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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

An extremely late model feature that marginally impacted UX for a subset of users but deeply upset a diehard subset (of a subet of) nerds philosophically? Which then got dropped the next major product cycle?

Hate Apple's business mentalility as much as you want - or even predict another market entrant dominating AR goggles later - but Macbook remains the best in class for a good reason. And you don't get there without Apple understanding you don't mess with what works, aka listening to customers.

Admitting you're wrong is one of the virtues most disregarded in our industry. It should be praised not scorned. Especially when all of us software engineers are common victims to cool new fancy tech and getting overly excited about it while disregarding IRL usecases or overvaluing our ability to adress "short term" trade offs via upgrading, and then fixing fundamentals far too late for customers to care.

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>Admitting you're wrong is one of the virtues most disregarded in our industry.

From 2007 onwards (but some could say eben before that) and with Ive's power, Apple has lost all credibility by being utterly unwilling to admit their shortcomings. We had to wait years and years for the butterfly keyboard to drop, for magsafe and SD slot to be reintroduced. If for the next 10 years they go back to making their products more functional like they did in the 90s and early 2000s then maybe I'll reconsider

I remember it differently. In my mind NeXT-Apple – while being perfectly willing openly eviscerate pre-NeXT-Apple – has always been extremely unwilling to admit any fault.

I see consistency, not a trend. Maybe a slight trend towards a softening, towards being more willing to admit fault.

Whether it’s brushed metal interfaces or butterfly keyboards, Apple isn’t good about admitting fault. Most of all openly.

However, my experience is also (and I don’t think you can be successful for so long without that) that they are still reactive. Maybe sometimes a bit slow, maybe without saying they did something wrong (just quietly fixing it), but NeXT-Apple does eventually change shit things.

Except, obviously when it’s deeply tied to something they hold strategically very dear. Then they are completely unable to.

Overall my main point is that I don’t see a trend where you seem to be seeing one. Especially not post 2007.

> "Apple has lost all credibility by being utterly unwilling to admit their shortcomings. We had to wait years and years for the butterfly keyboard to drop, for magsafe and SD slot to be reintroduced."

How long did you have to wait for Google to revive Reader, for Reddit to undo 'new Reddit', for Microsoft to revert the Windows UX hodgepodge and Microsoft account requirement and telemetry, for Facebook to put your timeline back to friends and chronological order without ads, for Linux distros to remove SystemD, and all the other much-maligned changes (Google News, Twitter timeline, Wayland, Ubuntu snaps, Google Maps UX, car manufacturers and touchscreens...)?

"Apple took a long time to fix their disliked changes" has to go against the backdrop of "other (tech) companies never do it at all".

Here is Apple's global revenue of sales from Mac computers, quarterly, 2006 to 2024: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263428/apples-revenue-fr...

Can you spot the 'butterfly keyboard' or the 'touchbar' in there? The drop in sales forcing them to change? I can't. 2015, 2016 (touchbar), 2017 and 2018 look pretty similar to me.

The Macbook are great because they finally undid the stupid changes of the 2016 models.

Touchbar, no HDMI port, keyboard that sucks... Most of my coworkers prefered to keep their older laptop than getting new ones, even though it was at no cost for them because paid by the company.

> Hate Apple's business mentalility as much as you want

I didn’t see anything about hating Apple’s business mentality in the post you’re replying to.

I think you’re both right, but you erected a bit of a strawman there.

> you don't mess with what works, aka listening to customers

Reminds me of "any customer can have any colour as long as it is black". People are still singing praises for not needing to fumble with the earpiece cords, for slowing down the phones and for the great ecosystem of multiple converters.

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