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Are Apple products different now that Jobs are gone? Yes. Jobs as local despot acted as a curb to bad decisions. Jobs had a vision which acted as a countervail

Are Apple products different now that Jobs are gone? Yes. Jobs as local despot acted as a curb to bad decisions. Jobs had a vision which acted as a countervailing force to keep Apple from being completely sucked into being a money grubbing luxury goods company. the core people that make and design all their overpriced, planned obsolescence devices are still there, often uncredited, while everyone else likes to focus on the captain of a ship. We know from the historical record that Jobs had quite good judgement, even in technical fields, and we know that he countermanded and convinced executives and managers to steer them in the right direction. I suspect that the Apple of today is descending into being just a money-grubbing luxury goods company.

SkyMarshal 8y ago
I don’t think Apple products are any different without Jobs, the problem is they’re nothing new either. With Jobs you knew he loved and lived technology and was always looking for cool new things to do with it. Most of his product launches did just that and brought some excitement about possibilities. Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, but they’re losing the excitement and expectation of something truly new and original that Jobs brought. That’s the big difference I think a visionary leader can make. Musk is doing the same thing with electric cars and space. Tesla and SpaceX could survive without him for a time, and since they’re very different industries than consumer electronics, maybe even thrive under a Tim Cook-like operator par excellence. But no guarantee.
- baxtr 8y ago
  Why would you say that for example the Apple Watch is "nothing new"? Or: what is the difference between jumping from an iPhone to an iPad (considered as genius by Jobs) and jumping from a fingerprint ID to a 3D face recognition.
  - Animats 8y ago
    Why would you say that for example the Apple Watch is "nothing new"? Pebble.
    - baxtr 8y ago
      So then the iPhone was nothing new either?
      - stevew20 8y ago
        Affirmative.
        reanimated 8y ago
        Yes it wasn't new per se, they didn't created first mobile phone with a touchscreen, but you can't deny that this one device single handedly shifted direction of entire industry. Similar things, just not in that scale is happening with watch. In reality no other smartwatch is even close to the Apple Watch. There is no competition. Same as with an iPad or the iPods before that.
      - isostatic 8y ago
        Indeed, and the ipod had no wireless and less space than a nomad, it was lame. Oh wait, while Malda was technically right, it turned music files mainstream, and the iPhone turned touchscreen phones mainstream
- rl3 8y ago
  >Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, ... I disagree. Look at the MBP keyboard issues, or the declining quality of OS X. Under Jobs that shit wouldn't fly. Other roles aside, one of Jobs' most important functions was that of acting as a sanity check to ensure that the constiuent parts of any given product came together as a cohesive whole.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    Again with the revisionist history. Did you ever use the first 3 versions of OSX ? Because I did. And the quality was pretty unacceptable compared to OS9 or Windows. On the hardware side how long did Apple stick with the coffee puck mouse. Or how about the iPhone 1 never even having 3G or MMS or how about all of the issues with the GPU. But yet Steve Jobs still shipped it all. Why ? Because his slogan was always "real artists ship".
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Mac OS 9 didn’t even have memory protection, what are you talking about? The problem with early versions of Mac OS X were feature completeness, software support, and performance, not quality.
    - jhabdas 8y ago
      When did HN turn into Reddit?
  - davidcbc 8y ago
    Apple had issues like this when Jobs was there too. He's the reason "You're holding it wrong" is a common phrase
  - adrian_mrd 8y ago
    Me.com launch? That happened under Jobs' watch...
  - arcticbull 8y ago
    Yeah, it would have flown, and did. Remember when the MacBook first came out and every 5th it 6th white one had a dark yellow film? Or how the touch pads had waves and wobbles in them? The MacBook Pro exploding and misshapen batteries? The MacBook Pro thermal paste issues and how they ran at up to 100C and shut themselves down? Every time some big new production change happens there are teething problems no matter who’s in charge.
- reanimated 8y ago
  but they’re losing the excitement and expectation of something truly new and original It's just the technology which has matured. The innovation slows and becomes more incremental so certainly the excitement goes down. Jobs wouldn't have been able to change that. Maybe the quality of new Macs would be better or maybe he would have pushed his engineers more to make more elegant way to solve the notch problem, but that's it. Don't make a mistake, he was insightful executive, not the miraculous engineer inventing new technologies. At this stage of the company he would probably just pushed more to the services and content deals.
threeseed 8y ago
This is just revisionist history and completely wrong. Steve Jobs pretty much set Apple on the premium goods track when he returned. The iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone were all developed under his watch and all were premium priced. Apple has pushed the margins higher but that's only because the market can absorb it. Computing is more central to people's lives and they are willing to pay a premium for a good experience.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  This is just revisionist history and completely wrong. Steve Jobs pretty much set Apple on the premium goods track when he returned You are revising what I actually said, and about that you are completely wrong. I never denied that Jobs set Apple on the premium goods track. However, he was one of the major forces keeping it from devolving into being only a peddler of luxury goods. Tech innovation does better with good margins, and good margins come easier for more upscale products. But doing that is better as an adjunct which increases your margins, and winds up empty as an end to itself.
  - eanzenberg 8y ago
    Apple produces better products than google and microsoft, get over it. The market decided.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Apple produces better products than google and microsoft, get over it. It sounds like you're the one who needs to get over something. For the record, I've been an iPhone user since the 2nd iPhone. I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro, and I bought the 1st unibody Macbook. I've developed iPhone apps and I've been an Apple user since 1980. Yes, Apple produces better products for now. However, as the years pass, those products might remain recognizably luxury, but become increasingly irrelevant, like a watch fob. Apple now is to Apple in the several years before Steve Jobs died as Pixar now is to Pixar in the days when they came out with Toy Story and Up. The market decided. Here's the thing. It never stops deciding.
ForrestN 8y ago
Your argument is fundamentally unconvincing because you're using unsubstantiated, subjective claims that anyone can disagree with and thereby nullify. While you say that Jobs curbed "bad" decisions, and that now the company is "money grubbing," and that he alone kept Apple going in the "right" direction, you don't explain why you think so. Someone could say the opposite (I don't have an opinion). For example, far more people choose to purchase iPhones for far more money than they did during Steve Jobs' tenure, so there is some evidence that "bad" product decisions from your perspective are actually good product decisions in the eyes of Apple's customers. Likewise, Apple's efforts to emphasize ethics and responsibility with respect to the environment, diversity and privacy are mostly new to the post-Jobs era. It may prove hard to argue that spending so much money on those priorities amounts to "money-grubbing," but I can't say for sure because you haven't really tried to argue anything at all.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Your argument is fundamentally unconvincing because you're using unsubstantiated, subjective claims that anyone can disagree with and thereby nullify. https://m.facebook.com/JamesHBlack/posts/10156560054277932 https://m.facebook.com/JamesHBlack/posts/10156560054277932 so there is some evidence that "bad" product decisions from your perspective are actually good product decisions in the eyes of Apple's customers. Where did I ever say that being luxury was a bad product decision? I never did. It raises margins. That's a very good thing for a company. However, it's empty and hollow as a driver of new product innovation.
ethbro 8y ago
I never thought of Apple as the GE (and GE Capital) of the tech world, but the "do more of the thing that makes us the most money, at all costs" metaphor is starting to fit.
- brisance 8y ago
  The NCPPR representative asked Mr. Cook to commit right then and there to doing only those things that were profitable. What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR's advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.[1] Apple leads in recycling, renewable energy use and privacy as well. So, no, your thesis is flat out wrong. [1] https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rejects-politics-of-the-ncppr-suggests-group-sell-apples-s https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej...
baddox 8y ago
I don’t buy that Apple products or Apple as a company is worse off in any measurable way. I’m sure the there are some people who dislike decisions that happened after Jobs, but Apple and their products seem to be doing fine.
eksemplar 8y ago
I think Apple products are actually better, maybe not so much because of Apple but because their competitors suck. Android is terrible, I mean, it’s looking more and more like iOS, but it’s still not iOS and it has no privacy if you want to use the official play store (which you want, because all the apps that actually make your phone smart, only live there). Android phones still die after a few years, my iPhone 5s is still a beast. Laptops, well the surface book is arguably a great device, but it’s also more expensive than a MacBook Pro and doesn’t come with a thunderbolt port. The XPS is decent, but it’s build quality is Dell terrible. Lenovo might make good laptops, but working for the government, I’m not allowed to own one. Apple has the only working Bluetooth devices on the planet. The magic keyboard and especially the AirPods always work, I can’t say that about anything else. Plug and play egpu, who else has one? I think the only place Apple isn’t actually best at what they do is in competition on software services like AI. Siri is terrible, Apple maps are terrible (why aren’t they just using OSM at this point? I’m sure OSM and Apple could find a way to benefit from each other, and OSM is currently better than google maps). I may sound like an Apple fanboy, and I am, but I’ve become that way because their shit always works right out the damn box. And I’ve never had a piece quit on me by it’s own. I bought a MacBook Pro 2018 edition to work with the egpu, but my old 2013 macbook still runs perfectly fine. I can’t say I’ve ever tried any thing similar, except for thinkpads, and I’m not allowed to own one of those. Meanwhile my 1 year old work laptop from Dell is literally falling apart. The keyboard rattles, the battery lock is breaking and the screen can’t keep itself up. It cost almost as much as my MacBook, and it’s just complete shit. You may wonder why I care about cost of my work machine, but I’m a manager, I still pay for it. As far as OSes go, Linux is still Linux, if you don’t mind spending half your life configuring it to your needs and then doing it every time it breaks then Linux is still awesome. Windows, the only plug and play option, however, has become atrociously bad. I like Microsoft, we use Azure a lot and stuff like AD and ADFS is heaven sent when you operate 500 different IT systems from as many suppliers, but windows 10 is one of the worst OSes I’ve ever operated. So again, Apple has managed to be great at OSes, mainly because their competitors suck. I do think not having an iPhone SE is a mistake, but I also thought losing the headphone jack was a mistake, and sales have since proved it wasn’t, so who knows.
- carte_blanche 8y ago
mortdeus 8y ago
I knew everything was going down hill the second I seen that they weren't going to call it the Apple iWatch. Like do they not know how important that lower case "i" is for their award winning and trend setting formula! And I am being serious right now. My ocd is going nuts just thinking about the lost uniformity of the branding. Especially when they still insist on us calling their other products "my iphone, my ipod, my imac, and now we also have to say "my apple watch"? How do you even tell somebody to pass you your phone, tablet, and watch all at the same time. "Hey man, can you pass me my iphone and ipad. Oh and my APPLE watch. Like do you not realize how much of my life you are wasting when you force me to say one more syllable.

SkyMarshal 8y ago

I don’t think Apple products are any different without Jobs, the problem is they’re nothing new either. With Jobs you knew he loved and lived technology and was always looking for cool new things to do with it. Most of his product launches did just that and brought some excitement about possibilities. Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, but they’re losing the excitement and expectation of something truly new and original that Jobs brought. That’s the big difference I think a visionary leader can make. Musk is doing the same thing with electric cars and space. Tesla and SpaceX could survive without him for a time, and since they’re very different industries than consumer electronics, maybe even thrive under a Tim Cook-like operator par excellence. But no guarantee.

baxtr 8y ago
Why would you say that for example the Apple Watch is "nothing new"? Or: what is the difference between jumping from an iPhone to an iPad (considered as genius by Jobs) and jumping from a fingerprint ID to a 3D face recognition.
- Animats 8y ago
  Why would you say that for example the Apple Watch is "nothing new"? Pebble.
  - baxtr 8y ago
    So then the iPhone was nothing new either?
    - stevew20 8y ago
      Affirmative.
      - reanimated 8y ago
        Yes it wasn't new per se, they didn't created first mobile phone with a touchscreen, but you can't deny that this one device single handedly shifted direction of entire industry. Similar things, just not in that scale is happening with watch. In reality no other smartwatch is even close to the Apple Watch. There is no competition. Same as with an iPad or the iPods before that.
    - isostatic 8y ago
      Indeed, and the ipod had no wireless and less space than a nomad, it was lame. Oh wait, while Malda was technically right, it turned music files mainstream, and the iPhone turned touchscreen phones mainstream
rl3 8y ago
>Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, ... I disagree. Look at the MBP keyboard issues, or the declining quality of OS X. Under Jobs that shit wouldn't fly. Other roles aside, one of Jobs' most important functions was that of acting as a sanity check to ensure that the constiuent parts of any given product came together as a cohesive whole.
- threeseed 8y ago
  Again with the revisionist history. Did you ever use the first 3 versions of OSX ? Because I did. And the quality was pretty unacceptable compared to OS9 or Windows. On the hardware side how long did Apple stick with the coffee puck mouse. Or how about the iPhone 1 never even having 3G or MMS or how about all of the issues with the GPU. But yet Steve Jobs still shipped it all. Why ? Because his slogan was always "real artists ship".
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Mac OS 9 didn’t even have memory protection, what are you talking about? The problem with early versions of Mac OS X were feature completeness, software support, and performance, not quality.
  - jhabdas 8y ago
    When did HN turn into Reddit?
- davidcbc 8y ago
  Apple had issues like this when Jobs was there too. He's the reason "You're holding it wrong" is a common phrase
- adrian_mrd 8y ago
  Me.com launch? That happened under Jobs' watch...
- arcticbull 8y ago
  Yeah, it would have flown, and did. Remember when the MacBook first came out and every 5th it 6th white one had a dark yellow film? Or how the touch pads had waves and wobbles in them? The MacBook Pro exploding and misshapen batteries? The MacBook Pro thermal paste issues and how they ran at up to 100C and shut themselves down? Every time some big new production change happens there are teething problems no matter who’s in charge.
reanimated 8y ago
but they’re losing the excitement and expectation of something truly new and original It's just the technology which has matured. The innovation slows and becomes more incremental so certainly the excitement goes down. Jobs wouldn't have been able to change that. Maybe the quality of new Macs would be better or maybe he would have pushed his engineers more to make more elegant way to solve the notch problem, but that's it. Don't make a mistake, he was insightful executive, not the miraculous engineer inventing new technologies. At this stage of the company he would probably just pushed more to the services and content deals.

threeseed 8y ago

This is just revisionist history and completely wrong. Steve Jobs pretty much set Apple on the premium goods track when he returned. The iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone were all developed under his watch and all were premium priced. Apple has pushed the margins higher but that's only because the market can absorb it. Computing is more central to people's lives and they are willing to pay a premium for a good experience.

stcredzero 8y ago
This is just revisionist history and completely wrong. Steve Jobs pretty much set Apple on the premium goods track when he returned You are revising what I actually said, and about that you are completely wrong. I never denied that Jobs set Apple on the premium goods track. However, he was one of the major forces keeping it from devolving into being only a peddler of luxury goods. Tech innovation does better with good margins, and good margins come easier for more upscale products. But doing that is better as an adjunct which increases your margins, and winds up empty as an end to itself.
- eanzenberg 8y ago
  Apple produces better products than google and microsoft, get over it. The market decided.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Apple produces better products than google and microsoft, get over it. It sounds like you're the one who needs to get over something. For the record, I've been an iPhone user since the 2nd iPhone. I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro, and I bought the 1st unibody Macbook. I've developed iPhone apps and I've been an Apple user since 1980. Yes, Apple produces better products for now. However, as the years pass, those products might remain recognizably luxury, but become increasingly irrelevant, like a watch fob. Apple now is to Apple in the several years before Steve Jobs died as Pixar now is to Pixar in the days when they came out with Toy Story and Up. The market decided. Here's the thing. It never stops deciding.

ForrestN 8y ago

Your argument is fundamentally unconvincing because you're using unsubstantiated, subjective claims that anyone can disagree with and thereby nullify. While you say that Jobs curbed "bad" decisions, and that now the company is "money grubbing," and that he alone kept Apple going in the "right" direction, you don't explain why you think so. Someone could say the opposite (I don't have an opinion). For example, far more people choose to purchase iPhones for far more money than they did during Steve Jobs' tenure, so there is some evidence that "bad" product decisions from your perspective are actually good product decisions in the eyes of Apple's customers. Likewise, Apple's efforts to emphasize ethics and responsibility with respect to the environment, diversity and privacy are mostly new to the post-Jobs era. It may prove hard to argue that spending so much money on those priorities amounts to "money-grubbing," but I can't say for sure because you haven't really tried to argue anything at all.

stcredzero 8y ago
Your argument is fundamentally unconvincing because you're using unsubstantiated, subjective claims that anyone can disagree with and thereby nullify. https://m.facebook.com/JamesHBlack/posts/10156560054277932 https://m.facebook.com/JamesHBlack/posts/10156560054277932 so there is some evidence that "bad" product decisions from your perspective are actually good product decisions in the eyes of Apple's customers. Where did I ever say that being luxury was a bad product decision? I never did. It raises margins. That's a very good thing for a company. However, it's empty and hollow as a driver of new product innovation.

ethbro 8y ago

I never thought of Apple as the GE (and GE Capital) of the tech world, but the "do more of the thing that makes us the most money, at all costs" metaphor is starting to fit.

brisance 8y ago
The NCPPR representative asked Mr. Cook to commit right then and there to doing only those things that were profitable. What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR's advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.[1] Apple leads in recycling, renewable energy use and privacy as well. So, no, your thesis is flat out wrong. [1] https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rejects-politics-of-the-ncppr-suggests-group-sell-apples-s https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej...

baddox 8y ago

I don’t buy that Apple products or Apple as a company is worse off in any measurable way. I’m sure the there are some people who dislike decisions that happened after Jobs, but Apple and their products seem to be doing fine.

eksemplar 8y ago

I think Apple products are actually better, maybe not so much because of Apple but because their competitors suck. Android is terrible, I mean, it’s looking more and more like iOS, but it’s still not iOS and it has no privacy if you want to use the official play store (which you want, because all the apps that actually make your phone smart, only live there). Android phones still die after a few years, my iPhone 5s is still a beast. Laptops, well the surface book is arguably a great device, but it’s also more expensive than a MacBook Pro and doesn’t come with a thunderbolt port. The XPS is decent, but it’s build quality is Dell terrible. Lenovo might make good laptops, but working for the government, I’m not allowed to own one. Apple has the only working Bluetooth devices on the planet. The magic keyboard and especially the AirPods always work, I can’t say that about anything else. Plug and play egpu, who else has one? I think the only place Apple isn’t actually best at what they do is in competition on software services like AI. Siri is terrible, Apple maps are terrible (why aren’t they just using OSM at this point? I’m sure OSM and Apple could find a way to benefit from each other, and OSM is currently better than google maps). I may sound like an Apple fanboy, and I am, but I’ve become that way because their shit always works right out the damn box. And I’ve never had a piece quit on me by it’s own. I bought a MacBook Pro 2018 edition to work with the egpu, but my old 2013 macbook still runs perfectly fine. I can’t say I’ve ever tried any thing similar, except for thinkpads, and I’m not allowed to own one of those. Meanwhile my 1 year old work laptop from Dell is literally falling apart. The keyboard rattles, the battery lock is breaking and the screen can’t keep itself up. It cost almost as much as my MacBook, and it’s just complete shit. You may wonder why I care about cost of my work machine, but I’m a manager, I still pay for it. As far as OSes go, Linux is still Linux, if you don’t mind spending half your life configuring it to your needs and then doing it every time it breaks then Linux is still awesome. Windows, the only plug and play option, however, has become atrociously bad. I like Microsoft, we use Azure a lot and stuff like AD and ADFS is heaven sent when you operate 500 different IT systems from as many suppliers, but windows 10 is one of the worst OSes I’ve ever operated. So again, Apple has managed to be great at OSes, mainly because their competitors suck. I do think not having an iPhone SE is a mistake, but I also thought losing the headphone jack was a mistake, and sales have since proved it wasn’t, so who knows.

carte_blanche 8y ago

mortdeus 8y ago

I knew everything was going down hill the second I seen that they weren't going to call it the Apple iWatch. Like do they not know how important that lower case "i" is for their award winning and trend setting formula! And I am being serious right now. My ocd is going nuts just thinking about the lost uniformity of the branding. Especially when they still insist on us calling their other products "my iphone, my ipod, my imac, and now we also have to say "my apple watch"? How do you even tell somebody to pass you your phone, tablet, and watch all at the same time. "Hey man, can you pass me my iphone and ipad. Oh and my APPLE watch. Like do you not realize how much of my life you are wasting when you force me to say one more syllable.