Hardware Is Sexy, But It’s Software That Matters
For years, the Mac was merely a container for Mac software. It was the software that enabled the work we created, it was software that shifted our relationship with computers and ultimately each other.
Over the last five years, Apple has lost the thread and chosen to become a hardware company again. Despite their huge profits and large staff, we’re confronted with[…]
I agree about the importance of software, and Apple’s recent troubles with it, but I don’t see Apple as having made such a choice.
Via John Gruber (tweet):
Software, in general, is much better than it used to be. Unlike 1995, we don’t lose data due to bugs very often. (For me personally, I can’t even remember the last time I lost data.) But our hardware is so much better than our software, the contrast is jarring. An iPhone is a nearly perfect object. Sleek, attractive, simple. The hardware is completely knowable — there are only five buttons, each of them easily understood. iOS, however, is effectively infinite. The deeper our software gets, the less we know and understand it. It’s unsettling.
As a hardware company, I would expect Apple to be able to iterate more quickly on fixing bugs and not worrying about huge features.
On the other hand, the iOS hardware sets the schedule for when the Mac software ships.
2 Comments RSS · Twitter
"we don’t lose data due to bugs very often"
That's true with the auto-save feature being implemented in more and more applications. But at the same time, I hate the fact that when you hit cmd-Q while trying to hit cmd-Q the apps are now quitting without any confirmation and you have to reopen the app again.
