I take issue with "It was the very reliability of it — in user-friendly design, as well as stability of functionality — that was the basis of my choice in the first place..." With some Apple products this was true, with others, not so much. iTunes is one example. To me, iTunes has always been a mess. In the old days it would reliably update my iPod with new songs purchased from iTunes, but that was about it and the usability was always terrible.
What do we mean by "old days" here? iTunes predates the iPod. In the old days, I had very few qualms with iTunes. Currently, it's been 6 months since I launched it (or rather intentionally launched it).
Yep, iTunes or Image Capture... annoying. I have a Pavlovian reaction now, and I avoid plugging my phone into my Mac. While one can easily change the preference to prevent it, I've been caught out too many times, from reinstalling or using an alternate user account.
Having iTunes fire up while I'm using my Apple remote with VLC is even more annoying. And since it tends to catch me when I have company, I generally don't feel like pausing a film to fix it either.
I agree that slowing down the upgrade cycle would be one way to regain the trust, as long as the extra time was spent on quality assurance (in all its forms) rather than new features.
Killing some product lines would be another (though be prepared for howls of rage from the 20% that found the product useful).
It's tough, though, for me to give any advice to the folks running a large company without their context.
I agree that slowing down the upgrade cycle would be one way to regain the trust,
And at the same time people are complaining that OS X rarely has any new features. I agree that iCloud sucks. But I haven't seen a clear trend up or down since I started using Macs in 2007, except perhaps fewer hardware issues.
I'm hoping it's true that Apple will move their Pro machines to better support external GPUs. Being able to swap out a fried graphics card without downtime would be brilliant.
I have a Surface Book and a 2013 MacBook Pro. Hardware wise, both are are what I would consider to be best in class. Software wise there is absolutely no comparison in terms of reliability. I generally like Windows 10, but I'd have a really hard time depending on my Surface Book as my only computer.
I have a 2015 era MBP that I use infrequently for work and I'm always impressed when I pull it out and it's still at 60% battery and wakes up from sleep despite being stowed in a cabinet for a few months.
The same can't really be said for Windows, I think a lot of that comes down to vertical vs horizontal integration. The majority of issues I encounter with the core OS usually come down to a dodgy driver (usually from Intel) that once removed and replaced with the Microsoft baseline driver resolves the issue.
I'm disappointed to see and hear all the issues people seem to be having with the Surface line, I would have expected those devices to be rock solid. I'm not sure if that speaks to a fundamental issue with Windows or something else but it just goes to show how well Apple is handling it's hardware/software integration.
I think the Surface Book hardware is fine -- it's just dodgy drivers and Windows 10 updates that cause tons of issues.
With my MBP I can close it and throw it in my bag without a second thought. I wouldn't dare try that with the SB because nine times out of then I'll end up with a dead battery.
I'm really surprised this is still a thing. One of the first things I loved about switching to a MacBook was that the sleep/hibernate functionality 'just worked', while it almost never did on the Windows laptop I had before that.
This was 10 years ago, and even then I didn't understand why a crucial feature like this wasn't given more attention.
My first macbook pro lasted ~4 years, then I sold it for ~50% retail. Second macbook pro died after 2.5 years with a screen hardware issue. Third, and probably last, macbook pro is dying after 1.5 years.
If I was a conspiracy nut, I would say they don't care about declining quality because otherwise people wouldn't buy the next release as replacement.
I'm getting off the Apple bandwagon for my next laptop.
To repeat the cliche: the plural of anecdote is not data.
I am pretty sure that there are as many people with counter-examples.
E.g. I haven't had a Mac with issues since 2010. 2008: MacBook white: plastic starts discoloring, the rubber starts peeling. 2008: Mac Mini DVD drives gives the ghost after a year or so. 2009: MacBook 13" aluminium has broken DRAM SIMMs.
The whole article is one person's account. As is my comment. There might be others with counter examples, but learning from one's experiences is what humans do.
Yep - Still running an Early 2011 Macbook pro just fine here - had a motherboard failure but was repaired by apple under an extended warranty for that particular issue. Other than that, no issues.
I'm still running a 2008 Macbook Pro with no issues other than a battery replacement. I did upgrade the RAM and replaced the SuperDrive with a disk drive and the disk drive with an SSD.
I bought a MacBook Pro in 2010 that my brother is still using every day and works great. I have a Retina MacBook Pro I bought in 2012 that I used every day all day for work until earlier this year and I still use several times a week, and it still works flawlessly.
If your MacBook Pro is "dying" (what does that even mean? what component(s) are failing?) you should get it repaired. If you put up a stink they might even do it for free.
The desktop hardware still seems pretty good (besides the lack of hardware updates) but software is another story along with lack of general eco-system fixes.. like support for Demos or paid updates in Mac App Store.
I stopped buying Apple products when they stopped updating iOS on my iPad after just a couple years. It's now over six years old and is still perfect for many tasks but since it's stuck on iOS 5 and has bugs in its HTML rendering, there are an increasing number of web-sites that crash the browser. If I'm going to replace a tablet every year or two, I'm going to buy sub-$100 Android devices.
I think that's part of the learning curve. Early devices were just too underpowered. But compare with iPhone 5: released in 2012, and still running the most recent OS (albeit somewhat more slowly). And Apple usually has pretty extensive OS support for their non-handheld hardware too (I'm still rocking a 2010 MBP).
I've thought that Apple has been in a rut or declining for over a decade. Their hardware designs are trite & a little ugly; their UI just is neither attractive nor easy on the eyes; their cloud services don't really deliver privacy and security (iCloud isn't end-to-end encrypted, and iMessage allows Apple to MitM).
At a certain point, one has to ask: why pay the premium? Why not just use Linux?
Another day another "Apple isn't what it used to be and I hate their products now" diatribe.
If you don't like their products buy someone else's. If you don't like your Apple Watch stop using it.
I use an iMac and a MacBook Pro for work and they serve me fantastically. Sierra has a couple weird things (like it doesn't automatically load your SSH identities after reboot) but it seems fine. iOS 10 has been fine as well and my new iPhone 7 Plus is great.
If there's something actually wrong with your hardware, take it in for repairs instead of writing a blog post that will accomplish nothing.
Matt is long standing Mac citizen/Mac Developer. I rate his opinion much higher then just some blog poster. He wants Apple to change back to what made it great. How many other choices are out there especially on the desktop?
> He wants Apple to change back to what made it great.
If that's what he wants this blog post is really short on actual suggestions or details of specific problems and big on just general "Apple sucks now, it was good before." which is useless.
I'd have a lot more patience for this type of article if he actually went into detail like "My MacBook used to get 10 hours of battery life before updating to Sierra now it only gets 8." or "My wife doesn't like her iPhone 7 because she has had problems with Wifi connectivity and battery life." instead of "She's frustrated with her iPhone 7." Which, again, is useless complaining.
> My Watch is misbehaving too, regularly losing its ability to track heart-rate and thus update in-progress workout calories for ten or twenty minutes at a time. Its battery life is vastly reduced. My iPhone’s battery widget shifts itself around on the widgets screen, and regularly vanishes altogether. There’s an unfamiliar street-address hovering in the Spotlight screen that I don’t recognise, beneath the app suggestions. It’s hit-or-miss as to whether the emoji suggestions feature works in the new on-screen keyboard. I quickly disabled my Apple Music trial after it deleted several of my rare live versions of Dire Straits tracks. And Apple Support finally conceded that my immaculate, obsessively-cared-for 2015 MacBook was beyond repair after three warranty parts-replacements
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Apple's not dumb. I'm sure they're already aware of these issues. It's a question of whether they care enough about quality to fix them, even if it means delaying a launch or cutting products.
In that respect, the author is doing the best he can to help Apple fix them -- by letting them know that long-time fans do care about the issues, and view it as a change in their relationship with Apple.
Yeah there's a couple examples but the article is mostly just general griping, which, like I said, I'm bored of.
I should be clear; there are plenty of things to complain about with Apple. They aren't a perfect company and their products aren't perfect. But we see articles like this one make the rounds several times a year and it's always the same "Apple's not as good as it was X years ago!"
I don't see expressing that a threshold has been passed as useless at all. I struggle with the question of whether to complain to companies like Apple. (For example, when running compatibility tests we used to find the occasional odd unrelated OS bug, but do I care if they fix it?)
In the case of PC manufacturers and the like, they are all approaching the same local maxima at any given time and responding to every trivial gripe and indicator of lowering sentiment is the way they get the .01% better than their competitors that they need to be. Since there is no conversion cost at a next purchase, they've won market for the next quarter. If I help one improve, I force the others to worry just a tiny bit more too.
For Apple, they have their own thing. If enough people complain about their resource allocation then it can fluctuate between a 10% worse deal or a 10% better deal in the measure of a particular demographic, depending on their price sensitivity, compatibility needs, etc.
But if I am in a demographic where they are never going to get past break even against a market at another local maxima, then it is in my best interest to say nothing so the fight at the other local maxima gets as intense as possible and I don't get forced to buy/use the unwanted products, develop for them or test compatibility as often.
My point was that these blog posts complaining about Apple accomplish nothing. If you don't like Apple's products any more stop using them and stop buying them. If your device is having issues, get it repaired.
These blog posts get a lot of circulation, though, because Apple haters go "See? Apple products are overpriced crap! Even former fanboys say so1" It's really silly and frankly I'm tired of reading them because it's the same thing every time. Articles declaring "Apple devices are crap now! They were good 5 years ago!" have always been written.
