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I've been an ardent Apple supporter since the first iPod came out and I've always loved Apple. But recently, it just seems like things are not getting better, the quality is really slipping.
Maybe you do need a Steve Jobs around after all to yell at people so that the software is any good.
The perspective also depends on how you look at your devices and the timeframe of expected use. Apple equipment used to be the kinds of devices you could have in production for many years. But, they are really now much more a consumer device company and part of the device churn. If this is acceptable to you (as a user) then you probably don't care because you will just skip the next hardware revision and get the one after (timed with some sort of Apple software obsolesce incentive) and be fine.
Last year around this time, I wrote this:
http://mergy.org/2012/12/irecognition-i-am-no-longer-apples-...
But then Lloyd Chambers did a detailed piece on the decline here:
http://macperformanceguide.com/AppleCoreRot-intro.html
But there are many more examples before me and others. Before the holy war kicks-in, I think it really is an expectation thing.
Complete the puzzle and here's the answer.
Apple had one in Scott Forstall and Tim Cook fired him, in the name of furthering "collaboration" at the executive level (whatever that means). IMO that was the singular event that defines Apple in the Tim Cook era.
My take is that Cook intends to coast at Apple until his 10 years are up, managing operations well but not taking any risks, and removing anyone who would take risks. It's an acceptable strategy, but it's just not what we're used to from Apple.
So, like another commenter said, I agree that it's mostly an expectations problem. It's not just that Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall are gone, it's that Apple, under Tim Cook's direction, has made a conscious decision to be a different kind of company.
Apple is "made in ______" Complete the puzzle and here's the answer.
I walked out of the store in 2009 with a device where you undid a few screws and the whole back came off giving easy access to upgrade ram, hard drive, replace dvd, fan or battery. My first stop was to buy a bigger hard drive and double my memory with reasonably priced commodity parts. Replacing my battery when it ran out was cheap and trivially easy.
I look at the new MacBooks and the RAM is soldered, the SDD is proprietary, the battery is glued in place. I don't know if they have gone downhill but they have certainly alienated some customers and forced them to look elsewhere. If you aren't looking to develop for the Apple ecosystem I think the justification for buying a MBP has diminished considerably.
Apple is "made in ______" Complete the puzzle and here's the answer.
The apple TV we use in the office for playing music has not worked correctly since the last firmware update and really struggles with streaming and the new MBP we purchased recently had a bug where the keyboard and mouse would randomly stop working(fixed in an update). These aren't huge problems but I think they are not something that would have occurred a few years ago.
That being said if you don't want to make the switch to linux then the apple/unix ecosystem is still much better than the current windows options but I think apple is losing its reputation for quality as it moves from being a high end luxury product to a standard.