“Additional hardware and software used.” (Small print)
What? Really?!
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Joined 8 months ago
Cake day: October 25th, 2023
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1·8 months agoThank you mein freund. Although, I can’t think why – we’re fools. We elected Boorish Johnson. We must be.
What happens if you remove the SIM, disconnect from cellular and wifi?
I’m in the UK. Can I change the date to pre-Brexit 2015? [Drifts into adolescent memory] Or 2000?
The articles below reveal that Federighi (Head of SW) has been struggling with the annual release scramble for some years now.
Usually, I’m the first to lay Apple’s declining quality record at the door of Federighi, poor resourcing etc., but perhaps that’s not the whole picture. Maybe, just maybe, the lion’s share rests with Apple’s obsession with annual sw releases to ship with annual hw releases. Hardware could still be annual, but surely this annual release obsession needs to be broken. S.Jobs recognised this. How can someone get this through to the present CEO?
A welcome article, but one that raises more questions than answers.
In 2019, Federighi adopted a policy that his division calls The Pact: “We will never knowingly allow regressions in the build. And when we find them, we will fix them quickly.”
In other words, if the company finds that the addition of a new feature breaks something else in the software — a regression — that bug needs to be immediately fixed. It seems clear that Apple had struggled to follow this guidance with development of iOS 18, macOS 15 and watchOS 11, necessitating the pause.
This ‘no-regression’ policy was introduced in 2019 (round the time of macOS Mojave). Subsequently, we’ve had 4 years of releases where reliability (IMO) has been declining each year. According to this report, Apple has taken special measures to halt development (for 1 wk) for iOS 18, macOS 15 and watchOS 11 to wheedle out the quality issues. I don’t know whether to jump for joy or weep. I mean, Federighi didn’t introduce these measures for macOS 11, 12, 13 or 14, so does that mean he finds their quality acceptable? If so, exactly how bad is the upcoming macOS 15?
What does it say about Apple’s tight development cycle that they’ll only allow 1 extra week in their timeline to fix bugs?
It’s obvious how this brainchild originated. A certain CEO (who’s not famed for his imagination) was engaged in his favourite activity – doodling, applying decorative ornaments to his surname when, wondering how to make his mark on the world, at last it came to him – a groundbreaking idea – “Cook! That’s it. Food.”
“But sir –”
“No ‘buts’ Zack. Shareholders’ll love it. Now, hop to it.”
“But sir –”
[CEO adopts lotus position and pray hands.]
Great insight into the talisman. It’s a shame that someone who personifies the very values he despises took over.
The problem isn’t Apple being greedy, they are a profit making company……that’s what they are supposed to do.
Sorry, I have to object to that defence. It’s absurd nonsense in the highest degree. Many companies are commercial. Banks are commercial entities, but what separates them from those lenders that charge 1000% (e.g. loan sharks) is a level of unscrupulousness that is beyond the pale. Just as companies extorting their customers is beyond the pale. Being a commercial company does not justify rampant rapaciousness.
To all its “new” devices, I’ll bet. Released after this AI is ushered in.
So, winners get some apparel, a pin set (whatever that is), and bragging rights that their app was selected by Apple. And what follows is Apple steals the best ideas and makes their own imitation apps. Apple is notorious for doing exactly this with smaller companies, but positioning themselves to pilfer the ideas of aspirational students is a new low. (Also, it’s yet another sign that Apple, under Tim Cook, have few ideas of their own.)
Apple argues that its opposition to 3rd party App Stores is that with only one App Store offering approved-only apps, it better serves customer’s needs because Apple can oversee security and quality control. That sounds altruistic enough, but if that were genuinely true, Apple could minimise their fees to only cover these costs and no more. Instead, Apple takes a whopping 30% bite of not just the initial app purchase price, but every purchase made in the app. Apple are learning the hard way that the EU Commissioners weren’t born yesterday.
AFAIK they don’t circulate emails to your contacts, but smart TV makers routinely overstep the boundaries of acceptability and harvest data that should remain private. On LG TVs, for instance, if you insert a USB, the contents of that USB are read and sent back to HQ to further add to the other data they capture about you e.g. watching patterns, which sources you use, which programmes you watch etc. They cash in by leveraging such data. Low TV prices are effectively subsidised by this model.