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Re: undefined

#241

Post by UIZealot »

tptacek wrote: post #66
killion wrote: post #23

I think that Apple suffers from not having that person at the top with taste who was willing to say “this is shit”. The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. There were misses under Steve like the Cube where there wasn’t a market. But the product was great. Now there is a market but the product is middling like the Watch. Yes the watch was started when he w…

I can't think of much I would trade from now for something in the Jobs era. I can do without the rich Corinthian leather, the PowerPC, and the colored plastic. The new keyboards aren't great, but I've dropped this MBP at least 30 times and it still keeps chugging; I'm pretty sure an errant dust particle could have take out my first Intel Macbook.

> I can't think of much I would trade from now for something in the Jobs era. I can do without

> the rich Corinthian leather

Taste, you either have it or you don't. Steve certainly did.

> the PowerPC,

The Mac switched to Intel in the Jobs era.

> and the colored plastic

Again, all Mac laptops and desktops switched to Aluminum in the Jobs era.

It seems to me you're going out of your way to not give credit whom (Steve Jobs) it's due, why is that?

Re: undefined

#242

Post by simondotau »

nzmsv wrote: post #220
Stevvo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the hotels really were shit, and the response was somewhat reasonable?

That shouldn't have happened enough times that Ive developed a Pavlovian reflex to avoid unpacking his bag. Or if all hotels they stayed at were that shitty, perhaps some stern words should have been said to the people responsible for booking travel. But this sounds like a case of someone being a diva. Hardly the mark of a great leader and role model. I've known people like this by the way. They act like any accommod…

A lot of hotels are shit, and often in way that aren't justified by cost. A most obvious example relevant to Steve's lifetime is wifi. 10-20 years ago, many hotels had unnecessarily restrictive wifi with tedious fees and tedious limitations. It's not a problem these days because hotels have finally given up being customer hostile—and because most people can rely on 4G anyway. But that kind of attitude pervades many aspects of the industry.

Re: undefined

#243

Post by simondotau »

microtonal wrote: post #34
jedberg wrote: post #9

I think Apple would be an even more interesting company if he were still around. Maybe not as big or as profitable, but certainly more interesting. I wish he hadn't been so strongheaded about herbal remedies and whatnot. He had the more curable kind of cancer, had he taken it seriously earlier. As someone who has lost family to pancreatic cancer, it really upset me to learn that he didn't use his vast resources to do…

I think Apple would be an even more interesting company if he were still around. Maybe not as big or as profitable, but certainly more interesting. I agree. As a user of Apple products, I think Apple makes great products. And I don't believe Apple can't innovate because Jobs is gone (they basically set category standards in smartwatches, wireless earbuds, and ARM desktop computers since then). But Apple was certainly…

The problem is that few people are as captivating to listen to as Steve was. I think Steve could sell anything so long as he could genuinely believe in it.

I agree that recent keynotes have been awful, but this recent decline is largely due to the format being changed from a live audience presentation into a high production value movie. It's so incongruent because it's the wrong genre. The sooner Apple can return to a truly live keynote, the better.

Re: undefined

#244

Post by theshrike79 »

nzmsv wrote: post #111
takahisah wrote: post #100

Ten years ago I was at Infinite Loop, when Apple held a special event in memory of Steve. Everybody was wearing sunglasses to hide their tears, even Tim and Jony. I remember Jonys speech quite vividly as it showed how truly close they were. He joked about how he would never unpack his bags upon arriving at a hotel because Steve would call him and say the hotel is shit so they had to move immediately after checking in…

> He joked about how he would never unpack his bags upon arriving at a hotel because Steve would call him and say the hotel is shit so they had to move immediately after checking in. I think it’s those human connections he made that made him so great. This is awful, no? There are people like that who can never be pleased. Usually narcissists. I fail to see where the human connection is in being a crybaby Karen. Not t…

My guess is this was a "Brown M&M" -thing[0].

Steve reserved a hotel with requirements X, Y and Z. Hotels might skimp on the requirements a bit because most clients don't care and won't bother to leave if something is wrong.

Steve cared.

So he left and took his money somewhere else.

[0] https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9

Re: undefined

#245

Post by thom »

duped wrote: post #77
microtonal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. Mostly on the Mac. The butterfly keyboard and how Apple handled it, were terrible. And macOS quality had gone down release after release. But I have never had any serious software or hardware quality issues with the iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods or any other products. It seems that they had just lost focus on the Mac…

Apple Maps directions now mispronounces the word "South" (who knew it had three syllables?). This word is so common in street names I'm shocked it made it out of testing.

My Siri can’t pronounce the letter ‘y’.

Re: undefined

#246

Post by simonh »

na85 wrote: post #183
actusual wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve quotes in the video "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been" which is of course a Wayne Gretsky quote, and I think it captures this sentiment very well. Moving from leader to follower is such a classic move for an incumbent like Apple, and with Steve they never seemed to lose that insurgent mindset, even when they were absolutely enormous. They've steadily stagnated and truly lost that…

Did you know Steve Jobs personally? I'm stupefied as to how someone who didn't know him socially can miss a CEO of a giant faceless corporation, especially one known to be such a monumental asshole. I mean his company made consumer products. It's like saying you miss the former CEO of Braun. I honestly don't get it.

What I miss is his insight into the state of the industry, the direction technology is going, and his discourse on design and why Apple products he worked on are engineered the way they are.

Yes he was a flawed person especially when he was younger, but he was also incredibly insightful, a master communicator and was always interesting to listen to. I think it's reasonable to miss that, and hence the person.

Re: undefined

#247

Post by sumedh »

Stevvo wrote: post #167
nzmsv wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He joked about how he would never unpack his bags upon arriving at a hotel because Steve would call him and say the hotel is shit so they had to move immediately after checking in. I think it’s those human connections he made that made him so great. This is awful, no? There are people like that who can never be pleased. Usually narcissists. I fail to see where the human connection is in being a crybaby Karen. Not t…

Maybe the hotels really were shit, and the response was somewhat reasonable?

I dont think someone like Jony Ive is going to stay in shitty hotels.

Re: undefined

#248

Post by simonh »

mhh__ wrote: post #193
killion wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Even a little thing like Safari having the close button on the wrong side in iOS 15 would have gotten someone fired. Multitasking in iPadOS is also a good example of non-Mac software being near unusable.

iPad in general screams of directionless product development. I have an M1 iPad Pro. The thing is so fucking fast, just let me do a bit of coding on it. ... or let me rename file extensions.

You can code in Swift Playgrounds, including developing GUI apps using SwiftUI, and the next version will be able to release apps to the store directly from the iPad.

That's aside from the third party apps like Codea and Pythonista that have supported coding and app development on the iPad for about a decade. If you've not been coding on your iPad, you've been seriously missing out.

Re: undefined

#249

Post by Lio »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #71
microtonal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. Mostly on the Mac. The butterfly keyboard and how Apple handled it, were terrible. And macOS quality had gone down release after release. But I have never had any serious software or hardware quality issues with the iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods or any other products. It seems that they had just lost focus on the Mac…

I generally agree, although there are all kinds of issues on iPhone as well. The one that bothers me most often is autocorrect sporadically changing correct English words to nonsense, or the complete inability to select certain bits of text properly (even in Apple apps).

I wish I could up vote this twice. Text handling on the iPhone is incredibly frustrating.

I'd add to the list of issues how hard it is to trigger the spell checker for underlined words and how poor its suggestions are when you finally do trigger it.

There are whole websites devoted to embarrassing errors caused iPhone text handling. I can't see why Apple don't bother to fix it. Even small iterative improvements would be OK.

Re: undefined

#250

Post by Lio »

dtjb wrote: post #224
avalys wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m stupefied as to how someone who didn’t know him socially can miss the CEO of a giant faceless corporation Would you have called Apple “faceless” if Steve Jobs were still CEO? I miss Steve Jobs because he did great things and he inspired others to do great things. The world was a more vibrant and creative place with him in it. As a software engineer I have used Apple products to do almost all of my day-to-day work…

As an interesting aside, Braun was led by Dieter Rams, a towering figure in product design and one of Jobs most influential idols. https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/andrewpacio/2016/02/19/how-a-designe...

Dieter Rams was the legendary head of industrial design at Braun but I don't think you could say that he led the company.

His role was more akin to Jony Ive's at Apple.

Jobs was a different kind of animal. It's hard to say exactly what the source of his magic was but the fact that he remained interesting throughout his career showed he had something special that's still worth talking about.

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