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Comment by rodh | Hacker News Reader

Apple has built a reputation of only releasing products that were absolutely completed and quality controlled. From my understanding, the company ethos has been that any defect, no matter how small, would result in the product being delayed.

Speaking from my own perspective, admission or not, I think it's the break in that expectation that has me disappointed.

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I don't know how to respond to this other than "lol".

Apple often releases products that many consumers would consider "incomplete". The only difference is that Apple never admitted to being wrong ever. Their branding depends on being seen as shiny software company-upon-a-hill. That's the only difference here, they admitted to making a bad decision. Their little spat with google just made this an unusually bad one; one that they couldn't paper over.

You will notice that the name at the bottom of this Apple letter is different than the name that appeared at the bottom of previous Apple letters. This change may have some connection to their new willingness to admit having made a mistake.

Right. It took them a lot longer to reluctantly admit anything went wrong in antennagate, and their apology lacked conviction.

That's the key, when you said "many" consumers would consider past products incomplete: it's quite subjective whether to call a product complete or incomplete. They would never admit to wrongdoing because there'd always be some way for them to argue otherwise.

As I mention in my other follow-up comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4586212, the difference in this case is that the product is objectively incomplete: the data itself is measurably bad.

That's the key, when you said "many" consumers

No, when I said "many" I was trying to avoid this conversation right here. We know software is never done, its not a thing you can finish, you can only stop. I tried to nip this in the bud because don't we all know that I could sit here and use the same exact handwaving to justify the status of the new maps app?

As jballanc pointed out, they did admit bad decisions, as with MobileMe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4586814

Maybe from a hardware point of view, but not from a software point of view. Case in point, iTunes is one of the worst pieces of software I've ever had to use. They could have made it so much easier to add music, etc, but it is probably the worst piece of software that I'm FORCED to use.

I'm at a loss, how could it be easier to add music? From files, it is drag and drop, from CD's, it is one click "Import".

In order to add an mp3 onto my iPhone I need to: start up iTunes and wait for it to load; plug in my iPhone to my iMac; find the song and drag and drop it into iTunes; click on Sync, and then wait for Sync to finish everything. If I haven't synced my iPhone in a while, then it could take 10+ minutes, since it has to backup, copy new Applications, etc.

What it should be is: plug my iPhone into my Mac; my iPhone should show up in Finder or on the Desktop; Find my mp3 and drag and drop it onto my iPhone icon; unplug my iPhone. I have no idea why I need to interact with iTunes at all.

>They could have made it so much easier to add music, etc

What? You either drag and drop, or purchase with one click from the store. It could not possibly be easier.

As witnessed by the other comment below yours, I have heard people refer to iTunes as a good piece of software in the past. (I am, incidentally, not one of those. I hate iTunes with a passion). The point being, this is a subjective measure.

Does a bad UI make software like iTunes "incomplete"? Again, it depends on your perspective. Missing, or bad data, as is the case in this instance, seems to be a bit less contentious, as can be seen in the quasi-unanimous anger towards the new maps.

OS X 10.0.

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