John Ternus to become Apple CEO

Jokes aside, I have started to see Microslop as the lesser of two evils (two evils being MSFT and AAPL, Google being its own parallel universe abomination). Their commitment to backward compatibility really paved the way to cheap PCs for the masses. That said, every day Macroslop is working diligently to prove me wrong.

I find your reaction strange, do you read news to be angry and/or afraid? :)

Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.

I do wish that some day someone will tell the story of what happened during that time. Maps was bad at launch yes, but it also wouldn't get better without people contributing more data, and the fact that it took a decade to slowly improve implies that there's nothing anyone could have done to get it right "off the bat". It still feels to me Forstall was set up as the fall guy, especially considering no one was fired for antennagate.

Example: Taking the airport train instead of a private driver and realizing there’s no luggage racks, staying in a regular hotel room and realizing there’s no light in front of the mirror, only behind you. So many examples like that on a daily basis.

And I know many engineers within Apple that had been testing Maps before it shipped and they were filing bugs about it. It shipped anyway.

Also, the UI for it keeps getting more cluttered, and they announced that in-map ads are coming Q2-3 2026.

They will not. Recognizing the value of power users and engineers looks deeply un-Apple to me.

The only way Linux on Mac will become a reality is if it's legislated.

I know between Moore's Law and Gate's Law which one I would prefer to be the industry standard... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law

I don't have a lot of samples, just one. So, YMMV.

I have to think some of that attitude would be good for apple's software division.

It's not as if ternus will be writing code directly, he's managing managers. Hopefully that means he'll demand and budget more for QA.

There are so many little bugs in consumer-facing apps that hit the ‘sweet’ spot of being incredible little annoyances that just aren’t worth putting an engineer on for a week to fix, but which are totally worth having an engineer throw an agent onto them.

I don't know about Thinkpads, but the utterly pleasant glass trackpad is still one of the things I cannot find on most non-Mac laptops, despite every manufacturer being able to copy it for years.

The closest I've found are the Surface laptop/cover trackpads, but they have their own set of reliability and repairability issues.

As a MacBook user, I very rarely want to use a mouse except for gaming. THe trackpad is delightful enough for the bulk of my use cases.

> But HW is at least improving (eg. they added anti-reflective screen option), and SW is very much not.

And I would disagree with the idea that I should be running Linux on my primary machine. As a developer, I've faced enough "death by a thousand cuts" situations from running Linux on my personal router and servers to let it anywhere close to my main computer.

Don't even get me started on the hardware quality of Mac laptop including their stellar trackpads, screens and the smallest details like the quality of the hinge. I can still open my 5 year old Mac with a single finger and the hinge is as solid as the day I bought it.

As someone who's also particular about user experience, Linux always fails at this. If you have good UX, that means you can critically think for what a user wants from a computer, and can determine what should and shouldn’t be prioritized. UX is never a first-class citizen on Linux, and for all the issues with Tahoe, macOS still has enough residual quality left in it to not feel like I'm constantly fighting the operating system.

Simple example: I want HDR on Linux. Should be easy right? Just switch to Plasma under Wayland? Then do a one time config so mpv can play HDR. Oh and no browsers support it so good luck. Games need gamescope and flags to be set.

I want my computer to work, not for me to work as an integration engineer. So I use my Mac and it just works™. So I just let Linux live where I feel it works best, in servers and headless environments.

We’re talking about the company that shipped the storage bug?

I also think most products apple makes are in the top tier of their respective category, if not the best.

I started writing out a list of Apple's products and it was simply [x device] in [y category] is either the best or consistently rated in the top of that category.

The Steamdeck was a breath of fresh air, the whole Steam frames and cube could have been a big deal.

But no matter what definition you take Siri was not the first AI. It's a classical cases of Apple fans thinking Apple invented everything because they saw it first in an Apple product...

If you think about AI in broad terms, it goes back to the 1970's where any skill computers gained originally thought as only human was called AI. Like playing chess.

If you think about the recent use of AI = LLM chatbots/gen AI, Siri wasn't an LLM.

Leadership needs to make sure everything else in the business is in order so that they can contain and shape the direction of the white-hot plasma of AI and its implications. A software leader would be too hands-on in this process and get nerd sniped. Sometimes you need some distance.

Or because you’re interested in the products and the „company community“ is fun and you like talking about it.

Steve Jobs called the original Apple TV a "hobby", and, similarly for now there isn't any pressure for it to massively grow.

But it's still a net deficit of nearly 15 million tons of emissions of which practically none are offset.

https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Pr...

The real disconnect IMO is TSLA.

Would you not own stock of the most valuable brand in human history?

Alongside Nvidia they essentially monopolize TSMCs entire latest generation chip supply.

That’s a moat in hardware that is going to get even stronger over time. Given this hardware moat they can dip their toes gently into the B2B market they’ve never really cared about and pick up another few hundred billion in high margin revenue over the next 10 years no problem.

I’ve always found it weird that Apple’s entire org runs on Mac but no other Fortune 500 company on earth does. Seems like an opportunity to nibble away at Microsoft.

Apple Maps really needs to up their POI game. They have some native data, but I’m still regularly seeing images from 3rd party sites and get prompted to download the app. I understood it in year 1, but we’re 13 years in now. This is the primary reason I keep Google Maps around.

YouTube’s who platform is built to show ads and run by an ad company. They are likely going to be much more profitable than a few ads in the App Store and Maps, and I’ve read Premium users are more profitable than ad-supported users. They are charging $160/year after a recent price increase. The fee you’re suggesting would be over 14 years worth of payments.

Amazon lets users remove ads on Kindle for a 1 time fee of $20, and people keep Kindles a long time.

The goodwill alone would be worth more than $20, considering iPhones already have margin (unlike most Amazon hardware).

Apple has been using security as the tent pole feature to try and differentiate themselves from everyone else. One of the reasons all the other platforms feel insecure is that ads imply data collection. If they really want to “think different” they need to stop following the crowd and operate a system that doesn’t create the compromised incentives that ads tend to come with.

- Gradually "make the line go up" by ramping up ad volume until the product is terrible (thereby ruining Apple's reputation among the 50-90% of users who aren't paying the ad-free prices).

- Periodically nerfing the premium ad-free tiers and putting ads into tiers that were previously ad-free.

- Purposefully making the lower tiers worse and worse in order to squeeze out marginal increases in conversion rates to the premium tiers.

Given the level of mathematics I’ve seen involved in hardware, I’d assume the average mech eng. has a better chance than the average software eng.

For example, a Vivo X300 Ultra or Xiaomi 17 Ultra. Much better cameras, larger batteries, 90-100W charging, etc.

That's the kind of thing people say when they are out of ideas. The reality is that the mobile phone market was already a mature market, with Nokia as the leader, even before the iPhone was released. Then Steve Jobs showed the world how to innovate.

What's the best case scenario? Make few billion a year fuzzed with long term warranty liabilities? That might sound nice, but for apple their companion products like AirPods or the Apple Watch easily clear much better profit. Putting their corporate effort into another companion product is more economically sensible and far less risky.

I guess if you are gonna fail, fail so deeply that it doesn't affect your legacy :P

Case in point? From what I've read he's reserved, keeps a very low profile, and is dedicated to his work. We know next to nothing about his personal life.

Excuse me? Giving a literal gold trophy to the God-Emperor Trump is not politics?

Apple has led the industry on hardware but is woefully behind on the software and services front. Focusing on device-level privacy controls turns what would be a gap into a moat, and it helps deprive Google and other services from monetizing their customer base.

Not to say that it's not something the company is passionate about - but it's also good for their business. Especially when you compare it to things like human rights, transparency, and security research where Apple could take a stronger stand but don't.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-...

"Expensive for no good reason" products?

Man, I love Apple, but their stupidity is beyond baffling sometimes. No Siri updates for 10 years, making the hardware harder to use, single-handed use is no longer as easy or comfortable, and they haven't done... anything(?) revolutionary in AGES. Their latest gaff was the Neo - a phone stretched out as much as possible to make a "laptop". They couldn't even bother to make the logo shiny on it, it was such a departure from true Apple style. Let's not forget the 92 lenses on the back of the phone that stick out a quarter inch, a screen that's nearly impossible to replace, and the hilariously pathetic "iphone repair kit" they lend you.

I have zero confidence in this guy. Nothing he had oversight over has gone well, as far as I'm concerned.

Really what apple is doing is putting a spin on their core business model of selling users the technology rather than renting it to them by subsidizing its development through spying.

It's not so much that privacy is apple's goal, but rather privacy is inherent to apple's business model (unlike google, which has always been spyware).

This just suggests him holding on to more influence. What apple needs, badly, is a software and tech guy (Cook is not a tech guy).

The MacBook Pro started using non-removable batteries in 2009. Also: https://www.folklore.org/Diagnostic_Port.html

I don't think your fantasy that Steve would have staunchly defended upgradable RAM in the past decade has much grounding in reality. It seems entirely likely that he would have supported the switch to LPDDR to enable better battery life, higher performance and thinner form factors at the cost of sacrificing that upgradability.

> when’s the last time you tried spoiled milk then?

Good, can they move to fixing the base OS then?

For example, on MacOS, you can set an app to be on all spaces. But on reboot, despite that setting, it will stick to a single space, until you relaunch the app. It has been this way for 4-5 major OS versions.

There are PLENTY of examples just like that.

Or more generically answer the question: how can I get an arbitrary audio file into my iTunes music? (hint: good luck)

Music 'synced' with iTunes but not appearing on my other devices? There must be some kind of arbitrary difference between 'synced with iTunes' and 'synced with iCloud'. I guarantee this is some kind of (barely) maintained legacy syncing to keep the iTunes workflow alive specifically so Apple can avoid giving users a modern 'import to my cloud library' feature.

I'd need another hand to fully count all the Apple apps that have burned me in the past.

No effect on you, really. You aren’t affected by gas prices or tariffs? They are bowing down and participating in Trump’s patronage schemes. Every powerful person who does this is complicit with all the horrible things done by the Trump administration. They are endorsing Trump and his ilk with their behavior if not their words, which allows and encourages him to continue his fraud and abuse.

Bribery hurts everyone else following the law. It erodes public trust. All of us are definitely hurt by Trump's extreme and obvious levels of corruption.

> Contrast with every other tech executive

What contrast is there? Tech executives capitulated to Trump's demands, and Tim Cook did the exact same thing. The problem doesn't start and stop with the gold trophy, it encompasses things like European legislation, labor/union laws, and complex supply chains that Apple needs federal support to manage. There are convoluted motives here, and the bizzaro FIFA trophies are only the tip of the iceberg.

He personally donated at least a million dollars to Trump's inauguration, plus whatever to the campaign.

I'm using both Linux and macOS close to 20 years (Linux is even more than 20, IIRC), and macOS (aka Mac OS) used to be snappier, more stable, more uniform and had incredibly low number of papercuts around the UI. Now it has some nasty thorns here and there, while Linux is improving steadily and not regressing much as macOS.

Apple needs to overhaul their software stack. They can use a lot of sanding and polishing to bring the shine back. They need another "Snow Leopard" release, as many people say.

On the other hand, even with all these bells and whistles, they can't even get close to the composability of Linux systems. Doing so will also damage their bottom line, so they won't, and that's OK.

I've used basically all of the major operating systems for 30+ years and I cannot stand macOS. I use a Mac as one of my work devices, and off the top of my head:

* Basic things such as window management require third party tools to get things that are table stakes everywhere else. Even with third party tools doing anything with a "full screen" mode is not going to work the way you expect.

* You can't have separate scroll directions for your trackpad and your external mouse.

* External peripherals in general are a disaster. Every time I connect or disconnect from a docking station my windows are left in awkward positions sized larger than my screen and I need to drag them around

* macOS seems to store a different set of monitor orientations based on what USB port I connect my dock to - same dock, same monitors, 2 different layouts I had to configure independently. I don't even know how you could accomplish that if you wanted it - and absolutely no one wants that.

* Multiple monitors is constantly an afterthought, whether it's menus, the dock, layouts, what have you

* The Settings app is impossible to find anything in. You have to search, and that works OK sometimes, but the layout has no rhyme, reason, or comprehensible order

* Safari. Enough said.

I could keep going, but I absolutely do not associate Apple with quality software.

I'd go further and say I am constantly frustrated by how difficult their software can make basic tasks. I often find many of their UX patterns unintuitive, or even feel user hostile at times. Small example, I really want to view passwords as I type them in. I constantly miss type passwords on touch screens. User error maybe, but frustrating experience.

XCode is my least favourite IDE that I use regularily.

20+ years ago, software was so horrible that we were just tolerating it, and every new OS release was a big deal because there was hope things would get better! Today an OS release comes out and I have to be bothered by automatic "you must upgrade messages" to even care.

People forget how horrible it used to be, and if you still use windows, how much worse it could be when vs. Apple (and let's not get started on Linux).

The fact that they tie the mobile version to the OS version is just ridiculous.

- Apple Music's UI/UX is quite rough on MacOS.

- Trying to use my iPhone to type a long password on my Apple TV is hit-or-miss.

- For some reason trying to view a password using Keychain requires you to enter your credentials twice, every time, for as long as I can remember.

But “best” is far too strong a word.

For starters, most if not all their software can be described as simpler also-rans.

And in line with that approach, for a company that innovates in hardware, it does not apply that effort to software.

With two exceptions in the last two decades. The iPhone and Apple Watch operating systems & interfaces were very creative efforts. Which genuinely matched the hardware innovation.

Vision’s OS, on the hand, basically iOS-ified hardware that deserved to be treated like the first device to be positioned above and beyond the Mac. The natural interface doesn’t fall below the Mac’s, like a touch screen does. It fat exceeds it, given a keyboard-trackpad.

Instead, software wise, we get another media and toy kiosk.

I am stunned that Tim Cook didn’t see the opportunity to leave his mark with a device that took the capability crown further than the Mac, instead of falling for the 3D as cute feature un-vision.

Pro hardware. Toy software.

He has been a great CEO. But if he let Steve and his own legacy down anywhere, that is where.

That, the predictable but mostly stalled vision of software apps. And all the odd software glitches on all their devices that seem to keep cropping up, that suggest poor underlying models to me.

Their underlying systems software are a high point. The hardware integration is stand out.

You are comparing against the wrong thing.

Compare it to NeXTSTEP from 35 years ago:

https://infinitemac.org/1989/NeXTStep%201.0

NeXTSTEP was both more usable and better looking.

But it's worst in the Apple software world compared to Apple's. In fairness, Microsoft has also been in steady tragic decline for a while. I don't know about Google.

I'd rather use nano than having to write code on xcode.

Outside the two.. Fina Cut better than Premiere Pro or Resolve or Avid, Logic Pro better than Pro Tools or Ableton or many others, Motion better than After Effects, Pixelmator better than anything from Adobe or Affinity..

Come on, my dude. Only thing I haven't mentioned is OS only because that's a religion and I don't fall into MacOS one.

Apple's hardware game is strong. Software isn't, never has been.

Apple does xcode, known for being perpetually broken and an ungodly mess of whatever design it had. Isn't it enough proof to completely reject your claim?

Honestly, that's such a low bar to hit.