5 ms·

Apple also cultivates "pets" who suck, but for some personal-connection or political reason have received or curried favor that results in them being retained a

Apple also cultivates "pets" who suck, but for some personal-connection or political reason have received or curried favor that results in them being retained and even promoted through Apple's organization despite high-profile and embarrassing failures. See: the Aperture fiasco. And also: Jony Ive. When will it substantially harm the company, enough so that someone ("activist" investors?) raise a hue and cry? Developers clearly can't wield enough influence; I say this from experience. Nor customers. Apple's shoe-horning of "AI" shit into its products to pander to "pundits" and "analysts," shames the company that once held itself out as a rebel and disruptor. And even Apple adherents have noted profoundly slipping quality. Absurd defects persist, and new ones arise. The "AI" BS reminds me of one of my favorite longstanding Apple blunders: If you are going on a business trip and you enter all your appointments and flight info into Calendar, you're in for a surprise (and potentially embarrassment) when Apple CHANGES THE TIMES of all of them simply because you TRAVELED to a different time zone. There is no way to tell Calendar to simply USE THE TIME SHOWN ON THE PHONE. If you set up an appointment and then travel east, you will miss that appointment (or return flight) because Apple will change the time of that appointment to make it LATER. This is mind-boggling detachment from reality, but that's where Apple operates... and far too often gets a free pass on it. Is it any wonder that its "AI" is just as bad?

gffrd 2y ago
That does seem like it would be confusing, especially the first time around. That said, you are able to fix your calendar to a specified time zone: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/schedule-display-events-a-time-zone-iph69525c028/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/schedule-display-even...
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  Thanks for the link, but I don't think that fixes the problem. If anything, it looks like it'll make it worse. If I'm traveling from CA to NY and I enter a bunch of meetings and flight, and then get to NY and enter some additional ones... they're going to be wrong.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    I don't get the problem. A Calendar event is a specific moment in time, it doesn't move with timezones. So if you want to enter an event which will be at 7pm local time in NY but you're currently in CA, why would you enter it at 7pm in your own timezone? Just enter it at 7pm and select NY as timezone.
    - DidYaWipe 2y ago
      "why would you enter it at 7pm in your own timezone" Because I (and, I suspect, most people) enter appointments BEFORE my trips. And, while on a trip, I may set up appointments that will take place after I return. Why should we have to dick around figuring out what timezone we're going to be in for every appointment in the future? Who operates like that? I know that the phone will show the correct time wherever I am. So all I need is to set up the appointment reminder based on the TIME SHOWN ON THE PHONE, regardless of where it is. I want to tell Calendar: "When the clock on my phone says '10:00 a.m.', raise an alert." For whom is this not the most common use case? Obviously you should be ABLE to specify a timezone, but I submit that the default should be "local."
      - echoangle 2y ago
        But you’re having the appointment with other people, right? How does that work? How can you make an appointment for a specific local time without setting a specific timezone? Are the people you’re having the appointment with traveling with you?
        DidYaWipe 2y ago
        Good question if you're assuming that those people are invitees in my Calendar entry (which is seldom the case for me). If you "invite" people within Calendar, then you would simply be forced to select a time zone instead of "none" or "floating."
  - gffrd 2y ago
    How does it not? If I understand what you're saying, it's that you don't want the calendar to adjust any times based on location/timezone. What I believe tour perfect scenario to be: you enter an event for 10am (even if in a different timezone than your local), and it always shows up as 10am on your calendar, regardless of where you are. If you fix your calendar to a single timezone, nothing updates time dynamically, and you take on the responsibility of manually translating timezone shifts. - You're in PT - A 9am event in PT, you add at _9am_ on your calendar. - A 10am event in ET, you do the timezone translation manually, and add at _8am_ on your calendar. Am I missing something?
Kwpolska 2y ago
The calendar thing is working correctly. Every event has a time zone attached, even if you didn't notice it or change it. If your appointments involved other people and you had sent out calendar invites, they would have noticed the wrong time.
- pmontra 2y ago
  Shouldn't the default time zone for an appointment be the one of the place it is held at? For online events, the time zone of the person setting the event. Of course it must be possible to set the time zone explicitly. I don't have an iPhone to check with but what I mean is that the time of an appointment should be displayed as 9:00 AM PST and people flying from NYC to LA should always see 9:00 AM PST when they are in NYC, at any mile of the flight and at destination.
  - lazyasciiart 2y ago
    Many people enter appointments without enough detail to say it is not going to be held at your current location. e.g for a planned vacation "3pm check for concert tickets", which will indeed stay at PST and show up on your phone at 6pm in New York.
    - cosmotic 2y ago
      It could theoretically use the location field to show a warning like "Which time zone, current or event location?"
    - lores 2y ago
      It's trivial to consider any event that did not specify a time zone to happen at local time, wherever that is, and not change its time when the phone's zone changes. Business software will set a zone, self-entered or casual appointments won't, so that matches usage. At worst, display a warning sign on the calendar entry. The default is "do no harm", not "we didn't know you didn't mean us not to do harm".
      - 2y ago
ben_w 2y ago
> See: the Aperture fiasco. And also: Jony Ive. > When will it substantially harm the company, enough so that someone ("activist" investors?) raise a hue and cry? For this specific example, their stock price went up from "basically bankrupt" to "company is now worth trillions of dollars" in Ive's time. It would take a lot to upset the investors, given the overall win rate.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > For this specific example, their stock price went up from "basically bankrupt" to "company is now worth trillions of dollars" in Ive's time. Presumably plenty of people were employed in that timeframe.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Of course. But if you want to get the investors to force a change, the stock price has to go down. Even if it does go down, that doesn't mean the investors will blame the right person — there's a reason why the English language retains the phrase "scape-goat" — but it has to go down or the investors will say "why would I change this?" Edit: I originally phrased this as "if you want to get kick-back from the investors", turns out "kick-back" doesn't mean what I thought it meant.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >Presumably plenty of people were employed in that timeframe Yes, employed to work on Jobs vision with Ive's designs.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  Yeah I knew throwing Ive in there invites a skeptical response, but I really detest that guy's product-degrading mania and attitude. And while the company obviously still thrived, Ive's intellectually bankrupt (and defective) design got bad enough to embarrass Apple even in the mainstream press. I thought this WSJ article was a brilliant dig: https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-macbook-keyboard-problem/ https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-mac...
golly_ned 2y ago
Agreed on the "pets" idea. I've even seen this from former Apple tech leaders. I've been one of the "pets" and it benefitted my career tremendously and, frankly, above my capabilities at the time; yet it gave me the opportunity to step in and fill out bigger shoes. When I was there the stance on "intelligence" was that Apple doesn't advertise itself as "AI" or "ML". It just builds good products by any means and if it happens to use particular technologies, then fine. Not so anymore.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  Thanks for the anecdote. I think a lot of us have been there, promoted into roles we're not quite ready for. The responsible ones kick into high gear to meet the challenge. I remember cramming a new programming language and framework when faced with a potential high-profile (public) failure for a new employer. But when people repeatedly demonstrate that they don't have the mindset or aptitude for the role, or important aspects of it, they need to be relieved of responsibility for those aspects. I'm griping about the individuals for whom that isn't done.
  - DidYaWipe 2y ago
    I love how someone downvoted that. "No! Keep the inept!"
coldtea 2y ago
>And also: Jony Ive. The person who created the distinctive Apple design language, several iconic products, got tons of awards, and his designs are still guiding today's Apple products (they're all Ive-derivative still), is one of your examples of failure?
- griomnib 2y ago
  The butterfly keyboard is undoubtedly the biggest fail in hardware design of the past 10 years. They took something that we figured out in the 1970s and somehow managed to screw it up and held onto it for three consecutive generations. You’re only as good as your last product, and Johnny Ive under the hand of Steve Jobs is a lot different than Johnny Ive under the hand of Tim Apple.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >The butterfly keyboard is undoubtedly the biggest fail in hardware design of the past 10 years. They took something that we figured out in the 1970s and somehow managed to screw it up and held onto it for three consecutive generations. Well, while a fail, obviously we haven't "figured it out in the 1970s", as no laptop today has a (or could have a) 70s-style keyboard and be convenient. And there are lots of things we haven't yet fixed with keyboard design, or are too expensive still, e.g.I'd like full dust protection. >You’re only as good as your last product Obviously false, as any designer (or product makers) has ups and downs. Ive had big failures in the late 90s/early 00s to o (e.g. the Cube). If we valued people like that (and not by a weighted average of their track record) he'd never had a second or third or fourth chance - and similar for artists and other professions.
- BearOso 2y ago
  His designs were fine when reined in by Jobs. Now they take simplicity too far to the extreme.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  Yep.
- 2y ago

gffrd 2y ago

That does seem like it would be confusing, especially the first time around. That said, you are able to fix your calendar to a specified time zone: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/schedule-display-events-a-time-zone-iph69525c028/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/schedule-display-even...

DidYaWipe 2y ago
Thanks for the link, but I don't think that fixes the problem. If anything, it looks like it'll make it worse. If I'm traveling from CA to NY and I enter a bunch of meetings and flight, and then get to NY and enter some additional ones... they're going to be wrong.
- echoangle 2y ago
  I don't get the problem. A Calendar event is a specific moment in time, it doesn't move with timezones. So if you want to enter an event which will be at 7pm local time in NY but you're currently in CA, why would you enter it at 7pm in your own timezone? Just enter it at 7pm and select NY as timezone.
  - DidYaWipe 2y ago
    "why would you enter it at 7pm in your own timezone" Because I (and, I suspect, most people) enter appointments BEFORE my trips. And, while on a trip, I may set up appointments that will take place after I return. Why should we have to dick around figuring out what timezone we're going to be in for every appointment in the future? Who operates like that? I know that the phone will show the correct time wherever I am. So all I need is to set up the appointment reminder based on the TIME SHOWN ON THE PHONE, regardless of where it is. I want to tell Calendar: "When the clock on my phone says '10:00 a.m.', raise an alert." For whom is this not the most common use case? Obviously you should be ABLE to specify a timezone, but I submit that the default should be "local."
    - echoangle 2y ago
      But you’re having the appointment with other people, right? How does that work? How can you make an appointment for a specific local time without setting a specific timezone? Are the people you’re having the appointment with traveling with you?
      - DidYaWipe 2y ago
        Good question if you're assuming that those people are invitees in my Calendar entry (which is seldom the case for me). If you "invite" people within Calendar, then you would simply be forced to select a time zone instead of "none" or "floating."
- gffrd 2y ago
  How does it not? If I understand what you're saying, it's that you don't want the calendar to adjust any times based on location/timezone. What I believe tour perfect scenario to be: you enter an event for 10am (even if in a different timezone than your local), and it always shows up as 10am on your calendar, regardless of where you are. If you fix your calendar to a single timezone, nothing updates time dynamically, and you take on the responsibility of manually translating timezone shifts. - You're in PT - A 9am event in PT, you add at _9am_ on your calendar. - A 10am event in ET, you do the timezone translation manually, and add at _8am_ on your calendar. Am I missing something?

Kwpolska 2y ago

The calendar thing is working correctly. Every event has a time zone attached, even if you didn't notice it or change it. If your appointments involved other people and you had sent out calendar invites, they would have noticed the wrong time.

pmontra 2y ago
Shouldn't the default time zone for an appointment be the one of the place it is held at? For online events, the time zone of the person setting the event. Of course it must be possible to set the time zone explicitly. I don't have an iPhone to check with but what I mean is that the time of an appointment should be displayed as 9:00 AM PST and people flying from NYC to LA should always see 9:00 AM PST when they are in NYC, at any mile of the flight and at destination.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  Many people enter appointments without enough detail to say it is not going to be held at your current location. e.g for a planned vacation "3pm check for concert tickets", which will indeed stay at PST and show up on your phone at 6pm in New York.
  - cosmotic 2y ago
    It could theoretically use the location field to show a warning like "Which time zone, current or event location?"
  - lores 2y ago
    It's trivial to consider any event that did not specify a time zone to happen at local time, wherever that is, and not change its time when the phone's zone changes. Business software will set a zone, self-entered or casual appointments won't, so that matches usage. At worst, display a warning sign on the calendar entry. The default is "do no harm", not "we didn't know you didn't mean us not to do harm".
    - 2y ago

ben_w 2y ago

> See: the Aperture fiasco. And also: Jony Ive. > When will it substantially harm the company, enough so that someone ("activist" investors?) raise a hue and cry? For this specific example, their stock price went up from "basically bankrupt" to "company is now worth trillions of dollars" in Ive's time. It would take a lot to upset the investors, given the overall win rate.

robertlagrant 2y ago
> For this specific example, their stock price went up from "basically bankrupt" to "company is now worth trillions of dollars" in Ive's time. Presumably plenty of people were employed in that timeframe.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Of course. But if you want to get the investors to force a change, the stock price has to go down. Even if it does go down, that doesn't mean the investors will blame the right person — there's a reason why the English language retains the phrase "scape-goat" — but it has to go down or the investors will say "why would I change this?" Edit: I originally phrased this as "if you want to get kick-back from the investors", turns out "kick-back" doesn't mean what I thought it meant.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Presumably plenty of people were employed in that timeframe Yes, employed to work on Jobs vision with Ive's designs.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
Yeah I knew throwing Ive in there invites a skeptical response, but I really detest that guy's product-degrading mania and attitude. And while the company obviously still thrived, Ive's intellectually bankrupt (and defective) design got bad enough to embarrass Apple even in the mainstream press. I thought this WSJ article was a brilliant dig: https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-macbook-keyboard-problem/ https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-mac...

golly_ned 2y ago

Agreed on the "pets" idea. I've even seen this from former Apple tech leaders. I've been one of the "pets" and it benefitted my career tremendously and, frankly, above my capabilities at the time; yet it gave me the opportunity to step in and fill out bigger shoes. When I was there the stance on "intelligence" was that Apple doesn't advertise itself as "AI" or "ML". It just builds good products by any means and if it happens to use particular technologies, then fine. Not so anymore.

DidYaWipe 2y ago
Thanks for the anecdote. I think a lot of us have been there, promoted into roles we're not quite ready for. The responsible ones kick into high gear to meet the challenge. I remember cramming a new programming language and framework when faced with a potential high-profile (public) failure for a new employer. But when people repeatedly demonstrate that they don't have the mindset or aptitude for the role, or important aspects of it, they need to be relieved of responsibility for those aspects. I'm griping about the individuals for whom that isn't done.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  I love how someone downvoted that. "No! Keep the inept!"

coldtea 2y ago

>And also: Jony Ive. The person who created the distinctive Apple design language, several iconic products, got tons of awards, and his designs are still guiding today's Apple products (they're all Ive-derivative still), is one of your examples of failure?

griomnib 2y ago
The butterfly keyboard is undoubtedly the biggest fail in hardware design of the past 10 years. They took something that we figured out in the 1970s and somehow managed to screw it up and held onto it for three consecutive generations. You’re only as good as your last product, and Johnny Ive under the hand of Steve Jobs is a lot different than Johnny Ive under the hand of Tim Apple.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >The butterfly keyboard is undoubtedly the biggest fail in hardware design of the past 10 years. They took something that we figured out in the 1970s and somehow managed to screw it up and held onto it for three consecutive generations. Well, while a fail, obviously we haven't "figured it out in the 1970s", as no laptop today has a (or could have a) 70s-style keyboard and be convenient. And there are lots of things we haven't yet fixed with keyboard design, or are too expensive still, e.g.I'd like full dust protection. >You’re only as good as your last product Obviously false, as any designer (or product makers) has ups and downs. Ive had big failures in the late 90s/early 00s to o (e.g. the Cube). If we valued people like that (and not by a weighted average of their track record) he'd never had a second or third or fourth chance - and similar for artists and other professions.
BearOso 2y ago
His designs were fine when reined in by Jobs. Now they take simplicity too far to the extreme.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
Yep.
2y ago