Some tech leaders (like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey) agreed, or at least they saw the writing on the wall. They enacted permanent or semipermanent changes to their companies’ policies to make partial or even full-time remote work the norm. Others (like Apple’s Tim Cook) are working hard to find a way to get everyone back in their assigned seats as soon as is practical, despite organized resistance.
In either case, the work cultures at tech companies that make everything from the iPhone to Google search are facing a major wave of transformation.
Apple’s institutional memory is long and the company still remembers what it was like to be on the brink of disaster in the mid-1990s. One element that put Apple in danger in that era was that it relied on an external provider for its most crucial component, processors, and that supplier’s technology had been significantly outpaced by competitors. That fear is part of what drove the company to make its operating system more flexible, running on first Intel processors and then its own silicon.
Models of the Apple Watch Series 6 with titanium cases part of the “Apple Watch Edition” collection is currently widely unavailable for pick-up in several of Apple’s retail stores in the United States and is unavailable entirely for delivery in major markets.
Just point your camera to the tag on the clothes you want to wash and it will say whether you should take some caution when using the washing machine, iron, or drying it clean.
Believe it or not, if you’re lucky enough to have an iPhone, iPad Pro, Apple Watch and, soon, a next-generation Mac laptop with the new MagSafe connector, you’ll be using four different charging cables to juice up your Apple devices. For a company that prides itself on simplicity and making all of its technology work seamlessly together, that is an anomaly.
Right now, however, Apple is giving the impression that its primary goal isn't the customer experience, or even protecting privacy, but protecting the company's bottom line. That goes against what people love the most about Apple, and it's a real problem--even if the reality is far more nuanced. When it comes to trust, perception is everything.
“I don’t feel bad at all – this is something that used to be natural,” he said. “For over 100 years, if something breaks on your car or on your air conditioner or washing machine, repair people are able to get access to what is needed to fix it. It is only in recent years and on computers that doing repairs has become like buying cocaine or something.”
There are a few products that Apple doesn't seem to pay too much attention. They are not exactly abandonware, but Apple doesn't seem to want to make them to be the best they can be.
Two examples: Apple Books, and iWork.
I often wonder if Apple still keep them around just as an insurance against third-party developers pulling out of Apple's platforms?
(At this point, I would classify iPod Touch as abandonware.)
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Thanks for reading.