5 ms·

Apple Is Flailing Badly At The Edges

27 points by epi0Bauqu 18y ago

tptacek 18y ago
Apple is definitely the worst computer company. Except for all the other ones.
- stcredzero 18y ago
  Capitalism, Democracy, and Apple? F/OSS would fit in better with that group. But a few years ago, I decided that I was tired of fixing and tweaking Windows and Linux and said: "Okay, Steve, I'll pony up the cash, just take care of me!" Then Ubuntu came along! Time to switch again?
- jrockway 18y ago
  What's wrong with Lenovo and Dell? They both make millions of solid machines. I suppose that they're not very sexy... but I tend to pay attention to what's on the screen, not whether or not the case won any design contests. (And FWIW, the Thinkpad has won a lot of design awards. The matte-black box is beautiful and durable. The Macbook feels like a cheap toy in comparison.) Finally, Asus' eeepc is also a beautiful computer.
  - ank7ovy7 18y ago
    It's the OS.
cypress-hill 18y ago
anyone taking risks is going to have some flops. but look at their hits - ipod and iphone. these far outweigh the failures
kylec 18y ago
Since he doesn't detail the nature of the problems he had with his failing Macs, I can't really say anything definitive. Personally, I've owned 4 Macs over the past few years and the worst failure I've suffered has been a hard drive crash, so maybe he just has bad luck. I do believe his criticism of MobileMe is warranted though. I'm happy enough to play with it on my free trial but I wouldn't trust its reliability to exclusive use, nor do I want to be locked into an email address at $100/year.
- cstejerean 18y ago
  I signed up for .Mac about 18 months ago and it continued to work well for me even after the transition to MobileMe. I would never use that email address as my primary one, but then again I don't need all my email pushed to my phone. Having GMail forward my important emails to my .Mac account has worked out well. What I really like about MobileMe is that my contacts, calendars and bookmarks are automatically synchronized so I no longer have to worry about docking my iPhone. Not quite sure what kind of problems people are having with MobileMe but as long as I keep getting free extensions from Apple I guess they should keep complaining.
- mrtron 18y ago
  I just found it hilarious that to paraphrase he said 'My Macbook Air couldn't stay connected to our office router so we took it apart for another project.' Wait...what? You realize that there could be many reasons for that - and many solutions. Follow that up with his 'high end' black Macbook had a problem...wait just because you pay 200$ more for a different colour doesn't make the laptop high end. Yes, quite an 'expert' able to judge how a company is doing by his folly with devices.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
alaskamiller 18y ago
Within corporate only Apple TV is considered a flop. Mac mini had great demand but not important enough for more focus, the same with MacBook Air. People also tend to forget or don't know this but Apple only has 26,400 or so employees and it caters to consumer, enterprise, and government/school on a global scale. Dell and HP and IBM are running around with hundreds of thousands of employees. And the size of the company is impacted entirely by the managerial abilities of one Steve Jobs. It's a mixed blessing.
- joao 18y ago
  And more than half of those employees are in retail, not development/business/management/etc.
martythemaniak 18y ago
"I love that damn phone, and it will take a lot more than lost apps and dropped calls to get it out of my hands." As long as stuff like this (and you can see a lot more of it here on HN) is the prevailing wisdom, Apple has little motivation to actually do anything to fix their problems. The hype around the iPhone is particularly telling - people put up with developer draconian restrictions, they put up with unstable software and poor reception that most other companies would be ashamed to release. I've had an iPhone for about 3 weeks now, and I still don't get the hype. Have iPhone owners never used a smartphone before? Did they all trade in their Nokia 5110s before buying the iPhone?
- stcredzero 18y ago
  Lots of iPhone users never had a smartphone before. You can think of them as the AOL of smartphones. Considering that, maybe the draconian babysitter policies they have over apps make sense. EDIT - iPhone users I know: Me - programmer, but no longer an early adopter. Had a Palm V awhile back, but found it annoying to have the additional device. 1st time smartphone user. Fellow musician - singer, engineering student. 1st time smartphone user. Veterinarian. Her husband's a Gentoo developer though, and he bought her an iPhone for her birthday. I also know of two coworkers who are early adopters who also own an iPhone. So of the 5 people I know, only two are early adopters. Two of them are female, and both of those users prize the iPhone because it's fun to use and it looks nice.
  - jsdalton 18y ago
    > Lots of iPhone users never had a smartphone before. This statement may be technically true, but I highly doubt it's true among the writers and commentators like Arrington that we hear so much about the iPhone from. In fact, most of the people I know who have iPhones are early adopter types. People like my mom -- a prototypical AOL user -- wouldn't have a clue as to what to do with an iPhone. Arrington's willingness to put up with the bugs, flaws, and "draconian" babysitter policies is a less a statement about Apple as it as about the rest of the smartphone marketplace, which frankly stinks.
    - 18y ago
glymor 18y ago
The title's some kind of mixed metaphor about medieval weaponry. It's terrifying. What's wrong with fraying? It would have worked better anyway.
sdurkin 18y ago
A couple anecdotes of broken machines does not make a trend, or a commercial failure.
- evgen 18y ago
  And to prove that the plural of anecdote is not data, today's news is that Apple has once again topped the PC industry in consumer satisfaction scores [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10019711-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10019711-37.html?part=rss&...] and is the only company in their class whose satisfaction rating actually increased since the last survey.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    Consumer satisfaction is as much about marketing as it is about sustained product quality. Apple customers may just be happy to be part of the club, even while their iPhone drains in one hour or their Macbooks are in an out of the shop, because it's better than using Windows. I'd be much more impressed with them leading something comparable to the IQS JD Power does for cars. It's kinda sad that nothing like that exists.
    - evgen 18y ago
      Ah yes, the old "they are all stupid sheep" explanation for results which do not support your particular worldview. The study in question is pretty open about its methodology, and includes everything from product quality to customer complaints and perceived value of the products. I guess the difference between real social scientists who build econometric models to rank consumer satisfaction values over tens of thousands of subject interviews and you is that the former can speak from authority and you speak only for your own biases and perceptions.
      - mattmaroon 18y ago
        Has nothing to do with stupid sheep or Apple in particular or my world view. It's about sound methodology. The reason the IQS metric is the gold standard in the auto industry is because marketing ensures that quality (from the reliability standpoint) and customer satisfaction are two very different things. One was being used as a proxy for the other here. Apple products could be somewhat unreliable yet still score high in overall satisfaction, apparently even given the methodology they used. Also, since it specifically mentions that the 3g iPhone is not included, that probably means that the older version and iPods are. Is it fair to rate Apple against HP when most Apple customers have used only their portable media players? Do HP's printers count in this?
gaius 18y ago
unexceptable Is this a new word meaning "unable to make an exception for"?
rainface 18y ago
I have owned a number of Apple products; workstations, laptops, iPods etc. I had one super bad incident with Apple which they will never live down. (After 6 months of phone calls, and visits to their 'geniuses'. It ended with them giving me a brand new $2000 workstation in exchange for my $1300 brick.) But that was it. If you are having problems with everything you by from them, you're doing it wrong.

27 points by epi0Bauqu 18y ago

tptacek 18y ago

Apple is definitely the worst computer company. Except for all the other ones.

stcredzero 18y ago
Capitalism, Democracy, and Apple? F/OSS would fit in better with that group. But a few years ago, I decided that I was tired of fixing and tweaking Windows and Linux and said: "Okay, Steve, I'll pony up the cash, just take care of me!" Then Ubuntu came along! Time to switch again?
jrockway 18y ago
What's wrong with Lenovo and Dell? They both make millions of solid machines. I suppose that they're not very sexy... but I tend to pay attention to what's on the screen, not whether or not the case won any design contests. (And FWIW, the Thinkpad has won a lot of design awards. The matte-black box is beautiful and durable. The Macbook feels like a cheap toy in comparison.) Finally, Asus' eeepc is also a beautiful computer.
- ank7ovy7 18y ago
  It's the OS.

cypress-hill 18y ago

anyone taking risks is going to have some flops. but look at their hits - ipod and iphone. these far outweigh the failures

kylec 18y ago

Since he doesn't detail the nature of the problems he had with his failing Macs, I can't really say anything definitive. Personally, I've owned 4 Macs over the past few years and the worst failure I've suffered has been a hard drive crash, so maybe he just has bad luck. I do believe his criticism of MobileMe is warranted though. I'm happy enough to play with it on my free trial but I wouldn't trust its reliability to exclusive use, nor do I want to be locked into an email address at $100/year.

cstejerean 18y ago
I signed up for .Mac about 18 months ago and it continued to work well for me even after the transition to MobileMe. I would never use that email address as my primary one, but then again I don't need all my email pushed to my phone. Having GMail forward my important emails to my .Mac account has worked out well. What I really like about MobileMe is that my contacts, calendars and bookmarks are automatically synchronized so I no longer have to worry about docking my iPhone. Not quite sure what kind of problems people are having with MobileMe but as long as I keep getting free extensions from Apple I guess they should keep complaining.
mrtron 18y ago
I just found it hilarious that to paraphrase he said 'My Macbook Air couldn't stay connected to our office router so we took it apart for another project.' Wait...what? You realize that there could be many reasons for that - and many solutions. Follow that up with his 'high end' black Macbook had a problem...wait just because you pay 200$ more for a different colour doesn't make the laptop high end. Yes, quite an 'expert' able to judge how a company is doing by his folly with devices.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

alaskamiller 18y ago

Within corporate only Apple TV is considered a flop. Mac mini had great demand but not important enough for more focus, the same with MacBook Air. People also tend to forget or don't know this but Apple only has 26,400 or so employees and it caters to consumer, enterprise, and government/school on a global scale. Dell and HP and IBM are running around with hundreds of thousands of employees. And the size of the company is impacted entirely by the managerial abilities of one Steve Jobs. It's a mixed blessing.

joao 18y ago
And more than half of those employees are in retail, not development/business/management/etc.

martythemaniak 18y ago

"I love that damn phone, and it will take a lot more than lost apps and dropped calls to get it out of my hands." As long as stuff like this (and you can see a lot more of it here on HN) is the prevailing wisdom, Apple has little motivation to actually do anything to fix their problems. The hype around the iPhone is particularly telling - people put up with developer draconian restrictions, they put up with unstable software and poor reception that most other companies would be ashamed to release. I've had an iPhone for about 3 weeks now, and I still don't get the hype. Have iPhone owners never used a smartphone before? Did they all trade in their Nokia 5110s before buying the iPhone?

stcredzero 18y ago
Lots of iPhone users never had a smartphone before. You can think of them as the AOL of smartphones. Considering that, maybe the draconian babysitter policies they have over apps make sense. EDIT - iPhone users I know: Me - programmer, but no longer an early adopter. Had a Palm V awhile back, but found it annoying to have the additional device. 1st time smartphone user. Fellow musician - singer, engineering student. 1st time smartphone user. Veterinarian. Her husband's a Gentoo developer though, and he bought her an iPhone for her birthday. I also know of two coworkers who are early adopters who also own an iPhone. So of the 5 people I know, only two are early adopters. Two of them are female, and both of those users prize the iPhone because it's fun to use and it looks nice.
- jsdalton 18y ago
  > Lots of iPhone users never had a smartphone before. This statement may be technically true, but I highly doubt it's true among the writers and commentators like Arrington that we hear so much about the iPhone from. In fact, most of the people I know who have iPhones are early adopter types. People like my mom -- a prototypical AOL user -- wouldn't have a clue as to what to do with an iPhone. Arrington's willingness to put up with the bugs, flaws, and "draconian" babysitter policies is a less a statement about Apple as it as about the rest of the smartphone marketplace, which frankly stinks.
  - 18y ago

glymor 18y ago

The title's some kind of mixed metaphor about medieval weaponry. It's terrifying. What's wrong with fraying? It would have worked better anyway.

sdurkin 18y ago

A couple anecdotes of broken machines does not make a trend, or a commercial failure.

evgen 18y ago
And to prove that the plural of anecdote is not data, today's news is that Apple has once again topped the PC industry in consumer satisfaction scores [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10019711-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10019711-37.html?part=rss&...] and is the only company in their class whose satisfaction rating actually increased since the last survey.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Consumer satisfaction is as much about marketing as it is about sustained product quality. Apple customers may just be happy to be part of the club, even while their iPhone drains in one hour or their Macbooks are in an out of the shop, because it's better than using Windows. I'd be much more impressed with them leading something comparable to the IQS JD Power does for cars. It's kinda sad that nothing like that exists.
  - evgen 18y ago
    Ah yes, the old "they are all stupid sheep" explanation for results which do not support your particular worldview. The study in question is pretty open about its methodology, and includes everything from product quality to customer complaints and perceived value of the products. I guess the difference between real social scientists who build econometric models to rank consumer satisfaction values over tens of thousands of subject interviews and you is that the former can speak from authority and you speak only for your own biases and perceptions.
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      Has nothing to do with stupid sheep or Apple in particular or my world view. It's about sound methodology. The reason the IQS metric is the gold standard in the auto industry is because marketing ensures that quality (from the reliability standpoint) and customer satisfaction are two very different things. One was being used as a proxy for the other here. Apple products could be somewhat unreliable yet still score high in overall satisfaction, apparently even given the methodology they used. Also, since it specifically mentions that the 3g iPhone is not included, that probably means that the older version and iPods are. Is it fair to rate Apple against HP when most Apple customers have used only their portable media players? Do HP's printers count in this?

gaius 18y ago

unexceptable Is this a new word meaning "unable to make an exception for"?

rainface 18y ago

I have owned a number of Apple products; workstations, laptops, iPods etc. I had one super bad incident with Apple which they will never live down. (After 6 months of phone calls, and visits to their 'geniuses'. It ended with them giving me a brand new $2000 workstation in exchange for my $1300 brick.) But that was it. If you are having problems with everything you by from them, you're doing it wrong.