> “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”
I just have to call out how much this impacted my mom’s life. She’s 100% blind and has access because of her iPhone and iPad. Yes she learned JAWSs and literally took classes to do it. Every single windows update has made it so she’d have to retake this class. The iOS updates a rocky but she isn’t literally hamstrung.
My dad, damn near 80, is still happily using his 2012 i7 Mac mini I set him up with before moving away.
Blind person using Apple products here, and at least for phones, I agree. I wouldn't say it's exclusively because of iPhone, but a large part of my independence is definitely it. There have been problems, bugs that go unfixed for years, MacOS VoiceOver is quite a disaster even though I do still use and enjoy the platform overall, and anything worth using can be criticized I think. But iOS has so many features built in that help me every single day. VoiceOver, but also all of the features utilizing vision like door detection, OCR, etc. they're in the magnifier as well so you don't need VoiceOver enabled to play with them, and I think a number of them also require a lidar sensor?
Anyway, my phone is such an important companion wherever I go that I keep several magsafe batteries on me whenever I leave the house for a significant time. It has made an absolutely huge difference in confidence. It is definitely one of the single most important assistive tech devices I have together with my computer.
Excuse my language here but: I fucking love this! My mom pretty much mirrors your experience. I purposefully left out macOS and voiceover. I would almost call it unusable, sadly. The amount of key layering that voiceover and macOS in general has makes it very hard to use.
I’ve been hacking on a macOS app that leans on LLMs, vision use, and the AX macOS APIs to try and make voiceover less.. prickly haha. Hoping to visit in person soon to watch her use it :)
The first time I saw a blind person using an iPhone, I was blown away. I follow some Apple engineers who work on accessibility, and they all seem very passionate about their work. It’s an area where I truly believe Apple is doing it to help people, not just for profit.
I’m not blind, but I’m using accessibility features like Speak Screen, and the text-to-speech is pretty poor (mispronunciations abound, markup is ignored, punctuation is misinterpreted), usability is poor (can’t start at a user-selected location on a page for example), and it’s rather buggy, especially within Safari. It doesn’t seem like anyone at Apple is interested in making it a better experience.
I struggle not to have a cynical take these days. Of course he cared about the ROI. The ROI is access to an underserved market, a halo effect, a new community of adherents, a new reason for customers to cross the moat into the ecosystem… a modest investment with a durable long term return in multiple categories.
I appreciate that it’s a win-win for Apple and for its customers, and I firmly believe that accessibility features serve everyone eventually. I’m glad that there are some billionaires who also see it that way.
I guess I just wish we didn’t have to rely on rare cases of billionaires finding it in their own best interest to happen to serve the rest of us. Especially when the actual accessibility work and everything else is actually done by a whole class of people that never make headlines just for leaving their jobs and being replaced.
I get what you’re saying but in my 15 year career the ONLY time I was allowed to meaningfully work on accessibility was when visa hired me to remediate visa checkout. And that was literally because a tier 1 bank was going to drop their contract over it.
The ROI Apple will get is when all of us turn 70 and need these features we’re ignoring now
It's obvious he has to be somewhat concerned about the ROI (or LOI) - if it cost ten times the value of the company to implement accessibility for the blind, it's not going to get implemented.
But the whole point of leadership should be to say "this doesn't bean count out perfectly, but we'll do it".
Cook was an able steward of Apple. Under his leadership the hardware side continued to iteratively improve nicely. Apple Silicon is good stuff. I am firmly embedded in the entire Apple ecosystem and have no reason to leave.
I do wish Apple used some of its massive cash hoard and market power to do better in software. The iPad remains my favorite form factor to use in lots of my day but Apple never invested in killer app software optimized for it. Same with VisionPro although maybe that story is just early. The VisionPro store demo was the closest I felt to tech magic since I was a kid in the 80s. The price was high but not prohibitively so. Rather, I could tell that there was just no reason to use it day to day because there wasn't enough software optimized for it.
I've lost track of the Apple Cash hoard which was insane some years ago but it would have been better for Apple to proactively invest in developing killer apps/uses for it's admirable hardware versus going into producing TV shows and movies because Hollywood people are fun to hang out with.
Cook did his job. Apple's supply chain didn't collapse and almost kill the company like in the 90s. But I hope we see some of the old innovative spirit come back. I want that "wow" moment again where I don't just get an iteratively improved version of what I already have but something new!
> versus going into producing TV shows and movies because Hollywood people are fun to hang out with
I disagree with this take quite a bit. Yes, software could be better, but Apple TV+ has given dozens of shows the budget and freedom to produce some truly generation-defining art. Ted Lasso, Severance, and For All Mankind are huge stand-outs in their scope, depth, and ambition. For instance, the latter is produced by Sony, yet you see nearly zero product placement, which has been a hallmark of the studio for over a decade now. Putting gobs of money into storytelling yields purer, and therefore more compelling, narratives that will hold up well over time and represent the best of what we are capable of. At the same time, Apple TV+ as a subscription service is also a very convenient way for Apple to weather any ups and downs in the physical product categories.
The TV shows and stuff were never in competition for their money, they spent over $700 billion on stock buybacks in the last decade that's where it went, and they certainly could have spent a miniscule portion of that to ignite the iPad and AVP software scene. It will be interesting to see if they change approach with the folding iPhone, the rumour mill says it won't support iPad apps so it is primed for the same problem.
> When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI
Tim Cook, 2023:
> Lawyers suggested Cook himself was involved with how the warning to App Store customers would appear, recommending an update to the text that appears when the external links were clicked. In one version, that link warned customers they were “no longer transacting with Apple.” Later, the link was updated to subtly suggest there could be privacy or security risks with purchases made on the web.
He micro-managed minimizing the cost of developers using third party payments in apps, so his nonchalance to ROI is likely overstated - or changed significantly since 2014.
> “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”
This made me sad. I moved out to Silicon Valley a few months after Jobs passed. I remember feeling so hopeful and inspired that technology could make the world a better place, and I saw the same in other founders. Today I look around and feel ashamed of the tech industry. The founders don’t talk about changing the world anymore, they just have dollar signs in their eyes. It’s been a long time since I saw any technology that felt inspiring the same way it used to feel.
> I would also bet that Cook moves into the role of executive chairman, and will still play a significant, if not leading, role for the company when it comes to domestic and international politics. Especially with regard to Trump.
FWIW, Gruber consistently condemns Trump, and portrayed Cook's obsequious sycophancy as lamentable and highly questionable "take one for the team" acts Cook chose to do for the sake of Apple.
Go read what Gruber says about Trump on his social media, or even on the very blog you were just on. Safe to say he isn’t a fan. I think what he’s saying is that Cook has been quite effective at stroking Trump’s ego enough that the admin leaves Apple alone, which is absolutely true in my opinion.
In a different world where Cook messed up, it might be Apple (a Big Tech company with uber-liberal employees, marketing, and vibes, and an openly gay CEO!) being designated a supply chain risk, not Anthropic.
I have to give props for him for keeping basically a simple blog with the same layout and still consistently pulling in over $40,000/month in weekly sponsorships after 20+ years.
No drama, never in the spotlight much nowadays, just posting on his blog and raking in insane money.
Until now Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades. That's one human generation, and it is also the span of time between when something first hits and when it sees its first retro revival. That isn't a coincidence.
I'm starting to get a little excited! This is going to be quite a decade.
> Until now Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades.
Going back to 2008:
> But the most fun on the conference call came when he parried analysts’ questions about new product areas that Apple might or might not enter. A recurring question among Apple watchers for decades has been, “When is Apple going to introduce a low-cost computer?
> Mr. Jobs answered that decades-old complaint by stating, “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk.” He argued instead that the company’s mission was to add more value for customers at current price points.
There is more to it than just accounting for inflation. Apple has done a number of other things in the meantime, including designing and manufacturing their own chips, that have changed the economies of this. Until the very recent RAM price explosion, a sub $500 computer in 2008 was probably more like a sub $350 computer today.
Inflation goes up - someone who could buy a $500 computer in 2008 should be able to buy a $766 or so computer today (cite: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com)
But today, if you can finagle the EDU discount, you can get a MacBook Neo for $499 ($600 without) which apparently isn't really compromised in any major way.
> What a wild take. I guess that explains the massive and growing popularity of iOS over that same time period.
Wild take, indeed.
I seem to recall something about Apple releasing a sub-$600 laptop so popular that weeks after it was announced it's backordered for more than 30 days.
People want another "iphone"-level impact. I would bet there never will be. A device that does everything that we carry with us will also be like an evolution of the smart phone.
The only possibility I can imagine is a home robot that takes off.
The iPhone was basically the apotheosis of the Internet. I don’t think we will ever see another consumer product able to have an impact like that unless there is some other kind of “substructure” technology with a vast amount of untapped potential lying around.
Even other transformational technological advancements, like home robotics, I don’t think will be encompassed by a single device the way smartphones could. Home robots will be scattered across a bunch of different robotic devices doing independent activities. You’ll have purpose-built laundry robots, vacuum robots, cooking robots, driving robots, etc. but not a single company doing a single thing.
I never understood why daringfireball is such a famous blogger. They seem totally insane to me.
Claiming Steve Jobs was two steps ahead of cancer, the same guy who compared himself to Jesus and Gandi, the same guy who ate berries and nuts thinking he could flush the cancer out of his body, always two steps ahead huh?
> In August 2011, Steve Jobs was sick. For years he’d managed to stay a step, sometimes two, ahead of the pancreatic cancer he’d been battling since 2003, but no more.
I was thinking about the upcoming regulation about replaceable batteries in the EU, and couldn't help but think that if I were Apple's CEO this would be a great time to make an orderly exit. Make no mistake, I'm not a fan of i-Devices' non-replaceable batteries, but I can't remember a single device with a lid for batteries on the back that was aesthetically in the same league as an iPhone.
As far as I know it should be pretty easy for Apple to comply with the regulation. The battery needs to be replaceable with standard or freely available tools and without adhesives. Many of Apple’s devices already meet this standard.
Edit: I'm not sure on the adhesives part. Apple uses an electrically-releasable adhesive in some of their newer products. The MacBook Neo doesn't use battery adhesive at all.
There are considerations in the law for water proofing, device safety, and battery durability (maintaining 80% capacity at 1000 cycles, which Apple already does). They do not require a pop open battery door on every device like it's 2005 again.
Apple already provides repair tools, guides, and replacement parts both to end users and third party technicians.
These regulations are complicated, but they aren't new and Apple isn't being blindsided with some catastrophe here.
I don't think any of the iPhone or iPads do. Their design is pretty tightly coupled to weird shaped, permanently attached batteries, from what I've heard.
I've read that Apple's products fall outside the scope of the regulation because their product batteries can do 1000 cycles and still hit the 80% benchmark.
I don't know whether the newer electrically-releasing battery adhesives would count, but they do allow cleanly removing and replacing the battery without proprietary tools.
They’re not proprietary but some of them are expensive and somewhat specialized. I don’t think it’ll be really economical for most normal people to self-service many repairs, but it’ll be very viable to have a corner hardware store that can do it for you for cheap. Self-servicing battery replacements ought to be doable with an eyeglass screwdriver though.
Reading some articles about the EU law, which is more complicated than the seemingly popular interpretation that all phones are now going to have tool-free battery doors on the back like it's 2005 again.
To be clear, replaceable battery doesn't mean a lid like phones used to have. It means that you should be able to take the device apart with simple tools and remove the battery and pop in another one.
It actually probably affects other phone companies more than it affects Apple, as some of the others have very poor repairability
> The battery thing doesn’t apply to water resistant devices, so doesn’t matter for iPhone/Apple Watch.
I think that is not true. If you look at article 11.2 b it talks about
"appliances specifically designed to operate primarily in an environment that is
regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion, and that are
intended to be washable or rinseable"
I don't think that applies to Apple devices. Also these special devices still need a battery replaceable by a professional.
The Microsoft Lumia 540 looks remarkably like a modern phone still and it had a fairly easily replaceable battery, because it allowed you to replace the back cover.
There's also the Lumia 920, which is arguably a nicer looking phone than anything Apple current have, also have a fairly easily replaceable battery, requiring you to remove just two screws.
I'm not sure how they are related. USB-C was not really a technical challenge or had trade-offs. I'm not a hardware engineer but from what I've read, having an easily replaceable battery would degrade the water resistance of the phone.
Lightning is a superior physical design to USB-C (can't speak to the electrical part). Much like every major tech battle in history, however [1], the worse solution won because of ubiquity. I'm not particularly thrilled because I've had a USB-C connector irretrievably break off in a port once on a laptop but I'll make that trade for being able to use a single cable for all of my devices.
- Not an "Apple Faithful"
[1] VHS vs Beta, Doom vs Marathon, Zergling vs human, etc
I've never had trouble with usb-c, but have had lightning connectors short out and burn one of the leads, or stop working from dust. Not sure I'd say one is better than the other, but individual experience can really vary on these kind of things. Tough to say one is clearly better imo.
The iPhone 4 was not water resistant. I remember owning one and being absolutely freaked out about it getting wet. Talk about an expensive paperweight.
By "rebuke" do you mean the thing where they didn't send any of their execs to be a guest on his WWDC podcast episode, presumably in retribution for his "Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino" post?
I don't see how that makes him irrelevant - I think it strengthens his credibility as someone willing to hold Apple accountable when he disagrees with their direction.
I really enjoy your content, Simon, but as someone who worked at Apple for years, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I can't think of a single person at Apple, outside of marketing, who likes or respects John. John became a necessary evil for Apple during the Mac vs PC era.
In person, he acts as if he's an engineer who builds and innovates. He should stick to markdown.
I am supremely disappointed in your comments here. I've always assumed you only speak from experience. If you'd like to have a private conversation about my experiences with John at Apple, or why he is generally reviled on campus, I am happy to do so privately (my contact info is in my profile).
Because there are very specific reasons why people (who actually know his relationship to Apple) don't view him as credible. I don't know how else to communicate that point.
What "vibes"? I do NOT like John as a person. That has no bearing on whether or not what I'm claiming is true.
I was an engineer at both Microsoft and Apple. I have extensive experience at both companies in how we shared information with 3rd parties and how we intentionally cultivated those relationships for specific purposes.
I'm currently building an interesting tool for macOS that Claude can't build on its own. I was considering reaching out to you because I was certain you'd find Claude's responses interesting. It is mind-boggling that this is how you interact with people publicly.
The vibes of starting a thread with "You've never met a more conceited asshole", followed by attacking my credibility with "you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about" and "I am supremely disappointed in your comments here" purely because I asked "what's the grift?".
It was mainly the "I am supremely disappointed in your comments here" thing that put me off, I didn't see how that was a reasonable response to what I had commented in this thread.
Again, you'd be hard-pressed to find an Apple engineer who has spent any in-person time with John who doesn't have a similar take.
> "you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about"
There is nothing in this thread, aside from your supposed "friend", that makes me believe you've had any direct contact with Apple employees who know anything about John's relationship with Apple. So, in this specific instance, I have no reason to believe you know what you are talking about.
Lastly, I'm not the one who pointed out any grift. My point was that John's relationship to Apple is complicated.
You are communicating with someone who helped build two of the most popular development tools of all time, and yet you continue to act like you are above us, poor HN commenters. I've offered to discuss things with you privately (which is the right thing to do, since I have no intention of hurting Apple), and you've ignored it. Anyone who has access to information and yet refuses to engage is not a journalist.
Would you still like me to email you? I don't have time for a conversation today (mainly because I'm not a journalist and have software I need to ship) but I can contact you if you think it would be productive.
I am more than happy to have a conversation. I am more than happy to share my experiences with John. I am more than happy to talk about some of the things we did at Apple (and MS) to "help" certain stories reach the right people. We definitely handled John differently than people like David Pogue or Jason Snell.
I'm also happy to show you a demo of my app (built without AI assistance) that Claude has repeatedly failed to replicate because it requires architectural knowledge that SOTA models still aren't able to turn into a comprehensive solution. This is very different from building a web browser from scratch.
If none of that is interesting to you, then no, there is no reach to reach out.
The comment asks what’s the grift? How is he irrelevant?
You ignore the questions and respond with ad hominem attacks.
Obviously, you’ve got a beef with Gruber. That’s fine. But you’re acquitting yourself well here (and make us suspect that whatever happened between you and Gruber, you might have had a significant hand in it).
Did you work at Apple when John was actually supremely relevant and useful to the company?
I am not going to talk about those things publicly (my contact info is in my profile), but everyone here is making assumptions without any direct experience. I'd bet my house that if you privately spoke to 10 Apple employees who spent any time with John (on campus, at WWDC, private parties, etc.), you'd hear exactly the same thing I'm stating.
John is a hanger-on and a conceited asshole. I think John believes that he's had a hand in creating things that actual engineers and researchers dedicated years of their lives to.
As I said, this is not something I will discuss publicly. But what I can say is that Apple wouldn't be the first tech company to pay for certain stories to be written, as I'm sure you're aware. There was a time when Apple needed John (along with his apparent "unbiased" takes). John's blog was critical for a period of time.
I found this exchange both entertaining and informative. Appreciate you sharing an insider's perspective (while also acknowledging I have no possible way to verify if any of this is even true).
Heh... thanks. I don't expect anyone to just believe this information verbatim; as you said, I'm just some rando on HN. But I did offer to discuss it privately with @simonw.
Apple prefers tech influencers / YouTubers like Marques Brownlee and the like who actually resonate with audiences (and don't harp on about Trump every week) rather than irrelevant bloggers.
> I don't see how that makes him irrelevant - I think it strengthens his credibility as someone willing to hold Apple accountable when he disagrees with their direction.
???
Accountable to what? Do you actually think Apple cares now about a random blogger who makes a living critiquing them?
That is the grift and by the looks of it I would say he is irrelevant since Apple declined his invitation.
> “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”
I just have to call out how much this impacted my mom’s life. She’s 100% blind and has access because of her iPhone and iPad. Yes she learned JAWSs and literally took classes to do it. Every single windows update has made it so she’d have to retake this class. The iOS updates a rocky but she isn’t literally hamstrung.
My dad, damn near 80, is still happily using his 2012 i7 Mac mini I set him up with before moving away.
Anyway, excited for the future of Apple under Ternus and a hardware guy at the helm. What kind of a11y does robotics have? https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/elegnt-expressive...
Blind person using Apple products here, and at least for phones, I agree. I wouldn't say it's exclusively because of iPhone, but a large part of my independence is definitely it. There have been problems, bugs that go unfixed for years, MacOS VoiceOver is quite a disaster even though I do still use and enjoy the platform overall, and anything worth using can be criticized I think. But iOS has so many features built in that help me every single day. VoiceOver, but also all of the features utilizing vision like door detection, OCR, etc. they're in the magnifier as well so you don't need VoiceOver enabled to play with them, and I think a number of them also require a lidar sensor?
Anyway, my phone is such an important companion wherever I go that I keep several magsafe batteries on me whenever I leave the house for a significant time. It has made an absolutely huge difference in confidence. It is definitely one of the single most important assistive tech devices I have together with my computer.
> MacOS VoiceOver is quite a disaster
I am curious as to why (definitely not arguing, but I’m not blind, and only use it for testing).
I write (Apple) apps to be accessible. I would be grateful for guidance in making them as useful as possible.
Excuse my language here but: I fucking love this! My mom pretty much mirrors your experience. I purposefully left out macOS and voiceover. I would almost call it unusable, sadly. The amount of key layering that voiceover and macOS in general has makes it very hard to use.
I’ve been hacking on a macOS app that leans on LLMs, vision use, and the AX macOS APIs to try and make voiceover less.. prickly haha. Hoping to visit in person soon to watch her use it :)
The first time I saw a blind person using an iPhone, I was blown away. I follow some Apple engineers who work on accessibility, and they all seem very passionate about their work. It’s an area where I truly believe Apple is doing it to help people, not just for profit.
I’m not blind, but I’m using accessibility features like Speak Screen, and the text-to-speech is pretty poor (mispronunciations abound, markup is ignored, punctuation is misinterpreted), usability is poor (can’t start at a user-selected location on a page for example), and it’s rather buggy, especially within Safari. It doesn’t seem like anyone at Apple is interested in making it a better experience.
I struggle not to have a cynical take these days. Of course he cared about the ROI. The ROI is access to an underserved market, a halo effect, a new community of adherents, a new reason for customers to cross the moat into the ecosystem… a modest investment with a durable long term return in multiple categories.
I appreciate that it’s a win-win for Apple and for its customers, and I firmly believe that accessibility features serve everyone eventually. I’m glad that there are some billionaires who also see it that way.
I guess I just wish we didn’t have to rely on rare cases of billionaires finding it in their own best interest to happen to serve the rest of us. Especially when the actual accessibility work and everything else is actually done by a whole class of people that never make headlines just for leaving their jobs and being replaced.
I get what you’re saying but in my 15 year career the ONLY time I was allowed to meaningfully work on accessibility was when visa hired me to remediate visa checkout. And that was literally because a tier 1 bank was going to drop their contract over it.
The ROI Apple will get is when all of us turn 70 and need these features we’re ignoring now
It's obvious he has to be somewhat concerned about the ROI (or LOI) - if it cost ten times the value of the company to implement accessibility for the blind, it's not going to get implemented.
But the whole point of leadership should be to say "this doesn't bean count out perfectly, but we'll do it".
Cook was an able steward of Apple. Under his leadership the hardware side continued to iteratively improve nicely. Apple Silicon is good stuff. I am firmly embedded in the entire Apple ecosystem and have no reason to leave.
I do wish Apple used some of its massive cash hoard and market power to do better in software. The iPad remains my favorite form factor to use in lots of my day but Apple never invested in killer app software optimized for it. Same with VisionPro although maybe that story is just early. The VisionPro store demo was the closest I felt to tech magic since I was a kid in the 80s. The price was high but not prohibitively so. Rather, I could tell that there was just no reason to use it day to day because there wasn't enough software optimized for it.
I've lost track of the Apple Cash hoard which was insane some years ago but it would have been better for Apple to proactively invest in developing killer apps/uses for it's admirable hardware versus going into producing TV shows and movies because Hollywood people are fun to hang out with.
Cook did his job. Apple's supply chain didn't collapse and almost kill the company like in the 90s. But I hope we see some of the old innovative spirit come back. I want that "wow" moment again where I don't just get an iteratively improved version of what I already have but something new!
> versus going into producing TV shows and movies because Hollywood people are fun to hang out with
I disagree with this take quite a bit. Yes, software could be better, but Apple TV+ has given dozens of shows the budget and freedom to produce some truly generation-defining art. Ted Lasso, Severance, and For All Mankind are huge stand-outs in their scope, depth, and ambition. For instance, the latter is produced by Sony, yet you see nearly zero product placement, which has been a hallmark of the studio for over a decade now. Putting gobs of money into storytelling yields purer, and therefore more compelling, narratives that will hold up well over time and represent the best of what we are capable of. At the same time, Apple TV+ as a subscription service is also a very convenient way for Apple to weather any ups and downs in the physical product categories.
The TV shows and stuff were never in competition for their money, they spent over $700 billion on stock buybacks in the last decade that's where it went, and they certainly could have spent a miniscule portion of that to ignite the iPad and AVP software scene. It will be interesting to see if they change approach with the folding iPhone, the rumour mill says it won't support iPad apps so it is primed for the same problem.
That is a generous assessment of Tim Cook’s reign at Apple and especially of his character. I found it a real pleasure to read.
Tim Cook, 2014:
> When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI
Tim Cook, 2023:
> Lawyers suggested Cook himself was involved with how the warning to App Store customers would appear, recommending an update to the text that appears when the external links were clicked. In one version, that link warned customers they were “no longer transacting with Apple.” Later, the link was updated to subtly suggest there could be privacy or security risks with purchases made on the web.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/24/apple-exec-phil-schiller-t...
Could you clarify your intended meaning in placing these quotes side by side?
He micro-managed minimizing the cost of developers using third party payments in apps, so his nonchalance to ROI is likely overstated - or changed significantly since 2014.
That’s a pretty non sequitur. Nobody said he wasn’t concerned with ROI. He’s said that not every decision is based on ROI.
People want peaceful transfer of power :)
Nah the execs want feudalism, they should get all the things that come with feudalism.
Feudalism includes heirs and successors. Sometimes the transition is peaceful, sometimes not.
So long Tim Apple
Hello John Apple.
Hello John Appleseed.
Please. This is the reason why I don't read r/Apple.
> “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”
This made me sad. I moved out to Silicon Valley a few months after Jobs passed. I remember feeling so hopeful and inspired that technology could make the world a better place, and I saw the same in other founders. Today I look around and feel ashamed of the tech industry. The founders don’t talk about changing the world anymore, they just have dollar signs in their eyes. It’s been a long time since I saw any technology that felt inspiring the same way it used to feel.
I don’t know what I would be need to be paid (via ad income or whatever means) to be a life and times of Big Tech X chronicler.
> I would also bet that Cook moves into the role of executive chairman, and will still play a significant, if not leading, role for the company when it comes to domestic and international politics. Especially with regard to Trump.
Right: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/03/tim-cook-apple-donate-1-mil...
Gruber is a joke
How does that link discredit what Gruber said there? It seems to me to back it up.
FWIW, Gruber consistently condemns Trump, and portrayed Cook's obsequious sycophancy as lamentable and highly questionable "take one for the team" acts Cook chose to do for the sake of Apple.
It strikes me as a fairly plausible analysis.
Go read what Gruber says about Trump on his social media, or even on the very blog you were just on. Safe to say he isn’t a fan. I think what he’s saying is that Cook has been quite effective at stroking Trump’s ego enough that the admin leaves Apple alone, which is absolutely true in my opinion.
In a different world where Cook messed up, it might be Apple (a Big Tech company with uber-liberal employees, marketing, and vibes, and an openly gay CEO!) being designated a supply chain risk, not Anthropic.
Regardless of whether you agree with his opinions, Gruber invented Markdown. The world would be a very different place today without it.
I have to give props for him for keeping basically a simple blog with the same layout and still consistently pulling in over $40,000/month in weekly sponsorships after 20+ years.
No drama, never in the spotlight much nowadays, just posting on his blog and raking in insane money.
> Regardless of whether you agree with his opinions, Gruber invented Markdown. The world would be a very different place today without it.
So?
And also...with substantial contributions from Aaron Swartz.
Not solely Gruber.
Gruber is only known for his Daring Fireball blog amongst everyone important, only techies care about his Markdown 'invention'.
Markdown is just a side project for him.
I had no idea Markdown had an inventor (but obviously someone had to do it) - I guess I thought it evolved from usenet on its own.
And I only knew of Gruber as "the Mac guy" and (am embarrassed to admit) that I thought the daring fireball was another Mac guy.
Until now Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades. That's one human generation, and it is also the span of time between when something first hits and when it sees its first retro revival. That isn't a coincidence.
I'm starting to get a little excited! This is going to be quite a decade.
> Until now Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades.
Going back to 2008:
> But the most fun on the conference call came when he parried analysts’ questions about new product areas that Apple might or might not enter. A recurring question among Apple watchers for decades has been, “When is Apple going to introduce a low-cost computer?
> Mr. Jobs answered that decades-old complaint by stating, “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk.” He argued instead that the company’s mission was to add more value for customers at current price points.
* https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/2...
USD(2008) 500 = USD(2026) 760:
* https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
which is about what the Neo costs.
There is more to it than just accounting for inflation. Apple has done a number of other things in the meantime, including designing and manufacturing their own chips, that have changed the economies of this. Until the very recent RAM price explosion, a sub $500 computer in 2008 was probably more like a sub $350 computer today.
Inflation goes up - someone who could buy a $500 computer in 2008 should be able to buy a $766 or so computer today (cite: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com)
But today, if you can finagle the EDU discount, you can get a MacBook Neo for $499 ($600 without) which apparently isn't really compromised in any major way.
> Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades
What a wild take. I guess that explains the massive and growing popularity of iOS over that same time period.
> What a wild take. I guess that explains the massive and growing popularity of iOS over that same time period.
Wild take, indeed.
I seem to recall something about Apple releasing a sub-$600 laptop so popular that weeks after it was announced it's backordered for more than 30 days.
Something something MacBook Neue or other…
People want another "iphone"-level impact. I would bet there never will be. A device that does everything that we carry with us will also be like an evolution of the smart phone.
The only possibility I can imagine is a home robot that takes off.
The iPhone was basically the apotheosis of the Internet. I don’t think we will ever see another consumer product able to have an impact like that unless there is some other kind of “substructure” technology with a vast amount of untapped potential lying around.
Even other transformational technological advancements, like home robotics, I don’t think will be encompassed by a single device the way smartphones could. Home robots will be scattered across a bunch of different robotic devices doing independent activities. You’ll have purpose-built laundry robots, vacuum robots, cooking robots, driving robots, etc. but not a single company doing a single thing.
They're now building the best cheap laptop ever made. That feels mass market to me.
2.5 bn iOS installed base, clearly a niche market.
I never understood why daringfireball is such a famous blogger. They seem totally insane to me.
Claiming Steve Jobs was two steps ahead of cancer, the same guy who compared himself to Jesus and Gandi, the same guy who ate berries and nuts thinking he could flush the cancer out of his body, always two steps ahead huh?
Here's the full context of that quote:
> In August 2011, Steve Jobs was sick. For years he’d managed to stay a step, sometimes two, ahead of the pancreatic cancer he’d been battling since 2003, but no more.
I read two steps as a physical metaphor—i.e., it was following him closely—and not like a chess metaphor—I.e., two moves ahead.
I was thinking about the upcoming regulation about replaceable batteries in the EU, and couldn't help but think that if I were Apple's CEO this would be a great time to make an orderly exit. Make no mistake, I'm not a fan of i-Devices' non-replaceable batteries, but I can't remember a single device with a lid for batteries on the back that was aesthetically in the same league as an iPhone.
As far as I know it should be pretty easy for Apple to comply with the regulation. The battery needs to be replaceable with standard or freely available tools and without adhesives. Many of Apple’s devices already meet this standard.
Edit: I'm not sure on the adhesives part. Apple uses an electrically-releasable adhesive in some of their newer products. The MacBook Neo doesn't use battery adhesive at all.
There are considerations in the law for water proofing, device safety, and battery durability (maintaining 80% capacity at 1000 cycles, which Apple already does). They do not require a pop open battery door on every device like it's 2005 again.
Apple already provides repair tools, guides, and replacement parts both to end users and third party technicians.
These regulations are complicated, but they aren't new and Apple isn't being blindsided with some catastrophe here.
I don't think any of the iPhone or iPads do. Their design is pretty tightly coupled to weird shaped, permanently attached batteries, from what I've heard.
I've read that Apple's products fall outside the scope of the regulation because their product batteries can do 1000 cycles and still hit the 80% benchmark.
Even if they can't right now, they certainly can by downrating them a bit.
I'd still like to see them comply with the spirit and make it easy to replace.
I don't know whether the newer electrically-releasing battery adhesives would count, but they do allow cleanly removing and replacing the battery without proprietary tools.
They’re not proprietary but some of them are expensive and somewhat specialized. I don’t think it’ll be really economical for most normal people to self-service many repairs, but it’ll be very viable to have a corner hardware store that can do it for you for cheap. Self-servicing battery replacements ought to be doable with an eyeglass screwdriver though.
And what, exactly, is your knowledge based on? I take it you've designed and shipped a working phone that meets IP68 standards for water intrusion?
Reading some articles about the EU law, which is more complicated than the seemingly popular interpretation that all phones are now going to have tool-free battery doors on the back like it's 2005 again.
What? Which? Huh? Absolutely not. So many of them have adhesives I dont think almost any of them meet your criteria.
To be clear, replaceable battery doesn't mean a lid like phones used to have. It means that you should be able to take the device apart with simple tools and remove the battery and pop in another one.
It actually probably affects other phone companies more than it affects Apple, as some of the others have very poor repairability
The battery thing doesn’t apply to water resistant devices, so doesn’t matter for iPhone/Apple Watch.
There’s rumors that upcoming iPad models are water resistant, I suspect that’s the motivation for it.
> The battery thing doesn’t apply to water resistant devices, so doesn’t matter for iPhone/Apple Watch.
I think that is not true. If you look at article 11.2 b it talks about
"appliances specifically designed to operate primarily in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion, and that are intended to be washable or rinseable"
I don't think that applies to Apple devices. Also these special devices still need a battery replaceable by a professional.
https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-2-2023-INIT...
Apple Watch seems to apply (it's a dive watch at least sometimes) - but it would be a change to the iPhone to make it a dive phone.
Unlikely they'd want to develop all that just to avoid some battery redesign - the phones last so long now that they should have some headroom.
It’s no secret that Apple has for decades wanted a device with no ports at all.
I does apply.
Battery should be sold for 5 years+ after EoS and it still must be replaceable without proprietary tools, nor proprietary parts.
Or out-of-warranty replacement should be available for a rate not to be above X% of the original price for 5+ years after last sale.
Of course the latter can be gamed where they refuse to replace the battery on a cracked phone, even though it could be done and probably work.
The Microsoft Lumia 540 looks remarkably like a modern phone still and it had a fairly easily replaceable battery, because it allowed you to replace the back cover.
There's also the Lumia 920, which is arguably a nicer looking phone than anything Apple current have, also have a fairly easily replaceable battery, requiring you to remove just two screws.
Didn't the Apple Faithful say the same for usb-c?
I'm not sure how they are related. USB-C was not really a technical challenge or had trade-offs. I'm not a hardware engineer but from what I've read, having an easily replaceable battery would degrade the water resistance of the phone.
Same type of concerns were raised about usb-c: more dust collects, worse connector design, would make the phones too thick, etc etc.
The Apple Faithful will always defend whatever Apple does, it's not terribly useful to listen to them.
It's the Apple Faithful who criticize Apple that are worth listening to.
Lightning is a superior physical design to USB-C (can't speak to the electrical part). Much like every major tech battle in history, however [1], the worse solution won because of ubiquity. I'm not particularly thrilled because I've had a USB-C connector irretrievably break off in a port once on a laptop but I'll make that trade for being able to use a single cable for all of my devices.
- Not an "Apple Faithful"
[1] VHS vs Beta, Doom vs Marathon, Zergling vs human, etc
I've never had trouble with usb-c, but have had lightning connectors short out and burn one of the leads, or stop working from dust. Not sure I'd say one is better than the other, but individual experience can really vary on these kind of things. Tough to say one is clearly better imo.
My experience that lighting was by far the best - when everything lightning I had was made by Apple.
As things became available in the after-market quality began to vary.
My biggest issue with USB-C right now is I have some devices that need a really long "tongue" and I can't find a cable with such.
The iPhone 4 was easily disassembled with screwdrivers...
The iPhone 4 was not water resistant. I remember owning one and being absolutely freaked out about it getting wet. Talk about an expensive paperweight.
> "easily"
Yoikes!
Yea, the dog shit pentalobe screwdrivers.
[flagged]
you met john gruber at apple?
Many times, yes. He's on campus a few times a year and almost always attends WWDC, the private parties, etc.
go on, spill the beans
He has always been a washed up irrelevant grifter.
The only thing he is known for is critiquing about Apple and harping on about Trump when it is a slow news day.
The day that Apple rebuked him last year sent his “blog” into the down path of irrelevancy.
I am sure there are more people in Apple who dislike this guy.
What's the grift?
By "rebuke" do you mean the thing where they didn't send any of their execs to be a guest on his WWDC podcast episode, presumably in retribution for his "Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino" post?
I don't see how that makes him irrelevant - I think it strengthens his credibility as someone willing to hold Apple accountable when he disagrees with their direction.
I really enjoy your content, Simon, but as someone who worked at Apple for years, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I can't think of a single person at Apple, outside of marketing, who likes or respects John. John became a necessary evil for Apple during the Mac vs PC era.
In person, he acts as if he's an engineer who builds and innovates. He should stick to markdown.
I am supremely disappointed in your comments here. I've always assumed you only speak from experience. If you'd like to have a private conversation about my experiences with John at Apple, or why he is generally reviled on campus, I am happy to do so privately (my contact info is in my profile).
Why should my opinion of how credible he is as a writer about Apple be affected by people who work at Apple not liking him?
Because there are very specific reasons why people (who actually know his relationship to Apple) don't view him as credible. I don't know how else to communicate that point.
> I don't know how else to communicate that point
It's not you, your points are clear.
Simon is sealioning [0] you.
He knows the answer but he just keeps asking the same question.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
I have genuinely no idea how I'm sealioning here.
The answer to my question appears to be "it's a secret, I'll tell you in private, everyone at Apple thinks like this".
I know at least one person who works at Apple who respects Gruber, so I'm already suspicious of the confidence being expressed here.
> The answer to my question appears to be "it's a secret, I'll tell you in private, everyone at Apple thinks like this".
Because that is the truth. I have no intention of sharing confidential information publicly.
Your take is "someone won't betray their previous employer publicly, so they must be lying."
I offered to share my thoughts, work experience, and other details with you privately. I've lost all respect for you as a journalist.
Before I spend time talking to someone I like to be reasonably confident that it's going to be a valuable conversation. The vibes aren't great here.
What "vibes"? I do NOT like John as a person. That has no bearing on whether or not what I'm claiming is true.
I was an engineer at both Microsoft and Apple. I have extensive experience at both companies in how we shared information with 3rd parties and how we intentionally cultivated those relationships for specific purposes.
I'm currently building an interesting tool for macOS that Claude can't build on its own. I was considering reaching out to you because I was certain you'd find Claude's responses interesting. It is mind-boggling that this is how you interact with people publicly.
The vibes of starting a thread with "You've never met a more conceited asshole", followed by attacking my credibility with "you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about" and "I am supremely disappointed in your comments here" purely because I asked "what's the grift?".
It was mainly the "I am supremely disappointed in your comments here" thing that put me off, I didn't see how that was a reasonable response to what I had commented in this thread.
> "You've never met a more conceited asshole"
Again, you'd be hard-pressed to find an Apple engineer who has spent any in-person time with John who doesn't have a similar take.
> "you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about"
There is nothing in this thread, aside from your supposed "friend", that makes me believe you've had any direct contact with Apple employees who know anything about John's relationship with Apple. So, in this specific instance, I have no reason to believe you know what you are talking about.
Lastly, I'm not the one who pointed out any grift. My point was that John's relationship to Apple is complicated.
You are communicating with someone who helped build two of the most popular development tools of all time, and yet you continue to act like you are above us, poor HN commenters. I've offered to discuss things with you privately (which is the right thing to do, since I have no intention of hurting Apple), and you've ignored it. Anyone who has access to information and yet refuses to engage is not a journalist.
Would you still like me to email you? I don't have time for a conversation today (mainly because I'm not a journalist and have software I need to ship) but I can contact you if you think it would be productive.
I am more than happy to have a conversation. I am more than happy to share my experiences with John. I am more than happy to talk about some of the things we did at Apple (and MS) to "help" certain stories reach the right people. We definitely handled John differently than people like David Pogue or Jason Snell.
I'm also happy to show you a demo of my app (built without AI assistance) that Claude has repeatedly failed to replicate because it requires architectural knowledge that SOTA models still aren't able to turn into a comprehensive solution. This is very different from building a web browser from scratch.
If none of that is interesting to you, then no, there is no reach to reach out.
This person is more credible than your unknown source and he knows many that doesn't like Gruber.
and Simon you're a indie journalist, why don't you contact him and find out?
The comment asks what’s the grift? How is he irrelevant?
You ignore the questions and respond with ad hominem attacks.
Obviously, you’ve got a beef with Gruber. That’s fine. But you’re acquitting yourself well here (and make us suspect that whatever happened between you and Gruber, you might have had a significant hand in it).
Did you work at Apple when John was actually supremely relevant and useful to the company?
I am not going to talk about those things publicly (my contact info is in my profile), but everyone here is making assumptions without any direct experience. I'd bet my house that if you privately spoke to 10 Apple employees who spent any time with John (on campus, at WWDC, private parties, etc.), you'd hear exactly the same thing I'm stating.
John is a hanger-on and a conceited asshole. I think John believes that he's had a hand in creating things that actual engineers and researchers dedicated years of their lives to.
How does he get paid by Apple?
I thought he earned his living from $11,000/week blog sponsors and whatever he earns from the podcast.
If Apple are paying him to cover them then yes, that's a grift. Is that happening?
(I know they send him review hardware because he discloses that in his posts.)
As I said, this is not something I will discuss publicly. But what I can say is that Apple wouldn't be the first tech company to pay for certain stories to be written, as I'm sure you're aware. There was a time when Apple needed John (along with his apparent "unbiased" takes). John's blog was critical for a period of time.
I found this exchange both entertaining and informative. Appreciate you sharing an insider's perspective (while also acknowledging I have no possible way to verify if any of this is even true).
Heh... thanks. I don't expect anyone to just believe this information verbatim; as you said, I'm just some rando on HN. But I did offer to discuss it privately with @simonw.
Apple prefers tech influencers / YouTubers like Marques Brownlee and the like who actually resonate with audiences (and don't harp on about Trump every week) rather than irrelevant bloggers.
> I don't see how that makes him irrelevant - I think it strengthens his credibility as someone willing to hold Apple accountable when he disagrees with their direction.
???
Accountable to what? Do you actually think Apple cares now about a random blogger who makes a living critiquing them?
That is the grift and by the looks of it I would say he is irrelevant since Apple declined his invitation.
Gruber needs Apple more than Apple needs him.
> Do you actually think Apple cares now about a random blogger who makes a living critiquing them?
Yes.
I mean, they clearly care enough to pull their execs from his podcast supposedly in response to something he wrote.
So is "the grift" the fact that he makes a living writing a blog? Who are the victims of this particular grift?