Another former Googler here (from waaaaaaayyyy back -- I was employee #104).
The reason Google is the way it is, and many organizations are the way they are, is that they are trying to reproduce the circumstances that led to their initial success. Google initially succeeded by solving what was at the time a Really Hard Problem, and so the people at the top want to reproduce that by encouraging people to solve more Really Hard Problems. Apple has fallen into the exact same trap. Their initial success came from building a Cool New Thing, and so they are constantly trying to build the next Cool New Thing. The problem is that at some point the product has actually converged to a local design maximum and so making further changes to it in order to produce something New and Cool is not actually an improvement.
But it doesn't work because it's sn inductive fallacy. Just because solving a Really Hard Problem or making a Cool New Thing led to success once does not mean that doing these things will lead to success in general. But the memory of that initial success is really hard to get past, especially when it was as earth-shattering as the initial Google search engine, or the Mac or the iPhone.
(Apple has actually done better than most companies at reproducing their initial success. They've done it at least five times, with the Apple II, the Mac, OSX, the iPod and the iPhone. But then there is the touch bar, the butterfly keyboard, the flat look...)
I think Apple has done a fantastic job of incremental improvements on their products rather than chasing the next cool thing. Can you name a company that has actually been doing this better?
For instance, they often resist new technologies like high refresh rate or OLED screens, 5G, etc., until they feel the technology is developed sufficiently and won’t impact battery life. There are other brands that compete by making a list of features rather than a coherent product.
Of the examples you named, both the Touch Bar and the butterfly keyboard are gone now, and the latest Macs are the best Macs ever. That shows a willingness to try new things, while also showing that they have good judgement in the long term and a willingness to move away from what doesn’t work.
Also, the iPad and Apple Watch haven’t been as important to Apple as the iPhone, but they are still original and category-defining products that I would call innovative. Not every new product needs to double your company’s market cap to be a big success in the category.
> Can you name a company that has actually been doing this better?
No. But that doesn't mean that Apple hasn't fallen prey to this phenomenon. It just means that they set the bar incredibly high to begin with.
My first Apple was an Apple II, and I have never been without an Apple product since then. I currently own three Apple phones and eight Apple laptops. But for me the overall usability and quality of Apple products has been in decline over the last decade or so. I still run Mavericks on many of my machines because it was the last version of MacOS that Just Worked.
The MacBook design has only changed step-by-step in small increments since the 2003 aluminum Powerbooks. The iPhone has pretty similarly used just a couple of basic designs since 2013.
So I'd definitely say Apple is best in class at incremental changes with the exception of the touchbar/butterfly MBPs. I'd just disagree with you over the quality: my M1 MBP is a big improvement over even the pre-touchbar ones in basically every way.
I'll see your M1 and raise you a trash-can Mac Pro, and the fact that anything other than a Mac Pro can't be upgraded.
But it's actually more about the software than the hardware. Once upon a time Macs were the computer that Just Worked. But recent devices, including phones, tablets, and laptops, have major usability issues. It's more about the software than the hardware, but with Apple you literally cannot separate the two.
Here are some war stories.
I bought a brand new M1 MBA. I installed XCode. The install process produced a tiny little progress bar that required a microscope to see. It got very near the end and then got stuck for several hours just short of being done. There was absolutely no indication whether the process was actually hung and no apparent way to inquire. So I tried starting XCode and it worked. I assumed that all was in order and the progress bar just hadn't gotten updated.
Then I updated the OS, which required a restart. But when I tried to restart I got a modal dialog saying that I could not shut the machine down because XCode was still in the process of being installed, and shutting down now could "damage my machine". Worse, the button to dismiss this dialog was inactive. There was no way to get rid of it. I ended up having to do a hard reset.
And this is just one of many, many similar experiences. I've tried transferring data from one iPad to another, waited many hours, only to have the process fail. I've tried importing old iPhoto libraries to Photos, waited many hours, only to have the process fail. When these failures happen there is no indication of what went wrong or what I might be able to do about it. Just, "Sorry, an unexpected error occurred".
I also really despise the new UI look and feel. Once upon a time it was easy to tell what was clickable and what was editable and what was static because all of these elements had different standardized looks. Now everything looks the same. Many UI elements are hidden until you hover over them. Apple devices have become the exact opposite of the easy-to-use discoverable devices they started out as. Using an Apple device today feels more like an old-style adventure game, complete with grues that randomly jump out and kill you for no apparent reason.
But other than that, yeah, Apple devices are great.
Apart from the look and feel, there are severe regressions with the operating system in a lot of places – external non-Apple hardware that would just work just fine on the existing OS stops working with a new OS version, etc. The quality of their OS has gone steadily downhill over the last few years.
At this point I would never do a macOS update unless I'm forced to do so for security purposes. I can't even begin to fathom why anyone installs the beta and does free QA for Apple.
I get the impression everyone at Cupertino works with only Apple Cinema displays and a lifetime supply of insanely priced Apple hardware; and no one bothers to test out compatibility with third-party devices at all.
To be honest, the current UI look-and-feel hasn't bothered me at all. I can't recall ever being confused by it (with one exception: iPad multitasking). Perhaps I've simply internalized it to such a degree that I accept it, warts and all, without thinking about it critically. But it's difficult for me to be too upset by a UI that really has "just worked" for me.
As long as my customized keyboard shortcuts still work, I'll be happy, I guess.
I also haven't experienced the software stability issues that you point out, though I have no doubt this is because I rarely do things like transfer data from one device to another (though when I have done so it's worked well enough). YMM(and does)V.
> I'll see your M1 and raise you a trash-can Mac Pro, and the fact that anything other than a Mac Pro can't be upgraded.
The trash can Mac Pro was a mistake, though at least it's one they eventually remedied. Their recent lineup has been almost universally praised, except for cost and (as you point out) upgradeability. I'm not too bent out of shape about upgradeability because I've never tried to upgrade a laptop, but I see the annoyance.
> I can't recall ever being confused by it (with one exception: iPad multitasking).
Oh god, don’t get me started. Not a single thing in any field of technology puts me straight into confused-grandma-mode as quickly and thoroughly as accidentally going into multitasking mode on the iPad. Oh god how do I close the floating safari window I accidentally opened? Why does swiping it off the screen do nothing? Oh god now there’s a weird paddle thing on the right side, and now it’s… gone? Is that window just there running forever now? Or I drag it to the left and now… oh god now it’s in split view. How do I go back? I move the vertical bar all the way to the side and now I have two safari windows, but I can only see them for a brief period when I cmd-tab… somebody please help me oh god.
Granted, it’s a little better each release, and used to be so much worse, but it’s still ungodly awful and impossible for me to figure out. I wish I could just disable it outright.
I think this is a topic about which people can reasonably disagree :-)
I'll just add that my complaint about inability to upgrade does not just apply to laptops. It's the whole product line (other than the Pro) including the Mini and the iMac. If I have an iMac and I need more RAM, I have to throw out a perfectly good SSD, processor, and display. There is just no excuse for that. I have a NUC that is essentially a hardware equivalent of a (pre-M1) Mini. The NUC is both smaller than a Mini and upgradable so I know it's possible.
You are correct to say there is no excuse for the lack of upgradability, but not for the reasons you believe.
There is no excuse because “excuses” are not germane to making trade offs. Apple chose to not make devices easily upgradable because it enabled them to be amazing in other dimensions (sturdiness, manufacturing efficiency, design, aesthetics, plus most users don’t give a flying fuck about upgrading)
Why would you need an excuse for defining your own products your way?
But this is exactly my point. Apple is optimizing the wrong things (for me) because it's trying to build Cool New Things rather than things that are actually useful. My NUC looks perfectly fine, and it sits under my desk so no one ever sees it anyway. It is superior to a Mac Mini in every conceivable way. It's smaller and it costs less for the same tech specs. The only thing that a NUC doesn't do that a Mini does is run MacOS legally.
> It is superior to a Mac Mini in every conceivable way
Based on the dimensions you feel are important and are visible to you. That is only one perspective on the elephant.
If you built that machine, and you made decisions that were not necessary tradeoffs AND these decisions went against your values, you would need an excuse. Apple is not you, and they do not need any excuses - they have a different set of values and built to those values.
Those values are what the market, aka other people, care about.
But you don’t have to throw those things away. Just sell it, for a decent percent of what you bought it for - because they have good resale value - and buy one with more RAM.
Then I have to transfer all my data. That's time consuming even when it goes well, and not once has that process ever gone flawlessly for me. Something always gets lost. Passwords. License keys. Settings. It has been a colossal PITA every single time.
I haven't worked at apple, but I suspect that this is the result of only having <20 core products (including services such as the app store). This generally implies that there are a very small number of internal employees who built those core products, and in most organizations this leads to a resistance to change.
Some companies like to spam new products, others like to perfect what they have.
Apple spent ~22B in R&D in 2021, but they definitely have large-scale decision makers expecting near-perfection on anything considered for released, probably before they even push it to DVT.
Resistance to change has an odd correlation with R&D spending. A company that refuses to change their products may spend more on R&D than one changing products all the time, as the cost of each change is much higher.
I'm not sure if you're saying it's a bad thing that they have <20 core products? I've always considered that a strength and a remarkable show of discipline, especially when they're willing to kill perfectly good products in order to create imperfectly great ones.
I find it valuable on occasion; I certainly understand why they were reluctant to give it up, but they should have either pushed harder for its success or given up sooner.
I can't really think of anyone who has done it well but I don't think Apple has either. They have released plenty of half baked products. The original apple watch is a good example, it was retroactively made the Gen0 and quickly killed. They had similar problem with the first Intel macs too and the original M1s weren't 100% either. I think sometimes they over estimate how ready a product is. The iPhone was amazing at launch but in retrospect it was missing almost everything.
I wasn’t saying that every product they release is perfect right out the gate. If your bar is perfection, then prepare to be disappointed.
But Apple will stick with a product and keep on improving it generation after generation until it is excellent. It’s rare to see them go all into something then give up to chase the next shiny project like Google does.
That makes sense. Googlers keep dumping out technically interesting products with no go-to-market strategy because one time doing that, they made a perpetual money machine (search ads). The problem is it’s 20 years later, technology has changed and not all markets are like search.
Throwing something out there is fine when it’s a magic website that answers your questions. When it’s, say, a half-baked messaging app none of your friends use, not so much.
... the Lisa, the Apple III, firewire, calling wifi "Airport" for way too long, that home speaker boombox thing, the weird round mouse that came with the iMac, ...
But seriously, I remember reading on here a comment from a previous Apple employee that all of their products are designed with the primary goal of looking good in a keynote presentation, which makes sense for their image, but results in underdeveloped products that "disappear" after a few years.
I think Apple continues to innovate in new product categories.
Apple Watch
AirPods
M1 Chip
Services (Apple TV+, Apple Pay, Music, Fitness, iCloud etc).
I include iCloud for services likeHide My Email and Private Relay.
They do this all while maintaining a consistent release cycle of upgraded versions of their hardware (new iphones, macs etc).
Also, everything in the list above has been developed under Tim Cook which is also impressive. He's been able to maintain Apple's ability to expand into new products and services.
You realize that's his point right? Each of those is trying to be the Cool New Thing, and part of what distracts the company while it ships butterfly keyboards, touchbars without escape keys, AntennaGate, whatever plagued HomePod so much they quietly discontinued it. Polish and Attention To Detail is outsourced to execs, who are increasingly spread thin.
AirPods in their first year shipped more bluetooth headsets than the all bluetooth headsets from all other manufacturers combined ever (or something insane like that). AirPods by itself is a Fortune 500 company. Apple Watch is a Fortune 100. AirTags is a 1B revenue business.
Their scale is so immense that "flops" means "not a breakout success that resulted in a massive instantaneous increase to their bottom line". It also means the pressure is on them to have everything right (from the HW side) from the initial launch in terms of volume, build quality, reliability, & value add or they will have a meaningful setback to an expensive proposition (no room for exploring with smaller-scale things which is where competitors should start - Oura for example).
But it hasn't distracted the company. Each of those things I listed are massive successes in their own right.
Not everything Apple does is a success, but they have gotten it more right far more often than wrong. The M1 chip affects also their entire existing computer line. AirPods work beautifully across iphones, macs, and ipads. Apple watch integrates flawlessly with my iphone (answer calls, play pause etc). These are accessory products that reinforce the main ones which they continue to upgrade beautifully every year.
They are able to balance both (Cool New Thing and upgrade cycles) and through it all, keep their product list to a relatively small number of items/skus. Compared to google who offers so many additional services and applications.
Cool New Thing was not distracting from these things.
> Polish and Attention To Detail
gets harped on at Apple because they are so much better than everything else (and charge $$$ for it), that customers and opponents don't tolerate mistakes. Maybe being perfect is actually, really too hard to reach?
The reason Google is the way it is, and many organizations are the way they are, is that they are trying to reproduce the circumstances that led to their initial success. Google initially succeeded by solving what was at the time a Really Hard Problem, and so the people at the top want to reproduce that by encouraging people to solve more Really Hard Problems. Apple has fallen into the exact same trap. Their initial success came from building a Cool New Thing, and so they are constantly trying to build the next Cool New Thing. The problem is that at some point the product has actually converged to a local design maximum and so making further changes to it in order to produce something New and Cool is not actually an improvement.
But it doesn't work because it's sn inductive fallacy. Just because solving a Really Hard Problem or making a Cool New Thing led to success once does not mean that doing these things will lead to success in general. But the memory of that initial success is really hard to get past, especially when it was as earth-shattering as the initial Google search engine, or the Mac or the iPhone.
(Apple has actually done better than most companies at reproducing their initial success. They've done it at least five times, with the Apple II, the Mac, OSX, the iPod and the iPhone. But then there is the touch bar, the butterfly keyboard, the flat look...)