Or Jobs, wanting a more streamlined product line, would've kept the poor selling mini off the lineup.
This is all meaningless speculation, of course.
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I miss Steve Jobs.
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Or Jobs, wanting a more streamlined product line, would've kept the poor selling mini off the lineup.
This is all meaningless speculation, of course.
I have experienced many AI/machine algorithm bubbles since the 1980's. It looks like AI is finally getting good enough to solve the XOR problem
, but other than that it is still unreliable for practical use in many situations. And the AI 'revolution' is likely to have very mixed effects on humanity, if it ever occurs.Regarding Jobs, he inspired people - sometimes by outright bullying - and wanted to make computer more than a dull appliance like a toaster. I don't get that impression that Apple is inspired much any more. Case in point: the mac OS Finder, which still does not default to displaying full filenames even if there is space in the window, nor does it have a setting to do this automatically when Finder windows are launched. It a small niggly thing for me, but it would take, what, an undergraduate intern a couple of weeks to implement this? Any yet I still get ellipses instead of full file names on my iMac with a huge 27" screen no matter how much I enlarge the Finder window.
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Are we talking about the same Steve Jobs who introduced products like the Apple III, Apple Lisa, and Power Mac G4 Cube? The same Steve Jobs who was very resistant to the iPhone? The same Steve Jobs who said no one would want to buy a large smartphone? The same Steve Jobs who said people won't want to rent their music as a subscription and would rather buy individual downloads?
I agree with you in the sense that the social media can be unhealthy, but that’s again people’s behavior not the device.
Exactly what power do you think Apple has?
Exactly how would they mitigate the harm?
Let me pull something out of thin air, but maybe this isn’t what you had in mind. They could remove social media apps from their App Store. That would be the scorched earth answer, and iPhone users couldn’t really do anything unless the EU pushes for alternate App Stores. Users could still browse social media on Safari. I think if Apple did this, it would push people away from iPhone and they would just go to an android phone. That would not solve anything.
They could implement mandatory time restrictions on the iPhone. So I’m paying $1200 for an iPhone that locks me out of Facebook after two hours? Apple could put that in place, but they can’t force people to buy iPhones. People will buy another phone that doesn’t have that restriction.
They could put dismissible nag notifications that annoy users after being in a certain social media app for a length of time. That wouldn’t cause anyone to ditch their iPhone, but likely they would just dismiss the notification and not change their behavior. As a user of TikTok, I get these things pop up every so often and says you’ve been scrolling too long. Take a break. Do you think I take a break? Do you think most people take a break when they see that? I bet months pay the answer is no.
My favorite thing people say when there’s some problem is “Just do something” or “We have to do something”. Yeah, but if that something is worthless than the only thing it’s doing is making you feel a little bit better that you “did something”.
I’d be glad to hear your solution to this problem because maybe you could come up with something. There might be some outside the box thinking that comes up with a solution to this problem. I can’t think of it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
AI is already incredibly useful and remarkably reliable. If you haven’t figured out how to make it work for you, that’s a skill issue.I have experienced many AI/machine algorithm bubbles since the 1980's. It looks like AI is finally getting good enough to solve the XOR problem
Of course, there are limitations, it lacks intent, struggles with poorly annotated data, and isn’t suited for every scenario, like where “hallucinations” would be dire. But there’s no need to wait for some hypothetical better version. LLMs are already good enough for a whole lot of tasks today.
For all his faults, Steve Jobs had great taste and he was a product person through and through. He started out making computers in his garage. He used Macs. Tim Cook famously does not use a Mac, and does not strike me as a product person so much as a numbers person.
These are very different sets of individual priorities and a company’s priorities will reflect that. When the CEO of a company runs into a bug, it has a much greater chance of getting fixed.
To be fair, I don’t think Tim Cook only cares about profits. I think he truly does care about Apple’s impact in personal health.
Well, time will tell, I may well be wrong on this one.
But when the iPhone came out it was revolutionary out of the gate. Yes, it had many flaws, but it was good enough to change the entire phone market within 5 years. Apple Intelligence is a complete mess. Apple Vision Pro is an expensive thought experiment.
I would get in trouble as this thread is not in the politics area of the forum.
People don’t know what they want. As per your own analogy, to paraphrase Henry Ford, if he made what people wanted he’d have made a faster horse.
What made Apple so special was that they cared about things most people don’t care about. Good design, details, the back of the cabinet. This kind of thing goes from the top down.
And yes, the current Apple is obviously very successful.
Hard disagree.
It is 100% a good thing that that stuff doesn’t fly anymore.
People are getting addicted. By design, and intent. It's malicious. People are choosing this behavior in the same way that a cigarette smoker continues to "choose" to smoke.
This would take a team of many people to figure out. A team of people that Apple could assemble.
Some of it can be addressed with legislation. For example, restrictions on minors' use of social media or anything with a tailored algorithmic feed. Like there are restrictions on cigarette or alcohol sales to minors. Apple has the lobbying clout to encourage this.
Some of it can be economic. By removing or reducing the incentives for social media to prey on users. Apple has done this already to a degree by attempting to restrict data collection. Maybe it can do more.
Some of it can be technological. You cited examples of controlling the user. I don't think that is the right approach. An example of what can be done is making people aware of what they are doing (or not) on their phones, and how it makes them feel (so more than screen time). For example, using an LLM to reflect to the user the sentiment of what they post online. Are they angry, sad, or numb? And if it is a particular app that makes them sad or angry, to tell the user explicitly that this app is not doing them right.
Some of it can be scientific research and education - "this is how iPads affect your toddler's brain".
The harms of smartphones and iPads are all around us. Throwing up our hands and saying that nothing can be done about it is exactly the kind of sentiment that I wonder if Jobs would bristle at.
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Can't say that I actually miss Steve these days, but I still love his era and that time, dearly.
I'm have actually been more occupied disliking and getting uppset about the f***** Tim Cook.
But it still been ok hardware-wise during this time and with his accomplishments.
But I REALLY want his era to end, and se Apple start to evolve in a better direction. Focusing more on customers, truly, again.
I've missed Steve, missed him all the time through this greedy CEO's time, through my own anger.
Still I don't regret that I didn't go down the road and invested in Apple stocks - I invested in other ways that felt better for me - as I just couldn't stand what Cook did with Apple, from loving the Steve era.
Now I just look forward to see who the nect CEO will be, and to see Apple go down another road, that hopefully can start to evolve a new and better era for customers again that can give a genuine feel from Apple again.
I'm have actually been more occupied disliking and getting uppset about the f***** Tim Cook.
But it still been ok hardware-wise during this time and with his accomplishments.
But I REALLY want his era to end, and se Apple start to evolve in a better direction. Focusing more on customers, truly, again.
I've missed Steve, missed him all the time through this greedy CEO's time, through my own anger.
Still I don't regret that I didn't go down the road and invested in Apple stocks - I invested in other ways that felt better for me - as I just couldn't stand what Cook did with Apple, from loving the Steve era.
Now I just look forward to see who the nect CEO will be, and to see Apple go down another road, that hopefully can start to evolve a new and better era for customers again that can give a genuine feel from Apple again.
That sounds vague but lovely, though I can't say I've felt much of a lapse in those areas.
What would that look like to you? (Two or three specific examples or scenarios…?)
Okay background removal for photos is genuinely useful though, my mom is a big fan. Otherwise I agree, I miss earlier tech/internet period, and I don’t think it’s just nostalgia/get off my lawn stuff, gen Z is pretty unhappy about the current state of things too
This is what happens to the world when corporations optimize everything to wring every last dollar out of their customers. It’s no longer about making money, it’s about making absolutely as much money as possible and getting consumers to expect less and less so they can provide less and we’ll still buy
Doesn't the doomscrolling (and friends) seem to have been the result of software innovation? Presumably the initial exemplar was Facebook, the company that tried and failed to release a phone during Facebook's rise.
I guess you could say hardware enables software, but that's significantly more indirect. And Tim has spoken out against overuse of things like endless timelines, online polarization, and, of course, tracking.
It does feel like Apple's more hasty and less ready with uses of machine learning and generative stuff that live up to its own hype – though it's been using both to good effect for some time (searching our photos for people and objects for well over a decade seems like a higher-rankable feature to any "Apple Intelligence" features). But I think I believe the hype in the sense that the future will better realize this domain. That is, they haven't particularly missed the wave, but this time, they perhaps tried to play their hand too soon and came up short.
I agree Tim is less of a product person but he’s a supply chain expert and negotiator.
True and his focus is maintaining the corporation. He’s not going to deal with bug reports. He hires people for that. Maybe he’s not hiring the right or enough people, but that’s supposed to be their job.
I think his primary focus is profits, but I don’t think he’s cold blooded into the sense he doesn’t care about anything. Some people act like Apple is a charity and I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. His primary goal as it should be is to make the company profitable over all other things. Sometimes doing the right thing while it may seem noble also helps profit.
Well, you’re just looking at Apple’s small slice of AI. I feel like Apple is late to this party so they’re trying to catch up.
Yeah, I understand that. Sometimes though even if it’s negotiating for supply parts for example backing down or not being overly demanding doesn’t mean you don’t have a backbone. As a skilled negotiator, you have to be able to read the room and figure out what you can and cannot do. Sure he can sit there with his hands crossed demanding his supplier give him 20% off and that supplier is just going to tell him no, get out. He can sweet talk the supplier and maybe get 15% off and which is more than he would’ve gotten if he was aggressive with what some might call a backbone. I don’t think he’s the aggressive type of negotiator, but I think he will use his charisma to get what he wants. He seems to be very effective, but I could be wrong.
You are very correct with this one. People will sometimes say what they want, but they won’t spend money for what they say they want. The iPhone mini is a great example. It should’ve been the top selling phone with all the people saying they wanted it.
I think Apple still cares for things that others might not. I think you’re paying a little extra for that too. If you pick up a MacBook Air versus another laptop, I think there’s a little something extra in the MacBook. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like it’s built and designed with a little extra attention.
Well, you can act nice. You don’t have to act like a jerk all the time, but you also have to be able to be cold. There’s times in a corporation existence where it has to layoff a significant part of its workforce. Those are people with families that depend on that salary. You don’t lay them off and your corporation is going to suffer. Make the choice. I wouldn’t want to do it.
I agree, but that’s another thing people liked about Steve Jobs. He was very demanding and very aggressive to people below him. How do you think he got so much performance out of them. It wasn’t all hugs and smiles.
The real problem is the phone itself. Reading on a desktop or laptop just doesn’t have the same grip on society. Sure, some people might get sucked in, but there’s a social stigma. Phones, on the other hand, are always there, in your pocket, on your nightstand, in your hand at a red light. You could have a workaholic dad obsessively refreshing his laptop at a little league game, but that’s pretty weird. The problem isn’t really Facebook (though it is genuinely horrible), the iPhone made engagement inescapable.
Tim Cook denounces overuse because the iPhone costs the same whether you use it 9 minutes or 9 hours a day. Apple doesn’t make money off addiction the way Meta, Google, or TikTok do. Their anti-tracking grand ethical stand conveniently does not harm Apple’s business model. The privacy push has always been a jab at Google’s fundamentals, one of Jobs’ biggest grudges.
I don’t know that Jobs would be upset that everyone is obsessed with his phone, but I do know he took on things that others wouldn’t. Look at Flash. He basically killed it single handedly despite massive pushback. If Apple wanted to break social media it could, out of spite even, like Jobs might have. They just don’t have the same guts.
Famously during the Jobs era Apple was a very odd stock and vastly undervalued. Tim has remedied that. Apple under Jobs made bold, often unpopular moves, but it wasn’t optimized for shareholder value. Under Tim, Apple became a financial machine, consistently delivering value to investors, buybacks, dividends, all the things Wall Street loves.
That shift explains a lot. Jobs might have taken on social media just to prove a point, the way he killed Flash. But today’s Apple isn’t in the business of crusades. It’s in the business of keeping the iPhone at the center of the universe and making sure the stock keeps climbing. Bold risky moves just aren’t their style anymore.
Except when it comes to social justice stuff. Tim loves that. But that’s low risk high reward for Apple’s brand. It doesn’t threaten their business model and in many cases strengthens customer loyalty. It’s not the kind of bold industry-shaking move Jobs used to make. Jobs went after entire technologies and business models because he genuinely thought they were bad. Tim picks advocacy that is safe and align with corporate incentives.
I don’t think this is a good comparison. Smoking two cigarettes a day is still unhealthy for me versus smoking the pack. Browsing Facebook for 20 minutes a day isn’t likely to shorten my life. Browsing Facebook for eight hours a day is a problem.
Or we could just have parents parent? I don’t think social media needs to be 18+. Teenagers don’t have the right to have a Facebook and interact with their friends on it? I think the answer is somehow parents need to take control of their kids. I know in current society it’s not really acceptable, but I’m not sure if there is another solution. I don’t think the government adult requiring identification for Facebook like it’s whiskey is going to help.
Social media is like any other website. It runs off of advertisements. MacRumors pops advertisements above the posts. One could argue that the longer they keep you in these forms the more ads you see and the more money they make. That’s just business though. I think the answer is adults need to be able to control themselves and children need to be parented
I’m not against that. Maybe it would make the user more aware, but they would need to be some privacy considerations. Is this LLM just reporting to the user or is it also reporting to the government? Is it just another way for Facebook or Apple to gather data with the AI?
We really don’t know what jobs would do. I feel like the older Apple community’s moto is WWJD (What Would Jobs Do)
How is the Apple car failed when there was never an Apple car? Did Apple ever announce the Apple Car was a thing?
1 - What I specific think of, is how horrible the key-notes has been during Cook-era, and how magical thery were with Steve. How he could walk around in silence on stage and captivate the audience with pure presence.
Thankfully Tim stopped his awkward horrible things - it was a pure embarrassment with him.
I would love seeing them coming back with a new CEO.
Sure none can do it as Steve did, but I'm sure it can be done with respect and sincerity again.
2 - A new CEO with at lest some genuinity - that will give back some respect for customers to start with.
The bigger announcement, a lot less people involved - be genuine!
Absolutely not 2-3 hours crazy reports with stressed out puppets / people as it ended with Tim - presentations that only were lifeless repitions with various new faces from Apple.
Customers can read about the details, don't treat us as that way - we are not as lifeless as Cook.
Keynote - Tops an hour with the next CEO, and a few co-workers, sitting comfy together and presenting the news in a couch perhaps. As non can match how Steve walked around in silence on the stage and captivated people with his presence during his keynotes.
3 - So be real, stop the drama and the neurotic pretence Apple.
The best Apple workers unfortunately left, with Ive and all the others around him, because they couldn't stand how Cook did Apple-workers to money-making marionettes, only.
It's clearly not working that way in the current environment. The environment can be changed to encourage it.
It's interaction mediated by Facebook to optimize Facebook's bottom line. Facebook is not a neutral medium. Should your children's interactions be mediated by a for profit corporation that can and will manipulate them for a penny? In any case, if the alternative is for these teens to meet in the park under the sun to interact, then I have no problem banning Facebook for teens.
I disagree. Social media is tailored individually to each person to maximize engagement. MacRumors, at worst, can be clickbaity, but everyone on the site sees the exact same thing. There is a shared truth to it. On social media, everyone sees something different tailored to them. Unfortunately, it turns out that two of the best ways to maximize engagement are to anger and polarize people or to sedate them with endless videos. Or both at the same time.
We are talking about the evils of tech companies. It would be strictly to reflect back at the user.
Nope.
I see, you assert that the phone specifically is the enabling hardware because it's "everywhere." That's probably the strongest rebuttal I can think of too.
However, it's easy to imagine:
In a world where there's Facebook but no smartphone? There's still doomscrolling and friends.
In a world where there's the smartphone but no Facebook? No doomscrolling and friends.
So I think that rebuttal doesn't really survive.
(Of course this allows for the eventual rise of other social apps, but this only reaffirms it's the software itself, not to mention the pandemic made the "not everywhere" devices more omnipresent for more people.)
It's true the companies' bottom lines align with their goals, but the question of why each takes their stance seems a separate one.
Apparently. When did Apple announce the Apple Car? I can’t even find it.
I don’t waste my time with most news but I follow Apple and the tech industry.
Apparently you missed some things. The original Macs were about as "half-baked beta version" as it got. There was no internal mass storage, and required circus acts just to do any basic activity. Then when we finally did get [expensive!] external mass storage it connected via SCSI, and for years SCSI was the ultimate computer black art. Connecting A to B might work while connecting B to A would not; early Mac computing involved lots of trial and error.
So I call nonsense on all those folks here who diss Tim Cook and wish for good ole' SJ, may he rest in peace. My M2 MBP is by far the most solid Mac hardware/software I have ever used, starting with the 128k Mac. And no, your mileage will not vary. The facts are that things are much more stable today, not half-baked beta.
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For the record, I have no more attachments to Apple then to any other company I buy products from, today. Neither am I more interested in Apple then other companies I buy products from.
MacRumors is inforrmative, and can be fun though 😁
I don't listen to or read through Apple's releases today, they are not a factor of inspiration aftor Jobs & Ive era, to me. If I want to buy something new Apple I check out, of course.
There's no new product-line that inspire me really.
I have Mac's - the ones I always loved most. I have an iPhone mini, see if next phone will be of Apple - not a certainty. I have iPad's - I like them too. I have Homepod's, wont buy any more of those. Prefer other speakers.
I have some Airpod's, they can be useful at times - don't update them often
I hate Siri, she was turned off a long time ago, not interested in Apple Intelligence.
Prefer other more intelligent services. Generally speaking, Apple is not in the frontline of tech today.
Hope for Apple's sake next CEO have more ideas then greed, or they could be in trouble.
MacRumors is inforrmative, and can be fun though 😁
I don't listen to or read through Apple's releases today, they are not a factor of inspiration aftor Jobs & Ive era, to me. If I want to buy something new Apple I check out, of course.
There's no new product-line that inspire me really.
I have Mac's - the ones I always loved most. I have an iPhone mini, see if next phone will be of Apple - not a certainty. I have iPad's - I like them too. I have Homepod's, wont buy any more of those. Prefer other speakers.
I have some Airpod's, they can be useful at times - don't update them often
I hate Siri, she was turned off a long time ago, not interested in Apple Intelligence.
Prefer other more intelligent services. Generally speaking, Apple is not in the frontline of tech today.
Hope for Apple's sake next CEO have more ideas then greed, or they could be in trouble.