[HN Gopher] Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line
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Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line
Author : zdw
Score : 187 points
Date : 2025-11-07 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kensegall.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kensegall.com)
| duxup wrote:
| Ads in Maps and how that contrasts with the customer experience
| is the message here.
|
| I'll be honest, I'm tired of the "steve jobs wouldn't" and "apple
| dying" articles, they're oh so shrill and tiresome and I think
| Steve would have changed with the times too ...
|
| Steve aside, I find this particular article's observation that
| ads in maps is a bad customer experience something I can agree
| with.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I think Steve would have changed with the times too_
|
| That's the thing that annoys me whenever someone says "what
| would $DECEASED_PERSON do?" We can't know! Maybe we can make an
| accurate guess about what Steve Jobs would have done in 2011,
| but it's really hard to say what he would have done in 2025,
| had he lived. Not just because people change over time (he was
| 56 when he died, and would be 70 today), but because business
| requirements and practices change over time, and executives --
| even Jobs -- adapt to those changes.
|
| Maybe this is _exactly_ what Jobs would have done: resist
| adding advertising for years and years, but finally in 2025
| decide it 's necessary for the business in some cases.
|
| (But I _also_ agree that this sort of thing is garbage for the
| user experience. In my fantasy world, advertising doesn 't
| exist, at all.)
| wrs wrote:
| Of course we don't know. But regarding this specific example,
| bear in mind that Apple is in _vastly_ better shape as a
| business than it was in 1999. So if that argument didn't work
| on him then, it doesn't seem implausible that it wouldn't
| work now.
| pqtyw wrote:
| Or the opposite. The Apple might and/or its execs might
| think that they are in such a dominant position that
| purposefully lowering UX to extract a few extra pennies
| from their users won't cause any short term harm.
|
| While back in the 90s the brand/reputational damage might
| have destroyed them.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Back in the 90s, Apple had zero brand or reputation. It
| had a few die-hard Mac fans and a bunch of inherited
| deals with public school district purchasing departments
| from when the Apple II dominated. They licensed Mac OS to
| clone manufacturers like Microsoft did with Windows. They
| were essentially already destroyed and waiting for the
| eviction notice.
|
| Jobs, with Mac OS X and the iMac, absolutely created the
| unassailable perception of quality and user experience
| Apple is known for today. The term "reality distortion
| field" was used a lot in relation to how much Jobs sold
| Apple and the Mac in keynotes.
|
| So it's completely fair to use his well-known positions
| against the company's current practices.
| xp84 wrote:
| > decide it's necessary for the business
|
| Necessary? That implies that there is some real threat to the
| business that needs to be countered this way -- which is
| laughable.
|
| Even Tim Cook had enough spine to make a principled stand
| once: he told activist investors in 2014 that if they didn't
| like Apple's commitment to environmental responsibility, they
| should sell their shares. Steve had twice the principles as
| Cook (on issues he cared about at least), so I don't think
| he'd allow "the investors want even greater growth" to force
| him do something he found gross and degrading to the
| experience.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Necessary?_
|
| Necessary, beneficial, has more upside than downside,
| whatever way you want to slice it.
|
| > _Even Tim Cook had enough spine to make a principled
| stand once: he told activist investors in 2014 that if they
| didn't like Apple's commitment to environmental
| responsibility, they should sell their shares_
|
| I feel like this is actually _support_ for my argument that
| people change over time (either naturally, or to adapt to
| the times themselves changing): I cannot for a second
| imagine Cook making this sort of statement today.
| xp84 wrote:
| > I cannot for a second imagine Cook making this sort of
| statement today.
|
| Agree, but personally I don't respect Cook and agree he
| seems to have sold his spine sometime around when he sold
| his soul. I got the sense that Jobs wasn't drifting
| toward increased greed but rather, a knowledge that he
| and Apple both had more than enough "F-you money" -- to
| do what they thought was best for the product, knowing
| that that was also exactly aligned with the long-term
| interests of the company anyway.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| There are lots of good experiences from ads in maps:
|
| - I search for "restaurants" and someone is having a special
|
| - A trampoline park opens near me, I'd like it to catch my eye
|
| - I've been googling chocolates recently, so populate the map
| with chocolate shops
|
| - Maybe I'm bored as a car passenger and watching the map
| screen so my attention is free anyway
| kelnos wrote:
| That sounds absolutely awful, honestly. I wouldn't want to
| see any of those things mess with the "natural" order of
| search results for whatever I've explicitly searched for.
| servercobra wrote:
| The 1st and 3rd are better served by Apple choosing the best
| result rather than who's paid for an ad.
| xp84 wrote:
| I do agree with you in theory, though their 'attempts' at
| this kind of thing are comical if not absurd (witness the
| organic search results in the App Store).
| ses1984 wrote:
| I don't want my phone to consume any of my "free" attention,
| ever, but holy cow especially not while driving.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > as a car passenger
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Sometimes the driver looks at the map screen too. That's
| most of the reason it's there.
| normie3000 wrote:
| > Maybe I'm bored as a car passenger and watching the map
| screen so my attention is free anyway
|
| I'm glad there are always ads available to stop my mind from
| wandering.
| dkdcio wrote:
| genuinely the worst opinion I've seen on HackerNews
|
| there are such better ways to enable these experiences
| without introducing the zero-sum, scam-inducing, corporate
| fuckery game that making it a pay-to-win ad-driven experience
| gives you
|
| I'm also concerned that boredom makes you want to see ads
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| I want to challenge the idea that any of these is an
| unqualified "good experience". I desire none of this.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Ads in the App Store continue to be a bad customer experience
| as well.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| Anything you search for, the first thing at the top of the
| list is an ad from a competitor!
| ndepoel wrote:
| Honestly, I think that if Steve Jobs had lived, he would have
| continued to push the industry in a direction more aligned with
| his tastes, others would have followed suit, and whatever hot
| topics we'd be discussing today, they would be _very_ different
| from the ones we are discussing now.
| xp84 wrote:
| Sad but probably true. I hadn't really considered that
| aspect. Anyone so influential no doubt changed the whole
| Zeitgeist, not just their own company's course.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Correct. This is something that is becoming increasingly
| apparent with time.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| He seemed very content in the end that Apple is on the right
| track and set up correctly for the future. I don't think he
| was talking about profit margins, but rather about the soul
| of the company, if there is such a thing.
| m463 wrote:
| > "steve jobs wouldn't" and "apple dying" ... shrill
|
| I think these are fans of apple who have lost something.
|
| Personally I think steve jobs was a good integrator - he got
| people together. Sometimes the people were apple <-> customers,
| sometimes music industry <-> computers, etc
|
| If there was controversy, he stepped in and lead - and stepped
| into the spotlight and explained.
|
| I don't see the same sort of leadership nowadays. Controversies
| like the app store woes, pricing, monopoly behavior, bad
| service to developers, even tariff stuff.
|
| Also he was good at creating/choosing new next products and
| killing not-quite-there products.
|
| yeah, but that ship has sailed.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I think what Steve added to Apple more than anything was
| being the biggest asshole in the room who was willing to
| point at a fellow high-up person and tell them their idea
| sucked ass, and you may be surprised to read what comes next,
| I think that's critical to a good product line. There are
| numerous problems caused by having too many stakeholders, too
| many cooks in the kitchen if you will, steering your given
| ship, and sometimes exactly what you need is one guy who
| knows damn well what needs to be made, and isn't afraid to
| tell you to take a hike if you want to die on the hill in
| question.
|
| That all being said, he got it wrong a lot too. You have the
| good decisions: the original Macs, the iPhone, banning Flash
| from iOS, backing Pixar, demanding the iPad Mini be better
| before it goes to market, etc. But he got it wrong a lot too:
| the Apple III, very strict App Store policies, not
| replaceable batteries in the iPhone which would eventually
| infect every Apple product, and I'm sure there's plenty more.
|
| The one thing though that prevents me from truly looking up
| to him though is he was, by all accounts, an absolute fucking
| asshole to work for. I appreciate a man with a vision
| absolutely, as should be evident, but there's also something
| to be said for being able to navigate those difficult
| conversations with class and kindness, even when you need to
| tell someone their idea sucks ass, you can do it in such a
| way where they don't want to quit outright. And those
| failings were mirrored in Jobs' personal life, too. Dude just
| had no fucking ability to People at all.
|
| So yeah. Complicated guy. I think he represents both the best
| and worst of what can happen when you empower one person with
| a lot of good ideas- and some bad- to lead a company. I think
| it's broadly a good thing; and I also think if I worked under
| him, I probably would've ended up knocking a tooth of his
| out.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I'm convinced you can't have your cake and eat it too.
| There's no _nice_ way to call someone's baby ugly. They're
| going to be upset, no matter how delicately you phrase it.
|
| Worse still, if you're too polite, many people won't "get"
| the message.
|
| _"Oh, he just thinks my baby has interesting and unique
| features."_
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > I'm convinced you can't have your cake and eat it too.
| There's no nice way to call someone's baby ugly. They're
| going to be upset, no matter how delicately you phrase
| it.
|
| I agree in a vacuum, but we're not in a vacuum, we're
| talking about Steve Jobs. A dude who would semi-regularly
| send coworkers and subordinates out of rooms in tears,
| throw shit around the office, and in general make a
| complete ass of himself.
|
| Like, I agree with you, it's gonna be hard to tell
| someone their baby is ugly. There's a better way to do it
| than throwing a stapler at the wall above their head and
| calling them ugly too.
|
| I don't mean to pick on you in particular but we
| seriously need to shred this societal idea that
| visionaries, rockstar devs, auteurs, whatever, have to be
| anti-social fucking monsters to make whatever they happen
| to make. It's stupid and it sucks and it excuses tons of
| abusive behavior. I'm all for making great shit but if
| you have to hurt people to do it, then I don't think it's
| worth it at all.
| Pamar wrote:
| About non-replaceable batteries: from what I understand, if
| a battery can be replaced by any random device owner you
| must design it with a robust cell to avoid risk of it being
| punctured, breaking, being crushed.
|
| And therefore you have more shell, less actual battery and
| therefore it lasts less.
|
| This does _not_ mean that I believe this was done
| exclusively for altruistic reasons. More like: this will
| result in a slightly better experience for the user... and
| more revenue for Apple. So let 's do it.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| The ads in Google Maps are fairly tame by modern standards. Of
| course, Apple can afford to not make this change and I hope
| they abstain. But it's really not too offensive in my opinion.
| qwerpy wrote:
| > fairly tame by modern standards
|
| That means they're still early in the ad-ification of the
| product. After a few dozen "what if we increase the ad
| density" A/B tests later, we'll get to the point Google
| search is now. Except with maps you're stuck using the app
| without an ad blocker.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I usually don't like those articles, but I think this one has a
| pretty good point.
|
| If it was just "Steve said no to ads in MacOS X, so it's a
| betrayal to put ads in Maps" then I'd be right there with you.
| We got a lot of these. "Steve wouldn't have accepted the
| notch." "Steve wouldn't have made a VR headset." These are both
| baseless and boring. Even if it's true, so what? Steve
| specifically told his successors _not_ to ask "what would
| Steve do?" And the objection is vague stuff about aesthetics or
| customer appeal or whatever.
|
| This one is more interesting than that by focusing on the
| customer experience angle, and there's little room for
| disagreement on that. I might argue that the notch makes for a
| better customer experience, you might argue it would have been
| better without it, and we're really just putting our opinions
| onto a dead man. But it's very hard to make the argument that
| adding ads to Maps makes for a better customer experience.
| Doing it isn't a matter of having different tastes or opinions
| than Steve had. It's directly going against a fundamental
| principle he had for the company. "Steve wouldn't have made
| Maps look like that" would be tedious, but "Steve wouldn't have
| deliberately made the customer experience worse in order to
| make more money" is a message I can get behind.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Ads is a red line for me too. They're in the App Store and I
| hate it.
|
| Adding ads to anything is going to make it significantly worse
| for me immediately - and I expect it only to get worse from
| there as the customer of the device or service is no longer the
| only customer of the product, and the more money the ads bring
| in, the more the needs of the advertisers will be weighted.
| microtherion wrote:
| Yes, I agree that ads in maps would be a bad customer
| experience.
|
| But "The customer experience was all-important" is a bit
| reductionist. The hockey puck mouse stuck around for years
| after it became clear it was a poor customer experience. And I
| have cursed desktop Macs countless times for having all their
| ports in the back, because Jobs disliked seeing them, customer
| experience be damned.
| gretch wrote:
| Or how the iphone 4 antenna was obstructed by normal holding
| of the phone (including poses in apple marketing materials),
| and then steve just told everyone they were holding their
| phones wrong.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| They will _always_ put ads into everything. Doesn 't matter what
| they say, eventually someone's gonna show up and notice that
| money is being left on the table by not advertising to all those
| users. Paying them just makes your attention even more valuable.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The trouble with any ad-free tier is that anybody who can't
| afford the ad-free tier can't afford what is being advertised.
| bigyabai wrote:
| There is some amusing "leopards ate my face" logic in paying a
| company to _not_ pester you for further monetization.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Never pay them. You're essentially paying to segment yourself
| into the upper echelons of the market.
| generalpf wrote:
| It doesn't matter what Steve Jobs would or wouldn't do, Tim Cook
| took Apple to a $3T company and that's where we are.
| mason_mpls wrote:
| Yeah every action a company takes is immediately and completely
| reflected in the market cap /s
| FrankWilhoit wrote:
| Jobs's focus on the customer experience was useless because he
| judged the customer by himself. "Be like me and you will have a
| good experience" is not clever marketing; it is abuse.
| pclowes wrote:
| I dunno, for a while it was the most valuable company on the
| planet. While you might not like his judgment it seems plenty
| of people did.
| bsimpson wrote:
| This might be the worst take I've ever read on this website.
|
| I'm a lifetime Mac user who has bought exactly one iPhone (the
| 3G S) before switching to Android. I'm definitely not in the
| Jobs reality distortion field.
|
| But I do remember how the iPod was better than every similar
| thing at the time, and how people spent _years_ clamoring for
| Apple to harness that same focus to make a phone. Apple had to
| go out and buy the iPhone name because that's what it had been
| colloquially called for years before it was announced.
|
| There are plenty of things Apple has done wrong, many by Steve
| personally, but you can't seriously claim that his taste was
| only applicable to him.
|
| Don't denigrate the meaning of the word "abuse" to make your
| hot take spicier.
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| as someone who bought the creativelabs mp3 player back in the
| day, the ipod was absolutely better and I was just being some
| combination of cheap and contrarian
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Saying it's abuse is quite the overstatement. It's certainly
| opinionated design.
|
| Contrasted to Microsoft's philosophy where _no one_ is allowed
| to have a good experience, it 's a breath of fresh air.
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| for something useless it worked very, extraordinarily well
| hylaride wrote:
| Use an MP3 player from before the iPod existed and then try an
| iPod classic. Same with smart phones. There is no way you're
| going to convince most people that what you say is true in any
| general sense.
|
| Sure, simplification means having to have some opinionated ways
| of doing things because you're removing options, but there's a
| very real benefit that can come out of it.
|
| If anything, it makes the current state of Apple that much more
| sad.
| cyberax wrote:
| I had an MP3 player before the iPod. It was a CD-based
| player, and it was pretty good.
|
| I think, iPod was really one of the first users of 1.8" hard
| drives, so it was better than the competition simply because
| Apple had access to better hardware.
| daft_pink wrote:
| To me the really question is how that impacts my privacy. I'm
| okay with Ads in their software as long as it doesn't negatively
| impact my privacy.
|
| It's obvious that many of google services have huge negative
| impacts on my privacy, which is why I buy from apple.
| nomel wrote:
| I buy from Apple for privacy and the their respecting users and
| being "classier" by not putting ads in their apps. That _is_
| the reason I pay the "Apple tax". I think this is very
| unfortunate.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's very likely that the "privacy" advertising is largely a
| sham too. As Senator Wyden proved, Apple can be compelled by
| the federal government to conceal spyware in iOS and its
| supporting systems: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
|
| Hardly surprising given how they reneged their stance on in-
| OS advertising though.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Is that AI Steve Jobs in the header image? Pretty uncanny and
| takes away from the article.
| sjm wrote:
| Yes. Pretty hypocritical for an article about "crossing red
| lines" to use AI slop for an image of a real person. Very
| disrespectful.
| roywiggins wrote:
| it also just looks awful and only about 80% like the guy
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's not hypocritical for an article about crossing someone
| else's red line to simultaneously be crossing _your_ red
| line.
| sjm wrote:
| Depicting deceased people with AI is objectively
| distasteful, especially from a self-described "ad guy" who
| should know better.
| wat10000 wrote:
| That's not what "objectively" means.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah especially since it probably wouldn't take long to scrub
| through some WWDC presentations of his to find him holding up
| his hands like that (or a gesture of comparable meaning)
| asadotzler wrote:
| It's death porn gross AI slop, 100% and immediately obvious to
| anyone who isn't coming of age in the slop era.
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| There's something way off about that image, I'd bet money it's
| AI. Gross.
| fpauser wrote:
| One word: Enshittification.
| kace91 wrote:
| I don't care about whatever Jobs thought, but honestly I do care
| about apple forgetting that the walled garden's walls are
| tolerated only because the experience inside is better.
|
| Their hardware is still amazing, but I've had enough issues with
| software quality and Cook's penny pinching philosophy that I've
| bought a second hand laptop to explore moving to Linux.
|
| So far, the experience is making me question whether my next main
| driver will be a MacBook.
| jabwd wrote:
| Yeah for me it has been degrading ever since the Settings app
| became an upsell app. I'm sorry I came here to change a setting
| not dismiss a notification on your latest failed service thing
| that requires 20,- a month.
| kace91 wrote:
| It's the push for services.
|
| It's the product ladder with artificial limitations like low
| fps screens or small storage to push you a bit more.
|
| It's bugs piling up because Marketing needs the next buzzword
| released.
|
| It's the aesthetics optimized for a screenshot rather than
| real usability.
|
| It's the feeling that their top talent is not able to deliver
| anymore, like their camera's processing or AI features.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > It's the product ladder with artificial limitations like
| low fps screens
|
| This one really pisses me off as someone who just had to
| upgrade their 2018 iPad Pro. The air would've been great,
| if it had a 120hz screen. I really don't need any other
| "pro" feature but I refused to tolerate 60hz in 2025 when
| every other device I own including my big desktop monitor
| is 120hz or more. But no, I have to spend an extra $500 for
| a higher refresh rate. I didn't even want the pro, I want a
| 120hz air so I can get the colors I want.
|
| Nonetheless, because my screen was broken and I needed a
| new iPad, I forked over the money for the pro.
| Conveniently, they use two different magic keyboards so now
| that I'm "locked in" to the pro ecosystem, I'm forever
| stuck buying iPad pros unless I also want to have to buy a
| new magic keyboard that works with the Air line if they
| ever release a 120hz air.
|
| Apple can easily differentiate the air from the pro in
| numerous other ways besides refresh rate, and yet they
| still continue to ship 60hz screens.
| accrual wrote:
| Yep. I have two un-dismissable notifications in the Settings
| app for two different AppleCare products. Can't dismiss them
| - you just have to have a red notification icon until they
| expire. Just turn off badges for the Settings app right?
| Sorry, the Settings app is mysteriously missing from the
| Notifications options.
| basisword wrote:
| >> Yeah for me it has been degrading ever since the Settings
| app became an upsell app.
|
| I didn't really notice this until I setup an iPhone from
| scratch for someone. I normally just move from one to the
| other. The nagging from Settings is outrageous. It will never
| stop telling you to setup Apple Pay and Siri and offering
| Apple Care. It was like the experience of buying a PC in the
| 2000's.
| cyberax wrote:
| > I do care about apple forgetting that the walled garden's
| walls are tolerated only because the experience inside is
| better.
|
| Why would they care if they can just lock the gates and put
| some barbed wire on top of the walls? What are you going to do,
| move to Android?
| kace91 wrote:
| >What are you going to do, move to Android?
|
| Why not? If ads are coming anyway why pay the apple tax.
| uvaursi2 wrote:
| Click bait headline. Is that a real photo of SJ? Flagged and
| moving on.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > What would Steve Jobs do?
|
| > ... I was in the room when Steve was presented with an eerily
| similar "opportunity." ... 1999-ish ... Lee Clow and I were
| invited to a hastily scheduled meeting with Steve and his top
| lieutenants. The topic was building advertising into the Mac
| system software. ...
|
| Not that I like ads, but - Late 90's Apple, fresh out of a near-
| death experience, is an extremely different context from today's
| Apple, with it's 12-digit annual profits and #4 spot on the
| Fortune 500 list.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Speaking simply to your comment because I'm not aware enough of
| their behaviors myself, wouldn't the 12-digit profits and a
| high Fortune 500 listing potentially be enough to make Steve
| say "We have enough honestly" obviously that's not the norm,
| most companies just seem to find any way to extract every ounce
| of our souls but I thought that was where Apple was supposed to
| differ, at least under Steve.
|
| I honestly don't know this is just a question.
| bell-cot wrote:
| My thinking was that recently-near-death 1999 Apple, with no
| deep moats nor cash cows, needed to present itself as premium
| and squeaky-clean.
|
| > ... wouldn't the 12-digit profits and a high Fortune 500
| listing potentially be enough to make Steve say "We have
| enough honestly" ...
|
| It'd be nice to imagine. But given Steve's documented
| horrible behaviors at a number of points in his life...I
| sadly doubt it.
| bamboozled wrote:
| If I see ads in their proprietary software, I'm done as a
| customer.
| radley wrote:
| Uhm, have you opened your Settings app? It's had Apple ads for
| years. And the Wallet app showed a promo notification for the
| F1 movie.
| intrasight wrote:
| I see no ads there
| metabagel wrote:
| I ran a reverse image search on the image of Steve Jobs, and
| couldn't come up with anything, so it does appear that it might
| be AI generated, which I don't approve of.
| furyofantares wrote:
| It sure looks it. It was my assumption the moment I saw it.
| monitron wrote:
| Same reaction here. I think the author certainly crossed a line
| by using a diffusion model to publish an image of a dead famous
| person doing something he never did.
| asadotzler wrote:
| It isn't obvious to you that it's AI? You had to look it up?
| Please get more familiar with actual photographs, maybe skim a
| few AI free photo sites or, oh, I don't know, buy a few coffee
| table photo books and develop some discernment, because that
| one is about as obvious a fake photo as a stick figure would
| be. It's truly gross.
| halapro wrote:
| Right? I only generated a single AI picture of myself and it
| had _that exact_ shading seen in this picture. Extremely
| obvious.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| it's super distasteful, i thought, having seen steve jobs in
| person face to face
| skhameneh wrote:
| The very first thing I saw from Apple that, IMO, Jobs would have
| vehemently stopped was the two-toned back on the iPhone 5.
|
| That said, the iOS 26 release is abysmal. The only redeeming
| thing for me has been the enhancements to Stage Manager,
| everything else with the UI/UX is such a mess that every day it
| seems like I'm discovering something new in the realm of awful
| design. And this isn't limited to minor nitpicks, there are major
| CTAs that are essentially "black on black" and practically not
| visible below 50% screen brightness and not acceptably visible at
| max brightness. Just last night I noticed the browser tabs will
| render full color content behind the text. It's so bad I've been
| considering cataloging screenshots and writing about it, because
| some of it's laughably bad.
| hbn wrote:
| > The very first thing I saw from Apple that, IMO, Jobs would
| have vehemently stopped was the two-toned back on the iPhone 5.
|
| The iPhone 5 was revealed a year after Jobs stepped down as CEO
| and his death shortly after. The design was almost surely
| locked in while he was still CEO.
|
| The original iPhone had a 2-toned back too.
| tartoran wrote:
| Iphone user here. I have to admit that the IOS UI/UX has become
| really tiring and at times I'm utterly confused by
| inconsistency, a total contrast from the early days IOS when
| everything was consistent and intuitive. The silver lining is
| that I am using my Iphone less and less.
| btown wrote:
| I have no doubt that the team behind Liquid Glass had the same
| noble motivations as the team behind Microsoft's Metro Design
| Language in 2010.
|
| In a crowded market, making a completely innovative visual
| identity is often the only option. One hopes that the result is
| that the words "forward-looking" and "trend-setting" and
| "loyalty-inspiring" and "inimitable" begin to apply. And if
| they pull it off, more power to them!
|
| But there's a matter of taste as well as novelty. And while
| there were many incredible things about Metro, history bears
| witness to how much Zune and Windows Phone and Windows 8 have
| become beloved household names in the decade-and-a-half since.
|
| I do think that Jobs would have signed off on the _motivation_
| behind Liquid Glass. I do not think he would have signed off on
| Liquid Glass itself.
| conductr wrote:
| > I do think that Jobs would have signed off on the
| motivation behind Liquid Glass. I do not think he would have
| signed off on Liquid Glass itself.
|
| Agree. Jobs took big swings like Liquid Glass but, perhaps
| the most important part that's missing in present Apple, he
| was obsessive about ensuring the swings were executed to a
| high standard. He was hands on in this pursuit.
|
| It's actually weird to me that a company so large, so well
| compensated, so profitable, so prolific, etc can't seem to
| care enough about the details without a Jobs-esque foot on
| their neck type leader to be afraid of.
| busymom0 wrote:
| I am running the latest iOS 26.1 and it's still very buggy. The
| most annoying one is that anytime I either restart my phone or
| update the phone (which restarts it), the wallpaper changes to
| all black.
|
| That wouldn't be so bad if the borders around the Home Screen
| icons didn't look so ugly with black background.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| I don't understand why car-based things can have ads or updates
| that popup or things like that. My car (2024 Subaru) + Android
| Auto is so restrictive that I can't even type a search query into
| the screen while I'm parked, I _have_ to speak to it. Yet, while
| I was out grocery shopping the other day the thing popped up
| multiple times asking me if I wanted to start an update "That
| would require you to turn your car off for 5-10 minutes"
|
| It popped up a second time as I _SLOWED DOWN_ at a red light. I
| didn 't even come to a complete stop but apparently that was
| "stopped" enough for it to pop up.
|
| Not to mention while you're using Google Maps the whole time it's
| popping up asking "Is that cop still there? Is there still
| construction?" and they're looking for you to click on a button
| on the car's screen that indicates yes/no. However, when I'm
| parked at a rest area trying to look for the nearest cracker
| barrel it'll start navigating me automatically to one that's
| 45min in the wrong direction instead of just letting me pick
| which one I want to go to.
|
| And now, ads will show in Apple Maps? Ah yeah, when I'm driving
| is definitely the best time to distract me for your own greed!
|
| It's asinine. Obviously the "Safety features" are just
| performative. Probably so they can force us to have a mic enabled
| or something. It's bs.
| tartoran wrote:
| Whoever designs these should be fired and never allowed in this
| space again.
| radley wrote:
| Uhm, _is crossing_?? Mate, you 're going to have to reverse
| direction and travel back about eight years to find that line.
|
| I feel like most of this is Microsoft's fault. As MS lowers the
| bar for what's acceptable on Windows, Apple just has to be
| somewhat-obviously better.
|
| Additionally, Google's ad-driven economy set a low bar with
| Android, but that platform has always been that way. Together,
| those platforms make it really easy for Apple to posture as being
| considerate.
| spankalee wrote:
| I don't know... ads in maps is very, very different from ads in
| the OS.
|
| Users buy the OS with the computer, and Apple doesn't incur any
| extra cost from users using it (maybe cloud-based AI will change
| this though?), and it doesn't require additional payments.
| Meanwhile, services like iCloud+ do require payment.
|
| Maps is a service, like iCloud, but users have been trained to
| expect it for free, with basically every other maps provider
| using ads to fund it. I suspect that most users think that ads
| are a better user experience than not using it at all because
| they won't pay $9.99/month for maps.
|
| Maps is also a search engine, and ads are the primary way to fund
| search engines. I guarantee that if Apple every launches iSearch
| they will eventually fund it with ads.
| zakki wrote:
| I just hope they won't change Calculator as a service app.
| tartoran wrote:
| Eventually it could get there if that's the direction Apple
| stays on.
| xp84 wrote:
| > basically every other maps provider using ads to fund it.
|
| > iSearch they will eventually fund it with ads.
|
| See, I disagree with your entire premise here. Apple, unlike
| Google, has a _very very profitable_ hardware business which
| provides so much to the bottom line that they don 't have to
| operate Apple Maps or Apple Search or Calculator as a self-
| sustaining business with its own P&L. It's stupid to operate as
| though they must.
|
| The correct thinking (in my not so humble opinion) for a long-
| term-minded company is to recognize:
|
| 1. That massive firehose of money allows them to make Maps
| markedly better than what Google can afford to do. Since Apple
| gave up on UI/UX design excellence, this ability to not rely on
| ads is arguably their only remaining differentiated advantage.
|
| 2. Part of what allows Apple to command such monster-sized
| margins is that (usually... so far... outside of the App Stores
| at least) their product is not packed full of sleazy ads that
| significantly detract from the experience. You don't just get
| to fully enshittify the product and still command the same high
| prices as you did when you were offering a premium product. A
| Porsche covered in wraps advertising porn sites and penis
| pills, which plays loud AI-generated ads on every screen all
| day long would not sell at the price a normal one does.
| cyberax wrote:
| > You don't just get to fully enshittify the product and
| still command the same high prices as you did when you were
| offering a premium product
|
| "Challenge accepted" - Tim Apple.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I'd pay $10/m for ad-free Apple/Google maps.
| twsted wrote:
| I am checking this carefully. The red line is here, for me and I
| think for many Apple customers. I choose Apple for being
| different from other companies, for valuing customer experiences
| and for rejecting ads and other "insults" for users. I think that
| if they cross the line, me and many other customers will leave.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > I choose Apple for being different from other companies, for
| valuing customer experiences and for rejecting ads and other
| "insults" for users
|
| Yes. The point of willingly putting yourself in the walled
| garden was that the experience was definitively better than the
| other options.
|
| When the walled garden ceases to be better and starts adopting
| all the same dark patterns and user hostile experience as
| everyone else, what point is there in staying inside?
| qwerpy wrote:
| The hardware is still marginally better but the experience is
| no longer better. In fact with android at least you can
| sideload and install full powered ad blockers. At some point
| once the iOS experience degrades beyond a certain threshold,
| android will be a more attractive option.
| cmckn wrote:
| Where will you go? The alternatives seem worse in almost every
| way.
|
| > and I think for many Apple customers
|
| Unfortunately, I think people who care about this enough to
| leave are a rounding error. It's why the entire consumer
| product market looks the way it does.
| retskrad wrote:
| Look at the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. It's constantly
| nudging you to subscribe to some Apple service, like AppleCare,
| or to pay for more iCloud storage because your measly 5 GB is
| running out. If Tim Cook is this shameless, then ads in Maps are
| practically old-school Apple by comparison.
| gdulli wrote:
| I don't understand why people are so tolerant of this first-
| party advertising.
| cyberax wrote:
| We develop for iOS, so we need to register a bunch of Apple
| test accounts once in a while. Every time an account is
| registered, you get around 5 emails of ads. WITHOUT ANY
| UNSUBSCRIBE links.
| zeld4 wrote:
| Everything breaks.
|
| Jobs, if lived, will bow to ads or get fired.
| dilap wrote:
| They crossed it definitively, and still unbelievably, to me, when
| they started showing ads as the first result in App Store search.
| For a long time searching "ChatGPT" in the AppStore would surface
| a rip-off clone w/ a lookalike icon as the first result. How many
| thousands of users inadvertently downloaded the clone, paid for
| it, and were, basically, victims of a scam, facilitated by Apple?
| (Now the first result for ChatGPT, Claude, Grok is at least the
| correct first party ad, though this almost seems like extortion
| on the part of Apple.)
|
| (Software quality has also fallen off a cliff, though that's more
| a loss of instutional competence, I think, than active anti-user
| behavior motivated by avarice.)
| bambax wrote:
| Could be wrong, but the photo of Steve Jobs at the top of the
| article looks AI. Disturbing suspicion.
| roxolotl wrote:
| Yea the sizing seems wrong. Hands are way too big compared to
| his head. Could be a weird lens/angle though.
|
| If it is AI wtf is it even doing there though? It adds nothing.
| A quick search returns a bunch of images where Jobs looks
| annoyed or trying to stop something.
| xd1936 wrote:
| Am I the only one that remembers Steve introducing the iAd
| platform?
| zahirbmirza wrote:
| Apple has already cross a red line, it stepped over to one that
| has little interest in user experience. Recent releases of MacOS
| and iOS and iPadOS have given rise to Windowsesque complexity and
| ugliness. I have used Macs since the Classic, and am sad to say I
| no longer ascribe to the cult of Apple.
| al_borland wrote:
| I will never understand why some companies turn away from some of
| the core principles that got them to their position.
|
| If it's market pressure, it tells me that Cook doesn't really
| believe their future roadmap is good enough for growth, so he
| needs to hedge with other things that make the product worse. Of
| course those very things will hurt future growth. That's how an
| upward spiral turns downward.
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| the thing that you're missing here is that Cook is gonna get
| roasted if he doesn't take every opportunity to maximize
| growth. That means the future roadmap as written PLUS ads in
| maps and other decisions like that. There's no such thing as
| enough.
| sumedh wrote:
| The people who helped them reach that position are probably
| retired, so the new leadership wants to make more money and
| leave their own mark.
| upboundspiral wrote:
| I feel this strongly. From a business perspective, when your
| competitors expand their revenue avenues through ads you have
| three options: copy them to catch up, do nothing and perish, or
| lobby the government for increased consumer protections. The
| third option isn't being taken, but I believe its the right one
| for many companies that want to remain customer-centric, and
| that have real values.
| wagwang wrote:
| Very ironic but so much of tech ultimately comes down to taste
| and Tim Cook obviously just doesn't have it.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Much of life does frankly...
| gwd wrote:
| > From that point on, Steve would go on to spend lavishly on
| things that improved the experience, and he would reject--often
| brutally--any idea that diluted or harmed the experience. ...I'll
| go out on a limb and say that uninvited advertising is not
| normally equated with a better customer experience.
|
| YES!!! SOO much of the Apple user experience has degraded due to
| this. I can't listen to my own music that I bought on the Music
| app, without being interrupted asking if I want Apple Music. I
| open up the Books app to read Winnie the Pooh to my son, and the
| opening screen has loads of random trashy romances to try to sell
| me. I go to comfort read Ender's Game, which I did buy though the
| store a decade ago, and it helpfully "groups" it with the other
| four (!?) books in that series which I haven't bought, as if to
| say, "Don't you want to buy these too?" NO! If I want to buy
| them, I know where to find them!
|
| It is SUCH an unpleasant experience. EVERY time I open the App
| Store to update some apps, I'm angry that I have to wander past
| advertising assaults to do it. EVERY time I open the music app to
| play an old favorite, I'm angry that I have to go past the
| advertising assault. EVERY time I open up the book app, I'm angry
| that I have to go past the advertising assault.
|
| I very much doubt the execs understand how much they're damaging
| the brand for that little bit of extra revenue. The see the extra
| revenue, but they don't see the lost brand, or the people that
| switch away. Is it really worth it?
|
| ETA: I don't think it's an exaggeration to say:
|
| Modern iPhones don't come with a music player. They come with a
| music store, that you happen to be able to put your own music
| into. But it's not structured to help you play your music, it's
| structured to sell you what they want to sell you.
|
| Modern iPhones don't come with an e-book app. They come with a
| book store that you happen to be able to upload some of your own
| books into. But it's not structured to help you organize and read
| your books -- even the ones you've bought; it's structured to
| sell you more books.
| delusional wrote:
| > I can't listen to my own music that I bought on the Music app
|
| That doesn't change if you buy the subscription even. I moved
| to YT Music only because the Apple Music app asked me to
| subscribe every time I used it. I was already subscribed.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| What do you mean "modern"? I'm using iPhones since 4S and I
| don't think that Music or iBooks workflow changed, it's largely
| the same. So probably Steve Jobs was OK with that.
| gwd wrote:
| Um, no? Apple Music wasn't even a thing in the iPhone 4S
| timeframe. You used to buy music in the iTunes Store, and
| play it in the music player app.
|
| It used to be if you clicked the App Store, and you had apps
| to update, it would take you to the "Update" tab immediately.
|
| Then they changed it to take you to the main page, and you
| had to click the "Update" tab.
|
| Then they changed the updates to be under your account; so
| you have to find this little corner thing and scroll down,
| wading through all the ads for the new apps you haven't
| installed.
|
| Books always had a store, but your library was primary. You
| managed it; it had books that you'd bought, not empty
| placeholders for books you hadn't bought. There was a store,
| but it was the second tab.
|
| Now the store is the main tab, and your library is the second
| tab.
|
| And, as I said, they've now started reorganizing _my_
| library, adding "empty placeholder" books in. I don't see
| Enders Game in my library any more; I see the Ender Series,
| and if I click on that, I see all five titles, the first of
| which I can actually read (since that's the only one I
| bought).
|
| If I honestly thought Android would be any different, I might
| consider jumping ship.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| The Music app on iPhones went from simple and usable to an
| absolute dumpster fire pushing a subscription. Even with a
| subscription it's incredibly maddening because of the
| terrible UX and show-stopping bugs (Literally failing at
| playing music!).
|
| The Library tab is now the last one, with the rest (Which are
| lazy-loaded and slow!) are pushing content much of which is
| locked behind a subscription. It's now even worse with iOS 26
| since tabs get groups and requires 2 taps to into my own
| library.
|
| The Music app has been getting worse and worse every year.
| strictnein wrote:
| This is how Amazon is too with the movies and tv shows you
| bought. There's no way to search your owned library anymore.
| You just have to page through it to find what you want. And
| your library is hidden away behind a tiny little unlabeled icon
| in the upper right corner.
|
| And, to make matters worse, you have things like the Charlie
| Brown Halloween Special, which Apple now owns the rights to.
| You cannot in any way search for the version you bought from
| Amazon. The only result Amazon shows is the result that would
| require you to pay for Apple TV. So you can either look through
| all of the stuff you bought from them, or find the original
| email for the purchase and click the link in there.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| It's true, and it sucks. But at least I didn't pay Amazon
| $1800 for hardware first.
| delecti wrote:
| How are you browsing your Amazon content? I see search bars
| on the 'All Content' [1] page, and also on each individual
| page, like my movies and shows [2].
|
| Though it seems like the interface is pretty rubbish in the
| Prime Video section [3], so maybe that's where you're
| looking?
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-
| console/contentlist/a... [2]
| https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-
| console/contentlist/v... [3]
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/mystuff/library
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| You are YASsing a ChatGPT authored screed...
| ngcazz wrote:
| Now where'd you cop that?
| card_zero wrote:
| Disconcertingly many em dashes, but they're used correctly,
| without spaces, and are easy to type on MacOS.
| staplers wrote:
| I very much doubt the execs understand how much they're
| damaging the brand for that little bit of extra revenue.
|
| Our entire societal system is based on increasing revenue (due
| to inflation). Until we measure, define, and value experience
| in nominal terms through data, most leaders won't care because
| it will remain an estimate against hard data.
| edoceo wrote:
| Consumers need actual choice too. Choosing between ad-
| infested music and no-music is crap. The option of music,
| sans PM-bloat doesn't exist.
|
| Sub music with the thing you like.
|
| Freaking heck, I've gotta dismiss ads on my BANKING APP just
| to deposit a check.
| gdulli wrote:
| > Modern iPhones don't come with a music player. They come with
| a music store
|
| > Modern iPhones don't come with an e-book app. They come with
| a book store
|
| As a Windows person I see these as features, not criticisms.
| Windows not having good builtin versions of these or other apps
| is either a cause or effect of there being a robust ecosystem
| of third-party choices, both open-source and commercial.
|
| My frustration with Apple when I tried it out was that you
| either use iTunes or there's little other choice. Technically
| some choice, yes, but because most people are passive and use
| the Apple stuff by default, there's a smaller community of
| developers who are motivated to try to compete.
|
| When I see people criticize Notepad in Windows (for example) it
| feels irrelevant because you're not expected to use Notepad for
| anything but the most trivial use cases. There are so many
| other, better options, and the platform has a culture of
| exploring those options.
| com2kid wrote:
| Microsoft used to have one of the best media players around!
| Windows used to have built in streaming support from device
| to device. You could load up music on your personal PC and
| play it on your home theater through your Xbox360! Windows
| Media Player was huge, only eclipsed by Winamp at the time.
|
| Eventually MS released the Zune app, which was also awesome
| but lacked many of the WMP features. (But it looked amazing!)
|
| They also were huge in the ebook space for years before amzn
| sucked all the air out of the room.
|
| They also tried to popularize a standards based in car stereo
| system a decade before car play became a thing, and the first
| Windows tablets were released in the 1990s!
|
| Oh and they tried to make a smart TV box in 1999, because of
| course they did. (Nearly 20 years too early, oops!)
| mulmen wrote:
| Microsoft had so many opportunities that they just failed
| to execute. How did they miss on _everything_?
|
| Home servers
|
| Media streaming
|
| Smartphones
|
| Touchscreens
|
| Tablets
|
| They even had media production with MSNBC.
|
| All of this was available from Microsoft in the XP era. How
| did they fail at literally all of it? There has to be a
| lesson.
| DarKraD wrote:
| The iBooks one situation is the worst for me. Underneaths it's
| actually a really good epub reader with the infinite scroll set
| up. Perfect for one hand reading.
|
| The front page got so annoying with all these trashy books that
| I eventually had to DNS blocking some iTunes/Apple endpoints.
| And now it just displays my current reading books, the previous
| titles and the daily goal every time I open iBooks.
| tgma wrote:
| Modern iPhones? iTunes/iPod sync still works just fine.
| However, you have to question if that's what most people who
| use iPhone want. For one thing, mobile users don't necessarily
| have a PC. Mobile is the main device for most users not PC
| which is different from 2007. Also, I bet many users prefer ad
| supported free music streaming services if they never pay for
| music over a system of organizing custom MP3 downloaded.
|
| Arguably Android has a much worse and fragmented default
| experience with respect to having a decent jukebox music player
| that does it the old school way.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I have to rant about search in the App Store.
|
| Pick any app you want and search for it. Ideally it has a
| pretty unique name and not just a dictionary wod. What will you
| see? The first result will _always_ be an ad for a completely
| different app.
|
| Google has long dealt with this problem with AdWords and search
| results. Google still tries to make the exact thing your
| searching for be the #1 organic result. Yes there are promoted
| links but they're not as prominent.
|
| The App Store #1 result, which is always an ad, is quite
| literally half the screen.
|
| I don't know how advertising works on the App STore but I
| suspect it's a CPM model not a CPC model (like AdWords). So
| Apple just doesn't care. But I don't think this would ever have
| happpened in the Steve Jobs era.
| znpy wrote:
| This is why you should always pirate digital media, even if you
| bought it.
|
| A pdf or epub file will never bother you in that way. And if
| they do, you can edit it and remove that trash.
|
| I _always_ pirate the media i buy and /or the physical books i
| buy.
|
| Loading pdf documents into GoodNotes (regularly bought) is the
| quickest way to make them usable (no bullshit, no ads AND i can
| take... good notes on the pages).
| basisword wrote:
| >> Modern iPhones don't come with a music player. They come
| with a music store, that you happen to be able to put your own
| music into. But it's not structured to help you play your
| music, it's structured to sell you what they want to sell you.
|
| I would have argued against this in the past. But in iOS 26
| they introduced the ability to 'pin' 6 favourite playlists or
| albums to the top of your library. Really useful. If you don't
| have a subscription (to Apple Music or iTunes Match) you don't
| get the feature. There is zero reason to do this other than to
| milk people for more money when they've already spent over $1k
| on the device and likely spent hundreds purchasing the music
| from iTunes Store.
| amelius wrote:
| An iPhone is a vending machine in your pocket.
|
| (owned and operated by Apple, and __you__ paid for it.)
| portaouflop wrote:
| I disagree. You can disable all the apps--in fact never use
| _any_ app if you can avoid it altogether. Apps are inherently
| bad, and the web version is always better.
|
| It didn't have to be like this, but here we are.
|
| I often go weeks without opening any app but the browser on
| my phone.
| portaouflop wrote:
| I haven't used Apple devices back when they were good so I have
| always avoided all the built-in Apple bloat/adware.
|
| Because I came from Windows this was already my standard
| assumption - I need to violently throw out all the built-in
| stuff and replace it with free and good software.
|
| It's funny because that means I never felt the same pain you
| feel; I just assumed that's how operating systems are.
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| I'm actually an apple convert, and I'm going back with my next
| new laptop purchase. About 8 years ago I got my first macbook at
| my first tech job and really loved what I was able to do with it
| as, essentially, a really fancy linux UI. Now it's a bloated
| linux UI that disrupts my ability to get work done, so I'm
| switching to a machine and OS that respect me.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Decent short article built around a personal anecdote with SJ.
| The AI slop image of SJ at the top was such a turn off it was
| hard for me to respect anything this fellow had to say. It's a
| real shame that people feel the need to include images like that,
| presumably to draw attention on social media embeds, but it's
| just gross seeing death porn like that.
| manoDev wrote:
| To be fair, ads on a map aren't the same as Windows 11 start menu
| ads - the former are useful and contextual.
|
| I feel the story being told would be more equivalent to what
| Microsoft is doing rather than Google.
|
| That said, advertising is like a virus, and every company and
| product is eventually infected by it. It's too tempting to _not_
| monetize your customer 's eyeballs once you have enough of them.
| qwerpy wrote:
| I actually consider the windows start menu ads less
| objectionable. At least you can turn them off (for now). There
| is no way to disable ads embedded in the maps app. And it's
| only useful and contextual if you're using the map to look for
| somewhere to spend money. I rarely do this. I'm using it to
| check traffic, get directions to somewhere, or exploring out of
| geographical curiosity. In all of these use cases, ads are an
| unwanted distraction.
| pzo wrote:
| Sadly iPhone sales and revenue saturated like 4 years ago (and
| the same for Mac, Wearables and iPad [0]). They focus now a lot
| on growing revenue from services. Which is kind of sad because
| they have still much room to grow Mac and iPad:
|
| - just make iPad more useful and support MacOS - it's not gonna
| canibalize Mac, they sale each year 2x more iPads than Macs and
| 12x more iPhones than Macs.
|
| - make macbook Pro standard with 32GB RAM / 1TB drive (macbook
| air with 500GB) and cheaper upgrades. It's not like those chips
| are expensive. Better to sell 2x more devices with smaller margin
| than holding to your margin like virginity.
|
| As for services they could go other way:
|
| - be AI gateway like OpenRouter and charge user 10% for token
| credits topup like electricity bill. Devs then don't have to
| setup back-end, protect API key, setup billings, auth etc or
| charge end user more with subscription.
|
| - make powerful Apple TV or cheaper Mac Mini for all users.
| Create a distributed computing platform that user can opt-in. Now
| you are competing with CloudFlare. Those devices normally do
| nothing during night but could generate/compute stuff, execute
| some lambda in sandbox, work as a proxy. Give 30-50% for device
| upgrades for such users that opted-in for 2 years.
|
| [0] https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/aapl/metrics/revenue-by-
| seg...
| polyomino wrote:
| They don't put MacOS on iPad because they want MacOS to slowly
| die and make App Store the only way to install software. This
| has nothing to do with cannibalizing Mac.
| skylurk wrote:
| You might be right, but if MacOS dies, how will Apple develop
| for iOS etc?
| iknowstuff wrote:
| probably some subscription cloud environments
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| And app developers too. Maybe sister comment about
| something cloud. Can fleece devs for more money too, bonus!
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| It is worrying that the machines many of HN rely on are the
| minority of their revenue so they'd not even flinch
| financially to mess up that product line. TF for
| Linux/x86/arm as an alternative ecosystem that is not
| controlled by one party.
| imglorp wrote:
| > They focus now a lot on growing revenue
|
| Explain like I'm five, how does a multi trillion dollar company
| expect to keep growing revenue forever? Are they planning to
| keep enshittifying user experience until revenue dives?
| pzo wrote:
| you omitted the most important 2 words from my quote:
| "growing revenue _from_ _services_ ". If you read other part
| of my post I shared ideas how they could grow revenue without
| enshitification.
|
| After that saturate they can keep innovating like xiaomi -
| they build plenty of useful home products so apple can as
| well.
| basisword wrote:
| Maybe they should stop focussing on 'growing'. Isn't nearly
| $100bn in profit per year enough??
| 827a wrote:
| I think you can point to the actual day Apple started this
| decline they're still on: September 16 2015. That was the day
| Apple News was released, which I think as a product perfectly
| encapsulates near-everything wrong with Apple in one convenient
| package.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Steve Jobs created iAd
| conductr wrote:
| I think they're trying to replace the hole they expect when the
| app stores are forced to be open. It is sad they lack any plan
| other than ads, it's a complete lack of imagination from what is
| supposed to the one of the most innovative companies on earth. I
| feel this is a more worrisome signal than anything.
| raincole wrote:
| What's with this uncanny AI Steve Jobs photo? I hope blog writers
| have red lines too.
|
| The sentiment of this article seems to be praising Jobs as a
| protector of user experience. And the author doesn't have the
| decency to use his real face?
| inshard wrote:
| Local businesses with better quality usually have better ratings
| in maps and better economics--higher margins, repeat customers,
| lower acquisition costs. And since only nearby places can
| compete, you get real competition on merit instead of a race to
| the bottom with faceless competition. Good ads solve a real
| problem: helping people discover great spots in unfamiliar
| cities.
|
| Jobs saw something with iAd.
|
| The problem is simple auction mechanics favor whoever has the
| deepest pockets. A mediocre chain with fat margins outbids an
| amazing local place, even if the local spot delivers way more
| value. You're optimizing for who can pay, not who's actually
| good.
|
| The fix this, you weight bids by quality signals like ratings,
| time spent and repeat visits.
|
| Now ads amplify what's already great instead of just selling
| visibility.
|
| Users get better recommendations, good businesses win, and Apple
| builds trust. That's how you turn ads from a tax on attention
| into actual product value--and an improved user experience.
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