5 ms·

I hate to say it, but I agree. The commercials aren't the only red flag for me. The recent releases (MacBook Pro Retina, Mountain Lion, rumored iPhone 5, iOS6

by jaems33 14y ago

I hate to say it, but I agree. The commercials aren't the only red flag for me. The recent releases (MacBook Pro Retina, Mountain Lion, rumored iPhone 5, iOS6) haven't thrilled me at all and I have been looking forward to the MBPR and iPhone5 for a long time.

masklinn 14y ago
That sounds like a decision looking for a justification. You weren't supposed to be thrilled by ML just as you weren't supposed to be thrilled by SL. Were you thrilled by Lion? I was not, I still consider it a huge pile of shit. Hell, I'm way more thrilled about ML because SceneKit, that may make me put my trusty SL to rest, it's got way more potential than fucking skeumorphic iCal or "linen all the things" (which I see in the line of the old stripes, that's going to age just as nicely and in 5 years everybody will agree it was a moronic idea). MBPR, if you were looking forward to it I fail to see why you wouldn't be thrilled by it, it's the biggest (positive) change in Apple's laptops since the 2nd gen Air. As for iOS 6, how is it any more underwhelming than iOS 5? Remember when you were thrilled about the "deep twitter integration"? Or that Apple had finally added a notification system which didn't blow goats? Yeah me neither. As to the ads... all the Siri ads I've seen so far make me facepalm.
- wonderyak 14y ago
  Just because I think it needs to be said - I, for one, was thrilled with Snow Leopard. I think it is the best OSX version by far and away.
  - danudey 14y ago
    Agreed. Snow Leopard was a great product, and it was worth every penny. Lion had a lot of new features and groundwork that made it worth the upgrade as well. Now, though, the trend seems to be 'incremental improvements and a few new features', and I'm ok with that.
  - masklinn 14y ago
    Oh I do think it's the best OSX version yet, I just wasn't thrilled when they announced. There was little thrilling about it (aside from the new bugs of 10.6.0, and the dropping of PPC). The most major "features" (to me) were Finder, Time Machine and Spotlight sucking significantly less, that Quicktime X existed, and the 64b kernel.
  - mhenr18 14y ago
    Snow Leopard's not that great. Lion (and now Mountain Lion) runs faster on my mid-2010 baseline MBP than SL ever did. Snow Leopard's UI was way too colourful and the Aqua scrollbars were far too big and look really dated. It wasted pixels on scrollbars and that stupid resize widget (thank fuck Apple finally stole something useful out of Windows) which made your windows look really tacky. Natural scrolling feels a lot nicer than the old-style scrolling, even on my old school mouse with a clicking scroll wheel. Quick Look doesn't suck (in both UI and functionality - persistent QL is amazing). You're limited to OpenGL 2.1 (you won't see games for SL now that GL 3.2 goes back to the previous version of OSX. GL 2.1 can go and die and that's a sentiment a lot of developers share). The entire system's a lot more subtle in appearance and IMO it's visually a lot cleaner. Don't be surprised by people appreciating the Lion features a lot more now that Mountain Lion's out and devs can finally drop support for SL.
    - pja 14y ago
      Oo. If we're going to UI nitpick, then I'll just add that having updated to Mountain Lion straight from Snow leopard, the new low contrast UI widgets are driving me up the wall. I just can't tell whether a UI element is active or not because everything is "pale grey" or "slightly darker grey". UI designers everywhere must be having fits. The glacial Spaces transitions when you use ctrl^<- or ctrl^-> are excruciating but will hopefully be fixed at some point: I think that's just an oversight.
      - gurkendoktor 14y ago
        > I think that's just an oversight. ...that has been ignored for a year and counting. :(
- Caballera 14y ago
  I just watched the new Apple ads and think they are fun. I don't feel they were directed at me. But I do feel for non-Apple and non-tech people they could raise the question, who are these Geniuses and perhaps they'll look deeper into it and visit a Apple Store.
jonursenbach 14y ago
Keep in mind that the products you mentioned have been in development long before Jobs passed away, so his passing shouldn't have had any effect on them. Wait a few years when Jobs' product roadmap runs out and we'll see what they're doing and if it's still up to snuff.
- aggie 14y ago
  Jobs was visionary, not clairvoyant. I'm sure he did everything he could to keep Apple on his track as long as possible, but there's only so much that can be planned years in advance. I imagine Tim Cook was groomed as a Jobs zombie of sorts. He's an manufacturing/operations guy, not a creative product manager. Eventually Jobs' roadmap will run its course and Tim Cook will be replaced or exposed as an automaton. It seems to be showing already.
  - hyperbovine 14y ago
    Jon Ive?
aprendo 14y ago
The rMBP, widely hailed as the best Mac since forever? You seem to be the only person on the planet disappointed by it (besides people disappointed in the glued-in battery – but that’s nothing new). Besides, there are a few years to go until we run out of Steve Jobs products. (I think this whole discussion is utterly pointless at this point. Look at Apple’s stock in ten years and you will know the impact of Jobs. I have my doubts that it will be possible to say much meaningful now.)
- Retric 14y ago
  I hate the rMBP. Apple calls it an 'PRO' laptop but it's basically just an 'AIR' with a higher resolution display. It's got no optical drive so you can't swap in an extra HDD while keeping the SSD for the OS / programs. It's limited to 8 or 16GB of ram and you can't upgrade it after the fact. It's also got way to few connectors no HDMI/DVI or even VGA. At the same time they also killed of the old MB line entirely.
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    You prefer the presence of an optical drive so you can tear it out and then put in a mechanical HDD? The product you want is called a MacBook Pro and it is currently for sale in any configuration your heart desires. While we're on it, the rMBP has a native HDMI port and a variety of inexpensive adapters that will keep your VGA workflows going. And while we're hammering it into paste, please name one feature on the now discontinued MacBook line that you miss.
    - omgsean 14y ago
      On the old white MacBooks I personally liked the yellowing underneath where my wrists sat. It said to the world "hey, this guy is spending WAY too much time online and may have some hygiene issues he needs to work out."
      - jpxxx 14y ago
        Guh, those were some of the absolute shittiest portables Apple ever put out. Even after the discoloring plasticizers were worked out, almost every single one of them saw the topcase flake and crack in normal use. Performance was poor out of the box, the screens were garbage, and the bottom looked bad after only moderate use.
pizza 14y ago
The trend could just be a fluke. Only time will tell...
rimantas 14y ago
If I ask you what would they need to have to thrill you, would you be able to answer? Built in toaster? Cure for cancer? We don't expect luxury cars to thrill us, why do we need that from electronics? It's a sign of maturity and I will take solid no-thrills product over gimmicky one any day.
Macha 14y ago
The rMBP was the first Mac that I would seriously consider buying for myself. I haven't, because I can't afford to buy a new laptop just because a shiny new one came out, but if I had been looking for a laptop at that time, I would have bought it. A couple of my non-Apple using tech friends had the same opinion. Then again, I'm not exactly Apple's core customer base, as I have no love for OS X and would probably have just installed Windows (for gaming) and Linux on it, but it's the first time in years where their computer hardware has distinguished itself, rather than selling on the basis of the OS.
grecy 14y ago
> The MacBook Pro Retina haven't thrilled me at all and I have been looking forward to the MBPR for a long time. Wow, you have some high expectations. What exactly were you looking for?
- radley 14y ago
  The RMBP is fine as long as your focus is text, so it's great for programmers & business people. But Mac has been the mainstay of graphic designers who predominantly use Creative Suite, and the RMBP is quite useless without a 2nd, non-retina monitor.
  - grecy 14y ago
    > nd the RMBP is quite useless without a 2nd, non-retina monitor. And how would you have a laptop manufacturer who designs a super-high res display to get around this problem?
    - radley 14y ago
      Probably by not starting a war with your core partner? Apple had time to get Apple apps like FCP & Aperture up to spec - they could have prepared Adobe similarly. FWIW, I'll admit it may not have mattered. Adobe is slowest moving ship that's still relevant. But "Photoshop will be ready soon" and no delivery date show Apple and Adobe to be out of touch their old base.
      - grecy 14y ago
        So you're complaining that the rMBP doesn't thrill you because Adobe's software has not been upgraded to take advantage of the retina display yet? You must think the Tesla is non-thrilling because there are not yet ubiquitous charging stations. You must think 4G handsets are non-thrilling because there is not yet enough 4G coverage. You must think Thunderbolt is non-thrilling because there are not yet enough devices that support it. To summarize, you think something is not "thrilling" because the world at large is not ready for it yet. This "keep doing what we've always done" approach really bugs me, and is not a good way to think if you have any interest in progressing and actually making anything better.
achompas 14y ago
> The recent releases (MacBook Pro Retina, Mountain Lion, rumored iPhone 5, iOS6) haven't thrilled me at all and I have been looking forward to the MBPR and iPhone5 for a long time. All of these have been released so recently (less than a year since Jobs passed away) that it's likely he played a large part in their design. Further, you're talking about (1) a 15" laptop that beats almost everything else on the market, (2) a minor version bump of OS X, and (3 & 4) two products that haven't been released yet. I'm as interested in Apple, post-Jobs as everyone else, but the arguments I've seen so far look too forced. The true test will occur over the next 2-3 years--not just the last 9 months. EDIT: I like snowwrestler's point: this is all "hindsight bias." EDIT 2: I've fallen into this trap myself at some points, especially with some of these commercials. But these are just single data points. We shouldn't fall into the trap of overemphasizing single data points.
- taligent 14y ago
  Exactly. This is what makes this all so hilarious. Steve Jobs said himself that he was directly involved in the next 2-3 years worth of upcoming products. So "this would never have happened under Steve Jobs" can partly be blamed on him.
  - radley 14y ago
    Steve wasn't just the inspiration. He was also the guy who was more than willing to say "WTF is this? We can't release THAT! Fix IT!!" Without that you've got the contentment of the collective.
    - jasonlotito 14y ago
      > "WTF is this? We can't release THAT! Fix IT!!" But he was also the guy that missed in that regard multiple times as well. Sure, he might have stopped a lot from going wrong, but the stuff he didn't say "No" to quickly became a blight on the company.
      - mikecane 14y ago
huhtenberg 14y ago
It's not even that. Now that Jobs's gone turning iPad sideways with the taskbar open causes app icons to overlap. Sometimes, not always, but that's just the kind of "sloppy" that just didn't exist in Apple products a year ago. They are slipping. I will give them a couple of years tops before they are back at the average product polish levels.
- taligent 14y ago
  Always fascinating watching this kind of delusion in action. This complete rewriting of history so that every Apple product before Jobs death had some extraordinary level of perfection that somehow doesn't exist anymore. When in actual fact the quicker release cycles for Apple software is resulting in less bugs.
  - huhtenberg 14y ago
    Oh, it's irrational alright. No arguing there. However, while there might be now fewer bugs, there count of imperfections that lie on the surface and contribute to the spoiled first impression is on the climb.
- kalleboo 14y ago
  iOS has been super buggy ever since iOS 5. Has nothing to do with Jobs' death.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    IMO super buggy is an overstatement. Which bugs seriously affect you?
    - kalleboo 14y ago
      Just lots of small things. Keyboards that stick around. The backlight randomly sticking at full on or full off. Settings panels that crash (got better in the latest update) or don't refresh. Alarms that don't go off. Everything related to the App Store. Internet sharing drops randomly. iCloud has been a disaster since day one. iMessages that arrive twice.
brown9-2 14y ago
Seems unfair to judge Apple based on rumored specs for the "iPhone 5".
ruswick 14y ago
I agree that there isn't much that Apple has done lately that has been truly groundbreaking. The last time that I was really surprised by Apple was the iPhone 4. That said, it's totally unreasonable to assert that Apple is declining because Steve is gone simply because their products haven't "thrilled" you or because they ran a bad line of ads. The Retina MBP is an excellent machine with one of the best screens to ever be put on a consumer-grade device. It might not blow everyone's mind, but it is at least as interesting of a product as the scores of laptops that were put out under Steve. Mountain Lion isn't groundbreaking by design. It's an iteration on Lion, and so it's unreasonable to expect a massive amount of new features. The iPhone 5 and iOS6 haven't been released yet and in the case of the former the rumors are so vague and unsubstantiated that it's categorically ludicrous for you to pass judgement yet. Lastly, I have to ask why the amount of "thrill" that a product brings matters anyway. Most consumers don't want to be thrilled. They want to buy a computer, and that's it. Apple is successful not because they thrill people, but because they make good products. The Retina MBP and Mountain Lion are still good products. I think the biggest annoyance in the post-Jobs era is that every imperfect action that Apple does is automatically passed off as a result of Steve being gone. Steve wasn't perfect, either. We need only look to the iTunes phone, Ping or the button-less iPod Shuffle. Apple has never been perfect, and the post-Jobs era is no different.
- slovette 14y ago
  "I have to ask why the amount of "thrill" that a product brings matters anyway." Marketing. Hype and thrill, I would argue, is a direct result of Apple's financial position today. The everyday consumer doesn't understand the technical qualifications nor do they care. They want nice, shiny and new. Start with that and build a stable high-quality product to match and it could be candy canes you're selling, you're gonna be successful. Packaging is probably the most important part of a product. It entices thrill and envy, the very primitive emotion that makes you click the usually brightest button on the page: "Buy".
FreshCode 14y ago
It feels like someone inside Cupertino has been saying, "OK, it looks good!" more than they have been saying "No."
rdl 14y ago
While this may be against NDA, iOS 6 Beta is actually quite nice. If they can get real buy in from non-Apple iOS developers for iCloud, it will be a big win, but IMO it all comes down to iCloud (and probably the long term premium for the Apple ecosystem depends primarily on iCloud). The security features in ML were critically necessary to keep OSX viable for business and professional use. 10.7 is vastly less secure than a well managed corporate Win 7 machine, and maybe even worse out of the box. (Linux probably covers the whole range of less or more secure based on exact distribution and features, but isn't terribly relevant for desktops). Which made the Google no-windows policy from a few years ago pretty funny. ML is now at parity with Win 7 out of the box, but still probably weaker in an enterprise setting due to lack of management tools.

by jaems33 14y ago

masklinn 14y ago

That sounds like a decision looking for a justification. You weren't supposed to be thrilled by ML just as you weren't supposed to be thrilled by SL. Were you thrilled by Lion? I was not, I still consider it a huge pile of shit. Hell, I'm way more thrilled about ML because SceneKit, that may make me put my trusty SL to rest, it's got way more potential than fucking skeumorphic iCal or "linen all the things" (which I see in the line of the old stripes, that's going to age just as nicely and in 5 years everybody will agree it was a moronic idea). MBPR, if you were looking forward to it I fail to see why you wouldn't be thrilled by it, it's the biggest (positive) change in Apple's laptops since the 2nd gen Air. As for iOS 6, how is it any more underwhelming than iOS 5? Remember when you were thrilled about the "deep twitter integration"? Or that Apple had finally added a notification system which didn't blow goats? Yeah me neither. As to the ads... all the Siri ads I've seen so far make me facepalm.

wonderyak 14y ago
Just because I think it needs to be said - I, for one, was thrilled with Snow Leopard. I think it is the best OSX version by far and away.
- danudey 14y ago
  Agreed. Snow Leopard was a great product, and it was worth every penny. Lion had a lot of new features and groundwork that made it worth the upgrade as well. Now, though, the trend seems to be 'incremental improvements and a few new features', and I'm ok with that.
- masklinn 14y ago
  Oh I do think it's the best OSX version yet, I just wasn't thrilled when they announced. There was little thrilling about it (aside from the new bugs of 10.6.0, and the dropping of PPC). The most major "features" (to me) were Finder, Time Machine and Spotlight sucking significantly less, that Quicktime X existed, and the 64b kernel.
- mhenr18 14y ago
  Snow Leopard's not that great. Lion (and now Mountain Lion) runs faster on my mid-2010 baseline MBP than SL ever did. Snow Leopard's UI was way too colourful and the Aqua scrollbars were far too big and look really dated. It wasted pixels on scrollbars and that stupid resize widget (thank fuck Apple finally stole something useful out of Windows) which made your windows look really tacky. Natural scrolling feels a lot nicer than the old-style scrolling, even on my old school mouse with a clicking scroll wheel. Quick Look doesn't suck (in both UI and functionality - persistent QL is amazing). You're limited to OpenGL 2.1 (you won't see games for SL now that GL 3.2 goes back to the previous version of OSX. GL 2.1 can go and die and that's a sentiment a lot of developers share). The entire system's a lot more subtle in appearance and IMO it's visually a lot cleaner. Don't be surprised by people appreciating the Lion features a lot more now that Mountain Lion's out and devs can finally drop support for SL.
  - pja 14y ago
    Oo. If we're going to UI nitpick, then I'll just add that having updated to Mountain Lion straight from Snow leopard, the new low contrast UI widgets are driving me up the wall. I just can't tell whether a UI element is active or not because everything is "pale grey" or "slightly darker grey". UI designers everywhere must be having fits. The glacial Spaces transitions when you use ctrl^<- or ctrl^-> are excruciating but will hopefully be fixed at some point: I think that's just an oversight.
    - gurkendoktor 14y ago
      > I think that's just an oversight. ...that has been ignored for a year and counting. :(
Caballera 14y ago
I just watched the new Apple ads and think they are fun. I don't feel they were directed at me. But I do feel for non-Apple and non-tech people they could raise the question, who are these Geniuses and perhaps they'll look deeper into it and visit a Apple Store.

jonursenbach 14y ago

Keep in mind that the products you mentioned have been in development long before Jobs passed away, so his passing shouldn't have had any effect on them. Wait a few years when Jobs' product roadmap runs out and we'll see what they're doing and if it's still up to snuff.

aggie 14y ago
Jobs was visionary, not clairvoyant. I'm sure he did everything he could to keep Apple on his track as long as possible, but there's only so much that can be planned years in advance. I imagine Tim Cook was groomed as a Jobs zombie of sorts. He's an manufacturing/operations guy, not a creative product manager. Eventually Jobs' roadmap will run its course and Tim Cook will be replaced or exposed as an automaton. It seems to be showing already.
- hyperbovine 14y ago
  Jon Ive?

aprendo 14y ago

The rMBP, widely hailed as the best Mac since forever? You seem to be the only person on the planet disappointed by it (besides people disappointed in the glued-in battery – but that’s nothing new). Besides, there are a few years to go until we run out of Steve Jobs products. (I think this whole discussion is utterly pointless at this point. Look at Apple’s stock in ten years and you will know the impact of Jobs. I have my doubts that it will be possible to say much meaningful now.)

Retric 14y ago
I hate the rMBP. Apple calls it an 'PRO' laptop but it's basically just an 'AIR' with a higher resolution display. It's got no optical drive so you can't swap in an extra HDD while keeping the SSD for the OS / programs. It's limited to 8 or 16GB of ram and you can't upgrade it after the fact. It's also got way to few connectors no HDMI/DVI or even VGA. At the same time they also killed of the old MB line entirely.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  You prefer the presence of an optical drive so you can tear it out and then put in a mechanical HDD? The product you want is called a MacBook Pro and it is currently for sale in any configuration your heart desires. While we're on it, the rMBP has a native HDMI port and a variety of inexpensive adapters that will keep your VGA workflows going. And while we're hammering it into paste, please name one feature on the now discontinued MacBook line that you miss.
  - omgsean 14y ago
    On the old white MacBooks I personally liked the yellowing underneath where my wrists sat. It said to the world "hey, this guy is spending WAY too much time online and may have some hygiene issues he needs to work out."
    - jpxxx 14y ago
      Guh, those were some of the absolute shittiest portables Apple ever put out. Even after the discoloring plasticizers were worked out, almost every single one of them saw the topcase flake and crack in normal use. Performance was poor out of the box, the screens were garbage, and the bottom looked bad after only moderate use.

pizza 14y ago

The trend could just be a fluke. Only time will tell...

rimantas 14y ago

If I ask you what would they need to have to thrill you, would you be able to answer? Built in toaster? Cure for cancer? We don't expect luxury cars to thrill us, why do we need that from electronics? It's a sign of maturity and I will take solid no-thrills product over gimmicky one any day.

Macha 14y ago

The rMBP was the first Mac that I would seriously consider buying for myself. I haven't, because I can't afford to buy a new laptop just because a shiny new one came out, but if I had been looking for a laptop at that time, I would have bought it. A couple of my non-Apple using tech friends had the same opinion. Then again, I'm not exactly Apple's core customer base, as I have no love for OS X and would probably have just installed Windows (for gaming) and Linux on it, but it's the first time in years where their computer hardware has distinguished itself, rather than selling on the basis of the OS.

grecy 14y ago

> The MacBook Pro Retina haven't thrilled me at all and I have been looking forward to the MBPR for a long time. Wow, you have some high expectations. What exactly were you looking for?

radley 14y ago
The RMBP is fine as long as your focus is text, so it's great for programmers & business people. But Mac has been the mainstay of graphic designers who predominantly use Creative Suite, and the RMBP is quite useless without a 2nd, non-retina monitor.
- grecy 14y ago
  > nd the RMBP is quite useless without a 2nd, non-retina monitor. And how would you have a laptop manufacturer who designs a super-high res display to get around this problem?
  - radley 14y ago
    Probably by not starting a war with your core partner? Apple had time to get Apple apps like FCP & Aperture up to spec - they could have prepared Adobe similarly. FWIW, I'll admit it may not have mattered. Adobe is slowest moving ship that's still relevant. But "Photoshop will be ready soon" and no delivery date show Apple and Adobe to be out of touch their old base.
    - grecy 14y ago
      So you're complaining that the rMBP doesn't thrill you because Adobe's software has not been upgraded to take advantage of the retina display yet? You must think the Tesla is non-thrilling because there are not yet ubiquitous charging stations. You must think 4G handsets are non-thrilling because there is not yet enough 4G coverage. You must think Thunderbolt is non-thrilling because there are not yet enough devices that support it. To summarize, you think something is not "thrilling" because the world at large is not ready for it yet. This "keep doing what we've always done" approach really bugs me, and is not a good way to think if you have any interest in progressing and actually making anything better.

achompas 14y ago

> The recent releases (MacBook Pro Retina, Mountain Lion, rumored iPhone 5, iOS6) haven't thrilled me at all and I have been looking forward to the MBPR and iPhone5 for a long time. All of these have been released so recently (less than a year since Jobs passed away) that it's likely he played a large part in their design. Further, you're talking about (1) a 15" laptop that beats almost everything else on the market, (2) a minor version bump of OS X, and (3 & 4) two products that haven't been released yet. I'm as interested in Apple, post-Jobs as everyone else, but the arguments I've seen so far look too forced. The true test will occur over the next 2-3 years--not just the last 9 months. EDIT: I like snowwrestler's point: this is all "hindsight bias." EDIT 2: I've fallen into this trap myself at some points, especially with some of these commercials. But these are just single data points. We shouldn't fall into the trap of overemphasizing single data points.

taligent 14y ago
Exactly. This is what makes this all so hilarious. Steve Jobs said himself that he was directly involved in the next 2-3 years worth of upcoming products. So "this would never have happened under Steve Jobs" can partly be blamed on him.
- radley 14y ago
  Steve wasn't just the inspiration. He was also the guy who was more than willing to say "WTF is this? We can't release THAT! Fix IT!!" Without that you've got the contentment of the collective.
  - jasonlotito 14y ago
    > "WTF is this? We can't release THAT! Fix IT!!" But he was also the guy that missed in that regard multiple times as well. Sure, he might have stopped a lot from going wrong, but the stuff he didn't say "No" to quickly became a blight on the company.
    - mikecane 14y ago

huhtenberg 14y ago

It's not even that. Now that Jobs's gone turning iPad sideways with the taskbar open causes app icons to overlap. Sometimes, not always, but that's just the kind of "sloppy" that just didn't exist in Apple products a year ago. They are slipping. I will give them a couple of years tops before they are back at the average product polish levels.

taligent 14y ago
Always fascinating watching this kind of delusion in action. This complete rewriting of history so that every Apple product before Jobs death had some extraordinary level of perfection that somehow doesn't exist anymore. When in actual fact the quicker release cycles for Apple software is resulting in less bugs.
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  Oh, it's irrational alright. No arguing there. However, while there might be now fewer bugs, there count of imperfections that lie on the surface and contribute to the spoiled first impression is on the climb.
kalleboo 14y ago
iOS has been super buggy ever since iOS 5. Has nothing to do with Jobs' death.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  IMO super buggy is an overstatement. Which bugs seriously affect you?
  - kalleboo 14y ago
    Just lots of small things. Keyboards that stick around. The backlight randomly sticking at full on or full off. Settings panels that crash (got better in the latest update) or don't refresh. Alarms that don't go off. Everything related to the App Store. Internet sharing drops randomly. iCloud has been a disaster since day one. iMessages that arrive twice.

brown9-2 14y ago

Seems unfair to judge Apple based on rumored specs for the "iPhone 5".

ruswick 14y ago

I agree that there isn't much that Apple has done lately that has been truly groundbreaking. The last time that I was really surprised by Apple was the iPhone 4. That said, it's totally unreasonable to assert that Apple is declining because Steve is gone simply because their products haven't "thrilled" you or because they ran a bad line of ads. The Retina MBP is an excellent machine with one of the best screens to ever be put on a consumer-grade device. It might not blow everyone's mind, but it is at least as interesting of a product as the scores of laptops that were put out under Steve. Mountain Lion isn't groundbreaking by design. It's an iteration on Lion, and so it's unreasonable to expect a massive amount of new features. The iPhone 5 and iOS6 haven't been released yet and in the case of the former the rumors are so vague and unsubstantiated that it's categorically ludicrous for you to pass judgement yet. Lastly, I have to ask why the amount of "thrill" that a product brings matters anyway. Most consumers don't want to be thrilled. They want to buy a computer, and that's it. Apple is successful not because they thrill people, but because they make good products. The Retina MBP and Mountain Lion are still good products. I think the biggest annoyance in the post-Jobs era is that every imperfect action that Apple does is automatically passed off as a result of Steve being gone. Steve wasn't perfect, either. We need only look to the iTunes phone, Ping or the button-less iPod Shuffle. Apple has never been perfect, and the post-Jobs era is no different.

slovette 14y ago
"I have to ask why the amount of "thrill" that a product brings matters anyway." Marketing. Hype and thrill, I would argue, is a direct result of Apple's financial position today. The everyday consumer doesn't understand the technical qualifications nor do they care. They want nice, shiny and new. Start with that and build a stable high-quality product to match and it could be candy canes you're selling, you're gonna be successful. Packaging is probably the most important part of a product. It entices thrill and envy, the very primitive emotion that makes you click the usually brightest button on the page: "Buy".

FreshCode 14y ago

It feels like someone inside Cupertino has been saying, "OK, it looks good!" more than they have been saying "No."

rdl 14y ago

While this may be against NDA, iOS 6 Beta is actually quite nice. If they can get real buy in from non-Apple iOS developers for iCloud, it will be a big win, but IMO it all comes down to iCloud (and probably the long term premium for the Apple ecosystem depends primarily on iCloud). The security features in ML were critically necessary to keep OSX viable for business and professional use. 10.7 is vastly less secure than a well managed corporate Win 7 machine, and maybe even worse out of the box. (Linux probably covers the whole range of less or more secure based on exact distribution and features, but isn't terribly relevant for desktops). Which made the Google no-windows policy from a few years ago pretty funny. ML is now at parity with Win 7 out of the box, but still probably weaker in an enterprise setting due to lack of management tools.