You are not the only one who feels this way, but I do feel that your sentiment, while perhaps representative of a growing group of disgruntled users here, isn't really representative of Apple's user base in general.
And yelling at one another here isn't really helping your case. You might draw a few like-minded people to your case, but you will also alienate everyone else who doesn't share your sentiments.
Wasn't sure if "your" applied to me, but if it does: where/when did I yell at someone?
To me, that has always been the caveat for using Apple products. They offer you an optimised way of getting things done, but the catch is that you have to do it their way. If the manner in which Apple implemented a certain feature so happens to be in line with how you intend to get things done, it's "magical". If it's the direct opposite, then it's like jogging through quicksand - you will die a slow and painful death.
Very accurate. How that's justified is truly beyond me though.
For me, I generally don't have an issue with how Apple has traditionally done things, and I also use all the issues you have listed as an opportunity to re-examine the way I do things and see how I can further evolve my own workflows.
If anything, that's what I am already doing with my iPad Pro. When I first got my 2012 iPad 3, I saw its potential despite its myriad of flaws and shortcomings, and so I set out to eliminate those limitations one by one. No file manager? Dropbox + Documents. Use Workflow to automate away the friction in certain tasks. Use airdrop to pass files around. The port is used either for charging or the VGA adaptor (and I have an Apple TV for mirroring in another class). Wireless connectivity with 4G.
The end result is that for many tasks, I can actually be more efficient on my iPad compared to a conventional PC. I can't go and address every one of the points you just listed, but in general, my solution is to simply not fight what Apple is trying to do, and I find that one generally comes out better for it. I bought the Apple Watch, and it's a great accessory to my iPhone. I got the AirPods, and it's the only pair of headphones I ever use these days. People laugh at the charging method of the Apple Pencil; it's the only way I ever charge my pencil since the day I bought it.
Sometimes, I look at all these criticisms and wonder what it is that I am doing wrong (or right) for me to not have experienced any of these issues.
But that's just me. I suppose I am fortunate in that the direction in which Apple seems to be headed in so happens to be in line with what I want out of my devices.
You are fortunate, yes. There's been a lot I adjusted to and learned to live with. Small things to big things. No delete key? painful sometimes but not majorly. No ability to add a bluetooth mouse when interfacing with an iPad, which would make working with spreadsheets & other things so much easier? That's OK, I have my MBA for that. There were quite a few shocks and awes, surprises and delights as I adjusted to the Apple world starting in 2005. In fact most every one of those new ways of doing things before say 2013 were rather welcomed and easy to adopt because they just felt right. Much less so after 2013. I didn't change, Apple did, certainly. To hear Apple and users like you say other users should just accept and adjust may never stick to users like me, no matter how much you believe it. Apple surely justifies they're on the right path since they keep breaking revenue records (I think only because they're still better than Microsoft and Android, and not because they're doing things as unquestionably best as could possibly be, but that's another conversation).
The way I see it, the problem here is that many people are over-emphasising the short-term drawbacks associated with the moves that Apple has made, while completely undervaluing their long-term ramifications.
Remember when Apple blocked flash on iOS and many people cried murder? In the short run, users were inconvenienced because they couldn't access flash content on their iPads. In the long run, we benefited from native apps in a thriving App Store, and websites better designed for mobile.
I am not saying the loss of the home button, or the headphone jack, or traditional ports or having to use adaptors doesn't suck. I am simply saying that it will all be worth it in the end. I think the whole issue here is our general inability / unwillingness to look beyond our own short-term interests. Yes, we can see the potential that USB-C holds, but clearly nobody wants to be one to have to give up their USB-A peripherals or spend extra on adaptors.
Many things introduced will never be worth it in the end no matter your optimism there. It's been 5 years since iOS7's bland/less-direct/low-contrast/made-up-UI-reinventions interface appeared and I think I hate it more now than day 1 (especially how it's poisoned much of website design since then). I still detest how Safari hides the navigation bar up top in iOS after 7. It's been 4 years with my MBA and I'm still annoyed no provision was made to allow expanding RAM or even adding a 2nd SSD. I acknowledge that Apple doesn't care about how customers like I find it hard to swallow that users should just leap and embrace, but am I ultimately in the wrong and should keep waiting to 'get it?' But since we both acknowledge Apple doesn't try to please customers, it's quite the odd world that their product plan works.
We can agree to disagree the suggestion I get from you that some should just "accept" short term drawbacks, but that logic has a few holes. I'll agree that we're being used as hostages to help force/get to the future, but we all know that future won't stick and will be replaced by yet a new future as soon as the old future finally set in universally, resulting in most users having not been able to use the full capacity of their machine during the time it was a hostage for change.
For me, Flash was inconsequential, or at least, a very small part of my user experience. Same for other things I’m willing to bet were small to most. Key too is my lengthy post a few days ago: when Apple used to do the majority of things right, the little things didn’t matter so much. Now that it’s reversed were just too many things are felt to be forced and irksome and just wrong to me, each new little thing’s pain is intensified. I’m basing that on the fact that when I first started looking into Apple forums after the introduction of iOS 7, when I was trying to figure out what the hell happened to my iPhone, I would tend to notice that most complaints resonated with mine. I.e., certain changes directly to the user interface features that were used most often and impacted of the most people. Things like flash or easy to work around and be transparent. The iOS & hardware back then were just too good to notice small potatoes like Flash. But not all changes resolved as
quickly as the Flash. (See what I did there?)
The lesson Apple keeps teaching and others keep ignoring is - to create true meaningful change in a market you need to force change. By taking bold unapologetic stances. Here’s a touchscreen smart phone without the familiarity of a physical Qwerty keyboard. Here’s a large screen tablet without a desktop OS and desktop apps and file system. Here’s a smart phone without a headphone jack. Here's a laptop with only USB-C ports.
Whoah now. You're mixing fine wine with Boone's Farm.
- Touchscreen phone - instant hit, long-term good move.
- Touchscreen tablet with touch-optimized OS and no file-access system: quickly a long-term good move.
- Smart phone w/o headphone jack: I don't think that's going to hold but we'll see. Too much useful integration out there in the non-Apple world to make Apple's separating itself like that to be a smart move. But we'll see.
- Laptop with only USB-C ports: mixed bag. Potential future gains for years of pains. First, you're overlooking the disappointing and unnecessary removal of MagSafe's function, a world-class innovation that set Apple apart and will be sorely missed. Second, there's my discussion above of being held hostage for change towards a future that surely will be replaced by a new future, resulting in many users never really able to fall completely into step with using their device as efficiently as they could. I personally don't think this is sustainable so we'll see.
In my opinion, Apple hasn't changed, in that I fully expect Apple to pull this sort of stunt from time to time, and personally, I quite welcome it. The problem here is that their users haven't changed either. They bought into Apple at a certain frame of time and they somehow expect Apple to just keep making and supporting the same old product forever.
At this point, maybe the current Apple is no longer the same Apple you knew back then, and perhaps breaking up is the most correct thing you can do, rather than continue to languish in a failing relationship and grow more and more bitter and resentful with each passing day.
Maybe. But as things always come around, I'll await Jony & Tim to move on or get displaced, after which I can almost guarantee someone will come up with new & fresh ideas basically parroting 10 years prior, which will involve adding a few more ports, adding a bit more intuitiveness and thought to the UI, add a bit more modularity of hardware...fresh "new" ideas. Watch and see. Like I've said in the past: how much as the violin evolved in the past 100 years? Until there's some radical new way of doing things, like screens implanted under eyelids, I look forward to seeing what more Apple has removed over the next 5 years and what the reception will be.
And that's your rebuttal? That the girl is screwed if she ever has to interview for a job which she might not even have an interest in?
Not everyone needs a PC in the first place. If I were a chef, or a construction worker, or one of so many vocations which doesn't involve interacting with a computer in any way, is it such a big deal that I have no idea what a PC is? Say the iPad meets my needs just fine. I return home from work, chill on the couch, and the iPad can meet all my light productivity, entertainment and social media needs, why are you so insistent that I use a PC if it's not the right tool for the job?
Apple is all about making technology more personal, and personally as a fan of the iPad Pro, if Apple does ever intend to usher in a new world order where the iPad is the default PC of choice for the general consumer and it meets their needs so well that they have absolute zero need of a conventional PC, I will be there at the frontlines cheering Apple on.
The Macs will still be there for the engineers, the coders, the app developers, the scientists. But I fail to see what the general populace has to lose from not using a device that never really met their needs to begin with.
Hm, I think you missed my point, which was: good luck to anyone working on anything rather technical if they're left to working on iPads, since that commercial suggests to me that Apple thinks nobody needs to use a stoopid kompooter.
I think the real issue here is that in a bid to serve a newer generation of consumers, Apple has changed in keeping with the times and the consequence is that they have left their old user base behind. And this older user base has little incentive to change, for reasons which remain their own, and now they are frightened.
History has shown that you cannot usher in a new world order without first doing away with the current one. It is not a genuine state of concern for Apple's future, or the well-being of us consumers that has you making this giant post that you did. It is fear, plain and simple.
From the perspective of someone whose work cannot be done on an iPad, there is a growing observation that apple's existing lineup of computers is either going extinct (Mac mini, tower Mac Pro, Airport) or evolving in a manner which they don't care for (eg: thinner, loss of legacy ports, crappy keyboard, touchbar displacing function keys). Not to mention that macOS no longer seems the stable, hassle-free OS it was once renowned for.
Apple seems to have little motivation in continuing to invest in the Mac and its future is honestly quite uncertain. As such, this makes people like you extremely sensitive to catchphrases such as "What's a computer" because it just reinforces your own observations - that Apple no longer seems passionate about the Mac and they might soon be faced with a grim future of either being saddled with a Mac which doesn't meet their needs, or turn to a Windows computer.
You are scared. You don't want to move to Windows or Linux but at the rate at which things are headed, you just might wake up one day and finding that this has become a reality.
I can empathise with that. I have no answer for you, because I am in the iPad camp, and all I can give you is a virtual hug and genuinely wish you all the best. Come what may from Apple.
Ha ha, well, we'll see. Thinking about this for a moment: price will likely be the deciding factor I believe, bottom line. As a value buyer who shopped online for weeks until finding the 8gb/128gb/i7 MBA+ apple care package for $1150 in 2014, ~$1200 is my absolute cap for a Mac with apple care. If I have to spend more than that for the package I feel I'd need, I'll gladly jump to a PC at half the price (and 2x the SSD size) and live with it probably just fine, where a dreaded Windows PC would be less pain than an uber-minimalized MacBook.
[doublepost=1525399936][/doublepost]
Not to burst your bubble, but what do you think all of us consumers have been doing, if not voting with our wallets? That Apple is as successful as it is today is testament that for all the complaints and criticisms levelled at it, there is still no lack of people who find value in their offerings and more importantly, are willing to pay top dollar for them.
I do think Apple/PC today is like Trump/Hillary. Two hugely-flawed options compared to just 5-6 years ago. Apple succeeds in large part because they're just a better option than the next big kid on the block, but clearly not as good as they could be to many consumers.
[doublepost=1525402519][/doublepost]
History has shown that you cannot usher in a new world order without first doing away with the current one. It is not a genuine state of concern for Apple's future, or the well-being of us consumers that has you making this giant post that you did. It is fear, plain and simple.
Interesting sentence since I agree and disagree with you at the same time. Actually, I think know my motive better than you do. It’s a concern over Apple’s direction and what it’s bringing consumers and myself. It’s fear that Apple morphs further and further away from providing the hardware and type of experience I once really enjoyed interacting with, taking away something that worked well for me and also made my work actually fun at times. Many of the things I complain about have yet to be proven to me to have been a decision based on improving something — usb-c, I could one day see possibly as being a good decision if usb-c becomes nearly universally adopted the next year or two of then sticks around for at least 10 years. The washed-out minimalized UI of iOS - I have yet to come across an example of how that change was based on anything but change for the sake of change. So yes, fear of seeing things taken away from myself and customers that result something no longer desirable. If I go back to windows, so be it, my world will go back to spinning like it did before moving to Apple in 2005, just a little less pleasingly than it did around 2012. I’d miss how good things once were, that were unnecessarily changedjust for the sake of trying to get people to embrace (and be a forced agent of change towards) how things should be four years from whatever time period they’re currently in, and that’ll be that. I know I’m not alone.
