"What we want from Apple isn't new technology. We want human warmth — a possibility of living a more fulfilled, meaningful life."
I think this sums up nicely what's wrong here: The belief that technology will make your life more fulfilled or meaningful. I didn't watch the live keynote (I don't have the required Apple gear) but saw excerpts on Youtube, and frankly, I find the level of religiousness surrounding this event appalling. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I really don't like how emotionally charged most products are today, in the sense that they are supposed to not only solve a technological problem, but at the same time fulfill a social or even religious role and provide "human warmth", as the author puts it. It's not only Apple who does this (BMW comes to mind with their Mini commercials), but it seems they perfected this art to a point where their events have more resemblance to a Lenie Riefenstahl movie than a trade show (no comparison intended beyond the aesthetics of the presentation). And does technology actually live up to the promise? Studies show that, although we have more superficial interactions through technology, the number of close friends diminishes and more and more people become socially isolated. Take the metro / subway in any big, affluent city these days, and look around you. What do you see? People whose eyes are glued to their phone screens, oblivious to the persons around them, looking for "human warmth" in their virtual companion. That's really not the society I want to live in.
Sorry for the rant, I just think that especially people who are very savvy and enthusiastic about technology and full of entrepreneurial spirit (like most readers of HN) are especially susceptible to this kind of religious admiration of technology and should sometimes take a step back to ask themselves what kind of society they're actually creating with their actions.
>> "Take the metro / subway in any big, affluent city these days, and look around youself. What do you see? People whose eyes are glued to their phone screens, oblivious to the people around them, looking for "human warmth" in their virtual companion. That's really not the society I want to live in."
I agree with a lot of what you said but this isn't correct. True we all have out faces buried in our devices but before that we had them buried in newspapers. [0][1][2] No matter the decade people don't look for human warmth on public transport. They want to get on, look down, and get off.
I feel like when people write this they completely forget what life was like in college.
It's true that ever since the newspaper we've had trouble interacting with each other in certain contexts. Why does that difficulty seem to dramatically increase post-college?
Sure, when I was in college tons of people including myself used their phone in public. But there was a corresponding amount of more or less random and constant public interaction.
To me, this suggests that the problem has little to do with phones or newspapers or watches and everything to do with the design of a city. College campuses are human-scale; modern cities are not. College students are encouraged to room together and give up materialistic wealth; college graduates and working professionals are encouraged to spend as much of their net worth as they can on procuring their own private abode. College students can walk mostly anywhere they need to go; working professionals usually drive in armored vehicles for a significant portion of the day and often find that virtually nothing useful is in walking distance of their residence except other residences that they aren't allowed to approach without good reason.
There were plenty of discussions about human-scale cities here on HN (and I hope to see more of them) :)
One oft-quoted title is Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language", which advocates several building and design patterns, and ended up picked up mostly by the software engineering community.
You're completely right. Sorry, I should have been clearer. My conception of the "modern city" is very biased by the cities I've personally experienced, which are all US cities with the exception of Moscow (which I would rank as the most livable city I've ever personally lived in, due to its public transportation infrastructure and general density).
This comparison is specious and unfairly undercuts the ThePhysicist's point.
People of that generation, outside of commuting, were an exceptionally social generation. Family dinners being important and often required, where you shared your day. You didn't see the entire family sitting around the table with a newspaper like you see entire families at a restaurants with their noses buried in smartphones.
Where are those same people you see in these pictures today? Commuting in cars - ever more isolated than before. They rarely if even carpool.
Original replies point is excellent and well said and if you're trying to somehow compare newspapers and smartphones you're ignoring a looming social problem that is going to affect generations to come. We already see it's detrimental affects in trying to higher young people.
> "Where are those same people you see in these pictures today? Commuting in cars - ever more isolated than before. They rarely if even carpool."
No they're not. All 3 of the pictures shown appear to be from the New York area - the first one is a commuter train, nowadays the LIRR or the Metro North. The latter two pictures are of the NYC subway which, well, still exists.
The modern counterparts to the people in those pictures are still commuting by train, and like before people still didn't talk much with each other. The means of self-distraction have changed, but the nature of people have not.
This is pure rose-tinted glasses crap. North Americans have never treated public transport as a social gathering ground. This is a cultural problem, not one of urban design.
Another poster draws comparisons to college campuses, which strikes me as false also. I live in Manhattan, which is about as dense as this country gets, and my neighborhood has a population density of 25K per sq mi. Everyone walks everywhere, but yet the amount of social contact between complete strangers is pretty minimal. Certainly less than when I was in college.
Once again, it's cultural. If you convince people that talking to strangers is annoying and not-okay, it doesn't matter how tightly you pack them together or how many times a day you can throw them at each other. It just isn't gonna happen.
and the difference now is many of those whose faces are buried in their smartphones are likely communicating with someone.If anything people are communicating more.
From a small statistical sample of people I meet every day in public transport when going to and back from work, I can say that almost everyone looking at the phone is either texting or IM-ing (Facebook Messenger/Snapchat), and if not they're usually on Facebook (which I'd still classify as mostly communicating). Usually the only person I with a game on I can spot is myself playing Ingress, because the city centre is full of portals ;).
And in general, looking at my life and the life of my friends, cow-orkers and family, people are communicating hell and a lot more than they used to.
If anything is a problem, it's maybe not lack of but too much human interaction. People don't find time to think for even few minutes anymore, because there's always someone texting you, chatting to you or some interesting post to comment on.
There's a 9 year gap in age between my ex and I. One of the big differences between us is that while I'm addicted to my phone too, I don't tend to use it to send messages much. Unless I have agreed to be somewhere by a specific time, I won't text to say I'm late, for example. I won't fret about not hearing from someone. I think that difference to great deal is down to growing up with and without a cellphone - I was 20 when I got my first one, and it was another couple of years before I used it much outside of business calls.
I'm used to expecting hours and hours of "radio silence" from people even if they're late, or I'm late, because when I was a kid calling meant having to know where they'd be, and getting to a phone booth or somewhere I could borrow a phone. She grew up being used to being always contactable and able to contact.
I would count img as entertainment. Just read over some peoples shoulders.
I think you shared my point, that too much communication starts to be superficial. Subway is a undisturbed time, where reading news or books can be done. Indeed, if you want to communicate in a meaningful way, it makes sense to reload information from time to time.
> that too much communication starts to be superficial
Yes, I agree with that. I actually start thinking about clustering communication types in different ways that it is usually done. I'd say that writing paper letters, writing e-mails and even commenting on discussion boards or places like HackerNews are one type of communication, while face-to-face talk, phone call, texting and IM-ing is the other type (and of course IRC would be grouped with going to a bar).
One type of communication gives you time to articulate your thoughts and reflect on what you have to say. The other is about tight feedback loop, back-and-forthing little bites of thought and emotion. Both types are of course useful and important, but I'm starting to feel that the perceived "superficiality" of communication is people talking too much with each other, and not writing enough letters. Too much human warmth, not enough time to think.
Sure, our technology is a facilitator of this problem. But the nature of the problem is different than usually portrayed.
People are terrified of silence and lone time. Sadly this is what people actually need.
Challenge any of you to just leave your phone in the house on a Saturday and drive to a park and walk for 2 hours and on the way stop at some nice spot and sit alone for 20 minutes. You'll be shocked at how you feel mentally.
This is vastly dependent on country. And even area within the country. To a large extent I guess population density.
E.g. come to London. Take a train heading as far as possible out of town. With every stop, the "average face" will soften, you'll start seeing smiles. Then eye contact will become "acceptable". You may find people greeting you eventually.
Time of day/week also makes a huge difference. The overcrowded commuter trains are awful. Except Friday afternoon, when the atmosphere at least on the long distance commuter trains out of London tends to be completely different.
Or go to Paris, and people will be far more open to eye contact from the outset.
The subway is just a horizontal and larger version of the elevator, a place where people are trying very hard to not have to interact with those around them. The trip is short enough that you can't really talk, probably you see the same faces every day and you feel awkward. Situations like that give people a ton of reasons to look for an excuse, be it a book, a newspaper or their phone. They're also cranky, it's early morning before their first cup-of-favorite-beverage or late in the day when they simply want to get home from the office. It's a collectively murderous mood, not unlike what you'd get if you put all the people in a traffic jam into a single box.
Compare with trains and you see the opposite, people get to talk to each other, make friends.
Other than that I completely agree with you, technology will not by itself make your life more fulfilled or meaningful and quite possibly will make it less so.
The way this stuff is marketed is as though the mere ownership of gadget 'x' will make you more attractive/interesting/happy. And that's never the case.
> Take the metro / subway in any big, affluent city these days, and look around you. What do you see? People whose eyes are glued to their phone screens, oblivious to the persons around them, looking for "human warmth" in their virtual companion. That's really not the society I want to live in.
This old photo (http://imgur.com/WkHHpZ1) comes to mind when I read this.
Don't blame technology.
And, on the phone I'm likely to be conversing with friends and acquaintances. Beats staring at newspapers. Oh, and my phone has OKCupid and Meetup.com.
But the original post goes into creepypasta territory with the human warmth thing. "Jobs: I feel her pulse against mine." It reminds me of http://windows95tips.com/post/34200923828
That's terrible, but the likelihood of me being in contact with my peers remains higher. Relative social and/or personal usefulness of Angry Birds versus reading news is another matter.
You should listen to Simon Sinek's TED talk about "Start With Why". He also has written a book with the same name.
The reason people like Apple products, and consequently Apple the company, is because they like how Apple approaches building products. Apple starts with "Why?" and works their way to "What?"
Obviously, this approach doesn't appeal to everyone but it does explain that "religiousness" you described.
While this technology may not lead to a more fulfilled or meaningful life there is plenty of technology that can achieve that goal. Look at the progress made for artificial limbs for example.
Even this type of technology can make a huge difference depending on circumstance. Several types of disabilities are easier to deal with using an iPad over the crummy alternatives that existed before.
People's eyes are not glued to their screens. I'm sure that they can move their eyes and point them onto other targets, and I'd like to see the evidence of any sticky substance between the ocular globes and the crystal screens. I don't understand the need of hyperbole, in general. Why is it necessary to exaggerate to make a point?
What is the society you would like to live in? A society in which intellectual and philosophical discussions pop up spontaneously on the subway? Or a society in which strangers stop to hug each other in the middle of the street and start conversing dearly and profoundly?
Seriously, it's always been like this and it will always be like this. You're just ranting about "kids these days" because their choice of distraction is different from what yours was.
Don't tear apart the details of what the author wrote. Just squint your eyes, and you know he's dead right. This is exactly the kind of storytelling that was missing from Tuesday's keynote. Steve always started with WHY before he got to the WHAT or the HOW. Tim Cook was shaking his fists in triumph after doing nothing but showing some over-produced video that showed some cool camera angles on the watch. Not a word about why it should exist, or what it changes about your life. WE DID IT! WE MADE A WATCH! WOOO! My jaw dropped. Very tacky. Too self-congratulatory.
Frankly, I'm glad Cook is not trying to imitate Jobs. Imagine if Cook had gone on stage and followed the script jiggly wrote. It would have come off completely insincere. Sincerety is why Jobs was great, and it's why Cook is great. He doesn't BS us, as Jiggity seems to want.
But the thing is, no matter what Apple does people will complain. There's always another way that they could say would have been better. If Apple had released only one watch model, in black, then people would complain about how they would never wear a black watch.
No, this is exactly the kind of spin we've seen from people after every Apple keynote, going back to the late 1990s. Steve Jobs was not immune. It's just now that he's dead, they have a new "it's cause Jobs is dead!" rationalization.
This is just a warm over of the standard issue "iPod is lame", "iPhone needs a 'real' keyboard", "iPad is just a big iPod touch", "the iMac needs a floppy drive!" type complaint after every product introduction.
Again, you are missing the point. Steve identified the insight (the WHY) behind a product before he introduced the details and design. Cook & team skip all the important foreplay. It makes the products feel less Apple-y, less inspired, and simply, more like everyone else's. I love Apple and will keep buying their phones, the watch, and Macs. But for some of us, the company is also part of the products.
While this is partially true, you need to remember that about half of the pitch here seemed to be that this item is fashion. Fashion typically isn't "pitched" as a solution to "problems" (right? runway?). Thus, Apple found itself in a very delicate balancing act between showing off this device's capabilities and appealing to our rational capacities while not going overboard and establishing it as something in a line of succession to Mac, iPhone, iPad with traditional, as you call it, foreplay. The device had to spend a lot of time speaking for itself, as good fashion does.
>>Try pitching your startup to investors in the style of Tim Cook, see how far that gets you. Then you'll get it.
It would work if you were Tim Cook. But you aren't.
That's what people mean when they say, "you have to find your own voice." Tim Cook has found his. He simply needs to change the content of what he is saying. I think if he explained the importance and significance of the iWatch more forcefully, it would have been a better presentation. But that has nothing to do with style.
"Foreplay"? Apple is a consumer electronics company, not a lover. You admit you'll buy their products regardless -- why should they make a point of titillating you?
They're a consumer electronics company selling high margin, high priced, niche products to people who care a lot more about aesthetics, image and feeling than the average consumer. They do need to titillate if they want to maintain their margins.
I don't think that Tim Cook needs to imitate Steve Jobs in order to make the product more compelling. My take-away from the article was that this Apple event focused too much on technical details and not enough on why people should want the product.
One bit that struck me was when the author pointed out that this watch now seems like a gadget for the geekier people, rather than something for everyone. That really could be, Apple has spent much time and money getting consumers excited about these events and, perhaps, squandered some of this excitement.
I am also not a big fan of choice. Sixty options sounds stressful to me, especially with something new that I've never really seen before.
He's right about the iPhone but not the watch. Jewelry is a completely different sector where individualization is not just nice-to-have but absolutely required. They would sell a few watches to die-hard fans if they didn't show "the 60", but they would miss the market they are trying to hit: people who wear watches. In effect, the ONE is the 60.
I'm not saying it was a perfect launch, and they may have gotten it right unintentionally, but they still got it right.
I totally agree with this ^. The key to wearables is to make them fashionable - to make them into something a lot of people want to wear, and want others to see them wearing.
Wearable devices are still very much on the fringe - mainly due to lack of style - and style is very individual. This watch, regardless of its somewhat indistinct purpose, will be able to appeal, on beauty alone, to a vastly larger group of people than it otherwise would if it were "the one."
I think what that guy and what I feel is that this is the first time Apple has made a product which is more fashion than function - if that's what you are suggesting. I feel that the watch is more function, and consequently should have been preceded with a Steve Jobs' "Why we need it".
Well, I was responding mainly to Jiggity's claims that this watch has no clear purpose, no "X" that everyone "NEEDS TO HAVE" - since it does seem to have somewhat indistinct function, it needs to sell itself mainly on fashion, and I would argue it will succeed at that.
But that's precisely a problem with the hardware and features and not the messaging. If they're not communicating a clear message about why it should exist, it's because they've failed to figure out a highly compelling reason why a watch that isn't a smartphone and has limited ability to operate independently of a smartphone, yet is bulky, has low battery life and costs $350-and-up should exist, other than "because it is beautiful and from Apple" (which is what the video was highlighting) or "because we need to grow our revenues to avoid disappointing Wall Street's now-crazy expectations".
I thought the fist shake thing was a subtle way to show he's wearing the watch. Every new product is introduced and shown for the first time in an interesting way.
iPod was in Steve Jobs' pocket the whole time.
iPhone was in Steve Jobs' pocket the whole time.
iPad was under the cloth on the table beside the armchair.
> WE DID IT! WE MADE A WATCH! WOOO! My jaw dropped. Very tacky. Too self-congratulatory.
Self-congratulator? Have you never watched an Apple release with Jobs? It starts off with a whole lot of "we sold X devices" and "we are opening new stores where most of you will never go."
Hacker News: your premier source for Steve Jobs fan fiction. (laughs)
Does the author really think that Steve Jobs would have ever said "When I open up a website on Safari, I don't have to strain my eyes anymore"? They're still selling 5S and 5C! Not even Asus would disparage their previous products like that.
The rest of the piece is just as bad and devoid of substance.
(Steve rolls in his grave)
Right. A product is, well, a product of its time. I doubt Apple spent much time worrying how can we go bigger after saying we had the perfect size. Seems a bigger problem is how can we go bigger without people thinking that's the only difference? A 5.7" iPhone would be as out of place in 2006 (not enough power to push those pixels, low power screen tech was non-existent) as a 3.5" phone is today. No mental backflips required.
> A 5.7" iPhone would be as out of place in 2006 (not enough power to push those pixels, low power screen tech was non-existent) as a 3.5" phone is today.
Why would a 3.5'' phone be out of place, today? I see people everywhere assuming this is right, that increasing the screen size was truly needed (and demanded), but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I mean, I'm sure that there's evidence that people wanted bigger screens (if Apple did it...), but I can't seem to find it, except for interweb-people who blog about... stuff. :) Real people - do they want bigger screens? For them, is the 3.5'' phone really out of place?
Anyway: I guess I can be considered a interweb-person, tech savvy, heavy user*, and all that jazz. Still, I'm proudly driving my 4s. Even the 5/5s/5c is too big for me; I can't comfortably reach the top corners of the screens. I do believe that habits may have changed, but our anthropometry certainly didn't - the average human thumb is still the same length.
Plenty of articles show that people are buying phablets and bigger screen phones this past year at higher rates. In fact, I would argue it's the only reason Apple made a big ass iPhone as they were losing customers in this growing segment. Purchasing a product is a pretty god measure of intent.
"People are buying" and "higher rates" isn't really proper data. Also, phablets are somewhat new, so increasing at higher rates is normal.
What I wanted to know is roughly how much are the bigger smartphones being sold, against the regular-sized ones. The most recent Apple smartphones are big, both, while the "regular-sized" ones are from last year or before. Does the data supports this decision - "forgetting" about the "regular-size" and launching only bigger ones?
My attempt was not to share the actual data, but to allude that the data is readily available showing that "phablet" as a market segment is growing.
Can't put my hands on the exact article and corresponding chart, but from memory the segment has grown from around 4-5% area to closer to 10%. Again not exact numbers, but until I find the post that's all I got.
Consumers have had both "regular" and "large" phones to choose from and they're choosing larger and larger displays.
These are not the posts I'm specifically remembering, but do have helpful insight:
> Consumers have had both "regular" and "large" phones to choose from and they're choosing larger and larger displays.
I'm sorry, but I can't read that from the data you shared. "They"'re not choosing larger and larger displays - it was an untapped market, so people willing to buy bigger smartphones are doing it, as they become available. We can't assume that everyone/most/many will follow this trend and we also don't know when it will stop growing. Also it seems natural that buying trends will, up to a point, follow marketing trends - if almost all automakers start selling only big cars, then people would choose "larger and larger" cars.
First, let me preface this with I really dislike large phones. My hands aren't big enough to use any of the new phones' screens one-handed, either. So, I feel your pain there.
The reason you're looking for is that these aren't phones any longer. Pulling numbers out of my ass here, but I bet the vast majority of smart phone users spend less of a hundredth of total smart phone usage actually talking on the thing. They're media consumption devices, just like your TV. And just like TVs, people like having larger screens so they can see more content, easier. Obviously, there is an equilibrium of size to convenience that will eventually be reached.
I agree. Steve Jobs died in 2011. It's like an eon ago in this field. He would have changed his mind so often in this period, over so many things, that we would be here reading tons of bad pieces about that time Steve said so and so and "oh look how the prick's contradicting himself all over again".
Get over it people, the Steve's passed, we can't have him back, unfortunately, and the worst thing Cook & co. could do is to follow the footprints of a guy who completely defied even the most common rules of big business. It worked, because he was Steve. It won't work for Tim & Phil & Jony & Craig and all. They're too smart to ignore that. The only one who really thought he could be Steve II, Scott Forstall, has been ousted. And that's fortunate, or he could have steered Apple against the cliffs in a very short time.
The adulation is a bit rich. Wasn't 3.5 inches claimed to be "the perfect size" by this same individual?
Part of being Steve Jobs is knowing when you have a breakthrough and knowing when you've got an incremental improvement. He did plenty of the latter as well as the former.
There are a lot of Apple fans who are about to suddenly discover that their thumbs are actually longer than they previously thought, or have grown in the years since the first perfect iPhone was released.
The design of the iPhone is guided by what is technically possible as much as by ergonomics. As the size of our hands hasn't changed, how can a 4.7 inch phone now be perfect when previously 3.5 inch was deemed perfect? Here is one reason: as the devices become slimmer, your thumb can reach farther than before and hence cover a larger screen. So: it's the combination of thinness and size that makes the iPhone 6 still usable with one hand. I'm not denying that people might not care as much and simply want a bigger screen, too, and this is an additional factor.
> As the size of our hands hasn't changed, how can a 4.7 inch phone now be perfect when previously 3.5 inch was deemed perfect? Here is one reason: as the devices become slimmer, your thumb can reach farther than before and hence cover a larger screen.
Well, I'd say most of the problem here is trying to identify a two-dimensional screen by a single number, the length of its diagonal. It must make more sense to give the actual dimensions of screens.
I remember pained discussion of the Nexus 5 saying the 4 was wide enough. The 5 is only wider by a couple millimeters, but is significantly enough taller that they bumped the single number identifying its size. That's no way to communicate.
Doesn't perfect also depend on what you're trying to do?
It's all trade offs but as we increase what we do with our phones, a bigger screen potentially becomes more valuable.
I know a lot of people saying they have no interest in more than 3.5" or 4". Generally those people are fairly casual users. I also know "power users" (horrible term) who have been crying out for bigger screens.
I'm less worried about thumb size and more worried about how it feels in my pocket.
Sounds like a good cross section of the tech press. Only half kidding. There have been mentions of this kind of thing (cheering, gasping, feverish typing) in live blogs of these events from The Verge and others.
That's interesting. I know we have some mild interest in the industry, but some people's slavish devotion to it (with associated euphoria/disgust at features) seems really weird to me. How do they keep up the excitement?!
First, "old" in this case is "older than 3 years", which is about 3 years older than almost any other phone manufacturer; my almost 3-year old iphone 4S is still getting updates the same day a new phone does. (Yes, my more-than-5-years-old iphone 3G does not, so?)
2nd, they don't care about older-than-3 iphones. But they care about getting old iphone owners to feel good about themselves and to upgrade to a newer one. And disparaging older products goes against that.
The author of this piece has got it completely confused: Talking sh*t about your old products is in the Microsoft playbook. Whenever they have a new Windows coming out, they tell you how bad the old one was so you should upgrade. Apple has never done that.
A study by Harvard University shows online complaints rise every time a new version is released. Researchers discovered that Google searches for phrases such as ‘iPhone slow’ spike whenever a more expensive type of the device goes on sale.
In contrast, they found there were no such patterns for rival products such as the Samsung Galaxy.
Professor Sendhil Mullainathan said: The results are, to say the least, striking’. However, he warned that the perception of a phone ‘slowing down’ may be purely psychological.
The study bases itself solely on results of Google searches. (also, that's the kind of research some professors are spending their time on these days? wow.)
please explain how this is any sort of relevant to my argument.
i never compared Apple to anyone. i never suggested it would be in character for Apple to vocally disparage their old products. i never put a limit on "old" nor did I ever suggest the original author was correct (or incorrect). lot of people hearing what they want to around here.
feel free to downvote without explanation- that seems to be the trend in Apple threads.
Don't know why you're getting down voted either. My old ipod touch is basically a brick. The battery doesn't last more than an hour, I can't update the OS anymore, 90% of apps aren't for my older version of iOS, and it lags on every input.
I wish I could just install whatever version of iOS it originally came with and use it as an mp3 player. Don't know why iTunes let me update to a version of iOS that my hardware can't handle, but oh well.
I honestly don't understand why apple fanboys get so worked up over this stuff, as if Apple is infallible. I just try to keep my opinions about apple to my self for the most part, at least on HN, because that's the environment the user base here has fostered.
Can't even read relevant tech news on HN if it shows Apple in a bad light, but hey, I can always go to reddit if I want to get a dose of reality relating to Apple.
You might find Whited00r useful for older iOS devices. For me it made an old 3GS into a snappy prepaid loaner phone for guests visiting from out of country.
It's relevant in that it shows that there is most likely a reason that support doesn't last > 3 years.
If you're going to state facts like "hardware gets deprecated" simply just to state it, then you're not adding anything to the conversation and that's why you're getting downvoted.
If you're mad at Apple for not supporting outdated hardware when no one else in the industry is supporting outdated hardware, then you're being unreasonable and that's why you're getting downvoted.
thank you for a thoughtful response. my point is not that "hardware gets deprecated" nor am I "mad" at anyone. are these really the only two possible interpretations of my post?
my point is that just because Apple doesn't vocally disparage their old products doesn't mean they think their old products are perfect.
my point is that some light disparaging of their old products may be a refreshing dose of honesty. (inb4 "but that could be bad for business!". I don't care.)
Yeah, at least for me, that's how your original post came across. I think your points that you declare here are fine points and would likely have been well-received (or at least not downvoted) if you had started with it to begin with.
Without qualifying your original statement, it just sounded angry and purposeless. I agree with you now, though.
The writer says a lot of things that are just silly. For instance:
It's hard enough to craft desire for a single identity. When asked to think of an Apple Watch, people don't know what to picture. Can you imagine if the original iPhone in 2007 came with sixty customizable skins?
Well, um, it did come with hundreds of customizable skins. They were called iPhone cases. They were, and still are, endemic.
Instead of a single, perfect product, we got a jumble of features and choices.
Actually, there is no functional difference between the various Apple Watch lines. It is a single product. It simply allows the user to customize the appearance of the product. This is necessitated by the fact that this device, unlike all Apple devices to date, is worn on your body.
The important point is Apple did not sell those cases when the iPhone was first released. It didn't talk about the idea of customizing it. People will figure out how to own their phone and make it personal.
I think the author of this piece did a great job channeling a likely, and better, introduction.
Right, and what would be the analogy here? I suppose they could've let you replace straps without actually offering other straps? But that sounds like you're not offering more out of some silly superstition?
Apple as a company has more resources today and I think that's certainly part of it. They barely launched a single phone on time in 2007, let alone multiple models. Steve Jobs said that "nobody would buy a bigger phone?" He didn't see people using phones the way they do today. In 2007 "bigger phone" meant "I can't make this smaller because small is hard" and by being small -- but inline with the phones people were using at the time -- it was even more impressive. Hell they STILL get us with that one, every single year. Thinner! Lighter! Yes!
It did not. And what's more annoying is the way he puts it: I KNOW WHAT STEVE WOULD HAVE DONE. I, a big nobody compared to a CEO that's worked for Apple since 20 years, know why he got it wrong. Now I'm gonna tell you what I would have done.
This is the worst bullshit. Critique is great, and you can pull it off brilliantly even you are a little dot compared to the big guys you're criticizing. This is clearly not the case.
About the customization: there's two version of the Watch, one big, one small. The rest is fashion. Apple knew, better than anybody else, that you need fashion to sell something that stays on your wrist and everybody will see all the time.
Deem it superficial, if you want, but that's reality. Once again competitors couldn't do something similar, because they may have the tech. This time around even the ecosystem. Unfortunately the don't have the best team of designers (not merely industrial designer, designer in general) a company has ever employed.
Yeah that's true but it's still silly. Phones sit in your pocket, they mostly look the same, it's not that big a deal.
Watches on the other hand have been fashion items for over a hundred years. There are countless variations. It would be arrogant - even for Jobs - to claim that a single design would satisfy everyone, would be perfect.
Doesn't seem to hurt the iPods of various form factors, Macbook Airs and Pro Retinas of various form factors, iPads of various sizes, and nor will it hurt the iPhone, I suspect.
May be. Just that Apple Watch is launching with two size options, whereas in case of other products that you mention, options were introduced years after the first launch of the products.
endemic? I have no idea what you meant by that word. It's not the right word at all.
iPhones are pretty much "worn" these days, either in the hand or pocket. What about the iPods that are worn daily by runners and practically everyone in the gym.
Endemic in this situation is used as commonplace. He's just saying that cases are commonplace. It's not a perfect use of the word, but one I've definitely seen and used.
The previous time this was submitted, it was deleted, so I guess I'll post this again:
Over the years, I saw many presentations from Steve that I thought were bland or off in some way.
Pointing out Steve's statement that nobody would want a big phone, implying that a big iPhone isn't something Steve would have allowed to happen, ignores Steve's famous habit of dismissing something and then doing it anyway. I remember when he said nobody wanted to watch movies on an iPod, and then new iPods came out with the ability to play movies.
I often see complaints that "Jobsian Apple" would never release multiple versions of something, even though there was the iPod, iPod mini in several colors, and the iPod photo; later there was the iPod nano, iPod classic, and iPod touch. A watch is a fashion device, and it would be strange not to have style options.
Steve got too much credit. Apple was led by a team, and many of those people are still there. Some of Apple's most successful decisions were choices Steve opposed or had to be convinced of.
The whole premise of this article is so wrong. If Jobs were alive we wouldn't have had this presentation in the first place.
First up, under Jobs phablet iPhones would have been out of the question. He would have flat out rejected those, because he was simply wrong about some of the assumptions of phone design and would be a lot slower to admit that than Apple did without him.
Second, the Apple Watch would not have been what it was now. For the first time in tech, Apple is second in execution with a more complicated product - one with a more complicated, information dense interface that requires two input methods to operate [1]. I'm not insinuating that Apple Watch will be an inferior product (I think it's more likely the opposite), but I don't think the execution of the product is something Jobs would have let happen in the same way.
But that's all okay! Apple is going in a different direction, and it just might actually be the better direction to go in. I'll be buying my first iPhone later this year, and I very much doubt I would have done so if Jobs was still as influential as he was.
This deification of Steve Jobs is incredibly annoying to me. The annoyance I feel when people say "what would Jesus do?" is the same annoyance I feel when reading these articles about "what would Steve do?". This article is just one level above fan fiction and it has gotten more than 450 votes. Ugh. He was a pioneer in the field, but let's appreciate him for what he's done and not for what he should have been doing today.
Apple should have released a single iPhone 6. A larger screen than the 5S with the physical dimensions of a much smaller phone. Look how much smaller the LG G3 with 5.5" screen is compared to the 6 plus with 5.5" screen. I just bought the G3 on Amazon for $49.99 on contract and LG has a promotion for a free additional battery and battery charger. Hard to pass up that deal.
I'm not sure why I was downvoted. Releasing a phone with a larger screen while minimizing the bezel so the phone is only minimally larger than a iPhone 5S would have stuck with Jobs original philosophy. If LG could do it, I'm sure Apple could too.
This ignores that Apple regularly changed direction under Jobs:
* No-one wants an iPod that plays video
* No-one wants a small tablet
* The original 3.5" iPhone is the right size (Jobs may not have lived to see the iPhone 5 launch but would have known it was coming and approved it)
He was a notorious flip flopper. He'd be a dick about it (surprise!) and take credit for things he'd previously been against, but he often changed his mind and a larger iPhone isn't out of the question.
Once you get to an iPad Mini being OK with him, I don't see why we think he'd have objected to the large iPhone.
EDIT: Thinking about it, the principal of multiple versions / sizes of a product was well established before Jobs left. MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros, desktop Macs, iPads, multiple sizes of iPod (Classic, Nano, Shuffle, Touch). Frankly the iPhone was about the only product where you weren't forced to take a specific shape / size.
I still think the "why" of the watch was missing from the presentation, and a lot of his points were spot on. My wife called me all excited about it and I kept asking her what it did and she didn't have a clue.
But I'm not sure it matters. My takeaway from reading your post was "Google released a watch? Oh...who cares." So I think you're right, Apple is still doing more right than wrong. I just don't think of Google as a product company, the Android brand mostly belongs to other manufacturers in my mind, and the overall impression is still that they are all making iPhone knockoffs, even if in many cases they are objectively superior. There's still nobody around who can do a product release like Apple.
> There's still nobody around who can do a product release like Apple.
But they might just reusing old fame. another one or two non-revolutionary product releases and , and their launches might become like everyone else's.
> I still think the "why" of the watch was missing from the presentation, and a lot of his points were spot on. My wife called me all excited about it and I kept asking her what it did and she didn't have a clue.
Sounds like the presentation didn't need a "why", then? ;)
I agree entirely. I think the same can be said of iOS 5 as well, the way they finally moved away from skeuomorphic styling.
I am really surprised to see such an information dense UI, and I'm actually quite pleased they've taken this approach. I'd much rather see everything I need to see at a glance than have to navigate to the correct screen.
I'm also pleasantly surprised to see a tactile user input device (the crown) rather than just a lousy touch screen. It's something else I wouldn't have expected from Apple.
I frequently find myself getting into arguments with designers about good design, and they are of course all Apple fanbois and always hold it up as proof of my wrongness. If they're consistent (honest?) then they'll be disappointed with this product. I'm curious to find out if that happens.
With the near-canonization of Jobs, people forget that his version of the right answers changed all of the time. Remember how awesome the PowerPC was due to the "velocity engine"? Not 18 months later, Steve was on stage pitching the amazing performance of the Intel Mac.
The whole business of iOS devices is shifting away from revolution towards evolution. The first big hint of this was when they shipped the low-margin iPad Mini. Earlier this year, Apple begin talking about how transformative apps are to people.
I think the watch and phablets reflect this -- people who watch alot of video will appreciate the bigger phone, and the watch is a whole new way to deliver app functionality.
Yeah, it went from a kind of interesting analysis of the presentation and then fell over into fan fiction, even referencing the author's previous fan fiction pieces as some sort of weird Steve Jobs head canon. Yikes.
> The annoyance I feel when people say "what would Jesus do?" is the same annoyance I feel when reading these articles about "what would Steve do?"
Interestingly Tim Cook has repeatedly said that Jobs' instruction to them when he was leaving was never to ask this, but to trust their own judgement. His fans may ask this but Jobs at least was smart enough to see the folly in it.
Obviously the problem with this is it creates a paradox. If I ask what would Jobs do, then Jobs wouldn't ask what Jobs would do. But if I follow that advice and don't worry about what Jobs would or wouldn't do, I start asking again, what would Jobs do?
Maybe Jobs wanted to launch "The Sixty" and did not have a product deemed personalizable enough to do so in his time?
Where they could, they have iMac, Macbooks, Mac minis. So with OSX, they do have multiple options cause it fits. Each model is customizable into gazillion ways based on HDD, RAM, GPU and what have you. How many variations of Macbooks can you count which can be ordered directly from Apple store website? I bet you it is more than the Apple Watch.
What the author misses is - Apple thinks. It did with Jobs, and it is doing so without him. Apple did "The One" when they thought it suited. They did "The Sixty" when they thought it suited. Copying Apple is a job of other companies, not of Apple.
This was killed already once today and is back again?
Steve was very explicit to Tim Cook and others in the Apple executive team that they should never ask "what would Steve do." Seems to be written by someone with little understanding of Apple today.
He didn't necessarily say that in Apple's best interests. Maybe he wanted to be missed more than he wanted Apple to succeed after his death? He did feel "hurt" when Tim Cook said Apple would remain the same regardless of who was leading it, after all.
This article was horrible, in poor taste, and raises a litany of ridiculous points.
That said, while I'm happy to see the iProduct naming convention die, I agree that including the logo in the product name is a bit much. There is the old story that the command key used to be an apple logo, but Steve had it removed as to not dilute the brand.
Jiggity, kill the intro to the blog post. All that insecurity stuff is BS. Jobs was as insecure as they come. But your Jobs transcript is spot on! Just have that as the blog entry. Keep it simple.
The single version of the watch is spot on. As is the implicit point that maybe they could have hit this year's holiday season if they hadn't tried to make so many different versions.
The best part of what you wrote is the end, where Steve ties the watch to the human experience. I hadn't thought about his keynotes from that lens before -- you showed me something new.
I feel like a fool sometimes where I have my iPhone out and everyone else around me does too. At least theirs are sometimes white. Now – your wrist is almost always visible. Once everyone gets an Apple Watch, if there were just one single minimalist design, it would start to feel less like a watch and more like a dog tag.
The idea that a different screen size or a bunch of watch bands would cause a delay of 3 months is pretty ridiculous. The far more likely scenario is that either (a) there are serious hardware showstoppers, (b) yield issues with certain components or (c) the battery life is still unacceptable.
Also the single version of a watch is a really dumb premise. A watch is a fashion accessory so you need to support people's varying tastes.
Apple did the right thing by releasing dozens of customization options for watch. They also did the right thing by having different sized watch mad phone. The whole average adult hand size is just that. Average. It ignores the fact that women have much smaller hands and wrist.
Phone has evolved to become everyday life commodity. You have to consider practical needs for devices that are going to be on you half your waking life.
What worked for apple in the past may not work for them in the future. For what they are they are solid devices.
The bigger problem apple has isn't the marketing. Its that they are making products that are predictable.
Missing the holiday season is intentional -- for one, Apple does that all the time, to great effect re Q2 sales (they require no additional holiday sales boost). Secondly, they deliberately licked the cookie of this product category, which is going to annihilate holiday quarter sales for their competitors and most likely cripple wearables teams in terms of group buyin for the coming year.
There could also be a "Well if Apple is going to release something right after the holidays, the other companies might try to make better models right after the apple watch comes out" feeling. Sort of the feeling that Apple might get one-upped by Samsung, et al.
I've heard other criticism about missing the holiday season. I suppose I feel like.. they're building a 20 year platform here. What's one holiday season?
Besides, with this timing, they can sell early adopters this "Ipad 1" of a watch and possibly release the Watch 2 in time for Christmas 2015.
Apple frequently "misses" the holiday season. Each version of the iPod Mini was launched in January of all times. The full sized iPod in summer. The iPad is in a March cycle.
I honestly have no idea whether it would have been better for Apple to sell a single version of the watch, but I see no reason to assume that Steve would have made a different decision, seeing as Apple sold 5 different colors of iMacs simultaneously under his leadership. At least the watch doesn't come in flower power or blue dalmation.
I just find this article a little creepy and off-base. He's yearning for Tim to be a fake imitation of Jobs. The author has some vision of a perfect Jobs. Guess what, Steve wasn't perfect. It's easy to say, "Steve would have done it this way".
Tim is not a presenter, he's the CEO. And he's just really proud of his team. It shows. So he leaves most of the presentation to other VPs.
Steve is no longer with us. Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs, and shouldn't be. He doesn't need to be. In any case, the products speak for themselves.
Apple Watch definitely needs styles. It's partly a fashion item!
Thank god Apple doesn't follow advice given by bloggers on the internet. Release one watch? Seriously? The wide variety of options is one of the reasons Apple has a shot at getting people to adopt smart watches when everyone else has failed so far. It's why they invited fashion industry people, and it's why many of them loved it. A wearable is a fashion accessory first and foremost. When it comes to looks, people like options - we've seen this with the iPhone. People quickly got bored of black, then they got bored of white. Most people also accessorise with cases, not to protect their device, but for aesthetic reasons and individuality.
As for all the 'Jobs wouldn't have done that' BS, how do you know? There's a reason Jobs told them not to do what he would do but to do their own thing. Not even Jobs new what he wanted. He changed his opinion regularly: no video iPods, then he released a video iPod. No bigger screen iPhone, then the iPhone 5.
This is one of those things that you look at and think you could do better but in reality dozens of the worlds smartest people have spent years researching and working on it and they have very good reasons for not doing the ideas you've come up with in 4 days.
Thanks for your kind words. It took me a long while before hitting that submit button. It's that moment when you're unsure if what you've written is any good.
I think I now know why. There was a TED talk by Simon Sinek regarding how Apple sells its products to its customers by making you believe why you should need one than without one.
The keynote didn't really sell me the watch. To me it was more like a 'me too' smartwatch but with several customizable options to set it apart from the competition. They should've stick with one model and iterate later like they always did.
But I agree, if the presentation was worded like this, I probably would've bought one in a whim and wouldn't think the heartbeat thing as gimmicky.
While I don't think so much should be viewed under the 'what would Jobs do' prism, I agreed with your points on product development, choice, and presentation. Brilliantly written.
I'll be downvoted for this, but I'd like the chance to express myself to the author.
I felt what you wrote was in poor taste. I think that it's in poor taste to speak for the dead when one was close friends with them, and I think that it's worse still to speak for a celebrity whom you had no personal acquaintance with.
I feel like you did nothing more than mask your own personal complaints about Apple inside dialog written as if spoken by Jobs' , but with little forethought about Jobs' past history of actions, or the hierarchy of team effort that goes on at Apple, or even the way Jobs presented himself.
The disparaging comments about 'his' previous lineup that 'he' (you) made proved that furthermore.
I say all this with a personal hatred for Apple and the Steve Jobs method of getting stuff done, so I'd hate for anyone to think that i'm simply upset that it is sullying His name. I don't care about that; I just don't think that it's realistic in the least.
This article is _fantastic_. Nailed Steve Jobs, as I remember him anyhow. The presentation that Apple gave sounded a lot like something you would hear from Google, not Apple, in my opinion. Too many options, too many stats. Not concise. Not moving.
It's a good attempt at a Jobs-esque keynote, enjoyed that aspect, but on the product side the only criticisms can be boiled down to...
1. There's too much choice (option of a larger phone screen from the 6+, and a variety of watch options).
2. Because of this choice, you have to do more thinking for yourself.
I feel like it's sad that thinking for ourselves is seen as problematic. That diversity isn't something to be embraced. Though it just shows how much some value the status symbol aspect.
Its not about not thinking for yourself, its about avoiding unnecessary choice. Our lives our filled with enough real decisions without the need for inane and subtle product ones. Most people do not need to be worrying about the voltage of their electric toothbrush. Its not because they're brainwashed and hate diversity.
With the iPhone I'm now forced to regret the decision either way. The iPhone 6+ is too big for my hands, but the smaller one doesn't support the special landscape mode stuff and has a worse camera. They haven't even provided a clear upgrade differentiation, I'm forced to consider tradeoffs, in a product that I used to not think about at all.
Similarly, I am incredibly skeptical that we really needed 2 different watch sizes (given that reviewers say both feel fine). I'm sure you'd agree we don't need 55 sizes in between the current two sizes, so its clear that its possible to have too much choice. Add to this three variations (hopefully there won't be different capacities like with iPhones too) and its just a fact that you created a necessity for me to try them on first before just buying them online.
I think 2 different watch sizes are absolutely necessary. There is no way that one watch size will fit across the varied wrists of both men and women. Both may feel fine for a average sized wrist, but start moving up or down from that wrist and one size quickly becomes a problem. Look at the Moto360. It's so large that it only looks decent on the largest of wrists.
"Our lives our filled with enough real decisions without the need for inane and subtle product ones."
Considering the length of time we spend with our gadgets it pays to spend a bit of time in those 'inane' decisions. However, if you're a light user and just want something that works you can always choose based on price. It's really not that hard.
"With the iPhone I'm now forced to regret the decision either way."
But are you though? Let's imagine for a second that the iPhone 6+ didn't exist. Is the iPhone 6 enough of an upgrade for you to want it? The obvious upgrade path is iPhone 5 to iPhone 6, if you've never wanted a phablet then the iPhone 6+ is not for you. There, I made your decision for you.
That's the point, that it does exist. I don't regret the other iPhone 5's because they actually don't exist. Since the iPhone 6+ actually does exist, developers will start programming custom superior landscape layouts for it that will serve to continually remind me I don't have it.
Had the only difference been physical size, the decision would be easy like you describe, I'd be measuring on one variable that I know how I prefer. (Note that this could be similarly fixed by apple choosing to offer the landscape modes on the 6 too, then it would just be battery and camera that are worse, of which battery is understandable).
"I don't regret the other iPhone 5's because they actually don't exist."
Except that they do exist (i.e. iPhone 5C). Perhaps you didn't face this dilemma with the 5S vs. 5C because it was clear which one was seen as the "best". It's the status symbol aspect.
Phablets are a niche market, if you have never wanted a phablet then the 6+ is not for you. The flagship model is the 6.
As for the features you'll be missing out on, do you have the same feelings about the superior features you can find on non-Apple phones? PureView from Nokia is far superior to Apple cameras, you can find Android phones with far better batteries, etc... Why is it only an issue with Apple? Again, I suspect, it's the status symbol aspect.
Once again, you seem strangely convinced that I am obsessed with the "status symbol aspect" despite my repeated listings of the differences in features I care about. I'll try once more: the iPhone 6 is smaller, which I consider better because I have small hands. The bigger one has iPad-style landscape layout and a better camera that I care about. Notice how neither of those have anything to do with impressing anyone with my status. Notice also that I don't care that one happens to be called a phablet: it still contains features unrelated to the size that I want and don't understand why they left out of the smaller one, and I also fear the fragmentation of the app market for things designed for the bigger screen and arbitrarily not available for the smaller one (as has already happened in Apple's software).
And I absolutely care about the discrepancy of features with Android as well. I happen to stick with iOS since I develop on iOS, of course I'm sure you'll now respond that this is really subconsciously because I want to have the status of an obj-c programmer or something.
"I also fear the fragmentation of the app market for things designed for the bigger screen and arbitrarily not available for the smaller one (as has already happened in Apple's software)."
That could happen, but if it happens a lot I'd expect Apple to change their app approval guidelines. iOS now supports dynamic layouts AFAIR so it shouldn't be a big issue for the better developers.
As for your continued phone upgrade dilemma, if you're an iOS developer there's a good argument for getting both (if you can afford it), but aside from that...
Have you used a phablet before? Small hands may not be an issue, speaking anecdotally phablets are relatively popular in Asia and Asians seem, on average, to have smaller hands than Americans. Why does this popularity exist? I'd suggest it has something to do with where you use your phone and what you use your phone for.
Ask yourself two questions...
1. Do I mostly use my phone whilst standing up or sitting down?
2. Do I communicate using voice calls much?
If you mostly use your phone sitting down and don't use the voice call features of your phone much, consider a phablet. If you're often using your phone whilst standing up, consider the smaller phone. If you use voice calls a bunch, but mostly sitting down, it's mostly personal preference (I mean, it's all personal preference, but the answer is less clear cut).
Perhaps the only way you'll resolve this for yourself is to try a phablet for yourself and see if you get on with it. Do you know anyone with a Galaxy Note?
Reducing choice is great when the involved tradeoffs are hard to figure out for yourself and depend on so many things around it.
That’s especially true for consumer electronics. I don’t know all the details, I can’t really write all the software for it, and I feel intimidated if I had to make all those choices by myself. I want someone to figure that out for me, especially since it works better as a tool if all the puzzle pieces are put together with care, not some bumbling idiot like myself. (Of course this is more subtle then that. And it’s always a delicate balance. Maybe others can deal better with picking tradeoffs for themselves. I personally really can’t.)
That said, while a little more complex, I don’t think the two models are too complex. But that’s where you can make a reasonable case. Still, they are clearly differentiated along practically only one axis (size) and exactly identical along most others. Only some things are more muddled and confusing to consumers (battery life, screen res, OIS). It seems manageable to me.
As for the watches … see, there’s where I think you are completely wrong. It’s not about functionality at all, it’s all about how it looks – and that’s a world of difference. When I go shopping for clothes I love to have a large selection. That’s the best thing. I want that choice, because it’s all very, very personal. That’s how this watch works, too, and that’s how it’s different. (In fashion there are problems, too, especially with no clear differentiation between products and no great overview. However, Apple doesn’t seem to make that mistake so far. Everything is clearly differentiated.)
The choices for the watch don’t really involve so much tradeoffs you as a consumer have to decide between (there is a bit of that w/ steel or aluminium and glass or sapphire – but that’s probably mostly paying more for better materials, not so much about tradeoffs), it’s more about what aesthetic you personally like. I think that’s very ok for something you wear. When I decide between different patterns for my shirt I’m not making tradeoffs, I pick what I like. That’s far simpler than making tradeoffs. It’s actually enjoyable, at least for me (and if the selection is big enough).
As for the watch size, your intuition is wrong. People are very specific on how a watch looks on their wrist, especially women. They aren't going to buy something that looks huge on their wrist, because it doesn't go with their outfit.
Unlike a phone, a watch is also a fashion item. And they will want to have a choice here.
Well, Apple's lack of choice sure helped me pick out my last laptop.
I had three companies on my list of laptops: Asus, Lenovo, and Apple. Go checkout Asus and Lenovo's websites. You'll find dozens of different laptops in various configurations spread across different lines and with many of the laptops further configurable after you've added them to your cart. You can't do a proper analysis of which to buy without starting a spreadsheet.
Oh, and most of the models you find at the store will end up being something completely different from what you saw on the website further compounding the issue.
I spent half a day building out a spreadsheet to compare all the different configurations and then decided to throw it all out and just buy a MBP since I needed the laptop by the end of the week and didn't have the time or energy to compute every possible combination of Asus's and Lenovo's lineup to figure out which laptop was the optimal purchase.
A watch is a fashion accessory. If you make it only in one 'perfect size/look/color', it becomes a gadget, which is the furthest thing Apple wants it to be.
When Mossberg in 2003 asked Jobs whether he
planned to put video in an iPod, the CEO said
he was turned off by the idea.
“I’m not convinced people want to watch movies
on a tiny little screen,” Jobs said. “To
paraphrase Bill Clinton, ‘It’s the music,
stupid, it’s the music!’ Music’s been around
for a long time, will continue to be, it’s huge.”
"I'm not convinced people want to watch movies on a TINY SCREEN"
Later they created a device with a much bigger screen(at least six times bigger) and called it IPOD, but it had not a tiny screen.
The same could be said about small computers. When I got my first laptop I considered at least 17'' necessary, which was very bulky, I told everybody that.
Then I got lots of complaints from people when I got a 13'' macbook air:"You said you will never use anything smaller than 17 inches".
But I didn't say that. I said that given the resolution they had at the time, I needed 17 inches, but obviously I wanted the same screen in a smaller size at a reasonable price.
The 13 inches macbook has more pixels on it than my old laptop.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO, he found a lot of variations of Mac getting developed. There was Mac for this, Mac for that, separate Mac for everything. He asked one question to the people developing, “If I had to buy one for my nephew, what would you recommend me?”
He got several options. Then he asked, “If I had to buy one for my nephew, what would you suggest from the ones you just suggested?” He got more fine-tuned answer.
He kept asking this question until a lot of the variations were rejected. Then he went up to the board and drew a 2x2 matrix. On one axis, he wrote, “Personal” and “Professional”. On another axis, he wrote, “Desktop” and “Portable”. He concluded that Apple would make only four variations of Mac, and they would shut down development of every other variation.
Steve always went for 'less'. While current leadership released 2 versions of phones, many versions of the iWatch, Steve always wanted the company to focus of a subset of users.
The simple flaw in present Apple's mindset is 'lack of focus'.
First time ever, I am disappointed by the Apple. And yes, Steve would have fired every 10th person for the glitch in the live stream and the Chinese woman.
I've seen a lot of people making this point about lack of focus wrt the watch, but I don't understand it. There is only one Apple watch, with no variation in storage or other internals. Like the iphone it comes in three finishes, in this case steel, aluminum, and gold.
The straps have zero functionality other than aesthetics, and the mechanism for easily swapping them is brilliant. Watches are jewelry. People who wear them usually own more than one and wear different ones based on the rest of their outfit. The Apple watch is more a more useful device if you wear it every day, and making multiple styles of watch bands makes it easier and more natural to do this. One watch for every occasion.
The iPod is a great counter-example: there have been times Apple was selling 4 different lines of iPod at a time, most of which came in an array of colors. The apple watch basically comes in two sizes with an array of 'colors' (metals) and watchbands.
The difference between that and the history is that each iPod has a clear niche. The problem Apple was having with such a selection of products is that it was hard to figure out which one should be purchased as they didn't have clear, differentiating roles.
This is just wrong. Jobs oversaw numerous variations in size, color, and specs during his time at Apple. The iMac came in like 5 colors at one point. And remember this was a desktop computer! Laptops in different sizes and colors; iPods in different sizes and colors, with Apple-branded accessories (remember the "socks" Apple sold for them?); iPad covers in multiple finishes and colors, etc.
You just need to do your research before posting on something that can be easily looked up.
totally disagree on the watch. I would never consider a watch with that metallic band, and there a few bands I really like that apple released. I think apple nailed it by recognizing the personal aesthetic and fashion statement that wearing a device on your body entails
Agree totally except for the bands. Customizable bands were a necessity for something you wear. It's a whole new experience to wear it and I would not buy it if it were just the band you selected as best. Otherwise this is spot on...
Yes. Apple's creations didn't all come singularly from Steve's mind. Apple's creations came from the team there.
Apple is not, and was not, one man.
It would be foolish to think that the entire company worked like some Borg collective where Steve was the head, and all Apple drones would wither and collapse without him. They clearly haven't.
When you buy food from Tesco, do you thank Jack Cohen and marvel at how he could think of so many foods and products and innovate so well? How will Tesco continue to succeed now that he's gone?!
That is indeed the question I ask myself since the introduction of the iPhone. And it includes the iPad and certainly the iWatch.
I am a Mac user and although the old Mac models were not always better technologically, Jobs made us feel good when we used them. Just think about the awful time, when he had to re-sell the G4 to us again and again, because there was no progress with the G5. Who could have kept the spirit alive, if not Steve? That's one of his great achievements. That's not anymore. Apple has completely lost its focus with Macs. If Linux were not so bad, I'd be working on Thinkpads again, or Vaios.
The iPod when I first bought one of the 5GB original white ones, was such a great thing to use. It reminded me of the walkmans but it was so much better. No need to explain. But, in the meantime I use a Cowon, because it sounds so much better.
I completely disagree with his assessment of there being "too many" watch choices. For a fashion accessory I think it's absolutely critical that they give people room to express themselves. IMHO the "style" angle Apple has taken is what's going to move product.
"What we want from Apple isn't new technology. We want human warmth - a possibility of living a more fulfilled, meaningful life."
What we (the corporations) want from consumers is for them to buy our product(s), and we'll do whatever it takes to sell it to them as long as it is profitable.
It's 12 Cases:
Stainless (38/42mm)
Black Stainless (38/42mm)
Aluminum (38/42mm)
Space Gray Aluminum (38/42mm)
Rose Gold (38/42mm)
Yellow Gold (38/42mm)
and 15 bands:
5 Colors of Sport Band (Pink, Blue, White, Green, and Black)
Classic Buckle
Milanese Loop
Modern Buckle (Pink, Blue and Brown)
Leather Loop (Stone, Brown and Blue)
Stainless Steel Link (Stainless and Black)
In reality, I'd bet when this thing ships it's going to be the 12 watch sku's then an additional 15 sku's for the band,, the combination thereof to be assembled at the point of purchase.
You cant expect to package an sell any watch like a phone, it can't be one size fits all, not to get any real market penetration, because with jewelry, the technology takes a back seat to the appearance.
I actually like the article but for a reason I did not suspect, he identified another aspect of the Apple Watch I didn't quite connect the dots on earlier. Its not a well defined product, they could not make a decision and so went with everything. Committee designed and marketed.
Author fails to see that iWatch is actually a single model, without any variation at all. Same OS and apps, same controls, same hardware. Counting straps as different models is really silly. And besides, not a lot of people are fans of metal bracelets.
Second - if we are speculating about how Steve would see iPhone 6 then saying that he would keep THAT design and only fiddle with diagonal is also silly. Steve would have imagined something way more efficient and pretty - no button maybe, maybe radically different materials for body (and solve stupid stripes vs. radio dilemma), maybe it would be a flip or slider, maybe... maybe... Definitely not just 0.2 difference in diag.
In my opinion, I think it was too early for Apple to release a watch.
They should have waited until there was more of a breakthrough in battery storage (to make it far slimmer) and also the ability to give it some little bit of extra power capacity through heat off of one's wrist along with an ability to grab solar energy combined off the watch face.
Also, it really, really needed to be able to work standalone without a tether to the iPhone, IMO.
This was just too soon. The battery technology isn't there quite yet. This didn't blow my mind in practicality and usability, it just looks like another vanity watch someone wears in a vapid attempt to impress others.
Not a realistic scenario. If Jobs was alive Apple wouldn't be chasing the Android and making crappy products, so he wouldn't need to give all of those lame excuses to try to justify poor decisions and no innovation in their products.
I'm an iPhone user, and when my iPhone stop being usable, I'll move to a Google phone, in spite of the size, not because of it. The real reason why I'm moving to an Android phone is because all of the limitation that the iPhone has and that it hasn't removed while the Android evolved.
Very nicely done! The problem is Steve Jobs is dead. NO ONE ELSE could have delivered that pitch. Anyone trying would have been reaching. Only Federighi could even try. Perhaps even Jobs would have had difficulty. You see Apple is a different company. There is a desperation around it now, being a behemoth that needs to run at full tilt to stay exactly where they are. Earlier they were a tiny David constantly taking on Goliath. It takes something special for that desperation not to show.
It's a, what, 7th, or 8th generation product?
Let them move on. Of course it's going to settle into a more MacBook style cycle of steady, measured updates (no pun intended).
Going bigger is clearly a 'we've done what we came here to do, now lets mop up what we can from the high end to fund our other projects'. I struggle to knock them for that.
What an awful article. The whole "let's imagine how Steve Jobs would do it" thing is so lame and morbid. His whole critique is basically "Why isn't Tim Cook the same as Steve Jobs?!" If you need bullshit "storytelling" to like or buy a product, then that product probably sucks.
I think the article was interesting, but it was surprisingly uncomfortable to see the various photos where Steve was suffering from the effects of his illness (I guess for me, it's more personal having seen other family members go through the same and pass away...).
Worth noting that "iWatch" doesn't work because it sounds like the sentence "I watch". There's a lot of ways to take that in creepy/joking directions, which would be an unnecessary distraction from the product.
Although I do agree with a lot of things being said here, I am happy that the watch comes with a variety of options. A watch is something much more intimate and reflective of personal style. Phones usually get covered up, the watch wont be.
While other commenters are trying to find smal imperfections or errors, I read both parts with great satisfaction. SJ fiction was spot on for me. I really was able to portray SJ telling all of that. And I did not mind those tiny errors.
Man, I'm sold! Even if this is fictitious, there is just something about Jobs that actually influences me. The stainless steel model looks indeed very attractive.
I just love your presentations)
You understand clearly what was missing at keynote and what all of us expected. Apple is becoming average. The iPhone looks like it has been derived from what market wants, it did not break any rules, and showed us we are wrong and that they know a better way. It feels cold (rightly noticed).
Please jiggity continue with your posts, its like "the proper apple keynote)
Half a billion original thoughts safely stored on iCloud.
I'm pretty sure Jobs wouldn't make a specific reference to iCloud's security so close to the celeb hacking scandal, whether or not it was Apple's fault.
A week doesn't go by without me seeing Steve Job's name in some click-bait headline and inasmuch as the author has identified current problems with Apple we can add the cult of Jobs to that list.
Yes, of course, Jobs had amazing charisma, and bringing Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy with well designed products by Johnny Ive deserves its legend. But as the novelty of these products wear off (as they should) Apple still strives to distinguish itself (and continue to charge its premiums) by designing superior hardware. The hardware market is somewhat saturated, but since the tech is always improving, planned obsolescence means we get to take advantage of superior tech and better products every few years.
The real growth market is the cloud and internet-of-things, and I think the author got it right by imagining Jobs describing the watch as a product for the "personal universe". Tethering to an iPhone is the first step to tethering to the Cloud. Apple is still trying to figure out the cloud, and they keep stumbling, and the celebrity leak (of which nothing was said to a room full of celebrities), and the live stream screw up are the latest examples. Also, egregiously, their indifference to producing a responsive website. They're still a hardware company, and the hardware, combined with their tightly controlled OS X / Unix based software, provide a solid platform for the design of superior software, by others.
The first iPhone was severely limited and it didn't become the democratized smartphone until after the App Store and the 3G, that is to say, after they crowdsourced software development. The watch seems like the iPhone 2G and the Nano watch hack as revised by Ive. I don't want this version, but I'll probably want the one after the next, when its twice as thin, and Ive makes another pompous video extolling its bullshit (I can't have been the only one rolling my eyes at the "horological experts" and the "conferring on how different cultures care about time" ... the clock was perfected years ago).
The thing about Apple is that they keep making the Modernist Future come true - handheld communicators, tablets, and now walkie-talkie watches. Tim Cook is proud of the fact that they pulled off the Dick Tracy finally, and who cares whatever Samsung did a year ago. What they really need to pull off next are the holograms.
It just seems to me as well that to everything there is a season, and Apple has had a glorious turn of the century. It integrated itself with youth culture, but do you think the kids of the 2030s will still crowd Apple retail stores, presuming they still exist? Or will they see the brand as that of their parents, and thus lame.
My greater point though is that Jobs is dead and let him rest in peace, and let Apple grow beyond Jobs, and don't worry if one day in about twenty years you hear some kid say Apple is lame. Apple did that to Sony, and presumably some startup out there now, or about to be created, might do that to Apple.
I think this sums up nicely what's wrong here: The belief that technology will make your life more fulfilled or meaningful. I didn't watch the live keynote (I don't have the required Apple gear) but saw excerpts on Youtube, and frankly, I find the level of religiousness surrounding this event appalling. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I really don't like how emotionally charged most products are today, in the sense that they are supposed to not only solve a technological problem, but at the same time fulfill a social or even religious role and provide "human warmth", as the author puts it. It's not only Apple who does this (BMW comes to mind with their Mini commercials), but it seems they perfected this art to a point where their events have more resemblance to a Lenie Riefenstahl movie than a trade show (no comparison intended beyond the aesthetics of the presentation). And does technology actually live up to the promise? Studies show that, although we have more superficial interactions through technology, the number of close friends diminishes and more and more people become socially isolated. Take the metro / subway in any big, affluent city these days, and look around you. What do you see? People whose eyes are glued to their phone screens, oblivious to the persons around them, looking for "human warmth" in their virtual companion. That's really not the society I want to live in.
Sorry for the rant, I just think that especially people who are very savvy and enthusiastic about technology and full of entrepreneurial spirit (like most readers of HN) are especially susceptible to this kind of religious admiration of technology and should sometimes take a step back to ask themselves what kind of society they're actually creating with their actions.