Consistently delivering high quality software features is impossible. Even great teams mess up every once in a while. The way apple used to get around that was to throw things away, or to send them back to the drawing board. There was someone at the top who detected when things weren't ready, and prevented them from getting released or dared teams to do better, even at great cost. In the jobs era there were many things which were rumored to ship and cut at the last moment. Apple has stopped not shipping things, and it's what will turn them into just another software company.
It Just Works
71–80 of 192 posts
Re: It Just Works
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not dismissing anything, just pointing out that the author's standard of evidence is somewhat lacking.
You don't have to look far for the evidence. For any issue you can normally find several huge forum posts on the apple support forums (with no helpful responses from Apple).
All software has bugs. Apple software has a giant audience and the Internet can magnify an issue that affects a small number of users to make it seem as though it's a giant problem.
If a problem affects 5,000 users it's easy for it to appear as if it's a huge issue when it in fact is affecting a tiny % of the user base. Not that bugs should be ignored, but an active forum posting is not evidence that there is a major issue.
Re: It Just Works
#73"It just works" is a tricky promise to make good on. Microsoft never made this promise and nor does Google. As a Google fan I accept a certain amount of flakiness as part of the brand identity. It's always celebrated a quirky, rough feel. In some ways, Google is starting to get TOO slick. People expect Apple to be innovative and reliable; too push the boundaries without ever falling over them. It's hard to do either…
>>>> People expect Apple to be innovative and reliable;
This is because your investment in their hardware is at a premium price. People expect when they drop 2-3K for a PC that both of things are going to be a given. Obviously, in the last few years, this hasn't been the case.
Re: It Just Works
#74This trend has been very apparent to me, starting a couple years after Steve Jobs passed. I waited until July 2015 to upgrade from Mavericks to Yosemite because of all the bugs I kept hearing about.
Re: It Just Works
#75The discoveryd fiasco was the biggest let down for me. Every single Macbook in the office suffered connectivity issues and it took them too long to go back to the old, perfectly fine state.
It's almost 20 years of internet ferociously consuming and producing digital music and pictures and no one has been able to improve upon what Winamp and Foobar2000 or a minimally organized photo folder delivered - Picasa worked quite well, but I guess, as google reader, being stable and functional is not enough.
How can a 600B dollar company sustain a buggy software like iTunes for so many years? Dreadful experiences include podcasts, album art, and even simple music organization! Apple Music... what makes you, the biggest digital music store in the world, release a cloud based product that thinks that a live version of a song is the same one as the album version?
It seems Apple is trying to make its user base - that helped it become the most world's most valuable company - user their version of every digital service/product possible but at the cost of lacking in the areas that made it thrive in the first place. Heck, even my last MBP had hardware issue (staingate)...
Re: It Just Works
#76I switched to mac when when MS lost its mind and came up with Vista--it was unusable, so much so that switching cost to mac was lower than trying to get Windows to work. Nowadays the only reason I stay with Mac is because I make iOS apps and realize it will be annoying if I abandon Mac. Apple is no more in a "just works" business. It's in a lock-in business. I used to be delighted to download their new OS's, and I'm sure everyone used to too, but nowadays I NEVER download their new versions and try not to upgrade as much as possible, I've been burned too many times and lost so many hours of productivity because the upgrade fucked me up
Re: It Just Works
#77It's certainly the case that OSX, at least, has gotten flaky as heck, but at the same time: What's the competition? While Apple was releasing Yosemite, Microsoft was going down the Windows 8 rabbit-hole, releasing the worst version of Windows since ME. And while desktop Linux has been getting better over time, I don't think anyone would say that it "Just Works" yet. The only desktop/laptop OS that actually does "Just…
I've suggested ChromeOS to family members that use facebook, email, and limited spreadsheets. Ultimately, I backtracked when they asked about printing. Telling them they have to buy a new printer that's Cloud Print compatible is a tough sell, especially if they've purchased one within the last year.
I have found that Chrome Boxes are excellent machines for demoing web products at tradeshows. Cheap, relatively hardened, fast enough, and sync bookmarks and settings.
Re: It Just Works
#78It's certainly the case that OSX, at least, has gotten flaky as heck, but at the same time: What's the competition? While Apple was releasing Yosemite, Microsoft was going down the Windows 8 rabbit-hole, releasing the worst version of Windows since ME. And while desktop Linux has been getting better over time, I don't think anyone would say that it "Just Works" yet. The only desktop/laptop OS that actually does "Just…
I've suggested ChromeOS to family members that use facebook, email, and limited spreadsheets. Ultimately, I backtracked when they asked about printing. Telling them they have to buy a new printer that's Cloud Print compatible is a tough sell, especially if they've purchased one within the last year. I have found that Chrome Boxes are excellent machines for demoing web products at tradeshows. Cheap, relatively hardene…
"Keep your old Windows laptop around in a drawer; when you want to print something, just boot it up to print."
Re: It Just Works
#79I switched to mac when when MS lost its mind and came up with Vista--it was unusable, so much so that switching cost to mac was lower than trying to get Windows to work. Nowadays the only reason I stay with Mac is because I make iOS apps and realize it will be annoying if I abandon Mac. Apple is no more in a "just works" business. It's in a lock-in business. I used to be delighted to download their new OS's, and I'm…
> Apple is no more in a "just works" business. It's in a lock-in business.
No such change has happened between 2007 (MS Vista time frame) and now. People familiar with Apple since 1980-something know very well that it's always been about both of the above: just works for the end user, and a lock-in business.
If anything, it's less locked in now than it used to be, because of the use of Intel processors (that was a big shocker in the Mac world). You can get a bootleg OS/X image to run under VirtualBox. I have such an image running over top of Windows 7; I use it to compile and test OS/X binaries of a FOSS program that I developed.
In the 1980's I had a clone of an Apple II+ computer. Apple did their best in their operating system software to detect clones and try not to run on them. Clones were the illegal work of the devil, according to Apple. By contrast, the IBM PC's spawned a thriving clone market.
Re: It Just Works
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been liking Google Play Music so far.
My only issue with GM is the portability. I work out frequently, and lugging around a large smartphone isn't the best scenario for simply listening to music. I'm looking into getting a smaller MP3 player and putting my GM library on that to achieve the level of portability I need for my music.
Your entire music library doesn't have to live on your device. Just stream it right from GM or cache the albums you want to listen too.