Ask HN: Has Apple lost its way? Is their decline imminent?

3 points by reach_kapil 10 years ago | 4 comments

I have been hearing a lot of complaints, issues all around the news and people I meet or talk to about decline in Customer service, brand equity, confidence, brand affinity etc. Are people losing confidence in Apple and with coming devices like watch, car, VR etc from Apple, do you think the decline is going to accelerate?

I used to love apple and its philosophy and products. it is no longer the same company. Its strategies are no different than IBM or Sony for that matter. They have amazing talent which is why they produce beautiful products, but why is then people all around the world are showing pessimism in their direction. has its peak done and gone

Has Apple lost its way?

lsiunsuex 10 years ago |

People show pessimism because they fear their size / cash on hand; hate the "walled garden"; love to bet against the big kid on the block.

So I suppose, it's all a matter of who you talk to. The genius bar repaired my years out of warranty MacbookPro for free (failing video card = new motherboard = not a cheap repair) so customer service for me has been nothing but top notch, as it has been in the past.

Love the "walled garden" - everything is getting better at working together and working together more consistently. Side note to this is I have friends who were die hard Android users who all just switched to new iPhone 6/Plus S's

And picking on the big kid on the block - meh - someone needs to get picked on. Google get's it's share - facebook gets beat up on occasion. happens.

So... they're considering building a car, or the watch or whatever. It's not like their hurting for money. Google is into so many products and industries that have absolutely nothing to do with search its dissying.

And what makes you compare Apple to IBM? They have almost no server presence, have never believed in "big iron" server configurations - OS X Server is now just an addon to OS X. IMO, Apple couldn't be any more different then IBM or MS for that matter.

Analysts love to speculate. It's apart of their job. Most of these people get paid to write pro or against Apple. No one knows what Apple is doing other then Apple.

(not defending them. I love Apple products and use them primarily - but people give them more shit then they deserve IMO.)

reach_kapil 10 years ago | |

You are right. From business perspective they are diversifying and making its bigger and better. Which in all fairness is fine. I was mostly talking about decline in consumer sentiment due to its focus more on selling rather than satisfying customer. I am hearing this from die- hard Apple fans and that is concerning

lsiunsuex 10 years ago | | |

Their not without faults - no company is.

I personally - as a die hard fan - think their moving towards more consumer facing ideas then professional facing ideas.

I think the iPad Pro is a great idea with the stylus / keyboard.

I think a lot of features in OS X are bad ideas - I've never once made a program absolute full screen - who works like that? (personal opinion). I'm all for size and portability but a Macbook Pro with no built in ethernet or cd / dvd? Sorry, their not completely dead yet. A lot of offices still don't allow wifi and theres always a need for an optical drive. Sure - I have a thunderbolt ethernet adaptor and I can get a external drive - but 1 more thing to carry is 1 more thing to loose.

I do see convergence - with the Ax processors getting faster with every generation - watch in a few more, Intel processors get dropped - OS X gets renamed to Desktop OS (following the naming of WatchOS and TVOS), becomes a branch of iOS and the App Stores get unified. 1 app, downloadable across all devices, using App Thinning to distribute app assets as needed.

This obviously will be a problem for pro apps (going back to my gripe) - could you imagine Photoshop being sold in the App Store? Hell will have frozen over for that to happen.

But I've gotten off track - It's impossible to please everyone. A company becomes more consumer focused and you piss off the pros. A company becomes more professional focused and you piss off the consumers. Still - sure as hell beats using Windows - but even MS caved. Windows 8 was a great idea - unfortunately, their target market is businesses and businesses a: don't want to spend money on training employees on a new interface and b: won't spend the money on touch screens - which is why 10 exists how it does. For consumers, 8 was great! For businesses, 8 sucked. 10 is the happy median. Not everyone is pleased with it, but it pleases enough.

Apple is in the same boat. Pro's rave about Apple when new products come out, but they need to please the consumer so they spend money before they please the pros (of which there are ALOT less of)

pshapiro99 10 years ago |

You've asked a relevant question. Sadly, Apple lost their way a couple of years ago. http://www.techhive.com/article/248264/cupertino_is_becoming...