It pains me to write this post. I love Apple products. I’m writing this on my MacBook Pro. I have a MacBook Air, an iMac, my wife and I have iPhones, and prior to iPhones replacing them, some iPods. But I believe Apple is starting to show the impact of Steve Jobs’ unfortunate departure.
First, innovation is being replaced by a glacial, feature creep. Is that the fault of the new CEO, Tim Cook? Maybe, probably, but it’s impossible to say for sure. However, he doesn’t strike me as the sort of driven visionary that Jobs was.
Second, following the botched maps roll out we have a much quieter response to what is, for iPhone 4 and 4S users, an even more thoroughly botched roll-out of the new operating system for the iPhone, iOS 7.
When it came out I did what I’ve always done: I downloaded the new operating system. I then went from having a smart phone to an irritating, cretin phone. This led me to call Apple and have the following odd conversation with one of their employees. My guess is he does not work in the genius bar:
Me: “I upgraded my iPhone 4’s iOS and now it doesn’t work.”
Apple boy: “Do you have a lot of photos on it?”
Me: “No. But I will type in 20 characters without seeing them and then all of the sudden the string of letters will appear. Sometimes, once it finally appears, a sentence is all in caps. It looks stupid. You’ve made my email, Twitter and Facebook apps an exercise in frustration. Is that what you want at Apple?”
What follows is rich. Upgrading was my fault.
Apple boy: “You know the upgrading process is voluntary and not mandatory. Did you check to see if this upgrade was recommended for your iPhone 4?”
Me: “Why wouldn’t I upgrade my software if you are offering me an upgrade for my software? If this was known to not work with the iPhone 4, then warning labels should have appeared before the download instructions and after them.”
Apple boy [Evidently, the reasonableness of this claim registered so he started to juke and jive, like a tiny punt returner dodging linebackers]: “We have thousands of people beta-testing this, but I guess they missed this problem.”
Me: “How can you miss a problem like, ‘We’ve just disabled your email’? Besides, Apple has over $100 billion in the bank. Why don’t they hire more people to test this crap out before you sneak it onto people’s phones?
“Anyway, I’m tired of this. Let me just upgrade my phone even though this one still works great.”
Apple boy: “I’m sorry, there are no iPhone 5’s available in the color and capacity that you want at your local Apple stores. Since you want to trade in your iPhone 4 the best thing to do is to call everyday to see if your phone is available and have them put it on hold.”
I never thought I’d say this, but Apple has become expensive, idiotic, and vulnerable to Android and, God forbid, possibly even Microsoft now that Ballmer is on the way out. Perhaps changes need to be made at Apple too.