I think it's pretty telling that there are lots of letters like this from Microsoft, but almost none from Apple.
I can't imagine someone from Apple writing a letter like this to Jobs and still working at Apple.
I can't imagine someone from Apple writing a letter like this to Jobs and still working at Apple.
> This document is from Comes v. Microsoft (2007).]
> Apple executive Eddy Cue sent an email in January 2011 to CEO Tim Cook... “I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one,” Cue wrote in the email, which forwarded an article written by a reporter that switched from the iPad to a 7-inch Samsung tablet. “I tend to agree with many of the comments below,” Cue wrote.
> The email was introduced Friday during Samsung’s cross-examination of iOS chief Scott Forstall, who was among the recipients of Cue’s email. Forstall testified that Cue also used a 7-inch Galaxy Tab at some point... Steve Jobs was an outspoken critic of such tablets, saying that one would only be practical if it came with sandpaper to make people’s fingers smaller.
https://allthingsd.com/20120803/apples-eddy-cue-saw-market-f...
> I expressed this to Steve [Jobs] several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time
https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/apple/a397538/apples-steve-j...
Many people thought they'd be doomed without Jobs but they've seemingly been doing just fine still (ignoring many valid criticisms here, of course, but talking about the general population).
Which I really find fascinating. Aside from their arguably better stance on privacy, I don't really find there's much at all to love about Apple products beyond they look quite nice, generally. In fact I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about.
Is that really all there is to it? The consistency of aesthetic is enough to win? I've always found it to be an interesting question, why they continue to be so successful.
The disconnect between the two worlds "people who use Apple products" and "people who think a day or so of your life is a reasonable amount of time to install an app that copies files over a network" is, well there's no way to cross that gap. And then you describe what Apple does as "dumbing down", for dumb people. People who don't want to care that SyncThing is written in Go instead of Java which means they can't access the Android API to write to an SD Card and the docs lead to a Github issue with 128 comments explaining why they aren't going to fix it. People who give their iCloud account login and Apple has their photos? Dumb people.
[I know people choose SyncThing to keep control locally and that often comes at a cost of more trouble, more effort. It's illustrative of very different worlds, that's all].
And then eventually, I just... got over it. There were other things I'd rather spend my finite energy on. I wanted my phone to do phone things and do them well, and without me having to think about it.
I've put all that customization energy into my Linux VM, i.e. my programming environment. Time spent dicking around there always teaches me something and results in a somewhat more efficient setup. Time spent playing with an Android shell or launcher or icon theme or whatever was just...sunk time.
This hasn't been my experience
> Stock Android is just as mature and capable as ios
It's fine, but everything is just (imo) a little bit less cohesive and polished, and then there's the Google spyware, a shorter lifetime of updates, etc. And then if you aren't going off the beaten path and customizing stuff anyway, what are you actually gaining in exchange for those downsides?
I would add that when I had an Android phone I used the exact same strategies for transferring files.
It honestly sounds like you're getting upset about this relative to how you think it should work, and not relative to an actual practical barrier, so I'm going to withdraw from the conversation here
Typical irritating Apple fan response - "It's not the device, it's your fault for not using the device as Apple intended.
Everyone knows that Apple locks down its devices to only work well within its eco system. But many don't like the fact that it doesn't work as well as with other devices, and this is where Android (and other mobile OS) shine over ios. With less than 50% marketshare, Apple device users do often run into this problem with others who have a non-Apple device.
- Cheaper. You can get great cheap android based photos from a lot of vendors
- Free app / games. You can sideload anything. You can find free really indie unique apps/games .
- Just using a cellphone means you are tracked. Murder someone with your phone and they will be able to track you. Apple collects data on you. I don't like it but accept that I am being spied on on any phone.
The comparison is more like google drive, or whatever MS's version of that is now. At that point the distinction seems relatively minor to me.
If you take it more like "why do so many devs use macOS when they could have open source fully customisable Linux/BSD" which is in some ways their real "surprising" success given that they are more expensive and less customisable, the answer falls out in every HN thread about Apple - they build things which let people get on with their work. People get fed up of fighting suspend mode or wifi config or high-DPI displays or sound drivers or web video or breaking upgrades or regularly needing to edit config files to keep things basically working, and Apple makes all that go away. And that increasingly applies to Microsoft/Windows, people on HN often say things like "Win 10 ads in the start menu and telemetry is the last straw, I bought a Mac" or "I'm fed up of Windows update reboots interrupting me, I bought an M1 laptop", but they don't say nearly as much "I use macOS for the consistency of UI aesthetic". [Although people do say things like that about choosing iOS instead of Android]
Syncthing would compare to Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, but it's the ecosystem and developer attitude towards users that I'm pointing to, not the file sync part. Apple walk the fine line between taking options away vs forcing you to deal with plumbing, easily well enough to keep their niche market share. "I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about." - including plenty of tech users who don't care.
If you want to run the normal CLI-with-a-web-server Syncthing on Android, sure you could do that... but you could also much better serve your time by just having the Syncthing app with a native Android GUI with it. The day-project turns into a 5-minute project.
Us programmers want to believe that technology is enough. That just because because our implantation is technically superior in x, y and z metrics, consumers should be flocking to our solutions. But that’s not good enough. We have to get the technology right, and we have to make the product a joy to use.
As you said, there is a real disconnect between technical people and users. User-centered design tends to be treated with a kind of hostility. It’s often viewed as “dumbing down” rather than making the product better. I’m not sure why this disconnect exists, but until we close it, customers will continue to flock to closed ecosystem solutions.
1) Landscape-shifting new product categories
2) Holistic, "scenario"-driven product design (as the author was advocating for)
#1 mostly died with Jobs, imo. But #2 seems to still have deep cultural roots at the company. They don't think in terms of component parts (at the hardware, software, UI, or any other level). They think in terms of making a device that a person can use for things they care about. They start from the top and work downward, everything else serving that ultimate end. Microsoft still doesn't do this, Google still doesn't do this.
That was enough on its own, but now 14 years of investing iPhone profits have added "sheer technical excellence" to the equation, giving them an additional edge.
Those are more advantageous features in smartphones than they are in desktop.
The products are 'good' but not that much better from a feature/function perspective. They look a little cleaner, nicer, but it's not really features that make them better.
Every employee rants, and thinks that 'the thing they are working on' is really important, and it's common that people think that the company has 'lost it's way' with this or that.
The fact is, the 'speed' of the file system on mac and windows isn't very relevant. It works, it's fast enough.
More paradoxically, the Windows UI's are a total confusing mess, always have been, and yet they've dominated on desktop forever.
Apple understands that technology is not enough. If you want consumers to want to use your products, you have to get the technology right, and you have to make the product a joy to use.
Most of us in this industry get the technology right, but treat the consumer joy (aka, amazing UX) as completely optional.
Unfortunately our industry is so metric-based, that we’re unwilling to make investments in intangibles like UX.
Or put in other words, metric-based was awesome, but then we decided to focus on wrong metrics.
Are you implying that there would have been reprisal? Because this whole thing happened just a couple years before a notorious incident where Jobs walked into a meeting and asked the Macbook team why the laptops were so inferior to iPads. He was notoriously critical of their own products.