What are Apple's top 5 current biggest mistakes?

[Ceroc Addict]

IMHO, these are:

1. iPod photo i.e. Not releasing an iPod video (or Newton II) from the get go.
2. Crippling the audio recording on the iPod.
3. Only having a "fast forward in 6 second increments" option on the iPod shuffle (i.e. it should have been more like a minute or two).
4. Not adding more buttons (or some other input option) to it's mouse/trackpads (esp. once it introduced a BT mouse)
5. Not putting 512MB into the Mac mini as standard

Technically, these aren't mistakes, because there's no indication as to whether Apple is actually working on these or not:

• Not releasing an iTunes video store
• Not releasing a 23" iMac
• Not adding labelled chapter markers for audio files in iTunes/iPod

Kap

 

[adambyte]

Heh. I'm going to do them backwards, Dave Letterman style, from weakest point to strongest point....

Current Biggest Mistakes...
#5 The Dock needs to be more customizable, and more mouse friendly
#4 Two-button scroll-wheel mouse.... give us the option! You can do it better than everybody else!
#3 Genius Bars are under-staffed
#2 I'm more knowledgable than 9 out of 10 "Mac Specialists" at the Apple store, and yet they STILL haven't hired me... (3rd time applying)
#1 "AppleCare" has gone from too forgiving to too chincy. They used to replace half of your PowerBook is something was just a little wonky. Now they assume you abused the computer and want to charge you a million dollars.

 

[MDLarson]

#1 One button mouse.
#2 One button mouse.
#3 One button mouse.
#4 One button mouse.
#5 Renaming Rendevouz to that other French name.

 

[olivier.marian]

Order depends on your definition of a mistake: bad financial strategy ? your satisfaction as a user ? short term market share strategy ? converting PC users to mac ?

Anyway, some ideas after 10 days as a new Mac user (mac mini is a great weapon to gain market shares from PCs !!! )

1 - stupid but yes I would not change my logitech mx700 mouse to an apple one with one button, even if it is 100 times nicer. It should not be hard to build a nice 2 button wheel nice white mouse. And for a long time I thought that right click or wheeling was not implemented in mac since the mouse had only one button....

2 - When you start, you begin to install lots of things... and after 1 day your desktop is covered with mounted files, installation files..... I am ok to chnage my habits and try not to mind where the files are on my hard drive, since OSX is supposed to handle it nicely for me, but please don't get my desktop that messy !!! I am quite a PC computer geek and now i handle it but many friends not very good in computing compalined about this

3 - iTunes is great at first sight, i even tried it on my PC, but again file management is messy. you end up with files everywhere..... When you have several computers at home and want to do some sharing and or backup, it is annoying. I understand it is how I feel it, but I heard several people saying so too.

4 - I Agree for the 256 Mo of RAM or the mini. I easily swaped for 1 Gb but most people won't be able to do it. (Why did they made such a hard way to open the mini ??? customising your mini would be a nice viral marketing tool, with websites reporting how every people changed things)

5 - a 4200rpm HDD is quite slow... in my mac mini. I'll use a firewire HDD for my music....


On the other hand, the mac mini is a great tool. it's a great way to move to the mac world, loaded with Tiger and Ilife you get a great value package.
I succeeded in creating a DVD in minutes from my digital camera, and this is great. OSX is also BEAUTIFUL, i just spend hours playing with this interface. i'll test the musical ability soon. But i definitly not regret my buy and now would consider seriously a mac for my next computer

 

[HateEternal]

2 - When you start, you begin to install lots of things... and after 1 day your desktop is covered with mounted files, installation files..... I am ok to chnage my habits and try not to mind where the files are on my hard drive, since OSX is supposed to handle it nicely for me, but please don't get my desktop that messy !!! I am quite a PC computer geek and now i handle it but many friends not very good in computing compalined about this

I don't understand your problem. Does your browser download to the desktop or something? I never get files on my desktop, unlike XP which always wants to put a shortcut. As far as the disk images go, I just hit the eject button in finder as soon as I am done installing, just as if I was ejecting the install CD.

3 - iTunes is great at first sight, i even tried it on my PC, but again file management is messy. you end up with files everywhere..... When you have several computers at home and want to do some sharing and or backup, it is annoying. I understand it is how I feel it, but I heard several people saying so too.

As long as you have ID3 tags on your mp3s I have always found that iTunes does a really nice job of organizing files by artist and album.

 

[olivier.marian]

I don't understand your problem. Does your browser download to the desktop or something? I never get files on my desktop, unlike XP which always wants to put a shortcut. As far as the disk images go, I just hit the eject button in finder as soon as I am done installing, just as if I was ejecting the install CD.

I guess by default everything downloaded goes to the desktop. And yes now i understood that most of things on the desktop are mounted volumes that you just have to eject, but this is not an obvious point for most users, and I have to confess that I also find it sometimes confusing when after downloading a compressed stuff, you end up with the compressed file, the mounted disk image and the program, with the same name, side by side... Don't get me wrong, I don't say it's a bad way , It's just confusing and , so far to my mind, not much more clever than what you get in the PC world where you end up with the zip file, the decompressed file, and at least the program usually in the program files folder. Again I'll easily get used to it, but do a crash test with a friend of yours not used to it, and check his reaction. It's not that easy to know what is the program and what is what you can eject or drag to the trash can.

As long as you have ID3 tags on your mp3s I have always found that iTunes does a really nice job of organizing files by artist and album.

Here I agree I should have pointed out that it's just trange to see itunes rearrange everything when you are used to manage by yourself, as it is mandatory in the windows world.

Anyway thanks for your comments, I guess i'll get used to all this new way of using a computer and discover the beauty of it. I already am charmed.

 

[Mikuro]

Here I agree I should have pointed out that it's just trange to see itunes rearrange everything when you are used to manage by yourself, as it is mandatory in the windows world.

I agree. I hate the way iTunes auto-organizes my collection. It always ends up splitting all my albums into umpteen folders if not all the tracks have identical Artist tags. Grrr. Fortunately, you can turn this off (Preferences -> Advanced -> uncheck 'Keep iTunes Folder Organized'). I do all my organization manually.

Anyway, my list:

1. 256 MB of RAM. It's painful. SOOOOOOO painful. I'm using a 256MB Mac mini. In Panther it was tolerable. In Tiger, just about everything comes with a 5+ second delay as my disk thrashes. ALL their machines should ship with AT LEAST 512MB. With Tiger, I feel like even that probably wouldn't be enough.

2. No upgradability. Tons of PC users (especially gamers) are completely put off by the lack of upgrade options for Macs. Only the G5 is upgradable in any real way, and even that isn't much (you're not gonna find any processor upgrades for your two-year-old G5). Apple should A) Give ALL their computers upgradeable graphics cards, and B) Produce their own processor upgrades for the G5s (and possibly their other models as well).

3. Safari is way too bare-bones. Give me some filters, PLEASE. I've always been a happy user of PithHelmet, but now with Safari 2.0, PithHelmet causes crashes way too much. As a result, there are really no good browsers for OS X. Firefox is intolerably un-Mac-like (the scrolling behavior alone makes it a chore to use), Camino has even fewer features than Safari, and iCab is ancient, and with Safari, I either have to tolerate regular crashes or have seizures from all the flashing. At the very least, add an option to disable animated gifs!!

4. The Finder. Seriously, you'd think it would get a little more attention, considering how important it is. From day 1, the Finder has been a mess. Windows always seem to want to appear with that god-forsaken toolbar (and the infinitely worse god-forsaken sidebar). And the few that I DO want to open with the toolbar never retain it. Give me some consistency, and make some damned sense. It's been, what, 4 years since OS X was first released? There's no excuse for the Finder to be anything but perfect at this point.

5. Smooth scrolling. It just sucks in its current form. Windows' scrolling has been smoother for years. It's not that hard, Apple. I've made my own OS X programs that scroll smoothly, but I've had to create my own scrolling behavior for it. First of all, Apple needs to make their "system-wide" smooth scrolling feature really system-wide, rather than supporting just a handful of apps (not even the Finder! Yeesh!). And most importantly, they need to make it actually smooth. Right now it's very obviously a cheap hack tacked on top of the existing scrolling behavior. It's not smooth at all; it's stuttery and unresponsive. Scrolling with the arrow keys should obviously not use the standard key repeat rate for typing; it should continuously scroll as long as the key is down.

 

[mrfluffy]

I agree. I hate the way iTunes auto-organizes my collection. It always ends up splitting all my albums into umpteen folders if not all the tracks have identical Artist tags.

Apple-i > Info > Part of a compilation

 

[kainjow]

#1 One button mouse.
#2 One button mouse.
#3 One button mouse.
#4 One button mouse.
#5 Renaming Rendevouz to that other French name.

Um the one-button mouse, I think, was Apple's #1 most genius idea, albeit well hidden.

Why? It's why the Mac is the Mac as we know it today. If the one button mouse didn't stay and doesn't stay as default, Mac UI = Windows UI, and beginners would have just as much trouble understanding why they need a 2nd mouse button on their Mac as they would on their PC.

I think one of Apple's biggest mistakes is not appealing to gamers. If they don't start appealing to gamers (which is just about every male ages 15-25), they are losing out on a huge chunk of $$$. Once they get better gaming performance and compatibility and such, they'll win over the gamers. But right now the Mac has no purpose to gamers. It's worthless. Yay I can play about 5 decent games on it, but any new game that comes out won't be available for Mac until 6-12 months later, if there is any interest in porting it.

Also they need to get with a chip supplier who can provide them chips well. Motorola couldn't, IBM can't... I think getting AMD to create their PPC chips would be insanely great. If they can't get their chips up to par with Intel and AMD, it's going to hurt in the long run.

 

[Krevinek]

Also they need to get with a chip supplier who can provide them chips well. Motorola couldn't, IBM can't... I think getting AMD to create their PPC chips would be insanely great. If they can't get their chips up to par with Intel and AMD, it's going to hurt in the long run.

Correction, IBM can't provide the chips that meet Apple's strict requirements for the Powerbooks. IBM is having no problems with supply right now, they are having problems meeting Apple's desire for an ultra-low power/heat G5 for the Powerbook. It is possible to make one off the current crop, but it would be rather large and bulky much like the big ol' Dell systems with the full-blown P4 systems plus cooling you can get now.

AMD wouldn't fare much better, I am afraid.

 

[MDLarson]

Um the one-button mouse, I think, was Apple's #1 most genius idea, albeit well hidden.

Why? It's why the Mac is the Mac as we know it today. If the one button mouse didn't stay and doesn't stay as default, Mac UI = Windows UI, and beginners would have just as much trouble understanding why they need a 2nd mouse button on their Mac as they would on their PC.

YOU'RE WRONG!!!

Your argument might be valid in 1984 when people didn't know what a mouse was. But most computer users know what a right-click is. And what does Apple need? Switchers. What are these switchers familiar with? Two-button mice. I laugh at your assertion that a 2nd mouse button makes a Windows GUI... that's just dumb, sorry.

 

[Viro]

If you've worked in tech support (I did when I was an undergraduate), you'll be surprised to see people being confused about two button mice. And... don't laugh, I've seen Oxford graduates who don't take kindly to computers too. These aren't dumb people, but something about computers just doesn't click with them. Or maybe they're smarter in Cambridge. Who knows .

 

[kainjow]

YOU'RE WRONG!!!

Your argument might be valid in 1984 when people didn't know what a mouse was. But most computer users know what a right-click is. And what does Apple need? Switchers. What are these switchers familiar with? Two-button mice. I laugh at your assertion that a 2nd mouse button makes a Windows GUI... that's just dumb, sorry.

Uh yea... have you ever actually gone out of your room and interacted with non-geeks and their PC's?

I worked for tech support for a while, and let me tell you PC users have no clue what the 2nd mouse button is for. The 2nd mouse button is only good for the 5% of computer users that are geeks. For everyone else it's just something else they have to learn unnecessarily.

Saying stuff like "you're dumb" doesn't help your theory here much...

 

[ApeintheShell]

In Safari's Preferences you can select remove download list items after download, when safari quits, or manually(which is what you seem to have as default). Select a folder on your hard drive to download the files to; otherwise you'll have tons of files on your desktop.

I think the biggest mistake Apple did was listening to some of the wackos on this board. ::ha::

 

[kainjow]

These aren't dumb people, but something about computers just doesn't click with them.

Exactly. Having 2 mouse buttons doesn't click with people. It never will. In fact, most computer topics won't ever click with people. You can't teach them what a contextual menu is, because not all programs support them. So you have to guess when to use them. Even Windows doesn't fully use the context menus, and they've been using 2 button mice forever.

My mom still has trouble knowing when to double click or single click. You think a 2nd mouse button would be something easy to learn when to use?

 

[MDLarson]

OK, I'll retreat from my hard-line stance a little bit (and for the record, I didn't say "you're just dumb", I said "that's just dumb". I would propose that even folks who are confused about the right-click might think that the Mac is limited in functionality. The "more buttons the better" kind of thinking.

I just know what I know, and I do fully acknowledge the simplicity argument, I just think it's dated is all.

 

[ksv]

#5 Renaming Rendevouz to that other French name.

Yea, they should've called it "Freedom Discovery"

 

[celeborn]

So you think Macs should have an additional level of complexity in the UI (which the mouse is part of) because some people might think that more buttons is better? OK...

And on to the problem of downloaded files - the whole concept of disk images is quite unintuitive to say the least. I mean... you download something, and then you end up with a "disk" that isn't a disk, and then you're supposed to "eject" it to get rid of it, and you're still left with the disk image you downloaded.

 

[Mikuro]

I agree, disk images need to die, but that really isn't Apple's fault. Nobody's forcing developers to distribute their programs as disk images. They could (and should, IMO) be using zips. The Finder's got the functionality built in. You don't need any special software to expand them. And they work a lot more logically then disk images.

Disk images are really a throwback to the earlier days of OS X, before the standard zip compression included resource forks and before StuffIt properly supported Mac OS X apps. Back then, dmg was the only real choice.


As for the mouse buttons, I agree Apple should include a beefier one as an option, but ONLY as an option. We do NOT want Mac developers to start creating software with the assumption of three mouse buttons the way Windows developers do.

However, I also have to point out that Macs just don't need a second button anywhere near as much as Windows does, because of superior UI design. In Windows, it's practically impossible to work without using the right button. On Macs, that's not the case. And when you do need a contextual menu, it won't kill you to use the Control key (but most PC users aren't aware of the Control key).

 

[MDLarson]

So you think Macs should have an additional level of complexity in the UI (which the mouse is part of) because some people might think that more buttons is better? OK...

Stop... it's too late... I'm feeling frustrated...

What is more complicated? Asking somebody to...
A) Control-Click to empty the trash
B) Press-Click to empty the trash
C) Right-Click to empty the trash

What's the big freaking deal? If you want to get nit-picky, the right-click option is the simplest solution because it requires a normal, straight-forward click with one hand.

I feel so childish arguing about why right-click is better because of this and that... But on the other hand, WHY must the entire Mac experience be defined by a single mouse button?

Look, I can appreciate the simplicity. However, nearly everyone I talk to is sophisticated enough to appreciate, understand, and use the right-click. I'm sorry, but the only person I know who prefers a one-button mouse is my grandma (literally). I know many more people who scoff at the Mac because of the one-button mouse.