Why doesn’t Apple make its devices as carefully as it’s making Apple Park? | Hacker News Reader

Why doesn’t Apple make its devices as carefully as it’s making Apple Park?

washingtonpost.com

49 pointsmji77 comments

Who is this guy again? Some serious problems with this article that call into account the integrity of the author:

1. He makes a direct, unqualified comparison between a Windows vulnerability that allowed remote execution of code over the Internet to a macOS one that was only a local privilege escalation.

2. He mischaracterizes the macOS bug as "password-free access," when in fact you need to log in to an account to begin with. Basic miscomprehension.

3. Apple Park isn't even open yet. Who knows if it will have bugs too (spoiler: DEFINITELY). Holding it up as less buggy than other Apple product is nonsensical on its face. It is just idiotic to report they don't lavish the same attention to detail on the iPhone as they do the pizza boxes in Cafe Macs.

4. Apple has a long history of favoring the cutting edge over the tried and true. It has worked out pretty well for them. It is totally dishonest to characterize that as something new.

5. This author is part of a long history of click-baity "Apple has finally screwed things up this time" reporting that happens every single product cycle.

> Apple has a long history of favoring the cutting edge over the tried and true.

This is categorically false. Apple has always taken ideas poorly executed by other companies, learned from their mistakes, and shipped a vastly improved product built on technologies that others failed with. Their new building is practically the only exception. Even things like depth sensors on phones have been attempted by Google (project Tango) with little commercial success.

Those are “tried” but they don’t qualify as “tried and true.” Something remains cutting edge until it ultimately fails and disappears or is a success and becomes mainstream.

Your statement is trivially false. “Ideas poorly executed by other companies” are not “tried and true” ideas, by definition.

> This is categorically false.

some counterexamples: iMacs without floppy disks and with USB, MacBooks with only USB3 ports, the original iPhone, the touch bar (like it or not, it's pretty cutting edge), ...

> like it or not, it's pretty cutting edge

As with your other examples it has antecedents, just poorly executed. Acer, Microsoft ( Windows Sideshow, 2008) and Razer had all experimented with an adaptive secondary LCD.

Not to mention Lenovo carbon X that replaced the function keys with an OLED display

It wasn't limited to local access. This tweet should have got much more coverage at the time (note that ARD is Apple Remote Desktop):

https://twitter.com/unsynchronized/status/935656609140711426

"macos 10.13 bug isn't limited to root in all circumstances; via ARD, you can log in as any existing user (e.g. _applepay) and share the screen of the logged-in user. also _uucp is allowed to log in"

It was limited to local access for people using the default settings, though, since ARD is something you have to explicitly enable in the system preference.

Not that this isn't a bad thing, but it's vastly better than a remote execution exploit which is default-enabled.

I think it's worth pointing out that for #4, it's more like "cutting edge once we can wrangle an Apple experience around it". They didn't adopt NFC, quick charging, water proofing, and so on for a while after their competitors, albeit somewhat haphazardly, added those cutting edge features.

> when in fact you need to log in to an account to begin with.

Guest account is enabled by default on Macs.

I'll take this opportunity to vent.

I bought new 13" mbp w/touchbar (only the touchbar version has the most powerful CPU). From day one, the butterfly keyboard's been a pain. Most days its fine, but now and again, for hours, keystrokes aren't recognized.

I don't live anywhere near an apple store and the local authorized repair store has a) crappy online reviews and b) wanted to keep it for 2 weeks.

I flew to a country with an apple store and they were super friendly and "fixed it". One week later, the problem is back (though much less severe).

Also, my touchbar occasionally crashes (maybe once every 2-3 weeks) and I need to kill the process. It gets "stuck" on whatever the last key I press, which is fun when that happens to be reduce brightness.

Even though it's new, I've seriously considered abandoning the platform. However, when I looked, I still didn't find anything that seemed close to acceptable. I don't understand why Google doesn't turn the Pixelbook into a proper linux laptop. (XPS 13 has awful camera placement, isn't available in my region, and you can only get 16GB ram if you also spend more for a touch screen).

I feel a little better now.

Yep, I spent over $3k on my MacBook pro and I had the exact same experience. Keys stopped working consistently, brought it into the Apple Store and they cleaned it out, only to have it stop working just a few days later -- and has been getting worse.

I regret buying this laptop every day. I'm considering switching to Linux or even Windows for my next personal computer.

Windows 10 is good. Try it.

Yeah, no thanks. Last time I tried using it I was severely unimpressed. Basic things like viewing photos and previewing downloaded songs is so much more obtuse in Windows than on OS X, not to mention all the snooping Microsoft does. Explorer would even crash trying to generate a thumbnail for a corrupt photo that I wanted to delete.. so I popped the SD card into my Mac to delete it

Yep, and it's so slow. On my new desktop rig (2017, $3,5k worth of hardware) it's ridiculously slow. Opening a exporer, wait 2 seconds. Open a network drive, it might open, if you're lucky. Even mundane things like opening Adobe software or Office takes noticeably longer than on my 2014 Macbook Pro. And it's not the hardware, geekbench is in expected territory, AIDA64 benches fine. It's just somehow, slow. Feels slow, at least. And then there's the visual inconsistencies. Open the details on a network view and EVERY TAB has a different UI style (one of them going back to the early 2000's) I find that inexcusable. But hey, games, they run fine.

I've considered the surface book but it's Windows 10 S, so I'll stick to old Mac

My reply was for the parent poster who already showed an intention of trying Linux or Windows. :) . I know a lot of people here scorn Windows.

Maybe you want to take a look again. The base model comes with Windows 10 S, but can be upgraded for $30 USD to full fledged Windows 10.

Not op, but I'd prefer 7

Can't you freely upgrade to the regular Windows 10 when you buy a Surface Book ?

The saying "if you give a man a fish he eats for a day, if you teach him to fish he eats for the rest of his life" seems applicable here. Microsoft gives you a fish with Windows 10, Linux provides tackle, bait and boat.

I'm not sure I agree with that analogy, but it does bring up an interesting choice. Do you just want to buy a fish every now and then with money earned with your regular job, or do you want to spend the time learning how to use your boat, the best way to use bait and tackle according to the latest industry insights and plug the holes in your boat when they appear?

I'm not making a value-judgement either way. Different people have different needs.

I'm getting ever closer to accepting the pain of shifting my life away from Apple. Apple is becoming gimmicky and useless. On top of that, the security issues of late are like Windows XP level crap.

> I bought new 13" mbp w/touchbar (only the touchbar version has the most powerful CPU).

It is very telling of the folly of that touchbar that people feel they need to apologise for having chosen a model with that feature.

I have the 15” MBP Touchbar and think it’s the best keyboard I’ve ever had on a laptop. (And I’ve used a lot of laptops.)

I actually like the feel of the butterfly keyboard. I just don't like that it doesn't work very well.

Likewise, I have had the 13” since it was released and absolutely love the keyboard, it’s never failed me once.

I wish they’d let us ship MacBooks in to a service center and bypass the local authorized repair centre even if they had to tack on a small surge charge. I can send in an iPhone (and presumably an iPad): why not their MacBooks?

> even if they had to tack on a small surge charge

I think you meant "surcharge," but in this era of Uber, congestion pricing, and cryptomania, that is a marvelous malapropism.

Whoops! I did indeed

You can in some countries. Here in Japan, it's faster to call phone support and ship it in to the service center yourself since that's what all the authorized repair centers are just going to do anyway (none of the ones near me fix Mac hardware on-site) so you're cutting out the middle-man.

It seems that at least in Spain you can get an XPS 13 with 16GB RAM and a FullHD screen

http://www.dell.com/es/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?ref=PD_Family

The new XPS 13 has a better camera position and a good touch pad but still not a great battery. It’s close. Maybe next year.

What about a surface book?

A significant portion of Apple employees are not happy with the Apple Park campus design at all. You might have noticed a whole other "R&D" building was built on the lot, with a more traditional design. That has a story apparently.

> Gruber said that Apple's internal critics included high-level employees, and related a third-hand, unconfirmed account of Apple's senior vice-president of hardware technologies Johny Srouji refusing to work in the new facility.

> "When he was shown the floor plans, he was more or less just 'fck that, fck you, fck this, this is bullsht,'" Gruber said. "And they built his team their own building, off to the side on the campus... My understanding is that that building was built because Srouji was like, 'fuck this, my team isn't working like this.'"

https://www.dezeen.com/2017/08/10/apple-park-campus-employee...

If they were trying to get engineers to acquiesce to an office layout design that some have agued has reached its peak, I can totally see why they would say "eff that bull".

Bullpens (and open layout ala google/fb/etc) work for some kinds of teams and especially for sales and support, but probably not for engineers used to cubicles and offices. I am thrilled to see someone in leadership stick up for their team and say no!

It seems telling that in the interview where Ive refuted the criticism he said "it wasn't built for you" and then only talked about how much better the new layout was for the design team's workflow.

A lot of those criticism were even before anyone has moved in and worked inside it. I am sure Apple isn't silly to force unfavourable working condition in its Engineering department.

Afterall Steve Jobs gave a lot of thoughts into it. Right or wrong it isn't something that break a company. And I think Apple employees are quite vocal in certain areas.

Apple Park is "for us" — that is, Apple employees, for values thereof that don't include parents.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/05/16/apple_s_new_...

https://www.ped30.com/2017/12/05/apple-park-childcare-daycar...

Apple as a company is now comfortably resting on its laurels. Management is slowly atrophying. Tim Cook is an MBA with a logistics background. Jony Ive is preoccupied with building palaces. The company is now in its Steve Ballmer-Carly Fiorina moment.

You are not giving Apple enough credit here. Removing buttons, ports and features is hard and requires courage. The fewer bits there are remaining, the harder the challenge to take something out. This is what made the IphoneX a moonshot, same with the touchbar on the macbook pro.

Walk a mile in their shoes - Take a long hard look at the current apple lineup - identify a key feature for each product and then imagine how much work it would be to get rid of it. Then the extra work on top to build a dongle to add back the missing functionality.

There's a difference between bravery and just plain poor design. Removing the escape key from laptops which were popularized by developers is firmly in the latter category.

As for them resting on their laurels, the fact that Mac OS is still shipping with Python 2.6 is somewhat telling.

Huh? I'm running 10.13.2

  $ python -V
  Python 2.7.10

https://docs.python.org/3/using/mac.html This page says 10.8 ships with 2.7, too.

I'm also not sure why that matters or how it would show they're resting on their laurels?

I stand corrected. I was going by the behavior of my coworkers laptop running a recent release os Mac OS. Perhaps it was a remnant of an older third party installation.

How does this relate to the parent comment at all?

Taking risks doesn't mean that the management at Apple is not atrophying. In fact, it might be a signal that it is indeed atrophying, which explains these "bold" gambles.

I was trying to use sarcasm to vent my frustration at the death cult of simplicity and minimalism that seems to have taken root at Apple. The bicycle for the mind is missing its wheels and chain by now. Wheels were removed in a release to reduce weight, chain was removed in another release because it was determined that users could hurt themselves with it.

The sainted Ive: "I know how we work, and you don’t"

So you know how multimillionaire pampered designer auteurs work? This is presumably why you can't make a fucking laptop usable by software developers. Wanker.

Who says it is making apple park carefully? A bunch of apple teams are really mad about Apple Park not having offices. I’m really starting to believe that Bezos acquired the post to manage his PR campaign.

The adage that companies decline right after they build a massive headquarters is once again going to prove true.

Lots of legit critique here. Apple certainly has a significant list of longstanding issues to resolve with their product-line. I've been particularly frustrated with my butterfly keyboard. The feel of the keys is lovely, but the reliability has been very sketchy.

But even with all the problems lately, I still haven't seen a laptop on the market as satisfying to use as a MacBook Pro, or a mobile device as carefully designed and engineered as an iPhone.

They're still leading the industry on both fronts.

I don't have a particularly negative attitude towards Apple, but 7 years ago I was a fanboy. Now I am "meh" about their products. Too many dick decisions taken by them lately.

If there's one thing I dislike is making laptops more expensive. I'd like to see some other laptop manufacturer creating a decent touchpad like the one in the 2013 MBP (not the super sized recent ones with fake click). The touchpad is the last thing that makes Mac a must for me.

Agreed. The touchpad is the last thing that's holding me back from going back to Windows. I have played with Dell XPS, Surface Book and Surface Pro and they are still far away from my Macbook.

Not just the touchpad. The XPS camera placement is below the screen, which means people are looking up your nose. Proprietary power port? There is 1 USB-C that can be used as power...but only 1? When specced out, the price was fairly close to a MBP, which was disappointing. Reported 13-22 hours of battery life seems promising, but I feel like I've been burned on every laptop not made by Apple.

I have too many concerns about long-term build quality to buy a Surface for how much I'd be paying.

I was recently looking for a new laptop, hoping for something better (or at least save a good amount of money), but was disappointed and bought another macbook pro.

And the Surface devices are even as expensive as a similar MacBook.

I was forced to try and fix my parents HP printer on Windows and after 30 minutes I got so frustrated and upset at the dumpster fire that is 3rd party tooling, Windows drivers, and Windows "repair" utilities. People can complain and rage about Apple, but just try going back to Windows. I was able to print from my MacBook Pro within 1 minute.

I'm pretty disappointed with Apple Park, which is going to add 14,000 new commuters in a community (Cupertino) that loves Apple's property tax revenue but has refused to build any new housing and regularly sends residents to San Jose to oppose new projects near their city border. That's going to increase competition for apartments in my town, which actually tries to build housing, and increase my rent.

Rent has nearly doubled on the Peninsula in the last seven years and Apple appears to have little interest in helping the least fortunate avoid displacement, or to mitigate the displacement its own employees will cause.

Isn't it mostly just shifting existing Apple employees in Cupertino a couple miles to the new building? Regardless, it is Cupertino's choice to add more housing or not, not Apple.

It's shifting existing employees, but then new employees at other companies are going to fill the old Apple offices.

I think it's irresponsible to add that much new office space without thinking about where everyone is going to live. If you want to add it, you need to add a commensurate amount of housing. Cupertino could have denied the new office, conditioned approval on Apple building a significant amount of new housing, or chose to zone for more housing itself, instead it chose to build only office & increase rents for its own citizens and those of neighboring towns.

And what of the people who were working on the site of Apple Park before it was acquired? Apple didn't manufacture brand new land, they knocked down existing commercial buildings... and replaced most of it with green spaces, mind you.

Apple could have demanded more housing to shorten everybody's commutes.

This headline is quite the clickbait. Architecture is a five thousand year old industry. Mobile phones are not. Apple will continue to push the envelope at the risk of bizarre and difficult hardware issues. We so easily forget that cell phones are a nascent industry, barely a drop in the bucket compared to buildings.

Also, Steve Jobs was wrong about open floor plan offices. Sorry, Steve, but it turns out that without doors some of your best and brightest are turned to mush by distraction.

There's not going to be an Apple Park S next year?

Open floor plans wasn't some bold choice, large companies have been moving that way for over 10 years. Offices are great as a worker, but a huge burden for facilities--I've never had heating/cooling work properly (usually because they reconfigure the office walls, but the ducting isn't changed).

Real estate is where corporations go to die, regardless of what they were originally making.

You're saying that investing in Real Estate is a bad idea for companies? Do you have a source here? McDonalds does well in the real estate game, and hotels, etc.

It would be seriously sad if 20 years from now some other company will triumphantly move into Apple Park the way Facebook moved into the Sun Microsystems campus.

People used to complain how a desktop PC had a 24 month lifespan and now that a 4 year-old Mac Mini still works fine people think it's too old.

There's nothing wrong with using a 4-year-old Mac Mini. The thing that sucks is selling it as new, because how will it perform 4 years from now. It shouldn't be this difficult for Apple to keep up with basic spec bumps - unlike the iPhone, not every update has to be revolutionary!

I know Moore's Law is coming to an end, but it's not over. The Mac mini has a 3.5GHz dual-core i7-4578U while today for the same money you can get a 4.2GHz quad-core i7-8650U. Only double the performance.

That has less to do with Moore's Law and more to do with Apple putting underpowered hardware into its desktop products. For example new Macbook Pros have been very underpowered on day one which is why many professionals who need powerful machines for work have been complaining (basically saying Pro in the name is meaningless now as it's just a normal consumer laptop with average performance, not a powerful workhorse for professionals such as engineers and designers it used to be).

The apple campus has been 6? 7? 8? years in the making. Hardware simply can't be that long in dev.

The Apple Campus is not intended to be discarded after eighteen months of use. Your phone is.

That's part of the problem. Why are they making their phones hard to repair? That's why they last only 2 years.

> That's why they last only 2 years.

Bold statement. Care to source that claim?

If you provide a link, I'll be sure to check it out on my iPhone 5S that's had zero issues.

Because Apple knows that the majority--by far--of its customers aren't buying hardware so much as they are buying into a culture, that they are loyal to the brand, and that it would take something truly monumentally terrible to drive any appreciable fraction of them away.

They could package Dan Aykroyd's "Bag O' Glass" in a bag with their logo on it and sell billions of dollars worth.

I'm not sure if it's a culture or the perception of a culture.

Apple was always sold as the smart, high-status, creative option.

But the software is getting less and less smart.

I've been house hunting, which has involved walking around many properties taking iPhone shots of many rooms - sometimes of features like water damage or tired paintwork that need money and attention.

Photos has been busy collecting these unscenic photos into groups of memories for me.

So now I have a fine collection of images of walls and ceilings bundled up with misty homely nostalgia and decorated with the very latest clean hipster typography.

Which should be amusing, but it's actually creepy, because the subtext is that Apple's idea of how I should use my photos is completely different to my idea - and I don't get an obvious opt out from the lifestyle choices Apple is making for me.

At the same time, a feature I actually need - being able to AirDrop the photos to my iPad without jumbling up the timestamps - doesn't work.

Time is a pretty powerful force, and enough of it can be monumentally terrible. In my opinion, the most recent apple releases have been a bad signal for future performance. They're leaving behind the community at their core to focus on wider market penetration. The logical conclusion to this scenario is a race to the bottom; a good way to kill the company. Obviously, Apple has a lot of padding to buy time and make up for their screw-ups, but the trend is currently in the wrong direction if they are to maintain the brand that would enable them to sell a "Bag o Glass" with their logo on it.

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