Hacker News Reader

Comment by bredren | Hacker News Reader

>underscoring the narrative that the company’s biggest victories were initiated under his predecessor, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs

What does the author consider to be a victory?

Tim Cook was elevated because he had the operational capability to grow Apple. Jobs did not consider Cook to be a product design person. But Jobs trusted Cook to find and keep people who could design products.

By any stretch of the imagination, the company's biggest victories have been in growing and holding together the vast ecosystem of HW / SW and services that continuously deliver the highest customer satisfaction ratings. The reward for that has been becoming the biggest company in the world. (Some might consider this a victory.)

If introducing new hit products is the only kind of victory that can exist, then Apple Silicon and AirPods victories also go to Cook.

View on HN

Absolutely. Between Apple Silicon, Apple Watch, AirPods, and scaling operations to be able to sell the amount of products they do in a year, that is hard to argue against being an overwhelming success for Tim Cook as CEO.

Is it equal to the legacy of Apple under Jobs? Definitely not. But how many other companies/people released 3 revolutionary products?

It is hard to not compare the breakthrough product release count between Jobs and Cook.

If that is the measure, then we have to bring in Jobs' tenure as not only CEO but company founder that stretched 25 years as CEO, 1976 to 1985 and 1997 to 2011.

Cook only took the reins in 2011, and at that time arguably the company should not have focused on releasing yet more revolutionary products.

iPhone is the most successful consumer product in history, focus was correctly placed in supporting that, building moats around it and positioning the ecosystem to support the next big thing.

One product often left out, which may have started with Jobs, but delivery should be attributed to Cook is the new Apple HQ. The initial impact has crumbled due to Covid WFH.

However, this campus may turn out to be a force multiplier going forward. If so, it is a victory, but not in the minds of consumers.

I strongly doubt that the campus is any more of a force multiplier than a collection of far cheaper class A office buildings of similar capacity, with similarly serene grass and vegetation connecting them.

And that, dear reader, is how we ended up with hundreds of bland copy-cat Android phones to the iPhone. There's something to be said, mentally, for working somewhere that's inspiring. A shitty office in yet a clone of all the other office parks, buried in office-park-landia of San Jose, is not it. Even a stroll through the secret underground parking lot at Apple is inspiring with all the exotic cars that are owned by early Apple employees, instead of Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I drive a Honda, but they just don't have the same emotional pull.

Rather than "inspiring" I think the feeling is "concerned about being hit by" in such places.

I've always found that after a while the wonder at the flash and pomp of some place that seems new and wonderful like that dies down and it's just another place that you do work in.

Much more important is the people you interact with every day, both in person and at a distance. If I had to choose between jobs doing the same work but one was in a closet but interacting with people I like or the apple campus and interacting with people I felt no connection to, I would take the former in a heartbeat.

I don't think I'm an outlier. If indeed I'm not, what does that say for how important and special Apple HQ will end up being in the long run?

What you are referring to is the culture. Obviously people are big part of it but the office is a big driving force of shaping the culture.

Even in an online office! When I had Slack, I felt much more involved with people and the company (500+ employees) culture overall. Ever since they transitioned to Teams, I feel like I only exist within my own team.

A pleasant and aesthetic office, surround by nature, built with sustainability in mind, etc is already a driving force for the type of culture you want instilled in your company.

It will certainly attract a type of people that want to work surrounded by beauty, it’s already paving the way for a common ground of understanding.

It goes much further than just wonder. It’s a feeling that persists. A nice feeling.

No, culture is different. Enjoying the people you work around is not culture, it's having good coworkers. You can have coworkers you don't like but a good culture, and coworkers you do like and a bad culture. Culture is distinct from enjoying who you deal with on a day to day basis. People mistake that all the time though.

Culture does matter for this as well though, as enjoying your coworkers but not the culture may still make the job somewhere you don't want to stick around.

I think physical surroundings may help with the culture some, but they'll always be a much lesser influence than the people and policies in place. What's worse, sometimes companies will think the physical surroundings are much more important than they are, and focus on those instead of fixing the policies destroying their actual work culture. I think most people past their early twenties would much rather have a better set of work policies than a really good view out of an office window. Sometimes that's doubly true because those policies might allow you to spend less time in the office and more time at home, around your real family.

Early 20s engineer here. It’s nice to have a cool view out your window. I can and will trade it for better culture in a heartbeat. I can generally get better views than my employer can provide myself anyways.

Yes, I wasn't trying to say that someone at your age and position can't appreciate it, but that people learn more about themselves and what they actually value as they age and gain experience, so on average younger people will know themselves less than older people, so younger people are more likely (in my opinion) to think some things matter more to them than they actually do.

I feel like engineers and all the math-y sciences, especially male, tend to dismiss very easily aesthetics over functionality.

I was once like that. Until I get over my anxiety and started to hang out more with girls. Especially from the arts and languages side.

The way they choose their environments… where they go to eat out or have a coffee, the clothing they wear, buying flowers, how they setup their home…

Even when I was down, being in their environments just made me feel more cozy. It was heartwarming.

In contrast, most of my engineer friends have either literally a mattress and a desk. Or, they just buy for their house whatever, without any thought in regards to color pallete, textures, shape, etc

Yeah being married definitely opened my eyes.

>In contrast, most of my engineer friends have either literally a mattress and a desk.

You’re describing my first two apartments. I only wound up buying a couch and a coffee table because I wanted to appear somewhat normal in case a woman came by my apartment.

A degree in architecture would give you that.

The combination of design work, history of buildings/art/cities, and socialization with people hyperfocused on their surroundings gives you superpower awareness of great environments at every scale, from silverware to regional planning. It makes travel a joy, no matter where, Paris or Poughkeepsie, it’s all fascinating.

On the downside, there are impossible odds you’ll ever get to actually create any of what you imagine, and the horrors of miserable design, a world full of McMansions and cheap junk, will crap all over your visions of paradise.

I hope you got paid to write that. I switched from an Android to an iPhone recently and it is precisely 0% cooler or "more inspiring" than my old phone. I did it purely because password auto-fill appears to be marginally more reliable.

Not that Apple is a bad company or place to work or anything, but it also isn't some magic zen garden that will imbue all who work there with the power to change the world.

For 90%+ of the people who go to work there, it's a job, and the scenery changing that equation meaningfully seems like wishful thinking. It might be nice, but it's not going to radically alter your output.

> A shitty office in yet a clone of all the other office parks

https://www.macworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Jons-and...

I'm pretty sure (strike that, am certain) the secret sauce is not the office.

This is nonsense. The place where the iPhone was invented, and iterated upon for many successful years, was the Infinite Loop campus, which is pretty much a clone of all the other office parks. Initially, when the iPhone was invented, developers had their own individual offices there, with closeable doors, which was nice.

Apple Park: it kinda sucks to actually work at Apple Park. It’s a goldfish bowl. It’s impossible to focus. But, yes, it looks really nice. It’s very pretty, that is undeniable.

Also, Teslas and Mercedes aren’t exotic or rare. They just cost a bit more than most Hondas. And the rare, occasional actual exotic doesn’t inspire new features, better design, or QA polish, they just indicate someone’s a pretentious ass with more money than sense. Remember that Steve drove a fairly pedestrian Mercedes.

Jobs drove a Mercedes SL55 AMG into work, sticker price $121k for the 2003 model.

Here's a forum post saying they were selling for $160k at dealerships https://mbworld.org/forums/sl-class-r230/25583-how-much-2003...

Really not a "pedestrian" Mercedes, at the time it would have been in the upper tier of their price range. The current-day SL AMG model starts at $178k.

And he leased a new one every 6 months.

> Also, Teslas and Mercedes aren’t exotic or rare.

Tell me you live in a rich neighborhood without telling me you do.

Wait until you see my asset allocation.

Well, a Mercedes he replaced every 6 months just so he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of a number plate.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/how-s...

> This is nonsense. ... Apple Park: it kinda sucks to actually work at Apple Park. It’s a goldfish bowl. It’s impossible to focus. But, yes, it looks really nice. It’s very pretty, that is undeniable.

Sometimes what people think they want isn't what they actually want once they experience it. People unhappy and surrounded by drab office space might pine for a beautiful setting to work in, but I suspect most of them will find that it wasn't the lack of beauty making them unhappy and that a change of scenery doesn't do nearly enough to rectify the problem.

The only thing that damn building is good for is showing off, and my peon friends aren't even allowed to being visitors in

This sounds like fan fiction. I do my best work distraction free. Seeing expensive cars... have you met engineers? We are the biggest collection of cheapasses on the planet!

Some are. Some are really into cars.

That was one of my favorite parts of Stargate. Every so often you got to see what the team drove when episodes took place on Earth. Most went for generic trucks or SUVs. Carter (engineer, scientist, colonel, destroyer of worlds) would always show up in some fancy ride from Amanda Tapping's collection.

That doesn't really ring true. iPhones are the baseline and Android has that plus the cheap models plus all the whacky weird and wonderful. iPhone has good build quality and reliability - it's the Toyota Corolla. But if there had been no Android then there would be no large screen iPhones, maybe no push on the camera specs. If Apple make a foldable it'll be because they saw Android do it and waited until they could do it better.

No, the iPhone is the Lexus.

No one can build a generic human chicken coop that’s more inspiring than a space you create for yourself. Office space is soul crushing because it has nothing of your soul in it. It’s just human chattel storage.

I worked in Apple Park. I now work on Android from a suburban office park. Believe me, the cars are the same, and completely irrelevant to anything you’re talking about.

What's it like to go from working at Apple to now working on Android?

It’s definitely an interesting jump. Also probably worth noting I do completely different things now than I did there. I can’t say I have super deep insight into either because it hasn’t been too long but IMO a lot is similar (particularly around yearly release cycles, working on an OS, etc.) and some parts are different. A lot of Android stuff gets built on well in advance in public, there are OEMs and update cycles to deal with, etc. There are some places iOS really shines (performance tooling, internal direction, concern for quality on certain things) and others where Android does (excellent CI and build system, better documentation).

Thanks for the reply and frankness

I'm sure other phone companies have plenty of highly creative people who could out-do the iPhone if management decided to make it happen. Do you think Microsoft just spontaneously developed the people who worked on the Surface once Microsoft decided to show OEMs how it was done? Even the manager behind it was already there in 2004.

Lack of environmental enrichment is not what gets in the way of innovation.

The landscaping is really very, very, nice. If you have the opportunity for a tour, you should see it.

But, no, it’s not a force multiplier vs a more pedestrian setting.

Brother you’ve got to get off that kool-aid, this just isn’t healthy.

Which part would you disagree with?

The Apple Park part is delusional. It's just a big corporate office, yet they're ascribing some magical powers to it.

> One product often left out, which may have started with Jobs, but delivery should be attributed to Cook is the new Apple HQ. The initial impact has crumbled due to Covid WFH.

> However, this campus may turn out to be a force multiplier going forward. If so, it is a victory, but not in the minds of consumers.

Curious, have you ever actually talked to anyone that worked there? While I have admittedly only talked to a couple folks, they either hated it or were at best indifferent. There reasons ranged from "my commute is now twice as long" to "it's still just a giant suburban office park".

Again, in no way arguing this is some sort of representative sample, so I am curious what Apple employees who work there actually think about it.

Apple Campus 2 is about a superblock away from Apple Campus 1, so unless we’re talking about someone whose 5-minute commute doubled to 10 minutes, no one’s commute doubled in any sense where the comparison is meaningful.

I don't know all the details but I'm pretty sure they consolidated a bunch of offices to Apple HQ when it first opened - for this person it was definitely not a 5 to 10 minute change.

More traffic congestion right by there tho.

I could believe 10-20 minutes from home to the Spaceship, and another 10-20 minutes from the parking lot to your desk in the giant aquarium

Make it 25 if you come in late, are looking for a charger and all the bikes are at the building rather than the lots.

Being rich is incredibly hard.

I don't know whether they've backed off from the open plan office layout for Apple Park[1], but that sounded terrible to me.

Personally I'd almost certainly prefer a real office (even a tiny closet-like one) with a door, maybe in Infinite Loop.

[1] https://www.macworld.com/article/670869/complete-guide-to-ap...

Yeah, no, they were still large glass aquarium-like enclosures for a couple dozen engineers the last time I was there.

That's so ridiculous for a custom designed space. Why not have team offices?!? Something for 6 to 8 people?

I only worked there briefly (I never officially had an office there — Covid times and all that). I don't see it as any different than any of the other Apple campus buildings I worked in (like Infinite Loop) with regard to productivity.

(I've always compared it to some beautiful, modern art gallery — but without any art.)

But to the above degree, I have to say I enjoyed all large Apple work environments (even some of the more far flung ones I worked at like Results Way).

It's because I have enjoyed being able to walk down a hall, up a floor, and chat with The Guy That Works on IOKit Display-support. I am a "social engineer" (not one to socially engineer though if you know what I mean). I truly disliked working from home for extended periods.

They must have some art!?

You’re expected to build it

Yeah Apple’s DRI system means it’s pretty easy to just talk to the guy. No PM nonsense. It’s nice.

DRI - directly responsible individual, for those who didn’t know.

No PM nonsense but there's some NDA nonsense even between internal teams no?

I don't think devs talking directly across teams is unique to Apple, though. Or do you mean that finding "the guy" is much easier because there's an official registry, and you don't have to guess from commit logs etc?

I work at Apple Park and it’s awesome. I love it! Been here 4ish years.

On my current team we share a hall-wide office that seats 4. On my old team I shared a half-hall wide room with another person.

Most people have this 2 person arrangement. Some teams sit in groups of 6-8 together. All of this is Siri.

Teams in other orgs are wildly different. I had a friend in iCloud that was in one of those open office style arrangements. She hated it. She left to Netflix eventually.

> iPhone is the most successful consumer product in history,

I'd say it's probably Coca-Cola?

I think even if Apple went bankrupt in 5 years, what Tim Cook has achieved is extremely good. It was not sure at all that Apple would grow this much over 12 years. It is not clear Steve Jobs himself could have had this success.

How would it even be possible for apple to do so

Apple's total comprehensive income was $24B in Q2. Their total assets were $332B, and total liabilities $270B. Assuming all product sales dropped to 0, they could make the best effort to liquidate assets, after which they'd only have $62B - which would last them a little over a year at $13.6B in quarterly operating expenses.

https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2023/q2/...

A fair portion of that quarterly operating expense results in $20 billion a quarter in services revenue. I don't think those numbers intuitively reveal a plausible scenario where they are under in five years.

The link shows ~ < 50% of Apple's liabilities are current; assuming revenue dropped overnight to $0, I doubt they'd need to liquidate any assets, likely for multiple years.

It's an unrealistic & impractical scenario, obviously, but IMO it's more likely they'd want to increase their liabilities (and likely WOULD be able to - lol!) without touching their assets. It's actually an interesting & somewhat comical mind game, even if nothing else.

FWIW, I've no personal position.

I suppose if the product sales dropped to 0, a few mass firings would be in order. That should cut down that $13.6B operating expense drastically :)

China going to war would destroy most of Apple's production bases and this would force people to use Android due to Samsung being the best fabs not involved.

No iPhone no success. Cook is a good operations man and he's helped to maintain the success, but he did it by relying totally on China. Not a good long term move at all. He hasn't come up with a revolutionary new product, just improvements on the current iPhone.

Don't forget air tags.

AirPods where and are loathed by some, but ultimately they present a well designed product that made the underlying product category more seamless and consumer friendly and accessible.

Their winning traits may seem banal, but in everyday carry objects small utility improvements play a huge role. Not having to deal with cables and increased range of movement are enough - what elevated AirPods though is that a visible, wearable product is an implicit fashion statement. Apples product designers succeeded in making st thing that is clearly recognisable and stands out against similar products already on the market, but is subtle enough not to disturb anything or polarise by totally overthrowing stylistic and societal convention. Perfect mix of identity and brand that is easy to integrate with your personal image.

Apple silicon is another kind of thing: it's just the same thing as before but cheaper and more powerful, without compromising any trait that made the predecessor products appealing.

Apple "reality" or whatever - I don't see carrying any of those same traits. It's much too visually disruptive to become an AirPod, it's much too close to similar products to be an M1, and on top of this it's success fully depends on expensive-to-produce software content within a technically complicated ecosystem, while Apple has long lost it's profile as a developer centric and welcoming brand and rather capitalized on it's ubiquity and alienated many developers who only still contribute to the platform it because they have too by sheer numbers.

Apple might be able to not totally fail spinning up the platform, because of buying power, image and again numbers.

But those just slightly more practical, still bulky and odd looking VR glasses are nowhere near replicating the seamless product fit of iPods, IPhones, AirPods or CPUs.

It's Metaverse all over again.

> Not having to deal with cables and increased range of movement are enough

I don't think that's enough. AirPods "just work" in a way that no prior Bluetooth headset ever did. Everything else was a kludge, particularly when it came to switching between multiple devices.

Yeah. They're not perfect, and I've had problems with them a couple times, but they mostly just work. The audio latency is also better than anything else I've used.

Agreed. Not perfect, but good enough that I didn't hesitate to get a pair for my aging mother. She loves them!

Not only does it “just work”. The sound and noise canceling quality is fantastic. On par or even beating many larger over-ear headsets in same price range. (Talking about the gen 2 pro)

I haven’t heard anything in-ear that comes close, disclaimer though I honestly haven’t tried many other in-ears in that price category.

This.

The AirPods Pro were a game-changer for me: I could always have headphones in my pocket, and isolate myself from the world whenever I wanted. The 2nd generation surprised me with much better sound and noise cancelation.

Don't get me wrong: over-ear Sonys (I have those) will still sound better and remove more noise. And my B&O H6 gen2 sound much better still if there is no noise around. But I can't have any of those with me at all times, I can't wear them when it's really hot outside or when it's really cold (because of head coverings).

AirPods I just always throw in my jeans pocket and they work anytime, anywhere.

It's not about a "fashion statement" as some say, it's about a really good product that changes your life patterns because it works so well.

You can get way higher audio quality at half the price with the Truthear Hexas. There are a ton of good wired IEMd that are cheaper than Airpod Pros and knock them out of the park

I would argue that the move the Apple Silicon was in the pipeline long before Cook took over. I mean PA semi was purchased in 2008 and the first A4 processor was 2010, the writing was already on the wall a good decade out.

But Air-pods, Apple Watch and Apple TV streaming were all under cooks watch. Maybe not as ground breaking but still very important. Mind you, who else has been doing ground breaking stuff like under Steve? I cannot think of anything other than the recent AI stuff. It kind of feels like Steve picked the last of the low hanging fruit and then bowed out before it came to stagnation.

Are Air-pods, Apple Watch and Apple TV actually VERY important? The whole Wearables, Home and Accessories category is 10% of Apple's revenue and that includes Beats and what not.

In the last quarter, that equates to $9.48B, which by anyone’s standards is a pretty good business. The company I work for arguably makes more “important” products, but we’d be incredibly happy with that revenue!

While I wouldn't put so much weight on Apple TV+, air-pods and Apple watch do pretty much launch wireless headphones out of a niche into the mainstream and absolutely kick started the smart watch market across all vendors.

I say this as someone that uses none of these type of devices from any vendor.

> I mean PA semi was purchased in 2008 and the first A4 processor was 2010, the writing was already on the wall a good decade out.

Is this similar to how AMD's Bulldozer architecture back around that timeframe was the writing was on the wall for their current competitive dominance over Intel?

PA Semi was a great talent accu-hire, but AFAIK at the time of acquisition they only had Power-based designs ready for market.

> It kind of feels like Steve picked the last of the low hanging fruit and then bowed out before it came to stagnation.

PT Barnum was a renowned showman as well, but that doesn't mean he trained all the elephants.

For instance, I would hardly say the release of a market-dominating phone was a foregone conclusion based on the success of the iPod, and an Apple without the iPhone would look incredibly different.

Sure, people wanted to take their music with them, but the nearly purely multitouch interface was a fresh invention - the iPod did not have a touch interface AFAIK until three years later.

I just don't see something which was such a fresh take and new engineering - to the point that other smartphone vendors thought the original keynote demos were staged - was low-hanging fruit.

PA Semi while an accu-hire was entirely done so that they could build processor tech internally.

By low hanging fruit, I mean the concept of a portable computer in your pocket. I'm not undermining the astounding work that went into things like the iPhone - The execution was fifth steps above everyone else. I just mean after the iPhone and iPad, ideas that had been around for a long while but had not been executed well, we have been waiting to see what the next step will be. I feel this is why things like VR got so much traction.

> What does the author consider to be a victory?

Well, there's the Apple II, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone...

Apple has had a long history of products that redefined the future of entire categories, and almost all of them up to this point except the Apple Watch included deep involvement by Jobs.

Apple watch? Airpods maybe? Apple silicon for sure.

Other than that not much, but to be clear there has not really been any other inventions in this time span like those you mention. The market is more mature.

Isn't Time Cook ultimately like Steve Ballmer? He has continued and consolidated to build a golden prison with the construction of a monopoly and increase the money generated incredibly.

A “monopoly” in what product category?

Monopoly (noun): Thing I hate that is incredibly popular, and I’ve got all bitter and twisted about it.

Ha! The “orange site” dictionary. There’s a parody site in that…

In the sense that it has become hostile to use. I remember when iTune and safari were user friendly on Windows. Or the iphone wouldn't be limited to a usb 2.0 port.

That’s not what a “monopoly” means and Safari was never good on Windows.

When the device has a user experience, it gradually turns into a convergence platform.

This is what makes coming out with new products harder - Apple doesn't have a market for a mid-range camera, or a GPS, or a music player, or a PDA - because those are all things the iPhone does. They add capabilities to the phone to usurp other device markets (most recently, emergency satellite communicators and OnStar-style crash detection). Apple releases new devices most often by releasing them inside the iPhone.

Which is why now, with a saturated cellphone market which is slowing down the upgrade frequency, they are so interested in wearables (separate hardware that augments your phone) and services (software that augments your phone).

The sad thing is that there are areas they could make a lot of innovations, such as smart home accessories. They killed off the AirPort line, and license out HomeKit with almost no first-party hardware, because those just don't move the needle for a company of Apple's size.

> Apple releases new devices most often by releasing them inside the iPhone.

Another example is Lidar 3d scanning in iPhone.

>Which is why now, with a saturated cellphone market which is slowing down the upgrade frequency, they are so interested in wearables (separate hardware that augments your phone) and services (software that augments your phone).

I suspect that annual upgrades to Watch, the maturation of Fitness and Music services and the mix of HW "devices" released in iPhone have strategic goal of supporting the new headset device.

RE: HomeKit, even if it couldn't deliver the revenue opportunity of other businesses of the company, I think it had potential to be far more than it is now.

The head of home services, Sam Jadallah left before his third year during a critical push into the home with Homepod and Homepod Mini.

It could be his efforts were blocked--perhaps to starve advancement of Smarthome while Amazon was bleeding cash on Alexa. But regardless his team failed to push the category forward and Home languished.

HomeKit and Siri are perhaps the most high profile weak products from Apple that, had they been handled differently, people would have greatly benefited from for several years now.

That said, neither seemed to have that much revenue opportunity and it is clear looking backward that their weakness has not (yet) obviously held the company back in any way.

Regarding HomeKit, I think Apple demands a kind of quality from third party manufacturers, along with royalties, that the market just doesn’t want to pay for.

> Jobs trusted Cook to find and keep people who could design products

Tim Cook's first major executive move as CEO was to fire Scott Forstall.

Forstall’s first big unguided product delivery was Maps. He royally screwed the pooch with the release. By all accounts, he was fairly toxic in the executive group, he had to go.

> By all accounts, he was fairly toxic in the executive group, he had to go.

So was Steve Jobs—Tim Cook would have fired him, too, if he could.

If you count victory by money, yes. But apple has not been able to surpass the iphone

Airpods were handed to Cook on a platter, honestly. It doesn't take a market savant to realize apple can make a killing selling the ever popular and sexy earpod in bluetooth form. Once the battery technology was available to resell the same earpod but with bluetooth it would have been made no matter who was CEO.

iPhone was handed to Jobs on a platter, honestly. It doesn't take a market savant to realize apple can make a killing selling the ever popular and sexy iPod in touchscreen form. Once the battery technology was available to resell the same iPod but with cellular it would have been made no matter who was CEO.

Yes, but would it have been done as well?

Are the airpods not doing well?

They said “done as well”, not “doing well”, two very different things.

Ok. Do you think airpods are not doing as well?

"done as well" means "built as well", not the same as "doing well" or "doing as well"

You jest yet I think there is truth in this analysis.

If you have a case that Tim Cook in particular made the unilateral call on the airpod and not market pressure from samsung and others in this product segment, then lets hear it out.

In retrospect, every invention is obvious. I think it's fair to say that Apple went a bit beyond just slapping bluetooth onto their existing headphones. The instant pairing experience alone makes them stand out against the standard competition.

I remember the release and all of the reddit and HN comments were to the tune of “this is stupid” “you’ll lose them” “they look dumb” “now I have to buy a cable to connect the two”

The idea that you could have two, disconnected pods seems to have been quite bold.

You can also find a group of comments holding any opinion

The obvious idea of wireless is anything but bold

These weren't fringe ideas, they were all of the top level, highly upvoted comments.

While the Airpods seem completely obvious now, they were pretty radical and controversial when first announced.

I believe samsung had a similar product out ahead of apple at the time. Just like with the watch.

It looks like so obvious in retrospect, but it wasn't sure. Bluetooth audio was somewhat a niche until Apple removed 3.5mm.

Maybe noise cancelling boom is another reason. NC also requires battery and amp so why don't make it wireless? IIRC until Sony MDR-1000X sold well (that's sold in 2016, same year as iPhone 7!), noise cancelling market was minor Bose's market for airplane user.

“When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com