Part of the reason is not just the complicated infrastructure but also the huge amount of users you want to satisfy as market leader. You can't just focus on a niche. There are people who listen to music, people who watch movies, etc. So you can't just make your software manage music.
Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
21–30 of 73 posts
Re: Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Winter is coming for Microsoft. The rise of mobile and the slow down of PC speed improvements means they are having a hard time delivering real value that people want to pay for and need to find a way to generate recurring revenue through subscription services. Witness the rise of Windows 10. How can they make money if you permanently own your software? What if Moore's law stops and we're sitting here 10 years later…
> How can they make money if you permanently own your software? Your hardware will die or become obsolete quickly enough that you still have to buy a new machine and with that a new windows license. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the churn for smartphones and tablets was a multiple of desktop pcs. Cars are a mature industry. You still have to replace your car regularly, but the new car doesn't go faster. But I ha…
This is true. Their problem is that until recently they've existed in a growth market and their annual profits rely on new PC sales. Shareholders don't see "we're a $10 billion company but we'll be transitioning to a $2 billion company over the next 10 years" as an acceptable strategy so they're forced to try and wring growth-market profits out of a mature market.
Re: Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Winter is coming for Microsoft. The rise of mobile and the slow down of PC speed improvements means they are having a hard time delivering real value that people want to pay for and need to find a way to generate recurring revenue through subscription services. Witness the rise of Windows 10. How can they make money if you permanently own your software? What if Moore's law stops and we're sitting here 10 years later…
> How can they make money if you permanently own your software? Your hardware will die or become obsolete quickly enough that you still have to buy a new machine and with that a new windows license. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the churn for smartphones and tablets was a multiple of desktop pcs. Cars are a mature industry. You still have to replace your car regularly, but the new car doesn't go faster. But I ha…
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Re: Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
#24Focusing on iTunes to argue that Apple can't design simple software anymore seems a little bit unfair, while on the other hand I understand that it might be the only Apple desktop software used by people who run on MS Windows. But still, it really not representative of the Apple ecosystem IMHO. 3D Touch on iOS for instance is a state of the art demonstration of how to transparently and smoothly add a layer of functio…
I dunno. How about Apple forcing me to sync my music via their dumb cloud thing if I happened to have enabled apple music at some point? I have a phone linked via a cable to a computer, want to get two songs on the phone, can't do it unless I sync multiple GB of junk via the internet. Then they won't let me sync a song via their cloud because it's a voice MP3 I bought ages ago and isn't high bitrate enough?! Kill. After much Googling all I could do was turn off apple music, sync to the device, re-add itunes music. IIRC there are two levels/types of cloud, one where you can add music and the other where you sync everything via it. Whatever, it's just something my mother shouldn't have to know about.
On the iphone, the "for you" icon is a heart. The "like" icon is also a heart, but the relationship between the two is tenuous. The "plus" button adds a song to my music but I still have to hit "download" to keep that song on my device. I have to double-opt-in to music I want? Make it easy to add music! To really say you like something there's plus, download and like. And then there's still the 1-5 rating, which I just had to click around for 30 seconds to find again. No idea if Apple will feed me more of liked-plussed-downloaded-5-star music than simply liked.
I haven't found 3D touch that useful. I try it all the time but it just feels gimmicky. Half-push to get something, full-push to get the same thing I'd get if I just touched it lightly. Sometimes it's a menu, sometimes it opens up a preview, sometimes a combo preview and menu. I'd bet 70% of people just don't use it because it's too faffy.
And I just remembered Airdrop, where the "air" part seems to be more representative of Airdrop reliability than anything else. Does it want wifi? Proximity? The moon in a given phase? What incantations must I perform to move this photo two feet? Why can it see the ipad but not the other phone, when the other phone can see this phone? Can I add a favourite set of devices so it can find each other a bit more quickly?
Apple are fantastic at simple interactions, when there's one button and three things to do. They can distill better than anyone. But make things slightly tricky and they overload one button with 100 features and start falling over their feet.
Re: Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
#25Focusing on iTunes to argue that Apple can't design simple software anymore seems a little bit unfair, while on the other hand I understand that it might be the only Apple desktop software used by people who run on MS Windows. But still, it really not representative of the Apple ecosystem IMHO. 3D Touch on iOS for instance is a state of the art demonstration of how to transparently and smoothly add a layer of functio…
I dunno. How about Apple forcing me to sync my music via their dumb cloud thing if I happened to have enabled apple music at some point? I have a phone linked via a cable to a computer, want to get two songs on the phone, can't do it unless I sync multiple GB of junk via the internet. Then they won't let me sync a song via their cloud because it's a voice MP3 I bought ages ago and isn't high bitrate enough?! Kill. Af…
>I dunno. How about Apple forcing me to sync my music via their dumb cloud thing if I happened to have enabled apple music at some point? I have a phone linked via a cable to a computer, want to get two songs on the phone, can't do it unless I sync multiple GB of junk via the internet.
You can turn off the iCloud Music Library and sync via cable
Re: Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
#26Simple: The goal used to be create simple things that just work. Now its create thigs that push your platform. As an example, to pick on MSFT: I thought hell froze over when I saw Word in the Android app store. Its a hugely wonderful word processor. I typed out a blog post and when to save, but... well I wasnt signed into sky drive. I managed to finagle my way around those prompts after 5 or so mins. Next time I open…
Does Google Docs or others allow anonymous authoring? I guess I'm not seeing the harm in requiring a free login.
It's not harm necessarily, but it does go to the OP's point of "pushing a platform"
Re: Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
#27So many good quotes in here:
> "We've moved into an age where the ubiquity and complexity of toolsets outpace the ability to leverage them tastefully,"
"Tastefully" - a much more tasteful term than the self aggrandizing "beautiful" I've been seeing used in design circles.
> “[iTunes] started out as a charming bungalow. Now it’s got turrets, a garage for a zamboni, and a helipad on the top.”
A Zamboni I have now discovered is one of those machines for resurfacing an ice-rink. Totes Hillaire!
> You've given people more of a skateboard or a unicycle. You can't bring the groceries home on that
Makes me think of that famous picture of the guy in china freighting a huge overarching load on his push-bike.
Brilliant article!
It doesn't really go into "why" as suggested by the headline (except maybe for to say that these businesses' product offering is now more complex than mere devices).
My personal suspicion is the rote application of established physical production that has worked so well on the hardware end (which we all know doesn't work for software) and the denigration of the software end to being "value added" (which IMHO was always "value gating"). This is perhaps somewhere that google/alphabet has the edge, albeit mitigated by being more "open" and "too much text".
Re: Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
#28Focusing on iTunes to argue that Apple can't design simple software anymore seems a little bit unfair, while on the other hand I understand that it might be the only Apple desktop software used by people who run on MS Windows. But still, it really not representative of the Apple ecosystem IMHO. 3D Touch on iOS for instance is a state of the art demonstration of how to transparently and smoothly add a layer of functio…
3D touch is a pain in the hole - always going off when I don't want it, and otherwise not really there whenever I do want to use it, to any useful degree. It's just another distraction for app developers too, away from creating value. I'd far rather the effort went into that went into providing a more stable dependable ecosystem.
Re: Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
#29I don't know about Google, I don't really use any of their products, other than search. As for Apple, it seems like their trying to make things simpler, but forget that people do development work on Macs. It's never huge things that bugs be, just minor tweaks Apple make, and sometimes half-baked features.
El Capitan has seriously made me consider if my next computer should be something other than a Mac. While I do like if to "normal" computing, such as browsing, word processing and browsing, I think it's getting increasingly worse as a development platform.
Yes, iTunes is a huge mess, and there aren't any good alternatives which support iPod syncing. El Capitan isn't the bug-fix version it should have been, it's an eye candy release the introduces subtle annoyances.
Re: Why Apple and Google are struggling to design simple software
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dunno. How about Apple forcing me to sync my music via their dumb cloud thing if I happened to have enabled apple music at some point? I have a phone linked via a cable to a computer, want to get two songs on the phone, can't do it unless I sync multiple GB of junk via the internet. Then they won't let me sync a song via their cloud because it's a voice MP3 I bought ages ago and isn't high bitrate enough?! Kill. Af…
>I dunno. How about Apple forcing me to sync my music via their dumb cloud thing if I happened to have enabled apple music at some point? I have a phone linked via a cable to a computer, want to get two songs on the phone, can't do it unless I sync multiple GB of junk via the internet. You can turn off the iCloud Music Library and sync via cable
I did figure it out, but it wasn't obvious. It just seemed a weird interaction - take a long-standing and obvious feature away because they're pushing the iCloud service.