
Why doesn’t Apple make its devices as carefully as it’s making Apple Park? - mji
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/12/11/why-doesnt-apple-make-its-devices-as-carefully-as-its-making-apple-park/?utm_term=.a1b2504aadce&tid=sm_tw
======
abalone
Who is this guy again? Some serious problems with this article that call into
account the integrity of the author:

1\. He makes a direct, unqualified comparison between a Windows vulnerability
that allowed _remote execution of code over the Internet_ to a macOS one that
was only a local privilege escalation.

2\. He mischaracterizes the macOS bug as "password-free access," when in fact
you need to log in to an account to begin with. Basic miscomprehension.

3\. Apple Park isn't even open yet. Who knows if it will have bugs too
(spoiler: DEFINITELY). Holding it up as less buggy than other Apple product is
nonsensical on its face. It is just idiotic to report they don't lavish the
same attention to detail on the iPhone as they do the pizza boxes in Cafe
Macs.

4\. Apple has a long history of favoring the cutting edge over the tried and
true. It has worked out pretty well for them. It is totally dishonest to
characterize that as something new.

5\. This author is part of a long history of click-baity "Apple has finally
screwed things up this time" reporting that happens every single product
cycle.

~~~
ggg9990
> Apple has a long history of favoring the cutting edge over the tried and
> true.

This is categorically false. Apple has always taken ideas poorly executed by
other companies, learned from their mistakes, and shipped a vastly improved
product built on technologies that others failed with. Their new building is
practically the only exception. Even things like depth sensors on phones have
been attempted by Google (project Tango) with little commercial success.

~~~
whyenot
> This is categorically false.

some counterexamples: iMacs without floppy disks and with USB, MacBooks with
only USB3 ports, the original iPhone, the touch bar (like it or not, it's
pretty cutting edge), ...

~~~
dingaling
> like it or not, it's pretty cutting edge

As with your other examples it has antecedents, just poorly executed. Acer,
Microsoft ( Windows Sideshow, 2008) and Razer had all experimented with an
adaptive secondary LCD.

~~~
anon1253
Not to mention Lenovo carbon X that replaced the function keys with an OLED
display

------
latch
I'll take this opportunity to vent.

I bought new 13" mbp w/touchbar (only the touchbar version has the most
powerful CPU). From day one, the butterfly keyboard's been a pain. Most days
its fine, but now and again, for hours, keystrokes aren't recognized.

I don't live anywhere near an apple store and the local authorized repair
store has a) crappy online reviews and b) wanted to keep it for 2 weeks.

I flew to a country with an apple store and they were super friendly and
"fixed it". One week later, the problem is back (though much less severe).

Also, my touchbar occasionally crashes (maybe once every 2-3 weeks) and I need
to kill the process. It gets "stuck" on whatever the last key I press, which
is fun when that happens to be reduce brightness.

Even though it's new, I've seriously considered abandoning the platform.
However, when I looked, I still didn't find anything that seemed close to
acceptable. I don't understand why Google doesn't turn the Pixelbook into a
proper linux laptop. (XPS 13 has awful camera placement, isn't available in my
region, and you can only get 16GB ram if you also spend more for a touch
screen).

I feel a little better now.

~~~
nihonde
I have the 15” MBP Touchbar and think it’s the best keyboard I’ve ever had on
a laptop. (And I’ve used a lot of laptops.)

~~~
latch
I actually like the feel of the butterfly keyboard. I just don't like that it
doesn't work very well.

------
ghostcluster
A significant portion of Apple employees are not happy with the Apple Park
campus design at all. You might have noticed a whole other "R&D" building was
built on the lot, with a more traditional design. That has a story apparently.

> Gruber said that Apple's internal critics included high-level employees, and
> related a third-hand, unconfirmed account of Apple's senior vice-president
> of hardware technologies Johny Srouji refusing to work in the new facility.

> "When he was shown the floor plans, he was more or less just 'fck that, fck
> you, fck this, this is bullsht,'" Gruber said. "And they built his team
> their own building, off to the side on the campus... My understanding is
> that that building was built because Srouji was like, 'fuck this, my team
> isn't working like this.'"

[https://www.dezeen.com/2017/08/10/apple-park-campus-
employee...](https://www.dezeen.com/2017/08/10/apple-park-campus-employees-
rebel-over-open-plan-offices-architecture-news/)

~~~
mc32
If they were trying to get engineers to acquiesce to an office layout design
that some have agued has reached its peak, I can totally see why they would
say "eff that bull".

Bullpens (and open layout ala google/fb/etc) work for some kinds of teams and
especially for sales and support, but probably not for engineers used to
cubicles and offices. I am thrilled to see someone in leadership stick up for
their team and say no!

------
rosser
Apple Park is "for us" — that is, Apple employees, for values thereof that
don't include parents.

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/05/16/apple_s_new_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/05/16/apple_s_new_headquarters_apple_park_has_no_child_care_center_despite_costing.html)

[https://www.ped30.com/2017/12/05/apple-park-childcare-
daycar...](https://www.ped30.com/2017/12/05/apple-park-childcare-daycare/)

------
KKKKkkkk1
Apple as a company is now comfortably resting on its laurels. Management is
slowly atrophying. Tim Cook is an MBA with a logistics background. Jony Ive is
preoccupied with building palaces. The company is now in its Steve Ballmer-
Carly Fiorina moment.

~~~
dman
You are not giving Apple enough credit here. Removing buttons, ports and
features is hard and requires courage. The fewer bits there are remaining, the
harder the challenge to take something out. This is what made the IphoneX a
moonshot, same with the touchbar on the macbook pro.

Walk a mile in their shoes - Take a long hard look at the current apple lineup
- identify a key feature for each product and then imagine how much work it
would be to get rid of it. Then the extra work on top to build a dongle to add
back the missing functionality.

~~~
bshacklett
There's a difference between bravery and just plain poor design. Removing the
escape key from laptops which were popularized by developers is firmly in the
latter category.

As for them resting on their laurels, the fact that Mac OS is still shipping
with Python 2.6 is somewhat telling.

~~~
pfranz
Huh? I'm running 10.13.2

    
    
      $ python -V
      Python 2.7.10
    

[https://docs.python.org/3/using/mac.html](https://docs.python.org/3/using/mac.html)
This page says 10.8 ships with 2.7, too.

I'm also not sure why that matters or how it would show they're resting on
their laurels?

~~~
bshacklett
I stand corrected. I was going by the behavior of my coworkers laptop running
a recent release os Mac OS. Perhaps it was a remnant of an older third party
installation.

------
crispinb
The sainted Ive: "I know how we work, and you don’t"

So you know how multimillionaire pampered designer auteurs work? This is
presumably why you can't make a fucking laptop usable by software developers.
Wanker.

------
zitterbewegung
Who says it is making apple park carefully? A bunch of apple teams are really
mad about Apple Park not having offices. I’m really starting to believe that
Bezos acquired the post to manage his PR campaign.

------
cylinder
The adage that companies decline right after they build a massive headquarters
is once again going to prove true.

------
benjismith
Lots of legit critique here. Apple certainly has a significant list of
longstanding issues to resolve with their product-line. I've been particularly
frustrated with my butterfly keyboard. The feel of the keys is lovely, but the
reliability has been very sketchy.

But even with all the problems lately, I still haven't seen a laptop on the
market as satisfying to use as a MacBook Pro, or a mobile device as carefully
designed and engineered as an iPhone.

They're still leading the industry on both fronts.

------
visarga
I don't have a particularly negative attitude towards Apple, but 7 years ago I
was a fanboy. Now I am "meh" about their products. Too many dick decisions
taken by them lately.

If there's one thing I dislike is making laptops more expensive. I'd like to
see some other laptop manufacturer creating a decent touchpad like the one in
the 2013 MBP (not the super sized recent ones with fake click). The touchpad
is the last thing that makes Mac a must for me.

~~~
maxxxxx
Agreed. The touchpad is the last thing that's holding me back from going back
to Windows. I have played with Dell XPS, Surface Book and Surface Pro and they
are still far away from my Macbook.

~~~
pfranz
Not just the touchpad. The XPS camera placement is below the screen, which
means people are looking up your nose. Proprietary power port? There is 1
USB-C that can be used as power...but only 1? When specced out, the price was
fairly close to a MBP, which was disappointing. Reported 13-22 hours of
battery life seems promising, but I feel like I've been burned on every laptop
not made by Apple.

I have too many concerns about long-term build quality to buy a Surface for
how much I'd be paying.

I was recently looking for a new laptop, hoping for something better (or at
least save a good amount of money), but was disappointed and bought another
macbook pro.

~~~
maxxxxx
And the Surface devices are even as expensive as a similar MacBook.

------
nodesocket
I was forced to try and fix my parents HP printer on Windows and after 30
minutes I got so frustrated and upset at the dumpster fire that is 3rd party
tooling, Windows drivers, and Windows "repair" utilities. People can complain
and rage about Apple, but just try going back to Windows. I was able to print
from my MacBook Pro within 1 minute.

------
kevinburke
I'm pretty disappointed with Apple Park, which is going to add 14,000 new
commuters in a community (Cupertino) that loves Apple's property tax revenue
but has refused to build any new housing and regularly sends residents to San
Jose to oppose new projects near their city border. That's going to increase
competition for apartments in my town, which actually tries to build housing,
and increase my rent.

Rent has nearly doubled on the Peninsula in the last seven years and Apple
appears to have little interest in helping the least fortunate avoid
displacement, or to mitigate the displacement its own employees will cause.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Isn't it mostly just shifting existing Apple employees in Cupertino a couple
miles to the new building? Regardless, it is Cupertino's choice to add more
housing or not, not Apple.

~~~
kevinburke
It's shifting existing employees, but then new employees at other companies
are going to fill the old Apple offices.

I think it's irresponsible to add that much new office space without thinking
about where everyone is going to live. If you want to add it, you need to add
a commensurate amount of housing. Cupertino could have denied the new office,
conditioned approval on Apple building a significant amount of new housing, or
chose to zone for more housing itself, instead it chose to build only office &
increase rents for its own citizens and those of neighboring towns.

~~~
sjwright
And what of the people who were working on the site of Apple Park before it
was acquired? Apple didn't manufacture brand new land, they knocked down
existing commercial buildings... and replaced most of it with green spaces,
mind you.

------
floatingatoll
This headline is quite the clickbait. Architecture is a five thousand year old
industry. Mobile phones are not. Apple will continue to push the envelope at
the risk of bizarre and difficult hardware issues. We so easily forget that
cell phones are a nascent industry, barely a drop in the bucket compared to
buildings.

Also, Steve Jobs was wrong about open floor plan offices. Sorry, Steve, but it
turns out that without doors some of your best and brightest are turned to
mush by distraction.

~~~
pfranz
There's not going to be an Apple Park S next year?

Open floor plans wasn't some bold choice, large companies have been moving
that way for over 10 years. Offices are great as a worker, but a huge burden
for facilities--I've never had heating/cooling work properly (usually because
they reconfigure the office walls, but the ducting isn't changed).

------
otabdeveloper2
Real estate is where corporations go to die, regardless of what they were
originally making.

~~~
tylerruby
You're saying that investing in Real Estate is a bad idea for companies? Do
you have a source here? McDonalds does well in the real estate game, and
hotels, etc.

------
guyzero
People used to complain how a desktop PC had a 24 month lifespan and now that
a 4 year-old Mac Mini still works fine people think it's too old.

~~~
wmf
I know Moore's Law is coming to an end, but it's not over. The Mac mini has a
3.5GHz dual-core i7-4578U while today for the same money you can get a 4.2GHz
quad-core i7-8650U. Only double the performance.

~~~
richardknop
That has less to do with Moore's Law and more to do with Apple putting
underpowered hardware into its desktop products. For example new Macbook Pros
have been very underpowered on day one which is why many professionals who
need powerful machines for work have been complaining (basically saying Pro in
the name is meaningless now as it's just a normal consumer laptop with average
performance, not a powerful workhorse for professionals such as engineers and
designers it used to be).

------
outericky
The apple campus has been 6? 7? 8? years in the making. Hardware simply can't
be that long in dev.

------
junkscience2017
The Apple Campus is not intended to be discarded after eighteen months of use.
Your phone is.

~~~
visarga
That's part of the problem. Why are they making their phones hard to repair?
That's why they last only 2 years.

~~~
PierceJoy
> That's why they last only 2 years.

Bold statement. Care to source that claim?

If you provide a link, I'll be sure to check it out on my iPhone 5S that's had
zero issues.

------
sidlls
Because Apple knows that the majority--by far--of its customers aren't buying
hardware so much as they are buying into a culture, that they are loyal to
_the brand_ , and that it would take something truly monumentally terrible to
drive any appreciable fraction of them away.

They could package Dan Aykroyd's "Bag O' Glass" in a bag with their logo on it
and sell billions of dollars worth.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I'm not sure if it's a culture or the _perception_ of a culture.

Apple was always sold as the smart, high-status, creative option.

But the software is getting less and less smart.

I've been house hunting, which has involved walking around many properties
taking iPhone shots of many rooms - sometimes of features like water damage or
tired paintwork that need money and attention.

Photos has been busy collecting these unscenic photos into groups of memories
for me.

So now I have a fine collection of images of walls and ceilings bundled up
with misty homely nostalgia and decorated with the very latest clean hipster
typography.

Which should be amusing, but it's actually creepy, because the subtext is that
Apple's idea of how I should use my photos is completely different to my idea
- and I don't get an obvious opt out from the lifestyle choices Apple is
making for me.

At the same time, a feature I actually need - being able to AirDrop the photos
to my iPad without jumbling up the timestamps - doesn't work.

