Apple, to my eyes, set things in motion regarding applications. Aperture was best in class for years, led the way for integrated photography management and editing. As time went on the integration between Lightroom and other Adobe products took over, not to mention truly pro apps like Capture One.
The apps Marilyn identified are on the watch and phone, and that’s the direction of the company if not the industry as a whole, here again Apple are setting things in motion. The focus on health and wellness stemming from computers that are on our bodies, they’re actively exploring what the parameters are. I have no doubt software companies will surpass them eventually on these platforms, but for now, they are the leaders.
I think with Apple it’s always best to see where they are pointing, their version of ‘let’s go over here’. As things progress, the vibrant software ecosystem will take over and expand what’s possible. There’s nothing bad about any of it.
You did ask for an app example, “any app,” originally. So it’s shifting the goal posts a bit to eliminate something because you specifically have no interest in it.
Likewise rejecting out of hand any third party Mac OS software because you are unfamiliar with It.
Maybe I’d love an Apple watch although I do prefer my Swiss made Rado. To me at my age with declining vision, I can’t see myaelf reading e-mail on a tiny watch when I need glasses to read an iPhone 12 Pro Max
.
Apple Watch can read text in Mail, Messages, etc. You can also dictate a typed response, or send messages as audio. And you can switch to your iPhone at any time.
Because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it is useless to the rest of the world. And I don’t have an Apple Watch either. I have small wrists and it looks stupid on me.
On the larger question, I think Steve Jobs’ genius was a combination of his aesthetic sense, his instinct for making things work, and his sheer courage (cancelling the iPod Mini when it was the best-selling iPod to replace it with the nano is just remarkable). They weren’t always in balance (the Cube) but when they were, he was unmatched.
Cook is a genius as well, but I think that his is more focused on the production and delivery side of things. He’s got the courage (going all in on Apple Silicon is one big example; leveraging Apple’s money to stay front of the line at TSMC is another). That’s not a small thing – when you’re building billions of dollars worth of goods, it’s one of the most important things.
Jony Ive was supposed to be the aesthetic side, and I think Cook let him run with it for many years until the drawbacks started to become overwhelming. The new MBPs show that clear shift back towards the practical side of things and it’s not shocking that they look most like a SJ era Titanium PB.
(And yes, I’ve used Better Touch Tool, Pathfinder, and Aqua Touch, and found none of them were vast improvements over the original).
Is that because the software is really hard to customize and program or because you see no instance in which you would use a Touchbar?
I love when editing photos and painting masks, the brush size sometimes appears in the touch bar. But not every time and I have no clue how to use all the controls present in the app to make that control always appear.