I Think Jobs would have kept the software from becoming a pile of garbage like it has. Hardware as a whole though is pretty stagnant.
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I miss Steve Jobs.
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Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs. At the same time Jobs was not quite the genius.
I got an Apple II in 1980 at work. They cost as much as a new Toyota at the time. Apple had almost 100% share in the corporate market and users were extremely loyal. Jobs refused to support IBM's networking so when the PC launched in 1982 market share dropped to 5%. He lifted the mouse/GUI from Xerox.
Phones are a mature technology which makes innovation more challenging. Cook is content with incremental 'innovations' all of which have snappy names and lag competitors by years. Being able to arrange icons is a good example.
If Cook is turning down innovative ideas or Apple doesn't have any, things need to change.
I got an Apple II in 1980 at work. They cost as much as a new Toyota at the time. Apple had almost 100% share in the corporate market and users were extremely loyal. Jobs refused to support IBM's networking so when the PC launched in 1982 market share dropped to 5%. He lifted the mouse/GUI from Xerox.
Phones are a mature technology which makes innovation more challenging. Cook is content with incremental 'innovations' all of which have snappy names and lag competitors by years. Being able to arrange icons is a good example.
If Cook is turning down innovative ideas or Apple doesn't have any, things need to change.
Interesting point... Got my Apple ][ in 1978 and paid a lot more to get the 16k version - the base model had 4k memory and could only run integer BASIC from ROM. You needed 16k to load floating point BASIC from tape. Disk drives had been announced but were not yet shipping at that time. Used my own TV as a monitor. The store was literally in the basement of a guy's home in the suburbs. Most of the invoice has faded but you can still see the price (and serial number - 4546)
By 1980, for a work computer, I suppose you could be into $3000+ if you maxxed out the RAM, got two disk drives and a real monitor. Was watching one of the "mega brands that built America" episodes about personal computers just the other day and (IIRC) they claimed an Apple II cost $3500 and the IBM PC was cheaper when it launched. That surprised me, I thought the PC was pretty expensive.
Anyway, could not find 1980 Toyota prices for 1980, but found this about American cars and the cheapest were in the $3800 to $4200 range. I will say, spending $1225 (before tax) on my Apple ][ was quite a stretch for me and most people (including my girlfriend) thought I was crazy! 🤣
5 Cheapest American Cars of 1980, Inflation Adjusted
There are few emotional influences more powerful than nostalgia. To hear my mother tell it, for example, everything was better in the old country. Given the fact that mom’s childhood home lacked electricity, indoor plumbing, and access to Netflix, I’m pretty sure the fog of time is clouding her...
blog.consumerguide.com
FWIW, in 1978 I was driving a hand-me-down 1972 Pinto station wagon that my Dad gave me. My girlfriend made curtains for the windows and we had an air mattress in the back with the seats folded down. We lived in that car for a period as we moved around between the West and East coasts. Fun times! 😄
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By 1980, for a work computer, I suppose you could be into $3000+ if you maxxed out the RAM, got two disk drives and a real monitor. Was watching one of the "mega brands that built America" episodes about personal computers just the other day and (IIRC) they claimed an Apple II cost $3500 and the IBM PC was cheaper when it launched. That surprised me, I thought the PC was pretty expensive.
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My Apple configuration included max memory, a 192K expansion memory board, 2 floppy drives, modem, and monitor. When the IBM launched, prices for large corporate clients were discounted but upgrades were really expensive. A 512k memory board was like $800 and a 5 MB hard drive was nearly $1000 if I remember correctly. I bought a clone for home use a year or two later and it cost $3200.
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My Apple configuration included max memory, a 192K expansion memory board, 2 floppy drives, modem, and monitor. When the IBM launched, prices for large corporate clients were discounted but upgrades were really expensive. A 512k memory board was like $800 and a 5 MB hard drive was nearly $1000 if I remember correctly. I bought a clone for home use a year or two later and it cost $3200.
Cook is a businessman totally focused on profit, not an innovator. His goal seems to be to maximize profit for himself and his upper management buddies. He makes more money in a week than most make in a lifetime. He seems to fail to recognize the real value of money which is to be used as a tool to make the world a better place for all rather than to be part of a goal to make more. Since he took over there has been little true innovation from Apple. Most if not all of Apple's innovations under his reign have either been on the drawing board before he took over, have been minor improvements, copied, bought, or stolen. Much of the evidence of this is the mediocre beta testing of software before release thus serious bugs in the releases, focus on subscriptions so that customers have to pay forever for products, closed systems, limited repairability, 5-year product lifespans, limited ability for user upgrades to hardware, degraded tech support, with no ability to escalate when support fails to provide useful answers, and the escalating cost of Apple products. Cooks main accomplishment in my opinion is to escalate the brand to the prestige label for those who live luxury lifestyles. Witness the evaporation of user group support and education, high level business infrastructure, such as servers, and a focus on closed systems that make data sharing often challenging. Consider the loss of many of the key innovators that historically made Apple one of the great innovators. What I have learned over many years is that the culture of a company is set by upper management, particularly its CEO. In my opinion Cook is John Sculley in sheep's clothing. Given Apple's stock prices lately, the chickens may have come home to roost. One can always hope that Apple's board of directors will finally step up to the plate and finally do what is needed to be done before it is too late.
Disclosure: I am a former Apple employee, starting in 1982, having worked in various non-management positions for 13 years and still have an employee number under 5000; as once an Apple employee you never lose your employee number.
Disclosure: I am a former Apple employee, starting in 1982, having worked in various non-management positions for 13 years and still have an employee number under 5000; as once an Apple employee you never lose your employee number.
True, but personal computers were cutting, if not bleeding-edge technology at that time and such innovation is often quite expensive. When working at Apple in 1982 I had a Lisa on my desk. That was priced at $10,000.Interesting point... Got my Apple ][ in 1978 and paid a lot more to get the 16k version - the base model had 4k memory and could only run integer BASIC from ROM. You needed 16k to load floating point BASIC from tape. Disk drives had been announced but were not yet shipping at that time. Used my own TV as a monitor. The store was literally in the basement of a guy's home in the suburbs. Most of the invoice has faded but you can still see the price (and serial number - 4546)
View attachment 2493717
By 1980, for a work computer, I suppose you could be into $3000+ if you maxxed out the RAM, got two disk drives and a real monitor. Was watching one of the "mega brands that built America" episodes about personal computers just the other day and (IIRC) they claimed an Apple II cost $3500 and the IBM PC was cheaper when it launched. That surprised me, I thought the PC was pretty expensive.
Anyway, could not find 1980 Toyota prices for 1980, but found this about American cars and the cheapest were in the $3800 to $4200 range. I will say, spending $1225 (before tax) on my Apple ][ was quite a stretch for me and most people (including my girlfriend) thought I was crazy! 🤣
5 Cheapest American Cars of 1980, Inflation Adjusted
There are few emotional influences more powerful than nostalgia. To hear my mother tell it, for example, everything was better in the old country. Given the fact that mom’s childhood home lacked electricity, indoor plumbing, and access to Netflix, I’m pretty sure the fog of time is clouding her...
FWIW, in 1978 I was driving a hand-me-down 1972 Pinto station wagon that my Dad gave me. My girlfriend made curtains for the windows and we had an air mattress in the back with the seats folded down. We lived in that car for a period as we moved around between the West and East coasts. Fun times! 😄
I worked on one during my PhD. For some reason the Lisa seemed soulless to me - something out IBM's corporate rulebook. Remember the manuals that used to take up an an entire shelf? The Mac was an improvement IMO.
Anyway, my first Mac (a Mac Plus) was actually less (with student discount) than my first computer - a Compaq Portable that was styled on a suitcase tipped on its side:
(Source)
You are correct but then again, there was better SQA, and most class 1 and class 2 bugs were fixed in weeks or months, not years or never fixed like the Contacts bug that has users quitting and restarting the App to add multiple contacts or move them into lists, a bug as confirmed by Apple support that is in Ventura and still in Sequoia. And regarding documentation; finding out how other than basic features work one needs a virtual hunting license, and having to purchase 3rd party books just to figure out how many of the App features work.
And then there is the removal of features and tools. Faxing is still the most secure method of electronically sending documents which is why healthcare and financial institutions still use it. But Apple unilaterally removed it from MacOS. eFax neutralizes the security of Faxing since documents are initially sent via email or through the Internet aside from costing money for each document. Other than that, one has to purchase a fax machine or a printer that supports it, go to a store to do it, or use virtual Windows on their Mac to use a Fax modem. 3rd party search Apps used to be able to search Mail when looking for files. But Apple took that feature away which is the main reason I am still using Ventura which still supports it. I could go on but the above documents the point that Apple instead of rewriting the code to improve the security to support useful features, they simply eliminate them or arbitrarily decide that a feature is obsolete and eliminates them.
You left out the Newton and the Apple Camera, both totally innovative for their time but the market was not ready for them.
What I have learned is that the CEO of a company sets the culture of a company. Before Cook, employees were valued and treated with respect and dignity. Apple was at the top of the list of the top companies to work for. Now they seem to be treated like cannon fodder with many benefits redacted. Now Apple is not even on the list. What many don't know is that Apple Store employees are treated differently than the rest of the employees as they lack many of their benefits.
So do I, but a major part of my decision making is product value, quality of the product, and customer support. Apple has publicly put a 5-year lifespan on all its hardware, made a majority of them unrepairable, blocked the ability to upgrade them after purchase by soldering in components, partially so they can charge a premium price for the at product purchase time. As an example, the other day my Magic Touch Pad batter started showing severe deterioration by needing constant recharge. Current ones can't be fixed by replacing the batteries they are now glued together. Older ones allowed battery replacement. Apples solution: toss the old one in the trash and buy a new one at list price. What I plan to do is buy a new one via Amazon which is lower than Apple, even with my military discount, and tack on a 3rd party 4-year warranty for $30. So, when it fails, I get a new one for free. Any future Macs I buy will be from a 3rd party authorized dealer that offers a 3rd party warranty other than AppleCare, which I regard as poor value given its overall costs and copays. What many do not realize is that AppleCare only covers Apple Hardware and not the 3rd party products that Apple sells at its stores. Also, Apple Care has nothing to do with software support as it is available for as long as you own the product without Apple Care so long as Apple decides to support it.
Personally, I regard Cook as the John Scully of the 21st Century. Given the recent downturn of Apple's sales, the AI fiasco and its stock price, his time at Apple may become shorter than planned. Hopefully the chickens finally have come home to roost. Also, what many are not aware of is that a year or so ago he purchased a 10 million home in the LA area. How does he get there? By using the Apple corporate jet of course and in the name of security. In case you are interested in how much it cost to maintain a corporate jet I looked it up:
The cost to maintain Apple's corporate jet depends on the type of jet, with very light jets priced between $3.5 million and $5.7 million, midsize jets ranging from $2.45 million to $30 million, and heavy business jets averaging $15 million to $30 million. The true cost to own a private jet includes upfront acquisition cost, fixed expenses like insurance, maintenance, and hangar fees, variable costs such as fuel and crew salaries, regulatory compliance, and depreciation.
It started when steve was the CEO with MBA, iPhone and so on. There are trade offs for each decision. Unified RAM packaged with SOC is great but can’t be upgraded. Would I compromise upgrade able RAM for unified Memory? Not at all. It’s just not Apple but TVs back in the day could be repaired. They are all glued in compact form factor.
Apple didn’t change the support or software update policy in long time, it’s pretty much on par or more than others in industry.
They are all something Apple could do better, but it is nothing new.
Nostalgia. "If Mozart/James Dean hadn't died so young…", "If the Beatles/ABBA hadn't split…", etc. Well, they would probably have created more incredible works, or maybe not. I don't want to sound cruel, but sometimes it's better to have a legendary guy who leaves at the height of his glory, than a has-been who is but a shadow of his former self.
I’d say the most similar thing between Cook and Sculley is that they needed to fire Ive/Gasseé way sooner.
ABBA did release a new album, at late 2021.
Voyage (ABBA album) - Wikipedia
Was magical and beautiful to hear the 'girls' voices together again.
They even made concerts with 'avatars' - https://abbavoyage.com
I assume they didn't feel like hopping around on stage anymore, at their age 😉
I miss the kindness and the announcements of what Apple is doing with regards to charity work or helping with disaster relief. I was disappointed to see Tim on Trump's inauguration stage, as one of the 'billionaires'. I've written to Tim a couple of times and once he helped me a lot with a MacBook Pro repair that I simply could not afford. I wrote to him by post last year for a personal reason, which I won't go into here, and received no reply at all, even though I traced the letter to him personally. I was probably expecting too much from someone who is a billionaire, to help someone like me, especially if he has gone into Trump's camp. I'm sad about that.
Jobs didn't really have anything to do with Newton and Apple Camera (I assume you are referring to Apple QuickTake) as those were developed and launched during his 1985-1997 time away from Apple.
We can’t get into Cook’s mind, but we seem to know some facts. Cook doesn’t have a luxurious life at all, and he has sometimes pushed against investors who focused on ROI when it comes to environmental projects. We’ll never know, but from the outside, he definitely doesn’t seem like someone whose goal is to “maximize profit for himself”. He seems like someone very focused on his job.
Then there are many things you say that don’t make sense from my point of view, like complaining about closed ecosystems (as if it wasn’t one of Apple’s core ideas) or old devices support (which is better than ever).
He obviously doesn’t seem to be a “product person”, but some people think that the opposite of a product person is a classic dinosaur manager, focused on quick profit and not caring about anything else… when in reality, they’re two completely independent dimensions. Whether it’s a good idea to have a non-product person at the top of a company is a different question, but Cooks seems to be actually more interested than SJ in having a bigger impact on more people (creating more affordable models, cultural initiatives, etc.), while SJ focused on creating very cool products.
Personally, I’m a fan of tech, so I generally prefer the second approach, but I think the notion that Cook is a “greedy manager” compared to SJ is not a good take.
I miss Steve, but I miss Joni and the design-team just as much, sometimes even more.
Because they didn't die, they just left and are most likely very much happier when not working under Cook. But as a customer the design are nothing to love at Apple anymore.
Joni & gang's departure was a big demonstration, that we see the result of more as times goes.
It was not a loud disaster as death is, but it's like seeing the paint fall off a house. The house works inside, but it's obvious that it needs to be restored.
But it doesn't happen at Apple, they just makes a quick-fixes and hope it will hold.
Something are just hollow at Apple now, without the design that I at least loved a lot.
Because they didn't die, they just left and are most likely very much happier when not working under Cook. But as a customer the design are nothing to love at Apple anymore.
Joni & gang's departure was a big demonstration, that we see the result of more as times goes.
It was not a loud disaster as death is, but it's like seeing the paint fall off a house. The house works inside, but it's obvious that it needs to be restored.
But it doesn't happen at Apple, they just makes a quick-fixes and hope it will hold.
Something are just hollow at Apple now, without the design that I at least loved a lot.
I think that Apple slights or diminishes the Mac at its peril. They almost did with the 2013 MacPro debacle. Bad move. The Mac is the foundation of everything else that is done at Apple. What are the new iPhone and other products designed on? Macs. Same is true for users. IPhone users without Macs are just poseurs. They aren't really Apple people. Today, the Mac is where is seems all the innovation is taking place. Keep the Mac growing and thriving, Apple.
Agree with all except the bold. Lots of folks for example use iPads instead of a Mac - and others only use a smartphone. I do hope Apple continues to support and develop the Mac though anmd yes it is the foundation of Apple.
Isn't Wozniak more of a genius than jobs ever was? Jobs had the ideas, but I believe it was Woz that made them happen.
What’s the innovation you’re seeing on Mac?
I’m sitting here with an 14” 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro, which I like very much. However, the only reason I can see right now to upgrade is to get a bigger screen, because my eyes are rubbish.
Maybe the OLED MacBooks Pro next year will tickle my fancy.
Maybe MacOS? Not as much as before but it still is the foundation of Apple's software at least - even if iPhones outsell Macs by a huge margin.