> I think Apple's self-image of being the epitome of design actually acts against them. Leads to monstrosities like Liquid Glass kinda vandalizing random parts of the UI
So assuming everyone at Apple isn't deaf (it's all over public discourse), blind (it looks bad), and dumb (no genius needed), then how does it get through? I can only see a few scenarios, none of which are good.
Maybe Apple engineers are afraid to push back on management?
Maybe management isn't receptive to their employees who voiced concerns?
Maybe key decision makers have pushed themselves into an echo chamber where it's difficult to hear concerns.
One of these has to be true, or some combination. But none of these are good, they are incredibly destructive to companies. Though also unfortunately common across monopolies. Iron Law of Bureaucracy hard at work...
I often think of that scene in Pantheon where they basically say they don't know what to do after Steve died. You can only laptops so small... and they're so small that anyone that puts on lotion is going to have an imprint of their keyboard on their screens... Steve wouldn't have accepted that
Apple is hurt by being so centralized Cupertino IMO. A company that big in city that small and frankly, boring, isn't going to have the best hiring pool.
I know plenty of very talented people who simply won't apply to Apple. They don't want to live in Cupertino or have to commute 2+ hours each day to go to work.
Steve Jobs was a middle-class guy trying to find his place in the world; the kind to travel India to to meet Neem Karoli Baba, shaved head, barefoot, wearing kurtas [1]. 50 years later, who grows up in Cupertino? It's no longer "middle-class". I'm sure Cupertino produces some excellent talent that did great at some top university, but I'm also sure it's not the kind that rocks the boat, or the kind that will push a "dumb decision" out of principle at work and get fired, like Jobs did back in 1985.
When I think Cupertino, the city, I don't think vibrancy of the built environment, diversity of professions, or wealth of ideas. I think comfort, complacency and quiet. The type of place that repels the kind of people who want to fight in the trenches, and slowly milds the fight out of those who do move there.
I can only assume Apple, like a lot of the Bay at this point, survives from imported talent. The kind that is hungry enough to move across the country, or across the globe, to achieve something. But if you're in demand, why would you want to work in Cupertino and not San Francisco? Or better yet New York, Shenzhen, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, etc. Money only motivates people so much, and people who are in it for the money don't stand up for or against things in the same way.
[1]: https://medium.com/macoclock/how-much-did-coming-to-india-co...
I think a lot of Bay Area companies don’t come to their full potential because of their location. I think Apple does so well though that I couldn’t tell them to change anything,
They are singular in a lot of ways. I was working with a business development guy on something that could have been “like Palantir but 10x potential TAM” and we seemed to have a knack for getting people to tell us more than they should have. Like instead of breaking up we should have gone into industrial espionage but I’ve seen just enough of that world to know better.
We heard from all sorts of places where “people never talk” but never Apple.
It gets through because Cook has no eye for design or usability (he's a supply chain guy) and Alan Dye, who Cook put in charge of software design, wanted it that way. I'm sure there are designers who hated it, but they don't have the final say.
This isn’t unique to Apple. The Windows developers were very vocal about a full screen start menu in Windows 8 being a bad change. We were told that we weren’t allowed to talk about it anymore on the large mailing list about the product. The decision had been made and complaints would no longer be read or responded to.
> Maybe Apple engineers are afraid to push back on management?
I can tell you with confidence that this isn't the issue. HIG (Human Interface Guidelines: a design spec that became a department / org) overrides them.