Also, if you are not charging for software what is point of forcing a June Demo and Sept release every year? Just wait till you have something and then release it. Hell, they use to do this when they charged for it. 🤣
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Apple Might Be Having Its Windows Vista Moment, Says Analyst
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I think this year is gonna be a rude awakening for Apple in terms of devices sold. Especially if they raise iPhone prices. Sales are already down 9% Jan-Feb, when traditionally they average about a 3% decline in previous years. iPhones were down 18% in China in 2024. The cracks might be starting to show.
Spot on - I think the live demos bring some accountability as the concepts have to work live and many of the things they have tried to float during these videos weren't in the hemisphere of being usable.
Siri should have been under proper development for at least a decade. When AI came out Apple raced to the table to say “us too” and just fumbled.
Apple is nowhere near the failure of Microsoft. Have you tried Outlook recently? It’s completely neutered compared to Outlook of the late 90s, 2010. I recently tried their movie editing app “ClickChamp” which is just complete garbage. A cloud app based video editor? Are you kidding?
Microsoft’s obsession with web/ cloud-based apps worse than Apple’s obsession with thinness.
Apple is nowhere near the failure of Microsoft. Have you tried Outlook recently? It’s completely neutered compared to Outlook of the late 90s, 2010. I recently tried their movie editing app “ClickChamp” which is just complete garbage. A cloud app based video editor? Are you kidding?
Microsoft’s obsession with web/ cloud-based apps worse than Apple’s obsession with thinness.
Windows Vista had 4 major issues.
1. Account authentication - MS addressed this in a later update
2. Horrible minimum specs - Intel wanted to sell a bunch of laptops with 2gb of RAM or something. The minimum should have been higher.
3. Hard drive seek times were slowwwww. Again, addressed in an update.
4. Video card drivers at launch were buggy.
As long as you kept Vista updated, and had more than 4gb of RAM, it was a really good OS.
I spend maybe a whole minute a day catching up on news. Give me a $1/month subscription without ads, and some news company would still make more from me than they do today.
I think that was an incredibly honest answer… Apple needs another Steve Jobs too.
Apple makes a communication device what is left to build?
oh they added a Calculator last year thats not communications.
Vista moment, not sure i agree with all that.
oh they added a Calculator last year thats not communications.
Vista moment, not sure i agree with all that.
Absurd commentary to analogize Apple 2025 to Vista's "performance issues, frequent warning dialogs..." Who on M-series Macs experiences "performance issues, frequent warning dialogs" unless they are pushing some really heavy apps or failed to configure enough RAM into their Macs?
Is Apple experiencing a "Vista-like drift into systemically poor execution?"
That was a question posed by well-known technology analyst Benedict Evans, in a recent blog post covering Apple's innovation and execution, or seemingly lack thereof as of late. He is referring to Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, which was widely criticized when it launched in 2007 due to software bugs, performance issues, frequent warning dialogs, polarizing design changes, and several other problems.
Evans said Apple stumbled with the Vision Pro headset, which he believes was not ready to launch. Then, it previewed personalized Siri features at WWDC last year that were merely conceptual, and are now delayed.
"This is a concern," said Evans.
His thoughts on the Vision Pro:He said the personalized Siri delay is a "mirror image" of the Vision Pro situation:All of this led to his Vista-like comment:Nevertheless, Evans acknowledged that critics have been claiming that Apple is no longer innovative since at least the 1980s, and that the company has historically continued to deliver more innovative and category-defining products over the years. Still, he said he is left wondering if that Apple still exists today.
Evans' full blog post, highlighted by Techmeme today, is worth a read.
Article Link: Apple Might Be Having Its Windows Vista Moment, Says Analyst
My M2 MBP (96 GB) has never even hiccuped no matter what I have thrown at it (no LLMs yet). Except that I have seen software glitches with aggressive usage of Apple's Photos app. Apple took bombproof Aperture from us and gave us flaky Photos, go figure.
It's a nonsense comparison. There are real questions for Apple to answer around Siri/AI in particular, but there's no parallel with Vista. The problem with Vista wasn't anything to do with marketing future product features. It was all about basic day-to-day functionality and performance issues on a company's most important product. If Macs or iPhones were failing to perform basis tasks and hitting blue screens of death every day, you could make the Vista comparison. Otherwise, a better comparison would be with Microsoft's struggles to keep up in mobile devices with their concept Courier device which never shipped. If Apple never ships the personalised AI features, this will be their Courier moment.
the signs were there early on in the Cook era, was it the iPhone 7 that was the first to have portrait mode but it wasn't ready for a month after the phone shipped?
The bean counters are in charge of apple. They’ll kill the company just like they nearly did 27 years ago and killed Boeing.
The only good bean counters are ones that never enter your company!
The only good bean counters are ones that never enter your company!
A CEO builds the largest most successful technology firm on the planet, by a lot. And some folks make absurd statements like "It’s time for Tim Cook to go."
It is not like Apple is putting out lousy products. All those 40+ folks liking on that comment need to think.
I was excited to upgrade to iPhone 16 Pro, having had an iPhone 12 Pro for a few years. To my surprise, it was the first Apple upgrade in twenty years where I didn't notice a great deal of difference at all. It didn't feel appreciatively more responsive, lighter or more capable. The camera "button" was helpful when I went on my first trip to Japan, but it was also fiddly and 'soft', to a point where a number of times I thought I was recording video but I was not. Accidentally slipping and bringing up the options instead of taking a photo or video was also a regular issue. The Dynamic Island is nice but doesn't really blow me away. First time I've ever felt a bit flat after an upgrade.
Clearly the author has absolutely no recollection of Windows Vista. Vista wasn't merely "less than promised" or a "2nd class citizen" or a "lost opportunity".
Windows Vista was years late and an unholy user experience mess. Many users skipped it, and most companies (including my own employer, with 120k+ computers) all but prohibited it.
Vista was supposed to be the largest and most important bread winner for Microsoft, and they botched it. Apple didnt go from X86 to PowerPC, but if they did, it'd be of that class of error.
Windows Vista was years late and an unholy user experience mess. Many users skipped it, and most companies (including my own employer, with 120k+ computers) all but prohibited it.
Vista was supposed to be the largest and most important bread winner for Microsoft, and they botched it. Apple didnt go from X86 to PowerPC, but if they did, it'd be of that class of error.
You want to wear a Vision Pro all day to do your computing??? It’s a commercial flop and a concept product. That’s its limit right now. This is why most concepts are just that, concepts. It takes time and money to bring the cost and tech to something that actually works in a positive user experience. The Vision Pro shows the ineptitude that is at the helm of AAPL - Tim Crook.
So growing Apple from a $4billion company to a $3trillion is how a bean counter killed Apple? Every company in the world wish they could fail so spectacularly.
You'd be singing a different tune when the IRS decides to audit your company and see the poorly cooked book from not having a bean counter.
Right. THere is nothing technically wrong with the Apple Vision given what they packed into that headset (and battery pack...). Its hardware and software are way better than any other headset. Is it the right time to launch it? Probably not. Is there enough support via 3rd party stuff yet? Probably not. Is it too expensive? Probably so. But that isn't a knock on the product it is misreading the market, consumer desires etc....
While I don't disagree that stability has been going down, especially in iOS, when was the last year Apple had a busy year? Overall, the pace of development has been going down, with each update being more iterative than anything. And his whole post is about how innovation is drying up coupled with poor execution.