Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

kensegall.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 519 posts

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#151

Post by basisword »

pzo wrote: post #112

Sadly iPhone sales and revenue saturated like 4 years ago (and the same for Mac, Wearables and iPad [0]). They focus now a lot on growing revenue from services. Which is kind of sad because they have still much room to grow Mac and iPad: - just make iPad more useful and support MacOS - it's not gonna canibalize Mac, they sale each year 2x more iPads than Macs and 12x more iPhones than Macs. - make macbook Pro standar…

Maybe they should stop focussing on 'growing'. Isn't nearly $100bn in profit per year enough??

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#152

Post by qwerpy »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #30
duxup wrote: post #3

Ads in Maps and how that contrasts with the customer experience is the message here. I'll be honest, I'm tired of the "steve jobs wouldn't" and "apple dying" articles, they're oh so shrill and tiresome and I think Steve would have changed with the times too ... Steve aside, I find this particular article's observation that ads in maps is a bad customer experience something I can agree with.

The ads in Google Maps are fairly tame by modern standards. Of course, Apple can afford to not make this change and I hope they abstain. But it’s really not too offensive in my opinion.

> fairly tame by modern standards

That means they’re still early in the ad-ification of the product. After a few dozen “what if we increase the ad density” A/B tests later, we’ll get to the point Google search is now. Except with maps you’re stuck using the app without an ad blocker.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#153

Post by basisword »

jabwd wrote: post #35
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…

Yeah for me it has been degrading ever since the Settings app became an upsell app. I'm sorry I came here to change a setting not dismiss a notification on your latest failed service thing that requires 20,- a month.

>> Yeah for me it has been degrading ever since the Settings app became an upsell app.

I didn't really notice this until I setup an iPhone from scratch for someone. I normally just move from one to the other. The nagging from Settings is outrageous. It will never stop telling you to setup Apple Pay and Siri and offering Apple Care. It was like the experience of buying a PC in the 2000's.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#154

Post by thewebguyd »

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, what point is there in staying inside?

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#156

Post by pzo »

imglorp wrote: post #135
pzo wrote: post #112

Sadly iPhone sales and revenue saturated like 4 years ago (and the same for Mac, Wearables and iPad [0]). They focus now a lot on growing revenue from services. Which is kind of sad because they have still much room to grow Mac and iPad: - just make iPad more useful and support MacOS - it's not gonna canibalize Mac, they sale each year 2x more iPads than Macs and 12x more iPhones than Macs. - make macbook Pro standar…

> They focus now a lot on growing revenue Explain like I'm five, how does a multi trillion dollar company expect to keep growing revenue forever? Are they planning to keep enshittifying user experience until revenue dives?

you omitted the most important 2 words from my quote: "growing revenue from services". If you read other part of my post I shared ideas how they could grow revenue without enshitification.

After that saturate they can keep innovating like xiaomi - they build plenty of useful home products so apple can as well.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#157

Post by busymom0 »

skhameneh wrote: post #40

The very first thing I saw from Apple that, IMO, Jobs would have vehemently stopped was the two-toned back on the iPhone 5. That said, the iOS 26 release is abysmal. The only redeeming thing for me has been the enhancements to Stage Manager, everything else with the UI/UX is such a mess that every day it seems like I'm discovering something new in the realm of awful design. And this isn't limited to minor nitpicks, t…

I am running the latest iOS 26.1 and it's still very buggy. The most annoying one is that anytime I either restart my phone or update the phone (which restarts it), the wallpaper changes to all black.

That wouldn't be so bad if the borders around the Home Screen icons didn't look so ugly with black background.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#158

Post by qwerpy »

manoDev wrote: post #107

To be fair, ads on a map aren't the same as Windows 11 start menu ads – the former are useful and contextual. I feel the story being told would be more equivalent to what Microsoft is doing rather than Google. That said, advertising is like a virus, and every company and product is eventually infected by it. It's too tempting to not monetize your customer's eyeballs once you have enough of them.

I actually consider the windows start menu ads less objectionable. At least you can turn them off (for now). There is no way to disable ads embedded in the maps app. And it’s only useful and contextual if you’re using the map to look for somewhere to spend money. I rarely do this. I’m using it to check traffic, get directions to somewhere, or exploring out of geographical curiosity. In all of these use cases, ads are an unwanted distraction.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#159

Post by portaouflop »

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…

I haven’t used Apple devices back when they were good so I have always avoided all the built-in Apple bloat/adware.

Because I came from Windows this was already my standard assumption - I need to violently throw out all the built-in stuff and replace it with free and good software.

It’s funny because that means I never felt the same pain you feel; I just assumed that’s how operating systems are.

Re: Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

#160

Post by thaumasiotes »

jdminhbg wrote: post #54
ses1984 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want my phone to consume any of my “free” attention, ever, but holy cow especially not while driving.

> as a car passenger

Sometimes the driver looks at the map screen too. That's most of the reason it's there.
Post reply on HN