5 ms·

I think it's pretty telling that there are lots of letters like this from Microsoft, but almost none from Apple. I can't imagine someone from Apple writing a l

I think it's pretty telling that there are lots of letters like this from Microsoft, but almost none from Apple. I can't imagine someone from Apple writing a letter like this to Jobs and still working at Apple.

sushisource 5y ago
I agree, but seemingly that hasn't mattered or helped much? Apple is a more valuable company in terms of market cap, and almost certainly a more 'loved' company in terms of mindshare. Many people thought they'd be doomed without Jobs but they've seemingly been doing just fine still (ignoring many valid criticisms here, of course, but talking about the general population). Which I really find fascinating. Aside from their arguably better stance on privacy, I don't really find there's much at all to love about Apple products beyond they look quite nice, generally. In fact I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about. Is that really all there is to it? The consistency of aesthetic is enough to win? I've always found it to be an interesting question, why they continue to be so successful.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  Just to take a recent HN front page example, the link to SyncThing. It says "Since Android phones, at least, are Linux-based, one need only set up a normal shell environment on it and put Syncthing there to achieve this goal; the process shouldn't take more than a day or so." The disconnect between the two worlds "people who use Apple products" and "people who think a day or so of your life is a reasonable amount of time to install an app that copies files over a network" is, well there's no way to cross that gap. And then you describe what Apple does as "dumbing down", for dumb people. People who don't want to care that SyncThing is written in Go instead of Java which means they can't access the Android API to write to an SD Card and the docs lead to a Github issue with 128 comments explaining why they aren't going to fix it. People who give their iCloud account login and Apple has their photos? Dumb people. [I know people choose SyncThing to keep control locally and that often comes at a cost of more trouble, more effort. It's illustrative of very different worlds, that's all].
  - brundolf 5y ago
    This sums up my return to the iPhone. I was an android user from 2012 to 2018. I loved messing with things, customizing, problem-solving when things would break. And then eventually, I just... got over it. There were other things I'd rather spend my finite energy on. I wanted my phone to do phone things and do them well, and without me having to think about it.
    - rewgs 5y ago
      Same. I switched from iPhone/Mac to Android/Windows and sometimes refer to that period as my "rumspringa," as I eventually returned to Apple for all things "daily life" tech. I've put all that customization energy into my Linux VM, i.e. my programming environment. Time spent dicking around there always teaches me something and results in a somewhat more efficient setup. Time spent playing with an Android shell or launcher or icon theme or whatever was just...sunk time.
    - webmobdev 5y ago
      I can understand when someone says they opted for macOS or Windows as they didn't want to struggle with Linux. But making the same argument for Android vs ios, doesn't hold. In fact, you actually struggle and waste more time on ios - e.g. transferring a file from an iDevice to a non-Apple device. Stock Android is just as mature and capable as ios. It's all the bundled adware / spyware crap that the phone manufacturers add to Android that often makes it lousy and gives it a bad name. (Google shares the blame for making it a spyware).
      - brundolf 5y ago
        > In fact, you actually struggle and waste more time on ios This hasn't been my experience > Stock Android is just as mature and capable as ios It's fine, but everything is just (imo) a little bit less cohesive and polished, and then there's the Google spyware, a shorter lifetime of updates, etc. And then if you aren't going off the beaten path and customizing stuff anyway, what are you actually gaining in exchange for those downsides?
- brundolf 5y ago
  There are two things that have always set Apple apart in my opinion: 1) Landscape-shifting new product categories 2) Holistic, "scenario"-driven product design (as the author was advocating for) #1 mostly died with Jobs, imo. But #2 seems to still have deep cultural roots at the company. They don't think in terms of component parts (at the hardware, software, UI, or any other level). They think in terms of making a device that a person can use for things they care about. They start from the top and work downward, everything else serving that ultimate end. Microsoft still doesn't do this, Google still doesn't do this. That was enough on its own, but now 14 years of investing iPhone profits have added "sheer technical excellence" to the equation, giving them an additional edge.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    I think of Apple as tech company that has fashion brand retail quality marketing and distribution, and highly developed internal hardware with very strong and well managed supply chain. Those are more advantageous features in smartphones than they are in desktop. The products are 'good' but not that much better from a feature/function perspective. They look a little cleaner, nicer, but it's not really features that make them better. Every employee rants, and thinks that 'the thing they are working on' is really important, and it's common that people think that the company has 'lost it's way' with this or that. The fact is, the 'speed' of the file system on mac and windows isn't very relevant. It works, it's fast enough. More paradoxically, the Windows UI's are a total confusing mess, always have been, and yet they've dominated on desktop forever.
- spideymans 5y ago
  > Is that really all there is to it? The consistency of aesthetic is enough to win? I've always found it to be an interesting question, why they continue to be so successful. Apple understands that technology is not enough. If you want consumers to want to use your products, you have to get the technology right, and you have to make the product a joy to use. Most of us in this industry get the technology right, but treat the consumer joy (aka, amazing UX) as completely optional.
  - spideymans 5y ago
    > Most of us in this industry get the technology right, but treat the consumer joy (aka, amazing UX) as completely optional. Unfortunately our industry is so metric-based, that we’re unwilling to make investments in intangibles like UX.
    - e3bc54b2 5y ago
      That's funny, because AT&T with the rotary phone and original Windows UI, both of which have stood the test of time, were results of extensive and rigorous UX research. Hard numbers got the industry mainstream. Then we decided it was time to make things pretty, even at the cost of UX, and here we are. Or put in other words, metric-based was awesome, but then we decided to focus on wrong metrics.
908B64B197 5y ago
Apple did not have it's internal emails made public and discussed in court. I think the email we're discussing was part of the anti-trust investigation against Microsoft.
- cronix 5y ago
  Yes, the following tweet states: > This document is from Comes v. Microsoft (2007).]
- canuckintime 5y ago
  Good point. Here's an example: > Apple executive Eddy Cue sent an email in January 2011 to CEO Tim Cook... “I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one,” Cue wrote in the email, which forwarded an article written by a reporter that switched from the iPad to a 7-inch Samsung tablet. “I tend to agree with many of the comments below,” Cue wrote. > The email was introduced Friday during Samsung’s cross-examination of iOS chief Scott Forstall, who was among the recipients of Cue’s email. Forstall testified that Cue also used a 7-inch Galaxy Tab at some point... Steve Jobs was an outspoken critic of such tablets, saying that one would only be practical if it came with sandpaper to make people’s fingers smaller. https://allthingsd.com/20120803/apples-eddy-cue-saw-market-for-7-inch-tablet-in-2011-said-should-do-one/ https://allthingsd.com/20120803/apples-eddy-cue-saw-market-f... > I expressed this to Steve [Jobs] several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/apple/a397538/apples-steve-jobs-was-open-to-ipad-mini-project/ https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/apple/a397538/apples-steve-j...
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
"… and still working at Apple" I can't imagine someone from Apple writing a letter like that either, but mostly because OS X, at the time of this writing, was amazing and getting better at a rapid clip, while Windows was its nadir. Are you implying that there would have been reprisal? Because this whole thing happened just a couple years before a notorious incident where Jobs walked into a meeting and asked the Macbook team why the laptops were so inferior to iPads. He was notoriously critical of their own products.
microtherion 5y ago
I don't know about writing a letter like this, but actually USING non-Apple products was never a big deal in my recollection. I've never heard of an Apple equivalent of the stories of ostentatious hostility displayed by Microsoft executives toward employees (or their own offspring) daring to privately own/desire Apple products.

sushisource 5y ago

I agree, but seemingly that hasn't mattered or helped much? Apple is a more valuable company in terms of market cap, and almost certainly a more 'loved' company in terms of mindshare. Many people thought they'd be doomed without Jobs but they've seemingly been doing just fine still (ignoring many valid criticisms here, of course, but talking about the general population). Which I really find fascinating. Aside from their arguably better stance on privacy, I don't really find there's much at all to love about Apple products beyond they look quite nice, generally. In fact I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about. Is that really all there is to it? The consistency of aesthetic is enough to win? I've always found it to be an interesting question, why they continue to be so successful.

jodrellblank 5y ago
Just to take a recent HN front page example, the link to SyncThing. It says "Since Android phones, at least, are Linux-based, one need only set up a normal shell environment on it and put Syncthing there to achieve this goal; the process shouldn't take more than a day or so." The disconnect between the two worlds "people who use Apple products" and "people who think a day or so of your life is a reasonable amount of time to install an app that copies files over a network" is, well there's no way to cross that gap. And then you describe what Apple does as "dumbing down", for dumb people. People who don't want to care that SyncThing is written in Go instead of Java which means they can't access the Android API to write to an SD Card and the docs lead to a Github issue with 128 comments explaining why they aren't going to fix it. People who give their iCloud account login and Apple has their photos? Dumb people. [I know people choose SyncThing to keep control locally and that often comes at a cost of more trouble, more effort. It's illustrative of very different worlds, that's all].
- brundolf 5y ago
  This sums up my return to the iPhone. I was an android user from 2012 to 2018. I loved messing with things, customizing, problem-solving when things would break. And then eventually, I just... got over it. There were other things I'd rather spend my finite energy on. I wanted my phone to do phone things and do them well, and without me having to think about it.
  - rewgs 5y ago
    Same. I switched from iPhone/Mac to Android/Windows and sometimes refer to that period as my "rumspringa," as I eventually returned to Apple for all things "daily life" tech. I've put all that customization energy into my Linux VM, i.e. my programming environment. Time spent dicking around there always teaches me something and results in a somewhat more efficient setup. Time spent playing with an Android shell or launcher or icon theme or whatever was just...sunk time.
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    I can understand when someone says they opted for macOS or Windows as they didn't want to struggle with Linux. But making the same argument for Android vs ios, doesn't hold. In fact, you actually struggle and waste more time on ios - e.g. transferring a file from an iDevice to a non-Apple device. Stock Android is just as mature and capable as ios. It's all the bundled adware / spyware crap that the phone manufacturers add to Android that often makes it lousy and gives it a bad name. (Google shares the blame for making it a spyware).
    - brundolf 5y ago
      > In fact, you actually struggle and waste more time on ios This hasn't been my experience > Stock Android is just as mature and capable as ios It's fine, but everything is just (imo) a little bit less cohesive and polished, and then there's the Google spyware, a shorter lifetime of updates, etc. And then if you aren't going off the beaten path and customizing stuff anyway, what are you actually gaining in exchange for those downsides?
brundolf 5y ago
There are two things that have always set Apple apart in my opinion: 1) Landscape-shifting new product categories 2) Holistic, "scenario"-driven product design (as the author was advocating for) #1 mostly died with Jobs, imo. But #2 seems to still have deep cultural roots at the company. They don't think in terms of component parts (at the hardware, software, UI, or any other level). They think in terms of making a device that a person can use for things they care about. They start from the top and work downward, everything else serving that ultimate end. Microsoft still doesn't do this, Google still doesn't do this. That was enough on its own, but now 14 years of investing iPhone profits have added "sheer technical excellence" to the equation, giving them an additional edge.
- jollybean 5y ago
  I think of Apple as tech company that has fashion brand retail quality marketing and distribution, and highly developed internal hardware with very strong and well managed supply chain. Those are more advantageous features in smartphones than they are in desktop. The products are 'good' but not that much better from a feature/function perspective. They look a little cleaner, nicer, but it's not really features that make them better. Every employee rants, and thinks that 'the thing they are working on' is really important, and it's common that people think that the company has 'lost it's way' with this or that. The fact is, the 'speed' of the file system on mac and windows isn't very relevant. It works, it's fast enough. More paradoxically, the Windows UI's are a total confusing mess, always have been, and yet they've dominated on desktop forever.
spideymans 5y ago
> Is that really all there is to it? The consistency of aesthetic is enough to win? I've always found it to be an interesting question, why they continue to be so successful. Apple understands that technology is not enough. If you want consumers to want to use your products, you have to get the technology right, and you have to make the product a joy to use. Most of us in this industry get the technology right, but treat the consumer joy (aka, amazing UX) as completely optional.
- spideymans 5y ago
  > Most of us in this industry get the technology right, but treat the consumer joy (aka, amazing UX) as completely optional. Unfortunately our industry is so metric-based, that we’re unwilling to make investments in intangibles like UX.
  - e3bc54b2 5y ago
    That's funny, because AT&T with the rotary phone and original Windows UI, both of which have stood the test of time, were results of extensive and rigorous UX research. Hard numbers got the industry mainstream. Then we decided it was time to make things pretty, even at the cost of UX, and here we are. Or put in other words, metric-based was awesome, but then we decided to focus on wrong metrics.

908B64B197 5y ago

Apple did not have it's internal emails made public and discussed in court. I think the email we're discussing was part of the anti-trust investigation against Microsoft.

cronix 5y ago
Yes, the following tweet states: > This document is from Comes v. Microsoft (2007).]
canuckintime 5y ago
Good point. Here's an example: > Apple executive Eddy Cue sent an email in January 2011 to CEO Tim Cook... “I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one,” Cue wrote in the email, which forwarded an article written by a reporter that switched from the iPad to a 7-inch Samsung tablet. “I tend to agree with many of the comments below,” Cue wrote. > The email was introduced Friday during Samsung’s cross-examination of iOS chief Scott Forstall, who was among the recipients of Cue’s email. Forstall testified that Cue also used a 7-inch Galaxy Tab at some point... Steve Jobs was an outspoken critic of such tablets, saying that one would only be practical if it came with sandpaper to make people’s fingers smaller. https://allthingsd.com/20120803/apples-eddy-cue-saw-market-for-7-inch-tablet-in-2011-said-should-do-one/ https://allthingsd.com/20120803/apples-eddy-cue-saw-market-f... > I expressed this to Steve [Jobs] several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/apple/a397538/apples-steve-jobs-was-open-to-ipad-mini-project/ https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/apple/a397538/apples-steve-j...

Eric_WVGG 5y ago

"… and still working at Apple" I can't imagine someone from Apple writing a letter like that either, but mostly because OS X, at the time of this writing, was amazing and getting better at a rapid clip, while Windows was its nadir. Are you implying that there would have been reprisal? Because this whole thing happened just a couple years before a notorious incident where Jobs walked into a meeting and asked the Macbook team why the laptops were so inferior to iPads. He was notoriously critical of their own products.

microtherion 5y ago

I don't know about writing a letter like this, but actually USING non-Apple products was never a big deal in my recollection. I've never heard of an Apple equivalent of the stories of ostentatious hostility displayed by Microsoft executives toward employees (or their own offspring) daring to privately own/desire Apple products.