Another fabricated headline and story designed to fill up ‘copy’ on the Internet! The same story headline could have been written on just about any other company in America. I was a boy when Walt Disney died in 1967 and everyone predicted that since the founder had died, Disney was going to fail! Bullshit!!!!!! Look at Disney today or look at how the oil companies prospered after the Standard breakup.
So far since Jobs passing we have only had bigger screens, smaller screens on all major products (besides Airpods and HomePod).;
You're such a fan that you've forgotten the flowering of the Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Beats, and the Apple Watch among many other huge successes (and a handful of misses) over the past few years. Each one of the areas I just mentioned are multi-billion $ businesses all on their own, and I didn't even mention the quantum scaling of the App Store and other bubbling-under stuff like HomeKit, the Apple Card, the expanded services, Apple News, the incredible environmental initiative (all those energy savings also add to profits, you know ...), the genuine phenom of the AirPods and the best-in-class-but-not-iPhone stuff like the HomePod. There's also the wealth of underlying technologies (like Apple's incredible leadership role in the processor industry) that make so much of this stuff work.
Steve was indeed an amazing guy, and he gets part credit for anything Apple does even years after he died by dint of showing Tim, Sir Jony, and many others how to go about making stuff that both genuinely improves lives and makes a crap-tonne of money. So it's a hell of a lot more than just "bigger or smaller screens" -- that's seriously underplaying how savvy the present team has taken the core concepts of the stuff Steve oversaw and run with it. The iPad Pro in particular is an example of how Steve gave you the logs and kindling and Tim made fire with it -- exactly as Steve knew he would.
Generally agree with the points the article makes... But, I think there are some things it missed.
One of the problem with '90s Apple, is that Apple was actually doing several of the things the industry pundits, experts, media, etc. and typical tech business minds would think to do. They were being run more like every other tech business. The media didn't jump all over them until that strategy started to fail.
Sure, Apple now has enough cash and success that such moves are much less likely to get them in trouble than in the past. But, I see some of those same trends happening today. The articles' argument seems to be... yeah, but this time Apple is making money with all the silly 'moonshots'. And, I suppose they are, but that doesn't mean they aren't equally silly and distracting from things that should be primary.
I was listening to an interview today of Guy Kawasaki on Jordan Harbinger's podcast. Guy wrapped up the interview with a few lessons we can learn from Steve's life. The one that caught my attention, was that Steve had taste. He was passionate about well-designed things.
I agree, and that's the big difference between technically advanced products, and truly great products. For example, take Samsung's recent folding phone fiasco. Having a screen that can fold is some incredible technology, for sure. It's also silly and fraught with problems. Or, there are a ton of Windows PCs out there that are technically pretty competent machines. But, no taste.
And, that also highlights part of the problem with Apple since Steve's death. They seem a bit more taste-challenged since then. They have great talent and technology, for sure, but products are starting to drift off into areas that IMO, Steve would have nixed or made them re-do.
When you combine a lack of taste, with typical tech business 'wisdom' I think that is a recipe for problems. However, having hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars in the bank can cover a heck of a lot of them. I've worked in side a Fortune 100 (nearly Fortune 50). I've seen how royally an operation of that magnitude can mess up and still chugging along. Apple is now at that point, kind of like a freight train. They could mess up a LOT and still keep chugging along (hence, why the 'doomed' prognosis is a bit nuts).
But, that doesn't mean Apple will be what they once were, just that they aren't going out of business any time soon. I hope they will be what they once were and more. In some ways they are. In other ways, I think they are worse than the '90s. What I'd rally like to see is Apple with their current resources AND the taste/vision they once had. Maybe that is now impossible, but I think they could be doing better than they are... and that makes me kind of sad.
rogifan_new said: Reminds me of Donald Trump supporters (including my mother) who are constantly obsessed with how he’s being covered by the media. To me it shows a real insecurity. If DED thinks everything with Apple is great and the company is heads and shoulders above its competition why the constant obsession with how the company is covered by the press? If a product is good it’s good no matter what the media says about it.
I think partly this comes from people who might have an overactive sense of justice (myself included). We want reporting and media to be fair, and as unbiased as possible. When we see the media acting badly, we want the world to know.
It's kind of funny, as I've had people get mad at me for pointing out how the media got something wrong with Trump. I've actually had them say something to the extent of, 'But, he's a bad guy... why should you care if they get something wrong if it makes him look bad or helps take him down, etc.' (Not those words, but that's what they were getting at.)
I also listen to a podcast called No Agenda. They consider themselves 'media deconstruction.' They get accused, for example, of having been anti-Obama and now pro-Trump. They often have to correct that by pointing out that they deconstruct the media. So, as much as they seemed opposed to Obama, it was often because they were reporting the reality vs how the media portrayed Obama. Likewise, they are pointing out the reality of Trump vs how the media portrays him. That doesn't make Trump a good-guy or Obama a bad-guy, but it might appear that way in contrast to the crazy-wild bias of the MSM. (A perfect example is the meme about Trump re: Charlottesville on 'some good people.' Or, the massive editing and story-crafting to cover Obama kicking the heckler out and make him seem hip and elegant in the MSM portrayal.)
So, whether I like Trump or not, he becomes a bit of an underdog I'm rooting for, at least in terms of winning out over a corrupt media. Same with Obama, when I see the media building up and protecting someone inappropriately, I'd like to see them get torn back down some, to better reflect reality.
But, more to the point... I too have been quite angry over the years at the media's handling of Apple. It comes back to the fair coverage thing, and Apple didn't get that for much of their history.
Why does that matter? Well, aside from liking to see the truth being presented properly, I also know a lot of people are pretty influenced by the media. They might not realize how great Apple's products are if the media tell them otherwise. In the past, this was a big problem for Apple.
My home was everything Apple until a few days ago.
I remember the day to turn myself to Apple's Mac because I believed that Microsoft Windows was intolerable when Steve Balmer punished us for not upgrading hardware and made Windows running slower for every update.
The story is repeating. It's impossible and unaffordable for me to replace every Apple devices every 2-3 years. It's also a blind-faith to put premium prices buying lagged-behind technologies just because of "security", "safety" and "privacy". The turning point came a few days ago.
I bought a Google Home Hub, and it immediately gave me and my family surprises. 1. Installation in 5 minutes. 2. Just by saying "hey Google" or "OK Google", every one in the family can command the Google Home Hub to do something and relate them with our individual Google Accounts, all in one Google Home Hub device. Unlike iPad and iPhone, we can only have one Apple ID in use per device. Google Home Hub recognises individual voices instantly. 3. With just voice, I can ask for the weather, set alarm, set timer, change volume, change brightness, play music of my choice or randomly picked up, play YouTube. 4. With the Google Home app and Google Assistant app on my iPhone / iPad, I can do much more, much much more than Apple Siri.
Before the intrusion of Google Home Hub, about $150- $220, and it was already 2 year old on the market, I thought that I could be still an Apple fan for another few years. Now, I know that I might be an escaped planet from Apple the solar system, or at least travelling in a twin-star system including Google.
You're such a fan that you've forgotten the flowering of the Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Beats, and the Apple Watch among many other huge successes (and a handful of misses) over the past few years.
Apple TV has failed to a degree where Apple TV+ is going to run on non-Apple hardware. Apple Music is a Spotify rip-off with some US celebrities hosting a few shows. Beats... was a success before Apple. Watch became a succes after Apple moved it from fashion to health.
On Mac hardware it seems Apple decided that we can't get affordable or usable devices. We can't get a dock (PowerBook Duo was the golden age), we can't get decent keyboards, no MagSafe, no Mac Pro at $2000, and we need to pay for Retina on all laptops - extra cost, more GPU, and less battery life.
But the real problem is macOS / OS X. Yes, the UNIX engine is kind of new, but the concepts are all 1984. It is the 737 Max of computing. It doesn't help us navigate knowledge.
Apple is a completely different company. As long as they religiously adhere to their excellent principles - across all products and services - they are going to continue to be a company to envy and mimic.
ha, the "curse of grandiose campus" - yes, it got some trueth in it. BlackBerry 4 new buidlings at Waterloo is prime example (compare to ATT Bell lab example, Bell lab was minimilist, focus on lab function. unlike those grandiose compuse. if the news paper start to report your starbucks coffee (BB case) or lighting at desk (Apple - Jonny's design?), something is out of wack. Big campus attrack new kind of applicants, if not careful, some of those fluffy applicants become occupants, before you know it, Peter's Principle in play in grand scale (saw tennis racket waving in design hall way with new Nike, one stand out 1st, but next year, it become common screen, ego gets easily brused ;-). Be careful with new campus, it like fire flys attrack by the fire...they are go after the glory rather than hard work (or grandiose back breaking work...
It's difficult to read these articles as they are written as if DED is personally offended by the fact that companies like Google and Microsoft even exist. They look at every company through an Apple lens, which they aren't. It has completely ignored Microsoft's transition under Nadella. Sure, Zune failed, Nokia was a mess but it's found a way make that shift from the desktop to the cloud era and done it profitably. Google's strategy is nothing like Apple's. It doesn't need everything to be perfect. It acquired Motorolla and Boston Dynamics and when it decided that they weren't a good fit, they flogged them off. The success of gambles like YouTube and Android meant they could afford a few flops. There have been mid sized ones like SkyBox and Waze that are part of the reason Google's Maps considered the best in the world. Picasa was the early step towards Google Photos. It treats services the same way - try what it thinks could be interesting, cancel what's not working, pour money into what is or what it believes could. It's now investing in autonomous driving for the long term, home automation, and AI. All three are still in the very early phases so Google is happy to burn some advertising cash to be an experienced leader when the market takes off.
So far since Jobs passing we have only had bigger screens, smaller screens on all major products (besides Airpods and HomePod).;
You're such a fan that you've forgotten the flowering of the Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Beats, and the Apple Watch among many other huge successes (and a handful of misses) over the past few years. Each one of the areas I just mentioned are multi-billion $ businesses all on their own, and I didn't even mention the quantum scaling of the App Store and other bubbling-under stuff like HomeKit, the Apple Card, the expanded services, Apple News, the incredible environmental initiative (all those energy savings also add to profits, you know ...), the genuine phenom of the AirPods and the best-in-class-but-not-iPhone stuff like the HomePod. There's also the wealth of underlying technologies (like Apple's incredible leadership role in the processor industry) that make so much of this stuff work.
Steve was indeed an amazing guy, and he gets part credit for anything Apple does even years after he died by dint of showing Tim, Sir Jony, and many others how to go about making stuff that both genuinely improves lives and makes a crap-tonne of money. So it's a hell of a lot more than just "bigger or smaller screens" -- that's seriously underplaying how savvy the present team has taken the core concepts of the stuff Steve oversaw and run with it. The iPad Pro in particular is an example of how Steve gave you the logs and kindling and Tim made fire with it -- exactly as Steve knew he would.
They're just whining because Apple isn't Apple Computer anymore and releasing a new Mac every other week with pointless specs just to have something to release...you know, like "back in the good ole days".
Why? Because strange androgyne commercials, politically correct behaviour and censorship, political aspirations (with Cook even suggesting the very dangerous and ultimate undemocratic notion that companies - Apple - should have a (big) vote because they consist of people ...) and lack of cut-trough new technology - like Musks new AI processor thats 12 times as fast as Apples latest ABionic.
The future computer technology Golden Age is dominated by AI processors and its software, Apple be prepared! I know this, because - you guessed it - I know it all (which I really do), but also because I am a descendant of a real ‘Gouden Eeuw’ as Dutchmen.
All good and correct. Yet Apple need to regain a sharp focus because I am under the impression they have been, for Apple's own set standards, quite lax in the last couple of years.
Apple is still vastly better than any tech company on several aspects but ignoring they have a "problem" in their quality is simply ignoring the truth and doesn't help them.
MacBook keyboards. Siri usefulness and especially Siri localization in non-US markets. HomePod which seemed to come out of nowhere and go nowhere (I own one of these great products, but I speak in italian on my phone and watch and yet there's no sign of that, and many other, languages on HomePod).
Furthermore, Apple's latest push on services is US only, at least in with regards to the TV aspect of it.
This list is not a "list of grievances" without merit. What I mean is that, when Apple was, well, "desperate" for a lack of better word, they did bet, TWICE (iPod and iPhone) the whole company on a new concept with laser-like focus and such a polish that was amazing. Nowadays all the new ventures seem "overly-cautious", almost as if they don't really believe in what they are doing. Considering the billions Apple have, I imagined a much, much, much greater expenditure in original content, Siri localization and overall industrial design quality (the leaks of the next iPhone's purported camera array speak for themselves).
I think the difference between Apple then and Apple now (and this problem was shared by many failed companies/services) – these were all companies that weren't actually using their typical hardware and software in their day to day tasks. AKA "Eating your own dog food."
Anyone with a long enough memory will recall that the Macintosh "Macintrash" lineup from the mid 90s was vast and garbage. Crashes were frequent, the default configurations were underpowered for the software of the day and the products were far more expensive than very similar competition. Apple had relatively little control over many of these factors, and certainly having most of their IP near-duplicated by Microsoft was a huge blow to the company's value proposition. The result was inevitable.
Since then Apple has had a major re-focus on the end user experience of their devices and services - this helped the company significantly, and it's something Jobs was notoriously demanding about. While Apple doesn't sell cheap hardware, what they do sell is dollar-for-dollar competitive and they are making serious efforts to take control of their supply chain and owning the technologies which their devices depend upon. The A-series is the most obvious of this, with the expectation of switching away from Intel as performance gains continue to flow.
Even in recent history: Look at all the companies that were making smartphones (e.g. Microsoft), yet the staff kept using iPhones. Companies like these don't make smartphones anymore despite their massive budgets - if their own staff won't use them, how do they expect people to keep buying them.
But that’s just it: look at Apple’s data centers and you’ll find all PC servers running Linux. Apple are NOT eating their own dog food.
Apple executives clearly don’t use their own iOS much, because there are still, after more than six major revisions, major usability bugs in Safari (text handling in edit fields on websites is rife with autocorrect/spelling, and selection/editing bugs introduced in iOS 7) and actually entirely BROKEN features (like the multiple-item-select mode in several places such as Reminders and Safari’s website saved data/settings tool, where the multi-select feature was clearly *not even designed to operate correctly* by whoever wrote the code there, and the partially broken version in the Messages app which works somewhat but has two distinct bugs that sabotage selections on the user after marking multiple screens of messages for deletion).
These are just a SMALL sampling of the MANY tens of bugs I’ve been reporting for over SIX YEARS that have not been fixed (and the bug that inappropriately clears the selection of multiple screens of messages in the Messages app is actually new as of iOS 12.2). The only UI bugs I’ve seen addressed in all these years years are the recently broken misspelling indicators in Safari that just started working again, and the Safari tab previews. Nothing else I’ve reported in over six years has been addressed. Some of this is so egregious that it’s obvious that no one at Apple even uses them (or no one understands what the feature is supposed to do, which is worse because it shows how much expertise has been lost over the years since iOS 7’s redesign was taken out of the hands of the UI designers and handed to the print design marketing people by Jony Ive).
I could list bugs for pages worth of examples. Not using this stuff, not *knowing* it’s so broken, is the only explanation I can accept, because the other explanation (that developers are explicitly barred from fixing existing bugs unless some executive needs it done for PR reasons) is so much worse in terms of leadership.
Interesting that this article came out today, exactly one day after I wrote my, "Dear Tim" letter stating why I was looking elsewhere for hardware and devices. At one point, it was "Apple or nothing," and now it's "Apple, or if it's good/cheap enough, I'll get it." while my income has gone up about 80% from where it was when I first started buying Apple products. That last statement is for those of you that are thinking that I can't afford it. In fact, a poor man pays twice for things. High quality items pay for themselves over time, and here is where my turning point is:
Two months ago, I was getting ready to use the facilities and my Iphone X slipped out of my hands and landed in the bowl, where it was quickly removed (the bowl was clean), dried off, and put in a bag of rice. Thinking that my $1200 phone (256GB iPhone X) was OK to be in water, based on the advertisements, I pulled it from the rice bag and saw that the FaceID camera was shut down. I took it to the Apple store, told them what happened, and the nice woman there told me that "Water damage is not covered by the warranty. We have a replacement you can buy for $600." There is not even a scratch on the phone (after 18 months of use), and not wanting to throw good money after bad (an $1800 iPhone X is not in the "Good Value" category, especially with new phones in 4 months, 6 months at the time.). Now I have a 256GB iPhone 5 Max, because to use it, I have to use the passcode. Advertising something with water splashing all around it, but then saying it isn't covered by water damage is downright deception. I did look at the page, and they're absolutely right, it does say that it isn't covered. Bad on me for believing the girl that comes out of the swimming pool to pick up her iPhone X laying at the side and checking her e-mail using FaceID.
Next up, over the weekend, my AppleTV 4K gave me the yellow triangle with the URL to go to, where I was told to call customer support. A very nice man told me that he'd send a box to ship it back to Apple, where they'd reload the software on it, as it seemed to be a software load issue. "How much will this cost?" "Oh, it won't tell me - usually that's a good sign that it is no charge." so we continue on with the call, and they send an e-mail to me with a "one more thing" (I get it...), where I'd print out the shipping label, but no, it's a request for $169 to "repair" the 14 month old 64GB (notice a trend here? I get the maxed out versions because I can't upgrade them later...) AppleTV 4K. So, my options are:
1. Send them my AppleTV with $169 and I'll have a returned device with a 90 day warranty
2. Spend another $20 (or find it on sale for $159) and have a new Apple TV 4K
But there's a third option... Stop buying these things from Apple, and that's where I'm headed. I can still watch my iTunes Movies on iTunes on a PC, and I can figure a way to send that to the 4K TV's that I have.
Lastly, so my diatribe is complete, when I upgraded the hard disk on my 2007 iMac, and Apple wouldn't touch it when the video card went out (2 years later), I get it. I stuck my hands in it. Same with when I repaired a 2008 MacBook Pro, and it had an issue with the TrackPad. I don't think I'm that unreasonable with my expectations.
Buying an Amazon Fire isn't out of the realm of possibilities, nor is getting a Google Phone. My car as a Google Drive/Airplay stereo in it, so I'm not that inconvenienced, but the main point is where Apple simply is looking to its customers as a cash cow, and quite frankly, I'm tired of it. I can afford Apple Products, and they can afford losing me as a customer, individually, but as a group, when the die-hards leave, all you have left is the fickle masses.
And that's a bad place to be. Just ask the employees of Sears, Montgomery Ward, Kodak, Pan Am, Tower Records, Blockbuster, Pets.com, Polaroid, Lehman Brothers, and Radio Shack.
You're never too big to fail. I hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, I hope they go out of business and aren't saved, so they become a lesson to other companies.
You're such a fan that you've forgotten the flowering of the Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Beats, and the Apple Watch among many other huge successes (and a handful of misses) over the past few years.
Apple TV has failed to a degree where Apple TV+ is going to run on non-Apple hardware. Apple Music is a Spotify rip-off with some US celebrities hosting a few shows. Beats... was a success before Apple. Watch became a succes after Apple moved it from fashion to health.
On Mac hardware it seems Apple decided that we can't get affordable or usable devices. We can't get a dock (PowerBook Duo was the golden age), we can't get decent keyboards, no MagSafe, no Mac Pro at $2000, and we need to pay for Retina on all laptops - extra cost, more GPU, and less battery life.
But the real problem is macOS / OS X. Yes, the UNIX engine is kind of new, but the concepts are all 1984. It is the 737 Max of computing. It doesn't help us navigate knowledge.
So you agree that all those things listed were successes. Good to know.
But what on earth did you mean by the 737 Max comment? It makes no sense.
It's possible for any company to fall out of favor or go in the wrong direction. if some new product comes along that most consumers like, then another company takes the forefront. The Chinese smartphone companies seem to make some fairly decent products but they're not game changers. I know there are a lot of tech-heads that have fallen in love with Samsung's Galaxy Fold, but it's too fragile and too expensive for the average smartphone user. It's possible that AR glasses might be the next big thing, but I won't be part of it as I don't particularly want to walk around wearing glasses everywhere.
I always get a laugh out of people believing Apple is a dying company but maybe they're right. I just find it hard to believe because Apple has so much money to spend on new technologies, but Apple totally got hung up on iPhones and missed a huge opportunity to get into cloud computing. I wonder if there is any driving force at Apple to find new product categories as Steve Jobs did. I think Apple can go on for many years by just making decent products that aren't revolutionary. However, I think Apple's product pricing has gotten out of control, so it's likely they can continue losing customers to companies willing to sell less expensive products. Apple seems to be run by bean counters and all they're interested in is profits. Does Apple even have a loss leader product? Apple is always losing market share percentage to almost every other company and that seems quite risky to me.
Smartphones are still very important but Apple doesn't seem to have an iPhone that's miles ahead of the competition and may in many ways be falling behind. Only time will tell. I think Apple has the financial capability of staying on top, but Apple's management doesn't seem very hungry to destroy competitors and that is a huge weakness, in my opinion. I'm interested in seeing what Apple comes out with in terms of a Mac Pro. If it's really a powerful computer and not super-expensive, then I may see some hope for the company.
Apple was so tiny back in 1990, as was the rest of the PC industry. It was kind of like the automobile industry prior to the model T.
Today Apple, and the industry, are all grown up. Apple and Microsoft today are kind of like GM and Ford in 1960 — big, powerful, and nearly invulnerable. It would take decades of consecutive bad decisions to place these companies in any real peril.
It may take decades after some bad decisions before the peril becomes obvious, but if you remember history you will know that Ford, GM, and Chrysler made major missteps in a very short period of time that ultimately doomed them. They completely missed the need for efficient, reliable vehicles and the competitiveness in the manufacturing labor market. In the space of less than a decade between 1970 and 1980 they became uncompetitive and had their tails handed to them by the Japanese imports. Yes, they had enough cash and the financial market willing to give them money to withstand the onslaught for a while, but the damage was done. They never recovered and ultimately GM and Chrysler both went bankrupt and Ford barely skated by.
My point is it doesn't take decades of bad decisions to imperil a large, well-established company. It can happen in just a few years even though the ultimate extent of the damage isn't realized until much later.
Generally agree with the points the article makes... But, I think there are some things it missed.
One of the problem with '90s Apple, is that Apple was actually doing several of the things the industry pundits, experts, media, etc. and typical tech business minds would think to do. They were being run more like every other tech business. The media didn't jump all over them until that strategy started to fail.
Sure, Apple now has enough cash and success that such moves are much less likely to get them in trouble than in the past. But, I see some of those same trends happening today. The articles' argument seems to be... yeah, but this time Apple is making money with all the silly 'moonshots'. And, I suppose they are, but that doesn't mean they aren't equally silly and distracting from things that should be primary.
I was listening to an interview today of Guy Kawasaki on Jordan Harbinger's podcast. Guy wrapped up the interview with a few lessons we can learn from Steve's life. The one that caught my attention, was that Steve had taste. He was passionate about well-designed things.
I agree, and that's the big difference between technically advanced products, and truly great products. For example, take Samsung's recent folding phone fiasco. Having a screen that can fold is some incredible technology, for sure. It's also silly and fraught with problems. Or, there are a ton of Windows PCs out there that are technically pretty competent machines. But, no taste.
And, that also highlights part of the problem with Apple since Steve's death. They seem a bit more taste-challenged since then. They have great talent and technology, for sure, but products are starting to drift off into areas that IMO, Steve would have nixed or made them re-do.
When you combine a lack of taste, with typical tech business 'wisdom' I think that is a recipe for problems. However, having hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars in the bank can cover a heck of a lot of them. I've worked in side a Fortune 100 (nearly Fortune 50). I've seen how royally an operation of that magnitude can mess up and still chugging along. Apple is now at that point, kind of like a freight train. They could mess up a LOT and still keep chugging along (hence, why the 'doomed' prognosis is a bit nuts).
But, that doesn't mean Apple will be what they once were, just that they aren't going out of business any time soon. I hope they will be what they once were and more. In some ways they are. In other ways, I think they are worse than the '90s. What I'd rally like to see is Apple with their current resources AND the taste/vision they once had. Maybe that is now impossible, but I think they could be doing better than they are... and that makes me kind of sad.
Nicely put. Microsoft is chugging along and even the most valuable company but nothing it was before.
Google and Microsoft are tremendous cash machines. The fact that Google isn’t making money on Chromebooks doesn’t mean thay Google is not making money. By offering Chromebooks Google prevented Apple from making many additional billions of dollars by not being able to sell as many iPads to schools as they could have, had there not been a cheaper alternative available. Google also denied Apple more than 75% of the smartphone market. Google may not have made much money on Android, but they surely prevented Apple from making hundreds of billions of dollars more. At the same time, Google is killing it in its core business, which is advertising, and Apple can't touch Google there no matter how hard Apple tries.
Microsoft failed in mobile OS, but Microsoft is killing it in the Enterprise software while steadily approaching the 1 Trillion capitalization after a lost decade under Ballmer. So, whereas Microsoft’s mistakes are behind them, Apple seems to be walking into the lost decade now. For one, I do not understand what all those tens of thousands of Apple engineers are doing because nothing revolutionary that should take so many engineers to create has come out of Apple lately.
Maybe we are about to see a new revolutionary product come out of Apple this year. Otherwise, I simply don’t understand what Apple has been doing lately.
As for the improvements in iCloud and Apple maps, they are simply laughable. I try Apple maps every six months, but it’s just as bad as it has been for years. It gets me lost every time without a fail. As for iCloud, the storage portion of it is so rudimentary! I still can’t share folders with my wife, who is on the same Family Sharing account. Hence, we can’t work on the same project (like taxes) in parallel. This is such a basic functionality that Apple can’t figure out that iCloud storage is not even suitable for simple tasks done by traditional families.
Solid and thoughtful post that exposes some of the pragmatic shortfalls in Apple's current strategies. I too wonder what is keeping that monotonically increasing employee population at Apple fully engaged. One recurring and somewhat disturbing trend under Tim Cook is the constant need for affirmation through alignment with popular celebrities and causes. Sure, having celebrity tie-ins and taking positions on social positions can boost market appeal for some folks, even as it turns off others, but it's also adding noise to the primary signal, which is building great products that inspire on their own, with or without a backing "message" from their creator. Your point about lack of grass roots Mom & Dad product/service features that help families get more value from their various Apple subscriptions or better manage devices like iPads in a family setting is spot on.
It sometimes feels that we are on the back-burner of Tim Cook's primary attention and its getting kind of lonely back here. Apple is big and Tim wants Apple to do big things in a big way with a lot of splash, but doing all the small things right and focusing on the tiny details in areas unseen, e.g., the Steve Jobs' "back side of the fence" obsession is equally important. I sometimes feel like we, the multitude of small time Apple customers, have become the unseen "back side of the fence" and are not getting the attention (to detail) that we deserve.
I have no problem with Apple branching out into other areas, like content creation or autonomous vehicle technology, but I'd rather see them spin those businesses off from the core businesses of Apple and keep Apple as we've grown to know and love obsessively focused on finishing off all facets and sides of what they're selling to us. In my opinion, that's kind of what Microsoft has done by re-focusing on the small set of core businesses that is driving its current market cap towards $1T. I'd rather Apple spin off what is not "core" and let them sink or swim on their own as separate entities rather than suffer the indignity of what Microsoft had to go through when it tried to establish itself as a smartphone leader and failed very publicly and very visibly. If Tim Cook wants a Hollywood Division, spin up an "Apple Studios," "Apple Productions," or something to that effect and let them roll on their own with their own campuses, executive staff, and business organization.
The answer is no. Why? Apple has a lot more money in the bank and has lots of other things making money for the company. The environment has changed significantly and things are just way different from the 90's.
Comments
Steve was indeed an amazing guy, and he gets part credit for anything Apple does even years after he died by dint of showing Tim, Sir Jony, and many others how to go about making stuff that both genuinely improves lives and makes a crap-tonne of money. So it's a hell of a lot more than just "bigger or smaller screens" -- that's seriously underplaying how savvy the present team has taken the core concepts of the stuff Steve oversaw and run with it. The iPad Pro in particular is an example of how Steve gave you the logs and kindling and Tim made fire with it -- exactly as Steve knew he would.
But, I think there are some things it missed.
One of the problem with '90s Apple, is that Apple was actually doing several of the things the industry pundits, experts, media, etc. and typical tech business minds would think to do. They were being run more like every other tech business. The media didn't jump all over them until that strategy started to fail.
Sure, Apple now has enough cash and success that such moves are much less likely to get them in trouble than in the past. But, I see some of those same trends happening today. The articles' argument seems to be... yeah, but this time Apple is making money with all the silly 'moonshots'. And, I suppose they are, but that doesn't mean they aren't equally silly and distracting from things that should be primary.
I was listening to an interview today of Guy Kawasaki on Jordan Harbinger's podcast. Guy wrapped up the interview with a few lessons we can learn from Steve's life. The one that caught my attention, was that Steve had taste. He was passionate about well-designed things.
I agree, and that's the big difference between technically advanced products, and truly great products. For example, take Samsung's recent folding phone fiasco. Having a screen that can fold is some incredible technology, for sure. It's also silly and fraught with problems. Or, there are a ton of Windows PCs out there that are technically pretty competent machines. But, no taste.
And, that also highlights part of the problem with Apple since Steve's death. They seem a bit more taste-challenged since then. They have great talent and technology, for sure, but products are starting to drift off into areas that IMO, Steve would have nixed or made them re-do.
When you combine a lack of taste, with typical tech business 'wisdom' I think that is a recipe for problems. However, having hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars in the bank can cover a heck of a lot of them. I've worked in side a Fortune 100 (nearly Fortune 50). I've seen how royally an operation of that magnitude can mess up and still chugging along. Apple is now at that point, kind of like a freight train. They could mess up a LOT and still keep chugging along (hence, why the 'doomed' prognosis is a bit nuts).
But, that doesn't mean Apple will be what they once were, just that they aren't going out of business any time soon. I hope they will be what they once were and more. In some ways they are. In other ways, I think they are worse than the '90s. What I'd rally like to see is Apple with their current resources AND the taste/vision they once had. Maybe that is now impossible, but I think they could be doing better than they are... and that makes me kind of sad.
It's kind of funny, as I've had people get mad at me for pointing out how the media got something wrong with Trump. I've actually had them say something to the extent of, 'But, he's a bad guy... why should you care if they get something wrong if it makes him look bad or helps take him down, etc.' (Not those words, but that's what they were getting at.)
I also listen to a podcast called No Agenda. They consider themselves 'media deconstruction.' They get accused, for example, of having been anti-Obama and now pro-Trump. They often have to correct that by pointing out that they deconstruct the media. So, as much as they seemed opposed to Obama, it was often because they were reporting the reality vs how the media portrayed Obama. Likewise, they are pointing out the reality of Trump vs how the media portrays him. That doesn't make Trump a good-guy or Obama a bad-guy, but it might appear that way in contrast to the crazy-wild bias of the MSM. (A perfect example is the meme about Trump re: Charlottesville on 'some good people.' Or, the massive editing and story-crafting to cover Obama kicking the heckler out and make him seem hip and elegant in the MSM portrayal.)
So, whether I like Trump or not, he becomes a bit of an underdog I'm rooting for, at least in terms of winning out over a corrupt media. Same with Obama, when I see the media building up and protecting someone inappropriately, I'd like to see them get torn back down some, to better reflect reality.
But, more to the point... I too have been quite angry over the years at the media's handling of Apple. It comes back to the fair coverage thing, and Apple didn't get that for much of their history.
Why does that matter? Well, aside from liking to see the truth being presented properly, I also know a lot of people are pretty influenced by the media. They might not realize how great Apple's products are if the media tell them otherwise. In the past, this was a big problem for Apple.
I remember the day to turn myself to Apple's Mac because I believed that Microsoft Windows was intolerable when Steve Balmer punished us for not upgrading hardware and made Windows running slower for every update.
The story is repeating. It's impossible and unaffordable for me to replace every Apple devices every 2-3 years. It's also a blind-faith to put premium prices buying lagged-behind technologies just because of "security", "safety" and "privacy". The turning point came a few days ago.
I bought a Google Home Hub, and it immediately gave me and my family surprises.
1. Installation in 5 minutes.
2. Just by saying "hey Google" or "OK Google", every one in the family can command the Google Home Hub to do something and relate them with our individual Google Accounts, all in one Google Home Hub device. Unlike iPad and iPhone, we can only have one Apple ID in use per device. Google Home Hub recognises individual voices instantly.
3. With just voice, I can ask for the weather, set alarm, set timer, change volume, change brightness, play music of my choice or randomly picked up, play YouTube.
4. With the Google Home app and Google Assistant app on my iPhone / iPad, I can do much more, much much more than Apple Siri.
Before the intrusion of Google Home Hub, about $150- $220, and it was already 2 year old on the market, I thought that I could be still an Apple fan for another few years. Now, I know that I might be an escaped planet from Apple the solar system, or at least travelling in a twin-star system including Google.
Apple, do you know what's wrong with you?
On Mac hardware it seems Apple decided that we can't get affordable or usable devices. We can't get a dock (PowerBook Duo was the golden age), we can't get decent keyboards, no MagSafe, no Mac Pro at $2000, and we need to pay for Retina on all laptops - extra cost, more GPU, and less battery life.
But the real problem is macOS / OS X. Yes, the UNIX engine is kind of new, but the concepts are all 1984. It is the 737 Max of computing. It doesn't help us navigate knowledge.
They're just whining because Apple isn't Apple Computer anymore and releasing a new Mac every other week with pointless specs just to have something to release...you know, like "back in the good ole days".
Why? Because strange androgyne commercials, politically correct behaviour and censorship, political aspirations (with Cook even suggesting the very dangerous and ultimate undemocratic notion that companies - Apple - should have a (big) vote because they consist of people ...) and lack of cut-trough new technology - like Musks new AI processor thats 12 times as fast as Apples latest ABionic.
The future computer technology Golden Age is dominated by AI processors and its software, Apple be prepared!
I know this, because - you guessed it - I know it all (which I really do), but also because I am a descendant of a real ‘Gouden Eeuw’ as Dutchmen.
Apple is still vastly better than any tech company on several aspects but ignoring they have a "problem" in their quality is simply ignoring the truth and doesn't help them.
MacBook keyboards.
Siri usefulness and especially Siri localization in non-US markets.
HomePod which seemed to come out of nowhere and go nowhere (I own one of these great products, but I speak in italian on my phone and watch and yet there's no sign of that, and many other, languages on HomePod).
Furthermore, Apple's latest push on services is US only, at least in with regards to the TV aspect of it.
This list is not a "list of grievances" without merit. What I mean is that, when Apple was, well, "desperate" for a lack of better word, they did bet, TWICE (iPod and iPhone) the whole company on a new concept with laser-like focus and such a polish that was amazing. Nowadays all the new ventures seem "overly-cautious", almost as if they don't really believe in what they are doing. Considering the billions Apple have, I imagined a much, much, much greater expenditure in original content, Siri localization and overall industrial design quality (the leaks of the next iPhone's purported camera array speak for themselves).
Apple executives clearly don’t use their own iOS much, because there are still, after more than six major revisions, major usability bugs in Safari (text handling in edit fields on websites is rife with autocorrect/spelling, and selection/editing bugs introduced in iOS 7) and actually entirely BROKEN features (like the multiple-item-select mode in several places such as Reminders and Safari’s website saved data/settings tool, where the multi-select feature was clearly *not even designed to operate correctly* by whoever wrote the code there, and the partially broken version in the Messages app which works somewhat but has two distinct bugs that sabotage selections on the user after marking multiple screens of messages for deletion).
These are just a SMALL sampling of the MANY tens of bugs I’ve been reporting for over SIX YEARS that have not been fixed (and the bug that inappropriately clears the selection of multiple screens of messages in the Messages app is actually new as of iOS 12.2). The only UI bugs I’ve seen addressed in all these years years are the recently broken misspelling indicators in Safari that just started working again, and the Safari tab previews. Nothing else I’ve reported in over six years has been addressed. Some of this is so egregious that it’s obvious that no one at Apple even uses them (or no one understands what the feature is supposed to do, which is worse because it shows how much expertise has been lost over the years since iOS 7’s redesign was taken out of the hands of the UI designers and handed to the print design marketing people by Jony Ive).
I could list bugs for pages worth of examples. Not using this stuff, not *knowing* it’s so broken, is the only explanation I can accept, because the other explanation (that developers are explicitly barred from fixing existing bugs unless some executive needs it done for PR reasons) is so much worse in terms of leadership.
But what on earth did you mean by the 737 Max comment? It makes no sense.
My point is it doesn't take decades of bad decisions to imperil a large, well-established company. It can happen in just a few years even though the ultimate extent of the damage isn't realized until much later.