Why is it that every misstep Apple makes has to be a sign of greater woes? Hyperbole is not just a river in Egypt, you know.
Its not a river anywhere, actually. The Macalope’s not sure why he said that.
Writing for Mashable, Raymond Wong says “The Apple Watch epitomizes how Apple lost its magic touch.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Stephen Bentley.)
This one goes from zero to troll in 3.5 seconds.
This would have never happened if Steve Jobs was still alive.
That’s the lede. So, hope you’re fan of ripping Band-Aids off instead of pulling them off slowly. Or, well, whatever the reverse of a Band-Aid is. A Harm-Aid, maybe.
Wong does not use these words lightly, though. Oh, no. He waited almost five years before dropping the “Jobs never woulda” bomb on us.
I never thought I’d ever write those words myself, but that day has come.
Worst “Dear Penthouse” letter ever. Still, there were so many other times he could have said it but didn’t and that just goes to show how this time it’s right.
Remember how bad Apple Maps was when it launched? It was so awful Tim Cook had no choice but to fire then iOS head Scott Forstall over the disastrous app.
The Macalope thinks you might be mistaking timing for something that should really never be said.
But is that why Forstall was fired? Or was it because he was so hard to work with other executives wouldn’t even meet with him without Cook present and that he loved green felt way too much?
There’s no Apple product that better epitomizes how the company has lost its way on user interfaces than the Apple Watch.
All the sighs. A veritable sighnado of sighing. In many ways, this article is much like the Apple Watch. It gets it wrong before it gets it right.
If Apple was off its usual game with the Watch, it was because it released it before it was baked to their usual level of perfection. The fact that watchOS 3 looks like what watchOS 1 probably should have been proves that, and that Apple’s still capable of making terrific software. The problem, then, is not one of the company’s ability to make a solid user interface but one of discipline.
It’s time to face the music: Apple got the Apple Watch software completely wrong from the start.
Completely wrong? Look, the Macalope knows that in the world of online writing you get more bees with exaggerated pollen (bees make honey, they don’t go looking for it, fix your metaphors, people), but Daring Fireball’s Interface of the Week is getting software completely wrong. The Apple Watch is just getting some of it wrong. Which, yeah, isn’t a great marketing campaign. “Only slightly wrong!”
But with watchOS 3 you still use the crown to scroll, you still touch and swipe, you still use Force Touch to customize, the app screen is still there, even if it is marginally deemphasized. This is how software is supposed to work — you update it — and Apple is no stranger to nuking something from orbit and rethinking a problem.
The Macalope agrees with much of Wong’s underlying point. watchOS 1 was somewhat clumsy and watchOS 3 is a big change and one for the better. Still, this piece felt unnecessarily like opening a walnut. You spend all this time trying to get through this dense and inedible shell that by the time you find what you were looking for you’re like “Huh. It’s a walnut.” The Macalope wishes he could get writers to realize that you can criticize something without having to make it the worst thing ever. Although if he could he’d probably be out of a job so… never mind.