8 ms·

I still don't understand how anyone with hundreds of billions of dollars ships really crappy anything. Like do hundreds of people just pretend that a crappy key

I still don't understand how anyone with hundreds of billions of dollars ships really crappy anything. Like do hundreds of people just pretend that a crappy keyboard isn't garbage or is it so siloed that most people never get an opportunity to register an opinion?

bitL 6y ago
"Hey dev, you don't like that new keyboard pushed by your director/VP? Here's your termination notice!" "We love our developers and pride ourselves on individual expression and transparent feedback." -- Corporation 101
- donw 6y ago
  This is part of it, but I imagine there was a lot of sunk cost in there as well. Imagine: you're in charge of Apple's new keyboard. You spend a bunch of time and money making the thing as thin as possible, because that's the overall design trajectory. Of course, you test this thing internally, and it's okay. It takes a little while to get used to, but isn't awful to type on, and a few months of stress testing seem to indicate that this thing will work in the real world with an acceptable defect rate. Besides, your management chain loves this thing, because It's Thinner(tm). And then, you ship it, and discover that this thing breaks way more often in the real world. But, because Apple, you're a company that never publicly admits to doing anything wrong (because lawsuits), which takes customer feedback with an overly-critical eye (philistines must be using it wrong), and which is more likely to spend it's entire capitalization on cat treats than it is to interrupt an ongoing hardware design cycle. It's not just management -- it's the company culture. On the one hand, this enables them to do bold things and endure incredible criticism before being proven right. The iPod, no optical disks, bundled GPUs, AirPods, etc. On the other hand, this enables them to do bold things and endure incredible criticism before being shown horribly, horribly wrong. The snowflake keyboard, the touchbar, the iPhone antenna, etc. I also suspect this is why Apple's hardware design is just so overall excellent. They identify perfection, and relentlessly pursue it. Sometimes Apple gets it wrong, and it shows, but when they get it right, they get it really right.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >On the one hand, this enables them to do bold things and endure incredible criticism before being proven right. The iPod, no optical disks, bundled GPUs, AirPods, etc. When the iPad first came out: "OMG, you can't print! How insane." Probably forgetting other things. Apple does a ton of things wrong and arguably forces some changes before a lot of the world is ready for them. But they've never prioritized supporting legacy and, in fact, arguably have had a pretty consistent strategy of eliminating legacy at least one or two beats early relative to other companies. Certainly I've found some changes too aggressive. OTOH, there are usually ways to adapt that I've found no more than mildly annoying at first.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      > When the iPad first came out: "OMG, you can't print! How insane." Probably forgetting other things. I very much don't recall anyone complaining about printer support. The primary jab at launch was "it's just a big iPhone". Which was in fact true—it just turned out that "a big iPhone" was pretty damn good, especially when actual iPhones had 3.5" screens. I'd say most of these sorts of complaints are basically legitimate. When the iPhone came out, it didn't have copy and paste, and that was in fact extremely annoying!
      - ghaff 6y ago
        I'm not going to spend the time to look but there were definitely complaints about printing which was still much more of a thing than it is today. (It's still sometimes annoying with both iPad and Chromebook but it's occasional enough that I just mail what I need printed to a computer.) The thing for me with the original iPad was coming to the realization that it was a (very nice) luxury device that was mostly useful for me (at the time) when traveling. And, when I gave one to my dad, it was a revelation relative to computers that he never could really use.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
woah 6y ago
The keyboard isn't that bad. It had reliability issues which suggest a failure of their stress testing, but it wasn't somehow obviously broken when it shipped
- jbverschoor 6y ago
  It fails within a few months of usage. Even when replaced twice
  - piva00 6y ago
    And replacing is even more of a problem as it's not simple or cheap. And wasteful.
- fnord123 6y ago
  The 2019 MacBook keyboards are ok. The ones before were worthless. The ones in 2005 had jitter resulting pro keyboards in double key presses rendering them also total garbage.
  - neuronic 6y ago
    I am typing on a 2017 MBP keyboard that never broke. While I generally share the criticism it is neither garbage nor worthless. These unnecessary juvenile hyperbolisms are so boring. The keyboards had a higher fault rate and many other issues and Apple has corrected its mistake, albeit 1-2 years too late from a consumer perspective. That's all there is to the story and the only semi-relevant competition to MBPs was STILL just ThinkPads and XPS, even with the main input device being significantly worse than previous iterations.
    - fnord123 6y ago
      I eventually threw away my apple keyboards from 2005 so they are literally garbage. Regarding the 2017 keyboards, I'm not even talking about the fault rate. They had no escape key and the key travel was too small so it was like typing on a touch screen.
gehsty 6y ago
It’s almost like the amount of money a company has doesn’t correlate with its ability to make a great product :)

bitL 6y ago

"Hey dev, you don't like that new keyboard pushed by your director/VP? Here's your termination notice!" "We love our developers and pride ourselves on individual expression and transparent feedback." -- Corporation 101

donw 6y ago
This is part of it, but I imagine there was a lot of sunk cost in there as well. Imagine: you're in charge of Apple's new keyboard. You spend a bunch of time and money making the thing as thin as possible, because that's the overall design trajectory. Of course, you test this thing internally, and it's okay. It takes a little while to get used to, but isn't awful to type on, and a few months of stress testing seem to indicate that this thing will work in the real world with an acceptable defect rate. Besides, your management chain loves this thing, because It's Thinner(tm). And then, you ship it, and discover that this thing breaks way more often in the real world. But, because Apple, you're a company that never publicly admits to doing anything wrong (because lawsuits), which takes customer feedback with an overly-critical eye (philistines must be using it wrong), and which is more likely to spend it's entire capitalization on cat treats than it is to interrupt an ongoing hardware design cycle. It's not just management -- it's the company culture. On the one hand, this enables them to do bold things and endure incredible criticism before being proven right. The iPod, no optical disks, bundled GPUs, AirPods, etc. On the other hand, this enables them to do bold things and endure incredible criticism before being shown horribly, horribly wrong. The snowflake keyboard, the touchbar, the iPhone antenna, etc. I also suspect this is why Apple's hardware design is just so overall excellent. They identify perfection, and relentlessly pursue it. Sometimes Apple gets it wrong, and it shows, but when they get it right, they get it really right.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >On the one hand, this enables them to do bold things and endure incredible criticism before being proven right. The iPod, no optical disks, bundled GPUs, AirPods, etc. When the iPad first came out: "OMG, you can't print! How insane." Probably forgetting other things. Apple does a ton of things wrong and arguably forces some changes before a lot of the world is ready for them. But they've never prioritized supporting legacy and, in fact, arguably have had a pretty consistent strategy of eliminating legacy at least one or two beats early relative to other companies. Certainly I've found some changes too aggressive. OTOH, there are usually ways to adapt that I've found no more than mildly annoying at first.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > When the iPad first came out: "OMG, you can't print! How insane." Probably forgetting other things. I very much don't recall anyone complaining about printer support. The primary jab at launch was "it's just a big iPhone". Which was in fact true—it just turned out that "a big iPhone" was pretty damn good, especially when actual iPhones had 3.5" screens. I'd say most of these sorts of complaints are basically legitimate. When the iPhone came out, it didn't have copy and paste, and that was in fact extremely annoying!
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I'm not going to spend the time to look but there were definitely complaints about printing which was still much more of a thing than it is today. (It's still sometimes annoying with both iPad and Chromebook but it's occasional enough that I just mail what I need printed to a computer.) The thing for me with the original iPad was coming to the realization that it was a (very nice) luxury device that was mostly useful for me (at the time) when traveling. And, when I gave one to my dad, it was a revelation relative to computers that he never could really use.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

woah 6y ago

The keyboard isn't that bad. It had reliability issues which suggest a failure of their stress testing, but it wasn't somehow obviously broken when it shipped

jbverschoor 6y ago
It fails within a few months of usage. Even when replaced twice
- piva00 6y ago
  And replacing is even more of a problem as it's not simple or cheap. And wasteful.
fnord123 6y ago
The 2019 MacBook keyboards are ok. The ones before were worthless. The ones in 2005 had jitter resulting pro keyboards in double key presses rendering them also total garbage.
- neuronic 6y ago
  I am typing on a 2017 MBP keyboard that never broke. While I generally share the criticism it is neither garbage nor worthless. These unnecessary juvenile hyperbolisms are so boring. The keyboards had a higher fault rate and many other issues and Apple has corrected its mistake, albeit 1-2 years too late from a consumer perspective. That's all there is to the story and the only semi-relevant competition to MBPs was STILL just ThinkPads and XPS, even with the main input device being significantly worse than previous iterations.
  - fnord123 6y ago
    I eventually threw away my apple keyboards from 2005 so they are literally garbage. Regarding the 2017 keyboards, I'm not even talking about the fault rate. They had no escape key and the key travel was too small so it was like typing on a touch screen.

gehsty 6y ago

It’s almost like the amount of money a company has doesn’t correlate with its ability to make a great product :)