Is Apple trying to do too much?

Ken Magel

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There are many instances where Apple releases a product and then leaves that product to wither for years. Examples include IBook Author, Siri, Photos, ICloud, etc., etc. as well as hardware such as the MacBook or the Pencil. While Apple probably has enough employees and talent to cover all its offerings, the company seems to lack enough high level managers to make certain that each of its many products gets enough attention to remain competitive.

There seem two choices: reduce the offerings to what the management team can handle, or split Apple into independent companies or at least divisions that have high level management concentrating on just a small niche of products each.
 

kataran

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What you wrote is all speculation

Yes there’s a lot of the ecosystem that needs attention but companies tend to prioritize things and sometimes things are released to a lower degree to gauge usage. I’m not trying to defend as I’m still waiting for keychain to get improved
 

Quis89

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Expectations are too high. We want new shiny items in every product line every year and that's just not how things work. Sometimes a product should enjoy a few years on the market before we rush to refresh it just for the sake of a refresh. The Apple Pencil, in my opinion, is still a strong companion accessory. MacBooks were just recently refreshed.

I don't think they are trying to do too much. I just don't think you can please everyone. If they don't release these products then people will say, "Is Apple being left behind?".

There will always be a critic.
 

iN8ter

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Siri does what she's intended. So does iCloud and Photis, which just got a sizeable update in macOS last release.

Most companies do too much. It's how you innovate and invent, doing tons of things.

You not liking what they've delivered is not equivalent to them allowing products to either on a vine.

Does iBooks Author really need more more work done to it at the moment? How many authors are using iBooks Author to write their books? If argue it's a product they can think about dropping at this point. Just make an ePub converter like Amazon.

MacBook get refreshed every year. There is no point in constantly changing iconic designs. Design is part of brand image.

Apple Pencil is an accessory that does its job, and hasn't existed long enough to wither. That sounds ridiculous.
 

TylerLV76

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Photos and iCloud haven't "withered" over the years in my opinion. They work as advertised for me.

I would have agreed with this before this past weekend.

I have a rather large library of images and am currently storing them in Google Photos. I tried moving them to iCloud Photos this weekend and found it was completely pointless.

The objective of storing things in a cloud is to save physical storage space. With iCloud photos this isn't the case. Instead of remotely storing these images, they are downloaded at a compressed level to my devices. This makes zero sense. If I delete an image off my device it also deletes from iCloud. This is not how clouds should work. The same goes for documents. If I want to view an iCloud document it downloads to my phone again taking up storage.

Apple needs to reevaluate iCloud and make it usable without using storage. Especially if they aren't going to allow me to upgrade the drive on my Mac.
 

Ken Magel

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The point I was trying to make is that many of the Apple products with the exception of the IPhone start with innovations and then do not get updated often enough to stay competitive with the leaders in their category. For example, Apple had a considerable lead when they first introduced Siri. Now many users consider it far behind Amazon Alexa or Goggle Assistant. It is not that these products do not do what they are supposed to- it is that they are no longer considered competitive with the best in what consumers and industry consider their category.
 

Just_Me_D

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The point I was trying to make is that many of the Apple products with the exception of the IPhone start with innovations and then do not get updated often enough to stay competitive with the leaders in their category. For example, Apple had a considerable lead when they first introduced Siri. Now many users consider it far behind Amazon Alexa or Goggle Assistant. It is not that these products do not do what they are supposed to- it is that they are no longer considered competitive with the best in what consumers and industry consider their category.

The iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Pay are all leaders in their respective categories. That doesn’t mean they are the best, however, all devices in their categories are compared to them. No company can sustain a consistent output of pure innovation, but they can sustain innovative ways of doing things as well as enhance their current line of products in innovative ways.

Under Tim Cook, it can be argued that Apple is trying to hard to attract or to appeal to a younger generation of consumers. Enhancing iMessages with a gazillion emoticons and some Animoji characters is an example of it. Maybe in that sense, they’re doing too much. With iOS not being stable enough for some people, maybe they’re doing too much to the point where iOS is being neglected a bit. Who knows?
 

msm0511

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As far as services go Apple is spending more and more time to ensure they're getting up to snuff. It's their largest growing segment, so of course they're gonna pay attention to it. As far as hardware goes, there are a few products they let linger without doing much with them. The Mac mini is probably the biggest in that regard. I don't really get where the Pencil has been left behind though. With the iPad Pro updates, the display itself got more accurate, so the pencil didn't need anything else.
 

Quis89

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The point I was trying to make is that many of the Apple products with the exception of the IPhone start with innovations and then do not get updated often enough to stay competitive with the leaders in their category. For example, Apple had a considerable lead when they first introduced Siri. Now many users consider it far behind Amazon Alexa or Goggle Assistant. It is not that these products do not do what they are supposed to- it is that they are no longer considered competitive with the best in what consumers and industry consider their category.

I think Siri is a bad example. Apple doesn't utilize the same resources that Amazon and Google do. They pride themselves on privacy. It is tough to match Alexa or Google's offerings when Apple doesn't collect the same level of data on it's users that Amazon and Google do. I don't think that's due to a lack of resources or attention by Apple. It's a difference in the intentions of the products.
 

Ken Magel

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One simple change could make Siri significantly better. When it is about to say "I cannot answer that", try a Google Search. That does not require any additional data, but would bring Siri much closer to what the other assistants can do.

A more difficult modification which would be really nice is to give Siri the same capabilities on all Apple devices. Again, this does not require any violation of user privacy.

I would have used IWork as another example, but just today, Apple announced a major upgrade for IWork as part of their education presentation. One has to wonder how many years IWork will then languish before the next update.
 

Speedygi

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I think with a company like Apple there's always bound to be some scrutiny in quality and they have a limited number of employees too. In this regard, so does a number of companies like Google. So I feel that they are bound to let some services be neglected down the road. I think it's just the nature of this line of work.
 

Golfdriver97

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I guess the best question is what is the most cost effective way to deal with all these? If there aren't many people using one service/device, is it worth it to update it? Maybe some of these are used just enough that Apple doesn't ditch them completely, but at the same time, not enough use to merit more time and attention?
 

Ken Magel

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Just because a device or software is not being used by many today does not mean regular updates would not make it widely used.
 

Golfdriver97

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Just because a device or software is not being used by many today does not mean regular updates would not make it widely used.
True, but a company will always look at it through a cost/benefit relationship. Companies don't usually throw money at projects that aren't used.
 

Ken Magel

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Do the current reports of serious bugs in new releases of IOS, IPAdOS, and Catalina indicate that Apple is trying to do too much?
 

Evilguppy

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Do the current reports of serious bugs in new releases of IOS, IPAdOS, and Catalina indicate that Apple is trying to do too much?

I’m going to be uncharacteristically optimistic :
I remember ios7 being so bad it sent me straight to Android. (A terrible mistake, lol) but it paved the way for a major change the following year and after that, following iOS was pretty good. I have a feeling this may be a similar case, and that 2020 will bring some really cool changes with various devices they’ll be releasing.

At least I hope that’s the case because man I loathe ios13 with everything I’ve got.
 

tekjunkie28

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There are many instances where Apple releases a product and then leaves that product to wither for years. Examples include IBook Author, Siri, Photos, ICloud, etc., etc. as well as hardware such as the MacBook or the Pencil. While Apple probably has enough employees and talent to cover all its offerings, the company seems to lack enough high level managers to make certain that each of its many products gets enough attention to remain competitive.

There seem two choices: reduce the offerings to what the management team can handle, or split Apple into independent companies or at least divisions that have high level management concentrating on just a small niche of products each.

Ever heard the term too many chiefs and not enough Indians? The last thing any company needs is more managers. But for some dumb reason they all wanna make a crap ton of management ppl.

When I came to my company that I’m with now we had a shipping manager, sales, production, assembly, and a owner, president and Vice President/whatever they called it. Now we just have a owner (who now has no reason to come to work really) and a Vice President. Everyone else is on equal ground minus the HR lady and me. Less chiefs is more efficient.
 

Instamixes

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I think Apple knows what it is doing. They are smart they are focusing on products that have much more potential to compete in the market. They are continually putting money in R&D to improve their products. It is good for the future.
 

Rob Phillips

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They had hardware that needed to be ready for September and the software was running behind schedule so they rushed it. I haven’t had any major issues with iOS 13 or iPadOS 13 but the majority of bugs I was experiencing (none of which made my devices unusable) were patched very aggressively.
I’d rather the hardware be ready and the software be a little rushed than the other way around (i.e. Samsung).
 

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