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Steve Jobs Made Apple Care. Who Does Now?
- Thread starter -BigMac-
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Personally, the combination of the wallpaper and screensaver preference pains has always made sense to me.Agreed. For example:
Use a screen saver on your Mac
On your Mac, use a screen saver to hide your desktop when you’re away from your Mac or if you need extra privacy.support.apple.com
In Tahoe:
Previously (i.e., Ventura through Sequoia):
I’m genuinely curious on the reason for that change, the reason to change at all and the change itself. I often use search to find Screen Saver now because I forget that it is being oddly neglected or rather maybe unreasonably punished, condemned to a subsection within Wallpaper.
Fortunately, for me, the legibility on macOS 26 hasn’t been as bad, even from the beginning, as iOS/iPadOS. Thankfully, Apple has course corrected a little with options such as tinting.
On that note, if they wanted to change the tone a bit… I (probably) would have been happier with something like a less ‘candied’ Aqua — not that I disliked Aqua — and made it more realistic effect (i.e., true(r) glassy like Liquid Glass).
😆 I had a few moments pause when reading the discussion title, wondering if the spacing (i.e., “Apple Care”) was intentional or a typo/language translation.
Almost all of Apple’s default screensavers have a wallpaper to go with them, and their wallpapers function more like screensavers than they ever have. They are dynamic, they changed throughout the day, they have dark and light versions, they animate on the lock screen…
So it makes sense they are now grouped together.
You make a fair point, and I won’t argue that Apple hasn’t delivered some incredible products in the last decade - Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Silicon, all impressive. Prices for some entry-level devices have stayed reasonable too. I get it.
But my gripe isn’t just about incremental updates or cost. It’s about the spirit of innovation. The Apple of Jobs’ prime didn’t just tweak existing products - it created new categories. iPod, iPhone, iPad - all market-defining devices that made people gasp and rethink technology.
The last ten years? VisionPro is really the only headline innovation, and let's be honest, the VisionPro audience is… very small. AirPods and Apple Watch are great, but they feel more like extensions of existing categories, not earth-shaking new products.
And yes, devices today are arguably the best they’ve ever been, polished and mostly reliable. But polish isn’t passion. Incremental improvements aren’t jaw-dropping innovation. There’s a difference between good tech and iconic tech, and it feels like Apple’s teetering more on the former lately.
I still love Apple. But these days.. it feels like Apple’s just polishing yesterday’s brilliance instead of daring to create tomorrow’s
Putting words in bold doesn't make them more real or persuasive. The "spirit of innovation" is just weasel words. Apple Silicon creates the best CPUs for computers, tablets and phones in the world. It's not even close.
I don't disagree with many sentiments in your thread, but it's an awful hard task to expect Apple (or any company) to keep repeating a certain innovation level back from a time when Apple capitalized on exploiting all the low hanging fruit that everyone else overlooked (or nobody else could visualize how to improve) for decades...resulting in breathtaking results at the time.
In the 90's to 00's, Steve/Apple revolutionized things that were, frankly, sloppy and inconsistent across the board. Ripe for the pickins...
Hardware & software interfaces...marketing...packaging and the unboxing experience... the shopping/buying experience...keynotes...etc... Virtual reinventions of computers, music players, and phones...which opened to the "aha" of blowing up the phone size into another innovation, the iPad.
It's awfully difficult to schedule Innovation/inventions.
And it's awfully risky to keep polishing something that's rather polished in the pursuit of "Innovation" in the form of something breathtakingly new or different (iOS7...Liquid Glass...butterfly keyboard...touchbar MacBooks...port reductions...trashcan Mac...)
I think the real critique should be: Don't sacrifice the basics (quality, consistency, intuitiveness, and the overall user experience) and don't force change for the sake of change.
But also, keep refining your innovations in the direction of "innovative refinements" like: Apple silicon...AirPods...a health/sports/training computer for your wrist (I feel the Apple Watch is way more a wrist computer than a watch lol)...the Mac Mini which to me is still the deal of the century IMHO.
Any murmurs by consumers away from "it just works" but towards "why is it this way" is a great indicator of Innovation gone bad, and IMHO there's been a lot more "why is it this way" than "it just works" over the past 10-15 years....
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It will be truly innovative if they make the next keynote entirely with AI including a virtual CEO 😂
iPhone 17 is crushing sales targets and that means nothing is going to change for the better, at least short term. People have to vote with their dollar. I did. My Pixel 10 Pro feels so much faster than my 16 PM (mostly because iOS animations are soooo slow), has a clean, consistent look across apps, is super stable, is super customizable, and does everything with less taps. Windows 11 for games, but I still have an iPad for comics/ebooks and an Apple TV... and that's it.
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I agree with this. Unfortunately, people seem to actually want change for the sake of change. Otherwise “Apple is boring”.
Most sadly, those "people" includes short-sighted (IMHO) marketing, design, and engineering leaders who need something new to market, design, or engineer and can't recognize the downside of polishing a polished stone so much that it just turns into ghastly and completely unnecessary plastic surgery.
Whilst I mostly agree with the sentiments, it’s also important to take a step back and actually remember that the Jobs era wasn’t flourishing with perfection.
Apple still made products and let certain ones languish, and made crazy decisions at times that had us scratching our heads. I think the issue is less to do with passion and more to do with market-driven decisions. Apple’s willing to sell the bare minimum until it can no longer afford to, which is evident with iPhone and iPad - because those devices are mature.
Apple still made products and let certain ones languish, and made crazy decisions at times that had us scratching our heads. I think the issue is less to do with passion and more to do with market-driven decisions. Apple’s willing to sell the bare minimum until it can no longer afford to, which is evident with iPhone and iPad - because those devices are mature.
personally I find the products more quality now than even 25 years ago when I started. All my apple stuff lasts and works great and I really don't have any issues. I don't notice any bugs in iOS26 or Tahoe. they've worked more solid than ever for me. You can still email Tim Cook and get help the same way. The one recent issue I had was with a Vision Pro cable and I emailed Tim Cook and his team hooked me up with a whole new battery and cable and followed up a lot to make sure I was happy. I miss Steve for the innovation but I don't have a prob with the rest of the company. It's wild that you now can buy a Mac mini for $499 that could easily last you for 4 years of college. In my day I had to spend $2500+ for a machine that was pretty damn sluggish a couple Years in. the one place they really screw people is storage and memory. those costs are absurd but thankfully external storage is better than it ever was
Well, the most important part of any product is getting it to consumers. Doesn’t matter how amazing it is if you can’t get enough of them into the hands of folks that want them.
They may not need it but they’ll still be exposed to it. Should be a nice research paper for someone.
I saw an image of the many various iterations the Mac line went through before they had the tech and materials to make it what it is now. I can imagine there’s a lot of folks that are used to large changes like that just because that was reality in their formative years.
Uhh you totally skipped Apple Watch and AirPods. Also skipped Apple Silicon Macs.
You are correct, as in, that’s the apparent direction Apple has gone in:
Apple said:
I just haven’t shifted to the “your desktop can seamlessly transition from desktop to screensaver” attitude. In other words, a thus far locked preference hasn’t tied those two together for me.
Yea for sure. That world is basically linux only. I only recently switched to mac (well now its been about a decade) so my taste for games has gravitated towards whats available on the platform. Thankfully I love simulation games and building games (Cities Skylines, The Sims, Frostpunk, Tropico) and all are cross platform on mac. Thankfully some Microsoft games I love like Halo and Age of Empires runs great with CrossPlay even for online multiplayer.
I didn’t skip them. I just don’t put them in the same category as industry-changing innovation.
They’re great products, absolutely, but they’re evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Smartwatches have been around since the mid 90s. Apple refined the idea better than anyone, but they didn’t invent the category.
AirPods are brilliant, but wireless earphones have existed since the early 2000s. Apple perfected them - they didn’t pioneer them.
Apple Silicon is a huge leap in efficiency and performance, no argument there. But SoC architecture has been around since the 1970s. Again, impressive evolution, not the kind of once in a generation disruption Apple was known for under Steve.
That’s really the point - Apple today is refining existing ideas at an extremely high level. The Steve-era Apple was introducing things we’d never seen before. The energy has shifted from “Here’s something new” to “Here’s something better.”
Okay. Well with that same logic foldable phones are not innovative either. To me it’s just an evolution of what we have seen with the likes of Nintendo DS.
Name a company that has been innovative in the last few decades then?
What’s sad is that everything else is worse. Apple isn’t perfect, but Windows will never be as good as macOS, and Android will never be as good as iOS, because they’re philosophically different. Apple designs around the user experience, and the others design around utility, with experience as an afterthought
If an Apple product can do what you need to do, the Apple ecosystem is a more pleasant place to spend your digital time
Sometimes change for the sake of change is okay, things do get stale and go in and out of fashion. They would lose market share if they changed too little, especially in the younger demographic that sees 3-5 years as an eternity, and those are the users it’s most important to maintain and turn into life-long Apple-heads
I wish Apple would update their phone designs more frequently than they do just to keep things fresh. At least give us new and exciting colors every year, and changing back and forth to and from round edges every couple years so those that like one or the other can upgrade during that cycle. I can’t be the only one that likes round edges, right?
When it comes to hardware at least, not everyone will like every design or color, but if they change it more often they’re more likely to come out with something you do like when it’s time to upgrade. I wasn’t able to hold out from the iPhone 11 Pro to the Air, and ended up with a 14 in between that I didn’t really care for due to the square edges. They stuck with square for far too long…
Foldables aren’t revolutionary either - I agree with you there. They’re clever engineering, but the core idea has existed in portable gaming and dual-screen devices for decades. Most “innovation” in phones lately is just bending, shrinking, or rearranging glass.
And that’s exactly the point: true category-defining innovation is rare, and Apple used to be one of the few companies consistently doing it.
If we’re talking about companies that genuinely shifted the entire tech landscape in the last few decades, the list is small, but it exists:
• Apple (pre-2015 era) with iPod, iPhone, App Store, iPad.
• Tesla making electric cars mainstream and forcing the entire auto industry to pivot.
• SpaceX normalising reusable rockets.
• Nvidia with GPU compute and AI acceleration.
• OpenAI kicking off the modern AI wave.
• Sony with PlayStation VR and console innovations.
• Amazon with AWS.
None are perfect, some are hit-and-miss, but they’ve all done something that didn’t exist before and changed entire industries.
That’s the level I’m talking about when I say “innovation.” Not just improving an idea - creating a new lane altogether.
I was about to say the same thing, but we should distinguish between Facebook, with its "algorithm" that is shoving propaganda, adverts, and generally things you didn't sign up for in your face, and this forum, which is simply a message board.
And yet….. here you are….. on an Apple Rumors forum.
Why would someone who hates the brand so much stick around?
Hmmmm 🤔🤔🤔🤔
Every single one of those points you made in your OP is so true.
In terms of innovation and user-friendliness, Tim Cook is the worst thing to ever happen to Apple. Steve Jobs served the insterests of customers. Cook serves the interests of shareholders.
Apple's software would've been much better if Cook hadn't fired Scott Forstall in 2012. Forstall was the closest thing Apple had to another Jobs, and Cook didn't care.
Whenever I buy a new Apple product these days, I do so unenthusiastically. I begrudgingly purchase them when I feel like I have no better choice. That wasn't the case when Jobs was CEO. At that time, I felt an enthusiasm about every purchase, knowing that although I disliked Apple's premium pricing, I would be getting value for my money, and their products would be reliable and user-friendly, and even fun to use.
There's no more fun now. The fun had a lot to do with the playfulness of the skeuomorphic design that Apple started in 1983 with the Apple Lisa. Cook allowed Jony Ive to completely eradicate skeuomorphism and replace it with flat design, which looks as dull as MS-DOS in some regards. Where's the playfulness of DOS?
The only reason I will still be using Apple computers and smartphones in five years is because, although macOS and iOS are both now are buggy and user-unfriendly messes, Windows and Android are even worse by a significant margin. Also, while Apple now is a highly unethical company, Microsoft and Google are more unethical by a significant margin. So Apple is evil, but it's the lesser of the three evils.
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