mpantone

zigzaglens said:

mpantone said:

My hunch is that Apple's board of directors discreetly employs a high-level government relations consultant who provides suitable guidance in how Apple handles the current administration.

"A consultant"? They aren't some trucking company in the midwest. They're a multi-trillion dollar behemoth with many moving parts that intersect with various policymaking apparatus around the globe. They have a huge government relations team, as they should.

All of Apple's government relations team have specialized knowledge about dealing with bureaucracy of many forms but the people who know the intricacies of dealing with the GAO aren't going to be the same people who know the most about dealing with the Chinese bureaucracy, Japanese government, Taiwanese, Koreans, EU officials, etc. And remember that most of those officials do the same work for decades.

Heads of state are another animal. You are dealing with individuals. The current Japanese prime minister is much different than the last 7-8.

This is precisely why Apple's BOD probably uses a specialist in Tim's interacts with the current Chief Executive. They probably used someone else with the prior administration (not that Tim had much interaction with POTUS 46). But for sure, no Apple staffer is going to claim to be the expert on working with POTUS 47 unless they were a former and fairly recent aide.

There's no reason for Apple to employ this protocol specialist full time. That consultant would likely be working with the CEOs of a number of other companies. It's not like Tim is seeing POTUS 47 a couple of times a week. In the same way, if your marriage is on the rocks, you don't ask your marriage counselor to move into the spare bedroom at your house. A freelance consultant would be able to make far more money and have far more flexibility than punching a clock at one employer.

Apple's government relations team would still be very much involved in the details of the investment deals, etc. but we're not talking about that. The subject of this article is specifically about the gift. This is about accurately reading people's personalities, just like someone should know what sort of gift mom would appreciate.

And it is probable that people from the Apple government relations team knows their limitations. If even you're good, sometimes very good, occasionally there will be situations where you'd say, "Hey, you need a specialist for this."

If you run an NFL team you won't have an orthopedic surgeon on staff. But if one of your players wrecks their ACL or Achilles, you'll have some numbers in your Rolodex.

My hunch is that Apple's board of directors discreetly employs a high-level government relations consultant who provides suitable guidance in how Apple handles the current administration. I doubt if Tim himself (or anyone else in the senior management team) came up with the idea of this particular plaque and presentation.

It's worth noting that two board directors were former CEOs of aerospace/military industry corporations who would be well versed in dealing with senior Washington D.C. officials to score big government contracts. There are also two directors from the healthcare/biotech industry. And there is another director from BlackRock.

For sure the BOD would have to be in general agreement in how/what Tim interacts with the White House, Congress, etc. He would definitely need their backing in his actions with POTUS 47. Tim Cook is not acting rogue or blindly shooting from the hip.

In a similar way I'm sure Apple engages the services of diplomatic relations consultants when Tim meets with foreign dignitaries.

Tim is smart enough to know this is how Tim Apple has to play the game for the next 3.5 years.

Macocalypse said:

My gods it's so fraking hilarious seeing you chucklefcks complain about something so stupid and mundane and completely irrelevant to how a Mac works as finder icons. 

This attitude will not get you anywhere important. Being mediocre won't help you achieve excellence or greatness.

The people who worry about the details (after getting the basics correct) are the ones who have a chance of creating something truly great: the Mona Lisa, a Michelin 3-star restaurant, haute couture, even something as commonplace as a videogame (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild comes to mind).

As Mies van der Rohr said, "God is in the details." If you don't understand why it is used in this discussion's context, you don't know anything about Apple, Steve Jobs or probably anything about consumer goods.

There's a reason why entry level Toyotas and Hondas seemingly run forever. Someone has to care about the details, even in a mass market vehicle like a Corolla or Civic. And what about the companies that didn't care about the details in sub-compacts? GM, Ford, Chrysler all basically gave up this entire market segment to exports in the Seventies.

You probably have never left your mother's basement but there are places on this planet where even modest workers care about doing something a little better, worrying about the details. 

If you don't care about the details, you get American public transit. If you care about the details, you get Swiss and Japanese public transit. There's no surprise that McDonald's in Japan blows doors on McDonald's stateside, even on identical menu items.

Steve Jobs -- perhaps more than any American CEO since WWII -- cared about the details. When Apple loses sight of this, you know the company culture has changed. Perhaps you think it is for the better but I assure you that quality doesn't come from a "satisfactory is sufficient" attitude.

Remember that this is not exclusive to PC operating systems or consumer electronics. It pertains to everything humans do and make.

This ham-fisted drive icon might seem unimportant. But in fact it's one of the things you will see every single time you log into your Mac. Like I wrote before, Steve NEVER would have let this get approved. Let's just hope that this was a one-off mistake and not the beginning of a trend.

ATLMacFan1 said:

Why does it look like it shifts perspective midway?

It's because Apple didn't depict the "drive" realistically. There are a couple of problems with the new icon.

The Apple logo is presented as though it is on a flat two-dimensional surface with no foreshortening. If you look at the traditional hard drive icon on the left, the circular spindle bulge is an oval.

Worse the "drive" on the right has parallel sides. The old HDD icon on the left has tapering sides, more properly depicted using vanishing perspective. Apple could have gotten away with the "flat" logo had they used proper perspective on the actual silver enclosure itself (like all the icons in the IconFactory window grab provided by theralsadurns.

The new and "improved" icon is an example of really poor draughtsmanship. Plus there's nothing that really says "I am a disk drive." It looks like it could be a (inept) sketch of the unreleased iPod shuffle 3.

Let's hope the rest of macOS 26 isn't full of equally bad design. Somewhere on this planet Jony Ive is silently smirking. And Steve never would have let this happen on his watch.

jeffharris said:

That’s kind of a nondescript icon. Apple could do better. Way better.

I still have a zillion icons in my old CandyBar (Panic software icon application) collection, which miraculously still runs in Sequoia!

Icon Factory had great icons!

Well everyone using the beta is free to fill out the feedback form and complain about it.

That said, the world has changed including Apple hardware. Apple generally doesn't use discrete drive components like the 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs of yesteryear. Their SSDs today are largely NAND chips soldered to the motherboard, not even m.2 sticks. The best representation of an Apple internal SSD is really just a chip (or a group of them) rather than some silver, white, or black enclosure.

Curiously Apple's longtime external drive icon is typically yellow. I have never owned a metallic yellow drive enclosure nor do I recall Apple ever marketing any of them. 

But yes the Icon Factory had great icons!