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Brave Ulysses
BANNED
I am worthless beyond hope.
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
 
2015-12-03, 15:37

With unprecedented growth and the largest profits in history its certainly hard to find fault in Apple's operations but throughout their modern success I've always been interested in what they "skate by" on and the big releases that they clearly don't love and that just kind of linger around until they die or become completely irrelevant.

The news story update today about the ebook antitrust lawsuit made me think about it again today. The iBook store.... does anyone use that? So much effort was put in by Apple (and subsequently so many legal problems) yet almost upon arrival it landed without excitement and I honestly have not opened the storefront in probably a year or more.

Beyond the iBook store, it seems like Apple has a very surprisingly high number of products/initiatives/services that just kind of exist but see no attention, no innovation, and at worst... provide a very negative user experience.

The Mac App Store is another example that has made headlines recently. The Mac App Store has not evolved at all since Day 1. Why? I don't know. It's easy to make the excuse that the Mac is a small platform compared to iOS.... but on its own, it's a huge... growing... business. And Apple has incredible experience in making good online stores.... the iOS store blows the Mac App Store away. Now major developers are pulling out of the Mac App Store in droves. Why has THE storefront for mac software not been a high priority for Apple? Presumably Apple will pour some resources and attention into in the next few months to address the latest complaints but why is that what it takes for so many things with Apple these days? They are incredibly complacent with so many customer experience aspects. About the only thing they are consistently innovating on and not showing signs of complacency is the iPhone hardware. (and argument could be made that they showed some complacency on iPhones with screen size, but I think that was a legitimate ideological problem).

What other products/services does Apple just not seem to truly care about?

Off the top of my head:
1. Apple Watch (I truly think Apple missed the mark on this.... still has a lot of potential... but I think they have spent the last year going back to the drawing board instead of hammering home on improvements.... the WatchOS app store is barren of useful apps... I love my Apple Watch but I do not use a single third party app on a daily or even weekly basis)

2. Mac Mini

3. Displays... the thunderbolt display is a great display... but no improvements and no price cut?

4. iPod (understandable)

5. Pro software

6. Photos.... iCloud Photo Library works great... but the Photos app is still worse than iPhoto and Aperture were at each of their primes.

7. Apple TV App Store (shockingly bad on day 1, still very bad 2 months in.)

8. iPad... do bean counters really run Apple now? It seems that once the iPad hit growth problems, Apple retracted resources from it.... the iPad Pro is a great product and a possible sign that isn't the case but the commitment to iPad has definitely been lacking... inconsistent updates to the line, and a real lack of promotion and development of incredible software and uses for the iPad. The iOS home screen still looking like an iPhone on a 12.9 inch iPad Pro is just not a sign of Apple pushing new ideas and thinking outside the box.
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