John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple

[BarrettF77]

I’ve lost all faith in Apple. So much to the point that I am considering alternatives to their ecosystem in the future. Tim Cook has been the cancer in Apple slowly metastasizing until it’s now become much more viable.

Surgery is needed and cutting him and some others out of the company is needed to return Apple back to being the innovators that its customers have loyally paid to keep them as being.

Instead under Cook, it’s all be profit focused and I do not appreciate nor respect him as a CEO or what his company is doing. Now days, I do not recommend Apple to others and it’s sad because it used to be as much the opposite as possible.

 

[Chungry]

My pure guess/speculation: Apple was following what other companies were doing with AI, and suddenly realized that AI wasn't nearly as advanced as everyone was touting. Many companies straight up got caught faking their AI results (Devon anyone?) and many other companies AI results are so bad they're unusable (Gemini anyone? Has anyone actually gotten accurate information from Gemini?)

Consumers realize the ruse is up and just aren't interested anymore.

I use Gemini flash all the time on my S25 ultra- it's deadly accurate but I think the early mistakes tarnished the reputation.

 

[zorinlynx]

I think the issue is that, well... AI kinda sucks, and Apple doesn't want to release something that's going to be crap.

Apple Intelligence has already shown to not be as great as it was pitched, and the company has gotten some criticism over that. Rather than release something that's crap, they're maybe waiting until they get it right?

Again and again GenAI is showing itself to be unreliable and error-prone. I personally refuse to use it. I'd honestly prefer if Apple would admit this was the wrong path to take and innovate in other ways.

 

[anthogag]

I am a public beta user; software updates appear regularly. It's fine if promised AI and Siri features arrive update-by-update.

 

[macford]

I remember when MobileMe had a release that took a dump and got bad reviews from Mossberg. Steve got the entire development team in a room to talk about what went wrong and how they were going to fix it. Same thing with Antennaegate. Press conference where people could ask questions directly to the leadership team and then gave a tour of their research facility for the phone to show how they tested it. This would be a great time for Tim to eat some crow and get in front of it. Do I think that will happen, no. Because Tim is a supply chain genius and Steve was a marketing and sales genius who knew how to get the best technologists to perform and how to sell to the press and public. I'm not saying this is the death knell for Apple. I have too much of their stock to predict that but this does seriously damage Apple's credibility. Selling vaporware is not a good look. And yes, Steve bent the truth many times or how market ready some things were but he was almost always able to pull a rabbit out of a hat and get things working when he said they would. Having Gruber say negative things about Apple is just about as shocking as when Mossberg said them about MobileMe.

 

[G5isAlive]

Apple's failure to deliver on the early promise of Sir is puzzling... but I always buy on features not promises. I suppose that was the hard lesson from the early days of computers. We seem to be right back at the beginning.

 

[Chungry]

"The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn't true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn't true, and they set a course based on that."

That was kind of Steve Jobs' business model. But then he set about making it come true, even if it was impossible!

I'm sorry what?! Steve didn't do that. It was total secrecy. Look at the iPod or original iPhone. He didn't make crazy promises he showed up and showed off what they had. Demos being hugely important to his method.

 

[delsoul]

We all know it’s Tim Cook that’s rotten at Apple, whether people want to admit it or not. I really hope things can turn around sooner than later.

Very interesting article to read, thanks for that!

 

[Andres Cantu]

Absolutely rotten. You know it’s just so rotten that the rotten pieces are rotting. It’s like cheese with mold that has cheese in the mold. As Tim Cook would say I will make the best rot ever. I’ll even attach a chart showing how bad this rot is. This is a five-year graph of the rot and it’s absolutely horrendous.

View attachment 2491617

You must think this is sustainable:

 

[Xade]

I don't even really care about A.I. The empty promise is what's truly disappointing.

Reminds me of all the 'HDTV ready' TVs that were sold many years ago that weren't actually compatible with HDTV when it came out.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Agree. They had to have known this before launching the 16

Finally someone is echoing what I've been saying & started yesterday! Gruber is typically an Apple sycophant gets it.

Exactly!

Why are not heads ROLLING for this - after over a YEAR of constant mistakes, failures, and setbacks!

Hmmm who was it that contributed MORE than ANYONE else at Apple the following and yet kicked out for either the software design teams mistakes in understanding vectore Map points OR the 3rd party source company for providing corrupted data of vector map points yet FORCED to make a public appology for something he himself NOR his team ACTUALLY was at any fault for?!

Forstall:
iPhone OS which evolved under HIS Design and direction iOS!
Time Machine - EVERY mac user actually benefits and has benefitted of this!
Apple's Push Notifications - a collaboration with the internet team.
Siri acquisition - in its initial 5yrs was stella and beyond anything any competition even thought of nor did!
He was thrown out for Maps?!

NOT ENOUGH PUBLIC COMPLAINTS from iphone and mac users is being done nor considered by TIm!
After ALL the BS HYPE that Federighi did to bring Ai to Apple he's in HIDING and protected while sucking BIG behind closed doors! ENOUGH is ENOUGH CAN THIS clown!


Man stop drinking the long expired and tasteless Kool Aid. Its not going your brain any good. stop forgiving endless mistakes on a single software service that continues to NOT live up to its name. This is from THE industry leader from the consumer leader. Do NOT continue to accept this! demand better! You've paid for it!

STARTING?! SERIOUSLY?

Its BEYOND embarrasing and has been over a year now! stop drinking that damaging Kool-aid!


Imagine what more Forstall could bring to Apple and its consumers if he was Not forced out!
over the years this looks more and more like a personal issue between Cook and Forstall or revenge.
while consistent and continued failings of Apple Ai bragged about by Federighi - who's been completely silent and in hiding as NOT been forced out YET! He's made more ridiculous mistakes and

NOTHING he's done has brought overal advances to Apple's OS and betterment for end user exerpeince like Forstall had.


At this point the service name itself is false advertising!

Fact is it isn't just starting to happen, lack of credibility it's been there for years and now is so bad it's showing almost on all fronts except the chipset division!

Accountability must be upheld and publicly shown it's value exists at Aplle starting with the protected ********ter Craig F who's really not contributed anything!

For the next 10yrs if proven protected not kicked out of this already - should NOT be shown joking or parading in any event like everything is fun and good! Put him to real work!! Or putting him out! The tie for public apology over Aplle Ai is long past!

 

[johnsawyercjs]

I'm guessing part of the problem is that Apple has been expecting to use the LLM approach to getting Siri to reliably do the things that the original Siri company (that Apple bought) demonstrated 15 years ago without using an LLM, along with the additions that Apple wants to turn it into a modern personal digital assistant (on-device awareness of the user's data, intent, contents of the screen, images of the user's immediate surroundings, etc.), but as everyone has learned, LLMs currently can't do those things properly consistently enough to meet Apple's (and our) goals for them.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

I remember rumors before that entitled twit enter the scene. It was bad enough with the twit from the far east and his hardware predictions. John became famous because of Apple. So have many of these deluded "influencers" and yet they all seem to play pretend to be "experts" which really has diluted the meaning of the word.

 

[russell_314]

it's almost like you have blinders on and couldn't bring yourself to actually read what was written. Yes, go off your stock chart.

Yes, he has a long list of personal complaints about Apple products. There’s a long line. Implying that something’s rotten at Apple means the company is going in a bad direction. When a company goes in a bad direction, the stock goes down. Investors get scared easily so if they feel things are going bad, they’re going to bail out. The stock chart is reality. What’s in Gruber’s mind is his imagination.

 

[Astuces iOS]

I agree, apple seams bad in 2025…

 

[Dark_Omen]

They put that PM person in charge of Siri a month or 2 ago. What has been transpiring over the past couple weeks is the outcome of the work of that person, they have known about it for a while, hence the change back then.
Grubers “PhD knowledge of Apple” (that is his claim) should have highlighted this months ago, he’s just riding the wave now.

Sounds like something they should’ve did about a year and a half ago when they decided to start making AI.

Surely they planned to build out their AI a year and a half ago, right? And it wasn’t just some stunt to have relevant technology plans to satisfy investors at WWDC? Apple would’ve needed from September to June to show off what was already a work in progress.

 

[antnythr]

At this point I’m just piling on, but Gruber is right. It’s not just AI that Apple seems so far behind in, but other areas as well.

We’ve all experienced the lack of polish in software quality over the last number of years. They wanted to have a “me too” product for every idea that came up. They failed at Air Power, they had to abandon their autonomous vehicle, the Vision Pro is 7x more expensive than the leading VR headset on the market. It’s just miss after miss after miss.

Apple seems to have been too focused on figuring out how to drip feed features and segment their product lineup to extract every possible penny from their customers.

 

[delsoul]

I’ve lost all faith in Apple. So much to the point that I am considering alternatives to their ecosystem in the future. Tim Cook has been the cancer in Apple slowly metastasizing until it’s now become much more viable.

Surgery is needed and cutting him and some others out of the company is needed to return Apple back to being the innovators that its customers have loyally paid to keep them as being.

Instead under Cook, it’s all be profit focused and I do not appreciate nor respect him as a CEO or what his company is doing. Now days, I do not recommend Apple to others and it’s sad because it used to be as much the opposite as possible.

I can’t agree more with you. I’ve been looking at other products and slowly planning leaving the Apple products behind. Laptop, phone, watch, etc…I pretty much have it all and going to start looking elsewhere. This is sad to me because I’ve liked and purchased Apple products since the Pismo G3…no longer. This is due to my lost faith in Apple and the fact that Tim Cook is still at the helm. Nothing will change until he’s gone.

 

[sully54]

Apple’s approach to AI is the same as BlackBerry’s reaction when the first iPhone came out. And we all know what happened to BlackBerry.

 

[jmhumr]

Hmm, weird take. I think a lot of big tech companies are quietly in a little shock as the realization that AI is a bust feature begins to set in. Microsoft’s CEO said as much recently.

Combine the stalled positive impact of AI with the lack of Siri power users, and I’m guessing Apple is having second thoughts. Sucks for Apple, but doesn’t really upset me as a customer.

 

[CarAnalogy]

....this is the thing that did it for him?

Not over 10 years of dropping the ball on Siri?
Not the ever-more buggy iOS platforms?
Not a business model that is increasingly built on rent-seeking?
Not selling commodity storage and memory for 5x or more than the industry standard because they know their customers have no other choice?
Not several years of selling defective macbooks who's keyboards couldn't be typed on?
Not billions wasted on a car that never made sense and never came to market?

This was kind of my thought too, but Gruber has been holding back years of massive cognitive dissonance defending Apple. And to be fair he did complain about a couple of those.

He’s their gentlest critic so I’m glad he’s speaking out. It’s not just AI, it’s Apple’s systemic issue of over promising and under delivering.

They need to just slow down for a second and look at themselves in the mirror and Wall Street be damned for just one quarter to get their **** together.

 

[TonyC28]

Mr. Gruber is mad. I thought this is where he was going, but then he didn't, so I will. Maybe the decision to announce things they weren't sure they could deliver had two motivations. One, they needed to join the AI party in a serious way. And two, the ideas on the table for the iPhone 16 were a slightly better camera, and nothing else. So they plopped Apple Intelligence on the table and thought this would get them caught up to ChatGPT and give them a selling point for the 16 lineup.

Gruber also suggests he knows of people within Apple who knew they couldn't deliver this stuff.

The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn’t true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn’t true, and they set a course based on that.

Is he speculating here? Or is he dropping a hint that people within Apple knew they couldn't deliver on this?

 

[chrono1081]

I use Gemini flash all the time on my S25 ultra- it's deadly accurate but I think the early mistakes tarnished the reputation.

Well then that's apparently not the Gemini used in Googles results because I literally can't think of a time that one was correct.

 

[TonyC28]

Hmm, weird take. I think a lot of big tech companies are quietly in a little shock as the realization that AI is a bust feature begins to set in. Microsoft’s CEO said as much recently.

Combine the stalled positive impact of AI with the lack of Siri power users, and I’m guessing Apple is having second thoughts. Sucks for Apple, but doesn’t really upset me as a customer.

Maybe the bust is their awkward attempt to cram it into an existing OS? ChatGPT is useful and amazing by itself. It doesn't need to be part of someone else's OS to shine.

 

[ProVideo]

It's crazy that John Giannandrea was chief of AI at Google when the "Attention is All You Need" paper was published, then he went to Apple in 2018 and they are this far behind everyone else.