
Apple’s Relentless Strategy, Execution, and Point of View - elsewhen
https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/apples-relentless-strategy-and-execution-7544a76aa26
======
baxtr
_> 15/ It is incredibly clear that everyone at Apple puts strategy
requirements above anything “local”. When you wonder why there isn’t more new
in Notes or why Mail is missing stuff it’s because supporting a multi-year
strategy trumps individual teams and that’s a good thing._

I don’t know anything about internals at Apple but I have been wondering
constantly how they manage to be successful over and over again. If I had to
bet, I’d say is this. I’ve worked for many companies where the ego of a
product or service line boss always trumped overall strategy. It was about
them not the company. Somehow Apple has succeeded in damping down this effect
(I am sure it’s there but just on different level than in other companies).

~~~
chadlavi
For a long time the biggest ego in the room was Steve, whose ego was behind
the overarching strategy.

~~~
MaysonL
And for someone with that big an ego, a remarkable willingness to change his
mind.

~~~
ladyanita22
He definitely was a clever guy. He had an enormous ego, but he knew when it
was wrong (despite him probably never accepting he was wrong in the first
place)

------
PaulDavisThe1st
Of course, "success" in this context also comes with a Point of View.

I am both a developer of "creative" (cross-platform) software, and a
participant in several different online audio-software-related communities,
I'd say that Apple is currently at an all-time low as far as the happiness
within the union of the development and user communities for audio software on
macOS.

Apple doesn't have to care ... but this was once a group that they explicitly
identified as among their core target audiences. That can change over time,
but it would be honest to acknowledge that whenever one is talking about
success.

OTOH, despite the level of unhappiness about recent Apple macOS/hardware
developments, most of the current macOS user community will keep buying Apple
hardware. So ... success? Depends on that Point of View, I suppose.

~~~
swyx
can you elaborate what exactly your community is unhappy about? hard to tell
from your comment so hard to empathize

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
there's a pervasive feeling that Apple doesn't really care about professional
creatives in the way that they once did.

it likely started with apple killing firewire (which immediately ended
numerous product lines and EOL'ed many people's devices).

it continued with the redesign of final cut, which was clearly done to appeal
to new(ish) users rather than people who used it all day.

the arrival of AUv3 has been somewhat half-assed, with poor documentation and
inconsistent experiences among developers. developers using higher level audio
APIs have also found things changing with no clear reason or announcements.

the mac hardware has continued to become less and less competitively priced if
you care about CPU cycles/unit-of-currency.

the demise of connectors on macbooks was hard on many musicians who were
performing live with their machines.

continued subtle OS-level changes continue to break many pro-audio/music
creation apps in not necessarily deep ways, but the breakages still have to be
addressed by someone.

there have been repeated reports of significant worsening of performance of
various types of audio interfaces as macOS has moved from version to version.
i tended to dimiss these initially, but they are becoming too common to
completely write off. the machines are becoming more and more sensitive to the
entire state of the USB bus(ses), and although they were never entirely safe
in this respect, things have gotten worse just as USB connectivity for audio
has become more and more important.

that's a sampling ...

~~~
swyx
sorry to hear all this. maybe in 10 years someone will come along and fill
this hole left by Apple.

------
alexashka
> Wildly unprecedented execution

It takes me back to when I was younger and every well polished presentation,
jazzed me up like it does, this author.

I remember buying first gen. 27" iMac and marvelling at the resolution - I
couldn't see the individual pixels!

Now I'm old and grumpy and not a single announcement from Apple or any other
tech company for that matter, has made me giddy in years. Many announcements
and ongoing blunders, have jaded my soul, bit by bit :)

I imagine some innovation, not iteration, is around the corner, because it
just can't be that this is all we've managed to accomplish with all the
opportunity that we've been given.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
If you eat the same food over and over and over again it eventually tastes
bland.

~~~
toohotatopic
>TheSpiceIsLife

Does it? Don't you hone your perception and you are able to taste subtle
differences instead of getting a kick from its novelty?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Ah, yes.

It depends what you’re trying to see, right?

Eventually your senses will be saturated by the mundane, physical realm.

True happiness lies in contentedness.

To be content is to have _enough_ ; to be _full_.

Only when we realise _we are full_ —when we see we were _born full_ —are we
ready, willing, and able, to _give_.

Only through _giving_ can we become _full_.

To _give_ is to be _content_.

------
lukasb
_This isn’t scrum or agile or… — most would call it waterfall BUT IT IS NOT.
It is planning, iterating, prioritizing, discarding, restarting, and more._

I don't understand why this isn't waterfall. Because ... sometimes Apple
changes their plans?

~~~
culturestate
I think his point is that you can't label their process with any one standard
methodology because it's uniquely Apple - it's all of them and none of them at
the same time.

It may _feel_ like waterfall from the outside because it seems like they do a
lot of planning up front and then execute on those plans, but that's too
simplistic a view of what actually happens internally.

~~~
arvinsim
That's not unique to Apple. No company adopts cookie-cutter standard
methodology either. There is always compromises.

~~~
culturestate
There are _definitely_ shops that adopt e.g. waterfall processes wholesale
throughout the org, but broadly I agree with you that most companies can't be
painted with a single brush.

That does't stop people from doing it, though, and I think he's just trying to
make sure that readers don't learn the wrong lesson (eg _no course
corrections! plan everything and stick to it no matter what!_ ) from this
analysis.

~~~
lukasb
Okay, but surely out of every major tech company, Apple is the closest to
waterfall-style? Given what a bad name waterfall has now, that's surely
notable.

It seems to me that the reason Apple succeeds with a (relatively close to)
waterfall style approach is the long term planning / strong point of view the
author describes. The more the goalposts move, the more agile you have to be.

~~~
arvinsim
Setting realistic deadlines is already a big win.

In the startups that I have worked with, most of them don't give nearly much
time to devs.

------
cable2600
The big selling point of the Apple Mac computers line is that they are not
Windows PCs. You can get stuff done without annoyance or tweaking the system.

The iPhone and iPad are so easy to use that a three year old can use them.
Which makes them easier to use for ebook readers in schools.

~~~
fossuser
Even a chimp can use it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTiZqCQsfa8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTiZqCQsfa8)

Yes, it's only the one app - but I think that's a win for usability.

It's the video I think of whenever someone on HN is complaining that iOS is
hard to use and that things were better in the past.

I'm not sure what a chimp would be able to do at a command line, but I suspect
not much.

------
damnyou
Correct. Apple's overall strategy with its short 7-year lifecycles is to use
planned obsolescence in order to continue extracting money from its consumers.

An 8 year old desktop running Windows 10 or Ubuntu 20.04 is perfectly
functional today, and will continue to be kept up to date for many more years
in the future. An 8 year old Mac Mini runs either of those OSes pretty well.
Now that Boot Camp will no longer be supported, an Apple Silicon Mac Mini
bought in 2020 would have to be thrown away in 2028 since it will no longer
receive security patches.

This is... not good.

~~~
cercatrova
And I mean, if you're a company that does planned obsolescence and your users
will continue to buy your latest products without caring about repairing them,
why wouldn't you continue to use planned obsolescence?

~~~
cafed00d
it depends on how much "consumer effort" repairing costs.

Most people seem to replace their phones on a regular 2-3 year cadence. Much
less so on laptops -- and surely Macs tend to get supported for long period of
time; I can run Big Sur on a 6 year old Mac.

Same with iPhones -- iPhone 6S is going to run iOS 14.

As a consumer, if I were to buy an alternative to the iPhone -- which is
practically _only_ Android -- then I'm looking at software obsolescence much
earlier;

I mean, look at Android 11 & iOS 14. iPhones released in 2015 are still
supported but Android 11 goes only as far back as Pixel 2, a phone from 2017.

So it doesn't seem like Apple is a company that is using "planned
obsolescence" from a purely functionality perspective.

Sure, hardware degrades in quality overtime -- but that's a function of
physical constraints -- not business strategy to get people to buy new stuff;
well, at least for the _most_ (some?) part.

