alt Hacker NewsOne doesn’t need to wonder why Apple couldn’t get something done. Apple seems to be in dire need of a shakeup at the top level, but seems to be incapable of seeing the need for that or being able to do that.
From the outside, it looks like there are just power struggles and fiefdoms held by the old guard that have resulted in the stagnation and the worsening quality across its operating systems. Even today you cannot search and find all the things in the Settings app on iOS, which has been a longstanding issue. ScreenTime is totally broken since iOS 18 and shows tons of minutes of apps that I open for just one minute everyday. There are many more irritating old bugs as well as new bugs being added regularly.
The recently rumored to be forthcoming “26” numbering of all its operating systems and the cementing of annual releases with new feature addition doesn’t bode well for improving quality. The way Apple’s software teams have been working, a tick-tock cycle of improvements followed by stabilizing every other year is the only way things can get a little better. That’s a pipe dream for me anyway.
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I am a bit late to the (upgrade) party, but ios 18… what happened?! If you scroll through dates in the Calendar app, random date numbers vanish. Huh. Search in Notes is super weird (shows old, fuzzy matches first). Photos app is just.. wow where am I? How is there no jailbreak yet? (Is there?). I have read here the main issue is fragmentation, but I am not sure how that (not) works. If one team builds, let say Notes.app why is it so broken? Because it recycles search libs from (broken) Photos.app? Sorry for the rant.
Edit: is this to upsell the AI?
I think Apple will have trouble course-correcting because there currently isn’t a good OS for sale. Why improve in terms of quality, if there isn’t any competition?
Weirdly, I think they might be smarter than us. Despite being superficially uninterested in hardware, the general public seems to buy hardware, and then just use whatever OS comes on it. Apple seems to have aligned with this by easing up on software quality a bit and obtaining a reasonable (although not incontestable) claim at being the best hardware company with their M-series chips.
I would wager sky.app will find themselves acquired by Apple before the end of 2026.
I’ve seen arguments that it largely comes down to the lack of a Jobs-like figure at the top maintaining a coherent, user-driven vision across the company and won’t hesitate to take a hatchet to projects and initiatives that aren’t furthering that vision.
Cook is excellent in terms of managing supply chains and has been good for the company’s bottom line, but he doesn’t have Jobs’ capability to discern what users want/need and what makes a good product, and I doubt he has anywhere near the level of direct involvement that Jobs had.
That’s not to glaze Jobs, he was anything but perfect but he was undoubtedly among the driving forces behind Apple’s quality and knack for building things that people want.