[HarHarVeryFunny]

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering.

Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to).

I think Apple took some missteps with the iPhone in later models, maybe too much influenced by Jony Ive and form over function. It certainly wouldn't be a bad thing to put more focus back on functionality if that ends up to be the case.

I do think the challenge for Apple going forwards (but also for Android) is going to be how to best take advantage of AI. Maybe Ternus has a vision for that, but in any case the CEO can't be a one-man marketing dept - he just needs to know what he wants and hire the right people to get it accomplished.

[foobarian]

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

[a012]

And dont forget the scissor keyboard and the fucking touchbar

[pohl]

I suspect that the touch bar served its likely real purpose: to ship an ARM CPU with a secure enclave in the machines so that we could have Touch ID without needing to wait for Apple Silicon. Everything other than that was gravy, an interesting experiment.

[SSLy]

T2 or a successor could theoretically do all of that too.

[alex7o]

Fight me but I miss the touchbar, it was customizable to be super useful with better touch tool

[csunbird]

I think the problem with touch bar was that, it completely replaced the function keys, instead of complementing them. Other than that, I actually liked it.

[plomme]

Hah, that reminds me! My first work issued Mac didn't have the ESC key, just the touch bar. IIRC a program hung in fullscreen, freezing both the app and the touch bar. So I had to reboot to get out of it because the esc key didn't work.

[vel0city]

Its interesting the touch bar was also hung up, as from what I recall the touchbar was actually driven by a separate processor (the T1/T2 chip) and had its own version of watchOS running. I would have thought it would have continued working, just unable to continue syncing with the rest of the Mac.

[prewett]

You should have been able to Cmd-Tab to a different app; if that wasn't working, something more serious was going on. Also, if you have Spaces enabled, you can three-finger swipe, since a full screen app gets its own Space.

[pants2]

Another issue with the touch bar is that part of the laptop gets quite hot (especially on Intel CPUs), and so did the touch bar. I recall a few times feeling like I burned my finger just pressing esc during video rendering.

[wtallis]

I think the lack of haptic feedback is what doomed the Touch Bar. If they'd been able to solve that problem, it could have been an acceptable replacement for the function keys.

[shawn_w]

I wonder if a keyboard where the keycaps are little eInk displays is feasible.

[reddit_clone]

That.

And I had to look down every time I had use it. I am glad to see it go.

[vel0city]

I think the touch bar was a neat idea with a lot of potential but IMO they should have kept the row of physical function keys as well.

[Cockbrand]

Another thing was that not all Mac notebooks had a touch bar, so developers couldn't put any vital features onto it.

[duskwuff]

And there was no Touch Bar-equipped external keyboard either, so users with a desktop system were shut out entirely.

[alex7o]

The thing is I have never used the function keys on my laptop so that was not a problem form me, but also some of the custom functions I hard can just be mapped to fn keys so it is bit like it it us a huge loss

[vel0city]

I don't necessarily use the numbered function keys all the time (as in F1-F12), but I use those physical buttons constantly. Brightness, volume, play/pause, mic mute, are all buttons I press a good bit. Many of those I'd rather just have be a single quick button, especially things like speaker or mic mute.

[dismalaf]

Fn keys usually double as media keys so I use them a lot, as do most laptop users I know.

[dkga]

Same. I still have my intel Mac as a secondary, backup device and I still love using it, in part because of the touchbar.

[garbageman]

Interesting to hear a different perspective on the touchbar. I have yet to meet someone who liked it. Removes touch typing, requires you to refocus attention, etc. Changing the volume is easy, button same place always - but with touch bar I have to look down and do the slidey thing. If they implemented real keys with that display built in...now we're talking!

[tpmoney]

The touchbar was great when apps used it for useful things. It’s main sin was replacing the physical escape key and I suspect if even just that key had remained physical most people would have been fine with the touchbar because most people don’t really use the f-keys by touch. Most of the time when I’m using the f-keys, it’s to use the debugger for an IDE. And that’s where the touchbar really shined because instead of remembering whether f6 or f5 was step over, the touchbar could just display the expected symbol.

Personally I’d love to see the touchbar make a comeback either as an addition to the fkeys row, or as a set of e-ink/oled physical buttons where the fkeys are. Allow the displayed legends to update while still keeping the physicality.

[dhosek]

Even without BTT, I liked the touchbar (especially on the Macbook “Esc” which restored the escape key). It was nice having keys that actually said what they did. Maybe someday, keycaps with an LCD-generated display will be feasible (or maybe e-paper for power consumption needs)

[sersi]

Yeah, I hated the keyboard but really did like the touchbar. Apple really dropped the ball there though. We shouldn't have needed Better Touch Tool to make it useful.

[s_dev]

Scissor keys are the good ones, you're thinking of Butterfly keys.

[bdcravens]

I didn't mind the touchbar, and enjoyed some of the added functionality. Would have been so much better if it had been an addition instead of a replacement for the top row of keys.

[epolanski]

My finger tips literally becoming purple colored due to the insane heat of that aluminum's thing in the i9 era. still hurts.

[nekooooo]

loved the touchbar for things like timeline scrubbers and quick shortcuts in my pro software

[RulerOf]

I thought it really excelled at displaying the timeline—it was quite novel to see a timeline for a video I was watching that didn't occlude any part of the screen—but quite annoyingly it would go black due to inactivity.

And of course the virtual function keys were awful.

[thih9]

Virtual function keys and virtual escape key in earlier models.

[varjag]

Have to say I really prefer butterfly keyboard (as long as it works).

[thih9]

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was a great phone as long as it didn’t spontaneously combust.

[varjag]

These keyboards did not pose safety risk and were nicer to type than whatever the normal mushy Apple stuff is.

Mine lasted 6 years of daily use.

[thih9]

Good for you and I bet Apple had similar thoughts when they were introducing them.

[WalterBright]

I dug out my old iPod from a drawer. Put the charger in - it took a couple days for it to charge. And then it was working just fine, except that the servers no longer supported the apps on it.

But the iPod is still so nice. I wish I could have a phone with that form factor. Even if it just had VOIP. The big phones are often just too much.

[ComputerGuru]

> but recovered nicely afterwards

After Ives was fired/forced out/decided to leave to pursue his creative vision.

[iwontberude]

I love that he instantly flopped repeatedly and showed it was actually Apple that was great all along.

[TheOtherHobbes]

He didn't flop. He's had a number of high-status bespoke projects, including the coronation logo for King Charles and a redesign of Christie's (auction house) podium.

He's not doing commoditised consumer design any more. He has enough money now, so he no longer needs to. The most consumer-oriented work recently has been an interior for the new Ferrari Luce EV.

I agree his post-Jobs years at Apple were somewhere between mediocre and hopeless (gradients...) and not many people seem to miss him.

Although to be fair, he wasn't responsible for Liquid Glass, which has set the bar for design failure at Apple to new depths.

[iwontberude]

Liquid Glass is fine for me and the people I talk to, I didn't even notice it happened when the upgrade happened and so many people have been complaining.

[33MHz-i486]

OpenAI acquired his company for Billions. maybe the products flopped but he did fine for himself personally

[iwontberude]

Sure he made it into the Epstein class, whoopty fucking do

[tsunamifury]

This is, by far, the most insane take i've ever heard.

The guy litterally built modern apple from the ground up in equal with Jobs.

[jordanb]

Ive got way more credit than he deserved. And he had to run all his ideas by Jobs. Once Jobs was gone we got to see Ive's true colors (it was garish pastels and a butterfly keyboard).

https://jonyiveredesignsthings.tumblr.com/

[tsunamifury]

He has designed 4 consumer prodocts that a good portion of humanity use every day. By every measure he is the most successful product creator in the history of humanity, no single other product comes close to impact and quality. (Believe it or not the Dorritos Locos Taco is likely the closest 5th place product)

The arrogance on hacker news is insane, or the self agrandizement and misunderstanding of how rare that is.

You have likely never done 1/1,000,000,000th of the scale or impact of this designer and then make flippant remarks that belay your ignorance of the matter.

I really would like to understand what your thought process is here. This is quite litterally like saying Michael Jordan was a pretty poor Basketball player and claiming Jerry Reinsdorf was somehow the real reason he succeeded.

[philistine]

People age and change; Jony Ive overstayed his tenure at Apple, through no fault of his own. Cook, not being a product guy, kept Ive with massive incentives. Build Apple Park, take care of software, here's a bunch more stock. That led to very misguided products. Laptops without MagSafe. Ever so thin phones for no benefit. A pen that charges in the most insane way.

Ive should have left shortly after the death of Steve. He was creatively spent at Apple.

[vishnugupta]

Apparently it required someone with the personality and product taste of Jobs to rein in Ivy. Cook on the other hand being a logistics/operations guy didn’t have the similar skills and we ended up getting absolute shitshow of hardware products from apple in late 2010s.

Thankfully he was fired and sanity prevailed which coincided with Apple Silicon line professors. The MacBook Pro that was immediate predecessor to M1 series was by far Apple’s worst hardware. It was bad on nearly every count.

[DonHopkins]

For what it's worth, the Intel MacBook Pro Espresso Machine and Milk Foamer Expansion Dock that water cooled the CPU while making you a hot fresh latte was pretty useful. The M4 just isn't capable of working up a proper head of steam.

[dkga]

I have one such mac. Things I like: the keyboard feels smooth, the speakers are great and the touchbar (yes you read correctly). Things that make me partially agree with this post I am responding to: annoying overheating, including when I plug an external monitor (!); the camera was really subpar, it always seemed as if I was facetiming using a 2002 cybershot rather than a 2019 MacBook Pro; the screen has nice colours but very easily feels smudgy. Other than this, I love using that computer as a secondary device.

[tsunamifury]

Apple grew into the best selling laptop in the world in this era.

How do you justify such a take?

[iwontberude]

Absolute bullshit.

[chongli]

Yeah my only complaint with Apple hardware these days is all the sharp edges. I miss the soft, rounded sides of touchID based iPhones.

[bmitc]

Apple has had sharp edges for like 15 years now on their MacBooks.

[jmyeet]

This was the last gasp of Johnny Ive. And yes, it was terrible. It got us ending the incredibly successful Macbook Air for the too-compromised 12" Macbook (1 port, remember?), the pointless Touch Bar and the terrible butterly keyboard (remember how dust could kill it and I'm sure Apple spent a fortune on replacements?).

Why did we get all these things? It wasn't just thinness. It was to raise to Average Selling Price ("ASP"). Someone at Apple decided the ASP was too low.

Ultimately the Macbook Air came back and it's really the SKU the most people should buy.

[wpm]

They did not take the MacBook Air off the market when the retina Macbook 12" was released. The MacBookAir7,1 was released a month before the MacBook8,1. The 7,2 came out 2 years later as a spec bump not because Apple abandoned the product, but because this was the same time Intel's tick-tock schedule went completely off the rails.

[jmyeet]

They pretty mcuh did in practice.

That 2016-2018 Macbook Air had a 2010 dispaly ie 1440x900. That was ridiculous for the time, given that the Macbook Pro first got a retina display (2560x1600) in 2012. No there was no technical reason for excluding the MBA. It was a product decision all along.

I distinctly remember thinking in 2013-2014 "will they just update the screen already?" as it was kept me from buying a new one. I also remember thinking in 2015 when the 12" Macbook launched "oh the MBA is abandonware now". The Retina MBA launched in 2018, the 12" Macbook was discontinued in 2019 and 2020+ was the M series processor era. And here we are.

[wpm]

But they didn't. Just because they didn't update the screen for free doesn't mean the discontinued the Air. They sold likely millions of Airs from 2015 to 2018, likely in no small part due to the fact you could get a barebones 11" Air for $899, $799 if you were a school. When the Retina Air came out in 2018 the prices jumped to $1199.

[sneak]

I collect the 12" macbooks, even today. It really only needs one port; the vast majority of people never plug anything but power into their computer ever. I would pay huge sums for a modern Mx 11-12" ultralight macbook with a reliable keyboard.

[varjag]

Same. Using my MacBook 12" of Theseus still at home. It's a fantastic machine for travel or field work if configured to 16GB. That 1" down from Air makes a huge difference on a seat tray.

[repparw]

the engineering workarounds to give the Neo a second port probably says that their internal numbers differ, regarding the number of ports importance

[foldr]

The Neo's targetting a different market. The MacBook was a premium ultraportable product. If you were buying it, you were willing to make all kinds of sacrifices for a thin and light laptop. The Neo is a general purpose consumer laptop that just happens to be fairly small.

[wpm]

Any advice for finding them other than partaking in whatever premimum drugs eBay sellers smoke to make the prices they are charging for essentially e-waste make sense? God I want to pick up one so bad but $150, $200, $300, hell there's one out there asking $1200! For a computer that was pretty crap when it was new?

I absolutely loved the one I used from 2017-2021. It was a maxed out 2017 model in gold. Some bozo director bought it for himself with his budget then quit a month later, so this thing no one really wanted ended up on the spares pile. I grabbed it to replace my 2012 13" MacBook Pro as my "going to town" computer, i.e. the one I'd take when I needed to step away from my desk and my desktop workstation. And whaddya know, the 7Y75 i7 benchmarked about the same as the Ivy Bridge i5 it was replacing.

The wedge shape is so undeniably more humanistic and comfortable than the current MacBook Air/Neo slab. 0.14" at its thinnest, rounded at the bottom to make it easier to pick up. An excellent screen. Great trackpad. Full size keyboard, and yes, I liked the butterfly keys! Key travel is dumb! I never had issues with it and I took it into network closets and steam tunnels and ate greasy lunches next to it and all kinds of dusty, dirty places, and never had a key failure. God, what a wonderful portable computer! It was like carrying an empty clipboard around, you'd barely notice it in a stack of papers or notebooks, but open the screen and bam, full-fat macOS!

Honestly it was the last Mac I think I've used that physically delighted me. I usually cringe when I hear executives talking about wanting to "delight" customers, but that shitty little slow, overpriced Macbook with one USB-C port, absolutely delightful. Like sure, Apple Silicon was amazing but in a different sort of way, in a "wow that V12 engine sure is powerful" and not "this entire car is amazing" way. The Retina MacBook was delightful even though my nerd brain knew that as a computer, looking at raw specs, was a complete dud (though mine had 16GB of RAM, nyah nyah, take that Macbook Neo!)

And now that the vision Apple had for that device actually came true?? That we live in a mostly mobile, USB-C world where my company's conference rooms all have AirPlay and most monitors have built-in USB-C input/hubs? That they could put an ultra cut down iPhone chip in it and even if it was only as fast as a 5 year old Macbook that would still make it as fast as an M1? Oh well, now we don't get one! You will have a brutalist cold slab of a Macbook Air or a pathetically locked down iPad appliance and be happy!

Perhaps it was a great product because of those flaws, those horrible compromises they had to make to get it that small. All I can hope is that there is some skunkworks project somewhere in Cupertino, maybe even unsanctioned, of hardware designers asking themselves "what would we have to figure out if we made it 0.25 inches thick?" or "Could we get a Macbook down to 1 pound?". I want a product whose development team were told "Make a Macbook. Priority 1. light, priority 2. thin, priority 3. there is no priority 3"

Joz, Ternus, if you're reading this, I would also pay huge sums of money for a modern 11-12" ultralight Macbook. I would write Apple a blank check for one, name your price.

[sneak]

The Macbook equivalent of the iPhone Air. They’re already using the “air” moniker for a mac that won’t fit into a manila envelope, so they’d need a new name.

I’ve just been buying expensive parts on eBay. I have two 16GB motherboards now and a few bottom cases and screens. Shoot me an email.

Same deal with the blank check. I carry a $7k MBP, I would have paid that for a much lower spec machine if it were stupid tiny.

[jnwatson]

That's a really good point to remember and counters the article's claim that there were no major recalls.

Still, the M series laptops are so much better than offerings from competitors I am hesitant to even put them in the same product category.

[YmiYugy]

The missteps of those intel MacBooks are undeniable, but I also feel like the new design feels very safe and unambitious. There is the huge notch. The 16" model is (given screen and battery size) 35% heavier than competitors and not exactly a joy to lug around. The keycaps continue to be made of subpar ABS getting a oily look within mere month of usage. The use of space inside is not very efficient compared to previous models.

[fooker]

That's exactly why I love it.

Happy to have an unambitious reliable workhorse where the battery lasts two days.

I'd actually be happier if it was even less ambitious, and made the graphics bits less powerful. But that would likely be a bad business move.

[throwaway894345]

I generally agree, but I had the misfortune of having a tiny grain of something (it was truly microscopic) wedged between my screen and the tiny rubber gasket around the edge and that completely disabled my screen and cost $800 to repair. I'm glad they moved away from the thin obsession, and I generally agree that the new design gives the impression of robustness even if that wasn't my experience. :)

[Nesco]

I had this opinion until I actually had a new model and felt the weight difference.

The duality of Man

[highfrequency]

Why do you prefer the laptop to be thicker and heavier?

[petu]

Nobody said that.

MacBooks of that period made compromises for useless gain in thinness. You can't with straight face tell that butterfly mechanism was a good tradeoff for .3 mm.

[hombre_fatal]

I don't want to think about how long I used that macbook where the keycaps would come off with my fingers as I typed, the switches were that broken.

It's like thinking about how much time I lost using a 2010 10" Atom netbook for development as a poor student where I'd close down all apps to watch a youtube video, and "rails server" took five minutes to boot on hello world.

[saghm]

That's a false dichotomy; there are plenty of keyboards that don't require recalls due to issues like the butterfly ones but also don't have the issues you're describing.

[et-al]

Luckily there are two lines: the Air and the Pro.

The issue people had was from 2016-2019, the Macbook Pros sacrificed a lot of usability for thinness, when that should only happen for the Airs.

[eloisant]

I'd be fine with a thinner and lighter laptop if it was without compromises.

But having a shitty keyboard, losing the HDMI port, wasn't worth it.

[anonymars]

Right? What was the point of a laptop with no "ugly ports" if everyone instead needed to carry around a stupid dongle to hang off it?

[jonhohle]

I think the preference is to have a battery that can run a CPU that's compiling, AI-ing, or rendering for an entire day (16+ hours) without having to worry about where an outlet is or being tethered to a wall or be thermal throttled. Right now that's a volume tradeoff. If there was something that ran as fast for as long and was MacBook Air (or the last Intel generation) thin, I don't think anyone would complain.

[soperj]

My old thinkpad was thicker but not heavier. Way more ports, didn't need dongles.

[reaperducer]

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish

It wouldn't be HN if someone didn't dredge up a decade-old axe to grind.

[wtallis]

It's not exactly a decade-old issue when the problem started a decade ago and persisted for half a decade. The MacBook Pros from the tail end of that era are only just now starting to reach an age where they can reasonably be considered obsolete and due for replacement, because that kind of machine absolutely should be usable for 5+ years. From the perspective of Apple's current product offerings those laptops are many generations back, but from the perspective of the actual user base they're still recent history.

Reputational damage always outlasts the defective products. There's nothing HN-specific or even nerd-specific about that phenomenon.

[triceratops]

MacBooks can last almost that long. People still own and use them.

[thewebguyd]

> It certainly wouldn't be a bad thing to put more focus back on functionality if that ends up to be the case.

As long as they can go back to simplicity in the process. Apple has been shoving functionality into iOS for a long time now, but it's a haphazard mess. The settings app is a disaster of clutter, and searching for settings doesn't work half the time. It needs a complete rearchitecting before they start shoving more functionality into the phone.

Did you know that iPhones have tap, double tap, and triple tap (on the back of the phone) functionality that can be set to custom actions? I didn't until recently, its buried deep in the Accessibility options for...reasons? This could be promoted to a core feature, with a dedicated space in settings instead of buried.

I'm sure there's other useful functionality hidden behind the settings mess too.

[WalterBright]

I bought a newer iPhone. My older one had the button to go to the home screen, the newer one replaced that with swipe up.

After a year, the swipe up is still a nuisance. It often doesn't work, and I have to swipe up several times.

[sholladay]

Do you use a case? My guess would be that when you swipe up, you're not quite starting low enough, perhaps unconsciously, because of the case being in the way. See if a case with a thinner front or smaller bezels helps. Using your index finger also works better than the thumb.

If that doesn't help, there are some settings you can try:

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch and turn on AssistiveTouch. Under Custom Actions, set Single-Tap to Home. Now you have a home button. You can move this button anywhere on your screen and adjust its "Idle Opacity" so it's less distracting when not in use.

2. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap and choose Double Tap or Triple Tap. Select Home from the list of actions. Now you can tap on the back side of your phone to go home.

There's also Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Touch Accommodations, but that's more about preventing accidental touches and swipes, so that would probably make the situation worse for you.

[WalterBright]

I had no idea. Thanks for the tips!

[locao]

It took me forever to upgrade because I was afraid the same thing would happen to me. Luckily it didn't, but I can imagine the frustration.

[ErneX]

You are probably not swiping up from down enough.

[ryandrake]

> I do think the challenge for Apple going forwards (but also for Android) is going to be how to best take advantage of AI.

IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it. They've shown you can still have a great company without chanting the "AI is the future" mantra day in and day out. It would be pretty disappointing for a new CEO to drag them into the cargo cult and declare "We, too, must find something that we can do with AI."

[troupo]

> IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it.

They both bought into hysteria and they've likely already wasted billions on it. Are you forgetting the interminable ads and announcements of "Apple Intelligence" from two years ago when even iPhones were marketed as AI-ready?

[samsolomon]

Honestly, I'm pretty bullish on Apple and AI. I think there move is in local, open source models. These are getting better and better for generic ChatGPT—type tasks. I'm kind of waiting for Apple to ship their own Ollama. And it's going to be a huge win for both them and consumers.

[jnwatson]

Apple is letting the market "commoditize its complements" without lifting a finger.

[ryandrake]

I just think the concept of an LLM is counter to how Apple treats content on their products. See [1] for more of my thoughts here. I think the only chance Apple embraces AI is if they manage to research a 1. local model that 2. is purely deterministic, whose output can be reliably constrained and controlled by Apple.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47849737

[HarHarVeryFunny]

I don't see selling local LLM servers/software, as such, being something that makes sense for Apple, but selling an "Apple Intelligence" appliance that works with your Apple devices and/or provides home automation might do.

[raw_anon_1111]

You can’t compare Apple to any other company. Apple is the only successful consumer hardware company (with Samsung being a distant second). They can afford to sit out the AI arms race.

You can’t be a software company without an AI story to tell.

[layer8]

That must be a very restrictive definition of “successful consumer hardware company”.

[raw_anon_1111]

Name one other successfully computer hardware company? PC makers are barely profitable commodities, other phone companies aside from Samsung are making pennies, the Microsoft XBox division is on life support, Sony sold off its TV division. The PS5 is going okay but doesn’t sell in near the numbers of iPhones. Who is left?

[layer8]

You didn’t say “computer”. And I would count the likes of Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Asus as successful. Without “computer”, Nintendo, Sony, LG, and so on.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to restrict “successful” to iPhone-level unit sales and Apple profit margins.

[raw_anon_1111]

So did you think when I was talking about Apple I was comparing them to a company that sold power tools?

But Dell’s profits cratered so bad that they took the company private and profits are still nothingburgers.

Sony just sold off controlling interest of its TV division.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/son...

Have you checked the profits of the other PC sellers?

A quick Google search shows that LG profits were $2.4 billion dollar (converted) and down its last fiscal year.

[MaysonL]

Apple _is_ a software company: everything it sells is based on a Mac OS X foundation.

[raw_anon_1111]

I would buy Mac hardware running Windows long before I would buy x86 hardware running MacOS. In fact Mac OS on x86 was really nothing remarkable. Macs were objectively worse than most Windows PCs during the last few years on x86 at least the laptops were.

[icedchai]

Walk in to any Best Buy and look around. There are many. Apple is in a league of its own, however.

[raw_anon_1111]

Successful == decently profitable with decent profit margins. Someone else mentioned LG with an annual profit of $2.4 billion as a “successful” company.

[icedchai]

Consumer electronics is a low margin business. Since low to mid single digit margin is typical and not every brand can be premium, like Apple, I'd say Sony and Samsung do pretty well, all things considered. "Success" is relative to the industry average.

[raw_anon_1111]

Samsung both sells premium hardware and manufactures a lot of it own components in house and sales components to other manufacturers including Apple. I consider Samsung “successful”.

Every single low margin PC company that exists now like Dell, HP etc were much more profitable than an almost bankrupt Apple in 1997. They had no vision and decided to compete on price. It doesn’t matter why they are barely profitable low margin businesses.

Seeing there revenue vs profits, they should take Michael Dell’s (bad) advice to Jobs when he came back - “shut the company down and give the money back to shareholders” who could make more money in treasury bonds.

[tsunamifury]

Only on hacker news would someone believe engineers would focus on the customer function.

Engineers tend to be selfish and self oriented to building whatever is easiest for them to ship. Theres a reason why they almost always are shifted away from heading products.

[swiftcoder]

> Engineers tend to be selfish and self oriented to building whatever is easiest for them to ship

You must be working with shit engineers. Every product I've ever worked on, it's the engineers holding the line on quality while the side of the house that has to care about costs steadily cuts

[tsunamifury]

classic engineering delusion -- often hold the line on technical items that are irrelevant or simply not important to the consumer.

I have worked at all top three firms, and never had engineers come close to being customer oriented.

[troad]

I enjoy your contrarianism, tsunamifury, but I'd enjoy it more (and I think you'd get more thoughtful engagement) if you weren't quite so spiky about it. (This goes for a couple of your recent posts.)

[swiftcoder]

> I have worked at all top three firms

I've worked at 2/3, and sure, there are shit product teams all over FAANG, but you can always decide to go work on one of the ones that does proper engineering