Apple is used to insults, but even its biggest cheerleaders are now wading in with the insults.
Even when reporting 23 percent year-on-year growth and a quarterly net profit of $8.8 billion Apple was slammed for lackluster and disappointing results.
The fact that they’re coming up to a year since its messianic founder, visionary and spiritual leader Steve Jobs passed away makes these shortcomings look like major weaknesses.
Apple launched a new ad campaign based on its Genius Bar staff, which aired for the first time during US coverage of the London Olympics Opening Ceremony.
Reviews of the ads were damning, with Apple fans calling them ‘embarrassing’, ‘cheap’, ‘cringe-inducing’, and ‘dreadful’.
Ken Segall, the Chiat\Day marketing man Steve Jobs turned to for the best creative ideas both at NeXT and Apple, was another slamming the new Apple genius ads.
“It feels like something Best Buy would do. Maybe even Dell,” commented Segall.
It doesn’t get much more insulting than that for Apple.
Now one of Apple’s biggest fans in the media has laid into Apple’s new hardware.
New York Times technology columnist, Missing Manual publisher, and Emmy-winning CBS news correspondent David Pogue loves Apple’s new laptops but hates one little part of them.
Pogue, author of Mac For Dummies and many how-to guides on Apple's hardware and software, is livid about the new MacBooks’ MagSafe 2 power connector.
That might sound like a minor gripe, but it’s the finer details that Apple nearly always got right under nit-picking perfectionist Jobs.
They’re a big part of what made Apple’s products stand above the copyist crowd.
“I think the MagSafe connector is one of Apple’s best ideas ever,” says Pogue in his New York Times technology blog.
“The beauty of the MagSafe connector was that Apple had found precisely the right balance between attachment and detachment. Strong enough to hold the connector in place, weak enough to detach if it gets yanked.
“The MagSafe 2 connector fails that balance test. Badly.
“The magnet is so weak it keeps falling out. It falls out if you brush it. It falls out if you tip the laptop slightly. It falls out if you look at it funny. It’s a huge, huge pain.”
Pogue explains that this “weakness is compounded by a second problem: a return to the “T” design of older MagSafe connectors”.
“This thing comes straight into the side of the laptop instead of hugging the side with the cord parallel, like the old “L” connectors.
“You can’t rest the left side of the laptop on your thigh. It’s constantly getting bumped. And since the magnet has all the grip strength of an elderly gnat, guess what happens?
“The poorly designed MagSafe connector is infuriating.
“It’s the worst Apple design blunder since the hockey-puck mouse."
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Comments received
-JC- said on Tue, 31 Jul 2012
Since Steve Jobs left the company, the blunders are endless:
1. MobileMe being replaced with the equally unreliable iCloud service which offers the same frustrating problems without many features of its predecessor (= DISAPPOINTING)
2. ITunes gets "upgraded" to version 10.4, a version where useful features such as "Back up to Disc" are REMOVED for absolutely no reason, leaving decade-long loyal users confused and angry; (= ARROGANCE)
3. Mac OS 10.7 Lion makes the Mac more annoying to use, as Apple blindly insists to bring mobile device features to the Mac in a simply un-elegant fashion; (= LACK OF CREATIVITY)
4. Apple surprises everyone by announcing Macs will no longer get EPEAT certification, only to have to reverse this decision within days due to public outcries; (= OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY)
5. Those three embarrassing Genius ads during the 2012 Olympics; (= STUPIDITY: It's clear whoever approves this stuff at Apple, Inc. just doesn't have the same standards Steve had.)
-JC- said on Tue, 31 Jul 2012
6. At the time of writing, Apple has seemingly scrapped Safari for Windows (from v.6). (= GO FIGURE...)
Aryugaetu said on Wed, 01 Aug 2012
MORE Huge Heartless Blunders:
Using an RSS reader integrated into the browser made learning about news and events invaluable for those that find it difficult enough just to use a mouse, and especially for my blind friend that had Safari read the RSS news listings aloud. Like running up and stealing his cane, Apple killed that ability without warning! No news for blind people! At the very least make older functions an option in preferences.
And, DEFINITELY announce when you MOVE the Universal Access icon! If you're blind, it's like a stranger breaking into your house rearranging the furniture. Who does that?! My friend thought Apple deleted Universal Access.
I am well aware that a 60-year-old blind woman doesn't have nearly the profit potential of a thousand 14-year-old girls Tweating about Justin Bieber. But, come on, try to find a microgram of humanity.
I have absolutely no doubt Apple's heart stopped beating the same moment Steve's did.
-JC- said on Wed, 01 Aug 2012
@Aryugaetu: I hear you re: moving the icon. And you reminded me about Safari, so that makes:
7. Apple downgrades Safari 6, stripping it of any RSS support, for no logical reason...
In time they'll be stripping optical CD/DVD drives from all Macs, making it impossible to do the simplest of things like import/play a music CD or watch a DVD movie. They've already removed the ability for iTunes to back up music files to disc or restore from previous disc backups, for no rational reason at all. All done with complete silence or forewarning. Apple have become like Microsoft, completely forgetting that the term 'upgrade' with good software usually means "the same features plus more..."
I told you the list is endless... (sigh)
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