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I think that Apple's lack of structure is why their software and services were largely lacking under Steve Jobs. Maybe there is a way to have your cake and eat

I think that Apple's lack of structure is why their software and services were largely lacking under Steve Jobs. Maybe there is a way to have your cake and eat it too. IDK, something like Apple Pay under Steve Jobs probably would've had a messy rollout. Software and services require stability and predictability. Tim Cook is the yang to Steve Jobs' ying. I think TC is looking for the optimal balance.

charlesism 10y ago
> software and services were largely lacking under Steve Jobs Software? It's a first to hear that Steve's Apple had a problem with software.
- Mtinie 10y ago
  iTunes.
  - valarauca1 10y ago
    Has been shit under everyone. I really think there are core issues with that product not a question of leadership.
    - deong 10y ago
      I think that is a question of leadership. Writing robust and reliable TCP/IP services isn't the wild blue unknown. People know how to do this. If Apple can't do it in 2017, it's because they haven't made doing it a priority.
    - Mtinie 10y ago
      Right, but the comment I was replying to implied that software problems under Jobs were unheard of. iTunes never "just worked", even when Jobs was running the show. The leadership issue was not expecting the same level of polish and ease-of-use that the rest of the product line offered for iTunes that was lavished on the iPod and iPhone lines. Whether or not it was bad architectural decisions at the beginning, an unfamiliar toolkit, or something else, as a primary application for the OS X and iOS platforms, I have always expected it should be vastly better than what it is.
      - charlesism 10y ago
        > software problems under Jobs were unheard of. Software problems are never unheard of anywhere. But it's absurd revisionism to take Steve Jobs - the guy behind Mac OS and iOS - and state that Apple had problems releasing good software under his leadership. > iTunes never "just worked" Yes, it did! Either your memory is playing tricks on you, or you aren't old enough to remember early versions of iTunes. iTunes wasn't born bad. It became bad.
        Mtinie 10y ago
        Probably my memory then. Your criticism is fair. I'll try to mentally split iTunes into two epochs -- Before-iPhone and After-iPhone. iTunes worked reasonably when it was simply a music library and store, with a simple integration to connect your iPod. Since 2007, meh...
        charlesism 10y ago
        2007 sounds about right to me, too. The last great feature I recall was "podcasts", which wikipedia says was 2005. By 2010 they were adding crap like "Ping".
    - charlesism 10y ago
      > Has been shit under everyone. All software is "shit" to some extent. It was just less so under SJ.
  - pawadu 10y ago
    and QT and anything iCloud (whatever it was called back then)
    - charlesism 10y ago
      By QT do you mean Quicktime Player? Quicktime Player 7 was pretty great. It's outdated now, but it did what it said on the tin, and had some cool features I still miss (like "Image sequence to movie" very cool). Quicktime X... not so much. A media player that doesn't support codecs. Yech! What do I do with my Flac files now? > anything iCloud Sure, that's "services" though.
      - pawadu 10y ago
        I did not use OSX back then so I can't comment on that. But on Windows QT was probably the worst piece of software ever created: 1. it took ages to start 2. the UI was very unresponsive 3. it used a LOT of resources, bringing the system to a crawl 4. it installed a lot of crap along side QT itself 5. it tried to trick users into installing Safari 6. it had a lot of security issues 7. it did not follow any of the Windows UI guidelines 8. just google "quicktime sucks" for many many more issues...
        charlesism 10y ago
        > probably the worst piece of software ever created Worse than Adobe Acrobat? Ouch. There are problems with Apple's Windows software: - many are "damned if you do, damned if you don't" problems - some are just ubiquitous Windows problems (there are very few things on a Windows box that antivirus software can't break) - some crept in, as the software bloated (QTP, like iTunes wasn't born bad, but became bad). That's Apple's fault It doesn't make much sense to me to judge Apple by their Windows software, since half of the problems there are unavoidable given the requirements. Eg: - you have Airport,iTunes,Safari,and Quicktime software. What happens if you don't "trick users" into installing it all at once? Well, then you have a new, equally bad, set of support issues. - you need hardware support for iPhones, you need network support for mDNS. Okay, now you have to install drivers, and your software is open to all the problems that any other Windows driver has (antivirus software + drivers == pain) - You can follow Microsoft's UI guidelines, or use Apple's HIG. If you don't use Apple's, you once again have support problems, on top of criticism from some users that the design is uglier on Windows, and also added difficulties maintaining two very different versions of the software The only really great cross-platform software anybody writes is written from the start to be that way, and there are trade-offs. If you instead choose a single platform, and want to make your software as good as it can be, then your ports to other platforms will suffer. Since Apple chose to optimize for the Mac, it's a given the Windows version would have problems. Apple handled cross-platform software as well as can be expected.
  - charlesism 10y ago
    I guess I'm old, but I remember when iTunes was amazing. You may not remember, but once upon a time that was the prevailing view. That was under Steve Jobs. Later, also under Steve Jobs, it became bloated. Under Tim Cook, iTunes has become so incomprehensible that "mere mortals" find it unusable.
    - charlesism 10y ago
      Not sure why people have decided that iTunes was always horrible. Here's a description from Ars in 2003: http://arstechnica.com/features/2003/05/itunesms/2/ http://arstechnica.com/features/2003/05/itunesms/2/ > Actually, iTunes is an excellent example of a > fundamental Apple design principle: the application > is the computer. The software automatically imports > and categorizes songs, creating an obscure directory > structure filled with 'unknown album' folders, but > you never see that. You see all your music, all the > tag info, easily sorted and easy to access from > within iTunes. It's elegant and simple, as can be > discerned by the fact iTunes users spend most of > their time arguing about whether the widgets > (buttons) look better raised (previous versions) or > sunken (current version). Here's a tour of iTunes' descent into madness. Note that the original version was, in no way whatsoever, bloated or inelegant. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/itunes-through-the-ages/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/itunes-through-the-ages...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lowtolerance 10y ago
  Where have you been, then? OS X turned into such a mess that Snow Leopard introduced no new user-facing features, focusing exclusively on improving performance and patching bugs, and even then it took several minor updates before they could really say that they achieved that.
  - charlesism 10y ago
    The real reason there were no new features in Snow Leopard is because they needed to transition to Intel. Leopard wasn't a particularly buggy release. If you want a release that really did have bugs galore, it's Lion.
DerpyBaby123 10y ago
Do you think their software is better lately? With nothing new on macOS and bad Xcode experience, I don't

charlesism 10y ago

> software and services were largely lacking under Steve Jobs Software? It's a first to hear that Steve's Apple had a problem with software.

Mtinie 10y ago
iTunes.
- valarauca1 10y ago
  Has been shit under everyone. I really think there are core issues with that product not a question of leadership.
  - deong 10y ago
    I think that is a question of leadership. Writing robust and reliable TCP/IP services isn't the wild blue unknown. People know how to do this. If Apple can't do it in 2017, it's because they haven't made doing it a priority.
  - Mtinie 10y ago
    Right, but the comment I was replying to implied that software problems under Jobs were unheard of. iTunes never "just worked", even when Jobs was running the show. The leadership issue was not expecting the same level of polish and ease-of-use that the rest of the product line offered for iTunes that was lavished on the iPod and iPhone lines. Whether or not it was bad architectural decisions at the beginning, an unfamiliar toolkit, or something else, as a primary application for the OS X and iOS platforms, I have always expected it should be vastly better than what it is.
    - charlesism 10y ago
      > software problems under Jobs were unheard of. Software problems are never unheard of anywhere. But it's absurd revisionism to take Steve Jobs - the guy behind Mac OS and iOS - and state that Apple had problems releasing good software under his leadership. > iTunes never "just worked" Yes, it did! Either your memory is playing tricks on you, or you aren't old enough to remember early versions of iTunes. iTunes wasn't born bad. It became bad.
      - Mtinie 10y ago
        Probably my memory then. Your criticism is fair. I'll try to mentally split iTunes into two epochs -- Before-iPhone and After-iPhone. iTunes worked reasonably when it was simply a music library and store, with a simple integration to connect your iPod. Since 2007, meh...
        charlesism 10y ago
        2007 sounds about right to me, too. The last great feature I recall was "podcasts", which wikipedia says was 2005. By 2010 they were adding crap like "Ping".
  - charlesism 10y ago
    > Has been shit under everyone. All software is "shit" to some extent. It was just less so under SJ.
- pawadu 10y ago
  and QT and anything iCloud (whatever it was called back then)
  - charlesism 10y ago
    By QT do you mean Quicktime Player? Quicktime Player 7 was pretty great. It's outdated now, but it did what it said on the tin, and had some cool features I still miss (like "Image sequence to movie" very cool). Quicktime X... not so much. A media player that doesn't support codecs. Yech! What do I do with my Flac files now? > anything iCloud Sure, that's "services" though.
    - pawadu 10y ago
      I did not use OSX back then so I can't comment on that. But on Windows QT was probably the worst piece of software ever created: 1. it took ages to start 2. the UI was very unresponsive 3. it used a LOT of resources, bringing the system to a crawl 4. it installed a lot of crap along side QT itself 5. it tried to trick users into installing Safari 6. it had a lot of security issues 7. it did not follow any of the Windows UI guidelines 8. just google "quicktime sucks" for many many more issues...
      - charlesism 10y ago
        > probably the worst piece of software ever created Worse than Adobe Acrobat? Ouch. There are problems with Apple's Windows software: - many are "damned if you do, damned if you don't" problems - some are just ubiquitous Windows problems (there are very few things on a Windows box that antivirus software can't break) - some crept in, as the software bloated (QTP, like iTunes wasn't born bad, but became bad). That's Apple's fault It doesn't make much sense to me to judge Apple by their Windows software, since half of the problems there are unavoidable given the requirements. Eg: - you have Airport,iTunes,Safari,and Quicktime software. What happens if you don't "trick users" into installing it all at once? Well, then you have a new, equally bad, set of support issues. - you need hardware support for iPhones, you need network support for mDNS. Okay, now you have to install drivers, and your software is open to all the problems that any other Windows driver has (antivirus software + drivers == pain) - You can follow Microsoft's UI guidelines, or use Apple's HIG. If you don't use Apple's, you once again have support problems, on top of criticism from some users that the design is uglier on Windows, and also added difficulties maintaining two very different versions of the software The only really great cross-platform software anybody writes is written from the start to be that way, and there are trade-offs. If you instead choose a single platform, and want to make your software as good as it can be, then your ports to other platforms will suffer. Since Apple chose to optimize for the Mac, it's a given the Windows version would have problems. Apple handled cross-platform software as well as can be expected.
- charlesism 10y ago
  I guess I'm old, but I remember when iTunes was amazing. You may not remember, but once upon a time that was the prevailing view. That was under Steve Jobs. Later, also under Steve Jobs, it became bloated. Under Tim Cook, iTunes has become so incomprehensible that "mere mortals" find it unusable.
  - charlesism 10y ago
    Not sure why people have decided that iTunes was always horrible. Here's a description from Ars in 2003: http://arstechnica.com/features/2003/05/itunesms/2/ http://arstechnica.com/features/2003/05/itunesms/2/ > Actually, iTunes is an excellent example of a > fundamental Apple design principle: the application > is the computer. The software automatically imports > and categorizes songs, creating an obscure directory > structure filled with 'unknown album' folders, but > you never see that. You see all your music, all the > tag info, easily sorted and easy to access from > within iTunes. It's elegant and simple, as can be > discerned by the fact iTunes users spend most of > their time arguing about whether the widgets > (buttons) look better raised (previous versions) or > sunken (current version). Here's a tour of iTunes' descent into madness. Note that the original version was, in no way whatsoever, bloated or inelegant. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/itunes-through-the-ages/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/itunes-through-the-ages...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lowtolerance 10y ago
Where have you been, then? OS X turned into such a mess that Snow Leopard introduced no new user-facing features, focusing exclusively on improving performance and patching bugs, and even then it took several minor updates before they could really say that they achieved that.
- charlesism 10y ago
  The real reason there were no new features in Snow Leopard is because they needed to transition to Intel. Leopard wasn't a particularly buggy release. If you want a release that really did have bugs galore, it's Lion.

DerpyBaby123 10y ago

Do you think their software is better lately? With nothing new on macOS and bad Xcode experience, I don't