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Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browet

by ksec 2y ago

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly every single one of them were walked back to Steve Jobs era. Mainly by Deirdre O’Brien who has been with Apple for 20+ years. Changes of Direction in PR. Which leads to Katie Cotton leaving. Forced out Scott Forstall. Tim is suppose to be the mediator. Promote Craig Federighi, after all these years I am still not convinced he is the right person for the job. Especially after merging iOS and macOS team together. Putting too much trust on Eddy Cue and sidelined Phil Schiller. Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Fitness, Apple Books, News, All these services are Eddy Cue. The committee that ultimately ruled for Apple's 30% cut? Tim Cook and Eddy Cue. Probably a few more names missing.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
As soon as Craig Federighi was taking over from Bertrand Serlet, quality started to decline. The only one to not notice is Tim Cook.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Because Cook is a supply chain mastermind not a software UX and QA guy. You can tell Steve Jobs is missing.
- ksec 2y ago
  I am reminded that the day he told over macOS team. They have been shipping features for features sake. And I dont remember a single new useful thing about from continuity. We are now 10+ years, macOS apart from facelift isn't all that better than before. If anything it might have gotten slower.
numbsafari 2y ago
> Putting too much trust on Eddy Cue I've never understood the love for Eddy Cue. Apple pundits all seem to love him. Personally, I am really unimpressed by everything he's done. My understanding is he's been really good at negotiating big contracts. I just don't think his execution or vision are exciting and, as you are hinting at, I don't think his moral compass points in the right direction. That said, despite some early pushback, my understanding is that Schiller was ultimately on-board with holding to the 30% cut.
- WoodenChair 2y ago
  Eddy Cue did an amazing job with the original Apple.com online store in the late 90s, the first version of the iTunes Music Store, and the early App Store. Interestingly these were all big WebObjects apps. I wonder if there’s some interesting server-side technology culture story here and how it trickles down to the way services operate for consumers on the client side. Just pure speculation.
dmonitor 2y ago
I don't see that being a strong case against Eddy Cue. Apple's 30% cut makes them tons of revenue, and as a whole those services probably make bank. Apple TV+ especially funds good television. Even if it loses money, funding the arts carries intrinsic value.
- klabb3 2y ago
  > Apple's 30% cut makes them tons of revenue Compared to? All taxes mean fewer transactions – and purchases that never happen don’t generate revenue. This is not easily measurable. Most SaaS or similar services probably go through other devices or email to handle transactions. Apples payments and subscriptions are excellent products but how much goes through there of say revenue for streaming services like Spotify and Netflix? Is that even supported? As an iOS user, I would never dream of trusting that the IAP prices are a good deal, and especially if I want to support the company I would sign up on their website. I’ve said before that even if they were allowing (or better, forced to allow) competition, people would still pay a premium, maybe 10%, to have all subscriptions in one place with one-click unsubscribe. They simply don’t believe their own product can stand on its own without crutches, for some bean counter reason.
  - jdminhbg 2y ago
    > I’ve said before that even if they were allowing (or better, forced to allow) competition, people would still pay a premium, maybe 10%, to have all subscriptions in one place with one-click unsubscribe. They simply don’t believe their own product can stand on its own without crutches, for some bean counter reason. The users aren't the issue, the developers are. Companies as reputable as the New York Times are willing to forgo easy subscription flows inside of iOS in order to get users into their dark patterns where you have to call to unsubscribe; can you imagine what shady game developers would do?
    - klabb3 2y ago
      > The users aren't the issue, the developers are. Just to clarify, you are referring to companies, not necessarily their developers. > Companies as reputable as the New York Times are willing to forgo easy subscription flows inside of iOS No they don’t? I just check their app listing and you can use Apples own IAP. In either case, NYT can have reputable reporting while still being complete slimes when it comes to subscriptions. And even so, it strengthens the argument that Apple and other subscription aggregators deliver value (relatively - our CC centric payment world is abysmally bad), meaning users are willing to pay, meaning merchants are willing to use it to get sales they couldn’t otherwise. > can you imagine what shady game developers would do? If what, they could do whatever they wanted? Apple (or any other curator) could still police against fraud and misleading consumers. What does that have to do with the 30% tax?
musictubes 2y ago
The biggest thing that Ahrendts did was merge the online and physical stores. People forget that before she came around there was very little overlap. If you bought something online and you wanted to return it you had to ship it back instead of going to a store. It was one of the things that Cook wanted to get done by retail. Katie Cotton’s departure was in no doubt at least partly to do with her health. She died not too long after leaving Apple. It also isn’t clear to me how much Phil Schiller was “sidelined” vs him just wanting to retire.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Funny how that seemingly forgettable caveat is seen as a huge achievement for an executive. As a customer my biggest issue with the apple store is not the return process. It is the lack of them for the population of apple customers given how long it takes to get attended to and the difficulty of securing genius bar appointments. It worked alright 15 years ago but the stores needed to expand along with iPhone market share and they did not at all.
  - iamacyborg 2y ago
    There’s probably some threshold they’ve reached at which just adding more stores doesn’t generate any incremental revenue. So you’ve got to wait a bit longer, well, where else are you going to go? Maybe I’m just a bit too cynical
    - ksec 2y ago
      And that is exactly the difference between old Apple and New Apple. Old Apple uses Apple Store as experience and services. It is part of the Apple ecosystem. It is not another "real estate property" like other Retail brands that is solely measured by incremental revenue.
      - kjkjadksj 2y ago
        Exactly. The entire thing no doubt cost money. That is why we were paying $2000 for a two year old intel chip mbp 10 years ago because the service aspect was a big part of the value proposition.
dieulot 2y ago
> Craig Federighi […] merging iOS and macOS team together. What year was that?
- runjake 2y ago
  In the absence of someone giving you a better answer, my hazy memory says 2015 or early 2016? Given what we know about Apple's hardware platform direction, on hindsight, it seemed like a good strategy. Note: I am talking about the team merging, not merging macOS and iOS themselves.
  - kridsdale1 2y ago
    It was 2016. Right after I quit.
kstrauser 2y ago
To be fair, I’d counter with Jobs picking Jony Ive. Ive made gorgeous, lustworthy art objects that sucked as computers. The nadirs for me were iPhone 6’s bendgate and the 2015 MBP. Damn the functionality, we’ll make these suckers so slim you can shave with them! No one was begging for a MBP so thin it had to have compromised keyboard switches. Also consider the mouse that couldn’t charge while you use it, and the trashcan Mac Pro. Those devices looked beautiful but they weren’t good at actually being used. Jobs let Ive design for a museum, not for the people using his creations. Cook let that continue for a while but finally reined it in and gave us useful designs again. Which isn’t to say that Cook hasn’t made or isn’t making mistakes. I just meant that as a reminder that it wasn’t all wine and roses under Jobs.
- eric-hu 2y ago
  Don’t forget the Touch Bars.
  - sroussey 2y ago
    I love the Touch Bar. Should have been above the function keys
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Ouch, yeah. I loved the idea of it. I mean, I have a Stream Deck sitting on my desk as I type this, and that's basically a large, freestanding Touch Bar. But whoever decided to replace physical keys instead of augmenting them with an additional control was out of their mind. And an undifferentiated escape key? On a pro laptop with lots of programmers? The mind boggles.
  - kemayo 2y ago
    The real problem with the Touch Bar was that they never made an external keyboard with it. So I could never actually build it into my habits, since it was only actually available to me half the time. (I'm demonstrably willing to spend money on fancy Apple external peripherals! I have the touchID keyboard, and think the convenience of it was worth the kinda silly price. I'd absolutely have wound up getting an external Touch Bar keyboard...)
subsubzero 2y ago
This is a fantastic comment, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment on Angela Ahrendts. What was once a magical experience going to a apple store has devolved into a nightmare. A few reasons why: - The complete removal of spontaneity of the shopping experience. You wander over to look at a laptop and decide you want to buy it. Asking a employee is disagreeable as most have a ear bud in their ear receiving instructions or messages from who knows what, they hurriedly ask if you made an appointment or placed the order online and then rush away and sometimes return. - Such a heavy emphasis on online booking for every conceivable issue. If you want a genius bar appointment you are angrily told you need an appointment and such an appointment is only available days or weeks away and at a inconvenient time for someone with a 9-5 schedule(Tuesday at 2pm work?). - Last years accessories are gone. Try finding a iphone case that was made for a phone you bough 7 months ago and an employee looks at you like you are trying to buy a model T - (Wait you are looking for a iphone 15 case, wow thats a really old model, I don't think we have anything for that anymore). - Insane levels of crowds, I can't think of the last time I saw a apple store open in the past 6-7 years that didn't have crowds inside the store like disneyland with service dogs, screaming kids and grumpy boomers yelling about how to transfer their grandkids photos from a phone to computer, just a terrible experience to deal with. I bought the first iphone in 2007 and have had a model for almost every two years and have been going to the apple stores since then, and the past few years have seen a huge drop in customer experience due to alot of the issuses I listed above.
- deleted 2y ago
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- PaulHoule 2y ago
  It does not bother me I’m hundreds of miles from an Apple Store because every time I look into one it is so crowded. Shopping online feels like a luxury experience in comparison (so blown away my M4 mini came in a tiny box!)
lsllc 2y ago
This is a big company problem. When companies grow, they eschew the folks who helped build it from the ground up and are intimately familiar with the business, products and customers in favor of people who have "worked at big companies". But in most cases, they didn't actually build them. So all they have to offer is the "big company baggage" that they were exposed to previously. You can imagine how it usually works out ... after a few years of zero or negative progress, they'll move on to somewhere else, claiming victory on their LinkedIn profiles. Meanwhile the employees who actually built the company continue to get passed over in favor of another round of impostors. So actually, staying at the same company for a long time probably means you're trapped by a glass ceiling and not promoted very far as you'll "never have had the big company experience that we need". Meanwhile, the company starts to stagnate. /rant
- MPSFounder 2y ago
  Disagree. This is a founder problem. Once founders go away, you are left with the MBAs and characters that are fit for business, but lack the umph you are describing.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Yeah, agree with your take. I think it's especially odd to describe Apple as suffering from this "big company problem" given that it seems like the execs there have tenures much longer than the norm. Cook has been at Apple since 1998, shortly after Jobs' return. Federighi originally worked at NeXT when it was acquired by Apple. Eddy Cue has been at Apple since 1989 and his Wikipedia page says he was instrumental in creating Apple's online store in '98. Sure, Jobs was such a unique visionary and it was inevitable that things would change after his death, but I still find folks tend to minimize his missteps (the Cube, antenna-gate), while somehow shitting on Cook despite Cook managing the giant ship that is Apple extremely well for nearly 15 years.
    - MPSFounder 2y ago
      Cook has been exceptional for the stock. But we would likely all agree that on the product end (take Siri for example), it is absolutely clear he and the leadership do not use the product. If they did, I do not believe they would be ok with it being horrendous for over 10 years. Also Apple has had a lot of mishaps under Cook (the wireless Air charger that never got made, butterfly keyboards, Vision Pro, Siri, an OS that is riddled with bugs, iPhone battery slowdown, touchbar on a pro device). I might be missing a few, but he is very clearly not a product guy
heed 2y ago
Eddy Cue owns Maps too
- tedd4u 2y ago
  Maps is my default now, it’s improved so much relative to Google Maps. (At least in my area)
  - hylaride 2y ago
    Yeah, Apple maps is my default, too. No ads and is accurate. Google maps is still better for finding businesses and streetview is still much, much more comprehensive.
caycep 2y ago
aren't a lot of App Store/dev relations critics frustrated with/ Schiller though?
caycep 2y ago
granted, this is me just speculating, but personality type of Tim Cook dreaming up highly precise supply chains and generating precise business numbers quarter to quarter might make him vulnerable in terms of the character judging side of things...
jjtheblunt 2y ago
As an ex Apple engineer myself, I've got to say the Angela Ahrendts thing was profoundly disgusting, and a partial reason i quit, despite thriving in a great team. They gave her 75 million dollars vesting over 3 years, as i recall, she did jack shit, and quit the day after all the money vested. Total failure of character judgement not only of the Burberry lady but of the hardcore engineers who believed in Apple (and I still do, but quit for cancer research work, another hobby).
- deleted 2y ago
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hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
Going to hard disagree with most of this. At any giant company with tons of executives (the article talks about the "Top 100" alone), if you didn't have at least some misfires then it probably means you're being too conservative. If anything, I give Apple props for making management changes relatively quickly when things aren't working out. For example, I have the exact opposite view of the forcing out of Scott Forstall, which after reading what I think are fairly accurate descriptions of what went down was absolutely the right thing to do IMO. Forstall refused to own up to failures under his watch, which is an absolutely toxic trait in leadership (side note, when you're at that level it doesn't matter if the failure was "your fault", you still need to take responsibility for what happened, identify the root cause and make changes to reduce the possibility of it happening in the future). I am not an iPhone user, but every time the issue of Apple Maps comes ups, people say they love using it and that it's improved leaps and bounds over the years since Forstall was forced out.
- whoknowsidont 2y ago
  >if you didn't have at least some misfires then it probably means you're being too conservative. Think you've dunked too far into the McKinsey kool-aid here.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Bullshit, because I don't even know what "the McKinsey kool-aid" is on this topic. But the best companies/teams I've worked at realized that some mistakes are inevitable, and they had a culture that quickly remedied those mistakes, learned from them, and moved on. The worst companies either (a) had "analysis paralysis" issues or (b) made lots of the same mistakes over and over and refused to learn.
- ksec 2y ago
  > Forstall refused to own up to failures under his watch Own up for what? Has anyone from Apple own up to Apple Intelligence or other design failures? Even in antenna gate Steve Jobs was defending it as holding it wrong. The firing of Scott was simply a power play. No one expected Maps to be perfect on first try. And it took Apple another 8-10 years before it was useable. But the Map Fiasco, if you could call it that. Was brown out of proportion with zero damage control from PR. A company that perhaps has the best PR department in history of cooperate America. If people are not reading between the line, Apple wanted him out, and very publicly. >(the article talks about the "Top 100" alone) Top 100, if that is indeed what it is has also completely changed. It used to be the 100 people Steve Jobs hand picked that if the company failed who he would recruit again for the next venture. And it is nothing "Top". You could be an engineer or doing some other lower level work but still included in the 100. Now from that article Top 100 becomes management level meetings.
neal_jones 2y ago
On the one hand Tim Cook has done better than I expected, but on the other hand I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the company
deergomoo 2y ago
> Promote Craig Federighi, after all these years I am still not convinced he is the right person for the job Yeah I wonder about Federighi. He doesn't seem to catch much criticism from the Apple pundits—I assume because he's one of the few SVPs that seems like a real human in interviews and videos and not a stilted robot like the rest of them. But Apple's software, and macOS in particular, seems to be rotting from the inside out. Changes ship and everyone says "boy this is a step backwards, I hope they iterate quickly" and then it sits, almost entirely unchanged, for years on end. e.g. new Settings in macOS, Stage Manager on the iPad. With how much the hardware team has been knocking it out of the park since the ARM transition it's really starting to feel like the software is the weak link. This rumoured massive redesign this year has me feeling very anxious.
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  I have met Craig a couple times. The man radiates charisma like a god damn movie star. The whole vibe in the room changes when he enters. Something about it, man.
  - khazhoux 2y ago
    It's obviously the hair. His epic lion’s mane. I'm told he has the superpower of memory. Someone told me they had an eng review with him on a year prior, which ended with action items for the team to fix XYZ. Then a full year they had another review, and Craig came in and right away asked, "Did XYZ get done?"
- ksec 2y ago
  It is not about design features and bugs etc. The whole iOS feels a lot slower than before despite having much more processing power. Android caught on, and now feels smoother than iOS. And that is with iOS animation tuned off.
mac-mc 2y ago
Probably an agreeability thing? The iconoclasts who get things done tend to be disagreeable, but success at a reality scale is different than success in a large company. You get promoted and go up because of your peer coworker group's support, which creates a strong incentive to not rock the boat and go against sacred cows that work well enough. The person who succeeds in big company post a hypergrowth phase is a very different person than one who made the hypergrowth happen.
paulddraper 2y ago
> The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. Evidently, he is very good at increasing share value though.
idk1 2y ago
I don't know if Ahrendts is in this category she did transform Burberry into a high-end luxury online sales+retail company. She really was the exact opposite of the old head of the Currys boss, John Browett. I think she was responsible for how the Apple Watch is sold. For example, trying it on and having that experience. It's a tricky thing to get right, and I think she's got it spot on. Also, the watch strap business must have one of the highest margins ever, and I feel like she must be in part responsible for those sales and how you try on the straps. That Apple Store feels a lot like going into a Burberry where you can just experience stuff and people are happy to talk to you about anything and not try and sell you anything, so I'm not sure she should be in the category of everyone else you have here because in that respect, the stores do feel very good.

by ksec 2y ago

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago

As soon as Craig Federighi was taking over from Bertrand Serlet, quality started to decline. The only one to not notice is Tim Cook.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
Because Cook is a supply chain mastermind not a software UX and QA guy. You can tell Steve Jobs is missing.
ksec 2y ago
I am reminded that the day he told over macOS team. They have been shipping features for features sake. And I dont remember a single new useful thing about from continuity. We are now 10+ years, macOS apart from facelift isn't all that better than before. If anything it might have gotten slower.

numbsafari 2y ago

> Putting too much trust on Eddy Cue I've never understood the love for Eddy Cue. Apple pundits all seem to love him. Personally, I am really unimpressed by everything he's done. My understanding is he's been really good at negotiating big contracts. I just don't think his execution or vision are exciting and, as you are hinting at, I don't think his moral compass points in the right direction. That said, despite some early pushback, my understanding is that Schiller was ultimately on-board with holding to the 30% cut.

WoodenChair 2y ago
Eddy Cue did an amazing job with the original Apple.com online store in the late 90s, the first version of the iTunes Music Store, and the early App Store. Interestingly these were all big WebObjects apps. I wonder if there’s some interesting server-side technology culture story here and how it trickles down to the way services operate for consumers on the client side. Just pure speculation.

dmonitor 2y ago

I don't see that being a strong case against Eddy Cue. Apple's 30% cut makes them tons of revenue, and as a whole those services probably make bank. Apple TV+ especially funds good television. Even if it loses money, funding the arts carries intrinsic value.

klabb3 2y ago
> Apple's 30% cut makes them tons of revenue Compared to? All taxes mean fewer transactions – and purchases that never happen don’t generate revenue. This is not easily measurable. Most SaaS or similar services probably go through other devices or email to handle transactions. Apples payments and subscriptions are excellent products but how much goes through there of say revenue for streaming services like Spotify and Netflix? Is that even supported? As an iOS user, I would never dream of trusting that the IAP prices are a good deal, and especially if I want to support the company I would sign up on their website. I’ve said before that even if they were allowing (or better, forced to allow) competition, people would still pay a premium, maybe 10%, to have all subscriptions in one place with one-click unsubscribe. They simply don’t believe their own product can stand on its own without crutches, for some bean counter reason.
- jdminhbg 2y ago
  > I’ve said before that even if they were allowing (or better, forced to allow) competition, people would still pay a premium, maybe 10%, to have all subscriptions in one place with one-click unsubscribe. They simply don’t believe their own product can stand on its own without crutches, for some bean counter reason. The users aren't the issue, the developers are. Companies as reputable as the New York Times are willing to forgo easy subscription flows inside of iOS in order to get users into their dark patterns where you have to call to unsubscribe; can you imagine what shady game developers would do?
  - klabb3 2y ago
    > The users aren't the issue, the developers are. Just to clarify, you are referring to companies, not necessarily their developers. > Companies as reputable as the New York Times are willing to forgo easy subscription flows inside of iOS No they don’t? I just check their app listing and you can use Apples own IAP. In either case, NYT can have reputable reporting while still being complete slimes when it comes to subscriptions. And even so, it strengthens the argument that Apple and other subscription aggregators deliver value (relatively - our CC centric payment world is abysmally bad), meaning users are willing to pay, meaning merchants are willing to use it to get sales they couldn’t otherwise. > can you imagine what shady game developers would do? If what, they could do whatever they wanted? Apple (or any other curator) could still police against fraud and misleading consumers. What does that have to do with the 30% tax?

musictubes 2y ago

The biggest thing that Ahrendts did was merge the online and physical stores. People forget that before she came around there was very little overlap. If you bought something online and you wanted to return it you had to ship it back instead of going to a store. It was one of the things that Cook wanted to get done by retail. Katie Cotton’s departure was in no doubt at least partly to do with her health. She died not too long after leaving Apple. It also isn’t clear to me how much Phil Schiller was “sidelined” vs him just wanting to retire.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
Funny how that seemingly forgettable caveat is seen as a huge achievement for an executive. As a customer my biggest issue with the apple store is not the return process. It is the lack of them for the population of apple customers given how long it takes to get attended to and the difficulty of securing genius bar appointments. It worked alright 15 years ago but the stores needed to expand along with iPhone market share and they did not at all.
- iamacyborg 2y ago
  There’s probably some threshold they’ve reached at which just adding more stores doesn’t generate any incremental revenue. So you’ve got to wait a bit longer, well, where else are you going to go? Maybe I’m just a bit too cynical
  - ksec 2y ago
    And that is exactly the difference between old Apple and New Apple. Old Apple uses Apple Store as experience and services. It is part of the Apple ecosystem. It is not another "real estate property" like other Retail brands that is solely measured by incremental revenue.
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      Exactly. The entire thing no doubt cost money. That is why we were paying $2000 for a two year old intel chip mbp 10 years ago because the service aspect was a big part of the value proposition.

dieulot 2y ago

> Craig Federighi […] merging iOS and macOS team together. What year was that?

runjake 2y ago
In the absence of someone giving you a better answer, my hazy memory says 2015 or early 2016? Given what we know about Apple's hardware platform direction, on hindsight, it seemed like a good strategy. Note: I am talking about the team merging, not merging macOS and iOS themselves.
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  It was 2016. Right after I quit.

kstrauser 2y ago

To be fair, I’d counter with Jobs picking Jony Ive. Ive made gorgeous, lustworthy art objects that sucked as computers. The nadirs for me were iPhone 6’s bendgate and the 2015 MBP. Damn the functionality, we’ll make these suckers so slim you can shave with them! No one was begging for a MBP so thin it had to have compromised keyboard switches. Also consider the mouse that couldn’t charge while you use it, and the trashcan Mac Pro. Those devices looked beautiful but they weren’t good at actually being used. Jobs let Ive design for a museum, not for the people using his creations. Cook let that continue for a while but finally reined it in and gave us useful designs again. Which isn’t to say that Cook hasn’t made or isn’t making mistakes. I just meant that as a reminder that it wasn’t all wine and roses under Jobs.

eric-hu 2y ago
Don’t forget the Touch Bars.
- sroussey 2y ago
  I love the Touch Bar. Should have been above the function keys
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Ouch, yeah. I loved the idea of it. I mean, I have a Stream Deck sitting on my desk as I type this, and that's basically a large, freestanding Touch Bar. But whoever decided to replace physical keys instead of augmenting them with an additional control was out of their mind. And an undifferentiated escape key? On a pro laptop with lots of programmers? The mind boggles.
- kemayo 2y ago
  The real problem with the Touch Bar was that they never made an external keyboard with it. So I could never actually build it into my habits, since it was only actually available to me half the time. (I'm demonstrably willing to spend money on fancy Apple external peripherals! I have the touchID keyboard, and think the convenience of it was worth the kinda silly price. I'd absolutely have wound up getting an external Touch Bar keyboard...)

subsubzero 2y ago

This is a fantastic comment, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment on Angela Ahrendts. What was once a magical experience going to a apple store has devolved into a nightmare. A few reasons why: - The complete removal of spontaneity of the shopping experience. You wander over to look at a laptop and decide you want to buy it. Asking a employee is disagreeable as most have a ear bud in their ear receiving instructions or messages from who knows what, they hurriedly ask if you made an appointment or placed the order online and then rush away and sometimes return. - Such a heavy emphasis on online booking for every conceivable issue. If you want a genius bar appointment you are angrily told you need an appointment and such an appointment is only available days or weeks away and at a inconvenient time for someone with a 9-5 schedule(Tuesday at 2pm work?). - Last years accessories are gone. Try finding a iphone case that was made for a phone you bough 7 months ago and an employee looks at you like you are trying to buy a model T - (Wait you are looking for a iphone 15 case, wow thats a really old model, I don't think we have anything for that anymore). - Insane levels of crowds, I can't think of the last time I saw a apple store open in the past 6-7 years that didn't have crowds inside the store like disneyland with service dogs, screaming kids and grumpy boomers yelling about how to transfer their grandkids photos from a phone to computer, just a terrible experience to deal with. I bought the first iphone in 2007 and have had a model for almost every two years and have been going to the apple stores since then, and the past few years have seen a huge drop in customer experience due to alot of the issuses I listed above.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
PaulHoule 2y ago
It does not bother me I’m hundreds of miles from an Apple Store because every time I look into one it is so crowded. Shopping online feels like a luxury experience in comparison (so blown away my M4 mini came in a tiny box!)

lsllc 2y ago

This is a big company problem. When companies grow, they eschew the folks who helped build it from the ground up and are intimately familiar with the business, products and customers in favor of people who have "worked at big companies". But in most cases, they didn't actually build them. So all they have to offer is the "big company baggage" that they were exposed to previously. You can imagine how it usually works out ... after a few years of zero or negative progress, they'll move on to somewhere else, claiming victory on their LinkedIn profiles. Meanwhile the employees who actually built the company continue to get passed over in favor of another round of impostors. So actually, staying at the same company for a long time probably means you're trapped by a glass ceiling and not promoted very far as you'll "never have had the big company experience that we need". Meanwhile, the company starts to stagnate. /rant

MPSFounder 2y ago
Disagree. This is a founder problem. Once founders go away, you are left with the MBAs and characters that are fit for business, but lack the umph you are describing.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Yeah, agree with your take. I think it's especially odd to describe Apple as suffering from this "big company problem" given that it seems like the execs there have tenures much longer than the norm. Cook has been at Apple since 1998, shortly after Jobs' return. Federighi originally worked at NeXT when it was acquired by Apple. Eddy Cue has been at Apple since 1989 and his Wikipedia page says he was instrumental in creating Apple's online store in '98. Sure, Jobs was such a unique visionary and it was inevitable that things would change after his death, but I still find folks tend to minimize his missteps (the Cube, antenna-gate), while somehow shitting on Cook despite Cook managing the giant ship that is Apple extremely well for nearly 15 years.
  - MPSFounder 2y ago
    Cook has been exceptional for the stock. But we would likely all agree that on the product end (take Siri for example), it is absolutely clear he and the leadership do not use the product. If they did, I do not believe they would be ok with it being horrendous for over 10 years. Also Apple has had a lot of mishaps under Cook (the wireless Air charger that never got made, butterfly keyboards, Vision Pro, Siri, an OS that is riddled with bugs, iPhone battery slowdown, touchbar on a pro device). I might be missing a few, but he is very clearly not a product guy

heed 2y ago

Eddy Cue owns Maps too

tedd4u 2y ago
Maps is my default now, it’s improved so much relative to Google Maps. (At least in my area)
- hylaride 2y ago
  Yeah, Apple maps is my default, too. No ads and is accurate. Google maps is still better for finding businesses and streetview is still much, much more comprehensive.

caycep 2y ago

aren't a lot of App Store/dev relations critics frustrated with/ Schiller though?

caycep 2y ago

granted, this is me just speculating, but personality type of Tim Cook dreaming up highly precise supply chains and generating precise business numbers quarter to quarter might make him vulnerable in terms of the character judging side of things...

jjtheblunt 2y ago

As an ex Apple engineer myself, I've got to say the Angela Ahrendts thing was profoundly disgusting, and a partial reason i quit, despite thriving in a great team. They gave her 75 million dollars vesting over 3 years, as i recall, she did jack shit, and quit the day after all the money vested. Total failure of character judgement not only of the Burberry lady but of the hardcore engineers who believed in Apple (and I still do, but quit for cancer research work, another hobby).

deleted 2y ago
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hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

Going to hard disagree with most of this. At any giant company with tons of executives (the article talks about the "Top 100" alone), if you didn't have at least some misfires then it probably means you're being too conservative. If anything, I give Apple props for making management changes relatively quickly when things aren't working out. For example, I have the exact opposite view of the forcing out of Scott Forstall, which after reading what I think are fairly accurate descriptions of what went down was absolutely the right thing to do IMO. Forstall refused to own up to failures under his watch, which is an absolutely toxic trait in leadership (side note, when you're at that level it doesn't matter if the failure was "your fault", you still need to take responsibility for what happened, identify the root cause and make changes to reduce the possibility of it happening in the future). I am not an iPhone user, but every time the issue of Apple Maps comes ups, people say they love using it and that it's improved leaps and bounds over the years since Forstall was forced out.

whoknowsidont 2y ago
>if you didn't have at least some misfires then it probably means you're being too conservative. Think you've dunked too far into the McKinsey kool-aid here.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Bullshit, because I don't even know what "the McKinsey kool-aid" is on this topic. But the best companies/teams I've worked at realized that some mistakes are inevitable, and they had a culture that quickly remedied those mistakes, learned from them, and moved on. The worst companies either (a) had "analysis paralysis" issues or (b) made lots of the same mistakes over and over and refused to learn.
ksec 2y ago
> Forstall refused to own up to failures under his watch Own up for what? Has anyone from Apple own up to Apple Intelligence or other design failures? Even in antenna gate Steve Jobs was defending it as holding it wrong. The firing of Scott was simply a power play. No one expected Maps to be perfect on first try. And it took Apple another 8-10 years before it was useable. But the Map Fiasco, if you could call it that. Was brown out of proportion with zero damage control from PR. A company that perhaps has the best PR department in history of cooperate America. If people are not reading between the line, Apple wanted him out, and very publicly. >(the article talks about the "Top 100" alone) Top 100, if that is indeed what it is has also completely changed. It used to be the 100 people Steve Jobs hand picked that if the company failed who he would recruit again for the next venture. And it is nothing "Top". You could be an engineer or doing some other lower level work but still included in the 100. Now from that article Top 100 becomes management level meetings.

neal_jones 2y ago

On the one hand Tim Cook has done better than I expected, but on the other hand I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the company

deergomoo 2y ago

> Promote Craig Federighi, after all these years I am still not convinced he is the right person for the job Yeah I wonder about Federighi. He doesn't seem to catch much criticism from the Apple pundits—I assume because he's one of the few SVPs that seems like a real human in interviews and videos and not a stilted robot like the rest of them. But Apple's software, and macOS in particular, seems to be rotting from the inside out. Changes ship and everyone says "boy this is a step backwards, I hope they iterate quickly" and then it sits, almost entirely unchanged, for years on end. e.g. new Settings in macOS, Stage Manager on the iPad. With how much the hardware team has been knocking it out of the park since the ARM transition it's really starting to feel like the software is the weak link. This rumoured massive redesign this year has me feeling very anxious.

kridsdale1 2y ago
I have met Craig a couple times. The man radiates charisma like a god damn movie star. The whole vibe in the room changes when he enters. Something about it, man.
- khazhoux 2y ago
  It's obviously the hair. His epic lion’s mane. I'm told he has the superpower of memory. Someone told me they had an eng review with him on a year prior, which ended with action items for the team to fix XYZ. Then a full year they had another review, and Craig came in and right away asked, "Did XYZ get done?"
ksec 2y ago
It is not about design features and bugs etc. The whole iOS feels a lot slower than before despite having much more processing power. Android caught on, and now feels smoother than iOS. And that is with iOS animation tuned off.

mac-mc 2y ago

Probably an agreeability thing? The iconoclasts who get things done tend to be disagreeable, but success at a reality scale is different than success in a large company. You get promoted and go up because of your peer coworker group's support, which creates a strong incentive to not rock the boat and go against sacred cows that work well enough. The person who succeeds in big company post a hypergrowth phase is a very different person than one who made the hypergrowth happen.

paulddraper 2y ago

> The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. Evidently, he is very good at increasing share value though.

idk1 2y ago

I don't know if Ahrendts is in this category she did transform Burberry into a high-end luxury online sales+retail company. She really was the exact opposite of the old head of the Currys boss, John Browett. I think she was responsible for how the Apple Watch is sold. For example, trying it on and having that experience. It's a tricky thing to get right, and I think she's got it spot on. Also, the watch strap business must have one of the highest margins ever, and I feel like she must be in part responsible for those sales and how you try on the straps. That Apple Store feels a lot like going into a Burberry where you can just experience stuff and people are happy to talk to you about anything and not try and sell you anything, so I'm not sure she should be in the category of everyone else you have here because in that respect, the stores do feel very good.