And the worst part is that their software division used to be great. Aperture was really good when it came out, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro were great. Eveh talking about iwork suite, numbers and page used to be better than they are now. Even Quicktime regressed.
It's frankly both puzzling and saddening how much Apple has lost in term of QA, user interface and vision in the last 10 years. I always feel that Tim Cook doesn't have a clue about what made Apple special and is slowly destroying it by not making sure to keep those qualities
EDIT: I do recognize Tim Cook's qualities, he is amazing at managing supply chain and apple does this better than anybody with very little impact in terms of chip shortage. He's original decision to target privacy as a marketing argument was on point (unfortunately the csam controversy kind of destroyed this) and under his tenure Apple has done tremendously well financially.
But the issue, is that Apple also benefits from its reputation and in the last few years, they've destroyed it by producing shoddy software, by having major hardware issues over multiple revisions (keyboards, staining screens)...
>Tim Cook doesn't have a clue about what made Apple special and is slowly destroying it by not making sure to keep those qualities
Well their shares have never been higher so as long as that's the metric by which a CEO's performance is judged then you can forget about Apple caring about SW QA and other such "nonsense".
Also, before Jobs passed away, Cook was Apple's supply chain mastermind so it makes sense his strengths are with the HW side of things, which, during the current silicon shortage, is an absolutely killer skillset to have, as proven by how little Apple was affected by it in comparison to other companies.
When it comes to quality SW, Cook might not be the ideal CEO for the job (like notifications on the new MBP can get hidden behind the notch; WTF, how did this pass QA?! Pretty sure Jobs would have sent them back to the drawing board) but Apple can always rely on the faithful developer base building great quality SW instead of them and then taking a 30% cut on their sales on the Apple store. Basically another win for Apple.
Oh I don't disagree with you that he is great at managing the supply chain. World class even.
The thing is, there's inertia, Apple made great products and still have a great reputation, Amazon was a great place to buy online and while it has a counterfeit problem, it's still doing great, I'm sure it's possible to find a few examples of companies that have been doing great stock wise but that are slowly eroding their reputation. It doesn't show yet in the sales, but the narrative has changed.
The thing is, look at the threads in HN, they used to be very very positive of apple and now they're much more critical. Things no longer just work. People complaining about stability issues on a mac are common. Macworld which has always tended to be extremely positive about Apple complains, Ars Tecnica too, even Daring Fireball is less overwhelmingly positive than it used to be.
Apple relies on those power users to recommend their friends to buy their stuff and I no longer recommend buying an iphone to my friends and I know I'm not the only one.
> look at the threads in HN, they used to be very very positive of apple and now they're much more critical.
Agree, but the thing is, the HN userbase is only a tiny fraction, and not representative of the entire more lucrative consumer base that Apple is targeting. I think Apple will be fine, even if it looses the super picky stickler developer HN userbase that is proficient in linux anyway.
Apple kinda stopped caring about the Mac SW quality as that's not its main cashcow anymore for a long time. iOS and app store subscriptions and fees are where the real money's at.
It's frankly both puzzling and saddening how much Apple has lost in term of QA, user interface and vision in the last 10 years. I always feel that Tim Cook doesn't have a clue about what made Apple special and is slowly destroying it by not making sure to keep those qualities
EDIT: I do recognize Tim Cook's qualities, he is amazing at managing supply chain and apple does this better than anybody with very little impact in terms of chip shortage. He's original decision to target privacy as a marketing argument was on point (unfortunately the csam controversy kind of destroyed this) and under his tenure Apple has done tremendously well financially.
But the issue, is that Apple also benefits from its reputation and in the last few years, they've destroyed it by producing shoddy software, by having major hardware issues over multiple revisions (keyboards, staining screens)...