10 ms·

Apple’s Relentless Strategy, Execution, and Point of View

124 points by elsewhen 6y ago

damnyou 6y ago
Correct. Apple's overall strategy with its short 7-year lifecycles is to use planned obsolescence in order to continue extracting money from its consumers. An 8 year old desktop running Windows 10 or Ubuntu 20.04 is perfectly functional today, and will continue to be kept up to date for many more years in the future. An 8 year old Mac Mini runs either of those OSes pretty well. Now that Boot Camp will no longer be supported, an Apple Silicon Mac Mini bought in 2020 would have to be thrown away in 2028 since it will no longer receive security patches. This is... not good.
- mahgnous 6y ago
  I have no doubt in my mind that they won't also try to force everyone to the App Store with these new "Macs"
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Ten- and eleven-year-old Macs are getting security updates now. Why do you think that will change with Apple silicon?
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Which ones are those? Not the 2009 iMacs that can run, at most 10.11 El Capitan, which stopped receiving security updates two years ago.
    - kalleboo 6y ago
      macOS High Sierra runs on the following Macintosh computers:[5] * iMac: Late 2009 or later * MacBook: Late 2009 or later * MacBook Pro: Mid 2010 or later * MacBook Air: Late 2010 or later * Mac Mini: Mid 2010 or later * Mac Pro: Mid 2010 or later
- kt103099 6y ago
  What drives most of the limited backward compatibility is the amount of testing required. If you want to officially support new features on an older harder platform, you should test that they work. And fix any bugs found. And maybe some of those older machines don't have hardware for a new feature, so you have to devise a way to fail gracefully. At some point you just need to cut off the older platforms and move on. Similar reasons many web developer complained in the past about having to support old versions of Internet Explorer. No one accused anyone of 'planned obsolecense'. BTW, the author of this article is not ignorant in these affairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Sinofsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Sinofsky
  - damnyou 6y ago
    Apple makes far too much money for this to be a legitimate excuse.
    - mthoms 6y ago
      I thought the article illustrated very well why "money" should not be the prime consideration for supporting something (in the short to medium term). They're playing the long game.
      - damnyou 6y ago
        Tell that to all the game developers whose games can no longer be played on Catalina.
        mthoms 6y ago
        Tell them what? Those developers already know that Apple is known for removing support for aging technologies way ahead of the curve. They also know that being willing to move fast and break backwards compatibility is what makes Apple, Apple. It's a major point of the article: >There’s a whole book to be written about the “deal” a company makes to [...] promise compatibility. The reward of success is extremely high, but it is almost a Faustian bargain because you will absolutely cede the right to innovate No one said that there weren't downsides to Apple's approach. The downsides are well known. And, as a user I'm slightly annoyed about the loss of 32-bit support. But if 32 bit support and backward compatibility is important, there's plenty of options including Windows, Linux or dual-booting MacOS versions [0]. Personally, I'm willing to suffer the short term pain of lost backward compatibility because I'm excited about the future of computing. As a user and developer I've already lived through 16->32->64 bit transitions (and similar disruptions). They suck at the time, but they're ultimately worth it. You can't stop progress. [0] https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/dual-boot-mac-3659676/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/dual-boot-mac...
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  I think you are confusing "won't run the latest macOS" with "doesn't get security updates", which simply isn't true. Apple is still providing security updates for Macs well over a decade old.
  - damnyou 6y ago
    Ahh, last I checked Apple would only do 1 more year of security updates. Glad to see they've changed their stance. 10 is better than 7 but not as good as the 15+ years Windows and Linux offer.
    - andrewnicolalde 6y ago
      When on earth did you check??
      - tpetry 6y ago
        They are not absolutely wrong. Old macOS versions do get security updates sometimes. Almost all the time when something really critical has bern found, but the most current macOS is receiving much more security updates. And i dont believe that these more security bugs are only in the newest version. Maybe they are hard to fix in old versions because they can‘t be backported?
- cercatrova 6y ago
  And I mean, if you're a company that does planned obsolescence and your users will continue to buy your latest products without caring about repairing them, why wouldn't you continue to use planned obsolescence?
  - cafed00d 6y ago
    it depends on how much "consumer effort" repairing costs. Most people seem to replace their phones on a regular 2-3 year cadence. Much less so on laptops -- and surely Macs tend to get supported for long period of time; I can run Big Sur on a 6 year old Mac. Same with iPhones -- iPhone 6S is going to run iOS 14. As a consumer, if I were to buy an alternative to the iPhone -- which is practically _only_ Android -- then I'm looking at software obsolescence much earlier; I mean, look at Android 11 & iOS 14. iPhones released in 2015 are still supported but Android 11 goes only as far back as Pixel 2, a phone from 2017. So it doesn't seem like Apple is a company that is using "planned obsolescence" from a purely functionality perspective. Sure, hardware degrades in quality overtime -- but that's a function of physical constraints -- not business strategy to get people to buy new stuff; well, at least for the _most_ (some?) part.
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    Last time I heard, Apple was an environment conscious company.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Apple has by far the highest customer satisfaction in the business. An 8 year old Mini is still going to run fine for years to come. Apple should put its efforts into creating the future fir those willing to pay for it, not grumps with 8 year old computers too cheap to upgrade to far better hardware.
lukasb 6y ago
This isn’t scrum or agile or… — most would call it waterfall BUT IT IS NOT. It is planning, iterating, prioritizing, discarding, restarting, and more. I don't understand why this isn't waterfall. Because ... sometimes Apple changes their plans?
- culturestate 6y ago
  I think his point is that you can't label their process with any one standard methodology because it's uniquely Apple - it's all of them and none of them at the same time. It may feel like waterfall from the outside because it seems like they do a lot of planning up front and then execute on those plans, but that's too simplistic a view of what actually happens internally.
  - peterkos 6y ago
    I've heard it descried (on Twitter) as Agile on steroids, haha
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    That's not unique to Apple. No company adopts cookie-cutter standard methodology either. There is always compromises.
    - culturestate 6y ago
      There are definitely shops that adopt e.g. waterfall processes wholesale throughout the org, but broadly I agree with you that most companies can't be painted with a single brush. That does't stop people from doing it, though, and I think he's just trying to make sure that readers don't learn the wrong lesson (eg no course corrections! plan everything and stick to it no matter what!) from this analysis.
      - lukasb 6y ago
        Okay, but surely out of every major tech company, Apple is the closest to waterfall-style? Given what a bad name waterfall has now, that's surely notable. It seems to me that the reason Apple succeeds with a (relatively close to) waterfall style approach is the long term planning / strong point of view the author describes. The more the goalposts move, the more agile you have to be.
baxtr 6y ago
> 15/ It is incredibly clear that everyone at Apple puts strategy requirements above anything “local”. When you wonder why there isn’t more new in Notes or why Mail is missing stuff it’s because supporting a multi-year strategy trumps individual teams and that’s a good thing. I don’t know anything about internals at Apple but I have been wondering constantly how they manage to be successful over and over again. If I had to bet, I’d say is this. I’ve worked for many companies where the ego of a product or service line boss always trumped overall strategy. It was about them not the company. Somehow Apple has succeeded in damping down this effect (I am sure it’s there but just on different level than in other companies).
- chadlavi 6y ago
  For a long time the biggest ego in the room was Steve, whose ego was behind the overarching strategy.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - MaysonL 6y ago
    And for someone with that big an ego, a remarkable willingness to change his mind.
    - ladyanita22 6y ago
      He definitely was a clever guy. He had an enormous ego, but he knew when it was wrong (despite him probably never accepting he was wrong in the first place)
    - taneq 6y ago
      It's easy to change your mind when you can just pretend that you'd always thought that, and nobody's game to call you on it.
- chongli 6y ago
  Somehow Apple has succeeded in damping down this effect I don’t know how Apple is organized internally but if I may be allowed to speculate, I think the way to avoid these ego issues is by moving people around constantly. If you don’t allow any team to establish a “territory” on a particular product, you may be able to get away with it.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Of course, "success" in this context also comes with a Point of View. I am both a developer of "creative" (cross-platform) software, and a participant in several different online audio-software-related communities, I'd say that Apple is currently at an all-time low as far as the happiness within the union of the development and user communities for audio software on macOS. Apple doesn't have to care ... but this was once a group that they explicitly identified as among their core target audiences. That can change over time, but it would be honest to acknowledge that whenever one is talking about success. OTOH, despite the level of unhappiness about recent Apple macOS/hardware developments, most of the current macOS user community will keep buying Apple hardware. So ... success? Depends on that Point of View, I suppose.
- swyx 6y ago
  can you elaborate what exactly your community is unhappy about? hard to tell from your comment so hard to empathize
  - plushpuffin 6y ago
    I read that the T2 chip really messed with some audio hardware by saturating the USB 2.0 hub. That might be one thing? https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/19/pro-audio-glitch-with-t2-equipped-macs-connected-to-usb-20-connections https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/19/pro-audio-glitch-...
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    there's a pervasive feeling that Apple doesn't really care about professional creatives in the way that they once did. it likely started with apple killing firewire (which immediately ended numerous product lines and EOL'ed many people's devices). it continued with the redesign of final cut, which was clearly done to appeal to new(ish) users rather than people who used it all day. the arrival of AUv3 has been somewhat half-assed, with poor documentation and inconsistent experiences among developers. developers using higher level audio APIs have also found things changing with no clear reason or announcements. the mac hardware has continued to become less and less competitively priced if you care about CPU cycles/unit-of-currency. the demise of connectors on macbooks was hard on many musicians who were performing live with their machines. continued subtle OS-level changes continue to break many pro-audio/music creation apps in not necessarily deep ways, but the breakages still have to be addressed by someone. there have been repeated reports of significant worsening of performance of various types of audio interfaces as macOS has moved from version to version. i tended to dimiss these initially, but they are becoming too common to completely write off. the machines are becoming more and more sensitive to the entire state of the USB bus(ses), and although they were never entirely safe in this respect, things have gotten worse just as USB connectivity for audio has become more and more important. that's a sampling ...
alexashka 6y ago
> Wildly unprecedented execution It takes me back to when I was younger and every well polished presentation, jazzed me up like it does, this author. I remember buying first gen. 27" iMac and marvelling at the resolution - I couldn't see the individual pixels! Now I'm old and grumpy and not a single announcement from Apple or any other tech company for that matter, has made me giddy in years. Many announcements and ongoing blunders, have jaded my soul, bit by bit :) I imagine some innovation, not iteration, is around the corner, because it just can't be that this is all we've managed to accomplish with all the opportunity that we've been given.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  If you eat the same food over and over and over again it eventually tastes bland.
  - toohotatopic 6y ago
    >TheSpiceIsLife Does it? Don't you hone your perception and you are able to taste subtle differences instead of getting a kick from its novelty?
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      Ah, yes. It depends what you’re trying to see, right? Eventually your senses will be saturated by the mundane, physical realm. True happiness lies in contentedness. To be content is to have enough; to be full. Only when we realise we are full—when we see we were born full—are we ready, willing, and able, to give. Only through giving can we become full. To give is to be content.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    We're definitely spoiled. The first iPhone was very impactful. Now everybody has something much better on their pockets and it's just meh.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
cable2600 6y ago
The big selling point of the Apple Mac computers line is that they are not Windows PCs. You can get stuff done without annoyance or tweaking the system. The iPhone and iPad are so easy to use that a three year old can use them. Which makes them easier to use for ebook readers in schools.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Even a chimp can use it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTiZqCQsfa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTiZqCQsfa8 Yes, it's only the one app - but I think that's a win for usability. It's the video I think of whenever someone on HN is complaining that iOS is hard to use and that things were better in the past. I'm not sure what a chimp would be able to do at a command line, but I suspect not much.

124 points by elsewhen 6y ago

Correct. Apple's overall strategy with its short 7-year lifecycles is to use planned obsolescence in order to continue extracting money from its consumers. An 8 year old desktop running Windows 10 or Ubuntu 20.04 is perfectly functional today, and will continue to be kept up to date for many more years in the future. An 8 year old Mac Mini runs either of those OSes pretty well. Now that Boot Camp will no longer be supported, an Apple Silicon Mac Mini bought in 2020 would have to be thrown away in 2028 since it will no longer receive security patches. This is... not good.

mahgnous 6y ago
I have no doubt in my mind that they won't also try to force everyone to the App Store with these new "Macs"
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
robertoandred 6y ago
Ten- and eleven-year-old Macs are getting security updates now. Why do you think that will change with Apple silicon?
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Which ones are those? Not the 2009 iMacs that can run, at most 10.11 El Capitan, which stopped receiving security updates two years ago.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    macOS High Sierra runs on the following Macintosh computers:[5] * iMac: Late 2009 or later * MacBook: Late 2009 or later * MacBook Pro: Mid 2010 or later * MacBook Air: Late 2010 or later * Mac Mini: Mid 2010 or later * Mac Pro: Mid 2010 or later
kt103099 6y ago
What drives most of the limited backward compatibility is the amount of testing required. If you want to officially support new features on an older harder platform, you should test that they work. And fix any bugs found. And maybe some of those older machines don't have hardware for a new feature, so you have to devise a way to fail gracefully. At some point you just need to cut off the older platforms and move on. Similar reasons many web developer complained in the past about having to support old versions of Internet Explorer. No one accused anyone of 'planned obsolecense'. BTW, the author of this article is not ignorant in these affairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Sinofsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Sinofsky
- damnyou 6y ago
  Apple makes far too much money for this to be a legitimate excuse.
  - mthoms 6y ago
    I thought the article illustrated very well why "money" should not be the prime consideration for supporting something (in the short to medium term). They're playing the long game.
    - damnyou 6y ago
      Tell that to all the game developers whose games can no longer be played on Catalina.
      - mthoms 6y ago
        Tell them what? Those developers already know that Apple is known for removing support for aging technologies way ahead of the curve. They also know that being willing to move fast and break backwards compatibility is what makes Apple, Apple. It's a major point of the article: >There’s a whole book to be written about the “deal” a company makes to [...] promise compatibility. The reward of success is extremely high, but it is almost a Faustian bargain because you will absolutely cede the right to innovate No one said that there weren't downsides to Apple's approach. The downsides are well known. And, as a user I'm slightly annoyed about the loss of 32-bit support. But if 32 bit support and backward compatibility is important, there's plenty of options including Windows, Linux or dual-booting MacOS versions [0]. Personally, I'm willing to suffer the short term pain of lost backward compatibility because I'm excited about the future of computing. As a user and developer I've already lived through 16->32->64 bit transitions (and similar disruptions). They suck at the time, but they're ultimately worth it. You can't stop progress. [0] https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/dual-boot-mac-3659676/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/dual-boot-mac...
LeoPanthera 6y ago
I think you are confusing "won't run the latest macOS" with "doesn't get security updates", which simply isn't true. Apple is still providing security updates for Macs well over a decade old.
- damnyou 6y ago
  Ahh, last I checked Apple would only do 1 more year of security updates. Glad to see they've changed their stance. 10 is better than 7 but not as good as the 15+ years Windows and Linux offer.
  - andrewnicolalde 6y ago
    When on earth did you check??
    - tpetry 6y ago
      They are not absolutely wrong. Old macOS versions do get security updates sometimes. Almost all the time when something really critical has bern found, but the most current macOS is receiving much more security updates. And i dont believe that these more security bugs are only in the newest version. Maybe they are hard to fix in old versions because they can‘t be backported?
cercatrova 6y ago
And I mean, if you're a company that does planned obsolescence and your users will continue to buy your latest products without caring about repairing them, why wouldn't you continue to use planned obsolescence?
- cafed00d 6y ago
  it depends on how much "consumer effort" repairing costs. Most people seem to replace their phones on a regular 2-3 year cadence. Much less so on laptops -- and surely Macs tend to get supported for long period of time; I can run Big Sur on a 6 year old Mac. Same with iPhones -- iPhone 6S is going to run iOS 14. As a consumer, if I were to buy an alternative to the iPhone -- which is practically _only_ Android -- then I'm looking at software obsolescence much earlier; I mean, look at Android 11 & iOS 14. iPhones released in 2015 are still supported but Android 11 goes only as far back as Pixel 2, a phone from 2017. So it doesn't seem like Apple is a company that is using "planned obsolescence" from a purely functionality perspective. Sure, hardware degrades in quality overtime -- but that's a function of physical constraints -- not business strategy to get people to buy new stuff; well, at least for the _most_ (some?) part.
- arvinsim 6y ago
  Last time I heard, Apple was an environment conscious company.
valuearb 6y ago
Apple has by far the highest customer satisfaction in the business. An 8 year old Mini is still going to run fine for years to come. Apple should put its efforts into creating the future fir those willing to pay for it, not grumps with 8 year old computers too cheap to upgrade to far better hardware.

lukasb 6y ago

This isn’t scrum or agile or… — most would call it waterfall BUT IT IS NOT. It is planning, iterating, prioritizing, discarding, restarting, and more. I don't understand why this isn't waterfall. Because ... sometimes Apple changes their plans?

culturestate 6y ago
I think his point is that you can't label their process with any one standard methodology because it's uniquely Apple - it's all of them and none of them at the same time. It may feel like waterfall from the outside because it seems like they do a lot of planning up front and then execute on those plans, but that's too simplistic a view of what actually happens internally.
- peterkos 6y ago
  I've heard it descried (on Twitter) as Agile on steroids, haha
- arvinsim 6y ago
  That's not unique to Apple. No company adopts cookie-cutter standard methodology either. There is always compromises.
  - culturestate 6y ago
    There are definitely shops that adopt e.g. waterfall processes wholesale throughout the org, but broadly I agree with you that most companies can't be painted with a single brush. That does't stop people from doing it, though, and I think he's just trying to make sure that readers don't learn the wrong lesson (eg no course corrections! plan everything and stick to it no matter what!) from this analysis.
    - lukasb 6y ago
      Okay, but surely out of every major tech company, Apple is the closest to waterfall-style? Given what a bad name waterfall has now, that's surely notable. It seems to me that the reason Apple succeeds with a (relatively close to) waterfall style approach is the long term planning / strong point of view the author describes. The more the goalposts move, the more agile you have to be.

baxtr 6y ago

> 15/ It is incredibly clear that everyone at Apple puts strategy requirements above anything “local”. When you wonder why there isn’t more new in Notes or why Mail is missing stuff it’s because supporting a multi-year strategy trumps individual teams and that’s a good thing. I don’t know anything about internals at Apple but I have been wondering constantly how they manage to be successful over and over again. If I had to bet, I’d say is this. I’ve worked for many companies where the ego of a product or service line boss always trumped overall strategy. It was about them not the company. Somehow Apple has succeeded in damping down this effect (I am sure it’s there but just on different level than in other companies).

chadlavi 6y ago
For a long time the biggest ego in the room was Steve, whose ego was behind the overarching strategy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- MaysonL 6y ago
  And for someone with that big an ego, a remarkable willingness to change his mind.
  - ladyanita22 6y ago
    He definitely was a clever guy. He had an enormous ego, but he knew when it was wrong (despite him probably never accepting he was wrong in the first place)
  - taneq 6y ago
    It's easy to change your mind when you can just pretend that you'd always thought that, and nobody's game to call you on it.
chongli 6y ago
Somehow Apple has succeeded in damping down this effect I don’t know how Apple is organized internally but if I may be allowed to speculate, I think the way to avoid these ego issues is by moving people around constantly. If you don’t allow any team to establish a “territory” on a particular product, you may be able to get away with it.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

Of course, "success" in this context also comes with a Point of View. I am both a developer of "creative" (cross-platform) software, and a participant in several different online audio-software-related communities, I'd say that Apple is currently at an all-time low as far as the happiness within the union of the development and user communities for audio software on macOS. Apple doesn't have to care ... but this was once a group that they explicitly identified as among their core target audiences. That can change over time, but it would be honest to acknowledge that whenever one is talking about success. OTOH, despite the level of unhappiness about recent Apple macOS/hardware developments, most of the current macOS user community will keep buying Apple hardware. So ... success? Depends on that Point of View, I suppose.

swyx 6y ago
can you elaborate what exactly your community is unhappy about? hard to tell from your comment so hard to empathize
- plushpuffin 6y ago
  I read that the T2 chip really messed with some audio hardware by saturating the USB 2.0 hub. That might be one thing? https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/19/pro-audio-glitch-with-t2-equipped-macs-connected-to-usb-20-connections https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/19/pro-audio-glitch-...
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  there's a pervasive feeling that Apple doesn't really care about professional creatives in the way that they once did. it likely started with apple killing firewire (which immediately ended numerous product lines and EOL'ed many people's devices). it continued with the redesign of final cut, which was clearly done to appeal to new(ish) users rather than people who used it all day. the arrival of AUv3 has been somewhat half-assed, with poor documentation and inconsistent experiences among developers. developers using higher level audio APIs have also found things changing with no clear reason or announcements. the mac hardware has continued to become less and less competitively priced if you care about CPU cycles/unit-of-currency. the demise of connectors on macbooks was hard on many musicians who were performing live with their machines. continued subtle OS-level changes continue to break many pro-audio/music creation apps in not necessarily deep ways, but the breakages still have to be addressed by someone. there have been repeated reports of significant worsening of performance of various types of audio interfaces as macOS has moved from version to version. i tended to dimiss these initially, but they are becoming too common to completely write off. the machines are becoming more and more sensitive to the entire state of the USB bus(ses), and although they were never entirely safe in this respect, things have gotten worse just as USB connectivity for audio has become more and more important. that's a sampling ...

alexashka 6y ago

> Wildly unprecedented execution It takes me back to when I was younger and every well polished presentation, jazzed me up like it does, this author. I remember buying first gen. 27" iMac and marvelling at the resolution - I couldn't see the individual pixels! Now I'm old and grumpy and not a single announcement from Apple or any other tech company for that matter, has made me giddy in years. Many announcements and ongoing blunders, have jaded my soul, bit by bit :) I imagine some innovation, not iteration, is around the corner, because it just can't be that this is all we've managed to accomplish with all the opportunity that we've been given.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
If you eat the same food over and over and over again it eventually tastes bland.
- toohotatopic 6y ago
  >TheSpiceIsLife Does it? Don't you hone your perception and you are able to taste subtle differences instead of getting a kick from its novelty?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    Ah, yes. It depends what you’re trying to see, right? Eventually your senses will be saturated by the mundane, physical realm. True happiness lies in contentedness. To be content is to have enough; to be full. Only when we realise we are full—when we see we were born full—are we ready, willing, and able, to give. Only through giving can we become full. To give is to be content.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  We're definitely spoiled. The first iPhone was very impactful. Now everybody has something much better on their pockets and it's just meh.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

cable2600 6y ago

The big selling point of the Apple Mac computers line is that they are not Windows PCs. You can get stuff done without annoyance or tweaking the system. The iPhone and iPad are so easy to use that a three year old can use them. Which makes them easier to use for ebook readers in schools.

fossuser 6y ago
Even a chimp can use it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTiZqCQsfa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTiZqCQsfa8 Yes, it's only the one app - but I think that's a win for usability. It's the video I think of whenever someone on HN is complaining that iOS is hard to use and that things were better in the past. I'm not sure what a chimp would be able to do at a command line, but I suspect not much.