5 ms·

Apple has pockets of excellence. It used to be most of the company, something about how Jobs ran it, inspired people much overqualified to apply, and not even f

Apple has pockets of excellence. It used to be most of the company, something about how Jobs ran it, inspired people much overqualified to apply, and not even for very high salaries. At NeXT infamously a PhD (EDIT: in comp-sci, or physics?) worked as a janitor as he simply wanted to be around Jobs and cool smart people. Currently entropy is getting to Apple in many ways. iTunes and Apple Music didn't use to be mediocre, but are now. Siri is very mediocre. OS quality is declining although still pretty good. Hardware division is excellent, but most hardware divisions are.

smt88 3y ago
Under Cook, Apple products have become bland and overpriced in most categories (the M_ processors are a huge exception), but it's also wildly successful. The stock price is 7x what it was when Cook took over. He's one of the most successful CEOs of all time. Unfortunately the only conclusion we can draw is that consumers don't care about: - software quality - bugs - voice assistants ...and do care about: - hardware quality - integrated ecosystems - cameras - battery life
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I don't agree customers don't care about bugs, software quality and voice assistants, you can hear them complaining in literally every forum for Apple users. An ecosystem has stickiness, so many things go wrong, that people strongly care about, but the overall equation still tips in favor of "I'll stay". The UI design went completely downhill in iOS7 with Forstall leaving and Ive taking over. I love Ive, but he's not perfect at all. Currently it's almost as if it's slowly, slowly, slowly recovering, but we'll see. Vision Pro's OS also shows some excellent design sensibilities, although the product as a whole is a solution in search of a problem. Tim Cook needs a "product guy" to help him round out the management team. He was/is an insanely good COO, though.
  - nkotov 3y ago
    I really respect Ives as a great product designer but not a great UI designer in my opinion. iOS 6 Skeuomorphism was taken to the extreme so that iOS 7 felt like a breathe of fresh air. Now everything just feels bland.
    - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
      There was a lot of air in iOS 7, and the fonts were so thin they were waving in the open breeze.
  - smt88 3y ago
    > you can hear them complaining in literally every forum for Apple users My layperson friends seem not to know iOS has any bugs at all. They just seem to think software in general is flaky. And all those complainers still keep buying these things, so they don't care enough to switch. > Tim Cook needs a "product guy" to help him round out the management team. Why? Objectively speaking, why does he need a product guy? The company has been performing incredibly well as-is, and that's all he cares about and all he's paid to care about. Their brand doesn't seem to be suffering either, so they're doing well in the short and long terms.
    - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
      You're describing Tim Cook as some automaton who only cares about performance indicators and believe me you don't know him well if you think that. But the fact is he's good at operations, and not great at products. Not everyone can be great at everything. Product design is, at this level, about your overall philosophy of product, and product portfolio, how they feel, how they fit together, and what is important, are we going pros, are we going consumers, why, how, etc. What do we want to see more of in the world, what is useful, how can we make it useful, and humane, and intuitive yet powerful. That's the product guy's job. Jobs, Ive, Forstall were product guys. Ive unfortunately kind of sometimes leaning into odd obsession with minimalism.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    > I don't agree customers don't care about bugs, software quality and voice assistants I care but once in a while I have this project I need to run Windows 10 for and I'm reminded the grass is greener on my side. Same for Android tbh. Edit: to summarize, Apple is still the least shitty option.
clouddrover 3y ago
> At NeXT infamously a PhD in comp-sci worked as a janitor as he simply wanted to be around Jobs and cool smart people. What did he get out of that in the end? Just more janitor work?
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I don't know whether when you do this, you think about career opportunities. You're on a "mission by God" (to clean, I guess, lol). You want to be there when "it happens". And frankly, looking back, those folks had a legitimate reason to be excited. History was made.
- Austin_Conlon 3y ago
  Cleaned up some Objective-C code maybe.
Apocryphon 3y ago
Hasn't iTunes been mediocre since the mid-2000s?
- atribecalledqst 3y ago
  I used it for years (basically since its inception) without issue through High Sierra. The only really annoying thing they did in all that time, IMO, was remove the ability to easily view artwork. I still haven't figured out how to see artwork in larger than a thumbnail view. I only recently upgraded to Monterey and I find Apple Music borderline unusable in comparison. There are lots of tiny little bugs like how if you sort a column it no longer holds your position in the library -- previous versions would ensure that the song you had highlighted remained highlighted and in view. There's larger bugs like how Home Sharing doesn't work with wireless headphones. (I have no point of comparison with other programs like Foobar2k, I'm just comparing how bad Music itself has gotten over the years)
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    iTunes has been notoriously bloated for years, though maybe that's predominantly for Windows users.

smt88 3y ago

Under Cook, Apple products have become bland and overpriced in most categories (the M_ processors are a huge exception), but it's also wildly successful. The stock price is 7x what it was when Cook took over. He's one of the most successful CEOs of all time. Unfortunately the only conclusion we can draw is that consumers don't care about: - software quality - bugs - voice assistants ...and do care about: - hardware quality - integrated ecosystems - cameras - battery life

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I don't agree customers don't care about bugs, software quality and voice assistants, you can hear them complaining in literally every forum for Apple users. An ecosystem has stickiness, so many things go wrong, that people strongly care about, but the overall equation still tips in favor of "I'll stay". The UI design went completely downhill in iOS7 with Forstall leaving and Ive taking over. I love Ive, but he's not perfect at all. Currently it's almost as if it's slowly, slowly, slowly recovering, but we'll see. Vision Pro's OS also shows some excellent design sensibilities, although the product as a whole is a solution in search of a problem. Tim Cook needs a "product guy" to help him round out the management team. He was/is an insanely good COO, though.
- nkotov 3y ago
  I really respect Ives as a great product designer but not a great UI designer in my opinion. iOS 6 Skeuomorphism was taken to the extreme so that iOS 7 felt like a breathe of fresh air. Now everything just feels bland.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    There was a lot of air in iOS 7, and the fonts were so thin they were waving in the open breeze.
- smt88 3y ago
  > you can hear them complaining in literally every forum for Apple users My layperson friends seem not to know iOS has any bugs at all. They just seem to think software in general is flaky. And all those complainers still keep buying these things, so they don't care enough to switch. > Tim Cook needs a "product guy" to help him round out the management team. Why? Objectively speaking, why does he need a product guy? The company has been performing incredibly well as-is, and that's all he cares about and all he's paid to care about. Their brand doesn't seem to be suffering either, so they're doing well in the short and long terms.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    You're describing Tim Cook as some automaton who only cares about performance indicators and believe me you don't know him well if you think that. But the fact is he's good at operations, and not great at products. Not everyone can be great at everything. Product design is, at this level, about your overall philosophy of product, and product portfolio, how they feel, how they fit together, and what is important, are we going pros, are we going consumers, why, how, etc. What do we want to see more of in the world, what is useful, how can we make it useful, and humane, and intuitive yet powerful. That's the product guy's job. Jobs, Ive, Forstall were product guys. Ive unfortunately kind of sometimes leaning into odd obsession with minimalism.
- nottorp 3y ago
  > I don't agree customers don't care about bugs, software quality and voice assistants I care but once in a while I have this project I need to run Windows 10 for and I'm reminded the grass is greener on my side. Same for Android tbh. Edit: to summarize, Apple is still the least shitty option.

clouddrover 3y ago

> At NeXT infamously a PhD in comp-sci worked as a janitor as he simply wanted to be around Jobs and cool smart people. What did he get out of that in the end? Just more janitor work?

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I don't know whether when you do this, you think about career opportunities. You're on a "mission by God" (to clean, I guess, lol). You want to be there when "it happens". And frankly, looking back, those folks had a legitimate reason to be excited. History was made.
Austin_Conlon 3y ago
Cleaned up some Objective-C code maybe.

Apocryphon 3y ago

Hasn't iTunes been mediocre since the mid-2000s?

atribecalledqst 3y ago
I used it for years (basically since its inception) without issue through High Sierra. The only really annoying thing they did in all that time, IMO, was remove the ability to easily view artwork. I still haven't figured out how to see artwork in larger than a thumbnail view. I only recently upgraded to Monterey and I find Apple Music borderline unusable in comparison. There are lots of tiny little bugs like how if you sort a column it no longer holds your position in the library -- previous versions would ensure that the song you had highlighted remained highlighted and in view. There's larger bugs like how Home Sharing doesn't work with wireless headphones. (I have no point of comparison with other programs like Foobar2k, I'm just comparing how bad Music itself has gotten over the years)
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  iTunes has been notoriously bloated for years, though maybe that's predominantly for Windows users.