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Silicon Valley Veteran On Apple: Company Has Become Sloppy, Missed Updates, Delayed Refreshes (chuqui.com)
Silicon Valley veteran Chuq Von Rospach's blog post, in which he has criticized Apple for the things it did last year, has received quite a few nods from developers, analysts and users alike. Von Rospach, who has previously worked at Apple, has lambasted at the company for, among other things, how it has handled the Mac Pro, a lineup that hasn't seen any refresh in ages, and the AirPort routers, which too have been reportedly abandoned. From the post:Back when I was running most of Apple's e-mail systems for the marketing teams, I went to them and suggested that we should consider dumping the text-only part of the emails we were building, because only about 4% of users used them and it added a significant amount of work to the process of creation and testing each e-mail. Their response? That it was a small group of people, but a strategic one, since it was highly biased towards developers and power users. So the two-part emails stayed -- and they were right. It made no sense from a business standpoint to continue to develop these emails as both HTML [and] text, but it made significant strategic sense. It was an investment in keeping this key user base happy with Apple. Apple, from all indications I've seen over the last year and with the configurations they've shipped with these new laptops, has forgotten this, and the product configurations seem designed by what will fit the biggest part of the user base with the fewest configuration options. They've chopped off the edges of the bell curve -- and big chunks of their key users with them. The most daunting sentence from his post, according to Nitin Ganatra, who worked at Apple for 18 years and headed engineering of iOS, is, "If you just look at the numbers, things are okay."
"Delayed Refreshes By Long"?
Long what, exactly?
It made no sense from a business standpoint to continue to develop these emails as both HTML [and] text, but it made significant strategic sense.
the fact that this rose to the level of a marketing decision shows that as far back as Chuq's tenure, Apple has been on a steady decline. As an email admin, let me spell this out for you. You supply email in text and HTML format because people who do real and meaningful work on desktops and laptops want to see the text, not HTML. these are the same people who still use real F keys, a real escape key, and consider removing the headphones from a cellphone a form of jackassery, not bravery.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Right, because all companies everywhere colluded and agreed to only buy Mac Pros on the same day. And no companies anywhere are allowed to grow and need more computers. And no new companies will be allowed, ever.
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E-mails? Really? THAT's Apple's problem? And spouting off about HTML in e-mails? HTML is total inconsistent crap. What looks fine to one user on one platform and one browser looks totally different to another. That said, this post reminds me of the time that Steve Jobs came into a meeting as asked what some particular software product was supposed to do. After receiving an answer he said, "Can anyone tell me why the f*ck it doesn't do that?" Apple has indeed lost its way. They have all but abandoned the power users and power developers (there are plenty of things that Android developers have access to that iOS developers don't). Why the hell did Apple buy Beats? Seems like they're focusing on trying to make the next big thing and that's sucking all the resources away from other product lines.
the MBP is not in the running. The Surface is looking pretty good. I already started to migrate out of the Apple ecosystem. Just a few last ties left then I'm free.
Apple --> Microsoft, is that really the path to freedom?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
They won't for long if they keep pissing off their highest revenue-generating customers.
I'm curious who you think those "highest revenue-generating customers" actually are. I'm willing to be it isn't who you think it is. Just because you buy a Mac Pro every few years doesn't make you a "highest revenue customer". Well over 50% of Apples revenues come from the iPhone and you can tell that Apple's focus is more on that product than any other. Also the customers generating the most revenue are very likely to be a different group than the most profitable customers. At the end of the day it's profits, not revenues that matter.
True, they've been successful for ROI. Their business approach focused on visual design and appeal to consumer ego has ultimately paid off.
Most economic theories I'm familiar with assume consumers make informed, rationale purchasing choices and understand trade offs. When you erode that assumption away and instead manipulate the consumer psychologically through marketing, Apple is basically what you get. It works. It's sad, but it works.
I view it all as part of the 'post fact' Era where as a society, we seem to care less about good choices and just want to feel warm and gooey inside, even for a short time, chasing high-to-high.
In a rational market this would mean that the price drops between cycles.
I get how it is hard for Apple to justify a sku that brings in less than $50MM a year (or some random number), but the problem is Apple is built on mindshare. Pithy example, but my company switched to iPhones (back in the day) because of me, our sole Mac user; Apple no longer makes a computer well suited for my personal needs. This leads to erosion in core markets over time, and is hard to recover from.
So, sure... there is no profit to be had in a better Mac Pro, or a laptop that has built in Ethernet, or whatever. Worse, the designers run things now, and other functional items are eliminated for better visual appearance.
If Apple falls into the no innovation trap, they could eventually join Blackberry in market oblivion. Blackberry was on the top once. If you wanted a mobile phone with all the latest features, you got a Blackberry. Their fans were just as rabid as Apple fans are (for better or worse - not saying that being a rabid fan is always a bad thing). But as other companies (notably, Apple) innovated into their space, Blackberry insisted that they didn't need to keep up. They were on top which (to them) meant that they were doing what the users wanted which meant they didn't need to change. Even as they slid down, they still insisted that they didn't need to change. By the time they realized change was needed, they were too far gone.
If Apple's not careful, they can wind up as another Blackberry. Short term profits are nice, but can blind you to long term trends.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Apple was once a great company. Back in the day Apple was ahead of the industry in just about every way. BYTE magazine wrote that the history of the microcomputer industry was an effort to keep up with Apple. In the 1980's and 90's I was a card carrying Apple fanboy. Then I got hooked on Linux in 1999.
I parted ways with Apple when OS X would not run on the several $5000+ computers in my household. I had fond feeling towards Apple, but was no longer interested in their products.
When the iPhone came out, I realized that in five years everyone would have such a phone, but with a dozen different brand names other than Apple. Just like the Mac vs PC when Apple would not license it's OS.
When Apple became a litigation factory, I realized that the end was near. Slide to unlock, really? Rectangles with rounded corners? Apple argued in a foreign court patent suit that Samsung could have made their tables thicker and heaver, as if thin and light were some exclusive Apple right. Here we are ten years later from 2007 to 2017 and the headlines in industry trade rags are beginning to paint the fall of Apple. Hey, it happened to IBM. Then eventually to Microsoft who is trying to grasp at relevance and embrace the open source world. Why can't Apple fall? Unthinkable? Think different! It could happen. (And some of us would say good riddance after enduring the snobbish fanboys.)
Today's Apple fanboys are little more than ditto heads. They protested that Apple's was not a patent troll. Yet Apple and Microsoft together formed Rockstar, one of the biggest patent trolls around, in order to shield their good brand names while patent trolling.
It may just be what happens to big corporations when they grow past a certain point. Hey Google are you paying attention? They become too conservative. They can't rock the boat that generates today's huge profits. They can't invest too many resources into the future. They don't have vision. They can hire people with vision, but then they won't believe what those visionary people tell them. It seems to be a common story of successful tech companies.
If Apple does go away, it won't be overnight. Not quickly. And maybe not even completely. Just a gradual slide into irrelevance. But Apple was once great, and had a good long run. And from my once fanboy days, I'll point out a saying of the early 1990's: people have been predicting the demise of Apple every year since 1981.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
As a developer/power user who sits at the far end of the bell curve, here's what I see as the folly of Apple's ways.
I switched to Macs after working on a beta version of OS X in the late 90s. Unix + sensible desktop was enough to keep me off the Linux train for daily use. That the hardware was also well designed with a good level of performance was also important. For the next 10 years or so, that held true.
But, in the last 5 years:
- the hardware has stagnated (e.g., I'd really like to buy a MacMini for my kids, but there's no way I'm shelling out Apple prices for 3 year old processors)
- new hardware decisions make it difficult to use existing peripherals (music is a hobby - no way am I dropping a few grand on new audio interfaces just b/c I upgraded my Mac and need to support new ports)
- Apple has ignored sensible design decisions made on the non-Apple side of the world (specifically, touch screens on laptops - my wife as an HP for work and the touch screen is useful, those old studies that claim otherwise are just that, old and dated).
- The OS continues to have a slew of undocumented features that may or may not be useful, but definitely affect performance (the real dig here: just document the features Apple, I hate discovering things OS X has done for years on random blog posts)
- The iPhone and OS X still don't work well together
Why does this matter from the perspective of the bell curve and my place on it? Simple: I switched not only my family, but also my company over to Macs. The middle part of that curve was filled by people following people like me into the Mac universe. I'm seriously considering dropping Macs for computer use and (horror of horrors) going back to Windows + Linux. If I go that way, it's just a matter of an upgrade cycle or two before those in my sphere of influence abandon Macs as well.
Apple seems to have forgotten that it's us geeks that couldn't wait for Linux on the Desktop that helped drive adoption 15 years ago. Kinda like the Democrats forgetting that the working class matters.
-Chris
*nix is the path to the Dark Side.
Linux leads to Apple. Apple leads to MicroSoft. MicroSoft leads to the Suffering. --The Penguin
I jest, Windows 10 has been remarkably stable and good on the 5 year old work computer I;m using ... enough that, based on how shitty MacOS hardware has been looking, I'm considering going back to windows for my next home computer ... for the first time in 15 years.
My iPhone is about 3 years old ... I expect I'll start looking at replacing it shortly and I'm open to looking at alternatives. ... Apple's moves may costing them more future revue than their calculations are predicting.
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Isn't this exactly the strategic short-sightedness the article was talking about? Sure, on the spreadsheet, you can do this sort of calculation. However, then you neglect the real people who need, or simply want, to be more up to date. While there aren't necessarily a lot of those people compared to, say, iPhone users, they probably include people who write the apps that make products like iPhones and iPads viable, or who use Apple gear to its full potential and then champion it when discussing tech with others. These people are a strategically valuable part of the market, and if you lose them, you risk damaging other, possibly much larger, parts of your business indirectly as well.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Exactly. I switched my entire family, and all my in-laws, from PCs to Macs years ago. There are thousands of stories like yours, where one or two people on the upper end of the user bell curve led an entire community or company to switch by proselytizing the Apple experience. If Apple stops manufacturing laptops and desktops that those power users want to buy, the drop in Apple's marketshare will be increased by orders of magnitude.
I see it more as Apple makes Corollas and Caravans that they market and price as a BMW.
I've been an OS X user since 2006 when Intel Macs arrived. I was strictly a linux user for the prior 7 years having abandoned Windows in the late 90s.
The reason I went to OS X was that its *nix under the covers (and gave me all of the programming/scripting power I needed) and also was incredibly stable. I would literally go for months without rebooting and without native (X86, not PPC emulated) apps crashing...at all...ever.
I feel that from a stability POV OS X peaked around 10.6. Ever since then, a pattern of increasing crashes and decreasing reliability has followed every release. The amount of instability is still very small, but when as a user you are used to 0 problems, it is very frustrating. (iOS seems to have followed a similar trajectory lately as well.)
I don't know what's happened to the QA process at Apple and I also don't see the point in rushing out a new OS every year. I would love for them to go back to the simpler, more stable approach that they have 5-6 years ago.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
The article didn't mention a frequent user complaint: Apple's obsession with trumping the competition by making the whole universe two-dimensional. The newest release of every product is thinner than the last, even though users in every single online forum keep wanting to trade some thinness off for more battery life. In the face of all that reaction the next release will be thinner still, even to the point of compromising structural integrity (iPhone Plus, iPad) and ports (MacBook Pro) and hardware features (iMac).