The shift has apparently been to do anything to increase their bottomline.
To my mind, a shift hasn’t happened because Apple has always been that way.
No, they used to be “for the rest of us”. I noticed the shift starting about 14 years ago, but it seems to have accelerated recently.
Did you retire 14 years ago?
;-)
Seriously though, I’d say Apple’s shift over time hasn’t been from crunchy, counterculture attitudes about money to profit-seeking motives but from a computer hobbyist, technology-driven focus to a lifestyle, mass luxury brand positioning. It’s like the difference between a Ford F-150 pickup truck and a Lexus SUV.
No, I retired from the USAF in 1990 and from my post-military job in 2008. I started with Apple in 1984 when I bought an Apple IIc. To me Apple’s now focusing on making as much money as they can, and if in means releasing half-baked products, so be it.
They’ve always made massive margins, and prioritized those margins. They have been “for the rest of us” but it came with a price tag.
True, BUT it wasn’t as BLATANT nor where the hardware or software suffered. Before you paid a premium price for excellent hardware/software; today you pay a premium price for OK hardware and increasingly lower quality software.
It was always blatant, and the hardware is spectacularly better than it’s ever been. My iPhone 16 is unbelievably good. My MBP is awesome and much better than my wobbly Powerbook G3 two decades ago. I pay a premium price for outstanding hardware and for software at the same level it’s been.
Remember the mid 1990’s when Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Every article about the company referred to them as “Beleaguered”. They had to beg Microsoft for cash.
After Steve Jobs came back and turned the ship around, they were like people who lived through the Great Depression and had a pathological fear of being caught short on cash. It was paramount that they have enough in the bank to weather any financial headwinds.
I don’t think they’re trying to generate as much profit as possible, they just want as much cash reserves as possible.
I used excel exclusively for spreadsheets until last year, when I switched to Numbers. I like Numbers so much more. It’s almost matches Excel function for function (and that was improved last summer, when more powerful functions were added), it’s much more attractive, I can place multiple different tables on each worksheet. The quality of Numbers has improved with time - it’s not been lowered.
I tried using Numbers rather than Excel a dozen years ago and just couldn’t use it. It is much better now.
I think there’s a lot of nuance here.
Hardware? Mac is doing spectacular. And Apple is setting the standard. Stuff like AirPods Pro or even just Air Tags is great too. iPhone feels already a bit less exciting. Sure, it’s good, but Apple isn’t leading the pack the way they do with Mac. Various things people keep asking for that take Apple long to finally implement, after cheaper Androids have had it for years. But build quality and longevity are still great so overall likely still well worth the money.
Software also highly depends. There’s stuff that’s just great, like Keynote or as @ddmiller mentions Numbers. And there’s cool stuff being added to macOS and/or iOS that indeed shows they can still pull it off. Would I want to trade macOS for Windows or Linux for my everyday computer? Heck no. But software quality and reliability? That for sure has taken a hit. Apparently what is “good enough” for release has been redefined. Rigid schedules dictated by folks outside of engineering that force their hand appears part of the problem. The other is perhaps just a lack of attention to detail or the willingness to really go the extra mile to fix every last little bump that shows up as tedious and unspectacular as that may be. Perhaps they just need to find a thorny stickler like Jobs to again be a real pain in their necks.
But in my mind, the one thing that has substantially taken a turn for the worse without question is this notion of turning your users from “valued customer” to just some product that needs to be squeezed like a lemon. I don’t mind paying top $ for great Macs. But once I do that I don’t want to be treated like some Google or Facebook users that needs to be monetized up the wazoo, advertised to, and milked down to the last drop. Apple has to find the dignity and rein in this insatiable greed that forces them into all this advertising revenue and services scamming and all that ecosystem pollution that makes them treat their buyers like just another schmuck to be plucked. Apple should IMHO return to making a living off of their hardware and software without needing to pollute App Store searches with ads or inject services offers into Wallet or any other such gaudy shenanigans. It dilutes what could be a high-end user experience because it puts Apple marketing ahead of Apple’s users. It’s cheap crap. The kind of thing I’d expect from Google or Facebook because they run an ad business that relies on selling out their users. But Apple isn’t that and they shouldn’t allow themselves to fall into that gutter. Apple has “customers” not just users, and IMHO they need to return to treating them that way.
they were like people who lived through the Great Depression and had a pathological fear of being caught short on cash.
So true. They also had this intense need to beat Wall Street EPS predictions, even if only by a cent or two.
This is almost universal among publicly-traded companies.
Beating predictions by a cent frequently results in a large rally. Missing predictions by a cent frequently results in a large sell-off.
And it makes perfect sense. People (especially institutional investors) buy and sell shares based on expected performance. And after the numbers are announced, they “correct” their past transactions based on how accurate those expectations were.
If actual performance is below expectations - even if it is record-setting, there will be a sell-off, because they bought too much leading up to the announcement. And if performance is above expectations - even if it is really bad, there will be a rally because they sold off too much leading up to the announcement.
This is almost universal among publicly-traded companies
Not to the level Apple was doing it.
I was going to say, didn’t that shift happen around 1976?
Here’s the prob
Here’s the problem with that: I saw just that sort of comment 14 years ago.
I’m not saying that you’re wrong; I’m saying that the shift is slow, and often things which Apple does which sound a lot like money-grubbing turn out to be very much not that (batterygate being a premier example).
Apple has not fully lost its way, and it’s important to look at the full context of whatever it is that you think indicates that it has.
Which is not to say that I don’t think you have a point.
Early times in my life I have heard that Apple had “lost its way” and isn’t really for the people:
This isn’t just an Apple problem, it is in the nature of being a publicly traded company. Being profitable isn’t enough, your stock price has to go up year on year. And if you are successful, and your stock goes up a lot, any diminution of that rate of rise becomes a disappointment to shareholders, and they sell causing further losses. So any exceptional success results in later performance (even if there is growth and profitability) being judged poorly. The solution would be to remove the obligation for the board of a public company to owe its primary loyalty to shareholders, a concept that dates back only to 1919. Apple could do worse than use its cash reserves to buy back stock, and regain its freedom.
In addition to the Wall Street pressure that others have accurately mentioned, another overlooked factor is that the audience here on TidbitsTalk is but a tiny fraction of Apple’s current customer base. They are no longer a niche, boutique company.
We can complain and wonder about some interface or policy tweak all day, but when taken at the scale at which Apple now operates, there are reasons for changes that we can’t even begin to guess at.
But the share price shouldn’t matter so much to the company. When the share price drops, it doesn’t take any money off the company’s balance sheet. When it goes up, they don’t suddenly have more income or assets.