I really hate how in subsequent generations, they faithfully cloned Apple's design decisions of removing ports and making the device gigantic.
"For customers who are dissatisfied with iphones,
Our product is a slightly different iphone-like device."
I mean come on now, what the hell...
About twice a decade google makes a good phone and the others are just iphone knockoffs
Now the Android UI is sparse and wobbly, Androids lost call recording, sideloading is limited, and they raised their prices to cost as much as iPhones.
Meanwhile, iPhones got call recording, they opened up NFC (a bit) and they support CalDAV and CardDAV and SMB natively in its built-in apps. The "control center" on iOS is customizable, to the point they do what Android's quick tiles did before 2020 or so.
It's very frustrating-- I wish they still made Androids like they used to :(
Just don't buy anything from Google, they've always screwed something up.
I liked Lineage, but an unlocked bootloader is a security non-starter for a device that's so personal and vital.
For those using the stock OS, Googles are nice because you "only" have Google's spyware built in to the OS.
But they're pretty clearly worse as phones and I'll go to my grave mad about the headphone jack.
pure evil
They used to have a really good human factors/ui team. I remember Bruce Tognazzini and reading his blog.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Tognazzini
I think I noticed around ios 7 things were getting bad. buttons didn't look like buttons, on-screen controls started being hidden, and form trumped function. Then like you said, ports disappeared and to me "do the wrong thing correctly" started winning.
but the worst thing is that apple sets an example. The same "simplify for sales, but not usability" technique has happened to countless other products in many industries. all laptops have elegant looking keys that have no curve to fit and center your fingers. Tesla cars have a pleasing-looking design, but when you drive them, you can't lean on the touchscreen to hit targets, you don't have drive selection or turn signal stalks to help you get into a parking space easily, and "elegant simplicity" is "cost cutting for the peons".
sigh.
I wonder how you mean it. Is it that older products with good fundamentals are being replaced with younger quick-to-market technologies without those fundamentals, and different (possibly) wrong things get optimized?
Or is it experienced engineers with "well known" fundamentals are not involved in new products?
...
"Gramaci's Prison Notebooks that 'the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear'"
"An interregnum is a period of discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order."
The reason I don't choose a hotel 500 miles away is fairly obvious.
This also applies to parking lots for the same reason...
I think it's just cargo culting products. Apple made electronics sexy fashion accessories through their marketing, advertising and branding.
The problem is the misattribution of their success to the poor choices they have the customer loyalty to get away with.
Nobody has said "well thank God my new MacBook has no ports" or "I'm glad my battery isn't removable". The support column for these decisions is empty.
No, but they do say "thank god my device survived being splashed by water" or "I'm happy this teeny tiny thin device doesn't leave an unsightly lump in my pocket"
The de-featuring isn't capricious -- it's a result of optimizing for different tradeoffs. While it would be best for the customers if multiple vendors managed to tile the pareto frontier of feature combinations, allowing us all to pick a product that serves us best, for the vendors bunching up around a single point is a more stable equilibrium.
I use a panasonic wired headphone with a mic, $10. Airpods are $200. They wanted to increase their costs and frequency of purchase by hiding it behind accessories with higher profits and shorter longevity than the primary device.