[ryeights]

>In their separate interviews with the FT this week, Mr Cook and Sir Jonathan insisted that no single person at Apple decides which innovations graduate from its R&D labs and which are sent back to the drawing board. “The company runs very much horizontally,” said Mr Cook. “The reason it’s probably not so clear about who [sets product strategy] is that the most important decisions, there are several people involved in it, by the nature of how we operate.”

This would certainly explain Apple’s apparent lack of direction in recent years. Between this, their recent refocusing on “services”, and the clusterfuck of ports, dongles, and redesigns on new products, I am fearful for the future of Apple hardware.

[mevile]

I'm ready for a post-Apple world. Fine attention to detail in the user experience of their products, but at the expense of a pernicious ecosystem that traps you in and works with nothing else. It feels weird to say it, but I much more prefer Microsoft and their recent culture change. They're putting xbox gamepass on non-Microsoft devices, their own PC games on Steam, open sourcing their software, building world class android apps. I don't care how many Jony Ive's you've got, it's the openness and willingness to work with others that I want.

[snazz]

Apple has their own walled garden ecosystem because they can afford to. It really isn't much different from Microsoft in the 90s and early 00s, when they were at the peak of their market lock-in with Windows. Then the rest of the world changed, and it took them a really long time to adapt. Since they've been forced to open up their software and their ecosystem, the consumer has benefited immensely. Had everyone still been working on Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows with generic PC hardware and the mobile revolution had not occurred, Microsoft would have never left their old ways because they didn't need to.

Whether the same thing will at some point happen to Apple we do not know (although I'll wager we're nearing Apple's peak), but it will likely take a monumental change in the way that the technology world works for such a transformation to happen.

[wbl]

Microsoft always wanted 3rd party apps on windows and never really tried to monopolize distribution or creation. They wanted the platform to be valuable to customers.

[mav3rick]

You always compromise on quality when you go for cross compat. Either the quality in hardware suffers or the quality in software suffers or both. And this is someone who never uses Apple. But I acknowledge why they do what they do.

[izacus]

Even Apple is capable of using standards when they want to - all the way from Samba, USB-C, Bluetooth, CalDAV/CardDAV, and more on every level.

They just tend to choose not to these days to make our user experience slightly worse and extract more money for dongles or force us to buy more of their special hardware.

[aidos]

It’s incredible that Apple have pushed so hard on a misguided design aesthetic at the expense of practicality in recent years. I’m temporarily using shiny slim new MacBook...with a third party Franken-dongle-appendage hanging off the side so I can actually plug it in to anything. Not to mention the insanely loud and clumsy keyboard. Definitely looking forward to my old MacBook getting back from the apple repair shop.

[trimbo]

> misguided design aesthetic at the expense of practicality in recent years

That is not at all a recent thing.

Example: the first iMac mouse in 1998 was round. A casual observer might not realize how misguided this is until they try to use one for 5 seconds and can't keep it in the correct orientation.

Another example: dreadful charger cables that predictably break. It's been this way for at least a decade now.[2]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_USB_Mouse

[2] - https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Apple-chargers-always-break/ans...

[wiredfool]

The hockey puck mice were actually better if you popped the colored panels off, so that there was a bit of shape to them

[derefr]

To me, the statement reads more like several people having veto power, than several people having approval power.

Which seems sensible, even under a benevolent dictator: if the COO says the logistics are impossible, well, you'd better go back to the drawing board, even if the design is perfect.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I strongly suspect that Ive's work was as much about industrial implementation as aesthetics. It's a huge part of what designers actually do, vs what many people think they do - which is make sketches of shiny things all day, some of which get built by other people.

We'll see if there's a move to more repairability now that he's moving on.

I suspect there won't be, but I'd love to be proved wrong.

[kevin_b_er]

Ok so its now a committee that approves designs.

But does anyone in the engineering groups yet get to pushback enough against bufferfly keyboards before they go to market or will function[ality] still follow after form?