No comment about the company, but want to make clear as a buyer you understand the procurement and legal parts i.e. MFN or MFC.
If they do discount, even 5%, then it ripples across their accounts as a legal matter, esp at your scale. I was a buyer for some big companies, 8 digit, and the procurement office would only do a deal with MFN/MFC clause. They would also audit the supplier from time to time.
I totally understand that ripple effect and am very familiar with Most Favored X when it comes to unit pricing of a tangible good (e.g. xx,xxx physical servers with a particular SKU), but in this case we were talking about a SaaS product where overages were disputed. Nearly every vendor would jump at the chance to discount additional commitments or support at the ‘expense’ of waiving some past overages.
There is a lot to digest in this piece. Work environments are very dynamic and context and time-in-point is very important. I did not see this behavior, but I was not part of that group at Apple.
I worked with Jony after we were acquired. The original Siri linen background was his idea, the bubbles had to be perfect, the padding, the text size, the lists goes on. I inferred this as design obsession and did not find it offending, he was right 95% of the time.
When I left Apple, I emailed with Jony on a device I had designed and pitched internally in 2011 but was shelved. His response has stayed with me to this day, “not all ideas make the cut, even the best ones”.
He could have cut me down or ignored me, but he responded with honesty.
I think that void he left when he moved on was too big to be filled. Steve and Jony were always together, pretty much every day we would see them at lunch.
>“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.
But that's "good" ideas. I wouldn't object to that. Instead, Jony said the best ideas. By definition, this means you're necessarily choosing a worse idea, because there's nothing better than the best idea. Seems like a bad process to me!
Quantifying best is very difficult. Is it the best technically but market conditions makes it less appealing? Or is it the best fit for the market but it’s a nightmare to build and so they can’t pump enough of them out to be reasonable.
The products that launch end up being good enough in all areas but rarely/never the best in all areas.
If quantifying "best" is so difficult, then maybe Ive should have worded his words of consolation better, maybe? Otherwise it's just an empty platitude.
Someone like Ive, and anyone within his professional circle, would necessarily be intimately familiar with the concept of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, just as best is. Any one designers design is the best for that designer. Best, by anyones definition, doesn’t always make the cut.
The context here is product design. Does this mean that you think there's one perfect form of a product that everyone would agree is the best, from the bean counters, to the fabricators, to the users?
Well, if there isn't, Ive shouldn't have used the word "best"! It sends the wrong message. Designers should be careful with their words.
(As an aside, in my opinion -- and many others on HN, as I've read through the years -- Ive sometimes made the worst choice between two design decisions, so he definitely sometimes cut the best in favor of the less good).
(Also, judging by the reactions to my top-level comment, others agree with me!)
I think you're coming from a context that isn't design, so there's a language mismatch here. In design, and basically everything not dictated by maths/optimization, the precise definition of "best" is that it's subjective. From the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/best
> 1. excelling all others
> 2. offering or producing the greatest advantage, utility, or satisfaction
Different models of products exist because "best" is subjective. The phone that is best for me is not best for you, but both are precisely, by definition, best for each of us. You seem to be thinking that the word "best" means some absolute global maximum, which is not the definition of the word. That maximum is made from weights in some huge vector space, with those weights being different depending on the perspective of each of us. There is no "correct" perspective that can allow this global maximum, that you seem to be searching for, to exist.
You're making the assumption that he, a celebrated consumer product designer, was not aware of the subjective, multivariate, nature of "best", when used in the context of consumer product design. I don't think that's an appropriate assumption, for any professional designer.
Both definitions 1 & 2 are universal and not exclusive to design, and furthermore, prove my point.
I stand by my opinion: Ive was either careless about words, or pointing out a flaw in Apple's process.
Please, don't try to convince me I don't understand product design or what "best" means. At this point, this intellectual match trying to save Ive from his own words is not productive.
How about an example then? Could you tell me what the best car to buy is? If you present the same make, model, and year as me, then perhaps you’re right. From what you've said, I think we can agree that you don't need details like my location, income, number of passengers, range, or driving habits.
> From what you've said, I think we can agree that [...]
No, we cannot agree on nothing of the sort. Where did I say I'm a car design expert?
Please stop trying to make me say things I don't want to. I'm just pointing out Ive's misleading use of language. Since Ive is a design expert, I hold him to a higher standard, but he certainly didn't "make the cut"! Maybe he wasn't the "best" after all.
There is Product Category A, Product Category B, and Product Category C. In each of those categories there is a "best" product.
But a company may not have the bandwidth to release in all three categories. So it may choose to focus on Product Category B, and the best implementation for B, and leave A and C (for now). Even though there are "best" implementations/ideas available for A and C.
Sometimes it is not possible for a company to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Not all the best ones do, it is quite straightforward. Some bad ones also do occasionally make the cut, but it tells more about the nature of ideas than Apple’s process at this point.
Excellent point. I don't know, maybe there was no clear-cut "best" in that case. Refreshing my memory about that formats war by reading Wikipedia, it wasn't obvious Betamax was "better" (it didn't check many of the boxes consumers wanted, like cheaper, longer running time, faster; instead, it checked boxes video professionals wanted, so it can be argued Beta was not "the best" for consumers!).
That said, in this case Ive seems to be arguing even in cases where the "best" can be identified and has a known meaning, it won't make the cut. By definition of "best", this means something "worse" will be chosen instead. Seems like a flawed process to me!
PS: if you ask me, I think Ive wasn't careful with his words, and instead he meant "even extremely good products sometimes don't make the cut, because they are competing with something even better here at Apple". But he said "best", an unfortunate word which made his statement... wrong. Someone so careful about design should also be careful about words, because words are also design.
An unqualified "best" means it's the best. It was an unfortunate turn of phrase by Ive, a person known to make mistakes, as pointed out several times here on HN.
No not really, real life does not work that, you can be best in some aspect while not the best in other aspects but for some reason you dont seem to understand nuance, its probably your hatred for Ive that seems to be clouding your judgement.
"Best in some aspects" is not an unqualified best. Maybe Ive should have been more careful about his wording -- which was my point, after all!
> its probably your hatred for Ive that seems to be clouding your judgement
Wow. Hatred. I don't even know the guy, how can I hate him? I don't own a Mac, I just use one provided by my work. I don't own an iphone. I really don't pay much attention to Ive at all, just pointing out a flaw in his wording.
Is that how you normally debate by making personal attacks? You have already made up your mind the Ive makes many mistakes.
> Maybe Ive should have been more careful about his wording -- which was my point, after all!
and my point was that there are nuances which for some reason you still dont understand because you have already made up your mind about Ive, so lets agree to disagree because you are not going to change your opinion.
You are making personal attacks saying Ive has made many mistakes, instead of just arguing about the main point you have already made up your mind that whatever he does is a mistake and then you refuse to understand why you are wrong.
I dont need luck when facts are on my side. Good luck understanding nuance in the future.
I was very lucky to have worked with Doug on multiple projects and see his passion for computer science and humanity. He was one of the most humble people and was happy to share all his wisdom. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him. To be specific, I built out purple numbers for Doug. I remember demoing it to him, it was hacky, and the joy he showed made my soul smile. He was a very special man. I have many other stories, but that is for another day.
He must’ve been terribly disappointed with how things evolved. In the 1960s, he envisioned computers to keep track of all human knowledge for us, to help us find contradictions, fill knowledge gaps, and ask better questions. And what did we get instead? Clickbait and spam bots. Did he see it that way?
Let’s give Bob a chance. I worked with him at AWS and prior. He is very committed to the customer, hence his post. We all try to communicate the best we can, so please try to support him in his new role.
I launched several startups on Heroku over the last decade +, and feel they have gravity on trust. Some of the best devs I have worked with.
Dan was a great soul and genius, this is very sad to hear. Dan made life fun, my stomach would hurt from laughing so hard with him. I am looking over our chats, and found a video he sent me that I can’t stop watching. He was working on streaming VM state to the cloud and decided a mouse wasn’t fun, so busted out a turntable to control it in realtime. It totally worked and was way better! He even starts making record scratching sounds. I love how someone posted the DEFCON shot of his nap, that made me smile! Remember those moments of joy.
“ The App Store's standard commission rate of 30 percent remains in place for apps selling digital goods and services and making more than $1 million in proceeds, defined as a developer's post-commission earnings” [1]
What is convoluted and worse? I am not a mobile Dev at this time, just going by what I see online.
If you make $999k in revenue, you will receive almost $850k in profit. If you make $1000k in revenue, you will instead receive $700k in profit. You're strangely incentivized to completely shut down your app as you approach the 1000k mark, unless you're confident you'll make it past the 1200k mark, where it's worth it again. Silly system.
Your earnings after the first 1M in a calendar year will become subject to 30%. Your earnings before that aren't affected.
However, you are then kicked out of the program for the whole following year and can only reapply for the year after that if the next year's earnings are under 1M.
Thank you, great information. Those incentives then have to change. I wrote a few apps back in the day, and 30% seemed high, but I never hit over $100k in rev. I was hoping the little guy who scaled would have won here.
It is not automatic, you need to enrol into the programme.
It only work for first year, subsequent year revert back to 30% if your previous year exceed $1M. ( the 1,000,000.01 problem )
Google also has a much more flexible definition of Services, Teaching to a group of Students via Video Call is not considered as Digital Services as on Apple App Store, and hence requires 30% of commission when signing up. ( And since been exempt after bad PRs )
1) Can you can explain what "And since been exempt after bad PRs"?
Does Apple does not charge for Teaching to a group of students anymore?
2) and is "teaching to a group of students" just an example for teaching to groups, or does it really only apply to students and to groups, but not when teaching to one person interested in guitar for example?
Thanks!
PS: any good ressources that distill such App Store & digital services? (even better would be also comparing them)
>Does Apple does not charge for Teaching to a group of students anymore?
This wasn't enforced or known until fairly recently [1] and finally got its public attention during pandemic. Those bad PR was what caused Apple to make concessions. Basically since 2018 Apple has been steadily Pushing these changes for their Services Strategy revenue target. If you look around on the Internet or places like MacRumours, you find a group of "Apple Apologist" who are perfectly in flavour of Apple charging 30% for these educational digital class.
>but not when teaching to one person interested in guitar for example?
Teaching one to one are exempt from sign up link. Which is basically a FaceTime Call. But that is only on the basis if the teaching is "live". If you are showing large quantity pre-recorded Video you might / will be counted towards "Digital Goods".
But again Apple Apologist thinks it is Apple's platform. They can do whatever they want.
Edit: I wanted to add some additional context. A lot of these were rules not previously enforced before 2016 / 2018. So App Store has been perfectly fine for many conducting online / digital business. And the App Store problem isn't just about the 30% commission.
I see comments on latency every so often when Starlink come ups. I would love some clarity on how satellite connectivity is expected to perform. Example: Streaming services will be great, but syn ack dependent SAAS apps have to be optimized for local cache and data retrieval? What ways are they looking to overcome latency? I could soap box, but this community is much smarter than me.
The satellites are very low altitude. They are not geosynchronous which would require them to be very far from the earth's surface. Instead they orbit at low altitude and the antenna base station uses a complex antenna arrangement (a phased array) to follow the satellites as they move rapidly overhead. Once the inter-satellite laser links are fully deployed, starlink will be the fastest way to ping a signal to the other side of the planet.
the "original" satellite internet [0] used geosynchronous satellites.
geosynchronous satellites (~35,000km) have an inherent speed-of-light latency of ~250ms. that means even if every other link along the route imposes <1ms latency, you've still got that absolute minimum quarter of a second on every single packet.
Starlink is in LEO (~500km) with a corresponding reduction in the minimum possible latency. that lower altitude also requires much more complex antennas and other ground hardware, compared to just pointing your antenna at a (relatively) stationary point in the sky.
Maybe you'd like to read more about Operation PBSuccess - they sure didn't call it that because it failed. [1] The US (specifically the CIA) replaced a democratically elected "socialist" in Guatemala with a right-wing authoritarian military dictator at the request of what is now the Chiquita fruit company. This of course kick-started a civil war that lasted 36 years.
On the plus side, it gave us "Why the Kremlin Hates Bananas" [2]
Interesting it lists right wing and left wing focus. Sounds like the US is bias towards the middle. Not sure how to groc that. Most likely it is what is important to the nation at the time would be a better qualification. History repeats itself. Thank you for sharing the links all.
The US bias when, uh, intervening in foreign politics is towards whatever's best of the US. Usually, more specifically, US corporate interests. Little care is paid to who ends up in charge so long as they're pro-"Business" and pro-America.
> In December 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that the United States did not plan a military intervention in Venezuela, saying that "we have said that all options are on the table", but that "we have learned from history that the risks from using military force are significant".
There has been zero proven connection between that operation with any US gov office nor even Guaidó himself. It was 100% amateur hour and initiated by a con man’s security company.
As a Venezuelan and victim of Maduro's constant anti imperialist propaganda I strongly believe the operation gedeon is just a fake. If the US would like to remove Maduro from power I don't think they would send 30 poorly trained, barely equipped men, from which the grand majority didn't even have military experience to disembark in one of the most popular coasts of Venezuela just a few kilometers from a navy base.
Members of Congress have literally referred to it as a coup on Twitter, it’s not some big secret or something you can choose not to believe in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24052507
Might as well comment, first employee at Siri here. This result “maybe” should provide ambiguity resolution, but where does it stop. The she/he who compared it to Google was right on. Siri provides singular results in most cases vs multiple search style results. We did use geo for locality based results in the past. This would solve the problem the OP mentioned, not sure if they call location for these requests now. The other person who mentioned we can’t/couldn’t train on data is correct too. Again, privacy first. Be proud, Apple cares a lot. When the Siri commercials hit (No one told us there would be commercials) when we launched, we got decimated, and couldn’t debug the issues, user utterances were not allowed to be logged. Luckily, after much sleep deprivation, one of my engineers (love you Stu) said, “hey, aren’t they running commercials” to all our surprise. We convinced the privacy team to let us log word parts. Then we started to see words that were present in the commercials. Fun fact, also happened when Tom Cruise was presenting at the Academy Awards. We had millions+ asks all at the same time, again word parts. “height”, “tom”, “foot”, etc.
I worked in Scott’s group. He was on top of everything and was passionately involved. We would get in a room and pitch all (yes, all) ideas/changes to him and sometimes Steve. He had no tolerance for bugs, and quality was number one. He was like that coach you thought hated you, then you realized he cared.
I wish Scott was running Apple today not Tim Cook. I love skeuomorphic interfaces. Tim Cook is a failure in my opinion. There have been no interesting products under him, nor any compelling features added to existing products. He is simply coasting on the trajectory set by Steve Jobs.
While I personally hate skeuomorphic interfaces, I'll mostly agree with your analysis on Tim Cook. He's an amazing supply chain whiz, but he's not a product guy. The software quality at apple has also plummeted.
I agree we haven't seen the Apple "Blockbusters" everyone got used to. Although many (like yourself?) are looking for leadership in creativity and higher risk endeavors, Tim Cook certainly has more business acumen which should not be undervalued. Does that lead to a boring company? Possibly.
I don't understand what people wanted Apple to do differently with Apple Maps?
Maps is core to the iPhone, given it's a device you use out and about. Google had them under their thumb, because they were dependent on their data, and were denying them features[0]. They couldn't wait until the data was better because that's not how it works, you need to collect data to improve data.
I don't see what they could have done differently? Even in hindsight this seems like the right call?
This whole situation sounds like people not liking to use a mediocre product, but just because the product is mediocre doesn't always mean it wasn't the right decision to release it, from both a company strategy perspective, and from a consumer benefit perspective (if you believe competition is healthy for consumers).
Exactly. There is no way Apple could wait until feature parity which still may not ever happen in some areas. There comes a point where they have to get what they have out the door and continue to iterate. One could argue Apple released too early, but it was going to be bumpy no matter when they released.
> There is no way Apple could wait until feature parity
Why?
A startup would eventually need to start generating funds, or at least prove themselves in the market to convince investors. But Apple? They could have kept Maps in the oven for another five years if need be. Similar to how they secretly kept Intel builds of OS X in their back pocket for years.
So we have two choices: Not have the single most important feature in a mapping app, or violating one of the basic tentpole features the iOS brand, user privacy. So obviously they went with the third option, launch their own mapping service despite its flaws, and I've never heard a convincing argument that that wasn't the best choice.
Oh, that's interesting—their deal with Google was about to expire!
Still—could Apple not strike deals with other vendors? It's not as though Google was the only game in town, especially back then when TomTom was a much bigger deal. At minimum, they could have used their leverage to negotiate with various players—Apple is good at that.
Nokia in particular had a fantastic mapping app, with turn-by-turn directions that worked really well on my N9. They still sell access to this API today: https://www.here.com/
I'm really not convinced that rushing an in-house app out the door was the only possible option.
Because Maps most likely needed user feedback and crowd sourced data collection to be improved. The longer the wait the bigger the gap to Google Maps that had been live for many years, happily collecting data about what streets are open, where the stores are, how the traffic works in a certain locations and so on
> Similar to how they secretly kept Intel builds of OS X in their back pocket for years.
I had a G4 PB and then an Intel MBP. The transition was better than expected, but certainly not without bumps. In a lot of ways, it was similar to maps in that to really finish they had to get it out the door.
Honestly, I assume the Maps fiasco came down to pricing, and Google was surprised that Apple chose to walk rather than take Gruber's option #2. Frankly, so am I. Map data sufficient for turn-by-turn isn't cheap and Apple largely plans and devlops on a yearly cadence. It's essentially impossible to produce the data quality needed in the WWDC-driven-development timeframe.
> This whole situation sounds like people not liking to use a mediocre product, but just because the product is mediocre doesn't always mean it wasn't the right decision to release it, from both a company strategy perspective, and from a consumer benefit perspective
Strong disagree. A mediocre product damages the brand and a mediocre navigation service can kill people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_GPS. Releasing mediocre products when a better option is available reeks of putting the company ahead of the consumer, frankly, and it's no wonder people ditched Apple Maps at the earliest opportunity.
You're ignoring the meat of the #2 choice, Google wanted more user data, location data at that. In order for that to be a good deal, you'd have to think that Google Maps is more valuable than privacy as a tentpole feature of iOS. Which I think is clearly false, especially since Google Maps was obviously still going to have an app on iOS, and this time on Apple's terms.
At the time I was a Nokia Linux user, but as far as I can tell, privacy was not a selling point of iOS in 2012. The 'fundamental human right' phrasing is relatively new[1], and privacy isn't really mentioned at all before 2012[2]. It feels like this was a response to where Apple was failing than a principled stand, considering 3 years prior Wayback machine shows only a 404 for the privacy page. I can see how some folks might infer from this that Apple leaned into privacy as a means of spiting a supplier.
> Google Maps was obviously still going to have an app on iOS
If I was a paying Apple customer, I'd sure appreciate having that option at launch rather than months later with no firm date. Even in 2019 my real estate agent insists that Apple Maps is garbage, I can only imagine the chaos in 2012.
They could've put a "beta" badge on Maps like they did with Safari, and kept Google Maps preinstalled alongside it. Perhaps many people conflated the hilariously bad looking 3D Flyover bugs with core functionality and the initial impression stuck.
Have two maps apps installed by default on a new iPhone...? I can't imagine Apple doing that under any circumstances.
I'm not sure about the "Beta" tag, it doesn't strike me as a terrible idea. But collecting refining map data is a project measured in decades, when should the Beta tag be removed?
However, Apple has certainly offered beta downloads before. Bootcamp Assistant was an optional "Beta" download before it was included with OS X in Leopard. Safari also began its life as a Beta web browser from Apple, even as there were alternatives from other companies.
That’s a very Samsung/Microsoft like approach. Besides that, the Maps app was always made by Apple. They used Google’s data. When they switched over to their own data, it still carried your data over.
I think the answer is quite simple. They should have launched as a beta or public preview ‘This is going to be great, it’s got these great new features but we need everyone to help us improve the data”
I do not believe that Apple (a design company), can match the quality of Google (an algorithmic organization company), simply by allocating resources.
You can read two excellent essays by Justin O'Beirne on Google[0] vs. Apple's[1] methodologies for creating and organizing mapping data. It seems a straightforward conclusion that mapping is simply a problem that's a better fit for Google as a company than Apple.
Also note how slowly Apple's strategy has been rolled out (3% of the U.S.’s area in 2018), waiting for this work to be rolled out simply wasn't tenable.
If they do discount, even 5%, then it ripples across their accounts as a legal matter, esp at your scale. I was a buyer for some big companies, 8 digit, and the procurement office would only do a deal with MFN/MFC clause. They would also audit the supplier from time to time.