Hacker News Reader

Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

Look at the mess that is Apple Home. They added it because Google and Amazon were doing it - and, that's about it. Hey, I can add some lights that I can change color to any color I want! Too bad if I want a thermostat, a doorbell, or...

Okay, what about Apple Wallet? It'd be really nice to add my digital driver's license, health insurance cards, auto insurance card, frequent shopping cards - basically make it so I don't have to carry my phone and wallet. Can I do that? Not really.

Alright, so what about their iWork suite? On second thought, forget about it. People are using Google Docs or Office 365. Next...

That's the problem with Apple software. It all feels kind of half baked and neglected. Apple built their reputation on It Just Works and now it feels like it sorta kinda works, I guess.

If Apple's software were a tenth as dazzling as their new hardware then it would be awesome. It's not even close. Their software division needs help.

View on HN

You're wrong. You can definitely add thermostats, doorbells, cameras etc. to Home (I've done it). And you can definitely add health insurance cards, frequent shopping cards, etc. to Wallet (I've done that too). Please don't state things that are just factually incorrect.

> Alright, so what about their iWork suite? On second thought, forget about it. People are using Google Docs or Office 365. Next...

For collaboration, yeah, you're stuck with what everyone uses. But considering the actual software itself, iWork is very nice in my experience. Fast, reliable, and the interface isn't a total shitshow like every other office app out there.

> I've done it

Same. I currently have a HomeKit thermostat, doorbell, and cameras in my house. Not really sure where GP is getting his info. They all work really well.

And the worst part is that their software division used to be great. Aperture was really good when it came out, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro were great. Eveh talking about iwork suite, numbers and page used to be better than they are now. Even Quicktime regressed.

It's frankly both puzzling and saddening how much Apple has lost in term of QA, user interface and vision in the last 10 years. I always feel that Tim Cook doesn't have a clue about what made Apple special and is slowly destroying it by not making sure to keep those qualities

EDIT: I do recognize Tim Cook's qualities, he is amazing at managing supply chain and apple does this better than anybody with very little impact in terms of chip shortage. He's original decision to target privacy as a marketing argument was on point (unfortunately the csam controversy kind of destroyed this) and under his tenure Apple has done tremendously well financially.

But the issue, is that Apple also benefits from its reputation and in the last few years, they've destroyed it by producing shoddy software, by having major hardware issues over multiple revisions (keyboards, staining screens)...

>Tim Cook doesn't have a clue about what made Apple special and is slowly destroying it by not making sure to keep those qualities

Well their shares have never been higher so as long as that's the metric by which a CEO's performance is judged then you can forget about Apple caring about SW QA and other such "nonsense".

Also, before Jobs passed away, Cook was Apple's supply chain mastermind so it makes sense his strengths are with the HW side of things, which, during the current silicon shortage, is an absolutely killer skillset to have, as proven by how little Apple was affected by it in comparison to other companies.

When it comes to quality SW, Cook might not be the ideal CEO for the job (like notifications on the new MBP can get hidden behind the notch; WTF, how did this pass QA?! Pretty sure Jobs would have sent them back to the drawing board) but Apple can always rely on the faithful developer base building great quality SW instead of them and then taking a 30% cut on their sales on the Apple store. Basically another win for Apple.

Oh I don't disagree with you that he is great at managing the supply chain. World class even.

The thing is, there's inertia, Apple made great products and still have a great reputation, Amazon was a great place to buy online and while it has a counterfeit problem, it's still doing great, I'm sure it's possible to find a few examples of companies that have been doing great stock wise but that are slowly eroding their reputation. It doesn't show yet in the sales, but the narrative has changed.

The thing is, look at the threads in HN, they used to be very very positive of apple and now they're much more critical. Things no longer just work. People complaining about stability issues on a mac are common. Macworld which has always tended to be extremely positive about Apple complains, Ars Tecnica too, even Daring Fireball is less overwhelmingly positive than it used to be.

Apple relies on those power users to recommend their friends to buy their stuff and I no longer recommend buying an iphone to my friends and I know I'm not the only one.

> look at the threads in HN, they used to be very very positive of apple and now they're much more critical.

Agree, but the thing is, the HN userbase is only a tiny fraction, and not representative of the entire more lucrative consumer base that Apple is targeting. I think Apple will be fine, even if it looses the super picky stickler developer HN userbase that is proficient in linux anyway.

Apple kinda stopped caring about the Mac SW quality as that's not its main cashcow anymore for a long time. iOS and app store subscriptions and fees are where the real money's at.

> notifications on the new MBP can get hidden behind the notch; WTF, how did this pass QA?!

Developer and QA team tester were using older MBPs? So it worked on their machines?

Rendered fine in the automated test?

Those all sound like terrible mistakes for a 2 trillion dollar company.

How can notifications, which appear in the upper right corner, end up behind a notch in the middle of the screen?

> Okay, what about Apple Wallet? It'd be really nice to add my digital driver's license, health insurance cards, auto insurance card, frequent shopping cards - basically make it so I don't have to carry my phone and wallet. Can I do that? Not really.

As far as I know, things like driving license need user adoption. It's getting there - https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/09/apple-announces-first...

Your comments on Apple Home are factually incorrect. I have lights, cameras, smart blinds, thermostats, temperature/humidity/air quality sensors, my eero6 router and even my Roku added into Home.

Apple Wallet also supports some forms of ID, transit cards and even vaccine certificates.

I use Apple home and want to like it, but it mostly sucks.

I think the main cause of this isn't so much Home, but the available third party hardware. I wish Apple would make a smart switch (I know that's fairly out of scope for them), but one high quality smart switch that actually worked reliably would resolve 90% of home tech issues.

Homepods are similarly bad with basic actions. I have five of them in multiple rooms. If you want to adjust the volume on all of them and say "make volume 50% everywhere" it fails. I have to whisper the command to my phone so the homepods don't hear me and then it can adjust volume on all of them.

Volume and playing on homepods generally from the phone is a shitty experience. Often the homepods lose the phone connection and then I can no longer control them from the device. Really it feels like nobody at Apple actually uses these things in their personal life.

I also have a gigabit network connection with a stupidly fast access point in a two bedroom apartment so it's not an issue of network speeds or signal.

In my experience, it's been pretty okay. Not amazing, but I can't really complain.

I've got 2 HomePods in a small apartment, and they typically work okay in what I need them to do, and automatons always work.

I sometimes have to close the app and open it again to get devices to respond IF I'm in not on my home network. Kind of annoying.

What's funny is that I've noticed that it's been better since I bought an eero 6 and added into into Home.

Most importantly, it works for my girlfriend who isn't the most keen on new technology. That's the most important part for me, rather than what I want.

I have two smart switches attached to lights (since our apartment has no overhead lighting) and after a nightmare of setting them up (probably the hardware's fault, but homekit couldn't recognize them via normal pairing method) they worked for a few months.

Randomly though they fail to work in Home and I have to manually reset them by holding in the button on the device and redo the entire process. This isn't workable at any scale (it's even annoying with just the two that I have).

It's the dearth of 3rd party hardware that I find frustrating. It's not apparent that Apple has done much to flesh out that ecosystem.

Is it Apple's job to flesh it out, or is it better if they come up with a spec for HomeKit and have third parties create devices?

It's not their job, but third parties have failed.

It'd be nice for them to make one base level device (like a smart switch) which supports most of the use cases.

I was really excited for a stereo pair of homepods but have similar issues and worse - even tho they still appear as grouped, music will often only happen on one or the other. If I was playing music from the phone, and then later ask siri to play something, it will play different music on each speaker - in a stereo pair! plus I have to shout for them to hear my command over the music, very bad experience, back to ebay they go…

Another annoying issue is with timers.

When cooking we'll tell the one in the kitchen to set a timer. Then we'll ask what time is left. If another one hears the question it yells "there are no timers set" so we have to whisper to the closer one.

Another thing that to me suggests nobody at Apple is really using these things.

what was simultaneously aggravating and hilarious was when trying to set up a stereo pair of Alexas, trying to whisper to one, and Alexa whispered right back!

I remember a funny story of a dad putting his very young kid to bed and whispering “play classical music” in order to use that feature and the Alexa screamed back at full volume “ALEXA IS HAVING TROUBLE CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET RIGHT NOW”.

> Alright, so what about their iWork suite? On second thought, forget about it. People are using Google Docs or Office 365. Next...

I'm only able to get away with it because I don't have to send anything other than PDFs to other people very often, but Apple's office-type apps are the only ones of their sort that I don't hate, aside from a few less-integrated and less-stable open source alternatives (Abiword, Gnumeric, that kind of thing—and I'm not even 100% sure those are still around). Google docs and Office 365 are terrible and I pity people who have to use them.

Are you posting from 2014 or something?

the things you complain about, in your comment, work here fine.

I thought the software division had help. In the form of many many developers making apps for the platform. What happened to them?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com