Every time you blurt about Apple products being glitchy or slow or not doing what you want, Jony Ive sheds a tear.  He and his team work their asses into the smallest cracks in the ground to get Apple’s products to gel with the human condition; to get every single Apple product to adapt to your lifestyle so you don’t have to learn how to adapt to your life…you’ll be able to just deal with it in the fastest way possible.  That’s really the goal of any tech product…and Apple knows this.  Everyone knows this, except every single bloated money-grubbing stupid-[REDACTED].
Well…that’s not entirely true.  Be warned, this is going to be an attack on Apple.  I hate doing that.  [I already tired to write a post like this and I just couldn’t do it.  I never deleted it from Drafts because I was wrestling with myself.]
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Look at the iPad 2.  No, not the iPad Air 2, the second-generation iPad.  Yes, THAT.  I still have one.  It still supports the current OS.  Lemme repeat that:  The second iPad that Apple’s ever released supports iOS 9.3.2, when it came with iOS 4.2.1.  That is 6 iOS versions.
It’s as slow if not slower than my android phone. Apps sometimes take more than three seconds to start.  The keyboard often lags so much, I can finish typing two or three short words before the keyboard registers the first keystroke, and then it replays the past keystrokes as it catches up to what I’m doing.  The Notification Center almost never responds instantly when I swipe from the status bar.  And it’s been like that since iOS 7.  It’s usable though, which is why I still have it.  I don’t really want to pay that much money for a new one.
So why the holy hell is it that slow, when Apple believes in doing everything the fastest way possible?  Even simplicity gets into that issue, as when a button doesn’t instantly respond, you’re left with an arbitrary waiting period where your left wondering “Did I miss the tap target or something?”!  Same for the Apple Watch.  Same for any interface lag that ever invaded any device.  And yes, even my 6s stutters occasionally.
You might just chalk that up to “Eh, it happens.  Hardware slows up as its software improves.  There’s no way around it.”
You might also chalk it up to “Apple obviously doesn’t care about speed or simplicity.  The borderless buttons ensure everyone remains confused about what buttons are, and the continued support and unacceptable speed of the iPad 2 proves that speed is not a concern at Apple.”
Both of those are complete and utter bull anus.  At least it is if the people at Apple actually remember how to innovate hard and solve problems.  And I admit…it’s extremely difficult to tell if they actually remember.  There’s tons of information saying that they continue to think and solve numerous problems by hacking at them relentlessly until the universe gives up.  But there’s also tons of information saying that as soon as Steve Jobs died, they all turned 16 years old, donned business suits, and said “We got a shiny ship to sail, lets make some money.”
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I have a way to interpret all this. Â And it violates the Rules of Simplicity as stated in this book.
My theory is that Apple literally has too much to do.  They have to keep up with too many things:  Their product lines are too big.  And to cope with that, they have to hire a lot of companies and people.  This increases the number of people working on stuff, and, as the book says, that’s one way to let the evil Complexity into your clean garden of Simplicity.
So yes, they might have to deal with a lot of things…but someone had to continue to compile OS files for the iPad 2.  Someone had to have noticed “Hey…the user experience on this iPad really sucks.”  Why didn’t they?
Well…maybe the Simplicity Garden is crumbling.  Maybe they are devolving into Generic Money-Hogging Technology Company #54837.
We’ll see.