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I have cracked Apple’s strange behavior #apple #mapsissues #ios7

(I don’t feel like trusting the internet on this, so there will be no links (except one).  Sorry!

I did do research on this, however, and I promise you’ll be able to find everything via Google.)

 

I decided to do homework after Apple had promised a lot of features with the Maps app in iOS 8, but did not deliver.

 

That alone is exceedingly strange for a company that promises on features and 1-ups every single thing it comes into contact with.  In fact it implies Apple’s going downhill, like there’s some sort of conflict going on inside Apple.

And there IS a conflict.  And it’s been going on for a really long time.  Since 2012 (hey, that’s a long time technology-wise!).

 

It all started with iOS 6’s Apple Maps.  Apple had dumped Google’s API and replaced it with its own implimentation.  And it was poorly done.  Labels and roads were in the wrong place, missing, or misnamed.  The terrain wasn’t built correctly in some places.  And it was just a total mess.

Then Tim Cook issued a public apology in the form of a letter written on Apple’s website apologizing for the horrible experience that Apple Maps had given users.  That angered Scott Forstall.

 

Scott Forstall joined Apple in 1997, after his last company, NeXT, got bought out by Apple.  He then became the software designer of the Macintosh and iOS families, and he reportedly “ran the iOS mobile software team like clockwork and was widely respected for his ability to perform under pressure”.

 

But he didn’t like apologizing and implying that Apple had issues.  So when Tim Cook put out that letter and asked Scott to sign it, Scott refused.  The letter went out anyway, and that caused Forstall to get angry, so on October 29, 2012, Apple issued a statement that Scott was going to leave Apple in 2013.

 

With Forstall out, Apple could finally move on with the interface because Forstall was apparently a total Stiff I guess (a term I made up describing someone who only believes in one thing).

Enter iOS 7, a technicolor exercise in eye-strain research!  Okay, not really.  Honestly I think this is what Apple was trying to do with its UIs in the first place, just that no one knew how to use a touchscreen phone at first and once Scott finalized his UI, he figured it was the ONLY UI that would work.  Damn Stiffs.

But before iOS 7 was released, Apple decided to try an experiment.  Since these happy bright colors tickled the designers in the right way, why not make a phone that did the same thing?  A colorful plastic exterior would fit in really nicely with the new color-oriented software, and colors make people happy.  Why else would you paint a room your favorite color?

So the iPhone 5c was born!  And almost immediately flopped as people actually realized it was made of plastic.  As in it wasn’t just some marketing ploy, calling it plastic to make it seem more lively, it was ACTUALLY made of plastic.

At least iOS 7 did better than the 5c…although people hated iOS 7 for almost the same reason.  iOS 7 looked as flimsy as the 5c, seemingly hastily pasted together with spit and prayers.  That and the 5c actually was just the 5 with a new paint job.  Honestly.

 

Notice I haven’t mentioned Jony Ive yet.  I couldn’t find any articles about his switch to software until April 9, 2014, after iOS 7 came out.  That was also when I found out that Jony didn’t like Greg Christie.

 

*searches for a Wikipedia article on him and sees that there is none*

Uh…he was also involved with the iOS user interface.  Yeah.  He was also ousted.

 

This is the beginning of Apple’s strange behavior.  Before Greg was ousted, but after iOS 7, OS X Mavericks became available.  And it didn’t look like iOS 7 at all.  In fact it looked more like Mountain Lion.  Even stranger, while the Keynote for Mavericks showed onscreen that Game Center had gotten rid of the casino-table skeuomorphism, the build of Mavericks that got released to the public still had the casino table!

And did anyone notice that iBooks basically looks the same between OS X Mavericks and the Public Beta of OS X Yosemite?  Maps has changed visually substantially, but iBooks looks almost exactly the same.

 

After Mavericks, iOS 8 was announced.  It had a whole slew of new features:  Controlling your house, seamlessly switching between devices, third-party keyboards, and transit directions in Maps.  All those features appeared in the betas…except for transit directions.  With no real explanation, as the betas rolled out, those new types of directions never came out (and I’ve looked firsthand!).

 

Now here we stand, Apple somewhat divided against itself, hiring companies left and right, trying to keep its cool.

 

“A [company] divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half [Scott Forstall] and half [Jony Ive]. I do not expect [Apple] to be dissolved — I do not expect the [company] to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” – Abraham Lincoln

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Our trip with the sea otters #montereybay #seaotter

No, we didn’t actually swim WITH sea otters, but we went on a kayaking trip and got to see sea see sea otters.  (tee hee).

 

And we apparently went on one with a rookie tour guide, because the first other  creature we saw, the tour guide didn’t know what it was.  That is always a good sign (no offense to the tour or the guide).

 

The creature was this jelly sack thing.  It looked like a zebra if a zebra was a slug.  It was as big as a child’s hand and it was literally this sack of internal organs, and it sprayed this yellow ink when we picked it up (well it didn’t actually spray, but it oozed it out).

 

But this has nothing to do with sea otters.

Something that has to do with it is when one of them climbed up on a kayak.

 

One of our classmates was tooling around somewhere very far away from the tour guide for whatever reason, and a sea otter just jumped up and climbed onto the back of the kayak and just laid there like the otter owned it.

There was also a dog.  In the kayak.  It actually didn’t do a damn thing.  I don’t know why.

 

So we shoved the otter off the boat.  After that the otter just rolled over onto its back and didn’t give any more shits.  That was okay…we had enough shits.*//Delete this joke//*

 

After this we drove to the hotel, waited until the dead of night and then me, my brother, and his girlfriend explored the hotel.  And rooted through every drawer we could find (they did, not me).

Once we made it to the ground floor, we sat around a fireplace and my brother stole an apple because apples are cool I guess.  Then my brother’s girlfriend made a joke about the vase of flowers on the table.  Because we apparently assumed she was a plant.

 

We talked about her sudden transformation into a humanoid plant, then she said she could hear other plants talking.  We asked her what the flowers on the table were saying, and she told us: “They’re saying: ‘We are GMO plants and we have no soul!‘”

It was funny.  Because being genetically engineered apparently means your leafy-green exterior will be sent straight to hell as soon as you die…or something like that.

And plants understand that they’re GMO’ed and what that means.  Obviously.

 

Anyway, barring oddly specific plant telepathy, after that we went to the aquarium and saw otters get fed.  They were cute.

Then hip-hop jellyfish.  Because the thing you think of when you see bright flashing wobbly-glass-like creatures of death, is hip-hop/rock/90’s/whatever music.  Or at least that’s what the people that built the exhibit thought of.

And there was this tank with little cute jellyfish that were lots of different colors and there were so many and they went push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push and then one of them bopped into the tank wall and AWWW KAWAII DESU NE?!

But the one disappointing thing about the exhibit is that the one room that actually HAD flashing lights (because none of the other rooms did for one reason or none), didn’t use hip-hop music.  NAN DESU KA?!?

Anyway, that was our trip.  Kind of boring, but kind of cool.  Ish.