How Apple lost its way: Steve Jobs’ love of simplicity is gone
I&#x27;m an Apple fan (having converted with the 2010 Macbook Air and the iPhone 4) and I am really frustrated by Apple&#x27;s products these days:<p>- I honestly don&#x27;t think the Watch is anything more than a niche product because there&#x27;s really no compelling use case for it. Having another device to charge just to have a notification screen seems like a lot to pay $500+ for;<p>- Force Touch is (IMHO) a disaster. Steve Jobs&#x27; Apple steadfastly refused to have more than one button on the Mac mouse. I think this is a rare case where Jobs was proven wrong as the right click is just too useful. But Force Touch adds weight to the phone and cost and doesn&#x27;t have a compelling use. What&#x27;s worse is that there is zero discoverability.<p>I honestly wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if the iPhone 7 drops this feature after the 5SE didn&#x27;t have it and that would be quite an admission of failure.<p>- I&#x27;m constantly frustrated by Apple&#x27;s apparent distaste for the Macbook Air line. When the 12&quot; Macbook came out I thought this was the end of the line for the Air and that makes me sad as, to me, the Macbook is too much of a compromise (horrible keyboard, no feedback on the trackpad, too low power CPU, only one port which is also for power). The Macbook proved they could release an Air with a retina display if they wanted to. They clearly don&#x27;t want to.<p>I honestly don&#x27;t get Apple&#x27;s hate for the Macbook Air.<p>- Steve Jobs famously called touch displays on laptops terrible from an ergonomic point of view. I agreed then and nothing has changed my mind. Every time I try one of these devices (eg iPad Pro with a keyboard), I wonder why anyone would want to lift their hand from the keyboard to touch something on the screen. The 13&quot; iPad Pro has other things going for it but I just don&#x27;t see an iPad as ever being a replacement for a laptop for most people. And I say this who has owned 5 iPads (including the latest 9.7&quot; iPad Pro).<p>- I kept my iPhone 5 for 3 years because I hated the larger phones. I finally relented and bought the 6S under protest. Apple finally relented and released the 5SE, which I take as correcting a mistake. Some people may want larger phones. It&#x27;s fine to have those. But many people don&#x27;t. I expect the 5SE form factor to be a big seller for Apple.<p>Tim Cook seems to be a great logistics man and I think was largely responsible for building the supply chain that could build 200M+ devices a year. This includes innovations in how Apple used their cash hoard as vendor finance to get exclusive supply for awhile and cut their costs in the long term.<p>But Cook just isn&#x27;t the visionary that Jobs was (who is?) and Apple&#x27;s much vaunted simplicity does seem to have at least partially fallen by the wayside.