Gina Smith for SFGate:
“This is the second time Apple has unleashed a beta product on the public post the death of (late Apple CEO) Steve Jobs,” Londis said. “Apple Siri was the first,” he said, referring to the iPhone’s voice-activated assistant.
He pointed out that Apple used to have a rule forbidding release of beta software when Jobs was in charge. “Apple is letting the public vet the software. This is something Jobs never would have done.”
I’m sick and tired of pundits saying “This is something Jobs never would have done.” There’s ever been precisely one person on Earth who knew what Jobs would have done, and he died last October.
Londis is also demonstrably wrong. Apple, under Jobs’ leadership, released any number of public betas. OS X Public Beta is one example. FaceTime for Mac is a more recent example. iWork.com. The list goes on and on.
This is just one example of the “Not on Steve Jobs’ watch” harping that’s been going on for months, and the vast majority of it is total bullshit.
Peter, you forgot MobileMe.
I’m with you. There’s more stupid stuff being promulgated over this one app that I can stand. Upgrading to iOS6 today just to spite the bastards.
Pretty sure that while Jobs did pass away right after the release of the 4S, he was still intimately involved with it even after he stepped down from the board, and knew and signed off on Siri going pubic as beta. Maybe someone with more insider knowledge knows otherwise, but it wouldn’t seem to me that they decided on releasing Siri as Beta only after Steve stepped down.
here, here. sick to death of this lazy meme: “Steve would never…!”
Yeah. Steve was alive when Siri was announced as a beta.
He was also involved in Maps, unless people think he was dead in 2009, or 2010 when today’s (faulty) app must presumably have been started. It’s all FUD.
Yes, Apple has always had public beta and preview software, and Jobs released tons of it. The article is wrong on that.
On the flip side, it’s fairly new for Apple to foist the beta software into their mainstream products like iOS, with things like Siri and Maps, which are core advertised features.
It’s not the same to offer a download for the geeks and fans to try out FaceTime, iMessage, or whatever before they really ship.
It’s very different to keynote a feature like Maps or Siri and ship it in a beta state in the release of the OS. You need to take these updates for security and other reasons, since Apple abandons security on old releases of iOS, so you’re forced into the role of beta tester.
I agree. This is different in that it’s not optional, in that maps is a feature that is a core functionality. Siri not working may be a letdown, but it’s not affecting the usefulness of the device, in that almost anything Siri does could be done other ways in the phone. But maps needs to be right.
It’s good that Mr. Cook acknowledged this and that he went out of his way to suggest other mapping apps for users to use, but Apple Maps will be at the core of the OS, the default map that gets used by most other map-aware apps.
The Messages app for OX X Lion was beta as well.
Dino Londis is a nobody. The blame lays at the feet of Gina Smith, the writer who wrote the article.
It’s the replacement for “Apple would never…” meme. Tim’s personality style is very different than Steve’s and they differ on financial stuff, but Steve RDF wasn’t the only thing holding the fort together. The same people running things are there and Jobs wasn’t always right or a saint. Some times you make a gamble, it doesn’t pay off as soon as you hoped, and you just have to suck it up until it does.
I am sick and tired of you using the word “pandit” in a
negative connotation.
Garbage In, Garbage Out. Dino Londis is culpable for his stupid comment. Gina Smith is culpable for reprinting it.
I’m not using the word “pandit” at all.
Suck it up princess because I don’t think Peter is going to stop.
Perhaps if the “Pandits” (Pundit + Bandit?) he calls out on their BS weren’t such link baiting, self absorbed drama queens it wouldn’t be such a negative term.
There are plenty of things in this world that are genuinely offensive and if bothers you so much you shouldn’t read his stuff or anyones for that matter.
Not so much “forgot” as “blotted out of my mind as a traumatic experience.”
I think we are all trying to forget MobileMe
Ha, point taken.
Siri was launched in October of last year and still bears the ‘Beta’ notation. It is clearly a crowd-sourcing effort; the more users interact with Siri, the better Siri can reply back and offer up actions. In other words, Siri won’t get better unless people continue to use and interact with it, and contribute to its knowledge.
If Apple knew the state of Maps before the release of iOS 6 and even before presenting at WWDC of this past summer, if they knew that this was a freshman experience (with, yeah okay, features like turn-by-turn and Flyover), why wasn’t it released as Beta as well? Clearly Maps will not ‘beautify’ itself on its own. People are constantly sending in requests and issues, and others are correcting and adding, pulling from Yelp, etc. People ask, “Is it really that bad, come on!” when they should be asking, “How much better could it be?”
What defining feature of Siri will bestow the honor of it graduating from Beta and should the Apple version of Maps have been released as such?
Oh my god, what an idiot.
I guess if you put something on the internet, you can’t always have everybody agreeing with you. With that said, there are endless possibilities one can interpret an article. So, can we please just end this shit storm in the comments? No man deserves to be called these names just for asserting his own opinion.
Are they not asserting their own opinion as well?
When he was alive they told him what he should do, now they know what he would have done.
At the sentence or clause that opines what Steve Jobs would, or would not, have done, I’m looking for another page. Someone more savvy than me needs to write a small “anti-bookmark” piece of code that will recognize an objectionably stupid typist and offer a “Do Not Go There” alert.
That way when you read the guys who preface their anti-Apple rant with, “I’ve been using a Macintosh since 1980 and I worship at the shrine of Steve Jobs…” your browser can warn you. Maybe call it “AAAA.” Anti Apple Asshole Alert. Or possibly, iII, iIdiot Intervention.
One quick question, if everybody knows what Steve Jobs would do, why was he the only one who did it?
Note: Yes, I know the Macintosh didn’t exist until 1984. That was part of the joke.
“…if everybody knows what Steve Jobs would do, why was he the only one who did it?”
^^^THIS
Nice edit, bud, but to the point, these critiques of character are based on more than just the assertion of one’s opinion.
Content matters.
The San Francisco Chronicle has had a noticeable tradition of publishing tech writers who formerly made hay out of complaining that Apple needed to be more like Microsoft. That clock ran out after Apple began to succeed beyond their ability to dismiss.
Too bad there aren’t many places that a short-sighted hack can go from there, especially if he or she isn’t smart enough to switch horses the way Mike Elgan did.
Poor boo-boo. Please tell us about anything else that irks you so.
Opinions merit attention when they’re informed by knowledge of the subject. Those that aren’t merit criticism so they don’t become the standard for lowered expectations.
Not everybody gets an award simply for showing up. Sorry that your parents were wrong about that.
Let’s boycott the Apple butt lovers. The ones who say, “I love Apple, but…”
But your holding it wrong? 😉