My thoughts on iOS 10 and Apple in general

[Tozovac]

And there is no real alternative. I've already danced with Samdung and NSA/Google, and I'm not going back for seconds.

Man. As smart as the world should be in 2016, we're picking presidential candidates and phones based on what's least offensive than the options. It really shouldn't be that way in 2016, should it?? Every nook & cranny of ios7/ios8/ios9/ios10 just pisses me off more and more since the UI is all about looking a certain way than working a certain way, and the UI just seems to trip over itself more and more. All this transparency that to me is just distraction...and then no transparency whenever you adjust the volume while watching a movie and you have to wait 3 seconds for the volume graphic to disappear off the screen. Just awful, I hate this current state of Jony Ive / Material Design iOS/OSX so freakin much.... I so miss that "it just works" and "it looks great" aspects of iOS6/Mavericks and prior.

 

[TheIntruder]

The irony is that Apple is in danger of too closely following the same path as Sony, a company that Jobs greatly admired and wished to emulate.

Sony was an innovative company, and undisputed leader, but their success and hubris blinded them from the fact that their purposeful deviations from industry norms strayed too far, and made them less and less attractive to users. I guess that's what Apple execs believe is "courage."

At the same time, the competition raised their game, and close, if not erase, the competitive gaps that Sony's products once enjoyed.

As their once-superior bread and butter products like TVs, and Walkmen either became commodities, or surpassed by others, they had no new answers, and began to stagnate, and flail while trying to remain relevant. The Sony brand is still recognizable, but has lost the luster that its products once help it build. It's just another player now.

Apple's ample war chest will allow it to endure more missteps, and perhaps actually find the next big thing again, but the chances of that are hampered by the fact that their leader, and visionary is no longer at the helm, and the culture has shifted more toward market preservation, exploiting service revenue, and maximizing licensing fees. To Think Different, and user experience is no longer the sole focus.

It's not the same company its loyal users once evangelized and fought for, it's The Man on the screen in the 1984 commercial, and the newer generation of drones in the audience who bought into the cult after the company enjoyed a renaissance may not know any better.

 

[mantan]

The irony is that Apple is in danger of too closely following the same path as Sony, a company that Jobs greatly admired and wished to emulate.

Sony was an innovative company, and undisputed leader, but their success and hubris blinded them from the fact that their purposeful deviations from industry norms strayed too far, and made them less and less attractive to users. I guess that's what Apple execs believe is "courage."

At the same time, the competition raised their game, and close, if not erase, the competitive gaps that Sony's products once enjoyed.

As their once-superior bread and butter products like TVs, and Walkmen either became commodities, or surpassed by others, they had no new answers, and began to stagnate, and flail while trying to remain relevant. The Sony brand is still recognizable, but has lost the luster that its products once help it build. It's just another player now.

Apple's ample war chest will allow it to endure more missteps, and perhaps actually find the next big thing again, but the chances of that are hampered by the fact that their leader, and visionary is no longer at the helm, and the culture has shifted more toward market preservation, exploiting service revenue, and maximizing licensing fees. To Think Different, and user experience is no longer the sole focus.

It's not the same company its loyal users once evangelized and fought for, it's The Man on the screen in the 1984 commercial, and the newer generation of drones in the audience who bought into the cult after the company enjoyed a renaissance may not know any better.

Very true. Younger readers may not have been around at a time when there was electronic products...then Sony. You'd happily pay a premium for Sony devices because of perceived value. I remember paying a grip for a Sony WEGA TV back in the day....then suddenly everybody from LG to Vizio to Samsung had flooded the market with cheap Plasma and LCD TV's that had a a better picture.

 

[cinger0439]

Do you really want to hear from someone who disagrees with you? I don't really think so but here goes. Obviously sales indicate that a lot of people still want Apple products. i like Tim's gentler vision and management of Apple. I like that the company is more diverse and that Cook is making more charitable contributions on behalf of the company. And, in my opinion, the products are still head and shoulders above anything else on the market. The fact that the iOS 10 adoption rate beats Android in three days vs Years speaks for itself. Perfect, no. Pretty damn good, yes.

Clearly, you miss Steve Jobs. Steve had a vision and he was a great salesperson but he also, in my opinion, was a horrible leader and sometimes, a very cruel person.

I don't understand this culture - we love to put the underdog on top and then when he is there, we love to rip him apart. There is something very wrong with this.

Like someone else said, if you don't like it, buy something else.

 

[mantan]

Do you really want to hear from someone who disagrees with you? I don't really think so but here goes. Obviously sales indicate that a lot of people still want Apple products. i like Tim's gentler vision and management of Apple. I like that the company is more diverse and that Cook is making more charitable contributions on behalf of the company. And, in my opinion, the products are still head and shoulders above anything else on the market. The fact that the iOS 10 adoption rate beats Android in three days vs Years speaks for itself. Perfect, no. Pretty damn good, yes.

Clearly, you miss Steve Jobs. Steve had a vision and he was a great salesperson but he also, in my opinion, was a horrible leader and sometimes, a very cruel person.

I don't understand this culture - we love to put the underdog on top and then when he is there, we love to rip him apart. There is something very wrong with this.

Like someone else said, if you don't like it, buy something else.

Steve was a d1ck and often petty. But the company released better products under his leadership. The sales are still there because most people upgrade their phones every 1-3 years and stay with the platform they have. But when you look at iPad, Macs and other products, the line is stale and sales are flat or declining.

 

[I7guy]

I actually agree with most of what you wrote, but not the ultimate doom & gloom conclusions you draw.

And there is no real alternative. I've already danced with Samdung and NSA/Google, and I'm not going back for seconds.

They did an overall great job with ios 10 and I'm using the "juvenile" features of imessage to communicate with my family. Seems they did get the message and there is no law that says they should open up their apis. I use my iphone to support my business and the upgrades in general are great, really liking ios 10. I live my mail and honestly the new version takes some getting used to, but it's nowhere near painful or slow.

 

[cinger0439]

Steve was a d1ck and often petty. But the company released better products under his leadership. The sales are still there because most people upgrade their phones every 1-3 years and stay with the platform they have. But when you look at iPad, Macs and other products, the line is stale and sales are flat or declining.

Well, I disagree. I don't think the lines are stale and I do think Apple still strives for innovation in how they execute the various features.

 

[GrumpyTrucker]

Do you really want to hear from someone who disagrees with you? I don't really think so but here goes. Obviously sales indicate that a lot of people still want Apple products. i like Tim's gentler vision and management of Apple. I like that the company is more diverse and that Cook is making more charitable contributions on behalf of the company. And, in my opinion, the products are still head and shoulders above anything else on the market. The fact that the iOS 10 adoption rate beats Android in three days vs Years speaks for itself. Perfect, no. Pretty damn good, yes.

Clearly, you miss Steve Jobs. Steve had a vision and he was a great salesperson but he also, in my opinion, was a horrible leader and sometimes, a very cruel person.

I don't understand this culture - we love to put the underdog on top and then when he is there, we love to rip him apart. There is something very wrong with this.

Like someone else said, if you don't like it, buy something else.

A company being more diverse often leads to more customer confusion. I'm not a Jobs evangelist by any means (the first keynote I ever saw was his last one), I've spent more time as an Apple user under Tim than I did under Steve, but under Jobs you had iPhone - how much storage do you want and do you want black or white? Now we've got 3 different sizes of phone, 5 colours on the newest phones, 3 different storage sizes, and the same is true of the iPad and probably Mac lines soon.

A company that uses every legal trick in the book to diminish its tax footprint making more charitable donations to me just means that's one more way of avoiding paying their dues. Probably over thinking it, but that's just my opinion. We all have them.

The products are nonlonger head and shoulders above everything else. Above everything else yes, but not by anywhere near as much as they once were. The world is moving on and Apple are trading a lot on past reputation. Their computers are not the cutting edge anymore - heck just look at the Mac Pro, 3 years old tech and still sold at a huge premium price - and their mobile devices are not that much superior to other high end devices out there.

As for customer service / experience that doesn't seem to be anywhere near as good as it was even two or three years ago. I recently broke my iPhone screen so tried to get a Genius Bar appointment to have it repaired. None were available to book online. That's ANYWHERE in the U.K. for a whole week. I even called Apple Support and they agreed there were no appointments. So I tried a walk-in. There would be a 2-4 hour wait to maybe get to see someone so I had to make an appointment for 7 days away. At that time there were appointments every 5 minutes throughout the day every day available on the Blue Shirt's iPad. Online? One slot available. What sort of system makes you go into the store to book an appointment to go back to the store to get a repair done? I'm not too bad where I live, I'm only about 15 mins from the store, but I'd be annoyed if I had to travel an hour or more just to make an appointment. You can't even ring them because the number just goes through to Apple Support.

I still like Apple and their products but they're much less shiny in my mind than they were just a couple of years ago. I really hope that changes, I really do.

Edit: just realised you probably mean racially diverse not product line. My apologies, it's the middle of the night here

 

[Blacking323]

1. Notifications - the new UI is bizzare - rounded edges and the name of the app atop every notification is a enormous waste of screen real estate. Clustering notifications from the same app is an absolute no brainer, and should have made the cut. Ever since iOS 7, I am increasingly more skeptical of Apple's overall design philosophy. The new notifications need some work. I will agree. They need to go back to the iOS 5 notification set IMO.

2. Control center - Still not customizable (this is next level arrogance), and if that weren't enough, iOS 10 adds an extra step to get to 'now playing' - which was my most frequently used feature (thanks Apple). Control Center DEF needs to have some sort of customization. I dont use timers and wish I could change that to get to the clock. Wish I could change airplane mode and Portrait Orientation lock as well. Dont use them.

3. HomeKit - why does it come with those two ugly wallpapers? And why is there no option to choose from existing system wallpapers or just use a plain background? This I personally couldn't care less about seeing as I dont use it. So its gone on my iPhone

4. iMessage - Apple seems to have completely missed the memo here - all this time and effort to enhance iMessage with juvenile features - why? Nobody in their right mind will ever use iMessage because its not cross platform by design. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Line, Hangouts are far better, far more optimized and far more widely adopted alternatives. Actually, quite a few people use iMessage. As a matter of fact, millions upon millions do.

5. Maps - who cares right? This effort should be completely abandoned - I don't know a single person who prefers Apple Maps over Google Maps. I actually use Apple Maps over Google Maps locally. As a matter of fact, I havent used Google Maps in FOREVER. Reason being is because of the Apple Watch

6. iPad UI - hasn't anyone at Apple realized that you can't just blow up smartphone UI designed and use it on a tablet? I mean, has anyone seen the size of control center buttons on an iPad? Notifications and control center on the iPad need to be redesigned to make better use of the extra screen real estate. I personally wish that the iPad would be a cross between iOS and OS X. But they DEF need to better tailor iOS to the iPad more. So much wasted space.

7. Mail - Probably one of the worst mail apps on a mobile OS ever - unreliable, and painfully slow. There hasn't been one instance where I've been notified of a new email and its ready to view when I open the app - which hasn't changed in iOS 10. I must say the new filters and mail organization tweaks are most welcome. Dont use native mail. As a matter of fact, I use Email by Easilydo. If you havent seen it, check it out.

[doublepost=1474077905][/doublepost]how can you possibly say that apple maps are better than google ones?I mean it's a garbage (apple maps) I use iPhone since like forever and I hate maps forever.Common man, they sell us the same phone for years now(and I keep on buying it lol).Same old **** different number

 

[mthomas184]

[doublepost=1474077905][/doublepost]how can you possibly say that apple maps are better than google ones?I mean it's a garbage (apple maps) I use iPhone since like forever and I hate maps forever.Common man, they sell us the same phone for years now(and I keep on buying it lol).Same old **** different number

Where did I say Apple Maps was better? Just because I use it over Google doesn't mean it's better. I use Apple because of the watch integration.