“Toward the end of a talk late last month at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, Apple’s chief design officer, Jonathan Ive, vented for a moment about the backlash against Apple Park, the company’s 2.8-million-square-foot circular headquarters building that has drawn some scorn for a perfectionist construction process that reportedly pushed its cost to $5 billion,” Rob Pegoraro reports for The Washington Post. “The audience laughed at Ive’s defense of what he called ‘a lovely environment’ that will help Apple employees work better together.”
“But the people paying for Apple products could be forgiven if their only laughter was of the bitter variety. Because while the company should have sufficient resources to obsess over both its headquarters and its software and hardware — even factoring in greater pressure to ship a new operating system or smartphone on time — the reality seen by Apple customers suggests otherwis,” Pegoraro reports. “These aren’t edge-case software breakdowns or random manufacturing glitches. They’re the kind of reproducible flaws that companies are supposed to find and fix before shipping a product.”
“The most valuable publicly traded company in America, with a market capitalization nearing $1 trillion, has also found itself incapable of keeping its computer lineup current,” Pegoraro reports. “The attention lavished on Apple Park, meanwhile, shows far more rigorous attention to detail. A February report by Julia Love of Reuters recounted such pursuits of perfection as 30 or so pages of documentation for woodwork, Apple’s insistence that doorways be perfectly flat so that engineers need not adjust their gait to avoid a threshold, and “a year and a half of debate” over a door handle’s contours.”
“A personnel move revealed Friday suggested one high-ranking Apple executive had been distracted by Apple Park’s construction: Ive, who Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Alex Webb reported had returned to directly managing Apple’s design efforts after two year,” Pegoraro reports. “But if the company wanted to craft a target for resentment among its loyal customers, it could not have done much better than to put this circle of glass and metal on the map.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Great job, Apple.
Don’t worry, very few people read The Washington Post or any of the hundreds of other outlets to which this article is and will be syndicated. (read with dripping sarcasm)
Apple brass. Lost for years in the weeds of Apple Park, The Colossal Distraction. May you find your way out ASAP!
[Organizations like Apple] require a charismatic leader who will shoot people in the knees when needed. – Alan Kay, April 2013
SEE ALSO:
Apple Park estimated to cost upwards of $5 billion to build – December 9, 2017
Apple started working on HomePod in 2012, so why are they so late to the smart speaker market? – November 21, 2017
Why Apple’s HomePod is three years behind Amazon’s Echo – November 21, 2017
Under ‘operations genius’ Tim Cook, product delays and other problems are no longer unusual for Apple – November 20, 2017
Apple delays HomePod release to early 2018 – November 17, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook: The ‘operations genius’ who never has enough products to sell at launch – October 23, 2017
Apple’s Mac Pro debacle: Failure and future – May 8, 2017
Why is Apple’s next-gen Mac Pro taking so long? – April 18, 2017
Apple’s desperate Mac Pro damage control message hints at a confused, divided company – April 6, 2017
Who has taken over at Apple? – April 5, 2017
Apple’s embarrassing Mac Pro mea culpa – April 4, 2017
Who’s going to buy a Mac Pro now? – April 4, 2017
Mac Pro: Why did it take Apple so long to wake up? – April 4, 2017
Apple sorry for what happened with the Mac Pro over the last 3+ years – namely, nothing – April 4, 2017
AirPods: MIA for the holidays; delayed product damages Apple’s credibility, stokes customer frustration – December 9, 2016
Lazy Apple. It’s not hard to imagine Steve Jobs asking, ‘What have you been doing for the last four years?’ – December 9, 2016
Why doesn’t the liberal storytelling Amazon Post put it where the sun don’t shine?
Water under the bridge……..
let see how things go from here ..
As a paid writer I write. If I don’t have anything to write about I make it up.
“Apple brass. Lost for years in the weeds of Apple Park, The Colossal Distraction. May you find your way out ASAP!”…
Uou are beginning to sound like a windowz site !!
MDN is a Windows site. You don’t think WordPress blogs are hosted on Apple Servers, do you? WordPress is MySQL, something of which Macs have never played well. The thick layering of Google AdSense garbage on this page isn’t from Apple either. MDN didn’t carefully craft their piles of annoying ads using Macs and iPads. Hypocrites at MDN tell you that you need Apple portable gadgets to be successful, but they rely on Windows based services and hardware to relay the incessant fanboy message.
Your persecution complex is at maximum setting.
The fact that you seem to think most WordPress sites are hosted on Windows disqualifies you entirely from commenting on tech issues.
What are you on? Every hear of Linux? Or, do you think anything not-made-by-Apple is Windows?
“The most valuable publicly traded company in America, with a market capitalization nearing $1 trillion, has also found itself incapable of keeping its computer lineup current…”
Hello – we have a winner.
and truth. Hopefully, it will knock some reality into the captains steering the ship…some sense is needed. Starting to “sound like a windoze site.” Truth always stings the naive fanboi, huh Hughie? Put your pants on and get out of the basement for some daylight.
There are still a few who haven’t been paying attention, I’d reckon, and don’t realize yet that “keeping it’s computer lineup current” is an afterthought at best and, to the largest company in the world, an annoyance at worst.
Apple is not going to please these “loyal customers” because these “loyal customers” want the PC form factor to be king again. Not gonna happen, Steve started the “PostPC” push and Apple shows no sign of stopping it. Oh, they’ll come out with new computer hardware just because they’ve got a spare million or two to throw at it and because they know folks will buy it. And they’ll make sure the price is such that they will absolutely make a profit on the endeavor. But it’s very clear that if you don’t think your needs can be met with an iDevice, you’ll have to look elsewhere in the next few years.
If you built it, they will come.
But they won’t let “you” in, except in the visitor’s center.
I’d really love to try out the Apple Park software!
Apple Park: Steve Job’s idea. And you constantly blame Cook for not executing perfectly even though Jobs left this ufathomably huge onus hanging around Cook’s neck.
“Here, Tim, balance on this roller board and juggle a million balls while keeping an equal number of plates spinning and, oh yeah, wear this 10 ton rock around your neck while doing so. What? You chipped a few plates and dropped 0.000001% of the balls! “You incompetent, disappointing slackard piece of shit!!!””
Here’s another Steve Jobs idea: “…milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth then move on to the next big thing.” Steve Jobs setup the mindset at Apple to largely ignore the Mac and focus on the iPhone.” Tim Cook and Co. are currently working to correct the mistake that Jobs made that you guys so viciously blame Cook and Schiller for.
And here’s another Steve Jobs idea: Keep the phone in a small form factor so that it could be operated with one hand. Again, after Steve died, the mindset he left the company with was to avoid larger phones. You guys blamed Tim Cook for taking so long, but in truth, Cook had to decide against Job’s obsession with small phones and correct this mistake.
Under Jobs other huge criticism of Apple occurred regularly including not putting a CD burner in the iMac, “Scratch gate” on the iPod, “Antenna gate”/ “You’re holding it wrong” fiasco. Etc. etc.
The truth is, mistakes, dead ends, and neglecting important parts of the business have happened and will happen throughout the life span of Apple, regardless of who is at the helm. The great thing about Apple, though, is that they mostly create product that is far superior to the competition, and they work very hard to fix problems and address criticisms at they arise.
But the bigger truth here is that MDN has become more and more a venue for espousing extreme, hateful, political rhetoric rather a tech site. I believe, and I think many here would agree with me that the main reason MDN and the echo chamber are hammering on Cook so vehemently is that you are hoping that your bully pulpit will contribute to getting Cook to step down and silence his liberal viewpoints.
So MDN and all you commenters here that parrot (or create their own)insults against Cook should quit criticizing him for execution mistakes (which is not really that much different from the Jobs era) and just say outright that Cook is a libtard, and a faggot. Because that is what your animosity toward Cook is really about.
Perhaps MDN could make a simple change to their name, too. You could call it MAGA Daily News. You wouldn’t even have to change the initials!
You’re an idiot
Case in point.
One of the best commentaries on this site in a long long time. I love Apple and have been using their products since 1984. And no doubt Steve Jobs was a genius. But leaving Cook et al. to finish Apple Park was a humongous burden that has led to some mishaps. Nonetheless, Apple is still making great products. The iPhone X is the best iPhone I have ever used and the AirPod and Watch are amazing.
Cook is CLUELESS. He needs to move on. And MDN is just fine …
You’re clueless. Team Cook is doing an outstanding job and will continue to do so. If Steve were here today to see how well Cook has nurtured and grown the company, I think he would be very proud. Jobs had great confidence in Cook and looking at Apple today it is clear his choice was spot on.
But as I said before, your issue with Cook is really about Cook’s politics isn’t it? Just face it, Apple is a politically liberal company that adhears to good liberal values; principals that have made the company great. Values like caring for the environment, values like striving to make the best products it can rather than following the bean counters. Steve Jobs often described Apple as being at the crossroads of technology and the liberal arts. And although “liberal” is being used in a different sense here, liberal arts finds its genesis in the ideals of liberal values. If you know anything about Steve Jobs and his life you would know he was a true liberal and never would have voted for Trump.
Apple has grown exponentially under Cook since Steve Jobs died, and likewise the difficulties of running the company have grown exponentially. So I applaud Cook, Schiller, Federighi and the entire Apple workforce for a job incredibly well done!
And I appeal to them directly to not listen to snarky little asswipes who sit in a dark room in the glare of their Mac displays, flailing their arms wildly, foaming, spitting and whining like the little girl at her $30,000 birthday party in the Hamptons who, after just receiving a beautiful iPhone X, an Apple Watch and a pair of AirPods, suddenly turns and screams at her parents, “Where’s my pony(homePod)!! You said there was going to be a PONY(homePod)!!! I WANT MY PONY(homePod)!!!!!, I HATE YOU!!! You are the WORST PARENTS EVER!!!!!”…
…small, loud-mouthed, pouty little asswipes who could never do the amazingly difficult job you do, but have no reservations about telling you how to do it.
New around here or just another regular hiding under a fake instant avatar? No matter.
Yes, Steve was a very good old fashioned liberal and not an intolerant PC snowflake. But he kept it to himself and more importantly — kept his company OUT OF POLITICS!
Cook is CLUELESS and cannot deliver cutting edge products year after year ESPECIALLY at Christmas. Good to see the iMac Pro will not add to the missed list.
Cook is simply riding the iPhone gravy train while the software continues to degrade and piss off even the most loyal Apple fanboys. He needs to move and Apple needs a CEO that understands the tech centric business like Scott Forstall and not a PC politician …
What hypocracy to label liberals as intolerant. The right holds the golden trophy for that. Unless, of course you are referring to not tolerating dictator wannabes, pedophiles, racist and liars. Yeah, we don’t tolerate those behaviors in civil society. Liberals never did.
“Good old fashioned liberals” ha ha! There’s an interesting label! New or old, all liberals embrace political correctness because it is a CIVIL way to respect diversity and inclusion. PC-ness is a manifestation of compassion and empathy – something sociopaths don’t understand. Just like calling a liberal a bleeding heart, the sociopaths like to spin compassion and empathy in a negative light when truly these virtues are the underpinnings of civil society.
Steve did indeed keep his politics to himself, but was a strong liberal none the less. Apple is a liberal company politically so live with it. Besides who knows if Jobs would have continued to stay silent in this political climate.
Again you are the clueless one, you have zero idea of the depth, detail, machinations, obstacles or tribulations of running the biggest, most complex company in the world. You just whine when you don’t get want you want. But of course what you want is for Cook to step down because you do not want his strong liberal voice to be heard across the world. I for one am so happy to hear his voice of compassion, reason and inclusion standing up to the most insidiously destructive rhetoric to hit our great nation’s political scene in my lifetime. I say, “Speak out loud and strong Tim! Speak out loud and strong!” Meanwhile, I’d say Mr. Cook delivered quite an amazing treasure trove of new products for Christmas, which belies your statement to the contrary.
And if I’m a snowflake, then you should know, winter is coming. You will see. We will blanket and snuff out the fiery train wreak that is happening before our eyes.
Clueless? You’re so clueless you don’t even know what is in your best self interest; you are just a stooge for the world class, democracy stealing sociopaths, the Koch brothers, et al.
You are an INTOLERANT modern day Libtard.
Nuff said …
T-paper, you need to lighten up. Your hate is going to kill you.
Bullshit meter on high. If people were so unhappy with Apple products, why do we keep buying them? Because there the best out there. Apple Park is a source of pride for loyal Apple and AAPL customers. What a passive aggressive twerp.
Simple, a shitty Apple product is marginally better many others out there.
“marginally better than many others” — in other words, there are the rest… the 100% minus many… the many that are better than Apple.
So off you go.
you’re such an all knowing soothsayer, lord and master of tech universe, I bow to your wisdom.
Who says Apple Park is well designed? We know it is expensive, but that is no guarantee it is also well designed. However, assuming this $5 billion edifice is well designed and other Apple products would also require such a large capital investment for design an development then it unlikely that you or me could afford such a device.
What a stupid remark!
Anyway, I’d still like to know what your vast business experience is, such that you think you know better than the Apple Board and management.
As a very happy owner of an iPhone X and AirPods, I can say with absolute confidence that Apple’s products are better than ever. This Washington Post article is horse manure. Apple is held to a ridiculous double standard.
I reiterate your exact words withe addition of…..iMac 27″ to your iPhone X and AirPods.
Also, the Washington post is owned by Amazon, the purveyor of all things “Apple Knockoffs”.
We’ve been predicting for years that the Mothership was going to be a massive, detrimental distraction for Apple.
And so it was.
AHEM! Apple! The Mac requires your attention immediately!
The problem is that you can delay the move into a new building for a long time (if you must) – but you can’t delay stuff like the iPhone – and the iOS-version its accompanied with.
The homepod missing Christmas is one thing – can you imagine the iPhone missing Christmas because they overpromised on the feature-set?
Right now, I’d consider Aliens landing on Times Square more realistic than that….
So, Apple has a very, very tall wall to climb every year – and, to Phil Schiller’s own admittance, it gets taller every year.
“They’re the kind of reproducible flaws that companies are supposed to find and fix before shipping a product.”
Exactly” 10.13.2 or 3 wherever it ends up when they finally get it right.
Milk the Mac for all its worth? True, Steve, but when you died they put in on the back burner. It IS the best OS out there with all its flaws, but think where it would have been if they had actually milked it instead of putting the cow in the back pasture. yes, I know; mixed metaphors.
The Washed Compost gets politics totally wrong. But they are spot on in Apple criticism.
The attention to DETAIL is missing from Apple in the Cook era.
Nuff said …
Fake news, fake newspaper.
I can understand how at the cutting edge of development it’s difficult to find the talent (after all, Jonny Ive’s don’t grow on trees and he can only do so much), but at the same time I don’t understand how they can’t find the resources to at least keep certain products up to date. The Mac Mini is a prime example. People don’t buy it because it looks amazing or is the the most cutting edge in terms of performance, they essentially buy it because they don’t need a high end machine but want to run MacOs. I use Mac Minis at my office where essentially we do web browsing, email, word processing, but also run Windows for a few legacy things we still need. I don’t need a super powerful machine, but at the same time I don’t want to pay for tech that is multiple years old. What’s the point of me upgrading my machine after 4-5 years if what is available to me is 3 or more years old? I may as well just keep using my current machines (which still work fine admittedly). Apple are doing themselves out of easy money.
The same can be said of the Mac Pro. Yes, a lot of people do want the most cutting edge, would want a great overall package, but most of all they want power and they want MacOS. On top of that they don’t want to have to junk all that expensive hardware in a year or two because they need to upgrade whatever elements. I would wager that a large percentage of Mac Pro users would be happy with the previous design but with regular updates to it and the option to upgrade it themselves. Chances are they’re tucked out of sight anyway.
I also appreciate that the bigger you are the harder it is to innovate and roll out new stuff that you instantly have to be able to make tens of millions of. Whilst it’s not the answer to everything throwing money at certain things does solve some problems and Apple have money.
Ok – so I get out my iPhone X – gee, it seems pretty solid and well-built., even beautiful. But everyone st Apple was working on Apple zoark, so it must be an accident that it came ourpt so well-designed,
What everyone needs to understand and realize is that Apple Park had to be constructed. And the proper time and attention to detail and care had to be taken. What–Apple isn’t going to spend time on Steve Jobs last project? Get real.
Why would engineers and designers tasked with iOS and MacOS devices have to spend any significant amount of time designing or constructing the new HQ? Not an excuse unless you believe there is some HQ-OS running there that is an offshoot of one or both of iOS and MacOS.
Apple OS and application software has been becoming crap with poor quality control and half baked features. Lickspittle MDN can’t pretend otherwise.
Maybe if Apple put as much effort into releasing bug free software as it does into Apple Playpen and emojis then it might start catching up to its past reputation for quality. So pleased I didn’t upgrade to High Serria and probably best to remain one whole OS version behind in the hope that all the fixes might be done.