Hacker News Reader

Comment by inetknght | Hacker News Reader

> [Apple is] probably one of the best run companies in the world.

I would argue that perhaps Apple's business side of things is arguably well-run. I personally disagree; I think that since Tim Cook has taken over, Apple's business focus is more on short-term gains instead of long-term quality.

But I would also strongly argue that their software side of things has been trending downward (especially in terms of quality) since Tim Cook took over.

View on HN

>...more on short-term gains instead of long-term quality...

Considering that Tim has been CEO for 11 1/2 years now, and things are still going incredibly well for Apple...it seems pretty hard to argue that he is too focused on the short term.

(FWIW, I mostly agree about their software quality.)

Speaking of software quality, anyone notice in Apple Music how the categories all start with Apple? Apple Dance music, Apple Country, Apple Pop... like are they trying to make it intentionally difficult for me to use my eyes to find music? I know that I'm using Apple Music... why does every category need to remind me of that while simultaneously impeding my ability to locate things alphabetically? Of course, when I use Siri I can just say "play Dance music" and it works. Hmm.

It could be worse. If you were on Android, about half of Google's 1P apps start with "Google", and about half don't, even ones that probably should (like Google Home).

Soon in supermarkets near you: the Apple Apple. Beautiful, healthy, tasty; no buttons!

Cutting it into quarters requires a special knife that costs $500

But it’s the nicest knife I own… and I’m saving the box.

I hear they even named one varietal of apple the "Macintosh"... someone must be a fan I guess.

(/s)

> anyone notice in Apple Music how the categories all start with Apple?

No-- where are you seeing this?

Almost nothing in the Apple Music app on iOS or MacOS starts with "Apple Music" for me. Only really the "Apple Music" radio stations, which is necessary to distinguish them from the generic playlists and third-party radio stations.

And what's the last revolutionary consumer technology that has come out of Apple? The original successful Macs, the iPod, the iPhone, iTunes, those were all under Jobs.

Quite the standard you’ve set there!

Watch and airpods are both rather successful products that capture about 30% industry market share every year.

M1, M2, AirPods

M chips, airpods, watch

When the iPhone was introduced , there were already 1 billion phones being sold each year. Sj said he wanted Apple to sell 10 million to capture 1% of the market.

There can’t really be anything bigger than the phone market that has 90%+ world wide penetration.

What revolutionary consumer technology has emerged since the iPhone, from any company?

The iPad

I don't know about revolutionary, but Apple's service revenue alone for 2022 was larger than the revenue of McDonald’s and Nike combined. Things can be wild runaway successes without being revolutionary.

https://finbold.com/apple-services-2022-statistics/

You might dismiss it, but for me AirPods are the biggest QOL improvement from tech since smartphones. Bluetooth headphones were atrociously hard to use before them.

apple's bluetooth experience is so refined it's practically revolutionary in general. I used to fight bluetooth mouse/keyboard problems all the damn time, I'd have keyboards that suddenly stopped responding or would repeat a key over and over again, mice that would suddenly scroll like an inch at a time, etc. The best experiences were on an Intel NUC that might only have an issue once a day or a couple times a week, but it still was occasionally temperamental and barring that every single other platform I've used ranged somewhere between "highly flaky" and "completely unusable". When it's happening multiple times per day it's just not acceptable.

even a dell latitude business laptop is something else I'd consider that should probably be close to the intel nuc level of "mostly works with minimal flakiness" but it flatly was not... and the intel NUC was extremely flaky compared to everything apple I've used. And everything besides the NUC that used Intel wireless chipsets was a complete disaster that was basically unusable. When I have to put a USB bluetooth adapter in my B550 motherboard to get something that works... yeah.

know what I haven't had to fuck with since getting an intel macbook for work, and a M1 MBA for around the home? bluetooth problems. somehow apple can figure it out, even when using that same flaky intel hardware. nowadays I can just reliably assume that any connection problem means my peripheral has a dead battery for some reason.

I people tend to have a bit of rose tinted glasses on about Apple's software quality of yore. There have always been big stability issues with new features and apps. And they've simply never been good at the UX for anything that involves a network connection or has to sync across multiple systems (besides Safari). The big difference is that more and more computing requires syncing and networking, which is their traditional weak point.

> There have always been big stability issues with new features and apps.

But they got fixed. At times there were 2 full years between major Mac OS X releases. 2 years of bug fix updates. And that was when Apple only had 1 major operating system! Now with the relentless yearly schedule, there's never time to fix bugs before they start working on the next big thing and adding brand new bugs. The problems just keep piling up year after year. The software is now underwater in technical debt.

Part of OS stability is simply not shipping new major versions too often. The new major versions are always buggier than the previous major version with many minor patches. Not to mention, Apple now pushes everyone to install the latest OS immediately. In the old days, you had to go out to the store and buy a new Mac OS X version on disc, so everyone wasn't upgrading to 10.N.0 on day one. Slower adoption means that fewer consumers have to suffer the early growing pains of new software.

Been on macOS since 10.3. In general, the .1 or .2 patches were solid, and if one release seemed like a stinker the next one tick-tocked its way into stability/quality pretty reliably, and staying on N-1 version while N was out was a pretty good choice if you wanted to keep your setup as-is without falling TOO far behind.

Also, Safari was really bad, early on. It was rendered unusable for me when a runaway bookmark sync problem with iCloud turned the default set of bookmarks into 30+ thousand copies.

You're thinking of recent Apple. You have to consider the first half of Apple's lifetime too.

Especially in the second half of the 1990s Apple was in very very tough shape due to poor software and uncompetitive hardware. Their fans wouldn't admit it but the company definitely knew what they were up against.

There's pretty much been no point 2000-present where Apple quality has been worse than it was Pre-2000, and their prices have never been more competitive either.

I don't know, people have been lamenting the poor quality of Apple software and how much better it was in the old days since I got my first Mac in 2007, at least that's when I became aware of the complaints. If it was really on a substantial continual down trend from then, by now nothing would work at all. Apple continues to invest massively in software, that means a ton of new code, which means a ton of new bugs. You can't develop new software and not have quality issues.

Apple continues to make extremely long term highly strategic investments. You don't get to develop a highly original, industry leading SOC architecture without long term investment in technology. Bankrolling new process node development and thereby locking in capacity in strategic contracts doesn't happen by accident or on a whim. Development and implementation of the Apple watch happened entirely in the post-Jobs era.

So I just don't see it, they continue to commit to heavy long term investment in capital intensive technology projects and innovative new products. Not everything works out. The touch bar and butterfly keyboards were notable misses. But then that's always been true. I look at the phones, desktops, laptops, watch, Airpods, iPads, etc. They're the most Apple-y products Apple has ever produced, and not a single one of them is a me-to product slapped together to ride a trend.

It was a very dark era for Apple, but the Power Computing years were the best time to be an Apple fanboy IMO. You had commodity firebreathing PC hardware running OS 8 better than Macs did, more ports and connectivity, the software was best-in-class, and this was the era with no spyware, telemetry and all the BS we face now.

And yes, I was still buying legit Macs and software, and a lot of stock when it was at $11. It was a blast, I tell you.

Uhh, speak for yourself. As a fanboy myself back then, it was kinda terrifying. Sure Power Computing was able to bump the bus speed beyond what Apple seemed to to able to do, but they also cannibalized Apple’s hardware market which they needed to stay alive. Also it became clear that the wheels were falling off the “new” OS rewrite (Rhapsody) project with no real plan for remedying. It was scary times when Microsoft had to help bail them out. Honestly, buying NeXT was the accidentally smartest move Apple executives made. I remember how cool BeOS was but was glad they chose NeXTStep over it. Mostly, because I was a Unix fanboy by that time too.

You can pry my Motorola StarMax out of my cold dead hands.

... the fact that the StarMax product hasn't been powered on for over two decades is beside the point. I want my nostalgia!

Rhapsody came about after Jobs came back, and after he ended the OS license debacle. The wayward OS was Copland.

> the Power Computing years were the best time

No, it really wasn't.

I know people who were techs for retail stores at the time.

The sheer volume of shit cheap-ass clones that crossed their workbenches during that era....

> no spyware

What spyware is on your modern Mac?

Ehh, Apple has some big misses. Their software objectively sucks. OS X has gotten buggier and slower over the years. I traded “it just works” for the speed and customization of linux years ago and would _really_ like the benefits of Apple hardware but can’t bite the bullet on Apple software (Asahi isn’t in a good enough spot yet to be my primary computer imo).

The iPad pro line is a travesty. IPadOS is horrible, Apple need to take it out back and shoot it. The hardware fits a great niche but Apple have ruined it with their gimmicky software.

IPhones have been getting bigger, heavier, and last less time with each generation. I recently upgraded from the 11 to the 14 pro, and the hardware feels strictly worse. It’s snappier and has a digital island, but it’s significantly heavier and is the first iPhone I’ve ever really been worried about dying during the day (even after turning off the stupid always on display).

AirPods have probably been their biggest win in recent years. The original were amazing, Pros, and Pro 2 were significant upgrades and they’re a big reason (along w/ apple ecosystem integration) I won’t jump ship for android. Maxs are horrible, heavy, and I just don’t understand why people like them at all (bose + sony both make better headphones for cheaper here).

For my use case (education) iPad Pro is a godsend. I don’t see anything wrong with it.

What feature of the pro makes it worth $150 ($650 if you have the larger screen) more than the comparable iPad?

120Hz + Apple Pencil.

So, 120hz is only on the 12.9. If it’s worth twice the price to you, that’s your decision.

The apple pencil difference is magnetic charging and magnetic storage on the side of the ipad. Which is nice, but it also means you have the camera in the absolutely most annoying spot in the world. Good luck using faceID while you’re browsing and you’re always going to have the worst angle/look like you’re staring into space during video calls.

iPadOS just doesn’t cut it for multi-tasking/any pro workload that would justify an M2 chip

The basic iPads don’t have laminated displays, are smaller, heavier and come with older CPUs and less memory. So the decision for me is between iPad Air and Pro. Frankly which makes the best buy varies. My current iPad is an M1 Pro that’s just over a year old, but my brother bought one last summer and got an Air, and if I’d been buying one then I’d have done the same. Sometimes it comes down to which was refreshed most recently. I just look at the size, weight, screen features, processor, memory, storage tiers and price then see what is the most compelling package. 14 months ago it was a Pro. 6 months later it was an Air.

Yeah, I mean you’ve more or less reiterated what I said. The hardware is very nice. And if you play a game where you calculate the hardware/$, the iPad pro makes sense.

When you really ask yourself what workload you’re doing on an iPad that requires anything more than an A16 is … I think you’ll find there isn’t much. You’re limited to iPad apps. You can’t even install a browser that isn’t a safari skin. Multitasking is horrible. The mouse/touch interface has weird janky things (like text selection).

You don’t have an escape key or a function row, so even many web apps are broken.

The iPad pro is about the same price as an M2 Macbook Air, and significantly more expensive than an M1 Macbook Air. While the hardware looks comparable, the software makes the hardware more or less useless.

For something that’s useless, I get an incredible amount of use out of it. Honestly a pro is probably overkill for me, but I use my iPad a ton every day. I use multitasking a fair bit. I’m actually typing this in a floating browser panel on top of Teams. iPads last seemingly forever, my hand me down iPad 2 was being used by a relative and got retired a few months ago. So I go for the best experience because multiplied by the use I get out of it, it’s worth it.

The only claim I think is objective here is IpadOS. And even then to say it's a "travesty" is hyperbole.

> OS X has gotten buggier and slower over the years. I traded “it just works” for the speed and customization of linux years ago

If you have been using Linux for years, how come you've been experiencing increasing number of OS X bugs and performance degradation? I thought you've been running Linux for years?

People have been lamenting about MacOS software quality since I got my first Mac in 1992.

Yeah - people have been saying the mac software has been in decline for as long as there's been mac software. If you have enough users some fraction of them are going to get hit by some rare bug and declare the software is crap, even if it is 0.001% of the users.

My m1 mbp is the best laptop I've ever owned, and I've owned a lot. I don't really use any mac software though - just a terminal, emacs, and a web browser. Macos just stays out of the way and causes no problems. I routinely get 1 or 2 months of uptime - only ever needing to reboot to apply system updates. Maybe if I used more mac software I would see this supposed decline.

Usually people decrying short-termism mean focuses on quarters rather than years. Are you saying Cook’s 10+ years that took the company from $100B/year to $400B/year are the short term, and it is at the expense of the next 90 years?

> Are you saying Cook’s 10+ years that took the company from $100B/year to $400B/year are the short term

Yes, however it's clearly successful.

> Are you saying Cook’s 10+ years that took the company is at the expense of the next 90 years?

Apple is slowly pulling away consumer ownership of their devices and is turning into an advertisement company. I honestly believe that is at the expense of the next 90 years. And this is rather more the point that I tried to make: short term profits at the expense of long-term customer satisfaction.

“Apple is doomed any day now”. That’s been the narrative for over 40 years.

So which customers aren’t satisfied? The people on HN that want to run Linux on the Apple Watch?

Are you saying that "any day now" and "next 90 years" are the same narrative?

Seeing that Apple and Microsoft both have a history of staying relevant for over 45 years, Microsoft has been one of the most valuable companies in the world for two decades and Apple for over a decade, I would bet on these two companies before any other company.

But it’s not good enough just to be right, you have to be right at the right time. How many products categories failed during the dot com bust that are doing well now?

It’s like me predicting the heat death of the sun. There is a big difference between saying it will happen eventually and that it will happen tomorrow.

Look, if Apple just made the watch open source with fully-user-upgradable parts and modular CPU + display + battery, and a command line interface, they would reach dozens of new customers.

> dozens

Even if there are 7 dozen extra customers, that's maximum (looks up price of most expensive Apple Watch) of 7 * 12 * $799 = $67k.

And the cost to acquire those customers including the development costs?

Apple made a profit of $99 billion in 2022. $67K is the amount Apple made about every 20 seconds.

> “Apple is doomed any day now”. That’s been the narrative for over 40 years.

And they almost went out of business at least twice, once they survived because MS bailed them out.

Apple pre-iPod was a source of amusing commercials. Pre iPhone they were the catalyst for change in the music industry, but they were still a consumer goods company with one product that had pretty wide, but still overall limited appeal.

Apple still doesn't have a diversified revenue stream. If Microsoft had to stop selling Windows today, they'd still make a fortune from Office. If Microsoft had to stop selling Office and Windows today, they'd still make a (much smaller) fortune from Azure.

Just Mac revenue by itself would be the envy of most companies.

But you can easily look at Apple’s revenue breakdown between Mac, iPads, services, wearables, etc and see that it is well diversified.

And Microsoft never “bailed them out”. Before the MS deal was signed, Apple had already gotten a line of credit for a couple of billion. The $250 million that Microsoft invested in Apple was nothing.

Apple turned around and used $100 million to buy out PowerComputings Mac license. It didn’t become profitable for another two years. The little money that Microsoft invested didn’t make a difference.

Microsoft’s financial contribution was nothing, but Office on Mac was huge. Had there been some third OS that was thriving so Microsoft didn’t feel the need to prop Apple up for antitrust reasons, the world would be different.

But so what? I can’t believe someone is seriously arguing that the failures of the Scully era are somehow damning to Apple under Cook. Sure, every company can fail. Apple is the most profitable company in the world right now, so it’s an odd time to sing doom songs.

Office had been on the Mac since the 80s. Microsoft didn’t just wake up one day in 1997 and decide to port Office to the Mac.

They promised to keep doing what they were already doing.

What % of those wearables and services are tied to devices?

If iPhones vanished tomorrow, how much trouble would Apple be in? Wearables are 100% attach rate to iPhone, and I'd presume so are the vast majority of service subscribers.

> Before the MS deal was signed, Apple had already gotten a line of credit for a couple of billion. The $250 million that Microsoft invested in Apple was nothing.

As others said, the software support, browser + office were huge.

They would still have Mac revenue that is more than they ever had pre-iPhone.

No one picks azure unless they are a windows shop.

> turning into an advertisement company

Apple 2022 revenue: $398B[0]

Apple 2022 ad revenue: $4B[1]

It is possible, with a lot of effort, that Apple could go from advertising representing 1% of revenue to maybe 10% over the next 10 years. I don't think that's realistic, but maybe. "Turning into an advertising company" is maybe overstating?

Besides, the whole reason Apple is in advertising is that free-with-ads is an important business model for media and developers, and the other players are pretty horrible. Me, I hate ads and will always pay directly for apps/media, and I don't like what Apple's doing in ads. But I think you're being a little over-dramatic there.

0. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue

1. https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/22/23513061/apple-iphone-...

You mean “short term” of a decade? Apple created two hugely profitable segments since Cook - wearables, services.

The Macs are better than ever.

What else should he be doing?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com