What would Steve Jobs say? — DAY 91
As a heavy user of Apples’ products, I woke up this morning asking myself what would Steve Jobs say about what Tim Cook and his crew are doing with his company. Apple has been standing out by their high level of innovation that created new markets, new products, and loyal customers. But things have changed after Steve Jobs death and me, as a customer, can feel it.
Apple doesn’t seem that innovative company anymore. Their last product releases (I won’t spent time reviewing it, but you can definitely find a lot of reviews just by googling it) didn’t create the impact they used to create neither the passion they used to arouse. The new iPhone, for example, came with a lot of usability problems and took off the headphone jack, the last MacBook Pro, for example, didn’t really brought anything new and created a sort of deception for anxious fans. Why?
Well, why is a tough question, and maybe it should have a lot of different reasons. I don’t have enough knowledge about Apple’s strategic decisions, but, as a consumer and a loyal customer, I can say that I’ve had a lot of disappointments with their products. I think that Apple forgot Steve Jobs’ essence. They don’t put the user in first place anymore. Everything used to be smooth, and as simple as possible, easy. But things have changed.
I wrote these two paragraphs to introduce what happened to me this morning, and I will still need to introduce a little bit more of the story before go for it. About one month ago, my roommate installed the new IOS 10.2 on his iPhone and had a very hard time with it. He installed at night and in the next morning, when he tried to start his phone up, he had the great news: you need to install the two-factor authentication and to type your password again. It would be cool if he remembered his password or had another Apple device. Yes, it would be, but he didn’t. It took one week for him to be able to access his phone again, and a couple visits and appointments to the Apple store. After this week he told me: man, I’m done with Apple, for my next phone I will try something else.
Great, it happened one month ago, and since then, I’ve been waiting to update my version until last night. Before sleep I made a backup, downloaded all my photo library to an external HD and thought: well, they’ve probably been experiencing a lot of problems with this authentication system, and it has been one month since my roommate had this problem, so I will try to do it today, they probably had solved it already, they are Apple. BUT I WAS WRONG!! Things have changed.
I think they probably forgot about what Steve Jobs used to say, but I will try to remember some of his thoughts here:
“If the user is having a problem, it’s our problem.”
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
“You have to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology”
- This is all Steve Jobs
It took me 45 minutes to figure out how to use my iPhone again, and I probably just had it figured out because I have other Apple devices. If I were a customer with only an iPhone and have had this problem, I would probably have to visit an Apple Store as my roommate. This is crazy, this is a very hard usability problem that a giant company, as Apple, is causing to their customers. It was not the customer who decided that the IOS should be updated, was Apple. It was not the customer who chose that he would like to turn the two-factor authentication system on, was Apple. The user only had his phone working at night, and at the next morning had a big problem in his hands.
Sometimes I really think about how Steve Jobs is feeling right now about what they are doing to his company. I’ve heard a lot of people saying that they will start trying something else as the Google’s Pixel, or a notebook powered by Microsoft. I loved to use Apples’ products, but, honestly, after this experience last morning, when it took me 45 minutes to solve a problem I haven’t created, I’m also considering the possibility of trying new products, new brands, and new experiences.
Apple is not the same anymore, unfortunately. Maybe (hopefully) they will be back, maybe (hopefully) they will remember what made them reach their current status, maybe (hopefully) they will remember his founder’s words, but if they don’t, if they don’t decide to focus on their users, they will do with this company the same they’ve done before they will bring Apple back to the common range of companies, with common products and common customers. And this is dangerous. Apple has serious UX problems right now, and need a lot of help to solve it, hopefully, they will find their way back to their core characteristic: usability.
#100DaysAboutUsers
Roberto Pesce — aboutusers.com
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