“…Rotten Apple…”

How Apple seem to have fallen out of love with its customers…

With $300 billion in the bank, why is Apple using its new OS Mojave to rid itself of its most loyal customers?

The other day, I logged on to Apple Support, to double-check something Alan Bailey from grizzlymedia.co.uk — my music studio tech guru — had told me: that the new Mojave macOS upgrade is not backwards compatible beyond 2012.

I could simply not believe my ears when he told me, as the implications seemed to completely contradict the very philosophy upon which Steve Jobs had founded Apple, so I had to check this out.

I logged onto Apple Support, and sure enough — there it was. Support was only available to those machines running the latest OS, Mojave. Mac computers older than late 2012 were not able to run Mojave, as the advanced graphics that Apple had incorporated into its newest system were incompatible with the ‘older’ generation of video and graphics cards.

At that point I had two Macs, both dating from early — mid 2011, and running “High Sierra” — Mojave’s immediate fore-runner. Given the quality of manufacture of Apple machines (something Jobs was always particularly proud of) my Macs both ran beautifully. I struggled to begin to consider them as “obsolete.”

Not only that, but here I was — cut adrift from Apple Support, just like that. If anything were to go wrong with either machine, the Mojave decision instantaneously denied me ANY form of Apple Support — no phone, friendly chat, no screen-sharing, nothing. All gone!

I felt like I’d been sent to Coventry, like I was being punished for some serious misdemeanour! This was quite traumatic. I began to worry…

Just then, a window popped open on the screen in front of me, inviting me — on behalf of Apple Support — to complete a short survey. I clicked yes — I usually do. However, the survey in the end proved so superficial and narrow in scope and detail, that I could tell that my responses were inevitably going to give the statisticians collating the data at the other end completely the wrong impression.

My fear was that the survey was going to suggest that my visit to Apple Support that day had been a 100% satisfactory experience.

But that was not the case. Not the case at all.

In the survey, it asked if I’d found the information I was looking for without a problem. To which of course the answer was “yes,” because I had found the information I’d been looking for — the verification of what Alan Bailey had told me.

But the question I wanted the survey to ask me, was not there. It only wanted to measure success. It had no interest in allowing me the platform from which to ask Apple “why?” as that might have messed up their bar-charts… Who knows!?

So that was the moment I decided to write this article. To articualate the elephant in the room question with you all: and that was:

WHY had Apple taken the unprecedented decision to make their latest OS update deliberately incompatible with Macs older than 2012?

Steve Jobs’ philosophy, as I had always understood it, had always been to put the User — the customer — front and centre. The most important component of any Macintosh machine was the User. I could hear him say it.

And yet, here we had a situation where, seemingly without warning, Apple customers were being herded around according to the technical capabilties of their machines. What Apple Users themselevs were capable of, seemed to have completely gone out of the window! This wasn’t Jobs’ pnhilosophy, was it? Surely — that “herd” mentality was all Gates, Microsoft, Primary Colours, and inebriated bankers!?

What had happened? WHY had Apple fallen out of love with its customers?

As I began to ponder, writing the opening lines of this article, further questions began to arise:

WHY was it being done in such an apparently brutal fashion? No transition or phase-out period that would at least allow customers to plan financially to accommodate the necessity of purchasing new hardware. The cut-off date of 2012 was going to render obsolete machines that were in perfectly good working order, such as my own two Macs.

But wait for this! There was to be no further Apple Support for machines running older operating systems. Apple Support — arguably the best customer service in the world — would henceforth only be available for Mojave, its latest OS. So only the latest OS was eligible for any kind off help! So — we’d also just lost our ability to call the finest Customer Service Operation in the world.

This wasn’t just a “falling out of love,” I began to think… “This was a divorce…!”

It seemed the only way to stay part of “The Apple Family” was to go and buy a new (or newer) Mac. I started to look apprehensively at my financial situation, and then at the pricelist on the Apple website.

My heart sank.

This divorce was going to get nasty!

If you take a moment to look back at some of Steve Jobs’ most successful product launches, they tended to demonstrate the same core principles that glued the brand together: innovation, excellence, technological advancement, design, empowerment of the individual, and an egalitarian sense of a global community connected by Apple.

Apple products weren’t just gadgets. These were the tools humanity would use, to drive forward our individual, collective and global evolution.

The products from Apple’s Golden Era, with Jobs at the helm, didn’t just enable us to feel like we could better record history. Apple had achieved superstar status. Its products WERE history. They MADE history. And that sense of both technical and aesthetic superiority was what we — his fans and customers — bought into, when we bought into Mac.

You’d never hear anyone talking about their ACER or DELL, or HEWLETT PACKARD, in quite the same tone of awe and reverence as you would someone talking about their iMac, or iPad.

And what further propelled Apple ever upwards, drove this unique success, was that ‘X-factor’ ingredient. That ‘ethos’ that guaranteed our growing devotion — and ‘loyalty’ to Apple: Apple seemed to care about us in a way that none of the others did. Annoying ‘gremlins, glitches and idiosyncrasies’ that persisted in products by rival manufacturers, were not found in Apple products, because they’d taken the time to get rid of them. The User was front and centre with Apple, period. And those pastel colours exuded a sort of calm and tasteful readiness. I absolutely loved my first Mac from the moment it came out of the box.

Compare the serenity of a Mac, to its main rival, Windows:

Windows was I believe designed with the financial industry in mind. No “mindfulness” in the colour-design-spectrum here! Windows was headed for Wall Street, the last place those of a more sensitive disposition were likely to be employed. It was garish, loutish, and for the most part in primary colours — I suppose to keep the Traders awake..? Subtlety, nuance is something both Microsoft and even Google still struggle with today. Look at that hideous infantile ‘blue’ that Google still insists on using as its default headline banner background!

But the fundamental difference between Windows and Apple, was the fact that Windows was JUST the OS. Microsoft did not manufacture hardware. Apple, on the other hand, was the complete deal: A beautifully-designed machine and an OS that complimented and reinforced the overall concept. Half-computer, half work of art.

Microsoft didn’t care whether you were running their Windows OS on a Dell or an Acer, or on a cow-pat from the field next door.

Microsoft were clear from the outset: their responsibility began and ended with Windows, the OS. What device you had was not their concern. Abd Windows was constructed in such a rigid way, that you — as User — have very little room for manouvre. You HAD to start by pressing START — imaginative, Windows was not!

I think it’s probably fair to say that most of us began our IT experience with Windows. And after a good few years trying to be creative and compose music using Windows on my Acer laptop, I came to the conclusion that the Programmers at Microsoft had essentially decided that their average User was either an idiot, hungover, mentally-challenged, or perhaps a combination of all three.

With Windows, the User was not so much “front and centre,” more like dumped in a lunatic asylum, on the way to work!

“Oh don’t go in there..!”

“Why ever not.?”

“That’s the Registry, no we don’t have anything to do with the Registry. Authorised Personnel only in the Registry..”

“And you don’t leave anything sharp lying around either, I’m sure..” I could imagine my cynical-self replying…

Add to that the humiliating and patronizing “are you sure?” pop-ups every time you tried to delete a piece of software, as though you really were some village idiot who’d struck lucky while everyone was out, found the computer unattended and was just hitting keys at random, with no regard whatsoever for the consequences. So the OS “helpfully” felt the need to endlessly double-check.

But Windows was successful. Extraordinarily so. So successful, in fact, it began to believe its own PR, which is always a bad sign.

Bill Gates, and his (to say the least) petulant and terse FBI interviews in the late 90s (which no doubt went down like a cup of cold sick in Microsoft’s PR department) did little to soften the “fuck you” attitude Microsoft had begun to gain a reputation for. History teaches, and a period of “introspection and soul-searching” at Microsoft began. Did they even have one, some of us wondered..? Gates and his pals were Blitzed by an onslaught of Luftwaffe -esque computer viruses, Those of us who’d experienced Microsoft’s unique brand of “fuck you” develope through the 90s, or watched Gates’ demeanour on YouTube, raging at bemused FBI Agents, a common thought passed through many of our minds: What goes around, comes around, Bill.

Oddly, none of these viruses seemed either willing, or able, to affect a Mac. Someone did explain that was down to Wozniack’s foresightedness, which means that when MacOS boots up, its’ 256 bytes are sequenced randomly, different every time. Microsoft I believe always boots up using the same 256 bytes in the same sequence — major security omission right there, Bill!

While Bill was undergoing his “Cntrl/Alt/Del” courtsey of the FBI, some Marketing guys, and the occasional therapist, Apple sailed on, into what I think many now regard as the company’s Golden Era, typified by Steve’s black roll-neck, and a series of jaw-droppingly good tech.

The iPod, the first generation iMacs with their funky transparent coloured plastic casing, and those handy handles! And then of course — the iPhone. It’s interesting to go back and watch Steve’s presentation of the first iPhone. I did so the other day, and was completely caught out by the gasp in the hall as he showed the scrolling feature. Today it wouldn’t be an iPhone if it didn’t have that feature. But back then, no one had ever seen a screen ‘roll’ quite like that before. It’s a great moment in technological history. And I love Steve’s nonchalant “Look at that,” as he scrolls, a camera beaming the innovative animation effect onto a huge TV screen situated in the hall, so that everyone could clearly see. “Isn’t that cool..?” Steve giggles… You can just hear the audience thinking “Cool? That is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” I wonder how many screaming matches he’d had with the programmers, in order to be sure he was going to get to that moment. Because judging by the reactions from that first launch, it was the scroll effect that stole the day.

Steve’s image, that simple black roll-neck (woncfder if that inspired Ed Harris’ styling and performance in “The Truman Show”??), was brilliant in its understatement. Apple products were the best, especially for the creative industries! The less like Bill Steve became, the more we bought into this calm genius’ brand! To paraphrase that notorious truism: “when you go Mac, you never go back!”

Apple cared. And we cared that Apple cared. And so slowly, but sincerely, we gave Apple our hearts. Never before had a brand or manufacturer offered — and delivered — dreams its’ customers were yet to dream. But Steve seemed to have a knack of knowing what his customers wanted — way before they’d thought or dreamt about it!

Now, I appreciate that Apple is neither a therapist, nor lover — it’s a Tech Company. THE Tech Company! But if you read on, I think you’ll appreciate where I’m coming from in terms of the emotional vulnerability loyal Apple fans will now be feeling, over the Mojave decision, and how difficult this decision on the part of Apple, is to reconcile.

Because not only does this ‘divorce’ contradict the philosophy Jobs spent years cultivating around Apple — it appears to fly in the face of basic commercial common sense as well.

I shudder to think of exactly how many millions of hitherto loyal and loved Apple customers will overnight feel shunned, unwanted, and irrelevant — as a result of this Mojave decision, and the manner of its execution?

But if they’re anything like me, then they will be feeling as hurt as I do right now.

If you’ll permit me to mangle my syntax slightly, this feels like a sort of bloodless “technic cleansing.” Some sort of IT Pogrom. Suddenly, Apple’s IT “Elysia” had inherited an “Economy” and “Business” Classes, with the rest of us thrown into Steerage.

The affluent “Haves” are favoured, Support is available and they continue to remain cherished members of the Apple Family. The hapless “Have Nots,” on the other hand (such as myself) with their now “obsolete” machinery have met a very different fate. Irrespective of whether their Mac was functioning perfectly or not — that detail is now irrelevant. The hardware in question has been deemed ‘too old,’ and has therefore been unceremoniously set adrift.

The “Haves” appeared to close ranks. The rest of us, meanwhile, the “Worker Bees” if you will, found ourselves in something of a disarray. The last decade has been overshadowed by the necessity to repair the damage caused by the financial crisis. Everyone of us has been affected by that event. Caused — lest we forget — in the first place by those loutish bankers, the very ones we left gazing at that Google Blue, unable to sleep, and wondering if the Registry had any porn in it..?

And it was only very recently that anyone had felt it was possible to ease back on crippling Austerity. The Government in the UK only really began to talk of “the end of Austerity” very recently. And forget a “spanner in the works,” now COVID has chucked an entire HONDA factory in, which has truly fouled everything up.

Wages had only just begun to rise again, and for most of us, there are several other, more pressing purchases — university fees, for example — that took precedence over the necessity to replace a computer, that was extremely well-made in the first place, and consequently continued to work perfectly. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — and certainly don’t go out and replace it!” So for the majority of us, it’s been unpleasant to find ourselves coerced like this, into having to make a decision about a purchase we really didn’t want — or feel we needed — to make.

And what has made this all the more unpalatable, have been the endless articles and headlines documenting Apple and Microsoft’s “Trillion Dollar Cage Fight” (as CNBC describes it).

Earlier last year (2019), CNN was reporting that with a net worth of $945 billion, Apple was close to becoming the first company to be worth $1 Trillion.

I need to check the latest figures, but I believe that Apple, Microsoft and Amazon all made it over the Trillion finish line in 2019. Mind-boggling figures!

Which kind of leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, when you look again at the ramifications, for cash-strapped but loyal Apple customers, of the “Mojave Manoeuvre.”

If Apple had needed a bail-out in 2008, as the banks did, I could accept the Mojave decision today. I would appreciate that this was a streamlining, part of the overall ‘recovery process,’ with the unfortunate necessity to downsize and focus areas such as after-sales Support on a more narrow hinterland. In the context of that hypothetical Apple “bail-out,” such streamlining would demonstrate a shrewd determination to once more achieve commercial solvency.

But Apple never needed such a bail-out. If anything, Apple had more by way of ‘petty cash’ than the majority of European Treasuries!

With their fortunes neck and neck, Apple and Microsoft have found themselves fending off a “delivery service…?” Yup, Amazon is right up there with them, as is Google, with that ’70s Bob Ross “Improbable-shade-too-much acid” blue!

Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to have embraced colour, in that desperate way an interior designer will try to impress a footballer’s wife. OK — the colours that feature on the latest Windows 10 are “more” than just primary, but alas also “less” than comely, some of them even a bit Lowry, if you ask me! Desktop backgrounds are a ‘sort of English racing green,’ (not exactly a Lowry trademark, I accept), with a ‘sort of Henley rowing purple’ and the texture as dense as though it’d been dawbed on during an occupational therapy class. Those little Apple subtleties, such as “Translucency” or “Opacity” not an option — at least not on the last Windows version I looked at.

And Windows had begun to sprout “apps.” Admittedly, the cringingly obvious graphics looked like they’d been purloined from some unfortunate Fisher Price toy, but there was no mistaking it — these were indeed apps!

The loss of Jobs — far too soon, whatever you might have thought of him personally — and the re-emergence of Saint Bill and Saintess Melinda, and the race got rapidly tougher.

Apple’s cash reserves — money just sitting in the bank because there’s so much of it no one quite knows what to do with it all — is reportedly currently around $285 billion, and rising. Yes — BILLION! And rising! Basically, I’m told — because Apple have run out of ideas. The no longer “know” what people want so far in advance, as Jobs did.

And it therefroe has to be said, set against this backdrop, surrounded by these eye-watering amounts of cash, the Mojave decision seems all the more ill-judged, unnecessary, callous, even cruel.

Because — in just the same way that “ethnic cleansing” persecutes the civilians who get caught up in it, “technic cleansing” (as I’m calling the Mojave decision) targets not the “Haves,” but the “Have Nots,” those who didn’t see this coming, and are — for the most part — unable to respond as Apple would seem to wish. Our pockets are empty, and have been for some time. And we’d bought Apple because Apple made the best computers. Which unfortunately meant that Apple also made the most expensive computers.

And just as any act of persecution will elicit resentment from those who it seeks to persecute, this began to shake the very core of my relationship with Apple.

To the extent — I’ll admit — that I began to think seriously about returning to a Windows machine, and throwing my lot in with the other Music Industry market-leader in Digital Audio Workstations (which IS available for Windows,) Pro Tools.

However, it’s no coincidence that a Mac tends to be the computer of choice for the creative industries. I described earlier how ungainly and stoic Windows was to work with. A Mac has a unique ability to mould itself around my habits as a User. It can sense what features I most frequently reach for, and (and this is the thing I love about my Mac) it moves those functions I never require out of the way, thereby freeing up more CPU power to be directed at the audio software I work with on a daily basis. To this day, there are things a Mac OS can do about which I know nothing, because they’re not associated with my line of work. I’m a composer, song-writer, recording artist and Music Label owner. Therefore the focus of my workflow is pro audio, not — for example — video or graphics. Although, having grudgingly acceded to the fact that these days EVERY music track, if it stands any chance of selling in any significant quantity, has to have a video attached to it. So my workflow is now adapting to incorporate video software that previously I didn’t even know existed on a Mac. That is how wonderfully flexible, reactive and adaptive a Mac is. And in my opinion, this has been the secret of the Mac’s success all along, and why the creative industries love Apple.

My creative process, I’ve discovered, is a slow but steady one. So that by the time I’m ready to sit down and “compose” the music is pretty much clear and complete in my mind’s ear. The challenge is then to transfer what I hear in my mind as successfully as I can onto my Mac, so that it can accurately interpret and represent the music, as I intended it for others to hear. During this process, there is a very special, emotional moment that I can experience, and I’ll admit, when I first started to write music seriously about 10 years ago, I used to worry about this emotional knee-jerk response.

Today, I understand what it means. It means the music is right. Whatever it was that I had in my mind, that I had determined was worthy of being created, realized, for the benefit of others to hear, I had managed to — as best I could — faithfully recreate via my Mac. If it’s going to happen at all (it doesn’t always!), the moment comes at the point when I’ve completed the creative transfer, and all that remains is to sit back, hit play, and listen.

And it I’ve got it right, if the Mac is playing back what I heard in my mind at the outset, then I’m usually in tears by the end of that playback.

It’s a moment I love. It’s a moment I live for, as a creative human being.

I never experienced that level of pure creative emotion with Windows — only with my Mac.

So, having established and nurtured such an emotional rapport with my Macs, and felt as a consequence a proud and valued member of the Apple Family, I find this sudden divorce really traumatic.

I cannot resist trying to think of helpful suggestions to make Apple happy again. To revive our love affair. It’s what the constant lover would always do, even in the face of such stoic rejection. And so I’m going to include some suggestions of perhaps how some of that $285 billion could be used to offset the damage Mojave is going to cause:

Let’s energise the extraordinary musical creativity that orbits the Apple sun, with incentives, campaigns, competitions, dedicated platforms, store-and community linked events to find the best of the best among the up and coming artistic talent, and give them the support and springboard they so desperately deserve. And give this initiative an umbrella name that taps into the creative psyche I’ve been talking about above: Apple Artists. iArtists. iA.

Human creative talent is priceless, the most precious commodity there is. So rather than the current grudging ‘reactive’ cataloging of iTunes and Apple music, rather than just selling music, why isn’t Apple there on the front line helping artists to CREATE it?

Business advice, management courses, musical and technical guidance, masterclasses, workshops, broadcasts, concerts…

If cdbaby.com and similar organisations can make it possible for an artist — any artist — to release an album worldwide for just $29, why can’t Apple? Why isn’t Apple?

Devoting itself to enabling the greatest possible future for its customers, is what Apple has always stood for. It’s where the love affair began, and it HAS to continue. But it has to reinvigorate and re-energise itself, adapting and modernising the Apple brand — not just walking away because nobody at Apple knows how to do it anymore, now that Steve’s gone.

Discarding customers in the way they have, is going to cost Apple dear. Customer care is the key component that has defined Apple’s distinction over the years. Remove it, and Apple becomes not just another computer manufacturer, but just another computer manufacturer who dared to engineer an unprecedented emotional engagement with its customers, upon which it has summarily reneged. And there will be consequences. For when you’ve pulled on our heartstrings as hard as Apple have done, no amount of light-hearted spin can redress the very real sense of personal pain those customers who are now being left behind will feel.

Ahhhh… There’s so much more I could add, but I’ve probably already “…said enough, said too much…” to quote REM (ironically from the song “Losing My Religion”!)

I believe in Apple — Apple IS a kind of religion to me. An Apple way of life was one filled with the Apple philosophy: excellence, taste, innovation and style. Having managed to replace my iMac with a late 2012 model (so I’m back in the fold again!), I realised with horror how the machine I bought had been modified from its predecessor, making it as hard as possible to upgrade. The screen is now glued onto the body, instead of held by magnets as before. So relatively straightforward upgrades, including adding a larger SSD drive (something those of us who use our Macs in order to create music often do as a matter of course) are being actively discouraged by the way newer machines are both designed and constructed.

That puts Apple on a collision course with the growing call for us to stop trashing our planet, and learn to recycle, and use our precious resources with far more care than we currently do. And the call is becoming ever more urgent.

So — to those Apple Execs, who maybe find themselves reading this by some fluke, my simple question is this:

What was it all for…? What IS it all for today…?

Was all the work and dedication that went into realising that history-making, ground-breaking, jaw-dropping tech — JUST in order to make money?

It wasn’t was it..? It was about that Silicon Valley Dream, that Utopian reverie of a better world. It was about a philosophy of life that made you join that company, and made us buy your products before any others.

So now what…?

What was the point of amassing all that money if you don’t put it to good use? And by good use, I mean something less predictable than just paying your shareholders. I would have expected Apple to be solving world poverty — actively, physically, and with humility. Just as, ironically, Bill Gates does today. Instead, I see them adding to the problem, and I see them playing no part in the solution.

So if the only honest answer is that Apple’s future goal is to just make even more money, and if the consequences — intended and unintended, do not even feature in Apple’s consideration of the future — then one truly tragic conclusion must be drawn:

And that is that when Steve Jobs died, Apple died too…

Simon Roberts

classicalbanksy.com