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Apple without Ive and Jobs increasingly has a taste problem. Everything from their ads to things like this are just in really poor taste, and aren’t something t
by keiferski 1y ago
Apple without Ive and Jobs increasingly has a taste problem. Everything from their ads to things like this are just in really poor taste, and aren’t something that they would have done 15 years ago because they would have thought it was beneath their brand.
I like Apple, so I’m really hoping they bring on someone to solve this. Otherwise they’re on track to be the same as every other tasteless tech company.
More on taste and Apple: https://www.readtrung.com/p/steve-jobs-rick-rubin-and-taste https://www.readtrung.com/p/steve-jobs-rick-rubin-and-taste
- dubcanada 1y agoJobs has been gone for almost 15 years. From what I know Ive had nothing to do with anything but design aesthetic. I am not sure either of these people have anything to do with ads on Apple Wallet. Or even Apple Wallet…
- keiferski 1y agoThe entire reason Apple made devices that were a level above competitors is because the design wasn’t just the aesthetic. Ive was chief designer and so obviously had a key impact.
- hshshshshsh 1y agoHow do you know Ive had a key impact? Do you know it or read somewhere online?
- dijit 1y ago“How do you know that <primary responsible person> had impact”. Do you hear yourself?
- hshshshshsh 1y agoThen all OP is saying key impact person had key impact. Doesn't add any substance to discussion.
- dijit 1y ago> How do you know that? Because of the title? Yes
- tempaccount420 1y ago3x Boosted?
- exe34 1y agoNeither did your second sentence, and you still wrote it. Sometimes we write things down to draw attention to the fact, not to inform a naive audience of facts that they did not know.
- nottorp 1y agoKey impact like the shit emoji keyboard that couldn't survive a single speck of dust?
- pqtyw 1y agoIt might be a complete misinterpretation but it seems like Ive went completely haywire when Job's was gone with the ultra thin, portless, overheating Macs with a crappy keyboards and pointless touch bars that sort of looked cool but provided no other real value.
- bobbylarrybobby 1y agoThe point is, when Jobs was around, there was an overarching (unstated?) policy at Apple of “nobody do anything to make us look like cheap tasteless shits”. Whereas now, Tim Cook is very happy to sell out for a quick buck. He's a logistics guy, not a product guy, and at his core is a bean counter; he neither has taste nor appreciates that it has value unto itself.
- tokioyoyo 1y agoThere were ~60M iPhone users when Jobs was the CEO. There are about ~1.4B right now. Both respectively accomplished very respectable things. It’s not selling for a quick buck if he was able to scale the business to such degrees. That being said, I agree that Apple makes a lot of wrongs.
- trinix912 1y agoPart of the appeal of Apple was that not everyone and their mom just had an Apple device. They heavily played on that, similar to how fashion does. That "exclusivity" (sort of) is gone now, and it shows with Apple trying to create likable, noncontroversial designs for the larger crowd. They try to make up for it with prices, but it misses the point.
- moomoo11 1y agoApple became Gucci
- danaris 1y agoMaybe that was part of the appeal to you. To most of us, the appeal of Apple has always been primarily that it does what it does well. I don't think Apple themselves thinks their appeal depends on exclusivity, but rather on a premium experience.
- dghlsakjg 1y agoI promise you, in 2005, everyone and their mom had an iPod. If you couldn’t afford the full fat iPod, you bought any of the various cheaper stripped down models. If anything, Apple has gotten more exclusive through their pricing.
- dkersten 1y ago> I know Ive had nothing to do with Ok you haven’t but what about Ive?
- ryandrake 1y agoThe whole forcing a U2 album onto people’s devices thing, which happened shortly after Jobs died, was the first time I, a former Apple fan, sat up and realized “wow, these guys are really losing their taste/tact!” Weird to think that was over a decade ago!
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- andyferris 1y agoI agree that was weird - but it was never forced onto your device unless you chose to download that album (it would be like saying a particular album was "forced" onto your spotify when they are ALL available and free - this was just the first "spotify"-style album designed to be streamed not purchased).
- yunwal 1y agoIt was automatically added to your library, so if you shuffle your recently added or your whole library it got included.
- iinnPP 1y agoWow. Depending on the timing, that's a brand ending event for me. Though I am definitely not the norm.
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- alwa 1y agoIt was forced onto your device to the extent that any other of your library songs or iTunes purchases were, whether that worked out to be streamed on demand or downloaded locally. Space was never the issue, forcing bad music in my shuffle play was. I remember distinctly, because after trying patiently for months then years to get rid of it through official channels, I rage-quit iTunes when that whiny man’s voice started playing again the moment I connected my phone in a rental car. I still won’t touch Apple Music to this day. For that matter, it still comes back from time to time all these years later: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/13kc29l/how_do_i_remove_this_u2_album_from_my_iphone/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/13kc29l/... Apparently, since they have taken down their dedicated removal tool from 11 years ago [0], your remaining recourse is to contact Apple Support and persist through upsell attempts to paid support. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29208540 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29208540
- jmsdnns 1y agoJobs hated ads. You're right that he never wouldve done what Apple is doing now. Cook needs to stop listening to investors, like Warren Buffett, because he's letting them wreck Apple's integrity for the sake of making a buck. Apple just isnt user focused like they used to be and it's crappy.
- chii 1y agoCook is an operations person. He makes the logistics work. He's no visionary. Jobs is a visionary, but is not a logistics person. Apple struck lightning when both existed, to provide complimentary ideas and counterbalances. Lighting doesnt strike twice imho.
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- mattmaroon 1y agoTell that to Van Halen!
- hylaride 1y agoSame with Ive and Jobs. Ive was a great designer, but no usability expert. Jobs put practical limits on and as soon as Jobs was gone, Ive got total control. The result is some of the least-popular Mac laptops ever.
- bluedevilzn 1y agoJobs created iAd. He hated bad ads. Here’s him announcing and talking about ads in WWDC: https://youtu.be/eY3BZzzLaaM?si=Dttc5eJJ1B7Zf3sB https://youtu.be/eY3BZzzLaaM?si=Dttc5eJJ1B7Zf3sB
- jmsdnns 1y agohe was vocal about his opposition to intrusive ads in particular. he'd say "You’re either the customer or you’re the product." he believed users paid a premium for apple products and that they should not be subjected to compromises with advertising. iAd was something that happened right at the end of his life because devs were putting ads in apple apps anyway and he wanted to control how that was done. this is meant to add context to what bluedevilzn said, btw. it is not a refutation.
- hshshshshsh 1y agoYeah. One thing I learned working at a Big company is that companies are full of parasites who are there to get their promotion or salary increase and don't give a cat shit about users or mission or values. Honestly it sucked any joy out of my life but I am stuck here because of visa.
- bombcar 1y agoYou almost need (not going to be definitive because some big companies just need to execute the same operations for hundreds of years) a Jobs or Gates or someone who doesn't believe their own bullshit and is willing to say "this sucks, we're shitcanning it." Otherwise you get generic slop, eventually.
- breckenedge 1y agoHappens at small companies too, especially those owned by private equity.
- soderfoo 1y agoVisionaries and solution oriented devs can’t deliver the kind of quarterly “profitability” that careerist, KPI-chasing, promotion-hungry product managers love to promise.
- noisy_boy 1y agoUntil a company fully supports the combination of top-class engineering + top-class user experience to the exclusion and expulsion of political parasites, this is inevitable. Unfortunately, the ever-expanding blind profit chasing, at the exclusion of everything else, kills the chance of that happening.
- surgical_fire 1y agoYou described any regular workplace. You are not supposed to find joy in work. Work is something that you do so you can afford to find joy elsewhere.
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- jwr 1y agoJobs was no angel, but he did follow "build great things and profits will come" philosophy. Apple these days is run for profit: profits are clearly first, and good things might accidentally come as well as a side effect. That would be ok, because competition, except these days the moat is huge: it is very difficult for a new entrant to compete.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jama211 1y agoThey did loads of tacky things back in the day, we’ve just forgotten about them.
- troupo 1y agoModern Apple can't even do tacky things. Tacky things under Jobs were failed experiments. Modern Apple doesn't believe in either experiments or failed experiments.
- moomoo11 1y agoI think back then their stock was so bad that anything to make it go up was a good thing. Now Apple is a multi trillion dollar company and they can’t take as much risk.
- layer8 1y agoGiven the Vision Pro, and the many billions spent on the now-defunct car project, I’m not so sure this is true.
- Fade_Dance 1y agoI agree about project titan/cars. That was a behemoth of a failed experiment experiment. As for vision pro though and I guess even to a little extent the car exploration, it's sort of "safe" and derivative conceptually. Steve's experiments were often seemingly directly at odds with profitability. Like, one day he may have looked at the extensive lineup with the "Pro Max" etc, and made the call to cut back down to one iPhone model. Or he would, you know, do something ridiculous like make the next Imac's screen round or something. It's decisions like that which primarily profit driven mega corporations just can't do.
- necovek 1y agoUntil it shows up in the bottom line, they will have all the metrics and data they need to continue pushing this way. The old adage of "vote with your (physical?) wallet" holds double here.
- AdamN 1y agoI remember when Jobs killed the Herald Square Apple Store even though the lease had been signed and it 'made sense' on paper. When visiting the location it's clear it's a dump and no Apple store will fix that. He put his brand before short term revenue.
- somenameforme 1y agoApple is basically a smartphone company at this point, and smartphone sales are plummeting. And I think they're plummeting for the same reason desktop sales plummeted. We went from a time where a new PC was a bit dated in 3 months and obsolete in 2 years, to modern times where a desktop from a decade ago is good for pretty much everything, even including high end gaming if you started with a high end card. The exact same thing's happening to phones. I have a 6 year old phone that was cheap when it was new, and it still runs 100% of what I use my phone for, and most people use their phones for, perfectly. Tech hardware as a recurring business model only works when there's perceived significant improvements between generations. Trying to sell a few more pixels, or a fraction of a cm thinner case or whatever just isn't worth it for most people. So, as typical with corporations in this spot, they start flailing to try to maintain revenue, let alone growth. Microsoft became a 'cloud' company paired with a side gig of spyware marketed as an OS. It'll be interesting to see what Apple transforms into.
- gizajob 1y agoNokia.
- drob518 1y agoYep. And this is why “liquid glass” is the hot new thing this year. That’s basically all we have left to drive the refresh cycle that tech is addicted to.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoIt surprises me that this is what apple has essentially boiled down to. Yes there are people stuck in the walled garden but they were willingly stuck there tbh. They liked apple vision and felt different. But if apple is just going to lose on all fronts ("AI","vision?","This year innovation=liquid-glass") Yeah, they might not be in a good state..., Also most people I see want an iphone just rebuy old iphones and those phones themselves are still in good conditions.
- drob518 1y ago
- hcarvalhoalves 1y agoCompany takeover by bean counters and clowns. It happens with every company, sooner or later. Apple remains on the edge with hardware though. I guess the show is still ran by the engineers at this department.
- ttcbj 1y agoI have been reading the book “apple in China” after hearing the author on a podcast. It has fundamentally altered my view of apple as a company. From a consumer perspective, I thought it was a an amazing company. But looking behind the scenes, I came to understand how morally compromised it has been for a very long time. In retrospect, I feel complicit in things I didn’t understand I was part of.
- Schiendelman 1y agoAnything looks worse when you see behind the curtain. The question is in comparison - who produces technology you want without that behind the scenes behavior (or being dependent on someone else's behind the scenes behavior!)?
- librasteve 1y agoTim Cook needs to get a grip on this. If Apple loses the privacy advocate reputation, then they will lose a lot of customers.
- newAccount2025 1y agoWill they though? Where does a privacy-conscious consumer turn? The only other serious option is Android, where Google will eagerly track all the things.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoI doubt it. They might lose a few nerds but no casual consumer gives a shit.
- int_19h 1y agoCasual consumers get pretty annoyed by undesired ads popping up in unexpected places. Whether they'll do anything about it is a different question.
- ls-a 1y agoAds are planed to come to every single wallet out there. Card companies, merchants, and tech companies are working on this together. Apple just thought it would be a good idea to be the first to launch it. Soon it will be a norm and everyone will forget about it or even find it useful.
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- epolanski 1y agoThe company is donezo to be honest. Without the huge hold of the cloud and business markets Microsoft enjoys they only have hardware. And besides their excellent laptops you can forget of the existence of any other of their products.
- Fade_Dance 1y agoApple services revenue has gone from 10 to 30 billion within the last 5 years. They are seeing extremely strong services growth.
- mr_toad 1y agoThey have a huge chunk of the smartwatch and tablet market.
- epolanski 1y agoNeither of those products is really hard to replace with competitor's products.
- caycep 1y agoone would've hoped w/ Angela Ahrendts Bosom St John but I guess not a cultural/operational fit.
- DidYaWipe 1y agoIt has become increasingly clear that Apple needs a management housecleaning. Their purposeful antagonism of entire geopolitical blocs with anti-developer douchebaggery alone should have resulted in heads rolling. But Jony Ive was part of the problem. His "taste level" resulted in the embarrassing emoji bar forced on "pro" users, a grossly defective keyboard that crippled Apple computers for five years, a computer with no available ports on it, regressive UI that made products less useful with every revision, battery life so poor that people were crouching in the corners of cafes next to outlets before lunch, the removal of headphone jacks from the best-selling music players... Ive is pompous hack with no ideas for the advancement of products. Meanwhile, lazy and ignorant pundits have incorrectly lumped Apple into "big tech" with Google, Amazon, and Meta because they can't be bothered to inform themselves (or even think) about the fact that those companies are all gatekeepers to huge swaths of the Internet; Apple is not. And their continual whining about Apple being "behind on AI" further testifies to their laziness and lack of critical thinking. Nonetheless, Apple has forfeited the high road. They're now another asshole in the club, inviting scrutiny and crackdowns that threaten the value of the company. What are the owners going to do about it?
- diskzero 1y agoApple employee pre, during and post Steve. I was in a lot of meetings with VPs whose tasteless suggestions were shut down immediately with the usual Steve critiques attached. My recollection is that Eddy Cue got the most critiques, Phil Schiller the least and the rest were in between. Eddy would push back and still get shut down. When Steve left the last time, it was knives out between these guys with Scott Forstall taking a fall as Tim Cook got ultimatums from everyone including Jony. I imagine loud voices with bad taste are pushing Tim hard. Apple can be an investor darling but Tim has needed to consider an exit and find a strong successor that knows what made Apple great in other ways.
- SSLy 1y ago> Phil Schiller Rings a bell. >Tim Cook asserted his control over the company, putting his own personnel in place, and now his authority is absolute. Even those few others who remain from the Jobs era, such as “Apple Fellow” Phil Schiller, are overridden by Cook https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/5/6.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/5/6.html by way of https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/05/23/apple-turnaround/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/05/23/apple-turnaround/
- lapcat 1y ago> I was in a lot of meetings with VPs whose tasteless suggestions were shut down immediately with the usual Steve critiques attached. Was it common for lower-level employees to take part in C-suite meetings and arguments?
- destitude 1y agoIve wanted to get rid of all the ports on everything! Thank goodness he's gone and we now have MagSafe, HDMI, and SD card readers back on portables.
- prewett 1y agoI loved MagSafe, but after the USB C power, I don't love it. USB C power could go on either side of the laptop, and if I stepped on the cable it still easily disconnected, but MagSafe only goes on one side, which frequently means the cord needs to wrap around the back.
- skeeter2020 1y agoIs this really that different than pushing an immutable U2 album into your itunes account years ago? "liking Apple" is a weird position; they're several generations away from when you could identify the company with actual people, and anthropomorphizing the company at this point seems wild.
- surgical_fire 1y agoThere was that event where everyone's iTunes suddenly had a U2 album on it. I don't really see a difference. Truth is Apple was always like that, but Apple in particular has a lot of fans willing to play the white knight in its name.
- keiferski 1y agoI would consider that the beginning of the problem - and it happened shortly after Jobs died.
- yomismoaqui 1y ago> Apple without Ive and Jobs increasingly has a taste problem Sorry, having seen the sappy photo of Ive & Altman I cannot trust his taste. https://in.mashable.com/tech/94502/sam-altman-taps-worlds-greatest-designer-from-apple-for-openais-next-big-thing-in-ai-hardware https://in.mashable.com/tech/94502/sam-altman-taps-worlds-gr...
- roughly 1y agoNor should you. OP should’ve said Apple without Jobs - Ive had artistic taste, but not product or human taste.
- diego_sandoval 1y agoWhen I saw that photo I thought someoneone on X had made it as a joke. I realized it was official as I read your comment.
- thrashh 1y agoA lot of people like Apple because it was built on Jobs’ taste and they liked Jobs’ taste. With Jobs gone, it still has a taste but it someone else’s taste. That said, I think some people have developed their own original taste but some people’s tastes are just an amalgamation of the people around them.
- graemep 1y agoIs that lack of competence, or lack of motive? Is it a problem from their point of view. Apple's main user base is not like HN users - not even like the Apple users/advocates here. I have come across many who are too deeply convinced that Apple is hugely ahead of other OSes (often because they assume other OSes capabilities are what they were years ago), and they do not want to adjust to anything that is different from what they are familiar with. They will stay will Apple almost whatever Apple do. Some examples of things Apple users I know have said were advantages of their products: 1. I can copy and paste between my phone and my desktop! 2. There is a terminal app that is so amazing you will want to buy a Mac just to use it. It was roughly similar to terminal apps I have used over many years. 3. If you buy a ticket on your laptop instead of your phone you will have to bring your laptop out to scan at the gate. When I explained my phone syncs selected folders with my laptop the reply was "that is so complicated". Only the first comment came from a person who is not comfortable with technology - obviously in the case of the second comment!
- alwa 1y agoI feel like there’s a taste aspect and also a focus/discipline kind of dimension to it. For the longest, they’d essentialize everything almost brutally: like that whole thing about the iPhone coming with no manual since you didn’t need it. The design only afforded you one right way to find and do things. This is a toaster, it makes toast. This is Apple TV, it plays TV. This is Apple Wallet, it does what your wallet does. And that was the magic! Of course the simplicity masked kaleidoscopic technical, commercial, and functional complexity—that’s not new! This weird cross-promotion is the latest, most crass, symptom; but it almost reads as the metastasis of a deeper disease—namely this urge to cross-pollute between little functional fiefdoms from inside the megacorp, instead of prioritizing the perspective of one user on one tool for one purpose at a time.
- Zafira 1y agoI’m actually curious how they were able to exactly filter some of their less promising impulses. Ive famously wanted the Apple Watch to be a standalone luxury product. > Jony Ive envisioned the future of the Apple Watch as a luxury product. Not only did he want to build a $25 million lavish white tent to promote the first Watch, but he “regarded a rave from Vogue as more important than any tech reviewer’s opinion.” According to Mickle, “the tent was critical to making the event as glamorous as a high-end fashion show.” Meanwhile Jobs always seemed to have an obsession with cubes (NeXTcube, Power Mac G4 Cube), no fans and nobody touching his products (the original iPhone “SDK” announcement was a badly received joke).
- pjmlp 1y agoThose of us that have been long enough around, see this Apple like the one when Steve Jobs was busy at NeXT. The only difference is that now they are decades away to ever worry about insolvency, yet the lack of direction and management entitlement as being the best, feels quite similar.