Yeah, like that lie they told for decades about how “mac can’t get viruses!” they got sued in a class action lawsuit over that claim, which is why they don’t EXPLICITLY say it anymore.
Or how apple can yoink anything you install off your apple devices whenever they want?
Jobs was the fucking cracks. The reason why zoomers have no fucking idea where their files are on their computer are because of the shitty attitude instilled into iphones/ipods.
He started the entire fucking enshittification trend and everyone ate his asshole like peaches.
I agree. I had to explain to a younger family member today that when I say “open notepad”, I meant the application that’s been on every Windows version since they were born, not to Google “notepad”
Gave me a crisis that people know so little of what would have been considered basic computer usage a while back.
If it makes you feel better I gave my 16 year old daughter a laptop with a fresh Debian install and she’s figuring out things on her own without asking for help. Customizing it and making it do what she wants.
I just thought she would watch YouTube videos on it and be content. Instead she’s talking about the nuance of installing programs on it, and how different it is from Windows.
It really is like that, the average people will get so much dumber but the kids who are interested is going to get much much crazier than the older dudes simply because of the abundance of information when they started. I still remember using magazines for guides.
You can extend this argument to saying everyone should master the command line. They’re all interfaces. There’s no “right way” to use a computer.
Jobs turned the computer into a product used by everyday people who don’t give a shit about how it works, and that’s fine. That’s empowering because it lowers the barrier to entry.
That said, we’ve been in a much worse “eternal September” since the iPhone shipped.
Can you expand a bit more on this? What makes it not an interface?
I am an android and windows person (would switch to Linux in a heartbeat if my CAD worked on there) and pretty tech savvy, even run my own servers. So I hate the fact that things are getting so dumbed down but I can’t understand why it’s just an interface would be not true.
A good interface has well defined inputs and outputs. A lot of interactions with iOS/MacOS software/applications have decently defined inputs via their UIs, but finding the outputs of those UIs can be a Sysiphysian effort. Figuring out where those outputs are beyond the defaults like “downloads from a browser end up in the Downloads folder” or “documents saved in the Pages app end up in the Documents” folder is frequently non-trivial.
It ends up being that the easiest way to find a file is to just open the original app you created it in, and find it in it’s history or whatever. To a non-technical person, this creates the impression that the only way to interact with those files is with the original app it was created in, which ends up limiting what people think they can do with their devices, and creates a bit of a walled garden effect.
So I suppose that the blanket statement of “it’s not an interface” isn’t completely fair. What is fair though, is to say that “it’s a bad interface”, if the average user can’t readily find said interface’s output.
I think I understand what you mean now, if it was an interface then it should be possible to use a separate but similar interface to access the output but here there is only one non-PITA way. Eg. If there was a competing galleries app on iOS it should be able to see all the photos. Is that roughly the thinking? Makes sense to me and thanks for taking the time to type that out.
yep, zalgotext basically did it for me. One other thing is that when you try to access files on an ipod through a non apple computer, it still uses tree based file structures, but the individual files, names, and locations are all garbled (eg : your Rancid album track 3 is in the same folder as your rush 2112 overture, but the rest of those albums are fuck knows where).
I had a joke that the original iphone wasn’t turing complete because you couldn’t run programs on it not from the istore.
Your files are in a magic place, directories don’t actually exist they’re a hierarchy we developed to meet the traditional concepts of a 20th century office. Tags and searching are just as valid.
Yes but under the hood, IOS is using a filesystem. Hiding helpful details is not the same as simply being a different way to use a computer. One actively makes the computer harder to use.
Though I agree with you partially there, I still think there should be options for users to access their data easily. Last time I tried getting my chat backups out of an iPhone was a nightmare
I can remember where I put shit faster and more easily than I can remember arbitrary names, tags, or my own typos. But if you put all the documents in a fucking folder I can find that AND IT CAN STILL BE TAGGED AND SEACHED FOR. The problem comes from business environments using technology that isn’t a fucking iPhone and then I’m having to teach a 25 year old how to use a USB drive. And that’s not an exaggeration, I literally had to do that today.
Apple managed to capture lightning in a bottle, twice. First by making a better Walkman, and then again by making that device a phone with internet access. They were able to leverage that success to revitalize their computer hardware business and act as a platform for selling accessories, and all of that made them very successful.
But the stock market doesn’t care about past success, it cares about growth, and without a major new, or buzz worthy product, investors might start to turn against Apple. Problem is, they have ridden the iPod horse about as far as it can go. They tried putting wheels on it, but that failed, and the jury is still out on whether tying one to your face will work out or not.
Yeah, but investors really don’t care about the price of a stock, they care about how much the price moves once they own it.
It’s the inherent problem with publicly owned companies. Even if you perfected a mode of profit, unless you improve upon perfection next quarter you’re in hot shit.
You can only squeeze so much profit out of any one gimmick, after that the only way to mimic growth is by cutting labour costs, and eventually diverting investment funding into profit for shareholders.
Not necessarily. Investors also care about dividends. Those tend to be the people who hold on long term. Blue chips, as a class of stock, are all about companies that don’t make big moves in price and pay out in dividends. They’re older companies that have built their product line, and while they still do R&D on new ones, they only do that to make sure they don’t get left behind.
Apple made it better. There is innovation in execution (whether they “invented” things or not) and that is what Apple does. It’s why Blackberries are things of the past.
Yep. Doesn’t matter how healthy or stable a company is… when infinite growth is no longer feasible, investors would rather pick the bones clean than let it be.
Why does a company that has already achieved it’s success need investment? When company potential is how we value society, this is an inevitable end result.
big part of apple’s success is that it successfully establishes itself as a status symbol - it is for a lot of people what car was for generation of their parents and grandparents.
so there will definitely be a clientele for that two times expensive whatever. some people will buy it just to show others they can afford it, same reason why people were buying overpriced cars.
Idk, more and more people are switching to mac and ditching windows. If their m1 thing continues being successful they’re going to have a more severe monopoly than Microsoft ever did. It’s one thing to patch Microsoft’s half ass attempts to embrace extend destroy Linux but that isn’t going to work out as well anymore once all the mainstream stuff is quarantined to an entire different cpu architecture and computers that no longer use off the shelf parts.
Luckily the only software they really have right now that Linux doesn’t is that s tier video editor and then no one wants to use their stupid Metal graphic acceleration so games are going to have a hard time taking off as well. Too bad most people think “command lines are too hard”.
The common person is going to lose access to computers as we know them today if Apple wins. If it gets to the point where the only modem mainstream systems left are M1 macs, everything computer related is going to get 10x as expensive. $1000 for a potato ass MacBook Air is already obnoxious but when that’s the only choice, that potato ass MacBook Air is going to cost $10k.
It’s shocking how bad the competition is in the laptop space. There are good options, but none of them have the great battery life, great screen, performance, and good trackpad all in one device. The margins being so low probably don’t help the situation. Developing for Windows native is meh edging on bad, so most apps these days are written in Electron or Qt and available on whatever other platform you use. The ship won’t sink because of Windows, it’ll sink because people aren’t buying the hardware that has Windows.
Idk if I agree with this. I feel like 1000 goes further for a Mac than 1000 on on an equivalent PC, least as far as user experience goes. Windows arm isn’t there yet as far as support from vendors goes. With apple everyone hopped on the train fast , it was a smooth transition for average workflows. It will be faster and/or more efficient. They certainly have their problems , mainly the base storage , and display limitations but at least they’re fixing the latter of the two.
Not everyone wants to navigate a computer with a terminal. Hell , apple silicon Mac’s have outperformed Mac’s that cost 3 times the amount. I think you overestimate the need of a more powerful laptop in that space. The real difference is that Mac has N AppStore and large enough dev base that unless it’s some obscure windows specific software or games , the app likely exists on Mac. Word , Spotify , adobe adobe apps , he’ll even epic has software coming to Macs for hospitals.
If the price just gets so absurd , the common person will just use cheaper and or older alternatives. But it’s not like apple hasn’t been competing in the mid to low range for iPhones. M1 Mac’s are still excellent deals to buy 3 years later and eventually they can offer Macs at a lower price point. They aren’t stupid enough to isolate the common man when other options will always exist
I can’t see how that’s ever arguable since Apple has only been about premium high-end products since Jobs took over. That’s literally the opposite of Henry Ford.
Jobs’ vision was fundamentally to make technology accessible to the masses.
Bullshit, maybe Woz had that, but Jobs? No way! His goal right from the Apple II was clearly to make money, and maximize it by controlling the tech instead of setting it free.
Already with Macintosh it was a “walled garden”, with many closed aspects to secure Apple had control. With iPhone it became even worse, and has NOTHING to do with making tech accessible, on the contrary. He made it easy because there’s money in that, he didn’t make it accessible, the price structure alone makes that an obviously false statement.
Jobs had an eye for design, but to call it that he wanted to make it accessible, is like arguing a fashion designer makes expensive designer clothes to make it accessible to people.
The fact that people associate Apple’s early history with Steve Jobs is sad. There were so many extremely talented people who did amazing work. Woz, Bill Atkinson, and Susan Kare are a lot more important. In a lot of ways Jobs just got in the way.
No. If you make money from ads your clients are the adversers and your readers are an asset you seek to capitalize. That is in opposition to journalistic integrity.
In opposition to popular sentiment, good journalism actually does make money. It just doesn’t make as much money. And bad journalism without advertising makes no money.
I’m not saying they aren’t allowed to show ads, but I am saying that once they do, they are no longer allowed to refer to themselves as independent.
No company that wants to advertise on your website is stupid enough to sign away editorial control, i.e. once you agree to display their ads, you are no longer allowed to say anything bad about them. And even if they did, there’s still the looming risk that if you do, they are well within their rights to pull their ads and there goes your income.
If you’re going to show ads, be honest to your readers about what that means.
Either you pay for access like the good old newspaper by gatekeeping the page or run unrelated ads from google AdWords and get paid by people clicking on them.
They said “they’re probably one of those privacy weirdos”, which is different.
I value privacy and am conscious of it, more so than the average user. I choose, willingly and knowingly, to use certain services that damage my privacy in exchange for their services.
The “privacy weirdos” are the people who see that statement and go “well you shouldn’t ever be using service x because it’s not secure you stupid dipshit! Just use service y, it’s FOSS and has half the features but it respects privacy so it’s better in every way!”
Dunno how the person got “I’m a privacy nut” from “ads aren’t good for journalism” tho, that doesn’t track
I mean, for some of the stuff I’ve seen here I wouldn’t even necessarily disagree with a comment like this but the OP saying advertising violates journalistic integrity has literally nothing to do with that. That’s just common sense.
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
Boeing’s stock kept rising in the last 10 years, because they were sacrificing what they should be doing for shareholder value. Stock price alone is not a good metric for companies.
I think in one of his autobiographies he was claiming that he self educated how to build rockets from some books and I wonder how much of this is true and how much is coming from his ego.
Even if we think about commerce and popularization stuff - people like Bill Joy or James Clark or many other names are much cooler than this particular salesman.
and found it funny that his own bullshit killed him in the end
Which is also what all those people credit him for, the kind of thinking that gets you killed by choosing “alternative medicine” over science. Apple devices make that seem to be a valid approach to the world.
Jobs basically had one job - be the screaming obnoxious asshole in charge who harangued the engineers until they came up with something to his liking. And then took the credit when they did. Basically just the Elon Musk of his day.
“I’m vegan! I don’t need to shower! I don’t produce mucus or smell because of my superior diet. Brb I’m gonna go wash my feet in the toilet!” -Steve Jobs
Except I can look at Jobs’ history and see an actual progression in technology. With Musk there is literally nothing but nonsensical hyped up promises.
I think we can give Musk credit for progressing technology - electric cars & space rocketry and some other things. But he is also an incredible asshole, has little regard for the people who work for him, has no inner filter and has some incredibly stupid hot takes.
Except he didn’t. Jobs progressed technology by essentially bullying engineers into making it a reality. Musk didn’t even put that effort in. He bought companies that were already doing these things
I think that is disingenuous. It’s clear Musk has been a driving force in Tesla and to a lesser extent in SpaceX and Starlink. And while I hate the guy with a passion and think he is a massive prick who is an awful boss and who takes credit for other’s work, I have no doubt that if not for him EVs wouldn’t be a mainstream technology they are today. Just like with Apple and smart phones, Tesla did not invent the electric car but they made the first cars people actually wanted to buy.
Im not praising musk, and i really think he fucked up his lead on twitter and tesla, but he is very much similar to jobs. Neither musk nor jobs have done really any of the engineering work, but both have had their hands in some pretty remarkable tech. Musk with paypal, spacex, tesla. Again, im not saying hes a good engineer, he hasnt done anything, but to discredit those companies is unfair.
Why can’t you make the same argument for that dick hole musk? Neither one has any engineering capabilities, and were a non-technical figurehead overseeing people with the actual talents making the technology better.
Jobs may have had an actual design element of input that I doubt musk has, but neither one of them actually improved technology; they have smarter people working for them that can do it. That’s especially true of Jobs with Woz, one of the actual people who improved technology at apple.
I mean, certainly he gets more credit than deserved. But I find it hard to deny the major impact he had. When he was hired back as CEO in the late 90s, Apple already had talented engineers, but there was no coherence or direction in what they were working on, and the next gen OS was never going to happen. Back then, CEO Michael Dell was asked what he’d do if he were in charge of Apple and he said he’d shut it down. Apple was a punching bag in the industry.
Jobs immediately made radical changes at the company, eliminating most of their product line which was superfluous and confusing, shutting down software projects that were “neat” but didn’t fit into a vision, putting them on the path to release OS X (which his company had envisioned and developed the basis for while he was away from Apple), changing their marketing strategy, making the most clear-cut product line I’d ever seen, and turning conference keynotes into must-see TV. And in addition to that he pushed Apple towards the iMac, the iPod and the music store, and the iPhone.
It took amazing engineers and a lot of work and pain to actually deliver these products. And Jobs does get more credit than deserved. But I think he does deserve a whole lot of credit.
The amount of credit people give Steve Jobs is such a kick to the nuts to all the engineers that designed those products
Try to lead an engineering team and make them all pull the same way and create a high quality, cohesive offering. It’s not as simple as you think. Good engineers should be recognized, but so should actual good leadership and technical vision. Steve’s visions may not always have been hits (and he often struggled with pricing) but it’s undeniable he had vision.
Im not gonna sit here and shill for people like job and musk. But i have to say there is somethkng to be said about steering a ship in the right direction.
Jobs knew how to market the products, and steer the engineers in the right direction.
One thing he always said was that there only needed to be one iphone and one ipad. I recall that the with the ipad he said it was the perfect size and didn’t need alternatives or it would become less functional.
Then he died and the ipad mini was released, as well as the iphone 5c.
In 2012, the year following the iphone 5c and the year of the ipad mini apple lost its global market lead to android.
They diluted the product and confused the market of loyalists and general consumers by releasing multiple versions of their main product and if you ask me, thats when the cracks started to show.
Apple havent had a majority of the global market share for years now.
I think what Jobs really understood was that in a world of Ford, people crave a Ferrari.
Making the best be beautiful and accessible is hard, but you do it through focus and intentionality. Jobs, despite his many, many faults did that well.
I listened to an interview with Scott Forestall several years back and he discusses the meeting he was in where Steve Jobs basically gave them the idea for the iPhone. He had seen the multi-touch displays, initially just used for very large displays, and also was seeing mobile phones take off at the same time. He was the one who put those two together and told the team to work on it. Sure, the product managers and designers came up with the details of the product and engineers figured out the tech to support it, but without that initial idea and leadership’s support to expend resources on building it, it may not have happened.
There are a lot of companies with bad uninspiring leadership that just ship what everyone else is shipping. Apple under Steve Jobs was trying to innovate.
TL;DR: Wahhh apple isn’t jamming enough AI crap in their products.
Jobs was once asked about what helped to set Apple apart from other companies. In response, he spoke of his fondness of a quote from ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky who once said what set him apart as an ice hockey player is that “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
Yet this is exactly where Apple finds itself right now, especially in relation to generative AI. While it is true Apple has long integrated AI technologies into the iPhone and its other devices in the form of features like computational photography and Siri, it has also trailed in these areas as well.
Google, conversely, AI from the start, making it a centerpiece of its Pixel smartphone strategy from the moment the original Pixel device shipped over 8 years ago with Google Assistant its heart coupled with computational photography chops. It has been focused on bringing useful and advanced (non-generative) AI-based features to users on a much broader scale than Apple, such as Call Screening, Google Lens, Top Shot, Smart Compose, among many others.
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