81–90 of 408 posts
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Why not just patch the cable with some electrical tape? Buying an entire charger just because the cable is fraying seems excessive.
You really expect a mac user to value function over form?
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It's not propaganda, it's my experience (and actually the guy sitting next to me at work as well, although he said his girlfriend has gone through a MacBook charger and her current one although working is looking tired but not broken yet).
It moves past being just your experience when you add in the bit about "I always assume when I hear of people with this problem that they're disrespecting their hardware by jamming it in doors / desks or perhaps have pets that chew on them." It's fine to say you don't have issues, but if six other people are saying they have issues, and know people with issues, it's rude to write them all off like that. ----- EDIT: r…
How do they fix this? They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users. Engage with the influencers. Sit down and find out what their developers need that the current products don’t offer. Find out what is making their users unhappy. Asking people what they want will give you predictable results: complaints about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features that demo…
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The typical way of addressing the 'users don't know what they want' sort of issue is to build some really high quality ideas or concepts and then talk with some of your users about them. See what they like see what they don't. This can be done poorly too, I attended a Lenovo tablet investigation which was sad from the perspective that the people who were putting it on for Lenovo were trying to insure that everyone sa…
I feel like it's less about coming up with good ideas/questions and more about having the "idealized user." A user with extremely good taste that can guide development. And put that user in charge of everything.
They need to relearn and engage in user discovery and questioning until they realise what niches they occupy and their use cases and needs.
I doubt Apple's former lead would ever have put out a Mac that needs a dongle to connect to iPhone but not Android. I doubt he'd have killed Apple monitors as an iMac sat next to a black LG is just so damn ugly. iOS, MacOS and current hardware shows, oh so clearly, that once notorious sense of detail and overall direction is long gone.
As is, their idealised user is envisioning all the wrong gimmicky things and missing most of the details. They're trying to play "what would Steve do?" but not being him they can't play that game well.
The same with the Mac. It is understandable from the view of the company, that iOS is the bigger thing. But, as the article mentions, the Mac is a vital part of the Apple eco system. And the Mac Pro is a vital part of the Mac eco system. You need to support the professional developers to have all the applications for your "non-professional" customers. The best sign, that Apple was surprised by the public reaction to the new MacBook Pro was, that they reacted by reducing the dongle prices. It didn't seem to have thought that people would object at buying a collection of them at full prices. When I bought my G3 iBook, it came with the necessary dongles included.
Besides the obvious conceptual issues with the current Mac Pro, the biggest sin was not to update its hardware regularly. Same for the Mac Mini. So there needs to be two things done:
- set up senior people for each product to make sure that issues/development for that product/category gets the necessary attention, e.g. people who only care about the mac.
- these people need to make sure that each product is updated in set cycles. The iOS devices as well as the operating systems are updated in a yearly cycle. Maybe not as strict as with the iPhone, this should be applied to all products. The releases might shift a bit on parts availability, but the Mac Pro and the Mini have missed several updates of CPUs/GPUs/other hardware.
One more thing: while it is understandable that the retina MacBook only has soldered on parts, this is less understandable for the MacBook Pro, and not at all for the Mini, iMac or the Mac Pro. How can you design desktop machines like the iMac, where you have to unglue the screen to get to its internals? I still have my G5 iMac, and that was a nicely designed machine. A mac czar could tell upper management, where clever and efficient production methods stop and making a bad product starts...
What you see is the predictable result: ossified thinking couple with a rigid adherence to "what makes them great". all criticism falls on deaf ears and they'll just continue like this until Tim Cook is gone and they get a product guy back in the heal who can give Apple direction and heart.
The day Apple makes a power cord that doesn't have a cable sheath with the consistency and durability of silly putty is the day I will recognize them as back on track. It's a small detail, but the power cord is the one part of the computer that users have no choice but to interact with every day and they've been ignoring the problems with them for the better part of half a decade. Every Mac at work either has detache…
The day Apple makes a power cord that doesn't have a cable sheath with the consistency and durability of silly putty is the day I will recognize them as back on track. It's a small detail, but the power cord is the one part of the computer that users have no choice but to interact with every day and they've been ignoring the problems with them for the better part of half a decade. Every Mac at work either has detache…
Wasn't Jobs the kind of person you were terrified of letting down and doesn't that kind of thing trickle downward?
As we all know, Apple recovered from its bad release of Maps and revamped iOS, the stock price recovered, and there was much rejoicing. So, it's important to have a sense of perspective about these things.
Apple certainly seems like it has slowed down lately, but they have more resources available to improve the situation than any other company in the world. I suspect the current issues are caused by internal organizational problems rather than a lack of product vision.