How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

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It's not hard to alienate your loyal customers when all the company does is focus on iPhones. But, to be fair, that's where Apple makes most of its money these days but still, it's kinda crappy to thumb your nose at all your other customers.

While the Mac generates about 10 percent of Apple sales, the company can't afford to alienate professional designers and other business customers. After all, they helped fuel Apple's revival in the late 1990s. In a stinging critique, Peter Kirn, founder of a website for music and video creators, wrote: "This is a company with no real vision for what its most creative users actually do with their most advanced machines."
 
No surprise; historically speaking this is what Apple does. Steve Jobs creates an inspired interface and Apple surges. Steve Job's departs and all innovation stops and Apple flounders. It is a repeat of the 1990's all over again except Steve Jobs cannot return for an Act III.
 
thejokker said:
Steve Jobs creates an inspired interface and Apple surges. Steve Job's departs and all innovation stops and Apple flounders. It is a repeat of the 1990's all over again except Steve Jobs cannot return for an Act III.
Click to expand...

I always thought of Steve Jobs as more of a Billy Mays. But, I agree that he did come up with some of the Apple inspired uniqueness.
 
I bought a laptop for a customer this week. When it arrived I was amazed...and pleased that the HDMI, ethernet, power and USB ports were at the back of the laptop. This is where they used to be on laptops 15 years ago and quite frankly where they should be. It looked rather neat on the desk without all the wires sprouting from the sides.

The 1080p screen, 6GB ram and SSD was nice too. All for £350! Things are getting better it seems. The more other manufacturers realise the Apple way of design isn't actually the best way, the better.

My advice to Apple? Dump Ive.
 
thejokker said:
No surprise; historically speaking this is what Apple does. Steve Jobs creates an inspired interface and Apple surges. Steve Job's departs and all innovation stops and Apple flounders. It is a repeat of the 1990's all over again except Steve Jobs cannot return for an Act III.
Click to expand...
Jobs didn't create that interface (if you're taking about the GUI), but I get what you're saying.
 
You'd think by now those die hard apple fans would fully understand that part of the core ethos is "fuck you, buy it, and then next year buy it again"

I mean unless you've been under a rock for the past 15 years, you should know by now apple will do whatever it wants customer demands be damned.
 
mynamehere said:
Jobs didn't create that interface (if you're taking about the GUI), but I get what you're saying.
Click to expand...

Jobs wasn't responsible for the creation of the Apple I/II, nor the Mac, nor the iMac, nor iPod, nor iPhone, nor iPad, etc. Several of these he fought against in the beginning. But he was able to see what products could sell, and could rally people behind them.
 
Shotglass01 said:
I always thought of Steve Jobs as more of a Billy Mays. But, I agree that he did come up with some of the Apple inspired uniqueness.
Click to expand...
Steve Jobs realized that many affluent consumers with lots of disposable income know absolutely nothing about electronics, and want it to be:

1) Simple
2) Reliable
3) Pretty

So he focused on retard proofing (without calling the customers retards... that's important), talking about innovation but generally using older tried and tested technology, and putting it in a pretty case with as few "doodads" as possible for aesthetic appeal. He even took it to a stupid level, requiring the redesign of a hidden system board because he didn't think the traces were pretty.

And yeah, he then adopted the proper liberal "I'm better than you" persona to market to that crowd, who believed they were buying superiority.
 
Worked on a Mac Classic in school and others and Macs at my first job. Then when we saw most of the same applications were available on the PC just switched to the PC and have never looked back. Photoshop is Photoshop, Premiere is premiere, fireworks, Dreamweaver, etc. why pay the markup?
 
Ducman69 said:
*Snip*

So he focused on retard proofing (without calling the customers retards... that's important), talking about innovation but generally using older tried and tested technology, and putting it in a pretty case with as few "doodads" as possible for aesthetic appeal. He even took it to a stupid level, requiring the redesign of a hidden system board because he didn't think the traces were pretty.
Click to expand...

Not in total disagreement, but there was a time when both the iPod and iPhone were the must have items of the day. I give Apple, maybe not personally Jobs, some credit in the interface design. Blackberry was all anyone had ever known before the relatively small iPhone touch screen at the time. But, when the iPhone took off, it really took off. I know Apple and Jobs weren't the first to "invent" stuff like that. But they seemed to be at the edge in a time when nobody knew different and took advantage of marketing it that way.
 
daglesj said:
I bought a laptop for a customer this week. When it arrived I was amazed...and pleased that the HDMI, ethernet, power and USB ports were at the back of the laptop. This is where they used to be on laptops 15 years ago and quite frankly where they should be. It looked rather neat on the desk without all the wires sprouting from the sides.

The 1080p screen, 6GB ram and SSD was nice too. All for £350! Things are getting better it seems. The more other manufacturers realise the Apple way of design isn't actually the best way, the better.

My advice to Apple? Dump Ive.
Click to expand...

And Cook.
 
Shotglass01 said:
Not in total disagreement, but there was a time when both the iPod and iPhone were the must have items of the day. I give Apple, maybe not personally Jobs, some credit in the interface design. Blackberry was all anyone had ever known before the relatively small iPhone touch screen at the time. But, when the iPhone took off, it really took off. I know Apple and Jobs weren't the first to "invent" stuff like that. But they seemed to be at the edge in a time when nobody knew different and took advantage of marketing it that way.
Click to expand...

I never considered iPod and iPhone must have items, and I've never owned either.

For mp3's I purchased an inexpensive MP3 player for about 1/5 the price of an iPod.
The simple plug in the USB cable, and drop & drag interface was much easier than iTunes.

I also had a Blackberry for work. The small iPhone screen was unusable for me with my large fingers. The physical keyboard on the Blackberry was much easier to use. It wasn't until the larger screen phones (like the Samsung S3) came out, that the touch screen keyboard was usable for me.
 
Shotglass01 said:
Not in total disagreement, but there was a time when both the iPod and iPhone were the must have items of the day. I give Apple, maybe not personally Jobs, some credit in the interface design. Blackberry was all anyone had ever known before the relatively small iPhone touch screen at the time. But, when the iPhone took off, it really took off. I know Apple and Jobs weren't the first to "invent" stuff like that. But they seemed to be at the edge in a time when nobody knew different and took advantage of marketing it that way.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but my PocketPC at the time was far better than the first iPhone. I had more applications and could do far more with it.
 
Design1stcode2nd said:
Worked on a Mac Classic in school and others and Macs at my first job. Then when we saw most of the same applications were available on the PC just switched to the PC and have never looked back. Photoshop is Photoshop, Premiere is premiere, fireworks, Dreamweaver, etc. why pay the markup?
Click to expand...

Because some idiots are TRUE BELIEVERS, and can't be bothered to think for themselves.
 
nutzo said:
I never considered iPod and iPhone must have items, and I've never owned either.
Click to expand...

Millions upon millions of others did. The only Apple 'device' I've ever owned was a IIc.

NoOther said:
I'm sorry but my PocketPC at the time was far better than the first iPhone. I had more applications and could do far more with it.
Click to expand...

I said I never gave Apple credit for 'inventing' these things.
 
I know several Apple fans. All were disappointed by the laptops this year. They are still buying them, but they are not what they wanted.
I work in iOS development and use a Mac at work daily. I like OSX. Mac track pads are the best in the business. However, USB-C only is a shit move. Factor in you are limited to 16gigs and not the most power CPU - and then require about $150 in adapters, screw that! (I'll let my employer buy my upgrade - but I won't be buying one for personal use. I'll stick with my old servers and desktop PC.)
 
steakman1971 said:
I know several Apple fans. All were disappointed by the laptops this year. They are still buying them, but they are not what they wanted.
I work in iOS development and use a Mac at work daily. I like OSX. Mac track pads are the best in the business. However, USB-C only is a shit move. Factor in you are limited to 16gigs and not the most power CPU - and then require about $150 in adapters, screw that! (I'll let my employer buy my upgrade - but I won't be buying one for personal use. I'll stick with my old servers and desktop PC.)
Click to expand...
Don't forget the things cost 2 grand. I almost got a tricked out Lenovo P60 15" with 64GB of ram, 1TB NVMe SSD, etc for 1700 on Cyber Monday with a sale, but didn't pull the trigger. Their value isn't, and imho has never been there, but it obviously does not stop the people that like them. (Not me, I've never bought an Apple device for myself, and don't see that ever changing. I disagree so heavily on how to treat your customers, I don't think I'd ever support them with my money.)
 
They lost the education market about 7 years ago when they disallowed third parties to sell to schools and brought those sales in house. They also lost me as an education customer when they stopped giving schools credit to purchase more equipment. For Example: I would place an order for 50 imacs and they would throw in a certain amount of free products that would allow us to order 5 more for no cost. Those were the perks that I always enjoyed as a mac user. Not anymore...
 
thejokker said:
No surprise; historically speaking this is what Apple does. Steve Jobs creates an inspired interface and Apple surges. Steve Job's departs and all innovation stops and Apple flounders. It is a repeat of the 1990's all over again except Steve Jobs cannot return for an Act III.
Click to expand...
Why do I get this image in my head of Tim Cook with an Ouija board in the basement of Apple headquarters? :dead:
 
mynamehere said:
Jobs didn't create that interface (if you're taking about the GUI), but I get what you're saying.
Click to expand...
True; he did not create it per se however he was the director and shaped the development towards his vision of the final product. No one in Apple has that vision...
 
whateverer said:
Because some idiots are TRUE BELIEVERS, and can't be bothered to think for themselves.
Click to expand...

You are giving them too much credit. They need to be able to show that logo at the coffee shop.

Want to see them having a heart attack?

Simple, tell them that apple should license the OS to others.

And for the few zealots here, it is a good time for apple to do so.

They dont depend on the Mac line anymore and since they dont want to bother with hardware, they can leave that to Lenovo/ Dell, Etc and they can make some laptops for the fanatics, so they can mil them by selling them dongles.

The rest would be happy making or buying approved "hackintoshes".
 
grtitan said:
You are giving them too much credit. They need to be able to show that logo at the coffee shop.

Want to see them having a heart attack?

Simple, tell them that apple should license the OS to others.

And for the few zealots here, it is a good time for apple to do so.

They dont depend on the Mac line anymore and since they dont want to bother with hardware, they can leave that to Lenovo/ Dell, Etc and they can make some laptops for the fanatics, so they can mil them by selling them dongles.

The rest would be happy making or buying approved "hackintoshes".
Click to expand...

Apple tried that before :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarMax

It was disastrous for the company. Apple's business model depends on vendor lock in. If you can buy a Macintosh clone for cheaper, there is no reason to spend money on an overpriced Macintosh.
 
Shotglass01 said:
I always thought of Steve Jobs as more of a Billy Mays. But, I agree that he did come up with some of the Apple inspired uniqueness.
Click to expand...

He didn't "create" those things so much as berate the engineers and make them go back to the drawing board over and over and over until they got it perfect.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/in-praise-of-bad-steve/246242/

Last year a former Apple employee related his favorite Steve Jobs story to me. I have no way of knowing if it is true, so take it for what it's worth. I think it nicely captures the man who changed the world four times over. When engineers working on the very first iPod completed the prototype, they presented their work to Steve Jobs for his approval. Jobs played with the device, scrutinized it, weighed it in his hands, and promptly rejected it. It was too big.

The engineers explained that they had to reinvent inventing to create the iPod, and that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller. Jobs was quiet for a moment. Finally he stood, walked over to an aquarium, and dropped the iPod in the tank. After it touched bottom, bubbles floated to the top.

"Those are air bubbles," he snapped. "That means there's space in there. Make it smaller."

Steve Jobs was a genius, and one of the most important businessmen and inventors of our time. But he was not a kindly, soft-spoken sage who might otherwise live atop a mountain in India, dispatching wisdom to pilgrims. He was a taskmaster who knew how to get things done. "Real artists ship" was an Apple battle cry from the earliest days. Everyone, by now, knows about the Steve Jobs "reality distortion field" -- the charismatic Care Bear Stare that compels otherwise reasonable people to spend weeks in line for a slightly faster telephone. In his biography of Jobs, journalist Alan Deutschman described the Apple co-founder's lesser-known hero-shithead roller coaster. "He could be Good Steve or he could be Bad Steve. When he was Bad Steve, he didn't seem to care about the severe damage he caused to egos or emotions so long as he pushed for greatness." When confronted with the full "terrifying" wrath of Bad Steve (even over the slightest of details), the brains at Apple would push themselves beyond all personal limits to find a way to meet Jobs's exacting demands, and somehow return to his good graces. And the process would repeat itself. "Steve was willing to be loved or feared, whatever worked." As Bud Tribble, Vice President of Software Technology at Apple explained. "It let the engineers know that it wasn't OK to be sloppy in anything they did, even the 99 percent that Steve would never look at."
Click to expand...

Jobs didn't care about making gadgets that competed with every latest social media feature/trend or went head-to-head with bleeding edge technology. He wanted products that had a basic feature set, were usable by the masses, and were flawlessly polished.

Cook and Ive have made the same mistake that the last pre-Jobs crop made: they've tried to make Apple a technology company that follows all the trends and keeps up with the Jones' feature sets. Apple has never excelled at that.
 
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damicatz said:
Apple tried that before :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarMax

It was disastrous for the company. Apple's business model depends on vendor lock in. If you can buy a Macintosh clone for cheaper, there is no reason to spend money on an overpriced Macintosh.
Click to expand...

Sadly, in your haste to prove me wrong, you ignored when I said that apple back then only had Mac's as their income, unlike apple's today, which gets around 10% of their income from Macs.

Get another excuse, because that one is old and tired.
 
InorganicMatter said:
He didn't "create" those things so much as berate the engineers and make them go back to the drawing board over and over and over until they got it perfect.

Jobs didn't care about making gadgets that competed with every latest social media feature/trend or went head-to-head with bleeding edge technology. He wanted products that had a basic feature set, were usable by the masses, and were flawlessly polished.
Click to expand...

I disagree. My statement is 'he did come up with some of the Apple inspired uniqueness' which I stand by. I didn't mean he didn't use whips and chains to get there or Foxconn employees jumping off buildings for insurance payouts. I know what Apple was. I know it was as evil as Satan's wife, but for folks to sit here and say they didn't invent or create a niche is just untrue. They built a massively profitable company out of it.
 
grtitan said:
You are giving them too much credit. They need to be able to show that logo at the coffee shop.

Want to see them having a heart attack?

Simple, tell them that apple should license the OS to others.

And for the few zealots here, it is a good time for apple to do so.

They dont depend on the Mac line anymore and since they dont want to bother with hardware, they can leave that to Lenovo/ Dell, Etc and they can make some laptops for the fanatics, so they can mil them by selling them dongles.

The rest would be happy making or buying approved "hackintoshes".
Click to expand...

Steve Jobs created The Religion of Apple. He took his "lock them in, and give them a show they won't forget" inspiration from all the great guilt-tripping and hell-bound religions of the world, and just softened things a little to gain new fanatics.

He saw first-hand how the company fell apart after he left the first time, even though they had the success of the Mac to keep them rolling. He realize that they needed some more guidance than he had given them previously, to keep shit in-line.

He rebuilt the company in his own image, using intimidation, secretiveness among employees and projects, and other standard religious tactics, and that's not going away anytime soon. So no, the platform will be locked down for the foreseeable future. Because Tim is no prophet, he''s just another disciple.

Hell, the only Apple service you can use outside Mac OS is iTunes, and the Windows port has always been shit. You can't develop for iOS without a mac, and apps like Final Cut X still keep the idiots locked-in, so Apple likes that just fine. They convince people to pay a minimum of $1300 for a quad core.
 
Last edited:
whateverer said:
Steve Jobs created The Religion of Apple. He took his "lock them in, and give them a show they won't forget" inspiration from all the great guilt-tripping and hell-bound religions of the world, and just softened things a little to gain new fanatics.

He saw first-hand how the company fell apart after he left the first time, even though they had the success of the Mac to keep them rolling. He realize that they needed some more guidance than he had given them previously, to keep shit in-line.

He rebuilt the company in his own image, using intimidation, secretiveness among employees and projects, and other standard religious tactics, and that's not going away anytime soon. So no, the platform will be locked down for the foreseeable future. Because Tim is no prophet, he''s just another disciple.

Hell, the only Apple service you can use outside Mac OS is iTunes, and the Windows port has always been shit. You can't develop for iOS without a mac, and apps like Final Cut X still keep the idiots locked-in, so Apple likes that just fine. They convince people to pay a minimum of $1300 for a quad core.
Click to expand...

spot on.

I do wonder what will happen when one quarter, their profits goes down more than expected. I'm pretty sure Tim and a couple more will be shown the door and the cult might be finally dissolved.
 
whateverer said:
The difference there is, you can actually find other options for Office. Most do a passable job of being compatible, and you know about the Office VBA lock-in going in.

http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/best-microsoft-office-alternatives

Same thing goes for any other development environment. But you have a much large choice outside Apple.
Click to expand...

I don't see a clear comparison. There are alternatives to Mac's too. It's other operating systems. They also have high levels of compatibility. I think most of you, based on your attacks, fail to recognize that a lot of people are actually satisfied with their products.

I got into it for music originally. Music and movies are that important to me and NO ONE offers a better all in one experience then Apple when it comes to integrating media in to your life.
 
Love macbook pros, before this year, especially in my line of work and development I do. Having a *nix based modern OS at your fingertips has been nice. I know some folks wont get it. But, my 2015 MBPr is probably my last one. Especially with windows native *nix support now and new macs just being an overall POS and step backwards. I run windars rig for gaming, and am not a zealot by any stretch, but they definitely completely lost me with this latest release. Next upgrade to my working laptop will most likely be a surface pro of some sort.
 
Why would you get a surface pro? I haven't felt a need to upgrade my 2015 MBPr, is there something yours isn't capable of doing anymore? OS X is getting more efficient, not less, and the system is actually more responsive than it was a year ago with older os versions. I built it with 16GB RAM and 500GB drive and feel that should last me for quite a while. I imagine this will last me until it physically breaks so I couldn't be bothered less by the fact that the brand new MacBook isn't knocking my socks off. I didn't even pay much attention to any of their launches this year.
 
The only thing a MAC 'loyalist' is, is someone who didn't know Windows 7 (and on presumably).
 
The Cobra said:
They lost the education market about 7 years ago when they disallowed third parties to sell to schools and brought those sales in house. They also lost me as an education customer when they stopped giving schools credit to purchase more equipment. For Example: I would place an order for 50 imacs and they would throw in a certain amount of free products that would allow us to order 5 more for no cost. Those were the perks that I always enjoyed as a mac user. Not anymore...
Click to expand...
So a 10% savings for a AIO, hockey puck controlled device when you could buy a far more capable PC for half that. Great deal!
 
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