Apple Software Angst
Marco Arment has been speaking out at several issues plaguing Apple’s software side lately. He often refers to issues with the App Store, like app discovery and the review process. These are real issues for real developers, but it appears Apple is working on it.
Now, Marco is going even farther, arguing that Apple has lost “the functional high ground”:
Apple has completely lost the functional high ground. “It just works” was never completely true, but I don’t think the list of qualifiers and asterisks has ever been longer. We now need to treat Apple’s OS and application releases with the same extreme skepticism and trepidation that conservative Windows IT departments employ.
Perfectly fair point. Both Mac OS X and iOS 8 are rough in some spots, but it also works really well in most of the areas that most people use the most.
Later, Federico Viticci tweeted his thoughts on the outcry:
And I feel like iOS/OS X geeks rightfully see a lot of the details gone wrong and sometimes skip over the big picture (myself included).
— Federico Viticci (@viticci) January 5, 2015
Nailed it.
Arment linked to a post from Geoff Wozniak, who recently decided to quit using OS X in favor of Linux. This passage, however, struck me as a bit odd:
Once I quit, I was met with different frustrations, but they didn’t feel like hopeless frustrations. I’ve gone back to a desktop system running Linux (for now) and while I consider it markedly inferior to OS X in terms of usability, it feels like a personal computer again. I’m enjoying the experience and I look forward to working with it, even when it’s a monumental pain in the ass.
It’s “markedly inferior” to Mac OS X, yet he’s more willing to work on it. Why?
Apple is moving at an incredible pace. The industry hasn’t really seen anything like it before. It recently unveiled major redesigns to the leading desktop/laptop operating system and the leading mobile operating system at the same time. We’re also months or weeks away from the launch of an all new product category
Apple is also doing all this in a time when when sales for devices running that the aforementioned software are at or near record highs.
Sure, there’s plenty of work to do with issues that need to be corrected. There always will be. Yet, I’m not convinced this is the crisis that some are making it out to be.