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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.
In a few hours, Apple will kickstart its annual developer conference.
I find this really surprising. I was sure Apple had plenty of capital.
Is a fucking Mac Pro that is not a fucking trash can.
That you can buy a new updated fucking motherboard for and not a waste a whole god damn machine.
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.
My main complaint with Apple's new features of the past years has been that most have limited reach.
Things like Apple Pay are still not available in The Netherlands (where I live), years after release. Siri took years to arrive and is still far more limited than in the US. Other features are constrained to the Apple ecosystem, ignoring the fact that most users own and interact with various platforms. I've never felt a need to explore stickets in Messages, because barely anyone I know still uses Messages.
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.
Developer here. I do some development on my MacBooks (newest is MacBook Pro from mid 2015). My ongoing wishlist:
- Large screens (DPI matters less than actual real estate): 15-inches or more, and vertical space is valuable
- At least two large/powered USB ports (today I have two large - Type A - and one powered)
- Two HDMI ports (today I have one; I use an adapter for my second monitor)
- Docking station (I do most of my work at one workstation where my monitors/keyboard/headphones live - today I plug/unplug 6 cables when I get in for the morning or back from a meeting)
No, I don't need a headphone jack. Bluetooth/wireless is a thing these days.
Bring the hardware up to modern specifications, then try to maintain a reasonable price, and people will be more likely flock to it. Of course, they make enough money on iPhone/iPad that they probably don't feel particularly motivated to improve the state of affairs for desktop/laptop users.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
I've been a longtime Apple Support Specialist and I've never, ever, seen it hit such a low level of usability and simplicity. It's as if the current Apple has a UI team staffed by the people who designed Windows 3.1. Even basic applications like Messages (on the Mac) are now so difficult to use (AND buggy) that many users have simply given up.
Apple needs to fire or re-assign every single person that worked on the UI designs post Snow Leopard and post IOS 6 and do a complete "Microsoft Windows 8 doh! moment reversal." They need to go back to where they were then, when everything worked exactly as it should and made freaking sense.
There is nothing worse than trying to teach people how to use current Apple software: "Why is this this way?" (Because Steve Jobs died and the people now in charge at Apple are morons.) "This doesn't make any sense." (No, it doesn't, it's complete nonsense and you just have to memorize it.) It's a fracking nightmare.
Imac pro without E-net build in! do you want to add an
$19.99 TB3 to E-net dongle?
$39.99 TB3 to 10G-E-net dongle?
$29.99 TB3 to SFP+ dongle?
I think they should add a feature where people can write stories. They could call it Stories.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
... to order food, scribble doodles and send funny pictures?
Wow. Society rally is going down the drain.
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.
Messages? That's where I want to send and receive communications from... iOS already has an App Store why would I want to replicate that function in my communications app?
Isn't this what killed Google Wave?
You can turn off that stupid doodle shit, I hated it too. http://www.iphonehacks.com/2016/09/disable-handwriting-mode-ios-10-messages-app.html
it seems to want you to "archive" the message and never delete it! We had to manually move it to the trash folder. Very unintuitive.
This is really just how Gmail wants it done. I'm not sure it works the same with IMAP.
...and an option button.
"We have just launched the new iPhone, it comes with *exactly* the same features as the last one."
That's obviously never going to happen, so creeping featurism it is. It's so hard to avoid this, no matter what kind of software system you're building. And that's exactly the reason why. Apple - and to at least some extend the users - want to have new features on the phones. But cutting away something that current users still use also sound like a bad idea.
Maybe Jobs could have avoided this. I doubt it. It's a major dilemma that all software and hardware vendors face all the time.
The hardware is sound...
The hardware is out of date. And I say this as a lifelong Mac user, working on a MBP right now. I want a Mac Pro with an i9 and a GTX 1080.
Everybody also needs to stop trying to make their app do everything. Everybody wants to add every feature under the sun, until their app becomes so bloated it's not worth the space or time it takes to launch it.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
What's the point of them selling servers? Apple's MO is quality, consumer-facing hardware and software, not a race to the bottom to make IT managers happy.
iMessage can become as advanced as it wants; the fundamental issue is that it's not a cross-platform app. Its extra features are only available on iOS devices and Macs.
I use mostly Telegram with my friends because it runs on everything. Even though I love my iPhone I recognize that without cross-platform support, some of its features will always be limited. Apple should open up iMessage to other platforms, then we might see some greater adoption of its fancier features.
Unless you're jailbroken there is little reason to not install the latest version of iOS. And if you're jailbroken you can disable the automatic updates.
Why in particular are you staying on an older version?
My messages/imessage/SMS are broken. Have spent hours trying to get it to work. From some people, I only receive them on my computer, from others they arrive on my iPhone. Receiving and sending SMS from my computer haven't worked in months.
Sigh.
If I have to spend hours getting things to work, I might as well build my own Windows computer again.
Apple has never released an instruction manual for the iPhones since they've been released to the public. I suggest adding one and not worrying about a users' ability to discover new features. I love any new functionality built in to each new model and don't see why it should stop anytime soon
One App to rule them all, One App to find them,
One App to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Have gnu, will travel.
One App to shut them down!
well they need something to get into business and they used to have servers rack mount and all kinds of sever stuff with them.
The person responsible for accelerometer activation of doodles in Messenger is no longer employed at Apple.
"Every few days a new iOS update is downloaded without my consent, with no way to disable it"
Block the shit in your router.
Turn off your data plan.
Don't let it connect to other APs.
In other words, use your phone AS A FUCKING PHONE. That seems to be what you want it to do, anyways. Here, I have a Tracfone for ya.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
One of the things that frustrates me about technology companies is the general focus on adding new features, while at the same time failing to make sure their existing features work. There are so many things in computing that are simply much more difficult and unreliable than they need to be. My fallback example is printer drivers. Why are printer drivers even necessary? I can understand 3D printers still needing custom drivers, or those big industrial copiers needing specialized drivers to deal with some custom publishing feature, but why on earth does a simple B&W laser printer need special hardware instructions just to print a Word document? And considering how simple the hardware ultimately is, why am I still dealing with buggy printer drivers from major manufacturers?
I know talking about printer drivers is a bit of a tangent, but it's just an example. My point is, these tech companies keep building virtual assistants that are nearly useless, or yet another snapchat clone, but they won't fix problems like printer drivers. And why would we even trust a company to build IoT devices, having computers listen to everything we say and integrating computers into almost every object in our homes, when they can't even make a reliable universal printer driver?
Apple's not the worst offender of this kind of thing, by any means, but they at least used to be among the best at making simple things that worked without frustration, and I do think that they're slipping a bit. You're complaining about Siri, but honestly, I wouldn't complain if they ditched Siri completely, and focused instead on dealing with the real problems that users and IT people face with computers. The problems I have aren't things like, "I wish I could talk to my toaster and have it tell me the weather," but more like, "Managing a fleet of thousands of computers is still more difficult than it needs to be" and "VPN still sucks" and "managing passwords and 2FA tokens is really annoying". I could talk for hours about the problems and annyances with computing, and so far, none of them have been fixed by Alexa or Siri.
....is " ability to order food, scribble doodles and send funny images known as stickers in chats on its Messages app" a handy feature. Those of us who aren't frequently find ourselves inanely "commenting" on a text by accident. And, of course, that can't be turned off.
You can turn off that stupid doodle shit, I hated it too. http://www.iphonehacks.com/201...
Yeah, but how do you turn off the stupid "commenting" on a text by holding down on it too long?
Unless you're jailbroken there is little reason to not drink the kool-aid
FIFY
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
There are so many things in computing that are simply much more difficult and unreliable than they need to be.
There are so many things in computing that are simply much more difficult and unreliable than they used to be.
My fallback example is printer drivers.
Funny, so is mine!
I can understand 3D printers still needing custom drivers
Interestingly, most of them don't. You just drop the STL file on an SD card or upload it to a web interface hosted on the printer itself, no drivers needed.
I'm 100% absolutely with you, here. When I look at where computing is today, I hang my head in sadness. Yes, machines have gotten faster, but it now takes longer to get anything done. This is not progress.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Sadly, no, they'll thrash around for a couple decades on their cash reserves, doing a lot of damage to the tech industry and to the global economy as a whole before they die. Buckle up, it's going to get interesting.
I wish I could believe they might turn things around, but I gave up any hope of that when they trash can was brought to market.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
... I could name a dozen other companies off the top of my head who are adding more features than I want. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Adobe, my cable company, my phone company... and that's just from looking at a list of what I have running right now. I could probably hit a hundred if I actually started making a list. Does anyone want to hear details of how the A/C controls in a 2016 Corolla are objectively worse than they were in a 1986 Corolla?
Apple is probably mid-pack in terms of "shit I didn't ask for and don't want".
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Even worse, while those dongles use nowhere near the bandwidth available form the port they plug into, they don't daisy chain. It's easy to say that shouldn't be a problem because you can just plug it in at the end of the chain, but we're talking about something you'll always want plugged in, which should dictate that it's at the start of the chain. Furthermore, almost no Thunderbolt devices daisy chain properly, so you can't just stick it at the end of the chain in the first place. And I largely blame Apple for that, as the company pushing hardest for the proliferation of Thunderbolt; they set the example and everyone else follows it. When their devices don't daisy chain, nobody else is going to bother, either.
4 ports could be enough if peripherals supported the spec properly. With USB, it's plenty as you can use a hub. Thunderbolt doesn't work like that, it's daisy chain or nothing; if you have more than 3 things to plug in (power being #4) you're screwed.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You just drop the STL file on an SD card or upload it to a web interface hosted on the printer itself, no drivers needed.
You'd agree that's not really a good solution, though, right? Like, you have a networked printer on your company's network, but you can't simply print to it without weird crappy drivers that don't work. Instead you copy it to an SD card, walk it over to the printer, plug it in, and then try to print it? Or you log into a web interface and upload things? That's not easier.
Either way, again, that's just an example. I work in IT support and I'm constantly working around and fixing problems that don't really need to exist. And for my personal use, too, it seems that companies are constantly moving in the wrong direction. Facebook's apps keep getting worse. I find Apple's music app harder to navigate than ever. Hulu's new iOS app is awful.
Indeed, I did say I'm with you on this...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
There isn't a new iOS update every couple of days. There's only a handful during the year so they are making it up. If you don't install a minor update a badge with a number (for the number of messages, warnings, etc) shows up over the Settings app. For the major updates iOS nags you multiple times a day to upgrade.
There could be application updates every day but you can turn them off in the Settings.
my 3d printers all are wifi networked and they use the same gcode file. No 3d printer made uses a STL file directly. Hell I can even watch the print from it's built in webcam from any computer made that has a web browser.
Sadly 3d printers are far more compatible than any inkjet because the people making them are extremely talented engineers and printer engineers are mostly idiots that think secret proprietary control codes are important.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The irony is that to some degree, the opposite is true. If you ignore the custom PPDs (which are just text files) to enable full feature support, you can send a plain-old-ordinary PostScript file to the most expensive Fiery setup, and it will basically "just work". My wide-format color laser has a PPD, with no custom drivers. The color copiers that offer multifunction printing generally require no drivers. And so on. It's the $100 PCL-based printers (and worse) that require custom drivers, mostly because they print via USB instead of over a network, which means there's no established standard for uploading the page data (*).
(*) Technically, there is a USB printer class, but AFAIK, it lacks the descriptive capabilities needed for declaring what language the printer speaks over the bulk endpoint, making it completely hopeless as a plug-and-play standard. By contrast, network printers almost invariably support PostScript-over-LPD, and occasionally support AirPrint. Both have distinct ports, so there's no difficulty figuring out which protocol a device supports. This just leaves PPD detection and downloading, which is trivial, and which is not required at all for basic printing features to work.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Not much innovation on the MacOS front for a WWDC. Looks like Apple really is a media company now. iOS seems to be their main software focus.
The hardware is sound...
The hardware is out of date. And I say this as a lifelong Mac user, working on a MBP right now. I want a Mac Pro with an i9 and a GTX 1080.
So you want a CAD Workstation CPU with (last-year's) GAMING Graphics Card?
Hahahahahahaha!!!!!
Name more than a small handful (if any) of Games that would benefit from an i9's EIGHTEEN Cores (36 threads).
Name one CAD/Video Editing Application that would benefit from the GTX 1080s limited Display-handling abilities (a paltry FOUR 4k monitors). From a Workstation. In 2017. Right.
Your proposed system is not only mismatched for most MacPro Applications, but it also doesn't sound like much of an "upgrade" to me.
How else will they make m/billions of dollars off your back?
Including drm in headphones, 30% tax on everything else...
Why do you just LIE through your teeth?
What FUCKING DRM in headphones?
WHAT FUCKING "30% Tax" on "Everything Else"?
Die, Hater.
Apple is going to fail so fast, it's going to be epic. It has become a fashion company. Once it goes out of style, it's going to be over so quickly, heads will spin.
Apple: Proudly going out of business for over FORTY YEARS...
Every few days a new iOS update is downloaded without my consent, with no way to disable it. Wasting my money on data caps. Apple should use it's $100 billion to pay for internet connections of its users if it wants to force download updates.
Bullshit.
iOS Update Downloads are only done over WiFi, so no impact on your cellular data usage.
Also, It ONLY downloads updates if on WiFi AND connected to AC. So, turn on Airplane Mode (or just turn off WiFi) while you charge.
And you HAVE to Consent to INSTALL it.
So, what was your question again?
>Unless you're jailbroken there is little reason to not install the latest version of iOS
How about if you have an iPhone that isn't the newest model, and don't want it to turn into a laggy, unusable mess?
"why on earth does a simple B&W laser printer need special hardware instructions just to print a Word document?"
They don't. Printer companies internally have this figured out. Google HP PCL or Samsung SPL. If you have the money you've never had to bother with even those. Any laser printer with native Postscript (PS) support doesn't need a custom driver.
The app is just matching user expectations. Gmail already set those expectations and Apple is just respecting it. Someone used to Gmail is not going to see this as a varying user experience. Treating Gmail differently is also smart, because maybe they can do some deduplication between labels on the iPhone storage and the all mail folder. Not that I know they do that.
Apple also has a user preference to delete instead of archive under that account's settings.
"Often"? Name one. Internet cafés died out 10 years ago. When working in Palm springs, we had to pay $100 for 10GB, but that was data. Boingo is like $10 a month. We have free hotspots in every restaurant in my area in Canada. Who's paying for WiFi?