
Apple’s 2016 in review - mef
https://chuqui.com/2017/01/apples-2016-in-review/
======
panic
_How do they fix this? They need to do more talking — and even more listening
— with their users. Engage with the influencers. Sit down and find out what
their developers need that the current products don’t offer. Find out what is
making their users unhappy._

Asking people what they want will give you predictable results: complaints
about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features
that demo well. You'll end up pulled in a million directions as you try to
account for everyone's feedback.

The traditional Apple solution was to give a single idealized user — Steve
Jobs — the power to improve his own experience. Nobody can replace Steve, but
I think someone (or some group) inside Apple needs to fill this role before
their products can become really great again.

~~~
ams6110
Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they want, they'd say 'faster horses'"

~~~
ekianjo
So what? The key take out here is "faster", so asking questions is not
necessarily irrelevant, instead of focusing on making one's horses shinier or
more economical. You need to find out what problem to fix.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The key take out here is "faster"

Even that part is mostly wrong. A fast horse can run more than 40MPH which
about all you can expect from a car in a city. The main reason most people
don't own a horse isn't that a car is faster.

Users ask for things that are obvious. No kidding faster is better. Can we
have it cheaper and more reliable too?

If you ask most people in 1870 how to improve those aspects of a horse they'll
tell you all about horse breeding but that doesn't get you a car.

~~~
ekianjo
> Even that part is mostly wrong. A fast horse can run more than 40MPH which
> about all you can expect from a car in a city. The main reason most people
> don't own a horse isn't that a car is faster.

Only on flat ground. Make a horse go uphill for a while and he will soon stop
if carrying anything. A car, even an ancient one, not so much.

Add to that that cars can maintain a sustained speed as long as they have
fuel, and of course cars are much faster than horses all things considered,
and of course this is one of the reasons of their adoption - you can get much
farther with a car than with a horse in the same amount of time, and it needs
less maintenance as well.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Make a horse go uphill for a while and he will soon stop if carrying
> anything. A car, even an ancient one, not so much.

> you can get much farther with a car than with a horse in the same amount of
> time, and it needs less maintenance as well.

But that's not _faster_. That's endurance, reliability, economy. You're
arguing that the tortoise is faster than the hare, but "being faster" isn't
how the tortoise won the race.

------
nicolas_t
I went from almost never needing to restart my mac (with Snow Leopard) to
having to restart it a couple of times a week with Sierra. The UI just becomes
totally unresponsive (the cursor stops moving, the time in the menu bar stops
ticking and the spinning wheel stops spinning) and needs a restart. And I
don't even have things like SIMBL installed (I used to with snow leopard, not
anymore). I just have Karabiner elements and Little snitch running (oh and
coconut battery since Apple in it's great wisdom decided to hide the remaining
time estimate).

The new versions of macOs provide no added advantage and have a lot of
regressions. I used to use Exposé all the time, now I don't because everything
slows to a crawl when I activate it.

And I run into severe bugs. For example, when I installed Yosemite and
activated Filevault, it managed to corrupt my partition and all my data
(luckily I had a backup).

I really wish Apple starts actually hiring good software engineers or at least
manage them to work on their OS because right now it's embarrassing. It
reminds me of when Windows ME was a thing. If Apple ran the I'm a Mac, I'm a
PC ad nowadays they wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on.

And then don't even get me started on their pro apps. Aperture used to be a
great app (much better than lightroom), they stopped its development.

~~~
danieltillett
This. The thing that made the MacOS ecosystem worth the pain and sacrifice was
the quality and things "just working". What I don't understand is Apple has
more than 10 times the developer resources they had 10 years ago yet quality
has gone backwards. Do you really need to be a Stalin to ensure your company
makes quality software?

~~~
mikeash
They're stuck conforming to an artificial schedule of once a year major
releases. They won't let themselves take the time they need to get things
right anymore. It's no surprise quality has gone down.

~~~
Xixi
Quality usually don't go up when releasing less frequently, quite the
opposite. The more you change things, the more likely you are to have severe
bugs. When Apple was releasing major OS upgrades less frequently, you usually
had to wait until a .4 or .5 point upgrade to have something usable.

The first release of macOS Sierra (10.12.0) was vastly more usable than the
first release of MacOS X Snow Leopard (10.6.0). I should know: I transitioned
to Snow Leopard on release and practically nothing was running on it. I think
it's the only time in my life I reverted to the previous version of macOS...
It didn't prevent Snow Leopard to become one of the best OS, in the end.

The problem is that Apple is shipping things that aren't right/ready, but this
_should_ be independent from the release schedule.

~~~
mikeash
At least they had time to reach that .4 or .5 version. Now they pop out a new
one before the old one is fixed, and we're stuck in a never-ending cycle of
suck.

------
adjkant
If you're browsing this and say "Great, another developer article shitting on
Apple after the Pro release who thinks they have figured out everything about
the company", please do read this. I was truly surprised at the depth,
fairness, and considerations in this article.

I'm very curious to see how Apple plays out in the next few years and will
likely look back at this article to compare, if I remember to.

As a developer, I wonder if making a Mac Developer model could be an
interesting path, and if it would make financial sense in any way given the
idea of "power users".

~~~
richardboegli
But the Macbook Pro was meant to be for Power Users?

~~~
matt4077
I have no idea what these self-annoited "professionals" do, but it's actually
quite difficult to get the MacBook Pro to its limits. Doing webdev or using
Xcode it's hard to ever notice any delay.

But maybe I'm just a noob who isn't professional enough to suddenly discover
that life just isn't worth it without 32GB of RAM.

~~~
lsadam0
Virtual Machines. If you use VM's, 16gb is likely going to be a problem. I,
quite easily, hit it all the time. It has nothing to do with being
'professional enough'. The nature of a dev's daily work can vary greatly with
what kind of dev they are doing.

~~~
yoz-y
Bollocks, I have a 16GB ram MBP from 2014, running a VM all the time and
compiling on both the VM and the host OS. No problems there. The 32GB might be
more comfortable for some, but I have hard time figuring out how something so
exclusive has now become a necessity.

~~~
lsadam0
> The nature of a dev's daily work can vary greatly with what kind of dev they
> are doing.

This was a very important part of your comment. It's good that 16gb isn't an
issue for you, but for some of us, it is.

~~~
yoz-y
One thing I would like to know is how we got here - that some NEED 32GB of RAM
in a laptop. Scouring the web for some time shows me that in 2015 it was quite
hard to get a non-gaming laptop with 32GB of ram. Now, there are quite a lot
of voices that cry that it is some bare minimum.

To me it seems that more people now prefer laptops to desktops and it is
annoying to sacrifice performance for portability. The lack of a truly
powerful desktop Mac definitely is not helping in this regard either.

~~~
simonh
Actually replying to lsadam0 but can't for some reason

> If the 2016 kept the same thickness but offered 32gb, I would have been
> happy.

That's not possible with the current chip offerings from Intel though. The
Intel CPUs that fit the MBP form factor and other features APple needs only go
up to 16 GB RAM. If you doubt this is a pain point for Apple, note that Apple
standardized on 16GB RAM out of the box. I'm sure thy'd love to be able to
offer 32GB as an up-sell.

Sure they could inflate the MBP form factor an re-design around the chipsets
that do offer 32GB RAM, but the chipsets that suit the current form factor and
support 32 GB are supposedly due out next year.

~~~
FireBeyond
"That's not possible with the current chip offerings from Intel though. The
Intel CPUs that fit the MBP form factor and other features APple needs only go
up to 16 GB RAM."

That's entirely reversed. Your statement should read:

"That's entirely possible with the current chip offerings from Intel. However,
it's not possible with Apple's requirements for form factor and power."

------
lowbloodsugar
In 2009 I bought my first Apple product: an 8GB 13" MacBook Pro that cost
$3000 ($1000 for the extra 4gb, like a dumbass). Quite soon after I got an
iPhone 3GS. Now every computer in the house (family of four) is an Apple.
Every phone is an Apple. Even AirPlay was an influencing factor in selecting a
hi-fi receiver (HTR7065). Apple TVs sit next to actual TVs.

Yesterday I replaced our fleet of TimeCapsules and Airports with Lumas.
Despite their problems they are still better than the Apple product. Rumor has
it Apple isn't working on Airports any more.

Today, I began looking for a replacement for the 2009 MBP, which my 11yo son
now uses. I started by looking at Microsoft Surface.

In the present, Apple doesn't meet my needs and as I look to the future, when
_I_ will need a new machine, the MacBook "Pro" is more like a MacBook "Bling".

Apple used to be an ecosystem. Now its just incremental phone updates.

~~~
wyager
> Now its just incremental phone updates.

And the software side of those updates is _bad_.

Apple hardware is probably better than ever. The mechanical engineering and
precision involved blows away anyone else in consumer electronics. The new
MacBooks and iPhones are truly works of art compared to the cheap injection-
molded stuff everyone else is pumping out.

But the software just keeps getting worse and worse.

My iPhone (and those belonging to my friend and family with iPhones) regularly
has strange graphics glitches and Springboard crashes. MacOS is a clusterf*ck
with tons of poorly-implemented useless "features" and UI glitches.

My suspicion is that Apple is hitting a level of software complexity where the
development and maintenance costs of correct code are too high. I believe
writing correct software has a super-linear cost; if you have N components in
your code, you can expect something like O(N^2) cross-component interactions
in your code, because any given piece of existing code is likely to interact
with some portion of new code. I suspect Apple will have to change their
software engineering practices if they hope to go back to a good level of
quality and usability with a reasonable temporal and financial engineering
budget.

~~~
jannyfer
Even if Apple hardware is a feat of mechanical engineering and precision, I
don't want to upgrade my Macbook Air or iPhone 6 with an Apple product right
now because nothing fits my needs.

I want a phone with a flat back that won't rock on a desk without a case. I
want a desktop with modern specs. I want a laptop with great battery life.

------
twright0
> But here’s the problem: sitting in this niche of excluded users are some of
> Apple’s strongest supporters, the influencers that create word of mouth...

I see this point made a lot, especially on Hacker News whenever this general
topic comes up. I'm just curious: what evidence is there to support this point
of view?

I'm as frustrated as the next software engineer that the new Macbook Pros
aren't targeted at me or users like me (and that there hasn't been a new Mac
Pro in a long time), and my next primary machine may well not be an Apple
product when my current Macbook Pro ages out. But I don't really see an
argument that draws a line between that fact and a future perception issue for
Apple - and that seems to be accepted as gospel whenever the topic of Apple
comes up in developer circles. Who are these "influencers" whose opinions
purportedly closely align with software engineers' and why do consumers care
about them?

~~~
musha68k
I don't even want to know how much revenue I brought Apple by "word of mouth"
alone as I've been one of the _gazillion_ fevered and outspoken Unix converts
(Darwin fan since 2004). Friends, family and random people in every potential
"evangelizable" context – don't even get me started on how many fellow
netizens, students, sysadmins and developers I actively tipped over as well
(these often were the hardest actually).

Macs or later iPhone, it didn't matter we had to tell everyone that those nice
and shiny devices were the real deal and we kept showing and telling until the
last potential convert saw the light as well.

I have been buying a new Mac and iPhone almost annually for about ten years
now – even (or especially) after 2011 _and_ 2013\. I honestly was thrilled by
iOS7, I loved it from the moment of its introduction and only saw potential.

All that said, no "OSX" release has made me happier than Snow Leopard
unfortunately and I am still convinced that "Losing the Functional High-
Ground" by Marco Arment channeled an important message about a pattern most of
us likely still see across the whole product line-up even though many things
got better since.

Why else have we slowly but steadily stopped recommending Macs over the last
two years?

When will that happen to iPhones or iPads? I'm still recommending them left
and right but it somehow also is getting harder in a way, especially when
people keep losing their safe-in-the-cloud data (in some cases even those
precious _moments with iPhone_ – _photos_ ).

Unfortunately Apple does seem to need a (kool-aid sober) benevolent dictator
with taste _and_ wholistic understanding of their core product/business (what
is that going to be btw?).

~~~
twright0
I can definitely believe that you, as an individual, have driven tens of
thousands of dollars in sales Apple's way over the last decade. But even if we
assume that there are tens of thousands of people doing the same thing as you
(as effectively as you) for the same reasons, that adds up to hundreds of
millions of dollars, which is three orders of magnitude below Apple's sales
per year, and your impact is stretched out over a decade. Hard to see that
loss as more than a rounding error on any Apple projection.

What I'm asking after, I suppose, is evidence that there are "gazillions" of
former "Unix converts" driving significantly more money than I'm estimating
here. I still continue to feel like this whole "software developers are
influencers" line of argumentation when it comes to Apple products is just
wishful thinking crossed with extrapolating from very limited personal
anecdotes.

~~~
angry_octet
I'm sure we each overestimate our importance. Plenty of my non tech friends
went out and bought tech without asking me, heck they probably know i'd tell
them not to buy that windows phone on a plan but they did anyway because it
came with free spotify.

I think the better insight is that our needs, for practicality and occasional
updates, are quite common. Its nice to add more memory or disk without needing
a new machine. It would be nice to have a replaceable battery in my laptop.
Apple is screwing up all these simple things.

------
quasse
The day Apple makes a power cord that doesn't have a cable sheath with the
consistency and durability of silly putty is the day I will recognize them as
back on track.

It's a small detail, but the power cord is the one part of the computer that
users have no choice but to interact with every day and they've been ignoring
the problems with them for the better part of half a decade.

Every Mac at work either has detached and frayed around the power connector
strain relief, or looks like an extremely precise samurai has made tens of
small cuts in the jacket of the cable.

~~~
mrmondo
Of all the MacBooks, MacBook Pros and idevices I've had over the years
(including my still running perfectly Jan 2011 MBP) I've never had a single
issue with any power cord tearing / breaking or power supply even fail as far
as I can remember. I always assume when I hear of people with this problem
that they're disrespecting their hardware by jamming it in doors / desks or
perhaps have pets that chew on them.

~~~
majormajor
Blaming the user isn't helpful.

I've had more problems with Apple cables than any other brand - and Apple
tends to make their cables sleeker looking. Coincidence? I doubt it.

At least they've improved from the Wallstreet-era Powerbook G3 chargers,
though. I think I went through 3 of those circa 1998. Of course, those
machines, and the early G4 Powerbooks, had bigger issues than just that. Dark
times in Macland.

(As an aside, how people talk about their device history is a good litmus test
of the length of their experience with Apple hardware, thanks to the Intel
switch laptop name change.)

~~~
baddox
In some circumstances you can certainly blame the user. Any remotely feasible
charger cable can easy be broken by repeated abuse. The real question is what
percentage of users break their cables. If that percentage is very low, then I
think you _can_ blame the user (or, rather than blame, sugggest they just be a
little more careful). I have no idea what the percentage is in this case.

------
aresant
Apple is the world's most profitable business - twice the profits of #2 (JP
Morgan Chase) and almost a 4x magnitude over Google.(1)

I agree with the author's final assessment - "meets expectations with some
areas that need improvement" \- and I think this is the key.

They are stoking the fire, keeping it burning, but clearly their focus seems
to be diminished on their core business.

And even companies of this scale need hyper focus to drive what seem like
small but obvious improvements, usually executives are faced with two choices:

(a) Focus on today's business and unlock maximum value in your product line /
distribution.

(b) Innovate to turn a corner and plan for tomorrow.

I am surprised at how few people attribute the current challenges at Apple to
what I suspect is an internal focus on planning for tomorrow.

How much more profitable is the iPhone going to get? The smartphone market is
approaching saturation (2)

So what does the leadership do?

Are laptops, imacs, and apple pro's the future?

No, they barely represent 9% of Apples sales and have been FLAT for years (3)

What about Apple TV & Apple Watch (the "other" category) - those have already
grown to 6% of sales - and moving in the right direction.

But is that it?

My suspicion is that Apple / Tim Cook knows something BIG that we don't that
they are going to get PERFECT while they still have the cash fire hose of the
iPhone to drive the engine.

(1) [http://fortune.com/2016/06/08/fortune-500-most-profitable-
co...](http://fortune.com/2016/06/08/fortune-500-most-profitable-
companies-2016/)

(2) [https://www.cnet.com/news/smartphone-markets-glory-days-
are-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/smartphone-markets-glory-days-are-over-
says-analyst/)

(3)
[http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/26/q1-2016-results/](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/26/q1-2016-results/)

~~~
majormajor
Apple should absolutely be investing big into future product categories, as
they have done in the past.

However, with revenue and profit levels where they are, it's baffling to see
them seem to devote _less_ resources in an absolute sense (not just a
proportional one) to existing money-makers. Mac laptops are big sellers.
iPhones are big sellers. Yet the refreshes get more and more basic, and the
software quality seems to be sliding downward. Could they really not fix this
without sacrificing future investment? They did it in the past when they had
less money to play with, after all...

~~~
Cthulhu_
They have invested in future product categories, the Apple Watch being the
most recent - and not very successful - example.

I'm afraid what Apple is doing is purely looking at figures - if it doesn't
sell at least X or account for Y% of revenue, it's discarded. AirPort, gone,
displays, gone, 17 inch MBP, long gone.

And yet their R&D budget is still going up ([http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-
new/2016/05/Apple-RD-Spendi...](http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-
new/2016/05/Apple-RD-Spending-2016.png)), estimated to become $12 billion in
2017. IDK where it all goes though.

~~~
dasil003
It's going to the car.

------
erichocean
Apple is a company that is following the process they learned when Steve ran
the show, without any clear understanding of _why_ that process exists. As a
result, they are unable to adapt to adapt that process to the external world
while remaining true to the underlying principles.

What you see is the predictable result: ossified thinking couple with a rigid
adherence to "what makes them great". all criticism falls on deaf ears and
they'll just continue like this until Tim Cook is gone and they get a product
guy back in the heal who can give Apple direction and heart.

~~~
adamlett
_Apple is a company that is following the process they learned when Steve ran
the show, without any clear understanding of why that process exists_

Apple created Apple University years before Steve died, to understand clearly
_why_ they became so successful. They even hired a top professor from an Ivy
League university to run it.

Whatever ails Apple these days is not caused by them not understanding how
they became great. It's caused by the lessons of the past not being applicable
to the reality of today.

~~~
tnone
You cannot teach taste and vision. Apple giving up monitors is the clearest
sign of that: it's the face of the computer, so much that novices confused it
for the computer itself.

The Jobs-style answer was the all-in-one iMacs and the monitor-as-a-dock, a
computer that wants to be seen. The Cook-style answer is to put somebody
else's logo right on their product's display case. Madness.

~~~
mjolk
For someone that was waiting for this hardware refresh to get a Macbook Pro
and a new Cinema Display, I was surprised that the keyboard became less
utilitarian and the display more-so.

------
chaostheory
> Defining products by the spreadsheet: A big percentage of complaints over
> the new MacBook Pro devices is that they ignore the needs of the “power”
> user. The problem? This group is fairly small and have needs living well
> towards the end of the bell curve.

The problem with ignoring this niche is because these users are either
developers or big influencers. They help with the ongoing success of the App
Store as well as with free marketing.

This is also a big reason why Apple needs to release either an iMac without a
screen or a more affordable Mac Pro. The Mac Mini has never really cut it for
anything but personal use.

For the 1st time in years, I'm thinking of switching back to Windows since
Docker makes development easier now. I'll still get a cheap Mac for personal
stuff like Photos, but it'll just be relegated for that.

~~~
jdcarter
My household has been Mac-only for about 20 years, but I finally gave up
waiting for a decent Mac Pro or a powerful Mac Mini. Last year I put together
a PC for about $1500 [1] which looks great _and_ completely demolishes any Mac
for GPU-heavy tasks, thanks to its Nvidia GTX 1070. The build was super-easy
(my 10 year-old daughter did half of it) and the machine worked perfectly the
first time I powered it on. And, much to my surprise, Windows 10 really isn't
bad.

I still use a MacBook Pro for most of my development work, but all gaming and
video stuff is now PC, and I can't see myself going back. The ability to
easily upgrade individual parts on an as-needed basis is just too appealing.

I still prefer MacOS to Windows, but if MacOS is the _only_ thing a $2500+ Mac
Pro brings to the table in 2017--compared to 2017 PC hardware--it really isn't
enough anymore.

[1]:
[https://pcpartpicker.com/user/joshcarter/saved/Dq2kLk](https://pcpartpicker.com/user/joshcarter/saved/Dq2kLk)

~~~
eridius
I built my first gaming PC (GTX 1070 as well) not that long ago, and you're
right, it wasn't too hard (though my wife did most of the work). And I use
that for gaming all the time.

However, I would never dream of using it for development. One of the games I
play is World of Warcraft, and I maintain a few addons, and even just trying
to edit Lua files on Windows is a PITA. Atom kind of sucks, and the CLI isn't
very good. I installed Windows Subsystem For Linux in order to get bash and
git, but it turns out there's no way to open GUI apps from that system, so I
have to independently navigate to my projects in both Explorer and the shell.
Oh, and Windows doesn't implement enough of Linux so tmux can't actually
remember my paths, so every time I reboot, I have to find all of my projects
again. And of course Linux symlinks don't work in Windows, and Windows aliases
don't work in Linux, so I have a shell script that copies a bunch of the
addons into place that I have to run each time because I can't symlink it.
Ultimately, it's all just very annoying.

~~~
jdcarter
Agreed, macOS is a far superior blend of Unix underpinnings and a graphical
front-end. I love that I can have my terminal and Emacs run seamlessly on the
same platform as Sketch and Photoshop. Fortunately, my MacBook Pro is still a
plenty capable machine for the programming I do in my day job.

But I have to say, PC hardware has come a long way, not just in terms of
performance, but also in build quality and ease of use. The aluminum case I
bought looks as good as any Mac Pro tower Apple has made, it has fantastic
cable routing so everything's clean and tidy, and tons of options for thermal
management--I can run games on ultra quality and my PC is still silent!

It's really too bad we can't have the best of both worlds. But I don't see
Apple going towards PC-standard hardware, Windows will probably never be a
great Unix, and Linux never quite gets the software adoption it needs to
become my desktop OS. I'd love to be proven wrong on any of those, however!

~~~
exadeci
Actually it can be done and works well after ironing down some stuff:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/search?q=flair%3A"succes...](https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/search?q=flair%3A"success!"&sort=hot&restrict_sr=on&t=all#success)!

~~~
jdcarter
Thanks for the pointer, I may stick an extra disk in there and give Hackintosh
a shot. Can you imagine how fast Apple Motion or Final Cut Pro would run with
a GTX 1070 GPU behind it?

------
new299
I feel like Apple are one of the few large SV companies that are producing
products for their users.

For everyone else the user is a resource that they're selling to advertisers.

They've shown they're willing to stand up for user rights. For this reason
alone I hope they continue to be successful.

~~~
Lio
I totally agree with this but at the same time I'm annoyed with the current
state of macOS and the Mac product line.

The Mac (and maybe the AirPort Extreme) are the only Apple products I really
care about or depend on.

I'm holding on to my iPhone because Apple have a great strategy with regard to
privacy and user rights but I'm not upgrading it because I'm pissed off about
the Mac. Pathetic as that is, as a Mac user it's about the only small leverage
available.

Sadly, I think Tim knows more about business than me. For every disgruntled,
Unix loving, Mac user they loose they'll probably add 10 more iOS users for
whom emoji are culturally interesting. :(

~~~
new299
As a UNIX-like system loving dev... I always found macs (running MacOS) a bit
frustrating for dev work.

It's nice that you have a familiar command structure to work with, but
installing software from homebrew/whatever else was always a nightmare. They
were nice laptops... but it seems inefficient.

So I maintain 2 laptop. A macbook which I basically use for Skype and office
work (and use about twice a month), and a cheap Thinkpad running Linux for dev
work. When I need more power, I can pull the drive out of the Thinkpad and
throw it in a desktop and it just works.

So... I think it's kind of hard to make a good case for macbooks as ideal
general purpose dev machines. And they were really never meant to be general
purpose dev machines. They probably work great for Mac/iOS dev and general
purpose applications though.

~~~
Lio
Each to their own I suppose. I personally don't find homebrew to be a
nightmare at all but that is of course anecdotal.

You are mistaken if you think that Apple never intended the Mac to be used for
general purpose Unix development though, they used to advertise it for that
purpose on the science section of their website, before it was removed.

[https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-
science-...](https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-science-as-
core-market-web-page-deleted)

~~~
grzm
Apple used to prominently promote its Unix heritage. For example, here's an
article from MacWorld in 2001.

[http://www.macworld.com/article/1001970/21osx-
unix.html](http://www.macworld.com/article/1001970/21osx-unix.html)

And an advertisement:

"Sends other UNIX boxes to /dev/null"

[http://www.mackungfu.org/vintage-os-x-ad-emphasises-unix-
pow...](http://www.mackungfu.org/vintage-os-x-ad-emphasises-unix-power)

------
ThomPete
The trouble at Apple is one of culture and timing. The ideals of Apple and the
timing of their thinking is in many ways out of sync with the rest of the
world.

This was the same that happened to Microsoft when their lets just create
machines with a million different providers and slap our OS on top were
surpassed by Apple when Steve Jobs came back. The advantages of Apples
vertical integration allowed them to push for radical new hardware design
aesthetics when that was craved the most. On top of that a completely
different way of pushing product in sync with the OS which allowed them to
avoid the issues of backwards compatibility which MS struggled with. Today
though in many ways the Apple aesthetic have been commoditized and were it
haven't Apple just haven't spent enough time improving (looking at you OSX and
Mac)

I frankly don't think there is much to do about it for the simple reason that
it would require Apple to change it's culture from being a secretive one to
being more open. This is where Google have many advantages as it's much more
in sync with where the world and technology is heading (Cloud, Deep Learning,
web). I don't think Steve would have been able to save Apple either although I
think he would have done things a little better.

I am a big fan of apples products and own only that but I can see a future, if
things doesn't change were I would easily use ex. Android phone.

------
twblalock
I remember feeling the same way about Apple back in late 2012/early 2013. I
was ready to replace my iPhone 4, and Apple was only making phones with small
screens, while the market trend was for larger screens. Then Apple Maps came
out, and it was the worst release I can remember Apple ever doing. Android
seemed to be pulling ahead in a lot of ways. A lot of people were saying that
Tim Cook wasn't capable of running the company, and that the magic died with
Steve Jobs. The stock price started to slide.

As we all know, Apple recovered from its bad release of Maps and revamped iOS,
the stock price recovered, and there was much rejoicing. So, it's important to
have a sense of perspective about these things.

Apple certainly seems like it has slowed down lately, but they have more
resources available to improve the situation than any other company in the
world. I suspect the current issues are caused by internal organizational
problems rather than a lack of product vision.

~~~
dolguldur
>> I suspect the current issues are caused by internal organizational problems
rather than a lack of product vision.

Absolutely. If they'd figure out how to scale up such that they're able to fix
the most annoying bugs filed via their bug radar, macOS would be a much better
product.

The sad thing is that at some point there were more and more bugs and UX
problems which I didn't even bother reporting since they were so obvious that
everyone using the OS should notice.

So apparently they're not able to scale in that regard. Even completely
isolated apps like Preview.app are affected.

------
Apocryphon
I find the recent turn of public opinion against Apple to be interesting. Two
years ago people were writing about brilliant Tim Cook was, largely because of
the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Which was Apple simply scaling up to
product sizes that they had previously resisted in joining, but were common to
the rest of the market.

So was praise then wrong and overblown? Or is the current wave of discontent
wrong and overblown? Or is two years enough time for Apple to underperform and
cause a loss in faith?

I think it's a bit of all three, but also a lot because this current
unhappiness is driven by developers, who had expected Apple to treat the MBP-
much less the Mac Pro- with greater care and respect. 2014 saw the
introduction of Swift, and developers were happy.

~~~
_ph_
Even 2 years ago, people were grumpy how long the "can" style Mac Pro had not
been refreshed and its obvious limitations, and that the Mac Mini had not been
refreshed in a long time. But this does get overshadowed in perception (both
public and of the critics) by a great launch like the iPhone 6. The
introduction of Swift was certainly a surprise move by Apple and a sign that
they cared about developers. But people were not unconditionally "happy",
there was some valid criticism of it back then.

~~~
intoverflow2
> and that the Mac Mini had not been refreshed in a long time

Worth keeping in mind the last refresh of the Mini performed way worse than
the model that existed before it and had all upgradability locked down when
the previous model actually championed the fact it could be opened and
upgraded.

These Mac updates are not only slow but it's a recurring theme they're
performing worse than what came before.

------
agentgt
One thing Apple needs to fix ASAP is online (iCloud) and offline storage
(iPhone).

Almost all my family members are having issues with running out of space on
their iPhone. Some even bought additional iCloud to improve storage space only
to be completely shocked and pissed to find that iCloud isn't really add
additional storage (it is just for synchronization).

On top of this Google is taking serious advantage of Apple's bad execution
with a fairly effective marketing campaign.

In some regards the most important thing about your phone these days is the
memories you have collected and not so much what operating system or form
factor is being used.

------
Niksko
I think this is a fair article and it echoes a lot of my sentiments. Something
is going wrong over at Apple. No, they're not going to go out of business
soon, but I think the sheer volume of criticism they've been receiving (not
just from users, but also from noted Apple advocates) is troubling, and they
need to do something about it.

My standout is the battery case they released a few years ago. The design of
that case is just unspeakably hideous. They need somebody with a Jobsian level
of ruthlessness, attention to detail and unified vision to steer the ship back
in the right direction. Another example here would be the fact (mentioned in
this article) that they effectively copied the rest of the market by providing
a larger phone. The Apple of old didn't do this. They didn't really follow
market trends, they started them. And then to be flummoxed by demand when
people responded so positively to smaller phones is baffling to me.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see some C level leadership changes some time
this year.

~~~
laichzeit0
> They need somebody with a Jobsian level of ruthlessness, attention to detail
> and unified vision to steer the ship back in the right direction.

This. I buy Apple products not because I'm looking for the latest tech gadget.
I want something that feels like a work of art. There are too many products,
too many sizes, too many options. Jobs would have told whoever suggested an
iPhone Plus that he's a shithead moron. Why am I using Fantastical instead of
the default Calendar app? I never did this on iOS 6. Go on their website and
you see all sorts of crap acquisition products (Beats) they're selling. I
don't want Beats I want Apple! I want premium, exclusive, luxury, high-end,
polished tech products that work as simple as toasters.

------
firloop
Mirror: [http://archive.is/aVNM3](http://archive.is/aVNM3)

------
elktea
What's the reasoning for trying to disable right click on your website? I
simple wanted to google for the WiFi company mentioned - I had to find an add-
on to copy the thing. For someone really into Apple you're good at obnoxious
design.

~~~
kk_cz
It might be just a firefox thing, but shift+right click bypasses it. Also
Ctrl+C for copying text (or Cmd + C on Mac, I believe).

~~~
johnnydoe9
No it's the same on Chrome and shift+right click isn't working.

------
stirner
I've seen very little discussion here of the battery issues with the new MBP,
which in my opinion is the most offensive example of Apple's decline in
quality. Lucky users are reporting 9 hour battery life, while others are
getting 4-5. Nobody is getting the promised 10 hour battery life from their
$1,500+ laptops.

~~~
lukevers
In regards to the battery life, I was excited to see "9 hours remaining" the
first time I turned the new MBP on. Realistically, I get about 3-5 depending
on what I'm doing.

------
_ph_
A great write up. I wonder, whether Apple just has gotten a bit to large for
their current organizational structure. It worked, when Apple had no iOS
devices to care for and the attention was divided across much less products.
Especially the signs of "sloppiness" point in that direction. At minimum,
Apple should create senior positions overlooking individual product
categories. Even the rather forgotten iPod business could be larger, if there
was a small team focussed on the question: what can we do to make new products
people want to buy? A friend was just missing a small (waterproof) iPod which
works seamlessly with Apple Music for example

The same with the Mac. It is understandable from the view of the company, that
iOS is the bigger thing. But, as the article mentions, the Mac is a vital part
of the Apple eco system. And the Mac Pro is a vital part of the Mac eco
system. You need to support the professional developers to have all the
applications for your "non-professional" customers. The best sign, that Apple
was surprised by the public reaction to the new MacBook Pro was, that they
reacted by reducing the dongle prices. It didn't seem to have thought that
people would object at buying a collection of them at full prices. When I
bought my G3 iBook, it came with the necessary dongles included.

Besides the obvious conceptual issues with the current Mac Pro, the biggest
sin was not to update its hardware regularly. Same for the Mac Mini. So there
needs to be two things done:

\- set up senior people for each product to make sure that issues/development
for that product/category gets the necessary attention, e.g. people who only
care about the mac.

\- these people need to make sure that each product is updated in set cycles.
The iOS devices as well as the operating systems are updated in a yearly
cycle. Maybe not as strict as with the iPhone, this should be applied to all
products. The releases might shift a bit on parts availability, but the Mac
Pro and the Mini have missed several updates of CPUs/GPUs/other hardware.

One more thing: while it is understandable that the retina MacBook only has
soldered on parts, this is less understandable for the MacBook Pro, and not at
all for the Mini, iMac or the Mac Pro. How can you design desktop machines
like the iMac, where you have to unglue the screen to get to its internals? I
still have my G5 iMac, and that was a nicely designed machine. A mac czar
could tell upper management, where clever and efficient production methods
stop and making a bad product starts...

------
jakelarkin
the _brand new_ Macbook Pro has last-generation Intel CPUs. I remember when
Jobs announced one of the first Intel Macbook Pros with chips that no other
manufacturer had even been given the chance to ship yet.

~~~
JoachimS
This is a really interesting point. Apple seems to have stopped pushing
suppliers as much as they used to.

~~~
cottsak
It's not an interesting point, because if you do your research, there is no
gain to using a Kaby Lake (7th generation) CPU over a "Skylake-U" (6th gen)
CPU:

Current/2016 13" max-spec i7 MBP uses i7-6567U which scores slightly higher
(average single/multi-core geekbench results) than the best dual-core Kaby
Lake CPU, being the i7-7500U.

[https://twitter.com/mattkocaj/status/814090388986175488](https://twitter.com/mattkocaj/status/814090388986175488)

------
bangonkeyboard
_> Want us to think you’re still serious about the Mac, Apple? Show us parity
of capabilities between the two platforms, at least on your core product
sets..._

Be careful what you wish for.

    
    
      The primary problem with Sierra with respect to PDFs is that Apple chose to 
      rewrite the PDFKit framework in macOS 10.12 and it broke a number of things 
      that PDF-related developers relied upon...
    
      Apple wants to use a common foundation for both iOS and macOS. However, it was 
      released way too early, and for the first time (at least in my experience) 
      Apple deprecated several features without caring about compatibility. And to 
      make things worse, lots of former features are now broken or not implemented at 
      all, meaning that we had to add lots of workarounds or implement stuff on our 
      own. And there’s still work left to be done.
      
      10.12.2 introduces new issues (it seems that Apple wants to fix at least the 
      broken compatibility now) and of course fixed almost none of the other issues.
    

[http://tidbits.com/article/16966](http://tidbits.com/article/16966)

------
hoodoof
Apple has forgotten how to compete in the computer industry. In the old days
there was a ruthless and relentless refresh cycle with manufacturers working
hard and fast to trump each other with more advanced products.

Apple appears to simply no longer have that cycle as part of its business DNA,
and no longer seems to even understand that is what the computer industry is
(or was) about.

I am looking ever more favorably at Windows again.

~~~
Razengan
The new MacBooks outsold all their competitors, so I glean that they still
know how to compete:

[https://intelligence.slice.com/apples-macbook-pro-
launch/](https://intelligence.slice.com/apples-macbook-pro-launch/)

~~~
hoodoof
Maybe there was record sales because there was a record number of years since
the hardware was last updated.

Latent demand = sales.

It's certainly not due to the effusive praise of the press.

~~~
Razengan
Conversely, this could also mean that the "press" and the vocal majority on a
few online forums have no bearing on what people out there really want.

In almost every discussion about this, you will see some people who have
actually purchased — unlike the detractors — these machines and are happy with
them.

I personally don't see anything bad about the new MacBooks either, except the
lack of out-of-the-box compatibility with the new iPhones/EarPods, and their
price point in relation to my budget at this current point in time. I will
definitely be buying one as soon as I can afford it.

Going all USB3/Thunderbolt only is very good, exciting even, and harkens back
to 2 decades ago when the very first iMac came out as the first every USB-only
computer. The wide color displays have to be seen in person to be appreciated.
The battery problems and GPU glitches have been found to be on the software
side, iirc, and some of those issues have already been patched.

~~~
gog
It is all great if you do not have existing hardware you want to use.

I have a Logitech mouse I love, it has a USB connector receiver that sticks 3
mm out of my laptop so I keep it plugged in all the time. The idea of it
hanging of some cable adapter is just silly, not even mentioning the fact that
you have to buy it.

Or my fancy 27" Apple Thunderbolt display. I had no issue paying the Apple tax
because I loved the display and it doubles as a docking station (integrated
power adapter). Guess what, it doesn't work with the new laptop. The new
display they are selling is made by LG and was not available for purchase
until few weeks ago.

~~~
realityking
There's an adapter for your Thunderbolt Display. You will however miss out on
the power provided by the display.

------
Waterluvian
This may be rather ignorant of how the motivational structure of a large
company works, but is it possible that some of these issues, like missed ship
dates, is caused by a lessening of the amount of fear that trickles down the
hierarchy?

Wasn't Jobs the kind of person you were terrified of letting down and doesn't
that kind of thing trickle downward?

------
woodpanel
Even customer service seems to be befuddled by Apple's policies at times. The
current battery issue with the iphone 6s took months until Apple made it
'claimable'. Then people are told to send their iphones in and are expected to
wait for 6 weeks (without a temporary replacement). But what's better: they
get the same phone back (because the system check apple performs won't test
for cold temperature based battery issues, so the device always passes).

I don't know if the Apple before Cook and Icahn was different in that, but
this is soooo ... dare I say "heyday Microsoft"?

------
Animats
Apple doesn't seem to have anything new. Just minor upgrades of the old stuff.
The car project, whatever that was, seems to have been canceled. The watch is
something of a dud. Amazon and Google are fighting it out in the voice
operated home control space, while Nest doesn't have an entry.

Apple is still making tons of money. Boring but profitable isn't that bad a
place to be. It's possible to be boring, profitable, and still be a prestige
brand. Look at Rolex.

~~~
realityking
Your comment sounds like Nest is a division of Apple. That's not the case,
it's a subsidiary of Google-parten Alphabet.

------
ciconia
I have a 2013 13" MBP and have started to look for a specifically non-Apple
machine to replace it with. What got me to give up on Apple is not really the
high price or infrequent updates but rather the state of macOS and bundled
apps. It just sucks. Each upgrade seems to introduce more eye candy, more
complications, more bugs, and is also slower. To me it feels like planned
obsolescence.

~~~
Lio
Yep it's like Aperture. If they neglect it long enough people will just move
the approved Apple alternative. In the case of Aperture it's Photos, for macOS
I think they want us to move to iOS.

It didn't work for Aperture, pros generally moved to Lightroom or something
else. For macOS either Linux or Windows seems more likely than iOS.

------
andyjohnson0
Just an idle thought: could the construction of, and move to, the new Apple
campus be partly to blame for the company becoming distracted?

~~~
exodust
I highly recommend firing up Google Earth and checking out the new campus.
Someone has painstakingly modeled the construction site in 3D. Make sure you
have 3D buildings enabled in Google Earth, and give it a chance to load the
details. Tiny details like vehicles and machinery, mounds of dirt, even porta-
loos have been rendered, You can zoom down inside and between the buildings to
get a good feel of the space.

I wouldn't mind knowing who did that, and what their workflow is to model all
that stuff.

I think once Apples moves in, they will be inspired to pick things up. It
really is an amazing building.

------
Shivetya
With regards to shipping dates. It used to be a source of pride of Apple to
say "shipping now" when they demonstrated a new product but somewhere along
the line they fell into the trap of announcing well before they could deliver.
They need to pull back.

having owned an airport router I no longer see the need as other routers have
become just as easy to use. my 1g service from AT&T was a breeze to setup for
home use and heavily customize, all from my Mac.

the only bone I have to pick with Apple is the disgraceful product cycle
associated with the mini and Pro. If they are going to drop these products
then drop them. if they aren't going to do yearly updates then either drop the
product or guarantee refreshes so people don't feel like they are buying into
a dead end.

finally, damn please get all your products to one connector again and fast and
in the mean time adapters should be included when your own products don't
interconnect

------
LargeCompanies
I just got a Google Home speaker and for me it feels like how the iPhone felt
in 2007; a revolution in computing!

But Apple is so far behind with the horrid Siri it's laughable. I've used Siri
almost daily since 2011 and after using Google Now I cant stand to use Siri as
her accuracy is 90 percent if lucky vs. her competitors 100 percent.

------
jpkeisala
I am really interested to see in 2017 Apple's product releases. Is iPhone 8
going to make me staying in iPhone? I already switched from Mac to Dell XPS
and I am quite happy with it. I guess this year there will be many old Mac
users that will be leaving Apple. Unless they do something drastic? But what
could they do?

------
intherdfield
Apple has a large enough hardware footprint.

They now need to compete on AI. I imagine a lot of their resources are being
put in the catch-up-to-Google bucket.

There have been a lot of blog posts saying Apple doesn't know who their
customers are. But their products are already accepted by everyone (every
group). Their customers are everyone.

~~~
dx034
I'd second that. They're on their way of losing the battle for AI. From my
experience (and those around me), Siri is way behind Alexa and the Google
Assistant, in both voice recognition and features. It was once the selling
point of iPhones, now no one really talks about it anymore.

I don't understand why their development in that area slowed down so much,
when Amazon started much later and was still able to produce the first home
assistant. An Apple version of Amazon Echo (Siri for Home) would've been the
perfect product to integrate users further in their environment.

------
angry_octet
> it makes sense for Apple to stop making WIFI devices

Only if Apple is looking not to innovate. Mesh networking has great potential
to take off, especially if the software was integrated into iOS. One missing
element from mesh is AAA, which Apple could definitely mediate.

------
jgiambona
2 things really concern me about Apple's direction under Tim Cook: his
statements that he doesn't see why someone would need a computer in addition
to an iPad and iPhone, and the fact that he has reportedly combined the iOS
and MacOS teams.

My MBP is only 1 year old, waiting to see what comes out of Cupertino later
this year before deciding if I'll move away from Apple products for my dev
machine.

------
mcculley
I see a lot of articles suggest that Apple may no longer support developers,
building only consumer devices. But what are Apple developers using
internally? Would Apple maintain some hackintosh build for their developers?
This seems unlikely to me. I would instead expect that we will soon see some
new hardware suitable for developers. But maybe I'm wrong. They got rid of
Xserve, which means they either are building server hardware they don't sell
or they are using Linux or Windows for their own servers.

------
patsplat
Somehow despite leading the charge Apple has missed the boat on voice.

~~~
wklauss
Unlikely. Volume of voice input for Siri probably is still orders of magnitude
larger than those Alexa or Google Home handle. It also does so internationally
and multilanguage. Once you start looking closely advantage is not really that
big. Google, Alexa and Cortana also mishandle queries and they might excel at
some tasks but fall short in others. Still a lot of room to improve for
everyone, Apple included, but I would argue they are all in a very similar
situation.

------
intoverflow2
> They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users.
> Engage with the influencers

Some influencers who are not either professional bloggers or iOS devs too
please.

------
DoodleBuggy
At this point my expectations for Apple are set so low that I'd be thrilled if
2017 brought us options for a physical escape key and 32GB RAM on a spec-
bumped MacBook Pro. But I suspect even that is too much to ask.

------
hoodoof
Apple should spin off the Mac division to be its own company so theoretically
the management might give sh*t about competing.

~~~
Humdeee
After brainstorming what they would call this subset company, it dawned on me
that the Mac, as in the Mcintosh (fruit) is an apple. I'm embarrassed to admit
I never put the two together. I am not a smart man.

They were correct in not naming the iPhone the Granny Smith.

------
jordache
Quite a manifesto about a single company...

------
hogrammer
I switched from Mac Pro to PC a few months ago. We needed NVIDIA and running
some hack over thunderbolt isn't a real option, despite what the Apple Zealots
say.

~~~
intoverflow2
Recently made the same decision myself to use CUDA too. After months of
considering hacked open thunderbolt enclosures that nearly cost the same as a
PC anyway I just switched.

I now measure my 3D render times in seconds not double digit minutes.

There is no doubt in my mind that if the trashcan mac had Nvidia GPUs I would
have just saved up and spent over double I spent on this PC even if it had
worse performance. I've been a mac user for 17 years and didn't make this
decision lightly.

~~~
exodust
Can I ask what sort of rendering you're doing? Do you mean animation or still
images... what software? I find that between different software you can get
vastly differing render times. Also, for really serious and large work aren't
people using render farms now anyway?

~~~
intoverflow2
Doing animation and still (admittedly haven't produced anything yet as I've
only had this setup running for a week) mostly motion graphics and advertising
focused.

I'm working in Cinema 4D and Octane render (render engine built from the
ground up for GPU) with a single GTX 1080, coming from a 2.7 i5 MBP with no
dedicated GPU the difference isn't even comparable.

Good idea of what you can expect from a single 1080+Octane is in this video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGXmsUnbPCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGXmsUnbPCM)

The industry is at a bit of a crossroads from what I can see, of course huge
studios have investments in render farms and CPU based tech but for
individuals and <10 person studios it's all moving towards GPU rendering.

Being able to run a renderer on your desktop machine that can show the end
result in near real time completely changes your workflow. It's no longer just
using experience to make guesses with lighting and materials then waiting
minutes to see if your hypothesis was correct.

~~~
exodust
Thanks for info. Yes the live render previewing is getting quite nice.

------
bergers89
seriously, if you have a problem with apple, don't use it. There are thousands
of other vendors. Instead of posting dribble on the web...

~~~
dx034
Not really. There's one other major phone OS out there (Android), with the
majority of phones made by less than a dozen companies. Linux and Windows are
the only other choices when it comes to operating systems for computers, and
few companies manufacture high-end laptops with acceptable quality.

The only company selling everything is probably Microsoft, where you can buy a
laptop from the manufacturer of the OS. But Windows Phones aren't nearly as
well supported when it comes to third party apps, so you'll have to go with
Google there.

So there's not really any company (except perhaps Microsoft) that can offer a
similar experience as Apple used to.

~~~
bergers89
hp elitebooks, thinkpads, toshiba's notebooks are all well designed. You can
throw anything on it.. linux, bsd unix or windows. You have a variety of
distributions or bsd os'es. i don't know what you're talking about phones:
there are plenty of phone vendors out there, too. Instead of whining about a
company, it would be better to move on and decide what you need and buy that.

~~~
dx034
Yes, but you'll still have a Microsoft OS, HP laptop, Google phone, etc. What
many people (including me) like about Apple that you have/had a well designed
ecosystem for all your devices, where hardware and software are made to work
well with each other. No one else can really provide that.

