Tim Cook

Why I no longer have much to write about Apple

by

These days Apple is hitting the news cycle for everything it dabbles in, from watches to a tv subscription service, but I largely stopped writing about Apple because I no long find much to write about.

Yes I can write rumors about the upcoming iPhones, but do you really need to hear them from me? This year’s iPhones are going to be largely the same as last year’s, with some additional feature here or there. Honestly, the whole phone market is just full of iPhones and iPhone clones, and we have reached the point where nothing new can be truly new. Yes, folding phones (with foldable screens) are not “new”, they are an evolution of the folding “productivity” phones of the early 2000s, which never really caught on. I buy iPhone and will continue to buy iPhone because the competition is both shitty and atrocious, and iOS is great, despite its flaws.

But I digress. I find nothing to write about Apple these days because Apple these days is more like Sony twenty years ago, or even Microsoft during their MSN days. There is so much going on because so many people are doing so many things separately at the company, and you can no longer tell what Apple’s “plan” because everything is so diverse. Hell I bet even Tim Cook don’t have a hold on everything that is happening at the company.

Yes I can write about flaws like the recent keyboards with butterfly switches, or highs like iPadOS, but you know, the MacBook Pros always go through one design generation of being slightly shitty, then the next generation being almost flawless, then to another generation of being slightly shitty again, eg. titanium G4 (slightly shitty), aluminum G4/MBP (almost perfect), first unibody MBPs (slightly shitty), Retina MBP (almost perfect) and now we are at the TB3 MBPs (slightly shitty) generation again. So it will likely get better.

iPadOS wise, if you are a serious follower of Apple throughout even just the last decade, it will have been easy to spot how Apple has always been slowly building up iOS on the iPad to this stage, especially since five years ago. The problem these days are people like MKBHD and other well-known youtubers without an actual history of following Apple sprouting fallacies like “Apple is finally giving us this and that..” when really, it was in the works all along. I mean, the guy makes good-looking videos, but that does not mean he is John Siracusa.

Oh you want to talk about Jony Ive leaving? The guy’s a massive asshole. After Steve died he used all his influence to get rid of Scott Forstall and his people, with the excuse of “unifying software and hardware design under the same person”. After Forstall was fired, Ive then reassigned software design and hardware design to two different men, splitting the responsibilities up again. Getting rid of Forstall and his men drove a stake into iOS’s stability that it really never recovered until iOS 12 recently. So yeah, Ive’s gone, so what. I considered him to be capable enough to be in the running to succeed Tim Cook eventually, but apparently he is not interested. So out he goes.

I have no insight on Apple Card, Apple TV+, Apple Music (I still think Eddy Cue’s a bozo) and I generally disagree with everything Apple is doing on the subscription front. But that is a story for another day. Or maybe one I will never write.

On the long Apple writing hiatus and my hatred for the world right now

by

Since Steve passed away, I have not found much motivation to post anything here. Furthermore, changes to various aspects of my Apple-related connections locally just made things worse.

These days, I am really more depressed than anything else to have idiots berating me every time I point out factual mistakes in their Anti-Apple rants, all while the whole local Apple scene is becoming more generic and boring. The Mac no longer matters to most, and all everyone is about are just iPhones and iPads, and how Samsung Galaxys are better simply because they have styluses and bigger (but lousier) screens.

To tell you the truth, I do not give a damn. I hate Samsung because I am disgusted by how they operate (through deceitful ways), and I hate people who defend them without any factual knowledge to back up their anti-Apple rants, and somehow thinking that if they hate Apple, they must support Samsung.

Samsung the brand and company is made up of scumbags and more scumbags, and every single person in cahoots with them by being a fan should be ashamed. Either that or they are scumbags themselves as well.

This is a fact – I do not hate Android. I just prefer iOS because Android is way too limiting for many things (yes, don’t give me all that crap about being “open” and whatever, because despite the sheer app ecosystem and raw numbers of devices out there in the world, Android and Android apps don’t do half of what iOS can do for me). I have Android phones all over my table right now, namely the Nexus S, the Nexus 4, the Xperia Z and the Sharp Zeta SH-09D (not everything is mine) and even a Windows Phone 7 phone (the Lumia 800) and I do not hate any of them.

Yet arseholes tell me that I am nothing but an Apple fanboy (including one of my old friends) everytime I point out how factually wrong their anti-Apple rants are, and either refused to give any facts to support their crap-attacks or simply do not have anything to back their shit up.

Just because I am a Steve Jobs fanboy does not mean I support Apple in every thing they do. There are more than a few things that I take issue with Apple in the past 20 months or so;

1. Firing of Scott Forstall – Just shows how ineffective Tim Cook is at managing those under him. Forstall was getting out of control and it seems that Cook had no choice but to get rid of him to keep the harmony within Apple’s executive team.

2. You think of Apple these days as AAPL and nothing else – Everything done in the past 12 months seems to be more than focused on the share price of AAPL. Is AAPL more important or is Apple Inc. more important? The board of directors seemed to be a bit confused. Almost every single comment Tim Cook makes publicly these days seems to be carefully calculated to affect the stock price positively. Whatever happened to “screwing” the stock price?

3. Wrong timing of product announcements – Seriously, what’s with the product announcements last October/Novemeber?

4. Don’t just give me iOS stuff. I want OS X and Macs.

There was a time when I relied on Apple to keep me entertained and feeling alive waiting for the next new annoucement, those days have since long passed. Every time I check RSS there’s nothing but stupid and baseless crap from analysts, or yet another report of Samsung doing something deceitful. Nothing, nothing at all from Apple.

Things may change with WWDC with iOS 7 and OS X 10.9, but until now I continue to be bored with the no-news situation from Apple that has been continuing since last October’s product announcements.

One more thing: Don’t listen to analysts. Those arseholes know nothing.

On Tim Cook and others

by

Been a long long time since I last wrote here, and before I restart having more frequent appearances here I thought I will post some very short thoughts about everything happening at Apple for the past few months.

On Tim Cook:

There are men who are “leaders”, and there are men who are just “bosses”. Unfortunately our dear man Tim seems to reside in the latter camp. I’m not doubting his abilities as a CEO/manager for it has been proven that he’s one of, if not the best, operations man in the world. But a leader attracts and keeps talent through sheer charm, a manager can only do the same, much less successfully, through promises of wealth and power. While Tim is arguably one of those talents attracted to Apple, he is no Steve Jobs, and it’s apparent if you follow news of Apple’s management shifts.

Still, the guy is one hell of a CEO, having run the company’s operations during its crazy ascent in the last decade, and was the best choice that Steve had to succeed him.

On Scott Forstall:

Unlike many, I am quite a Scott Forstall supporter. I don’t hate the look of iOS skeuomorphism at all, and while many like to say shit about the guy, you cannot deny that the guy is smart, and good at what he does. Everything iOS is today can all at least partly be attributed to him, and the so-called maps screwup was not really much of a screwup at all, no matter which way you see it.

Problem though, is that many geniuses are also jackasses, and Forstall happens to be one of them. Steve was able to “control” and keep Scott working under him for all these years, something that Tim was unable to do. I see the loss of Scott as a loss for Apple, but neither Tim nor anyone else in Apple today will be able to control Forstall, and it is best for Apple’s internal stability that he was fired. Which is why Steve’s presence is missed so badly, not just because of what he can contribute to Apple’s ideas and lineup, but also because of his influence in other areas.

Whether iOS loses direction from now on without Scott at the helm all depends on his Hair Force One successor, and I am not very hopeful, looking at his work on OS X.

On John Sculley’s remarks:

The guy is the reason why Apple almost shut down in the nineties. When he gives advice on how Apple should act, the correct approach will be to do the exact opposite of what he proposes.