The iPhone is stale in the same way that the 911 is. This years 911 is better than last years, and this years iPhone is better than the last one. But this isn't about the iPhone, it's about iOS. A lot of the discussion has focussed around the devices themselves but that's not the point of the matter.
iOS in some respects is stale. The 'look' has been the same since the first iPhone came out of box. Is that a bad thing? Sure, to some people it is, they want new and fresh and different. That's not how Apple works though, they settle on a design paradigm and iterate repeatedly until they think it's time to move on.
When the iPhone came out, it was huge. It really was a big deal, and it's only gotten better since then. But the lack of a new huge advancement is playing against Apple. It's not that the competitors have advanced leaps and bounds beyond Apple, it's not that the competitors are necessarily better, but they're different. Even these small differences can be enough to excite a consumer who is growing bored with the minor changes they've seen as they've grown with a platform. It's not that the competition is stronger or something new, it's that the competition is different.
I don't want to be the guy telling Apple what they need to do or not do, the point is that the iPhone is still, at its core, the same as it's been since it was released. Occasionally I get bored with Windows, having used it for two decades and see that it's still the same at the core, and switch to Linux for a few months. It's not that I find Linux better or worse, it's that it's different enough to inspire me out of a slump I might be in.
A change out of a routine can be a very refreshing experience. Apple may realize this, but they may also realize that a lot of their non-technical consumers won't share this viewpoint. For them, routine might be the only comfort they have in the electronic world.
I agree with most of these points. Good design is iteration though - you want it to be familiar to the last. However, iOS was good design from 'nothing.' 5 years on, it's boring design now - it should have had some serious reiterations.
Going from 0 to iPhone 1 was a huge advancement. It would be nice to see half of that again. Each new iPhone comes out with one or two gimmicks, and an iOS update that'll run on the last version anyway.
Saying that; I'll still be replacing my 4 with a 5 at this event. And I'll still continue buying Apple products. Not trying to suggest we boycott them, but I am feeling like they're not showing their innovation qualities.
I do disagree with the Samsung point. I think their case was beyond fair.
Why are we still using the same designs / ideas approved by Steve Jobs in 2016? Its been 5 years and the new iPhones look almost exactly the same as the old ones - aside from some obvious local optimizations like processing speed and screen quality. It would be great to see something different come out of Apple, but right now it seems like the company is scared of coming out with anything truly revolutionary.
Nothing's gone wrong. Apple's phones are good but so are their phones from a couple of years ago. It's not sustainable to have a huge improvement or redesign every year.
Apple, as it exists now, is not much an innovator. They don't need to be. They can release improved versions of the products everyone already has. Best not to mess with that by introducing half-assed tech that breaks the user experience. Wait till its matured a bit then release a smooth and polished apple version.
In the span of ten years (2001 - 2010), they brought Unix computers to the mass market, revolutionized the smartphone, and introduced mainstream tablets. Saying that there's a lack of innovation there is ridiculous to me. I am extremely pleased that Apple only rarely embraces change for the sake of change[1].
I get the sense that people like us tend to want to see lots of changes, and are too quick to write things off just because they don't look that different from last year's model.
All that said, I certainly don't think iOS is perfect. I think Apple needs to add user accounts to the iPad, and allow for some IPC and replacement of system components on iOS, among other things.
[1] cf. this god-awful skeumorphic thing that is finally being put out to pasture. And the Flower Power and Dalmatian iMacs. And that whole "It's called iTools, not wait .Mac, no wait MobileMe, no wait iCloud!" thing has been a total disaster.
Apple's software has never been perfect-- but the competition was often much worse, so it looked really good. (I switched to Mac because I couldn't take WindowsXP crashing all the time.)
However, now Apple is essentially the iPhone company. The iPhone has a new version, with new hardware and new capabilities, every year. This basically means a new iOS, new apps, and often, new capabilities in OS X (Hand-off, whatever is happening with photo sharing this year, etc), and new features in XCode. (Plus all the watch stuff last year.)
I'm all for being agile and moving fast, but there's just not enough time to do this right. Sure, it might help to have more focus, and they have plenty of people and money. They just don't have enough time.
I don't buy it. Apple has always been like this, even when iPhone was far and away the best thing on the market. It seemed to work fine for their marketing department back then.
It's just hard for most people [including me] to look at any smartphone today (essentially all of which are clearly directly descended from the iPhone) and agree with the idea that "Apple is not innovative". I'm not sure what one would have to be looking at to not see the products they ship as innovative.
Lately, Apple does kinda suck at software development.
I spent days hunting down issues in the launch iOS 13 simulator that turned out not to happen on real hardware (and had never happened worth the iOS 13 launch).
Their UX is on a downward trend for several years now, IMO.
Historically I've heard Apple described as a software company that uses hardware to achieve competitive advantage.
Apple sucking is relative, obviously - their stuff is still better than most other products, but it's not add good as it used to be, IMO.
I wonder if the iPhone's success has transformed them into more of a hardware company?
>The point is that Apple's been dropping the ball a lot lately.
They might, but the examples for that are bad themselves:
>Macbook with less ports
Which has always been something Apple pushed for. Dropping deprecated ports early (to complains) and adopting new ones. Few doubt USB-C is the future, even if they complain about the dongles.
>copy&paste iPhone with no originality
The iPhone, like the iPod before it, had always had incremental updates. What originality exactly should it had at it's 10th year? Magic pixie dust spray? Can you point to some competitor doing anything original?
Besides, while everyone is always about how "Apple is all about style and no substance", nobody pays attentions to the large internal changes inside the iPhone year over year, with new processors, boards, camera setups and other internals designed by Apple. Processors, than, in all tests, leave the competitive top-end Android phones behind in single/multi core performance.
>imac/macpro with old CPUs :-(
Intel announced Kaby Lake CPUs suitable for the iMac just last week (Jan 03).
Mac Pro, yes, but it's probably a duying niche product.
1. The new iPhone is not different enough from the previous two generations. Even for the Pro, with the screen off, it is hard to tell the difference. Things loose their status symbol symbolism when your status symbol looks the same as an older model, or a refurb.
2. It is all formulaic. This may be more personal, but I used to eagerly await the Apple keynotes, even post-Jobs when they were somewhat predictable. I could normally expect _something_ new. Now it is just the same old shit:
- Silly intro
- "Here is how great our sales were", with an optional jab at Android
- Best iPhone ever
- Best iOS ever
- Something about macOS to fill time
- Curtains.
It isn't exciting, there is no reason to tune in. Most people will upgrade at their cycle. There is no motivator to go off-cycle to get that must-have or must-show-off feature. There is no excitement.
I'm not sure I really agree with the principle of the idea that apples products are getting worse in general. There's always some products that work, some that don't and some that don't at first - but do after refinement.
For example, 2-3 years ago I thought OS X (now macOS) was really going down hill, far less stability, performance stagnation and no clear direction. Turn to 2016 and I think Sierra is the most stable and reliable macOS yet, also we now have much 'better' standboxing, protected core system storage, better battery life and an interesting file system on its way. Now, look at the iPhone 7+ - it's a great phone, it's in my opinion the best phone they've ever made, it's not perfect, the camera is good but it's still a phone camera and thus requires a lot of light and a nice clean lens to take a decent shot, its battery life is excellent compared to most other phones - you can quite happily go two days between charges unless you have something setup poorly (like a polling email account etc), iOS is more responsive and stable than ever, we have public and developer betas and finally Apple actually respond to bug reports from the feedback tool (not every time, but when it's something worth investigating).
The retina MacBook is a lovely replacement for the MacBook Air, yes it doesn't have enough RAM and could do with a bit faster CPU, but it is a truly portable, usable machine.
Since the introduction of the 5k iMac, there's been no turning back for me, I have an early 2015 model at work and late 2015 at home and they are simply a joy to work on, not just the wonderful screen but the CPUs are rarely maxed out, the upgraded GPU in my home machine easily plays any game I want to play.
The bad is that the MacBook Pro is undeniably over priced if you want to spec it out, the Mac Pro is long overdue an update and they in my opinion should have retired the Air and offered a higher spec MacBook.
On the software side of things, we have a larger than ever open source software community contributing software usable on OS X and the range and diversity of games available of macOS has grown at an amazing rate over the past few years, look at the titles on steam, gogs and the App Store - it was only 2-3 years ago you really had to use wine and friends to play such games. iTunes still kind of sucks, it's UI/UX is a lot better than when Apple Music first launched but the app is still very slow and heavy when you have a large library, but Apple Music itself has very quickly gone from being a wtf is this product to replacing Spotify for me thanks to its integration across devices, better streaming quality (or so it seems) and it's better range of full albums.
Tldr; some things work, some things don't, I think things are better than ever regardless of failed experiments or some product lines that are outdated.
For me, it has everything to do with avoiding pain points on the consumers end. Keeping a consistant design/feel means Apple doesn't have to teach consumers new skills. Other platforms have to differentiate with size, shape, and OS. Each one requeres a transitional learning period.
Take siri for example. Apple is running a ton of celebrity ads just to show people how to use it, because siri is too different for the average person. Luckily for Apple, its just a feature, not the core product. Just like a new Android device, people will get used to siri eventually. The difference is the iPhone consistency makes the essential phone experience seamless.
> It feels old because it hasn't changed in 5 years, but I personally appreciate that.
And I think Apple is betting on a "conservative" majority that does not want change for the sake of change (I'm certainly part of it) - just observe how similar all the iPhones look, or all the laptops, displays... The only exception I can think of are the cheaper iPods.
I don't think very many people think their products have improved. I still buy Apple but am increasingly frustrated by their design choices in the last few years.
iOS in some respects is stale. The 'look' has been the same since the first iPhone came out of box. Is that a bad thing? Sure, to some people it is, they want new and fresh and different. That's not how Apple works though, they settle on a design paradigm and iterate repeatedly until they think it's time to move on.
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