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Apple’s 2016 in review

• adjkant 10y ago
  If you're browsing this and say "Great, another developer article shitting on Apple after the Pro release who thinks they have figured out everything about the company", please do read this. I was truly surprised at the depth, fairness, and considerations in this article. I'm very curious to see how Apple plays out in the next few years and will likely look back at this article to compare, if I remember to. As a developer, I wonder if making a Mac Developer model could be an interesting path, and if it would make financial sense in any way given the idea of "power users".
  • richardboegli 10y ago
    But the Macbook Pro was meant to be for Power Users?
    • na85 10y ago
      The "Pro" moniker has simply meant "more expensive" for years now.
    • tsujamin 10y ago
      Pretty sure the Pro stands for Profitable, Problematic or Prohibiting; could be all three
    • matt4077 10y ago
      I have no idea what these self-annoited "professionals" do, but it's actually quite difficult to get the MacBook Pro to its limits. Doing webdev or using Xcode it's hard to ever notice any delay. But maybe I'm just a noob who isn't professional enough to suddenly discover that life just isn't worth it without 32GB of RAM.
      • lsadam0 10y ago
        Virtual Machines. If you use VM's, 16gb is likely going to be a problem. I, quite easily, hit it all the time. It has nothing to do with being 'professional enough'. The nature of a dev's daily work can vary greatly with what kind of dev they are doing.
        • yoz-y 10y ago
          Bollocks, I have a 16GB ram MBP from 2014, running a VM all the time and compiling on both the VM and the host OS. No problems there. The 32GB might be more comfortable for some, but I have hard time figuring out how something so exclusive has now become a necessity.
          • lsadam0 10y ago
            > The nature of a dev's daily work can vary greatly with what kind of dev they are doing. This was a very important part of your comment. It's good that 16gb isn't an issue for you, but for some of us, it is.
            • yoz-y 10y ago
              One thing I would like to know is how we got here - that some NEED 32GB of RAM in a laptop. Scouring the web for some time shows me that in 2015 it was quite hard to get a non-gaming laptop with 32GB of ram. Now, there are quite a lot of voices that cry that it is some bare minimum. To me it seems that more people now prefer laptops to desktops and it is annoying to sacrifice performance for portability. The lack of a truly powerful desktop Mac definitely is not helping in this regard either.
              • lsadam0 10y ago
                I don't really disagree with you. I'm not a big fan of laptops at all, but they have become necessary in my life. I would prefer a desktop. That said, I use a 2014 MBP and feel it's already as portable as I need. If the 2016 kept the same thickness but offered 32gb, I would have been happy.
              • 10y ago
      • dtougas 10y ago
        For me, it is not just what the MacBook Pro can do now, but what it will be able to do in three or four years. When I buy my computers, I am looking for something that will last several years. That means having the memory and storage capacity for the future, not just what I need today. Apple is making these things like iPhones, and probably hoping that we will buy a new one every two years. I have older MacBook Pros that I upgraded the RAM, and upgraded the storage (both capacity and speed), and they still work strong. When I am done with them, I pass them down to my kids.
      • alphonsegaston 10y ago
        As an artist/illustrator, I'm often working with multiple, large (1GB+) files when preparing stuff for print. Photoshop eats up 8GB of ram doing just about nothing, so when you try to bulk apply some rendering action, export files, or hell, even use their brush engine with something besides the default tool presets, the current gen macs don't cut it. And this doesn't into account running a Cintiq and another display, or their awful integrated graphics setup, etc, etc I'm currently looking at gaming Desktops to replace my current setup because those are the only things with enough horsepower anymore. It sucks because I feel like I'm going to have to divide up a lot of the scripted tasks I have to make my workflow more efficient, given the lack of a real Unix environment on Windows.
      • Stubb 10y ago
        It's a non-starter for CUDA development, which is important to anyone doing serious GPU programming.
      • exadeci 10y ago
        You got your answer in your question: "webdev". If you use After Effects it's recommended to allow it 8GB of ram so you have 8 left, your browser takes 3 to 5GB, you now have 3 to 5 left but usually you have photoshop that needs to be running too so remove 2GB and now you are really tight on memory.
    • wyclif 10y ago
      The MacBookPro now seems like a sideline for Apple. They put a lot of design and development into the iPhone because they sell so many of them. It makes sense from a business standpoint, but it's disappointing if you're a developer or power user.
      • simonh 10y ago
        If so, why did they bother designing and engineering in an entirely new touch-based interface in the form of the touch bar, using a watch-OS based subsystem, and update all the integrated apps to support it? That seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a sideline product. If that were the case surely they'd just have upped the specs on the existing designs.
        • wyclif 10y ago
          But the Touch Bar feels like a bolt-on "innovation", i.e. something Apple did to prove that they are still innovating and driving sales, rather than refinements to the MBP experience (the "P" in MBP) and more power. My point is that Apple knows that laptops are a declining market. Still, the professionals who use MBPs drive adoption of other Apple products.
• panic 10y ago
  How do they fix this? They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users. Engage with the influencers. Sit down and find out what their developers need that the current products don’t offer. Find out what is making their users unhappy. Asking people what they want will give you predictable results: complaints about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features that demo well. You'll end up pulled in a million directions as you try to account for everyone's feedback. The traditional Apple solution was to give a single idealized user — Steve Jobs — the power to improve his own experience. Nobody can replace Steve, but I think someone (or some group) inside Apple needs to fill this role before their products can become really great again.
  • ams6110 10y ago
    Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they want, they'd say 'faster horses'"
    • mrmondo 10y ago
      Exactly, I find myself needing to use this quote all too often but it is a wonderfully well considered statement on product engineering.
      • jay_kyburz 10y ago
        Really? I have a lot of hay, and it grows in my field for free. Horse manure goes well on my roses. I don't have petrol. I really did want a faster horse.
        • redler 10y ago
          You're in luck: Maximum-speed horses are indeed still available.
          • mrmondo 10y ago
            Indeed, if you have the money - you can buy racing speed horses and in many countries it's still legal to ride them on the road while abiding standard road rules and avoiding highways. (The term 'Enterprise Horse' came to mind and I had a giggle)
• lowbloodsugar 10y ago
  In 2009 I bought my first Apple product: an 8GB 13" MacBook Pro that cost $3000 ($1000 for the extra 4gb, like a dumbass). Quite soon after I got an iPhone 3GS. Now every computer in the house (family of four) is an Apple. Every phone is an Apple. Even AirPlay was an influencing factor in selecting a hi-fi receiver (HTR7065). Apple TVs sit next to actual TVs. Yesterday I replaced our fleet of TimeCapsules and Airports with Lumas. Despite their problems they are still better than the Apple product. Rumor has it Apple isn't working on Airports any more. Today, I began looking for a replacement for the 2009 MBP, which my 11yo son now uses. I started by looking at Microsoft Surface. In the present, Apple doesn't meet my needs and as I look to the future, when I will need a new machine, the MacBook "Pro" is more like a MacBook "Bling". Apple used to be an ecosystem. Now its just incremental phone updates.
  • seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    If you think MBPs have problems, it's nothing compared to the issues I've had with Surface. Microsoft really needs to execute much better in addition to creating innovative experiences, firmware and driver meltdowns aren't fun. Heck, Apple has become the "conservative" choice for a computer that is boring but will work with fewer problems. How we got here I have no idea.
    • BinaryIdiot 10y ago
      > If you think MBPs have problems, it's nothing compared to the issues I've had with Surface. Microsoft really needs to execute much better in addition to creating innovative experiences, firmware and driver meltdowns aren't fun. See, I've had the exact opposite experience with my Surface. Most of the people I know much prefer MacBooks but are exploring the possibility of switching to something in the surface line. I know some of my friends had initial issues with the Surface Book but now they love it after much needed updates. I think sometimes Microsoft pushes hardware out a little too early but, at least in my experience, they always make it a great experience even if it comes after several updates. But like Apple products it's usually best to wait until after the initial kinks work themselves out anyway.
• quasse 10y ago
  The day Apple makes a power cord that doesn't have a cable sheath with the consistency and durability of silly putty is the day I will recognize them as back on track. It's a small detail, but the power cord is the one part of the computer that users have no choice but to interact with every day and they've been ignoring the problems with them for the better part of half a decade. Every Mac at work either has detached and frayed around the power connector strain relief, or looks like an extremely precise samurai has made tens of small cuts in the jacket of the cable.
  • ams6110 10y ago
    I hear this a lot, but I still use a 2009 MacBook Air with the original "magsafe" power cord and it's fine.
    • DashRattlesnake 10y ago
      Me too, but I had to learn the "right way" to wind up the cable (make a little strain release loop before you start winding the rest around the clips). I shouldn't have had to learn that though, since it should have been designed to be durable enough to work the obvious/intuitive way.
      • BinaryIdiot 10y ago
        See, I have two cables that I've never wound up, one is on the verge of tearing and the othaerntore years ago. I didn't handle them roughly as far as I know and all of my PCs have never had such an issue. Even if every user was using it wrong I would still call it an Apple issue as their solution is obviously not meeting the needs of their users.
    • jimboj 10y ago
      I have Apple cables that old that still have nothing wrong with them. I think it was maybe about 4-5 years ago that they switched the materials, every cable I have had since then has started to disintegrate after a few months. In my office cupboard we have 5 mighty mice that have all worn through after 6 months use and we have stopped buying official Apple lightning cables.
• hogrammer 10y ago
  I switched from Mac Pro to PC a few months ago. We needed NVIDIA and running some hack over thunderbolt isn't a real option, despite what the Apple Zealots say.
  • intoverflow2 10y ago
    Recently made the same decision myself to use CUDA too. After months of considering hacked open thunderbolt enclosures that nearly cost the same as a PC anyway I just switched. I now measure my 3D render times in seconds not double digit minutes. There is no doubt in my mind that if the trashcan mac had Nvidia GPUs I would have just saved up and spent over double I spent on this PC even if it had worse performance. I've been a mac user for 17 years and didn't make this decision lightly.
    • exodust 10y ago
      Can I ask what sort of rendering you're doing? Do you mean animation or still images... what software? I find that between different software you can get vastly differing render times. Also, for really serious and large work aren't people using render farms now anyway?
      • intoverflow2 10y ago
        Doing animation and still (admittedly haven't produced anything yet as I've only had this setup running for a week) mostly motion graphics and advertising focused. I'm working in Cinema 4D and Octane render (render engine built from the ground up for GPU) with a single GTX 1080, coming from a 2.7 i5 MBP with no dedicated GPU the difference isn't even comparable. Good idea of what you can expect from a single 1080+Octane is in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGXmsUnbPCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGXmsUnbPCM The industry is at a bit of a crossroads from what I can see, of course huge studios have investments in render farms and CPU based tech but for individuals and <10 person studios it's all moving towards GPU rendering. Being able to run a renderer on your desktop machine that can show the end result in near real time completely changes your workflow. It's no longer just using experience to make guesses with lighting and materials then waiting minutes to see if your hypothesis was correct.
• firloop 10y ago
  Mirror: http://archive.is/aVNM3 http://archive.is/aVNM3
• hoodoof 10y ago
  Apple has forgotten how to compete in the computer industry. In the old days there was a ruthless and relentless refresh cycle with manufacturers working hard and fast to trump each other with more advanced products. Apple appears to simply no longer have that cycle as part of its business DNA, and no longer seems to even understand that is what the computer industry is (or was) about. I am looking ever more favorably at Windows again.
  • Razengan 10y ago
    The new MacBooks outsold all their competitors, so I glean that they still know how to compete: https://intelligence.slice.com/apples-macbook-pro-launch/ https://intelligence.slice.com/apples-macbook-pro-launch/
    • hoodoof 10y ago
      Maybe there was record sales because there was a record number of years since the hardware was last updated. Latent demand = sales. It's certainly not due to the effusive praise of the press.
      • Razengan 10y ago
        Conversely, this could also mean that the "press" and the vocal majority on a few online forums have no bearing on what people out there really want. In almost every discussion about this, you will see some people who have actually purchased — unlike the detractors — these machines and are happy with them. I personally don't see anything bad about the new MacBooks either, except the lack of out-of-the-box compatibility with the new iPhones/EarPods, and their price point in relation to my budget at this current point in time. I will definitely be buying one as soon as I can afford it. Going all USB3/Thunderbolt only is very good, exciting even, and harkens back to 2 decades ago when the very first iMac came out as the first every USB-only computer. The wide color displays have to be seen in person to be appreciated. The battery problems and GPU glitches have been found to be on the software side, iirc, and some of those issues have already been patched.
• aresant 10y ago
  Apple is the world's most profitable business - twice the profits of #2 (JP Morgan Chase) and almost a 4x magnitude over Google.(1) I agree with the author's final assessment - "meets expectations with some areas that need improvement" - and I think this is the key. They are stoking the fire, keeping it burning, but clearly their focus seems to be diminished on their core business. And even companies of this scale need hyper focus to drive what seem like small but obvious improvements, usually executives are faced with two choices: (a) Focus on today's business and unlock maximum value in your product line / distribution. (b) Innovate to turn a corner and plan for tomorrow. I am surprised at how few people attribute the current challenges at Apple to what I suspect is an internal focus on planning for tomorrow. How much more profitable is the iPhone going to get? The smartphone market is approaching saturation (2) So what does the leadership do? Are laptops, imacs, and apple pro's the future? No, they barely represent 9% of Apples sales and have been FLAT for years (3) What about Apple TV & Apple Watch (the "other" category) - those have already grown to 6% of sales - and moving in the right direction. But is that it? My suspicion is that Apple / Tim Cook knows something BIG that we don't that they are going to get PERFECT while they still have the cash fire hose of the iPhone to drive the engine. (1) http://fortune.com/2016/06/08/fortune-500-most-profitable-companies-2016/ http://fortune.com/2016/06/08/fortune-500-most-profitable-co... (2) https://www.cnet.com/news/smartphone-markets-glory-days-are-over-says-analyst/ https://www.cnet.com/news/smartphone-markets-glory-days-are-... (3) http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/26/q1-2016-results/ http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/26/q1-2016-results/
  • tajen 10y ago
    > My suspicion is that Apple / Tim Cook knows something BIG That's what everyone has been hoping for years. That's why I was hung up to the last keynote, up to the last second, hoping for Tim Cook to say "One more thing", and launch a new product line. And the one more thing was, no kidding, Lady Gaga. And everyone is now despairing that there is anything to wait for. At least we have the emoji bar on the keyboard now.
    • rcthompson 10y ago
      Isn't one of the theories that the "something BIG" is Apple becoming a payment processor/bank/whatever financial entity, supported by the presence of a fingerprint reader & secure enclave in all their mobile devices (including laptops courtesy of the Touch Bar)?
• Niksko 10y ago
  I think this is a fair article and it echoes a lot of my sentiments. Something is going wrong over at Apple. No, they're not going to go out of business soon, but I think the sheer volume of criticism they've been receiving (not just from users, but also from noted Apple advocates) is troubling, and they need to do something about it. My standout is the battery case they released a few years ago. The design of that case is just unspeakably hideous. They need somebody with a Jobsian level of ruthlessness, attention to detail and unified vision to steer the ship back in the right direction. Another example here would be the fact (mentioned in this article) that they effectively copied the rest of the market by providing a larger phone. The Apple of old didn't do this. They didn't really follow market trends, they started them. And then to be flummoxed by demand when people responded so positively to smaller phones is baffling to me. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some C level leadership changes some time this year.
  • laichzeit0 10y ago
    > They need somebody with a Jobsian level of ruthlessness, attention to detail and unified vision to steer the ship back in the right direction. This. I buy Apple products not because I'm looking for the latest tech gadget. I want something that feels like a work of art. There are too many products, too many sizes, too many options. Jobs would have told whoever suggested an iPhone Plus that he's a shithead moron. Why am I using Fantastical instead of the default Calendar app? I never did this on iOS 6. Go on their website and you see all sorts of crap acquisition products (Beats) they're selling. I don't want Beats I want Apple! I want premium, exclusive, luxury, high-end, polished tech products that work as simple as toasters.
• jakelarkin 10y ago
  the brand new Macbook Pro has last-generation Intel CPUs. I remember when Jobs announced one of the first Intel Macbook Pros with chips that no other manufacturer had even been given the chance to ship yet.
  • JoachimS 10y ago
    This is a really interesting point. Apple seems to have stopped pushing suppliers as much as they used to.
    • cottsak 10y ago
      It's not an interesting point, because if you do your research, there is no gain to using a Kaby Lake (7th generation) CPU over a "Skylake-U" (6th gen) CPU: Current/2016 13" max-spec i7 MBP uses i7-6567U which scores slightly higher (average single/multi-core geekbench results) than the best dual-core Kaby Lake CPU, being the i7-7500U. https://twitter.com/mattkocaj/status/814090388986175488 https://twitter.com/mattkocaj/status/814090388986175488
  • Strom 10y ago
    Kaby Lake quad-core CPUs aren't a thing yet, so Apple is still shipping the most advanced quad-core CPUs available even today.
  • scott_karana 10y ago
    Admittedly, "Switching a whole product lineup from IBM to Intel" is the sort of multi-billion dollar deal that will give you lots of pull, pre-release goodies, and bulk discounts with a provider. But it's a one-time trick. We can't expect them to do it all the time. You won't, and shouldn't, get preferential treatment for "upgpraded an existing laptop to use the newest model of the same CPU". (Switching to ARM right now could potentially allow for a nice repeat, though)
• patsplat 10y ago
  Somehow despite leading the charge Apple has missed the boat on voice.
  • wklauss 10y ago
    Unlikely. Volume of voice input for Siri probably is still orders of magnitude larger than those Alexa or Google Home handle. It also does so internationally and multilanguage. Once you start looking closely advantage is not really that big. Google, Alexa and Cortana also mishandle queries and they might excel at some tasks but fall short in others. Still a lot of room to improve for everyone, Apple included, but I would argue they are all in a very similar situation.
  • deleted 10y ago
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• ThomPete 10y ago
  The trouble at Apple is one of culture and timing. The ideals of Apple and the timing of their thinking is in many ways out of sync with the rest of the world. This was the same that happened to Microsoft when their lets just create machines with a million different providers and slap our OS on top were surpassed by Apple when Steve Jobs came back. The advantages of Apples vertical integration allowed them to push for radical new hardware design aesthetics when that was craved the most. On top of that a completely different way of pushing product in sync with the OS which allowed them to avoid the issues of backwards compatibility which MS struggled with. Today though in many ways the Apple aesthetic have been commoditized and were it haven't Apple just haven't spent enough time improving (looking at you OSX and Mac) I frankly don't think there is much to do about it for the simple reason that it would require Apple to change it's culture from being a secretive one to being more open. This is where Google have many advantages as it's much more in sync with where the world and technology is heading (Cloud, Deep Learning, web). I don't think Steve would have been able to save Apple either although I think he would have done things a little better. I am a big fan of apples products and own only that but I can see a future, if things doesn't change were I would easily use ex. Android phone.
• deleted 10y ago
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• new299 10y ago
  I feel like Apple are one of the few large SV companies that are producing products for their users. For everyone else the user is a resource that they're selling to advertisers. They've shown they're willing to stand up for user rights. For this reason alone I hope they continue to be successful.
  • Lio 10y ago
    I totally agree with this but at the same time I'm annoyed with the current state of macOS and the Mac product line. The Mac (and maybe the AirPort Extreme) are the only Apple products I really care about or depend on. I'm holding on to my iPhone because Apple have a great strategy with regard to privacy and user rights but I'm not upgrading it because I'm pissed off about the Mac. Pathetic as that is, as a Mac user it's about the only small leverage available. Sadly, I think Tim knows more about business than me. For every disgruntled, Unix loving, Mac user they loose they'll probably add 10 more iOS users for whom emoji are culturally interesting. :(
    • new299 10y ago
      As a UNIX-like system loving dev... I always found macs (running MacOS) a bit frustrating for dev work. It's nice that you have a familiar command structure to work with, but installing software from homebrew/whatever else was always a nightmare. They were nice laptops... but it seems inefficient. So I maintain 2 laptop. A macbook which I basically use for Skype and office work (and use about twice a month), and a cheap Thinkpad running Linux for dev work. When I need more power, I can pull the drive out of the Thinkpad and throw it in a desktop and it just works. So... I think it's kind of hard to make a good case for macbooks as ideal general purpose dev machines. And they were really never meant to be general purpose dev machines. They probably work great for Mac/iOS dev and general purpose applications though.
      • Lio 10y ago
        Each to their own I suppose. I personally don't find homebrew to be a nightmare at all but that is of course anecdotal. You are mistaken if you think that Apple never intended the Mac to be used for general purpose Unix development though, they used to advertise it for that purpose on the science section of their website, before it was removed. https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-science-as-core-market-web-page-deleted https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-science-...
• hoodoof 10y ago
  Apple should spin off the Mac division to be its own company so theoretically the management might give sh*t about competing.
  • Humdeee 10y ago
    After brainstorming what they would call this subset company, it dawned on me that the Mac, as in the Mcintosh (fruit) is an apple. I'm embarrassed to admit I never put the two together. I am not a smart man. They were correct in not naming the iPhone the Granny Smith.
• LargeCompanies 10y ago
  I just got a Google Home speaker and for me it feels like how the iPhone felt in 2007; a revolution in computing! But Apple is so far behind with the horrid Siri it's laughable. I've used Siri almost daily since 2011 and after using Google Now I cant stand to use Siri as her accuracy is 90 percent if lucky vs. her competitors 100 percent.
• _ph_ 10y ago
  A great write up. I wonder, whether Apple just has gotten a bit to large for their current organizational structure. It worked, when Apple had no iOS devices to care for and the attention was divided across much less products. Especially the signs of "sloppiness" point in that direction. At minimum, Apple should create senior positions overlooking individual product categories. Even the rather forgotten iPod business could be larger, if there was a small team focussed on the question: what can we do to make new products people want to buy? A friend was just missing a small (waterproof) iPod which works seamlessly with Apple Music for example The same with the Mac. It is understandable from the view of the company, that iOS is the bigger thing. But, as the article mentions, the Mac is a vital part of the Apple eco system. And the Mac Pro is a vital part of the Mac eco system. You need to support the professional developers to have all the applications for your "non-professional" customers. The best sign, that Apple was surprised by the public reaction to the new MacBook Pro was, that they reacted by reducing the dongle prices. It didn't seem to have thought that people would object at buying a collection of them at full prices. When I bought my G3 iBook, it came with the necessary dongles included. Besides the obvious conceptual issues with the current Mac Pro, the biggest sin was not to update its hardware regularly. Same for the Mac Mini. So there needs to be two things done: - set up senior people for each product to make sure that issues/development for that product/category gets the necessary attention, e.g. people who only care about the mac. - these people need to make sure that each product is updated in set cycles. The iOS devices as well as the operating systems are updated in a yearly cycle. Maybe not as strict as with the iPhone, this should be applied to all products. The releases might shift a bit on parts availability, but the Mac Pro and the Mini have missed several updates of CPUs/GPUs/other hardware. One more thing: while it is understandable that the retina MacBook only has soldered on parts, this is less understandable for the MacBook Pro, and not at all for the Mini, iMac or the Mac Pro. How can you design desktop machines like the iMac, where you have to unglue the screen to get to its internals? I still have my G5 iMac, and that was a nicely designed machine. A mac czar could tell upper management, where clever and efficient production methods stop and making a bad product starts...
• erichocean 10y ago
  Apple is a company that is following the process they learned when Steve ran the show, without any clear understanding of why that process exists. As a result, they are unable to adapt to adapt that process to the external world while remaining true to the underlying principles. What you see is the predictable result: ossified thinking couple with a rigid adherence to "what makes them great". all criticism falls on deaf ears and they'll just continue like this until Tim Cook is gone and they get a product guy back in the heal who can give Apple direction and heart.
  • adamlett 10y ago
    Apple is a company that is following the process they learned when Steve ran the show, without any clear understanding of why that process exists Apple created Apple University years before Steve died, to understand clearly why they became so successful. They even hired a top professor from an Ivy League university to run it. Whatever ails Apple these days is not caused by them not understanding how they became great. It's caused by the lessons of the past not being applicable to the reality of today.
    • tnone 10y ago
      You cannot teach taste and vision. Apple giving up monitors is the clearest sign of that: it's the face of the computer, so much that novices confused it for the computer itself. The Jobs-style answer was the all-in-one iMacs and the monitor-as-a-dock, a computer that wants to be seen. The Cook-style answer is to put somebody else's logo right on their product's display case. Madness.
      • mjolk 10y ago
        For someone that was waiting for this hardware refresh to get a Macbook Pro and a new Cinema Display, I was surprised that the keyboard became less utilitarian and the display more-so.
    • phaed 10y ago
      Nope you don't get to pass the buck to "the world has changed". Nothing has changed. Power users are still there needing the best machines they can get. Apple is the one that has changed to cater to the lowest common denominator, this is a lack of understanding.
• Waterluvian 10y ago
  This may be rather ignorant of how the motivational structure of a large company works, but is it possible that some of these issues, like missed ship dates, is caused by a lessening of the amount of fear that trickles down the hierarchy? Wasn't Jobs the kind of person you were terrified of letting down and doesn't that kind of thing trickle downward?
• twblalock 10y ago
  I remember feeling the same way about Apple back in late 2012/early 2013. I was ready to replace my iPhone 4, and Apple was only making phones with small screens, while the market trend was for larger screens. Then Apple Maps came out, and it was the worst release I can remember Apple ever doing. Android seemed to be pulling ahead in a lot of ways. A lot of people were saying that Tim Cook wasn't capable of running the company, and that the magic died with Steve Jobs. The stock price started to slide. As we all know, Apple recovered from its bad release of Maps and revamped iOS, the stock price recovered, and there was much rejoicing. So, it's important to have a sense of perspective about these things. Apple certainly seems like it has slowed down lately, but they have more resources available to improve the situation than any other company in the world. I suspect the current issues are caused by internal organizational problems rather than a lack of product vision.
  • dolguldur 10y ago
    >> I suspect the current issues are caused by internal organizational problems rather than a lack of product vision. Absolutely. If they'd figure out how to scale up such that they're able to fix the most annoying bugs filed via their bug radar, macOS would be a much better product. The sad thing is that at some point there were more and more bugs and UX problems which I didn't even bother reporting since they were so obvious that everyone using the OS should notice. So apparently they're not able to scale in that regard. Even completely isolated apps like Preview.app are affected.
  • mergy 10y ago
    This was when I stepped away from Apple equipment and, for the first time, bought new phones and laptops that were non-Apple brands and I haven't gone back.
• bangonkeyboard 10y ago
  > Want us to think you’re still serious about the Mac, Apple? Show us parity of capabilities between the two platforms, at least on your core product sets... Be careful what you wish for. The primary problem with Sierra with respect to PDFs is that Apple chose to rewrite the PDFKit framework in macOS 10.12 and it broke a number of things that PDF-related developers relied upon... Apple wants to use a common foundation for both iOS and macOS. However, it was released way too early, and for the first time (at least in my experience) Apple deprecated several features without caring about compatibility. And to make things worse, lots of former features are now broken or not implemented at all, meaning that we had to add lots of workarounds or implement stuff on our own. And there’s still work left to be done. 10.12.2 introduces new issues (it seems that Apple wants to fix at least the broken compatibility now) and of course fixed almost none of the other issues. http://tidbits.com/article/16966 http://tidbits.com/article/16966
• twright0 10y ago
  > But here’s the problem: sitting in this niche of excluded users are some of Apple’s strongest supporters, the influencers that create word of mouth... I see this point made a lot, especially on Hacker News whenever this general topic comes up. I'm just curious: what evidence is there to support this point of view? I'm as frustrated as the next software engineer that the new Macbook Pros aren't targeted at me or users like me (and that there hasn't been a new Mac Pro in a long time), and my next primary machine may well not be an Apple product when my current Macbook Pro ages out. But I don't really see an argument that draws a line between that fact and a future perception issue for Apple - and that seems to be accepted as gospel whenever the topic of Apple comes up in developer circles. Who are these "influencers" whose opinions purportedly closely align with software engineers' and why do consumers care about them?
  • musha68k 10y ago
    I don't even want to know how much revenue I brought Apple by "word of mouth" alone as I've been one of the gazillion fevered and outspoken Unix converts (Darwin fan since 2004). Friends, family and random people in every potential "evangelizable" context – don't even get me started on how many fellow netizens, students, sysadmins and developers I actively tipped over as well (these often were the hardest actually). Macs or later iPhone, it didn't matter we had to tell everyone that those nice and shiny devices were the real deal and we kept showing and telling until the last potential convert saw the light as well. I have been buying a new Mac and iPhone almost annually for about ten years now – even (or especially) after 2011 and 2013. I honestly was thrilled by iOS7, I loved it from the moment of its introduction and only saw potential. All that said, no "OSX" release has made me happier than Snow Leopard unfortunately and I am still convinced that "Losing the Functional High-Ground" by Marco Arment channeled an important message about a pattern most of us likely still see across the whole product line-up even though many things got better since. Why else have we slowly but steadily stopped recommending Macs over the last two years? When will that happen to iPhones or iPads? I'm still recommending them left and right but it somehow also is getting harder in a way, especially when people keep losing their safe-in-the-cloud data (in some cases even those precious moments with iPhone – photos). Unfortunately Apple does seem to need a (kool-aid sober) benevolent dictator with taste and wholistic understanding of their core product/business (what is that going to be btw?).
• intherdfield 10y ago
  Apple has a large enough hardware footprint. They now need to compete on AI. I imagine a lot of their resources are being put in the catch-up-to-Google bucket. There have been a lot of blog posts saying Apple doesn't know who their customers are. But their products are already accepted by everyone (every group). Their customers are everyone.
  • dx034 10y ago
    I'd second that. They're on their way of losing the battle for AI. From my experience (and those around me), Siri is way behind Alexa and the Google Assistant, in both voice recognition and features. It was once the selling point of iPhones, now no one really talks about it anymore. I don't understand why their development in that area slowed down so much, when Amazon started much later and was still able to produce the first home assistant. An Apple version of Amazon Echo (Siri for Home) would've been the perfect product to integrate users further in their environment.
• elktea 10y ago
  What's the reasoning for trying to disable right click on your website? I simple wanted to google for the WiFi company mentioned - I had to find an add-on to copy the thing. For someone really into Apple you're good at obnoxious design.
  • quanticle 10y ago
    Yeah, I came here to post this very thing. Right-click -> open in new tab is a fairly normal thing to allow for blog posts that have links in them.
  • kk_cz 10y ago
    It might be just a firefox thing, but shift+right click bypasses it. Also Ctrl+C for copying text (or Cmd + C on Mac, I believe).
    • johnnydoe9 10y ago
      No it's the same on Chrome and shift+right click isn't working.
• ciconia 10y ago
  I have a 2013 13" MBP and have started to look for a specifically non-Apple machine to replace it with. What got me to give up on Apple is not really the high price or infrequent updates but rather the state of macOS and bundled apps. It just sucks. Each upgrade seems to introduce more eye candy, more complications, more bugs, and is also slower. To me it feels like planned obsolescence.
  • Lio 10y ago
    Yep it's like Aperture. If they neglect it long enough people will just move the approved Apple alternative. In the case of Aperture it's Photos, for macOS I think they want us to move to iOS. It didn't work for Aperture, pros generally moved to Lightroom or something else. For macOS either Linux or Windows seems more likely than iOS.
• Apocryphon 10y ago
  I find the recent turn of public opinion against Apple to be interesting. Two years ago people were writing about brilliant Tim Cook was, largely because of the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Which was Apple simply scaling up to product sizes that they had previously resisted in joining, but were common to the rest of the market. So was praise then wrong and overblown? Or is the current wave of discontent wrong and overblown? Or is two years enough time for Apple to underperform and cause a loss in faith? I think it's a bit of all three, but also a lot because this current unhappiness is driven by developers, who had expected Apple to treat the MBP- much less the Mac Pro- with greater care and respect. 2014 saw the introduction of Swift, and developers were happy.
  • _ph_ 10y ago
    Even 2 years ago, people were grumpy how long the "can" style Mac Pro had not been refreshed and its obvious limitations, and that the Mac Mini had not been refreshed in a long time. But this does get overshadowed in perception (both public and of the critics) by a great launch like the iPhone 6. The introduction of Swift was certainly a surprise move by Apple and a sign that they cared about developers. But people were not unconditionally "happy", there was some valid criticism of it back then.
    • intoverflow2 10y ago
      > and that the Mac Mini had not been refreshed in a long time Worth keeping in mind the last refresh of the Mini performed way worse than the model that existed before it and had all upgradability locked down when the previous model actually championed the fact it could be opened and upgraded. These Mac updates are not only slow but it's a recurring theme they're performing worse than what came before.
  • coldtea 10y ago
    >Or is the current wave of discontent wrong and overblown? Obviously the latter. Let's see the quarterly results...
    • 10y ago
• nicolas_t 10y ago
  I went from almost never needing to restart my mac (with Snow Leopard) to having to restart it a couple of times a week with Sierra. The UI just becomes totally unresponsive (the cursor stops moving, the time in the menu bar stops ticking and the spinning wheel stops spinning) and needs a restart. And I don't even have things like SIMBL installed (I used to with snow leopard, not anymore). I just have Karabiner elements and Little snitch running (oh and coconut battery since Apple in it's great wisdom decided to hide the remaining time estimate). The new versions of macOs provide no added advantage and have a lot of regressions. I used to use Exposé all the time, now I don't because everything slows to a crawl when I activate it. And I run into severe bugs. For example, when I installed Yosemite and activated Filevault, it managed to corrupt my partition and all my data (luckily I had a backup). I really wish Apple starts actually hiring good software engineers or at least manage them to work on their OS because right now it's embarrassing. It reminds me of when Windows ME was a thing. If Apple ran the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ad nowadays they wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on. And then don't even get me started on their pro apps. Aperture used to be a great app (much better than lightroom), they stopped its development.
  • danieltillett 10y ago
    This. The thing that made the MacOS ecosystem worth the pain and sacrifice was the quality and things "just working". What I don't understand is Apple has more than 10 times the developer resources they had 10 years ago yet quality has gone backwards. Do you really need to be a Stalin to ensure your company makes quality software?
    • mikeash 10y ago
      They're stuck conforming to an artificial schedule of once a year major releases. They won't let themselves take the time they need to get things right anymore. It's no surprise quality has gone down.
      • Xixi 10y ago
        Quality usually don't go up when releasing less frequently, quite the opposite. The more you change things, the more likely you are to have severe bugs. When Apple was releasing major OS upgrades less frequently, you usually had to wait until a .4 or .5 point upgrade to have something usable. The first release of macOS Sierra (10.12.0) was vastly more usable than the first release of MacOS X Snow Leopard (10.6.0). I should know: I transitioned to Snow Leopard on release and practically nothing was running on it. I think it's the only time in my life I reverted to the previous version of macOS... It didn't prevent Snow Leopard to become one of the best OS, in the end. The problem is that Apple is shipping things that aren't right/ready, but this should be independent from the release schedule.
• woodpanel 10y ago
  Even customer service seems to be befuddled by Apple's policies at times. The current battery issue with the iphone 6s took months until Apple made it 'claimable'. Then people are told to send their iphones in and are expected to wait for 6 weeks (without a temporary replacement). But what's better: they get the same phone back (because the system check apple performs won't test for cold temperature based battery issues, so the device always passes). I don't know if the Apple before Cook and Icahn was different in that, but this is soooo ... dare I say "heyday Microsoft"?
• Animats 10y ago
  Apple doesn't seem to have anything new. Just minor upgrades of the old stuff. The car project, whatever that was, seems to have been canceled. The watch is something of a dud. Amazon and Google are fighting it out in the voice operated home control space, while Nest doesn't have an entry. Apple is still making tons of money. Boring but profitable isn't that bad a place to be. It's possible to be boring, profitable, and still be a prestige brand. Look at Rolex.
  • realityking 10y ago
    Your comment sounds like Nest is a division of Apple. That's not the case, it's a subsidiary of Google-parten Alphabet.
• angry_octet 10y ago
  > it makes sense for Apple to stop making WIFI devices Only if Apple is looking not to innovate. Mesh networking has great potential to take off, especially if the software was integrated into iOS. One missing element from mesh is AAA, which Apple could definitely mediate.
• jordache 10y ago
  Quite a manifesto about a single company...
• andyjohnson0 10y ago
  Just an idle thought: could the construction of, and move to, the new Apple campus be partly to blame for the company becoming distracted?
  • dx034 10y ago
    I don't think that developers were involved in the move or planning. It probably took some resources on the top level of management, but I don't think that products weren't developed because the CEO spent some time planning a new office.
  • exodust 10y ago
    I highly recommend firing up Google Earth and checking out the new campus. Someone has painstakingly modeled the construction site in 3D. Make sure you have 3D buildings enabled in Google Earth, and give it a chance to load the details. Tiny details like vehicles and machinery, mounds of dirt, even porta-loos have been rendered, You can zoom down inside and between the buildings to get a good feel of the space. I wouldn't mind knowing who did that, and what their workflow is to model all that stuff. I think once Apples moves in, they will be inspired to pick things up. It really is an amazing building.
• stirner 10y ago
  I've seen very little discussion here of the battery issues with the new MBP, which in my opinion is the most offensive example of Apple's decline in quality. Lucky users are reporting 9 hour battery life, while others are getting 4-5. Nobody is getting the promised 10 hour battery life from their $1,500+ laptops.
  • lukevers 10y ago
    In regards to the battery life, I was excited to see "9 hours remaining" the first time I turned the new MBP on. Realistically, I get about 3-5 depending on what I'm doing.
• jpkeisala 10y ago
  I am really interested to see in 2017 Apple's product releases. Is iPhone 8 going to make me staying in iPhone? I already switched from Mac to Dell XPS and I am quite happy with it. I guess this year there will be many old Mac users that will be leaving Apple. Unless they do something drastic? But what could they do?
• bergers89 10y ago
  seriously, if you have a problem with apple, don't use it. There are thousands of other vendors. Instead of posting dribble on the web...
  • dx034 10y ago
    Not really. There's one other major phone OS out there (Android), with the majority of phones made by less than a dozen companies. Linux and Windows are the only other choices when it comes to operating systems for computers, and few companies manufacture high-end laptops with acceptable quality. The only company selling everything is probably Microsoft, where you can buy a laptop from the manufacturer of the OS. But Windows Phones aren't nearly as well supported when it comes to third party apps, so you'll have to go with Google there. So there's not really any company (except perhaps Microsoft) that can offer a similar experience as Apple used to.
    • bergers89 10y ago
      hp elitebooks, thinkpads, toshiba's notebooks are all well designed. You can throw anything on it.. linux, bsd unix or windows. You have a variety of distributions or bsd os'es. i don't know what you're talking about phones: there are plenty of phone vendors out there, too. Instead of whining about a company, it would be better to move on and decide what you need and buy that.
      • dx034 10y ago
        Yes, but you'll still have a Microsoft OS, HP laptop, Google phone, etc. What many people (including me) like about Apple that you have/had a well designed ecosystem for all your devices, where hardware and software are made to work well with each other. No one else can really provide that.
    • NEDM64 10y ago
      No, you have alternatives you enumerated. Yes, they are not as good as Apple. What's new? Isn't the thread and the author shitting on Apple? If he is, and you all are, then it's because you have something better.
• intoverflow2 10y ago
  > They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users. Engage with the influencers Some influencers who are not either professional bloggers or iOS devs too please.
• agentgt 10y ago
  One thing Apple needs to fix ASAP is online (iCloud) and offline storage (iPhone). Almost all my family members are having issues with running out of space on their iPhone. Some even bought additional iCloud to improve storage space only to be completely shocked and pissed to find that iCloud isn't really add additional storage (it is just for synchronization). On top of this Google is taking serious advantage of Apple's bad execution with a fairly effective marketing campaign. In some regards the most important thing about your phone these days is the memories you have collected and not so much what operating system or form factor is being used.
• chaostheory 10y ago
  > Defining products by the spreadsheet: A big percentage of complaints over the new MacBook Pro devices is that they ignore the needs of the “power” user. The problem? This group is fairly small and have needs living well towards the end of the bell curve. The problem with ignoring this niche is because these users are either developers or big influencers. They help with the ongoing success of the App Store as well as with free marketing. This is also a big reason why Apple needs to release either an iMac without a screen or a more affordable Mac Pro. The Mac Mini has never really cut it for anything but personal use. For the 1st time in years, I'm thinking of switching back to Windows since Docker makes development easier now. I'll still get a cheap Mac for personal stuff like Photos, but it'll just be relegated for that.
  • zimpenfish 10y ago
    Developers, yes. Big influencers to other developers? Yes. But big influencers to Joe Q Common Public? No. They will buy what meets their (generally meagre) needs from someone they trust.
  • sdegutis 10y ago
    Yep. They probably don't realize how big of a part "Word of Mouth" marketing plays in their sales. At every small business I've ever worked at, everyone praised the MBP highly, and if you didn't have one, you felt like you wanted and needed one. Especially because it Just Worked™, it was kind of this sleek and powerful tool that only people who know the value of their time had, because they weren't going to waste their time on anything lesser. It was almost a status symbol. Word of mouth is a powerful thing. It can make and later break a product. I bet that'll happen now. That said, how can I buy stock in Apple? I'm betting they'll look at dropping sales, realize the above, and make a huge come back with a significantly better MBP and Mac Pro in a year or two. EDIT: The above question is not rhetorical: how can a simple developer like me with no idea about stocks, throw $100 or $200 at Apple stock in hopes it grows a good amount in the next few years?
    • DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
      > Yep. They probably don't realize how big of a part "Word of Mouth" marketing plays in their sales. I'm not sure who would know better: Apple's marketing team, or a group of developers chatting on Hacker News. Depending on the level of sophistication in Apple's marketing department, they might have a very clear, well-researched, quantitative model regarding just how much impact our word-of-mouth carries. I wonder if some of our angst comes from the nagging fear that we (professional developers and photo/video editors) hold less clout than we thought, and that as a result, our tools in upcoming years will be more expensive and less useful.
• Shivetya 10y ago
  With regards to shipping dates. It used to be a source of pride of Apple to say "shipping now" when they demonstrated a new product but somewhere along the line they fell into the trap of announcing well before they could deliver. They need to pull back. having owned an airport router I no longer see the need as other routers have become just as easy to use. my 1g service from AT&T was a breeze to setup for home use and heavily customize, all from my Mac. the only bone I have to pick with Apple is the disgraceful product cycle associated with the mini and Pro. If they are going to drop these products then drop them. if they aren't going to do yearly updates then either drop the product or guarantee refreshes so people don't feel like they are buying into a dead end. finally, damn please get all your products to one connector again and fast and in the mean time adapters should be included when your own products don't interconnect
• NEDM64 10y ago
  Another thread shitting on Apple with more than 300 replies... Most from people who were never Apple costumers and never will be.
• DoodleBuggy 10y ago
  At this point my expectations for Apple are set so low that I'd be thrilled if 2017 brought us options for a physical escape key and 32GB RAM on a spec-bumped MacBook Pro. But I suspect even that is too much to ask.
• mcculley 10y ago
  I see a lot of articles suggest that Apple may no longer support developers, building only consumer devices. But what are Apple developers using internally? Would Apple maintain some hackintosh build for their developers? This seems unlikely to me. I would instead expect that we will soon see some new hardware suitable for developers. But maybe I'm wrong. They got rid of Xserve, which means they either are building server hardware they don't sell or they are using Linux or Windows for their own servers.
• jgiambona 10y ago
  2 things really concern me about Apple's direction under Tim Cook: his statements that he doesn't see why someone would need a computer in addition to an iPad and iPhone, and the fact that he has reportedly combined the iOS and MacOS teams. My MBP is only 1 year old, waiting to see what comes out of Cupertino later this year before deciding if I'll move away from Apple products for my dev machine.
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