Apple en problemas

Lo vengo diciendo desde que falleció el querido ex-co-fundador de Apple. Y es que lo único que le espera es un camino hacia abajo.

Ya se que en ventas van geniales y todo eso, pero el mundo avanza con nuevas ideas y Apple lo que está haciendo el copìar un poco todo lo que ve. Y así no es como se hace el dinero que lo mantiene a Apple donde una vez estuvo.

Ya le pasó a BlackBerry, lo pasaron literalmente por arriba y no se pudo recomponer...

Pero bien, la noticia que recibo hoy es sobre el post de uno de los mejores desarrolladores que tiene Apple (Marco Arment) y co-fundador de otros emprendimientos muy populares (a mi gusto son una estupidez, pero que se le va a hacer, es lo más usado en el mundo) Y estoy hablando de  Tumblr, Instapaper y Overcast.

Se queja de la mala calidad del software que produce Apple cada año. Dice literalmente que es mejor tener un software de calidad para después recién preocuparse por agregar features. Y Apple hace todo lo contrario.

Quien sea desarrollador (como yo) entenderá que ésto es lo que se le pide a toda empresa. Y, cuando no lo cumplen, uno siente que está poniendo en juego su reputación, porque todo el mundo comenta sobre lo malo que es el software producido y luego comentarán cosas como: "Quién hace ese software tan malo? Y, lo hace este muchacho Marco Arment"

Lo más gracioso es que en su blog, Marco Arment ya tuvo de retractarse de haber escrito lo que escribió y se asombra de ser tan sorprendentemente popular por un día.

Es gracioso que inclusive linkea a una historia de otra persona y esa persona (por miedo o vaya a saber por qué) retiró el posteo! Muy gracioso todo...

Les dejo sus palabras aquí porque en unos días ya ni siquiera tal vez exista el post:

Apple’s hardware today is amazing — it has never been better. But the software quality has fallen so much in the last few years that I’m deeply concerned for its future. I’m typing this on a computer whose existence I didn’t even think would be possible yet, but it runs an OS with embarrassing bugs and fundamental regressions. Just a few years ago, we would have relentlessly made fun of Windows users for these same bugs on their inferior OS, but we can’t talk anymore.

“It just works” was never completely true, but I don’t think the list of qualifiers and asterisks has ever been longer. We now need to treat Apple’s OS and application releases with the same extreme skepticism and trepidation that conservative Windows IT departments employ.

Geoff Wozniak went back to desktop Linux after almost a decade on OS X(Update: He appears to have taken the post down). It’s just one person’s story, but many of his cited reasons resonate widely. I suspect the biggest force keeping stories like this from being more common is that Windows is still worse overall and desktop Linux is still too much of a pain in the ass for most people. But it should be troubling if a lot of people are staying on your OS because everything else is worse, not necessarily because they love it.

Apple has always been a marketing-driven company, but there’s a balance to be struck. Marketing plays a vital role, but marketing priorities cannot come at significant expense to quality.

I suspect the rapid decline of Apple’s software is a sign that marketing1 istoo high a priority at Apple today: having major new releases every year is clearly impossible for the engineering teams to keep up with while maintaining quality. Maybe it’s an engineering problem, but I suspect not — I doubt that any cohesive engineering team could keep up with these demands and maintain significantly higher quality.2

The problem seems to be quite simple: they’re doing too much, with unrealistic deadlines.

We don’t need major OS releases every year. We don’t need each OS release to have a huge list of new features. We need our computers, phones, and tablets to work well first so we can enjoy new features released at a healthy, gradual, sustainable pace.

I fear that Apple’s leadership doesn’t realize quite how badly and deeply their software flaws have damaged their reputation, because if they realized it, they’d make serious changes that don’t appear to be happening. Instead, the opposite appears to be happening: the pace of rapid updates on multiple product lines seems to be expanding and accelerating.

Este es el update pidiendo perdón (o algo así)

Last night, I wrote a quick post about Apple’s software quality. Originally, it was just a link to the Linux post. I had too much commentary, so at the last minute, I changed it to an article and came up with a quick headline. I’d been toying with the idea of the “moral high ground”, but that was too harsh and incorrect, so I went with the “functional high ground”, thinking almost nobody would get the reference and it would uneventfully breeze through my geek friends’ RSS readers like most of my posts.

This morning, my words were everywhere, chopped up and twisted by sensational opportunists to fuel the tired “Apple is doomed!” narrative with my name on them. (Or Tumblr’s name, which was even worse.) Business Insider started the party, as usual, but it spread like wildfire from there. Huffington Post. Wall Street Journal. CNN. Heise. Even a televised CNBC discussion segment.

All of them using my name, and a few of my words, to create drama, fan the flames, and get some views.

And there were a lot of views. The small fraction that came back to my site still pushed it past the pageview totals for any posts I wrote in 2014. You might think this is a dream come true for a blogger, but it’s horrible.

Instead, I looked back at what I wrote with regret, guilt, and embarrassment. The sensationalism was my fault — I started it with the headline and many poor word choices, which were overly harsh and extreme. I was being much nastier and more alarmist than I intended. I edited some words to be more fair and accurate, but it was too late. I can’t blame the opportunists for taking the bait that I hastily left for them.1

Most of my posts go effectively nowhere, but occasionally, one will unexpectedly go really far — and this blew past everything I’ve ever done. When that happens, there’s no chance to revise, no room for error, and no way to stop it.

If there’s any flaw, it’s an unstoppable nightmare of embarrassment and guilt. Most people, myself included, aren’t accustomed to that level of scrutiny. Those who are usually have PR training, editors, and handlers to protect them from publishing flippant blog posts before they go to bed.

Instead of what was intended to be constructive criticism of the most influential company in my life, I handed the press more poorly written fuel to hamfistedly stab Apple with my name and reputation behind it. And my name will be on that forever.

Had I known that it would go as far as it did, I never would have written it.

I now need to write everything with the fear that any hastily written article might end up on TV, with the most extreme word in the article singled out with my name on it forever.

I’ll keep writing — I can’t stay away. But academically, it’s not worth the risk.

Y les dejo esta nota relacionada donde un conocido investigador de seguridad habla de lo inseguro que es Apple en estos días.

"Apple es tan inseguro como Windows"

http://www.elladodelmal.com/2015/01/protege-tu-iphone-es-tan-inseguro-como.html