<story><title>Apple has lost the functional high ground</title><url>http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bushido</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion other than &amp;quot;I perceive Apple&amp;#x27;s software quality to be worse based on my own anecdotal experience.&amp;quot; This opinion is being perpetuated by a few people and it&amp;#x27;s just going everywhere.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You quoted the unreliability of anecdotal experience and then went ahead and added your own anecdotal immediately in the next paragraph:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;   I don&amp;#x27;t think the software quality dropped
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&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Those who want to experience a lower &amp;quot;functional high ground&amp;quot; should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am sure most would agree with you that OS X at it worst is way ahead of Ubuntu, except that&amp;#x27;s not really the benchmark the users who are going around in circles are using, it quite evident in almost each one of these anecdotal commentary that &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;an older version of OS X is the Benchmark&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think the real complaint people have is that a lot of these people switched to Apple for superior well tested hardware and software, thus avoiding problems that they would not need to wait six months to be fixed.&lt;p&gt;The key take away I think is NOT that recently OS X has some bugs, rather that the seemingly increasing in occurrence of bugs that more advanced users are experiencing is perceived as a sign on discarding their Test Everything Well Before Shipping culture that important to these people.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; To the everyday user, there is no drop in software quality.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The core market for Apple until quite recently was not the everyday user but developers, designers and the more tech savvy.&lt;p&gt;-----&lt;p&gt;I am unsure if your comment was designed to substantiate your thought that &amp;quot;This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion&amp;quot;, if it was, at that you succeeded.</text></item><item><author>owenwil</author><text>This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion other than &amp;quot;I perceive Apple&amp;#x27;s software quality to be worse based on my own anecdotal experience.&amp;quot; This opinion is being perpetuated by a few people and it&amp;#x27;s just going everywhere.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the software quality dropped, it&amp;#x27;s all about perception. Just a few years ago, everyone was moaning about software quality with Lion but nobody remembers that now, because bad headlines are easier to create than good ones. Yosemite has some bugs, yes, but so do almost every other major releases of Operating Systems.&lt;p&gt;Apple &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt; have some bugs to iron out, but in six month&amp;#x27;s time when they&amp;#x27;re fixed, everyone will forget and start complaining about something else. Perhaps a few happened around the same time, but that&amp;#x27;s no indication that things are getting worse. People just like to complain.&lt;p&gt;Those who want to experience a lower &amp;quot;functional high ground&amp;quot; should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is.&lt;p&gt;To the everyday user, there is no drop in software quality. They wouldn&amp;#x27;t have even noticed unless articles like this continued to circulate. People are just noisier these days.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>&amp;gt;The key take away I think is NOT that recently OS X has some bugs, rather that the seemingly increasing in occurrence of bugs that more advanced users are experiencing is perceived as a sign on discarding their Test Everything Well Before Shipping culture that important to these people.&lt;p&gt;Apple products are &lt;i&gt;clearly&lt;/i&gt; becoming less stable and usable, in ways that are very basic and obvious. Extreme computing skills are not required. I can think of the following bugs without trying too hard:&lt;p&gt;iCloud Notes fail to sync between my Mac, iPad and iPhone. (I&amp;#x27;ve tried everything I can to fix this. Nothing worked.)&lt;p&gt;iPhoto makes two copies of all my photos when I download them from them my iPhone&amp;#x2F;iPad.&lt;p&gt;Windows&amp;#x2F;OS X networked file sharing seems deliberately broken, possibly at the Apple end. (You have to install the previous version of Samba to get it to kind-of work some of the time.)&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t use FaceTime on my Mac because some weird sample rate issue makes everyone sound like a chipmunk.&lt;p&gt;Incoming FaceTime calls don&amp;#x27;t always ring on all devices, and some are simply ignored on all devices. (This is particularly unhelpful, especially for business calls.)&lt;p&gt;iTunes is an outstanding example of terrible software design. (Why is it still impossible to access app content directories from iTunes in any useful way? Why is the app icon layout editor so crufty and clumsy? And so on...)&lt;p&gt;All these features Just Don&amp;#x27;t Work[tm]. And it&amp;#x27;s not as a result of god-mode tweaking. They&amp;#x27;ve simply never worked.&lt;p&gt;tl:dr; - Apple really needs to improve its software game.&lt;p&gt;I think the actual problem is complacency and a culture that favours style-over-substance marketing over solid UX engineering.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a lot of interest in trivia like flat icons, but clearly no one in or near the C-Suite cares about more basic usability issues.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple has lost the functional high ground</title><url>http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bushido</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion other than &amp;quot;I perceive Apple&amp;#x27;s software quality to be worse based on my own anecdotal experience.&amp;quot; This opinion is being perpetuated by a few people and it&amp;#x27;s just going everywhere.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You quoted the unreliability of anecdotal experience and then went ahead and added your own anecdotal immediately in the next paragraph:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;   I don&amp;#x27;t think the software quality dropped
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&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Those who want to experience a lower &amp;quot;functional high ground&amp;quot; should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am sure most would agree with you that OS X at it worst is way ahead of Ubuntu, except that&amp;#x27;s not really the benchmark the users who are going around in circles are using, it quite evident in almost each one of these anecdotal commentary that &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;an older version of OS X is the Benchmark&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think the real complaint people have is that a lot of these people switched to Apple for superior well tested hardware and software, thus avoiding problems that they would not need to wait six months to be fixed.&lt;p&gt;The key take away I think is NOT that recently OS X has some bugs, rather that the seemingly increasing in occurrence of bugs that more advanced users are experiencing is perceived as a sign on discarding their Test Everything Well Before Shipping culture that important to these people.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; To the everyday user, there is no drop in software quality.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The core market for Apple until quite recently was not the everyday user but developers, designers and the more tech savvy.&lt;p&gt;-----&lt;p&gt;I am unsure if your comment was designed to substantiate your thought that &amp;quot;This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion&amp;quot;, if it was, at that you succeeded.</text></item><item><author>owenwil</author><text>This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion other than &amp;quot;I perceive Apple&amp;#x27;s software quality to be worse based on my own anecdotal experience.&amp;quot; This opinion is being perpetuated by a few people and it&amp;#x27;s just going everywhere.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the software quality dropped, it&amp;#x27;s all about perception. Just a few years ago, everyone was moaning about software quality with Lion but nobody remembers that now, because bad headlines are easier to create than good ones. Yosemite has some bugs, yes, but so do almost every other major releases of Operating Systems.&lt;p&gt;Apple &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt; have some bugs to iron out, but in six month&amp;#x27;s time when they&amp;#x27;re fixed, everyone will forget and start complaining about something else. Perhaps a few happened around the same time, but that&amp;#x27;s no indication that things are getting worse. People just like to complain.&lt;p&gt;Those who want to experience a lower &amp;quot;functional high ground&amp;quot; should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is.&lt;p&gt;To the everyday user, there is no drop in software quality. They wouldn&amp;#x27;t have even noticed unless articles like this continued to circulate. People are just noisier these days.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>heyts</author><text>I agree with you on many points and it seems obvious that apple is spread too thin these days and tries to do too much.&lt;p&gt;I dont think this statement is true however:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The core market for Apple until quite recently was not the everyday user but developers, designers and the more tech savvy.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Historically the core market of Apple Computer has been graphic-designers, journalists and the education market. Developers have only been on the platform post OS X because of unix.</text></comment>