This is actually the first time in a long time I am not taking an iTunes update, given that it doesn’t fix the graphic artifact during scrolling issue, and other users are reporting worse things happening. In retrospect, I should have stuck with 11.x . iTunes 12.x is looking more like Windows Millennium everyday.
Sad.
This was once SoundJam, an app so good that Apple bought it. But this is now another example of an app in the care of a company too big to care to give it the attention to detail, and true UI/UX modernizations and feature enhancements an indie would have. A third party company would have listened to their customers or face declining sales. Apple is too big to truly care about the declining quality of iTunes. Whomever is sitting in charge of shipping product quality control is obviously not paying attention, and this toxic style of management is what can and has brought once great companies down.
Since v4 the only “improvements” have been cosmetic and the addition of the various stores. Apple has never addressed iTunes key failings and has instead focused on bloating it u to the point where once loyal users are looking elsewhere for leading edge features.
But this isn’t really about Apple. Apple is really an example. This is about a mentality epidemic in proportion of people who think that marketing, money or someone else can make up (or take the blame) for subpar products. The logic is as follows:
As a company gets bigger and more successful, there is less pressure to deliver superior products because the brand itself will sell a guaranteed percentage. So, smaller products will have that branding bump concealing their true quality. With the pressure off, people decide to either neglect or alter things that once worked great, thinking they are onto some new and great UI/UX design. The sales only continue to go up. So, they take this brand bias as confirmation they were on the right path, and further deviate from the standard. The problem is, these people never read a UI pattern methodology book in their life. So, they do not know which rules they are breaking, nor why it is important to adhere to rules in the first place. And the rule is, if you are going to break a rule, you must know why you are breaking it, and the deviation must result in a better design/feature. If the deviation doesn’t pass this litmus test, don’t break the rule and follow the established standard. They also rarely use the advanced features of the product, so they rules they break are usually advanced usability ones first must to the chagrin of advanced users. So, they feel free to alter or remove things they don’t need, inconsiderate of people with more knowledge and skill at navigating an app. This reduces the usability of the product for established users, and results in a weaker product.
Slowly, each release of the product gets worse, and the bar for the entire company is lowered. Then another product has some more usability flaws and the bar is lowered anyway. So, it gets released. No biggy the brand will sell it long before anyone gets wind of what a pile was shipped — it’s overbudget and has to compete with the marketing hype Competitor X has put out, anyway. Or worse, “It’s free” or “It’s not our core business” is used as justification for allowing “crapware” out of the gate.
Soon the pile is revealed. So, the company pre-announces a new flagship product and lets the cash pour in. But the new sales savior shows its first rev. warts and the company’s brand takes a hit. Apple, in particular, has been able to reverse course before, but the last few years have felt different. I am not sure they will see the cliff before they hit it. Even then the cliff is at least 3 years out — so hold onto your shares for now if you are one of those spastic traders. Corporate Apocalypses often come with at least 7 signs. So far we are on only number 4.
After a string of these sorts of failed promises, consumers can no longer depend that the brand means they will get the quality the brand is perceived to have. It seems that Apple is moving toward this precipice. Currently, the only true product travesties at Apple’s door are the confabulated “bendgate.”
BTW, can we please stop attaching the suffix of “-gate” to every perceived conspiracy? How many people using the suffix can actually remember Watergate? Do you know where Watergate got its name and the events that transpired? If not, take a bit and read up — otherwise you might be guilty of “Gategate,” should you ever use “-gate” to describe something underhanded, shady or even illegal . I’ll wait…
Anyway, every year tech pundits take pot shots at Apple over supposed schemes, all the while ignoring the same or worse among other tech companies. The funny thing is, if they truly cared about quality and the things they say they care about they would report on less flashy topics of products that shouldn’t make the cut. iTunes is just one of these products that, while not headline grabbing, is an example of Apple bungling the upkeep one if its old trojan horses.
If mismanagement is a conspiracy, then many other tech companies would be setting fire to in the presses as often if not more than the current king everyone likes to take potshots at. Looking at Google’s pattern of chewing up open technologies until they have gleaned enough useful data on them and then dumping them, Samsung’s pattern of copying everyone (LG, Sony, {insert market leader here}) shamelessly, then pleading “it’s no big deal—it doesn’t hurt anyone,” or HP & Microsoft’s track record of entering into emerging markets by buying declining tech companies, and you can see, the larger the company they larger screw ups they can get away with. But this eventually does catch up with these companies, as they’re stepping on people on the way up & burning bridges and fewer and fewer people have any desire to buy their product.
However, now the long held axiom, “No one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft” has turned from given into joke. “Yeah no one was ever fired, because they were laid off thanks to the company folding!” Now Microsoft tablets are at an all time loss, and Microsoft has burnt money to the tune of 2 billion in lost confidence that any of their tablets can hold a candle to Apple’s iPad. Even their PC sales are sinking, as less businesses have rigid one platform rules which forbid Apple hardware. To be honest, I will tell you one of IT’s support’s dirty little secrets since I won’t ever go back to being an in-house digital janitor: if you work at a place with an “only Microsoft” policy is not because MS on the desktop is better or more cost effective — it is simply because your IT department doesn’t know Macs and doesn’t want to learn how to support them. Macs on the desktop have been viable and a good way to maintain productivity for at least the last decade. I have contracted at various places and seen both single, dual and multi-platform offices of all sizes, and every time I ran into a 1 platform (Windows only) company, the real excuse was that they didn’t want to deal with Macs.
Speaking of which, want to know a great way to burn a pile of cash? Buy new systems and do not allocate a dime on retraining workers on how to use them. In fact, don’t even train new hires on anything — they know computers and can figure it out, right? Wrong. The most often logged in reason in help desk tickets for worker downtime because of their computer was actually, “PBKAC” which means “problem between keyboard and chair” — user error.
So, we go from large failures such as strategy failures, to product failures and all the way down to management and departmental failures or even user errors. Failures abound in the business world. But unlike smart people, even smart businesses cannot learn from these failures. Why?
No one likes to talk about failure or mismanagement. If you are an executive, no matter the outcome of a product you helmed, the fact that you shipped a product means a 6 figure salary, and potential employers looks at that as experience, and failures won’t be made again. If you are an employee if a ship that went down, it might reflect badly on you. People might think you were one of the incompetent cogs in the machine that couldn’t successfully execute a perfect vision. Or they might question why you chose an employer that had these problems. Surely, a person with good judgement would have turned down the job?
The point is, no one wants to look like a fool. And no one wants their work audited because so often the audits will pick out every little flaw in process or procedure. So, companies ship half baked products or updates that haven’t gone through any rigorous testing by people who know how to things work.
Honestly, if people could set aside attaching their ego to their work, and can resist taking every product flaw as an assault on their character, then we might be able to improve this half-baked mentality. If you want honesty, hire a person with no vested interest to take your product and find the flaws.
Real experts—those that eat, breath,live and use the hell out of tech, pushing it to the edge of it capabilities or even over the point of failure—can use their knowledge to find the edges quickly and see at what point does the product fail to meet needs, and very quickly see if it actually improves upon current existing products.
But with the current climate of “everyone’s a rockstar,” we can’t have a QA department that actually has the power to push back and stop the release of a product that does not meet the standard. Let marketing and support handle that and the can gets kicked down the road, costing more than a system designed to prevent flawed products from shipping.
This has been my stream of consciousness rambling (excuse any typos and edit mangling) about what should be keeping executives up at night, not me. Thanks for reading.