Comment by Nevermark
10 hours ago
Apple’s software has a kind of reliable predictability that many appreciate.
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.
The huge strike-out they made with the Vision Pro still blows my mind. I'm in the camp of people who would have possibly shifted my entire working setup to that thing if they'd made just a few less dumb choices with it, and it might have been worth it even at the high price. I still occasionally waste my time checking out the latest to see if they've made any headway towards making it useful, because I'm still recovering from the shock that they haven't. The only way I can see the current state making any sense is if they just wanted to squeeze as much field usage data as possible from early adopters of an overpriced prototype, but that seems so far outside of how Apple normally positions its products that it's hard to believe.
> I'm in the camp of people who would have possibly shifted my entire working setup to that thing if they'd made just a few less dumb choices
That describes me too. I even did for a while. But it just made the incomprehensible lack of any software ambition more painful.
The software is the only reason the Vision isn't worth the price. A real Pro OS, paired with an Studio M5-Ultra, or with its own M5-Ultra, would be an amazing work environment.
(The only hardware they would need to upgrade for the latter, i.e. its own Ultra, would be making live-battery swapping convenient. Which they should have already done.)