John Ternus to become Apple CEO
apple.com
apple.com
They’ve coasted too long on consistent visual identity, and even that’s been slipping. Time to focus on actual user needs.
I know between Moore's Law and Gate's Law which one I would prefer to be the industry standard... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law
Honestly, the thing that pushed me into software dev was the fact that hardware tools were absolutely garbage. Verilog felt like a joke of a language designed to torment rather than help the user.
It’s really amazing that at least there are some fully open flows for FPGAs these days, unfortunately they don’t support system Verilog. (I think this is still the case?)
I don't think it means anything for this particular move; good leaders know what they know and what they don't know; they know how to motivate and select the right people, they know what to delegate and what to control. Having a track record of success of any kind is IMHO always the best start. I'm excited to see what kind of changes the transition from an operations person to a more technical leader may bring. Especially given how awesome Apple's hardware has consistently been.
There are so many little bugs in consumer-facing apps that hit the ‘sweet’ spot of being incredible little annoyances that just aren’t worth putting an engineer on for a week to fix, but which are totally worth having an engineer throw an agent onto them.
I have to think some of that attitude would be good for apple's software division.
It's not as if ternus will be writing code directly, he's managing managers. Hopefully that means he'll demand and budget more for QA.
I don't have a lot of samples, just one. So, YMMV.
But HW is at least improving (eg. they added anti-reflective screen option), and SW is very much not.
There's also software component. It has improved by now, but early libinput was giving some good trackpads bad rep.
I don't know about Thinkpads, but the utterly pleasant glass trackpad is still one of the things I cannot find on most non-Mac laptops, despite every manufacturer being able to copy it for years.
The closest I've found are the Surface laptop/cover trackpads, but they have their own set of reliability and repairability issues.
As a MacBook user, I very rarely want to use a mouse except for gaming. THe trackpad is delightful enough for the bulk of my use cases.
I was never a trackpad person until I finally got a Mac at work maybe 10 years ago. But since the trackpads stopped really clicking in favor of haptics, they're a lot worse than they used to be. I get false/double clicks and inconsistent feedback.
ThinkPads have nicer keyboards, but they stopped doing the more traditional IBM layout several years ago, which is really unfortunate. I'd be willing to pay for a more traditional keyboard layout with a slightly smaller trackpad and/or a sizeable bottom bezel (which is actually preferable for me because of my posture when I use a laptop most of the time).
I’ve worked in big tech and fast growing startups, side by side at one point or another next to hundreds of nerds that love talking about hardware and software
The touchpad is almost universally loved - I have never ever once her anyone complain about the click - most people didn’t even notice the switch
It has 3D Touch and all that and I’ve never gotten a false click - ever - not exaggerating, in however long they’ve been out
The only complaint I’ve ever heard more than once is that sometimes it takes a second to respond
So I ask you: how do you use your laptop? If no one else complains about this, it’s at least worth asking the question: what do you think you’re doing differently than everybody else?
What about gestures, like two-finger scroll, or two-finger hold+click right click?
If there's a trackpad as well (usually there is), you can still do all the multi-finger gestures on it unless you choose to disable the trackpad altogether.
Fwiw, I don't find the trackpoint faster or more precise than the giant MacBook trackpads. Its main advantages are being closer to your index fingers' likely resting position on the keyboard, physical mouse buttons, and requiring less vertical space than a giant trackpad.
> But HW is at least improving (eg. they added anti-reflective screen option), and SW is very much not.
And I would disagree with the idea that I should be running Linux on my primary machine. As a developer, I've faced enough "death by a thousand cuts" situations from running Linux on my personal router and servers to let it anywhere close to my main computer.
Don't even get me started on the hardware quality of Mac laptop including their stellar trackpads, screens and the smallest details like the quality of the hinge. I can still open my 5 year old Mac with a single finger and the hinge is as solid as the day I bought it.
As someone who's also particular about user experience, Linux always fails at this. If you have good UX, that means you can critically think for what a user wants from a computer, and can determine what should and shouldn’t be prioritized. UX is never a first-class citizen on Linux, and for all the issues with Tahoe, macOS still has enough residual quality left in it to not feel like I'm constantly fighting the operating system.
Simple example: I want HDR on Linux. Should be easy right? Just switch to Plasma under Wayland? Then do a one time config so mpv can play HDR. Oh and no browsers support it so good luck. Games need gamescope and flags to be set.
I want my computer to work, not for me to work as an integration engineer. So I use my Mac and it just works™. So I just let Linux live where I feel it works best, in servers and headless environments.
hardware - afaik only lenovo(some say asus is worth to try - but no official linux support, framework is sturdy but feels cheap) is well know for quality hardware - others are questionable.
unfortunately AMD AI Max 390/2/5+ nor Qualcomm Elite 2 Lenovos are not here.
it kind of 'just works' if someone already wrote the nix code to do what you want it to do and put it in nixpkgs and you manage to find it and figure out how to use it. but if that isn't the case, good luck. i once spent almost a week trying to get a program to build and run properly under nix that could probably be installed in around 20 seconds on a osx/windows machine.
The quality of the managed / packages software, however, is still a bit subpar compared to Debian and Redhat.
2. nix is just package manager and configurator of sh which forces to write idempotent sh code with explicit dependencies(just good practices right? check guidelines of any non nix solutions and you will find out that 90% of these rules are just nix). nixos, nix darwin, nix home manager final artifacts are just just idiomatic dotfiles, so nix does not exist.
OTOH, I want subpixel rendering on my big screens, and you can't have it with a Mac.
Apple has always been a "our way or the highway" brand, we can at least keep in mind that 3 laptop formulas only differenciated by size and thickness won't cut it for everyone on the planet.
Sports motorcycles used to be for people who care about motorcycles. Breakdowns, unsafe, finicky, tuning the carburetor if you went between mountains and sea level. You didn't just get on it and go. You had to know about motorcycles if you were an owner. And each individual model had their individual quirks.
Which option is better?
While I see your point, that's not the reality of mac laptops to my eyes.
The stupidest example: I just want to play Steam games. Will they work on my mac? who knows, probably not.
Other basic stuff: can I 2FA without owning any other Apple device ? What happens if I owned an iPhone but switched to android ? etc.
"it just works" stopped being true for a pretty long time now IMHO.
Glossy screens, crappy keyboards, sharp edges, large weight are all single, terrible choices that one has to accept, manage or tune (there was recently a blog post shared where someone files edges on their MacBook; you constantly need to position yourself so light sources are not pointing at the screen...).
They have their good sides, but I am disagreeing that they are the ultimate laptops when they so clearly aren't.
The main reason I haven’t purchased a Vision Pro is they have all sorts of glass on the front. I live alone and don’t need to share my eyes with an empty room, and even I did I would rather have a screen I could control to make a funny mask with. That screen is a step too far with not giving users control.
> “When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. It was bumpy,” said Ternus. “But the team had just been over the years just pushing and pushing and pushing. And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. If you have the vision and you're persistent and you keep working at it, you can take something you know that has a rocky start and turn it into something great.”
Here's hoping he recognizes that Apple's current generation of software is in the "rocky start" phase, not the "pushing and pushing" phase and definitely not the "absolutely amazing" phase. Time will tell...
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/apples-joz-and-ternus-on...
> Ternus recently gave an interview where he said this about the initial flop of Apple Maps:
While it is great now, it did flop because it was terrible.
It just means nothing here except who you pay to collect the bins.
"Turn right on East one hundred and twenty three thousand South"
"Straight" can be ambiguous, second exit isn't. Maybe it's because I'm terrible with directions and hate driving, but I like the constant feedback that I'm going the right way.
I used to work to resolve addressing disputes and google just doesn't expose (maybe even store) the relevant information for a lot of parcels of land.
It’s all available freely from the government in simple formats but for Joe Public they don’t know that much less how to access it and it’s the case that technicians on the ground don’t always have it in their SOP either. Google has a level of market dominance that means their errors can be, for a small individual or over an aggregation of small individuals, costly.
In general, for all it benefits from globalization, Apple disappoints on global markets.
If it weren't for that, I'd use Citymapper for practically everything.
And I know many engineers within Apple that had been testing Maps before it shipped and they were filing bugs about it. It shipped anyway.
“Real artists ship”
No product worth using is bug free.
This is not correct; "If a product is worth using, then it has bugs." (P→Q) does not imply its converse "If a product has bugs, then it is worth using." (Q→P). Buginess is presented as a necessary condition of being worth using, not a sufficient one.
It does, however, imply "If a product has no bugs, then it is not worth using.".
That was exactly my point. The presence of bugs in a product (in this case Apple Maps) does not mean it should not ship. “No open bugs” cannot be the criteria for whether a product is ready to ship.
I think you mean, should not.
I do wish that some day someone will tell the story of what happened during that time. Maps was bad at launch yes, but it also wouldn't get better without people contributing more data, and the fact that it took a decade to slowly improve implies that there's nothing anyone could have done to get it right "off the bat". It still feels to me Forstall was set up as the fall guy, especially considering no one was fired for antennagate.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-minimalist-ive-assume...
Yes, being rich.
Absolutely.
Was the choice to release way way way too early the right choice in the end? Needed telemetry, or even more time, to beat Google? Also taking the data from Google must have had significant ramifications.
Also, the UI for it keeps getting more cluttered, and they announced that in-map ads are coming Q2-3 2026.
Example: Taking the airport train instead of a private driver and realizing there’s no luggage racks, staying in a regular hotel room and realizing there’s no light in front of the mirror, only behind you. So many examples like that on a daily basis.
In a lot of cities, that’s either the fastest or the most comfortable way to go somewhere in the city when you come from the outside.
Not any single navigation app support this (tbf, the few European ones don’t support it either)
I think LLM's with access to lots of personal data and the ability to scout the web might solve all these use cases in one fell swoop, rather than trying to design a user interface with buttons, algorithms and data sources for every obscure use case.
I can assert than this isn't a thing in most Portuguese big cities, although it would be great to have it.
The's a metro ("S-Bahn") going north up to Friedberg/Hessen. Friedberg is the capital of the country. But there's no free "Park & Ride" there. Two stations towards Frankfurt you are in village called Wöllstadt. And there you have a free Park & Ride. More south some other village, no P&R. But then again in Bad Vilbel you have one.
Is however P&R + public tansport the fastest way to Frankfurt? That depends.
First, the Wöllstadt P&R isn't easily accessible from the Autobahn, or not even from the B3, which goes around Wöllstadt. And even when it went through it some years ago, it was several turn-left turn-rights through small streets.
And then the S6 only drives every 30 minutes to Frankfurt. It's supposed to change once they double the train tracks, but that will change. On top of it: metro lines don't have precedence, the quick trains like ICE have. So the S-Bahn more often than not waits until a faster train passes.
If it isn't between 7-9 in the morning, you're actually faster by car in Frankfurt than by public transport ... So the P&R is quite helpful for people living in the neighboring villages: they go by car to Wöllstadt, park there for free, commute to Frankfurt by metro. And that traffic jam free ... but not necessarily fast. And since parking in Frankfurt usually comes with a price tag, it's also a bit cheaper.
So it's nice to have this, but it's no all roses.
However compared with European countries like Portugal, this is a complete different reality.
This was my main point, because there are these "in Europe public transport is so great" remarks, yes it is, provided one is lucky to be on the right parts of Europe, as you also kind of refer to by your no all roses scenario.
If it happens to be there, it will say to use it, but I can't say "Route me to the nearest HOV entrance" because I prefer it even if it's 1 minute slower.
I'll bite, what does this have to do with Apple Maps?
To get to my home you take an exit off a toll road and where the exit splits continuing straight or going to the right you continue straight to a stop light where you take a left and in 1/4 mile take a right into my neighborhood. Apple Maps will tell you to go to the right instead of going straight merging on the road and continuing through 2 stop lights, taking a u-turn at a 3rd light and then backtracking to take the right into my neighborhood. Google Maps gives the correct directions.
In the closest major city Apple Maps will give directions instructing you to perform u-turns on streets where u-turns are legal but practically impossible. Google Maps will instead correctly direct you so such risky u-turns are not needed and you actually arrive quicker.
That is just two examples. I have many more I could provide.
Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.
I tried using it in Bosnia, once, and it decided to use an abandoned airfield landing strip as a shortcut. Wild stuff.
I frequently drive through Serbia/Bulgaria/Montenegro/Macedonia, and if you ever do, do yourself a favor and install something OpenStreetMap-based.
Otherwise, you will be missing new motorways, get thrown on unpaved roads, or even asked to drive on roads that just do not exist anymore.
to be frank, I have a feeling that Google has more / better data.
I haven’t come across anyone using Apple Maps while living in Japan, most seem to use Yahoo! Maps or Google Maps.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/xbejr2/apple_m...
Noone in my circle with iphone uses it. Most of people are using Yahoo maps, which is way better than google and apple maps combined.
And they are planning to make it even worse with ads, so.
Google Maps is definitely still a little better but I find the delta is nowhere near as wide as it used to be. The main problem with Apple Maps I find today is that their data on business listings and locations tends to be a little older than Google’s, sometimes even a year or more out of date. So if a business or meeting place you’re trying to get to has moved recently you can wind up in the wrong spot.
Apple have been promising bicycle support in Canada since iOS 14. Bike paths and itineraries still aren't there.
It's the same with public transit, which is unsynchronized or unavailable depending on the city.
Apple Maps will show business informations and schedules, but only pull information from Yelp, which no one here uses. The app will guide you to businesses that have closed or moved out, and will show you photos and menus that date 5+ years.
It's not an issue of software quality unfortunately, but one of negligence on the service side.
We might be kind of lucky in New Zealand with the yellow AA signposts at every intersection in the country telling you the nearest towns/communities and their distances in every direction.
Generally they are fine, but not literally in every aspect in every place, Europe or not.
However my biggest gripe with Apple Maps in Poland is that Siri does not understand Polish and cannot be told to navigate to a Polish address. It just can’t understand the street and city names :(
Btw: I haven’t counted the times Google Maps wanted me to go through the worst possible traffic jam (where the traffic jam was not visible on the map) or a closed road. I guess it just happens with every navigation system that errors happen.
The pronounciations, though, are indeed something that leaves no other option but to laugh. Expect "Rogozińska" (ruh-goh-tzeen-ska?), recieve something I fail to comprehend :-)
Around here (Long Island, New York, USA), it’s better than Google Maps. I get to compare a lot, because I have a friend that uses GM, and constantly sends me Google Maps universal links.
I hear that it is a lot less effective in rural areas, though, and I think Google Street View is better than the Apple variant.
It drove me around a couple miles that went right back to the intersection where we started, and then wanted me to start the loop again.
That has not been my experience, I've got a Honda CB125F which uses Apple Maps for their on screen navigation.
I live in Lisbon and I wanted to Almada which is directly South from Lisbon. For reasons beyond me, Apple Maps kept telling me to go North and North and North, I tried restarting the navigation multiple times, but in the end I had to switch to Google Maps which did mean that I didn't have on screen navigation, only the audio ones, but at least it immediately told me to go South.
In my eyes, this is a critical failure.
The advances that made Apple Silicon possible were, fundamentally, TSMC and ARM. These were the material conditions that had to exist in order for a tech company to capitalize on a new generation of vertically integrated chip design. Now what's the conditions for next generation Mac OS? What research advances or software engineering paradigms that are mature enough for adoption? The state of Apple software isn't just due to mismanagement, it is, but the success of the hardware entails technology nodes as a confounding factor.
I'm still on 18.x thats insecure by now and switching to Asahi as soon as something breaks.
and I’ve gotta say it: this is off-topic.
Post a link to a recent comment of someone using glasses as a display. That’s on topic.
Having blueprints and 3D models and info overlayed onto what you see in the real world can be very useful for farming, construction, infrastructure, and much more. Not to mention military application.
Apple used to insist that different types of devices require different UI principles. This seems all the more true for a transparent device that you wear on your face while moving around trying not to bump into physical objects.
But we'll see. Perhaps the right level of transparency is situational. If you sit down with iGlasses using them as a screen you might want to reduce transparency while increasing it when you're moving around outdoors. Adjusting transparency could become as routine as adjusting audio volume.
it's still not quite my tempo, looks downright silly in many places, but it has grown on me just a smidge, and i think i'd receive it a little better if it wasn't fundamentally more intensive to render. i think that's a line i can't respect and it feels like a step backwards.
i don't want to wax nostalgic about windows 98 era ui's or the design patterns i see with a lot of qt apps either, like they are imo kind of ugly to me too. but i appreciated the consistency back in the 98 era, and i think a ui that restored 3d beveled looking components, were somewhat expressive but consistent is what i want.
but the world is different now. things like flutter that give people a canvas and let them ground up their entire design language undoubtedly mean consistency can only exist within an entity's control, there likely will never be a unified agreed-upon set of ui standards that span industries and personal computing and different stacks anymore. kinda amusing that improved tooling and frameworks has just resulted in a wild west of user interface design.
Since 26 upgrade it is unusable with 100+ notes. It looks like they merged iOS variant with Macos one. Constant freezes, random unsaves, device gets boiling hot. No fix with factory reset. I love the HW but SW needs more love.
Not being able to feel that it's turned on is basically the primary feature of a laptop for me. I've wanted to switch my personal device to linux for a while, but there just... isn't... one. I know I could run linux on the macbook, but the point here is that there is nothing which compares, not even at higher prices.
There are literally no PC laptops with the quality or hardware offered by even the cheapest MacBook - the software, while fine for general consumers, creators, and some developer workloads, tragically holds back its potential something fierce.
The only way Linux on Mac will become a reality is if it's legislated.
Using the App Store is optional on the Mac.
As for Windows on ARM, I'd bet that if Microsoft had managed to figure out their own product, Apple might have been tempted to support it. I mean why go through all the trouble of developing the most advanced firmware on the planet to support a fully secure macOS next to an unsecured OS if you do nothing with it?
That was totally up to Microsoft [1].
[1]: "Craig Federighi: Native Windows on M1 Macs is 'Really up to Microsoft'" — https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/20/craig-federighi-on-wind...
The Mac has never been more popular in its 40 year history than it is now. The recently released MacBook Neo broke all previous Mac sales records. Needing to sell more Macs isn't an issue these days.
Apple's Mac revenue last fiscal year was $33.7 billion. I suspect the number of Linux users that might buy a Mac if it could run Linux natively is probably in rounding error territory.
Apple has been around for 50 years and has a market-cap of around $4 trillion. All without supporting Linux. I think they're okay with that.
Linux on Mac is absolutely a reality [1], and Apple specifically supported it by deliberately leaving a documented/supported mechanism for another OS kernel to be loaded.
Linux on Apple Silicon is not a reality on my M5 Pro. I run Asahi on my M1 Pro, but I cannot use my USB-C dock with it and, while amazing, cannot practically use the GPU for gaming or local LLMs.
This limits my ability to practically use it for work and play.
There were a couple of people (the Asahi team) that made this work for M1, but as I understand it, the effort has stalled since. This just goes to show how few people truly care.
Most people just want to sit down and eat a nice meal. They don't want to go through all the difficult back breaking work of farming, animal husbandry or fishing/hunting to eat.
That is how I look at people writing OS drivers and core components. It's boring back breaking work no one wants to think about. People pine for it, even romanticize about it. But the fact is that it's dirty annoying work and I have never heard anyone thanking the farmer for the meal they just ate. Yet we still have farmers. Few, yet they exist.
Just because a few people stepped away from the project doesn't mean there are plenty of other developers working hard every day on this.
If they wanted to go out of their way, they could spend a weekend writing Linux drivers - Apple have written Windows drivers in the past, so it's not unprecedented.
I believe the real hurdle is that Linux doesn't do well with modular (closed source) drivers. Unlike Windows, drivers can't practically be added to a kernel, they must be compiled into it.
Apple would not want to make their drivers open source or so they would want to distribute their drivers as binary blobs.
That would necessitate either maintaining an Apple-fork of the Linux kernel with their drivers hidden within it, or contributing shims to upstream Linux + binary blob drivers.
If they wanted to help, the bare minimum would be to publish documentation on their hardware so drivers could be written without reverse engineering from schematics and microscope photos.
If I play devil's advocate, the only reason I could think of is that supporting Linux signals to investors that Apple is offering a key to bypass their API moat, perhaps sacrificing a longer term vision of vendor lock-in.
By contrast, I can imagine investors would get upset if the iPhone had an unlocked bootloader and allowed Android to be installed - but that's because the App Store is a significant revenue stream for Apple. I don't think there is a parallel on MacOS that investors could point to as being upsetting.
If anything, optional support for Linux would lift the market cap for Mac hardware as it would close the only pull that other laptop vendors previously enjoyed.
In reality though, just like is historically true, 99% of people would continue to use MacOS. Only SWEs, enthusiasts, gamers and some number of Windows refugees would pick Linux.
Though I am 100% behind legislating Linux support - EU are you listening?
No offense to Lenovo, it's a great laptop. But Apples build quality is on another level, plus if I want to run local LLMs, AFAIK there is no better option.
There's no way I'm going back to macOS though, that shit was bad 5 years ago when I switched and it sounds like it's gotten way worse.
At work I have an M4Max 128G, and it's hard to beat that amount of compute, with that build quality.
They will not. Recognizing the value of power users and engineers looks deeply un-Apple to me.
At the moment, I have a 2018 Mac Mini with a 12-core i7 and 64GB of RAM that is more limited in OS choice and hardware support than the 2012 Mac Mini sitting next to it, because the inner workings of the T2 chipset in particular and various other components have to be reverse-engineered bit by bit.
Right to repair with aftermarket parts and app installs from any source without Apple's permission. Then I'll consider using an iPhone.
It's not that the hardware is horrible, but I think if it weren't for the ecosystem and chips most Apple products would seem quite unremarkable.
Bertrand Serlet, Avie Tevanian, Scott Forstall were all great with software directions.
Craig feels like a people pleaser. Which may be great for modern or current Silicon Valley where everything has a softer approach. But pleasing everyone means there is no unity and direction. Software stack that is less cohesive.
I still to this day do not believe Swift is the right path, in both technical and philosophical approach.
Tech in general has changed quite a bit though. I don't know how Steve Jobs would have reacted to AI, and I don't know where tech itself would be if Jobs were still around. But I do think the next evolution is due and yet to be seen. It's not clear that Tim Cook would be the one to effectively see that through. And so I think his timing is impeccable and probably aligned with what is best for Apple. I have a lot of respect here: time has shown that a lot of leaders don't let go until its too late.
But no matter what definition you take Siri was not the first AI. It's a classical cases of Apple fans thinking Apple invented everything because they saw it first in an Apple product...
If you think about AI in broad terms, it goes back to the 1970's where any skill computers gained originally thought as only human was called AI. Like playing chess.
If you think about the recent use of AI = LLM chatbots/gen AI, Siri wasn't an LLM.
This is a classic case of thinking that inventing something before others is all that matters, while ignoring that finding a mass market use-case for an existing technology is also important.
That’s a point you are very unlikely to see being made. Apple famously bought the startup that was making Siri. They didn’t even change the name.
I say this as someone who hasn't worked there, but has a large number of friends and peers who currently do or have in recent years.
Otherwise I completely agree, once Tesla reached takeoff, it's too hard for anyone else to do it without burning mountains worth of cash.
We’re talking about the company that shipped the storage bug?
The Steamdeck was a breath of fresh air, the whole Steam frames and cube could have been a big deal.
I'm not just being snarky — I don't think it's reasonable to say the profit-maximizing service-oriented Apple is the best possible version of itself without losing its values of personal computing and individual empowerment.
Besides some changes to macOS and removing the ability to upgrade I've been pretty happy with Apple.
I vehemently disagree with this. I think Cook's logistics and business-focused goals are, if not diametrically opposed to Job's product obsession, at the very least orthogonal to it. Almost everything about Apple the product, over the past 15 years, has either coasted (e.g. stayed at par with the rest of the industry) or gotten worse. The one exception is arguably Apple Silicon (and I'm sure their board is acutely aware of it).
I started writing out a list of Apple's products and it was simply [x device] in [y category] is either the best or consistently rated in the top of that category.
Safari, a web browser, randomly stops being able to connect to the Internet (other apps can).
Like what? In the true wireless camp, the Sony's are much less comfortable (and more expensive), the Bose are not as good (and more expensive)...
There's cheaper options, sure, but you're sacrificing build, ANC, battery life, etc.
Airpods? I have nothing bad to say about them, but nothing good either (I rather take the Sony's with better NC and battery life on a flight, better audio quality and painless equalizer).
> Or is it more likely that some consumers judge the utility differently from you?
That's possibly the case, so help me, what I am missing?
I know I'm a rather late here and essentially just ranting a bit while waiting for github to finally do as it is told, sorry :)
But that's exactly the (frustrating) issue - as I've laid out in another post - no, they don't work as well. It's not about others being better in every aspect (yeah, they usually aren't), but about expected baseline features that are simply missing.
(And to be honest, I've become a bit jaded regarding the resulting discussions :) No, that thing doesn't just suck in general. No, it's not impossible. It's Apple's implementation. External Display Support flashbacks incoming ;) )
Every time I see someone here dismiss this success as status symbol-oriented marketing, I just shake my head at how much that signals a deep misunderstanding of how the world works or what most of the human race wants in a product. Nobody wants the Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds because Sony doesn't even give a shit enough to give them a name people can remember. Nobody wants Bose earbuds because nobody wants to open a buggy spyware-laden app to turn on/off noise cancelling. These products are destined to fail because they make simple things complicated, untrustworthy, bothersome.
People are whole-experience buyers, not single-feature buyers, and the experience nearly every person on earth wants is the magical 'I put it in and it works' experience. What people want is all the upside of the magic of technology and none of the cognitive overhead associated with it. The specific choices that make up a product offering - aka the product marketing - reflect the inherent desire of the customer. Any luxury / status symbol aspects come AFTER that.
You fool! The WF-1000XM5 is the worst model of the line! You should buy the WF-1010XN5, it is far superior!
Apple tends to name things in an odd way, e.g. sometimes you need to remember whether your laptop came out in "early" 2014 or "late" 2014, but they have a remarkably flat, but consistent, product line.
I mean, honestly, if somebody just tossed you a random Macbook from the Apple store, it may not be the exact model you want but you wouldn't complain. All of them are pretty good, even down to the bargain basement Neo.
Apple at its best makes its product like so legible people only need dim awareness of what they’re buying. That’s only possible if you build a ton of trust with consumers, which is why Apple is so so focused on their brand value.
Thats the power of marketing, making you think you are exclusive and treating yourself to luxury when you buy their product, instead of the reality that is everybody on the planet owns the same device as you.
Today the average new car price in the US is 50K. That would make an entry Ferrari 115K, but the cheapest new Ferrari is the Roma at 225K, or double that.
Ferrari used to be more accessible, but we had compressed incomes then, the rich weren't so far from the middle as they are now. Similarly in 1967 a bottle of Channel no 5 cost $15, but today it is $200. According to inflation, it should be $140, so again roughly double the spread.
Does owning the same phone as every 16 year old in America really fit that description?
Linus is not an audiophile by any means, but he's also exposed to more and better equipment than even most of the already significant outliers in HN
This statement only has any merit if your usage pattern is 100% limited to Apple devices, otherwise it falls apart.
It would be fine if they fell back to "at least as good as the competition" in a mixed use case, but in the mixed case they are worse than what even low-budget BT buds often offer (no BT Multipoint, no ear recognition, etc., hell, not even a battery level over BT...and even pairing/reconnect is often a crapshoot reminiscent of the state of BT Audio 10-15 years ago). It was honestly a really disappointing realization.
I do not have to that even with my ~30€ JBL buds.
Why? Why should we consider an advantage that doesn't exist anymore?
IMO the airpods vs the rest of the industry is kinda like the iphone vs blackberry.
I also think most products apple makes are in the top tier of their respective category, if not the best.
I would disagree here. Apple actually did lose their values, or they are in the process of doing so.
Ads in App Store results, Ads in Maps (coming soon!), constant upsells and pushes of subscriptions and services, forced upgrade of Numbers/Pages/Keynote with annoying nags that can't be turned off, things are getting worse.
Also, when the word "values" is mentioned, one cannot forget about Tim Cook's donations to Trump and his overall support of Trump and cozying up to him.
I could not disagree more. Apple has become increasingly just another tech company shipping products that are great but not insanely so.
The level of insanely great coming out of Apple has been in steady and constant decline since Jobs’ death.
The “I wish Steve were still around so he could have vetoed this” that I get have been steadily increasing on a y/y basis for the last 5-10 years.
I’m not talking about big obvious macro stuff like the Airpods Max being super mid or how much my face hurts after wearing the ridiculously heavy Vision Pro for a while, but the constant subscription nags for $5 after buying a $1500 phone and a million other little paper cuts, culminating lately in the polished turd of an OS that is 26.x. Apple is the most un-Apple it has ever been in its history. Their contempt for their users is now palpable.
Such as Think Different, where you don't need to comply with the standard ways of doing things?
From a Steve Jobs interview in relation to this statement:
> When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your job is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.
> That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is - everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
(Via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_different)
I couldn't think of a company to whose hardware "your job is just to live your life inside [someone else's] world" applies more, though maybe that's because Oracle doesn't make consumer hardware products
Edit: I should probably add that this isn't meant as a purely negative statement: many people want to hand over digital control and have someone else be bothered with keeping the hardware running and curating what software they're allowed to run. It's not me, and it's not what Steve Jobs said Apple was about, but it's not that I don't understand why someone's grandma would choose it
Jobs was all about bold innovation, hugely risky bets on gamechanging products.
Cook is a timid logistics optimizer, and he's good at that. We reliably get an iPhone with slightly more RAM, slightly faster CPU on schedule every year. No category changing products.
Innovation has stopped -- after Jobs, there is only minor incremental improvement
Vision Pro was a science experiment that few people have even heard of.
Apple Silicon is a perfect example of a purely internal-facing logistics optimization: sure, it's fine in terms of saving money and boosting performance. 99% of end users do not know or care whether they have Apple Silicon or Intel chips.
Let's keep it quantitative rather than relying upon personal anecdotes: Apple does not break out unit sales for the Watch (which in itself is telling.)
According to third party analyst estimates which are readily obtainable from search engines, the Apple Watch has shipped just over 100 million units worldwide since inception. Upgrade cycles are weak to nonexistent. Growth flatlined years ago -- even declining slightly in recent years. After the initial burst of interest from early adopters -- that is, tech nerds plus a few outliers here and there among normies -- demand fizzled.
The iPhone has shipped 3 billion units. It is in an entirely different category. While demand has roughly plateaued, there is a strong upgrade / replacement cycle. Annual iPhone sales are in the ~250M range -- far more iPhones are sold every year than all Apple Watches that have ever been sold in history.
The Apple Watch is firmly in the "niche product" category. It's not a "gamechanger for everyday life for normal people," notwithstanding the existence of a few normie outliers here and there.
That's the bar you set. So you're saying the Apple Watch did not change the watch category at all, is not the key product in the category? And likewise Airpods, or Apple Silicon laptops?
I don't know where the comparisons to iPhone have come from. No, it's not comparable to iPhone. Nobody said it was. That would be crazy.
You call Vision Pro a science experiment and dismiss Apple Silicon as irrelevant to users, but also say there's been no innovation. How do you square that?
When Steve Jobs came back in 1997 Apple was against the ropes and they needed some radical change lest they sink.
But after they stabilized around 2010s then they didn't need radical shakeups but to maintain the good thing they got going. Tim was the man for that. And he did it well.
And yes I get that in this case one is a consigliere and one is the Don but there's similarity here.
He only carried what was left from Steve Jobs. But nothing special or groundbreaking came from him. Apple Vision failed, the transition to AI failed, many people still dislike what is done with the MacBook, he agreed to have the horrible glass UI design just like what Windows did a decade ago, and he failed to find the next Jony Ive, etc... Sure he was an awesome COO. But as a CEO, he was certainly way below Steve Jobs and even less taking his vision "to the moon".
This is something Tim and John both deserve credit for.
https://www.apple.com/community-letter-from-tim/
I understand Tim is a logistics genius and Ternus is a hardware genius, and that we all want better software and policy from Apple, but I'm glad that there seems to be good people at the head of one of the biggest and most consequential companies, and further that they seem to care about being good people.
As far as I can see, that's the only way to have a prayer of scaling without too much damage, which is the key issue humanity faces today.
Also want to second your point about the need for having good people leading large organizations like Apple. Especially so as things are changing so fast in technology, with a widening impact across more and more aspects and parts of lives of people and society. We certainly see the negative impact that comes with questionable and/or short term decisions (see social media), so I too am hopeful that above all else, Ternus is a good person and makes (for the most part) good decisions for people and society first and foremost.
I had emailed with an explanation of what had occurred, and asked if I could get a refund so that I could just purchase a replacement. Within two hours of sending my email, an assistant from his office called me to arrange sending me a replacement. I was really impressed. I honestly figured I would just have to wait until the repair depot opened again, because I didn’t think I would hear back about my email.
Then a month or so later I got a call from the repair depot asking what address I’d like my repaired laptop sent to, since it was supposed to be sent back to the store for pickup (but stores were closed.) So I guess the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doeth in that case, because the person on the phone from repairs was pretty confused when I said no thanks.
Why share it as a quote rather than a link I can click?
While I agree with all these points, I'd still rather see a hardware guru leading Apple rather than a software-focused leader. The state of software zeitgeist has gotten fairly poor, and the types of formal and thorough "Acceptance Testing" that are common in hardware are more likely to produce great experiences for users than whatever most software leaders are doing today.
Before anyone mentions how all hardware groups seem to produce god-awful software (IoT, vehicles, etc)...I agree, though I have generally attributed this to a lack of budget and vision. I don't expect those two things to be an issue at Apple, but I could be surprised.
Leadership needs to make sure everything else in the business is in order so that they can contain and shape the direction of the white-hot plasma of AI and its implications. A software leader would be too hands-on in this process and get nerd sniped. Sometimes you need some distance.
Wonder if he'll be as good as Cook was at kissing Trump's ass. Half serious, half /s.
As an aside, I absolutely love the minimal elegance of that web page.
Sorry, but this is pretty naive. You simply can't infer the real personality of a CEO from a (well)crafted public letter.
If he really cared about being a decent person, he wouldn't have sucked up to Trump.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/03/25/tim-co...
Well he is, but I cannot forget being completely blown away by the lack of, I don't even know what to call it.
On a moment of worldwide shortage, this move didn't move masks to the US that were shelved in forgotten warehouses, they raised the price and left medical workers from poorer countries exposed.
Marco has enough standing within our world that it's actually a clever idea to appeal to Ternus on these terms. He'll probably be aware that it was written and the appeal is somewhat generic in its call to reverse course on some Cook-era policies.
We're all very hopeful but there's not enough information available on the outside to predict with any certainty how he'll lead.
It is not a tongue in cheek remark, I am genuinely curious
Or because you’re interested in the products and the „company community“ is fun and you like talking about it.
Does anyone here pay close attention to updates in the Linux kernel or is that pretty stupid too? (To be fair, you didn't call me stupid, but it's sorta there.)
What's Framework doing? I'm pretty jazzed about their laptops even though I don't buy them.
What about game companies that get bought by Microsoft and now people worry that the franchise they love might get killed?
I'm a nerd and I care a lot about a thing. I don't feel bad about that.
Why would anyone pay close attention to a sports team? A musician? A writer?
But if you read Arment's post:
> As you grow into the leader that we know you can be, I urge you, on behalf of everyone who loves computers as much as we do, to protect and cultivate this spirit of Apple’s founders as the company’s top priority:
> *We love computers. We don’t hide that — we celebrate it!
> *We use computers to enhance our minds, lives, and abilities — not to be controlled, restricted, tricked, placated, angered, or surveilled.
> *Our computers work for us, with the utmost respect for our time, attention, money, data, and privacy.
> *We are customers and owners — not resources to be harvested, annoyed, or badgered into ever more services and upsells.
> Apple leads the industry in these values, but leading doesn’t always mean excelling. Remaining true to these values requires constant diligence, honest evaluation, introspection, and the audacity and courage to effect change.
* https://marco.org/2026/04/01/letter-to-john-ternus
Perhaps if more companies had values besides "shareholder value"[1] the world would be a better place.
Further, one of the other hosts is John Siracusa, the guy who wrote in-depth 18 page reviews of MacOS X releases for ArsTechnica for many years. He got a shoutout from Apple's head of software, Craig Federighi, when I attended a live interview in 2019 during the week of their World Wide Developer's Conference (hosted by John Gruber of Daring Fireball). Siracusa must have been in the first few rows because Federighi said something like, "Oh, there's Siracusa." You could label that "fan service" because everyone in that theater knows who he's talking about and it's a form of acknowledging the crowd as a community.
So, all of this is to say that Marco is one of the small number of outsiders who could write such a letter on their blog and have upper ranks of Apple hear about it and maybe, maybe not, be curious enough to see what was said. I can't do that. I don't know if you can. But Marco can. I'm glad he took a shot. Whether it means anything, we'll never know.
And yes, the release of his redesign was premature, but I'm ok with the app as my daily podcast driver right now.
But I cannot argue with the results the man achieved. Especially the transition to A-series and then M-series chips has been an incredible success. Perhaps the biggest flop was the Apple Vision Pro, but it is hard to really call him out on that since it wasn't that Apple lost a battle, it was that the product category just hasn't caught on (yet). Siri is another place where Apple has lagged but they could very easily catch up with the massive interest in local AI on the mac minis.
I think it will be difficult to look back on his legacy without giving him a large share of credit for Apple's continued success.
Vs. when you're in the Top 10 of the Fortune Global 500, "steady as she goes" business vision is the far safer strategy.
Macs are great for gaming in terms of hardware. But other gaming platforms dominate the market. And Apple's walled garden approach is so effective that Steam's proton doesn't work on its platforms (so far). And its attempt to convince game developers to use Apple specific SDKs like Metal and build platforms are not really making any dent in the overall gaming market, which now eclipses Hollywood in terms of revenue and budgets. From a developer point of view it remains a highly crippled platform. And the Apple tax isn't helping.
Seen against this background, the Vision Pro is a strategic content failure. Very few 3D games work on it. Very little new 3D content is developed for it. Apple's insistence on our way or the highway continues to have developers preferring the highway. There are a few decades worth of back catalog of VR games, 3D movies, etc. Most of which flat out won't work on the Vision Pro or aren't licensed for it. They could fix that but that would require investing in content/licensing deals, compatibility/emulation, etc. And by making the core product so expensive, it basically became a niche product. And without content that remains a hard sell. It does not make sense for productions with hundreds of millions of budget (i.e. most 3D games and movies) to be targeting such a niche platform. And it does not make sense for end users to buy the product if there is no good content and if most of the good content is never released for it.
It's a very fixable problem. Valve is leading the way with Proton currently. That strategy is very portable to macs and the Vision pro. There is very little technical reason to stop that from working. And Apple has been chipping away at their own portability kit. But they are so far not really committing to it fully. They should be filling the Apple store with decades worth of great content that just works on Apple HW. As it is there is only a relatively small collection of old content that has been ported.
Steve Jobs called the original Apple TV a "hobby", and, similarly for now there isn't any pressure for it to massively grow.
I love their SciFi material but two seasons of severance in three years won’t keep people subscribed. The only reason I have Apple TV for more than a month or two out of the year is due to the bundle plan math working out with family sharing.
Silo For All Mankind Tehran Foundation (“meh-ish, but watchable”) Slow Horses Murderbot Shrinking …
But my point wasn’t that they don’t make good television because they do, it’s that their shows aren’t talked about nearly as much in the mainstream because people don’t have Apple tv. I think Ted lasso and to a lesser degree severance are really their only major popular hits. Most people I talk to haven’t seen slow horses. If it were on Netflix they would have.
And I’m just left to wonder where Apple TV would be now if Ted lasso hadn’t been a massive breakout success for the platform, which i think largely only happened because it was a decent feel good show that came out right when the entire world was miserable and cooped up inside looking for new content.
Apple religiously defends its walled gardens. Stuff like this is the exact symptom. They don't allow third parties to "fix" this either. They don't really document their own hardware and treat it as a control point. They also don't support independent efforts to port other operating systems on mac hardware.
Software support is vital here, you can't just say that if the hardware is good then people would buy it. What good is it if you can't use it?
Gosh I just read a really hellish thread on what frontier LLMs will become as they're infected with advertising, I hope apple manages to break locsl LLMs (and training?) Into the public discourse
Now I think we need to see Apple remake categories the way they did under Steve. If that can happen again, the future is bright.
I like Tim, but I don’t think the Tim we see is the real Tim. He must be an absolute elite sniper ninja cyborg internally, which is also cool.
Apple Maps really needs to up their POI game. They have some native data, but I’m still regularly seeing images from 3rd party sites and get prompted to download the app. I understood it in year 1, but we’re 13 years in now. This is the primary reason I keep Google Maps around.
I’m not so sure about this. Tapping around to some random businesses around me, I see photos being pulled in from Yelp, OpenTable, and Foursquare.
When I try to view the photos full screen, OpenTable and Foursquare images work seamlessly. Yelp prompts for an app download to jump me over to their world, which is a horrible user experience.
I submitted a few minor location edits to make the markers more accurate. Occasionally I’ll get an email telling me how often my new location change has been used. It’s not enough to be annoying, I’m always just shocked at the impact. Back in July I got an email that one of my updates was viewed 500k times, for a little boat rental shop on the Great Lakes. It had been really hard to find with the former location of the marker. Another one edit in a more populated area had 1.7m views.
I’ve only made 3 edits, but I can where feedback like this could get a person make map updates as a hobby, especially if the map data still needs a lot of work. One person with some free time could have a massive impact on the maps data in their community.
Which means the only other option is to hopefully be able to pay Apple even more to not have to see ads. Maybe buy more Apple shares to share in this "advancement".
Under Jobs they tried iAds. The idea was to make ads so high quality that people would want to interact with them, and they had to go through a vetting process to ensure there were no dark patterns that would make people scared to tap an iAd. After a while, it was decided it didn’t work and they pulled it.
A company is under no obligation to continue bad ideas.
I've used Google Maps for two decades and have 1000s of saved pins. I could have been a customer for life. Haven't used it since.
If you buy the 'iPhone Max' for $1500, you get ads, and if you buy the 'iPhone Max ad-free' for $3800, you don't get any ads in the app store, apple maps, apple news, or the various other apple services you use on only that one device. Similarly, you need to buy the ad-free edition of the iPad to not get ads there, and the ad-free version of the macbook for no ads there, and each of them can cost ~2.5x the cost.
I think that would be better than a monthly subscription since you'd just pay it once and then never think about it again.
- Gradually "make the line go up" by ramping up ad volume until the product is terrible (thereby ruining Apple's reputation among the 50-90% of users who aren't paying the ad-free prices).
- Periodically nerfing the premium ad-free tiers and putting ads into tiers that were previously ad-free.
- Purposefully making the lower tiers worse and worse in order to squeeze out marginal increases in conversion rates to the premium tiers.
YouTube’s who platform is built to show ads and run by an ad company. They are likely going to be much more profitable than a few ads in the App Store and Maps, and I’ve read Premium users are more profitable than ad-supported users. They are charging $160/year after a recent price increase. The fee you’re suggesting would be over 14 years worth of payments.
Amazon lets users remove ads on Kindle for a 1 time fee of $20, and people keep Kindles a long time.
The goodwill alone would be worth more than $20, considering iPhones already have margin (unlike most Amazon hardware).
Apple has been using security as the tent pole feature to try and differentiate themselves from everyone else. One of the reasons all the other platforms feel insecure is that ads imply data collection. If they really want to “think different” they need to stop following the crowd and operate a system that doesn’t create the compromised incentives that ads tend to come with.
Quite successful.
Even if that figure might somehow be inflated, it is impressive nonetheless.
But it's still a net deficit of nearly 15 million tons of emissions of which practically none are offset.
https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Pr...
From a correct pricing perspective, of all the companies in tech Apple seems one of the most likely to keep customers for a lifetime. They have immense lock-in and customer affinity. I don't know if the correct number is 20 or 30 or 40 but unless the economy completely tanks (which tbf is reasonably possible these days), I can only imagine a majority of their customers today will still be their customers in 15-20 years.
The real disconnect IMO is TSLA.
Would you not own stock of the most valuable brand in human history?
It's the cash-money value of putting a fee on all digital goods and subscriptions and cash transactions in a world predisposed to forming and consolidating around monopolies. What does Apple's services revenue look like in another 20 years when Africa, China and India are paying their smartphone provider every time a dollar moves, a few billion more people paying one of two companies every time for their music, movies and tv, games, books, real-world transactions... in de-facto perpetuity.
Alongside Nvidia they essentially monopolize TSMCs entire latest generation chip supply.
That’s a moat in hardware that is going to get even stronger over time. Given this hardware moat they can dip their toes gently into the B2B market they’ve never really cared about and pick up another few hundred billion in high margin revenue over the next 10 years no problem.
I’ve always found it weird that Apple’s entire org runs on Mac but no other Fortune 500 company on earth does. Seems like an opportunity to nibble away at Microsoft.
The real strategic risk for Apple is if it overly locks-in users and falls back into complacency. The discipline of having to continually win customers with better product is ultimately the only thing that will cause them to thrive long term.
AMZN: +2100% META: +1700% MSFT: +1300% GOOG: +1400%
This growth comes from rent seeking. Greedy fees and lock-in they can sustain due to control of the platform and cultivated duopoly.
Apple narrative around security is patronising and deceptive, used as an excuse for removing users' freedoms (by not letting users replace Apple's services with competing ones Apple protects users from their bad choices). Very conveniently the supposedly most innovative company that is great at UX can't do better than Vista.
Apple's response to pro-consumer laws was petty, vindictive, malicious compliance.
To me Apple morphed from having premium products with excellent integration to having cross-product lock-in that maximizes money extraction from users.
And then there's Cook sucking up to Trump with a golden turd to protect next quarter's revenues. This showed that Cook had no principles more important than profit.
You see this most obviously in software and marketing - the kinds of decisions where only a few people sign off at the end, and where "good enough" is whatever those few people decide it is. You see it less in hardware and procurement where there's a powerful review cycle and scrutiny at every level of the stack. Work there is more immediately measurable: benchmarks for performance, dollars for cost.
The "vibe" of software, or of a PDF [^1], is much harder to catch that way. There's no benchmark that flags it and most conventional executives aren't drilling down in that level of detail to see it either.
You want distributed decision-making, of course. But that only works well if it's distributed to people who've cultivated their own taste and who will make good calls under pressure. I'm not sure how much of that gets fixed by leadership change at the top. Taste isn't really something a CEO can decree into a 60,000 person org. But I've only heard good things about Ternus, so I'm optimistic. Fingers crossed for a bright new chapter.
[^1]: https://www.apple.com/promo/pdf/US_FY26_Earth_Day_Promo_Tand...
It sounds like Cook will continue to get the dirty work of pleasing world leaders while Ternus can focus on actually running the company.
you could say apple silicon was almost 2 years ahead of its time, or you could say that intel lost years on bad bets. there are only 3 consumer-scale, leading node foundries in the world!
is apple a, "making good commercial terms with poor counterparties" company? yes, to their core. whether it is their employees whom they worked to the bone, their suppliers in the ASEAN trade network, or the US politicians who starkly are too broke to regulate giant US corporations, for whom too little money goes too long of a way.
my point is, who the hell knows! there are many, many points of view. it's not any one thing. but one thing's for sure, i don't think i'm upgrading my phone until it blows up anymore, and this is the simple, greatest risk to their business.
so they're going to become a company that breaks phones to get people to replace them, regardless of what they are today :)
Not saying that Ternus wouldn’t have been involved in or part of the decision making process in moving the Mac to Apple-designed silicon, but I haven’t seen any indication he was any more involved than other execs at the company.
Also think it's cool that John Ternus has only a bachelor's degree with a very down to earth presence. I completely dig his LI page being really bare bones.
I suspect Apple is about to experience another Renaissance era...
Given the level of mathematics I’ve seen involved in hardware, I’d assume the average mech eng. has a better chance than the average software eng.
Mech E. on the other hand, is perhaps the broadest engineering discipline in terms of foundational principles, application variety, and transferable skills. So shouldn't be all that surprising when it comes to hardware engineering.
That people are still judging someone by their school performance (or, less charitably but how I experienced the difference between "poor" and "good" students in about half of the cases: their willingness to deal with arbitrarily set requirements) after being in the workforce for this long says a lot about society. I'm not sure it's a factor when one is comparing devices in a store, which ultimately is what they created right? Shouldn't we judge them by their work?
Also considering this is HN
> Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture
"Only a bachelor's" is a ridiculous comment, and incredibly out of touch.
[0] As Steve Jobs said in 2005: "OS X is the most advanced operating system on the planet and it has set Apple up for the next 20 years."
How incredibly prophetic that 21 years later, MacOS is suddenly showing its age.
and mac has ios, which with ipads goes desktopy. (capability based security)
How so? Genuinely curious, I've got no idea what he's like as a person.
Case in point? From what I've read he's reserved, keeps a very low profile, and is dedicated to his work. We know next to nothing about his personal life.
I wish more tech execs were in Cook’s mold. Reserved. Controlled. Calm. No Twitter beefs, no overt politics, no blow-ups behind closed doors.
Excuse me? Giving a literal gold trophy to the God-Emperor Trump is not politics?
It's bending the knee.
Why degrade himself, what can Trump do that their trillions cannot cushion?
It'd be bad business stewardship if he didn't; bad for shareholders, ultimately.
It looks silly optically, but it's plain to see that Apple has trump nailed psychologically. And it worked! They knew what was needed to get an administration to support the company in meaningful ways.
May we do better on the next election.
He literally gave him a gold trophy! How is that not support? It's beyond compliance in advance.
To a president hell-bent on overturning Obergefell v Hodges, even.
He gave him more gold than Maria Corina Machado.
Yeah, what's going on? I'm confused by this choice - I would have expected a marketer. Maybe they really are doubling down on hardware for the ai age?
I would have expected a marketer.
Before we had many groundbreaking features that redefined how you use smarphone:
- gps
- flashlight (yes everybody with flashlight in the pocket!)
- front selfie camera + video calls
- compass + accelerometer + gyroscope
- good wide and ultrawide (video) camera
- nfc + apple pay
- fingerprint / faceid
- esim
- magsafe
Now you can have iphone 12 pro and don't miss much from iphone 17 pro.
For example, a Vivo X300 Ultra or Xiaomi 17 Ultra. Much better cameras, larger batteries, 90-100W charging, etc.
OP is alluding to the fact that Apple hasn't created industry changing categories like the iPhone.
Like the brands I've mentioned, Apple buys their camera sensors (from Sony), battery, and display. And yet they don't have the best camera sensors, the newer higher capacity batteries, the latest display tech, etc.
You can go 2 or 3 iterations before seeing a real improvement, and it's not always because better tech doesn't exist. They're just not pushing hard.
Apple Silicon in the past 5 years has trounced every single market player. Apple has to make decisions on things like sensors based on the supplier being able to deliver hundreds of millions annually -- by the time we see the hardware it was baked and locked in over 12 months ago.
Apple introduced 48MP camera sensors many years after they became available. For the past 2 or 3 years, there have been devices with much better cameras, but again, they're not iPhones. Some phones have been charging at peak 40-100W for a while, so when you look at Apple's 30-40W, it's not that impressive, is it? In a year or so they may release a foldable phone, but Samsung is already on the 7th iteration of the Fold. And so on.
It doesn't make their SoCs less impressive (typing this on a M4 Mac!) or the shipping of so many devices a lesser feat, but Apple is very conservative with iPhones, and that's very apparent when you look at all phones out there.
That's the kind of thing people say when they are out of ideas. The reality is that the mobile phone market was already a mature market, with Nokia as the leader, even before the iPhone was released. Then Steve Jobs showed the world how to innovate.
sounds like a ton of fun to me. Just sending it rally-style everywhere :)
a better comparison is buying a Ferrari to drive around your town at 40 km/h
I daresay the iPhone 17 Pro is a compelling enough upgrade, hardware wise. Not much innovation, but their phone hardware is very usable.
But I'd prefer if Apple gave up 2 years of trying to "innovate" nonsense like Liquid glAss and polish up their software first, just like the old days.
> lets you quickly open your iPhone camera and access common camera settings *points at button* (https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/use-the-camera-contro...)
The way you phrased it about changing how you use a phone, I was expecting you control a lot of the phone via the camera somehow (gestures?) and don't need to bother with the pesky touchscreen. But okay no it's just the camera button that has been on cameras and other phones since time immemorial
I guess if you are gonna fail, fail so deeply that it doesn't affect your legacy :P
Google is gonna spend between February and December 2026 $185 billion on their AI technology, and how much has Microsoft spent somewhere near 100 billion dollars or how about OpenAI (we don’t know yet) but that number will be my numbing or Meta which is some where in the $80 billion mark.
Tim Cook has nothing to worry about Apple didn’t squander billions of dollars they put the money where they should’ve put it in Apple Silicon and everything else they do well.
Google got a $1 billion refund and OpenAI got nothing. I’m sure Sam thought when he went into the meeting with Tim Cook that he was gonna come out with $50 billion and he came out with zip. Apple made the right choice.
What's the best case scenario? Make few billion a year fuzzed with long term warranty liabilities? That might sound nice, but for apple their companion products like AirPods or the Apple Watch easily clear much better profit. Putting their corporate effort into another companion product is more economically sensible and far less risky.
In the years after Jobs' death, Ive was pampered as many people attributed Apple's vision and taste to Jobs #1 and Ive #2. Losing both would've trashed the stock and Apple's reputation at that time.
Ive loves watches and cars. Despite launching the Apple Watch with a $10k+ gold version and a heavy fashion emphasis (another Ive indulgence), it fortunately became a viable product but more due to the health and fitness features.
I just don't think Apple goes down the car path without Ive at his most outsized influence at that time. But Ive wanted to put his mark on the automobile.
Now he's doing it for Ferrari but in a much more traditional sense. Buttons and switches instead of entirely touchscreen, human drivers and not driverless, etc.
Software is easier given the shorter cycles. Caveat is, the shorter cycles also benefit competitors.
As for Ternus' timing:
A)Not very Apple to have the CEO do one last launch while on the way out the door (want the full throated, 1000% commitment in execs)
B)Gives John stage for first time as CEO at September Keynote (historically a BFD)
C)It felt right, among all the other time-slots and factors to consider
D)John gets to announce the next One More Thing, and own it. Would be odd for Tim to announce the One More Thing and then resign.
I still hope they eventually sell server blades for macOS.
Apple's big win was that consumer basically became enterprise. There was lots of noise around formal BYOD but in many/most places it just happened whether IT was on-board or not.
The main problems regular people have when it comes to their phones/macs today isn't that they're boring, it's that the software is buggy and inconsistent, and generally just seems a disservice to the otherwise industry leading hardware.
I'd rather they fix that first than cater to the hardware enthusiasts yearning for some breakthrough new-paradigm design.
EDIT: I also want to say I really appreciate Tim Cook’s emphasis on user privacy and I hope John Ternus can continue this trend.
It would be unusual for a leader of such a thing not act in accordance w/ shareholders' best interests, as well to defy likely board guidance.
That said, I'd love to enlightened to how it's myopic, or rather, what course(s) of action you would take, keeping in mind that Apple is a multi-trillion dollar public company.
Myopia is thinking “well he did it so it must have been good”. There are myriad other things he could’ve done, that have a strong argument towards higher shareholder value.
Edit to add: Think TSLA, if you want a concrete example. If that stock was at all trading on fundamentals (and if they had a remotely capable or competent board) and not Magic Memes, Musk’s hard right pivot was inarguably bad for the brand and shareholder value, even if it made the President temporarily happy.
Given that Apple is doing well, the onus is on someone claiming that Apple would have done better, having a strong argument.
Not "could" have done better, because things could obviously have gone better, worse, or anything else, given any substantive or random difference. Could means nothing.
(And I say this as someone very disappointed with how Cook handled that.)
It’s not clear what you are saying, other than what you want to hear.
Ah, "If you can't definitively and completely prove a negative then you're wrong (but also I'm like, totally not carrying water for those people)" is definitely not a weak opinion, though.
That said, maybe you should read the discussion a bit more carefully before jumping in with "OMG PROOOOOOF" or whatever the fuck this was supposed to be? The entire, plain English discussion, revolved around one thing not being the only possible "fact" just because it happened. None of the posts were particularly long, and none used challenging words.
I hate what Cook did.
I would be happy and open to anyone who can point out how Apple was supposed to handle the actual threat of major tariffs in their components and systems better than he did.
But simply asserting a counter factual, a plausible way it might have been better, isn’t that. What would Cook be expected to do with that?
But what?
Not dismissing that there was a better way. There must be. It’s very worthwhile figuring out, even as a counter factual. That’s how we all learn.l
Not judging anyone. My answer is just or even more weak! I have really thought about this too, and come up with nothing so far.
(I appreciate and take note that my comment didn’t communicate my point well enough. It’s important to recognize weak reasoning. But that wasn’t meant to discourage, or show a lack of respect for another person’s efforts. I want a better answer too.)
You're writing words that I did not say or imply.
The point is going against any (current) admin is almost always bad for a publicly traded company. Any public entity is going to have to have extremely good reasons to "fight back", how doing so is good for business. As a CEO of such an entity you're having to answer to many people who want a concrete plan and a belief in your strategy.
In the first rodeo, when all this was novel, it was believed such social signaling would pay off. Obviously silicon valley as a whole no longer feels this way.
TSLA is an outlier being grounded more on some superior man theory, that Apple did have in the past w/ Jobs, who is no longer there. Religious fervor stuff. It doesn't really apply. Rational moves here, please.
> There are myriad other things he could’ve done, that have a strong argument towards higher shareholder value
This is what I asked you to expound on. Please state a few.
---
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/05/business/video/jp-morgan-chas...
[0] https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-...
Apple has led the industry on hardware but is woefully behind on the software and services front. Focusing on device-level privacy controls turns what would be a gap into a moat, and it helps deprive Google and other services from monetizing their customer base.
Not to say that it's not something the company is passionate about - but it's also good for their business. Especially when you compare it to things like human rights, transparency, and security research where Apple could take a stronger stand but don't.
It is a market position, but companies do have some choice in which market positions they choose to take. And I wouldn't underestimate the effect of the personal views of the CEO in that.
The payment Apple gets from Google for being the default search might help explain this. It would be hard to turn down the sums Apple gets.
https://9to5mac.com/2025/09/03/just-one-word-in-the-google-a...
iOS is ahead on software security compared to Android, Windows, Desktop Linux, etc.
I’m not sure what else they are behind on frankly, as their current offerings have been extremely stable from day dot.
How many products has Google released and killed in the past 20 years? Apple managed to land on a good thing with Apple iTunes and iPhotos in the early oughts, and managed to transition those core services into Apple Music and iCloud with little to no disruption to users. iCloud is generally a pretty predictable service that delivers on a core set of user requirements very well.
Also, thief productivity suite isn’t meant to completely replace Office, and for a free package, it meets many users needs perfectly fine.
Define sensible. Apple's B2C margins are peanuts compared to what Nvidia's commanding right now, and they're both ARM retailers competing for the same cutting-edge fab space.
On macOS when I connect or disconnect an external monitor, my applications get all confused on where they should display, especially if I then reconnect a monitor. On KDE when I unplug my monitor everything goes nicely onto one desktop. When I put a monitor back in, everything goes back to where it was before. It just works.
On macOS, every time I install a new program I need to do some dance with System preferences to allow it to run. I tried some command line settings that supposedly disables this, but it never sticks. Every few months, the process is different than it was before. On KDE, I just run my software and it works.
On macOS, I don't have useful window snapping behavior or full-screen behavior, nor am I able to have focus follow my mouse. On KDE, I have these.
macOS just doesn't work for me. But the competitors have a good solution.
Computing should be personal. Some people like to mold their tools to their way of working. Others adapt their way of working to their tools. KDE is for the former, and macOS is for the latter.
Why would someone else use my criteria? They should use their own criteria? I certainly am not going to use your "it's niche so it can't be useful" criteria as it's important to my usage.
Apple software isn't bad, but it is often obtuse and buggy. And, with iOS 26, usability has taken a big hit.
I'd need another hand to fully count all the Apple apps that have burned me in the past.
Giving a golden statue of Trump has no effect on you and me, and a very large effect on Trump. He is gaining significant political capital while giving up nothing that matters (feel free to correct if I am wrong). Contrast with every other tech executive, lawyer, and university dean in America, most of whom have been cowed into compromising on their deepest values, or even worse, have done so without hesitation. I cannot think of many tech execs whom history will be kinder towards.
No effect on you, really. You aren’t affected by gas prices or tariffs? They are bowing down and participating in Trump’s patronage schemes. Every powerful person who does this is complicit with all the horrible things done by the Trump administration. They are endorsing Trump and his ilk with their behavior if not their words, which allows and encourages him to continue his fraud and abuse.
Everyone in the United States is complicit to the horrible things done by the Trump administration by your logic. I partially agree, but I also think burning Apple to the ground will not be Tim Cook's legacy and he is in no place to go against the executive branch.
It is not about Trump, it is about the corrupted executive branch. Tim didn't do any crime against humanity in his act.
But they're still responsible for their own personal piece of the rot in the system.
If a cop says your problems go away for $100, you pay it, because the downside is huge by comparison. The problem is the cop getting away with it, not that you paid the bribe.
Having the prize doesn’t make you the winner. But it feeds Trumps ego sooooooo muuuuuch, it’s probably the “best” thing you can do to get on his good side without actually giving him anything.
This is a ridiculous strawman. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume ignorance instead of malice.
I wrote that going above and beyond to curry favor with an autocrat in order to protect your profits is collaboration.
And you read, what? Existing under a government means you necessarily support it because there was an election? You do understand an election means some people voted the other way, right?
He's not an autocrat precisely because there was an election. He won the election because he got the most votes. He has since failed to do most things he campaigned on because his power is very limited by virtue of our government's structure.
Every complicity is another nail in the coffin of our democracy.
Other, much smaller organizations have stood up to Trump and forced him to back down. So much for "courage."
He personally donated at least a million dollars to Trump's inauguration, plus whatever to the campaign.
> Contrast with every other tech executive
What contrast is there? Tech executives capitulated to Trump's demands, and Tim Cook did the exact same thing. The problem doesn't start and stop with the gold trophy, it encompasses things like European legislation, labor/union laws, and complex supply chains that Apple needs federal support to manage. There are convoluted motives here, and the bizzaro FIFA trophies are only the tip of the iceberg.
Cynically speaking, Cook is wise to keep the DEI and climate commitments as bartering chits for Apple's next leadership to forfeit. He knows that Apple needs leverage to get their druthers from the Fed.
The USA has the best government that money can buy.
Bribery hurts everyone else following the law. It erodes public trust. All of us are definitely hurt by Trump's extreme and obvious levels of corruption.
It didn't.
> In that lens, this bribery, while bad, is the least destructive form it could have taken.
Its not.
> It being so gaudy actually helps this case.
It doesn't.
Normalizing corruption to this level is a bad thing. Period.
The people engaging in this should be in prison. Including Trump.
Perhaps. Assuming it actually keeps existing:
Usability wise (UI/UX/design), they are in the gutter.
A decade to produce a non-functioning gesture bar / system. Such a titan among titans.
This is not to say that Apple’s desktop software is great, only that the bar is a lot lower than it had to be when people had to be convinced to buy licenses.
goto fail was relevant in 2014 - perhaps not the most useful point in 2026.
However, it's bad. I much prefer the rare, elusive, postfix if:
goto fail if (condition);
[...]Use a space after keywords (if, while, for, return, switch). No braces are used for control statements with zero or only a single statement unless that statement is more than a single line, in which case they are permitted.[0]
The good thing is that -Wmisleading-indentation [2] (comes along with -Wall) catches this indentation error.
[0] https://man.openbsd.org/style - happens to be same for at least NetBSD.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Syntactic-Conve...
Or comments such as: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/Security/blob/rel...
Unsurprisingly, given BoringSSL doesn't have a stable API (yet alone ABI), it isn't exposed as a system library.
If you really are doubting what gets used for TLS, open up Console.app, start streaming, run `nscurl https://example.com/` (or load it in Safari, etc.), and you'll see logging like:
default com.apple.network boringssl 18:11:46.229209-0700 libboringssl.dylib nscurl boringssl_session_apply_protocol_options_for_transport_block_invoke(2360) [C1.1.1.1:2][0x1008cef10] TLS configured [server(0) min_version(0x0303) max_version(0x0304) name(redacted) tickets(false) false_start(false) enforce_ev(false) enforce_ats(false) ats_non_pfs_ciphersuite_allowed(false) cc_mode_enforced(false) ech(false) pqtls(true), pake(false)]
https://security.it.miami.edu/stay-safe/sec-articles/macosx-...
[1] Actually, the defect was that creating a root account was a unprivileged action, so anybody could create a root account on your machine with a password of their choice. The most obvious presentation is that you could login to root by pressing enter twice with the empty password; the first time creating root with the empty password and the second time logging you in.
I'm using both Linux and macOS close to 20 years (Linux is even more than 20, IIRC), and macOS (aka Mac OS) used to be snappier, more stable, more uniform and had incredibly low number of papercuts around the UI. Now it has some nasty thorns here and there, while Linux is improving steadily and not regressing much as macOS.
Apple needs to overhaul their software stack. They can use a lot of sanding and polishing to bring the shine back. They need another "Snow Leopard" release, as many people say.
On the other hand, even with all these bells and whistles, they can't even get close to the composability of Linux systems. Doing so will also damage their bottom line, so they won't, and that's OK.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/15/ios-27-will-reportedly-...
iOS 26 is slated to drop a bunch of iPhone models. macOS is dropping all all macs with Intel CPUs.
A Snow Leopard release isn't great news for a lot of people.
> macOS is dropping all all macs with Intel CPUs.
Those two cases are not really comparable though, are they? The last Intel CPU Mac was the 2019 Mac Pro, which was discontinued in 2023.
The broader point is that a "Snow Leopard" release has historically resulted in a lot of hardware being left behind, and many of the devices that could have benefited the most from optimizations were cut off.
I still think it's unrealistic to expect 8+ years of OS updates for a computer even if you purchased it 5 years after its launch date.
The development of Mac OS X was the development of iOS, and it was one-way.
Apple, like you, can only think in terms of revenue and profit generated. "iPhone makes this much profit = iphone gets this much development".
That thinking has led us into this stagnated crap, because it's a terrible way to do software. Worse, what's happening now is apple is taking its iThing software and trying to migrate it to the mac. The Mac is now getting destroyed by the iPhone development.
That is the reason why.
Wow.
The smart move is further development of the Mac to explore ways to bring new features to the iPhone or future apple devices. To simply go "this = profit = all development goes there" personifies a lack of wisdom.
Improving interface response times is the single best thing Apple can do to improve their UX. I don't need an interface which throbs, wiggles, jiggles, shines, and refracts, I need an interface that's snappy and fast.
As far as I know, MacOS is the _only_ desktop OS with this problem. The only way to fix this problem on MacOS is to do everything inside a virtual machine running anything but MacOS.
I use both linux (with a decent tiling window manager; the tiling management being the least important part of it) and macos. And certain things are just not possible to do with macos. On linux I can have 300+ open terminal windows AND CAN find the one I need when I need to. On macos 20 (counting in Termianl tabs, which are implemented as windows, underneath) is about the high mark that it gets annoying to work on. On macos, you can't effectively work on multiple projects that use the same software (editor + terminal, for example). You can work with different Applications, though, and that is managed pretty well (better than most linux window managers that I have seen).
Every year or so I try adding a couple of Spaces, and always regret it a couple of hours later, switching back to a single Space (+ a few fullscreen apps).
I love the three finger gesture to move between them though, it's like moving pieces of paper around. You can also work around the bug I mentioned by swiping faster, but yeah I wish they'd just fix it so we can move on.
I used to run Linux with i3 tiling window manager, but switched to Mac because the battery is so much better. Although the new Framework laptop looks like it has pretty great battery life.
In terms of package management SOFTWARE, however, nix (and guix, lix, etc.) are state of the art and work fairly similar in both linux and macos. A deeper integration with the OS would have been nice.
But did you try Homebrew and its extensions? It works pretty well for managing both terminal and GUI apps, and has some useful extensions like Brewfile, MAS, etc. Its not perfect, but for single-user Macs with an up-to-date OS version, it works quite well.
How often are you switching systems that you can't remember the package manager?
You could just alias your package manager to something more memorable if it's really a problem, but I feel like this argument only really applies to servers where you may be logging into a variety of different distributions every day.
You can turn down the animation times for most of this with "defaults write" commands. Set them to 0 or as small as you want. Here's a good list to get started:
https://gist.github.com/j8/8ef9b6e39449cbe2069a
> I don't need an interface which throbs, wiggles, jiggles, shines, and refracts, I need an interface that's snappy and fast.
System Settings -> Accessibility -> Reduce Motion: Enabled System Settings -> Accessibility -> Display -> Reduce Transparency: Enabled
> This is always the default answer to this question online, and I’m sick of it! It doesn’t even solve the problem, but rather replaces it with an equally useless fade-in animation.
https://arhan.sh/blog/native-instant-space-switching-on-maco...
But this eroded over time. Nowadays both Mac and iOS are bloated pieces of crap that reek of design by committee. A lot of people blame Alan Dye (and they are probably right to do so) but there are other factors too. With Steve and Jony gone, they need someone who cares to step in and assert control once more
That's kinda rose tinted history. System 7 (1990s Mac OS) for example crashed and locked up a whole lot, in my experience. The UI was fantastic and had great consistency, and the developer docs were of a quality that would blow minds today. But the software was not as solid as all that.
Windows was the same or maybe worse at the time. BSOD was common and a nightly reboot was a good idea until NT/Win2000. Solaris and BSD would have months of uptime on similar hardware, so it was a software problem. PC OSes were just not there yet. Windows 2000, OSX, and Linux gradually fixed that.
That's all basic uptime. The UI design drift of MacOS is another story.
These terminal commands don't fix the problem- there are still lengthy animations, e.g. when swapping desktops or opening folders. These are tasks I sometimes do multiple times per second on Linux.
It's not the default, but IIRC Windows could be configured to have zero animations, and I found it to be quite responsive as such.
I'm not talking about the speed of opening programs, but more of the speed of every-second interactions: Unfolding a folder (or other interactions within a program with keyboard or mouse), alt-tabbing across windows, moving between desktops, etc. At least on Windows, I saw far fewer IO-blocking animations than I have on MacOS.
You're right about the "something starts to happen": Apple hides delays behind sigmoidal animations throughout much of their OS. For those who aren't aware of the trick, the delay between the start of the animation and the tail where it starts appears to just be an animation that started on the interaction.
Input devices and monitors can make a difference as well.
FWIW, SwiftUI got a huge performance boost for iOS/macOS 26+, and Instruments 26 has been nice for finding performance bottlenecks. You may find the SwiftUI performance auditor in a free/FOSS project of mine (https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/commands/ui-design/au...) helpful as well.
Why it took 4 years to get to near-UIKit levels of performance I couldnt say, but I've had a great experience working with it on an app that's 97% SwiftUI.
Any specific improvements you've seen on the mac side?
Now that said iPhone is a thousand times faster, just invoking the keyboard can cause a serious delay with stutters.
In any case, it’s odd that hardware is multiples better yet it doesn’t always nail something as basic as typing
But I often have input lags where I will press several keys, and then a period of time (which can be multiple seconds) will pass before my taps are registered.
The 14 Pro Max launched less than four years ago, and should not be slower than an Android which launched a decade prior.
No-one has forced you to upgrade. I’m writing this on iOS 18.
I plug a Mac into a 120hz monitor with a high refresh rate mouse and it is gloriously snappy, snappier than any Windows PC I’ve ever used.
I wouldn't expect that of Android because it's Java and Kotlin parts run in a VM and there's a garbage collector pausing the execution at times.
So true. I run into so many little and annoying bugs I sometimes wonder if Apple Execs actually use their own devices.
These days I'm happier (or at least content) without a Mac. My FW13+Linux setup may not be as nice as the latest macbook, but it does exactly what I want and if it doesn't, I have options.
It's really easy to fail to see this in the heat of things.
macOS has a feature where it puts an orange dot on the top right corner of your screen whenever your microphone is recording. That orange dot is normally part of the menu bar, and completely unobtrusive, but will still show up on top of full-screen windows (e.g. it'll show up on top of games if you're on Discord talking to friends), which is distracting as hell.
As horrendously annoying that little dot is, what's the alternative? Either you have an uncircumventable marker saying you're being recorded, or you don't. Any way to turn that thing off that doesn't involve disabling SIP would be trivial to exploit by anybody who managed to plant malicious recording software in the first place.
Again, I get it, but as a power user this kind of stuff is just infuriating.
So much pain in macOS is in areas like this, trying to hack basic features back into the anemic OS.
Apple's "OS" updates typically focus on end-user applications that I don't use and never intend to. Meanwhile the core of the OS, and even the desktop environment, feels stagnant compared to many Linux distros.
Dead on.
Apple's current software is such a joke I almost regret ever having invested in the Mac ecosystem. I still run Mojave for its 32-bit app support for (apple's own) apps that have no contemporary equal.
Apple weathered the passing of Steve surprisingly well, however the cracks still show. Apple's very best is exclusively reserved for those products/devices/software with Jobs' fingerprints on them.
I still run an original iPhone SE as well. The entire tech sphere has gone in such a poor direction, I've increasingly divested myself from tech. If it no longer works with my system, I simply stop using it. It's a happy ("insecure") place.
I think that was mainly due to GPL 3.
IIRC, the FSF generally insists on getting assigned the copyrights on all GNU software, so the FSF can re-license any new version of their software under any license they choose to, which is currently GPLv3.
Users/vendors can still choose GPLv2 for the older versions of GNU software, which I think is what Apple does for the few remaining GNU software they ship.
I think it started slightly earlier: 10.7 Lion in 2011 introduced the new full-screen mode that was completely broken on multi-monitor setups, as though Apple entirely failed to test on or even anticipate what was at most a moderately "power user" hardware configuration. They've introduced lots of useless features over the years (eg. Game Center), but that full-screen mode was the first time I recall OS X having such an in-your-face usability regression that was so obvious and avoidable.
10.7 also dropped Front Row, which was a disappointment to me, but is at least understandable in the context of Apple TV existing as a separate product they wanted to steer users toward. Losing Rosetta in 10.7 was also somewhat justifiable, and didn't hurt me much since my first Mac was an Intel machine and I didn't have much of a library of PPC-only applications.
Many other iPhone/Macbook users have been shocked I don't turn on Messages on my Mac due to a bad experience with sync in the first year that was possible, and I had a similar bad experience with photos in iCloud early on. Maybe the sync is fast now, but my usage would put my in a higher iCloud tier than I'd like, and I still feel more at ease juggling many Photos libraries on external hard drives. I avoid Google Photos like the plague, and even though I trust Apple more (for now), I'd still rather not entrust to them my family's personal photos and videos.
Hopefully in a place where I can solve the bigger problems I have then!
You can use Messages on the Mac without storing messages in iCloud. iPhone, iPad and Mac can all send and receive the same account’s messages, effectively staying in sync without actually syncing them to iCloud’s servers.
There are many, many things that are completely normal in Linux that are super clunky in MacOS at best.
But at least try to match Nautilus or Thunar ffs.
As for Linux, I don't think I've ever used a system with UI for any serious amount of time. >99.999% of my usage is on headless systems through a terminal. As god intended.
With macOS, you really have no choice to use what Apple offers. You can hope they listen to dissent but they may not depending on priorities. And things have to be bad enough to jump platforms before real dissent registers. And things have to get pretty bad for that.
Same issue with Windows of course.
With GNOME, KDE, COSMIC, and the Linux rat pack, it is easy to switch experiences without ditching Linux entirely. And somebody has probably even patched your DE of choice to address the papercuts you do not like.
They were so much better. And have slid slowly into complacency, if not worse.
You just have to look at their directors managing those software directions and you will exactly why it's become the mess that it is today.
Both those ecosystems are rapidly enshittifying (apple cannot even reliably process keystrokes with subsecond latency, and google is banning sideloading).
We need a third, actually user-serving and open alternative. Maybe the new CEO will slow or reverse the bleeding on the iOS / MacOS side.
The hardware is nominally open only because they enforce participation in their software ecosystem via other means.
Partially accurate / misleading at most.
If your “partially accurate” objection is that I didn't describe a perfectly universal experience, I will be greatly disappointed.
your bank’s app sucks, tell them they suck,
and or use the webapp.
Tens of thousands of financial institution apps work A-OK on GrapheneOS,
that is my objection.
Are we talking about root checks? Bootloader unlock?
I'd go further and say I am constantly frustrated by how difficult their software can make basic tasks. I often find many of their UX patterns unintuitive, or even feel user hostile at times. Small example, I really want to view passwords as I type them in. I constantly miss type passwords on touch screens. User error maybe, but frustrating experience.
XCode is my least favourite IDE that I use regularily.
My favourite example being looking for the volume mixer, and after looking online the top advice seemed to be to pay for a 3rd party application for that... Wtf?
Those third-party apps do increase the overall appeal of Apple's platform, but suggesting that Apple might want to encourage that situation rather than improve their OS themselves sounds like a broken windows fallacy.
Microsoft finally caught up around that time, but has since added a whole new dimension of enshittification that the only conclusion that can be reached about tech as a whole is that it all sucks and will always suck.
The fact that they tie the mobile version to the OS version is just ridiculous.
The latest version of Chrome requires the version of Android released in 2019. Even phones that old aren’t getting other security updates.
Is that really the argument you want to make?
The latest version of iOS runs on iPads back to 2919.
The latest version of Chrome requires the version of Android - released in 2019.
So how is it better?
My company keeps the testing cycle smaller by only adding new OS-dependent features to its mobile app when the minimum supported OS version gets incremented and a feature is supported in every supported OS version. That means that the iOS app is only now getting features that were added in iOS 15 in 2021.
20+ years ago, software was so horrible that we were just tolerating it, and every new OS release was a big deal because there was hope things would get better! Today an OS release comes out and I have to be bothered by automatic "you must upgrade messages" to even care.
People forget how horrible it used to be, and if you still use windows, how much worse it could be when vs. Apple (and let's not get started on Linux).
When it comes to the software, I’d take the Tiger experience over the Tahoe one hands-down.
I don't think software is improving today, which is why I have to be nagged to upgrade. I don't think it worse, but my computer usage probably varies greatly from yours.
I understood that, and I was using it in the same way.
> I don't think software is improving today, which is why I have to be nagged to upgrade. I don't think it worse…
Yeah this is the part I was disagreeing with, and I gave a couple examples showing why it’s meaningfully worse now.
I’ve been using Macs since the 1980s. The timeframe of 20-25 years ago (post Classic Mac OS) was some of the best software Apple has ever released.
The macOS Tahoe release is a great example of this. I can't think of a single thing I prefer about it and could easily name ten things I hate about it.
Absolutely not, especially not on an Apple thread.
By example, the iPod released in 2001. Anyone who used those early knows the user experience was competitive with the current experience. In 2006, I was using the version of iTunes then which was probably objectively the best desktop music app ever created. There are features then that were just there, that were pioneered, or now absent, like an automatically sorted "least listened to" playlist that are now nearly impossible to find. Sync alone is still an headache the OS community just does on the side, and no one is even bothering to compete on it anymore.
I had an iPod in those days and Apple's firmware updates that periodically broke third-party sync (while bringing no improvements) is the reason that to this day I've never bought Apple hardware for myself from Apple since that time. Used hardware only.
Every time I had to use iTunes was regrettable. The app was an insanely massive download for the time. It tried to install fucking Safari on Windows for no reason. The UI was somehow simultaneously a sprawling mess and feature-deprived.
Maybe there was a brief period where iTunes was genuinely an interesting app, but even by the mid-aughts, it had been totally surpassed by a number of open-source music players.
But Amarok at that time was only available on Linux. I assume most iTunes fans of the time never got to try it.
I've used basically all of the major operating systems for 30+ years and I cannot stand macOS. I use a Mac as one of my work devices, and off the top of my head:
* Basic things such as window management require third party tools to get things that are table stakes everywhere else. Even with third party tools doing anything with a "full screen" mode is not going to work the way you expect.
* You can't have separate scroll directions for your trackpad and your external mouse.
* External peripherals in general are a disaster. Every time I connect or disconnect from a docking station my windows are left in awkward positions sized larger than my screen and I need to drag them around
* macOS seems to store a different set of monitor orientations based on what USB port I connect my dock to - same dock, same monitors, 2 different layouts I had to configure independently. I don't even know how you could accomplish that if you wanted it - and absolutely no one wants that.
* Multiple monitors is constantly an afterthought, whether it's menus, the dock, layouts, what have you
* The Settings app is impossible to find anything in. You have to search, and that works OK sometimes, but the layout has no rhyme, reason, or comprehensible order
* Safari. Enough said.
I could keep going, but I absolutely do not associate Apple with quality software.
1. ios performance in scrolling and loading (especially on my ipad pro m2) is unbearably slow, just stutters everywhere when loading a page in the background
2. tap-and-hold to open a link menu is so strange; sometimes it highlights text instead of showing the menu, sometimes it works ok, there is some kind of strange ui timing issue at work
3. on ipad and ios the tab overview display scrolling is absolutely appalling like 4fps level slow... completely unbearable to scroll through tab previews
4. developer tools are abysmal compared to chrome
5. on desktop performance is also extremely slow compared to chrome, its night and day
6. battery usage is so bad on ipad, just leaving some tabs open they run down the battery and chug memory (i know this is more a web thing, but they should at least freeze tabs in the background or make it an option)
7. just strange bugs on ipad, when tapping a text field the keyboard pops up, then suddenly disappears and the pops up again... just a terrible app
etc etc lots of paper cuts, but the performance issues are the biggest for me... i like the tab groups + auto save and icloud sync and built-in spellcheck, but its getting harder and harder to resist the alternatives
But if I want to search for any comment by you on this page, how do I do it?
I’m not after a web search, I just want to see ‘j16sdiz’ highlighted on this page.
Currently I go to ‘…’ > share > scroll down > find on page.
Thank you.
I could basically sums up your experience as Safari is appalling at multi tab resource management. And it has been the case for 14+ years and counting.
It wasn't until Safari 18 before I have most of the rendering issues gone on sites I visit. Safari 26 is completely gone. I haven't encountered one since Safari 26.1.
With a lot of features done, I just hope Safari turn its attention to performance and snappiness of the browser. Multi Tabs doesn't work. For people who uses more than 30+ Tabs is when it start getting slow. Safari used to have an option to unload background tab and that usually fix 80% of the problem but it was taken out some years ago.
1. Mandating all browsers on iOS/iPadOS to be powered by Safari (excluding in the EU). This doesn't sound bad, but wait until #3 below...
2. Safari's many bugs. Too many bugs. Oh so many bugs. Damn that's a lot of bugs.
- See: https://webventures.rejh.nl/blog/2024/history-of-safari-show...
- Also see the State of CSS developer survey where Safari makes up such a large portion of pain reports that "Safari" is its own category: https://2025.stateofcss.com/en-US/usage/#css_general_pain_po...
- And again in the State of JS developer survey: https://2025.stateofjs.com/en-US/features/#browser_apis_pain...
3. Grievance 1 and 2 compound together. Whenever Safari (or a Safari update) breaks a feature, you cannot inform a user that they can use another browser as a work around (because all browser engines are forced to use Webkit on iOS/iPadOS)
4. Bad dev tools. This has been seeing much needed improvements (e.g. being able to type an entire word in the css pane instead of a new character on each line), but it still feels 7 years behind.
5. No way to report bugs. There is a "bug reporter" at bugs.webkit.org, however each bug is auto-tagged with a link to an internal bug tracker within Apple. This means that those who are trying to fix bugs and those are trying to report bugs have a wall between them. There is no way to have a discussion to try to narrow down what the bug is, why the bug happens in one case but not another, what's really the cause of the issue, or why the bug matters more than whoever is assigned it might realise. When reporting a bug to Apple, it's more useful to talk to an actual wall because it might fall on you giving you an actual response.
6. Performing incorrectly is more important than getting the performing correctly. This one takes some explanation, but it's a little tricky. I'll give three examples then show how they're all the same issue:
Example 1: The cool homepage.
I was working on a website. Two months before launch I decided to spend a month of time juicing up the homepage, then one more month on polish.
On the homepage I decided to use the brand's pre-existing graphics and turning them into a parallax animation (inspired by: https://www.firewatchgame.com/)
It had:
- Regular content on the page
- Parallax layers with simple vector graphics inside them so that when the user scrolled down the page, the user saw a parallax animation of the landscape changing. (e.g. far clouds, far mountains, close clouds, close mountains, hill, foreground, simple bubble particles closer than the regular content on the sides to strengthen the depth of field illusion, etc...)
- Other vector graphics following a motion path animation
- This was done in 2017, so before CSS got scroll driven animation support, or motion-path support. It was also done without JS.
- Everything worked brilliantly, until we discovered that one particular iPhone model rendered an empty blank white page.
- I lost the last month trying pulling the effect apart trying to diagnose the bug (and with Safari's buggy dev tools being no help I had to do it in the dark). I was able to determine when the bug would trigger, and had to tear down my whole homepage and rebuild it with 2 fewer parallax layers before launch and 3 days of polish for the rest of the website before launch.
(you can see the final result at https://myobrace.com, but I really would have liked the extra time for polish, if you're wondering how I achieved the effects without JS and/or scroll-driven animations, I used css's perspective and transform rules to position the elements back in the z-axis then scaled them up so they appeared the correct size with the regular page content so as the page scrolled, the elements further back appeared to scroll at a different speed. I then used SMIL for the motion paths in the SVG elements).
Example 2. The texture
I wanted to add a repeating texture to buttons so they didn't feel so flat without needing a separate network request to download an image.
I tried generating one with SVG but the SVG 1.1 filter effects implementations aren't all hardware accelerated.
I tried generating one with CSS which worked everywhere but Safari.
You can see a texture here where the texture is generated entirely within CSS, and it doesn't work in Safari (but I didn't hide the seams because the result looks like a cool mosaic and I wanted to share the technique): https://codepen.io/spartanatreyu/pen/Yzbmvbr
(if you're curious about the actual texture I used, I hand drew a minimal noise texture in photoshop that could be repeated without showing seams, then base64 encoded it and inlined it within the CSS file so it could be loaded without needing an extra network request. You can see my development version here: https://codepen.io/spartanatreyu/pen/YzoexGg?editors=1100 (the final version is locked behind a login wall in a child-friendly education webapp))
Example 3. Asset downloading
I made a webapp for kiosk machines that downloads 100mb+ of video assets when logging in for the first time. iPads have a kiosk mode so I supported iPadOS' Safari mode so that the iPads could be used in commercial settings as kiosk machines.
When the final assets were added, the iPad machines would randomly crash during the asset downloading process.
With Safari's completely broken debugging experience, I eventually learned that as Safari downloads a video, as soon as it tries to put that downloaded data somewhere, it has to copy it across to the new place it's being stored, and if you're copying more than 3mb, it crashes the browser.
The fix was to download and store each video in 1mb chunks. This slowed down the installation speed by a bit over 300%, but at least Safari didn't crash any more.
---
Now back to: "Performing incorrectly is more important than getting the performing correctly."
It turns out Safari on iOS/iPadOS has an invisible time/performance budget. Anytime Safari hits that budget, the browser stops what its doing.
- Drawing texture to screen? How about we stop drawing all textures to the screen, including text. Websites don't need to draw any text right?
- Rendering a texture in CSS? How about you have the color white covering everything else instead.
- Downloading a video that's more than 3mb? How about I crash the browser when the download completes.
Compare this to Firefox and Chrome, as they run out of their budget, they stop starting new work so they old work can finish before starting their next task. The page may take a few milliseconds longer to get to the correct result on slower devices, but the result IS correct.
Even worse:
- Safari has no way of informing the code how close it is to the budget.
- The budget can only be found by trial and error.
- If the iOS/iPadOS device has other apps in the background, the budget is smaller.
- Each device has a different budget, so you have to penalize all Safari devices to the smallest supported budget of the oldest supported device.
- If you hit the budget on the most basic functionality (e.g. a homepage, a button, downloading required assets), then your website / webapp may as well not exist to those Apple users.
Agree on the time/performance budget. It is pain stupid. As has been the case for so many years. And yet nothing has been done about it.
Code-signing to force updates should be illegal (including iOS versions)
The worst. There are even separate toggles in Settings for mouse and trackpad scrolling direction, but changing one changes the other. It is truly amazing that this has persisted for 15 years.
No serious computer user can use a Mac anymore, and this is an unfortunate departure from Steve Jobs' Mac where he expended great effort to ensure the Mac remained a serious desktop OS.
The most egregious example of this stupidity is the dumbing down of the Disk Utility app - an app rarely if ever used by normies, and so dumbed down the pros don't want to use it either. Really leaves you scratching your head what the decisionmaking process there was.
Where Steve Jobs' would draw lines in the sand and ask developers and users not to cross it, chairman cook put NATO wire and basically forced users to do as told (safari extensions got nuked, app store apps don't load older versions of software and there's some weird exclusivity agreement, HFS+ support got dropped and apple refused updates to machines that didn't follow, etc. etc. etc. etc.)
The settings app being hot garbage is apple trying to unify their toy phone OS with the desktop OS.
Safari nuked 3rd party extensions so everything has to go through apple's extensions "store".
Apple treated its core base, the ones who saved Apple from collapse in the 90s, like expendable slave. Worse actually; apple actively chased them away like lepers.
This has led to a systemic core rot in apple's software and ecosystem, one that will take years to rectify.... if apple even chooses to do so.
> * You can't have separate scroll directions for your trackpad and your external mouse.
Scroll Reverser
Apple's iOS is hot garbage. The macOS is not far behind on how horrible the UX is
In the answer to your question, there is nothing better overall across hardware and software top to bottom and that applies to computers, smartphones, tablets, and watches across five ecosystems.
Windows has a better desktop compositor and window manager than macOS. It supports Nvidia GPUs with CUDA. It also has WSL so you can use real package managers instead of homebrew.
- Apple Music's UI/UX is quite rough on MacOS.
- Trying to use my iPhone to type a long password on my Apple TV is hit-or-miss.
- For some reason trying to view a password using Keychain requires you to enter your credentials twice, every time, for as long as I can remember.
But it's worst in the Apple software world compared to Apple's. In fairness, Microsoft has also been in steady tragic decline for a while. I don't know about Google.
Honestly, that's such a low bar to hit.
You are comparing against the wrong thing.
Compare it to NeXTSTEP from 35 years ago:
https://infinitemac.org/1989/NeXTStep%201.0
NeXTSTEP was both more usable and better looking.
I'd rather use nano than having to write code on xcode.
I use Pathfinder on MacOS, and it's generally a lot better than finder, but there are features I wish would carry over from other OSes. Windows file check boxes are incredibly useful
Outside the two.. Fina Cut better than Premiere Pro or Resolve or Avid, Logic Pro better than Pro Tools or Ableton or many others, Motion better than After Effects, Pixelmator better than anything from Adobe or Affinity..
Come on, my dude. Only thing I haven't mentioned is OS only because that's a religion and I don't fall into MacOS one.
Apple's hardware game is strong. Software isn't, never has been.
But “best” is far too strong a word.
For starters, most if not all their software can be described as simpler also-rans.
And in line with that approach, for a company that innovates in hardware, it does not apply that effort to software.
With two exceptions in the last two decades. The iPhone and Apple Watch operating systems & interfaces were very creative efforts. Which genuinely matched the hardware innovation.
Vision’s OS, on the hand, basically iOS-ified hardware that deserved to be treated like the first device to be positioned above and beyond the Mac. The natural interface doesn’t fall below the Mac’s, like a touch screen does. It fat exceeds it, given a keyboard-trackpad.
Instead, software wise, we get another media and toy kiosk.
I am stunned that Tim Cook didn’t see the opportunity to leave his mark with a device that took the capability crown further than the Mac, instead of falling for the 3D as cute feature un-vision.
Pro hardware. Toy software.
He has been a great CEO. But if he let Steve and his own legacy down anywhere, that is where.
That, the predictable but mostly stalled vision of software apps. And all the odd software glitches on all their devices that seem to keep cropping up, that suggest poor underlying models to me.
Their underlying systems software are a high point. The hardware integration is stand out.
That describes me too. I even did for a while. But it just made the incomprehensible lack of any software ambition more painful.
The software is the only reason the Vision isn't worth the price. A real Pro OS, paired with an Studio M5-Ultra, or with its own M5-Ultra, would be an amazing work environment.
(The only hardware they would need to upgrade for the latter, i.e. its own Ultra, would be making live-battery swapping convenient. Which they should have already done.)
Apple does xcode, known for being perpetually broken and an ungodly mess of whatever design it had. Isn't it enough proof to completely reject your claim?
The Vision Pro software team did an incredible job. Its software is more impressive than its hardware.
What did you think you were asking? Or was this just a lame, ill-conceived gotcha that probably needed another few hours in the oven before being chucked in the garbage?
And to do that more than likely the engineering and design of memory systems probably needs to come in house. No more outside dependency.
Good, can they move to fixing the base OS then?
I killed a Finder process that was at 1.2 G ram consumed today...
> As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.
This gives me the impression that at least for the near-term, Cook will still be the one groveling to the Trump White House. Whatever you think about that, that's probably helpful for Ternus' dealings with the next administration.
MacOS reliability has slowly gotten worse and worse, but the UX drop with liquid glass was profound.
Contrast is an objective measure. There are well studied and known levels where you can have trouble reading, or an easy time reading. Similarly, things like drag regions not even aligning with visual elements are literally indefensible. This stuff is so basic you'd fail a UX 101 course with it.
Things like spotlight defaulting to the newest item so that when you hit enter and it changes your selected item the millisecond before you hit enter. I'm not even sure how you'd try to defend UI elements literally flickering as either style or not affecting usability.
It's objectively bad by a great many widely agreed upon and studied standards.
While they’ve improved some of the contrast issues, all the other issues I mentioned are there to this day.
I hope the new leadership will bring back better software. As of now, macOS 26 is disgusting.
Or more generically answer the question: how can I get an arbitrary audio file into my iTunes music? (hint: good luck)
Music 'synced' with iTunes but not appearing on my other devices? There must be some kind of arbitrary difference between 'synced with iTunes' and 'synced with iCloud'. I guarantee this is some kind of (barely) maintained legacy syncing to keep the iTunes workflow alive specifically so Apple can avoid giving users a modern 'import to my cloud library' feature.
iOS comes with a text editor built in. Memo.
Ssh server doesn't make sense for an iPhone. How would that even work? It wouldn't be able to do anything or be a worse experience than something properly designed for the user rather than trying to force a 50 year old computing model onto a phone.
Maybe iPhone is different but most phones you can connect a keyboard to, making the shell pretty usable. Not my cup of tea but I have tried it. I'm still holding out on the dream that a good Linux phone might exist one day.
> a 50 year old computing model onto a phone
What? Do you think command lines are based on the lambda calculus or something?
For decades it has been speculated they intentionally make that shit so people will be more likely to switch to apple
For example, on MacOS, you can set an app to be on all spaces. But on reboot, despite that setting, it will stick to a single space, until you relaunch the app. It has been this way for 4-5 major OS versions.
There are PLENTY of examples just like that.
I think the issue is that there are SO many piled up little features everywhere that SOMEone is using that keeping everything working while making any changes at all is very difficult.
I am a fan of more wood behind fewer swings. Don't add something like spaces unless you think you've got something so good that you are confident that it will be the common path.
I read a Gruber article recently that when Messages went Catalyst he had no issues with his AppleScript at all.
Sure it's gross but it does not necessarily signal an abandonment of values from Apple.
But somewhere in the mix, Apple could also really use another great product mind, like the other Steve. It has been too long since the last era-defining product from Cupertino.
I have no idea what that next big thing would be. And of course, a bad product mind in charge is worse than none at all! If the next big leaps come from other companies while Apple just keeps doing what it does best in the hardware categories that it already dominates, then I guess that's fine, too.
If you put third party support under macos leadership or next to it on the org chart, it’d be systematically sabotaged to death. That org hasn’t delivered anything useful in a decade (“useful” == “a user might notice and care”), so there’s no evidence current leadership could ship leadshot from a wet paper bag, even if they wanted to.
Also, they’d nearly double their laptop share overnight if they did this, and it’d cost them 10-20 FTEs.
This just suggests him holding on to more influence. What apple needs, badly, is a software and tech guy (Cook is not a tech guy).
The privacy focus is why Apple is dominant today, keep that up.
If we're paying $1000 for a Chinese phone that we'd pay $2000 for, we'll end up paying that price when the manufacturers have finally starved the professional capability to compete from the rest of the world. As we get closer to that point, the urgency to onshore is increasing.
Exploitation when we can get away with it is in our social nature as humans. So this isn't about the Chinese, or any other culture. It's just necessary for this to be onshored because it's critical.
What does this look like, in practice? Once China and India and Vietnam "starve the professional capability to compete" (presumably in the manufacture of smart phones) from the US, what would actually change and why?
"Expensive for no good reason" products?
And his "kind of glib"
No, Zuck, you're just mad Apple introduced fine grained control so you can't constantly scrape people's credentials
When is the last time you used Windows 11? I begrudgingly have to run it on my gaming PC and almost every time it's a frustrating experience where I want to put my fist through my monitor. Absolutely awful, zero taste, that will-do software. Windows explorer I believe is still single threaded, the integration of OneDrive into everything (my desktop is stored in OneDrive for some reason) with little to no way to undo it. Don't even get me started on Copilot. My blood pressure just rose off the charts.
> when’s the last time you tried spoiled milk then?
That's a wild claim.
I think you're attributing a lot more agency to a CEO role (for a publicly listed company, at the least) than they actually have.
Apple also made some amazing hardware blunders.
My personal favorite is the force-touch home button on the previous generation iPhones and iPads wouldn't work if you were wearing a band-aid. I don't mean the fingerprint reader, it wouldn't even click. So don't ever cut yourself if you were planning to unlock your phone ever. It added basically nothing for the end user over the previous physical home button besides rendering the vibrate function wimpy and useless.
Man, I love Apple, but their stupidity is beyond baffling sometimes. No Siri updates for 10 years, making the hardware harder to use, single-handed use is no longer as easy or comfortable, and they haven't done... anything(?) revolutionary in AGES. Their latest gaff was the Neo - a phone stretched out as much as possible to make a "laptop". They couldn't even bother to make the logo shiny on it, it was such a departure from true Apple style. Let's not forget the 92 lenses on the back of the phone that stick out a quarter inch, a screen that's nearly impossible to replace, and the hilariously pathetic "iphone repair kit" they lend you.
I have zero confidence in this guy. Nothing he had oversight over has gone well, as far as I'm concerned.
If they can make 50B from ads in the iPhone in 12 months why invent a new device that will make pennies.
Sorry folks, the math is brutal for the big corps. They cannot pivot and make cool things, the market demands to be milked until they bleed.
How many renaissances does one company need? Apple hasn't had enough? lol
The MacBook Pro started using non-removable batteries in 2009. Also: https://www.folklore.org/Diagnostic_Port.html
I don't think your fantasy that Steve would have staunchly defended upgradable RAM in the past decade has much grounding in reality. It seems entirely likely that he would have supported the switch to LPDDR to enable better battery life, higher performance and thinner form factors at the cost of sacrificing that upgradability.
Don't count on it.
At the same time, privacy on internet-connected devices is like true liberty and justice -- rare, precious, fragile, and easily lost without active pursuit and sacrifice.
I hope Temus has the courage and principle to keep fighting the good fight.
You're kidding right? News [1] just broke about how Apple's permanent notification storage (that they refuse to fix) undermines encryption and is being exploited by law enforcement. And they conveniently left out the fact that they were giving out push notification data to law enforcement without any warrants from their transparency reports [2]. And these are just from the top of my head.
Do we now presume all companies putting the word privacy on their ads are emphasizing privacy? Because Meta and Google does that too.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2026/04/10/fbi-pulle... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-google-push-notification-s...
Really what apple is doing is putting a spin on their core business model of selling users the technology rather than renting it to them by subsidizing its development through spying.
It's not so much that privacy is apple's goal, but rather privacy is inherent to apple's business model (unlike google, which has always been spyware).
It used to be the other way around, nice software and mediocre hardware.
But MacOS is excellent IMO, and Apple's office suite is still my favorite (and I've worked extensively on Win/Lin/Mac for the past 25 years). I can't say I have any more gripes about their SW than most others.
What makes you say they don‘t care?
"Tim Cook took Apple from $350B to $4T"
So? That's a 11X market cap increase. In the same time, MSFT saw a 14X increase, Google saw a 20X increase, Amazon did 28X, Facebook did 35X. We're not even going to talk about NVidia.
Cook led Apple through a period where every tech company expanded. Yay for him?
(It keeps going at https://x.com/politicalmath/status/2046428057255211032 )
The business you mention are pure service / zero marginal cost businesses, and in that time internet usage has expanded both in reach and depth (it is being used for more things in more places), so their opportunity for profits has grown. Apple turns aluminium and silica into a laptop. They didn't even miss a beat during COVID.
Yay for Tim Cook for scaling this to the absolute behemoth of supply chain and manufacturing that modern Apple is.
We are talking about the third largest company in the world by market cap - growing an additional 3X isn't particularly feasible (that would have made them twice the size of the next largest company).
Particularly with the hardware category it's easier to drop the ball and fumble rather than stay on top - just see Nokia or Rim.
Apple's hardware and silicon divisions are considered good not because they're competitive, but because they're uncompetitive. They keep cranking out products that far surpass their competitors. Apple is reduced to announcing the fastest CPU core in the world in a press release spec bump, every year.
Even if Tahoe is a regression from the high bar Apple set with Sequoia, it's still the best OS for regular people (sorry Linux but you know it's true). Apple's software is bad because it's merely best-in-class and not light years ahead.
Maybe I'm being too hopeful but the MacBook Neo was announced at live presentations in a few cities around the world, and Ternus did the presentation at their New York event. Perhaps the guy is also partial to live presentations? It's not impossible that Apple mostly stuck with the prerecorded presentations because Cook didn't like the old way. I wouldn't say he's the most natural presenter, he always seemed a bit uncomfortable on stage.
I don't think even Steve Jobs would've been able to imagine that Apple can get this big.
Over the time I developed the instinct to not take pundit's opinions too seriously.
I also love the Vision Pro, actually, I think it’s brilliant, so that was an exception to the rule too.
I'm interested to see what Ternus' first few moves are and how much he will avoid (or hopefully embrace) reversing some of the things Cook is responsible for.
He has a long row to hoe when it comes to things like developer relations but from what I've heard, he is one of the best options we had for the next CEO.
As it happens with most big corp c-suite transitions (see: Amazon), a lot of powerful executives will have to make way for the new CEO's chosen ones, and what those chosen few do (in lieu of asserting new found power) will dictate the short-term.
Srouji stays to lead hardware, https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/20/srouji-chief-hardware-o...
Johny is one of the most talented people I have ever had the privilege to work with. He has played a singular role in driving Apple's silicon strategy, and his influence has been felt deeply not just inside the company, but across the industry. He has always led his organization with remarkable deftness and judgment, and time and again, his team has delivered breakthrough innovations that have transformed our products. We are incredibly fortunate to have him as Apple's chief hardware officer.(actually I doubt this- Demis does not want to run a big company whose main business is Ads)
i highly doubt he will ever want to take over primarily what is an ad/small time hardware company in favour of taking away focus from his ai company
Ternus will be the soldier in the trenches.
I feel excitement for the future of Apple.
There is no question many of Apple's business experienced significant, impressive growth during his tenure. Amazing capital efficiency.
There is also no question Apple lost product velocity. Few new products were launched, and those that were had mixed success.
Tim was, at the end of the day, an elite financial operator. Apple shareholders were lucky to have him. Customers like myself probably have mixed opinions, and it remains to be seen how he set the company up for the future.
* Apple Silicon, the most far-reaching technical transformation in the company's history (probably a bigger deal than macOS itself)
* Apple Pay
* The Watch and Airpods product categories, both of which Apple now dominates.
All while holding on to its position in phones and improving (drastically) its computers.
It feels like a pretty successful term.
I'm just pointing out product velocity slowed. I'm far from the first person to say it, it's just a fact. In the five years before Cook we got first generation Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. Your list spans 14 years.
The reality is everyone just wants another hit product like the iPhone, but its success was based on it being a personal convergence device. You can't really create a second carryable/wearable convergence device and expect it to be wildly successful at the level of the iPhone without it killing off the iPhone.
So far that revolutionary approach by third parties has not succeeded against the iPhone, and the evolutionary approach apple takes with the iPhone means there is no clear inflection point anywhere in the future where the phone form factor goes away.
Tim oversaw the launch of the Apple Watch, Airpods, Airtags, Apple Pay, the Beats acquisition (which lead to Apple Music) and the launch of the M series chips.
He's had quite a few product launches under his belt, many of them company-defining products.
Cook absolutely deserves credit for the successful desktop ARM transition, but building ARM processors in-house was in no way something he directed as CEO.
Jobs was likely very burned out on IBM failing to deliver a 3Ghz PowerPC G5 and one with a low enough TDP for a PowerBook.
So he switches to Intel because he needs chips, but the vulnerability still exists, and it's what happened again after the Skylake launch and the ensuing 4 years of terrible Macs designed for silicon that didn't exist.
Steve saw the danger, and probably acquired PA Semi because of it as well as the fact that PA Semi actually did deliver a power efficient PowerPC G5, even if it was a bit late.
Steve had the vision. Cook executed it very well. They both deserve credit.
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2025/06/17/g-s1-72...
With Apple it's the scale of what was done.
We’ll see how the new CEO sees it.
I don't think this is true. Apple Watch is basically in a market of its own. iPad might have existed before Cook but he turned it into something people actually use for stuff. Vision Pro may not be a financial success but the tech is impressive and it's clear that work will pay off in the near term in other wearables. Apple Silicon is a phenomenal success. Apple TV is no longer a hobby and he's been at the helm while they've developed their entire services business. AirPods rule the headphone market. Not mention the numerous Mac variants he presided over.
But he is not an aestheticist as much as Jobs was. See how Cook has been destroying the faces of iPhones and Macs, which had a huge dent or what is ironically called a "dynamic" island on the top of the screen. Back of iPhones is desparetely ugly.
Also he has not been presenting what makes us exicted. Apple's Siri is forgotten so that he has to rely on Google's Gemini instead of developing their own. While Samsung's Galaxy has been deploying its 7th foldable phone, Apple has done none. Leaks are usual so we can tell what he will show at its annual conference well before he acutually does and it gives us no surprise at all.
In a short term, "what Cook's Apple has innovated?" -- I guess zero. Rather, deteriorated.
As a long-standing user who started computer life with Performa 5220, keep using Macs as main machines and now run M3 MAX Macbook Pro to develop web apps, current Apple is never what I think it should be.
Making the company bigger is great. But what about their products and services? These are also where Cook has been leading to. He seems to forget Job's aphorism, "Stay hungry, stay foolish."
So I hope the new CEO changes the course.
So, the Tim Cook era lasted 15 years (2011 - 2026). He's 65yo, and he could have easily hung in there for a few more years. But I believe he's leaving at the peak -- both Apple's and his own -- and this might be the best time to leave, rather than being forced out (as many too-long-in-the-tooth CEOs have been) when the company inevitably grows slower, or has a crisis.
Ternus is 50-51 yo, roughly the age when Cook himself took over Apple. There the similarities disappear. Ternus is a HW guy through-and-through. I hope he has solid SW and Design team with him. He's gonna need it, given all the big/small design snafus in the recent past. [Not including Mac Neo in there, which looks stellar by any means]
Wishing him luck; he's gonna need it. (and me too, my $$$ are invested in AAPL, and I ain't selling anytime soon, so well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
Though US famously does not, which is a curse in itself, IMHO.
Though tbh, it's worth wondering if Berkshire Hathaway without the Sage is still the same...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/technology/apple-ceo-tim-...
Also, going over his past statements as recent as during this year, it seems like he didn’t want to leave his CEO position, so he got forced out?
I bet that was just good message management. The steadiest approach to a CEO transition is to make it seem a long way off until the moment it happens. Markets don’t like any wobbling at the top.
As the world undergoes increasing supply chain issues, wouldn’t it be in Apple’s best interest to keep Tim Cook as CEO for a while? Or is he the one who’s looking to transition to a less demanding position?
1. Hardware: OLED touchscreen Macs, foldable iPhone (2026) & 20th anniversary iPhone (2027). The message here is about flexing his strength in hardware.
2. Software: Snow leopard-like iOS27/macOS27 fixing a lot of Liquid Glass' rough edges. The message here is he's returning Apple to form with quality software.
3. Ecosystem: Gemini-powered Siri. The message here is he's getting Apple finally on track to meet the promise of AI.
4. Political context: A clean slate. The message here is placating the president (or anyone) is in the past.
The timing is interesting because Apple needed Ternus announced before WWDC27 in June, because that's when Gemini-Siri and Snow Leopard-OS strategy are both being unveiled. But they needed to delay it as long as they could so that Tim Cook could soak up as much Trump-chaos as was necessary. Now that polls and vibes show Trump losing support across the board, politically it's the safest it's ever been to announce this change, and still enough time before WWDC to suggest that what's being announced are his initiatives.
Is this a golden opportunity to take on the software side of Apple, native apps like photos and messages, notes app? So much good data we give to Apple apps sit their idling, there is a play here to turn them into an independent playable artifacts and shared digital human network company. My friend emma has her snack Game on! I would like to get a snack list derived from her snack data. Yes, texting works but there is no programmatic way of accessing each other’s data. I believe this data needs be freed from Apple.
Apple’s privacy approach is stellar, that quest though is a prison where our data goes and does a slow death.
It's also the year the iPod was launched, which capitulated Apple from near bankruptcy a few years before to then having the cash it needed to invest in R&D on things like transitioning to Intel, creation of iPhone, etc.
What are these titles? Why? Who does what? It feels like a linkedin tea party.
Yes, I get that the iPad is supposed to be a "casual computing device" or whatever. Yes, I know Apple has delivered significant improvements to iPadOS's capabilities in those five years. But using it still feels like wearing a straitjacket a lot of the time.
I have almost no use for the keyboard that's attached to my macbook. I use an external one. On the plane it's in the way. The only use for the keyboard is when taking it with me somewhere which is not my regular spot. And even then a portable bottomcase (keyboard+touchpad) would be great.. Basically an iPad
These new devices will combine Arm performance-per-watt, thousands of Linux OSS packages, ChromeOS desktop SaaS and Google Play Store touch-optimized local apps. Apple could compete by enabling MacOS and/or Linux VMs on iPad Pro, without forcing Pro users to jump through JIT-enabling hoops for iSH or UTM.
MacOS already runs on iPhone SoC in Macbook Neo.
Tim is fine, but there are clearly other, more powerful forces at play than "Tim Apple amaze".
I was just thinking about what had been avoiding enshittification, and Apple's hardware was the only thing I came up. All other stuff, all products from Google, MS, Facebook, Twitter, and even Nvidia though the performance was improved has gone downhill. It's not only tech companies, but fast food, car manufacturers, real estate, and many others, if it wasn't shit from the start like consulting, healthcare, and marketing.
They have flaws, like not allowing users to repair the hardware, but well, at least it's consistent.
I really hope Apple (hardware at least) will remain free from enshittification.
That focus on privacy pisses off a lot of devs (Yours Truly, included), but I sincerely believe in it. I write apps that Serve a demographic that values privacy.
Oh that would have been a treat. He would have made Apple hardware so unusable for real work that I'd have switched back to beige boxes running Linux.
I'm sure he dreams about keyboards that are harder to type on and even more sensitive to dust than the emoji keyboards of yore.
This entire thread is evidence of why hackernews crowd fails to make anything successful anymore, product or otherwise
This period in Apple’s history will be the cold ice bath post Jobs.
There may be serious fanboy energy to this but Apple has so much dry powder going for it still, and to put that in the hands of someone who actually builds, along with what looks to be a strong rumor mill year with VR stuff and the foldable to create a big tailwind… it seems like a pretty intentional move.
Also if they dropped one more subscription on us before expanding categories they might’ve caused an avalanche in lack of confidence.
Cook did an excellent job of raking in cash for bet the company size bets that he wouldn’t be guaranteed to see through. The dude is clearly a salt of the earth, values guy, should enjoy a proper retirement era.
You may also be interested in this video where Jon Rettinger predicted that John Ternus will be the next Apple CEO. Goodbye Tim! A new era for Apple (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbqLWZtdQTc)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-08/apple-s-n...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-10-05/who-wi...
do they predict problems of some sort - like lost of ability to small down transistors for a while or supply chain disruption(increased prices of components sourcing)?
Edit: 6 years old, not 4, and also Intel Macbook, so due an upgrade for sure
I think the Apple Silicon transition has increased Mac longevity far beyond the Intel or PowerPC eras, and I am quite baffled you think otherwise.
The M1 MacBook Air was more powerful than the top Intel i9 MBP config if I recall correctly.
Historically there were so few bugs in Apple’s software that to encounter even one was a jarring experience. Now they’ve reverted to the mean, and it’s just as buggy as Windows or Android. So if you’re comparing with them, no big deal. But compared to Apple standards we’ve fallen a long way.
One day that watch could be your only PC. And then some type of eyeglass for a screen. Can also do "terrain overlays" Terminator style. I suppose battery power is the bottleneck so maybe long-distance wireless power delivery is the key (as what Tesla originally created.) So no battery at all.
[0] https://www.spencerstuart.com/research-and-insight/2021-ceo-...
To support this I was thinking about (and obviously Googling these names because I definitely don't know them by heart, only that they recently left) the change of CFO Luca Maestri to Kevan Parekh, John Giannandrea being removed, Alan Dye leaving and being replaced with Steve Lemay.
So I take those 4 months more as like an FYI to the public than anything else. Though I am definitely not someone that knows corporate politics all that well (or at all), just mostly thinking out loud in response to your comment.
Apple included.
They're gonna be fine in the AI age just like Costco was able to be a honey badger about e-commerce.
Least understood yet most influential company in the history, present and future of the venture capital backed tech world.
Me thinks Apple software is the problem—I put Asahi Linux on my Mac.
Why so soon?
So nothing further to wait for,
Tim gifted Donald a trophy 8 months ago doing his legacy no favors. You wouldn't do this if you knew you were on your way out. Makes me wonder if something happened between August 2025 and now.
I don’t need the distraction.
I'm just askin' questions.
EDIT: Also, can Apple take over the data center already? I am sick of HP and Dell.
the bit in brackets ain't even necessary since we all know Tim is the CEO
he knows when to be conservative - and knows when to push hard.
qualities very few CEOs have shown to have in practice.
all his contemporary competitors have ridden on certain waves e.g A.I to increase company valuation - while he did sorely on just pure operations not hype.
Personally, I have lost all interest in Apple and been slowly switching off their hw/sw/saas for some time.
Thanks for making all that money, Tim. Now please retire. Please.
I'm perplexed by the assertion, unless it was some joke that went over my head.
*John Ternus to become Apple CEO*
Talk about burying the lede, lmao.
Among the dup stories submitted, this one has the best content but the worst title.
I still haven't scroll down to the bottom, I don't want to spoil my impression. But it's great to see a positive reaction. Good way to mark the moment. Tim has been CEO for 15 years roughly, since Steve's passing. This guy seems much younger than Tim was when he ascended. I hope he really takes it to the next level.
Got a feeling that Apple has some Amazing new hardware category-making products coming out of the 'skunkworks' over the next 3 years.
What marketing does to people
MacOS might not be your preferred way of working, and you might prefer cheaper options or USB-A ports, but there is really nothing you could arguably call bad craftmanship in those machines.
my 2 bad craftsmanship cents:
laptop keyboard leaves marks on screen. laptop's sharp edges leaves marks on wrists.
I don't think this has been a thing in years.
Sharp edges on wrists is true.
My wrists, conversely, are fine, but I suppose I rarely use it in a 'classic' desk position that would cause that.
Their software craftsmanship has really suffered in the last 10 years.
I think a better implementation might have been to have it be an alternate mode for the trackpad and sell external trackpads that also had it so it could be used everywhere. But I get why that didn’t happen, the touchbar was basically being run with a mini Apple Watch SOC built into the MacBook Pro, and it’s primary use was to have the Secure Enclave on it. The touchbar itself was a deal where they could find a use for having an otherwise idle smartwatch’s worth of computing power in there, but that wouldn’t be doable if it’s sold as an external device.
> What marketing does to people
I'm sorry, are my MacBooks Pro, Air, and (my spouse's) Neo not some of the best built laptops you can buy? Maybe there's something better, but these are inarguably some of the best. Absolute top of the line.
See the Verge (I think) reviewing similarly priced laptops priced around the Neo. They were plastic crap, even if they had better specs elsewhere.
The Macbook Air, the best computer for most people, starts at $1099. I paid something like $2,700 for my computer, which I brought to college in 2002. That's about $5,000 in today's money.
Affordable, ethical. You can only choose one.
This being hackernews, I hope to be excused for siding with a white hat code-hacker over a trillion dollar corporate.
(And that's not getting into all the other morally questionable stuff they've done.)
Jokes aside, I have started to see Microslop as the lesser of two evils (two evils being MSFT and AAPL, Google being its own parallel universe abomination). Their commitment to backward compatibility really paved the way to cheap PCs for the masses. That said, every day Macroslop is working diligently to prove me wrong.
Wipe if you think you can do better :) It can and has been done.
Since they can't charge a subscription for Windows (like Adobe does for its products), they don't care about it anymore.
Once there's friction there, it'll make other friction seem less bad.
On that topic, it’s always surprised me just how little Apple invest into their enterprise / business backend services. Everything about the way they integrate Macs into businesses is awkward. Apple could make so much money there if they wanted to. It’s a real missed opportunity.
I don’t even think Microsoft is all that adamant that their customers use it.
It’s just not competitive with Linux and that ship has sailed. Linux is better and costs $0. Microsoft lets you run .NET applications on Linux and they’re better there.
I think the same thing happened with SQL Server. Nobody’s choosing it for new projects, its niche is basically legacy software.
I agree that Apple is missing an opportunity with business and enterprise but I think the issue is that they’re so far behind that catching up would be a massive investment that might never pay off.
This is similar to saying that Microsoft missed an opportunity with smartphone ecosystems. They could spend billions on getting a smartphone back on the market and it would arrive and everyone would ask the question “why am I buying this when my iPhone has X million apps on its store and is a nearly perfect device?”
If Apple Enterprise Cloud was available today who is switching and why? Apple would have to undercut established players to convince businesses to switch via a massive migration effort.
If we look at Microsoft's revenue I think it's pretty clear that they do in fact care an awful lot about Windows Server - or at least should.
In fiscal year 2025, Microsoft Corporation's revenue by segment:
Devices: $17.31 B
Dynamics Products And Cloud Services: $7.83 B
Enterprise Services: $7.76 B
Gaming: $23.46 B
Linked In Corporation: $17.81 B
Microsoft Three Six Five Commercial Products And Cloud Services: $87.77 B
Microsoft Three Six Five Consumer Products and Cloud Services: $7.40 B
Other Products And Services: $72.00 M
Search Advertising: $13.88 B
Search And News Advertising: $13.88 B
Server Products And Cloud Services: $98.44 B
Server Products And Tools: $98.44 B
Windows: $17.31 BWhat’s the difference between “server products and cloud services” and “server products and tools?”
I assume the former is Azure and the latter is on-premise.
In that case if we lump 365 in with server products and cloud tools then it shows that 2/3 of the enterprise revenue is going to cloud and 1/3 is on-premise (and I assume that 1/3 is declining over time)
Hwat? How does LinkedIn generate revenue (as much as "Windows")?
Windows Server is used for more than just directory services and web hosting though.
Not sure about others, but I would switch if it meant I no longer needed to rely on Google Workspace.
However if you do want to talk about services outside of fleet management, then there are plenty of niches where Windows Server has a surprising foothold. Though typically they’re domains which haven’t been disrupted by “tech bros”, which is why you don’t read about it much on HN.
> This is similar to saying that Microsoft missed an opportunity with smartphone ecosystems.
They did. But we are talking specifically about fleet management and not any random tech-adjacent industry.
> If Apple Enterprise Cloud was available today who is switching and why? Apple would have to undercut established players to convince businesses to switch via a massive migration effort.
The existing players only exist because Apples default offering is basically non-existent. Apple wouldn’t need to undercut them, just be comparably priced. The reason being that if you already have a business account with Apple then you don’t need to go through the pan of getting a new supplier approved by the board (etc).
As for existing businesses, if they’re already large enough that fleet management is a concern then they’re large enough to have people on payroll who manage that fleet. And thus to perform that migration. It might even be part of their laptop refresh program.
And if Apple had an enterprise fleet management service then they’d be able to offer tools that are locked to their fleet management (eg remote wipe). Which would heavily incentivise businesses not to go with 3rd parties.
Agreed! My $DAYJOB is an Apple shop and the Apple "Business" offerings are horrible. No support for a proper business developer account is annoying. A single human is responsible for this and when that human moves to a different company or role then you have to reassign the account to a different human. Configuring SSO is another trap. You have to capture a domain to add SSO but after you do that your users can't access the Apple App Store (for some reason).
There are so many places that Apple could improve their "Business" business, but they seem hell bent on not doing that. Maybe Mr. Ternus will address this issue.
But if, say, AAPL had won the PC wars, we'd be staring at a much more locked-down, much more expensive OS experience.
"Sometimes" doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Nokia had an app store, and before you could see the available apps you have to first choose your phone: because even with-in Nokia's own product range there was so much variation in screens, keyboards, and general capabilities that they had to pre-apply a filter to show you what would actually work.
But then came Java and Wap. You could, in theory, download a jar from a site and try to run it. God knows if it would run. But it wasn't a locked-down app store that bypassing would land you in hot water.
Wow. Just… wow.
Excuse me while I get permission from sixteen levels of managers inside Cingular, U.S. Cellular, Cincinnati Bell, PrimeCo, and the fifty different regional carriers calling themselves "Cellular One" to offer my app on their networks.
I'm not claiming that iPhones are open to the extent that HN griefers want it to be, but you must have been freshly hatched in the years before the iPhone to think the ecosystem was open.
I say this as someone who developed some of the first mobile phone weather apps. (Before "app" was even a word.)
I could flash my Nokia 6210 with whatever firmware I wanted, but I guess that doesn't count, because Nokia and Ericsson aren't American companies.
My experience with a Nokia 6210 was very much the opposite of what you describe.
The discussion is about Apple. Which is an American company.
But if taking discussions off-topic is what gets you off, have at it.
oh i guess it's from a court hearing[2] when his company was suing apple over app store monopoly ("... they are talking about an iOS update that, quote, broke Cydia Impactor. Where they said, it feels too good to destroy someone's spirit. We did something else today that will kill him again with a little smiley emoticon.")
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Freeman [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydia
[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18730843/75/saurikit-ll...
I think I found the original comment I had read (featuring a reply by saurik himself): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43853055
The contempt for their customers is palpable these days.
In other words, nothing insightful or worth talking about. I don't want to read news for feelgood vibes.
I find your reaction strange, do you read news to be angry and/or afraid? :)
Saying it is disagreeable is like saying that honestly is disagreeable. Sure, it can be, but it is not an inherent feature, and a lot depends on how it is delivered.
(I am not claiming the top comment is AI generated, only that an AI generated summarization of the thread can function just as well in its stead, despite the occasional inaccuracies)
Yes, as algorithmic engagement has proven, most people want to read the news to get angry about stuff.
But I don't like hanging around that. I'd rather talk about tech news with nerds (old HN) and not just talk about coastal filter-bubble US politics with big tech worker bees (new HN).
US politics has definitely captured the crowd here lately. Half of the comment threads somehow devolve from discussions of Javascript frameworks into hysterical left-populist struggle sessions over the perceived political injustice of the day.
Maybe some feel good vibes and some apolitical news for the day aren't a bad thing.
In general, I'd say it's about confirmation bias and having a fluffy statement that confirms preconceived notions is hardly interesting to me. If there is anything of substance that contradicts any narrative or general consensus than I find the signal in the noise highly valuable.
But I can't speak for the general case because I don't use any social media and find rage bate quite cumbersome.
That makes me wonder why people love Apple but hate all other big companies.
In the case of all of them, they may make some questionably ethical business decisions but at the same time do genuinely care about the craft they're in, pushing boundaries and making quality products.
You can see a similar thing in the 3D printing world with Bambu Lab - people love the product (my A1 has been excellent value, very reliable, and I despite preferring my fancy more expensive toy for most tasks I would still recommend it to those starting out without specific needs that such a design can't provide), and any concern about the company behind it (slowly closing off the ecosystem, initially trying to make out that their obviously-inspired-by-the-fullspectrum-scorca-fork colour mixing option was their own original stroke of genius) doesn't matter to them.
With both Bambu and Apple part of why they get this attention is the end-to-end polish that people feel in the product experience (to be fair is a valid reason to choose those products) and a certain amount of luck in them bringing their show to market at the right time, where other companies are seen as producing more interchangeable commodity items. Without that distinction giving people a higher view of the product range, the other companies struggle to get away from the fact that we don't naturally, for good reason, trust nor love commercial entities.
The other thing working in favour of some companies is momentum: some were worthy of some adoration for higher quality products and/or greater customer care than the competition, but are no longer and it takes a while for everyone to realise how much things have changed. Disney is definitely a company that I would add to this pile, and there are others.
Another big company that seems to get a lot more adoration than any of their competition is Nintendo, though I'm not in the gaming market any more so I don't know how much of that they still earn and how much of it is just that at least they aren't Sony or Microsoft!
They also made a good unix based OS that was easy to purchase on decent hardware (esp laptops).
> With a new boss, Apple may be showing its strategic interest in deeper integration of AI into its hardware, said Hubbard. "The very strengths that made Apple dominant - their discipline, polish, and control - could become constraints if the next era rewards openness and faster iteration," he said.
The opposite of the basic human interface quality and consistency improvements that several commenters here hope for.
(Admittedly "Hubbard" here is just the first pundit they could grab, an Assistant Professor of Management and Organization, so this isn't the best informed prognostication.)
Ternus just looks a bit younger. He’ll be 51, and half a year older than Cook was when he became CEO in 2011.
All those statements are psychological manipulation. Being too positive or too negative makes people blind and mendable by silently suppressing their will to be themselves.
> This guy seems much younger than Tim was when he ascended.
"A lot of love for Apple" is not evidence of wisdom or merit. It is evidence that Apple has been extraordinarily successful at converting ordinary consumer electronics into a moral aesthetic identity for its customers... Once that happens, public praise stops being about products and starts being about selfregard.
That is why Apple gets discussed in a register normally reserved for institutions that have actually earned public affection. In reality, it is a company that charges luxury prices for tightly controlled products, then persuades customers that the control is sophistication and the markup is virtue. :-)
This is mostly a case study in prestige bias. People are not just evaluating a company but protecting a status hierarchy in which buying Apple signifies discernment.
And the something amazing must be in the skunkworks line is the usual theology that means when the present is overpriced iteration, redemption is always scheduled for a few years from now.
I remember the iPhone launch queues...as in the strangest ritual in consumer tech. People camping overnight for a device that will be sitting on shelves in unlimited quantities the following week. Like queueing up for a vacuum cleaner and pretending it's the moon landing.:-)
Oh the love for a company, with the battery gate ($500M settlement for throttling phones customers already owned), the CSAM on-device scanning proposal, a decade of Irish tax routing, active lobbying against right to repair, repeated supply chain findings on child and forced labor... and a CEO who hands Trump gold while going quiet on the causes Apple used to grandstand about.
So much much to love on this company. Its poised with assholery of Steve Jobs to its core, and has no salvation. If I want luxury, I buy a laptop from Cartier...
The worst is the tell that an all Apple setup is a the near perfect filter for not a hacker. The ecosystem is engineered against the instincts that define hacking, no sideloading without ceremony, no real repair, no low level access without fighting the OS, no running what you want without Apple permission, no swapping parts that haven't been blessed with the right serial number.
Its computing for consumers, not tinkerers. Which is fine, except the culture around it borrows the prestige of technical sophistication while actively opting out of it. :-)
The Mac in the coffee shop is a lifestyle object. The ThinkPad running Linux next to it is a tool.
(We're seeing echoes of that again now where you can get 20-30% performance bumps in Neos and Airs just by sticking a thermal pad on the CPU - Apple is still allergic to cooling, they've just built amazingly efficient hardware that sidesteps the problem)
They are all still there.
But here’s to hoping that change comes. Apple is already a rich company. But isn’t that boring?
“Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art” — Andy Warhol
It will redefine the way we watch TV and that's exactly your job, to make something truly unique. And I'll tell you the secret sauce, the remote. I know you'll come up with something totally different, a marvel of engineering that will drop jaws around the world. Different aluminum colors and extra flat? Check. But that's not what this new generation needs. They want to watch tiktok and instagram in their TV and nobody right now offers an out-of-this-world experience. Social media consumption on a big screen. Excel at that and you will sell millions at whatever price you set.
My credit card is ready...