Wednesday, March 11, 2015

BBC Joins Those Seeking an "Apple Reality Check"

As I discovered from all the time I spent on discussion groups trying to resolve the many problems that arose with the upgrade to Yosemite, I am far from alone in complaining that Apple's house is far from in order, particularly where OS X is concerned. Still it was gratifying to find the BBC adding its voice (albeit an anonymous one) to the protests. Yesterday, the Technology division of Newsbeat responded to the latest new-product show here in San Francisco with an article trying to address why Apple was not fixing existing problems rather than coming up with new cool stuff to shove down our throats. Is this a policy decision that can be traced all the way to the top of the managerial food chain, or does it come from a slightly lower level while Tim Cook goes around "being a personality" with little clue about what is going on in the development and maintenance of his own products? Inquiring minds (not to mention shareholders) would like to know!

Addendum: After I wrote the story, BBC News broke the story about a general software failure in Apple operations that affected iTunes, App Store, and iCloud. It could not have come at a better time. This is not so much a matter of Schadenfreude as it is one of painful nostalgia for days when you could count on Apple when all of the alternatives left far to much to be desired. For my own work activities, I am constrained by the fact that Examiner.com requires the use of either Firefox or Chrome when I submit my articles. I cannot say that I have very much confidence in Chrome yet for either software or hardware. I suppose I might be able to work on Firefox on a Linux machine, but I am not sure how well it supports iTunes. I could care less about the download service they provide, but I have dug myself a hole by using them to index music I have downloaded from other sources. I have never felt that my personal work practices were sufficiently modest that they would not be hard to satisfy, but now it feels like Brünnhilde has finished building her funeral pyre and is about to put a match to it!

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