I hate to do this in some ways, but I’ll make it short. Recently, Marco Arment posted a small article suggesting that quality has slipped a bit within Apple and they need to step up their game. It was a reasoned and valid argument, and I agree with him. I also really respect his regret at having posted it and the frenzy it caused.
I am a relative newcomer to Apple products. I started around 2009 and never looked back. I use a Mac at home and work and have iPads and iPhones all over the house. I’ve written three simple little apps for the iPhone and am working on a new project now. I can see where Apple may have rushed a few things in the last few years to make dates instead of letting products be ready. I also understand that as the company it is, I firmly believe the upper echelon of management believe (and are right to) that they can have both. They’ve missed the mark, but not by far.
But, I work every day with Windows computers. Very few of my customers have Macs, many have Android phones (that they mostly love) and with all that I have to deal every day with their ‘idiosyncrasies.’ Now I respect Microsoft for building a product that is supposed to run on anything, where Apple keeps their hardware tight and easier to maintain, but they’ve done a poor job of it in many ways. How many products have people bailed on or skipped? Windows ME, Vista, and even 8 (though it’s better now) have each been considered train wrecks at release, and have kept that stigma. My customers universally dislike the new look and operation of the Office 2013 products and generally just shrug their shoulders and cope. Don’t even get me started on 3rd party applications on Windows. So many have bugs, or cross into territory of other products to create bugs, that I literally spend most days dealing with these problems.
Apple may have slipped a bit. But for those of us relative newcomers to the Apple environment, look where we’ve been.