Apple

...do you think it's the right one?

Don't know if that was steve's body just decomposing still or he rolled over a little in his grave.

No. I miss my Thinkpads. There are a lot of off-topic posts here (mine included) complaining about the fruit brigade's bold new direction.

Meanwhile, (snow) Leopard still does everything I need it to do perfectly well. I just shake my head when I look at their new stuff.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/ ... oks-apple/
yup...

They've pissed all over their human interface guidelines; read "zen of steve jobs" and they've ruined most of steve's defining principles that were outlined in that book as well..

If you're referring to the use of skeuomorphic interfaces, this shake-up could be good news

I lost interest in Apple when they went Intel.

Sure, because after Apple will design itself near oblivion in the next ten years, Scott Forstall has the chance to return to Apple and rescue them (like Steve Jobs did after being fired).

And I’m a sucker for these tales where the hero is exiled only to return in the times where he is needed most.

As long as its not as crappy as the alternative; windows and linux, it is serving its purpose.

iPad4! Yeah!!!

I would say it (OSX) is worse than windows, yes. In terms of stability, definitely... usability, probably. iCloud works better with windows than OSX (any version of OSX) and it isn't iCloud's fault or windows's fault. (mail, calendar, contacts, photo stream, is all that I use icloud for)

iOS was the best compared to blackberry or a cheap javaME featurephone back in the day, but the only thing that keeps it around now is all the entrenched hardware it needs to support (at least for me), that just doesn't exist anywhere else. It works fine but it doesn't do anything beyond that. No excitement. Which I suppose is what I really want in a cell phone. If you're a nerd then you should definitely be looking elsewhere.

I liked that part of it. It was cute and it made it easy to tell which app was where even when (for example) only a tiny bit of the calendar was showing, or you used that bastardized new version of expose called.. what was it?... mission control.

The problem came in with all the extra buttons scattered loosely across the title bar for various features such as full screen, saving, etc. The notification center I thought would be useful for facebook (facepalm) until I realized I would have to squish together the facebook people with the contacts people on my phone. No way around it, at least I didn't bother to look too hard.

All the old 10.6 stuff still does everything I need it to do. If it weren't for the power consumption and lack of portability I could do everything I need on my onyx. And then some

The market will determine whether his way is "the right way" through the financial success of the company. In the meantime though, considering the high level of guidance Steve provided up until the bitter end, I personally think Apple may struggle to adapt successfully to the Cook methodology and will most likely go through a strategy-shift not unlike the Sculley era of the 80's and early 90's.

Not saying that we're going to see (authorized) white-box clones any time soon, but I think some products will be championed while others will fall by the wayside. Of course, that's easy for me to say because it's already happening!

Guard, yeah keep believing that.

Jesus H Keerist, are you guys still gobbling up that pap ? Grow up, would you please ?

Gobbling up what? Basic and obvious principles of economics and business management?

Apple is a publicly traded corporation and as such their goal is to create value for shareholders. If Tim Cook can establish and enforce policies that result in additional value to shareholders, then he is doing "right" by his shareholders.

Honestly, this is a very pretty little story to put cranky children to sleep. But it's nothing but pig shit in a large economy size bowl. Did they teach you to use your eyes and ears and mind in school or was it just high-level training in regurgitating the pap written by shills for the kleptocrats ?

That whole Cato Institution propaganda blizzard is just that : pigshit. If you actually believe it you seriously need a reeducation session in the countryside.

Sorry, just telling you the truth.


You're nucking futz if you believe that. Tim Cook's goal in life is to grab as much money as he can for himself and to hell with the rest of the world. If you don't believe that I have a lovely golden bridge to sell you.

After all the disclosures of the past few years, if you still accept those lies then you need your head examined. I'm not trying to be rude here, just speaking the truth. Time to wakey up now, it was a nice fantasy but that's all it was - a giant fantasy. If you keep swallowing that garbage you'll end up in a double wide under the bridge down by the river, with the rest of the 99%.

Because you know him and he's personally told you that? Oh, you don't know him, you say? Okay then, come back when you have more to say than just "eek the whole world's out to get me!" And I'm the one who needs to grow up. Heh.

Times they are a changin'..... the currently quoted ratio for that particular fantasy is now 47%.

For all definitions of "the right way" == "successful in the market".

Note that "successful in the market" is not sufficient to define "the right way", as there are more criteria. As this is (predominantly) engineering and not math or logic you'll be hard pressed to define a "right way" - best to think of it more as a continuum of crappiness with many variables defining a products range (rather than absolute point) on the continuum.

It's not sufficient in most cases, but is necessary in some. My thought on this is, how do we define "the right way" without introducing our own personal agenda for the company? I argue that we can't. In the absence of all other definitions of "the right way", I think it's necessary to fall back on a very basic answer like "Whatever makes us more money."

One person's definition of "the right way" for Apple may be to exit the desktop market and focus on mobility. Another person's definition may be to reenter the server market. Yet another person's definition may be to strengthen technical computing and bolster the desktop line. The OP asked a simple question, "is it the right way?", and I think that begets a simple answer - "It depends."

EDIT:
Also, on the note of engineering, I agree that there is no one right way... but there is a "most correct" way which would be the way that best meets your project's goals. hamei seems to disagree with me that the goal of a company should be to make money, but nonetheless, it's an imperative that sits at the core of modern business so it's actually quite fitting.

Why is the younger generation so attached to theorizing on subjects that have demonstrable practical outcomes? Are they so detached from reality they can't see what's right in front of their face? Why do people keep insisting that "with the advent of the internet, today's young generation is one of the most informed generation in history"? How does drooling over tech blogs, misquoting Wikipedia articles, reading endless web comics, installing endless windows secuity updates, and recompiling the kernel a substitute for experience? And they have the gall to insist they're right?!?! Where has respect for their elders gone? This thread is one of the sadest examples of what this message board has come to. It used to be a haven from ignorance; now it's spouted as a matter of course. *sigh*

I could theorize about what side a coin will land on when flipped, but that would be a waste of time because I could just flip one and see. It's instantaneous. What's not instantaneous, however, is making strategic changes to affect the trajectory of a business. Getting an outcome from that takes years. So, us young'ins spending a few hours theorizing is a lot better than spending years testing things out with a "wait and see" attitude.

Plus, sometimes it's fun to play armchair-CEO. I went to business school but didn't go into a management career, so I enjoy opportunities to reflect on things I've learned.

This brings up another important question. Why does it matter what we talk about?

Predictably, you've missed the point.