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Craig and Joz - The Interviews (Now including a roasting from Joanna Stern)
- Thread starter tomtad
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Federighi should have got the boot from apple years ago. iOS has been awful on his watch, and the iOS 26 abomination for me is the final straw.
Steve Jobs would have cleared house.
Steve Jobs would have cleared house.
Federighi is a marketing delight for Apple but a lousy leader. Everything has gone south quality and reliability wise under his leadership. As complex as the structure is in practice, after all these years he needs to be held accountable. Liquid Glass is a precursor to future products so I am somewhat excited by a more opinionated design ethos. It needs a ton of refinement, but at least some are thinking forward in there and trying to evoke a new direction. The call backs to the Forstall/Serlet/Tevanian era of Apple in iOS 26 make me smile (The tortoise/hare graphic in speed controls in Apple Podcasts, the Camera app icon, the Aqua vibe in certain areas). Someone remembers “the crazy ones.”
Nilay of The Verge: "The hard rule of reviews at The Verge is that we always review what’s in the box...We never review products based on potential or the promise of software updates to come."
Good philosophy.
He's basically an Apple Fellow at this point. Invincible exec that probably shows up to work for fun. Remember Phil Schiller? He's an actual current Apple Fellow, I wonder what he's doing.
The whimsical ceremony that was once an Apple signature is kinda gone. I was thinking about this with the new AutoMix feature. It's an ok feature, lots of potential but it could have been executed better. It plays it safe... literally! As in, the effect's mechanics are simple enough that it's mostly an enhancement to the existing fade in-out. Even the name is clinical: "AutoMix."
I can't help but feel Jobs would have seen the feature in its current state and said "not good enough" because it should actually be like an virtual human DJ with personality, surprise, unpredictability -- the elements of Apple magic. If the excuse was "the tech doesn't exist yet" Jobs would will it into being, not through voodoo but by forcing engineers to really push the boundaries of what's possible and actually INVENT new technology to accomplish the objective. One of Jobs' talents was that he could sniff when "it's impossible" actually means "we've tried the thing that we know how to do given the already existing scope of standard practices and approaches" because that means you're not innovating. If it's actually impossible for now given current technological constraints the product simply wouldn't go out the door. No compromises.
It doesn't sit right with me that I've "figured out" how the feature works on a high level just by listening to a couple transitions. The point of magic is you see it and think "how the hell did they pull this off? I can't put my finger on what makes this special"
AutoMix as it stands, in name and function, is something you could feasibly see from another company. It has no soul.