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Apple Piles On the Features, and Users Say, 'Enough!' (nytimes.com)
In a few hours, Apple will kickstart its annual developer conference. At the event, the company is expected to announce new MacBook laptops, the next major updates for iOS and MacOS, new features of Siri, and a home-speaker. Ahead of the conference, The New York Times has run a story that talks some of the headline announcements that Apple announced last year: one of which was, the ability to order food, scribble doodles and send funny images known as stickers in chats on its Messages app. Speaking with users, engineers and industry insiders, the Times reports that many of its existing features -- including expansion of Messages -- are too complicated for many users to figure out (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). From the report: The idea was to make Messages, one of the most popular apps on the iPhone, into an all-purpose tool like China's WeChat. But the process of finding and installing other apps in Messages is so tricky that most users have no idea they can even do it, developers and analysts say.
Seems a case of "it just bloats" from now on.
Users say: Enough!
Apple needs a swift kick in the ass. They've completely lost sight of the Jobs method of empire building which starts with "build and maintain your moat." That moat is the Mac. Even if it becomes 10% of their revenue, it is one of the single most important products they have because of a few reasons:
1. It has developers get to every iOS product line.
2. It is the general purpose computer of influencers and decision makers.
3. It is a hub to the iOS product lines that Apple can totally control.
It takes no real resources for a company like Apple to regularly update the Mac lines. They can easily afford to sacrifice some potential profitability to make their pro lines robust, repairable, upgradeable, etc. I didn't mind a semi-disposable iPhone when the Macbook Pro was like it was until the post-Jobs era. Now I don't know any power users that think Apple for a $1500-$2500 laptop purchase because we all now think it's a sucker's game.
Jobs uniquely understood how important choosing things not to do was. Engineers and designers do brilliant work every day, but the vast majority of that achievement gets lost in the clutter and quickly forgotten.
Better to leave consumers wanting more than to leave them confused. Best of all, you can sell them that something more next year. That way you don't have to hit it out of the park every single time. It's more like loading the bases and then getting to first, time and time again.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
apple needs an server system or at least rights to run server in a VM on ANY base hardware. Small and big business can use an local update mirror and they would like to rack mount it / load on there in place VM hardware. Also apple used to have an mini server but they just had cut the power and make the mini even thinner.
And the mac pro??? 256G is small and 2 video cards is over kill for an server.
They already have a docking station - it's called a Thunderbolt port, you just chose not to buy a dock.
Strong agreement here.
I have been annoyed for a while with what they have done to music on iOS since they integrated streaming. It is hard to do something as simple as switch to shuffle on a currently playing playlist for Pete's sake. Then I took my old ipod touch that is stuck at iOS 6 on a road trip. Holy cow did things "Just work". I'd forgotten just how bad iOS had gotten that I could easily do more of what I wanted on a widget I've barely used in 2 years than on the iPad I use almost daily.
I'd rather have fewer gimmicks that worked really well than heaps of buggy features I never use.
Not only that, who the fuck ever thought "Shake to undo" was a good, intuitive idea?