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Marks Out of 10

Entry 834, on 2008-08-16 at 21:47:50 (Rating 1, Computers)

Is Apple spreading itself too thin over too many different products and producing stuff which isn't quite up to its usual high standard? I'm usually positive about what Apple is doing but they are just as capable of making errors as other companies so I do try to point out where I think they are getting things wrong.

So what leads me to discussing this issue anyway? Well several of Apple's recent releases have been rather short of what we would expect from them. The most obvious example is the problem with the new MobileMe service which Steve Jobs even admitted wasn't good enough. It has always worked fine for me but a significant proportion of people did have problems and I don't know whether everything is 100% even now.

And the new iPhone OS could do with a bit of improvement in terms of stability. I didn't use version 1 enough to really know, but I've heard that it was considerably more stable than version 2. I certainly had major issues with the OS and am still having a few problems even after the first update. For example, I cannot install a new app on the phone without it crashing once (installing through iTunes is fine).

And some of the iPhone hardware appears to have a problem with signal strength as well, so its not just the software which has issues.

So what about the Mac? The first release of Leopard was quite buggy even though it was late being released (so you would think they would have had time to tidy up the extra bugs). Also there didn't seem to be a lot of new stuff in that release since Tiger, but there was probably more than there appeared to be on the surface.

So what is Apple doing and what marks out of ten would I give each product? The iPhone hardware is great and I would rate that very highly, probably 8. The iPhone OS is nice until you hit the stability issues plus there are a few missing features there so I would only rate that as good, maybe 6.5.

The current version of Mac OS X Leopard is very good. Its pleasant to use and has great stability so I would rate that 8.5. The Mac hardware is generally good although its maybe not as reliable as it has been in the past. While some Macs are better than others I would give them an overall rating of 7.

The Apple software I use is generally good. It doesn't tend to have as many features as some of its competition but its well designed and easy to use. I would rate the software overall as 7.5.

My ratings might not sound very generous but I am being tough. As a comparison I would rate Windows XP as about 4 and Microsoft Office (Mac) as about 5. So Apple are still doing some great high quality and original work and they are still producing the most innovative products which are a pleasure to use. They just need to make sure that quality isn't sacrificed to meet schedules and if they need to hire more hardware and software engineers then they should use some of that vast amount of profit in the bank and hire them!

Comment 1 (1536) by SBFL on 2008-08-23 at 10:14:39:

What about iTunes? I put an updated version on my PC recently. I used to be able to throw in a CD and iTunes would convert it to mp3 for me, but I couldn't do this last time. Am I doing something wrong or have they taken this functionality away?
Also, when you choose your columns you want to see in the track list, and their width, how do you get iTunes to remember these settings next time you run the program? If this simple task is not possible, then I wonder why they bother even allowing you to choose columns in the first place.

Comment 2 (1541) by OJB on 2008-08-23 at 14:29:46:

I can't comment on either of those issues except to say that on the many Macs I support which use iTunes that those functions work fine. Maybe you have a virus, or a registry corruption! :)

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