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Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

kensegall.com

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Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#161

Post by qwerpy »

thewebguyd wrote: post #154
twsted wrote: post #52

I am checking this carefully. The red line is here, for me and I think for many Apple customers. I choose Apple for being different from other companies, for valuing customer experiences and for rejecting ads and other "insults" for users. I think that if they cross the line, me and many other customers will leave.

> I choose Apple for being different from other companies, for valuing customer experiences and for rejecting ads and other "insults" for users Yes. The point of willingly putting yourself in the walled garden was that the experience was definitively better than the other options. When the walled garden ceases to be better and starts adopting all the same dark patterns and user hostile experience as everyone else, wh…

The hardware is still marginally better but the experience is no longer better. In fact with android at least you can sideload and install full powered ad blockers. At some point once the iOS experience degrades beyond a certain threshold, android will be a more attractive option.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#162

Post by cmckn »

twsted wrote: post #52

I am checking this carefully. The red line is here, for me and I think for many Apple customers. I choose Apple for being different from other companies, for valuing customer experiences and for rejecting ads and other "insults" for users. I think that if they cross the line, me and many other customers will leave.

Where will you go? The alternatives seem worse in almost every way.

> and I think for many Apple customers

Unfortunately, I think people who care about this enough to leave are a rounding error. It’s why the entire consumer product market looks the way it does.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#163

Post by portaouflop »

amelius wrote: post #149
gwd wrote: post #75

> From that point on, Steve would go on to spend lavishly on things that improved the experience, and he would reject—often brutally—any idea that diluted or harmed the experience. ...I’ll go out on a limb and say that uninvited advertising is not normally equated with a better customer experience. YES!!! SOO much of the Apple user experience has degraded due to this. I can't listen to my own music that I bought on t…

An iPhone is a vending machine in your pocket. (owned and operated by Apple, and __you__ paid for it.)

I disagree. You can disable all the apps—in fact never use _any_ app if you can avoid it altogether. Apps are inherently bad, and the web version is always better.

It didn’t have to be like this, but here we are.

I often go weeks without opening any app but the browser on my phone.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#164

Post by inshard »

Local businesses with better quality usually have better ratings in maps and better economics—higher margins, repeat customers, lower acquisition costs. And since only nearby places can compete, you get real competition on merit instead of a race to the bottom with faceless actors. Good ads solve a real problem: helping people discover great spots in unfamiliar cities.

Jobs saw something with iAd.

The problem is simple auction mechanics favor whoever has the deepest pockets. A mediocre chain with fat margins outbids an amazing local place, even if the local spot delivers way more value. You’re optimizing for who can pay, not who’s actually good.

To fix this, you weight bids by quality signals like ratings, time spent and repeat visits.

Now ads amplify what’s already great instead of just selling visibility.

Users get better recommendations, good businesses win, and Apple builds trust. That’s how you turn ads from a tax on attention into actual product value—and an improved user experience.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#165

Post by upboundspiral »

al_borland wrote: post #71

I will never understand why some companies turn away from some of the core principles that got them to their position. If it’s market pressure, it tells me that Cook doesn’t really believe their future roadmap is good enough for growth, so he needs to hedge with other things that make the product worse. Of course those very things will hurt future growth. That’s how an upward spiral turns downward.

I feel this strongly. From a business perspective, when your competitors expand their revenue avenues through ads you have three options: copy them to catch up, do nothing and perish, or lobby the government for increased consumer protections. The third option isn't being taken, but I believe its the right one for many companies that want to remain customer-centric, and that have real values.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#167

Post by freefaler »

gwd wrote: post #75

> From that point on, Steve would go on to spend lavishly on things that improved the experience, and he would reject—often brutally—any idea that diluted or harmed the experience. ...I’ll go out on a limb and say that uninvited advertising is not normally equated with a better customer experience. YES!!! SOO much of the Apple user experience has degraded due to this. I can't listen to my own music that I bought on t…

It's a general trend with hired managers who optimize for their bonuses. Also many founder led companies when they got sold to the shareholders are also optmizing for that. Some founder led companies are optimizing for something else, not profits only, but that's rare and that's what Jobs had the leeway to do when he got back to the almost bankrupt company. Current minions will try to squeeze more profit from any screen the incentives are such that they'd do that.

Enshitification is possible where there is some kind of lock-in and the pain of leaving is greater than the level of annoyance of the product. Apple has one of the strongest lock-in ecosystems and it's rational for them to do so.

I'm not sure there is a better way, because max freedom = open source, but that equals mostly subpar experience for the average user. Let's hope for more platforms and data transfer from one to the other.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#168

Post by ReptileMan »

strictnein wrote: post #95
gwd wrote: post #75

> From that point on, Steve would go on to spend lavishly on things that improved the experience, and he would reject—often brutally—any idea that diluted or harmed the experience. ...I’ll go out on a limb and say that uninvited advertising is not normally equated with a better customer experience. YES!!! SOO much of the Apple user experience has degraded due to this. I can't listen to my own music that I bought on t…

This is how Amazon is too with the movies and tv shows you bought. There's no way to search your owned library anymore. You just have to page through it to find what you want. And your library is hidden away behind a tiny little unlabeled icon in the upper right corner. And, to make matters worse, you have things like the Charlie Brown Halloween Special, which Apple now owns the rights to. You cannot in any way searc…

Torrent sites have amazing search ... just saying

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#169

Post by racl101 »

torben-friis wrote: post #15

I don’t care about whatever Jobs thought, but honestly I do care about apple forgetting that the walled garden’s walls are tolerated only because the experience inside is better. Their hardware is still amazing, but I’ve had enough issues with software quality and Cook’s penny pinching philosophy that I’ve bought a second hand laptop to explore moving to Linux. So far, the experience is making me question whether my…

Yep. For the first time I'm really considering Linux as a personal / desktop OS. Currently I just use it for servers. But now for the first time I don't think I have much to lose by leaving the Apple ecosystem.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#170

Post by thaumasiotes »

ratelimitsteve wrote: post #83
bsimpson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be the worst take I've ever read on this website. I'm a lifetime Mac user who has bought exactly one iPhone (the 3G S) before switching to Android. I'm definitely not in the Jobs reality distortion field. But I do remember how the iPod was better than every similar thing at the time, and how people spent _years_ clamoring for Apple to harness that same focus to make a phone. Apple had to go out and buy the…

as someone who bought the creativelabs mp3 player back in the day, the ipod was absolutely better and I was just being some combination of cheap and contrarian

I had a Zen Stone, which was made by... Creative!

It was much, much better than an iPod. I had an iPod first. I gave it away, because it was too heavy to carry around.

The Zen Stone was essentially weightless and could be operated without looking at it. The only problem I ever had with it was that it couldn't charge and play at the same time.

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