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Apple’s 2016 in review

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Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#121

Post by jmspring »

ams6110 wrote: post #10
panic wrote: post #5

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…

Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they want, they'd say 'faster horses'"

I'd like an early 2015 MBP with 32 gig, faster processor and SSD and no fancy light bar....

Oh wait, that's a fancier horse...

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#122

Post by jmspring »

ams6110 wrote: post #10
panic wrote: post #5

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…

Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they want, they'd say 'faster horses'"

I'd like an early 2015 MBP with 32 gig, faster processor and SSD and no fancy light bar....

Oh wait, that's a fancier horse...

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#123

Post by [deleted] »

ams6110 wrote: post #10
panic wrote: post #5

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…

Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they want, they'd say 'faster horses'"

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#124

Post by jmspring »

ams6110 wrote: post #10
panic wrote: post #5

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…

Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they want, they'd say 'faster horses'"

I'd like an early 2015 MBP with 32 gig, faster processor and SSD and no fancy light bar....

Oh wait, that's a fancier horse...

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#125

Post by [deleted] »

ams6110 wrote: post #10
panic wrote: post #5

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…

Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they want, they'd say 'faster horses'"

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#126

Post by caconym_ »

wineisfine wrote: post #95
triangleman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure there has been a "shift" like you said? In 2007 Jobs was using the phrase "post-PC", and by the time he died in 2011, more than half of Apple's revenue was iPhone/iPad/etc. To me it seems that Cook is just continuing the trend.

The shift is the pure neglect towards the dev community. Something that most likely would not have happened so blatant and fast under Jobs. It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware. Why should one exclude the other?

How do you figure "pure neglect"? What are the features you're missing in the current Mac lineup? Which products from other manufacturers make a meaningful improvement on Apple's offering for "devs"?

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#127

Post by bamurphymac1 »

loosescrews wrote: post #27
panic wrote: post #5

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…

Steve was a notoriously hard person to work with. Realistically, anyone who Steve was likely to name as his successor would be a follower, someone who went along with whatever Steve said and told him what he wanted to hear. What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

I've thought about this a lot. Wouldn't Steve have realized this inherent contradiction? Is this an understood reality at the top levels at Apple?

That is, does Tim see his role now as maximizing revenue from the current position, with the goal being to hand off a healthier company to a "visionary" successor?

My personal answer fluctuates depending on my daily gut feeling about human nature. And how many times sourcekit crashes.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#128

Post by musha68k »

twright0 wrote: post #96

> But here’s the problem: sitting in this niche of excluded users are some of Apple’s strongest supporters, the influencers that create word of mouth... I see this point made a lot, especially on Hacker News whenever this general topic comes up. I'm just curious: what evidence is there to support this point of view? I'm as frustrated as the next software engineer that the new Macbook Pros aren't targeted at me or use…

I don't even want to know how much revenue I brought Apple by "word of mouth" alone as I've been one of the gazillion fevered and outspoken Unix converts (Darwin fan since 2004). Friends, family and random people in every potential "evangelizable" context – don't even get me started on how many fellow netizens, students, sysadmins and developers I actively tipped over as well (these often were the hardest actually).

Macs or later iPhone, it didn't matter we had to tell everyone that those nice and shiny devices were the real deal and we kept showing and telling until the last potential convert saw the light as well.

I have been buying a new Mac and iPhone almost annually for about ten years now – even (or especially) after 2011 and 2013. I honestly was thrilled by iOS7, I loved it from the moment of its introduction and only saw potential.

All that said, no "OSX" release has made me happier than Snow Leopard unfortunately and I am still convinced that "Losing the Functional High-Ground" by Marco Arment channeled an important message about a pattern most of us likely still see across the whole product line-up even though many things got better since.

Why else have we slowly but steadily stopped recommending Macs over the last two years?

When will that happen to iPhones or iPads? I'm still recommending them left and right but it somehow also is getting harder in a way, especially when people keep losing their safe-in-the-cloud data (in some cases even those precious moments with iPhone – photos).

Unfortunately Apple does seem to need a (kool-aid sober) benevolent dictator with taste and wholistic understanding of their core product/business (what is that going to be btw?).

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#129

Post by simonh »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #84
nardi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does the current Apple identify the correct idealised user when they don't seem to share the required taste? 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…

> needs a dongle to connect to iPhone

What's wrong with the USB-C to Lightning cable?

http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MK0X2ZM/A/usb-c-to-ligh...

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#130

Post by coldtea »

Apocryphon wrote: post #105

I find the recent turn of public opinion against Apple to be interesting. Two years ago people were writing about brilliant Tim Cook was, largely because of the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Which was Apple simply scaling up to product sizes that they had previously resisted in joining, but were common to the rest of the market. So was praise then wrong and overblown? Or is the current wave of discontent wrong…

>Or is the current wave of discontent wrong and overblown?

Obviously the latter. Let's see the quarterly results...

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