I'm so old I remember people calling Apple insane for ever making the $10k Lisa.
Whatever I first thought about that back then, I realized not much later that the idea was insanely great. When I first booted my own Mac 512k, I knew I'd left the world of DOS-based machines behind forever, at least for my personal computing requirements. I think I had one Toshiba laptop after that for awhile, mostly because I liked its keyboard.
Apple's had a lot of insanely great ideas, and some of them have been realized in great --even if sometimes late-- fashion, with meticulous attention to detail in hardware and software. As both have become more complex, and as Apple has expanded its product lines, and as more consumers have become more used to never looking under the hood of anything, it's probably natural enough that old timers can become alarmed at the appearance of seemingly more physical-function flaws on Apple rollouts, more updates "to enhance stability" and so forth.
Trying to look at Apple fairly, it's quite hard for me to know whether there has been an overall decline in "quality" or not. We ask so much more (and are given so much more ) than used to be the case with technological offerings no matter the manufacturer or type of gear.
As far as design related to human interface with our gear, I don't really think Apple can be faulted except that there are those of us who sometimes do tire of the metal metal metal -- but then what would the case manufacturers do for a living?
I welcomed the 5C for a break from all that aluminum but then embraced the SE when it came out. I cop to being one of those who mourned the passing of the G4 notebooks. But then I loved my blackjack Macbook and to me now the 13" mid-2012 refurbs I bought awhile back seem as solid as the 12" G4s I used for so long.The software is an issue for me now though. It's about what we can do with gear and not just about what the gear looks like or its other physical attributes. I'm talking about what I regard as a deplorable shift away from the OS as truly and intentionally distinct from iOS. Every time another iTunes version comes out I expect now to see another feature removed or made less obviously still available. There was a time you could do almost anything with iTunes in terms of playlists and manipulation of playlist content. Now some of that is more of a challenge, not apparent, or not even possible. Why? Only reason I can think of is you wouldn't expect to be able to do it on an iPhone... and so I do find that trend alarming. Unlike some others I don't at all mind the continued incorporation of Store and Apple Music options within iTunes. I just don't like the ongoing reduction of content handling options in the library part of the application.
One more thing about software: I think it was a mistake to make the OS upgrades "free". The same as it was a mistake for our once great newspapers ever to make them "free". It's almost criminal how we've led younger generations to expect insanely great anything for nothing.
You may not get what you pay for when there's a nonzero pricetag on something, but you definitely degrade the very idea of quality when the artisans who create something see their work "sold" for nothing, regardless if they are actually paid well but by shifting that cost elsewhere. There's a downward tilt there in expectations and in morale as well, and we're seeing the effect everywhere.
That paragraph was not meant to be about H1B visas since among other things that would make the post political and land it in another forum. That paragraph was about not misleading people who think because something is free it's easy or simple, and worth about as much as we're asked to pay. That's not the case with Apple's OS. It was always worth paying something for, in fact worth paying more for, and it's a shame we no longer acknowledge that directly, in my opinion.
