
Ask HN: Is there evidence that Apple management even grasps what is wrong? - hoodoof
There is so much wrong with Apple&#x27;s desktop computing division these days, but I wonder is there any evidence, any communication from Apple management that it truly understands what is wrong?<p>Often when there is a problem it is human nature to find someone or something else to blame, to avoid being wrong.  This happens to companies too, so no matter how much the indstry signals that a company is off track, it cannot be fixed because management cannot, or will not understand, take on board and own the real problems.<p>So I&#x27;m trying to work out if Apple is one of these companies that is bewildered and stumbling around trying to make something else responsible for its failings, or does Apple really understand what is wrong and is actually working to fix it?<p>My perspective on what is wrong is:<p><pre><code>  ** buggy software
  ** slow, old, out of date computers
  ** unbelievably slow hardware release cycle, well behind the state of the art
  ** obsession with removing things is taking away needed functionality</code></pre>
======
sjc_native1980s
This is root problem with feedbackless, Egyptian army general cultures...
cognitive dissonance and sunk costs fallacy until bankruptcy.

------
sogen
I'd add: Zero help in their forums.

------
dfraser992
I just upgraded my 2010 iMac from 10.8 to 10.11 (don't trust 10.12 yet). I
have been resisting this for some time now as 10.8 was fine, didn't need to
upgrade... But things were getting a bit slow, and have had to deal with too
much software complaining 10.8 is no longer supported and os I don't get the
latest and greatest (Chrome being pretty obnoxious in constantly reminding
me...) So it was more the pressure of other software than OS X itself.

Jesus. It should have taken less than an hour, but I lost the entire NYE
weekend to the upgrade process being totally whack job incompetent. It at
first seemed like it had been successful, the Mac booted properly the first
time as I'd expect... then trying to login took 20 minutes (never finished)
and it obviously wasn't working. I then went down the rabbit hole of trying to
recover, trying to boot into single user mode, trying to use the Recovery
partition to re-install, trying to make a new user from scratch so I could
login, and then ...

trying to fix the NAS drive because the machine couldn't see it anymore
(neither could my other Mac Mini) £$%£$%!!! reset PRAM, reset SMC, spent too
much time reading lots of forums (I now know all about MDNSResponder and how
Bonjour is really buggy) then a reboot of the NAS cleared that problem up
(WTF?)

so I finally gave up, booted off my Linux USB drive, and used Samba to connect
to the drive so I could double-backup my Mac's file to the NAS (just to be
safe) - I do not like Time Machine much and found some data Time Machine and
NASes don't play well together sometimes. Then I wiped the Mac's hard disk and
started from scratch, which I was not going to in the first place b/c that's a
lot of manual labor to clean and reorganize files.

The fresh install of 10.11 was finished in 30 minutes or so and now it seems
to be working perfectly. %^&$&£@£!!!! Rebuilding my file system and all the
apps etc will take 2 days, but I at least have a chance to get rid of all the
cruft. I think one problem might have been some kexts that were really old
that I forgot about and somehow the upgrade process got wrapped around an axle
and I couldn't get a command line prompt to figure things out. Apple seems to
have not been paranoid enough...

My take is one of Apple's subgoals might be to get the average user to buy the
latest hardware as best they can (that is how companies are). If I wasn't in
IT, I would have been down to the Apple Store very quickly.

My other opinion is that the flat design of 10.11 is awful. I can deal with
it, but I realized spending too much time on twiddly little things like UI
tweaking (not improvements) is a way to not have to deal with more important
things. A friend reminded me of the time Jobs, who had just sold NeXT to Apple
but hadn't yet become CEO yet, was in an interview and he said (paraphrased)
one of the death knells of a company is when the marketing department takes
over and starts pumping out too many products and "features" and etc - i.e. he
was explaining why Apple at that time had a zillion versions of the same basic
computer and it was all too confusing for the consumer. He came back to Apple
and things started going upwards again.

Apple seems to be starting to tread that same road again. I hope Jobs is in
Heaven right now using his reality distortion field on God trying to get Ives
sent to hell (that's how much I do not like this flat design and what I think
of the iOS changes). Jobs was a marketer, but I have read stories about how
people who worked with him relay that he really did give a damn about trying
to make products that A) worked well (were designed properly) and only B)
looked good (and really did). He had his faults, but he also knew what he was
doing. Why he let iTunes be the POS it is I don't know... but I absolutely
avoid it so I am biased.

If I ever do get new hardware, Linux is going on it. The UIs for Linux are not
great, but I spend most of the time in Terminal anyhow...

~~~
sogen
I tried El Capitan and Sierra, and both are Slower and uglier, specially with
the "Material/Flat" trend...

I went back to Yosemite and honestly won't upgrade for at least two years
more.

~~~
sjc_native1980s
I wish there were official themes and skins support for the UI, because those
traffic light window icons look 1990's.

