What should new Apple leadership do? That’s the question posed in Apple Turnaround by John Siracusa, which explores a new deal for developers, better software reliability, and harder paths to growth. It’s a great post, and the developer side of things especially gets me. I remember being at an EA meet around 2010, with a slew of indies excited about iPhone. They didn’t care about Apple’s cut, because everything else was, for them, better than what existed on other platforms, including the (relative) freedom to do whatever they wanted. Amazingly, Apple was less prescriptive than others in the gaming space. Then things all went very wrong.

Apple prioritised IAP over traditional game models, training users to want games for nothing. App Store editorial led to iPhone game sites shuttering – but they’d given new titles far more visibility than Apple ever would. And competitors quickly learned and evolved to compete with – and then better – Apple’s offering to game creators. Whereas we once saw iPhone-first titles head to other platforms, the reverse quickly became more commonplace. Elsewhere, major mobile creators like Simogo quit, which should have set alarm bells ringing – but it didn’t. Because Apple just counted the cash.

More widely, across apps and games, Apple has also found itself in a space where it’s not just showing – as Siracusa suggests – disrespect for developers as much as outright disdain. Various emails, now very much in the public domain due to emerging in lawsuits, suggest too many senior figures at Apple believe their own press to the degree they think Apple is responsible for all developer success and the success of the platform as a whole. They argue developers should be grateful to Apple and not the other way around. I have two words to counter that: Windows Phone.

I hate doing a “what would Steve Jobs do?” and it’s naive in the extreme to think his Apple wasn’t out to make huge piles of cash. But there are questions today about where Apple’s priorities lie in a whole range of spaces. Perhaps, as one developer said to me, the Jobs version of Apple only appeared to be on the side of devs because it needed to be, and now it doesn’t. So was this disdain always there or not? Was it a culture ingrained in Apple when Jobs was CEO or is it a more recent thing? Because I’d say that if it’s the former, Apple has an even bigger problem than Siracusa suggests.

Rich white men feel they should have everything instantly. That now increasingly extends to skills. But also, they don’t know what good looks like. Hence the current mess we are seeing with GenAI. Worse, everyone – from managers to consumers – is now being taught the same thing.

I see an increasing number of people saying that they want to paint/write/make songs and that it’s unfair that they can’t, and GenAI is the solution. Or hear about organisations claiming they can automate such tasks to the level they no longer need creative people at all. But GenAI tools are rarely sufficient. At least, if you want good. Which requires you to be able to recognise good.

For people who want to be creative, GenAI generates a finished article for them, based on a vague idea. There’s none of ‘you’ in there. In corporate scenarios, the lack of precision, specificity and accuracy from GenAI ultimately leads to some level of slop. In either case, the result is further erosion of the creative industries to make a handful of rich white guys richer through enabling people to think they can be Picasso or Shakespeare from merely typing in a line of text. What you’re really getting is another anodyne ‘median’ remix of what’s already out there.

Just like any other type of skill, creativity is not innate. I’ve lost count of how many people in the past have inferred that people are just born artists or musicians or writers. You don’t get people saying someone was born an electrician or a scientist or a footballer. In my case, I certainly wasn’t born a writer or a musician. I got to the point I’m now at because I’ve been writing professionally for 25 years – and writing songs for even longer.

Whatever skills I do have in these fields are also the result of thousands of hours of experiments and failures and building on successes. There was no shortcut. Notably, I also, as a kid, was good at art. Today? I’m OK. I can draw quite well. Am I ‘entitled’ to more? No. I never kept at it. Increasingly, though, tech bros would argue there’s no need to keep at it because you don’t even need to start. You just need a GenAI service and a prompt and you’re good to go, ready to turn even the vaguest creative impulse into the finished article in an instant.

I’m not sure where this is leading us, but I’m certain it’s not anywhere good.

This post is based on a post originally published on Bluesky and Mastodon.

Veteran Apple expert and commentator Jason Snell asked of me the question that’s the title of this post. This was after I (playfully) responded to his thoughts about Apple working on a “new, consistent design” with an XKCD klaxon jibe.

The actual answer to the question, in true Betteridge’s Law fashion, is no. But really: it’s complicated. 

In the full Mastodon thread, Snell suggested we should praise optimism over negativity, and called the latter “no way to live”. Similar sentiments about Apple have recently been expressed by Federico Viticci and David Smith. And, despite my often cynical and curmudgeonly demeanour, I think there’s value in that way of thinking. Being relentlessly negative is no fun.

But.

I’m not keen on recent trends that suggest where Apple might head, hiding or removing yet more UI, including iPhone app tabs and iPad app sidebars. More importantly, every single major Apple redesign – even more so than ‘standard’ annual OS updates – results in a slew of vestibular accessibility issues that slip through the net.

I’m not sure why this is the case. And, to be fair, Apple’s iOS team has been very responsive ever since the iOS 7 days. Multiple requests that I’ve made have been rolled into iOS, which remains far ahead of Apple’s other operating systems in terms of usability for people who have vestibular conditions. (Stern glare @ tvOS team…)

Even so, more proactive support would be welcome. And so, returning to the question posed at the start, I’m not afraid of a major iOS redesign per se, but I am concerned that it will render my devices unusable for weeks or even months until fixes are made. If that’s primarily for a coat of fresh paint, that will be particularly dispiriting.

Writer Matt Gemmell decided eight years ago to go all-in on iPad. Now, he’s switched back to the Mac. This should set alarm bells ringing on Apple’s iPad team, but I imagine Apple as a whole won’t really be fussed. After all, Matt simply swapped one Apple product for another. And he’s keeping the iPad. If anything, this is a victory for Apple and precisely what it wants people to do.

In his post, Matt notes part of the problem with the iPad is that it’s never been strongly defined. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, it was positioned somewhere between a phone and a laptop. Since then, users have argued for it to take over the capabilities of both devices – but especially the latter. However, while the iPad has the power of Apple’s ‘proper’ computers, it lacks the flexibility and, in some cases, utility. All of which is by design.

What some people tend to forget is that Apple is very opinionated on wanting people to buy (at least one) Mac alongside any Apple mobile devices. It’s my ongoing belief that arbitrary barriers have therefore been – at best – left in place for that purpose. Friction exists in part not because Apple cannot find a solution that works on a tablet, but because Apple wants more of your money, and it gets that through hardware sales.

Right now, any current-gen iPhone is more than powerful enough to run the vast majority of software the average person would want to use. And more. Mine happily runs Korg Gadget projects with an absurd number of tracks. But Apple absolutely does not want your iPhone to become the one device to rule them all. It hates the idea of you getting home and plugging your iPhone into a dock, and using it with a keyboard, display and pointing device. Because then you’d only buy one thousand-buck device, rather than two – or several. The iPad isn’t quite in the same space. After all, Apple is quite happy about selling iPad keyboards that cost as much as entry-level iPads. But it would still prefer for you to own an iPad and a Mac. And an iPhone. And maybe a second Mac. And so on.

I’ve struggled with the same issues as Matt. I for a time really wanted an iPad to become more. I love using the device. But I stuck with an iMac for the day job, primarily due to iPad frictions relating to external display support. Even when Stage Manager arrived, it was far, far too slow and clunky to replace my Mac set-up. My iPad subsequently largely turned into a combination of comics reader and sofa-based music-creation sketchpad, with the odd smattering of video and games. One holiday, I took only the iPad and found myself frustrated by how much longer key tasks took when I was trying to work at speed, in order to enjoy more of my spare time.

From a personal standpoint, things have changed a little since last September, in terms of my iPad usage. Although that’s not really been down to the iPad itself. There’s something very off for me about the iPhone 16 Pro. I’m reasonably certain I cannot use it for any extended length of time without getting dizzy. Despite my issues with vestibular triggers, I’ve never had this with any other Apple display when a device has Reduce Motion active. Perhaps something has changed with the display and PWM. I don’t know. But this does mean my iPad is now doing more work again, in being the device I read on at breakfast or noodle around on of an evening. Notably, though, the iPad is still not being used more for work. And I’m not sure that will ever change.

Apple never wanted emulators on the App Store. I imagine it felt strong-armed into allowing them, due to EU regulators getting antsy, or as a means to attempt to derail third-party app AltStore, which an awful lot of people primarily cared about due to Nintendo emulator Delta. Even with that, Apple first authorised a terrible rip-off over Delta, and everything since has been at best a crapshoot.

PPSSPP Gold is currently in kafkaesque hell, with absurdist responses from app review. Mini vMac was blocked from the App Store, because Apple took umbrage at the idea of an emulator that used its IP. But then Apple went a step further and wouldn’t notarise it for third-party stores, which is outrageous. 

These aren’t the only issues emulator authors have faced. Last I checked, MAME4iOS was in limbo. Several other emulator authors have given up. Meanwhile, Apple merrily approves emulators that barely work and are exploitative crap. A cynic might wonder whether this is intent, to showcase the worst of emulation and put people off. Although given app review’s history, it’s perhaps more realistic to instead go for the old saying that you should never put down to malice what could be explained by incompetence.