An Open Letter to Apple

Dear Apple,

I've been a loyal user since the late '90s. However—and it pains me to say this—some things just suck lately. I need to tell you that the hate-filled rants I see on social media from other loyalists are making me think it's not just me.

But let's lead with the positive: the hardware.

The MacBook Air is simply the best laptop I've ever used. It's beautiful. It's light. Typing on the backlit keyboard makes my fingers happy. The battery life is unparalleled. It's infinitely faster than the MacBook Pro I just sold. I run Photoshop, Illustrator, and other graphics software that require heavy processing power, and it handles everything I throw at it without slowing down. 

The greatest laptop ever invented. The same can't be said for the software.

I can honestly say that having a laptop with these advantages, especially as a multitasking power user and creative professional, has made me more productive in my work and personal life.

My iPhone 5 and iPad also have special places reserved in my heart, except for the inability to control my content on them (apps, music and photos), and the sheer size of and bugs that come with every new iOS bloatware. 

Which brings us to what needs improvement. Like, immediately: the software. 

When you have your own cultist community—and I'd count myself as a member—turning against you in droves, there's a problem. I'm not just talking about fellow acolytes and bloggers. I'm talking about friends and family who I've always known to be loyal. I'm talking about my wife and mother using curse words in the same sentence as 'Apple.' 

So let's get started.

iTunes - The interface is a complete mess. The UX sucks and it's overly complex. It gives me little to no control over what songs are on my devices. iTunes Match is on sometimes, other times its off. Tracks stutter and skip during playback. There's a new version every week and even then, it still blows.

I've begun to associate this logo with pain, misery, and heart palpitations.

Recommendation: Start over. Keep it simple—strip out all the weird options for showing thumbnails, resizing windows, etc. Just make it a clean, simple interface to play and manage music on iTunes match, my hard drive, and my iPhone and iPad, period. Oh, and please for the love of god, make it easy to switch music libraries.

Safari - Crashes way too much. It's the delicate flower of browsers. I shouldn't have to keep Chrome in my dock because I can't depend on Safari to run and stay open when I'm using it, or when I need to play Flash (cock-blocking Adobe on Safari was one of those petty moves by Jobs that made no sense. Why not just let Flash work and then introduce a superior technology, which would realize the justification for the move in the first place? Still hasn't happened to my knowledge).

iCloud - This is just one big hot mess. Years after the rollout, iCloud still lacks an integrated, cohesive experience. Commit to being a competent, functional cloud provider or get out of the game. Be in it to win it. Right now I don't get the value beyond being a place to store my Photo Streams. Speaking of which...

iPhoto - iPhoto needs an overhaul. On even slightly older Macs, it's incredibly slow to the point of not even being functional. 

And what. The F. Is up with Photo Stream. Like iTunes, iPhoto doesn't serve offer a viable way to manage what photos are on my device vs. what's in the stream vs. what's in my library. This is incredibly frustrating as the Stream takes up a ton of memory on my devices, compounded each new bloated OS release that my now stuffed device can't even accommodate. 

And hell no, I'm not buying a new iPhone and iPad once a year to accommodate the bloatware or inability to properly manage songs and photos on my devices.  

iOS, Yosemite — I haven't even installed Yosemite on my Air, iPhone or iPad. IT folks, plus the internet, tell me not to do that on my Air yet because of all the bugs, and I'm not interested enough in the new look to navigate the trouble or dubious "improvements." I haven't installed the newest iOS on my iPad and iPhone because I don't even have the room—because I have no simple way of deleting music and my Photo Stream photos from those devices.

In summary, my evaluation: 

Hardware department — Doing great. Nice job. Keep up the great work.

Software department — Heads need to roll. Get your "ecosystem" to look and act cohesive. iCloud, iPhoto, iTunes, Mavericks... they all look like they're from different companies, except for the typeface. Stop rolling out buggy bloatware that please your shareholders in the short term while alienating and enraging your users. 

It's worth noting that Apple's original mission was to empower the everyday person so they could be more creative and productive. There was an emphasis on making technology beautiful, easy to use, and widely available to the masses.

Apple's apparent new model of releasing hardware and software before it's ready—along with software that crowds its hardware to the point of immobilizing the hardware to get people to upgrade both more often—is anathema to this original mission, the reason so many people fell in love with Apple in the first place. It turns Apple into a brand that's the opposite of innovation, accessibility and empowerment, into one that's reserved for elite members of the club—a club that's most assuredly not the creative class. The Apple logo itself is becoming a status symbol instead of an expression of everything Steve Jobs and the company were about.

Please keep all of this in mind before your next shareholders meeting. Shareholders don't make much money if everyone's buying cheaper, more functional hardware and software from their competitors.