I miss Steve Jobs.

[MakaiMan]

Of course, we all miss him. His charisma, presentations, vision, leadership, humor, his angry moments... but I really doubt that if he was still alive would be chairman nowadays. Most probably he would retire due to tiredness or lack of motivation due to actual technology stagnation... IDK.

Being an Apple user since 1995 and of course nostalgia kicks hard so we tend to idealize the past. I really loved Jobs Apple, of course was more fun than nowadays. Remember the G4 cube presentation, or the imac g4 (lamp)... that was mind-blowing. But also disappointments, like the switch from ppc to intel.

 

[CyberDavis]

I miss Steve Jobs too, he was taken too early.
But I’m also happy in general with Apple, it may not be perfect but what is.🤷🏽

 

[tonester1984]

well even withou

 

[phoenix-mac-user]

We'd all be walking around with 3 inch iphones if Steve Jobs was still around. Actually we'd prpbably all be walking around Androids because people would have eventually got sick of looking at that itty bitty screen.

It is sort of laughable that the he said "a 3.5 inch screen is what iPhone users want" because it is obviously not true....because they haven't made one in 14 years.

The minute he was in the ground they were making the normal sized iPhones everyone uses today.

 

[Lesimac]

I miss Steve Jobs.
I'm tired of Apple releasing half-baked beta versions.
I'm tired of Apple trying, like Google and Samsung, to attract customers with unnecessary features like background removal from photos.
I'm tired of Tim Cook announcing things just days before any official release.
Where's the old, good Apple?

Apple has not had an original idea since. And have the nerve to say they innovate like f*** they do

 

[OscarC12]

I miss the innovation ideas and functiones that Apple had given to me. And see Apple now...

 

[redcarian]

Apple has not had an original idea since. And have the nerve to say they innovate like f*** they do

Apple has rarely had an innovative idea. What Apple historically (let’s say since SJ returned) has been peerless at is taking things innovated elsewhere, and implementing the absolute buggery out of them, with extreme style and polish.

They didn’t invent USB, but the spangly iMacs with their “USB or sod off” approach meant we all got working USB accessories.

They didn’t invent Bluetooth, nor did they invent in-ear headphones, nor did they invent Bluetooth in-ear headphones, but I’ll bet anyone a pint they can’t find a pair of in-ear Bluetooth headphones with an OOBE as effortless as AirPods, nor that work across more than one paired device as well as AirPods*.

*I absolutely adore my Sennheiser Momentum 4 over-ears, because they sound awesome and the battery lasts forever, but getting them switched between devices, using the app, is very much not seamless.

 

[mxrider88]

I think they miss him too!! They wouldn't have such a mess in the software department, that's for sure

 

[Onelifenofear]

I miss Steve Jobs.
I'm tired of Apple releasing half-baked beta versions.
I'm tired of Apple trying, like Google and Samsung, to attract customers with unnecessary features like background removal from photos.
I'm tired of Tim Cook announcing things just days before any official release.
Where's the old, good Apple?

What an odd thing to chose I use background removal a few times a day.

Oh and the OS is 20x more complex since 2010.

 

[Jetson]

I think they miss him too!! They wouldn't have such a mess in the software department, that's for sure

I am only guessing, but I see signs of 3 issues which may be affecting software quality, imho.

1. The use of Agile SDM
   • The concept of taking a list of requirements, then coding as much of the list within an arbitrary timeframe regardless of whether all requirements have actually been satisfied may result in side effects, such as "half baked" software as far as end users, i.e. customers are concerned.
   • Yes with the Agile approach the team can return to code the missing specs but in practice they don't seem to get around to it.
2. Lack of clear UI philosophy
   • Certain values such as consistency among a group UI elements is not enforced. An example would be with the Apple TV. In the store when you click on a movie or tv show icon, the app takes you to the show description screen. However when in the library this choice is inverted and when you click on the icon the movie is started immediately. This behavior is illogical and inconsistent with what is expected.
   • Apple has been eliminating customer choices in the UI and has been enforcing arbitrary limitations.
     • Apple TV used to provide user options for sort orders of things such as the contents of movies, color choices, etc. Those things have fallen by the wayside.
     • The Music app used to provide a mosaic of album covers for new playlists. Now it forces you to select from nondescript icons or choosing from photos. But for some reason the mosaic of up to 4 album covers is no longer allowed despite that being the default from the beginning of iTunes.
     • Game Center notifications pester customers who have turned it off, yet the notifications persist. This seems annoying and arrogant.
   • Perhaps these and other issues are a result of Agile methodology. The scrum does things according to that particular scrum master who does as they please because vision and standards are no longer being evangelized.
3. Apple is unresponsive to customer complaints or requests. I can understand this to some extent since the customer base has become so huge. It is a frustrating side effect of the company's unprecedented success.

If my "being on the outside looking in" opinion is in any way accurate, I would recommend that Apple return to the vision of giving customers choices rather than taking them away for no perceivable reason. Maybe that would reduce the sense of frustration that many of us long term customers feel.

Steve was relentless in enforcing a vision of great user experience. Maybe some of that has fallen by the wayside.

 

[Circa1984]

Jobs was a visionary, the modern smartphone is one of the greatest inventions that mankind has ever created. And with all great inventions, at some point it becomes commoditized - the greatest compliment you can give a product. Where people now expect to have it, rely on it … and take it for granted. The next wave of tech will be based on AI, computing at a scale we’ve never imagined and have an even greater impact on the world - healthcare, robotics, transportation and knowledge sharing. Like him or not, this quirky (crazy?) polarizing guy named Elon Musk is that next visionary. I mean really, who thinks about inhabiting mars and ‘catching’ rockets? Think Different… Think Bigger.

 

[decafjava]

Jobs was a visionary, the modern smartphone is one of the greatest inventions that mankind has ever created. And with all great inventions, at some point it becomes commoditized - the greatest compliment you can give a product. Where people now expect to have it, rely on it … and take it for granted. The next wave of tech will be based on AI, computing at a scale we’ve never imagined and have an even greater impact on the world - healthcare, robotics, transportation and knowledge sharing. Like him or not, this quirky (crazy?) polarizing guy named Elon Musk is that next visionary. I mean really, who thinks about inhabiting mars and ‘catching’ rockets? Think Different… Think Bigger.

AI for better and for worse is the future. Still, while Steve Jobs could be an a** he wasn't a goose walking guy like Elon. Can't be more explicit here, IYKYK.

 

[ayephoner]

apple is still trying, but they are primarily the manufacturer of a bunch of devices that aren't really ripe for innovation anymore. iphones, macbooks, apple watches, airpods, ipads, apple tv, and homepods are all devices that have their form factor and functionality well carved out. they mostly don't change from one gen to the next other than specs. i'm not sure why that's so off-putting to some people, but apple as a company is just in a very different place than it was for most of jobs' control.

I think the vision pro will likely find a niche and as the cost drops and adoption increases, it will probably be a device that is viewed as being ahead of its time (imho). Apple is also working on a robot arm type of thing that could be absolutely incredible. Who knows if those rumors will actually lead to a consumer product, but it seems interesting.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

We'd all be walking around with 3 inch iphones if Steve Jobs was still around. Actually we'd prpbably all be walking around Androids because people would have eventually got sick of looking at that itty bitty screen.

It is sort of laughable that the he said "a 3.5 inch screen is what iPhone users want" because it is obviously not true....because they haven't made one in 14 years.

The minute he was in the ground they were making the normal sized iPhones everyone uses today.

Well, for what it is worth, personally, I loathe those modern monstrosities, - they are far too large - and am one of those who far preferred the smaller size of the original iPhone.

 

[Martius]

Steve Jobs and the people he surrounded himself with created a well-oiled machine called Apple. He was the heart and soul of Apple. It's clear from the interviews I've seen with him that he was never about the money. Money for him seems to have been only a means to create the best products.

With his passing, that spirit and passion slowly began to fade. Apple is an incredibly strong brand that Tim Cook has managed to carry on, but the passion is no longer there. I'm not saying the employees lack love for their jobs, but the leadership is dominated by a desire to make as much profit as possible.

Slowly, Apple is becoming just another company that creates products to make money. They are building on an amazing brand, so it will be a long time before people realize that the spirit is gone, but it will happen one day.

Every new product is calculated down to the last cent. To me, this would be understandable if it was a small company and every dollar saved was worth it. But with Apple, it's a sign of what I'm saying.

Why doesn't Apple, for example, make peripherals for professionals (ergonomic mouse, mechanical keyboard)? Why did they stop making the iPhone Mini? It sold less, but they certainly didn't lose money on it. Why did they forget about the AirPods Max? These are specific products for a narrower group of users, but these products complete the ecosystem beautifully.

I miss Steve too!

 

[turbineseaplane]

Well said @Martius

Yours is my favorite post in this thread

 

[Martius]

Well said @Martius

Yours is my favorite post in this thread

Thank you, sir!

 

[ConradRoentgen]

I'm not using any of my Apple products in a professional setting. However, I'm a lifelong computer enthusiast and not a casual user by any stretch of the imagination. I use photo editing and music production software almost every day.

I look at most of these gripes with Apple, and I just don't get it. Between my wife and I, we have an iPhone 13 Pro Max, an iPhone 16 Pro, an M4 iMac, an M2 MacBook Air, and an M1 MacBook Air as well as a 7th gen iPad that's still getting updates. Am I crazy? The life of a computer enthusiast has never been better. All of these products are outstanding in my opinion. Do I miss Steve Jobs? It's sad, and I'd like to have seen what he came up with, but I'm quite happy with my Apple computers at this time.

I will concede the Apple Intelligence crap has been a fiasco. However, that's a feature I have no intention of using anyway. I could not care less, but I understand why others do.

Also, the Magic Mouse is an uncomfortable piece of garbage.

The only two things I can personally come up with that aren't great.

 

[tomsaccount]

Steve is widely recognized as one of the most profoundly influential visionaries of his time. His time has gone, and the tech world has simply moved on.

“*Steve’s time*” would be much more compatible with what we are seeing in ai today than you would think. Look at this conceptual product demo from Apple in the 80s. Although Steve wasn’t involved in this project he still clearly would have been able to strategize with technology of today.

 

[Jetson]

“*Steve’s time*” would be much more compatible with what we are seeing in ai today than you would think. Look at this conceptual product demo from Apple in the 80s. Although Steve wasn’t involved in this project he still clearly would have been able to strategize with technology of today.

I remember this as a series of personal agent concepts being pushed by John Sculley who was Apple Computer CEO at the time. Scully was instrumental in getting Jobs fired after having been recruited by Jobs.

The clip is quite well done and I was positively impressed. Sculley's vision was a forward looking one; it proved to be infeasible at that time. Meanwhile the Apple brand was beginning to flounder.

Perhaps Steve Jobs would not have appealed to academia as a potential market, if indeed that was John Sculley's purpose in presenting his vision of a personal digital assistant (PDA).

The technology of today is characterized by:

• speed
• near optimal connectivity
• sophisticated client devices with rich high definition displays and sound
• AI language models generating information and creative content
• Those LMs being able to understand and follow directives - mostly.

Still the existence of this technology has not yet birthed anything quite like Sculley's vision. Siri, the object of kind hearted jests by comedians, apparently has not reached her potential by a long-shot. I haven't discovered a use case for Siri so I wouldn't know, personally.

Would SJ have made Siri work by now, and would he have made a PDA out of it?

That video was a great reminders of times past.

 

[tomsaccount]

I remember this as a series of personal agent concepts being pushed by John Sculley who was Apple Computer CEO at the time. Scully was instrumental in getting Jobs fired after having been recruited by Jobs.

The clip is quite well done and I was positively impressed. Sculley's vision was a forward looking one; it proved to be infeasible at that time. Meanwhile the Apple brand was beginning to flounder.

Perhaps Steve Jobs would not have appealed to academia as a potential market, if indeed that was John Sculley's purpose in presenting his vision of a personal digital assistant (PDA).

The technology of today is characterized by:

• speed
• near optimal connectivity
• sophisticated client devices with rich high definition displays and sound
• AI language models generating information and creative content
• Those LMs being able to understand and follow directives - mostly.

Still the existence of this technology has not yet birthed anything quite like Sculley's vision. Siri, the object of kind hearted jests by comedians, apparently has not reached her potential by a long-shot. I haven't discovered a use case for Siri so I wouldn't know, personally.

Would SJ have made Siri work by now, and would he have made a PDA out of it?

That video was a great reminders of times past.

Would Sculley or Jobs have done anything different with Siri? who's to say. What I am meaning by associating the conversation with what was presented by the knowledge navigator is that there are obvious parallels with the presentation of that device and what eventually became the iPad. There are also clear parallels with what that device demo'd as an ability of ai and where we can see the potential of today's ai eventually being able to produce. easily within the next five years we would see ai capable of doing what that video is showing. maybe not by Siri but by some ai almost certainly.

even just now, you think you have been talking to a human but *actually*.... no haha. I am not ai, but honestly how we would know? sure it's the butt of many jokes but considering Moore's law it is almost inevitable that we will not too distantly see some truly remarkable computing power that we can currently only today say is fantasy.

 

[ONOHC]

I miss Steve Jobs.
I'm tired of Apple releasing half-baked beta versions.
I'm tired of Apple trying, like Google and Samsung, to attract customers with unnecessary features like background removal from photos.
I'm tired of Tim Cook announcing things just days before any official release.
Where's the old, good Apple?

Steve is gone, and so is Apple's innovation spirit. Tim is a numbers guy, not an innovation guy.

 

[Fumblerooskie]

Steve Jobs may be gone, but his Reality Distortion Field lives on!

Cook has taken the company to the ends of the earth with products that have changed lives, while making Apple into a multi trillion dollar company. I think he’d be pleased with how the company is doing.

I miss Steve too, but owning AAPL for a quarter of a century has made dealing with it a little easier.

 

[lolski]

I miss Steve too, but owning AAPL for a quarter of a century has made dealing with it a little easier.

I definitely would have given apple a break had i owned their stock for as long as you do lol

 

[redcarian]

I miss Steve Jobs.
I'm tired of Apple releasing half-baked beta versions.
I'm tired of Apple trying, like Google and Samsung, to attract customers with unnecessary features like background removal from photos.
I'm tired of Tim Cook announcing things just days before any official release.
Where's the old, good Apple?

V1.0 of any Apple product has been a half-baked beta version, basically forever, and Jobs oversaw his fair share.

The original iMac was slow, heavy, had a terrible keyboard and mouse.

OS X didn’t come good until 10.3. iTunes was hot garbage until at least v4, and then it turned into the horrific pile of technical debt thrown away to create Music.

PowerPC failed across the board to deliver the computational power required to make OS X go in the way it was intended.

The first iPhone was a technology demo. It’s always worth reminding ourselves how Jobs had to do the on-stage product demo in a very specific “golden thread” sequence, otherwise he ran the very real risk of looking like a right tit on stage, as the phone crashed.

The original MacBook Air was very clever, but it was awful to use with terrible thermals, that fragile ethernet port, ephemeral battery life, a very meh display, and so on. The engineering would not catch up with the compromises needed to fit that computer into that form factor, without significant deleterious impact to the user, for a couple of years.

Jobs was a good leader, a bit of an awful human, but he gave Jony Ive far too much leeway and as noted, had quite a lot of broken crappy products under his watch.

He greenlit the Motorola ROKR - never forget that.