Random example: One of the first things I asked when I got there was “why, when you turn on a Windows PC, does it start your user experience by filling the screen with scary gibberish?” That got fixed, but it took many years, partially because of all the coordination needed in the PC ecosystem to do anything, but mostly because nobody really cared all that much.
Too many SKUs tend to be correlated with lack of polish and attention to detail. And this comes from someone who prefers Linux, and hence ThinkPad.
Even basic user experiences, such as buying online, are vastly better at Apple. For instance, lenovo.com is handled by a third party in many markets, including the EU.
So true. Back a decade ago, Nokia had an enormous amount of SKUs. The firmwares were usually crap, and even the hardware was often subpar. You were obviously not expected to keep the same Symbian smartphone for 5+ years, with the possible exception of the Communicator.
Blackberry, on the other hand, had much fewer SKUs and much better quality.
The technical talent of their R&D was top notch, and it was sadly wasted by a dysfunctional decision making culture.
People here on the HN tend to value engineers highly and look with disdain on mere managers. They may be right when it comes to the Pointy-Haired Bosses, but good management is a large force multiplier when it comes to the capabilities of any org. And bad management will easily drag a good engineering corps into an endless mire of meaningless work.
On the contrary, it costs a LOT to make the box that good.
I can't find it now, but I recall some article posted here about how lots of startups spent insane amounts of money trying to make their packaging as good as Apple's (UHD foam, aluminum milling) when they should be working on their actual product instead.
Sometimes. Other times not so much. Sometimes they make changes just for the sake of making changes so that they can continue to be the "cool new thing" and in so doing they make things objectively worse. The canonical examples were the butterfly keyboard and the touch bar.
Another example is the move away from discoverability and towards hidden controls. In mail.app, for example, the controls to save attachments are hidden until you hover over them. There is no visual clue that they exist until you hover. You either have to know where they are, or stumble upon them by sheer luck. There is, obviously, no manual to clue you in.
I don’t actually know, but my impression is that they work harder “under the hood” than on the user facing stuff (which ironically is what I want. But in applications and user interfaces, in many cases they have simply lost their way.
But the physical quality from, as you say, the box to the device does feel like it improves the quality, making up in part for indifferent software.
The double irony here is that I can afford to buy expensive goods, but I won’t buy a Prada pullover any more because the zippers are functionally poor. Apple provides a luxurious experience (a nice box with a lovely watch inside) at a cost that a supermarket worker can afford.
The first touch point on a new Apple product is the box, and they use high end, thick cardboard that’s got a great finish.
...I can’t agree with this. Their boxes are bad! They’re probably really proud of their boxes and think they’re the best, and they do have a nice surface sheen, but they’re bad.
They’re too heavy, too hard to open, near impossible to break down to recycle.
Every time I mention this somebody says “that’s out of date, they’ve really improved recently”, but I’m still seeing the same shitty plastic-infused boxes.
Nintendo are great at doing amazing things with simple cardboard. But there are plenty of other companies doing this now. Apple is well behind the times.
I'm not denying that there's "plasticized paper" in the box, but as far as I could tell, it was 100% recyclable. As for "breaking down the box", if you flip the lid around to the bottom of the box, and then stack them together, then it saves a good bit of space. But yes the moulded cardboard that held the laptop itself was a pain to get out of the bottom section.
I'm not an apple user but it is obvious to me that apple users aren't paying more just for the box.
faulty logic. if that was the case, they would intentionally over engineer the box, and leave everything else shitty, in order to save money. the box doesn't matter, the product matters.
So the box matters; and the product; and the customer service. Focussing on just the product is missing the big picture.
The box matters to some people including me, it is, after all, part of the package that you buy, and the most visible one.
That does not mean that I would buy worthless product just because it has a great box. It just means that I appreciate work spent on the box design, too.
You say this after a paragraph praising a cardboard box that's basically exactly the same as you'd get with almost any other google, samsung, etc brand?
Apple fanboys are so self-unaware it's hilarious.
>windows has ads and malware built into the OS
windows "ads" are suggestions about what software to use, the same as mac has
>the charge you for os upgrades
not for either 11 or 10
> The laptop hardware doesn’t cut corners. Yes, it’s expensive, but everyone knows of its quality. in 5 years it still has value. Try and sell a 5 year old windows laptop.
you can find plenty on resellers at a considerable fraction of their original price, same as with mac hardware. obviously laptops that were cheap when they were sold don't fetch much.
> I pay more to not be the product, and to have privacy.
you pay for a fashion statement. nobodies blaming you for that, but lets be honest
I find that developers who disrespect Apple and use Android, Linux, and Windows, have almost never written a single GUI app with the platform tools. Which I find baffling. The desktop environment is what you interact with all day, why wouldn't you learn to customize it?
I used to be anti-Apple. I used Android or Windows Phone and used Windows or Linux on PC. I thought the extra cost of Apple was a scam. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate a company that doesn’t BS me and waste my time.
Windows has ads and malware built into the OS. They charge you for OS upgrades. macOS is just free and ad-free.
The laptop hardware doesn’t cut corners. Yes, it’s expensive, but everyone knows of its quality. in 5 years it still has value. Try and sell a 5 year old windows laptop.
This extends to all their other products and services. I pay more to not be the product, and to have privacy. I’ll make that deal all day.