

Why Apple is the cross-section of great hardware, design and shitty software - meteorash
https://medium.com/dear-blank/4219ae7ce6a4

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GeneralMaximus
> And where does Apple store these pictures? As a massive proprietary lump of
> data that is illegible to any other software or life form.

Go to ~/Pictures, right click the iPhoto Library, click "Show Package
Contents". Suddenly, photos!

I agree with the poster, though. From a purely technical POV, Apple's software
is pretty bad. I have been using OS X since 2008, and it's much worse than
Linux and Windows when it comes to stability and performance. It regularly
uses much more memory than either OS, behaves badly under load, occasionally
freezes up when connecting to external devices, takes more time to respond to
certain events, is extremely hard to customize etc. iTunes is so bad that I
prefer using almost anything else to play my music. Safari is an okay browser
at best; it certainly can't compete with either Firefox or Chrome.

I'm able to overlook all these technical issues because OS X is marginally
better designed than Windows and Linux, does most of what I need to do without
me having to jump through hoops, gives me great battery life, allows be to do
an astounding number of basic computing tasks right out of the box[1], and
runs all the software I need it to run. The fact that the OS X UI has remained
functionally the same for _over a decade_ is also a plus. I use OS X, but very
little of Apple's other software. I browse the web using Firefox, listen to
music using Clementine, use iTerm as my terminal, Google Docs for documents,
Gmail for email, etc.

I would switch to Linux in a heartbeat, but I feel the userland changes far
too much far too often. At 23, I'm far too old for that.

\---

[1] These include cropping pictures, annotating PDFs, slicing video, recording
my screen, recording video or voice, syncinc contacts and calendars, looking
up words in a dictionary, reading mail, importing pictures from a digital
camera, backing up my files, viewing (but not editing) ODF, XLSX, DOCX, etc.
It even includes an on-line partitioning tool (Disk Utility), and a graphing
calculator (Grapher).

~~~
xenophanes
The OS is supposed to use memory. That's what it's for: to be used. Using
memory is a feature, not a bug. Let the OS manage memory instead of demanding
a lot should be left in an used state.

You also didn't make much effort to argue your points. Consider Safari vs
Chrome. Safari has better UI IMO, and Chrome is a fork of Safari's internals.
So what's better about Chrome on Mac? I use both regularly. Chrome's adblock
works better but it's not obvious what else is better and you didn't tell me.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Saying Chrome is a fork of Safari as if it's a bad thing and the only word on
the subject is a bit disingenuous. Safari is built on WebKit which is built on
KHTML (which predates Apple having their own browser). Chrome was also built
on WebKit but Google has now forked it themselves into Blink which will be
used by Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Iron, etc so they don't have to deal with
Apple while improving the code.

As for Safari itself, I don't know about Mac OS X, but I know it was a
disaster on Windows. But then, Apple has always only barely been able to
develop Windows software. That's one of the reasons Apple abandoned it. iTunes
it seems Apple only develops on Windows because they have to and they do as
little as possible with it, hence the slow, custom UI that violates all
Windows UI guidelines.

~~~
xenophanes
I didn't say it's a bad thing to fork, I said it requires further explanation
how a fork -- with worse UI imo -- is better. Worse UI and similar internals
-- where is the way better part?

I don't wish to defend windows safari, only mac.

~~~
JohnTHaller
It's also worth pointing out that Safari's UI is not open source and not part
of WebKit. Additionally, I find Chrome's UI (which is open source) superior to
Safari, but it's subjective, of course.

------
duskwuff
You're deferring a lot of ideas in this essay ("enough said", "I'll leave that
for another day", etc.) without actually going in depth on anything, and that
leaves a lot of your gripes sounding really shallow. Pick one topic and stick
to it.

~~~
meteorash
yes, my point here is not to argue the pros/cons of flat design or rant about
the many different weird errors Xcode spews out. there is enough literature
out there detailing those.

my topic is merely to highlight that major software coming out from Apple are
either buggy or stale.

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danieldk
This article contains little support for the statements it makes. I also don't
agree that their software is shitty. iOS may have been a bit stale, but I have
two family members (my mother and grandma), who had never used a computer
before and could use an iDevice without much instruction. iOS < 7 was very
simple and logical (I haven't made my mind up about 7 yet) and the
applications (iPhoto, iMovie et al.) work well and are very usable for a non-
expert users (who don't care what iPhoto stores its metadata in).

I think the more serious problem that Apple should solve is the hiccups in
their cloud services. A significant (but different) subset of my iTunes Match
songs is not playable most of the times. iMessage messages arrive in a more or
less random order on random devices. Facetime calls come in on some devices,
but not others. Most of my iOS wielding friends/family (and myself) have
switched to other services. Facebook Chat works great, Skype is acceptable for
video calling.

Another threat is the lack of differentiation in their product portfolio. So
far, uniformity worked well for them, but some people switch to platforms to
get a larger (phone) screen, a better camera, a cheaper phone, etc.

------
xenophanes
> Apple has to put its cash to work

Throwing cash at it does not make better software. See the Mythical Man Month.
Or don't. But Apple is aware of it.

I do not agree Apple's software is "shitty", but there is certainly room for
improvement. But the bottleneck isn't cash (nor is the bottleneck desire. they
want to improve things and are working on it).

~~~
gbog
Would be interesting to try to imagine where the bottlenecks are, because I
think we can suppose there are some bottlenecks.

Maybe Apple locked itself when locking in its users?

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TheZenPsycho
1\. you _can_ switch between apps and close them with gestures. That's been
available for several versions now. It's just that's a stupid idea so nobody
does it.

2\. I use "contacts" all the time.

3\. So what if other phones had flat design? now Apple has it. It's not a mark
against Apple if they fail to make you orgasm with delight with every feature
they add. Sometimes it's good enough if the phone just works without having to
monkey with customisation options for days.

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galvanist
Not worth your time. At all.

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eonil
1 day old, has no comment, but only this shitty post.

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r0h1n
tl;dr - dude opens Medium account -> wonders what topic to write on -> picks
Apple cos he owns an iPod, iPhone and Macbook -> realizes & rehashes what most
people have known for years -> that Apple's hardware is world class, iTunes is
bloated and iOS is a walled-garden and late-comer to flat UI.

~~~
meteorash
you mistake your understanding to be that of the general public as well. it is
an opinion piece and the idea is to get common people to realize and think
about what you may have "known for years".

~~~
charlesism
Such as the difference between "intersection" and "cross section."

I know it's a cheap shot, but it strikes me as carelessness to not even get
the title right.

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supercoder
Go back to Windows.

