Agreed. How is Apple not to blame? If this article was about Gmail instead of Mail.app, every comment would definitely be blaming Google.
What real innovation has there been on Mac OS X since Bertrand Serlet left?
Where are all the adult engineers?
I've met a few people now who are contracted by Apple to work on their customer facing Apps. They commute to Cupertino from the Bay Area every day. Nice people but they're second tier. They never critique Apple, think Apple is the best at everything, and shrug their shoulders at any technology developed outside of Apple. There's always an excuse for things that don't work, from broken iCloud APIs to Apple Maps.
They're competent engineers, they'll do what they are told, but they're not the mavericks who will break new ground. Just my opinion, but perhaps this is something other people have experienced.
EDIT: To poster below, with regards to the Bay Area which covers a large geographic region, I'm talking about the San Francisco peninsula area. Amongst people I know, Cupertino (which is in Santa Clara) is generally referred to as being in South Bay rather than the Bay Area.
Cupertino is part of the Bay Area. 1 Infinite Loop is just south of the Sunnyvale border and 280. About two miles from El Camino Real. If you're going to make stuff up, at least consult a map first.
> EDIT: To poster below, with regards to the Bay Area which covers a large geographic region, I'm talking about the San Francisco peninsula area. Amongst people I know, Cupertino (which is in Santa Clara) is generally referred to as being in South Bay rather than the Bay Area.
South Bay, like East Bay, is a qualifier for a sub-region within the Bay Area. The peninsula is referred to as... the peninsula, not "the Bay Area". San Francisco specifically is either referred to as San Francisco, SF, or "the city". Santa Clara County is almost always referred to explicitly as such lest it be confused with the City of Santa Clara. When not speaking of governmental/political boundaries, one would more commonly say "Silicon Valley", "the valley", and sometimes its proper name of "Santa Clara Valley".
You have clearly spent little if any time in the bay area and are hardly qualified to make bigoted judgements about the caliber of engineers based on where they choose to live within it.
Since I know these people, I know their work, I know from technical discussions the level they're at, I can legitimately form an opinion, and that is they are not great engineers, merely competent. More importantly, they tow the company line, they don't think outside the box, they are anything but mavericks.
Maybe Apple's software is suffering because the culture there means that engineers are too compliant or too scared to speak out and rock the boat?
Of course, that would be silly, since they're already in the Bay Area. I bet they don't say they're going to visit California, either. By the way, "the 101" is slightly unusual phrasing, too. Usually it's just "101".
Give it up. You have no idea what the bay area or anyone living in it is like, and it's obvious to everyone. You're the one who made this about geography. Don't get mad just because it exposed you as a fraud.
You've just shown there is nothing wrong with my statement "commute to Cupertino from the Bay Area every day" which you seem to have such a problem with.
Also with regards to:
> "the 101" is slightly unusual phrasing, too. Usually it's just "101".
Are you being serious?!!
It also makes no logical sense, as there would be no reason to mention where they commute from unless you thought it was of some significance, in which case you would want to be clear on where they are commuting from. Or are you now trying to insinuate that every engineer in the Bay Area (now that you've reversed your position and agreed the term is not limited to the peninsula), including Cupertino, is mediocre by virtue of being there, rather than only those engineers from the immediate San Francisco area?
> Are you being serious?!!
Deadly.
I am however insinuating that the culture at Apple may have changed, which allows merely competent engineers to be hired in the first place, while great engineers like Bertand Serlet leave the company, to the detriment of OS X.
As for the 101, you must be trolling...
The term "Bay Area" has always referred to the nine counties touching SF Bay, and thus includes all of Santa Clara county. I've never heard your definition of "Bay Area" before, and I grew up in San Jose.
The area you're referring to is generally called "The Peninsula".
One poster, for whatever reason, didn't like me using the phrase "commute to Cupertino from the Bay Area every day".
My Edit to that poster should have been clearer, but all I'm saying is that people I know describe themselves as going to "South Bay" when referring to their commute from the Peninsula to Cupertino, to distinguish the subregion from the whole region.
People you know are delusional. The "Bay Area" includes the peninsula, south bay, east bay, and north bay. Some people throw in Santa Cruz, which might be a bit extreme, but I've never talked to anyone who lived there for an appreciable time period and didn't include Silicon Valley (and hence Cupertino).
> I've met a few people now who are contracted by Apple to work on their customer facing Apps.
You've met a couple of employees (or maybe contractors?), and you believe that they are representative of thousands of technical staff? That says far more about you than it does about anything else.
People always orient around themselves. People living in Cupertino or Mountainview might say they live in the "Bay Area" but for people living further North in San Francisco or Oakland, they would consider themselves to be living in the "Bay Area" and folk further South to be living in the "South Bay".
This is just semantics.
Of course not; they're already in the Bay Area. People in Palo Alto don't say "I'm going to the Bay Area" when they drive to SF, and people on the Upper West Side don't say "I'm going to New York today" when they take the A train downtown, either. I honestly can't tell whether or not you're trolling, at this point.
With regards to your other point, no, of course I don't think all Apple engineers are second tier, but I do feel that since Bertrand Serlet left, OS X engineering has languished.
Given that I know some competent - but not great - engineers who work at Apple (and they happen to commute) I wonder if the culture at Apple today is more about hiring competent engineers to implement a roadmap, rather than hiring great engineers and letting them loose to "think different".
Regarding "great" vs. "competent" engineers: every company needs a mix of them. There aren't enough truly great engineers for even just Apple or Google to be entirely staffed by them, much less all of the other companies out there. So everyone needs to make do with merely competent engineers in some roles.
You mentioned in a sibling comment that the engineers in question "contract at Apple"; here you wonder if Apple is merely "hiring competent engineers to implement a roadmap". But that's exactly what all companies hire contractors for, whereas great engineers who are "let loose to think different" are typically permanent employees.
Check out the reviews of Pages 5, which has been dumbed down. If the vision and future for OS X is to turn it into a Fisher Price OS for the masses, I can see why a great engineer would prefer to work elsewhere and tackle bigger challenges.
http://mjtsai.com/blog/2013/10/23/iwork-13-a-huge-regression...