Is Apple so far behnd (and distracted) that catching up is now impossible?

[s15119]

OP never claimed Apple was dooomed. He claimed that the wide gap between Apple and its rivals keeps closing. As is evident, you can lose your edge for the most part and still remain profitable. The halo effect from the iPhone is still in full effect. Since they neglected everything else, they will go the way of Nokia with both eyes open should the phone scheme ever die on them. Then we can hold an honest doom and gloom debate. I personally can't wait for them to tuck their tail between their legs and put Computer back in the company name. They'd be awesome with both feet firmly planted on the ground again.

As for the best customer service ever I challenge you to just take in a new MBP with a faulty riveted keyboard out of warranty for repair and celebrate the little service fee. Recommend to bring some vaseline for the process.



They work so flawlessly together that even Messages in the Cloud or operating 2 of their overpriced speakers is a thing yet.



I'd be glad if Apple wouldn't play zeitgeist and political awareness for mere marketing reasons. There are political parties for that. Actually, I'd like a technology partner that keeps their hands off politics and is content doing their job: delivering electronic devices, gadgets and services without feeding me any agendas.

All human interaction is political in nature.

 

[Apple Fritter]

All human interaction is political in nature.

Assuming it is, it's one thing to strive to keeping it down to a minimum or consciously driving agendas into people's heads. It just happens I prefer the former. YMMV of course.

 

[bluecoast]

The OP makes a great point.

Apple IS starting to feel like it’s on the back foot in lots of areas.

As the OP says, there’s just a general feeling that it hasn’t devoted enough r&d in the right direction early enough ie ‘skating to where the puck is going to be’, as famously quoted by Jobs.

Credit first: The Watch is great and I’ve never heard bad things about EarPods. And obviously the iPhone and iPad define their product categories.

However as far as (consumer) software and services go:

• Siri - seems to have been badly mismanaged from the start. Now it’s a poor 4th after Google Assistant, Alexa & Cortana
• Apple UI & UX is still good but is inconsistent with only piecemeal changes since ios7 to the core experience with a feel of features being bolted on. Google are catching up. Even Microsoft seem to be making moves to finally clean up windows 10.
• iCloud is ok I guess - for 2013-14. It certainly feels like that was the last time anyone actively developed it. iCloud file management is a mess.
• Photos I like & it’s reliable (for me) but compared to Google Photos, its feature set is stagnating.
• Apple Music just isn’t as good as Spotify.
• iBooks. Why?
• iTunes. Why? Apple was a leader in digital music retail and its experience is now pretty bad (I mean the co-existence of iTunes Music Store, Apple Music and iCloud library is amazingly confusing. Let alone chucking all of these into iTunes on the Mac.
• Homepod. Maybe it’ll be great when it’s out of early beta.
• And let’s hope that the Mac ARM stories are true.

Even in the Jobs era people complained that Apple felt like a company that couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. I guess it’s the same under Cook.

However, a company Apple’s size SHOULD be able to meaningfully work on all of its products and services and keep them current.

Anyone have any insight into what’s going on there and why they always seem to struggle here?

 

[TiggrToo]

The OP makes a great point.

Apple IS starting to feel like it’s on the back foot in lots of areas.

As the OP says, there’s just a general feeling that it hasn’t devoted enough r&d in the right direction early enough ie ‘skating to where the puck is going to be’, as famously quoted by Jobs.

Credit first: The Watch is great and I’ve never heard bad things about EarPods. And obviously the iPhone and iPad define their product categories.

However as far as (consumer) software and services go:

• Siri - seems to have been badly mismanaged from the start. Now it’s a poor 4th after Google Assistant, Alexa & Cortana
• Apple UI & UX is still good but is inconsistent with only piecemeal changes since ios7 to the core experience with a feel of features being bolted on. Google are catching up. Even Microsoft seem to be making moves to finally clean up windows 10.
• iCloud is ok I guess - for 2013-14. It certainly feels like that was the last time anyone actively developed it. iCloud file management is a mess.
• Photos I like & it’s reliable (for me) but compared to Google Photos, its feature set is stagnating.
• Apple Music just isn’t as good as Spotify.
• iBooks. Why?
• iTunes. Why? Apple was a leader in digital music retail and its experience is now pretty bad (I mean the co-existence of iTunes Music Store, Apple Music and iCloud library is amazingly confusing. Let alone chucking all of these into iTunes on the Mac.
• Homepod. Maybe it’ll be great when it’s out of early beta.
• And let’s hope that the Mac ARM stories are true.

Even in the Jobs era people complained that Apple felt like a company that couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. I guess it’s the same under Cook.

However, a company Apple’s size SHOULD be able to meaningfully work on all of its products and services and keep them current.

Anyone have any insight into what’s going on there and why they always seem to struggle here?

As much as I love the Apple stuff I got, it feels like you nailed most of the stuff that does worry\annoy me. In addition I'd add that Apple really need to ramp up their Genius training so it provides uniformity across the board and fire the entire PR department and bring in folk who realize that one misstep in PR can cost you millions. And finally, they need to get back to basics with their codeset - quit with the fancy schmancy new features - stabilize the heebies first THEN enhance.

That said, I still think they've a bright future ahead - however even if they were to only fix a quarter of the things you listed, it would make a lot of folk happy...

 

[Lloydbm41]

The OP makes a great point.

Apple IS starting to feel like it’s on the back foot in lots of areas.

As the OP says, there’s just a general feeling that it hasn’t devoted enough r&d in the right direction early enough ie ‘skating to where the puck is going to be’, as famously quoted by Jobs.

Credit first: The Watch is great and I’ve never heard bad things about EarPods. And obviously the iPhone and iPad define their product categories.

However as far as (consumer) software and services go:

• Siri - seems to have been badly mismanaged from the start. Now it’s a poor 4th after Google Assistant, Alexa & Cortana
• Apple UI & UX is still good but is inconsistent with only piecemeal changes since ios7 to the core experience with a feel of features being bolted on. Google are catching up. Even Microsoft seem to be making moves to finally clean up windows 10.
• iCloud is ok I guess - for 2013-14. It certainly feels like that was the last time anyone actively developed it. iCloud file management is a mess.
• Photos I like & it’s reliable (for me) but compared to Google Photos, its feature set is stagnating.
• Apple Music just isn’t as good as Spotify.
• iBooks. Why?
• iTunes. Why? Apple was a leader in digital music retail and its experience is now pretty bad (I mean the co-existence of iTunes Music Store, Apple Music and iCloud library is amazingly confusing. Let alone chucking all of these into iTunes on the Mac.
• Homepod. Maybe it’ll be great when it’s out of early beta.
• And let’s hope that the Mac ARM stories are true.

Even in the Jobs era people complained that Apple felt like a company that couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. I guess it’s the same under Cook.

However, a company Apple’s size SHOULD be able to meaningfully work on all of its products and services and keep them current.

Anyone have any insight into what’s going on there and why they always seem to struggle here?

Siri is a complete joke, I agree. In fact, I turned it off, cause it sucks so bad.
Apple UI, Android UI. Basically the same thing, with very minimal differences.
iCloud - When it comes to backing up and then restoring from that backup, it amazes me that Android is so far behind the curve here. Apple wins, hands down.
Photos - dealers choice
Apple Music - it's fine. Not the best, but not the worst. It's a 1st party app, so I stick with it.
iBooks - dealers choice between it and Google.
iTunes - For the love in all that is holy, why? Why is it the nightmare that it is? After all this time, I HATE using iTunes, because it stills feels like I'm using an interface from the late 90's! If Apple could change one thing, I wish it was to destroy iTunes and replace it with something that is intuitive and actually works.
Homepod - don't care. Is there really a difference between a UE Megablast with Alexa, an Amazon Alexa speaker, the Google Home device or the Homepod? iOS integration is about it? For the money, I'd rather use Alexa devices that actually have a quality AI and are well integrated into all OS's.

 

[Tech198]

We all get detracted. even Apple.

iTunes - For the love in all that is holy, why? Why is it the nightmare that it is? After all this time, I HATE using iTunes, because it stills feels like I'm using an interface from the late 90's! If Apple could change one thing, I wish it was to destroy iTunes and replace it with something that is intuitive and actually works.
.

With each and every update, i can even count the each problem laggyness that is fixes, and then re-introduces at a latter update. Where is the actually testing apart from developers ? Perhaps that's it the issue... Apple would rather 'testing' be done by developers who won't capture this stuff.

Even the odd glitches now and then. Apple cares too much about making great products,, i wish they put the same amount of time in actually testing them thoroughly as well.