What is Happening to Apple?

30/05/12 13:29

Many of us might have been wondering and worrying what will happen with Apple after Steve Jobs had gone. Some might have thought it will be just fine and continue the way it did before, but the signs are telling something different.

I remember my resistance to move to OSX Lion when reading all the comments in the forums. And when I couldn’t avoid it anymore and made the move I was shocked. Not only because of the difficulties with emails and internet OSX Lion caused, plus some other dysfunction, but the most because of the betrayal of the Apple philosophy regarding user interface design and functionality. Especially the user interfaces of the emails, the calendar and the address book are very disturbing and ergonomically hurting. Apple stood out by making everything easy for the user, one click or look and there was everything. The new interfaces made it complicated, annoying, dysfunctional, disturbing and the colors are bad too. I was hoping for the update OSX Mountain Lion to come to fix the missteps. But it seems that it is getting even worse. In a todays article Gizmodo (http://tinyurl.com/7p62hzb) gives an overview of new things to happen with Apple products in the near future and it doesn’t sound promising. It seems that the trend of abandoning the track of great and practical design will be continued. What is going on?
The situation reminds me of stories from Zimbabwe, although this must sound far-fetched. There was a time in Zimbabwe when the white farmers had to leave their farms and often their former employees took them over. Some farmers went back to see how everything was going and often the following had happened. Here an example. A farmer had left his house to the employee who had done the maintenance of the house for many years. The farmer thought this employee deserves to live in the house, because he looked after it for many years and he would also be the right person to understand it and to know how to maintain it. When he came back for a visit several years later, the employee was still living in the house, but the house had almost fallen apart. No maintenance was done throughout all the years the employee had taken over the house. Why didn’t he look after the house like he had done all the years before? He had done the maintenance, because he was told to do it, it was his work, but he obviously had never understood why the work was necessary, why a house needed maintenance. He didn’t understand the concept of maintenance.
Now back to Apple. It seems that there are parallels to the concept of maintenance. There might be nobody who actually who really had understood the concept of user-friendly designed interfaces. In the past they only designed them, because they were told to do it, not because they understood them and the design of the interfaces is immediately dropping in quality.
Another aspect of worry is that they are looking at the “last five minutes” of Apple, the very successful and wealthy Apple with money to spend in abundance. Steve Jobs had experienced the nearly dead Apple and pulled it out and into success. Will that happen again when Apple comes in difficult situations with the current decision makers? Or will they just move to another company, one that has to spend money in abundance at that time?

One needs to live the product, philosophy, idea or company one is doing in order to bring it to success and to keep it there. With the big corporates nowadays this is rarely the case. It’s to big and there is mostly no owner or company founder involved anymore who has the personal commitment.

Well. Lets see what’s happening to Apple in the future and hopefully they will either get back on track or an alternative will evolve from all the new young companies.

Ute Sonnenberg, www.rohoyachui.com