'Apple charm' going away?

[SevenTheGamingKitty]

Didn't the "apple charm" basically go away the instant OS X Yosemite was released?

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Apple went from being on the verge of bankruptcy to being the most valuable company in the world.

The first half of that transition was the good Apple that focused solely on making great products, in a bet that people would want them, and buy them. It worked. It worked so well that they created a lot of loyal customers that appreciated that product and customer-first approach.

Yes, I am broadly in agreement with you.

That combination of great products - and I mentioned that my first Apple purchase was an iPod, the old iPod Classic, which I loved, - and excellent customer service - when my first iPod classic died, while still under warranty, it was immediately (and professionally) replaced without any quibble or quarrel, an action which certainly cemented my appreciation of Apple, and which, most certainly, contributed to my purchase of an MBP, a few years later.

The second half of that transition has been a greed machine that has been doing everything it can to maximize what it can squeeze from every loyal Apple customer. That includes increasing prices while decreasing value, forcing customers to pay for things that Apple should be covering with profits, introducing some wildly overpriced products, and shipping low-quality software developed and managed by unqualified hires.

Alas, there is some truth to this.

 

[MacsRgr8]

I think that, like many others, if you've been around Apple way back when things were going badly for them (so, basically the mid nineties) but enjoyed using classic Mac OS, rooting for the "underdog" was in a way being sentimental and in that sense Apple had a "charm" to it.
Huge and impactful decisions like moving from classic Mac OS to Mac OS X, then from PowerPC to Intel back then was showing true courage, and that also probably added to the "charm" of the company.

Fast forward to the company it's now... To me, just another huge, huge, tech-company. I do not find Apple charming at all nowadays (far from it....), but just want their products as I do not want to use the competition's options.

 

[eyoungren]

Didn't the "apple charm" basically go away the instant OS X Yosemite was released?

If we are talking 'charm' in relation to OS, then I'd argue when Lion was released. I'll even be a jerk about things and say that Snow Leopard should have had an official PowerPC release.

 

[Und Eser]

Nothing remotely charming about big-corp profiteering, nor about the defence thereof based on the defenders having thrown so much of their moolah at the corporation.

Ritualised self-validation in lieu of real satisfaction.

 

[redheeler]

In the late 2010s it really seemed that way. Mac mini and Mac Pro were basically abandoned, 21.5" iMacs were expensive and slow due to the 5400 RPM HDDs, the Butterfly keyboards were causing all kinds of issues on the laptops, and the Intel processors of the time were nothing special – often they did worse than similarly-speced PCs due to Apple's thermal arrangements.

I'd argue it's a much better situation today. While not perfect (upgrade pricing is still out of control), many Mac models are reliable and stack up well against the competition again. I can even recommend the base model Mac mini for the first time since 2012.

As for the variety of different iPhones being offered, I don't see anything wrong with that. Apple did the same with the iPod in the mid 2000s, and buyers of these devices are different people operating with different budgets and priorities. In the past I've occasionally been critical of Apple withholding premium features from lower-end devices, but for a while it's been true that any of these devices could satisfy the needs of the average person, and thus comes down to their budget and priorities.

 

[dumastudetto]

Apple is what it has to be as a publicly traded corporation. They are under so much pressure to deliver insane numbers, quarter after quarter, that there is no room for reminiscing about the past. I know long-standing members of the Apple community wish Apple could be nicer, friendlier with developers, less-greedy, but that approach would only see Tim Cook booted out and replaced with an even more committed bean counter.

At least Cook has some connection with what made Apple great in the past. But he can't ignore the fundamental requirement to deliver returns for people who are buying AAPL today. And this is why Apple fights every threat it faces to its sources of revenue - be it government regulators, competitors, corporate policies and values, walled gardens and seamless experiences and integrations across Apple devices. It's why Apple negotiates very hard with the supply chain because shaving off costs increases margins that boost profits even if sales are relatively stagnant.

They are even in court helping Google fight the government because that search deal is a huge pile of money they don't want to lose. If Apple lost that deal, they would need to find money from elsewhere to make up for it. And because the Google deal is basically pure profit, it will be a big challenge to replace.

The only way Apple could be anything like they were in the past is if they took the company private. And this just isn't going to happen anytime in the forseeable future.

 

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Agreed. Left the iPhone and (yet) not lookin' back. Too cheesey for my likin'.

 

[subjonas]

IDK. Perhaps it's just me. I came over to Apple because their Macs and OS just worked - unlike the PC/Windows I was having issues with at the time. Later on, I liked the design of the iPhone 5 and iOS, and so converted to iPhone. And those are the reasons I stay.

I didn't come over because of excitement about some new feature or innovative product. For now, I can make my Apple stuff work the way I want it to and that's all I really care about - not some bold new thing that is going to force me to change in a manner that Apple wants.

I decide how I work and what I will use and how I will use it and if and when I will change that. Not Apple. Not any other manufacturer. Me.

So…excitement, charm? Irrelevant to me.

I’m similar to you in that I was pushed to Apple by my frustration with competitors (probably a common story for many Apple customers), but for me I was first pushed to iPhone by Android. Then soon after, my frustrations with Windows pushed me to Mac, and I’ve been in the ecosystem ever since, largely very satisfied.

It was funny because I was pretty anti Apple before getting that first iPhone, because of their controlling approach. But after my years of mounting frustrations with the UX of competitors, and my eventual satisfaction with Apple’s, I realized their controlling approach was exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want to mess around and customize things. And I didn’t want to deal with the complications that come with fragmentation. I just wanted to spend less time getting things to work so I could spend more time actually using them and living life, and I realized that required a company to a) control as much of the UX as possible, AND b) make the right decisions. And this has been mostly the case for me in my experience with Apple, hence they’ve been getting my money for a long while now, with no bitterness like so many in MR seem to have. Of course I only buy the products that I find valuable. I’m also like you in that charm is irrelevant to me. I have no feelings of fandom and maybe that’s why I don’t feel Apple owes me anything. My relationship with all companies is purely transactional, including Apple. I look at what they offer and their price, and I pay it if it works for me, end of transaction. Their offerings just generally happen to be the most appealing to me by a wide margin.

 

[maflynn]

I think part of the problem now is that there aren't as many surprises as there had been in the past.

We need to keep in mind that those "surprises" came during the early stages of a product's life cycle. Take the iPhone, every company was innovating putting new ideas into their phones, some were good ideas, other were not, but the pace of change was high. Now 18 years later, the iPhone has matured, innovation has dropped off, there's really not much more to get excited.

How different is the iPhone 13, to the iPhone 14, to the iPhone 15? All of the features were generally improvements to the camera, display and processor's performance.

I'm not saying the iPhone is a bad product, just that it exists in a very mature product line.

 

[eyoungren]

I’m similar to you in that I was pushed to Apple by my frustration with competitors (probably a common story for many Apple customers), but for me I was first pushed to iPhone by Android. Then soon after, my frustrations with Windows pushed me to Mac, and I’ve been in the ecosystem ever since, largely very satisfied.

It was funny because I was pretty anti Apple before getting that first iPhone, because of their controlling approach. But after my years of mounting frustrations with the UX of competitors, and my eventual satisfaction with Apple’s, I realized their controlling approach was exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want to mess around and customize things. And I didn’t want to deal with the complications that come with fragmentation. I just wanted to spend less time getting things to work so I could spend more time actually using them and living life, and I realized that required a company to a) control as much of the UX as possible, AND b) make the right decisions. And this has been mostly the case for me in my experience with Apple, hence they’ve been getting my money for a long while now, with no bitterness like so many in MR seem to have. Of course I only buy the products that I find valuable. I’m also like you in that charm is irrelevant to me. I have no feelings of fandom and maybe that’s why I don’t feel Apple owes me anything. My relationship with all companies is purely transactional, including Apple. I look at what they offer and their price, and I pay it if it works for me, end of transaction. Their offerings just generally happen to be the most appealing to me by a wide margin.

We do differ in a few ways, but I agree with most of what you said.

To a certain extent, I am willing to mess with things to make them work. Whether that's because there is a lack of finances to get something newer, disinterest in a particular product or simply the desire to make things work the way I want them to.

For instance, I am typing this message in on a 2009 MacPro running Sonoma. Apple says I can't do that. OCLP says I can. For years I jailbroke my iPhones. I had Dark Mode in 2012, the ability to put icons on my homescreen anywhere I wanted and a bunch of other stuff. It was only the turn that jailbreaking took into being semi-untethered and Apple's having finally offered Dark Mode and a few other things that caused me to stop. In that instance, jailbreaking became the irritating factor.

But yeah. I never drank the Koolaid. There was a point in my life where I'd tell others that the Mac is a crutch for people who refuse to learn DOS (because I knew DOS). Periodically, my wife will remind me of this statement in some Mac discussions. But there is a point where making things work becomes more of a hassle, so I do what I can to upgrade. I know the M series is coming for me in the next few years for instance.

And, like you, my dealings with business is transactional. Business owes it's loyalty to the stockholder, not to me. So, I'm going to be loyal to myself and get what I want, wherever that happens to be, when I want and how I want. And I will probably not use it as intended.