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Comment by delinka | Hacker News Reader

Dear Tim,

Please focus on Mac hardware. Please focus on giving me the hardware tools to work and play on the macOS platform. Continue improving your mobile devices. Consider adding and improving only those things that will continue to make my business and leisure tasks smoother, simpler, and more enjoyable.

I'd rather you didn't take focus from the things you've traditionally done well to do something that's never been in your wheelhouse. If you want to get involved with automobiles, work with the industry to improve my life while I'm riding along in the autonomous vehicle, but please don't try to build the autonomous vehicle. I'd prefer you wait until the market is saturated with terrible implementations so you can learn from others' mistakes and come along with a much-improved offering.

But for now, just give me and my fellows Macs we can depend on for everything, a reliable mobile experience that doesn't throw out the habits we gained on the previous iteration, and the tools to make great software for your platforms.

--d

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Reminds me of this classic comment on Macrumors when the iPod launched [1]:

Sounds very revolutionary to me. :mad:

hey - heres an idea Apple - rather than enter the world of gimmicks and toys, why dont you spend a little more time sorting out your pathetically expensive and crap server line up? :mad: or are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm? :mad:

[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...

Well, that guy was right to be worried. Apple made extremely successful consumer products, but where are their servers? You could rightly argue that it's better for apple to focus on other stuff than servers, but it most definitely wasn't better for the people who depended on their server hardware and software.

Didn't people said the same thing about iPhone, that Apple would fail if they enter in the already oversaturated phone market and they should stick with what they do best instead?

I'm sure people said negative things about Pippin, iTunes Ping and other products as well. Beware of survival bias.

Indeed. Can't wait to look back at this thread 10 years from now.

The only difference is Jobs and Cook

Tim wasn't CEO when the iPod launched.

As a fellow Mac user, I get it. Especially after the (to put it lightly) dry spell that was 2016, I understand wanting Apple to focus on the Mac and on making their current devices best-of-breed. And given what we just saw at WWDC, I'm inclined to think they're moving in that direction again.

But the way Tim is framing this, they're looking at it as an AI problem. He doesn't go into the feel of driving or the wonderfully bad user interfaces of current cars, he describes it as "the mother of all AI projects." So while this is "something that's never been in [their] wheelhouse", they're approaching it from the AI side. And AI, given WWDC, is something they are very much trying to make their wheelhouse. And it sounds like they're doing it in a very Apple-like way: work on the hardest problem they can, then take what they've learned and apply it.

Even if they don't make a car, or even a driving platform they can sell, the AI things they'll learn will show up in Siri, iOS, and everywhere else.

So yeah, I want them to focus on Mac hardware. But I also want them to learn and grow. And I think they might, might, be starting to do both.

Did we watch the same WWDC? macOS is in maintenance mode no mater how they try to mask it and still somehow I keep experiencing more bugs with every release. At least they are going to update their hardware this time around huh? Is that what passes for "being focused on macs" these days? Last year was like they completely forgot about us, this year they are throwing us breadcrumps.

EDIT: Since I keep getting the same replies, I'm gonna edit it here too:

1. When you are in maintenance mode and you still manage to introduce more bugs than you are fixing then your are doing something wrong (usually that's a result of limiting the budget of a department and as a consequence hiring less experienced developers)

2. Every new feature the last few years has been ported from iOS and without much care. I still can't believe they have yet to make Siri and Spotlight one unified product (at least make Spotlight more powerful, I can't even set a timer with it).

And to add to this, being in maintenance mode doesn't have immediate effects. If Apple continues like this somewhere down the line macOS is gonna end up quite behind (and a big mess due to points 1. and 2.)

I prefer macOS being in maintenance mode instead of becoming bloated with new but unimportant features especially given the 16 GB limit. The lack of hardware refreshes wouldn't have been horrible if Apple's hardware was easily upgradable like pre-retina models

"... given the 16 GB limit." Can you explain that? I mean, as a 64bit operation system, that doesn't jive. Are you talking about physical memory in machines that are being sold now? I've swapped out tons of memory and never heard about this. - this isn't a jab either. I seriously am not sure what you mean. (no insult intended)

Its limited because they are using low power LPDDR3 ram, which its limited to 16GB. LPDDR4 doesn't have this limit, but isn't supported by intel on Kabylake.

https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/macbook-pro-16gb-32gb-ram/

> "... given the 16 GB limit." Can you explain that?

They are referring to the fact that Apple portables ship with soldered memory and max out at 16GB while PC manufacturers are shipping systems which support 32 and even 64GB in laptop/mobile workstation form factor.

So they are referring to the physical memory (RAM) limit of Apple devices, not any logical limitations of the OS.

You can't purchase a laptop from apple with more than 16GB of RAM, and what you get is soldered to the motherboard anyway.

most likely the 16GB limit on the Macbook Pro

Couldn't disagree more. The macOS it its current iteration is a platform. With that platform you have a stack. Within that stack you support unward / downward functions depending on what you want. Just take a look at what Tridium does with their Niagara AX automation platform and the world of IoT and energy and you'll see what Apple most likely is iterating towards. https://www.tridium.com/en/products-services/building-automa...

a new file system is a pretty big deal (and a non-trivial one at that, just ask Microsoft). But I'm wondering what features you are want out of MacOS?

What's so bad about maintenance mode? Do we really need a major new OS revision every year!? An OS is a platform, it's not a product of its own.

> What's so bad about maintenance mode? Do we really need a major new OS revision every year!?

That's a false dichotomy. Do you really believe they are the only options?

Luckily Apple is ignoring the false dichotomy and giving us reasonable OS updates every year.

I don't need a new OS, but modernizing AppKit and other frameworks would be a godsend!

>But the way Tim is framing this, they're looking at it as an AI problem. He doesn't go into the feel of driving or the wonderfully bad user interfaces of current cars, he describes it as "the mother of all AI projects." So while this is "something that's never been in [their] wheelhouse", they're approaching it from the AI side. And AI, given WWDC, is something they are very much trying to make their wheelhouse.

I agree, but I think their approach is flawed. A car is more than an AI with wheels and a seat. Tons and tons of engineering expertise goes into making a roadworthy car, and even more goes into making a truly good car.

Apple quite simply does not have automotive engineering experience, and the jump from computers to iPhones pales in comparison to the jump from consumer electronics to automobiles.

Cook has never struck me as a man with a vision. I think this is just Keeping up with the Joneses.

> I agree, but I think their approach is flawed. A car is more than an AI with wheels and a seat. Tons and tons of engineering expertise goes into making a roadworthy car, and even more goes into making a truly good car. Apple quite simply does not have automotive engineering experience, and the jump from computers to iPhones pales in comparison to the jump from consumer electronics to automobiles.

I agree with you, and I think Cook and Apple do to! The article just says they're focusing on "an autonomous system." When asked if they were going to commit to a full automobile:

> "We’ll see where it takes us," Cook said. "We’re not really saying from a product point of view what we will do."

In other words, they're not making a car, just the AI for it.

Granted, Apple rarely makes 'components'; they make Products. It doesn't really jive with the Apple we know to make part of something without making the _whole_ thing. But I think these comments from Cook are telegraphing that they are--at least for right now--just making a component.

edit to clarify: Based on this and previous rumors, I think the "Apple Car" project (that totally existed, no joke!) has been refocused on the autonomous AI project. Cook and Mansfield realized that a car was big and complicated, and the market was inevitably moving toward self-driving cars. In realizing that without the self-driving component, they wouldn't have a car at all, they refocused the project to see if they could even build such a component. Once they have that, they'll go from there.

It's a seductive argument, but how much of the AI R&D in an autonomous car would be 1: truly unique 2: transferrable to other projects?

It seems to me domestic/concierge/robotic/secure IoT AI is a much bigger and uncontested market.

What specifically does building an automotive AI give Apple that a more general robotics and/or concierge AI project doesn't?

+1 - AI is becoming fundamental to our computing experiences whether it's in a car, on your phone, or on your desktop. Good AI is probably the next big leap in usefulness on any device, whether it's a car or a desktop. So it makes sense for Apple to focus on it now, in order to make their devices better in the future. That said, Apple is big enough to have multiple focus areas, just because this is a focus to them doesn't mean they don't have other teams properly focusing on the Mac or iOS.

fundamental <--- not true. It's becoming an enabler, yes. Fundamental, no. Plus AI is terribly subjective, unfortunately. It's neither thought producing or augmentative to the process - but that's my OWN 2c on it. However, it _is_ important from an enabler for technology to be more "natural" to the way we interact with our technology.

Dear 'delinka,

We regret to inform you, but you are a part of a market niche known as "power users". That niche is but a small part of our customer base, and like all other big companies in the industry, we no longer care about you.

Don't be sad about gradually losing useful tools - enjoy the new, shiny toys instead.

Sincerely,

Apple.

Many of the current "power users" are also "trend setters". If those users start switching away from Apple then it's going to be a big hit to Apple's brand value (and their ability to sell middling products and high prices).

I used to think this was true in the tech world, but I don't think it is, at least not in the last 10-15 years. If power users were trendsetters, there'd be a lot more people running desktop Linux these days. I think the time in which the most dedicated and enthusiastic computer users reflected the leading edge of the rest of the market is long gone, unfortunately.

However, I do think turning off power users is a great way for the company to shoot itself in the foot when it comes to recruitment. They really depend on a certain degree of enthusiasm to get the kind of engineering talent they want to get, much more so than money or the work environment or perqs. If they no longer inspire that enthusiasm in as many people, it'll make it that much more difficult to bring good people together to do whatever they want to do next. Unfortunately the general trend seems to be a long, slow transition from being the BMW of the computer industry to being the Chipotle of the tech industry. I'm sure all the metrics favor being Chipotle (and gosh do they love metrics), but that doesn't do anything to help make Chipotle a desirable place to work at that draws all the best talent.

This is a mantra that's been repeated whenever "pro users" feel like Apple is neglecting them, but there isn't actually any evidence that this is true. It may have been true at one point in the 90s, when Apple's customer base was much smaller, but today it sounds more like a jilted ex trying to guilt someone back into a relationship.

I'm still waiting to see this effect in action from when Apple supposedly threw away the Final Cut Pro 7 userbase over night. That was back in 2011, 6 years should have been plenty of time to see this play out. Or perhaps the movers and shakers in Hollywood don't have as much influence as they thought.

I disagree. I naturally ask advise from people who I know to have extensive domain experience. That is, I ask my plumber buddy about the best water heater to buy. I ask my realtor buddy, where are the homes selling the most. and so on.

I get asked all the time about buying laptops. I used to recommend Apple, but it has become very difficult to do so for a myriad of reasons. Lately, I have found that most people can get by with a chrome book after looking at their requirements.

Can you explain a bit further? MacBooks have always been premium laptops. Are you saying low end laptops are able to serve basic needs better than a few years ago? I agree with that, and take it to be a sign of a mature market, not a failing of Apple's.

Are they though? Not saying you're wrong, but that's a giant assumption without data to back it up. That Mac sales are still up year over year suggests to me that the complaints of pro users (which lets face it, date back to 2010, when the cheesegrater Mac Pro was getting long in the tooth) have had little or no impact on sales.

"all other" ? Dell does great work with Linux on some XPS laptops. Ubuntu may not be what we want, but the foundation is set for other distros.

Rest assured that you are not losing pro tools, instead you are getting new ones, we work dilligently to provide you with the best Uber like cars so you can be the best Taxi.

-- Pear

> I'd rather you didn't take focus from the things you've traditionally done well to do something that never been in your wheelhouse

like how they were a computer company and then decided to go into cellphone business?

I don't get why people keep making this argument; they never strayed outside of their core computer business, they just committed genocide against buttons and added a big battery. They made a massive design innovation, not a huge technological shift.

You can say the same about automotive driving, it's still "computer business"

I dunno; Google's foray into self-driving cars made sense in part because they already had so much experience with 360-degree cameras and spatial mapping and managing international fleets of vehicles, not because they "do computers."

Apple's claim to automotive relevance seems to be the idea that they could somehow worm their way into the supply chain of ordinary car manufacturers. As in, Ford, Toyota, Tata, etc. would all have the same iDrive system. To me, this is not only hopelessly naive, but utterly contrary to Apple's consistent insistence on controlling every aspect of their ecosystem.

This pivot does not seem like a savvy business move to me. It seems like they see a big market and want to be part of it regardless of their actual...ugh...synergies.

Exactly. As an Apple user and fan since the late 80s, 2007 was when it all went to hell.

You mean when Apple stopped being a hardware company and started being a media / services company?

Nobody knows what Apple is anymore, least of all Tim Cook.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or if you are being genuine here. I'm taking it as sarcasm. If so well done.

Apple has hundreds of billions of dollars. They can focus on more than a few products. It's natural that they look into AI.

It's 100% genuine. Obviously Apple has been very successful following this path, but I'm much less happy with Apple 2017 than I was with Apple 2007, and it all stems from the iPhone.

In an alternate universe where Apple doesn't launch the iPhone, do you think the company would still be nearly as relevant in 2017? Getting annoyed at Apple for embracing mobile in 2007 is a fools game - if they hadn't made the iPhone, one of their competitors would have gotten close enough eventually and drastically reduced Apple's stature in the industry. Complaints like these remind of the Mac OS 9 holdouts when OS X was so obviously the future.

The comparison to Mac OS 9 makes no sense. Apple was dying in the late 90s. The OS was extremely obsolete and the whole company was on the verge of falling over. They needed a big change to survive, and that was OS X, which suddenly gave them a modern OS and made their computers popular in many segments which had previously completely ignored them.

Apple was doing just fine in 2007. OS X was in great shape. They had recently transitioned from the faltering PowerPC CPUs to x86, which revitalized their hardware offerings and opened up a world of new possibilities for users to dual-boot or virtualize other OSes. Their market share was pretty solid, and their share of PC profits was quite high.

You say "stature in the industry" as if there's a single "the industry" that encompasses both PCs and phones. If Apple hadn't done the iPhone then maybe Microsoft or Nokia would have done better, but so what? That wouldn't affect Apple in the PC market. Wikipedia says the top five PC makers are Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus, and Apple, and as far as I know Apple is the only one with a substantial smartphone business.

Of course Apple wouldn't be nearly as relevant overall in a world where they never produced the iPhone. I don't care about that. I see no reason why the Mac wouldn't be about as relevant in the personal computing space, which is what I care about.

In any case, I'm not just annoyed at the existence of the iPhone, but the nature of it. If the iPhone had been a Mac-like open platform instead of this walled garden bullshit, all of my complaints would go away. I have no problem with mobile per se, I have a problem with pervasive vendor-controlled code signing, not getting root on my own devices, etc.

> Of course Apple wouldn't be nearly as relevant overall in a world where they never produced the iPhone. I don't care about that. I see no reason why the Mac wouldn't be about as relevant in the personal computing space, which is what I care about.

Most of Apple's APIs and tools run on and build for both Mac and iPhone. Without the iPhone, Apple would have to pay for that from just what they made from the Mac, so improvements to macOS would come slower than they do now.

The pace of Apple's API improvements don't seem to be particularly related to their cash flow, and the pace of improvement on the Mac has not noticeably increased since 2007 (I'd argue it has actually decreased) so I don't buy this.

    > improvements to macOS would come slower than they do now.

I'm starting to wonder how many people here even remember what Apple was like 10 years ago. The way macOS has "improved" under Tim I think "the slower, the better". One of the best WWDC moments this year was when Tim announced a maintenance release.

The only real improvements I'd suggest is switching back to NVIDIA across their entire product line and offering 32 and 64GB in MBP. I kind of struggle to think what else they could improve. Do you have any concrete suggestions?

I do agree that autonomous cars are a money pit not worth pursuing right now.

Faster processors would be nice. The current gen macbook pro is appallingly slow for the price.

Faster processors do not exist. The current gen MBP already uses the latest Kaby Lake chips.

Are you insinuating that they can't do both? They're certainly working on the things that you're asking for. Maybe not at the pace and direction that you personally want but they're not stagnating, either. They've already said they'll have a new Mac Pro out next year. They've introduced a new iMac Pro. They're investing heavily into AR/VR.

They're big enough to do a lot of different things. It's like asking Microsoft to focus on Windows and Surface instead of putting in effort into their Hololens. Again, why can't they do both?

> Are you insinuating that they can't do both?

Well they certainly aren't doing both at the moment. All of the Mac hardware updates have been so heavily "form over function" that they aren't very appealing to people that just need to get shit done. My 3 year old Macbook Pro is still very fast, and since I use most of the ports on a regular basis it's arguably more useful than the new Macbook Pro.

Apple's company and team structure is very different from the more common organization model adopted by Microsoft, Google and others. It's a "functional organization", where teams and people are organized by expertise and not products as such. [1] That's why Apple, at least to the rest of us outside, seems to be struggling to make new Macs and not paying adequate attention to certain things even though it has so much cash (in other words, not being able to work on multiple things in parallel when things get tougher). It's not an easy problem to solve without making sweeping changes in how the company is organized and works. Is it frustrating for some classes of users? Of course, yes! But it cannot be wished away just by external pressure and commentary.

[1]: https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-crossroad...

I agree and will also say the structure made more sense with Jobs versus without. Not changing the structure after Jobs did not make sense, imo.

Hmm, I'm all for Apple's entry into the autonomous car sector. The more players the better in my opinion. Autonomous cars have the promise to reduce congestion, asthma rates, and lives lost to car crashes and they'll be a tremendous boon to major metropolitan areas when they're ready for full scale deployment.

Apple's the richest company in the world and it seems like they are actually focusing a bit on the MacPro and some of the other pro offerings power users need.

I'm also confident with the amount of money they have, they can certainly do both.

I don't think this needs to be a zero sum game (they can improve macOS' many problems and also work on self driving AI), but your point stands. Apple doesn't seem to care about certain classes of users.

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