JWZ once described a "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" model of software development, where you get bored with the old codebase and just throw it out, only to make just as many mistakes with the new one.
Lots of open-source projects do that, but it also happens with business. Version 1, written in your garage (or Starbucks, these days), is the best thing ever. Version 2 fixes bugs, improves performance, integrates with 23 popular services, has complete documentation, etc., and then the press roasts you for no longer being "innovative".
(As a budding indie developer, I feel the heat: people buy version 1.0 and expect it to be perfect. Sorry, I don't know how to deliver an Apple-like experience on day 1. I do my best to fix any issues you find, as soon as I reasonably can, though.)
Everything is perennially semi-broken, and everybody is constantly telling me that their idea is going to be the Next Big Thing, and I know that it's just going to be semi-broken forever, too. We complain about micropayments and subscriptions and advertising, but the truth is that no end-user would ever pay what software costs, if they knew how expensive it was to get right.
I spent a week and I couldn't get OAuth2 to work with Google Sheets, at all. There's some cargo-cult guesses on StackOverflow, but nobody even has a good idea for how to debug it. Google's own documentation doesn't even match what their webpage shows, and many of the options don't appear to do anything at all.
I'd be very happy, as a user and as a developer, if everybody stopped trying to "innovate" and just fixed their crap. I love Yegge's writing, but it's a little funny to hear the media complain about lack of innovation while we're still arguing about how best to patch up Meltdown/Spectre. We're so friggin' innovative I can't even trust a CPU built in the past 20 years.
A couple weeks ago, I tried to report a problem to Amazon about Prime Photos. It took a couple dozen emails to get their customer service person to read for comprehension and as soon as they did they opened 6 internal bug reports for basic UX problems – 1 that I’d started with and 5 that I found while litigating that the first was a bug not covered in the online help.
Today, I noticed that Google is trying to push iOS users into using a “Smart Lock” app as a new wrinkle on their two-factor support, which seems reasonable until you install it and learn that the only thing it can do is pair with wireless tokens rather than the USB devices most people actually have. I would be shocked if a single person really tested that before they pushed it to production.
It's something the market wants. It would increase productivity. It might even increase happiness. The world, indeed, would be a much better place.
Hey. A guy can dream, can't he?
Some of the APIs are superbly documented with a lot of obvious effort put into them. Google sheets sounds like it isn't. I think one major problem is that there is a unified interface and docsets for both the good APIs and the bad APIs - while there are starkly different teams maintaining them with different interests and motivations. APIs that make a ton of money for Google are naturally going to get more love, the reverse will likely be abandoned, inaccurate, etc.
The bottom line we have to remember as developers is that we use Google's API at their own discretion. Many popular used APIs are "FREE".
If you want to create a stable, long-term, software product, you need to think long and hard about incorporating third party APIs, no matter if it's provided by a large well-respected organization like Google, or the teenager down the street.
[1]: "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth", "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v4/token",
I also wholly disagree with the viewpoint that Apple's pace of innovation has slowed. I strongly believe that the best products in Apple's entire lineup right now are the Watch and AirPods; what they are doing in these two categories are 10x ahead of competitors. iPhone X? They were the first to release IR-based face detection and authentication. They took what MS did with the Kinect and made it 100x smaller. The A10 and A11 are 2-3x more performant than any competition. They lead the industry in productizing consumer security. These are all innovations.
I simply don't think its fair to judge everything any company does to the iPhone then say "they're not innovating". The iPhone is, without a doubt, a once in a lifetime thing. I compare it to the discovery and application of electricity, oil, or the integrated circuit. It was a core insight into human behavior and the world which marked a dramatic change in all of humanity. Just calling it an "innovation" is a disservice.
Automatic real-time text translation from videos, on your phone. You point your phone at a sign in Thailand and it changes the words to English.
Computer vision systems that index the themes of your photographs. You can search your Google photos for "dog" and it finds all the photos with dogs.
A computer that beats all living humans at board games.
Cars that drive themselves. Not the ones that kill their drivers, like Tesla's, or that can't see stop lights, like Uber's, or that run into people all the time, like GM's. Actual self-driving cars that will pick your ass up and take you to Taco Bell.
An airborne internet service that can be deployed anywhere in the world on short notice.
And, under all of that, a service platform that remains fast, reliable, and economical to operate even after two decades of exponential user growth, which provides free services such as searching all documents ever written, delivering the majority of the world's email, etc, all free of charge.
What on earth gave you the impression that big companies innovate?
Small companies innovate. Big companies eat the small companies, absorbing their IP, or duplicating it. Or the small company survives and becomes the big company.
AT&T, General Electric, IBM, Xerox etc. The personal computer was invented by individuals and small companies, but the transistor was not, and probably could not have been. The loss of the idea that big companies need to innovate, may be one of the worst pieces of news in today's world for the survival of our species.
For another example the iMac Pro was released a couple of weeks ago. I know what you mean, but your single example is misleading.
But not to single out Apple- as you pointed out, many startups are doing the same thing over and over again. Guess this is the consolidation and make profits stage of the tech cycle.
Everywhere, the problem is only the good innovations are seen as innovations, the rest are just changes. Windows Vista for example was incredibly innovative, we just didn't like the results. Personally I'd prefer less innovation and more focus put on refinement and efficiency.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/8/16622802/apple-ar-headset...
Get ready for a tidal wave of blockchain apps, most of which don't really need blockchain. But I'm sure some innovative new products will shake out of the cruft.
Remember when Tim Cook was criticised for not constantly bringing out new product lines? Yo don't hear that any more - people seem to have forgotten about the idea that Apple might be a company that actually comes up with entirely new product categories. Indeed Apple hardly even releases updates to its computers any more, and was savaged for that a year or two back, promised solemnly that it really does know how to release new computers, but for example the Mac Mini was last updated 4 years ago in 2014.
Amazon is certainly innovating in the cloud space. Sony is having a go with VR. What other examples are there of companies that remain innovative, not just reactionary?
Out in the startup world innovation seems to have declined - reviewing the next batch of startups from any incubator/early stage VC you're bound to see the same types of companies that are fixing insurance, delivering food to people and basically doing the same things over and over.
I feel like the real innovation happens on github but most of the projects don't bother trying to become businesses.