John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple

[halo9]

This was simply announced too soon and now Apple are paying the price. In my view a proper acknowledgment and apology from Apple is in order, plus some heads should roll. You expect vapourware from startups and scammers, not trillion dollar companies.

If no announcement or acknowledgment comes before or at WWDC and Apple simply tries to gloss over this, it will be a sad day for their reputation. I’m sure there is a lot more in the background going on than anyone knows but it may be time for the most secretive company to share something to regain some trust.

 

[BarrettF77]

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

Your post is what bean counters love. Those of us who miss the old innovative products would drive that graph even higher but you’re too content with less

 

[dypeterc]

I guess everyone forgot about Job’s telling the public “You're holding it wrong!” in response customer complaints about the iPhone 4's antenna design and then gave us rubber bumpers.

 

[Dark_Omen]

This was simply announced too soon and now Apple are paying the price. In my view a proper acknowledgment and apology from Apple is in order, plus some heads should roll. You expect vapourware from startups and scammers, not trillion dollar companies.

If no announcement or acknowledgment comes before or at WWDC and Apple simply tries to gloss over this, it will be a sad day for their reputation. I’m sure there is a lot more in the background going on than anyone knows but it may be time for the most secretive company to share something to regain some trust.

The timing of the announcement wasn’t the problem.

Tim looks like he slapped it together at the last minute in order to have something relevant at WWDC 2024. What else does iOS 18 have that’s any good? That you can change the colors of the icons on your Home Screen?

Apple should’ve started working on AI, at the LATEST, September of 2023.

 

[Chungry]

As someone that's not a fan of Gruber, this was a scorcher. I and many others have been sounding the alarm over Apple while folks like Gruber cheerled and covered for them. It's just too big to ignore at this point.

He's right. Unless they can demo something, they lied. And it's a terrible look. John said they squandered all the good will they built up. That's true too.

I think the difference between Cook and Jobs is that Jobs was harsh but fair. Calling people out in a way that makes them buckle down is a gift, "you've let each other down." That's a personal challenge. I've said it for a while but Apple seems to live in a bubble of toxic positivity these days insulated by piles of cash and their own past track record. Guess a few people are taking notice.

I've moved my less-than-a-year-old iPhone to a backup role and now my daily driver is an S25 Ultra. It's consistently a great experience. There are lovely (delightful even) affordances in Android that make the whole thing a joy to use. From notifications, to integrations like alternative browsers and cloud storage it's quite the departure from Apple's "you will take what we give you and like it" approach. Instead of me trying to conform to how my phone demands me to use it, my phone now conforms to me. The sad part: Apple should have been the one to offer all this, it's their secret sauce to humanize technology and it baffles me how bad they continue to miss with the user experience. I think Tim is greedy. I think that's a huge part. Their greed has strained developer relations, caught them out in hot water with governments, prevented them from disrupting/cannibalizing their own hardware, created a hostile environment. Because of greed, they squandered the good will of developers who aren't flocking to their new hardware platform, and slowly choked out innovation in other parts of the company. Greed means they take a years worth of meaningful phone features and stretch it to 3. Greed has them overcharging for cloud storage. Dishonesty has them lying about stuff in the 2024 WWDC and failing to own their myriad mistakes related to their garbage service offerings. Remaining silent over the iCloud lockouts last year was a huge red flag in terms of dishonesty. It's sad. It angers me. Apple used to be the bees knees, I used to look forward to whatever they did. Aside from their silicon I lost all interest at this point.

 

[DeepIn2U]

All I see here are a bunch of people that don’t know what AI means for them complaining about the absence of something completely nebulous. And when Apple delivers it, they’ll go crazy. What? You’re going to leave the Apple ecosystem so you can have a different AI assistant make up a limerick about frottage and text it to your buddies while you drive? Get real.

You're acting like a sycophants.

Apple Knowledge Navigator envisioned exactly what the future of technology would ans should be.

Forstall wasn't even finished university back when that video launched in 1984 fully describing it was a vision not a product or a service. That video showed something very specific that only last month here in 2025 were able to get on OTHER Ai platforms and able to integrate into competiting devices!

Scott Forstall saw the greatness attended a showing conference of Siri and pushed to have it purchased wholelly and thus the race to ai assistance began. Incredible vision and tenacity by Forstall got that happening. Nobody can take that away from him nor EVER erase that, 1 of many great things he's brought and done for Apple.

Craig despite years of ignorance jumps on the world stage seemingly stating it was HIM that brought modern Ai awareness at Apple. He's been in hiding ever since aying NOTHING!!! Protected medicine ball jingles hasn't done anything. The team under his guidance and direction has sincerely gotten LAZY focusing far too much on ridiculous emoji and the like 'which actually dumbs the human vocabulary.

The competition are now capable of the second stage of Ai assistance which is incredibly powerful : extensions or agents! Multiple actions and results from a single human prompt that can involve more than 1 app to complete a complex task!

ChatgPT announced this for web litersry 2wks before Samsung shipped it with Bixby and Google Gemini on a complete Galaxy S25 lineup!

Agents was shown by Apple Knowledge Navigator 1984 concept video!! Litersry the single most important biblical vision under Jobs tenrue was COMPLETELY ignored and left for dead AFTER Fostalls ejection!

More natural voices for siri a plug-in from mini speakers is the ONLY improvement since and maybe another 10 languages. Go ahead and challenge me on this! With facts not fanboyism cause I used to be a HUGE fan since 1980 and a product user and owner since 1984 on and off and on from iPhone 3G and Mac G3 Power mac to iPhone 13 mini and PowerMac G5 and MacBook Pro Core i7 !

 

[antnythr]

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.

Have you read the details about how the original iPhone announcement was pulled off?

Almost nothing worked, bugs and crashes in everything. They basically had to fake the whole thing.

 

[VisceralRealist]

Showing off a concept video is fine...as long as you don't promise that those concepts are coming in a software update next year.

 

[Salty Pirate]

Jeez, drama much.

I just got my new MacBook Air 15 M4 and it is freaking incredible.

My iPhone 15 pro is incredible.

AI is such a huge buzz, the next wave, blah blah blah.

Would not surprise me if most companies AI was proven ********.

 

[Rogifan]

Jason Snell and Myke Hurley have been critical of Apple Intelligence for a long time. Glad John Gruber is finally joining the party. We know Apple employees read his blog.

Honestly this isn’t even about AI. It’s about Apple announcing and marketing something that they had to know was nowhere near close to being ready to ship. And the stuff that they did ship is nowhere good enough. And this isn’t some charging accessory; this is a major OS feature that is being marketed with all their new hardware (“Built For Apple Intelligence”).

 

[Rockanrolero]

I didn’t realize people needed AI so badly in their lives… 🤔

 

[ececlv]

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.

The original iphone didn't work when he demod it. He had to do things in a specific order or the device would crash. There was still a ton of work left to do before it became a working device..

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/01/how-steve-jobs-faked-his-way-through-unveiling-the-iphone.html

 

[schappim]

You know it’s pretty bad when the “Fox News of Apple journalism” calls out Apple!

 

[TheDauterive]

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 AI on a daily basis (ChatGPT and Claude) and even though they are far from perfect, they are both revolutionary products and can in no sense be dismissed as a ruse. I also used Apple Intelligence for several weeks until I turned it off on all my devices. It’s simply not ready for market, and the only way people will choose it over its competitors is if Apple gives them no choice.

 

[dguisinger]

Have you read the details about how the original iPhone announcement was pulled off?

Almost nothing worked, bugs and crashes in everything. They basically had to fake the whole thing.

Eh... not faked... it was very carefully scripted because they knew what crashed, and even when they followed the script it had crashed during some rehersals.

Sure, they didn't tell the public how buggy it was at the time.

impressive that they pulled it together by the launch date

 

[TheDauterive]

You know it’s pretty bad when the “Fox News of Apple journalism” calls out Apple!

I’ve never heard him called that. Is that a little name you’ve made up?

 

[milkrocket]

It almost seems like Apple has been taken over the PE vultures. They are more concerned about their stock price and what fresh-out-of-college analysts think, rather than delivering good products.

The key to any good company is that the people understand that money is a side-effect, and not the goal. The goal is having loyal customers

 

[benoit79]

I remain a big fan of Apple hardware after all those years, but the software quality isn’t there anymore. The HomePod OS has been mediocre for more than two years and Apple keeps telling me to wait for the next update, which often adds more issues.

I crave for quality at this point more than any new feature Apple could think of. I want the OS to work!

 

[Ethosik]

All I see here are a bunch of people that don’t know what AI means for them complaining about the absence of something completely nebulous. And when Apple delivers it, they’ll go crazy. What? You’re going to leave the Apple ecosystem so you can have a different AI assistant make up a limerick about frottage and text it to your buddies while you drive? Get real.

And the best part is that I have seen these AI tools be factually wrong....A LOT.....to the point where I am not even bothering any more. I have spent more time fixing AI problems than it is supposed to solve by using them.

 

[jonblatho]

Yes, he has a long list of personal complaints about Apple products. There’s a long line.

I beg your pardon, the hell? Apple could release a bag of dog **** and I’d put money on Gruber finding some dubious way to praise it.

 

[Ethosik]

Albeit financial success to shareholder, Tim needs to go.

Apple hardware advancement is solid but barred with mediocre OS, even they starting another useless noise by UI redesign based on VisionOS? Meh, I better licking good old Aqua！

Annual OS releases absolutely need to stop, to polish and squash the bug as priority, but Tim says otherwise.

It is not Tim that needs to go, it is Craig Federighi. He is the one in charge of software.

 

[twolf2919]

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.

You’re absolutely missing the point. It’s fine if a feature gets delayed if it’s not ready. But Apple absolutely made people believe it would be - at least within a year. And it’s not. The old Apple would not have announced a feature if it wasn’t confident it could deliver it. Judging by what Gruber said, they didn’t even have a prototype they could show at WDC 2024.

 

[TechnoMonk]

He lost the plot few years back. I haven’t been to his blog in 6-7 years. Too much soap opera.

 

[F23]

oh no Mister Gruber it looks like you won't be getting the Apple Execs on your little podcast anymore after this statement.

 

[StoneJack]

It is nothing new for Apple. Some may recall Copland and OS 8. Or G5 powerbooks. So it is business as usual