It's sounds incredibly controlling, which would explain the lack of freedom on iOS and Apple's various platforms. It's not enough to own the entire ecosystem, anything outside is not allowed to run on the hardware (at least for iOS devices). Great for investors and Apple's bottom line, but horrible for consumers (e.g. this story: http://niederfamily.blogspot.be/2012/06/silencing-of-maya.ht...)
Whether or not Apple's corporate culture is "controlling" (though I don't really understand why you're conflating 'confrontational' with 'controlling' in the first place) does not directly impact whether policies towards consumers are restrictive. Since the two seem related, I can see why you'd slip into that, but your claim is really a non sequitur.
Also, that article is about a patent lawsuit being brought against a third-party software development firm. The plaintiffs probably requested that Apple take down the allegedly infringing app, and they did. Any curator, no matter how strict or liberal their policies, has the freedom to remove potentially patent-infringing content from their marketplace.
(Which, for the record, isn't to say I agree that the patent is legitimate. I really hope the small developer wins.)
Here's just one example of the controlling nature of Apple from the article:
> Andy Miller, who joined Apple as a vice president after Apple bought his mobile advertising company in 2009, asked Jobs if he could join the board of an independent company in a different business than Apple. “What?” Jobs responded. “You’re barely cutting it here,” Jobs said, which Miller understood to be relatively high praise, “and you want to go spend your time helping someone else’s company? I don’t even let Forstall out of the office,” Jobs added, referring to Scott Forstall, Apple’s mobile software chief, a high-ranking and considerably more influential executive than Miller. Needless to say, Miller declined the board membership offer.
Expecting a board member at a critical time in Apple's turnaround to dedicate 100% of the time to Apple is hardly controlling. In fact I would deem it common sense.
First, 2009 (or later I suppose) was a critical time in Apple's turnaround?
Second, the anecdote in question is about an Apple executive wanting to be a board member somewhere else. Plenty of executives (at companies other than Apple) are board members elsewhere, so Jobs' refusal is at least noteworthy. And since the refusal seems at least partly motivated by limiting an employee's outside interests, that does sound controlling (try replacing the subject of the conversation another professional activity that had a similarly modest time commitment).
It's also worth noting that the executive in question left Apple last summer.
Because consumers don't always know what they want. They can be influenced by marketing and word of mouth (as shown in the Vista vs Mojave experiment).
On another point, Facebook is by far the most popular social network, and it can hardly be argued that Facebook's policies are good for the users.
This is an interesting point. It is valuable to have this kind of engineer instead of a Yes-man.
Steve Jobs was famously difficult. Certainly not the kind of boss I would want. But the turnover in his inner circle was really low. Craig Federighi who on Monday demonstrated the next OS X is a Guy from the old NeXT days. I think Jobs selected people as underlings who were able to stand up to him (sometimes).
It's a terrible environment, but I bet being a supreme court Justice is also a terrible environment. It also brings out profound conclusions and vision.
When Apple says that battery-life is important in mobile devices, they mean it. If Samsung says it, maybe a year later they will turn around and bring out an eight-core phone that you can play a game on for forty-five minutes before having to plug it in again.
Apple isn't just opinionated: it's opinionated on hugely difficult technical issues that don't even exist in the wild yet. (As when they release a new category.) You only get that through violent discourse with egos on the line.
edit: a similar thing happens at Google, but not when it comes to ergonomics or user interfaces and usability with the same hardware devices Apple makes, but instead when it comes to solving certain problems on a massive scale. The result is that Google can't really release a laptop that's as usable as a Macbook in the same ___domain, and for everyone, and Apple can't really solve the ops issues that it would take to bring out a Google Search competitor. There is huge amount of discourse (of a radically different nature) at both companies.
> When Apple says that battery-life is important in mobile devices, they mean it
No, they don't. They mean battery life is important in mobile devices as long as it doesn't get in the way of making them thin (among other things). After all, the modern smartphone with the best battery life is the Droid RAZR MAXX (soon to be dethroned by its international sibling the Motorola RAZR MAXX, which doesn't have the battery-life handicap of an LTE radio).
Apple would never release a laptop with a 1.5 hour battery (wifi web browsing). an unimaginable number of such laptops are brought out by every major brand other than Apple.
(likewise apple has its standards in a phone, which is not the standard you cite, but not 45 minutes either.).
Apple is opinionated on every part of the user interface and design, on usability and ease-of-use. They then go on to put their money where their mouth is, and practice what they preach. (For the most part.)
It's very hard to find design decisions at Apple that seem to have 0 thought or discussion behind them. This is the norm at other companies.
The 1.5 hour battery laptop serves (for me) an important niche. You see, I don't actually need a laptop. I need a portable desktop with built in battery backup, which is what the 1.5 hour battery laptop is.
Of course, it's entirely within Apple's prerogative to ignore that very niche market (I would if I were them) and it seems to be working well for them, but every odd ball computer configuration you see was created to meet the needs of at least one market. You are not the target market for the desktop replacement laptop. I am.
In college I loved my desktop replacement. This was before wifi was campus-wide, so bringing my laptop to class didn't give me much more benefit than bringing a pad of paper, so the laptop stayed firmly put on my desk all semester. What was really important to me was being able to haul my computer out of the dorm in one trip. A desktop would require multiple trips and would need to be shut down to move (the laptop lasted and hour on battery and 5 hours in sleep mode). A desktop replacement offers almost all the benefits of a desktop, but with a built-in UPS and a one-piece form factor.
There will always be miss-steps. But I don't think you ever achieve great design without being very opinionated. I feel that it helps to edit yourself.
I really hate all these fake textures they are going though.
Windows XP didn't ship with a user-level calendar. If Apple had a calendar before 2006, they'd be winning the calendar design front without much effort.
Apple would never release a laptop with a 1.5 hour battery (wifi web browsing)
That's too bad. I use my laptops as portable desktops, seldom away from a plug. So I have to heft around a giant battery because Apple decides that only one usage model is right?
RIM devices have, generally, dramatically more endurance than Apple mobile devices. Apple seriously compromised battery life on the burgeoning smartphone market because they prioritized other things like a nice interface and a bigger screen. They weren't the leaders in battery life, and it's weird that you compare them particularly to Samsung when most Samsung devices have comparable or battery performance.
> That's too bad. I use my laptops as portable desktops, seldom away from a plug. So I have to heft around a giant battery because Apple decides that only one usage model is right?
False assertion. With a Macbook Pro, you get one of the lightest laptops of its size, plus very competitive specs in pretty much all areas. (This goes for the new Retina one as well as the standard one.)
With a Macbook Pro, you get one of the lightest laptops of its size
Samsung series 9 notebook - 2.8lbs.
Macbook Pro - 4.4 - 5.6lbs.
Apple is a remarkable organization, but they are still using the same Intel processors and chipsets, SSDs and wifi chips as everyone else. Where they have a longer battery life it usually is because they filled every crevice with battery, as with the new Retina Macbook Pro. It could have been much lighter if they didn't so intently focus on a 7 hour battery life.
You're comparing a 15.4" mobile workstation with a 2.3GHz or 2.6GHz Ivy Bridge Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a GT650...to a 13.3" notebook with an Intel IGP, a ULV Core i5, and a max of 8GB of RAM. They don't even come close to filling the same role. If you want to compare the MBP 15" to the Series 9 15", you're looking at a ULV Core i5 at 1.7GHz in the Series 9, still a maximum of 8GB of RAM, still a crappy Intel IGP, and it's less than a pound lighter (3.63 lb).
If you want to compare apples to apples, the 13" Air is a much more appropriate comparison to the original machine you were referring to. The Air has a faster processor (and an option to upgrade to an i7) and weighs almost exactly the same (2.96 pounds to 2.9--not 2.8 as you said).
Enjoyable response given the fact that you brought up the ridiculous notion that the MBP was the lightest laptop of 'it's size'. Of course you are carefully amending the claims now ("lightest of its size using a 3rd generation core i7 with a nvidia 650M GPU and..."), unsurprisingly, but the original point was one hundred percent wrong.
I never actually said the lightest laptop of its size, I said it was one of the lightest laptops of its size, and I kind of assumed you wouldn't be disingenuous enough to compare underspecced ultralights with workstation machines.
> It's a terrible environment, but I bet being a supreme court Justice is also a terrible environment.
In the books I've read on the topic like _The Nine_, it's sounds like a terrific environment. You are incredibly respected by everyone you meet, you have a light workload which is self-chosen and also extremely important and you can see the consequences of your work without doubt, you work with other highly competent people, you can indulge in things like teaching your pet subject in your offtime and be paid very well for it, you get to select the most talented young lawyers as your staffers, and so on and so forth.
In addition, it appears that in general it's not personal. For example, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who often strongly dissent from each others' opinions in court, are personal friends outside of court.
Reliable trackpads, multitouch, battery life, pushing SSDs, unibody enclosures, magsafe, reliable wake-from-sleep, keyboard illumination. And I hope you don't regard the display as a minor accomplishment.
That sounds like a terrible environment.