[Macworld]

Post your comments for For Apple, change could be a good sign here

[Showman]

I find that even the best of anything, over time, turns into Rube Goldberg fiasco. Features are added and changed that seem good at the time, but at some point you take a step back and say, what the heck have we done? This is when change is good and you can take all the ideas that were add ons over the years and recreate a fresh and more integrated product. Apple is one of the few companies that has done this. Most companies think short term and don't want to upset their customers so they sacrifice long term success.

[oneappleaday]

Isn't it Jony Ive's job now to improve iOS? I'm pretty sure there are some nice changes ahead of us.

[gusluz]

The begining of a slow decline.

Inside turmoil going out in public.

A new product, with a lousy, lousy, lousy processor (iPad mini). In other words, older specs, in a new package. Worst off, blatantly trying to compete with another product, instead of creating its own space ( K-fire )

Bringing manufacturing back to the US.

Clearly a different apple. The only really awful was the missed opportunity with the mini. I guess the other two we shall see.

[hmurchison]

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The begining of a slow decline. Inside turmoil going out in public. A new product, with a lousy, lousy, lousy processor (iPad mini). In other words, older specs, in a new package. Worst off, blatantly trying to compete with another product, instead of creating its own space ( K-fire ) Bringing manufacturing back to the US. Clearly a different apple. The only really awful was the missed opportunity with the mini. I guess the other two we shall see.

You mean the same mini that is selling out wherever it's sold? If that's a company in decline I'm sure there are many wanting to join this party.

[wesley96]

While iPad mini has the processor that came out one and a half year ago, it's not a "lousy, lousy, lousy" one.

One needs to consider that this is basically the same processor in iPad 2 (A5), which is still sold by Apple. The 3rd gen iPad that came out just half a year ago to succeed it had improvements to graphics only, (A5X) which were literally soaked up by the quadruple resolution. So in actual use, both perform more or less similar.

Further, A5 is what's inside iPhone 4S. That phone is by no means a slouch. Far from it.

As an actual iPad mini owner, I can see that it performs better than many of the Android (or Android-based) tablets out there. It's pretty competitive.

I would agree that the processor is last year's tech. But Apple optimizes the hell out of its hardware. Saying "lousy" three times only makes such claim three times as more.. ahem... lousy.

[flowney]

One of the big mistakes an organization can make following a period of rapid and significant expansion, is not to consolidate those gains. Apple today has a number of areas where they are spread too thin. For example, the experience of capturing, editing and consuming video lacks internal consistency. There are too many ifs, ands and buts. I believe that much of this is the result of compartmentalization which is important to Apple's legendary code of silence but the bane of collaboration. Collaboration was the keyword in Tim Cook's comments on the changes made to Apple's executive team. Greater collaboration at Apple will be a major change and should yield great benefits to its customers.

[redgeminipa]

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The begining of a slow decline. Inside turmoil going out in public. A new product, with a lousy, lousy, lousy processor (iPad mini). In other words, older specs, in a new package. Worst off, blatantly trying to compete with another product, instead of creating its own space ( K-fire ) Bringing manufacturing back to the US. Clearly a different apple. The only really awful was the missed opportunity with the mini. I guess the other two we shall see.

You've obviously never touched an iPad mini, let alone compare its performance with any "competing" products. Considering it is just as good of a performer as the Nexus 7 (the king of small Android tablets) with a quad-core CPU, I'd say the A5 in the mini is quite good. If you remember, it was only recently that mobile processors started out-performing the A5. Then came the A6, which is practically killing all mobile quad-core processors in the performance department with... DUAL-CORES...

As for competition, when you compare the iPad mini to any other 7-8" tablet on the market, the only thing missing is a high-resolution display. Again, it's only been recently that other tablets started shipping with them. The resolution of the mini's screen is better than the iPad 2, and it was highly praised back in the day. I'll take the slightly lower resolution for much more usable screen real estate in a very well packaged form factor.

Yes, I put my money where my mouth is when I bought one.

[redgeminipa]

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... the experience of capturing, editing and consuming video lacks internal consistency.

I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about. That process works pretty much the same on my iPhone 5 (and 4S before it), iPad 3rd Gen. and iPad mini...

[FlopTech]

Re: "Change is hard, and most of us dislike experiencing it."

True. But over the years, Apple has proven that they can successfully transition users and developers from old technologies to new. 68k -> PowerPC -> Intel. OS 9 -> OS X. And now iTunes 10 -> 11.

Getting back on topic here...

iTunes on Mac really needed a major overhaul. I'm sure Apple has plenty more changes in store for us, but maybe not until OS X 10.9 or 11.0.

It seems that Mac users are much more resistant to change than iOS users. Or at least the Mac users seem to complain much more about UI changes in their favorite apps. Makes sense, because the Mac dates back to 1984. There's an "old guard" faction that will (claim to) resist change, even change for the better. iOS, being new and still rapidly evolving, doesn't have any traditionalist minority in its user base.

[tsarkon]

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Re: "Change is hard, and most of us dislike experiencing it." True. But over the years, Apple has proven that they can successfully transition users and developers from old technologies to new. 68k -> PowerPC -> Intel. OS 9 -> OS X. And now iTunes 10 -> 11. Getting back on topic here... iTunes on Mac really needed a major overhaul. I'm sure Apple has plenty more changes in store for us, but maybe not until OS X 10.9 or 11.0. It seems that Mac users are much more resistant to change than iOS users. Or at least the Mac users seem to complain much more about UI changes in their favorite apps. Makes sense, because the Mac dates back to 1984. There's an "old guard" faction that will (claim to) resist change, even change for the better. iOS, being new and still rapidly evolving, doesn't have any traditionalist minority in its user base.

I am confident OS X (as in roman "ten", although I always say "ex") will go from 10.9 to 10.10, or get rid of version numbers completely, leaving only build numbers to diff the products. It makes sense since OS X (no longer called Mac OS X since Lion and onwards) is basically one OS with two platforms: one using touchscreen with Apple ARM processors and iDevices using touchpad.

[tsarkon]

Quote

Re: "Change is hard, and most of us dislike experiencing it." True. But over the years, Apple has proven that they can successfully transition users and developers from old technologies to new. 68k -> PowerPC -> Intel. OS 9 -> OS X. And now iTunes 10 -> 11. Getting back on topic here... iTunes on Mac really needed a major overhaul. I'm sure Apple has plenty more changes in store for us, but maybe not until OS X 10.9 or 11.0. It seems that Mac users are much more resistant to change than iOS users. Or at least the Mac users seem to complain much more about UI changes in their favorite apps. Makes sense, because the Mac dates back to 1984. There's an "old guard" faction that will (claim to) resist change, even change for the better. iOS, being new and still rapidly evolving, doesn't have any traditionalist minority in its user base. I am confident OS X (as in roman "ten", although I always say "ex") will go from 10.9 to 10.10, or get rid of version numbers completely, leaving only build numbers to diff the products. It makes sense since OS X (no longer called Mac OS X since Lion and onwards) is basically one OS with two platforms: one using touchscreen with Apple ARM processors and iDevices using touchpad.

Oh, and .. I believe the riddening of version numbers makes it more transparent to users (iOS 6.1 vs OS X 10.X.X), more seamless.

[ClinicalPosters]

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While iPad mini has the processor that came out one and a half year ago, it's not a "lousy, lousy, lousy" one. One needs to consider that this is basically the same processor in iPad 2 (A5), which is still sold by Apple.

Yes, as an entry-level device, it is expected to have a hand-me-down processor. It will get faster when there's something extraordinary to add to the larger iPad.

[oirudleahcim]

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Re: There's an "old guard" faction. . .

And sometimes we members of the old guard have a long view of a software product's evolution [i.e., more than the last two versions in the last two years], and our perspective regarding improvement is informed by having seen the iterations of the product over a long timespan.

Sometimes, change IS bad, especially when it involves the constant dumbing down of applications to elementary-school-level interfaces and functions and reducing capabilities of those apps as well.

Apple is increasingly oriented toward what's popular with entertainment-oriented customers rather than excellent software. The hardware end is a different story.

And we will continue to call Apple out on this matter. Long live the old guard!