All of this has led to a pretty vigorous (and fair) debate about whether Apple is still a design-led company, or whether its massive scale demands an operational focus that simply dictates design operates in a different way from the iMac and iPod eras. The view from inside Apple, for what it’s worth, is that design is still central to everything the company does, and the operations vs. design conflict is a media creation.
But I think that debate misses the point in a serious way. There is but one important question for Apple to answer as it enters its next phase, one that will reveal everything about the company’s priorities and how it designs its products. Here it is:
Will Apple compromise the user experience of the iPhone to sell services?
…the answer is yes. Very much yes. It has already started.
They’ve been doing that for decades. Anyone ever get an iCloud full message after 5GB? They don’t do that because it’s a great user experience.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t get everyone into a giant cost pool, and offer those services essentially for free (if they divide the costs over the entire customer base, instead of individualizing the costs, they could probably add $5-10 to the price of every unit they sell and cover everyone in the pool). They could do the same with insurances – just get everyone in the pool, and tax on a small additional fee on top of their already bloated prices (Dominoes Pizza does this with their delivery insurance). They know how long these units last on average, they know the replacement rates, etc. I’m sure they could work out the math, and I’m sure it would be cost effective to do it. People are clearly willing to pay an Apple tax – and this would be a solid improvement over the current user experience, and actually provide value, something Apple seems to have forgotten how to provide. I don’t get why we always have to individualize everything.
Apple went from a design company in the early days to a mass marketing empire dedicated to making money on increasingly gimmicky and lobotomized consumer products and services. They were overwhelmingly superior to Wintel (except for third party support), but better didn’t sell and they got beaten on performance twice, when Intel had cash to dump into making their old chips faster. At least we got better technology — from everyone else.
Apple’s rebirth started with the original iMac, which looked cool but was much less reliable than previous Mac’s (supposedly Jobs channeled Ivan Boesky and decided warranty repairs were cheaper than QA.) They went through a series of failed projects (I learned to be cautious about hyped Latest Things from Apple), put everyone through a 2 year public alpha of OS X before it became usable, and shafted Metrowerks, who literally saved the company when they botched the PowerPC introduction (and whose product was better then than XCode is now.) I was reminded of Winston Smith’s realization that everything was simple when you turned around and went with the flow.
And now? I won’t contribute any more money to Apple (it helps that they have nothing, hardware or software, that I want.) I’d be excited about the A chips if anybody but Apple had them. I’d be happy with OS9, if it was still viable.
Apple made their choice, and I’ve made mine.
> Apple went from a design company in the early days
That was in the second set of early days, with the Mac Classic 🙂
The true early days were made mostly by the other Steve, Wozniak: the Apple 1 and then the Apple ][ were true engineering masterpiece! Then things slowly went the design way and the more Steve Jobs got the upper hand, the more Apple forgot about engineering excellence…
ChodaSly,
I’ve always thought that Wozniak was more relatable and I respect him as a talented engineer. He’s the guy I’d like to sit down and chat with. Jobs on the other hand just had a reputation for being an ass****. He even cheated Wozniak whom he built the company with. I couldn’t tolerate Job’s RDF-speak and idolization, it certainly reminds me of trump’s followers today. At least Jobs never tried to take over the government, Trump’s RDF poses threats to democracy itself 🙁
UX and functionality are more important than pure design. The Apple of 10 years ago knew this, but more recently design has become all important at the cost of functionality and UX. As evidence I present, the “Trash Can” Mac Pro (not convinced by the new one either, and at that price I will never be able to judge how good/bad it is), the MacBook Pro butterfly keyboard, and the bendy iPad Pro.
Thom said “…the answer is yes. Very much yes. It has already started.”
Examples?
Apple Music, it has already started long time ago
Mac Book Pro’s touch bar is an example how Apple design may fail big. Humans need to see where they touch when there’s no tactile feedback. I wonder what Apple designers thought when they envisioned using the touch bar without looking directly at it.