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Apple needs a new CEO. Someone more visionary than Cook. The software needs more focus on making it "just work" and having significantly less bugs. The line-up

• sschueller 9mo ago
  As long as stock profit is the only goal then Tim Cook is the correct CEO for Apple. Bribing the president publicly and doing what ever is required to keep the cash flowing in the short term is what share holders want.
  • FrustratedMonky 9mo ago
    That runs out of steam eventually. Hence need a leader with Vision that is filling the pipeline for next few years. Unfortunately. Once the money does run out, and they do get someone with Vision, then that Vision takes years to realize, so there would be a big slump in products/money where they could just collapse. Usually it is a competitor that comes up with the new vision. Maybe Apple is so big it just buys other people vision.
    • njb311 9mo ago
      But hang on, Cook has Vision _Pro_!
  • OhMeadhbh 9mo ago
    Yes and no. I agree with the general sentiment, but the market may be changing in a way that Cook, et al. aren't suited to understand. So... maybe. Even probably. But eventually there'll come a point where not having a product person high up on the org chart is going to come back and bite them in the rear end. But I have no idea of when that time will be.
    • ethbr1 9mo ago
      > But eventually there'll come a point where not having a product person high up on the org chart is going to come back and bite them in the rear end. Are there any great examples where having a non-product-focused CEO has left the company in a good competitive position after 10-15 years?
      • OhMeadhbh 9mo ago
        IBM, DEC, HP
        • ethbr1 9mo ago
          I think you'd have to drill down into certain periods in their corporate history to make that argument. IBM is now notorious for having over invested in services in the 90s/00s and thus ceded their previous technical/product expertise. Similarly, HP bifurcated itself into product and not-product divisions. DEC is a weird case. Both Olsen and Palmer were arguably product people, but also missed major shift in the market (personal computing and x86 ISA consolidation, respectively).
• silvestrov 9mo ago
  This reminds me of when Steve Balmer became the CEO of Microsoft. He sold Windows in so many versions that even a developer like me had no idea of what the difference was between them. I could not figure out from the packaging which version I needed.
  • retired 9mo ago
    Had to use an LLM to generate this list: Windows Vista was available in Starter (32-bit only, Retail and OEM), Home Basic (32-bit and 64-bit, Retail, OEM, and Volume License, plus Home Basic N 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, in multiple languages), Home Premium (32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, Home Premium N 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, in multiple languages), Business (32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, Business N 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, in multiple languages), Enterprise (32/64-bit, Volume License only, Enterprise N 32/64-bit, in multiple languages), Ultimate (32/64-bit, Retail/OEM, Ultimate N 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM, in multiple languages), and the Korean-market versions Home Basic K, Home Premium K, Business K, Enterprise K, Ultimate K (all 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, in multiple languages), plus Tablet PC editions, Media Center pre-bundled versions, and Embedded/IoT variants, each with additional 32/64-bit and N/K distinctions, creating a combinatorial explosion of literally hundreds of distinct SKUs when factoring in architecture, licensing type, language packs, and region-specific requirements.
    • OhMeadhbh 9mo ago
      preach your truth, brother.
    • fmajid 9mo ago
      Leading to Jeff Atwood's memorable rant: https://blog.codinghorror.com/oh-you-wanted-awesome-edition/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/oh-you-wanted-awesome-edition/ "Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome."
    • r_lee 9mo ago
      You listed the K/N etc. ones as well, they're still a thing to this day... And the situation was pretty much the same thing for Windows 7
• whiteboardr 9mo ago
  Guess I’m not in a position in telling Apple how to structure their product offering and choice isn’t a bad thing IMHO. But I’d highly encourage you to have a look into which Apple pencil is compatible to which iPad. Choice, yes, a mess - no.
  • retired 9mo ago
    I should not have gone down that rabbit hole. Why is Apple selling three variants of the Apple Pencil and then the Apple Pencil Pro as well. The first generation comes with a Lightning adapter and a USB-C to Apple Pencil Adapter (required to pair and charge with iPad (A16) and iPad (10th generation). What are those adapters doing? It is compatible with the "iPad Pro 9.7-inch" which I presume is the first generation iPad Pro but why does it not state the generation like they do with the iPad Pro 12.9-inch? Why state "iPad (A16)" but not use the 11th generation? Thanks for raising my blood pressure! But I had fun doing so.
    • deepfriedchokes 9mo ago
      No Apple Pencil Ultra? What a missed opportunity.
  • SanjayMehta 9mo ago
    And try getting Apple Care for them without buying an iPad at the same time.
    • retired 9mo ago
      The Pencil is covered through the Apple Care of your iPad, even when purchased separately. Using a Pencil without an iPad and wanting Apple Care on it is a bit of a niche use case. And do you really need Apple Care on a $79/$99/$129 product?
      • SanjayMehta 9mo ago
        I wanted to add a Pencil to an existing iPad. Company policy required me to get AppleCare for the new device, there was no way to add it to just the Pencil. At least on the India site.
• petesergeant 9mo ago
  Apple's hardware lineup has never been stronger. They need a new software guy, and it looks like they've recently gotten one.
  • OhMeadhbh 9mo ago
    Yes and no. They've made some great hardware, but the OS is old and slow, they fired most of the people on the #a11y team that knew what they were doing and the only reason they make Macs is so devs have a machine to write iPhone apps on.
• volemo 9mo ago
  > Why is there even a MacBook Pro without a Pro chip? I like MB Pro with a regular chip: my tasks aren’t hugely parallelisable, the plain chip is plenty fast, but I want the nicer display, sound, and ports, and additional battery life is nice to have.
• mingus88 9mo ago
  Why do you consider a color to be an entirely different model? Storage size would be a better differentiator, but even then it’s just an option. Do you feel the same way about cars? Have you been this fired up looking at a dealership all these years? So many paint options and wheel choices! Idk, my phone gets hours of use each day, in my hands. Very personal device. I appreciate the options. I agree with you about the cpu confusion, but I think most consumers largely act on price and many biased towards the lowest or highest ends every cycle. Largely any modern CPU will be enough for regular users.
  • bko 9mo ago
    I don't think it's about colors per-se. Sure if everything was 100% customizable and nothing else was different, whatever. But they're obviously focusing on these features and pretending they're innovating when they're just slapping some new paint on it and a slight camera bump spec and expecting you to fork over $1,500 every two years.
    • DrProtic 9mo ago
      I still need to understand what kind of innovation the current MacBook Pro needs. It’s arguably the best laptop on the market and I wouldn’t change a thing (except maybe improved camera and added FaceID, but that would increase cost). They dominate the market from low cost Air to top of the line MBP 16.
• fmajid 9mo ago
  They need to fire Craig Federighi first, but of course that is Tim Cook's job, and he showed poor judgment in firing spiky but effective Scott Forstall to keep that hack Jony Ive. Ive is the one who appointed Alan Dye, an advertising designer with no clue about UX and too arrogant to listen to those who did, leading to iOS 7 and now Liquid Ass. There is no point in complaining, or worse, enduring Stockholm Syndrome, Apple repeatedly demonstrated its contempt for its customers. I've decided to cut my losses after 25 years of using the modern OSX Mac (and 35 years using the Mac), and iOS since the original iPhone, to go back to Linux, and to GrapheneOS, and the migration is largely complete.
  • moepstar 9mo ago
    My journey is quite similar, although I haven’t migrated (back) to Linux and not away from iPhone yet. Do you have a writeup of that, somewhere? How do you manage without device interoperability (i.e. copy and paste between Mac and iPhone)?
    • fmajid 9mo ago
      It's still work-in-progress: https://blog.majid.info/quit-apple/ https://blog.majid.info/quit-apple/ You can copy-paste using LocalSend. Not as seamless, but it does work, including with Apple devices.
      • seec 9mo ago
        Honestly, it is so infrequently needed that just having a synced note app is good enough for the few times you need it. Apple has been focusing way too much on gimmicks like that and they don't have that much value.
        • moepstar 9mo ago
          I kinda agree in the way that having synced notes (a good feature in itself, also available on iPhone/Mac) would probably suffice. Still, being able to copy and paste not only text but also images between devices seamlessly is really nice, not to mention i can open an open browser-tab (Safari, iOS) in Brave on the Mac by just clicking the icon that has a "mobile device icon" next to it and it opens the same tab on the Mac... And yes - as i said - i agree that having a synced note app would probably enable the same usecases, but with distinctly more friction (at least in my books).
• ChrisRR 9mo ago
  I'd hardly call a different colour an extra mnodel
• jaredklewis 9mo ago
  I find this comment baffling. Apple needs a new CEO because their products come in lots of colors? And they have (gasps) two series of laptop chips?
• GeorgeOldfield 9mo ago
  what are you people talking about? Cook is the best thing that happened to apple. Look at their sales. They are killing the laptop market - likely a complete dominance in the next years. same with the iphone - first year to be the biggest phone seller in a long time. the switch to ARM and their M silicon was one of the best moves in computing in years.
  • emchammer 9mo ago
    The M silicon is real, but Nokia, a company that specialized in rubber products, was doing low-power ARM 30 years ago, and the stage was set by His Jobsness with Mach binaries and Rosetta. Tim Cook was excitedly waving his hands in the last event video about some kind of evaporative cooling mechanism in the latest low-end iPhone. He has completely missed the plot.
    • FireBeyond 9mo ago
      At least 15 years ago (I haven't bothered to look since), you could actually still buy Nokia toilet paper.
• alimbada 9mo ago
  I would expect the M4 options to be cheaper than their M5 counterparts. Given how expensive Apple products are, I appreciate them offering both options at the same time. Just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it doesn't make sense for anyone; you're obviously in the miniscule [nit-picking] minority since Apple will have done enough market research to offer the options that they do offer.