Sour Apple

 A few days ago, I read John Gruber’s long post about something rotten at Apple. It kind of floored me. I think it’s the most critical thing he’s ever written about the Cupertino company. It took me a while to process it; I also read many follow-up comments around the web. Most folks, including me, generally agree with Gruber on this one.

Siri struggles

I don’t know any details within Apple itself, so I don’t want to be judgmental or accusing. That said, publicly advertising software capabilities that don’t exist is not intelligent. And marketing iPhone 16s as having or being made for AI features when they initially had none is also not smart.

Maybe last summer Apple was reasonably confident that it’d be able to deliver those Siri features within the iOS 18 life-cycle but now realizes it’s not going to work out that way. Or maybe Apple was overly confident and advertised “vaporware” in order to sell iPhone 16s. I don’t know. It seems John Gruber thinks it’s more of the latter, or is awfully so close to that situation to warrant severe, if not dire, warning.

This issue is not isolated though. It stacks upon other recent ones that overall seem to indicate something about the state of Apple like what Gruber said. But rather than outright “rotten", I think “sour” may be apt.

Apple Intelligence not so smart

Based on what I’ve heard and read from the web, the consensus seems to be that Apple Intelligence in general — not just Siri — is lackluster. Apple had to roll back Notification Summaries, for example, because they were bad or factually incorrect. And while some people, I’m sure, like Genmoji or Image Playground, all I see online are the ones who really dislike it.

It’s unfortunate that Apple, like all big-tech companies, is so intent on shoving A.I. to everyone as fast as possible. Isn’t my smartphone already “smart” enough? Why do tech companies insist that I would want to talk to an A.I. bot to get things done when otherwise all I must do is tap on my phone to do it myself? Do we really need to shift the paradigm of computing to make things a little more convenient or efficient than they already are?

Vision Pro no go

In the summer of 2023, “Spatial Computing” seemed to be the “future of computing” according to Apple. But with over a year on the market, the Vision Pro seems to be a dud. I still firmly believe that most people simply do not want to wear a face-computer, if they could even afford it. And the few people who do like AR/VR just buy a Meta Quest because it has hand controllers and gaming, which the Vision Pro lacks despite its sky-high price tag. Apple is good at minimalism, but it’s a for-profit business — it won’t minimize its profit margins.

EU regulations and developer relations

In recent years, Apple has suffered poor publicity for its salty dealings with regard (or disregard) to EU regulations and iPhone software developers, even being accused of malicious compliance. That’s not a good look.

Iterative updates and costly upgrades

iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches have been mostly iterative each year for the past half-decade. Yet Apple heavily markets them (with much hyperbole) as needful advancements worthy of their expense. And while Apple might now be staggering its overall device release cadence to some degree, it shows no signs of slowing the iPhone’s upgrade cycle yet.

Along with costly new hardware that’s more or less unchanged from prior models, Apple charges exorbitant prices for buying any device above the base model. Wanting or needing more memory or storage will cost you dearly. Upgrades are typically an extra $200 per tier at a time when storage and memory are otherwise low-cost commodities. This year, for example, I added 32GB RAM to my PC laptop for about $55. But right now with the new MacBook Air, adding just 16GB RAM will cost you $400, about eight times the cost for half the additional memory — absurd!

Summary

I’m not focusing on all the negatives here in order to say, “Down with Apple!” Rather, I want to say, “Apple, do better.” The company is a huge corporate entity now and might be overly bureaucratic. Could it crumble under its own weight? I guess so, but hopefully it won’t.

Either way, being so large and lucrative, Apple naturally attracts more scrutiny. Its decisions have a big impact on not only the tech sector but also the culture. Accountability is healthy, and I think Gruber’s long post calls for that.

Apple makes great hardware and good software that works well together in a way that unifies and amplifies the company’s tech-ecosystem. But Apple has made mistakes, with the new Siri A.I. being a big one. Mistakes are forgivable. Yet like Gruber talked about, if these issues are endemic or systemic, then Apple might suffer a downturn. But even that would not necessarily be “the end.” It’s not feasible for any company to sustain ever-increasing stratospheric heights and must eventually come back down to earth a bit. Let’s just hope Apple doesn’t fall hard to the ground.