I’m not flaming Apple here. They make many fine products and employ many fine people. But all those products are perverted, and the leadership warped, by the will of a fucking madman.
As those who have done so will doubtlessly have guessed already, I have just had to service Apple products.
A pair of iPods to be specific.
Two fucking iPods with the exact same model number, that use different parts. Not obscure parts, but the battery. Who would think that two A1136 iPods bought at the same time would have different batteries just because they have different hard drive capacities?
OK, I can order another battery and wait for it to arrive. But would it fucking kill anyone to give a different model a different model number? No, the fucking cutesy Apple habit of “generations” and substantial redesigns while keeping the same model number has to come from the sick, twisted mind of Steve Fucking Jobs.
But before you can find this out, you have to get the fucking thing open.
Jobs’ derangement manifests it’s self in his button and screw phobia. No engineer would willingly design a product that is so difficult to service. It goes against everything the profession stands for. They would have to be browbeaten by this flaming asshole and his hand-picked minions.
What the hell is wrong with screws you fuckwad?!
Instead, people have to use mini pry-bars to try to open these fucking things. And the devices come in two forms - plastic that will break and tear and metal that will work, but that you will stab and slice yourself with.
Apple’s (Jobs’ that is) products are produced by a megalomaniac who utterly abuses every person who works for him to get them to do it exactly his way and his vision. He is successful in that he produces products that Apple’s customers absolutely love and are pretty to look at and supposedly easy to use. I personally don’t care for anything about his way of doing business except that it spurs late to the game competition that I do feel comfortable using. I don’t want my various media to be controlled by this nut, I want to use media for my own purposes without being tethered to the nasty Steve. So I wait for the more open competition and thank Jobs for lighting a fire under their worthless asses. And I am grateful that no one I know is currently working for Apple.
And the theory behind this? To prevent the end user from making any modification. Why? So Apple can make you buy the new “Generation” when you decide the new features are worth it instead of a much cheaper 3rd party upgrade.
Say what you want about Microsoft but Apple is at least equally evil.
Universe knows Apple and Jobs are no flawless genii, but of all the misdirected rants this is about the frikkin’ pits.
Coulda fucking fooled me.
And you have no frikkin’ idea that these two sentences might be connected in any way whatsoever?
Which, if you had your way, WOULDN’T EXIST. Remember what Apple were like before Jobs’ return? Any chance of an iPod? I don’t think so.
Me. Who the fuck would assume sight unseen they’d automatically be the same? A bigger hard drive might need a bigger battery - inconceivable! You deranged possum you.
So we’ve finally arrived at your core strength. Well done dude, if this career all goes even further wrong you have an opening doing floor stock for Wal-mart.
Oh yes, because I’m sure he contracted pancreatic cancer fretting over frikkin’ model numbers - the* very key *to Apple’s success.
In which our protagonist reveals he has NO FUCKING IDEA what true engineering entails. Aside from such exotica as familiarity with MORE THAT ONE FRIKKIN’ TOOL (himself excluded) engineering’s base value is flexibility. Adaptability. The ability to, you know, ENGINEER in the circumstances in which you find yourself, not the circumstances you would design had you the power - which thank the frikk you do not.
Can’t handle anything other than a screw? You are clearly entirely unsuited to your profession. Move over to Fisher-Price or some other such product line that a born non-engineer such as your spastic self might be able to handle - on a good day.
No, you ridiculous clown. Apple’s entire success with user interfaces is removing from users options and accesses they don’t frikkin’ need. Notice how almost every complaint about MS products circles around the “bloatware” drainhole? No-one ever says that about Apple products. Apple judge - overwhelmingly correctly - what options are useful to present to the users and what it is destructive to usability to present to users. One button. Name one other niche technology provider who made the leap into end-user land like Apple. You can’t because no-one else considers the user experience first, AND THEN constructs the interface and the product accordingly. MS design the product they want to write and sell AND THEN advertise as if they had taken users into consideration from the start - which they haven’t.
You know how Vista came to be? MS were getting slammed because of weak security in their entire Windows product line. Their response was to throw the responsibility onto the user - oh, you said YES to the 50 questions we asked you as to whether you REALLY REALLY wanted to download that file? In that case it’s your own frikkin’ fault you got trojanned. Then they got slammed for a hostile user interface - "but, but, but we made it as much like Mac OS as we could without being sued!’ - so their response is to either cozen the user away from access to files they themselves wrote - imagine someone playing a computer game which installs automatically into c:/program files/ (as MS themselves do) wanting to save a game there! - or force you to log in as Admin and so bypass the entire frikkin’ security structure. The desperate desperate fools.
Apple locks down their shit to stifle any and all competition. That is ALL they intend to do. Go ahead with your Apple jerk-off session, but face the facts. Apple intentionally stifles innovation.
He doesn’t just take away things you don’t need–he takes away things he says you don’t need. If he were really doing it for usability’s sake, he’d still provide a way to do what you want, but hide it from the average user. That way the power user could do it.
But that isn’t what he does. He specifically designs everything where fixing it requires you to use his services. He specifically tries to stop anyone from using techniques that do get around his restrictions. He’s good with publicity, throws in a few flashy UI elements, and then everyone thinks he’s great.
Why? Because so many people think with their emotions, not their brains. He’s learned the trick that Anthony used against Brutus. Everything he does is designed to make you like something, not because you’ve weighed all the options, but because you feel like it’s good.
See all the people who heard about the iPad, and didn’t want it, but then actually had it in their hands, and loved it. Or the people who will pop in and defend Apple any time someone articulates a legitimate problem. Both of those are emotional reasoning. And I detest encouraging ignorance on that level.
I’m a significant Apple user. In the last four years, I’ve bought two MacBook Pros, one MacBook, two iPhones, and one MacPro desktop. Their hardware works great for me, and I use it. But I feel they’re every bit as cutthroat as Microsoft are, perhaps even moreso. I hate the integrated batteries, I hate the power cords, and I hate how much work (not that it’s terribly difficult) it is to upgrade the hard drives or RAM on the unibody MBP. (Oddly enough, it’s easy on the cheaper MacBook–at least the non-unibody version I have.) Really, when you look back to that famous 1984 ad, it’s hard to believe Apple is the “little guy” and not the authoritarian dictator on the monitors. However, the good, for me, outweighs the bad, so I stick with Apple.
Anyhow, the crazy Chinese computer animators really captured the “spirit” of Apple after the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco.
Yeah, outrageous! How dare Jobs make products that people like or try and want! Much better he should make them the way you like and want, since what you like and want isn’t based on emo…oh, wait! It is!
Seriously. Can you not see how ridiculous your complaints are here? You are actually excoriating someone for making products that people like and want to buy because he doesn’t make them in the way that you’d like and want to buy them, despite the fact that as a would-be “power user” you likely don’t make up more than a very small percentage of Apple’s target market.
The fact of the matter is that Jobs doesn’t want people adding crapware to the products that Apple makes. Doing so results in products that run sluggishly or not at all; that are susceptible to all sorts of software problems not of his making but which he has to hire customer support people to deal with; and which inhibit sales because people who’ve added that crapware to their formerly pristine Apple products start complaining to their friends and co-workers about what a shit product their Apple computer/iPod/iPad is, how it doesn’t work right, and how Apple’s customer support sucks.
Apple isn’t out to please the relatively few techies and power users who want the ability to modify and undo all its hard work; they are in business to make products that the most people like and want to buy, and they achieve this by making products that are dependable, easy to use, and work like they’re supposed to. By creating their products in such a way that power users or anyone else can open, tweak and screw around with, Apple would accomplish nothing but to cause itself problems and a lessening of sales.
According to the Harvard Business Review Jobs is the best CEO in the world, and I couldn’t agree more. Cite I love Apple’s products and the thought and discipline and courage that goes into making them look and perform the way they do and in keeping them that way. It’s my hope that Jobs will be making products for the next two decades at least, provided that he - and we - are lucky enough that he lives that long.
In many ways I respect Apple’s designs and I think it’s great that they have pushed UI design and produced wonderful consumer devices…
What I hate is that Apple have used the success of their designs and the power of their brand to push a model of computing that is essentially complete Apple lock-in. Microsoft wish they could get lock-in as good as Apple. Every single decision they have made in the last ten years has been to increase and expand this lock-in. Apple are pushing the computer and entertainment industry in a direction that restricts user freedom and the more success they have, the more iPhones and iMacs they sell the closer this future of complete user restriction gets. By the time everybody notices it will be too late.
I like Apple’s designs but I hate everything that Jobs and Apple stand for and pray for their failure. The Apple future is not somewhere I want to go.
And Jobs may be the best CEO but he’s also a complete asshole. In fact that’s probably why he’s a great CEO.
iPod, iPhone, iMac - they’re consumer devices. To me, it’s like buying a toaster oven and wanting to mod it to cook a blue whale. Sure, a handful of folks on message boards think this is what a toaster oven should be capable of, but most regular folks don’t want a toaster oven that’s 100 feet wide. Jobs understands this, and that’s why he sells a ton of those devices.
Buy a whale oven if that’s what you want to cook (you whale eating bastard!)
Surely there is a compromise position between “Allow any and all user modifications” and “don’t even allow the user to replace the freaking battery themselves”.
I’d like Apple a lot more if they could find that position.
