Comment by roncesvalles
11 hours ago
This is looking back at Apple through some very rose-tinted lenses. Apple had a big role in moving the tech industry toward "grift-adjacent". There were at least 2 contiguous decades when Apple products were unusable, poorly designed, self-important, overpriced pieces of junk. Some would argue they still are.
People bought Apple because they were subscribed to Steve Job's personality cult. Heck, they might've even bought a "not-a-flamethrower" if he tried to sell one.
I don't like Apple products really but 2 contiguous decades is a bit much? The first mac was good, os x when it first came out was phenomenal, and there aren't 2 decades in between there.
OS X was never good and still isn't. I need to install like 7 third-party usability tools to make myself productive on a Mac, including a tiling manager, a clipboard manager, and a not-broken replacement for Spotlight - very basic things.
Also, Steve Job's "font obsession" is overrated. The fonts on Windows have always been much better and render way better as well (even to this day). Helvetica Neue is widely considered one of the worst fonts and Apple used it for a whole 3 decades.
You can certainly say that now, but in 2000, a Unix with a polished desktop really was amazing imo. Agree to disagree I guess.