When did Microsoft buy Apple?
 

That's what I've been saying for 3-4 years now, or a year or two after Steve Jobs passed away. Very little innovation, things that used to work no longer did and my Apple experience felt very little like anything from 1985 to 2012. At one time I was an evangelist on the level of Guy Kawaskai. Now I just use my computer and phone and hope for an Apple second coming.

https://hackernoon.com/the-age-of-apple-is-over-b4570e2a2955#.3zii1rb49

Bill Gates bought a large chunk of Apple back right after Jobs was hired back. Gates infusion of cash kept them for running of of cash to meet payroll. I have always wondered how much stock he owns in Apple.

Maybe Gates is helping in designs at Apple.

What is even weirder is that Microsoft employees were responsible for most of the new code (by line count) contributed to the Linux kernel last year or maybe it was the year before.

Dogs and cats living together...

That was a self preservation move.

MSFT owned so much of the market share they were being perceived by the Fed as well as foreign States as a monopoly.

If you recall there was a lot of noise about breaking up MSFT.

As Apple represented the only other commercial mass market OS, read competitor, it was in MSFT's best interest to ensure they remained viable.

It's called market saturation, does anyone know someone without at least one mobile device?

Jobs saw things others within Apple never will, there is no one there that has the kind of imagination he did.

Agreed.

I think much of Jobs wisdom came from his adoption and adherence to the Human Interface Doctrine.

Nearly everyone else creates technology that people need to learn / be taught how to use.

Apple / Jobs always approached new product from the position of, if this were something people could do today what is the natural way they would do it and designed to meet that natural inclination.

I remember my first iPod, I picked it up, spun the wheel, clicked the big center button and I had it.

My brothers b-day was coming up so I decided to get him one. Went to a big box and started picking up other mp3 players because the iPod was expensive and you could get more capacity for less with the other offerings.

Every single one had a horrible user experience. Convoluted menus, multiple buttons for seemingly redundant functions, felt cheap and fragile.

Sales guy comes over and we start talking. At one point he says, yeah they all do the same thing and the others are certainly a bargain. He pauses and says, but they are not iPods.

When the iPhone first came out I had an out of state client that I would visit for a week every other week for 6 months. Was pretty much living in the same hotel the entire time. You start to get to know the regulars.

Sitting at the bar one night having a beer and dinner and this guy I'd met comes in and sits down. UI/UX engineer for Verizon. He see's my new iPhone and starts poo pooing it, no physical keyboard, Apple, walled garden etc...

He asks to see it. Starts playing with it and he's mumbling to himself, cool, wow, nice. Played with it a good half hour.

Next night he comes in with his boss. They sit down and he asks to see the phone again. Right away he's hammering his boss, look at this, so intuitive, check this out, watch this, this is how it's done, this is what we should be doing.

That is and always was Apples thing. It was never necessarily to invent something new but about doing it right.

Personally I think Jobs would have **** all over removing the headphone jack. It's not a better UX.

Main problems are slow progress on Siri, AppleTV, Homekit.

iPhone, Mac, iPad, App Store, Apple Music, Watch are all doing very well. Name a competitor who wouldn't kill to be doing a fraction as well as Apple in these products, in revenue, market share with the valuable customers, profit.

Jobs had no problem dumping old ports and features even if that angered customers for awhile. Optical drive in MacBooks, for example. Big outcry, now it's clear that software install and music/video can be done more easily via internet. Similarly MacBooks dumped Ethernet, parallel, serial ports long before PC notebooks did. Now it is clear that wireless and USB make all of those unneccessary. Mac OS X broke backwards compatibility with prior Mac apps, while Windows tries to maintain backwards compatibility. Not a lot of people still wishing they could run OS 9 apps. Etc.

A dumb (can only carry audio, can't carry data or power) port like 3.5 mm audio jack is a logical thing to dump. Easily replaced by wireless (BT) and Lightning. So people need to buy new earbuds or use dongle. The people whining about this mostly use disposable earbuds anyway.

Excellent post. I had the opportunity to be involved in a number of "crew station working groups" the past 30 years, both as a Navy flight test guy, program manager and commercial UAS developer.

User Interface is everything. I could write a book.

Quick Sea Story.

The Saudi's were interested in buying one of the UAS I was managing, Fire Scout. I flew over to Riyadh and briefed the heads of the Saudi Navy and Army. They were very interested in the capability of the UAS...but they had a very hard time believing the Fire Scout wasn't "piloted" from the ground control station, rather it was controlled by a series of commands: The aircraft figured out the rest...we called it "fly by mouse".

I had videos, pictures, etc. but the head of the Saudi Navy in particular was doubtful.

"If this is true, it solves our biggest problem: Pilots. We as a country don't often produce the skills required to be a pilot and when we do they immediately leave for the airlines..."

I was there with the USN Admiral in charge of Foreign Military Sales and during a break I asked him, since he clearly thought I was trying to fool him, if I could have the Saudi's come to the US for a demonstration?

The Admiral agreed and two weeks later the Saudi contingent arrived (the head of the Saudi Navy in particular) for an extensive demo.

I had the Saudi Admiral sit in the GCS, which had windows so he was looking right at the Fire Scouts.

"Hit the launch button"

He does and Fire Scout lifted into a hover.

"Now hit the programmed route"

Fire Scout nosed over, added power, accelerated and climbed, ever faithful to the programmed route.

"Now click on Return and Land"

You guys know the rest.

UX was as much the revolution world wide as was the underlying technology.

Sorry for the hijack.

As much as I like my iPhone, I can't express my hatred of iTunes. That has to be the worst piece of software ever written, EVER.

Right there with you in Itunes, and Apple in general... But at the moment it's surpassed by my hatred of Microsoft's new patch model which will make my life a living hell... (new monthly updates, impossible to pick and choose, so if there' a bad patch you must roll back an entire month of protection until it's fixed)

Waiting to hear what's new on the Mac front (shortly apparently). Thing is even if it's ho-hum it won't be as bad as Win10 ! it's a race to the bottom, it seems...

The floppy drive was dropped because no one used it.

Optical drives could be dropped because a better alternative, The Apple Store, and lack of retail boxed product made it seamless.

Ethernet was not dropped, RJ-11 jacks could be dropped because you can run ethernet (as well as serial / parallel services) over other ports like USB. There is no difference in the user experience by replacing one cable with another.

And IMHO Apple have done a spectacular job at maintaining backwards compatibility. They did it through both OS as well as architecture changes. In my case I can't think of a single piece of legacy software that UI used that stopped being supported before it was grossly outdated.

Point being they have been pretty good about eliminating things that were simply no longer being used.

Sure they are providing a lightning port to 3.5 mm jack adaptor but that, unlike prior eliminated hardware, adds an additional step.

Adding steps to a process is not better UX.

What business requirement keeps you on Windows? What would it take to move to Linux on the desktop?

Jobs died and plain old suits took over. The plain old suits are always hovering like vultures to come in and grab the reins and thus the money. They kicked him out in the '80s and learned it was too soon. They waited for him to die and came back in. Suits are not bold and innovative. Suits protect the money and not always in the smartest of ways. All suits see is cost. Jobs looked like a huge cost to the suits under him but they tolerated it while Jobs was alive and making such amazing innovations and staggering profits. But it's the conservative nature of most suits to halt that and "protect" the business from risk. Apple is dull now because of that.

When optical drive was dropped, many extra steps were added for many people - if you had software on CD, watched movies on DVD, etc, you had to buy an external optical drive, re-buy your software as download, sign up for Netflix, etc. Ditto when Ethernet port was dropped - everyone who used to plug an Ethernet cable into their Mac needed to find an Ethernet-to-USB adapter or a WiFi connection. These were meaningful hassles at the time, larger than simply putting a $9 Lightning-to-3.5mm dongle on your headphone cord.

In my case my customer/user base is running Win7/10. Not a single Mac in sight. I still develop on my MBP (Java based apps) and test on a Fusion VM Win7. That said nothing gets verified for delivery until operational tests on real hardware.

Very true. That was bolstered with tightly integrated OS/Software/Hardware which promoted superior reliability vs Windows and the thousands of external vendors. Folks would stroll into Fry's Electronics and buy an external DVD player for $29.95 and complain when it didn't work or worse caused OS issues on their $299 laptop.

IMO the facade of Apple reliability is starting to fracture. OS updates on mobile devices are not without issue. Spinning beach balls are not as rare these days but trumping (oops) all of that is the very real loss of Steve Jobs imagination. Reports of Apple not paying their "fair share" in taxes may actually put a dent into their very large millennial fan base who are sporting Feel the burn tattoos.

I don't mind the elimination of the 3.5mm audio port. What I do mind is Apple providing an imperfect solution in the box for those of us that will want/need to continue using existing headphones.

The dongle included in the box provides an audio port which is good. What is bad is that you can't charge the iPhone when using the dongle. Apple should have provided a complete solution to the issue or no solution at all. It is a half-assed attempt to placate the people who don't want to lose the audio port.

Yup.

To restate /clarify my earlier position.

I'm not saying Jobs would have not eliminated the headphone jack.

I believe he would have wanted a better implementation / transition.

I hate it too.

In general i am alright with my iMac at home. Tablets and phones they are doing a great job. iTunes can get annoying if you are dealing with it once a year to back up. Once learnt it is alright.

I am not fan of any Microsoft products in the market.


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