4 ms·

Steve Jobs would probably very upset with what Apple has become

17 points by Yhippa 10y ago

Juliate 10y ago
Or he probably wouldn't. We don't know. And either way, it does not matter. Either way, it won't/wouldn't change anything. As all things do, Apple evolves.
busterarm 10y ago
I'd hate to have to live up to the spectre of Steve Jobs. Maybe we shouldn't care about satisfying the dead. They're not around to care anymore. This post is the equivalent level of discourse as saying he's turning in his grave.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
I'm not convinced that constant, continuous innovation is really necessary all the time. I mean, we're talking about an industry where the two most popular code editors still used today were written in 1976. Does every new Macbook need to be a "revolution" in design? I imagine most people are okay with the idea of "last year's model but thinner/lighter/faster/stronger", up to a point. People hold on to their six year-old Macbook Pros and their 10 year-old Thinkpads because they're reliable. It seems to me that the bigger backlash is against Apple's attempted "innovation" which felt gimmicky and unnecessary.
- SocratesV 10y ago
  Late 2008 Aluminum 13'' Macbook here. Going to upgrade. Can't really understand all the fuss. It's Apple. Making this polemic decisions has been their bread & butter for a long time, always dropping standards that have peaked for new ones. Causes a pain in the short term, yes, but it's certainly not something new.
  - Yetanfou 10y ago
    Well, the thing is they're getting 'better' and 'better' at dropping standards. They drop things which still see a lot of use, for which there are no viable alternatives which perform at least as well as the current standard. It is almost as if they're trying for some form of abstract 'perfection' as defined by the dictum that 'Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away'. While nice in theory, in practice people buy computers to perform mundane tasks with 'imperfect' hardware with odd interfaces like HDMI, SD or analogue audio. This might go against the purist's dream of a perfect world but it is the one we're living in, warts and all. If you want to buy a computer as a personal statement you may be willing to live with the restrictions such 'perfection' brings with it, but those who want to upload their photos are left out in the cold. Yes, they can use an adapter or some sort of dongle but surely that is even less 'perfect'?
    - grzm 10y ago
      You bring up some interesting points. I think we all agree we want to be able to make progress on connectors. The question is how we do so. - Before something is widely adopted, how do we decide which connectors to use on future products? - How do we transition from one to another? Some thoughts that came to mind when reading your comment: What did people do before computers had HDMI ports? SD slots? How about audio systems that have 1/4" plugs (not 3.5mm)?
perlpimp 10y ago
Its either they are asleep at the helm or are furiously working on something else, like VR, not too focusing product renewal of current product lineup... It is an essence of a magic trick. You follow left hand while right one is about to surprise you, isn't it? I hope they are working on something extraordinary.
- no_wave 10y ago
  They haven't done anything remotely extraordinary since Steve J left. I don't know why people are so charitable towards Apple when everything indicates it's a company that's no longer what it was. To quote someone, "revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business".
aikah 10y ago
When it comes to the Macbook Pro, something like the Razor Blade laptop keyboard would have been much much better than getting rid the upper row. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0talSSC5ToI/hqdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0talSSC5ToI/hqdefault.jpg Imagine the screen on the right of the size of an iphone. I would have opened a much larger set of possibilities. Want to test and develop iphone apps ? want to use this for video or music production ? or want the num pad back ? The num pad is redundant yet useful, and replaced by a screen the surface is big enough to offer interesting possibilities for pro users.
omarforgotpwd 10y ago
Yeah I'm sure Jobs would be so upset to see that Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world. I'm sure he would think the fact that Apple now makes a computer you can wear on your wrist is "meh" and the new MacBook Pro should have kept the functions keys.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
drinchev 10y ago
If Steve Jobs was still Apple's CEO, the only thing that is certain is that he would keep the Skeuromorpihsm UI. For anything else there is no proof.
heisenbit 10y ago
"While Jobs was explaining why he thought old tech giants had fallen from grace, he probably wasn’t thinking about Apple at that time. " I doubt that. Just read Ed Catmull's "Creativity Inc." (highly recommended) and all his thoughts that went into making Pixar (Steve's other company) sustainable and returning a fallen Disney animation around. The question what went wrong elsewhere is central to that. Also there are the early years of Apple where Apple fell from grace. Steve was acutely aware of the fragility of his businesses and wanted to protect them. Steve knew about the critical importance of culture. The spaceship follows his earlier work on the Pixar building. Enabling people to come together and build something great, insanely great. Apples products tended to deliver value seen from the customer perspective. Proper waterproof phones is a step forward that does not look great, is hard to do, is hard to charge for but delivers value every single day. The "insanely great" perceivable customer value was missing in the presentation of the last macs for a lot of reasons (memory, keyboard, cable integration with iPhone out of the box, mag-safe, extension cord, higher price etc.).
- SocratesV 10y ago
  For me knowing that soon, once peripherals makers and also cable makers catch-up, I'll be able to use just one type of cable to connect to anything (and I'm assuming cable makers will stop doing sub-par ones and just stick to Thunderbolt 3 capable), is probably a huge win. No more USB/HDMI/MagSafe mix (with the different ports on the peripheral side to increase complexity). After that, wireless.
  - erichocean 10y ago
    > I'll be able to use just one type of cable to connect to anything If you're talking about USB 3, sorry to burst your bubble, but you won't. There are a lot of different varieties of USB 3 cables. You're thinking of "connector", and yes, the USB 3 connector is now used for wildly different things. Cables are different even though they have the same connector.
    - SocratesV 10y ago
      Please read my comment again, I did say: > I'm assuming cable makers will stop doing sub-par ones and just stick to Thunderbolt 3 capable
snowwrestler 10y ago
Why? Because a bunch of reporters are shitting on a new Apple product they haven't even tried yet? I'd imagine he was pretty familiar with that phenomenon. Remember "then don't hold it that way?" And they gave bumpers to iPhone 4 customers for a few months to shut up the press. BTW the iPhone 4 sold very well, with very high consumer scores, for 2 more years after the bumper program ended. Steve Jobs was a guy who spent most of the time between 2001 and 2007 releasing incremental updates to existing products. I have to wonder how many of those keynotes this writer has seen. Most would be incredibly boring and pointless to view today. "Wow, 802.11g has the speed of 802.11a, but uses the backward-compatible 2.4 GHz band." This was like a 5 minute section in multiple keynotes.

17 points by Yhippa 10y ago

Or he probably wouldn't. We don't know. And either way, it does not matter. Either way, it won't/wouldn't change anything. As all things do, Apple evolves.

busterarm 10y ago

I'd hate to have to live up to the spectre of Steve Jobs. Maybe we shouldn't care about satisfying the dead. They're not around to care anymore. This post is the equivalent level of discourse as saying he's turning in his grave.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

I'm not convinced that constant, continuous innovation is really necessary all the time. I mean, we're talking about an industry where the two most popular code editors still used today were written in 1976. Does every new Macbook need to be a "revolution" in design? I imagine most people are okay with the idea of "last year's model but thinner/lighter/faster/stronger", up to a point. People hold on to their six year-old Macbook Pros and their 10 year-old Thinkpads because they're reliable. It seems to me that the bigger backlash is against Apple's attempted "innovation" which felt gimmicky and unnecessary.

SocratesV 10y ago
Late 2008 Aluminum 13'' Macbook here. Going to upgrade. Can't really understand all the fuss. It's Apple. Making this polemic decisions has been their bread & butter for a long time, always dropping standards that have peaked for new ones. Causes a pain in the short term, yes, but it's certainly not something new.
- Yetanfou 10y ago
  Well, the thing is they're getting 'better' and 'better' at dropping standards. They drop things which still see a lot of use, for which there are no viable alternatives which perform at least as well as the current standard. It is almost as if they're trying for some form of abstract 'perfection' as defined by the dictum that 'Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away'. While nice in theory, in practice people buy computers to perform mundane tasks with 'imperfect' hardware with odd interfaces like HDMI, SD or analogue audio. This might go against the purist's dream of a perfect world but it is the one we're living in, warts and all. If you want to buy a computer as a personal statement you may be willing to live with the restrictions such 'perfection' brings with it, but those who want to upload their photos are left out in the cold. Yes, they can use an adapter or some sort of dongle but surely that is even less 'perfect'?
  - grzm 10y ago
    You bring up some interesting points. I think we all agree we want to be able to make progress on connectors. The question is how we do so. - Before something is widely adopted, how do we decide which connectors to use on future products? - How do we transition from one to another? Some thoughts that came to mind when reading your comment: What did people do before computers had HDMI ports? SD slots? How about audio systems that have 1/4" plugs (not 3.5mm)?

perlpimp 10y ago

Its either they are asleep at the helm or are furiously working on something else, like VR, not too focusing product renewal of current product lineup... It is an essence of a magic trick. You follow left hand while right one is about to surprise you, isn't it? I hope they are working on something extraordinary.

no_wave 10y ago
They haven't done anything remotely extraordinary since Steve J left. I don't know why people are so charitable towards Apple when everything indicates it's a company that's no longer what it was. To quote someone, "revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business".

aikah 10y ago

When it comes to the Macbook Pro, something like the Razor Blade laptop keyboard would have been much much better than getting rid the upper row. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0talSSC5ToI/hqdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0talSSC5ToI/hqdefault.jpg Imagine the screen on the right of the size of an iphone. I would have opened a much larger set of possibilities. Want to test and develop iphone apps ? want to use this for video or music production ? or want the num pad back ? The num pad is redundant yet useful, and replaced by a screen the surface is big enough to offer interesting possibilities for pro users.

omarforgotpwd 10y ago

Yeah I'm sure Jobs would be so upset to see that Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world. I'm sure he would think the fact that Apple now makes a computer you can wear on your wrist is "meh" and the new MacBook Pro should have kept the functions keys.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

drinchev 10y ago

If Steve Jobs was still Apple's CEO, the only thing that is certain is that he would keep the Skeuromorpihsm UI. For anything else there is no proof.

heisenbit 10y ago

"While Jobs was explaining why he thought old tech giants had fallen from grace, he probably wasn’t thinking about Apple at that time. " I doubt that. Just read Ed Catmull's "Creativity Inc." (highly recommended) and all his thoughts that went into making Pixar (Steve's other company) sustainable and returning a fallen Disney animation around. The question what went wrong elsewhere is central to that. Also there are the early years of Apple where Apple fell from grace. Steve was acutely aware of the fragility of his businesses and wanted to protect them. Steve knew about the critical importance of culture. The spaceship follows his earlier work on the Pixar building. Enabling people to come together and build something great, insanely great. Apples products tended to deliver value seen from the customer perspective. Proper waterproof phones is a step forward that does not look great, is hard to do, is hard to charge for but delivers value every single day. The "insanely great" perceivable customer value was missing in the presentation of the last macs for a lot of reasons (memory, keyboard, cable integration with iPhone out of the box, mag-safe, extension cord, higher price etc.).

SocratesV 10y ago
For me knowing that soon, once peripherals makers and also cable makers catch-up, I'll be able to use just one type of cable to connect to anything (and I'm assuming cable makers will stop doing sub-par ones and just stick to Thunderbolt 3 capable), is probably a huge win. No more USB/HDMI/MagSafe mix (with the different ports on the peripheral side to increase complexity). After that, wireless.
- erichocean 10y ago
  > I'll be able to use just one type of cable to connect to anything If you're talking about USB 3, sorry to burst your bubble, but you won't. There are a lot of different varieties of USB 3 cables. You're thinking of "connector", and yes, the USB 3 connector is now used for wildly different things. Cables are different even though they have the same connector.
  - SocratesV 10y ago
    Please read my comment again, I did say: > I'm assuming cable makers will stop doing sub-par ones and just stick to Thunderbolt 3 capable

snowwrestler 10y ago

Why? Because a bunch of reporters are shitting on a new Apple product they haven't even tried yet? I'd imagine he was pretty familiar with that phenomenon. Remember "then don't hold it that way?" And they gave bumpers to iPhone 4 customers for a few months to shut up the press. BTW the iPhone 4 sold very well, with very high consumer scores, for 2 more years after the bumper program ended. Steve Jobs was a guy who spent most of the time between 2001 and 2007 releasing incremental updates to existing products. I have to wonder how many of those keynotes this writer has seen. Most would be incredibly boring and pointless to view today. "Wow, 802.11g has the speed of 802.11a, but uses the backward-compatible 2.4 GHz band." This was like a 5 minute section in multiple keynotes.