and now I have a topless Britney Spears staring at me

W for Apple

The vast majority of users clearly are not able to act responsible all the time in all life-situations.

And yet society still gives them lots more freedom than Apple does.

Majority marketshare ≠ major computing platform.

You will always have the option to use only the App Store.

Apple promotes their products as perfect

Apple fans as well. (Well, not necessarily “perfect” but definitely “better” than the competition. We’ve seen many cases where feature X was derided on competitors’ products, but subsequently praised when Apple added it to their product line.)

Apple doesn’t have other products if one is bad. They sell 2 laptops, so if there’s a problem with the keyboard it effects 1/2 their product line

This point is underrated.

If Apple sold appropriately updated versions of the 2012 Mac Pro and 2015 MacBook Pro alongside the 2013–2019 cylinder Mac Pro and 2016–2021 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, then the latter two products would have gotten much less criticism.

Much of the history of GUIs can be split into two parts:

1. Skeuomorphism (1980s–2010s)
2. Flat design (2010s–present)

The quick shift from skeuomorphism to flat design happened in the midst of other cultural changes: the prevalence of “digital natives,” specialized subnotebooks (e.g. personal organizers) being replaced by more general computers (e.g. smartphones), society becoming more digital, along with the increasing abstraction of technology over the decades. These factors generally benefit flat design, which is why I don’t see it being replaced in the near future.

Ten years ago, iOS 7 and Mac OS X 10.9 “Mavericks” were probably near the top of my head.

Now I have to look up what the current versions of iOS and macOS are.

If Apple moved to a 2-year cycle, would you prefer Apple update all their OSes in the same year or update different OSes on alternating years?

I feel like a 3 year cycle for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS is probably ideal at this time. Apple already uses the dot updates for nontrivial features anyway. visionOS and watchOS are newer so should get more frequent updates for now.