
How Apple lost its way: Steve Jobs’ love of simplicity is gone - digikazi
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/02/ken-segall-apple-steve-jobs-simplicity?CMP=fb_gu
======
panglott
What a terrible article. This article has no substance to it at all. The
author rehashes the line about how Apple is doomed b/c Steve Jobs is
irreplaceable. It's more nonsense from there.

Simplicity in product lines: "Apple now sells three different iPhones, four
different iPads and three different MacBooks." This is "endless choices"? Is
the argument here really that Apple Watch has too many band options, and this
constitutes a violation of simplicity in product lines?

Simplicity in software: literally the only argument the author provides here
is Apple Music. There is actually a case to be made here, but the author
doesn't make it (iTunes has been a disaster for years).

Simplicity in product naming: Apple is retiring iThings in favor of Apple
Things, and consumers understand far too well that "S" releases are off-
year/internal changes only. If customers understand something as esoteric as
that, how is the product naming too complex?

Simplicity in marketing: The author's argument here is just that the internal
Apple marketing process is more complex, because Steve Jobs doesn't just keep
it between himself and the ad agency anymore.

Even if you took this seriously, is there any PC hardware company with product
lines/software/naming/marketing as simple as Apple's?

------
ProxCoques
"Apple’s ability to make software solid and simple has come under attack"

I don't actually recall Apple's software being any better or worse than the
competition after OS 6. The fact is that ALL software, including Apple's is
confusing and hard to use. You just have to watch normal people trying to use
computers and phones to understand that. It's not at all surprising that Apple
have simply reverted to the mean. But this isn't a new thing. iTunes has been
a constant bafflement since its release - and so has pretty much all complex
Apple software.

~~~
charlesism
> iTunes has been a constant bafflement since its release

My memory must be suffering because I recall the first versions of iTunes
being _extremely_ simple. It was a list of music, and you could play said
music. You stuck in a CD, and it would rip it for you. Very little else else.

Then they bolted on: a music store, iPod sync, podcasts, video player, library
sharing, social network, iPhone + app management... etc etc etc.

~~~
digi_owl
I wonder if all that happened because it is Apple's beachhead in the Windows
ecosystem. We may be observing the same with how Google chrome has gotten more
and functionality added over time.

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drinchev
I still remember my iPhone 3G. The settings "app" was so simple that I
couldn't imagine a smart phone would be so "perfectly" configured, without any
user modifications.

Nowadays it's different. I have my Apple Watch for one year already and I
haven't clicked / tapped everywhere yet. I barely use some of the features (
as Mail, Music, World Clock and many others ) and I definitely do not feel
satisfied because of that.

The author has a good point saying that Apple is moving out of simplicity.
There is a new market gap that IMHO, is increasing and soon I hope a company
with money and bold vision will become for that market, what Tesla is for the
auto-industry.

~~~
digi_owl
Well back then the iPhone was more a featurephone with a fancy UI than a
smartphone.

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tim333
The arguments are a bit rubbish eg

>With the current models consisting of iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus and SE,
Apple’s naming scheme is becoming noticeably less simple.

That started with the 3GS many years before Steve left.

The simplicity thing lives on in Jony Ives. He might even be overdoing it with
things like only one port on the Macbook.

~~~
awesomerobot
It's a bit different though, isn't it? The 3GS was a successor. The current
models share the same space.

2009: iPhone 3GS

2016: iPhone — 6S, 6S Plus, SE

~~~
jdminhbg
2009 was iPhone 3GS and 3G at least; they may even have still sold the
original at that point. Three different models for the biggest-ever consumer
electronics product doesn't seem too crazy.

~~~
milkytron
Especially when you compare them to Samsung's plethora of devices.

~~~
tracker1
I wish Samsung would coalesce their phone options to 3-4 devices, would be a
lot easier... Same for most others.

That said, I would still love a mid-range desktop option from Apple... with
actual user-upgradable hardware.

~~~
digi_owl
With Samsung it seems to be a Korean corporate culture problem. Something
about being involved with a shipped product being a way to score social points
and work towards a promotion.

That said, all those devices leads to them being willing to try things. Like
for example that model with a pico projector.

------
pbreit
Out of all the execs we've seen since, the one that seemed to come the closest
to Jobs in force of will and design sensibility was Scott Forstall (now gone,
of course). We may not like skeumorphism now but the original iOS design was
an impressive achievement.

~~~
godzillabrennus
Agreed. Apple maps was a huge screw up and if he was responsible it makes
sense why things were handled that way.

Still, iOS and Mac OS X are both so bland and ugly that it's a terrible homage
to the legacy of Jobs and his focus on tying tech to the lives of people.

Todd; Apple user interfaces look like Google and Microsoft these days. Not
like those are something you should aspire to have your product look like.

~~~
protomyth
> Agreed. Apple maps was a huge screw up and if he was responsible it makes
> sense why things were handled that way.

Given its continued screw up, I find it hard to blame him.

I do wonder if he'll ever do any OS related things from here on out. It would
be interesting to see him guiding a Linux (well I would prefer BSD) distro.

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Stubb
I'd overlook 99% of this if Apple gave a shit about the pro market instead of
obsessing over phone sales. The software is on life support or dead (Aperture)
and the hardware well behind the competition. OS X relies on a file system
nearly twenty years old…

Edit: Used to be that iOS devices drew people into the Mac ecosystem, where
the Mac HW and SW was suitable for doing real work. These days, I get the
feeling that Apple expects everyone to stay on iOS devices and begrudgingly
sells Macs as iOS development and personal productivity machines. People with
serious work to do should look elsewhere.

~~~
digi_owl
I suspect you can pin the start of when they discontinued (in classic Apple
fashion) the Xserve line. And being finalized with the into of the "trashcan"
Mac Pro.

Then again, Apple have for nearly a decade now being selling their stuff as
"lifestyle" devices, so one should not really be surprised.

------
educar
A leader is only as good as his people. And this is yet another article doing
disservice to all the people working at Apple. Steve might have given the
direction but he was hardly responsible for every idea that came out of Apple.
The logic goes like - if something good happened, it was steve's genius. If
something bad happened, it was despite his genius. For the last 4 years, Tim
has been managing the company and growing it incredibly well.

Next what sundar is personally responsible for the really silly notes app that
came out recently (I even forgot it's name)?

~~~
ThomPete
Apples problem is not the lack of ideas or talent, but the lack of an ability
to prioritize which ones to focus on.

That was Steves talent, thats what they are lacking today.

~~~
educar
I don't doubt that. I am sure priorities can be set by one man. But the
article talks about he is the main driver for simplicity in the products.
Which is an design/engineering outcome. I think the simplicity of apple
products is the work of lots of people and not one man.

~~~
ThomPete
He was the main recognizer of it's value to build products which were easy to
sell.

It's hard to find many other CEO's who were so articulate as to why they
believed what they did would work and turned out to be right.

He was wrong about many things too, but if it wasn't for him apples wouldn't
have made the product choices they did despite what everyone else was doing.

------
Animats
It's time for a new form factor to shake up the industry. Mobile devices are
getting far too bulky.

See Cicret's wristband.[1] This is a revolutionary concept. The video is fake.
But there are people plugging away to make it real.

They're going to have the battery life problem from hell, projecting that
image in daylight. As it gets closer to reality, it's getting bulkier. But
they claim they need to raise $500K, and are 94% of the way there.

This might be the next Pebble. Or the next uBeam. It may be a hoax. But it's a
good concept.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J7GpVQCfms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J7GpVQCfms)
[2] [https://cicret.com](https://cicret.com)

~~~
chillacy
This looks like it enables even more complex UI interactions, even if the
device looks simpler. Also, this is going to suck on those with darker skin.

~~~
Animats
It might work better on darker skin. You need more projector power, but you
get better contrast.

------
Animats
Apple, like Rolex, may not need a Next Big Thing. Rolex still sells their
1950s Rolex Submariner. It costs over 10x as much in constant dollars now,
since it's a status symbol rather than a useful tool for divers.

~~~
petra
How do companies in the status symbol business disrupt each other ? There must
have been some such cases.

~~~
Animats
Happens occasionally in the fashion industry. Coco Chanel invented sportswear.
Mary Quant invented the miniskirt.

------
askafriend
I should save this article for when AAPL posts another record quarter.

~~~
ben_jones
It's kind of like when you're trash talking in sports and the other team just
stands there and points to the scoreboard with a 100 point lead.

 _Posted from a 2015 Mac Book Pro_

~~~
wavefunction
Their recent OSX releases have been terrible.

Mavericks and even Yosemite caused my 2012 Mac Book Pros to crash randomly.
And then stall on restart. If Apple has 100 pts on the board, they don't
deserve them.

~~~
astrange
File a bug!

[http://bugreporter.apple.com](http://bugreporter.apple.com)

------
ozten
I see confirmation bias in this post. The author ignores product lines under
Steve Job's tenure such as the iMac line.

The iMac G3 celebrated 13 various configurations for example.

------
Zigurd
How much of Apple was Steve Jobs's love of simplicity and iron will not to
release half-baked products, and how much was the ability to build things in
ways inaccessible to other manufacturers? To say it is all simplicity is like
finding Intel's advantages all in the chip designs and none in the fabs.

------
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I swear news organizations have this type of article in their back pocket
whenever they need a boost in traffic. "Apple is going out of business" seems
to be something I see from multiple different organizations every few months.
And I have yet to see an article with any interesting commentary.

------
notadoc
The narrative has turned sharply against Apple

~~~
zepto
Nope. The guardian had been posting anti-Apple pieces for years, as have large
sections of the tech press.

~~~
notadoc
Meanwhile, most Apple services are down.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2016/06/02/apple-
con...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2016/06/02/apple-confirms-app-
store-itunes-icloud-services-all-down/#6c53dc293d97)

~~~
zepto
If you think that is something to do with Steve Jobs being gone, you are
forgetting how much worse their services were during his tenure.

------
cletus
I'm an Apple fan (having converted with the 2010 Macbook Air and the iPhone 4)
and I am really frustrated by Apple's products these days:

\- I honestly don't think the Watch is anything more than a niche product
because there's really no compelling use case for it. Having another device to
charge just to have a notification screen seems like a lot to pay $500+ for;

\- Force Touch is (IMHO) a disaster. Steve Jobs' Apple steadfastly refused to
have more than one button on the Mac mouse. I think this is a rare case where
Jobs was proven wrong as the right click is just too useful. But Force Touch
adds weight to the phone and cost and doesn't have a compelling use. What's
worse is that there is zero discoverability.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone 7 drops this feature after the
5SE didn't have it and that would be quite an admission of failure.

\- I'm constantly frustrated by Apple's apparent distaste for the Macbook Air
line. When the 12" Macbook came out I thought this was the end of the line for
the Air and that makes me sad as, to me, the Macbook is too much of a
compromise (horrible keyboard, no feedback on the trackpad, too low power CPU,
only one port which is also for power). The Macbook proved they could release
an Air with a retina display if they wanted to. They clearly don't want to.

I honestly don't get Apple's hate for the Macbook Air.

\- Steve Jobs famously called touch displays on laptops terrible from an
ergonomic point of view. I agreed then and nothing has changed my mind. Every
time I try one of these devices (eg iPad Pro with a keyboard), I wonder why
anyone would want to lift their hand from the keyboard to touch something on
the screen. The 13" iPad Pro has other things going for it but I just don't
see an iPad as ever being a replacement for a laptop for most people. And I
say this who has owned 5 iPads (including the latest 9.7" iPad Pro).

\- I kept my iPhone 5 for 3 years because I hated the larger phones. I finally
relented and bought the 6S under protest. Apple finally relented and released
the 5SE, which I take as correcting a mistake. Some people may want larger
phones. It's fine to have those. But many people don't. I expect the 5SE form
factor to be a big seller for Apple.

Tim Cook seems to be a great logistics man and I think was largely responsible
for building the supply chain that could build 200M+ devices a year. This
includes innovations in how Apple used their cash hoard as vendor finance to
get exclusive supply for awhile and cut their costs in the long term.

But Cook just isn't the visionary that Jobs was (who is?) and Apple's much
vaunted simplicity does seem to have at least partially fallen by the wayside.

~~~
Yhippa
I don't like Force Touch on my MacBook Pro. I loved being able to lightly tap
on the touchpad instead of having to click. I don't get why this was worth
having more levels of gradation in fast-forwarding through videos.

~~~
glhaynes
Just in case you weren't aware: you can turn off Force Touch and turn on "Tap
to click" in System Preferences > Trackpad.

