I can only surmise (hope) that their resources are diverted towards Something Big. Could be ARM macOS and/or AR glasses. Not that this excuses the bugginess of their current core products.
Bringing up comparisons to Steve Jobs must be the tech equivalent of Godwin's Law, but if there was one thing about him, it's that he actually was a user of his own products, like us.
It feels like there's no one at Apple (or other companies) like that anymore. They can only try to guess at what it must be like to be a user, so they can't nitpick all the little things that annoy us.
>Bringing up comparisons to Steve Jobs must be the tech equivalent of Godwin's Law, but if there was one thing about him, it's that he actually was a user of his own products, like us.
It feels like there's no one at Apple (or other companies) like that anymore. They can only try to guess at what it must be like to be a user, so they can't nitpick all the little things that annoy us.
Exactly this. As he famously said on stage he was the low paid beta tester for Apple. He was also sensitive to certain users opinion. I could only wish he was replying email on this latest MacBook Pro and decide to throw the damn thing out of the Window. Calling up Engineers at midnight and demand this to be fix or redesigned ASAP.
Without Steve we have been stuck with this butterfly keyboard for 4-5 years now, because Tim Cook decided it is a small problem and they need to amortise the cost of R&D.
> I could only wish he was replying email on this latest MacBook Pro and decide to throw the damn thing out of the Window. Calling up Engineers at midnight and demand this to be fix or redesigned ASAP.
I think part of Apple's issue is that Cook isn't that the guy at the top isn't a product guy -- it's the guy at the top could do (and from some rumors, possibly does?) his job with an iPad. I feel like, under Cook's tenure as CEO, the Mac has lagged, while the iPad significantly improved. Part of that is that the Mac was a mature platform when he took over, but a big part of that is that Cook can provide some of that Jobs-ian top-down product feedback that designers must listen to.
With their culture, something big will be worked on by a relatively small team in total secrecy. The team, in name of secrecy, will repeat the same mistakes that some other teams are fixing elsewhere.
Secrecy inside a company may help a team to focus on only one thing but it also prevents people from understanding the "big picture" and unless there is a special process for "sharing lessons learned", people repeats the same mistakes over and over. It is a little sad.
They seem to have at least a fair bit of effort devoted to reversing earlier maligned decisions, given the new Mac Pro, thicker iPhones with larger batteries, and the rumors about ditching butterfly switches on the laptops.
Bringing up comparisons to Steve Jobs must be the tech equivalent of Godwin's Law, but if there was one thing about him, it's that he actually was a user of his own products, like us.
It feels like there's no one at Apple (or other companies) like that anymore. They can only try to guess at what it must be like to be a user, so they can't nitpick all the little things that annoy us.