>One of us, Tognazzini, worked at Apple with Steve Jobs in the early days. Norman joined Apple shortly after Jobs departed and then left shortly after Jobs returned in 1996. We were not present during the shift from the days of easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products (where Apple could honestly brag that no manual was necessary), to today’s products where no manual is included, but is often necessary. We do know that before Jobs returned, Apple had a three-pronged approach to product design: user experience, engineering, and marketing, with all three taking part in the design cycle from day one to when the product shipped.
>Today’s Apple has eliminated the emphasis on making products understandable and usable, and instead has imposed a Bauhaus minimalist design ethic on its products.
I actually love this article because when people look back with rose tinted glasses about how things were great when Forstall was around, I can send them this article about how Apple's usability suffered when Jobs came back, an era where they claim that Apple's products was the best they ever were from a usability stand point.
Tesla has a small rabid fan base (here and on Reddit) that are willing to overlook its shortcomings. If Tesla actually delivers on its Model 3 any time soon and manages to penetrate the mainstream at all, you can be sure those customers won't be giving Tesla a pass.
Take a look at that thread in /r/teslamotors (which is full of Tesla fanboys). Tesla's problems with quality and reliability are talked about as if that's what they're known for, and the comments are being upvoted (at the same time they're very optimistic about it improving but that's to be expected given its /r/teslamotors).
The problem for Tesla is they are 1990s Apple. A bigger problem for them is if when Apple enters the car market in 2020, they come in as 2015 Apple.
Spotify is truly fucked if Apple is going to pay during the free trial AND pay higher overall royalties. When the negotiations come up again with Spotify, who is already running increasing losses, things will just get worse.
Tech/media companies dependent on advertising should just adapt. As techies told a complaining music industry, just do concerts and sell t-shirts. Now maybe this won't be as profitable as the current business model, and maybe the industry will be smaller and more consolidated, but that's capitalism. No one guaranteed you would keep growing and making more money.
Perhaps you'll have to stop using third-party ad networks and start selling and creating your own ads. Native ads like Buzzfeed's sponsored posts could work. It'll probably require more capital and won't scale as well, but you'll just have to deal with that.
If what Tim Cook said could be easily discounted as puffery, it would be largely ignored by the Google fanboys. But the fact that you don't even have to believe what Tim Cook says or even trust him, because Apple's business model doesn't benefit from the perverse incentive that Google's does, is driving them crazy. And no iAd doesn't count, that's a service for third party developers to monetize their own apps. There are no ads in Apple's first party apps. It's also been criticized by advertisers because of Apple's protection of customer privacy. http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-apple-catch-a-break-...
It's an interesting twist for HN, which is normally ready to take strong pro-privacy positions in the wake of the Snowden leaks under the premise of potential abuse by governments.
Samsung Electronics is a publicly traded corporation and the market value is what it would cost to acquire them (plus some premium). This is sort of academic because it would be a dumb use of Apple's cash to acquire them and probably wouldn't be approved.
That part about Andreessen warning about "risks" was really just a response to Bill Gurley sounding the alarm in a WSJ story. Until that time if you followed Andreessen on Twitter, you'd see him talking down the idea of a tech bubble, mocking Janet Yellen for her warning about valuations in social media, etc. It was basically that or go against another prominent VC in a fight about valuations. And this is not like the rest of Wall Street, there's not going to be any Icahn vs. Ackman style fights in the VC world. Relationships matter too much.
But at least 10 years from now once the current cycle has come to an end Andreessen can point to that one time he was on the record as warning about "risks" when really his M.O until then was to talk up valuations.
It's really amusing that so many of you actually think that Apple is threatened by Pebble in the slightest that they would remove apps that supported it.
I love that coders are all worried about their "craft" being devalued while these are the very same people that will unironically tell music artists that they should sell t-shirts and to do concerts.
Well my friends, like the music industry it's time to adapt. It's time to start selling t-shirts.
>Today’s Apple has eliminated the emphasis on making products understandable and usable, and instead has imposed a Bauhaus minimalist design ethic on its products.
I actually love this article because when people look back with rose tinted glasses about how things were great when Forstall was around, I can send them this article about how Apple's usability suffered when Jobs came back, an era where they claim that Apple's products was the best they ever were from a usability stand point.