was useful to an extent, but then they went overboard at some point. They were always more difficult to use than they should have been, and to me, they were overhyped. I own a mac which has been good to me, so I'm not totally anti-Apple. But I prefer other OS GUIs, and am often confused why Apple doesn't get called more on their over-minimalism in design. There's such a zeitgeist of minimalism in general in design that no one really questions whether it goes too far sometimes.
xigency 10y ago
You might not be a jerk but you are off-target. This 15 year-old NYT piece with the iPod announcement, something that ballooned to gigantic sales and forming the base of a more influential contemporary product line, the iPhone, shows how expectations and reactions were not what you just described. Over 15 years, this company has made massive profits through brilliant sales and marginally better products, and it started with the iPod. There have been times that Apple has almost gone under. These last 15 years have been something completely different.

kem 10y ago

Not just you. I have similar sentiments, if not exactly the same. To me, the ipod was a double-edged sword, because I felt like it introduced, or at least reinforced, many UI choices that are actually very poor. The onion parody of the keyboardless laptop (http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no--14299 http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary...) is funny precisely because it's true. I'd argue that Apple's UI choices have been popular as much for creating a cache of sophistication as for actually being useful. Binding multiple functions to the same physical element on the ipod was useful to an extent, but then they went overboard at some point. They were always more difficult to use than they should have been, and to me, they were overhyped. I own a mac which has been good to me, so I'm not totally anti-Apple. But I prefer other OS GUIs, and am often confused why Apple doesn't get called more on their over-minimalism in design. There's such a zeitgeist of minimalism in general in design that no one really questions whether it goes too far sometimes.

xigency 10y ago

You might not be a jerk but you are off-target. This 15 year-old NYT piece with the iPod announcement, something that ballooned to gigantic sales and forming the base of a more influential contemporary product line, the iPhone, shows how expectations and reactions were not what you just described. Over 15 years, this company has made massive profits through brilliant sales and marginally better products, and it started with the iPod. There have been times that Apple has almost gone under. These last 15 years have been something completely different.