While everyone likes to harp about the senseless limitations in iPadOS, I think this is just part of a much broader problem, which is that Apple’s software has been terrible and getting worse since they released iOS 7. That began a trend towards an oversimplification of their user interfaces, which at first seemed mainly cosmetic, but the problem goes much deeper into abandoned features and functionality. And nowhere is this more obvious than in their Mac apps, since there we can compare current Mac apps to their predecessors.
Just look at the current Music app and compare it to what we could previously do in iTunes. You used to be able to show a list of all music and then sort or filter or search by any parameter you desired: artist, song, genre, album, date of release, date added to library, etc. With the Music app, on the other hand, it takes a monumental effort to find anything or even get a sense of how the navigation works. For instance, just try to find a list of recent releases from artists you follow. Nope, can’t do it. All you get is a notification when a new song is realized. That’s it, and then it’s gone.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that iTunes was long overdue for a rewrite and I get that with most people streaming music today, it made sense to design a music app around that, rather than around managing locally stored music collections. But put all that aside and the Music app is still trash. Much like Apple TV, the Music app feels like advertising. It feels like commercial radio. It keeps trying to tell you what you should be listening to instead of giving you the features to find and organize the music you want to listen to in the way you want.
Now look at the stagnant Photos app and the long list of features that were lost when Apple abandoned Aperture. Sure, you can always use Adobe Lightroom, but Adobe products require a separate, overpriced subscription AND they are not compatible with iCloud! I never expected Apple to turn Photos into a full blown photo manager and editor like Aperture was, but fuck it’s been so many years and they’ve barely added any features at all! You would think that given how important photography is to selling iPhones, Apple would want to go out of their way to make the best software for viewing, editing, and managing your photos. But nope, that’s not the case.
I think there are three root causes to these problems:
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Loss of Talent The people who designed those great Apple apps years ago have mostly retired and the current designers at Apple have lost all that institutional knowledge (not to mention the loss of Steve Jobs)
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Penny Pinching Apple has seemingly prioritized making their software simpler and cheaper to maintain, while sacrificing quality, consistency, features, and user experience
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Pursuit of Infinite Growth As Apple increasingly relies on “services” to grow their business, much of their software starts to look and feel more like a billboard for internal advertising than tools to empower the end user (see Music, TV, News, etc.)
What frustrates me most is that none of the tech writers are talking about this in any sort of focused way and I don’t think Apple executives—who are quite out of touch— even realize there’s a problem.