Apple Has Two Problems

Over the last few years, Apple Inc. has come in for its fair share of criticism. In my opinion, this boils down to two main problems: politics and software quality.

The company has lost its way several times over the years but it has always kept going and eventually bounced back. Now it's a massive company with more money than any human can imagine, and it's losing its way again. What can they do to bounce back this time?

The reason I care is because I love using Apple's products. I fell in love with the very first Macintosh, way back in 1984. It was many years before I was able to afford one, but I always admired them. The Mac is the computer I use every day and it's the computer I want to keep using. The iPhone is my principal communication device and the iPad is my entertainment center. I want to see Apple get back to being a company that I can feel good about buying from, with products that I want to use and that work as expected.

Politics

The first and most obvious problem is Tim Cook's personal and corporate funding and encouragement of the current US administration. This started with Cook's contribution to the inauguration and has continued through various cringe-making events to the stage where Apple is paying to assist in the legally suspect demolition of a piece of America's heritage.

Apologists say that Cook is doing this to avoid tariffs on Apple products, but what is the point in being one of the richest companies in the world if you don't use this power to stand up to bullies? People with $40 frog costumes can do it - why can't Apple?

As everyone who has ever been bullied knows, giving the bully what they want is only ever a temporary solution. They respect you even less for giving in and will just keep asking for more. At some point, one has to wonder if Tim Cook is doing this reluctantly because he feels it best for Apple, or if he really is a full-on MAGA supporter.

The second part of the political problem is the way Apple deals with the EU. The company has been very quick to cooperate with authoritarian governments around the world and at home. If you want a good list (which makes for very depressing reading) check out Jesse Squires' recent post: Apple's cooperation with authoritarian governments. But when the democratically elected European Parliament passes a law requiring Apple to do anything, they suddenly descend into petulant toddler mode and lie on the floor screaming. When eventually forced to comply, they do it with extremely bad grace and as poorly as possible, so as to give the worst possible result.

While I understand that a lot of politicians are not well enough informed about tech matters to legislate well, has it occurred to anyone at Apple to act like an adult and negotiate honestly and in good faith?

The Solution

The solution to this problem is that Tim Cook must go. I don't know how far down the rot goes and how many other Apple execs also need to go, but ditching Cook is an essential first step. I haven't any suggestions as to who should replace him, but I would suggest looking for an external hire - maybe even one from outside the US who doesn't believe that companies have the same rights as people.

Software Quality

The ever decreasing quality of Apple software is more of an existential threat to Apple. Cook will eventually go, and presumably democracy will return to the US, but if Apple software becomes more difficult to use and more buggy than Windows or Linux, they will lose customers who will then not want to risk coming back.

Apple Silicon is incredible. They appear to be designing and making the best chips in the world right now. I haven't seen any real-world benchmarks for the new M5 chip, but I'm sure it's another huge advance.

Apple hardware is pretty good. They make some odd design choices, like the power button underneath the Mac mini and the iPhone Air, but the overall quality is good. Even the Apple Vision Pro is a great piece of hardware. Like many others, I tested it in the local Apple Store and was blown away. If it was half the price, I might have actually spent a few minutes considering buying, but at that price, for what is essentially a media watching device, it is way too expensive for me.

It's the software that lets down the hardware and the quality has been going downhill for some years now. We are way out of the "it just works" phase of using Apple products. I consider myself an expert and I have great trouble accomplishing some tasks.

The latest versions of all the operating systems seem particularly buggy, even if one ignores the obvious readability problems of Liquid Glass. Apple is a company that has always prided itself on its commitment to accessibility, so how they got this so wrong is a mystery. It seems like they wanted a major redesign just for the sake of it, and were prepared to put up with a huge reduction in usability in order to look different.

Then we get to the fiasco of Apple Intelligence which is sounding more like an oxymoron every day. First, Apple showed us vapor-ware at WWDC 24. Then they used this mythical system to advertise the iPhone 16 - at least at first. Finally, they did a partial implementation which is embarrassingly bad. It sounds like a great idea to have Mail and Messages show summaries, but when the summaries make stuff up or reverse the meaning, this is much worse than no summary. And when you can't trust the summary, it becomes totally pointless.

In the developer world, we were promised a two stage roll-out. First predictive code completion in Xcode and second, Swift Assist. The predictive code completion has been released, but I've had to turn it off. I don't know what language it was trained on, but it obviously wasn't Swift! Despite having all the docs and APIs there in Xcode, it suggests functions that just don't exist. Or if they exist, it suggests incorrect parameters. This has been incredibly disappointing. Apple has a captive audience using Xcode and with all their resources, it could have been great.

Swift Assist never appeared. Apple gave up on this and instead integrated ChatGPT into Xcode. I've tried it a few times and once or twice it has even worked. The biggest problem is that Swift is still a rapidly developing language and ChatGPT is not up-to-date with the latest changes. So it's not much use for Swift development - at least not yet.

The Solution

Unlike the first problem, this one has a multi-stage solution:

Move Craig Federighi from software to marketing. He seems like a really nice person and he makes great videos, but he is not managing the software teams.
Fire Alan Dye and hire a team of UI, UX and accessibility experts to fix OS26.
Instead of penalizing engineers for spending time on tests and QA instead of new features, insist that they do.
Give up on the yearly OS release cycle and give the Apple engineers time to fix things.
Use the developer community which is full of people who want to help, but are sick of being treated like the enemy. I've written before about Apple's developer relations and nothing has changed since then.

So there it is - my opinion of what is wrong at Apple and what needs to be done to fix it. If you have any other ideas or comments, I'd love to hear them. Please contact me using one of the links below or through the Contact page. And if you found this article interesting, please buy me a coffee.