[eykanal]

> ...Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version.

While this was true about ten years ago, it's been a while since we've seen this model of software development from Apple succeed in recent years. I'm not at all confident that the Apple that gave us Mac OS 26 is capable of doing this anymore.

[midtake]

Best privacy in computers, ADP, and M-series chips mean nothing to you? To me, Apple is the last bastion of sanity in a world where user hostility is the norm.

[kaashif]

Apple is certainly the least worst but man... Liquid Glass. Windows bordering on the circular...

[eykanal]

As said elsewhere, success in hardware does not translate to success in software.

Privacy is definitely good but it's not at all an example of the success mentioned in the parent comment. It's deep in the company culture.

[Pediatric0191]

Airtags were released in 2021, I'd say that counts, but generally I agree.

[atonse]

Their hardware division has been killing it.

The software has been where most of the complaints have been in recent years.

[Nevermark]

Their software efforts have little ambition. Tweaks and improvements are always a good idea, but without some ambitious effort, nothing special is learned or achieved.

A "bicycle for the mind" got replaced with a "kiosk for your pocketbook".

The Vision Pro has an amazing interface, but it's set up as a place to rent videos and buy throwaway novelty iPad-style apps. It allows you to import a Mac screen as a single window, instead of expanding the Mac interface, with its Mac power and flexibility, into the spacial world.

Great hardware. Interesting, but locked down software.

If Tim Cook wanted to leave a real legacy product, it should have been a Vision Pro aimed as an upgrade on the Mac interface and productivity. Apple's new highest end interface/device for the future. Not another mid/low-capability iPad type device. So close. So far.

$3500 for an enforced toy. (And I say all this as someone who still uses it with my Mac, but despairs at the lack of software vision.)

[msy]

Not just lack of ambition, lack of vision or taste. Liquid Glass is a step back in almost every way, that it got out the door is an indictment of the entire leadership chain.

[RyanOD]

Recently upgraded. Ughhh...it's just so god-awful terrible.

[LoganDark]

I think, then, the correct term would be "updated".

[Espressosaurus]

Not if the idea is to tank old phone performance to sell new phone hardware!

[Tagbert]

That’s never a good, long term business model and people are willing to pay more for Apple hardware because it tends to last longer than others. We’ve heard this cynical take for years, but I don’t think that it is really convincing.

[LoganDark]

> It allows you to import a Mac screen as a single window, instead of expanding the Mac interface, with its Mac power and flexibility, into the spacial world.

I've thought this too. Apple might be one of the only companies that could pull off bringing an existing consumer operating system into 3D space, and they just... didn't.

On Windows, I tried using screen captures to separate windows into 3D space, but my 3090 would run out of texture space and crash.

Maybe the second best would be some kind of Wayland compositor.

[turtlesdown11]

> Their hardware division has been killing it.

The last truly magical apple device launch was the Airpod. They've done a great job on their chipsets, but the actual hardware products they make are stagnant, at best. The designs of the new laptops have been a step back in quality and design in my opinion.

[Freedom2]

Agreed, especially as we all have and use our Vision Pros daily.

[fennecbutt]

I mean they literally just looked at Tile. And they have the benefit of running the platform. Demonstrates time and time again that they engage in anticompetitive behaviour.

[cromka]

No, they didn't just look at Tile. The used a completely new UWB radio technology with a completely new anonymization cryptographic paradigm allowing them to include every single device in network, transparently.

AirTag is a perfect example of their hardware prowess that even Google fails to replicate to this date.