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> [Apple is] probably one of the best run companies in the world. I would argue that perhaps Apple's business side of things is arguably well-run. I personally

• bell-cot 4y ago
  >...more on short-term gains instead of long-term quality... Considering that Tim has been CEO for 11 1/2 years now, and things are still going incredibly well for Apple...it seems pretty hard to argue that he is too focused on the short term. (FWIW, I mostly agree about their software quality.)
  • dumpsterdiver 4y ago
    Speaking of software quality, anyone notice in Apple Music how the categories all start with Apple? Apple Dance music, Apple Country, Apple Pop... like are they trying to make it intentionally difficult for me to use my eyes to find music? I know that I'm using Apple Music... why does every category need to remind me of that while simultaneously impeding my ability to locate things alphabetically? Of course, when I use Siri I can just say "play Dance music" and it works. Hmm.
    • eitally 4y ago
      It could be worse. If you were on Android, about half of Google's 1P apps start with "Google", and about half don't, even ones that probably should (like Google Home).
    • brnt 4y ago
      Soon in supermarkets near you: the Apple Apple. Beautiful, healthy, tasty; no buttons!
      • red-iron-pine 4y ago
        Cutting it into quarters requires a special knife that costs $500
        • covercash 4y ago
          But it’s the nicest knife I own… and I’m saving the box.
      • paulmd 4y ago
        I hear they even named one varietal of apple the "Macintosh"... someone must be a fan I guess. (/s)
    • mlyle 4y ago
      > anyone notice in Apple Music how the categories all start with Apple? No-- where are you seeing this? Almost nothing in the Apple Music app on iOS or MacOS starts with "Apple Music" for me. Only really the "Apple Music" radio stations, which is necessary to distinguish them from the generic playlists and third-party radio stations.
  • flangola7 4y ago
    And what's the last revolutionary consumer technology that has come out of Apple? The original successful Macs, the iPod, the iPhone, iTunes, those were all under Jobs.
    • Adraghast 4y ago
      Quite the standard you’ve set there!
    • infotogivenm 4y ago
      Watch and airpods are both rather successful products that capture about 30% industry market share every year.
    • sneak 4y ago
      M1, M2, AirPods
    • nobaddays 4y ago
      M chips, airpods, watch
    • scarface74 4y ago
      When the iPhone was introduced , there were already 1 billion phones being sold each year. Sj said he wanted Apple to sell 10 million to capture 1% of the market. There can’t really be anything bigger than the phone market that has 90%+ world wide penetration.
    • anthomtb 4y ago
      What revolutionary consumer technology has emerged since the iPhone, from any company?
      • inlined 4y ago
        The iPad
    • GeekyBear 4y ago
      I don't know about revolutionary, but Apple's service revenue alone for 2022 was larger than the revenue of McDonald’s and Nike combined. Things can be wild runaway successes without being revolutionary. https://finbold.com/apple-services-2022-statistics/ https://finbold.com/apple-services-2022-statistics/
  • naravara 4y ago
    I people tend to have a bit of rose tinted glasses on about Apple's software quality of yore. There have always been big stability issues with new features and apps. And they've simply never been good at the UX for anything that involves a network connection or has to sync across multiple systems (besides Safari). The big difference is that more and more computing requires syncing and networking, which is their traditional weak point.
    • lapcat 4y ago
      > There have always been big stability issues with new features and apps. But they got fixed. At times there were 2 full years between major Mac OS X releases. 2 years of bug fix updates. And that was when Apple only had 1 major operating system! Now with the relentless yearly schedule, there's never time to fix bugs before they start working on the next big thing and adding brand new bugs. The problems just keep piling up year after year. The software is now underwater in technical debt. Part of OS stability is simply not shipping new major versions too often. The new major versions are always buggier than the previous major version with many minor patches. Not to mention, Apple now pushes everyone to install the latest OS immediately. In the old days, you had to go out to the store and buy a new Mac OS X version on disc, so everyone wasn't upgrading to 10.N.0 on day one. Slower adoption means that fewer consumers have to suffer the early growing pains of new software.
    • ynx 4y ago
      Been on macOS since 10.3. In general, the .1 or .2 patches were solid, and if one release seemed like a stinker the next one tick-tocked its way into stability/quality pretty reliably, and staying on N-1 version while N was out was a pretty good choice if you wanted to keep your setup as-is without falling TOO far behind. Also, Safari was really bad, early on. It was rendered unusable for me when a runaway bookmark sync problem with iCloud turned the default set of bookmarks into 30+ thousand copies.
      • ben7799 4y ago
        You're thinking of recent Apple. You have to consider the first half of Apple's lifetime too. Especially in the second half of the 1990s Apple was in very very tough shape due to poor software and uncompetitive hardware. Their fans wouldn't admit it but the company definitely knew what they were up against. There's pretty much been no point 2000-present where Apple quality has been worse than it was Pre-2000, and their prices have never been more competitive either.
• simonh 4y ago
  I don't know, people have been lamenting the poor quality of Apple software and how much better it was in the old days since I got my first Mac in 2007, at least that's when I became aware of the complaints. If it was really on a substantial continual down trend from then, by now nothing would work at all. Apple continues to invest massively in software, that means a ton of new code, which means a ton of new bugs. You can't develop new software and not have quality issues. Apple continues to make extremely long term highly strategic investments. You don't get to develop a highly original, industry leading SOC architecture without long term investment in technology. Bankrolling new process node development and thereby locking in capacity in strategic contracts doesn't happen by accident or on a whim. Development and implementation of the Apple watch happened entirely in the post-Jobs era. So I just don't see it, they continue to commit to heavy long term investment in capital intensive technology projects and innovative new products. Not everything works out. The touch bar and butterfly keyboards were notable misses. But then that's always been true. I look at the phones, desktops, laptops, watch, Airpods, iPads, etc. They're the most Apple-y products Apple has ever produced, and not a single one of them is a me-to product slapped together to ride a trend.
  • smm11 4y ago
    It was a very dark era for Apple, but the Power Computing years were the best time to be an Apple fanboy IMO. You had commodity firebreathing PC hardware running OS 8 better than Macs did, more ports and connectivity, the software was best-in-class, and this was the era with no spyware, telemetry and all the BS we face now. And yes, I was still buying legit Macs and software, and a lot of stock when it was at $11. It was a blast, I tell you.
    • bgm1975 4y ago
      Uhh, speak for yourself. As a fanboy myself back then, it was kinda terrifying. Sure Power Computing was able to bump the bus speed beyond what Apple seemed to to able to do, but they also cannibalized Apple’s hardware market which they needed to stay alive. Also it became clear that the wheels were falling off the “new” OS rewrite (Rhapsody) project with no real plan for remedying. It was scary times when Microsoft had to help bail them out. Honestly, buying NeXT was the accidentally smartest move Apple executives made. I remember how cool BeOS was but was glad they chose NeXTStep over it. Mostly, because I was a Unix fanboy by that time too.
• brookst 4y ago
  Usually people decrying short-termism mean focuses on quarters rather than years. Are you saying Cook’s 10+ years that took the company from $100B/year to $400B/year are the short term, and it is at the expense of the next 90 years?
  • inetknght 4y ago
    > Are you saying Cook’s 10+ years that took the company from $100B/year to $400B/year are the short term Yes, however it's clearly successful. > Are you saying Cook’s 10+ years that took the company is at the expense of the next 90 years? Apple is slowly pulling away consumer ownership of their devices and is turning into an advertisement company. I honestly believe that is at the expense of the next 90 years. And this is rather more the point that I tried to make: short term profits at the expense of long-term customer satisfaction.
    • scarface74 4y ago
      “Apple is doomed any day now”. That’s been the narrative for over 40 years. So which customers aren’t satisfied? The people on HN that want to run Linux on the Apple Watch?
      • Dylan16807 4y ago
        Are you saying that "any day now" and "next 90 years" are the same narrative?
        • scarface74 4y ago
          Seeing that Apple and Microsoft both have a history of staying relevant for over 45 years, Microsoft has been one of the most valuable companies in the world for two decades and Apple for over a decade, I would bet on these two companies before any other company. But it’s not good enough just to be right, you have to be right at the right time. How many products categories failed during the dot com bust that are doing well now? It’s like me predicting the heat death of the sun. There is a big difference between saying it will happen eventually and that it will happen tomorrow.
• scarface74 4y ago
  You mean “short term” of a decade? Apple created two hugely profitable segments since Cook - wearables, services. The Macs are better than ever. What else should he be doing?