Where is Apple's insanely great stuff?

After all these years in and around the Apple media circus, I found things pretty predictable this morning from the Walt Mossberg article to some user group folks desperate to find a copy of Leopard.  I am sure in a few day all but the most remote early adopter Apple customers will have a copy.

With Apple especially, it pays to hesitate to jump on the bandwagon.  Long gone are the days when Apple's operating systems spends months in the hands of real testers.  Now, so that Microsoft won't steal Apple's features, very little testing seems to take place.  At least that is the justification we hear.  I don't think it has much to do with anything other than this is way Apple wants to do it.

Perhaps there is a good reason for the lack of end user testing but what it means is that developers probably test for how their application works, and there are few real world testers who have a combination of applications that might be more typical of actual users.

The usual Apple way to fix this, and they do a good job of it, is to throw the operating system over the wall, have it snapped up by the restless natives while working hard to get updates ready to fix the major problems which are usually identified when it hits the hands of those real users.

I'm sure it will work out fine this time with a few predictable howls and complaints.

I was actually pleased to see one comment this morning.  It was in a MacWorld review of Leopard.

First, the good stuff: After years of experimenting with different looks for windows, sidebars, and other interface elements, Apple seems to have settled on a fairly consistent interface...

Leopard Finder’s new sidebar, clearly modeled after the iTunes Source List, is better organized and more usable than its Tiger counterpart.

Unfortunately, some of the changes are not as successful.

I have been saying for a while that some of the changes that Apple is making in its computer software don't necessarily seem to click.  I found that with iPhoto.  I am more used to the new iPhoto now, but I still find irritating some of things they removed in the new version and how it takes more steps to do things now.  The old version is still on my MacBook.

Leopard & iPhoto 08 are definitely maturing products, and it is much harder to get "insanely great" out of a maturing product than it is out of something like an iPhone.

It is also hard to please everyone, just ask Bill Gates.

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, I was most impressed with his continual focus on what not to do.  The idea was that you could only be insanely great on a very few products. 

A focus on those few products resulted in the Apple turnaround which is legend these days.

Still the Apple of those days is not the Apple of today. Apple worries about products on Windows, operating systems on iPods and iPhones and even stuff like iWeb or blogging software.

Part of the reason Apple spends time on these things is to keep its customer base happy and to perhaps expand it.  Yet in pulling all of this under one roof, perhaps Apple is recreating the problems that it tried so hard to escape.

I consider myself something of an expert on blogging.  I have been doing it for over three years on just about every platform that has been out there from Radioland to Typepad, Squarespace and everything in between including Bubbler which seems to have disappeared.

That includes iWeb.  Right now Oracokewaves (me that is) has these active blogs Blogger, Wordpress, and Squarespace. I have three presences on Typepad, Once a Reston resident, View from the Mountain, and Applepeels.  I also have a real estate blog at Active Rain.  I even drop by Live Journal once in while and have started a small blog on the Weather Underground.  I even post on the Blacksburg, Virginia Webvillages site.

I am passionate about the web as a communications medium.  I believe enhanced web communications can help us understand each other a little better.  Along with all the blogs, I have information sticking out there on a number of sites, Southern Outer Banks, my Homepage, my Coastal Blog, and my free print site.

The biggest disappointment of my web presences happens to be a couple of iWeb generated blogs on .Mac, one that I no longer use and my Carteret County, NC one which I do update regularly.  I won't even do more than just mention all the incompatible .Mac photo albums that I have. I suspect no one else is bothered by this.

You either jump through extraordinary hoops or just use one computer to do iWeb projects.  Visually the iWeb generated blogs look really good and clean, but everything else that you would expect with a blog isn't there.  There is no perfect blogging software, but iWeb on .Mac is so far from "insanely greatly" to make me ask, why bother?

Which brings me to the other point of this post.  I have been actively using my new Windows Vista machine.  It's a better blogging platform than my Mac.

I have written a number of time about why Firefox is one of the reasons I have stayed on the Mac.  I detailed some of the reasons in a post, A scary thought for Apple users.

It didn't hit me until this morning when I had a problem with formatting on a post that I was doing with MacBook on Squarespace.  I just couldn't get it right.  The cursor wouldn't even go in some places.  Usually I can fix that by switching to HTML mode but this time nothing worked.  That is until I got the idea of seeing if I could fix it on my Vista machine.

As soon as I logged on to the blogging service from Vista I could just click where I wanted to be and clear up the formatting problem.  After that happened I started doing a little experimenting with Typepad.

I have always been bothered by how slow some of the secondary windows are on Typepad.  It turns out the problem wasn't Typepad, it was my browser on my Mac.

On Vista, the windows as they open almost jump out at me.  It's just a whole faster.  I also find that with websites.  I had heard for years that Windows was a better browsing experience, but I didn't particularly find that to be the case on my old XP box, but browsing is pretty darn good on this new HP laptop.

I hate to say it, but I have been especially impressed with the speed of 64 bit version of Internet Explorer.  I still have Firefox as my default browser because I like the user interface better.

So all this brings me to my conclusion.  I think Apple and the Apple community would be well served if Apple didn't try to do everything on their own.

Even someone with a blogging addiction like me has to say, why does the world need iWeb?  Why not work really hard to integrate your wonderful iPhoto program into Typepad and Blogger for starters instead of letting them limp along not even fully functional on Safari?

There is a lot about the user interface of Picasa that I like better than iPhoto. Still you could put iPhoto back at the head of my list if it would work with Typepad like Flickr currently works with Typepad or Blogger. Storing a picture on the web and being able to post it to another blog service is a big deal for me, and Apple isn't the one that gets that or delivers that.

Integration across different web applications is really important in the Web 2.0 world.  I'm not sure Apple is part of that world.

As I see Apple trying to create their own Apple 'World" with all Apple tools done by Apple, I get worried that insanely great is going to disappear from that world.

Maybe all I am asking for is that Apple reach out and make an effort to get their stuff working really well with everyone else's stuff instead of reinventing the wheel.  That used to be part of the Apple culture.

Now it is seems as long as the iPod and iPhone work with Windows, who the hell cares about how well Safari might work with Typepad.

I realize that I am in a small minority of Apple users, but right now I can tell you that there is a huge amount of choice in the Windows world and it is a big deal.

I really like a more responsive browser. Now not all is perfect in the Windows world, my MacBook with OS is still friendlier, has better battery life, and hooks up to wireless networks with less effort.

Given the choice of both machines, I doing this post on my HP.  The screen, keyboard, and the mouse are all better.  The mouse which used to be on my MacBook works better on the HP.

I am surprised that even at this early stage in my use of Windows, that I have found something which is really important to me and the way I work.  A better browser experience, a built in slot for reading my smart media, and a few other goodies make that $849 price that I paid look even better.

Still I had Windows shut down without warning me because "my battery life had reached the critical stage."  It might have warned me, and I just did know it, but I am pleased to report that it saved my post, and I back typing.

It is too bad we can't get more Windows users to try Macs, and more Mac users to try Windows machines.  I think the dialog would be good and both platforms would benefit.

Comments

[megaphone]

You once mentioned someone at Apple had made a patronising comment along the lines of: “Customers don’t know what they want. We need to tell them.”

Well, after using the MacOS for 20 years I have a very good idea of what I want, and after 2 years since Tigers release its not the illogically designed stacks, a shiny dock or a transparent menu bar. (Or at the very least could I have a checkbox to turn them off?)

I can’t speak for anyone else, but using the whole ‘Redmond start your photocopiers’ guff is getting tired. The eventual announcement of Leopard’s ‘Top Secret’ features demonstrated how deflating Apples secrecy can be.
I’d like to see Apple implement a programme with a pool of beta testers outside of the ADC - customers that use OSX and related apps as part of their daily workflow in conjunction with 3rd party apps. If Apple could set their ego aside, they might actually find the feedback constructive and insightful. Of course I doubt that’ll happen, because Steve treasures secrecy and loves surprises. And apparently Apple already knows what I want, right?

[ibvanmat]

Did you ever stop and think that maybe you're version of insanely great and Apple's are two different things? What I see is a company constantly trying to make daily tasks easier for people. iPhoto is a good example of that, and so is iWeb. Sure us geeks know all about Flickr, Typepad, etc. But the majority of computer users don't. They are still struggling to do the basic things they need to do on a computer. Apple isn't trying to create the best, most full featured software out there every time. They know full well they don't have the resources for that. They are giving people simple software that is easy to learn. If people grow out of it, then they can move on to other software. There is plenty of it out there. Why recreate what 3rd party mac developers are already doing? Taken a look at MarsEdit?

As for your web experience, it's no surprise things felt faster on Windows. Given that MS has continued to try and monopolize the web with their own technologies. It's impressive that most of the web works on Macs at all. Still, it doesn't sound like you've even tried Safari 3, which has been tested faster than any other browser already. You also never talk about the inherent security risk of running Windows. Sure, if you ignore it, it may not hurt you, but what happens if something does go wrong. How important is stability and security to your work environment? These are the things users have to deal with, and so many people in positions of influence (geeks) just ignore it, or assume that anyone with problems is doing something wrong.

I've already installed Leopard, and so far it's been running great. The changes they've made have made things easier, and in some cases there are features that I can't believe we haven't had before (like QuickLook). The new Finder will bring lots of Windows switchers over, simply because they've made it work like iTunes, and most Windows users already know how to use it. You say it wasn't tested enough, but it seems rock solid stable so far. It will be interesting to see how the next few weeks play out. My money is still on Apple to increase it's share in the market, and for MS to still flail around not knowing what they are doing. There's just been too much written about Vista's problems to take one person's experience as indicative of the software. I've worked with Vista, and it seemed bad even when just compared to XP. I doubt I'll ever run it unless forced to. In the meantime, I'll continue getting more value out of my Macs, and feel more secure about my data and privacy as well.

[michael]

Beyond the original OS X, I have seen little reason to upgrade unless I am forced to by network administrator.

OS 10.4 gives me little incentive to upgrade.

AS to do things on Windows, I love the send to feature. I use it a lot. It irritates me to no end that Apple does not include this feature.

Besides Windows XP and OS 10.1 when has anyone been boner excited about an OS? Apple should marshall its forces on building a laptop to replace its current generation of tabletops. Two features I would love: (1) does not burn my lap from excessive heat and (2) does not crack three times in six months.

[Tutor]

Since blogging is important to you, you may want to try Marsedit.

http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/

[ocracokewaves]

Michael,

You missed the point of the article.

I'm not asking for the most full featured products from Apple.

However, I am asking for the best products.

I don't think that Apple can deliver the best when they try to create products like iWeb which fill a space that is already well occupied with better products.

Computer users aren't dumb. In spite of what Mac users think of Windows users, I have found that plenty of Windows people manage to send and edit photos. It is not a Mac monopoly.

In fact the dumbing down of the Mac so more people will try blogs through iWeb is just asking for trouble. Apple's way of doing blogs just doesn't work the way the web is supposed to work.

What I am asking of Apple is don't be Windows. Just do what you do in an insanely great way.

If that means saying no to iWeb because others have better ideas than you, great.

Take that effort and make you products work with other products already out there.

Leopard may be working fine for you, but I talked to a friend this morning who is in a disaster situation after installing Leopard.

It is because Apple doesn't test with real users, that is the plain and simple reason for my friends problem.

I was in the same situation with the last OS release. I couldn't send mail and the only advice my Apple SE's friends could give me was reformat my drive.

Fortunately a reader told me about Tiger Cache cleaner which saved my rear.

http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2005/05/the_ultimate_ir.html

So the poor folks who do have problems are just swept under the rug like most other Apple problems.