It's kinda weird to read commentators talking as if this was the end of a golden age of Apple.
From my perspective, their application software has always sucked. It was there because you need apps to bootstrap a platform and attract enough users to attract developers. But you can't really expect a consumer electronics company to have the best application for a given niche once the niche has been identified and attracted companies that really want to make it their bread-and-butter.
XCode and occasionally FaceTime & iMovie are the only bundled applications that I ever use on my Mac. When I get a new computer, the first things I do are usually download Chrome, MacVim, Google Photos, and VLC. I use Hangouts over iMessage, Google Calendar over the built-in calendar, and Google Docs over the office suite. On my iPhone, getting Google Maps and Yelp is a top priority, lest I end up navigating off a mountain. This is not a new habit; I've operated like this since getting a Mac in 2009 after a 10-year hiatus from Apple products.
Perhaps I was just less brainwashed than most Apple fans, and the end of the brainwashing may itself be news with big consequences for product adoption. But IMHO anyone who used the whole integrated Apple software suite and never looked elsewhere has been missing out on some seriously nice features this whole time.
> anyone who used the whole integrated Apple software suite and never looked elsewhere has been missing out on some seriously nice features this whole time
Ditto for anyone not using the Apple ecosystem. Better tested drivers installed by default, no OS license hassles, no issues created by malfunctioning (or maliciously functioning) antivirus, top download sites weren't infested with malware (no hunt for the real DL link), journaled FS in the consumer tier for instant fsck since 2002 (vs 2012), no-additional-cost professional-grade IDE since 2003 (vs 2015), one-click backup since 2007, decent integrated movie editing, some truly awesome platform-specific-at-first apps (subethaedit, quicksilver, textmate, coda), solid one-button-away desktop search years before it landed and stabilized in Windows, window navigation with expose (they've arguably been leapfrogged since then with window snapping), unix command line with a decent terminal emulator, emacs movement supported in every text field by default, built-in menu bar search, the list goes on.
I now have both feet in the Windows ecosystem but the transition was rough. If you have used Windows all your life, you have taught yourself to live with a lot of BS. Since you have made the investment it's now a sunk cost and no longer factors into your OS decision. Fair enough, but realize that wasn't the case for everyone. Also realize that you necessarily didn't miss what you never knew you could have.
I use the past tense because MS has caught up on most of these fronts, except for perhaps stable drivers and license hassles, where they are hobbled by their business model rather than technical shortcoming.
> It was there because you need apps to bootstrap a platform and attract enough users to attract developers. But you can't really expect a consumer electronics company to have the best application for a given niche once the niche has been identified and attracted companies that really want to make it their bread-and-butter.
I have a hard time with this. Apple products tend to lock you into apple software. If you want to develop software, then you are pretty much stuck with XCode. If you want to send email on iOS, then you are stuck with the built in mail app (at least if you click an address from Safari, or Contacts). If I ask Siri to play some music, it launches the built in Music player. So if what you say is true, then why can't I set a default app made by a third party company?
Could you please express your opinions without using the term "brainwashing"? I think Safari and iMessages are vastly superior to Chrome and Hangouts and that doesn't make me an idiot.
> From my perspective, their application software has always sucked.
I think the main problem is not the application software (aside from iTunes and Apple Maps) - the main problem is the OS level software.
During the "golden age" of apple, apps would just work. Didn't matter if it you were using Apple-provided software or "better" 3rd party stuff - crashing, lagging, stuttering was minimal.
Now, many users are seeing much more lag, beach balling, and kernel panicking than before, across all of their applications. [1] Combine this with some poor decision making in the UX/UI department of certain Apple apps and you get a lot of people who are unhappy with their entire software stack.
But the app is the closest piece of software to them, so instinctively it makes more sense to blame declining app quality, when it's actually more a function of OS stability.
There was a time during Windows XP when apple software was very well done. They were on a roll. OS X was a lot more stable, safari was introduced and was one of the best browsers at the time, etc. The 64-bit transition was flawless, the ppc to x86 was flawless. Safari was an excellent browser when it was first introduced. Mail.app used to be just as good as thunderbird (if not slicker). Itunes was THE app that everyone finally started using to organize their music in a proper database.
It's only since the "App-store" that apple seemed to screw things up. It's quite amazing that so did microsoft and so did linux desktops. I feel like the golden age of desktop computing ended with the dawn of the iphone.
Agreed. I don't think Apple creates their applications for power users though. We switch to VLC because we handle a wide range of file formats, QuickTime is "good enough" for the average user (perhaps not anymore considering MKV files are very popular amongst pirated videos). Photos, Calendar and Safari are "good enough" for users who don't use a lot of third-party extensions/Developer Tools, or sync their Calendars across multiple non-Apple services.
XCode is a necessary evil for a lot of developers, FaceTime depending on your situation is also a necessary evil for users. iMovie is the best of a bad bunch for the average user.
However the OSX interface is still very slick in comparison to *nix, requires hardly any maintenance and still supports "all the things" because developers love the hardware and the UX and have built the applications needed for it.
I've always turned away from Apple because "you are paying for a brand" - however since being given a Macbook to play with I've really enjoyed using it for dev and personal use. I've uninstalled and removed pretty much all the "bloat" that people like us have a preferred alternative for, but the average user simply doesn't give a damn.
I still run away from iOS however. The requirement to find an exploit in the firmware to do what I want is a PITA.
There are some Google products that I like, but I don't think I've ever had a good experience with Hangouts. Maybe it's rose tinted lenses, but it seems like multi-person video chatting with screen sharing has been getting uniformly worse ever since iChat AV.
More recently, there are online alternatives like https://appear.in/ that I've been happy with, and which don't require you to install a browser plugin like Hangouts.
The whole point of buying an Apple device was that it was an alternative to Microsoft Windows PCs. It was supposed to be better and easier to use.
When iOS got invented Apple got into mobile devices. Microsoft has been making Windows Phones (way back to Windows CE) longer than Apple has been making iPhones, but the iPhone sells better.
Apple has sort of gotten into a trap they got into before bringing Jobs back, problems with software quality. Jobs solved it by merging MacOS and NextOS together to make OSX. Then OSX spawned iOS.
Apple got focused on bringing out new hardware, to have users upgrade every once in a while to keep the profits going. They focused on the hardware more than the software. That is the mistake that Apple once made during the PowerMac Era before Jobs came back to fix it. They were working on project Copland to fix it, but never finished that project.
It is not that Apple Fans are brainwashed, they like Apple because it is not Microsoft. They've been burned by Microsoft too many times and went to Apple as an alternative. But now Apple is starting to make mistakes like Microsoft did in their software. Apple Fans are starting to take notice of that.
Apple just needs to focus on software quality for a while, fix the bugs and CVS exploits. Instead of releasing new features, just fix the bugs and make the OS and apps stable. They've done it before and they can do it again.
> But IMHO anyone who used the whole integrated Apple software suite and never looked elsewhere has been missing out on some seriously nice features this whole time.
I've looked elsewhere but I stick with Apple's software because I like the simplicity and privacy it offers. I don't want more than a handful of basic functions in my calendar app. I don't want a half a dozen new features to help me avoid reading e-mails. I don't need to install Google Maps to avoid driving off a mountain because Apple Maps works fine for me. I don't want to type the wrong thing into a Google app and see ads about it for the next 3 months.
While on OS X you can replace everything easily to craft the experience you need, on iOS, it's not as much of an option, sadly.
Also, I don't really like Google's desktop offerings - or the lack of them - everything is a webapp, and they just don't work as well as proper desktop software would have. I am so annoyed by the random reloads Chrome apps do, and the utter disrespect they have for multiple desktops.
You make a fair point, you can mostly avoid bad Apple software.
The one choice you can't make is iTunes. Being forced to use that dreadful piece of software is why I gave my first iPhone away after little less than one week. It's abysmally incompetent as a music player. You could probably count the number of codecs it supports on one hand - a core feature of a music player is, well, playing your music. Last time I used it, it still didn't have a media library and dumped tens of thousands of songs into a flat list. You have to have that garbage installed on your machine if you own an iPhone. Not interested.
It's not just software. While I'm still a fan of Macbooks, I'm getting close to abandoning ship thanks to the increasingly un-repairability of these things. I have a Macbook from ~2008 that's still functional as a media PC thanks to memory/SSD upgrades and battery replacements over the years.
My current Macbook Pro has memory soldered on to the motherboard and a battery glued to the case. The SSD is technically replaceable, but the specs that this laptop shipped with are going to be the specs that it dies with.
When the battery goes, I'll have to either risk destroying the machine or pay way too much to Apple to do the job for me. At that point I'll probably just switch to a brand with a more reasonable user-servicing model, assuming those still exist.
I dread helping anyone with iTunes related issues. The syncing process is dangerous, it's far too easy to wipe someone's collection of music / family photos / pictures. I'm not sure if this is an isolated issue but I start sweating bullets as soon as I have to connect an iDevice to iTunes. What really shocks me is that instead of showing a big red warning message before a destructive sync, it silently goes ahead and wipes data without even asking. And there's no easy way to tell what a sync is going to do. After any iTunes sync I generally think "Ok, now let's assess the damage".
To add insult to injury it's almost impossible to make a file-for-file backup before decimating a device with iTunes sync. In fact, the iTunes sync process is the main reason I stick to Android despite it having a whole other ecosystem of flaws. I'll take a USB Mass storage device and robocopy / rsync, thanks. They actually work.
>Mossberg pointed to "a gradual degradation in the quality and reliability of Apple’s core apps." He fingered iTunes for the desktop ("I dread opening the thing"), and the Mail, Photos, and iCloud programs.
As somebody that's used a Mac for 90%+ of all computing-related tasks since OS X was released, all of the above-mentioned apps/services have been dead to me for years. I honestly can't remember the last time I purposely used any of the above.
What's driving me away is a combination of flaky behavior on the desktop (bizarre wifi glitches; bizarre NFS/SMB/AFP mount behaviors; increasing system instability), and a lack of differentiation across both the desktop and mobile platform. There was a time when I needed a Mac or i-Device to do things I cared about/needed, but those days are long over. Almost all of my compute activity happens on a server in my homelab or 'the cloud', and Linux and Android meets or exceeds my needs for completing other tasks. I just swapped my iPhone 6+ for a Nexus 6P, and my current MacBook (12" model) will probably be my last when I retire it in 3-4 years.
I want and need a deluxe Linux OS for which I would pay $200/year, which would do things well. This includes:
- Porting bugfixes forward (I dropped Ubuntu because they didn't port a bugfix from 12.x to 13.04 - After 2 days trying to recover my network auth, I asked a Mac to my boss).
- Designed for me, not for monkeys with big fingers who bring up Amazon results for every search (That's not why I dropped Ubuntu, but desktop developers aren't within the targets of Canonical),
- Who would hire and pay UX designers. I want the Mac OS X experience. I don't want to recompile my kernel. I want few features in the OS, but well-designed. I want people working days over days to fine-tune the mouse controls in the OS (the first warning that made me upset about Ubuntu). I want to hear the rumble of developers integrating Webkit with nice developer tools into an open-source chromium.
- I, developer, using IntelliJ IDEA, using apt-get/brew, I want to be the paying customer of that OS. I don't want my data be sold. I might want some cloud sync, but I don't want share buttons, especially when I watch porn (I'm absolutely serious). And I want the cloud parts of my OS to be under APL-Affero.
- Obviously those bugfixes must be sent back upstream to the OSS community. Ideally there would be half the money left to pay back, but let's start pessimistic.
- As a bonus, in that OS, all apps would be webkit/js-based. But I'm dreaming.
It is totally possible to charge for open-source, even the GPL says it. You can't prevent people from re-sharing the OS online, but you can offer upgrades to subscribed users only.
I wanted the Apple experience, but that's not coming back. Look what Nest did: They're selling a working thermostat for 3x the price. Tesla is selling electric cars for deluxe customers. I want to pay $200 per year, recurring, for a stable env with little novelty and many bugfixes, and I want to "deluxe". I want to purchase the feeling of being superior with my OS.
And I say that as a peson who earns €32.000 gross per year (France).
...[Mossberg] fingered iTunes for the desktop "I dread opening the thing"
This is so spot on. It feels like they rearrange iTunes every month, especially the mobile version.
Recently I noticed that I'd be searching for a song (that I have on my phone) and it would default to their streaming service.... Why would I want to use my data to stream a song that I already have on my phone?
The purpose of the new iTunes is to steer you away from listening to music and towards purchasing music or social features, or whatever other part of their ecosystem they're trying to push.
You think iTunes is bad on Mac? Try it on PC. iTunes has always, always been horrible. I think anyone suggesting it was ever "good" is rewriting history.
I've just gone through some pain to downgrade from iTunes 12 to iTunes 10 and can't believe I've been putting up with such crap for so long. iTunes 10 is so much better and so much easier it's ridiculous.
I used to be fairly content with Apple: the iOS ecosystem (or walled garden) was pretty decent, and OSX is basically Unix. I was happy.
Then, after a few years of iOS use, I switched to Android. Suddenly, I was an outcast among friends: any group SMS conversations I had been a part of, I would no longer get. I get it: Apple uses iMessage, and it is not present in Android. But at least Apple could warn the sender that it is unable to deliver the message to me, instead of silently dropping it! Friends started calling me: are you OK? And I had to patiently explain to them the iMessage fiasco. I tried everything to disavow iMessage on my phone number; but nothing works. I still don't get messages in group conversations, months later.
This totally soured me on Apple. Instead of being a greedy little fuck, why can't they just play nice? They are the biggest company in the world; they don't have to be giant pricks too!
I don't much care about the software - I haven't used iTunes in years, don't use Mail, etc. etc. - it's the operating system I care about.
Wi-fi has been buggy on OS X for literally years now. And each new major release seems to bring some new pain point where it refuses to turn on, refuses to connect, doesn't transmit data... and on and on. There's no way Apple can't know about this - it must drive their own employees crazy. Yet, nothing gets done.
If I were in the market for a new laptop right now I'd be taking a serious look at a Surface Book - it's the first thing I've seen that looks like it could rival a Macbook in the hardware department. Sadly, I'd have to do a lot more research into getting a decent POSIX environment set up on it before I could take the plunge.
OSX fan here: Everyone is completely misunderstanding our recent criticisms of Apple software.
We don't hate Apple software!
We have seen a steady decline over the last few years, and so we are expressing our concerns. This does not translate to us hating the software. We know what Apple can do when it really focuses on the quality of it's software (see OSX Snow Leopard).
I still think OSX is more stable and useable then any other OS out there. Yes there are annoyances, but they are trying to move the ball forward. The only piece I would agree has gone completely off the rails is iTunes.
OSX is still strong, and I believe Apple will right the ship. After all, Apple employees use Mac's themselves to build iOS.
Even with the problems, I still prefer OS X to anything else. Apple claims a higher standard, and everyone wants to hold them to it. They're falling short of their standard, but they're falling to a higher point than the alternatives IMO.
They have a bunch of gripes, but at the same time there's still a lot that makes them happy and they're not about to start using Windows or Linux instead. This is exactly how I feel: yeah, there's stuff they need to do better and some of their stuff has either gotten totally crufty (iTunes) or was a bit too early (Apple Music, Apple Watch), but overall I still prefer Apple's products to their competitors at this point in time.
I haven't used Apple software in a long time, but Google is not immune to this either apparently. If you use the YouTube app, and especially if you use Chromecast, you'll experience countless bugs as it fails to reconcile state changes between the devices or properly buffer videos. I'm considering setting up a raspi or something and installing an ad blocker on it to replace my Chromecast. I don't think this is what Google wants but its product is difficult to use any other way.
Hangouts / Google Calendar are also really clunky and seem poorly tested. Things often go out of sync or you're randomly asked to re-login several times a month, and only during video chats.
What I really hate is that Googling for problems brings you to Apple Forum discussions from 2014, 2013 and sometimes even earlier. If they are not fixing serious bugs that have been around for a couple of versions now, just how much cruft are they accruing. Worse, issues that were fixed, like my iPhone playing a random song at a random loudness instead of returning to Audible, have returned.
My Fall 2015 Mac Book Pro has already crashed more often than my Fall 2013 did in two years. Apple support claims the logs show it is software, not hardware, so I'll take their word for it.
Our UX guy summed up the other serious issue with Apple software, they are focusing more on design now rather than UX. There is a great article on FastCompany about it http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi.... Stuff may look fine but it no longer functions in a natural, intuitive fashion; it no longer "just works". The font selection in iOS is a great example, it's almost like it's picked specifically to be hard to read. Killing misbehaving iOS apps has become a pain, the current app is never in focus, swiping is clumsy and swipe up to kill will often swipe left or right instead. iTunes as a whole is another example of this. It was never great but it's become increasingly difficult to find what I'm looking for and make it do what I want.
I find myself cursing my computer and my phone on a regular basis now instead of the once in a blue moon I used to.
I use both Windows 10 and OS X on a rMBP all day at work. I definitely think Windows 10 is way more stable and polished.
I constantly have problems with OS X WiFi connecting/dropping out, this has only been a recent thing since 10.11 (before OS X wifi support was incredible).
I also have problems with Spotlight screwing up. I use spotlight for launching apps, and it often just loses all the apps which I use all day every day. Instead of finding 'Skype' for example, it'll return a list of all the times I've mentioned Skype in emails instead. Again, this broke in 10.11.
I never really use the new features in OS X, which is fine, but 10.11 especially has so many regressions in it for me it is pretty annoying. It also absolutely blasted my unix config in a really hard to fix way, which hasn't ever happened on a previous OS X update.
Spotlight has been straight broken for me since 2008, especially when using large external drives (stuck "scanning" for >5 hours every time the drive is power cycles, using a whole core). I just gave up and now forceably disable spotlight.
Definitely should download Alfred (on Mac App Store) as a replacement for Spotlight. I use it basically for launching and quick math, etc. but it can do almost anything.
It doesn't have any of the slowdowns that Spotlight does, and it still has a small interface by default that can move anywhere on the screen.
I stopped using OSX shortly after Lion came out, surprisingly because of hardware problems and comically poor support from Apple (I'm not going to go into that again here). Since then I've been using Linux for work and Windows, as always, for gaming and blurays (because there's no other viable choice).
Something weird has happened though. When I left OSX, it was already a bit buggy. A lot of stuff didn't work properly and wasn't well thought out. Windows, aside from the unfortunate Metro experiment, has just gotten better.
Over the life of Windows 7, the only time I had BSOD's was when the SSD with the OS got too close to full. If I kept some free space on my OS partition, BSOD's simply did not happen. Windows 8 was even more stable. It just works. Yes, I added Classic Shell so I could just completely avoid Metro, and the result is an OS that just works and doesn't get in the way. I have privacy concerns about W10 which have prevented me from upgrading, and that really is the one major fly in MS's ointment. Free upgrades are nice, but I'd prefer to pay for an OS where my data isn't treated as a product.
Will I continue to use Windows? Well, there's no other choice for gaming and blurays, so yes. Privacy concerns aside, this is more palatable than ever. Linux continues to be a workhorse for me, and I don't miss OSX one bit.
Edit: I should mention that I tend to customize certain aspects of my OS rather extensively. I like things to be a certain way. Linux is fantastic for this. Windows is good too. OSX is really hit or miss. Some things aren't too bad, but other things are an absolute chore. It's amazing that an OS can restrict hardware and customization choices to the extent OSX does and still be buggy.
iTunes has been awful for years. The only reason it hasn't got worse is because devices are more powerful. I do think they are producing more and more buggy-on-release software with a video game mindset of "patch it post launch". Sadly it is the way software appears to be today. I have no problem with fixing problems post-launch (obviously!) but shipping a product just to meat a deadline (looking at Microsoft with Windows 10 here as well!!) is a pain in the ass for users.
There is a big difference between shipping an MVP (a HN favourite!) and a buggy piece of shit product.
Will it harm Apple (or Microsoft, or ...) in the long run? Probably not. Sadly users seem to be used to this kind of thing now from all the main players so what alternative do they have?
On a positive I have found Android L to be a solid release which is probably the only solid major point release I have used from any major software company in many years.
Apple will begin sitting on it's laurels while core services and products degrade, while Microsoft enters a quiet, user-first renaissance under new leadership.
If you switch Apple and Microsoft in the above paragraph, it sounds a lot like the past...
My take on this is not that Apple has gotten worse, but that they have actually gotten better at cloud services. Whereas no one actually used MobileMe or iDisk, their new generation of cloud services is actually being used. It's true that they're losing ground because Google has defined a bar for cloud services that they can't reach, but they are trying and not entirely failing at it.
The secondary aspect is the surface area of what they are dealing with. This is a far cry from the old Mac OS days where they were really a PC company. Now they have to make OS X, iOS (for both phones/tablets), and tvOS all work together seamlessly. If quality was exactly the same, they would have far more bugs just based on the cartesian complexity of possible interactions.
I hope they can sort it out because I'm feeling the pain just like everyone else, but I don't see any better alternatives at the moment.
> My take on this is not that Apple has gotten worse, but that they have actually gotten better at cloud services.
Which isn't saying much, since they're still terrible. Their cloud-synced Notes.app is almost unusable; every time I add a note on the phone there's maybe a one-in-three chance it'll sync to the desktop immediately, a one-in-three chance it'll sync the next day, and a one-in-three chance it'll appear three days later or more. If Apple has in fact gotten better at cloud services, it's only because they were so abysmal before that there was nowhere to go but up.
No, the problem is that they are making very questionable design decisions in their new software: this is unaffected by being spread too thin. It indicates a total loss of the sensibilities that made Apple software great to begin with, not just "bugs."
How much of this is due to the loss of Steve Jobs? A great amount, I think. He had all day to look at the outputs of different teams and tell them why it was stupid or ugly.
Apple products have always been buggy. If you do anything slightly unusual, you quickly find that everything breaks. It's as if they don't actually systematically test anything and instead only fix the bugs that the developers themselves happen to notice in day-to-day use.
And here's me ranting about it in 2016: My wife's Macbook has a fun feature. It scans the network looking for audio receivers. When it finds one, it hijacks the receiver, switching it away from its current input and over to the Macbook's audio. This happens for example while watching movies, while the Macbook is in the other room with no one touching it, even though it has never been intentionally asked to use the TV room receiver for any purpose (though there is another receiver in another room that she uses regularly). As Denon receivers have no apparent access control, there is no way to stop this except to set up some sort of firewall between the Macbook and the receiver. (I do in fact use the receiver's network protocol, so disconnecting it is not a good option.)
Let's be real, Apple's never been a software company -- they've always made excellent hardware and good enough software that people will deal with because they want their amazing hardware. No one has ever said anything about any Apple software compared to what people say about their hardware.
Software's not in their DNA and I think all this media attention will just fade after a while and people will keep using and loving Apple hardware and putting up with their miserable software.
For the record, I use Notes/Mail/Photos on my iPhone, and Preview has never crashed for me.
I'm an Apple fan, and I am unhappy with the state of software, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I hate Apple software.
I am also not nearly disgruntled enough to even consider switching platforms to something else (like Linux for example).
No matter the platform people will always have gripes and issues with the software. It's amazing how much choice we all have these days, and it's simply not possible to cater to everyone's whims.
I feel like over the last couple of years the landscape has changed tremendously, and what once may have been a simple blog post that mostly got ignored the news can spread further and wider than ever before. Things that are simple complaints of "I wish this worked better" now get twisted and restated as "X hates Y".
[+] [-] nostrademons|10 years ago|reply
From my perspective, their application software has always sucked. It was there because you need apps to bootstrap a platform and attract enough users to attract developers. But you can't really expect a consumer electronics company to have the best application for a given niche once the niche has been identified and attracted companies that really want to make it their bread-and-butter.
XCode and occasionally FaceTime & iMovie are the only bundled applications that I ever use on my Mac. When I get a new computer, the first things I do are usually download Chrome, MacVim, Google Photos, and VLC. I use Hangouts over iMessage, Google Calendar over the built-in calendar, and Google Docs over the office suite. On my iPhone, getting Google Maps and Yelp is a top priority, lest I end up navigating off a mountain. This is not a new habit; I've operated like this since getting a Mac in 2009 after a 10-year hiatus from Apple products.
Perhaps I was just less brainwashed than most Apple fans, and the end of the brainwashing may itself be news with big consequences for product adoption. But IMHO anyone who used the whole integrated Apple software suite and never looked elsewhere has been missing out on some seriously nice features this whole time.
[+] [-] jjoonathan|10 years ago|reply
Ditto for anyone not using the Apple ecosystem. Better tested drivers installed by default, no OS license hassles, no issues created by malfunctioning (or maliciously functioning) antivirus, top download sites weren't infested with malware (no hunt for the real DL link), journaled FS in the consumer tier for instant fsck since 2002 (vs 2012), no-additional-cost professional-grade IDE since 2003 (vs 2015), one-click backup since 2007, decent integrated movie editing, some truly awesome platform-specific-at-first apps (subethaedit, quicksilver, textmate, coda), solid one-button-away desktop search years before it landed and stabilized in Windows, window navigation with expose (they've arguably been leapfrogged since then with window snapping), unix command line with a decent terminal emulator, emacs movement supported in every text field by default, built-in menu bar search, the list goes on.
I now have both feet in the Windows ecosystem but the transition was rough. If you have used Windows all your life, you have taught yourself to live with a lot of BS. Since you have made the investment it's now a sunk cost and no longer factors into your OS decision. Fair enough, but realize that wasn't the case for everyone. Also realize that you necessarily didn't miss what you never knew you could have.
I use the past tense because MS has caught up on most of these fronts, except for perhaps stable drivers and license hassles, where they are hobbled by their business model rather than technical shortcoming.
[+] [-] Skunkleton|10 years ago|reply
I have a hard time with this. Apple products tend to lock you into apple software. If you want to develop software, then you are pretty much stuck with XCode. If you want to send email on iOS, then you are stuck with the built in mail app (at least if you click an address from Safari, or Contacts). If I ask Siri to play some music, it launches the built in Music player. So if what you say is true, then why can't I set a default app made by a third party company?
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roymurdock|10 years ago|reply
I think the main problem is not the application software (aside from iTunes and Apple Maps) - the main problem is the OS level software.
During the "golden age" of apple, apps would just work. Didn't matter if it you were using Apple-provided software or "better" 3rd party stuff - crashing, lagging, stuttering was minimal.
Now, many users are seeing much more lag, beach balling, and kernel panicking than before, across all of their applications. [1] Combine this with some poor decision making in the UX/UI department of certain Apple apps and you get a lot of people who are unhappy with their entire software stack.
But the app is the closest piece of software to them, so instinctively it makes more sense to blame declining app quality, when it's actually more a function of OS stability.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11034071
[+] [-] goalieca|10 years ago|reply
It's only since the "App-store" that apple seemed to screw things up. It's quite amazing that so did microsoft and so did linux desktops. I feel like the golden age of desktop computing ended with the dawn of the iphone.
[+] [-] Mandatum|10 years ago|reply
XCode is a necessary evil for a lot of developers, FaceTime depending on your situation is also a necessary evil for users. iMovie is the best of a bad bunch for the average user.
However the OSX interface is still very slick in comparison to *nix, requires hardly any maintenance and still supports "all the things" because developers love the hardware and the UX and have built the applications needed for it.
I've always turned away from Apple because "you are paying for a brand" - however since being given a Macbook to play with I've really enjoyed using it for dev and personal use. I've uninstalled and removed pretty much all the "bloat" that people like us have a preferred alternative for, but the average user simply doesn't give a damn.
I still run away from iOS however. The requirement to find an exploit in the firmware to do what I want is a PITA.
[+] [-] wlesieutre|10 years ago|reply
More recently, there are online alternatives like https://appear.in/ that I've been happy with, and which don't require you to install a browser plugin like Hangouts.
[+] [-] orionblastar|10 years ago|reply
When iOS got invented Apple got into mobile devices. Microsoft has been making Windows Phones (way back to Windows CE) longer than Apple has been making iPhones, but the iPhone sells better.
Apple has sort of gotten into a trap they got into before bringing Jobs back, problems with software quality. Jobs solved it by merging MacOS and NextOS together to make OSX. Then OSX spawned iOS.
Apple got focused on bringing out new hardware, to have users upgrade every once in a while to keep the profits going. They focused on the hardware more than the software. That is the mistake that Apple once made during the PowerMac Era before Jobs came back to fix it. They were working on project Copland to fix it, but never finished that project.
It is not that Apple Fans are brainwashed, they like Apple because it is not Microsoft. They've been burned by Microsoft too many times and went to Apple as an alternative. But now Apple is starting to make mistakes like Microsoft did in their software. Apple Fans are starting to take notice of that.
Apple just needs to focus on software quality for a while, fix the bugs and CVS exploits. Instead of releasing new features, just fix the bugs and make the OS and apps stable. They've done it before and they can do it again.
[+] [-] jeena|10 years ago|reply
> Perhaps I was just less brainwashed than most Apple fans
I'm not quite sure who of you is the brainwashed one ... ;)
[+] [-] jsz0|10 years ago|reply
I've looked elsewhere but I stick with Apple's software because I like the simplicity and privacy it offers. I don't want more than a handful of basic functions in my calendar app. I don't want a half a dozen new features to help me avoid reading e-mails. I don't need to install Google Maps to avoid driving off a mountain because Apple Maps works fine for me. I don't want to type the wrong thing into a Google app and see ads about it for the next 3 months.
[+] [-] Ezhik|10 years ago|reply
Also, I don't really like Google's desktop offerings - or the lack of them - everything is a webapp, and they just don't work as well as proper desktop software would have. I am so annoyed by the random reloads Chrome apps do, and the utter disrespect they have for multiple desktops.
[+] [-] zamalek|10 years ago|reply
The one choice you can't make is iTunes. Being forced to use that dreadful piece of software is why I gave my first iPhone away after little less than one week. It's abysmally incompetent as a music player. You could probably count the number of codecs it supports on one hand - a core feature of a music player is, well, playing your music. Last time I used it, it still didn't have a media library and dumped tens of thousands of songs into a flat list. You have to have that garbage installed on your machine if you own an iPhone. Not interested.
[+] [-] mmastrac|10 years ago|reply
My current Macbook Pro has memory soldered on to the motherboard and a battery glued to the case. The SSD is technically replaceable, but the specs that this laptop shipped with are going to be the specs that it dies with.
When the battery goes, I'll have to either risk destroying the machine or pay way too much to Apple to do the job for me. At that point I'll probably just switch to a brand with a more reasonable user-servicing model, assuming those still exist.
[+] [-] Cartwright2|10 years ago|reply
To add insult to injury it's almost impossible to make a file-for-file backup before decimating a device with iTunes sync. In fact, the iTunes sync process is the main reason I stick to Android despite it having a whole other ecosystem of flaws. I'll take a USB Mass storage device and robocopy / rsync, thanks. They actually work.
[+] [-] sithadmin|10 years ago|reply
As somebody that's used a Mac for 90%+ of all computing-related tasks since OS X was released, all of the above-mentioned apps/services have been dead to me for years. I honestly can't remember the last time I purposely used any of the above.
What's driving me away is a combination of flaky behavior on the desktop (bizarre wifi glitches; bizarre NFS/SMB/AFP mount behaviors; increasing system instability), and a lack of differentiation across both the desktop and mobile platform. There was a time when I needed a Mac or i-Device to do things I cared about/needed, but those days are long over. Almost all of my compute activity happens on a server in my homelab or 'the cloud', and Linux and Android meets or exceeds my needs for completing other tasks. I just swapped my iPhone 6+ for a Nexus 6P, and my current MacBook (12" model) will probably be my last when I retire it in 3-4 years.
[+] [-] tajen|10 years ago|reply
I want and need a deluxe Linux OS for which I would pay $200/year, which would do things well. This includes:
- Porting bugfixes forward (I dropped Ubuntu because they didn't port a bugfix from 12.x to 13.04 - After 2 days trying to recover my network auth, I asked a Mac to my boss).
- Designed for me, not for monkeys with big fingers who bring up Amazon results for every search (That's not why I dropped Ubuntu, but desktop developers aren't within the targets of Canonical),
- Who would hire and pay UX designers. I want the Mac OS X experience. I don't want to recompile my kernel. I want few features in the OS, but well-designed. I want people working days over days to fine-tune the mouse controls in the OS (the first warning that made me upset about Ubuntu). I want to hear the rumble of developers integrating Webkit with nice developer tools into an open-source chromium.
- I, developer, using IntelliJ IDEA, using apt-get/brew, I want to be the paying customer of that OS. I don't want my data be sold. I might want some cloud sync, but I don't want share buttons, especially when I watch porn (I'm absolutely serious). And I want the cloud parts of my OS to be under APL-Affero.
- Obviously those bugfixes must be sent back upstream to the OSS community. Ideally there would be half the money left to pay back, but let's start pessimistic.
- As a bonus, in that OS, all apps would be webkit/js-based. But I'm dreaming.
It is totally possible to charge for open-source, even the GPL says it. You can't prevent people from re-sharing the OS online, but you can offer upgrades to subscribed users only.
I wanted the Apple experience, but that's not coming back. Look what Nest did: They're selling a working thermostat for 3x the price. Tesla is selling electric cars for deluxe customers. I want to pay $200 per year, recurring, for a stable env with little novelty and many bugfixes, and I want to "deluxe". I want to purchase the feeling of being superior with my OS.
And I say that as a peson who earns €32.000 gross per year (France).
[+] [-] drhayes9|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxtonab|10 years ago|reply
This is so spot on. It feels like they rearrange iTunes every month, especially the mobile version.
Recently I noticed that I'd be searching for a song (that I have on my phone) and it would default to their streaming service.... Why would I want to use my data to stream a song that I already have on my phone?
[+] [-] nerfhammer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] partiallypro|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tajen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonaldi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hudibras|10 years ago|reply
It gets worse: this is now also the default behavior on the ipod touch.
[+] [-] midnitewarrior|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1024core|10 years ago|reply
Then, after a few years of iOS use, I switched to Android. Suddenly, I was an outcast among friends: any group SMS conversations I had been a part of, I would no longer get. I get it: Apple uses iMessage, and it is not present in Android. But at least Apple could warn the sender that it is unable to deliver the message to me, instead of silently dropping it! Friends started calling me: are you OK? And I had to patiently explain to them the iMessage fiasco. I tried everything to disavow iMessage on my phone number; but nothing works. I still don't get messages in group conversations, months later.
This totally soured me on Apple. Instead of being a greedy little fuck, why can't they just play nice? They are the biggest company in the world; they don't have to be giant pricks too!
[+] [-] piyush_soni|10 years ago|reply
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/08/05/imessage-android-lawsuit...
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|10 years ago|reply
It's harsh, but this only happens if you don't follow the instructions.
Deregister and turn off iMessage: https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage
If you follow this, you'll never miss a message.
[+] [-] untog|10 years ago|reply
Wi-fi has been buggy on OS X for literally years now. And each new major release seems to bring some new pain point where it refuses to turn on, refuses to connect, doesn't transmit data... and on and on. There's no way Apple can't know about this - it must drive their own employees crazy. Yet, nothing gets done.
If I were in the market for a new laptop right now I'd be taking a serious look at a Surface Book - it's the first thing I've seen that looks like it could rival a Macbook in the hardware department. Sadly, I'd have to do a lot more research into getting a decent POSIX environment set up on it before I could take the plunge.
[+] [-] chrisblackwell|10 years ago|reply
We don't hate Apple software!
We have seen a steady decline over the last few years, and so we are expressing our concerns. This does not translate to us hating the software. We know what Apple can do when it really focuses on the quality of it's software (see OSX Snow Leopard).
I still think OSX is more stable and useable then any other OS out there. Yes there are annoyances, but they are trying to move the ball forward. The only piece I would agree has gone completely off the rails is iTunes.
OSX is still strong, and I believe Apple will right the ship. After all, Apple employees use Mac's themselves to build iOS.
[+] [-] ld00d|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ensorceled|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangoor|10 years ago|reply
http://atp.fm/episodes/155
They have a bunch of gripes, but at the same time there's still a lot that makes them happy and they're not about to start using Windows or Linux instead. This is exactly how I feel: yeah, there's stuff they need to do better and some of their stuff has either gotten totally crufty (iTunes) or was a bit too early (Apple Music, Apple Watch), but overall I still prefer Apple's products to their competitors at this point in time.
[+] [-] ewillbefull|10 years ago|reply
Hangouts / Google Calendar are also really clunky and seem poorly tested. Things often go out of sync or you're randomly asked to re-login several times a month, and only during video chats.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Ensorceled|10 years ago|reply
My Fall 2015 Mac Book Pro has already crashed more often than my Fall 2013 did in two years. Apple support claims the logs show it is software, not hardware, so I'll take their word for it.
Our UX guy summed up the other serious issue with Apple software, they are focusing more on design now rather than UX. There is a great article on FastCompany about it http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi.... Stuff may look fine but it no longer functions in a natural, intuitive fashion; it no longer "just works". The font selection in iOS is a great example, it's almost like it's picked specifically to be hard to read. Killing misbehaving iOS apps has become a pain, the current app is never in focus, swiping is clumsy and swipe up to kill will often swipe left or right instead. iTunes as a whole is another example of this. It was never great but it's become increasingly difficult to find what I'm looking for and make it do what I want.
I find myself cursing my computer and my phone on a regular basis now instead of the once in a blue moon I used to.
[+] [-] Spooky23|10 years ago|reply
Leave me alone. I get periodic full screen ads when I try to listen to music. Is that too much to ask?
[+] [-] martinald|10 years ago|reply
I constantly have problems with OS X WiFi connecting/dropping out, this has only been a recent thing since 10.11 (before OS X wifi support was incredible).
I also have problems with Spotlight screwing up. I use spotlight for launching apps, and it often just loses all the apps which I use all day every day. Instead of finding 'Skype' for example, it'll return a list of all the times I've mentioned Skype in emails instead. Again, this broke in 10.11.
I never really use the new features in OS X, which is fine, but 10.11 especially has so many regressions in it for me it is pretty annoying. It also absolutely blasted my unix config in a really hard to fix way, which hasn't ever happened on a previous OS X update.
[+] [-] captaindiego|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makecheck|10 years ago|reply
It doesn't have any of the slowdowns that Spotlight does, and it still has a small interface by default that can move anywhere on the screen.
[+] [-] sehr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beloch|10 years ago|reply
Something weird has happened though. When I left OSX, it was already a bit buggy. A lot of stuff didn't work properly and wasn't well thought out. Windows, aside from the unfortunate Metro experiment, has just gotten better.
Over the life of Windows 7, the only time I had BSOD's was when the SSD with the OS got too close to full. If I kept some free space on my OS partition, BSOD's simply did not happen. Windows 8 was even more stable. It just works. Yes, I added Classic Shell so I could just completely avoid Metro, and the result is an OS that just works and doesn't get in the way. I have privacy concerns about W10 which have prevented me from upgrading, and that really is the one major fly in MS's ointment. Free upgrades are nice, but I'd prefer to pay for an OS where my data isn't treated as a product.
Will I continue to use Windows? Well, there's no other choice for gaming and blurays, so yes. Privacy concerns aside, this is more palatable than ever. Linux continues to be a workhorse for me, and I don't miss OSX one bit.
Edit: I should mention that I tend to customize certain aspects of my OS rather extensively. I like things to be a certain way. Linux is fantastic for this. Windows is good too. OSX is really hit or miss. Some things aren't too bad, but other things are an absolute chore. It's amazing that an OS can restrict hardware and customization choices to the extent OSX does and still be buggy.
[+] [-] kozukumi|10 years ago|reply
There is a big difference between shipping an MVP (a HN favourite!) and a buggy piece of shit product.
Will it harm Apple (or Microsoft, or ...) in the long run? Probably not. Sadly users seem to be used to this kind of thing now from all the main players so what alternative do they have?
On a positive I have found Android L to be a solid release which is probably the only solid major point release I have used from any major software company in many years.
[+] [-] jszymborski|10 years ago|reply
Apple will begin sitting on it's laurels while core services and products degrade, while Microsoft enters a quiet, user-first renaissance under new leadership.
If you switch Apple and Microsoft in the above paragraph, it sounds a lot like the past...
[+] [-] dasil003|10 years ago|reply
The secondary aspect is the surface area of what they are dealing with. This is a far cry from the old Mac OS days where they were really a PC company. Now they have to make OS X, iOS (for both phones/tablets), and tvOS all work together seamlessly. If quality was exactly the same, they would have far more bugs just based on the cartesian complexity of possible interactions.
I hope they can sort it out because I'm feeling the pain just like everyone else, but I don't see any better alternatives at the moment.
[+] [-] Analemma_|10 years ago|reply
Which isn't saying much, since they're still terrible. Their cloud-synced Notes.app is almost unusable; every time I add a note on the phone there's maybe a one-in-three chance it'll sync to the desktop immediately, a one-in-three chance it'll sync the next day, and a one-in-three chance it'll appear three days later or more. If Apple has in fact gotten better at cloud services, it's only because they were so abysmal before that there was nowhere to go but up.
[+] [-] dubrocks|10 years ago|reply
How much of this is due to the loss of Steve Jobs? A great amount, I think. He had all day to look at the outputs of different teams and tell them why it was stupid or ugly.
[+] [-] kentonv|10 years ago|reply
Apple products have always been buggy. If you do anything slightly unusual, you quickly find that everything breaks. It's as if they don't actually systematically test anything and instead only fix the bugs that the developers themselves happen to notice in day-to-day use.
Here's me ranting about it in 2011: https://jx4slc83qru3hgkkkt1v.oasis.sandstorm.io/
Here's me ranting about it in 2014: https://plus.google.com/+KentonVarda/posts/FEUGQ7mxkUL
And here's me ranting about it in 2016: My wife's Macbook has a fun feature. It scans the network looking for audio receivers. When it finds one, it hijacks the receiver, switching it away from its current input and over to the Macbook's audio. This happens for example while watching movies, while the Macbook is in the other room with no one touching it, even though it has never been intentionally asked to use the TV room receiver for any purpose (though there is another receiver in another room that she uses regularly). As Denon receivers have no apparent access control, there is no way to stop this except to set up some sort of firewall between the Macbook and the receiver. (I do in fact use the receiver's network protocol, so disconnecting it is not a good option.)
[+] [-] aditya|10 years ago|reply
Let's be real, Apple's never been a software company -- they've always made excellent hardware and good enough software that people will deal with because they want their amazing hardware. No one has ever said anything about any Apple software compared to what people say about their hardware.
Software's not in their DNA and I think all this media attention will just fade after a while and people will keep using and loving Apple hardware and putting up with their miserable software.
For the record, I use Notes/Mail/Photos on my iPhone, and Preview has never crashed for me.
[+] [-] X-Istence|10 years ago|reply
I am also not nearly disgruntled enough to even consider switching platforms to something else (like Linux for example).
No matter the platform people will always have gripes and issues with the software. It's amazing how much choice we all have these days, and it's simply not possible to cater to everyone's whims.
I feel like over the last couple of years the landscape has changed tremendously, and what once may have been a simple blog post that mostly got ignored the news can spread further and wider than ever before. Things that are simple complaints of "I wish this worked better" now get twisted and restated as "X hates Y".