4 ms·

Why Apple is the cross-section of great hardware, design and shitty software

30 points by meteorash 13y ago

xenophanes 13y ago
> Apple has to put its cash to work Throwing cash at it does not make better software. See the Mythical Man Month. Or don't. But Apple is aware of it. I do not agree Apple's software is "shitty", but there is certainly room for improvement. But the bottleneck isn't cash (nor is the bottleneck desire. they want to improve things and are working on it).
- gbog 13y ago
  Would be interesting to try to imagine where the bottlenecks are, because I think we can suppose there are some bottlenecks. Maybe Apple locked itself when locking in its users?
duskwuff 13y ago
You're deferring a lot of ideas in this essay ("enough said", "I'll leave that for another day", etc.) without actually going in depth on anything, and that leaves a lot of your gripes sounding really shallow. Pick one topic and stick to it.
- meteorash 13y ago
  yes, my point here is not to argue the pros/cons of flat design or rant about the many different weird errors Xcode spews out. there is enough literature out there detailing those. my topic is merely to highlight that major software coming out from Apple are either buggy or stale.
eonil 13y ago
1 day old, has no comment, but only this shitty post.
TheZenPsycho 13y ago
1. you can switch between apps and close them with gestures. That's been available for several versions now. It's just that's a stupid idea so nobody does it. 2. I use "contacts" all the time. 3. So what if other phones had flat design? now Apple has it. It's not a mark against Apple if they fail to make you orgasm with delight with every feature they add. Sometimes it's good enough if the phone just works without having to monkey with customisation options for days.
galvanist 13y ago
Not worth your time. At all.
r0h1n 13y ago
tl;dr - dude opens Medium account -> wonders what topic to write on -> picks Apple cos he owns an iPod, iPhone and Macbook -> realizes & rehashes what most people have known for years -> that Apple's hardware is world class, iTunes is bloated and iOS is a walled-garden and late-comer to flat UI.
- meteorash 13y ago
  you mistake your understanding to be that of the general public as well. it is an opinion piece and the idea is to get common people to realize and think about what you may have "known for years".
  - charlesism 13y ago
    Such as the difference between "intersection" and "cross section." I know it's a cheap shot, but it strikes me as carelessness to not even get the title right.
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    We are discussing it on HN, right?
danieldk 13y ago
This article contains little support for the statements it makes. I also don't agree that their software is shitty. iOS may have been a bit stale, but I have two family members (my mother and grandma), who had never used a computer before and could use an iDevice without much instruction. iOS < 7 was very simple and logical (I haven't made my mind up about 7 yet) and the applications (iPhoto, iMovie et al.) work well and are very usable for a non-expert users (who don't care what iPhoto stores its metadata in). I think the more serious problem that Apple should solve is the hiccups in their cloud services. A significant (but different) subset of my iTunes Match songs is not playable most of the times. iMessage messages arrive in a more or less random order on random devices. Facetime calls come in on some devices, but not others. Most of my iOS wielding friends/family (and myself) have switched to other services. Facebook Chat works great, Skype is acceptable for video calling. Another threat is the lack of differentiation in their product portfolio. So far, uniformity worked well for them, but some people switch to platforms to get a larger (phone) screen, a better camera, a cheaper phone, etc.
supercoder 13y ago
Go back to Windows.
yoster 13y ago
For someone who has a lot of negativity about, why doesn't he go back to Windows?
GeneralMaximus 13y ago
> And where does Apple store these pictures? As a massive proprietary lump of data that is illegible to any other software or life form. Go to ~/Pictures, right click the iPhoto Library, click "Show Package Contents". Suddenly, photos! I agree with the poster, though. From a purely technical POV, Apple's software is pretty bad. I have been using OS X since 2008, and it's much worse than Linux and Windows when it comes to stability and performance. It regularly uses much more memory than either OS, behaves badly under load, occasionally freezes up when connecting to external devices, takes more time to respond to certain events, is extremely hard to customize etc. iTunes is so bad that I prefer using almost anything else to play my music. Safari is an okay browser at best; it certainly can't compete with either Firefox or Chrome. I'm able to overlook all these technical issues because OS X is marginally better designed than Windows and Linux, does most of what I need to do without me having to jump through hoops, gives me great battery life, allows be to do an astounding number of basic computing tasks right out of the box[1], and runs all the software I need it to run. The fact that the OS X UI has remained functionally the same for over a decade is also a plus. I use OS X, but very little of Apple's other software. I browse the web using Firefox, listen to music using Clementine, use iTerm as my terminal, Google Docs for documents, Gmail for email, etc. I would switch to Linux in a heartbeat, but I feel the userland changes far too much far too often. At 23, I'm far too old for that. --- [1] These include cropping pictures, annotating PDFs, slicing video, recording my screen, recording video or voice, syncinc contacts and calendars, looking up words in a dictionary, reading mail, importing pictures from a digital camera, backing up my files, viewing (but not editing) ODF, XLSX, DOCX, etc. It even includes an on-line partitioning tool (Disk Utility), and a graphing calculator (Grapher).
- xenophanes 13y ago
  The OS is supposed to use memory. That's what it's for: to be used. Using memory is a feature, not a bug. Let the OS manage memory instead of demanding a lot should be left in an used state. You also didn't make much effort to argue your points. Consider Safari vs Chrome. Safari has better UI IMO, and Chrome is a fork of Safari's internals. So what's better about Chrome on Mac? I use both regularly. Chrome's adblock works better but it's not obvious what else is better and you didn't tell me.

30 points by meteorash 13y ago

> Apple has to put its cash to work Throwing cash at it does not make better software. See the Mythical Man Month. Or don't. But Apple is aware of it. I do not agree Apple's software is "shitty", but there is certainly room for improvement. But the bottleneck isn't cash (nor is the bottleneck desire. they want to improve things and are working on it).

gbog 13y ago
Would be interesting to try to imagine where the bottlenecks are, because I think we can suppose there are some bottlenecks. Maybe Apple locked itself when locking in its users?

duskwuff 13y ago

You're deferring a lot of ideas in this essay ("enough said", "I'll leave that for another day", etc.) without actually going in depth on anything, and that leaves a lot of your gripes sounding really shallow. Pick one topic and stick to it.

meteorash 13y ago
yes, my point here is not to argue the pros/cons of flat design or rant about the many different weird errors Xcode spews out. there is enough literature out there detailing those. my topic is merely to highlight that major software coming out from Apple are either buggy or stale.

eonil 13y ago

1 day old, has no comment, but only this shitty post.

TheZenPsycho 13y ago

1. you can switch between apps and close them with gestures. That's been available for several versions now. It's just that's a stupid idea so nobody does it. 2. I use "contacts" all the time. 3. So what if other phones had flat design? now Apple has it. It's not a mark against Apple if they fail to make you orgasm with delight with every feature they add. Sometimes it's good enough if the phone just works without having to monkey with customisation options for days.

galvanist 13y ago

Not worth your time. At all.

r0h1n 13y ago

tl;dr - dude opens Medium account -> wonders what topic to write on -> picks Apple cos he owns an iPod, iPhone and Macbook -> realizes & rehashes what most people have known for years -> that Apple's hardware is world class, iTunes is bloated and iOS is a walled-garden and late-comer to flat UI.

meteorash 13y ago
you mistake your understanding to be that of the general public as well. it is an opinion piece and the idea is to get common people to realize and think about what you may have "known for years".
- charlesism 13y ago
  Such as the difference between "intersection" and "cross section." I know it's a cheap shot, but it strikes me as carelessness to not even get the title right.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  We are discussing it on HN, right?

danieldk 13y ago

This article contains little support for the statements it makes. I also don't agree that their software is shitty. iOS may have been a bit stale, but I have two family members (my mother and grandma), who had never used a computer before and could use an iDevice without much instruction. iOS < 7 was very simple and logical (I haven't made my mind up about 7 yet) and the applications (iPhoto, iMovie et al.) work well and are very usable for a non-expert users (who don't care what iPhoto stores its metadata in). I think the more serious problem that Apple should solve is the hiccups in their cloud services. A significant (but different) subset of my iTunes Match songs is not playable most of the times. iMessage messages arrive in a more or less random order on random devices. Facetime calls come in on some devices, but not others. Most of my iOS wielding friends/family (and myself) have switched to other services. Facebook Chat works great, Skype is acceptable for video calling. Another threat is the lack of differentiation in their product portfolio. So far, uniformity worked well for them, but some people switch to platforms to get a larger (phone) screen, a better camera, a cheaper phone, etc.

supercoder 13y ago

Go back to Windows.

yoster 13y ago

For someone who has a lot of negativity about, why doesn't he go back to Windows?

GeneralMaximus 13y ago

> And where does Apple store these pictures? As a massive proprietary lump of data that is illegible to any other software or life form. Go to ~/Pictures, right click the iPhoto Library, click "Show Package Contents". Suddenly, photos! I agree with the poster, though. From a purely technical POV, Apple's software is pretty bad. I have been using OS X since 2008, and it's much worse than Linux and Windows when it comes to stability and performance. It regularly uses much more memory than either OS, behaves badly under load, occasionally freezes up when connecting to external devices, takes more time to respond to certain events, is extremely hard to customize etc. iTunes is so bad that I prefer using almost anything else to play my music. Safari is an okay browser at best; it certainly can't compete with either Firefox or Chrome. I'm able to overlook all these technical issues because OS X is marginally better designed than Windows and Linux, does most of what I need to do without me having to jump through hoops, gives me great battery life, allows be to do an astounding number of basic computing tasks right out of the box[1], and runs all the software I need it to run. The fact that the OS X UI has remained functionally the same for over a decade is also a plus. I use OS X, but very little of Apple's other software. I browse the web using Firefox, listen to music using Clementine, use iTerm as my terminal, Google Docs for documents, Gmail for email, etc. I would switch to Linux in a heartbeat, but I feel the userland changes far too much far too often. At 23, I'm far too old for that. --- [1] These include cropping pictures, annotating PDFs, slicing video, recording my screen, recording video or voice, syncinc contacts and calendars, looking up words in a dictionary, reading mail, importing pictures from a digital camera, backing up my files, viewing (but not editing) ODF, XLSX, DOCX, etc. It even includes an on-line partitioning tool (Disk Utility), and a graphing calculator (Grapher).

xenophanes 13y ago
The OS is supposed to use memory. That's what it's for: to be used. Using memory is a feature, not a bug. Let the OS manage memory instead of demanding a lot should be left in an used state. You also didn't make much effort to argue your points. Consider Safari vs Chrome. Safari has better UI IMO, and Chrome is a fork of Safari's internals. So what's better about Chrome on Mac? I use both regularly. Chrome's adblock works better but it's not obvious what else is better and you didn't tell me.