Comment by retired | Hacker News Reader

Comment by retired | Hacker News Reader

Apple needs a new CEO. Someone more visionary than Cook. The software needs more focus on making it "just work" and having significantly less bugs. The line-up needs to be cleaned up as well.

Right now you have the MacBook Air 13" and 15" in 3 variants and 4 colours, that makes for a total of 24 models. M4 processors only.

The MacBook Pro 14" can be purchased with the M5, M4 Pro, M4 Max in 2 colours for a total of 12 models. Then the 16" with the M4 Pro and M4 Max in 2 colours for a total of 8 models. That makes another 20 models.

That is 56 different models to pick from! And that is before customisation.

Why is there even a MacBook Pro without a Pro chip? And why are you selling M4 and M5 processors at the same time? Why release the M5 non-Pro in a Pro laptop and not put it in the Air, leaving it with an M4? The M5 is sometimes better than the M4 Pro, making it hard for the customer to decide to pick which one.

Don't even get me started on the convoluted mess of the iPhone. Apple sells the iPhone 16 (5 models), iPhone 16 Plus (10 models), iPhone 16e (6 models), iPhone 17 (10 models), iPhone Air (12 models), iPhone 17 Pro (9 models), iPhone 17 Pro Max (12 models). 64 models to pick from!

I remember Apple selling the iPhone 4. You would walk into the store, pick a Black or White model, 16 or 32 gigabyte. If you wanted colours, get a case.

Why do you consider a color to be an entirely different model? Storage size would be a better differentiator, but even then it’s just an option.

Do you feel the same way about cars? Have you been this fired up looking at a dealership all these years? So many paint options and wheel choices!

Idk, my phone gets hours of use each day, in my hands. Very personal device. I appreciate the options.

I agree with you about the cpu confusion, but I think most consumers largely act on price and many biased towards the lowest or highest ends every cycle. Largely any modern CPU will be enough for regular users.

I don't think it's about colors per-se. Sure if everything was 100% customizable and nothing else was different, whatever. But they're obviously focusing on these features and pretending they're innovating when they're just slapping some new paint on it and a slight camera bump spec and expecting you to fork over $1,500 every two years.

I still need to understand what kind of innovation the current MacBook Pro needs. It’s arguably the best laptop on the market and I wouldn’t change a thing (except maybe improved camera and added FaceID, but that would increase cost).

They dominate the market from low cost Air to top of the line MBP 16.

As long as stock profit is the only goal then Tim Cook is the correct CEO for Apple. Bribing the president publicly and doing what ever is required to keep the cash flowing in the short term is what share holders want.

That runs out of steam eventually. Hence need a leader with Vision that is filling the pipeline for next few years.

Unfortunately. Once the money does run out, and they do get someone with Vision, then that Vision takes years to realize, so there would be a big slump in products/money where they could just collapse.

Usually it is a competitor that comes up with the new vision.

Maybe Apple is so big it just buys other people vision.

But hang on, Cook has Vision _Pro_!

Yes and no. I agree with the general sentiment, but the market may be changing in a way that Cook, et al. aren't suited to understand. So... maybe. Even probably. But eventually there'll come a point where not having a product person high up on the org chart is going to come back and bite them in the rear end. But I have no idea of when that time will be.

> But eventually there'll come a point where not having a product person high up on the org chart is going to come back and bite them in the rear end.

Are there any great examples where having a non-product-focused CEO has left the company in a good competitive position after 10-15 years?

IBM, DEC, HP

I think you'd have to drill down into certain periods in their corporate history to make that argument.

IBM is now notorious for having over invested in services in the 90s/00s and thus ceded their previous technical/product expertise.

Similarly, HP bifurcated itself into product and not-product divisions.

DEC is a weird case. Both Olsen and Palmer were arguably product people, but also missed major shift in the market (personal computing and x86 ISA consolidation, respectively).

They need to fire Craig Federighi first, but of course that is Tim Cook's job, and he showed poor judgment in firing spiky but effective Scott Forstall to keep that hack Jony Ive. Ive is the one who appointed Alan Dye, an advertising designer with no clue about UX and too arrogant to listen to those who did, leading to iOS 7 and now Liquid Ass.

There is no point in complaining, or worse, enduring Stockholm Syndrome, Apple repeatedly demonstrated its contempt for its customers. I've decided to cut my losses after 25 years of using the modern OSX Mac (and 35 years using the Mac), and iOS since the original iPhone, to go back to Linux, and to GrapheneOS, and the migration is largely complete.

My journey is quite similar, although I haven’t migrated (back) to Linux and not away from iPhone yet.

Do you have a writeup of that, somewhere? How do you manage without device interoperability (i.e. copy and paste between Mac and iPhone)?

It's still work-in-progress: https://blog.majid.info/quit-apple/

You can copy-paste using LocalSend. Not as seamless, but it does work, including with Apple devices.

Honestly, it is so infrequently needed that just having a synced note app is good enough for the few times you need it.

Apple has been focusing way too much on gimmicks like that and they don't have that much value.

I kinda agree in the way that having synced notes (a good feature in itself, also available on iPhone/Mac) would probably suffice.

Still, being able to copy and paste not only text but also images between devices seamlessly is really nice, not to mention i can open an open browser-tab (Safari, iOS) in Brave on the Mac by just clicking the icon that has a "mobile device icon" next to it and it opens the same tab on the Mac...

And yes - as i said - i agree that having a synced note app would probably enable the same usecases, but with distinctly more friction (at least in my books).

I definitely agree that it's nice but not useful enough that you could consider it a required feature. The point I'm trying to make is that Apple markets it as something that is essential and much better than what is out there, when it's really not the case.

The truth is that this is perfectly possible to do on other platforms; you just have to set it up. But most people don't since this is not needed often enough to be worth the hassle, or they just don't use computers that much. And the only reason it has to be provided by Apple is because they lock everything down.

Windows has had Clipboard Sync for a while with "Link to Windows," and there are many third-party solutions, from KDE Connect to third-party keyboards offering clipboard sharing. Nobody really cares, and in a world where you have to use the cloud to get stuff in and out of devices, it doesn't even matter. Chances are, the stuff you are trying to copy is also available on the computer.

Apple would have a lot more to stand on if they didn't go full retard with the cloud as well in order to increase service revenue. Those kinds of Apple technologies would make a lot more sense and have a lot more value if they didn't require using their cloud offering anyway. I wish Apple would go back to making personal computers with software that stands on its own and can work independently of any cloud. But they have been unable, or more likely unwilling, to figure out proper local syncing without going through their cloud, so the marketing is largely moot.

We end up with the worst combination possible: expensive hardware storage to promote cloud subscription and expensive cloud storage with weak interoperability/capacities (sharing with iCloud is a joke).

For this reason, I'm unwilling to consider any gimmicky "Continuity" feature as something inherently valuable.

I did set up Joplin, and I also have Wiki,js.

> They need to fire Craig Federighi first, but of course that is Tim Cook's job, and he showed poor judgment in firing spiky but effective Scott Forstall to keep that hack Jony Ive. Ive is the one who appointed Alan Dye, an advertising designer with no clue about UX and too arrogant to listen to those who did, leading to iOS 7 and now Liquid Ass.

These have been exactly my thoughts for years. Craig Federighi does not have any taste or interest in software quality. And Jony Ive (after Steve Jobs) has been a disaster for UI/UX and industrial hardware design. Tim Cook has been an extraordinary bean counter and hasn’t been hiring useful people (from users’ perspective) under him.

Craig Federighi needs to go when Tim Cook also moves out of his current role this year. Maybe, maybe, there are some old school folks at Apple who can take over and do things better.

Tim Cook is gay and thus works like a woman. He wants "consensus" and focus on appearances to pretend everyone is getting along. The traditional masculine way of competing to show who can do better is frowned upon. It is very unsurprising it has all turned to shit.

And yes, Ive couldn't do jack shit without Jobs' leadership, and everyone with half a brain cell knew it.

> Why is there even a MacBook Pro without a Pro chip?

I like MB Pro with a regular chip: my tasks aren’t hugely parallelisable, the plain chip is plenty fast, but I want the nicer display, sound, and ports, and additional battery life is nice to have.

Apple's hardware lineup has never been stronger. They need a new software guy, and it looks like they've recently gotten one.

Yes and no. They've made some great hardware, but the OS is old and slow, they fired most of the people on the #a11y team that knew what they were doing and the only reason they make Macs is so devs have a machine to write iPhone apps on.

This reminds me of when Steve Balmer became the CEO of Microsoft.

He sold Windows in so many versions that even a developer like me had no idea of what the difference was between them. I could not figure out from the packaging which version I needed.

Had to use an LLM to generate this list:

Windows Vista was available in Starter (32-bit only, Retail and OEM), Home Basic (32-bit and 64-bit, Retail, OEM, and Volume License, plus Home Basic N 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, in multiple languages), Home Premium (32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, Home Premium N 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, in multiple languages), Business (32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, Business N 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, in multiple languages), Enterprise (32/64-bit, Volume License only, Enterprise N 32/64-bit, in multiple languages), Ultimate (32/64-bit, Retail/OEM, Ultimate N 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM, in multiple languages), and the Korean-market versions Home Basic K, Home Premium K, Business K, Enterprise K, Ultimate K (all 32/64-bit, Retail/OEM/Volume, in multiple languages), plus Tablet PC editions, Media Center pre-bundled versions, and Embedded/IoT variants, each with additional 32/64-bit and N/K distinctions, creating a combinatorial explosion of literally hundreds of distinct SKUs when factoring in architecture, licensing type, language packs, and region-specific requirements.

preach your truth, brother.

Leading to Jeff Atwood's memorable rant:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/oh-you-wanted-awesome-edition/

"Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome."

You listed the K/N etc. ones as well, they're still a thing to this day...

And the situation was pretty much the same thing for Windows 7

Guess I’m not in a position in telling Apple how to structure their product offering and choice isn’t a bad thing IMHO.

But I’d highly encourage you to have a look into which Apple pencil is compatible to which iPad.

Choice, yes, a mess - no.

I should not have gone down that rabbit hole. Why is Apple selling three variants of the Apple Pencil and then the Apple Pencil Pro as well.

The first generation comes with a Lightning adapter and a USB-C to Apple Pencil Adapter (required to pair and charge with iPad (A16) and iPad (10th generation). What are those adapters doing?

It is compatible with the "iPad Pro 9.7-inch" which I presume is the first generation iPad Pro but why does it not state the generation like they do with the iPad Pro 12.9-inch? Why state "iPad (A16)" but not use the 11th generation?

Thanks for raising my blood pressure! But I had fun doing so.

No Apple Pencil Ultra? What a missed opportunity.

And try getting Apple Care for them without buying an iPad at the same time.

The Pencil is covered through the Apple Care of your iPad, even when purchased separately.

Using a Pencil without an iPad and wanting Apple Care on it is a bit of a niche use case. And do you really need Apple Care on a $79/$99/$129 product?

I wanted to add a Pencil to an existing iPad.

Company policy required me to get AppleCare for the new device, there was no way to add it to just the Pencil. At least on the India site.

I would expect the M4 options to be cheaper than their M5 counterparts. Given how expensive Apple products are, I appreciate them offering both options at the same time. Just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it doesn't make sense for anyone; you're obviously in the miniscule [nit-picking] minority since Apple will have done enough market research to offer the options that they do offer.

what are you people talking about? Cook is the best thing that happened to apple. Look at their sales. They are killing the laptop market - likely a complete dominance in the next years. same with the iphone - first year to be the biggest phone seller in a long time.

the switch to ARM and their M silicon was one of the best moves in computing in years.

The M silicon is real, but Nokia, a company that specialized in rubber products, was doing low-power ARM 30 years ago, and the stage was set by His Jobsness with Mach binaries and Rosetta. Tim Cook was excitedly waving his hands in the last event video about some kind of evaporative cooling mechanism in the latest low-end iPhone. He has completely missed the plot.

At least 15 years ago (I haven't bothered to look since), you could actually still buy Nokia toilet paper.

I find this comment baffling. Apple needs a new CEO because their products come in lots of colors? And they have (gasps) two series of laptop chips?

I'd hardly call a different colour an extra mnodel

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